One of our Write Fantastic's very own members, Stan Nicholls has kindly given us an extensive (and in parts hilarious!) interview over on Wonderlands... so do come over and share oor Stan's expertise and reminiscences... http://wonderlands.ning.com

Also, while I'm 'here' - just a reminder that Juliet, Chaz and myself (Deborah Miller) will be at the Ealing/West London Lit Fest on Saturday 6th September 1 - 2pm. Come along and say 'hi'!

Here's something to look out for. Phil Rickman will be talking fantasy fiction on his BBC Radio Wales programme this coming Sunday afternoon, 20th July, at 5.30 pm. There's a repeat at 9.30 pm on the Monday.

For those of us outside Wales, BBC iPlayer is the answer.

Over at Strange Horizons I confidently predict you'll find a whole lot of interesting stuff.

Including this week, my thoughts on Shadow Gate, the second volume of Kate Elliott's Crossroads sequence.

There's a new social networking site just for fantasy where readers, authors, artists, publishers, agents and other pros can meet up. It's only just launched, but already people are signing up. Take a look at http://wonderlands.ning.com/

In my capacity of 'info' at thewritefantastic.com, I've been contacted a second time by a seventeen year old whose first book is being published! Or rather, I've been spammed again. The circulation list for this email runs into probably hundreds of names. I'm not going to waste time counting. So I'm presumably dealing with someone who doesn't even know basic web etiquette/has never heard of 'undisclosed recipients'.

Well, actually, I'm not dealing with him. No, I'm not dismissing him because of his age. There are some very good/popular teenage writers. But I simply do not have the time to attempt to explain all the problems inherent in his approach. Or why anyone in the book trade will look as his 'press release' and bin it immediately. The breathless, repetitive and jammed-with-adjectives prose style aside, it's misspelled and poorly punctuated. Assuming this is a reflection of the book, it's a positive disincentive. As is the fact the one-word title includes two umlauts and a diphthong - but I concede that may just be me.

There's a shot of the artwork included. Amateurish is the kindest thing one can say about that. To be more specific, it doesn't stand any comparison with the A Level Art piece of my sister's that I have framed and hanging on the wall here.

Who's publishing this? Yes, it's one of those outfits that offer "authors' services" in a handy range of packages to suit all pockets, handily priced in all anglophone currencies - though you have to dig fairly deep to find out that you have to pay, after you've read all the fantastic blurb about how much money you can make as an independent author in the brave new world of internet publicity and print-on-demand.

Which this kid has presumably swallowed, hook, line and sinker. So me trying to tell him otherwise would presumably just be me being mean and spiteful, what with me being one of those authors who's weaseled a way into conventional publishing through contacts or whatever and pulled up the ladder behind her. Sorry, it may be cowardly of me but I don't feel inclined to get that kind of abuse - and more - again.

I've done a quick google on the so-called publisher and checked the usual sites for warnings about them and can't find any evidence they're actively scamming people. If I had, I would drop the lad a line.

So his email will go in the bin and over the next however-long, he will presumably learn the same painful and expensive lessons as 99.9% of all self-published writers.

SIGH

We're having another satisfactorily busy year. Our next appearances are as follows. Please spread the word and if you can get along yourself, do say hi.

18th June 2008
Beckenham Library
Bromley Literary Festival
Sarah Ash
Jessica Rydill
6.30-8.00 pm
Free. Please book through the library.

25th June 2008
Kensington Central Library
Alternate Worlds
Sarah Ash
Chaz Brenchley,
Juliet E McKenna
6-8 pm
Contact the library for more details.

Via Darren Turpin, who found it on Jeff Somer's blog.



Too true/funny/agonising* not to share.

*delete as applicable

UK national newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, asked me to write an article on fantasy for those not familiar with the genre. The result is here.

Mark Chadbourn

So says Stephen Page, Chief Exec of Faber & Faber in The Guardian yesterday. According to him, "as most book publishers bow to bestsellers and celebrity culture, serious literature can still thrive thanks to the internet."

