writing

Tropes Part 2: The Familiar and the Novel

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In my last post, I talked about how I’ve gone from seeing tropes as a pitfall to be avoided to seeing them in a whole new light this year. Three things have contributed to that shift, the first being conversations about tropes with other writers, as I said last time, and now it’s time to dig into the second and third: science and K-dramas.

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts online about the neuroscience involved in rewatching shows and movies (or re-reading books) and about how shows with repeated tropes (like K-dramas) can have similar effects: calming your nervous system during times of stress or overload, self-regulating and processing difficult emotions, empathy and connection with characters our brains react to as if they are real people, and more. Psychologist Jeanie Y. Chang (second link in the paragraph) notes that tropes simultaneously provide the brain with novelty and familiarity, a safe space to explore emotions, relationships, perspectives, alternative responses to challenges within a context where we have agency to decide if we will continue to engage at any moment. In her post, she notes that people aren’t really drawn to a particular trope, per se, but to an emotional experience. That’s a fascinating insight for me, as a writer.

I still want my work to feel fresh and unique, and I still love to subvert a trope for the surprise and the lols, but learning more about the science side of what an audience (be it readers or viewers) experiences makes me think differently about familiarity. It’s also humbling and funny to realize that I’ve always said I didn’t understand people wanting to read different versions of the same story over and over, when I have frequently reread and rewatched literally the same books, movies, and shows many times in my life. Things I have reread at least seven times: Crime and Punishment, Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog), Something Wicked This Way Comes. Movies I have watched every day for a month (or once a week for multiple years) at some point: The Labyrinth, The Princess Bride, 12 Angry Men, The Pirates of Penzance. TV shows I’ve seen at least three times: Babylon 5, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, the 1960s Dark Shadows, Cowboy Bebop (the animated version). There are others but I can’t think of them off the top of my head. Clearly, I’m no stranger to the impulse to revisit a familiar story world and fictional characters who register to my brain as real people I want to spend time with again.

I may not want to write a series of books with the same plot over and over and I don’t want to be complacent, but maybe it’s okay to stop banging my head on the keyboard anytime I get the sense that the audience might be able to see where my story is going? As a writer, I might lean harder into novelty than familiarity, but instead of seeing tropes as a problem to avoid, I can recognize that when they show up, they may be important elements that ground the story and characters and make them relatable. If, when I’m editing, I realize that they’re weakening the story instead, I can always rewrite them, subvert them, or take out things that were just my own mental shortcuts. I’m not trying to outsmart the reader, after all–I’m trying to take them on a journey they’ll enjoy, and that means they’ll want to know enough of the plan to know what to pack, even if some parts of the trip will be surprises.

“I didn’t even pack for an ocean voyage! You clearly saw me get on the tour bus with no hat and said nothing. And the insurance waiver said nothing about depressed sea monsters on this trip!”

Again, I think it’s important to distinguish between a trope as a cliché and a trope as a common theme or motif. An underdog winning the day is a trope, but there are a million ways to tell that story. The reluctant hero is a trope (you might also call that an archetype), but why they’re reluctant and what pushes them into heroism is the interesting part, and incredibly variable. The novelty is the exploration part of the story, but the reader chooses a story based on what familiar emotional experience they want to be the framework for that exploration. At least according to new science and any number of writers who’ve said it long before now. Aside from freeing us from a lot of writing hangups, this also tells us a lot about how to make book blurbs more effective!

And while I’ve already touched on K-dramas here, there’s a bit more to the story of how they’ve helped change my mind about tropes that I’ll discuss in my next post.

Tropes, Pasta, and Self-Sabotage: A Reflection

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It’s been a long time since my last post, but I’ve been easing back into writing fiction on the regular and have also had some interesting conversations with other creatives over the last few months, and all of that mixed together has given me some thoughts to share. Something I’m experiencing a major perspective shift about, as a writer, is the use of tropes.

In the past–and even at the beginning of this summer–I had a knee-jerk negative reaction to the mere mention of tropes. Part of the difficulty of discussing them stems from the fact that the literal definition of trope includes both the meaning cliché and common motif, device, or theme. It’s easy to conflate those definitions given the potential overlaps, but there’s a massive difference in the connotations, if nothing else. To be told your writing is cliché is a criticism at best, if not an insult. In my mind, at some point (possibly when I worked as an inventory supervisor at a big box bookstore) trope became a bad word.

