Year: 2018 (page 14 of 32)

August 1, 2018 / 4 Comments

Carrie Vaughn: Five Things I Learned Writing The Wild Dead

Mysteries and murder abound in the sequel to the Philip K. Dick Award–winning Bannerless

A century after environmental and economic collapse, the people of the Coast Road have rebuilt their own sort of civilization, striving not to make the mistakes their ancestors did. They strictly ration and manage resources, including the ability to have children. Enid of Haven is an investigator, who with her new partner, Teeg, is called on to mediate a dispute over an old building in a far-flung settlement at the edge of Coast Road territory. The investigators’ decision seems straightforward — and then the body of a young woman turns up in the nearby marshland. Almost more shocking than that, she’s not from the Coast Road, but from one of the outsider camps belonging to the nomads and wild folk who live outside the Coast Road communities. Now one of them is dead, and Enid wants to find out who killed her, even as Teeg argues that the murder isn’t their problem. In a dystopian future of isolated communities, can our moral sense survive the worst hard times?

Trust the Process

The Wild Dead will be my twenty-second published novel. I’ve written another five or six that haven’t been published, depending on how you count. And on every single one, I got to a point where I stalled out. The idea was trash, the plot was falling apart, none of the characters had any reasons to be doing anything, and the whole thing was about to disintegrate in a poof of bad intentions. Every single time, I figured it out. I learned to take a break. Walked away for a little while, worked on something else. Let my subconscious noodle with the problems. Sat down with a piece of paper and pen and outline what I had and where I needed to go. Made outlines within outlines, looking for connections I didn’t know were there. Brainstormed what could possibly happen next. Remembered that once I finished a rough draft, revising it into something good would be easier — it’s easier to revise a thing that actually exists. I’ve learned to remind myself: this has happened every single book I’ve written. Somehow, it always works out. Trust the process.

Listen When Your Subconscious Sends Messages

For a couple of months last summer, I only watched episodes of Poirot, starring David Suchet. This went beyond binging. I didn’t watch anything else. At first I only put it on in the background while doing other things. But then I began really looking forward to spending time with Monsieur Poirot. I wanted nothing more than to sit with him in his parlor, sipping aperitifs, and being very stylish. It was weird, it was crazy, this is not my normal TV viewing habit, but it was just so comforting, despite all the murder and really awful people doing horrible things to each other in very genteel fashions. Suchet’s Poirot calmed me. Then while revising the manuscript for The Wild Dead I got to the part toward the end where my investigator, Enid, gathers up all the concerned personages and explains to them exactly what happened, how that body ended up where it did, and who was responsible. I had been channeling Poirot the entire time. My brain was so saturated with that kind of story, it wanted nothing else, hence the several dozen hours of Poirot back to back. This was my subconscious poking me: Don’t forget, poke poke, you’re writing in a post-apocalyptic setting but this is structured like a classic murder mystery. Use that. Which brings me to:

Classics Are Classics for a Reason

Formula doesn’t have to be a straightjacket, and classic tropes don’t have to be clichés. Rather than resist the fact that I appeared to be writing a classic murder mystery, I embraced it. I could use the familiar structure to help guide readers through my unfamiliar setting. Mystery is one of the most popular genres (maybe the most popular on TV) because people really like the formula: following personable detectives and investigators as they solve complicated mysteries in very competent manners. This became the solid framework on which I built both Bannerless and The Wild Dead.

