More Shorts for Summer: Pirates and Victorian Super Heroes

A Tall Ship, A Star, And Plunder
Edited by Robert Krog

Piracy has been around as long as there have been ships plying the seas with anything that might be valuable enough to take by force. Piracy will still be around when merchant vessels are traveling the galaxy with cargoes of potential plunder. Explore the past, present, and future of our favorite scallywags in these 24 amazing tales of bravado, daring, and dastardly deeds committed by the legendary pirates.

Good luck, and may the wind be in your favor, blowing you toward good pickings, and a safe harbor.

https://www.darkoakpress.com/pirates.html

The Tales:
Yo Ho by Melinda LaFevers
Rumble the Dragon by Cindy Vallar
The Princess and the Sea by Sydney Blackburn
Ghost of a Chance by Paula Gail Benson
The Making of a Privateer by Melinda LaFevers
Not I by Jerri Hardesty
Fireflies on the Water by Michael Krog
The Celeste Affair by D. Alan Lewis
The Tale of Tizur the Red by Tom Sheehan
Bottom of the Mug by S. P. Dorning
The Captain's Woman, the Dagger, and the Serpent by Robert Krog
The Gods Must Clearly Smile by A. Christopher Drown
Corey of Steel by Jerri Hardesty
The Jamaican Dragon by D. G. Driver
Rosa and the Pirate by Laura Nelson
The Ghost of Queen Anne's Revenge by M. R. Williamson
Of Wing and Song by Kirk Hardesty
One Way by Herika R. Raymer
Puffystuff the Pirate by Jerri Hardesty
Theft of the Royal Jewels by Kathryn Sullivan
Eighty-Six Pitrell Becomes Dread Admiral by Paul Calhoun
Rasputin's Whimsey by T.A. Riddell
Pirates of Happenstance by HC Playa
Blood is Thicker than Pirate's Gold by Kent Swarts

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Capes and Clockwork
Superheroes in the Age of Steam
Edited by D. Alan Lewis

During a forgotten time when the world was powered by steam and clockwork, heroes arose to do battle against the forces of evil. Some were outfitted with the latest technology. Others were changed by the mysteries of science and magic, while a few came from the skies. Capes and Clockwork fuses the fantasy and beauty of steampunk with the action and adventure of the superhero genre. Tease your imagination with sixteen stories of good versus evil, monster versus hero, and steam versus muscle!

https://www.darkoakpress.com/capes.html

The Tales:
Roger Dawkins and the Steam Daemons by Adam Millard
Keely by D. Alan Lewis
Catching Steam by Andrea Judy
Clockwork Demons by Logan L. Masterson
At the Quiet Limit of the World by David J. Fielding
Indestructible by Alexander S. Brown
Ectoplasmic Eradicators Wanted: Professional Inquiries only - A Timothy Flood Adventure by Nikki Nelson-Hicks
Captain Amy and the Steam-Driven Kittens of Doom by Azrael Wolf
Thursday Morrow by Robert J. Krog
Lost Child's Little Protector by Herika R. Raymer
The Gears Of Justice by Brent Nichols
Aeolus, Chiron, and Medusa by John A. McColley
Blastbucket by Christopher J. Valin
Beneath Familiar Suns by Konstantine Paradias
Deep Diving Death Defying Dwarves of the Deep: A Tale from the Cycle of Ages Saga by Jeremy Hicks
White Lightning by John G. Hartness

https://www.darkoakpress.com/

The Worst Advice Ever About Writing Dialog

Lots of articles and writing books teach how to more effectively create dialog that just "sings" to readers. But enough about that. Let's look at the flip side of that. What's the worst advice you've ever received about how to write dialog? And did you take? How did you learn just how wrong it was?

Desmond Reddick: To listen to how people REALLY talk and mimic it. Ugh. That would create unreadable nonsense. Ha! I think the trick is more to approximate real dialogue but rather boiling it down to its purest, most plot-driving core while still leaving room for characterization and distinction.

Robbie Hilliard: Tagless dialogue. Sure, it has its place, but I once ran into a writing group that uniformly insisted that all dialogue tags must go! How insane is that? You know, the 'he said' and 'she said' speech attribution tags? Yeah, well I think there are times when they are just fine. They can help give the reader a hint at the pacing of 'spoken word' in the story. Just like you don't want to twist sentences due to grammar rules to the point that they don't sound natural (e.g. "Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put."), you don't want to find yourself creating dialogue that is twisted and unnatural just so your reader will clearly know who is speaking. Sometimes a 'he said/she said' is exactly what you need in order to preserve the natural flow of the dialogue.

So when to strive for tagless dialogue? When the scene is close, the tension is high, and the action is tight and flying by so fast you don't want the reader to have to slow down for anything. That's a great time for tagless dialogue!

C.E. Martin: Oh, I am all over this one... Back in 2012, when I started my first Kindle Direct book, I read a lot of advice from authors at Kboards.com. They were blasting the use of dialogue descriptors, like "Stay back" he growled. They claimed "Said" was always better.

Even though it went against my grain, I went ahead and followed the advice. By my second book, I decided that was stupid, and went back to trying to avoid having "said" appear twenty times on a page. I think "said" takes a reader out of the story when used more than once a page.

I also don't like that Hemingway-way of never identifying who is talking. Sure, if it's two people in a scene, then yes, your readers should be able to tell who is who, but in a crowded room, you need to spell out who's who.

Gordon Dymowski: Worst advice: try to capture a local dialect by spelling. Tried it in one of my stories, and rereading it....hoo, boy, was it bad.

Now, I tend to write dialogue the same way that Tommy Lee Jones once described his method for scripts - people tend to talk in sentence fragments. So I tend to write very fragmented, lyrical dialogue. (Plus, best advice - listen to *how* people people. Find rhythms)

Paul Mannering: Dialog should speak directly - people talk shit in real life. We hesitate, mumble, stumble over words, say things in a round about way. Listening to most people talk is like listening to Donald Trump -- it's bizarre.

In a story -- off the cuff comments should sound like they were carefully thought out - because they were - but they make your characters look cool.

Avoid dialect and specific slang -- it never reads well.

D. Alan Lewis: I was once told in a critique group that we all speak English and we talk the same. So, write your dialogue that way. Don't try and make everyone sound unique because it will confuse the reader. I didn't follow his advice.


Richard L. Altstatt: Most words are monkey noises. Ignore them...or, learn to spell....other good advice.

PJ Lozito: Potential agent: "No, don't set STING OF THE SILVER MANTICORE in 1942. World War II would make the events in it sort of a side show...." forgetting there were plenty of novels and stories happening during WWII.

My work is nominated for Preditors & Editors' Readers Favorites Poll

Capes & Clockwork 2 is in the running for the Preditors & Editors' Readers Favorites Poll. The poll has many different categories, so look for C&C2 under that Anthologies category. Share the link below with your friends and be sure to give us a vote.

C&C2 featured my story "Not So These City Beasts."

http://critters.org/predpoll/antho.shtml

You Need Werewolves! (Dark Oak Press Announces LUNA'S CHILDREN: STRANGER WORLDS)

LUNA'S CHILDREN: STRANGER WORLDS
Edited by D. Alan Lewis

For countless centuries, mankind has watched as the sun goes down knowing that Luna will rise in its place, to rain her brilliant shards of light upon the Earth. But for the cursed and afflicted, that silvery orb brings horror and death.

LUNA'S CHILDREN: STRANGER WORLDS takes the stories of the werewolf and turns them on their pointy ears. From the American Old West to the Victorian-era streets of London, from the Far East to worlds undiscovered, from steampunk to Nazis, Stranger Worlds takes us on 21 horror-filled journeys from the twisted minds of some of the best writers.

The Tales:

Eagle And Wolf by Brad Ellison
Chimera by K.S. Daniels
Henge by Kimberly Richardson
The Hungry Stones by Josh Reynolds
The Shadow of the Wolf by Logan L. Masterson
The Perfect Present by Jodi Ralston
Bad Blood and Old Silver by Christopher L. Smith
The Were by Melinda LaFevers
The Artemis Gang by Jeff Provine
The White Tree by Jason Lairamore
January at Fort Wayne by Lucy Ann Fiorini
The Hand That Feeds by Ray Deen
You Can't Beat The Metal by Jonathan S. Pembroke
Wolfwere by A.B. Rinklin
Full Moon Man by Windsong Levitch
Have Gun Will Howl by Scott T. Goudsward
Ailsa by Michael Keyton
All That Glitters by Blaise Torrance
Burning Bridges by Aaron Longoria
Always Hungry by Zorknot Robinson
Another Solution by James C. Simpson

White by Default? A Character Assumption Roundtable

This new writers roundtable topic comes from a recent discussion on a Pulp Writers list of which I'm a member. I thought the topic a pertinent one, so I wanted to share it here as well. 

The key kernal for this discussion comes from an exchange my fellow pulp writer I.A. Watson had with one of his editors, and is as follows:

Editor: About this villain, Ms Zeuzi. Why is she White? Aren’t there enough White characters in your book? 

