Category: The Ramble (page 430 of 463)

Yammerings and Babblings

August 23, 2011 / 80 Comments

25 Things Writers Should Know About Social Media

1. The Devil’s Trident

Social media has three essential prongs of activity: broadcast, rebroadcast, conversation. This is true for everybody, not just writers, but it’s worth noting just the same. I say something or repeat something someone else said (broadcast/rebroadcast), and from that social seed-bed, conversation may arise.

2. Be The Best Version Of Yourself

Writers and other creative-types often seem to believe that they need to become someone different online, that they cannot be themselves lest they not find a publisher, not get work, not sell their book, not collect sexy groupies, etc. To that I say, bullshit! And cock-waffle! And piddling piss-wafers! Be yourself. That’s who we want. We just want the best version of you. Scrape the barnacles off. Sit up straight. Smile once in a while. But you can still be you. Uhh, unless “you” just so happen to be some kind of Nazi-sympathizing donkey-molester. In which case, please back slowly away from the social media.

3. Put “Brand” And “Platform” Out Of Your Fool Head

You are not a brand. Social media is not your platform. The world has enough brands. You are not a logo, a marketing agenda, a mouthpiece, a Spam-Bot. Approach social media not as a writer-specific tool (keyword: tool) catered only toward your penmonkey self and see it instead as a place where you can bring all the crazy and compelling facets of your personality to bear on ~~an unsuspecting populace~~ your audience. People want to follow other people. People don’t want to follow brands.

4. Communicate With Other Human Beings (And The Occasional Spam-Bot)

Put the “social” in “social media.” Social media needn’t be a one-way street. A real connection goes both ways. Talk to people. Chat. Converse. Discuss. Share ideas. Don’t be one of those writers who uses their social media channel as a bulletin board announcing naught but their next signing, book release, or $0.99 bowel movement. Don’t aim only to be heard but to open your ears, as well. (Oh, and I’m totally kidding about the Spam-Bots thing. Don’t talk to Spam-Bots. Eradicate them with extreme prejudice. Perform the “honey-pot” maneuver — draw them to you with keywords like “real estate” or “ipad” and then EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE with the vim and vigor of the Daleks.)

5. Guide Them Toward Your Sticky Embrace

Having a blog, website, or online space where you establish an authorial “base camp” is a great thing. It allows you to own your content, track stats, post long-form material, and be whatever it is you need it to be. I use this site for writing stuff, baby babble, recipes, and pagan Lithuanian pornography. Can’t see the porn? You haven’t unlocked the special content. Enter Konami code. Password is: “TheWhoreOfVilnius.”

6. Determine The Tools In Your Toolbox

Find different uses for different social media. Facebook is pretty light on writer-stuff for me. Google+ is good for longer-form discussions. Twitter is really where it’s at for me — it’s where I get the most conversation and connection. Then the blog is the central tentpole to the whole goddamn circus. Maybe you use Tumblr. Or some as-yet-unknown social network, like Wordhole or iPalaver or Friendhammer. Anything except LinkedIn. I mean, c’mon. LinkedIn is the scabby venereal disease of social media.

7. Breed Positivity And Share What You Love

Writers are content creators, and so it behooves us to share what we love. You’re generally better off showing positivity rather than sowing the seeds of negativity. For the most part, the Internet is a monster that thrives the rage of countless disaffected white people, so I don’t know that it does a writer good to be a part of that noise. Your audience cares more about what you’re into rather than what you’re not. After all, I don’t particularly care for a lot of things. Most things, really. If I spent all my time talking about them, I’d be little more than a septic social fountain spewing my bitter froth into the world.

8. Show The World You’re Not A Raging Bonerhead

The Internet is like hot dogs: it’s made of lips and assholes. A writer does well to set himself aside from all that and use social media to reveal that he is, indeed, not a giant bucket of non-contributing human syphilis

9. Kill Them With Kindness

Connection, not conflict. Communication, not combat. Don’t get into fights online. I mean, it’s one thing if you’re getting into an argument with a Nazi-sympathizing donkey-molester. Because, seriously? What an asshole. But nine times out of ten, getting into a snit-spat-tiff-miff-feud-fuss-or-fracas online doesn’t make you look like a shining prince of social media. It just makes you look cranky. Note the difference between “friendly, chummy disagreement” and “pissy Internet rumpus.” The former? Fine. The latter? Not so much.

10. Variety Is The Spice Melange Of Life

…and is essential to the creation of the sandworms, as well as the diet of the wandering Fremen. Wait, what? This isn’t Frank Herbert’s DUNE? Oh. Oh. Sorry! What I’m saying is, divvy your social media existence up. Don’t talk about any one thing. It may not be critical to chop everything up into neat percentages, but just vary the content of your broadcast. Ensure that you do more than share links. Contribute original thoughts. Add conversation. Say something. Just keep the commercials — i.e. self-promotion — to a necessary minimum.

11. Be An Escort, Not A Whore

Speaking of self-promo… the reality of the modern writer’s existence is that self-promotion is inescapable. Whether you’re published by the Big Six or published or by your buddy Steve out of his mother’s basement, you’re going to have to serve up some self-promo. Social media is your online channel for this. It has to be. And it isn’t a dirty word — if I follow a writer, I want to know that their new book is out because I may have missed that news. I just don’t want to hear it 72 times a day. And there’s the key to self-promotion — like with all things (sodomy, gin, reality TV), everything in moderation.

