Drop by the Visiting Writers Page to read their posts.
Paul Garrety
Ben Peek & Stephanie Campisi
Ian Irvine
Sally Newham
Michele Cashmore
Thoraiya Dyer
A A Bell
Lara Morgan
Paul Collins
Glenda Larke
Kylie Chan
Dave Freer
Rhonda Roberts
Edwina Harvey
Nicole Murphy
Lynne Jamneck
Dave Freer
Kate Forsyth
Cat Sparks
Anyone going to be in Tassie on Thursday 2nd of Feb?
We’re pleased to spread the news that Margo Lanagan will now be joining us on February 2nd for a launch of her new book, Sea Hearts. Margo and Tansy Rayner Roberts will share the evening, making it a very exciting double launch for us — don’t miss it!
Thursday February 2nd
5:30pm
The Hobart Bookshop*
Rowena Cory Daniells will launch Reign of Beastsby Tansy Rayner Roberts.
This is the final book in Rayner-Roberts’ The Creature Court trilogy.
Richard Harland will launch Margo Lanagan‘s Sea Hearts — an an extraordinary tale of desire and revenge, of loyalty, heartache and human weakness, and of the unforeseen consequences of all-consuming love.
So if you happen to be around, drop into the Hobart Bookshop and toast to Tansy and Margo’s new books!
As some of you might know our ROR writing group gets together every 12 – 18 months to critique our books in progress.
Back in 2001 at the first ROR we read Margo Lanagan’s Black Juice anthology and wept over Singing my Sister Down, which went on to win a World Fantasy Award. That was also the year we read Maxine Mc Arthur’s Less than Human, which went on to win the Aurealis Award for SF in 2004.
Since then there have been many RORs, and critiqued many books. Some of these books have been shelved or are still waiting to be completed and others have been published, some of have won awards or been shortlisted for awards. (This reminds me I must update our success page. There’s been more sales since then. My bad).
For those of you who are interested, I’ve blogged about how to set up your own ROR group and how we critique. There are eight of us, but due to life, family and deadlines we don’t get to every ROR. (I’ve done them all so far, but I’m a bit of a ROR groupie. I even maintain this site in my spare time. All very sad, really).
Our next ROR is coming up in a couple of weeks. Having a deadline to get a book written for is a great motivator. We’re all madly reading each other’s WIPs (Works-in-progress), writing reports and planning to run away and be full time writers for a week!
There will be one book launch and possibly two, stay tuned!
From the Steele's Island web page. Link below.
This time we’re going to Tassie to Steele’s Island. Looks perfect for a bunch of nerdy writers!
So I’d like to raise a glass of cyber champagne to:
My writing friends, ROR ten years* on and still going strong!
* We couldn’t squeeze in a ROR last year in 2011, which would have been exactly 10 years, so this 2012 ROR is our official 10 year birthday bash.
Alisa Krasnostein is an environmental engineer by day, and runs indie publishing house Twelfth Planet Press by night. She is also Executive Editor at the review website Aussie Specfic in Focus! and part of the Galactic Suburbia Podcast Team. In her spare time she is a critic, reader, reviewer, runner, environmentalist, knitter, quilter and puppy lover.
Q: First let me say mega congratulations on being a finalist in the World Fantasy Awards (courtesy LOCUS) in the Special Award Non-Professional section for your work with Twelfth Planet Press. I imagine you’ve been popping champagne ever since you found out. Did you have any inkling this was coming?
Thank you! My nomination was totally unexpected and took me completely by surprise. I’m very excited because I was already planning on attending World Fantasy Con in San Diego.
Q: I was involved in Indy Press in the late 70s early 80s so I know how much work and money goes into this. If you’d had any idea that you’d be ‘working longer hours on the press than my day job and I still don’t have enough time in the week to get to everything that needs to be done.’ – (See full interview on Bibliophile Stalker) – would you have jumped in with as much enthusiasm?
Interesting question. I’m not afraid of hard work. I definitely lean towards the workaholic. I think also, being an engineer has trained me to get absorbed and focused on the task at hand. And the amount of time I work and the amount of work I create for myself is definitely self-inflicted. And I hear I can dial it back at any point in time if I want! I love indie press more now that when I first jumped in and I respect and appreciate the people who contribute to the scene even more so now that I know how much work and dedication and talent goes into everything that gets published. And I also believe that we are limited only by the passion, time, commitment and hard work that we put in. So. No pressure. And no regrets.
Q: And following on from that, if you could go back and give yourself advice about starting Twelfth Planet Press, what would that advice be?
The number one thing I regret is not taking my business more seriously from the start. My advice would be to set up my small press as a small business from the beginning and not rely on a box of receipts or a papertrail for forensic auditing later. I set the financial and business side up several years in and that was most definitely one of the most painful things to sort out. There’s so much more to writing and editing and publishing than the creative side and I would advise myself, and anyone jumping in (both at the publishing and the writing ends), to get a basic handle on accounting, legalese to read and understand contracts and basic business advice (like if you need an ABN and how to structure your business – will you be a sole trader or a company and what does that mean anyway?) .
Q: You did a post for Hoyden About Town on The Invisibility of Women in Science Fiction. It’s obviously a subject you feel strongly about. Is Twelfth Planet Press seeking to address this issue with affirmative action?
