Alex Beecroft's Blog, page 10

Toiling at the Word Hoard

Once upon a time I used to do one project and finish it before starting on another. Goodness knows exactly how things changed, but those days are now a distant memory. I’ve been tallying up what I have on my plate at the moment, and deciding I’ve maybe gone a little over the top.

(Not a faithful portrait of Alex)

Angels of Istanbul

This is my 18th Century fantasy in which Romanian nobleman Radu invades the Ottoman Empire at the head of an army of strigoi (aka vampires.) Coming out from Riptide’s Anglerfish imprint some time next year, I think.

I’m half way through copy edits on this and have dropped everything else in order to get them done. I’m still in doubt about whether I’ll manage it in the fortnight I’ve been given, but if I do need a bit more time, it’s not likely to be more than another three days or so.

I’ve seen cover art for this book and it’s going to look awesome

I’ve been interviewed!

Here I am on Simon Williams’ blog, talking about my influences and the single book that changed my life the most:

http://www.simonwilliamsauthor.com/interview-with-alex-beecroft.html

Those of you who know me well will probably not find out anything new, but if you don’t know the name of the Saxon poet who changed my life, then you can find it out in this interview

Fallen Into The Sea

So, I have discovered a 10,000 word story I finished and then left to languish in one of my folders on the computer. It’s not doing anyone any good in there, so I thought I’d post it here, on a Monday, in thousand word installments. If, by the end of it, people like it, I’ll tidy it up and make it available with a nice cover, with the typos sorted out

How to include more female characters in your m/m romance.

It’s the nature of the writing beast that no matter what kind of writing you specialise in, someone will tell you that you’re doing it wrong. In the m/m genre they will also find numerous ways of telling you that you are doing it immorally. Either you’re being homophobic by exploiting gay men’s lives for the sake of straight women, or you’re being misogynistic by writing women out of your fictional worlds entirely. Or both at once.

Now I’m not sure how a genre can be simultaneously wrong by catering to women’s needs while also being wrong by being bad for women, but as is so often the way, there may be some truth in both things. So what can be done to minimise the problem? Well, we do what we can to make sure gay people enjoy our writing as much as straight women, and we make sure we have more interesting female characters, so women are well represented in our fiction.

Clearly the main problem in getting female characters into your m/m fiction comes from the fact that both of your main characters are men. Your viewpoints will be overwhelmingly male because your romantic couple are both male. And there’s nothing you can do about that without completely changing the genre to m/f, which rather defeats the object.

So if the nature of m/m means that both your main characters are male, what can you do to increase the presence of interesting female characters?

We could start off with the evil ex. Does main character A have a wife or girlfriend? She doesn’t have to be an evil bitch – after all, it’s no more fun for a woman to be married to a gay man than it is for a gay man to be married to a woman. So any breakup is likely to be both their responsibility. Maybe they separated amicably and are now working at being friends while raising their children together (or apart)? Or maybe she is an antagonist, but for perfectly good reasons, which can be addressed during the plot without blaming her for being some kind of monster.

Maybe the main characters both have evil exes, and they are genuinely moustache-twirling (what’s the female equivalent? Dog-fur-wearing?) villainess exes with plans to rule the world. Everyone loves a magnificent villain. As long as you have a woman or two on the side of the angels too, a genuinely, gloatingly, over the top villainess can be great fun.

We could also mention mothers. It’s a fair guarantee that every character will have a mother, and she doesn’t need to be dead or out of the picture. She could just as easily be funny and capable, or doing a glamourous or interesting job. She could be interfering, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Many people have sisters, and your main characters may be among them. Perhaps they have gone into business with their sister, or their sister has a problem they can help with, or their sister has a brilliant idea about what they can do to solve whatever their big plot problem is.

