Category Archives: Life Philosophies

The posts this month have been amazing. Not only did we explore great works and what made them great, but described aspects of our own writing, and ways to improve our personal secret sauce.

Please browse through the month and read the posts from the Fictorians explaining our special sauce, our unique voices, and how we developed as writers. These excellent posts offer great insights into the Fictorians and the process of developing as writers.

As the famous Julia Childs once said, “No one is born a great cook. One learns by doing!”

In addition to those great posts, I’ll point out a few of the other highlights this month:

Research Until Your Fingers Bleed by Sean Golden

Hiding Your Secret Sauce by Guy Anthony De Marco

Using Voice to Set Yourself Apart by Kristin Luna

Adding Realism – Military SF by Kevin Ikenberry

Jayne Barnard and Adria Laycraft – Creating Successful Author – Editor Relationships by Ace Jordyn

Wisdom in abundance – The Characters of Daniel Abraham by Greg Little

So keep working on your own secret sauce, and feel free to update your recipe books with some of the wisdom shared this month.

Keep writing!

Happy Cinco de Mayo

May 5, 2017

Frank Morin

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Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Hopefully you’re having a barbecue. Here at the Fictorians I’m sharing my special sauce with you.

What makes a Frank Morin book worth reading? (And they are definitely worth reading! Trust me).

Now that I’ve got six novels out there, with a couple more due by the end of the year, I’ve got enough material for readers to get a good taste for my secret sauce.

When you read one of my novels, you can generally expect:

Big, epic stories. Seriously, most of my books are at least 150,000 words. Even my one novella is pretty epic.
Complex, intricate plots, with a large cast of characters.
Lots of action. I like books that move along and in which lots of fun stuff happens, so that’s what I write.

My works to-date span two very different series, and they do have important differences. Jumping from one series to the other has proven a fun challenge and highlighted for me the significant differences.

First, The Petralist.

Big Magic. Big Adventure. Lots of Humor.

Yup, they’ve got the huge, epic story line with tons of action. Layered on top of that is a super cool magic system based on rocks It’s all topped with a layer of humor that raises the stories to a whole new level. The humor makes them accessible for younger readers down into middle school, even though they’re thoroughly enjoyed by high schoolers and adults too.

I dialed up the numbers a lot on the Humor Scale.

A really interesting theme I get to explore through this series is the question of loyalties. In particular, what happens when loyalties to family, to town, to nation, and to a love interest end up conflicting? Which loyalty trumps others, and what to do when people you care about make choices that place them in conflict?

It’s hard to fight against someone you care for, and those difficulties are compounded further by the fact that both sides in the conflict have reason to feel justified in their actions. It’s even harder to fight an enemy, when they might just be right.

The Facetakers.

These urban fantasy historical thrillers are so much fun. Think The Matrix, but through history. These are hard-hitting thrillers that my editor described as “Mission Impossible meets Agents of Shield“.

They’ve got an intricate, awesome magic system fueled by the force of human souls. I switched to a strong female lead for these, and Sarah is simply amazing. The supporting characters are fascinating, and they pretty much all have dark moments in their pasts where they’ve done things that Sarah has a hard time accepting. She and her team must hunt through deadly memories that brush against the fabric of time, fighting superhuman-enhanced enemies whose agendas will topple the world order and destroy Sarah and everyone she loves.

A definite stand-out about these novels are the many historical settings. History is not what the books claim it is, and Sarah learns what ‘really’ happened in critical moments in history, which become the primary battlegrounds.

One bonus of these books is the body-swapping tendencies of many of the characters, which allow me to explore all kinds of fun questions of identity and body image. If you’re suddenly swapped into a very different body, are you still you?

So if you like stories that move fast, make you laugh at one moment, but then ask hard questions in the next, and will very likely keep you up a lot later at night than you had planned, sample these books. You won’t be sorry.

About the Author: Frank Morin

Frank Morin loves good stories in every form. When not writing or trying to keep up with his active family, he’s often found hiking, camping, Scuba diving, or enjoying other outdoor activities. For updates on upcoming releases of his popular Petralist YA fantasy novels, or his fast-paced Facetakers Urban Fantasy/Historical thrillers, check his website: www.frankmorin.org

Authors Lie to Tell the Big Truths

April 26, 2017

Nathan Barra

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When we pick up a work of fiction, we are seeking to lose ourselves in a beautiful lie. While some readers are driven by the need to escape their reality, most use fiction as an emotional exercise, a way to live vicariously through the adventures of another and stretch the limits of what is possible in our own lives. This latter sort of reader won’t be satisfied by fantastic worlds and flashy plots. While they may be entertained by these elements, they want to sink their teeth into some deeper meaning, a truth that resonates not only with the story, but with their own experiences.

