David B. Coe's Blog, page 11

A New Post About Writing and Pitching. Yep.

Today's post at the Magical Words blogsite is about writing, and the creative lessons to be learned from the success of an aging baseball pitcher.  The post is called "Writing to Our Strengths, or What I Learned From Barry Zito."  I hope you enjoy it.

A New Interview and a Thieftaker Review

I have a new interview up at The Word Nerds blogsite.  It was a fun set of questions to answer, and I'm grateful to Bethany for asking me to the site. Check out the Q&A here.

Thieftaker was also reviewed recently by the SciFiChick.  Check you the review here.

Some Thoughts on Author Rankings and "Popular" Fiction

"Some of the greatest works of art our culture has produced were incredibly unpopular when they first were created; others were dismissed as not worthy of serious critical attention because they were popular with the masses.  Popularity is a double-edged sword."

Today's post can be found at the Magical Words blog site.  The post is titled "Amazon, Popularity, and a List That We Really Don't Need," and it is about the dangers of of making assumptions about the relative merits of works of art based solely upon their popularity.  I hope you enjoy the post, and that you'll feel free to join the discussion.

Guest Author, Max Gladstone!

Today, I welcome a very special guest: author Max Gladstone, whose first novel, Three Parts Dead, is out today from Tor Books.  What makes Max so special?  Well, in addition to be incredibly talented, thoughtful, and intelligent (read the post) Max is also my very first fan.  Yep.  He showed up with his Mom at my first book signing fifteen years ago.  He was shy and quiet, but so excited to have read my book and to have a chance to meet me in person.  He came to subsequent signings and mentioned to me on more than one occasion that he wanted to be an author some day.  Well, here he is, and the reading world is in for a treat.  Welcome, Max.  So good to see you here.

*****

"Love, Silence, and Pacing" by Max Gladstone

Musicians make love with silence.  Melodies and harmonies excite the active mind, but there’s no feeling for a chorister quite like the moment when the choir stops singing and the hall air holds first the note, then the hole left as the note fades.

Silence relaxes tension, yes, but it can also build.  John Cage made an entire piece out of the tension of silence.  Sure, 4:43 feels like a joke when described, but when performed it can fill an attentive (and unfamiliar) audience with expectation.  Until the audience gets the joke, that is, after which point they shift in their seats and glance at their watches (though maybe the seat-shifting and watch-glancing is part of the piece, too).

There’s a dangerous tendency when writing fiction where stuff happens—people get stabbed, chase one another through rain-slick alleys, betray, discover, make love, throw rings into Mount Doom—to fill the story with stuff that happens.  Our hero just outran the cops and took shelter in a tenement, but now the tenement’s burning down, but when she escapes the fire she’s held up in an alleyway by a gangster to whom she owes money.  One crisis gives way to another without pause and without fail.  Endless arpeggios trill along.

There’s nothing wrong with such a sequence, or with stepping up tension, or ‘raising the stakes’ in workshopese.  Raymond Chandler was once asked what he did when he felt his story was lagging, and he said: “I bring in a man with a gun.”  (There’s a wonderful egregious example of this in The Big Sleep.)  But lag isn’t the only pacing problem.  A story can also be so swift the reader cannot find her feet, so swift that characters do not grow or reflect: they stagger from emergency to emergency, flailing in all directions like they’re under attack from a swarm of bees.  Chandler brought in his men with guns, but he also had a fine instinct for scenes where Marlowe wanders the streets of Los Angeles, ponders chess problems in his apartment, stops into a bar for a drink: for scenes when characters breathe, and appreciate the chaos growing around them.

These rests, these pauses, are not moments of recovery.  They are an opportunity for reader and character to take stock of the pain they’ve crawled through, and the pain yet to come—or to build anticipation of a victory, or a love affair, or a brutal betrayal.  Events become real in reflection upon them.

Silence is the gateway to consequence.  Newlyweds feel their transformation not on the wedding night, but the next morning, when they sit at breakfast alone and feel the world settle around them.  After the One Ring falls into the fires of Mount Doom, Frodo sees a vision of Sauron’s empire collapsing, followed by a scene break (that purist silence of white space and uncreated words), followed by a tender moment of Frodo and Sam talking, alone at the end of the world, the rest after the ultimate crescendo.  Once Ben and Elaine flee the wedding in The Graduate, they sit on a bus bound to anywhere, and do not talk, and the smiles slip from their faces: the consequences of their actions coalesce, and they become afraid.

Working on my books Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise, an editor or friend would occasionally tell me they felt a scene wasn’t consequential enough, that it felt anticlimactic.  At first such comments stepped me back: the points they called out felt like serious confrontations, battles and revelations an entire book in the making.  How could I make them more consequential?

