My friend Lawrence Schoen’s latest novel and big publisher debut, Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard, from TOR Books had sold out its first printing before it even released. It is about sentient animals who have survived the self-destruction of human beings and now rule the galaxy. I asked him to talk on the blog about how to write animals as main characters of a novel.
How do you approach writing animals as characters? Do you anthropomorphize or avoid it?
I treat animal characters much like I treat alien characters, which is to say, I write them as characters first, and then add in the other bits (animal, alien, or both).
I start by asking myself a few basic questions like, “Who is this character? How does he see the world? How does he see himself? What does he want?” and then as these basics start to sketch out, I drop the character into the setting that further shapes those answers.
With the anthropomorphic animal (or as I like to call them, “raised mammals”) characters in Barsk, there were additional factors. The easiest of these was to build on the physiological differences from the source animals, and play with how that then affects the more basic characteristics and questions. This is particularly important for the reader, because she’s looking for something familiar to glom onto, something that can be assessed at a glance, be it an elephant’s trunk or the graceful gait of a cheetah or the relative lethargy of a sloth. These are signals to a reader that say, “oh, okay, it’s like a human being, only not, because it’s also like X.”
After the broad strokes of an animal character is done, the real fun begins. The bits that act as Easter eggs for more savvy readers. Little pieces from research into what ethologists and other scientists have learned about these species which when dropped into sapient characters inform their culture and worldview. As one example, we know that among elephants, after a certain age, the males all go off on their own solitary way and only return to mate, leaving the females behind to form groups of adults and children of both sexes. Take this one datum and apply it a planet of uplifted elephants and you get a society where you have households of adult females — mothers and sisters aunts and cousins, like something out of H.M.S. Pinafore — taking responsibility for all child rearing, and males who spend their adult lives as peripatetic bachelors — never settling down for long, always moving on. And from there you get to ask how this all manifests in routine things that you probably won’t actually look at in the book, but which has to exist in the back of your mind because it all influences the way the characters walk through their own world. Questions like, “What does this do to the housing market? What’s the impact on job security? What happens to individuals who don’t fit smoothly into the society’s normative roles?”
The characters in an anthropomorphic novel need to have the same quality of breadth and depth and variety that ordinary human characters enjoy and/or endure; it’s all just filtered through the specialized animal traits that is their due as well. Because at the end of the day, you’re using them to tell human stories, and while they may be furry or horned or bat-winged or something else, they must also project a basic humanity, one to which the reader can relate. In the end, the thing we always remember about the best alien or anthropomorphic characters isn’t how much they differ from us, but how human they were.
Lawrence M. Schoen holds a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics. He’s also one of the world’s foremost authorities on the Klingon language, and the publisher of a speculative fiction small press, Paper Golem. He’s been a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award, the Hugo Award, and the Nebula Award. Lawrence lives near Philadelphia. You can find him online at LawrenceMSchoen.com and @KlingonGuy.
Hey Y’all. Thanks for having me here today. I’ve been a commercially published writer since I sold my first book in 1989. I know that makes my first book older than some of you, but like any good mom, I remember the birth-day of the book quite well. However that is a post for another day. Today we are talking about things every writer needs to do in order to write a successful series. The bestselling part – well that is up to the fans and readers. They make or break you, and if they love you, you are golden. So, (in no particular order) on to it!
Keep it all straight or your readers will remind you for YEARS about how you missed this or that. I live in constant fear of breaking this rule. I am about to hire a continuity editor, someone who will create for me a bible of the Jane Yellowrock world, with every character’s: description, history, weapons, skill, ability, diet preferences, clothes, house floor plan, love life, and more. Also, history of the world Jane lives in. To this point in my writing career, I’ve never written more than a 4-book-long series, and it was easy to keep up back then. Now, not so much.
Develop a thick skin. There will be good reviews and bad reviews. There will be people who love you and your work and people who call you bad names on book review sites because you did something in your book they didn’t like. I am very careful when I read reviews to pick ones that don’t A.) Call me names. B.) Seem to have an ax to grind against the world, and picked me as the whet stone. C.) Love me and everything about my books. When I read reviews, I pick ones that do A.) Seem rational and calm and mostly sane. B.) Seem to have actually read the book and the series that came before. C.) Offer constructive criticism. I get really good ideas from reviews that are reasoned and well thought out. But mostly I am kind to myself. No matter how thick my skin is, I don’t torture myself and end up depressed.
