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The Big Idea: Kate Elliot
Posted on October 22, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 2 Comments
Sometimes you go long. And as Kate Elliot details in this Big Idea for The History of the World Begins in Ice, sometimes you go long to explain why, this time, you’ve gone short.
KATE ELLIOT:
After writing a seven volume epic fantasy series followed by an epic fantasy trilogy (in a different universe) which stuck to three books but whose final volume ran to 300,000 words, I was desperate. . .that is, desperate to write a normal length book, not a book that any intelligent author would have published as a trilogy in itself.
To be clear, I don’t regret writing Crown of Stars (the seven volume series) or the Crossroads Trilogy (whose third volume, Traitors’ Gate, is indeed 300,000 words long, but which, to this day, I believe has one of my very best and most effective endings). Not at all. There are certain narratives that work best with heft. Yet, I couldn’t really afford to keep writing such long books for a fairly modest return, maybe enough to keep publishing but not enough to be financially secure.
So I devised a clever plan: rather than writing yet another massive trilogy, or seven book series, featuring multi-stranded, interweaving plots told through the third-person gazes of multiple points-of-view characters, I would (see how clever I am!) write an epic fantasy trilogy told in first person through a single point of view. That would absolutely make the books shorter. Absolutely. I could totally expect to manage a neat and tidy100,000 words each.
The evidence, Your Honor:
Cold Magic (150,000 words)
Cold Fire (180,000 words)
Cold Steel (210,000 words)
Okay, maybe not a brisk 100,000 words each, but they are shorter. . .for some definition of shorter. I rest my case.
But a funny thing happened as I worked on the Spiritwalker Trilogy (as the Cold Magic books are also called).
A quick review of the setting: For the Spiritwalker project, I wanted to write a multicultural world in which a mixing of cultures and people was the expected, the norm. I happen to think that when cultural change is considered across time, mixing is the norm. It goes on all the time throughout history and continues to happen to this day. Interaction and influence are what keep cultures dynamic.
In the Spiritwalker universe, cultural mixing plays out in an alternate (with magic) early 19th century Earth: an immigrant Malian culture meets and mingles with northwestern Celtic European culture, while old imperial Rome and merchant Phoenicia retain a strong influence, just to name the four most prominent cultural groups in the book (the second novel in the trilogy, Cold Fire, adds the Taino culture of the Caribbean to the mix). I particularly wanted to highlight the immense and too-often overlooked power and richness of the West African Mande traditions and civilizations, specifically the Malian Empire. An extended ice age (thus the “cold”) means the Germanic cultures of northern Europe never developed at all.
When I began writing Cold Magic, my primary goal (besides making it shorter than Traitors’ Gate) was to tell a story that would be exciting and rich, a page-turner that was difficult to put down. I wanted to tell a story in which the central emotional relationship was a female friendship (sisterhood), and one in which the concerns of a young woman finding her way in the world could include sword fighting, sewing, finding enough to eat, sex, science, revolution, spying, and fashion. I wanted her voice to carry the tale. I wanted to write a fantasy novel in which the neutral universal stance—the one that expresses the story’s highest level of privilege, which no one thinks about in this world because it is the default expectation—is embodied in a man of African ancestry. And I wanted to write about lawyer dinosaurs.
There is so much I personally love about the Spiritwalker books and stories. The characters, of course, who walk through their world with all their flaws that I worked so hard to make believable and compelling, whether the reader loves the characters or, in some cases, very much does not. The world, with its late-18th-and-early-19th-century overtones, imbued (I hope) a strong sense of a fantastical alternate-historical path and the vivid sights, textures, smells, tastes, and rhythms of this made-up world.
Perhaps most of all, I love the tone of the Spiritwalker universe. The trilogy is funny in a way I hadn’t thought I could manage in my writing, not up until I wrote them.That’s because Cat is funny, and the novels are all told in her voice. Once I let her voice speak through me, I not only had the easiest time writing her story, but it was just such a delight.
I’m a novelist at heart. Jo Walton once said that my natural length is the trilogy. Short stories are really hard for me because I find them difficult to conceptualize. I so rarely get a “short story idea” that, across the course of my career, I have written more novels than short
Tuesday, October 22, 2024
Indie Spotlight: Chris Bauer
Welcome to our Indie Spotlight series, in which TNBBC gives small press authors the floor to shed some light on their writing process, publishing experiences, or whatever else they'd like to share with you, the readers!
