A Blogging End, A Blogging Beginning

After three years, I'm leaving Novel Spaces as a blogger. I'll still be around as a lurker and occasional commenter, but this is my last post here.

Thank you, fellow Novelnauts, for having me as one of you. Thank you, readers, for your visits and comments.

 2012 has brought several exciting new projects, and I have not kept up with them, partly because of illness, partly because of bad time management and underestimates of the time required by projects. For example, I mentioned in a February post that I would be putting out my dissertation as an ebook within the week. Here it is, the first day of summer, and my dissertation only went live on Amazon.com today.

Although several projects need more of my time, I'm leaving Novel Spaces because of one particular project, a new Website meant to build an audience for a book still in the conception stage. As you may remember from earlier posts, my publisher, Hadley Rille Books (HRB), has a series of novels set in archaeologically interesting times. HRB publisher and editor Eric T. Reynolds came up with the idea of publishing a cookbook that ties in with past and future books in the Archaeology Series. It will stand on its own as a cookbook, and it will also increase awareness of HRB and its Archaeology Series among people interested in history and archaeology.

Such a cookbook, though, will take time to create because of the huge amount of research needed in a wide variety of fields. In the meantime, Eric of HRB, Classical scholar Jenny Blackford (another HRB author), and I are starting a blog: "Meal Times: Ancient Foods for Modern Cooks" at http://ancientmealtimes.weebly.com. It will be a food and cooking blog with a wide scope, from recipes to photo essays, from novel excerpts to posts on archaeology, history, ethnobotany, and more.

Eric, Jenny, and I love history, cooking, and eating, so this blog will be a fun project for us. But it will also help us with the cookbook in several ways:

• I always research more broadly and deeply than the scope of my article, short story, or book. I think it essential to understand my subject in its historical and cross-cultural context. The blog is a place where we can share some of the interesting things we learn in our research that is beyond the scope of the book.
• As we research and process what we learn, we can use the blog for drafting possible sections of the book, both to try out ways to organize the material and to gauge readers' interest. The development of the cookbook thus will be an interactive process with the blog readers.
• Over time, the blog will build an audience of people interested in history, cooking, and eating—the perfect audience for the eventual cookbook.
• As the cookbook's publication date nears, we can use the blog as one of our marketing tools.
• Once the cookbook is published, the blog posts—past and future—become supplements to it, expanding its value. For example, blog posts can have color pictures of unusual ingredients, food plants, and steps in the preparation of a recipe; interviews with or guest posts by scholars and people who are experts in their ancestors' food traditions; cross-cultural comparisons of uses of foods or dining customs; and posts that enhance the cookbook owners' enjoyment of the cookbook, such as posts on historical gardens, food in ancient art, the history of pottery, and other topics related to the cookbook but outside its scope.

I don't know what Jenny and Eric have in mind for their first posts, but I will start with some posts about recent research on the first farms in Europe, the domestication of cattle and horses, and how scientists can learn what ancient people ate by studying the calculus built up on their teeth.

I invite you all to visit the new blog. Later in the summer, once it has some posts and some followers, you are welcome to contact me at ShaunaRoberts@ShaunaRoberts.com if you are interested in writing a guest post or want me to be aware of your own food blog or your research.


Thank you for three good years.

—Shauna Roberts

The Kindle Cover Conundrum

I met a writer at the recent ConQuesT science fiction convention in Kansas City who had sold about 180,000 self-published books in the past year. I mentioned that I planned to self-publish a novel this summer, and she encouraged me to produce both e-books and trade paperbacks.

I took a look through her CreateSpace-printed books and was surprised at the quality. (CreateSpace is Amazon's hardcopy self-publishing arm.) The coverstock, inside stock, and ink looked as good as those of books produced by New York. I decided I would self-publish my novel both electronically and as a trade paperback.

But what would I do about the cover? I had designed the cover for the Kindle, and so it:

• is very simple
• is brightly colored
• is bold
• uses large typefaces for the title and author name
• is designed to look good in Kindle's preferred 5x8 proportions

It won't work as is on a 6x9 trade paperback. Sure, I can stretch the image here and squash it there so it looks nearly identical to the Kindle cover. That would allow me use the same promotional materials for both.

But do I really want to make only minor formatting changes? What is pleasing and catches the eye in an image half the size of my thumb and on the cover of a 6x9 paperback are quite different. A book cover pleasingly complex enough to get me to spend a minute or two looking at it in person is often a blurred mess when viewed in the carousel of my Kindle. (Which I know because covers look different enough in person vs. on my Kindle that I have bought several expensive books on Kindle and then later bought them in paperback or hardback, not recognizing them. Ouch!)

I worry that the Kindle cover may be too loud and insufficiently complex for a paper book. I worry that my name would look much too large on the paper cover for a writer early in her career.

Another worry: I created the cover using Microsoft Word and some free programs. (I don't own Adobe Illustrator or any other fancy art program.) I had to do some work-arounds to create the cover I wanted within Word's limitations. The resulting minuscule flaws won't show up on the Amazon ad or in the Kindle book, but they will be glaringly obvious if I use the image on the trade paperback's cover.

I am still mulling what to do. The advantages of the same cover on every edition of a book are obvious. But so are the advantages of tailoring the cover image to the size at which people will view it and the disadvantages of having clear mistakes in the art.

I think some of my answers may lie in digging deeply into Word's more obscure features; somewhere buried under many layers of menu options may lie the solutions to the flaws created by my work-arounds. I will also try making subtle but significant alterations to the design and printing them out at different sizes to see whether I can make the image more suitable for a paperback without altering it significantly.

As more of us try out self-publication, solutions to these and other problems of designing our own books will become common knowledge. In the meantime, we each struggle with producing a high-quality book within the limited financial means we have as writers.

Thank goodness we writers are creative and can think out of the box!


I'll be blogging again at Novel Spaces on June 21.

—Shauna Roberts

Parawriting

What activities count as part of writing a story or novel?

It's not such a silly question. I often spent all day, every day, in my office and not get any actual writing done that week. But not anymore. I recently decided to reserve 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. four days a week to actual writing.

After only a couple of days, I realized I needed to define "writing." Does revising a draft count? (Yes, I decided.) Does reading a general writing book not specifically related to any current works? (No.) What about everything in-between, which I named "parawriting" because it's related to current projects but doesn't involve doing something with an actual manuscript?

To keep myself honest and make sure I put in at least 20 hours of  working on a manuscript, I defined the following as "writing" when keeping track of my 20+ writing hours per week:

• writing, rewriting, revising, or polishing a manuscript
• submitting stories to markets
• researching subjects directly related to a manuscript
• blogging at the book-related blog "Meal Times"
• designing book covers, bookmarks, and postcards
• brainstorming
• preparing manuscripts for self-publication
• uploading manuscripts for publication

The following, however, got defined as "parawriting" and don't count toward my minimum of 20 hours a week:

• booksignings
• nagging magazines that published my stories but didn't pay me for them
• critiquing other people
• attending critique groups
• attending professional conferences
• reading background for a actual or potential book or story
• reading books about becoming a better writer
• blogging at my personal blog, "For Love of Words," or here at "Novel Spaces"
• preparing a schedule for my writing week and writing month
• updating my account book
• writing reviews at GoodReads or Amazon.com
• all marketing and promotion (except for designing bookmarks and postcards)
• straightening my office

Now I'm moving my drafts forward, and I'm getting new words down. Best of all, I'm no longer baffled by not knowing where the time I spend in my office goes. I was devoting too much time to parawriting and not enough to writing.

Parawriting tasks are essential and they are legitimate to do during working hours. But they shouldn't squeeze out actual writing. And now they no longer are for me. Goodbye, frustration! Hello, high productivity!


What is your relationship with parawriting? Are you able to balance parawriting and writing? Or does one squeeze out the other, leaving you unable to proceed?


In my next "Novel Spaces" post, I'll tell you about Conquest, the science fiction and fantasy convention held yearly in Kansas City, which I'm attending this week and weekend. See you on June 6!

—Shauna Roberts

Why I Probably Won't Buy Your Self-Published Book

I have nothing against independent publishing. In fact, my two Kindles probably contain hundreds of books between them, I have many friends who self-publish, and I intend to self-publish an e-book later this year. I like saving money. I like not having to buy more bookcases.

