Tag Archives: Character

D.H. Aire: Rearview Mirror

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Rearview Mirror

By D.H. Aire

Looking back, I could focus on the number of books I published by June and say, “Look what I accomplished.” But that’s not how I see the business of being a writer.

I always have to be working on another book or three. I figured that if I was to get noticed as an author, I needed to write a series. That turned into writing four series at the same time this year. Or it was supposed to be.

I was working on the concluding book of my main series and was getting bogged down. So, I played with a short story and wrote it as a novella. TOR’s looking for novellas these days. Alas, the novella seemed to be missing something. So, I found myself re-writing it as a novel. Possibly a stand-alone, but the odds are it may be the first book in a YA series.

Then I told myself, focus, you need to finish the last book of your series. So, I worked on one of the other books in need of a second and third draft for a while, then I put that aside and finished the last book in my series and sent it to my editor.

Ta, da, now that was an accomplishment. I was behind schedule, but it was done—until my editor sent me the draft back. Yes, draft. She felt it wasn’t polished and pacing was off in the beginning of the book. So, I’ve been working on that. Too slowly as life and work keep tugging at me.

So, here’s what I think as the U.S. elections approached and my sales dropped. Something I’ve heard friends in the business remark about, too. The polishing of the climax of my series is damn important. Yes, I want to send off copies to beta readers, but my editor could see that I had something still too close to second draft in places.

I’ve completed a third of the work and hope my editor gives me the nod, but if she doesn’t, I’ll do what I’ve always done. I’ll let the story evolve and get better and better. My writer’s fear is that I’ve written too fast at times, knowing I need to build my brand, produce book after book to earn more money. Last year my biggest accomplishment was qualifying to join SFWA (the Science Fiction Writers of America). That was my dream.

The reality is writing is hard work. I’m a creative writer. I enjoy writing. I can’t help but write. Fine, it’s a sickness. I love the genre and I’m now playing a part in it. Likely not a big part, but I connect with readers and potential fans at conventions and book fairs and network as best I can.

That’s in some ways the easiest part of my becoming a professional writer.

Working on the seventh book or a seven book series, one I started writing over twenty-five years ago, that’s an accomplishment I’m proud of. No one who knew me would have thought, hey, he’s going to be a sci fi and fantasy author one day. Who am I kidding? I had teachers who wrote an IP on me saying I was learning disabled and needed remedial reading assignments for years.

My revenge was reading all of John Carter of Mars in a couple of weeks, my father complaining about my buying them at the book store rather than getting them from the library. My mother was a teacher, she slipped me more money to buy books. I bought the Foundation Trilogy and the Dragonriders of Pern Series.

So, looking in the rearview mirror, I know I’m accomplishing what I need to, knowing I need to do so much more. But I’m writing, I re-writing, and I likely won’t publish as many books next year. But I will publish a kick-ass climax to my series and that will get me noticed just a little bit more. And isn’t that what being a writer is all about?

 

Bio

D.H. Aire has walked the ramparts of the Old City of Jerusalem and through an escape tunnel of a Crusader fortress that Richard the Lionheart once called home – experiences that have found expression in his writing of his fantasy/sci fi Highmage’s Plight and Hands of the Highmage Series. He is also the author the Dare 2 Believe and Terran Catalyst Series.

His most recently published short story appears in Street Magick: Tales of Urban Fantasy (Elder Signs Press).

Follow him at: Twitter @dare2believe1, Facebook (Dare 2 Believe), and his blog on www.dhr2believe.net.

L.J. Hachmeister: A Tale of Disappointment, Fear, and Murder

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 My Year in Review: A Tale of Disappointment, Fear, and Murder.

By L.J. Hachmeister

2016 started off with a bang. I just finished my first out-of-state convention with a group of established authors, and got asked to join their touring group. On top of that, I was promised a seven-book contract for my science fiction/fantasy series, Triorion, by the managing editor of my favorite publishing house. For the first time in my literary career, after years of frustration and despair, I had hope. And hope can be a dangerous thing.