Not in any formal or mandated way. Overall, I don’t have a gender imbalance issue at Twelfth Planet Press – I buy what I like and the best stories that are submitted to me. And funnily enough, that gender breakdown is different to the general norm (though that’s not true of my novella series).
The Twelve Planets – twelve four-story original collections by twelve different Australian female writers – is a project that came from a place of realising, at the time of idea conception, how few female Australian writers had been collected. That’s changed during the time of project development. But the Twelve Planets remains a project that will release over two years close to 50 new short stories written by women. And that’s something that I’m really proud to be doing.
Q: Twelfth Planet Press has had some remarkable wins for a new, small Indy Press. There were six finalistings in the Aurealis Awards this year. Two finalistings on the Australian Shadows Award. And Tansy Rayner Roberts’ novella Siren Beat won the WSFA Small Press Award for 2010. This novella was part of a series of back-to-back novellas that Twelfth Planet Press released. It’s notoriously hard, from a writer’s point of view, to sell a novella to a publisher. Why did TPP start producing BtB novellas?
Thanks, I was particularly pleased with our Aurealis Awards shortlistings this year coming after seven shortlistings last year. It feels like validation for some of the choices that I’ve made particularly in terms of the direction I’ve taken. And the win from the WSFA was just unbelievably exciting. I’m so proud of the work that Tansy Rayner Roberts is producing at the moment.
I really wanted to have a product to sell at a particular price point, around the $10 to $15 mark. That was really the place that I started at for the novella doubles. I personally love the novella length, especially for science fiction and I loved the idea of paying homage to the Ace Doubles. I especially loved the idea of pairing two totally unrelated works and throwing them into a package like many of the Ace Doubles did. From a gambling sense, if you love one and not so much the other, that’s not a bad deal for $12. And from a publisher’s point of view I like the idea of perhaps enticing readers to find new or unknown to them writers or be exposed to a new genre by buying a double for one of the stories and getting the other one as a bonus. If I make the pairs right!
Q: An editor once said to me, I can’t tell you want I want, but I’ll know when I see it. This is incredibly frustrating to a writer. Can you tell us what you want?
Only that I’ll know when I see it. Sorry! But yeah, we look for what we aren’t expecting, what is outside of what everyone else is writing, that breaks new ground and feels fresh, that stands out from the pack. What I want is the project that stands out cause it’s not like all the other books on the shelf. I specifically look firstly for really solid writing – writing that is unpretentious and doesn’t get in the way of the story. And then I want to be emotionally or intellectually moved or changed by the work. I look for stories that demand my attention and then hold it. I look for stories that tell me something I didn’t know before – about myself, or about society or humanity. I look for a rewarding reading experience. So. Not much.
I’m very busy and I deliberately choose to read submissions when I’m in a bad mood and whilst doing something else. I want what I’m reading to demand attention, to demand I put everything down and just read it to the end.
Q: A finalist placing in the World Fantasy Awards has to raise the profile of Twelfth Planet Press. Where would you like to see TPP in five years time?
I’d like to see us with wider distribution in brick and mortar bookshops all over the place (long live the bookshop!) and being in a position to pay pro rates for writing, art, design and layout. I’d like to see us pushing genre boundaries and continuing to publish top quality fiction by writers at the top of our field that inspires, engages and entertains.
Q: On a personal note, where would you like to see yourself being career-wise in five years time?
I’d like to be working full time for Twelfth Planet Press.
The Gender Divide – Does it exist in fantasy or is it our perception that it exists, that creates it?
I started last week answering interview questions from Marc at Fantasy Faction (see interview here). Marc introduces the interview with:
‘A few months ago I was in Waterstones and a book caught my attention… ‘The King’s Bastard’. There were thousands of books in the Fantasy/Sci-Fi section of that particular shop, but this one was in the ‘featured’ section and for some reason just jumped out at me. The name ‘King’s Bastard’ perhaps appealed to my darker side, the picture on the front cover of a rugged man with multiple weapons – obviously to be used for brutal combat, the power of the word; King! To me as a male fantasy fan this book simply said ‘pick me up‘. I picked up the book and gave it a read, the blurb was equally dark and I could tell that this book would feature everything I’d been looking for… Now being an e-book reader, I got home, jumped online and added the title to my ‘wish list’… It was only at this point that I noticed the name of the author; ‘Rowena Cory Daniells’. I did a double take at this point – Now, without injecting any sexism into this post (at least intentionally) I had presumed the book was written by a male.’
Please note, I’m not being critical of Marc, I’m taking about perception. It was my perception that most fantasy writers were female because in Australia, it is a bit of a girl’s club. Marc’s sixth question was:
‘Please excuse me for saying this – but after a recent topic in our forum entitled ‘Female Fantasy Authors’ we concluded there are very few of you out there. Even more so – there are less who write darker fantasy. Why do you think this is?’
This reminded me of a conversation I’d had a World SF Con in Melbourne in August of 2010 with Kate Elliot. Kate has since gone on to comment on my ‘Why I’m featuring Female Fantasy Authors’ post. She said:
‘My feeling is that there is a gatekeeper issue that creates a sense of invisibility(of female fantasy authors)and of the sense that the female writers are secondary or irrelevant to the greater discussion. There are a ton of epic/heroic/fantasy review discussion blogs out there, and I think they’re fabulous, but they heavily skew male.’