The thing about major publishing companies, like all big companies, is that they chase market trends. You get some great original stuff sometimes that may or may not change the direction of a genre, but you also get a market that’s oversaturated with very similar stories all at the same time, with varying degrees of originality and quality. Some are excellent and others are frankly worn out and stale. I love spaghetti, but I don’t want bland, watery spaghetti, and I want other kinds of noodles, too: yakisoba or beef stroganoff or a pesto lasagna. Sometimes I want food that isn’t noodles, although, to be fair, I don’t think I’ve ever refused pasta. Same with books, at least for me. As a reader, I want quality and I want variety, and I had come to think of tropes as antithetical to that. So as a writer, I didn’t get why other writers often spoke of tropes in a positive light…because I thought they were talking about the cliché definition: bland, watery spaghetti.

Meanwhile, other writers have largely been talking about the other definition: common motifs, devices, and themes. The literary equivalent of ingredients, with a multitude of ways to prepare or combine them that may be predictable, surprising, or some balance between the two. For two years in a row, I was a speaker on a panel about tropes at InConjunction in Indianapolis, and it wasn’t until weeks after the second one this summer that I realized that what I thought we were discussing was not what we were actually discussing, because I was stuck on this idea about clichés. Well, that’s embarrassing. But I’m past the point in life where being embarrassed is more important than what I learned from it, so you get to hear about my goofy ass misunderstanding something for years at a time and what I’m now realizing has been a huge hangup in my own writing journey for decades.

To paraphrase something someone on the panel said this summer (apologies to my fellow panelists and the audience, because I can’t remember who said it), there’s nothing new under the sun, and the trick is not to come up with something that’s never been done, but to bring your own original voice and perspective. That advice is also not new, exactly, but in the context of rethinking what tropes represent to a writer and to their readers, it’s been sinking in for the first time that I have had such a hell of a time finishing things I start–even get hundreds of pages into–because I’m so inhibited about doing something predictable (with the negative association of the cliché) with a plot that I’ve made it so that there’s no path forward for myself. I can’t wrap up the story because you can’t have both a completely unpredictable and a completely emotionally satisfying conclusion to a story. If I’ve made a rule for myself, even subconsciously, that I can’t follow a story to an ending that feels natural because that would be “too obvious” or has “been done before”, then any ending I move toward will automatically feel wrong. To me. To my readers. That doesn’t mean there can’t be a twist or a surprise or an original take, but (1) the setup has to be in place for that to work and (2) twist endings are also (guess what?) a trope! I’ve had myself in a stalemate with endings for most of my writing life, and the few things I’ve managed to actually complete and publish have always been the result of me saying, often literally and out loud to my keyboard, “Fuck it! Let’s just do it!” to get over the logical fallacy I trapped myself in.

I can see where this is going. That pig is obviously going to throw a chamberpot over the wolf’s head and then the wolf will get cholera and all the pigs will be safe forever and this pig will be a hero and they will build statues of him in town squares for miles around.

There are two other things (aside from the tropes panel) that have shaken loose my trope-phobia and made me reconsider the role of tropes in the media I consume, as well as the differences I’m noticing between what I’m drawn to as a reader/viewer and my self-imposed rules for myself as a writer (which now seem very unreasonable). I’ll discuss them more in a later post, and you can laugh at me about them if you want, but I won’t care because (a) I won’t be able to hear you and (b) I’m too old to care if people on the internet laugh at me. Anyway, one of the things is SCIENCE and the other is K-dramas. Bet you’re curious now. If you’re not, (a) I can’t hear you and (b) I don’t care. Just kidding, I value all my readers and their perspectives, as long as you’re not rude.

Happy Octoberween!

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Starting today, October 1st, you can read a new Halloween-themed short story by a different author each day for the whole month at Jack Wallen: Dark Twisty Fiction! My story will go up on October 24th, but there will be plenty to read before and after mine (the stories don’t have to be horror, but mine is). A bit about our host, Jack Wallen: he’s a multi-talented creative fellow, a prolific and excellent writer, and all around great person, so you should also check out his books while you’re on his site.