Maybe this should come first or last, for emphasis, but let your characters develop and grow. One of the first things a writer learns is to have good character development in every novel, but in a series, it is paramount to let them change and grow through problems and really develop. If you want a more in depth overview how to make your characters develop, there a lot of really good posts a www.magicalwords.net, a writing site created by two writing pals and me years ago. Here is one I wrote back
in 2009 http://www.magicalwords.net/faith-hunter/character-development-%E2%80%93-what-is-it-really/ where I break down the how of character development.
Be willing to try new things. One of the worst things writers can do is let their writing get stale. Take a break, write something different every now and again. I have been writing inside the Jane Yellowrock world, but outside of Jane’s Point of View in short stories lately, and I am really enjoying it! In the series, I am locked into a first person POV, which I adore, but it can be limiting. Writing from third person, from another character’s POV, is very freeing, and also, it lets me see my main character through eyes of the secondary characters in the series. I had no idea she was so lean and menacing. And cuddly. Depending on the POV I am writing from.
Voice. I think this is probably the most important part of a successful series. Finding the different voices in the stories and keeping them true. There are many different voices in a novel: A.) Voices of each and every character, both internal thoughts (depending on the POV, of course), and dialogue patterns. Every character should not sound alike. Just like real people, they should have unique verbal and physical tics, and unique word placements and phrasing. B.) Narrative voice. This is the writer’s voice. It is composed of many disparate things: the tone of book, the setting, the character’s temperament, sentence length and the number of detached non-full-sentence-dangling-phrases to name a very few. This voice should remain constant throughout the book.
Faith Hunter is the fantasy author of the Jane Yellowrock vampire hunter series and a long time professional fiction writer. Including her other pen name, Gwen Hunter, she has over 25+ published books in 28 countries around the world. Her latest addition to the Jane Yellowrock series, Blood Trade, was released by Penguin/ROC on April 2nd, 2013. She is an original creator of and regular contributor to MagicalWords.net, an industry blog for sci-fi and fantasy writers. You can find out more about Faith at her home on the web, FaithHunter.net, or visit her official Facebook page to connect with her and other fantasy fiction fans.
Faith Hunter has over 20 years in the writing profession, over 20 books written total in over 20 countries. Born in Louisiana and raised all over the south, she writes action-adventure, mysteries and thrillers under the name Gwen Hunter while The Skinwalker series, featuring Jane Yellowrock is taking off like a rocket under Faith Hunter. Skinwalker, Blood Cross, Mercy Blade, and Raven Cursed have released so farwith last two becoming New York Times Bestsellers. Another series, her Rogue Mage novels, a dark, urban fantasy series—Bloodring, Seraphs, and Host—features Thorn St. Croix, a stone mage in a post-apocalyptic, alternate reality, urban fantasy world. These novels are the basis for the role playing game, Rogue Mage (2012). A co-creator and contributor to the MagicalWords.net blog for writers, Faith was a guest on SFFWRTCHT last May, and I fell in love with her Skinwalker series. So much so, in fact, that I included it on my 9 Great Urban Fantasy Series You Don’t Want To Miss list, which has been quite popular this month. To read our previous interview at Grasping For The Wind, click here. Celebrating the release of her 5th Jane Yellowrock novel, Faith sat down with me here for a new interview to open her 100 Q&A Tour Of Faith blog tour, the rest of which can be found at http://www.faithhunter.net/wp/2012/08/28/deaths-rival-urban-fantasy-blog-tour.
BTS: Nice to chat with you again, Faith. This is your fifth time diving into the minds of Jane, Beast and the imagined New Orleans. What is the appeal for you of doing a series and revisiting characters and locations over and over?
Faith Hunter: Thank you so much for having me here again. I had such fun the last time!
For one thing, my publisher loves New Orleans! Seriously. And I was born and spent a large part of youth in Louisiana. Many generations of ancestors are buried there (along with the skeletons in their closets) in mausoleums and crypts and vaults. New Orleans was a port city and has long and amazing history to draw upon – hundreds of years – for my long-lived secondary characters. For instance, Leo Pellissier is 500 years old. If I want to go back in time and write a story of his early years, I have lots of historical data to draw upon. Having ongoing relationships with violent, nonhuman predators adds tension to Jane’s stories, and keeps the readers coming back.
That said, I do get tired of one setting, which is why some novels, including Raven’s Curse, which came out in Jan. 2012, and Blood Trade, which will be out in 2013, take place in other cities. Also, the short story Cajun With Fangs, which is in the compilation Have Stakes Will Travel(e-book to be released on Sept. 4, 2012) takes place in the very Deep South in a Cajun township and involves all new characters, which helps to keep the series fresh.
BTS: What ties the books together? Is there a through line or is it just world and characters?