Maybe one or both of your main characters have female bosses? Maybe their bosses are rivals, and that’s how they get together – snooping around each others’ businesses in a series of acts of industrial espionage, and they can’t get together without talking the bosses into a merger instead of a hostile takeover. As long as neither boss is represented as an evil bitch, this could be a great chance to develop two strong female characters with a large degree of power and influence on the plot, who are still neither of them involved in the main relationship.

Along the ‘bosses’ line, your characters might also have female servants, whose below-stairs goings on affect their plotline. No reason why these shouldn’t be fully rounded characters too.

Your characters may work in a team and have female team-mates, whether this is one of a group of paranormal werewolves or werewolf slayers, or floor layers or architects or whatever.

If we’re talking a fantasy setting, ask yourself if your king really needs to be a king? Could she perhaps be a queen instead? If your lead characters are always having to deal with the queen and her (ninja magician) handmaidens, it will make it a great deal harder to end up with a book in which it looks as if you’ve killed off anyone in possession of a cunt.

If you find that, without realising it, you have written a novel in which there are no female characters at all, why not go the Ellen Ripley route, pick one or two of your most important support characters and make them women instead? Generally this makes no real difference to their characteristics or role in the story, and can be easily done. It may even bring some interesting freshness to your novel when the hard drinking, fist fighting, womanising best friend of the hero is a woman herself.

When I finished my first draft of Foxglove Copse, for example, I thought “this is a bit sparse on female characters! What can I do?” So I changed Jory’s tough farmer uncle John who lives out of town with his ‘close friend’ Phil to a tough farmer auntie Jillian and her ‘close friend’ Phillis. Which was a win all around.

Obviously, all of this is slightly more difficult when you are writing in an all male environment, such as in a historical – aboard a warship, inside a gentleman’s club etc. But usually even in those situations there were women invisibly doing their stuff, whom you can choose to make visible. Servants at the club, wives travelling alongside their menfolk in the warship, a doctor’s daughter serving as loblolly boy rather than being left destitute at home. Look closer at almost any situation and there will be women there, any one of whom might get involved with the plot. And yes, perhaps all she can do is be the washerwoman who scorched the MC’s breeches because he was rude to her, but even that shows there are women in this universe who have their own personalities and are not to be trifled with.

Even the small things can make a difference; the barmaid who offers the hero directions to the castle and grins behind her hand as he goes, the landlady who gets the bloodstains out of the cuffs with a suspicious look, the interior decorator who gets mistaken for a stalker when she tries to break in to replace that lamp…

In short, just because your main characters are both men doesn’t mean you can’t fill your world with interesting women. If you put effort into making your men believable, complex and non stereotypical so as to avoid the danger of offending your gay readers, why not also put effort into including believable, complex, non stereotypical female characters too, so as to avoid the danger of offending your female readers? You might even find you start liking them yourself.

~

Bond, Jane Bond.

Every so often, a post comes up about how this or that character is a ‘Mary Sue’. I’m sure Rey from Star Wars: The Force Awakens was one of these unfortunate female characters, who certain viewers regard as being too good at things to be believed.

Allow me a moment of rocking in my chair on the porch. I was around when the term Mary Sue was localized to fandom, and in fandom – I think – it had a useful purpose. You see, the thing about fan fiction is that people read it hoping for more of the characters they loved from [whatever the canon is.] If they’re Aragorn fans, they want to see more fic about Aragorn, in which they can revel in how cool he is, feel sorrow for his sorrow and happiness for his joy, etc.

In a situation like that, I think it’s perfectly valid to resent the introduction of a female character who wasn’t even in the canon stories, who inserts herself into the universe and immediately becomes the focus of the story. Especially when she outshines Aragorn by being better than him at everything, by advising him against the bad choices he makes, being wiser than him about his moments of self doubt, more beloved than him by the good guys and more hated than him by the bad. That wasn’t what you were looking for when you went looking for Aragorn fan fic. It claimed to be Aragorn fanfic, but it was actually Legolas’s-Sister-the-real-heir-of-Lorien fanfic.

