Category Archives: Interacting With Fans

A guest post by Amanda McCarter.

Okay, folks, get ready for the cheese factor, because I’m going to lay it on you.

One of the things I love about being a writer is my mom. Yes, I’m going there. It’s an incredible feeling. She tells me she’s proud of me and that she loves my books and my stories. It does not get any better than that.

But that’s what moms are supposed to do, right?

They’re supposed to be partial and think everything you do is golden and amazing. Parents are supposed to support you and encourage your passion. It’s what they do.

I’ve got horror stories of watching friends and colleagues torn down by their parents and loved one because their writing is some time-wasting hobby that will never amount to anything. Every story is a struggle and a fight because someone is nagging them to give up their silly pastime or belittling them for doing it.

This is where I get to brag. My mother is not one of these people. She is absolutely tickled pink that her little girl is a writer. She reads all my books and bugs me about when the next one comes out. It’s fantastic.

And it means a lot to me. It’s special to me. My mother is my love of reading. I grew up with The Hobbit by Tolkien and The Harper Hall Trilogy by Anne McCaffrey as bedtime stories. Whenever my mother finished a book, she passed it on to my brother or me. I grew up with bookshelves in my bedroom stacked full of Mercedes Lackey and Peter David and Frank Herbert.

We would take family trips to Hastings where we could rent a movie and choose a book. Sure, we could have gone to the library, but there was something so personal about owning a book. I could read it over and over again and never worry about late fees or giving it back to someone else. It was mine.

My mother gave that to us.

So my mom isn’t just a supportive woman with a proud smile. She’s a reader. She’s well read. The classics, mysteries, science fiction, drama, fantasy, romance. You name it, she’s read it. When she says she enjoys a book, she means it.

Yes, I get a pass. I’m related. But it does mean something when it comes from her. When she says she likes my writing, in my mind, I’m right up there with Lackey and McCaffrey and the dozens of other authors she’s read. Am I as good? I’ve got a ways to go. But I’m good enough for her and that’s a tremendous amount of strength.

Because when you’ve got the support of someone who loves you and loves your field and what you do in it, it’s incredible. She doesn’t just like my books because I wrote them. She likes them because they’re books. Would she have found them if we weren’t related? No telling, but that’s not the point.

Writers are susceptible to a certain amount of depression, angst, and self-doubt. Is this good enough? Should I even bother? Why did I write that scene? Who am I kidding? This is all crap.

But then I talk to my mom and things are right with the world. I finish what I’m writing and work through it.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have this kind of support. I know not everyone gets it. And my mother’s enthusiasm has spread to other members of my family. Two of my aunts are very interested in my writing as well.

I guess my point is, those are the people whose opinions really matter. Friends, loved ones. Yes, it’s exciting when an editor says nice things or you get an impressive review. But nothing feels quite as warm and fuzzy as your mom telling you how proud she is of you.

For the record, my big brother thinks this writing business is cute.

Guest Writer Bio:
Amanda grew up reading the works of Mercedes Lackey, Anne McCaffrey, Frank Herbert, and dozens of other fantasy and science fiction writers. As time went on, it occurred to her to write her own fantastic stories of faraway places and distant lands. Encouraged by her mother and family to write, a one-time hobby became an obsession and a passion. An obsession she hopes to one day make full time. Currently, Amanda lives in Tulsa, OK with her boyfriend, one snake, two cats, and two dogs. When not dreaming of faraway places and distant lands, she spends her time knitting, reading, and playing video games.

Raindancers

July 15, 2014

Quincy J. Allen

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Everyday living for most people can be compared all-too-easily to what drought means for farmers, what the dry seasons meant to American Indians. It’s a barren time full of silence and waiting and subtle, fatalistic dread that nothing is going to happen, that life will wither and perhaps even die. And it’s that need for green, for life and living, which brings comfort and joy and the heights of emotional salvation when the rains finally come. One could make the argument that we read drama and fantasy and horror because we have an inherent, hard-wired need for emotional input—a need for rain.

That’s a writer’s job, at least some of the time. We must don the doe’s skull and bright feathers. We must clothe ourselves in tanned hides and wrap bone rattles about our wrists and ankles. We must dance, sprouting clouds of dust as we stomp our feet and we sweat upon the hard-baked clay of everyday life.