FH: Jane’s life is the series story arc. Her self-discovery, her memories of her youth, which are slowly returning, her love life, and her future are part of that. But also the deadly relationship between the vamps and the witches, and the importance of the blood diamond – the dangerous magical artifact that is in Jane ‘s possession – will play a big part in the series ending.
BTS: In Death’s Rival, someone is after Leo’s job as top vampire of New Orleans, and, to top it off, a vampire plague is loose. How does your approach evolve with each new novel or does it?
FH: Every book has to be based on something, a foundation that the returning fans can remember and associate with. So I try to use a lot of the same cues and clues, then add some new fillip to the mix that will grab them. The writer’s technique is called bait and hook, which means the writer dangles the known, with something hidden, the bites, and the reader is hooked. LOL
BTS: This series is classic urban fantasy with a mix of detective/vampire hunter and some paranormal. What, to your mind are the core elements of good urban fantasy?
FH: Good UF is a good mystery with danger to the main character or people the MC loves. Danger & mystery. And a few good fights. And some romance. (nods head) Gotta have romance in there somewhere!
BTS: Tell us about your writing office.
FH: My desk is set up in my writing room, on the second story of my home. The lot is sloping so I am up in the trees, overlooking a creek. It is a wonderful place to write, though I often turn my back to the window while actually pounding away, to keep from being distracted by the hunting hawks and feral cats and the antics of the squirrels.
No music, unless I am writing a sweat-house scene where Jane’s Cherokee Elder friend leads her back to her broken and mostly-forgotten youth. At those scenes, I listen to AmIn (American Indian) flute and drum music.
BTS: You told me before you can envision 10 or 15 Jane novels. I know you’re an outliner, or as you put it “I outline wearing pants.” Do you have any kind of plan for those? Idea bank? Story bible perhaps? Or do you just find the idea when you need one?
FH: I have a loose idea of how the series will end and I am slowly getting all the clues in place for it. As to firm outlines, I am only thinking one book ahead right now, so no future-story-bible. While I lay the foundation for the series ending, I am having so much fun!
BTS: What can we expect from Jane 6 and what’s it called? when will it arrive?
FH: Have Stakes Will Travel, the e-book compilation, is out on Sept. 4, 2012, Death’s Rival out on Oct. 2, 2012, and Blood Trade, Ap. 2, 2013. Blood Trade takes Jane to Natchez, Mississippi for fun, mayhem, a new form of vampire she has never seen before, and a lot of interesting men!
BTS: What do you want to write that you haven’t been asked to write or haven’t sold to a publisher?
FH: I want to do a few more Jane books, and maybe a couple of standalone spinoffs, one with Rick LaFleur as main character and one with Molly Everhart’s witch family. If I can find a publisher for them. The market trends will guide that, of course.
BTS: What do you see as the future of the fantasy genre?
FH: The future is, as always, seen through a glass, darkly, but I’ll take a shot. I think people in general are very frustrated, so I foresee a lot more fighting and violence in the genre. I predict a new version of vampire, something not done before. I see a lot more historical settings and time periods emerging. And, because people are angry, lonely, and searching, I expect a lot more religion crossover novels. Ex: A character who is both Hindu and Orthodox Christian, and has no problem with the crossover religion, who brings his religion into the story, and the mythos of both affect the storyline and the character’s growth.
BTS: What do you have coming up next?
FH: The Rogue Mage World Book and Role Playing Game (set in Thorn St. Croix’s world) has been Kickstarted and is in production to sell to fans as I write this. It has Mega Fiction in it!
Have Stakes Will Travel is a short story compilation set in Jane Yellowrock’s world, releasing in September 2012. I have a short (yes, it too is set in Jane Yellowrock’s world) in the anthology An Apple For The Creature (headlining Charlaine Harris) releasing Sept 4, 2012.
Death’s Rival will be out in October 2012, and it takes Jane deeper into her own Cherokee past as well as introduces a new story arc for the series. The cover copy says it all!
Jane Yellowrock is a shapeshifting skinwalker you don’t want to cross—especially if you’re one of the undead…
For a vampire killer like Jane, having Leo Pellisier as a boss took some getting used to. But now, someone is out to take his place as Master Vampire of the city of New Orleans, and is not afraid to go through Jane to do it. After an attack that’s tantamount to a war declaration, Leo knows his rival is both powerful and vicious, but Leo’s not about to run scared. After all, he has Jane. But then, a plague strikes, one that takes down vampires and makes their masters easy prey.
Now, to uncover the identity of the vamp who wants Leo’s territory, and to find the cause of the vamp-plague, Jane will have to go to extremes…and maybe even to war.
