Archive for the 'Novels' Category

Comicon 2010 round-up and wrap-up, Saturday, Sunday

Kevin Andrew Murphy July 26th, 2010

Continuing the Comicon 2010 report from the previous post….

Saturday: I had some thoughts of seeing the Chuck panel, as I was there early enough, but early enough for the panel and early enough for the line are two different things and the line for Ballroom 20 was beyond insane, so I decided to go over to the Indigo Ballroom in the Hilton which is generally less impacted and see the program track there.  En route, I witnessed the line for Hall H, where the movie panels go on.  It had overflowed it’s already insane bounds and gone over across the street, wrapped around the park where the Clash of the Titans games promos were set up and extended into another dimension I think.  The games in the park were all nice: You could have your face painted and have a picture taken in cut-outs as one of Medusa’s victims, you could bounce on a giant trampoline (which did a number on my knee last year at con), you could play boffer wars in a bouncy arena, and you could even climb a rock wall with a cable safety harness.  Almost no one was playing the games, preferring to stand in line, so I decided I’d try the rock wall, which was free.  Unfortunately, I’d sprained my LCL a few months ago and about ten feet up the rock wall I felt it complain so I wussed out.  The guy who was supervising the wall looked more approving after I compared knee surgery scars with him.  In any case, I got a souvenir fan in place of a shield or a medusa headdress and went on to the line for the Indigo Ballroom, which was fortunately short.

I was there in time for the panel for Leverage, which I’d only vaguely heard of.  They had free MASTERMIND and GRIFTER T-shirts.  I took MASTERMIND, of course.  The room was packed and I had an extremely excited fifty-something fangirl next to me who was sqeeing with delight over seeing her favorite actors, one of whom I then noted was Christian Kane who I’d previously seen on Angel and who mentioned that he has a new music debut on iTunes of some song played on the show (explaining why his character Lindsay on Angel went off with a guitar at one point–they were incorporating a talent of the actor into the character).  Wil Wheaton was also playing this seasons’ guest villain, Chaos. It looks like a great show, and has a nice simple premise: a gang of modern-day Robin Hoods pulling a heist each week against some bad guys who deserve to get ripped off and then have their money given to charity.  I now have to set my DVR for another show.

Next was the Venture Brothers panel.  It’s a fun cartoon I’ve watched some episodes of and I’ll probably watch a few more.  The actors on the panel were entertaining and generally gonzo, as one might expect.

Then came the Sanctuary panel.  I’ve enjoyed the show, and the panel was enjoyable as well.  They talked a good bit about the Bollywood dance that figured into the last season finale, and also mentioned how they’ve set up a charity which has been helping various groups around the world.  The guy next to me started recording the whole show on his camera, but it wasn’t going to be an unsteady shot, because he’d brought an actual tripod.  I looked around and he wasn’t the only one.

Then came the panel for The Guild, who could teach the rest of Hollywood something serious about work ethic and how to please your fans.  Aside from being at their booth throughout the con with all the actors present doing continuous signings from what I could see, they started the panel with the producer thanking all the fans and telling some production details that were genuinely interesting (as opposed to the twaddle from the guy for the Falling Skies panel, for example).  They then introduced the actors and segued neatly to showing the third episode the current season because they assumed everyone had watched the first two.  I hadn’t, but I can remedy that now, it was fun to see Wil Wheaton back as the villain Faux who had ended up as Codex’s love interest at the end of last season.  They then gave out buttons with the bodice ripper painting of Codex and Faux shown in the episode as a funny bit.  Then, when you wouldn’t think they could top that, they said they’d show the fourth episode, though the editing wasn’t quite done.  So we start into a nice seen with Codex and Zaboo in her bedroom which suddenly organically turns into a Bollywood extravaganza called “Game On.”

Wow.  That was some serious showmanship, and not just for the music video, which was amazing, but for the reveal to the fans.  Obviously they planned this well in advance and I’m pleased to see it such a success.

The guy with the tripod then packed up and left, but I then stayed around to watch a bit of the Community panel.  It was fun and whacky and basically what you’d expect for a comedy set in a community college with Chevy Chase as one of the professors, but after getting a free community college membership card with a discount for buying the DVD, I decided I was tired of sitting and so left too, going back to the convention center to see the art show, which was underwhelming, and more of the art on in the dealer’s room, which was not.

