eSpecs Books Focus #6: Mary Fan

I've got a special treat for you this month and next month. I'm going to devote Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays to writers from eSpecs Books. They're a great bunch of folks whom you need to get to know. 

Next up, Mary Fan!

Tell us a bit about your latest work.

Recently I turned in a novella for Systema Paradoxa, an imprint of eSpec Books that publishes cryptid fiction for Cryptid Crate, a cryptid subscription box. Because of exclusivity around the crate, I can't talk publicly about which cryptid is being featured, but what I can tell you is that it's a sci-fi thriller set in Princeton, New Jersey in the early 2000s about two teenagers who go into the woods to film a student movie and capture something... unexpected... on camera. When no one believes them, they decide to take matters into their own hands to uncover the truth. Why early 2000s Princeton? Well, let's just say that's a significant time and place for the lore around this particular cryptid. I'll admit, part of the reason I picked this cryptid is that I went to Princeton High School in the early 2000s and thought it would be fun to set a story during my teen years (as a YA author, I don't ever get to do that, since the 2000s now count as historical fiction!)

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer?

I used to write up a storm as a kid, but dropped it around junior year of high school. Then, after I graduated college and started my first job (in China, where I knew no one, no less), I suddenly found myself with more time on my hands than I knew what to do with. So I decided to revive my writing habit pretty much out of boredom... and soon found it so engrossing that it took over my life.

What inspires you to write?

Everything! Anything! I never know what's going to trigger a story idea. In the case of this latest novella, I was reading the lore on this cryptid, found it interesting that early 2000s New Jersey was central to it, and had a flashback to when I took a filmmaking class in high school... how I went into the woods late at night once to get a shot for my movie. I remembered how creeped-out I was by the oppressive blackness, and how even a forest in a densely populated state could feel like the middle of nowhere when you're a lone teenager. The convergence of these thoughts led to the novella idea.  

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

Strong leading ladies are a big one. And not necessarily physically strong - though I have a few of those as well. There are many ways for a gal to show strength, whether it's through actions, resilience, kindness, intelligence, or a whole host of other traits. One can be the quietest, meekest person in the room but still the strongest in ways that aren't always obvious. Another thing I tend to revisit a lot is the abstract antagonist - a faceless villain whose power is felt but who isn't physically present, or an antagonizing force that can't be pinned to an individual, or an unknown evil that must be unmasked and defeated. I think the reason I tend to do this is tied to the explorations of strength; by keeping the antagonist in the shadows, the focus is more firmly on the heroine and how she handles the obstacles thrown at her.

What would be your dream project?

I'd love to write tie-in fiction for an on-screen franchise someday, just because I think it would be a lot of fun.  

What writers have influenced your style and technique?

I'm terrible at naming names, and so I won't. I will say that reading a lot of genre fiction helped me get a feel for the contemporary storytelling style.  

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do?

I'd go back and give my debut novel, Artificial Absolutes, a bit of a line edit. Looking back, it's obvious I was still feeling my way around novel writing, and some of my sentences feel awkward now. Then again, that book was the only time I got a starred review from a significant review publication (Publishers Weekly) so maybe it's just in my head, and the fact is I'm a different writer now than when I was 23.

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

Honestly, I've never seen art and science as being very different, so I have no idea how to answer this question. In art there are structures and patterns that emerge to guide one's expressiveness - not always taught, often subconsciously absorbed, but ever-present. Meanwhile, science without inspiration and improvisation wouldn't get very far.

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?

Writing the first draft is the hardest for me. Blank pages terrify me. I like brainstorming, and I like revising after I have something to work with, but to create something out of nothing? Yikes!  

How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not?

Writer friends are absolutely vital to becoming a better writer, in my opinion. Talking to them about a shiny new idea or complaining to them about a thorny plot problem is the best way to get the ideas flowing. The act of writing is by definition lonely, and it's always nice having someone to work through the ideas with you. Not to mention someone to be there for you when the horrible hellpit we call the publishing industry inevitably crushes your soul.

What does literary success look like to you?

Once, I would have said something related to money, but now, I just want to write what I want, when I want, how I want. That freedom is worth more than any contract.  

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?

I'm contributing a story to Sing, Goddess!, an anthology of YA Greek myth retellings edited by Jane Watson, which is coming out this August! I did a dark academia retelling of the Arachne myth, where Minerva is Min Wong, a high-achieving student at an elite prep school who will do anything to stay on top, and Arachne is Ara, Min's artistic classmate whose recent suicide haunts Min. 

For more information, visit:

Website: www.MaryFan.com

Twitter: @astralcolt

Instagram: @astralcolt

Facebook: facebook.com/mfanwriter

[Link] The Pleasures of Tsundoku, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Book Pile

by Antoine Wilson

Recently, while moving several piles of books (31 titles) from the floor to another place on the floor to make space for my office chair, I experienced a moment of clarity during which I felt like I had arrived at the end of a manic episode and was confronting the aftermath.

Hoarders have been known to describe how seemingly insignificant detritus—an old cup, a yellowed newspaper, a toothbrush—are so meaningful to them that they couldn’t possibly be thrown away.

I, too, was capable of justifying the presence of each of my individual piled up volumes. There was Thomas Bernhard’s Gathering Evidence. Purchased on the recommendation of a friend, begun at some point, set aside not because not good but because quietly usurped, knowing that someday I would get back to young Thomas on his bicycle. The usurper? Javier Marías’s Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear. I wanted to soak in Marías for a little while, but apparently not long enough to finish. Next, Edith Grossman’s translation of Don Quixote, awaiting comparison to the only other one I’d read, Tobias Smollett’s. And adjacent in stack and century, Tristram Shandy, half-finished, waiting for the right mood to strike. Shonagon’s The Pillow Book, uncracked—a purchase inspired by Suzanne Buffam’s A Pillow Book. Bergman’s The Magic Lantern, just begun, which I picked up because Dorthe Nors mentioned it somewhere, and, below that, her story collection Wild Swims…

Other stacks contained more yet-to-be read novels by authors I loved, books bought for research, various computer programming guides, more than one how-to book on writing, an excess of belles lettres, journals, books by friends, and, perhaps the most pathological and well-represented category, various iterations of the book I had to buy to magically solve the problems in whatever project I was currently working on.

Read the full article: https://lithub.com/the-pleasures-of-tsundoku-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-book-piles

MICHAEL LODESTONE AND THE QUEEN OF DARKNESS NOW AVAILABLE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A WIZARD HUNTS HIS OWN KIND…WITHOUT MAGIC -- MICHAEL LODESTONE AND THE QUEEN OF DARKNESS NOW AVAILABLE

Michael Lodestone is full of secrets. And, thanks to author M. B. Weston, the mysteries that make up this enigmatic man are revealed in the first of a new series from Pro Se Productions. MICHAEL LODESTONE AND THE QUEEN OF DARKNESS is now available in print and digital format.

Rule #1: It’s not what you see in a reflection that matters. It’s what sees you.

Michael Lodestone is immortal. He is one of the world’s most powerful wizards. And he is hunting down the other immortals, trying to destroy them before they can reunite and take power on Earth once again.

The catch? He must take them down without the use of magic.

Hunting Old World evil with New World technology, Michael Lodestone roams the New Orleans’ underworld with a small team who knows his secrets: a computer hacker who now uses his gifts for a higher calling and a city detective bent on avenging her father’s death. Michael has chosen to go after the most powerful of the immortals: a witch whose power over mirrors and reflections makes her practically omnipresent. Armed only with iron weapons and his team’s know-how, Lodestone enters the world of magic once again—only this time, magic is the one thing he can’t use.

