Beta Drafting II

Here's what the end result of the beta drafting process looks like:



That's 11 betas and the critique folder.

And, for reference, the process started here:

Friday Cat Blogging--Choose your own caption edition

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope you all have a lovely turkey ritual sacrifice or whatever other celebration you make today.

Good Article on Diversity in SF

The title of which is simply, "Diveristy in Speculative Ficton," and it's by Paula R. Stiles in Fantasy Magazine. It's a four page article, but since I've touched on this issue here, I thought I'd bring it to everyone's attention.

Link Salad

Smart things via Beth Hanggeli: Toni McGee Causey on why comfort reading really matters. Go read this at once. It's very powerful and exactly right. If anyone ever clobbers you over happy endings send them to this post.

Interesting things via Bear: Ozarque on artist spaces.*

Terrifying Worrisome things (for writers) via Agent Kristin/pubrants and Publishers Weekly–Houghton Mifflin Harcourt temporarily suspending acquisitions.

*Bear addressed this a bit as well in her link. And I thought it worth addressing too. My own studio is a huge screen porch in summer and our front room in winter. Hopefully the latter will soon be abandoned in favor of a solar where my old screen office used to sit (2nd floor back–I'm now writing on the front porch in the summer) but that depends on royalties and book sales so it could be another year or three depending.

Monday Morning WIP Open Thread

Hey Folks,

Just hitting the treadmill and wondering what everyone's up to. Today I'm working on the beta for eye of Horus and submission stuff for the Black School update. I'm also pretending the holidays are not bearing down on me like a runaway freight train.

How about you?

Smart Things--Story

Nancy Pickard is saying smart things about story and contrast in reference to a photo of AndiF's that she put up. It made me think, which I find to be tremendous fun.

My response is below, but go read the original first.

I've decided that stills don't make a great metaphor for the way I think about story, not as dynamic through time as I'd like. I tend to want to start the reader out in a tattered fog, with sharp sudden moments of clarity that slowly form the picture around them until they think they've got it all nailed down. Then, the last few scenes blow the fog away and reveal a picture that has all the elements they've seen but slightly rearranged so that it is both not really what they expected at all and exactly as it should be. That's the plan at least.

Beta Drafting

This is what my office looks like at the beginning of the beta draft process. In this case The Eye of Horus--Black School II. (updated below)













Things to know:

1) The Wyrdsmiths don't always critique things in the exact same order due to various sorts of life interference.

2) Some of the critique comes in electronically for similar reasons.

3) By pure coincidence the Horus rough finished going through Wyrdsmiths in the same week that Pat read and commented on Black School (long story redacted) which is why the latter is part of the spread.

4) I just completely reread Black School and did some revisions there (Pat's and ret-con from Eye of Horus) which is why I'm doing the Horus beta now rather than in a month or two which was the original plan.

5) While I know #4 is the smart way to do things under the circumstances, it means I have to put down SpellCrash for about a week in the middle of chapter 1*, which in turn means I'm going to be very hard pressed to get it done in the three months I'm shooting for, so I may be scarce for a little bit while I try to repair the hole in schedule.

*Black School and WebMage are really incompatible in terms of voice and style and shifting between the two is a major gear strip that costs me a couple of days. This reduces the total time used by taking out two gear strips, but it does it at a bad place in the schedule.

Addenda The schedule it dents is mine, not my publisher's. According to Ace I have 6 and 1/2 months to finish the book. At this point I expect to use 3-4 of those.

Friday Cat Blogging--Guest Kitties

I'm the king of the world!



Yeah, whatever, take my picture, see if I care.



This is what I would look like on a coat of arms.

Kelly is Pleased

It has just been brought to my attention that Cybermancy is now out in Kindle and other e-editions.

Short fiction vs. novels

One final, final comment.

I think it's possible to write short fiction that is close to perfect. But a novel is too long -- there are going to be slow spots and places where you don't get the writing just right. Why? It's too much hard work to polish every word of a manuscript that is 100,000 words +; and inspiration -- if it exists -- can't be sustained for that long.

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice may be almost perfect. Many great novels are not.

There is a pleasure in writing something that is compact and does everything it intends to in a brief space.

It's the difference between netsuke and some giant piece of public art. Both work, but in different ways.

I like small works of art, including short fiction; and the stories of mine I like the best are less than novel length.

On Writing and Sanity

So, at the last several talks I've given I've found myself repeating something that I don't know that I've said here. It's about how you balance your mental attitude and stay sane in a fundamentally irrational business.

First, the way you should feel about whatever book or story you are writing this very minute, is that it is absolutely your best work ever and will be irresistable to readers.

Second, whatever book or story you are revising or getting critiqued at this very moment, is a solid piece of work that can and will be improved if you work at it and learn from comments.

Third, whatever work you have just finished, is ready to go out to agents or editors and you're excited to get it in the mail.

Fourth, whatever work has been bought or is being shopped around, no longer exists until and unless a decision is called for on your part.

Fifth, whatever work has been published or set aside is complete and an example of your work at the time, not something that reflects the writer you are now.

Sixth, whatever work you are going to embark on next will be made better by what you will learn from the completion of what you are working on now. So much so that once you have finished the current work, this new project will be the best thing you have ever written, bar non.

Repeat as often as possible.