As the story misguided you as to who it was actually about, you had every reason to resent it.

However, when you take the female character who is good at everything – who outshines all the other characters, has a cool name and a destiny, who is chosen and favoured and successful – out of fanfic, I think she ceases to be a Mary Sue.

Mary Sue doesn’t just mean ‘a female character who is implausibly good at things.’ Because you know who else can be defined as ‘a character who is implausibly good at things’? The hero. That’s who. The hero, by definition, tends to be that character who always comes through in the end, and often does it by being better than everyone else.

Outside of fanfiction, there are plenty of male characters who are handsome and devastatingly sexy and dangerous and destined for greatness. Or if they’re not destined, they fight their way to greatness anyway.

It’s a classic superhero trope isn’t it? Young man finds himself in some hidden valley/ancient temple/bat-cave and is taught to be a superhero by a secret society who only exist to give him the tools to be great. Then he goes off and fights crime and dazzles high society with his wealth and debonair attitude, while carrying the fate of the world on his shoulders.

No one seems to call James Bond a Mary Sue. We’re just happy to go along with him for a wild ride of a power fantasy in which we vicariously enjoy being awesome.

So, outside fan fiction, I don’t see why you can’t also have a female hero who exists entirely to be badass and better than anyone else. A female character who gets openly admired for that.

In fact, I thought that sounded rather fun. And so Aurora Campos from the Cygnus Five series was born. I wanted her to be the kind of unstoppable force of nature that Hornblower or Jack Aubrey are, but in space. I wanted her to be the kind of person who, when she’s abandoned on a hostile world by her venal bosses, who hope she’ll be murdered and thus be no more embarrassment to them, would go “No. I’m Aurora Campos. You should be afraid of me.” And then take over that world and make it happen.

I suspect she’s a direct descendent of Susan Ivanova from Babylon Five, who initiates a war from the bridge of her battlecruiser with a speech that still makes me want to punch the air. I get to the end of this speech and I have chills even now, so very many years since I saw this first.

“I am Death Incarnate. I am the last living thing you will ever see. God sent me.”

How often do we get to see this? When do we ever get to see women have this kind of crowning moment of awesome? It’s so rare.

And that’s how Aurora came to be. I wanted her to be the kind of character who could pull off a speech like this, because she has the force of will, intelligence and strength to follow through on it.

She’s still not a Mary Sue, for the reasons I’ve given above. She’s a hero. And writing her was such a blast. Such a relief. I hope if you read her, she’ll come as a vicariously enjoyable power fantasy for you too, and that you too will find that something of a breaking of mental chains.

Interview with Simon Williams, Author of the Aona Series

Hello!  And thanks for agreeing to be interviewed!

Now that I’m an Indie author myself – a very new one who doesn’t know what they’re doing – I’m fascinated to hear from other indie authors who’ve been at this longer than me. So have a variety of questions, and choose the ones you’d like to answer, and I (and I’m sure my readers too) will be fascinated to hear what you have to say

The Wages of Sin are – more sin? No. That’s not right.

It is autumn. My son has had his first week at university, leaving me in the house on my own. Naturally I had to be busy busy busy in order to justify my right to existence.

Rather than actually tidying the house (I did do some of that, but it never lasts), I have been beavering away on several writing projects at once.

I narrowed down the whole of history into a focus on 50ad, and the whole of the world into a snapshot of the area of Britain belonging to the Brigante tribe, letting me conclude that the novella I intended to write for my newsletter would involve Queen Cartimandua, notorious backstabber and Roman sympathizer.

I also spent like three days wrestling with the names of my heroes. Do you know if a Brigante man called Tamm whose father was called Cara would be Tamm MacCara or Tamm ap Cara? I didn’t.

Do you have any idea how to work out , when the Roman in question is not a member of one of the original Roman gens? I really didn’t. I am very very fortunate to have Wulfila to talk me through it. But if I had any confidence going in, I’ve emerged from the experience without it.