But most of the intriguing-sounding independently published e-books I take a look at on Amazon.com  I don't buy...even when they're free. I don't want to waste my time downloading or starting to read a bad book. So I take a careful look at the e-book's page first. And I often find warning signs that a book is poorly written, poorly edited (and thus unreadable for me, although I know people who don't notice poor editing), or both.

These are the clues I use to decide whether a book is badly written or edited:

• The title contains a misspelling or a grammar error.
• The title is stupid or a cliché. (Word play on a cliché is okay.)
• The descriptive paragraph contains more than two misspellings or grammar errors.
• Most or all of the sentences in the descriptive paragraph are confusing or awkward.
• The descriptive paragraph contains so many vague words I have no idea what the book is about.
• The descriptive paragraph makes the book sound just like 2,000 other Tolkien take-offs.
• The described plot contains standard-issue vampires, werewolves, fairies, or other stock fantasy characters with no apparent original twist.
• Most of the good reviews read as if they were written by people who don't usually read books or who have never written a review before. (Family member alert!)
• Most of the reviews are full of grammar errors, bad sentences, and misspellings, making me skeptical of the reviewers' ability to recognize a good book if they saw one.
• The bad reviews mention poor editing or formatting.
• The bad reviews discuss at length the lack of plot, poor plotting, paper-thin characters, unbelievable actions, or other evidence of poor writing.

Unfortunately, 80% or 90% of the e-books I'm tempted by have at least one of these flaws, and I move on.
 
Do you care about poor editing or formatting in the e-books you read? If a book is free, are you willing to read it even if the story bores or irritates you? Or are you fussy, like me, in what books you choose to purchase, download, and read?


I'm glad you stopped by my post today. I'll be blogging again on May 21. Hope to see you then!

—Shauna Roberts

Still in Love with Paper

Computers and the Digital Age have made the life of a writer easier in too many ways to count. Yet, after trying new digital tools, I often return to my original paper and analog methods.

For example, after I got my new color Kindle, I bought a few background books for my next novel because they were cheaper as e-books. Yet I immediately forgot the names and authors of those books. It wouldn't surprise me if I one day buy some of them again in paper (if I haven't already), not knowing I already own them.

Other books I would have been willing to buy as e-books I didn't because for some reason the illustrations weren't included in the e-book, only the paper book. 

You might object that those are technical issues; that once Kindles allow one to tag books and then sort books by multiple tags, that once Kindles have bigger memories so they can easily hold many image-heavy e-books, these problems will disappear. True, and if those advances happen, I will reconsider my decision. In the meantime, I buy only pleasure reading in e-book form.

Some of the downsides of new digital ways of doing things are intrinsic. For example, software improvements so far have been inevitable. Twenty years from now, I won't be able to access the books currently on my Kindle or any files that are now on my computer because the software and possibly the hardware will have advanced too far.

Another example: office recordkeeping. I've found Quicken worse than useless for recording my business expenses. I don't like using Microsoft Excel, either. It's much faster and more convenient to keep records of expenses by hand. With an old-fashioned paper ledger, I can work on my account book anywhere, not just at my computer. For another, I can see all my expenses and their categories for the year with only three or four glances (or with a single glance if I tear out the pages and spread them out). I make fewer mistakes when I write numbers in by hand, and it's easier to notice and correct mistakes in a paper ledger.

These aren't the only areas in which I've decided to be a Luddite. Recently I decided to return to using a paper address book as my master list of addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. I loved having a Palm Pilot, with all data collected in one place and accessible in 30 seconds from anywhere I was. But my newer-model computer doesn't support such old technology. Contact data are now scattered through several different programs, and they're not accessible when I'm away from home. So it's back to a portable address book for me until smartphones and smartphone data plans drop drastically in price.

And it hardly needs mentioning that even if one makes many backups of computer files and stores them in more than one physical location, one can nevertheless irretrievably lose important information.

As a result, I'm still in love with paper. Where do you fall? Does your office and business depend entirely on computers and digital devices, does it still run entirely on paper, or is it somewhere in-between? And why?


I'll be blogging again on May 6. I hope you stop by again then.

—Shauna Roberts

Blog Tours

Now that physical book tours are becoming rarer and more expensive, some of my friends have toured virtually, visiting many blogs in a month in a "blog tour." Usually, these blog tours have involved a combination of guest posts, prize give-aways, profiles of the author, and/or interviews with the author.

I hope to self-publish a novel soon—some of you have been hearing that for months; all I can answer is that life keeps getting in the way—and I have wondered whether I should take the time and effort to do a blog tour. So I have been looking on the Internet for tips.

Here are ten important things I learned; I'll give links afterwards so that you can go to the original blog post or article and learn more about how to run a successful blog tour.

1. Don't give away copies of your new book. Some people won't buy it right away if they think they may win it in a blog contest. (I know I've entered contests at blogs and then not bought a book I wanted because I forgot about it.)
2. Your previous books or gift certificates to bookstores are good prizes to offer instead of your new book.
3. Send your guest post or interview directly, not via your publicist, if you have one, or your publisher. Include a picture of your cover and yourself.
4. Some bloggers don't automatically provide a link or links to places to buy your new book, so be sure to ask your host or hostess to.
5. Always check the comments at the blogs that host you and take the time to respond to all people who comment. Do so repeatedly on the first day.
6. Some blogs schedule months in advance, so arrange your blog tour well ahead of when you want your tour posts to run.
7. Start writing your scheduled posts well in advance. That way, you still make progress on current progress and you have a cushion in case you have an emergency.
8. Don't schedule a blog stop for every day of your touring month. People on your lists and on Facebook will get tired of and maybe even annoyed by your constant announcements of blog stops.
9. Each stop on your tour should provide unique information, not the same stuff recycled over and over.  If the thought of writing unique posts for each stop seems daunting, consider providing other types of material at some sites, such as excerpts from your new book, good-quality photographs you took related to your book, or your book trailer. Also, you can ask your host or hostess whether they would like to review your book instead.
10. Choose professional-looking blogs to visit on your tour (to showcase your book to its best advantage), and make sure your own blog looks great before it starts receiving visitors from your tour.

Here are the links I promised:

• http://marielamba.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/blog-tour-tips-on-planning-your-journey/
• http://writersinthestorm.wordpress.com/2012/03/12/blog-tours-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/
• http://www.poesdeadlydaughters.blogspot.com/2012/03/planning-blog-tour-read-this-first.html
• http://yodiwan.com/2009/06/11/whats-a-book-blog-tour/ 
• http://blogbooktours.blogspot.com/2007/11/blog-book-tour-in-retrospect.html

Do you have any tips to add, either from the perspective of having hosted a blog tour or having taken your book on tour? Please share!


Thanks for stopping by. I'll be blogging again at Novel Spaces on Saturday, April 21. Hope to see you again then.

—Shauna Roberts

Why Anthologies Make Good Markets

If you write speculative fiction but have never submitted to an anthology, you should consider it. I've found anthologies to be good markets.

• Anthologies get fewer submissions than equivalent-paying magazines, so your chances of acceptance of higher.
• Personally, I'm more creative when I have boundaries. An anthology provides a topic, usually an approach, and maximum and minimum word counts. I can come up with several ideas for an anthology story while watching a TV show, while I have a hard time corralling ideas, characters, and settings into something coherent when I have the whole of time and space to work in. 
• Editors of anthologies sometimes arrange booksignings, increasing your name recognition. 
• Editors sometimes arrange readings at bookstores or sf/f cons, increasing your name recognition.
• Being in an anthology is an automatic conversation topic when you meet other authors in the anthology at sf/f cons and meetings.
• Anthologies have deadlines. You can't put off writing your story or keep revising it; if you want to submit, you have to meet the deadline. If you write for anthologies, you get more stories out.
• Sometimes I write a story that doesn't match the guidelines of any magazine. A few times, I've sold such stories to anthologies, where they were a perfect fit.

It's easy to find out about anthologies. Start with Ralan.com's list of open anthologies at http://www.ralan.com/m.antho.htm. This summary briefly lists genres, word count, pay, and other important matters. When you see an anthology that interests you, click on its name. A new window will open—sometimes it will be the page with submission information; other times, it will be a publisher's home page and you'll have to look for the submission instructions.

