This Saturday, 9-15, I'll be doing a signing from Noon until 2 with fellow authors John Hartness and Stuarte Jaffe at Market City Comics and Games, 1110 W Green Drive, High Point, NC.
In October, I have three events:
Capclave, October 12-14 in Gaithersburg, MD
On October 20, I'll be doing a meet and greet with other Hillsborough authors at the Eno River Gallery in Hillsborough, NC from 10:00am to 11:00am.
Then, the following weekend, I'll be teaching a class at the main branch of the Orange County Library in Hillsborough from 10:30 to noon. The class is called, "How to Write Fast: Tips and Tricks for Blasting through Writer's Block and Jamming Out 10,000+ Words a Week."
Also, I currently plan to be selling books in front of Purple Crow during Last Fridays in Hillsborough on September 29, though I made those plans all the way back in June and should probably check back in with the owner to confirm this.
Whew! Busy days ahead!
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Advice for young writers
I'm currently mentoring a high school student on writing, and one of his questions was what advice I might have for him on how to develop his writing over the next five years. I thought my answer might be of use to more than just him, so here's my advice to young writers:
First, write a lot. Then write some more. Keep track of your word counts. When I'm working on a book, I try to produce 10K new words a week. Of course, this is followed by a lot of revision time, so my average word count for the year is far less than 10k a week. Still, I would consider any year where I haven't produced at least 100k of new writing to be a year of wasted opportunities. Writing fiction is a lot like trying to make a living buying lottery tickets. Odds are, most of the things you write won't pay much. But, the more you write, the greater the odds that something you produce going to bring a big payoff. The odds that you can write one book and make any substantial income from it are poor. Write ten books, and you really pull out from the pack.
Second, read what's being published today. One problem with formal English Literature studies is that classes tend to focus on books written decades or even centuries ago. Go to bookstores and study the new releases. Find out what magazines are actually in stores. Make note of who is publishing what. Various publishing houses have specific tastes; the line of books released by Baen is very different than the line of books released by Tor or Pyr. The short stories published in Analog would never see print in Realms of Fantasy, and vice versa. (Especially since Realms of Fantasy folded last year.) You'll need to look at http://www.ralan.com/ for current market information and search for webzines and anthologies that want this type of story. The markets change every month, so if you don't see an obvious market at first glance, don't despair. Sooner or later, a new market will come along.
Third, learn everything. Map out the boundaries of your ignorance and make a concerted effort to explore new intellectual frontiers. I have days when I wake up and think, wow, I really don't know anything about sailing a tall ship, or how salt winds up on my kitchen table, or the history of the Mayans. So I go and learn about all these esoteric and seemingly unrelated things. Sometimes, the information winds up in my writing. Most of the time, it doesn't. But I never know what obscure bit of trivia I might need to create a satisfying story. To write Greatshadow, I had to know about volcanoes and tidal waves, jungle flora and fauna, archeology, medieval fighting equipment, aboriginal cuisines, various religious traditions, political concepts like anarchy and theocracies, circuses, superheroes, fabrics, how books were made in the premodern era, mosaics, varieties of alcholic beverages, lots of things about different animals (since I have a character who's a shapeshifter), caves, the economy of fishing, Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythology, palindromes, and psychology. And that's really not an exhaustive list. Facts are the most important fuel for imagination. The more you know, the more you can make up.
Finally, if you want to play the blues, then you gotta pay your dues. You've got to get out and experience the messier parts of life. Get your heart broken a time or two, and break a few of your own if you have the courage. Put yourself in situations where you don't feel safe or comfortable. If you find yourself in a position where all your friends thing the same way you do and share your values, then go out and find some different friends. Writing is a kind of craziness where you have to have a hundred different people in your head, and they can't all be nice people. And even nice people have dark secrets. Learn them. Earn your own. At the risk of being morbid, all good fiction is about pain and loss and alienation (which often lead to joy, wealth, and comraderie). You don't have to go out and intentionally create these feelings in yourself; they will seek you out. As a writer, your duty is to experience these things honestly and openly. As a writer, your duty is to gain empathy and insight into all of mankind.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Dragon*con
Spent the weekend at what might be my last Dragon*con in Atlanta. If you're a geek and you've never been to this convention, you really don't understand what you're missing. This is 50,000 SF and Fantasy fans crammed into central Atlanta for a four day orgy of nerdiness. In fact, judging from the fact that many of the costumes consist of nothing but tape and body paint, it looks like many people are showing up for an orgy, period.