Tansy Rayner Roberts brings up the point that: ‘The Nebula novel shortlist was just released and it features five female-authored novels (four of them fantasy) and one male-authored.’
So there are great books by female fantasy authors but are they being discussed on the blogs? Lindsey from the US said: ‘most of the female fantasy writers I encounter are in other countries, mostly in Australia. I’d say that reflects in the readership, too.’ Remember it is all about perception. If female fantasy writers aren’t being talked about, then the readers won’t be aware of their books.
And Erica Hayes suggested that ‘in the US, there is a huge romance market, which includes a large slice of paranormal, urban fantasy, fantasy and sci-fi romance. The majority of ‘romance’ authors are female. So perhaps many female fantasy authors in the US are being published as ‘romance’, and are putting a higher romance content in their books — just because it’s a larger market and they have a greater likelihood of making a living.’ Since romance is one of the few genres where a mid list author can make a living, this is a valid point. There seems to be a perception that we authors should be grateful just to be published and be willing to work a second job to support our families. But that is a topic for another post.
Glenda Larke says: ‘Re the gender divide, one part me really HATES saying this, but the advice I’d give to a woman starting out is: use a gender neutral pseudonym. Later on – when you have an established career – that’s the time to tell everyone you are a woman.’
When my first trilogy was published I chose to use Cory Daniells, because it was a non-gender specific name. If I’d continued to do this, Marc would not have been at all surprised by the author of the King Rolen’s Trilogy. He would have read the trilogy believing it to be written by a man. Would this have changed his perception of the book? Will Marc read it now with the subtext, this book was written by a woman, in his mind? Will he think, Gee, she really writes good fight scenes for a woman – rather than – Great fight scene! (Here’s hoping he likes the fight scenes. LOL).
Which brings me back to the original question. Is there a gender divide in the fantasy genre, or is the perception that there is a gender divide, the problem?
Update: Since writing this post I’ve done a series of interviews with creative people where I ask them about gender (as well as lots of other things). See here.
Rowena Interviewed by Marianne. Watch out for the give-away question at the end.
Q: Tell us a bit about your current trilogy, King Rolen’s Kin? How is it different from your earlier T’En books?
KRK is a rollicking fantasy. You just jump on the magic carpet and it sweeps you away. I’ve had lots of people tell me they started reading one evening and didn’t stop until they were finished, and had to go to work the next day!
The T’En trilogy was about a clash of cultures. It explored trust and overcoming prejudice. The KRK trilogy is more of a traditional fantasy. A kingdom is in peril, there’s forbidden magic, the heir resents his twin who is more popular than him, there’s feisty princess who doesn’t want to be married off, and a prince who has been sent to serve the church because he’s cursed with forbidden magic. But it is really about friendship, trust and believing in yourself, so the core elements are similar in both trilogies even though the settings diverge.
Being a bit of a nerd I love inventing societies. I’m always reading about other cultures and collecting obscure bits of information. For instance, did you know that there is a New Guinea tribe where the women cut off a knuckle from a finger each time a family member dies. By the time the woman are very old they have a hardly any fingers left. I find this fascinating. And I don’t mean this in a frivolous way. Think what it says about love and sacrifice.
Q: Heroic fantasy is enduringly popular. What role do you believe it plays in peoples reading lives? What attracts you to it as a writer?
Heroic fantasy presents us with a world as we would like it to be, as opposed to the world as it is. We live in a world where politicians make promises that aren’t core promises and terrorists kill people who are going about their daily lives, then run away and hide.
Faced with a reality where shades of grey abound, who wouldn’t love epic/heroic fantasy? The good guys set out to right a wrong. They might not be perfect but they try. They overcome obstacles and, in the end, they succeed so the world is a better place!
Q: Many people believe that publishing a first novel is the Holy Grail and that after that it all gets much easier. What would you say to them?
I belong to a couple of shared blogs, MGC and ROR. From hearing about the experiences of these other generous and talented writers, I know the publishing industry is an arbitrary reward system.
You can write a good book and jump through all the hoops to get published, then editors leave, lines get cancelled and bad covers kill sales which means all your work goes down the drain and you have to start all over again.
Really, you write because you love writing. If you don’t expect fame and fortune, you won’t be disappointed. Then when readers email you to say they enjoyed your books it’ll be a thrill!
Q: You won several awards for your debut adult fiction novel The Last T’En. What affect did that have on your career? What is your opinion of awards in general? Do they serve a purpose?
It’s always nice to win awards. It’s like this big hand reaching down out the sky, patting you on the head and saying, There, there. You really can write.
I know that the Children’s Book Council wins or short listings are great for sales. Libraries buy the CBC books, and they get used in classroom (which is the holy grail of children’s book sales), all this makes your publishers really happy. I don’t know that genre awards make a big difference to sales, which is really the bottom line for your publisher.
But it is really nice to win an award. In Australia we have the Aurealis Awards, which are peer awards. The entries in each speculative fiction sub genre is read by a panel of dedicated readers who agonise over their decisions. (I know because I’ve been involved in the process). The AAs have been going for fifteen years now and everyone in the genre knows about them. The wider community is less well informed, but then most reporters would not know what a Nebula or a Hugo is, and these US awards have been around for 44 and 71 years respectively. So I suppose it is evidence that SF still being ghettoised to a certain extent. The only other genre that cops more flack is romance, yet it is by far the largest selling genre.