Another source that I have not used often but other people swear by is Duotrope. Its search page is at http://duotrope.com/search.aspx. The fewer items you specify, the more hits you'll get. So to review all open paying anthologies in all genres, go down to the "Payscale" box and choose the minimum pay you want, go down to "Anthologies" box and click, then click "Search." Click on the title, and you'll go to Duotrope's summary. From there, you can go to the publisher's or anthology's Website.

The only bad experience I've had with anthologies is that they seem more likely not to respond if they're not interested.


I'll be blogging again at Novel Spaces on April 6. Hope to see you again then.

—Shauna Roberts

Are You Driven To Write?

Many writers say they are driven to write, that they have to write, that they would write even if they never sold a thing.

I'm not among those writers.

Sometimes, other writers are perplexed. "How do you stand the loneliness then?" "How can you motivate yourself to do the hard work if you don't have to write?"

Frankly, I like solitude. I enjoy writing. I love when I'm on a roll, feeling the words spill out faster than I can think. I love the tension of try to finding the perfect word, that one with the precise meaning I want that also contains the right number of syllables to yield a smooth sentence and that has a first letter that echoes elsewhere in a word nearby. I love the research and learning things I didn't know before. I love taking a crappy first draft and shaping it, draft by draft, revision by revision, into something sharper, shorter, and more exciting.

Sure, sometimes writing is hard, but life's much harder. Writing distracts me from the difficulties of real life.

More important, though, is that I am driven ... driven to create. I've tried many many creative endeavors since childhood, and if I had been good enough at one of them, I might now be a professional musician or a professional herb gardener or a professional quilter or a professional photographer or....

Unfortunately, the only creative activity I had a real talent for was writing. So I became a writer. The drive to create is almost as good a motivator to write as a drive to write. I say "almost" because although I've given up most of my hobbies to create more time to write, I still sometimes find myself out in the garden plucking weeds or photographing my plants or their pests when I should be writing. I suspect those who are driven to write don't get diverted by opportunities to do something else creative.

How about you? Are you driven to write? If not, why did you become a writer?


I'll be blogging again on March 21. Hope to see you again then.

—Shauna Roberts

Mardi Gras Basics for Writers

"It's Carnival time, and everybody's having fun." 

 —from "Carnival Time," Al Jonson

Joyeux Mardi Gras!

The one thing everyone seems to know about New Orleans is that it has a big Mardi Gras celebration. But many people are fuzzy on the details, including writers.

The Carnival Season traditions of New Orleans are so rich that one could write books about them. Here, I'll just summarize the basics and provide links to more information so that you don't embarrass yourself when writing a story set in New Orleans during Carnival Season.

Mardi Gras is on a different date every year because it's tied to the Catholic Church calendar, not the secular calendar. Mardi Gras itself is always the day before Ash Wednesday. It's called Mardi Gras—French for "Fat Tuesday"—because it's the last day before the sacrifices and penances of Lent.

In New Orleans, the season of parties and parades leading up to Mardi Gras day is called Carnival. It starts on Twelfth Night, the twelfth day after Christmas.The first Carnival ball occurs that night. The balls are part of the secret Mardi Gras that visitors and most people who are not from old New Orleans families do not see, including me. So I will focus on what I know, the public celebrations.

One widespread custom is the king cake, which appears in bakeries on Twelfth Night (also known as Kings' Day). The king cake varies from bakery to bakery and is made differently in different homes. But it is always a sweet, oval pastry, usually iced and often with a filling inside. Before baking, a trinket is mixed into the dough; nowadays, for safety's sake, this is a small plastic doll, called the baby, that is soft enough not to break a tooth on and big enough that you probably won't swallow it. King cakes show up at offices, parties, and other places. The custom is that whoever finds the baby must provide the next king cake (and throw the next party the following week).

The official colors of Mardi Gras have remained the same since 1872: purple for justice, green for faith, and gold for power. These colors show up everywhere. Some civic-minded people paint their houses purple, green, and gold to celebrate year-round. Most Mardi Gras beads (discussed later) are one, two, or three of these colors; so are the icing on king cakes, many costumes, Carnival-season clothes, and almost anything else you can think of.

Many people look forward most to the parades or the parties that people who live along the parade route throw. The most parades roll on Mardi Gras Day—barring rain, nine parades, including Rex and Zulu. Although most parades occur in the week and a half leading up to Mardi Gras, in 2012 there were two parades on Twelfth Night. Each parade is sponsored by a club called a crewe, which chooses a theme for the float and then spends the entire year having elaborate floats and "throws" designed and made.

Families generally watch the parades from their porches, their friends' porches, and along the streets and on the neutral grounds (medians) in neighborhoods. The crowd in the French Quarter is rowdy,  and people stand 30 deep; also, tourists congregate in the Quarter, getting drunk and sometimes taking off items of clothing. So few families go to the Quarter on Mardi Gras day; they celebrate with friends and neighbors instead.

As tractors pull the floats down the street, the costumed and masked krewe members, riding horses, riding in cars, or riding on the floats, toss "throws" to the crowd. The most common throws are strands of plastic beads (often coated with a metallic layer) that both men and women wear around their necks, doubloons (commemorative coins bearing the year and name of the parade), and commemorative go-cups (a large plastic cup suitable for safetly carrying your beer or other drink on the street). The most-coveted throw is a coconut decorated by someone in the Krewe of Zulu. Other throws include small stuffed animals, candy, small toys, decorated high-heeled shoes, MoonPies, koozies, and tee-shirts.

Between the floats march great high school and military bands, dance troupes, and flambeaux carriers, who dance with torches at the night parades, a tradition dating back to before there were street lights.

In some neighborhoods, people march on foot from bar to bar or on an improvised route. The most glamorous of these groups is the Mardi Gras Indians. The Indians are small groups of African-American men who spend all year designing and making sewing beads on elaborate, colorful costumes based on Plains Indian outfits.

Mardi Gras day, the parades are done by midafternoon, but the partying picks up. In the Quarter, street sweeping machines start rolling at exactly midnight as mounted police, horses shoulder to shoulder, firmly encourage everyone to go home. Mardi Gras ends with a whimper as tired people slump off.


To learn more:

Large collection of links about Mardi Gras (including etiquette, history in New Orleans, Carnival balls, parade dates, and tips for first timers) can be found here, here, and here.

Learn about the krewes and their history here, here, here, and here.

Information on Mardi Gras Indians and links to more information are here.

In rural Acadiana in southern Louisiana, customs are quite different and include le Courir de Mardi Gras, a celebration that varies from town to town but usually involves costumes, masked riders on horseback who gather ingredients for a community gumbo, other types of begging, singing, and playing pranks. See also this brief overview.


Mardi Gras is so much more than what I've been able to fit in this post. I'd appreciate stories or links shared in comments to help readers understand our traditions better.

Far from home, but always a New Orleanean wherever I am,

—Shauna Roberts

News And Shameless Self-Promotion

Now that Devon Archer has moved on from Novel Spaces, we will have occasional empty blogging slots that our writers will use for promotion and news.

I believe I am the first to take advantage of this opportunity, and I have several pieces of news to share.


Campbell Award


I am in my second (and last) year of eligibility for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in the genres of science fiction and fantasy. If you are eligible to nominate works and people for Hugo Awards, you can nominate as many as five people for Campbell Award at the bottom of the Hugo ballot.

Please consider nominating me for the Campbell Award. Last year, it took only 40 nominations to get on the final ballot, so your five votes really do count.  

A list of people eligible to be nominated for the Campbell Award is posted at Writertopia. Clicking on a name will take you to a page telling you what work made that person eligible. Most pages also have a bio and a list of fiction publications and awards. My own page is at http://www.writertopia.com/profiles/ShaunaRoberts.

You don't need to nominate five works or people in every category on the Hugo ballot; in fact, you can leave entire categories blank. If you vote, the nomination ballot must be received by March 11. Thanks.

Novel Sale

Hadley Rille Books, the science fiction and fantasy press that published Like Mayflies in a Stream, will be publishing my novel Ice Magic, Fire Magic.  

