Rod Duncan's Blog, page 4
December 28, 2017
Ten things about Elizabeth
Approaching publication day, we’re counting down the top ten points of interest in the Gas-Lit Empire novels, as revealed in readers’ comments and questions. In the last episode I wrote about the 2nd most commonly commented on topic: World Building.
Finally, the most frequently referred to topic is:
Number 1: Elizbeth Barnabus
It may seem as if I am cheating here. Elizabeth is a character, not a theme. And yet, she is the intersection of many themes. Boats and travelling shows and gender and politics and more. Instead of re-stating those issues, I’m going to share ten curious facts.
1) When the first reviews started coming in 2014, I realised people who loved the books also love Elizabeth. Perhaps she attracts them because of her pragmatic bravery, her vulnerability, her witty insights, her confusions, and her loyalty to her friends. It seems strange that a fictional character has become so important to so many people. Including me.
2) All fictional characters come from their writers to some extent. But as they are released into the world they also take on an identity of their own: the projection of a kind of collective conscious, manifest through reviews and discussions and even fan art. I’ve been aware of this transition taking place. It is at once a joy and a responsibility.
3) Elizabeth started as a young man when I first wrote her. When I wrote the reveal at the end of chapter one of the Bullet Catcher’s Daughter - the removal of the disguise - I was taken aback. But I followed it through to see where the character would lead. And it did feel to me as if she was leading.
4) I have often found female characters easier to write than male. My first novel, Backlash, was a first-person female narrative. I think this comes from my lazy tendency to treat male characters as if they are me. Which ends up making them bland. That slight added distance was initially a help to me. Having said that, I think I am getting better at the male characters now. Through practice.
5) The review comments that have pleased me most have been expressions of incredulity that a man could write a woman so convincingly. It is one of the hardest things for me to achieve, so I work hard at it. And I do make ‘mistakes’. But through the kind help of female Beta readers, I have been able to iron most of them out. (Huge thanks to Terri and Stephanie for this.)
6) I problematised the word ‘mistakes’ in number 5 because the idea is complex. Any character is an individual rather than a representative of some mythical idealisation of gender. Thus, if someone tells me ‘A woman wouldn’t do that’ it is fair enough for me to respond. ‘But Elizabeth would.’
Having said that, if I were to say anything in the books that pops the bubble which is ‘the suspension of disbelief’, then I will have alienated the reader. My argument about individuality doesn’t help one jot. Thus, I have to walk a delicate balance between asserting that she is an individual and satisfying the preconceptions of my readers.
7) Much of the crucial gender identity that readers take from the text is driven by the places the eye of the narration happens to fall. When describing a scene, I have to notice the things Elizabeth would notice. If that happens to be the pinch cuff of a jewel green dress, then that’s what I must describe. Even though I am not so interested in it myself.
8) There is no particular science to Elizabeth’s pseudo-Victorian speech patterns and vocabulary. I just write it any old way and then when I come to a phrase that feels too modern, I try restructuring it away from my own natural speech patterns. I just keep doing that until it feels right. Over time and with practice, that has come quicker and easier.
9) Elizabeth is somewhat coy by nature. She is also inexperienced when it comes to physical relationships. This makes her an unreliable narrator of her own feelings and desires. She may be able to observe and narrate other people’s lives. But she initially confuses the perturbation caused by her sexual attraction to another person with anger. To be fair, she is experiencing the two at the same time. But this clouds her judgement. And even when she does understand it herself, she is reluctant to admit it to us.
10) Elizabeth is her own brother, some reviewers say. But others ask whether her brother is real. And in the story a Patent Office official states that her brother is her twin. The ambiguity that hovers over this issue comes naturally enough from Elizabeth herself. If we were to question her on the issue she would be vague in her answers. Not so much because she doesn’t know, but because she doesn’t want to think about it.
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
Finally, the most frequently referred to topic is:
Number 1: Elizbeth Barnabus
It may seem as if I am cheating here. Elizabeth is a character, not a theme. And yet, she is the intersection of many themes. Boats and travelling shows and gender and politics and more. Instead of re-stating those issues, I’m going to share ten curious facts.
1) When the first reviews started coming in 2014, I realised people who loved the books also love Elizabeth. Perhaps she attracts them because of her pragmatic bravery, her vulnerability, her witty insights, her confusions, and her loyalty to her friends. It seems strange that a fictional character has become so important to so many people. Including me.
2) All fictional characters come from their writers to some extent. But as they are released into the world they also take on an identity of their own: the projection of a kind of collective conscious, manifest through reviews and discussions and even fan art. I’ve been aware of this transition taking place. It is at once a joy and a responsibility.
3) Elizabeth started as a young man when I first wrote her. When I wrote the reveal at the end of chapter one of the Bullet Catcher’s Daughter - the removal of the disguise - I was taken aback. But I followed it through to see where the character would lead. And it did feel to me as if she was leading.
4) I have often found female characters easier to write than male. My first novel, Backlash, was a first-person female narrative. I think this comes from my lazy tendency to treat male characters as if they are me. Which ends up making them bland. That slight added distance was initially a help to me. Having said that, I think I am getting better at the male characters now. Through practice.
5) The review comments that have pleased me most have been expressions of incredulity that a man could write a woman so convincingly. It is one of the hardest things for me to achieve, so I work hard at it. And I do make ‘mistakes’. But through the kind help of female Beta readers, I have been able to iron most of them out. (Huge thanks to Terri and Stephanie for this.)
