Write what you know | Michael A. Ventrella

Interview with Gray Rinehart

Posted on July 25, 2017 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: Today I’m pleased to be interviewing Gray Rinehart, who is the only person to have commanded an Air Force satellite tracking station, written speeches for Presidential appointees, and had science-fiction-related music on The Dr. Demento Show. In his rather odd USAF career he fought rocket propellant fires, refurbished space launch facilities, “flew” satellites, drove trucks, processed nuclear command and control orders, and did other unusual things. Today, he is a contributing editor for Baen Books and the author of WALKING ON THE SEA OF CLOUDS (WordFire Press). His short fiction has appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, and several anthologies, and as a singer/songwriter he has two albums of mostly science-fiction-and-fantasy-inspired songs. His alter ego is the “Gray Man,” one of several famed ghosts of South Carolina’s Grand Strand, and his web site is graymanwrites.com.

Tell us about the plot of WALKING ON THE SEA OF CLOUDS!

GRAY RINEHART: In the near future, commercial space activities have expanded to include the first asteroid mines, and the multinational Asteroid Consortium is establishing a lunar colony on the southern edge of Mare Nubium (the “Sea of Clouds”) as something of a “mining camp.” Environmental engineers Stormie and Frank Pastorelli and engineering “grunts” Barbara and Van Richards are some of the earliest inhabitants, with the aim of getting the colony systems up and running. They and their fellow colonists struggle against balky equipment, deadly accidents, and the unforgiving lunar environment in a common quest to see the colony survive and thrive. In the end, one will leave, one will stay, one will teeter on the edge of indecision, and one will sacrifice their life so another can live.

VENTRELLA: How did you decide on that title?

RINEHART: I originally called the novel Mare Nubium, since that’s the lunar formation where the colony is located — the “Sea of Clouds.” But my beta readers and my wife convinced me that the Latin title might resonate with people who already knew about the lunar “seas” but could fall flat for other potential readers. I struggled for quite some time to find an alternative. Eventually I settled on the current title because at one point in the novel one of the supporting characters, upon first arriving at the colony, remarks about “walking on the Sea of Clouds” and I thought that was evocative enough that it could apply to the whole novel.

VENTRELLA: What is it in your background that interested you in writing this kind of book?

RINEHART: My first assignment in the Air Force was as a bioenvironmental engineer at what was then the Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (and for someone with a deep love of all things space-related that was a dream job!). My routine duties included industrial hygiene and environmental protection — essentially, making sure our test operations didn’t make our workers sick or harm the environment. book_WotSoC_FrontCoverScreenshot_small At one point I reviewed a research proposal for scrubbing aromatic hydrocarbons from spacecraft atmospheres, and it got me thinking about the difficulty of maintaining a closed environmental system over a long period of time. I decided that the people who would have to do that job might have stories to tell.

In addition, one of my additional duties was as the chief of the lab’s Disaster Response Force. In that role I directed the responses to a couple of real-world emergencies, so I had the opportunity to apply what I’d learned about the hazards associated with rocket tests and rocket propellants. That got me thinking about various accident scenarios that would make life in a lunar colony even harder. I hope I was able to convey some of the emotions and confusion that are part of dealing with difficult and potentially deadly situations.

VENTRELLA: What kind of research was required and how did you do it?

RINEHART: Remember that the first inklings of the story came to me during my very first USAF assignment, which was about 20 years before I actually started writing it! In the interim, I had several additional space-related assignments: building and maintaining facilities for processing launch vehicles, controlling spacecraft from ground stations, and so forth. During each assignment, I collected and filed away little tidbits of information about new research or new inventions, about the relationships between prime contractors and their subcontractors, and in the case of my remote tour in Greenland about the stresses that people undergo in geographically separated environments. All of that became “grist for the mill,” as the saying goes.

Besides collecting a variety of different materials, only some of which made it into the novel, I needed to get some sense of the geography my characters would be traversing during the story. So I spent a good deal of time poring over NASA photographs of lunar formations. The nice thing is that NASA has a wonderful online repository of photographs from the Apollo-era up to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. I was also able to glean useful tidbits from various science panels at conventions!

VENTRELLA: How did you go about finding an agent?

RINEHART: Ha! If I had one, I’d be able to tell you.

I tallied it up the other day, and I queried over 60 agents over a period of several years, a handful of whom actually looked at the full manuscript before deciding not to represent me. I’m not sure whether it was that I never got the hang of writing a compelling enough query letter, or that this novel didn’t fit an easy category like “space opera,” but very few agents asked to see even a partial manuscript. All told, I got replies from just over two-thirds of the agents and never heard back at all from the remainder.

VENTRELLA: You’ve been involved in the publishing industry for a while now. Did that help you?

RINEHART: I think it did, primarily in terms of recognizing that publishing is a slow game, especially in the “shopping around” stage. I know how many submissions we get at Baen Books, and that we pay a lot of attention to the ones that are interesting to us, so I didn’t mind giving publishers a good deal of time to make a decision. CD_distortedVision_cover

VENTRELLA: What did you learn from your years working in the industry?

RINEHART: Lots of things! How not to approach a publisher, for one thing; it doesn’t make a good impression, for instance, when you address your letter to one publisher but send it to a different one.

But one of the main things I’ve learned, that was harder to fathom when I was just on the writing side trying to break in, is that sometimes a story just isn’t right for a particular publisher. A story rejected in one place can get accepted in another place, not because there was anything in particular wrong with the story itself but because it didn’t fit what that one publisher needed at the time.

VENTRELLA: Let’s talk about writing. How much of writing is innate? In other words, do you believe there are just some people who are born storytellers but simply need to learn technique? Or can anyone become a good writer?

RINEHART: Wow, that’s an excellent question! We could almost put together an entire convention panel, or even a curriculum, based on it.

My first thought is that storytelling and writing are two different but complementary skills.

We all learn to tell stories, whether they’re true accounts of how we rescued a lost animal (and please can’t we keep it, mommy?) or made-up tales of how someone else ate all the cookies. Some of us learn to tell those stories better than others. Some of us are very matter-of-fact: here’s what happened, and that’s all. Some of us learn to add details to make the story come alive, and to insert complications and conflicts to increase the dramatic tension — or to relieve tension with a touch of comedy. And maybe the fact that some of us struggle with storytelling indicates that it does come more naturally to others.

Likewise, in this modern society most of us learn to write, even if all we write are grocery lists and the occasional message (whether electronic, as texts or e-mails, or actual letters). But written language is an artificiality; as a result, learning it is a much more mechanical process: subjects, verbs, modifiers; spelling, punctuation, grammar. As such, learning how to write is less “natural” than learning how to tell a story: most of us tell our first stories, after all, before we know how to write them down. And because we don’t all take to schoolwork and lessons with the same gusto, some of us learn the mechanics better than others.

When it comes to techniques, then, the techniques of storytelling are certainly different from the techniques of writing — but each can be studied, practiced, and improved. A hesitant storyteller can become better: smoother and more confident. GR_TLMB_angle_square An inarticulate wordsmith can become better: more skilled and comfortable with language. But whether either becomes “good” will be for their audiences to decide.

VENTRELLA: What’s your opinion on self-publishing?

RINEHART: Whenever self-publishing takes the form of companies preying on unsuspecting writers, taking their money and producing shoddy copies of questionable content while making promises of fame and glory, I’m against it. But current self-publishing practice offers something more in terms of authors taking control of their own content and finding audiences receptive to their work, and that is quite marvelous. Some authors have succeeded very well, and others have not; but in every case, whether a book is published by a big house, a small press, or independently, the venture involves taking a risk and the possibility of failure.

One of the great things about self-publishing is that it allows us to serve niche audiences that traditional publishing cannot. For a non-literary example, most “filk” music recordings — primarily science-fiction-and-fantasy-related music — are self-produced because the audience for nerdy music is fairly small; thus, I self-published (so to speak) my two music CDs (Truths and Lies and Make-Believe; and, Distorted Vision). I also took advantage of another feature of self-publishing, the ability to reach different audiences, when I put out a completely revised edition of my nonfiction book, QUALITY EDUCATION. The book had only been available in hard copy when it was first published, so after the rights reverted to me I decided it was worth making it available in e-book form.

VENTRELLA: What’s the best advice you would give to a starting writer that they probably haven’t already heard?

RINEHART: Another terrific question! I’m going to answer it by referring first to Robert A. Heinlein’s “rules” for writing, which I would hope a starting writer (especially a starting science fiction or fantasy writer) might have heard of. Heinlein’s rules are pretty simple. The first one, for example, is “You must write,” which seems pretty obvious. The second one is “You must finish what you start.”

My advice stems from recognizing that “finish” has two possible meanings. (I blogged at length about this a couple of years ago, in a post called “Heinlein Was Right: A New Look at His Rules for Writing.”) “Finishing” what you write doesn’t just mean getting to “THE END” and calling it good; “finishing” can also take on the aspect of the additional effort required to turn something rough into something final. It’s the glaze and firing applied to the newly-turned clay pot. It’s the sanding and the paint or varnish or shellac applied to the newly-built piece of furniture. The draft you complete is fine for what it is, like the unfired clay pot or the raw wood furniture; but it is not fit for its intended purpose until it is edited, until it is put through the final stages of the process. Only then is it “finished.”

I will add that this is often a difficult thing to do, and I have at times failed miserably at it (quite recently, even). But that doesn’t negate its value as advice. book_qualityEducation_front_small

VENTRELLA: Do you think readers want to read about “believable” characters or do they really want characters that are “larger than life” in some way?

RINEHART: I hope they want to read about believable characters, because I worked hard to make my characters believable — even the ones who are a little bit “larger than life”!

In all seriousness, this question may be one of the things that differentiate genre readers — especially science fiction or fantasy readers — from readers of mainstream or literary fiction. In genre fiction, we expect to find characters to be placed in situations that require special talent or cleverness or strength or something beyond what we might encounter in normal, daily life. In much of my science fiction, and particularly in Walking on the Sea of Clouds, it’s a high degree of technical competence and problem-solving skill, coupled with professional discipline and a strong will to survive. Those are all qualities we can find in ourselves or people we know, but what makes them larger-than-life in my story is where they have to be applied: one of the most inhospitable places in the Solar System.

But even when a character is “larger than life,” by having some extraordinary ability or determination or inventiveness in difficult circumstances, we have to make that aspect (or those aspects) of the character believable enough. By that I mean that the character has to fit the story in such a way that the reader finds them believable. We have to structure the story, and the universe in which the story takes place, such that the character’s abilities and persona make sense and are important to the story’s outcome.

For instance, sometimes we’ll know right away that a character has superpowers, and by that we’ll know what kind of story we’re reading. Sometimes we’ll know that a character is special for some other reason — tremendous drive, or ambition, or a particular ability, or heart, or whatever quality it is that sets them apart from “normal” or “average” people. How we portray the character, the goals the character wants to achieve, and the obstacles the character must overcome to reach those goals, will determine whether our readers think of the character as believable.

And it may be that the more believable we make those larger-than-life characters, the more readers will admire and want to read about them.

VENTRELLA: What’s the worst piece of advice you’ve heard people give?

RINEHART: “Write what you know.” I don’t mean that it’s always bad advice, but that it’s easy to take badly.

“Write what you know” does not (and I mean not) mean “write only what you know,” but it’s easy to take that way. I took it that way when I was about twelve or so: I wrote to a fairly famous author — not a genre author, I should point out — who replied with a nice enough note but said the space-related subject matter I was working with was too much for my young self to handle. He said I should write about things closer to home because then I’d be writing what I knew. That was not as encouraging as it might have been, and not too long thereafter I gave up writing fiction because I took it to mean I should only write what I knew.

Obviously I got over that attitude … a decade or two later.

Instead of “Write what you know,” I prefer what Orson Scott Card told us at his Literary Boot Camp: “Know what you write.” In terms of subject matter, if it takes research to know enough in order to write what you want to write, then do the research and learn what you need to know in order to make your story coherent and realistic. Beyond just subject matter, think clearly and carefully about your worldbuilding, about the motivations and emotions driving your characters, about the ramifications of their actions, and so forth, so that you know your world and know your characters and know the story you want to tell.

VENTRELLA: We’ve both been guests at various conventions over time. How important are these for networking for a new writer?

