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Today I’ve the great pleasure of hosting Keith Stevenson on my blog. Though I predominantly write fantasy and urban fantasy, I love to read science fiction and have recently finished Keith’s debut novel, Horizon. It’s a wonderful piece of work I recommend to anybody, a novel of large scope set in an intimate environment with a tightly contained cast of characters.

Now,

let’s hear what Keith as to say . . .

 

 

The highly enjoyable movie The Martian, based on Andy Weir’s novel, seems to have everyone taking about the possibility of traveling to and colonising another planet. NASA is already leveraging this interest with its Journey to Mars program. It feels like it’s ‘all systems go’. Of course there are a few obstacles in the way…

Firstly there’s the need to ‘science the sh*t’ out of a lot of technical issues. Andy Weir spoke about some of these on a recent, entertaining Geeks Guide to the Galaxy podcast [http://geeksguideshow.com/2015/09/21/ggg169-andy-weir/]. Currently it takes us a long time to get anywhere, although our spaceflight tech is slowly improving. Then there’s the radiation we’ll be exposed to over the prolonged period on board the spaceship and to a lesser extent on the planet, which will greatly increase our cancer risk. And, of course, there’s the problem of taking EVERYTHING with us, including the air we breathe. Let’s not kid ourselves, the cost will be huge and the need for mission redundancy will be vital, particularly when the nearest help will be at least a couple of years away. And no matter how well we test our devices for extracting water from the lunar regolith or catalysing oxygen from the Martian tundra, there’s no guarantee they’ll work on-site. Mistakes like that can be deadly.

But there’s also the damage we could wreak on another planet when we start living there. The jury is still out on whether there is life on Mars, at least on the microscopic level. That’s why the Mars rover robots are scrupulously disinfected before launch to make sure we don’t corrupt the pristine Martian environment with Earthly biota. We can’t disinfect people, so there will be inevitable contamination, with potentially devastating effects on indigenous life. That was certainly a concern for the stellarnauts in my SF novel Horizon; sent to research another solar system, most of them were horrified by new orders to scout the worlds they found there for potential colonisation. Beyond purely scientific concerns, there are moral and ethical questions about changing the natural life cycle of another world, which my stellarnauts wrestled with. But something tells me that when it comes down to it, we’ll lament the damage done by our colonisation, but it won’t stop us going.

Of course some planetary biota, particularly those that evolved in other solar systems, may be deadly to us in return. Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest novel Aurora shows just such a world and in a recent interview with Radio National Books and Arts Daily [http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandarts/ksr-aurora/6810960], he suggested that perhaps our place is not among the stars and that the life that evolves in other star systems may be so inimical to Earth life, that we’d be better off staying in our own planetary back yard. It’s true that the planets and asteroids of our solar system are there for the taking. As for the stars, I’m not quite ready to give up on them yet. Extra-solar life may be dangerous as Kim Stanley Robinson says, but let’s not discount the possibility that in the future we may engineer ourselves to thrive in those alien environments: an idea already explored in James Blish’s Pantropy Series and books like Frederik Pohl’s Man Plus.

In any event for the simple survival of the species, staying put on Earth is not a viable alternative. We need to diversify to viable colonies on numerous moons and worlds just so one meteorite doesn’t wipe us out. Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves shows to devastating effect just how badly the ‘all-our-eggs-in-one-basket’ scenario can turn out for humanity.

As usual our imagination outpaces our ‘real-life’ ability to do the stuff we want to do. It’s been forty-three years since a human walked on the moon. But as Buzz Aldrin said recently [http://www.aol.com/article/2015/10/06/buzz-aldrin-earth-isn-t-the-only-world-for-us-anymore/21245132/] we’ve already reaped huge technological rewards from the space program and continue to do so, and once we set up a colony on Mars, the mineral wealth of the asteroid belt will be within our reach. After a long period of robot probes and deep-space satellite missions, we’re finally getting ready to send people out of Earth orbit again. The dangers will be huge. The setbacks may be many. But the rewards will be incalculable.

 

Keith Stevenson is the author of Horizon an SF Thriller out now in ebook from HarperCollins Voyager Impulse. He blogs about the ideas behind Horizon at www.horizonbook.com.au and you can find out more about Keith at www.keithstevenson.com, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/keithstevensonwriter and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/stevenson_keith

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A guest post by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

Today I’m joined by the talented Richard Ellis Preston Jr. Richard and I have been friends for a couple of years, the first of his Romulus Buckle books and my Garden of Stones being released around the same time. Richard is an experienced author and an all round lovely guy. I hope Steampunk fans enjoy what he has to say, and perhaps a few of you on the fringe decide to take a dip after reading this.

 

First of all, I’d like to thank you for having me as a guest on your blog, Mark. You and I seem to share similar sensibilities so I think readers who are interested in what you have to say might find some similar perspectives on the world from my camp. We’ll see. The main question you posed to me was Why did you choose steampunk? Good question. Let’s get to it.

Mysteampunk adventure series, The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, has currently the first two books, Romulus Buckle and the City of the Founders and Romulus Buckle and the Engines of War published, while the third book, Romulus Buckle and the Luminiferous Aether, is coming out soon, in early November, 2015.

 

Beginnings and Misfires: I was having trouble finding an environment for my story when I was first trying to develop Romulus Buckle as a series. I knew I wanted to do a big, sweeping, epic adventure story in the tradition of Indiana Jones and Star Wars and I knew that I wanted it to center on the intimate relationships and trials of the crew of a ship at war. But I also wanted prominent female characters (officers) and a zebra-striped alien (I can only refer to some weird cubby in my subconscious as to where that idea came from).

I couldn’t make a pure sci-fi spaceship scenario work to my satisfaction, nor a contemporary submarine (lack of female sailors) and I found myself coming around again and again to the 17th-19th century seafaring eras, landing somewhere in the swashbuckling neighborhoods of Horatio Hornblower and Richard Aubrey. The only way one can wedge females into command positions in these periods is to make them pirates and a pirate story, while attractive, didn’t provide the opportunities I wanted in a way I could make them work. Things kind of stalled at that point.

Finding Steampunk: One day at work a friend handed me the novel Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. When I started reading the story I realized I had found the sandbox where my ideas could sink in and take hold. Steampunk. Although I was aware of retro-Victorian stories and certain elements of it in costuming and art I hadn’t realized it was a young but well-established subgenre of science fiction with a healthy following and a great bookshelf of literature to its name. Once I knew what steampunk was (and its definition is difficult to pin down, to be discussed below) I recognized it in some mainstream films such as Sucker Punch and TV series like Castle. Now I could mix all of my desired ingredients together in the steampunk stewpot and place them in an environment which felt new and unexplored to me. My story world arrived as a frozen, post-apocalyptic California where only fragments of the human race have survived an alien invasion and are left with nothing but steam power. Resurrected human society, re-engineered by a handful of scientists, has been designed to imitate the Victorian era and its mannerisms. Now I had my war vessel—a zeppelin—and I packed it with a swashbuckling Captain, swashbuckling female officers and a zebra striped alien among the crew.

