Category Archives: Author’s Perspective

“Come in, — come in! and know me better, man!” -Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

We’d love for you, our wonderful readers, to get to know us better. That’s why, each month, Kristin Luna will interview a member of The Fictorians. We’ll learn more about each member, such as their writing processes, their work, where they live, and what they prefer to drink on a cold winter’s day. We hope you enjoy this monthly installment of Meet the Fictorians.

Meet the Fictorians:

Frank Morin

Kristin Luna (KL): Hi Frank!

Frank Morin (FM): Kristin, as always, it’s a pleasure.

KL: When did you join the Fictorians?

FM: I was one of the first members of the Fictorians who wasn’t an original founding member. I joined just months after the original group was formed. As soon as I heard about the idea, I saw the brilliance of it and decided I had to become part of it. I’ve never looked back.

KL: Where do you live? Are you inspired by your surroundings when you write?

FM: For most of my life, I lived in New England, but I moved with my family to southern Oregon about five years ago. This is a beautiful part of the country, with a great climate, mountains, rivers, and lots of outdoor activities, which I enjoy. I’m a scoutmaster, so I get to camp and hike and explore more than I would otherwise.

I try to draw inspiration from everything I know, and I definitely look to real environments when developing settings. I’ve traveled some, and hope to travel much more in thefuture. It’s all great fodder for the creative process.

KL: I feel like you’ve been putting out books left and right. I’m really in awe of your productivity. Do you have any words of advice for our readers on that?

FM: Thanks. Last year was a big year. I released three major titles and jumped into indie publishing with both feet. This year, I’m planning on four or five major titles, with some short story publications worked in somewhere too. My books tend to be long – about 150,000 words, so it’s a challenge to release so many.

The most important advice is to write every day. Make a commitment and stick to it. Some days writing is less fun than other days, but when I force myself to sit down and start typing, I can find the fun, even if I lacked motivation to begin with.

I also recommend setting goals that will motivate you to try harder, goals so high they might scare you as much as they motivate. I set the goal to launch eight books last year. Not physically possible, but I tried and I worked like crazy to try to make it. I learned a lot of lessons and got further than I ever could have without setting that stretch goal.

And enjoy the process. I love writing and I often tell people I’m my own biggest fan. That love of story will radiate off the page. It helps me keep going, and readers feel it.

KL: You’re currently working on a new series, The Petralist. Book 2 came out in December of 2015. When is book 3 coming out? Can you give us a quick elevator pitch of the series?

FM: I’ve been releasing books in two series. The Petralist is my YA fantasy series that has been doing quite well. It’s a fun, epic read full of big adventure, big magic, and lots of humor. Book three should be out in May, and it’s shaping up to be even better than the first two.

Set in Stone kicked off the series, introducing Connor and his friends as their remote village became ground zero for an escalating international crisis. In a kingdom where only the nobility are supposed to have special powers, Connor’s secret curse might hold the key to stopping the war and saving his village from destruction.

The other series is the Facetakers, my alternate history fantasy series. It’s been described as Mission Impossible meets Assassin’s Creed. It’s a fast-paced, world-spanning adventure that also delves back in time as opposing forces with superhuman enhancements battle for control over pivotal moments in history to control the power needed to shape the future. Fun stuff.

KL: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from writing a series?

FM: Series are fun, but they definitely offer unique challenges. Each novel needs to push the over-arching storyline forward, but each novel needs to be standalone enough for readers to pick it up and enjoy it, even if they might not have read previous works, or forgotten much of those earlier novels. The other challenge is in making each novel resonate with the series but still remain unique enough that readers don’t think I’m just re-hashing the same old plot ideas I’ve used before.

I’ve tried to learn lessons from failures I’ve seen in other series, and so far the response has been very positive.

KL: What’s your favorite book or short story you’ve written so far?

FM: That’s such a hard question! Each book and story is like a part of me. Perhaps that makes me seem schizophrenic or suffering from a very split personality, but it’s true. Like I mentioned earlier, I’m my own biggest fan, and when I sit down with any of my stories, I get sucked in by them, even though I wrote them.

But if I had to choose, I’d say Set in Stone, book one of the Petralist. That story started as a project with my kids. We tell a lot of stories in our home, and the kids were demanding I give them something epic. So I threw down the challenge: they come up with a magic system, and I’d make up stories using it.

