Deborah J. Ross's Blog, page 110

ToC: The Usual Path to Publication

My essay, "The Magic Phone Call," is among many delicious, terrifying, inspiring stories of how authors managed to "break in" to publication (and no, there is no "usual" way). These have been edited by Shannon Page, and the resulting anthology will be released in early June (and is available for pre-order here.)

I'm in such great company!




Cherie Priest: How I Skidded Sideways Into PublishingAlma Alexander: Don’t Try This at Home, or, This Can Only Work OnceMark Teppo: Mapping Uncharted Terrain, or, How I Got Here (Though I’m Not Sure Where “Here” Is)Laura Anne Gilman: Two PathsJim C. Hines: The Goblin’s CurseKatharine Kerr: That Long Winding RoadDavid D. Levine: How to Sell a Novel in Only Fifteen YearsK. Tempest Bradford: It All Happened Because of Netscape NavigatorAda Palmer: The Key to the Kingdom, or, How I Sold Too Like the LightningKen Scholes: My Path to Publication, and My Other Path to PublicationNancy Jane Moore: The Long Winding RoadJennifer Brozek: No One True WayRhiannon Held: Timeline Key PointsJo Walton: Not Deluded: How I Sold My First NovelChris Dolley: First SaleBrenda Cooper: With a Little Help from a PoetChaz Brenchley: My First BookTina Connolly: Going from Short Stories to Novels in 60,000 Easy WordsRandy Henderson: My Finn Fancy Adventure in PublishingElizabeth Bourne: The Gypsy CurseJohn A. Pitts: My Path to PublicationMindy Klasky: April Is the Cruelest MonthAmy Sterling Casil: I Was Rejected, Then Sold the Same Story to the Same Editor!Deborah J. Ross: The Magic Phone CallPhyllis Irene Radford: My Road to Publishing, or, Tiptoeing Through Mine FieldsSara Stamey: How I Became a “Real Author”
Trisha Leigh/Lyla Payne: Making It

Rosemary Edghill on “Stormcrow” in REALMS OF DARKOVER

Realms of Darkover®, the newest Darkover anthology, will be released in May 2016. You can pre-order it at Amazon (and it will be available at other outlets soon). Here’s a contributor interview to whet your appetite!

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s beloved world of Darkover encompasses many realms, from glacier-shrouded mountains to arid wastelands, from ancient kingdoms to space-faring empires. Now this all-new anthology welcomes old friends and new fans to explore these landscapes of time and place, history and imagination.

Deborah J Ross: When and why did you begin writing? (And anything else you’d like to share about yourself and your life.)
Rosemary Edghill: I've always been a storyteller.  As a child (we're talking pre-K here), my favorite game was "Let Me Tell You A Story".  This never really changed.  As I got older I told myself Batman stories, and Man from U.N.C.L.E. stories, and Star Trek stories.  In my late twenties, it was Star Warsstories, and I started writing them down (in fact, my first professional SF sale was a revamped and expanded version of a story that appeared in the fanzine "Skywalker").  From then on, I wrote down my stories instead of telling them.For me, writing is performing, a way to be actor, director, scriptwriter, and audience all in one.  If something doesn't resonate with me in my position as "audience", I know it isn't going to resonate with the reader, and it's back to the drawing board (or the rehearsal hall).  So while it's true, in one sense, that I spend most of my time alone in a small room staring into a computer screen, in another sense...I am extremely well-traveled.

DJR: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover. What about the world or its inhabitants drew you in?
RE: Back in the "olden days", there weren't a lot of people in SF books.  You've probably heard some version of the phrase "Science Fiction is a literature of ideas"--well, with very few exceptions, that was all it was: great ideas presented by cardboard story-people, and you couldn't really imagine any of them being embarrassed, or worried about the state of their love life, or drunk, or...well, pretty much anything except their role in the story.If this sounds like I'm dissing old-school SF, I'm not.  I've read a lot of the Golden Age stuff, and I still do, and right on down to the present.  Stories about ideas are just fine, and--as a matter of fact--what else is a classic murder mystery but a story of ideas?
But it certainly did mean that the Darkover novels and stories stood out like a white peacock when they arrived on the scene.  They were all about people.  And, like Anne McCaffrey's "Pern", Darkover came with a thin veneer of SF to overlay things and give them respectability, since this was long LONG before Fantasy was a "respectable" publishing category--or even a visible genre.  But my point here is: Darkover was full of PEOPLE.  And other readers must have noticed--and liked--that too, because the books spawned one of the first modern fandoms based on a book series rather than a TV series, and that, in turn, gave rise to newsletters, fanzines, and even a Darkover convention.
So what drew me (and all the rest of us) in?  Darkover was exotic, mysterious, wonderful...and at the same time, the kind of place you could imaging yourself having adventures in.  It was filled both with people you'd like to meet, and people you'd like to be, and even better, the world of Darkover was designed in such a way that it wasn't a single circumscribed setting that the story, the characters, and the readers couldn't venture beyond, but part of a great big Empire of planets, many of which became settings for the stories.  In that sense, Darkover became the gateway into a universe that was not only broad and endless, but very very human.