Author M. B. Weston reimagines the eternal fight against good and evil with the first in a new series- MICHAEL LODESTONE AND THE QUEEN OF DARKNESS. From Pro Se Productions.

With a haunting cover by Antonino lo Iacono, MICHAEL LODESTONE AND THE QUEEN OF DARKNESS, formatted by lo Iacono and Marzia Marina, is available on Amazon at https://tinyurl.com/vkm3sf74 for 7.99.

Lodestone’s first adventure is also available on Kindle formatted by lo Iacono and Marzia for $0.99 for a limited time at https://tinyurl.com/7rufa2fr. Kindle Unlimited Members can read this thrilling adventure for free!

For more information on this title, interviews with the author, or digital copies for review, email editorinchief@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. 

eSpecs Books Focus #5: Ef Deal

I've got a special treat for you this month and next month. I'm going to devote Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays to writers from eSpecs Books. They're a great bunch of folks whom you need to get to know. 

Next up, Ef Deal!

Tell us a bit about your latest work.

Esprit de Corpse is the first book in a series featuring the Twins of Bellesfées. Jacqueline Duval is an engineering genius in 1840s France. Her sister Angélique is a virtuoso pianist, a former protégée of Sigismond Thalberg. She’s also a shapeshifting wolf who lives a dissolute, bohemian life, constantly forcing Jacqueline to bail her out of trouble, until one day in the summer of 1843 on the railway home from Paris, the train is brought to a halt by a rogue automaton powered not by steam, but by a spirit borne in the skull placed inside it. As Jacqueline tries to unravel the mystery of the skull, Angélique pursues the brigand who tries to steal it back from them, uncovering a plot to build an army of automatons powered by the spirits of the skulls of the Paris Catacombs.

I love this story because where most steampunk is Victorian England or New York, this is set before the great railroad surge and before the taming of electricity, but all the groundwork is there for Jacqueline to discover and use.

I also love it for the relationship between the two sisters, one of whom has been so lost for the past five years and who finally finds the strength within herself to take responsibility for her own life.

It features an evil count trying to take over Russia, a mysterious janissary combatting a necromantic sorcerer, a dashing rogue, a French spy, a hilarious automaton, Charles Baudelaire, and a magnificent airship. Plus, Paris!

And I’m especially excited because this is coming out from eSpec Books. I’ve been a fan of Danielle McPhail for ages, and I’m thrilled she picked up Esprit de Corpse for publication.

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer?

I learned to read at a very early age, and after finishing up the entire children’s section of my local library, I wandered over to the fiction section where I found Alfred Hitchcock anthologies. The librarian noticed my choices, and she steered me to more horror and supernatural, then science fiction. I was only ten years old when she had me get a note from my mother to read F&SF— as if my mother cared what I read. I finished reading a few of them, and I said to myself, “One day, I’m going to publish a story in this magazine.”

I had a younger sister and three younger brothers I had to babysit, and in those days, radio after 10pm was nothing but ’50s oldies, and television went off the air at 11:30, so I took out my mother’s Underwood Royal and began typing stories.

What inspires you to write?

I have no idea. Stories just keep coming, and I have to write them. As the meme says, “I’m a writer; I make the voices in my head work for me.” Characters form, and the characters make the stories. It’s almost as if they’re telling me their stories, and I’m just recording them.

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

My primary continuo is women overcoming abuse, especially young women. The inequality women face, the prejudice against them, the stupidity of the patriarchal paradigm, the outright hatred of women manifested in our entire social system infuriates me. So, I write about women who can rise from the ashes.

I also play around with bifurcation—the half-elf, the royal peasant (or peasant royal), the black-and-white. I believe that all of us have another half inside us that gets sublimated until some great crisis forces it to surface.

What would be your dream project?

I would love to turn the Twins of Bellesfées into a film or television series. The Loire valley, which inspired the setting, is absolutely enchanting, and who could argue with Paris? It’s the France of Alexander Dumas, both père et fils, but before Jules Verne. Chopin and George Sand were romping or fighting, Franz Liszt was at the top of his game, and Ada King, the Countess of Lovelace, was about to publish her foundation of the modern computer program. The King of the French Louis-Philippe had just lost his son, and in another few years would lose his throne, but in the meantime, he survived eight assassination attempts (nine if you count the one in my books). Frankenstein had been published, but werewolves and vampires had yet to make it into print, although they do invade Bellesfées. Seriously, doesn’t that sound like a great project?

What writers have influenced your style and technique?

First and foremost, Gregory Frost. He’s a master of metaphor and I am in awe of his work. We were in a writers’ workshop together, and every session was like a master’s class for an MFA, but Greg has a way of seeing the story you want to tell and helping you tell it. As for the stories he tells, they are gorgeous tapestries, even—or especially—his horror.

As for my style, I’m not sure any writer has influenced it. Much of it is from conversations around the dinner table with my husband and my two sons as they were growing up. We are all punsters and love wordplay, which plays a huge role in my style. We’re all great readers and viewers, so allusions to the most obscure facts come naturally to us, and that’s made writing historical fantasy a lot of fun.

I began writing florid high fantasy, heavily influenced by Jane Yolen and CJ Cherryh, Lord Dunsany, Tolkien (naturally), but Lester DelRey told me my strength was in my characters, and I should let them take the lead, which is where I get my style now. As I said, the characters come to me, and I let them tell their story.

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do?

My husband wants me to make over my first novel, the one DelRey really liked but ultimately rejected. I, being naive (pronounced “stupid”) thought that meant it was no good and I shoved it up on a shelf; but it was good, and I’m sorry I didn’t know that at the time and pursued publication elsewhere.

However, I have a series of novels and novellas featuring a misanthropic spellcasting musician, Gwynna Lionshadow, and I love her. Her whole saga is wonderful, but she’s got such a chip on her shoulder and fear of intimacy that no publishers liked her. I would love to take time to examine her from a distance now and see where she can go.

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

Writing is an art. There’s no real “why” about it. There are varying degrees of art, so if a writer simply follows a formula to sell something no one will remember in two years, that’s no less art than a coloring book page you put on your fridge or the clay mug your kid brings home from school. Writing is creating, and any form of creativity is art. My younger son is an electrical engineer, specializing in lighting. Engineering is a science, but what he does with it is art. Visit the rotunda of the Franklin Institute (featured in book three of the Twins of Bellesfées, by the way) and tell me that isn’t artfully lit.

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?

The physical pain of sitting at the keyboard for hours on end. I’ve had osteoarthritis in my feet, knees, hands, hips, and back since I was twenty years old. When a story takes hold of me, I have no trouble putting “AIC” and writing. But when the arthritis sets in, and no painkillers can do anything about it, it takes me out of the process, and it’s difficult to get back to that place, that pace.

The second most difficult part is writing characters who are smarter than me, or more evil than me. It’s like any RPG, when your character has an 18 intelligence and you can’t figure out how to open the puzzle box because you only have a 12 yourself.

How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not?

