Author: Karen

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Writing process

Science fiction through modern media

Lately it seems I’ve come across more and more people who love science fiction, yet their total exposure to the genre is through film and television. They’ve watched every episode of Star Trek, seen more Star Wars movies than I have, they’ve seen Farscape, and Torchwood and Firefly. (Every single one of them adores Firefly.)

They have never read a science fiction novel that wasn’t a spinoff from a television series or a movie or a computer game.

These people love science fiction as much as I do, and most of them are far more fanatical. They go to conventions, they join forums to talk about their favourite shows/characters, and they meet up with fellow aficionados. Some of them are even writing novels. Good novels.

I just wish there was a way to steer them toward science fiction books. There are some stories out there they’d love.

I wouldn’t steer them toward the grand masters from the golden age of science fiction. They were good for their time, but that time isn’t now. I’d start them with what they’re enjoying at the moment. Light military science fiction. John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, Tanya Huff’s Confederation series, maybe even Louis McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan books. Then I’d go on to some of the more modern day classics. Some early Connie Willis. Finally I’d move on to some of the more thought-provoking or deeper science stories. Vernor Vinge, Paolo Bacagalupi, Elizabeth Bear and others.

Except, no matter how much I coax, I can’t convince these fans to read them.

Fantasy doesn’t seem to have the same problem

People who are introduced to fantasy via the movies, however, often graduate to other books.

I wonder if this is because a lot of fantasy you get on television and film comes from books anyway. The three most obvious being Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and A Song of Ice and Fire.

Many fantasy readers start off with the movies, graduate to the books and before you know it they’re waxing lyrical about Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson and Joe Abercrombie.

Don’t jump in at the deep end

Unlike fantasy, science fiction created new stories for the new media. There are a few standouts that came the other way, like BladeRunner, but I’m generalising here. And let’s be honest, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (the story that spawned Bladerunner) is probably not the first story you would give someone to introduce them to science fiction as a novel. You need to ease into it gently.

Easing into it is important. Not everyone wants heavy science in their fiction, at least, not at first. If you ask the people who have been introduced to sci-fi through media-related material what they like about it, I’m sure that most of them would say the characters, the action and the humour.

They need stories with those same characteristics.

There are dozens of stories just like that in novels that these fans would love.

If only they would read them.

Categories
Writing process

NaNoWriMo

To all of you who plan on doing NaNoWriMo this year. Have fun, and may your words flow fast.

Categories
On writing

GenreCon 2013 – Take 1

GenreCon 2013 has come and gone. We both met lots of great people, talked until we were hoarse, and learned lots from the varied presenters.

As usual, we’re both blogging about it. This is my (Karen’s) take on the event. Sherylyn’s will follow in the next post.

John Connolly was superb. Entertaining, witty and targeted perfectly to his market of writers.  I would love to be able to speak like him.

Or failing that, Kathryn Fox.  She was excellent too.

The two stand-out sessions for me were the long ones that covered practical aspects dealing with writing.

The first was Damon Cavalchini’s Say It With Feeling. Damon gave practical tips and hints on how to prepare for and do readings. Useful tips on how to overcome your nerves, how long you should read for, and the impact that changing your tone and pitch has. Tips on dealing with nervous mannerisms like waving your arms about (do it, just be careful of the mic) or giggling. Tips for practising readings and using your voice. It was good, practical advice on a topic most of us never even think about until we have to do it.

The second was Alex Adsett’s Contracts and Copyrights. Again good, practical information from a woman who obviously knew what she was talking about. Alex covered the basics of copyright and permissions and then went on to cover publishing contract clauses and rights. What the various clauses mean, which are the show stoppers for her, and so on.  And she made it easy to understand, which you have to admit is hard to do when you’re talking legal documents.

Next up: Sherylyn’s take.

Categories
On writing

My writing crystal ball

After reading the recent tweets from #MSWL—Manuscript wish list hashtag—on Twitter I did my own non-scientific analysis of the results and came up the following list of potential future trends.

  • Historicals in different eras (MG, YA, NA, adult)
  • Male protagonist who’s not beautiful/perfect or who is deeply flawed
  • Lots of YA science fiction and fantasy
  • Lonely kids
  • Sassy contemporaries. If they’re YA, not too much angst
  • Retelling of fables, fairy tales
  • LGBQT and POC
  • Space opera
  • Epic fantasy
  • YA horror
  • Con/heists/mysteries/capers

If I had to pick a single trend I’d say it was historical fiction, particularly for eras that haven’t been written about before. Regency is out, Victorian, Renaissance and middle ages are in. The trend crosses over to science fiction and fantasy as well as mainstream historical.

There were a few requests for stories about lonely kids, some for non-perfect heroes, and others for sassy contemporaries without too much angst. Quite a lot for lesbian, gay, transsexual and bi-gender (LGBQT) and people of colour (POC).

