IGMS News

Turns out that IGMS will be available on Kindle. We've had numerous requests for it to be available there, and at first it looked like it wasn't going to work out. But where there's a will, there's a way, and our web designer has begun converting each issue for Kindle, starting with issue one (which should be available shortly). Between his (the designer's) wide variety of other projects, he will work through the back issues as time permits until each issue is ready and done. We'll then add the new issues as they are published. The main differences between the online version of the magazine and the Kindle version is that the cover art will be in black and white instead of color, and the audio stories will not be available (Kindle doesn't support that yet). Certain other bonuses will not be there (like the serialization of "Hotsleep" that we did in issue one, or the comic versions we've done of a few of OSC's stories), but all of the short stories, any interviews, etc. will be in the Kindle version for the same $2.50 we charge for the online version.

Speaking of serialization, we are going to serialize Orson's "Folk of the Fringe" over the next five issues. Frankly, it is my personal favorite of his books, and though it is still in print and available from Tor, they gave us permission to serialize it anyway. If you're not familiar with "Folk," it is a series of interconnected short stories and novellas set in a post-apocalyptic America. Minor characters from one story become major characters in the next, etc. "Folk" includes a novella titled "The Pageant Wagon," which, in my opinion, is one of the best novellas I've ever read. We'll run one story/novella per issue for the next five issues as an added bonus to the regular content.

Also, we're closer than ever now to having an annual membership or subscription option. There's a lot going on right now as far as implementing all of the changes/upgrades we're making, so I don't think that will come into effect until issue 13, but I'll keep you posted as we go along. This is something else that people have been asking for for a long time and I'm glad to announce that it is (almost) finally happening.

"Tekkai Exhales His Avatar" - by Tony Pi

Twenty-Four Hours in Pasadena

It might be hard to believe, but "Tekkai Exhales His Avatar" started with a polar bear.

The Writers of the Future workshop in Pasadena, August 2007 put us through a dreaded but exhilarating challenge: the 24-hour story. We'd each receive a random object, go interview a random stranger, and pull random books at the local library. Once we had those seeds, we had to write a complete short story within twenty-four hours. Three people's stories would be critiqued the next day by our peers as well as Tim Powers and Kathy Wentworth. Talk about pressure!

Kathy gave me my random object, a tiny polar bear on a red pole, likely from a toy carousel. The bear made me think I'd be writing an Inuit tale, so when I got to the library, I tracked down books on Inuit and Greenlandic mythology. I learned fascinating things on those topics, but I had also pulled a few volumes on Japanese myth by chance, and jotted down whatever nuggets of information that caught my eye.

That left the interview with a total stranger. We weren't supposed to tell anyone that we were writers, and simply talk to someone and pry their life stories out of them. Not so easy! I failed miserably trying to engage people in conversation, and only managed to ask a scruffy-looking guy what he did with the empty water bottles he was collecting.

When it came time to sit down and write, I had absolutely no idea how my different pieces of research would fit together, if at all!

But Tim's advice was to think at the keyboard, so that's what I did.

I mashed my ideas together, hard, and decided the fallout looked like a multiverse fantasy that would take an immortal hero from Greenlandic legend to feudal Japan. (Plot? No clue, yet.) But then it occurred to me that the universes in the story only seemed like fantasy, but were actually interconnected virtual worlds. They would be mimicstreams, artificial realities built from the world's collective sensory experiences, each with a basis on a world mythology.

I had my worlds, but who would be the main character, and what would he want? Well, suppose the man I met lived on the fringes of society. Maybe he had run-ins with the law, even spent time in jail. What if my hero was stuck in prison? (Correction: anti-hero.) Why would the government need his help, and what could they tempt him with?

Answer: they needed a hacker to help them catch someone. Not just any hacker, but one of the best. And they offered him freedom to see his son.

I ran with it. I cut out my intended prelude in the land of ice, since I had no time to show how he got caught. Instead, I focused on the Japanese angle.

Then came the frantic typing, rushing my characters blindly into the unknown. I remember a couple of caffeine runs, slapdash chicken sandwiches, and about five hours sleep somewhere in there. But I had no ending until two hours before the deadline, when something Tim said in class suddenly clicked into place. I managed a last surge of key-pounding and finished the story, with fifteen minutes to deadline.

As luck would have it, my story was among the ones selected for critique. It was nerve-wracking sitting in the hot seat, having my classmates and instructors pick apart the barely-edited piece -- but in the end, they all gave great insights that helped me revise the story. All that remains of that first polar bear story seed are the snow motif and the creatures of Japanese myth.

Overall, the 24-hour writing challenge was odd and exhausting, but also an invaluable teaching tool. The rapid-fire method creates quite a different work than if I took my time with the ideas. My experience writing this story has made it quite close to my heart.

One last thing: many thanks to the editors at Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show for allowing my cousin to illustrate "Tekkai Exhales His Avatar". I-Wei's art appeared in IGMS #1, and he also designs working steampunk robots. It was a blast collaborating with him on the artwork, leaving us nostalgic for the days when we were kids, inventing incredible stories and gluing magazine cuttings together to make them real.

And it's still fun.

Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, Issue 11, March 2009

*
Issue 11 is now live and ready to go. Table of Contents includes:

Cover story by Peter S. Beagle, "The Vanishing"
"The Sin Hypothesis" by Elizabeth Lustig
"Tekkai Exhales His Avatar" by Tony Pi
"The Urn of Ravalos" by Rebecca Day
Part Two of "The Absence of Stars" by Greg Siewert

Plus text and an audio reading by Orson Scott Card of "The Man in the Tree," from his forthcoming novel, "The Lost Gate"

"Free Seas," a Tale For The Young and Unafraid by David Lubar

And an Interview with Tanith Lee (by Darrell Schweitzer)
*

And Now For Something Completely Different

Well, maybe not completely different, but I’m a sucker for Monty Python sketches and I’ve never been able pass up on an opportunity to quote them. But times, they are a’changin’, and this InterGalactic Medicine Show is rollin’ along.

Have I mixed the metaphor sufficiently? Maybe I should just get to the point(s). I do have good news:


1) Effective immediately, IGMS will be released on a bi-monthly basis, publishing for January, March, May, July, September, and November.

2) The number of stories published in each issue will be reduced from 7 to 5; however, the total number of stories published each year will increase from 28 to 30.

3) Instead of writing a new story for each issue (which he was having a hard time keeping up with), from now on Orson Scott Card will record a story as an audio file for each issue. If you bought issue 9 or 10 with the expectation that there would be a new Orson Scott Card story in it, fear not; that commitment will still be met (and hopefully soon, now that the latest screenplay for the Ender’s Game movie has been completed). However, having an audio file takes advantage of things a print magazine cannot do, and also allows Orson to stay active in the magazine on a more timely basis, with a commitment that takes a few hours of his time instead of a few weeks. The audio story he records might be one of his own previously published stories; it might be a story by another author published in IGMS; or it might be something from a novel-in-progress, as will be the case with issue 11 when he reads an early chapter from The Lost Gate (to be published in the future by Del Rey). The story/chapter is titled "The Man in the Tree,” and the audio presentation will be accompanied by the full text.

4) There will still be an author interview in every issue, and the monthly columns will still be free. Each story will still come with its own custom illustration.


Issue 11 should be out the first of next week. In addition to the audio story by OSC that I already mentioned, the table of contents will include a great new story by Peter Beagle called "Vanishing," as well as "The Urn of Ravalos" by Rebecca Day, "The Sin Hypothesis" by Liz Lustig, "Tekkai Exhales His Avatar" by Tony Pi, and Part Two of the novelette, "The Absence of Stars," by Greg Siewert. You'll also find an interview with Tanith Lee, and a short essay by our own Orson Scott Card in response to a reader question.

Well, that’s what’s happening at IGMS. As much as I like to ramble on and on and on and on, I think that’s enough for you to digest in one sitting. If you have any thoughts or questions about any of this, please drop us a line via the contact page on our website or comment right here.


Edmund R. Schubert
Editor, Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show

P.S. As usual, I've collected essays from the authors in the upcoming issue and will post them here on Side Show Freaks. Feel free to drop by next week and catch The Story Behind The Stories, where the authors talk about the creation of their tales.

P.P.S. If you've a story submitted to IGMS, please give me a little extra time to get to it; with the changes we've made to the publication schedule, we should have already started work on issue 12, so I've got a bit of artificially created catching up to do. It's a good problem to have, but still one I have to prioritize.

Local TV and Not-So-Local Signing

I was interviewed on the local FOX affiliate here in Greensboro, NC, yesterday. It came out well enough that I'm not embarrassed to show it to you. I look a little disoriented in the very beginning because I didn't know I was on camera; the monitor overhead only showed a shot of my novel's cover and I thought the interviewer was doing a voice over. Once we got past that, I thought it went all right.

http://www.myfox8.com/news/morningnews/wghp-morning-meet-author-090225,0,6388255.story

On other notes, I'm doing a 90 minute workshop on the Business of Writing, followed by a reading and signing at the City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC (just west of Asheville). The bookstore called yesterday to say they've already got 35 people signed up, so it might be smidge crowded, but if you're in the area, please stop by.

Guest Post - Mur Lafferty and "New Media"

A few weeks ago I posted an essay about achieving success in the publishing industry that included a link to an article posted on Time Magazine's website. One of the people quoted in that Time article was a friend of mine named Mur Lafferty, a fiction and non-fiction author who has built her career on using new and open media. She can be found on Suicide Girls as a regular columnist, on Tor.com as a blogger, or on her home page, murverse.com. Her first novel, Playing For Keeps, is available via print and free audio podcast (and was reviewed on IGMS by James Maxey). She graciously agreed to write more about the subject of new media, for which I am grateful. I'll let her take it from here...




Edmund posted recently on this blog about podcasters getting publishing contracts. He then invited me to guest blog here, and I wanted to discuss this in more detail.

I am a podcaster who built an audience of over 40,000 via free giveaways of audio podcasts and PDF podcasts, so you can guess I'm rather gung-ho about new media. Podcasting my book led directly to it being picked up by a small press and released in print.

Yes, print publication, or "old media" is my ultimate goal. Giving work away for free is not a way to directly make money, obviously. But new media allowed me to connect to an audience, make them care about my work, and then ask them to help me with the marketing of the small press book. Many bought copies of the book for themselves and to give as gifts. I received one email from a woman who appreciated the free podcast so much that she promised to buy several copies for Christmas gifts. I'm never clear on what number makes a small press book a success, but I earned out my advance and had a strong showing on Amazon for several weeks after the release, so I'm pretty pleased with the sales numbers of a book that never hit the bookshelves.