It's worth going just to look at the costumes, but there are excellent programming tracks as well, and dealer rooms that offer everything a fanboy heart might desire, rare comics, obscure games, black tee-shirts with clever captions, and steam-punk paraphenalia of all flavors.
This was my fourth or fifth visit to the con, but also possibly my last. The con is about as well organized as I can imagine, but there are just certain realities to packing so many people into a limited space. Walking from one side of the lobby to another can be an insane challenge, because everyone's stopping randomly to take pictures of costumed individuals who come to a halt in the middle of walkways because people ask to take their picture. At one point, I was trying to meet Cheryl in time for a panel, and it took me a half hour to travel from one hotel to the adjacent one. Again, I think the organizers do all they can, and there are lots of signs up saying not to stop in walkways for photos, but some of these people obviously spend all year working on thier costumes, and, by god, all their work pays off when people ask for their photos. I'm in no way being critical; I completely understand, and have even engaged in a bit of costuming myself. Still, it is possible to have too much of a good thing.
Moving through the dealer's rooms on Saturday is a bit like getting pushed along a cattle chute. I found myself thinking about how different things were from my early days of collecting comic books. Back in the late seventies and early eighties, I had to dig through boxes at a dozen flea markets if I wanted to put together a collection of some out of print series. Collecting was a challenge because comics weren't very popular, and old comics were generally left to rot in basements if they weren't outright used to line bird cages. There was a shortage of product because these things were only valuable to a few wierdos like myself. Now, rare comics are pretty much manufactured via limited print runs and treated like they are objects of solid gold. But, if you want one, the only real barrier is how much you are willing to pay. There are hundreds of people eager to sell you anything you desire. It's removed the thrill of the hunt from the game.
But, I'm probably just worn out. Dragon*con takes a lot out of me. Give me a few months and I'll forget the crowds and once again remember the sheer energy that comes from being surrounded by so many creative, smart people. Perhaps the lure will prove to be too strong in the end.
Scene from the tenth floor of the Marriot, looking down at lobby on Sunday afternoon during a lull in the crowds.
Lot's of Venture Bros costumes this year. From an obscure cult classic, it seems ready to really break out into the mainstream of geekdom. I predict a big budget VB movie before the end of the decade.
Hands down my favorite costumes. The little peanut shaped cutouts they stood on really sold this.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Besieged Winner!
Rowena Cory Daniells guest post about female villians definitely stirred up quite a debate! Rowena has selected a winner from all the responses and will be sending a free copy of Besieged to Mr. Cavin! I believe that this is a situation in which internet hipsters may celebrate by typing "w00t!" So, w00t!
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Linkathon!
Yesterday, I emailed Witchbreaker to Solaris! My brain is now officially mush!
While I'm waiting for my brain cells to recover enough for me to form fully devoloped thoughts again, here are some links for your amusement.
First, there was a feature article about me in my local paper almost a month ago that finally went live on their website. You can read the article here.
That same issue also saw a review of Hush, which is now online here.
And, speaking of Hush reviews, here's one at the Falcata Times and another at the Fantastical Librarian.
Finally, my wife Cheryl gets her time in the spotlight at Dark Cargo, where she gets reviewed on the ups and downs of being married to an author.
While I'm waiting for my brain cells to recover enough for me to form fully devoloped thoughts again, here are some links for your amusement.
First, there was a feature article about me in my local paper almost a month ago that finally went live on their website. You can read the article here.
That same issue also saw a review of Hush, which is now online here.
And, speaking of Hush reviews, here's one at the Falcata Times and another at the Fantastical Librarian.