Ice Magic, Fire Magic is a fantasy with strong romantic elements. Its heroine is a woman who is  incapable of doing evil and who must become the ruler of her world. Meanwhile, evil people who want to seize her power are out to stop her.

I wrote the novel to explore in more depth the good Kirk–bad Kirk dilemma: Can a person who is all good be an effective leader?

Ice Magic, Fire Magic has some cool elements I had fun creating. The land is sentient and chooses the ruler. The rulers are true servants of the people, and they go barefoot as a constant reminder that they should serve, not be served. Two species of humans share the land; one species wields magic, and the other relies on advanced technology. Women and men work different types of magic; their magic is complementary, and both kinds are needed for the land to thrive. A lonely, 1000-year-old evil spirit tries to influence both the good heroine and her evil opponents. And then there are the ice dragons and fire lizards.

The book is scheduled for publication in 2013.


Story Sale

My fantasy flash story "Moonlight, Reflected in Dewdrops" was published in the January 2012 issue of 10Flash Quarterly. You can read it for free at http://www.10flashmagazine.com/10flash-fantasy/moonlight-reflected-in-dewdrops/. 


 New e-Books

My novelette "The Hunt, " despite having been published twice, is hard to find. This science fiction mystery is one of my favorite pieces I've written. So I've put it up at Amazon.com as an e-book. You can find it at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006WEVR7I.

I hope within the next week or so to put up my 1983 dissertation for Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.) on mating behavior of Nicobar pigeons (Caloenas nicobarica) at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. Although mating behavior has been studied extensively in other pigeons, to my knowledge my dissertation remains the only such work on Nicobar pigeons, so it will be useful for a few specialists to have it available.

Of more interest to Novel Spaces readers, this spring, if all goes well, I will e-publish my epic fantasy novel Shrine of the Heavens. More on it later. 

Writing Flash Fiction

"That sounds so hard!" people often say to me after hearing I'm working on or have published a flash fiction story.

Flash fiction—generally defined as a short story of 1000 words or less—offers unusual challenges, but that makes it fun. To tell a story and then prune it and prune it again and prune it some more and possibly even prune it yet another time until it's under 1000 words and has no flab left whatsoever is like a game and improves one's skills in trimming.

Some standard short fiction markets accept flash, and surprisingly many markets specialize in flash fiction (see, for example, lists here and here), so writing flash is more than an exercise.  (Note, though, that some markets pay little or nothing for flash.)

In this post, I'll give some hints about how I approach a flash fiction story and then summarize tips I found on the Web.

Some flash markets offer prompts. I like starting with a prompt because someone else has already spent the time deciding whether the idea could be satisfactorily turned into a flash story. I then make lists of possible meanings of the prompt and/or draw a mind map. As I play with ideas, I keep in mind that I need to tell the story with:

• as few characters as possible
• only one plotline
• only one character arc
• one scene, if possible, or in a few short scenes
• enough description to create a strong setting
• words that create a consistent mood throughout
• a first sentence that intrigues readers
• a last paragraph that leaves readers satisfied that they have read a complete story (that is, one with a beginning, a middle, and an end)

I then write the story concisely, but without worrying about the word count. My first draft is usually 1300 to 1600 words. Then I start cutting.

• First, I get rid of adjectives, adverbs, and phrases that aren't needed.
• Second, I try to strengthen each verb and noun.
• Third, I check the word count. I usually am still well above 1000 words, so I look for secondary plot lines (yes, they creep in when I'm not looking) that can be cut, weak dialogue that can be condensed or removed, setting details that can be cut or revealed through action instead of description, and characters that can be cut or combined.
• Fourth, now that I'm below 1000 words, I revise each paragraph to end on a strong word. As part of this step, I look for passive sentences and test whether rewording them makes them better.
• Fifth, I add details of action, character voice, and description to make the characters and setting feel as alive as in a long story.
• Sixth, now that I am above 1000 words again, I repeat all the steps.
• Seventh, after several rounds of cutting and adding, I polish each sentence and each paragraph so that it is as clean and sharp as possible, then cut or add again as necessary. 

The rounds of cutting and polishing are more important in flash than in other fiction. Flash is so short that a break in the mood or a wrong word can demote a story from "great" to "good." Also, you have time to make your story a perfect jewel (compared with longer stories, with which the revision and polishing time seems to go up exponentially with increasing word count), and your competition will probably have taken advantage of the extra time to do just that.


I searched on the Internet for other people's guidelines for writing flash fiction, and here are some tips I found that sound potentially useful:

• Use allusion to familiar events or literature so that you can avoid explanation. For example, if you have a character refer to President Lincoln, you don't need to give the date or country or describe the clothes.
• Use clichés and tropes for the same reason.
• Have a twist or a surprise at the end.
• Try removing everything except the dialogue.
• Give your main a single compelling need.
• Have only a single theme.
• Get right to the story; don't use introductions.
• Give as little backstory as possible; imply the rest.
• Keep the action in one location if possible.
• Focus on a character or an event or an idea, not all three.
• In complete opposition to my own recommendation, one Website suggested setting a timer (for an hour, say) and aiming to complete the writing and editing before the bell goes off, because flash fiction "shouldn't be something you belabor."

Thanks for stopping by. I'll have a special post on Monday the 13th with news and promotion and be back to regular blogging with a Mardi Gras–themed post on February 21.

—Shauna Roberts

Professional Organizers Can Help Writers

Professional organizers don't come cheap, but sometimes they can pay for themselves by making a writer much more productive.

I have used professional organizers twice, and they were a great help both times.

The first time, I had been living in New Orleans for almost fifteen years, and I had outgrown my home office. When a friend mentioned that she and a friend of hers were starting a professional organizing business, I commented that my office was a lost cause. Her eyes lit up. She said that they needed to get some practice jobs so they could get references and suggested that they give me a discounted price with the understanding that if I were happy with what they did, I would write a reference for them for their Website.

Dubious that anyone could help me, I still couldn't pass up such a good offer. The two women came to my office, crawled over piles and dug through the closet, took lots of measurements, and asked lots of questions. Then they came up with a brilliant plan that gave me lots more space and a more efficient work space. They even did all the work themselves in one day, shutting the door so I couldn't interfere. I was happy to write a good recommendation.

A lot of what they did for me was to make me question my assumptions. A few examples:

• I had been keeping every draft and every piece of reference material for every article I had ever written, or ever proposed, since I had started as a freelance writer. They convinced me that now that the Internet had been invented and information was easy to come by, I could get rid of many journals and all but the most recent background information for articles. 
• I had one table for writing and one table for editing, with reference books and basic supplies by each. That had made sense when editing work arrived by Fed-Ex or fax machine and I edited manually. But now that I edited mostly on the computer, they consolidated the two work areas into one. 
• I had all my bookcases and tables against the walls with a big empty space in the middle of the room that I used for storing piles of papers. They took my tables and arranged them in the shape of a U, making a work cockpit. From my chair I could now reach every project on every table as well as my printer and fax. The room felt bigger because my work area was neat and there weren't piles all over the floor; I had more work space because the "cockpit"  took advantage of the middle of the room; and I even had wall space for more bookcases. 

I went from having a messy, crowded office without enough space to work to a work space that saved me time and energy and suited my work style perfectly.

The second time I used a professional organizer was a month ago. We had lived in California for more than four years by then, and yet many boxes from my former office were still sitting in the hall, waiting to be unpacked. My major problem was that my office in California has no closets and is lined with built-in wood bookcases and drawers. They look beautiful, but I can't reach their top shelves, and they leave no space for filing cabinets. I was at a loss where to put books so I could reach them and how to store papers I would otherwise file.

The problem only increased over the succeeding four years as I generated more paper and started new projects. I had nowhere to file or store them, so the floor and every other surface in my office was covered with stacks of paper. I wasted 15 to 30 minutes a day looking for phone numbers I needed to call, notes I needed for a project, and other important things such as scissors, my calculator, my pocket knife, even my house keys.

I was overwhelmed and, some days, frustrated to tears. The mess stressed me out, but I didn't know where to start.

This time I found an organizer by searching Google for professional organizers near my Zip code and then reading the organizers' Websites carefully to see what types of jobs they did and whether they had experience with people with memory and health problems. I selected a company that listed "elderly people" as one of the groups it served.

