Stephen Cox's Blog, page 7
September 28, 2022
Paperback Launch Update
Palmers Green Author Stephen Cox has his second book out in paperback on 13 October. It’s also the tenth anniversary of committing to being a writer.
Our Child of the Stars and now Our Child of Two Worlds combine family drama in 1960s USA with new takes on a few classic SF ideas. A childless couple adopt an orphaned alien and try to keep him safe – against peril on Earth and in space.
LAUNCH
Saturday 15 October, 7pm All Good Bookshop. 35 Turnpike Lane, Wood Green, London, N8 0EP. There’s some wine and snacks but do BYOB. Stephen will reading, doing Q+A and talking on Tigger or Eeyore? – ten years getting publishing. RSVP appreciated. BTW you can order from the bookshop and Stephen will sign and dedicate where asked
ONLINE LAUNCH
There is an online launch Monday 17th Oct at 7pm on Zoom – similar to above. All welcome but email stephen.cox.pr@gmail.com for Zoom link. Stephen does talks to groups.
ENFIELD TOWN SIGNING
If you just want to grab Stephen to sign a copy, Enfield Waterstones Church Street are planning a just-turn-up signing 12-2pm Sat 15th.
Our Child of the Stars was praised by the Guardian, Grazia, FT, the Mail and LA Times. (“…a wonderfully emotional, heart-warming journey of what it really means to be a parent” – LA Times).
The sequel, Our Child of Two Worlds has won similar praise. “Riveting, compelling, and emotionally charged: a page turner I loved” “watch and be dazzled”
More on https://www.stephencox.co.uk
September 20, 2022
The Case of the Corrected Carol
“Mystery/detective/police or legal procedurals are antithetical to horror/fantasy; if you like one, you will not usually like the other. because traditional mysteries MUST be realistic, otherwise detection makes no sense.”
Joyce Carol Oates”
This is objectively wrong.
Firstly, because many people read widely in genre. I read thrillers, contemporary fiction, historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and some YA (and YA can be any of those genres as well – it is more a mode than a genre). To give a specific example, I have read traditional murder mysteries set in ALL these genres – traditional in the sense of solved by logic, insight into character, lab work, etc.
I have written ‘traditional’ mysteries which are also science fiction or fantasy. What are the actual issues?
Does the logical process of unpicking a ‘traditional mystery’ require absolute realism? Clearly, if you have read good SFF, you know it doesn’t.
Oates assumes that once you leave the shores of absolute realism, anything can happen. Therefore a mystery cannot be constructed because things happen without a reason. This is a rookie error, each story in science fiction and fantasy follows their own logic, which is sufficiently revealed to the reader that the story makes some sense.
Mysteries fall into two types – fair, where the reader can puzzle out what is going on from what is in the text – and unfair – where the ‘investigator’ has information the reader does not, or they can make the uniquely correct deduction from the facts whereas a normal person couldn’t find the signal in the noise, or there are multiple solutions. (Famously Arthur Conan Doyle accepted some of his Holmes stories had other solutions.)
A great many mysteries are written to be ‘unfair’ and are perfectly enjoyable. You are along for the ride. The SFF mysteries I have written are fair – the detective knows nothing relevant to the case which has not been shared with the reader. Try “Murder in the hospital” in my Free Fiction pages
It is rare to set out to write a mystery which is immediately solved – although it would be a splendid story if the solution could be known immediately but be exceptionally difficult to prove.
Those solving the crime can share what they learn with the reader. ‘Using this spell, I can say who has been in this room since the last full moon.’ This is then no different from any other source of information for the detective. Spells or hitech are just lab work.
Or whatever is special in the world may mislead the detective or be inconclusive. We used to think DNA was infallible. Then we discovered human error creeps in.
If your story rests on orcs having night-vision but being colour-blind, a fair author will slip that fact in, directly or otherwise. It’s no different from writing a deeply conventional murder.
Mysteries are usually out to entertain with a thrilling or intriguing plot, to shed some light on character and the human condition, and in the classic murder mystery, to assert moral order over immoral chaos. The murderer is caught or otherwise punished.
