Posts made in August, 2012

• Why Not Science AND Magic?

  Who

  This week we’re talking about “Science vs. Magic”…a dichotomy that always brings to mind my toddler’s response when I read him Shark vs. Train: “Mommy, I like sharks AND trains, so they both should win.” 

  Amen, kiddo.  I have to say I’ve never quite understood the people who read only fantasy and not science fiction, or vice versa.  To me, it’s all one genre whose characteristic quality is imagination, whether you’re extrapolating on existing physical laws or making up your own world.  I’m happy to read everything from the diamond-hard SF of Greg Egan’s Orthogonal series to the mystical beauty of Patricia McKillip’s Cygnet duology.  I also don’t mind when technology and magic mix – I’m quite fond of urban fantasy (even if I prefer the mythic and noir flavors over paranormal romance), and one of the reasons I like steampunk is the opportunity for characters to play with both gadgets and spells.

  That said, as an author I haven’ t yet written anything that would be labeled science fiction, only fantasy - something that often strikes people as strange, when they learn I’m a Caltech-trained engineer who works in the aerospace industry.  “But why don’t you write a story with spaceships and science?” they ask.  “Wouldn’t you be good at it?”  (more…)

  Read More...

• How to Con for Fun and Profit

  Conventions and Conferences
  

  G.J. Koch

  Unlike most authors, I’m not an introvert. I like people, and I like interacting with them in reality, as opposed to only in my head.

  My first career was in marketing. And, unlike most promotions, sales, and marketing people, I loved trade shows. I loved attending them, and I loved working them. Apparently I have Carnival Huckster in my blood, because I enjoy getting people to come over and look at and/or buy something they originally had no interest in. (This has served me remarkably well in my current career, too.)

  Therefore, this should shock no one when I say that I love going to conventions. I go to all kinds — big, medium, and small.

  Why to Con?

  Lots of reasons, really. Exposure, though, is the number 1. My first con as a published author was San Diego Comic-Con. I was on a panel, did a signing, had my books in the bookstore. Not only was it fun, it helped me get onto the local con circuit much faster than I could have without the SDCC Bump. At cons you have an opportunity to reach tens to thousands of readers who, until this very con, didn’t know you or your bookie wookies existed. Hard to beat that kind of exposure. (more…)

  Read More...

• To Con or Not To Con?

  Conventions and Conferences
  

  Katy Stauber

  A good alternate title or this week’s posts would be:

  How To Party With Introverts

  Having walked amongst the sffy community over the past two years and observed their migratory patterns, I highly recommend going to a sff convention.  It’s fun, educational and air-conditioned, much like being on safari in your local coffee shop.  Only at conventions, you are allowed to prod the wildlife with a stick.  We are… allowed to do that right?  Well, nobody ever complains when I do it, at any rate.  OK, they complain, but they never catch me and take away the stick, so same difference.

  

  You could totally rock this look at a sffy con. You could.

  At this point, I have been to nine or ten sffy cons.  I too am an introvert so I only have the energy for so many social interactions.  I have a sort of manic-depressive introversion in that I love socializing with other sffy enthusiasts and geeking out to all things science and fiction related, but after a few hours, I get cooked and have to sneak off and curl up in my room with a book.  Sffy cons seem to be entirely populated by introverts so conversations can be a bit uneven as people air out their rusty social skills, remember what it is like to talk in real-time, and then get overwhelmed and have to go have a bit of a lie down.  However, so long as you bear in mind that you and everyone around you is an introvert who just wants to have a nice weekend, the whole thing can be a great experience.

  There are plenty of choices, if you are interested in attending a sffy con.  Here’s how I would generally break down the conventions by size:

  The big conventions: San Diego Comic-Con (over 130,00 of your closest friends) and Atlanta’s Dragoncon (over 45,000 )

  The middles: Worldcon (around 5,000 people) and WFC (around 3,000ish?)

  The smalls: Local conventions like Armadillocon or Aggiecon.  Typically these have a few hundred people at them.

  

  I had a pair of these. They got stolen at a sffy con. True story.

  Suggestions for getting the most out of your convention experience:

  • Get into it. Wear your Cthulu slippers, your Mork from Ork suspenders and/or your steampunk costume.  You know you have that stuff in your closet.  This is THE place to wear it.  It makes you feel like an insider and there is really nothing more entertaining than sitting around people watching at a convention.  Everyone is looking at you anyway and nobody cares about your age, your weight or any of the mundane stuff.   So put on a show! (more…)

  Read More...

