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Professor by day, author by night
With 50 novels complete and teaching history at Pierce, Hambly has a full plate
Victor Stephen Kamont, Coburn Palmer / Roundup
A famous author with more than 50 novels to her credit happens to work at Pierce College as a history professor.
Barbara Hambly, an adjunct assistant professor in the history and humanities department, is also a historical fiction novelist although her students might never know it.
“They don’t need me to stand up there and tell them I am a famous writer,” Hambly said. “If they go to the faculty website, they can find out I write books.”
She trained as an academic historian, in order to become a professor and she became a writer because it is what she likes to do.
“Barbara is sweet, congenial and easy to get along with, I shared an office space with her for about a year,” Professor Richard McMillan said.
According to Hambly there are two kinds of writers. The first kind start writing as small children, and writing is a safe place for them to go. The second start writing later and writing is the dangerous place.
Every writer draws from their own, or others experiences, according to Hambly but not every character they write represents them.
“We’re good at making stuff up,” she said.
Hambly applied to teach creative writing at first but was later hired to teach history because of her degree.
“Barbara can teach other classes too, she has taught the Honors class,” chair of the history department Gene Larson said.
Meanwhile, Hambly’s students might never know she is a professional writer.
“I think that bringing anything from my writing life would be a distraction,” she said.
Despite her attempts to remain hidden some of her students do wind up reading her blog and discover her secret.
Her advice to beginning writers is to have someone they know read their writing and give them feedback.
“They can tell you if you are writing clearly,” Hambly said. “You are to close to it.
If writers get stuck at a crossroads, they should retrace their steps and have their characters take a different path, according to her.
“Your subconscious is telling you that you are going down the wrong path,” Hambly said.
She generally starts her books from outlines so she always knows where they are going but she doesn’t always know how they’re going to get there.
“I make my outlines short and lose,” Hambly said. “Point A or point B might end up as point Z.”
Hambly also says that beginning writers spend too much time describing their character’s worlds and not enough time describing the action.
“A common mistake is to put everything in one lump,” Hambly said. “You should divide your writing into little slivers and distribute them through out your book.”
Hambly will soon be selling her whole backlist of sword and sorcery and vampire books in digital form through Open Road Media, and all new original stories on her website barbarahambly.com
“The series got dropped, but I still had many fans,” said Hambly. “I’ve started writing short stories of those series.”
Hambly believes that writers write because they have no choice. The only difference between her and another writer is that she gets paid.
“Every writer makes 10,0000 mistakes, get started and get them out of the way,” she said.
