Mad Genius Club

We've Moved

2011-05-13T16:06:00.007-04:00

WE WENT THISAWAY
COME SEE US IN OUR NEW DIGS AT HTTP://MADGENIUSCLUB.COM

We vamoosed. We blew the joint. We's out of here.

Having acquired an Url (I thought we should hold out for a duke, but the other guys don't got no ambition) we can now be found at http://madgeniusclub.com

Ladies, gentlemen, dragons and ladybugs, grab the children and reset your bookmarks. We're waiting for you!

The Writer's Toolbox - The whys and wherefores

2011-05-11T19:53:00.000-04:00

Just as no artist would consider working without a toolbox - including physical items like paints and brushes, but also non-physical things like techniques the artist knows and a mental library of what works with which surface or set of conditions - no writer should work without a toolbox. In some ways writers are fortunate: almost all the tools a writer needs can be carried inside his or her skull. We don't need special ink, special pens or special paper (unless we're writing in the Myst universe, where somewhat... different rules apply...). But we do need tools, and some of them aren't all that intuitive.

I'm going to digress a bit here, because there are some terms I'm going to be using in a uniquely Kate way that I should define before I start. When I talk about talent, I mean an innate, potentially inherited and inheritable, ability to do something (anything) better or easier than the norm. They're pretty common - just about everyone is better than the norm at something (although sometimes the something is relatively useless, like tuned flatulence). Skills are things you've practiced at and made better than the norm. Sometimes there's overlap: if you've worked at something you're talented at to make it even better, it's become a skill as well (in which case you got a head-start. Aren't you lucky?). Other times you started from the norm or below the norm and worked at it until you got to be good at it. Generally speaking, the only difference between someone who's developed a skill from scratch and someone who started with a talent for it and built the skill is that the second person got there faster. Otherwise, there's no difference to speak of. The third piece of the puzzle I call gifts. These are phenomenally rare and involve a synthesis across skills and talents that defies logical explanation - and can't be learned. Ever. If you're lucky enough to have one of these, treasure it, nurture it, and build the skills to support it - because while it can show without the associated skills, it won't truly shine until you've gained the skills it needs.

If that seems a bit abstruse, here's an example (and homework, sort of) for you. If you take an example of Luciano Pavarotti at his peak, you will hear one of the world's great tenors with a truly magnificent voice (Singers have it rough - their most important tool, their voice, is born. If you've got a crappy voice, nothing you do can make it great. Only less crappy - speaking from experience here as a not-quite-professional-level soprano with a voice that no-one could ever claim was good. The instrument just isn't there). Now listen to Placido Domingo at his peak, singing the same song. Domingo's voice is darker, and not as good an instrument - but when he sings, there's magic happening. He has the gift: Pavarotti doesn't. No amount of training or practice could give Pavarotti that instinctive sense that allows Domingo to make the most of the emotional punch in the music. The most Pavarotti can do is learn to sort-of imitate the sense that Domingo has. Think of it as a blind man imitating the actions of a sighted one by rote learning, and you're getting close. Now, if Domingo hadn't worked and trained his voice, that gift would never have been enough to take him to the top of his field. But its absence didn't stop Pavarotti. The real difference that I see is that the best you can do without the gift isn't quite as good or as satisfying as the best you can do with it. Incidentally, I have the musical gift, albeit not terribly strongly. What I lack is the talent and the skills (and the desire to develop them).

In writing, there are some very popular and high-selling authors who don't have the gift. There are others who do. In cases like Pratchett, you can see it grow as his skills develop: just read his books in order of publication. Some highly skilled authors with the gift are stuck in midlist hell - or unpublished. The point being, that whether you have it or not doesn't matter except that if you do have it you'll be forever second-guessing yourself because this weird shit you never planned on keeps showing up in what you write and making your work better for it.

Okay, here endeth the rant. Now back to the toolbox.

Ours is - mostly - not physical, although in the case of writers who plot by sticky-note, a plentiful supply of sticky-notes and a large wall space is essential (for those who know software development methodologies, I am resisting the urge to call this "agile plotting". Long story, not one you want to hear. Trust me on that). What that virtual toolbox shares with the physical ones is that it needs to contain a range of tools from the most basic to the most sophisticated, and from brute-force to ultra-precision. To go back to the painter, spray paint or rollers count as brute force, where brushes with diameters measured in fractions of an inch would be ultra-precision. Finger in paint - basic. Computerized pattern spraying - sophisticated. You get the idea.

Into the toolbox go all the techniques, all the skills, and all the bits and pieces that writers need to actually do their job. Most other artists work with a mix of a physical and a virtual toolbox - we mostly get to put it all together. Usually it's kind of disorganized, too. How do you separate words from spelling, for instance?

Next post will be on basic tools: the things a writer needs before developing skills. Some of these basic tools can be talents (spelling is one of mine), which gives the fortunate possessor a free pass in that tool. Most of them are so basic we usually don't even think about them, much less consider them as tools. Which is why I'm starting there - everything else builds on the basics.

Next week (assuming my life doesn't explode) - the basic tools.

Learning To Whisper

2011-05-11T06:18:00.000-04:00

What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers. ~Logan Pearsall Smith, "All Trivia," Afterthoughts, 1931

I’ll confess that much as I would like to sound incredibly erudite, I’d never heard of Logan Pearsall Smith until I read this quote. Having read it, I’m of two minds about it.

The reason I’m of two minds about it is that I have a tendency to “whisper” in writing, something that I’m sure will surprise a lot of people who have met me in person (i.e. who’ve been exposed to the woman who needs not microphones) as well as a lot of people who have read me – in person or not. But what you see in my books is not always what comes naturally. Naturally, I have a tendency to elide a lot of the emotion and what I would call “the embarrassing stuff.” My style of narrating is to assume the reader already knows a lot of this and it doesn’t need to be emphasized. That, as I’ve learned, is wrong. There is such a thing, yes, as keeping a stiff upper lip, and it is very important in a human, but not always in a writer. Since readers read for the emotion, the stiff upper lip undercuts the power of the writing.

On the other hand, there is a way of whispering in writing – there are the things not said, but which come across just fine. This is a higher type of writing, and one that I frankly don’t know if I can do. I try, but it’s hard to judge, with your own work, whether you landed perfectly or fell on your face. Only the reader can tell.

This type of whispering is subtle and haunting. It’s the little things about the character and the world that remain in your mind, sometimes years later, the little things that aren’t always stated, but that you return to, are sure of, wish were written about.

Entire websites full of stories echo with Jane Austen’s whisperings, particularly in Pride and Prejudice. “Did other people know what they were feeling better than they did? When did he realize he loved her?” Etc. The same goes for Georgette Heyer. Most of the sexual tension in her romances is never even mentioned. Take Venitia, one of my very favorites – they joke, they recite poetry, they make repartee sometimes on risque subjects, but there’s no kissing, no fondling, nothing beyond an embrace and that at the end. However, the sexual tension is scorching. How much more powerful does it make the book than the modern romances which tell me what went where and how many times, sometimes with shocking anatomical improbability? Then there is Heinlein. Take The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. Nowhere does the main character tell us he’s fallen in love with Wyoming Knott. Except it’s in everything he says about her, and how he says it, so when she marries into the family and ends up in his bed before the trip to Earth, it’s expected. It’s been whispered throughout the book, even though explicitly they’ve done nothing more than flirt. And there’s Pratchett. Most of the romances, like in Making Money and the relationship between Sam Vimes and his wife. But more than that, there are hints about Nobby Nobs that you honestly don’t want to think too deeply about.

But it is those whispers, those less-brightly-illuminated scenes that give the book the feel of roundness, of completeness. Look, if you walk down a well lighted street, you expect to pass boarded up stores, and others that are dark and alleys that you only see the opening to. If those are truncated, not there, you know the street is a fake, a Hollywood scene made of painted boards with nothing behind it. At the same time, if al those side avenues are brightly illuminated, you get dazzled, stop paying attention to where you’re going, and get lost in a side street. Or, to make the metaphor more consistent – if you hear only one loud, clear voice, you feel like there is no one there, just perhaps an electronic simulation of a human voice. As – in TMIAHM – Heinlein noted, behind a real human voice there are other sounds. Breathing. Adjusting yourself in the chair. A door slamming somewhere.

We don’t consciously hear them, but they are there, and they convince us this person is real. Of course, in the same way, you don’t want them to be so loud they drown out the voice.

You see the point and the dilemma? It’s something I’m trying to learn, as I said, but I’m not sure if I can, except by studying those who’ve done it well and learning to imitate. And you? Do you know who does it well? Do I even explain what I mean clearly enough for you to understand?

I hope I do. I want to catch your attention, and I hope I’m learning to whisper.

Crossposted at According To Hoyt

Polishing that Manuscript

2011-05-10T04:33:00.004-04:00

Here I am, sharing the cover of book two of The Outcast Chronicles. And here I am, plunging into the clean up of book three, so I can hand the books in to my publisher at the end of May. Which brings me around to polishng that manuscript.

Here Kate Elliot talks about revision, part one. She says: 'When I think about what I have learned and how I have improved in skill and experience as a writer, most of that improvement revolves not around coming up with ideas or characters or even necessarily interactions between characters. While I hope I have the experience of age in being able to see more nuance and layers in human behavior, I do not think I am “better at” coming up with “ideas” (depending on how you define what an “idea” is in the context of fiction).

What I know, however, is that I have a better grasp of the revisions process.

I know how to look at a scene, or a conversation, or some element or detail within a book, and identify that it needs work or, at the least, that something about it makes me twitchy and uncomfortable, which means it needs work. Then, I can often pick it apart to the point where I can sort how it isn’t working and, through trial and error or in a single flash of authorial brilliance, figure out how to fix it.'

I would have to say that this is what I've discovered. It's partly experience from editing my own work over the years, but it is also all the hours I've put into marking treatments for UNI (What's wrong with this? What isn't working?) and the hours I've put in reading my fellow ROR writers' manuscripts to give feedback at one of our weekends away.

I will generally have a feel for what is wrong. Sometimes I have to go off and clean something or mow the yard for the core problem to percolate up from my subconscious mind, along with the answer. That's the thing about being creative. It's not like accountancy, where the sums always add up to the same answers (if you're lucky).

Kate talks about accepting imperfection and moving on, because none of us write brilliantly the first time we put the story down on paper. Here Kate Elliot talks about revisions part two and how she tackles them. She divides them into large scale, medium scale and small scale.

And here is a post I did over at the ROR blog where I talk about revisions and editing (and I quote the inimitable Sarah Hoyt from the Mad Genius Club. LOL).

I like the editing process. It's when I add the layers and the extra nuances. By the time I come around to editing I know the characters so much better and I know what they are trying to hide. I like to plant clues for the reader. With King Rolen's Kin I'd had plenty of time to clean up the manuscript. I was able to print it off and give it to my husband and son who both read fantasy, to look for plot holes and inconsistencies. I won't get a chance to go to that length with the new trilogy.

Which do you prefer first drafts, or the revisions?

The 99 cent book

2011-05-09T05:28:00.008-04:00

"He sold his first story to Wonder Stories in 1931 when magazines cost a dime and you could get 12 ounces of Pepsi for a nickel" Harry Harrison writing of Clifford Simak in the introduction to the 1977 edition of Ring Around the Sun.

I read this and got a dose of perspective. So... back when pulps had their heyday - in the Depression, they cost two bottles of soft drink. They ALSO had circulations that most 'bestsellers' now couldn't dream of. A name built on a pulp readership could make your novels successful right out of the gate. Now those 'pulp' descendants have moved upmarket in price and sometimes in quality... and are outsold by an average midlister, and have a sadly tepid marketing value.

Things have changed since then. For example: We've increased the number of books being published enormously... and we've also changed the distribution mechanism and structure. The distribution curve for sales has become ridiculously attenuated, with 97% of books selling less than 10K and 2.8% selling between 10-100K and 0.2% selling into the tens of millions... as opposed those days when there were far less books published, but perhaps 30% of books sold less than 10K, and 69.8% 10-500K... and 0.19 getting to million, and 0.01% did better.

Lets face it, 2011 has a fair amount of frightening commonalities with 1931. The one trend that isn't running in tandem is entertainment. In the Great Depression books and movies did well. They provided cheap escape from a grim reality. They also provided uplift and hope for depressed people in hard times. I can't say that a lot of 2011 books are cheap enterainment, or good escapism or uplifting. And the industry has been hurting, badly. I can't really believe that no-one in the publishing establishement can see this, but I suspect it's a case of vested interests who would rather aim straight for the icebergs than change from their course. The content an I suspect especially skewed distribution model plainly has LOST readers/buyers. So I think has price, particularly with e-books, where electrons are cheaper than cheap pulp paper ever was. However: Where the behemoths lumber on their preselected paths, it does look as if independents with e-books are challenging this (I note some very cheerful - humor too - books which publishing ignored are doing very well thank you.) I also note that Pulp pricing is BAAAAAAACK... 99 cent books. Many of them probably at the same level as much of the material in those pulps, and I suspect the escapist and uplifting ones will do well. I'm unsure if they're going to return to the distribution curve of sales - simply because the entry is easier. But I have a feeling a solid 'midlist' will develop driven by reader demand not the marketing department -- a LOT healthier for a diverse reading audience and actually growing a reading market. Oh and as another aside, I see Apple's challenge seems to have been a fashion statement rather than having any real impact on e-book sales. Curiouser and curiouser.

So what do you think? Is it worth doing a 99 cent book? Is there a sea-change underway, to fit our society to a more austere but more hopeful model?

Do Your Homework

2011-05-08T08:48:00.006-04:00

We all know that writers have to do their homework. No matter what we write, there's some research involved. Whether it's knowing the street layout of the town where our story is set or getting the science right for our space opera or knowing the appropriate mythology for our fantasy, we have to do our legwork. Otherwise, our story or novel will not be as good as it can be.

What we sometimes forget is that our homework doesn't end with the writing. We have to research where to send it when we're done and we have to research what the agent or editor wants when we do. That's where we have to go looking for the guidelines and then we have to make sure we follow them. It doesn't matter how good our book or story is if that agent or editor doesn't see it because the query or submission was kicked for not following the guidelines.

This is something I've become more aware of since going to work as an editor for Naked Reader Press. I have a new appreciation for some of the frustrated comments I've seen from agents and editors about writers who don't follow the guidelines. Until I started working forNRP, I could sort of see what they meant but still thought they were making a mountain out of a mole hill, especially in this day when most submissions are made electronically. After all, how hard is it to do [ctrl + a] and then change the font size or type or line spacing?

Then I put on my editor hat and start looking at some of the submissions that have come across my desk. Up front, these are the minority and not the rule. We've had some very wonderful submissions come to us and others that might not have fit our needs, but would be good fits with another publisher. These submissions have, as a rule, followed our guidelines to the last detail. These are the submissions we really appreciate.

The flip side are those writers who don't even give a hat tip to the guidelines. These are the ones without cover letters with the requested information. These are the ones that don't include the short synopsis of their novel. These are the ones who submit genres we don't accept. These are the ones who don't know -- or don't understand -- basic manuscript format rules. These are the ones who start off with one strike against them because they didn't do their homework.

It starts with the cover letter or query letter -- I say "or" because if you are submitting to a publisher like NRP where we accept submissions without queries first, you don't have to do a formal query letter. However, much of the same information you put into your query letter needs to be in the cover letter. Things like the genre of your work, how many words, and if it's been published before or not. (This last is especially important because, whether you realize it or not, editors and agents do google you and your work.)

A short blurb is also good -- and required if you are sending a query. This isn't the synopsis nor is it an excerpt from your submission. This is similar to what's on the back cover. It is a hook to get the editor or agent interested enough in what you've sent to actually open the file. This is the one place in the cover/query for you to be creative -- but not at the expense of another author. Guys, you don't know if the editor or agent reading your cover is a huge fan of that author you've just called a hack. So don't shoot yourself in the foot before you get out of the starting gate.

Once you hit send, take a deep breath and go have some fun. Then get busy on your next project. You won't hear back from the editor or agent that day or the next. See what the standard response time is and then wait a reasonable period after the expiration of that time before sending a follow-up. And, please, unless you realize you hit "send" without attaching a file, don't keep resending every time you find and correct a typo.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: if you start submitting your work to agents or publishers, you need to finally admit to yourself that you are a writer. That being a writer is your job. It may be your second or third job, but it is still a job. So you need to treat it as such. Agents are your headhunters and publishers are who you enter into contractual agreements with. I won't say employers, because they aren't. But, just as you don't keep sending resumes every day to the same human resource professional, you don't keep sending revised queries or full manuscripts to an editor or agent when all you've done are minor cosmetic changes.

If it seems like I'm harping on the issue, I am. Some of the larger publishers and, I suspect, some agencies, have gone to a service that vets queries long before that agent or editor will. This service simply weighs the queries against the guidelines of that particular agent or editor. If you haven't followed the guidelines, it's rejected out of hand. It doesn't matter how good your query letter might be. It doesn't matter that your book might be the next best seller. A computer program has just rejected it because you didn't do your homework.

Is it fair? As a writer, I'm inclined to say no. But then, I sort of feel that way about having to send a query letter without a writing sample. After all, someone can write a wonderful query letter and their novel may suck eggs. Conversely, I've read awful queries but the accompanying novel is wonderful.

But as an editor, I can understand why the larger firms and publishing houses have gone to this automated vetting process. It takes time to read the cover/query. If that cover/query doesn't contain the information required by the guidelines, it takes time away from another author's submission to open the accompanying file and start reading only to discover the original submission is a genre we don't publish. I know how many submissions we get and my mind boggles at how many the larger companies that still accept unsolicited submissions must get.

So, as a writer and as an editor I remind you to do your homework. Be sure to read the guidelines and do your best to follow them. Don't start off with a strike or two against you because you haven't followed directions. Remember, if you have a question, e-mail is your friend. I've never had an agency or publisher not answer when I've asked for clarification of something.

Well, I've run on long enough. Just one more thing. For those of you who have been following the "outing" of the English teacher in PA as an erotic writer, here's a great interview with her from Publishers Weekly.

Go Read

2011-05-07T08:20:00.002-04:00

Today is Amanda Green's day to publicize herself, but she is going to be busy away from the computer all day, so she asked me to do something. I have no idea what she meant by "something" and she knows I suck at internet comedy routines and if I tried to dance on tables, the tables would probably break. Then, since the table at Mad Genius Club is owned in common and sort of round (well, it would be round, but since three of our members are in Australia, it turns into kind of a weird shape as it crosses the space/time continuum and... well... read And He Build A Crooked House (Heinlein's, not Christie's) for reference as to shape and perils) trust me when I say my attempting to dance on it and breaking it might bring about the end end of the universe as we know it.

So, instead, I'm going to encourage you to go read Amanda's novel, Nocturnal Origins, out from Naked reader press.

This is a review for the book: http://shinybookreview.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/amanda-greens-nocturnal-origins-is-quick-smart-and-sometimes-shocking/

And you can buy it here: http://nakedreader.com/joomla15/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=39&category_id=6&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=11

If you need it, you also have my personal recommendation. I've now read the book three times, which is a rare compliment, as I seldom read anything but my "comfort books" more than once.

Amanda has made noises about writing a sequel, and trust me you want to encourage this by bumping up her numbers. Now, go and read. And be glad I didn't dance on tables.

Coming Up Blank

2011-05-05T19:06:00.009-04:00

The wonderful thing about writing is that you can always make something out of nothing. It really is the original perpetual motion machine!

If you have a bad day, or a crap interaction, it immediately becomes fodder for your work. Inane conversations on the bus become a lesson in realistic dialogue. Annoying health problems or injuries suddenly manifest in your character and increase the depth of characterisation.

Today I was really stuck for something to blog about, then I realised I could blog about the fact I could not blog about something:)

All writers seem to approach their work from a different angle, and be inspired by different things. So what to do when you come up blank?

Some writers are inspired by natural settings, by the feeling of the landscape itself. I know for myself, some very weird characters and magical ideas can emerge from a quiet natural landscape, especially during storms and at twilight. At the very least it injects some reality into descriptions of scenery and setting.

Others are driven by the ideas themselves (this is very true for me). I can get inspired by interesting non-fiction, good books, films, and other weird ideas or what-ifs that occur to me in my more wistful moments.

Another thing that often gets me going is to plot out maps and put together drawings of the cities where the story takes place. Others might paint characters (I am total crap at drawing) or spend time imagining the settings of the story to get enthused. You can look for movies, books, pieces of music or art that inspire you for the piece you are writing.

I know many writers who write to music. Many take it even further than this - one writer friend of mine has collections of music for different types of scene. If there is an action scene coming up he puts all his 'action' CDs into the player.

Of course to be creative, you also need enough sleep (a challenge for me I can tell you) and to be in good frame of mind. The quality of your food, the amount of rest you get. Health is often neglected by writers, but has a huge impact energy levels. What do you do for stress reduction? That's important as well. How about exercise? Small amounts of low impact activity have been well demonstrated to have large positive effects. Walk the dog.

What do you do when you look for inspiration? Or do you subscribe to the notorious Idea of the Month Club?

Intersection of the Soul's Darkness

2011-05-05T08:00:00.001-04:00

Sarah and I have been having an intermittent blogversation about writers, writing, and madness, which got started with my post Dancing in the Shadows of Madness. The next two posts in the series are The Shadows Within, and Voices in the Dark. This installment of the blogversation should be pretty much independent, but I hope a few people decide to read the earlier posts anyway.

I personally - not that I'm at all opinionated - think that the kind of creativity capable of generating novels that feel 'real', like the kind of creativity capable of creating great and intense art, music, theater, or for that matter new insights in science, is actually the same thing as madness, just better controlled. Or perhaps better focused.

To conceptualize something that doesn't actually exist vividly enough that you can bring it into a form of existence and make it temporarily real for other people takes a mind that works very differently from the norm. It took me a while to work this out: like most people I thought I was pretty much normal. Yeah, right. And just what is this 'normal' anyway?

It wasn't until I was well into my teens that I realized 'normal' doesn't seek isolated corners to build imaginary cities out of whatever came to hand and devise tales of how the tiny residents lived. 'Normal' doesn't write obsessively (no, nothing from that time of my life is publishable. I was in full angsty-teen by then, and I had no idea about certain techniques like... er... point of view. Not only did I head-hop in the same paragraph, I did it in the same sentence), nor does it read anything and everything it can get its hands on.

Perhaps more to the point, 'normal' doesn't think about everything, much less question most of it, even the most basic assumptions about how things should be. People who knew me then got to dread the question, "Why?". Sure, it was usually asked in a nasal whine - at least partly the legacy of six months of non-stop tonsillitis when I was four, during which I learned to speak nasally because my throat hurt so damn much - but I still wanted to know why things were how they where.

Why? is probably the most useful question in a writer's repertoire, closely followed by, "What then?". Between those two, you get conflict, which drives plot.

To dig out of that little diversion, it's not mentally healthy to question the fundamentals of your society. People build intricate mental models of how the world works so they don't have to think about the things they need to do - because if you stop to think about the mechanics of, say, driving, you're going to get yourself into all sorts of trouble. Upending those models causes chaos, and makes it more difficult to function in the world that generated them.

When the models in question are things like "how my society works", well... It's not hard to see where breaking that one leads. I should add that you don't have to like something to have a mental model of it. It's just that breaking it means you're back to dealing with things from observation and thought, which isn't easy.

Insanity can be considered as the mental state of broken/non-functional models. Sometimes it's chemical: there's a malfunction in how the intricate biomechanisms running the brain work (see Speaker's Lab Rat's Guide to the Brain for a whole lot of information about that). Sometimes it's situational: some circumstance overloads the models and forces them to break down. Usually people recover from the second one, but the first is something you live with, sometimes - like me - with lots of pharmaceutical assistance.

Not everyone can deal with that level of dissonance. I suspect that those who can are what gets labeled creative - they've learned to channel the dissonance into socially acceptable forms and to pretend normality well enough to more or less 'pass' (some better than others. I've become rather better at passing in the last few years. That or ceasing to care what other people think of me is delightfully liberating and no-one is daring to tell me I'm not socially acceptable).

At any rate, the kind of mind that can simultaneously live in ancient Rome with magic, this world, and eldritch battlefields facing all the demons of Hell, is not the kind of mind that gets the stamp of approval from whoever it is that decides what 'sane' is.