6) I problematised the word ‘mistakes’ in number 5 because the idea is complex. Any character is an individual rather than a representative of some mythical idealisation of gender. Thus, if someone tells me ‘A woman wouldn’t do that’ it is fair enough for me to respond. ‘But Elizabeth would.’
Having said that, if I were to say anything in the books that pops the bubble which is ‘the suspension of disbelief’, then I will have alienated the reader. My argument about individuality doesn’t help one jot. Thus, I have to walk a delicate balance between asserting that she is an individual and satisfying the preconceptions of my readers.
7) Much of the crucial gender identity that readers take from the text is driven by the places the eye of the narration happens to fall. When describing a scene, I have to notice the things Elizabeth would notice. If that happens to be the pinch cuff of a jewel green dress, then that’s what I must describe. Even though I am not so interested in it myself.
8) There is no particular science to Elizabeth’s pseudo-Victorian speech patterns and vocabulary. I just write it any old way and then when I come to a phrase that feels too modern, I try restructuring it away from my own natural speech patterns. I just keep doing that until it feels right. Over time and with practice, that has come quicker and easier.
9) Elizabeth is somewhat coy by nature. She is also inexperienced when it comes to physical relationships. This makes her an unreliable narrator of her own feelings and desires. She may be able to observe and narrate other people’s lives. But she initially confuses the perturbation caused by her sexual attraction to another person with anger. To be fair, she is experiencing the two at the same time. But this clouds her judgement. And even when she does understand it herself, she is reluctant to admit it to us.
10) Elizabeth is her own brother, some reviewers say. But others ask whether her brother is real. And in the story a Patent Office official states that her brother is her twin. The ambiguity that hovers over this issue comes naturally enough from Elizabeth herself. If we were to question her on the issue she would be vague in her answers. Not so much because she doesn’t know, but because she doesn’t want to think about it.
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
December 25, 2017
World Building and Alternate History
Approaching publication day, we’re counting down the top ten points of interest in the Gas-Lit Empire novels, as revealed in readers’ comments and questions. In the last episode I wrote about the 3rd most commonly commented on topic: Secondary characters.
The second most frequently referred to topic is:
Number 2: World Building and Alternate History
My first trilogy of novels were marketed as contemporary crime. Set in Leicester, England, they followed the impact of a fictional riot on four very different characters. Although the books didn’t sell widely, they did receive some critical acclaim at the time. The first of them, Backlash, was shortlisted for the prestigious John Creasey award of the Crime Writers’ Association.
I find it interesting that in all the reviews of those novels, no one ever mentioned ‘world building’. But world building has been one of the main themes covered in most reviews of the Gas-Lit Empire novels.
World building is usually defined as the construction of fictional worlds on which creative works can be based. The term came to particular prominence in the 1970s with the spread of role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. The games produced an arena of creativity in which the player acting as ‘dungeon master’ could plan and build portions of a fictional world for the other players to inhabit.
No surprise then that the term is most associated with science fiction and fantasy. Reviewers generally don’t talk about world building in contemporary crime. Those stories are set in the real world, aren’t they?
That idea works fine until you start to think about the entirety of the process. Part of the creative work of world building is done by the writer. But part also by the reader, who in their imagination expands from the few details they have been given, creating the fully realised world.
I did have one thoughtful but negative review of the novel Backlash. The reviewer said he found himself unable to imagine the world of red brick terraced streets and wheelie bins that I was describing. Everyone else said the opposite. But, uniquely, that reviewer was from America. For a British audience, familiar with those streets, I was giving sufficient clues for them to construct the world of the story in their minds. But for someone who had never seen such a landscape, I was failing in my part of our world building collaboration.
I didn’t understand any of that when I started writing the Gas-Lit Empire novels. Though I did know I had to design the parameters of the alternate history and work them through. My thinking about the part of the reader in constructing the world came about as I wrestled with the manuscript of the Bullet Catcher’s Daughter. I took 8 months to write it. But then another 10 months to re-write it (twice), trying to get my delivery of the world to work.
In the end, I resorted to a number of different techniques to get the world across without inserting pages of intrusive explanation. But the most helpful technique was this:
I imagined my narrator, Elizabeth, speaking to a small audience few years after the Gas-Lit Empire had finally crumbled. Not all the people she was addressing would have lived through the events. So occasionally she would throw in a few extra words of explanation. But not many, because most of what she was saying she imagined would be known. My job was just to write down what she said.
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
The second most frequently referred to topic is:
Number 2: World Building and Alternate History
My first trilogy of novels were marketed as contemporary crime. Set in Leicester, England, they followed the impact of a fictional riot on four very different characters. Although the books didn’t sell widely, they did receive some critical acclaim at the time. The first of them, Backlash, was shortlisted for the prestigious John Creasey award of the Crime Writers’ Association.
I find it interesting that in all the reviews of those novels, no one ever mentioned ‘world building’. But world building has been one of the main themes covered in most reviews of the Gas-Lit Empire novels.
World building is usually defined as the construction of fictional worlds on which creative works can be based. The term came to particular prominence in the 1970s with the spread of role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. The games produced an arena of creativity in which the player acting as ‘dungeon master’ could plan and build portions of a fictional world for the other players to inhabit.