The woman the company sent out was a former nurse who had seen worse messes than mine and was not intimidated.

• She took everything off the bookcases; I chose what books to keep, what to throw away (some of my medical and scientific books were so out of date that they were useless), and what to give to Goodwill. When she refilled my bookcases, I had room for books that were sitting in piles, waiting for a home. 
• She cleaned out my cabinets and reorganized them. 
• She convinced me that old computer, printer, and USB cables; old phones; and old phone cables should be boxed up and put in the garage, where they would be easy to access but not taking up limited drawer space in my office.  
• We went through all the piles of papers and still-packed moving cartons and we filled boxes and boxes with papers and junk I no longer needed. 
• With the addition of several files trays, my tall pile of "papers to do something with soon" became neatly organized by topic and urgency. 
• Once the hall was empty of moving boxes, I bought short bookcases for along the hall wall to store  books and papers for current projects. Now components of projects are together at a level I can reach, and the hall looks nice instead of as if we're preparing to move.
• My organizer took several empty plastic file boxes sitting in the hall and, using hanging folders I already had, filed important papers in them. I have no place to put the boxes except to stack them on the floor in the corner, but at least they look orderly and contained and I can find what I need.
• Many organizers—watch out for this if you decide to hire one!—want their clients to buy expensive prepackaged systems for organizing and filing. Personally, I don't care for nouveau-middle-class matchy-matchy decorating, and I certainly don't want to pay money for it. My organizer was similarly frugal. She organized my drawers and cabinets with things we already had around the house or in the garage, buying only a few attractive—and cheap—storage containers and file trays at Target. 
• Because my organizer didn't use a prepackaged system, she was able to organize my office and storage around the way I work and think, not around the way the designer of a prepackaged system did.

The professional movers who had packed us up in New Orleans had put things in boxes willy-nilly, without regard for what papers, folders, or books were grouped together in my office. Materials for a half-written novel had been packed in several different boxes. Thanks to the organizer's help in unpacking and sorting, I now have everything I need for that novel reunited.

My office is a haven again and no longer a place of stress.

This time, I received no friend discount or early client discount. I paid by the hour, and it was expensive. However, my organizer worked quickly and had excellent ideas for fixing my problems. I was amazed how quickly she got things in order, and I needed her for far fewer days than she or I originally estimated. I'm working efficiently now. I know where things are, and I no longer fret that I'm forgetting something I'm supposed to do. I don't have to climb over papers anymore to get to my desk or a bookcase or a cabinet.

As before, it was worthwhile to hire an organizer to get my office—and me—back on track. I expect 2012 to be more productive and lucrative than 2011, and hiring a professional organizer is a big reason why.


I'll be blogging again at Novel Spaces on February 6. Hope you visit again then.

—Shauna Roberts

Roasted Pepper and Four Cheese Cannelloni...

[with]...manchego, fontina, parmesan and goat cheese with pine nuts, spinach, roasted portabella and spicy tomato broth."

The above is an entrée description from the menu of Mat and Naddie's, a neighborhood restaurant in New Orleans' Riverbend area. Which would you  rather order, "Cheese-Stuffed Cannelloni" or an entrée whose menu description tells you what you are getting and makes you eager for it to arrive?  I doubt I'm unique in preferring lovingly detailed descriptions in the menu.

Fiction writers as well as menu writers need to sell an entire sensory experience with a few carefully chosen words, the "significant details."

What makes details significant? I'll give an example from my ancient copy of Roger Tory Peterson's A Field Guide to the Birds: Eastern Land and Water Birds. Peterson doesn't bother describing each species completely; each bird could fill a book. Instead, he describes each species in a third of a page or less.

Use Important, not Unimportant, Details
How does Peterson describe a bird so compactly? He first lists the features shared within the taxonomic family and then notes for each species only the details that help the birdwatcher distinguish one species from another. He doesn't use photographs of individual birds; instead, he draws a generic member of each species and sketches in the details most important for identification. For example, on page 88, he says the Least Tern is notable for being very small and having a yellow bill. Adults have yellow feet.

Very small; yellow bill; yellow feet in adults: Three significant details are all you need to know to identify the Least Term.

For the fiction writer, important details are those that are, well, important. Few people go through life noting every sound, every sight, every smell, every taste, and every feeling. That would be unnecessary data overload. Instead, the brain filters incoming data for what's relevant—such as a red light or a train whistle—or interesting.

Viewpoint characters are people too. Put a book's characters all in the same small room, and:

• The claustrophobic character cringes because the walls and ceiling close in.
• The self-appointed leader frowns because the circular table has no head for him to sit at.
• The architect compares the placement of the doors and windows with where she would have put them. 
• The artist leaves the others to study an unusual painting on the wall.

To write a description of the room, you should not list every feature, but only the few that stand out or matter to your scene's POV character—and those few features likely are different for each character.


Use Significant, not Insignificant, Details
Some decisions about details must transcend the characters. If a character's blue eyes or the broken spine of the pine tree are crucial to the plot, you must mention these early in the book, whether or not they would normally be important to any of the characters.


Details should always be in the book for at least one reason, preferably more. For example, the examples above of "important details" enlighten us about the characters. Details can also create suspense, reinforce the theme, fill out the world, draw the reader's attention to something important, and advance the plot.


Use Specific, not Generic, Details
The fiction writer should also follow Peterson's example by avoiding generic details ("the jail cell had a barred window") and focusing on the specific, unique traits of a person, place, thing, or action, what separates that one from all others ("Jimmy took one look at the Pepto Bismol–pink walls of the jail cell and his stomach roiled").

What you don't describe, the reader fills in from experience. So there's no need to describe what your typical reader is familiar with. Focus instead on what is distinctive. Zoom in on the homeless person's Harvard class ring, not their shopping cart piled with blankets.

Specific details draw the reader into the story and make it feel more real. For that reason, it's good to include details from all the senses (not just sight) and to use strong nouns and verbs to bring the scene to life.

Why use nouns and verbs instead of adjectives to introduce details?

• Doing so forces you to focus on action instead of passive description.
• "Show, don't tell."
• Details can fill more roles when they are revealed through action. Take this sentence: "'Lovely fuchsia dress, Emily,' Livia said to the new widow." We learn not only that Emily is wearing a hot-pink dress but also that Emily is flouting the social conventions of mourning and that Livia is catty. We wonder about Emily's choice of dress. Did Emily dislike her husband, or is she so poor she has only a few dresses, none black? Why is Livia cruel to Emily, and is she cruel to everyone?

A Final Word
One could write entire books on using details (and people have). I'll end here with advice from Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White. Their rule 16 for composition is, "Use definite, specific, concrete language," and they comment:

The surest way to arouse and hold the reader's attention is by being specific, definite, and concrete. The greatest writers—Homer, Dante, Shakespeare—are effective largely because they deal in particulars and report the details that matter. Their words call up pictures.

What are your favorite rules of thumb for writing details? Do you agree with my three?


Thanks for stopping by. My next post here at Novel Spaces will appear January 21, when I will talk about how professional organizers can help writers.

—Shauna Roberts

Richard Pryor: A role model for writers

This month marks the anniversaries of both the birth of Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor III (December 1, 1940) and his death (December 10, 2005).

Richard Pryor has long been a hero of mine, and I would like to share with you some of the reasons why.

Pryor was the quintessential American hero who rose from adversity to achieve his dreams. As he himself said, "I live in racist America and I'm uneducated, yet a lot of people love me and like what I do, and I can make a living from it. You can't do much better than that."

And he made that rise from adversity repeatedly.

He started life as the son of a prostitute who abandoned him when he was only ten. He was then raised by his grandmother, the madam of a brothel, who beat him. That was not the worst of his childhood. He was also sexually molested as a six-year-old by a neighbor and later by a priest. At 14, Pryor was expelled from school. He spent some of his time in the Army in jail for beating up a racist white soldier. There was every reason to expect Pryor to be a failure.

Instead, after he left the Army, he began singing in clubs. He discovered his talent lay more in comedy and soon began appearing on TV variety shows and then in Las Vegas. By age 27, he had risen from rags to riches and was a well-known comic.

