Ben asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

Dear Ms. McMaster Bujold, Thank you so much for answering all these questions! Of the Vorkosigan books, A Civil Campaign is especially delightful because it's a departure from the tone of the series -- I always think of it as a comedy of manners after lots of (wonderful) space opera, military fiction, family drama, etc. Did you conceive of it this way? Are there other modes that you'd like to write in but haven't?

Lois McMaster Bujold I'd wanted to write a Barrayaran regency romance ever since I awoke to the fact that Barrayar had this perfectly good regency lying around. Aral Vorkosigan's regency was long over by the time this book came along, but why should that stop the parade? A lot of other elements went into the book, not least Shakespearean comedy... somewhere around is a long fannish discussion of them, A Reader's Companion to A Civil Campaign. Aha, free pdf is here -- http://dendarii.com/ACC-Companion.pdf -- warning, large file.

At this point, I could write in any mode I wanted, so long as I liked it enough to have internalized it. One reader-reviewer even described Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen as an SF-mainstream crossover, which may be a bit of a stretch, but not for me to say. Whatever the mode, it would have to be a story I relished enough to slog through the bog of actually writing.

Ta, L.

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