One artist I should point out to everyone is Echo Chernik.  She does some amazing art nouveau illustrations.  Another is Jeremy Bastain who does the Cursed Pirate Girl comics.

I then picked up with Albert and a couple of his friends and we went to Dick’s Last Resort which was a good deal of fun, especially since they were into the Comicon spirit and the waiters were in costume.  Ours was dressed as a white Mr. T with a Brooklyn accent, which was entertaining, and the food was good.  Pete, who’d joined us for dinner late, told us about the really cool Tron set-up they’d had off-site from the convention center.  I wish I’d been able to see it, but there’s always too much stuff to see, but what he showed me on his camera was pretty amazing.  We ate and ordered too much, which in hindsight we shouldn’t have because the next stop was the House of Blues where one of my publishers, SmartPop, had invited us to a party.  There was a buffet with too much delicious food, and also copies of their latest essay anthology A Taste of True Blood which the editor, Leah Wilson, was signing for all the guests.  There was fun talk about anthologies and the usual convention party fun.

Sunday: The last day of the con, I decided to catch Ann and Jeff Vandermeer‘s panel where they talked about upcoming projects, including steam punk anthologies and various curious and whimsical things.  I then did the dealers room floor, snagging up various things that caught my eye as purchases for the final day sales and also getting the final day swag.

The most interesting/fun bit of swag came in the WETA Workshop booth where a guy got up on a chair and announced that in partnership with TheOneRing.net were doing a trivia contest based on The Hobbit. Now, I pride myself on having a semi-eidetic memory, so I thought my chances of winning something with trivia from a book I’d read over thirty years ago were not half bad if I played my cards right.  After flubbing one question, I got called on for another, wanting the names of two of the swords Bilbo found in the troll’s hoard.  Now, if I racked my brains I might have been able to recall the fancy elven names, but they just asked for names, so I immediately gave the orcish ones: “Biter and Beater!”  The Weta guy looked at me as if I’d gone slightly mad since he was reading the card and those were not the names he was looking at but I just grinned and nodded to the OneRing guy for arbitration, and he admitted that those indeed were two of the names for the swords.  Not the names they were looking for, but names from the book.  I was asked if I knew the elven name, which I didn’t, but a guy next to me did: “Glamdring and Orcrist!”  The OneRing guy decided that that question was sufficient to advance us both to the finals after we’d answered a couple other questions.

The final round was me, a woman, the elven scholar guy, and a kid who I expected had read the book recently.  The elven scholar won the first question, selecting a miniature shield as his prize, the kid then correctly said that Gandalf had asked for red wine in Bilbo’s house and got the map of New Zealand as Middle Earth, and I then answered the next question correctly and got my choice of fancy rubber Hobbit ears or a red T-shirt for TheOneRing.net with the slogon “Talk Nerdy to Me.”  I’m not much of a cosplayer, but a T-shirt in my size?  Excellent.

After that, Albert gave me a ride to the airport and my friend Michael picked me up.  All in all an excellent Comicon.

Comicon 2010 round-up and wrap-up, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday

Kevin Andrew Murphy July 26th, 2010

I’m just back from the San Diego Comicon 2010.

I had considered doing a daily blog post and update, but that way lay madness or at least sleep deprivation and less con, so I’ll just do it now.

First off, a broad generalization: This appears to be a banner year for zombies and a notable year for family togetherness, and yes, we’re talking at the same time too.

Now on to specifics, in order of occurrence, not importance. I flew down Wednesday and was picked up by my friend Albert who was my guest for the con and in turn whose house guest I was. He’d already picked up our badges and since the airport was so close to the convention center, we hopped back and I got to see the last hour of preview night, whereupon I saw simultaneously the most impressive thing I saw at the con and the least impressive thing which were one and the same. The most impressive thing was the throne of Odin from the upcoming Thor movie. It’s this grand extravaganza that looks somewhat like a giant gold sword hilt (riffing, I think, on Odin supposedly having a sword suspended over his throne a la Damocles) with amazing Norse knotwork and steps and the impression that there were supposed to be valkyries perched all over portions of it like the Rockettes. However, on the throne itself was this cheap gold lame cushion that looked like it came from a ’70s porno. My guess is that Odin is going to wear some amazing fur cape and the set designer said not to bother because no one would ever see it, but it’s also going to be seen in thousands of photos as people lined up to take their pictures in it.

