Interview with Jody Lynn Nye

Posted on July 10, 2010 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I’m pleased to be interviewing Jody Lynn Nye today. Since 1985, she has published 39 books and over 100 short stories. Among them are her epic fantasy series The Dreamland, five contemporary humorous fantasies starting with MYTHOLOGY 101, and three medical science fiction novels starting with TAYLOR’S ARK. STRONG ARM TACTICS, a humorous military science fiction novel, is the first of Jody’s new series, The Wolfe Pack. Jody collaborated with Anne McCaffrey on four science fiction novels, and edited an anthology of humorous stories about mothers in science fiction, fantasy, myth and legend, entitled DON’T FORGET YOUR SPACESUIT, DEAR! She has written eight books with the late Robert Lynn Asprin. Her web page is http://www.sff.net/people/jodynye.

Jody, I first became aware of your work with the fun MYTHOLOGY 101 series. Was MYTHOLOGY 101 your first published work?

JODY LYNN NYE: MYTHOLOGY 101 was my first solo novel, but not my first published work. I wrote some humor and short pieces (unpaid) for various digests and newsletters after college. While I was working for WFBN-TV in Chicago, I contributed technical articles for Video Action magazine. For those, I was paid sometimes in money, but sometimes with technology items that VA had been given to review. My first paid work was for Mayfair Games, Inc. They published the Role-Aids game supplements to Dungeons and Dragons. I wrote modules for D&D and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine game.

Because of the game materials, I had credentials to ask to be included in the Crossroads game book series for TOR Books, which were choose-your-path novels but based upon established science fiction or fantasy series. I had volunteered to write adventures for a couple of other books in the series until Anne McCaffrey gave consent to allow the creator/editor of Crossroads, Bill Fawcett, to commission Pern-based adventures. As a big fan of Anne’s, I couldn’t resist dropping my previous selections and writing one of those.

That first Crossroads book was DRAGONHARPER (not to be confused with the current novel by Anne & Todd McCaffrey, DRAGON HARPER). It was published in 1987. I eventually wrote four Crossroads adventures, two in Pern and two in Piers Anthony’s Xanth. Once Anne and Piers found I was easy to work with and respected their worlds, Bill had me write the VISUAL GUIDE TO XANTH and the DRAGONLOVER’S GUIDE TO PERN. The DLG is in its second edition and who knows which printing.

I wanted to work on my own novels, of course. I sold MYTHOLOGY 101 to Brian Thomsen of Warner Books in 1988. I did not have an agent, but as you may know, SF/fantasy editors are far more accessible to fans and would-be writers than in many other genres. I got to know Brian through friends and professional contacts. At a SF convention, I chatted with him about my concept for the series, and he asked to have me send a proposal to him at Warner (note to aspiring writers: do not try and load an editor down with paperwork at a convention. Always send it to their offices.). He bought it, and I was off to the races. MYTHOLOGY 101 came out the same year as the first of my collaborations with Anne McCaffrey, THE DEATH OF SLEEP. So far, there have been four books in the series.

VENTRELLA: I always imagined that the idea must have come to you while secreted in some college library. Is that true? What was your influence for this series?

NYE: You are absolutely right. The Midwestern University college library is based upon a real library. If you had ever seen the original, you would be able to identify it. Some alumni of that university have come up to me and asked about it.

In fact, the library itself was the influence for the series, not the characters. Those came later. In the carrels among the nine-story stacks, it was warm and quiet — except for the sounds of distant voices. I could never make out what they were saying. It was odd, because no one around me was talking, nor was anyone in the reading rooms out front. The sensation of the disembodied voices stuck in my mind for years. Finally, one day I began to think about it. Where were those voices coming from? Who were the speakers? And somehow, they became the little people who lived in the basement of the library.

VENTRELLA: Will we ever see another MYTHOLOGY 101 book?

NYE: I certainly hope so. From Warner, the series moved to Meisha Merlin Publishing, which ceased to publish a few years ago. I would dearly love to place the Mythology series with another house. I have more stories to tell. After all, Keith and Diane finally got engaged!

VENTRELLA: More than most authors, you’ve managed to work with some of the biggest names in speculative fiction. How did these arrangements come about?

NYE: SF actors Wil Wheaton, Roxann Dawson, Armin Shimerman and Nigel Bennett were once on a panel at a convention when the subject came up how some of them had become published authors. Armin, Roxann and Nigel each said that because they knew Bill Fawcett, they had been approached to co-author books with science-fiction writers for the Star Line, an imprint of Baen Books that had been arranged and packaged by Bill. Wil noted down carefully, that to become published, one needed to “know Bill Fawcett.”

One of the many hats Bill wears is that of ‘book packager.’ His function is to create a book or series, staff it with one or more authors, supply illustrations and maps if needed, possibly even commission the cover from an artist, and put the whole, production-ready package into the hands of a publisher. It is what a publishing house would do for itself if it had far more employees than one typically does.

In the late 1980s, Bill created a package for Baen Books that paired CJ Cherryh with three junior writers apiece to write a series of co-authored novels. CJ’s was “Sword of Knowledge”, and included Nancy Asire, the well-known filker Lesley Fish, and a new fantasy writer named Mercedes Lackey. These series gave the senior writer a chance to have ideas for which s/he had no time to do alone, and gave a boost to the career of the junior writers, who would get to work closely with a noted name in the field whom they admired.

A few years later, Bill interested Anne McCaffrey in trying the same thing. She liked the idea, because she had always had more ideas than she would ever have time to write in some of her non-Pern series. I was one of the three noobs who were signed on to co-author books in the Planet Pirate trilogy with her. She already knew my work from the DLG and two Pern Crossroads books. She and I wrote THE DEATH OF SLEEP. Chronologically, it is the first novel in the trio, but was published second, after SASSINAK, by Anne and Elizabeth Moon.

VENTRELLA: How did you meet Robert Asprin?

NYE: I read ANOTHER FINE MYTH the year it was published in mass market paperback by Ace Books. I loved it. At the time I never thought I would ever meet any author at all, let alone end up collaborating with Robert Asprin on eight books.

It’s funny, but I seemed to have been following Bob into so many places long before I met him. I was a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism in the late 1970s, early 80s, but he, known there as Yang the Nauseating, had already stopped going to events. His legend, however, persisted. I knew dozens of stories about him. How he had founded the Dark Horde. How he was mischievously disrespectful to the king. His songs. His quips. His legendary prowess with women.

When a friend whom I knew from the SCA took me to my first convention, I found at least one more Myth book in the dealers’ room. I heard legends of Bob. His perpetual ‘office’ in the hotel bar (sort of a permanent party). His love of Irish whisky. His friendship with Gordon R. Dickson. His irrepressible humor and memorable filks. His legendary prowess with women. But he had already stopped going to so many conventions, so I never ran into him.

It was not until Bill, then my fiancé, took me up to Ann Arbor to meet Bob and his wife, fantasy author Lynn Abbey, that I met the man himself. Bill was one of Bob’s closest circle of friends. At the time, Bob was writing his own books as well as co-editing the shared-world anthology series Thieves’ World with Lynn. He and Lynn were so kind and gracious to me, a baby writer, that the impression has never faded. Bob was encouraging about my efforts in humor fiction, but at that time the subject of collaborating didn’t come up.

Later, when Bob had some trouble with writer’s block, we agreed to try writing together. We found we were very compatible as co-writers. We had a lot of interests in common, which meant we got one another’s jokes. Our first book was LICENSE INVOKED, a novel about spies, magic and rock and roll.

VENTRELLA: When working on the Myth Adventures series with him, how much input did he have?

NYE: We communicated mainly by e-mail and in person at conventions. After the first Myth novel, MYTH ALLIANCES, we would get together at DragonCon in Atlanta every Labor Day weekend and work out the plot over a table in one of the restaurants. When we got going, the ideas came out faster and more furious than a hive of angry bees. It was a lot of fun. We threw around plenty of concepts; what we didn’t use for the book that year I squirreled away in a laptop file to discuss at future dates. Bob was not great at keeping notes, and I type faster than he did.

VENTRELLA: What sort of arrangement do you have to continue the series?

NYE: Ace Books has purchased two new Myth novels (and one Dragons novel). I am already working on the first one.

VENTRELLA: How did your collaboration with Anne McCaffrey work?

NYE: Each of the four collabs I did with her was different. On THE DEATH OF SLEEP, she had a basic outline for each of the three novels. Since they were being written simultaneously we juniors had to adhere to the structure we were given to maintain series continuity, though we had room to add our own ideas. I wrote the first draft and sent it to Anne. She worked on it and sent it back to me. I made changes or corrections, then it went back to her for a final look and polish. As the senior writer she had the final say on everything, but she was intensely generous with me. For example, she had no problem using one of my ideas if she liked it better than her own. I learned an incredible amount from her.

VENTRELLA: Do you find collaborations easier or harder than writing on your own?

NYE: They go faster than solo books. When you are bouncing ideas off another person, you can crank out a lot of energy. That’s not to say that when I am working alone I don’t cackle over my keyboard at something that strikes me as funny and pound the keys at top speed to get it down. Collaborations are more work because you can’t just keep an idea in your mind and come back to it later. You must share everything with your co-writer that you expect or hope to have in the final manuscript. You must prepare to compromise and respect your co-writer’s opinion and skills. Only in solo books can you get your way on everything. I think it’s worthwhile to learn to work with someone else. It’s like teaching: you learn a good deal about your craft when you have to explain something to someone else.

VENTRELLA: Some writers tend to think that humor in fiction means that it can’t be taken seriously as literature, and therefore should not be considered as “worthy”. What’s your take?

NYE: I deplore the fact that just because something makes one laugh that it is not worthy of the respect enjoyed by tragedy. Without the light moments, no one could stand all the dark ones. Those writers who don’t consider humor to be literature have to turn their backs on Mark Twain, Anthony Trollope and many others whose books occupy the Literature shelves in bookstores and libraries. Shakespeare’s comedies are held in the same esteem as his dramas. I would put up a Terry Pratchett Discworld novel against any number of popular dramatic novels that I don’t consider nearly as well written.

VENTRELLA: Your most recent work, A FORTHCOMING WIZARD, is a stand-alone novel. What’s it about?

