Fantastic Metropolis

M.M. Hall: It’s intriguing how the title reflects your early obssession. Maybe you should misspell the title? Like, call it “The Misteraees?”

Lisa Tuttle: Maybe someday I should write a children’s book with a mysteriously misspelt title.

M.M. Hall: Gracia… what a cool middle name! I wonder what your writing would be like if published under Gracia Tuttle?

Lisa Gracia Tuttle: I’m a subscriber to the “a rose by any other name” theory, and doubt that if I’d started writing as “Gracia Tuttle” it would have caused my stories to be perceived any differently. Of course, if I changed now people would doubtless find huge significance in it. I think “Gracia Murray” could write contemporary women’s fiction, possibly with a Scottish setting… Dept. of Coincidence: In The Affirmation by Christopher Priest there is a significant female character named Gracia. Chris began writing this novel soon after meeting me (more than a year before I moved to England) but he had no idea of my middle name (which I very rarely use) and thought he had “made up” the name. Weird?

M.M. Hall: Well, as some sage once said, there are no coincidences… I might add, but there are always wonderful little miracles and little magicks… such as your work. Gracias… Lisa Gracia…

Background notes

I first met Lisa Tuttle in 1978 at the Fourth World Fantasy Convention held in Fort Worth, Texas. That small convention remains one of the most amazing incidents in my life. As the very young assistant manager of an independently run bookstore (Barber’s Bookstore now sadly, out of business after many years), we were running a promotion for Ace Books and Barber’s owner, Brian Perkins sent me down to the convention to see if I could snag some writers to visit the store (only blocks away). I got in line behind Judy Lynn and Lester Del Rey, Stephen R. Donaldson and Harlan Ellison to register. Before long, perhaps not surprisingly, weird things began happening. I kept meeting authors I’d read and wondered about. At one point I found myself sitting next to Stephen King and Lisa Tuttle, listening to Harlan Ellison perform. I met Charles Grant who would eventually buy several of my short stories for his Shadows series. I got reacquainted with a college buddy, Howard Waldrop. I met a Southern gothic photographer Clarence Laughlin noted for his works centered on the ghostly antebellum mystique… but the friendship that began there with Lisa Tuttle continues to give me encouragement to take my own writing more seriously and to appreciate the joys of self-expression and self-exploration.

“Finish it,” Lisa would repeatedly tell me, when I was blocked on a novel or project. She’s bought stories from me for her anthologies. She’s listened and confided in me. We’ve shared and continue to share our lives, even at enormous distances. Her work continues to take chances. Her fiction never takes the easy way out. She challenges herself and her readers to embrace the mysteries of everyday life.

—M.M. Hall

M.M. Hall’s career began in the ’80s with Twilight Zone magazine, edited by T.E.D. Klein who called her Fort Worth’s answer to Shirley Jackson. Since that time, the unrepentant Texan has been trying to live up to that scary comparison by publishing in numerous anthologies (Gahan Wilson’s Ultimate Haunted House, Ellen Datlow’s Whisper of Blood, Lisa Tuttle’s Skin of the Soul and Crossing the Border), including a contribution to the book she also developed and edited, Wild Women, which was subsequently reprinted, along with another WW contribution by Carole Nelson Douglas, in the Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories (1998), edited by Ed Gorman and Martin Greenberg. She has also collaborated with Douglas E. Winter. Datlow and Windling have cited her work in Honorable Mention lists in their Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. When not reviewing books for various markets, or interviewing writers for Publisher’s Weekly, Hall works on various writing, editing and art projects. Most recently her work has been in the August ‘02 issue of Realms of Fantasy, the first issue (July ‘02) of New American Review (Authorlink Press) and featured on the Gothic.net website. You can check out The Hall of Mia for more information and Hall’s interview with Kevin J. Anderson in Publishers Weekly.