Babel Clash

Thank you, Karen, for contributing to Babel Clash!  Best of luck with Prodigal Mage.

I’m very excited to announce that our next feature guest is Lev Grossman, author of the Magicians.  Tune in tomorrow, and I’ll have more content to share.  Lev has provided some video footage for Borders, and I’ll have that posted.  Shortly after that, look for the next geeky debate to begin!

And cheers to District 9 for winning this weekend’s box office!

I’ve had such fun nattering on here at Babel Clash. Thanks to everyone who stopped by, and thanks to Morgan for inviting me. As I stagger on my way to finish another book, I’ll leave you with these couple of thoughts …

As a writer, I owe everything to you guys … the readers and the booksellers who take that leap of faith and trust me to tell you a story that doesn’t waste your time and  your money. As a reader, I know how it feels to fall in love with a new world, with its characters, and the adventures they have. As a reader, I also know what it’s like to feel disappointed in a story — and by extension, the teller of that story. And as a writer, it’s a possibility that haunts me every time I sit down in front of my computer.

Of late there’s been a lot of internet kerfuffle about the notion of ‘entitlement’ … readers angry because they don’t have a book they’ve been waiting ages for, or because a book they get hasn’t fulfilled their expectations or told a story they wanted it told. And writers angry because readers are saying hey, wait a minute, when are you going to finish the damn book you promised us, and why did you take the story this way when it would be  better if you’d done this other thing, and angry because readers are telling them how to tell their stories.

I think there are justifiable gripes on both sides. And sometimes I think writers and readers get a little carried away with themselves.

Writers and readers need each other. If you guys don’t buy the stories I tell, then my career as a novelist disappears. And if I don’t keep my promises to you — finish what I start, tell the kind of story I say I’m going to tell, accept that your opinions of my work are valid, even when they sting a bit , then the trust that keeps this relationship alive is going to die.

And when trust dies, so dies everything else.

First and foremost, a storyteller must tell the story that’s true for them, the best way they can. After that, all a storyteller can expect is that the readers will try it and if they like it, keep on reading. A storyteller is under no obligation to tell a story to please anyone but him or herself. And a reader is under no obligation to like a story just because it’s been told.

But if I as a storyteller manage to hit a sweet spot — if what pleases me happens also to please you, the readers, then I am a lucky, lucky, bloody  lucky writer. Right now, I’m that storyteller. Thank you for reading me. Thank you  for trusting me. If at any point I’ve let you down, I’m sorry. It wasn’t on purpose. And my fingers are crossed that I won’t let any of you down again in the future.

Keep on reading, guys. There are so many, many, many wonderful stories out there.

So, as most of you reading Babel Clash probably know by now, I have a new book out this week. It’s The Prodigal Mage, the first part of a two-part sequel to my very first fantasy series, Kingmaker, Kingbreaker. When I first sat down to tackle a fantasy novel, I was both enthusiastic and yet somehow hesitant. I loved the idea of the story and the characters but I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to tell a big story. So the very first draft of that story, which was actually called Kingmaker, Kingbreaker, was a standalone novel. It took me some time and a helpful publisher’s rejection to show me how badly I’d underwritten the story. After a break away from it, to write something else (what eventually became The Accidental Sorcerer, actually) I looked again at KK and realised I could turn it into a two-parter. So I did. I found what was — to me — the most logical breaking point in the story as it stood (ha! A literal cliffhanger!) split it, and focused on expanding and exploring the hints of story I’d been too inexperienced to tell properly the first time around. And those books sold. But even as I looked ahead to other projects, in the back of my mind I was always wondering … hmm, what happened next?

The short answer would be, well, nothing much good. Because hey, this is drama, and you don’t get drama without a lot of things going wrong!!!

I realise I run the risk of sounding self-serving, but if you haven’t read the first 2 books then I think that would be a good idea because Prodigal Mage spoils some huge story events that occur in the previous adventures. But it’s true, you don’t actually have to.

