Barbara Friend Ish's Blog, page 6

We need a geek pride ribbon

"The geeks shall inherit the earth."

How often do we geeks say that to one another? When we gather in our geek enclaves (read: coffee shops, bookstores, bookstore coffee shops, and SF/F conventions) it is easy to celebrate all the things that set geeks apart from the mainstream. We're smart, we produce most of the really cool books and all the really cool games, and we reliably breed smart children. But with the exception of those of us who have the good fortune to work in geek havens (e.g. Microsoft, Lawrence Livermore Labs, gaming companies) as soon as we return to our daily routines we find ourselves trying to get along with people who connect effortlessly with what is considered normal. Trying to fit in.

You might think it would be different in publishing. (After all, how geekish is working on books all day?) But the great exemplars of geekish bookdom, the SF/F tribe, seem to spend more time excusing our differences from the mainstream and trying to pass than any other branch of geekdom. We crave acceptance by the rest of the publishing world, and we make the mistake of downplaying our differences and trying to act like all the other book people, smiling self-deprecatingly at the pitifully small amount of shelf space allotted for SF/F in our local independent bookstore.

Oh, well, people of culture don't read that stuff, right?

Wrong. I'm not going to bombard you with statistics, because that's just boring. Instead I will remind you that some of the best literature being published is SF/F and proud of it, and refer you to the blog post I did on Baby Got Books yesterday, in which I discussed how poorly SF/F fared in coverage of this month's World Book Day and reactions to it.

I think we need a geek pride ribbon. I believe it is foolish and ultimately self-defeating to try to mash geekdom into the space allotted by expectations of normality. We should be Geeks And Proud. If the gay and transgendered can have their own pride ribbon (and if anybody should, it's they) then so can we. It should probably have geekish little glasses printed on it or something.

Getting ready for the last draft of War-Lord

I've been away from the study for a few months because things have been so action-packed in the office. Meanwhile Ellion and his problems haunt me. He whispers in my ear when I'm doing layouts and eBook designs on other people's books. Not writing is becoming an ache, and before long there will be no choice about it.

This morning I was struck by the realization that a critical plot point may unfold in a very different way on this final draft. It would change little in terms of plot but have huge impact on meaning. And now that I'm aware of the possibility of this other course of action, I am tormented by not knowing what Ellion will actually do.

I won't know until I get to that chapter on the final draft.

It's not that I don't know how the book will end. I'm just a little fuzzy on what will happen in the middle. This is going to make me crazy until I can get back to the study for a good extended run.

Out to StellarCon and Back to Normality, or What Passes For It

What a great weekend we had at StellarCon 35! Rachael and I packed up the car on Thursday night and were out on the road to High Point, NC, bright and early (uh, for us) Friday morning. Getting on the road for a con always makes me feel like a kid playing hooky. With two drivers the 5-1/2 hours on the road was an easy trip, and we've driven up and down I-85 enough times that we're familiar with the territory. We descended upon the con hotel like a twin-funnel tornado, commandeered a luggage cart, and disgorged the contents of our car into our hotel room and our booth in the Dealers Room.

Actually, Rachael did much of load-in to the Dealers without me, assisted by the many so-helpful Stellar volunteers, because I had to race upstairs and change out of travel clothes in time for my first panel, at 4 pm: Making Sausage, in which we discussed small press life. (The title is my fault; when I pitched the idea to Davey Beauchamp, I didn't expect him to keep that title. Apparently Davey & I were the only ones who think it's funny…)

Talk about starting the con with a bang! I couldn't believe how many people turned up for a 4 pm Friday panel. Elizabeth Campbell of Darkcargo was the soul of kindness and operated the camera for us so we could film. (Look for it on our YouTube channel in a couple of days; we'll post the link when it's up.) Allen Wold kept us focused but not limited with great expansive questions; Theresa Bane delivered a lot of cogent thoughts on what it takes to get a small press up and running; Laurel Anne Hill brought perspective on the experience of an author at a small press. And I talked a lot, as usual. But you'll see that on the video.