Regardless, I stopped by a few booths, notably Kingdom of Loathing and Girl Genius, picking up a few item cards at the first for my in-game clanmates and saying “hi” to the Foglios at the other.  The hall then closed and Albert and I went over to the bar at the Sheraton Suites to meet up with my friend Allison Lonsdale as well as her friends J. and Mel who do the Two Lumps webcomic.  Allison gave me the CD of “Live at Lestat’s” which I’d pre-ordered many years ago–and which she was glad to finally have out–and we had a good time (apart from my garlic intolerance and the unadvertised surprise garlic in the risotto, but they brought me mammoth coconut shrimp instead, so it all worked out).

Thursday we went to the con and I went off to The Power of Myth panel, which was an author track panel moderated by Maryelizabeth Hart of Mysterious Galaxy.  The room was packed to the point of them turning people away and there were a number of interesting panelists, including my friend Seanan McGuire, and my friend and editor Esther Friesner who had been flown out for the con.  It was a very fun panel and moreover informative, with Seanan mentioning the Romany legend that a certain type of fey creature was known to steal your baking stone if you displeased it which had been modernized in her grandmother’s retelling to stealing your microwave.  Michael Scott also made mention of the fascinating and tragic detail that there were entire villages in Ireland that had lost their native folklore due to the inhabitants dying during the Potato Famine or emigrating to America.  However, when they emigrated, they brought the folklore with them.

After the panel I caught up with Esther and set up to meet with her for dinner.  I then looked at the program guide and decided that there was nothing else in particular I wanted to see that day so I decided to pace the floor of the dealers room to see everything, something I hadn’t done in years since it’s the size of two and a half football fields.  But I did it.

Walking the floor made me conclude that this is the year of the zombie.  There were enormous displays for The Walking Dead, both the original comic series and the new AMC adaptation.  I was able to gather that it follows some small-time sheriff’s officer who’s injured in a shoot-out then wakes up in a hospital after the zombie plague is already in full swing, a la 28 Days, but it also has the heartwarming family angle where he’s out to track down his wife and son and rescue them from the zombies.  There were also zombies visible in the large booth for a video game called Dead Speed which appears to involve some bad-ass in motorcycle leathers, zombie card and dice games for sale from Steve Jackson Games, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies stuff at dozens of booths.

There was also more heartwarming family stuff in the form of No Ordinary Family which postulates that somewhat dumpy looking bald guy, played by Michael Chiklis, is married to super-hot MILF Julie Benz, and they have a boy and a girl, and then they’re in a plane which is caught in some super-uber-phlebotinum storm while they’re flying, which is pretty much the same origin story as The Fantastic Four.  Michael Chiklis even played The Thing in The Fantastic Four, so it’s really not a surprise that he gets the super-strength power.  Julie Benz’s Milf gets the Flash’s superspeed power, which is also reminiscent of The Incredibles.  To be different (for certain values of different) the daughter gets telepathy and the slacker son gets super-genius calculator powers.  I’m certain it’s hearwarming but it sure looks derivative.

I then got together with Esther for dinner and we went to the Gaslamp Strip Club which is so named because you grill your own steaks, which was good and fun.  After that I linked up with Albert and we hit Extraordinary Desserts, which were beautiful but too sweet for my taste, and went to the “From Dusk Till Shaun” party being hosted at El Camino on India Street.  It was the place that had previously been The Airport Lounge and it was kind of sad to see the 60-70s “golden age of air travel” be replaced by an admittedly cool Mexican bar.  I saw my friend Storm who I hadn’t seen in a year and it was then time to call it a night.

Friday The day began with the panel I was on, again hosted by Maryelizabeth, With Great Power Come Great Stories.  I was there representing for Wild Cards, as were Carolyn Spector and surprise extra guest Paul Cornell.  The room was about two-thirds full, but would have had more people if the interminable line for ballroom 20 weren’t routinely barring access to the rest of the hall.  One of the panelists was even late because of it.  Regardless, the panel went well, and I got the closing remark, “But sometimes you need to use the insanity widget,” which Maryelizabeth then echoed as a good final line and adjourned us to the signing area.