New media is not a fad or a gimmick. It's not a pipe dream or a crazy idea. It's a way to connect directly to an audience in a way that just a website will not do. Established authors with existing audiences can afford to look down on new media, but new authors with no audience would do well to consider audio or ebook releases of their work.

The relationship with the community is what it's all about. What I've discovered from the listeners who hear my voice talking to them in intros and read me on blogs and Twitter, is that they want me to succeed. I'm not an author in an ivory tower to them, I'm a person trying to climb a pretty big mountain and can't do it alone. (Yeah. Sometimes I mix metaphors.) When these people see my book, they don't think, "Oh, a superhero novel by that author I heard of once." They think, "Mur's book came out! Awesome!"

I had a man approach me at DragonCon last year. The conversation went something like this:

HIM: You're giving your PDF book away for free?

ME: Yep.

HIM: The whole book?

ME: Yep.

HIM: I read ebooks exclusively. What's to stop me from downloading your book and putting it on my reader and never paying you?

ME: Nothing.

HIM: But I won't buy the print version. What are you getting out of this?

ME: Hopefully a new fan. And someone who will tell a friend, who does buy print books, that there's a new author they should check out.

I'm not the best advocate for Creative Commons or giving work away - if you want to read some fantastic arguments for this, check out this Cory Doctorow's essay - (or his collection of essays, Content, which is available in print and, yes, as a free ebook. ) I will say that I've experienced nothing but good things using new media, and I can personally vouch for everything that Cory mentions in his essays (that apply to me, of course.)

I'm only a small example of the power of new media. Scott Sigler hit the New York Times Bestseller list with his latest book, Contagious, this past January. Scott built his career on podcasting as well, and has vowed to always have a free version of his work available (usually audio podcast). His legions of fans are rabid and dedicated and do a lot of his marketing heavy lifting for him.

For me, new media is a key part of the foundation of my writing career. I am hopefully building an audience who will stay with me for years, evangelizing my work whether it's out for free or in print. "Old" media is not dead; it's vital if you want to feed your family on what you make as a novelist. But it's becoming more and more important for new authors to consider new media as a way to engage their audiences, build communities, and get that zealous fanbase. Marry the two, as it were.

How do you do it? Here is a small checklist, but it doesn't cover everything:

1) Contact other authors doing the same thing. My audience already knows about this whole "they give it to you in one form and hope you buy it in another" situation. They're also already built in to receive and appreciate audio podcasts.

2) Network, offer to play other podcasters' promos if they play yours or talk up your book.

3) Connect with your audience. Intro your book with a personal note. Doesn't matter what you talk about, just let them know who you are and what you want out of podcasting your book. If you want them to buy the print version, SAY SO. If you want them to tell others via blog, word of mouth, or Twitter, then SAY SO. When they email you, email them back. Thank them for listening. We've been completely honest with our audiences, telling them what our goals are, and hoping they can help us.

4) Get a Twitter account, announce the Twitter account on your podcast and ask your listeners to spread the word. Make sure you use it - whether to talk about your breakfast, liveTweet the Oscars, or talk about your latest book. Just don't use it solely as a way to shill your stuff. You're trying to make people get to know you; you're not using it as a bullhorn about your work.

5) Keep putting out content. This is the hardest one; we all have issues with time management, and managing new media is no relaxing hobby. But if you want to keep up with your podcast audience, just like your print audience, you need to keep putting out content.

6) Enjoy yourself. The thrill of getting fan mail that your book in someone's ears moved them to tears, or got them through a tough time, or just that they usually hate [insert your genre here] books, but they loved yours, is unparalleled. And it's been proven many times that it will increase sales, but you have to work your audience (go back and re-read #3.)

Thanks a lot to Edmund for letting me play on his blog about new media. If you want to ask questions or continue the conversation, comment below or email me at mightymur@gmail.com. You can find my many projects at http://www.murverse.com.

Picture Worth A Thousand Words?

Some of my February has been spent writing a new novel, but not as much as I would have liked. (Never as much as I would have liked.)

I thought I was going to sit down and start writing the first draft on February 2nd, but found myself terribly blocked. After a couple of frustrating days I realized the reason I was blocked was because I didn't know enough about my characters or the world they lived in.

So I pulled out a flip chart and started taping pages up on the walls of our guest room, until I had covered just about every available inch of wall space with blank pages. I labeled one for each of my main characters and started writing what I knew about them. I had another page for plot points I knew I wanted to hit, for characters and situations I wanted to bring into conflict. Conflict is one of the main things I'm looking at/for right now. Where can I bring opposed viewpoints together to clash in the story? It's been an interesting process.

For the first couple of days the kids would walk into the room and chuckle (after an initial wide-eyed response). And the wife doesn't mind at all. In fact, I think she's hoping that when I take these sheets down the tape will peel off some of the paint so that I will then have to repaint the room. She's never been happy with the shade of green it is now. And yes, the whole room is covered with pages.

So anyway, technically that's writing. I'm not really drafting any text for the story, but I'm writing down everything I know and using that to figure out what it is that I still need to figure out so I can get to writing. Right?

TV Interview? What TV Interview?

A friend of mine who is friends with one of the local morning news TV personalities gave her a copy of my novel, Dreaming Creek. That's the way of the world, right? A little ‘friend-of-a-friend’ networking. She reads enough of the book to decide that she likes it (you know they never read the whole thing) and then invites me to come on TV to talk about it. Cool beans. I’ve done plenty of print interviews, and maybe a half-dozen podcasts, but this is my first time with a major media outlet.

