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Thursdays of Sword & Sorceress 27: the Michael Payne interview

This week’s interview is with Michael Payne.

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1.) Tell us about yourself.

Eh, what’s to tell? I’m just your average library clerk/church musician/college radio host/webcartoonist/story writer. Dime a dozen, really.

2.) Why do you write?

‘Cause I’ve never been able to stop. Stories and characters are constantly skating through my head, and typing them out so I can shape them into things that maybe make sense and are maybe interesting keeps me from hopping around after them like Frankenstein’s monster chasing butterflies only he can see.

3.) Sword & Sorceress is known for sword & sorcery centered around a strong female character. Is there any particular trick to writing strong female characters?

Get to know some strong females. Around about 1960, for instance, when my mother was in her early 20s, she packed up, left her whole family behind in Illinois to move to southern California with nothing but two suitcases, and got a job as a proofreader at the little local newspaper where my father had just started working as a photographer. And my eldest sister worked as a chemical engineer building rocket engines for several years after graduating from CalTech. So I’ve just been writing what I know.

4.) What would you say makes sword & sorcery different than other kinds of fantasy?

It wasn’t until the last year or so that I realized people actually thought of sword & sorcery as something different from other kinds of fantasy, so I may not be the best person to ask this question. I’d guess that real sword & sorcery stories have fewer talking squirrels in them than mine do, but again, that’d just be a guess.

5.) How do you think ebooks and the Internet will change the way we read & write?

I’m what you might call a slow adopter; I mean, I still don’t have a cell phone ’cause I can’t think of any reason to get one, and for the same reason, I’ve yet to invest in any sort of ebook reader.

But the advent of the internet has certainly changed things. Where else, after all, could a guy like me who can barely draw have spent the last seven-and-a-half years posting two pages of comics to his website every weekday for an audience that regularly reaches into the double digits?

And as an avid admirer of the current My Little Pony TV show, I find the internet indispensable for writing and reading fanfiction. No more smudged mimeographs or stapled-together fanzines! And while most of it’s as grammatically atrocious and artistically questionable as fanfiction has always been, now it’s all lovely and pristine and carefully indexed on the web!

6.) Tell us about your Sword & Sorceress story.

“Airs Above the Ground” is the sixth adventure of Cluny the Sorceress Squirrel and her two familiars, Shtasith, a firedrake, and Terence Crocker, a somewhat befuddled human. The previous five stories saw them navigate their first year at Huxley College where the expectations of who can be considered a sorcerer have forced them to pretend that Crocker is the wizard with Shtasith as his familiar and Cluny just a fetish he needs to keep his highly disturbed mind focused. This story sees them on summer break visiting Crocker’s well-to-do and not-terribly-supportive family.

7.) Can you share an excerpt from your Sword & Sorceress story?

Flexing his nostrils, Shtasith gave a greenish puff, the rotten-egg stench making Cluny wince. Crocker groaned, leaped for the window, the tiny tornado Cluny had conjured to stir a breeze in the August Friday morning heat ruffling his black curly hair. “That!” Crocker shook a finger at Shtasith. “A weekend with my folks will stink exactly like that!”

Cluny flared her claws, stretched the tornado’s tail into Shtasith’s cloud, sucked it outside. “I’m sorry, Crocker, but if we’re truly going to come together as a team, balance each other, and keep each other honest, we need to–”

“To what??” His anguish folded Cluny’s ears. “Totally humiliate me??” The half-angry, half-queasy look on his face was like nothing she’d ever seen there. “My folks already thought I was a blot on the family name before I got the lowest passing marks possible on the Huxley entrance exams!” He flailed his arms. “And now I can either pretend I’m a crazy, ultra-powerful super wizard like Master Gollantz wants ev’ryone to think, or I can tell ‘em the truth: that they were right all along, that I’m not good enough to be a wizard, that I’m nothing but the world’s only human familiar!”

8.) Recommend one other book or short story you have written that we should read.

A recent thing I’m really happy about is my short story “Thoughts on Early Spring” in Kazka Press’s anthology Bronies: For the Love of Ponies published back in June. I’ve had the story’s two main characters lurking around in my head for twenty years, but I was never able to build a story around them till I began observing the adult fandom that’s sprung up in the wake of the aforementioned My Little Pony cartoon show.