Today, we are joined by Chris Bauer, who answers the question:
“What’s it like to co-author a book with a USA Today bestselling author when
you aren’t a USA Today bestselling author yourself?”
So
things went down like this.
Andrew
Watts, USA Today Bestselling author of three thriller series and a branding
expert via his Severn River Publishing (“SRP”) house, the publisher who’d launched
four of my thrillers and republished my first novel SCARS ON THE FACE OF GOD,
said to me not so long ago:
“Hey
Chris. I’ve got a proposition for you.
“A
number of my readers ask me ‘When do you plan to release the next installment
in your Max Fend Thriller series?”
Mr.
Watts had published two novels in the series at that point, but it had been a
few years back, and readers of the series, he said, were feeling neglected.
“The
challenge, Chris, is that I have an idea for the next one, but…”
Here
readers can pick from one or more of my remembered Mr. Watts perspectives.
“I
overcommitted myself with my other series…
“I’m
running a growing publishing house that needs a lot of TLC while I build and
care and feed my current stable of (x number) authors.” (Chris remembers that
number to be between five and ten at the time. Chris also notes here that the publishing
house’s current author stable now numbers forty-two novelists with titles that
include USA Today bestsellers, International bestsellers, WSJ bestsellers, and a
NYT bestseller.)
“I
know your work is good…” (Chris blushed an “Aw shucks, Andrew.”)
“I
have a good plot…” (Chris notes it was a great plot.)
“Sooo,
here’s a crazy thought,” Mr. Watts said, “and I’m fine, no worries, if the
answer is no. How would you like to co-author the next espionage novel in the
series with me? Maybe you can make my plot even better.”
That
was when I checked to see how well the two books in his Max Fend Thriller series
were doing, and they were doing very well. Checking them now on Amazon,
they have multiple thousands of ratings from his cultivated readership.
“Hell
yeah,” Chris said. “Where do I sign?”
If
you picked all of the above perspectives as backstory here, good for you,
because it did go down like that, just not verbatim. But do recognize that nowadays,
with me as a novelist, I do a helluva lot more lying for a living than I did
working for an insurance company for twenty-two years.
The
deal was excellent, a true 50-50 share in the proceeds for the thriller (title,
AIR RACE, a Max Fend Thriller). Plus, with me being a co-author with someone
who was bringing much more to the table in terms of readership notoriety than I
was, my name on the cover of our book might have suffered from the James
Patterson treatment (“JAMES PATTERSON with Chris Bauer”) but it didn’t, as guaranteed by
Mr. Watts hisself. (Reader should now look up AIR RACE by Andrew Watts and
Chris Bauer to check out the cover.) (See?)
Our
process worked well because it was simple, with Andrew emailing multiple pages
of his notes to start. Our writing styles were close enough: action-oriented,
peppy dialogue, some humor, good drama. Andrew Watts is a former Navy
helicopter pilot and a subject matter expert who could keep us out of trouble
when it came to the aviation aspects of the thriller, which exhibited
themselves in 75% of the scenes. We arrived at nearly thirty single-spaced pages
of a chapter-by-chapter summary, a lot of which required significant research
into airports and cities around the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East. I selected
ten stops in the air race where the distances between them had to accommodate
the identically-equipped small aircraft and fuel consumption used by competing
teams of pilot and co-pilot, all from different countries. Fly during the day, with
drama, action, intrigue, crises, and espionage among the race teams. Continue
the conflict at night in different, exotic cities at each stop. Explosive, high
energy conclusion. We used a Microsoft Word program that allowed each of us to
see changes in real time as they were being made in our summary whenever we
were both logged into the document online. For the life of me, I don’t remember
the name of the interactive application. (Checks notes. Nada.)
We
finalized the chapter summaries and brought in a developmental editor who SRP
utilizes a lot. (Hi, Randall Klein.) Made some revisions. With that finished,
it became crunch time.
“You
will do a lion share of the prose,” Mr. Watts said.
“Yeah,
I get that. The nature of earning my wings. Frankly, it will be my pleasure,
Andrew.”