RINEHART: I’ve found conventions most valuable in terms of building friendships in the industry; i.e., making personal connections more than business connections. I need, and I think many of us need, the reassurance that there are like-minded souls out in the world, toiling in similar fields and experiencing similar joys — and even similar disappointments.

That’s not to say that business connections never get made; they certainly do, and we can be open to those possibilities, but I find it more satisfying to think of “all my friends in fandom” (a phrase I use in the chorus of my song, “Dead Dog Party”) rather than my associates or collaborators or whatever else we might call one another.

VENTRELLA: What’s your next project?

RINEHART: At present, I’m struggling with a fantasy novel. It’s grown in scope since I first imagined it, and is now larger and more complex than I wanted it to be, and my progress has slowed considerably as the scope has grown. Either it’s going to overwhelm me or I’m going to be able to rise to the challenge, but at this stage it feels pretty doggone overwhelming! Wish me luck.

17038464_10158289987025416_7500546622329058916_o

Gray and me hamming it up at a convention, acting out “The Eye of Argon” with an unknown victim

Filed under: writing | Tagged: bad advice for writers, Gray Rinehart, novels, Rules for Writing, Write what you know, writing believable characters | Leave a comment »

Interview with Larry Hodges

Posted on April 3, 2016 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I’m pleased to be interviewing author Larry Hodges today. His web page is here. Larry, tell us about your latest work!

LARRY HODGES: My new novel, CAMPAIGN 2100: GAME OF SCORPIONS (from World Weaver Press), dramatizes and satirizes politics in a new sub-genre, campaign science fiction. larry1_sm The novel covers the election for president of Earth in the year 2100, when the world has adopted the American two-party electoral system. A father decides to buck the system and run for president of Earth, taking on his own daughter with a third-party moderate challenge – with an incredulous alien ambassador along for the ride.

Presidential politics has dominated the news for years, and few stories are more compelling than a bare-knuckle, fight-to-the-finish political campaign. And yet, where are the SF stories that cover this? CAMPAIGN 2100 is West Wing in the 22nd Century. The underlying theme of the novel is moderation in politics; some will read it as a Moderate Manifesto.

VENTRELLA: How did you go about finding a publisher?

HODGES: One of the toughest decisions for a new author is whether to try and get an agent, or go directly to publishers. I decided to try both, and sent numerous queries. For agents, I mostly used http://www.agentquery.com. For publishers, I mostly used http://www.ralan.com. It took three years – three years of checking email every three minutes – but then, one day, I received a note from a publisher that they really liked the novel – only . . . [and there followed a list of things that they’d like to see rewritten]. I did the rewrite. With the publisher’s blessing, I also had the novel critiqued at The Never-Ending Odyssey (an annual writer’s workshop for graduates of Odyssey), and did more rewriting from that. I sent the rewrite to the publisher, and from there on I checked email every three seconds for many months. And then came the response, which I printed out and put on my bulletin board: “I’m pleased to offer you publication with World Weaver Press for the novel CAMPAIGN 2100: GAME OF SCORPIONS…”

VENTRELLA: How did you first become interested in writing?

HODGES: I’ve been reading science fiction & fantasy since elementary school. It was inevitable that at some point I’d start writing it. My first story was “The Snowflake,” written circa seventh grade, which featured a guy read about a snowflake warning in the newspaper, and rants about how stupid that is, that they meant a snow warning. Then he sees the same snowflake warning on the TV, on the radio, from friends, and he keeps sarcastically correcting them. It ends with a giant snowflake falling onto and demolishing his house.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t science fiction that turned me into a professional writer – it was table tennis. Yes, ping-pong. In high school, when I wasn’t reading SF, I was training in this Olympic sport, and became first a top player, and then a top coach. (I’m in the USA Table Tennis Hall of Fame.) SpiritofPong-cover-med I began writing coaching articles, and then books on table tennis. I was hired as director and a coach for table tennis at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, and between training sessions, I began to write SF. I now have over 1600 published articles and eleven books – seven table tennis, five SF/fantasy, which adds up to twelve since one is a table tennis fantasy novel.

VENTRELLA: How do you make your protagonist a believable character?

HODGES: CAMPAIGN 2100 really has four main characters – an ensemble cast. I decided that each would get their own introductory chapter. Each had to have some major issue to deal with that affected the plot, while developing them as memorable characters.

• Toby, the de facto “main character” (since he’s the one running for president of Earth), is introduced in chapter one, which is five years before the rest of the novel. President Corbin Dubois is being sworn in as the new president of Earth – and Toby ran his campaign, assisted by daughter Lara. Only he now realizes he’s made a terrible mistake, thinking, What have I done? He’s supposed to stay on as Corbin’s political director, but decides to resign. Corbin blackmails him, threatening his daughter if he leaves, and Toby ends up staying – but leaves us with the cliffhanging thought, What can I do to fix this? His character is developed as he faces a huge conflict – his desire to fix his mistake in making Dubois president, while not destroying his daughter’s future. The novel really takes off when he finally goes to war with his own daughter! He is a gold mine of conflict – inner conflict over his past support of Dubois, his battle with his daughter, and various campaign issues; and external conflict as he runs for president against Dubois.

• Twenty-two, the alien ambassador, is introduced as she’s diving into Earth’s atmosphere on her way to landing at the seat of world government. She’s excited, wondering about this new world and its politics as she naively converses with her overly adoring ship’s computer. We learn a terrible secret about her, which the reader knows but no one in the story will learn of until the very end. And then we see the alien point of view during first contact – and how both sides react when it turns into a disaster.

• Bruce, who also helped Toby run the Dubois campaign (but quit early on when he realized it was a mistake), is a professional table tennis player. He’s introduced as he’s playing for the U.S. championship. His great intelligence and sarcasm is highlighted throughout, with him simultaneously carrying on four conversations (with his opponent, the umpire, people in the crowd, and his thought computer), and then, right when he’s about to win . . . he makes a big decision. He’s such a flamboyant character that he’s easy to write, but he can be irritating, and so it’s a high-wire act making sure he goes the Han Solo rather than the Jar Jar Binks route.

• Feodora, the tiny Russian general who is running for president, is built up in advance by hints about her almost super-hero status. When she’s introduced, she’s stuck in bureaucratic meetings, representing Russian in talks with China, Japan, Korea, and others. Her character is built up via the contrast between her somewhat whimsical and sarcastic comments there, and her contrasting thoughts. Campaign 2100 Front Final-sm (She’s practically a superhero, and so throughout the novel she is showcased doing over-the-top things.) We get a flashback history lesson on how she shot and killed the Russian lead general, took command of Russian troops, and led them to a surprising victory. Feodora originally wasn’t intended to be a major character, but when she first appeared halfway through the book in the first draft, she pretty much took over, dominating the story whenever she appeared. At the behest of critiquers, I rewrote the story so she could appear sooner. I also had to send her on various journeys to get her off the stage so the other characters could get attention!

VENTRELLA: Which of your characters was the hardest to write and why?

HODGES: The toughest was probably Toby, simply because I had to be careful that he wasn’t overshadowed by the interesting and flamboyant Twenty-two, Bruce, and Feodora. He was the heart of the story, as he struggled with his inner demons over his guilt in making Dubois president and taking on his own daughter, and his desire to make up for this by running for president. The other three were very easy to write, once I had their characters down – the naïve goody-goody with a secret alien; the brilliant in-your-face sarcastic Bruce; and the over-the-top almost superhero and yet soft-spoken Russian general Feodora. One key thing about writing all four of them is that I considered them all different facets of myself (or facets I wanted to be), and so would just become that part of me when I wrote that character.

VENTRELLA: Do you think readers want to read about “believable” characters or do they really want characters that are “larger than life” in some way?

HODGES: It’s a balancing act, but for the type of story I was writing, I needed larger than life characters, such as Feodora and Bruce. But they were balanced off by the far more believable Toby, who comes off as a more regular guy in an extraordinary and highly public position.

VENTRELLA: What makes your fiction unique? In other words, what is it about your stories that makes them stand out against all the other similar stories out there?

HODGES: I thought long and hard about what I wanted to write about, balancing my strengths and interests versus what readers might want to read. I think all new writers need to do this. I decided that I wanted to write at least three different novels, each one unique – and then I’d decide which of these sub-genres to focus on:

A political satire – CAMPAIGN 2100: GAME OF SCORPIONS. What was unique about this that it created a whole new SF subgenre – campaign science fiction. I asked myself the simple question (also noted above): “Presidential politics has dominated the news for years. Few stories are more compelling than a bare-knuckle, fight-to-the-finish political campaign. And yet, where are the SF stories that cover this?”

A humorous fantasy – SORCERORS IN SPACE. What was unique about this? It was potentially a new series that covered historical events but replaced the main characters with sorcerers. In this case, the novel covered the U.S.–Soviet space race of the 1960s, but with sorcerers instead of astronauts/cosmonauts. Maybe I could be the next Terry Pratchett!

A table tennis fantasy – THE SPIRIT OF PONG. What was unique about this? Well . . . how many table tennis fantasy novels are there?

VENTRELLA: Hey, come on. My novel BLOODSUCKERS: A VAMPIRE RUNS FOR PRESIDENT is also “campaign science fiction.” (INSERT SMILEY FACE)

What is your writing process? Do you outline heavily or just jump right in, for instance?

HODGES: This is another thing that new writers struggle with. When I first decided to write Campaign 2100, I spent a huge amount of time outlining it in great detail. Sorcerer-in-Space-cover-med This is now some top writers operate, such as Connie Willis, who is famous for doing detailed outlines of every chapter – and then writing the novel out of sequence, writing whichever chapter she feels like writing that day. And she’s won more major awards than any other SF writing – eleven Hugos and seven Nebulas. The other extreme would be a writer like Stephen King, who only has a vague idea what he’s writing about when he starts, and often writes a huge amount before he figures out what the story is about. Another example might be Isaac Asimov, who often started with a general idea of what the story would be, and with an ending, and then wrote to that end.

So I tried the Willis method, and began to write. But it didn’t work for me. I kept coming up with creative ideas that I had to ignore, since I had already outlined what was supposed to happen, and if I changed things, then subsequent chapters wouldn’t work. And so I tried to squelch my own creativity! The result for me was rather drab writing, and it was also pretty boring to write. I finally put aside the detailed notes, and instead did a very general outline of each chapter, about one or two sentences each, and went from there – along with an ending I wanted to work toward. Often chapters would go in directions I hadn’t foreseen, and I’d just go with it – but always I’d manage to bring it back on course toward the planned ending. This method worked for me, and I’ve since adopted this.

VENTRELLA: Writers are told to “write what you know.” What does this mean to you?

HODGES: Some people mistakenly think this means write what you know now. What it means to me is two things: 1) write about stuff you know and enjoy, because you can write well about things you know, and if you enjoy it, the writing is fun; 2) research the stuff you don’t know, either because you need it in the story, or because you want to learn about something and then write about it. I’m an amateur presidential historian – I can name all 44 presidents, their term of office, and all sorts of trivia on them. I know a lot about presidential politics, and so when I wrote Campaign 2100, I knew what I was writing about – other than that thing that it was 84 years in the future, and took place in settings all over the world that I knew nothing about, with all sorts of unexpected topics coming up. And so I became an expert on such diverse topics as Tanzania; the South China Sea; Antarctica; blue whales and narwhals; wheat production; submarine bases; Brodmann Area 10, which is the moral judgment center in the brain; the United Nations; and the Hindu caste system.

VENTRELLA: What do you do to avoid “info dumps”?

HODGES: That’s a tricky subject, as it’s so easy to fall into the “As you know, Bob” syndrome, since that’s the easiest way to let the reader know what the characters already know. For Campaign 2100, it was a serious problem, in that readers needed to learn about the history – our future – as well as the political system. And so I had First Contact, bringing in the alien ambassador Twenty-two. Readers learn about Earth’s history (our future) and the political world of 2100 at the same time as the alien – and if I wrote it well, then readers will be as incredulous as Twenty-two!

VENTRELLA: What advice would you give to a starting writer that you wish someone had given to you?

HODGES: Learn the rules guidelines for writing before breaking them. There are few rules, just guidelines that range from strongly recommended to general ones, and you should understand them all – and then, when you have reason to, break them mercilessly. It’s okay to explore breaking these rules, but always have a specific reason for doing so, or your work will likely come off as amateurish. Writing is both art and craft, and you need to do both.