12. Just Say No To Quid Pro Quo

Controversial notion: do not re-share something purely as a favor to someone else. I know — it’s an easy favor to make. “You shared my link, now I share your link. In this way, we tickle each other’s pink parts.” The thing is, if one is to assume you are a writer to trust, then those who listen to your social media broadcasts want to know that the information you share is, in a way, pure. If they believe that the things you’re saying are motivated only by mutual social media masturbation, then you’ve gone and ruined that. Share things you think your audience wants to hear or things you believe are worth sharing. If all you’re doing is echoing links endlessly, what separates you from just another Spam-Bot?

13. You Don’t Build Audience, You Earn It

Lots of writers look at their follower tallies like they’re experience points in a role-playing game, like with every MilliWheaton earned you hear a “ding” and then gain +4 against 4chan or a new Save Versus PublishAmerica roll. Your audience isn’t just a number. It’s a whole bunch of actual human beings. Humans who don’t just want to be sold stuff or yelled at but who want to interact and be amused and enlightened — and who want to amuse and enlighten in turn. Earn your audience, don’t build it. They’re not dollar signs. They’re not credit you can spend buying vintage porn on eBay.

14. Followers Are Not Fans

It’s easy to believe that, pound for pound, those who follow you and read your broadcasts and interact with you online are automatically the same people who are going to buy your books, pimp your stuff, and become super-fans. Bzzt. Wrongo. A retweet or Facebook “like” or “Re-G” on Google+ (that’s what I’m calling the re-share feature over there) is free. The investment to procure your wordsmithy is a whole different level of commitment. That said, these people are all potential fans. It’s your job to make that happen.

15. As A Storytelling Medium

Use social media to tell stories. Real stories or fictional ones. Hey, if my three-month-old baby has an epic diaper-breach and manages to defy gravity and shit up his own back and into his hair, I’m gonna tell you about it. Talk about your life. Or use Twitter to write micro-fiction. Or empower your blog to experiment with telling old stories in new ways. Experiment! Do what you’re bred to do: write.

16. My God, It’s Full Of Words

Social media is, as noted, full of words. Words that must be written. You’re a writer, so tackle social media — from Tweets to Blog Posts to Friendhammer Epistles — with all the grace and aplomb you would give to any of your writing. In other words, let social media demonstrate your abilities as a writer. Use punctuation. Capitalize. Write well. Learn to engage in brief spaces. This will help you be a better writer.

17. The Self-Correcting Hive-Mind

Social media self-corrects. Many find this uncomfortable, but it’s an excellent memetic Darwinism. If I tweet about, say, my three-month-old’s poosplosion, inevitably I’m going to come across people who don’t want to hear about that. Eventually they may say, “This guy talks a lot about poop,” or “Boy, he sure says ‘fuck’ a lot,” and then they stop following me on Twitter or stop coming here to terribleminds. It’s regrettable, but that’s the nature of life. Social media is a frequency that people can tune into or turn away from. That’s normal. Let that happen. Don’t get mad at it. Embrace that kind of course-correction.

18. Dip Your Ladle Into The Brain Broth Of Social Media

Writers need to know things. So ask those in your social media world. Say, “I need a good book on wombat husbandry for a novel I’m writing,” or, “Can anyone recommend good writing music?” or, “If I were to write a stage play based on the Twitter stream of Kanye West, would anybody beta-read it for me?” Don’t be afraid to ask for things. And don’t be afraid to answer when others ask. Again: communicate.

19. The Water-Cooler For Writers

I believe it was game designer and writer Jeff Tidball who said he sees Twitter as a water-cooler for stay-at-home freelancers, and I think he nailed it. Writers don’t have the ability to hover around a water-cooler and talk to other writers most times, and so social media fills that function. It’s a great way to connect with other penmonkeys and creative-types and engage, interact and amuse. It’s important for writers to know other writers. It’s how we get book blurbs or find out what bottle of Bourbon we should try. Used to be you had to travel to conventions and conferences to do it. Now you can do it at home. Without pants.

20. Gaze Into The Whirring Gears Of Industry Machinery

You can use social media to do more than connect with writers. The entire industry is out there. So go and watch. And then partake. Follow agents. Ping publishers. You can watch trends unfold and see what agents are looking for (or what mistakes people are making in their queries). It’s a great place to interact with the industry as a person-who-is-a-writer, not merely a writer-shopping-a-product. Though, I must pass along a critical warning: gazing too long into the publishing industry is like dropping a fistful of acid and then staring into a backed-up toilet for days. You will starve and go mad.

21. Behold Zen Serendipity

Open yourself to the social media experience. Don’t be one of those walled-garden scrod-boats who follows like, 10 people but has 10,000 followers. Put your ear to the ground like Tonto. Listen to shit. Pay attention. Let the sweet serendipity and weird waves of connection wash over you. People are each their own little rabbit-hole: grab a thread and follow it down into the dark, and just as you might use Pandora to discover new music or Amazon to discover new books, use social media to discover new people. Without people and their thoughts and their stories, writers are just lonely weirdos screaming into an empty closet.