At
that point, yours truly kept his butt in his seat for four months straight and
cranked out the first draft, with Mr. Watts reviewing and revising where
appropriate, our chapter summaries as the roadmap
Posted by Unknown at 14:00 127
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Book review: The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman
Review: Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-Il Kim, Tra...
Thursday, October 17, 2024
Book review: The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman
Credit: https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/the-walking-dead
Book links: Amazon, Goodreads
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: an American comic book writer, screenwriter, and producer. He is best known for co-creating The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, Invincible, Tech Jacket, Outcast, Oblivion Song, and Fire Power for Image Comics, in addition to writing Ultimate X-Men, Irredeemable Ant-Man and Marvel Zombies for Marvel Comics. He has also collaborated with Image Comics co-founder Todd McFarlane on the series Haunt.
He is one of the five partners of Image Comics currently serving as COO.
Publisher: Image Comics Length: +/- 4500 pages Formats: 193 single issues, available in many collected aeditions
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Wednesday, October 16, 2024
Review: Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-Il Kim, Translated by Anton Hur
Buy Blood of the Old Kings
OFFICIAL AUTHOR BIO: SUNG-IL KIM was born in Seoul in 1974. Despite his lifelong dream of writing fiction, he only got around to it in his forties. He writes science fiction, fantasy, horror, or some blend of those. In South Korea, he is known for Blood of the Old Kings, I Will Go to Earth to See You, and “The Knight of La Mancha,” the last of which earned him an Excellence Award at the Korean SF Awards in 2018. He spends most of his time in his downtown Seoul apartment with his wife and two cats.
Read more »
3:00 AM | Posted by
Caitlin G. | | Edit Post
Labels: book review, sung-il kim | 0
comments
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Giovanni Papini's 1913 The Failure, recently re-issued by Sublunary Editions
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Editorial Matters - October 2024 by Gayle Surrette
Manga /Graphic Novel Reviews:
Leviathan Vol 1 by Shiro Kuroi
Set in Stone by K.J. Parher
Spill by Cory Doctorow
Vigilant by Cory Doctorow
Bitter is the Heart by Mina Hardy
The Downloaded by Robert J. Sawyer
My Brother's Keeper by Tim Powers
The Vampire of Kings Street by Asha Greyling
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Friday, September 27, 2024
THE HOT BEAT
THE HOT BEAT
By Robert Silverberg
Hard Case Crime
227 pgs
Though a wee bit dated, this crime thriller pro is still
worth a read. Bob McKay is a talented band leader who lets success get the best
of him. He becomes an alcoholic and loses his loving girlfriend, Terry, and then
his band. Now on the skids, he drifts from one seedy bar to another until,
through a series of unfortunate circumstances, he is falsely accused of
murdering a local B-girl. Things go from bad to worse when the cops dig up two eyewitnesses
who claim he is the killer.
Considering the time setting, it’s no surprise when the
overly eager detectives proceed to beat the crap out Bob trying to get a
confession out of him. Silverberg paints a realistic picture of both the good and
the bad guys. What turns things around is a nosy reporter name Ned Lowry, who,
having previously known the musician, believes him to be innocent. Then Bob’s
old flame, Terry, volunteers to help Lowry sharing his feelings. As they start
digging into the case, they eventually uncover hidden clues that point to the real
killer.
“The Hot Beat” is a masterfully woven tale with an economy
of words. Silverberg tells his story clean and neat like a shot of whiskey. And
if that wasn’t enough, the good people at Hard Case Crime have added three of
his short crime stories to fill out the volume. All in all, a nice package
we’re glad we picked up.
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THE HOT BEAT
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CAPSULES OF FILM >> 07.23.24
July 23rd, 2024
What differentiates The Satanic Screen: An Illustrated Guide to the Devil in Cinema is author Nikolas Schreck used to practice the Black Arts. That granted the original 2001 edition a seal of credibility, but this new, considerable update — courtesy of Headpress — allows him to cover dozens of titles that didn’t exist, like Megiddo: The Omega Code 2, in a hilarious review that alone is worth the price of purchase. In his intro, Schreck asks, “Who the hell is the Devil anyway?” then answers with a thorough history lesson spanning the life of cinema. Yes, horror films abound, but Satan pops up in costumed dramas, British comedies, kiddie matinees, mondo docs, animation, pornography and even an “all-Negro musical” from Vincente Minnelli. From Kenneth Anger to Irwin Allen, Ingmar Bergman to Ed Wood, our writer proves to be the authority of the evil one’s vast filmography. Surrender!
