Posts Tagged "books"

• Welcome to Hell, Blofeld

  Introductions

   

  What better way to start an introductory post than a quote from James Bond?  That it’s said in Sean Connery’s accent is a bonus, a bonus that offsets the fact that it comes from one of the, ah, lesser Bond films (Diamonds Are Forever).  I’m hyperbolizing, of course–blogging isn’t really Hell (at least, not yet–talk to me under a tighter deadline).  In fact, since I get to offer my opinions on things, it may be closer to Heaven for me…and the rest of you, too.  We may disagree from time to time, but we’ll laugh, we’ll cry, these blogs will become a part of us.  Really.  It’s gonna be a fun ride. 

  Trust me.

  My name is Thomas Morrissey, and I’m one of the new authors at Night Shade Books.  My first novel, FAUSTUS RESURRECTUS, is being published today, Tuesday, April 3.  It’s a Supernatural Noir Thriller, a terrific read with elements of thriller, horror, mystery and romance, and is the first of a series featuring Donovan Graham, occult scholar (MA in Philosophical Hermeneutics–the study of interpretation and the search for truth), bartender (in midtown Manhattan), biker (motorcycle, not Schwinn) and (occasional) stoner.  Kind of an eclectic mix, but hey–write what you know.

  So who am I?  

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• A glorious, nauseating journey of discovery

  Writing the Second Novel

  There are two ways to look at publishing your first novel.  My friend Mark Lawrence looks at it this way: you have already won the lottery. With so many good writers out there, and agents and publishing houses drowning in submissions, somehow you got your book noticed, and not only  noticed, but in print and on shelves. Everything else that happens after that is a gift. (He says this while simultaneously writing a best seller, designing a rocket ship, and saving his children from terrorists.)

  I take a more stressful view: this first book is a chance, a foot in the door, a job interview. After that, you could be a writer for real. You just have to learn to write for a deadline; suck creativity out of your overtired, depressed, distracted head; learn how to write a good sentence the first time instead of the fifth; be professional and adult when discussing your work (harder for me than I originally believed); and come up with a good idea more frequently than once every five years.

  Because Mark is right: the first book is a sign of incredible luck. But I think the second book (or trilogy, if you write SFF) is a sign that you are a writer. (more…)

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• Richard Hell and William Gibson: Any Connection?

  Sub genres, what do they mean (steam, cyber, bio, splatter)? 



  o hold the t.v. to my lips, the air so packed with cash
  then carry it up flights of stairs and drop it in the vacant lot
  To lose my train of thought and fall into your arms’ tracks
  and watch beneath the eyelids every passing dot

  I belong to the blank generation . . .

  –Richard Hell and the Voidoids

  When I learned I was to write a blog post about all the –punk genres (cyber, steam, bio, splatter), I panicked.  Here, I am entirely ignorant. But I do know about punk music, so my mind turned there instead. Why is the word ‘punk’ attached to these genres?

  First I must address the question of whether or not the ‘punk’ of steampunk actually has anything to do with the music. I’ve seen arguments that it doesn’t—that punk is a much older word. No argument that it’s a much older word: I remember my dad being dismayed that punk music was called ‘punk music’ because of what ‘punk’ had meant to him in the Navy. But truly I think arguments that ‘punk’ is referring to something pre-1970s are reaching a bit too far. The term ‘cyberpunk’ was coined in 1983, a mere decade or so after the advent of Television, The Stooges, and the Ramones, an earthquake in terms of contemporary culture. I think the term was meant to build upon that, both for shock value and for aligning itself with punk values. (more…)

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• All about cons from someone who hasn’t been there

  Conventions and Conferences

  Ah, conventions. They sound like such fun. Great costumes, parties, roleplaying games with everyone’s favorite authors—who wouldn’t want to go? Well, a shy person like myself. The best thing about being an international person of mystery is that nobody knows who I am. No phone calls, no author readings, no book signings: so far I have loved it. But I also know that the writing community is just that – a community – and that one day I will join it in person.

  Even so, I imagine my first venture into conventions this way: I will attend a few panels (“Chronological Dissonance: Modern Archetypes & Morals in a Historical Setting” and “Science Fiction & Religion: How Readers and Writers Mix the Two”—both from past cons—are what I imagine), then run off to a museum by myself or else hole up in my room, writing. (more…)

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• Of gods and flying

  From airships to jet packs--The best flying machines.

  When Daedalus fashioned wings for himself and his son Icarus, he knew the danger. He warned his son to fly neither too high nor too low. Too high, and one is too near to the gods; too low, and one is pulled down by earthly needs and desires.  Icarus of course flew too close to the sun, melting the wax that held his feathers together, and he drowned in the sea.

  Daedalus gave his warning, but we human beings have never heeded it. The ages are filled with inventors who attached wings and leaped from tall buildings, usually breaking bones, until at last they turned to gliding. Gliding was the key to achieving the impossible: with lift, we can now fly halfway across the world in less than a day. Next we discovered rocket power and flew to the moon. Not shabby, but also not enough. We don’t want to depend on a metal tube or a capsule. As fantasy readers we want to feel the air brush against our skin, the clouds dampening our cheeks.

  Let us not forget why Daedalus fashioned those wings: he could not leave Crete by either land or sea. In all human ways he was trapped. He needed wings – he needed to pass between the immortal and the mortal realms, between sun and earth. Too high, and the wax would melt; too low, and the feathers would become weighted with water. A fine balance, and his son could not maintain it. (more…)

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• The trouble with fantasy romance

  Sex and Feelings; It's in every genre. How are the elements of Romance used in Science Fiction and Fantasy?

