Deby Fredericks's Blog, page 25

Who Is the Audience?

We writers can become hermits, sometimes. We get into our writing cave, and we write the kind of stories we’ve always written. Especially if we’re indy writers, and to an extent we’re writing to please ourselves because our audience is so uncertain.

It’s easy to lose track of the fact that there is, ideally, an audience separate from ourselves. It’s important to consider who they are and what kind of stories they want to read. If we have a “read” on our audience (ha ha) we can shape our work to appeal to them.

One way to look for your audience is to consider research on who the reading public is. Reading statistics show that younger people read more than their elders. In 2021, 83% of people aged 18-29 were reading, compared to 77% in ages 30-49, 72% in ages 50-64, and 68% over age 65. This progression shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Younger people simply have more free time for things like reading. The older we get, the more of our time is taken up by work and family responsibilities. I would also guess that by age 65, people are beginning to experience disabilities that interfere with reading.

With this information, writers need to think about young readers as our future audience. Not that readers over 30 aren’t important! However, young readers are more active on social media. If they like our work, they may talk about it with their friends. So all writers, no matter your genre, need to keep the priorities of younger readers in mind.

What do young readers care about? Civil rights (women, gay, minority, all of them). Climate change. Diversity and representation. Book bans/censorship. Those may sound like a litany of liberal causes, but they are important priorities for the 18-29 age group. As someone who works in education, I can tell you that young people as a group are pretty angry about the state of the world they are coming into. Authors who brush past their issues as too complicated or not relevant will not attract younger readers. Worse, you might alienate them. They may tell their friends about that, too.

Stay tuned, friends. There’s more to come on Wednesday.

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Facebook, Instagram and/or CounterSocial.

MosCon Revival

There is going to be another MosCon Revival this year, and I’m a speaking pro! What was MosCon, you ask? And why does it need a revival?

MosCon was an annual science fiction convention, held in Moscow, ID, during the 1980s and 90s. It was founded by a group of University of Idaho professors and students who were also artists, writers, or simply shared a love of science fiction. MosCon was one of the first SF conventions in the Northwest. It became nationally important despite its relatively remote location. For example, MosCon was one of the first conventions to have an official Guest Artist, and later an official Science Guest.

My husband and I were regular attendees, though for a variety of reasons, the convention ceased operation in 2001. However, MosCon is remembered with deep fondness in the region. There was a Revival event in 2019, sponsored by a local comic and costume shop. Unfortunately, COVID started later that year. It wasn’t possible to repeat the event… UNTIL NOW!

This year’s revival is on September 9th, just over two weeks from now. So stay tuned for more about my schedule and the panels I’m going to speak on.

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Facebook, Instagram and/or CounterSocial.

What Are You Reading?

It’s summer, and as a school worker I have a nice long break. I’ve been reading a lot, naturally. It’s good to take in new influences and see what’s going on with the genre as I look ahead to new projects.

My biggest obsession has been Martha Wells. My husband had been telling me about her Murderbot Diaries novella series, with its fast pacing and anxiety-ridden protagonist. Since I’m more of a fantasy reader, I have to recommend her latest, The Wizard King. I’ve read it twice since May, and really recommend it for the fabulous world building.

What about all of you? What are you reading these days?

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Facebook, Instagram and/or CounterSocial.

Another Reprint +

I’m happy to say that Wolfsinger did agree to reprint The Grimhold Wolf. I’m hoping it will be out by this time next year. Carol took on a lot with the Sky Warrior catalog, though, so we’ll see. It’s nice news, anyway, but too soon to get excited.

I also did a read-through of The Eighth Order, which is a sequel to The Seven Exalted Orders, the novel Wolfsinger reprinted in July of this year. It’s ready to send during their next submission window.

In addition, I have another call for submissions to share. This one is Midnight Menagerie, a Wolfsinger anthology featuring exotic SFnal and fantastic creatures. Check the guidelines here. It doesn’t open until next June, but that just gives us plenty of time to think up an interesting angle.

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Facebook, Instagram and/or CounterSocial.

Relief

I’m working on another short story. Yes, I’m using the new Default that I mentioned last post. This is actually a big relief. (The story, not the Default.)

When I complete a novel, I usually have a new project in mind. If I don’t, then I get this low grade panic that I have no more stories to tell. That my career is over.