Having been given the option of mental hospital (I refused), I know what it's like to have everything break. I wonder sometimes if there's a better way to handle those who can't focus the weird into something acceptable, so long as they're not going to endanger others (if the voices are telling you that you need to kill someone, you do need to be on the wrong side of locked doors for everyone else's safety - unless you kill them in effigy, the way I do in my writing when someone has irritated me enough). I'm not sure that there's a nice easy dividing line, either. Hell, I know there isn't. Depending on how things are doing, I range from 'can pass' to 'needs suicide watch' (that hasn't happened in a long time thank God), and I'm far from alone in that.

The question that disturbs me, though, when I look at how savagely conformist the trends are at the moment (just ask Sarah about the state of schools in the USA), is whether we're killing the creative types before they can learn to channel their differences. Not much can give me nightmares, but the thought of a world without writers, artists, and the like does.

Going Deeper

2011-05-04T08:05:00.001-04:00

As some of you know, I’ve lately been reading romances.

Now, in a woman who’d come no nearer romance than Austen and Shakespeare until her late thirties, this must be understood in the way of a daring expedition into unknown and somewhat strange territory.

Picture me, in fact, in helmet and safari suit, led by a troupe of – possibly pink-attired – natives, penetrating impenetrable jungles.

Only as far as that goes, I would be a terrible explorer. Rather than penetrating deep (it’s so wrong to use this expression with romance, I know) into the contemporary swamps, I mostly stay around the edges of regencies – i.e. near the native villages of historical, which I have visited before.

Part of the reason for this is the reason I no longer read mysteries in the way I now read romance. Growing up I considered Science Fiction and Fantasy “real” reading, while mystery was what I read when otherwise out of “real” books, and/or, later on, as “popcorn.” Popcorn books are read without studying them and without any necessity to feel like I’m competing with them.

As it’s probably obvious part of what chased me out of mystery is that I started writing it. But the other part is what makes contemporary mystery – and a lot of science fiction and fantasy – odious to me.

I’m perfectly willing – no, look, I’m used to – skipping the political screeds in the middle of books. That’s fine. They’re particularly funny in older mysteries which assure me that such and such event/policy will destroy all life as we know it by... well, earlier than now. So, cool.

But while I’ve my entire life worked on the principle that everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion, I do take offense to people being entitled to their own facts and both in mystery and SF and for that matter contemporary romance, I run across an awful lot of stuff where I go “Well, now. I’ve never met a woman who worked THAT way.” Or “Yeah, you know, I refuse to entertain the idea I found the only man in the universe who is not an abuser.” And in the last ten years or so, either I’ve got more crotchety (Hey, you kids, get off my literary lawn!) or the instances of this type of nonsense have gotten WAY thicker. I’d suspect both, as the older I get the more I have trouble suffering fools – gladly or otherwise – and as we’re churning out generations of women who have been taught an entirely imaginary history, not to mention sociology and economics. (You need to be exquisitely educated and exceedingly brilliant to believe that much nonsense.)

Anyway, so I ended up reading mostly historical mystery but some years ago the publishers decided historical mystery was out. (No, don’t tell me it didn’t sell. It was a niche, like anything else is, practically. Mostly it didn’t sell because the publishers wouldn’t get it on shelves. They decided all that needed to be pushed was what I call “sex and the city” mysteries, which is fine, but I’m simply not that interested in shoes. Oh, and craft mysteries, which are the resurgence of the cozies they also decided wouldn’t sell about twenty years ago -- but the fact I write those about furniture refinishing should tell you how ‘with it’ I am about crafts.)

I still need popcorn books. These are things read when cooking or cleaning, and usually not remembered at all. The things I consider ‘vacation’ because I can retreat into them and not think about much of anything. Ideally they’re the books I read while walking around amusement parks in the wake of the boys.

So I started reading romances. (They’re also great recessionary reading because I can buy a used book for a dollar pretty consistently, and then I can trade them in, four for one more book. And it is only after two of these transactions that I have to head to the used bookstore with thirty dollars again. So, a month’s worth of popcorn reading might cost me fifty.)

Unfortunately, you can take the writer out of her field, but you can’t make her stop being a writer.

So lately my mind has been turning on what makes some of the regency-popcorn I’ve been ingesting particularly tasty, and what makes some of it a snort-giggle fest.

We’ll eliminate genius from the equation, first. I should point out what led me on this primrose (or at least pinkish) path to hell to begin with was Dave Freer making me read Georgette Heyer. I’ll say it right now: Heyer is not like any other regency romance. Just isn’t, period. That’s genius.

So, I’m fairly sure I’m not a genius, and that’s where THAT analysis ends. Now, onto the other ones.

Like with any other genre I plunge into, I started noticing stylistic and character building stuff in some of the books I buy more or less blindly (no, really blindly sometimes. As in, I tell my friend at the used bookstore “grab me thirty regencies, put in a bag, I’ll pick them up in an hour.) So I started making “friends” – i.e. “I like her style, I’ll look for her name.” – and “enemies” – “oh, my freaking Lord, I’d pull out my eyes rather than try to read anything else by this woman” lists. We’ll leave those aside too. Right now my hatreds are way more violent than my loves which mostly rise to “oh, okay, she’s pleasant.”

Instead, let’s say that in the mass of books I get I get any number of “category” romances, as well as the more complex – better covers, far more push – “bigger” romances.

It wasn’t till this weekend I realized I could tell which one I was reading and would be able to even on kindle, with no cover or weight to tip me off to which it was. And then it occurred to me you might be interested, as I suspect this applies to all books.

A lot of the category romances are painless enough to read. None has made it to my hate list. On the other hand, none has come close to the love list.

What I will say for them is this – none of them is very deep. Now I think a lot of people have made this observation and in usual the cure for it from editors – who are not, after all writers, and who are, most of them university graduates in the fuzzier fields – is “let’s make it relevant.” This usually results in the injection of the sort of ideas that could only pass as facts on a college campus. I suppose that makes them feel “deeper” or more “relevant” if you either agree with them and/or you’ve been living in an hermetically sealed chamber for the last fifty years and the idea that someone would write a book positing women are the equals (or even the superiors) of men is a mind blowing thought. For the rest of us it amounts very much to a yawn.

No, what makes these books – as opposed to other regency romances – lighter or less relevant or, let’s face it, less interesting is more difficult to correct and I’d say it’s this: the writer studiously avoids the big emotions.

I realized this last night as I was reading one where a young girl “ruins” herself by attending a masquerade and being recognized. In one of the “bigger” books, this would be a serious thing (whether historically accurate or not is something totally different) and the subplot of her finding true love despite this would be if not the secondary subplot (she’s the supporting-role character) to the entire book, at least the subject of the second half of the book. It would require some soul-searching and changes on her part. You’d see character growth. In this book it is merely a diversion on the way to something else, and a reason to go to the country for a few days and you know that the problem will be solved in the way other problems in this book are solved: through luck.

In fact, we already know how it will be solved because, behind the back of the character, we hear that the guy who bragged of seeing her is not really believed since, what young lady of proper upbringing would go unmasked at a masquerade? Coincidence also helps a character follow another character who elopes, because someone with a carriage just drives by. In other words, it is too easy.

Is that all, you say, and you’ll remind me Heyer also employs coincidences. Well, sure. But because not everything is easy and passing, you don’t feel the coincidences are unwarranted. In this book the coincidences mar a plot punctuated with irrelevancy.

What do I mean irrelevancy? Well... take the disgrace above, even though we’re assured it won’t matter in the long run and the girl is none too worried about it and doesn’t seem to give it a thought, this is the reason the main male character chooses to throw a hissy fit we never saw coming, and the reason the girl then chooses to elope with someone she never looked at twice before, and who in fact doesn’t want to elope with her. Uh?

In the better romances, they start with something the character wants desperately (and usually it’s not JUST love) and then wind love and other contretemps around it, TIGHTLY never letting go until the climatic moment.

What this means is that people don’t acquire emotions and discard them simply to move the plot forward. If they want something they’ll continue wanting it until they either get it or are convinced it’s bad for them. The emotions don’t LET UP. They continue going deeper and deeper throughout the book.

If you do that, then even a fluffy romance can touch the heart of the human condition. I know it’s uncomfortable and it requires putting a lot of yourself in, to go into the emotions – but trust me, it’s the only way to make your book memorable and rising above the general stream of pap. And it doesn’t matter what field you write in.

*Crossposted at According To Hoyt*

Doing the Happy Dance!

2011-05-03T06:00:00.001-04:00

We writers spend most of our time in the 'writing cave', head down living in our imaginary worlds. We send out the stories we've slaved our, poured our hearts and souls into, never knowing if they will be accepted by a publisher.

And, even if they are published, there is so much that is beyond our control. We don't know if the cover will do the book justice, if it will say 'Pick me up, I'm fantasy and you love fantasy!'. We have no control over things like bookstore chains going bankrupt and leaving our book sitting in a warehouse somewhere, not that this has happened so me, as far as I know. But I once heard of a romance writer whose books were sent via train and the train was derailed.

So when we get a good cover we do the happy dance! Here is it The Outcast Chronicles book one cover. (Yes, I know there is a typo in the title. I didn't see it. I think the publishers and I were so preoccupied by the design, we didn't see the misspelling).

Your publishers will ask you for cover suggestions. Don't expect the artist to read your book. Have a file prepared. I have a Resonance file with pictures of what the city/country is like, how the people dress etc. I also write up a description of the main characters so that the artist can capture their personality. And I surf the internet to see what kind of covers are currently out there and collect covers that I admire to show the kind of look I'd like.

What had you done to prepare a Resonance file on your current manuscript?

My computer has been playing up so my DH is going to reformat it. I may be out of contact for 24 hours. (Hopefully, it will be less than that as I have deadlines).

Satisfaction

2011-05-02T05:39:00.004-04:00

Well, I'm feeling very cheery to hear my favorite villain Osama bin liner is dead. There is something cathartic about finally getting the bad guy. Of course Kate's post some time back about the complexity of villains springs to mind: this was a man to whom life, innocent babies even, were chaff, to killed without qualm or guilt. The sort of human being who is model villain... but who convinced millions that he was a wonderful man and a great leader, and that somehow, just because he told them to do something which any human with a shred of decency or fellow feeling for anyone else would find abhorrent, and justified it in terms of their predjudices, he was worthy of their worship and unquestioning loyalty. The parallels with Adolph Hitler, Stalin, and even Mugabe are obvious. Some humans have a weakness for villains, and, even if it is not a majority of humans with this weakness , the minority following these pieces of snake excreta are most earnest and brutal in their following and unquestioning dumb 'loyalty'

It's a real challenge to get right in your writing. Because, yeah, the real major villain has people who believe in him (or her) and think their actions are heroic. And the trouble with doing it too well is of course that the book can become a masterpiece of realism... and an excercise in Mick Jagger (I can't get no...)
Because yes, it's not inevitable and it's not every book, but WE LIKE TO SEE THE VILLIAN GET HIS. It leaves us satisfied. It's as much of a delight that the noxious Dursleys get it Harry Potter, or Reacher Gilt fail to look at the door he's stepping through and all his greedy little cohort go down.

So what books left you feeling "YES, that sorted the Bastards!" and which didn't - but you still loved?

And the winner is. . . .

2011-05-01T23:19:00.003-04:00

Drum roll please. . . .

Stephen Simmons.

Steve, email me or leave a comment here about what prize you want. You can have any two e-titles from NRP or one print novel (Nocturnal Origins, Impaler, Death of a Musketeer, or The Calvanni by Chris McMahon).

Congrats to Steve and thanks to everyone who entered. You really made it hard for the judges to decide a winner.

So here's the question. . . Would you like to see more contests on MGC? If so, what sort?

(Sarah said to tell you she has t-shirts with the world's worst cover, guaranteed to become collectors items, she'll be glad to donate to the cause.)

Sunday Morning Thoughts

2011-05-01T08:07:00.002-04:00

An announcement first. The winner of the writing prompt contest will be announced later today. We apologize for the delay, but several of our judges are fighting deadlines right now and are running behind. So, check back later this afternoon or this evening to see who won.

As I sit here this morning, staring at the computer screen and trying to figure out what to write, a lot of things pop into my head. I could do a follow-up to the on-going debate about Greg Mortenson and Three Cups of Tea. Or there is the Borders bankruptcy and their "need" for another $50 million in financing even as they give their executives bonuses. Or there's the latest insanity -- the witch hunt in Pennsylvania where a group of parents are trying to force a teacher to choose between teaching their little darlings high school English or continue writing erotica (see here and here).

All of those are good topics. They just don't call to me this morning. So, with your indulgence, I want to expound on something Sarah commented on in her last post.

One of the questions she addressed was if e-books are "merely paper books transformed to electrons". It would have been easy to answer "yes" and go on from there. Instead, Sarah brought up the so-called "enhanced" e-books we see advertised in the iBookstore and, to a lesser degree, at Barnes & Noble. For those not aware of what these "enhanced" e-books are, they are e-books with active hyperlinks, video, author interviews, etc., included with the book. Think of it as the director's cut of a DVD. You get the book plus all these extras.

I'll admit, I'm torn about the enhanced e-books. Part of it is as Sarah said. Someone clicking a hyperlink and navigating away from the book may not return. If they don't return, they don't finish the book. If they don't finish the book, they don't buy my next book. See the problem?

The enhancements such as hyperlinks and embedded video might work for non-fiction works, especially text books. I know having that sort of reference at the touch of a finger in college would have been wonderful. However, I don't want it for my fiction. Either the writer has crafted a story strong enough to pull me in or they haven't. Adding music and video and links will only distract me. I shouldn't have to hear the theme from Jaws to know the main character is in danger. The words on the screen should be enough. Remember, the words paint the picture.

Mind you, this is coming from the girl who loves tech toys. Maybe that's why that particular question struck me. I've spent a good part of this past week looking at tablets -- no, not the iPad or the new Galaxy Tab. As much as I'd love to have either one, they are outside of my price range. So I've been doing my research. Part of that was to look at the Nook Color. Here's a tablet most folks will think of as an e-book reader first and that led me to think about enhanced e-books.

My question is if these enhanced e-books will last or if they are just a flash in the pan. My gut feeling is that they will last, in some form, for textbooks and reference books. But I don't think we'll see them long term for fiction. This is simply because the latest figures I've seen about people who actually read using their iPad are dismal. I'll bet if a comprehensive study was done, that would be the trend for all tablets. People see them more as computing devices and not as reading devices. But it is actually more fundamental than that. Enhanced e-books cost more than regular e-books and we all know about the controversy surrounding e-book pricing. Will readers willingly pay more for a book with an author interview and active hyperlinks than they will for "just" the book? Will enough readers do so?

Who knows? All I can say is that it will be interesting to see where things go from here. Fingers crossed it's "interesting" in a fun way and not in the proverbial "may you live in interesting times" way.

e-books, upcoming and present

2011-04-30T02:46:00.007-04:00

Given that no one (big publishers, little publishers, individuals, stray elephants) has really mastered the internet equivalent of paying for a big fat book dump at the checkout counter, or paying for end displays, or massive print and distribution strategies to put the book in front of buyers in ever bookstore, etc or any of the other way that publishing cheated and gamed the system (to readers, authors and indeed publishing's eventual loss) we're still in a situation where e- book buyers are looking 'other readers also bought' and where a pre-existing name/series and of course sheer volume of offerings count, I have decided that I have to stretch a little and get some more work out there.

At the moment we have THE GOTH SEX KITTEN, CRAWLSPACE AND OTHER STORIES and forthcoming from Naked Reader, WITHOUT A TRACE.

THE FORLORN is also OOP and out of contracted grant of rights - I've asked for my rights back, and will give it its original ending back - and a new cover. At the moment it is available - for free - from Baen Free Library. It will be fascinating to see how many people buy it.

A MANKIND WITCH also appears to be OOP and I've asked for those rights to revert too. At last I will get that book a cover it deserves. It's a part of a series, but as i am sole author, it's sucked hind teat and been allowed to go OOP.

And finally, I've had SAVE THE DRAGONS sitting at Baen for (mumble) many months now. Patience is not my strongest suite, so that will very shortly be going up too.

It's going to be interesting to see what (if any) impact 6 books(rather than 2 collections of shorts) have on visibility. Personally I am of the opinion these need to approach 20, and include some new novels, in series to be effective. I am thinking of a Rats Bats and Vats book, which will go directly to Kindle.

Interesting times. What do you guys think? How many books do you need out there? Are books (new) more effective than old material? And what do you want to see?

Catching Waves

2011-04-28T18:50:00.014-04:00

Hi, everyone. It's good to be back at MGC after a nice Easter break.

Thanks to Amanda for running a great Friday slot! And plugging my upcoming novella in the Yos universe - Flight of the Phoenix - which is coming from Naked Reader in May:)

We took the whole family and the dog up to Currimundi beach on the Sunshine Coast, just north of Brisbane. We had a nice time catching waves and running about on the sand.

While the surf was not excellent, the water temperature was perfect. It made it worth getting in even when it was a little windy or overcast.

Catching waves - body surfing - is a favourite pastime of mine from way back. My family used to own a fibro holiday shack at Palm Beach on the Gold Coast (Queensland), and we used to go down in late spring every year.

Learning to judge a wave is really an art. The way it looks, the feel of the water drawing back across your legs and body. You get the feel of the power of it, when and how it will break, and whether it stands any chance of taking you down to the edge of the sand.

There are those perfect waves - the ones where all you have to do is get yourself in the right place at the right time and jump on board. You need to do little but enjoy the ride.

Then there are the rest of the waves. Some just do not have enough power to take you anywhere, but there are a lot of waves that may not have enough power to pick you up, but will get you through the surf if you give them a bit of a hand - paddle and swim furiously enough to stay on board until they break and the water gets shallow enough to give them extra speed.

I think publishing - and success in general - is a lot like catching waves. What you start out looking for is that perfect wave. Being in the right place at the right time. Some people get lucky and actually catch it. They sit back and enjoy the ride. And there is nothing like whizzing past all the other people in the surf with a wave like that at your back - you feel like a king.

Then after the perfect wave fails to appear, or for one reason or another you were in the wrong place to catch it, you realise that the real way to get back to beach is to catch any damn wave at all and just swim like hell!

At one point I was watching a television documentary about the 'hot' actors of the 1980s and 'where are they now'. It was fascinating. All these guys were at the top. Most were talented.

Yet the ones that really stayed at the top were the ones who worked. They might have had even more flops than the young guns who ended up in B-grade - but they had twice as many that worked! They were not afraid to take roles, and even if the role stunk they damn well gave it there all. They put away the pride and did not let the fact that they were 'hot' stop them from experimenting, taking risks and generally putting their hand up for just about everything - even if their 'hip' contemporaries sneered at similar roles as being beneath them, or not lucrative enough.

Anyway. I guess what I am trying to say is you never know where a particular piece of work or project might lead. At one point I sweated for months over a SF novella - The Eyes of Erebus. Like everyone else I dreamed of publication in Asimovs, or maybe Analog. In the end I could not sell the damn thing anywhere. Then I got an offer to publish it electronically in the Daikaiju series put together by Robert Hood and Robin Pen. I really vacillated. Then in the end I just thought. Why not? It's getting it out there.

In the end the editors decided to publish it in print in Daikaiju 2: Revenge of the Giant Monsters. The story then went on to be short-listed for the Aurealis Award in the SF category.

Have you ever been surprised by a story that led to unexpected success?

Why I don't interview my characters

2011-04-28T08:00:00.001-04:00

The scene: a more or less anonymous location somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind. I'm looking more than a little bit frazzled. My interviewee, on the other hand, is quite relaxed. Note to self. Never do one of these when your character is more composed and at-home than you are.

Me: So, what next? (Quickly, before I can get fobbed off - again - with an accurate but totally useless reply) I mean, you've got Constantinople, but there's enemies on either side, and Mehmed is going to be practically frothing at the mouth.

Vlad: (Is that a smile or a smirk? Probably smirk, knowing him.) I certainly hope he is.

Me: So how are you going to stop him coming after you?

Vlad: Killing him first is generally considered good tactics in this situation.(It's definitely a smirk. You haven't seen smirk until it leans against a wall with its arms folded and adds in a kind of pitying, condescending 'don't worry your little head about it' look).

Me: That isn't an answer.

Vlad: (Smiling) You really are taking this far too seriously. You know where I intend to start. You will be informed as the need arises.

Me: (sourly) Gee, thanks. I know how that works. Hours of bloody research or bashing my head against a wall before you tell me what you think I should know.

Vlad: (raised eyebrow - you'd be surprised how cold it can get in here: I'm trying not to shiver, suddenly)

Me: I'm the one writing your books. You want good books, you need to tell me all of it so I don't screw up.

Vlad: (I think my language amuses him) If you would only sit down and write, I would tell you all you needed. You know that.

Me: (speechless)

Vlad: (laughing)

*

The sad thing is, he's right. The sadder thing is, I've got way too much else I'm trying to juggle. For starters, I don't dare try to edit ConVent while I'm dealing with Kaziklu Bey (the sequel to Impaler). The two are so different I really don't need to have the voice of one leaking into the other. Maybe when I'm a better writer. But then, given Sarah's blogging, maybe not. Maybe it's always like this.

The Writer Answers

2011-04-27T06:23:00.002-04:00

*Sorry about this, most of the post seems to have got cut SOMEHOW when this first went up. So, let's do this properly this time.*

Partly because I wasn’t sure what to write about, and partly because I think we keep trying to do articles on specialized points while there is a vast under-store of ignorance there that we aren’t even scratching, (mostly because today I got yet another nice email from a nice young man asking me to help him get published) I figured I’d ask my fans what I should be answering.

However, a funny thing happened on the way to certainties. I find that in casting my eyes over most of the entries, most of them are things I’d have answered unwaveringly a year or two ago but of whose answer I’m not absolutely sure now. Because ebooks are changing the way business is done, I can give you the “official” – i.e. this is how I did it/would have done it till recently – answer, then the answer I SUSPECT is true now. The caveat for those is please remember I broke in THIRTEEN years ago, and the new realities of the market are not something I’ve experienced first hand. I might know a little more than you, but only because I read blogs and listen to friends. I don’t know for sure.

I’ll use the questioner’s name for the question, then OA for official Answer then BG for Best Guess.

SS:To agent, or not to agent? And, if yes, *how* to agent?
What the heck is a "query", and how does one go about concocting such a beastie?

OA: You have to have an agent to get published with a big publishing house. I suggest writing a query for your best novel (no one agents short stories). Then ask published writers for recommendations to agents and/or snoop on authors blogs to figure out who their agents are. Read the agents’ descriptions for fit with your work. Before sending queries to your picked ten or so, check preditors and editors to make sure you didn’t pick skunks. Send out. If one replies, then send out whatever they ask for, no more no less. Do not send out proposals or manuscripts to more than one agent at once. Wait for an answer. If the agent offers to represent you, watch very carefully to see how enthusiastic they are. You want an agent who LOVES your work.
A Query is a lot like the blurb in the back of a book, with a difference, you actually tell the agent/editor how it ends.

BG: Someone I respect greatly in the field just said it’s stupid to have an agent these days, that in the current publishing climate an agent gets you nothing. I don’t fully understand her angle unless she’s counting out all of big publishing, but she’s not the first much-more-established-writer than I that I heard it from, and when she says stuff like that, I wonder.

JD: Contracts: What’s fair? What’s a Trap? How far to trust your agent?

OA: At the most basic, contracts should establish that money flows to the writer. Anything requiring you to pay is unacceptable. Beyond that, there are many things that are traps, things that you should be able to figure out with common sense: contracts that get the rights to all your characters, or where you transfer copyright to the publisher. (This might be all right for SOME short stories, like using other people’s characters per invite. NEVER for a novel, unless it’s a media tie-in.) Other clauses to watch for will say things like, you can’t work for anyone else until your story is PUBLISHED. Since you can’t control the date of publication this could tie you up forever. Sometimes they just say you can’t work for anyone else period. Anything like that, run very fast. And if your agent tells you it’s okay, run from agent, too.

CDC: Keeping track of query letter and sent manuscript submissions and responses.
OA: I haven’t done this in very, very long. It’s far more important for short stories, when it climbs into the dozens. But I suggest a spreadsheet program, or else one of many specialized programs available. I’m blanking on names, can someone in the audience help. I’m thinking of Write Again. Not sure if that’s true.