He would have to rise from the ashes (one time literally) many more times. The next time was in the mid-1960s when he sought a more authentic comic persona that would portray black life and race relations with brutal honesty. His race-related themes and his increasing use of profanity made him controversial, and opportunities to work dried up.

Instead of giving up, Pryor reinvented himself. He moved to Los Angeles and began appearing in movies. He generally had poor roles to work with, yet he was hired again and again, eventually appearing in forty-two movies.

Although he was perhaps the greatest stand-up comedian ever, his personal life was less successful. He married seven times and had five different wives. His drug use, his adultery, and his alleged mistreatment of most of his wives contributed to this turnover. He had a heart attack at age 36. He was not happy, and in a strange suicide attempt in 1980, Pryor poured rum over himself and set himself on fire after freebasing cocaine.
Despite the odds, he survived, badly burned. It's hard to imagine anyone bouncing back from such despair, severe injuries, and public humiliation. But he did. He even worked his freebasing incident into his comedy routine and got big laughs making fun of himself.

In 1986, Pryor was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. A long-time advocate for animals, he continued to oppose medical experimentation on animals even though such research might lead to better treatments for MS. He continued performing comedy and acting for years after his diagnosis.

Writers can learn many lessons from Pryor:

• When life knocks you down, get back up. Repeat as necessary.
• Take responsibility for your failures and turn them to your advantage.
• Be willing to reinvent yourself.
• Be true to your vision as an artist.
• Reveal the truth, even if it hurts your career.
• Don't take yourself too seriously.
• Avoid self-pity.
• Use your pain to understand and help fix the suffering of others.
• Help those who are not as well off as you.
• Hold true to your principles. 

These lessons have proven invaluable in my personal life too. As some of you know, I have many chronic illnesses that at times have made it difficult or impossible for me to work or to do the things I love. Each time, I thought about Richard Pryor and followed his example. No self-pity. Get back up. Reinvent myself to accommodate my new circumstances. Use my pain to help others. Repeat as necessary. Because Pryor bounced back, I knew I could too.

Thank you, Mr. Pryor.


I'll be blogging again at Novel Spaces on January 6, 2012, when my topic will be the use of details in fiction. I hope you have a wonderful New Year!

—Shauna Roberts

World Fantasy Con: Can You Mix Science into Fantasy"

I went to World Fantasy Convention (WFC) 2011 in San Diego at the end of October, and the second panel I attended was on mixing science into fantasy.

The panelists were Greg Benford, Yves Meynard, Brent Weeks, L.E. Modisett, Darryl Murphy, and Edward Willett.

I did not stay for the whole panel because I wanted to get a good seat at the animal show. (Yes! The San Diego Zoo brought exotic animals to WFC, and for an hour talked about their adaptations. Very cool.) But even in what I attended, I learned several interesting things I'd like to share with you.

Edward Willett says that he likes to write fantasy in which the magic does not break physical laws of nature. However, after his steampunk fantasy was published, he received criticism that by having coal- and gas-based inventions that could be built and work in real life, he had taken all the magic out of the story.

Most or all of the panelists agreed that magic in fantasy should have rules (at least in the author's mind; it's okay if the characters themselves do not understand the rules) and that the rules should make sense. One panelist pointed out that if magic is not given rules, explicit or implied, then tension and drama are reduced because anything can happen (similar to the tension-draning effects of deus ex machina solutions in literature in general). That is such a great observation that I will repeat it again:

If magic is not given rules, explicit or implied, then tension and drama are reduced because anything can happen.

The panelists agreed, though, that some authors and readers particularly like figuring out rule-based magic, while for other readers, the wonder of the magical world is what they read for. Harry Potter's world may not make sense, but who wouldn't want to attend Hogwart's Academy?

Willett said that George R.R. Martin says that magic stands in for all the things in our real universe that we can't control. I searched today for the quote and didn't find it. However, I did find a recent interview with GRRM in which he says that for magic to work in fiction, it has to be mysterious. He does not believe in creating elaborate rules. (Full interview here.)

Modisett thinks also that magic especially appeals to people who wish things were other than they are. (Shauna's note: Perhaps this partly explain fantasy's appeal to children, who are loaded with so many unwanted rules and restrictions physically and socially.)

Personally, I prefer rule-based magic. It usually takes me out of a story if, for example, Michelle Pfeifer transforms into a twelve-pound hawk with nothing left over, breaking the law of the conservation of mass-energy. But if a story is good, I am willing to suspend belief. I loved Ladyhawke despite the unbelievable magic and many anachronisms.

What about you? Which type of fantastical story do you prefer? And why?

******
Los Angeles Appearance

I will be at the Los Angeles Science Fiction Convention (LOScon) this Friday, November 25. I speak on the panel "10 Beginning Writing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them" from noon to 2 pm; I sign copies of Like Mayflies in a Stream from 3:00 pm to whenever the next scheduled author shows up; and I will be on the panel "Short, Short Stories" (about ultraflash fiction) from 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm. I hope to see you there.

Until next time (December 6)!

—Shauna Roberts

World Fantasy Con: Why Do Teens Read Dystopian Fiction?

Dystopian fiction has so overtaken science fiction and fantasy (sf/f) that only a small percentage of newly published books catch my interest.

I went to World Fantasy Con (WFC) 2011 in San Diego last week, and the first panel I attended was on why so much young adult (YA)  sf/f is dystopian. At last, I hoped, I would understand the appeal of the seamy side of life shown in so much sf/f today.

The panelists were Marissa Lingen, John Pitts, Lissa Price, and Chandra Rooney. Below are the main points I came away with.  Some are statements that panelists or audience members made, while some are conclusions I drew or my amplifications of the points.

Reasons why there's so much dystopian fiction for teens

• Writers who got hooked on sf/f in the 1970s, when dystopias were common, are now writing what they read in their formative years.
• Baby boomer authors, who grew up in the 1960s  with high hopes for a brighter future with regular travel to the moon and the end of bigotry and war, are disappointed in what happened instead. Their writing reflects their sense of hopelessness about society.
• 9/11 influenced the mood of the country and made the future seem bleak.
• A novel needs a conflict. A novel about a dystopia has a built-in conflict. Some conflicts in the past arose from social divisions based on class, wealth, race, ethnicity, or sex. These conflicts admit easier solutions than in the past.
• Teens are under much more surveillance now. Schools have metal detectors. Surveillance cameras are everywhere. Parents can keep constant tabs on their kids through cell phones and social media. The "Big Brother is Watching You" aspect of some dystopian fiction rings true to teens because they are living that reality.
• Helicopter parents have disempowered teens by trying to control what they read—a librarian in the audience said that parents come into the library with their teens to choose the books they will check out!—and making other decisions for them they should be making on their own. So the oppressive governments in dystopian fiction also ring true.
• Teens today are less concerned about privacy and more concerned with assertion of independence. So they are attracted to the trope of a young person acting against authority to change the world for the better. Books based on that trope give teens a sense of empowerment.

Oddly enough, no one in the panel or the audience brought up the poor economy or the dysfunctional U.S. Congress. American teens do not remember a time in which young people got good jobs (or at least a job of some sort) or had a functioning national government. I don't view the United States as a dystopia because I have a long-range view; teens who have only been aware of the greater society for a few years may view the United States and other Western countries as dystopias, making traditional fantasy seem unbelievably utopian.

Other random comments made by panelists about dystopian fiction

• Some people disapprove of dystopian teen fiction because they think it glamorizes a dark view of the world.
• Publishers are getting away from the word "dystopia." One panelist's new book was labeled "futuristic thriller" instead.
• Adults and teens may take away different messages from the same books. Teens of different ages may also take away different messages.
• Old dystopian speculative fiction gets assigned as reading in high schools. (The panelist gave several examples; I got down only 1984 and Flowers for Algernon.) This gives dystopian fiction the status of literature. (She drew no conclusion, but if parents nowadays are choosing the books their teens read, I can see that parents might be drawn to sf/f that they think is "literature" and "less trashy.")
• Most dystopias have a happy ending. (This surprised me.)

I thought the panelists' and audience comments made a lot of sense. I won't be increasing the amount of dystopian fiction I read, but at least I have a better grasp of its appeal for teens.