9.) Recommend one non-fiction book that you haven’t written.

I’m trying to recall the last time I even read a non-fiction book. Simon Louvish’s biography of Laurel & Hardy last spring before giving it to my uncle as a birthday present, yes, but unless you’re as mad about Laurel & Hardy as everyone in my family is…

I could recommend my all-time favorite book on writing, Algis Budrys’s Writing to the Point, but it’s been out of print since before he died, so I doubt anyone could track down a copy. Judging from the evidence, therefore, non-fictional things don’t much interest me, a conclusion I find a little surprising. I’ll hafta look into that.

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Thanks, Michael, for the interview.

Check out our interviews with past S&S contributors – , , , Sword & Sorceress 25, and Sword & Sorceress 26.

And the novel featuring my Sword & Sorceress character, spy and assassin Caina Amalas, is now available for free in all ebook formats: Child of the Ghosts.

-JM

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Published on October 18, 2012 05:40

GHOST IN THE FLAMES – 3,000 copies

Cover image Copyright Nicholas Wave | iStockPhoto.com

September 2012 was my best sales month so far. It was also the month GHOST IN THE FLAMES passed 3,000 copies sold.

Thanks, everyone!

This is especially gratifying because I tried very, very hard to sell that book to a traditional publisher and got exactly nowhere.

-JM

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Published on October 17, 2012 14:19

ebook sales for September 2012

4,785

The Lord was kind to me, for that is quite a lot of books. In fact, that is the most books I have ever sold in a single month. That’s 34,971 books this year, and a total of 43,336 since I started this little self-publishing experiment back in April of 2011.

Thank you, everyone!

April 2011: 22

May 2011: 105

June 2011: 236

July 2011: 366

August 2011: 489

September 2011: 1335

October 2011: 1607

November 2011: 2142

December 2011: 2340

January 2012: 3261

February 2012: 3750

March 2012: 3644

April 2012: 3521

May 2012: 3886

June 2012: 3580

July 2012: 4153

August 2012: 4608

September 2012: 4785

-JM

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Published on October 16, 2012 14:24

THE DRAGON’S SHADOW – the first chapter

Image copyright Dvargfoto | Dreamstime.com

Click here to read the first chapter of THE DRAGON’S SHADOW.

The rest of the novella will be coming very soon. Here’s the description:

Lucan Mandragon is the Dragon’s Shadow, the most powerful wizard of the Grim Marches. His brother hates him, his father regards him as a weapon, and the nobles distrust him…but they all fear his magic.

And when Lucan’s lost love Tymaen falls ill, stricken by a deadly poison, there is no one else who can save her.

But to save Tymaen, Lucan will have to plumb the secrets of a master necromancer…and face a trap that even his power cannot overcome.

-JM

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Published on October 15, 2012 19:37

The Dragon’s Shadow coming soon

Image copyright Dvargfoto | Dreamstime.com

Now that GHOST IN THE STONE is finished, it’s time to start working on THE DRAGON’S SHADOW, a stand-alone DEMONSOULED novella about Lucan Mandragon.

What’s it about? Read on for the description!

Lucan Mandragon is the Dragon’s Shadow, the most powerful wizard of the Grim Marches. His brother hates him, his father regards him as a weapon, and the nobles distrust him…but they all fear his magic.

And when Lucan’s lost love Tymaen falls ill, stricken by a deadly poison, there is no one else who can save her.

But to save Tymaen, Lucan will have to plumb the secrets of a master necromancer…and face a trap that even his power cannot overcome.

If all goes well, it should be out before the end of the month.

-JM

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Published on October 14, 2012 08:50

Reader Question Day #41 – the origins of Caina and THE GHOSTS

GHOST IN THE STONE came out yesterday, so it’s only appropriate that we have several questions about Caina and THE GHOSTS this week!

Danielle asks:

If you don’t mind me asking how’d you come up with Caina and the whole series??

The idea first came to me in 2007, when I saw that Marion Zimmer Bradley’s SWORD & SORCERESS XXII anthology was looking for submissions. I spent several weeks writing a short story called KNIGHT OF SORROWS, and I deliberately wrote it with a very high fantasy, very Arthurian sort of tone, because I thought that was what the editor would go for.