It might have been stronger when finishing up The Tale of the Drakanox, because this novel ends a series I’ve been working on since 2018. During that time, the next project was always another Minstrels of Skaythe novella.

Now the whole series is in the bag. What am I to do with myself?

That’s why it’s such a relief to have new stories pop up. The latest one is an idea I’ve had for a while, but I didn’t focus on it because of Minstrels. The previous two were totally new. I’m more of a novelist, so I’m reading through my journal of ideas and seeing if anything is substantial enough. Or if Wolfsinger decides to reprint The Grimhold Wolf, I can ask her if she wants a sequel to that. We shall see.

Anyway, I guess my career isn’t so over as I feared.

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Facebook, Instagram and/or CounterSocial.

The Default

Every new story teaches me something, even after all these years. While writing the short story “Blood Token,” I got to thinking about the way my characters were dressed and what it implies.

If you’ve been working as a writer for a while, you may have heard discussion about “Default Settings.” Any time a character is mentioned, we assume the Default unless specifically described otherwise. (In fact, some of my stories do specifically describe brown-skinned people but reader comments tell me they are still imagined as if Default. What’s a writer to do?)

What is the default setting? 1) Male. 2) White. 3) European clothes.

This is a dense subject with a lot of layers, so let me suggest if you’re curious to read up on the topic. I’d like to get back to what I, personally, learned from writing “Blood Token.”

As I got started, I realized that I was using a lot of character Defaults. The goblin characters were small, scrawny, hairless, with green skin and really bad teeth. The main character is a witch, and her familiar was a cat. The antagonists are human oppressors, dressed in a European style.

Now, Defaults are very easy for writers to use. There’s less explaining to do with the world building, and readers feel a certain comfort that they know what’s going on without having to work at it. But the down side of using a lot of Defaults is that they are overly familiar, even stereotyped, and worst of all — boring.

I didn’t want to re-write the whole story, but I did try to make some details more interesting. I gave my protagonist bulging red eyes with slit pupils, like a frog’s. And I gave her black hair in a long braid. Her cat familiar became a blackbird.

And that human? He was a walking stereotype wearing fine trousers tucked into shiny boots, a cream waistcoat, and a long black coat. His hair was blond, in a ponytail, he had a goatee, and he had a mask tied on like Zorro. How very 19th Century, proto-Nazi of me!

I needed to change the way he was dressed, but I hadn’t decided how. Then I saw a flock of parrots on TV. So now my human oppressor is wearing loose black pants tucked into soft boots, a bright yellow tunic, and a long green sleeveless coat. Still with the mask, for plot reasons. He does all the mean oppressor things he was doing before. He just has the color scheme of a parrot? If the editor accepts it and we get to the revision stage, I may work on this a bit more.

To sum it all up, one of my projects going forward is to develop a new Default for how my characters dress. There are lots of historic sources and images where I can get inspiration. I’m working on a new story, and I plan to build in a different style of dress this time. It should be fun!

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Facebook, Instagram and/or CounterSocial.

That’s Too Political (Reblog)

This is a repeat of a post I did last November (2022). The SF convention I’d been involved with for a long time, SpoCon, had just ended its run. These comments were about what I thought was the best panel of the weekend. The topic still resonates, so I’m offering it again.

Today I’m sharing an excerpt from the panel discussion, “That’s Too Political.” I was joined by my old friend Manny Frishberg, with newer friends S. Evan Townsend and Michael Hodges.

“That’s too Political” is an accusation that gets thrown around a lot recently. It’s meant to stop uncomfortable conversations. The panelists agreed that all fiction is political. Science fiction and fantasy have been at the forefront of this more than many other genres. Anyway, this is what I remember about my closing thoughts.

“One book can change the world. Books are that powerful. When people say, “That’s too political,” it is a form of censorship. They want to stop the conversations that challenge their world view. Through a coordinated campaign of school and library censorship around the country, they want to stop kids from having empathy for a gay, or a Black, or someone thinking of suicide, or someone with a mental illness.

“We as writers must not permit this. We writers cannot be silenced.”

I still believe this. Writers are people who live in this world. We see what’s going on around us. With our keenly honed literary skills, we want to write about what we see.

