Interview with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Author of the Saint-Germain Series - Page 4

I've wanted to know this since 1983: just how did Mr. Lorpicar become a vampire?

Lorpicar is a Sicilian name; Csimenae got to him on a walk trip.

You describe yourself as a "skeptical occultist" and you've been a Tarot card reader and a palmist. But the Count seems to be an agnostic about mysticism and the supernatural. Would Saint-Germain be "an occultist" or is his outlook completely rational and scientific?

He's an occultist. So was Isaac Newton. And what constitutes rational and scientific changes over time, both in expression and desirability. Saint-Germain, like Newton, is an empiricist. Modern empiricism is a product of the Age of Enlightenment; classical empiricism was the hallmark of Imperial Rome. Most times and most cultures were not so relentlessly left-brain as modern technologically sophisticated societies are, and their range of rationality was more broadly defined than what is presently accepted.

With all the loss that Saint-Germain has endured, does he believe in any kind of afterlife or non-material reality? What does he think happens after "the True Death?"

He thinks he'll be dead. For Saint-Germain, who died about 4,100 years ago, this is the afterlife.

As the Saint-Germain series has progressed, it's seemed to me that the Count has become more and more constrained by his own principles. Do you ever sometimes feel that you've "written him into a corner" and limited his reactions to situations? Will Saint-Germain ever "break out" again like he did in Tempting Fate?

You ask as if I am putting constraints upon him: I can only write when my characters come alive and tell me who they are and how they act. I don't tell Saint-Germain what to do; I choose the setting and do the research and turn him loose in his environment; he does what he does and I write it down. That's true of all my characters. I don't know if he'll ever have another episode like the one in Tempting Fate. He surprised me then and he can still surprise me now. Minor characters are as autonomous as the main ones; if they aren't real for me, they haven't a prayer of being real for a reader. That's the most enjoyable part of writing, that sense of the characters becoming real.

In the small publishing field, there are many gloomy predictions made about the decrease in reading and book sales. Do you think that people are really less interested in written fiction, as pessimists say, or do you think people still love to be told a good story as much as ever?

Article Author: Vyrdolak

Inanna Arthen (Vyrdolak) is the creator of the website By Light Unseen, owner of the small press By Light Unseen Media and author of Mortal Touch. An authority on vampire lore, Forteana and alternative culture, she is a fascinated observer and commentator …

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