SFF stories can be heist movies, buddy cop stories, classic noir thrillers, creepy psychological chillers, or political dramas. They can be set in any era and any genre. Ultimately they are more often about people than ideas.
But Joyce Carol Oates does us one favour – it reminds us to read in a genre before pontificating about it.
Picture thanks to cottonbro pexels.com
Detection can take place in many worlds
September 19, 2022
The Power of Shorts
Les Murray wrote a great poem about shorts, as in trousers, but I am talking about short stories.
Short stories provide a superb form for fiction, and I’ve written a good many. An intriguing story can be done in a few words – flash fiction is often more like poetry – or they can sprawl to 10000.
I believe an idea, or a set-up, has a natural best length. Your story seed might grow to be a rabbit hutch, a shed, a house, or a cathedral.
It is one reason why all the speculative genres are keen on the short form. You might feel 2-5000 words is enough to float the imaginative challenge.
One of my stories (Winged) postulated a society where a small number of people – apparently at random – grow wings in adolescence. The winged can fly, are stronger in various physical ways, and much more charismatic. This fast-tracks them into the elite of politics, the civil service, and media. The story combined the prompt ‘what if coming out immediately moved you into the elite’ with the human idea of ‘what happens to a school friendship when one friend receives a massive leg-up in life through chance’.
Some great ideas don’t need much development. Winged will never be a novel. I am perfectly capable of developing a credible working society around this, and of writing a novel about male friendship. I just didn’t feel I had to do this particular work, this particular way.
Conversely, when I wrote the short story that launched Cory into the world, it was obvious I was tilling fertile ground. Family. An outside eye on humanity. Loving difference. A kid in terrible danger. The issue was not – can this grow into a novel? It was, is it two novels or three?
With short stories you can try out ideas, and forms, and settings – try them as a writer and try them as a reader. You can finish the piece with the end of the world, the transcendence of humanity, or the Second Coming. You get in when you need to and leave before you outstay your welcome.
Short stories allow you to taste someone’s work. I’m unlikely to finish a novel with a truly terrible chapter but if a short story doesn’t work for you, you haven’t wasted a day.
I am intrigued by novellas. 20-40k allows substantial room for character, world, and plot development.
Anyway, a plug.
I have free fiction on my website. Newsletter subscribers get exclusive content every so often.
Coming soon a new story in the Coryverse (the world of Our Child of the Stars and Our Child of Two Worlds) and in due course a new taster story to the world of my Work in Progress.
I may share with you the real solution to the Princes in the Tower; a charming enigmatic elegy; a sweet superhero love story; a provocative post-apocalyptic tale; and the only story I have ever written inspired by a scientific research paper.
August 25, 2022
Authors Over Fifty podcast
Late Start Writers
I had a lovely chat with Texan Julia Brewer Daily whose podcast is called Authors Over Fifty – which is what it is about – and like most publicity I do it is about both books.
This episode launches Thursday 25 August.
Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts – authors over 50.
That same day it will be available on YouTube
We talked Britain and America, what brought us to writing, methods and issues but above all, the late start.
I think there are several strong advantages to a writer starting later in life and a couple of disadvantages.
If you haven’t started early in life, better to start now than moan.
Being more financially established helps. If you have kids, them being old enough to entertain themselves for a bit is enormously useful.
Many people – not all – have wider experience when older and have their stuff more together and more things to write about.
Against that can be set
Energy and focus. If I was 25 again, I would be able to do new writing in the evenings. (I can sometimes edit in the evenings but not always.)
You get better at writing by writing and getting feedback – however busy any stage of life can be, young starters have more time in total.
Most careers build slowly so obviously if you have 40 years of writing ahead that will be better
The podcast goes into this and hope you enjoy it. Julia is keen to get more subscribers.
While I wish I had started earlier, I equally look at my current books, I fairly sure I couldn’t have written them before I had kids.
August 5, 2022
How many freaking plots are there?
Before I reproduce a letter in the Guardian many years ago, what is all this about there only being one story, or seven, or 36?