And that was without deciding my Roman MC needed a Phoenician personal name because his family were still proud of being Carthaginians first. Apparently the Phoenicians (like other ancient cultures) didn’t believe in writing down vowels. So it took me most of this morning to decide on Kpr as my MC’s Phoenician name and decide it was spelled Kepir. To make it pronounceable for his mates, he would tell them it was Kepirus, or just to call him Africanus and have done with it.

That was all research. In addition, I have been plotting. *Steeples hands in a sinister fashion*

What have I been plotting? I’ve been plotting another adventure for Charles Latham and Jasper Marin of The Wages of Sin fame. This one is to be called Waters of the Deep.

In which Charles’s Latham family entitlement makes a bad situation worse when he and Jasper are called in to investigate a multiple stabbing in (the cotton mill town of) Paradise. 

This will be another combination of m/m romance, murder mystery and fantasy. No ghosts, this time – other than Lily, Charles and Jasper’s adopted ghostly daughter – but other denizens of Faerie instead.

I haven’t set a firm deadline for getting that finished, other than ‘hopefully before Christmas.’

But!

as a way of whetting people’s appetites for it, I’ve written a 10,000 word short story in the same universe. Buried With Him is a prequel to The Wages of Sin and tells the story of what happened after Jasper was pilloried that managed to save his faith.

It also manages to keep on with the theme of vaguely sinister Biblical titles, though I worry that this one in particular – though thematically appropriate – is really offputting.

That’s currently being edited, and I’m hoping to release it in mid October. Since, once that’s done, there will be two (soon to be three) volumes in this series, I’ve given the whole thing a series title of Unquiet Spirits. I hope to do at least one more novella in the series afterward, if only to justify calling it a series at all! Watch this space for more definite news on that.

Netflix Nerdery – Shadowhunters

I’m determined to get my money’s worth out of Netflix, despite the fact that even with all those programs to choose from, very often I don’t see anything I really want to watch.

At any rate, having worked my way through Daredevil Series #1, Jessica Jones Series #1, Sense8 series #1, Grimm series #1 and #2, Gotham #1, and iZombie #1 and #2, having tried and failed (again!) to watch Once Upon A Time, I blazed through Shadowhunters #1 in about a week and a half.

I’m not familar with the books. I have the feeling there’s some kind of plagiarism debate going on about where the series concepts come from, in a similar vein to 50 Shades coming from Twilight which itself came from something else. Although I was in fandom at the time there was something going on with Cassandra Claire, I wasn’t in that part of fandom, and I don’t know what it was. All I really know is that I’ve heard of her and I’ve heard of the books, but not necessarily in flattering terms.

As a result, I really wasn’t expecting to like the series. And in fact the super-hyper-real high fashion glossiness of its visual style was very offputting to me at first. I have more or less got used to the fact that even the characters’ faces are a part of the overall aesthetic, but I still need an occasional double-take over the fact that everyone in this series is beautiful in exactly the same way. (Except for Jace who just thinks he is.)

The dress standards of this universe are way too high for me – even the werewolves manage to be stylish – and it is a world in which you will believe a woman could be born with neon orange hair. But it’s beautiful in its own highly saturated, highly coloured way, and better to have a consistent aesthetic than not, right?

Story-wise, it hits the ground running and accelarates from there – corruption in the heart of the good guys! Sworn brothers put at odds by the appearance of a mysterious lady! Tragic disappearance of our MC’s mother just as she was about to tell her the world-changing secret concealed from her at birth! OMG! My father is the villain! The demons are invading! Accidental near incest! My best friend is a vampire now!

Okay, perhaps the emotional realism is a bit lacking, and the characters tend to explain their emotions to each other rather than acting like they actually have them. But the sheer exhuberant invention of the entire thing is charming, and it manages to unify the appeal of a soap opera – weddings, jiltings at the altar, surprise siblings, cross-species romance, who’s dating who, whose parents are up to some dodgy stuff (all of them!) etc with the appeal of angels, devils, werewolves, vampires, warlocks and fairies.

