Running up that hill
A while back on my blog in a post called ‘Steepness’ I wrote about a workout I sometimes do.  It involves running up a hill with a flight of steps cut in it. It’s a killer workout.  After a few repetitions you either vomit, or almost-vomit (if you start with a completely empty stomach).  It’s a workout that pays huge dividends in terms of physical conditioning. And it’s a workout that I will make many excuses to avoid. (At the moment I’m claiming hayfever).

What I found, briefly, was that if I isolated the hardest part of this hard workout and worked it repetitively, as intervals, I got better rapidly. And the intensity of mental focus that arose out of that isolation work was staggering. It was really remarkable.

I’ve wanted to unpack this in relation to writing for ages, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what I wanted to say. Then my partner (who trains fighters in his work) started telling me about research in a field called ‘deliberate practice.’

Deliberate practice is a method of improving performance through stretching yourself, making mistakes, and critical self-evaluation while remaining ignited toward your goal. It’s an area of research developed by K. Anders Ericsson centring on sports performers, classical musicians, chess players, and some other professionals. If you want to read more about it, here’s an article. Malcolm Gladwell also wrote about these ideas in Outliers

This is a huge area, but in brief here’s what I’m getting: the essence of deliberate practice is forcing yourself to deal with steepness. It’s a way of increasing the gradient of your learning curve whether you are a beginner or an old-timer. And I would add from my own experience of running the hill that this approach creates a degree of intensity that burns through mental barriers. It’s like putting yourself in the anaerobic threshold zone and staying there even when you think you’re going to die.

But how to apply these sports metaphors to writing? When I first read this stuff about classical musicans practicing like demons I was repelled. I was all like, ‘Oh, but I’m a creative, dude. I’m not gonna do drills. That messes up my flow, like. Yuck.’

I think I said to my partner: ‘But this represents the whole ethos that I ran away from screaming, years ago.’

Then I thought about it a bit more.

Deliberate practice is a set of ideas cultivated around performance, and specifically around performance in areas where success or failure can be clearly defined. So we can run into trouble when we try to apply these methods to creative work. Partly this is because of the definitional marsh surrounding the notion of creative ‘success.’ Success for a classical musician performing a score relies on that musican reaching an agreed standard of what is ‘good’ or’ excellent.’ A basketball player drilling shots knows exactly what he or shy is trying to achieve. Even in the chaotic environment of a game where the player has to deal with teammates, opponents and the unpredictable unfolding of events, at least there is clear feedback that tells her ‘where did I go right?’ and ‘where did I go wrong?’ There are objective criteria to be met.

If you’re a writer you’ve probably already spotted the problem I’m talking about. One reader loves how you did X in a story. Another reader thinks it’s tacky. And so on. Or maybe you look at a bestselling or highly praised book and go, ‘Huh? What’s all the fuss?’ while noticing that critics describe a book you love in pejorative terms. Trying to judge your work (or anybody’s) against an objective standard is impossible. There is no such thing. The whole enterprise is a recipe for crazy sauce.

And yet, we must go on, crazy sauce or no. Personally, my sense is that although trusted readers can encourage you and a good editor is priceless, ultimately you spend most of your time in your own head. You stand or fall on your own judgement. So the decisions about what to work on in your writing have to be yours.

To start with, how can we identify strengths and weaknesses? I have found that the obvious, most foolproof way is to look for the steepness. Look for what is hard. Steer into the wind.

For example, maybe dialogue is hard and you avoid it. OK. If you can identify that, then you can do something about it. You aren’t doomed to write wooden dialogue for the rest of your life. Go read books that have excellent dialogue. Read plays. Watch movies–good movies with good writing, not just movies where stuff blows up. And practice dialogue in isolation. You could try writing a whole story in dialogue, or at least a whole scene.

And this is important: work with the expectation that it will be bad. Don’t let suckage stop you. When you have some product, examine it carefully and conscientiously to identify your failures, correct what you can, and go again. Writing ain’t magic (except when it is, but that’s out of your control so you may as well forget about it). It’s a learning process like any other.

If you look closely, you can find a way to apply deliberate practice to your writing at pretty much every level, from word choice through all the levels of style and structure, right on up to subject matter and work habits. The trick is to isolate problem areas, devise ways of addressing them, then evaluate the result and adjust accordingly. All of these stages are important. You can’t just put in blind mileage; you have to invest in the meta, in the critical examination of your own process. And this never stops.  There is no arrival. That’s what makes it a practice.

And it’s not supposed to be easy. The whole point is to push past your own resistance.

So many times I have thought, ‘I can’t do that. I’m not that sort of writer. I can only do this.’  But the lesson of deliberate practice is that you can be any kind of writer you want to be if you’re prepared to take on the steepness.

My personal bugbear of the moment is endings. I’m famous for starting things, going a certain way, and then starting something else. My hard drive is full of undeveloped and half-developed projects.  I work and work and have no product. So at this moment, I’m forcing myself to finish what I have started. I hate it! It’s not fun. But I’m learning from this. It’s like psychological kettlebells. No pain, no gain.

And look: we’re all human here with all kinds of demands on our time and energy.  We may need to pick our battles carefully, choose wisely where we invest energy. So it’s important to be smart and practice with eyes open as to what specific work will do the most good.