MB: Alpha readers, beta readers, writing groups, and all that. I just had someone fretting about "losing their ideas" if they participate in a writing group -- I told them they were more likely to never find their ideas if they didn't participate. But... there's that running fear that somehow talking to people will ruin you, somehow?
OA: You need reality checkers. I’ve covered writing groups in several columns, and the importance of finding a writer group that works for you. If a writer group isn’t doable, at least find two critique partners you can trust and trade manuscripts.
No, you’re not going to have your ideas stolen. And no, no one can change your writing style, or at least not permanently. It is human to influence each other, but life also influences you. To grow you have to change and you don’t live in an hermetically sealed bag.

SS: In the absence of a co-conspirator with remarkably pointy shoes, how to recognize when one has reached the point of "polishing the cannonball", as we called it in the Navy, and firing off a submission rather than endlessly re-reading and re-revising ...
OA: Ah. I do this too and I went through long years without co-conspirators. It’s hard. My advice is that when you feel like you’re adding more errors than you’re removing (you find the subplot you just added in doesn’t mesh with an earlier one, for instance) or when you feel you’re being particularly clever (no, seriously, this is usually a symptom) or when you go above 200k words, it’s time to let go. Otherwise, establish an arbitrary number of passes, say, five. After five passes it leaves the house. (I can only do three or I kitchen sink it – I throw in EVERYTHING plus the kitchen sink.)

BG: If you’re going to self-publish as is an option this day, hire a trusted copy editor. I don’t care how good you are, you’ll drive yourself insane proofing and stuff will still escape you.

OP: As a former wannabe writer, I'm more interested in the business aspects. They are more relevant to my life. Your opinion of the right mix between paid writing and freebies that hook people in, for example.

OA: in general business “coverage” – I was told that you should quit your day job when you were selling fifty percent of everything you sent out. I’ve been there for years but if I had a day job I wouldn’t quit it. I’d guess right now, with the uncertainty, you’d have to be closer to eighty percent. Also, I would advise something I’m just now implementing: have multiple income streams, say novels and short stories and articles and whatever else you can get. If one of them can be regular pay, like a paid blog, that will give you some security. As for mix between paid and free – the freebies I give away that are fiction are usually already-published things. There’s also blogging and mine for my three base blogs (my own, my group blog and the other group blog) are still mostly free, but I’m starting to branch out into paid blog articles. Look, you need the exposure, it’s all there is to it, but if you find it taking most or even half of your time, you’ll have to cut back. Only you can find your balance.

EM – ebooks. Are ebooks merely paper books transformed to electrons? (like the early TV shows were just televised plays) or is there more potential in this medium? Hyperlinks, embedded video, embed sound effects,.....what else?
BG: I don’t know. I find that a book is a book is a book. Once you put in hyperlinks and embedded video, you’re running the risk of people not coming back to the story. Maybe my opinion is influenced by all those examples I’ve seen of this sucking badly. However, I still think a book is a book. But things that can improve the book while just a book are available in e – like the ability to search for a character name/word. That can really help when you want to go back and check on something.

SB – How about baby steps for the very beginning writer, such as how to find someone who can say "you've got potential" or " was that suppose to read like bad Twain?"
OA: I find that “potential” or “talent” is one of the worst lies writers buy into. We have a great desire to write and we want to believe it’s somehow meant to be. Look, the only thing I’ve found “natural talent” or “potential” good for is to give you some things “for free.” In my case it’s characters. I understand Dave Freer got plot for free. The rest we had to work for. What most laymen will tell you is that “you have potential” based on LANGUAGE. Language is easy. It’s the story telling that’s difficult. I am telling you now that if you really want to write, and are willing to study how to, including grammar and expression, you have enough talent. How to find critiquers, OTOH is a problem. Ask at your local library if there’s a writers’ group and then screen them for experience, right field, etc. Alternately, grab a few friends you know are readers and make them read your stuff. (Paying in chocolate works!) This has the advantage that you presumably know your friends’ idiosyncracies.

AKD: Years ago, I had an agent who convinced me to write a truly appalling cover letter cum proposal letter (yes, same document). Which was mailed to every publisher in the world, and was rejected. I parted ways with the agent, but I still have great faith in the series that was rejected. However, I can't even bring myself to do anything with it, because I'm convinced that it was so appallingly presented that my letter is still be laughed about in the publishers' offices. Should I just kill the whole idea? Change my name?

Okay. Breathe. First of all 99% of the submissions or queries sent in by a low-status agent don’t even get read. I’m assuming this was not an A lister with offices in NYC, so, chances of it having been read at all are zero. Second, even if it was read, if you got back a standard rejection, it was read by an under-editor or an intern. These stay at the houses a maximum of a year, according to my experience. The chances of anyone now at publishing offices knowing or remembering this letter are zero. Honestly, if you’d done slush, you’d realize what it takes to be memorable in the bad category: death threats, live animals, body parts and nude pictures MIGHT do it. A bad query is as unmemorable as a oh, hum face in a crowd. Don’t change your name. Don’t kill the idea. Just send it out again

BG: or, alternately, publish it yourself on Kindle. *At this point, for certain genres this might be a better way to break in.*

RE: not just tell, SHOW it, if he's a nose picker have him do it in a scene where it's funny or inappropriate while being given instructions or mission orders and all he can think about (along with the reader) is where to put the booger.
OA: Okay, this was part of a longer ramble on a different suggestion for another post, I know, but I MUST insist RE go on over to my blog and read the post called Ick. This is an example of something memorable to have the character do that... serves no purpose and makes me instantly go “ick” and fling the book away. Unless you’re writing “gross out horror” for which the market is very limited, you can’t get away with having the VILLAIN do this, much less the hero. Remember your character is supposed to be someone we want to spend time with (if only to see him coming to a bad end.) Evil might fascinate. Gross will just make us look away.

*Crossposted at According To Hoyt*

The Fun Side of Writing

2011-04-26T02:05:00.007-04:00

We writers spend so much of our time, working away in a back room somewhere for years to produce the books we love. Then comes the day when we get a contract and ... gosh ... a cover!

Here's a sneak preview of one of the covers for The Outcast Chronicles. The is the front and back of a bookmark I'm producing (with my publisher's approval). I sent the proofs to the printer on Thursday. I've seen the cover art for the three books and I'm just waiting for the text to go on and permission from my publisher to show the world. Very exciting!

I'm still neck-deep in the clean up of the trilogy, which I must send to the publisher by the end of May. I've been through book one and there were moments when I got shivers.

The books are long (about 700 pages each) and I've been writing them for ages. The first draft when off to my ROR critique group in 2007 but the books were written in pieces over the last 10 years, so it has been a challenge to pull them all together. And this means that sometimes as I turn the page to edit, I don't remember what's coming next. I get the same surprise a reader would. This is a funny position for the author to find themselves in.

It also means that the big rewrite I've done over the last year has been a real challenge because I've had to unify the pacing and the tone of the story. I threw out whole scenes or completely rewrote them from a different perspective. In some ways it is harder to rewrite an old piece than to write something fresh. There's been a lot of work gone into these books.

Which brings me back to the Fun Side of Writing, when all that work pays off and you see the covers and start producing the bookmarks! (I plan to give these way at Supanova).

As writers how do you keep yourself motivated during the long hard slog, before the fun stuff happens?

And here's an update. My new Blog Banner for The Outcast Chronicles page.

Input and changes...

2011-04-25T05:26:00.005-04:00

So my week has had a couple of interesting developments (Besides watching Kris Rusch's blog with... interest. The potential shakeout from this could be a whimper. Could be. Or it could be the first domino. Interesting time to be in this this business.) Firstly I've been asked for input into my covers for CUTTLEFISH and THE STEAM MOLE (which have been bought by Pyr). They asked me for detailed descriptions, and also sketches of the submarine and tunnelling machine. Now Bob Eggleton, who did the cover DRAGON'S RING asked me for input. But it's a novelty having this from a publisher. I'm not actually sure it's a good thing - I can't tell them ideas suck in so many words, and also, I'm a writer, a fisheries scientist, a weird little hairy guy who lives on the outer fringes of nowhere. Writers are possibly good at writing. Fisheries scientists are good at fantasy and sometimes also at math and fish. Neither of these skill sets automatically qualify me as an artist or as a cover designer. And weird little hairy guys on the outer fringes of nowhere are a poor sample of the potential market. We (I presume there is at least one other) are not a good target market, and it matters not a jot if it appeals to us or not. Finally, it's a time sink of note. I could have written a short story in the time I've taken do ONE set of very bad sketches. So what do you think: is a good thing? How much input should authors have into covers?

Secondly I got an e-mail from Toni Weisskopf (The boss-lady at Baen) asking me if I'd do a short story set in DOG AND DRAGON'S universe (for which they will pay me 5 cents a word) as a promotional tool for publication on the Baen Website. This too is a new development. BTW DOG AND DRAGON is tentatively scheduled for April 2012, so don't hold your breath. It's a new development, and, depending on the contract I get for it(ie, how soon the story reverts) I think it a good one. What do you think? Should all publishers follow suite?

Controversies and a Squee

2011-04-24T08:58:00.005-04:00

Let me start by wishing everyone who celebrates it a Happy Easter this Sunday morning. Be safe and enjoy family and friends.

Now down to business. This week has seen a couple of controversies in the world of publishing. The first began last Sunday night with the 60 Minutes broadcast. One of the stories centered on the facts of Greg Mortenson's best selling "memoir" Three Cups of Tea. In case you missed the story or the follow-up articles, questions have been raised about the accuracy of some of the claims Mortenson made in the book, including whether he actually became separated from his group and wandered into the small village on his own, needing medical assistance and the villagers nursed him back to health. Another part of the book that was questioned was Mortenson's claim he'd been kidnapped by the Taliban. The 60 Minutes piece also raised questions about how much of the money raised by Mortenson's charity -- monies that are supposed to be used to build schools in Afghanistan and other areas -- is put to use.

I don't know whether the inconsistencies raised by 60 Minutes are the result of conscious fabrication by Mortenson and his co-author, editing issues or what. But it does point out a problem that isn't new when it comes to memoirs. Who bears the responsibility for fact-checking and for determining if the book is a non-fiction memoir or a fictionalized memoir?

Remember this isn't the first time this sort of situation has arisen. Oprah got burned by James Frey and his book A Million Little Lies. There was Matt McCarthy’s Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit. When the so-called facts in the book were challenged, “Carolyn Coleburn, the vice president and director of publicity for Viking, which is an imprint of Penguin Group USA, said, “We rely on our authors to tell the truth and fact-check.” Herman Rosenblatt’s memoir, Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived was cancelled after it was revealed that, while he was a Holocaust survivor, he’d fabricated the details of how he met his wife. There are a number of others, including Clifford Irving's supposed bio of Howard Hughes.

I detailed some of the responses to the 60 Minutes piece here. One response that came out after I initially wrote about the episode reminds us that the real scandal here -- if there is a scandal -- lies not with the publishing industry but with the charity. While that is true, at least to a degree, the fact that this sort of problem continues in publishing is a scandal. Publishers have to take some responsibility for ensuring that the book they are selling to the public as a non-fiction memoir is just that -- non-fiction. It would have been very easy for Viking to contact some of the people named in the book to see if what Mortenson claimed happened did and in the way he detailed. They need to take to heart this comment from Ta-Nehisi Coates from The Atlantic: "At some point, publishers are going to have to start fact-checking memoirs. At least a little bit. No disrespect to my editors, but I know having done a memoir, that it is shockingly easy to create fiction and claim that it's real."

But that wasn't the only controversy of the week. After it was announced that Jennifer Egan had won the Pulitzer, the shine was tarnished some -- not by critics decrying that her book shouldn't have won, but by Egan herself. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Egan took what appears to be a potshot at genre fiction and the authors who write it. Also, she has an opportunity to condemn plagiarism and doesn't; in fact, she appears to tacitly give a hat tip to it -- as long as you do it to the right authors.

Over the past year, there’s been a debate about female and male writers and how they come off in the press. Franzen made clear that “Freedom” was going to be important, while others say that Allegra Goodman was too quiet about “The Cookbook Collector.” Do you think female writers have to start proclaiming, “OK, my book is going to be the book of the century”?

Anyone can say anything, that’s easy. My focus is less on the need for women to trumpet their own achievements than to shoot high and achieve a lot. What I want to see is young, ambitious writers. And there are tons of them. Look at “The Tiger’s Wife.” There was that scandal with the Harvard student who was found to have plagiarized. But she had plagiarized very derivative, banal stuff. This is your big first move? These are your models? I’m not saying you should say you’ve never done anything good, but I don’t go around saying I’ve written the book of the century. My advice for young female writers would be to shoot high and not cower.

For more on this, I recommend you check out this post at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Read the post all the way to the end...it seems this isn't the first time Egan has taken shot at the author of The Tiger's Wife and the fact she didn't plagiarize the right sort of authors.

Finally, a squee. Nocturnal Origins, which has been available as an e-book is now available in print. You can order it from Amazon and it will soon be available through B&N and elsewhere. If you want to get it at your local bookstore, it should be available for them to order within the next few days.

On with the motley

2011-04-23T11:00:00.004-04:00

In other words, I can't be trusted to remember when it's my week, and my reminder service glitched. So instead of a nice, planned out post, I'm winging it. Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

Anyway... Impaler moves closer to the dead tree edition. It should be there Real Soon Now - watch for the deafening squee when this happens. As is, the kindle edition is sitting in the mid-60k range of the Amazon rankings, which for a new author's book with zero promotion is pretty good. I'm pleased.

My con schedule for the rest of the year is set - Discworld Con in July, Capclave in October, and Philcon in November. Details to come as the time gets closer.

Now, did Amanda's challenge scare people away? Really... Let's up the stakes a little. Instead of two free ebooks, the winner can choose one of NRP's dead tree books - Death of a Musketeer, Impaler, Nocturnal Origins, Without a Trace, and The Calvanni. Is that sufficiently awesome to attract new entrants?

Don't make me go into the comments section with a non-entry example. Just don't. It's too scary to contemplate (Remember, I'm the woman responsible for Impaler, ConVent, AND the Knights in Tarnished Armor. This is not someone you want running around uncontrolled).

Friday Morning Prompt

2011-04-22T08:13:00.002-04:00

Good morning, everyone. Chris is away today and left me in charge....bwahahahahaha. I thought we might do something a bit different today since we had an open thread not too long ago. So I talked with Sarah for a bit yesterday and she came up with an exercise for us. Well, an exercise and a contest. I'm going to give you two writing prompts. Choose one of them. In the comments post up to 1,000 words. It doesn't have to be an entire story. What we're looking for is something to hook us enough that we want to keep reading. The only caveats are to keep it PG and to watch the language. Anything that steps over the line will be deleted (if you need to check on ick factor-ness, read Sarah's post yesterday on her blog.)

Prompt #1: Choose three words from the following list. Two of them must be central to the story.

motley
signal
estate
glitter
cut

Prompt #2: Use the following specifics to build your story. All three need to be included in the 1,000 words.

character -- apprentice
setting -- the beach
problem -- fecundity

You have your challenge. All entries must be posted by 0600 EST Sunday morning. You can enter twice -- once for each prompt.

Now, I guess you're wondering what the winner will get -- and the winner will be decided by a group of MGC authors. The winner can choose any two titles from Naked Reader Press. This includes Chris' upcoming novella Rise of the Phoenix.

Any questions? Post them in the comments. Now, have fun and see where your muse takes you.

Writing the Magic Moment

2011-04-21T08:00:00.001-04:00

The first time the Magic Moment became clear to me wasn't a book: it was an opera. Les Miserables, in the original Sydney production, which was very closely based on the original London production. Since a Magic Moment is a lot easier to describe by example than definition (it tends to be one of those "you know it when you see it" things), allow me to describe it as it occurred.

This was quite early in the Sydney season, so most of the audience were seeing it for the first time. For those who aren't familiar with Les Miserables, one of the pivotal sequences is the barricades battle: Parisian students throw furniture and whatever else comes to hand into the street to create a defensive barricade of sorts. Their mini-revolution is a dismal failure: the students are killed almost to the last man (and woman). After his friend Marius is shot, the iconic leader Enjolras takes the red flag and climbs to the top of the barricade, where he waves the flag in defiance until he is shot multiple times and falls forward, over the barricade and out of sight of the audience. It's important to note that Enjolras is wearing a scarlet and gold waistcoat over a white shirt - he's one of the few splashes of color in the musical.

One of the key staging devices used in Les Miserables is a rotating section of stage. Soon after the Enjolras falls, the stage rotates, slowly and majestically. Here is the Magic Moment. The dead are scattered in front of the barricade and draped over it. Enjolras is in the center, head down, facing the audience, with his arms splayed out rather like an inverse crucifixion. The bright waistcoat and white shirt against the backdrop of his red flag pulls your eyes to him: he is absolutely the focus of attention. The audience gasped. In that one moment, the waste and pointlessness of the whole attempt at revolution came into brilliant clarity, with fiery, charismatic Enjolras as the symbol and centerpiece of the devastation.

That is my first memory of a Magic Moment, where something immensely moving and profound hits with the force of a sledgehammer and nothing is ever quite the same again.

There aren't many of them, and I've certainly never been able to write one deliberately. I think I may have managed one in Impaler, but I'm not sure. Even Pratchett only has one or two. The moment in Thud! when the terrible tragedy of Koom Valley becomes clear. The secret of the Grandfathers in Nation. They're that rare - and that precious. They also only ever have the full impact once: the first time you hit them.

Here's my attempt at a definition: a scene or image in a narrative work (i.e. opera, musical, book, play) where a number of plot and character threads connect to illustrate a deeper sense of meaning than expected.

Pretty lame, yes? But when one hits you, you know all about it. It's personal, too - because what goes into that illustration of deeper meaning is also all your experience up to that moment (which is why they only ever hit once - after that you know it's coming and the power of the moment is lost).

Here's some of the things I've identified in creating a Magic Moment:

- foreshadowing in buckets, but subtle. In Thud!, for instance, there are hints all along that Koom Valley is a lot more than we know, but Pratchett sets up an expectation that the truth will still be something more or less expected.
- strong interaction between character and plot. I've never seen a Magic Moment where the characters weren't central to the plot as it unfolded. The Koom Valley revelation in Thud! would not be the same without Vimes being present and being who and what he is.
- one or more characters is fundamentally transformed by the event. Again, in Thud!, Vimes is transformed into... well, himself. He sheds the various layers of social expectation, and in that moment is more quintessentially Vimes than we have ever seen him - and he understands and accepts that this is who he is.

I suspect there are more requirements - for a Magic Moment in a book to work, a single word that doesn't quite ring true will kill it. But when it does work... well. In all the examples I've given, I was left shaken, deeply moved, and with the books I couldn't hold them properly. My hands shook too much.

What are some of the Magic Moments you've found?

It Came From The Slushpile!

2011-04-20T06:00:00.001-04:00

I’ve beat up on editors for unprofessional behavior towards writers, and I’ve beat up on writers for being wussies about rejections. Today, girls and boys, dragons and butterflies, we’re going to look into everyone’s favorite punching bag... The slush pile.

Or rather, we’re not just going to look into the slush pile. We’re going to look into beginning writers and why they really, really – really, really, really – need a second opinion. And not just from their dog or girlfriend. Particularly in these days when anyone can just throw their work on Amazon or self-publish for nothing. Because you run a risk of making a really big – not to say huge – mistake if you do it without vetting.

There is a peculiar arrogance to a beginner writer, a particular certainty that their work is the best thing since sliced bread, peanut butter and the invention of the rotto tiller – the sort of brass faced “read me, I’m wonderful” that nine times out of ten means this person can barely string a sentence together, has half a dozen words in the first paragraph that don’t mean what he thinks they mean, and is either playing with a world/idea that has been done to the point of nausea or most of the world is still in their heads and what’s on the page is a disjointed mess.

Conversely, the beginner writer who slips their work at me reluctantly and only after I asked to see it is, nine times out of ten either already publishable or very close to it.

I thought this was a peculiar curse of publishing, which makes the current system – dependent on self-confidence and self promoting – a peculiarly counterproductive one. But it turns out it’s actually the curse of any task whose completion doesn’t show immediate and concrete results, at least according to this article: http://www.damninteresting.com/unskilled-and-unaware-of-it

For those of you unwilling to click through, the idea behind that article – which is research supported – is that the less skilled you are at a task susceptible of personal evaluation (i.e., not whether you mowed the lawn or not) the more likely you are to think you are extremely competent at it.

The thesis is that until you gain basic competence you don’t see your own errors. I have to say I have found this to be true for myself at any variety of crafts (from crochet to embroidery) as well as at art and writing. It is not till I learn SOMETHING about the tasks that I start seeing all the errors I made in the early projects that, when I did them, seemed perfect.

Apparently this correlates to the four stages of competence theory, which can be summarized as follows, in progression:

1- Unconscious Incompetence
The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit.

2 - Conscious Incompetence
Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit.
3 - Conscious Competence
The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration.
4 - Unconscious Competence
The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become "second nature" and can be performed easily. He or she may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.

These four stages correlate completely not only with my writing, or my progression in art – where I am, at best, in stage 2 – but with such tasks as fine-chopping an onion without either cutting myself or being excruciatingly slow.

Unfortunately confidence seems to move in inverse progression through the set. People in the stage of unconscious competence, often assume that they’re not very good at all because they still see how much further they have to go. This unfortunately means that if you get to stage four without showing your work to anyone, you’re not going to have the courage after that.

It also means that slush piles might drive most if not all editors insane. I’ve read some of these and the sheer volume of unadulterated, imaginably bad... Raw sewage that hits those is almost unbelievable. A lot of it is literally incomprehensible. And then there’s any number that’s just understandable enough to be repulsive.

Oh, come on, Sarah, you’re saying. Surely writing doesn’t fall to incompetent-but-unaware. I mean, people have been reading their whole lives, so they know what makes a book/story.

Uh... yeah, theoretically. But the problem is when it’s your book/story you have to be playing chess on both sides – to learn to be both the writer and the reader, and not to read into your stuff more (or sometimes – ick, trust me – less) than you put in. Until you get there you’re often unconscious incompetent. Very, very incompetent.

Unfortunately this is also, often, the bane of writers groups, because there is an effect associated with that. As you’re going through the stages (as the first article mentions) you’re not capable of evaluating anyone who is above you. This means unconscious incompetent will rate down conscious competent who will accept it because he/she underrates him/herself. This is one of the reasons I’m STRONGLY against anonymous or semi-anonymous, large online critique groups: after a while a certain tyranny of hte unconscious incompetent rules and destroys anyone who might have had a shot. Writers groups should be small and personal and you should be able to evaluate the person’s opinions in relation to where the person is on the writing journey.

And then you won’t risk letting your little monster into the wild, trailing excess adjectives, incoherent sentences and unresolved plots and making half of the readers scream “Oh, no, it came from the slush pile!”

Do you see yourself in those stages at all, or is it just me? Do you see the stages in others? How do you think this affects self-promotion ability? And do you have any slush horror stories to share? (I brought some slush-tentacles, if pressed to share mine.)

*Crossposted at According To Hoyt*

Rewriting and Editing

2011-04-19T03:50:00.008-04:00

When I handed in the King Rolen's Kin books, I'd had time to clean them up, print them, give them to my son and husband to read, then clean them up again. I'm not going to have that much time with the new trilogy.

Currently, I'm on a count-down to clean up the three books of The Outcast Chronicles and submit them by the end of May. It seems like the world has been conspiring against me. I had planned to get a lot of work done over the summer holidays but we had a major flood and I spent a lot of the holidays digging trenches in my yard to prevent the water from flowing in.

Since then life has become complicated with an elderly relative needing somewhere to stay and work taking up a lot of my time, so I am really looking forward to the next week. Because of the Easter Holidays and Anzac Day I won't be at work again until Thursday of next week. A Whole Week in which to write. I feel giddy with delight.

The funny thing is that I am up to page 430 of book one but I keep jamming up because I'll be reading away and then realise that I need to insert either a new scene or a paragraph to illuminate a character's change of heart or realisation. I do have a list of Things to Fix with each book and I'm working my way through them, but I find the things I am fixing are things that come to me intuitively. I will wake up in the morning with the conviction that I need to add a line to a scene.

I work with the manuscript open on one screen and the chapter outlines open on the other. This means I can find exactly the right scene because I know which page it's on and I have all the POVs colour coded, so I know if I have been neglecting a character. This give me the illusion that I am in control.