Back in the ’90s, the AOL message boards featured a lot of writer interaction and discussion—Harlan Coben, CJ Cherryh, Patricia Wrede, Jane Yolen, all dispensing advice and guidance. CJ even recommended my misanthropic minstrel novel to her agent. But the best part was the collaborative tales a bunch of us novices began putting together, and one fellow, Tom Holzwarth, taught me the power of details in body language and the senses, not just what you sensed, but how that sensation revealed itself in a character’s actions. He would also challenge me by putting my character into impossible plot twists and force me to think my way out of them. Tom never saw publication, and he should have, but he was a gem.

Nowadays, just talking about writing makes me want to write more. I’m in the Bucks County Writers Workshop right now, and many of my colleagues from the nameless workshop in Philadelphia are still close friends—notably Greg Frost, Sally Weiner Grotta, John Schoffstall, Lawrence Schoen. We talk about our projects, commiserate over blocks or plot hangups, and discuss publishing plans. I learn from them. We learn from each other, I think.

I met Wendy Delmater Thies at Lunacon a few years back, and I’m now her assistant fiction editor at Abyss&Apex online zine, an award-winning publication. Reading through the slush pile has been a huge education, and launched my freelance editing career as well.

And Danielle McPhail, my editor at eSpec Books. Just reading her Bad-Ass Fairies or Bad-Ass Moms will give you an idea of how much we think alike, and that helps shape my work as well.

I’m always looking to learn, and my writer friends are such great writers, I can’t help but learn from them.

What does literary success look like to you?

It’s book twenty-two of the Twins of Bellesfées series, or all nine of my minstrel Gwynna Lionshadow novels in print.

Well, that’s a dream success. But seriously, literary success means people coming up to me at a con and telling me my work meant something to them, that what I created inspired someone else in some way. It’s writers I respect as mentors telling me I "done good."

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?

Book 2 of the Twins of Bellesfées, Femmes Fatales, in which Jacqueline is stalked by a lesbian vampire while assassins try to take out her guest, the King of the French Louis-Philippe, during Angélique’s wedding celebration.

Book 3 of the Twins of Bellesfées, Les Fleurs du Malheur, in which Jacqueline and her four protégées are dragged across time and the aether to solve the riddle of a locomotive haunted by the children of the Husker coal-mine tragedy.

Book 4 of the Twins of Bellesfées, Wails’ Tale, in which Jacqueline honeymoons at Angélique’s great house in Wales, and as the Rebecca Riots plague the roads, a ghost plagues the twins.

For more information, visit:

Blog: www.efdeal.blogspot.com

Website: www.efdeal.net

Movie Reviews for Writers: The Shining

 

A caveat: This is not a review of Stephen King's book The Shining. This is not a comparison between Stanley Kubrick's movie The Shining and King's book. Yes, they are very different works with significant details changed from book to movie. But I'm reviewing Kubrick's film because his changes have something to say about his thoughts on storytelling and storytellers. Are we good? Okay. Let's move on, shall we?

There are lots of movies based on King's stories that say a lot about his thoughts on the act of writing and the character of writers, but the movie version of The Shining gives us a rarer peek into the mind of Stanley Kubrick about those subjects. 

Many smarter folks than me have analyzed this movie and come up with many varying ideas about what it is saying about several different subjects, from the genocide of the indigenous Americans to the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis in WWII, to it having something to do with faking the moon landing (in my mind the most ludicrous of the theories, but I digress). I, however, will look at what I feel this brilliant film has to say about Kubrick's view of the writer and the work of writing, and I think he tells us a great deal. 

Let's start with the oft-told idea of a writer having to "kill your darlings." Both Kubrick and King treat that in the most literal sense in the story of Danny and his family. But it's too easy to get distracted by that notion. Neither is saying that writing is actually about murdering your family. 

There's something be said for the idea of getting away to write, but we've covered that in several other reviews, so we won't go into that here, and besides, it's just more surface stuff Kubrick can distract us with. 

Let's move on to "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy." Of course, he's correct in this. As writers, the time we spend away from the keyboard is as important for us to recharge our physical and emotional and (most importantly) our imaginative batteries. Writers who live only in books, well, they aren't really living at all. A great writer once said to write what you know (and yeah, I know that statement has been abused), and to some degree, it's an important truth. Writers must live to write. We to experience in order to fuel our fictional dreams. 

But that's the real point of Kubrick's concept of the writer either, not completely. That's more surface distraction. 

Where King lets his writer hero slowly descend into madness from father to writer to killer, Kubrick starts with a manic writer and all but ignores the father role, giving viewers a crazy Jack pretty much throughout the film. That's a huge change. But it's another indicator that Kubrick is telling his own story and he isn't talking about family dynamics. He's talking about something else. 

Did you know that the maze isn't a maze at all in the novel? It's a garden. The maze was added to the movie as a visually terrifying change that would play out better on camera. I think it's more than that. The hedge maze isn't the only maze in Kubrick's vision. There's also the carpet pattern (which changes from scene to scene), the changing layouts of the Overlook Hotel itself (try to map it, you can't), and all the mazes begin when the family arrives at the Overlook when Jack is finally off the single path of the mountain's winding road and ready to begin to write. He moves from a single path to a myriad of possible directions. 

What is Kubrick saying about writing (at least in my interpretation)? Writers exist in mazes when we create, and we are captured inside them by the vast potential directions at our disposal. 

Think about your plotting. No matter how you do it, it's not a linear progression, not until it's edited and sent away. Then it sets in the glue. But before then, it's all about the changes in plot, shifts in focus, side trips that become important, things we thought were important that become dredge to be tossed in the bin. The act of creating a story is the act of living in a maze. 

So many options. So many choices. We haunt our mazes, and we are haunted by them. 

In the book, John (not Jack) is trapped in the boiler room and then the hotel blows up. In the movie Jack dies frozen in the hedge maze, one that doesn't even exist in the book. (Some say the world will end if fire and some in ice...) Danny backtracks to stay alive to leave the maze, all of them. Jack moves forward, further "being" in the maze. Ponder that for a moment. 

The writer dies in the maze. 

Read that again. 

The writer dies in the maze.

The writer (when he/she/they leave the "real world" and begin to write), lives in the maze and dies in the maze. The stories we tell, both the untold bits that float untyped or unwritten in our brains and the finished (or unfinished) ones we actually get down on paper (or in computer files), are the world of the writer. We are in that world when we write. We are in that world when we work a day job. We are in that world when we visit friends and family. The little bits and bobs of story never leave us alone. The maze travels with us. 

And when we die, the stories we didn't get to tell and still wish we could have had time to, will be with us still. Just like Jack, we die in our maze. 

That's not a bad thing, I think. In spite of all the horror imagery of this very visually disturbing film, Kubrick's message to writers is one of hope. There's a part of us called "writer" that exists outside the part of us called "father," "mother," middle manager," or any other title, and we become it when we exit the highway's path and enter the maze world where stories lie. Fortunately, unlike Jack, we have the ability to step back into the highway's path again and resume the role of father, mother, or middle manager. 

But there is still a part of us that stays in that maze and takes it with us. And if we're lucky, like Jack, when we are actually gone from this world, we enter the stories we found and live on through them, smiling in the "images" we leave in our words. 

Or I could just be as loony as that “moon landing” person. 

eSpecs Books Focus #4: David Lee Summers

I've got a special treat for you this month and next month. I'm going to devote Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays to writers from eSpecs Books. They're a great bunch of folks whom you need to get to know. 

Next up, David Lee Summers!

Tell us a bit about your latest work.  

My latest work is called Breaking the Code. It's set in Gallup, New Mexico right after the start of World War II. Marine recruiters arrive in the town looking to fill their ranks with a secret weapon against the Axis powers—the people who would become known as the Navajo Code Talkers. Unfortunately, not everyone supports the prospect of young native men going off to war.

