Welcome to the Patricia McKillip page! This page is not officially affiliated with Patricia McKillip in any way. I am not Patricia McKillip, nor can I pass your question on to Patricia McKillip. Also note that all covers remain the copyright of the artist (or whoever has them). Photo by Kate Kincheloe, taken from the (former) Putnam Berkeley webpage on McKillip. as of 7/27/99 when it reset for some reason... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Feel free to send me comments on this page.Ê Sign the Guestbook! NEWS:Ê Ê McKillip's next book will be called In the Forests of Serre and will be available in June, 2003. The Changeling Sea is going to be reprinted, and will be out in April, 2003.Ê It's being done in a Young Adult line from Penguin/Firebird.Ê Buy it! Like the recent covers?Ê They are by Kinuko Craft.Ê I've written a small page about her, with links to her official site and several books she's illustrated.ÊÊ I've updated the Recommended Reading List - the egroup came up with some of our favorite authors and books.Ê If you like McKillip, you might find some good stuff here. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note that I am not a writer, I am a computer geek who loves to read and loves most to read Patricia McKillip. These pages exist because when I went looking for information on my favorite writer, I couldn't find any - so I wrote some.Ê If you have any constructive criticism of these pages and especially of my text, I'd love to hear it. If you know of any stories I don't have, or feel like scanning a few book covers I don't have and e-mailing them to me, that'd be wonderful.Ê Just e-mail me at evan@evan.org. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I've added links to amazon.com for the books of hers that I can find there to make it easy for those looking to purchase them.Ê Search: Keywords: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Report from the 25th World Fantasy Convention, with pictures of McKillip and other authors.Ê The WFC book had a pretty good biographical article on McKillip by her friend David Lunde. McKillip has done two interviews with Locus.Ê "Moving Forward" was done in 1992, and "Springing Surprises" was published in 1996.Ê Current and back editions of Locus are still available at Locus Online.Ê Locus also often includes information about upcoming McKillip releases.Ê Thanks to Rebekah Jensen for sending them to me! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I first discovered Patricia Anne McKillip when I was in 5th grade or so. I found a copy of The Forgotten Beasts of Eld and loved it. It was years before I found another book she had written (I lived in a very small town...no real bookstores.) Her books have an innocence to them that I cherish. Even her villains are characters that I can relate to and care about. They do not see themselves as villains but instead are just people who are doing what they think is best or what they feel they have to do. I can understand their motives and care about them, even if I do not agree with them (they are still "the bad guy"!) I don't have too much personal information on McKillip. All that I know is what is in the various "Author's notes" in her books. She was born in Salem, Oregon (USA) on February 29, 1948 - a leap year baby!Ê She started writing at 14, and according to the notes in the Riddlemaster trilogy, "she has been writing ever since - except for a brief detour when she thought she would be a concert pianist." The House on Parchment Street has a neat quote about how she started writing - "In a fit of boredom one day when she was fourteen, she sat down in front of a window overlooking a stately medieval church and its graveyard and produced a thirty-page fairy tale." She went to the College of Notre Dame, Belmont, and San Jose University where she earned a BA in English. She then went on for a MA at the San Jose State University. McKillip then moved to San Francisco, then to the Catskill Mountains in NY, and now lives in Roxbury, NY (if I make sense of the author's notes in consecutive books correctly.) She won the World Fantasy Award in 1975 for The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, the Locus Award in 1980 for Harpist in the Wind, and the Balrog award in 1985 in the short fiction category for "A Troll and Two Roses". This quote was in Faces of Fantasy (by Patti Perret): I write fantasy because it's there.Ê I have no other excuse for sitting down for several hours a day indulging my imagination.Ê Daydreaming. Ê Thinking up imaginary people, impossible places.Ê Imagination is the golden-eyed monster that never sleeps.Ê It must be fed; it cannot be ignored. Ê Making it tell the same tale over and over again makes it thin and whining; its scales begin to fall off; its fiery breath becomes a trickle of smoke.Ê It is best fed by reality, an odd diet for something nonexistent; there are few details of daily life and its broad range of emotional context that can't be transformed into food for the imagination.Ê It must be visited constantly, or else it begins to become restless and emit strange bellows at embarrassing moments; ignoring it only makes it grow larger and noisier.