Finally, my wife Cheryl gets her time in the spotlight at Dark Cargo, where she gets reviewed on the ups and downs of being married to an author.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Powerful Women, Factual and Fictional - Guest Post by Rowena Cory Daniells
Rowena Cory Daniells is a fellow Solaris Fantasy author, whose new fantasy series The Outcast Chronicles is now hitting stores. I invited her to write a guest post (since, lord knows, I seem to be negligent in writing posts lately), and she's turned in thoughful essay on the shortage of female villians in fiction. At the end of the post, we're giving away a copy of her latest book! Read on:
----
I teach a unit on film and TV to university students. One of the things we discuss is characterisation and character archetypes. I can find examples of female heroes, (Ripley, it always comes back to Ripley!), but the hardest thing to find is a female villain. When I ask the students to name some, they come up with women who are the sidekicks to male villains, or they come up with Disney villains.
‘Stand alone’ female villains tend to be from children’s stories. (Does this mean that inside the home is the only place where a woman can be truly powerful?). The evil step-mother trope is probably based on truth. In the past, when many women died in childbirth, their children would be raised by a step-mother who, when resources were scarce, would favour her own genetic off-spring over the older children of another woman.
While a gun will kill in anyone’s hands, you come back to the person behind the trigger. You have to believe they are a threat to you and these young men couldn’t take a female villain seriously. Judging from the lack of female villains in mainstream media, it would seem most men can’t take a female villain seriously. (Does this mean they don’t feel threatened by women and, if so, does it mean deep-down they don’t regard women as equals?)
You could base a doctoral thesis on the questions this raises, but since I’m writing a light-hearted blog post I’ll move on and talk about the late 70s SF show, Blake’s 7.
Supreme Commander Servalan...
I understand it is possible to watch the Blake’s 7 episodes on you tube. I should really go back and re-watch them to see if she still has the same presence, thirty years later.
Why do we see so few powerful female characters in drama? If a woman is powerful she is often divorced from her femininity or crazed (and therefore pitiable).
In real life, there were women who wielded power but they were often born into aristocracy and they wielded power on behalf of an absent husband or son, or an under-age son, such as Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. She was smart, but it helped that she was born into power, married two kings, produced many children — three sons who became kings, among them Richard the Lionheart — and lived to be eighty-two. (It is hard to make an impact on the world when you spend the majority of your adult life pregnant and die in childbirth at twenty-five).
This pattern of accepting a powerful woman if she is acting on behalf of son, but resenting her if she attempts to wield power on her own behalf or that of a weak husband can be seen in the Byzantium Empire, specifically during the hundred years between 1150 to 1250. Although empresses who ruled for their sons were still criticised by their male peers, the most severe criticism was reserved for Irene Doukaina and Euphrosyne Doukaina, who were ruling as wives rather than mothers.**
From this you can make the assumption that powerful men, feel threatened by a woman who ‘usurps’ their power, but will accept a powerful woman who is wielding power on behalf of a son.
Could it be that powerful men, resent powerful women?
There are always exceptions to the rule and not all powerful women came from privileged backgrounds. According to Hiskey, Ching Shih, the Pirate Queen started out as a prostitute and by the time she was thirty, she commanded a fleet of around 1,800 ships with: ‘70,000-80,000 pirates (about 17,000 male pirates directly under her control, the rest being other pirate groups who agreed to work with her group, then female pirates, children, spies, farmers enlisted to supply food, etc.); controlled nearly the entire Guangdong province directly; held a vast spy network within the Qing Dynasty; and dominated the South Chinese Sea.’
With such a vast network of people under her command, she formed a government and established laws. She defeated the Chinese Emperor’s armada, and evaded capture by the combined British and Portuguese navies. Then she negotiated with the Governor General of Canton and struck a deal. Most of her people received amnesty, while she walked away with a noble title and retired at the age of thirty-five. She must be one of the few pirates, male or female, to live out her days in wealth and security.
But Ching Shih would have to be an outlier, which brings us back to women and power, and powerful women in fiction.
