Category Archives: Publishing

Discussions about the business of publishing.

Shakespeare’s Planet

Posted on by

Clifford D. Simak was an earlier writer in the sf/f field that I’d heard about for years but somehow managed to avoid reading at a time when I was reading just about everything I could get my hands on. I didn’t plan it that way, but somehow it happened, so I made a conscious effort to correct this oversight, starting with Shakespeare’s Planet.

The consensus is that this is not one of Clifford D. Simak’s better works. Good thing I decided to read it before I found out what the consensus was. The premise may have been a little fresher when the book was written, but probably not by a lot: humans go into space in disembodied human brain controlled, slower-than-light ships, with the crews kept in coldsleep while the ships themselves look for earth-like planets for potential colonizing. Naturally, with that long a mission time it turns out that earth finds quicker and easier paths to the stars, and by the time one particular ship finds a habitable planet, a thousand years have gone by and humanity is already scattered across the galaxy and the original ships’ mission is only remembered as a legend. And yes, it turns out that humanity has already reached this particular planet.

Carter Horton, the only surviving crewmember of the ship (coldsleep accident, the usual), finds the mortal remains of a half-crazed old man who called himself Shakespeare after the only book he had, and his long-time companion, a creature who calls himself Carnivore, because that’s what he is. It turns out Carnivore, like Shakespeare, was marooned on this planet. Most intelligent species now use a series of interstellar “tunnels” built by an ancient, unknown race to travel around the galaxy, the problem is, no one knows where any particular tunnel leads. They all lead to habitable planets, but when you leave, you have no idea where you’re going, so the tunnels are mostly used by the desperate and those who simply don’t care where they’re going, so long as it’s “somewhere else.” The tunnel to this particular planet has a quirk: you can arrive safely, but you can never leave. Nor is this a breakdown in the system—the tunnel controls were deliberately removed. Shakespeare’s Planet was designed to be a one-way trip. Why?

Horton, Carnivore, and the ship’s robot crewmember, Nicodemus, attempt to repair the tunnel with no success, hampered by the fact that none of them know how it works in the first place. They are soon joined by Elayne, a woman from one of the human colonies now scattered through the galaxy who is one of many on a mission to travel the tunnels and attempt to map their destinations, a work that may take many generations and many millions of years. Only now she, too, is marooned on Shakespeare’s planet.

Spoiler(Sort of) Alert: All this, you have realized by now, is the setup and basic situation. It says nothing about the plot. So here’s what happens: the three minds that control ship are trying to meld into one great consciousness. They discuss this at length, wondering why it is so difficult. Horton contemplates the irony of his situation and does some exploring. Nicodemus works on self-inprovement through a series of extra brains for specialized tasks. Carnivore fusses at everyone to hurry and fix the tunnel so he can leave this boring place. Elayne does pretty much the same things Horton does. They (sort of) discover the reason that the planet had been quarantined. Carnivore discovers his destiny. Events are triggered, apparently by accident, or an accident of timing, and now everyone is free to leave the planet by the methods they choose.

Sounds awful, doesn’t it? It really isn’t. Now, I completely agree with those who say the cast never comes together. It’s true, but then you realize that Simak isn’t making characters, he’s making points of view that will be used to express those views. They’re not so much characters as walking, talking narrative vehicles, and some of their responses–Horton’s reaction on first meeting Elayne, for example–don’t make sense to me at any level. And I really didn’t mind. Simak was obviously a bright guy, and it’s not the story, the characters, or even the situation that made this book interesting to me. It was the contemplation of that situation, the nature of humanity, and yes, even Shakespeare’s insightful and yet completely wacko speculations recorded in the margins of his future edition of the complete works of his namesake.

Shakespeare’s Planet isn’t a page turner. It’s a page digester. A page savorer. It’s either a fun book or the most boring thing you’re likely to not finish, even at a mere 151 pages. That all depends on the reader. It worked for me. I also find it interesting to recall that a sf/f book that was really just a long novella could get published by a mainline publisher in Simak’s time. You want to do that now, and you’re going straight to the ebook edition. And you’re probably doing it on your own. The field has changed, sure, but a story worth reading is still a story worth reading. Glad there was a venue then, just as there is now.

Look It Up in Your Funk and Wagnall’s

Posted on by

Yeah, I know. Ancient history reference. Which is appropriate, because today I’m going to talk about research.

The subject of research came up elsewhere recently. Specifically, some people make the argument that, for fantasy especially, “You’re just making stuff up and so you don’t have to do research. Even for work set on earth in a particular point in history, no one’s going to ding you for minor oopsies other than some anal history types. Regular readers don’t care.”

To start, I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a  “regular reader.” I think readers are varied people with varied interests, and are likely to know a bit about the period you’re writing in and dang well do care, but that’s actually not what I want to talk about (ok, “write about.” Don’t be so dang literal). See, I believe the premise that research is unnecessary is wrong-headed on at least two levels, and I want to concentrate on the second, not the first.

On the first level, yes, you do research to “get it right.” This is the “Will this be on the Test?” theory of research. To a degree I can sympathize. Put this way it sounds a lot like scutwork, but there’s a lot more to it than not giving the Normans 13th century English longbows at Hastings or referring to an 11th Century Japanese nobleman as a “samurai.” Research isn’t just about avoiding mistakes. That’s important but secondary. Even if you’re working in a world of your own, it’s going to be based on or a reaction to historial analogues. Nothing comes from nothing. So you do research to enrich your story and, in some cases, to find the story in the first place.