But when I re-read the scenes in question, took their pulse and compared them to the rest of the book, I realized that often, caught up in the passion of finishing a book, I’d drive too hard toward the end, leaving out the fractional beats for characters to react, or to appreciate the new dangers they faced.  The emotional universe of the book broke, and tension drained from the scene.  Returning to the page, I drew out those moments, gave the moments space to breathe.  The revised scenes felt better, and readers agreed: if anything, the new chapters felt faster, though I’d added material.

Writing’s intensely personal, and your mileage may vary.  Perhaps you’re a natural with silence; perhaps you never push too hard, and risk overstimulating yourself or your reader.  But if you feel your greatest pyrotechnics fail to impress, maybe the problem isn’t that your writing isn’t strong enough, or fast enough.  Try working like a musician: make love with silence, and space, and see how that changes the feeling of the scene.

Impostors and Insecurities

Today's post can be found at Magical Words, a blog site devoted entirely to essays on the craft and business of writing that I maintain (as David B. Coe) along with fellow authors Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, A.J. Hartley, Catie Murphy, and Kalayna Price.  The post is called "More on Fear and Writing, part II:  Impostor Syndrome," and it is about that feeling, shared by so many writers and artists, that somehow we've been slipping by for all these years, without people realizing that we're really not very good at what we do.  I hope you enjoy the post.

Magical Words and a New Review

I have a new post up at the Magical Words blogsite that I maintain with fellow authors Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, A.J. Hartley, Kalayna Price, among others.  The post is called "More on Fear and Writing, part I:  Confessions of an Idle Writer," and it is about the fear that comes from not starting any new writing projects in a long time.  Come by and join the discussion.

I'm also happy and proud to point you to a new review of Thieftaker.  It can be found at the Word Nerds website under their Book Banter feature.  As a bonus, I will be interviewed on the Book Banter site in mid-October.  Watch this space for the link when the interview goes live.

And enjoy your Monday!

Sephira Pryce-Jane Yellowrock (Faith Hunter) Interview

Today I am hosting my dear friend (and Magical Words co-founder) Faith Hunter, New York Times Bestselling author of the Jane Yellowrock books.  The latest installment in the Jane Yellowrock series, Death's Rival, will be released on October 2, and to mark the occasion, we thought it might be fun to have Sephira Pryce, thieftaker extraordinaire, the Empress of the South End, and Ethan Kaille's nemesis, interview Jane Yellowrock.  This involved a bit of magicking and time travel, but we managed to pull it off.  Enjoy!

*****

Sephira: 
Dear Readers,

I am Sephira Pryce, the most renowned thieftaker in Boston, despite the protestations to the contrary of a certain charlatan.  I am also your hostess at an interview, arched through the time lines by a witch of my acquaintance.  Yes, I know witches, and various other magick users.  All other humans fear them and their powers, but not I.

This witch shall allow me to speak to a woman from the year 2012, and, provided she is not insipid, or a woman caught up in the latest fashions, I expect to find her . . . interesting, though unusual.  I have been assured that she isn’t a witch of any kind, but that she is a magick user extraordinaire, of a rare and potent form, her name:  Jane Yellowrock.

To accomplish this time-speaking, the witch has charmed a mirror.  As we speak, I am seeing my own reflection—a beautiful woman in corset and silk gown, a small table nearby with a blade and flintlock pistol, loaded, of course—the finest steel blade and the most modern pistol that money can obtain.  But in moments, I will see a woman from the future.

(Speaking off to the side) Cast your spell, witch.

(The mirror darkens and then brightens, to reveal a woman wearing … I sit back in surprise.) I view a woman, slender to the point of emaciation, though with strong, well-formed limbs, which I can see clearly, as she is wearing pants and boots as men do, and her arms are bare and muscled.  She appears to be tall, with coppery skin and black hair, perhaps a member of one of the Indian tribes to the south.  Though she wears no corset, she does wear many arcane objects about her person, and upon her breast is a golden chain with a depending golden nugget.

Can she hear me, witch? Excellent. Welcome Miss Yellowrock.  Perhaps you would like to begin by telling us a bit about yourself and your world, which I assume is vastly different from my own.

Jane:   Pretty different, yeah.  I’m a Cherokee Skinwalker. That means I can change shape and form into other creatures of equal mass. Usually I change into a mountain lion.

Sephira:  I have killed a mountain lion. I used this pistol, a caliber 35 bore, steel, smoothbore cannon barrel.

(The creature from the future smiles, and her teeth are perfect. Such a strange thing to see—an adult with teeth not yet rotten or browned by tea.)

Jane:  You killed a puma, eh?  With that little gun?  Single shot, right?  And you killed it all by yourself?

Sephira:  She mocks! (Lifts her brows, her eyes steely.)  I mortally injured it.  One of my men finished it off.