Making Time to Write

I can't speak from my own experience, since I have always been a slow writer with low output. Once in a while, a writing project takes fire for me, and I write quickly. Most of the time, I take a lot of breaks from writing.

My best estimate is -- I've averaged a little over a hundred pages of publishable text a year over the past 35 years. This adds up to five published novels and 30+ published short stories. But it's a pretty modest output compared to many writers, including many of the other Wyrdsmiths.

However, I have read and heard a lot about how to make production as a writer. Most writers who produce a lot seem to set quotas and then meet the quotas. Some writers decide they will write x number of words a day. Others plan to sit down at the computer for a period of time -- say, four hours a day -- and stay at the computer until the time is up, doing nothing except writing or trying to write. If nothing comes, they stare at the blank screen for four hours.

You are not going for quality in this situation. The point is to get words on the page. If the words seem awful on a given day, grit your teeth and keep going. You can fix them later.

I took a class recently on "Writer's Resistance," which is sort of like writer's block, but not quite so scary. The woman teaching the class said it was key to make a commitment to write, however small, and then keep it. Commit to writing for 15 minutes or until you have half a page. She said it was important to make the initial commitment doable. Don't be too ambitious, because then you will fail. The idea is to create the habit of writing.

She also said it was always possible to keep writing after the first fifteen minutes or half a page. But make the commitment modest and then meet it. On bad days, you can quit after the commitment is met. On good days, you can keep going.

This is very similar to the system used by SF writers who are productive, though less demanding. It is probably a good place to start.

If you have a lot of distractions in your life, then the problem becomes -- can you find at least some free time and use it and maybe expand it. I am trying to get back to writing in a notebook, because then I can write on the bus or while taking a break at work. Patricia Wrede and Pamela Dean used to meet for lunch when they both had jobs and sit together and write. It was harder to goof off when each had a writing partner; and they were both scheduling a block of time each work day that was devoted to writing.

Short fiction vs. novels

A final note.

It used to be possible to make a living -- though not a good one -- by writing and selling many, many short stories. But this required the existance of a lot of magazines and the use of pen names, so readers would not realize that they were actually reading only half a dozen writers.

If you plan to make a living from writing nowadays, you had better focus on novels. But remember that most writers, even published novelists, do not make a living from writing.

What you can get from short stories is a fair amount of recognition, and this is not bad.

More on science and science fiction

So, in response to Steph's ScienceOnline09 post which I linked earlier and with some trepidation, my responses:

Questions for Science Fiction Writers

* Why are you writing science fiction in particular? What does the science add?

I actually write very little science fiction these days. I am much more an author of fantasy. This is despite the fact that I am an occasional science educator married to a physicist...or is it? I truly love science and I work to make sure all the non-supernatural stuff in my books is as accurate to the real world as it can possibly be. I read several science magazines on an ongoing basis and keep a close eye on the world of science. And that in combination with quirks from my own personality, is in large part, why I write mostly fantasy.

The interstices where a non-scientist can write scientifically accurate, broad-scope, science fiction have contracted enormously in the past twenty years.

Many of the areas that I find most interesting in terms of story have reached a point where I don't find much that is written in them genuinely scientifically plausible. I'm not at all sold on the singularity. I find the idea of faster than light travel ever more implausible. Ditto serious extra-solar system travel. I still like aliens, but I don't see us interacting with them anytime soon, not physically at least. I've never bought time travel as a science trope, though I love magical time travel. Psionics? Nope. Etc.

Now, many writers can and do write perfectly reasonable workarounds for these issues, and I still enjoy reading them, but my ability to suspend disbelief doesn't extend far enough to actually write them. Certainly not at novel length, which is what I prefer to write. I don't know that that will hold forever, and if I find a fabulous SF idea that I can really buy into, I might well write an SF novel.

Yet another group of writers have found things in SF that really interest them that are fully scientifically plausible but that don't really hit my sweet spots in terms of what I want to write, and I must note that the ones who are doing this often have extensive science backgrounds.

I love science. I love science fiction. But for me as a writer they are sadly not two great tastes that taste great together.

On the other hand, I can and do try to make my fantasy as rigorous as possible and I very much approach creating worlds and magic systems from the point of view of someone who wants an internally consistent and theoretically robust system. My studies and work in science and science education have made me a much better writer of fantasy.

* What is your relationship to science? Have you studied or worked in it, or do you just find it cool? Do you have a favorite field?

I married into the family. At this point in time my wife is the chair of a physics department. When we met, she was a senior in high school planning on becoming a physics professor and I was a theater major in college who had always had an interest in science. We are very close and in many ways I shadowed her through grad school, helping to write papers, design research studies, and work on curricula.

My involvement was strong enough that I developed a close friendship and intellectual bond with her adviser that led to my own work in science education, writing and editing various curriculum projects in physical science. I have a broad field interest in science though my work in science education is most deeply rooted in basic physical science.

* How important is it to you that the science be right? What kind of resources do you use for accuracy?

For my own science fiction work, paralyzingly so. For what I get out of others, not so much. When I need to check accuracy I tap the rather large academic network of scientists that I've developed through my wife and my own work in science education as well as various online resources and an extensive personal science library.

* Are there any specific science or science fiction blogs you would recommend to interested readers or writers

I don't know that I have recommendations. The vast majority of science and science fiction blogs that have found their way onto my list got picked up because I know and like the people writing them rather than because of content. I think all of them have great content as well, but it's nothing like an objective judgment. Thinking in terms of science and science fiction as a crossover point I will say that you could do worse than to read Jay Lake's blog. He does a great job of aggregating cool links from both fields among other things.

