Magical Words

Poster’s note: I met Yanni several months ago, online, when she invited me to participate in a Subterranean Press anthology, literally the day after I’d been thinking, “Gee, wouldn’t it be nice to get a chance to work with SubPress someday?” She’s up next in our ongoing attempts to get a view of other angles of the publishing industry, so without further ado, here’s Yanni! -Catie

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Hi there and welcome to the show! I’m Yanni Kuznia. In another life I was a Russian historian, professional actress, and stuntwoman. In this life, I’m Director of Production at Subterranean Press. For those of you not familiar with Subterranean, or SubPress as we affectionately call it, we publish lavishly designed, and frequently illustrated, collector’s and trade editions of a wide variety of books, both new and previously published.

I’ll be honest: I’m pretty new to the whole publishing industry. About a year ago, I met Bill Schafer, the owner of SubPress at PenguiCon 5.0 while I was liasing for Guest of Honor Elizabeth Bear. After Bear introduced us, we happened to sit next to each other during a rather dull panel. We snarked a bit, then decided to take it outside. Turns out our senses of humor gelled quite nicely and we lived within shouting distance of each other. Not long after, Bill offered my first professional proofing gig. He called it my audition (he was pandering to my actress nature). If I did well, there would be more proofing jobs in the future. Apparently, I must have done something right as I’ve been at SubPress full-time for something like seven or eight months now. It’s been quite the learning experience for me, with a lot of growing pains and even a few screw-ups.

The question I’m asked most about my job is, obviously enough, what do I actually do? Well, my work starts after the publishing arrangements with the author, agent, and/or original publisher (if applicable) have been made. The computer file for the book is sent to me and from there I must: prepare the file for the designer; approve the initial book design, proof the book (either myself or send it to somebody else), find artwork, choose the materials the book will be printed on, and bound in, and send everything off to be printed. Thus far I’ve taken three books through the entire process and had my sticky fingers in nearly every book we’ve published since last September.

It hasn’t been easy. I’ve been reading since I could understand that the squiggles on pages corresponded to the garbled sounds coming out of our mouths. However, there’s a world of difference between reading for fun or information and reading for mistakes of various kinds, such as–but not limited to–punctuation, syntax, and formatting differences. It’s hard, folks. It’s like reading a contract. Your eyes sometimes start to glaze over. You realize that you’ve read the last three pages without really seeing them, and it’s your head if it goes to print with mistakes in it, so you go back to cover your butt–and the pages. I’ve learned that at some point you realize that you always are worried you missed something and you just need to pull the trigger to get the little bugger to the printer.

And it’s not just about the words on the pages. You have to coordinate what the author wants, the interior designer wants to do, what you want, and what you think the customers want or will appreciate. Sometimes you want to spend more on the design than the book’s price point will allow and have to make that painful decision between artistry and running a business. Because it is a business, and while making the books is artistic and creative, at the end of the day you have to pay the authors and artists and printer and all the other people involved or else what you do won’t matter because it won’t be produced.

In the end it’s really amazing when you get the book in your hot little hands and say, “I did this. I put this book together. People are going to read this!” I realize I’m biased, but SubPress puts out some beautiful books and being able to say I had a part in it is one of the most satisfying and fulfilling things in my life.

Tags: C E Murphy, Special Guest Stars // 9 Comments »

“Will you read my novel and give me some pointers?”

It’s the question all published writers face eventually. And most of us dread it. We’re usually nice people, and we don’t especially want to hurt anyone’s feelings. We remember all too keenly how it was before we achieved our published status, which makes us want to help, if possible. That’s one reason Catie, David, Faith and I started this blog in the first place.

But for the most part, we will beg off reading someone’s as-yet-unpublished manuscript. For one thing, there’s the liability issue. Say I read your manuscript, in which there is a secondary character named Jolene. Three years later, I publish a book, and I’ve named the romantic interest Jolean. If you’re of a litigious nature, you could decide it’s all close enough to sue me for stealing what you wrote, and while I probably wouldn’t lose the case, you sure could make life complicated for a while. Another problem is that I barely have enough time to meet my own commitments, so dropping my work to read yours just isn’t smart of me.