Personally I believe that desire is probably the most important thing, because it’s desire that keeps driving you even when the work is too hard and the road seems too long. So I will leave you with the quote that hangs above the computer in our kitchen:

‘Champions are made from something they have deep inside them, a desire, a dream, a vision.  They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will.  But the will must be stronger than the skill.’

–Muhammad Ali

Bio:

Tricia Sullivan is a science fiction writer. She also writes fantasy under the pseudonym Valery Leith. She moved to the United Kingdom in 1995. In 1999 she won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for her novel Dreaming in Smoke. Her novel Maul was also shortlisted for the same award in 2004. Sullivan has studied music and martial arts. Her partner is the martial artist Steve Morris, with whom she has three children. They live in Shropshire.

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How Do You Do It?

One of the questions I get asked a lot is  “how do you do it? How do you juggle writing books in different worlds, and the short fiction, and the freelance, and all of that?”

My joke answer is “carefully, and with a lot of caffeine.”  And the joke is that it’s utterly true.  But, on a more serious note…

Once upon a time, I was a book editor, running an imprint that published 50+ books a year.  I loved my job –the chance to work on so many different projects, each with their own voice and personality, was what got me out of bed and into the office every day.  But, eventually, the stress of the job, plus the growing number of hours I spent nights and weekends with my own writing, required a change.  I couldn’t keep giving 100% to both careers, not without something taking the hit (and that thing would probably have been me).

So in 2003 I bid farewell to the 8-6 routine of the office, and went boldly into the 8-6 routine of…well, the office.  Because, the truth is, the change in my work habits has mainly been that my commute is shorter, and I don’t have to close the door when I take that 15 minute power nap.  But from the very beginning I knew that the only way this career would work, for me, was to treat it with the same mindset: this is my job, and it has structure.

Yes, I can work anywhere, and do.  But the structure comes with me.  There is coffee in the morning, to jumpstart my brain.  There are the stretches, so I don’t cramp up from sitting too long.  There’s the usual procrastination of internet-browsing and email checking, and the quick conversations with my fellow freelancers on Skype replacing the traditional water cooler.  I get dressed – not as formally as officewear, but I don’t work in my pjs, either.

And then I chose a project to work on.  Usually, it’s on the basis of What’s Due First, but if I’ve had a sudden thought about a project, then I’ll get to that first.  If a deadline is looming, I may spend all day on it; if there are a bunch of things I need to get to, then I spend time with each. Prioritize, schedule, and begin.  It’s all pretty basic… or so I thought.

“But how do you switch between them?” people ask, certain that they would not be able to stop working in one world/project and move to another.  The only way I can answer that is to ask in return – how did you switch between classes, in school?  How do you stop working on one project when a more urgent one hits your desk at work, and then go back to the items still waiting?

But my interrogators are certain, somehow, that it’s not the same.  Oh, but that’s not creative, they reply, dismissing the effort their jobs require far too easily– and giving far too much weight to the demands of  ‘creation’ versus ‘work.’

And I think that people do themselves a serious disservice, with that.

When teachers teach, they have multiple classes, filled with kids that have different needs.  A reporter or a cop doesn’t investigate only one case or story at a time (far from it!).  A carpenter or plumber is rarely working on only one job, and an office worker of any stripe is often juggling not just projects but multiple bosses!  And meetings, let’s not forget all those meetings…

Me, I wonder how YOU do it.

Bio:

Laura Anne Gilman started her professional life as a book editor for a major NYC house, fitting her writing into the remaining available hours. In 2004 she switched that around, becoming a full-time writer and freelance editor.

Laura Anne is the author of the popular Cosa Nostradamus books for Luna (the “Retrievers” and “Paranormal Scene Investigations” urban fantasy series), and the award-nominated The Vineart War trilogy from Pocket,as well as the forthcoming story collection DRAGON VIRUS.  A member of the on-line writers’ consortium BookView Cafe, she continues to write and sell short fiction in a variety of genres.

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The Moment of Gratuitous Coolness

When I was a teenager, I inhaled the works of Alexander Dumas, one of which was  MARGUERITE DE VALOIS.  The story centers around King Henry of Navarre, a protestant, and his unwilling wife, Marguerite.  Henry rules Navarre, a large province, and is technically a king in his own right, but he owes his allegiance to France.  Unfortunately he is trapped at the French court at the time of St. Valentine’s day massacre, during which Catholics mass-murdered French protestants.

Henry’s wife, Marguerite, is a part of a large Catholic family that rules France.  She is the daughter of Catherine de Medici and sister to Charles, the monarch of France.  Catherine de Medici deeply hates Henry, both because he is a Protestant and because of some past business with his mother and she is continuously scheming to murder him somehow, in such a way as to not cause a war with the powerful province of Navarre.  Catherine de Medici is a deeply evil character.  She poisons, she schemes, she uses her children as pawns.  She is this unstoppable malevolent force and she stalks the palace like a panther waiting to pounce.

In the novel, Henry and Marguerite are married against their wishes.  They do not consummate the marriage, but out of sheer self-defense, they form a secret political alliance with each other.  Henry is seduced by Madame de Sauve, one of Catherine’s maids of honor.  He makes nightly pilgrimages to her bedroom.  One night, Marguerite sends him a note asking him to come to her bedroom instead of that of his mistress.  Henry arrives in her bedchamber, where they discuss strategy, but before they can get anywhere, they receive word that Catherine de Medici has left her rooms and is heading to Marguerite’s chamber.  Quickly Henry strips and dives into the bed, behind the curtains.  Marguerite cuts the laces of her gown, rips off her hair dress, and jumps into her bed next to her husband.