In February, I attended Superstars Writing Seminars. Being a frugal person, I balked at the ticket price, but after the first hour, I realized it wasn’t an expense, but an investment. In that conference room were some very big names in the industry as well as up-and-coming authors, and talking to them without the craze of a Comic Con or being under the stress of selling books allowed us the time to trade secrets, and give each other insight into our publishing experiences. Finally, after years of feeling alone in my literary struggles, I felt like I had allies.

Things started to unravel not too long after Superstars. The seven-book contract fell through, and the touring group disbanded. My mentor, someone who I had deeply trusted, disappeared, leaving me stranded in a strange author limbo. Because of this, I felt plagued by disappointment and frustration, and full of doubt. Triorion was the most important story I had every written, and landing a publishing contract for that series was my greatest wish. Having hope like that—feeling like the publishing contract was right in front of me, only to have it evaporate—left me shattered.

I vowed to never hope again.

In the early spring, one of my good friends called me up and asked me to critique the short story he wanted to enter for the Superstars anthology, Dragon Writers. When he found out I didn’t have a story to enter, he gave me some much-needed encouragement. Still, I didn’t feel like I had much to offer. I was experiencing manuscript burnout from working around the clock on the Triorion series, and I didn’t like dragons. Seriously. Dragons frightened me; they represented a genre I didn’t feel comfortable writing in, and I feared what I didn’t understand about them.

Still, part of me understood that you shouldn’t pass up opportunities, no matter how intimidating or out-of-reach they may seem. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t terrified with every word I typed out for my story, Heart of the Dragon.

In the month it took the editor to get back to us about our entries, my fear turned into anger. I no longer hoped that Heart of the Dragon would be accepted; I knew it wasn’t, and I was all the more frustrated with myself, the writing industry, and all the blood, sweat, and tears I had put into my stories. Triorion fan letters dulled some of the hurt, but I felt beaten down.

And yet, I didn’t stop writing. I can’t tell you exactly what keeps me going. Encouragement from fans is fantastic, as is that ineffable feeling when a character truly comes to life on paper. But there’s something else. Perhaps it’s a mix of insanity and unrelenting desire, but even before I heard back about Heart of the Dragon, I made a decision: I wouldn’t stop, ever. There is no other choice. Writing is a need of my soul.

Now, keep in mind I had vowed off hope and prepared myself for rejection for Heart of the Dragon, but when I opened the email from the editor, and I didn’t see the words, “we regret that we will have to pass,” and instead, “congratulations,” I screamed. Finally, something real—and it was born from my lowest point.

But my biggest challenge was yet to come. Despite a successful convention year, I finally acknowledged something I had been down-playing: I needed to write something other than Triorion. It sold well, but it wasn’t catching fire like it needed to if it was going to get picked up by a big publishing house.

The truth about killed me. After all, I had already written book five, and was well into book six of the seven-book series. How could I stop now? Even with my meticulous notetaking, I was bound to forget some nuance, some critical component of the nearly million-word saga—and I left my characters right in the middle of a terrible intergalactic battle!

As I struggled with my decision, my editor gave me feedback on a short story I had written for another anthology. Along the top of the paper, she wrote in big bold letters: “murder your darlings.” A google search later, and I realized what she meant: I had to kill what I felt was brilliant and precious in my work if I wanted to be successful. I found that it didn’t just apply to that story, but to my biggest decision this year. I had to put aside Triorion.

Inspired by my friends and martial arts training partners, I sat down and wrote, Shadowless: Outlier, the first book in an illustrated novel series. I thought it would be difficult to write something new, especially since I had been writing in the original Triorion storyline for twenty-nine years. However, my 10,000+ hours of writing experience really smoothed out the process, and I ended up writing the entire novel in less than five months.

My year was tough, but in the end, I met a lot of cool authors, sold out at every convention, got published, wrote a new novel, and landed a literary agent. If I could go back and give myself advice about how to manage through the toughest times, I would tell myself this: Stay flexible, say yes to as many opportunities as you can, and get everything in writing.