Finding time to write / eliminating distractions

In the TCSFWN followup thread, Jaye Lawrence asked for other tips for putting writing time into your day, and eliminating distractions. I had some thoughts on that.

1. If you have something frivolous you do instead of writing -- whether it's reading blogs, playing games, or watching TV -- tell yourself that you're required to write for a certain amount of time before you are allowed to indulge in your personal time-suck. When I impose this sort of self-discipline on myself, it works extremely well; if I'm writing every day, it doesn't usually take that long to click into a groove where I don't feel as tempted to go waste two hours reading blogs. Or whatever.

2. I really do not try to write while the kids are home and awake. I write after bedtime or while they're at school (preschool, in the case of my younger daughter). There are people who manage it, at least with older children, but it's hard. You have to be very tolerant of interruptions. Some people get up at the crack of dawn to find kid-free time to write; I am much better at staying up late, so I do that instead.

2a. Experiment with your own flexibility. You can probably write under more adverse situations than you think. Most writers prefer a nice, long, un-interrupted stretch, but if you only have 15-minute chunks, you can probably train yourself to write in 15-minute chunks if that's what you have.

3. You can never really eliminate distractions. There are ALWAYS distractions. Even if you took yourself off to an island where you had a cottage with a typewriter, meals delivered three times daily, no one to talk to, and nothing else to do, you'd find yourself thinking "oooh, I could go skip rocks for three hours. The fresh air would do me good! It sounds much more appealing than writing right now." All you can do is to work on your own self-discipline.

3a. That said, some people really, honestly, do not have time to write. I wrote almost no fiction in college. I do not look back at those four-hour Magic: The Gathering marathons I played with my housemates and say "curse it! I could've written a ten-volume epic in that time I wasted!" I also wrote very little when my older daughter was a baby. (I wrote furiously when my younger daughter was a baby, but that was because I was on deadline. I can write under much more seriously adverse circumstances with proper motivation.) If you're in college, or parenting little kids, or a caregiver for an ill relative, or struggling with depression....cut yourself some slack. Everyone has seasons in their life; sometimes, something has to give, and it's far better that it be writing than your sanity, health, relationships, etc.

4. Recognize that you only get 24 hours in a day, and consider how you're spending them. I watch almost no TV, and this is true for several of the Wyrdsmiths. (Kelly doesn't own a TV at all.) I don't own a gaming system because I don't want to be tempted by the timesuck. I'm not saying you need to quit all your hobbies and live like a monk -- just be aware of how you use your time.

5. The support of the other people in your life is really critical for a lot of this, especially if you're raising children. I am fortunate in that my husband has always, ALWAYS considered my writing important and worthwhile, and he will make an effort NOT to distract me if I'm writing. If you've got a significant other who considers your writing a frivolous waste of time, I have no idea how to advise you.

Short fiction vs. novels

I think Kelly pretty much covered the topic. But I am going to repeat at greater length.

At one point -- the glory days of the pulpzines -- American SF was pretty much all short. There was close to no market for novel length science fiction. When novels were published, they were often collections of linked short stories that had been published in the magazines. The original Foundation books are an example.

There was a transitional period when short fiction markets -- the remaining magazines and original anthologies -- were still fairly numerous and strong. The theory then was, you began by writing short fiction and established a reputation which would make it easier to sell novels. The book editors knew who you were.

A good example might be William Gibson, who published a series of stunning short stories in Omni, and then went on to write Neuromancer.

At this point, four pro-magazine markets remain, and there are a number of good small magazine or semi-prozine markets in print and on line. There are even a few original anthologies. However, the market for short fiction is not huge, and the readership is also not huge. One of the things I noticed when I paid attention to the Nebula nomination process was -- the competition was always strongest in the novel class. This (I think) was because more people had actually read novels and so could nominate them. It seemed pretty clear to me that most members of SFWA were not reading short fiction.

It's possible that editors still read short fiction, even if they are buying novels. But the field has shifted from being mostly short fiction to being mostly novels; and -- like Kelly -- I am not at all sure that short fiction is the way to break in anymore.

If you enjoy writing short stories, you might as well write them. You will develop your skills and maybe make some sales, and the publishing credits may help when you are looking for an agent. But I don't think they are a necessary stage.

Having said that, I will add that there are successful novelists who continue to publish short stories, I assume because they like writing them. And there are SF writers with good reputations who are still known mostly for their short fiction. For some reason the names that come into my mind are all men: James Patrick Kelly, John Kessell, Michael Swanwick. Wait a minute, Kelly Link!

I think Kessell and Kelly have written novels, but I don't know for sure. Swanwich won a Nebula for one of his novels. But I know him best as a very prolific short story writer.

And Kelly Link has managed to get one heck of a reputation with two short story collections, both published by her own press, if I'm remembering correctly.

The Writing Process

Svetlana Chmakova, "The Writing Process." From the exhibit Graphic Language: The Art of the "Comic Book," Bryan Gallery, Bowling Green State University. Via the Toledo Blade.

Tobias Buckell in the hospital

The truly fabulous Tobias Buckell is in the hospital. Go over and wish him good health and fast healing. He's one of the sweetest guys in the business.