I.A. Watson: Where do I say she’s White? I don’t describe her appearance at all, except her business suit and mannerisms. 

Editor: You don’t say she’s not White. You could have mentioned she’s African American or Latino. You don’t. 

IW: There’s lots of characters in the book, some of whom are White, but I don’t say they are Caucasian or put in a description of their skin colour. Why do I need to specify that Ms Zeuzi is non-White if it doesn’t come up in the story? 

Editor: Readers default assume characters are White if you don’t say otherwise.

I’m really not sure about this. Advice?

Is this true in your experience? Why do you think that?

Lee Houston Jr.:  Only in regards to classic characters created before the late 1960s, and the writers of the day didn't dare challenge the "social norms" of their time.

Erwin K. Roberts: Before "enlightenment" came to the various media, there were occasional stealth minority characters. In his book,  Space Cadet, Robert Heinlein's three protagonists were a kid from Des Moines, a wild & wooly Texan, and a quiet fellow from colonial Venus. One presumes they all had white skin. After they finish training, the three spend a year or so on a spaceship with a crew of about a dozen. What is not revealed, until after they leave the ship, is that one of the ship's officers was "as black as the ace of Spades." Not exactly politically correct, but I'm sure a lot of younger readers circa 1950, or so, were shocked by the revelation.

Kristi Morgan: This is true, and applies to writing that has more than just humans in it too. I am in the middle of editing stories for a collection that contains humans, elves, dwarves, and kobolds. Every story started of with dialogue or what their characters were doing, but nothing about what they looked like. My mind assumed they were human and probably white unless the writer said otherwise, and most of them never did. Readers are not mind readers. Unless you describe the characters, we will make up our own descriptions in our mind.

Van Allen Plexico: I think readers consciously or subconsciously look for cues, even tiny ones, that tell them more about a character. Those cues can come via outright descriptions of appearance, yes. But also via tiny comments during dialogue, manner of speech, name, and so on. And those don't even have to be intentional or conscious decisions on the part of the author in some cases, I think.

So, no, I don't think all readers default all characters to white as long as there are any reasons not to... But likely some do.

Alan Lewis: In most cases, I'd say it is true. Or maybe, more to the point, we like to make the characters like ourselves, so we default many characters to our own race.

Lucy Blue: I know as a reader, i do this, and I always assumed that everybody just defaulted to their own race until told otherwise. But of course, that isn't true--readers of color have gotten so used to white being the "default setting" in fiction that they make that assumption, too. (May that someday not be so.) So yeah, as a writer, I struggle with this. I don't want to point out every character's race as soon as they're introduced, but if a character's race is important to the story, I want the reader to have a clear picture of them. That's one great thing about writing science fiction and fantasy; in those worlds, a lot of the time it doesn't matter what skin tone the characters have; readers can picture characters however they choose. But in writing any kind of contemporary or "realistic" fiction, it's definitely a concern.

Rose Johnson Streif: This is weird, but the characters tend to remain somewhat amorphous to me until they are described, or begin to take shape. I have a highly visual mind, but I want to see what the writer sees when I am reading someone else's work. I'll fill in the blanks as time goes by, but I want to see their world, not impose my own. (That's for my own work.)

And so, as to race, I'll pick up cues, wait until the author says it outright, or just not assume. But if it goes on for too long without description, I probably will default to white, because the author probably did too. (And I dislike not having descriptions. I don't need info dump, but show me these people you created, d@mmit.)

Marian Allen: I think it's true. If somebody's ethnicity doesn't matter to your third-person story or doesn't impose itself on your first-person narrator's consciousness, don't bother with it.
Herika Raymer: I usually default to the race of the writer, not sure who else does. It's usually the correct assumption, unless otherwise stated.

Gary Phillips: I once wrote a novel giving hints as to various characters' race -- she was a natural blonde, his name was Kurasawa and so on, but deliberately gave no indication of the main charater's race. And being black but with a "whitebread" name, left my photo off the back Of, and the anti-hero, the main guy is only called O'Conner, though plenty of black folks have Irish sounding last names.

How do you handles such descriptions of ethnicity or do you prefer to let the reader default to their preconceptions?

Erwin K. Roberts: I tend to sprinkle minority characters around my stories. But only if the story is not slowed down by explaining how and why the character happens to be there.

Sometimes there is a compelling reason for a minority character, or group, to be included, even it such a thing was not common to the period. In my Sons of Thor the first section is set in World War One. The French need a battalion of Infantry to provide security for a very important meeting. There can not, must not, be any German sympathizers or spies among them. Who they gonna call?

Well, there's this Regiment that the U.S. Army dumped on them. The Yanks just couldn't figure out what to do with the unit calling themselves The Men of Bronze. The 369th Infantry Regiment is best known as The Hellfighters From Harlem. How many Germans are in an all African-American (to include some of the officers) unit? This retired Missouri National Guardsman was proud to shine some fictional light on the former 15th New York Infantry Regiment.

Marian Allen: GENERALLY SPEAKING, I don't think of characters as being a particular ethnicity or race so much as I think of them as individuals OF a particular ethnicity, race, or background. I might specify this lady has milky skin and red-gold hair, or this guy might have tightly curled black hair, brown eyes, skin the color of bittersweet chocolate .... If there were no such thing as the concept of "race," or if we understood that "ethnicity" doesn't mean "everybody but white," how would we describe characters? That's what I try to do. It kind of pisses me off when writers don't describe characters unless the characters are people of color, or when writers do describe characters UNLESS they're people of color, in which case they're "black" or "Oriental" or some nonsense.

Lee Houston Jr.:  Unless I am writing either aliens in science fiction stories or contributing a story to an already established character, I usually don't mention ethnicity and let the readers judge/decide for themselves.

Alan Lewis: I only feel that the color of a character's skin should be important if it is a factor in the story.

For example, in my Black Wolf stories, the lead character is a black man, living in 1930's South Carolina. He lives in a predominantly black neighborhood and is always dealing with racist attitudes when he ventures into the white parts of town. He dates a young white woman, which was very taboo in those days. All these factors come into play in the stories, telling the daily struggles with racism while the man is simply trying to do his job.

Now take away the prejudice and time period and drop him into a contemporary setting, and those issues of race are greatly reduced. Therefore, the color of his skin isn’t an issue and doesn’t need to be made part of the story.

Van Allen Plexico: I will admit I do feel a responsibility to make the casts of my stories at least somewhat diverse in terms of race and gender, rather than monochrome and all guys. I don't do this out of any sense of trying to be "PC", but because it makes the story more interesting and more appealing to more people, and it's more logical in a world of diverse people, particularly one set in the future. The fact that it is the right thing to do is only a happy side effect.

To convey this, I try to provide as many cues as reasonably possible (short of doing any harm to the narrative) to make the characters "visible" in the minds of the readers as close to how I've imagined them as possible.

As a made-up example:

Hawk drew off his glove and stared down at his olive-skinned hand, flexing it carefully. 

Hawk glanced over at Falcon, then ran his hand back through his thick, black hair. 

I generally follow Roger Zelazny's rule that you should provide no more than three outright physical descriptions of a character when you introduce him or her (more than that and they get fuzzy in the reader's mind, rather than clearer), and then fill in any remaining visual blanks during the course of the narrative or dialogue later, as needed, as you go.

Sean Taylor Shares the Skinny on THE NEW DEAL: MASKS AND MUTATIONS!

If you need someone to blame for this book, here I am. It’s simple math. A + B = C, with C being this book. If you’ll keep reading for a moment or two, I’ll attempt to explain.

A: What If

“What if” is a writer’s favorite game to play. It’s the basis of all stories. What if King Lear happened on a farm but from the POV of a “bad” heir? That’s Jane Smiley’s A THOUSAND ACRES, for the record. What if spiritual samurai tried to hold off imperialism from an invading and technologically superior force? That’s both history of Japan and the basis for a little space movie called STAR WARS. What it space were the wide-open West and we sent people out to explore it? You guessed it, STAR TREK.

“What if” keeps the fictional world from becoming stagnant. It’s the remix that word-artists use to create something new from something borrowed, something blue. “What if” is the glue (sorry for the cliché) writers make from the hooves of both classic and often forgotten literary steeds.

Now that we’ve established that, what about this one: What if the American public had a scapegoat on which to blame all the bad stuff from the 1920s and 1930s, such as the stock market crash, increasing crime, etc.? And what it that scapegoat weren’t a race but a whole new kind of people, a new generation of people born with amazing powers, some that could stay hidden in public and others that didn’t have that luxury?

B: Man Vs. Man  

Two super hero-themed books have always stuck with me as being important to the American cultural/creative landscape. The first is the X-Men adventure God Loves, Man Kills. It’s a masterpiece of Us vs. Them literature. The second is the Wildcards series edited by George R.R. Martin et al, particularly the first book with its crazy trip through American history with the added benefit (or detriment) of Aces and Jokers.

