writing advice | Michael A. Ventrella

Interview with Keith DeCandido

Posted on December 12, 2009 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I’m pleased to be interviewing the very prolific Keith DeCandido, author of numerous novels, short stories, essays, e-books, and probably Bazooka Joe comics too for all I know. He’s best known for his Star Trek fiction, but has written tie-ins for other popular sci-fi and fantasy series as well, such as Doctor Who, Supernatural, Andromeda and Farscape, as well as comic books (Spider-Man) and videogames (World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Command & Conquer). He has also edited various anthologies, including OtherWere, Urban Nightmares, Imaginings, the Doctor Who collection Short Trips: The Quality of Leadership, and the Star Trek anthologies New Frontier: No Limits, Tales of the Dominion War, and Tales from the Captain’s Table.

Keith, you have made quite a name for yourself writing movie adaptations, novel tie-ins, and so on, from Star Trek to Resident Evil to Buffy to CSI. This seems extremely cool and fun. How did this all begin? You weren’t one of those slash writers, were you?

KEITH DeCANDIDO: No, I wasn’t a slash writer—nor, for that matter, have I written any Bazooka Joe comics. I actually got my start on the editorial side of the desk, as I was the genre editor for the late Byron Preiss from 1993-2000, where I edited a large number of tie-ins, most notably the Marvel novels that Byron co-published with Berkley Books in the mid-to-late 1990s. Through that job, I was able to get the opportunity to pitch, both for the Marvel line I worked on (someone else in the office edited me for that work) and for things like Doctor Who and Magic: The Gathering anthologies, which is where I made my first fiction sales. Eventually it snowballed into novel contracts, and now this.

VENTRELLA: Do you primarily write first and then try to sell your work or do you at this stage in your career get assignments for specific books?

DeCANDIDO: There’s never been any consistency to it. Some projects are generated in-house, some are suggested by the editor, some are wholly from the writer. Much of my Star Trek work was developed with the editor—either John Ordover or Marco Palmieri—though not all of it, but that’s always been a collaborative thing. On the extremes, my three Supernatural novels were all my own concepts, but all my work with Blizzard was very much directed by the licensor. It all varies. Sometimes people will come to me—that was what happened with Blizzard and Supernatural both—sometimes I’ll go to them—which is what happened with the new Farscape comics.

VENTRELLA: Do you find it easier to write with pre-established characters, and is that one of the reasons you can be so prolific? Or instead, do you find it somewhat constraining, in that you may anger fans who gripe and exclaim that their favorite character wouldn’t act like that?

DeCANDIDO: : I think it’s a false dichotomy. There are ways that writing your own characters is easier; there are ways that writing in another setting is easier. It depends in part on the type of story you’re trying to tell. I don’t find it constraining at all, though—it’s more of a challenge than a constraint.

VENTRELLA: Does your work get subjected to more editing and control since you do not “own the characters”?

DeCANDIDO: Again, that varies from license to license. Blizzard keeps a very tight hold on their universes—which is the source of their popularity, honestly, so that isn’t a complaint—but it also means that they do more hands-on work. On the other end of it, Tribune Entertainment was very hands-off with my Andromeda novel. With Star Trek, they tend to keep a firmer hand on whatever’s current onscreen—which currently is the JJ Abrams stuff—while letting the writers and editors be more creative with the ends of the franchise that are not being developed onscreen any longer.

VENTRELLA: Do you feel that there is any sort of bias against tie-ins in the book world? I am no expert, so correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to me that they often sell much better than traditional fiction, yet can be ignored by reviewers and awards.

DeCANDIDO: That bias has lessened in the years I’ve been working, which is good to see, though it still does exist. The lack of reviews is frustrating, but a bunch of us have gotten together to redress the award issue by creating our own. In 2006, Lee Goldberg and Max Allan Collins formed the first professional association specifically for us licensed folk, the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. We also created our own award, the Scribes, which is awarded at Comic-Con International in San Diego every year. I’ve had three of my novels nominated for a Scribe so far, though with no winners, and I also was blessed with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the organization, along with Donald Bain and Alan Dean Foster.

VENTRELLA: Who is your favorite character to write for and why?

DeCANDIDO: Probably Worf from Star Trek. He’s always been one of my favorite characters, and I got to do a great deal of work with the character in his post-DS9 phase, as well.

VENTRELLA: And in a similar note, what’s your favorite Star Trek series and why? And how about that new film, huh?

DeCANDIDO: Deep Space Nine. It had the best writing, the best cast, the best characters, the most complex storytelling, and it really just did almost everything right. I enjoyed the new film for what it was, and I’m glad it’s revived interest in Trek, but it didn’t do much for me—but neither did any of the others. Star Trek has always, in my opinion, been far better suited to television than movies.

VENTRELLA: Have you ever been asked to write a novel based on a movie or TV show you didn’t like?

DeCANDIDO: When that has happened, I’ve found myself able to seek out and focus on the elements of the original that I do like. It’s worked wonders.

VENTRELLA: What’s your opinion on e-books and self publishing? Do you think aspiring authors should work with an e-book or POD publisher, or even self-publish?

DeCANDIDO: Well, eBooks and POD publishers and self-publishers are three entirely different things, and they only overlap in spots. I used to edit the monthly Star Trek eBook line, which were original eBooks published every month focusing on the Starfleet Corps of Engineers. I do not think that aspiring authors should work with such publishers until they’re at the point of last resort. It should be the final option, not the first one. Self-publishing is particular is fraught with difficulties because the need to print, publish, publicize, and distribute takes time away from doing more writing, which is what the writer should focus on. Finally, no author should ever under any circumstances work with a publisher who charges a fee to publish. Money flows to the writer, and any publisher that does so is a scam artist who is cheating you.

VENTRELLA: What’s the worst mistake you have made in your publishing career?

DeCANDIDO: Getting into it in the first place. This business is nuts…

VENTRELLA: And what’s the worst and best piece of advice you have received?

DeCANDIDO: PLASTICS!

Filed under: writing | Tagged: comic books, Keith DeCandido, self-publishing, Star Trek, tie-ins, writing advice | Leave a comment »

Interview with World Fantasy Award winning author Tim Powers

Posted on October 2, 2009 by Michael A. Ventrella

Tim Powers has won the World Fantasy Award twice now, for LAST CALL and DECLARE, the Philip K. Dick award twice for THE ANUBIS GATES and DINNER AT DEVIANT’S PALACE, and has multiple Nebula award nominations.

Tim Powers has always been one of my favorite authors. I look forward to every new release and move it to the top of my “Must Read” pile. My wife likes his work too, and turned him into a piece of dryer lint art which Tim purchased and now has hanging on his wall. (No, I’m serious — check out my wife’s page at www.HeidiHooper.com).

I met Tim at a convention a while ago and now it gives me great pleasure to be interviewing him.

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: Tim, one of my favorite books of yours is the pirate novel ON STRANGER TIDES. Let’s start with the big news then: How did this end up as the fourth Pirates of the Carribean film?

TIM POWERS: Disney optioned the book a couple of years ago for a projected fourth Pirates movie, and now it seems likely that the movie will happen! I imagine it’s the Fountain of Youth element in the book that they mainly want to use, but I haven’t talked to the script writers or anything, so I’m only guessing. In any case, I’m very pleased with this new attention being paid to a book I wrote 23 years ago!

VENTRELLA: Are you worried that the book may change too much upon being transferred into a film with already established characters? Do you have any say in this?

POWERS: No, I have no say in it, and that’s okay with me. I never feel that a movie must accurately reflect a book it’s based on — look at “Bladerunner”, or “To Have and Have Not”! Both were great books made into great movies, and the movies had very little to do with the original books. And obviously this movie can’t be based at all closely on the book, since the movie is using characters that are already separately established. I mainly want to be surprised when I see the movie!

VENTRELLA: Is it true that you get to have a cameo? TIDES

POWERS: No, that was an internet rumor. I’ve often said that if anybody were to make a movie of one of my books, I’d have three non-negotiable demands: (1.) That my wife and I get parts as extras in some crowd scene; (2.) That we get a free lunch from the catering truck; and (3.) that we get six of those cool jackets they make for the crew, with the movie logo on the back. This was, though, a joke!

VENTRELLA: Most of your novels follow a technique unusual for other writers, in that you take items from real history and find ways to make them interconnect in magical and fantastic ways that cause a reader to say “Aha! That makes perfect sense now!” when in fact it’s just make believe. How did this style come to being?