Sometimes Being Right Makes the Job Harder

I’ve spent a few years now writing stories set in the world of The Wild Dead, and I’ve thought a lot about what a realistic apocalypse might look like. What sort of event would have to happen to make this world that I’m depicting, the scrabbling and pastoral remnants of a society trying to learn from the previous society’s mistakes. I thought of a cascading failure of civilization. Climate change brings mega storms and rising sea levels, compounded with failing infrastructure because of bad policy, compounded with a Great Depression or worse level economic crash, and compound that with a 1918 Spanish flu level epidemic. The kind of apocalypse I imagined required literally everything going wrong. It seemed a little farfetched when I started. Then came 2017. A series of massive hurricanes, recovery from which is still ongoing. Massive fires near populated areas of California. All the same infrastructure problems we’ve had before, and an administration that seems hell bent on taking away all the institutional memory and fail safes we’ve had in place to make recovering from all this easier, or even possible. Add to this economic policies that seem designed to hasten a collapse rather than prevent one. Oh, and there are also plans to defund the CDC. You know, the organization that helps prevent epidemics. Remember that big ebola epidemic in the U.S. a few years ago? THAT’S RIGHT YOU DON’T. Because there wasn’t one. Thank you, finely honed bureaucratic institutions that handle things like people bringing dangerous contagious diseases into the country. Like a lot of writers, I had some issues getting work done last year. I got work done, but boy, it was rough watching my fanciful thought experiment basically play out in real-time during stretches of last year. So, I’m now writing a cautionary tale, I guess? Alrighty then.

Trust the Process

I put this here twice because this one’s a little different. There’s trusting the creative process, the actual work of writing and crafting and turning a bunch of ideas into a compelling narrative that people want to read. Then there’s the process of conducting a career as an author. Just like with writing the novel, there comes a point when you realize that it’s never going to get any easier. Each book launch is as nerve wracking as the one before. Promoting your work is just as mysterious. And then you do something like I did, and flip the table. After spending ten-plus years writing a successful urban fantasy series, I’ve gone in a totally new direction with post-apocalyptic murder mysteries. Some people think it’s crazy. “Branding!” they scream. “What about your loyal readership?!” they wail. Eh, I replied. I don’t know. I don’t know how any of this is going to turn out. But there’s an editor who wants to publish this new stuff, and no one’s suggested I use a pseudonym, so hey, let’s try it and see. Because there are second chances in this business. And third, and fourth, and more. George R.R. Martin was twenty-plus years into his career when he published A Game of Thrones. And that’s only one example. I have a writer friend who talks about publishing as gambling. You put chips on the table and take your chances. And as long as you’re working, as long as you’re producing new things, you always have chips to put on the table and make your bets. Sometimes you’ll win, sometimes you won’t — but you do get second chances. It’s easy to forget that. It was scary taking off in a new direction, but I had encouragement to go for it, and I knew, creatively, it was the right thing to do even though it was a challenge. Scratch that, it was the right thing to do because it was a challenge. I wrote the first draft of The Wild Dead before Bannerless came out, and it was something of an act of faith, because I didn’t know how the new book and new direction were going to do. (On the other hand, it’s probably good I did finish it so that however Bannerless was received wouldn’t impact the writing of its sequel.) Bannerless went on to win the Philip K. Dick Award for best science fiction paperback original in 2018. So, I guess it did just fine, and now The Wild Dead has a solid foundation to enter the world on. Have faith. Make your bets. Trust the process.

* * *

CARRIE VAUGHN is the best-selling author of the Kitty Norville series, the most recent of which is the fourteenth installment, Kitty Saves the World. She is also the author of several other books, including the superhero novels Dreams of the Golden Age and After the Golden Age, the young adult novels Voices of Dragons and Steel, and the fantasy novel Discord’s Apple. Her Hugo Award–nominated short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, from Lightspeed to Tor.com, as well as in George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards series. She lives in Colorado with a fluffy attack dog.

Carrie Vaughn: Website

The Wild Dead: Indiebound | Amazon

July 31, 2018 / 4 Comments

Five Things Kevin And Delilah Learned Writing Kill The Farm Boy

Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, a hero, the Chosen One, was born . . . and so begins every fairy tale ever told.

This is not that fairy tale.

There is a Chosen One, but he is unlike any One who has ever been Chosened.

And there is a faraway kingdom, but you have never been to a magical world quite like the land of Pell.