After stopping in to the Dealers to see the magnificence Rachael had wrought at our table, spend a bit of time hanging out with the folks from Mystik Waboose (whose booth adjoined ours), and watch the parade of young men who stopped by to drool on our books because Rachael was behind the table (note to self: bring paper towels next time) I went around to the Opening Ceremonies. They were nicely done! The various GoHs looked very impressive up on the dais, and the Q&A had the crowd laughing. I had the rest of the evening free, which meant I got to wander around and talk to people. We had a great time with our friends at Mystik Waboose; I finally got to meet the Stellar committee members with whom I'd been emailing, as well as Torch Scp and Teresa Frohock, in person. I spent a little time catching up with Debra Killeen and Allen Wold, and hung out in the bar with Rachael, Elizabeth and Duncan Campbell, Eli Goldberg and Morgan, whose last name I never did get. Or maybe some of those conversations happened on Saturday. It was a con, and it all blurs together.

What I know is that Rachael and I were back up early (for us) Saturday morning so we could eat before opening the Dealers Room again. (Here's a tip: if you ever stay at the Best Western in High Point, DON'T EAT THERE. But there's a perfectly passable if tiny Greek Diner down the street, which no doubt I enjoyed as much as I did on Sunday because the horror of the so-called breakfast buffet for which I paid way more money on Saturday was so fresh in my mind.)

Afterward, I was off to the first installment of Allen Wold's Writing Workshop. I sat on the panel with Allen, his daughter Darcy (the designated Reader Advocate), Debra Killeen, and Danny Birt. Allen assigned the workshop attendees the task of writing an opening hook, in 100 words or fewer, in 10 minutes. No pressure! Afterward participants read their opening hooks, and we discussed what was good about them and what might be improved. It was a huge treat to hear so many different voices and ways of looking at story, and I admire all of the participants for completing that assignment. The opening of a story is the hardest part of all, in my opinion, and having to nail it in 10 minutes, even trying to arrive at a workable first draft in 10 minutes, would make me crazy.

Saturday afternoon I shared a signing slot with Danny Birt, which gave us a nice opportunity to chat with one another and with convention-goers who came by the table. I actually signed far more books incidentally over the course of the weekend than I did at that session, and I get the sense Danny did too. But the practice of having authors stationary at a table for a while seems to be a convenient way for readers who might not otherwise be aware of a given author's work or presence at the con that day to cruise through the Dealers Room and meet them by chance. Did I just make it sound similar to being a sideshow exhibit? That's not what I meant. It was a lot of fun.

After closing down the Dealers Room, Saturday evening I slipped out for a quiet dinner with my bff Rachael, so we could catch up. (Yes, we were there together all weekend. But we were both very busy at our separate things.) And then back to the hotel for a quick freshen-up and back out to another panel, this one for writers: on digging deeper into fantasy story development, so we might find the wealth of ideas that are available to us in this genre if we take the time to think past the obvious, tropic story components. If that sounds like some sort of scholarly retreat, be not deceived. We were next door to the room in which someone had organized a karaoke party. There's always something for everyone at a con. ..

After that, more delightful unplanned conversations in the hallways and a few quiet minutes with Allen Wold and his family, drinking the potent, mysterious, positively peat-boggish elixir Laphroaig and talking about esoteric things. After which I fell into bed so we could get up in time to check out of the room and eat breakfast someplace with real food before opening the Dealers Room again.

Sunday morning found me at the second meeting of Allen Wold's Writing Workshop, where we heard second drafts from participants who had written opening hooks on Saturday. The improvements between the Saturday and Sunday versions were amazing. There was a lot of talent in that room, and I hope some of those openings I heard are developed into full stories. Afterward I shared a reading session with the delightful Laurel Anne Hill, and enjoyed hearing her read from her work. She really does some cool things with alien characters, making them both truly alien and sympathetic.

At noon I sat in with Ed Schubert, Faith Hunter, and Debra Killeen on a panel titled "Finding Your Path to Publication", at which we discussed the relevance of writing and selling short stories, the importance of beta readers and professional editors, the esoterica of book wholesaling and how it impacts a writer's career, and the challenges self-publishers face. All very interesting and informative, but if you don't think that list of topics bears much resemblance to the stated charter of the panel, you're not alone. I don't count it wasted time for anyone involved: audience and participants alike learned from the conversation. And this is the nature of cons: conversations scheduled for one topic can easily veer off in other directions, and what audience members get to hear is often as dependent on luck as on the panel description. This panel was recorded, too: by the Pendragon Variety podcast. We'll post the link to that podcast when it's available, so you can hear the things we discussed. And Pendragon's L. "Scribe" Harris plans to interview me on the topic in a later podcast, so there will be more, and perhaps more on-target, discussion on the topic to follow. Meanwhile, we've got a couple discussions of the topic up on the Mercury Retrograde site to get interested readers started.