POWERS: Back in the mid-’70s, Roger Elwood proposed a series of books in which King Arthur was reincarnated at various points in history to save Western civilization. K. W. Jeter and Ray Nelson and I signed up to write these books, and I drew three places in history: 1529 (the Siege of Vienna), 1650 and 1810. Elwood’s project collapsed, which was just as well, but by then I had noticed the virtues of historical fiction! Such as — you get your exotic world ready-made, with its geography & maps, climate, government, currency, cuisine, mythology –! Even a lot of usable characters and events come with the package, all free. All you’ve got to do is look at the settings and the events and figure out a story that could be woven among them without knocking anything over. Find the inexplicable bits and connect the dots. It’s much easier than making up a consistent other-world, and I like to think it makes the supernatural developments more plausible, since they occur in places and among people that the reader has actually heard of.

VENTRELLA: Do you look for the connection first, or do you read a lot of history and biography and then see what jumps out at you?

POWERS: I approach it sort of like a paranoid detective. I read heaps of biographies and journals and whatnot, and my attention is polarized to look for things that don’t fit — which any biography has. And I ask myself, “Aha! What was really going on there?” And I make it a rule that nothing is a coincidence — if Keats did something on the same day that the King of Prussia did something, they’re secretly connected. And as I look for clues to the secret back-story, I eventually come up with one!

VENTRELLA: Has it ever not worked? Have you ever decided “You know, I’d love to do a book about X” and then after research, determined there wasn’t enough there?

POWERS: Not so far! I think anybody’s biography — Louisa May Alcott, Beatrix Potter — if it was thorough enough, could provide this sort of clues, this sort of evidence of a secret supernatural real story. Of course I’ve got to let the clues dictate it — it might turn out to involve vampires, or ghosts, or werewolves, or anything. If the research is going that way, I let my story go that way too.

VENTRELLA: What do you think of Dan Brown’s work? Do you think he is just copying your style, but not as well?

POWERS: Well I doubt that he’s copying me! That is, I doubt he’s read my books. But if I were ever (per impossibile) to collaborate with him, I’d tell him, “No, our made-up history has to be plausible enough to at least stand up to a quick search in the Encyclopedia Britannica!”

VENTRELLA: What gave you the idea for THREE DAYS TO NEVER? never

POWERS: It started with me noticing that, in all the photographs of Albert Einstein, his hair was white after 1928. So I wondered what had happened to him in that year — the biographies said he had some sort of stroke, or heart attack, or seizure, but I thought, “I wonder what really happened?’ So I started reading all the biographies of him, which led me to histories of Israel, and Charlie Chaplin, and Kaballah, and God knows what-all else. And of course at every turn I found odd details that couldn’t entirely be explained. One significant thing was this “maschinchen” or “little machine” that Einstein was working on for years; I eventually concluded that it must have been a time machine.

VENTRELLA: Were you a Chaplin fan before that? Or was it just research that led you to including him in?

POWERS: I wasn’t really a Chaplin fan, before I had to research him! Now I love his movies, especially “City Lights” and “Modern Times” and “The Kid.” Eventually I realized that the reason I had thought I didn’t like Chaplin was because I connected him with people like Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett doing imitations of him. Hardly fair.

VENTRELLA: You’ve commented before that you dislike it when authors try too hard to give messages or when readers try to read too much into the work. Have you been the victim of this, and how do you counter it?

POWERS: If people claim to find themes or messages in my books, that’s okay with me, as long as it’s nothing nasty. There may, for all I know, be themes and messages in them! But certainly I don’t have “things to say” in my stories — any themes that may show up are from my subconscious, not from any deliberate intention of my own.

VENTRELLA: What do you know now about the publishing industry that you wish you had known when you first started out?

POWERS: Oh — hard to say. My first publisher, Laser Books, surprised me by re-writing bits in my books, but nobody’s done that since. Really I haven’t learned anything that would have made me behave differently if I’d known it from the start! I guess I have no real complaints! DECLARE

VENTRELLA: What sort of advice would you give an aspiring writer that you wish someone had given you?

POWERS: Finish what you start, don’t do dozens of unconnected “Chapter Ones” that extend for only a couple of pages each. That’s kind of obvious, I know, but you specified what I could have benefited from hearing. To aspiring writres in general, I guess I’d say — read a whole lot, and not just in the field you want to write in and not just in the century or centuries you’ve lived in; and try to ditch your reflexive 2009 mind-set when you’re reading the old stuff. Don’t be cynical or ironic or tongue-in-cheek or Post Modern — that is, take your characters and their concerns at least as seriously as you take the elements in your own life. Don’t fret about the fact that your first drafts are dumb; they’re supposed to be. Print your stories out in the correct format and send them to editors — and start with the best publishers and magazines, don’t anticipate disappointment by starting with the lower ranks. Don’t self-publish.

VENTRELLA: And finally, what work would you like most to outlast you? What do you want to be remembered by?

POWERS: Oh gee — I suppose ANUBIS GATES or LAST CALL or DECLARE! I think those are my best. After I’m dead I won’t care, of course, but there’s something charming about the idea of somebody a hundred years from now finding a book of mine in a junk store and enjoying it, and trying to find more!

Filed under: writing | Tagged: fantasy world creation, pirates, writing advice | 1 Comment »

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Michael A. Ventrella

One of my blog readers (Stop laughing! Seriously, I do have some!) said that he appreciated the focus of this blog — helping aspiring writers with advice and examples — but wanted to know more basic information. For instance, he asked, how do I get ideas?

I recall reading somewhere that same question being asked of Isaac Asimov who responded with “How do you not get ideas?”

Most of the times ideas come from a “what if” scenario, especially when you’re writing speculative fiction. Everyone’s played “what if”. My writing has followed that pattern.

I read a lot of fantasy fiction. A common thread in many of these is The Special One who has some prophecy to fulfill and goes through a rigorous training in order to meet their destiny. Think of “Star Wars” for instance. With ARCH ENEMIES, I began with “What if they got the wrong guy? What if he was suddenly thrown into the adventure and didn’t have all those years of training and preparation?” writing

With THE AXES OF EVIL (the sequel, due out early 2010), I asked “What if he was faced with three prophecies which contradict each other and had to solve all three?”

Those were just the starting points, of course, because then the fun was throwing in the monkey wrenches. I love plot twists and turns and surprising my readers. Usually, that just involves looking at my outline and saying “Things are going smoothly in this part. What can I do to mess it up?”

Basically, the adventure should never be too easy and should never be predictable. I dislike books and movies where I can figure out what’s going to happen next, so I try my best to avoid cliches like the plague. (That was a joke.) My readers have told me that they really like the “Whoa! Wasn’t expecting that!” sections of my books, and the “How the heck is he going to solve this problem?” that isn’t revealed until the very last minute.

Doing that well takes preparation (which I have discussed in an earlier blog entry) because in order to work, all the clues have to be in place. Pulling something out of a hat at the last minute is a cheat and feels like one, especially if you’re writing a book with magic. I’ve seen too many movies and books where the solution is something magical: The “All you had to do was click your heels three times” ending doesn’t reward the hero in the slightest. Take Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” — the hero Prince is fighting the dragon. What an exciting battle! How does he defeat the creature? Oh, the three fairies come in and give him magic. Yawn, boring.

I like my heroes to do something special and unexpected yet completely in character. To be honest, that’s one of the hardest parts of writing, but also the most fun.

In THE AXES OF EVIL, there is a scene where a werewolf who can only be destroyed by a silver dagger through the heart must be killed. There is an elaborate plan laid out in which the the four main characters, armed with two silver daggers, attempt to accomplish this feat. But that’s too easy. Things go awry and soon Terin (the cowardly hero) gets stuck in a room full of werewolves with no weapon whatsoever. “This is great!” I thought. “This is exactly the situation I want.” Of course, it took me another month to think of a solution, but it’s much more satisfying and surprising than if there was just a great battle and the hero managed to stab his enemy.

I was recently given an assignment to write a short story “using pirates and magic.” Arrr! I love pirates! I had no idea for a story, however, so I just began thinking of typical pirate props — parrots, ships, peg legs, treasure maps and the like. Treasure maps led me to “X Marks the Spot” and being the lover of puns I am (oh, you can’t tell that from the two previous book titles?) this quickly became “X Spots the Mark.” What if the treasure map was a fake and the pirate was merely a “mark” for the scam? That began the adventure, but it didn’t lend itself to much of a story — until I brought out my monkey wrench.

Once THE AXES OF EVIL is finished with its editing (that will be the subject of another blog, I promise), I’ll begin work on BLOODSUCKERS: A VAMPIRE RUNS FOR PRESIDENT. The idea for that began when I heard someone refer to Congress as a bunch of bloodsuckers and I thought “Hey! What if….”

Bottom line: My technique is to start with the “What if”, come up with a basic story, and then throw as many unpredictable barriers in the way of my heroes as possible. This does not work for all types of fiction or all types of writers, but seems to keep me happy with my storylines.

Next week: back to interviews!