But this Us vs. Them theme sadly isn’t confined to books and movies. We all know that. Without racism, the X-Men wouldn’t have been so popular since that was their story to tell (only slicing it in a fantastical way).  The Wildcards books would have had little to say beyond mere escapist fiction without the realities of McCarthyism and anti-socialist and anti-communist politics at their core.

I’m not talking about simple man vs. man plot structures here. This is far deeper than the noble sheriff vs. the bad cattle rustler, or even the disillusioned copper vs. the vicious gangster. I’m talking about the propensity of human beings to focus on the things that make us different and use those very things at best to segregate the greater (us) from the lesser (them), or at worst the right and proper (us) from the evil and should be gotten rid of.

It’s one of the things that makes us rightly and truly suck as people, but it makes us great fodder for stories, fantastic fodder for compelling stories.

It’s the fodder at the heart of this collection of stories, which brings us to…

C: This Book

At its simplest, this book asks the question, “What if the X-Men happened in a generic way right around the Great Depression and took all the blame for, well, everything?” But it didn’t stay there. With the input of several writers I trust, value, and am jealous of, it became more than just a rip-off of the X-Men. It became something wonderfully and truly pulp, something that took the ideas of masked men with guns and fedoras from the realm of possibility into the realm of the fantastic, of superheroics.

The pulp era is filled with costumed do-gooders, but most of them were what my first super-fiction editor staunchly referred to as “mere vigilantes.” (A super hero, after all, had to have super-powers, according to him.) Men and women with guns. Men and women who were tremendous athletes, but nonetheless merely human.

This volume takes those men and women farther. But rather than putting the superhuman on a pedestal and seeing him or her as a god or goddess, it takes a more realistic approach. As I said above, we humans don’t have a good track record welcoming the new and different, especially when it frightens the bejeeszus out of us.

The title is an obvious riff on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s political stab at rejuvenating the country. Only in this case the new deal is not what history tells us. It’s a new kind of human. The new and different. The thing no longer in the shadows that frightens the bejeezus out of us.

How the people involved “deal” with that new is what makes the stories in this collection worth your time and money.

So welcome to THE NEW DEAL: MASKS AND MUTATIONS.

I hope you enjoy your trip to the past that never was.

Sean Taylor
Creator of The New Deal: Masks and Mutations
September 30, 2016
Atlanta, Ga.

HEROES AND HISTORY IN THE CROSSHAIRS- ‘THE NEW DEAL: MASKS AND MUTATIONS” DEBUTS FROM PRO SE PRODUCTIONS

A cutting edge Publisher of Genre Fiction, Pro Se Productions proudly announces the release of THE NEW DEAL: MASKS AND MUTATIONS.  A collection organized by Sean Taylor, THE NEW DEAL turns the best in New Pulp authors today loose on the concept of super powers in a real world setting at the end of the 1920s.  The anthology is now available in print and digital formats.

“THE NEW DEAL,” explains Tommy Hancock, Partner in and Editor in Chief of Pro Se Productions, “asks the question ‘What if Super Powers were a thing at one of the most explosive points in our history?’ And this taut, thrilling anthology is most definitely the answer to that.  Each story tackles both the nostalgic view we have of the Golden Age of Comics and Super Heroes as well as the actual ramifications of something like this happening when the world was well on its way to Hell already.  From sentimental to terrifying, THE NEW DEAL: MASKS AND MUTATIONS delivers on every note, pushing readers into a world of fedoras and movie matinees that has so much more hidden under the surface.”

The Jazz Age is over and the Great Depression and Dust Bowl are ravaging across the United States. People need someone to blame. Luckily for a population who needs a scapegoat, the next wave of human evolution has begun, and it couldn’t have chosen a worse time to be born.

Men and women with amazing powers now fly across the sky, turn their skin into gold, and block bullets with their bare hands. Some take to crime. Some hide their powers for their own safety. Some seek the Underground Railroad for safe haven and a new life in Mexico. Some try to fight the good fight and turn the tide of public opinion as heroes. All of them are in the wrong place at the wrong time in a wounded, terrified, and violent country.

In this collection from Pro Se Productions, Sean Taylor, D. Alan Lewis, Lance Stahlberg, Sean Dulaney, Andrea Judy, and Tommy Hancock spin history ’round like a top to create an alternate reality both comfortably familiar and strangely new for readers of action, adventure, and crime stories. THE NEW DEAL: MASKS AND MUTATIONS. From Pro Se Productions

Featuring an amazing cover by Timothy Standish and cover design and print formatting by Antonino Lo Iacono, THE NEW DEAL: MASKS AND MUTATIONS is available now at Amazon and Pro Se’s own store  for 15.00.

This exciting super hero anthology is also available as an Ebook, designed and formatted by Lo Iacono for only $2.99 for the Kindle and for most digital formats via Smashwords.

For more information on this title, interviews with the author, or digital copies to review this book, contact Pro Se Productions’ Director of Corporate Operations, Kristi King-Morgan at directorofcorporateoperations@prose-press.com.

To learn more about Pro Se Productions, go to www.prose-press.com. Like Pro Se on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ProSeProductions.

Oh, the Horrors (of the Publishing World)

For this week's roundtable, let's talk horror stories. No, not how to write horror stories. Instead I want to hear your horror stories from the world of getting and staying published. Please don't name names, as this is a small world (after all), but it would be good (I think) for new writers to be prepared for the inevitable stuff than can go wrong.

Alan Lewis: My first two books, published by different companies, were messed up initially. Each company uploaded the wrong (unedited) file to the printers. As a result, I was hit with bad reviews until they were able to upload the correct (edited) versions. This pretty much killed early sales since reviews help drive ebook sales, and negative reviews kill them completely. Having it happen once, I can understand. But two time in a row and by different companies? I almost quit writing completely as a result. They say lightning doesn't strike twice, but in my case, it does.

Mark Bousquet: I have a story in with Publisher X now for a book that was supposed to come out in January. It's now June and on track for a July release. Publisher X has valid reasons for not hitting the January deadline (some his fault, some not), but when you're excited to get a story out and it's not out when it was originally supposed to be out, it sucks, and I get mad at Publisher X.

Also, Publisher X is me.

And yes, there are valid reasons - my own long-term unemployment and never-ending search for a full-time job, formatting issues between different submissions, one nightmare file that doesn't play well with Pages, difficulty with a cover artist, someone getting sick, someone else disappearing, a file getting misplaced, and so on.

Valid reasons - It still sucks, though, and I feel terrible for that anthology's writers. But the contracts are signed, the final edits are being done, and the anthology will be out in July.

Instead of sharing any particular horror story beyond that, I would say that new writers need to be aware that horror stories will happen. A copy editor will miss an easy grammatical mistake. Or twenty. A publisher will tell you your book will be out in June and then it won't come out until October. Your name will be spelled wrong (this happened to me on my first publication credit, which came from Yale University Press! (I was an Illustrations Researcher on the Encyclopedia of New England book which came out a decade ago.) An artist will disappear, another will deliver the wrong content. You'll have a release your excited about come out on the same day as a horrible tragedy, which means you're caught between wanting to get the word out and not looking insensitive (this is happening to me right now). What I've learned is that whomever your publisher is, your artist is, your copy editor is, your graphic designer is ... ultimately, the final responsibility lies with you, so the more you can take control of your own career (not doing everything but being intelligent about everything that's being done), the greater your happiness.

R.J. Sullivan: Haunting Blue was rejected by a major publisher for being "too exciting."

Lucy Blue: I probably should leave this topic be -- I come across as the hag on the hill screeching doom every time I get started on it. My biggest horror story is the collapsing dominoes that were my writing career a few years back. After working with an A-list agent for a decade and publishing six mid-list paperbacks with a Big 6 publisher, in the space of three months I found out that 1)my publisher didn't want my next book and in fact wanted me to basically "go erotica or go home;" and 2)my agent was retiring, closing up shop, and the nice girl who'd been taking care of my stuff while he, my actual agent, was ill had decided (AFTER I had chosen to NOT go with the new people taking over the agency but stick with her out of loyalty) to not be an agent after all because the market was just too horrible. When I was a new writer, I thought that once I had an agent who knew everybody's name in NYC and signed a contract with a publisher, it would be smooth sailing, and I could just concentrate on being the Shakespeare's sister of historical fantasy/romance. Yeah.. . not so much. BUT--BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT -- and please, any new writers reading, this is the most important part -- it hasn't stopped me writing, or publishing, or finding readers, or making money as a writer. I just have to work harder and take more responsibility for my own stuff. I don't expect somebody else to take care of me and my career and my ego any more - which is good because nobody will. And in a lot of ways, that's been really liberating. But it sure didn't feel liberating while it was first happening.

