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Something Nasty, Something With Claws

Something Nasty, Something With Claws

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brendan-detzner-the-orphan-fleet-small brendan-detzner-the-hidden-lands

Whenever I have an idea for a story, it usually came from at least six different places, three or four or which I’ll have forgotten by the time the story is done. Let’s see how well I do this time:

I grew up in a house where bookshelves were the most important pieces of furniture, and I was happy to take advantage, but in a hidden corner of the basement was a particularly important shelf, the one where my dad kept his old 70’s science-fiction and fantasy paperbacks. Roger Zelazny, Harlan Ellison, Michael Moorcock, Gene Wolfe. Not a bad haul. In one of those books, a short story collection from Gene Wolfe, was a story called “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories,” which is about a child reading a story featuring a villain who he later imagines (or maybe not, it’s a Gene Wolfe story) breaking the fourth wall and discussing his role as a bad guy. He talks about how he and the hero seem to hate each other, but that backstage they actually get along and understood their interdependence.

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Go Ahead. Judge The Starlit Wood by its Cover

Go Ahead. Judge The Starlit Wood by its Cover

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starlit-without-border-small the-starlit-wood-small

We know not to judge a book by its cover, but sometimes it’s just so hard. You look at a book and think, Wow, I need to take a look at that. As a writer or an editor, you dream of that perfect match, of that gripping cover that perfectly conveys the story you’re eager to share, that makes people want to pick up your book. With The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, we feel we’ve been fortunate enough to get just that. We’re so thrilled with every element of the packaging of The Starlit Wood, so we wanted to share a bit about the process of creating such a lovely book.

The Starlit Wood is our love letter to fairy tales. The book is a cross-genre anthology of fairy tale retellings, featuring everything from science fiction, western, and post-apocalyptic, to traditional fantasy and contemporary horror. Retellings of lesser-known fairy tales takes place alongside traditional ones, which makes for a really unique experience where the familiar and the unfamiliar co-exist. The book features established authors like Naomi Novik, Garth Nix, Seanan McGuire, and Margo Lanagan, as well as rising stars like Charlie Jane Anders, Sofia Samatar, and Daryl Gregory. The full table of contents is here.

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The Man Behind The Princess Bride

The Man Behind The Princess Bride

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goldman-11111“It’s an accepted fact that all writers are crazy; even the normal ones are weird.” Wm. Goldman

Anyone who has been reading my posts over the last few years already knows that The Princess Bride (TPB) is one of my favourite – if not my favourite – movies. Family and friends quote from it all the time. “Morons!” we’ll exclaim when faced with any, or, “Murdered by pirates is good,” we mutter as we walk away from someone who should be.

And I know there will be some who disagree with me, but I think TPB is one of the few examples where the movie is actually better than the book. And why not? They were both written by the same person, one who understands clearly what he’s doing:

Here is one of the main rules of adaptation: you cannot be literally faithful to the source material.
Here’s another that critics never get: you should not be literally faithful to the source material. It is in a different form, a form that does not have the camera.
Here is the most important rule of adaptation: you must be totally faithful to the intention of the source material.
— from Which Lie Did I Tell?

Which, by the way, is the perfect answer to people who complain when movies turn out to be different from books. It’s only when screenwriters fail in that last rule that they’ve done a bad job.

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The Dandelion Dynasty and Sagrada Família

The Dandelion Dynasty and Sagrada Família

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the-grace-of-kings-small the-wall-of-storms-small

The Dandelion Dynasty is an attempt at melding two separate literary traditions, both of which I’ve been fortunate enough to inhabit.

One of them traces a lineage from ancient, fragmentary pre-dynastic legends and Warring States Period annals to the spare, vivid biographies in Records of the Grand Historian, to elegant Tang Dynasty lyric poems and politically subversive Yuan Dynasty plays and pre-modern Ming Dynasty novels, and thence to the first vernacular Chinese stories, whose awkward but also lively language is cobbled together by great writers who were also courageous translators and who enriched the new medium with neologisms and adopted grammatical structures and strange metaphors imported from the West, and finally, to the wuxia classics that revived the strength of Chinese storytelling and the modern web serials that represent the lives of men and women in a society seized by some of the greatest upheavals and tumultuous changes ever encountered by any human society, incorporating along the way historical romances, oral storytelling, and magnificent fantasies that have been built up by generations of artists, brick by brick,  like the Great Wall itself.