What the hell is the definition of ‘Steampunk?’:  steampunk is a sprawling playground which encourages personal deviation so it tends to defy specific definition.  I like to call it the “brave, new, dystopian old world.” My own steampunk definition follows as: “a subgenre of science fiction which tends to involve stories set in Victorian England or its empire where steam power and fantastic machines have become the norm.” The Victorian/Edwardian period (1840-1900) anchors the steampunk timeline but is often extended back to encompass the late 18th century and forward to include the span of the Great War. My Romulus Buckle steampunk series is set hundreds of years into the future though its thematic heart is late 18th century-early 19th century Victorian. Steampunk tends to be militaristic and dark (dystopian) but it has such a broad imaginative scope it can head in almost any direction its creator chooses.

A true definition of steampunk?  Looking to the experts, I like Jeff VanderMeer’s fun steampunk ‘equation’ which he includes in The Steampunk Bible:

“STEAMPUNK = Mad Scientist Inventor [(steam x airship or metal man/baroque stylings) x (pseudo) Victorian setting] + progressive or reactionary politics x adventure plot.”

VanderMeer states that his equation “… does sum up the allure of steampunk,” which is “…simultaneously retro and forward looking in nature … evokes a sense of adventure and discovery …(and) … embraces divergent and extinct technologies as a way of talking about the future.”  Bruce Sterling, co-author of the first-generation steampunk novel The Difference Engine with William Gibson, plumbs a darker vein in his User’s Guide to Steampunk: “Steampunk’s key lessons are not about the past.  They are about the instability and obsolescence of our own times … we are secretly preparing ourselves for the death of our own tech.”

(Just to mention, Jeff VanderMeer is now experiencing huge success with his Southern Reach novel trilogy. He was the story editor on my first two Romulus Buckle novels and helped me publish my Romulus Buckle universe-related short story, An Officer and a Gentleman along with featuring my work in his The Steampunk User’s Manual: An Illustrated Practical and Whimsical Guide to Creating Retro-Futurist Dreams. Jeff is a wonderful guy, a great writer and a tireless supporter of other writers and I wish him all the success in the world. I would also highly recommend his brilliant Wonderbook: the Illustrated Guide to Crafting Imaginative Fiction to any writer in any stage of his/her career and to any creative person in any field of the arts. I’d also like to make a shout out illustrator Jeremy Zerfoss, who provides art for much of Jeff’s manuals and is a blast of a guy as well).

How Do You Do Steampunk? For me, plunging into the steampunk world meant researching everything I could: hydrogen, zeppelins, aerial navigation, steam engines, locomotives, muzzle-loading cannons and muskets, Victorian clothing and culture, ballroom dances, and so on. I like the sense of being as spot on and as authoritative with the real science as I can so I know exactly when I cross the line—leaving the realm of reality for the realm of fantasy—and I can carry that authority in my voice so the reader feels comfortable suspending their disbelief and coming along.

One of the great things about steampunk is that it carries with the baggage of its history. The Victorian era is now considered highly racist with its flag-bearer Rudyard Kipling and his “white man’s burden” and the brutalities of colonialism and empire. But it was also a time of great energy, a period which saw the beginning of the industrial revolution and the intellectual and nation-state struggles which still afflict the modern world. This era provides the author with a smorgasbord of conflicts and contradictions: exploration vs. colonialism; the traditional hero vs. the fallible everyman; industrialization (the clock tower) vs. subsistence agriculture (the cycles of the sun and moon); idealized romantic love vs. debauchery; female suffrage vs. sexual repression; extreme wealth vs. extreme poverty; Darwin vs. the creationists; man vs. machine, and on and on.

Out of Disaster Comes Hope: Lastly, and this is important to my Romulus Buckle series, the Victorian period is infused with an immense optimism, an optimism fueled by rapid advances in technology, science and medicine. Many Victorians hoped mankind was embarking on a new, utopian age. But that hope was crushed by the First World War and the resulting great disillusionment is still part of who we are today.

Steampunk exults in dystopian adventure, in zeppelin air battles and sentient, steam-powered machines, but it is also driven along by the Victorian torch of hope, expectation and a belief in the ultimate triumph of human potential.  This torch is fallen and battered, near extinguished, but it still flickers in the shadows of our terrible failures along the way.

A Steampunk Journey to Publication: I had been a screenwriter in Los Angeles for about 20 years, working my way through a couple of agents and penning medium-budget action, sci-fi and family movies and TV shows for HBO, USA, TNT, Animal Planet and foreign theatrical release. Television wore me out and I turned to writing novels. The first novel I finished was Romulus Buckle and the City of the Founders. I set up my long agent query letter lists but I had a friend on the inside, author Julie Kenner. Julie had quit the law business and became a successful NYT Bestselling writer. She ran the manuscript past some agents for me and Adrienne Lombardo at Trident Media Group in New York read the book and offered me a contract with the agency. I ended up with a two book deal signed with 47North, Amazon’s new sci-fi publishing imprint in March, 2012. 47North did not choose to continue publishing the series, however, and I am self-publishing the third installment, Romulus Buckle and the Luminiferous Aether.

Always onward and forward! I’d like to thank Mark T. Barnes for having me by today. It’s been a blast!

 

Richard Ellis Preston, Jr. grew up in the United States and Canada but he prefers to think of himself as British. He attended the University of Waterloo where he earned an Honors B.A. in English with a Minor in Anthropology.  He has lived on Prince Edward Island, met the sheep on Hadrian’s Wall, eaten at the first McDonalds in Moscow, excavated a 400 year old Huron Indian skeleton and attended a sperm whale autopsy. The Purple Scarab is the first book in his new League of the Sphinx YA adventure series which he writes as R.E. Preston. Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders, Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War and Romulus Buckle & the Luminiferous Aether are the first three installments in his steampunk series, The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin. His short story, “An Officer and a Gentleman,” is a prequel set in the same steampunk universe. He currently resides in California.

Social Media

Richardellisprestonjr.com

RichardEPreston on Twitter

Richard Ellis Preston, Jr. on Facebook

 

Here are links to other useful posts by Richard:

How I Got My Literary Agent: Richard Ellis Preston
Richard Ellis Preston, author of the debut steampunk novel ROMULUS PRESTON, explains how he signed with literary agent Adrienne Lombardo of Trident Media.









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[GUEST POST] What is Steampunk? by Richard Ellis Preston, Jr. (+ Giveaway!)




















[GUEST POST] What is Steampunk? by Richard Ellis Pre…
Richard Ellis Preston, Jr. is a science fiction writer who loves the zeitgeist of steampunk. Although he grew up in both the United States and Canada he prefers to …









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by Angela Slatter

I’ve not posted anything in a while, being focused on other projects. I thought why not get back into things with a post about something vital to every writer who wants their story to be the best it can be. It’s my pleasure to welcome the talented Dr. Angela Slatter to the page.