May be an image of text that says 'FLASH OF HALLOWEEN HA A Halloween-themed flash fiction event with new story every day in October. a'

And since you’re here now, reading my blog, I will tell you, dear readers, that although my ability to focus hasn’t been great during the pandemic sandwich, I have been writing more this year than last. I don’t know how long it will be before I finish any one project, but sometimes you can’t worry about that. Sometimes you need to write to stay sane, cheer up, or escape from reality, just like sometimes you need to read a good book for the same reasons. Sometimes you need to write to process what you’ve been through. Or to express things you didn’t know you were feeling until a character vents onto the page. Sometimes you need to write to keep your writing skills honed, your ideas fresh, and your storytelling muscles strong. Right now, I’m not writing to finish anything. I’m writing because I need to, for all of the reasons above.

…And also because Jack needs my story by October 24th. 😉

My First Workshop: Crafting Cross-Genre Fiction

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I ran my first workshop last weekend at Imaginarium 2019 (the most awesome event in Louisville). Given that I am not a morning person, that I’d never run a workshop before, and that I stayed up late on Saturday night because (a) friends, (b) beer, and (c) Imaginarium entertainment, I thought it went pretty well!

My topic was Crafting Cross-Genre Fiction, which is something I love to do and love to talk about with other writers. I will say that I think in the future I would open up some audience participation early in the workshop, right after introducing myself. I think things really started to come alive when I asked people if they already had an idea or a work in progress that blended genres, and I wish I had opened with that instead of giving my talk right off the bat (particularly given how well I speak in the morning.) So I file that away for next time, and pass it on to others out there who might be doing their first workshops and are looking for tips.

But what I was most pleased with was how my activity went! Here is what I did: before the convention, I made a spreadsheet with 22 genre and subgenre categories and 22 “wildcard” story or world elements. I coded playing cards to those 44 options (I plan to modify this method*). At the workshop, everyone drew 2 cards from the wildcard stack and 2 cards from the genre/subgenre stack. Everyone was allowed to trade out one card if they wished to. Then we spent about 10 minutes writing a “book blurb” (the teaser on the back of a book) based on the elements we drew.

Here's exactly how my 9am workshop was. Minus the dead animals hanging from the ceiling.

Funny thing was, three of us (myself included) randomly ended up with elements that described something we had already written or were working on! Some crazy serendipity there.

Everyone who attended came up with really great ideas, every one of which I would totally read if I came across it! Tried it out back at the vendor table with some of my cohorts, too, and they came up with awesome ideas, as well. So I’m very happy with the exercise, but for the sake of simplicity I think *the coding method could be tweaked. There’s probably an easier method with the cards and cards have the advantage that once one is drawn, no one else will get the same thing as the others. I would definitely use two different decks of two different colors in the future to ensure that the two stacks stay distinct. It might also be reasonable in a small group to cut out four of the 44 options and use four 20-sided dice of two different colors, and just re-roll if anything gets repeated. Or you could draw slips from two separate hats! If anyone thinks of a better method, feel free to comment and tell me!

If you want to give the game a shot, pick your way to randomize and play! Here are my lists, but you can make up your own wildcards or use genres or subgenres I didn’t think of:

#Genres & Subs (pick 2)#Wildcards (pick 2)
1FantasyAon a spaceship
2Science FictionBin the Jazz Age
3RomanceCin an ancient civilization
4MysteryDwith humorous elements
5ThrillerEwith a dragon
6HorrorFin a foreign country
7Historical FictionGwith a ghost
8SuspenseHwith a robot
9ComedyIduring the Revolution
10ParanormalJwhen pirates show up
11SurvivalKin a hidden world
12SteampunkLafter civilization crumbles
13CyberpunkMwith a cat
14DystopianNwith supernatural creatures
15Alternate HistoryOand magic
16WesternPleading to a trial
17NoirQwhile on the run from the mob
18FuturisticRwhile on the run from agents
19RetroSbefore recorded history
20GothicTafter the village is raided
21SatireUwhen an invention changes everything
22Coming-of-AgeVduring a family reunion

Here is one of the combos I drew and the blurb I did based on it:

Romance / Alternate History / On a spaceship / Leading to a trial

Tsarina Catherine the Great is at the height of her reign when she is taken away by the dashing captain of a spaceship from an alien world. While Pugachev takes control of Russia in her absence, the Tsarina falls in love with Captain Gugog*. But the captain’s superiors demand her return and court-martial Gugog for interfering with Earth’s affairs. How will Catherine and Gugog sustain the flame they have kindled as the forces of two worlds try to tear them asunder?