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The New Pulp Era: Ghostwriting, Ebooks, and the Economics of Now

The New Pulp Era: Ghostwriting, Ebooks, and the Economics of Now

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I'm going to say absolutely nothing about that sword.
I’m going to say absolutely nothing about that sword.

A lot of writers and readers are saying we have entered a new pulp era, a repeat of those days when hardworking writers pumped out exciting fiction in large quantities while facing very tight deadlines. The old pulp era died long ago, and was replaced with modern traditional publishing. Under that model, writers usually only came out with a book a year, and if they did more than that it was generally under a pseudonym. Traditional houses seem to have been under the impression that “less is more” when it came to a writer’s output.

Readers disagree. They want more from their favorite authors, and they want it now. Those writers who have come to the top of the new indie publishing revolution tend to be those who write a lot, generally in series, and keep up a consistent quality. Some traditionally published writers such as Guy Haley are moving that direction too. In our interview with him, he talked about how he has to write five novels a year if he wants to make a living at his writing.

Even superstars such as James Patterson are getting in on the game. A post at Non-Fiction Novelist talks about how Patterson’s new project “Book Shots” fits perfectly into the pulp mentality. These thrillers and romances are touted as having lots of action and no padding, just like a good pulp story should. They’re all under 150 pages and cost less than $5. Plus there’s a whole lot of them.

I’m seeing a similar trend in online start-up publishers. My own body of indie published work, while doing OK, is not bringing me enough to live on, so I make up the deficiency by ghostwriting. This is a relatively new venture for me as I shift steadily away from nonfiction writing, but the trend I’m seeing is remarkable.

Ghostwriting always involves a strict written agreement not to take credit for a work, so what follows will by necessity be of a general nature.

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Series Architecture: The Same But Different in EC Tubb’s Dumarest

Series Architecture: The Same But Different in EC Tubb’s Dumarest

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Toyman EC Tubb-small
Oddly compelling…

EC Tubb’s Dumarest serial is oddly compelling… so oddly compelling that, if you like the first book, you end up slowly chugging through the series.

For those who’ve just tuned in, this is an incredibly long mid-20th century low Space Opera serial that influenced the roleplaying game Traveller. Note, series not serial: though there is forward momentum, each book is standalone — it’s more Deep Space Nine than Babylon 5. Also note the low. This isn’t exactly Conan in Space, but the Cimmerian would not be out of place.

So, Dumarest wanders a Grapes of Wrath galaxy — think how we met Rey in The Force Awakens — in search of Earth while pursued by the fanatical Cyclan, cyborg monks with no emotions other than the hunger for power and pride in their intellect.

It’s very much The Fugitive does Space Western. There are exceptions, and Tubb often kicks off with a short story before settling down the real meat. However, in almost every episode, Dumarest is the archetypal Drifter who becomes involved in gothic goings on in one of the local great houses, usually because that house faces some external threat.

(The houses are usually Gormenghast-style piles crammed with extended family and fuelled by dwindling fortunes. However, from time to time he swaps in military unit, spaceship, expedition, clan or band, with similar effect.)

This happens so consistently, that the books should be too formulaic to keep coming back to.

But we do. Each novel is the same but different.

How did — does — he do it?

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When Researching Your Novel Scares You: Daily Life in the Third Reich

When Researching Your Novel Scares You: Daily Life in the Third Reich

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Feierliche Vereidigung der Freiwilligen des Deutschen Volkssturms in Berlin In Berlin fand heute die feierliche Vereidigung der Freiwilligen des Deutschen Volkssturms statt. UBz Volkssturmm‰nner mit ihren Waffen w‰hrend des Vorbeimarsches an Reichsminister Dr. Goebbels.

Propaganda photo of the Volkssturm. This civilian militia appears
to be well armed, but in fact borrowed their weapons from a regular
army unit and had to give them back after the parade. The Volkssturm
received castoff uniforms or no uniforms at all. The most appropriate
uniform would have been a big bulls-eye on their chest

I’m in the process of researching one of my upcoming novels, Volkssturm, about the German civilian militia formed in October 1944. The Volkssturm called up all able-bodied men aged 16 to 60 who weren’t already in uniform. It also brought in some women. Most of these people weren’t particularly fit, or had been working in essential jobs such as armament factories and had been made redundant due to chronic shortage of material and Allied bombing. Even those who remained in essential jobs often served in local Volkssturm units charged with protecting their home area. The idea was to launch “total war” against the Allied invaders and save the homeland from devastation. We all know how well that worked out.