 

There’s a particular kind of arrogance that can trip up a new writer (and sometimes even an experienced one) and it goes something like this, “I just wrote The End, so it’s all done.”

No.

The End, to paraphrase The Mummy’s Imhotep, is just the beginning.

Your first draft is just that: a draft. It needs tender loving care as well as brutal pruning to shape it into a piece that’s not only something someone wants to read, but also something that someone (i.e. an editor/publisher) wants to (a) put into print and (b) pay you for.

Editing is a form of auditing and before an experienced editor/publisher will look at your work you need to make sure what you’re sending to them is the best you can produce. You must go over your own work to make sure that you have actually written what you think you’ve written: are spelling and grammar all present and correct? Does the ending match the beginning? Is the story’s internal logic flawless? Do characters act in a manner consistent with their motivation and characterisation? Are those characters believable and engaging or merely cookie-cutter stereotypes that interest no one? Does the pacing work as it should or does the story have a flabby middle that needs tightening? Are your descriptions apposite and sharp, rather than simply a bruised purple mess? My expertise is in short stories, but most of what follows can − and should − be applied to longer works as well. I can’t cover everything here, but I’ll do my best.

The task of self-editing always seems huge, but just like eating an elephant it should be done one bite at a time. I always start with the small stuff because it’s relatively quick and easy and it gives me a sense of achievement that buoys me up to tackle the bigger issues − yes, being a writer is a constant system of sticks and carrots. The basics are always spelling, grammar and punctuation. When you’re reading over a draft, put on your critical thought hat: have you used the right word? Have you written ‘enervated’ when you mean ‘energised’ because they sound a bit alike? I have marked more student pieces with this kind of assured idiocy in them than I care to remember − some crackers I cannot burn from my memory include: “She spent the day begatting a meal for her husband”, “This gave the movement the inertia it needed to move forward”, and my personal favourite, “She danced around on the stage with a feather Boer around her neck.”

Have you used the correct version of words that have different meanings and spellings but sound the same? Your, You’re, Yore? Their, They’re, There? Where, We’re, Wear, Were (as in the Old English version meaning ‘man’)? Flaw, Floor, Flore (Latin for flowers)? A good idea is to keep a list above your desk of words that you know are a problem for you; every time you’re reading a draft, check against the list, make sure you’ve got it right. With any luck, the repeated reminders will help embed the correct meanings in your brain. It’s easy to make a mistake in the first draft − that’s what the first draft is for, making mistakes, throwing the brain-vomit onto the page. What’s not forgivable is to leave those mistakes in there after the second or third draft.

Grammatical mistakes, such as disagreement between your plurals and singulars, most definitely need to be fixed. If you know grammar is not your strong point, then find a writing friend who is good at it and learn from them. Punctuation is also very important: the old saw about “Let’s eat grandma” versus “Let’s eat, Grandma” is a perfect illustration as to why punctuation matters. Also collect − and read! − books such as Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style or Mark Tredinnick’s The Little Green Grammar Book or Lynne Truss’s most excellent Eats, Shoots & Leaves. These reference books should sit beside your dictionary and thesaurus.

And for the love of all that’s holy or otherwise, learn how to use apostrophes. Here’s The Oatmeal to tell you how http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe.

Another problem to look out for is that of unintentional repetitions: you’ve described something as ‘dark’ eighteen times in the space of a page, or seven times in two paragraphs, not because you’re going for a considered repetition to build a rhythm or a motif, but because it was the only word you could think of in your rushed first draft. Remember: the thesaurus is your friend. A lot of unintentional repetition occurs in descriptions or actions, so look for them there first. Replace those repeated ‘darks’ with ‘ebony’, ‘cinereal’, ‘shadowy’, ‘murky’, ‘gunmetal’, ‘charcoal’ … carefully consider the subtle sense you want the word to convey. There’s whole range of alternatives that will add texture to your writing − but don’t go overboard and make a simple sentence read like either an anatomical text or a bad romance novel: “Her heart beat strongly” never, ever needs to be “Her blood-pumping organ palpitated indomitably.” Also to note: don’t just do a global replace of the offending word with a new one.

You also need to develop an awareness of your crutch words − those you fall back on automatically and don’t even think about. Are you a repeat offender with ‘seems’, ‘that’, ‘suddenly’, ‘slightly’, ‘appears’, ‘maybe’? Do they pepper your manuscript like buckshot?  Once again, a reminder list above the desk can do wonders to keep these words from cluttering up your work.

Another thing to consider during the self-edit is the length of your sentences, especially if you’re a new writer with less experience in crafting prose. Here’s the thing about long sentences: the more words you jam in there, the more likely your reader will get to the end of the sentence and go “Huh? What was the start of that? I’ve been reading for about fifteen minutes and I forget what the point was.” The more words you put between your reader and the story, the more chance your tale has of failing, of losing the reader. There are some writers who are simply masters of the long sentence: Jeff VanderMeer is one of them, Angela Carter is another. They also know this secret: a long sentence set amongst a bunch of shorter, sharper ones will stand out. It will stand out like a jewel; it will make the reader pause, catch their breath, marvel at the craft displayed. Shorter sentences are great for simply transmitting information and action, as well as keeping the pace cracking along.  Longer sentences can be where you make your reader think more deeply − but you do need to frame them carefully to best advantage.

This brings me to Five Dollar Words. Is your narrative crammed with multisyllabic words as a matter of course? Does your sentence look as though it ate a thesaurus? Is said sentence verging on purple, with the prose so ornate and extravagant that it draws attention in the way a lime green mankini does? For the record, that is Bad Attention. The Five Dollar Word is best deployed, like long sentences, in a garden of Five Cent Words. That way it will have more impact.

The idea of minimising purple prose leads to another important characteristic of the short story: brevity. There is an art to making short fiction short and making it work. Henry David Thoreau said “Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.” This may seem self-evident and you’re thinking, “Well, d’uh”, but I’ve critiqued and edited a LOT of work in which there were too many words for the amount of story contained therein. You don’t have the same luxury you’ve got with a novel, that of great long wandering descriptions: as with life, you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression, so do it right the first time. Your descriptions must be powerful but precise: if you’re describing a character, give us their outstanding feature/s, the thing/s the reader will remember (or needs to know in order to comprehend the tale). If you’re describing a setting, again, tell us what we need to know in order to understand the story, although brevity doesn’t mean a white room, i.e. no setting given. It means, as my old friend and mentor Jack Dann says, “What does the camera see?” So, if a television camera were to pan through your scene what would/should it pick up?

What must the reader see when they enter that scene? A shotgun on the mantlepiece? Show us − carefully and casually scattered amongst a few other red herring items − what is going to be essential to the story’s resolution. So, if the shotgun is going to be fired by the end of the story, then show it in the first act, remind us about it (subtly) in the second act, then fire that shotgun in the third. My point? When you’re editing/auditing ask yourself “Does my tale do this/work in this way?”

