Guest Post: KV Johansen on The Last Road
Off the Map: How Small Things Create Depth in Space and Time by K.V Johansen I’ve always been fascinated by maps of places both real and imaginary. Blame The Hobbit and Shepard’s endpapers for The World of Pooh. But it’s not the map that gives a world its breadth and depth; that sense of space, and of time, too, in a story is created in other ways. Middle-earth, a place and a collection of myths and legends and epics never quite finding a final form, had been evolving for years before The Hobbit was sucked into it and what had started off as a children’s fairy-tale adventure struck roots down into something deeper, to grow into the unexpected, The Lord of the Rings. That sense that there is so much more off the map, casting long shadows into the story, is what gives The Lord of the Rings a part of its power. In 1955 readers had no way of finding out anything more of Beren and Luthien, of Gondolin, of Morgoth, of Ungoliant or Thingol, Elbereth or Erendil, beyond a few references: a song, a poem, the narrator’s mention of “some say …” as though of course you, like the characters, will have some faint familiarity with these ancient tales. Readers, before the publication of The Silmarillion, didn’t know that those stories existed as more than a whisper in the author’s mind, and for the story at hand that didn’t matter. What mattered was that their shadows were cast into the present action, the shape of them touching and affecting the unfolding story, and that those fragments and references gave the world a history, an internal frame of reference known, in various forms appropriate to their experience, to the characters.
Guest Post: Writing the Monster by Scott Oden
When Thomas Hobbes called the life of a man “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”, he could easily have been referring to the life of an Orc. Since their humble beginnings as song-croaking goblins in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, these dim-witted, often Cockney-speaking brutes have grown well beyond the Professor’s intent; they have seized a place of their own in the annals of Fantasy. While some fans will never see them as anything other than sword fodder and servants of this Dark Lord or that, others have embraced them as noble savages, maligned and misunderstood – and worthy of their own books. Long have I pondered the question of how mere spear-carriers in the epic drama of Tolkien’s legendarium captured the imaginations of so many readers.
Guest Post: Switching Between Lanes, by Stephanie Burgis
I think that every writer who’s ever read publishing advice online has probably come across at least one article on the importance of “branding.” Apparently, to be really smart, writers ought to be figuring out the one thing that they’re best at — or the one thing that connects the most with potential readers — and then sticking to it no matter what, so that fans will know exactly what they’ll get from every new novel by that author. I know I sound a little snarky in that description, but I’m actually not arguing with it as a strategy. I’m sure that it is a smart, practical way to build a successful career. Unfortunately, I’ve never been much good at sticking to my own lane. There are too many wonderful genres that I love as a reader, and I get frustrated whenever I try to shut out all but one of them in my writing life. Before I sold my first books, I published dozens of adult f/sf short stories, and I drafted full-length novels for both adults and kids. Then my first agent, back in 2005, took me on with an adult historical fantasy manuscript, and it felt like my first big step onto the publishing ladder. Aha! I’m almost there!
My Superpower: Daniel Ionson
My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Daniel Ionson to talk about how his power of making nothing happen relates to After Life. In the game of Paper-Rock-Scissors, my superpower trumps all of the Supermen, X-Men, Whatever-Men, every time… in the most boring way possible. It’s the “Non-Event Sphere.” Wherever I go, there, nothing happens. How did I get such a plain cheese-sandwich superpower? Because the Universe and I made a pact: I decided that I was willing to forgo anything like an “adventurous life” so long as I can have an entire expanding series of multiverses in my head.
My Superpower: Michael J. Martinez
My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Michael J. Martinez to talk about how his super-powered burrowing writer-mind relates to The Gravity of the Affair. The scene: a typical weekend, with my daughter and her friends running about the house, doing the inexplicable, strange and occasionally cute things girls do. My wife is reading. I’m in my favorite chair, laptop on lap, fingers flying through The Gravity of the Affair, my novella set in the Known Worlds of the Daedalus series. A ship is under attack by unknown privateers. Alchemical cannon fire lances through the Void into wooden hulls,
My Superpower: Stina Leicht
My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Stina Leicht to talk about how being meticulous, overly analytical, and sensitive relates to her work. —————————————————————————————— There should probably be a sign hung over this post that reads, Don’t Try This At Home, Kids… Frankly, I’m not sure I’d call any quality I have a ‘super power.’ (Well, other than the ability to find a goth outfit in any store.) I’m a ball of positive and negative traits that constantly war with one another–in short, I’m a human being. As luck would have it, that happens to work in my favor from time to time. My husband loves to call me a ‘method writer.’ He does this primarily when I rush outside after an ice storm[1] and tramp around in the thin layer of snow with my head tilted like the Victor dog, Nipper. Dane loves to shout, “Remember your coat!” because half the time I’m so wrapped up in capturing the experience that I forget silly little things like self-preservation. It’s why, when I took rally racing lessons as part of my research for Of Blood and Honey and its sequel And Blue Skies from Pain, he made me promise not to race on the track with other drivers.[2] When I broke my arm in Kung Fu class last summer, my biggest thought was, So, this is what it feels like. How much does it hurt? What can’t I do? What can I do? Why do I know something is wrong? How long does it take for the