Tamara Lowery: Before I found a publisher, I found a "publisher" that seemed very interested in my manuscript. I sent it in; they looked it over and sent it back with the advice to have it professionally edited then resubmit. The snag was that they preferred I use only an editor THEY recognized. For me, that was a red flag. Sure enough, when I did a more thorough bit of research of this "publisher" I found that several articles warning about them had been posted on SFWA's "Writer Beware" blog. Bullet dodged.

For quite a while, I kept an eye out to make sure my story did not turn up under a different author name/title.

Desmond Reddick: I'm still a neophyte to being published, As such, I don't necessarily have any horror stories about staying published. That horror story is still very much in progress. I do, however, have a story about my first anthology acceptance that gnaws at me to this day for reasons beyond my control.

I had written many stories in the first quarter century of my life, mostly yawn-inducing screeds sure to bore even the most diligent and forgiving of readers. Then the submission notice came out. It called for zombie stories and the anthology was specifically geared toward authors who had yet to be published. Perfect! It just so happened that a brilliant idea popped into my head. Of course, looking back, it's far from brilliant, but it was unique and fun in a sick way. I wrote it feverishly and submitted it. Lo and behold, it was accepted. I was ecstatic! It wasn't a major publishing house or anything, but it offered a token payment and an author copy. That was more than enough to stir my excitement.

Then, thanks to a particularly nasty internet battle between said publisher and an author he once worked with, it was revealed that the publisher spent more than a dozen years in prison for four counts of first degree sexual abuse of his former step-children. He admitted it, referring to his past mistakes, and said there would be no hard feelings if someone wanted to withdraw their story from the anthology. In a stunning turn of events, I appeared to be the only one to do so. I am an educator, so being in any way associated with a convicted sexual predator is not necessarily something I need in my career. Further than that, as a human being, it would certainly bother me. Yet, here I was: the only person who didn't see that "he'd paid his debt to society" or whatever. Honor had certainly kept me away from other situations that would have been boons earlier in my life, but this was my first foray into becoming a published author, my dream.

I eventually would be published, shortly after, with a different story. Though, that anthology made zero attempt to copy edit and completely neglected to put in a Table of Contents, but that's far lower down on the publishing horror story ladder. Today, with my first professional short story sale and my forthcoming first novel, I feel a little better about the publishing world, though that zombie story is still sitting in my completed drafts folder. I still sneer a little bit when I see it sitting there. Maybe one day I'll get over myself, polish it up and send it off.

Kerlak annouces a story call for the new pirate story anthology!

A Tall Ship, A Star, and Plunder.

Story Call for the new pirate story anthology!

Get out your quill and parchment and give us your best. Following the success of many other anthologies at Dark Oak Press / Kerlak Publishing, we are swashbuckling our way into a new genre.

If you are not familiar with the history and literature associated with piracy, please take a look at what is current as well as what is classic, such as Robert Louis Stephenson's Treasure Island, to get an idea of what we are after. Don't limit yourself to classical, argh, Caribbean pirates as the history of piracy has been around as long as there have been ships plying the seas with anything that might be valuable enough to take by force. Piracy was already old when a young Julius Caesar was held hostage by pirates in the Mediterranean and will likely still be around when merchant vessels are traveling the galaxy with cargoes of potential plunder. Piracy is equally probable on other worlds and galaxies and could easily cross into a variety of genres be it steampunk, scifi, fantasy or what have you. Be inventive, but if you choose to place your story in an historical era, and I hope many of you do, be historically accurate. Also remember that the story must be primarily about pirates or piracy. Don't let the particular setting carry you away from the theme of the anthology.

Please do not make references to or use copyrighted characters from other known sources. We will only accept unpublished, original works, characters, and plots. Please keep the stories relatively clean.

We aren't looking for content that is gory, sexually explicit, or rife with expletives and profanity, think of pirates for all ages.

Due to the massive number of submissions, please pay very close attention to all the submission guidelines. Any submission with excessive formatting, spelling, grammatical, or editing issues will be disqualified as soon as the errors are evident.

Good luck, and may the wind be in your favor, blowing you toward good pickings.

Story Call Deadline: June 15, 2013
Please include on the front page of your manuscript:
Name (and pen name, if you desire)
Address
Phone Number
E-mail Address
Number of words (2,000 min. - 9,000 max.)
Short bio of 350 words or fewer.

Submissions should be made in standard, double-spaced, manuscript format, using only one font (preferably Times New Roman 12pt).

Stories are to be e-mailed to request@kerlakpublishing.com as a MS Word .doc or .rtf (rich text format) attachment.

See original posting at: http://kerlakpublishing.com/storycall.html

Open Submissions for Glass Page Books!

Glass Page Books is hosting a Streampunk Anthology Short Story Call for two upcoming Anthologies:  Airship Kids and The Clockwork of Crime.  

This genre is open; no agent is required.

Contact Acquisitions Editor, Alan Lewis, at alan@snowflakegarden.com

The Clockwork of Crime

The Clockwork of Crime will be a collection of crime/mystery stories set in a steampunk setting.  P.I. noir, police procedurals, Vitorian Holmes-styled detective stories are all welcome.   We are looking for well-developed characters of your own creation, not steampunk'd versions of existing characters.  The heroes and villains are to be of your own creation.  Please double-check to insure that you do not use names of existing, trademarked characters.

We are looking for short fiction between 3,000 and 10,000 words.
Deadline for entry is April 1, 2013.

Rights:
    We ask for first publishing rights, the right to use the story for as long as there is demand for the books in print, digital and audio format, the right to edit each story for errors, and the right to utilize excerpts and the author's name for promotion.  Authors will keep all other rights and can republish the story once the anthology has been in print for twelve months.

Your Take:
    As payment for an accepted story, you will receive a print copy of the finished anthology.  In addition, accepted authors will be able to order copies of the book at 30% off of the cover price and have their names and links displayed on our website.

How and what to send: 
    Send a cover letter including your contact information, publishing history, and a short synopsis in the body of the email.  Attach the submission in rich text format as an rtf file.  The text must be 12 point Times New Roman with single line spacing and one inch margins.  Please place a single space (not multiple spaces) between sentences and a hard break for paragraphs.  Separate scene breaks by a hard break, centered asterisks (***) and a hard break.

Please do not send multiple or simultaneous submissions.

Both the subject line and rtf file should be:
CofC_StoryName_AuthorName_wordcount.

Airship Kids

Airship Kids will be a collection of Steampunk Bedtime Stories written for young and middle-grade children.  Some, if not all stories will be illlustrated.  As the name of the anthology suggests, all of the stories should feature a child or young adult living in an airship in some form or fashion.

We are looking for short fiction between 1,000 and 3,000 words.
Deadline for entry is April 1, 2013.

Rights:
    We ask for first publishing rights, the right to use the story for as long as there is demand for the books in print, digital and audio format, the right to edit each story for errors, and the right to utilize excerpts and the author's name for promotion.  Authors will keep all other rights and can republish the story once the anthology has been in print for twelve months.

Your Take:
    As payment for an accepted story, you will receive a print copy of the finished anthology.  In addition, accepted authors will be able to order copies of the book at 30% off of the cover price and have their names and links displayed on our website.

How and what to send: 
    Send a cover letter including your contact information, publishing history, and a short synopsis in the body of the email.  Attach the submission in rich text format as an rtf file.  The text must be 12 point Times New Roman with single line spacing and one inch margins.  Please place a single space (not multiple spaces) between sentences and a hard break for paragraphs.  Seperate scene breaks by a hard break, centered asterisks (***) and a hard break. 

Please do not send multiple or simultaneous submissions. 

Both the subject line and rtf file should be:
Airship_StoryName_AuthorName_wordcount.

For more information, visit http://www.glasspagebooks.com/submissions.html 

Getting Under the Hero's Skin -- Writers on Villains

Good villains (or antagonists). 

Where would our heroes be without them? 

So, let's find out what make 'em tick (and kill and maim and steal and refuse to leave our memories alone).

What makes a villain memorable? 

Allan Gilbreath: The depths they are willing to go to and the singular identifying characteristic that makes them obvious.  

Derrick Ferguson: I think a memorable villain should be as formidable and as resourceful as the hero if not even moreso. Nobody would have remembered St. George if he had slain a waterbug. No, he went out and slew a dragon.  That's why James Bond villains such as Dr. No, Goldfinger and Ernst Stavro Blofeld were so memorable.  They were all smarter than Bond, had way more money and resources and just by looking at the tale of the tape, Bond should have never stood a chance against them.  But he took 'em all down.  I think sometimes writers are afraid of making their villains too powerful, too charismatic or too intelligent for fear that they will take over the story or overshadow their hero.  I say go for it! Maybe your hero will surprise you yourself at how he rises to the challenge!