Another important thing to keep in mind is structure. I like a three act structure because it gives you a good guide for where to put which plot points. It’s especially useful for new writers to train them in the rhythms of a short story, so they become second nature. When you’re editing/auditing your work, ask: do all of the parts make up the whole in the way they need to? Is there too much/not enough set up/foreshadowing in Act One? Is there to much exposition/marking time in Act Two? Is Act Three simply too short or too long? Has the climax of the story occurred in a fashion that leaves the reader saying “Huh?” because the writer hasn’t given enough foreshadowing/hints/ breadcrumbs in the previous acts? So, once again, you need to read your draft with a critical gaze: forget that it’s your baby and you love it to distraction; actively look for its faults.

Consistency is also critical, not simply in the spelling of particular words, but in the meaning you give to them and the way you use them. For example, if in your story you’ve allocated a specific meaning of “magical and dangerous” to “weird” and that is a recurring meaning, then keep that word specifically for use in that context. Don’t suddenly use it for “a bit off”. Similarly, make sure a character’s appearance remains consistent − don’t change eye or hair colour unless you’ve also given a very good reason. A one-armed woman should not suddenly be shown using a tool or weapon that requires her to have grown back her other arm, because that says the writer forgot who their character is and the limits within which they must operate. In addition, you must show consistency in a character’s motivation and action − don’t suddenly have your protagonist acting against their grain unless you’ve given them (and shown the reader) why they are doing so.

Finally, when you’ve done all of the above, is it over? Can you send it out into the wide world for publication?

No.

You do another draft, a second, a third, a fourth until you can no longer see any problems.

Then can you send it off for publication?

No.

You give it to your writers group or your trusted beta readers and let them find problems with it.

Why? Because, let’s face it, we’re all certain we know what we’ve written, and the mind will trick us into seeing words that aren’t actually there. You’re likely to see the ghost words because you know the story so well, you’re used to it, it’s like a long-term partner: you’ve stopped looking properly at their face, you’re relying on your memory and you’ve become too lazy to look for something new. Your beta reader, however, as a person who did not write this thing that means so much to you, is not invested in it − they will see omissions and highlight them. This is an essential part of the critique process, for which you must thicken your skin. You must not be so in love with your story that anyone pointing out its faults causes you to burst into tears/flames/defensive protestations about what you really meant/how no one understands your genius. The whole point of editing is to make your story the best it can be. Isn’t it better for a beta reader to find these problems rather than the editor/publisher to whom you’re hoping to sell it?

The other side of the critiquing coin is that being a beta reader for other writers will help you become a better self-editor/auditor. The more you’re exposed to the process, the more you’ll learn, the more able you’ll be to spot issues, and the more all these techniques will become second nature to you. As a matter of courtesy to your beta readers, always do a self-edit before you pass your work on because, quite frankly, if all you’re doing is writing a really rotten first draft then sending it off for someone else to do the hard work then you’re a bad person. No, really, you are.

Now, you’re wondering: is it all over? You’ve self-edited, you’ve let beta readers gnaw on the entrails of your story-child, you’ve patched it up, and you’ve sent this new, beautiful Frankenstein of a thing out into the world. If you’re lucky, someone else will love it too, so surely the editing is over. Surely.

No.

Sorry.

An editor/publisher worth their salt will see what’s wonderful about your tale, but they’ll also see what’s been missed. They might have suggestions that will make it even better (sometimes they will have terrible suggestions, too, but that’s a subject for another post), and you will find your story is being slashed and stitched yet again.

But that is okay, because you’re a professional. You’re tough, your skin is thick, and you’re wearing your Big Person Pants so you can deal with anything. You are okay with the editing because you want your story to be something that takes a reader’s breath away, that stays with them as they go about their day long after they’ve read the last line. You are okay with the editing because it’s all part of the profession. You are okay with the editing because the whole point of editing is to make your story the best it can be.

 

 

Specialising in dark fantasy and horror, Angela Slatter is the author of The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales, Sourdough and Other Stories, The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, and Black-Winged Angels, as well as Midnight and Moonshine and The Female Factory (both with Lisa L. Hannett). She has won five Aurealis Awards, one British Fantasy Award, and been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the Norma K. Hemming Award.

Angela’s short stories have appeared in Australian, UK and US Best Of anthologies such The Mammoth Book of New Horror (Stephen Jones, ed.), The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (Paula Guran, ed.), The Best Horror of the Year (Ellen Datlow, ed.), The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror (Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene, eds.), and The Year’s Best YA Speculative Fiction (Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios, eds.).

She has an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing, is a graduate of Clarion South 2009 and the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop 2006, and in 2013 she was awarded one of the inaugural Queensland Writers Fellowships.

Her novellas, Of Sorrow and Such (from Tor.com), and Ripper (in the Stephen Jones’ anthologyHorrorology, from Jo Fletcher Books) will be released in October 2015.

Angela’s urban fantasy novel, Vigil (based on the short story “Brisneyland by Night”), will be released by Jo Fletcher Books in 2016, and the sequel, Corpselight, in 2017. She is represented by Ian Drury of the literary agency Sheil Land.

You can contact Angela at http://www.angelaslatter.com.

 

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As part of the launch of ‘The Pillars of Sand’ at Galaxy Bookshop here in Sydney, I used photocomposition to create character art that was given away in sets to people who attended. I did 80 sets, and all of them were accounted for.

For those who’ve not seen them, I thought I’d post a gallery of the portraits here. They may not be exactly what readers see when they imagine the characters, but this is how I see them. I may do other characters who appear in The Obsidian Heart, and The Pillars of Sand. People who have these cards as a series were interested in seeing The Emissary, as well as some of the supporting cast. We’ll see how I go for time. Until then, please enjoy. If people want to do their own art and sent it through, I’d enjoy seeing how you pictured the characters.

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As was pointed out by somebody on Goodreads, it’s been some time since I’ve updated my Blog; so here’s an update on where things are in my world of words.

The Echoes of Empire series is doing well, with predominantly great reviews. Of course there are those who’ve not connected with the series, and that’s to be expected; there’s no book that’s all things to all readers, and I did write a book that could be considered challenging, and not typical epic fantasy. However for the most part the positive reviews far outweigh the negative, and my readership seems to be growing as does word of mouth. I had the very great honour of being the first Australian (of which I’m aware, happy to be corrected) to be in the final five for the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for Best Debut/Newcomer for 2013, with the Garden of Stones also making the long list of the top 20 fantasy novels for the 2013 David Gemmel Legend Award. While I can’t be a contender for the debut again, knowing that there were enough people who rated my debut novel so highly was as flattering, as it was humbling.