After the signing, Carolyn and I went to The Field and had lunch, talked Wild Cards and writing in general, and had a good time, then went back to the convention center and went around the dealer’s room until my feet got too sore and I went off to see a panel and sit down.

While I would have liked to see the True Blood panel, the line for it was insane and the main point was to get off my feet.  They’d also cross-programmed it with another vampires-and-werewolves show I also like called Being Human, but as that’s from Britain and didn’t have banners over half the convention center advertising it, I assumed it would be less impacted and I could sit down immediately.  I was right.

I got in for the tail end of Teen Wolf. No, not the Teen Wolf with Back to the Future made them release it anyway, and not the cartoon version either.  Well, yeah, sort of, but it looked like with this remake, they planned to play it straight and it looked reasonably cool.

This was then followed by the panel for Falling Skies, or as I called it afterward “In Which Stephen Spielberg Phones It In.”  How do I explain it?  Let’s see….  Take War of the Worlds and file the serial numbers off (it’s in public domain, but the last version bombed, so you don’t want to be associated with that) and cross-pollinate it with some patriotism lifted from Independence Day by making your protagonist an American history professor who specializes in the Revolutionary War and is thus is filled with idealistic hope that a small band of insurgents can continually frustrate and annoy an invading army until their intergalactic homeworld eventually suffers an economic collapse and the funding for the invasion of earth is yanked.  Or something like that.  This role is being played by Noah Wylie, an actor I usually enjoy and who was very earnestly trying to sell his new series, but the story about his character’s wife being dead, two of his sons being around, and the third son being kidnapped by the aliens for “mysterious purposes”?  (Hint: These “mysterious purposes” are invariably hybridizing humans with aliens, which he would know if he were a professor of pop culture and were thus genre savvy.)

Like The Walking Dead, the story picks up several months after the invasion, but instead of having the collapse of society glossed over by means of a convenient coma, we have this grave-voiced little girl telling us that the aliens “did not want to be friends” as a voice-over to crayon drawings of bug-eyed green men with gnashing razor-sharp teeth.  I’m about to wonder if the sheriff and the history professor shouldn’t team up and go deal with the zombies and the aliens together when the Q&A begins and this breathless woman asks the producer where they came up with the brilliant idea of explaining the invasion via the little girl’s drawings, and I’m thinking, um, it’s on tv tropes.org and it’s called a “nightmare fuel coloring book.” I could almost forgive the woman for the ditzy question when the producer opened his mouth and started blowing colored smoke about it being something Stephen Spielberg invented from his amazing creative genius, as opposed to it being a standard film convention of the genre, and you always give the dire exposition to little girls instead of little boys if you can help it because little girls are perceived as inherently more innocent and the contrast is automatically viewed as creepier.  Duh.

Then the panel was over and there was a short wait for Being Human to start.  Unlike most there, I had not yet illegally downloaded the whole second season to watch it, but I still enjoyed the panel and the actors.  There was also an interesting mention that while the BBC show is continuing, there will be an American version started up on the SyFy channel and the producer hoped we’d watch both so he’d get more residuals.

I then went and caught dinner with Albert and his friend Andrew, who’s also a housemate.  We hit the Dublin Square and had dinner and drinks with a blogger who was covering the con, after which we called it an early night in preparation for Saturday.

15 Days of Deverry Party Begins Today!

Constance October 28th, 2009

 

 

The Silver Mage

 

 by renowned Fantasy writer Katharine Kerr publishes on October 29th in the U.K. (HarperVoyager) and November 3rd in the U..S. (DAW).

Heralds 15 Days of Deverry

 

The Silver Mage is the final volume in this fantastic Celtic inspired cycle of interbraided lives, personalities and events in the alternate world of Deverry, through eras and generations of Deverry’s historical and chronological time!

 

15 Days of Deverry is an online celebration of the successful conclusion of Katharine Kerr’s vision for this Celtic knot of inter-braided novels. The 15  Days stands for the 15 titles that constitute the cycle’s sequence.***

 

A community at livejournal, deverry15 , has been set up as a clearinghouse where links will be noted. If you post any Deverry related material on your blog, anywhere (not just livejournal), please send the link to: rhi.rose@gmail.com. She’ll be collating the links.