How do you approach your rewrites? Do you have Things to Fix list? Do you find that you wake with the awful knowledge that you need to add another scene?

Cuttlefish

2011-04-18T05:38:00.003-04:00

What is it about Mondays? They're low, vile, underhand, snarky, sneaky beasts that leap out on poor unsuspecting authors* what hardly ever did anyone any harm, and beat you about the lugholes.

Which is odd because I never get to that biblical injunction about a day of rest, so why should Mondays be worse and sometimes worser**?

Still, despite the running chaos I do have some positive news to report: You may remember I posted a snippet here about a coal-fired submarine? Got some good advice on that from a reader here... and lo and behold, the proposal has sold -- CUTTLEFISH along with its sequel - tentatively titled 'the Steam-Mole' have been bought by Pyr Books. I think the book could fairly be described as Alt-history meets Steampunk and probably not the clean fit into steampunk it could be. The book does not leave out the enormous environmental impact of coal-burning (far worse than oil, IMO, because of the carbon black) or exist in a quasi-Victorian in which the social impacts and stratification of Imperialism is glossed over. So while we have the Victorian/Edwardian costumes, and the weird steam and smoke and brass and cogwheel world of typical steampunk, I am afraid we don't quite manage to gloss over women's logical place in this Alt. Hist. And no. Mrs Pankhurst did get clapped in irons, but as millions of women did not go out to work in the factories of WW1... the world isn't quite as liberated as ours is.

So I have my heroes travese a world turned into an eclogical disaster area by 20th century industrialisation with coal instead of oil, and in which WW1 was a very brief thing and King Edward VIII never even met Wallis Simpson, but married a Prussian princess to heal wounds between England and Germany. The Empire endured... at least until this book. And it ain't pretty, least of all if you're Irish, Indian, or Australian for that matter. Or not part of the upper class, actually.

I have a feeling I should probably rather have gone with the tide with this, but it's too late now... It irritated me.

Anyway almost all subgenres have their tropes that irritate someone: These are some of mine.
Historical fantasy - what are these 21st century urban-dwellers doing in this rural feudal setting?
SF - What happened that FTL suddenly got so easy? Why are biosystems not at least double redundant?
Urban fantasy - who is that A-hole with sparkles? Where is my stake?
Paranormal Romance - what is this thing with man-titty?
YA - why is so much YA chicklit?

And what are yours?

*and other life-forms, proving that at least they'll your equal-opportunity oppressor.
** It is too a real word. Just not English... yet.

Ooooh, Shiny Book

2011-04-17T06:03:00.000-04:00

(Disclaimer: No books were harmed in the writing of this post. No vampires were made shiny and no werewolves were turned emo. Had either of the latter two occurred, said vamps and wolves would have been humanely extracted from the world of the written world for their sakes as well as for the sake of all readers out there.)

I must start with a confession. I am an e-book addict. You all know that. I've made no secret of how I love being able to put hundreds, thousands of books on my kindle or iPod touch and carry them with me. I love the convenience of being able to use my kindle to shop directly if I suddenly feel the need to have a new book and I just can't wait on it any longer. Besides, why would I work for a digital press if I didn't believe in e-books, right?

So what, you ask, do I have to confess? Well, I fell in love the other day. No, not that sort of love, although I did want to sleep with the new object of my affections. (Quit laughing, Sarah) Ah, I can see the looks of puzzlement in some of your faces and I see Kate covertly trying to find the number for the men in the white jackets. No, I haven't lost my mind. But I have discovered something many others before me already knew.

Thursday I received the bound proof of Nocturnal Origins. It was like Christmas morning all over again. My hands shook as I ripped into the box. My breath caught as I carefully lifted the book from inside and turned it over. There, finally, one dream come true. I actually held a book with my name as author.

And it was soooooooo cool.

That isn't to say I was more proud of the hard copy version of Origins than I have been of the e-book, because I'm not. But there is something about holding a book in your hands and seeing the physical manifestation of all your hard work.

Does this mean I'm not as big of an advocate of e-books as I was before Thursday? Absolutely not. But that feeling reminded me of something -- there really is something special about "real" books. For those folks who are tactile, physical books will almost always be more enjoyable than e-books. What we are going to see over the next few years is a balancing out of the industry -- I hope. E-books will gain more respectability while physical books will be ratcheted back some. I think we'll see more of the POD hubs cropping up in bookstores and other outlets so stores don't have to keep a lot of stock on hand. The customer simply orders the book while in the store, goes to have a cup of coffee or something, and comes back later to pick up his book. Technology like this may very well be one of the saviors of the print end of publishing.

In the meantime, however, let me have a moment to just go, "SQUEEEEEEE!". I promise to be back to normal -- or as normal as I ever am -- next weekend.

Open Thread

2011-04-16T08:31:00.002-04:00

Good morning! Today is Open Thread Day. This is your chance to ask any questions or talk about what you've seen in publishing news recently. You know the rules: no politics and no in-your-face posts.

The floor is now yours. Have fun!

Training Tips

2011-04-14T20:42:00.006-04:00

One of the things I do to let off a bit of stress and keep myself healthy is run. I have often amused myself with analogies between running and writing. Both take dedication, both require you to push through 'barriers of pain' to reach the end goal.

After years of slogging away at around the same pace 'do or die' I have recently been changing my approach. I have started to incorporate some smaller, quicker runs as well as sprints. I have been amazed at how this has shortened overall times. The other thing, which has been something of a breakthrough, is incorporating nutrition around what I do.

For years I have been a big believer in a low carb diet, and I pretty much went off for extensive runs without eating much of anything - before or after. My theory was my body would 'burn fat'. Well, it probably did, but I always found it a struggle energy-wise, and experienced massive physical drops afterwards. Typically, I just kept doing it, soldiering on.

Then, after talking with some friends who do marathons and other runs, I tried incorporating some key nutrition around the runs. Taking a sports drink beforehand to provide some calories as well as magnesium for muscle function. Then immediately afterwards have a good meal or supplement with both protein and carbohydrate. Then eating again after two hours. I can not believe the difference!

My muscle recovery and energy recovery is so much faster, and my overall performance has taken a leap. My body just burns this! Metabolism kicking into high gear.

Basically, in the old training scheme I was breaking down muscle - but not giving my body anything to build back with. And I was not supplying the muscles with the sugars they needed for Glycogen recovery.

So - how does this relate to writing? Well - I think as writers we need to think about what we put into our writing 'bodies' and when we do it. I think we need to be inspired by story, we need to be exposed to language - good language! It's probably just as important as carbo-loading! Getting exposed to the right genre forms to excite your interest, to create a flow of ideas. Trying different things to use your writing 'muscles' in different ways. All can increase performance, but also help to stop the 'massive drop' you might get after a particularly intense writing period.

Have a favourite book or movie waiting as key nutrition when you get back from a critique group roasting. Allow yourself to excite your imagination - that is our stock and trade as SFF writers.

How do you keep your writing 'body' in good nick?

Conformity, Diversity, and the state of things

2011-04-14T08:00:00.000-04:00

Yet again, Sarah's got me thinking... Yeah, I know. It's dangerous.

Anyway, some time back, Howard Bloom in Global Brain described societies as being composed of conformity enforcers, diversity generators, inner-judges, resource shifters and intergroup tournaments. Ideally, the five elements are more or less balanced, with the resource shifters (which don't need to be people) "rewarding" the successful (for whatever value of success) and "penalizing" the unsuccessful, and the inner-judges constantly evaluating where anyone stands in the social hierarchy. The intergroup tournaments are - metaphorically - what shakes the hierarchy and changes the internal rankings.

Ever since then, I've been seeing the effects everywhere - and Sarah's post is a pretty good summary of what happens when the conformity enforcers have absolute control. One fits the prevailing model of what should be, or effectively does not exist.

Most people are conformist - it's the human norm to want to be part of a group, any group. Conformity also offers a lot of mutual support and protection. What tends to happen is that rewards within a group flow to those who conform to the group's norms, unless the diversity generators happen on some new source of wealth or inter-group success and either spawn off a new group (colonize something or create a new press) or shift the norms of the old group.

It doesn't matter how big the group is, either, or who's in it. If you gather all the innovators and put them in a group, you'll quickly get a new set of conformists.

What does that have to do with publishing and writing? Simply, after a long period of decline masked as stability, there's an explosion of change in process. The last two conventions I attended, micro-presses were respectable. So were ebook-only presses. Most of the low-end mid list authors I spoke to are involved with small presses in some way - some editing for them, some running them. And what used to be the mainstream was hardly visible at all.

In Bloom's terms, the diversity generators have broken past the wall and are actively trying out anything and everything they can think of. Some of it will work, some won't. There's no way to tell which experiments will work out - and there won't be for quite some time.

All of which is a really roundabout way to say that we're in the middle of "interesting times" and they're only going to get more interesting. The only thing that's obvious is that the losers will be the ones who were on top in the old system.

Thoughts, comments, raspberries? (with cream, please).

Anger

2011-04-13T06:59:00.001-04:00

Dave Freer wrote about anger almost a year ago. Mostly he wrote about the incredibly self-destructive anger that comes with being a writer.

I can’t improve on what he said particularly the part about how every crash is assume to be driver’s error even if the wheels came off the publishing effort before the driver took the wheel.

A few years before Dave wrote that, I stumbled on a book on burnout, because I hit a wall of sorts, where I couldn’t motivate myself to write, even when I wanted to write. (This wall is endemic. It comes, I fight against it. It comes again.)

The book on burnout was, of course, not directed at writers. It was actually a book on escaping the situation that caused the burnout. And the first thing it identified was the situation that almost inevitably causes the worst burnout – what they called the perfect storm.

Apparently people are able or at least willing to withstand working their hearts out at things where the outcome can’t be under their control (i.e. no matter how excellent they are or how hard they work, they can’t guarantee the outcome will be good.) They can survive this situation given, ideally, two things – recognition (pats on the back, prestige, the sense that what they’re doing is special and needed) and very good pay. The lack of control over their position will still tire them, and they’ll need vacations and cosseting. Now, if you remove just one of those compensations – the high pay or the recognition – you’re going to make it more likely that burnout will happen. If you remove both the compensations, so you have someone with no control over the outcome of their work, no high compensation and no recognition you’ve just created a mid list author... er... I mean the perfect storm for burnout.

Or perhaps “the reason my dentist thinks I should wear a mouth guard at night because of tooth-grinding.”

(Their advice, btw, was to run away from such a situation at all costs because it will kill you in a short time. Of course, for writers, at least up till now, the escape hatches are few.)

I happened to re-read Dave’s post last week, while looking for something on MGC and this brought to mind the book on burnout (remind me I need to find my mouth guard) which in turn came to mind again when I read a post by a friendly colleague about her extreme depression, brought about by... lack of control of the outcome, lack of recognition and lack of money. This post touched me greatly because there but for the grace of Baen go I. I was saved from being exactly where she is, by Jim and Toni giving me my own conference in the Baen bar oh... six? Years ago. Which in turn resulted in my hearing directly from Baen fans, so that even if the establishment doesn’t know my name, I do get people asking what happens next, and talking about my characters like real people, and that recognition keeps me going, even through all the worry about money and book distribution and my wretched attempts at publicity.

And then yesterday, while writing on rejections, it occurred to me that there is something there that links in with both Dave’s post and this colleague’s plea for help and that is – they treat us like children or fools.

Now, I mentioned this to a friend who said she knew many stores that treated their employees like that. Yeah, I’m sure she does. I know some computer shops that do the same. But it’s not an industry wide syndrome. Exploited employees can usually walk down the street and get something new. (Well, maybe not in the present economy.) In writing – though there are quite a few exceptions – the norm seems to be for anyone in an editorial position to treat the writer like dirt beneath their chariot wheels.

Crude, rude and overbearing rejections are not rare. Making generalizations about writers being like children are not rare. In fact, anywhere that industry professionals gather, writers will often be treated like idiot children.

My friend suggested perhaps this is because – though the number of writers who fit the stereotype is very small – there is a stereotype that writers are unstable.

I don’t think so. Look, the stereotype for postal workers IS that they’re unstable. Hence the “going postal” and I don’t see a supervisor treating a carrier this way – say, taking a professional of twenty years and telling him “you don’t know how to distribute mail. You can’t drive that car properly” or anything like that. Why not? Because they are afraid the postal worker will go berserk.

On the contrary, I think the general rudeness and unprofessional belittling of writers comes from the fact that until recently, to quote my grandmother’s expression for these situations, the publishing side of the equation had both the knife and the cheese. If you were so much as rude to them, or they just didn’t like you, you could be shut out of publishing. It didn’t even take any formal blacklisting. I personally observed one of these cases up close and personal (no, not me) and despite excellent sales all it took was putting word about that the writer is “hard to work with.” (Which isn’t even true.)

Even beyond that, if they didn’t actively like you/your book and get very involved in it, your distribution would suck, and failing all that if, by a miracle, you still sold, they were in control of your statements and you couldn’t see your numbers, so they could p*ss on your neck and tell you it was raining.

So you had to approach them cap in hand, and bow and tug on your forelock. You had to stay in their good graces to keep working, and your entire livelihood was dependent on this handful of interconnected (with some exceptions, like Baen) people.

Did this breed contempt? Good Lord, yes. I mean, seriously, it doesn’t surprise me that people with the ink barely dry on their fine arts diploma would presume to tell professionals how to do their job. What surprises me, under the circumstances, is that they didn’t feed us to literal lions for their amusement. (We won’t mention the metaphorical lions.)

What is the point of this? Other than venting my anger?

Well, writers are starting to acquire other channels. Not as viable as mainstream publishing yet, I’ll give you that. For all but a lucky few, it won’t support us... yet.

But things are changing very fast. And long before it is viable for a writer to make a living from self publishing, it will be possible for enough exasperated writers to walk away or die trying. (And no, I’m not ready to yet. Read about where I got a conference from Jim and Toni. And also, things seem to be finally starting to sell. And also, at this point I'm practically down to editors I enjoy working with. But there are a lot of people where I was a few years ago.) And for enough competing offerings to be available to take money from the publisher’s bottom line.

In other words – long before we can live without them, publishers will find they can’t live without us.

And then they’ll run up against that anger Dave mentioned.

I’ve long ago preached about writers growing up. Don’t bitch at an editor. Don’t tell them they’re stupid because they rejected you. (I’ve been on the other side of that desk. Most people who do that are not people I want to work with.) If an editor offers politely expressed non-ludicrous comments, consider them before you dismiss them. (But don’t rewrite unless they’re paying you or at least agreeing to read it again. As for ludicrous, if I get one more rejection critiquing a three page synopsis as though it were the whole book... I’m going to find my mouth guard.) Accept in your heart that no matter how good you are, some books are simply not what the editor (or sometimes anyone) is looking for. Be willing to move on to the next book.

Now, hark, for I’m the voice that cries in the desert, and who doesn’t expect to be heard until ... a year or two from now, when the desertion of the midlisters (and lower) starts hurting. And even then, it might take a while.

But perhaps it’s time for editors (and some agents) to consider (this just from things that happened to me I’ve heard much worse, and I’m sure our readers have too):

- Not telling the writer that you have read better things from your three year old son;

- not telling the writer that you disapprove of his/her moral stance and he/she must be “depraved”;

-not spending hours thinking of belittling ways to describe the writers’ work (the one that stuck in my mind was ‘flipping voices like a cook flipping pancakes in a cheap greasy spoon’ (12 years ago, from an agent for... Darkship Thieves.);

-not sending a rejection saying “your novel was terrible” when the only thing the author ever sent you was a request for guidelines (and the author hadn’t published yet, so chances of your having seen one of her novels are small to none.)

Editors should instead – particularly when they’re dealing with authors who have published more than one or two books – treat them as professionals treat other professionals. Oh, sure if there’s a chance you’ll buy the book if they fix a detail or two, point out what they got wrong. If they’ve got some egregious error of science of history (or grammar, like the lady who had a character with a “copulant face” in a story I read for a slush pile long ago. I was forced to point out “I think you mean corpulent, and that’s still wrong.) you can mention it politely.

Of course, if the author doesn’t behave like a professional, THEN you may take your gloves off, but don’t preemptively assume you’re dealing with the mentally unstable. It takes a degree of fortitude and work to produce readable work. I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but truly, anyone off the street CAN’T do it.

See, now you might still have the knife, but the writers have the cheese. You’re going to have to behave as if they matter, because they do. And you won’t survive without them.

*crossposted at According To Hoyt*

Looking Forward, by Looking Back

2011-04-12T05:40:00.007-04:00

Here I am, back from Supanova (Brisbane and Melbourne). To say it was heaps of fun and totally exhausting would be accurate. Here's a picture of Marianne and I working hard at the coal-face (bookshop).

Here's someone climbing out of the Delorean from Back to the Future. I was chatting with someone today about the number of people who came to Supanova (26,000 in Brisbane, not sure of Melbourne). When I went to Melbourne way back when I was a teenager, I met the SF fans and found people who talked about the kinds of things that interested me. But we were a minority that the mainstream didn't understand and actively mocked.

When Starwars came out in the late 1970s and it was so incredibly popular, I can remember SF fans saying Soon we won't be marginalised any more. We'll be mainstream. It took a bit longer and a lot more successful movies and TV shows, but the day has come.

The basic concepts of SF stories are understood by the average person and the staple devices of SF are everyday accessories. A communicator that takes pictures, connects with a knowledge base and reminds you of where you should be? Sure!

It's funny to sit at the bookshop stall and see Doctor Who walk by, Manga characters, computer game characters and more, and know that many caught public transport to get there. I'm sure there are similar events in the US and the UK.

I'd like to raise a glass of cyber champagne to all those fans who kept the dreams of SF and F alive for so many years when they were marginalised. What are your memories of discovering the genre and getting involved in fandom? And where do you see our genre going from here?

The wedding guest

2011-04-11T04:27:00.006-04:00

I feel* -- at times -- like the ancient mariner in search of a wedding guest to hold with my glittering eye. You see this is the crucial phase and stage in ANY good writer's process: to see if they can take the reluctant reader away from the feasting and merry minstrelsy** and bind them to their tale, that, willy-nilly they must read. Must finish, somehow.

Now, of course, if the reader is not reluctant, and you are a name they recognise and trust to give them an entertaining read, they'll sit down on the stone and be hypnotised, even if you take your own sweet time about it, and tell them all about the setting and the weather first. For the rest of us, you have an 'elevator pitch' - a paragraph, maybe a page or two if you've been fortunate enough to be granted a good cover, and a bored wedding guest.

However, seeing as I am back on the amatuerish side of ancient marinering, I've found the need to hypnotise wedding guests starts long before the book is on the shelf. It actually starts before there is a book. You see, I have a head with serious decay issues. Ideas ferment up in it like - well, like a fermenting brain. Yes, that was an image you didn't need. It produces WAY too many ideas, and many are best left alone. And the trouble with a lot of these strange ideas is that that 1)I don't really understand them or the story implication behind them myself. 2)Many of them seriously lack the glittering eye to hold an audience, but are more like the glistening something else. So I need a winnowing system - a reluctant audience. It's a worth trying process: if an idea appeals to me, I find an unsuspecting soul(and preferably hoping to rush off elsewhere, poor victim) and I try to explain it to them. If they hit me with sharp objects it was a rotten idea. If they are late for wherever they're going and still keep asking me questions... it's a winner.

I can sell that Albatross.

To put this in slightly less artistic terms, what actually talking the idea through with another person (one who does not know what you am talking about) does for you is to force you into the situation you will be when giving the concept to your agent, publisher, and most importantly to your reader. It forces one to actually formalise and condense the vague, grand concept in your head. Finally it does something that all too few writers do: forces you (well, me anyway)to build a far far broader background to the story in your head, because, inevitably the wedding guest starts asking questions (and not just 'when can I get out here?'). For each of us, of course, the process varies, but this is where I get a real handle on a story.

So what works for you? Do your ideas stay a dark secret in your head until you write them? Do you write them out? Formalise them?

Or have I merely given you a reason to run a mile when you see me on the horison?

Here is my current one:
_______

"I can't cope any more!"
My mother said that about twice a day.
Usually about me.
Huh. I couldn't cope with me either, and I've got no escape. I didn't fit, and I didn't belong and I didn't like it.
But this time she was shouting it down the ‘phone line to my father in Oman. And she normally won't even speak to him. Keeps it to snarky e-mails about money. I know, I looked. Her password is so lame.
"He's a changeling, Tom! He's not normal."
I couldn't hear my Dad's answer to that. But I bet my mother didn't even know what a changeling was. I kinda wished I was one. It had to beat ‘loser'. Maybe Faerie glamor let you look taller, cooler, like you had an I-phone. Maybe it let you get away with shoplifting without getting busted.
"That won't work. The school has asked me to remove him. I don't know what do, Tom!"
_________

*I might feel like one, but it is a tactile illusion, created by the smell. Please stop touching me. It's so embarrassing.
**It is SO a real word. If it was good enough for Coleridge, it is good enough for thee.

How not to behave as a reader

2011-04-10T08:30:00.002-04:00

Last weekend, I wrote about bad behavior by one very passionate but unwise author as well as a publisher behaving badly. This week, I want to talk about things readers do that have repercussions on authors they might not think about.

Over the last week or so, there has been a great deal written about the number of one star reviews Michael Connelly's latest book, The Fifth Witness, has received for its digital version. Now, it's not unusual for a best seller like Connelly to have a few one star reviews for a title. There's always that one person who buys the book and reads it, expecting something the book isn't. But we're not talking a few readers who aren't satisfied with what Connelly wrote. No, we're talking about hundreds of readers who have given the book one star reviews -- and who very well may not have read it.

If you go to the kindle page for The Fifth Witness, you'll see that there have been 167 customer reviews that average out to a 2 star rating. Specifically, there have been 38 five star reviews, 4 four star reviews, 1 three star reviews, 4 two star reviews and a whopping 120 one star reviews. While the B&N rankings aren't quite as one-sided, they do show the readers' frustration.

Why all the low rankings? Well, when this book first came out, it cost more for the e-book than for the hard cover. Yep, that's right. On amazon, you could get a copy of the hard cover for $14.28 while the e-book was $14.99. At bn, the prices were $14.73 for the hard cover and $14.99 for the e-book.

Needless to say, the discussion boards went wild. And so did the negative reviews. I understand readers doing this to protest something the publisher has control over. (For the record, the publisher of this book is one of the publishers following the agency model of pricing for e-books. You can always tell if a book is affected by this because Amazon adds the following under the price -- This price was set by the publisher.) The problem is, when you give reviews based solely on price, you are hurting the author. There are people out there who might not read the reviews but they do look at how many stars a book has. When they see a disparate amount of one or two stars as opposed to four or five stars, they make a decision not to buy the book. And that is how it impacts the author.

Now, surprisingly, the publisher did listen to the readers who protested the price. A check of both Amazon and BN this morning shows that the price for the e-book has been lowered to $12.99. While that is still more than what a number of e-book purchasers see as the upper limit on what they will pay, it is lower than the physical copy of the book. But the damage has already been done. The bad reviews based on price are there and the only being hurt by them is Mr. Connelly.

I'll admit, I might not have paid as much attention to what happened to Mr. Connelly but for a review one of NRP's short stories received. This particular reviewer either posted the review to the wrong title -- there is another title very similar to ours that is a novel where our title is a short story -- or this particular reviewer didn't pay attention to the file size when buying the title. Why, you ask, do I say this? Because the reviewer complained about having to pay for something that was, in his opinion, nothing but a "review" of a book. That review, coming around the same time as the kerfluffle over Connelly's book, really made me start thinking about what damage such reviews can do.

Is there an easy answer? Sure. Sellers such as Amazon and BN can add another level to their review process, one where you rate the price of the book that is separate from the review of the content. Will it happen? Doubtful. So it falls into our hands as readers to be responsible. Review the book -- read it and write a thoughtful and thought out -- review of the contents. Then add any concerns you might have about the price of the book. Publishers aren't going to be hurt all that badly by the loss of sales for one author's books. But that author will be. Numbers are everything in the publishing world. Authors don't have control over what their publishers price a book -- paper or digital -- at. So don't punish them.

If the price is more than you want to spend, then pass on the book until the price comes down. Speak up about the price on your blog, in discussion boards, in emails to the author and to the publisher. Email amazon and bn and other e-tailers asking them to change their review system to allow you to rate the price as well as the content. That, to me, is a much more fair approach.

