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Taos Toolbox, a Two Week Master Class in Science Fiction and Fantasy

Taos Toolbox, a Two Week Master Class in Science Fiction and Fantasy

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My project this month was to put together a promo video for Taos Toolbox, which is run by my longtime friend, Walter Jon Williams, and Nancy Kress. It will run from July 10-23rd this year. I remember when Walter put the first session of this workshop together, and right from the start, it has helped authors turn rough draft manuscripts into traditionally published novels.

A non-exhaustive list of Toolbox novels includes:

Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon
Alan Smale’s Clash of Eagles Trilogy
Gail Strickland’s Night of Pan, the Oracle of Delphi Trilogy

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Matthew David Surridge on The Great Hugo Wars of 2015

Matthew David Surridge on The Great Hugo Wars of 2015

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Rabid Puppies logo-smallOver at culture site Splice Today BG blogger Matthew David Surridge, who declined a Hugo nomination last year for Best Fan Writer, looks back at his involvement in Puppygate.

It was difficult to keep up with everything that was happening; when a controversy strikes the literary world, writers are affected, meaning much will be written. And I was out of it. Appreciative reaction to my post continued to come in at Black Gate, but as what Martin called “Puppygate” sprawled on, I was watching from the sidelines. I saw calls for boycotts of publishers, I saw counter-calls to buy books from the same publishers, I saw reports that the number of people buying memberships to Worldcon had hit record numbers. I saw satires and arguments. I saw proposals to change the Hugo voting rules to limit the impact of future slates. I kept track of as much as I could, partly because it was fascinating to watch, and partly because I never knew if my name would come up. Mostly, it didn’t, which suited me fine. If for no other reason than that the culture-war overtones that Breitbart had highlighted in the Puppies became increasingly front and center…

In the end the Hugo voters opted for “No Award” over the Puppy nominees in almost every category. The Best Novel Award went to Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem, which made it onto the ballot when Marko Kloos, whose book Lines of Departure was on Beale’s slate, declined the nomination after learning about the Rabid Puppy actions. Beale, ironically, ended up urging his Puppies to vote for The Three Body Problem; the Rabid vote seems to have given it the margin of victory. Meanwhile, Best Fan Writer was won by the lone non-Puppy, Laura J. Mixon. Later, the final nomination data confirmed a rumour I’d heard that Mixon had gotten the nomination when I declined it.

See Matthew’s complete comments here.

Fellowship of the Pathfinders: The Importance of Party Dynamic in Fantasy Adventure

Fellowship of the Pathfinders: The Importance of Party Dynamic in Fantasy Adventure

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illustration by Eric Belisle
illustration by Eric Belisle

I bought my first Pathfinder novel after reading about it here in a New Treasures post. Howard Andrew Jones’s Stalking the Beast just looked like a lot of fun. Hunting down a big scary monster? Okay, cool. And I’m a sucker for half-orcs. The potential dynamic of a half-elven ranger and a half-orc barbarian working together grabbed me — in fact, I don’t think I ever ran a D&D campaign that didn’t have something like that combination in the mix.

As I described in my review here at Black Gate, I was pleasantly surprised by how much fun the book was — I found myself not wanting to put it down: an experience I was not primed to expect from previous RPG adaptations I’ve read. It delivered the sort of entertainment I am hoping for when I crack open an RPG-themed book, and it was very well written just in general terms as a fantasy novel. Well plotted; good world building; but most importantly, great characters. The dialogue was just as entertaining to read as the action set-pieces.

I subsequently read two of Tim Pratt’s books for Paizo Publishing, and then I went back to Jones’s first contribution to the series. All four of the books impressed me, which left me wondering: is it just because I’m a fan of Jones and Pratt? I mean, these are good writers (a critic more dismissive of “tie-in” literature might have uncharitably suggested they were just “slumming,” writing for a game publisher’s bi-monthly novel line). Were these books the exception, or are Pathfinder novels routinely this level of quality?