He concludes

"The industry is closer now to a tipping point that would see a dramatic reduction in range, a shortening of writers' careers, and a reading culture that errs towards mass forms of entertainment alone. Perhaps one day the ebook will play some role in this, but for now hope lies in the new technology-spawned networks and print technologies that give oxygen to diversity, resulting in demand that allows online and range-holding booksellers to thrive."

And thus we see, not for the first time, that SF&F is out there well ahead of the curve

Over at Shelf Awareness today, there's a very good article about Print on Demand by Robert Gray, who's been talking to Ken Arnold, who's a chap who's setting up a new publishing venture and who knows exactly what he's up against.

"I suspect you are right about the low-bar syndrome as a precondition for bookseller and reviewer suspicion of POD publishers. And the market has been flooded with self-published and subsidized merchandise. An easy response to the sheer quantity is to reject an entire category that has proved to be too often full of defective goods.

"On the other hand, he notes that university presses and other publishers already take advantage of POD's economy of scale to keep titles in print, "and that seems to be a real solution to a problem that's been around a long time. Hittite grammar is not a popular subject, but a few people need it. Entire areas of scholarly research are moribund because there are no publishers who can afford to carry the results of academic research."

And, as we see in genre fiction, PoD is an obvious way for authors to keep their own out of print titles a new lease of life for their dedicated fans.

I'm keeping a copy of the whole article and a note of the archived url for the next time some hopeful aspiring writer emails asking for my advice about getting reviews and/or publicity for their first self/subsidy/vanity published novel.

I got one of these just this week. It does feel brutal to reply that their biggest problem is going to be the near-zero credibility of such efforts, referring them on to Absolute Write, Preditors & Editors and Writer Beware so they don't have to take my word for it. But in all honesty, I just don't see an alternative.

Juliet E McKenna

Over in The Guardian's book blog Hannah Davies wonders "If novels are going to combust imaginatively, shouldn't they be written spontaneously?" going on to say

We now know that noxious fumes are a formidable foe in the battle to produce great literature. Rob Jones, chairman of innovative independent publisher Snowbooks, thinks he's uncovered another enemy: lack of preparation.

I would have thought it was the other way round. Doesn't planning kill creativity? When it comes to fiction, sitting down and hammering out a step-by-step plan just seems so John Grisham, so Jordan's ghostwriter - a writing-by-numbers technique that produces plot-heavy bestsellers. But a little investigation seems to prove Jones right. Stephen King states in On Writing that he never sets out his stories in advance. Orhan Pamuk, by contrast, reveals himself to be a veritable boy scout of literature, saying that he plans his books down to the last detail, to the point of plotting each chapter in advance. So on the side of planning ahead we have a Nobel prizewinner, and fighting the spontaneity corner is a bestseller-list fixture and goremeister.

Read on if you wish. This is another of those evergreen writing debates, so the comment thread is pretty much as you might suspect.

My six pennorth? I'm thinking Rob Jones, innovate independent publisher has probably seen more sprawling messes of hoplessly unstructured prose than most, thanks to the slush pile. Just about every writer I know who's taught creative writing says ability to structure a coherent plot is what divides the may-be's from the never-will's. This is certainly my experience.

Not every time. I've come across those who have nailed a plot down in every particular and gone on to produce astonishingly tedious writing. Mostly because the aforementioned plot is a wholly artificial exercise taking some plot-structure diagram from a 'how to' book and then shoehorning in stuff to tick as many boxes as possible in the genre they think will speed them to fame and fortune. Thus their prose shows the same poverty of inspiration and originality.

The thing is, the successful 'write Chapter One and go!' practitioners are actually just as good as the plan-aheaders at structuring plot. They just do the work at a different point in the process, as they rewrite. Talking to other writers, I find the 'let's go!' folks tend to far more drafts than we plan-aheaders.

(And suffer more from writer's block, incidentally, and tend to have more 'I wrote 60,000 words and realised it was going nowhere' stories. Sorry but I cannot afford to write 60,000 words and realise it's wasted effort!)

I've learned in such conversations that the most successful 'let's go!' writers are almost invariably the most experienced, and will often say, 'I used to do a lot more planning'. While I've heard the most dedicated plan-aheaders say they've become less wedded to their outlines as time passes.