Catherine de Medici enters this bedchamber.  Marguerite springs out of her bed, terribly surprised, kisses her hand and bats her eye lashes.  Catherine sits down and proceeds to make her case for Henry’s demise.  She is trying to blatantly manipulate Marguerite in helping her destroy Henry, arguing that he is obviously not suited to be the husband of the Princess of France.  Why, everyone knows that Henry and Marguerite haven’t slept together and what’s more, Henry is clearly slapping Marguerite in the face with this terrible affair with his mistress.  Catherine is simply heartsick over seeing her daughter so badly treated by that boorish ruffian.  At this point Marguerite raises her hand and says, “Shh, mother, please not so loud.” Catherine de Medici asks why she should be quiet.    Marguerite rises, pulls back the bed curtains and says, “Because you’ll wake my husband.”

Catherine looks inside and there is Henry, half dressed, his hair tousled, asleep on the bed.

Oh snap!

Catherine stands there, stares at Henry for a long minute, as if she’d seen Gorgon Medusa’s head with snakes instead of hair, and marches out of the chamber, seething.

It is a moment of pure gratuitous coolness. There were other scenes in the novel, heartbreaking, poignant, tragic, romantic, but years later this is the scene I remember best.  It is a magic instance of complete surprise, half ingenuity, half coincidence, with the stars aligning just right so the protagonists could for a moment triumph against an overpowering foe in a battle they had no chance of winning.

I love these moments.  They are my absolute favorite part of reading.  Such moments give you a little thrill and you tend to remember them forever. It’s the moment of Jessica Trent shooting Sebastian Ballister in LORD OF SCOUNDRELS.  It’s the moment that makes you go, “Ha!” and “Oh my God!”

I’d like to read about your favorite moment of gratuitous coolness.  It can be from books or movies, from any genre.  Comment on this post and one of the comment authors will get a set of signed books from our Edge Series: ON THE EDGE and BAYOU MOON.

BIO:

Ilona Andrews is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing team. “Ilona is a native-born Russian and Gordon is a former communications sergeant in the U.S. Army. Contrary to popular belief, Gordon was never an intelligence officer with a license to kill, and Ilona was never the mysterious Russian spy who seduced him. They met in college, in English Composition 101, where Ilona got a better grade. (Gordon is still sore about that.)

Gordon and Ilona currently reside in Oregon with their two children, three dogs and a cat. They have co-authored two series, the bestselling urban fantasy of Kate Daniels and romantic urban fantasy of The Edge.

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The Generosity of Strangers

Growing up, I wanted to draw comics.  If you’d gotten ahold of my notebooks from middle school on, you’d have found the margins (and sometimes whole pages) filled with pen drawings of superheroes and other such byproducts of a life spent between the covers of DC and Marvel.

My high school art teacher encouraged me to choose art as a college major, and thinking I would blossom into an illustrator, I went for it.

Then, in the final semester of my second year of art school, I took a night class in Creative Writing. (Is there somewhere a class called “Noncreative Writing”?)   I can no longer remember the name of the woman who led this class, but she quickly managed to shake up my little art major’s snow globe of a brain.  I began writing short stories.  They were all derivative, ideas and plots stolen from Rod Serling, Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, and anyone else whose sf, fantasy, and horror fiction had graced the pages of Playboy magazine. To this day nobody believes me when I say I kept a collection of Playboy going back to about 1964, for the fiction.

Some threshold got crossed in that semester, though.  In my third year as an art major, I could not maintain my interest in it.  I missed afternoon studios.  It’s extremely difficult to fail art classes in drawing and painting, but I was giving it a shot.

When finally my off-campus apartment was gutted by a fire, destroying six semesters-worth of paintings and drawings (oil on canvas makes an excellent combustible) while by some bizarre fluke leaving a story I was working on intact, it really was divine-intervention overkill.

Most authors I know were sure they wanted to be writers from the time they were six. Some claim they were composing poetry in the womb.  My addiction began late.

A year passed during which I tried twice to write a novel.  The first one was 68 pages long.  Yeah, I knew what I was doing all right.

The second one was at least more or less the right length at 250 manuscript pages.  I had by then read a couple of books by David Gerrold about his experiences writing for Star Trek, and knowing nothing about proper etiquette, I sent him a fan letter in which I explained (apparently rationally) that I’d written a fantasy novel and did not know what to do with it now that I had.  Knowing no more than that, David Gerrold sent me a letter of introduction to Lin Carter, the editor of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series.  I attached this gracious letter to my manuscript, boxed it and sent it to New York.  It was rejected.  But–and perhaps because of David’s kindness–Lin Carter sent with the rejection a line by line analysis of the first ten pages of the book.  While ten pages was probably all anyone could have endured without falling into a state of gibbering madness, Mr. Carter had also done me an incredible kindness.

Soon after that, I was accepted at the University of Iowa, where I met and was taught by the likes of T.C. Boyle and Joe Haldeman.  T. Boyle introduced me to Joe–another kindness.  And Joe encouraged me to submit two stories along with an application to the Clarion workshop at MSU. I’d never heard of it.

At Clarion in short order I found myself in a one-on-one conference with Samuel R. Delany.  This was like sitting before God while he gently exposed your inadequacies.  And they were formidable inadequacies.  Delany did not for a second let me off the hook.  It hurt. It was supposed to.