VENTRELLA: Who do you like to read? Who are your favorite authors?

HODGES: I mostly read science fiction & fantasy and history. My favorite authors for many years were the three most famous grandmasters – Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein. I read their complete works by the time I finished middle school. I periodically go back and reread some of their works; last year I reread the Foundation series from Asimov. In recent years my favorite writers have been Robert J. Sawyer and Jack McDevitt. Sawyer consistently brings us thought-provoking SF on a wide range of topics, such as his recent QUANTUM NIGHT. I read much of McDevitt, but my favorites are the Alex Benedict series, where we have a guy who researches ancient relics – but the relics are things from our future! Very interesting stuff. And yet, I’ve been debating whether to broaden my reading to some of the classics. I was on a panel with Sawyer at the recent Lunacon SF convention, and he recommended just that. After reading QUANTUM NIGHT, I’m now 60% through Stephen King’s 11/23/63, which is fascinating.

VENTRELLA: What projects are you working on now? What can we expect next from you?

HODGES: I wrote 17,000 words of the sequel to Campaign 2100 (which was 124,000 words long), but I’ve put it on hold to see how the first volume sells. If it does well, expect more futuristic campaign politics as our moderate extremists move into space, running the campaigns (or running for office themselves) in local star groups! I’ve also outlined sequels to Sorcerers in Space and The Spirit of Pong, and also have plans for several other potential novels.

Filed under: writing | Tagged: agents, character development, Larry Hodges, new writers, publishing house, science fiction, Write what you know, writing advice | 2 Comments »

Interview with NY Times Bestselling author Heidi McLaughlin

Posted on March 7, 2016 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I am pleased to be interviewing Heidi McLaughlin today. Heidi is a bestselling author now living in Vermont with her family. A movie based on her bestseller FOREVER MY GIRL is currently in production. She’s also got a great story in my “Alternate Sherlocks” anthology coming out soon!

First, tell us all about your latest book.

HEIDI McLAUGHLIN: My most recent release is called BLIND REALITY, which is Big Brother meets Married at First Sight, a fun little romantic comedy that is very reality-television based. If you’re not a reality TV fan, this book isn’t for you.

VENTRELLA: Romance continues to sell, but it goes through trends like all fiction. What is popular now?

McLAUGHLIN: Probably stuff I don’t write! Everyone loves the Alpha male, the down and dirty smut and shock factor. I like to keep everything mainstream and fun.

VENTRELLA: Do you find yourself writing what is popular or do you just write what you want and hope people will like it?

McLAUGHLIN: I write what I want to write. If I have an idea and I can make it work, I’m running with it. Life is no fun when you’re thinking like everyone else. I want to set the trend, not follow.

VENTRELLA: Do you feel there is a limitation with romance in that it pretty much has to have a happy ending? Or am I mistaken in that?

McLAUGHLIN: No, you’re very on point. In BLIND REALITY, it’s a cliffhanger, albeit it minor one, and people flipped out. Funny enough, when I’ve been asked about it and asked in return why they felt that way, the reader was able to answer their own question. Compared to some enormously huge bestselling novels, my cliffhanger is a blip and barely noticeable. Unfortunately, readers don’t see it that way and I’ve paid the price.

VENTRELLA: Perhaps more than other genres, romance has to have tremendously believable characters. Do you agree? How do you accomplish that?

McLAUGHLIN: I absolutely agree. When people read romance the way to feel like they’re the character being wooed or falling in love. They want to live in the happily ever after and avoid reality of a dirty kitchen, loads of laundry, etc… For me, modeling my characters after people I know or have encountered makes them believable. Every character I write I want the reader to feel like they know them, that they live next door or went to high school with them. 6873690_orig

VENTRELLA: What’s the difference between romance and erotica?

McLAUGHLIN: Well that’s a loaded question (excuse the pun). Erotica is heavy behind the doors taboo stuff that you don’t discuss at the dinner table with Grandma sitting across from you even though Gram has probably read a good old fashioned Harlequin in her day. Romance is the light-hearted can’t-wait-to-tell-you-about-my-day happy stuff… most of the time.

VENTRELLA: What’s your opinion of FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY?

McLAUGHLIN: E.L. James hit the market when women needed something new to sink their teeth into. Erika is a marketing genius.

VENTRELLA: Have you ever had to censor yourself where you think you may have gone too far?

McLAUGHLIN: No, I’m fairly tame and am often told I need more detail with certain scenes.

VENTRELLA: Why do you think more men aren’t reading romance?

McLAUGHLIN: I have a contingent of male readers and my husband has even read JR Ward! I think some men are just afraid of what those pages hold.

VENTRELLA: What is the biggest misconception people have about romance novels (and romance novel writers)?

McLAUGHLIN: That writing is a hobby, or we’re just writing porn.

VENTRELLA: How did you first become interested in writing?

McLAUGHLIN: When I was little I was an only child for the longest time and my playmates were my aunts and uncles who were older. I had to create worlds to entertain myself when they weren’t around and my grandma always told me to write them down. 1003461

VENTRELLA: How much of writing is innate?

McLAUGHLIN: Writing is a craft. you have to learn, process and repeat. No one is “good” out of the gate.

VENTRELLA: What is your writing process? Do you outline heavily or just jump right in, for instance?

McLAUGHLIN: I’ve never outlined. I take notes, and write. I’m a chapter by chapter and never out of order. If I have a scene in mind I’ll write it down and save it, but chances are I never come back to it.

VENTRELLA: Do you find yourself creating a plot first, a character first, or a setting first?

McLAUGHLIN: Lately, it’s been the plot first. I hate naming my characters so I tend to do that last. But show me an image, song, or something on the news and I can give you something to work with.

VENTRELLA: Writers are told to “write what you know.” What does this mean to you?

McLAUGHLIN: To me that means – don’t think outside the box. I’m glad I didn’t listen because I write a Navy SEAL series that I absolutely love, but I’m not in the Navy, nor have I even been though BUD/s. If we only wrote what we knew, we’d be boring.

VENTRELLA: What criticism of your work do you disagree with the most?

McLAUGHLIN: When people tell me how I should’ve ended a story, or assume they know my characters better than I do.

VENTRELLA: How did you get started? What was your first story or book published?

McLAUGHL 3312058 IN: I wrote a manuscript (my 3^rd actually) and shared it with my friend who encouraged me to publish. My first story was FOREVER MY GIRL, which is slated to start production for the big screen this year.

VENTRELLA: Do you think it is important to start by trying to sell short stories or should a beginning author jump right in with a novel?

McLAUGHLIN: Short stories are fun, like the one we’re doing, but serial novels tend to make the reader wait too long for the conclusion. I do prefer a novel though.

VENTRELLA: Do you think short stories are harder to write than novels?

McLAUGHLIN: For me, yes, especially, when you’re limited on a word count.

VENTRELLA: In this market, with the publishing industry changing daily, how important is the small press?

McLAUGHLIN: Every press is important, but you can get lost with the big ones and just become a number. As with anything small, you’re always on their mind.

VENTRELLA: What sort of advice would you give an un-agented author with a manuscript?

McLAUGHLIN: Believe in yourself and the process. It does work. My first MS I queried 45 agents all to be told no, so I published and hit USA the next week and half those agents came back to work with me.

VENTRELLA: What’s the worst piece of writing advice you ever got?

McLAUGHLIN: That social media doesn’t sell books. 8811796

VENTRELLA: What’s the best piece of writing advice you ever got?

McLAUGHLIN: Never give up.

VENTRELLA: What advice would you give to a starting writer that you wish someone had given to you?

McLAUGHLIN: Do not trust everyone you come in contact with, and do not share your story with you FB bestie. Keep your work close to your heart and invest in your craft.

VENTRELLA: Who do you like to read? Who are your favorite authors?

McLAUGHLIN: I love paranormal romance, but also contemporary. However, Nelson DeMille is my favorite author.

VENTRELLA: What projects are you working on now? What can we expect next from you?

McLAUGHLIN: Right now I’m finishing up SAVE ME, which will come out April 5^th – it’s a Navy SEAL novel, and I’ll be writing my manuscripts BLOW (Virtuous Paradox 1) and LEFT FIELD (The Boys of Summer 2).

Filed under: writing | Tagged: Heidi McLaughlin, promoting yourself, romance novels, short stories, Write what you know, writing advice | Leave a comment »

Interview with author Jim C. Hines

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I am tremendously pleased to be interviewing Jim C. Hines today! Jim is best known as a fantasy novelist and the guy who did those gender-flipped SF/F cover poses. His first novel was GOBLIN QUEST, the tale of a nearsighted goblin runt and his pet fire-spider. After completing the goblin trilogy, Jim went on to write the “Princess” series, four books often described as a blend of Grimm’s Fairy Tales with Charlie’s Angels. He’s currently working on the “Magic ex Libris” books, which follow the adventures of a magic-wielding librarian from northern Michigan. He’s also the author of more than forty published short stories. His web page is here.

Let’s talk about your latest news: The FABLE book, based on the best-selling game. How did that come about?

JIM C. HINES: The publisher contacted my agent to see if I’d be interested in writing the book. I’m guessing a lot had to do with my previously published work, particularly the GOBLIN QUEST series, which has some of the same fantasy and humor feel as the Fable game universe. My agent and I talked about the contract details, he went back and did a bit of negotiating, and voila – I got to write FABLE: BLOOD OF HEROES, which was a great deal of fun.

VENTRELLA: What kinds of limitations did they give you? In other words, how far away from the main narrative could you go?

HINES: I had a fair amount of freedom with the story. They wanted a book that would introduce the characters and the world, but I wasn’t novelizing the plot of the game. I had to set the story in the world of Albion, and to use the characters from FABLE LEGEND, but I was able to introduce my own villains and secondary characters, my own plotline, and even my own quirky little town.

VENTRELLA: What is it like writing a story that has already been written, with characters you didn’t develop? Did you find it liberating (“Hooray! I don’t have to spend months working all the details out!”) or confining (“Dammit, I want the character to do this but I am limited by what someone else wrote first!”) or somewhere inbetween?

HINES: I was hoping it would be a bit easier to write pre-existing characters, but as far as I can tell, nothing about writing ever ends up being easy. Lionhead came up with some interesting and entertaining characters. Sometimes it was fun to play with ideas I wouldn’t have necessarily come up with on my own. But there were also moments when I wanted to do something with a given character and couldn’t, because it didn’t fit with what Liongate had set up.

VENTRELLA: Assuming that this is like other games, your character could make different choices which could change the ending completely. How did you approach this?

HINES: I haven’t played LEGEND, but I’ve played some of the other FABLE games and read some of the previous tie-in books, so I was definitely thinking about the emphasis on choice. I tried to include some moments for the characters where they had a clear and important choice to make. Trust this character or don’t? Fight or flee? Kill or capture?

VENTRELLA: Who do you think the audience is for these kinds of books?

HINES: Well, we want it to appeal to fans of FABLE. First and foremost, I hope that all the hard-core chicken-chasers will approve. But if I’ve done my job well, you shouldn’t have to be familiar with the games to enjoy the book. If you like fantasy and quirky humor, you too can be part of the audience!

VENTRELLA: What will people who have already played the game get out of it?

HINES: Right now the game is still in beta testing. I don’t know if the book will come out before the game, or how that schedule will work. So it’s possible this could be the first real point of entry into FABLE LEGENDS world. For those who have played the previous games or participated in the beta, my hope is that they’ll get some insight into the characters, some exploration of Albion and its history, and a new adventure to enjoy.

VENTRELLA: Let’s talk about the “Goblin Quest” series. Where did the idea for that originate?

HINES: I guess I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdogs, and it’s hard to get more underdogged than the goblins. How many goblins got slaughtered in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? So I really liked the idea of taking this scrawny, nearsighted goblin runt and doing a typical fantasy adventure from his point of view, with all of his questions about fantasy logic and this so-called “heroism” stuff.

VENTRELLA: What inspired the “Princess” series?

HINES: Those books were for my daughter, who went through a princess phase when she was younger. Some of the movies, and a lot of the merchandise, all stressed that a princess has to look pretty and be rescued and so on. I wanted stories about princesses who teamed up and kicked butt and beat the witch and saved the prince. I also wanted to play with the older fairy tales, and to do something fun with it, like turning Sleeping Beauty into a ninja, or letting Snow White run around doing mirror magic.