NYE: That is actually the second half of an epic fantasy I wrote for TOR. It does stand alone, the vicissitudes of publishing being what they are, but I hope people will seek out both books. The first half is called AN UNEXPECTED APPRENTICE. The story concerns a smallfolk girl named Tildi Summerbee who, like Frodo Baggins, is thrown into an epic struggle not of her making. She comes into possession of a page of the Great Book, a magical tome that can change reality. Only Tildi, because of a chance gift from her parents, can touch the book without being harmed. She becomes part of a fellowship to regain possession of the book and restore it to a place of safety before it destroys the world.

VENTRELLA: What are you working on now?

NYE: Already finished and heading for your shelves in December is DRAGONS DEAL. This is the third in the Dragons series created and written by Robert Asprin for Ace Books. The first two were DRAGONS WILD and DRAGONS LUCK. The copy-edited manuscript of the second landed on my doorstep only a few weeks after Bob died. I took care of it, and some time later, when we had all recovered a little, the editor asked me if I could and would continue the series. I hope that our readers will enjoy it. The Dragons series is about a brother and sister named Griffen and Valerie McCandles who discover that they are hereditary dragons. And they are by no means the only dragons out there. Hence, drama and comedy ensues. DEAL takes place during Mardi Gras. As the series is set in New Orleans, where Bob lived the last many years of his life, I felt that was fitting.

At Baen Books, I have an entirely new humorous SF book, which I hope will become a series, called VIEW FROM THE IMPERIUM. If you ever read P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster books, you will understand something about my two main characters. Thomas Innes Loche Kinago is a foolish, spoiled, rich, good-hearted young noble who has never had to work a day in his life. He has just graduated from the space academy and is serving his required stint on a warship. His duties, as he is a noble (pretty nearly useless in this society), are nominal. That’s not to say he can’t spin a perfectly ordinary assignment into chaos. To keep him from doing more damage than is strictly necessary, Thomas has assigned to him an aide de camp, Commander Parsons, who seems to know absolutely everything, and is never at a loss for the right action to take. VIEW FROM THE IMPERIUM is due out in April of 2011.

VENTRELLA: When creating characters, how do you make them real and believable to a reader?

NYE: As CJ Cherryh said during a panel discussion I once sat on with her, in the end all stories are about people. The protagonist of a story, or at the very most distant, the sidekick, needs to be someone with whom the reader can identify. In the Sherlock Holmes stories, it is Dr. Watson, a nice, normal human being, intelligent, caring and devoted, with whom most readers feel empathy. For us, Watson asks why. Through him we feel involved in the action. The reader will be drawn into the book by a compelling proxy.

I need to know what motivates my characters. Often, a new writer will only know what s/he wants a character to do, but maybe not why. Such characters will feel wooden and artificial. Once you know where your character is coming from, you can see how it will behave in various situations.

All beings have flaws. Perfect people are irritating or boring (or both). Imperfections give characters vulnerability that we understand, or can learn to understand. Hidden hurts or past events in my characters’ back stories inform their behavior.

When I create a character, an image often appears in my mind. A few of my writer friends like to use celebrities as the basis of their cast, but that hasn’t worked for me. Only once have I ever run into anyone who resembled one of my characters.

One thing I dislike enormously is having a character do something stupid just to advance a plot. If I have created realistic personalities, it will feel wrong if I try to steer them into an unrealistic situation. That’s not to say I can’t have a character behave stupidly –- people do dumb things all the time -– but it can’t be to make things easy for me as the writer. I owe my readers real people.

VENTRELLA: I tried to avoid cliches in my fantasy novels (regarding the typical “chosen one” hero and so on) while also relying upon them too (elves, dwarves, wizards…). How does one meet the balance of creating a world that balances both?

NYE: There is always an element of the “chosen one,” or else why are we reading about him or her? If that character isn’t special, then can anyone do what s/he does? What if there had been a hundred Arthurs who could have pulled the sword from the stone, but he just happened to be the one who tried that day? (Hmm, there’s an unexplored story.) But why that one, and what happened afterward to all the others? When I write a story, I have to focus upon my protagonist. What is extraordinary about this person? How can s/he succeed when others have failed? I think a successful story will tweak the reader’s perception and give a new way of thinking about the meaning of a hero/ine. Archetypes exist because they have a core of truth about the eternal journey. Cliches exist because some storytellers can only think of telling an archetypal story the way we have always heard it.

I agree, there have been a LOT of books lately featuring familiar tropes like elves, dwarves, werewolves, pirates, vampires, pixies, princesses, and so on. There’s nothing wrong with using these creatures, as long as you don’t necessarily believe that they all belong in the same worlds all the time. Or if you do, have a good reason for it. Only in D&D do Aztec gods occupy the same sphere as leprechauns.

VENTRELLA: You’ve also written role-playing books (a subject close to my heart, since I have been doing that for 20 years now myself). How did you arrange those?

NYE: I’ve been affiliated with the gaming industry for a long time. I got into D&D role-playing when I was nineteen. It’s always been dear to my heart, though I haven’t played in a long while. My first DM introduced me to one of the partners at TSR whom I dated for a year. I ended up typing out Gary Gygax’s manuscripts for the new Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manual for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I guess you could call that my first job in publishing. It made me aware of the game industry, where I met an amazing number of creative people. For a short time, I worked with a couple of fellow players who wanted to create game materials. I attended every GenCon from 1977 until it moved from Wisconsin to Indianapolis. Because I had a background in role-play, I had the expertise to write for Mayfair Games and later for TOR Books’ Crossroads series, as I mentioned above.

VENTRELLA: And finally, tell me… why do so many writers have cats? (I have four, by the way…)

NYE: Cats are the superior species in the universe, or haven’t they told you that? I like to use the Two Cat System of writing, my take on Dave Barry’s Two Dog System. My cats specialize in holding me in one place, usually through Cat Gravity (read Robin Woods’s excellent small book on her Theory), so I have to stay put and work. Other writers I know use more or fewer cats, depending on how much inspiration they require. Some writers, like Mr. Barry, use dogs for inspiration. Cats are a convenient size for laps and do not need to be walked in the rain, so I prefer them. Also, purring is a near-magical soother to a creative person’s troubled soul. I often rely upon purring to get me through a complicated story.

Thanks for interviewing me! I enjoyed your questions.

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Interview with Betty Webb

Posted on July 6, 2010 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: Primarily I interview writers of fantasy and science fiction (since that’s what I write) but today, I am pleased to be interviewing mystery writer Betty Webb.

Before writing mysteries full time, Betty Webb worked as a journalist, interviewing everyone from U.S. presidents, astronauts who walked on the moon, and Nobel Prize-winners, as well as the homeless, the dying, and polygamy runaways. The six dark Lena Jones mysteries, based on stories she covered as a reporter, include DESERT LOST (judged “One of the Top Five Mysteries of 2009,
Library Journal), DESERT NOIR (“A mystery with a social conscience,” Publishers Weekly) and DESERT WIVES (“Eye-popping,” New York Times). Her humorous Gunn Zoo series debuted
with the critically-acclaimed, THE ANTEATER OF DEATH (I love that title) to be followed this August 15 with THE KOALA OF DEATH. A long-time book reviewer at Mystery Scene Magazine, Betty is a member of National Federation of Press Women, Mystery Writers of America, and the Society of Southwestern Authors. She also volunteers at the Phoenix Zoo, which is the inspiration for her Gunn Zoo mysteries. Her web site is www.bettywebb-mystery.com.

Ms. Webb, you began your career as a journalist, writing nonfiction. Why and how did you make the switch to fiction?

BETTY WEBB: I was a full-time journalist for 20 years, but after 15 years, all that fact-checking started to drive me nuts. So I thought I’d just write a novel “for fun.” After three rejected novels, I hit pay dirt with DESERT NOIR, the first of my Lena Jones mysteries. The second Lena Jones book, DESERT WIVES: POLYGAMY CAN BE MURDER, was sold to Lifetime-TV, eventually making my retirement from journalism possible.

VENTRELLA: Do you find your writing style changes from fiction to nonfiction?

WEBB: Absolutely. In journalism, which is non-fiction to the max, you must always use non-judgmental language, especially verbs, such as “He said,” as opposed to “He shrilled.” And unless you’re a columnist — which is very, very different than straight reporting — you can never interject your own opinions in an article.

When you’re writing fiction, you can let it all hang out, as I do in both my Lena Jones novels and even the Gunn Zoo series. Of course, the Lena Jones books are much more political and issue oriented; Publishers Weekly called them “mysteries with a social conscience.” The Gunn Zoo books, being very funny and much more relaxed, are much less issue-oriented, but they do give readers a lot of information about exotic animals and a behind-the-scenes look at life in zoos. Plus they say nasty things about people who are cruel to animals.

VENTRELLA: Your Lena Jones books are based on actual cases. How do you go about preparing these mysteries?

WEBB: I spend an average of two years researching each novel, which includes trips to the area where the event happened. During that time, though, I’m doing the actual writing for the previous book. Therefore, although I’m now in the process of writing DESERT WIND, I started researching it two years ago. And I am now in the process of researching the next Gunn Zoo mystery and the Lena Jones book.

VENTRELLA: Have you received any protests for these books (from Mormons, for instance)? And how have you dealt with it?

WEBB: Mainstream Mormons weren’t bothered at all by either DESERT WIVES or DESERT LOST, which were both about polygamy. In fact, various Mormon newspapers and periodicals gave both books warm, accepting reviews. Why? Because the mainstream LDS (Latter Day Saints) church outlawed polygamy almost 150 years ago and today’s Mormons are appalled by polygamy as it is currently being practiced. Also, the state of Utah is leading the way in polygamy prosecutions. They have sent many polygamists to prison for polygamy-related crimes, such as child rape (polygamists like 13 year old girls), financial fraud, and sadly, murder. the infamous Warren Jeffs is just one of the now-imprisoned polygamists.

The people I have had a problem with are the polygamists themselves. I’ve received death threats from them, and some of the male polygamists have shown up at my book signings in order to scare me. They finally stopped doing that when I started identifying them to the audience, and asking them to stand up and take a bow. That’s when I discovered that those guys are cowards. They’re good at intimidating 13 year old girls and battered “sister wives,” but not so good at intimidating grown, non-polygamous women.

VENTRELLA: It certainly seems that you still have that journalistic goal of exposing injustice, but are working through fiction now. Is that the case? Have you had much success about informing people about these issues?