In my new trilogy, The Outcast Chronicles, the pure-blood mystics all have a gift of some kind, but the women are more powerful than the men. Not only are the females more powerful, but their power is expressed in a different way and the nature of male-female power means they are drawn to each other. The mystics live in brotherhoods and sisterhoods, united for their own protection. Their society balances on a knife edge because the men resent the women and the women fear the men.
With this trilogy, I wanted to explore the ramifications of gifted people living amongst the non-gifted, True-men as they call themselves. Would those without power resent those with the gifts? We see the results of this discrimination and persecution through Sorne, the unwanted half-blood son of the True-man king.
I also wanted to explore how power would affect the individual mystic. There had to be limitations and consequences for using power. The gifts affect the way the mystics see the world and each other. Their society evolved rituals to recognise and contain power.
Most powerful of this generation is Imoshen, who has the gift of reading people’s motivations. The males hate her and even the women of her own sisterhood are wary of her. It is not until the True-man king besieges their city, that her gift makes Imoshen the natural choice to lead their people.
In this trilogy I explore the consequences of power for those with it and those without. I also explore the impact of the gender divide because I’m fascinated by these questions.
Rowena has a copy of Besieged to give-away. To enter, on the comments section, tell us who is your favourite powerful female (villain or hero) and why?
Catch up with Rowena on Twitter: rcdaniells
Catch up with Rowena at Goodreads!
Catch up with
Rowena on her blog
* For more information on Queen Eleanor see Eleanor of Aquitaine by Alison Weir.
** For more information on these women see Women, Men, and Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantium, edited by Liz James. It contains a series of essays on the topic. This section is drawn from Barbara Hill’s essay Imperial Women and the Ideology of Womanhood in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries.
----
I teach a unit on film and TV to university students. One of the things we discuss is characterisation and character archetypes. I can find examples of female heroes, (Ripley, it always comes back to Ripley!), but the hardest thing to find is a female villain. When I ask the students to name some, they come up with women who are the sidekicks to male villains, or they come up with Disney villains.
‘Stand alone’ female villains tend to be from children’s stories. (Does this mean that inside the home is the only place where a woman can be truly powerful?). The evil step-mother trope is probably based on truth. In the past, when many women died in childbirth, their children would be raised by a step-mother who, when resources were scarce, would favour her own genetic off-spring over the older children of another woman.
So why can’t the students name a female villain? These young males (average age 19) have told me it’s because they aren’t afraid of women due to females being physically weaker. The obvious response is, but what if you put a gun in her hand, surely this would negate the physical differences?
While a gun will kill in anyone’s hands, you come back to the person behind the trigger. You have to believe they are a threat to you and these young men couldn’t take a female villain seriously. Judging from the lack of female villains in mainstream media, it would seem most men can’t take a female villain seriously. (Does this mean they don’t feel threatened by women and, if so, does it mean deep-down they don’t regard women as equals?)
You could base a doctoral thesis on the questions this raises, but since I’m writing a light-hearted blog post I’ll move on and talk about the late 70s SF show, Blake’s 7.
Supreme Commander Servalan...
This character had to be the sexiest and most menacing villain in any TV show. She made a deep impression on my young mind. Why? Because she was smart, powerful, ruthless and... feminine.
I understand it is possible to watch the Blake’s 7 episodes on you tube. I should really go back and re-watch them to see if she still has the same presence, thirty years later.
Why do we see so few powerful female characters in drama? If a woman is powerful she is often divorced from her femininity or crazed (and therefore pitiable).
In real life, there were women who wielded power but they were often born into aristocracy and they wielded power on behalf of an absent husband or son, or an under-age son, such as Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. She was smart, but it helped that she was born into power, married two kings, produced many children — three sons who became kings, among them Richard the Lionheart — and lived to be eighty-two. (It is hard to make an impact on the world when you spend the majority of your adult life pregnant and die in childbirth at twenty-five).