Selah Janel: For me, it depends on what the vehicle is. In comics or movies, I want them to look amazing and just be completely badass. I want to feel intimidated by a good villain. In books and in general, though, I want to know what makes them tick. It's important for the villain to have their own story and not just be there to oppose the hero. It's scarier if a reader can connect to a villain in some way. If you can empathize with someone you may consider evil - that's terrifying, because then what does that make you? I also like well-rounded villains because sometimes they're just plain more likeable or more fun than a very stoic or typical hero. Look at all the variations of the Joker in Batman - in The Killing Joke you empathize with him because you learn his tragic backstory. In the Animated Series he's just plain hilarious while still being a vile enough threat. And when he's all-out like in certain comic arcs or The Dark Knight - he becomes terrifying because you can't exactly argue with some of his twisted logic. In the series American Vampire, there is no doubt that Skinner Sweet is evil.He's manipulative,  unrepentent,  and a killing machine. He wants what he wants. But he's also a vampire because of the people who tried to screw him over - he just made the most out of it. He's genuinely funny at times and as the story progresses you can see why Pearl might be tempted or attracted by him. You can understand in some arcs why he does what he does,  but he's still completely vile. He's strangely likeable, but vile.

Alan Lewis: People love a good villain because the bad guys are able to go in to the dark places of our minds and do the things that we may want to do but are afraid to admit. If someone cuts us off in traffic, we may want to pull out a gun and shoot, but a good villain will not only shoot, but take out the bastard’s family and if possible, set fire to the planet. Oh, and did I mention that the villain’s usually have the best outfits and the hottest chicks…albeit brainwashed, but still.

Andrea Judy: I need my villains to be justified. I don't want someone who just rolled out of bed and decided to blow up Oklahoma. For me that justification is what makes or breaks a villain for me. I want to know the details; I want to feel his/her pain and rage and reasons for their actions. What I really love is a villain who has a sliver of humanity left, a sliver of hope, something good still there that the audience wants to root for. I want my readers to say 'Yeah, he/she robbed those people… but I can see why.' The line between love and hate is paper thin when it comes to villains.

James Comer: Being a person.  Sirat Tho'anchur, the antagonist of my story "Windbox", is a sworn-virgin who lives life as a man, despite being female; his back story is yet a secret to the heroes.  He comes from a village wrecked by bandits, and took the virgin's oath in order to earn money and protection for his sisters.

Herika Raymer: For me, their demeanor. To me, a loud-mouthed profane villain is not scary, he is just bluster. However, the calm calculating and intelligent villain who understand human behavior and uses it to his advantage, now THAT is the type of villain that impresses me. Barring that, the type of villain who can hide in plain sight, they really creep me out.

Lee Houston, Jr.: That is a two-edged sword. On one hand, the villain can be infamous for past deeds. On the other, the same character could be remembered for something more noble. Doctor Doom is reviled and even hated by the Marvel superhero community, yet most people in Latveria actually love and adore him because he looks out for and truly cares about them.

Describe your approach when creating the antagonists for your main characters.

Derrick Ferguson: I always keep in mind that as far as the villain is concerned, HE'S the hero of his own story. To him he's got a perfect good and sound motivation for doing what he's doing. Even if he knows it's wrong, he thinks his reasons for doing it is right.  Two of my favorite villains of all time are Fu Manchu and Doctor Doom.  Both are men capable of hideous evil.  But they also are men of honor and great benevolence toward their people. They are villains whose complexity springs from the core of their belief that the world would be much better off if they were ruling it.  When I write my villains I try to remember that villains are people too.  Well, some of 'em, anyway.

Selah Janel: It depends on the story. If I'm doing an actual villain and not some scary force,  I do like to keep some sort of humanity there. I want people to think that their reasons at least make sense. I also like really quirky,  interesting villains - things with a good look or a really creepy vibe. I don't know if it's the comics/horror geek in me,  but I do like to have some aesthetic value there,  too. Then it all depends on if the character is supposed to be sympathetic or plain evil, deciding how much of their reasoning/back story to show, etc. I'm the type that would almost rather focus on the dark characters so I'm not sure if I write classic villains or more of an antihero twist to them. I like to analyze what kind of a home life vampires would have or what crazed maniacs would think about.

Andrea Judy: I love villains. Most of my friends will tell you that I have a bit of an obsession with them. I usually am rooting for the villain. So for my own work, usually the villain shows up first and is screaming his/her story. The villain helps to set and create the whole rest of the story. I rarely have a method that I always use for creating a villain but I find reading/watching other stories with amazing villains really helps. Also listening to angry music.

James Comer: I have to see them. It's hard to explain. For this story I saw the hero, a monk, running across rooftops with a group of warriors chasing him, and leading them  was a black-dressed swordbearer. With attitude.

Herika Raymer: First, I have to consider the context. For instance, if I am writing psions, the villain has to be similarly talented and motivations must be even better hidden or, at the very least, shared among like minded individuals. In the case where I am writing paranormal or supernatural tales, I usually concentrate on mythos and legends but the lesser known ones because I do not like the romance now attached to the main monsters -- i.e. werewolves and vampires - and wish to reinstate the dread that is supposed to be associated with them. Which makes it especially difficult when writing just everyday stories: shall the antagonist be a serial killer, a drug-peddling creep, someone warped in the head due to nature or nurture, or are they fighting themselves. Though I enjoy character development, the story also matters and I have to be sure it makes sense.

Lee Houston, Jr.: Whether I'm writing Hugh Monn - Private Detective or Project Alpha, my superhero, first and foremost their opponents have to at least create a challenge, if not be an actual threat to the heroes. Hugh (so far) has only gone up against beings who are out for some kind of personal gain. But in his first outing, Alpha went up against Conalaric, his equally powered counterpart who had already made himself the self appointed dictator of his home planet. But it's good to mix things up too. Further down the road, Hugh will be facing a far bigger threat (probably in his third book) while Alpha will face more personal menaces as he tries to find himself and his place in the universe.

What kind of connection (if any) do you prefer your villains have with your heroes? Or that sort of relationship to stereotypical (a la Vader and Luke) to be believable?

Derrick Ferguson: It's a case by case basis. I don't believe that a villain has to necessarily have a connection with the hero outside of that the villains wants something and the hero has to stop him.

Lee Houston, Jr.: I agree with Derrick that there doesn't always need to be one. But when one does exist, like what Alpha has already experienced and Hugh will, it should be dramatic in some way and logical to both the plot and the background of the characters.

Selah Janel: If a villain is going to get under a hero's skin,  then they either have to be such a complete threat to the entire world as we know it (like an indestructable monster or aliens or something) or they have to have something in common with the hero. Voldemort works because he starts out as Tom Riddle who has quite a bit in common with Harry. In the second book in the series we get to see that they're not too much different in some ways,  which makes the further evolution of Voldemort that much more powerful. I keep going back to Batman,  but for a reason. In the original comics the villains were much more light-hearted or comedic - even up to their original television incarnations. As the series progressed and they were evolved and given tragic back stories and reasons for doing what they do, it suddenly made the fact that there are all these crazy people running around with either superhuman abilities or who are willing to go to any lengths to get their way really scary. If you can suspend your belief that this could happen in the real world in some fashion, then these characters become formidable. And because you know that they started as regular people for the most part,  it's worse because you want to feel sorry for them even though they're despicable.

Andrea Judy: I don't think there has to be an immediate connection between hero and villain. It's sometimes nice to add in some sort of dynamic, family, old lover, friend, etc. but it's not a requirement. I want my villain to stand on his/her own, not need the hero's back story to make sense as a character.

James Comer: I do not know that it is needed -- it can work when the story, like Harry Potter, is about family.  (Draco and Harry are cousins). Clearly, not all villains will be connected to the hero.

Herika Raymer: As mentioned previously, I like the calm ones. To me, they are more dangerous. The more volatile one seems, the easier it would seem for the hero to manipulate and thus less impressive. Family versus family is an interesting dynamic, though for me it is rather bland. I can see the want to make the tension between the hero and villain intense, but does the writer really have to rely on a family dynamic to portray that? Friend versus friend can be just as horrifying, and it works a little better. Though, in my opinion, such relationships lead toward the supposition that the author wants some sort of reconciliation at the end - in other words a 'nice' ending. For me, not a good goal. Now, an adversarial relationship between the hero and villain is much more interesting, to see who can win.

To what degree do you give your villain a story arc, or is he or she only important in being an opposite to the hero?

Derrick Ferguson: I think at some point it has to be made clear to the reader exactly WHY the villain wants to take over the world or find the Ark of The Covenant or rob Fort Knox. Motivation is the key to any good villain...hell, any good character, period. Even the secondary characters have to have SOME motivation for why they're doing what they're doing. If the writer knows his characters well, their motivation can't help but come out in the story at some point because the character him or herself will literally demand that they be heard.