More recently all three books in the Echoes of Empire series were part of the Kindle Daily Deal. Another humbling, and intensely gratifying, moment to see all three books in the Top 10  Best Sellers for Fantasy Adventure. It’s a huge genre and my work was in there with some incredible company. Of course George Martin’s new project had to be released in time to stay in the number one spot, but I was happy with the rankings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most recently I’ve been working on a new urban fantasy project. ‘Autumn Country’ is the first in what has been planned as a quadrilogy, but we’ll see what the appetite of publishers is like to see whether they want none, one, or all four of the books. The series is told from two points of view, and deals with the bizarre and dangerous world kept deliberately hidden from humanity, behind the machinations of the Great Illusion. There’s more strong and innovative world building, though the world of ‘Autumn Country’ is less fantastical in some of it’s elements than was Ia in the EoE. Below is a snippet from an early chapter:

“Through a shattered window Gallow surveyed the Escheresque ghetto of Pandemonium. Buildings were monochrome geometries in a suspension of dirt and light, where they leaned over twisting lanes. Titanic statues rose into the sky, their upper limits partially obscured by low clouds of dust but visible enough to hint at tentacled horrors. The Soul Wind undulated across the sky, sparking like lit iron filings, and it backlit the leather winged, serpentine shadows that circled in the gloom far overhead, and the smaller humanoid silhouettes wheeling much closer to the rooftops. The air vibrated with what sounded like the droning of metallic cicadas, but was not. He inhaled the scents of storms and desiccation.”

Barring incident I’m expecting to have the first draft down by the end of November, as I get into the spirit of NaNoWriMo in an effort to do 50K new words in the month, plus all the edits. I’m editing this book and sending it to proof readers in Acts: Act I, and Act IIa, have been edited and sent to readers. Readers have come back with some wonderful, positive responses and almost no changes at all; certainly nothing structural. I’m almost finished Act IIb, with then Act III to follow. Breaking the editing down into logical segments has helped tackle the story, and to ensure that I don’t need go completely off the rails. It also means that there’s not a long tail at the end of the book, so the finished product is a little closer at hand. Once the book is written and edited, I’ll be sending it to my agent and we’ll then discuss our next steps.

Once ‘Autumn Country’ is sent I’ll get back to writing the remainder of ‘Darkness in the Green’, the first in an epic fantasy trilogy set in Ia that is told concurrently with the EoE. I’ve also a couple of stand alone novels, a steampunk, some sci-fi . . . oh, and the next trilogy in the Echoes of Empire should the publisher and readers have an appetite for it.

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Rjurik Davidson has released his debut novel, Unwrapped Sky, with both TOR US and TOR UK. The novel, like the author, is both perceptive and thoughtful, intelligent and with a conscience. The writing is lyrical and immersive, with care taken to create an innovative world once as strange as it is familiar.

Rju and I met at Clarion South 2005 where both Unwrapped Sky and my Echoes of Empire books had their birth in short stories written there. Rju is a genuinely nice guy, well read, well-travelled, and with a personality that can be irrepressible. We did this interview as a series of emails with me in Sydney, and Rju either in Finland, or Paris, depending upon what question was being asked at the time. A university lecturer and associate editor for Overland magazine, Rju is also an award winning author of screen plays, and short stories including The Library of Forgotten Books collection, and Nighttime in Caeli-Amur which is available here.

 

Q1: You’ve been an award winning writer of short stories, and have worked on film scripts. Writing long form fiction is a very different endeavour. Can you share with us what motivated you to write Unwrapped Sky, and how you found the process different to your previous work?

Writing a novel was one of my first ambitions, going back to my early teenage years. Back then I used to read omnivorously, anything I could get my hands on. You’d find me with absurdist plays, Tolstoy, Yeats’ poems and a massive fantasy book. I’m still like that, actually, though keeping up with the field means I read a lot more fantasy and SF than anything else. Somewhere in the back of my mind, as a teenager, I always thought of the novel as the pinnacle of things. And in some ways I still do, though it’s a purely subjective judgment.

The process – as you know – is considerably different to short work. The scale of a novel can be intimidating, and I seem to have a habit of writing complicated ones, with multiple characters and story lines. I want my novels to be rich and complex. I want readers to be able to return to them, if they want. When writing, this means there are all kinds of logistical/plot issues that need to be worked out. That can be complex, and I’m not the most patient guy. I like to jump in and create problems for myself later. And I do, believe me. I do. But when I feel overwhelmed, I spare a thought for George R. R. Martin. Five books in and he’s still going. Bring it home George! Bring it home!

Q2: You mentioned how you tend towards writing complex stories, and that you have a broad reading list. Unwrapped Sky veers away from a lot of standard fantasy tropes and delivers something quite different from most work in the genre. What was the pitch that got your agent interested in such an innovative project.

Well, the pitch was something like this: “There’s a publisher interested in my book and I’m looking for an agent. Would you like to see it?” So there wasn’t anything specific about my book in the actual pitch (my superlative agent, John Jarrold, liked the book so we went from there). In fact, I think a lot of publicity-type stuff, “pitching” and so on, is overstated. An intelligent editor (or reader) is going to know that a well-pitched book might be rubbish, and a poorly-pitched book might be brilliant. There isn’t much correlation between the two.

Still, marketing is a modern reality and we can’t just step out of the world so, if I were to pitch my book (and it’s sequels), I’d say that it’s the story of a revolution taking place in a strange, beautiful city, something like ancient Athens or Rome, and something like London in the 1890s or Turin in the 1920s. If you’re intelligent and interested in reading something different from the usual fare, you’ll like it.

Q3: I remember your two Caeli-Amur stories from when we were both at Clarion South 2005, and the seeds of the world we’re reading now. The world you’ve built is innovative and haunting, bubbles of disparate histories all floating together towards the surface into a unique whole. Trying something new can be risky. What was your process in building your world, and the people and races that inhabit it?

World-building is a process of combinations, of matching various things – often surprising things – together. In the case of Caeli-Amur, it was an industrial city with Ancient Greek mythology. When you do that, you have all these questions thrown out, like lines floating in the wind. You wrap those up one by one. Others you leave for a while and wrap them up later. For example, where does this world come from? What’s it’s history? Why are there only male minotaurs? Where do they come from? We’ll find out some of these answers in the next two books, The Stars Askew and The Black Sun. Though some questions are answered in Unwrapped Sky.

You were there when Caeli-Amur was first conceived, both in the story which later became Maximilian’s underwater section, then a few weeks later Kata’s opening section. So you saw a bit of its construction. Over time, it became weirder, more science-fictional. Partly that came because I was reading a bit about physics and realised how weird it was, how strange and magical – and so ‘thaumaturgy’ (magic) in the novel is a kind of weird science. It all happens over time as you work on it. It doesn’t happen right at the beginning. Writing is a process of discovery. In terms of the mythic creatures: I wanted to make the them creatures recognisable but also strange and unusual. I want my readers to be surprised at times, to not know what to expect when they meet a Siren, or an Augurer, or a Nymph. I think just writing about plain, obvious versions of them would have been a bit boring. I also have a lost golden age, but I didn’t want this to be some kind of conservative rural utopia – like in Tolkien – so I made it a more advanced civilisation, which had suffered a catastrophe. The cry for the golden age is also a desire to move forward in science and technology, into a lost future.