So if I can’t personally read your novel, where can you turn for help? [Read more →]

Tags: Misty Massey // 4 Comments »

I was going to write on muses today, but I got…um…off track. Stuck on a tangent, which can be a problem, as you’ll see farther on. Muses and writer’s block go hand in hand, and since I don’t believe in muses, I suppose I have to put writer’s block in the same *don’t believe in it* category. And yet, I’ve experienced both. How can I not believe in them and yet have experienced them? Sometimes it ain’t easy! Here’s my take today on Writer’s Block! *cue scary music*

Poets, fiction writers, non-fiction writer, all claim to get writers block. So IMHO – what is it? Several possibilities of why a writer can’t write, other than some amorphous *just can’t do it today* phenom.

It can be a problem with plot, where you have painted yourself into a corner. I usually call a friend when this happens and suggest tea or lunch. I often call Tamar Myers, a mystery writer pal. Together we sit down and I tell her the plot conflict line then a quick plot progression. And as I do, either she makes suggestions which stimulate my thinking, or I figure it out. Presto-chango, I am back writing. I wasn’t blocked, I was confused.

Another thing I do sometimes is read my story with 2 highlighters and mark all the stuff that works in one color and all the stuff that changes the plot line off and away from the central conflict in another color. Because it’s conflict that make a book really good. The more conflict to resolve, the better the book. I usually see what has taken me away from my central conflict, onto some less important track. As I highlight, I can see where I got lost on a tangent that took me away from the original plot line, writer’s block took me away form muses today. Of course, sometimes the writing is sooooo good, that I can’t toss it and go back to the place where I got off track. At such times I have to remember that writing is a commercial product. Unless I do it for myself alone, I need to keep in mind that this is one-size-fits-most product. It ain’t my baby. It will be rewritten a dozen times according to the specification of others. Perhaps two times for me. Two times for my agent. Three or four times for my editor. This isn’t a living being. It is product. In fact — it’s only paper. And I can cut and paste into a *use later* file, the lovely scenes I wrote but that are stopping the conflict line from going forward, and get back on track.

Sometimes the problem is that I didn’t set up the solution to the plot at the beginning of the story. For me, this is just sloppy writing. I don’t care how many famous writers say they just give a character a problem and let him work it out, for me this can make for confusing and poor writing. My best books come from a problem I envision and the solution to that problem. The writing part is the way it happens for me and the reason why I write!

Other times, when I experience Writer’s Block (that thing that I don’t believe in) is that I am afraid. Maybe I’ve tried something new and I fear that someone will laugh at me. Or I’m afraid that I’ll get halfway through and get stumped (get writer’s block, *snicker*). Or worse, that I’ll succeed, and then that my editor or agent (or, God forbid, both) won’t like it! And that I won’t get it published. Or that some critique will say that I can’t write, when all I’ve ever wanted to do is write.

I can’t help you with your fears. They are yours to do with as you please. Yours – to do with as you please. You own them, they do *not* own you, unless you give control over to them. Fight fear, injure it, slay it, treat it with medication. But always remember that it is yours… Not the other way around.

And sometimes – writer’s block come from simple boredom. I have rewritten this book so many times that I hate it. Hate it! I have started it ten times and frankly have lost interest. Then I can do one of four things: start another book, go to the next most interesting thing that will happen and write that, or kill off a major character to shake things up a lot, or go to the end, write that, then tie it all together. Sometimes this is the best thing to do because I’ve reached a place and just can’t get any more down on paper. The ending looks ten miles away. And the ending is what is really pulling at me. I write that, and it energizes me to work through the blasted middle.

So. I don’t believe in Writer’s Block, yet I have specific ways to deal with it when it appears. Am I strange? Yeah. But I’m a writer, and all writers are a bit strange!

Happy writing, ya’ll!

Faith

Tags: Faith Hunter // 8 Comments »

Today’s my second book release day of the year.

I have, for the last three years, been publishing contemporary series: two urban fantasy series and one spy novel trilogy. Those series have been first-person (the Walker Papers), tight third-person with two viewpoints (the Negotiator Trilogy), and tight third-person with a single viewpoint (the Strongbox Chronicles). I regard them–particularly the Walker Papers and the Strongbox Chronicles–as being well within my typical writing style, which I consider to be efficient: get in, tell the story, get out. Hopefully leave ‘em wanting more. The Negotiator books linger a little more, with slower builds and more emotional resonance, but I still see them as essentially action-filled novels, no time to rest between one scene and the next.

These books have been doing pretty well; this is a niche I can fit into comfortably, and in which I love to write. There’s … a hell of a lot of conventional wisdom in saying, “Hey, stick with what’s working.”