Ê Content, it dreams awake, and spins the fabric of tales.Ê There is really nothing to be done with such imagery except to use it:Ê in writing, in art. Ê Those who fear the imagination condemn it:Ê something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten.Ê Not all of us dream awake.Ê But those of us who do have no choice. I have several pictures of McKillip here. Ê Thanks go to Rebekah Jensen for these pictures, as well as several other scans she has been kind enough to provide.Ê ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I started a email list on McKillip a while ago - feel free to join in.ÊÊ Subscribe to McKillip Powered by groups.yahoo.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Following is a list of her books and short stories.Ê The books and short stories are in order of publication.Ê Click on each title for more information on that book, including cover scans. At the moment, I have only entered the text on the book jackets - not much review material.Ê One of the prime reasons is that I am terrible at writing review material. Ê If you'd like to write a review of your favorite book (or any other on this list)and send it to me, I will add it to the appropriate page.Ê Reviews with spoilers are acceptable, but rather than include them directly there will be a link to them so no one will have a novel ruined accidently. Novels The Throme of the Erril of Sherill, 1973 (republished with The Harrowing of the Dragon of Hoarsbreath) The House on Parchment Street, 1973 The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, 1974 (buy the hardback - buy the paperback) The Night Gift, 1976 The Riddlemaster of Hed, 1976 Heir of Sea and Fire, 1977 Harpist in the Wind, 1979 (The Hed trilogy was collected in Riddle of Stars and is about to be released again in Riddle-Master.Ê Buy it.) Stepping From the Shadows, 1982 Moon-Flash, 1984 The Moon and the Face, 1985 Fool's Run, 1987 The Changeling Sea, 1988 The Sorceress and the Cygnet, 1991 The Cygnet and the Firebird, 1993 Brian Froud's Faerielands #2: Something Rich and Strange, 1994 The Book of Atrix Wolfe, 1995 - buy it Winter Rose, 1996 - buy it Song For The Basilisk, 1998 - buy it The Tower at Stony Wood, 2000 - buy it Ombria in Shadow, 2001 -Ê buy itÊ Short Stories The Harrowing of the Dragon of Hoarsbreath, 1982 Moby James, 1991 The Fellowship of the Dragon, 1992 Lady of the Skulls, 1992 The Snow Queen, 1993 - buy it Transmutations, 1994 - buy it The Lion and the Lark, 1995 The Witches of Junket, 1996 Oak Hill, 1998 - buy it A Gift To Be Simple, 1999 - buy it Toad, 1999 - buy it McKillip has a new short story in the Datlow and Windling collection called The Green Man.Ê Buy it! Short Stories I Don't Have (please e-mail me with any stories you know about that I've missed with the collection they appear in.) * Baba Yaga and the Sorceror's Son in Dragons and Dreams edited by Jane Yolen, Martin H. Greenburg, and Charles Waugh, 1986 * A Troll and Two Roses in Faery! edited by Terri Windling, 1985 * The Old Woman and the Storm in Imaginary Lands edited by Robin McKinley, 1985 * A Matter of Music in Elsewhere, Volume 3 edited by Terri Windling and Mark Alan Arnold, 1984 * XMas Cruise in Christmas Forever edited by David Hartwell, 1993 * Ash, Wood, Fire in The Women's Press Book of New Myth and Magic edited by Helen Windrath, 1993 * Fortune's Children in Tales of the Witch World 3, edited by Andre Norton, 1990 * The Stranger in Temporary Walls, edited by Greg Ketter and Robert Garcia, 1993 (1993 World Fantasy Convention) * A Doorkeeper of Khaat in Full Spectrum 2, edited by Lou Aronica, Shawna McCarthy, Amy Stout & Patrick LoBrutto, 1989 * Star-Crossed in Shakespearean Whodunnits, edited by Mike Ashley, 1997 * Wonders of the Invisible World in Full Spectrum 5, edited by Jennifer Hersh, Tom Dupree & Janna Silverstein, 1995 and also in Years Best SF, edited by David Hartwell in 1996. * 12 Dancing Princesses in A Wolf at the Door : And Other Retold Fairy Tales, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, 2001. Miscellaneous (please e-mail me with anything else you know about and where it appears.) * Introduction to The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche, a collection of stories by Peter Beagle * Introduction to the 1984 World Fantasy Convention Program Book, edited by Charles de Lint (reprinted in Dragonfield and Other Stories in 1985.) * Introduction to StoryTeller, a 1992 convention book in honor of Jane Yolen ÊÊÊ Other Good Links A page with a discussion of vengeance as a theme in McKillip's books. Locus has a index to Science Fiction and a list of McKillip's books which you can get to from their author list. I've been told that the Bookstore Junkies Mailing List is a good way to find stuff if you are willing to help others.Ê Everyone looks for books for everyone else. I have also found every book McKillip has written at http://www.abebooks.com/ - check them out. Ê It's a huge listing of all sorts of used bookstores. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Evan's Page. Evan Strikes Back. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ If you would like to send me a comment, please do. Evan Reynolds < evan@evan.org >