WEBB: I absolutely write the Lena Jones books to expose injustice. For instance, are you aware that we have legally allowed immigrants into this country who believe in cutting off little girls’ genitals in order to make them submissive? They see it as no different than spaying a dog or gelding a horse. Those folks continue their ghastly practice in America today. I exposed it in DESERT CUT, and I named names.

Have I had success? Again, absolutely. DESERT WIVES caused such a fuss in Arizona that the Arizona legislature enacted its first ever anti-polygamy law. Readers of DESERT WIVES continue to organize and ride herd on the still-existent polygamy compounds. DESERT CUT has been read by many social workers, medical professionals, and law enforcement officers, who are now on the lookout for it. Immigrants who continue this practice are now being sent to prison, when before it was just shrugged off as a “cultural difference.”

VENTRELLA: What other issues are you interested in that may make future books?

WEBB: Can’t tell you that. DESERT WIND is still a big secret. I always keep my subject matter secret until the book comes out.

VENTRELLA: Your character also lives in Arizona. Why did you decide to do this?

WEBB: I’ve lived in Arizona since 1982, and much of my subject matter — such as polygamy — is rampant here. Plus, Arizona is a beautiful place to write about. On the other hand, the Gunn Zoo mysteries are all set on the Central California Coast, where I vacation every year. And my zoo keeper sleuth lives on the same houseboat I once spent a summer on.

VENTRELLA: How did you make your first sale? Did you have an agent?

WEBB: I was fortunate enough to get an agent, based upon my reading of “The Literary Marketplace.” She also sold one of my books to Lifetime-TV. Thankfully, I still have my agent!

VENTRELLA: Why did you choose Poison Pen Press for your work?

WEBB: My agent sold my books to Poisoned Pen Press. In a happy coincidence, I had already written an article about that particular publishing company for the newspaper I worked for. Therefore, I was very, very comfortable with the sale. We have now enjoyed a 10-years-long relationship.

VENTRELLA: What is the biggest mistake you think new writers make?

WEBB: I think the biggest mistake they make is in thinking the first book they write deserves to be published. I didn’t write a truly publishable novels until my 4th, which was DESERT NOIR, the first Lena Jones mystery. Even though I’d been a professional journalist for years and wrote for an average of 10 hours a day, 5 days a week at my newspaper job, the two skills don’t always cross over. I had to learn to write like a novelist, and that took about 5 years of writing from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. every single day before I went to the office. Good, publishable writing is more hard work than most beginners realize.

Another big beginner’s mistake? Writing only when they feel “inspired.” I teach creative writing, and one of the first things I tell my students is, “If you only write when you feel inspired, write a haiku. You won’t able to produce much else.” Professionals write for hours every day, regardless of how “inspired” they feel. As for the entire “inspiration” issue — I say “Baloney!” True inspiration only hits once you’ve been at your keyboard for several hours. Writing is work. Period. It’s not a game you play only when you feel like playing.

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

WEBB: William the Conqueror (1066), William’s opponent Harold Godwin (also 1066), Shakespeare, Dorothy Sayers, Dorothy Parker, Ernest Heminway, Lillian Hellman, Truman Capote, William Buckley, and Gore Vidal. Of course, I’d have to wear a suit of armor to that dinner party because it would probably turn very, very violent. And I’d enjoy every savage, bloody minute!

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Interview with author Dennis Tafoya

Posted on June 11, 2010 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I’m pleased to be interviewing author Dennis Tafoya today, whose latest novel THE WOLVES OF FAIRMOUNT PARK has just been released. His first novel, DOPE THIEF, was published by Minotaur Books in 2009. His short story “Above the Imperial” will appear in Philadelphia Noir, coming from Akashic Books in November as part of their award-winning City Noir series. He is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the International Thriller Writers, and the Liars Club, a Philadelphia-area writers group. He lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Dennis, let’s begin by talking about how you first got started. What got you interested in being a writer?

DENNIS TAFOYA: Writing is something I’ve always done. When I was nine I wrote a story about a monster with my friend Keith Parker. We thought it was pretty good, but looking back I have to admit it was basically a rip-off of an episode of the TV show, One Step Beyond. I associate my love of writing with a love of reading, and my early stuff was very much influenced by the science fiction and horror authors I loved when I was young, like Ray Bradbury and Robert Bloch and Harlan Ellison. I would still like to write something in a paranormal or horror vein, and I still think those authors are amazing.

VENTRELLA: Do you think starting authors should concentrate on perfecting short stories first? Do you feel the skills needed for novels is different?

TAFOYA: That’s a really interesting question, and I’ve never thought about short story writing as a prerequisite for the aspiring novelist. I know people who are very comfortable in the long form who really don’t like writing short stories, and short story writers who really struggle with the requirements of the novel. I think the best novel chapters are frequently short stories in themselves, though, and trying to master the short story can teach the writer a ton about tight control on the elements of story.

I love writing short stories — I’ve got a bunch of them out or coming out in the next few months, and I’m really proud that I’ve got a story in upcoming Philadelphia Noir from Akashic Books. I did write shorts before I tried a novel, I think to show myself that I could write a complete story. It’s also a lot easier to find a home for a short story because of the explosion of story sites on the web. I frequently advise my aspiring writer friends to take advantage of those sites, both to get work out there and get reactions, and as a way to meet people who are writing in your genre, too.

Actually, my only creative writing teacher was a poet, and I think writing poetry is an excellent path to writing fiction. Writing good poetry requires a brutal discipline, and it kind of distills the tension that should be present in all good writing to a very fine point. Poetry teaches an awareness of rhythm and word choice, too. I think making demands on ourselves as writers is the only way to get better at what we do.

VENTRELLA: Why did you decide to be a “crime writer”? What sort of background do you bring to the genre?

TAFOYA: Oh, not much other than a deep interest in crime. The threads that inform my work are literary fiction and true crime, I think. I have a few relatives with a little Damon Runyon quality to thier lives, but mostly the characters in my novels and stories are out of my imagination, applied to what I’ve read and heard about criminals and the criminal life. I’ve been lucky to know police officers and prosecutors and defense lawyers, and I’ve gotten some amazing things out of those associations, but I’m pretty boring and middle class personally. I think that’s a little disappointing to people who meet me, and I was thinking I should get some tattoos or something to sell the image a little more.

VENTRELLA: What kind of research do you do when preparing a story?

TAFOYA: I’m a fiend for research. I want to get the details right, and I want to write about those worlds as well as I can. I did a ton of research for both DOPE THIEF and WOLVES OF FAIRMOUNT PARK. I read, go to the library and spend thousands of hours on the internet trying to learn the things I want to know.

The cool thing is that research itself can generate new story ideas and take me in directions I wouldn’t have thought to move. Reading about crime in Philly for WOLVES OF FAIRMOUNT PARK, I stumbled on stories about ‘hoppers,’ kids who ride freight trains and live in squats in the city. So I added a couple of hopper characters to the novel, and the stuff I’ve learned is tucked away in my brain in case I want to spend more time developing characters or stories that involve that world.

VENTRELLA: Do you like being called “hard boiled”? What the heck does that mean, anyway?

TAFOYA: I’m not entirely sure. I guess it’s fiction with a gritty edge. I don’t mind the label, but I hope it doesn’t keep people away who might enjoy the books but who think my work might be too intense. My stories are character-driven, and while the stories do involve violence and drug use, I really want to arouse the interest and sympathy of the reader, not shock or alienate anyone. I write about people who struggle in the margins, who live compromised lives but who are still smart and aware and want more from life than their roles would suggest. I hope people recognize themselves, at least a little, in characters like Orlando in WOLVES or Ray in DOPE THIEF.

VENTRELLA: How did you interest a publisher in your first novel?

TAFOYA: I was extraordinarily lucky. Basically, a very nice woman from California, a writer and producer named Cori Stern, took an interest in my work and started me toward publication. She introduced me to her manager, Brooke Ehrlich, who agreed to represent me. Brooke found me an amazing literary agent, Alex Glass of Trident Media, who sold the book to Minotaur. It was all so painless I feel guilty when I hear other writers tell me about trying for years to find representation and get their work in front of editors. Like Blanche Dubois, I depended on the kindness of strangers, but it went much better for me than for Blanche.

VENTRELLA: THE DOPE THIEF was released first in hardcover. Why was that decision made? Do you think it was the right decision?

TAFOYA: It’s been Minotaur’s decision to release both books in harcover. I’m still a little worried that, times being what they are that people will balk at the price, but I have to trust that my publishers know what they’re doing. I think there is more interest and attention aimed at hardcovers, but there is that price issue, too. It’s a tremendous vote of confidence from Minotaur and my editor, but I feel a huge responsibility for it all to go well.

VENTRELLA: Let’s talk about characters. The best and most memorable are flawed in some way yet believable. What sort of process do you take when developing your characters? How do you make sure they don’t turn cliche?

TAFOYA: Trying to avoid cliche is one of my major preoccupations, in my characters, in the plot and in the prose itself. My aim is to write something readers haven’t seen before, but that delivers a satisfying experience and engages them emotionally. It’s a lot to try to accomplish, but I think I’m a better writer for at least moving in those directions.

I’m really only interested in characters who are deeply compromised. Maybe because I see myself that way, maybe because people who are self-contained, capable and sort of unassailable are cyphers to me. I don’t know many people like that in real life, either. Good writing is about tension, and I think that tension between the way we live and the way we want to live is what generates story in a really interesting and organic way.

VENTRELLA: Also difficult is making unsavory characters appealing to a reader. What do you find works best?

TAFOYA: I think some degree of self-knowledge is the key. My characters are drug addicts and criminals, but their awareness of themselves and the gap between what they want for themselves and the lives they lead is something we can all identify with. In DOPE THIEF, the main character is trying to figure out where things went wrong for him and whether he can get to a better life that’s about connection and engagement with his own best impulses. You don’t have to be a criminal to feel that way.

VENTRELLA: What is your writing style? Do you outline heavily, jump right in, start at the end…?

TAFOYA: I outline very briefly and generally, a couple of pages. I find so much in the writing that I don’t want to limit myself. The story will demand it’s own level of planning, too. WOLVES was a mystery, and there are logistical issues that need to be worked out with a little precision when you’re working on that kind of project, but I always find new characters or new ideas, so my sense of the story remains pretty fluid. I do have an image or scene that I’m writing toward, usually, a kind of state I want things to be in at the end. That’s pretty important for me.