I mean, there’s something for everyone in here.

I won’t deny that I’m probably hooked because I so rarely get a canon couple to be invested in, and I am terribly terribly happy to have the canon romance between Alec Fairchild and Magnus Bane to cheer on. (If something terrible happens to them later, don’t tell me! Netflix UK only has series 1. Let me enjoy it while I can.) I would definitely be fannish about Magnus Bane if I had time.

Just in terms of representation, it’s got to be rare to have a bisexual POC character who gets to be openly in a m/m relationship while being Magnus’s level of awesome, surely. I hesitate to recommend the series just for that. (I’m braced to hear that they kill him off in series #2.) But it’s up there in my list of ‘top three reasons to watch this show.’ Number 1 of that list is that this series is a real masterclass in how to keep the hooks coming, so there’s never a moment when the viewer doesn’t wonder what the sinister plan is now, and how the characters are going to get out of this one. It’s fast and fun. I like it.

Roman and Celt it is!

Thanks to everyone who replied to my newsletter blog post saying what kind of story you would like to see. We had a three way tie between the Roman/Celt idea, the Victorian tattooist idea, and Pacifist Prince meets H. Rider Haggard.

I’ve got to say the idea of H. Rider Haggard or any of his muscular explorers meeting my pacifist prince character is a delight, and I personally would love to write that most of all. But in the spirit of first come, first served, it seems the Romans have it.

Story stage – assembling the ingredients.

As I don’t actually know anything at all about the Celts, and very little about the Romans. I need to take a while to narrow down where this is likely to be set, when, who would be involved and what exactly they would be likely to be doing. Then I need to research the heck out of all of it. So this week will be devoted to looking things up and trying to get enough of a feel of the setting to allow me to vaguely see the shape of what kind of a story it could be.

I will post a newsletter on Friday containing an update of my progress, any interesting research I might have come up with, and the usual selection of news about all my other projects (of which there now seem to be many!)

I’m going to have to get some form of time planner to keep track of it all. Anyone have software they can recommend for an author trying to keep track of lots of different projects at the same time?

 

Newsletter musing

I hear having a newsletter is pretty much vital for an Indie author, but I have to admit that’s something I’m failing on. I have got one, but so far it’s been going out only when there was news. IE once every six months or so.

Naturally it’s not lively.

Those of you who know me, know that I have a tendency to read too many self-help books, and recently I finished a cool book on self publishing called Write, Publish, Repeat. Among many pieces of advice that seemed to make sense to me, they suggested weekly newsletters, with bonus content.

By ‘bonus content’ I here mean ‘a weekly episode of a story written specifically for the newsletter.’ They suggest 500 words a week as a doable goal alongside writing new books, and that seems like something I could manage, particularly if I plotted out the whole thing before I started, and aimed for a total length of about 30,000 words before starting either on a sequel or a different one.

Then I thought, well, perhaps before I do that, I should offer the chance to any readers of this blog to be involved. I’m going to put these choices to you and see whether anyone would like to read a 30,000 word novella on one of these prompts, told in episodes of 500 words each.

Historical Romance choices

Victorian gentleman falls for a tattoo artist.

Celtic chieftain & Roman captive.

Fantasy choices

Arranged marriage between a warrior king and a pacifist prince.

Steampunk meets Lovecraft.

Steampunk meets Rider Haggard.

Alternative Option:

Pick a historical period

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/

Pick three words from this list

http://towriteprompts.tumblr.com/onewordprompts

combine, and I will write a story around that.

My Cunning Plan

If I get a request, I’ll plot out the story and let you all know when the plot plan is done and the episodes are about to start. If I don’t get a single request, I’ll assume nobody wants this and try to think of something else to do. It’s up to you