*Gugog is a random thing my family says, as in, “You’re such a gugog!” or “That thingy, you know, the gugog!” Since I couldn’t think of a name off the top of my head, Captain Gugog.

Yevgeny Zamyatin: a brief biography

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Yevgeny Zamyatin is among my literary heroes. A subversive writer who protested first the Czarist and then the Bolshevik governments in Russia during the tumultuous period between 1900 and the 1930s, Zamyatin was multi-talented and pretty damn close to fearless. He wrote novels, short stories, political essays, literary criticism, and plays; edited literary magazines and journals; served on editorial and theatrical boards; mentored the Serapion Brothers Literary Group; lectured on Russian literature, naval engineering, and creative writing; and designed warships for Russia and England during World War I.

Somehow, with all that on his plate, he also managed to find time to be exiled on three separate occasions. The first time, he was a student in St. Petersburg (known in the Soviet years as Petrograd) who regularly participated in demonstrations against the Czarist government and was caught hiding an illegal printing press in his dorm room. He was exiled from the city in 1905, but he sneaked back in to finish his degree in 1906. Through a bureaucratic loophole, he was able to stay and begin his teaching career at the Polytechnic Institute. He was exiled from the city again in 1911 and then sent to Ukraine in 1913 to get him out of Russia. He worked on warships in England from 1916-1917, where he became an associate of George Orwell (Orwell’s 1984 would be heavily inspired by Zamyatin’s ideas and his novel We). Zamyatin managed, again, to sneak back into St. Petersburg, this time for the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Although Zamyatin had been a Bolshevik since his student days, he was (like many others) repulsed by the brutality of the civil war that followed the Revolution, as well as the pressure for conformity which the new Bolshevik government imposed on society. Zamyatin was as quick to criticize the authorities of the Soviet regime as he had been those of the Czarist regime, earning him epitaphs such as “The First Dissident,” “The Devil of Soviet Literature,” “The Soviet Heretic,” and “the most left-wing man in Russia.” His 1920 novel We became the first novel banned in the USSR; it wasn’t even published yet, and had only been read in literary circles in manuscript format. (It was published abroad in 1924 and would go on to inspire Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Brave New World, and Vonnegut’s Player Piano.) Truth in literature, empathy toward others, and a deep awareness of reality were paramount in Zamyatin’s philosophy. He once wrote, “It is not possible to build on negative emotions. Genuine literature will come only when we replace hatred for man with love for man,” (The Goal).

In 1931, after being systematically banned from publication and from the theater, and removed from his teaching positions, he wrote a letter to Stalin requesting to leave the Soviet Union to live abroad. Here is a quote from that letter which pretty well displays Zamyatin’s lack of fear:

I know that I have the very uncomfortable habit of saying what is not advantageous at a given moment, but whatever I believe to be the truth. I never concealed what I think of literary servility, toadyism, and coat changing. I have always thought and I continue to think that such things are as degrading for the writer as they are to the revolution.”

Yevgeny Zamyatin to Yosef Stalin, 1931

As much to Zamyatin’s surprise as anyone’s, Stalin granted passports to Yevgeny and his wife. The Zamyatins traveled in Germany and Czechoslovakia before settling in Paris, where they met Marc Slonim, the man who had published We. Sadly, Zamyatin’s health deteriorated rapidly; he had heart disease. Slonim sheltered him and helped nurse him through his final years before Zamyatin died in 1937.

The striking thing (to me) about Zamyatin’s ideas, his philosophy, his writing advice, is how deeply rooted they are in his particular moment in time and place, and yet how universally they apply. Some of Zamyatin’s quips and quotes could belong just as well to an L.A. punk rocker of the 1970s or a Zen philosopher as a subversive shouting his message from the early days of the USSR.