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is an author and editor of adult and children’s speculative fiction. His debut novel, The Worker Prince(2011) received Honorable Mention on Barnes & Noble Book Club’s Year’s Best Science Fiction Releases for 2011. A sequel The Returning followed in 2012 and The Exodus will appear in 2013, completing the space opera Saga Of Davi Rhii. His first children’s books, 102 More Hilarious Dinosaur Books For Kids (ebook only) and Abraham Lincoln: Dinosaur Hunter- Lost In A Land Of Legends (forthcoming) appeared from Delabarre Publishing in 2012. His short stories have appeared in magazines, anthologies and online. He edited the anthology Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 (2012) and is working on World Encounters and Space & Shadows: SpecNoir with coeditor John Helfers, both forthcoming. He hosts #sffwrtcht (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writer’s Chat) Wednesdays at 9 pm ET on Twitter and is an affiliate member of the SFWA.
Wow! That sure went by fast. Two month blog tour. And I’m exhausted! I always knew physical book tours wear authors out but this blog tour has really got me beat. Yet, despite some snaggs in the book’s print release, and other issues, it’s really been a good tour and I’m so thankful to all of the bloggers and readers who’ve supported it. Especially the bloggers who stepped in last minute to help me complete the second leg of the tour when I fell behind with booking.
And to say thanks, I’m going to do something special to celebrate this tour. I’m going to give stuff away.
And by stuff, I don’t just mean my books, although those will definitely be included, but a few select books by other authors as well.
All prizes are brand new, final release versions. And all you have to do to win is answer the following quiz, based on the blog tour stops, by August 31st. You should send entries to bryan at bryanthomasschmidt.net. (If you tried the contact link, it’s not working steadily so please use this email instead.) List answers numbered by question and tell me which prize package you want, 1st-3rd choice. I’ll award prizes based on number of correct answers and order received.
QUIZ:
1) The character Qajuan makes an appearance in one of the excerpts. What planet is Qajuan from and on which blog did the post appear? (Hint: It’s from a blogger with three names in June.)
2) What is the name of the 3rd book in the Saga of Davi Rhii and please cite the post where you found it. (Hint: It’s an interview)
3) What is a Gixi and what do people in the Davi Rhii universe do with it? (Hint: It’s something edible.)
4) Which ground vehicle from the Davi Rhii universe is similar to a motorcyle and on which post is the answer found?
5) What is the name of Xalivar’s sister (cite post)?
6) Who is Davi Rhii’s fiancee (cite post)?
7) What are boxes?
8 ) The Worker Prince received what honor from Barnes & Noble? (Hint: It’s in my bio.)
9) Davi’s best friends are human and alien. Name them and which planet is the alien from? (Note: Both have character profiles.)
10) What is the link to my first book trailer?
PRIZES:
Prize Package 1- The Saga of Davi Rhii: The Worker Prince & The Returning (Books 1 & 2) trade paperback, signed & personalized by authorPrize Package 2 – The Saga of Davi Rhii ebooks – Book 1 & 2 (The Worker Prince, The Returning) Signed copies can be requested using kindlegraph for both Nook & Kindle
Prize Package 3— Mark Chadbourn’s Kingdom Of The Serpent Trilogy trade paperback from PYR Brand New
Prize Package 4- 4 hardbacks: Ian McDonald “Planesrunner”, Goyer & Cassutt “Heaven’s War”, Hugo nominated Haldeman “Earthbound” and Bujold “Diplomatic Immunity” (last two have shelf wear but all brand new)Prize Package 5 – “The Phoenix Guard” by Steven Brust, “Hunter and Fox” Phillippa Ballantine, “The Return Man” by VM Zito (Zombie Apocalypse) – paperbacks, brand new
GRRRRRRRRR Go ahead, make my day!!
One of each prize will be given away. All are currently being guarded by the fierce poodle, Amelie, seen below at her post.
And here are the blog tour links you’ll need to track down the answers. Thanks for following along and supporting me and these great bloggers. And remember, I am still offering sale deals on Davi Rhii books at my website store through September 1st, including e-book and paperback bundles at discount at 33% off print or e-book copies ofThe Returning.
Well, after a brief break for the July 4th, holiday, the blog tour for my second novel, The Returning, has resumed and I’m late posting links to it but here they are:
The tour will run through July 31st and also have another interview at Adventures In SciFi Publishing podcast amongst others. Links will be added to this post as things develop. My heartfelt gratitude to all who have hosted and helped make this tour a success.
And in case you missed it, here’s the posts we did in Part 1 of THE RETURNING Blog Tour:
Also, you can still get The Returning at 33% off for a limited time from me in either print or ebook (both signed) here.