They did, and I did. What started as a fun journey of ad-hoc stories at home became a year-long journey with characters we came to love. Writing novels based off of those verbal adventures was a no-brainer. The books are dramatically different from those early verbal drafts, but some nuggets have remained, and the kids and I love to rediscover them as we read the stories again and again.

KL: What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

FM: Life is full, and never boring. I almost never have time for television. I’m a self- employed computer consultant and I try to write as close to full-time as possible. Plus I’m busy with my family and church and community. I’m a scoutmaster of a local Boy Scout troop, and we camp every month. I love outdoor activities, SCUBA, but also reading and playing video games with the kids when I can. I try to be active and enjoy life.

KL: Do you write to music or in silence?

FM: I usually listen to instrumental music when I write. Most often, I listen to Piano Guys radio on Pandora, and other similar stations I’ve been customizing. The music helps free my mind, but I can’t often listen to lyrics because the words distract me.

I’m convinced that “Numb” by Linkin Park would make the perfect theme song for a movie-quality book trailer for Set in Stone. Listen to it after reading the book and you’ll see.

KL: What’s your favorite blog post you’ve written for The Fictorians? I know, there are a ton, but what’s the one you’re most proud of?

FM: Wow. Another impossible question. I don’t think I can pick a single favorite, but there are a couple of contenders I could mention.

One that comes to mind is “Working the Humor Scale” where I discuss different degrees of humor. I’ve explored using humor in my stories, particularly the Petralist novels, and it’s a fun process. With each story or novel, one of the important aspects I look at is where on the humor scale the novel is going to fall.

I’m also a fan of setting stretch goals. I’ve done a couple of posts on the topic, including one in January of this year, but I think the one I’d like to highlight is “Go Big or Stay Home”. Take life by the horns, take a chance, and go for it.

If you have any questions for Frank, please leave a comment below. Thank you for reading!

Cultivating the Fungus

February 25, 2016

Travis Heermann

Author's Perspective Life Philosophies Living Deliberately Making Progress as a Writer Self-Awareness The Writing Life The Writing Process Travis Heermann Writing as An Emotional Outlet 1 Comment

“One writes such a story not out of the leaves of trees still to be observed, nor by means of botany and soil-science; but it grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps. No doubt there is much selection, as with a gardener: what one throws on one’s personal compost-heap; and my mould is evidently made largely of linguistic matter.” – J. R. R. Tolkien, on the creation of The Lord of the Rings

Where do your stories come from? Writers are often asked that question.

The short answer: they come from leaf-mold, like Tolkien says.

As Tolkien was a philologist, the leaf-mold of his life was largely the study of languages and their relation to history, so it’s no wonder why Middle Earth’s races and history are so meticulously constructed.

Let’s deconstruct the above quote and expand its scope.

“One writes … not out of the leaves of trees still to be observed…”

We’ve got to have some experiences, don’t we? Experiences that elicit deep passions, loves in all their forms from crushes to parental bonds, betrayals, butt-kickings, travels, successes, and failures. We need to know what things feel like. We need to have laughed, wept, exulted, raged, and trembled in sufficient quantity to infuse our art with truth. The hearsay of truth, the derivation of truth, and sight of truth on a distant mountaintop is not sufficient fodder for art. Our truth must come from our own experience, not someone else’s.

…[N]or by means of botany and soil-science…”

Conscious thought is death to the creative process. It has uses, but only after the story exists in some form. The study of stories will not create a good story–although it could be argued that feeding your compost with the masterworks of your field forms a rich foundation. In the composition process, we must get the hell out of our own way. The subconscious wants to tell the story, but we fill up our awareness with fears and over-thinking, like scum on top of a crystal clear pond.

A quote from one of my favorite Japanese writer/philosophers, Takuan Soho, a 17^th-century Zen monk, sheds more light here.

“One may explain water, but the mouth will not become wet. One may expound fully on the nature of fire, but the mouth will not become hot.”

Knowledge of fire and water comes with experience of fire and water, not from talking about fire and water.

We can’t write stories by talking about stories, deconstructing stories, or applying criticism to stories.

“[B]ut it grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.”

Good writing comes not out of our immediate experiences today, the things that are immediate in our minds, our current traumas, but from experiences that we have assimilated.

Writing about an ongoing heartbreak might have value in catharsis, but the immediacy of the raw emotions can blind us to deficiencies in the work. Time lends perspective.

But here’s the thing. Our subconscious remembers. Those experiences will always be there. Water in the well. Leaf-mold covering the floor of our subconscious forest.