The editor, Elisabeth Waters, rejected it. She said that while it was a good story, it didn’t have the tone she wanted for the anthology. That would have been that…but there was still a week and a half left in the submission period.

Upon later reflection, that was the genesis of Caina and the entire THE GHOSTS series. I was not going to give up, and I was going to do my best to get into that anthology.

So in about three days I wrote and edited a story called BLACK GHOST, RED GHOST about a spy named Caina sent to investigate (and kill, if necessary) a treasonous Lord Governor. I made sure it has exactly the opposite tone of KNIGHT OF SORROWS, and that Caina had a much harder and more competent personality than the main character in KNIGHT OF SORROWS. (Amusingly, I later found out that in his “Inferno”, Dante named one of the regions of hell “Caina”.) After I finished it at about 3 AM or so on the third day, I sent it in, Ms. Waters bought it for the anthology, and that was that.

(Side note: I wound up selling KNIGHT OF SORROWS to a small-press magazine called MINDFLIGHTS a whilte later – you can still read it here.)

In 2008, SWORD AND SORCERESS XXIII opened up for submissions. I wrote another story with Caina called STOLEN GHOSTS, sent it in, and Ms. Waters bought that, too. I’ve been writing short stories for SWORD & SORCERESS ever since – this year’s story, GHOST PYRES, is the sixth (sixth!) one I’ve written for SWORD & SORCERESS.

After STOLEN GHOSTS, I thought I had a good thing going with Caina, so I decided to write a novel about her. In late 2008 and early 2009 I wrote GHOST IN THE FLAMES, and in later 2009 I wrote GHOST IN THE BLOOD. My idea was that I would try to sell GHOST IN THE FLAMES, with GHOST IN THE BLOOD ready as a sequel in case FLAMES did well.

I did not have any luck selling GHOST IN THE FLAMES – I have an entire spreadsheet tracking many, many rejections from various agents and publishers. By 2010, I decide to try a different tack, and I wrote what would become CHILD OF THE GHOSTS – sort of a prequel to GHOST IN THE FLAMES and GHOST IN THE BLOOD.

However, by the end of 2010, I wasn’t tired of writing, but I was very tired of trying to get published. I started to think that CHILD OF THE GHOSTS would be the last novel I would write, and that I would focus instead on writing my technology blog, which at least made me money via the magic of Google Adsense.

Then in December of 2010 I got myself a Kindle…which tracks nicely into the next phase of our story, continued in answer to Vicki’s question below.

Vicki asks about publishing THE GHOSTS:

I’m curious as to how long you had been writing before you were first published? Did you have to look around a lot for someone to publish your books? I am an aspiring writer myself, and I hope (someday) to get something of mine published.

I started writing in 1998, had my first novel, DEMONSOULED, published in 2005, my second novel, WORLDS TO CONQUER, published in 2008, and never got another book contract after that. I spent a lot of time trying to sell my additional books to various agents and publishers, and I have (as mentioned above) this fairly massive spreadsheet tracking these hundreds of rejections. By the end of 2010 or so, I had finally concluded that I was wasting my time with fiction, and that I would stick to writing my technology blog.

Then after Thanksgiving of 2010, I bought myself a third-generation Kindle, and I thought to myself “there has GOT to be a way to make money off this thing.” Previously, I had no knowledge of or experience with ebooks, so I started to read up on ebooks. Specifically, on self-publishing. By April of 2011 I decided to self-publish DEMONSOULED (I had gotten the rights back) and its unpublished sequel SOUL OF TYRANTS as ebooks, just to see what would happen. After I did that, I decided to write one more novel, a sequel to SOUL OF TYRANTS called SOUL OF SERPENTS. That way I would have a proper fantasy trilogy, which I could mention wistfully from time to time as I worked on my technology blog.

Well, I finished SOUL OF SERPENTS in August, and made DEMONSOULED a permanently free ebook in September. And…it started to take off. People were reading DEMONSOULED, and liking it enough that they bought SOUL OF TYRANTS and SOUL OF SERPENTS. As in, paid actual physical money for them. After all those years of rejections, this was just mind-boggling.