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the author of the space opera novels The Worker Prince, a Barnes & Noble Book Clubs Year’s Best SF Releases of 2011 Honorable Mention, and The Returning, the collection The North Star Serial, Part 1, and several short stories featured in anthologies and magazines. He edited the anthology Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 for Flying Pen Press, headlined by Mike Resnick. As a freelance editor, he’s edited a novels and nonfiction. He’s also the host of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chatevery Wednesday at 9 pm EST on Twitter under the hashtag #sffwrtcht. A frequent contributor to Adventures In SF Publishing, Grasping For The Wind and SFSignal, he can be found online as @BryanThomasS on Twitter or via his website. Bryan is an affiliate member of the SFWA.
It’s hard to believe it’s here. I get all emotional because of all the behind the scenes chaos I went through while writing it, but I’m about to be the author of two published novels and I’m thrilled and humbled at the same time. So you know what that means: another blog tour. Just last October, I was off promoting the novel I’d longed to write for 27 years, The Worker Prince. Now, it finally has a sequel, The Returning. It’s got another brilliant Mitch Bentley cover. More of the action and multi-layered plotting, larger-than-life characters and humor mixed with drama. It’s even got blurbs by three of my favorite writers, now also my friends.
It has everything, and you can find out for yourselves on June 19th! But right now, here’s the scoop on the tour and how you can preorder signed paperbacks or ebooks at 25% off on my store or at Barnes & Noble here.
The Vertullians are free and have full citizenship but that doesn’t mean they’re accepted. Someone is sending assassins to kill and terrorize them, riling up the old enmity all over again, while Xalivar is back seeking revenge on Davi and all those who defied him. Davi, Farien and Yao reunite to investigate the murders, finding their lives and friendships threatened by what they discover. Meanwhile, the new High Lord Councilor, Tarkanius, Lord Aron, and Davi find themselves fighting all over again to preserve the unity of the Borali Alliance, while even many of their allies and friends work against them to tear it apart. Davi and Tela find their future together threatened by difficulties with their relationship, and Miri’s adjusting to her new status as a non-royal. The action packed, emotional, exciting Davi Rhii story continues.
370 pp · ISBN 978-0-9840209-4-2 ·Trade Paperback · $14.99 tpb $5.99 Ebook · Publication: June 19, 2012
“The Returning has romance, assassins, tension, both modern and classic science fiction notions, and very smooth writing. What more could you want? Bryan Thomas Schmidt keeps improving. As good as THE WORKER PRINCE WAS, THE RETURNING is better.” – Mike Resnick, Author, Starship, Ivory
“The Returning blends themes of faith with classic space opera tropes and the result is a page-turning story that takes off like a rocket.” – Paul S. Kemp, Author, Star Wars: Riptide, Star Wars: Deceived
“A fun space opera romp, complete with intrigues, treachery, dastardly villains, and flawed but moral heroes.” Howard Andrew Jones (Pathfinder: Plague Of Shadows, The Desert Of Souls) on THE RETURNING
To preorder your signed paperback for $11 + shipping, click here:
To preorder the ebook in whichever format you prefer, click here: (be sure and enter format desired in the box)
And please visit these awesome blogs for more information including excerpts, interviews, guest posts and more all through June and July 2012! I’ll insert links as they become available as well as updating specific content which is still being determined.
To order my debut novel, THE WORKER PRINCE, Book 1 in the Saga Of Davi Rhii, use the links at the bottom:
What if everything you thought you knew about yourself and the world turned out to be wrong? For Davi Rhii, Prince of the Boralian people, that nightmare has become a reality. Freshly graduated from the prestigious Borali Military Academy, now he’s discovered he was secretly adopted and born a worker. Ancient enemies of the Boralians, enslaved now for generations, the workers of Vertullis live lives harder than Davi had ever imagined. To make matters worse, Davi’s discovered that the High Lord Councillor of the Alliance, his uncle Xalivar, is responsible for years of abuse and suppression against the workers Davi now knows as his own people.
His quest to rediscover himself brings him into conflict with Xalivar and his friends and family, calling into question his cultural values and assumptions, and putting in jeopardy all he’s worked for his whole life. Davi’s never felt more confused and alone. Will he stand and watch the workers face continued mistreatment or turn his back on his loved ones andfight for what’s right? Whatever he decides is sure to change his life forever.