In the meantime, let's hope the agency model of pricing falls by the wayside in the near future.

This And That And The Other

2011-04-09T08:40:00.004-04:00

So, today is my day to promote, again, which makes me feel rather on the spot. Since we last talked, I’ve sold a short story (An Answer From The North which will come out in Courts of The Fey, edited by Russell Davis.) Wrote another which I’m in the process of cleaning up (hopefully) for acceptance. I delivered a book – A Fatal Stain – to Prime Crime. I’m hoping to get the sample chapters for that up this weekend. The samples for the other two are here. And I had a few things come out with Naked reader.

First, I want to call your attention to Death Of A Musketeer. Excerpts are here. The trailer video is here.

There is also A Touch of Night, written by Sofie Skapski and myself. The reason we wrote this – Pride, Prejudice and dragons, oh my – is that my Magical British Empire Series wasn’t selling, so we did this to use the world. For fun. An unedited and shorter version is out at austen.com. Of course, the minute we’d written it, the MBE sold to Bantam Spectra.

I have also attended a steam punk con. Yeah, that’s what the picture is all about. It was surprisingly fun. First, possibly because I hadn’t dressed up in years. Second because though it took place on a college campus – though, you say? Though, I reply – the attendees were all bright, engaging and interested young people who actually seemed to read for fun. Why is it “though”? Because with notable exceptions, a lot of young sf fandom seems to be more media and games based. My excuse to be there, of course, was having written the Magical British Empire Trilogy. Samples for which are here. It is a chase for the eye of the goddess in a magical land in which the industrial revolution is underfoot in a way you’ve never seen before, and all shape shifters are illegal and subjected to being killed on sight.

And right now I’m working on finishing Darkship Renegades, which is the sequel to Darkship Thieves. Excerpts for Darkship Thieves live here. Darkship Renegades starts this way:

Out Of The Frying Pan

I was a princess from Earth and he was a rogue spaceman from a mythical world. He saved my life three times. I rescued him from a fate worse than death.
We married and lived happily ever after.
Ever after comes with an expiration date these days. We’d been married less than year when Kit got shot in the head.

And if you're totally at loose ends, let me remind you I give away some short stories and even a collection. If you haven't tried the short stories, read them or download them here. As for the collection, please visit the Baen Free Library and look for my name. Happy reading.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, and the occasional dragon (thought I wouldn't see you, lurking there at the back, uh?) have a good weekend. I shall go imbibe massive quantities of caffeine and work.

(The Picture is courtesy http://Fantascenes.net )

*Due to serious lack of caffeine as well as fact I am finishing a book, this post being echoed over at According To Hoyt*

Judging Your Own Work

2011-04-07T20:01:00.005-04:00

Now this is something I find almost impossible to do.

Every single time I sit down to write I make the journey from 'My God this sucks' to 'this is starting to hang together' to 'I'm liking this!' and back to 'this is total crap.' Somewhere through that process I actually get a buzz - usually when I forget to think critically at all.

I've won prizes and been shortlisted for genre awards. Other writer friends say I write well. Every now and then I will get a shock when a dedicated critiquer who does nothing but criticize me and my work introduces me as a 'fine writer.'

It seems that I have no capacity for objectivity. When I look at the work that I have done I see the prose through a microscope (showing ugliness usually) and the story from a lightyear away - focused on the shape of the whole thing and its various subplots.

Getting critique is one way to get feedback. Reviews on published work are another. I'm not sure which one is crueler, probably the reviews since they are public and liable to effect sales.

I got a mixed review on The Calvanni from one of the Asif reviewers when it came out in 2006 (the other one loved it). She went on about unnecessary complexity etc When I met her some months later at a convention she said. 'You know I really liked the book.' Well why the Hell couldn't you have said that in print!

On a day-to-day basis, how are you supposed to get any sort of handle on your work?

I guess writing is a never-ending series of judgements you make - is the sentence too long, is there enough description, should the clown really kill the president, how big are his shoes etc. Yet when the high of actually being in the flow fades, all I am left with is a sense of unease.

How do you go about judging your own work as you progress? Is it actually impossible?

You wouldn't believe it

2011-04-07T08:00:00.000-04:00

Most writers end up bitching at fate sooner or later, usually along the lines of "if you put it in a book no-one would believe it". Weird news is good for this. So is politics, and a pretty hefty chunk of everyday life. And bureaucracy. Or perhaps especially bureaucracy.

I got a prize example of that one - the bureaucracy side - today, courtesy the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Basically, they charge an $8 toll to cross a particular bridge. I got there and and didn't have the cash because what bloody toll bridge charges eight bucks to cross? Oh, and they don't take credit cards.

So, the attendant tells me I'll get a bill. That's - sort of - what arrived today. Only it doesn't say "bill", it says "Notice of violation enforcement action". And includes, in big letters, a $50 fee. Everything on the notice refers to the amount due as $58.

It's not - not unless you take more than 2 weeks to pay up. But the way the form is set up, it reads as though you'd better pay $58 or there'll be all sorts of nastiness. I have to wonder how many people pay up the full amount when they don't need to: guaranteed they don't get refunded the $50 they paid when they didn't need to.

If I wrote a bureaucracy that did that, no-one would believe it!

Office politics is another one. My opinion of office politicking isn't something you can repeat in impolite company, much less polite company, but for various reasons I've been watching the goings on at work. Much, much more that you wouldn't believe if you put it in a book.

What other situations in life would be unbelievable in a story?

Listening to Voices

2011-04-06T06:20:00.000-04:00

Lately I’ve become a consumer of audio books. I’ve done this before, years ago, when I was working on getting a house ready for sale. Mind you, I’ve always read while cleaning or cooking, but it’s pretty hard to read while painting, hence the audio books.

The latest spree isn’t painting related (though it could be soon. I mean, all of this house needs painting, but I’m waiting for summer.) I’ve just taken up long walks, and audio books help.

It has also caused some strange shifts in my reading habits, as I’ve discovered that just like reading authors in Portuguese then in English isn’t the same. I don’t know if it’s extraordinary translators or simply ideas more suited to being expressed in one language than the other, but I loved some authors in Portuguese that I can’t read in English and vice-versa.

So, that’s the first:

1- not all my favorite authors translate well to audio books. Though so far I’ve found I’ve got a greater tolerance for books in audio than in reading. Some language issues that bother me in reading sound a lot more plausible in voice. I think that this is because hearing things spoken makes them somehow more real than reading them. Hearing is believing. (In this it might help to know I grew up with radio news, as opposed to TV news, so maybe I’m conditioned to consider spoken things “true” I guess.)

1a) I cannot listen to F. Paul Wilson’s Repairman Jack series, one of my absolutely favorite series, and one of the very few I buy in hardcover. Mind you, I can’t listen to horror, either, but I don’t read horror. Repairman Jack is a thriller with horrific elements. I can read it fine. In fact, when it comes out I usually read it in the evening/night. So why can’t I listen to it? I dream about it. In detail. Graphically.

There is a second find:

2 - I’m more likely to get subtexts in a book listening to it read.
Well, either that or I simply don’t function well while reading and washing dishes, and making sure the book doesn’t fall in the water. But Terry Pratchett, for instance, is infinitely “richer” in audio books.

Third:

3- I’m more likely to catch the voice of the book while listening to it audio. I mean, I’m more likely to start speaking and writing like that book. This means I CANNOT listen to Georgette Heyer while writing space opera. Otherwise, my space people will be going “Handsomely over the bricks, my dear. What can you possibly signify?” OTOH once I caught this mechanism, it makes it easier to stay on voice. I listen to the book with the closest “feel” to what I’m trying to write.

But the fourth and most awesome discovery is that I feel MUCH closer to the writer’s personality when I listen to books than when I read them. I can feel the person, there as it were. And the realization suddenly hits me:

4- I’m listening to the author tell a story. When these are the voices of a dead author – like Heinlein – or even an author who was much younger when he wrote something – like Pratchett’s early work – it feels like the narrator captured a moment in time and brought it to me, still alive an pulsing.

To my mind that’s a form of magic.

So, what are your experiences with audio books? (I don’t ask about movies, because we all know what they do.) Any fun anecdotes? (Oh, yeah, like the time the kids came in and I was – years ago. Got books from library, so had to go with what they had – painting and listening to a Nora Robert’s ahem scene. To this day they talk about me listening to porn.) HOW do you feel about audio books? Are they – to you – a legitimate translation of the story? Or do they feel somehow wrong, and like a completely different thing? And is it just me who reacts differently to the same book, read versus narrated?

Fun stuff for a change!

2011-04-05T04:00:00.004-04:00

We all work so hard (and I am still up to my neck with UNI marking and publisher deadline) that we forget how important it is to have fun. This is a no-holds-barred fun post.

I spent the weekend at Supanova, a massive pop culture event. And tomorrow I fly out to Melbourne for next weekend's Supanova. You should see the costumes, everything from Manga to Doctor Who and Predator. Here I am being threatened by a Stormtrooper.

Took over 200 copies of my books along and sold out. Yay!

Now I know what it feels like to be a celebrity. The guest bus arrived and when we got out people cheered and flashes went off as they took photos. I thought I better enjoy this. It's not like I'll ever experience it again. LOL

Funniest moment: Going over to the venue in the bus and two of the Buffy stars doing an on-line Buffy quiz to see if they knew the answers.

So that is where I'll be next weekend. Hope my books sell out again!

Have you let your hair down and had fun recently?

Diana Wynne Jones

2011-04-04T02:40:00.004-04:00

One of my favorite authors, Diana Wynne Jones, has died. DWJ is generally regarded as a 'children's book' author, but you'd have to search long, hard and far to find a better example of 'if it's not good enough to be read by adults, it's certainly not good enough for children.' I forget who said that, and I para-phrase, but it's pretty close to fundamentalist religion to this author and parent. She was clever, funny, warm and sometimes tragic in her writing (Dogsbody made me weep. It doesn't stop me reading and re-reading it). The other thing that shines through her characters is just how real and 'ordinary' and accessible her fantasy characters are. She stands out because wrote amazingly fallible characters... that you still liked. There was a certain warmth and indomidability of spirit about them -- she knew these people and in many cases, was them. I've just been reading her autobiography and it is obvious, fairly soon, as you recognise places and people, that DWJ's writing was shaped by a razor sharp memory (and a razor sharp mind) and curiously, an ability to cruel - both to herself and the illusions we humans like to cling to about our parents and background. The distances and sometimes weakness of parents come through strongly - in Archer's Goon for instance, where, to be honest Venturus's step- parents made me long to give them a clip around the ear-hole. It took me a while to realise that it was this that made DWJ stand out in the 'urban fantasy' sense - in an era where families were portrayed as either perfect or detestable - hers were neither. They were fallable, and often likable despite it. In Fire and Hemlock, in which DWJ mercilessly details the breakdown of Polly's family, you keep reading, because 1)there's Polly - and it is hard not to care about her, and 2)in both her parents - Reg and Ivy (but particularly the weak father) there are moments, when as an adult anyway, I found myself in sympathy with him. Grannies, we note, do tend to get a soft billet :-). Reading the autobiography - and knowing the books - it is fascinating to see how the places and people of her youth keep coming into the books.

The other aspect that shines through DWJ's fantasy is the feeling that many of her fantasy worlds convey - of a complex, vast, and very 'alien' but real universe. Part of this is her sheer magic - from whence it came, besides inside her, who knows. It was just... special. Part of it is of course that she had a vast background in mythology (which, if you know the myths, make the books even more like opening one of those layered gifts). Books such as The Spellcoats, the Power of Three or Black Maria fill you with a feeling strangeness - as if you've been lucky enough to catch of fleeting glimpse of something truly magical, on the edge of the dream.

And yet... she makes me laugh. And the books send me out stronger. Read her books and learn. Buy them for your kids, buy them for yourself. Treasure was never so cheap.

Respect. One of the great has passed beyond.
A glass for the living and glass for the dead.

How not to behave as an author or a publisher. . .

2011-04-03T08:15:00.003-04:00

and I am paying very close attention so I never, ever follow in these folks' footsteps.

First, you've probably heard about the author behaving badly this past week. If not, you can read what I had to say about it here. Basically what happened is a review was posted that the author took exception to. Mind you, it wasn't anywhere close to a scathing review. In fact, the only real negative the reviewer pointed out was that he had problems with the formatting and other technical issues -- nothing with regard to the writing itself. The author decided to argue with the reviewer, accusing the reviewer of not downloading a new edition she told him to (okay, rule number one. Don't tell the reviewer to download a new version. Send it to them.) Then she accused him of not understanding or not liking her writing because she's British. HUH?!? When some of the blog readers started telling her she was not helping her cause, she went off the deep end and told them, multiple times, to f***k off. Yep, that's right. She found the plank, put it over the side of the ship and took a long walk off of it.

Then there's the ongoing Dorchester Publishing brouhaha. I first became aware of it when I read Brian Keene's blog post requesting authors, reviewers, readers, booksellers, etc., boycott Dorchester. The basic facts, according to Keene, are that he negotiated with Dorchester for the reversion of his print and electronic rights, effective January, in return for releasing them from all financial claims he might have. Seems that he hadn't received any royalty statements, much less royalties, in a very long time (you can see the specifics in his post). Then, to his surprise, after the reversion took place, Dorchester continued to digitally publish his titles, always blaming others when he contacted them.

It turns out that he's not the only one this is happening to. If you follow the links in his post, you will find a number of other authors willing to share their horror stories as well.

As word of the boycott spread, fans started posting on the Dorchester facebook page about the situation. It didn't take long for those posts to disappear. Not exactly the way to respond. Dorchester would be better served by simply answering the questions. Instead, they posted a question to their followers asking what titles the readers would like to see in digital format.

Now, being the overly suspicious sort and rarely finding a conspiracy theory I didn't like, I don't see this as an innocent question. This is, in my opinion, Dorchester's way of seizing rights that have already reverted. And I'm not alone in wondering if this isn't exactly what's happening. That supposition is strengthened by the news that Dorchester even changed its Amazon listings from Dorchester to DP. Gee, one would think they are trying to hide who they are....hmmmm.

What we need to remember is that this isn't a new state of affairs for Dorchester. Last year, the Mystery Writers of America delisted the publisher. From GalleyCat: eReads has a quote from the official memo from Richard Curtis: “[T]he publisher must not wrongfully withhold or delay royalty payments to authors. We have been hearing an unusually high number of reports from our members of unpaid advances and withheld royalties on their Dorchester books … The board made it clear to Dorchester that it is welcome to re-apply once these problems have been cleared up.”

After that happened, Dorchester went to strictly digital and POD. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, I think we are going to see more and more of it in the future. However, they have yet to put their house in order. In fact, comparing Keene's and his fellow boycotters' tales with this one from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, it looks like Dorchester is simply continuing the course that got them de-listed with MWA.

Horror Writers of America have also issued an open letter to Dorchester. It notes that Dorchester has been removed from the list of approved publishers. It goes on to list a number of grievances against the publisher. If, by the end of this month, Dorchester addresses these concerns, HWA will reconsider Dorchester's status.

What are the answers? Well, one is quite simple. Amazon and other e-tailers need to hold these so-called major publishers to the same standards they hold small publishers and self-published authors to. When Naked Reader Press submits a title for publication that has already been published in one format or another, we have to present proof that the rights have reverted to the author and that the author has contracted with us for publication. It's a headache, but one we are more than happy to bear to protect the rights of our authors.

While I am not asking you to boycott Dorchester, I am asking you to look over the list of authors who have joined Keene's boycott and consider what they are losing through Dorchester's actions. Someone asked on facebook yesterday how the authors would be paid if the publisher is boycotted. That might be a valid point if Dorchester had shown any indication it planned on paying these authors. Instead, its track record speaks for itself, imo. For me, I am going to have to think two and three times before buying anything from Dorchester right now.

Cross-posted here.

The Jakirian Series

2011-04-02T23:59:00.003-04:00

The Jakirian series is heroic fantasy set on the world of Yos, with its unique ecology and twin suns, where all metal is magical and where control of magic is the basis for power.

The Calvanni was first published in Australia in 2006. Readers have had to wait a long time for the sequel.

Now I am happy to announce the wait is finally over!

Naked Reader will be publishing the follow on book from The Calvanni, Scytheman, and also the third book in the series, Sorcerer. All three will be available both as electronic and also print-on-demand. The nice people at Naked Reader have also agreed to do both US and UK/Australian English versions! How cool is that?

For years I have been getting emails from people saying 'I loved the Calvanni, when is the second book coming out?' Well Scytheman has been burning a hole in my hard drive for a long time. Finally I can email all those people back!

The publication schedule is:
Flight of The Phoenix (prequel novella): May (electronic)
The Calvanni: June 2011 (electronic & POD)
Scytheman: December 2011 (electronic & POD)
Sorcerer: June 2012 (electronic & POD)

The events in The Calvanni are set thirty years after the fall of the once vast Bulvuran Empire, when Kelas is divided into waring sardoms, and the ancient enemy of Man, the Eathal, plot their long-awaited revenge.

The Druids have monopolized power, outlawing the ancient practice of Sorcery, once the domain of the Bulvuran nobility.

An unknown evil – once contained by the Emperors – is now reaching to ensnare new victims.

In The Calvanni, first of the series, it is Storm Season on the world of Yos, when the twin suns eclipse and the planet is plunged into bitter cold. It is usually a time of quiet, when the wise lock their doors, praying for the demons of the red sun-goddess Uros to pass them by. Yet deep in the Caverns of Maht, Hukum, the Sorcerer-Lord of cavern-dwelling Eathal, plots his attack on the world of men.

Cedrin, a street-wise calvanni (knife-fighter), is summoned to the secret underground tunnels of the Brotherhood of the Night. There, Cedrin is forced to join Hukum’s attack against the rulers of his native Athria. Caught between the threat of death and his suspicions that all is not what it seems, he must try to keep his friends Marken and Skye alive and escape.

When Cedrin makes his escape he comes face-to-face with Hukum’s minion Raziin, a fearsome mercenary. His world is shaken as Raziin’s Sorcerous attack triggers the awakening of his own powers. Cedrin survives, but must now flee not only the wrath of the rulers of Athria, but also Raziin and the Brotherhood of the Night.

Ellen, daughter of the assassinated Athrian Sarlord, is named as heir before his death. She struggles to assert herself as the new ruler, little suspecting the civil war that will be unleashed on Athria within days. Ellen’s father warned her never to reveal her hidden powers of Sorcery, but as Hukum’s minions close in, she has little choice. She is forced to flee persecution at the hands of the Druids.

Both Cedrin and Ellen head for the ancient capital of Raynor, soon to come under attack by Hukum’s armies. Pursuing both Cedrin and Ellen is Raziin, eager to escape his bondage to Hukum and convinced by a powerful prophecy that Cedrin holds the key to an artifact of untold power. . .

I hope you enjoy the ride!

For more background on the world of Yos, check out my first post on Yos.

Reentering the Work

2011-03-31T18:58:00.012-04:00

Life has a way of interfering with the execution of art (I am using the word in the broad sense of all artistic activity). Blame the cut-throat nature of the artistic world, or perhaps the fact that the gap between poor artists and rich artists is much larger than for any other section of society. Either way, this nasty thing called needing to earn a living and the other mundane things like taking out the trash and cooking dinner (and driving around the kids!) take out a big slice of time.

These nasty things really put a dent in the working flow. Like most writers I find it pretty hard to tune back into the work. Ideally I would like to write for a minimum two hour block each day. That's about how long it takes me to tune into the story, the characters, chip through the usual layer of ice and start to get the words flowing again.

Life is a little like torture at the moment. I just get started, just break through into the story and I have to stop and help with the groceries, or run for the bus, feed the llamas etc. The worse thing is when you are forced away from the work for a number days.

Getting back in can be a real challenge.

My way back in is always through the story itself - in the flow of the plot - and through the characters. If the break has really been a long one, I might have to first review the plot and do some thinking about the characters then start re-drafting from a few chapters back, or even from the beginning to get back into the feel of the piece and understand at a gut level where I had been coming from.

How do you navigate your way back into your story when life gets in the way? Or can you pick up the threads easily?

Open Thread

2011-03-31T08:00:00.000-04:00

Don't ask. Just don't.

The usual rules apply: no politics, no hitting, and have fun.

Hey, Writer, if That’s Your Real Name

2011-03-30T06:06:00.002-04:00

So, you’re out there and you’re frowning at my blog – yeah, I can see you. You didn’t know that monitor was two way and powered with narrativium? – and going “okay, Sarah, what’s with all the different series and different names? I know that notorious criminals and people with multiple personality disorder use different names, but why you? And what’s with all the series? And, by the way, when are you going to update your website, so I don’t have to stumble around in the dark looking for your series in order?”

I’ll start with the last question first: renovations are ongoing. Only I’ve come to the conclusion I need a complete redesign. So, I’m building another site, from scratch, in the “invisible pages” of the site, and keeping it there until I can bring it all on line with a bang. Also, hopefully with a forum, which hopefully will have chat but no bangs, unless it’s New Years or something.

Now the series. Well... I didn’t set out to write multiple series. Heck, I didn’t set out to write multiple genres. I started out to write science fiction. To be exact, I was going to write space opera and maybe some historical, high brow, incredibly involuted fantasy. People were going to swoon at my brilliance for the fantasy and push cash at me for the space opera. I was going to have someone to do the cleaning and laundry for me and I could spend all my free time with the kids and Dan. And we’d have time and money to travel. Oh, yeah, and for purely morale purposes, I would have a cute male secretary who made a killer cup of tea. (Yes, I DO love my husband dearly, but I’m allowed eye candy.)

As you can probably guess... things went weird. First of all, I still don’t have household help. Or a cute male secretary. It also took me decades to publish. And on the way there I wrote eight books, two of which are now published in rewritten versions, and one of which I now know how to rewrite (it’s actually a trilogy). It is patiently waiting its turn. The other five are just in a world that’s not workable.

Anyway, in those thirteen or so years I was writing mostly for myself, I had to keep myself amused. So the Space Opera morphed into odd fantasy. And the odd fantasy begat other odd fantasy. And then I wrote historical and mystery and... I actually have a YA space opera with telepathic cats outlined somewhere.

And then I sold. And then when that series didn’t do so well, I sold the Musketeers. And then there was the historical. And, oh, yeah, the shifter’s fantasy. And then a proposal for an historic fantasy series sent out years before, sold. And then another mystery. And then I got attacked by a vampire series on the way from my art class.

If this sounds chaotic to you, it is. Yeah part of it is “market driven” to the extent that I tend to finish series that sell. But the other part is internal. You see, I trained myself to have ideas, and now I can’t stop having them. (Yes, it totally is a matter of training. I’ll write about it tomorrow, probably.) I’m now at the point that I believe – as Leonardo de Quirm, Terry Pratchett’s character – that the ideas rain from the sky all the time. I have tried to fashion a tinfoil hat to keep them out, but my agent says it will overheat my brain, and besides she likes it that I have ideas. (She’s a cruel woman. Love her to pieces, but.. Really. She’s leaving me at the mercy of the ideas!)

As for why the multiple names – no, I’m not embarrassed by what I write. I do however have two types of names: open and closed. Two closed, so far, (one published, one yet unpublished.) for good and sufficient reason either on my part or that of the publishers. Mostly marketing reasons. No, I’m not embarrassed. Nor am I doing anything immoral or illegal. It’s just that sometimes it’s easier to market things that way.

In the open, I have four currently, and frankly if I had started out today, they would have a slightly different distribution. Why? Because I think on the net, it is very important to brand your name. More important than it used to be when it was all paperbooks. Why do I think that? Well... because the covers might be harder to see or read for genre signs. I have plenty of readers of mystery who would be upset if they bought an SF by accident, and readers of SF who will not read historical and... So, I’m trying to establish branding. BUT because of the timing of my realization, some series are already started/done under a name that would not be different. That’s life.

As for a list, here they are in order:
Sarah A. Hoyt
The Magical Shakespeare Biography (somewhat literary fantasy, with tons of Shakespeare quotes and allusions, it reimagines the early life of the bard and his experiences with the elves of nearby Arden woods.)

Ill Met By Moonlight; All Night Awake; Any Man So Daring

Status: out of print. No authorized e-versions. I’m working on getting those out.

Sarah A. Hoyt
Shifters Series (Urban Fantasy Sarah Style. ALMOST science fiction. Shape shifters, but no vampires, no general magic even if some stuff is a bit mystical, not too much dark stuff. Mysteries and diners, though. Set in Goldport, Colorado.)