22. Appreciate Your Audience

Your audience follows you and rebroadcasts you and that’s a very nice thing. So appreciate them. Interact with them. Respond to them. I don’t mean to say, act as God from on-high acknowledging the little people — I mean, you’re them and they’re you and social media is a powerful equalizer. Appreciate that they take the time to listen to your nonsense day-in and day-out. That’s pretty cool of them, innit?

23. Crucify Gurus And Stab Them With Your Mighty Spears

Anybody who wants to charge you a bunch of money to “optimize” your “social media skills” is selling fool’s gold. This stuff isn’t hard. It ain’t fucking math. At its core, social media is really, “Talk to people, and try not to be a dick.” That’s true for writers as it is for everybody else.

24. Go Old-School

Every once in a while you need to unplug and embrace some old-school social media: go outside and talk to people. Go to a bar, a book signing, a game store, whatever. Engage with fleshy 3-D meatbags!

25. Remember That You Need To Escape Its Gravity

In the end, social media has uses for the writer. But it also runs the risk of becoming the Sarlacc Pit: a giant evil desert vagina that draws you in with its tentacle porn and slowly digests you over the course of many millennia, not allowing you to make any progress on that screenplay you’ve been writing for the last 16 years. Your priority is to write stories, not to fritter away hours on Facebook or dick around on Adult Slutfinder or pretend like LinkedIn is anything but a giant digital boat anchor. The most important thing a writer should know about social media is that it is not the crux of the penmonkey’s existence. What matters most of all is that you write great stories. So what are you doing hanging around here?

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

August 22, 2011 / 19 Comments

Please Accept These Penmonkey Announcements

Announcements incoming. Please assume the “announcement acceptance position,” which is bent over at the waist, head between your knees, fingers and thumbs gently milking your nipples while you hum.

Excitement Over The Incitement

The current count of the PENMONKEY INCITEMENT PROGRAM jumped to 238/1000.

As you may know, that means some incitement achievements have been — ding! — unlocked.

Because at 200, I will send out:

A postcard.

A t-shirt.

And someone gets an edit of their fiction.

I will pick these names tomorrow. As always, I will note that if you want in on the Incitement Program, you have to have to have to email me proof of your purchase of COAFPM.

You can email me at terribleminds [at] gmail [dot] com.

That said, if you procured the PDF version… then I already have your name and address.

If you need more details on the Incitement Program (including how to win a free Kindle), then here you go.

I will pick the next batch of ~~victims~~ winners tomorrow morning. You will find those winners in the comment section of this post and edited into the post itself. So keep your grapes peeled.

EDIT:

Drum roll please. The winners?

THE PENMONKEY EDIT: Nick Olivo!

THE T-SHIRT: Michael Rasmussen!

THE POSTCARD: Shannon Sofian!

I’ll be contacting each of you in turn!

Free Copy Of 250 Things

You’ve got till the close of Monday (i.e. went the clock strikes midnight on Tuesday, Eastern Standard Time) to get in on the other COAFPM promotion, which is, if you buy a copy of COAFPM and tell me about it, I’ll send you a free PDF copy of 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING. As above, if you bought the PDF, you don’t need to do anything, but Amazon/B&N means you need to email me your proof-of-sale to terribleminds [at] gmail [dot] com.

Diggit?

Duggit?

Good!

The Infection Rate

I don’t know if you like hearing about sales numbers or not, but here goes.

COAFPM is at 566 sales. 250 THINGS just hit 900 sales. And IRREGULAR CREATURES is at 744 sales.

If you’re in the group of those who have been, erm, infected by my e-books, then I graciously clink my glass against yours and grab the back of your head and press our foreheads together like we’re two old drunken Irish cops who just lost our third brother in the force to a borked drug bust. We breathe loudly through our noses, then part, then slam a shot, then curse the mayor’s office for not giving the dept the support it needs.

Or something.

I could, however, use a little more from you, if you’re willing to lend an ear.

First, I am always pleased when you tell other people: HEY YOU THIS IS NEAT STUFF. And then you hold them down and inject the Wendigo Virus (v3.0) into their asscheek.

Second, those three e-books of mine could always use more reviews at Amazon from you fine, fine people. Hell, you wanna leave a one-star review, leave one like “Linda” did for 250 THINGS:

“If this author actually had anything helpful to say, it was impossible to find. The book is a conglomeration of abusive statements, excessive swearing, arrogant side-tracking and blatant lack of any sense of how to communicate ideas. Definitely not worth the 99 cents, and since I cannot get a refund, I am hoping this review will save others their hard earned money.”

From her perspective, that’s a bad review. But hey, you ask me, it sells the book. Excessive swearing? Abusive statements? Arrogance? Lack of sense? Sold, lady. Sold.

SFX

Thanks to mighty mate Aaron Dembski-Bowden, COAFPM gets a mention in this month’s SFX Magazine (thanks too to Jason Arnopp for pointing this out). I hope to pin down both of these gentleman (get your mind out of the gutter) and force them both to submit to an interview here soon.