I could say that all of these mentors were just doing the job they were paid to, but I don’t think so–certainly not David Gerrold or Lin Carter.

I think that on some level I must have expressed the excitement that writing kindled in me; and they, recognizing the nascent addict before them, went further than they had to–what’s nowadays referred to as “paying it forward.”

I heard Joe Haldeman not long ago tell an audience that a writer needs three things: Talent (and you don’t need much), perseverance (a heap of that), and luck.  The luck, he said, is the thing that’s out of your control.  Which may be true, but sometimes your luck is made through the generosity of strangers.  As a teacher of writing I’ve tried to remember what these people did for me and when confronted by a young addict, to serve an occasional helping of that myself.  Remember, kid, the first one’s always free.

Bio:

GREGORY FROST is a writer of best-selling fantasy, science fiction, and thrillers.  He has been a finalist for every major sf and fantasy award. His latest work is the duology Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet. Voted one of the best fantasy novels of the year by the American Library Association, it was also a finalist for the James Tiptree Jr. Award in 2009 and received starred reviews from Booklist and Publishers Weekly. His previous novel, the historical thriller, Fitcher’s Brides, was a finalist for both the World Fantasy and International Horror Guild Awards for Best Novel. His latest short story, “The Dingus” leads off in Ellen Datlow’s anthology Supernatural Noir, out in June.   He also directs the fiction workshop at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, PA.

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In Praise of Fantasy

For many long years readers of fantasy have happily ignored the way the larger world sneers at their genre. Even writers within the genre of speculative fiction have been critical of the subgenre, fantasy. In his iRoSF article ‘Peter Jackson and the Denial of the Hero,’ M. Garcia quotes China Mieville on epic fantasy:

‘Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature. His oeuvre is massive and contagious—you can’t ignore it, so don’t even try. The best you can do is consciously try to lance the boil. And there’s a lot to dislike—his cod-Wagnerian pomposity, his boys-own-adventure glorying in war, his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quo’s, his belief in absolute morality that blurs moral and political complexity. …. He wrote that the function of fantasy was ‘consolation’, thereby making it an article of policy that a fantasy writer should mollycoddle the reader (Miéville, PanMacmillan).’

But not everything Mieville has to say about Tolkien is derogatory. In his Socialist Review article, ‘Tolkien’s Middle Earth and Middle England’, he says:

‘Tolkien’s most important contribution by far, and what is at the heart of the real revolution he effected in literature, was his construction of a systematic secondary world. There had been plenty of invented worlds in fantasy before, but they were vague and ad hoc, defined moment to moment by the needs of the story. Tolkien reversed that. He started with the world, plotted it obsessively, delineating its history, geography and mythology before writing the stories. He introduced an extraordinary element of rigour to the genre.’

It was this depth of world building that made readers buy into Middle Earth and it was the promise of adventure based on wondrous myths that kept them reading. In a post for the Australian Literature Review on Fantasy: Why is the genre so popular? I argue that:

‘Whether these (fantasy) stories are set in our world or a secondary world where magical creatures and/or people exist, they all share a common theme: the exploration of the human condition. Even the much maligned medieval/quest fantasies offer their readers the chance to vicariously explore a wondrous world, battle evil and restore justice. Even a lowly Hobbit can change the course of the world by destroying the Ring.

That is the appeal of the tolkienesque fantasy. In our modern world where politicians prove corrupt, large corporations rip off consumers and terrorists kill ordinary people going about their daily lives, the traditional quest fantasy provides an antidote to cynicism. Fantasy, deriving from the word fantastic, exercises our sense of wonder.’

Could there be a back-swing seeking to recognise the power of fantasy? Recently Louise Schwartzkoff wrote a piece for the Sydney Morning Herald titled ‘A sucker for a fantastic story’. She brings up the conundrum many fantasy readers come across when they do a BA in Literature. Some of the books they read are fantasy or science fiction, but the authors brand themselves as literature. She says:

‘Margaret Atwood’s perturbing The Year of the Flood was sold in Australia with a black cover choked with thorny vines. Atwood says the book is not science fiction at all, preferring the more reputable label ‘speculative fiction’. Looking at the storyline – a genetically engineered virus all but wipes out humanity – it is hard to see this as anything but an attempt to protect the book from ‘literary snobbery.’

Similarly, in his article, ‘The fantastic appeal of fantasy’, on the subject of literary snobbism Mark Chadbourn quotes Jo Fletcher, editorial director of fantasy publisher Victor Gollancz.

“For years I have been asking why one of the greatest satirists who ever lived – in this country or any other – is consistently ignored by those who ought to be lionising him. I’m talking about Terry Pratchett, who may have the financial rewards commensurate with his talent – but where are the Booker prizes, or the Whitbreads ? Where are the literary accolades? Whenever he’s interviewed, it’s usually with a faint air of surprise that someone who writes fantasy can be so erudite and funny.”’

Chadbourn goes on to say:

‘Publishers love the genre because it reaches all people – highbrow readers attracted to the skilful writing of M. John Harrison, say, or those simply wanting a well-told adventure story by the best-selling Robert Jordan, men and women in equal measure, young and old.