Agent Neepery

So, mystery author extraordinaire, Nancy Pickard, posted some thoughts and questions on agents this morning and it turned out I had a lot to say in response. Here is my comment from over there:

I think you absolutely must be friendly with your agent. I think that it also is a great thing to make friends with them over time, but I'm leery of starting off the relationship as friends because then if it doesn't work out* then you have a major problem.

Ooh, I should probably back up one from that, I really believe that having an agent is a huge asset in this business both to sell your work so that you don't have to do what is a really big job, but also because a good agent will do wonders for you in contract negotiations and long term improvement of both your revenue stream and flexibility**. This is doubly true as more and more publishers stop looking at unagented works.

Multiply submitting...I'm with Miss Snark on this, exclusives suck and should only be entered into when there is no reasonable alternative. Submit to a bunch of agents (though you've got to read guidelines and tailor the pitch). Only agree to an exclusive if it's an agent high on your list and for a finite window and for a full. If you've got stuff out with multiple agents and someone asks for exclusive on the full, be honest, tell them you've got the partial out elsewhere and that you're willing to give them an exclusive on the full for a finite period--probably not less than three weeks and certainly not more than a couple of months. Don't submit multiply to several agents at the same house, but other than that, go for it.

I will say that I think it's best to send in waves. Maybe five at a time in the first couple so that you can get a sense of the response to your initial query and synopsis and adjust as necessary.

Finally, as I said, Miss Snark is the best thing ever to happen to online agency discussions, and I am eternally bummed that she no longer updates her blog. However, the archives are still there and a while back I went through and read and indexed the whole thing by topic: Miss Snark index. The vast majority of basic and even advanced agent questions have answers in her files that are both smart and funny.

Okay, going to stop now since I've already grabbed a huge chunk of Nancy's comment real estate. Hope it's useful.

Oops, I lied. Two last things, I have my doubts about the average value of in-person pitches, but for anyone who's interested, I've sunk some time into talking about pitches and synopses: Pitching and Synopses parts 1, 2, and 3. Plus, what a synopsis should do.

*possible reasons for not working out, they don't sell your work, you don't agree on the way your career should go, you change genres into something they don't/won't represent, major life changing events knock them out of business for a significant time, etc.

**Mine has a standard contract with all the houses he works with that is much better than the intro contract and which is the starting point for negotiation so that we don't have to fight over all kinds of things that unrepped authors do. Also, his negotiations for me have a lot of impact on options and no competing works clauses, very important in my case since I write fast.

Lavishly Illustrated

Over yonder, I've been writing about artists from the golden age of illustration.

Last Monday, Howard Pyle. Today, Arthur Rackham. With galleries!

Also, does anyone besides me remember Star Hawks?

TCSFWN Follow-up

Well, we had a great session meeting with the Twin Cities Science Fiction Writers Network this afternoon. Most of the Wyrdsmiths were there--Lyda, Eleanor, Naomi, Doug, and yours truly, with only Kelly, Bill, and Harry (on hiatus) not represented. I think we got a chance to answer a good number of questions, but it was obvious when we got to the end of the session that it could have gone on for some time.

So here's your chance! Did you have a question or comment that you wanted us to talk about? Post it in the comments thread, and we'll respond. Didn't get a chance to pick up a copy of one of the books and would like one? You can email us: it's just "wyrdsmiths", over at that gmail locale. We'll do what we can to get you a copy, if you'll do what you can to help us get it to you!

That's all folks: Thanks for having us over for tea, and let the thread begin!

Science and Science Fiction

One of the hats I wear from time to time is my science educator hat. At an earlier point in my writing career I wrote a series of hard science fiction short stories designed to help teach physical science for the InterActions in Physical Science middle school curriculum, which was funded by the National Science Foundation--there's an illustrated student reader of my short stories associated with the project. I also worked as a continuity editor for another NSF funded project, Constructing Physics Understanding (CPU) smoothing the differences between the voices of the people who created the various units. The hat is pretty dusty at the moment, but I take it out from time to time for good causes. This is one of those times. Stephanie Zvan and Peggy Kolm are going to be moderating a session on science and science fiction at ScienceOnline09 on science and science fiction. As part of that they're starting a discussion on the topic.

Go look.

Answer questions. Ask questions. It'll be fun and discussions like this one are in the best interests of both science and science fiction.

Friday Cat Blogging

From the cats on radiators series:

Local Announcement: Samuel R. Delany

For those of you in the Twin Cities area:

Science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany will be speaking at the Walker Art Center on Saturday, November 15 from 2:00 p.m. to4:00 p.m.. The lecture is FREE and open to the public.

From the Walker website:

Spend an afternoon in another world with author Samuel R. Delany, who visits the Walker in conjunction with the exhibition Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of Metamorphosis. Just as Kudo proposed a “new ecology” of humanity and technology, so has Delany’s groundbreaking science fiction—including award-winning titles such as Babel-17, Dhalgren, and The Einstein Intersection—offered captivating glimpses of hypothetical and shifting realities. In addition to science fiction and fantasy, Delany’s highly acclaimed works include autobiography, literary criticism, and eroticism. His latest novel, Dark Reflections (Running Press), presents a devastating “portrait of the artist” for the 21st century. Copresented by Rain Taxi Review of Books.

In other news, I guess we're all extremely busy or there would be more posting goodness happening here. Maybe we're all heads down today getting ready for group tonight...?

