Zena Shapter's Blog, page 3

Making Money With Emotion – Author Interview!

What better way to start the year than with a fabulous author interview!

The Hybrid Author podcast interviews industry professionals on all aspects of forging a career as a hybrid author: writing across genres, mixing writing styles, publishing all ways and getting comfortable marketing your books. This week saw the release of its 109th episode, and in it host Joanne Morrell interviews me!

We talk about:

Ways of monitsing a creative careerHow creatives might make money with emotions via the Japanese concept IkigaiHow I’ve applied earning money through emotion in my own author careerMy advice to authors struggling to tap into the emotional aspects of their workAnd much more!

I had so much fun during this interview, and must have impressed Joanne because afterwards she asked me to edit her manuscript!

Find out what I said that appealed so much to her by listening over here:

Making Money with Emotion With Award Winning Author of Speculative and Contemporary Fiction Zena Shapter

It’s only 30 minutes long – so please just click ‘play’ and enjoy!

A Cinematic Summary of 2023!

Every year has its ups and downs. Every turn of the globe gives us celebrations to enjoy and commiserations to endure. It’s the same for us all. In the interests of inspiring others with positivity, however, I tend to share more of my celebrations than commiserations, and this year I had lots of inspiration to share! On video!

My latest video is this brief round-up of my 2023 releases:

Each publication of course also had its own YouTube #Short earlier in the year…

SONG OF THE CAWALVILLAIN OR HEROWHEN DARK ROOTS HUNTNOT TODAY

Throughout the year, I visited a few bookshops (click on the link to watch a summary video!) and gave a few interviews to promote my work…

I also managed to find time to read…

To write and send books to readers requesting signed copies…

I enjoyed plenty of bush walks…

And plenty of relaxing trips to the beach…

I snuck off for the odd lunch treat…

And in between all that…

I won a writing competition, yay!I judged a writing competition for young writers, and I organised a writing competition for adult writers to enter in 2024…

Oh, and I helped plenty of writers fulfil their writing dreams as well, because for me there’s nothing better than earning my keep and spending every day with words!

I hope you enjoy the results of all my creative endeavours, or are tempted to share them with someone who will.

And if you know someone who’d like to share their words with the world as I do, but needs some help to get there, please invite them to check out my Creative Support Services and get in touch. Let’s see what 2024 can bring us!

A Cinematic Update of 2023!

Every year has its ups and downs. Every turn of the globe gives us celebrations to enjoy and commiserations to endure. It’s the same for us all. In the interests of inspiring others with positivity, however, I tend to share more of my celebrations than commiserations, and this year I had lots of inspiration to share! On video!

My latest video is this brief round-up of my 2023 releases:

Each publication of course also had its own YouTube #Short earlier in the year…

SONG OF THE CAWALVILLAIN OR HEROWHEN DARK ROOTS HUNTNOT TODAY

Throughout the year, I visited a few bookshops (click on the link to watch a summary video!) and gave a few interviews to promote my work…

I also managed to find time to read…

To write and send books to readers requesting signed copies…

I enjoyed plenty of bush walks…

And plenty of relaxing trips to the beach…

I snuck off for the odd lunch treat…

And in between all that…

I won a writing competition, yay!I judged a writing competition for young writers, and I organised a writing competition for adult writers to enter in 2024…

Oh, and I helped plenty of writers fulfil their writing dreams as well, because for me there’s nothing better than earning my keep and spending every day with words!

I hope you enjoy the results of all my creative endeavours, or are tempted to share them with someone who will.

And if you know someone who’d like to share their words with the world as I do, but needs some help to get there, please invite them to check out my Creative Support Services and get in touch. Let’s see what 2024 can bring us!

‘Song of the Cawal’ is released! Thank you @GrimboldBooks @Kristell_Ink!

Leon hates living on Tefnut, a planetary nature reserve of hydrogel seas and the gargantuan electric cawal. Not even friggites, the colossal bird-like warriors that populate the system, live there. But when the research lease granted to his family expires – he must choose between the safety of his sister’s unborn child, his mother’s life, an interspecies war, or the release he’s long sought…

I’m thrilled to announce that my science fantasy novella Song of the Cawal has just been released! Woo hoo!

I’m so excited for readers to enjoy this story and the world in which it’s set. It sure offers readers one electrifying, fast-paced, unforgettable adventure!