Another year means another McFarland & Company publication from Roberto Curti. As prolific as he is, his subject this time makes him look lazy by comparison: cult icon Jess Franco. Co-authored by Francesco Cesari, The Films of Jesus Franco, 1953-1966 examines the works of the Spanish director from his start — his pre-OB/GYN cinema, one might say. As is Curti’s wont, each pic — from puffery like Attack of the Robots to artistic triumphs like The Diabolical Dr. Z — reliably devotes coverage so in-depth, they may as well be a submersible. What really makes this Jesús text special is how heavily it goes into Franco films we’ll never see, from his university short Theory of Sunrise, a debut “ignored” by other Franco texts, to Treasure Island, an abandoned ’64 adaptation/collaboration with Orson Welles. One Yank’s quibble: The movies are listed in Spanish, so unless you know your Red Lips from your Labios rojos, keep the index bookmarked.
I thought my own book did a decent job of mining some obscurities … then along comes Lowest Common Denominator: The Amateurish Writings of a Failed Film Critic to show everybody up on that front. Written by David John Koenig, aka “A Fiend on Film,” the self-published paperback might review as many movies I’ve never heard of as it has pages! That’s because Koenig’s tastes lean toward the Asian, underground, microindie and black-and-white crime pics as old as my grandparents. Needless to say, my Tubi list grew exponentially as I read. And read. And read! From A to Z, I didn’t miss a word and, as a result, got exposed to a whole new world.
When a movie gains a fervent, coast-to-coast cult, multiple books on it inevitably follow. That’s certainly the case with Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. I reviewed two of them a decade ago, and now it’s time to add a third with BearManor Media’s release of Accidental Genius: An Oral History of The Room. Think the world doesn’t need another? Think again. Andrew J. Rausch, whose work I love, goes deeper on the topic than any medium before him. With dozens of people weighing in, his task as curator and craftsman couldn’t have been easy, but as a read, it sure is. The anecdotes are as crazy as a Room viewer could hope for, from using Greg Sestero’s facial hair as a guide for editing the nonsensical scenes into something watchable to Wiseau’s desire to perform his sex scenes unsimulated. On purpose, Accidental’s a lot of fun, as entertaining as it is thorough — enough to make you want to exclaim in joy, “Hai, doggy!”
Enjoyed the historical aspect of Vincent A. Albarano’s recent Aesthetic Deviations: A Critical View of American Shot-on-Video Horror, but wish it also had room for reviews and interviews? Then you’re going to love Justin Burning’s Hand-Held Hell: The Outbreak of Homemade Horror. With a title like that, how could you not? Well, quite easily, were we in the hands of a poor writer, but that, Burning is not. Covering a mind-boggling 40 years’ worth of SOV projects, he gives great insight about movies I’ve not only seen (Video Violence), but seen more than once (Black Devil Doll from Hell), wish I could unsee (The Burning Moon) and absolutely never will see (August Underground). Interspersed among these 44 movies are interviews with nearly two dozen directors — including such household Hanekes as Tim Ritter, Bret McCormick and Donald Farmer — and full-color photos, all in a trade-paperback package heavy enough to challenge your wrists’ strength. For the right type of person (like you and me), this trip through Hell feels like heaven.
As someone whose film knowledge began on watching movies on UHF channels and read the Sunday paper’s TV listings supplement in full, Armchair Cinema: A History of Feature Films on British Television, 1929-1981 stirred nostalgia in this American. It’s a shame the Edinburgh University Press title costs such a pretty penny, because I suspect like minds would find it catnippy, too. Leslie Halliwell (he of the Halliwell’s Film Guide) emerges as a hidden hero as Sheldon Hall looks back at when the tube saw
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Sunday 24 August 2014
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The Wide World of Photography: Past, Present and Future
Cclapcenter.com is no longer available here. Please visit〓facebook.com/CCLaPCenter〓instead.
Photography: Youngest Son of the Visual Arts
Of all the major artistic media, only photography appeared relatively late in the course of human history.
While people have been writing, painting, and composing music for thousands of years, they have only been taking photographs since 1826. In that year, French scientist Joseph Niépce snapped the world’s first photo (entitled ‘View from the Window at Le Gras’) at his country estate.