I also may have my own little interview in SFX soon. More on that as I know it.

The Bloggery Beseechment Initiative

Worth asking again: what do you want to see here at the blog? What topics do you want covered, writing and non-writing alike? What works? What doesn’t? Be bold, be honest. Speak your mind.

Are you liking the Thursday interviews and guest posts? I think I’m actually going to close up shop on the guest posts and stick only to interviews, but I’m accepting your thoughts into that matter.

Further, if you’re an accomplished storyteller of some ilk who would like to submit to terribleminds for “processing” — er, I mean, an interview — please hit me up soon as you’d like. I’m gearing up toward getting the next batch of interviews together, so get in while the getting’s good.

Finally, A Tease

…coming soon.

August 22, 2011 / 9 Comments

The Writer Is “In”

I’m your Huckleberry.

My writing projects over the summer are wrapping up. Which means it’s time to turn my gaze toward new writing projects for fall and winter. I have leads and am doing the standard, “scaring up work by shaking the weeds,” but I figured it couldn’t hurt to dance over here and announce my intentions loudly. With a megaphone. And a guilt-inducing picture of my adorable baby who, without your writing jobs, will be forced to live on whatever bugs I can scrounge up from our front yard.

Put differently: I’m open for business.

My lance is again free. Writing work, ahoy.

As you may know, I can and will write just about anything. Film. TV. Short fiction. Long fiction. Pen and paper game. Video games. Transmedia endeavors. Diner placemats. Angry letters to ex-lovers.

So, the call is out there. Spread it around like warm jam if you feel so inclined.

If you have work or a lead on work, I would appreciate your consideration.

You can hit me via the contact form on this page.

Or you can reach me at chuckwendig [at] terribleminds [dot] com.

My thanks.

August 19, 2011 / 60 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: The Sub-Genre Tango, Part II

This past week’s Frankie Bill-themed challenge — “Must Love Guns” — is ready for your perusing.

It’s time again to smash a bunch of genres together and see what we get. Had fun last time. Will have fun this time. If I’m not having fun this time, I’m going to disintegrate one of you with my orbital laser.

Oh, stop. I don’t really own an orbital laser.

I lease it from a bunch of high-tech Somali pirates.

Anyway.

You will pick two genres from this list of sub-genres I give you. You will mash up those two genres into a piece of flash fiction, ~1000 words long. Easy like Sunday morning.

Here, then, is the list:

Southern Gothic

Cyberpunk

Sword & Sorcery

Femslash

Black Comedy

Picaresque

So, will we see Picaresque Femslash? Southern Gothic Cyberpunk? A Black Comedy S&S tale?

Mix and match, kids.

I’ll offer a prize yet again — I will do a critique and edit of up to 3000 words of your work. A slice of a novel, a short story, whatever. I’ll give it a look-see and add my comments.

That’s what’s on the table.

You’ve got a week. Friday the 26th by noon EST.

You know the drill.

Start dancing that tango.

August 18, 2011 / 14 Comments

Anne Lyle: The Terribleminds Interview

It’s time again to give the mic to another wonderful writer — this time, Anne Lyle, writer of historical fantasy and Angry Robot author — and submit her brain for processing at the Terribleminds Institute For Penmonkey Dissection. You’re going to want to keep a keen eye on Anne, and you can do so at Twitter (@AnneLyle) or her website: AnneLyle-dot-com. (Er, by the way, that image is not Anne Lyle. That’s Mal Catlyn, the star of Anne’s upcoming fantasy series.)

This is a blog about writing and storytelling, so before we do anything else, I’d like you to tell me – and, of course, the fine miscreants and deviants that read this site – a story. As short or long as you care to make it, as true or false as you see it.

I can’t write fiction on the spur of the moment – I hate writers’ workshops for that reason. I would flunk Clarion, or have a nervous breakdown. You want a story, go to my website. There’s a free short story there (only one thousand words), previously published in an anthology to celebrate Darwin’s bicentennial. Me, I have a novel to write…

BZZT. Wrong answer! You’re not getting out of telling us a story. We’ll totally check out that story at your site (because it’s worth checking out), but I ask again: tell us a story. Doesn’t have to be fiction. Doesn’t have to be long.

OK, non-fiction I can manage.

When I was 19, my boyfriend and I went on holiday to Greece, as many students do. We camped on a beach on one of the Cyclades (I think it was Mylopotas, on Ios), and one morning we were shaking out our sleeping bags when I rubbed my eye and my contact lens fell out. Disaster! I’m very short-sighted, and I didn’t have any glasses with me, so I was faced with the prospect of squinting my way around the rest of the islands.

As we knelt sifting desperately through the sand, I heard a jingling sound. I looked up, and my heart sank. Coming towards us along the beach was a herd of goats, followed by the goatherd. All we could do was stand there whilst two or three dozen goats trotted across the area we’d been searching. Understandably we gave up at that point.

My boyfriend suggested we go for a walk along the coast, and we did so. We even took our camping stove and stopped for a cup of instant coffee. Eventually we returned to our camping spot. Still annoyed at this serious inconvenience to my enjoyment of the trip, I lay on my side and sifted idly through the sand – with no success, of course.

