Sci-Fi/Fantasy Fiction

Posted by Colin Harvey

Recently I blogged about meeting Bruce Holland Rogers and how it sparked off thoughts about how writers are expected more and more to follow the 'right' career path. While I agree with some of those strictures, I'm uncomfortable with the vehemence with which some agents and writer's organizations rail against those who don't necessarily agree with their point of view.

That led me to examine my own motivations. The reasons I write can be classified as follows:

1. The creative act. The pleasure of good writing is better than any illicit substance, better than all but the best food and sex. There's a buzz that can last for days; even if two days later I re-read my 'masterpiece' and decide that it's rubbish!

2. Immortality. I have no children, nor am I likely to have any. My stories are my children, and like our children, are my attempt at immortality. I know that when I die, every time someone reads my story, for a moment I'm no longer dust.

3. Communication. There's no point in me writing for myself. I write to communicate. Generally speaking, the best paying markets are those with the biggest circulation, but it doesn't automatically follow. So given a choice between two markets, I'll take the one with the biggest reach.

4. Status. Of course I'd like the respect of my peers, but I'd like it for the work that I do, not based on what market I've sold it to, and what it pays.

5. Money. I'd like money but only insofar as it releases me from having to work, enabling me to write even more.

Those are my reasons. If you're a writer, what are yours?

Colin

Posted by Colin Harvey

When I was nine or ten, I read the Chronicles of Narnia. Correction: I devoured them. I loved them all, although The Silver Chair and The Last Battle seemed rather sad to me. My favourite was always Prince Caspian. There was something about the return of the children after only a year in our world to find that over a millenium has passed in Narnia that blew my mind completely. Maybe too, I could identify with the young prince, fleeing for his life. And those glorious black-and-white interior illustrations.

Even when I re-read it as an adult, Prince Caspian was one of the books that I really enjoyed.

So I went to see the film with mixed feelings. On the one hand, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe was both faithful to the book, and a film that I enjoyed. But TLTW&TW was only a moderate favourite, so there wasn't the same emotional investment.

Going to see the film version of a favourite book is always something of a lottery. Will they be faithful to the storyline? Will the budgetary and intellectual limitations of the film-makers allow them to match the power of my imagination?

Actually, the first part was astonishingly faithful; the first real diversion from the book wasn't until Caspian met the children, and that actually helped the story. Then the film veered right away, with a whole extra pre-battle battle, a sort of aperatif conflict thrown in, but again, by upping the ante and really emphasizing Miraz's villainy, it actually worked.

For all that it's a favourite book, for once I wasn't disappointed. It'll be interesting to re-read it now in light of having seen the film.

Posted by Colin Harvey

I had lunch with my friends Bruce and Holly last week before they returned to Oregon after two years in the UK. I'll miss them more than I should, considering we've only been able to get together twice, and they're merely a trans-Atlantic flight and attendant security checks away.

On the journey home I began thinking about Bruce the writer, rather than Bruce my friend

Bruce the Heretic:

Who makes his living by writing three wonderfully crafted short-short stories a month, and sending them to his seven hundred subscribers, who each pay ten dollars a year.

He also teaches creative writing, but he couldn't do that were he not 'walking the walk.' His numerous awards validate those classes, and he has the experience of writing gaming tie-ins to show that he can write novels -- but simply chooses not to at this time.

Increasingly a writer's career advice seems to consist solely of:

1. Write a novel

2. Find an agent

3. Sell it to a big publisher

4. Repeat 1 and 3

with these optional extras

5. Write short-stories

6. Sell to the highest paying market

7. If rejected, submit to the next highest-payer

8. If you run out of pro-markets, put it away until the next market appears.



But one size doesn't fit all, and Bruce outlines why in Word Work, which I'll blog about separately.

I'm not advocating that the novice necessarily this example, but nor do theyr have to blindly follow a career path advocated by agents and others with vested interests, who are becoming increasingly aggressive in their preaching of The Only True Path To Happiness As A Writer.

Posted by Colin Harvey

It's a tough life being a writer. In 2000 less than one in seven writers in the UK was able to live on their income, while one in fourteen was living below the poverty line. Sometimes it can be a desperate life.