No surprise then that the term is most associated with science fiction and fantasy. Reviewers generally don’t talk about world building in contemporary crime. Those stories are set in the real world, aren’t they?
That idea works fine until you start to think about the entirety of the process. Part of the creative work of world building is done by the writer. But part also by the reader, who in their imagination expands from the few details they have been given, creating the fully realised world.
I did have one thoughtful but negative review of the novel Backlash. The reviewer said he found himself unable to imagine the world of red brick terraced streets and wheelie bins that I was describing. Everyone else said the opposite. But, uniquely, that reviewer was from America. For a British audience, familiar with those streets, I was giving sufficient clues for them to construct the world of the story in their minds. But for someone who had never seen such a landscape, I was failing in my part of our world building collaboration.
I didn’t understand any of that when I started writing the Gas-Lit Empire novels. Though I did know I had to design the parameters of the alternate history and work them through. My thinking about the part of the reader in constructing the world came about as I wrestled with the manuscript of the Bullet Catcher’s Daughter. I took 8 months to write it. But then another 10 months to re-write it (twice), trying to get my delivery of the world to work.
In the end, I resorted to a number of different techniques to get the world across without inserting pages of intrusive explanation. But the most helpful technique was this:
I imagined my narrator, Elizabeth, speaking to a small audience few years after the Gas-Lit Empire had finally crumbled. Not all the people she was addressing would have lived through the events. So occasionally she would throw in a few extra words of explanation. But not many, because most of what she was saying she imagined would be known. My job was just to write down what she said.
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
December 21, 2017
Julia, Tinker, Fabulo
Approaching publication day, we’re counting down the top ten points of interest in the Gas-Lit Empire novels, as revealed in readers’ comments and questions. In the last episode I wrote about the 4th most commonly commented on topic: Gender presentation and gender identity. The third most frequently referred to topic is:
Number 3: Secondary characters
Book reviews tend to have three aspects: a plot summary or précis, an emotional response to the book and a discussion of themes that the reviewer engaged with. Secondary characters are mentioned in most reviews that give a précis of the story. But secondary characters also appear in the discussion of themes. That’s the part I’m going to talk about here. Three characters are mentioned in particular: Fabulo, Tinker and Julia.
Fabulo is mentioned less often than the others. Yet he is the one I personally love the most. He is a small person in stature, but expansive in character. When he is first introduced in The Bullet Catcher’s daughter, we see him being kicked and ordered around. He has suffered a life of this treatment due to his stature. As a result of the discrimination, he has had to develop strong emotional armour. His abrasive manner is part of that. And his apparent thick skin. Insults seem to have no effect on him.
I loved him when I first encountered him. But it was in The Custodian of Marvels that I had a opportunity to really explore his psychology. I’m not going to spell out the backstory here. It would be a spoiler for anyone who is yet to read Custodian. But I can tell you that I hadn’t consciously worked it out in advance. Yet when I came to write Custodian, I found that I did know it. And when I looked back at The Bullet Catcher’s Daughter, I found all the clues were in place.
Whilst writing Custodian, I came to a scene where all seems lost and Fabulo tells Elizabeth a truth about himself for the first time. He relates it in the form of a Mulla Nasruddin story. I wrote that scene and I wept.
Tinker is mentioned in the reviews more than Fabulo. I hadn’t expected that. Indeed, it was partly because of the warmth with which he was received in the Bullet Catcher’s Daughter that I increased his visibility in Unseemly Science.
There are three secrets to writing Tinker. One is that he will stay silent in preference to speaking, and in speaking he’ll use the fewest possible words. The second is that from the moment Elizabeth gives him an apple in The Bullet Catcher’s Daughter, he is entirely devoted to her. She is the parent he has longed for, though he couldn’t admit it, even to himself. And the third trick is that in his actions and the words that I use to describe his movement and habits, he is like cat. I’m probably giving away too many writerly secrets here. But if you re-read the books, you’ll see it’s true.
My strongest emotional response with Tinker came when he recognised Elizabeth in her male guise. It was entirely matter-of-fact to him. He doesn’t even know that this ability is special. It is a mystery to him that other people can’t recognise the person who is the centre of his world. (Tove Jansson fans, may recognise a parallel here with Moomin Mama’s recognition of Moomintroll after he has come out of the Hobgoblin’s hat!)
But it is Julia that reviewers respond tend to talk about the most. What do we know about her? She is 2 years younger than Elizabeth. She comes from a settled family - by which I mean she has lived all her life in one house with two parents. This contrasts with Elizabeth’s experience of being raised in a travelling show by her father alone. The difference magnetises the two women together. Each sees in the other...
The full article can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
Number 3: Secondary characters
Book reviews tend to have three aspects: a plot summary or précis, an emotional response to the book and a discussion of themes that the reviewer engaged with. Secondary characters are mentioned in most reviews that give a précis of the story. But secondary characters also appear in the discussion of themes. That’s the part I’m going to talk about here. Three characters are mentioned in particular: Fabulo, Tinker and Julia.
Fabulo is mentioned less often than the others. Yet he is the one I personally love the most. He is a small person in stature, but expansive in character. When he is first introduced in The Bullet Catcher’s daughter, we see him being kicked and ordered around. He has suffered a life of this treatment due to his stature. As a result of the discrimination, he has had to develop strong emotional armour. His abrasive manner is part of that. And his apparent thick skin. Insults seem to have no effect on him.