VENTRELLA: I’ve blogged about humor in fiction, and feel that tooLibr many authors think that if your characters crack jokes then you can’t make serious points or make them ever seem to be in danger. Since humor is a part of your work, how do you approach it? How do you find the right balance?

HINES: Humor and serious go quite well together. Just ask Joss Whedon. The contrast between humor and fear/pain/tragedy can make both more powerful. You don’t want to let the humor undermine the tension, but that’s just a matter of practice and learning how to write it. Human beings crack jokes. Even in dark times. Especially in dark times. It’s one of the ways we cope. Completely stripping that out of a story feels dishonest and hollow to me.

VENTRELLA: You haven’t avoided talking about politics on Facebook and your blog. Do you ever worry that this may alienate readers?

HINES: It’s weird. A fair amount of what I talk about are things like sexual harassment and racism and sexism, stuff I’d have assumed most people agreed were bad, regardless of politics. But it’s the internet, so everyone seems to get assigned to one “side” or the other, and that’s the end of that. It’s definitely cost me some readers. But I think these are important things to talk about, and I’ve ended up with a bit of a platform to do so. It would feel like a betrayal not to do so. I try not to be a dick about things, but it doesn’t matter how polite and “civilized” you are. There’s always someone who’ll get pissed off at you.

VENTRELLA: How much of writing is innate? In other words, do you believe there are just some people who are born storytellers but simply need to learn technique? Or can anyone become a good writer?

HINES: I think practice and skill are far more important and useful than talent. Looking back, I don’t know how much of where I started was actual talent vs. skills I’d picked up over my life, from reading and telling jokes and getting a pretty good education and so on. But wherever you start, pretty much all of us have to work to improve before we become Good Writers™.

VENTRELLA: What criticism of your work do you disagree with the most?

HINES: I try not to disagree with criticism, as a general rule. Once my book is out there, it’s up to the reader what they find in the story. Who am I to say they’re wrong?

That said, it annoys me to be told I only included a non-white or non-straight character as part of an “agenda,” or to push some mysterious “message” down people’s throats. Acknowledging the existence of people who aren’t exactly like me isn’t a message. And choosing to exclude people who aren’t like you from your stories is lazy, lousy writing.

VENTRELLA: Which of your characters was the hardest to write and why?

HINES: Lena Greenwood, the dryad character from the LIBRIOMANCER books. I’ve been working to get her character right for at least a decade. The way I wrote her and her backstory is problematic as hell. This series deals with the magic of books, and Lena was “born” as a sexual servant, one who gains in strength and independence over the course of the series. There’s a lot I’ve tried to do with her journey, but it’s so easy to mess up, and I know I’ve made mistakes along the line. For some people, she’s their absolute favorite character, but she’s been tough to write.

VENTRELLA: Writers are told to “write what you know.” What does this mean to you?

HINES: I prefer to flip it to “know what you write.” Do your research, and make sure you know what you’re talking about.

VENTRELLA: What do you do to avoid “info dumps”?

HINES: Mostly, I try to pay attention to when I’m getting bored while writing the story. There’s nothing wrong with exposition and info dumps from time to time, as long as it’s interesting. But the moment I start getting bored, that’s a clue to look more closely at the story and figure out why.

VENTRELLA: When going through second and third drafts, what do you look for? What is your main goal?

HINES: My first draft is when I get a sense of the book’s structure. I can’t hold an entire novel in my head, and outlines help, but they only work so-so. Once I’ve finished that first draft and know more or less how the book goes, I can go back and start developing the characters better, cleaning up plot problems, and generally delving deeper into the story.

VENTRELLA: Science Fiction doesn’t seem to be selling as much as fantasy these days, including urban fantasy and all the varieties. Why do you think that is?

HINES: Not a clue. I think it depends on where you look, too. Are superheroes science fiction? If so, then Marvel’s films are blowing away most of what’s out there. Video games? Paranormal romance vs. sword and sorcery? I try not to worry too much about what’s hot this year, and to just write stories I love.

VENTRELLA: Do you think it is important to start by trying to sell short stories or should a beginning author jump right in with a novel?

HINES: I was told you have to write short stories first, and I spent years doing that before really trying to write novels. That was Bad Advice. There’s no one right way to learn, and while short fiction used to be the “traditional” road for breaking into novels, these days I’d tell people to write whatever the heck they want. Enjoy short stories? Do that. Prefer books? Start writing them.

VENTRELLA: Do you think short stories are harder to write than novels?

HINES: I think they’re different. For me, short stories are much faster to write. You know, on account of being shorter. I like that. But you have some of the same challenges of characterization and worldbuilding and so on.

VENTRELLA: What’s your opinion on self-publishing?

HINES: I like anything that gives authors more options, and gives readers more ways to find stories they love. I could do without the religious crusades about the One True Way to publish, though.

Most of my books are through DAW, a commercial publisher in New York. I’ve also self-published some electronic chapbooks, as well as a mainstream novel and a fantasy novel project that … well, let’s just say RISE OF THE SPIDER GODDESS probably wouldn’t have found a home at most self-respecting publishing houses.

VENTRELLA: In this market, with the publishing industry changing daily, how important is the small press?

HINES: I think the small impress has been and continues to be important. They have more ability to take chances and to take on projects that might not sell huge numbers, but are important and powerful nonetheless.

VENTRELLA: What sort of advice would you give an un-agented author with a manuscript?

HINES: Finish the manuscript, and do some research. Learn how agented and unagented authors built their careers. Learn the pitfalls of different paths. Read Writer Beware and other writing blogs and resources. There’s no one right way to do this, but there are definitely some wrong ways to be aware of!

VENTRELLA: What’s the worst piece of writing advice you ever got?

HINES: You have to write short stories before you can write novels.

VENTRELLA: What’s the best piece of writing advice you ever got?

HINES: I don’t know that it’s a specific piece of advice so much as a general attitude of persistence. Writing is hard, and there are times it will wear you down. Most of the successful authors I know are the ones who got stubborn and just kept writing.

VENTRELLA: What advice would you give to a starting writer that you wish someone had given to you?

HINES: Have fun. Find your own voice, and your own passion. I spent years trying to write the books and stories I thought I was “supposed” to be writing, but it wasn’t until I said the heck with it and started having fun with this goofy little goblin and his flaming pet spider that I really found myself as a writer. Coincidentally, that’s the first book I sold. Go figure.

VENTRELLA: Who do you like to read? Who are your favorite authors?

HINES: It depends on when you ask! Terry Pratchett, Janet Kagan, Nnedi Okorafor, Seanan McGuire… Heck, I’m on Goodreads. You can see my shelves here.

VENTRELLA: What projects are you working on now? What can we expect next from you?

HINES: I’m working on the fourth LIBRIOMANCER book, which is called REVISIONARY and should be out in February of 2016. I’m also finishing up the copy-edits on FABLE: BLOOD OF HEROES. Beyond that, I’m starting on INVISIBLE 2, which will be a collection of essays about representation in science fiction and fantasy. I’ve also got several anthology invites waiting for me to write short stories. So basically, I’m in no danger of getting bored any time soon!

VENTRELLA: With a time machine and a universal translator, who would you invite to your ultimate dinner party?

HINES: I’m not actually much of a party person, so I’d probably keep it small. Maybe David Tennant and my wife to start with. (So that my wife could meet David Tennant, which would make me the Best Husband Ever. And also because I’m a bit of a fanboy myself.) Janet Kagan, who was something of a mentor for me, but passed away before I could meet her in person. I’d also want to invite someone who can actually cook, you know? Oh, and maybe Gutenberg, because he’s one of the characters in my current series, and if I got him to sign one of those books, it would be a pretty awesome memento!

Filed under: writing | Tagged: Fable, Fable: Blood of Heroes, Fable: Legend, Goblin Quest, Jim C. Hines, LIBRIOMANCER, new writers, outlines, publishing house, science fiction, self-publishing, short stories, Write what you know, writing advice | Leave a comment »

Interview with NY Times Bestselling Author A. J. Hartley

Posted on April 6, 2014 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I am pleased to be interviewing NY Times Bestselling Author A.J. Hartley today! A.J. is the international bestselling author of a dozen novels including the mystery/thrillers such as THE MASK OF ATREUS, young adult fantasies like ACT OF WILL, and children’s fantasies like DARWEN ARKWRIGHT AND THE PEREGRINE PACT (which won SIBA’s best YA novel of 2012). With David Hewson he has written two adaptations of Shakespeare plays as Game of Thrones-esque epic thrillers, the first of which was MACBETH, A NOVEL (audio edition voiced by Alan Cumming), and HAMLET, PRINCE OF DARKNESS. When he’s not writing, A. J. is UNC Charlotte’s Robinson Professor of Shakespeare.

A.J., I just finished reading ACT OF WILL and enjoyed it tremendously! Like my own ARCH ENEMIES, it is a first-person high fantasy story with a punnish title about a cowardly young entertainer with a sarcastic voice who gets thrown into an adventure against his will — so you can see why it appeals to me. (The stories otherwise have nothing in common plot-wise.) What inspired you to write ACT OF WILL?

A.J. HARTLEY: I grew up reading high fantasy—Tolkien, Le Guin, Lewis, and the like — and loved it all, but as my reading tastes expanded, I started to crave fantasy which was rooted in some version of reality and didn’t take itself too seriously. I’m a big fan of Terry Pratchett because I think he proves that fantasy with a comic edge needn’t be “light” and can be as serious as more obviously ponderous works. I like that. I’ve always been a devotee of writing which is fun, outrageously populist, deliberately and self-consciously “genre” but still rich and complex and layered. Like Shakespeare, a master genre writer if ever there was one. ACT OF WILL grew out of many of these impulses: high fantasy with an attitude and a strong sense of character voice, swords and sorcery with a little Salinger thrown in.

VENTRELLA: It seems to have gone through a number of different printings with different publishers. Can you share that story with us?

HARTLEY: From the first time I submitted the manuscript, I ran into the familiar problem of publishers saying something like “we love it, but we don’t know what it is.” In other words, it was considered a hybrid in terms of genre. They didn’t know what shelf to put it on. It took me twenty years to sell it. Literally. By then the market had evolved so that smart-mouth heroes and a pointed absence of dwarves and elves were no longer considered antithetical to fantasy.

Even so, when the book came out from Tor, people weren’t sure how to market it. The original hardback cover (which I actually really liked) didn’t look like a fantasy novel at all, and it certainly didn’t suggest its young adult protagonist. Both novels (ACT OF WILL was followed by WILL POWER) were very well reviewed (the second book made Kirkus Top ten for the year –- and Kirkus are notoriously hard to please!) but they didn’t really sell.

When they went into paperback, Tor went with more conventional fantasy style covers, but that didn’t solve the problem. Simply put, people who read them liked them, but not enough people read them. They eventually went out of print and I self-published them with the current, more aggressively YA covers. Interestingly, these covers (stylishly designed by a wonderful designer called Asha Hossain) have really touched a chord with readers and book sellers. They play up the drama of the stories, rather than the slightly tongue in cheek tone, but they fit the books very well indeed.

VENTRELLA: ACT OF WILL takes place in a sort of alternate middle ages, in that there are some things that are definitely relatable to the real medieval world (the way women were treated, men playing female parts in plays, etc.) yet without using any real places (and of course, adding some magic to it). How did you decide what to use and what not to use? In other words, how did you go about developing the world?

HARTLEY: To be honest, Michael, I didn’t. I just made it up as I went along, doing remarkably little of the kind of systematic world building I would do now. The world of the books is an odd mixture of my historical work as a Shakespearean, my travels all over the world (there are moments which — at least to me — evoke India, for example, where I had been right before the final version came into focus), and the voice is clearly modern, without being so contemporary that it would date quickly. What the world contains and doesn’t was determined by the story and the character, particularly the voice of the character.

VENTRELLA: What makes a novel Young Adult? When writing one, how do you change your style (if at all)?

HARTLEY: Most importantly, it’s about the age of the protagonist, and therefore about confronting adulthood in all its aspects. Beyond that, a young adult novel can do anything you might do in an adult novel. YA is defined by the age of the readership rather than by genre, of course, which means that there’s a lot of different kinds of stories within the bracket. Some are virtually indistinguishable from a middle grades novel, while others push the envelope as far as possible in matters of sex, violence, subject matter and vocabulary. So long as you are consistent and clear from the outset as to what you are writing, you can do pretty much what you want. For me, style has less to do with age group as it is to do with the sub genre or style of the story and I never consciously self-censer or simplify.