I think my agent, as well as pretty much anybody else who knows me, would be fairly willing to say that I’m not all that inclined to run with conventional wisdom. In fact, if I was, the Walker Papers would be a book or two longer by now, and the Negotiator Trilogy wouldn’t be out at all, because the Walker Papers were (and are) *working*: people want to know what’s going to happen with Jo. But instead of telling them, I took a chance on the opportunity to tell a different kind of urban fantasy story with a new lead character and a whole different world. I did, though, stay in the UF sub-genre.

THE QUEEN’S BASTARD is my first foray outside the contemporary era, and my first fantasy novel that’s not urban fantasy. And it’s emphatically not: it’s set in an alternate Reformation-era Europe, and though told primarily from Belinda (the titular queen’s bastard)’s point of view, it has … five, I think, other viewpoint characters. At least five. It’s a completely different, lusher writing style for me, and the pacing of the book is unlike anything I’ve ever written. I love it.

And I’m both excited and nervous as hell. I think it’s a good book. I think, in fact, it’s the best thing I’ve had published so far. There are parts of it that make me want to fling my hands up in triumph because I got it right. But my readers are urban fantasy readers, and I’m giving them something *completely* different with this book. I don’t know how they’ll react. I hope they’ll love it too, obviously, though I’m sure some of them won’t. I don’t know if people who aren’t urban fantasy readers will pick this up because it’s visibly different. I hope they will, and I hope they might try some of my urban fantasy after reading it.

This is a balancing act, I think. Treading a line between making yourself happy as a writer (oh, *God* was I glad to write something non-contemporary, something in a different voice, something in a totally new style, and oh man was I nervous, too, because who knew if I could pull it off? Not even me, when I started.) and giving readers what they’re looking for; what they’ll keep coming *back* for.

It’s a lot more comfortable to stick with what’s working. It wouldn’t be personally satisfying for me to do that, and I think for many writers it’s not, which is why people often write more than one series at a time, if they can. I happen to be doing a lot of different things very early in my career (which probably speaks to my sanity, or lack thereof, if nothing else!), so it’s perhaps unusually visible, and I’m perhaps unusually aware of spreading wings that one might more reasonably be doing eight or ten years into a writing career instead of three. For me–because I write fast, because I had novels already finished or well-begun and waiting for possible publication before I got my first book published–I’ve been able to do this, and to my mind it’s at least partly worth the risk in order to be certain of never being pigeon-holed. I’d love my readers to be able to come to expect oh, anything from a C.E. Murphy book: anything, with the confidence that yeah, even if it’s different, it’s going to be a good story.

Arright. This is already a long entry, but I’m going to post an excerpt for THE QUEEN’S BASTARD behind the cut. Let’s astound my editor and send the book back to press before the month of May is out, shall we please?

[Read more →]

Tags: C E Murphy // 12 Comments »

I attended RavenCon in Richmond, Virginia this past weekend and had a great time.  Saw some old friends and met several new ones, sat in on some interesting panel discussions, and even managed to sell a few books.

We’ve blogged here before about cons, and about the purposes they serve for us professionally, so I won’t go into that again.  Usually, though, I come home from a con feeling one of two ways.  Either I’ll have spent the weekend talking shop with friends and thinking about work in new ways, in which case I’ll come home completely energized, or I’ll have a disappointing con and arrive home somewhat dispirited.  But this weekend I seem to have discovered what for me is a new post-convention emotional dynamic (oh, joy…).

As I say, I had a good con, so I’m certainly not depressed or sapped of energy.  But I don’t feel particularly energized, either.  Instead, I feel restless.

[Read more →]

Tags: David B. Coe // 13 Comments »

Poster’s note: I met Alethea a couple of years ago at World Fantasy Con in Austin when we were both on a shuttlebus together, and she and her friends very kindly enveloped me into their group and invited me to lunch. We (all) hit it off splendidly, embarking on a weekend that involved people throwing themselves through hedges to greet one another and other such silliness, and it is my utter delight to have invited her to post about a day in the life of an Ingram Buyer.

Ingram Books, for the uninitiated, is the world’s largest wholesale distributor of books. As such, it is very, very important, and not a little mysterious, to those of us who write, and so we thought a back-door look at what the people who help bring our books from publisher to bookshelf actually do day-in and day-out might be interesting…and it is.