For further information, join the deverry15 community at livejournal or stay here on the DeepGenre 15 Days of Deverry.  Ask questions, join the discussion, and make additional suggestions at both sites.

15 Days of Deverry Party Favors:  Katharine Kerr will provide autographed copies of her books and a signed bookplate designed by Party Committee member, Mary Frey, as prizes in  3 different contests!  (Contests’ Details and Rules follow in a separate entry.)

There is yet more!  A three-way interview-discussion here on the DeepGenre site, conducted among Katharine Kerr, Kate Elliott and Sherwood Smith on what it is like to have spent a long period of one’s professional career writing in a world one has created,  the roman fleuve and how a writer brings such large and long projects to a successful conclusion.

We encourage you to post about your experience reading these books in addition to your your congratulations to the author and her grand vision. You can create entries about how and when you first read one of the books, what attracted you to the series, which of the Deverry heroes ranks #1 in the Hotness Factor,  the overarching themes and structure of the series – or anything else about the Deverry world and books that has affected you.  We hope you all will share your own unique views of Katharine Kerr’s achievement.

We’re very excited by the successful completion of this Grand Fantasy Vision, so we’re throwing this Big Party to celebrate!  All of you are special guests.  Please come!  Post often!  Bring your friends, your dog, your cat and your dragon too!

***Link Here to the Deverry Webpage and the list of titles in the cycle

 

Please check out Book View Cafe, for short fiction by Katherine Kerr and many other fine authors!

 

. . . The 15 Days of Deverry Party Committee:

Constance Ash, Mary Frey, Darcy Javanne Kramer,  Kate Elliott,  Sherwood Smith and Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein

Spoilers: or, The Joy of Reading and Viewing Without Preconceptions

Kate Elliott March 4th, 2009

Some folk cannot abide spoilers–it ruins a book for them–while others read for process not goal and therefore do not mind spoilers.  Now, it makes no never mind to me whether a person hates spoilers, or doesn’t mind spoilers, or checks ahead to see who lives and who dies because the anticipation is killing them.  As I say, let a person be the reader they want to be.

As for me, I personally prefer to read or view for the first time without knowing what is going to happen;  I like to experience the plot “in real time” with all the surprises, setbacks, revelations and shocks that may entail.  I enjoy the experience of my own reactions, and if I really really like a book or film I will read/see it again, which provides yet another experience, the experience of watching the known story unfold and anticipating or recognizing the way the narrative builds and twists.

Others will approach the reading (viewing) experience differently, and that’s as it should be. Continue Reading »

Memo to Hollywood: How to do (and not do) an adaptation

Kevin Andrew Murphy December 31st, 2008

I have just watched The Seeker: The Dark is Rising, a year after it came out (DVR is your friend, except maybe in this case) and I’m gasping in horror at how bad it was, and for no good reason.  You’ve got all the elements that would seem to make a great movie:  Beloved children’s classic as source material?  Check.  Lavish sets?  Check.  Gorgeous costuming?  Check.  Actors ranging from competent to excellent?  Check.  Impressive and appropriate special effects?  Check.  Script by a competent screenwriter?  Um, well, I understand they got the guy who did the adaptation for Trainspotting, which I understand was a decent movie, but….

First off, let me make one thing clear: Departure from the source material is fine.   The Wizard of Oz dumped the scene in the Dainty China Country from the movie adaptation because it was boring, extraneous, and painfully lame.  Glomming the Good Witch of the North and Glinda the Sorceress of the South together makes sense from a dramatic perspective, though making her a bubbly airhead was a bit much (although the MGM version does have her fans).  Having the Wicked Witch of the West be responsible for the poppies is fine for purposes of drama, and having them be foiled by snow as opposed to field mice is likewise fine for purposes of staging.  Mary Norton’s The Magic Bedknob and Bonfires and Broomsticks do not contain Nazis, musical numbers, a young Miss Price, or magical football matches with talking animals–though all of these things are very fun in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, a movie I adored as a child and had to thank for introducing me to the equally good (if significantly different) book.  And Alfonso Cuaron’s version of A Little Princess took numerous liberties with the original novel, including but not limited to moving the setting from London to New York, making Becky black instead of Cockney, and most significantly, having Sarah’s dad not be dead of bad investments in India but instead poisoned by mustard gas and MIA in WWI.