When one new recruit is found dead, and a rancher's cattle are mutilated, whispers of witchcraft and a skinwalker filter through the town, and interest in enlisting wanes. Is there evil afoot, or is that just what opponents to the cause want everyone to think?

 What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer? 

I was a fan of the original Star Trek when I was a kid and one of my favorite episodes was "The Trouble With Tribbles." One Day, I saw a book with that title in my local bookstore and asked my parents to buy it for me. The book was David Gerrold's account of how he wrote and sold the famous episode and the book really gave me my first glimpse of what it meant to be a working writer and I decided right then that it was something I wanted to do.

Later, in high school, I had the good fortune of meeting Ray Bradbury. We had the opportunity to talk and I told him I'd written a few stories and was working on a novel with a friend. He looked me in the eye and said, "Send your stories to a magazine right now!" That sealed the deal. I've been sending stories out for publication ever since then. Perhaps it's no surprise that none of those very first stories sold. Still, Bradbury's belief that I would keep writing and keep trying spurred me on and eventually I did sell some stories. When I made my first professional sale to Realms of Fantasy in 2001, Bradbury wrote me a letter to say it was a fine story and that he was proud that I had persevered.

What inspires you to write? 

It probably sounds cliché, but everything around me inspires me to write. I live in the Southwestern United States surrounded by history. Pat Garrett, the man who shot Billy the Kid, is buried in the cemetery behind my house. My commute to work takes me past the strongholds of Cochise and Geronimo as well as the turnoff to Tombstone, Arizona. Researching those stories and connecting new dots is a never-ending source of ideas.

In addition to writing, I'm also an astronomer who works at Kitt Peak National Observatory, which played major roles in the discovery of dark matter, dark energy and numerous planets around other stars. When I turn my mind to more science fictional pursuits, it's easy to be inspired when discoveries are being made around me on an almost daily basis.

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

A lot of my fiction has what might be described as a retro-futuristic tone. I set many of my speculative stories in the last century or two as a way of exploring how we arrived at the place where we are now. One of my goals is to shine a light on some of the bright spots of the past. It's easy to look back at the past and point fingers at the terrible things like slavery, colonialism, and class inequity. To me, it's more interesting to look at those people who didn't give in to their baser selves and tried to overcome those terrible things. Of course, a person fighting against their baser nature will still create conflict both within themselves and with their neighbors.

In this context, I find culture fascinating, especially in a place like the United States where it doesn't always follow racial or geographic lines and where cultures have a way of melding with one another and reshaping themselves. I can imagine this process becoming even more pronounced if humans actually do move into space. In my futuristic stories, I like looking at how humans use their backgrounds as a way to find solutions to problems. 

What would be your dream project? 

I get many of my ideas from traveling to new places. I love exploring a place, hearing its stories, eating the food, and delving into the history. With that in mind, my dream project would be to have the time and financial freedom to immerse myself in a new place for an extended time and just see what stories came out of it. I have never been to Europe or Africa. I could see many stories coming from those places. More of a longshot dream would actually be to spend time on the International Space Station, or even travel to Mars and then write stories that came from the experience. Of course, as a science fiction writer, I've trained myself to "experience" many of these things in my imagination and write them down, but I bet I'd find new things to write about if I actually came closer to the real experience.

What writers have influenced your style and technique? 

I've already mentioned Ray Bradbury and David Gerrold. Bradbury, especially, taught me the importance of sitting down at the computer and following characters through a situation you created for them until the story is complete. I was also strongly influenced by reading two very different books back to back. One was Robert A. Heinlein's Time Enough for Love, which has an extended sequence about homesteading another world. The other was John Nichols' The Magic Journey, which is a story about a family in New Mexico. These two novels reminded me of the stories my mom's family told of homesteading New Mexico at the beginning of the twentieth century. They helped me see the importance of using experience and the stories I grew up with and heard from people I knew as an inspiration for new stories.

The Australian author A. Bertram Chandler also influenced me. Not only are his space operas great fun, but he showed me the importance of letting characters make mistakes and grow from those mistakes.

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do? 

As it turns out, I've had the opportunity to do just that. A couple of years ago, the contract for my first novel, The Pirates of Sufiro, came to term and the publisher agreed to revert the rights to me. This was a multi-generation story about characters making a life on a new world. I didn't think I'd taken the time to really delve into the characters and explore their motivations. Too many characters appeared for only a chapter or two and then disappeared. There were too many moments where I told the story in exposition instead of letting the reader experience the story alongside my characters. So, I embarked on a two-year journey to revise the novel and fix as many of those things as I could. I endeavored to give characters more defined arcs within the book. I am under no illusions that I have made the novel perfect, but I do believe I've made it far more satisfying.

If I had another book I'd like to revise, it's my first wild west steampunk novel Owl Dance. Again, I have a few characters I would like to explore a little more in that novel. Also, when I sold the sequel, Lightning Wolves, I had a new editor who really impressed on me the importance of reading stories aloud. When I listened to Owl Dance aloud, I heard many places where I'd clean up little unconscious repetitions and make better word choices.

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

For me, it's right about the middle of the continuum. The elements of imagination, creating a story that's pleasing to the reader, and creating details that engage the reader are very much an art form. That said, there's a certain science involved in building a story to a climax, good grammar, and doing the research. Being a scientist, I'm well acquainted with how much of science is process. Do research, design an experiment, conduct the experiment, write up the results and send it to a peer-reviewed journal. Writing has some of that same kind of process: Come up with an idea, do the research to back up your idea, write it down, and give it to beta readers for feedback. That said, you have to engage your artistic sensibility to know how much to set a scene, what hints to set up about the ending and when, what descriptions add "color" to a scene as opposed to getting in the way. I find I have to engage my entire brain when I write. I have to analyze my writing when I rewrite, but I analyze it both to see if it conveys all the important story points and is also emotionally pleasing.

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process? 

By far the most difficult part of the process for me is sitting down and getting that first draft out of the way. I do enjoy the journey of discovery and I have moments of fun when inspiration strikes me, but I find the blank screen intimidating. I know the process is working as I write and I feel like I'm "watching" the story instead of "seeing" words fill the screen. It feels like magic when that happens and suddenly I see 500 or 1000 words in front of me. Still, there are moments of terror before that happens. On the best days, those moments of terror last just a few seconds before I get into the groove, but there are days when I struggle to get each paragraph down.

When I reach the second draft, the pressure of having something written is gone. I absolutely love reading it back and I have no problem adding details that were in my mind but didn't get down the first time. I love the process of deconstructing the story and moving scenes around until they work well. Sometimes in the second draft, I find I have to write new scenes, but those are somehow never as scary as the initial writing process when facing the blank page.

How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not? 

My writer friends have absolutely helped me to become a better writer. Although it's sometimes a little intimidating, I'm always grateful for those times when writer friends have taken the time to tell me what they feel works and doesn't work in my writing. Some of my writer friends are also English professors, and I find their advice very helpful. They can explain why things work or don't work.

Writer friends also provide a level of professional support you don't always get from non-writers. They know what it's like to get rejection letters and poor reviews. They can help you work past those difficult moments. They are also a great resource when you're looking for markets to submit to or people you might want to work with if you're self-publishing.

What does literary success look like to you? 