VENTRELLA: WOLVES was bought by your publisher based on a one sentence synposis, about a heroin addict trying to solve a mystery. Did that provide a challenge? Are you pleased with the result?

TAFOYA: I don’t know what I was thinking promising to write a mystery. I have so much respect for writers who can deliver those on a regular basis! I’m really glad I did it, and I’m pleased that the book is getting good reviews, but it was a real challenge. It stretched me in new ways, and not just because of the requirements of the mystery form. I knew I was going to have to plan much more extensively, create red herrings and keep control of the way information is revealed, but I was also working for the first time with multiple viewpoints and a much larger palette. It was pretty ambitious, and I can’t tell you how relieved I am that the book is getting good reactions.

VENTRELLA: WOLVES also deals with the seedy underbelly of Philadelphia. What is it about Philly that makes it unique to your stories? Could your fiction work in any other place?

TAFOYA: I was asked that in another interview recently, and I’ve been thinking about how Philadelphia and its characters might be unique. I’ve spent a lot of time in New York and Washington and some other places and I can say people in each of those places really seem different to me. I recently set a short story in Vegas that dealt with characters from the west, and I think the speech patterns, the way people engage one another, reflect a slower pace and sometimes a little more recalcitrance than the people I know here. My friends and relatives from Philly talk fast and loud and share different kinds of information. We’re on display in a way that a guy from rural Nevada might not be.

Another thing I think is interesting is that here in Philly we’re more rooted to the place we live. In my family we used to joke about that, about our relatives who thought they needed a passport to leave South Philly. We’re defined by neighborhoods, by where we grew up and where our families live. Our accents are very specific and we’re very conscious of class and income. My relatives from Oregon Avenue regarded the Main Line as a different planet.

VENTRELLA: Can we expect your third novel to do the same?

TAFOYA: I’m working (very slowly) on a new novel dealing with little criminals from South Jersey. It’s an excuse to do a ton more research, of course, and to spend time in the area getting to know the places and reading local papers, eating in the diners. Research like that is always fun and it always yields really interesting stuff, some of which might actually make it into the book.

VENTRELLA: And finally, what advice would you give the aspiring writer that isn’t obvious (“write better”)?

TAFOYA: Find other writers. I meet people who have been working alone on novels for years, hoping to finish that novel or screenplay, or endlessly refining work they’ve already done. Meeting other people who are doing the same thing you are will help you gain confidence, it will get you help and advice, and it will hopefully let you get reactions from people who are engaged in the same work. Your friends and family might be really supportive, but they’re rarely able to help you get better at your craft or help you find ways to get your work in front of readers or agents or editors. Your best bet is to meet other writers. I think you’ll find, like I have, that writers are extemely generous and supportive. Nearly all of the great things that have happened to me have been because other writers went out of their way to help me or give me advice.

Tafoya

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Interview with David Niall Wilson

Posted on June 6, 2010 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I’m pleased to be interviewing David Niall Wilson today. David has been writing professionally since the 1980s. He has more than sixteen novels and 200 short stories published and has won the Bram Stoker Award for poetry and for short fiction. He is an ex-president of the Horror Writer’s Association and an ordained minster. David lives and writes on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina with the love of his life, Patricia Lee Macomber, their children Stephanie, Billy, Zachar, Zane, and Katie, two brainless Pekingese and a chinchilla named Pook Daddy. David is CEO and founder of Crossroad Press, publishing e-books and professional level audio books. His personal web page is http://www.davidniallwilson.com/ and the publishing site is http://www.crossroadpress.com/catalog

Vampire novels began your career, with White Wolf. Were these stories based on the vampire LARP games? Were you limited in any way because of this?

WILSON: First off, my career (at least by publication date) started with the sale of my stand-alone vampire novel, THIS IS MY BLOOD, followed by the actual publication of CHRYSALIS, my Star Trek Voyager novel.

To answer the question, yes, the White Wolf novels I wrote were all written in their “World of Darkness” and were always intended as companion fiction to their games. The vampires were required to be part of a known clan, to have the proper abilities, and in many cases the novels – while I plotted them – had a particular outcome that was required to further the overall story arc the publishers / editors had in mind. Yes, it was a bit restrictive, but I had a lot of fun with it. Recently I wrote the novel VINTAGE SOUL, which came out in hardcover this past December. It’s the first in a series titled “The DeChance Chronicles” that is written in much the same style and “feel” of my White Wolf novels.

VENTRELLA: You’ve used religion in your writing. What sort of research did you do to prepare?

WILSON: Well, just about every biographical note concerning me will mention that I’m an ordained minister. While that’s a bit tongue in cheek, I spent many years of my youth studying for just that purpose. It wasn’t until about my second year in the US Navy that I determined most (if not all) organized religion was merely an excuse for a small group of people to take control of a larger group by making crazy rules and blaming it on supernatural entities. I left the church behind, but not before I was pretty well versed in The Bible and most denominations who claim to live by it.

VENTRELLA: For the benefit of those unaware, can you describe the plot to THIS IS MY BLOOD?

WILSON: It is a retelling of the gospel from a very different perspective. When Jesus goes into the desert and is tempted by the devil, there is one temptation added. One of the fallen is raised as a woman to tempt him with the flesh. Instead, the woman, named Mary, falls in love with Jesus and his promise of returning her to Heaven.

Cursed to follow him and drink the blood of his followers, Mary walks a fine line between her desire to love and support the Christ, and her burning need to return to Heaven. This novel takes the world of faith, which was the world of men, and of the apostles, and shows it through the eyes of a fallen angel – one who has, in her own words, walked the roads of both Heaven, and Hell. She doesn’t believe there is a God … she knows.

Faithful to the storyline of the original gospels, only weaving in new things when there are gaps in the old, this is a novel of faith, redemption, and ultimate sacrifice.

It’s also my shot at that aforementioned organized religion. In this novel Mary knows that there is a Heaven, and a Hell. She has no need of faith, and this frees her to comment on the lack of belief, harmony, and strength in the apostles … not to mention I’ve always thought Judas got a bad deal, and had fun correcting that as well.

VENTRELLA: Have you received any negative response to your books which use religion as the core?

WILSON: Not a bit. In fact, more than one person (recently, even) has told me that the work has given them new perspective on the Christian faith. So far as I know the only time it’s been an issue was when a German publisher said they could not publish it because they were backed in great part by The Vatican.

VENTRELLA: Have you ever had an idea that bit at you but you couldn’t make work?

WILSON: Not so far. I have had moments where I had an idea I knew to be very, very good, and worried that I wouldn’t be able to pull it off. The first time this happened was when I sat down to write THIS IS MY BLOOD. Oddly, the project I’ve just started feels that way, though after all the years and words, I’m less worried whether I can do it than I am whether I’m ready to do it…I guess time will tell.

VENTRELLA: Writing a short story is much different from writing a novel. What are the difficulties you have found?

WILSON: I’ve always been good with short fiction (I suppose that explains the award). I have noticed, though, that if you spend most of your time writing novels, it can be more difficult to go back to short form with success. You have to change your focus – sort of like the difference between a snapshot and a movie. A short story usually winds around a single conflict, while a novel can have multiple related plots that wind in and around one another. You have to be a lot more careful with your words in the short form and waste none of them.

VENTRELLA: Why do you think some authors specialize in one or the other?

WILSON: Part of it is a difference in career focus. It’s not impossible to make a living with short fiction, but it’s almost as rare as making a career of being a poet. If you want to reach larger audiences and make a mark, it’s necessary to move into longer forms at some point.

For some, creating short stories is the focus. They love theme anthologies, magazines, and collections, and I admire authors who can maintain that focus. As for myself, I write short fiction when time allows, but my focus has largely shifted to novels and screenplays.

VENTRELLA: Do you think the public is sick of vampire stories yet? Will there be a saturation point? (As an aside, I hope not, given my next book…)

WILSON: I don’t think vampires are going anywhere soon. They are very versatile, shifting to fit whatever the fiction style du jour might be. Today they are mostly just characters in bigger stories. In the old school vampire novels, the fact that there were vampires WAS the story. Now they are just characters with a different set of needs, powers, and goals. They’re not going to disappear on us in the foreseeable future.

VENTRELLA: What work of yours would you advise as a starting point for your books and why?

WILSON: It depends entirely on what sort of fiction you enjoy. My most enduring work is THIS IS MY BLOOD, while my personal favorite so far is DEEP BLUE. My latest is VINTAGE SOUL, and I’m hoping that will launch a series that sort of falls halfway between White Wolf and Harry Dresden. I’ve written science fiction, fantasy, thrillers, dark fantasy, and horror. There’s something available out there for nearly everyone.

VENTRELLA: I note that you do not limit your blog to your writing only, and instead discuss whatever you want. What sort of feedback do you receive? Do your fans appreciate this, skip past it, or does it matter?

WILSON: I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on the blog, and I have to say, I can’t imagine the purpose of a blog other than to share what’s on your mind. There’s only so much one can write about their work, and if you want to actually create rapport with readers, you have to be willing to give something in return. I am personally turned off by and uninterested in blogs that cover nothing but a writer’s work. It feels like an advertisement rather than a connection.

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

WILSON: Not sure that it was not given to me and ignored, but I’d say the best advice in today’s writing world is to not get caught up in blogs, websites, hunting for agents, worrying over markets, self-publishing, and “branding” to the point that you forget the most important thing. If you don’t write, write well, and then write some more, all the rest is a waste of time.

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Interview with S. C. Butler

Posted on May 28, 2010 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I’m pleased to be interviewing S.C. Butler today.

After graduating from Harvard, S.C. Butler worked in New York’s financial sector. His first published novel was REIFFEN’S CHOICE, published by Tor Books in September, 2006, followed by QUEEN FERRIS in the fall of 2007, and THE MAGICIAN’S DAUGHTER in May, 2009.

S.C., you had tried to make it as a novelist after college, but instead ended up on Wall Street. Tell us about those earlier books. Why do you think they didn’t get accepted?

S.C. BUTLER: My early books didn’t get accepted because they weren’t very good. They were all over the place, too: a scifi rock and roll novel, a baseball novel set in the Old West, a children’s book called THE MOVIE MICE (think Ratatouille with cameras instead of food).

VENTRELLA: Why have you been able to make sales now?