When Richard the Lionheart inherited his throne from his father, he authorised his mother to rule England until he was ready to take over. Yet, when Eleanor was married to her first husband, the weak king of France, and she attempted to play a part in politics she was put in her place by the powerful men of the French court. *This pattern of accepting a powerful woman if she is acting on behalf of son, but resenting her if she attempts to wield power on her own behalf or that of a weak husband can be seen in the Byzantium Empire, specifically during the hundred years between 1150 to 1250. Although empresses who ruled for their sons were still criticised by their male peers, the most severe criticism was reserved for Irene Doukaina and Euphrosyne Doukaina, who were ruling as wives rather than mothers.**
From this you can make the assumption that powerful men, feel threatened by a woman who ‘usurps’ their power, but will accept a powerful woman who is wielding power on behalf of a son.
Could it be that powerful men, resent powerful women?
There are always exceptions to the rule and not all powerful women came from privileged backgrounds. According to Hiskey, Ching Shih, the Pirate Queen started out as a prostitute and by the time she was thirty, she commanded a fleet of around 1,800 ships with: ‘70,000-80,000 pirates (about 17,000 male pirates directly under her control, the rest being other pirate groups who agreed to work with her group, then female pirates, children, spies, farmers enlisted to supply food, etc.); controlled nearly the entire Guangdong province directly; held a vast spy network within the Qing Dynasty; and dominated the South Chinese Sea.’
With such a vast network of people under her command, she formed a government and established laws. She defeated the Chinese Emperor’s armada, and evaded capture by the combined British and Portuguese navies. Then she negotiated with the Governor General of Canton and struck a deal. Most of her people received amnesty, while she walked away with a noble title and retired at the age of thirty-five. She must be one of the few pirates, male or female, to live out her days in wealth and security.
But Ching Shih would have to be an outlier, which brings us back to women and power, and powerful women in fiction.
With this trilogy, I wanted to explore the ramifications of gifted people living amongst the non-gifted, True-men as they call themselves. Would those without power resent those with the gifts? We see the results of this discrimination and persecution through Sorne, the unwanted half-blood son of the True-man king.
I also wanted to explore how power would affect the individual mystic. There had to be limitations and consequences for using power. The gifts affect the way the mystics see the world and each other. Their society evolved rituals to recognise and contain power.
Most powerful of this generation is Imoshen, who has the gift of reading people’s motivations. The males hate her and even the women of her own sisterhood are wary of her. It is not until the True-man king besieges their city, that her gift makes Imoshen the natural choice to lead their people.
In this trilogy I explore the consequences of power for those with it and those without. I also explore the impact of the gender divide because I’m fascinated by these questions.
Rowena has a copy of Besieged to give-away. To enter, on the comments section, tell us who is your favourite powerful female (villain or hero) and why?
Catch up with Rowena on Twitter: rcdaniells
Rowena Cory Daniells
Catch up with Rowena at Goodreads!
Catch up with
Rowena on her blog
** For more information on these women see Women, Men, and Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantium, edited by Liz James. It contains a series of essays on the topic. This section is drawn from Barbara Hill’s essay Imperial Women and the Ideology of Womanhood in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Witchbreaker!
Of course, the star of Witchbreaker is Sorrow Stern, the young witch introduced in Hush who is on a quest to overthrow the Church of the Book and lauch a new golden age of witchcraft. In personality, she's the opposite of Stagger and Infidel, who mainly wanted to find a little happiness. Sorrow, as befits her name, cares nothing about happiness and is willing to pay any price to reach her goals. She's the most driven character I've introduced in this series, and her attitude doesn't earn her a lot of friends as the book unfolds. But, she's surrounded by a truly eclectic cast that compliments and contrasts nicely with her somewhat harsh world view. There's a lot of humor to balance out the high stakes drama.
Oh, and dragons. Lots and lots of primal dragons. For the first time we get to see the primal dragons interact with one another as they debate the final fate of mankind. There's a reason I call this series the Dragon Apocalypse!
The book hits bookstores in January, 2013. A preview chapter is in the back of Hush, though, alas, that chapter has changed a good deal from the final product. After the book goes through further editorial revision, I'll probably post the final preview chapter here. (The basic outline of the published chapter is fine, but I ditched the whole "Journal of Sorrow Stern" format at the beginning of the chapter since it just proved awkward to include it throughout the book like I'd planned. Ah well. You can't learn from mistakes unless you make them.)
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