A Little Nonsense Next Door

A tonic for a rainy, freezing Tuesday: some silliness I've been doing for a couple of weeks at that comics blog of mine.

I'm guessing the readers of the Wyrdsmiths blog might have some fun with it, y'know, cuz you're, like, writers 'n' stuff.

At very least you can grin at the pulpy goodness.

Monday WIP Open Thread

Another Monday has rolled around, and it's time to share what we are all doing. Me, I'm currently finishing off a synopsis for Dust and Steel to send off to a prospective agent; after that, it's back to work on Hawthorn Queen. I also need to come up with a lesson plan for the historical rapier class I teach (ouch, that's tomorrow already!) and should get started on my critiques for Wyrdsmiths this week. Oh, and there's being Dad, which takes up a startlingly large amount of time. :)

So what is everyone else up to? The winter cold seems to have settled in for good here in Minnesota, making the urge to escape outside and put off work a bit easier to avoid. How about around you?

A Group Interview of Kelly

Updates:

A class My friend Jonna's class has been studying WebMage and they sent me a block of questions and I figured I might as well post the questions and answers here for anyone who's interested. Also, my friend Dave's comments made me go looking for the initial description of the WebMage idea and I've included it at the very bottom of the post.

L's Questions:

1. What inspired you to write WebMage and the novels that followed?

I started messing around with the web back in 1997 or thereabouts and one of the things that fascinated me about it was the way all of the pages reminded me of individual worlds linked together by the internet. Parallel worlds stories are a long standing form in science fiction and fantasy, and this looked like a fabulous way for some entity to arrange worlds. That's where the first glimmer of the idea happened-I think I called it World Diving when I wrote it down. More on that in later questions.

As for the series:

I hadn't originally intended WebMage as the first book in a series, but along about the time it sold, I came up with the idea of Ravirn hacking into Hades. That led to the second book, Cybermancy, which has its roots in the Orpheus story and a two book deal. Time went by, I finished Cybermancy about a month before WebMage pulled a starred review from Publisher's Weekly and started a sales run that meant a second printing in the first month of release. Since I had a great time writing Cybermancy and the books looked like they were doing well I decided I should think about writing another one or two in the WebMage world. My agent and editor both thought that was a dandy idea, and I sat down to see what I could come up with that would keep me excited about the characters and their world. Out of that process came CodeSpell and MythOS and next SpellCrash which will be the end of the series arc. So that's the business side of the story.

The writing side starts with having fun hanging around with these characters and playing in the WebMage world. I want these books to be readable as standalone novels, but also to have an arc where the characters grow and develop and deepen across books. That means that what happens in each book is going to have spillover into the next and later books. Especially the things that Ravirn does that are stupid or the result of hard choices.

2. Are there particular conditions or is there a particular place that you like to write?

My ideal writing space is a screen porch with a nice view of the outside world and about 75 and sunny. Failing that, I like lots of windows and temperature control. Oh, and I need a nice comfy chair and a lap desk for my computer.

3. How did you go about creating the world in WebMage? What process did you use?

After I had the initial story idea I started picking at the edges, what kind of story could I tell that would let me really play with the concept of parallel worlds in web type environment? I decided to go with magic rather than a scientific setup because most parallel world stories go the other way and I wanted to do something really new.

That in turn gave me my main character, Ravirn. A hacker/sorcerer was the logical protagonist for that kind of story. Since I like familiars, I gave Ravirn a familiar appropriate to someone who lived in both those worlds, a shape-changing goblin/laptop combo. When I started to think about plot, I figured that I should have a hacking episode gone terribly wrong--this was for the short story that started it all. So, what was Ravirn's target? Had to be the heart of the web itself if I was going to really get into meat of the idea. Who would build a web to keep track of all these worlds? That stopped me for a day or two until I came up with the idea of the Greek Fates using this new technology to do their age-old job. To raise the stakes I made Ravirn a grandchild of one of them, and bingo, I had the heart of the story that gave birth to WebMage.

T's Questions:

4. As far as the Greek mythology in Webmage is concerned, what inspired you to take that angle on the story?

My upbringing and early reading was weighted heavily toward the classics. My mother and grandmother started reading me Shakespeare and the Greek and Norse myths long before I was old enough to understand them. Also Tolkien and Asimov and a lot other science fiction and fantasy. Some of my earliest memories are of listening to things like Lear and Lord of the Rings and Oedipus Rex. So a lot of my core storymaking sensibilities are rooted in the classics and f&sf. As I noted above, I was looking for someone who would build a world-spanning magical web. When I thought of the Fates it seemed exactly right and the rest of the mythological structure built from there.

5. Did you have to do any special research or manipulate the traditional Greek stories to make everything fit in with the plot you had originally imagined?

Not a lot actually. I had a very solid grounding in the Greek myths from my childhood and I try to stay true to the archetypes of the Greek gods as much as possible with the books. I did have a couple of copies of the myths around to double check names and minor details but mostly it was all in my head. Likewise the computer stuff. My mom's a coder and bug checker and my grandmother was a computer test equipment technician in her last job, so I grew up in an house saturated with computer geekery. Then, when my wife was in college, I spent a lot of time messing around with computers to help her out with various classes as an undergrad and grad student so I had to keep up to date on that too. I did make mistakes there, but a couple of my first readers are IT professionals and they pointed out where I needed to make changes.

