Guest post - Philll Berrie
Hello everyone,
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Phillip Berrie and I am a writer and editor living in Canberra, Australia.
Gillian and I have known each other for quite a while.
Gillian has invited me onto her blog to talk about my short novel, 'The Changeling Detective' which is now available through the US small press Hotspur Publishing. I think, and hope, she feels a little responsible for this, because the Changeling Detective first saw print as a short story in a themed CSFG anthology called 'Masques', that she co-edited.
As there are likely to be a lot of authors reading Gillian's blog, I am not going to bore you with a spiel about the book. If you are interested, you can find out all about it on the Hotspur Publishing website here
No, instead, I am going to bore you all with details of the book's genesis.
-- Sounds of crickets --
For those nice souls still reading, the original idea for the protagonist of this book (i.e. the changeling detective, a reference I will continue to use because his real name is just as changeable as himself) came from a character I designed and played in a superhero role-playing campaign. That character's name was the Magician and he had a couple of super powers that he used for fighting crime and, in his secret identity, as a stage magician.
The ability that intrigued me the most was his ability to change his appearance and disguise himself as other people. For those familiar with Marvel comics or the X-Men movies, he was a sort of male equivalent of the Mystique character, with added extras.
The character's face-changing ability should have been one of his most useful, but it was under utilised as it wasn't conducive to group play. However—in perhaps what was a foreshadowing of the future—when that character finally left the campaign, he did it by simply changing his features, assuming a new identity and disappearing into the mass of humanity, never to be heard from again in that world.
The fictionalised (and de-powered) version of the character was first seen in a short story called 'The Triple A Detective Agency, RIP' which I put before a critiquing circle called 'Critmonsters' that I was a moderator of back in 2008. Critmonsters was a Yahoo-based critiquing group of writers who hung out on the original HarperCollins Australia 'Purple Zone' at the time. Critmonsters is now defunct, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the members of that group aren't regular readers of Gillian's blog. So—Hi guys!
As mentioned previously, the story was written to submit to the CSFG's 'Masques' anthology. When I heard what the theme was to be for this anthology I saw it as a natural fit for this face-changing character that was still kicking around in my head.
For this story, I made the character into a detective. There was a Janus (i.e. the Roman two-faced god of beginnings and transitions) aspect to this story, and I wanted it to be open-ended, but leave the reader thinking that the protagonist would henceforth be on the case, as it were. Making him a detective also allowed me to play with the detective noire trope, after all, if you could change your face, wouldn't you be tempted to look like Humphrey Bogart?
The story successfully made it through the blind reading selection process after which Gillian helped me whip the story, now with its name changed to 'The Changeling Detective', into better shape for an anthology format (Please note that the short story in the anthology is a spoiler for the novel, so be warned).
Why the title change?
The first title was a gimmick. The Triple A Detective Agency was a one-man operation that appears at the top of the list of private investigation companies in the phone book. The company has three detectives listed on its books, each with a family name beginning with the letter 'A'. I'll let you think about what happens if even one of these detectives gets killed.
The new name still has several connotations, depending on your context, but it rolled easier off the tongue and the idea of a 'changeling' had much greater relevance to the back-story of the character. So much so, that this name has survived to remain the title of the novel, even though there is already a book by Elaine Cunningham in the marketplace by that name.
The 'Masques' anthology was published in 2009, and to add to my excitement, the story was one of the ones from the anthology that gained honourable mention on Ellen Datlow's blog for best horror for 2009.
While the short story was making its way to publication, I was busy working on the longer version of the story. This involved my creating a detailed outline of the story with the goal of writing the text as my first attempt at NaNoWriMo in November (Duh!) 2008.
As an aside for the writers out there, I have taken part in NaNoWriMo three times, using three different story-crafting techniques: rigid outlining, pantsing, and writing scenes for multiple characters that fit within a general SF story outline. Of these three techniques, the first has produced the strongest story, but I still have some hopes for the last experiment.
With the publication of the anthology buoying my spirits, I started shopping my completed MS around some of the Australian spec-fic publishers that I thought would appreciate this sort of material. My plan was (and still is) for this book to be the first in a series of pulp-like short novels concerning the protagonist. However, before going ahead with this plan I needed to be convinced that it was going to be worth the effort going beyond the first book. Unsurprisingly, considering the rough nature of the text, although a few publishers had a look at the full manuscript, nobody ended up being interested enough to offer me a contract.