And we should keep on writing it, even in the face of self-proclaimed “community groups” who actually are not related to the communities they claim to represent. These are political hit squads, carefully curated by one political party to carry out their agenda of censorship against racial and gender equality.

Over the past year, we’ve seen their attacks on libraries, whether in individual classrooms, whole schools, and now public libraries. They weep over alleged “pornography” and rant about “liberty” and “freedom” while relentlessly suppressing both.

Writers, keep writing your stories. Don’t let the censors win.

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Facebook, Instagram and/or CounterSocial.

Woman At Work, August/2023

What’s Happening? Believe it or not, I finished all the big yard work I had to do, including picking up the cherries that dropped under our tree. All I have to do now is maintenance weeding and enjoy the vegies. Blackberries are coming in right now. Yummy!

What I’m Working On. A couple of days ago, I finished the full first draft of a short story, “Blood Token,” for an anthology. It’s 8,500 words and the limit is 7,000 so obviously I have some work to do in the next draft. I also realized it’s time to update the indicia in my books. I need to put in a statement that none of my work is machine generated, and explicitly say that I do not give permission for my work being used to “train” machines. Unscrupulous actors may ignore that, but the statement needs to be made.

What’s Next? Once “Blood Token” is off on submission, I plan to read through Trial of the Eighth Order. It’s a sequel to The Seven Exalted Orders, which my then-publisher requested but never brought out. I’m hoping Wolfsinger will take it up, along with The Grimhold Wolf, which they are currently considering. However, I haven’t looked at Eighth Order since probably 2017. My skills have grown since then, so I want to give it another look before I submit it.

Fun and Games. Currently I’m replaying Subnautica Below Zero. Who doesn’t want to dream of cool oceans and glacial landscapes (although with huge monsters) in the middle of August? When I just need to chill, I play a puzzle game called Ruya.

Don’t forget to make time for your own writing. What we have to say matters in the world.

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Facebook, Instagram and/or CounterSocial.

Sarcastic “Laws”

I recently read a fun blog post from novelist Nicholas Rossi, about Cippola’s Basic Laws of Human Foolishness. I won’t steal Rossi’s thunder here, so I encourage you to read his article.

While reading, it made me think of various other sarcastic “laws” that we have in modern culture. Like Murphy’s Law (“If something can go wrong, it will”) and the Peter Principle (“If you get really good at your job, you’ll be promoted into a position with a totally different skill set”). My favorite, which I can’t seem to pin down, is “It will cost more than you think.” Maybe I’ve mixed it up with Murphy’s Third Law, “It will take longer than you think.”

What struck me while reading Rossi’s post is how useful these “laws” are for fiction writers. Do you feel like things are going too easily for your characters? Or you need a side arc that will allow the rest of the plot to develop? Why not pull in Cippola’s First Law, “A person always underestimates the number of fools around him.” Cippola has a specific definition of fools, so it really is worth reading Rossi’s article, above.

Now you have something to work with. Who is the fool in this scenario? It could be a minor antagonist, or it could be the main character themself. What kind of mischief could be caused by a moment’s foolishness? Could this foolishness illuminate character, while also building suspense?

Or reflect back to Murphy’s First Law, above. Say your characters are racing across country to prevent some sort of disaster, and then a stirrup breaks on someone’s saddle. Or a flat tire, or a flight is over-booked — you get the idea. They have to fix this problem, but then you can bring in Murphy’s Second Law, “Nothing is as easy as it looks.” This can go on as long as you need for your plot to develop or your characters to grow.

So have some fun with “laws” in your plotting. Just be aware, it may take longer than you think!

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Facebook, Instagram and/or CounterSocial.

Hard At It

Now that some summer travel got done and enjoyed, I’ve been back at my writing. First, of course, I published the paperback, Renegades of Skaythe, as mentioned last week. Since then I’ve been working on a new short story. My intended market is Wolfsinger’s Borne in the Blood anthology, which I also mentioned last week.

So far I’ve just finished the rough draft. A skeleton, if you will, that mostly puts the plot in order and does a crude bit of characterization. Starting today, I plan to go back and start putting muscle on the bone. I’m pretty excited about how this story is coming together. You can expect to hear more about it as time goes on.

Hope you’re all getting some good writing time in, too!

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Facebook, Instagram and/or CounterSocial.