So... I get to the TV station this morning, get buzzed in the door, and am greeted by a producer whose first words are "Who are you and why are you here?" She honestly has no idea.

Much scurrying and scrambling ensues. Computers and logbooks are consulted. Finally the news anchor who invited me is pulled off the set during a commercial break. "I swear I wrote it in the book," she says three or four times, all the while poring over a book that clearly doesn't have my name written down anywhere in the schedule for this week (or next, or the week after that). Numerous apologies are made on their part; I smile and just keep saying "It's no big deal." What else is there to say?

An hour later I’m at home, working on various magazine stuff, when I get an email from the TV producer saying they finally figured out what happened. Apparently my friendly neighborhood news anchor wrote me in for March 19th, when she meant to write it in for February 19th. Oops. These things happen. (Though I’d like to know why I’m such a magnet for them; they may happen, but they seem to happen to me with disproportionate frequency.)

I'm scheduled to try again next week, Wednesday morning. Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.

Oh well, could have been a whole lot worse…

Assuming it comes off this time, I’ll post a link to the interview when the station adds it to their website.

*

Achieving Publishing Success

The subject of success in the publishing industry is one that is always under discussion. There are lots of writers, all of whom would love to achieve J. Rowling-like success, so it's natural that they're talking about this subject. And a good deal of what I've been reading lately on blogs related to this has been about self-publishing, podcasting novels, and other, alternate means of getting noticed. There was an article in Time (Podcasting Your Novel: Publishing's Next Wave?) that recently generated a lot of conversation.

I've been thinking about this issue, and here's where I've come down on the subject. A lot of times you hear people talking about how they circumvented the traditional system (by choice or by necessity), and then they trumpet their success, all the while mistaking its cause. They say, "I self-published and succeeded. Self-publishing is the path to success." Or, "I podcast my novel and succeeded. Podcasting in the path to success." Or, "I published my novel as an e-book and succeeded. Digital publishing is the path to success." Or whatever.

There are a problems with that logic, though, specifically in that there are some things it fails to recognize. And I think the main thing it fails to recognize is that the means of distribution is not the key to the success. For every success story that can be found in the realms of self-publishing, podcasting, etc. etc., there are thousands upon thousands of people who have tried the exact same path and failed. And failed miserably. Failed spectacularly.

The reason for the successes is because of three main things, two of which the author controls, one of which the author does not, and none of which are the means of distribution.

The first controllable factor is that the author wrote a good (or great) book to begin with. Just because an agent or editor rejects a book, does not mean it isn't a good one; sometimes editors (or agents) just get it wrong. The publishing industry is rife with stories that bear that fact out. But if an author has done their best work and believes in that work, they'll keep trying.

That brings us to the second controllable factor: that the authors of these books worked their assess off to promote them. There are so many books out there that it takes a tremendous amount of effort to get noticed, much less succeed. This is not news to anyone; you hear it all the time. But if you look at the story of the people who made it, you always hear them talk about how hard they worked, how many events they appeared at, how many signings and reading they set up, how many blogs they guest-posted on, etc. etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum. That effort, more than anything else, is the single biggest key to their success. I firmly believe that if an author who enjoyed success with podcasting their novel had put equal effort into self-publishing that same novel or releasing that same novel as an e-book (or whatever other means of distribution you care to name), they would have enjoyed comparable success. It's about the level of effort put into the book's promotion.

And for better or for worse, the third factor in determining success (or failure) is luck. Being in the right place at the right time has made or broken more careers than there is time to list. Of course, you increase your odds of being in the right place at the right time by being in as many places as possible as many times as possible (see previous paragraph on the subject of working your ass off), but in the end a little luck goes a long way. You can't control it, though, so stick with items one and two.

The last thing I want to mention is somewhat related to this topic and somewhat not. I've been hearing a lot of chatter about the potential demise of the traditional means of publishing and the revolution that's imminent. But before you dismiss traditional publishing, bear this in mind: The "success" of people who tried their hand at self-publishing or podcasting their novels is usually success in the very traditional medium they started out circumventing. They may not have arrived by conventional means, but they still arrived at the same place everyone else is angling for, for the same reason everyone is angling to get there: a good contract with a major publisher. Why? Because that's how you get you book into as many hands as possible. And because that's where the money is. And at the risk of having my membership revoked by the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Fine Artists, that is still the kind of "success" we are all looking for. We want as many people to read and enjoy our books as possible, and we want to be paid well enough for it that we can afford to stay home (instead of going to a regular job) so we can do it again.

Anyway... I didn't mean for this to turn into a PhD dissertation, I just wanted to say that getting as many people as possible to read your book is a good way to get noticed by a major publisher, but I think it is a mistake to confuse the means of distribution (podcasting, self publishing, whatever) for the cause of success in achieving wide distribution.

Locus Online: 2008 Recommneded Reading List

Yesterday Locus Online released their recommended reading list of books, stories, etc., published in 2008. Congratulations to everyone who made the list, especially the authors of the two novelettes that first appeared in InterGalactic Medicine Show:

"The Tale of Junko and Sayuri", by Peter Beagle (InterGalactic Medicine Show July, '08)

and

"From the Clay of His Heart", by John Brown (InterGalactic Medicine Show April, '08)

ROF R.I.P.