Filed under: writing | Tagged: Arch Enemies, character development, ideas, new writers, The Axes of Evil, writing advice | Leave a comment »

Interview with Gregory Frost

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Michael A. Ventrella

Gregory Frost is the author of the Shadowbridge duology, SHADOWBRIDGE and LORD TOPHET. His latest short fiction appears in the anthology POE, edited by Ellen Datlow. He’s been a finalist for every award in the sf, fantasy, and horror genres. Other works include LYREC, TAIN, REMSCELA, THE PURE COLD LIGHT, FITCHER’S BRIDES, and the short fiction collection ATTACK IF THE JAZZ GIANTS & OTHER STORIES. His essay on Slipstream fiction appears in Modern Fantasy Literature (Cambridge University Press), co-edited by Farah Mendelsohn. For two years he was the principal researcher for a non-fiction television producer, for shows that appeared on The Learning Channel and The Discovery Channel. Currently he is the acting Fiction Writing Workshop Director at Swarthmore College, in Swarthmore, PA, and teaches in writing programs in and around the Delaware Valley. His web page is Gregoryfrost.com.

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I’m pleased to be interviewing Gregory Frost. I first became aware of Frost with his initial novel LYREC which I remember reading on the Boston subway back in the 80s. Although I have not re-read it since then, I recall it being quite fun with some real issues about religious beliefs…

Gregory, was LYREC the first novel you had written? What made you decide on that theme for your first novel? (PS: My wife says to tell you she loved that book.) Any news on it being re-issued?

GREGORY FROST: LYREC was the first novel that was published. Hardly the first one I’d written. In fact my first attempt at a novel was about 70 pages long. The second attempt was, at least, of an appropriate length, around 250 pages. But it and numerous others live in a box in a closet, which is where they belong. That second one made its way to Lin Carter, who was editing the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series in those days (that should date me), courtesy of a letter of introduction from one David Gerrold, who’d never even met me. And Carter, bless him, did a line edit on the first 10 pages, showing me how much I did not understand of the craft. It would be a decade after that before I sold LYREC. But both Gerrold’s letter and Carter’s efforts were acts of kindness on their part. I think apiring authors should always stiffen their spines and talk to published writers. Trust me, only some of us bite. The zombie writers…yeah, you should probably not talk to the zombies.

I expect LYREC would have been a YA novel had there been such a category in ’84. Main character is an alien who has little experience with human emotions and finds himself greatly overcome by them as he inhabits a human body; he has to sort out his angry, warring and violent impulses. And his sidekick is unable to manifest as a human and so goes through the book as a large talking cat with attitude. I was trying to do something with fantasy besides interminable trilogies and quests. So there’s way more Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser in there than there is Tolkien or Robert E. Howard. I love Fritz Leiber, and those stories of his were unquestionably influential. Roger Zelazny’s work, too. It’s fresh, funny, different. I was shooting for all that with LYREC. A really good ride.

And at the moment there’s a possibility it’s coming back into print from Wilder Press this winter. Negotiations on that front continue, and I don’t know how that’ll fall out.

VENTRELLA: How did you break into the publishing business at that time?

FROST: I broke in by publishing a short story (in The Twilight Zone Magazine for the old people in the audience), and then in quick succession two more in F&SF, and around then at a convention I met Terri Windling, who at the time was an editor at Ace Books. I was in the middle of a draft of a novel based on the Irish epic The Tain, and the idea excited her. She agreed to look at LYREC, I think, pretty much on the strength of the idea that I was going to do my version of Cú Chulainn.

VENTRELLA: Has the business changed much since then?

Back then a publisher would try to develop a relationship with you—grow your career, so to speak. Now you’d better write a bloody best-seller coming out of the chute or you’re for it, mate. The bean-counters will look at your numbers and instead of thinking, “We can promote her next book and sell even more,” they go “Huh, your numbers weren’t great, so we’re not going to publish you at all!” That is the current reality. I can’t even tell you how many writers I know of who published a portion of a trilogy or series with a full character arc, only to have the publisher say in the middle of it, “Don’t bother to finish. We don’t want the last book(s) because your sales haven’t been great.” It’s ugly—and bovinely stupid—out there.

One of the books I use in teaching writing is THE GREAT GATSBY because so much of the correspondence between Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins, his editor, is available to us. And it’s interesting to see how much of that book was pulled together during the editing and revision process. Fitzgerald did not turn in a fine, complete, perfect manuscript. Far from it—the original Jay Gatsby was a complete cypher, even to the author. But nowadays that’s what you’re expected to do, turn in a perfect, finished work. Editors are now responsible for twenty more times the number of books in any given minute, so they can’t take the time to guide, to work in close that way. Someone like David Hartwell may still take such carewith selected authors, but he’s a dying breed. Everything now is Walmartized, the whole process. And it is not giving us better literature.

VENTRELLA: You have not limited yourself to one specific genre. While certainly that is very admirable artistically, do you feel that may harm you professionally? Should authors try to “specialize”?

FROST: I wouldn’t recommend the genre hopping as a career move. But then I wouldn’t recommend you be slow and methodical, either, in the genres.

Okay, I was having lunch with two contemporary authors a few days ago, Rachel Pastan (LADY OF THE SNAKES) and Asali Solomon (GET DOWN). And Rachel expressed to Asali how prolific I am. I mean, I had two books out last year. I’m now working on what I hope are final revisions of a supernatural mystery. I protested that I’d been working on this thing for 18 months and that was after setting it aside to write LORD TOPHET when Random House picked up SHADOWBRIDGE. And in discussing this, I realized that for a contemporary—let’s say (snootily) literary—author, a decade between books isn’t particularly shocking or unusual. Lord-Tophet_web

Asali’s collection came out a few years ago, and she’s under contract to produce a second book. But nobody’s going mad wondering where it is, and she’s still pondering it. Now, I took seven years probably from beginning to end to write SHADOWBRIDGE, and got nothing but shit about it from reviewers and interviewers. You take that much time in the genres and you’re immediately suspect. There’s this kind of “You’re writing entertainments, so if you took that long there must have been a problem” thing going on. We’re expected to knock out a book a year, in the same mold as the last book. You want a career, you should be doing that. You’re not supposed to be spending years crafting sentences.

Anyway, not answering your questions exactly, am I? Short answer: I write what I feel like writing. Always have. Always will. No, it’s not a smart career move when the industry and fan-base wants volume 18 of the seemingly endless saga of Morgock the Swordbelcher, or the eighth alternate history of some damn war that you haven’t added laser weapons to yet. Truth is, if you can stomach doing that and you’re fast, go do it, because you will definitely see more financial reward. Going off into the dark and changing up every time will likely not do this for you. Especially if you’re slow. But I’m stuck with me and that’s how I am. Contrarian by nature.

Having said that, I do write stories for anthologies that I’m invited to contribute to, provided I can think of something that fits within the proposed theme. But I have to get interested. I turned in a werewolf story for an anthology Darrell Schweitzer put together. But I only did it because I got to write a Donald Westlake werewolf story. And for another anthology of Darrell’s, of vampire stories, I wrote one because it allowed me to create a fifteen minute version of Homer’s The Iliad.

There has to be something to interest me and get me beyond the “oh, great, another vampire book” response, which is invariably my first reaction. TWILIGHT? Oh, please kill me now. (Of course, he said, mine wouldn’t be like that.) Also my response to anything to do with King Arthur, bands of small hairy men on terrible quests, or brutish brooding barbarians. The best King Arthur work since T.H. White was a throwaway piece penned originally as a Christmas card by the late John M. Ford. No one else has even come close. The best barbarian was in Ian Banks’ THE BRIDGE. Shadowbridge-web1

VENTRELLA: What is the basic theme of the SHADOWBRIDGE series? What’s the long term plan for the storyline?

FROST: The basic theme is that the books are and will be all about stories and storytelling. The first two are about Leodora aka “Jax”, who travels the world of Shadowbridge collecting stories and performing them. She sort of finds herself obsessed with learning stories and eventually discovers that her own exploits are becoming mythic, stories are being told of her. And finally her very life depends on knowing one particular story, one particular truth.

I built the world to be open-ended, and part of the first book’s challenge was winnowing down the breadth of possibilities into one large canvas on which creation myths, kitsune tales, stories about Death, and ghost stories could all float. With one exception the stories were written where they showed up. And I have a couple that never found their place, so they’re sitting off in a notebook, raring to be used somewhere, sometime.

VENTRELLA: Not every writing technique works for everyone, but what’s your writing process? Do you use extensive outlines?

FROST: No, not every technique works, and no two people have the same process. So I cannot advocate what I do in the sense of saying “you must do this.” In fact, anyone who says “You must do this” is at best telling you what they must do.