BUTLER: Ten years after I’d stopped writing, I reread one of my novels and realized it wasn’t very good. Which meant not getting published was my fault (and something I could fix by writing better books), and not the fault of a blind publishing industry. (It rarely is).

VENTRELLA: I certainly know the feeling, having gone through a similar process myself. Please tell my readers about your books!

BUTLER: THE STONEWAYS TRILOGY was conceived as one book with three basic parts. In REIFFEN’S CHOICE the reader discovers how Reiffen learns magic; in QUEEN FERRIS we learn what he does with his magic; and in THE MAGICIANS’ DAUGHTER we learn what his magic does to him. The books are very much about the consequences of power, but with a lot of humor and drama along the way. My own favorite character is Durk, the talking rock.

VENTRELLA: Do you have an agent? How has that relationship worked out?

BUTLER: I have an agent. I think it’s very important for writers to have an agent, not just for the doors an agent can open, but for the business knowledge they bring to the table as well. Most agents are definitely worth the money a writer pays them.

VENTRELLA: We met at a science fiction convention. Have you been attending those for very long?

BUTLER: I only started attending conventions after I became published.

VENTRELLA: Do you find that they are useful?

BUTLER: A lot of people find conventions useful for networking and business, but that isn’t the main reason I enjoy them. I attend conventions more for the chance to meet new people, find out what they’re reading, what they like and don’t like, that sort of thing. A writing friend describes attending SF conventions as a writer’s version of hanging out at the water cooler at work. Since writers tend to work alone, we don’t get a lot of chances to hang out together.

VENTRELLA: What other types of promotion have you done for your books and what do you find the most successful?

BUTLER: I’ve done readings, handed out postcards, done interviews, done bookstore signings, gone on radio programs, done podcasts, blogged, and spoken at schools. Speaking at schools is the only promotional activity I’ve found particularly effective, especially if the talk is combined with a school book fair where I can sell books. Most of my attempts at promotion have had relatively little effect, and I’m coming around now to the idea that the best way to sell books is to write another, better one.

VENTRELLA: What makes your fantasy novels different or unique from others in the genre?

BUTLER: I like to think that my books stand a lot of fantasy conventions on their heads. For example, though one of main protagonists in THE STONEWAYS is a 13 year old boy whose kingdom has been stolen from him by his uncle, he never becomes king. A lot of reviewers didn’t get that, perhaps because the red herring was too red, and thought the book was yet another fantasy where the hero conquers the baddies to win the girl and the crown. But, as I said earlier, the books are very much about the consequences of power. Too much fantasy sidesteps that issue entirely – the hero is more powerful than anyone else, yet never really does anything bad. He saves the world and that’s that. What if Boromir had actually gotten hold of the ring in THE LORD OF THE RINGS? That’s the question THE STONEWAYS asks.

VENTRELLA: What clichés do you see in the genre that you hate? How do you avoid them?

BUTLER: I dislike books where the magic has no cost, where magic-users are people with special talents unavailable to the rest of the people in the world. I much prefer magic that anyone can learn and use, but only if they’re willing to pay the cost. It’s how they deal with their power they have that I find most interesting.

VENTRELLA: When we met, we discussed the fact that neither of us have religion in our fantasy novels, which is somewhat unusual in the genre. Why did you make that decision?

BUTLER: This follows nicely from the previous question – another cliché I dislike is the use of religion as a plot device, usually with the bad guys being priests or clerics who want to preserve their power. The actual faiths of these one-dimensional bad guys are never actually described in this sort of book. It’s just one more form of medieval political power, no different from the various kings, barons, or magic-users also out there trying to take over the world. Though I am not religious myself, I recognize that most religions have a great deal of thought and history behind their beliefs. But bad fantasy religions rarely discuss these things. They’re just present to provide easy motivation for the bad guys.

VENTRELLA: What are you working on now?

BUTLER: My current project is a science fiction story I call THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS meets CONTACT. But writing sf is very different from writing fantasy, and I find myself still adjusting my writing style to the new form’s demands. It’s an interesting challenge – I just hope I can pull it off!

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Don’t Give Up Your Day Job

Posted on May 23, 2010 by Michael A. Ventrella

Thanks largely to TV and movies which tend to feature successful authors solving mysteries, appearing on talk shows, and living in fancy penthouse apartments in Manhattan, the public believes that all you need is a book in Borders and you’re set for life.

Talk about writing fiction!

Side profile of a journalist typing on a typewriter

As I’ve met more and more authors, interviewed them for this blog, and become friends, I am learning how rare it is to find an author who makes a comfortable living from their work. Seriously, I can only think of a few examples where “writing” is that person’s prime occupation.

One author with many books on the Science Fiction bestseller lists works as a secretary. Another has taken a part time job with the census bureau. There’s a NY Times Bestseller who has complained on her Facebook page about her real life job (but I’m not sure what it is).

Many have been able to find jobs related to writing: English professors and other educators are (not surprisingly) common.

And a few have been able to pay the bills by writing, but they write a lot — fiction, nonfiction, magazine articles, comic books, short stories — anything. This is a good strategy if you can manage it, but ironically it kind of requires you to not have a job first to have enough time to write that much.

There are some who are doing quite well, but not everyone can be J.K. Rowling or Steven King — just like every songwriting musician can’t be Bruce Springsteen or Elvis Costello.

I was on a panel with Lawrence Watt-Evans at a recent convention, and this subject came up. He’s an award-winning author whose books can easily be found at any bookstore. The uncertainty of income is a constant for writers. “One year my total income was $16,000,” he said. Of course, it’s understood that his income could have been ten times that much in the next year when a great bestseller would be released, but the lesson remains:

Don’t become a writer for the money!

Seriously!

There are creative people all over the world — artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers — and for every rich successful one out there, a thousand more are working as waiters while hoping for their big break. Being talented helps, but often the relationship between talent and success is blurry.

Write because you love it! I’m not saying to disregard the public — if you write stuff no one wants to read then it’s rather pointless — but be realistic about your future. Keep your feet on the ground.

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Interview with Author and Editor Cecilia Tan

Posted on May 4, 2010 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I’m pleased to be interviewing Cecilia Tan today. Cecilia has been writing and editing professionally for the better part of two decades, both independently and for the small press she founded in 1992, Circlet Press, who specialize in material that mixes the erotic with the fantastic. She has written numerous erotic romances for Ravenous Romance, has edited anthologies for Alyson Books, Thunder’s Mouth Press, Carroll & Graf, Masquerade Books, Blue Moon Books, and others, and collections of her short stories have been published by HarperCollins and Running Press. On top of all that, she also writes and edits publications on baseball.

Cecilia, What brought about the founding of Circlet Press?

CECILIA TAN: I had written a story called “Telepaths Don’t Need Safewords” and just knew at the time I finished it that it was the best story I had written to date. It mixed explicitly kinky erotic action with a science fiction plot. Then I looked around for somewhere to submit it. There was nowhere. Science fiction magazines had explicit rules against sexual content. Porn magazines had explicit rules against both science fiction and any plot beyond “two people meet, then have sex.” The BDSM magazines of the time were either exclusively lesbian or exclusively gay, and my characters were neither. I had been working in book publishing for a few years at that point so I knew the business and I thought “this is nuts. Someone has to do this!” And of course that someone ended up being me.

VENTRELLA: Has it met your expectations?

TAN: Circlet Press has met all my hopes and dreams except for the financial one. We grew by leaps and bounds, garnered fabulous critical acclaim, excellent notice, a great reputation, helped to blow the doors off the old restrictions and show how good mixing the genres could be, jumpstarted the careers of a whole generation of writers … but once the Returns Crisis hit the book publishing industry in the late 1990s, it’s been a financial uphill battle ever since. I’m too stubborn to quit, though, and the ebook has suddenly allowed us to start reaching the readership that mainstream bookstores abandoned. So all of a sudden, there’s some cash flow! Who knows? Maybe someday we’ll turn a profit. What’s most important to me is that we’re still able to connect authors to readers, and then put money back in the pocket of the authors. That part of the business is the same as always … in fact, it’s better.

VENTRELLA: There are many examples of small press these days; do you think this is good for the publishing industry or does it tend to water down the field?

TAN: Oh no. It’s the mainstream presses, not the small presses, who are the most watered down. That’s where you’ll find the most mediocre, recycled pap being packaged and put on the shelf. Granted, it’s not 100% the fault of the big publishers — it’s also the fault of the buyers at Borders and Barnes & Noble, who just want the same thing over and over again, in the hopes that what sold before will sell again. They are all chasing the book equivalent of the Top 40 radio hit and making a lot of boring noise in the process. The small presses are more directly connected with the readership and what they actually want. The small presses occupy the specialty niches.

Another way to look at it is with a comparison to restaurants. The big presses are the chain restaurants. They’re Applebee’s and the Olive Garden and Budweiser. The small presses are that great little gourmet Italian restaurant in your neighborhood, and handcrafted microbrews.

Small presses are also the minor leagues, but for the most part the authors being published in the small press aren’t any less talented than the ones in the mainstream press. They are sometimes less experienced, or less marketable, or just less lucky.

VENTRELLA: As a small press author, I thank you for that!

Has the rise of self-publishing been good for the business?

TAN: Absolutely.

VENTRELLA: When acting as an editor, what is it you look for? What will immediately get a story chucked in the trash?

TAN: The first thing I tell my assistant editors when its time to read the slush pile is DO NOT read the cover letter until after you read the story. Far too many authors think that the job of a short story cover letter is to build you up into a froth of excitement about how great the story is going to be, thus ensuring that a) you’ll be let down, and b) any suspense or joy of discovery in the story has been killed for the reader. I think many amateur writers are confused about the difference between submitting a short story and pitching a novel proposal to an agent or editor, and some just can’t imagine that all they should introduce in the letter is THEMSELVES and let the short story speak for itself.

We get a lot less utter garbage than we used to, though, honestly, and I think the reason why is that thanks to the Internet, writers are actually better informed about how to go about submitting, and they are much more likely to have practiced their grammar and spelling skills on a daily basis. It’s that or the Internet has somehow
swallowed up the attention of most of the crackpots who used to send us wacky submissions in red crayon and the like.

VENTRELLA: What sorts of things do you want in a query letter?

TAN: Since most of what we read is short stories, we don’t read queries. We just want a professional introduction of the author, with whatever credentials they have, but if none, just a firm, no-nonsense hello. It’s professional courtesy to include a cover letter. Sticking a post-it note shaped like a heart on the story is not professional.