The con wound down, as cons will. We loaded out of the Dealers Room and made our goodbyes, already comparing notes on our respective con schedules with friends old and new, planning our next meet-ups. And after a brief detour for Chipotle burritos, we got back on the freeway south: tired but already spinning plans for the next con we'll do.

We'll be at MidSouthCon next: March 25-27 in Memphis, TN. We've never been to Memphis before, and we've got to figure out where to eat. But we already know we're going to have a blast at the con. Hope to see you there!

"Magic–Fiction."

This amuses me.

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication entry for The Shadow of the Sun categorizes the book as

"Magic–Fiction."

I'd say that's a pretty accurate assessment, ultimately more accurate than the "Epic Fantasy" label under which we're marketing it. Maybe we need a new category.

My first review on Publishers Weekly

Yesterday, to my surprise, I discovered that Publishers Weekly had reviewed my forthcoming novel The Shadow of the Sun in this week's issue. I knew PW had received a review copy, of course, but for the last couple weeks, everything PW had been reviewing bore March release dates, and Shadow is slated for February. So I figured they had passed the book by, and just checked in to be sure I wasn't overlooking something.

And there was my name.

Usually when writers talk publicly about their reviews, their comments fall into one of two categories: either "Hey, look, I'm AWESOME!" or "Why did this awful, mean reviewer abuse me so?" This post is meant to be neither of these; as always, I use a single primary criterion for deciding what to talk about here: whether what I want to say will be of use to others, particularly writers. I hope this will.

The title of this post is something of a misnomer: this is not the first time PW has reviewed a book I've worked on. But in all of those cases I had been editor and/or publisher; I had a certain distance from the experience. I generally look at PW reviews from a marketing perspective: good or bad, a review in PW means sales for a book, so I always welcome them. And any reader of PW reviews knows PW pulls no punches; they tend towards the snarky and judgmental. Which, of course, is natural for a publication that serves the book business, which is composed almost entirely of New Yorkers. Nobody does snarky better than New York. As an editor, it's generally my job to talk any writer lucky enough to capture the attention of PW down from the ledge they invariably occupy after reading the review of their work: to remind them that what they're seeing is just PW's way, and they really are good writers, and there are quotes we can use, however slim, buried among the barbed wire. Presumably after we get off the phone they go away somewhere quiet and drink a lot.

Last night I needed that phone call. Fortunately I am married to someone who has listened to me deliver that speech more than once, and he knew his lines.

So, back to my tale. There was my name in the Publishers Weekly review listings. I was alone in the office, doing One Last Thing before I went upstairs to make dinner. When, against all expectations, I saw my name, I said, "Holy f**cking s**t!" (Yes, with asterisks.)

And then I read these words:

The Shadow of the Sun

Barbara Friend Ish, Mercury Retrograde (Ingram, dist.), $20.95 (502p) ISBN 978-1-936427-01-7

[image error] Mercury Retrograde founder Ish debuts with a clumsy but enthusiastic epic fantasy piled high with Celtic-themed fantasy tropes, conventions, and clichés. Disgraced former wizard Ellion has turned away from gods, magic, and conflict. When a power-hungry wizard begins conquest in the name of the old religion, Ellion flees to the Tanaan realms, but assassins pursue him, as does a dynastic crisis. As his allies fall one by one, Ellion is forced to choose between the talents he forswore and the triumph of evil. Ish's prose is competent without being noteworthy. The grander conflict that drives the book will be familiar to readers, but Ellion gives hints that his eventual solution to his inner conflict–to be resolved in future books–may yet demonstrate a bit of welcome innovation. (Mar.)

When I hit the word "clumsy", my head began to ring the way it does when one's chin connects with a really solid uppercut. I knew all along that beginning this series in this place was going to lay me open to the accusations that are all over the rest of the review, but *clumsy*? Ouch.

I took my ringing head upstairs to find Mark, bewildered by conflicting emotions. A debut genre author getting airplay in PW is huge, and the publisher in me was pleased, but Writer Brain was reeling.

"Publishers Weekly threw up on my book," I told him. "I can't figure out how I feel about this."

Mark looked at the review. He is on the finance side, and thus has a certain distance. It was not a bad review, he patiently pointed out. It was just PW being PW. And look, there was a quote we could use.

Nevertheless dinner was a shambles. People had to step in and help me with stuff that is ordinarily effortless; Writer Brain had hijacked me, and I was gone. I wasn't weepy or offended, just mentally hamstrung by the ringing in my head and the conflicting responses.

