Don't judge a book by its cover, but we do!

I've been thinking a lot about covers recently. For one thing The King's Bastard (cover art by Clint Langley) is up for a Ravenheart Award. (See here). YAY!


For another, I've had to prepare a resonance file for Solaris who are getting Clint to do the covers for The Outcast Chronicles. (Have seen a cover rough which I can't flash around yet. Very exciting! Go Clint!).

And then I came across these two posts. Malinda Lo talks about books and characters of colour and whether the covers reflect this. She says:

'A lot of commentary laments the low percentage of books with people of color on the covers (and yes, it is low), especially in comparison to the huge number of YA novels (fantasy and otherwise) featuring slim, attractive white girls.'

Did you follow the ruckus last year about Justine Larbalestier's YA book Liar's cover? The protagonist was coloured and they put a white girl on the cover. The book was re-released with a cover that reflected the character more honestly.

Melinda Lo goes on to say: 'Even if a book cover doesn’t echo the diversity within the book, that doesn’t erase the diversity. It hides it a little, yes, but the cover is not the story. The cover is an advertisement. (And in most cases, it’s removable.)'

And over at the Enchanted Inkpot they do a summing up of winter YA covers, analysing what is appearing from close-ups of pretty girls to iconic images. But these are all YA covers, I hear you say. What about fantasy covers?

Here we have the Orbit 2008 Vs 2009 cover trends. Swords are still big, but I suspect hoods will have made big gains. (I can't find anything for 2009-2010). And here's the Urban Fantasy analysis. Apparently Stilettos are out. LOL

So there you have it. Next time you go into a bookstore, take a look at the covers and see if you can spot the trends. Does it annoy you if the protagonist is coloured but on the cover they appear to be white?

The Genre whose name will not be mentioned ...

Romance - there, I've said it. It is now more acceptable to admit to being gay, than it is to admit to reading romance. (Note - this is a broad generalisation, made for fun and not to be taken seriously).

Could it be the titles? The Billionaire's Virgin Bride's Secret Baby? Could it be the covers, which are often lushly sensual? (They can be the sort of thing you hide behind brown paper so you can read on the train).

For a smile, drop by here to see the cover with the three armed woman. The author, Christine Dodd, doesn't mind.

Here is a post by someone who attended the Australian Romance Readers Conference. There is a section on a panel of academics discussing romance.

But seriously folks, romance makes up around 65% of the fiction market (depending on your sources) and there is a major overlap with speculative fiction: fantasy-romance, paranormal-romance and futuristic-romance. Although you will probably have noticed the Dark Urban Fantasy on the shelves as this sub-genre, along with its cousin paranormal-romance, has been going strong for several years, so strong in fact that it seems to have almost consumed fantasy-romance and futuristic-romance.

The difference between a paranormal-romance and a Dark Urban Fantasy is in the 'endings'. Both are set in our world where the paranormal exists alongside the mundane world, either acknowledged or in secret. Both have a strong female heroine who fights evil. The difference is that in a DUF the heroine may (probably) will sleep with the guy, but she won't end up with him. She'll go on for further adventures. In the paranormal-romance you'll get a HEA - Happily Ever After ending.

NY Best Selling, author Nalini Singh is a good example of a writer who sets related stories in an invented world but gives the reader a HEA (in her Changeling-Psi books) and an open ending in her Guild Hunter novels.

Now what is the difference between a DUF like Keri Arthur's books (another NY Best Selling author) and a DUF like Trent Jamieson's Death Most Definite? Both are set in our world with a paranormal twist. Both have a protagonist who falls in love with someone.

The difference is in tone. Trent's book has a male protagonist and has more in common with Simon R Green's Nightside series.

While a DUF will have blood, swords and/or guns but it will also have a lush sensuality. Imagine one book as a three course meal and the other as a similar meal with lashing of sauce to titillate the taste buds.

The romance writer sets out to create a heightened sensual experience. They set out to connect the reader with the character so the reader can vicariously enjoy this experience. If you're interested in how they do this, then take a look at the paranormal-romances that are short listed for the RITA. (This is the RWAmerica's peer award).

I am going to come out of the closet and admit that I've read all of Nalini's Changeling -Psi series and enjoyed them. I've read every Regency that Georgette Heyer ever wrote. I've read some of Keri Arthur's books and enjoyed them. She delivers on both pacing and sensuality.

I've also read Simon R Green, China Meiville, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ian McDonald and Jeff VanderMeer.

Is anyone else brave enough to come out of the closet?

Breaking the Genre Mould

After reading Dave's post about people not knowing the tropes before they start writing in a genre, it occurred to me that speculative fiction is a rather arcane genre, with many sub-genres.

I was at a convention over the weekend and someone asked me to define fantasy. I said, 'James Bond is a fantasy' and they all fell about laughing. LOL, because it is. In fact, when it was written it was near future SF and now it is retro SF.