Yevgeny Zamyatin, the “Devil of Soviet Literature”

A few fun facts:

  • As a child, Zamyatin was bitten by a rabid dog. He didn’t tell anyone until two weeks later, because he wanted to see what it would feel like to have rabies. Luckily for him, he didn’t contract the disease
  • Zamyatin struggled with math as a child; he chose to study engineering specifically to challenge himself
  • Zamyatin applied Einstein’s theory of relativity to his writing style, which is why he avoids chronological narration, changes point of view, utilizes multiple planes of action, and expands time relative to the moment in his work
  • Zamyatin was deeply inspired by Dostoevsky, particularly his concept that the irrational is the ultimate source of freedom and individuality (most famously expressed in The Brothers Karamazov in the Grand Inquisitor sequence)

Zamyatin quotes:

  • “We have long become overgrown with calluses; we no longer hear people being killed,” The Dragon: Fifteen Stories
  • “If I mean anything to Russian literature, I owe this completely to the Petrograd Secret Service.”
  • “Irony, sarcasm, and satire are the most effective weapons of progress…for stopping man kneeling before someone or something.”
  • “There are books of the same chemical composition as dynamite. The only difference is that a piece of dynamite explodes once, whereas a book explodes a thousand times,” A Soviet Heretic
  • “Who knows who you are…a person is a novel: you don’t know how it will end until the very last page. Otherwise it wouldn’t be worth reading to the very end,” We
  • “Knowledge! What does that mean? Your knowledge is nothing but cowardice… You just want to put a little wall around infinity. And you’re afraid to look on the other side of that wall,” We

If you’re curious to read some Zamyatin, I can’t recommend enough the short story “The Cave.” It’s my favorite of his works that I’ve read. The novel We, as you can tell from this post, is probably his most important piece in terms of influence on literature.

InConjunction 2019

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This past Friday-Sunday (July 5-7) I spent in Indianapolis at InConjunction Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention. As usual at these types of events, I was wearing the multiple hats of vendor, panelist, writer, reader, and partner/marketing director in the small press publishing house, Per Bastet Publications. This might seem like a lot of hats, but I’m used to it.

Although my panels were MANY, they were a lot of fun, and a nice mix of readings and discussions. I did two readings (one action scene from my novel The Life and Death (but mostly the death) of Erica Flynn and one fun scene from the opening of my short story “She Who Dines on Heavenly Food), swapped book recommendations at the Best Book I Read Since InConjunction 2018 panel, spoke on a panel on world-building, and spoke on a panel about balancing plot-driven and character-driven elements in writing.

I was also very excited and honored to be on two panels with the curator of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library and the director of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at Indiana University (shout out to Doug Powers for the fantastic job he did as moderator)! The first was about science fiction in Vonnegut’s works, and my part was mainly to comment as a Vonnegut reader and as a writer of speculative fiction–although Vonnegut and I do have in common a degree in anthropology, which shows up in the way he writes about both our society and fictional societies in his work. The second panel was about censorship and banned books, which both apply to Vonnegut and Bradbury, but also to another little niche of mine: while I was getting that aforementioned anthropology degree, I did two projects on censorship: one on censorship in general, and one on Soviet subversive literature during the Stalin era. Here’s the thing about being on panels and attending panels: you come away really excited about things all over again. I’ve been away from academia since I graduated in 2015, but being on these two panels in particular reminded me of all the things I miss about it. Not that I don’t talk about ideas a lot, and not that I’m not constantly learning new things in my current capacity as a CRM archaeologist, but damn, school was fun.

It also made me realize that, hey, I have a blog that’s primarily about writing, and that I’ve said very little here about the brilliance, courage, and resourcefulness of subversive Russian writers. Also that I have a lot to say, and that I use my blog far too little for someone who’s as impassioned about as many topics as I am. So, dear readers, although my primary focus at the moment is finishing The Death and Times of Seth McCoy, methinks I’ll try to write a few posts here in the near future about two of my literary heroes, Yevgeny Zamyatin and Mikhail Bulgakov.

If you write, whether you’re published or trying to be or are just starting out, I can’t stress to you enough how good for you it is to attend conventions. Many writers are not people people, or are not good with crowds, or are not good with strangers, or are socially awkward, or all of the above. I don’t exclude myself from at least a few of these categories (one of my dreams is to own a coffee mug that says I’d rather be digging your grave) but there’s this gorgeous energy you only get from conventions, and you’re cheating yourself if you don’t tap into it. Everybody else there is just as nerdy as you are, after all. And once you step into it, you’re family. Seeing friends and welcoming newcomers is part of the joy, and one not absent for me this weekend!

For me personally, there is also always the benefit of sharing even the shittiest hotel room with my crime business partners, T. Lee Harris and Marian Allen a.k.a. Mom, who loves me so much she bought me a plague rat from one of the vendors this weekend. His name is Bubo.