Draw One In The Dark; Gentleman Takes A Chance; Upcoming: Noah’s Boy

Status: last I heard hard to obtain in paper, but both are available in ebooks from baen.com. Reasonably priced at that. I have heard rumors publisher plans to bring them out again at time of third which is started but not yet finished.

Sarah D’Almeida
Musketeer’s Mysteries and should the need arise, other historical mysteries. (Murder Mysteries solved by the three musketeers plus one.)

Death of A Musketeer; Musketeer’s Seamstress; Musketeer’s Apprentice; A Death In Gascony; Dying By The Sword and (possibly) upcoming Musketeer’s Confessor.
Status: Death of a Musketeer is being re-released by Naked Reader Press. For now it is available as an ebook. It will also soon be available POD. As for the others, their status is unclear. By the terms of my contract the rights should have reverted, however he house is being difficult. Proceed with care. If DOAM does well enough, I will write Musketeer’s Confessor for publication early next year. The trailer for Death Of A Musketeer is here.

Sarah A. Hoyt
Magical British Empire. (At the time of Charlemagne, in a magical parallel world, someone stole the eye of the goddess, which must be recovered. Victorian England. Dragons. Magic. Flying carpets. Trains and factories run on magic. Steam power and gas lights, too. Oh, yeah, romance. Africa. India. China.)
Heart of Light; Soul of Fire; Heart and Soul

Status: in print. No more planned – at least for now.

Elise Hyatt
Daring Finds Mysteries (A young woman struggles to survive and feed herself and her toddler, by refinishing furniture that, somehow, often has clues to crimes new and old. Sassy. Funny. Odd. Set in Goldport, Colorado.)

Dipped, Stripped and Dead; A French Polished Murder and upcoming A Fatal Stain.

Status: in print.

Sarah A. Hoyt
Space Opera (set along a future history populated with such things as artificial islands, wars between bioengineered and natural humans, biological solar collectors, feisty women and men who are not exactly slouches.)
Darkship Thieves and upcoming Darkship Renegades and POSSIBLY (not bought yet) A Few Good Men (in the same world/interacting, but not with characters from Darkships)

Status: in print and furiously underway. (Given my health giving me a break soon, should be done in a matter of days. At least DSR)

Sarah Marques
Blood Worlds (this is the first trilogy, but actually there is a contemporary series set in the same world. A world almost entirely taken over by vampires, in which humans must fight, gallantly, against overwhelming odds. And which vampire domination is often legalistic and undermines human societies from within. The first trilogy, just sold to Prime books, revisits the world of the three musketeers, where Richelieu is a vampire and with his guards rules the night, while the king rules the day. A noir feel and the sort of black humor where one laughs in the teeth of hell.)

Sword And Blood; Blood Royale; Rising Blood

Status: All are upcoming. The first one is delivered.

Any questions about the books or their content, or why some have a certain name? I’ll be glad to oblige with answers, if I can.

*crossposted at According To Hoyt*

Brave New World, for real

2011-03-29T04:47:00.004-04:00

The other day I saw something amazing. My husband is a fan of the Singularity Blog and he's always saying, come here look at this.

First he showed me this one - a robotic's company called Cyberdyne. Yes, you heard right, someone has a sense of humour. They're making exoskeletons. See here. The lower leg version has been available for a year now.

And this one was elegant and amazing, a robot bird. It is controlled by a computer which communicates with the bird and controls it in real time, responding to air currents.

I like to read New Scientist on the train to work. It gives me ideas for stories and keeps me on my toes.

How do you get mental stimulation to keep your brain ticking over?

Crawlspace and other stories - the kindle experience

2011-03-28T04:50:00.003-04:00

It finally happened: CRAWLSPACE AND OTHER STORIES is up on US kindle - now because this was the way Eric wanted it, it is not being done throught NAKED READER as the rest of my e-sales have been. I'm a better writer than I am e-publisher. (I have no real desire to fiddle my way through formats and covers and fine print.) But I am enjoying the sheer accessibility of my sales records. This is something so simple that publishers really need to drive towards. I have never met an author (and I doubt one exists) who really wants to be a mushroom - kept in the dark, fed on BS and harvested when convenient. If you're running an open, honest shop, there is no gain in keeping this information from the author either. I'd argue that the information (along with publicity spend and advance) should be public domain, but I am aware that I'd have more chance of falling pregnant. But really - to set up the feed that tells authors where they are day-to-day is not - for your medium/large publishing house - a particularly expensive or difficult process. There must be at least a million programmers available to do the job. The point is, it's a serious spur - both to authors and readers (and possibly publishers). It would be hugely popular with the authors, and cost little to implement. It's also quite a wake-up call as to how little draw I really have - Crawlspace has sold 21 copies in 5 days (in fact the process made me 45 dollars this week), whereas the Nielsen data says I sell about 500 paper books a week. But it's been very interesting in a number of ways. One has been that I've sold a few more NR shorts simply because readers discovered - on hearing about CRAWLSPACE and searching for me on Amazon Kindle - that there were more. That is why I intend to insist on teasers for other books/stories being part of any e-book in the future. It's a feedback loop I've seen over and over. The best eg. I can think of is MUCH FALL OF BLOOD - where the paperback release has seen the sales of earlier books shoot up... Provided of course they are available - A MANKIND WITCH is not. So while SHADOW OF THE LION benefitted to the tune of 1004 copies... AMW sold zero (ergo I am asking for my rights back - hopefully before the next release in that series). I am not happy about this, as I've lost readers - which is one reason, perhaps, for keeping authors in the dark.

So where is all this leading - well, quite simply into into how valuable - to me anyway, seeing the results of sales effort is. And, more importantly, how vital it is to feed the beast and to keep feeding it, and use the books you keep putting into the system to get new readers.

So: what data would you like from your publisher, and why?

Sunday morning round-up

2011-03-27T08:37:00.007-04:00

It's been a busy week, both in the publishing world and in the little bit of the world that is mine. For me, I've been trying to finish up reviewing edits on several titles coming out for NRP and I've been attacked by a new novel -- one that demands it be written NOW. For the industry, well, let's just say there have been a lot of developments and I'll try to touch on a few of them.

Let's start with the news from the courts. A federal judge in New York has thrown out the Google books settlement. From Publisher's Weekly: But citing copyright, antitrust and other concerns, Judge Denny Chin said that the settlement went too far. He said it would have granted Google a “de facto monopoly” and the right to profit from books without the permission of copyright owners. There is still the possibility Google and the other parties to the settlement can reach and agreement that will pass legal muster, but PW is right. This is a blow not only to Google but to the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers. The parties had taken two years to negotiate the current settlement and now must go back to the drawing board.

Then there's this head-scratcher from Hawaii. Simply put, this bill would open publishers and authors up to civil liability if a reader of a travel book or article is hurt or killed trying to get to a location described in the piece. In other words, even if that person trespasses on private property and decides to hang off the edge of a skyscraper to see that nest of birds he just read about in the travel section of the newspaper and falls, the paper and the author could be held liable. It doesn't matter that the reader didn't exercise the common sense of a gnat. At the risk of stepping over the no politics line, I have to say that this smacks of legislators going a bit too far. There has to come a point where you have to trust folks to use a little common sense. If they don't, then they need to suffer the consequences. From a realistic stand point, conditions change and what may have been true at the time an article or book is written may have changed by the time it is published. So the warning might be so totally wrong as to be misleading as well. So, trust folks to use their brains or let them suffer the consequences. This is like requiring publishers to have disclaimers that books written 200 years ago use words that are no longer considered proper, etc.

Then there was the news that Barry Eisler gave up a $500,000 publishing deal to self-publish his books. Among the reasons given were that he was unhappy with the current royalty scheme with traditional publishers -- especially where e-books are concerned -- and the desire to get his books out quicker than they would be going the traditional route.

Coming on the heels of the news about Eisler is this piece that indie publishing phenom Amanda Hocking has just signed a deal with St. Martin's. As an indie, Hocking has sold more than a million books and made more than $2 million. She has done what every indie -- heck, what every writer -- wants. She's made enough money to be able to write full-time. So why did she, as some will say, turn traitor and join the ranks of traditional publishing? According to Hocking, it's so she can finally see her books on bookstore shelves. Something else every writer wants. There are other reasons, some very good ones, including making her books available when and where her readers want them, ensuring better editing (I hate to tell her, that may be a pipe dream. I've seen some horrible editing coming out of the major publishers.) But this doesn't mean she's giving up self-publishing either. As she notes in her post, she still has a number of books she can put out on her own.

So, who's right -- Eisler or Hocking? To me, they both are. Authors have to decide what is best for them and for their readers. The industry is changing. We have to change with it, whether we're authors or editors or publishers. If we don't, we'll be left behind.

Finally, if you want to take part in a poll, Genreville has a poll about SF/Fantasy purchasing habits. You can find it here.

What do you think? Should there be a new Google books settlement? Should there be warnings and disclaimers in travel books and articles? Self-publish or traditional?

(Cross-posted to The Naked Truth)

Authors and the dreaded 'Promo'

2011-03-26T02:32:00.002-04:00

Once upon a time, authors would sit in a little room somewhere and write. Not so, any more. Here is the poster I had to produce for SUPANOVA, (Brisbane next weekend and Melbourne the weekend after). They wanted a picture of me. I couldn't bear the thought of a giant poster with my face on it, so I added the book covers. It still means I have to go to the hairdressers and get them to straighten my hair because no one can take me seriously when I look like a French poodle!

On a more serious note it means I have two weekends when I can't write and, while I enjoy catching up with other writers and meeting readers, I'm happiest pottering around at home, writing when ever I can slip away to my study.

You know self promotion is serious when a publisher puts up a list of tips for their writers . (See it here, Simon and Schuster). Here are Patricia Simpson's self promotion tips for romance writers. Have to admire those romance writers, they are so organised. And here Victoria Strauss from Writers Beware talks about self promotion, and invites Alyx Dellamonica to talk about it. Then we have The Author as a Brand from Writers Website Planner and Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers gets in on it.

All of which is pretty overwhelming. I've heard people say, don't try and do everything. Just pick a couple of things that you are good at and do those. Here's the list of what I currently do:

I'm on Amazon Author Central. Lucky for me it updates from my blog, so I don't have to drop by there every couple of days.

I'm on Twitter, which I find surprisingly interesting. I didn't think I would because - What can you say in 140 characters or less? - but I seem to have 'Followed' a lost of quirky writers and people tweeting about political injustice. There's always a link through to a post that makes me think. I don't know if I am actually using Twitter to promote myself, more I respond to what other people have said or share a great movie or book. I have linked my blog into twitter, so it updates when I post.

I have the King Rolen's Kin blog. It's been nice having a blog because people read my books, google KRK, then drop by and tell me how much they enjoyed them, which is reassuring because I'm as insecure as the next writer. I tried to post to the KRK blog about twice a week, but sometimes after I've been marking first year UNI student essays for 5 days straight, I'm all out of interesting conversation. I sit at the keyboard and think, what do I have to say that would possibly interest people? That's why I'm relieved to be doing the interviewing of female fantasy writers. (Not that I don't like male fantasy writers. See why I'm featuring female fantasy authors).

I'm here at the Mad Genius Club, where I get an insight into what's happening with writers in the US, since my perspective is Australian and about 2 years behind the US as far as e-readers etc go. It's been very informative for me.

I'm also at the ROR Blog, where we talk about practical things to do with writing craft and what's happening in our end of the world, over here in Australia.

I am on FaceBook. I drop by once a day and do an update. Someone created a King Rolen's Kin page and I still haven't figured out how to use it. I found that if I did an update with the words King Rolen's Kin in it, the update would appear on the KRK page, but then it would disappear after a couple of days. (Still a bit of a FaceBook newbie, I'm afraid).

And when my books came out I contacted lots of review blog sites, offering copies, a guest post and a give-away. it cost me a small fortune posting books off all over the world for prizes, but I figure it is cheaper than flying to the US, the UK and Europe (I wish!).

In-person-stuff I tend to do at conventions, festivals and workshops at libraries etc. I can volunteer for panels at SF conventions and I have writing groups contacting me for workshops, but I can't get invited to festivals because my publisher is based in the UK and the way it works here in Australia, the publisher has to contact the festival. It's considered bad form if the writer does. Most of the festivals are literary and they aren't all that interested in genre writers.

All of this takes time when I could be writing. But I tend to do the on-line stuff after a long day at work, when my creative brain is tired, or after a long day of writing when my brain is creatively drained, so I don't think it is stealing that much time from my writing.

The publishing world has changed so much since my first children's book came out in 1996, all the things that you did or didn't do are different. The process of reaching out to readers is much easier. I really like that part.

Authors, people who like to be left alone for hours on end while creating invented worlds, and self promotion. It's a contradiction but we struggle on. What do you do to promote your writing?

Writing to Market (Not?)

2011-03-24T18:47:00.007-04:00

When I started off writing, I would often see articles and emails floating around saying how important it was to write to your market. Although I could understand the sense of this, in another way I could not see the point. I came to writing late, overwhelmed by an urge to develop my ideas and turn them into story. Frankly, if I could not develop my ideas my way, then I could not see the point of all of the pain to begin with. I had other ways to make money - and good money at that.

So I guess I did my own thing, the result of which is various manuscripts that were not judged commercial, or did not fit into the neat marketing categories. The most notorious of which is Warriors of the Blessed Realms, which is a hybrid SF/Urban Fantasy/Heroic Fantasy that straddles various worlds from contemporary Earth to the Vaults of Sheol and the Blessed Realms themselves.

Years ago (2003), an editor rang me to say they liked WBR, but perhaps could I take out the SF? Well, the SF was so integral to the story I could only answer - No. As a result, I missed a great opportunity for a potential sale. Basically removing the SF would have resulted in a novel that had very little in common (at least on a conceptual level) with the original concept. (I think I was actually in shock at the question, which probably dulled my wits a little.)

What I have realised since then is I should have said - YES!! - then proceeded to write a completely new novel with the same title and characters:) I am still kicking myself after all this time.

While I don't think I would ever really 'chase' a market, I have learned since then that I can generate ideas out of just about any context imaginable, so if someone gives me a solid reason to do it (i.e. they will publish it) then I can make use of any material to weave a story.

Right - now I have blurted out my biggest publishing blunder. . .

I have known quite a few writers who have deliberately set out to capitalize on trends. I'm not sure this has really worked out all that well for them. The reason is that by the time something is recognised as 'in' the trend is really quite well established. Writing a good novel takes time. If you add the fact that the new movement/innovation/setting has probably really been around for at least a decade by the time LOCUS does a special on it, then add the five years it takes to really produce a masterpiece - that's 15 years. Time enough for the next new thing to come along.

I've seen a lot of writers run foul of this timeline. Their novels get shunted aside in the tide of copycats that flood onto the editor's desk.

Now - anticipating a trend is something different. Can anyone actually do it? I'm not sure. But some people have sure as Hell got lucky!

I think this is one of the reasons that great writers are often not recognised in their lifetime. Perhaps they are ahead of there time, perhaps they are writing something that is seen as having had its day. Maybe it takes fifty years before the cycle comes around again and someone actually picks their novel up and assesses it on its merits and realises its brilliance.

So do you try to anticipate or follow current trends? Or do you just follow your crazy ideas wherever they lead?

Lunaconned

2011-03-24T08:00:00.002-04:00

I've been back from LunaCon for several days now, although it feels a lot longer. Work will do that to you.

It was a great convention despite some interesting issues with double-booking and a programming team scrambling to keep from getting too behind (apparently they lost their programming database 2 months before the convention - OUCH!) as well as a lack of mobile bodies doing duty as convention minions. Some people were booked for 15 or more panels over the course of the weekend, and one or two tried valiantly to actually be at every last one of them.

Friday highlights:
- The lady running the SoHo Host Club has the right idea - surround yourself with polite, attractive, well-groomed young men. It makes quite the impression!
- Meet the Pros party chatting with Heidi Hooper (aka the dryer lint art lady), Michael Ventrella and assorted others. Somewhere the conversation got onto vegetarian vampires, the chocolate fountain ran out and desperate souls trailed the waiter out of the room grabbing as much of the rapidly solidifying chocolate as they could.

Saturday highlights:
- chatting with Esther Friesner between Cheeblemancy readings
- Dracula vs Undead Porn panel with KT Pinto which turned into a free-ranging discussion about the vampire mythos, the inadvisability of vampire sparkles, and when urban fantasy becomes undead porn. Naturally I wore my "Dracula Never Sparkled" badge.
- Catching up with Mike Kabongo and Leo Champion between panels and parties.

Sunday highlights:
- People hanging off the railings near the hotel pool for the World Building panel with Esther Friesner, Russ Handleman, Pauline Alama and Paul Calhoun. That one was actually scheduled for a good-sized room, but the room was the one that was showing movies all convention so we ended up down by the pool in a space meant for maybe 5 people. It was a fun panel, with some interesting insights into what shapes culture.

Monday I took things easy and drove home after a good night's sleep, and I've been in post-convention recovery ever since (aka exhausted and brain-dead). But I'm paid up for next year, and in about a month I'll ping the programming email to get myself on next year's programming.

(cross-posted to Kate's Corner)

This is Sarah -- Kate allowed me to post this link to my blog where I did a follow up on my post yesterday. I.e. I've come to a decision on what to do, at least for now: Welcome To The Treadmill

Money Matters

2011-03-23T05:42:00.000-04:00

I hate it when it’s time to get resourceful. For all my innovation in writing, my interest in the new and the different, I crave security at a very deep level. Frankly, it’s a joke that someone with my need for security should be in a profession where the money comes slow and irregularly when it comes at all.

Lately a series of very bad expenses – all new appliances except for the stove which is limping (and I do mean limping, unfortunately) along and might hold another year if we’re lucky, a series of car repairs, tuition for both kids an idiot cat who swallowed a bunch of thread and other sundry emergencies – have driven a knife deep into my bank account. This combines with the fact that payments that used to be almost instant in publishing are often now eight months late to bring us to a no good, very bad, rotten type of financial situation.

Of course the problem with this is that anxiety brings my writing to a grinding halt, and that in turn grinds the payments to an even slower schedule because I deliver late.

To put things bluntly, we need to make up the about 12k in unexpected expenses (yeah, the tuition was expected, but the rest wasn’t) that have buffeted us since around December or things are going to go south very fast and get extremely unpleasant to the point that writing time will become iffy (as in, if we need to move).

In this type of situation, normally, I get a day job. Except... I haven’t needed to do that in more than ten years, so my marketable skills are limited. Also I’m signed for six books due this year. This combination means in this market getting a job at all will be... uh... interesting and that if I get a job I won’t be able to write.

This leaves me two options, which – while both cut into my writing by making more writing – are actually doable and in several ways preferable.

One is a storyteller’s bowl. I set up a site and start putting up a novel, then set a value per chapter – since my chapters are short, probably a relatively low value – and once that value is reached in donations, I put up the next chapter. The only problem with this is finishing the novel before I put it up. I don’t think that would happen, which means people would essentially be donating for an e-arc – an unedited/unpolished novel. I was thinking – for those of you in the diner – of putting up my regency Witchfinder novel with the Scarlet Pimpernel character. It is outlined, and I know I can finish it, and well... I will write for money. (I could also do a science fiction, mind you...)

The other is a subscription. For – say – $10 a year, I commit to two short stories a month, 60% of those to be set in either the world (and probably past history) of DST and shifters. (Probably more than 60%, but I can promise 60%. ) There would be the occasional three short story month/novellete/story by a “guest author” as a bonus.

I am tempted to try both of them. They would take less time away from contracts than an honest job and if they bring in what I need, it would reduce anxiety enough to allow me to work.

What do you guys think the chances of either/both/neither of these succeeding are? I confess that they’re all too “risky” to my mind and that I hate having to get creative in this way. However, it seems that I DO have to try. Ideas? Suggestions? Rotten tomatoes?

Crossposted at According To Hoyt and Classical Values.

Words, the writer's tools ...

2011-03-22T06:03:00.002-04:00

I've spent the last two days working 12 hours straight, teaching and marking. Before that, like Dave, I've been madly writing in every spare moment. I am so deep into The Outcast trilogy that I can't read any other books, or I will forget where I am in approx 2,100 pages of story with 4 points of view and numerous supporting characters. (Each book is between 650 - 750 pages).

So I'm feeling a creatively drained. On Sunday after a marathon session I almost finished the story arc of the third book. Now it is time to go back to book one and work on all the little things I have in my To Fix list for each book.

Today at UNI we were teaching semiotics, which is all about meanings and signs/symbols/words. It made me think about the very small differences in word choice that we, as writers, make instinctively all the time. For instance if I chose 'rural', over 'rustic', each time I made a small word choice like this, it would eventually lead to a different over-all feel for the book/story.

Then there are the invented words. We writers of fantasy and SF are always inventing words. I want my invented words to have meaning and not just by a jumble of letters. So what I do is look up the thesaurus for similar words, then take a couple of those words and look up their Old English, Old Norse, Old German and Latin roots. Then I come up with a word that has its roots in those origins, so that, while it is an invented word, it has connotations which the reader will pick up on subconsciously. Or so I hope.

For instance, in my T'En trilogy I had a character called T'Reothe. He was betrothed to the main character. I came to his name by looking at 'Betrothed' and to 'Plight one's Troth'. Betroth comes from Medieval English - trouth/treuth. Troth comes from Medieval English - trowthe and Old English - treowth. All of which mean truth. Maybe no one would ever pick up on it. But to me, his name had meaning and I was comfortable with it, because as a character he held firmly to his beliefs.

Are you as obsessed with the choice of words and invented words as I am?

To start again

2011-03-21T05:40:00.005-04:00

So I turned the latest book (DOG AND DRAGON) in on Wednesday. At some stage Toni will read it, and hopefully like it. At some stage the Australian Dollar will strengthen to a 10 year peak and I will get paid. Currency manipulators could hire me.

For a day or two I just had pure burnout. Glad to go out and fish and do some of the vast list of round-tuits that have built up. Dive for Abalone, cover myself in gooey little bits of it. (What? Do you mean you DON'T? Oh. But it is so good for your fur. Honestly, ask any hairy chested damsel out there. Really, you need to try it. Especially you poor bald-chested folk. It stops the deposition of all that fat on chest too. That only happens to cold chests to protect them. You can see this because of the hypertophy in the ones with insufficient clothes to keep warm.) Then I got onto chasing people who are late paying for shorts, and trying to sort out just WHY we're still waiting on CRAWLSPACE AND OTHER STORIES (Tomorrow, we are promised. We will see), and to follow up on the contracts for WITHOUT A TRACE. I even had a go with Audacity (programme, not lady-of-ill repute) reading one of my shorts aloud. I want to put this up somewhere and am not too sure how or where. - So ideas welcome*

Now I am starting on phase two of recovery. Which is reading fiction again. The latter part of a book just lacks time and I read nothing except research material. Now, I don't know about the rest of you but there are books / authors I turn to get myself wanting to write again. Call it hero worship if you like. For me it's Zelazny - probably 'I Immortal' right now, or 'Jack of Shadows' - and a good happy wallow in a Heyer or two. A Pratchett - Probably Small Gods or Pyramids, but possibly my friend Moist Von Lipwig. And probably a Michael Scott Rohan - who I suspect is an author's author as he never really hit the audience spot that Jordan or GRRM did - but appeals almost infinitely more to me. Then I might read Goblin Reservation or Way Station again just to be reassured that rural writers had readers. After this I'll move onto some newer fiction, some of which I will hate. But returning to these roots is what shapes me and makes me desire to be a writer. Any books that do this for you?

Phase 3 will be writing proposals as the voices start clamoring to get out, and maybe a short or two. And then, once more, body, mind and soul into the book-pit. At which point some Kindly One** will intervene with edits or proofs or something, and I will have extracate myself and worse, get back in. Usually this stage is reached in about 2-3 weeks, with goatgaggers (Heirs of Alexandria books) taking me longer to recover from. They're much longer books.

So: as we've all said - never write one book/story... how do you guys cycle back in? Do the books you read shape the direction your next book will take? They do for me.

*Slice and 'where the monkey keeps its nuts' are not ideas. They are places. Geography.
** You should get a better Classical Mythological education if you want to follow my obscure sarcasm. Sneaking in 'in jokes' in your prose is one of the small compensations for the pay-rates.