Actually, these days, we only accept manuscripts by email, so whenever anything arrives in the mail, I know it’s likely to be from the land of psychoceramics.

VENTRELLA: As a writer of erotic and romantic fiction, what would you advise to someone wanting to enter this field?

TAN: Both romance and erotica have a lot of cliches. The whole trick to writing something that will thrill the pants (sometimes literally) off your readers is to satisfy their expectations while at the same time exceeding them. Be aware of the boundaries of any genre that you write in, and then find out how you can play with and cross those boundaries.

That is, unless thinking about that sort of thing paralyzes you and saps your will to write. In that case, forget everything I said and JUST WRITE. That’s probably the best advice. Step one, start writing. Step two, finish what you started. You’ll get better every time.

VENTRELLA: What trends do you see in the publishing industry that excite you? Which ones worry you?

TAN: I’m very excited at how social networking is allowing authors and readers to connect directly. But the problem is how do you find out about new authors you might like if you’re a reader, when now there isn’t just a publisher-wholesaler-retail chain delivering you a limited selection to choose from? A lot of things are changing now because of that.

It worries me a little that the newer system rewards authors more based on their marketing savvy than on their writing ability … but then I look at a lot of the junk that was published that still hit the New York Times best-seller list over the past 20 years and I realize that’s ALWAYS been true. There have always been populist and popular writers who weren’t particularly great artists.

VENTRELLA: Writing a short story is much different from writing a novel. What are the difficulties you have found? Why do you think some authors specialize in one or the other?

TAN: I’ve written a fair number of both and I really think they are different arts, just like painting and sculpture are different arts. A short story writer has to have guts and brio; a novelist has to have stamina and vision. For me short stories have always come pretty easily. I grab an idea and just pound it until it’s done. A novel takes a bit more planning. The one time I just grabbed hold of a novel with minimal planning, it took six years to finish and came out three times too long to be a commercial novel. (That’s DARON’S GUITAR CHRONCILES, which I’m serializing now on the web.) The next time I plotted out 12 chapters of 5,000 words each and bam, I hit my target right on the nose.

The secret to writing outlines for me is realizing that in the second half I’m going to deviate quite significantly from the outline I wrote, but that some kind of internal logic is at work in my subconscious, so if I forge on, it will all work out. I still have to write the outline, which to me is like sketching out the map of the mountain I’m going to climb. But when I get to the top, exactly halfway through the journey, and am at the turning point, I look down the other side of the mountain… and discover it always looks totally different from the top than it did from where you started at the bottom. Some of the landmarks are the same, but how you get to them changes.

VENTRELLA: Are you sick of vampire stories yet? Is there any plot you have seen too often?

TAN: I love vampires! But even sixteen years ago when I edited my very first anthology of vampire stories, called BLOOD KISS, there were some cliches I didn’t ever need to see. Like setting your vampire story in a goth nightclub … cliche cliche cliche! It really isn’t very imaginative to think “what if those spooky kids who look like vampires actually WERE?” Not exactly an original idea. I actually had to turn down a lot of stories where the “surprise” ending was that one of the two people who met in the bar turns out at the end to be… A VAMPIRE!

I had to write rejections that said things like “It’s a vampire anthology. Every readers KNOWS at least one of them is a vampire.” Then there were the millions who tried the surprise twist: they’re BOTH vampires! Argh. Or surprise twist two: the other one is a vampire hunter! I saw literally hundreds of stories with these plots even after I explicitly banned them in my submission guidelines.

Then there are some ideas that go through fads. I kid you not. One year I received no fewer than four stories all with this exact same plot: an artist falls in love with a model in a painting (usually a Renaissance painting) and gets artistically blocked, can’t paint, is wasting away… until the day the model shows up at the door to have
fantastic sex, looking just like the painting, because s/he is a vampire. Somewhere, once upon a time, that was an original plot. Now, it’s a cliche.

VENTRELLA: How do you think your education has helped your writing?

TAN: Well aside from the actual writing courses I took, it was important to me as someone who writes science fiction to learn some high level science. In college I went right for what was cutting edge at the time, cognitive science (artificial intelligence, neurology, etc) and genetics. Anything you learn that stimulates your brain is going to help your writing. I took a fair amount of psychology in that mix, as well as literature, music, etc. … Long live the liberal arts.

VENTRELLA: Besides “keep writing” what specific advice would you give an aspiring author that you wish someone had given you when you began?

TAN: I think I must have started out with some pretty good advice, because I can’t think of anything. I suppose the advice I would give is this.

You need your reader to trust you to lead them on a rollercoaster ride. For them to trust you, you have to trust yourself. To trust yourself, you have to know your craft and be constantly improving it, constantly learning about yourself and the way your writing affects your readers. So don’t write in a vacuum because you’re afraid people won’t like it. Find the ones who do like it, and write more for them!

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Interview with Tanya Huff

Posted on April 26, 2010 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I am pleased to be interviewing Tanya Huff today! Tanya Huff lives in rural Ontario, Canada with her partner Fiona Patton and, as of last count, nine cats. Her 26 novels and 68 short stories include horror, heroic fantasy, urban fantasy, comedy, and space opera. She’s written four essays for Ben Bella’s pop culture collections. Her Blood series was turned into the 22 episode BLOOD TIES and writing episode nine allowed her to finally use her degree in Radio & Television Arts. Her latest novel is THE TRUTH OF VALOR (DAW, September 2010). When not writing, she practices her guitar and spends too much time on line.

Tanya, How did you break into the publishing business?

TANYA HUFF: I started by sending out Third Time Lucky to the digests — Asimov didn’t want it and Amazing did. At the same time, I’d finished writing CHILD OF THE GROVE (in about 80% the same shape as the published book) and sent it out as a YA to Terri Windling at one of the Ace imprints I think. It was twenty-five years ago so details are foggy. Terri suggested I submit it as an adult book.

One of the things they suggest when you’re looking for a publisher is to look at what who publishes what you read and I was split about 50/50 between DAW and Del Rey. But I had a friend, S. M. Stirling who’d sold two books to Sheila Gilbert while she was at Signet and now she was at DAW and that seemed like a sign. I was heading to NYC to see some shows and Steve said he’d call Sheila and ask if she had time to see me. Unfortunately, he forgot and when I called Sheila, she said she hadn’t heard from him in a few years but if I could get there right away, she’d just had someone cancel and could see me for about twenty minutes.

Never do this, btw. Never cold call an editor and mention you just happen to be in town. It was barely doable 25 years ago. It’s really isn’t now.

We talked, I left the manuscript for CHILD OF THE GROVE with her, eventually, a year and a rewrite later, she bought it and, in the intervening years, she’s bought another 25.

VENTRELLA: You’ve stated in the past that you decide to write a vampire book because, basically, you knew they were popular now.

HUFF: No, what I said was, I decided to write a vampire book because I was working in a bookstore and had observed that vampire readers were very, very loyal to their genre. That they’d buy anything with fangs on the cover in the desperate hope of finding something decent to read. I figured if I wrote a good vampire book, then I’d give the vampire fans what they were looking for and they’d be that loyal to me. So I did. And they are. But twenty odd years ago when I wrote BLOOD PRICE, vampires were no where near as widely popular as they are now. This was pre-Buffy, remember.

VENTRELLA: This leads to an interesting question in general: How much of writing is about art and how much is about business? Do you think most authors write for the love of writing or because they want to be successful? Are the two incompatible? And is there anything wrong in that?

HUFF: The two are certainly not incompatible. On one level it doesn’t matter what job you do, if you’re just in it for the money, it’ll show and it won’t be pretty. On another, good writing requires a piece of your soul so you’d better love it given that you’re gouging chunks out of yourself to produce it. Also, as I tell the high school kids I occasionally talk to, you’d better love it because the odds are very good you’ll never make much money at it. On the other hand, I’ve never met a writer who doesn’t have a mulitude of ideas floating about and the smart ones will look at what’s selling, try to use that to figure out what’ll be selling in a year to eighteen months when any book you may start now will actually be published, and develop the idea that has the best chance in the market. On yet another hand, sometimes you just want to tell a particular story so badly that the market be damned and it then becomes your agent or editor’s job to reign you in.

So the short answer is, no.

VENTRELLA: You ignored many traditional vampire myths in your books. (I’m doing the same in my next novel, by the way, about a vampire who runs for President.) What led to that decision? Did you get any complaints from the hard core vampire fans?

HUFF: In order for myth to remain alive, it has to grow and change. Once a myth codifies, it dies. I used the parts of vampire myth that were relevant to my story and ignored what wasn’t. So far, no one’s complained. Well, not to me anyway.

VENTRELLA: You’ve been fortunate (and talented) enough to have a TV series based on one of your series. How did that come about?

HUFF: The wonderful guys at Kaleidoscope optioned the Blood series because they loved them and then worked their butts off to bring it to the screen. All I had to do was cash the option check. They did all the work.

VENTRELLA: Were you pleased with the result?

HUFF: I loved the result. Christina Cox was one the actors I saw playing Vicki back in the early 90’s when she was on a show called F/X THE SERIES and I was thrilled when she got the part. Dylan Neal was not how I physically saw Mike — until I saw Dylan play Mike and I loved his interpretation. I’d never been able to cast Henry Fitzroy but now I can only see Kyle Schmid in the part.

VENTRELLA: Did the TV series inspire you to make changes in future books of the series? Did you care about continuity at all, or was that not an issue?

HUFF: I wrote the last Blood book in… I think 1996 so it was totally a non issue. I said at the time that BLOOD DEBT was the last and it has been. There’s been a few short stories since Blood Ties but I have no problem keeping the show mythos and the book mythos straight.

VENTRELLA: What process do you use when preparing a novel? Do you do extensive research? Do you outline?

HUFF: First I have the idea — or, more accurately, separate the idea I’m currently excited about from the herd. Then I write up a pitch for my agent to give my editor — this is a very short outline and has, in the past, actually used the phrase, “And a bunch of stuff happens in the middle.” I always know where I’m starting from and I always know where I’m going, I just don’t always know how I’m going to get there. After the book sells, I research for two to three months until the weight of information tips me over into writing. Then I start at the beginning and tell the story until I finish. Because I edit as I go, my first draft about 95% similar to the book you buy.