Received knowledge among non-readers suggests fantasy is simply a case of swords and sorcery or elves and dwarfs. Yes, there is that by the shelf. But the genre really is as broad as the imagination. It contains events on this world and any other world, on this side of life and beyond it. ‘

Four times World Fantasy Award winner, Margo Lanagan brings up the same point in her post The Appeal of Fantasy – Sparklies and  Magic’. She says: ‘I don’t think fantasy stories are any less truthful or complex than naturalistic fiction, or even some forms of non-fiction. What you believe about the world will insist on bubbling up through your confections.’

You can explore discrimination and persecution within the fantasy genre because it frees readers from preconceived prejudices by removing loaded nouns such as Black and Jew, and substituting created nouns for created races.

In her Film Reference article on ‘Fantasy films – Theory and Ideology’ Katherine A Fowkes says.

‘By raising questions about reality and by revealing repressed dreams or wishes, fantasy makes explicit what society rejects or refuses to acknowledge. Indeed, to the extent that it includes the surreal and experimental, fantasy is often explicitly subversive. ‘

The fantasy genre is freeing. Sure it can deliver a rollicking read, which is what I set out to do with the King Rolen’s Kin trilogy. But I was also exploring discrimination and narrow mindedness. In his post ‘Counting Down My 11 Favourite Books of 2010’ Rob

Will Review discusses the trilogy these themes in the trilogy. He says:

‘ …  people came to think that men who love men were indistinguishable from the conspiracy of men hellbent on overthrowing the king. The hatred of gay people and people with Affinity became similarly conflated.

Daniells uses this ingenious conceit to demonstrate how easily people can shift from one hatred to another, collapsing all perceived enemies into a hazily defined external or internal threat.  In another thematically related subplot, Rolen decides to attack one of the Utland territories, even though he doesn’t know precisely which one attacked his kingdom.  One is as good as any other.  This seems to be a reference to George W. Bush’s successful bid to satisfy an American desire for revenge against Afghanistan by attacking Iraq, as well as to the general concept of a scapegoat.  Meanwhile, the concept of people with Affinity and/or homosexual desire needing to hide the truth in order to keep fighting for their king or protecting their country and/or loved ones acts as a fascinating parallel to America’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which unfortunately continues to be in effect.’

So there you have it. The fantasy genre can work on several levels. It can deliver a rollicking read. It can deliver that sense of awe and wonder and it can also be quite subversive and in the work of the wonderful Terry Pratchett.

So that is why I write fantasy, because of the versatility of this wonderful genre.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U5uZbt052w

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Letting Go

The SaDiablo family has been part of my life for the past 20 years. During that time, I recorded Daemon’s and Lucivar’s transition from tormented slaves to warriors serving their beloved Queen to being the dominant males in Kaeleer.

As the stories progressed, they became men who have firm control over the lands they rule—and a much more slippery hold on the women in their lives. I watched Saetan, family patriarch and High Lord of Hell, stumble through the challenges of being a single parent. And I followed Jaenelle as she changed from haunted child to powerful queen. All of those personal changes kept me coming back to these characters and the Black Jewels world, visiting them from time to time to share their lives again.

With the stories in Twilight’s Dawn, the SaDiablos have told me it’s time to let go. Some of the questions readers have been asking since the Black Jewels Trilogy was first published have been answered. Other questions may always remain a mystery for all of us—and that’s as it should be. Sometimes the veil that keeps a character from being fully revealed is as important to our enjoyment of a story as the things we are allowed to see.

Does that mean these are the last Black Jewels stories? No, I don’t think so. But the lives of the SaDiablo family have changed, and experience has taught me that it is better to let a place and a people rest for a while before exploring the next set of stories. So I’m gathering up my notes and tucking them away until I return to the Black Jewels world again to visit these long-time friends. In the meantime, I’m writing a story set in Ephemera, and may even explore a new world that has been beckoning lately.

Letting go. It’s not forever. And when I return to the Realms, I’m sure the SaDiablo family and their friends will have more stories to tell.

*****

Visit my web site—annebishop.com—at the end of November for excerpts from three of the stories in Twilight’s Dawn.

Bio:

Anne Bishop lives in upstate New York where she enjoys gardening, music, and writing dark, romantic stories. She is the author of thirteen novels, including the award-winning Black Jewels Trilogy. Her most recent novel is Twilight’s Dawn, a collection set in the Black Jewels world.

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Thinking About Urban Fantasy

Urban fantasy is dying. Everybody seems to be saying so. Yanno, except for the people reading it, the people publishing it and the bookstores selling gobs of it.

It’s almost too good to be true. This genre of fantasy just keeps growing and expanding, with no end in sight.

The death stuff is true on one level. It’s not so easy to sell vampire fiction anymore and you definitely have to be creative and fresh with the stuff you’re writing. A lot of ground has already been covered, but so you need an original take. Shapshifters and werewolves and faeries are also looking down the same barrel. Zombies are on the rise, as are angels and demons. Soon they’ll be superseded by something else. Maybe new vampires. Maybe it will be something else entirely. But something will come.

The thing with urban fantasy—which is not so urban anymore, but I’ll get to that in a minute—is that it’s incredibly fertile ground. The possibilities seem endless. The idea that your neighbor could be a witch, or a gremlin, or a fairy is seductive. The idea that the real world can be full of magic and mystery if only you look at it just so, or turn the right corner, or pick up the right key, is equally alluring.