I got the impression that people were looking for more uplifting stories than they have for a while.

There were lots of requests for YA horror, science fiction and fantasy. I think this is fantastic, as it means this next generation will grow up thinking of these genres as automatic ‘to reads’. Bring it on.

There was also a bigger demand for mysteries and capers than I have seen for a while.

What’s really good for us is that quite a few people are looking for space operas.

Now that’s a trend I like.

Categories
Writing tools

A final look at Office 365

It’s been six months since I bought Office 365. Time goes so fast. Only another six months to renewal, which was always the bad part about the whole deal, but I knew that when I started, so it’s not really the bad part, just the choice I made.

It’s a good time to look back on how I’ve found it. It’s been a busy six months, writing-wise.

Using Office

When I installed Office 365 I moved from Office 2007 to 2013. I had no problems with the transition.

I thought I would get used to the colours, but six months later I still open Outlook when I mean to open Word, and I still don’t like the all-white for everything. (I see that the iPad has gone very white as well. All I can say to both companies is, please don’t.) I would love an option to add more contrast. For users like me, who have two 24 inch screens, it is too much white.

The templates on the New Documents pages still drive me crazy. I would love to control which templates I see.

Outside of the above, I like the software.

Transferring licenses

Back in September I bought a new laptop and transferring the licenses was a breeze. A definite plus for Office 365.

Networking

Office itself is great, but when it comes to the cloud you can probably hear my screams from the other side of the world.

Continue reading “A final look at Office 365”
Categories
Talking about things

eBook things

The eBook market seems to be settling down, and with it eReading habits. I step back and take stock occasionally. Here’s where I’m at with eBooks right now.

I buy my eBooks from a number of suppliers, and I keep them in a number of different places as well. This may or may not be typical behaviour—most of my eBook reading friends tend to buy from one supplier, even if they buy their paper books from different places.

I can see lots of advantages to sticking to a single supplier and format but there a lots of disadvantages too.

Some eReading facts about me

  • I don’t have a dedicated eReader like a Nook or a Kindle
  • My favourite eReader is the iBook app on the iPad
  • Other eBook readers I use on a regular basis are Calibre, Kindle for iPad and Kindle for PC, and I use on a lesser basis some other proprietary readers
  • I like to keep all my books in the one place
  • I use Calibre to manage my books
  • I don’t have a preference for eBooks over paper books; price and immediacy (as in, do I want to read it right now) determine which format I buy in.

Some eBuying facts about me

  • I buy DRM-free if I can, because it’s easier to move between eReaders
  • I prefer to buy books in a non-proprietary format, again so I can easily move between eReaders
  • I try to buy from publishers whose business practises I support
  • I buy more books now I have an eReader
  • I’ve had some bad experiences with PayPal, so if that’s the only way I can pay for a book I’m not going to buy, not matter how much I might want it

And yes, those first three points mean that I only buy eBooks from Amazon when it’s the only place I can get them from, or when they’re so cheap I’ll take that in preference to a book I can read in another reader. What this means is that my Kindle books tend to be my junk novels. There are a lot of self-published books in there, for example.

I don’t buy books from the Apple store. Ever.

I also like to feel that once I’ve bought a book, it’s mine. The bookseller can’t take it back on a whim. Here’s looking at you, Amazon.

The last point limits where I buy books. A surprising number of smaller online publishers only take PayPal.

ePurchasing experience

Things suppliers/software do for me to make my ePurchasing experience easier

  • Read the first pages

This is the equivalent of picking up a book in the bookstore and starting to read. I love it.

  • Amazon one-click to purchase

I love it.Despite what I say about Amazon above, this makes be buy a lot of books. Spur-of-the-moment decisions. If I have to take out my credit card to make the purchase I’ll often think twice.

Maybe it’s a good thing.

  • Number of pages or number of words

Amazon again, but other publishers do it as well. Sometimes, buying a book off the internet seems like a lottery with regard to value for money. I have been caught out so often buying stories—at novel-type prices—only to find it’s little more than a glorified short story. Unfortunately too, many of my favourite mid-list writers are turning to self-publishing, and it seems that as soon as they do, they start producing shorter works. If a story is only nine pages long, I want to know that before I fork out $5 for it. I’m expecting at least half a novel for that price.

  • Send to device

Calibre has a great feature where you can send your books to iTunes. Kindle has a ‘send to Kindle’ option when you select a file. I use them both all the time. Anything that makes it easier to move between the various readers gets my vote.

Reflections

Looking back over old blogs, I’d say my eBuying and eReading habits were settling.

Categories
On writing

Remember, you became a writer because you enjoyed writing

The pressure to always write ‘serious’ stuff can lead to burn out. Sometimes you need to leaven it with some fun, otherwise you’ll find you just can’t write any more.

Paolo Bacigalupi writes some pretty heavy stories. They do what great science fiction always does, they make you think—really think—about the issues that he writes about. Like the ethics of genetic engineering.