6. What inspired you to go with a cyberpunk story fused with other areas of science fiction? What are your favorite science fiction or fantasy genres to read?

I covered the first half of this in 1 and 3. As far as favorite genre, that shifts over time. At this point I'm reading mostly fantasy and probably more urban fantasy than other sub genres, but I've got about 1,500 f&sf titles on my shelves, almost all of which I've read, and there are another 5-600 that I've read but not kept. But I really select my reading based more on writers than sub-genre.

And actually, I probably read more non-fiction than fiction at this point in time. I read around a 100 books worth of material a year. Before I was a writer I read more.

7. What was your inspiration for the character of Ravirn?

As I noted in three, his role came out of my thoughts on how best to tell the story. I really needed a hacker/sorcerer to explore the core idea. The specifics of his personality on the other hand is pretty close to mine, probably the closest of any of my protagonists to date, though he's more of an idealist and I'm not really interested in hacking.

C's Questions:

8. Why are all of your fates and furies women?

That's an easy one. Because that's the way the Greeks thought of them. But I don't think that's a very satisfying answer, so let me tackle a related question.

Why did I focus on the female members of the Greek pantheon? It's really about the characters I find interesting. To me the female portion of the pantheon seems much more complex and real, and besides that I've always liked strong women, both in real life and in my reading and writing. More specifically, given a choice between writing about Fate, Discord, and Vengeance on the one hand or War, Storm, and the Sun (Mars, Zeus, and Apollo) I'm much more interested in the former. As the books go on you'll see more gods (Zeus, Hades) and goddesses (Persephone, the Muses, Nemesis, Necessity, Athena) but as you can see, I still tend to favor the goddesses. As a counterpoint, MythOS, which comes out next year, takes Ravirn off to meet the Norse gods and there I deal pretty much exclusively with male members of the Pantheon, Odin, Loki, Thor, Tyr, Fenris, Jormungand, Hugin, and Munin. That's because in the Norse myths I find the guys got all the good roles.

9. What gave you the idea of webgoblins and why would they turn into laptops...instead of some futuristic item?

I like familiars as I mentioned above, and I was looking for one that would fit with Ravirn's dual nature of sorcerer and hacker. I'm not entirely sure of why a goblin popped into my head rather than a pixie or an elf except that I wanted someone snarky and that triggered goblin for me. As for laptops, I wrote the initial story in '97. I wanted the story set in a sort of moving window of the now and I suspect that laptops will be with us for at least another decade or two--it depends on how fast certain technologies are moving. If you want an idea of where I think laptops are going, you can see it in Loki's tech toy in the forthcoming MythOS, something the size of a cellphone that will use projectors and lasers and sensors to give you a virtual keyboard and screen. I think we'll have keyboards in some shape for writing at least for quite a while to come yet, though they will probably eventually give way to voice recognition.

10. Why put Ravirn in the family of fates rather than another family?

That was dictated by the idea of making the mweb a tool of the Fates. As a writer, one of the things I always try to do with any story is keep raising the stakes. Another is to try to show the inherent complexity of relationships between people. Interfamily conflict is a great way to do both of those things. I wanted Ravirn's relationship with the bad guys to be more complex and painful than just white hats vs. black hats. Putting him in a situation where his ideals were in conflict with his sense of family and belonging made all of his choices harder and more costly and it let me show the Fates in a more complex way too. I find the ideas that Atropos expounds in a couple of places to be morally abhorrent, but I can also see how someone could believe in them strongly and feel that what they were doing was the right thing to do. I think antagonists need to be every bit as three dimensional as the protagonists and this helped get me there.

11. Why Lachesis as his grandmother?

I wanted him to have a relationship with the Fates that was both close enough for complexity and far enough away to make him seem more human. Also, the Fates have been around for a really long time and I wanted Ravirn to be a child of the modern era, someone who grew up with computers, and I felt that meant some distance in the blood line. Why Lachesis as opposed to Atropos or Clotho? That's tougher. I felt that Atropos' role as the cutter of threads naturally made for a harder harsher character and a logical antagonist for the story. That left Clotho and Lachesis and I honestly don't know why I chose one over the other, though I'm very glad I went the way I did, as it gave me some lovely dynamics to play with with Clotho later in the story and the other books.

E's Questions:

12. What are your main influences of your writing? How did you come up with WebMage specifically?

I'm a lifelong fan of sci-fi, fantasy, and the classics. My education favored those and the greats of theater (my degree). Everything I write is built on those foundations. Tolkien, Asimov, Shakespeare, Greek and Norse myth, Norton, McCaffrey, Cervantes, Molière, Niven, Heinlien, Zelazney, etc. As for the how, see 1 and 3 above.

13. What prompted you to include Greek mythology into your writing of WebMage?

See 4.

14. Have you dabbled in any other genres besides Science Fiction? Who are some influential authors to you?

I've written horror and memoir shorts, and poems as well as co-written short plays, but I'd have to say that it's all been pretty close to f&sf. As well as the folks mentioned in 12 I have to give a nod to Tim Powers, Mercedes Lackey, Terry Pratchett, Marion Zimmer Bradlley, Garth Nix, Colleen McCullough, Anne Rice and the group of folks who did the Wild Cards series. Also, for their wise council and mentorship: Dean Wesley Smith and Kristin Katherine Rusch, and to a lesser extent Raymond Feist, George R. R. Martin, Kevin J. Anderson, and Tim Powers (again).

