Name of the author: Mercedes Lackey (also writes as Misty Lackey)
Main genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Music
Main audience: Young adult on
Main books: Mercedes Lackey has over 140 books published. Many of her books are set in the world Velgarth, mostly focusing on Valdemar. She also has written books in the series Bedlam's Bard (about a young man who works magic through music), the SERRAted Edge (books about racecar driving elves) and the Diana Tregarde (books about a Wiccan Guardian who combats evil). Sometimes characters from one of the series are mentioned in another. (That's always fun.) As well as writing many stand-alone books, she has co-authored many books which grow into their own series.
She's also re-written many well-known 'fairy tales', giving them yet another slant, and often including magic as a matter of course as part of the life there.
Short summary of the author: Read the Goodreads write-up below. Basically, Mercedes Lackey write about worlds where magic is just there, as a matter of course. Some people are completely unaware of the presence of magic and others are not. What she does, though, is create fascinating worlds where the magic users and people who are not magic interconnect and sometimes learn about each others' worlds.
It is through reading her books that I was introduced to the idea that many things which I had experienced in life and thought were just my imagination had been experienced by many other persons and were actually going on, real. This was a wonderfully liberating thing. Yes, I really AM hearing/feeling/being this way. Yes, there are psychic parasites (as well as other kinds of parasites). Yes there are ways to protect oneself from them. How lovely.
On the other hand, sometimes she can get a little strong on the 'morality' bit. I don't think that is such a bad thing, though, when compared to those who believe they are 'separate from and superior to the rest of life' -- and act upon that belief.
Goodreads write-up for Mercedes Lackey
Mercedes entered this world on June 24, 1950, in Chicago, had a normal childhood and graduated from Purdue University in 1972. During the late 70's she worked as an artist's model and then went into the computer programming field, ending up with American Airlines in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In addition to her fantasy writing, she has written lyrics for and recorded nearly fifty songs for Firebird Arts & Music, a small recording company specializing in science fiction folk music.
"I'm a storyteller; that's what I see as 'my job'. My stories come out of my characters; how those characters would react to the given situation. Maybe that's why I get letters from readers as young as thirteen and as old as sixty-odd. One of the reasons I write song lyrics is because I see songs as a kind of 'story pill' -- they reduce a story to the barest essentials or encapsulate a particular crucial moment in time. I frequently will write a lyric when I am attempting to get to the heart of a crucial scene; I find that when I have done so, the scene has become absolutely clear in my mind, and I can write exactly what I wanted to say. Another reason is because of the kind of novels I am writing: that is, fantasy, set in an other-world semi-medieval atmosphere. Music is very important to medieval peoples; bards are the chief newsbringers. When I write the 'folk music' of these peoples, I am enriching my whole world, whether I actually use the song in the text or not.
"I began writing out of boredom; I continue out of addiction. I can't 'not' write, and as a result I have no social life! I began writing fantasy because I love it, but I try to construct my fantasy worlds with all the care of a 'high-tech' science fiction writer. I apply the principle of TANSTAAFL ['There ain't no such thing as free lunch', credited to Robert Heinlein) to magic, for instance; in my worlds, magic is paid for, and the cost to the magician is frequently a high one. I try to keep my world as solid and real as possible; people deal with stubborn pumps, bugs in the porridge, and love-lives that refuse to become untangled, right along with invading armies and evil magicians. And I try to make all of my characters, even the 'evil magicians,' something more than flat stereotypes. Even evil magicians get up in the night and look for cookies, sometimes.
"I suppose that in everything I write I try to expound the creed I gave my character Diana Tregarde in Burning Water:
"There's no such thing as 'one, true way'; the only answers worth having are the ones you find for yourself; leave the world better than you found it. Love, freedom, and the chance to do some good -- they're the things worth living and dying for, and if you aren't willing to die for the things worth living for, you might as well turn in your membership in the human race."