Here’s a short video to tempt you:

Song of the Cawal is published by the science fiction and fantasy imprint of Grimbold Books, Kristell Ink. Based in the UK, they’re home to some of the very best science fiction, fantasy and dark fiction around, though they only publish ‘a select few brilliant titles each year’:

Readers can expect the unexpected from our authors. You won’t find books like these anywhere else. We aim to bring you only the best books in the genres we’re passionate about.

Thank you so much Grimbold Books and Kristell Ink for including me among your ‘select few’ for 2023! Thanks in particular to Jo Hall, Roz Clarke, Sam Smith, Kate Coe, and Ken Dawson – you’re an amazing team and made the publication process so enjoyable. I hope readers enjoy the story!

A few already have…

“A lightning-paced SF novella of transformation, family, and adventure set in a truly original world. Strap yourself in, the Cawals are coming, and nothing will be the same again.” Trent Jamieson, Aurealis Award winning author of The Stone Road and Day Boy

“High stakes planetary SF with a brilliantly flawed hero and a strong environmental message which is never preachy but IS enormous fun and takes off in a really unexpected but at the same time very satisfying direction. It’s hard to say a lot about this one without spoilers though!” Jo Hall, Commissioning Editor, Kristell Ink at Grimbold Books

Ebooks are now available on Amazon, with print to follow shortly:

Pick Up A Copy!

WORLD BUY IT HERE: print – [paperback and hardback to come!] | ebook – Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

AUSTRALIANS BUY IT HERE: print – [paperback and hardback to come!] | ebook – Amazon.com.au

BOOKSELLERS & SCHOOLS BUY IT HERE: please order from your usual distributor!

As always, if you do me the honour of reading my story, let me know what you think!

Making Mistakes & Enjoying Stress! #Characterisation

Have you ever noticed how some people experience emotion outwardly, and others inwardly?

I noticed this most recently as a parent, supporting my son and daughter through important exams. One of them took exams as cool as a cucumber, the other almost threw up with nerves, though I knew both of them felt the pressure equally. 

It brought back memories of taking exams myself. I was an inwards-emotion person. I didn’t get nauseous or have nose bleeds. I didn’t get sweaty hands or a tight abdomen. I was a little shaky as I walked into the exam room, but otherwise displayed no obvious outward signs of stress.

I’m the same today. Few people will know if I’m experiencing stress unless I tell them, which can have its advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes I might not even know myself, until my body tells me! 

But this makes writing stressed-out characters interesting. Firstly, because I know this about emotion – that some characters won’t express how they feel in any obvious way. And secondly, because of the challenges this presents, the intricacies involved in their portrayal, and the skill in writing them realistically.

This might sound mean, but I actually enjoy making my characters stressed, because it’s only when we face great pressure or personal challenge that we open ourselves up to the possibility of change, and for me stories are all about change. Change is one of the hardest things to do in life, so stories should explore the nature of change as much as possible, to help readers when they then experience change themselves. 

Stressed-out characters are also great for plot. While I love using subtle techniques, allowing readers to suspect a character’s feelings even if they don’t, stressed-out characters often make mistakes, which is perfect for storytelling excitement!

It’s also realistic. Whenever I catch myself making a mistake I wouldn’t ordinarily make, it’s a sign that I might be juggling too much and need to simplify my focus. Making a mistake is horrifying! It’s also a wake-up call.

What about the characters you enjoy reading? How do they experience stress, and is it similar to the way you experience stress yourself? I’d be interested to know! I might even use it for a character one day!

‘Villain or Hero?’ – You Decide! #BookLaunch

Congratulations to the 13 amazing writers published in this imaginative new anthology – Villain or Hero?, edited by me!

The idea for this anthology started at last year’s NBWG writers’ retreat, where a group of us were discussing how unfairly some characters had been represented and judged over time. The conversation became quite detailed, discussing famous villains such as Medusa, Circe, and various Shakespearian villains, to examining more contemporary criminal masterminds and their henchmen, then more broadly considering villain character types as a whole – such as witches in fairytales who might have just been intelligent women, jungle beasts that might have had an honourable purpose, and sea monsters who might have simply been defending their own homes. We asked ourselves, could one person’s villain be another’s hero?

Our answers inspired this anthology – delving into the pasts, thoughts, and alternate worlds of character types we’re supposed to hate!