There, a plucky farm boy will find more than he’s bargained for on his quest to awaken the sleeping princess in her cursed tower. First there’s the Dark Lord, who wishes for the boy’s untimely death . . . and also very fine cheese. Then there’s a bard without a song in her heart but with a very adorable and fuzzy tail, an assassin who fears not the night but is terrified of chickens, and a mighty fighter more frightened of her sword than of her chain-mail bikini. This journey will lead to sinister umlauts, a trash-talking goat, the Dread Necromancer Steve, and a strange and wondrous journey to the most peculiar “happily ever after” that ever once-upon-a-timed.

“Ranks among the best of Christopher Moore and Terry Pratchett.”—Chuck Wendig

“When you put two authors of this high caliber together, expect fireworks. Or at least laughs. What a hoot!”—New York Times bestselling author Terry Brooks

If writing alone is a soliloquy, writing with a co-author is more like improv.

Kevin: Collaborating is turbo fun. We trade off drafting chapters and it feels a bit like an improvisational game, because while I might have a vague idea of what Delilah is going to do in a chapter plot-wise, thanks to our rough outline, I never know exactly what’s going to happen or what kind of cliffhanger she’s going to throw me at the end of it. And the jokes slay me too. I quickly wondered why I waited so long to try it.

Delilah: So true. Getting a chapter from Kevin feels a little like seeing my Easter basket for the first time as a kid. When I write a book by myself, I always leave plenty of room for organic plotting, but in order to write a book with a co-writer, it’s important to have a solid road map so someone doesn’t veer off into a sticky swamp. But there’s still plenty of room for creativity within that outline, and I love looking at each chapter’s objective and trying to figure out how to delight and amuse the reader—and Kevin—by doing something unexpected or flipping a trope.

You’ve got to pick the right writing partner—and make it legal.

Kevin: Trusting your partner is key, especially in the writing and editing bits, but also: Have your agents work out a collaboration agreement. Because I hate worrying about business stuff, and once the agreement is worked out, you have no worries. It’s something your agents will be able to whip up amongst themselves pretty easily and it mostly involves contingency plans for unlikely scenarios.

Delilah: There’s an interesting push and pull in the co-writing relationship as each person discovers what’s a deal breaker for them and what they can feel free to let the other person handle. That trust is key to knowing when to let go—and to trusting that when something is important to you, whether a legal issue or a character arc or just a joke, that the other person will respect that. I feel so fortunate to work with Kevin because he’s a master of his craft, a canny businessman, and a great friend. If either partner has too much ego or if the power or skill differential is too broad, I feel like it would be really hard to keep that balance of professional respect and individual artistic license. You want to pick someone you genuinely like, whose writing you like, and whose business practices are in line with yours, and it helps if they’re on the same level as you are so it’s an equal partnership.

You’ll get the best synergy in person—preferably with fine cocktails and Spam™.

Kevin: If you can, get the initial breakdown done in person. And by that I mean just jotting down the characters, what they want, and what’s in their way—that’s a plot breakdown. The brainstorming back and forth is going to be more vibrant if you’re in person instead of skyping. And where you do it can make a huge difference. We were breaking down No Country for Old Gnomes in New Orleans while we were there for a convention. The convention hotel had a griffin on their room key cards and we looked at it and said, “We should have a griffin in this book.” I honestly don’t think it would have occurred to us otherwise and now we have a gryphon on the cover. And then we went for a walk in the city, soaking up this amazing atmosphere and maybe a liter of rum drinks, and we wound up on Frenchman Street, enjoying live music in bar after bar and taking notes on ideas the whole time.

Delilah: Gotta admit it: Storybreaking a pun book with Kevin is one of life’s greatest joys, and not just because of the rum drinks. The key to hammering out a plot for us appears to be good food, great cocktails, a novel environment, and being as open and supportive as possible. Most of our plotting is just us taking turns, saying, “That’s a great idea! And what if also this? And that? And some more drinks? And spam musubi?” And then the other person says, “Hey, that’s great!” And then we giggle a lot. I can’t imagine our books would have the same vibrancy and creativity if we were soberly skyping at 2 in the afternoon like it was a business meeting. As it is, we’re maximizing our creativity through sensory enrichment and the application of flaming tiki drinks. We want to write fun books, and we want to have fun doing it.