-Catie

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A day in the life of Alethea Kontis, Incredible Whirlwind of Beauty and Dynamite — Ingram Buyer by day, New York Times best-selling author by night.

April 14, 2008

3-something a.m. — The rumble of thunder wakes me up. I stumble out of the bedroom in the dark, unplug the laptop, shut down the desktop, and stumble back to bed.

6:15 a.m. — Wake up before the alarm goes off. Check my email. Solaris got my copyedits yesterday, but they can’t open the attachments. Can I please resave them as .rtf and send them again? Sure. Walk down to the office to power the desktop back up.

6:22 a.m. — Walk back through the kitchen. Put bread in the toaster. Look out the window. Laugh hysterically. What woke me up at 3 a.m. wasn’t thunder.

6:25 a.m. — Grab my digital camera and walk barefoot through the cold grass (there’s a freeze warning tonight) to take pictures of the dead tree that has fallen from my next-door neighbor’s yard onto my back fence. I know to take pictures of the evidence before anyone has a chance to tamper with it. I watch CSI.

7:23 a.m. — Arrive at work. Turn on computer and multicoloured rope lights. Stop by International Department for chai tea. Stop by fellow buyer’s office and check out the thumb she broke while swordfighting. Assemble audio bestseller report for NY Times. Review orders that have come up for release. Check out what my weekly returns cycle looks like. Not too bad.

7:45 a.m. — Send an email to my supervisor reminding her that I’ll be working lunches and staying late this week, because I’m leaving work early Friday to catch the plane to NY Comic Con. I still have no idea what to pack.

(Poster’s note: All this before 8am. I don’t think I do that much in a *day*. And yet there’s more!)

[Read more →]

Tags: C E Murphy, Special Guest Stars // 12 Comments »

SF Signal (a very cool blog for those who want to keep a finger on the SF/F media pulse) posted a list of 10 Obscure But Superb SF Novels. I’ve read Wasp, but none of the others.

So many books fall between the cracks - good books, books that seem like secret treasures to those few who actually find and read them. Sometimes the author only had one good story inside him to tell. Other times the sales just didn’t support offering a second book contract, and the author either changed names or left writing. Death, of course, takes good writers before we’re ready for them to go. We, as writers, never want to think of our work slipping into obscurity that way, but it happens. Lots of reasons for books to fall by the wayside (especially if the changes Faith spoke of yesterday continue.) It’s good for writers to read not only the bestsellers, but the obscure books as well. What did those writers do wrong, or not do at all? What did they do beautifully, and why didn’t it work for the majority of readers?

I scanned my own bookshelf for some of my favorites, and I found:
Frostflower and Thorn by Phyllis Ann Karr
(the first feminist fantasy I ever read, recommended by my first game master)
Harpy’s Flight by Megan Lindholm
(I still miss Ki and Vandien, Robin! Just so you know!)
Phaid the Gambler by Mick Farren
(a rambler and a gambler and a sweet-talkin’ ladies’ man - I love a good rogue!)
Soulsmith by Tom Dietz
(Contemporary fantasy before much of anyone else had even tried writing it - I still love the radio tarot reading)
Jane-Emily by Patricia Clapp
(this short, gothic novel scared the pants off me back in 7th grade, and to this day, I can’t look into a reflecting ball without getting the willies)

I love every single one of those, even though no one I’ve talked to seems to have heard of them. A dreadful shame, that. If you need something good to read, (and you’ve read all of our books already *grin*) try one of the titles above. In the meantime, I’m sure there are a few titles you love that I don’t know about. No longer must they suffer in silence - bring them out into the light! Tell us what books you love that no one around you has heard of or read. Why do you think they’re languishing now?

**Special bulletin!** Stay tuned to this blog for a fabulous guest appearance tomorrow by Alethea Kontis, Ingram Buyer by day, New York Times best-selling author by night!

Tags: Misty Massey // 9 Comments »

I replied yesterday to a post about what was happening in the market. I’ve blogged elsewhere about this, but not in depth here, so I thought I’d do so today.  Bookstores have problems keeping books stocked, buying books that don’t sell in quantity, tieing up their stocker’s hands stripping covers and sending them back, (paperbacks don’t go back to be resold, they are stripped, covers sent back, and contents recycled.) The time the stockers spend costs the story money. So the big chains have all instituted changes that directly affect you, the book reading public, and you the writer.