VENTRELLA: What are your upcoming projects?

HARTLEY: My next publication will be the HAMLET, PRINCE OF DARKNESS (co-written with David Hewson) performed by Richard Armitage (Thorin Oakenshield in the Hobbit movies) which comes out May 20th. I think that will get a lot of attention. After that, I’m not sure. I’m mid stream on a couple of YA projects, but they aren’t done yet.

VENTRELLA: Of which of your fiction books are you most proud and why?

HARTLEY: This will sound like a dodge, but it’s not. I’m always proud of my work when I first finish it and wouldn’t want it published if I wasn’t, so each project tends to have a special place in my head/heart. Each book has something about it I’m proud of. In ACT OF WILL, it’s voice. In WILL POWER it’s about pulling off a socio-political critique of the genre from within.

VENTRELLA: What should someone read first if they want to get to know your work?

HARTLEY: Depends what they like. If they like YA or adult fantasy, ACT OF WILL. For something a little more Harry Potter-esque, I’d recommend DARWEN ARKWRIGHT AND THE PEREGRINE PACT. For historically rooted thrillers, MASK OF ATREUS. For Shakespeare fans, the Macbeth or Hamlet.

VENTRELLA: I see from your CV that you were studying for your doctorate at Boston University around the same time I was graduating from law school and being a public defender there. Maybe we even rode the T together from Brighton. Why did you leave?

HARTLEY: I left after completing my Ph.D and getting my first academic job in Georgia.

VENTRELLA: Much of your work is scholarly. How have you found your styles compare when writing fiction and nonfiction?

HARTLEY: Apples and oranges. There may be a little bleed over in terms of ideas which inform both, but academic writing is an entirely different beast, from writing fiction. Scholarly books are much slower to produce for me, much cagier, much more research-driven and hyper aware of what other people have said. I can do the first draft of a novel in two months. My performance history of Julius Caesar took me almost six years.

VENTRELLA: I’ve always wanted to ask a Shakespeare expert this: Of the hundreds of Shakespeare movies that have been released, which one(s) is/are your favorite(s)? And which just made you scream at how terrible they were?

HARTLEY: I can usually find something of value in most half-way competent films or stagings because I’m looking to be shown something new from a production, not a “correct” interpretation of the play, which I don’t believe exists. We do theatre/film to generate a new art object which grows out of the (necessarily partial) play text, not to somehow broadcast the original in some kind of unmediated way. That’s aid, I do, of course, have preferences. Of recent efforts, I like the Loncraine Richard III with Ian McKellan as an early twentieth century fascist, Branaugh’s Henry V, the Goold Macbeth with Patrick Stewart as a Stalinist tyrant, the filmed stage version of Greg Doran’s Hamlet starring David Tennant, and Joss Whedon’s wonderfully intimate Much Ado.

VENTRELLA: How do you deal with the conspiracy nuts who claim Shakespeare never wrote his plays?

HARTLEY: Impatiently.

VENTRELLA: Shakespeare is often cited by authors who point out that what makes a good story is not originality, but the way the story is told. Do you agree?

HARTLEY: Well, it’s sort of a false binary, isn’t it? Shakespeare didn’t generally originate plots, but the stories have his unmistakable stamp which goes beyond sentence-level utterance. I think he proves that a gifted author can own and refresh a story people thought they knew

VENTRELLA: How much of writing is innate? In other words, do you believe there are just some people who are born storytellers but simply need to learn technique? Or can anyone become a good writer?

HARTLEY: Hmmm… I believe that writing is generally a fairly self-selecting process, in that you need to love stories and words and work to be good at it, but I see plenty of writing from people who have been at it a while which isn’t that good, so no, I don’t believe anyone can do it. There’s a lot you can learn—from classes, from studying other people’s work, and from just doing it—and I think that most people can achieve a basic competence in getting a story down coherently. But writing really well, with power and subtlety, with an eye for character and an ear for voice? No. I don’t think that can simply be learned by anyone.

VENTRELLA: Do you think readers want to read about “believable” characters or do they really want characters that are “larger than life” in some way?

HARTLEY: I think that’s a genre question. Most people who read thrillers and fantasy novels want big drama and larger than life characters which take them out of their conventional reality. For people who read realist literary fiction, generally that’s not true. I like something in between the two.

VENTRELLA: What is your writing process? Do you outline heavily or just jump right in, for instance?

HARTLEY: I outline briefly and loosely — 10-15 pages that sets up the story, main characters, world, key scenes. The book, however, is in the details. Execution is all. But the outline helps me to start with a clear sense of what the book is going to be so that I don’t wander for fifty pages trying to figure out what the story is, what drives it. You need a special gift for self-denying and brutal editing to write without an outline, I think, and most writers don’t have it. It can take me months, even years, to see what a book needs in terms of cutting. Outlines help get me there faster.

VENTRELLA: Do you find yourself creating a plot first, a character first, or a setting first? What gets your story idea going?

HARTLEY: Varies from book to book. ACT OF WILL, for instance, began with character voice. Plot came later. MASK OF ATREUS began with two intersecting plot ideas. DARWEN began with a way of reinventing the cross-over-into-a-fantasy-world I first encountered in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. WILL POWER came from an idea about what I found frustrating about some conventional fantasy…

VENTRELLA: Writers are told to “write what you know.” What does this mean to you?

HARTLEY: Usually, it means, write what you value, what you want to read, what you care about. Then it means, make sure you know what you need to pull it off.

VENTRELLA: What do you do to avoid “info dumps”?

HARTLEY: Cut them out and then find ways to reveal the information in another way! Unhelpful, I know. I think it helps to think of how movies handle the problem, usually visually.

VENTRELLA: Do you think it is important to start by trying to sell short stories or should a beginning author jump right in with a novel?

HARTLEY: I’ve never been a short story writer. I’ve done a few recently, but I think it’s a very different skill from writing novels, and for the most part I don’t they necessarily transfer that helpfully. If you want to be a novelist, write novels.

VENTRELLA: Do you think short stories are harder to write than novels?

For me they are, to do them well as genre fiction. They are, paradoxically, easier to pull off as literary fiction, I think, because they don’t have to have the pesky necessity of plot and event. Most genre short stories read—to me—like unfinished novels or, worse, mere episodes.

VENTRELLA: What advice do you have to people trying to find an agent?

HARTLEY: Write a really good book.

VENTRELLA: How do you promote your work?

HARTLEY: Badly. Minimally. Irritably.

VENTRELLA: We’ve met at a few science fiction conventions. Do you find attending these to be a useful activity?

HARTLEY: I do, and find them useful to a point. They can help you answer real questions about the craft and the business, but their real value is in making you feel part of a community. Writing can be very isolating, and it is good to know other people are in the same boat. And sometimes they can produce connections which are directly useful. BUT, some people treat the discourse around writing as a substitute for writing itself. It’s not. Never will be.

VENTRELLA: What’s your opinion on self-publishing?

HARTLEY: It can be a very useful tool for people who already have a fan base, or for people who just want to make their work available but aren’t looking to make a lot of money off it. Some people do make money, of course, but I don’t think they are representative and for many the riches some self-pub promoters tout will never materialize. I also think self-publishing requires a degree of self-promotion most people are not good at, and which takes time away from the development and production of their actual craft: writing. Self-publishing can be a nice extra string to your bow, or a way to find an outlet as you work, but I would still recommend traditional publishing to most writers. Sometimes—not always, of course—but perhaps more often than we usually admit, rejection from publishers is indicative of the fact that the work isn’t ready. Publishing it in any form can do you more harm than good in the long term. I wrote lots of books that were rejected before I had one accepted, and I thank the stars that I didn’t opt to self-publish them. I might not have been able to see it at the time, but I can now. They weren’t ready. They weren’t good enough.

Ravencon 2012

Filed under: writing | Tagged: A. J. Hartley, Arch Enemies, convention, fantasy world creation, new writers, promoting yourself, publishing house, reluctant hero, self-publishing, short stories, Write what you know, writing advice | Leave a comment »

Interview with author Thomas Erb

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: From the snowy confines of Upstate New York, from a place he calls “Hell’s 1/2 Acre,” author/artist Thomas A. Erb brings stories of the unlikely hero: from extreme brutal violence, to touching, gripping interpersonal relationships sure to catch the reader and never let them free. (He wrote that.)

Thomas, how did you first become interested in writing?

THOMAS ERB: I’ve always been a storyteller. It started visual when I was two and used to draw elaborate battles with army men fighting the Nazis or another vile foe. It then turned to comic books. For most of my young life, all I wanted to do was work for Marvel comics. I would create my own characters and write whole story arcs to accompany all my great illustrations. (pure sarcasm intended.)

Then I got into role-playing games. Yup, that’s right … Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller, Champions, Twilight 2000, Call of Cthulu, you name it, I’ve played it. And, just like for comics, I’d have to create highly detailed character backstories and potential subplots for my DM(s). Although, I never knew if they liked that I did that or not. Oh, as a word of advice … Never piss off a Game Master. Bad idea.

Now, I’ve fallen in love with writing my very own fiction — a love that keeps on growing with each tale I tell.

VENTRELLA: I must admit, my background is similar — I went from creating worlds and stories in D&D to creating them in LARPs to writing my own stories (the characters in my books are so much easier to control than my players).

How much of writing is innate? In other words, do you believe there are just some people who are born storytellers but simply need to learn technique? Or can anyone become a good writer?

ERB: I believe we all have an innate creative talent. Each one of us has something to say and in that yes, we are all storytellers. However, much like my philosophy with the visual and musical arts, I think that innate ability has a limitation. By that I mean, while we all can create, there is a certain level where some folks top off their talent. Some folks are just “born” to be X. Poe/Hemingway/Toklien/King were surely born to the written word. Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, Picasso, Rembrandt were put on this earth to give us visual masterpieces. Krupa, Rich, Peart were born to make playing the drums into a sonic art form. Same goes for the rest of us.

Quick life anecdote: While I was born to draw, I never tried hard. It’s always come easy to me. I had friends that would bust their humps and draw for hours and hours and no matter what, they couldn’t draw the same level as I did. (Now, I am saying this with no ego at all. Just an observation.) The same holds true for drumming. I’ve been playing drums since I was 16 and really love jamming. Sure, I’ve been in many bands and jammed with some amazingly talented musicians but I’ve plateaued my drumming talent. I know I will never be a Neil Peart. I wasn’t “born” with that level of ability. Even if I took more lessons and practiced for ten hours a day. It’s just a reality.

So … very long answer I know, but yes, writing talent is human nature but the level of craftsmanship,language, once in a generation storytelling ability does have a cut off. Not everyone can be Stephen King, Tolkien or James Joyce.

VENTRELLA: Tell us about TONES OF HOME!

ERB: My very first novella, TONES OF HOME, was released in June of last year and it’s the most brutal, violent story I’ve ever written. If you dig graphic scenes with tons of blood, machetes and shotguns, rednecks and oh yeah, the Beatles … then this story is right up your jukebox.

I am currently working on my first novel. (well, the one that I actually want folks to read.) It’s a deep story of loss, troubled relationships, a Nor’easter and a black monster coming to a small lakeside town, seeking revenge. I’m really loving this project and hope to have it in the hands of an agent by Thanksgiving.

VENTRELLA: What should someone read first if they want to get to know your work?

ERB: That’s a really tough one. I feel like I am just now, seeing my true “voice” come to fruition. While I loved writing all the great bloodletting in TONES OF HOME, I don’t think I am a Richard Laymon kind of writer. But, it’s the best work I’ve done thus far. So, Yeah, I’d say check out TONES OF HOME or “Spencer Weaver gets Rebooted.” It’s in a new anthology called FRESH FEAR.

VENTRELLA: How do you make your protagonist a believable character?

ERB: All of my stories seem to be based around an extremely flawed character. Or, as I like to refer to them, the unlikely hero. Usually they have something about them, whether it be a physical or mental determent. I have a weakness for the “loser”. The outcast, the outsider. A fat or skinny kid with asthma. I just identify with that and my thinking is, “hey, if I can feel for this guy/gal, then the readers should as well.” It’s not about having the Chisel-chinned, barrel-chested hero, saving the day. No … that’s the easy way out. It’s more of a challenge to break away from that trope and find a way for this less-than-heroic protagonist to overcome all the huge hurdles that makes up a great compelling story.

