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Feeling Cozy?

Feeling Cozy?

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Macleod VaultMost of you already know that I’m a big fan of mystery fiction. I’ve been reading all kinds of it for almost as long as I’ve been reading Fantasy and SF, starting with Agatha Christie’s Mystery on the Blue Train when I was fourteen. For that matter, I was the co-founder of the Wolfe Island Scene of the Crime Festival, and many of my friends are crime writers.

I’ve often talked about crossovers, and mixed genre novels, but I don’t think we have anything in our world that’s the equivalent of the cozy mystery. Read on, and let me know what you think.

The easiest way to describe cozies is to say they’re like Agatha Christie mysteries. Though she wasn’t deliberately trying to write cozies – there being no such thing at the time – Christie established many of the standard conventions used by the cozy mystery today. See if any of this sounds familiar to you:

There will be a murder, which often takes place “off stage” and of which no graphic or gory details are given.

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How One Award-Winning Author Thinks About Awards

How One Award-Winning Author Thinks About Awards

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Sarah L. Avery (photo by Theodora Goss)
Sarah L. Avery (photo by Theodora Goss)

A funny thing happened on my way to lifelong obscurity. I accidentally won a book award.

The award didn’t quite fall out of the sky and land on my head. After all, I had put the best I had to give, day after day, for many years, into the book’s drafts. Then I’d sent it to the most exacting readers I knew, and put the absolute best I had to give into revising it. Tales from Rugosa Coven was worthy. I had just stopped expecting anyone who didn’t already know me to notice.

And that was all right. I had other projects in process, and I when I sat down to work at them, I put the best I had to give into them, too. It’s joyful work. Universe willing, I’ll get to do it for the rest of my life.

Well, someone noticed. When the Mythopoeic Society shortlisted me for their award, it was such good news I was sure it had to be an error. The award may not be widely known in mainstream literary circles, but in the world of fantasy literature, it’s a big deal. I traveled to Mythcon to meet my unexpected readers, who were excited to see me. People who’d never met me had actually read my book and wanted to talk about it. I’m not being facetious when I say it was an utterly disorienting experience. The strength of the rest of the shortlist was such that, every time I sat down to write acceptance remarks just in case I won, I found myself drafting congratulatory emails and rehearsing what I’d say to my hotel roommate, a fellow nominee. If she hadn’t insisted that I must at least prepare a few notes, I have no idea what I’d have said at the podium when my hosts put the Aslan in my hand.

Even now, a month later, it’s hard to believe it really happened. Now I know what trophies are for. They’re how dark horse candidates who win things confirm for themselves that it wasn’t all a dream.

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Multiple Passes: A Post About Editing

Multiple Passes: A Post About Editing

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Playing it where it lies is sometimes not so simple: an editing allegory
Playing it where it lies is sometimes not so simple: an editing allegory

The Black Gate executive golf course was built on the highest volcano in Scotland, and, between the snow and the lava, I would have been hard pressed to make par. Had I been actually playing, the round of golf would have taken far longer, and, looking at the rumbling caldera to one side, I wasn’t certain we could spare the time. John O’Neill, however, was having the sort of game that allowed the group to clip along at an unprecedented pace.

Being the cart driver, I listened to him chatting on a phone to this or that business associate as we navigated the narrow tracks between holes. But, as the sixteenth hole approached, he had not gotten another call, and I took my chance.

“I was thinking about a new blog post, and wanted your opinion, sir,” I ventured. Mr. O’Neill , startled from his reverie, grunted and looked over at me.his eyes opening into narrow slits.

“Are you still blogging, Starr?” he asked.

“Uh, yes, sir,” I replied. “I was thinking about the topic of editing, actually, and –”

“Editing?” he asked, his incredulity awakening him fully, and he fixed me with an icy stare. “Why can’t you write anything exciting? Like something about aliens?”