I suspect everyone has heard the news by now, but in case you haven't, I am sad to report that after fifteen years of publication, the venerable Realms of Fantasy is ceasing publication with their April 2009 issue, which is currently at the printers.

For a more detailed look at the situation, see the article on SFScope.

If you have a subscription with them, you have a few options.

My condolences to all their wonderful staff, writers, and artists.

Guest Post - Lon Prater

Lon Prater (www.lonprater.com, http://lonfiction.livejournal.com) is an active duty Naval officer by day, writer of odd little tales by night. His short fiction has appeared in the Stoker-winning anthology Borderlands 5, Writers of the Future XXI, and the Origins Award finalist Frontier Cthulhu. His most recent publications include "A Road Like This, At Night" just out in latest issue of Talebones (#37) www.talebones.com and "Prelude to a Theme by Dougie Franz" in www.spacesuitsandsixguns.com.

I’ve met and hung out with (translation: consumed alcohol with) Lon at a few conventions and enjoyed his company tremendously, and we also haunt a few common forums. It was on one of these forums that a conversation developed on the subject of Plot, Character, and Structure, and I thought his post on the subject was one of the most articulately succinct musings on the topic that I had seen in a long time, so I asked his permission to reprint here in Side Show Freaks. If you are interested in understanding (and constructing) what makes for a good story, read on. -- Edmund

Lon:

“Plot is tied to structure as muscle is connected to bone. In fiction that works really well for me, character is the nervous system telling those muscles where to take that skeleton. If any one of those is out of whack your story is out of whack, diseased, or disabled. Or at least achy with a head cold and acid reflux.

So IMHO it is most helpful to look at plot holistically in conjunction with the other two. A story is the intersection of plot, character, and structure. If you are better by far at one aspect than others, use that aspect to build and design and determine the other two. (I think all writers are better in one area at first and then grow stronger in the others as they develop.)

Character determines what a protagonist or any other agent within your story wants AND how they will try to get it.

Plot is what happens to the character to bring that need to the surface AND what happens when the protagonist takes those actions.

Structure is where the story starts, climaxes and ends; what order these and other bits of story information are presented to the reader; what happens to whom in each scene; whose POV we get that scene from; and the manner in which the story is told. (a.k.a. style)

Most writers come to a story inspired by one of these aspects. The idea is just there naturally, and it is this flash of inspiration that gets them interested in writing the story in the first place. The other two aspects must be either designed with significant work and forethought or fixed once the story is far enough along that they are discovered. (Or some mélange of both.)

If you are strong on plot, you need to go the extra mile to make sure that you have built characters who will be challenged in the most interesting and surprising ways by it.

If you are best at character, the trick is figuring out the sorts of things that need to happen to reveal and transform that character on the crucible of conflict. Knowing the character means knowing how to make them motivated to change their situation over and over until they finally realize they must change themselves to succeed.”

New Novel from David B. Coe

David B. Coe (www.davidbcoe.com) is the Crawford Award-winning author of ten fantasy novels and several short stories (including one that was published in issue 9 of InterGalactic Medicine Show). A refugee from academia, David has a Ph.D. in history and has taught at the university level. In a life prior to that prior life, he was a political consultant. The Horsemen's Gambit is the second book in his Blood of the Southlands trilogy. It was published on January 20, 2009, which is good because there was nothing else of importance happening that day to draw attention away from the book's release....

That's the (semi)official introduction anyway. The behind-the-scenes reality is that although I only met David a few years ago, he very quickly became one of my favorite people, not just in this business, but out of it as well. He's fun, funny, and smart, and a heck of a writer. If you enjoy fantasy at all, you really owe it to yourself to go find one of his many novels and wallow in it. They are rich and complex worlds, and you will quickly discover why he already has the immense fan-base he has. --- Edmund

Q) Can you tell us a bit about The Horseman's Gambit and the Blood of the Southlands series?

DBC) Blood of the Southlands begins with The Sorcerers' Plague as a sort of medieval medical thriller. An old woman named Lici has set out to avenge a injury done her decades before by conjuring a plague. Before long though, the plague spirals far beyond her control, and in The Horsemen's Gambit, the damage done by the plague to the Qirsi, the sorcerers of the Southlands, convinces their enemies, the Eandi, to attack Qirsi lands in the hopes of winning back territory lost during the Blood Wars. Along the way there's political intrigue, some romance, and a web of personal interactions tinged with all this ethnic baggage.

Those are the basic plot points. In a larger sense this series, like my five-book Winds of the Forelands sequence [Rules of Ascension, Seeds of Betrayal, Bonds of Vengeance, Shapers of Darkness, Weavers of War], which is set in the same world, deals with issues of race, ethnic identity, and prejudice. My characters, particularly those who seek to control the chaos unleashed by Lici's curse, are constantly fighting against the destructive power of ancient hatreds. Ultimately this newest book -- like those that came before it and the one that remains -- is about overcoming history and transcending bigotry.

Q) Race, prejudice, ethnic identity -- That all sounds pretty familiar. Is Blood of the Southlands set in a created world or our own?

DBC) It's definitely a created world, but as with all my work, Blood of the Southlands touches on issues of great importance in what we call, for lack of a better term, the "real" world. My LonTobyn series [Children of Amarid, The Outlanders, Eagle-Sage] touched on ecological themes. Winds of the Forelands and Blood of the Southlands deal with race. I have another project that I'm working on that focuses on drug addiction. I write books that I hope will entertain. I strive to make them fun -- as I said, there's lots of action and intrigue, romance and even humor. But they also deal with serious issues that resonate with social concerns in our own lives. I do this because I find it more interesting to write books that grapple with big questions. And if some of my readers come away from the books thinking about race or ecology or substance issues in a new way, all the better.