Jane: (laughs softly) Well, I'll be sure to keep that little tidbit hidden from Beast. She wouldn't be happy.

Sephira:  Who is this . . . this Beast?

Jane: Doesn't matter. See this? (She pulls a strange device to her lap. It appears to be a handgun, but of artless design, with no engraving, black, blocky and coarse in shape.)  It’s an HK45, and I’m thinking about adding it to my arsenal for more stopping power. It’ll drop an enraged boar with one shot, and if I happen to miss—which I wouldn’t—the magazine holds ten rounds.  (She tilts the weapon to show it off.)

Sephira:  Such a vain creature you are.  Wait. Arsenal?  You have more than one firearm?  And … ten rounds!  You must be wealthy indeed.

Jane:   I have a shotgun that holds seven rounds, two nine millimeter semiautomatic pistols, two .380 semiautomatics, and a two-shot Beretta.  Financially?  I do okay for myself.

Sephira:  Oh my!  Are you a soldier of your time?  Like the Amazons of old?

(Jane sits back in her chair, her legs long and lean.  With one hand, she begins to disassemble the weapon, removing a rectangular section from its insides.  I am fascinated with the workings and wish to see more, but she does not seem to welcome such inspection.)

Jane:  I kill rogue-vampires for a living.

Sephira:  Piff.  Vampires.  They are myth.

Jane:  Nope.  Real. Blood-sucking predators with sanity problems.  (Jane smiles, showing those perfect teeth in her copper-skinned face.)  I know one, Leo Pellissier, a real pretty vamp, the strongest vamp from the Mississippi to the Atlantic ocean.  He would love to suck you dry.

Sephira:  (Picks up her weapon.)  I would defend myself.

Jane:  And die trying.  Killing vamps requires special weapons, and a technique refined over many years.

Sephira:  Are you saying that I could not kill the creature on my own, that you’re more capable than I?

Jane:  Well . . .  Yes, I guess I am.  I have the knowledge, and I have the equipment, (she grins again,)  as it were.  When amateurs take on vamps, they die.  Simple as that.  And while you might be good at whatever it is you do, I can tell that you’re an amateur.

Sephira:  You dare speak to me, the Empress of the South End, in this way?

Jane:  So it would seem.  Time for me to go.  I have work to do

Sephira:  What is happening?  The mirror darkens.  Witch!  Correct this instantly!

(But the mirror remains dark, lit only by the reflection of the beautiful woman seething, her designs thwarted.)

*****
For more on the Jane Yellowrock series, and Faith Hunter, visit:


http://www.faithhunter.net

http://www.facebook.com/official.faith.hunter

Been A While -- Mind Melds and Updates

Yes, it's been a while since my last post.  I've been revising Thieves' Quarry, the second Thieftaker book, which, it turns out, my editor likes as much as I do.  Good thing, that.  It doesn't mean I didn't need to rework parts of the manuscript, but it did make the rewrites relatively simple.

In case you missed the announcement on Facebook, I am happy to let all of you know that Audible.com has bought the audio rights to both Thieftaker and Thieves' Quarry, and has asked as well for an option on subsequent Thieftaker books. So, at some point in the not-too-distant future, we should be seeing audio versions of the books.  I'm very, very excited.

And finally, I should mention that I am over at SFSignal today, participating in their latest Mind Meld.  Today's discussion topic:  "What is the future of Urban Fantasy?"  The discussion can be found here.

Today I Post About Ideas and Try To Draw a Sheep . . .

“Sometimes an idea really is greater than the sum of its parts.  Each idea on its own might show little potential; but combine them and BOOM!” The Summer-(Now-Fall) 2012 THIEFTAKER Blog Tour continues today with a new post at my “home blog” -- Magical Words. It is another in my series of essays dealing with creative ideas and how to handle them. The post is called “On Creativity and Writing: Making the Most of Ideas, part V — The Quest” and it can be found here.

I also have a new interview up at the "I Smell Sheep" website.  No that's not a typo.  It was a fun interview.  You should check it out.

I hope you enjoy both posts!

Two New Posts Up As Summer Blog Tour Becomes Fall Blog Tour

With the coming and going of the Labor Day Weekend, the Summer 2012 THIEFTAKER Blog Tour has now become the Fall 2012 THIEFTAKER Blog Tour. But still it rolls on with two new posts going up in the last several days.  One is an extensive interview Bryan Thomas Schmidt that has just been posted at SFSignal.  We cover a wide range of issues, from pseudonyms to the Magical Words blogsite.  So check it out.

The second is a post about creativity that I wrote for the Fantasist Enterprises blogsite.  The essay is titled “A Single, Fickle Spark,” and it can be found here.

I hope you enjoy both posts.