My own experience bears this out. I do a lot of note-taking and advance planning but ten books in, I now see for myself where the internal dynamic of the unfolding plot and character interaction means I must significantly change or even abandon elements of my original scheme. These days I make the necessary adjustments as I'm writing without fretting.

Back in the beginning, I needed an editor to point out where changes were needed to stop the first-draft plot creaking under the strain. After a couple of books, I'd see this for myself but agonise over how best to do it and thrash out various alternatives in subsequent drafts. Now I'll just drop my editor a quick email, if some really radical change to the outline needs to happen, saying 'oh, you know that bit where... actually now, it's going to be...'.

So I will continue to advise aspiring writers to do as much advance thinking and planning as they personally can stand, whether or not they actually write any of it down, before typing "Chapter One".

Juliet E McKenna

If you're thinking of sending a writer your manuscript in hopes of feedback, or if you're a writer with one of those very emails lurking in your inbox - here's a piece worth reading.

Every writer has their horror stories on this topic. The top of my personal list is the individual who emailed to say they wished to become my apprentice. Said individual would send me chapters and then it would be best if we had a hour's face to face discussion and instruction once a week. Since said individual didn't drive but handily lived in a neighbouring county, it would obviously be most convenient for me to drive there. As soon as I replied, I'd get the first chapter and here were convenient times and dates over the next fortnight for the first session. Obviously I'd be paid for my time - £{risible hourly rate} - just for the hour's mentoring. OK?

Once I'd recovered from the breath-taking arrogance of all this, and then once I'd got my breath back from laughing myself silly, I emailed a polite demurral. Said individual took this as me merely wanting to negotiate up the money. I explained in firm and simple sentences that no amount of money would buy me more hours in the day and my time was already fully committed with no leeway to take on something like this, even if I wanted to, which I didn't. I ignored the subsequent emails and happily they soon stopped coming.

There are people who have asked for my help who I've really regretted having to turn away for one reason or another. This individual isn't one of them!

It's a cold, grey, rainy Friday here. The kind of day when you can all too easily find yourself staring glumly at shelves and shelves of nothing to read. If any of that applies wherever you are, I suggest you slide on over to The Fantasy Book Critic blog where a truly awesome collection of authors from all over are enthusing about good stuff they read in 2007 and looking forward to books due out in 2008.

Ok, declaration of interest here, I chipped in with my six pennorth/ten cents worth. Never mind that. Go and see what Elizabeth Bear (aka matociquala and kateelliot and markchadbourn and oh, all manner of other folk have had to say. It'll brighten up your day, trust me.

Philip Pullman is one of the greats of modern fantasy, not just for his exuberant imagination, but because he is one of the few fantasists prepared to confront serious matters. It is impossible to dismiss his work simply as escapism. As a writer with something to say, he can compete in the wider arena of 'literature' and that makes him an important figure for all those interested in imaginative fiction.

This movie adaptation of his book Northern Lights crushes the best of Pullman beneath the weight of spineless, bone-headed, superficial and incompetent direction. The sheer scale of its ability to suck the magic out of a book so brimming with a powerful sense of wonder is almost breathtaking. American Pie director Chris Weitz lumbers from disconnected scene to disconnected scene with no sense of how to build character, develop drama or menace, or draw out any of the magic that is inherent in Pullman's inventions. Instead, every frame shouts out that it is a monument to the producer's vision that only thick people watch these kinds of films, people who would throw their popcorn at the screen if time was wasted on developing character or mood, or who would walk out in anger at the travesty of character interaction when they simply want to gorge on fast-food spectacle - which Weitz also manages to ham-fistedly destroy. The final battle on the northern ice field is so poorly framed it looks like a dust-up in a provincial shopping precinct on a Saturday night.