Bubo the Plague Rat. Yes, that is a Wolfman figurine astride Ein from Cowboy Bebop in the background.

Mernan’s Betrayal – $0.99c Short Story Release

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Released today on Amazon Kindle is my short story, Mernan’s Betrayal, for the low low price of 99 cents! Originally published in Southern Indiana Writers’ Off the Rack anthology, it’s the first of the Tales of Pasmira stories to be published.

Click image to see on Amazon!

The use of magic is forbidden to everyone but the village mage, Mernan. But a stranger from the north, a man of the longren race said to be descended from dragons, is caught nearby, and the villagers demand his execution. Mernan must choose between his duty and his conscience to decide the stranger’s fate. This story is one of many Tales from Pasmira, a world where humans, elves, longren, and rarer races coexist in anything but harmony.

This story is based in a world I began building for a novel back in 1998. The world has by far overflowed what one novel can hold,  with over 1500 years of history timelined and a plethora of legends, characters, creatures, and encounters with their own stories to tell. This is the first of these stories released, and takes place in the equivalent of the Bronze Age. Most of the others take place roughly a thousand years later. I hope (fingers crossed!) to announce the publication of another before long, and there will eventually be a collection, at least one novella or novel, and possibly a storytelling game! But for now, here is an introduction to the world of Pasmira.

The Wisdom of James Herriot

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I don’t know how much of what I’ve written this week I’ll end up keeping vs. cutting. I finished a chapter tonight which may well be completely replaced. But I’m not sorry I wrote it, because 1. I enjoyed writing it, and 2. it gave one of my characters room to open up on the page–not that I didn’t already know certain things about him, but just like with real people, it’s one thing to know a character, and another thing to really empathize with them, to feel what it’s like inside their head. Whether the scene is integral enough to the plot of the novel or not to keep it remains to be seen, along with whether or not it’s anything a reader would care to sit through when there are much more adventurous moments to be had in the book. In a first draft, you can’t worry about that kind of stuff, or you’ll never finish. Be generous with your first draft and ruthless with your second, I always say. Or, in other words, write the first draft as a writer and the second as an editor.

Image result for james herriot

Alfred Wight, a.k.a. James Herriot with doggie. Image cribbed from James Herriot Twitter account.

And speaking of writing, I just finished re-watching the excellent BBC series All Creatures Great and Small, based on the autobiographical books of a Yorkshire veterinarian. The books were written under the pseudonym of James Herriot, real name Alfred Wight. I grew up on his books, which both my mother and my grandmother read to me as a child, and on the BBC television series which aired on PBS when I was little. The time period is the 1930s-50s, the setting rural Yorkshire, the style funny and touching by turns, and the characters (both human and animal) portrayed with a beautiful balance between honesty and compassion in the narrative. Herriot’s (or rather, Wight’s) stories are as ingrained in me as if they were the mythos of my personal culture. So when I finished the series and sat down to check out the special features, I was thrilled to come across a 1970s interview with the author.

There were several things in the interview that particularly struck me. First, Wight spent twenty years saying he was going to write a book before, at age 50, he ever attempted the task. He described his struggles with learning to write from the heart, rather than trying to write “well,” with finding his own voice in the shadow of the literary classics he loved. And then his struggles with rejection letters and the inevitable depression that accompanies their repetition, disasters like having an editor who liked his work but asked him for rewrites leave for another company by the time he did the rewrites, and a host of other obstacles. And yet, he ended up with one bestseller after another, translations into languages for readers all over the world, and a TV series on the BBC.

Second, I was struck by the accuracy of his portrayal of himself and his wife, and their relationship, based on the books in comparison to things he said in the interview. It can’t possibly be easy to portray anything that close to home without skewing it. And I’m sure there’s some of that, but it made me smile to see him act so much like the James Herriot I knew from his books.

Third, the interviewer asked several times, in different wording each time, why a multi-national bestselling author was, at that time, still working full time as a country vet. Wight’s answer: He loved being a vet, his love of being a vet is what he writes about, and he felt it was important to balance his writing life with the activity his career provided him with. All of which just makes me love his books more, because of the depth of his feeling for his work with animals–and the people who care for them. But that third component, balancing creativity with daily life, struck me in particular. It’s something all but the most successful writer struggles with: balancing a day job with writing. And yet, here’s an author who could easily have lived on his sales, who felt that without his day job (if you can call a job where you’re on call 24/7 a “day job”), he wouldn’t have been as productive as a writer. Granted, he wrote about what he did for a living. But still, it’s a point to ponder. We tell ourselves we need time to write, but is it time we need, or is it motivation, self-discipline, and drive?