All characters must have flaws. Both protagonists and antagonists. (even Darth Vader has a soft side.)

VENTRELLA: Certainly agree with that (as you can tell if you read about the reluctant “hero” of my fantasy books.)

ERB: There are so many basic story ideas out there in the ether and to me, it’s more of how you get there as opposed to reworking old ground. Either way, readers want to escape and I hope I offer a wide mix of rich characters and tales they can sink their hungry teeth into.

VENTRELLA: What is your writing process? Do you outline heavily or just jump right in, for instance?

ERB: When I first started writing, I just sat down, opened a cold beer and let the muse of chaos take the wheel. That’s how I wrote my first novel. (a zombie tale that might see the light of day … someday.) But, when I went back to write a second draft, I was overwhelmed. Too many characters. Too many plots and subplots.

So, now, I am working on a happy medium kind of approach. I need to have some kind outline. It’s always loose and organic. Nothing is written in concrete. That would feel too much like a term paper and not an adventure.

I write the basic novel idea is. Usually the characters come to me almost immediately. I then write a very loose outline and then, write the first draft. Get it all down, fast and dirty. Never looking back.

Side note: Dry erase boards and sticky notes are a writer’s best friend.

VENTRELLA: Writers are told to “write what you know.” What does this mean to you?

ERB: This is lame, but I’m going to steal from the master. Stephen King states in his must-read ON WRITING book that we should take that statement as much extensively and inclusively as possible.

While I may not know anything about being a Gunny Sargent in the Royal Space Marines guarding the Princess Allayha, I do know what it’s like to always try to live with the demon of my father being a cruel man whom I could never please. You can use that kind of thing in your fiction.

VENTRELLA: How did you get started? What was your first story or book published?

After on a whim, I spent a year writing a zombie novel, I decided that I really enjoyed this writing thing and I started meeting other writers online. Back then, it was Myspace and through a few message boards. I discovered Brian Keene, (who’s book GHOUL made me want to write seriously) and found out he was attending a con in Ohio. I went and met him and some other folks that changed my life forever.

I began writing short stories and then submitted my short story, “Cutting Class” to the DARK THINGS II anthology edited by Ty Schwamberger (whom I met at the con) and next thing I knew, Bazzinga! I was a published author.

VENTRELLA: Do you think it is important to start by trying to sell short stories or should a beginning author jump right in with a novel?

ERB: I think each person tackles their writing in their own way. I jumped straight into the novel but I was only doing it for fun. It wasn’t until later that I wanted to do something with this whole writer gig.

With some hindsight, I’d suggest write some short stories first. With shorter works, you really learn how to write tight, lean prose. Plus, it’s far easier (and I use that term loosely) to get published.

VENTRELLA: Do you think short stories are harder to write than novels?

ERB: I think both have their own angels and demons. It also depends on what kind of storyteller you are. If you like deep character development and more than two intricate plots…a novel is best for you. If you really dig fast-paced, gripping tales with a small cast… short stories are for you.
I love writing both. I usually like to write a short story in between other long works. It’s a nice change of pace.

VENTRELLA: How do you promote your work?

ERB: Platform. Publishers are looking to see if you have an effective and active writer’s platform. And to me, that means an engaging, fresh online presence. A blog, Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, Goodreads account. And many, many more. Too many, in my opinion. It can be a distraction, trying to keep up with updating all your social media sites. (A necessary evil, but still evil.)

I do giveaways, I’ve done podcast interviews, blog talk radio interviews. I go to conventions when the money is right and try to post something funny, new and interesting on the social sites as much as I can manage.

I’m always looking for new ways to get my work out there. It’s an ongoing process.

13. Do you attend conventions or writing conferences? Do you find these to be a useful activity?

I attend as many as time and finances allow. Conventions are one of the biggest reasons I’m here today. I’ve made many, life-long friendships as well as business connections. It’s a must to get you and your words out there. We writers live and create in a room, all alone. You need to get out and meet other like-minded folks who know what you’ve been going through.

Plus, I’ve gotten the blurbs for my books and stories because of the conventions and conferences. Writing and life in general is about relationships.

Get you and your stories out there.

VENTRELLA: What’s your opinion on self-publishing?

ERB: When I first started writing back in 2007, self-publishing was the devil’s work. It was much maligned- rightfully so and very much a joke. But now, in 2014, you are a fool if you don’d consider exploring the self-publishing market. Things are fluid and ever-changing in the publishing world and the once hated and mocked world of self-publishing is now becoming common place.
The secret is to put out work that kicks the crap out of any book that comes out of the big 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 …

VENTRELLA: What’s the best piece of writing advice you ever got?

ERB: Get the first draft down, fast and dirty. Don’t stop to worry if it’s good. That’s what second and third drafts are for.

VENTRELLA: What advice would you give to a starting writer that you wish someone had given to you?

ERB: Research the publisher before you sign a contract. Know the business side of things. Royalty rates/payments/editing, etc.

VENTRELLA: Who do you like to read? Who are your favorite authors?

ERB: Anything from Jonathan Maberry. They guy is a monster and tackles all the genres I love. YA zombies, military thrillers, comic books, you name it. He is my mentor and I use him as my career guidepost.

VENTRELLA: And I couldn’t help but notice he named a character after you in his latest novel…

ERB: Jon was so kind to have his signature cop-turned Department of Military Sciences bad ass Joe Ledger clean my clock in his last Ledger novel, EXTINCTION MACHINE. I think my jaw still pops when I talk.

VENTRELLA: What can we expect next from you?

ERB: I have a retro-zombie novella that is looking for a new home. And I am currently writing a wintry monster novel that I hope to have completed and in the hands of agent by the end of the year.

I am also working on a comic script, a screenplay and a self-publishing project of my short works I hope to have out early in 2015.

I love having a lot on my plate. Not just saying that as a fat guy. I have many stories and projects inside me and time is of the essence.

Filed under: writing | Tagged: Beatles, character development, first draft, Jonathan Maberry, new writers, outlines, promoting yourself, reluctant hero, self-publishing, short stories, Thomas Erb, Write what you know, writing advice | 1 Comment »

Interview with author Storm Constantine

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I’m pleased to be interviewing author Storm Constantine. Storm’s work has covered many genres from fantasy, dark fantasy and horror to science fiction and slipstream. She has so far written twenty-three novels, and currently has most of her short stories collected in four Immanion Press editions.

Let’s start by discussing the re-release of SEA DRAGON HEIR. There is always an urge to rewrite older materials when it gets re-released; what has changed with this edition?

STORM CONSTANTINE: My urge to tinker with old works is simply that some were written when I was much younger and certain incompetencies in the writing and structure of the stories were just too much to ignore. Also, in some cases, publishers had asked for sections to be removed, simply because they wanted a shorter book. When I came to republish the books myself, I could restore them to my original vision. As I’m an editor as well as a writer, it was impossible for me to keep my hands off revising and refining!

I don’t think the Wraeththu books (the original version of the trilogy) were edited as well as they could have been. I was such a fledgling writer then, and when I returned to the books fifteen years later to republish them I was astonished really at what I’d been allowed to get away with, in terms of inconsistencies, plot holes, wobbly structure, and so on. It was glaringly obvious to me where the stories could be successfully reinforced. Some things happened ‘off stage’ that shouldn’t have. The ending of ‘Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit’ was a prime example of that. I added a couple of extra chapters to the revised edition to ‘show rather than tell’ things that occurred.

I also re-edited THE MONSTROUS REGIMENT quite heavily, as I’d never been happy with that book. The sequel, ALEPH, had technical errors to be fixed, but I didn’t do that much to it other than that.

As the reissues of my back catalogue progressed, there was less for me to do, because I’d been improving as a writer through those years of creating the original books. By the time I got back to ‘The Magravandias Trilogy’, all I was correcting was typos. I was happy with that trilogy as it was first written.

VENTRELLA: What projects can we expect from you next?

CONSTANTINE: I have so many notes written down for both short stories and novels, but my worst obstacle to realizing them now is time. I have sent a couple of stories off to anthologies, but as I’ve not heard back from the editors yet, don’t want to say which they are, in case my stories aren’t suitable for them. I want to finish off the other four or so I’ve got half written, because it’s always handy to have unsold stories available, should I be approached by an editor. Also I simply want to get the ideas down.

Novelwise, there are several books I could write, but it’s knowing which to do first. I’ve started work on the third volume of the ‘unofficial’ third Wraeththu trilogy, which is a series of novellas set in Alba Sulh. English Wraeththu. The first two were quite emotionally grim stories about betrayal and obsession, but the third has a different tone – it just happens to have a couple of the characters in it from the first books. I want this one to be a ghost story, and already have a lot of disturbing images for it that are just pure, enjoyable, supernatural scares. There will be less angsting in this book!

Aside from that, I have notes for at least half a dozen novels that are all unconnected, some of them with chapters already written. My plan is to finish the short stories, finish the Wraeththu ghost story, then take a good long look at what I have in my ‘ideas’ folder on the computer. I just feel like I need to clear the decks before venturing into territories new.

Nonfiction-wise I’m working on some ideas with a friend for a couple of books concerning magical path-workings/visualisations. They will just be fun to do; sit down together and invent the stories for them. The difficult part will be for us to get together, since my friend is very busy and quite often off on research trips around the world. I hope to get at least one of these books out this year, though.

VENTRELLA: How did Immanion Press come to be?

CONSTANTINE: When I sold The Wraeththu Histories (the second trilogy) to TOR in America, I wished that the original trilogy had still been available in the UK. This coincided with the advent of Print of Demand publishing, which meant that it was possible for small presses to bring out books at a fraction of the price of traditional publishing. So initially, Immanion Press was set up to coincide with the Grissecon convention I ran in 2003, where I relaunched ‘The Wraeththu Chronicles’ As I was let down in the UK by a publisher who initially wanted to publish the Histories, I decided I might as well bring out my new Wraeththu trilogy in the UK too. From there came the idea to reissue all of my long unavailable back catalogue titles. Then it just grew from there. Other writers asked me about reissuing some of their out of print titles too, and I had a rather altruistic urge to help new writers get published as well. Unfortunately, the latter idea didn’t really survive contact with reality. I found that it’s incredibly difficult to sell the work of new fiction authors, so I’ve had to cut back on that dramatically.

However, the non fiction side of things does well. People buy books on certain subjects irrespective of who the author is, or what they might have written before. Generally speaking, they just want a book on a particular topic, rather than to seek a name they already know. Megalithica Books, the nonfiction imprint, came about because a friend of mine, Taylor Ellwood, was interested in getting work out through Immanion. He saw a way to expand that side of things and eventually became the manager of the non fiction line.

VENTRELLA: Many established authors are now self-publishing their back catalogues themselves, avoiding the big publishers completely. What are the disadvantages of doing so?

None really, since the big publishers are largely not interested in doing this job for us. OK, we’re not going to have big publicity budgets at our disposal, and most presses (like mine) run on a shoe string. We can’t afford to hire staff, so have to do everything ourselves, or work with volunteers. In my case I simply don’t have enough time to be a full time publicity manager as well as everything else.

For established authors, it’s great to see their often long unavailable works back in print. You just have to make sure you have a fairly active online presence to help publicize your work, and let people know where they can buy it.

Is Immanion’s goal mostly to allow for established authors to reprint old works or are you actively looking for exciting new talent as well?
As I said above, the new author experiment didn’t go too well. Sadly, it just lost me a lot of money. We’re moving into ebooks more now, though, which have far fewer overheads, so perhaps in that medium I can still endorse new writers.

VENTRELLA: Has it been successful?

CONSTANTINE: Well, we’ve been around for 10 years this year, so we’re not doing too badly. The downside of it is that it eats into my working day like a pack of starving wolves. That’s another reason I’ve had to downsize the fiction line. I was in the position over the past five years or so where my workload had grown so much editing other people I had no time at all, and no energy, for my own writing. That had to stop. So I started to delegate more, to a fabulous woman, Sharon Sant, who volunteered to do editing for me. We’re publishing her first novel RUNNERS in June. I might not be able to pay a salary to people, but I can help out in other ways.