DJR: What do you see as the future of Darkover? Is there another story you would particularly like to write?
RE: I went on a Darkover reading binge (all the originals and a bunch of the continuations!) while I was writing "Stormcrow", and I found myself fascinated about the earliest period of Darkovan history: the time just after Landfall.  How did all of those people get from being colonists and ship's crews to creating the Darkover society we see in the First Age?  How did they lose all memory of coming from another world?  I have a story in mind that would touch on these things, and I really hope to write it.  But overall, I think the thing that draws me to particular eras of Darkovan history is the culture clash.  That kind of thing fascinates me.
Rosemary Edghill describes herself as the keeper of the Eddystone Light, corny as Kansas in August, normal as blueberry pie, and only a paper moon. She says she was found floating down the Amazon in a hatbox, and, because criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot, she became a creature of the night (black, terrible). She began her professional career working as a time-traveling vampire killer and has never looked back. She's also a New York Times Bestselling Writer and hangs out on Facebook a lot. 
DJR: What inspired your story in Realms of Darkover?
RE: In a way it was sort of a retcon: at the very end of "Learning To Breathe Snow" we meet Ercan Waltrud's spymaster "boss", Felix Elhalyn.  So...how did they meet?  Where did Darkover get an espionage agency?  What would a Darkovan espionage agency look like?  (Hint: not much like James Bond.)  Why did Felix become a spy?  Elhalyn...aren't those dudes the Royal House? (Spoiler: yes.)  So as usual when I have pressing questions of this nature, I IM'd my co-author, demanded her immediate assistance, and started typing...

DJR: What have you written recently? What lies ahead? (feel free to expound on your recent and forthcoming books!)
RE: I'm currently in the middle of the eighth book in my military fantasy series: it's the middle book in the third trilogy, and middle books are HARD!  Fortunately, by this point in the series, I have collected all the reference I could possibly need about castle architecture, armor design, heraldry, and magical beasties.  I really love this world (it's written under a pseudonym that its publisher wants me to keep under wraps) and I don't think I'll ever run out of stories to tell about it.  (At this point, even the comprehensive timeline runs over 50 pages!)
Once Eight and Nine are at the publisher, I have an "Alternate English Civil War Period" book to write and then a modern Urban Fantasy, and I would really like to go back to YA, since it's a great place to tell stories.  In addition, there are a couple of pet projects of mine that have been on hold for quite a long time, simply because they probably have a very narrow appeal, but the wonderful world of epublishing removes that as a stumbling block, so it could be that I will at some point open up my WIP Vault and release the flying monkeys.  Who knows?
One thing's sure.  I'll never be bored... 

Monday Wisdom From Lord Tennyson

Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers.

Let us treasure the slow, deep things in our lives.

Shariann Lewitt on "Tainted Meat" in REALMS OF DARKOVER

Realms of Darkover®, the newest Darkover anthology, will be released in May 2016. You can pre-order it at Amazon (and it will be available at other outlets soon). Here’s a contributor interview to whet your appetite!

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s beloved world of Darkover encompasses many realms, from glacier-shrouded mountains to arid wastelands, from ancient kingdoms to space-faring empires. Now this all-new anthology welcomes old friends and new fans to explore these landscapes of time and place, history and imagination.