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Seven Common Approaches to Stories That Use Mythology, Fairy Tales & Other Established Source Material

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Seven Common Approaches to Stories That Use Mythology, Fairy Tales & Other Established Source Material

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writing myth-smallThis week in both my fantasy writing classes, I talked to the students about some common approaches to writing stories that incorporate characters or plots from world religions and mythologies or public domain stories and characters. I’ve identified seven distinct techniques.

1. Old Tale – New Audience

A simple re-telling of the original story or myth is perfectly fine – if you’re dealing with a story that is relatively unknown to an American English-speaking audience. A simple retelling of Dracula won’t work; we know all about this Romanian vampire. But a retelling of the doomed love of the Shinto god and goddess Izanami- and Izanagi-no-Mikoto would be fine, as most Americans don’t know that mythology (though, through anime and manga, that is changing).

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A Deal You Can Refuse, But Shouldn’t

A Deal You Can Refuse, But Shouldn’t

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Black Gate HQ in downtown Chicago
Black Gate‘s Manhattan offices

There were seven hundred and seven stairs leading to John O’Neill’s desk within the Black Gate publishing complex, twelve more than last time, and I was exhausted when I reached the top. There, I waited, watching with trepidation as he finished reading a sheaf of papers, each heavily marked with the red pencil in his white-knuckled fist. His youth of back-alley boxing had left his hands suited to little more than holding an editor’s pencil, and this he wielded furiously, gold rings glinting in the dim light. From behind his massive chair the bodyguard, Tolstoy, glowered silently. Finally, the publishing magnate looked up at me and scowled.

“Starr,” he muttered, running a finger down a printed agenda on his desk. “Something about a blog post.”

“Yes, sir,” I stammered, holding out the two flimsy pages in my hand. Sweat had made the paper soft and slightly rumpled, and he considered them with distaste before taking them. His eyes flicked down the length of the copy before he tossed them down on his desk.

“Rubbish,” he declared.

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tips From Paul Dale Anderson, Installment #2

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tips From Paul Dale Anderson, Installment #2

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Paul Dale Anderson (photo by Tim Hatch)
Paul Dale Anderson (photo by Tim Hatch)

For our Pro Tip this week, we’ve got the second of what will be several installments from the prolific and generous Paul Dale Anderson, who answered all the questions on our list.

Chicagoans will have a chance to hear the Rockford native this Wednesday, when he’s the featured reader at the Gumbo Fiction Salon reading series. (Details on the event are at the end of the article.)

Paul has written across a variety of media and genres for more than twenty years and all across the spectrum of commercial fiction, including romance, westerns, science fiction, erotica, and especially horror. He’s written a huge amount of non-fiction for television, radio, newspapers, and academic journals, along with poetry and book reviews.

His latest novels are Darkness (2AM Publications, 2015), Abandoned (Eldritch Press, 2015), and Axes to Grind (Crossroad Press, 2015). He has new short stories coming out this fall at The Horror Zine magazine, Weirdbook 31, and Pulp Adventures 18.

To Outline or Not to Outline – What Works For You?

I outline only after the work is complete in manuscript. I let my characters tell their own story and each work writes itself. Then I write an outline, synopsis, elevator speech, and what I want to see as jacket copy. If I try to do that first, the story loses momentum. I put all of my creative energy into the story. Everything else is foo-foo.

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Politics: Slightly Less Important Than Breathing?

Politics: Slightly Less Important Than Breathing?

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The Gate to Women's Country-smallThere’s been a lot of election talk in the air lately (here in Canada we’ll have our federal election on the 19th of October) and that’s led me to thinking about politics in general, and politics in genre fiction in particular. Without having gathered any statistics, just on a gut feeling, it seems to me that politics plays a stronger or more obvious role in genre writing than it does in non-genre writing.

Unless we’re writing thrillers or mysteries, when we create our worlds, we can’t just take the background of the real world for granted, as non-genre writers can. Even if our focus is family drama or interspecies romance, we have to create the socio-political framework for our novels along with everything else – this is part of the “world building” that so many panels at so many conventions address.