  Most fantasy authors choose a low-tech setting for their alternate worlds. Without going into the reasons for that, which are themselves fascinating and sometimes illogical, I will go straight to the result: by choosing low-tech we catapult ourselves backwards into history, often choosing to build a society that is less progressive than our own.

  This ensures your mages reign supreme over swords and arrows (although some medieval weapons were badass, if you ask me) – but that’s not the only reason to do it. The more road blocks you can put in front of a character, the better. Readers tend to identify with the underdog, the person who is struggling against great injustices,  and therefore what’s better than putting him in a society where things are unequal?

  But then we get to the women. Romance gets complicated when you have a historically-adjacent setup of empowered males and disempowered females. In the United States, where this blog resides, women constitute 51% of the population but make up only 17% of congress, and they continue to struggle for control of their own reproduction. We moderns have not succeeded in working out our own issues, so portraying them is tricky. What’s worse is that romance in itself – its tradition of broody men and devoted women – is a ‘how not to’ guide for our daughters. (more…)

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• The role of dystopian fiction in a changing world

  From Hunger Games to The Windup Girl. Is Dystopia the new black?

  Dystopian fiction is a time-honored tradition in genre. Beginning with HG Wells and continuing with Huxley, Orwell, Bradbury, Vonnegut, Atwood, and right into the present day with Bacigalupi and Collins, dystopias fascinate and frighten us with what is possible in human society. A well-established subgenre of speculative fiction, they pop up on our bookshelves every few years to bring forth a new set of ‘what if’ questions.

  Dystopias provide a view into the maximum extensions of political, religious and other motivating beliefs. While in real-life societies rarely reach that logical end point of an argument (and when they do, it is always ugly and strictly not encouraged by me), fiction can do it again and again. What if we lived in a theocracy that followed the exact word of the Bible? What if we lived in a society in which the government controlled every aspect of our lives? What if women were denied agency over their own lives and forced to reproduce for strangers? A dystopian novel can take those questions and build them into a world we can examine, discuss, and question. (more…)

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• The benefits of not planning a world

  From Middle Earth to Dying Earth: How to create SF and Fantasy settings.

  Good morning. Today I am here to write about creating fantasy settings, which would be a wonderful thing for you to read, if I knew anything about that.

  The fantasy world of The Emperor’s Knife is, as has been noted at many times in many places, very similar to the Ottoman Empire, except it is not – the most salient difference being that nobody is muslim. Islam was central to the philosophy of government in the Ottoman empire, so to take that out would have been the equivalent of taking the custard out of a Boston cream pie. It would not have worked. Rome also lends a great deal to the setting, with its many gods and its Byzantine plots, except it is not Rome either.

  So how did I arrive at this setting? Did I sit down and decide what the map looked like, the powers of each god, and what types of ships are in the river? No, unfortunately I did not, though I have done that – for gaming campaigns. In writing, I find that it helps me to ground my character first. (more…)

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• The floating ‘s,’ tables that stand, and how I got my commas back

  Trusted Collaborator or Annoying Schoolmarm?

  The first thing I must say about editing is that I have worked as an editor and copyeditor myself. I am accustomed to cutting out flab, reorganizing information into coherent strings , switching out “which” and “that,” and moving commas. When it comes to commas, every company I have ever worked for used the Chicago Manual of Style.  The guidelines therein have soaked through me and into my bones, so that when my victims argue against corrections I can respond with, “Chicago Manual 5.30 . . . Chicago Manual  5.33 . . .” holding up that icon of perfect consistency as proof of my goodwill.

  But that is not to say I enforce my preferences on everyone. I recommend the Chicago Manual to those who are struggling with punctuation and cannot get a grip on how to use it effectively. But it is the Manual of Style. It is not a rule book. Nothing is more tiresome than people on the internet telling each other what the “rules” are. One does not have to put a comma when a sentence has two different subjects , for example – but once one has chosen to do so, one should do so always. That is the only rule.

  And so it happened that when I turned The Emperor’s Knife over to Jo Fletcher Books I knew that a different style may be applied, and it was. I had taken great pride in my perfect punctuation, but it was all wrong, terribly wrong – completely at odds with all acceptable forms of human communication. (more…)

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• Delicious Books and Why I Read Them

  Reading Habits of a Writer

  So, books. They are the backbone of any writer’s house. They are the inspiration, the goal, the comfort, and the interior decorating. A bookshelf holds dozens of different worlds and styles of prose, and every person’s collection is a new adventure.

  So what is in my collection? Let me confess first that it is mostly nonfiction, and that I won’t be talking about all those books. This post is about fiction – lovely, full-bodied, thick and tasty fiction.

  Some books are like old friends, and even as they grow worn and dusty they remain so familiar that when you come back to them, it feels like home. David Copperfield is one such book for me. It is not flawless by any means – as I have grown older, I have come aware of a lack of spirit in the female characters, and of a rambling plot. However, the coming-of-age of young David, and his slow recognition of the various types of injustice in the world – played out with a cast of characters so vivid and unique that you come to love them all – continues to feel relevant to me. I think it’s a shame Dickens goes against the sensibilities of modern readers, with his wordy prose and fondness for description, because I feel he still has much to offer. (more…)

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