Q4: The concepts you cover in Unwrapped Sky are unlike what you’ll find in most fantasy novels. Seditionism, industry, ties to business, the rights of people to live the way they want . . . some of these are touched on in fantasy, but rarely with such a demonstration of social conscience. Tell us about your point of view characters, how they fit into your world, and how they fit into your story.

Well, we have three characters. There’s Boris, a former tram-worker who is moving up the echelons of House Technis. Initially he joined the House because his wife was sick, and when strikes begin at his former frameworks he is given the task of resolving it. One of his agents is Kata, a philosopher-assassin who is just struggling to survive. She grew up on the streets and that has made her hard. Then there’s Maximilian, a seditionist who wants to overthrow the cruel House system, but he’s also ambitious and egotistical.

The three characters are from three different ‘levels’ of society, then. Here the book works a bit like the old realist novels, where the characters are ‘typical’ of social forces. They come to embody groups, to some extent: the House bureaucrats, the oppositionists, the swaying masses in between. Though the House system is unjust, the seditionists are themselves compromised. They tend to reflect the cruelty of the system – as many revolutionary groups are forced to in the real world. A dictatorial system creates violent opposition, and even when right is on your side – think of the Resistance movements to the Nazis – a cruel system is going to be reflected in the opposition to it, to some degree. Still, I think it’s pretty clear, in the end, whose side we’re on (just as it’s pretty clear that we would be on the side of the World War Two Resistance movements).

Q5: What did you find the most challenging aspect of your journey in producing Unwrapped Sky?

The most challenging aspect was making the time to get the thing finished. Somehow I got myself into a position where I was working crappy jobs, mostly teaching at universities, which didn’t pay enough to buy the time to write. In order to buy that time, I’d work more, and so it went on. The university system is one of the most exploitative places in Australia, and sessional staff do the bulk of the teaching and essay marking. At one point, a friend of mine worked out she was earning something like $10-15 an hour. And of course that kind of work – highly skilled, totally undervalued – requires a lot of take-home work. You write lectures, prepare tutorials, mark assignments. Luckily I liked teaching and liked the students, so there was at least some reward, but it meant that one had to really fight for time to write.

Q6: You mentioned that you gone back and looked at Unwrapped Sky as the kind of book that you’d want to read, and that it was interesting. Was there any pressure to write something that was going to be commercially appealing, rather than personally satisfying?

I think there’s always pressure to write something commercially appealing. But first and foremost, I want to write original things, to make a contribution, if you like. That’s also what I want to read: something I’ve never read before, something which makes you think new ways, see the world slightly differently. I want to be surprised, delighted, shocked – things which don’t happen when you’re reading the ‘same old stuff’. I’m often surprised that in the writing world – this goes for genre as well as literary fiction – there’s so little discussion about having something to say. I don’t mean something to say in some crude didactic way, but in terms of writing about things that matter, presenting a perspective that’s of value.

So I want to write books which are original and have something to say. I also like to try to push the form, though this happens more in my short fiction, I think. Having said that, there’s always a sliding scale of commerciality, and you have to accept that the more avant-garde you get, the smaller readership you’re likely to enjoy. I think, for example, I could write action-fantasy, descending from Robert E. Howard, say, pretty well (I’ve done it before). I think it’d be quite commercially appealing. But if I did that, I’d still want it to be original. Otherwise, I wonder, why write it?

 

Q7: You’ve certainly created something original, with an innovative world and a story we don’t see often in the genre. What more can we expect to see in Caeli-Amur, and what other projects are you working on that people need to keep an eye out for?

The Stars Askew is due out in a year. It’s a sequel to Unwrapped Sky and starts a few weeks after the end of the first book. Things aren’t going well in Caeli-Amur. I won’t give away too much about it now, but if the tagline of the first is, ‘The Revolutions is Coming’, then the tagline of the second is ‘The Revolution is Broken’. It features more of the world surrounding Caeli-Amur, especially Varenis. There are more mythical creatures. I’m quite pleased with how it’s turned out. Otherwise, I’ve got an Australian steampunk novel, in which the inland sea still exists and the continent is still populated by megafauna. I’m happy with that too.

Q8: What’s the best way for readers to know more about your work, and what’s coming next?

Best way is to follow me on twitter @RjurikDavidson and check out my website and blog: rjurik.com.

Q9: What advice do you have to any aspiring writer, or writer starting their journey? You and I both know that the reality can be somewhat different to the expectation.

The clichés are all true: do it for the love of it; develop a thick skin; etc. But most important, I think, is to keep writing, even in the slow or hard patches and remember that you are the person who cares most about your work, so don’t rely on anyone else.

Q10: If you had the chance to do it all over again, is there anything you’d change? And if so, how would you change it?

That’s one of those impossible questions, I think. I mean, it I changes something, I wouldn’t be where I am. I wouldn’t be the person I am. I wouldn’t be writing the things I am. So I wouldn’t change anything. The future, however, is a different question. In the future, I’d make sure that books are flourishing and that people know about my own work. I’m make sure that people know about good work that’s ignored and forget average work which is popular. I might give myself slightly better contracts too, if I’m allowed to do that.

 

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I met Suzanne Church at Clarion 2005, where for 6 weeks we shared the ground floor rooms of the university dormitory with three other writers. We’ve remained friends over the years, enjoying our fellow Clarion graduate’s many and varied successes. Today I’m happy to be joined by Suzanne as she talks about short fiction.

 

Suzanne Church juggles her time between throwing her characters to the lions and chillin’ like a villain with her two sons. She writes Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror because she enjoys them all and hates to play favorites. Her award-winning fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Cicada, and On Spec, and in several anthologies including Urban Green Man and When the Hero Comes Home 2. Her collection of short fiction, ELEMENTS is published by EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing.

Short stories are odd fish in the ocean of fiction. Even though they’re perceived by land lubbers as guppies, they’re actually more like sharks. If you’re wondering why authors write short fiction or why readers search out these stories, then follow the shark.

After all, isn’t it wiser to follow a shark than swim in front of one?

Five Reasons Authors Write Short Fiction

1. To Improve Your Craft

Writing, like anything, improves with practice. Short stories take less time to complete than novels, so the more of them you write, the more you’ll practice beginnings, middles, and endings. Mastering beginnings will get you noticed in the slush pile and mastering endings will leave stronger impressions with readers.

2. To Build Your Brand – Quantity

Novels take a long time to write, edit, and publish. During that time, your readers will seek more of your work. If two or three of your short stories pop up in magazines, anthologies, and online, your readers will be satiated while awaiting your next novel masterpiece.

3. To Build Your Brand – Quality

Since each short story tends to explore one theme, style, or concept, having multiple short stories in print will expose your readers to a variety of your writing talents. You might capture the attention of horror readers who are gripped by your suspense and tension in one story and fantasy readers by your vivid descriptions of setting and character in another.

