An Interview by Erin Stocks

“The Summer People” by Kelly Link will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: 2012 edited by Rich Horton. Pre-order here!

In “The Summer People,” Fran eventually comes to realize that she doesn’t know what she’s missing until it’s gone. Where did the idea for the summer people come from?

Fran escapes a terrible situation, but it’s at a high price. And there are people all over the world stuck in terrible situations. I don’t know that it’s true that there’s no place like home. Sometimes the problem is that other places are exactly like home.

The idea for the summer people came from traditional fairy tales about humans who become servants of fairy folk. That, and about what it’s like to be under obligation (for financial or other reasons) to people who are much more rich and powerful and scary than you are.

Ophelia’s eagerness to please seems to be the catalyst Fran was subconsciously looking for. Do you think she would have ever left home without Ophelia befriending her?

I don’t really know. Fran is under magical (contractual) obligation to stay unless someone else will take her place. Ophelia is the first real opportunity she sees for escape.

Fran’s reaction to the unusual and unworldly elements of her life–taking them all in stride and not even blinking an eye–provides a nice contrast to Ophelia’s (and possibly the reader’s) reactions. How did you go about writing the juxtaposition between the two girls? 

Well, as the writer, you have to imagine how your characters look at the world. You take things in (or don’t) depending on whether or not you’ve grown up in a environment where there are particular kinds of danger or risk or responsibility. Ophelia comes from a rich family, she’s gay, and she’s been bullied. So she would be sensitive to particular kinds of situations and risk and blind to others. She’s susceptible to overtures of friendship, because she’s lonely. She is attracted to the idea of magic and the fantastic, maybe because she’s been protected from the true cost of things. (I think that often magic seems like a kind of currency — you get marvelous  things! Magic can belong to you!) Fran, on the other hand, is self-reliant. She knows what things like magic and family cost. In her eyes, friendship isn’t something affordable.