Still is.

So I did the same thing with THE GHOSTS. I posted CHILD OF THE GHOSTS, GHOST IN THE FLAMES, GHOST IN THE BLOOD, and made CHILD OF THE GHOSTS free. They did well enough that I then wrote GHOST IN THE STORM and now GHOST IN THE STONE in 2012.

The whole thing has sort of snowballed from there.

I am extremely grateful to everyone who has bought a book.

One final point: Publishing, in my opinion, used to have two challenges – getting published, and then finding an audience. (Getting published is no guarantee of finding an audience – look at how quickly many writers disappear after their first book doesn’t sell well.) Nowadays, publishing is easy. It’s just a button on a webpage. Finding an audience, however, remains a challenge.

Do you do a lot of research for your novels, or is it something where you just sit down and write? How much editing do you have to do before the book is published?

For my nonfiction computer books, I do a bit of research to confirm that everything works. It’s no good telling someone how to install a print server if one of the commands will wipe their hard drive.

For my novels, I don’t do very much research. Generally, I try to pick a historical “feel” and go for that. Like, Caina’s Empire is a cross of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, the setting of DEMONSOULED is a bit like late Carolingian France, and so forth.

I edit the books to make them shorter and tighter – I want to say as much as possible using as few words as possible. For GHOST IN THE STONE, the rough draft was 96,000 words, and the final draft turned out to be just over 90,000.

Vicki asks concerning the cover for GHOST IN THE STONE:

I have a question with regards to the cover of the book: How come the girl on the cover is holding a sword? Caina uses mainly knives, and stealth, yet the character on the cover is conveying more of a Western stereotypical ninja feel to me. Was that a personal design choice, or something your publisher decided on?

Basically, it’s because artists are expensive. :)

The idea is that when you pick up a book, the cover is supposed to say “this is X kind of book”. So a book with a cover showing a man in a leather jacket with a gun and a police badge is probably some sort of mystery novel or thriller, while a book with a cover showing a partially-undressed man in 18th century costume holding a swooning woman in a corset is probably some sort of period romance. If the cover sends the wrong signals, people get ticked – if someone buys a book that shows a man with a badge and a gun, they’ll be pretty annoyed if it turns out to be a period romance or a book of crockpot recipes or something (or a period romance about crockpot recipes).

So for the Caina books, we wanted covers that said “this is a book about a female spy and assassin who has adventures”, and I think the covers send that message. Eventually we’d like to hire an artist for custom covers, but we’re not there quite yet.

-JM

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Published on October 13, 2012 07:37

Ghost in the Stone now available!

Cover image Copyright Nicholas Wave | iStockPhoto.com

I am pleased to report that GHOST IN THE STONE, the fifth book in THE GHOSTS, is now available.

You can get it at Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords. (Availability on iTunes, as usual, should come in a few weeks.)

You can read the first chapter from GHOST IN THE STONE right here.

If you have any questions about the book, leave a comment here and I’ll answer it in tomorrow’s Reader Question Day.

-JM

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Published on October 12, 2012 07:33

Thursdays of Sword & Sorceress 27 – the Linda Davis interview

This week’s interview is with Linda Davis.

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1.) Tell us about yourself.

“I write speculative fiction from Pensacola, Florida where I also spend much of my time swatting mosquitos and sweating, or as we ladies in the South like to saying, glowing. Most of my fiction is science fiction or fantasy, but I do write mystery and mainstream now and again. I have a Master’s Degree in Communication Arts, so it was quite interesting to make the switch to fiction. My favorite sub-genres to read are first contact stories and coming of age stories. My all-time most loved book is To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and the book I’m reading right now is Blood on the Bayou by Stacey Jay.

I share my life with my husband, Steve, and our three dogs and three cats. My office is covered in animal hair most of the time which is awesome for my allergies, and I frequently find stray jigsaw puzzle pieces around the house after they have mysteriously disappeared. My daughter and her husband, Erica and David, are busy seeing the world with their own cat, courtesy of the US Marines. For anyone who ever wants to take me out to dinner, I crave hot and sour soup the most.”

2.) Why do you write?

