Laura Anne Gilman's Blog, page 69
April 19, 2014
In Case You Missed it, Midweek....
But since I know y'all are far less likely to click through than to read through, I reprint it here for your amusement. :-)
Mindy Klasky brought me into this blog tour with a few rather pointed - and makes-me-think - questions. Like me, she started in fantasy and branched out - most recently with the Diamond Brides series. Check her out!
1) What am I working on?
Two projects, currently. As L.A. Kornetsky, I'm writing the fourth Gin & Tonic mystery (cozy mysteries set in Seattle). As myself, I'm working on a brand new fantasy currently titled Silver on the Road (The Devil's West #1), which will be out from Simon & Schuster in 2015 (but for now you can read a story in that world in DEAD MAN'S HAND)
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
One of the things I'm trying to do with The Devil's West stories is create a modern (for 19th century interpretations of 'modern') American fantasy - one that isn't reliant on Europe for its legends and story arcs, but pulls from American (North and Central - not so much of South America in the first book, at least) people, legends, and history. It could be considered "weird west," but the west I'm writing about isn't the traditional cowboys and gunslingers, but rather the people who went before them, natives and immigrants alike: the adventurers, the settlers, the people who wanted to live outside the box..... and were willing to pay the devil to get it.
3) Why do I write what I do?
As the legacy of immigration (19th century arrivals from Eastern Europe) and as a student of American history, the conflict between old and new, power and vulnerability, tradition and innovation, has always fascinated me. And when I started writing the first story of the Devil's West (Crossroads) my mind asked the question: was it inevitable that the new American States expand into the western half of the continent? What if... there was a power there already? A strange, strong power that - unlike the Spanish and French - was not willing to trade or sell its control over native lands? What would happen to the natives living there, the settlers willing to venture into that unknown, the countries that have to deal with that power? And that idea spread from stories to a novel, to a series of novels.....
Short version: America is made up of many parts, and she has stories to tell all her own. I wanted to delve into that.
4) How does your writing process work?
I'm a very intense, burst-writer, whose brain is most creative in the morning. So I've learned to roll with that. I wake up at 6am and deal with the cats (I have a diabetic eldercat who needs his shot) and go through the morning routine: shower, breakfast, get dressed. I'm not one of those writers who can work in pjs or sweats - although thank god my brain doesn't require a suit and shoes. Jeans and a shirt, a pot of coffee, the cats asleep behind me in the office, and my fellow word-warriors in the virtual room giving me positive peer pressure... a few thousand words between 7am and 1pm, and I spend the rest of the afternoon doing administrative work, research, or editing. Five, sometimes six days a week - seven, when deadlines get crunchy.
And I don't get to do just one draft. Everything is layers: First the basic research, to make sure I've got my starting points down. Then Draft 1, which makes sure I hit all the plot-points, and stake out the pacing, get a feel for the characters and why they do what they do. Then there's Draft 2, where I fix the pacing, and start filling in the holes of Why and Where (more research!), and Draft 3, which lets me do the specific color-work on characters and motivations, and correct anything that might gave gone wrong in Drafts 1-2. Then I get feedback, and fix the things that were pointed out to me. And only then, at Draft 4, do I send the book on to my editor...
Of course, it's not all writing. I do a lot of research, starting before I write the first word, and going all the way through to the final version. Some of that's reading, or talking to people (I am known for giving yelps-for-help on my Twitter feed, and Livejournal) - and some of it's hands-on experience. Since much of this book is set in Kansas, and I've never actually been to Kansas... we're embarking on a road trip to trace the route (more or less from Kansas City to Colorado Springs, CO). I'm a firm believer in as much hands-on research as possible (which includes, in this case, refreshing my memory of guns and knifes, cooking over a campfire, and pack-trail riding...).
Next week (April 21), please visit:
Keith DeCandido - Media-writer, fantasy writer, percussionist, and self-proclaimed long-haired hippie New Yorker
Katherine Eliska Kimbriel - Long long ago, editor-me tried to buy Kathi's YA fantasy novel Night Calls. Some other editor beat me to it, but I've been a fan of her work ever since.
(the third person tagged had to drop out for personal reasons.)
April 18, 2014
Solve My Stress!
EtA: why do I have the feeling that y'all are voting "wing it" just for the eventual on-the-road tweetathon amusement?
April 16, 2014
Porting over from Tumblr...
Main thought: Yep, yep, that’s kind of what it’s like when the characters toss your script and refuse to go along with the plot….and explaining to them that “but this is the plot! You need to follow the outline!” never seems to work…” But the experienced storyteller also knows that sometimes the plot twists, and the ending isn’t quite what you’d originally thought it would be.
Metatron spent a lot of time transcribing someone else’s words, and reading other peoples’ stories. As a writer, though, he’s a newbie. He hasn’t yet learned that you can’t always force the ending to stay the same form it was when you started….