The difference here is that The Wizard of Oz, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Cuaron’s A Little Princess are all great movies.   The reason The Seeker isn’t is not because elements were changed, but because elements were changed for the wrong reasons and the wrong way. Continue Reading »

Publication basking: Busted Flush here, latest Wild Cards novel

Kevin Andrew Murphy December 9th, 2008

I got my author’s copies of Busted Flush yesterday, the latest Wild Cards novel which I wrote part of. I’d seen bits and bobs of the other author’s sections during the writing phase, for character approval and to see that we were on the same page, but this is my first chance to read the whole thing together and I’m enjoying it. So far I’ve read Melinda and Caroline’s sections at the beginning, then skipped ahead to reread parts of what I wrote (since there’s no plot surprises there, but there’s the fun of seeing your words in actual print).
Busted Flush cover shot
I’m not certain how many other authors do this, setting aside a day for enjoying the book when it comes out. Lots of times I know it hasn’t worked out, due to life, deadlines and other realities (and today not so much either, since I’m having a friend over to help install a new hard drive in the new computer and attempt to transfer what files were saved from the dead one), but when it happens, it’s nice to be able to just sit back and bask.

P.S. As a small update, there’s now an interview with me and the rest of the Busted Flush authors up at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist for anyone who’d like to read it.

For Love of A Vampire: Twilight & True Blood

Constance July 30th, 2008

O noes!

Twilight’s got all the cooties: romance, girl and YA — no Harry Potter adulation for this series.   Shoot, it’s as bad as Sex and the City, except – it haz shoes? It should haz belly dancing.  Does it?  Myself does not know,  not being a romance fan nor generally a YA reader. (I am a fan of belly dancing, and for long time now.)

Salon dot com analyzes.

[   No wonder the media has heralded Twilight as the next Harry Potter and Meyer as the second coming of J.K. The similarities, however, are largely commercial. It's hard to see how Twilight could ever approach Harry Potter as a cultural phenomenon for one simple reason: the series' fan base is almost exclusively female. The gender imbalance is so pronounced that Kaleb Nation, an enterprising 19-year-old radio show host-cum-author, has launched a blog called Twilight Guy, chronicling his experiences reading the books. The project is marked by a spirit that's equal parts self-promotion and scientific inquiry -- "I am trying to find why nearly every girl in the world is obsessed with the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer" -- and its premise relies on the fact that, in even attempting this experiment, Nation has made himself an exceptional guy indeed.    ]This is an interesting piece, though, because it attempts to track similarities, if there are any, and contrasts, which there certainly are many, among Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the Harry Potter series and the Twilight series, and their audiences.


Another quote:

[  If Harry Potter has a vampire-loving, adolescent female counterpart, it's Buffy Summers. ]  Continue Reading »

Jumpstart

Madeleine Robins April 29th, 2008

I have an erratic career path.

My first four books were written between 1976 and 1981; book number five took another two years to write (I went to the Clarion SF Writing Workshop; I moved from Boston to New York; I worked part time and then full time, I fell in love, I fell out of love.  Life, right?).  I also started writing SF and fantasy short stories.   When I turned in my last romance (in 1984) I kept writing short stories and started noodling around with a story which grew into a book.  It took me more than ten years to finish that book (worked freelance, picked up my acting career again, fell in love, got married, started working at Tor Books, had a baby, went back to work again, left Tor, left the job after that, edited comics for three years, had another baby).  I sold the book on a partial manuscript while I was still working at Tor, and was more than half-way through it–but it still took what seemed like forever to finish.  After I turned in The Stone War I got a chance to do a work-for-hire novel based on a Marvel Comics superhero–Daredevil.  I wrote that book in about six weeks, from a fiendishly tight outline (remind me sometime and I’ll tell you the hoops you jump through to write tie-in novels) and it was fun.  Then I wrote Point of Honour, and almost immediately afterward, Petty Treason.