Shariann Lewitt is the author of “Tainted Meat,” the cover story for Realms of Darkover (and that amazing owl!) She has published seventeen books and over forty short stories, including “Wedding Embroidery” in Stars of Darkover and “Memory” in Gifts of Darkover. When not writing she teaches at MIT, studies flamenco dance, and is accounted reasonably accomplished at embroidery. Her expertise with birds arises in part from being the devoted servant of two parrots.
Deborah J. Ross: When and why did you begin writing? Shariann Lewitt: I always knew I wanted to be a writer--and an astronaut.  Only my eyes were awful (I have since had Lasik and it is wonderful!) so astronaut was out of the question. The first purchase I ever made with my own money was an SF novel, and it was all over from there.  I started reading Darkover not terribly long after.
DJR: What about Darkover or its inhabitants drew you in? SL: Darkover really spoke to me.  It had magic and adventure and an alien world to explore, but it also had science and technology. Above all, it had women who did things, but they had to fight for their right to do so.  When I was young, stories, especially SF/Fantasy, featured either active males, or feminist utopias where the women were simply accepted. Which sounded nice, but not at all like my life. Darkover felt--real.  And gave me role models and support during difficult times.  When I reread the books as an adult, they stood up.  So many of my favorites hadn't that I worried about going back to stories and characters I remembered so fondly.  I was thrilled to discover that they were rich and nuanced in ways I hadn't been able to quite understand as a youngster, and the books were just as satisfying for different reasons.
DJR: What do you see as the future of Darkover? Is there another story you would particularly like to write?SL: Because of my own experience, I would expect that Darkover would continue to find an avid readership for decades to come. I know I've really been having fun with the early Ridenow, and may want to go back and explore more of Age of Chaos. I love the sophistication of the biology and the technology, and the sheer creativity of pursuits they explored with matrix technologies.  But now, well, I'm also quite taken with the characters in this story--especially the owl/human relationship.  So I may want to examine that more deeply as well.
DJR: What inspired your story in Realms of Darkover? SL: "Tainted Meat" really comes from my love of writing animal characters.  I had some ideas I'd been playing with in my head--I'd already decided that I was going to set a story in a more modern era than my previous Darkover stories.  I wanted to think about some of the ideas of what honor means and how people approach it from different perspectives, but like any story that's worth anything, it totally got away from me and formed itself when Owl arrived. Sometimes an unplanned character can walk (or fly) in and take over, that that's exactly what Owl did.  I fell in love with her.  You see, I have two pet parrots.  Many years ago I asked Dr. Irene Pepperberg, one of the foremost researchers into animal intelligence, what Alex the Grey parrot though of humans. She laughed and said, "Oh, he thinks we're dumb as dirt."  She then went on to explain in more detail, and in the intervening time I've noticed how often by the standards of other species, humans really do appear stupid.  My own parrots are certain that I don't understand object permanence.  So once she came onto the scene, I realized I had something more interesting than a cultural misunderstanding about the concept about honor.  I had a person and an owl with their own agendas and their own notions of how one should behave and what a reasonable creature wants.
DJR: What have you written recently? What lies ahead?SL: I've been writing a lot of short stories lately. I've just finished a historical novella and I'm working on a giant steampunk book, so I'm going in many different and new directions!

Monday Wisdom from Helen Keller

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.


Sometimes all a suffering person needs from me is my faith that they can overcome their sorrows. This does not mean that I an absolved of responsibility to act when I should, but it does not mean I must do for others what they can grow by doing for themselves. I am not entitled to deprive someone I love of the experience of their own resourcefulness.

Rejection, Discouragement, and How a Few Loyal Readers Can Save an Author

Being discouraged is part and parcel of a working writer's life. Negative reviews, ditto. Some of us are naturally more thick-skinned about them than others, and most of us develop coping strategies over the years. This is where networking with other writers can be very helpful.  We say things like:


If you're not accumulating rejection slips, you're not doing your job (taking risks, "pushing the envelope").Just file the slip (or email) and send the story out Remember how many times A Wrinkle in Time was rejected.Editors are human, too; they have bad days, and it's no one's fault if your hero has the same name as their ex.Hey, I'm making progress from a form rejection to a personal note and invitation to submit again!

Even after many professional sales, a rejection can sting. The sting doesn't last as long as it might when we were first starting out, and we have tools (see above) and lots of writerly commiseration to help us. We know from experience that the sting will pass; we have acquired the habit of immediately diving back into the next project, so that we always have something fresh  and exciting in the pipeline.