At the same time, you can mix in mystery, thriller, romance, the old west, political intrigue, police procedure . . .  You can stir in just about any ingredient you want that makes for a good story and there are readers out there for you. It’s a lot harder to do that in most other fantasy or sf genres. I think part of that is that the everyday life, language, and settings lend themselves to all these elements and don’t seem strange or out of place. I think also, the various flavors mean that readers don’t get bored. They have lots of choices and they dine heartily on whatever appeals at the moment. Don’t want Italian food today? Have some sushi. Not in the mood for soup and bread for dinner? Have some southern BBQ. Tomorrow or next week, you’ll be in the mood for something else and the nice thing is, it will be there.

The thing about this kind of fantasy—which is called Urban Fantasy by some, paranormal romance by others, and various other monikers—is that it has a lot to offer a wide audience. Characters are rich and emotional, the magic is interesting, there is complex and interesting worldbuilding, and you have a lot of choices and a lot of surprises in store.

I don’t think Urban Fantasy works as a category name though. That’s partly because it’s no longer limited to urban settings. For instance, my Horngate Witches books are set partly in an urban landscape, and partly in the very wild landscape of Montana. I can’t call it paranormal romance, either, because while there is romance, it doesn’t focus on romance. And while set in an existing landscape, I’m also bringing on a magical war and so soon it will be more in an apocalyptical world.  At the same time, Nalini Singh is called paranormal romance, but wow, her books contain complex worlds that are amazing and makes reader want to wallow around in them. None of those names seem to be a big enough container for all the flavors of this is this kind of fantasy.

If you read the Ilona Andrews Kate Daniels books (and you should), then you know that her books are set in an alternate Atlanta where magic and technology have changed the landscape considerably. If you’ve read Robin Mckinley’s Sunshine (and again, go do it if you haven’t), then you know that this is no ordinary United States and her vampires are not the usual variety.  Neither fit well into the urban fantasy or paranormal romance categories.

I used to think Contemporary Fantasy was a good group designation—better at least than urban fantasy or paranormal romance. But really, it doesn’t capture enough under its umbrella either. I’m thinking possibly Modern Fantasy might do it, though “modern” carries a lot of its own baggage.

You might ask why it matters what it’s called. There are a few reasons. One, it helps publishers figure out how to market it, and bookstores figure out where to put it, which therefore determines who is likely to read it, and even how long it might stay on the shelves. For instance, if it’s paranormal romance, then it will be in the romance aisle, and there are a lot of people who will sniff and turn up their noses and never even walk down that aisle. But also, romance rotates frequently and the shelf life there can be much shorter than in the sf/fantasy aisle.

On the other hand, people who read romance might never wander into the sf/f, because they believe that all that they want will be shelved in the romance aisle. But for instance, Ilona Andrews, Patty Briggs and Laura Anne Gilman are typically shelved in fantasy, but they all have strong romantic elements. On the other hand, Jeaniene Frost, Karen Moon Moning and Meljean Brook are typically shelved in romance, and they have very strong fantastical elements beyond the romance elements. But they can only be in one section. And that doesn’t cover young adult writers like Melissa Marr or Lisa Mantchev. I remember going into a bookstore and I couldn’t find Richelle Mead. She was in literary fiction, where I never would have looked. Wouldn’t it be nice if they were all together?

If you are shopping electronically, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to click a category and see all the kinds of books that you love? (though in electronic indexing, you could put books in multiple categories, which doesn’t happen in bookstores—there is only so much shelf space).

Regardless of the name, however, this genre is not dying. Not by a long shot. Thank goodness. It looks like I’ll never run out of my favorite stuff to read. And hopefully I’ll keep being able to write what I love as well.

So let me ask you two questions. Do you think the genre is dying? Or maybe you might think it should die. And where do you find books to read? Do you cross out of your normal aisles and look more widely?

Bio:

A professor of English at the University of Montana Western, Diana Pharaoh Francis is also a writer of fantasy. Her novels include the Path series and the Crosspointe Chronicles by Roc books, and the Horngate Witches books from Pocket. She likes to write flawed characters struggling with making good choices (and frequently failing). She believes evil should be punished and good should triumph. Eventually. But figuring out which is which is sometimes very difficult. Her next book, Crimson Wind, will be hitting shelves in December. For more on Diana Pharaoh Francis and her books, go to www.dianapfrancis.com

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…And A Side Order of Romance

Two readers walk into a bar. “Read any good books lately?” one reader asks the other.

Two authors walk into a bar. “Sold any good books lately?” one author asks the other.

Honest, that’s the truth. The problem is that the second question is a lot harder to answer than the first. Which is why when I’m asked to wax poetic about the state of the science fiction romance genre, I’ll look at my wristwatch and ask, “Do you mean the state of SFR now or a half-hour from now?”

Adult science fiction novels, according to my agent, Kristin Nelson, are on the down-trend. http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2010/09/when-its-not-hot-passion-can-carry-it.html “This week I went on submission with an adult SF novel. Ask any editor and they will tell you, adult SF is not hot. Fantasy is hot—particularly urban fantasy,” Nelson says.

This obviously is not happy news to anyone reading this blog. Nor is it startling news. Statistically, science fiction has always been a low point-scorer in the game of fiction, accounting for about 8 to 10 percent of all paperback sales. Mystery clocks in around 15 percent.

Which brings me to my title… a side order of romance.

Romance fiction accounts for about 45 to 50 percent of all fiction paperbacks sold. This is a whopping huge number to those of us who follow the business of writing fiction (ie: the second set to walk into the bar above.) So one would think that combining a romance plot with a science fiction plot would bring that additional 10 percent of readers to the game.