• It’s All About Priorities

  Conventions and Conferences

  This week we’re talking “Conventions: Big, Small, None at All?” I’m far from an expert here.  Before I got my book deal, I’d been to only a couple of conventions, all local events (though that includes a day trip to WorldCon when it was in Denver back in 2008). Last year – my first year as a published author – I attended a grand total of 3 conventions: WorldCon, World Fantasy, and my local sf con MileHiCon.  

  That was actually a nice sampling of the different types of conventions: WorldCon is fairly large (albeit far smaller than the mega-size media cons like Comic Con) and geared toward fans of written SFF; World Fantasy is limited to something like 800 people, and is a “professional” con, oriented toward those in the publishing business (authors, agents, editors, etc).  MileHiCon is a local convention, small in size and featuring a “family reunion” atmosphere, in which long-time attendees get together and celebrate their passion for all things SFF. 

  I thoroughly enjoyed all three; and my experiences cemented my belief that the best way to approach a con (whether author, aspiring author, or fan) is that you’re there to hang out with like-minded people and have fun.  Anything else (promo, professional contacts, star-struck moments with your favorite authors) is icing on the cake.  I think it’s especially important for new authors to keep this in mind.  Yes, you want to try and get on panels and such. But don’t stress too much about it – because honestly, there are probably far better uses of your money and time if all you’re looking to do is promote your book.  You’ll be far happier and less harried if your highest priority in attending the con is to enjoy spending time with folks who share your passion for SFF and writing.  (And if you’re not passionate about SFF, well, why are you writing it?)  (more…)

  Read More...

• Whoops & Books

  Reading Habits of a Writer

  Yesterday was my birthday, so I forgot to post.

  What hooks me into a book? Good story, good writing, a good world, or good characters. I would say it has to be a combination of at least two of those. I have put down books due to bad prose, but picked them up again because the story and the world were compelling. I have read through books that had a rambling plot because I loved the characters and the writing. And so on.

  I believe I give books more time to hook me than do most people. I have been known to read through a whole bad book just to see whether it redeems itself. So there are many things that will hook me but a shorter list of what will make me absolutely not read the book. (more…)

  Read More...

• Just call it “Superhero Robot Space Cowboy Sexy Time.” I’ll buy it.

  Who

  

  Oh no! I just realized I am supposed to be posting on Wednesday, not Thursday. My bad!

  What’s guaranteed to hook me in a book?

  Full disclosure:  I buy alot of books.    Since I read fairly fast, a book usually lasts me a day or two.  Therefore, I am willing to take a chance on a book because it’s not a huge commitment for me.  That said, these are a few things that keep me up late to finish a book and make me want to read the author’s next book.

  • Interesting Cover.  It’s true.  If it is pretty, my brain says, “Give to me the shiny object.  Now!”
    

    If John Picacio does the cover, I am pretty much going to buy it.

  • Good title.  Scott Westerfeld’s books have fantastic titles:  Pretties, Uglies, Specials, Behemoth, Leviathan.
    
  • Cliffhanger chapter endings.  This is guaranteed to keep me up late into the night cursing the author even as I blearily turn pages, telling myself I will stop before I get to the next cliffhanger chapter ending.  Dan Brown is the classic of the form, of which all others are but shadows.
  • New twists on classic themes, like Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire series (better known as the books that led to True Blood.) where she did vampires in a small southern town.  What it interesting to note is that her books came out long before the vampire craze and remain popular long after it has peaked and ebbed.  I love that woman.  I really want her to write about a dozen more books for me to read.
  • A genre mash-up.  Mira Grant grant did a zombie-gonzo reporter mash-up in Feed whereby she retold Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 as a zombie thriller.  Very clever. (more…)

  Read More...

• By Hook Or By Crook

  Who

  So this week we’re talking about what’s guaranteed to hook us into a book.  An interesting question, because I find as a reader there are two stages to getting hooked.  One is the initial spark of interest, which might come either from something in the first few pages (an unusual situation, a witty character, a piece of lovely prose) – or might be from the book blurb, or a review, or a recommendation from a friend. 

  But there’s a deeper, more important stage: the point where you find you can’t put the book down, where you get so wrapped up in the story and characters that the real world feels strange and un-real by comparison.  This tends to be a slower burn for me.  I’m a patient reader; a book doesn’t need to hook me straight off to keep me reading, if I had that initial spark of interest to start. (more…)

  Read More...

• Pseudonym starts with ‘p’

  Say my name! Talking Pseudonyms.