Needless to say I took the evening off and watched TV, and once I'd slept on it, I had it back in perspective. This morning I'm delighted and honored to have been reviewed by PW, and I understand that I brought much of the snark on myself by beginning this series in overly familiar territory. But as usual, my experience as a writer of a debut novel has given me perspective I will take back to the other side of the desk.

Like all writers, I am painfully insecure about my work. If in a given workshop session I receive ten compliments and one really withering criticism, it is the criticism I will take home. As a published author it is my task to put that aside; to be glad that people take the time to read my work, to understand that we all have our own reactions and opinions, and to do what I must to nurture the belief in my own vision that allows any of us to commit words to formats less ephemeral than Facebook. It is incumbent upon reviewers to speak the truth as they see it; else they are no more useful than that woman who became a top reviewer on Amazon by writing positive reviews of EVERYTHING she ever encountered. And the old saw quoted to me by Tara Maya is absolutely true: There is no such thing as bad publicity.

So there's really only one appropriate response to this turn of events:

Holy f**king s**t! Publishers Weekly reviewed my book!

When it isn't about education anymore

There's a movie making the rounds of parents: "Race to Nowhere," a look at the downside of childhoods spent on résumé-building. I hope that as a culture we're able to take the ideas presented in that film and think about what they mean for our society and where it's going, because right now our educational system reminds me of nothing so much as the educational scene in Imperial China. (For those of you whose schools failed you, that's not a good thing.)

We have two brilliant, talented children. (For the purposes of this discussion I treat that not as bragging but as baseline.) One of them was able to thrive in the environment addressed by that film, not because he was smarter or more talented than the other but because he happened to have been blessed with the correct set of temperaments and innate talents to do so. (He's a sciences guy with high language skills who learned early how to work the system.) Our other child almost drowned. Though we have always been careful to tailor our expectations to personal bests rather than scores and competition, she possesses talents and temperament that make her a brilliant artist in several fields but leave her ill-suited for today's school environment; and she breathed the air of a society that said the miracle of who she is was insufficient. By the time she was in 7th grade, she was on the verge of physical collapse from stress. Through careful therapies including homeopathy and intense, loving support, we were able to pull her back from the brink. But by 10th grade she was suffering stress-induced insomnia.

She's doing much better now, after having bottomed out in ways with which I will not bore you. But in order to do so she's had to completely abandon the notion of herself as a person capable of academic success, and focus her schooling entirely on art. I'm grateful she has the capacity and inclination to continue educating herself on her own terms, because no school we've met (and we've tried a few) is prepared to do justice to kids who are learners rather than regurgitators.

It's tragic not only for these kids but for our society, which is unwittingly stamping out nearly all the kids whose brains operate in ways different from what this racecourse we laughingly call education is prepared to address. This incisive and original thinker, like so many others, will be lost to the places that might have benefited from her contributions.

If we're prepared to take the necessary risks, as parents we can rescue the kids this system is designed to destroy. But the intellectual life of our culture is another matter. That will require a wide-scale rebellion: not by children, but by parents.

Darkcargo Blog's review of The Shadow of the Sun

Happy dancing! It made my whole week to read this review of The Shadow of the Sun by Darkcargo's Elizabeth Campbell Nrlymrtl*. She says,

"This was one of those few books a year that would roll around my head during the day when I was not reading it, chomping at the bit to get back to it. The plot and the characters kept my mind and imagination engaged and I could not always guess where the story would take me."

The most exciting thing for me was seeing how she, as a reader, picked up on the things I was doing with The Tain. I just adore that tale, and to have a reader recognize the story in the midst of a novel and process what its presence there means constitutes a flavor of writerly delight for which I lack words. Suffice it to say I am experiencing total, geekish glee, and I truly appreciate her taking the time to share her insights with her readers.

 

* Correction: This review was written not by Elizabeth, the Mistress of Darkcargo, but her associate Nrlymrtl. No, that's not Nrlymrtl's real name. It's her Superhero Name. Thanks to Elizabeth for setting the record straight!

Typeset Complete!

Typeset on The Shadow of the Sun is complete! The book turned out to be exactly 500 pages long. Wynette is at work on the final cover–and in the process put together much better back-cover copy. You can see the final copy here, but it will be a few days before the final version of the cover is ready.