Yes, Virginia, it’s still going to be hard sometimes.

Delilah: Sounds pretty dreamy, doesn’t it? Write a book with one of your best friends and get that sweet book cash for just half the work? But it’s still a book, and it still requires time on task, just with an extra helping of diplomacy and courtesy. Kevin and I each have our own individual publishing and event commitments, and we don’t want to let one another down on our co-written book, which means there are all-nighters and frantic weeks of 6,000 word days to catch up after a con. Sometimes—although rarely—we disagree on something in the book, and it becomes a super polite dance of trying to decide how to move forward in a way that feels right for both of us. Is it worth it? 100% yes! But you shouldn’t go into a co-writing experience expecting nothing but roses.

Kevin: Yeah! Roses can be cloying anyway, and the whole point of co-authoring is to combine powers. Syncing up to maximize our strengths not only takes hard work but the expectation that the mesh will require such work. If everything was perfect with a chapter I sent over, honestly, that’s when I’d start to doubt. If I didn’t see Delilah tweaking and refining my stuff and inserting delightful jokes I’d wonder if she read it. And because our writing processes in addition to our schedules are different, allowances obviously have to be made for workflow. The fact that Delilah is even capable of 6K-word days still boggles my mind when I write at a more plodding pace of 1-2K per day and constantly believe I’m running behind.

You’ve got to learn to say, “Why not?”

Delilah: So much of writing is about being open to possibility and not letting your brain say, “No, that would never work.” Kevin first pitched Kill the Farm Boy to me at an airport barbecue joint in the Dallas airport after a great signing. Three years later, here we are. At any point, we could’ve let conventional wisdom kill the project. Is the title too silly? Do people want a funny book? Will co-writing be too weird or difficult? Can we really do this in Fantasy? Can we really make that many jokes about elf boners? Instead of asking if we were allowed to do it or if it would sell, we just let ourselves have as much fun as possible. Any time I think a chapter might be too out there or wacky, I write it anyway and send it to Kevin, and most of the time, he digs it. That’s how books get made—you pick an idea that’s too crazy to work and just write the hell out of it in exactly the way that makes you feel the most alive.

Kevin: Yes. And because of the collaboration, we both feel safe writing some wacky stuff because we trust the other one to tell us if it works. And when it does—which is most of the time—it pushes us to take more creative risks. Delilah recently wrote a chapter for book three that was an extended punny riff on a particular body function that folks usually don’t discuss and I had never seen anything like it before. I sat there flabbergasted and giggling after reading it and wondered if I could do something like that. Why hadn’t I tried? I made my next chapter an extended riff on something else and Delilah loved it and couldn’t believe I went there. Well, normally—if I’d been writing solo—I wouldn’t have! So the collaboration has challenged me and forced me to grow as a writer while remaining incredibly fun. 14/10, would recommend doing that thing you’ve always wanted to do.

Find out more about Kill the Farm Boy or order the book at the Tales of Pell website.

And if you want to find out who you would be in the world of Pell, take the easy and non-data-grabby name generator quiz!

Kevin Hearne: Website | Twitter

Delilah S. Dawson: Website | Twitter

Kill The Farm Boy: Signed Copies from Worldbuilder | Indiebound | Amazon

July 30, 2018 / 5 Comments

Awkward Author Photo Contest Strikes Back: The Winner You Chose

And we have our You-Chosen Winner.

A reminder that this is the winner I picked — and this is the winner you picked.

That one is #10, and it gained an early, insurmountable lead in the voting that wouldn’t relent. And truly awkward, it is. It did, however, face some stuff competition between #18 and #9 (in second and third place, respectively).

Congrats to all.

Our two winners — please ping me at terribleminds at gmail so I can get you some SWEET SWEET PRIZES. Thanks all for participating, let’s get together and do this again sometimes. You bringing your A-Game — meaning, your Awkward-Game — with some awesomely uncomfortable authorial photos. You’re all super-weird. It’s wonderful. *applause*

July 30, 2018 / 5 Comments

Macro Monday Went Into The West, But Did Not Diminish

I HAVE RETURNED.