To me, the surest sign of literary success is when your characters become household names. Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes, Dorothy Gale, and Tarzan are characters everyone knows because their authors crafted them well and the books they appear in are much loved.

There are certainly other measures of success. Winning a high profile award is one.  Having your work published in a magazine and or an anthology alongside authors you admire is another. I've been fortunate enough to achieve that last one more than once.

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug? 

I am releasing a comic book called Guinevere and the Stranger. It tells a story about how Guinevere encountered a vampire after King Arthur's death. The comic is adapted from a chapter of my novel Dragon's Fall: Rise of the Scarlet Order Vampires. For more information about the comic, visit: http://davidleesummers.com/Tales-of-the-Scarlet-Order.html

Also, this month, I'm releasing the 20th-anniversary edition of my novel Children of the Old Stars. It's the sequel to my novel The Pirates of Sufiro. In the novel, a disgraced starship captain, an alien warrior, and a cult leader go on a quest to learn about a mysterious space vessel that destroys everything in its path. You can learn more about this novel at: http://davidleesummers.com/children_old_stars.html

For more information, visit:

You can learn more about Breaking the Code and find a link to an excerpt at: http://davidleesummers.com/Breaking-the-Code.html

My personal website is: http://www.davidleesummers.com

My blog is at: https://davidleesummers.wordpress.com

Motivational Monday: Unlimited

eSpecs Books Focus #3: Christopher J. Burke

I've got a special treat for you this month. I'm going to devote Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays to writers from eSpecs Books. They're a great bunch of folks whom you need to get to know. 

Next up, Christopher J. Burke!

Tell us a bit about your latest work.

I have three short shorts appearing in the anthology Devilish & Divine from eSpec Books. The first involves a meeting between the last demon of its domain as it traverses a bridge across the planes to where the last angel remains vigilant after a lengthy war across the astral planes. The second involves a young man who can hear thoughts of every dog on the street and in the park on a day when he crosses paths with a hell hound. The last tale answers the question: what do you do if you're an ancient destroyer of worlds and you accidentally get summoned by a four-year-old to a tea party?

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer?

Ever since I learned to talk (or so I've been told), I've been telling stories. My mother may have doubted the veracity of some of them but she acknowledged their creativity. This gift of gab likely came from my father, who could spin a tall tale or two himself. Warning: take his history lessons with many grains of salt. Also, no small part of the credit should be reserved for my brother Stephen, who is 13 years my senior. While he was away at college, I may have gone through some of his stuff at home including a number of notebooks filled with his musings. I started putting my words on paper to be like him.

I started writing enough that when I was ten, Santa brought me a toy typewriter. It was plastic and only typed capital letters, but it was mine and it got a workout with any kind of paper I could scrounge up. Oddly, my friends would rather run around outside or play board games than sit and write stories. Weird.

What inspires you to write?

Many things inspire me. Things I've heard or misheard. Plays on words. What if and why not? Sometimes, it's just two ideas that could fit together, which was how the first story I ever sold started. Someone might ask, "Did you ever wonder ...?" Maybe not, but I'm wondering now.

One of the first stories I remember putting down on paper as a young boy chronicled a dream that I'd had the night before because I didn't want to forget. Dreams still speak to me, and sometimes I listen to them.

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

I find myself returning to both magic and time travel, because it's fun to create rules that open worlds of possibilities. There are stories with each theme in my flash fiction collection In A Flash 2020 (eSpec Books). I like supers, too, because they're larger than life and yet down to earth. And I write about Family because that's just important to me. 

It's interesting to see how a character's personality and motivations change when you mention that they have a sister or a son. I created a word map of my hellhound story and discovered that the word "Dad" is used most often though the father doesn't appear in the story, except in the main character's heart and mind. The son's personality changed immensely from the first draft.

What would be your dream project?

My dream would be to create something new that I could keep coming back to and discover something fresh over the horizon. I'd populate it with people that I liked and that I liked to hate. And then tell a lot of stories about them. I don't know where this place is yet, but as soon as I've found it, I'll paint you a picture or draw you a map, with words, of course.

What writers have influenced your style and technique?

I enjoy reading authors who are more conversational in their style. If I had to pull two out of thin air, I'd say Mark Twain and Douglas Adams. Their use of humor and the fun they had with language are things I strive for.

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do?

After my first sale in the late 80s to Autoduel Quarterly, an in-house publication from Steve Jackson Games, I had difficulty making a second sale. However, I was able to get a license to create my own fiction fanzine, Driving Tigers Magazine. The problem arose that I was now editing myself, among others. Not that I saw it as a problem thirty years ago. Looking back now, I can see how those stories suffered. If there was ever a chance to reprint those pieces, I'd apply lessons learned in the intervening years to that text until it didn't wince when I reread it.

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

My high school Creative Writing teacher told me: "You have a sense of story here. We need to bring it out." Being a math teacher, I'm a science-type by nature. But it's the words that make the story, and the right choice of words in the right order is an art. On my most productive days, I don't feel like I've created fire. I feel like I'm making words sing.

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?

The most difficult part is getting through a first draft without wanting to kill it with fire, or nuke it from orbit just to be sure. Second to that is deleting all that "greatest writing ever written" that appears in the first draft in order to get a coherent second draft.

How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not?

If there was one thing that pushed me over the top to sell my first story, it was the fact that my friend Rob was published in the same magazine first. After that, it became a mission that if he could do it, so could I. Okay, maybe I was being competitive, but it worked.

Aside from this, my friends are great for bouncing ideas around and for encouragement to write things in the first place. They're also good for telling me when something isn't working right in a story, or if I describe something and "it doesn't work like that."

What does literary success look like to you?

Right now, I'm happy to see a book with my name on it, on its own page at Good Reads or Amazon, with a bunch of ratings and reviews, and people having wonderful little conversations about this thing I created. If a story or two from In A Flash 2020 made someone a little happier for a little while, that's a success.

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?

Aside from Devilish & Divine, I have my semi-regular webcomic (x, why?), which since 2007 has celebrated math, teaching, and anything geeky, while reveling in bad puns. It updates several times a week on my blog: http://mrburkemath.blogspot.com.

For more information, visit: 

Christopher J. Burke's writing page at http://www.mrburkemath.net/

[Link] Reading Science Fiction Will Make Your Child More Resilient

Geeky reading won't just distract your kid during lockdown. 

Sci-fi helps us cope with crises, experts insist. 

by Jessica Stillman

See a kid curled up with a novel about space aliens instead of swinging on the jungle gym at the park and one word will probably pop into your mind: geek. 

Maybe that young bookworm will grow up to be a billionaire (many of the biggest names in business were dedicated sci-fi fans in their youths), but many of us associate a love of sci-fi with social awkwardness and getting pushed into your locker a lot. 

Instead of a sure, straight road to social isolation and nerdiness, parents should think of science fiction as a great way for kids (and adults) to build mental strength, weather uncertainty, and imagine better futures, experts argue. 

Predicting the unpredictable ... 

"Science-fiction writers don't know anything more about the future than anyone else," admitted celebrated sci-fi writer Kim Stanley Robinsonin The New Yorker recently. "Still, if you read science fiction, you may be a little less surprised by whatever does happen." 

Why? "By presenting plausible alternative realities, science-fiction stories empower us to confront not just what we think but also how we think and why we think it. They reveal how fragile the status quo is, and how malleable the future can be," Eliot Peper pointed out on the Harvard Business Review site. 