Then there are the situations when a story or book is sold and the publisher goes out of business. The editor gets fired. I know authors this has happened to more than once. We find ourselves wondering if we killed the magazine. We didn't, but that laughter overlays the secret and utterly illogical fear that our writing careers are somehow jinxed. Then we sell something else and there are no thunderbolts from above. We carry on.


Reviews, ah reviews, and in this category I include feedback from critique groups and beta readers. So much has already been said about the power of a caustic review or harsh feedback of a work in progress that I won't belabor the point here. Suffice it to say that the natural human desire for praise (for our creative "children") leaves us vulnerable to interpreting criticism of the work with condemnation of ourselves. Or, having torn off our emotional armor to write from the heart, we've also ripped off any defenses against sarcasm, etc. I'm among those who, having received scathing feedback, went home, and cried. I never considered giving up (although on more than one occasion, I contemplated getting even and thankfully resisted the temptation). But some writers have.

Negative feedback, if consistent and prolonged, can have a devastating effect on a writer's self-confidence and ability to work. Support and encouragement from our fellow writers can be our greatest asset in setting aside the nasty things people have written about our stories. A hiatus from reading reviews is highly recommended.


Another form of discouragement arises when a novel gets published, gorgeous cover and all, and sales are abysmal. Sometimes this means you're dead at that publisher, but other times they'll take a longer view and be patient. Or they might want you to change your byline or genre to get a fresh start, so the poor sales figures don't haunt new releases.

Sooner or later, this will happen to most of us. We reach for the support and tools that have helped us through rejection letters, bad reviews, and writer's block. If it's a single book or a book now and again, we can usually get through the disappointment. But when it happens repeatedly, it can be even more catastrophic than those early rejections. We've enjoyed a period of success and self-confidence. We've sold a book or twelve. We know how to do this. Our fans love us. We're professionals. And then our next book flops. And the one after that. And we change our names and write something different. And the same thing happens. Our publisher dumps us. Maybe our agent dumps us. It would be a miracle if we did not feel discouraged.

This has happened to writers I know. Some of them have kept writing, and eventually hit their stride and connected with an enthusiastic readership again. Others gave up.

It's happened to me, too. I've written books that my editor loved and that those few readers who bought adored and wrote glowing reviews about...and that simply did not sell worth beans. Some days I'm sure I'll never amount to anything, I can't write my way out of a wet paper bag, and what's the use? Other days, I chalk it all up to practice. Sometimes I admit I have no idea why some books sell like wildfire and other, equally or more wonderful, fizzle. I tell myself I'm paying my dues as a professional, no matter how obnoxious and painful these particular dues are.

Then I remind myself of the question: If your work would never be published, would you still write? And my answer is yes. Because these stories are in my heart, and because when the words flow, there's nothing like that creative high. Maybe it's just the luck of the draw that some folks do want to read what I write. I treasure those few readers who have taken the time to let me know how much my work has meant to them. A readership of one (myself) is enough; a readership of that small community is the whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles and cherry on top.

Monday Wisdom From Eleanor Roosevelt

The giving of love is an education in itself.


I have long believed that what is wrong with the world is not too much love but too little. Therefore, let us be bold in our loving, boundlessly generous with our hearts. 

Starry Skies and Other Wonders

Crazy times, these. Elections. Zika. You name it. And yet this is an awesome and beautiful universe we live in. Here are some things that lifted my spirits:

Milky Way over the Pinnacles in Australia , Image Credit: Michael Goh. Made of ancient sea shells (limestone), how these human-sized picturesque spires formed remains unknown. In the background, just past the end of the central Pinnacle, is a bright crescent Moon. The eerie glow around the Moon is mostly zodiacal light, sunlight reflected by dust grains orbiting between the planets in the Solar System.


Meditation and aerobic exercise done together helps reduce depression, according to a new study. The study, published in Translational Psychiatry this month, found that the mind and body combination – done twice a week for only two months – reduced the symptoms for a group of students by 40 percent. ... "We are excited by the findings because we saw such a meaningful improvement in both clinically depressed and non-depressed students," says Brandon Alderman, lead author of the research study. "It is the first time that both of these two behavioral therapies have been looked at together for dealing with depression."