Selah Janel: I think it's fine to start out with a villain as being just an opposite - you have to start your introduction somewhere. You don't need to know Vader's entire backstory to know he's a huge threat. But the longer your book/series/arc goes on, the more it helps to open up about the villain. Either the hero ends up projecting their own feelings onto this force of nature and you learn about their own darkness that way, or you flesh out the villain and develop an empathetic connection that way. I think it says something that people keep going back and revamping or rebooting characters - especially villains. It shows that people don't just want an evil force (outside of maybe the mysterious slasher type horror movies or a possession movie where your villain is an ethereal force whose point is just to be scary). They want to know what makes these people tick,  in some weird way I think they want to feel for them as much as they want to know about them. The trick is doing it well and playing a fine line. Vader works and ends up being a tragic character in the original Star Wars series because it's handled fairly subtly. Anakin doesn't really work because it's all out in the open and too much of that transition is shown. You aren't given a chance to even begin to agree with why he's making those wrong choices,  where with Vader you slowly begin to wonder if there might be good in him or if Luke has gone off the deep end.

And you can always just have a well-fleshed out,  interesting villain without having to go into redemption or tragedy. Sometimes it's fun just to have a well-thought out,  interesting,  entertaining baddie!

Andrea Judy: I have a really, really hard time not making the villain's arc more attention than the hero's arc. I really, really love my villains. Any villain that is created only as opposite to the hero is doomed to failure (at least in my world) that villain doesn't have their own legs to stand on. They're riding the hero's coattails and blending into that shadow. The strongest villains stand on their own and have their own story that intersects with the hero's… But is also a totally separate journey than the hero's arc.

James Comer: At the present, Sirat (see above) is an antagonist to Charthat and Hilojat, the heroes of two stories.  I intend to write stories in which Sirat is the protagonist, and in which Charthat and Hilojat are victims, and later, villains.  In other stories, Sirat will be a victim, as will be the wizard Etroklos who is his master.  I believe that to be believable, and not one-dimensional guys-in-tights-dropping-batman-into-meat-grinders, "villains" need their own  characterization. Thus, their rise and fall follows the hero's. 

Herika Raymer: Depends on the story. All characters should have a background, to help flesh them out to more than just a two dimensional reflection. The danger lies in becoming so invested in the villain that he becomes too difficult to defeat or even part with. Then again, for story arcs for comics, a recurring villain is a draw, and the same holds true for some television series or book series. It helps to draw away from the 'monster of the week' trap. For larger novels, though, a good villain is necessary so the readers enjoy seeing the heroes triumph.

Lee Houston, Jr.: That is dependent upon the story. In Project Alpha, Conalaric's background was just as important as Alpha's. Yet Hugh needed time to establish himself to the readers before facing his big menace. But it is an event that I have been building towards since the beginning of the series, and something that will help define who he is. But however you approach villains, their schemes and ambitions should always make sense, at least to them if no one else.

Alan Lewis' Bloody Garden

Some titles resonate with you and grab you by the throat. That's the way it is with Alan Lewis' novel The Blood in the Snowflake Garden. Six words and I'm hooked.

So I was thrilled that he loans us a bit of his time to chat with us about his work.

Tell us a bit about your latest work.

The Blood in Snowflake Garden is my first novel, released by BeWrite Books in December. Set in an alternate 1965 at Santa’s North Pole, the novel revolves around the murder of the Premier of the NP. Max Sneed, a retired police chief is called back to duty in investigate the high profile killing. Helping him along is Rob Watson, a London reporter. It is through Rob’s eyes that we see what life is really like at the top of the world. The novel is a gritty, hardboiled detective story at its core.  Make no mistake about it; this isn’t the kind of funny, goofy tale that’d be made into a Tim Allen movie. Political intrigue, Cold War politics, infidelity and racial tensions are just some of the obstacles facing the citizens of the NP and lend motive to the many suspects of the killing.

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?  

I’m an amateur historian, so I love alternate history or using historical themes as a basis for a story. Also, dark comedy is a must for me.

What would be your dream project?    

My next novel is a steampunk adventure. I dream is that it will be received well enough to turn into an ongoing series, maybe movies, and will generate more money than the Harry Freakin Potter books.  Well, you do say ‘dream’, right?

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do?
 
I’m too much of an editor and perfectionist to ask me that question. I look at everything I’ve done and start rethinking how it should have been done.

What inspires you to write?    

Bad writing will inspire me faster than anything. When I read or hear something awful, I think to myself, ‘Damn, my kids could have done better.’  Then to prove I’m better, I start writing.

What writers have influenced your style and technique?   

Hard question. There have been many that I’ve enjoyed over the years and that have helped shape my style.  Douglas Adams has always been a favorite of mine. Although my humor isn’t as farfetched as his, I do find myself thinking of the times when I would laugh my butt off at a particular line and it makes me look for ways of inserting my own brand of humor into a scene. Tom Clancy’s way of taking a mammoth storyline, filled with dozens of subplots and yet making it all come together in the end has always fascinated me. I feel like BSG was like that, plenty of subplots that I had to bring together at the end. I studied his writing as a way of pulling that novel together in the end.

Where would you rank writing on the "Is it an art or it is a science continuum?" Why? 

I’d said it would depend on whose writing we’re looking examining. Some writers are true masters at grammatical form, structuring and word choices. Those writers can use the beauty of words to hide the imperfections in their plots or flat characters. Other writers are gifted at the art of storytelling. They may not be the best writers, but damn they can tell a great story that will keep you turning the pages.  The true masters are those few among us that are skilled at both.

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?     

My second novel will be a steampunk tale due out this summer called The Lightning Bolts of Zeus. It’s a steampunk action/adventure novel, which will be the first in The Hawke Girl’s Series.  After that, I’ve got a dark comedic werewolf novella, Wild Pooch, due out in October.

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To learn more about Alan's work, visit: http://www.snowflakegarden.com.

How Epic is Epic? -- Working with "Epic" Storylines

Harry Potter is perhaps one of the most recent breakout hits to be created specifically for a major, multi-book storyline that is categorized by a marketing label that actually (some might say "for once") does a excellent job of defining the scope of the works it promotes -- Epic.

You can't turn around in a bookstore without tripping of any number of multi-volume works, and the trend only seems to be growing and taking up more and more shelf space and online retail bytes.

But what makes a writer want to think beyond the scope of a simple story to create something so grandiose and far-reaching?

Well, you know us here at Bad Girls, Good Guys, and Two-Fisted Action. With our curiosity suitably piqued, we asked a few writers to see what they had to say.

What attracts you to or turns you away from epic storylines, both as a reader and as a writer?

Van Allen Plexico: I've always preferred TV series over single movies, and similarly I prefer books in a series over one-shots. I just tend to enjoy big, long-running stories in which the characters have lots of time and room to grow and evolve, without it feeling forced (the way it sometimes does in a movie, single novel, or short story.)

Those same factors hold true for me as a writer. I like having lots of room to develop a big cast of characters. I've always been drawn to that type of story-- generational ones, with multiple protagonists and whole legions of villains. I guess I could blame superhero comics as much as anything--the first two I ever read as a kid were an issue of Avengers and an issue of Justice League (and that one happened to be a cross-over with the JSA and the Legion! Good heavens, no wonder!!)

Alan Lewis: As a reader, I tend to shy away from Epics, at least until all the books have been released. The last thing I want is to get started on a series only to have the publisher & author to stop producing/continuing the story arch due to poor sales or some other reason.

As a writer, I have no real desire to write an epic. I personally feel that a story can be told in a single volume. Although some epics such as Harry Potter are rich enough to span several books, I think some publishers push authors to expand a great single book in to multiple books simply for monetary reasons.

Bobby Nash: Epics can be fun if you like the concepts and characters. It can be fun revisiting old friends whenever new volumes arrive. That’s the positive. The negative is that sometimes these big epics either fall by the wayside before they’re completed or in some cases there are long delays between them. As a reader that can be quite frustrating.

Ian Watson: Epic storylines are by definition high-stakes, long-running stories. If they're populated with characters that interest me then because the tales are long I get more of the cast I enjoy, I get to see them in plenty of varied situations, and they probably develop. Also, a saga of that length usually has to properly world-build to sustain itself.

But some writers confuse 'epic' with 'long.' Writing variations of the same quest journey for five volumes only works if you're David Eddings.

For a writer, epic stories call for different writing skills, starting with plotting and working through long-term character and theme developments. The disciplines of short story word-counts are abandoned in favour of techniques to pace, vary, and sustain a narrative that builds on itself over and over.

Because I like backstory, and character-driven storylines, and world-creating, I enjoy writing epics. Unfortuately, small publishers can't risk the resources to publish such things. My 1.25 million word The Last Days of Atlantis will just have to stay on my hard drive some more.

Lee Houston Jr.: As a reader, I don't intentionally go looking for epic story lines, per se. I do like being able to go from one book to another with the same core group of characters. That's  akin to visiting friends on a regular basis. But what attracts me is the sense of grand adventure. The Lord of the Rings is a perfect example, although Tolkien never actually wrote it as a trilogy. The publisher split the book because he wasn't sure the story would find an audience. But the same things that would detract me in any story are an even greater risk in epics: stories that drag out beyond their natural length and boring tales.