For my own part, if I’m honest, it’s the latter. Thank you for the reminder, “Mr. Herriot”!

Imaginarium Convention 2016

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Imaginarium Convention in Louisville has been my favorite event of the year since it began three years ago, and every year it gets better! It’s the best-run, most organized, yet most relaxed, friendly, and welcoming writer’s convention I’ve ever attended, and on top of that, it’s fun and accessible to not-just-writers, too, since it offers gaming, a film festival, live entertainment, and a free vendor hall in addition to its excellent array of panels and workshops on everything from poetry to documentary film writing to speculative fiction to music. I literally can’t say enough good things about Imaginarium. It’s not just the folks who run it (who are awesome), but the whole atmosphere that makes it magic. Everyone involved, from the staff to the panelists to the attendees, is generous with their time, knowledge, and attentiveness. Truly a special thing in today’s world.

Marian Allen's award

Marian Allen, with Kerosene Kerry’s award

This year was also special because Per Bastet Publishing, which I am now marketing director for and which is one of the event’s sponsors, came away with two awards! One went to Marian Allen (who happens to be my mother) for doing a fabulous job promoting the event. The second, the Sizemore Award for small press excellence, went to the house.

T. Harris with Sizemore Award

T. Lee Harris with Per Bastet’s Sizemore Award!

Coming away from this year’s Imaginarium, I have so many happy takeaways. There’s the momentum of inspiration and ideas from all the great discussions and conversations. There’s the hilarity of cutting up with other writers (especially when we’re supposed to be acting all professional). There’s the happiness of catching up with people I haven’t seen since last year and the happiness of meeting new people I look forward to catching up with next time. There’s the excitement of the great pitches the press got from authors who want to work with us. And great-sounding projects authors might send my way for editing (shout out to Jack Wallen, the best client evarrrrr! for all the recommendations!) I keep asking if we can have more than one of these things a year, but for some reason the staff who work their butts off to make the weekend run smoothly for the rest of us keep looking at me like I’ve grown wings out of my ears when I say it…… 😉

Per Bastet with Jason Sizemore

Per Bastet with Jason Sizemore, award namesake and super-nice guy! Third day of the convention = complete exhaustion, but we’re happy on the inside, I assure you!

Author Interview: Jack Wallen’s Suicide Station Kindle Scout Campaign

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Would you like to experience the godlike powers of a publisher, to choose whether to make an author’s heart sing or crush an author’s hopes and dreams? Well, Amazon’s Kindle Scout publishing lets you, the reader, do just that! My client and fellow author of genre-bending fiction, Jack Wallen, has submitted his novel Suicide Station to Kindle Scout, and you have until April 7th (if my math is correct) to read the preview excerpt and nominate the book, if you so choose, to be published. Oh, and nominators get a free e-copy if it goes to publication! “What kind of book is Suicide Station?” I hear you ask. Well, I’ve read it (and edited it) and thoroughly enjoyed it, so I can promise you it’s not quite your average romance! Here’s the blurb:

PROJECT_COVER_IMAGE_1._SX800_“A romance with a twist of Grim Reaper.
The world of stand up comedy was too much for Foster Donovan. Leaving a note behind for his wife, he wrapped a noose around his neck, and changed his life by embracing death.Turns out, the after life was nothing like he’d expected. Those who’ve taken their own lives find themselves temporary residents of Suicide Station, where they receive counseling, friendship, and (for Foster) the prospect of love. Suicide Station is a paranormal romance with a twist even the Grim Reaper wouldn’t see coming.”
And now, without further ado, I give you an interview with the author himself, Jack Wallen!

 

SM: Suicide Station is pretty different than your other work. What sparked the idea for this book?

JW: Believe it or not, it was a nightmare that sparked the idea. I dreamed that I’d died and, in the dying, realized the worst part about it was that I’d never get to spend another second with my lovely wife. That led me to wonder what happens to love when we pass on. Not knowing if there is an “afterlife” or not, I decided to answer all the questions the nightmare brought up. There’s no better way for a writer to answer the big questions than to write about it. In the end, I realized that death was not the end of love.