Which brings us back to awards and sales. The readers decide what they like, but only if they can find the books. An award should help draw the reader to the book.
Q: Can you tell us in a little detail what future projects you have planned?
Currently, I’m working on The Outcast Chronicles. This is a family saga fantasy about a group of mystics, who are banished from their homeland. It follows four key individuals as they as they struggle with misplaced loyalties, over-riding ambition and hidden secrets which could destroy them. Some make desperate alliances only to suffer betrayal from those they trust, and some discover great personal strength in times of adversity.
As soon as I hand this trilogy to my publisher, I need to start on the new King Rolen’s Kin trilogy. I’ve had so many emails from readers wanting to know what happens next, that I’ve already started planning the next three books, while finishing the current series.
Q: You’ve been involved in many, many projects in the creative industries over the years; running countless workshops and pitching forums to help others. How do you know when to draw the line and say, I must have time for my own work? What advice would you give others about finding balance?
I’ve enjoyed all the projects I’ve worked on and, over the years, I’ve met lots of wonderful aspiring writers and lots of generous, inspiring professionals. Many of these aspiring writers have become published. Now that I’m working (I lecture on story, scripting, storyboards and animatics), as well as writing (and renovating the house), I’m struggling to squeeze in the time to complete the books I have under contract. Yet, I LOVE writing.
I think the best thing you can do, is realise that without writing (or what ever creative outlet is your passion) you won’t be a happy balanced human being. You need to be kind to yourself. Imagine that you are your best friend. If your BF was doing all the things you’ve been doing and running her/himself into the ground, what advice would you give them? Now, give that advice to yourself and take it.
There is no shame in looking after yourself. After all, a lot of people depend on you and you need your emotional and creative well to be replenished so that you have something left to give.
Q: What would you like to have achieved in ten years time?
Finish renovating the house. LOL. It’s a bit like painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge, by the time you finish at one end, the other end needs to be painted again.
Apart from that, I would love to be living quietly somewhere with my DH, and writing away, knowing that the books I write are all under contract and readers are looking forward to them.
In reality, I will probably be run ragged between my six children and their kids. But I like a challenge!
My give-away is a set of King Rolen’s Kin trilogy (If you already one or two of the books I’ll fill the gap with the missing book/s).
My question is: If you could take a holiday in an invented secondary world, where would you go and why?
I first met the sweet, but ever so sharp, Tansy at World Con in 1999. She’d just had her first book come out and we shared the same publisher. Since then we’ve shared many a ROR and convention. Tansy’s new series Creature Court is an eclectic mix of Ancient Rome and the 1920s. I loved Power and Majesty (book one) in each of its incarnations as it came through ROR and I’m biting my nails, waiting on book two!
Watch out for the give-away question at the end.
Q: You came to writing success very early, winning the Inaugural George Turner SF Prize when you were nineteen (you were twenty by the time the book was published) with Splashdance Silver. If you were able to go back to the nineteen year old Tansy, knowing what you know now and give her advice, what would it be?
Get an agent BEFORE signing the contract! Also, don’t expect that just because you earned a living at this for one year, you’re going to be able to every year, and the ease with which you write the second book is going to be totally misleading about the effort required for all future books… and um, by the way, your publishing house will be bought out within a year and your editor will leave and you’ll lose all your support, and…
Wow, that’s a really depressing topic to start out on! I think something like “This is only the beginning, you will write better books, and this will (eventually) be your career,” is a bit more positive.
Q: You had success early, then you were ‘orphaned’ by your publisher and spent quite a few years out in the cold before being picked up by Harper Collins with your new Creature Court series. Did you ever feel like giving up? How did you sustain your creative drive?
It feels like a really long time (and indeed was a really long time) but I never really stopped. I wrote short stories by the bucketful, and worked on my craft that way. I spent several way fun years playing with small press as part of the ASIM collective. I wrote several manuscripts, and workshopped them with ROR – some were discarded, some went on to publication. I tried different genres and even tried on the hats of a few writerly pseudonyms. I only had one year without a writing credit, the year 2000 – and that was a real kick in the pants. After that I was always working on something, or getting something out there.
The first novel of the Creature Court has actually been six years in the making – I was about a year and a half into writing it when I had to put it away in the hopes of getting my PhD thesis submitted before my first daughter was born (it wasn’t). It took a lot longer to get back to it than I thought and then it only took one more revision before the novel sold. Lots of long periods of waiting – for publishers to decide, and then between the signing of the contract and the actual appearance of the book.
I never thought about giving up! Stop writing, are you mad?
Q: You have two delightful little girls now. Do you find having children has given you a new insight as a writer? And are you ever tempted to write for children?
It’s made me less precious as a writer, for a start. I remember when I used to need a WHOLE DAY to myself to write, and it always had to be at my desktop computer in the same part of the house… crazy, crazy luxuries. I trained myself to write at the drop of a hat, with a baby clamped to my leg, or in a cafe, or in the ad breaks.
I think being a mother has taught me a lot as a person, and that necessarily changes my writing. I don’t know that I’m a deeper or more insightful writer now, but I think I feel things more, and I suspect that has an effect.
I would love to write for children. If I could just get a few months to MYSELF I would run off that superhero middle grade series for girls that I have in my head.
Q: This leads on from the last question. I notice you’ve been reading and reviewing a lot of YA. Is this an area you are thinking of writing in, or do you read it for the love of it?