VENTRELLA: Starting authors often mistakenly think they can do this as well; they self-publish and then go nowhere. What advice do you have for beginning writers concerning getting published?

CONSTANTINE: One of the biggest downsides of everyone being able to self-publish easily, either through ebook or printed copies, is that they can do so without their work ever being looked at by a critical pair of eyes, whether that’s a professional editor or a friend who’s prepared to be honest. Editing is a very different job to writing. Even though I edit my own work to a degree, I still get someone else to do so as well. Writers are too close to their own work. We know everything that’s going on, but the readers don’t, and sometimes we don’t put enough in, or we over-write and things have to be trimmed back. The more people who can read a book before publication, the better. You have more chance of errors being found.

Even though there are now millions more people producing books of some format or another, sadly a lot of it is let down and diminished by the fact the writing itself isn’t up to scratch, and the writers don’t know their craft.

When I ran a creative writing class, I generally had to spend the first term every year teaching the students how to write. They knew nothing of grammar, syntax, spelling, punctuation or narrative structure, (the writer’s essential tool box), not to mention how to create credible characters, a compelling plot and realistic dialogue. They just had an idea they wanted to write stories or a novel, and didn’t even think it involved any particular skills other than the storytelling urge. From what I’ve seen there is a hell of lot of new writers actually publishing works with all of those aforementioned aspects being of poor quality.

So, first advice – hone your writing skills, learn your craft, share your work with other writers to get constructive criticism. Your Mom saying, ‘yes, that’s very nice, dear’, is no use to a writer. You want and need people to tear your work apart really. You don’t have to agree with every criticism, and might choose to ignore some of it, but without this flow and exchange you’re at a disadvantage. You owe your work your best shot, and that means using the tools at your disposal to make that work as good as it can be.

Also, it’s now absolutely essential for new writers to self-promote and use the Internet and social media to their full advantage to get word about and create a buzz.

VENTRELLA: Some writers tend to avoid controversy, but that doesn’t seem to stand in your way. Have you ever avoided an idea because you thought your readers (or editors) wouldn’t accept it?

CONSTANTINE: Not so far, that I can think of!

VENTRELLA: To the other extreme, have you ever specifically written in order to make a point about religion, politics, sexual orientation and so on, or do these things just flow from the plots?

CONSTANTINE: I think a writer’s political and religious beliefs tend to permeate their work naturally. I haven’t gone out of my way to pontificate about these things, but I don’t think any reader of my work would be in doubt about where my political and spiritual beliefs lie.

VENTRELLA: Do you think fantasy/science fiction settings allow you to tackle these issues in a way you could not otherwise?

CONSTANTINE: These genres give writers marvelous freedom to tackle issues it might be more difficult, or even risky, to tackle in a mainstream novel. Science fiction has long been used to criticize political regimes under the guise of fiction. I can’t help thinking that writers who have run into trouble over what they’ve written wouldn’t have done so if they’d set their stories in a fantasy world. It’s liberating; you can say what you like really.

VENTRELLA: How much of your own personal religious beliefs are reflected in your work?

CONSTANTINE: I am a spiritual person but not a religious person, but I do possess Pagan leanings. And yes this is reflected in my work.

VENTRELLA: What book do you advise for the starting Constantine reader and why?

CONSTANTINE: When I discover a new writer to read, I like to start at the beginning of their works if possible, but other people might feel differently. I don’t think it matters, other than it’s perhaps not the best idea to start with the second or third volume of a trilogy! I do have a number of short story collections published through Immanion Press, which can also give people a taster of my style.

VENTRELLA: The Wareththu series is probably your most famous. Do you plan on continuing to expand it?

CONSTANTINE: I think I’ll always return to it, but as I’ve concentrated on it exclusively for quite a time now, I want to explore something different for a while. I’ll continue to produce the Wraeththu story anthologies to keep my hand in. These are published roughly annually (or I hope them to be) and include stories by other writers as well as a couple by me. The first was ‘Paragenesis’, and the recently published ‘Para Imminence’. Both are available through Immanion Press, and I’m just mulling over ideas for the theme for the next one. Paragenesis explored the start of Wraeththu, and Para Imminence its far future. Anyone interested in contributing, please do get in touch via editorial@immanion-press.com

On top of the anthologies, I’ll continue to publish novels set in the Wraeththu world but written by others. A thriving online community of fan fiction writers helped keep Wraeththu alive during the years (fifteen of them) when I couldn’t sell any more Wraeththu novels to publishers. I began to publish the best of these writers, and again am always on the lookout for new ones. If anyone is interested, get in touch at the aforementioned address.

VENTRELLA: Do you think that there are things women can write about that just can’t be done by men writers?

CONSTANTINE: Not really, but perhaps it’s fair to say they might be able to write about certain aspects of life more convincingly than a man.

VENTRELLA: Are you someone who outlines heavily or are you a “pantser”?

CONSTANTINE: Not quite sure what a pantser is, but I don’t outline that heavily. I feel that stories are organic entities that tend to create themselves as they emerge. Publishers always used to demand huge outlines from me, which I found a pain to do, and quite frankly the finished books rarely had much resemblance to their synopses. Once a story is written down, then it’s time to go back and work on fine-tuning the plots, locations and characters. I can’t put all that in a synopsis. The story has to come out first.

VENTRELLA: Do you start with an idea, a setting, or a character?

CONSTANTINE: It can be any of those, just a spark of an idea, a smell, an impression, an emotion.

VENTRELLA: All writers are told to “write what you know.” What sort of research do you do before writing?

CONSTANTINE: I think it’s important to get your facts right. I often see movies about the 70s and see so many anachronisms in them. That’s why I write fantasy instead of historical novels. You have far more freedom in a fantasy novel about, say, what people might have on their breakfast tables. You don’t want to find Pop Tarts on a Victorian table in a novel, do you? But you do see that kind of thing. I really admire historical novelists; the amount of research and checking they must have to do is phenomenal.

For myself, I research aspects that apply across universes and realities. For example, I have an idea to write a fantasy novel that heavily involves the weather – so I bought some books for research on that.

VENTRELLA: What techniques do you use to make your protagonist someone with whom the reader can relate?

CONSTANTINE: I think it’s important to observe in reality how people speak, how they use their bodies and faces to communicate, how much a silence says. No one really speaks in formal dialogue like an updated Shakespeare play. Of course, it would be really irritating to have characters in a story talking completely realistically, so you have to impose some boundaries and restrictions, but it’s important to have an ‘ear’ for realistic speech.

Giving your characters credible behavior makes them believable, and people will relate to them more effectively. One thing I always tried to stop my students doing was using fiction clichés, such as people screaming or dropping a teacup/glass/plate in shock. When people are really frightened, I think most are more likely to swear beneath their breath, or not make a sound, than scream like someone in an old horror film. And have you ever seen someone drop something they were holding in shock? I haven’t. Also, things like collapsing/fainting. I don’t see that happen much either. Screaming might have its place, but the dropped tea cup and maidenly collapse really have to go!

VENTRELLA: What do you do to establish a believable fantasy world? In other words, how can you introduce the fantasy elements into the story and make them real without relying on info dumps?

CONSTANTINE: It’s just a case of being aware of it, and not dumping too much at once. A great amount of detail can be introduced with subtlety, such as in the ‘stage directions’ you might use for characters during lengthy dialogue. What are they doing as they’re talking? What are they picking up, leaning on, looking at, avoiding, etc etc.

VENTRELLA: When going through second and third drafts, what do you look for? What is your main goal?

CONSTANTINE: Pretty much all of the things I’ve talked about throughout the interview. Plot holes, realistic characters and situations, grammatical/syntactical errors, spelling, compelling dialogue and so on.

VENTRELLA: What criticism of your work do you disagree with the most?

CONSTANTINE: I had this one reviewer, who used to go out of his way to review my books, who absolutely hated my work. He obviously got his jollies by being able to slag me off once a year. I disagreed with his observations because they were subjective and just plain offensive. Clearly, he wasn’t comfortable with many of the subjects I include in my work.

I don’t expect everyone to like what I write – that would be an unrealistic expectation. And everyone is entitled to their opinion. A lot of people love writers I absolutely despise, but I don’t believe I am right and the others are wrong. It’s just down to taste.

VENTRELLA: All writers basically write what they would like to read. So what do you like to read? Who are your favorite authors?

CONSTANTINE: My favourite authors are Tanith Lee, Alice Hoffman, Jack Vance, P G Wodehouse, Jonathan Carroll, to name but a few. I have just about everything the first three on that list have ever written.

VENTRELLA: What advice would you give an aspiring author that you wish someone had given you?

CONSTANTINE: Don’t expect to be rich. Let go of any attachment to outcome, and simply write because you love to do so. Write what you love, because your heart will show, and other people will be more likely to love it too.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk with you about my work.

Filed under: writing | Tagged: editors, fantasy world creation, first draft, nonfiction, publishing house, self-publishing, Storm Constantine, Wraeththu, Write what you know, writing advice | Leave a comment »

Write What You Don’t Know

Posted on September 8, 2012 by Michael A. Ventrella

One of the most misunderstood directives new writers get is to “write what you know.”

Do you think H.G. Welles actually went to the moon? Did Steinbeck travel across the dust bowl? Did Melville fight a white whale?

Too many beginning authors get paralyzed by this: “But I don’t know anything about being a spy, so how I can write a good spy novel?”

Come on, if you limit yourself to “writing what you know,” well, your work will probably be very boring. Who wants to read about someone who drinks a lot of coffee and spends hours typing in front of a computer screen?

It would be better to take the negative form of this advice: Don’t write about what you don’t know. writing

They key, then, is to research. If you’ve never ridden a horse and your character spends days in the saddle, then find out what that’s like. Make it real.

We’ve all been frustrated when we read about something with which we have personal knowledge and found it lacking. As an attorney, I get very frustrated when some courtroom drama doesn’t follow the rules of evidence or otherwise completely misrepresents what a trial is like. Computer programmers hate it when the hero hacks into systems in ways that are impossible, and historians throw away novels full of anachronisms.

You have to write what you don’t know if you want to create believable characters. I am a straight white male in his early 50s; in order to write about people different than me, I have to do some research. I have to observe other people; I have to talk to them; I have to get into their minds and imagine how they would react to the things that are happening to them in my story.

I don’t know everything. I have to learn. I have to be willing to expand my experiences, because I don’t want my readers to roll their eyes and lose their suspension of disbelief when I go so far as to be unreasonable.

While writing BLOODSUCKERS (forthcoming), I interviewed an FBI agent to learn about their procedures, used Google Maps to determine where my characters were traveling so I could describe the area accurately, did research on vampire lore across the world, and otherwise tried my best to make the world in which my fantastic story takes place be real and meaningful. I don’t want a reader to stop and say, “Oh, come on now…” when I wrote about something in their area of expertise.

So go ahead and write that spy novel. Just do some research first so that you don’t place The Louvre in Rome.

Filed under: writing | Tagged: character development, new writers, Write what you know, writing advice | 1 Comment »

Interview with New York Times Bestselling Author John Ringo

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: Today, I am honored to be interviewing New York Times bestselling author John Ringo, who will be the Guest of Honor at this year’s Ravencon convention. (I’ll be there, too!)

John has has over two million copies of his books in print, and his works have been translated into seven different languages. His books range from straightforward science fiction to a mix of military and political thrillers.

You’ve had an interesting background. What made you decide you wanted to be a writer?

JOHN RINGO: My family tells me I’ve always written but you wouldn’t know it by my memory. I was always the kid who never turned in his essays. But I guess I’ve puttered at writing most of my life. And it’s better than a 9-5 job.

VENTRELLA: You’re also quite unique in that you did not collect a pile of rejection letters before your first novel was published. What’s the secret? Who did you bribe?

RINGO: Sigh. I need to just make a copy of this reply somewhere so I can cut and paste. 🙂

I wrote A HYMN BEFORE BATTLE in two chunks in the mid to late ’90s. It was the second “novel” I’d written. (The quotes are because neither the original version of HYMN nor my first novel were current novel length. And the ‘first story’ is never going to see the light of day.) When I’d finished, at least as well as I knew how at the time, I consulted ‘The Writer’s Digest’ then submitted it to Baen following all the submission requirements exactly. I’d already determined that it was more or less center of the lane for what they published.