Meanwhile, other things were happening in my life. As mentioned earlier, I am a specialist editor (i.e. proofreading and continuity checking) and I list among my credits Glenda Larke. Glenda, bless her socks, was responsible for my attending Worldcon in Melbourne in 2010, where I met and got to know over several breakfasts, an American writer named Saul Garnell. This was a meeting that was to prove very beneficial for the future of the book. However, between then and now, the changeling detective took a turn at being a freelance.
Spurred on by the panels on self-publishing that I'd attended at Worldcon, I put my efforts into producing my own self-published version of the book through Smashwords, which went live for the first time in December of 2010. I have a great admiration for the concept of Smashwords, and while the original edition of 'The Changeling Detective' did not do very well, I now recognise that its less than stellar success was more through my lack of promotion and marketing than the quality of the book because, rough though it was, it was still better than a lot of the other offerings out there.
Humble? Me? Nope. But that doesn't matter. This observation is based on personal experience as I read a lot of independently published work from that site.
One thing that did come out of having the book up on Smashwords was that I had put together a nice submission package to present to potential publishers and so, when I heard through an author colleague of mine about a new ePublisher starting up in my home state of Queensland, who I thought might bring some proper marketing to the title, I sent off my submission.
And I was accepted. Yay!
But this was a case of a very small fish in a very small pond and nothing much happened after the first initial run of sales and I removed my book from their list at the first opportunity. (I carefully negotiated sunset clauses into the contract.) One of the reasons I withdrew my book was because I knew, in my heart of hearts, that the book still needed some polish. I had been hoping for some editorial input from this publisher, and there had been none forthcoming.
So, the changeling detective was threatening to disappear back into the unwashed masses of failed manuscripts again. Fortunately, seeds sewn at Worldcon were starting to sprout.
Canberra's Conflux is my local spec-fic convention, and apart from worldcons in Australia, is the only convention I regularly attend. You can imagine my surprise when my American friend Saul Garnell walked in the door of Conflux 7 in October 2011. This time, however, he was attending as a published author himself, having had his science fiction story 'Freedom Club' published through a US small press called Hotspur Publishing.
During the course of Conflux he offered to have a read of something of mine, saying that he might send it to David Bischoff, a New York Times best-selling author famous for his work in the Star Trek franchise, who was now the head of Hotspur.
I dutifully sent him a copy of a fantasy novel 'Transgressions' that I'd recently put through the CSFG's novel critiquing group and was completely surprised when I was contacted by David Bischoff himself. David said he was interested in my work, but that he thought that the novel needed major work and asked if I had anything else that I was working on that was perhaps less ambitious than a fantasy series that could conceivably run to five books. In response I sent him a copy of 'The Changeling Detective', which he found much more to his liking and thought would be more marketable after some work had been done on it.
Understandably I was rapt, this was exactly what I thought the story needed, and over the course of a very busy year for both of us we traded chapters. I finished the final run through earlier this year when the CSFG had a writing weekend in Yass that finally gave me the chance to work through the last couple of chapters following David's advice.
Hotspur Publishing is still small press, but it is a small press in a lot bigger market. A market where traditional physical small presses have larger print runs than some of Australia's larger publishers. The book 'The Changeling Detective' was published as an eBook in June of this year and is now available through Amazon and Smashwords and all its affiliated distribution sites.
If sales of the eBook go well, the book might even find itself being manifested in a physical form, perhaps through Print On Demand. But that's not really a big deal for me, because I am a great believer in eBooks. I also still see this sort of story as a kind of e-pulp to be consumed by people on their e-readers to help enliven their daily commute, and having my book one-click away from a potential reader is a definite plus to me.
What next?
Well. Now comes the hard part—promotion.
These days, with so much competition, I see it as a requirement that an author play a major part in their own promotion. Fortunately, the internet has also made that much easier. I am active on Facebook, Google+ and Goodreads (Sorry, no twitter) and can be found on those sites under my name 'Phillip Berrie'.
Guest posting on popular blogs like Gillian's is another great way of raising one's profile. There are also plans afoot for me to be interviewed on the 'Adventures in Sci-fi Publishing' podcast, which will be a sort of dream come true for me, as I have been a long time listener to that podcast.
However, promotion aside, for me the most important thing is to write more books and let my body of work speak for me. To this end, I am now working on the second in the Changeling Detective series. Hopefully, this book will see the light of day a lot sooner than the first.
So, I think that's about it for me.
Thanks to all of you who made to the end. If anyone has any questions about me, the book, or Christmas bubbles, they can either leave a comment on the blog or contact me directly at 'phillberrie at phillberrie dot com dot au'.