I’ve adopted what I call the John Cleese method of outlining, which sounds like a joke but isn’t. I heard him interviewed, describing how he and Connie Booth had written “Fawlty Towers” episodes by stretching a sheet of butcher’s paper across his living room and then writing the things they knew, or thought they knew, in about the place where that seemed it should happen. Started out with just a few things and then added to it, building a timeline of a sort.

So I have boxes of this old useless pinfeed paper, and I now take five or more sheets of it and do the same thing—write what I think I know, approximately where it seems to belong in the book, and then add to it. Build it up. And once it’s done, I’ll pretty much ignore it and go write. Usually by that point I’ve already done a few scenes or chapters anyway, because something got me interested. For the Shadowbridge books, I had a draft of the final dialogue between Leodora and Tophet done before I’d started the second book or had any notion of how I would arrive at that dialogue.

And about a third of the way into the book, I’ll usually find that the outline is invalid, because something better came along while I was writing and I took a left turn at Albuquerque. So I’ll do another outline as verification that I’ve still got a story going. And then I’ll write forward. And on top of that, I’m writing longhand. With a fountain pen (and Noodler’s Inks). Now, how in the world could I recommend that process to any sane human being?

VENTRELLA: Of which book are you most proud? What would you like to be remembered for?

FROST: Currently, I’d like to be remembered for the Shadowbridge duology and for FITCHER’S BRIDES, which I think was a hellishly good novel of horror. I think I did up Bluebeard pretty well for Terri Windling with that book (I seem destined never to stray very far from Terri’s influence). On the other hand, since joining Facebook and other online communities, I’ve been floored by people who have read TAIN and REMSCELA to the point where the pages are falling apart and claim these are their favorite books in the world. So (to quote Bill Murray), I’ve got that going for me…which is nice. Fitcher-Cover

(Oh, and there’s a limited small-press edition of those books in one volume, by a publisher who went out of business, so if anyone’s still searching for them, get in touch, because I have all the remaining copies…)

VENTRELLA: What’s your opinion on e-books? Do you think they’re the wave of the future or a step down from traditional publishing?

FROST: It may be the thing that saves us all. My agent swears by her Kindle. I expect Apple will come up with an iNovels reader in the near future (you heard it here first) that tries to do for literature what the iPod did with music. I think we’ll reach the point where bookstores become places that make the book for you on the spot, eliminating the returns and distribution problems that plague this idiotic industry now. Put in your order, get your book in twenty minutes, like a pizza. I think if America wasn’t so pig ignorant we’d be making books from hemp paper now, which would cut costs ridiculously since, you know, it’s a weed that grows almost anywhere, like kudzu. But that would not make timber and paper industries happy, just as alternative energy sources infuriate Big Oil…so until you kill the chuckleheads, it probably won’t happen and you’ll shortly pay $10 for a mass market paperback.

Essentially, I’m for anything that puts books in the hands—and minds—of people, and makes them kill their TVs. Invite me to your house. I’ll kill your TV for you.

VENTRELLA: Tell me about the Liar’s Club and what you hope to accomplish with it. And be sure to let me know when you are accepting applications for other members.

FROST: The Liars Club of Philadelphia is a small collective of authors from across and outside the genres who felt that we could do more to promote ourselves as a collective. The baker’s dozen includes Bram Stoker Award Winner Jonathan Maberry and bestselling author William Lashner. We’ve been doing a “Liars Club Tells the Truth” tour now for about 6 months in and around the Delaware Valley, strictly at libraries and independent bookstores. We’re trying to promote the indies as well as ourselves. When the dinosaurs die (and Borders, I’m talking to you), then our hope is the independents will move back into the spaces that they were squeezed out of by these small-brained leviathans. We’re doing our part to help by throwing bashes at the bookstores and bringing in as many people as we can get. Here’s a link to our latest outing, at Aaron’s Books in Lititz, PA (http://liarsclubphilly.com/?p=189)

Greg and me

Filed under: writing | Tagged: e-books, first draft, Gregory Frost, Lyrec, publishing house, Shadowbridge, short stories, writing advice | 4 Comments »

Interview with Dave Freer

Posted on August 1, 2009 by Michael A. Ventrella

This week, I am pleased to present an interview with Dave Freer. Dave writes mostly humorous or alternate history novels and has collaborated with Eric Flint and Mercedes Lackey as well. His books do not always fit into nice little categories that publishers like, but that’s also what makes them interesting. Before pursuing a writing career, Dave was an ichthyologist, and (not making this up) fish farm manager. He is a rock-climber, chef, and all around athletic kind of guy, especially when compared to most writers. He lives in South Africa with his wife and children.
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MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: Dave, what’s your writing process? Do you use extensive outlines?

DAVE FREER: I must write 200 words before I get up, go to ‘loo, make coffee, read e-mail, or any other displacement activity. Trust me: there is nothing like twisted legs or desperate need for coffee to focus the mind, and once focussed you often over-run the 200 by several thousand. Outlines? Oh yes, very useful… until the characters take over and ignore them. I still do them. They provide a framework to disregard… well, to build on. In the end the book fits the concept if not the verbatim outline.

VENTRELLA: What’s your writing background? Did you begin with fiction?

FREER: Writing background… when I was a final year schoolboy back just before the age of dinosaurs, I went to my English Master (Old British style Boarding School) and said “Sir, I want to be a novelist.” He laughed at me and replied: “Freer, you can’t spell, and no one can make a living at it.” He was right about the spelling, so I assumed he was right about the rest (he was a teacher, see, and teachers are right, except, as I later learned, when they are wrong), so I listened and embarked instead (after my two year stint as a conscript in Medical Corps) on a career in fantasy writing in which no could make a living. Okay, so it was lightly disguised as Fisheries Science (I am an ichthyologist) but it involved writing a lot of papers and reports about the status of the Shark Fishery and the biology of sharks. I blundered into writing from there in an unrepeatable fashion. (I started my fiction writing career in a stuck in a bathroom with amoebic dysentry for a week. There are many other better ways to do this. In fact, almost any other way works better. And is less horrible. I’m a GREAT bad example.)

VENTRELLA: What skills are needed for short story writing that are different from novel writing?

FREER: Shorts are a bitch to write well. Harder than novels. I always hold that writing shorts is best training for writing novels and I wish a lot of verbose novelists would do it. So, to me, there is no real difference.
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VENTRELLA: You’ve do a lot of collaborations with other authors. Do you meet in advance? Work through email? Is it basically one person’s ideas and the other’s work? What happens when there is a disagreement?

FREER: Eric and I met through a e-flamewar that ended in mutual respect. We became good friends and offered a collab proposal to our mutual publisher. Don’t try this at home, as you’re probably not going to get as lucky with a guy who can be gentleman and admit he was wrong – or be one yourself. My publisher set the Lackey collab up. We work through e-mail in multiple colors for our replies.

It’s usually one author’s seed-idea – for example RATS, BATS & VATS: Eric Flint had a short in which he had a talking uplifted rat and a bat rejected by one of the major magazines, with the editor profoundly informing him that the skull capacity of rats was too small for the volume of brain needed for uplift. Eric — knowing I was a biologist — asked me if this was true. I said I could think of at least three ways to solve the problem, and suggested the best. He said that would make a great story… and then we plotted the backround and setting. The book is still selling, and the mechanism I suggested was reported in Scientific Journals as a successful neurological implant technique. Of course a book is really rarely about science — it’s about the characters — and this one was no exception. I then wrote the first draft, e-mailing it to Eric to read as we went along. We’ve modified that over time — I now write the first draft with notes where I need him to put in stuff. We then do circulating edits.

SLOW TRAIN TO ARCTURUS was a similar evolution. Eric said he’d really love to do another generation ship story, they’d gone out of vogue — but it would have to be something different. So we touched on the core problem with generation ships — they take a long time to get there and it’s quite possible the planet will suck for habitability when you get there. And then you have to do it all over again… and biosystems are fragile. We solved the problems in a rather unique way.

It’s more — with us — a case of two lumps of fissionable material being pushed into close proximity, than one person’s ideas. It’s about as much fun as you can have as a writer, provided you get the right collaborator. As forthe disagreement thing… it happens. We both give ground and reach compromises. That’s ideal, but otherwise resign yourself to “yes sir,” if you’re a junior partner.

VENTRELLA: How did you break into the business? Did you start with an agent? 067131940X

FREER: Through the slush pile. Took me two years to the day from submission to acceptance. No agent back then.

VENTRELLA: How important is an agent, in your opinion?

