Babel Clash

We are joined by Kelley Armstrong, author of the Otherworld series, in what may or may not turn out to be the final Star Wars Sunday post on Babel Clash.  I’m not 100% clear on the status of the blog, but like I said on twitter, I’m going to keep the lights on for as long as I’m able.

So, without further ado, here’s Kelley Armstrong’s SW Blog!

Not Just For Kids

Kelley Armstrong

Like most children of my generation, I remember the first time I saw Star Wars. I was nine and my parents had warned that it wasn’t really a film for kids, which is why we were going to the drive-in—so the kids could sleep while they enjoyed a movie without hiring a baby-sitter.

Of course I watched it, peering over the back seat of the station wagon, where my sisters and brother and I were stretched out with blankets and pillows. I expected to see some dull “grown-up” movie. When it opened with robots and princesses and spaceships, I was sure my parents had made a mistake. This was a kid’s movie. It had to be. Grown-ups watched boring shows about boring people sitting around talking about boring things. Star Wars was good. It was exciting. So it must be meant for kids.

As I watched, I realized Star Wars wasn’t really meant for children. I also realized that my parents were enjoying it. They were watching a movie with aliens and spaceship fights and they were having fun.

That was the night that first learned fantasy could be meant for grown-ups, too. Even at the age of nine, that came as a huge relief to me, because I’d already been dreading the transition out of “fun” books and movies into the dull, serious adult variety. Now, I realized, I didn’t have to.

Since then, I’ve seen Star Wars at least a dozen times. These days, I often watch it for what it can teach me about the art of story-telling. When I’m teaching three-act structure and the monomyth of the hero’s journey, Star Wars is the example I use. So it clearly affected my view of craft. But if you ask me about the impact Star Wars had on me as a writer, what I remember most is being nine, watching it from the back seat of a station wagon and discovering that fantasy wasn’t just for kids.

The End is Nigh

Kelley Armstrong

Spell Bound is the twelfth novel in my Otherworld series. It’s also the second to last. With number thirteen, I will draw the curtains on a world that I’ve been playing in for nearly half my life.

When I began writing Bitten in my early twenties, I knew exactly where the story would end—on about page 400 of that novel. It was written as a stand-alone. It took me about six years to reach that last page—and two of those were spent mere chapters from the end, because as long as I didn’t finish the book, I didn’t need to send it out and suffer certain rejection. But eventually the book was done and eventually it sold. Then came the question: what about turning it into a series?

I loved the characters of Bitten and relished the excuse to play with them for a little longer, but I knew I couldn’t base a long-running series on them. As a writer, I need variety and challenge. So I agreed that Bitten could be book 1 in a series, if I could introduce new supernatural types in book 2 and spin off to their stories after that. And so the Otherworld was launched.

Last year, with Waking the Witch, I began the final act. While Savannah solved the mystery and dispatched the killer, in Spell Bound she now discovers that those events were only a small offshoot of a plot that will threaten the entire Otherworld.

I’ve had this conclusion in mind since I first began plotting that second Otherworld book, Stolen, and introduced Savannah Levine, the preteen girl who would grow up and narrate the story of the Otherworld’s darkest hour. And it was mid-series, with Broken, that I began laying the groundwork for that final plot, weaving in minor threads that, as readers will discover, were building the fabric for this last adventure.

It will be hard to leave the Otherworld. But I know that I’m drawing a curtain, not slamming a door. There is always room for a curtain call or two, somewhere in the future, when this world calls me back for another visit.

Borders in one of the few stores that maintains a distinct Horror section.  At Waldenbooks, horror titles find a home in fantasy or general fiction.  B&N shelves their King, Koontz and Straub books with general fiction.

Horror fans seem to appreciate our commitment to their genre.  On the flip side, trying to identify which titles belong in which section can be tricky.  We feature Kelley Armstrong in fantasy but Kim Harrison in horror (her adult books anyway).  We often keep an author’s work together.  So Stephen King’s Eyes of the Dragon is a fantasy, but it’s shelved in horror.  Dan Simmons’ Hyperion and Ilium novels stay in Science Fiction, but the Terror and Song of Kali live in Horror.

Sure, it would be nice to shelve a borderline book in two places.  Financially, it could mean buying twice as much inventory.  Technically, our computer system can’t handle it.  Third, we’d risk confusing customers, who might find a title only in horror one week and then only fantasy the next, as one or the other sold out.

As genres blur together (which I encourage, mind you), determining the best home for a title gets trickier.  The line between fantasy and horror is especially blurry.  For better or worse, vampires, werewolves and zombies are everywhere from Young Adult to Romance.  Zombie Romance?  Really?

F. Paul Wilson, our latest guest, has made a nice home for his work in our horror section.  What do you think?  Did we find the right home for Repairman Jack?