I loved him when I first encountered him. But it was in The Custodian of Marvels that I had a opportunity to really explore his psychology. I’m not going to spell out the backstory here. It would be a spoiler for anyone who is yet to read Custodian. But I can tell you that I hadn’t consciously worked it out in advance. Yet when I came to write Custodian, I found that I did know it. And when I looked back at The Bullet Catcher’s Daughter, I found all the clues were in place.
Whilst writing Custodian, I came to a scene where all seems lost and Fabulo tells Elizabeth a truth about himself for the first time. He relates it in the form of a Mulla Nasruddin story. I wrote that scene and I wept.
Tinker is mentioned in the reviews more than Fabulo. I hadn’t expected that. Indeed, it was partly because of the warmth with which he was received in the Bullet Catcher’s Daughter that I increased his visibility in Unseemly Science.
There are three secrets to writing Tinker. One is that he will stay silent in preference to speaking, and in speaking he’ll use the fewest possible words. The second is that from the moment Elizabeth gives him an apple in The Bullet Catcher’s Daughter, he is entirely devoted to her. She is the parent he has longed for, though he couldn’t admit it, even to himself. And the third trick is that in his actions and the words that I use to describe his movement and habits, he is like cat. I’m probably giving away too many writerly secrets here. But if you re-read the books, you’ll see it’s true.
My strongest emotional response with Tinker came when he recognised Elizabeth in her male guise. It was entirely matter-of-fact to him. He doesn’t even know that this ability is special. It is a mystery to him that other people can’t recognise the person who is the centre of his world. (Tove Jansson fans, may recognise a parallel here with Moomin Mama’s recognition of Moomintroll after he has come out of the Hobgoblin’s hat!)
But it is Julia that reviewers respond tend to talk about the most. What do we know about her? She is 2 years younger than Elizabeth. She comes from a settled family - by which I mean she has lived all her life in one house with two parents. This contrasts with Elizabeth’s experience of being raised in a travelling show by her father alone. The difference magnetises the two women together. Each sees in the other...
The full article can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
December 18, 2017
Gender Presentation and Identity
Approaching publication day, we’re counting down the top ten points of interest in the Gas-Lit Empire novels, as revealed in readers’ comments and questions. In the last episode I wrote about the 5th most commonly commented on topic: Cover Designs. The fourth most frequently referred to topic is:
Number 4: Gender Presentation and Gender Identity
Different reviewers have described this issue in different ways. Most commonly the protagonist is described as ‘cross dressing’, though that term is never used in any of the books. From the outset, she refers to her adoption of the appearance and manners of a man as ‘disguise’. Which it certainly is - because she is trying to hide her identity from people who would do her harm.
But there are deeper currents flowing, which are not so easily defined.
When I realised that this was going to be an aspect of the stories, I immediately thought of Twelfth Night, in which Viola disguises herself as her twin brother. I do have a fondness for the play. But that bit of plot always seemed to me ridiculous. When I was a child, I went to see a performance in Stratford. With the honesty of childhood, I thought how foolish the other characters were, since I could plainly see she was a woman in man’s clothing. I mentioned this to my father, who told me that in Shakespeare’s time only men were permitted to perform on stage. So Viola would have been a male actor playing a female character who disguised herself as a man.
Not wishing the novels to become farce, I started to read around historical examples of people who successfully passed as male, though they were assigned female at birth. There are many of these. (And, of course, there will be many more who were never ‘discovered’.) Two of the particularly interesting case studies are the pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Much has been written about them. Some people suggest they had disguised themselves as men to be able to perform male roles. Others suggest that the male presentation may have been closer to their natural gender identity. I’ve heard it suggested that for Anne Bonny it was disguise and for Mary Read it was her preferred presentation.
We will never know.
From my reading, I’d become convinced that Elizabeth passing herself as a man was entirely credible. Next I had to research the specific techniques that she might use. Much has been written about such practical questions.
Many reviewers have commented on how credible this aspect of the stories is. But from that reaction, please never imagine for a moment that I really understand it. A novelist is a trickster. We use our toolkit of illusion and misdirection to give the appearance of a fully formed understanding. The best I can say of myself is this: I know more now than I knew when I started.
But there is something substantive that happens when a novelist puts their mind into the mind of a fictional character and spends time exploring fictional situations - from the inside out, as it were. When things are working well, we get insights we might not have been able to access in other ways.
The more I wrote Elizabeth’s character, the more I realised that male and female presentations were each to some degree artificial for her. This is most clearly seen in her thoughts on the corset and the binding cloth. Each modifies her shape, one towards an idea of femininity, the other towards masculinity. Neither is her natural state. Nor are the roles that society permits for the two genders.
The novel is not a scholarly investigation. (Nor even a series of novels.) But it does have validity as an emotional investigation. One of the great strengths of the novel is its power to explore ambiguous areas of discourse without having to decide on a position.
In the Queen of All Crows, Elizabeth is explicitly challenged on this question. Male and female are presented to her as options and she is asked which set of clothes she would choose if there was no need of disguise and no one was looking. I’m not going to reveal her answer here. But I will tell you that even as she speaks it, she doesn’t know whether she is telling the truth or not.