And it’s okay to hope.

 

Author L.J Hachmeister writes and fights—though she tries to avoid doing them at the same time. The WEKAF world champion stick-fighter is best known in the literary world for her epic science fiction series, Triorion, and her equally epic love of sweets. Connect with her at: www.triorion.com

The Truth About Dark Fiction

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The truth about dark fiction is very simple. It’s all about us.

I’ve always thought of myself, as a science fiction writer, clearly on the side of optimism versus doom and dystopia. As a kid, I was certainly a fan of Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica and their themes of human conflict, but I remember watching Star Trek with a different set of eyes. I only really appreciated Star Wars after traveling halfway around the world during high school. Star Trek pulled me in because it portrayed our current terribly flawed and imperfect society at its absolute theoretical pinnacle in the very near future. Even with the latest movies, in the alternate “Kelvin” timeline, that future world is a darker place than before, but that relentless optimism is there. If you look across the plethora of recent popular books and movies, there is a very strong lean towards darkness and dystopia. Why is that?

It’s very simple. We see the worst of the world every night when we turn on the news. Even the newscasts that end with that thirty-second “water skiing squirrel-type” video are full of dark, depressing themes. It’s no wonder that it calls to us as writers. Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic dystopias are easy to imagine because all we have to do is turn the creative knobs to eleven or twelve and our worst fears are easy to explore. The truth of dark fiction is very simple. It’s a reflection of our society, and in some cases, how we view our future selves in the worst way possible. And as writers, it’s pretty damned easy to wrap it around us like a blanket.

Let’s be clear, I’m not disrespecting dystopian, apocalyptic, or post-apocalyptic fiction. Nor am I saying it’s easy to write and build these worlds. I’m discussing something that writers sometimes fail to notice – our own attitudes seep into our writings. When we’re convinced the world is a terrible place, it’s a little easier to write dark fiction. When we’re happy, writing happy subjects is a little easier as well. Our own personal attitudes and emotions often come with us to the keyboard and until we understand it, there’s nothing we can do to mitigate their effects.

How do I mitigate those effects? Music. There are quite a few folks I know who couldn’t imagine listening to music while writing, but it really helps me leave things behind when I sit down to the keyboard. What music? Whatever fits the mood. For my novels, I usually create a playlist while I’m developing the early outline. Sometimes a song really captures the emotional vibe of a scene. Sometimes, I need a song (or three!) to get me into the mood to even look at the book again. Watching the blinking cursor of doom for a little while without music is almost certainly going to send me on a miserable writing time adventure. On those nights (when I do most of my writing), having that go-to playlist helps me put the day behind me and focus on the next 2,000 words I want to write. That focus, and understanding that the way negativity can crawl inside our heads, is critical.

But what about when I want to look into the darkness? Well, because of my own experiences, it’s even easier for me to capture that emotion than listening to music. I’ve blogged on Fictorians before about a life-threatening illness I faced in 2014. As I recovered, my own attitudes were dark and depressed and I wanted desperately to get back to polishing the draft of SLEEPER PROTOCOL, but I couldn’t. Writing just wasn’t a positive experience. Ironically, the two stories I wrote during my recovery were much darker pieces than I’d ever written before. When I need to get dark, remembering that experience and bringing that attitude to my writing is fairly easy. Experience, especially those that are dark and uncomfortable, helps us tap into dark fiction. I’d wager that our happy dreams and goals are equally powerful, but darkness tends to have a greater connection to us because we’ve lived through it or we are living through it at a given time.

But, we have to come up for air. Not everything is wine and roses in the real world, but we can’t let our miserable world drag us down on a daily basis. We have a choice to respond to every emotion, stimulus, and action we face daily. There are times it’s okay to delve into the darkness and craft the story that needs to be written. It’s human nature to explore the abyss, after all. Just don’t sit there staring for too long. The world needs you and your voice up here. Your characters need you. Dark fiction is all about us, but so is optimistic fiction. There’s no balance to it – it’s a continuum. We’re all out there somewhere. If you’re too far down the dark side and feel like you can’t slide back the other direction, please reach out. I’ll be happy to help.