Humans like to find patterns and make categories. Aristotle said stories should have a beginning, middle, and end, and progress through a logical chain of cause and effect. Unlike many things Aristotle says, this stands up surprisingly well., although now we don’t always tell stories now in the order they happened.
In Shakespeare’s day, plays were comedies (ends with wedding), tragedies (ends with funeral), or histories (‘right’ King wins.)
The Hero’s Journey tries to shoehorn every story into a single model where personal change and succeeding in the objective are the same thing. At a basic level it is definitely right to consider internal and external conflict and change. In my view, the Heroine’s Journey is better in that it considers three aspects – internal change, external conflict, and a change in respect to society (family, team, etc).
Polti found 36 basic plots – truly more like dramatic situations – in fairy tales.
The following piece claims there are eight essential plots (but in effect adds a nineth ‘modern plotlessness.’) Each plotty plot can be ‘inverted’ or comes in at least two versions – so that is already sixteen plots. They can be done seriously or as comedy or farce. Hamlet could be darkly hilarious if no-one ever managed to murder the people they were trying to kill. Then they can be combined. A love triangle can be added to any of the others.
Of course, reading the below, people need not be human, not all boys are looking for girls, and three is not always a crowd.
It’s true that there are deep structural similarities between stories and that understanding how a story works is important. Stories and books can meander and lose interest because the writer is not clear what they are doing.
Writing combines free creativity and strong discipline, matching ideas can produce fruitful new scenarios. But trying to reduce a book to a standard plot can sometimes serve no purpose.
To say every story is either ‘a stranger comes’ or ‘someone goes on a journey’ only works by taking sweeping definitions of the words. That reminds me of the phase ‘everyone is bisexual really’ which can only be true for a very wide definition of bisexual or really or both – a definition too broad to be useful.
Our Child of the Stars is “A stranger comes to town”. Which of the following plots is it?
I like this list because I use it as a prompt for ideas.
Article begins:
“I’M NOT sure about plots for stories, but plots for plays is something my father, the Irish playwright Denis Johnston, had a lot to say about. Originally he thought there were seven, but then he realised there are in fact eight:
1. Cinderella – or unrecognised virtue at last recognised. It’s the same story as the Tortoise and the Hare. Cinderella doesn’t have to be a girl, nor does it even have to be a love story. What is essential is that the Good is despised, but is recognised in the end, something that we all want to believe.
2. Achilles – the Fatal Flaw that is the groundwork for practically all classical tragedy, although it can be made comedy too, as in the old standard Aldwych farce. Lennox Robinson’s The Whiteheaded Boy is the Fatal Flaw in reverse.
3. Faust – the Debt that Must be Paid, the fate that catches up with all of us sooner or later. This is found in all its purity as the chase in O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones. And in a completely different mood, what else is The Cherry Orchard?
4. Tristan – that standard triangular plot of two women and one man, or two men and one woman. The Constant Nymph or almost any French farce.
5. Circe – the Spider and the Fly. Othello. The Barretts of Wimpole Street if you want to change the sex. And if you don’t believe me about Othello (the real plot of which is not the triangle and only incidentally jealousy) try casting it with a good Desdemona but a poor Iago.
6. Romeo and Juliet – Boy meets Girl, Boy loses Girl, Boy either finds or does not find Girl – it doesn’t matter which.
7. Orpheus – The Gift taken Away. This may take two forms: either the tragedy of the loss itself, as in Juno and the Paycock, or it may be about the search that follows the loss, as in Jason and the Golden Fleece.
8. The Hero Who Cannot Be Kept Down. The best example of this is that splendid play Harvey , made into a film with James Stewart.
These plots can be presented in so many different forms – tragedy, comedy, farce, whodunnit – and they can be inverted, but they still form the basis of all good writing. The fault with many contemporary plays is simply that they do not have a plot.
Rory Johnston, London NW3.
July 4, 2022
Revamp of my web site
Excuse my appearance – and let me know immediately if any links don’t work!
The site is being updated and restructured so it it is clearer and keep coming back to see the improvements! This will include a little shop and easier navigation.
It’s also moved to a new hoster – wordpress.com – so that I spent less time on tech and more time on content.