15. How did you get started in writing? What would be some advice you have for prospective authors?

From the ages of 11-22 I pursued theater with great passion. I was dead certain I was going to work in the industry and even landed the occasional paying gig in acting or tech theater. Then I met the woman I'm now married to—we've been together for almost 18 20 years—and realized that theater and anything resembling a normal home life aren't terribly compatible. The hours and the travel are both deadly for relationships. About that same time I got my first computer and decided to try my hand at writing a novel. I fell in love with the process inside of a week and haven't really ever looked back. The funny thing is that I think theater probably prepared me better for writing what I do than an English degree would have. I did renaissance festivals, stunt work, slapstick, makeup, stage combat, lighting, all sort of things really. I got a feeling for story and scene that has served me very well, and developed skills like fencing and dancing that map directly onto writing fantasy.

The advice question is always a tough one. There are a million and one business things I could tell you*, none of which would be the least bit helpful when you're starting out and all of which are critical once you start selling. The single most important thing you can do if you're interested in writing is simply to write.

Write.

Write more. Write again. Revise. Send out. Write more. All of those things are predicated on the initial writing. You achieve success in this business by the expedient of writing, improving your writing, and not giving up. The formula is a simple one to lay out but it can be awfully hard to follow, especially the not giving up part.

This is something I've blogged about extensively:

http://wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com/2007/10/because-it-cant-be-overemphasized.html
http://wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com/2006/09/write-next-story.html
http://wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com/2007/03/loving-craft.html
http://wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com/2007/02/deciding-not-to-quit.html
http://wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com/2006/10/never-give-up.html

*I will give you one business note. Money always flows to the writer. If you start submitting your work around and anyone who see it asks for money for development or anything else, run, do not walk for the exits. That is the sign of a scam artist. The only person who ever gets money from a writer is their agent and that comes only as a percentage of money paid from the publisher after the publisher starts sending checks. I actually blog a lot about the writing craft and business at wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com and much of it has been indexed.

M's Questions:

16. Were there writers from your childhood that inspired you?

See 4 and 12 above and add: Richard Adams, Eve Titus, C.S. Lewis, Margery Sharp, Kenneth Grahame, A.A. Milne, Michael Bond, and E. B. White.

17. Do you base your characters on people from your own life?

Not really. There are bits and pieces of people I know or have known scattered through my characters, but mostly my characters are little bits of my personality split off and played against each other. I have occasionally likened it to being professionally schizoid, in that I spend my days breaking my brain into multiple pieces and assigning personalities to the various bits so that I can spend several hours being a bunch of different people. It can make me a little strange at the end of the work day as I slowly come up out of the world of the book and its characters and reassemble myself and reground myself in the real world.

18. Which character in WebMage do you identify with most?

Ravirn and/or Melchior. People who know me well see both of them in me and have argued on more than one occasion over which is closer to my core personality. Unfortunately there's little doubt that of the two I look more like Melchior. The character that I have the most fun writing is Eris. I love her attitude and even more I love her problems.

19. How difficult was it to get published the first time?

It took me eight years and around a hundred rejections before I sold my first short story. Then another six years and fifty or so rejections before I sold a novel. I was also writing and selling shorts in there, so my total count of rejections is around 450 for 5 novels sold and 20+ short stories. I do much better with poetry, but it doesn't pay enough to justify the work involved.

On the other hand someone in my writers group sold her first book to the first editor it was sent to after having it picked up by the first agent who looked at it. On the other other hand, I've got a friend who's been doing this longer than I have and who, despite being a good writer with dozens of short stories sold, has never managed to sell a book in America.

For more general purposes it looks like this: For every novel that is published the editors have looked at and rejected between 500 and a 1,000 other books. That number is both much better and much worse than it sounds. Better, because for every hundred books submitted 90 of them are so poorly written as to not really be in contention. Worse, because that 500 to a 1,000 includes books by already established authors. So, I've got 5 novels either in print or forthcoming and that means that 2,000-4,000 of those rejected books were competing with the 4 of mine that sold after Penguin had already invested time and effort in making me a success story. It does get easier after that first book but it's not a sure thing. My editor rejected 4 books of mine after she bought the first pair.

That said, if you write well and are persistent beyond all reason you have a good chance of selling a book. Publishing is about 15 percent talent, 15 percent luck, 20 percent craft, and 50 percent banging your head against the wall until you knock it over. The thing to remember is that your forehead heals and the wall doesn't.

H's Questions:

20. What made you decide upon creating a story that infused both ancient Greek mythology along with new age technology?

See 1, 3, and 4 above.

21. Did you place any of your attributes into the characters within your story/stories?

I did and I do. As I noted earlier Ravirn has a lot of me in him. Particularly his snarkiness and pigheadedness. His adrenaline junky, wild man tendencies owe a lot to my younger self. Melchior's sarcasm and tendency to be a bit on the cynical side are mine as well. Cerice's almost OCD level of organization is rooted in my own. You can also find chunks of my philosophy and world view scattered all around the books, sometimes in very unlikely places. For example, Eris' comments on uncompromising idealism (refusing to choose between the lesser of two evils) being responsible for some pretty bad results has a lot to do with the way I felt about Ralph Nader in 2001. I'm all through the books in many ways, but I also have characters, even my heroes, say and do things that are 180 degrees from what I think is the right answer.