Then, two weeks after I turned Petty Treason in in 2002, we moved to California.  My writing path since then has been, um, erratic.  And with the benefit of hindsight and a several-decades-long career, I now realize that my writing history is punctuated by gaps.  Some of them very significant gaps.  I am not, nor do I ever expect to be, one of those 2000-words-a-day-year-in-and-year-out, writers.  But there have been times when I wrote consistently, turning out a book a year or so.  And times when I didn’t, when I felt guilty because I wasn’t writing, or because I wasn’t finishing a book.  Guilt, needless to say, butters no parsnips and is the enemy of the creative process.

But a time has come, at the end of each of these hiatuses, to jumpstart my process and get back to work.  What to do?

Here, in no specific order, are some of the tricks that have worked for me:

  • Retyping the stalled manuscript.  Yes, even at book length.  Maybe especially at book length.  Retyping immerses me in the book in a way that merely re-reading and line-editing doesn’t.  I often find myself adding, branching out, finding the places where I went astray, cutting out wholesale chunks.
  • Writing “cover copy” for the story.  Nothing focuses what you believe are the salient points of a story like trying to convey it in a punchy, convincing two paragraphs.
  • Following The Artist’s Way or some similar program.  The Artist’s Way requires, among other things, that you write three pages, longhand, every morning before you do anything else.  When I was stalled on The Stone War this was one of the things that helped get me moving again.  And you don’t have to follow all the rules the Way suggests: Julia Cameron isn’t going to show up at your house at 6am to make sure that you’re writing before you feed the kids, or that you’re making all your “artist dates.”  The right way to do this is the way that helps you.
  • Participating in a writers’ workshop–one where I have to show up in person (nothing against online crit groups; I just found that having to show up was useful to me) and one in which I focus as much on the critiques I’m giving other people as I do on their critiques of my work.
  • Reading stuff that makes me want to write.  What is that going to be?  Sometimes it’s fiction that, in some way, approaches what I’m trying to do.  When I was working on Point of Honour I was reading The Maltese Falcon, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and The Name of the Rose.  If another writer has pulled off a particular technical trick, I may want to read that work for awe and inspiration.

I am reasonably certain that, however long my writing career continues (until they prise my laptop from my fingers, no doubt) there will be lulls in my creative process.  That means I’m always looking for new ways to jumpstart that process.  Got any you want to share?

How to Write a Novel (Part 2)

David Louis Edelman January 21st, 2008

So you decided to write a novel, you committed yourself to the task, and you agonized your way through your first draft — as described in How to Write a Novel (Part 1). Now one of two things will happen:

John Barth writing 1) You’ll print that sucker out and add a title page. You’ll type up a page dedicating the book to your sister Chloë in Venice, whose steadfast support and witty observations helped you get through the tough parts, and who served as the inspiration for the character of Empress Fögelschmëer (the Younger). You’ll add a cover letter, mail the whole package off to Random House, and watch the royalty checks flow in. Or,

2) You’ll look at what you’ve written and realize it ain’t publishable.

Most writers — even the successful ones — fall into that second camp. And it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Months or even years will have passed since you started, and the world’s not the same place. You’re not the same person. So it’s only natural that the story has wandered onto unforeseen paths. It’s only natural you look back at those early chapters and shake your head and think, How naive that guy was who wrote this stuff.

Don’t despair. Here’s a path (my path) of getting from first draft to final draft. As before, keep in mind that your mileage may vary.

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How to Write a Novel (Part 1)

David Louis Edelman January 15th, 2008

One of the Ten Commandments of Author Blogging is “thou must write a post explaining how thou writest thine novels.” And so, in an effort to save my immortal writerly soul from scribbler’s purgatory, I’m going to explain my process in easy numbered steps that anyone can follow.

Since I’ve only written two novels to date — Infoquake and MultiReal — and am now in the midst of a third, I can’t say that this is always going to be my process. All I can say is that it’s worked for me twice now, and it seems to be doing just dandy the third time around.

More importantly, I can’t say whether this process will work for you. No two writers write the same way, and sometimes what works for one person will only trip up the next person. Life’s like that. You’ll need to adapt to your own unique circumstances as you see fit.

Here goes. How to write a novel:

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