FREER: Important. Getting more important every week. I actually think this is another case of publisher penny-wise pound-foolish, as the task (and relatively small expense) of trawling slush has been handed increasingly to agents. Some are good at it, but the reality is the short term saving is recovered from publishers, because it means authors get agents right off the bat (instead of many mid career as was once true). Agented sales inevitably cost publishers more, after the initial ‘get in’ — so by saving on slush reading they’re now paying more, sooner, for more expensive books. Agents have less resources and, in some cases, less experience with publishing than junior editors at a publishing house, so it may not be wise in quality terms. But that’s the status quo, it’s not going to change soon. Live with it, and pick out the good agents. There are some excellent ones.

VENTRELLA: Here’s the question I’ve asked everyone so far: What’s the biggest mistake you have made?

FREER: Turned down a collab suggestion from publisher… He wouldn’t tell me who it was. It was David Weber.

VENTRELLA: What is the best piece of advice you could give a starting writer?

FREER: You don’t need amoebic dysentry or the approval of your English teacher to write. You just have to write.

Filed under: writing | Tagged: agents, Dave Freer, outlines, short stories, writing advice | Leave a comment »

Interview with “Space and Time” editor Hildy Silverman

Posted on July 25, 2009 by Michael A. Ventrella

Hildy Silverman is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Space and Time, a 43-year-old magazine featuring fantasy, horror, and science fiction. She is also the author of several works of short fiction, which can be found in Wild Child, Phobos, Dark Territories (ed. Gary Frank and Mary SanGiovanni, Garden State Horror Writers, 2008), Witch Way to the Mall? (ed. Esther Friesner, Baen Books), an as yet-to-be-titled vampire anthology (ed. Esther Friesner, Baen Books) and Bad-Ass Fairies (ed. Danielle Ackley-McPhail). She is a member of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and the Garden State Horror Writers. She lives in New Jersey with one husband David, one daughter Rayanne, and one Bichon Frise, Frosty. She is a freelance consultant who writes corporate training, marketing communications, and SEO articles for major companies throughout the U.S.
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MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: First of all, Hildy, how did you end up with this position, following in Gordon Linzner’s footsteps?

HILDY SILVERMAN: It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I had met Gordon at a convention and saw him a few times due to mutual friends. I started reading Space and Time and really liked the unique fiction he ran. He told me that he was looking to sell the magazine and had some possible buyers interested, so I didn’t think much more about it.

Later, at a SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America party), Gordon told me that none of the buyers had come through, so he was just going to shut down the magazine. Maybe I had a few too many Cosmos, because my response was, “Well, what if I wanted to buy it?” Long story short, we talked it over, I performed my due diligence, and in the end we were able to work out a good deal. Thus my career as a small publisher began.

VENTRELLA: When reviewing submissions, what will send a story to the slush file quickest?

SILVERMAN: Well, pretty much all of the stories start in the slush file anyway. Space and Time has six associate editors, who serve as first readers of the slush. They weed out the stories that aren’t up to snuff then forward the “goodies” to our fiction editor, Gerard Houarner. If he gives the story his blessing, it’s usually in…I just look them over and, except for a few rare occasions, rubber-stamp his choices.

If what you mean is what will get a story rejected quickest, there are a few obvious (or what should be obvious) things. Stories that are mailed to the business address without first requesting to do so are rejected out-of-hand (we accept electronic submissions only). Stories that clearly haven’t been proofread – full of typos, spelling and grammatical errors, formatting problems, etc – are also Right Out. Also, if the story doesn’t contain some sort of speculative fiction element, it is not for us. Those are the kinds of things that get weeded out first and fastest.

VENTRELLA: Do you advise aspiring writers to begin with short story submissions or do you feel that in today’s market, it is no longer necessary as a way to make a name for yourself?

SILVERMAN: I’ve heard conflicting advice and statements on this subject for awhile now. If a writer ultimately wants to make it as an author of full-length books, I’d say that writing ANYTHING until you’ve perfected your craft is a good idea. There’s certainly a lot less of a time investment in practicing your craft perfecting short stories for submission than if you write full-length manuscripts over and over. If you’re good enough to have you short stories published in a number of respected short fiction magazine and anthologies, perhaps win an award or two, it certainly wouldn’t hurt your reputation when ready to peddle a longer work to agents and editors. Credits are credit – they always look good on a submission letter.

VENTRELLA: Is there a talent needed for short stories that is separate from the skill needed for novels?
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SILVERMAN: Oh, yes. Some people mistakenly believe that because short stories are – well, shorter, they are faster and easier to write. Not true. You need to be able to convey an entire story – full plot, characterization, world building, etc. – in 10,000 words or fewer (usually fewer). That takes a great deal of skill. Your writing has to be tight, your use of language precise. Folks who write novels may have those abilities, but others will tell you they just can’t fit everything they want to say into the short story form. By the same token, there are short fiction writers who can’t “go long.”

VENTRELLA: Are there any taboos that would prevent you from accepting a story? Any trends you’re sick of?

SILVERMAN: I’m pretty hard to offend, especially when it comes to often-taboo subjects like sex or religion. In fact, I daresay I have or will publish some stories that are bound to get me into trouble with a few readers! As long as the story is well-written, with involving characters and a plot with a beginning, middle, and end I will give it fair consideration.

That said, pure “snuff” fiction holds no interest for me, mostly because there’s no plot there, just a vignette showcasing the abuse of one character by another. If someone sent me a piece featuring abuse, rape, or torture that is clearly all about wallowing in some disturbing fantasy, that’s not getting published, mostly because such work has no character, plot development, or anything of interest to say (except, maybe, “I need help.”)

As for trends I’m sick of, nope, haven’t run into any yet. We only open for submission windows, so I don’t see what a lot of other editors do, which is the same vampire plot or the same space opera story repeatedly throughout the year. There was a funny mini-trend I noticed last time we were open, though. Several stories about Quetzalcoatl came in all at once. I assume there was a planned anthology that didn’t go through; that’s usually the reason for an odd theme to suddenly rear its head in multiple submissions.

VENTRELLA: What do you personally like to read? Does that influence the choices you make as an editor?

SILVERMAN: I am a big fan of dark urban fantasy and horror these days. However, my tastes have changed over the years…I started out reading only hard science fiction (Asimov, Bova), transitioned to fantasy (Tolkien, McCaffery), and went on from there (King, Butcher). I also enjoy some literary fiction (Russo) – referencing the category here, not my personal opinion that it is more “literary” than other fiction. I supposed personal taste always comes into play when making editorial decisions, but I try to focus on how engaging a given story is, rather than be distracted by it not being my “thing.” If I feel unqualified to judge the merits of the story, I’ll leave it up to Gerard or one of the associate editors who is into that kind of story to make the final call.
Space&Time2

VENTRELLA: Does having an agent make a difference to you?

SILVERMAN: No, not for short fiction. In fact, I would find it odd to receive a piece brokered by an agent. There’s simply nothing to negotiate with a magazine publisher – our payment offerings, the rights requested, they’re all pretty standard. I can’t remember every getting a piece that was submitted by someone’s agent, though many of our authors do have agents to represent their longer works.

VENTRELLA: What’s the best piece of advice (other than “learn to write better”) you can give an aspiring writer?

SILVERMAN: Don’t forget to send your work out. It does you little good to write a huge number of short stories only to let them pile up in a drawer because you can’t or won’t get around to sending them to a market for consideration.

Also, learn the business side of writing. Too many writers are so focused on the craft – which IS important – but they never bother to learn the rules of the trade. You need to know how to research a potential market, understand guidelines, adhere to those guidelines, read a contract and understand the rights you are signing away, things like that. There are resources all over the Web and in how-to books that can tell you how to manage the money-making side of your career as well as the creative aspects. You should be equally versed in both.

VENTRELLA: As a writer yourself, what are your long term goals and what are you doing to make them happen?

SILVERMAN: Long term, I would like to see my novel published. I’ve been shopping it around to agents and have gotten some lovely rejections. Oh, that’s another thing for aspiring writers to remember – you’re going to get rejections. A lot. And some more. So has pretty much every major author you’ve ever heard of. The key is how you handle it. You can’t take them personally…it is your work being rejected, not your baby, not you. Everyone rejects work for a huge number of reasons, most of which are not because you suck as a writer. This is something I have to remind myself of all the time, because it is easy to be stung by rejection, even if you have a thick leathery skin like me.

In the meantime, I’m continuing to submit my short fiction to a variety of markets and have been enjoying some success there. I currently have three pieces published or about to be published in three different anthologies this year, plus a couple more pending.

I need to set some time aside to do more writing and submitting, but between running the magazine, my “day” job, and family life, time is a factor. I need to push past that and get on the stick, though, especially when it comes to sending out the next round of queries on the book.