As a writer, I have yet to even consider doing such an epic myself. But I do try to build upon my characters (Hugh Monn, Private Detective and Alpha) with each tale I write so the readers at least get the sense of an overall epic, even though every book is self contained.

Nancy Hansen: Epics in fantasy writing are generally about some heroic quest. I've always loved the big series where the characters are familiar, the world setting is well described and detailed, and there's some ongoing, overarching situation in the background. That said, if the individual stories in the books plod along, I lose interest quickly.

Roger Stegman: If well done, It is fun to return again and again to the world created. If not well done, subsequent books are likely not read. As a writer, once a world is created, it is easy to stay in the world. Most decisions are already made. The problem is retaining constancy over many stories.

Selah Janel: I love epics if I can be made to care about the characters. At the end of the day it isn’t just about the quest or the amazing world that’s inhabited. It’s all about what’s going on in it and who’s affected. I’ve started a lot of series and burned out because things were either taking too long for my tastes or it was obvious that they were being written either in an attempt to cash in on the epic fantasy craze or to show how much the writer knew. I’m not opposed to people making money and I’m always impressed by people who have a wealth of knowledge, but I want to feel invested in the actual story.

Lisa Matthews Collins: As a reader the answer is pretty much the same thing…If the epic story line is from an author who I know has a great handle on the genre I will be more likely to use my very limited reading allotment for their books, but on the reverse side of the coin, if the author is untested (by me or someone I trust) I will pass on their longer story arcs because of my limited time.

Matt Adams: As a reader, I like epic storytelling because it gives me a sense of scope; that even the smallest action can have an impact on the larger picture. These stories explore a world in great detail, and give me a chance to encounter a variety of different characters. The biggest "turn off" is that trying to juggle as this as a reader can get confusing (if you need a flowchart to follow the action, you're in trouble). Epics work best, I believe, when tightly focused on a few characters who introduce us to others along the way.

As a writer, it is still a matter of time. I have a full time job and write in my free time (that is so laughable). I do have two epic stories I want to tell and am working on, but I often put them on the back burner to get other shorter pieces published.

What are the benefits of creating an epic, far-reaching, multi-book storyline, regardless of genre?

Van Allen Plexico: Lots more room to work. More room for more characters, more action, more developments, more perspectives... Lots of cross-cutting scenes all over the place. Multiple major plotlines to follow, or to develop.

And as a writer and publisher, more money, honestly. Every time a customer buys *every single thing* White Rocket currently offers on Kindle about Lucian, I earn $2. Every time a customer buys *every single thing* White Rocket offers on Kindle in the Sentinels series, I earn $12. There you go.

Ian Watson: This assumes that epics are multi-volume. Nowadays with 1500 page paperbacks that's not always the case. There's also a distinction in my mind between a multi-volume novel and a multi-part series. Each volume of a series should be accessible in its own right, even if there is a developing continuity unifying it as a single narrative. Volume two of a three-part novel can assume that readers read part one first; who starts The Lord of the Rings at The Two Towers?

The benefit of extended storylines is that situations can grow organically, with events cascading into other events on a grander scale than in a shorter story. That has implications on every element of the work. The characters have to be that much more defined, because they need to carry a plot for that much further. The situations and settings need to be more carefully thought through because there has to be an internal consistency half a million words later on. And the plot has to have more beats, more peaks and troughs and mini-conclusions than a novel that's at heart a three-act play.

A good epic should immerse the reader, carrying them away for days into another world.

Lee Houston Jr.: Besides job security (he types with a chuckle)? To create a sense of grand adventure. It's like climbing to the top of a mountain, with the summit being reached in the last book, resulting in the final battle, climax, action, etc. But the reader also gets to see the main cast grow and mature in the process since they spend so much time with them.

Nancy Hansen: From a writing aspect, I get to spend more time with the characters and their world, fleshing them out in greater detail. Writing within an established world is very comfortable, because you know how things work there already. I'm kind of an odd duck because I have multiple story lines going on in the same world, yet each set of tales covers some unique character or group. For instance Tales Of The Vagabond Bards and Fortune's Pawn both take place in the same world, but at different times and places. So you have that familiar backdrop of what is going on behind the scenes, but distinctively different settings and features. And each story can stand alone, as whatever happens within it has a conclusion. So while the big background issues have not been resolved, the point of the tale has been made.

Roger Stegman: As a reader, these series are fun to return to time and time again. with each new book, you already know something of what to expect and are more happy to spend the money. I have purchased more series books than individual books simply for that reason.

As an author, if you have a good series, people will read one and want to read others of the series. Each new book causes people to read earlier books. You can develop a loyal readership for just about anything you produce.

Selah Janel: People know what they’re getting, they know what to expect at least in terms of the universe and style. Plus, new books in an epic series are like re-visiting old friends. It’s exciting to see what new aspect of a familiar place you’re going to get to see with each added installment. Plus, if you care about certain plot lines or characters it’s always great to see how they’re developed and what happens to the people you’ve spent so much time with, even if it’s in your imagination. There’s a reason fandom exists, especially with epic fantasy and series – people get invested. As a writer there’s always something different in that universe to play with. It’s like going back to a familiar hometown but wandering into different parts of it. There’s something very attractive to having a world that you absolutely know, but have the freedom or options to explore different areas of it. There’s always new aspects to explore and as a writer you always have something familiar to go back to.

Lisa Matthews Collins: If I love a book and the characters, I want more, and I will pay well for the continuance of the saga.

Matt Adams: A multi-book storyline gives authors a chance to really dig in and get to know the characters. Writers are effective at accomplishing this in a single book, but spreading an adventure over multiple books really allows writers to develop characters and reinforce themes. When you widen the scope of a story, it allows readers to spend more time with characters; thus, when major events occur, readers feel connected to the characters they're invested in.

What are the drawbacks to working with such a large scope?

Van Allen Plexico: It can take longer to plot and write, and can be harder to keep track of. But, honestly, that's rarely a hindrance for me, simply because I enjoy it so much. Nothing is really "work" if you love it. Keeping track of the Sentinels, for example, is getting dangerously close (already!) to keeping track of everyone who's been an Avenger. Well, not quite--not yet! But you get what I mean. But yet I love it, so it doesn't bother me to do so at all.

Bobby Nash: I would assume time commitment would be one of them. As a writer I know that I am often coming up with new ideas faster than I can implement them. Before I could finish a ten or fifteen book epic I’d get the urge to do something else, which would delay my epic and probably anger my readers.

Ian Watson: It's a lot of hard work. It requires more planning, more proofreading (try recalling minor details from chapter 3 when you're typing out chapter fifty-one), more range of techniques, more determination to finish, and more closure than a shorter piece of fiction. It also requires more discipline. The temptation to leave things in because another 5000 words makes no difference really can be fatal.

Another problem is that epic can sometimes be impersonal and boring. Any story that requires a ten page prologue telling me about what happened three thousand years ago is off to a really bad start. Any long tale that begins to repeat its action scenes or its character interactions is in trouble. Any cast so large and indistinguishable that the reader forgets who's who will kill a story.

Lee Houston Jr.: There are a lot more chances for the tale to fall flat. Coming across padding (unneeded sequences) to justify/fill out the length is a major turn off for me, regardless of any story/book's length.

Nancy Hansen: I have seven separate short story lines in that same big world, with novels built around them. It gets confusing at times because I am back and forth across history and boundary lines, Little details can get lost, and you'd be surprised how fast readers can pick up on that. And because what I am writing now is pulp, which means the novels are shorter, each one has to move quickly and be full of action scenes. That makes it more challenging to tell a long running tale over multiple books.

Roger Stegman: As a writer, one could get burned out on the story, wanting to work on something else. It could be hard to come up with fresh plot lines -- hero walks stumbles into crime and finds himself fighting gang. Book two, hero follows leads that leads to him fighting a new gang. Book three, hero is helping friend, gets into trouble with new gang... -- if the plots are not thought out ahead of time, aiming for something, one can get into a rut. Keeping details consistent can well be a problem. I know of a couple books where the author admitted some errors he made in the author notes at the back of the book.

Another problem is avoiding that dreaded "to be continued" at the end of each book, or where a reader cannot figure out what is going on unless one reads the series in exact order.

Selah Janel: I think the downside is that there’s a huge opportunity for plot holes, loop holes, etc. A writer has to do their homework and be organized with epic series, especially since one book may only cover a little bit of the entire world/universe it’s set in – if you’re not prepared then when you go to focus on another aspect it’s easy to forget things that you haven’t been working with for a while. I’ve read series where authors either contradict themselves (understandable but frustrating) or let certain plotlines get really thin because it’s either not what they’re into at the moment or the world is so huge that things fall out of importance. Even J.K. Rowling has had to go back and make corrections in the Harry Potter universe and as the series got bigger and more popular, I grew frustrated because some of my favorite characters that weren’t huge fan/marketing favorites became cardboard versions of themselves. They had to be in the series, but they were pale shadows of themselves.