Second thought: oh Gadreel, what was that look on your face, at the end? What is going on in your oh-so-conflicted and oh-so-damaged head?
Third thought: any Gabriel is better than no Gabriel, I suppose.
Fourth thought: that title was a terrible, terrible multi-layered pun, bless their pointy little heads.
Fifth thought… this one gets kinda long. And there are gifs.
So, yeah. Overall high marks for Show a) kicking it up a notch in terms of Events, b) using every damn tool in their toolbox to kick it up, and c) not pulling many punches.
But there was one punch that, for me, was straight to the gut.
The look on Castiel’s face was the pullback to the blow: What have you done?
Dean’s fine. Everyone’s fine. Right. And they part, each to do their bit to bring this to an end…
But when Castiel returns to his motel room, filled with the detritus of Being a Hunter (shades of John’s motel room in Season 1), the look on his face is of someone who is bleeding internally, who has taken the last blow before his knees buckle. Because Metatron holds the script, and Dean wears the Mark of Cain.
“You are not the hero in this masterpiece. You are the villain. I’m the hero.”
If they are not the heroes, if they are not The Righteous Man and the Angel - then what chance to do they have?
And then the blow lands - the moment when Castiel stops, turns, and tears down the wall of evidence, clearing it away to make the glyph of the Horn of Gabriel and call his troops to him …
It was the sheer violence that I loved in this scene [where loved means “oh Casbabyno”], the “get the fuck out of my way you useless pieces of paper that can’t save anyone” intensity of his slow-building yet sudden decision. That is not the rational strategist, the emotionless angel-soldier. That’s a heart in pain
”Fine,” he is saying. ”I will play your game. I will embrace the role you have made for me, leading my people to death in a futile attempt to destroy you. And we will see how it plays out…”
And oh, Cas, baby, you’re real close to becoming this 2014’s version of EndVerse Dean….
turnaround turnaround
29 hour turnaround, total.
I'ze tired.
Massive amounts of email to unload and answer, work to edit, words to write, and trips to plan. Knowing I'll get it all under control isn't quite the same as having it all under control already.
*makes more coffee, adds it to the whiskey*
April 15, 2014
Happy Birthday to the CatofSize!
Today is Cat-of-Size's Birthday (Observed). Observed, because nobody's actually sure quite how old he was when I adopted him, so...
But having his birthday observed on tax day always made sense to me, considering how much he's cost me over the years...
Happy tenth-or-eleven-ish Birthday, Boomerang, Cat of Little Brain, Fool of a Took, Meatloaf-in-Trainaing, Cat of Size!
2004
2014
April 13, 2014
Wild and Crazy Weekend...
Yeah, I'm a hobbit. Your point?
Sunday I....slept in (after a brief wake-up to feed and stick the cats) until noon. At that point, my plan to haul the bike out of the storage room and give it a tune-up fell prey to utter slothfulness. My total accomplishment today was getting the actual physical in-box/to-file box down to zero.
Actually, that's a pretty damn good accomplishment.
(I hate filing. I've always, since I was a wee baby editorial assistant, hated filing. I don't even get a feeling of satisfaction from having filed. I just hates it.)
I probably should go eat something now, though.
April 12, 2014
Ahhhhh, Spring.
(The park is Inwood Hill, the bridge is the Henry Hudson, and past that you can see [barely] the Palisades)
And yes, due to a day spent in the sun.... the freckles have reappeared. I need to remember my *&^& hat next time....
April 11, 2014
April 10, 2014
Reordering the Actions
In an earlier post, I outlined the predicted structure of SILVER ON THE ROAD, as follows:
Part 1: Flood
Part 2: The Road
Part 3: A Magician
Part 4: Bones and Stone
Part 5: Silver on the Road
Part 6: Spanish Flu
Part 7: The Dust Roads
As of 9 April, the structure looks thus:
Part 1: Flood
Part 2: The Road
Part 3: Bones and Stones
Part 4: Rising Winds
Part 5: Spanish Flu
Part 6: Silver on the Road
Word count approximately as-estimated (112,000 before revisions)
And no, "Spanish Flu" is not going to be the final section title for 5. Although I'm still tempted, For Reasons.
April 9, 2014
Mix, knead, rest. Repeat.
It's actually sort of relaxing, being able to slip into familiar characters and familiar settings - while there's a particular trickiness to writing mysteries, there's also a structure I can fall back on, compared to the wide open canvas of the epic fantasy, especially an epic fantasy where you're worldbuilding at an intense and somewhat terrifying scale...
So hopefully, I'll also be able to catch up on the backlog of email and blogposts that have piled up over the past two months. Eeeek.
And, if anyone's wondering "how the hell do you juggle all that?" I ask in turn - how the hell do you manage all your projects? How do we manage to learn multiple subjects in school? We just...do.