You can read all the articles in this series here: https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire/
Number 4: Gender Presentation and Gender Identity
Different reviewers have described this issue in different ways. Most commonly the protagonist is described as ‘cross dressing’, though that term is never used in any of the books. From the outset, she refers to her adoption of the appearance and manners of a man as ‘disguise’. Which it certainly is - because she is trying to hide her identity from people who would do her harm.
But there are deeper currents flowing, which are not so easily defined.
When I realised that this was going to be an aspect of the stories, I immediately thought of Twelfth Night, in which Viola disguises herself as her twin brother. I do have a fondness for the play. But that bit of plot always seemed to me ridiculous. When I was a child, I went to see a performance in Stratford. With the honesty of childhood, I thought how foolish the other characters were, since I could plainly see she was a woman in man’s clothing. I mentioned this to my father, who told me that in Shakespeare’s time only men were permitted to perform on stage. So Viola would have been a male actor playing a female character who disguised herself as a man.
Not wishing the novels to become farce, I started to read around historical examples of people who successfully passed as male, though they were assigned female at birth. There are many of these. (And, of course, there will be many more who were never ‘discovered’.) Two of the particularly interesting case studies are the pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Much has been written about them. Some people suggest they had disguised themselves as men to be able to perform male roles. Others suggest that the male presentation may have been closer to their natural gender identity. I’ve heard it suggested that for Anne Bonny it was disguise and for Mary Read it was her preferred presentation.
We will never know.
From my reading, I’d become convinced that Elizabeth passing herself as a man was entirely credible. Next I had to research the specific techniques that she might use. Much has been written about such practical questions.
Many reviewers have commented on how credible this aspect of the stories is. But from that reaction, please never imagine for a moment that I really understand it. A novelist is a trickster. We use our toolkit of illusion and misdirection to give the appearance of a fully formed understanding. The best I can say of myself is this: I know more now than I knew when I started.
But there is something substantive that happens when a novelist puts their mind into the mind of a fictional character and spends time exploring fictional situations - from the inside out, as it were. When things are working well, we get insights we might not have been able to access in other ways.
The more I wrote Elizabeth’s character, the more I realised that male and female presentations were each to some degree artificial for her. This is most clearly seen in her thoughts on the corset and the binding cloth. Each modifies her shape, one towards an idea of femininity, the other towards masculinity. Neither is her natural state. Nor are the roles that society permits for the two genders.
The novel is not a scholarly investigation. (Nor even a series of novels.) But it does have validity as an emotional investigation. One of the great strengths of the novel is its power to explore ambiguous areas of discourse without having to decide on a position.
In the Queen of All Crows, Elizabeth is explicitly challenged on this question. Male and female are presented to her as options and she is asked which set of clothes she would choose if there was no need of disguise and no one was looking. I’m not going to reveal her answer here. But I will tell you that even as she speaks it, she doesn’t know whether she is telling the truth or not.
You can read all the articles in this series here: https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire/
December 14, 2017
That Cover Art!
Approaching publication day, we’re counting down the top ten points of interest in the Gas-Lit Empire novels, as revealed in readers’ comments and questions. In the last episode I wrote about the 6th most commonly commented on topic: Poliics.
The fifth most frequently referred to topic is:
Number 5: Cover Designs
We’re told to never judge a book by its cover. And yet one of the most frequent comments I see or hear about the Gas-Lit Empire novels is this:
‘I picked it off the shelf because the cover art was so gorgeous.’
So even though my part in this topic is minimal, it easily makes it to the top half of the list. The person really responsible is Will Staehle, a Seattle based designer. I had the pleasure of meeting him when I went out to that city for the Philip k. Dick Award ceremony.
Will wrote about the design process in an article on Tor.com, saying:
“I started with a few Victorian based thoughts, including designs with mixed and matched lettering, as well as some designs with heavy ornamentation. One of the other core elements in the story is the main character’s secret identity, so I also worked up some designs where I tried to use optical illusions to imply our double-sided heroine...”
“One of my all-time favorite artists is John Heartfield, who was an incredibly powerful photo-montage and collage artist. (We also happen to share the same birthday – just 90+ years apart! ) His use of simple objects and interesting compositions to create larger than life concepts, and in some cases images that were able to be two different things at the exact same time seemed a good fit for The Bullet Catcher’s Daughter. So, in a homage to Heartfield, we have a woman’s hand that is assembled from bullets and a small coin purse.”
At that stage, the publisher had contracted only two books. Given that, the high bar Will had set probably didn’t seem a problem. Indeed, when the cover for Unseemly Science was commissioned...
The full article, and cover image picture can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
The fifth most frequently referred to topic is:
Number 5: Cover Designs
We’re told to never judge a book by its cover. And yet one of the most frequent comments I see or hear about the Gas-Lit Empire novels is this:
‘I picked it off the shelf because the cover art was so gorgeous.’
So even though my part in this topic is minimal, it easily makes it to the top half of the list. The person really responsible is Will Staehle, a Seattle based designer. I had the pleasure of meeting him when I went out to that city for the Philip k. Dick Award ceremony.
Will wrote about the design process in an article on Tor.com, saying:
“I started with a few Victorian based thoughts, including designs with mixed and matched lettering, as well as some designs with heavy ornamentation. One of the other core elements in the story is the main character’s secret identity, so I also worked up some designs where I tried to use optical illusions to imply our double-sided heroine...”