VENTRELLA: How do you personally create a new fantasy world, with its own rules? In other words, how much planning and background information do you write?

HUFF: When I create a new fantasy world I need a map so I know the climate, the type of food, the industry, the type of farming, the housing needs. I need to know what time of year it is. I need to know what the religon is, and I need to work out the profanity. Most profanity is very tied to religion and is often the hardest thing to come up with in a created world.

VENTRELLA: What do you bring to the genre that other similar books miss? In other words, what is different about your books?

HUFF: Well, I don’t take myself or the genre (or various) subgenre too seriously while still respecting my readers, but I’m not the only one. I like kick ass women and witty repartee, so that’s going to be included every time. I guess the big thing that’s different about my books, is that I’ve written them…

VENTRELLA: Many aspiring authors get conned by self-publishers who pretend not to be, or by “editors” who do little more than proofreading for a large fee. How does one avoid these scams?

HUFF: They’re not hard to avoid. Publishers and editors pay you — you’re creating the product. If you’re paying them, it’s a scam.

VENTRELLA: Besides “keep writing” what specific advise would you give an aspiring author?

HUFF: Put a third of every check you receive into a separate tax account. Sure, it won’t matter for years but there will come a day when you’re actually making a living wage and the goverment will want a surprising amount of it. If you’re Canadian, you have to pay both halves of the Canada Pension Plan and that’s a surprise when it hits the first time, believe me. It’s best to remember that you’re essentially a small business all year long, not just in April.

Remember that publishers, editors, and agents all talk to each other. They will talk about you. You don’t have to be a saint, but don’t be an ass. If you get a reputation as being unprofessional or hard to work with, it won’t matter if you have all the talent in the world.

And speaking of talent, discipline matters more. I guarentee that more disciplined people with minimal talent are published than talented people with minimal discipline.

Write subjectively. Edit objectively.

Have fun.

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Interview with author Marie Lamba

Posted on April 19, 2010 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I’m pleased to be interviewing Young Adult author Marie Lamba today. Marie is the author of the humorous young adult novel WHAT I MEANT…, which Publisher’s Weekly has dubbed “an impressive debut.” She has two more novels which will be coming out soon. In addition to her fiction writing, Marie has written and published more than 100 articles, including features in national magazines such as Garden Design, Your Home, and Sports International. Her most recent piece, “Plotting a Novel Group,” appears in the February 2008 issue of Writer’s Digest. Her web page is www.marielamba.com.

MARIE LAMBA: Hi Michael. Thank you for having me on your blog.

VENTRELLA: Marie, what is it that makes a novel a Young Adult novel?

LAMBA: To me, a young adult novel is categorized primarily by the age of the main character. Since readers read about characters older than themselves, if you have a 13-year-old protagonist, you’ve just written a middle reader (not a YA), and will have mostly elementary school aged readers. Also, content figures in. Sometimes the content is not right for the YA market. But these days, almost anything goes for YA readers. The edgier the better, though you may just be banned by schools…which usually reaps great press and even better sales, interestingly enough.

VENTRELLA: You keep a pretty active blog. Do you think this is necessary to help promote your work?

LAMBA: My site helps me promote my work every single day. I’ve heard people say that if you don’t update your blog at least 3 times a week, then don’t bother having one. I heartily disagree. Sometimes it’s not about getting a huge number of subscribers, but about having a presence, and being able to be found in various ways.

While my blog may seem really active, I sometimes post as rarely as once a month. I just don’t think there’s a point in posting unless I really have something to say. Yet the site is dynamic and gets a fair number of hits everyday because I’ve got a lot going on there. In addition to offering updates about my work, essays on writing, and book reviews, I’ve made it function as my website, www.marielamba.com. So folks are going there to find out about my appearances, to read my bio, to read excerpts from my books, etc. And with links to my Twitter feed, there is always something new to see.

By combining my website with my blog, people stumble onto it while doing the weirdest searches. Like when looking for the menu of Nat’s Pizza. And then they see that my novel has a scene set there. Then they click on my link to buy my Doylestown-based novel. All because of a blog post that tagged Nat’s Pizza in it, if that makes sense?

VENTRELLA: Should unpublished authors have a blog?

LAMBA: Absolutely. It’s a great way to start establishing yourself and your voice. Everything from the color scheme you use to the tone of your bio can help create a feel for who you are. Have a page on your blog with short excerpts of your work, but don’t give away too much material there. Just enough for a taste.

If you really want to be savvy, then you could use your site for things such as book reviews and editor and publisher interviews, which would make your name familiar to the “powers that be.”

VENTRELLA: What can an author do to make their blog stand out among the many out there?

LAMBA: I think it goes back to your voice. Who you are should come through in the tone of your writing, and what you choose to highlight. Then, of course, you need to connect with your audience. That’s where bringing your site to the attention of an organization can help. For example, after I wrote a post about plotting, I saw on a children’s writing message board that I belong to that there was some recent discussion about plotting. I immediately commented there, providing my link to my post.

VENTRELLA: You also make extensive use of Twitter. How can you make your tweets stand out when there are so many people on Twitter? And do you think this is an efficient use of your time?

LAMBA: You know, Twitter is so quick that it isn’t the time suck that sites like Facebook seem to be. At least not for me. Here’s the trick though: when you post there, make it under 40 characters so that you can easily be retweeted to others. Also, try to always provide a link, whether it is to a relevant blog post or a Facebook invite to an event. Links are always too long, so go to www.bitly.com, paste the link there, and you’ll get a shorter link that you can use. And don’t always make your tweets about you. Highlight the accomplishments of others. It’s fun to do, plus I think it’s just good karma.

As for making your tweets stand out, I definitely avoid the whole “I’m getting a cup of coffee now” variety of posts. Again, I only go on there when I have something to say or I really want to respond to someone. I think then people will pay more attention to you. You aren’t the annoying talker everyone wishes would go away. And I try not to follow just anyone or anything. My list is made up of people I know, and of publishers, editors, librarians, media, authors. In short (in the spirit of Twitter), folks who might actually care to hear what I have to say.

VENTRELLA: What is your writing process? (Do you outline heavily, create character backgrounds first, come up with the basic concept and run with it, etc.?)

LAMBA: Good question. It’s evolving. For my past few novels, I knew my final scene. I had my opening dialogue. And then I was off! Kind of like knowing I’m driving to California, and therefore start heading west, but without a map. I do get to the end eventually. The fun thing about this method is the unexpected twists and turns. The not-so-fun thing is cleaning up the mess that I’ve created, trying to make it more direct and cohesive. It can take a long time.

With my current novel, I’m trying to be more organized. I’ve plotted it out, and now I’m in the outlining stage. Then I’ll start writing. I’m hoping that this will help me write faster. My last novel DRAWN (which is now out on submission), took over a year and a half to write. I want to be much more productive than that.

VENTRELLA: What are you doing in your fiction that no one else is doing? What makes your book different and exciting?

LAMBA: I think, again, it comes down to voice. I’m the only person with my point of view and my humor, and that flavors the plot and the characters. With WHAT I MEANT… (Random House YA), the book’s cast of bi-racial characters mirrors my own family’s blend of Italian-American and Asian-Indian personalities. Because WHAT I MEANT… has a mixed race protagonist, yet it is a mainstream story not focused on race, it became a standout in the field.

VENTRELLA: Have you received any surprising results from your writing?

LAMBA: It is always touching to have readers contact me saying that they identified with the characters and that WHAT I MEANT… is their favorite book. One girl even said that she never cries at anything, yet she found herself bawling at the end of my novel because it touched her. That was humbling.

On a funny note, an ex-boyfriend from high school assumed that one of the guy characters in the novel was named after him. He wasn’t.

VENTRELLA: You do a lot of personal appearances to promote your books. What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing these? How do you organize them?

LAMBA: The main advantage is making a personal connection with a reader. If someone meets you and enjoys talking with you, they’ll also remember you and feel a connection to your writing. This is really how books are sold: one reader at a time. I love meeting people, and appearances take me away from my isolated little writing spot and out into the real world. All good. The disadvantage? I can’t think of a single one. I’m careful to pick and choose where and when I go so it doesn’t take away from my writing time.

Events happen many ways. Sometimes booksellers or conferences or teachers contact me. Sometimes I get in touch with them if I have a specific event idea. And I have done presentations to hundreds and hundreds of scouts. I also have to mention that I’m a proud member of the Philly Liars Club, a collection of 13 authors who basically lie for a living. Together we stage a slew of oddball events, and have a blast.

VENTRELLA: Let’s discuss the publishing business a bit. With self-publishing and e-books becoming more prominent, how do you think this will change the demand and market for new writers?

LAMBA: I really think that self-publishing and e-books represent a revolution in publishing, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 1460’s when old Guttenberg came onto the scene with his printing press, displacing those hard-working monks and their illuminated manuscripts. Documents at that time show that people didn’t realize the magnitude or ramifications of what was going on. Quite simply, the change was so huge that they couldn’t envision the implications.

And so it goes with us. We speculate, but we can barely foresee what all these huge changes mean. I say look to the music industry, to prevalent iPods and the dearly departed record stores. And be cautious. Will books on paper no longer exist? Will bookstores and libraries disappear? Will publishers become obsolete? The only thing I know for sure is that no matter what form content will take, someone will have to write it.

Cling to that, writers and future writers. We are not replaceable.

VENTRELLA: Do you think the stigma of being self-published will continue? Do you think it’s deserved?

LAMBA: Some self-published books are brilliant. Others are painful and shouldn’t see the light of day. Books that are horribly written and barely edited definitely ruin the reputation of others out there, sadly.

I do think that as distribution of self-published novels improves, and more established authors step into this arena, that this stigma will fade. I mean, what does an author like Stephen King really need a publisher for? Couldn’t someone of that stature just put books out into the stratosphere by himself by self-publishing? J.A. Konrath has started to do it with some success, though he still also goes the traditional route.

VENTRELLA: Who are your favorite authors? Why?

LAMBA: Anne Tyler for her beautiful imagery and quirky characters. T.H. White for his epic storytelling, sense of grandeur, and sense of humor. Audrey Niffeneger for her amazing plotting abilities. Sarah Dessen for her touching and real YA voice.

VENTRELLA: What’s the biggest mistake you see aspiring writers make?