If you’re not sure what you’ll get when reading my work, well, it’s not your typical epic fantasy. At least, these books aren’t. The scale’s not huge and sprawling, there aren’t massive battle scenes, no sword fights. Someone recently described my work as  ’Doorstopper Fantasy by way of a buddy movie, with the threads weaving together and getting you good and involved in their lives.‘ And really, that about sums it up. There are huge and epic events unfolding, world-changing events, but they’re told through the prism of a few people’s lives. I’m writing about friendship and sacrifice and betrayal and love and honour and heroism and cowardice and changes of heart. The good guys aren’t perfect and the bad guys aren’t always entirely bad. So if that’s your cup of tea, well, you might enjoy the read!

Karen, thank you for participating on Babel Clash and chatting about media tie-ins with us.  Would you like to take your last post or two to tell us more about Prodigal Mage?  Is your new book a good starting point for new readers, or would you recommend readers first check out Innocent Mage?

So here’s a question for you: are writers sane?

The answer? No.

Writing is one of the most insane occupations around. I rank it right up there with acting. And since I’ve done both, I feel confident in that assertion.

So, why is it that writers’ elevators don’t got all the way to the top?

Well, for a start, our job requires us to sit by ourselves for extended periods of time, in isolation, getting up close and personal with people who don’t really exist. It requires us to have deep and meaningful conversations with them. It demands that we get so involved and so attached to these people we made up in the first place that when something awful happens to them we have to get terribly, terribly upset about it. Even though it never actually happened at all. And anyway, we did it to them.

How can any sane person think this is a sane way to live?

Writers – like actors — have a kink in the brain. It’s a kink that means we are at the same time deeply and intimately involved in the process of being human while standing outside that process watching it happen. It means that we can never truly be at one with our own lives because we can’t ever totally lose ourselves in the unconscious moment. A part of us is always conscious, always watching, analysing, pulling the moment apart so we can put it back together again as fiction.

Here’s a case in point: when I was at university, one of my horses had a terrible accident and put a stick through his side. The vet treated him and we hoped he might survive. But the next morning, as he was going down fast, he ended up falling out of the shelter he was in, sliding down a muddy slope and ending up in convulsions on the ground. In my arms. Yes, my horse was convulsing to death pretty much in my lap. I’m sure you can appreciate this wasn’t one of the better mornings of my life.

But – as my horse was dying in my arms – that kink in my brain kicked into action. Wow, it said. I swear, I can still hear it. There should be a camera here filming this because it’s so totally Disney. As in Old Yeller, or Bambi, or something like that.

You see, even in the midst of trauma the writer stands outside the moment with a pen and paper in hand, taking notes.

Another true story, just in case you doubted my claim to insanity: in my last year of university (maybe this is actually about how university is hazardous to your health) I had a car accident. It really truly wasn’t my fault. I came over a slight rise to see a station-wagon in a fast 360 degree spin coming right at me. The roads were greasy and the driver had been speeding. Anyway. I had enough time to say, Oh shit, he’s going to hit me, and pull left, when bang. He hit me. Wow, I thought. That was loud. And then I went flying off the road into the undergrowth, heading straight for a telegraph pole. The undergrowth was significant. And I thought, Wow. This is what it was like when Luke crashed on Dagobah.

Yes, indeed. In what could’ve been my last moments of life, I was thinking about Star Wars. And by the way, if that doesn’t make me a fan then I don’t know what would.

But again, my point is – writers stand outside events even while they’re happening. We are scavengers. Carrion eaters. We pick the bones of the human experience looking for interesting morsels that we can then seed through our fiction to make it more real and believable and affecting.

I helped embalm a dead body once. Up to my elbows in a deceased man’s chest cavity helping to pull out his insides so he could be packed with formaldehyde crystals. Why was I doing it? Because I’d never seen a dead body and I figured I should if I was going to write one into a story. It was very interesting. Also? People who’ve died of lung cancer have lungs that turn kind of green and go all funny looking. So maybe rethink that whole smoking thing, yes?