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tip From Nancy Kilpatrick

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tip From Nancy Kilpatrick

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Nancy Kilpatrick-smallOur Pro-Tip author this week is the multiple award-winning writer and editor Nancy Kilpatrick. She writes dark fantasy, horror, mysteries, and erotica. Her publishing credits include 18 novels, over 220 short stories, 7 collections, and 1 non-fiction book. She has edited 15 anthologies.

I Can’t Seem to Get the Ending Right. What Should I Keep in Mind?

A short story is a slice of time in the life of the protagonist. What happens has to have a beginning, middle and end, even though most of the time the protagonist had a life before the events of the story and will (hopefully) have a life after. A short story should read from the beginning as if the reader does not know where the story will end–that’s suspense. But once the story is finished, the reader should feel that Yes!, this is how it had to end. That makes a satisfying read.

Your protagonist has a problem, aka ‘conflict.’ If he/she doesn’t, you don’t have a story. That conflict is an either/or conflict. The protagonist is torn between two basics. Base line example: live or die. The reader reading the story knows this because they see the conflict and the obvious solutions to that conflict. If the story ends with either of these obvious endings: the protagonist lives/the protagonist dies — the reader will feel let down. The writer’s job is to find either an alternative ending or a variation on one of the two obvious endings so that the story has an intriguing and unanticipated conclusion.

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I Need a Job

I Need a Job

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Moon PaksHave you noticed how some characters come with their own jobs, and some need to find one? Some of them, like Sherlock Holmes, even invent their own jobs. There was no such thing as a “consulting detective” until Holmes became one. The job is the character, and the character is the job.

Or, to put it another way, sometimes the type of story you want to tell dictates what kind of job your protagonist needs.

And, sometimes, the type of job your character has dictates the story you’re going to tell about them. There are quite a few jobs that can bring a story with them, at least if you’re a genre writer. Detective. Queen. Knight. Wizard. Thief. Soldier. Then there are those whose story potential doesn’t seem quite so obvious. Servant. Miller. Potter. Cook. Farmer.

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Fool’s Assassin: How Robin Hobb Writes Lyrical Fantasy Without Being Boring

Fool’s Assassin: How Robin Hobb Writes Lyrical Fantasy Without Being Boring

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FoolsAssassin
This is a dissection, not a review, and it’s full of (slightly obfuscated) spoilers.

If you’re looking for a review of Robin Hobb’s Fool’s Assassin, please go away. This is a dissection, not a review, and it’s full of (slightly obfuscated) spoilers.

If you are wondering how Hobb works her magic, but haven’t read this book, then your probably want to do that first. However, if that means starting from the beginning of the Assassin series, then you can safely read on because by the time you reach Fool’s Assassin you’ll have forgotten.

It is a good book. It’s as if Mary Renault or Rosemary Sutcliff wrote Fantasy, or if Tolkien channeled Thomas Hardy with more magic ninjas. It’s also a very rare bird; a country house Gothic from the point of view of the moody denizens.

From a writerly point of view, it’s interesting because she makes two things work that are often the comeuppance of lesser writers: a first person narrative in a slow burn thriller, and rich description.

Here’s how I think she does it.

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Congratulations to the Dell Award Winners, including Courtney Gilmore of Columbia College

Congratulations to the Dell Award Winners, including Courtney Gilmore of Columbia College

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Dell Award Winners-small

I am proud to announce that my student Courtney Gilmore received an Honorable Mention ranking in the prestigious 2016 Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing, for her story, “The Numbers Queen of Harlem,” which she wrote in the Columbia College-Chicago Advanced Fantasy Writing Workshop (which I taught) last semester.

The judges are pleased to announce the winner, runners-up and honorable mentions for the 2016 Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing.