A few minutes later, my boyfriend tapped me on the shoulder. “Look what I’ve found!” he said. Yep, it was my lost contact lens, only slightly the worse for its adventure.

Hand on heart, that’s God’s honest truth. Since I’m an atheist, maybe that doesn’t mean much. Still true, though.

How would you describe your writing or storytelling style?

I’d describe my novels as fantasy noir meets fantasy-of-manners: down-to-earth and gritty (but never gruesome), laced with dry wit and a dash of romance, in the broadest sense of the word. I make no pretentions to literary greatness (though I love playing with the English language); mostly I want my readers to be so enthralled they can’t put the book down!

What’s awesome about being a writer/storyteller? And: what sucks about it?

What’s awesome is hearing that someone you’ve never met stayed up all night reading your book. What sucks is waiting for a yes/no from agents, editors, etc. It’s up there with being chained to a mountainside having your liver pecked out by vultures every day. Seriously.

Care to describe your path to publication? Everybody’s got their own way through that tangled jungle, and wondering if you have any unique insight to share.

Like most writers, I’ve been messing around with stories as long as I can remember, but you know how it is: career and/or family happen along, and you tell yourself there’s plenty of time…then suddenly you look back and realise you’re no closer to realising your dream than you were a decade ago. That happened to me about nine years ago. Hadn’t finished a single novel; had written and submitted maybe one short story (not my thing, as I said above). That was when I vowed I would not be in the same position in another ten years’ time. I was going to finish at least one novel, send it out and, gods willing, get it published.

Of course RL never lets up, so it was 2006 before I made any real headway. I did NaNoWriMo for the first time, and it was just what I needed to give me a kick up the backside. I’d been a pantser until then, but NaNoWriMo forced me to, if not outline, at least to brainstorm lots of scene ideas that formed something resembling a plot, because I was terrified to the soles of my writerly boots of running out of ideas, running out of steam, facing the Big F. FAILURE.

I made my 50k, and in the New Year I started revising. And continued revising. And did NaNoWriMo again. And carried on revising that first novel. In 2008 I did a workshop at the Winchester Writers’ Conference with Juliet E McKenna, and after critiquing a chapter of my work she recommended I start attending conventions in order to network. I’d never thought of going to a science fiction convention, to be honest – I thought they were full of guys dressed as Klingons talking about their computers, and frankly I get enough geekdom in my day-job! However I took her advice and started with NewCon 4, a small convention in nearby Northampton. I had a great time, and not a single cosplayer in sight! (No offence to cosplayers – I’m a former tabletop/live action RPGer myself.)

The following year I went to FantasyCon for the first time, and also signed up for Holly Lisle’s online course “How To Revise Your Novel” – because my 2006 manuscript had been part-revised so many times it looked like an Igor from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. Time was running out on my original goal, so I set myself a hard deadline: that I would have my novel finished, polished and on submission by mid-September, in time for FantasyCon 2010, so that I could enjoy the convention guilt-free. I made it, sending out my first queries to agents the week before the con.

On the very first evening, I strolled into the bar and stopped to talk to fellow Cambridge-based writer Ian Whates, and he introduced me to Marc Gascoigne of Angry Robot Books, saying they were looking for new writers. At that point, I was of course aware of Angry Robot, but since I was focusing on agents initially, I hadn’t researched them in detail. I chatted to Marc over a drink (a stiff whisky for Dutch courage, as I recall), pitched my book, and he asked for chapters. After the convention I poked around on the internet and was really excited by what I found. I was aware that publishing was going through massive changes, but these guys really seemed to be taking it in their stride. They were, and still are, innovative and passionate about genre fiction, and to say I was keen to work with them would be the understatement of the decade.

About a month later I got an email from Marc to say that he and Lee really liked my work but thought the book needed more magic. To be honest I had expected as much: I’m not terribly interested in writing wizards-with-fireballs fantasy, so I deliberately dialled it back to see how little I could get away with. Not that little, apparently! Anyway, we bounced some ideas back and forth – Marc is a great sounding-board – and eventually came up with something we both felt excited about. In January this year I sent them the full manuscript plus two synopses, and within three weeks I had an offer on the table.

I had also continued querying in the meantime and, long story short, ended up going to John Berlyne at Zeno to ask if he’d like to negotiate the contract. John already represented a couple of other Angry Robot authors, and he also seemed to really “get” my work, so I felt he was the ideal person for the job.

In some respects I’ve been extraordinary lucky: selling a first novel within six months of submission, to a great publisher via my choice of agent, is a long way from the norm. The moral of the tale, though, is that you make your own luck. If I hadn’t set myself that deadline and been ready to pitch to Angry Robot at a moment’s notice, I wouldn’t have been able to take that opportunity and run with it. And of course you still need a damned good book!

Deliver unto us a single-serving dollop of writing o advice that you yourself follow as a critical tip without which you might starve and die atop a glacier:

“To make a silk purse, first you need a sow’s ear*.” In other words, get on and write that first horrible, crappy draft — because how else can you edit it into something fit for publication?

(* David Michael Kaplan, in “Rewriting: A Creative Approach to Writing Fiction”)

Should authors feel constrained by genre or should it be freeing? Explain. And show your work. And juggle these chainsaws. Okay, not so much with the chainsaws.