Weitz was involved in a little fantasy invention of his own when he said in the film's pre-publicity that for all the changes he made, he stayed true to Pullman's original vision. He didn't. Cut through all the Gyptians and warrior polar bears and dust and golden compasses, and this story is about one thing: the ability of organised religion to control people and their thoughts. The brooding, monolithic presence of Pullman's Magisterium is barely evident in the film. The book's great theme - the thing that raises it far above a simple children's story - is diluted to such a degree that it is barely evident, and in the end only contributes to the incoherence that corrupts the entire movie. (And as an aside, Christian journalist Peter Hitchens wants parents to know that, 'If you buy this book for your children, don't imagine for a moment that you are handing over a neutral story; this author has a purpose'. As if a neutral story is a good thing. You know what: parents should be warned The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is not a neutral story; the author has a purpose...)

The really depressing thing about The Golden Compass is that it is blessed with such an excellent cast, all of whom are operating at the top of their game. Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra does a good job portraying a charismatic heroine, even though she occasionally stumbles over Weitz's lead-footed dialogue. Sam Elliot as flying cowboy Lee Scorsby burns up the screen with the power of his presence, even though he too has dialogue which is cliche heaped on cliche. But the real revelation is Nicole Kidman as Mrs Coulter who does great work. In one scene she carries a huge weight of emotion, presence and back story in a simple glance that is quite electric (and the one point where Weitz shows he can actually direct).

The weight of the actors and Pullman's imagination takes The Golden Compass above the screen adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, with its wooden leads and ineffectual set-pieces. But it remains a crushing disappointment, stolen from us by people aiming for the lowest common denominator.

Mark Chadbourn
(cross-posted from jackofravens.com

Every writer - published or not - should read this.

Mark Chadbourn

The science fiction community is global, committed and very vocal. But is there a fantasy community? And if not, why not?

Nick Cirkovic has a few thoughts, specifically, "It may be indeed that writers are by profession a solitary bunch: they sit alone in a room and write, lots. They each have a small number of writer friends and confidantes, some of them may not even be writing in the area of genre they themselves do. Again, generally a healthy thing. It may also be that there is such a wide and varied set of sub-genres with the tag 'fantasy' that such healthy cross-breeding precludes a concentration of the one ultimately self-destroying inbred strand."

It's interesting that science fiction is a smaller genre than fantasy in terms of book sales, yet fantasy essentially remains subsumed by science fiction in terms of community, booksellers and marketing, as it has done since the days when there were only two fantasy books on the shelves compared to a hundred SF ones.

Mark Chadbourn

Fantasy and SF for the connoisseur or for mainstream tastes: which path should a publishing house follow? That's an interesting debate which the ever-erudite Lou Anders has raised on his blog. When founding the excellent Pyr imprint, Lou and his team took the conscious decision to publish what Norman Spinrad called "science fiction written specifically for experienced and intelligent readers of science fiction, with a bit of fantasy more or less in the same mode thrown in".

I think that's an excellent policy for Pyr. It's certainly a truism that the more you indulge in a particular taste the more refined that taste becomes (which can also be a problem for critics, who, as Stephen King puts it, "lose their taste for pizza"). The core readership of fantasy and SF - the fans, although they probably don't categorise themselves that way - deserve some gourmet dishes.

But there is a wider debate here. On The Genre Files, Ariel gives a smart overview of marketing genre books in the 21st century, a post that all authors and publishers should read. And in a separate article, editor George Mann writes about Solaris' choice of traditional covers for their genre titles.

Both these articles get right to the heart of trying to sell books to a fragmented audience in the 21st century, and it's something the music industry in particular, and TV and Film, are all struggling to deal with. Do you go for the hardcore fan or reach out to the wider audience? There are pros and cons for both. It seems that Lou, Ariel and George are all swinging towards an approach that caters to the dedicated reader, and I think that's a business model that will work very well for Pyr and Solaris.

But if it was applied to the whole industry I would have real problems. In the music industry, where I worked for a while, the marketeers have struggled. By focusing on the tribalist music fan that has emerged over the last twenty years, they have had trouble gaining breakout hits from genres. Attention shifted to marketing bland fare that would appeal to all tastes to gain those mainstream hits, and sales have fallen dramatically (yes, I know there are many other factors, but this is a core concern).

The comics industry in particular has faced a great many problems because of the loss of its mainstream audience. That was caused by the collapse of its distribution network in the late seventies and early eighties and the shift to specialist comics shops. But the comics producers then found that to maintain sales in this rarefied atmosphere required stories that excited the jaded palates of the core fan - and were nigh-on incomprehensible to the casual reader. Sales fell further, the core fan market had to be shored up to a greater extent, and a desperate retreat from the centre ground took place, that is still damaging the industry.