What do you like and dislike about dystopian fiction in sf/f, romance, or other genres? If you are a teen who reads dystopian fiction, do you agree with what the adults at the panel said? If you are a parent of a teen, why do you think teens are drawn to bleak books?


Thanks for stopping by today. I'll be blogging here at Novel Spaces again on November 21, when I likely will discuss one of the other great panels I attended at World Fantasy Con.

—Shauna Roberts

The Purpose-driven Novel

The theme at Novel Spaces this month is, "Should novels have a purpose beyond entertaining the reader?" My answer is an unqualified, "Yes!"

It's not that I'm against novels entertaining people. In fact, I believe the most important function of a novel is to entertain. A novel that doesn't is a failure.

But a novel that does nothing but entertain is like cotton candy—without substance and a waste of time and money.

Fluff.

At minimum, I believe a book should have a theme. It can be as simple as "Love conquers all" or "Justice wins in the end " or "Honor above all," themes that run, respectively, through many romance novels, mysteries, and Westerns. It can be something controversial, such as "Fate controls one's destiny" or "People control their own destinies." Without theme, a book has no meaning or resonance, no power to last.

But books can offer a much richer experience than mere entertainment and a theme that satisfies. I have conscious purposes for almost every story and book I write. I put in situations to make my readers think, as well as messages, ideas, or information. Sometimes themes show up on their own, and when they do, I go back and develop them further.

Here are five of my several purposes for my 2009 novel Like Mayflies in a Stream.

1. Like Mayflies in a Stream is set in ancient Mesopotamia about 2750 B.C.E. Most historical fiction readers, like most fantasy and science fiction readers, want to know what it's like to live in another place, time, or society. I obliged them by having scenes set in the city, the wilderness, and a farming village. The characters are as true to their time as I could make them, as are the customs and physical settings. The reader both has an excellent time reading about the characters' adventures (I hope) and learns something about the world's first city and its people.

2. My book was inspired by the world's first epic poem, "The Epic of Gilgamesh," which is about the world's first superhero and his exploits. The tension between wildness and civilization is a thread woven intricately throughout the poem. This theme deeply resonated with me: I am only happy when living in a city with lots of music, good food, and art, yet I am also only happy when I am part of the natural world. I have never completely reconciled those two sides of my nature.

I put into my novel conflicts between wildness and civilization at several levels: between wilderness and village; between wilderness and big city; between Gilgamesh, the world's greatest king, and Enkidu, a wild man brought up by gazelles; between the sophisticated priestess Shamhat and the rustic trapper Zaidu; and within the complex man Gilgamesh himself.

The reader gradually realizes (again, this is my hope)  that we 21st-century Americans are not so different. We still struggle with civilization. We want civic order and prosperity, but we want to do our own thing and make our own rules. We want to breathe clean air and hear birds sing, but we also want to live near our jobs and enjoy the safety of having our houses behind flood walls and wolves well away from our backyards.

3. Shamhat, priestess of Inanna (the goddess of love), only appears in a few lines in the "Epic of Gilgamesh." I made her the heroine of Like Mayflies in a Stream and gave her many ethical dilemmas. Her duties conflict, and she has to puzzle out whether she owes her greatest loyalty to her king, her city, her temple, her family, or herself. She makes choices—but I am still pondering whether they were the right choices. I hope readers are too; I hope reading about Shamhat's decisions will help readers when they have to make similar ethical choices.

4. I have a pet peeve: The collateral damage left behind by macho heroes in books and movies is often glossed over or even presented as entertainment. Audiences cheer, for example, when a movie has a car chase or an explosion that kills many people. Gilgamesh is the prototype for this style of hero.

I thought the world needed a feminist perspective on the epic's portrayal of Gilgamesh as a hero worthy of honor, as well as on his many modern-day successors. (Why do I consider this a feminist issue? Women usually suffer the most in stories with these kind of heroes.) In Like Mayflies in a Stream, Shamhat witnesses the destruction Gilgamesh causes, and she takes on the heavy burden of trying to protect her family, her friends, and her temple.

5. I have another pet peeve: Some authors who want a  woman character to be strong make her rude and sarcastic and bossy, put her in black leather boots (high-heeled, of course), arm her heavily, deprive her of female friends, and have her be as violent and create as much havoc as Gilgamesh and other macho heroes.

I am a strong woman and I am (almost) nothing like that, and I worry about the influence of so-called "kick-ass heroines" on young people's self-concepts and on perceptions and expectations of women. So I  write heroines who are strong in the way real women are strong and who are true to their societies and times. That's how I wrote Shamhat. Hadley Rille Books specializes in fantasy novels and historical fiction with strong, realistic heroines, and Shamhat and Like Mayflies in a Stream found a welcoming home there.


I invite more Novelnauts in their October posts to take up the question of whether fiction should have purpose. I have strong opinions that it should, and I believe that done well, purpose in fiction makes  fiction stronger, not weaker.

What do you Novel Spaces readers think?


I'll be blogging again at Novel Spaces on November 6. Between now and then, I'll be attending the World Fantasy Convention. I hope to tell you a bit about it on November 6 and more in my November 21 post.

If you've read this far, thank you. This post was long, and I appreciate your reading it to the end. I hope it gave you much food for thought.

—Shauna Roberts

Guesstimation

"This process should take no longer than 30 minutes to an hour." So said one of the sets of instructions I read on preparing one's kitchen for termite fumigation.

The reality was far different. The tall, skinny nyloform bags had be double-bagged, and because they were floppy, I had to wrestle a paper bag or box into each to support the contents. After the bags were half full, the inside bag had to be sealed in a special way, then the outside bag. It took nineteen double-bagged to hold our nonrefrigerated kitchen items that needed protection from the gas. It was a full day's worth of work. Clearly, the person writing the instructions had never packed for a termite tenting.

We have moved many times, so we know packing. When we learned our house had to be tented and the scheduler wanted to sign us up for the following week, we knew to say "no." There were several dozens bushes and trees to be trimmed or cut down; valuables to be packed and taken elsewhere; hotels to be researched and reservations to be booked; suitcases for our time away to be packed; hundreds of items in the kitchen and bathrooms to be put into nyloform bags; get work done ahead of time; and the ground around the house to be soaked with water for several hours. We scheduled it four weeks out, and we could have used a little more time.

Similarly, I've had clients who were clueless how long their projects would take, usually because they did not understand the steps involved. "Big-picture people" have a hard time breaking down projects into the component actions. They assume drone work takes little time and base their guess of the total time on the amount of creative work needed, when in fact chasing down contact information, lining up interviews, collecting data and doing research, checking facts and spellings, finding photos and getting rights to use them, creating spreadsheets, and all the other foundation work often takes longer than writing the article or book.

As writers and editors, we need to develop the skill to estimate the time a project will take. Otherwise, we will sign on to projects we don't have time to do or get paid a pittance for a huge project.

Here are some tips I've learned.

Stick with the same clients. There are many good reasons to have low turnover in your client list, but one of the most important is that you and your client learn what's involved in a typical project and how long it takes. You can then set a per-project or per-hour rate that both of you are happy with.

Do part of the project before bidding to find out what's involved, and keep track of how long the different tasks take. You will then be able to guess how long the full project will take and bid accordingly. There's the risk that the client won't hire you if you bid too high, but that's better than being the winning low bidder stuck with a nightmare project.

Ask for an hourly rate, not a project rate. Doing so gives the client most of the risk, so they may object. But with a new client or a client who seems particularly big-picture-oriented, an hourly rate may be the only way to get a fair deal.

Assume that you will spend 25% (for a regular client) to 100% (for a new or ditzy client) more time on a writing or editing project that you estimate. Set your project fee and plan your calendar accordingly.

Writing projects are usually paid by the project, not the hours worked. Some of the information you need to know before making a bid or deciding to accept the offered fee are:

• Word count
• Reading level (lower reading levels take longer to write)
• Audience
• Nature of project
• Date due
• Number of people who will review your work and ask for changes
• Whether your deadlines will be extended if the client is late getting info or feedback to you
• What background material you will be given and what do you need to find on your own
• A guess about the likelihood that the editor will keep their word

Editing projects are usually billed by the hour. Clients, not surprisingly, often want a guess ahead of time of how many hours you'll need if the project is large or unusual. Sometimes they need to get approval from a higher-up or look at their budget to see whether the project can be done or must be scaled back. Most of the information above for writers is useful to know before giving your editing client a guesstimate. Here are some other things to find out.