“Genre” has two different meanings (IMHO). Firstly, there’s the one I think you mean in your question: the content of the story. Does it have SF elements? Fantasy? Mystery? Historical? Or is it some kind of crazy mashup – WTF, as Angry Robot like to call it.

Secondly there’s the marketing category, which boils down to “what the reader is looking for”. A romance reader is looking for a very different reading experience to a fan of epic fantasy – one wants to vicariously enjoy the sensation of falling in love, the other wants to escape into an imaginary world – so a book that includes both romance and fantasy gets shelved depending upon which elements dominate and therefore which readers’ tastes it will appeal to the most. If the main plot is a romance and it just happens to be set in a fantasy world, then it’s probably going to be classified as a romance. If two of the main characters in a heroic quest fall in love as a subplot, it’ll be shelved with the fantasy books.

Fiction has always mixed things up a bit – romance, for instance, gets everywhere! – but it’s becoming increasingly common as readers get bored with the formulae that ruled mid-20th century publishing. They want life in all its messy glorious diversity, and writers can take advantage of that to breathe new life into old clichés. Hence the proliferation of new sub-genres: paranormal romance, steampunk, fantasy noir. It’s also far easier in ebook stores to place books in multiple genres if there really is crossover potential.

I think, though, that it’s the agent’s and editor’s job to define the second type of genre – who are they going to sell this book to? Of course the writer must be aware of the market too, but first and foremost you have to write what you love and throw in all the things that move you – and only then worry about marketing categories. Besides, what’s hot now may be old news by the time you’ve written a novel good enough to interest an agent, so aiming at the current market is rarely a good strategy for unpublished writers. It’s different, of course, for established pros, who have all the contacts in place and may be able to knock out a book in a year or less.

As for my own work… The fantasy novels I grew up on were mainly the traditional quest variety, but I also enjoy SF, historical crime, classics (Jane Austen and earlier), and in TV and films, swashbucklers, 1930s noir, romantic comedies…and all of those influences make their way into my writing. Hence I sometimes describe the Night’s Masque books as “alternate history fantasy rom-com spy thrillers” 🙂

Favorite word?

Yes. (As in, from an agent or editor!)

And then, the follow up: Favorite curse word?

Hmm, difficult. We Brits tend to swear a lot, so it’s hard to pick a favourite. I think maybe “bollocks”. It’s forceful, but mild enough to use in any but the most polite of company. Plus my husband’s favourite curse when he’s really pissed off is “bollocking bollocky bollocks”, which always cracks me up!

Explain: “Bollocks” is bad, but “Dog’s Bollocks” is good? Do I have that right? Why are dog bollocks — which I believe are a canine’s testicles? — a good thing?

That’s correct. Dogs’ bollocks must be good – otherwise why would they constantly be sniffing each others’ and licking their own? [cdw: best explanation ever.]

Favorite alcoholic beverage? (If cocktail: provide recipe. If you don’t drink alcohol, fine, fine, a non-alcoholic beverage will do.)

I think you know this one already! G&T, made with Bombay Sapphire gin and Fevertree tonic. Wedge of lime optional.

Recommend a book, comic book, film, game: something with great story. Go!

The film “District 9.” I love the fact that it’s both an edge-of-your-seat actionfest and a moving character story that has a lot to say about people. That’s something I aspire to in my own work.

Where are my pants?

Underneath your trousers, I hope!

Got anything to pimp? Now’s the time!

My fantasy novel “The Alchemist of Souls”, comes out from Angry Robot Books early next year. The setting is an alternate history 16th century – when Europeans went to the New World, they found non-humans (dubbed “skraylings” by their earliest discoverers, the Vikings) living along the eastern coast of North America in peaceful alliance with the native humans. The skraylings have both magic and a natural resistance to many human diseases, which has made conquest rather less easy than in our world.

The story takes place in London in the summer of 1593. Swordsman Mal Catlyn is plucked almost literally from the gutter to act as bodyguard to a skrayling ambassador to England, but protecting this foreign dignitary from assassins turns out to be the least of his problems. Betrayed by his friends and befriended by those he once considered enemies, Mal finds himself caught in the middle of a conflict between humans and skraylings that could cost him and his twin brother their lives–and maybe their souls.

It’s not all gritty and doom-laden, however! Much of the book is set in the seedy underworld of the Elizabethan theatre, and I’ve had a lot of fun with that, and particularly with taking the Shakespearean clichés – identical twins, girls disguised as boys, mistaken identity – and putting my own spin on them. Issues of gender and identity fascinate me, and the Elizabethan era is a great setting in which to explore that.

“The Alchemist of Souls” is due out March 27, 2012 in the US, and a few days later in the UK, and is now available to pre-order from all good bookstores. Of course there will be ebooks versions as well as the paperback, and probably an audiobook eventually. Visit www.nightsmasque.com for more information!

What’s next after “The Alchemist Of Souls?”

I’m contracted to Angry Robot to write three novels in the Night’s Masque series – yep, the dreaded fantasy trilogy. Way back in 2006 I planned this first book as a standalone, but during revisions the characters blossomed and there was no way I could cover their stories in a single volume.