“No doubt there is much selection, as with a gardener: what one throws on one’s personal compost-heap….”

And there you have the crux of it. What do you throw into your leaf-mold? Some of it, you get to choose. Education? Choice of field? Work experience? Travel? Military service? Relationships? Long-distance bike trips? Having children? An obsession with cosplay, motorcycles, firearms, history, pro wrestling, forensics, or another wild passion?

Use the good stuff, the kind of stuff that will be nourishing at the next stage. Don’t put Snickers wrappers and pop cans in your leaf-mold. Fill it with the remnants of glorious feasts and breathtaking bouquets.

Things I’ve consciously added to my own leaf-mold include travel to places such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Bali, Cuba, and Costa Rica, plus living internationally first in Japan for three years and now New Zealand, activities such as martial arts training, bicycle trips, motorcycle trips, stock car racing, a Bachelors Degree in Engineering, a Masters Degree in English, learning some chords blues riffs on guitar so I can make a little music when it suits me, studying Texas Hold’em, seeking out music that fuels the creative stardrive, and cultivating awesome friends who feed my writer soul.

We throw the best stuff into that compost pile, rake it around, and boy does it get rich!

And also full of worms, and beetles, and spiders, and grubs. Those things just get in there, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Some of it, you don’t get to choose.

An abusive, controlling parent/significant other.
A loved one’s struggle with chronic or deadly illness.
Finances gone horribly awry.
Natural disasters.
The experiences of war.
Accumulated injustices, prejudice, and betrayals.

Unwilling additions to my compost are things like divorce, poverty, long-ago injuries resulting now in chronic pain, illness in the family, a lifelong struggle with weight, the deaths of loved ones, unrequited love, and a host of trials, failures, successes, and incidents long since receded into the past.

One of the cool things about being a writer is that we get to right a few wrongs, even if only in our own heads and the heads of our readers.

We can get the girl/boy.

We can tar and feather that politician and ride him out of town on a rail.

We can save our parent from cancer.

We can rewrite history.

We can give just desserts.

We can create our own worlds where justice prevails. And those choices we make in our stories bubble forth from our experiences, our desires, our sense of right and wrong, our pain from those who have wronged us.

If people don’t wish us to write about them, they should behave.

Here’s the thing again: it’s all leaf-mould.

Everything we experience, whether accidentally or on purpose, leaves its tracks on our hearts. When those tracks are deep enough, ubiquitous enough, we must write about them. Consciously cultivating a rich leaf-mold will reward the writer with a great life on the front end and better writing on the back end, the kind of writing that makes readers weep and thrill and ponder and exult. The world needs more of that kind of writing.

So you owe it to the rest of us. Live an awesome life, and then imbue your art with that awesomeness.

About the Author: Travis Heermann

Travis Heermann’s latest novel Spirit of the Ronin, was published in June, 2015.

Freelance writer, novelist, award-winning screenwriter, editor, poker player, poet, biker, roustabout, he is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and the author of Death Wind (co-authored with Jim Pinto), The Ronin Trilogy, The Wild Boys, and Rogues of the Black Fury, plus short fiction pieces in anthologies and magazines such as Perihelion SF, Fiction River, Historical Lovecraft, and Cemetery Dance’s Shivers VII. As a freelance writer, he has produced a metric ton of role-playing game work both in print and online, including content for the Firefly Roleplaying Game, Legend of Five Rings, d20 System, and EVE Online.

He lives in New Zealand with a couple of lovely ladies and more Middle Earth souvenirs than is reasonable.

You can find him on…

Twitter
Facebook
Wattpad
Goodreads
Blog
Website

“Dear NSA Agent…”

February 20, 2016

E. Godhand

Action & Adventure Author's Perspective Authorial Trust Emily Godhand Horror The Writing Life Writing as An Emotional Outlet No Comments

I am not a criminal, I swear.

I’ve just experienced a life with a unique set of events and fields of study that, if one were given enough the correct motivation (and a healthy dose of limited moral inhibitions), the particular set of skills learned could be misapplied to one’s advantage. Fortunately, I’m in a position where the best use of these skills is writing realistic stories where the only people affected or hurt are characters.

There’s always that old writing advice of “write what you know”, but if that’s all writers did, there’d be a lot of the same old. I always liked to interpret it broader: “use what you know to help flesh out your story”.

It does help to have first hand experience with things, but in order to tell characters who know how to break locks, I don’t have to be a master locksmith. To tell characters who know how to use medicines or poisons, I don’t have to be a professional assassin. To describe characters who must infiltrate or use stealth to escape, I don’t have to be a scout or a ninja.