Serving the fans, why it's important, and how to survive it

Being a popular author is a lot of work. There's all those hotels you have to stay in, and all those bookstore appearances, and all those drooling fans with books they want you to sign. Oh, sure, it sounds glamorous, but you have to smile at a lot of people when you'd rather be watching re-runs of CSI, and your hand gets tired from signing all those books. There's got to be an easier way.

OK, yeah, I mock the problem. And I do have a faint notion of how stressful and tiring that scene can be; I know I tend to come home from cons and other public events worn out. But while I am learning (slowly) to marshal my resources at public events, I think we forget why we do those events at our peril. They're not for us; they're for fans. Yes, we have to take care of ourselves; but we have to do it in a way that doesn't leave fans feeling unappreciated.

This morning on Facebook, I read this post from my friend Mitch, who graciously agreed to be quoted here:

Unless you've been under a rock for a while, you know The Hunger Games is hugely popular right now. I'm sure all the appearances Ms. Collins does are swamped, and the bookstores at which she appears have no reasonable choice but to impose some sort of order on the chaos that her presence creates–not only for their sakes and the health and safety of the author, but also for the fans who come to see her. And when the crowds get huge, inevitably some fans will be disappointed. But in this case both the bookstore and the author seem to have lost sight of the goal, which is to serve the fans. That is a separate issue from selling the book, as you may observe from Mitch's reaction. While this episode represents a lost sale, it also represents something worse: a fan who feels used and disrespected. In short, a lost fan. And that's the loss of far more than one sale.

I recognize that this failure is an outgrowth of real problems for the professionals involved. So here's my question: how should this situation have been handled? How could the interests of the author and the bookstore have been protected without leaving fans feeling used? Please help me troubleshoot this one.

The angst of the back-cover blurb

I am learning new lessons today. At the moment I think they are lessons about marketing oneself and one's work, but already I sense deeper layers of what's going on in my mind and heart. I stand with my fingertips brushing something that is, at least to me, huge.

Yesterday, with the page count for The Shadow of the Sun stable, I sent final data for cover development to Wynette Hoffman, the friend and artist who is doing the cover for the novel. She'd already put together a concept a number of weeks ago; now we're dealing with the nuts and bolts of actual measurements and fine-tuning the design. Among the things I sent, naturally, was the back-cover copy (or blurb, as we say in the trenches) I wrote a few months ago, and which my editor blessed with minor tweaks.

I always write the blurbs for Mercury Retrograde books. It comes with the territory. Naturally I always work with the author of the book in question, asking them to fine-tune, making sure that what I've written accurately represents their intent. One of the things I've observed is that authors consistently tone down the language I come up with: I over-dramatize things; I don't quite nail the intent here or there. Naturally, this time, no author asked me to tone my description down.

Actually, quite the opposite happened: Wynette called today to say that she agreed with all the ideas I'd put forth for fine-tuning the cover concept…but, she said gently, that blurb was awfully dry. Was I attached to it?

Well, no. I was surprised to learn it was dry, as I thought it was a reasonable representation of the story; but I found it easy to believe that I was too close to the work in question to do a good job of reducing the concept to 75 words or less. Wynette is the publisher of Alien Perspective and an author in her own right (as well as a visual artist. Feeling inadequate yet?) and has written her share of back-cover copy; so I asked her to see if she could draft a better one. We yacked for quite some time about non-work-related things, as is our way, and she said she had some ideas for how to attack the blurb, promising to send a draft today or tomorrow.

Tonight, as I returned to my desk for a last check-in, there was a draft blurb from Wynette. The drama level in this piece almost knocked me out of my chair. Really, it's *immodest*. I couldn't ever write such things about my own work, and I'm not comfortable with someone else making it sound that dramatic either.

As has so often happened during the process of bringing this novel to press, I suddenly see things from the other side of the desk. This is how all those authors for whom I've been writing blurbs feel, I now suspect: jittery and insecure at seeing the contents of their imaginations, their fantasy lives, described in such huge and dramatic terms.

I'm almost certain Wynette is on the trail of exactly the blurb that should be written for this book. But I am reeling, and will have to come back to it tomorrow. Meanwhile, I have a theory: what I am feeling stems from every writer's bugaboo, insecurity. Our years in the world, most of them spent as geeks, have taught us that the likeliest follow-up to being held up as awesome in public is being taken down several pegs shortly afterward. To see one's own work described as dramatic and actually kinda magnificent raises embarrassment and defensiveness, as we anticipate humiliation–whether consciously or not.

There's a lesson in there that is about way more than publishing books. I'm going to be chewing on it for hours. Tomorrow I will come back to the blurb.