Me and Hildy at the Philcon 2010 convention

Filed under: writing | Tagged: agents, editors, rejection letters, writing advice | 1 Comment »

Interview with Hugo and Nebula Award Winning Author Mike Resnick

Posted on July 5, 2009 by Michael A. Ventrella

Mike Resnick has 5 Hugo Awards to his name (having been nominated 33 times — so far!) and has won numerous other awards for his fiction. As of 2009, he is first on the Locus list of all-time award winners, living or dead, for short fiction, and 4th on the Locus list of science fiction’s all-time top award winners in all fiction categories. He’ll be attending the World Science Fiction convention in Montreal in a few weeks, as will I, except he, of course, is once more nominated for a Hugo award.

His web page is here.

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I am thrilled to be interviewing one of my favorite writers, Hugo and Nebula award-winning Mike Resnick.

Mr. Resnick, you seem to embody what many people advise all new writers: write a lot and write about everything. You’ve done fiction, non fiction, articles, editing, and so on. Do you agree that this is important and how do see a varied background as helping your writing?
Mike Resnick photo

MIKE RESNICK: Anything a writer can learn will eventually prove useful. Editing shows you how other people attack their stories, lets you see the strengths and weaknesses of certain approaches. Writing non-fiction teaches you to be careful of your facts, and that’s almost equally important in science fiction, where you strive for verisimilitude. Short stories and novels have different approaches, and the more you can learn about both, the less likely you are to put yourself at a competitive disadvantage against writers who do learn all that they can about their craft.

VENTRELLA: How has the publishing industry changed since you began?

RESNICK: The main change is that while they are printing more books, less houses are printing them. When I started selling in the early 1980s (I won ‘t count the three science fiction books I did in the late 1960s; my post-1980 career is a public penance for them), 18 New York publishers had science fiction lines. Today there are maybe half a dozen mass market houses with science fiction lines. Signet, Fawcett, Gold Medal, Pyramid, Lancer, Paperback Library, Playboy Press, Doubleday, and half a dozen others have gone – or seen their lines go – the way of the dodo.

VENTRELLA: Did you have an agent and do you think agents are necessary these days?

RESNICK: I had an agent after my first couple of sales; a lousy one. I got a top one in 1983, and I still have her, and she is absolutely not allowed to die or retire before I do. Yes, they’re necessary, for any number of reasons:

1. A lot of houses – most, in fact – won’t read unagented manuscripts.

2. Your agent, because of all the contracts that pass through her office and all the deals she’s negotiated, has a far better idea of what will be a contract-killer that you do, and will know what Publisher A will accept that Publisher B won’t.

3. A good agent will have a top foreign desk, will make you more money overseas than you’ll make in the US, and will have working relationships with top foreign agents in each country.

VENTRELLA: Self-publishing seems to be the trend; do you believe that if a starting writer self-publishes it destroys their chance of being taken seriously by “real” publishers and editors?

RESNICK: John Scalzi to the contrary – and he had a unique situation, with 25,000 daily hits on his blog – I believe, and have always believed, that a self-published book practically screams out that it was not good enough to compete in the economic market place. resnickflagship

VENTRELLA: What process do you use in writing? How important are outlines, for instance?

RESNICK: I have a very brief outline I use to sell the book to a publisher, and a slightly more detailed but far less formal outline – a set of notes,
actually – that I use when I sit down to write the book.

VENTRELLA: Do you plan an entire series at once or concentrate on each book separately?

RESNICK: If you’re writing a series, you have to know a little about where each book starts and finishes, but you concentrate on the book you’re writing, because if you do a lousy job there won’t be any more in the series.

VENTRELLA: Do you usually have more than one project at a time, or do you tend to get one finished and then move on? Do you think it is better to concentrate on one?

RESNICK: I only write on one novel at a time, but while I’m writing it I often take a couple of days off to write a story or an article, and then come back refreshed. For example, I just handed in STARSHIP: FLAGSHIP, the 5th and final book in that series…but while I was writing it, I wrote and sold a story to Asimov’s, 2 to Subterranean, 1 to Analog and 1 to GATEWAYS, plus an article for Challenger and one for the SFWA Bulletin. That’s probably why it took me 9 weeks to write the novel instead of 6 weeks.

VENTRELLA: What’s the biggest mistake you have made professionally? What is the biggest mistake you see new authors making?

RESNICK: I sold 3 very derivative, not-very-good science fiction books in the late 1960s. I was busy learning my trade as an anonymous hack in the “adult” field, and I made the mistake of doing hackwork in a field I cared for. I realized it very quickly, and stayed away from science fiction – as a writer, not a con-attending fan – for 11 years to give readers a chance t forget. They forgave, but those damned books still turn up at every autographing session to humiliate me.

The biggest mistake new authors make? Either sending a manuscript out when they could make it better (this is a murderously competitive field), or signing a lousy contract with a second-rate publisher just to get their book into print.

VENTRELLA: I understand that Hollywood has just taken an interest in your “Galactic Midway” series, which I recall discovering and loving back when they were published 27 years ago. How did that come about, and why that series among all of yours? Can you give any details about this deal yet? resnickoutpost

RESNICK: There aren’t any details to give. I met with Jupiter 9 Productions when I was in Los Angeles for the Nebulas this spring. They have options on a couple of my properties, and asked what else I had. I mentioned that I had a 27-year-old novel called SIDESHOW that I have thought, from the day I wrote it, was very filmable: good story, almost no special effects, emotional rather than cerebral, all you really need is a good make-up artist and good actors. They asked to see it, I send them a copy, and they optioned it.

That doesn’t mean it’ll be a film. SANTIAGO has been under continuous option since 1990. I’ve been paid 4 times for the screenplay that Carol and I wrote. You haven’t seen it at your local theatres, have you? Another one was THE WIDOWMAKER. Sold it to Miramax; they paid Carol and me to write the screenplay, hired Peter Hyams to direct – and then lost interest. It’s currently under option with Jupiter 9. The Penelope Bailey trilogy – SOOTHSAYER, ORACLE and PROPHET – has been under option to Intrinsic Value Films for about 5 years now; they’ve had a screenplay for 4 ½ years, they hired a director 2 years ago – and you haven’t seen that one in theatres either, have you? Other projects under option include “Hunting the Snark” and KIRINYAGA. (On Hollywood’s behalf, the economics are different. If a publisher had to raise $75 million every time he wanted to publish a book, you wouldn’t see a lot of them, either.)

VENTRELLA: What is your favorite of your own work and why? Of what are you most proud?

RESNICK: My favorite novel is THE OUTPOST, because it was the most fun to write. Far and away my favorite character is Lucifer Jones, who over 20 years has starred in ADVENTURES, EXPLOITS, ENCOUNTERS, and (this summer) HAZARDS, and will be in VOYAGES and INTRIGUES before he’s barred from every land mass on Earth. If I could write only one thing the rest of my life, it’d be Lucifer Jones stories; I love them.

I’m most proud of PARADISE, because no one had ever used that approach in that way, and I thought I did it about as well as it could be done. And I’m pretty proud of KIRINYAGA, which is up to 67 awards and nominations and still chugging along.

VENTRELLA: And finally, what is the best piece of advice you would give an aspiring writer?

RESNICK: Books don’t write themselves. Writers write; dilettantes who will never amount to much talk about writing.

Filed under: writing | Tagged: agents, new writers, outlines, self-publishing, writing advice | 1 Comment »

Interview with Author Peter Prellwitz

Posted on June 29, 2009 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I’m pleased to be interviewing Peter Prellwitz, one of the most successful writers at my publishing house, Double Dragon. His web page is http://shardsuniverse.net/ . Peter, what made you sign up with Double Dragon, and do you regret going with a smaller press?

PETER PRELLWITZ: Double Dragon Publishing (DDP) was pointed out to me by a friend who was looking to start up his own publishing company. He’d read my novel Shards back when it first appeared in serial form on the CompuServe Writers Forum and became a supporter to see it published. (I’d originally written the novel just for my own enjoyment, with no intention of publishing it.) At the time, Double Dragon was conducting its first – and sadly, only – Draco Writing Contest, so I entered four of my finished novels, Horizons, Promise Tide, The Science of Magic, and The Angel of St. Thomas. I didn’t enter Shards because the four books making up the novel totalled three hundred thousand words and I knew better than to submit something of that size, having never been published. All four books fared well in the judging, with Horizons selected by finalist judge Mike Resnick as the Winner for Best Science Fiction.
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I have never regretted going with a smaller press, primarily because that smaller press was Double Dragon Publishing. I have always been treated cheerfully, professionally and politely. This can be tempting to think, “Sure, they treat me that way because my sales are pretty good.” But the undisputed truth is the company treats all its contributors that way.

VENTRELLA: Given the cutbacks at the big publishing houses, would you advise other starting writers to “build a portfolio” by having success with a small publisher or is it better to keep holding off for that big potential deal?