LAMBA: Not taking the time to polish their work, and really learn their craft. Writers need to work so hard to improve everything they do. Established authors are always struggling to polish, to edit. They value pointed criticism, and vigorously revise. When I see someone with talent refusing to do this type of work to polish their manuscript, or not absorbing decent criticism, I know that they are limiting themselves, and that’s a shame.

VENTRELLA: What advice can you offer that you wish someone had offered you?

LAMBA: Writing is not only an art, it’s a business. And sometimes in this business really nasty crap will happen to you. In fact, expect it. Your novel, no matter how important it is to you, is just a commodity in the business world. Be as businesslike as you can, while protecting the sensitive artist within. And write another book. And another. And another.

VENTRELLA: And what’s next? What can we look forward to seeing from you?

LAMBA: My YA paranormal DRAWN (excerpt on my blog/website) is under consideration right now. It’s about a teen artist who moves to England in search of a normal life. But then she starts channeling one very hot ghost through her drawings. Not normal at all.

And right now I’m working on a novel for adults: When an Italian grandmother shares old fashioned recipes for sauces and for a happy life, her three granddaughters test the ingredients in fresh ways, cooking up a surprising blend of spice, passion, trouble and true love.

That pretty much sums it up! Thanks, again, for having me here.

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Interview with NY Times Bestselling Author Rachel Caine

Posted on April 4, 2010 by Michael A. Ventrella

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I’m pleased to be interviewing NY Times bestselling author Rachel Caine. Rachel has the Morganville Vampires series, Weather Warden series, and the Outcast Season series, as well as writing paranormal romantic action/adventure and many other genres. Rachel will be the Guest of Honor at Ravencon next weekend (April 9 – 11, 2010) where I am a mere minor guest! Her web page is here.

Rachel, what is it that makes a novel a “young adult” novel?

RACHEL CAINE: The way I look at it, it’s purely a matter of the age of the central characters. My four main characters are ages 17, 18 and 19 now, and as with all characters, their ages and life experience shape the events of the book. So it’s not that I deliberately target the audience … it’s that I think in order to be faithful to the characters and the story, it should naturally appeal to a young adult audience. (Although I have plenty of adult readers of this series as well.)

VENTRELLA: It seems like you have a new book out every month! How do you manage to be so prolific?

CAINE: Ha, I don’t think it’s *every* month. But definitely 3 or 4 a year, that’s true. Most of that’s driven by the YA series (Morganville Vampires) because the schedule for that is we’re publishing one every six months vs. a year for the adult novels (Weather Warden and Outcast Season). But when you add it all together, three series going at the same time does tend to add up fast.

I think I’m lucky that I really enjoy writing to tight deadlines (generally) — it’s been a really great balance against my sometimes stressful day job.

VENTRELLA: There is an ironic balance that has to be met when writing about the supernatural, in that it has to be rooted in reality to be believable. How have you made decisions about integrating the real with fantasy?

CAINE: I’m going to shamelessly quote Jim Butcher, who once said that in order to have urban fantasy that feels realistic you need to have about as much “real” as you do “fantasy.” I believe that’s true … If you look at the success of the movie “Hellboy”, I think that first film achieved a wonderful balance in that area. Sure, you’ve got a big red devil guy running around fighting monsters, but there’s so much real world complication that it makes it all that much funnier and more outrageous. I thought that in the second film, good as it was, they forgot that balance, and slid it to about 75% fantasy, 25% real world … and I think it wasn’t as strong as the first.

So I try to balance my fantastic elements with the fact that everybody, even supernaturally gifted people, have to worry about bills and dry cleaning and child care. 🙂

VENTRELLA: What is it about vampires that attracts such attention these days? Do you think this is just a trend? (I hope not, since my third novel will be a vampire book …)

CAINE: Well, I’ve actually been in the vampire field when it was cool before (in the early 90s) and when it wasn’t (in the late 90s), and now it’s cool again, which is kind of great. Vampires never really go out of style — we’ve been afraid of them for thousands of years, and writing about them in fiction for more than 100 years. The fascinating thing is that in the beginning, vampires were soulless monsters … reflecting that hidden terror that those you know and love can suddenly become monsters. And then they took on personalities and became more sympathetic, and eventually (by the mid-70s) became actual misunderstood romantic anti-heroes. By the mid-1980s, vampires had become heroic, appearing as police officers, detectives, doctors, all kinds of professions that had always been seen as admirable. Now, it seems that they’re back to the dark, romantic Heathcliff-type heroes (at least in the romance circles), but then there’s graphic novels like 30 DAYS OF NIGHT that harken back to the terrifying soulless monster vampires prototypes. So there’s lots of room to do anything you’d like in vampires, which I think is fantastic fun.

VENTRELLA: For those unfamiliar with your work, can you give a quick description of your main series?

CAINE: The Morganville Vampires series (Young Adult) follows the adventures of Claire Danvers and her fellow housemates Eve, Shane and Michael in the town of Morganville … just your average Texas college town, except that it’s controlled by vampires, and the city taxes get collected by Bloodmobiles. Once you’re in on the secret, you’ll never make it out of town alive. Not all the vampires are bad, but they’re all unpredictable, and Claire and her friends often find themselves caught in the middle of the ultimate haves-and-have-not struggle.

The Weather Warden series (Urban fantasy) features Joanne Baldwin, a sexy, sassy woman with a secret … she can control the weather, and she’s part of a secret organization that battles the forces of nature on a regular basis. Mother Nature really doesn’t like us, and only Joanne and the Wardens stand between us and total extinction … when they’re not battling among themselves. Oh, and there are Djinn (genies) who sometimes serve the Wardens, and quite often turn on them with fatal results. Trust Joanne to engage in the most dangerous kind of romance … with one of the most powerful Djinn in existence.

The Outcast Season series (Urban fantasy) is a spin off of the Warden universe, and concerns Cassiel, a former Djinn who’s been cut off from her supernatural kin and now must survive in a human world she doesn’t understand or like, with the aid of Wardens she’s never respected. But in her struggle to survive, she finds herself drawn more and more to the humans she cares for, in particular Warden Luis Rocha — which makes things more difficult when she realizes that she may have a destiny after all: to destroy the human race.

VENTRELLA: How have you planned out the Morganville series?

CAINE: I had a six-book story arc planned, and I’m making the second set of six more standalone stories. There is a certain continuity to the storyline, but I’m trying to avoid too many cliffhangers. 🙂

VENTRELLA: What do you do to create believable characters who learn and grow from their adventures?

CAINE: I don’t know that it’s a conscious process for me … the characters really seem to do that on their own. I have found that less is more in character development … the more tics and traits you give a character, the less natural they seem over time. I find that starting small gives characters plenty of room to grow.

VENTRELLA: How did you break into the publishing business?

CAINE: Not in any way that anyone else should look on as typical! I never intended to … a friend bought me a ticket to a writer’s conference and dropped me at the door. He wanted me to learn about being a writer because I’d been writing on my own (and hiding it) for more than 15 years at that point. So I thought I’d talk to an editor or two, and that would be that.

Only the first editor I talked to hired me to do my first novel. So that worked a little better than I expected, actually. That was in 1990, and I’ve been publishing ever since … with the occasional career hiccup.

VENTRELLA: Some of your earlier works were written under other names. Why did you do that, and would you advise others to do so?

CAINE: And that would be the “occasional career hiccup” referred to above. 🙂 I wrote as Roxanne Longstreet (my maiden name) when first starting out, but my books didn’t really burn up the shelves in any significant way. When my first publisher told me they wouldn’t be able to buy more from me, I changed my name to my married name (Roxanne Conrad) and tried again, with similar results. Rachel Caine is proof that the third time is the charm, I think!

I did use the name “Julie Fortune” for a media tie-in novel for Stargate, mainly because at that time the “Rachel Caine” identity was still new and fragile, and I didn’t want to risk bad sales on something so far outside of my new areas of expertise. But Julie actually has done pretty well on her own.

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

CAINE: I don’t think I’d like to be remembered for one book … more for a body of work. I can’t really say that I prefer one book over another; from my perspective they each have different characters, but mostly in the sense of where I was emotionally at the time I did the work. I’m not the best judge of that sort of thing. I’m just happy that it seems to touch people and entertain them.

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?

CAINE: I don’t think it’s a step down at all, but there are a number of people who simply don’t like to read on the screen, so I think traditional publishing will always have a place. For people who read for the experience of the story, versus collecting books, I think ebooks are perfect — portable, simple, and disposable. For collectors, nothing will replace the experience of a book.

I do think there is a real and growing problem related to ebooks … there’s a basic misunderstanding of copyright as it relates to electronic files. Buying an ebook doesn’t give someone the right to copy it wholesale and sell it on to others … and there’s a constant issue with this happening. Most of those people don’t understand that what they’re doing is setting themselves up as a digital publisher, which is robbing both the author and the publisher. Unless we can collectively get that settled, it’s going to bleed the industry dry over time.

VENTRELLA: You’ve wisely advised authors before not to self-publish. Why is that important?

CAINE: I don’t say never self-publish, but it’s not a good way to launch a career as a writer. If the person wants simply to have a book, and has no expectations of continuing to advance in it as a career, then self-publishing might be okay. But there are a lot of drawbacks to self-publishing … you’re responsible for marketing, getting your books into physical stores, and competing with authors who don’t have to do any of that for themselves. Don’t kid yourself: it takes time away from your writing, and trying to break into bookstores in any kind of volume is difficult, if not almost impossible.

Self-publishing also has a reputation — sometimes undeserved, but often accurate — of not being good quality. Often the covers aren’t very good, and unless you’re extremely good at self-editing, or employ a professional editor who knows their stuff, the product is often easy to detect as amateurish rather than professional. So you have a huge burden to overcome.

The last thing I’ll say is this: very few people have ever made decent money from self-publishing, and those that have, generally jumped to traditional publishers as quickly as possible. Don’t get fooled by companies that promise you they’ll publish your book, but then require you to pay for editorial, marketing, and other services. They make money off of you. Your chances of making money from them is pretty small.

VENTRELLA: Finally, what is it about conventions that you like?

CAINE: I love hanging out with my people. 🙂 I’ve always been drawn to conventions — where I can have endlessly fun conversations about things that I’m passionate about, whether it’s geeky obsession over a TV show or deep conversation about life, the universe, and everything (thanks, Douglas Adams!). I’ve met many of my best friends through conventions, and had some of my finest times ever.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk with you! Looking forward to seeing you at RavenCon!

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