So here we have Firefly - which is cowboys in space. And we have Star Wars which is fantasy in space, just swap the swords with the light sabres.

Once it was science fiction, fantasy and horror, and there was a whole sub-genre of romance that dealt with fantasy-romance, futuristic-romance and paranormal-romance. Then paranormal-romance escaped the confines of its sub-genre and became Dark Urban Fantasy (I know DUFs don't offer closure for the romance arc with every book), but they do have lashings more sensuality than the urban fantasies that came before them. And there's steampunk, a whole movement in itself. I must admit I really like the costumes. Simply spiffy. It's a pity we don't dress like that every day.

Now we have genres being twisted and inter-woven so as to challenge definition. Think of Simon Green's Nightside series. (I really enjoy these books). The series is horror and dark urban fantasy but his world also includes science fiction tropes.

Have we reached a point where your average reader isn't too worried about the divide between the genres? I read across a variety of genres. and like to find books that challenge and stretch the genres.

Have you discovered any authors who manage to take a genre and give it a surprising new twist? Does it worry you, if the genres are inter-woven?

My week as a writer

Today has been a good week.

1) I finished editing the changes on the first section of my new novel required by my (far more experienced and talanted) co-author.

2) I received word that I have a new scientific paper out in Molecular Ecology.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/123278877/HTMLSTART

3) Five days ago I got a commission for a short story for an Urban Fantasy short story - provided I finished it in a fortnight. the editor gave me a meme to get me started.

Of course, I said yes, deciding to panic later. I went to bed that night with various ideas running around in my head. In the morning, I had a story. Today I finished the first draft.

This has focussed my mind on how I did it.

1. Write about what you know. Either do extensive research or use material from your own life. The latter is infinitely preferable.
2. Ruthlessly trim down extraneous detail and side issues to focus on the story line.
3. Assume no special knowledge among the readers.
4. Use strong characters as the protagonists. Try to make them real.
5. See the story as a series of scenes, each of which either advances the plot or tells the reader something interesting about the protagonists.
6. Don't infodump - dump the information from the story. It probably isn't necessary.
7. Write. Write. Write.
I got up each day and wrote at least a thousand lines before lunch. Get into the writing habit.
8. Edit, show it to another writer and edit some more. When you have finished that do some more editing.
9. Removing words usually improves a story much more than adding words.
10. Enjoy it. You are not doing this to get rich so why bother if you are not having fun.

John

PS You can follow me on Twitter. I twit under johnlambshead.

Females in Fantasy and SF

R&D Studios

I went to a great workshop at the Romance Writers Conference where we covered characterisation. One of the things that came up was being sure to make the heroine worthy of the hero. We had to exercise our 'inner mother-in-law' to decide if she was good enough for him.

Then later at a panel of Paranormal and Dark Urban Fantasy writers with Denise Rossetti, Keri Arthur, Emily Gee and myself we were talking about how the heroines in these books are allowed to get away with a lot more than the heroines in mainstream books. They can take more than one lover and they don't have to deny their sexuality.

It made me realise that there is still a big divide in what we will let female characters get away with, compared to male characters.

Sarah Rees Brennan wrote a really good post on women in fiction here. Her section on 'Harry Potter and what if HP were really Harrie Potter, how would we feel about her?' confirmed this feeling. Her point was that we let male characters get away with a lot more than females. if you had a female character who was amazing good at everything and men were constantly throwing themselves at her, wouldn't you feel annoyed by this character? She cited James Bond as an example.

If it was a guy in the illustration above he would be wearing sensible furs, maybe with his chest bare. He certainly wouldn't be wearing the equivalent of a chain mail bikini.

In SF and fantasy are we creating female characters who are restrained by the gender limitations of our own society? What do you think?

Brand Names and World Building

I write book length fantasy and near future SF in short story length, so I build worlds. It will sound nerdy but I love it. I love reading about history and sociology. The study of linguistics for instance and how language can not only define your place in the world, but how you see the world fascinates me.

Because I write science fiction and fantasy, I don't write much that is set in our contemporary world. But recently I've been reading books from the incredibly popular Dark Urban Fantasy genre (DUF). These have been fun and easy to read, with good pacing and likable characters.

Coming fresh to the DUF genre, one of the things I noticed was the use of brand names in the narrative. In theory it is like writing in short hand. The author doesn't need to explain what the car/watch looks like, they just give the brand. This brand name will tell the reader the character's social status and wealth or lack of it.

As long as the reader knows the brands. I don't.

I found some of the books so heavy on brand name usage that it was like reading an SF book, where the author introduces a lot of invented nouns. At least in an SF book the author will plant clues in the narrative to explain the meaning of the invented nouns. With brand names the author assumes you know all the associations.

Brand names in contemporary narratives. What do you think of this?