I'm one of the Managment Committee of the Speculative Literature Foundation, and when the organization was founded four or five years ago, it was decided fairly early on that help should be practical -- you can pick up advice on how to do it in pretty much any internet chat room, but there's a distinct paucity of money in the form of grants for genre writers.

So we decided to make a US$600 grant available for writers needing to travel to research their work, if that work is science-fiction, fantasy, horror, slipstream or magic realism -- any one of the sub-genres covered under that umbreall catch-all 'speculative fiction.'

Click on the link and make your application.

But a couple of words of warning -- do NOT apply via Suite101, but through the SLF. I'll be pretty annoyed if I get any coming through here, and will delete them unread.

Second, treat it as seriously as you treat a job application; put real effort into yourgrant proposal, in terms of telling us why you want to go, when in theory everything you need to research a novel is on the internet.

The deadline, by the way, is September 30th.

Good luck, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Abyssinia

Colin

Posted by Colin Harvey

My first novel Vengeance is being reissued, this time by Swimming Kangaroo Books, who have already published Lightning Days and The Silk Palace.

Most writers will have a special place in their hearts for their first book. So it is with me and my SF novel Vengeance. It was first published in 2001 in electronic format, but the company concerned never really got off the ground, and it quickly vanished without trace.

Two years later a small press contacted me and asked if they could publish it; they collpased before it even made it to press, but at least I got to keep the token advance.

By that time I'd become convinced it was jinxed and put it out via lulu, but while I sold a few copies, it was at about this time that I sold Lightning Days to Swimming Kangraoo, and knew that this was a bigger opportunity, so poor old Vengeance got a little neglected.

Now it has its chance with a proper publisher in all formats.



So...you are cordially invited to a launch party for it on Saturday the 28th June from11am CST for 1 hour.



The Launch Party will take place at the SK Chat Room:



You don’t have to register to chat, just type your name in the field and come on in.



Larianne Wills and I will each chat and answer questions about our books. We'll be giving away copies of books given away at various intervals so people have plenty of opportunities to win prizes -- do turn up!

Ciao Ciao

Colin

Posted by Colin Harvey

I mentioned last month that an increasing way of generating revenue (so that you Dear Reader can get your fiction-fix for free) is to have fund drives.

So without further ado, over to my friend, Susan Marie Groppi, editor of the wonderful Strange Horizons:

"Strange Horizons is unusual for SF magazines. We're the longest-running online magazine in the genre, and we've built our reputation by showcasing exciting new voices in the field. We see ourselves as part of a community, part of this larger world of SF readers and writers and fans. We depend on the community for our support, and for our very existence.

Donate $25 and you can have your own Strange Horizons member card, with our logo and your name on one side, with exclusive original artwork by Jeremiah Tolbert on the other side. If you donate $50, you can have a lovely Strange Horizons logo mug or t-shirt. For $100, you can have a mug -and- a t-shirt, along with a selection of some of the best small-press zines and chapbooks in speculative fiction. Donors who give us $250 or more get all of those lovely prizes, and they also get our portable tea party package, which now includes a hand-knit tea cozy in your choice of colors.

Everyone who donates is entered in a special prize drawing. We have a great set of prizes this year, including a lot of original artwork, magazine subscriptions, and a hand-knit hat monster that will eat your head. (Seriously!) We're also going to be doing special bonus prize drawings during the month, and I'll be posting more information on that later."

Take a look over at Strange Horizons website!

Colin

Posted by Colin Harvey

I'm painfully aware that it's been about a month since I last posted on my blog. That's because as a writer, I have two or three key projects, and in order to keep them on track, have had to devote all my time to them -- even if it means no time to blog.

One thing that aspiring writers often don't realize is that a writer's greatest selling point to professional editors is reliability. If an editor sets you a deadline, move heaven and earth and work through the night if you have to, to meet it.

All the advice in the world about writing techniques is worthless, if a writer has a bad reputation for unreliability.

The first project is my novel, Winter Song. In order to deliver it by next year, I need to write about a thousand words a day while it's in draft stage.