  Here’s the thing. I did not expect to get published. I had enough to think about in even finishing a book, let alone sending it off to an agent. Still, in my far-off dreams on the subject I had considered that any form of my name(s) would not work well on the cover of a book because, just as Courtney Schafer complained about her own, nobody spells them correctly. Ever. So when people were suddenly using words like “contract” and “payment” and then I also heard “pseudonym,” decades of correcting credit card representatives and RMV workers had me primed to agree.

  There is a strategy to pseudonyms. You want to appear on the right place on the shelf; send a message about your identity (‘Raven’ sends one message, ‘Suzy’ another); show some musicality or rhythm your real name doesn’t have; and leave certain bits of information out of the picture, in many cases  gender. (more…)

  Read More...

• The Great Unmasking

  Say my name! Talking Pseudonyms.

  I said last week that I would reveal my true name today, the writer behind T. Aaron Payton and The Constantine Affliction, and if you’ll dim the lights and start the drumroll and prime the fireworks…

  Oh, I won’t be coy: T. Aaron Payton is a pseudonym for me, Tim Pratt. Ta da! All is revealed.

  I’ve done other books with Night Shade — my collection Hart & Boot & Other Stories, and an anthology, Sympathy for the Devil. A couple of years back I was chatting with Night Shade editor Jeremy Lassen, and he asked if I had any novel ideas I could pitch him. I said, “Well, there is one thing…”

  Back in 2009 my agent sent around a proposal for a book that was called, at the time, Death (and other afflictions), and which I thought of as “Steampunk Zombie Jamboree.” One of my friends had commented that lots of zombie books were selling well, and lots of steampunk books were selling well, so obviously the perfect commercial novel would combine steampunk with zombies. (That’s actually something that Cherie Priest has done, and very well, in her Clockwork Century novels.)

  I started thinking about that throwaway comment, and saw a way I could write such a thing and amuse myself immensely in the process, though it wouldn’t be exactly like most steampunk, and the zombies wouldn’t be exactly like most zombies, and there’d be this sex-changing plague, and some embedded literary references, and, actually, it likely wouldn’t be very commercial at all…. So I wrote up the first few chapters, and a synopsis, and sent it off to my agent to shop around.

  The big publishers passed on it. I got various responses, but more than once we heard variations on, “We like all the steampunk stuff, but this sex-changing plague stuff is too weird.” To which I could only shout at the moon, “But the sex-changing plague stuff is the only thing that differentiates it from all the other steampunk! If I take that out, I’m not writing anything a dozen other writers couldn’t do better!” So I gave up on the book, with sadness because I loved the characters, and shelved the proposal.

  Until Jeremy asked if I had anything. And I thought about how welcoming the Shade could be to things that were weird. I pitched him the idea, and he was enthusiastic, and now… here we are, among the afflicted.

  Why the pseudonym? Partly because this book isn’t like any of my other books — it’s my first time doing a historical, my first time doing steampunk, my first time mangling London geography, and the first time I’ve written anything quite this over-the-top at novel length — so they wanted to differentiate it from my other work. I did something similar with my Marla Mason urban fantasy series, which I wrote as T.A. Pratt. I’m told it all has to do with branding. And I’m fine with branding, as long as it doesn’t involve hot irons.

  Read More...

• Personally, I’m holding out for a Nom De Guerre

  Say my name! Talking Pseudonyms.

  According to dictionary.com:

  pseu·do·nym – [sood-n-im] noun a fictitious name used by an author to conceal his or her identity; pen name.  Synonyms : alias, nom de plume.

  nom de guerre – [nom duh gair; Fr. nawn duh ger] noun, plural: noms de guerre  [nomz duh gair; Fr. nawn duh ger]  an assumed name, as one

  

  Still looks like more fun than my day job.

  under which a person fights.  Origin: French:  literally, war name

  

  I have heard other professional writers advise the use of a pen name.  Apparently the deal is that if you get a few books published and they don’t sell well, you are frequently not able to sell any more to the publishers and it’s all very sad.  The work around is to switch to a different name and genre where your previous experience plays to your benefit and the publishers over there don’t know you were a flop.    So you don’t use your real name when writing in case you have to dump it and get a new one.  That’s just what I heard.

  My real name.  What does that even mean?  This is a time in the world’s history when you can have a fully-fledged online avatar for every aspect of your life, every mood swing, or every day of the week if you so desire. This is a time when we must all swallow the bitter irony of Facebook insisting that only perverts and criminals would use a pseudonym on social media while it sells our identity down the river to every credit card thief and relentless advertiser it can find.  (more…)

  Read More...