PRELLWITZ: Having just crowed over the joy of being with Double Dragon doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges and downsides to being signed by an ebook publisher. One of the biggest is the “stigma” that comes with it. The sad truth is that there are a LOT of ebook/small publishing houses out there that have poor business practices, very low standards for accepting materials, and are about as real as faster-than-light travel. The mainstream publishers and associated agents, editors and such have maintained for years that ebook/small press publishing was no better than vanity press, and not to be taken seriously. Sadly, more often than not, they’re absolutely right. There’s an overabundance of – forgive me – poor quality writing that is being published by ebook/small press publishers that has little or no merit to it and is seeing print only because of their publishers’ inexperience, vanity or outright greed. That means that real publishers like DDP, who have high submission standards, a winnowing process, and sustainable business/publishing models, are unfairly lumped into the same group as so-called publishers. Because of this, while the idea of “building a portfolio” with a small publisher sounds good, it can actually hurt you in the respect of building a reputation among the larger, more conventional publishing companies. And literary agents won’t even look at work you’ve published with ebook/small press publishers.

But there a many positives to going with the right small publisher. One is the self-realization that you’re a serious writer; you’ve tried to get your work published. Another is that your chances of getting read and signed are greater with an ebook or small publisher. Just be sure you go with a reputable publisher. I do believe the time is coming when there will be a blending of some elements in the ebook publishing and mainstream publishers. The ebook and small publishing companies are far more efficient; not wasting paper but rather using print on demand (POD) or electrons to put out books, as opposed to the tried and true but increasingly expensive and wasteful mass publishing model that the larger houses use. Being a known, respected author with a known, respected publishing house, be it ebook, POD or mass, is a good thing.

VENTRELLA: What’s your writing process? Do you use extensive outlines? And do you plan out the series or just work one book at a time?

PRELLWITZ: I’m afraid I’m a nightmare of an example when it comes to the writing process. I’m what you would call a “seat of the pants” writer. I no idea how a novel is going to end, nor even what’s going to happen in the next chapter or even the next page. Oh, I’ve tried to do the outlines, plot summaries, character direction, and etc. For ten novels now, though, it hasn’t worked. I introduce my characters to the initial conflict that needs to be resolved, then just write down what happens. If I ever try to step in and direct things, they either smack me down for meddling in their lives or they stand around and go on strike like a bunch of prima donna actors. In one novel, TAU (which stands for Those Above Us), I set up one character to be the penultimate bad guy; then traitor everybody wants dead. I built this massive case of evidence against him and then, one chapter before the end of the book, he dies a noble death. He’s NOT the villain I was certain he was. Which left me completely in the dark as to who WAS the traitor. Took me a couple weeks to figure it out, and when I did, I couldn’t believe it. But when I read through the novel, there it was. I’d laid out – rather, recorded what I saw – everything that was needed to prove the guilt of the traitor and I’d missed it all.

As for planning out series, I do and I don’t. Oftentimes when I’m working on one novel I’ll write a reference to an event or person that has only tangent relevence at that moment but promises to have a good story on its own. Several novels and a couple dozen short stories have come about that way. I will start and work on more than one book at a time, however. Generally, I don’t recommend it. In my opinion, it’s far better to focus on one novel. Right now I’m writing a Shards Universe novel and a Martian Western novel and a fantasy novel. They’re all moving forward, but slowly. They’ll probably all be finished about the same time, which will be cool because I’ll have three completed novels. But until they’re finished, I don’t have anything to offer my readers. That’s okay before you get published, but once you establish a fan base, you owe them more than vague progress updates.

VENTRELLA: What’s your writing background? Did you begin with fiction?
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PRELLWITZ: I did. My first “published” work was a Thanksgiving play I wrote in 4th grade. My teacher was so impressed that I’d written completely on my own (it wasn’t an assignment or anything), that she produced it and it played to the entire school. It was an awful play. Elements of Gilligan’s Isle and F-Troop, poor dialogue, no logical progression to plot, and a cookie-cutter ending. My mom saved me a copy of the play, so I was able to refresh my memory about it. Yep, it was awful. But it was produced and it was my creation.

I was hooked.

I wrote another, much better Thanksgiving play in fifth grade, which was also produced, this time by my fifth grade teacher. After that I started writing short stories and started about six different novels that I never took more than a hundred pages. I co-wrote a melodrama in my senior year that was produced and played in nine libraries around Orange and Los Angeles counties in 1978. We got our fist official reviews from that; two thumbs up from both the Orange County Register and The Los Angeles Times. I continued writing fiction and non-fiction through the years, my break coming in 2003 with Horizons.

VENTRELLA: Is a web page important for a starting writer?

PRELLWITZ: Yes.

Hmm… let me rephrase that:

YES!!

One trap an author can fall into is that his or her “job” is to write and only write. Indeed, in the past – say, the 19th Century – a well-known author need only send his completed manuscript to his publisher, then sit back while other people did the rest of the work. Marketing, publicity, etc. The author had only to keep writing and occasionally show up at lecture.

Not only are those days gone, I wonder how much they really ever existed. If you look at Samuel Clemons’ life, you’ll see it was nothing like that. Today, however, the author must also be the main source of publicity. Also, simply writing a novel isn’t the only option. There are so many opportunities to add to the novel’s audience and reach, that NOT taking advantage – especially when so many other authors are using the chances – that an author is really short-changing the novel’s life.

Web sites are a critical opportunity that should not be passed up. And I don’t mean a typical “Buy My Book!” vanity web site. Having a living, breathing web site that you update regularily, store plenty of free stuff on, and just generally increase a readers involvement in your writing, can be the difference between your book just sitting on the shelf and your book gaining a following.

For the starting writer, I would recommend having a web site up and running at the same time you’re writing your first novel. When I was writing Shards back in 1996, I started the ShardsUniverse.net site mostly for myself. I kept my research, connecting short stories, maps, and everything else there. I didn’t let anyone really know about it. When I’d finished Horizons in 1998, I did more of the same. It wasn’t until 2003, when Horizons was first published, that I began pushing my web site. By then, however, it was a wealth of information on my universe, with a free library of short stories, novel excerpts, research, and current news on conventions and the like. Since the majority of my novels occur in the same universe, the web site helped tie everything together.

A tip… I put up my first web site all by meself. I wish I hadn’t. Even though I’m a professional IT person, I’ve never been big on web design. If you have a couple hundred bucks, PAY a professional to set up your site if you’re seriously going into the writing world. I’m doing that now, but it’s an ugly, slow process since I have a lot of content to move over.

VENTRELLA: How does writing for comics differ from writing standard fiction?

PRELLWITZ: As you know, I’m currently working with Steve Bennett, the anime artist, in turning my young adult novel, The Angel of St. Thomas, into a web comic of the same name. It’s been challenging. Since the medium is so very different, illustrated as opposed to written, rewriting is an absolute must. Where I could use the reader’s imagination to help me tell the story in the novel, as a web comic I’m more compelled to provide visual story-telling. While this forces me to provide more detail in the form of instruction to the artist, the result is a universal representation of what I’d envisioned when I first wrote the story, as opposed to my letting the readers’ imagination fill in the blanks.
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Pacing is also a huge challenge. The novel can be read in two or three hours. The web comic, which only posts one page twice a week, will need three years to tell the same story. Because of that, action scenes need to be enhanced while exposition and transition sequences need to be condensed. Taking three paragraphs of exposition in a novel is a one minute read, filled with useful information. But drawing three paragraphs of information might take four or five pages, which is two weeks worth of web comics in which nothing is happening. So adjustments are needed. Sometimes major adjustments. For instance, one chapter has the main character telling the origin of the “Angels” to another character over dinner. In the web comic, we’ll be having her showing the story; the reader will go back and watch things as they occurred from three centuries earlier.

The other primary difference is also the most exciting and, yes, at times challenging difference. The story is mine. The characters are mine. But the art is Steve’s, and he’s as much a creator of the web comic as I am. What I try to convey in a script isn’t necessarily what he’s going to draw. Not one single page has been exactly as I thought it would be. But at the same time, every page, while different, has been better. He’s the artist, after all. What he doodles in two minutes I couldn’t draw in two weeks; Steve is that good. So we always have an exciting and sometimes energetic exchange of ideas. That’s forced me to better see things as an artist does, which has helped me become a better writer when it comes to scripts. And being able to write scripts is always a useful skill.

VENTRELLA: You make regular appearances at science fiction conventions as a guest author; do you find these to be a useful process to promote yourself?

PRELLWITZ: Yes, and I think your question touched on the often overlooked main point. Conventions are a great place to promote MYSELF. Almost all other means of promotions, youtube, web sites, even book signings, are to promote the book. And my books are certainly the reason some people want to meet me. So when I’m at a convention, I’ll have a table in the Dealers Room and talk about/sell my books. But this is primarily the way my readers – and potential readers – get to meet the person behind the stories. To hear my opinions and my life experiences, as well as witness my reactions to and interactions with events as they occur at the convention.