Q) What is it about fantasy that attracts you?

DBC) Well, in part I'm drawn to fantasy precisely because I can create worlds that then serve as mirrors for our own world. Admittedly, these are imperfect mirrors, but they're mirrors nevertheless. I can make the Forelands/Southlands universe and create racial tensions that are complex and compelling, and yet different enough from the racial problems in our own world that no one will be offended by the books. Speculative fiction offers us a unique opportunity to look at ourselves through a lens that both distorts and magnifies. The distortions allow us to distance ourselves and perhaps examine an emotionally fraught issue without so much emotional heat. The magnification can make us see things that we might otherwise miss.

I'm also drawn to fantasy, as well as science fiction, and dark fantasy, and horror, and all the other subgenres in our field, for the simple reason that they're so much fun to read. I love magic. As a friend of mine wrote elsewhere just the other day, I believe in magic on some level. And being able to write magic into the lives of my characters, giving them the ability to shape their world in ways that I can only dream of doing myself, is enormously entertaining.

Q) Why did you decide to make Besh, one of the protagonists of Blood of the Southlands, an old man?

DBC) Well, let me start by saying that I'm not certain I "make" any of my characters, any more than I'm certain that I control their actions. My characters present themselves to me. They clamor for my attention, and when I finally turn my mind's eye on any one of them, he or she tells me his or her story. When I first started conceiving of the Blood of the Southlands trilogy, Besh was the first character I met. I didn't know at the time why it was important that he tell so much of the story, but I trusted him and also my instincts as a writer, which told me that he was crucial to the entire series. I think I was drawn to him, at least in part, because he was so different from other protagonists I'd written and other heroes I'd encountered as a reader. Yes, he's old. He's also got that stubborn sense of "I know myself, and I know the world, and by God you're going to listen to me," that we sometimes find in our elderly friends. He's not particularly strong physically, and he wields little influence or political power. But he's clever and wise and uncommonly brave. He has a profound moral sense and is intensely loyal to his people and his family. Over the course of writing the three books of the Southlands series he became just about my favorite of all the characters I've ever written.

Q) You've been a historian, you've worked in politics -- it seems you came to writing relatively late in life. How did it happen?

DBC) I suppose I did come to it a bit late, but the irony is that I've wanted to be a writer since I was a kid. I wrote and illustrated my first books in first and second grade -- and given the quality of my illustrations, it's a good thing I can write. I went to college with every intention of majoring in creative writing, but got sidetracked by concerns with practical considerations, like making a living. I tried political consulting, but found it disillusioning. So I went to grad school, got my degree in history, and applied for a bunch of teaching positions. But the summer after I completed my degree I found myself with lots of free time on my hands. My grad work was done, but the academic jobs hadn't been listed yet. And my wife said to me, "You know, since the day we met you've been talking about writing a book. You have some time now. Why don't you spend the summer writing?"

I did, and by the end of the summer I had several short stories written (none of them has ever seen the light of day, and none of them ever will) as well as the first five chapters of what would eventually be Children of Amarid, my first novel. A friend of mine agreed to act as my agent and he shopped the book around while I applied for teaching jobs. I got the perfect academic job offer -- teaching environmental history in Colorado -- and my first nibble from Tor Books within 24 hours of each other. I chose writing and have never looked back.

Q) Aside from writing, what do you do for fun?

DBC) Well, I'm a husband and a dad, which are the two things that mean the most to me. My daughters are 13 and 9, and a lot of my non-work time is taken up with stuff I do for or with them. I've been a Soccer Dad, a Swim Dad, a Dance Dad, a Music Dad, and a Theater Dad. And because my wife is a full-time college professor, I do most of the grocery shopping, a fair amount of laundry and house stuff, etc. In addition, I'm active in my community -- I run a local food cooperative, I'm on the parents' council of my older daughter's school, and I'm on the town council here in our little village. But when I'm not doing any of that I have quite a few outside interests. I like to hike and birdwatch. I'm a dedicated amateur photographer and actually had my first one-man exhibit in 2008. Nature and landscape photography mostly. I play guitar and sing -- folk, rock, a bit of bluegrass. I listen to music all the time. I look at butterflies and run a local butterfly census here in my home town. I'm a bit of a political junkie, and I'm confident that my professional output will be greater in 2009 than it was last year, simply because I won't be checking political web sites every 3 minutes.

Q) What's a typical day like for you?

DBC) A typical day? I'm not sure there's any such thing -- did I mention that I'm the father of a teenager? My routine looks something like this: We're up at 6:30 am. I make lunch for my younger daughter and do what I can to get the girls moving. After my wife and I get the girls to their schools, I go to the gym for an hour or so. Exercise is crucial for me; without my morning workout I'm not sure I could function. I get back, have a light breakfast, check my email, and begin the day's writing. I shoot for 6-8 manuscript pages a day, which translates to about 1500-2000 words. I'm not a particularly fast writer, but if I can write 35 to 40 pages a week, that's a book every 6 months or so, which isn't too bad a pace. I might have to pick up one of the girls from school or take them to dance or sports practice, but I can usually get back to work for a while longer. I knock off around 5:00 or 5:30 and the rest of the evening is family time. I don't work on weekends, and I don't work many nights. I work at home, so it would be very easy to be sucked into working all the time. To prevent this, I set strict boundaries. I have work time and family time. I'd probably get more written if I was less strict about this, but that's a choice I'm comfortable making.