The issue of covers and marketing is not just an industry issue. I've had several readers complain about my move away from traditional illustrative fantasy covers to the latest design-oriented ones. I've had just as many applaud the move. These covers are a personal choice. I like design; they work for me. And, I have to say, sales have been much, much better. But I don't think you can extrapolate too much from that for the wider market. If all covers were designery, mine wouldn't have had the same impact.

I love fantasy, science fiction and horror. I believe these three genres are appealing to mainstream tastes, if some way can be found to communicate their values to the casual browser. I'm afraid that an across-the-board retreat to the 'core fan model' will ghettoize them even further and lead to a long-term decline. The best way for the industry, I think is - to use music industry analogy - hardcore labels for the purist, and general labels to attract new users.

But that is a fiendish and crippling trap for the writer. Once you establish yourself in one pool or the other it will be very hard to crossover and gain, on the one hand, the new readers and wider sales that sustain your career, and, on the other, credibility that is just as valuable a commodity in the internet-empowered world.

Mark Chadbourn
(cross-posted for http://www.jackofravens.com

Or how you can lose by winning…

Science fiction is in a slow sales decline (or not so slow, depending on which bookseller you talk to), and now accounts for a fraction of its former market. Meanwhile, fantasy remains a sales juggernaut, with what Publishers Weekly described at its last roundtable close-up (admittedly nearly three years ago now) as a ‘huge’ audience for immersive epics.

Which is strange when you consider that the quality of SF is arguably at an all-time high, a new golden age of speculative fiction. I can name several authors whose books will undoubtedly be read in decades to come, and I’m sure you can name many more. Fantasy – and I’m stating this as charitably as I can – has not produced so many quality works. One or two maybe. There have been a lot of good books, entertaining books, comforting books, ones that please their readers, but classics? Not so much. (I’m a fantasy author – I can say this.)

There’s been some debate about why SF is failing to resonate with the wider public in the same way that it used to do. Part of the reason is that we live in a science fiction age. The wonders that were on the page are now all around us. But to follow that argument to its conclusion would suggest that SF sales should be increasing rapidly as it becomes the fiction of the mainstream, true 21st century literature that shines a light on the way we live our lives today. Instead it’s following the trajectory of the western.

If we look to psychology we may find some answers. We are creatures that are held in stasis by opposing forces: our nature demands a balance. Right brain/left brain, masculine/feminine, intuitive/logical. Plato defined two ways of seeing the world – ‘logos’, from which we get ‘logic’, looking out at the world, scientific in common usage, and ‘mythos’ from which we get ‘mythic’, which mapped our inner selves and was just as vital for defining the way the world works.

Long memories or a little research will show how irrational we were back in the sixties and into the seventies. Belief in the occult was much more mainstream than it is now, with serious people discussing it in a serious way. You won’t find that today. I know some of you American readers will beg to differ, as you face a rising tide of irrational religiosity infecting mainstream life, but those pressures are coming from the outside into the heart of society, and are generally resisted by the opinion-formers and the establishment which shapes the consensus-reality of our society.

This was very clear in Richard Dawkins’ recent TV series where he charged out to attack what he saw as a tidal wave of irrationality from creationists, new agers and charlatans threatening to swamp science. In reality, he came across as a complete bully, using his intellect to smash down people who couldn’t vocalize their beliefs, or even really comprehend why they felt the way they did. It’s a flaw that’s just as clear in his best-selling book, ‘The God Delusion’.

The fact is, his side is winning. Generally, society is much more rational than it ever was.

I’m talking here about subtleties – about the mood of society, the ‘feel’ of it. You can probably find a million examples of perceived irrationality, from the high sales of ‘mind, body, spirit’ books to millionaire astrologers. But those things are accepted, often wryly, often hopefully, but very rarely at the heart of a world-view. Commentators in the media who shape opinion are united in their acceptance of the scientific paradigm. You don’t even find UK tabloid newspapers covering occultist or fringe subjects to the same degree they did in the sixties and seventies. As someone with lots of journalist friends, I know this is because even the tabloid people consider these things beyond what their readers would take seriously.