I remember reading The Calorie Man back when it first came out, just after I’d visited family in the wheat belt of the Wimmera and for some reason that visit we’d been discussing Monsanto and buying GM modified wheat. I tell you, reading Bacigalupi’s story immediately afterward made an impression that stayed with me for years.

However, I digress, I’m not here to talk about Bacigalupi, I’m here to talk about a comment he made on John Scalzi’s The Big Idea, which is part of Scalzi’s Whatever blog.

If you read science fiction and fantasy, by the way, I hope you’re reading The Big Idea. It’s one of the best places I know to discover new/unfamiliar authors.

But, back to Bacigalupi, whose new book is Zombie Baseball Beatdown.

In The Big Idea Bacigalupi says:

To be honest, I didn’t write Zombie Baseball Beatdown just for the giggle … I actually did it because it if I didn’t, I probably wasn’t going to write another one of my ‘serious’ novels ever again …

For the last two years, I’d been miserable trying to write The Drowned Cities with that Greek chorus of critical voices in my head. I desperately wanted to play creatively in a space where I no longer had to worry about who liked what, or who approved of what, or whether anyone would want to buy what I wrote.

I just wanted to create…

The Big Idea: Paolo Bacigalupi*

I know exactly how he felt.

When Sherylyn and I write we tend to do one ‘serious’ novel and then one ‘light and frothy’, before returning to another heavier story.

You can’t call our serious novels anything like Bacigalupi’s, of course, but they’re still a lot more serious than our light-and-frothies, which tend to be romps. We have written, for example, a young-adult fantasy, a rim-world science fiction and a romantic science fiction in our metaphorical time down.

Then we got an agent, and while our agent has been fantastic and not put any pressure on us at all, we put pressure on ourselves. We jumped straight from one serious novel to the next.

And we struggled. Linesman II (Acquard) has taken us twice as long to write as a normal novel, and while it’s good in parts, it’s nowhere near finished yet. We’re on the second draft and there’s still lots to clean up. Clean-up that would normally have been done in the first pass.

Like all of our writing, once we’ve finished a major draft we put the story away for a couple of months. We do this not just so that we can come back to it with fresh eyes, but also because once you have finished writing a story you’re tired of it. Put it away for a bit and you come back to it less jaded. You see what you loved about it in the first place.

So we put Acquard away and what did we do next? We jumped straight into Linesman III (Fergus).

More fool us.

Fergus was coming hard too.

Then, I have no idea why, we started a side project. A story about a demon who eats a wizard and decides to take that wizard’s place. It’s definitely a light and frothy.

We’re having fun writing again.

And not surprisingly, Fergus is coming along well too.

*p.s. Bacigalupi still manages to pack some heavy themes into a kid’s book.

Categories
Writing tools

A tick in the box for Office 365

I finally caved in and bought an ultrabook laptop. My not-so-little netbook that I shopped so hard for weighed in at a whopping 4.1kg, which is a fair weight to carry around in your handbag.

My new PC weighs in at 0.87kg and yes, it fits into my handbag. I’m loving how light it is.

I have to admit, with Office 365, the installation of Microsoft Office was painless. Log in to the Microsoft site, click ‘install’ and wait for it all to happen. It was the most painless install I’ve done. And my shared data came across all set up ready to go.

Tick one for the plus side of Office 365.

Categories
Writing process

One month to GenreCon 2013

One month to GenreCon 2013. We both had such a good time last year we’re going back. We even blogged about it (here and here).

The things that stay in my mind twelve months later aren’t the things we blogged about. What I remember now are the little things, like the young waiter serving drinks the night of the cocktail party who asked, “Are all these people published writers?”

“Some of them are,” we told him. “Some of us aren’t yet, but we want to be.”

Seriously, that young kid wouldn’t have taken much encouragement to become a writer himself. (Sherylyn planned to blog about incidents like this before we go this time, but she’s busy, busy, busy doing tax. Never get in the way of a lady doing her tax return, especially not when she’s helping me fill out mine as well.)

Like I say, we’re both going back. It was lots of fun, and we met lots of interesting people all interested in the same things we’re interested in. What more can you ask?

If you’re going, we’ll see you there.

Categories
On writing

Selfies – a trend I would never have picked

Science fiction writers try to predict the future. Take a trend, extrapolate it, and there’s your future. Yet there are some things you’d never think of, even though they’re so obvious once the trend has arrived.

Selfies are like that.

Whoever would have picked a trend where people took photographs of themselves and made them available on social media?

Not me.

I could probably have picked social media. Maybe not in exactly in the same format, but some kind of interaction and exchange of social information via virtual communities.

But selfies?

In retrospect, it’s logical. The proliferation of cameras on mobile phones, combined with easy access to upload them, combined with social media. It’s obvious, but only after it’s happened.