If you find this useful, a coffee would be nice!
Revamp of site
The site is being updated and restructured so keep coming back to see the improvements! This will include a little shop and easier navigation
July 3, 2022
Four books I read in June
I’ve read two books where a teenager has to navigate a post-apocalyptic England – and two queer romances. You can miss good books if you scorn teenage protagonists.
We live in a world contemplating disaster. Writing about after allows stories of humans under pressure, and it can ask questions about how we organise ourselves, what we would lose, and perhaps here and there, what we might gain. They don’t have to be right wing power fantasies. Read more here.
A boy and his dog by C A Fletcher shows the British Isles largely depopulated. Gris’s family only knows one or two other families, scattered across the whole Western Isles. A stranger steals his dog, among other things, and impetuous Gris sails after him. Step by step Fletcher puts Gris in increasing danger, in a haunting vision of a world largely without humans. The author has a brilliant way of foreshadowing disaster, in a way that makes what actually goes wrong a complete surprise, with at least one unforgivable twist, and he brings it to a staggering ending.
The Book of Koli by M R Carey starts in a post-apocalyptic Yorkshire, where an isolated village is slowly shrinking – births being fewer than deaths. Surrounded by carnivorous trees and other mutants, the community is ruled by those who can make old technology work. Koli challenges this and ends up expelled. Carey delivers originality and imagination, his humane take on the world is accessible. This is the first of a trilogy, in which Koli must see if humanity is doomed to die out.
Red White and Royal Blue is fun – Alex is the adult son of the female President of the US and dislikes tall handsome Prince Henry of the British Royal Family. (It’s set in a world where Trump lost). Obviously, they’re going to end up in love but it’s good clean entertainment getting there. Spin, the obsessions of the modern media, and the stultifying nature of monarchy add to the mix. Many people firmly believe it is bad to read books that make you happy, and they also believe it must be easy to write them. I’m not going to read this sort of thing every day but it’s very successful, and even drips in a positive political worldview. Passionate love scenes are tasteful.
Felix Ever After follows black trans artist Felix at art school in Brooklyn, it is about his struggles with bullying, including aggressive deadnaming, and not knowing what he wants to do with his talent. The title warns you that he gets his stuff together, though it’s sharper and less obvious than Red White and Blue. We need an assertion of the basic humanity of trans people.
June 13, 2022
Our Child of Two Worlds: a few reviews of interest
(There are more – this is a quick selection)
“A compelling story of love, family, and hope, Stephen Cox skilfully continues the story of Cory, the alien child who became the beloved son of Molly and Gene in Our Child of the Stars. Cory is torn between where he came from and his life on Earth. Heart-warmingly beautiful, Our Child of Two Worlds is not to be missed.”
Barbara Conrey, USA Today Bestselling author of Nowhere Near Goodbye
Annarella – Scrapping and Playing blog
“Riveting, compelling, and emotionally charged: a page turner I loved”
“This is a book about hope, hope that things can get better, that we can work it out”
“Like the best SF, Our Child of Two Worlds is about us, at our best and worst, and how we respond to the best and the worst in others. Cory’s people are from a very different, almost Utopian seeming culture and – as in one of Swift’s novels – we’re judged by that comparison, Cory himself noting it even as his love for his adopted parents and his friends burns bright. Are we worth saving, if we seem willing to destroy ourselves anyway?
“Once again, Stephen Cox has created a novel that strikes at the heart of family. The novel, I think, can be seen as an examination of how complicated family interactions can be. How infuriating blood relatives are. How difficult marriage can be even when both people are on the same page, wanting the same things. How hard it is when what is best for your child most definitely isn’t best for you. Throw in some aliens and the threat of the extinction of the Earth and those themes are stretched to their limits.”
“The sequel to Our Child of the Stars will definitely delight those of us who loved the first instalment.”
“Stephen Cox writes beautifully and fills his characters with warmth and self-questioning. I love the incidental characters who debate whether Cory is a hoax. There’s the drama surrounding Molly’s family. There are tensions that play out on an intimate scale against the massive context of aliens, space travel, the potential end of the world. It works brilliantly.”