326 pp · ISBN 978‐0‐9840209‐0‐4 ·Trade Paperback · $14.95 tpb $4.99 Ebook · Publication: October 4, 2011
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the author of the space opera novels The Worker Prince, a Barnes & Noble Book Clubs Year’s Best SF Releases of 2011 Honorable Mention, andThe Returning, the collection The North Star Serial, Part 1, and has several short stories featured in anthologies and magazines. He edited the new anthology Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 for Flying Pen Press, headlined by Mike Resnick. His children’s book 102 More Hilarious Dinosaur Jokes For Kids from Delabarre Publishing. As a freelance editor, he’s edited a novels and nonfiction. He’s also the host of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chatevery Wednesday at 9 pm EST on Twitter, where he interviews people like Mike Resnick, AC Crispin, Kevin J. Anderson and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. A frequent contributor to Adventures In SF Publishing, Grasping For The Wind and SFSignal, he can be found online as @BryanThomasS on Twitter or via his website. Bryan is an affiliate member of the SFWA.
This post is part of the Origins Challenge Blog Series. Almost 200 blogs participating. Click here for the list. So the challenge is to blog about how we got started writing. This is an ironic date because writing about the origins of my writing on February 13th means I’m writing about origins on the day of my origin. Yes, February 13 is my birthday, so how’s that for interesting parallels?
I got started writing through play really. My mother says I never played with a toy the same way twice. I would get mad when the toys couldn’t do all the awesome things I imagined them doing in my mind. I’d get bored and move on.
On the playground at school, I organized elaborate make believe scenarios with my friends, from firefighters fighting fires to astronauts. I’d take charge and lay out the storyline and direct the actors. Amazingly they came back to bossy me for more.
In third grade, my friend Chris Marshall and I wrote our own stories for The Littles series of books about little mouse-like people living inside a human family’s house. We wrote book after book of them, so, as best I can remember, this was my official start to writing.
However, at the same time, I wrote my first song in kindergarten around the time I started piano lessons. So I’d been doing lyric writing and such for a while by the time Chris and I wrote those books. Which counts as the first? Chicken or egg, my friends.
Over time, my active imagination continued and I’d make up stories. My 3rd grade friend, Chris Marshall, and I got hooked on John Peterson and Roberta Carter Clark’s Littles children’s books and started writing our own sequels. That was my first dreams of being a professional writer and yes, despite my stand on fanfic, I did start there like so many.
As I watched TV shows, I’d make up stories and scripts for them: Emergency, Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice, L.A.Law, Life Goes On… This eventually led to spec scripts and film school, where I actually pursued a TV career. My most successful were scripts for L.A. Law and The Wonder Years.
The idea for my debut novel, The Worker Prince, came to me in high school while I wrote all those TV ideas. I even created my own TV show and wrote the first 13 scripts plus pilot for that and plotted out episodes for two whole seasons.
In college and grad school, I wrote three nonfiction books which never went anywhere, but then my devotionals started getting used a lot and I sold some of those. Eventually, I tried prose and The Worker Prince was the second novel I finished. So here I am. That’s the story of my origins as a writer.
I’m 43. This year will see publication of the second and third anthologies to feature short stories by me, one of which I edited, my second and third novels, and the first print magazine to feature one of my stories. So far the journey’s going well.
What’s yours?
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the author of the space opera novelThe Worker Prince, a Barnes & Noble Best SF Releases of 2011 Honorable Mention, the collection The North Star Serial, Part 1, and has several short stories forthcoming in anthologies and magazines. His second novel, The Returning, is forthcoming from Diminished Media Group in 2012. He’s also the host of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chatevery Wednesday at 9 pm EST on Twitter, where he interviews people like Mike Resnick, AC Crispin, Kevin J. Anderson and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. A frequent contributor to Adventures In SF Publishing, Grasping For The Wind and SF Signal, he can be found online as @BryanThomasS on Twitter or via his website. Excerpts from The Worker Prince can be found on his blog. Bryan is an affiliate member of the SFWA.
Well, my first book tour and first ever blog tour was a lot of fun. Truly a blast. And I think all the bloggers and readers who participated. The comments were encouraging and helpful. The posts were fun to write and participate in. Timing was fairly smooth in most cases. And I think we provided worthwhile and diverse content for everyone. So thank you. I look forward to the next one and I look forward to hosting blog tours as well.
Here’s a list of all the posts broken down by category/type for easy access. I hope you continue to enjoy them and, please check out The Worker Prince. You can purchase it here: 1 5-star & 6 4-star reviews THE WORKER PRINCE $3.99 Kindlehttp://amzn.to/pnxaNm or Nook http://bit.ly/ni9OFh $14.99 tpb http://bit.ly/qIJCkS. If you do, please review it on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com and send us a link. You can get a free chapter from the sequel before it releases next year.
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the author of the space opera novelThe Worker Prince, the collection The North Star Serial, and has several short stories forthcoming in anthologies and magazines. He’s also the host ofScience Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat every Wednesday at 9 pm EST on Twitter, where he interviews people like Mike Resnick, AC Crispin, Kevin J. Anderson and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. He can be found online as @BryanThomasS on Twitter or via his website. Excerpts from The Worker Prince can be found on his blog.