22. What originally inspired you to take up writing science fiction-fantasy?

A big chunk of your answer can be found in 15 above and in 4. Basically I was raised to be a fantasy and sci-fi author. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intent of either my mother or grandmother but it was the result--I didn't spend much time with my dad as a kid, though he is also an f&sf fan and a good friend.

I'll add here something my wife calls "leaking weirdness."

I'm pretty much wired for creating stories out of thin air. When I was little I did it as part of the elaborate scenarios that constituted much of my playing--I used to build Asgard out of blocks and use my toys to act out the final battle of Ragnaroc. I also used to vanish into the woods around the farm where I spent summers for hours, playing Robin Hood and other scenarios. Later, I channeled that energy into theater, and especially improv at Renaissance Festivals and the like. Then I quit theater and wrote my first novel and my second and so. It turns out that I don't do well when I don't have something like that soaking up the creative energy. If I go too long without writing I will begin to have vivid dreams and wake up spouting off about things like "llamaflage" or a "Connecticut Buffalo in King Heifers Court"--leaking weirdness. My wife's normal response to this is to give me a very patient look and tell me to go write something.

C's Questions (Being a rebel, C didn't write any questions but instead made statements inviting comments.):

23. The use of magic in WebMage was interesting and different.

Thanks. I tried and try to create something new with each world I build, whether it's magical or sfnal. I sometimes call myself a world-driven writer since creating logically framed magic systems or science-fictional futures is what really interests me as a writer. The story and characters almost always come after the place and mode for me.

24. The plot of WebMage has lots of hooks to keep you reading.

Again, thanks. I would probably write travelogues of places that never were if I were just writing for myself. Writing for others makes me think about story and what makes it interesting: high stakes, characters the reader will identify with, interesting circumstances, cost, reversal, betrayal, things hidden from the characters and thus the readers, lulls to allow the reader a chance to breathe, chapter structure that leaves the reader with questions at the end of a scene that will draw them on to the next one, and resolutions that satisfy the reader's desire for closure and sense of justice while not glossing over the complexity of life or the idea that nothing worth having ever comes cheap.

Update:

Original description of WebMage, verbatim: World-Amberesque family of mages. Responsible for creation of www, internet, and cell phone net. This is actually the material component of spell that allows them to communicate worldwide and across the dimensions. They create webspiders that drop through alternate realities and report back to them via the web. Each mage has a familiar that is essentially a walking talking laptop with a built in cell phone. They travel from reality to reality via Decision locuses. Each locus is a location where a decision was made. Thus, if you want to get to a world where reagan didn't win you would go to a voting booth and follow one of the decisions to vote against him into the appropriate world. They call it world diving.

Friday Cat Blogging

This is what Kitty Consensus looks like in the McCullough household:

Leith on one of the new radiator benches because it's cold out



Jordan, ditto



Ashbless on the last of the old radiator benches because it's cold out



Isabelle, ditto (though you can't see it in the close up)



Nutmeg: Where are we going next, Boss?

The Thick Skin of a Writer in Critique

Several months ago now, I had a conversation with a couple of women from Midwest Fiction Writers after a signing. We did the usual things writers do when they get together -- gossiped about the publishing industry, our fellow writers, and generally bemoaned the trials of the writing life. Somehow it came up that I'm in a critique group. After the usual back and forth about how it all works, both of these women were stunned. "You must have really thick skin" one said, and other shook her head and asked: "How can you stand to have people read your work before it's finished?"

My first thought was: How can you not?

I've been writing this way for so long, I can't even imagine a writing process that didn't include the constant criticism of my peers. To me, it's far more shocking to think of handing in a manuscript to your editor having never shown it to another soul before that moment.

After listening to them, however, it occured to me that most authors write very much alone, and that a lot of people are really afraid of what others might say about their work. Even established writers who write for a public audience may not ever interact with a reader about their work other than their editor.

If it works for them (or you), great. I imagine like my earlier post about whether or not people keep rejection letters, this comes down to a matter of personality. For me, I'm kind of a life-long student. I like having a place I have to go every other week (or 2nd and 4th weeks of every month), and "homework" that's expected of me. Since I can't afford to stay in college my entire life, I think I suppliment by being in a critique group. This way I get to yell about esoteric stuff with a bunch of other people all engaged in the same process. Commas! Verbs! Passive voice!

Plus, I'm such a social creature -- which I realize many, many other writers are not. Being in a writers group helps me NOT be alone with my writing process all the time. For instance, I think I'd tend towards writers block if I didn't have "homework" to prod me along.

As for having a "thick skin," I guess I'd rather hear about any problems while I still have time to fix them rather than after I've sent a completed manuscript in to my publisher. But that may be a matter of preferring to do my work at the front rather than at the end.

I also realize that for many people the issue is kind of moot. They live too far from other writers to enjoy the kind of experience I get to have every other week. But if you had the opportunity, would you be in a critique group?

President Barack Obama

I just needed to say that.

Hail to the Chief

Alex Ross's Time for a Change.

F*@% yeah!

ONE THING

VOTE

That is all.

A Special Election Day Message

Monday Morning WIP Open Thread

So, what are you all up to? I'm going through the copyedits for MythOS--all electronic now, yay!. I'm also trying to shake off the beginnings of the cold Laura brought home for me. A little bit later I'll be making some new trim to replace the stuff that no longer fits around the new back door.