Lisa Matthews Collins: As a writer I have to do more of one of my least favorite things—outlining, character sheets, planning (not flying by the seat of my pants like they are on fire.)

Matt Adams: The inverse is true as well. In order to spread a storyline across several books, sometimes the story gets stretched thin. Some stories simply don't need to be told across an entire series. Many authors fall into the trap of introducing too many main characters and supporting characters. This can be challenging to follow, especially when done poorly. In addition, readers expect wide-ranging changes to occur in an epic story; sometimes the smaller, more intimate character moments get lost in the bombastic resolution.

Whom do you consider the reigning masters of the epic storyline?

Van Allen Plexico: Peter F. Hamilton. George R. R. Martin. Dan Abnett. (How many volumes are we into the Gaunt's Ghost series now? Fourteen? Where does this man find the time to write comics, on top of all that other stuff?)

Frank Herbert, James Clavell and Patrick O'Brian all have been dead for a while now, but they were a major part of what has always inspired me to take on that kind of project, and to be truly excited about it. They all executed grand storylines across hundreds of thousands of words in volume after volume, and kept the reader starving for more.

Bobby Nash: I don’t generally read series like this. Stephen King’s Dark Tower series springs immediately to mind.

Ian Watson: Currently George R.R. Martin is probably leading the field. Special mention to Lois McMaster Bujold and Stephen King.

Lee Houston Jr.: Tolkien, although he didn't originally plan it that way. Terry Brooks, Timothy Zahn. Edgar Rice Burroughs, taking the Mars and Venus books collectively as whole stories. If we expand this into comic books, then definitely Grant Morrison and James Robinson.

Nancy Hansen: Tolkien for the big world backdrop, David and Leigh Eddings for characters you wanted to read again. Robert Jordan I liked but for some reason his books didn't stick with me. Terry Brooks Shannara series started out well, but skipped ahead so far each time i got frustrated that my faves from the last book had already died off. Anne McCaffrey in the Pern books had about the smoothest world evolution I've ever seen, and each story had a finite conclusion.

Roger Stegman: My favorite is Anne McCaffrey and Piers Anthony and Aundry Norton. One thing they did a lot of was have each book follow a different character in the same world, which makes each story stand alone, but also linked together. One does not have to read many of their series in order, though it does help in getting the full depth of their series.

Selah Janel: Tolkein is always going to be the master. He had his down points, but he is the master. He knew every corner of Middle Earth and every moment of that time line. Whether you love or hate reading him, you can tell he felt strongly about his work – to the point that he kept strengthening with each reprinting. From the language to the cities to the different cultural viewpoints of the groups it all worked. I will admit that he isn’t the easiest author for me to read but I like getting swept up in the adventure and as a woman I’ve always identified and felt for Eowyn.  I’d also count C.S. Lewis in the category – he knew what to show in Narnia and when to focus on what. Nothing ever felt wrong or contradictory and the characters always behaved like themselves. He could switch from Narnia to Calormen and jump around in time and it always rang true. Narnia may have been a children’s series but he didn’t write down to his audience; he wrote the story and let his readers get swept along with him.

I think J.K. Rowling and George Lucas have done very well – but I just can’t include them as being prime examples. I love parts of the Harry Potter series, don’t get me wrong. Rowling’s worlds are amazing and lovingly detailed and I adore how she plays on stories and mythology. My problem is that all the aspects of the universe aren’t always balanced out very well (I chalk this up to the books being from a single viewpoint – so if Harry isn’t where the action is you’re limited to what you can see and restricted to only his emotional point of view). And Lucas has had a lot of help from conceptualists and EU authors (whether you love or hate the expanded universe it’s come to shape a lot of what people are familiar with.) Plus I’m just not a fan of people who have to keep fixing things that don’t need fixing, and he contradicts himself all the time.

Lisa Matthews Collins: For fantasy, Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn) and for sci-fi, Frank Herbert (Dune).

Matt Adams: In general, when I think of epics, I think of epic fantasy. I'm not a huge fan of the genre, but I have enjoyed the Song of Ice and Fire series from George R.R. Martin. For me to sit back and read those books (a George R.R. Martin paperback is large enough to kill a man) tells me that guy knows what he's doing.

In a publishing world where series books are all the rage, what's the real difference between a series being a true epic and just a book series? What makes an epic, well... epic?

Van Allen Plexico: I think the only way to really know that is to read it and see how it strikes you. Is it watered down -- stretched out like a Brian Bendis comic book story to take up far more pages than it really needed to? Or is it filled with action and excitement and development on every page? Are the stakes grand enough? Is the cast big enough--and yet you can still pretty easily keep track of who everyone important is? Are you dying to get the next volume as soon as you're done with the last one? Fortunately, there are a lot of series like that out there -- and I definitely plan to add to them!

Bobby Nash: For me, as a reader, I don’t mind following a series, but I prefer my novels to be stand-alones. I can revisit Harry Bosch with each new novel from Michael Connelly, but each one ends. Only subplots and character moments continue on through each book in the series. Nothing annoys me as a reader more than getting to the end of a good novel and reading the words "to be continued..."

Alan Lewis: In my opinion, a book series is simply a a group of books using the same characters and universe/world but each book is a stand alone story. An epic is a story large enough to be broken into multiple parts (books).

Ian Watson: Like the poetry it's names for, an epic novel features a heroic aspiration on a grand scale. The stakes must be high; epics deal in life and death, love and hate, war and peace. Personal stories are played out across a vast backdrop of turmoil and change. An epic also features genuine progression; at the end of the story things are very unlikely to return to status quo. Epics tend to have grand themes such as freedom, betrayal, tragedy, or discovery.

That's why epics tend to involve quests, battles, romances, and disasters; all of these things interrupt and irrevocably alter the participants.

We shouldn't disparage the "just a" book series however. That's an art form in its own right, with its own strengths, and its probably the form which has developed most in the last decade.

Lee Houston Jr.: A true epic would be all the volumes focused on just one main-overall story/adventure, although there are some very great series out there too.

Nancy Hansen: A series is a set of stories involving the same character(s) in many different adventures. Each book is a story unto itself and may or may not depend on books that came before. They tend to stand alone, and you can read #7, #21 and then #13 and not feel lost. An epic as I've said usually involves some sort of quest, and that is the entire backdrop of the series of books it entails. So while each book may have a separate story line, they tend to build on one another, and are best read in order. That doesn't mean you can't start somewhere down the line and figure out what is going on, because if the author is skillful at all, you're going to get sucked right in. I started David Edding's The Elenium with The Ruby Knight, which I got in a cutout bin as a steeply discounted hardcover with an amazing cover. That book sold the rest of the series to me. It did make more sense once I had read the rest, but the story stood well on its own. That's what I strive for too, when I write an epic series. Fortune's Pawn is the first book of an epic trilogy, but you can pick up the next one and have a good idea of what is going on. Tales Of The Vagabond Bards is an anthology series because each book will have separate tales that stand alone.

Roger Stegman: A series, I think, are mainly a story arc, that starts at point A and gets to point Z and ends. A real epic is one where there might be story arcs, they can also continue on beyond the original characters and situations. Star wars books were a epic. the first three stories were  a story arc. Zahn wrote three more books I read that showed it was epic, where there was more to the story than the way it originally looked.

Selah Janel: A true epic shouldn’t just involve a magical world or a long-running problem. The universe should be so vast that the author should be able to write adventures twenty to fifty years in the future from the main story or twenty to fifty years back. It doesn’t necessarily have to involve the familiar cast of characters. Tolkein is epic because he could use the same universe for The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings books, and The Simarillion – they span the gamut in time and main characters and also gives you the feeling that he could have written about anyone in that world – even the most insignificant person. While familiar characters creep up now and again in Narnia different leads are used to account for the vast time difference between worlds. Plus, Lewis can poke around not only at Cair Paravel but in adjoining lands and every type of creature. He takes his readers all the way from the forming of Narnia to its destruction. Theme-wise an epic should involve a problem so huge that it doesn’t just involve all the characters involved but the future of the universe itself. It should drag everyone into the issue at hand because it touches everyone and becomes too big and terrible to ignore.

Lisa Matthews Collins: You can have a series without much planning (Sweet Valley High books are a good example of that.). As long as one of the characters’ lives from the last book continues into the next one, wham-bam-thank you ma’am, you have a series.

Epics have a world (universe is probably a better word) built (described) to the degree that even if none of the characters from the last book are ever seen again, the new volume will unmistakably have the same feel. Your readers know so much about the world and its customs, that they feel the continuity of the story arc even if the “stories” are hundreds of years apart or even take place on other planets.

Matt Adams: An epic series has an overarching storyline; it doesn't carry on forever. You have a starting point, a middle point, and the eventual end. These series go somewhere. The characters' choices have an unalterable effect on their world. This, to me, is much different from "just a series," where the same characters have the same adventures. Sure, some things change from book to book, but in the end, the status quo ends up getting reset (much like in a TV series) to set up the next adventure.

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