The first step in delivering this deeper human truth is establishing a sense of empathy between the readers and the characters. No matter the culture, or even the species, of the protagonists and points of view, their motivations and choices must ring true. Would we be willing to accept a teratogenic dwarf that cons his way into the admiralcy of a space mercenary fleet? Sure, no problem. However, if Miles VorKosigan were to suddenly give up his military dreams and decide to become a farmer? We’d call shenanigans. Readers invest in characters, not stories. We must see them struggle against impossible odds and make choices that lead them to victory. No matter how fantastic the persona, it is only when our characters are true to their natures and goals that we as readers can invest in their struggles.
Once our readers invest in character, they will begin to look for a link between the protagonists’ fictional journey and the questions and struggles they face in their own lives. Sometimes these truths are topical and current. As an example, I can write countless blog posts about racism, discrimination, prejudice, and fear, but for the most part will have a hard time convincing those who disagree with me. Rather than arguing with my audience, I could make my characters argue for us. Furthermore, by couching my argument in the terms of a fantastic lie, I remove ego and defensiveness from the equation. After all, I am talking about my characters, not about them, right? I could make my protagonist an anthropomorphic bunny who is trying to break a species barrier and fulfill her childhood dream of being a police officer. I pair her with a fox conman and force her to question her own views of predators and foxes in particular, with whom she has had bad experiences in the past. As she questions her prejudice and preconceptions, so will the audience. In so doing, I use my fantastic lie to proxy larger, current social struggles and make an argument for diversity and inclusiveness that is more likely to achieve meaningful success than a thousand angry blog posts.

However, as writers we aren’t limited to current social questions. There are some truths so profound to the human experience that variations on their stories are repeated across generations and cultural barriers. We want to believe in a world where a hobbit from the Shire can face and destroy the greatest evil of his world because sometimes we feel small and powerless. We want to see Aragon and Arwen marry because if they can find a way for their love to survive war, distance, and hardship, then our own romantic futures aren’t hopeless. We want to return to the Shire with Sam because we need to believe that all the chaos and pain of living is for a greater purpose – home and family. Though we might not have the perspective to see the arc of our own lives, we can spend hours, days, or weeks with a story to gain the catharsis we need to push through our own struggles.

As writers, we rely on our readers to willingly suspend their disbelief in order to work our storytelling magic. However, no matter how fantastic and entertaining we may be, our stories must ring true on a deeper level for our readers to commit to the tale. It is only when our characters are believable, empathetic, and when their decisions and struggles resonate with our own experiences that we can truly connect with a story. Readers want to believe the lie, not only because they seek to escape reality for a time, but also because in so doing we seek to understand the truth of our own world.

Waking Up from a Nightmare

March 7, 2017

Evan Braun

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I had a nightmare last night, and it was bad. There was no natural disaster, no fire, no car accident, no home invader, no endless falling through the abyss—indeed, no violence. I was at a writer’s convention, which for introverts can be almost as bad, and I didn’t know anyone there. Not a soul. The dream consisted of me making concerted efforts to join conversations and mingle with the other con-goers, and time after time it went badly. I stuck my foot in my mouth. I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t brushed my teeth that morning and had bad breath. Suddenly everyone spoke a foreign language and I couldn’t keep up. The reasons varied. The results didn’t.

It was a story of constant rejection. Which is a worse fear than falling through an endless abyss.

Eventually I did find someone I knew, a writing friend from my hometown. She was gregariously holding court with a bunch of people, and the sense of relief I felt when she welcomed me in and facilitated introductions was so intense that it literally woke me up.

Such is the power of friendship.

I’ve said before that I find friendship to be a more powerful force in many ways than romantic relationships. Going by my own personal tastes, it’s a more powerful force in fiction (sorry, romance readers, I know you outnumber me). In a larger sense, I think the argument could be made that it’s a more powerful force in the world. It seems to me that friendships often outlast romantic partnerships. How does the average length of a friendship compare to the average length of a spousal relationship? I wonder! Calculating these averages would be extraordinarily tricky.

I’ll take Thelma and Louise over Romeo and Juliet, thank you very much. I’ll take Han and Chewie over Han and Leia, Geordi and Data over Riker and Troi, Norm and Cliff over Sam and Diane. But maybe that’s just because fictional couples are plagued by narrative-mandated drama in a way that many real-life couples aren’t. Maybe.

When I think about my best friends, they’ve been with me for an awfully long time. Many of them have been in my life since high school or college, and they are crucial supports. If I lost my boyfriend (whom I love dearly, are you reading this?), I would be devastated. Devastated. But I’d need my friends to get through it.

Friends support us in a multitude of ways, but for now I want to focus on those who support us professionally. I’m talking about writer friends, and how until seven years ago I didn’t have any. Talk about the dark ages. The good times started to roll when I first attended Superstars Writing Seminar, a story I’ve told many times before and won’t go into now, since it’s a story shared by just about every writer on this blog and most of its guests.

But those friends still weren’t local. I couldn’t call them up and go out for a coffee. I didn’t manage to find those kinds of friends until four years ago, and it turned out they were right under my nose all this time. It’s hard to imagine being successful in my career without them. I see some combination of them once a week, often on Mondays, and they play a big role in kickstarting my productivity.

They also hang out with me at those otherwise scary writing conventions, pretty much ensuring that nightmares like the one I woke up from this morning can’t possibly happen.

Evan Braun is an author and editor who has been writing books for more than ten years. He is the author of The Watchers Chronicle, a completed trilogy. In addition to writing science fiction, he is the managing editor of The Citizen. He lives in Niverville, Manitoba.