Writers are blessed – or cursed – with the kind of imagination that turns ‘what if’ into an automatic reflex. A lot of non-writers like to ask where we get our ideas. If you’ve got that writerly kink in the brain, the answer is, Where don’t I get them? A magazine cover, a funny cloud shape in the sky, an overheard snatch of conversation – every single thing we see and hear and feel and touch and taste is a potential catalyst for a story. Nothing is ordinary. Everything has the potential to become huge, sweeping, epic.

And to write it, we have to take ourselves out of mainstream life, out of the social sphere, into a quiet place where the people who come alive in our imaginations are as real – or sometimes more real – to us than the people we bump into in the supermarket. Or next to in bed every morning.

So yeah. It’s my contention that writers aren’t entirely sane. But then I tend to think sanity is a tad over-rated. I love my pretend people. I love watching their lives unfold and go in unexpected directions. And I really love it when a reader contacts me to say how much they love those people too.

Sanity? Pffft. Who needs it?

The New Yorker posted “Seven Essential Fantasy Reads” on their blog.  If anyone gets a chance to take a look at the link, tell us what you think.  Is it a good list, or is something critical missing?

New Yorker

What about Stephen King’s Dark Tower?  That has to make the list, right?

If you could play in any franchise, is there a dream project lurking out there for you?  Craving a shot at Halo, Warcraft or Hello Kitty?

And if I say I don’t know Hello Kitty, will you smack me? *g*  Actually, I don’t do computer games or anything like them. I suspect they are far too much of a time sink, because I can get caught up in that kind of thing so easily. I have a brain like  grasshopper, it leaps all over the place. Metaphorically speaking.

Right now I have to say that I don’t have a hankering for any other franchises. There are many stories by other people I’m loving to pieces but the urge to start writing in those backyards hasn’t stirred.  At the moment I’m pretty much swallowed alive by my own stories. I’m just finishing the 2rd Rogue Agent novel, and then it’s time to tackle the sequel to Prodigal Mage. That’s kicking over quietly on the backburner, and I’m really  looking forward to telling it.

I want to see what writers do next with Star Trek.  The film raised the bar and reset the mythology.  So what happens next in the books?  How do you take that new spirit of adventure and mystery and inject it into the novels?

I can’t tell you how impressed I was with the reboot of the Trek. I think it was a stroke of genius. They’ve not laid a finger on the original series, they’ve not changed that timeline or affected its canon at all — and I have to tell you, I’m a huge stickler for continuity and honoring what came before. And yet they’ve managed to still give us Trek. I’m so looking forward to the next films Abrams and co.  do - and I have to say, I’d be surprised if they authorised any tie in novels to that brand new world, at least for a while. The primary story is always the most important, and the primary storytellers need to have their say long before anyone like me comes along and starts tinkering with it.

Also, District 9 looks fantastic!  That looks like a story perfect for spin-off novels.  Of course, I say that because the trailers are brilliant.  I haven’t seen the film yet.  Is anybody else lining up to see this one on day 1?

I know very little about District 9, I have to confess.  I read someone trashing it as a racist film, but since it’s not been released yet — has it? —  and I haven’t seen it I don’t know how valid that is. I’ll go have a look at the trailers, though — thanks for the link!

It’s a very odd business, tie ins. It’s been around a long time. I remember reading a High Chapparal novel when I was in school. I used to love that show! And there was a Voyager to the Bottom of the Sea one, and novelisations of Trek, and Planet of the Apes (tv series) and The Professionals. I guess it all boils down to what’s caught the public’s imagination, and the stories readers are hungry for. They really slot into that feeling of oh no, I want to know what happened next! that I think a lot of us get when we reach the end of a great story.

Hey Karen,

If you could play in any franchise, is there a dream project lurking out there for you?  Craving a shot at Halo, Warcraft or Hello Kitty?

I want to see what writers do next with Star Trek.  The film raised the bar and reset the mythology.  So what happens next in the books?  How do you take that new spirit of adventure and mystery and inject it into the novels?

Also, District 9 looks fantastic!  That looks like a story perfect for spin-off novels.  Of course, I say that because the trailers are brilliant.  I haven’t seen the film yet.  Is anybody else lining up to see this one on day 1?