Dell Award Winner, Runners-up and Honorable Mentions for 2016

Winner: “Lullabies in Arabic,” by Rani Banjarian of Vanderbilt University
First Runner-up: “Nostos,” by Eleanor Griggs of Grinnell College
Second Runner-up: “Get Out of Here,” by Laura Davia of Vanderbilt University
Third Runner-up: “Wags,” by Eleanor Griggs of Grinnell College

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tip From Carlos Hernandez

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tip From Carlos Hernandez

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Carlos Hernandez-smallOur Pro-Tip author this week is Carlos Hernandez. Full disclosure: I got an uncorrected proof reading copy of his short story collection, The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria, (which has been described as 12 stories of fantasy, science fiction, interstitial weirdness, and a few boldface lies), this past summer at the Nebula Awards weekend.

I gobbled that book down, and promptly made one of the stories, “More Than Pigs and Rosaries Can Give” part of the reading curriculum for the Advanced Fantasy Writing course I teach at Columbia College – Chicago. The story, synopsized by Carlos thusly: “A Cuban expatriate travels to Cuba and hires a local historian to suck the ghost of his mother out of the bullet hole where she was shot at the dawn of the Revolution,” is part history, part magical realism, and in equal parts an admonishment to be brave and dare to step off into that adventure, no matter how scary that first step may be.

Columbia College is very diverse economically, socially, ethnically, and in gender/sexuality identities. I encourage /p/u/s/h/ my students to explore stories, settings, characters, and themes beyond white knight in a generic Medieval European land rescues princess from dragon. We’ve all read that, wrote our own fan-fic, bought the “knights are crunchy and good with ketchup” T-shirt and wore it out. It’s past time for new kinds of fantasy stories.

And that is exactly what Carlos gives us in his first collection. That marvelous title, once again, is The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria, and it’s due out at the end of January 2016 from Rosarium.

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You May Be A Writer

You May Be A Writer

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MeredithDo you enjoy planning? When you want to give a party, do you start making lists? Thinking about the menu? Who to invite? When there’s a trip coming up, are there lists? Are you usually the first one packed? Or have you at least given considerable thought to your packing?

Is organizing an event almost more fun than the event itself? Then you may be a writer.

Do you think planning’s for squares? Do you decide at 6:00 pm to have a party and let people know via Twitter? Are you rushing through the airport at the last minute with your passport in one hand and a pair of (mismatched) socks in the other?

Are you all about the spontaneity? Seizing the moment? Then you may be a writer.

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The Series Series: Shards of Heaven by Michael Livingston

The Series Series: Shards of Heaven by Michael Livingston

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The Shards of Heaven-small[This review may contain trace amounts of David Bowie.]

The jacket copy for Michael Livingtson’s Shards of Heaven sounded promising. I asked for the ARC immediately, and bounced with joy when I found it in my mailbox. Alas, the press release tucked into the book described it as Dan Brown meets Indiana Jones.

Who am I to say Dan Brown is unreadable? Clearly millions of people find him otherwise. To me, though, Brown’s sentences and paragraphs are so relentlessly clunky, ugly, and boring, I am unable to care what happens to any of Brown’s characters. My one attempt to read The Da Vinci Code found me fighting the urge to throw the book across the room, several times on every page.

So the press release made me fear for the well-being of Michael Livingston’s novel. I also feared for my own domestic tranquility: Now that I have children, my household’s penalty for throwing books is a five-minute time-out.

Which was I to believe? The blockbuster-bluster elevator pitch, or the cover copy?

[A]s civil war rages from Rome to Alexandria, and vast armies and navies battle for supremacy, a secret conflict may truly shape the course of history: two sons of Caesar have set out on a ruthless quest to find and control the Shards of Heaven, legendary artifacts said to possess the very power of the gods — or of the one God. Caught up in these cataclysmic events, and the hunt for the Shards, are a pair of exiled Roman legionnaires, a Greek librarian of uncertain loyalties, assassins, spies, slaves . . . and the ten-year-old daughter of Cleopatra herself.

Shards of Heaven has so many of the things Black Gate readers love — epic sweep, battle and brawl, ancient secrets, women one underestimates at one’s peril, and world-shaking magic. Michael Livingston has some nice writing chops. The secret history clearly has a mountain of real historical research to give it depth. How can such a book go wrong?

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