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Peadar and The Call: Behind the Scenes

Peadar and The Call: Behind the Scenes

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the-call-peadar-oguilin-smallA few weeks ago I read, nay, inhaled Peadar O’Guilin’s The Call. Peadar and I are friends and fans of each other’s work, but I went into this one not having a clue about what it was. I knew the manuscript was YA, and had elements of horror.

What I discovered was a novel absolutely deserving of the hype it has received — a dystopian YA story about a fractured society, with heroic teenaged protagonists who are realistic AND don’t whine. There are moments of chilling otherworldly horror owing to the frequent presence of the fae folk, the force behind the terrible situation facing these Irish children. And there’s excellent pacing and characterization, and growth…

But this isn’t a review, it’s an interview. After devouring the novel I naturally had questions about how it was composed, and since I knew Peadar I asked him if I could take those questions and his answers public. I did my best to avoid spoilers, although there might be mild ones ahead.

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When a Trilogy Becomes a Sextuplet

When a Trilogy Becomes a Sextuplet

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Michael J. Sullivan
Michael J. Sullivan

After the launch of his newest book a few weeks ago I asked writer Michael J. Sullivan if he could spare some time to talk about his writing process. In addition to being talented, Michael also happens to be one of the humblest and kindest writers it’s been my pleasure to meet. It’s my pleasure to turn the blog over to him.

I recently released Age of Myth, the first novel in my new series. It’s the one with the big tree on the cover. Since people ignore advice, and nearly everyone actually does judge books by their covers, it’s a good thing for me that trees appear to be popular (no pun on poplar intended… okay maybe it was).

My first series The Riyria Revelations is six books long. This new series was supposed to be a trilogy. You’ll note I used the word supposed in that sentence. When I write a novel it almost always tops off around the 100,000-130,000 word mark (around 375-450 pages). I don’t plan it that way — just happens. It’s the length I need to tell a self-contained tale. Apparently I also have a set number when it comes to how many books it takes to write a series. You guessed it, my trilogy grew to six books long (okay, you had help from the post’s title). No, the publisher didn’t make me expand it, and Peter Jackson had nothing to do with it. The story takes place during a great war, but the story stopped before all the conflicts were over. I had a suspicion readers weren’t going to like that. I didn’t either. Quitting before the war was 100% resolved felt unfinished.

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A Story Checklist for Writers

A Story Checklist for Writers

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b17
Checklists were developed because nobody could fly the B17 without crashing it
The Tower of the Elephant-smal
“Can Conan raid the Tower of the Elephant? Yes, but rather than looting, he ends up liberating the enslaved alien demon. Now he must continue his adventures.” (Read on to find out why this is relevant!)

I read this book by a surgeon. It was called The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right and it was mildly terrifying (and I promise this relates to writing…).

Nowadays before an operation it’s the thing for — usually — a senior nurse to work through a list with items like: “Does the patient have any allergies? Has the anaesthetist raised any concerns…? Is this even the right patient for this operation..?” There are also checklists for  emergency situations such as reviving somebody fished out of a pond to make sure critical injections aren’t missed.

Why this is mildly terrifying is because (a) checklists significantly raise patient survival rates, and (b) the medical profession has only recently adopted them! (It’s a bit like that time my doctor mate remarked, “Oh that was before we went over to evidence-based medicine….” Erk?)

Why this is interesting for writers — and why I’m talking about this book here — is because  checklists help in situations when people are working “in flow.”

They were first developed because nobody could fly the B17 without crashing it. The test pilots got together and made up a list for the co-pilot to read out at different stages: “Engine revving enough? Flaps at right setting…?” Now checklists are pretty standard not just for the aviation industry, but also for manufacturing and construction.

Checklists work because they are not procedures. They don’t tell the surgeon, “cut along dotted line A” or the pilot, “Steer down the runway.” Rather they act as gates between different phases of a project or procedure. They don’t get in the way of flow, so much as force you to pause and take stock before getting going or moving on.

For a writer like me this is interesting because it’s all too easy to dive in too early to drafting — because flow is addictive — without planning properly, and even easier to send off work that’s not properly polished — because writing is both exhilarating and mentally tiring.

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