4. Great Movie Options

How many times have you seen a movie based on a book and been disappointed at the interpretation? Probably because they cut out huge chunks of the story or didn’t go deep enough into the characters’ arcs. Short fiction — novellas in particular — has historically been adapted into great movies. Three out of the four novellas in Stephen King’s Different Seasons have been successfully adapted into movies.

5. The Bottom Line

Publishing is a business and publishers are in it to make money. The more “unknown” an author, the less likely a publisher is to gamble on you. When you’re starting out, try to write stories under 4,000 words. The less space your story takes up in a magazine or anthology, the less of a risk the publisher will feel they’re taking by picking your story out of the slush.

Five Reasons Readers Seek Short Fiction

1. The Perfect Commute Length

Many people read during their commute to work. In larger cities the commute might last 45 minutes to an hour each way. That’s the amount of time it takes to read a short story. And if you’re low on reading material and can’t face another minute avoiding eye contact with the strangers on the train, you can quickly purchase a low-price e-book short story and download it to your phone/tablet. Your budget will thank you when the size of the file won’t chew up your cell plan’s entire data limit.

2. Podcasts

Podcast sites are great places for readers to find short fiction. Escape Pod, The Drabblecast, Clarkesworld, and Pseudopod are all speculative fiction podcast markets. The great thing about podcasts of short fiction is that they’re the perfect “task-length”. You can listen to a complete short story podcast in the time it takes to wash the dishes, pull a few weeds from the garden, workout at the gym, or walk the dog.

3. Exploring a Theme

Anthologies often explore a theme. For instance, Danse Macabre: Close Encounters with the Reaper edited by Nancy Kilpatrick contains stories where death is a character and Urban Green Man edited by Janice Blaine and Adria Laycraft explores the mythical Green Man’s presence in urban settings.

4. The Multi-Flavour Joy

Every reader has a finite amount of dedicated reading time. Reading short fiction magazines or anthologies provides a reader with the opportunity to try out new authors without committing too much time to the task. Plus, it’s cheaper to try 20+ new authors in one anthology than it is to buy 20 novels. (Ultimately, we authors want to hook you into ALSO buying those 20 novels.)

5. Convenience

Magazines are convenient. You subscribe to one and then each issue shows up on a regular basis in your mailbox/email box. When the subscription nears the end, the publisher sends you a reminder to order again. The issues fit conveniently in your purse/pocket/tablet. Sometimes magazines are even lying conveniently on a table when you find yourself waiting in an office for an appointment.

 

So if you’re not sure whether to write short fiction, here’s a nudge to WRITE SOME! And if you haven’t read short fiction in a while, here’s another nudge to BUY SOME! You’ll feel more like a shark and less like a guppy.

Enjoy the power, but use it responsibly.

 

ELEMENTS: A Collection of Speculative Fiction is available now in Canada and April 30, 2014 in the USA from EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing.

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by Kate Danley

 

As part of the 47North Author Blog Swap I’m proud to have the charming, talented and vivacious Kate Danley drop by and have a chat about her process.

 

Although a writers’ playground is littered with dictionaries and words, sometimes sensory tools can help to keep projects focused.

I quit my job to write full-time in January 2013.  It is funny how, when I had a day full of demands, it was easy to know when to schedule my writing.  The only time I had free was 10PM-11PM?  That must be writing hour!  But when the whole day stretched before me, it was tough to figure out when to write, when to promote, when to run to the grocery store, and get to the gym.  It is easy for the days to pass in a blur of Facebook updates and Netflix binges.  Organizing my creativity became vital to my long-term success, especially when I was juggling several projects at once.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(This is my office.  Please ignore the ugly wires.  I might be organized, but I’m not THAT organized.  And, yes, treadmill desks are amazing and I recommend them to everyone.)

I moved my creativity out of my head and hard-drive and onto my walls, putting my projects in places that I could not ignore them.  It was actually something a fellow author shared with me many moons ago and it has turned into one of the most valuable motivational tools I have.

Every morning, I wake up and decide what my goals are.  I put them on a white board (which also includes the trips to the dry cleaner and birthday presents that need to be shipped) and cross them off as I meet them.

I once heard a financial guru state that we should place less emphasis on tracking sales (which we have no control over) and more emphasis on tracking our hustle (how much time do we devote to writing, to promotion, to research, etc.).  My monthly wall calendar is where I keep track of my long-term progression.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I note which projects I have decided to work on that day, and if I meet my goals, I get to color them in (I color code for each project).  If I don’t meet my goals, I don’t, even if I’ve worked on the project.  I only get rewarded if I see through the promise I made to myself that morning.  It makes me set realistic goals which I can meet.  The big circles are the deadlines I have set and met.  Many of my daily goals are identified by deciding upon a deadline and working backwards to see what I need to do in order to meet a due date.  I can tell at a glance which days I am slacking and which days I’m staying on task, and can start to look for patterns.

The next big motivational tool is a “book vision board”. Remember back in the day when The Secret was big and everyone was creating dream boards?  I started doing that with each of my books.  I cut out pictures that reminded me of my characters, artwork which felt inspirational, pictures of locations, etc.  A picture is worth a thousand words, and with ten pictures, I only have to come up with 40k more to fill in!  I have several of these boards hanging over my desk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The final thing I do is a bit of a Pavlovian dog trick.  I pick out a specific mug for each project.

There’s something about smelling and tasting the coffee, and feeling and seeing that specific mug in my hand which gives my brain the “Oh! We’re working on THIS project now” cue.  It is better than a bell for making my Muse begin to salivate.

I hope this is valuable!  I managed to complete nine major projects in 2013 and, due to contractual obligations, many of them I had to work on at the same time.  When there are that many stories swirling around, elbowing their way to the front for my attention, creativity management becomes important.  This has turned out to be the way I have been able to juggle them all.  Please feel free to take what works and throw away the rest!

__________________

USA Today bestselling author Kate Danley began her writing career with The Woodcutter (published by 47North). It was honored with the Garcia Award for the Best Fiction Book of the Year, the 1st Place Fantasy Book in the Reader Views Literary Awards, and was the 1st place winner of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy category in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Her other titles include Queen Mab, the Maggie MacKay: Magical Tracker series (optioned for film and television), From the Indie Side, and the O’Hare House Mysteries.

Her plays have been produced in New York, Los Angeles, and DC Metro area. Her screenplay Fairy Blood won 1st Place in the Breckenridge Festival of Film Screenwriting Competition in the Action/Adventure Category. Her projects The Playhouse, Dog Days, Sock Zombie, SuperPout, and Sports Scents can be seen in festivals and on the internet. She has over 300+ film, television, and theatre credits to her name, and specializes in sketch, improv,

stand-up, and Shakespeare. She trained in on-camera puppetry with Mr. Snuffleupagus and played the head of a 20-foot dinosaur on an NBC pilot.