I long to be a YA author. I have written a few manuscripts, but nothing that has landed a bite yet. I also love reading YA for fun – my attention span has gone to hell over the last couple of years and I have found that YA is just so succinct as far as plot and character goes that it’s very enticing. I’ve been working this year to lure myself away from YA just a bit – reading some actual grown up books – but I do love it, and I really believe that some of the most exciting speculative fiction of the last few years has happened in this genre.
Q: You’ve edited ASIM, Shiny and AustrAlien Absurdities. Do you find editing has helped you develop as a writer? Do you have any advice for short story writers?
I enjoy editing although have been doing my best to give it up because it uses a lot of the same energies as my writing, but doesn’t give (me, personally) nearly as many of the same rewards. It was one distraction too many, once parenthood hit me over the head. Editing has done a lot for me as a writer – increased my critical awareness quite strongly. And it does tempt me back from time to time, but it would have to be a pretty incredible project to make me break my current stance on the matter.
As far as short story writers go – I think the most important thing to tell them is that it’s quite easy to get a half-decent short story published these days. There are so many markets, and so many editors. There’s nothing wrong with going for the cheap and easy sale when you’re just starting out. But ultimately if you want people to take you seriously, you need to look at what you’re sending out there, and whether these are stories good enough to build a reputation on. As someone who served out her “apprenticeship” in public venues, I look quite jealously at newbie authors who come out swinging, earning critical achievements and award nominations and so on with their first few published works.
This applies to novels too: a debut is a terrible thing to waste.
It was Marianne who did it! She and Lynne Jamneck had a glorious plan to edit a charity anthology of Australian urban fantasy, to raise funds for Crohns Disease. Their submission guidelines were so inspiring that I wrote a pitch straight away – because it was an anthology I decided to avoid vampires and werewolves on the basis that most people would choose them, and I decided to set it in Hobart because I figured again I was the only one who would do that!
Once I started thinking of how to turn Hobart into an urban fantasy city, it came so easily – the docks, Salamanca, seamonsters, and Nancy Napoleon standing damaged on the edge of the city, protecting it from invaders. I was so excited that I took a month off what I was supposed to be doing and just wrote the thing. They used it as part of their pitch document for publishers and it got within an inch of being accepted before the Global Financial Crisis hit, and suddenly an anthology wasn’t an appealing risk for a Big Name publisher. So sad…
But Alisa loved the story when I sent it to her next and it was published as the first of the Twelfth Planet Doubles, along with a gorgeous story by Robert Shearman. Since then – well, I have said repeatedly that Siren Beat is the story that keeps giving back! It’s earned me more critical acclaim than any of my previous writings put together, and apart from the various nominations and the lovely win from the WSFA, it’s also now earned me two writing grants to give Nancy Napoleon a novel of her own.
Q: You have a PHD in Classics and spent a month in Rome. I believe the topic of your thesis was Imperial Roman Women. Did this area of study help you develop the world for Creature Court?
Technically the series was first sparked off in my head when a mouse invaded the study in our old house! But that’s a far more mundane story of origin… my studies of Ancient Rome absolutely infused these books. I used my memories of tramping around the city to give a feeling of weight and reality to my imaginary city of Aufleur – which led to all kinds of fun and games when we got to the mapmaking part, I can tell you! Turns out the Rome in my head is nothing like the one on the page…
It was actually my Honours thesis that contributed most to these books – I was studying women’s role in the Roman religion, and one of my great fascinations is the Fasti, a poem which details the many traditional festivals of the old city. I started thinking what it would be like to actually live in a city where the economy revolved around rites and festivals – taking the old ‘bread and circuses’ concept and pushing it further. That was the essential core of Aufleur – sure, there was this whole little plot about dark, twisted magical shape-changing superheroes and the sky trying to kill them, but MOSTLY it’s a book about ancient religious calendars.
Heh okay, that’s a total lie. The festivals are purely background. But they were an important inspiration for the society, and it made me think very much about the role of festivals and traditions in our society. I say this as someone who just totally WON at Christmas, and is very smug at having all her presents bought and wrapped… apart from the 8 or so that haven’t been delivered yet!
Q: Book one, Power and Majesty is out now. When are the other two books due? Did you have the books written or planned when you accepted the contract? If not, was it a struggle with two small children to meet your deadlines?
Book Two, Shattered City, is scheduled for April 2011 and Book Three, Reign of Beasts, is scheduled for October 2011. I had always planned for there to be more of this story, though when I sold Power and Majesty I only had three paragraphs, one for each sequel (it was originally planned to be a series of four). As it turned out, everything from about halfway through Book Two was to change drastically from my initial plots. Part of the reason there was such a long gap between the sale of P&M and its publication was to give me time to write Books 2 and 3.
Words cannot express how hard it was to meet those deadlines. I have always prided myself on being professional and I was so determined to be the author who met every target with quality and quantity and a big smile on my face. I did pretty well to start off with, and even managed to get ahead of my deadlines as far as the writing went – which was totally necessary when my second baby was born! It was the editing that killed me. Juggling a school age daughter, a new baby and writing Book #3 was totally possible, but stretched me to the absolute limit of my resources. So whenever one of those essential things like structural edits, copy edits or proofs arrived for one of the other books, I fell in a heap. I resented that so badly, because I KNOW that I can do that kind of work standing on my head. But it happened over and over, and every time I had to stop writing Book 3 to edit something, I lost all momentum. It was hugely frustrating. Luckily my publishers were understanding, and there was just enough give in the schedules to make everyone happy. I know now that I need to take the fact that I have two children actually into consideration when planning deadlines.