Science fiction nudges us not just to imagine other worlds, but also to face up to the fact that the world as it exists today isn't fixed. Alternatives are possible. Maybe even inevitable. The status quo can feel like an all-enveloping fog around us. Sci-fi (and global shocks like the one we're living through) part that fog, reminding us empires fall, tech advances, certainties crumble, and nature regularly dishes out corrections to our hubris. Unpredictability is the only thing that's predictable. 

Read the full article: https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/reading-science-fiction-will-make-your-child-more-resilient.html

Airship 27 Productions Proudly Presents Sherlock Holmes – Consulting Detective Vol 17

Airship 27 Productions is thrilled to announce the release of the 17th volume in their bestselling series of wonderful new Sherlock Holmes adventures.

A young boy’s dog is cruelly slain. A British agent is murdered aboard a train and the daughter of a distinguished military officer commits suicide. These are just three of the five mysteries contained in this volume of new Sherlock Holmes adventures as offered by writers I.A. Watson, R.A. Jones, George Tackes and Jonathan Casey. Easy offers the brilliant Holmes and his ever-loyal companion, Dr. Watson, unique and exotic puzzles that will test their skills and bring them face to face with murder most foul.

“We never tire of receiving these amazing tales,” says Airship 27 Production’s Managing Editor Ron Fortier. “And after so many volumes, it is really exciting to discover as yet different types of mysteries proving that there really is no limit to the imagination of today’s modern new pulp writers. This collection is resounding proof of that.”

Art Director Rob Davis once again provides 12 beautiful black and white interior illustrations and artist Chris Rawding the stunning color cover to bring together another glorious addition to this incredible series. As ever, loyal Homes fans, the game is still very much afoot!

AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTIONS – PULP FICTION FOR A NEW GENERATION!

Available now from Amazon in both paperback and on Kindle.

eSpecs Books Focus #2: Christopher L. Bennett

I've got a special treat for you this month. I'm going to devote Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays to writers from eSpecs Books. They're a great bunch of folks whom you need to get to know. 

Next up, Christopher L. Bennett!

Tell us a bit about your latest work.  

My most recent published work is Star Trek: The Original Series—Living Memory from Gallery Books, my second consecutive novel set in the period between Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan. My previous novel, The Higher Frontier, showed how Kirk became commandant of Starfleet Academy while keeping the Enterprise as his flagship for special missions, setting up the status quo that would eventually lead to The Wrath of Khan. While The Higher Frontier showed Kirk commanding one such special mission, Living Memory keeps Kirk occupied with a challenging situation at the Academy, involving the controversial admission of a specially bred warrior population to the student body at a time of public protests at the perceived militarization of Starfleet. Meanwhile, Captain Spock of the Enterprise and Captain Terrell and Commander Chekov of the Reliant investigate a series of destructive cosmic storms that seem to be backtracking the Enterprise’s past ports of call—and that turn out to have a surprising connection to Commander Uhura, one that she’s unable to remember due to the Nomad probe wiping her memory in the episode “The Changeling.” I was glad to take that throwaway plot point and craft a poignant story about Uhura’s struggle to reconnect with her lost past.

My latest original work (aside from a few short stories on my Patreon) is the duology Arachne’s Crime and Arachne’s Exile, published by eSpec Books, also available as a single volume with bonus stories, The Arachne Omnibus. This is an epic interstellar adventure in which a human starship crew inadvertently destroys an alien space habitat and is put on trial by the survivors. Arachne’s Crime devotes its first half to the trial, then follows the crew as they attempt to integrate into the alien society and make amends for their mistake, complicated by factions of both species that would prefer a more violent resolution. Arachne’s Exile then opens up the story on a more cosmic scale, as the characters travel deeper into galactic civilization and discover ancient secrets that drive them to seek escape—leading to a dangerous heist on a unique megastructure orbiting a neutron star. The late Don Sakers of Analog called Arachne’s Exile “a fun, exciting read.”

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer? 

Nothing prompted me to become a writer—just to discover I already was one. I had this set of “Star City” building blocks, like futuristic Legos, and I’d build space cities and make aliens out of my father’s pipe cleaners. One day when I was 13, I told myself a whole story about the city’s inhabitants from beginning to end, just looking at the city rather than physically playing with it, and I realized that what I was doing was writing. That’s when I knew it was what I wanted to do with my life. The future I imagined in playing with those building blocks was the early stage of what eventually became the universe of the Arachne novels, though it had evolved and changed enormously by the time I finally got published. (Unfortunately, I never wrote that daydreamed story down, and I hardly remember it now.)

What inspires you to write? 

If you mean pursuing it as a career or coming up with ideas, I just do it by default; there’s nothing else I ever wanted to be. If you mean what motivates me to do the actual work of sitting down and putting words on the page, that’s a more difficult question. Sometimes it comes a lot more easily than others. I have my up and down phases—times when the words pour out of me effortlessly, and times when it’s a struggle to get anything done at all. All too often, what inspires me to produce is the pressure of a looming deadline.

Still, I find the easiest things to write are ones that I have fun with. I’m currently working on a project that I can’t talk about yet, but it’s been enormous fun, with characters and a world I really like, plus lots of big action and humor and emotion, as well as letting me experiment with a new style of writing. I’ve found it a lot easier to write than some of the other things I’ve done in recent years, which is good, because it’s on a pretty tight deadline, and because it’s taken up the bulk of my attention for more than half a year now.

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

I like to write optimistic science fiction, to project futures that are better than the present, more inclusive and fair and enlightened, though not without their failings. I like to explore the problems and complications that can arise even when everyone is trying to do the right thing, the unexpected conflicts and shortcomings of a better society. I like conflicts where both sides are arguably right, yet still end up at odds, so that there’s no easy answer.

I like to write plausible hard science fiction, but I enjoy the challenge of taking normally fanciful genres and coming up with credible justifications for them. My first original novel, Only Superhuman, was possibly the first hard-SF superhero novel. A recent story on my Patreon page, “The Monsters We Make,” offers a hard-SF take on the kaiju/giant monster genre. And that big project I can’t talk about is in that vein as well.

I have a marked preference for writing female leads, particularly funny and quirky and tough and dynamic ones. I was a child of the 1970s, one of those periods when media culture embraced female heroes for a while before they got marginalized again. I grew up watching The Bionic Woman and Wonder Woman and Isis, plus Batgirl in reruns, so I guess I grew up taking strong, appealing heroines for granted. By the time I started writing, I didn’t feel there were enough of them anymore, so I favored creating them. I often intentionally center a work on a female lead, such as Only Superhuman’s Emerald Blair, but I’ve found that sometimes I find myself gravitating more to the female characters in works that nominally have male leads. For instance, in my “Hub” comedy stories from Analog (collected in the volumes Hub Space and Crimes of the Hub), I initially envisioned David LaMacchia as the central character, but I’ve ended up focusing more heavily on the female lead Nashira Wing and have come to think of her as the series lead.

What would be your dream project? 

At this point, I’ve already written a fair number of my dream projects. I’ve gotten to write Star Trek novels set in my favorite period, after Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I’ve gotten to tell stories I wanted to tell, like Captain Picard’s missing years in The Buried Age and a comprehensive take on Star Trek time travel in my Department of Temporal Investigations series. My Arachne duology is a story I’ve been trying to get into print for a long time, and I’ve finally succeeded.

At this point, what I want most is to continue to expand the Arachne/Troubleshooter Universe, as I call the continuity that encompasses the duology and Only Superhuman. I have ideas for several more novels, including a third Arachne tale and sequels to Only Superhuman. I’d also like to try my hand at writing comic books.