This website is created and run by photography enthusiasts for photography enthusiasts. Conveniently broken up into easily digestible sections, it offers a range of written and visual material on the exciting world of photography.
Two Centuries in Photos
It’s hard to believe, but cameras and photography are still less than 200 years old. In the 195 years since the camera’s invention, however, numerous men and women have achieved immortality by mastering the novel art form.
This website offers a range of excellent photo galleries highlighting masterpieces by history’s greatest shutterbugs. Photographers featured in the gallery section include Ansel Adams (1902-1984), Henri Cartier Bresson (1908-2004) and Walker Evans (1903-1975), among many others.
Contemporary Photography
But while this website is keen to pay tribute to celebrated photographers of the last two centuries, it does not dwell entirely in the past. Instead, this site also covers contemporary photographers and the cutting-edge photo technology they are using these days.
What’s more, by becoming a regular visitor to this site, amateur photographers can obtain helpful advice from their professional counterparts, from the best times of day for taking still photos to the most suitable schools to attend for a career in the field.
〓
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With the lack of interest in posting, the discussion forum has been closed.
In Memoriam: 2015
a memorial by Steven H Silver
Science fiction fans have always had a respect and understanding for the history of the genre. Unfortunately, science fiction has achieved such an age that each year sees our ranks diminished. Deaths in 2015 included Alice K. Turner, Leonard Nimoy, Tanith Lee, Jon Arfstrom, George Clayton Johnson, Suzette Haden Elgin, Sir Terry Pratchett, Christopher Lee and Peter Dickinson.
The Blood Red City by Justin Richards
reviewed by Nathan Brazil
This is the second novel in the author’s Never War sequence, and as might be expected, picks up almost where the first book ended. Ambitiously, the action aliens and Nazis sprawl across the USA, Germany, the Greek island of Crete, occupied France, Stalin’s Russia, and good old Blighty. Once again it’s a hell-for-leather scramble between those loyal to the Third Reich or the Allies, with the alien Vril following their own agenda and playing both sides against the middle.
By Force of Arms by William C. Dietz
reviewed by Sandra Scholes
In the latest volume in the Legion of the Damned series, Booly comes back from the brink of what could have been disgrace as a hero to his men who risked their lives for freedom. Now Naa Commandos are set to protect him, yet assassins come to try and take over their encampment. The author fleshes out the characters and their lives, their doubts, loves and hopes. Booly’s rescue mission to get back Maylo gives us an idea of what kind of man he is, and what others think about him.
The Dark Arts of Blood by Freda Warrington
reviewed by Sandra Scholes
This story is separated into two parts with several smaller chapters that create an epic feel about it. These vampires seem more sophisticated than, say, the ones from a Stephen King novel. Their settings are bourgeois in their development and the characters never lose their edge. While the previous three novels have set the scene and developed the characters, this, the latest in the series, has a twist in the tale of which Sandra is very fond ever since reading Roald Dahl’s deliciously disturbing stories.
Of Bone and Thunder by Chris Evans
reviewed by Sandra Scholes
Every day the men of Red Shield have to face the Collective as they need to keep the Kingdom enemy free in Luitox. Here while they play the waiting game for their enemy to approach, we hear the war from several viewpoints during the story and many of the accounts aren’t what the Kingdom’s rulers might expect. The men are tired, hurt, stressed-out and at times bored out of their brains, and who can blame them? Their enemy is sneaky, dangerous and worthy of being feared as they never show themselves if they can help it, and they aren’t the sort of enemy who fights en masse.
The Oversight by Charlie Fletcher
reviewed by Nathan Brazil
This is the tale the last Hand; five people with supra-natural abilities, keeping the Law and Lore in an alternate Dickensian London. The Oversight was established to police and maintain the borders between the world of men and the darkly magical Sluagh. For many years an uneasy balance was achieved, mostly by mutual adherence to the rules that govern what is permitted from both sides. Then came the Disaster.
A Conversation With Rick Riordan
An interview with Steven H Silver
On merging Greek and Egyptian mythology:
” It wasn’t too difficult [to merge Greek and Egyptian mythology] because historically the Greeks and the Egyptians were
09-18-15: A 2015 Interview with William T. Vollman
08-31-15: A 2015 Interview with Susan Casey