Q: When Marianne and I approached you back in 2001 to see if you’d like to join ROR, you agreed and have been part of the group ever since. Did you find ROR helped you in developing or directing your writing and, if so, in what ways?
Being invited to join ROR was a lovely surprise! It came at a time when I was quite dispirited about my writing career, and gave me a boost that was sorely needed. To be treated as a peer by writers – all women in that initial group – who were older and more experiences than me really made me think about my future, and what I wanted from it, and how to raise my own expectations of what I could do. Also you guys were totally right about what I needed to do with the beginning of Power and Majesty!
There were times when RORing a manuscript gave me the confidence to pursue it and turn it into something great – and other times where I did just let one drop, which is also a good thing to do from time to time. More than anything, I love the time we spend together on those rare weeks away, talking about writing all night, hanging out together, and just FEELING like a writer. It’s soul-feeding.
Q: What are you currently working on?
You have caught me technically between projects! I have some editing and proofing still to do on the remaining Creature Court books, over the summer. I’ve just this week finished a small collection of stories for Twelfth Planet Press which I shall be able to talk more about in due course. And as soon as the school holidays end, I am plunging back into the world of sea monsters, kelpies and Nancy Napoleon to write FURY, a novel that I received an Australia Council Grant and Arts Tasmania grant to write. It’s very exciting!
After that, who knows?
Q: At ROR we always do our realistic goals and our dream goals. So what are your realistic goals (what are you currently working on) and what are your dream goals?
My realistic goals are to sell at least one novel a year for the next five years, but particularly to get the Nancy Napoleon series written. I have one other fantasy series that I long to write but it still requires a lot of sitting and thinking time.
My dream goals are to have a YA career in tandem with an adult fantasy career (once Jem gets to kindergarten I can TOTALLY manage this), possibly running a second writing name to keep it all straight in my head as well as the bookshop catalogues. Also, I long to judge the Tiptree Awards. They are my favourites and my best. I would also love to win one, of course, but that’s almost too dreamy a thing to long for. I want desperately to attend a World Fantasy Convention.
My dream goal used to be about earning a living from my writing, but as the mother of two kids who is also running a small business from home, my concept of “earning a living” has shifted somewhat. I have a lot of jobs right now! Having said that, I would rather like to help my honey slam our mortgage into smithereens. He’s invested rather a lot in me over the years and it’s about time I paid some of it back.
The Give-away question is: “if you could change into an animal, which would you choose and why?”
Tansy will be giving away either a copy of Power and Majesty or Siren Beat Please nominate which you would prefer to receive. The competition will be open until Tuesday of next week when we’ll announce the winner.
There’s a saying in movies that you have to grab the viewer in the first ten minutes.
Next time you’re watching your favourite movies take a look at what has happened by the ten minute mark.
By the time those precious ten minutes are up, the viewer should know who the hero is, what he/she wants and what the main thrust of the plot will be.
And they should CARE about the hero/heroine otherwise they are not going to keep watching and you’ve lost them. The same goes for books.
How far can a reader get in ten minutes? Ten pages, one chapter? How long do you have to capture the reader?
Rather than worry about how long you have, concentrate on making your opening so gripping, the reader has to keep turning the pages.
I love genre. I am unashamedly a genre writer so, for me, Story is King (or Queen if you are worried about sexism). And for me, Story = Plot driven by Character. Now that I’ve warned you about my (not so) hidden agenda, here are my tips.
When I run workshops I tell aspiring writers make me care. To do this:
Give your hero/heroine a BIG problem.
Make your readerlike them. (They don’t have to be all sweetness and light. In fact I like a character better if they have failings. Abercrombie’s Glokta is one of my favourite characters!).
Put your hero/heroine in danger.
Reveal something to the reader, that the character doesn’t know. Make it something they need to know.
Make the bad guys really bad, but with a motivation that would be logical. And if you really want to turn the screws, make your baddie a little bit likable, too.
Set a time limit.
Make your character determined to do something (even if it turns out to be the wrong thing). There is nothing so irritating as a character who vacillates.
Keep back-story to a minimum. (I know this is hard in fantasy and SF because we build these amazing worlds and societies, which impact on our characters’ motivations and life choices. But it is the PEOPLE the reader cares about, not the history). You can fill the reader in later. As a reader, I’ll take a lot on faith if I am captured by the characters and their dilemma. I can catch up with back story later.
Logic – make sure your world building is logical. Nothing breaks the reader’s suspension of disbelief faster than a logic flaw. And if there’s one in the first chapter, the book is likely to be riddled with them.
There’s lots of good advice for writers on how to make their opening chapter/s riveting. Here are Mike Gagon’s tips for writing a great opening for your books. And here at Fiction Notes they cover the basics.
For fun see here for great opening sentences from science fiction books, a post by Charles Jane Anders. And here are 100 great opening lines from all sorts of books. Andhere at About.com is a list of opening chapters (an excerpts) from novels, if you want to do some reading to compare how other authors handle this.
Those first 10 minutes, when the reader steps into your world and into your character’s shoes are critical. Do you have a favourite opening page or two, that gripped you from the start? Is there an author you know you can rely on to sweep you away?