It hasn’t—yet. Or it hasn’t to any great extent. A lot of the reason is marketing. Publishers are sincerely confuzzled on how to market science fiction romance or romantic science fiction (and the two are not the same, no.) When publishers hype the romance with kissy-covers, the science fiction fans flee. When the publishers slap a starship on the cover, romance readers recoil. No, not all. I’m exaggerating to make a point (and to have fun with alliteration, obviously). But in the six years I’ve been on the shelves with SFR books, I’ve not seen the barriers come tumbling down from either side when it comes to a side order of romance with SF.

There have been high points. SF readers who like the character-driven visual media tend to be more accepting of SFR. Romance readers who watched FIREFLY and aimed to misbehave along with Captain Mal found the same kind of hi-jinx on the pages of an SFR. But there are still barriers—there are still readers (and bloggers and reviewers) who thrust their heels into the mud and refuse to budge on the issue of mixing SF with R.

The reality is that a goodly amount of SF is plot-driven and/or theme-driven, with the characters simply as vehicles for the plot or analogies for the theme. If that’s the kind of journey a reader wants then, yes, any character-driven novel is going to feel strange to her. It doesn’t mean that plot is better than character, or character than plot. It’s what the reader likes or expects to find between the covers of the book.

And various publishing marketing departments haven’t had much success in telegraphing just what it is between the covers, so that readers can judge whether or not they like it. Which, of course, affects sales and, of course, affects an author’s “numbers,” which of course affects whether or not the author’s next manuscript will be picked up. Which affects the state of SFR as a genre overall.

Dorchester’s SHOMI line and Silhouette’s BOMBSHELL are almost poster-children for this dilemma. Both had SFR/Urban Fantasy/ Paranormal Romance plots. Both lines folded. Both were—in the opinions of just about every editor and agent and author I’ve spoken to in the past two years—horribly mis-marketed. And when a line goes down, detractors love to point to that and say, “See, I told you SFR doesn’t sell.”

No. SFR poorly marketed doesn’t sell well. But with romance readers making up danged near half of all paperback sales, and with SF books traditionally having the longest shelf-life of any paperbacks in a store, there’s every indication the combo CAN and SHOULD work.

If only someone can figure out how to market it.

Maybe we need some guy in a trench coat standing in the bookstore aisles going, “Psst, hey, reader! You want a little side of romance with that?”

Bio:

A former news reporter and retired private detective, Linnea Sinclair writes award-winning, fast-paced science fiction romance for Bantam Dell, including Gabriel’s Ghost, Games of Command, Hope’s Folly, and her current best seller, Rebels and Lovers. Her short story, “Courting Trouble,” is featured in Songs of Love & Death: Tales of Star-Crossed Love, a cross-genre anthology edited by Gardner Dozois and George R.R. Martin (Simon & Schuster, Nov. 16. 2010). Sinclair splits her time between Florida (winters) and Ohio (summers)—and the Intergalactic Bar & Grille at www.linneasinclair.com.

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Maybe it is inevitable that I became a fantasy writer.

As the daughter of an adult immigrant (my mother) and the great-grandchild of immigrants on my fathers side, I grew up with an awareness of living between worlds.

While I very much lived within mainstream rural America (such as rural America is mainstream, but it was moreso then than now), at home we had special foods, a second language, ways of going about things and expectations of how one ought to act that were subtly or sometimes quite overtly different from the general culture around us.

Also, for the year I was five, my father was teaching on a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship in Denmark (my mothers birthplace and my fathers ancestral home), so I was additionally dislocated for a year at a young and formative age.  First I didnt want to speak Danish;  later, I didnt want to speak English.  (I was a stubborn and opinionated child.)

So even though I was entirely at home growing up in rural Oregon, playing outdoors, climbing trees, swimming in the river, and making up adventures, there was a part of me that always felt at one remove.  Like maybe I wasnt quite in the place I was supposed to be.  Like if I just found the hidden gate, I could step through into that other world.

Which world, precisely, was that other world?  My true home?  No, for I never felt that I was a changeling or a secret orphan.

Maybe by that other world I meant a place where I felt I fully belonged.  I cant be sure;  Im speculating;  Im certainly comfortable in this world, even if at times I feel a yearning in my heart for something I cant quite describe or put my finger on.  But from an early age I found myself drawing maps and writing snippets of scene and story about those other places.  These landscapes changed as I changed and grew, but the fundamental process of seeking did not change.

Eventually, of course, I wrote a couple of not very good novels, and with practice, I got better, and eventually began publishing what I sincerely hope are much better novels than those early attempts.  I am still writing novels set in other worlds.  If there is one constant in all those plots, it is one of characters who are seeking to find their place, maybe by crossing from one land into another or else by uncovering the hidden landscapes of the world they live in.

My latest novel, Cold Magic, fits seamlessly into this personal tradition, about a girl who, quite unexpectedly, is forced into a journey in which she uncovers secrets about her own past and about the world she lives in.  The character of Cat Barahal is not based on me, nor is she meant to be in any way a secret second persona for myself.  But her story is definitely the kind of story I have been exploring for a long time, and one that I really truly love to write.

Bio:

“Kate Elliott” published her first novel with DAW Books in 1992.

She is currently working on the Crossroads series (Spirit Gate and Shadow Gate, with Traitors’ Gate ), published by Tor Books (USA) and Orbit Books (UK). It’s an “HBO-style” fantasy with a focus on character and landscape, and an epic plot.