Being a small press, Diminished Media Group can’t afford to send me to big cities on a book tour. Instead, I am doing the tour online. Thanks to generous friends, I will be appearing on 29 blogs and 1 podcast as part of this tour. Here are the dates, links and a description of what you can expect to find. I hope you’ll check it out. For general information on the novel itself, click here. NOTE: Since the links don’t go live until the date scheduled, clicking links early will not find the specific links. Please keep that in mind.
These bloggers and I have worked hard to give you quality, unique content every day. Even the interviews are different. So I hope you’ll take the time to visit their sites and poke around a bit to see what they’re all about. They’re good people all and I’m honored by their friendship and support!
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the author of the space opera novelThe Worker Prince, the collection The North Star Serial, and has several short stories forthcoming in anthologies and magazines. He’s also the host ofScience Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat every Wednesday at 9 pm EST on Twitter, where he interviews people like Mike Resnick, AC Crispin, Kevin J. Anderson and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. He can be found online as @BryanThomasS on Twitter or via his website. Excerpts from The Worker Prince can be found on his blog.
My friend Gene Doucette has a new book out called Immortal. A combination of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, it’s hard to categorize neatly by genre, but he’s given me the opportunity to review the book and do an interview as well. As a bonus, you can find an excerpt below. I hope you’ll check it out, and, if you like it, you can order the book here:
I don’t know how old I am. My earliest memory is something along the lines of fire good, ice bad, so I think I predate written history, but I don’t know by how much. I like to brag that I’ve been there from the beginning, and while this may very well be true, I generally just say it to pick up girls.
Surviving sixty thousand years takes cunning and more than a little luck. But in the twenty-first century Adam confronts new dangers: someone has found out what he is, a demon is after him, and he has run out of places to hide. Worst of all, he has had entirely too much to drink.
IMMORTAL is a first person confessional, penned by a man who is immortal but not invincible. In an artful blending of sci-fi, adventure, fantasy and humour, Immortal introduces us to a world with vampires, demons and other magical creatures, yet a world without actual magic. It is a contemporary fantasy for non-fantasy readers and enthusiasts alike.
Here’s my brief chat with Gene:
Immortality is a popular subject for a lot of writers. What made you decide to investigate it with Immortal?
To be honest, I had no idea how popular it was until I started promoting it. Then every few days it was, “Have you read…” or “Did you see…” I usually nod and try to point out where Immortal is different. And it is quite different. (I think the one story it has the most in common with is The Man From Earth, and the two stories are not at all close.)
I imagine I was drawn to it for the same reason most people were: the idea of being alive for long enough to have experienced things the rest of us have to read about is interesting. Maybe it’s a fear of death manifesting itself creatively, I don’t know.
In what way is Immortal different from the other stories?
When I began writing I posited one basic assumption: maybe this is all there is. I don’t mean religiously (although it made sense for my main character Adam to be an atheist) so much as intellectually and socially. On the scale of Adam’s lifetime societies are extremely temporary and knowledge is largely localized. There is a limit to the number of higher truths one can become aware of. In other words, grasping Plato doesn’t change anything if you’re still stuck in Aristotle’s rational reality.
So there is no magic, or true gods, or unnamable higher powers. And Adam has not become so detached from the world that he’s drifting through it like Bowie’s character in The Man Who Fell To Earth. He experiences. He interacts. And he drinks too much. He is a living representation of the history of mankind, but that history is messy and violent and not particularly full of enlightenment.
But you’ve included vampires and demons in this world.
I did. And pixies and iffrits and dragons, and in the next book you’ll see satyrs and werewolves and a few other things. But I took these beings and put them into a world without magic, and a world where history unfolds the way it has in the real world, in our world, meaning these creatures can’t have been significant enough to have had a direct effect. These are beings on the margins.
Including extra-human creatures was a concession I found I had to make to tell the story. And I’ve found that as long as readers find Adam plausible—and so far they have—the beings he associates with occasionally are equally plausible.
One of Adam’s themes throughout the book is that people exaggerate things, and that while some of the legendary things or events may have existed or happened, they were not as epic as described. It’s not a leap to have your main character declare on one page that the French Revolution was just an after-the-fact rationalization of a street riot, and on another page point out that the proportion of vampires that are also evil killers is roughly the same as the proportion of humans that are also evil killers.
Is this book part of a series or a standalone?