• Whether the authors are native English speakers
• Whether the authors were given a common style guide 
• Whether the authors followed that style guide
• Whether you may query the authors directly when passages are obtuse or calculations seem wrong, or whether you have to go through the editor
• Whether you have to check and correct the references
• Whether you will receive complete materials or whether you'll have to write abstracts or do research to complete the chapters or articles yourself
• Whether your client wants a light edit that merely corrects spelling, grammar, and house style errors or a heavy edit that also includes correcting factual errors and rewriting badly written sentences so the authors don't look like idiots

What tips for estimating time for writing or editing projects have I missed? Do you have any horror stories about times you estimated the time needed for a project poorly?


I'll be blogging again at Novel Spaces on October 21. See you then!

—Shauna Roberts

POD Is Not a Dirty Word

Somewhere along the line, print on demand (POD) got a bad rep. Perhaps this occurred because POD started about the same time as e-books and has been the dominant way of putting e-books into hardcopy format. Or perhaps it was because it quickly became the dominant format for vanity publishers. Or perhaps it was because POD allowed anyone to be a publisher, and some micropresses that sprung up were run unprofessionally by people who knew little about publishing.

"Print on demand" does not mean a book is of lower quality or the publisher or writer is unsavory. In fact, many of the tiny presses that use POD are making books with better cover art, better interior design, and higher paper quality than traditional publishers. Others make a point of seeking out great writers who are not writing what is currently selling. Others are reprinting classics that are no longer in print with the original publisher. Some scholarly and university presses use POD.

POD simply means  that a publisher prints a book only after an order has been received. Traditionally, publishers guessed at how many bookstores might stock the book and how many copies they might buy and then printed up copies. 

I have run into the stigma against POD on several occasions. Bookstores have refused to stock my book or to let me sign simply because Like Mayflies in a Stream is a POD book. My book is available through wholesalers, just like books by the big boys, and my book's publisher (Hadley Rille Books) offers bookstores the same terms as the large publishers do, such as a standard discounted price and the ability to return unsold books.

Despite the stigma, I believe the small publishers using POD will grow faster and be more profitable because of the technology. I also believe POD is the wave of the future for all publishers, including the New York Gargantuas.

When all the copies of the book sell, publishers make more money by having printed up mass quantities of books rather than using POD. This extra profit comes about because mass production is currently cheaper than printing small quantities as needed through POD technology.

However, publishers quite often overestimate or underestimate the demand for a book. Most books do not sell out. An occasional book sells out quickly, leaving many unsatisfied people who wanted to buy it but couldn't. When such things happen, the only advantage of mass production is lost.

Problems with estimating demand happen in other industries too, and many have embraced "just-in-time" practices. For example, one of my brothers works for the Graphic Communications division of Kodak (http://graphics.kodak.com/US/en/default.htm), which makes custom specialty printers. He has given me a tour of his plant a couple of times and proudly pointed out the many efficiencies Kodak uses. One such efficiency is just-in-time ordering. Every single part, down to the tiniest washers and screws, is counted and computer monitored. The division always knows exactly how many of each part it has and how many of each part it needs that week. Orders for new parts are placed only when needed.

Imagine how much money Kodak saves on parts and storage buildings with this practice! Then imagine the consequences if all publishers used just-in-time printing (POD):

• The price of POD technology would fall.
• The price of POD technology would eventually fall enough that bookstores could own printing apparatus and stock only one copy of each book, printing out copies for customers as needed.
• Bookstores could carry more books in less space, and independent bookstores would have an easier time surviving.
• Readers could possibly customize their books by choosing their favorite of two or three covers or having their names imprinted on the book.
• There would be fewer returns from bookstores, benefiting publishers and writers alike.
• Publishers would make a profit on more books than they currently do.
• Publishers could charge less for books and could pay authors higher royalty rates. (Whether they would do so is another question.)
• Small presses could compete on an even playing field, with lower prices comparable to big publishers and without booksellers turning up their noses at their books.
• Paper books, with their wonderful smells of paper and ink and the lovely feel of different covers and papers, could continue to exist side-by-side with e-books.

Old-Guard publishers are struggling now mainly because they have not kept up with the times. Accounting systems haven't been updated to track e-book sales or to pay royalties quickly and accurately. Ridiculously low e-book royalties drive some authors to smaller presses or to self-publishing. Books are printed in large batches by guestimate.

POD alone won't save the big publishers. They need to modernize in many ways. But POD technology would be a big step into the future and help bookstores, writers, and publishers.

What do you think? Do you agree almost all publishers will switch to POD production and that it will benefit everyone in the publishing industry?


I'll be posting again at Novel Spaces on October 6. Happy Autumn!

—Shauna Roberts

Gifts for Writers (or Yourself)

Some people are last-minute shoppers, but I keep my eyes open all year for Christmas and birthday gifts. I still end up rushing around at the last minute looking for a present for hard-to-shop-for people, but that's better than rushing around at the last minute looking for presents for everyone.

Right now is an especially good time to look for gifts for writers because office supply stores, craft stores, and drugstores are having deep discounts on many basic office necessities—wire-ring notebooks, binders, pens, Sharpies, USB drives, wireless mice, colored pencils...the list goes on. Without venturing to more than a nearby store or two this week, you can take care of holiday or birthday gifts for the writers on your list with such things as:

• Gift basket for making collages (for a writer who starts each book that way) containing such things as posterboard, tape, glue, pushpins, colored markers or pencils, or a bunch of old magazines you haven't gotten around to throwing away yet. Depending on what genre your friend writes in, you could toss in a subscription to a fashion magazine, People, Smithsonian, National Geographic, or other publication full of pictures of people and places.

• Gift basket for the person who still likes to take notes, develop plots or characters, or draw diagrams on paper: ringed notebooks of various colors and sizes, some four-color pens, a Dr. Grip or other ergonomic pen and several refills for it, colorful binders, zippered binder pockets, and a box of their favorite kind of pencil.

Or, if you prefer to keep your shopping short, most writers would be happy to receive an expensive essential such as:

• A box of printer paper
• A toner cartridge
• Ink cartridges

On the opposite end of the spectrum, a writing-related luxury item for a very special writer is worth considering:

• A beautiful pen to use at autograph signings (Some well-stocked pen stores with pens in all price ranges include JOON and Fahrney's Pens. Or, if you live in or plan a trip to New Orleans soon, the French Market usually has some beautiful pens at cheap prices.)

• A leather or leatherette portfolio with a pad of paper, a pen, and pockets for business cards and handouts—perfect for taking to a conference as well as to a meeting with an agent or editor

• The Oxford English Dictionary (either a subscription to the online version or the two-volume-with-magnifying-glass set, which you can find at most online-used book stores)

• Fancy office supplies from a place such as Levenger (the company also sells fancy pens here)

If you're still drawing a blank on what to get for your favorite writers, here are some useful things they may not think of getting for themselves:

• A set of CDs of the sessions from a recent RWA conference (available from Bill Stephens Productions)

• Complete set of National Geographics through 2010 on CD 

•  iPad stand (Many iPad stands work well for holding Kindles and Nooks as well.)

• Special-use pens; I recently treated myself to an erasable pen, very-fine-point pens perfect for taking notes in the margins of research books and for squeezing in comments while copyediting or critiquing on hardcopy, and a brush pen meant for writing Japanese characters or drawing, all from JetPens, which also carries pencil cases, journals, and penguin-shaped paperclips, and other cool stuff.

Or consider something you  make yourself at home or design yourself and order from Cafe Press, Vistaprint, or a similar online store that specializes in small-volume custom items:

• Bookbag with photos of the writer's books (Crafts stores have special fabric and paper that you can use to transfer a design or photo from your computer to a bookbag, teeshirt, or other item)

• A mug or mousepad with the writer's favorite inspirational saying on it

• Customized journal that can be carried in a purse, briefcase, or bookbag

• Customized Post-It notes

Happy shopping! Hope to see you again on September 21, when I'll be blogging again at NovelSpaces.

—Shauna Roberts