Happy reading.
Phill
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Phillip Berrie and I am a writer and editor living in Canberra, Australia.
Gillian and I have known each other for quite a while.
Gillian has invited me onto her blog to talk about my short novel, 'The Changeling Detective' which is now available through the US small press Hotspur Publishing. I think, and hope, she feels a little responsible for this, because the Changeling Detective first saw print as a short story in a themed CSFG anthology called 'Masques', that she co-edited.
As there are likely to be a lot of authors reading Gillian's blog, I am not going to bore you with a spiel about the book. If you are interested, you can find out all about it on the Hotspur Publishing website here
No, instead, I am going to bore you all with details of the book's genesis.
-- Sounds of crickets --
For those nice souls still reading, the original idea for the protagonist of this book (i.e. the changeling detective, a reference I will continue to use because his real name is just as changeable as himself) came from a character I designed and played in a superhero role-playing campaign. That character's name was the Magician and he had a couple of super powers that he used for fighting crime and, in his secret identity, as a stage magician.
The ability that intrigued me the most was his ability to change his appearance and disguise himself as other people. For those familiar with Marvel comics or the X-Men movies, he was a sort of male equivalent of the Mystique character, with added extras.
The character's face-changing ability should have been one of his most useful, but it was under utilised as it wasn't conducive to group play. However—in perhaps what was a foreshadowing of the future—when that character finally left the campaign, he did it by simply changing his features, assuming a new identity and disappearing into the mass of humanity, never to be heard from again in that world.
The fictionalised (and de-powered) version of the character was first seen in a short story called 'The Triple A Detective Agency, RIP' which I put before a critiquing circle called 'Critmonsters' that I was a moderator of back in 2008. Critmonsters was a Yahoo-based critiquing group of writers who hung out on the original HarperCollins Australia 'Purple Zone' at the time. Critmonsters is now defunct, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the members of that group aren't regular readers of Gillian's blog. So—Hi guys!
As mentioned previously, the story was written to submit to the CSFG's 'Masques' anthology. When I heard what the theme was to be for this anthology I saw it as a natural fit for this face-changing character that was still kicking around in my head.
For this story, I made the character into a detective. There was a Janus (i.e. the Roman two-faced god of beginnings and transitions) aspect to this story, and I wanted it to be open-ended, but leave the reader thinking that the protagonist would henceforth be on the case, as it were. Making him a detective also allowed me to play with the detective noire trope, after all, if you could change your face, wouldn't you be tempted to look like Humphrey Bogart?
The story successfully made it through the blind reading selection process after which Gillian helped me whip the story, now with its name changed to 'The Changeling Detective', into better shape for an anthology format (Please note that the short story in the anthology is a spoiler for the novel, so be warned).
Why the title change?
The first title was a gimmick. The Triple A Detective Agency was a one-man operation that appears at the top of the list of private investigation companies in the phone book. The company has three detectives listed on its books, each with a family name beginning with the letter 'A'. I'll let you think about what happens if even one of these detectives gets killed.
The new name still has several connotations, depending on your context, but it rolled easier off the tongue and the idea of a 'changeling' had much greater relevance to the back-story of the character. So much so, that this name has survived to remain the title of the novel, even though there is already a book by Elaine Cunningham in the marketplace by that name.
The 'Masques' anthology was published in 2009, and to add to my excitement, the story was one of the ones from the anthology that gained honourable mention on Ellen Datlow's blog for best horror for 2009.
While the short story was making its way to publication, I was busy working on the longer version of the story. This involved my creating a detailed outline of the story with the goal of writing the text as my first attempt at NaNoWriMo in November (Duh!) 2008.
As an aside for the writers out there, I have taken part in NaNoWriMo three times, using three different story-crafting techniques: rigid outlining, pantsing, and writing scenes for multiple characters that fit within a general SF story outline. Of these three techniques, the first has produced the strongest story, but I still have some hopes for the last experiment.
With the publication of the anthology buoying my spirits, I started shopping my completed MS around some of the Australian spec-fic publishers that I thought would appreciate this sort of material. My plan was (and still is) for this book to be the first in a series of pulp-like short novels concerning the protagonist. However, before going ahead with this plan I needed to be convinced that it was going to be worth the effort going beyond the first book. Unsurprisingly, considering the rough nature of the text, although a few publishers had a look at the full manuscript, nobody ended up being interested enough to offer me a contract.