“One of my all-time favorite artists is John Heartfield, who was an incredibly powerful photo-montage and collage artist. (We also happen to share the same birthday – just 90+ years apart! ) His use of simple objects and interesting compositions to create larger than life concepts, and in some cases images that were able to be two different things at the exact same time seemed a good fit for The Bullet Catcher’s Daughter. So, in a homage to Heartfield, we have a woman’s hand that is assembled from bullets and a small coin purse.”
At that stage, the publisher had contracted only two books. Given that, the high bar Will had set probably didn’t seem a problem. Indeed, when the cover for Unseemly Science was commissioned...
The full article, and cover image picture can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
December 11, 2017
The Gas-Lit Empire and the 'P' Word
Approaching publication day, we’re counting down the top ten points of interest in the Gas-Lit Empire novels, as revealed in readers’ comments and questions. In the last episode I wrote about the 7th most commonly commented on topic: Circuses and travelling shows.
The sixth most frequently referred to topic is:
Number 6: Politics
I was looking for a different word to describe this topic. After all, we are getting rather a lot of the P word in the news and I didn’t want to put anyone off. Can’t we at least have room in our entertainment for escapism?
So let’s state this from the start. By ‘politics’, I don’t mean the advocacy of one political party or another. I don’t mean the current political debates gripping the UK and America, although some reviewers have speculated on current issues in relation my the novels, seeing potential areas of overlap.
The subject that animates me (and therefore tends to come out in the novels) is a fascination for the processes underlying the detail of politics. I’m particularly interested in a strange paradox in contemporary democratic politics. Almost all politicians agree on almost all of their objectives. Yet they fight each other tooth and nail over the details of what should be done. Who would not say that they want to see a healthier, fairer, more prosperous, peaceful and happy society? How do they find room to argue?.
Differences emerge in two key areas:
1) How we prioritise different issues.
2) ‘Theories of change’ - how we believe those goals can best be achieved.
It is this second issue that I find particular fascinating - theories of change, ideas about how a society might be shifted from one place to another. We all want lower crime. But is that better achieved by increasing prison sentences or by putting money into drug rehabilitation? If cannabis were...
The full article can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
The sixth most frequently referred to topic is:
Number 6: Politics
I was looking for a different word to describe this topic. After all, we are getting rather a lot of the P word in the news and I didn’t want to put anyone off. Can’t we at least have room in our entertainment for escapism?
So let’s state this from the start. By ‘politics’, I don’t mean the advocacy of one political party or another. I don’t mean the current political debates gripping the UK and America, although some reviewers have speculated on current issues in relation my the novels, seeing potential areas of overlap.
The subject that animates me (and therefore tends to come out in the novels) is a fascination for the processes underlying the detail of politics. I’m particularly interested in a strange paradox in contemporary democratic politics. Almost all politicians agree on almost all of their objectives. Yet they fight each other tooth and nail over the details of what should be done. Who would not say that they want to see a healthier, fairer, more prosperous, peaceful and happy society? How do they find room to argue?.
Differences emerge in two key areas:
1) How we prioritise different issues.
2) ‘Theories of change’ - how we believe those goals can best be achieved.
It is this second issue that I find particular fascinating - theories of change, ideas about how a society might be shifted from one place to another. We all want lower crime. But is that better achieved by increasing prison sentences or by putting money into drug rehabilitation? If cannabis were...
The full article can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
December 7, 2017
Fairgrounds and Circuses
Your Top Ten Gas-Lit Empire Topics
Approaching publication day, we’re counting down the top ten points of interest in the Gas-Lit Empire novels, as revealed in readers’ comments and questions. In the last episode I wrote about the 8th most commonly commented on topic, which was research.
The seventh most frequently referred to topic is:
Number 7: Circuses and Travelling Shows
This is clearly a setting beloved of many readers, who have been keen to mention it in their reviews. It is an important aspect of the Bullet Catcher’s Daughter. Less so for the novel Unseemly Science. But the theme is reignited in Custodian of Marvels, where characters from the first book return. Though without the circus itself, they have a bond formed by their status as outsiders to every community through which they pass.
I was born in a house right next to the sea in the village of Borth in Ceredigion, Wales. There was a field next to our house where the seaside donkeys were left to graze. I remember a travelling fair coming to the village and pitching there. My parents were pleased to let them use our telephone for some calls. Unexpectedly, they gave us a free pass for the various fairground rides in exchange. I was a small child and didn’t understand the curious relationship between travelling people and the settled community.
Later, we moved a few miles down the coast to the town of Aberystwyth. A larger fair came and pitched there from time to time. Being older, I was beginning to sense that strange attraction/repulsion the townsfolk felt for the alien community that came for a week and then left. The streets around were thick with crowds. The smell of toffee apples, candyfloss and cigarettes. Strings of coloured light bulbs. Music and excited chatter.
To step into the glow of those lights was in some strange way to leave the ordinary world and enter a place where the restrictions of conventional morality seemed tantalisingly...
The full article can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
Approaching publication day, we’re counting down the top ten points of interest in the Gas-Lit Empire novels, as revealed in readers’ comments and questions. In the last episode I wrote about the 8th most commonly commented on topic, which was research.
The seventh most frequently referred to topic is:
Number 7: Circuses and Travelling Shows
This is clearly a setting beloved of many readers, who have been keen to mention it in their reviews. It is an important aspect of the Bullet Catcher’s Daughter. Less so for the novel Unseemly Science. But the theme is reignited in Custodian of Marvels, where characters from the first book return. Though without the circus itself, they have a bond formed by their status as outsiders to every community through which they pass.