It’s our job.

One of the hardest things writers have to live with is the uncertainty that their dancing has brought rain, sprinkled or poured a little bit of life into a reader’s existence. The truth is that most writers, especially at the beginning of their careers, never find out if their dancing has borne precipitation. There is this gulf—a fundamental disconnect—between writer and reader, one that leaves writers with cracked lips and dusty throats.

I recently had two experiences—more milestones in my career—which gave me tangible evidence that my own dancing was not in vain. Last fall I submitted a short story called Family Heirloom to the magazine Steampunk Trials. It’s a steampunk take on the Underground Railroad where a white widow and a freed slave build an Underwater Railroad in Missouri.

Included in the acceptance email was a very simple accolade, and one I’ll never forget. The story had brought tears the editor to eyes. When I wrote that story, it was with the absolute intention of touching, playing upon the heartstrings of the reader. I intended to bring forth the emotions of suffering and sacrifice, highlight the resolve of an individual to carry on and enrich the lives of the next generation in spite of tragedy.

Because of that first editor’s response, I chose Family Heirloom as the lead in a short story collection of mine that came out this summer. It’s not a best-seller in no small part because it contains cross-genre short stories, which is really a double-whammy against people even looking at it, let alone buying it. And yet, in spite of its uphill battle to gain recognition, I recently received another bit of rain. One of the reviewers up on Amazon said the same thing as the editor: that the story had brought tears to his or her eyes, and that other stories in that volume also had profound emotional effects. A reader took the time to let me—and the world—know that there was rain to be found between those pages.

For a writer, there’s nothing better than that.

So, to all the writers who read this, I can say but one thing: keep dancing. And to every reader, for all the rain you have been given by authors, give them some back. Give them the rain they need in the form of emails and reviews and word-of-mouth praise for the rain that has sustained you.

Drought is a fact of life, but we all possess the means by which we can bring rain to those who need it.

Just a Moment

July 10, 2014

fictorians

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A guest post by Rob Riddell.

There is a crystalline moment that keeps me writing. At a wonderful production of one of my plays, a talented director and cast came together on a gorgeous set. I sat on opening night in the dark, anticipating. My emotions roiled as if I was about to ask someone out on a first date. The lights were about to come up.

The play was about the change in relationship that occurs between couples, and a bit about rebranding oneself. The setting was in the time of Robin Hood and Maid Marion, but with some current sensibilities. There were seven main couples, all at a different point in their relationship. From the “failed to launch” couple to the “why am I still married to you” couple, the actors had brought the couples to life. Almost.

During the weeks of long rehearsals, the actors worked through the characters and action and the play came together. The big sword fight enacted by a couple of guys with martial arts training looked fantastic! The comedy and drama seemed to come through as hoped—for the most part. But the couple that represented a relationship like my grandparents struggled to find the comedy. Somehow, they could find the pathos, yet missed the joy. Out of all the parts of the play, no matter what they tried, their scenes missed the magic everyone else could create.

The director and I worried, because we both wanted to deliver to the audience the best performance possible. This seemed to be the one point everyone had doubts about. People feared that whenever that couple was onstage, they slowed down the energy of the play. Also, I noticed that during rehearsals, when that particular couple performed, the director would smile, but even he never laughed. I offered to rewrite, but we couldn’t come up with alternatives that would get us a better result. Finally, after the dress rehearsal, the director shrugged and said, “Have faith in the actors and material.”

So I did.

Sitting in the dark theatre beside the director and the sound tech, I waited to see what would happen. The play began, and the audience responded well to the parts we hoped would work, and early in scene one, the lights came up on the couple. The guy stood onstage, within his character, as usual. Then he delivered his first tentative line to his onstage wife. From out of the darkness behind us, a lady laughed. Not just the titter of a young schoolgirl, but a good honest laugh. The reaction onstage was electric. The wife looked up at her husband with a new light in her eye. The wonderful actress absorbed that lady’s laugh. When she now looked up at her husband, under the lights of the stage, her look told everyone that she had been married to this guy for a long time, that she could deal with whatever he was about to come up with. She started delivering her lines as a wise married woman, and the lady hidden behind us loved it. The husband fed from this and his character grew to match his wife. As the scene progressed, that singular laugh grew to the fully committed laugh of someone who really knew those characters. She just knew. Her laugh carried the whole audience along. The couple onstage blossomed. They performed.