Sunday Morning Thoughts

2011-03-20T09:06:00.002-04:00

I'll admit it, I'm exhausted both mentally and physically this morning. For those of you who read my personal blog or who have seen my posts on Facebook, you know that this has not been a restful Spring Break. Oh, don't get me wrong. I love it when my son comes home from college. But part of me has spent the last few days almost wishing he hadn't -- not because I didn't want to see him or want him to come home. No, it all comes down to this -- after he left university, his dorm room flooded. It was one of a number that were damaged to varying degrees when an overhead pipe burst. Unfortunately, his room was one of the worst ones hit, at least according to the housing office. So, we've spent the last few days trying to figure out what has to be replaced immediately, what he needs to do when he gets there, etc. Needless to say, it's made it very difficult to think about writing or publishing or anything else.

So, with your indulgence, I'm simply going to ask a few of questions and see if we can't get a discussion started that way.

1. What do you think about blending genres in novels? Do you like a little mystery mixed in with your romance, a little fantasy with your mystery? What genres do you like to see mixed and which ones do you feel should never, ever be mixed? Or do you prefer your genres to remain "pure"?

2. Do you feel cheated when a cover doesn't ring true to the book? In other words, if you buy a book based on its cover and, after starting to read the book, do you get upset to find out the cover has absolutely nothing to do with the story?

3. How important is the cover for an e-book to you?

4. Are there any questions you want to ask?

Thanks, guys. I'll check back in afterwhile. Now I'm off to find gas for the new mower. Fuuuun.

Some thoughts on sequels, snippets and those voices in your head.

2011-03-19T08:46:00.003-04:00

There's a question that is often asked by authors, usually new ones, when it comes to sequels. It is basically this: Should I write a sequel to my book? My answer has always been to wait and see if you find a publisher for the first book and then to see if it sells well enough to justify writing a follow-up. Now, there are times, at least for me, when that advice isn't completely followed. I say completely because, well, I have a sequel to Nocturnal Origins about halfway written and completely outlined. Why? Because those voices in my head get so noisy at times it was was the only way to quiet them so I could work on anything else.

But recently, I've come to wonder if there's not another reason to have at least a rough draft of a few chapters of a sequel written when the first book finally comes out. It can be great promotion -- of course, it can also backfire on you. Hopefully, for me, it's working and will help drive the sales of Origins to the point that NRP will buy the next book in the series.

All of this is a round-about way of saying I've been posting a few snippets to Nocturnal Serenade, the sequel to Nocturnal Origins, over on my writing blog. You can find the first two here and here. I thought today, I'd post a third snippet both on my blog and here.

The following scene is not what comes next in Serenade. I thought I’d skip ahead some. This scene comes about 75 pages or so into the book. It will give a little of Mac’s family background and, hopefully, tease you some about what’s happening in the book. Yes, I’m evil and I love it. Hope you enjoy the snippet.

* * *

“All right, Mackenzie, don’t you think it’s time you told me what in the world is going on?”

They’d finally collected Ellen’s bags, after what had to be one of the longest delays in getting luggage from a jet to the terminal in recent memory, and had made their way to Pat’s sedan. Instead of answering her grandmother’s question right away, Mac had stowed Ellen’s luggage in the trunk, thinking hard as she did. Where to start? There was so much to tell her grandmother, none of which would be easy.

So she’d start with the easiest. She’d explain that they’d have to wait until morning to go to the hospital. The doctors wanted to keep Elizabeth sedated during the night so she could get some of the rest she needed so badly to begin her recovery. Ellen simply nodded, her eyes flitting from her granddaughter to Pat and back again.

Now, with Pat carefully navigating her way through the parking garage, Mac knew she couldn’t put off telling Ellen the rest of it. Especially not with her grandmother looking at her so closely. Still, she couldn’t quite find the words to begin.

“When did you start shifting?” Ellen’s voice carried a mixture of concern and, to Mac’s surprise, guilt. “And I assume you’re aware of the fact your partner’s a shifter as well.”

Well, trust her grandmother to cut right to the chase.

“It’s a long story, Gran, and I’ll tell you everything later. I promise. But the short version is this. Shortly after my birthday, I was attacked by one of the local lycans. He damn near killed me – Hell, they thought he had. Imagine my surprise when I woke up in the morgue. I about scared the poor attendant to death – Any way, the attack awakened my shifter abilities. I started shifting shortly after that, although I didn’t realize what was happening.”

Anger and resentment flared as she remembered how scared she’d been, how close she’d come to actually considering killing herself for being a monster.

Easy, Mac. It’s not her fault you didn’t know what might happen one day. You know that. Just as you know it’s something you need to talk to your mother about. So ease back on the anger.

“Fortunately” she continued, relieved none of the resentment showed in her voice, “my captain, who happens to be the local pride leader, did realize what was happening to me. He sent Pat and another member of the pride to watch me. Fortunately, all of them, especially Pat who helped me control one of my first shifts and then who took me somewhere secluded so she could teach me, helped me begin accepting what was happening.”

“Thank you.” Ellen reached over and lightly clasped Pat’s shoulder in appreciation. “And this lycan who attacked you?”

“It didn’t take long to realize he was responsible for a series of murders Mac and I were investigating. At first we didn’t know if he was a loner, because there hadn’t been any problem with the local lycans for years, or what. Then we realized he was a member of the local lycan pack and was doing his best to stir up trouble. Which, as I’m sure you realize, was the last thing any of us wanted,” Pat said.

“Wait!” Ellen leaned forward, reaching out with her left hand to turn Mac’s face to her. “That is why the Conclave convened here, without warning. You met that bastard in the Circle.”

It was more statement than question and all Mac could do was nod.

“I dealt with him, Gran, as I needed to.” That much was true. She had needed to deal with Wilcox herself, not only for what he’d done to her but for what he’d done to the others he’d stalked and killed. “The Circle gave me the only way I could make him pay for his crimes without arresting him, and that was the last thing I wanted to do. I couldn’t risk him shifting while in custody.”

“Of course you couldn’t!” Ellen leaned back, suddenly looking her age as the implications sank in. “Mackenzie, I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have –“

“Gran, don’t.” Mac waited until she knew she had her grandmother’s undivided attention. Then she waited a moment longer as Pat paid the toll to get off of the airport grounds. “I won’t lie to you. I was angry and hurt and more than a little confused and scared about what was happening to me. Then, when I learned shifting ran in the family, that you and Granddad were shifters, I was more mad than anything else. I didn’t think we had any secrets between us, and, damn, this was a big ass secret.

“I’ve had to do a lot of thinking since then. I know it wasn’t your decision not to tell me. That’s something I’m going to have to discuss with Mom when she’s better. But I am glad you know now and that we can talk about it, and about the family aspect of it.”

“Mackenzie, there’s more to this than you’re telling me. What is it?”

Mac laughed softly, ruefully. She’d forgotten just how quickly Ellen could read through all the layers and realize she’d hadn’t been told everything.

“Unfortunately, Gran, there is.” She paused, chewing her lip as she thought. “I know you’re worried. But I’d appreciate it if you’d wait for an explanation until we get to my place.”

Leaning back, arms crossed, Ellen studied her granddaughter for a moment before nodding. The moment she did, Mac smiled and thanked her. It was going to be hard enough to tell her everything that had happened, especially when it came to the attack on Elizabeth. The last thing Mac wanted was to be confined in the car where she had to sit still, not pace and burn off at least some of her own anger and fear as she spoke.

Half an hour later, Mac and Pat carried Ellen’s luggage inside and upstairs to the bedroom she’d be using while in town. Ellen trailed behind them and Mac could almost feel her fighting against the urge to start asking questions again. She understood. If their roles had been reversed, she’d have been demanding answers long ago. But then, she’d never had her grandmother’s patience, something she knew she should try to cultivate but simply didn’t seem to be able to.

“All right, Gran.” Mac handed Ellen a glass of wine and sat across the kitchen table from her. They were alone for the moment. Pat had excused herself a few minutes earlier and had disappeared outside. Although she hadn’t said so, Mac knew she was checking the perimeter and talking with whomever King had sent from the pride to keep watch. “You said there’s more to what’s happened than I told you and you’re right. There’s a hell of a lot more. But let’s start at the beginning. How much do you know about what happened at the Conclave?”

And you’d better be ready to tell me how you know, since you weren’t anywhere near here at the time.

“I know that the Conclave was called by the head of the pride here because at least one of the local lycans was openly hunting and leaving his kills where they were being found. I’d heard that the lycan had also attacked a member of the pride. Cassandra called the Conclave when it became clear that the pack leader either wouldn’t or couldn’t control the lycan, this Wilcox I assume.” She waited until Mac nodded in confirmation. “Apparently, the pack turned Wilcox over to the Conclave for judgment rather than risk the Conclave disbanding the pack or ordering its extinction.”

“All true,” Mac confirmed. “The pack leader, Ferguson, had been aware of the trouble Wilcox was stirring up but hadn’t, apparently, realized how much trouble he was actually causing in the pack itself. When he did, instead of calling out Wilcox, he punished two weaker members and expelled them. All that seemed to do was send Wilcox over the edge. He’d already caused at least two deaths that we know of, as well as attacking me. His third kill was also here in the city and happened just before the Conclave arrived.”

“So, how did you wind up meeting him in the Circle?”

A hint of disapproval touched Ellen’s voice. Mac heard it but knew it wasn’t aimed at her. Or at least not totally. She had a feeling that when her grandmother finally met King and realized he was the local pride leader, her captain would get a lecture he’d not soon forget.

“When the Conclave passed the death sentence on Wilcox, he demanded his right to trial by battle. Pat and some of the others of the pride had already warned me that he had that option. So, when the Speaker, this Cassandra, asked Mike who would stand as the pride’s representative in the Circle, I said I would.”

“MacKenzie!”

“Gran, I didn’t have a choice. I had to do it. I had to for me, as well as for all the others he’d attacked. We still don’t know now many others he killed. Nor do we know if he managed to turn anyone. But we do know he can’t do any more harm and the pack now realizes we will not stand by and let them run wild. It’s hard enough keeping our existence a secret without one of them getting careless and revealing our existence through DNA or other forensic evidence.”

“I understand why you felt you needed to do it, Mackenzie. What I don’t understand is why your pride leader allowed it. You were too new as a shifter.”

“Gran, that’s you speaking as my grandmother. Besides, Mike knew better than to try to stop me. I had to do it and, as you can see, I managed quite well, thank you.”

“All right.” Now she smiled, and reached over to grasp Mac’s hand. “Don’t get me wrong, sweetheart. I’m very proud of you. Your grandfather would be as well, if he were here to see you.”

“I hope so, Gran.” She gave Ellen’s hand a quick squeeze and then leaned back, wondering how to say this next part. “But there is more you need to know.”

“Just say it, dear heart.”

“Gran, we haven’t caught the bastard who attacked Mom. But we do know one thing about him, or her.”

“I have a feeling I’m not going to like what you have to say.”

“You aren’t.” Mac lifted her wineglass and drained it. “Gran, she was knifed by a lycan. I don’t know if the bastard was trying to turn her and things got out of hand or what.”

Ellen looked at her in disbelief, the color draining from her face. Then, much as Mac had done just a moment before, she lifted her wineglass and drank it dry.

“Y-you’re sure?”

“I am. I got there within minutes of the attack happening and there was no mistaking the scent. Pat and Mike confirmed it.”

“Damn it!” Ellen shoved back her chair and got to her feet. Mac watched as she paced the length of the kitchen once and then twice before returning to the table.

“It gets worse, Gran. I don’t know if he infected her. Hell, even if he didn’t, I don’t know if she’ll react like I did and start shifting on her own.”

“Dear sweet Lord, Mac. This is going to be more than your mother can handle.”

“You’re right. We tried talking to her about it when she was old enough to start showing signs of shifting, not that she had. But she wouldn’t listen to us. When she finally realized just how serious we were, she decided to try to ignore it all. When she couldn’t do that any more, and when she realized she wasn’t going to be a shifter, she convinced herself that your grandfather and I had some sort of hideous disease that she wanted to avoid at all costs.” Ellen paused, gnawing her lower lip much as Mac did when thinking hard.

“So, when you were born and I tried talking to her again about the possibility of you being a shifter, she panicked. She watched your every move, scared you’d begin showing signs of having inherited the curse.

“She should have told you, Mac. I should have told you….”

“Gran, don’t.” Mac slid out of her chair and moved around the table to her side, holding her close. “It’s over. Now you can help me continue learning. More than that, you can help me look after Mom and help her deal with what’s happened.”

Ellen nodded and Mac relaxed slightly. They’d have to talk some more, a great deal more, but it could wait. One step at a time, and they’d already taken a huge one. Even better, they’d managed to do it without it devolving into an argument. Now if she could just figure out how to manage the same with her mother when Elizabeth was able to talk.

Titanic Theory of Writing

2011-03-17T19:06:00.012-04:00

I've been amusing myself again by doing writing analogies. This time it's the Titanic Theory of Writing - or specifically, how to manage your 'ship' without hitting an ice-berg and having your writing productivity plummet to zero (with a few ideas fleeing in the lifeboats).

In this case the icebergs are a handy analogy for creative lockjaw. The emotional freeze that stops your creativity and the words flowing. It's not much good running into one and saying 'Oh Damn!' Much better to be on the lookout for dangerous waters - events and snarl-ups that will dent your productivity. It is better to sail around them or cut back the engines then rip out the hull.:) These would be things along the lines of staying alert for events coming up that will restrict writing time, or knowing that you will get a manuscript back with red pen all over it - both of which might effect your flow, or at least divert energy. That might be time to cut back the engines and chart a course.

You also need to stoke up the coal-fired boilers to give yourself motive force. Maybe plan a few things to keep the motivation and love of story alive inside you as well. Need to keep the flame alive inside you to keep going along. Of course all good nineteenth century engineers knew you did not want too much pressure in the boiler - otherwise kaboom! Not point winding yourself up and setting the expectations too high.

I've recently had to jump the hoops of a few Navigation Room incidents. The ship needs to chart its course (OK so I am a plotter - sue me!). I need a certain amount of planning before I declare 'full steam ahead'.

And last but not least - make sure you have enough lifeboats! Plan emergency measures for severe dips. I used to keep a David Gemmell novel in a sealed envelope along with written instructions (no I'm not kidding).

What's your favourite writing analogy? How do you keep the coal-fires burning on your ship of prose?

What do you do?

2011-03-17T08:00:00.000-04:00

What do you do when you're overloaded, and there's not one damn thing you can do to take some of the pressure off?

Yeah, that's right. The post I was going to write has gone bye-bye in the wake of a minor meltdown set off by a string of mostly minor things that just built up over the day combined with not being well and a few other more or less seasonal issues.

In other news, I've got most of the prep done for LunaCon. I still need to cut out the bookmarks (I'll be signing them at the con as giveaways, but you've got to sit through a panel or a reading first), but that's about all that's left.

My schedule for the con (the last I heard: this might change between now and Friday)

Reading (from Impaler, natch): Friday 5pm
Panels:
Saturday 6pm - Invisible Collaborator or Paid Fanfiction?
Saturday 7pm: Dracula vs Undead Porn
Sunday 1pm: World-Building for Historical/Fantasy Fiction
Sunday 3pm: Writing Battle Scenes

Assuming I can manage to not melt down, it should be fun.

A Funny Thing Happened

2011-03-16T06:16:00.000-04:00

I’ve been meaning to announce, only life keeps interfering, that I sold Sword and Blood, under the pen name Sarah Marques to Prime Books.

Why a pen name is tied up with “what is sword and blood.”

I suppose only a few of you know my very first sale was Thirst, a vampire short story, back in ninety four. If you look in the year’s best fantasy and horror for that year, it is under “honorable mentions.”

The truth is more complicated than that – truth always is – I actually sold it sometime in 93 of course, that part is normal. But I never got paid and didn’t even know it had been published until years later, while doing a routine search for my name on Amazon. Back then, it only showed three or four items, and that was one of them. You see, I sold it to an Australian magazine, the entire print run of which got seized and destroyed for violating indecency laws. I guess they’d got a magazine out to Year’s Best before that happened, but I never saw it.

Then I sold that short story again. Four times. It killed two more magazines and an editor. Finally, I sold another story (I was starting to think that would never happen) a science fiction one called Plaudit Cives to Absolute Magnitude. And I thought Dreams of Decadence was run by the same people and what the heck. So I sent Thirst to them, with its sorry history attached and ended the cover letter with “Do you feel lucky?”

Apparently they did, since they bought it and it was published... in 06? 07? Somewhere around that.

Since then I’ve done vampires intermittently always as short stories. On the one hand there is a lot to explore in the vampire mythos: the trade of death for life; the power that comes with virtually endless life; the nature of evil; the link of sex and blood which seems to be somewhere at the very back of my head. Vampires fulfill Terry Pratchett’s dictum that in the end all the important stories are about the death and the blood. (This is part of the reason I get so exasperated at what seems to me the defanging of vampires in Romance, because what’s the point of it if you don’t have the blood and the death. But then again, I never understood the appeal of the Disney versions of fairytales.) There was The Blood Like Wine and For Whose Dear Sake, and I get the persistent feeling I’m forgetting another.

Then three/four years ago, I was slammed under six books and home schooling a teenage genius. Something had to give and something did. Sleeping and vacations were no longer working as relaxation, so I took up art class because while working in pastel or pencil, my mind became empty of words.

Then one day I came out of class, and had parked far from the school (the school is across from a sports complex, and people parking for the game had taken everything up for half a mile.) By the time I got in the car and got my key in the ignition, I had three books in my mind in their entirety.
My first thought was “Oh, heck no. I can’t write that.” You see, they were the three musketeers set in a crepuscular world in which vampires rule most of the world and there’s a fight over France. Oh, yeah, and Athos has just been turned.

I came home and did what I do when I want to get rid of a novel that won’t shut up. I outlined it and wrote the first three pages. But it wouldn’t shut up. The series stayed at the back of my mind, nagging me, until I finished the first book, almost a year ago.

It has now been bought (and the still unwritten sequels, Royal Blood and Rising Blood) by Prime Books (not to be confused with Prime Crime.) It is not... exactly what my friend Kate calls undead porn, but it has sex. Oh, and death. And blood. Because of that, and fearing giving those of you who are fans of the other musketeer series or my space operas whiplash, I am bringing it out under Sarah Marques, which shall henceforth be my name for historical fantasy.

I’ve put up three chapters of Sword And Blood, the first book, in a temporary page. It’s not proofed and don’t sweat the look, this is just temporary. Before you head over, beware it contains references to sex. Discretion advised.

Hope you enjoy it, in many ways it’s the most intense thing I’ve ever written, though that might change when Darkship Renegades is done.

Do you mind horribly that I’m doing vampires? (I promise they don’t glow!)

Ten Traits of Creative People

2011-03-15T04:34:00.005-04:00

I write so much about creativity is because the subject fascinates me. I came across this post by Liz Strauss on why creative folk drive us crazy. In it she dissects a section from Dr Mihaly Csikszentmikalyi's book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. The section deals with the 10 dimensions of a creative personality, or as Liz Strauss puts it, 10 reasons why creative people drive us crazy.

Since Dr Mihaly Csikszentmikalyi studied people who had been inventive in technology and science these description may not apply as much to writers but I thought it would be interesting to examine this from a writer's perspective.

1. Creative individuals have great physical energy, but they become extremely quiet when they are at rest. This restful period can lead others to think that they are not feeling well or that they are unhappy, when the truth is they are fine.

Well, our job as writers tends to be static. But I can spend a day writing non stop and feel like I've just a run a marathon. My mind will be racing. Also, I can be watching TV, listening to people talk on the train or just staring off into space, but my mind will be either making connections as to motivations and reasons behind people's actions, or doing the same thing for the characters in my current manuscript.

When the urge to get a story down hits me, I feel like I'm on a high. Do you get this feeling?

2. Creative folks tend to be both highly intelligent and naive at the same time.

I laughed when I read this one. Has anyone ever watched a documentary about the Disney artists called Dream on Silly Dreamer? It looks at the rise of the Disney animation studio in the early nineties and what happened to it. These artists were ignored by the Disney corporation. Left to get on with their jobs they produced beautiful work - The little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, the Lion King. Then the business people saw they were making money, they moved in and stifled all creativity and tried to milk the animators like cows. Consequently the next movies were not as successful and most of the animators lost their jobs. What was interesting was that most of the animators, as the talked about the events, still did not understand what had happened to them. They had the exact same combination of personality traits mentioned in the above point. They were highly creative people who were also a bit naive about the world.

It is rare to combine the creativity with the business sense. Today, writers are expected to be that business person. Not only do they have to write great books, but they must do their accounts, promote their books and plan their career.

I know I tend to wish the business side of it would take care of itself, but I do knuckle under and get it done. Are you in the same boat?

3. Creative people are disciplined and playful simultaneously. In some creative people, this can mean that they are responsible and irresponsible at the same time as well.

This is a good point. One of the things I tell people in my workshops is that you must give yourself permission to make mistakes. When children play they learn by making mistakes. As adults we have an investment in getting it right. But as writers, we need to be willing to make mistakes, to take that creative risk. So we are playful. But we are also highly disciplined. You can't sit at a computer (every spare moment) as I have done for the past three months in 35- 40 degree heat with a wet towel around your neck and rewrite three 700 page books, without being highly disciplined.

Take a look at yourself, do you combine that sense of playful risk taking in your creative gambles, combined with personal discipline?

4. Creative minds move between a spectrum of fantasy and imagination and a firm grounding in reality. They understand the present and need to keep in touch with the past.

Wow the first half of this is so accurate for fantasy and SF writers it is scary. I would argue that the second half also applies, as it is through examination of the past, that we writers extrapolate the future and explore how humanity would react given technological changes.

In fact I would argue that it is the role of creative people to examine the present by holding a mirror (a distorted mirror if they are writing fantasy and SF) to the world. By exaggerating aspects of everyday behaviour, we make them easier to see.

Do you feel you can see a fantastical world and yet remain grounded?

5. Creative individuals seem to be both introverted and extroverted, expressing both traits at once. An image to explain this might be that they are shy showoffs, if you can picture that.

I think writers tend to be observers of life and people. I find people endlessly fascinating, but also frustrating and bit frightening. The extroverted part of me enjoys running lectures and making the students laugh. The introverted part of me could happily live in a monastery and do nothing but write.

Does the term 'shy showoff' strike a chord with you?

6. Creative people are sincerely humble and extremely proud in a childlike way. It requires ego to have a risky, fresh idea. It takes self-doubt to hammer it out to a workable form.

Think of Dave's post yesterday. It struck home with me because I have to love the book I'm writing, or I wouldn't write it. I can be totally in love with it and totally despairing of it within a day, or even an hour. I want people to read what I write. I want them to love the characters as much as I do. Yet the idea that readers will read and be critical of my book terrifies me.

From speaking to other writers they tend to feel this same conflict towards their work.

7. Creative folks don’t feel as tied to gender roles. They feel distinctly individual. They don’t feel the barriers of authority or the rules of what they are “supposed to do.”

Or put another way, creative people tend to be a bit iconoclastic. Add to this we are writers and readers of speculative fiction, quite happy to identify with an AI or a genderless alien, and you can see how accurate this description is. if we could not 'think outside the box' we could not create other cultures for our books, or write from a different Point of View.

8. Creative individuals are thought to be rebellious. Yet, in order to be creative one has to understand and have internalized the traditional culture. Therefore creativity comes from deep roots in tradition. Creative people are traditional and cutting edge.

This one made me stumble as little, as I don't consider myself traditional at all. The only way I can relate this one to myself as a writer is to look at it this way. I want to write stories that make people question their assumptions. To do this, I have to internalise their world view - the traditional culture of my society - once I've internalised it, I can deconstruct it within a story.

I think this one ties in to number 4.

9. Creative people are deeply passionate about their work, yet can be extremely detached and objective when discussing it.

Absolutely. I have to be passionate to write the book. Then I have to be objective to analyse what does and doesn't work. I think of first draft as right brain (creative) and second draft as left brain (analytical). (Leftbrain/rightbrain)

What this leads me to guess is that creative people are better as switching between different sides of their brain. I read somewhere that piano playing is goof for you because it forces the two sides of the brain to work in unison. Just throwing some theories out there.

10. Creative people are highly open and sensitive, which exposes them to pain and suffering, but also allows them to feel higher values of joy and happiness.