I was born in a house right next to the sea in the village of Borth in Ceredigion, Wales. There was a field next to our house where the seaside donkeys were left to graze. I remember a travelling fair coming to the village and pitching there. My parents were pleased to let them use our telephone for some calls. Unexpectedly, they gave us a free pass for the various fairground rides in exchange. I was a small child and didn’t understand the curious relationship between travelling people and the settled community.
Later, we moved a few miles down the coast to the town of Aberystwyth. A larger fair came and pitched there from time to time. Being older, I was beginning to sense that strange attraction/repulsion the townsfolk felt for the alien community that came for a week and then left. The streets around were thick with crowds. The smell of toffee apples, candyfloss and cigarettes. Strings of coloured light bulbs. Music and excited chatter.
To step into the glow of those lights was in some strange way to leave the ordinary world and enter a place where the restrictions of conventional morality seemed tantalisingly...
The full article can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
December 4, 2017
How to research a Fantasy Novel?
Your Top Ten Gas-Lit Empire Topics
Approaching publication day, we’re counting down the top ten points of interest in the Gas-Lit Empire novels, as revealed in readers’ comments and questions. In the last episode I wrote about the 9th most commonly commented on topic: times and dates.
The eight most frequently referred to topic is:
Number 8: Research
Whilst research is seldom mentioned in reviews, it comes up as a question at 90% of author talks and readings. How do I do all my research, people want to know. At first I found this question somewhat alarming. Because I wasn’t aware of doing any research. It is fiction, after all. It is fantasy. They let you make things up.
But the question came up so regularly that I started responding with a question of my own. What research? I just read an extract to you. Can you pin down some of the research material that it revealed?
The result was fascinating. People believed they had been shown a fully fleshed out and thoroughly researched world. But it usually came down to a few precisely chosen ‘technical’ words scattered over a more vague suggestion of a setting. The readers had filled everything else without even knowing they were doing it. As in an impressionist watercolour, a few precisely placed details were giving the illusion that everything else has been fully realised.
To be fair, I do research. But it isn’t a formal process. I’m inquisitive by nature. Wherever I am, I find myself asking questions. Why is that drainpipe attached to the wall in that way? What would it have sounded like when a carriage went over those cobblestones? How did they sleep in a very small narrow boat cabin? When I write the stories, odd facts that I’ve randomly accumulated pop into my mind and I put them down on the page. Where there’s a gap in my knowledge (there are lots of those) I steer the story away.
The rest of it is a process of reasoning and educated guesses. In a big city without refrigeration and without steam trains, how would they get fresh food to the population? If most technology was held back, how far could medicine advance and what directions might it take? What are the limits to computing in the absence of electronics?
In summary, 95% of the apparent research in the novels comes from curiosity and pondering. As for the rest, there is always Google. (Other search engines exist.)
You can read the article and others in this series here: https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
Approaching publication day, we’re counting down the top ten points of interest in the Gas-Lit Empire novels, as revealed in readers’ comments and questions. In the last episode I wrote about the 9th most commonly commented on topic: times and dates.
The eight most frequently referred to topic is:
Number 8: Research
Whilst research is seldom mentioned in reviews, it comes up as a question at 90% of author talks and readings. How do I do all my research, people want to know. At first I found this question somewhat alarming. Because I wasn’t aware of doing any research. It is fiction, after all. It is fantasy. They let you make things up.
But the question came up so regularly that I started responding with a question of my own. What research? I just read an extract to you. Can you pin down some of the research material that it revealed?
The result was fascinating. People believed they had been shown a fully fleshed out and thoroughly researched world. But it usually came down to a few precisely chosen ‘technical’ words scattered over a more vague suggestion of a setting. The readers had filled everything else without even knowing they were doing it. As in an impressionist watercolour, a few precisely placed details were giving the illusion that everything else has been fully realised.
To be fair, I do research. But it isn’t a formal process. I’m inquisitive by nature. Wherever I am, I find myself asking questions. Why is that drainpipe attached to the wall in that way? What would it have sounded like when a carriage went over those cobblestones? How did they sleep in a very small narrow boat cabin? When I write the stories, odd facts that I’ve randomly accumulated pop into my mind and I put them down on the page. Where there’s a gap in my knowledge (there are lots of those) I steer the story away.
The rest of it is a process of reasoning and educated guesses. In a big city without refrigeration and without steam trains, how would they get fresh food to the population? If most technology was held back, how far could medicine advance and what directions might it take? What are the limits to computing in the absence of electronics?
In summary, 95% of the apparent research in the novels comes from curiosity and pondering. As for the rest, there is always Google. (Other search engines exist.)
You can read the article and others in this series here: https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
November 30, 2017
Your Top Ten Topics
Your Top Ten Gas-Lit Empire Topics
Approaching publication day, we’re counting down the top ten points of interest in the Gas-Lit Empire novels, as revealed in readers’ comments and questions. In the last episode I wrote about the 10th most commonly commented on topic: canals and boats.
The ninth most frequently referred to topic is:
Years and Dates
Several people reading the Bullet Catcher’s Daughter commented that the story took place in an alternate 19th Century. A few thought it was set in the 1970s - because of a sentence near the beginning of Chapter three:
“Then, in the Anglo-Scottish Republic’s 155th year, being equivalent to 1973 in the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales, the Grand Union Letter and Parcel Distribution Company transferred the last of its network to airship and the fleet of narrow boats was sold at auction.”