Q) What are you working on now?

DBC) The third and final Blood of the Southlands book is finished and handed in to my editor (it's scheduled for release in January 2010). I'll have revisions to do eventually, but for now I'm working on a new project that is completely separate from anything I've done before. It's alternate world fantasy set in a place that's roughly analogous to early Renaissance Europe. There's a magical element and each book is a stand alone mystery with recurring characters. I don't generally like to talk too much about works in progress until I'm further along than I am with this series. Suffice it to say that I'm very excited about this one. I hope to see the first book in print sometime in 2010.

David B. Coe's personal website can be found at www.davidbcoe.com. He blogs with some regularity on both LiveJournal and WordPress, and he is part of the MagicalWords.net writing blog with fellow fantasy authors Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, and C.E. Murphy. The Horsemen's Gambit, book II of his Blood of the Southlands trilogy, can be purchased through Amazon.com. (Release date: January 20, 2009)

Letting Go

I got an email today from someone who is nearing completion of her first novel. I thought she asked a very pertinent question, because anyone who has ever gotten near the end of their first novel has, in one form or another, asked themselves this kind of question. And my answer is not particularly profound; it's just what a writer needs to do.

Dear Edmund

Please tell me that somewhere, all of this ends. The playing with the story, the revisions, the internal logic ... that all of it eventually gets onto the page and is published, and you let it go.

Did you find it difficult to let go of Dreaming Creek?

Linda

Dear Linda,

I didn't find it difficult to let go of Dreaming Creek; if anything it was a relief. I spent SO many hours and days and weeks and months and years on it that I was ready to move on. Very ready. However, in order to do so, I had to accept the fact that it would live with certain flaws.

I think there was a tipping point where I was satisfied that it was good enough, even if it wasn't as good as it could possibly be. Because every month that goes by, I learn things about the book, the characters, and about writing in general, that could be used to make the book better. But I don't want to spend the rest of my life 'perfecting' the same book, I want to write new ones. So I've let go of the last one; I hardly think about it all. I'm focused on the next one. Of course, that’s a lot easier to do once the book has been published… but eventually you have to decide it's good enough -- and move on.

Edmund

Free Story at IGMS

News from the IGMS Homepage:

In July of 2008 IGMS published a story by Alethea Kontis titled "Blood and Water," an outstanding dark retelling of Hans Christian Anderson's "Little Mermaid." "Blood and Water" has received numerous recommendations for the HWA's Bram Stoker Award for Best Short Story of 2008, and in order to both celebrate this recognition, and to make it easier for HWA members to read this story and continue to recommend it, IGMS is making the story free for everyone to read until the end of March of 2009. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

If you're an HWA member who hasn't made a recommendation yet, this is a wonderful story, wonderfully told, and deserves the recognition. If you're not, it's still a great read. Enjoy.

He's Baaaaack...

Took a week off from the computer for Christmas. No big deal. But right after Christmas a situation arose that required my computer to be, shall we say, disassembled, and in more pieces than usual, with those pieces separated by more space than usual. On the one hand it was a very peaceful experience. I discovered, among other things, that I actually can get through a day without checking my five different email accounts thirteen times each. On the other hand, I found out -- well, confirmed, really; I've learned this before, always the hard way -- that just because I'm not checking email doesn't mean that people aren't sending them. So you can imagine what the backlog looks like.

One of the things that was uncovered today was an email about a review of my novel, Dreaming Creek. I don't know how long it's been up, but it's dated January 2009, so it can't be too terribly old. If you want to read the whole thing, it's on SFRevu.com:

http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=8485

Overall the reviewer enjoyed the book, though it's not all sunshine and daisies; he does point out several thing he considers to be flaws. But I forgive him for his transgressions, if only because of this paragraph:

"Schubert's writing style is almost thriller-like in its clarity and the short chapters make for quick reading. [He] has a very clear, very concise writing style. He does not bog down with detail, nor does he attempt to hammer the reader over the head with his own social observations. It appears, in fact, that he quite simply put the characters on the page and let them do their thing, allowing the reader to draw what conclusions they might. I imagine that's a hard thing to do, but Schubert does it quite well. If I hadn't researched and found out that this was his first novel I would have thought him an old pro. He certainly writes like one."

There's also an interview (in case you're not tired of those yet)(actually this interview was more interesting than many of the previous ones, if only because someone finally asked different questions; a lot of the previous ones covered a lot of the same territory, but not this one):

http://sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=8486

IGMS presents: "The Absence of Stars" by Greg Siewert

***

Notes on “The Absence of Stars”

I’m not sure if I remember having the initial idea for “The Absence of Stars.” I definitely remember being fascinated by Stephen Hawking’s notion of microscopic black holes and the idea that a black hole is a function of the density of matter, not its total mass. I was also interested in black holes because although they have properties that border on the fringes of known physics, they can also be viewed as simple, massive objects and therefore, they can move around and orbit just like any other planet or asteroid.