Dawkins knows this, I’m sure, but he’s on a crusade to stamp out irrationality wherever he might find it. He has stated that any irrationality is a threat, even if it’s a lightly held belief or a half-hearted curiosity about things he believes could never, ever be true.

And he’s wrong. Utterly. We need our mythos. We need our irrationality. We are built to need it. Cultures before ours managed to integrate both into the same world-view quite easily; it’s not an either/or situation. If you’re interested in magic, it doesn’t mean you think Einstein is a charlatan. (On the fringes, some may, but we’re talking about ‘real’ people here). The more people are unable to find irrationality in the culture around them, the more they will be driven to seek it out through their imagination.

In other words, every time Richard Dawkins kicks a quivering new ager, a hard-pressed science fiction writer loses another sale.

Right now, and for the foreseeable future, society *needs* fantasy. It doesn’t really need SF.

Mark Chadbourn (cross-posted from http://www.jackofravens.com)

Because you don't have half enough to read:

here's Guy Gavriel Kay on writing and reading fantasy;

and here's M John Harrison on the same subject.

Needless to say, they are not entirely compatible; needless also to say, I agree entirely with both of them. I'm like that.

The massive explosion of RPGs, table-top, video and net games over the last fifteen years has changed the landscape for fantasy authors. In ancient times, if you wanted to slip quietly into another world, you had only a handful of potential access points that were widely available in commercial locations: some Moorcocks, the odd reprint of the Weird Tales authors and the ubiquitous Tolkein. Mythologies were being re-interpreted for a new audience, strange horizons were invoked and it was all fresh and exhilarating.

Now we've all visited fantasy worlds hundreds or thousands of times by our teens, whether it's the Dungeons and Dragons of the eighties, the paper-based games that grew out of it, or the World of Warcraft and other MMPORGs of the netscape. This huge industry has turned all the tropes of fantasy into crashing cliches. Elves, dwarves, and dragons are as familiar as your next-door neighbour. We all know how magic works, as clearly as the laws of physics - it's defined in a thousand rule books. Games Workshop alone has mapped an entire universe of new worlds. And when I say mapped, I mean geographically, culturally, economically, racially, sexually, theologically, scientifically and mythologically. They are defined as clearly as the world you might search for in Wikipaedia or the Encyclopaedia Britannica. This is not fantasy. This is reality, living, breathing and evolving all around.

Nor is this is a criticism of games, far from it. Their remarkable success has turned our shared minority interest into a mainstream taste - or it will have when the next generation comes to maturity. How will our western society be shaped when people rooted in imagination and the fantastic become the majority? But that's a different blog...

The question now is, what is the point of the fantasy author? Any writer coming into this field in this age faces immediate dangers. The core fantasy elements have been so colonised by the games industry that the writer automatically has to handle accusations of being a hack dabbling in cliches. Yes, a good writer should infuse their work with levels of meaning, subtext and characterisation usually unavailable in games and their fictional tie-ins. But is that enough? Any author utilising the long-standing tropes and landscape of fantasy fiction will now always be hamstrung by suffocating familiarity. The games worlds are so diverse, so cleverly and startlingly imagined (usually by teams of highly inventive people) that authors working in these traditional fields will be seen as 'more of the same' by anyone giving their work a cursory glance on the shelves. And what author worth their salt wants that?

Fantasy authors - and all the thousands of would-be fantasy authors out there - need to wake up. They're being squeezed out of the territory they have occupied for the last hundred years or so. They can no longer count on the fact that they're the only visionaries in town, or the only explorers charting the fringes of the imagination. They're being supplanted by a much more dynamic and agressive breed.

I'm not convinced that simply 'doing it better' will work. Fantasy authors need to find a new unique selling point. If they want to maintain their reputation as the elite of this field, they need to work their imaginations harder, start defining new territories, go to places that the gamers wouldn't (yet) dare to go.

Who is up for that challenge?

(Cross-posted) Mark Chadbourn