What writers have influenced your style and technique? 

That’s not something I really keep track of, since I draw on whatever examples strike me as worth emulating. My early influences included Asimov, Clarke, Niven, and the various writers for Star Trek. But I’ve drawn on much more eclectic influences since then, from Diane Duane to Alfred Bester to Joss Whedon. When I went out to Hollywood to pitch for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine once in the 1990s, I learned a lot from Robert Hewitt Wolfe about the importance of grounding stories in character rather than plot. In recent years, I’ve found myself unexpectedly influenced by the Japanese Kamen Rider franchise, particularly the work of writers Shogo Muto and Yasuko Kobayashi.

There are writers I wish I could emulate stylistically but never really could as well as I’d like—master wordsmiths like Bester, Ray Bradbury, and Edward Wellen, or wildly imaginative worldbuilders like Max Gladstone. Conversely, an agent once favorably compared my writing to Kim Stanley Robinson, even though I’ve never consciously modeled my style on Robinson.

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do? 

That’s an amusingly apposite question, because that’s exactly what I did with Arachne’s Crime. The first half of that novel (the first fourth of the duology) is an expanded, revised retelling of my first published story, “Aggravated Vehicular Genocide,” which appeared in Analog in November 1998 (and is collected in Among the Wild Cybers from eSpec Books). That novelette made some scientific assumptions I later learned were problematical, and it was also fairly weak at character development. For the novel, I revised the science and fleshed out the characters and worldbuilding substantially, then continued the story well beyond the novelette’s conclusion.

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

I’m not sure I accept the premise that the two are opposites. Art and science have always been interdependent—just ask Leonardo da Vinci.

If the question is whether I approach writing from a more intellectual, technical standpoint or a more emotional, intuitive standpoint, I think I’m a hybrid. I consider myself a hard science fiction writer and I research my fiction in detail, but I also tend to go with what feels right and make spontaneous discoveries along the way. I outline my novels in advance, but some of my best writing often comes in scenes or even whole subplots that occur to me on the spur of the moment to fill gaps in the outline. And I prioritize character and emotion in my fiction as much as science and reason.

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process? 

Maintaining the focus and discipline to actually sit down and do the work. Avoiding distractions and overcoming lack of motivation and self-doubt.

Also, I’ve often struggled to come up with specific story ideas. Some writers can churn out new concepts and stories on the spur of the moment, but it’s always been harder for me. When I have a specific assignment to come up with something by a deadline, I’ve always been able to manage, but when I’m trying to generate ideas for original fiction on my own time, it’s harder. I have this whole universe I’ve developed that I’ve wanted to write about for years, but I’ve never quite managed to figure out the right story to tell.

How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not? 

I’m an introvert, and I’ve never drawn on friends or family as much as I probably should have. Still, I value my social connections with my writer friends on those all-too-infrequent occasions when we get together, and I’ve been able to draw on them as sources of expertise or as beta readers on occasion. That’s been more the case in my Star Trek work, which is often collaborative to a greater or lesser degree. One of my most enjoyable experiences in tie-in writing was when I collaborated with a number of other writers on the Star Trek: Mere Anarchy miniseries. Our epic e-mail exchanges in developing and plotting the miniseries were a great deal of fun, and I’ve always hoped to be part of something like that again.

What does literary success look like to you? 

I’ve been pretty successful at Star Trek tie-in writing, but my goal has always been to be known for my original fiction first and tie-ins second. I’ve never wanted or expected to be hugely famous, since I’m shy, but I’d like for my original SF to be moderately well-known and popular, and to earn enough to remain a full-time writer and build up some decent savings, so I have the time to focus more on original projects I’ve never quite managed to get around to. I certainly wouldn’t be averse to selling the film or TV rights to one of my creations.

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug? 

I’d really like to talk about the big project I mentioned before, which is really cool and fun and new for me, but I can’t until the publisher announces it. Still, I think it will be announced fairly soon, so keep an eye on my social media. I’m only just starting to plan out what comes next when I’m done with that. 

I have two standalone campaigns for Modiphius’s Star Trek Adventures role-playing game currently in the editing stages, in addition to the half-dozen I’ve done before. I don’t know when they’ll come out, but it’ll probably be at least a few months. Beyond that, there’s just my Patreon page and the original short fiction and reviews I post there. 

For more information, visit:

Written Worlds (my homepage and blog): https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/

My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/christopherlbennett

Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/ChristopherLBennettAuthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CLBennettAuthor

Movie Reviews for Writers: Wodehouse in Exile

Do you know know the story of P.G. Wodehouse and how he was manipulated by the Nazis during WWII? In a nutshell, he was rounded up into an internment camp, and while there wrote comical pieces to help keep up the spirits of his fellow internees. He was then used by the enemy to read these pieces over the radio to "convince" the U.S. to stay out of the war, not his intention for these works. That didn't stop him from being accused of treason by Great Britain. At least according to this movie.

Politics of this wonderful BBC production aside, it's also a great look into the mind of Wodehouse and the way he saw the world.

One of the early moments of the film has Plum (Wodehouse) and Bunny (his wife) sitting in their drawing room while their yard is suddenly invaded by Nazi soldiers. "I wonder what will happen next," asks Bunny. Plum responds with a list of bullet points from his latest Jeeves and Wooster novel. Bunny responds, "I mean about the war."

Even in the midst of war and Nazi occupation, Plum is thinking about his work, about the stories in his head. But his focus doesn't just end there. While in the internment camp, he still manages to find his writer's voice. While penning his comical pieces, he states, "The great advantage here is that the authorities leave us alone most of the day, and I have time to write."

In fact, when he is finally able to get a postcard out to his publishers in the states, he boasts laughingly that the situation has actually given him a new idea for the next novel. 

He admits after the war is over that "Writing is an escape for me, in the literal sense, an escape from prison."

I've heard many writers (and readers to be fair) make the first part of that statement often. Writing (and reading) is an escape, if not from a literal prison, at least a figurative one, be it an unfulfilling job or a life unlike what they imagined. Writing is their way out of themselves and their lives and the things they believe are holding them back. They can be who they dream of being when they write, when they create. 

Wodehouse is honest with his place as a writer, but perhaps sells himself more than a bit short. "I'm not really a writer," he says, "in the sense of going right down deep into life. I'm just a musical comedy man really."

It's a trait I see in others and in myself. "I'm just a romance writer," some say. Or, "Well, I haven't written the great American novel or anything, just a few fun sci-fi stories." It is easier to diminish our work than to be publicly proud of it. That smacks of pride, we believe, and it's better to err to the side of lesser than greater in regards to our own work, so we keep our pride to ourselves. 

But the key point of this powerful fictionalized true story is a rather damning one for writers. It is this: We don't get a say in our legacy. Only our words do. 

No matter what or when or the tone or the themes we put into our stories, the danger for any writer is having their words turned and twisted against them, to mean something they never intended, but honestly once the words are out there, do we have any control over how they are received or interpreted?

While in Paris, while being accused of treason, Wodehouse meets fellow scribe Malcolm Muggeridge, and the two strike up a friendship over the situation. Muggeridge is at once convinced of Plum's sincerity and that he was used and manipulated by the Nazis. While visiting his friend while Plum is in a hospital maternity ward, held there by the French authorities, Malcolm asks him about his newest Jeeves and Wooster book. 