In Villain or Hero?, you’ll get to meet the real witches and scoundrels of our childhood tales, the archetypal religious fanatic, the brilliant mastermind, the evil ex-spouse, the meddling housekeeper, even those monsters of myth and legend we discussed at the retreat. The anthology explores the transformative power of perspective, challenging archetypes, reflecting contemporary sentiments, and retelling stories we thought we knew…

Here’s a list of the stories:

Burning Bright – Aislinn McKenzie
Stone Hearted – A.R Kelly
Avengement – Susan Steggall
A Bloodied Tail – Zena Shapter
Curse of the Finest – Mandy Munro
Mr Smith’s Bad Day – Mark White
The Great Fish – Sue Osborne
Myth or Real – Howard Reid
Circe – Elise Robertson
Dottie Calls The Inspector – Rosalie Horner
Botox and Bats – Megan Rohleder
Three Hearts – Sonia Zadro
Hezze: The Gingerbread Hag – Avi Vince

Sonia Zadro & Zena Shapter

The anthology even includes a story by me, ‘A Bloodied Tale’, which poses the question: when is a sea witch not a sea witch? In the original story of ‘The Little Mermaid’ by Hans Christian Anderson (1837), the mermaid’s father is a sea king who ‘had been a widower for many years’, but there’s no explanation about how, when or why his wife died. It’s as if she’s purposely excluded from the story. There is, however, a sea witch who lives nearby and, although fearsome, the little mermaid hopes the witch ‘can give me counsel and help’. So I started to wonder, what if these two women were one and the same? What if the sea witch wasn’t as evil as the sea king might want us to believe? What would have been his reasons for doing so, and what would be the result…

Find out in Villain or Hero?! It’s now available for sale at most online bookstores (please just search for the title or ISBNs: 9780645539615 for print, 9780645539622 for ebook), as well as through the NBWG over here.

Thank you to all the authors for joining in the fun, and everyone who came to support the launch on Saturday – it was wonderful to have you all there.

Now it’s time for everyone to participate – each story includes an after-thought explaining the villain character type that inspired it, but let’s see if readers can guess the archetype before the story ends!

We Are All Multi-Genre Storytellers!

Our lives have ups and downs. Our lives can also move forward and back, such as when we look to the future or examine the past. Our lives can also be filled with a murky mess of unknowns, such as when we journey to new places or meet new people, creating fantastical stories to enthral our friends and family when we relate our experiences.

In this, we are all storytellers, and multi-genre ones at that. When we share our most stressful or alarming moments with others, we become horror or thriller writers. When we joke about experiences to make others laugh, we become comedy writers. When we talk about our everyday experiences, infusing our storytelling with contemporary angst, romance, or adventure, we switch genres accordingly. When we consider where the world, science or society is heading, we become speculative writers.

Professional creators experience the same range of ups and downs, forwards and backs, angst and jokes, thrills and horror; which means that, if they can listen to their experiences effectively enough, they can become very versatile in the art they create.

Take my brother Adam for instance. He’s an award-winning film producer in the UK, and this year he’s produced two films, through his amazing production company White Lantern Film, the second of which has just been released… Congratulations, Adam!

A Very English Christmas:

Earlier this year, he produced another romance…

To England With Love:

But he’s also won awards for horror…

K-Shop:

And he’s also won awards for business and entrepreneurial endeavours, as well as environmental documentary…

Drying for Freedom:

His versatility makes perfect sense to me. 

As children, we were sponges of story. Television, movies and, for me, books. Genre didn’t matter, it just had to be a good story. Good story thus became central to everything we absorbed from the world, and everything we then created.

It still is! Like my brother, I too have won awards for multiple storytelling genres – contemporary fiction, horror, children’s books, science fiction and fantasy – and in my novels and novellas I use the full breadth of my storytelling skills and experience to take readers on a journey of ups and downs, forwards and backs, exposing them to horror, contemporary angst, thrill, adventure, romance and speculation.

My complete bibliography is over here if you’d like to check it out.

And my brother’s portfolio is over here.

You could also check out the complete bibliographies or filmographies of other professional storytellers you like, to see what else they create. You might prefer one genre over another, but if a creator is good at telling one type of story, they’re probably good at telling all different kinds of stories, and you never know when or where you’re going to discover your next favourite story.

After all, as you know from being a multi-genre storyteller yourself, there are always new stories to tell.

I Won an Award!

Yay! I just won the Port Writers’ Open Writing Competition, with my short story ‘About Time‘. Oh my gosh, I’m absolutely thrilled! And what lovely comments from the judge too, who said my story:

‘Has a strong narrative voice’

‘Never flags in its pace’

‘Allows a clever revealing of the main character’s dilemma’

‘Has a strong ending that is not overblown in spite of the emotional impact’

‘A very satisfying story to read.’

I will cherish these comments, and use them to power through my writing goals this week. Let’s do it!