But having a familiarity with these concepts, and the feelings and logistics that surround them, can certainly be used in the stories to provide a more authentic experience.

So how do my characters know how to pick locks, poison, or sneak around? Because someone who was obviously not a good friend once told me to have an interesting life.

Back in middle school, I was your typical latch-key kid. I’d come home off the bus, pick up the mail, and let myself into the apartment. But on more than a couple occasions I forgot my key. Easy enough fix, you can use your student ID to let yourself in (seriously, use the deadbolts). But another time, the deadbolt was locked for some reason, which meant I wasn’t going in through the front door without property damage (and I didn’t have a drill handy anyway).

But I could climb over the balcony. Turns out that door was locked, too. With some bobby pins, tweezers, paper clips, for some reason the metal file on nail clippers, and a rudimentary knowledge of tumblers, I was able to get in.

Another time in gym class, someone decided to put their lock on my locker to keep me from getting my things. I got in, and kept their lock so they could never lock up their things until their parents bought them a new one. When they confronted me on it, it was already in the trash and I could honestly say I didn’t know what happened to it.

“Why would I have your lock? That’s a weird question to ask, did you give it to me somehow?”

Getting gently vicious at the middle-school gym. Add in another skill-set for my characters to learn.

Now, poison…I don’t have a story for poison. I’ve never poisoned anyone without it being a written order from a doctor for a dose low enough to be within the therapeutic range for the purpose of providing medical treatment. So, any medicine, really. Morphine. Chemotherapy.

I liked studying toxicology in the library, hoping one day to help people with overdoses after some friends got into drugs, and drinking was a problem within the community.

There was a greater job market and more marketable skills in medicine, so I learned more about medicines through the certification to be a pharmacy technician and then getting my nursing license. But with those studies comes the knowledge of the “Therapeutic Index”, and the difference between the toxic dose and the lethal dose. The “dose makes the poison” as the saying goes, and the dose that affects the body varies based on the mode of delivery.

Does the liver filter out most of it? Can you add in another substrate that will tie up the cells in the liver that detox the blood, thus leaving the chemical within the system to build up to lethal doses?

There’s a reason they make doctors take the “First, do no harm” oath, ‘cause oh, man, could we ever.
…also, people who took anatomy or who have hunted know how to dissect.
So. There’s that.

Horror writers, am I right? We’re fun folk. I get invited to so many parties. Someone please invite me to a party. I swear I’m charming and won’t bring up dissection again.

Stealth I learned from having to navigate the school, my home, the neighborhood, and the woods.

School because I didn’t make many friends, and if people noticed me it often didn’t end well. Where were the exits? How do you make a distraction? How do you blend into a crowd?

Home because …because.

Neighborhood because I often house-sat with my friend, and she’d often take long walks at night past curfew. I didn’t want her to go alone, so I’d go with her. We’d wander around the neighborhood and hide from passing cars or people.

Woods because I was involved with a search and rescue team. We were looking for people as a group, so obviously we wanted them to know we were coming, in case they wanted to be found.

…Did you know people who don’t want to be found hide in trees? So that’s what I used the night we had a squadron-wide bottle rocket war by the lake one summer.

We took turns ‘defending’ and ‘attacking’ a trailer hooked up with a security camera.
When my team, Bravo, was on ‘defend’, I snuck out to go scout out where Alpha was and what their plans were.

They didn’t expect to find me in the trees. Humans don’t usually have predators above them, so they rarely look up. To start, I was wearing overalls and a t-shirt over my swimsuit. The overalls made noise, so I took them off and kept the swimsuit bottoms. Black stands out at night, and dark blue is a much more natural color, so one of the boys lent me his shirt that I tied at my waist to avoid swishing or catching. I had a flashlight nestled in my chest to not only hold it but keep the noise down from it swinging.

I learned their plans, took off my boots to hide the noise, and took the dirt path back to the trailer to warn my team. Because Bravo was prepared, we could successfully defend. Like having me fire bottle rockets from the trees. They really weren’t expecting that.

When it came time for Bravo to attack, we had already defended, so we learned where the security cameras were and what their range was. We definitely got the better end of that coin toss.

The rule was, defending team started out inside, and we waited 15 minutes to give people time to spread out and get far enough away. I hid in the bushes and avoided the guards, then covered the cameras with my old shirt and overalls by staying just out of range. Sent out a rocket for my team to come out of hiding.