So, I’m currently writing the sequel, “The Merchant of Dreams”, which will be out in winter 2012/3, with the third (as yet untitled) instalment about eight or nine months after that. Although each book stands alone in terms of the challenges the heroes face and overcome, the three books do form an arc, so whilst I’m writing one book I’m planning the next – it makes it easier to foreshadow things (oops, giving away trade secrets there!).

After that, I don’t know. I have another fantasy project on the backburner, but there’s also the possibility of more stories set in the Night’s Masque world, maybe in the Americas or in Europe in a later era. So many ideas, so little time…

August 17, 2011 / 32 Comments

The Life Cycle Of A Novel

Were you to take a freeze frame snapshot of my current writerly existence, you would find a still image of much juggling. No, not bowling pins, chainsaws, and rat terriers but rather a flurry of writing projects — and, as it turns out, a goodly portion of those projects are in fact novels.

BLACKBIRDS is at the publisher. I just finished the first draft of something with a codename POPCORN. I’m in the midst of doing a final editing pass on DOUBLE DEAD. I’ve got word count down on MOCKINGBIRD. I’ve got a bucket of notes on a little something-something called THE BLUE BLAZES. I’ve got the first novella in my Atlanta Burns series done with the second in the conception phase.

All this fails to mention the dozen-plus novels existing across various outlines and synopses.

Fuck turtles.

It’s novels, all the way down.

And so I thought, for those of you looking to write novels, that this was a good place to pause and have a look around. Let us gander at the wondrous miracle that is the birth and life of the common novel.

1. Crash Of Cymbals

An idea falls from the sky. A burning nugget of possibility tumbling out of the bleak black nowhere like a meteor. It slams into your brain. “A goblin love story! Wacky hijinks with two space detectives! The presidential campaign and political ambitions of the common Corsican nuthatch!” The idea blooms swift, like a rose in super-fast-forward. “This will be my opus,” you think. “A big advance. Book awards. Respect.”

2. Sinister Plotting

You plot and scheme to whatever level grants you solace. Maybe you write a 400-page “story bible” for a 350-page novel, a treatment so thick you could bludgeon a Cape buffalo with its weight. Maybe you just write a single index card in thick black Sharpie featuring some cryptic phrase that only makes sense to you as the storyteller: “CHRISTMAS SKELETON FAILS THE LSAT.” Hell, maybe it’s all in your head.

3. The Cold Vacuum Of Space

The blank page. Tabula rasa. Endless possibility. A million-billion ways to jump with the first sentence, first paragraph, first page. A finger hovers over the keyboard; it swiftly retracts as if stung. No. Yes? No. It’s like standing on the wing of an airplane in mid-flight. The wind. The empty air.

4. Hyperventilating

Panic attack. “Oh, Christ, I can’t do this. What do I do? The first page has to grab them. It has to grab them by pubes and perineum. The first sentence alone has to fucking sing. I don’t know what to do. What to say. I can’t feel my legs. Am I dying? Is it hot in here? Cold? My lips are numb. I can feel my teeth. Is this a palsy? Did I have a stroke? OH GOD WHAT IF I FUCK THIS PAGE UP.” Cue lots of sobbing and twitching.

5. The Eagle Has Landed

Swift is the realization that the first page doesn’t have to be perfect; it merely has to be functional. And suddenly, it’s like uncorking a bottle. A bottle which contained a rambunctious demon. Time to write.

6. The Tango Of Mirth And Shame

Day by day, a roller coaster. A whirling dance. Some days it’s 4,000 words that unmoors from your heart and soul the way a glacial shelf will suddenly shudder, crack and fall. Other days you barely carve off 1,000 words, and each word feels like a tooth ripped from the jaws of a snarling poodle/alligator hybrid (new on SyFy, THE GATORDOODLE). Some days you’re high on your own stink, huffing your word-fumes in a brown paper bag. Other days all you get is a swirling hate vortex living in the space between your heart and your gut, threatening to eat both. On Tuesday you’re king of the castle. On Wednesday you’re a fraud and a fool who will be found out. This way, that way, this way, that way…

7. Lost In The Woods

Late middle of the book. Everything’s come undone. You feel unfettered. You’re a lone pair of underpants hanging on the line, flapping in the wind. Where to go next? Does any of this make sense? It’s all coming apart. You’ve no sense of things. No grasp of placement. The character seem like strangers. The plot seems foolish. You can’t find the thread, can’t see the throughline. Is this a swamp? Where are your pants?

8. The Nattering Of Goblins And Crows

A chorus of goblins and their crow-faced consorts stand just behind you, whispering new ideas in your ear. They smell your confusion. “Don’t write that,” they say. “Write this.” And they parade before you a cackling Conga line of shiny new novels. It’s a ruse. A trap. They’re the sirens drawing you away from your current work and toward the crushing rocks of ruined productivity.

9. Beethoven’s Ode To Joy

You see the light. You find the path. You karate-kick the sirens in the face, stab the goblins, shoo their crows — you’ve found your way. Possibility and potential once more reveal themselves. Churn forward.