Of course, it’s a two-way street. I also get to observe, interact, and learn from readers; those who’ve already read my novels as well as those who have not. Of all the genres that exist in fictional writing, science fiction is the fastest moving target. All other genres are limited by time, be it past or present. Even fantasy – which occurs in universes significantly different from ours – can’t go into the future, since it’s the future of a universe different from ours. But science fiction has no such limits. It can – and does – cover past, present and future. And it can cover multiple realities. And anyone who reads and enjoys science fiction is going to have a mind that has been stretched and exercised by a scope of endless possibilities. Those are people I want to know and with whom I want to interact

VENTRELLA: Here’s the question I’ve asked everyone so far: What’s the biggest mistake you have made?

PRELLWITZ: : In all honesty, I don’t think I’ve made it yet. I’ve had a very fortunate career as a writer to date. I continue to write, though not as much as I should, which is a common Biggest Mistake for authors. Though I do wish I hadn’t started playing World of Warcraft. That’s eaten up hundreds of hours I could have spent adding to my universe.

A lot of my readers often ask, “Why aren’t you in all the bookstores?” which is to say, “Why aren’t you with a mainstream publisher?” But I never for one moment think of my loyalty to Double Dragon as a mistake. Yes, I might have been able to get published with a big publishing house. But I DID get published with DDP. And now that I’ve proven myself to me and to a growing number of readers, I am trying to go mainstream with my next novel, Redeeming The Plumb. And I have DDP’s blessing and support. And if I have my way, DDP will always have my ebook contracts.

So, this is the only question I guess I’m dodging, because I really haven’t made my biggest mistake.

Yet.

VENTRELLA: What is the best piece of advice you could give a starting writer?

PRELLWITZ: My advice is three-fold.

1.) Buy, read and KNOW “The Elements of Style” by William Strunk and E.B. White. This slim book is a must for any writer.

2.) Constantly improve your skill with your tools; namely grammar, vocabulary and style (see above). If you have the greatest novel up in your head, but cannot communicate it, the story has value only to you. Don’t cripple your imagination because of poor writing skills. Mark Twain said it best: “Use the right word, not its second cousin.”

3.) Write crap. If the aspiring writer accepts that he or she will be a better writer in ten years, then the writer must also accept they are a POORER writer now. Don’t wait until the perfect inspiration comes along. Flowers can grow alone and by themselves, but a truly beautiful flower requires fertilizer to grow from, as well as less beautiful flowers nearby with which to be compared. The same is true for writing. Start writing and keep at it. You will write junk. But you’ll learn. And you’ll get better.

Filed under: writing | Tagged: convention, Double Dragon, e-book, new writers, publishing house, web page, writing advice | Leave a comment »

The Curse of Enthusiasm: “Don’t Get Cocky, Kid.”

Posted on June 15, 2009 by Michael A. Ventrella

You’ll never get anywhere in this business if you don’t have a healthy ego and believe that you are indeed producing good work that people want to read.

But in the words of a famous pilot, “Don’t get cocky, kid.”

The biggest mistake I made when I began was in being too confident in my abilities.

A few years ago, I finished writing my novel ARCH ENEMIES. Filled with enthusiasm for my baby, I rushed it off to every agent and publisher listed in the traditional resources. Surely they would see it for the masterpiece it was! How would I decide between the multiple offers that would flow my way? ArchEnemies-510

As you have guessed, I spent a year collecting rejection letters.

One reason for this, which shall be discussed in a future blog, was due to poor query letters (an art in itself, I have discovered). But the real reason was that the book deserved to be rejected.

After some time, I went back and re-read it. And found that while the characters and plot were fun, the writing itself was clumsy and pedestrian. I was so excited about my story that I had basically submitted my first draft.

I rewrote it, almost line by line, and not wanting to embarrass myself further, submitted it to the small (but growing rapidly) publisher Double Dragon, who accepted. It has since done quite well with them. But even now, I want to rewrite sections.

So today’s lesson is this: Slow down. Don’t be so enthusiastic. Take your work and set it aside for a while until you calm down, and then go over it line by line. Get that first draft out quickly to get the right feel and flow for the material, but never forget that it is a first draft.

Coming to a later post: Ideas aren’t everything. Everyone has them.

Filed under: writing | Tagged: Arch Enemies, first draft, new writers, rejection letters, writing advice | Leave a comment »

Interview with Alan Dean Foster

Posted on June 8, 2009 by Michael A. Ventrella

I am pleased to today be interviewing Alan Dean Foster, someone whose work I loved long before we ever met. Alan was one of the first subscribers to my magazine Animato, published in the 80s and early 90s, and later worked Animato into one of his novels (Quozl). I was quite honored!

Besides sharing the name “Alan” (mine is in the middle), Alan Dean Foster is also a political science undergraduate, but there we split; Alan went on to get a Master in Fine Arts in Cinema at UCLA. Behind all that was, of course, a love of writing, and after some short stories were published, his first novel THE TAR-AIYM KRANG was published in 1972, and many more soon followed. Among his series include 14 novels in the “Pip and Flinx” series, the Commonwealth novels, and (my favorite) The Spellsinger novels.

His Star Trek “Log” books kept fans entranced between the end of the animated series and the start of the movies, and his Star Wars novels include the hugely popular SPLINTER OF THE MIND’S EYE.

He has written the movie novelizations for (among others) Alien, Clash of the Titans, Outland, Starman, Alien Nation, and the most recent Star Trek movie.

Alan lives in Arizona with a beautiful wife and a beautiful house (well, I’ve seen pictures anyway). They love to travel the world.

I really shouldn’t have to go into too much detail about Alan; if you don’t know who he is, you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog!

His web page is www.alandeanfoster.com.

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: Alan, your first published work was with the Pip and Flinx series (unless I am mistaken) in the 1970s. How has publishing changed since then for beginning writers trying to break into the field?

ALAN DEAN FOSTER: First publications were a couple of short stories in 1971. I don’t believe it’s that much more difficult for new writers trying to break in, but the advances have shrunk and there’s more competition, thanks to the use of computers. More importantly, and especially for SF, the short story market has contracted enormously even from the ’70’s. So writers are almost forced to break in with an entire novel, which is obviously more difficult.

VENTRELLA: Too many starting authors get frustrated with trying to obtain an agent and/or publisher and turn to self-publishing as a way to get noticed. Is this wise, in your opinion?

FOSTER: Fifteen years ago I would have said no. But the line between “real” publishing and self-publishing grows more blurred every day. Now you have sites like Scribd that allow writers…and would-be writers…not only to self-published, but to do so easily, cheaply, and still get paid for their production. No one knows what the future will bring for this new technology, but it’s very exciting for published as well as newbie authors.

VENTRELLA: Similarly, do you advise starting authors to go with small but reputable publishers in order to gain some attention first before approaching agents and editors?

FOSTER: Not in the case of writing. Always start at the top and work down. If your work is good, why not have the best markets and the best people see it first?

VENTRELLA: Do you personally plan out series in advance or concentrate on each book on its own? Do agents and publishers want to know that a beginning author has ideas for sequels or a series?

FOSTER: It depends. With the Commonwealth and Flinx & Pip books I had no idea it was going to turn into a series…much less one that is still on-going after thirty-seven years. It just kind of growed. But with a trilogy, the entire story arc is indeed planned from the beginning. And yes, publishers are always interested in knowing if a new author has ideas for further stories in the same setting.

VENTRELLA: What really pushed your career was being approached by George Lucas for the Star Wars novelization. How did that come about?

FOSTER: Actually, my career got its first real push from the publication of a book called ICERIGGER, which went through several printings right away and spawned two eventual sequels. As to the SW novelization, my agent was contacted by Lucas’s representatives. I met with George, who though somewhat busy gave me a fair amount of his time, and all went well from then on.

VENTRELLA: You’ve done dozens of movie novelizations. Do you have your agent approach Hollywood agents for these or do they call you these days?

FOSTER: They contact me. Quite unintentionally, I’ve developed something of a reputation for them.

VENTRELLA: What’s the biggest mistake you have made professionally?

FOSTER: I’m not very good at promotion. I’m much better and more comfortable praising someone else’s work than my own. And I probably am too polite when it comes to matters that affect publication of my work. But it’s just the way I am. My wife says I have no taste…that I like everybody.

VENTRELLA: When people look back on your work, what would you like them to remember you for? What are you particularly proud of?

FOSTER: That I never sacrificed story for the sake of “art”, and that I managed to slip in one or two thoughts about the nature and future of humankind without lecturing the reader or otherwise belaboring the audience.