{"id":26420,"date":"2015-03-26T07:01:16","date_gmt":"2015-03-26T11:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=26420"},"modified":"2015-03-26T07:01:16","modified_gmt":"2015-03-26T11:01:16","slug":"cat-rambo-five-things-i-learned-writing-beasts-of-tabat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2015\/03\/26\/cat-rambo-five-things-i-learned-writing-beasts-of-tabat\/","title":{"rendered":"Cat Rambo: Five Things I Learned Writing Beasts Of Tabat"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When countryboy Teo arrives in the coastal city of Tabat, he finds it a hostile place, particularly to a boy hiding an enormous secret. It\u2019s also a city in turmoil, thanks to an ancient accord to change governments and the rising demands of Beasts, the Unicorns, Dryads, Minotaurs and other magical creature on whose labor and bodies Tabat depends. And worst of all, it\u2019s a city dedicated to killing Shifters, the race whose blood Teo bears.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

When his fate becomes woven with that of Tabat\u2019s most famous gladiator, Bella Kanto, his existence becomes even more imperiled. Kanto\u2019s magical battle determines the weather each year, and the wealthy merchants are tired of the long winters she\u2019s brought. Can Teo and Bella save each other from the plots that are closing in on them from all sides?<\/em><\/p>\n

IF YOU\u2019RE A WRITER, YOU\u2019RE IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL<\/h2>\n

The book that\u2019s coming out in April, Beasts of Tabat<\/em>, is one that I\u2019ve been working on, in one form or another, since the fall of 2005. (And before you ask, yes boy howdy, it\u2019s extremely satisfying to see it finally coming into print.)<\/p>\n

I put one version aside, came back to it, wrote three other novels, but kept returning, incorporating what I was learning over a long span of time. In this I\u2019ve differed from some friends who I\u2019ve seen publish longer works faster, but the thing that\u2019s kept being emphasized is that writing is a marathon, not a sprint, and it\u2019s okay to pace yourself accordingly.<\/p>\n

One of the nice things about all that labor is that a) the three following books are mapped out (at least the overall highlights) and b) book number two, Hearts of Tabat<\/em>, arrived partially written already because it focuses on two characters who got shifted out of Beasts. So a lot of it is written — it\u2019s just that I still need to make it make sense on the page as well as it does in my head.<\/p>\n

Even when finished, it kept being a long haul. I sent it off to my agent, he shopped it around, and there weren\u2019t any offers that didn\u2019t feel a bit exploitative to the point where neither he nor I wanted to say yes. That took a year and a half and if I hadn\u2019t started working on something else immediately after handing it off, I would have gone crazy, I think. It helps to have worked in software — you gotta ship that product and then move onto the next thing.<\/p>\n

TO THY OWNSELF BE TRUE IS ON THE MARK<\/h2>\n

I learned that you can be true to yourself and worry later about the publishing. I wrote the book I wanted to write, in a world that has fascinated me ever since I first set a story in it, and I wrote an unlikely pair of protagonists, who I deeply love. This book wanders around in both fantasy and more literary territory in a way that, I hope, will satisfy both kinds of readers. I didn\u2019t try to write a book according to what I thought was marketable, and Beasts<\/em> is strong in part because of that. There\u2019s sex and violence, and swordfights, and all of the things that make a fantasy novel so much fun, but I put them in -because- they were fun, not because they\u2019re part of a formula.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean to make it sound as though I think everyone else is writing to a formula, because that\u2019s not what I\u2019m getting at. What I want to say is, it\u2019s okay to sit down and write and find out what happens. What emerges is a landscape all at once already unfamiliar and totally unknown. Writing by the seat of your pants can yield amazing stuff if you\u2019re willing to look around and readjust your course every once in a while.<\/p>\n

YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve learned that you can come back to a world over and over again, learning more about it each time. One of the things I\u2019ve found myself doing is assembling the history of the world out of the stories that I\u2019ve written in it so far, I think close to a dozen now, and I\u2019ve found in doing that task that many of those stories fit in some way with the overall novel. In fact, \u201cIn the Lesser Southern Isles,\u201d a story that appeared in a pirate anthology called Black Sails<\/em> and then in my collection Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight<\/em>, prefigures a good part of Book Three, tentatively titled Exiles of Tabat<\/em>.<\/p>\n

One of the concepts key to the book came out of a short story of mine that Clarkesworld Magazine<\/em> published, called \u201cI\u2019ll Gnaw Your Bones, the Manticore Said.\u201d It\u2019s a detail that stuck with me, and in the novel we learn more about it and the people who\u2019ve employed. (I apologize for being ambiguous, but I hate spoilers.)<\/p>\n

The city is almost as much a character as any other, and one of the things I love about it is the history of it that I\u2019ve developed over time, including all the little quirks that make it distinctive, some of which I hope come across in the book. For more of that texture, I\u2019m running some flash pieces set in that world every weekday through the last week of March and the first half of April.<\/p>\n

THINGS ARE CHANGING<\/h2>\n

Not so much in the writing, but in the selling, I learned a lot about the ways that publishing is changing. I\u2019m publishing Beasts with a small press, Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta\u2019s Wordfire Press. I\u2019d published two collections with small presses before then and learned that I had to do a lot of things myself, but refreshingly enough, Wordfire isn\u2019t like that. It is one of the most professional outfits I\u2019ve worked with, actually, and one of the things I\u2019m looking forward to seeing at Emerald City Comic Con is how they use their booth to push books as well as awareness of the press.<\/p>\n

NETWORKING = DOUBLE PLUS GOOD<\/h2>\n

I learned that networking really is important. I sold the book myself due to a chance conversation at MileHighCon in Denver when my spouse and I stopped there on our way through town. And now that I\u2019m trying to push the book, a lot of the contacts that I\u2019ve made in the past are coming into play.<\/p>\n

One of the fun things is that the book owes a good bit to a session of Taos Toolbox where Saladin Ahmed was workshopping Throne of the Crescent Moon and Scott Andrews was thinking about forming an online magazine that would become Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Now the book\u2019s got a lovely blurb from Saladin on the cover, and Scott is running a companion novelette, \u201cPrimaflora\u2019s Journey,\u201d in April along with a book giveaway.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve tried to go to places where I knew I had fans already is promoting it — as another example, there\u2019ll be another piece of fiction, a flash story called \u201cA Souvenir of Tabat\u201d will be appearing as a free read on Quarterreads.com, where I\u2019ve published a lot of flash pieces for the first week the book\u2019s around. I\u2019m not saying that writers should be meticulously tracking who owes them favors — but when it comes time to promote a book, it\u2019s a good time to see who you feel comfortable enlisting and spending a little time putting together that roster.<\/p>\n

\u00a0* * *<\/p>\n

Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches by the shores of an eagle-haunted lake in the Pacific Northwest. Her fiction publications include stories in Asimov\u2019s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and Tor.com as well as three collections and her latest work, the novel\u00a0Beasts of Tabat<\/em>. Her short story, \u201cFive Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain,\u201d from her story collection Near + Far (Hydra House Books), was a 2012 Nebula nominee. Her editorship of Fantasy Magazine earned her a World Fantasy Award nomination in 2012. She is the current Vice President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. For more about her, as well as links to her fiction, see:<\/p>\n

Cat Rambo: Website<\/span><\/a> | Tumblr<\/span><\/a> | Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Beasts of Tabat: Amazon<\/span><\/a> | Wordfire<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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