Stoker-winning author John Langan wowed us with his recent novel, The Fisherman. He joins the Narrators to talk about his recent success, his background and writing process, and his upcoming collection, Sefira and Other Betrayals.
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Brooke Bolander‘s short fiction has been nominated for Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Theodore Sturgeon awards. Next year, she moves into longer fiction with her Tor.com debut, The Only Harmless Great Thing. Join us for a discussion of her fiction and her influences. Alcohol may be involved.
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Chris, Cath and George compete for fabulous prizes, live from our studio in Burbank! Actually we aren’t live, aren’t in Burbank, and there are no prizes other than shared wisdom. But it’s a fun time, honest!
Write what you know, kill your darlings, don’t use adverbs. We’ve all heard the old chestnuts of writing advice that get passed around like second nature. But can these kernels of wisdom survive a round of Writing Advice: Yea or Nay?
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The Narrators might be planning to do a review of Wonder Woman, so I’m not going to do that. This post, instead, is about seeing one of my favorite fictional characters realized on the big screen. I’m going to have to tell you, then, about my 44-year relationship with Diana, princess of the Amazons.
My first Wonder Woman comic was a gift from my parents. It was a giant-sized treasury edition of the early World War 2 comics. I look at those comics with adult eyes, and I cringe at the portrayal of Germans and Japanese. My child eyes focused instead on a woman hero. I had been watching a steady diet of Yvonne Craig being Batgirl on the 1960s Batman, as well as watching Emma Peel in syndication on the British Avengers television show, so I was primed to think of myself as a woman of action in my pretend time. But Princess Diana of the Amazons? Well, she was different. And it wasn’t just that Diana was more brightly colored. Honestly, it was because I had finished reading the Children’s Encyclopedia of Folklore and Mythology and I was hooked on the Greek Gods.
Suddenly in my hands were two of my favorite things: Greek mythology and an action heroine paired together. After that first giant comic, Wonder Woman returned to a monthly comic. I didn’t know it at the time, but she had just shed Emma Peel like martial arts action running a groovy clothing boutique and returned to her comic book persona, rejoining the Justice League through a series of self-imposed labors, like Hercules, while her male colleagues judged the success of her completion of them. Um…missed the problems with that as a kid too. Instead, I loved the way she lassoed her costume on and off, and thought that it would be cool to be both a super hero and an employee at the United Nations…at the same time!
All things Wonder Woman were to come into my hands. Reprints of old stories, the new comics, whatever I could find. Happiness and ecstatic glee were mine when I found out that there would be a pilot for a Wonder Woman series. Unhappiness and frustration replaced my feelings when Wonder Woman was blond and the story wasn’t anything like the comic books. But in a few more years, well, cue Linda Carter.
Cath fangirls up a storm in the presence of one of her favorite authors, Pamela Dean. The Tam Lin author reflected on her work and influences during a break in the action at MiniCon. BONUS: Cath also sits down with Lisa Gus, co-founder of WishKnish, a new service to connect authors with like-minded readers.
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Recently, my agent asked me to send her some pitches for some new projects. This is another thing that is different for me as a publishing author–Strategic Planning.
Right now, I am still working diligently on the Klaereon sequel, and I plan to finish it by the end of the summer. There will be a short interlude for a short story, but then what next? This is the space where strategic planning comes in. By sending my agent, someone who is a marketplace specialist, several proposals for new projects, we can make an educated guess about which one of the projects might be smart to develop next.
The short summary, pitch, and query letter skills all come into play here, so some of the techniques I have already learned had quite a workout last week. I found that I enjoyed the process, as the Venn diagram overlap between creativity and organization is this very sweet spot. The technical writing masters also comes in handy here.
This is a sign post on the road that denotes working with your agent and strategically developing your next project is, in fact, a mark of writing as a career. Crossing into a writing career is a new piece of the overall puzzle, and I have been “careering,” so to speak, with editing, formatting, and planning book support, but this new piece speaks more to the future than any other piece has.
Let’s see what the future holds!
It’s not a caper, it’s an operation! Hugo nominee Sarah Gailey joins us for hippo mayhem on the eve of the launch party for her Tor.com novella, River of Teeth. She regales us with tales of stress hippos, the women of Harry Potter, the perils of nonfiction and so much more.
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Literary agent Mary C. Moore of Kimberley Cameron & Associates joins us for a discussion of all things agenting. What captures her attention in a query or pitch? How does one go about becoming an agent? Has she ever been slipped a manuscript under the bathroom stall? You must tune in to discover the answers, gentle listener.
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