However, keen-eyed readers noted that it is actually set in an alternate 21st Century. There are more comments referencing the correct time frame after the publication of The Custodian of Marvels - in which book the date is made explicitly. (Each chapter begins with a date or time.)
This odd juxtaposition of a Victorianesque world and the present day was the idea from which I developed the Gas-Lit Empire. I was becoming increasingly aware of the 19th Century built structure of the city of Leicester and wanted to find a way of bringing it back to life - in the present day, so to speak. In order to do that, I constructed the alternate history timeline. Everything flowed from there.
At the time, I had no idea that it would lead me from my original short story into a novel, a trilogy, a second trilogy and perhaps beyond.
For this article and more like it, follow the link below:
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
Approaching publication day, we’re counting down the top ten points of interest in the Gas-Lit Empire novels, as revealed in readers’ comments and questions. In the last episode I wrote about the 10th most commonly commented on topic: canals and boats.
The ninth most frequently referred to topic is:
Years and Dates
Several people reading the Bullet Catcher’s Daughter commented that the story took place in an alternate 19th Century. A few thought it was set in the 1970s - because of a sentence near the beginning of Chapter three:
“Then, in the Anglo-Scottish Republic’s 155th year, being equivalent to 1973 in the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales, the Grand Union Letter and Parcel Distribution Company transferred the last of its network to airship and the fleet of narrow boats was sold at auction.”
However, keen-eyed readers noted that it is actually set in an alternate 21st Century. There are more comments referencing the correct time frame after the publication of The Custodian of Marvels - in which book the date is made explicitly. (Each chapter begins with a date or time.)
This odd juxtaposition of a Victorianesque world and the present day was the idea from which I developed the Gas-Lit Empire. I was becoming increasingly aware of the 19th Century built structure of the city of Leicester and wanted to find a way of bringing it back to life - in the present day, so to speak. In order to do that, I constructed the alternate history timeline. Everything flowed from there.
At the time, I had no idea that it would lead me from my original short story into a novel, a trilogy, a second trilogy and perhaps beyond.
For this article and more like it, follow the link below:
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
November 27, 2017
The top 10 things You Mentioned in Reviews
From here to publication day, we’ll be counting down the top ten points of interest in the Gas-Lit Empire novels, as revealed in readers’ comments and questions. The list is based on my impression of around 1000 reviews on Goodreads and Amazon as well as in publications such as Fantasy Faction, Entertainment Weekly and the Washington Post. I’ve also factored in the questions put to me at conventions, public readings, on Twitter and on Facebook.
It isn’t a scientific study. It could be that if I put all the data into a massive spreadsheet and did some sums, the order of lower ranked topics would turn out to be slightly different. You won’t be surprised to hear that I preferred guesstimation to actual mathematics in this case. However, I am reasonably confident, especially of the top few.
So here we go, the top ten countdown begins with:
Number 10: Canals and Boats
The year I started writing these books, I spent 6 months working as writer in residence for a museum project in the East Midlands of England. I had the pleasure of visiting many different historical sites around the region. But my favourite was Foxton Locks. I spent many hours there, interviewing boat owners, pub owners, museum staff and gongoozlers - the name given to people who like watching canal boats. That experience and my love of the canals seeped into stories.
Elizabeth lives on a boat moored just north of Leicester. She learns to trust her neighbors on the wharf. It is a place where she can keep a low profile. But her reasons for living there are emotional as well as practical. She has the soul of a traveler and loves the feeling that she could slip the mooring ropes at any moment. The shifting of the boat as the wind tugs at it is a constant reminder that she is not fixed down.
It seems that some readers of the books share my interest in canals and boats. This theme turns up in quite a number of review comments. It seems that some readers have formed a particular attachment to Elizabeth’s houseboat, Bessie. And so have I.
In the next episode, we’ll explore topic number 9
You can follow the countdown here:
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
It isn’t a scientific study. It could be that if I put all the data into a massive spreadsheet and did some sums, the order of lower ranked topics would turn out to be slightly different. You won’t be surprised to hear that I preferred guesstimation to actual mathematics in this case. However, I am reasonably confident, especially of the top few.
So here we go, the top ten countdown begins with:
Number 10: Canals and Boats
The year I started writing these books, I spent 6 months working as writer in residence for a museum project in the East Midlands of England. I had the pleasure of visiting many different historical sites around the region. But my favourite was Foxton Locks. I spent many hours there, interviewing boat owners, pub owners, museum staff and gongoozlers - the name given to people who like watching canal boats. That experience and my love of the canals seeped into stories.
Elizabeth lives on a boat moored just north of Leicester. She learns to trust her neighbors on the wharf. It is a place where she can keep a low profile. But her reasons for living there are emotional as well as practical. She has the soul of a traveler and loves the feeling that she could slip the mooring ropes at any moment. The shifting of the boat as the wind tugs at it is a constant reminder that she is not fixed down.
It seems that some readers of the books share my interest in canals and boats. This theme turns up in quite a number of review comments. It seems that some readers have formed a particular attachment to Elizabeth’s houseboat, Bessie. And so have I.
In the next episode, we’ll explore topic number 9
You can follow the countdown here:
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