SM: You’re a very versatile writer, with quite a few genres/subgenres under your belt. Was there anything about writing this book, branching out into paranormal romance, that was challenging for you? Or was the story just “there” and the genre was secondary?

JW: To me, genre is always secondary to telling a good story. If you consider reality, you’ll find the horrific in romance and romance in the horrific. I’ve always found books that set aside the multi-dimensionality of reality to be rather 2 dimensional. With regards to romance, it’s not all about steaming passion, abs, long legs, glistening skin, and the soft moans of seduction.

Pant, pant.

If we’re going to escape, let’s really escape from reality and twist the narrative to better match the landscape of our dreams…not our wishes. Dreams can be gritty, dirty, even ugly. That’s life.

To answer the other part of this question…this story really wrote itself. I think the imagery that so quickly developed (as I wrote) helped this story to flow out of me with incredible ease.

SM: Do you think you’ll write a sequel, or other books set in Suicide Station?

JW: Initially this was going to be a one-off. But shortly after I dove into that other-worldly realm of the Suicide Station, I knew this had to continue. This book barely scratches the surface of possibility for what I’ve created and I’ve no intention of letting it die. I thoroughly enjoyed creating this world as well as the characters within. I want to explore and develop the relationship between Foster and Candy and (especially) visit some of the other Stations.

SM: How did you go about setting up the world and the rules and workings of the afterlife?

JW: One of the best parts about being a writer of fiction is that we can toss aside the constructs of reality and forge our own worlds. Before going into this, I knew one thing and one thing only – that Foster Donovan would have to go through counseling in order to move on to his “Forever Station”. That was the original intent. I had no idea this would turn into a love story. The second I started writing this book, in my mind it quickly evolved into a sort of Tim Burton-esque world where anything was possible. So…I allowed anything to be possible.

I’ve always found it unfair that we writers expect readers to suspend their disbelief, when often we’re hesitant to do the same while writing. I pretty much suspended every ounce of disbelief I had for this one.

SM: As a book set in a sort of purgatory for suicide victims, this could have been a very depressing read, yet it’s actually very hopeful, sweet, and funny. How did you maintain the balance between tastefully addressing depression and suicide and keeping the book upbeat and romantic?

JW: Confession time. I’m a helpless romantic at heart. I truly believe in the human heart and the power of connection.

Suicide has such a stigma attached to it. For some, the challenges of existing are simply too much to bear. There’s always help to be had; and I highly recommend anyone flirting with suicidal thoughts to reach out for help. But being that helpless romantic, what I really wanted to address was that the power of love reaches beyond the veil of death. When we pass, people will remember us fondly; they’ll tell stories about us, smile and weep for the loss. To me, that is the afterlife…those memories. There’s a sweetness in that. I can pass from this mortal coil knowing my wife and my friends will smile when they think of me, that I will continue to bring them some form of joy.

So to me, it wasn’t so much about the act of ending one’s life, but of moving beyond that and dealing with whatever might come next. And underneath it all, it’s about knowing your own truth and that things can always work out.

SM: What was the most fun about writing this book?

JW: The interplay between Foster and Candy was so much fun. Considering what I usually write, I don’t often get the chance to make with the flirtations. This is one of the reasons why I also enjoy writing my steampunk series…because underlying all that heady stuff, there’s a sweetness to power it along.

Also, in this book, I found David David to be so much fun to play with. Not being a stoner, it was pleasure to dive into that skin and see how far I could take it.

SM: What’s next for Suicide Station?

JW: I have entered the book into the Kindle Scout program. Kindle Scout is a new program, started by Amazon, that puts the weight of Amazon promotions behind those books they’ve accepted for publication. What this means is that readers can go visit the Suicide Station campaign page, read the sample, and (if they think the book is worthy) nominate the book. Amazon takes into consideration how many nominations a book gets, how much traffic is directed to the book campaign, as well as the quality of the book and the ability of the author to promote the book.

Should Suicide Station win a contract, everyone that nominated the book will get a free ebook copy! Win-win!

SM: How can we find out more?

JW: I’ll be releasing blogs and videos so you can keep up with the progress of my Suicide Station campaign. Find out more on my website.

 

Now, go forth and READ!