It’s part of a series now. When I first wrote it back in… good lord, 2004? I wrote a story that answered most of the questions raised within the book, such that a second or third book would have been less necessary, let’s say. But in rewrites I realized I’d crammed far too much into the final portion of the novel and it was killing the pace. So I pulled out some things—the most significant being his history with a certain red-haired woman. And then I went and wrote a second book that still didn’t answer those questions. So it’s going to be at least three books long.
What other books have you written?
My other published work is in humor. In 1999 I put out a collection of my humor columns called Beating Up Daddy and in 2001 I released The Other Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook: A Parody which is a collection of fake “chapters” I did on my old website for fun. I just released an anniversary edition of that with new chapters as an ebook. I also put out a second collection of humor columns called Vacations and Other Errors In Judgment as an ebook a year or so ago.
For novels, I wrote a book called Charlatan before Immortal. It was agented and shopped but didn’t get published. I turned it into a screenplay a few years back, and that screenplay has won a few awards but isn’t currently optioned. Which is a shame; I think it’s better than most thrillers out there right now. And while Immortal was being shopped I wrote a novel called Fixer for which a deal may be pending. Then there’s Hellenic Immortal, which is in process.
What made you decide to become a writer?
I don’t think I ever made that decision. It was something I expected to be doing with my life as far back as when I learned how to read.
Do you outline, do character sketches, etc. or let the story unfold as it comes?
I start at the beginning and do the best I can to get to the end. So no outlines or character sketches or anything like that. But all that means is that I hold everything in my head rather than jotting it down. It’s easier for me to make changes if it’s not committed to “paper” somewhere. And my characters reveal themselves to me at the same time as the reader, usually through dialogue. It’s not something I’d recommend to someone who isn’t really good at writing dialogue, to be honest. (If I am allowed one moment of egotism: I am very good at dialogue.) Character delineation through conversation was one of the first things I learned how to do well, as a playwright.
Intrigued? I know I was. So here’s an excerpt from Immortal chapter four, in which Adam ponders the nature of the only other immortal he’s ever encountered, a red-haired mystery woman he’s never spoken to and only seen in glimpses throughout history.
I ran through the possibilities again. Vampire was one that was most likely, as they are hypothetically just as immortal as me. Except I’d seen her in the daytime on more than one occasion. And, every vampire I ever met had black eyes. Possibly she was a vampire that didn’t need to hide from sunlight and had blue eyes, but thats a bit like saying something is a cat except it walks on hind legs and has no fur or whiskers.
I dont know any other sentient humanoids that have a get-out-of-death clause. Well other than me. And I don’t have porcelain skin and haunting eyes. So she might be like me, but was she the same thing as me?
What was she?
Mind you, I’d run through all this before thousands of times. I’ve taken suggestions, too. A succubus I used to hang out with insisted my red-haired mystery girl was death incarnate, meaning my endless search for her was actually a complex working-out of my immortality issues. (A note: succubi are notorious amateur psychologists and have been since well before Freud. In fact I have it on good authority that Freud stole his whole gig from a particularly talkative succubus he used to know. And if you don’t believe Freud knew a succubus, you haven’t read Freud.) I didn’t find the argument convincing. If I am to believe in some sort of anthropomorphic representation of mortality I should first develop a belief in some higher power, or at least in life-after-death.
I’m a pretty sad example of what one should do with eternal life. I’ve never reached any higher level of consciousness, I don’t have access to any great truths, and I’ve never borne witness to the divine or transcendent. Some of this is just bad luck. Like working in the fishing industry in Galilee and never once running into Jesus. But in my defense there were an awful lot of people back then claiming to be the son of God; I probably wouldn’t have been able to pick him out of the crowd. And since I don’t believe there is a God, I doubt we would have gotten along all that well anyway.
I probably wasnt always quite so atheistic. I don’t recall much of my early hunter-gatherer days, but I’m sure that back then I believed in lots of gods. And that the stars were pinholes in an enclosed firmament. There might even have been a giant turtle involved. And I distinctly recall a crude religious ceremony involving a mammoth skin and lots of face paint. But after centuries on the mortal coil I’ve come to realize that religion is for people who expect to die someday and really want to go to a better place when that happens. It doesn’t apply to me.
Be willing to try new things. One of the worst things writers can do is let their writing get stale. Take a break, write something different every now and again. I have been writing inside the Jane Yellowrock world, but outside of Jane’s Point of View in short stories lately, and I am really enjoying it! In the series, I am locked into a first person POV, which I adore, but it can be limiting. Writing from third person, from another character’s POV, is very freeing, and also, it lets me see my main character through eyes of the secondary characters in the series. I had no idea she was so lean and menacing. And cuddly. Depending on the POV I am writing from.