Muggeridge: How's the novel?

Wodehouse: Ah! Well, it's seen me through through the war. All I need is a publisher. That's all a novel needs. You send it out into the world like a young chap going into boarding school.

And that's the rub, perfectly captured by the great P.G. Wodehouse himself. At best we can send the work out, but we can't control how it's seen and experienced. We can create, we can imagine, and we can share, but beyond that, writers are powerless to control how the work is interpreted and understood. 

It's a lack of control that can lead to calls of anything from treason (like Wodehouse) or wokeness or counterculturalism or religiomania or whatever. We are merely creators throwing stories and words to the world that will be the ultimate arbiters of them, regardless of our intentions. 

Still, we endure, knowing that the more we share, the better we can frame those words when those arbiters do their worst. 

eSpecs Books Focus #1: Danielle Ackley-McPhail

I've got a special treat for you this month. I'm going to devote Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays to writers from eSpecs Books. They're a great bunch of folks whom you need to get to know. 

First up is Danielle Ackley-McPhail!

Tell us a bit about your latest work. 

I just finished Daire’s Devils, a military science fiction novel I’ve been working on off and on for twelve years. It was shelved for a good part of that time as I worked on other projects, but it was always in the back of my mind. One of my friends/fans kept poking me to finish it and I guess the time was right. It is about an elite military team (because aren’t they all?) caught up in a power play between forces inside and outside their command structure. There is espionage and betrayal and loads of action. 

The book is set against the backdrop of the Alliance Archives universe created by my husband and fellow author, Mike McPhail, for a role-playing game he’s had under development longer than we’ve been married. (I’m now poking *him* to finish.) 

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer?

When I was about five or six years old, my mother took me to the library and got me my first library card. Once I had it in my hands she turned me toward the stacks and said “You can chose as many as you can carry.” From that point on she was doomed, and my fate was set. I read constantly until even she could tell me over and over to ‘put the book down!’ I would read long after I was supposed to be asleep and even then I would continue the stories in my head once I closed my eyes because I never wanted them to end. With so much immersion into the written word and storytelling it was only natural that English would become my ‘easy’ courses and from there I learned to put my own bend to the tale.

What inspires you to write? 

Finding the twist. Taking the unanticipated path. Observing a designated theme, but turning expectations on their collective ear. I love building a world and populating it until the reader is immersed as I was as a child, and still am as an adult.

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

I don’t know that I consciously set out to write with a message. My writing is entertainment, not political. I more tend to find an interesting tale and explore where it takes me. If I’ve done my job correctly there is growth and consequence and hard choices, but I feel that a reader finds their own messages as the words speak to them, and for every person that is different. 

What writers have influenced your style and technique? 

I have writers that I enjoy and that I feel my work is similar to, but I can’t really say I am influenced by anyone. I’m just not wired that way. I have and always will do my own thing, the way that I would do it.

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do? 

Oh… oh my. I am and have always been a small-press author, mostly because I am impatient and don’t want to wait years just to be told my work isn’t what they are looking for right now. That means I step in when opportunities present themselves. Unfortunately, with small press there can be a lack of stability in publisher and business models. I have encountered this several times in my career as an author, which has resulted in my first novel, Yesterday’s Dreams, having been published by no less than four different publishers. Each time it has been revised and cleaned up, but there is only so much you can do without rewriting the whole thing from scratch. While I love my first trilogy, it is some of my weakest writing, despite repeated revision. But I wouldn’t be where I am today without those experiences, and even if I find aspects of them cringe-worthy, there are plenty of people out there who have loved them.

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

Hmmm. Art, definitely art, because I am fully aware of my artistic license and exercise it regularly. Rules and facts are fluid things when writing creatively. Know the rules, but don’t be afraid to break them for effect and with clear intent.

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process? 

I am a non-linear pantser. I cannot write an outline. My mind just doesn’t work that way. I discover my story as I am writing and rather wander down a rambling path to see what is there, than to feel tied to a structure predetermined before I start. It means that things do not always go smoothly, or quickly, and occasionally I get lost, but oh, the tales I can tell 😉

How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not? 

I have a few select friends that will read my work and help me beat it into shape, or who will spend some time with me to brainstorm a particularly problematic scene. Other than that, they are primarily support.

What does literary success look like to you? 

Keeping ahead of obscurity. I don’t have to be known around the world, as long as I make a connection with my fan base and can share my worlds with those eager to explore them. My greatest joy as a writer is when someone knows of my work and they didn’t hear about it from me, but I am also more than glad to make that direct connection when and where I can. This is one of the reasons I promote my work primarily through fan conventions.

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug? 

I am currently working on a new book for the Systema Paradoxa series of novellas, which are featured quarterly in the monthly subscription box, Cryptid Crate. The books in the series are individual tales.

For more information, visit:

Website: www.sidhenadaire.com

Online Store: https://especbooks.square.site

GoodReads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/989939.Danielle_Ackley_McPhail

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Danielle-Ackley-McPhail/e/B002GZVZPQ/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DMcPhail

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/danielle.ackleymcphail

Book Bub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/danielle-ackley-mcphail

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzaURWImlDd-w9o_YMte0cVZKKviZTLbo 

Motivational Mondays: Escape

Sunday Funnies -- Freelancing Pipers

 

[Link] In Memory of Award-winning Author and Creator of Logan's Run William F. Nolan

by Mark Gottlieb

William F. Nolan was a multi-award-winning author of science fiction, fantasy and horror novels—most notably the creator of Logan’s Run, which went on to become a cult classic film, based on the novel of the same name, with a remake due out from Warner Bros.  Among his many accolades, Nolan was nominated for Best Paperback Original by the Mystery Writers of America. He was voted a Living Legend in Dark Fantasy by the International Horror Guild in 2002, and in 2006 was bestowed the honorary title of Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. In 2010, he received the Lifetime Achievement Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association (HWA). In 2013, he was a recipient of the World Fantasy Convention Award in Brighton, England by the World Fantasy Convention. In May 2014, Nolan was presented with another Bram Stoker Award, for Superior Achievement in Nonfiction; this was for his collection about his late friend Ray Bradbury, called Nolan on Bradbury: Sixty Years of Writing about the Master of Science Fiction. In 2015, Nolan was named a World Horror Society Grand Master; the award was presented at the World Horror Convention in Atlanta, Georgia in May of that year. Nolan lived in Vancouver, Washington, with an apartment full of books, pulp magazines, and stuffed animals. Jason V Brock was his caretaker and heir to his literary estate. (Nolan and Brock conducted this interview with me, shortly before Nolan’s death on July 15th, 2021).

How did you both get your start as authors within major trade book publishing? 

William F. Nolan: When I started my career there were a lot more publishing houses. Even before I had an agent, I was able to pitch ideas to friends, such as the late Charles Beaumont, and then we would work up proposals for anthologies or other books. There were also a lot more places for publishing stories or articles in magazines, such as Rogue, Playboy, Mademoiselle, Colliers, and the like.

Jason V Brock: By the time I was publishing regularly in the mid-2000s, the landscape had changed quite a bit with respect to outlets. Magazines were waning in influence, and small press anthologies filled that niche. Novels are still popular, of course, but mostly the small press has taken the spaces once occupied by magazines, and online appearances are increasingly the norm.

Read the full article: https://literaryagentmarkgottlieb.com/blog/in-memory-of-award-winning-author-and-creator-of-logans-run-william-f-nolan