I have returned, in fact, from that place. Well, not just there — I bee-bopped around the Pacific Northwest with the family. Portland to the coast, then the coast to Seattle, with even a brief stop in the San Juans. It was lovely. The food is amazing. The sights range from “ooh” to “whoa” to “that’s so breathtaking I peed myself, for all the muscles in my body have gone slack in the revelation of the sublime.” I’ll pop some more photos at the bottom of this post, and also you can find the PNW photoset here — not it’s not robust yet, as I’m slowly processing and adding photos as I go.

It’s important to note that the photo at the fore of this post was taken with an iPhone X. Only tweaking I did was to the colors, using Lightroom. I took the DSLR, and also brought the new 100-400 lens, and only had that attached at the time of this shot — so I used the iPhone in the hopes I’d get a good image, and, well, there you go. Digital camera phones are increasingly bridging the gap between them and high-test photo equipment.

An example of one not taken with the iPhone, but rather, the DSLR:

Anyway, you get the idea.

Portland and Seattle are two very different, and very same, cities — they’re like family members. Portland is the scrappy younger sibling, an alternative artist, is really into weed and fancy sandwiches, doesn’t like to hold one job for any long period of time. Seattle is the older sibling, has a good job, interested in pop culture more than weird fringe shit, has mostly shed its free-spirited chaos and traded it for a little humility and grown-upedness, still dabbles in weed, because c’mon, way more techie, likes finer cuisine, etc., etc.

I really love the area.

Back now, in rangy, rabid Pennsyltucky.

Where it’s very humid. It was hot out in the PNW, maybe unseasonably so, but it was never really humid. Here it’s like walking through a sticky toffee.

What else is going on?

Hey, Darth Vader Annual #2 released, by yours truly, with sublime pencils by Leonard Kirk, inks by Scott Hanna and Walden Wong, Nolan Woodard on colors — they really made the issue sing, and I’m in awe of what they managed to do with my dumb words. You can find a review round-up here — I’m so glad people dug it. I know some didn’t dig my TFA adaptation as much, because that was really less of an adaptation and more of a translation — the job there wasn’t to tweak and add and find cool marginalia, but to take that film script and put it into comic book form.

So, it’s nice to see this is being well-received. Thanks, folks.

What’s weird is, for me, this is my only release left in 2018. (Well, there may be one other thing, but it’s secret and I can’t talk about it yet.) 2019 will be a big year — Vultures in January, Wanderers in July, plus some other stuff (like a seeecret comics project). But it’s weird for me to slow down, it’s feels… antithetical to how I normally do things? But that’s okay, too, as in the meantime I’ve got this brand new book to write, The Book of Accidents.

More as I know it.

(I’ll be announcing the winner to the Awkward Author Photo contest later today.)

Here, have some more photos.

BYEEEEEE.

July 15, 2018 / 5 Comments

Macro Monday Is Gone Fishin’

AHOY.

I’m outta here.

FOR GOOD.

Okay not really. I’m just traveling for the next mumble-mumble several days, so you won’t see me back with posts until sometime next week. In the meantime I will be cavorting around the Pacific Northwest, causing trouble and delivering shenanigans and doing a jig on your social norms and mores. Or something. Shut up.

In my stead, I have given you a flower.

That flower is a gayfeather. That is really its name.

At the bottom of the post is also a lovely, cuddly photo, in that it is a photo of a grass-carrying wasp cuddling a stung, paralyzed tree cricket as it levers the bug into a hole under a patio chair in order to feed the cricket to her WASP BABBIES.

Ain’t nature sweet?

Also, do not forget, this week is:

DARTH VADER, ANNUAL #2, by me and Leonard Kirk and with a Mike Deodato cover. It features Vader getting up to some REAL SHIT with Tarkin and Krennic and the nascent Death Star, y’all. You might get a little stardust in your eye if you’re not careful.

Have a great week, frandos.