For Mira: different characters pronounce her name differently, so why can’t we? e.g. Mee-rah, when Ben’s frustrated with her, shaking his head, or Mi-rah! when it’s an urgent shout for her to get out… and there’s even a sociopath stalker who chants Mira, Mira on the floor, who’s the sanest one of all?
Kai-ron / ky-ron if you know your mythology of tortured heroes (Chiron was the centaur who taught Achilles and other warriors, which is appropriate to his relationship with Mira), or Ch-ron / Shee-ron if he strikes you more as a gentle-giant, which is also appropriate in his case.
Same goes for Beesh / Beach, which can even sound like bitch if you’re a character who’s being deliberately snipey at her. The character is a French-Australian park ranger on North Stradbroke Island, which is virtually ALL beach… And yes, Jess nailed it as French… according to my Dictionary of Romance Languages, (published 1864), it was already lost from the language by the 1860′s - and it did originally mean bitch – which is ironic, because it’s back in the French language now with ma biche which means my darling… complete opposite, which is also appropriate to the evolution of this character.
So five winners… can still be six if Jess changes her mind, since I confess to mis-pronouncing Hermione too… She was Her-ME-on, to me… Or Her-my-on-ee once I got to know her better as a softer character, but I still can’t get myself to drop the “o” for Her-MY-nee… Then again, I love fantasy where silent letters are often drop’d as redundant anyway
If anyone already has a copy, I can send them either an autographed book plate for the copy they have, or a copy that’s autographed to whoever they wish, so they can give one away as a gift.
(Rowena here, email me at- rowena(at)corydaniells(dot)com – and I’ll arrange to have a copy of Diamond Eyes sent out to you)
We’ve had a request this week from Sally, who would like to:
‘see a post about how to feed in back story without swamping the narrative drive and tension’. ‘
We writers of speculative fiction spend so much time building worlds, with distinct societies each with their own history then we try to write about the people who live there. This leads to the dreaded info-dump. The people who live in the writer’s invented world already know their customs and history. How is the writer going to convey this to the reader?
If you’re Tolkien you won’t worry, you’ll put it all in, including the poetry you wrote about events that happened a thousand years ago.
But this is hardly ideal. The modern reader wants ‘bang for their buck’ they want to be swept away on an adventure, not to be lectured.Since I am always having trouble with this one I asked the ROR team for their insight.
One method is for the author simply to tell what happened.
Five years ago, Denny had had an affair with …
The house had been inhabited by drug gangs, and a brutal murder had occurred just months before Vee and Lorrie moved in …
If you kicked off your first chapter with a dramatic scene, telling some backstory could be a way of starting your second chapter. Old-fashioned, but simple and economical.
For a writer nowadays, the obvious method for feeding through a backstory is to have a main character remember the past. It’s effective so long as it doesn’t look like a cheat. The only thing worse than a character standing in front of the mirror and thinking about his/her appearance is a character standing in front of the mirror and remembering about his/her past life and recent history. So corny and clichéd!
Please, can we have a character’s memories genuinely prompted by something that happens, something that’s said? And when they are prompted, can they look like genuine memories rather than a plot synopsis?
When we remember past events, we rarely run through the full story—this-led-to-that-led-to-the-other—which we already know. We zoom in on the emotionally charged highlights and the bits that are relevant to us right now.
I reckon backstory memories often seem more plausible when they’re questions rather than statements. We don’t pore over the detail of past events merely to re-state them to ourselves, but we do when we’re puzzled or uncertain about what happened. We might run through the whole chain of cause and effect if we’re trying to spot something that doesn’t gel, something that doesn’t make sense to us.
For the rest of this article see Richard’s free writing tips here and here.
Backstory and exposition is some of the toughest material to work into a decent narrative. It’s especially difficult in speculative fiction, where your story may depend upon some element which is entirely impossible in the world as we know it.
I think that the real trick isn’t fitting the stuff in. I believe it lies in knowing how much to leave out.
The joy of reading is that it’s an interactive, constructive process. The readers literally rebuild the narrative in their minds as they work through the story, and it’s that process of engagement, that act of rebuilding which constitutes the most engrossing and rewarding part of reading a story. The very best stories leave you full of questions and suppositions afterwards, imagining what might have happened next, or what might have occurred ‘off-screen’ at crucial moments in the plot development.
The point I’m making is that every time we provide backstory, we take away from the reader an opportunity for creation, for real engagement, for ownership of the story. Every time the author says canonically: “C happened because A and B happened first, in that order”, we eliminate the rest of an infinite alphabet of possibilities that the reader might well find more intriguing than our own.
Naturally, there are times when backstory is necessary. But in practice, it’s usually far less necessary than new authors imagine.
If you must incorporate backstory, in practical terms there are at least three ways to manage it without too much slowing. Of course, you can always step out into the professorial, explanatory storyteller POV beloved of the Tolkien school of writing, but unless you’re lining up to churn out a thousand pages or so, that’s probably not your best bet. (Still, there’s a market for it, obviously!) But if you’re interested in keeping the story moving, the easiest way to incorporate necessary backstory is to have one of your characters deliver it. There are three ways to consider this.