As a relatively new writer, I’ve been doing my own versions of some familiar sub-genres. I’ve got a “demon escapes from hell” story, a “futuristic war-scape” story, and “The Absence of Stars” was my version of the well-tread “big thing is heading toward the earth” story. I have a laymen’s interest in relativistic physics and this novelette allowed me to air out some of my pet opinions and theories (yeah, they’re probably wrong—I’m a winemaker). It also allowed me to create a version of this scenario without some of the irritating clichés that I always see presented in films. You know that part of the movie where humanity has to struggle with the weighty decision of who should be evacuated to create a new society and who should remain on Earth? I don’t know why, but I find that really irritating. I took great joy in sidestepping the issue completely.

Another thing that bothers me in such movies is how unrealistic the technology always is. The government always has seems to have some secret rocket program that nobody knew about. Although my story is set in the future, it’s meant to exist in roughly the present day from a technology standpoint. As a fan of the US space program in general, and the International Space Station in particular, I was really excited to set a story on the ISS. I think the station became a character of its own. Speaking of characters, it was also very satisfying to craft the personalities of the astronauts as serious-minded scientists, and not the cartoonish super-heroes that I see in the movies. I’m sure that someone more knowledgeable then myself could poke all sorts of holes in my depiction of the station and the events of the story, but I can assure you that I tried to make it accurate and plausible wherever I could.

Since I mentioned plausibility: The speed of light is infinitely fast. If you’re looking for a fistfight, say that in front of a physics student. Light has been measured many times traveling at 300,000 Km per second. Say you’re standing under the night sky and you turn on your flashlight at the same time you start a stopwatch. Your flashlight is pointed at a planet ten light years away, where the light bounces off a mirror and comes back to you 20 years later. You stop your stopwatch, get out your calculator and figure the speed to be 300,000 Km per second. What’s the problem? Well, here’s the thing: My understanding of relativity is that if you repeated this experiment with the stopwatch riding on the beam of light (go with me on this) and waited for it to come back to you 20 years later, the stopwatch would still say zero; special relativity, being what it is. If velocity is distance over time then if you travel 20 light years (or any other distance) in zero seconds then your speed is infinite. Right? So how fast does light travel? Is it 300,000 Km/sec or is it infinitely fast? I suppose it depends on your point of view. At least I think it does, one day maybe I’ll get a real physics education and know for sure.

Enjoy the story,

Greg Siewert

***

Part One of Greg's story, "The Absence of Stars," is in issue 10 of Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, available now. Part Two will appear in issue 11, due out in February.

Cue Twilight-Zone Music Here...

I don't know what dark forces are at work in the universe to cause things to work out this way, but about a year or two ago I realized that good things always happened to me in the publishing world right after bad things happened to my poor wife in the real world. It's uncanny.

In 2003 she got laid off from her job, and within mere days I sold my first short story. Then right after she found out she was going to get laid off a second time (in 2006), I had my first novel, Dreaming Creek, accepted for publication.

Well, as I was writing our family Christmas newsletter tonight, I realized it had happened again. This summer my poor, suffering wife had major reconstructive surgery on her shoulder -- they actually did two different procedures while they had her under anesthesia -- and in the space of fewer than of ninety days this autumn I had two books published.

It would appear that my wife is suffering for my art.

As I said, cue Twilight-Zone music here...

Revenge of the Penguins

A few months ago I did an interview where I admitted to having a taste for fire-roasted penguins (read the full monstrosity here), and that certain authors had had stories published in the IGMS anthology by virtue of having bribed me with said fire-roasted penguins.

The problem is that apparently people actually read that stupid interview, and now the whole penguin thing has taken on a life of its own. And it would appear that the penguins are having the last laugh, because the following list is only of the most recent cases of penguinalia (whatever the heck that means). In the space of about a week, I received:

1) a story submitted to the magazine wherein the author admitted in the cover letter that the scene in Antarctica with Satan kicking a bunch of penguins was written specifically because of the aforementioned interview,

2) an email from an author whose story I had just accepted, whose first words were not "Cool!" or even "Thanks," but "Where do I send the penguin?" and,

3) This, handed to me by writer just the other day:


Even now, from thousands of miles away, I can hear the penguins, laughing...

*

"The Tile Setters" - by Ami Chopine

The Tiles Setters was born in a car dealership. I’d been given the assignment to go out and search: find ideas for stories. Learn about
something you’ve no interest in. Meet people. Observe.

I wandered into the dealership with my partner from the class, and we
decided to pretend to be interested in a car. The somewhat lecherous
salesman turned out to be uninteresting, except for the fact that he was the perfect representation of the cliché. So I looked around. The tile caught my attention. It wasn’t magnificent, being a simple cream and white ceramic with gray grout. But it started me off on a route I’ve found myself taking many times since.

How did this tile get here? Who laid it? What were their lives like? How was it made?

That last question lead to visions of clay being kneaded and rolled out and cut. I knew that clay sometimes benefits from different things being added. What would happen if this process were magic? What if the additives imbued some kind of power to the tile? I imagined that the magic artist might use snippits of themselves. Some of the things in those jars are dead skin cells and even dried blood, as well as other plant, animal, and mineral materials with certain properties.

Initially, my idea was that the tile makers worked for a prince of long ago. But someone suggested I bring it to the modern age. It was brilliant idea and I wish I remembered who it was to thank them. My husband had worked in an advertising agency. These places really do spend lots of money on their own image and their office décor.

I wrote the story in about seven hours. Then, I couldn’t get my laptop hooked up to a printer so I retyped it in an hour onto the school computer so I could print it out. Good times.

***

Ami's story, "The Tile Setters," is in issue 10 of Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, available now.