Star Forming Region S106, Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Legacy Archive; A large disk of dust and gas orbiting Infrared Source 4 (IRS 4), visible in brown near the image center, gives the nebula an hourglass or butterfly shape. S106 gas near IRS 4 acts as an emission nebula as it emits light after being ionized, while dust far from IRS 4 reflects light from the central star and so acts as a reflection nebula. Detailed inspection of a recent infrared image of S106 reveal hundreds of low-mass brown dwarf stars lurking in the nebula's gas.


Prehistoric Asterid Flowers Found Perfectly Preserved in Amber. “The specimens are beautiful, perfectly preserved fossil flowers, which at one point in time were borne by plants that lived in a steamy tropical forest with both large and small trees, climbing vines, palms, grasses and other vegetation,” said team member Prof. George Poinar, Jr., from Oregon State University. ... “They show that the asterids, which later gave humans all types of foods and other products, were already evolving many millions of years ago.”


Pleistocene Mammal Rusingoryx atopocranion Had Dinosaur-Like ‘Nose’ This wildebeest like bovid with characteristics of a hadrosaur: “It appears that both Rusingoryx atopocranion and hadrosaurs evolved their nasal domes in a similar way and that it also developed in the same way as the animals aged from juveniles to adults,” they said.

A Fruitful Absence

It's been a while since I've blogged regularly. I've put up some quotes-to-think-about on Mondays, and soon will be hosting a series of guest interviews from the contributors to Realms of Fantasy.

This does not mean my writing has come to a screeching halt, however! Quite the opposite: I've been working on two and sometimes three projects. One is the next-next Darkover novel (Thunderlord is scheduled for this August, so this is The Laran Gambit, which I hope to turn in by the end of 2015.) I'm about 10K words into it; it's got some forward momentum building to the first thing-changes-everything moment. I've heard writers say they don't like to talk about a new project because their creative energy goes into the talking, not the writing. That's somewhat true in this case. And besides, why talk about a book that isn't even finished when one that is ready to go will be coming out soon? This is what happens when writers turn in one book and dive right into the next, while publishing takes its sweet time. If you're curious about Thunderlord, check the blog archives here. I posted snippets of chapters from the first half of the book. And I'll blather on about it as the day approaches.

The other big project is a combination of fiction (sword and sorcery) and non-fiction (commentary on my own sometimes very dark journey of healing from my mother's murder). I've spoken about the latter, sometimes to large audiences, but writing about it, especially as intensely as I have been doing in the last couple of months, is much more immersive. I have no idea if anyone will want to read it, but the writing has been filled with revelations for me. Here's a bit from the introduction:

Because I am a writer, much of what I experienced — not the external circumstances but the emotions and insights — made its way into my stories. In the first few years after the murder, I wrote a short story, “Rite of Vengeance” (Sword & Sorceress V, ed. Marion Zimmer Bradley, DAW, 1988) about anger and revenge; it also contained a glimmering of understanding of how these could destroy me. I followed the same wounded heroine in “Crooked Corn” (Spells of Wonder, ed. Marion Zimmer Bradley, DAW, 1989) and eventually used these two episodes as the basis for a novel-length work, The Haunted Ring. The good news was that this gave me a sense of completion; the bad news was that it simply did not work as a novel. Eventually, I set it aside as a poignant but essentially dead-end exercise. 

Years and much recovery later, this book presented itself to me again. I was speaking to a class of law students, trying to explain what it was like to live through the violent death of a loved one. I scribbled a few notes on the “stages” of healing — numbness and shock, anger and vengeance, letting go, re-engaging with life, and so forth. It occurred to me that The Haunted Ring was not a deeply flawed, episodic, meandering novel. It was a healing journey disguised as a fantasy-adventure.

Here then is that story, with my own commentary about how I now understand what all this was about for me, and some queries that have been helpful to me. Stories keep our intellects busy while the deeper parts of our psyches resonate with things that are not easily put into words. Every person's experience of tragedy is different. How we make sense of what has happened to us also changes with time. A reader brings his or her own history and temperament, beliefs and visceral reactions, to the tale.

The way I've structured this book, each chapter of story is followed by commentary about my own experiences, reflections on larger issues of clawing my way out of the darkness and then creating the life I want, and queries for reflection. I'll keep you posted about the progress of this piece. It's in revision now, but because it is so emotionally intense, it's hard to predict when it will fly along and when I have to take a breather.

Monday Wisdom From George Bernard Shaw

Better to keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.


And better to admit our errors and make amends when we can, and be our truest, most honest, most courageous selves!