“It’s not the actual writing that I enjoy. It’s creating the story. Reading a story for which I plucked the individual words out of my brain and put them together in an enjoyable sequence truly fascinates me. I think it rocks to be able to make something of out of nothing. It’s what I call art.”

3.) Sword & Sorceress is known for sword & sorcery centered around a strong female character. Is there any particular trick to writing strong female characters?

“I think writing strong females characters is the same as writing any other strong character, whether it be male, alien, dog or Djinn. Females are generally stuck with being perceived as the weaker sex when I believe it really boils down to the individual inside the casing. No, females aren’t historically known for their physical strength, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t smart enough to identify one of the strengths they do possess and use it to survive.”

4.) How do you think ebooks and the Internet will change the way we read & write?

“I believe they will change things definitely for the better. I see a world where more people read because it’s more convenient to read on the go. There’s an excellent potential for books to be less expensive to the reader while still rewarding the authors fairly. I’m envious of the young authors who have so many years left to take advantage of the technology.”

5.) Tell us about your Sword & Sorceress story.

“‘Jack in Black” is one of the few urban fantasy stories included here. I’d long had a vision of a dangerous entity creeping through neighborhood bushes on Halloween night as it watched the trick-or-treaters with a perverse hunger. When I decided to write my first Halloween story, I used this vision as the starting point.

This story is about Kiki, a woman who grew up in mysterious circumstances and doesn’t know a lot about her supernatural origins. Today, with a husband and child, she uses her ability as a shapeshifter mostly for convenience since she can only shapeshift to earlier versions of herself, nothing else. On Halloween night, she smells an evil magic riding the winds in her neighborhood. Reluctant to allow her daughter and young friend to go trick-or-treating alone, she decides how best to use her ability to indulge them and protect them at the same time. Then, when faced with the ultimate danger of losing her daughter, Kiki must draw upon her own inner strength and find a unique solution to saving them all.”

6.) Can you share an excerpt from your Sword & Sorceress story?

“Kiki took a breath and leaned against the table, knowing she would somehow, certainly, be sorry for what she was about to do. She comforted herself with the knowledge that at least she could be present to keep them safe. The girls would never know she was there.

“Fine,” Kiki said. “You’re right. You guys are getting older, and it’s time for you to start taking care of yourselves some.”

The girls grinned and jumped up, immediately ready to go. Bennita kissed Kiki on her cheek. “Thanks, Mom. We’ll be safe.”

“Yeah, Miss Kiki,” Jaz said. “All we’ll get tonight is candy.” She grabbed their little pumpkin bags, both pristine now but guaranteed to be grubby and torn upon return.

Kiki hugged each one and sent them on their way. She stood still for a moment, centering herself. She went to the kitchen and drank a full glass of orange juice. She’d found that some serious sugar before a shift made it easier. Liquid was the fastest way to get it.

7.) Recommend one other book or short story you have written that we should read.

One of my lesser known stories that I absolutely adore is “Rocket Girls Are Real.” It’s another story that features a strong female character, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s available on www.bn.com and www.amazon.com as a short story e-book for just 99 cents.

(Editor’s note: description of the story follows.)

“Lola is an imaginary rocket girl who lives in the closet when Kelsey doesn’t remember her. Lola wants out of that closet. She and Pinkalink, her elephant friend, escape to make their way to Kelsey so they can be Real for a while. On the way, they encounter Globbula Optimi, one of the few space species that can take Lola down. What are they doing on Earth? Can Lola defeat the enemy and protect Pinkalink while on their journey? Can she and Pinkalink ever be Real? What does it take?”

8.) Recommend one non-fiction book that you haven’t written.

I am so thrilled to recommend Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein. I consider it a must read for all parents of young girls. I was fascinated, and I wish I’d had it to read while my daughter was still young. The book is smart, easy to read, and amusing as all get-out in places.

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Thanks, Linda, for the interview.

Check out our interviews with past S&S contributors – , , , Sword & Sorceress 25, and Sword & Sorceress 26.

And the novel featuring my Sword & Sorceress character, spy and assassin Caina Amalas, is now available for free in all ebook formats: Child of the Ghosts.

-JM

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Published on October 12, 2012 06:43