Alpha rushed outside to defend against the ambush, and with the majority of their forces distracted, I got inside and ducked past the guards. Got on the speaker: This is our castle now, and I am its Queen.
Because of all of these experiences, I can describe not only the logistics of what goes into less than reputable character actions, but the feelings they might have as they do so, whether the first time, or after it’s become second nature.

So think of what things in your life might not immediately translate into something you could put on a resume, but you still might be able to use in your story.

Scientist or Writer? Why Not Both!

February 17, 2016

Nathan Barra

Author's Perspective Day Jobs Doing Good in the World Nathan Barra Science Fiction Self-Awareness Setting and Milieu The Writing Life Work-Life Balance World-building No Comments

You wouldn’t believe how many times people have told me that I couldn’t possibly be a writer. NO! Nathan, you’re an engineer, a scientist. And everybody knows that those sciencey types aren’t creative. They’re ALL left brain dominant. Being creative is a completely different thing.

*le sigh*

Growing up I had two great passions: science and stories. To me there weren’t mutually exclusive. However up until recently, I’d been shaped and encouraged to follow my technical ambitions. I went to an engineering school rather than an arts school because it was what was expected of me. Now, don’t think that I was oppressed or forced into a certain path. I’m very stubborn, and wouldn’t have devoted such a large chunk of my life to science and math if I hadn’t genuinely enjoyed doing so. However, what I wish I had realized sooner was that I’m not limited by my choice of degree.

Looking back I believe that no matter what career I chose my creative nature would have always found a way to express itself. What many people don’t realize is that there are many different kinds of engineers. For myself, I have always gravitated towards data analysis and problem solving. Both of which require a fair amount of creativity. After all, if a problem were easily solved by the “normal” way of doing things, you wouldn’t need someone to devote their time and attention to finding a new solution.

My engineering training wasn’t a matter of stifling my creativity, but rather expressing and training those creative impulses in a different way. Even better, many of the skills and techniques I learned while pursuing my scientific development translated into my writing life. Don’t see it? Let me show you how.

Firstly, both scientists and writers need to be keen observers of the world and people around them. For a scientist, it’s about quantification, drawing trends, building models, and predicting the future. Writers, on the other hand, use those observations to bring their characters and worlds to life for their readers.

Additionally, both writers and scientists need to know how to manage large, complex projects. Both novels and research or design projects need to be broken up into smaller parts to be managed. Both are efforts of months or years and require significant organization, timing, and team work to pull off smoothly.

Furthermore both novels and physical machines are intricate constructs with many moving parts. If any one piece is out of balance, it throws off the rhythm of the whole. Ideally, both a novel and an engine are working at their best when the person on the other side isn’t even aware of the complexity beneath the hood. It just works.

Finally, scientists and authors are both in search of the capital “T” truth. We are trying to understand what motivates people, what makes the universe work the way it does, and use those discoveries to make the world a better place.

The truth is that science and fiction have been bedfellows for a long time. Many of the scientists and engineers I know are also avid readers, especially of science fiction. I’ve read interviews of Motorola engineers who claim that they were inspired by Star Trek communicators. I’ve also seen videos that demonstrate real world hologram technology (in progress, admittedly) that directly reference the Star Wars movies. It’s not surprising that the scientists and engineers, as fans, seek to bring the fantastic things they enjoyed so much into the real world.

The fascinating thing is that the transfer of ideas doesn’t go one way. I’m always keeping an eye on the major science news outlets for new discoveries or technologies that I can commandeer for my fiction. If I see something that catches my interest, I dig a deeper, try to understand the development as best I can, and then project it forward or sideways into one of my stories. Also, the natural world is unimaginably cool. There are creatures in the deep oceans that put fictional aliens to shame with their pure weirdness. Need some inspiration for your outer space settings? I signed up for NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day mailing list specifically to have cool visuals delivered to my inbox. More than one has inspired a change of setting in one story or another.

What I’ve come to realize is that the time I’ve spent developing my scientific half doesn’t limit my authorial half. Rather, I’d argue that my writing is enhanced by widely varied interests. I don’t need to choose between scientist and creator. Both are me, both fundamentally shape how I view and interact with the world around me, and how I tell stories. Realizing this, and using it to my advantage, have helped make me a better writer and a better engineer.

So, the real question isn’t how are the various parts of your life keeping you from writing, but rather how to use all of who you are to make better stories.