Thank you Port Writers, for selecting my story as the first place winner, and for running the competition. It’s fantastic that competitions like this are judged anonymously, so it’s a real test of writing ability. Congratulations also to the other winners. Yippee!!

Morning Praise! #LoveEditing

Waking up to praise… Who doesn’t like hearing good things about their work, especially first thing in the morning. Yesterday, I woke up to find a wonderful testimonial in my Inbox, from a client whose novel I recently edited. Big smiles all day!

I love editing manuscripts – helping other writers by using my decades of knowledge about story and, specifically, how to write them. I enjoy seeing just how much time and angst I can shave off my clients’ lives with every comment I make, every deletion or insertion, every professional flourish.

I also have a natural gift for mimicking narrative voice. This is something I’ve been able to do since I was at high school, and one of the reasons I excelled academically. It means that, once I get stuck into editing a full-length manuscript, I can literally hear the writers’ voice in my head. So any sentences I suggest to the author, automatically align with something they might themselves have written. I’m often quite impressed with myself!

My clients must be too, because they often report back that they accepted 95% of my edits. That’s extremely high! Edits are only suggestions after all.

I will have to add this snippet of praise to the rest of the fabulous testimonials I’m super proud to display on my website over here…

I sent my manuscript to Zena for a copy edit and received back an excellent response in a prompt and professional time frame. Not only had Zena fulfilled everything I’d expected through the copy edit, but she also went above and beyond to comment in ways that helped me develop the manuscript structurally and also made me consider some of the choices I made in other areas, such as story and character. I have found every dealing with Zena to be professional, and I feel that her work has moved my manuscript significantly towards a better standard for submission to agents and publishers.

David Coleman-Mann

I’m so pleased for my clients when they either get a publishing contract, if that’s what they want, or self-publish their words to the universe. Here are a few pictures of my clients’ recent releases…

Monsters Are Metaphors! #StorytellingOverTime

No matter how many monstrous creatures, villains or plagues we create in our imaginations, they are first and foremost reflections of what we most fear about society. Our evolving world might influence their shape and form over time, but they are still metaphors for our collective fears. Thus the 1830s folklore of ‘Spring-Heeled Jack’ personified the frightening urban world of Victorian industrialisation, the 1954 film Godzilla represented the alarming power of nuclear power and radiation, and ‘Big Brother’ from George Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four embodied fears of World War II totalitarianism and what that said of us as humans. With each monstrous story, we can thus find an opportunity to reflect on what monsters might tell us about our societies.

Such stories also allow us to ask valuable questions about the real world, such as:

Where might we find hope when all else fails?Which values might we seek to retain through a crisis, and which would we relinquish?At what cost would we protect what we cherish, and to what aim?After the societal breakdown that inevitably follows the impact of a significant ‘monster’ – be it a single entity, invasion or plague – how might we find our way back to a civilised existence?

At a recent writers’ festival, I was asked about the world of Palude I created for When Dark Roots Hunt, and particularly its giant water-ants and carnivorous wyann trees.

In the real world, ants seem to follow me everywhere, even nipping on my shoulder in the shower and biting my leg on planes! If I were truly the focus of their hunt, I would be terrified by how well they mobilise en masse – a worthy villain. Reminiscent, perhaps, of human armies and their relentless endurance.

As for trees, although I absolutely adore being in nature, trees are intimidatingly long-living and impenetrable, with long roots reaching far out of sight – what if those long-living, impenetrable roots also reached for us? In such a world, how would we live? Would we bend it to our will, or succumb to its might? Is this a metaphor for our increasingly contemporary fear that nature might soon turn on us, toppling us from our status as invincible hunters, and instead making us the hunted?

Of course, more often than not – in both fiction and the real world – the truest monster is always human. Perhaps this is because we really are our own worst enemy, or perhaps it’s because we cannot even imagine a world in which we are not in control of our own destiny. Either way, monsters and their stories can act as a guide to the dynamics of the society in which they’re told, and an insight into our vulnerabilities – for in simply believing we’ll always win over the monsters we create, we risk that one day we actually won’t.

Perhaps if you come to read When Dark Roots Hunt, you’ll let me know what monster-metaphors you find.

More #StorytellingOverTime Posts: Who is Your Hero – all about the hero’s journey in stories Fear of the Unknown, Fear of Yourself – how we find a part of ourselves in wilderness stories No One Listens to Change – how stories can test out elements of progress The Power of Love & Betrayal – how stories help us understand the complex nature of love Monsters are Metaphors – how monsters are metaphors for the dynamics of society