Earlier, she wrote the seven volume epic fantasy series, Crown of Stars, set in an alternate European landscape where magic has been (literally) woven through the land. The first volume,King’s Dragon, was a Nebula Award finalist in 1998.  Crown of Stars is published by DAW Books (USA) and Orbit Books (UK) and has been translated into German, Russian, Polish, and Spanish.

Her Novels of the Jaran, set in a speculative future, follow the nomadic people known as the jaran after their first contact with the technologically more advanced society of Earth. The author has described Jaran, the first in the series, as “Jane Austen meets Genghis Khan” in a science fiction setting.  The series is published by DAW Books.

With Melanie Rawn and Jennifer Roberson, she co-wrote the bestselling fantasy novel The Golden Key, a 1997 World Fantasy Award finalist (published by DAW Books in the USA and Pan Books in the UK).

She has also published short fiction in various anthologies.

In a previous literary life, she published four novels under her real name, Alis A. Rasmussen.

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Unconventional

A few days ago I received a poster in my email—a very cool poster that Orbit, my UK/ANZ publisher, have put together for Worldcon. The poster features planet earth and the moon (two moons in fact!) and the names of all the Orbit authors attending Worldcon in Melbourne this year—of whom I am one. Which is very exciting for me, not just to be an Orbit author—which is, of course, very exciting—but because this is the first time that I have attended a World Science Fiction Convention. I am a long time avid reader of scifi-fantasy and lover of shows such as Babylon 5, Buffy and Firefly, not to mention Blade Runner being one of my all-time-favourite movies—but I have never been to a Worldcon or voted on the Hugo Awards. (I’ve even blogged about this sad fact on Out of this Eos, my US publisher’s blog.)

There are a number of reasons for this. I live in Middle Earth—I mean, New Zealand—and most Worldcons are in the northern hemisphere, i.e. a very long way away. (So it’s great that so many northern hemisphere folk are making the journey “downunder” this year.) Also, a little like some other residents of Middle Earth fame, I am something of a moss gatherer by nature and not unhappy with my study and my garden, my manuscripts and my books . . .  But Melbourne is not only closer than your average world city, it’s also one of my favourite cities. And this is Worldcon—and the opportunity to meet a whole lot of other people who love writing, and reading, and viewing the same stuff I do, many of them writers themselves. So you can see why even a long-time moss gatherer like me had to close my eyes, take a deep breath—and go!

(OK, so there’s the whole not liking flying thing—or as I like to think of it, ‘David Bowie, Sean Bean and me’—but I’ve read Dune, I can recite the Litany Against Fear: i.e. close the eyes really tight, take a boddhisattva breath—but still go!”)

Oh—the writing? OK, back on track. Yes, I am a writer, or as I say on my blog, “a novelist, poet, interviewer and lover of story”. The poetry is for the page and for performance. The interviewing is mainly around books and writers, for a local radio station, and has also lead to my chairing and compering a number of public events, including an evening with Orange and Whitbread prize winning author, Andrea Levy, which was a lot of fun. But mainly, I am a novelist, and when the ideas for novels come to me, they arrive almost exclusively in the guise of fantasy-science fiction.

My first novel, Thornspell (Knopf 2008), has just come out in paperback and is a fairytale retelling:  in this case of Sleeping Beauty, butfrom the perspective of the prince destined to break the spell—with a dark little backstory around the motivation of the wicked faery who has not at all given up her vile plots and machinations. Described variously as “darkly imaginative” (Canvas), and a “full blooded tale of ambition and romance” (Booklist) Thornspell was my first foray into the kind of Fantasy I love to both read and tell: swashbuckling, adventurous, and romantic, with overlapping layers of mystery and magic. And it won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Novel: Young Adult in 2009.

But coming very soon, in October in fact, from Orbit here in Australia/New Zealand (also the UK, but not until a little later there—March 2011) and Eos in the USA, is my second novel The Heir of Night (The Wall of Night, Book One) which is a darker and more epic tale for adult (but also “crossover”) readers. Heir is a story of darkness and peril, mystery, friendship and love, which unfolds in a broken world of shadow and conflict where nothing is exactly as it seems . . .

Currently, I am hard at work writing the second book in the Wall series—but you can read all about that and my books, as well as other people’s books, the writing process, ideas, interviewing, story, poetry and a whole lot more on Helen Lowe on Anything, Really. Right now I’m taking time out to visit Melbourne in the springtime—and Worldcon. Having an adventure, in fact—which even we moss gatherers have to do from time to time!

Bio:

Helen Lowe is an award-winning, New Zealand-based novelist, poet and interviewer. Helen won an inaugural Robbie Burns Poetry Award in 2003 and her first novel, the YA Fantasy Thornspell, is published by Knopf (USA, 2008). In 2009, Thornspell was selected as a Storylines Children’s Literature Trust “Notable Book” and won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for “Best Novel, Young Adult”. In the same year, Helen was also awarded the Sir Julius Vogel Award for “Best New Talent”. Helen’s second novel, the Heir of Night, the first of the adult Wall of Night quartet, is due out in October in the USA (Eos) and Australia/New Zealand (Orbit), with UK publication (also with Orbit) scheduled for March 2011. Helen’s poetry and short fiction has been published and anthologised in New Zealand, Australia and the United States.

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