Meanwhile, other things were happening in my life. As mentioned earlier, I am a specialist editor (i.e. proofreading and continuity checking) and I list among my credits Glenda Larke. Glenda, bless her socks, was responsible for my attending Worldcon in Melbourne in 2010, where I met and got to know over several breakfasts, an American writer named Saul Garnell. This was a meeting that was to prove very beneficial for the future of the book. However, between then and now, the changeling detective took a turn at being a freelance.
Spurred on by the panels on self-publishing that I'd attended at Worldcon, I put my efforts into producing my own self-published version of the book through Smashwords, which went live for the first time in December of 2010. I have a great admiration for the concept of Smashwords, and while the original edition of 'The Changeling Detective' did not do very well, I now recognise that its less than stellar success was more through my lack of promotion and marketing than the quality of the book because, rough though it was, it was still better than a lot of the other offerings out there.
Humble? Me? Nope. But that doesn't matter. This observation is based on personal experience as I read a lot of independently published work from that site.
One thing that did come out of having the book up on Smashwords was that I had put together a nice submission package to present to potential publishers and so, when I heard through an author colleague of mine about a new ePublisher starting up in my home state of Queensland, who I thought might bring some proper marketing to the title, I sent off my submission.
And I was accepted. Yay!
But this was a case of a very small fish in a very small pond and nothing much happened after the first initial run of sales and I removed my book from their list at the first opportunity. (I carefully negotiated sunset clauses into the contract.) One of the reasons I withdrew my book was because I knew, in my heart of hearts, that the book still needed some polish. I had been hoping for some editorial input from this publisher, and there had been none forthcoming.
So, the changeling detective was threatening to disappear back into the unwashed masses of failed manuscripts again. Fortunately, seeds sewn at Worldcon were starting to sprout.
Canberra's Conflux is my local spec-fic convention, and apart from worldcons in Australia, is the only convention I regularly attend. You can imagine my surprise when my American friend Saul Garnell walked in the door of Conflux 7 in October 2011. This time, however, he was attending as a published author himself, having had his science fiction story 'Freedom Club' published through a US small press called Hotspur Publishing.
During the course of Conflux he offered to have a read of something of mine, saying that he might send it to David Bischoff, a New York Times best-selling author famous for his work in the Star Trek franchise, who was now the head of Hotspur.
I dutifully sent him a copy of a fantasy novel 'Transgressions' that I'd recently put through the CSFG's novel critiquing group and was completely surprised when I was contacted by David Bischoff himself. David said he was interested in my work, but that he thought that the novel needed major work and asked if I had anything else that I was working on that was perhaps less ambitious than a fantasy series that could conceivably run to five books. In response I sent him a copy of 'The Changeling Detective', which he found much more to his liking and thought would be more marketable after some work had been done on it.
Understandably I was rapt, this was exactly what I thought the story needed, and over the course of a very busy year for both of us we traded chapters. I finished the final run through earlier this year when the CSFG had a writing weekend in Yass that finally gave me the chance to work through the last couple of chapters following David's advice.
Hotspur Publishing is still small press, but it is a small press in a lot bigger market. A market where traditional physical small presses have larger print runs than some of Australia's larger publishers. The book 'The Changeling Detective' was published as an eBook in June of this year and is now available through Amazon and Smashwords and all its affiliated distribution sites.
If sales of the eBook go well, the book might even find itself being manifested in a physical form, perhaps through Print On Demand. But that's not really a big deal for me, because I am a great believer in eBooks. I also still see this sort of story as a kind of e-pulp to be consumed by people on their e-readers to help enliven their daily commute, and having my book one-click away from a potential reader is a definite plus to me.
What next?
Well. Now comes the hard part—promotion.
These days, with so much competition, I see it as a requirement that an author play a major part in their own promotion. Fortunately, the internet has also made that much easier. I am active on Facebook, Google+ and Goodreads (Sorry, no twitter) and can be found on those sites under my name 'Phillip Berrie'.
Guest posting on popular blogs like Gillian's is another great way of raising one's profile. There are also plans afoot for me to be interviewed on the 'Adventures in Sci-fi Publishing' podcast, which will be a sort of dream come true for me, as I have been a long time listener to that podcast.
However, promotion aside, for me the most important thing is to write more books and let my body of work speak for me. To this end, I am now working on the second in the Changeling Detective series. Hopefully, this book will see the light of day a lot sooner than the first.
So, I think that's about it for me.
Thanks to all of you who made to the end. If anyone has any questions about me, the book, or Christmas bubbles, they can either leave a comment on the blog or contact me directly at 'phillberrie at phillberrie dot com dot au'.
Happy reading.
Phill
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