She lost on Hollywood Squares.

 

Official Website: http://www.katedanley.com

Mailing List: http://eepurl.com/vcch1

Twitter:  @katedanley

Blog:  http://katedanley.blogspot.com

 

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by Joseph Brassey

For January I was paired up with the talented renaissance man, Joseph Brassey, for the 47North Author Blog Swap. I had written a piece on honesty in writing, and Joseph’s article on truth in writing is an interesting read. Enjoy.

 

The Truth is a beautiful thing. I mean that, without reservation of irony or any other little tonal tack-ons that people so often use when talking about important things. The Truth is multifaceted, as simple as it is complicated. It is deceptive. It is broad ranging, bigger than any one person can ever hope to see in its entirety. It is something nobody can ever claim to completely grasp by themselves.

Right? Right. Now for the other part: The Truth is something for which every storyteller must have only the utmost respect. This is weirdly complicated and frustratingly simple all at once. Mark touched on this when he wrote his piece about Honesty in writing, but I’m going somewhere a little different: I’m talking about those moments when something uncomfortable comes up in the work, a thing that feels true but tickles that fear in the back of the mind that such a thing given voice will drive away would-be readers. It is the same temptation that lies at the root of what causes us as young adults to dress ourselves to the expectations of our peers, disguising or struggling to erase our perceived faults to present a more palatable appearance.

There’s nothing innately wrong with presenting oneself well, mind you. I’m not advocating for bad hygiene, but when we write fiction, telling stories that are not technically factual, we have an obligation to present something with a truth at its core, and not to tell lies for the sake of acceptance. This shouldn’t manifest as a desire to antagonize, or at least I don’t think it should, but it does present itself to me as a willingness to say something even if you know it will make people – people you’d like to buy your books – angry.

Full disclosure is in order here: I’m a fairly contentious person. There’s a harmony that comes with conferring with like-minded individuals that for the longest time gave me a horrible case of the intolerables. I don’t like putting too many labels on it because they end up coming across in a self-aggrandizing way, and descriptors like “rebel” or “devil’s advocate” present a very different picture than do words like “Ornery” or “antagonistic.” Those are more honest. Seeing a theme, here?

When I say that a writer has an obligation to the Truth, I speak to the urge to paint – in their objective voice – something as other than what the creator knows it is. None of us can hope to see the entirety of the full picture. We’re short-lived, small-spanned consciousnesses piloting flesh-ships, each with our own lenses of life experience and priority hierarchies that permit us to see shades of the real. But what we see, we must tell. Excuses, justifications, these don’t serve anyone. Characters can use them, and people can and certainly will, but there’s an honesty as to what the writer knows is actually happening, the meat beneath the skin and hair of dialogue and description, that holds the reality the story reflects.

Somehow this has to be balanced with not falling into the trap of presuming to tell the reader what they should see when they delve into the work. That’s the strange, wonderful thing about text. Especially if the writer is honest and speaks the truth as best they know it, their words will yield a facet of which they were unaware when put in front of the nose of somebody whose life they’ve never known, nor imagined. Your work might hold a truth you’ve not come to imagine that may horrify you when seen by another as much as it will delight. This is the sorcery of fiction, and the magic of writing. This is the strength of Truth. If you shy away from what you see on your page, the work will read false, and falsehood will be evident to the people who see it. But with veracity, truths even you never glimpsed will appear to the people who read it, things they will take from it into their own lives, molding, shaping, transforming.

As far as any creator’s legacy can go, that’s not a bad one.

 

Joseph Brassey lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife, son, and two cats. In his spare time, he trains in, and teaches, medieval martial arts to members of the armed forces. He has lived on both sides of the continental United States and has worked everywhere from a local newspaper to the frameshop of a crafts store to the smoke-belching interior of a house-siding factory with questionable safety policies. His website and Blog-in-progress is JosephBrassey.com, and he can be found on Twitter and Facebook as well. Joseph’s books can be purchased from Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Brassey/e/B005TAZ8BW.

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By John Jackson Miller

In penning a guest post for my blog, Mark described how Indris, the protagonist of his Echoes of Empire series, belongs to a group fallen from glory due to their own hubris. This description touched close to home, as that’s a sort of situation I’ve thought quite a bit about, in both my licensed and original science fiction and fantasy prose.

I’m probably best known for my work with Star Wars, including this year’s bestseller Star Wars: Kenobi, which followed the Jedi Master’s first few weeks of exile on Tatooine. But I have written a number of other works in different parts of the Star Wars timeline, including the Knights of the Old Republic graphic novels — which gave me my first occasion to look at the how the hubris of the Jedi Order frequently gets it into trouble.

It’s a pretty big deal having powers beyond other mortals: the Jedi are obviously the superheroes of the Star Wars universe. Combat skills, persuasive powers, and the ability to see the future, too? “Sign me up,” we’d all likely say. But somehow, when the Jedi get together as an organization, their results are less than optimal. In my Knights of the Old Republic books, a faction of the Jedi order is so convinced of its ability to see the future that it risks a schism — and commits murder — in an attempt to prevent the rise of the Sith. Things don’t go quite their way, as you might expect — but the kicker is that they didn’t expect it. The same powers that convey visions can also blind.

And Kenobi is full of reminders of Jedi hubris, as Obi-Wan has to deal in its pages with the Jedi order’s colossal failure to see the danger of the Emperor, and his own failure to prepare Anakin Skywalker against the temptation of the dark side of the Force. Obi-Wan walks every day of his life with regret — which makes a perfect character for the western-like setting in the novel. Many westerns have the archetypical stranger wandering into town, puzzling over a hidden past: the Jedi’s hubris gives him cause.

Even my own science-fiction work from 47North, Overdraft: The Orion Offensive, takes on hubris of a similar kind — although here, the mysterious magical order is Wall Street, a place with its own arcane language and incantations. (Listen to the business channel on TV sometime — it’s like listening to alchemists talk to each other!) Jamie Sturm, the lead character of the book, is colossally sure he’s cast a financial spell (so to speak) that will net him billions — and his overconfidence nearly bankrupts his interstellar expedition. But the mercenaries with the organization choose not to go quietly into unemployment: they return to the Solar System and draft him into their service as a merchant, forcing him to get their money back, one dangerous planet at a time!

Wherever people with hidden and mysterious powers collude, there’s often failure due to hubris around some corner. And there’s often a story waiting somewhere after that!

 

John Jackson Miller is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Kenobi, Star Wars: Knight Errant, Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith—The Collected Stories, and fifteen Star Wars graphic novels, as well as Overdraft: The Orion Offensive and Star Trek – Titan: Absent Enemies , due out on Feb. 24. A comics industry historian and analyst, he has written for several franchises, including Conan, Iron Man, Indiana Jones, Mass Effect, and The Simpsons. Visit his website at http://www.farawaypress.com , follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jjmfaraway , and find him on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/johnjacksonmiller .

 

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