This is one of those 'of course' moments. As writers we feel very deeply. We mine those feelings for our characters and, even when suffering, we examine how we feel. I know this intensity leaves us open to greater pain, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

This post has been a bit of a ramble. Dr Mihaly Csikszentmikalyi's book looks interesting. There's a section on the domains of creativity and on enhancing creativity. How accurate did you find his list of 10 traits of creative people?

Dog and Dragon... slowly

2011-03-14T06:27:00.003-04:00

I've just finished my first run through DOG AND DRAGON, and it grew by 1500 words. I am just starting on B's corrections - which will improve it a lot and grow it by several thousand more. I'm suffering from the post-partum stages already. I know by tomorrow, or the day after, I'll think it sucks totally. At this stage I am still full of sheer emotional and mental exhaustion, and think at least parts the most brilliant thing written (yeah well, someone has to). I think part of the real downer that many authors go through is knowing that they have basically cut their wrists and bled onto the page, given what they can, to the point of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion... and off it goes - to be a minor midlist book which will get the TLC of the yet-another-book. I occassionally get e-mail from readers who tell me it was not just yet another book for them, and I think that's the reason I'll be doing this again, soon enough.

Is the publishing glass half full... or half empty? According to this there's some reason to believe that it is a bigger glass. Of course what this shows is the huge potential scope for growth of e-books - if 49% say they prefer traditional p-books then logic says 51% of UK readers would rather read e-books, and as 18% are... that's 200% growth just to fill that demand. I think e-readers will still drop in price and improve in quality, and that 49% is going to fall. No I don't believe the p-book is dead. But I can see purchases per reader dropping from say 10 per year to 1-2 per year -- not enough to sustain the publishing industry at status quo. And it's lovely to see fiction is coming up in demand. Cheap and entertaining I believe is the key here, myself. I think while males have been quicker adopt new tech (let's face it, playing with new mechanical toys is quite a boy thing) I reckon female usage will overtake it in a year or two - just as boys got mobiles while they were clutzy bricks, but once it was a good, easy-to-use communication tool, female use caught up and overtook. A good time to be writing fiction designed for female audiences IMO.

The price take is interesting: I'm with most folk who say a e-book CAN'T be more expensive than a p-book. No returns for starters (that's 45% of a publisher's costs), let alone the costs of paper etc. For a good wrap on this see Darryl Adam's post at Oz-E-books

So: food for thought.
And now, to red ink...(putting in corrections from B's edit)

What is a book?

2011-03-13T10:16:00.004-04:00

Back in January, I posed this question over on The Naked Truth. I thought it might be time to look at the question again, especially in light of Random House's decision to go with the agency model, the inquiries into whether or not the agency model is legal -- not only here but in Great Britain -- and Australia's decision that it is NOT legal (Way to, OZ!). So, with your indulgence, here's the post from January, with a few additional comments or edits.

What is a Book?

According to Jeffrey Matthews (vp for corporate strategy for Scholastic), “That’s the $64 million question.”

It is also a question the publishing industry — publishers and authors alike — can’t seem to agree upon. Ten years ago, it was easy to answer that question. A book was, well, a book. It was something you could walk into a bookstore or your public library and hold, take home and read. You bought a book you liked and read it, sometimes many times. You loaned it to your friends and family — often with threats of violence if they didn’t return it. You could sell it to used bookstores for a bit of pocket cash (of course, if you did and then someone else bought the book, the author didn’t get any more money from it).

Now it’s not quite so simple to answer that question. A number of publishers feel a book is still a book — that physical incarnation of an author’s words into print. Print being the operative word. E-books have thrown a wrench into the works and the industry simply hasn’t figured out how to respond. This includes publishers, agents and writers.

That’s one of the reasons we find so many publishers applying DRM to their e-books. Not understanding that doing so is like telling a recalcitrant child “no”, publishers say they have to apply DRM to their e-books to protect them from piracy. They don’t stop to think that that merely waves a red flag saying, “I bet you can’t find a way to break our code.” Guess what, that’s a challenge and what happens when you issue a challenge? It’s usually taken up. Don’t believe me, simply google “how to break DRM” and see how many hits you get and how many verified codes using Python and other programs there are.

DRM does something else. It adds to the cost of e-books. And, honestly, there will always be people out there who will post digital versions of books online for free. Their reasons vary. Some do it because, in their countries, the books may not be available in digital — and sometimes even in print — formats. Some do it because, as noted above, it’s a challenge and they hate being told they can’t do something. But digital piracy isn’t limited to books released in digital formats. If I remember correctly, the last Harry Potter book — none of which have been legitimately released as e-books — was online as a PDF e-book before the book hit the shelves. So, how did applying DRM to a digital file help prevent piracy?

But there is another reason people break DRM on e-books. A book that is "protected" by DRM is tied to a certain type of device. For example, if you by a DRM'd e-book through Amazon, it is tied to the kindle or kindle apps. It's the same with B&N and the nook, etc. But worse, there is a limit on how many compatible devices the e-book can be downloaded to. Say you have a family of three. Every one of them have a kindle and they have the kindle app for their laptops or smart phones, etc. That's at least 6 potential forms of tech that e-book can be read on. But, wait. There's a hitch. The publisher has limited the number of devices to 4. So Junior can't read that book on his smart phone because it is already registered to the maximum number of devices. That's like telling me I can only read a physical book in four of six rooms in my house. Sorry, but I bought it, I should be able to read it when and where I want -- and on whatever device I have with me at the time.

And this brings me to the question posed in the title of this post. What is a book?

This is a question those of us involved with Naked Reader Press asked ourselves long before we opened our digital doors. We’d seen interviews with publishers who hold that a book is only the physical incarnation of an author’s work. Under this definition, those of us who buy e-books aren’t buying the book. Instead, we are only buying a license to read the author’s work in a certain digital format. DRM is their way of enforcing this by preventing us from doing with digital books what we can with physical ones — loan them, sell them, donate them. Even so, these same publishers who are so adamant about limiting our access to these e-books — and if you don’t believe me, buy an e-book using Adobe Digital Editions and try to read it on a machine that isn’t tied to that specific Adobe account — are more than willing to charge us as much or more for the digital version than we’d pay for the paperback copy of the book.

Still, not all publishers feel this way. There are some like Baen Books who believe that, once you buy an e-book, it’s yours. They don’t apply DRM and don’t limit the number of e-readers or computers you can view the e-book on. To them, and to me, a book is made up of the words an author writes. A book can take many forms — physical paper versions, electronic, audio, enhanced, etc. A book is something meant to be enjoyed by readers in whatever form they are most comfortable with.

This divide in thinking may be narrowing. The Nook, and now the Kindle, allow lending of e-books (with publisher approval). Mind you, it’s limited to only being able to lend a book one time, for a period of two weeks. During that two week period, the original purchaser of the e-book cannot access it. There is the option being offered through these sellers for authors and small publishers to bring out their books DRM-free. Guess what, most of them choose no DRM. Why? Because they are selling BOOKS, not licenses.

But publishers are still trying to throw kinks in the works when it comes to e-books. Not too long ago, Harper Collins announced it was going to limit the number of times an e-book can be checked out by a library. According to HC, the magic number is 26. After that time, the title will no longer be available unless the library buys it again. Of course, HC says that it will be at a discounted price, but I'm not holding my breath. Besides, I have a several problems with HC's reasoning here. First, they say they came up with this magic number because this is the average number of checkouts a physical book goes through before it is pulled from the shelves. This ignores the fact that, if this is true, the library simply cleans and repairs the book and then puts it back into circulation. It's not removed unless it is lost or destroyed or beyond repair. My next issue is that I can just imagine how ticked I'd be if I happened to be number 27 on the wait list for that e-book, only to be told I couldn't check it out. Finally, publishers don't put a limit on the number of times a physical book can be checked out. All they are doing by limited e-books in this manner is once more saying they don't look at e-books as real books. (For more on this, check out this post and this one.)

So, what is a book? To me, a book is the collection of words, written by an author for readers to read in whatever format they like: hard cover, trade paperback, mass market paperback, digital or enhanced. After all, why should it make a difference if the book is printed on paper or on your computer screen or smart phone? A book is a book is a book and it’s time the industry’s definition caught up with technology.

So, what is a book to you?

works

2011-03-12T04:22:00.002-05:00

I feel rather shallow writing something about my work when Japan has suffered the most awful of devastation. My thoughts and prayers are with the Japanese people and I hope for any little miricles among that destruction.

We write about such events without, perhaps, grasping the the enormity and tragedy of them. Yet another Military sf novel destroys New York, or Tokyo... A fanasy hero destroys/saves entire continents etc. It's very hard to get our heads around the real implications of these things.

I've tried to avoid the blockbuster disaster... other than saving the universe a few times in Karres books. That's OK isn't it?

So I thought I'd tell you about what I have written

Basically - to give you a quick rundown of Dave's writing career -I wrote THE FORLORN sf self-standing book; the various RATS, BATS & VATS books - which are humorous mil sf/ social satire about uplifted rats and bats..., and the PYRAMID SCHEME books which are adventure/fun and humor set set by a SF maguffin in the worlds of mythology. The Heirs of Alaexandria books are Fantasy meets alternate history - Where the great library of Alexandria was not destroyed and magic still exists. The Karres books are sequels to James H Schmitz's classic WITCHES OF KARRES this is space opera, in the grand old tradition. And then there are DRAGON'S RING and DOG AND DRAGON -which are high fantasy if Ffarhad and the Grey Mouser are High Fantasy with a Loki-rouge dragon.
And then of course from Naked Reader... WITHOUT A TRACE - a MG story which is what you'd get if Willard Price had written sf.

And that right now... is that.

Reconnecting with the Work

2011-03-10T22:19:00.008-05:00

I haved tried to do something a little different over the last few months and set off into a new novel without much of the usual planning and pre-work.

The initial sprint lasted a little over three chapters. Then I sort of tanked. I had sketched a basic plot, and tried to get further into the story, but the pace was woeful. There was just something wrong - I could sense an unease with the work that was stopping me. Finally, after a couple of frustrating weeks, I decided to stop and really listen to that little warning voice and try to understand what was going on.

After a bit of belly-gazing, I realised that I had missed a crucial element of my own process. Since then I have gone back to the drawing board and pretty much returned to the same sort of approach I have used in the past.

Not that there was anything wrong with the writing itself on a craft level - it was surprisingly good considering the sprint - just that it was underpinned with an unease that I had perhaps failed to nail the essential essence of the thing and that I had not woven in enough complexity.

It looks like I really need to 'front end load' the story and characters before I can move through the story. I need to understand what is going on inside each of the characters at an emotional level. I need to do enough plotwork to have an instinctive sense for what is moving in the background of the story, for what threads are weaving in through the main action. I also need to have a fundamental confidence in the core concept - particularly if it is science fiction (which this one is). I love the 'wow' concepts, but there is enough engineer in me to need the things that surround that to be entirely credible.

Now I am a happy camper. I am back writing again and moving forward at my typical pace. I would have to say the off-the-cuff novel with little pre-work was probably an experimental failure for me, although it was a lot of fun at the beginning!

How about you? Can you set off happily into unknown territory?

Impale them All

2011-03-10T08:00:00.001-05:00

(God knows his own)

While it's a reasonable bet that Vlad Dracula never actually used that particular phrase, it's a pretty good description of what could be called "pointer" fantasy violence. It's the rather more pointed version of the kick the puppy moment which less skilled writers use to show that the villain must be bad, because see? He kicked that poor, helpless puppy.

And yes, Vlad did impale a lot of people, and more than a few of them were alive when the stake treatment started. He also added a fair few refinements to the basic stake up the khyber routine to make his... ahem... point. (To be fair, it's more than feasible the added extras like rounding the end off and a heavy coating of grease were things he learned in the Ottoman Empire - they were rather enthusiastic proponents of impalement as a way of dealing with problems, themselves.) He also lined the roads with stakes as a way of informing people that they'd better behave themselves - something that seems to have been quite effective.

The thing is, it doesn't matter how much violence there actually is in a book, if it's not properly directed. If you're lopping off heads left, right and center, when you need to raise the stakes (so to speak), you don't actually have many places to go. Gushing arteries and painting the town in someone's blood tend to have that effect.

When I was writing Impaler, I aimed to keep all the on-screen violence (and most of the off-screen, for that matter) tightly focused. If it didn't matter, it didn't rate a mention. I don't think there's a single random act of violence, although there are a number of impalements (kind of hard to avoid them in a book about Vlad), several battles, and assorted instances of torture, bad temper, and - again, somewhat inevitable - impaling and generally despoiling enemy corpses (Yes, the equally inevitable graveyard humor surfaces. It wouldn't be true to the time or the people if it didn't).

How did I keep it from overloading the book and dripping off the pages, you ask (well, actually, no you don't, and yes, I know you're trying to sneak out the back door. Go on then, I'm not stopping you)? I used several techniques - none of them as blatant as the kick the puppy or pet the kitten cues that make me want to smack the author. Hard.

First there was context. You know, Vlad gets pissed, and he directs his - quite filthy - temper at an appropriate target. Appropriate in this case meaning someone he'd have had executed with just cause sooner or later, because even though in that place and time it was normal to beat several kinds of hell out of the servants when you had a hissy-fit, today's readers wouldn't accept it. Or he's got a recalcitrant spy to deal with (trust me, you don't want to know what's going through my mind when I'm writing torture scenes. Let's just say the writer-voodoo is strong in those times. Curiously enough, the target of that particular bit of writer-voodoo is no longer a co-worker). Or it's the middle of a battle and he's fighting as much to stop the other guys killing him as he is for any other reason.

Then there's one of my favorite tools, balancing and offsetting something that would normally be utterly horrific by describing it in a way that's got more dry humor than anything else. If you've ever sat with nurses or cops talking shop, you know the tone. I've naturally got a sarcastic streak wider than I am (which takes quite a bit of effort, what with the beached whale look), so this is a very easy technique for me to use - so easy I need to be careful not to overdo it. In Impaler, that wasn't helped by Vlad's voice being even more strongly sardonic than I am.

Yeah. I finally met someone who could out-snark me, and he's one of my characters. Only a writer.

Anyway, that kind of technique, along with focusing on a specific goal or impact, shifting up Vlad's perspective so he's not always in the middle of the violence (even though he'd much rather be in the thick of it than waiting to find out whether he won or not), and shifting to the next goal instead of the loving writer-closeup of the horror all served to keep the impact of the violence at the level I need it to be - which allowed me to ratchet up the tension a good ways for the climactic sequence.

You'll have to read the book to find out what I did - but I'm pleased with the end result. It still drags me in and doesn't let go until the final sentence. And if I can do that to myself, I have a slight hope of being able to do it to other people.

Popcorn and the Single Writer

2011-03-09T06:24:00.000-05:00

Kevin J. Anderson uses a popcorn analogy to illustrate two methods that beginning writers can use to break into print.

One of them consists of writing a single novel and polishing it and perfecting it until it is the absolute best it can be. He compares this to putting a single grain in a pot with just the right amount of oil, at the right temperature and waiting till it pops to produce the perfect single kernel of popcorn.

While this can work, if the kernel you put in is a dud, or if the one novel you concentrate all your work on is unpublishable, for reasons having nothing to do with how well crafted it is (theme, market, events in the world that make your premiss untenable) you’re going to fail.

Then there’s the other method that I – and a lot of other people used – you throw some oil in a pot at as close to a perfect temperature as you can make it, and you heat it. A whole bunch of them are going to pop, even if you get a few duds. (This doesn’t mean by the way that we care less about each individual kernel... er... novel. And it doesn’t mean that in the middle of the “okay” kernels there won’t be one or two perfect ones. Possibly not the ones we expect.)

This approach, of course, takes its toll on the writer, but it has the opportunity for bringing the greater rewards.

What Kevin didn’t say is that for at least the last ten years and probably more, publishers have taken this approach to writers themselves. It used to be they carefully selected a writer and often invested considerable time and effort in helping him or her perfect the craft and improve. Perhaps there are still editors out there that do that. One or two of mine have been very good, but often work with limited time, because these days their job is not to help the writer progress, improve or even become more commercial. At best, if they’re interested in you, they give you a call and make suggestions. My friend Rebecca Lickiss, for instance, at one time got asked to write a “bigger” novel. But that was all the guidance she got.

Gone are the days of legendary editors shaping a house to their vision and keeping writers for years as long as they were paying their own way, trying to help that writer develop a following.

These days, and I think since publishers have been able to control every process of distribution and exposure a writer can get/have so that they could “comfortably manufacture bestsellers” at will, they have used the popcorn theory with authors.

Well, not quite, because they do have favorites. In the center of the pot, they would clear a little space and drop one or two little favored kernels they shepherded to the popping into bestsellerdom. The rest of the kernels were thrown in haphazardly, around the edges, where it might be too hot or too cold. And if they didn’t pop they got thrown away and other kernels thrown in.

This total absence of response to market signals – in fact, inability to get market signals – since what the system was rigged for was GIGO, that is to give you back what you put in, didn’t bother anyone, because those perfect kernels that popped meant great profits for the houses. Also, the smart ones were aware that the house giveth and the house taketh away and they would toe the line. The dumb ones... well, there were always replacements for those.

But now in the brave new world of electronic publishing, which will only grow faster as paper books grow more expensive – and for our friends across the pond, this is guaranteed as our price of energy is skyrocketing, thereby skyrocketing manufacturing and transport as well – anyone with a name, no matter how acquired has a great incentive to publish him or herself. As Dave Freer detailed in his Monday post, there is no real reason for bestsellers to go with mainstream publishers anymore, and sooner or later they’ll all realize it.

This means the popcorn theory of publishing is dead. Heaven alone knows how many publishing houses it will take with it.

To me this seems amazingly obvious, as it seems amazingly obvious that the only way for a publishing house to stay afloat and prosper is to establish a brand – a taste if you will. The only way for a publishing house to stay afloat is to return to the days of legendary editors, say a Hugo Gernsback or a John W. Campbell, who take authors in whom they find a glimmer of something that could be great and mold and shape them and help them find their audience.

The big ones will still escape – unless you really make sure your brand is a value added (and you might. I know people who read everything Baen publishes, for instance, just for the brand) – but by the time they escape they’ll have been writing for you for years and getting incrementally better. And those who aren’t total SOBs might even write for you, on the side, for years after they start a solo-publishing career, because they’re grateful for the help you gave them.

Why aren’t any of the businessmen in publishing houses seeing this? Have I made some huge mess in my reasoning? Because this has gone beyond “obvious” to “plain as the nose on your face.” I don’t understand how anyone can miss it, much less people whose livelihood depends on the current, soon to become toxic, model.

*crossposted at According To Hoyt and Classical Values*

Race in Speculative Fiction

2011-03-08T03:32:00.005-05:00

I came across this article by Jha on the Intersection of Race and Steampunk. It raises some interesting questions. Since Steampunk is based on the Victorian era, when colonialism and repression of indigenous races was rife, how do you translate this for a modern sensibility?

The author says:

'I’m aware that other steampunks come to the subculture differently. Our stories are as diverse as our backgrounds, our reasons for participating are many. Interests tend to overlap in steampunk; we’re all geeks in some form or another. Reasons for being drawn to the subculture are various: a love for history, a love for speculative fiction, the giant robots, the ray guns, the fabulous clothes.'

But the fact remains that the steampunk genre is romanticising a period when anyone who wasn't a white protestant male, was repressed. How accurate do you want to make a story, to give it the flavour of the time? I'm currently writing a story set in approx 1840, during the settlement of Australia where everyone is racist to some degree. I expect the reader to be mature enough to see it as characterisation, not my personal endorsement.

When Le Guin wrote the Earthsea books she set out to create fantasy characters of colour, but she wanted the reader to identify with these characters before they realised the characters were coloured so that the average readers of the period would not be put off. So she did not slip in the colour of their skin until the story was well under way. Yet, when the TV series was made, the producers managed to white-wash her characters, which did not please the author at all.

How do you handle the ticklish question of authenticity of historic characters without crossing the line and making them all touchy-feelie?

The book is dead. Long live the book

2011-03-07T02:42:00.004-05:00

In the small hours of last night - 2.57AM to be precise I finally wrote this
-00-
Which is either monkey-code for 'I am flat on my back' or 'DOG AND DRAGON is finished.'
Unfortunately Roly, my beloved Old English Sheepdog decided to celebrate for me by being not a well puppy (he's 10, not exactly a puppy except mentally). So sleep has been a little short in supply. Today has been spent Spill-chucking, dog caring, dealing with people who can't manage their own account numbers (I bought some scuba gear from a guy who sent me account number... wrong) Couriers who seem to want to pee me off, and not much sleep. So the gifted blog piece explaining the inner workings of the writer's mind and how to make readers love it will just have to wait - probably for another writer.

I've been watching the e-book saga slowly unfold and wondering in my cantankerous way why no-one reads or seems to understand Adam Smith*. As a philosopher, Smith was accused of merely writing down what was common sense, which accounts for him appealing to me more than some others. While I actually believe his first book the more brilliant, with refence to e-books it's the economic principals in the second book that apply. It's all about the value of labor. And anyone who doesn't believe a book is the product of much labor is smoking their own socks. But the value of that labor has been very depressed by the middlemen between the production and consumer. In fact, generally speaking that labor has valued at about a quarter of that of ditch digging or floor sweeping. And that's for experienced writers, because the labor pool exceed the number of employers by several orders of magnitude. This brings one to think about the aftermath of the Black Death on the pay for labor: scarcity drove that to levels not reached (in relative terms) for IIRC 4 centuries when the industrial revolution was well underway, and production increased... and so did a need for labor.

At one time Authors were relatively rare, and earned quite well - our just after the black death period. It went steadily downhill from there. Publishers could, and often did, treat authors as less valuable than a square of toilet paper and as interchangeable. Of course daring to complain, or even to talk about the share of income or even the relative support of different authors - to put this to society's mirror (Smith's first book) was simply not possible.

Along comes the e-book, and publishers in a clash with Amazon force the agency model. Amazon's broadside is to allow authors the same terms. Now one has to think of this in labor terms. Is this going to make less laborers toiling at books? No. More, probably. Publishers can pick and choose from newbies on the same or worse terms than ever...

But only if they are failing to sell on their own or have never sold a book. Otherwise the ordinary publisher has to - in economic terms - multiply readership 250%-700% to be as attractive. Now let's face it, there are plenty of authors who have been made by publicity and marketing who are no different from millions who haven't. But of course that relied heavily on controlling the access to books for both readers and authors. Now, according to Mintel - that market is going to lose 51% of its readers. 51% going... to the e-books they prefer. And that's NOW. In 10 years time expect that to be 70-80% IMO.

In the meanwhile, having to compete in flooded labor pool themselves, it ought to occur to anyone in publishing with a single iota of common sense that all labor is not near equal any more - and that if they're going to pay 12.5% -17% _real_ royalies on selling price, they have deliver -- to compete with 70%(-costs), more than 4-5 times the e-book sales. In other words, if Joe Midlist has a following of 5K e-book buyers, the publisher either needs to find another 20 000 readers for Joe, or he's better off without them. Fred Bigname has a following of 50 000 anyway - they would have to offer him 250 000 readers to stay. Tom Noob has however 5 readers who blundered on his book, and he has no social network. If they can offer him 100 readers he's winning.

They have at this stage no levers that can do this sort of 500% increase. In fact they want Joe's 5000 so they can introduce them to Fred to push his 50 000 up to try and keep him. They have no real interest in Tom's 5 readers...

And there is not much in it for Joe or Fred. So: if the value of labor is to be realistic, the publishers are going to have to up their ante, offer more in publicty and services... That's reality.

I've seen a few tremors already with those with 'following'. "Bonuses" being offered on advances IF a certain threshhold is breached (large bonuses - half again the advance, not the derisory increase in percentage over 100 000 sales etc. bonuses based on last sales numbers being equalled.) At the moment that's it.

But it's going to change the 'flatness' of the price of writer's labor.

*I'm not referring Adam Smith the Zombie Apocalyse magna comic writer but the bloke who wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, back in 17 hundred and whatsit. The bloke whose work is the foundation of Capitalism _and_ Communism - who in fact said something very different to 'greed is good' (Actually said greed is very stupid, but that we all work for self-interest, and this works best when it is enlightened - when the self-interest is informed by being cognizant of the effects and feedbacks, which means working at the point where co-operation maximises the reward to self interest of both parties. Why did I start on this...