I know this to my cost, as my editor at DAW, Sheila Gilbert, is always asking me for details that I just take for granted. I always thought that when I say “king” everyone else just fills in the socio-political blanks, and I can get on with my story without having to figure out where the food and the saddled horses came from.

That turns out not to be the case.

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Tips on Writing a Great Swordfight from a Professional Swordsman

Tips on Writing a Great Swordfight from a Professional Swordsman

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Sword fight in Robin Hood-smallIn my book Swordfighting for Writers, Game Designers, and Martial Artists, I devote about 45 pages to advice to writers. I thought the readers here at Black Gate might like me to expand a bit on some of the points I made there. Let me start with a quote:

There are several distinct skills that go into a good written fight. They are:

  • visualizing the fight accurately, to avoid describing impossible actions;
  • maintaining dramatic tension and pacing the fight to be exciting;
  • maintaining characterization: making sure that the characters’ actions in the fight give the reader the sense of their personalities that you want; and
  • serving the plot, so that the fight meets the needs of the story and is not just shoehorned in.

Dramatic tension, characterization, and plot are key skills for a novelist; ask M. Harold Page if you don’t believe me. Visualizing a swordfight accurately is a much less common writing skill.

Assuming that training in actual swordsmanship for a few years is out of the question, here are three ways to get it right, if you want to go into technical detail (which blade goes where).

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: No TV for You

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: No TV for You

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TV News cartoonSo you’ve got a new book out, and despite all attempts at humility, you secretly believe it is the coolest thing invented since smart phones. The whole world would love to read it – if you could only get those jaded, cynical, world-weary, keepers-of-the-gate to give you a little television air time. Forget it.

I briefly worked as a newspaper reporter, and I married a television news producer. I made a side trip through the land of promotion, working as a publicist for a couple of authors, for a few years.

So, believe me when I tell you, forget what the perky little “You can do it!” how-to promotion articles tell you – unless you are Stephen King, Anne Rice or a celebrity already – you are NOT going to get television coverage for your magnum opus of fiction.

Let me explain why you aren’t going to get television coverage, and so, should not waste your valuable and probably-limited personal publicity funds on it.

Look at the word Tele-vision. The Vision part is key – there must be something to see. No matter how pretty your cover art; there’s no movement, no action to it. And there’s no way to change that fact. Therefore, your book is of no interest to the television reporter – or to the television station’s viewers. Even if those viewers read ten books a month, when they turn on the television, they expect to see something visually entertaining.

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The Great Serialization Experiment: Don’t Kill Your Reader – Eat a Cookie Instead

The Great Serialization Experiment: Don’t Kill Your Reader – Eat a Cookie Instead

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Write on your own tombstone. Is there anything the Internet won't do? What a world we live in, people. What a world.
Write on your own tombstone. Is there anything the Internet won’t do? What a world we live in, people. What a world.

Remember, Kids: A Dead Reader Is A Non-Purchasing Reader

Here we are, last post of this series. Thanks for sticking around! Check out the first two parts if you haven’t yet: The Lay of the Land and Attack on Multiple Fronts.

The Mad Science

Ah, the eternal question: To plot ahead, or to write by the seat of your pants? I like to strike a healthy balance between planning and OMG WHY DID I THINK THAT CAPTURING MY NEIGHBOR’S PETUNIA GARDEN WOULD BE SIMPLE AND WHY DIDN’T I STUDY THEIR SQUIRREL DEFENSE GRID MORE THOROUGHLY FIRST??? I seriously still wonder about that one, as do my scars. I enjoy a combo of planning and flying by the seat of my squirrel-shredded pants is what I’m saying, in case that was a bit much on the cap locks.

This is what I did for Nigh, but I already had two published trilogies by the time I wrote it, so I had some idea of how I draft best (hint: very caffeinated). I didn’t have book 5 written when book 1 came out, but I had my plan. A thin little plan full of hunger and pain, but a plan nonetheless. I focused on arcs (skeleton) and promises (muscles and organs), and then tacked on the skin as I wrote.

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