KRK Covers!!!

This is it. I am so excited. The covers for books 2 and 3 have arrived.

First of all a BIG thank you is in order to the team at Solaris for selecting Clint Langley as the artist. I am so impressed with what he's done!

I love the look of all three and I love the way they work as a design when you put the three together.

Would you pick up these books if you saw them on the shelf?

What you can learn from TV series

A TV series has to grab the viewer and hook them into coming back for more, much like a fantasy book series.


I'm currently watching 'Desperate Romantics' and really enjoying it. This series is about the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood, set in 1860s. A period drama about a group of artists trying to be accepted by the Royal Academy could be rather stuffy, but this is a romp. Having lived as a bohemian artist in Melbourne I can really relate to it.

What I learnt from it as a writer? Don't forget that historical figures were once passionate young people, struggling for recognition. Also, the social restrictions of the time make for great drama.

'Breaking Bad'. Just finished watching series 2. Brilliant. A high school science teacher is diagnosed with lung cancer despite never having smoked. He doesn't have health care, his wife falls pregnant by accident and their 15 year old son has cerebral palsy. So he decides the only way he can make enough money to leave something for his wife and children, is to go into the business of making Crystal Meth. This series raises a lot of moral and ethical issues.

What I leant from it as a writer? Heap the problems on your protagonist. A character can do terrible things and not lose the audience, if their motivation is strong enough. And also, black humour is a wonderful thing.

What TV shows have you been watching and what have you learnt from them?

Heroes and Villains

LOL cat.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. And it does have something to do with this post, which is about characterisation.

Over at Mad Genius Club they were talking about Evil Overlords. How can we understand them? How can we write them in a believable way. Hence Darth Kitty, here.

I came across an interesting article on Scientific Blogging (I know that is like admitting I read New Scientist for fun. Which I do). Andrea Kuszewkei blogged about the link between the sociopathic personality and the extreme altruistic personality. Addicted to being Good?

She says, 'Personality has consistently shown to be extremely heritable. However, the same genetic material arranged and weighted in a slightly different way, may at times express as vastly different phenotypes: the "extremely good" and the "extremely bad" individual. How is this possible?'

A sociopath is willing to break rules. But then so is an extremely altruistic person. They are convinced they are right, or must do the right thing, even if it is against the rules.

As a writer I found this really interesting. I can see how tendencies pushed a little too far one way do become obsessions. Mal in Firefly said 'A hero is some guy who got a lot of people killed.' (That's quoted off the top of my head). He was talking about war, but it does make you wonder. What convinces someone that they are right, so right that they can send other people to their deaths? Bonaparte marched into Russia with 500,000 men and between the fighting and cold he returned with 20,000. How could a normal person live with that?

As a writer of fantasy books I often create 'hero' characters. To help me with this, I researched great military leaders (Bonaparte included). Iwanted to understand why people followed them and I came to the conclusion that most people are followers.

My favourite hero would have to be Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorksigan. My favourite character in Terry Pratchett's books would have to be Vimes. Neither of them are villains. Conversely, have you read any really believable villains or heroes?

Writing Craft

I'm currently in the middle of the edits on book two of King Rolen's kin. And now my editor, Jonathan Oliver from Solaris, has posted 10 rules for writing.

I should be taking notes!

10 rules for writing according to Jon

Okay, so apparently the Guardian has been running a 10 rules for writing thingy, and David and Jenni thought it would be interesting/amusing/shocking/inspiring for me to give my take on these, seeing as I'm an editor and I've written one book and that. Anyway, this is going to be messy so bear with me:

JON'S RULES FOR WRITING AND GETTING PUBLISHED (AND MAYBE STAYING PUBLISHED).

One step closer!

Here's the cover of book one of the Chronicles of King Rolen's Kin. My editor tells me the next cover will be delivered soon, maybe in a week. Clint Langley is the artists and I'm really looking forward to seeing what he does with the next book cover.

Meanwhile, my editor at Solaris has sent me book two 'The Uncrowned King' for editing. I would like nothing more than to immerse myself totally in the book, tidying up the little glitches that he has discovered, but life gets in the way.

!Whinge Warning!

This weekend I have to mark assignments for work (I'm an associate lecturer). I have to take child number 6 to the dentist. And I'm involved in organising a national workshop, for which there was a competition to enter. This is the weekend that I have to prepare the contact emails to the 51 entrants to let them know if they have been selected to be offered a place at the workshop.

I'd be flat out, without the editing of book two. Meanwhile, we've decided to sell our house, so I should be cleaning, sorting and throwing out, and painting the walls where the kids have stratched them, or stuck up posters and pulled off the paint, etc.

Why can't I just run away from life and do nothing but write? Sigh.

Does life get in the way for you? How do you find time to write?

Gender genie for writers ...

I've done nothing but work and be sensible all day so now it is time for a coffee break and a bit of fun.

The Gender Genie is an interesting site.

'Inspired by an article and a test in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses a simplified version of an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author.'

You type in a paragraph of text and see if the program thinks you are male or female.
This is particularly useful for writers. We know if we are male or female but ...

Say you are writing from the view point of a character. You are female and the character is male. Do you have the right tone for the character. Is his inner narrative coming across as male enough? This site will tell you.

I've done it several times with character pieces. A stuffy male academic was interpreted as female. But I think this was a good result because it meant the tone of his inner narrative was in character.

Writing in a different gender ... do you wonder if you have it right?

Publishing Misconceptions

I run a lot of workshops and I come across a lot of misconceptions about how the publishing industry works.

Over here, Charlie Stross is talking on just this topic.

Here are some of the things that have come up at workshops from the general public. The first one is my own misconception.

1. Once you get a book published it means you have joined the world of the professional author, and editors from other publishing houses will look at all your future books differently. ie. It will be easier to sell your books, because after all you are a published author.

Unfortunately, no. There are a dozen reasons for rejecting your book, that you don't know about, starting with 'we have one slot left and we're going to use someone we've published before' to 'your book is too similar to one we're going to publish next week' to the old 'It's just not what we are looking for'. What are you looking for? 'We'll know it when I see it.'

2. Publishers and their editors are out to steal your book/ideas, so you need to get your book copyrighted before you send it out.

No. If you write a good book, the publisher will want to grow you as a writer, not steal your idea and write it themselves. They aren't writers. They might know writers, but those writers couldn't reproduce your book. Your book is automatically copyrighted when you write it. Posting it back to yourself via registered mail to prove when you wrote it, isn't necessary.

3. Self publishing your book then sending copies of it to celebrities across Australia in the hope that they will love it and promote it.

Um ... celebrities are probably not going to read your self published book and, even if they loved it, they aren't going to arrange to go on Breakfast Television to talk about it.

Are there any questions that you'd like to ask the ROR team with our shared experience in the publishing world. (Disclaimer -- we don't know everything).

PS. The story about the aspiring writer following the editor into the toilets at a convention and pushing her manuscript under the door is true. Note. This is not the right way to approach an editor, it will not endear them to your book.