Throughout the rest of the night, each time that couple came onstage, everyone in the audience began to anticipate their antics. What was feared to be the weak point of the night became the lynchpin. The rest of the actors took that fantastic energy and made their scenes truly glow. The magic they had worked so hard to achieve hung that night in the space between the cast and the audience. I sat anonymously in wonder and amazement, humbled at their tangible yet insubstantial creation.

When the lights came up, I searched the crowd to see if I could identify the owner of that laugh. For a fleeting moment, I wanted to identify myself as the playwright and tell her I was grateful. But I couldn’t immediately find her, and then my courage left like a will-o’-the-wisp in the dark, so my thank you went unsaid forever.

I write so that someday I can feel that wonder again, the electric moment when words come alive and snap into focus, to create the play between the characters and their audience, which is held in accord between the two, right up until the very end of the story.

Guest Writer Bio:
Rob Riddell has been hooked on playwriting ever since Grade Five. He wrote his first play about Edward Teach, so he and his buddies could have swordfights on stage. Currently, he joyously writes plays and acts with the CandleWick Players in southern Manitoba.

Without Them, I Wouldn’t Be Writing

July 4, 2014

Evan Braun

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There are many advantages to being a writer, especially a self-employed one like me. True, my income is highly variable and no one throws me a staff Christmas party at the end of the year, but I get to wake up late, work in my pyjamas, and take time off whenever I like. I get to go trips, use them as research opportunities and attend writing workshops, and then write off all those flights, hotels, and restaurant dinners on my taxes.

I also get to have fans.

I’ve written before on the Fictorians about the day I first realized that I had a fan club. That was one of the best moments of my life, and certainly one that I wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t poured so much time and energy into being a writer.

Having fans is incredibly inspiring—but more than that, it comes with a greater sense of responsibility. No longer can I get away with just writing anything I want and hoping it’s good enough. I have people who read carefully and care about the characters and settings I have invented. And if I don’t give it my all, they know. They call me on it.

During a question-and-answer session last year at a reading for my latest novel, an astute reader in the audience stood up to identify a plot hole I had never noticed before. She didn’t do it in a mean-spirited way; she had assumed the seeming inconsistency was intentional, and that it was part of an elaborate setup for a future book. If only that were true. Knowing that people are reading carefully and paying attention means you gotta work twice as hard.

Well, lesson learned.

This week, I went to the doctor’s office for a checkup. While in the waiting room, someone sidled up next to me and asked when my next book was coming out. When I refused to give him a straight answer, he tried to fish some spoilers out of me. This isn’t the first time this has happened, and more than once I’ve pulled a Robert-Jordan-esque “ROFL.” Even two years ago, I never would have imagined something like that happening.

Another reader once asked me if I could write her into the next book. She may have been joking, but when she picks up said book when it comes out she may have a surprise in store.

Perhaps it’s because I’m from a small town, but people seem to know me where I’m from. They recognize me, they turn out in relatively large numbers when I have an event, and they ask me about my upcoming projects while I’m picking up the mail or waiting at the deli counter at the grocery store. This most likely wouldn’t be the case if I lived in a big city, which makes me all the more grateful for the experience. I’m in awe of it.

Like I said, it comes with responsibility.

When I sit down at the beginning of a new writing session, my mind invariably turns to the latest handful of people who asked me when the next book is coming out. I want my writing to be worthy of their interest and attention, and as a result I strive hard to take my craft to the next level.

What makes me love being a writer? Indisputably, the fans. Without readers, there cannot be books. If all these dedicated and persistent readers in my life didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be pushing as hard as I am right now. I wouldn’t be writing. I’d be popping in a DVD, sitting down to watch another episode of Game of Thrones for the tenth time. I’d be playing yet another game of Minesweeper.

So here’s to the fans—who came to my reading despite having to drive fifty kilometres through one of the worst snowstorms of the worst winter since the 1800s, who put me on Winnipeg’s bestseller list two weeks in a row during the Christmas rush, and who pester me constantly when I’m feeling down. They make this whole miserable and glorious experience worthwhile.