Once that is done, my second priority is to ensure that I deliver the requisite four articles a month to Suite101. Which is where things have gotten a little tricky, in that the time involved isn't just the time needed to write the piece, but that needed to read the source material. Magazines like Asimovs and F&SF are each about sixty thousand words long, the length of an Agatha Christie. But when I foolishly took on China Mieville's New Crobuzon trilogy, I discovered after I started reading Perdido Street Station that each volume is between a quarter and a third of a million words --the length of four or five ordinary novels-- and even I can only read so fast!

Things are returning to normal, and you should see the review of the first volume of that trilogy --Perdido Street Station-- next week, and some blogs for good measure.

Posted by Colin Harvey

We're so used to getting our fiction for free on the web, that it's easy to forget that the people who provide it often incur costs, and often bear them out of their own pockets.

One trend that was started some years ago by Strange Horizons is to have fund drives, whereby people pledge money in return for small prizes, or for the chance to go into a raffle.

So it is that the people at the excellent Flash Me! webzine have picked up this trend. If you're not familar with them, Flash Me! publishes micro-fiction, stories of less than 500 words, ideal for reading on the bus or the train. In this case they've pledged instant rewards for pledging certain amounts, while everyone goes into a prize draw.

One of the prizes is my novel The Silk Palace, while Bruce Boston's wonderful Stoker-nominated The Guardener's Tale, and Writers of the Future volume XXIII are also on offer.

Do go and pay them a visit. They deserve your support. And you may win a good book in the process.

Posted by Colin Harvey

You may -or may not- be aware that my article F&SF June 2008 Reviewed has been selected as the Editor's Choice for this week.

Although my novel Lightning Days was a finalist for the USA News Best Book Award for SF in 2006, and my short story 'The Bloodhound' won 3rd place in Ralan's Grabber Prize that same year, I've never actually won anything outright, so I'm absolutely delighted.

One of the things to learn when writing is to learn when to stop; that sometimes Less Is More. And that different readers react differently to their personal experiences. I could have written more about Rand B. Lee's 'Litany' in that review, but it would have been a reaction based on my own prejudices rather than any absolute qualities in the story, and it was already the longest paragraph by far -- adding to it would have unbalanaced the whole article.

That the story struck me as Zelzany-esque may have to do with its New Mexico setting, where Roger Zelazny settled in the 1980s, or the Greek references to kourabiedes, which evoked Kallikanzeros from his Hugo Award-winning novel '--And Call Me Conrad,' or it may be that the Archetypes reminded me of Zelazny's Trumps. Certainly while there was nothing obvious in Lee's use of language --controlled to Zelazny's free-flowing-- there was something there.

But to most people, Roger Zelazny is dead and gone, so such comparisons would have been pointless.

None of this may be obvious to most readers. And it was unnecessary. I won the vote on what was in the review, rather than a paean to a dead writer, no matter how good he was.

Posted by Colin Harvey

I've already confessed to my shameful reading of New Wives Tales, and it's reasonably accurate description of blokes (so kudos to Adele Parks for her research and the quality of her characterization), but not content with skiving off on Saturday, yesterday was a Bank Holiday in the UK.

I've just finished Greg Egan's Quarantine, which I'm reviewing for Strange Horizons, but rather than start Terenesia by the same author - which is for the same review -- I wanted something I could read in the sunshine outside. That ruled out F&SF, which I'll be reviewing tomorrow, as that's on my laptop, and contrary to those TV ads where you can read a laptop on the beach, the glare's just too much to cope with.

Instead, I baulked.

After all, it's not every day we get sunshine on a Bank Holiday.

So I snuck - yes, snuck, dear reader- out into the garden with Agatha Christie's Dead Man's Folly.

In many ways, it's an almost archetypal Christie; many of the characters are stock ones -- the rich husband, younger wife who's married him for his money, almost-mad-scientist, xenophobic yokels. And the plot is standard Christie, borrowed from at least two other books. But there are signs that Christie was alert to the changing demographics of Britain in the 1950s, and there is a wry self-pastiche in crime-writer Ariadne Oliver.

Hugely enjoyable. And now it's back to work.