The Rewards of Glaciality (Which I Realize Is Not a Word)

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Sense8Last summer, I got psyched up about Netflix’s new series, Sense8. I had no idea what it was about—I hadn’t even seen a trailer—but it had J. Michael Straczynki and the Wachowskis at the helm, and that was enough for me to give it a shot. I stayed up until 2:00 a.m., waiting for the show to appear in my Netflix queue. I was strangely drawn to the fact that the cast was mostly composed of people I hadn’t heard of before. After all, when I see Matt Damon onscreen playing a character, I have trouble seeing the character; I see Matt Damon onscreen playing a character. Know what I mean?

Anyway, I watched it all very quickly. Finished it in two and a half days. And then I read the reviews, and to my surprise realized that as a profound admirer of the show I seemed to be in a minority, at least as far as critics were concerned. And usually I’m on the same page as the critical consensus.

Sense8 is so many things to me. It’s beautiful beyond description, mostly. It’s atmospheric. It’s sensual. It’s sexy (I’m looking at you, Episode 6). It’s worldly, global. It’s cosmopolitan. It’s mysterious and coy. It’s haunting. It’s diverse. It’s profoundly moving.

It’s slow.

Glacially

s

l

o

w

.

.

.

Which is awesome! I mean, one of my favourite movies of all time is Meet Joe Black, so obviously I’m not averse to taking my sweet time getting to the point (and even then, perhaps being a bit vague about the point). Sometimes I don’t want something explained; I just want to dig in and experience every aspect and nuance of it.

As the years go by, I value plot less and less. When I read books, I skim right over the battles, the big action scenes. In movies, I drift off to sleep when everyone else’s pulse starts to pound. The setup, and the aftermath—that’s my jam. The long travelogue of meandering from Point A to Point B? The average person may throw their popcorn across the room and stalk out of the theater in frustration; I eat that shit up.

These weren’t always my preferences. So yeah, I admit that this is a surprising trend in my life.

At the heart of Sense8, you have a really powerful and beautiful idea—eight people, waking up slowly, suffering from confusion and long-dawning realization, discovering that they’re connected, that they’re sharing each other’s memories and emotions and experiences. They are strangers and they are intensely familiar.

This series, or at least the first season, is dedicated to exploring the underlying confusion of these eight characters as their very separate and independent lives begin to merge in surprising ways. They come from every corner of the globe, have different passions, different sexualities and gender identities (did I mention this show is diverse?), and they all bring unique skills to the table. And they don’t know what the hell is going on. They’re very slow—realistically slow—to put the pieces together.

And damn if that isn’t a beautiful thing to behold.

It’s a massively complex idea, on a character level. And there are eight main characters to be explored, and just as many interesting side characters. The best novelist would have trouble executing this, never mind a TV series. And if Sense8 wasn’t on Netflix, which is about a hundred times more patient than its broadcast cousins, it wouldn’t exist at all past the pilot.

As you make your way through the show, you realize that the show is not particularly interesting in explaining things. Well, it does explain things occasionally, but it’s never in a hurry to do so. The show knows that as long as it’s turning the spotlight on the characters and their relationships and interactions, and their inner struggles and emotions, it’s on solid ground.

But if you need plot bleeding from your every pore, Sense8 may not be for you. It’s character first. Character, character, character, and more character. So much character that you almost can’t stand it.

In a world of brainless action flicks, it’s pretty refreshing.

P.S. I also adore The Leftovers. Which is, now that I think of, Sense8’s spiritual sibling. It evokes very similar reactions in me, critics, and the overall TV-viewing audience.

Evan BraunEvan 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 Niverville Citizen. He lives in Niverville, Manitoba.