1) None of the characters knows the information, but they have to find out: In this case, discovering the backstory becomes an integral part of the story. Clues are delivered. Information can be obtained, but uncovering that information is a quest in itself, an obstacle to be overcome before the plot can be fully resolved. Think about crime fiction: scenes of interrogation, examination, detection, and so forth. The trick is to remember the old rule: every scene requires conflict of some sort – so if your characters are just going to go to the library to look up old land deeds, for example, someone else should get there first and steal the critical information, or lose it in the vaults. Or perhaps the information is kept secure, and it has to be stolen. There are as many ways to carry this out as there are stories, but it can be remarkably effective.
2) One character knows the information, and can tell another, or act on it. And once again, the key here is to incorporate the delivery of information into the action itself. Absolutely do not have your characters sitting in a bar, drinking quietly, saying things like “Lo, it is written that during the final days of the Fornikarr Imperium the dread tantric master Duu-phuss the Lightly Endowed forged the now-legendary Three Dildoes of Fire at the command of Empress Booblatooie the Ninth…”
It’s acceptable to have one character ask a simple question for a reasonably simple response. It’s even acceptable to have one character deliver vital information to another at a necessary time. But dialogue doesn’t move the plot or develop action, so as a rule, if you can have your characters taking action while the information is passed on, you’re better off. Take the ridiculous lines above: if there was a bar fight going on, involving one of the minions of the enemy, the character delivering the information will have to keep it to a minimum, perhaps shouting it in bursts between clobbering bad guys – or whispering it nervously while the villains stalk the room, seeking their victims. Either way, we’ve got something going on, not just expository dialogue.
3) Both characters know the information, and the reader needs to know it too: This is at once the most interesting, challenging, and dangerous situation. This is the place where new writers start having characters say things like “As you know…”, which is a horrible concept. How often do real world people go around telling each other things that both already know? You’d sound like a pompous idiot if you tried to explain to someone that you’d arrived in “…a motor car, which as you know is a vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine requiring refined petroleum products to operate…”
The joy of this situation for the writer is that it presents not just a hazard, but a real opportunity. If you’re using POV well, you can actually leave out the information, except for appropriate references in dialogue. Taking example above, you might have one character say to the other “… sorry I’m late. Ran out of petrol.” Naturally, in this real world, the only response to that would perhaps be derisive laughter. But a reader who knows nothing of cars and petrol now has the opportunity to wonder, and imagine for herself what ‘petrol’ might be.
Done well, this approach greatly strengthens the verisimilitude of the work, making the setting more intriguing and believable, and likewise strengthens the characters as part of that setting. When I edited the Canterbury 2100 anthology, for example, I had three separate stories from different authors, each of which explained why there were wolves running around England in 2109. However, the point of the anthology was to have characters telling oral stories to one another, and as editor, I realised that for the people of 2109, wild wolves would be an accepted fact of life. Explaining them would be like explaining ‘cars’ to you or I. So I very simply cut away all explanation of the wolves, and just left them in the stories for readers to wonder at – and to realise that this was a world in which wolves were a commonplace.
Some of the best examples of this technique come from writers like Cordwainer Smith, or more recently, Terry Dowling. Both of them, in constructing their fantastic worlds, have been quite willing to use evocative names and images without fully explaining them for the readers. We’re left to marvel at concepts like the Congohelium, or Underpeople, or Dowling’s land-sailing ships, all of which are simply accepted by the characters, and integrated easily into the narrative.
This is easily my favourite way of delivering backstory, and when I see it used well, it never fails to draw me into a narrative, and leave me wondering about the implications and the histories left unspoken by the author. The effect of this minimalist delivery is so strong and profound that it illustrates in the best possible way the old saw that ‘less is more’ – and in the case of backstory, the more you can leave to the imagination of the reader, the stronger your tale will be!
There is the first paragraph,which has to sparkle so much it grabs the jaded editor and then it has to grab the fussy reader, browsing through the bookstore. (How important is the first paragraph when a reader can download the whole novel instantly, often for free?).
But the real challenge is the opening chapters.
These opening chapters have to set up the world which is harder for speculative fiction writers because even a Dark Urban Fantasy writer’s world has different rules from the one we live in. Holly Lisle has some tips on getting to know your world here.
I tend to let the world grow as I write. I trust myself to do this because I’ve done a lot of reading on sociology and anthropology. In fact the real art is not to introduce too much world building. The writer reveals only what the reader needs to know, as they need to know it.
These opening chapters have to introduce the characters and make the reader CARE about them. This is terribly important. If your reader doesn’t care why would they keep reading? This is where Holly Lisle talks about bringing characters to life.
There’s a saying, have your character save the cat – meaning have them do something likable. I’d say, even if the character is doing terrible things, the reader will like them if they are doing these things for a good reason. So make your character’s motives powerful, make these motives something the reader can identify with.
Rather than constructing characters, I tend to throw them into conflict and see what they do. This way I get to know the character as the reader gets to know them. This has the added bonus of putting the character is danger which raises the Worry Factor as I call it. The more your reader is worrying about the character, the more they are going to want to keep turning the pages.
These opening chapters have to introduce the conflict. If you throw your characters straight into trouble, then you’ve already introduced the conflict. By the end of the first two chapters (depending on the complexity of the plot) the reader should have a good idea what the driving force of the conflict is. Holly Lisle covers conflict here, both internal and external conflict.
So this is why opening chapters are so important. I often find that I’ve started too late and have to go back to write more before the original opening. Do you struggle with beginnings?