10. The Water Breaks, The Baby Is Coming

Writing the ending is you, duct-taped to a mining cart as it speeds down through the underdark, faster, faster, you can’t stop it now if you wanted to, it is what it is, the ending shall be what the ending shall be, you’ve lined up all the dominoes, they fall as they must, the hand-brake is broken, you emerge. The ending is written. The manuscript broadcasts its inchoate existence to the world.

11. Bliss

Oh my God. It’s done. It’s done. Ha ha! Ha ha ha! HA HA HA HA HA! Eeeee! Woo!

12. Ennui

Oh my God. It’s… it’s not done. Is it? This was just the first lap. It’s all uphill from here. Oh. Oh, no.

13. Overwhelming Dread

The realization hits like a nail from a nail gun: you’ve got a lot more work to do. The boulder must be pushed up the rock again. And again. And again. Your book is a boat anchor whose chain is wrapped around your ankle. It weighs you down. It’s a brick. A bludgeoning brick. Bricks and boat anchors and boulders, oh my. Dread assails you. Fatigue nibbles at your marrow like an army of tiny chipmunks.

14. Exile

Fuck that novel, you say. You piss on it and shove it in a drawer. You can’t stand to look at it anymore lest you kneel and sing a technicolor hymn to the porcelain god. Fuck that novel right in its wordhole.

15. Wake Up In Tijuana And Realize It’s Time To Go Home

It’s been weeks. Maybe months. You’ve been whoring it up with short stories, blog posts, social media, Facebook games, a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, a fifth of vodka, and a drilldo named “Mister Sprinkles.” You stumble back into the house, and there it is. It’s escaped the drawer. The pee stains have dried to a crisp sepia crinkle. You pick it up. You reconcile. Your exile is complete.

16. Second Draft

You’ve got a meat cleaver, a micro-torch, and a jar full of maggots hungry to eat dead flesh. The second draft commences. Repeat after me: to fix something, I must first break it.

17. Third Draft

The third draft is there to fix the mistakes of the second. The second draft went the wrong way. Somehow the second draft just fucked things up worse. You walked the maze again and this time the minotaur didn’t just eat you, he sat you down for a long talk about a time-share. Then he made you do his taxes. Then he made love to you. Then he killed you. The third draft now has to walk the maze again. Beware of minotaurs.

18. Seventh-Fifth Draft

OH MY GOD SO MANY DRAFTS. You didn’t know writing a novel might need this much tweaking. What the novel is now looks nothing like what the novel was then. Same characters, same idea, same story. Roughly. But so much else is different. Every pass a new tweak. Writing, plot, theme, plot, new character, plot, writing. Dizzy-making. Still. By the end, you stand atop the hill next to the boulder. You suddenly realize: it didn’t roll down this time. You made it to the top. You and your boulder friend. From Sisyphean to Herculean. From impossible to improbable. From victim to hero. Holy fucking shit.

19. The Reader’s Report

Don’t get too excited. The reader has to weigh in. Maybe more than one reader. Stuff you were sure worked didn’t. Stuff you were sure didn’t work did. Up is down. Cat is dog. CRAP MORE DRAFTS.

20. The Editor’s Cocked Eyebrow

Don’t put that rage boner back in your pants. Because now a proper editor is going to look at it. Someone with a real critical eye. Someone who knows things the readers don’t. Someone who’s done this before. This is the forensics pass. Where the editors shines a UV light over the whole of the manuscript and shows you all the hidden blood spots, jizz drops, and other uninvited fluids.

21. Draft #3000

You’ve run the gauntlet. You’ve carried the novel through a hundred doorways ringed with fire. The work has been forged and reforged. Purified and refined. It is as good as you can make it. It is time.

22. The Novel Goes Off To War

Go forth, little novel. Duct taped to the novel are all your hopes and dreams. The novel flies far and wide. Agents big and small. Publishers big and small. Or maybe you do it yourself — get the cover together, format the book, and send the book to one of the many e-book marketplaces. The book must dance for its dinner, sing for its supper, suck dick for its dessert.

23. The Passing Of One Geologic Epoch

Nothing moves fast. Takes forever to hear back from an agent, then hear back from a publisher. These are books. Not Chicken McNuggets. It takes time to write them, and it also takes time to digest them. Even putting the book “out there” yourself isn’t fast. And the response isn’t overnight. Everything is slow. It is the forming of stalagmites and stalactites — one mineral drip at a time. A game of inches.

24. Conquest Or Castigation

YAY! You got published! Or BOO, you didn’t. Or maybe you got published and didn’t sell. Or maybe you got an agent but no publication. Or maybe you’re a bestselling author with a Rolls Royce literally cobbled together from rare first edition novels. You came and conquered, or you arrived and were promptly crushed by Hannibal’s elephants. Or you fell somewhere in the middle, in the hoary zone of the midlist. Or maybe you’re almost there, if only you’ll do three or four (thousand) more drafts…

25. Reflection

You look back over the last seventeen years — the length of time it took to get all this done — and ask yourself, was it worth it? Was it really truly worth it? Will you ever do this again? You can think you won’t. But you will. Of course you will. This is who you are. This is what you do. You couldn’t stop if you wanted to. You are writer. So get back to work, will you? This life cycle won’t live itself.