First, up front, near the registers, they will only stock new books by bestsellers and new books by unknowns.  Your fav author who is not a bestseller? His/her book is back in the stocks. Er…stacks.

Second, they are cutting the numbers of new books they will buy.  Rather than stock, say 100,000 books in the store, they are stocking say 65,000.  Roughly 2/3rds the previous number.  They are making them all face-out, which is nice, but if you want an author’s backlist, (previous books you have not yet read by this wonderful author you just discovered) you have to special order it in the store or from Amazon. Amazon is gonna love this change BTW.

Third, they *may* only keep the new books on the shelves (in any quantity) for one month. So, if you don’t go to the book store every month, you may well miss a release. And a writer has only 4 weeks to make him/herself noticed in the market. Which totally sucks, pardon my English.

Fourth, they are dictating to to publishers the length of the books they will carry. They have discoverd that they make the same profit on a book that is one inch thick as a book that is three inches thick. One book takes up very little shelf space. The other…well, it takes up more. Duh. Plus the price of paper is going up fast. So publishers are now specifying the length of a book to writers.  And they mean business. I had to cut BloodRing by 24,000 words. Of course, that meant that I was a fourth of the way through Seraphs, but still, it was tough to do.

Can I understand why chains are doing this?  Yes. Do I like it?  Not really.  I want to write what I want to write. But I still want to have it read by the buying public. And if I fight, that ain’t gonna happen.

Faith — who has about 50 more pages to write in the WIP, Skinwalker.

Tags: Faith Hunter // 9 Comments »

I was, hrm, what was I doing. Participating, I think, in the “books I’ve written” meme (available here, if you want to read it) and someone asked me how I knew how long a book was going to be. (This question could’ve been put to me/us here, too, and I just can’t remember. But I thought it was a good one, so I’m addressing it!)

Your average SF/F novel that you pick up, not the ones that make you go “Damn! That’s a big book!”, but the average ones that are an inch or so thick, run anywhere from, say, 90,000 words up to around 135-150K. That’s (using Courier New 12pt font with 1″ margins, .3″ tabs, and 25pt exact spacing) 380-600 manuscript pages, which is quite a spread. How, indeed, do you know how long your book’s going to be?

Well, if you’re not under contract, you generally want to be aiming for about 100K, not 150K. (There are exceptions. There are *lots* of exceptions. But *generally*, publishers like 100K books better than 150K books, because you can put 4 100K books into a supermarket wire rack and only 3 150K books. And I’m talking about SF/F here, not mystery or romance or YA or thrillers or anything else.) So if it’s your first book, you’re *probably* better off aiming for 100K than 150K. This is a pretty decent rule of thumb, I think.

Me personally, my writing approach is by thirds: the first third of the book is setup, the second third (which often pushes through to the 3/4ths mark) is plot & character development, and then the final third is all hell breaking loose on our way to the climax. So for, say,the Walker Papers, which are 110K books, that means I’ve got about 36K per third. It does not work out that tidily. Ever. But it’s not a bad mental structure to approach it with.

There is almost always a point in any book where I have two *extremely* different panic attacks at the same time. One is: “Oh my GOD how am I ever going to get all this story into the wordcount space I have left?!” and the other is, “Oh my god there is no way I have enough story to reach the wordcount I’m supposed to deliver.”

This (for me) means everything is going according to plan, and the book will come out at the right length.

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Tags: C E Murphy // 5 Comments »

Hi, all.  David here.  Faith and I have switched days for a while.  She’ll be posting on Wednesdays for the foreseeable future.

This past weekend marked the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover (also known as Pesach).  I’m Jewish, but I wasn’t raised in a religious household.  My parents, siblings, and I didn’t go to temple, we didn’t observe Yom Kippur, which is the holiest of Jewish holidays, we actually celebrated Christmas rather than Hanukkah, because it was more convenient.  But every year we went to a Passover Seder at my aunt’s house, and even when I was young, I looked forward to Passover.  As I’ve grown older it has surpassed all other holidays to become my favorite.

Why?  Because, like Thanksgiving, it’s a holiday that revolves around family and food, two of my favorite things.  And because it is entirely about shared history, about storytelling as a way of reinforcing heritage and tradition, and about using symbols and metaphor to reinforce that storytelling.  Passover is, in short, a holiday that is made for writers.

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Tags: David B. Coe // 5 Comments »