The thing about writing tie-in fiction, for me, is how easy it is. Like I said in my answers to Morgan, I’ve already fallen in love with that world and those characters. They are real people to me (okay, remember now how I said I was nuts?) so that when I’m writing a Star Wars novel or a Stargate novel I feel like I’m just eavesdropping on their lives and recording what’s happening. It took me a long time to have the same kind of faith in my own characters and worlds that I feel for those invented by other great writers. And the first character I really fell for like that, the one I created who absolutely took on a life of his own, is Asher.  Even while I was flailing around all over the place in the early drafts, too inexperienced to really have any kind of clue as to what the hell I was doing, not quite getting a handle on the other characters, Asher was always there. Fully-formed, three-dimensional, and smacking me over the head to get the story told already.

The reason I think writers and actors share a kink in the brain is because when we’re writing a story, it’s like we’re actually putting on a one-person show. When I write a novel I become all of the people in the story. Like an actor I try to get inside their skins, their minds, and create their lives the way they’re living and feeling and thinking them. It’s easier to do with tie-in work because the external example is there to study and absorb. When you’re the one creating the performance, it’s a bit more intimidating.

I was pretty nervous about returning to Asher and his world. Since writing the first two Kingmaker, Kingbreaker books I’ve written another seven novels, with a really wide variety of characters and settings. When it came to time to start work on The Prodigal Mage I started to panic, thinking that I wouldn’t get the voices back, I wouldn’t get them back, Asher and Dathne and Pellen and Darran. But it was so amazingly weird. I sat down, I started writing, Asher opened his mouth and it was on for young and old. He was back, bigger and bolder and brasher than ever. And it felt like I’d caught up with an old friend, after a long time away. A bit older, a bit wiser, but still Asher.

I wonder if that’s how Johnny Depp’s going to feel when he goes back to Captain Jack Sparrow?

At the end of the day it’s all about falling in love, I think. Whether it’s my world or a world I’m playing in that someone else dreamed up, if I’m in love with it and the people who live there, it’ll definitely come alive.

So  Morgan’s asked a bunch of questions, and they’re great questions, so I’ll answer them as a  post.

I imagine that writing a tie-in novel is a little bit like driving someone else’s car.  You’ve been given the keys, but you know that you’re going to have to give them back.  How do you make the tie-in novel feel like your own?

Well, I don’t know how other media writers feel, but when I start writing the story can’t be anything but my own. The fact that I didn’t create the world or the characters in it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I think that might be because I only go after media tie-in work connected to worlds and characters that I’m already in love with. There has to be a pre-existing relationship between me and the characters. I doubt that I could write a novel about a franchise (ick, hate that word, but it’s the only one that fits) that hadn’t already engaged my emotions. I mean, I watched Atlantis and I enjoyed Atlantis but I never clicked emotionally with Atlantis the way I clicked with Stargate, so I could never write an Atlantis novel. At least, not one where I felt I was being honest and truthful to the characters and their lives. Likewise there are many tv dramas that I enjoy but can’t imagine writing fiction based on them because they don’t have the dangling threads which snag my attention. The stories I write that are based in worlds I didn’t create come about because I feel there’s some kind of ‘unfinished business’ to do with the characters that hasn’t been explored yet. So I play with that.

When signed on for a tie-in novel, do you get a peek behind the curtain into the larger plans for the brand?  Assuming that the Star Wars narrative is going in a fixed direction, how much information are you given to make sure that your story keeps the narrative on track?

I think that very much depends on the franchise you’re working in. For example, because my Star Wars novels are set in the Clone Wars cartoon era I was sent the first season of scripts to read, so I could see where the story was heading and also use some of the cartoon work as a springboard for my own. So my first Star Wars novel, Wild Space, intersects with a couple of Anakin-centred episodes of the first season, and the next two — a two-parter story! — feature a returning character from the cartoons. On the other hand, with Stargate, I’m not aware that there was any conversation like that between the writers and the showrunners. Of course, Stargate’s not in production now so the writers have a freer hand, and 2 books were set back in earlier seasons so the direction thing wasn’t an issue.

Cool questions, Morgan! If anyone’s got any more, I’m happy to blather on!