I’ll use examples from my own stash since, well, they’re the only ones I have. One of the Goji Yamada stories (Prime Books 2013, plug or fair warning) concerns Kenji and Goji making a trek to the frozen north ofJapan to help with a delicate political matter. That delicate matter proves to be that the local “barbarian” leader’s daughter-in-law has been kidnapped. Two problems: the leader’s son is dead and his daughter-in-law is a wooden doll. No, the leader is not crazy. It was the custom in that part of Japan that, when a boy or young man died before marriage, the family would create an effigy of a bride, have it blessed by a priest, and symbolically marry the figure to the deceased before donating it to the temple for safe-keeping. It was believed that the doll’s spirit would then serve as the deceased’s “wife,” giving him the company and support in the spirit world that he never had in life. Now, was that merely a research detail? Heck no. It was the genesis of the entire story. I stumbled upon that piece of information while doing research for another piece, and once I found it, I knew there was a story there. No research? No story.

Besides providing the germs of story ideas, research enriches what you’re already doing. Does this really need to be explained? Probably not to anyone here, but you never know. I’m amazed any working writer would take the “research is unnecessary” position in the first place, but apparently some do.

In “Moon Viewing at Shijo Bridge,” I needed a letter to disappear from a heavily-guarded Imperial compound and a princess to vanish in front of two alert guards, and both in a way that was both integral to the story and plausible in context. Related reading on the nature on Japanese theories of magic in the Heian period gave me exactly what I needed–the shikigami. In To Break the Demon Gate (PS Publishing, late 2012), a bad guy has taken over a temple that guards the eastern approaches to the Capital. A temple? How is that a threat to our heroes? Two reasons: Warrior monks (sohei) and the concept of the ikiryo, the first from historical reading and the second straight from The Tale of Genji. Could I have written the book without those two bits of information? Sure. Would it have been as good as I humbly think it is? I seriously doubt it.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Captain Obvious. Ok, here’s something not quite so obvious, and why this particular meme is so insidiously dangerous–when someone says, “Oh, I never do research” what they’re really saying is “I’ve already done all the research I’m going to do.” They already have what they need, in their opinion: HS or college-level history. Earlier readings and stories, including childhood reading that they’ve already done ages ago. There’s some validity in this. I didn’t do any new research when I wrote “Kallisti,”  because I really had already done what I needed. I knew the story of the Judgment of Paris so well that it was no problem at all to do my own take on it. I didn’t do any new research for “The Plum Blossom Lantern,” because I already knew the Edo period ghost story that it was based on. The research was already done. This is extremely useful when it happens, but it can also be a trap.

That’s right—trap. Once you stop searching, once you think “Ok, I’m done” it means you’ve lost interest, both in your subjects and in the idea of getting better. You’re no longer finding new information, and more to the point, new connections between those bits of information. You’ve stopped looking for the tools that would help you grow as a writer. You write about the same things, with the same toolkit, that you’ve always had. You have a hammer, so to speak. It may be a very fine hammer, but that’s all it is. All you can do is assemble the pieces of wood as they are. Pretty soon you’re repeating yourself because, well, you can’t do anything else.

That’s the trap. And the ones caught by it don’t even realize it. But I can gurantee you their readers do.

Things That Go Bump–Live!

Posted on by

The event’s in full paranormal swing. I’m talking about books and Carol’s drawing my aura. Apparently, I have a lot of red surrounding me today. That’s energy, which I do need. I’m on. It takes a lot to be personable when that doesn’t come naturally. But it’s a friendly crowd here at Vicksburg Library, and we’re rolling with the fun.

People are almost more interested in the eBooks than the actual paper ones. Feel the paradigm shift? I sure do.

Edited to Add (since live blogging wasn’t practical):

Had a great time. Sold a number of books, met people, said hello to people I already knew, and generally mingled. Carol’s aura readings were a huge hit, and between us (though mostly her) we raised $239 for CAPS, the Vicksburg chapter of the Child Abuse Prevention Center. I’d call it a good day.

On Being Decisively Indecisive

Posted on by

I once read an interview with a well known author in our field. She was explaining her career choices in the context of some seasoned advice from her agent, who was explaining what she was doing wrong. To this day I consider it one of the most depressing writer interviews I’ve ever read. Not because of the author, who is obviously doing well and is comfortable with who she is and what she’s doing.

No, it was because of the agent’s advice. The author had written a fairly well-reviewed first novel that had sold okay but not great. Then she wrote another fantasy novel, but not much like the first one. And then she did something else for her third. See the trend? So her agent sat her down and said something to the effect that “When you write books that have no relation to each other, each one is like a first novel and you’re starting from scratch every time. It doesn’t work.” The point being that the author was doing many different kinds of books and this was a bad thing. Readers who liked her first book wouldn’t necessarily like her second, because it might not be about what interested them as a reader.  This approach was preventing the author from building a readership, and if she wanted a readership (and thus a career) she was going to have to pick one kind of novel and stick to it.  And one kind doesn’t mean “fantasy” as opposed to sf or horror; all her novels up until then were fantasy. Just not consistently the same sort of fantasy.  That was what had to change, and a consistent approach (traditional fantasy adventure, urban fantasy, steampunk, whatever) chosen. Otherwise she would never be able to establish her “brand” as a writer. The author took her agent’s advice and she did change her approach and it worked wonders for her career.

In other words, in terms of branding, career and audience building, the agent was exactly right.

For those of us who still cling to the idea of being able to write one-off, quirky individual books and still have a career, that is depressing. Though I guess the fact is that one can very easily have a career that way.  Just so long as you don’t expect to make a living.