I knew it would take months to even get reviewed so in the meantime I started on the sequel (one of my big suggestions to aspiring authors) and poked around on the Baen website. There I found one of the first ‘webforums’ (Baen’s Bar). Being a shy and retiring type, I, of course, just lurked. Hah! By the end of the first month I was one of the top three posters. 🙂

Another top poster was Jim Baen. He’d been active on the internet practically since it was opened to private and business use and he actively involved himself in the discussions. Which meant we were trading frequent discussions (as well as japes, gibes and jousts.) One point to make is that I did not go on there saying ‘I’m an aspiring author! Read my manuscript!’ I just got involved in the discussions. But at one point there was a discussion going on on the Aquatic Ape Theory. Jim was a proponent. I said ‘I think you’re crazy but I have to be nice to you cause I’ve got a book on your slushpile.’ His response was ‘Marla! Find me this manuscript!’ I took that as a jest suggesting that he was going to shred it.

About a week later I got a rejection. Just a mailed form letter with the title (A HYMN BEFORE BATTLE) squeezed into the title blank in a woman’s hand.

By that time I knew enough about Jim that if he had rejected it he’d have sent a personal message. So I sort of put it aside (I think I threw it away, I wish now I’d kept it!) and continued work on the sequel. I knew by then that Lois Bujold had been rejected three times before she published so I wasn’t worried. I had a day job and I’d just keep plugging along until I got published.

A week after I got the rejection (two weeks after Jim’s comment) I got the first email I’d ever gotten from Jim. ‘Nobody can find your manuscript. Send me an rtf.’

I then wrote a really abject letter explaining that it had been rejected but that was planning on reworking it as well as I could and I understood if he didn’t want to override his first reader…

I didn’t know Jim very well at that point. When he read the manuscript he fired the person who rejected it. 🙂

Anyway, I sent him HYMN as well as as much as I’d finished of GUST FRONT. One point that had come up during the discussions was that publishers look for ‘more than a one trick pony.’ They want someone who is going to be able to keep putting out stories. So I wanted to show I had more than one book in me.

He read it then sent me a series of emails telling me what was wrong with it. And the last was ‘if you fix it the way I told you, I’ll buy it.’ (Yes, every aspiring author’s dream.) So I did and he did.

The denouement to the story occurred a few month’s later. Jim accepted HYMN in April of 1998. In August I was puttering around on the computer and got an email from Jim. (Ding! You’ve Got Mail! Remember those days?) 🙂 The email read ‘Your mss Gust Front stops in media res. You have ten minutes.’ 🙂

I’d mentioned that I’d sent ‘as much as I’d finished’ of the sequel to Hymn when I sent Jim the Hymn mss. Well, it was exactly as much as I’d finished. I was working on it at the time so it ended in the middle of a battle in the middle of a sentence in the middle of a prepositional phrase. The last word of the mss was ‘of.’. 🙂

Fortunately, I’d finished it by that time and I sent him the whole thing. And he bought that. It was also when he hooked me up with David Weber.

VENTRELLA: Do you think that someone can learn to be a good writer? In other words, can a distinction be made between the technical skill and the creative skill?

RINGO: I think that any competent person can learn to be a competent writer and sometimes that’s all it takes. To be a really good author, though, I think requires talent. That may seem pompous but… I love music. I listen to music all the time. I have a head for lyrics. I absolutely suck at music. I have zero talent. I can’t figure out how to play the most basic notes, I’m flat as a singer. I just really suck. So I leave the music to people with the talent and admire that talent but I don’t go inflicting it on people.

But talent alone is not enough. ‘How do I get to Carnegie Hall?’ ‘Practice.’ As I mentioned above, I wrote a ‘full’ really really crappy novel before HYMN. And, yes, lots of other stuff before that. (Even if I was lousy about turning in homework.) Figure that you’re going to write a million words before you’re good enough to be published. But don’t get freaked by that. Those ‘million words’ are all the letters you write, emails, blog discussions, essays, etc. If you write them well, you’re advancing in the craft. Go for leet and you’re setting yourself up for failure. (At least until novels are primarily published in leet. 🙂

VENTRELLA: What themes do you find yourself revisiting in your work that may pop up without planning?

RINGO: The competent individual trying to achieve goals using a system in which he has to use people who are below his level of competence to achieve those goals.

Real life in other words. 🙂

VENTRELLA: What is it about science fiction that attracts you?

RINGO: The pallette. In SF you can pretty much create the starting environment and then work within that new millieu.

VENTRELLA: What science fiction stories (literature or movies) have inspired you?

RINGO: Heh. Either due to innate anti-socialness or the fact that I was always the ‘New Kid’, I grew up without alot of friends. Middle school and early HS was particularly bad. So I read instead of, you know, having a social life. So the list is…long.

Heinlein in general. (At least his earlier stuff.) The juveniles, STARSHIP TROOPER, obviously, the first part of TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE is probably my favorite book of all time. (The latter part being nearly my least favorite Heinlein.) Clarke’s DEEP RANGE was awesome. The list is endless.

VENTRELLA: Lately, fantasy has been outselling science fiction. Why do you think that is?

RINGO: Education. The educational system in the ‘West’ in general has been dumbed down so much that people’s brains aren’t well exercised. SF is designed to make people think. If you’re not used to that it, literally, hurts. A new thought causes increased blood flow to new areas of the brain. This is a good thing but it causes a slight headache. Since people’s brains aren’t broadly stressed by their education and day to day interactions reading SF gives them a headache.

In addition, alot of the traditional ‘core’ SF readers are now doing gaming instead of reading.

Combine the two and you have the relative success of fantasy.

However, thank God for it. For a while there nobody was reading. The population which graduated in the mid 80s into the late 90s contained a miniscule fraction of readers compared to newer graduates. Harry Potter has made reading ‘okay’ again. That’s a good thing.

VENTRELLA: Often, new writers are told to “write what you know.” This would seem to preclude anyone from ever writing science fiction or fantasy. Is this good advice at all?

RINGO: At one point it was suggested that I take over a writer’s workshop at a major convention. (Which idea I rejected.) But the joke was that the first thing I’d do is tell people to get some experiences. ‘The first writing exercise is to RUN to the top of this 22 story hotel! THEN BACK DOWN! When you get back I want a five hundred word essay on HOW YOUR FEET FEEL! MOVE IT MAGGOTS! MOVE IT! 🙂

What ‘write what you know’ means in SF is have a base of experience upon which to draw so as to more effectively tell the story and create the environment. I recently had to write a scene where a space welder is in an out-of-air situation. Have I ever been in an out-of-air situation in space? Nope. But I’ve been in one diving at least six times. (The last one during a cave dive which is why I now have claustrophobia.) So my big suggestion is always ‘Experience life. Then write. That way you’ve got something you ‘know.’

VENTRELLA: What is your writing style? (Do you outline heavily or just jump right in? Do you tend to start with an idea, a character concept, or something else?)

RINGO: Generally I jump right in. But … The ideation for the story is usually solid from months and even years of thinking about and building scenes and concepts. And I generally start with a general idea and a scene. Then, in general, I have scenes that I write to, what I call ‘stringing the pearls.’ Those scenes (‘visions of fire’) are what drive me to keep writing and are, generally, the really good part of my books.

Sometimes stuff comes out of nowhere and requires itself to be written. INTO THE LOOKING GLASS, GUST FRONT, GHOST and THE LAST CENTURION are in that category. Those write themselves and write themselves fast. LOOKING GLASS was a couple of weeks, GUST FRONT (one of my longest books) was a couple of months while I was working, GHOST was a month, LAST CENTURION was seven net days. (153k words)

I love those.

VENTRELLA: Of what work are you most proud?

RINGO: UNTO THE BREACH. I don’t recommend the series. Despite it’s popularity (and it’s immensely popular) it’s not everyone’s cuppa.

But UNTO THE BREACH is outstanding. It’s one of the few books of mine I recommend. The last book that was that good was GUST FRONT but GF is weak in prose and grammar. (Early author mistakes.)

VENTRELLA: You’ve done quite a few collaborations. What do you see as the advantage of doing so?

RINGO: For the junior author the advantages are several. They build market by introducing the new author to the established author’s fanbase. They help teach the craft of writing as well as working in the publishing industry. And you can generally get more money from doing a collab as a new author than your own work.

For the senior author they’ve got two or three values. They permit the author to get a story out there that they either don’t have time to write or don’t have quite the right skill set to write. (See ‘write what you know.’) And the senior author gets fairly good money for slightly less work than a full novel.

VENTRELLA: They have obviously worked out, as you continue to do them. Is it a truly collaborative effort, or does one author primarily do the writing and the other act as guide and editor? How do you divide up the responsibilities?

RINGO: Every collaboration is different. I’ve done collaborations where I wrote a 35k outline for the junior author, (THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS, HERO) one where it was the junior author’s idea and I took portions of it as well as teaching the craft of writing, (VON NEUMANN’S WAR) wrote most of it and left portions for the junior author to ‘fill in’ (Vorpal Blade series) to ones where I basically gave the junior author a vague concept and they ran with it. (TULORIAD.)

Every collaboration is different.

VENTRELLA: Have you ever run across unexpected controversy with your writing? If so, how have you dealt with it?

RINGO: Unexpected? No. I’m considered a ‘controversial conservative SF author.’ Not to mention GHOST, which… well, you just don’t get more controversial unless you’re a gangsta rappah under indictment for murder. How do I deal with it? Generally I try to swallow my rage and smile. Because with the exception of some of the stuff in the Ghost series, I really don’t see what I say, what my characters do and say, as particularly controversial, crazy, evil or illogical. I see the people who consider it ‘controversial’ as idiots and morons. (Whereas they view me as a ‘racist, homophobic, xenophobic, genocidal asshole’ in the words of Mercedes Lackey.)

So, mostly, I ignore it.

VENTRELLA: You’ve never shied away from political issues as well (nor have I) – we have had a few interesting discussions in this area. Do you think it is wise for authors to take stands which may alienate readers?

RINGO: As I said in a recent email to a family member, politics has become religion and there is virtually nothing which is not politicized. You can take the PC approach of having the enemy be alter versions of what the Left hates (the US military as in Avatar, Christians, middle-class white males) in which case you can alienate the core readers of SF. Or you can alienate the Left by being a human and American exceptionalist and having characters who, whatever their race, nationality, creed or sex, act in a traditional self-determinant manner and worry about PC after the Human Race has been saved.

Whatever people think, you don’t get the choice to not piss anyone off. ‘You can please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.’

VENTRELLA: Do you think this has affected your sales in any way? Do you care?

RINGO: If anything in the positive. My ‘controversial stands’ fit the market of my core writing. And, no, I don’t even if it’s in the net negative.

VENTRELLA: What advice would you give to a starting author that you wish someone had given you?

RINGO: Get an accountant.

VENTRELLA: What is the biggest mistake you see aspiring authors make?

RINGO: I tend to get sarcastic about this question. Impatience is one. There are alot of people out there that want to get published. Publishers who are even willing to look at unsolicited manuscripts are overwhelmed. So don’t think it’s going to be a fast process. Fill the time by writing your next book. Publishers also want people who have more than one book in you and if you’re a writer you’re going to want to write that one, too. Just write it. It may take years to get published. Unless you’re in your ’60s, you should have them. Be patient and keep writing in the meantime.

‘Puff reads.’ I made this mistake. After HYMN got accepted I asked Jerry Pournelle if he’d read it. He sent me a reply which at the time I took to be very rude to the effect that I’d asked him to do the most odorous chore of a professional writer so, no. Since then I’ve gotten to know more about Jerry and being asked to ‘read my manuscript’ and for Jerry he was being really damned polite.

There are authors who really enjoy that sort of thing. I don’t. Most don’t. So… please don’t ask. When we say ‘Yes’ we’re not really happy about it and when we say ‘No’ we feel like we’re dissing somebody’s baby. So … Don’t ask. Kay?

VENTRELLA: Finally: What’s the latest news on the possibility of movie adaptations? What other exciting scoops can you share?

RINGO: Zero. Nothing moving on that area. It sort of norks me that I’ve got 33 novels published or in the pipeline and so far I don’t have option or contract one. OTOH, given that I’m a ‘controversial conservative sf author’ (three strikes against me since even Syfy no longer does SF) I’m not really surprised. Just…norked. (Mildly irritated.)