Sci-Fi Book Recs!

This week we’re talking about one of my favorite subjects—let’s talk about books! 

It never fails to blow my mind when a writer mentions they don’t read. Maybe you’re one of them. But I firmly believe, and will continue to say,  that reading will improve your own writing. 

Yes, you can take classes and get degrees that will teach you how to write. But if you don’t read and absorb emotions from the page, it’s like following a recipe step by step but never stopping to taste what your cooking. 

Back to my favorite topic! Books! I write both fantasy and science fiction, and though I read basically all genres (sorry gridmark, you’re a touch too dark for me) I glom SFF reads. Recently I’ve devoured some excellent sci-fi! So, let me gush:

Re-Coil by J.T. Nicholas

Out on a salvage mission with a skeleton crew, Carter Langston is murdered by animated corpses left behind on this ship. Yet in this future, everyone’s consciousness backup can be safely downloaded into a brand-new body, and all you’d lose are the memories of what happened between your last backup and your death. But when Langston wakes up in his new body, he is immediately attacked in the medbay and has to fight once again for his life—and his immortality. Because this assassin aims to destroy his core forever.

Determined to find his shipmates and solve this evolving mystery, Langston locates their tech whiz Shay Chan, but two members are missing and perhaps permanently killed. Langston and Chan are soon running for their lives with the assassin and the corporation behind him in hot pursuit.

What Langston and Chan ultimately find would signal the end of humanity. What started as a salvage mission just might end up saving the world.

This futuristic, as opposed to near-future, sci-fi plays off the idea of our souls consisting of the neural pathways that we’ve been able to contain on a computer chip and when you die, you can be re-coiled into a new body. 

There’s quite a bit of repetition in describing how different people mentally handle being re-coiled into various bodies. Some readers/writers go the repetitive route, some, like me, avoid it. To each their own. But the plot line is tight, intriguing, and the emotional connection between Langston and his former crew mate is intense. 

I highly suggest this if you’re in the mood for a sci-fi with a heavy dose of mystery, tension, and a nice romance sub-plot.

The Blighted Stars by Megan E. O’Keefe

When a spy is stranded on a dead planet with her mortal enemy, she must first figure out how to survive before she can uncover the conspiracy that landed them both there in the first place.

She’s a revolutionary. Humanity is running out of options. Habitable planets are being destroyed as quickly as they’re found and Naira Sharp knows the reason why. The all-powerful Mercator family has been controlling the exploration of the universe for decades, and exploiting any materials they find along the way under the guise of helping humanity’s expansion. But Naira knows the truth, and she plans to bring the whole family down from the inside.

He’s the heir to the dynasty. Tarquin Mercator never wanted to run a galaxy-spanning business empire. He just wanted to study rocks and read books. But Tarquin’s father has tasked him with monitoring the mining of a new planet, and he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter.

Disguised as Tarquin’s new bodyguard, Naira plans to destroy his ship before it lands. But neither of them expects to end up stranded on a dead planet. To survive and keep her secret, Naira will have to join forces with the man she’s sworn to hate. And together they will uncover a plot that’s bigger than both of them.

This sci-fi follows off the same theory that our souls can be downloaded into new bodies, making us near immortal. And it’s immortality that’s driving a dirty hunt for an element that will enable us to live even longer. 

Filled with political intrigue, undercover spies, a young scientist, and tangled emotions, The Blighted Stars is a fantastic other-world read!

I know, the second blurb was short. They’re both fantastic reads, I’m just running out of time. I need to catch a plane! And yes, I’ve packed two paperback books and have two queued up on my kindle….I hope I don’t run out of things to read! 

What are you reading this week?

Dragons, Vampires, or Aliens? Genre Expectations and How to Analyze Them

 

Photo by Loren Cutler on Unsplash

Why do you need to care?

You want people to read your book, right? In the indie book publishing world, there are over 2 million books being published every year, according to Berrett-Koehler Publishing. Readers won't just stumble onto your book on Kindle and buy it in droves, you need to work at it. If you're traditionally published, your agent and publisher will need you to identify comparative titles and tropes to help them market your book.

You can write your book for yourself, the way you want it. But when you put it out into the world and you're looking for readers, you need to fit your book into current trends and ideas. 

Readers expect certain things when they pick up a book. Think of how writers pitch a tv show or movie: "I read this book series, Game of Thrones. It's like The Tudors mixed with LOTR." "How about a High School Drama, but with Vampires? She's Buffy the Vampire Slayer." 

If you're J.R.R. Tolkien or Tamora Pierce or Octavia Butler, you can be a pioneer, but even then they are building on what has come before. Although the belief in a tortured genius who is misunderstood in their own time is a powerful dream, it disregards the hard work authors put in to understand their craft and to communicate through their work with their audience. It's also elitist patriarchal malarkey.

What can you do?

So how do you find your genre expectations and incorporate them into your work?

 

Read, read, read

All the posts this week reiterate the most important point. Kristine focuses on reading in your genre and adjacent ones, reading reviews, finding reader comments online. Alexia puts it succinctly: "Don't forget to read." 

“Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You’ll find what you need to find. Just read.” – Neil Gaiman 

The more you read, the more you will learn, and the better you will write.

What are the bestsellers in your genre? Search Amazon and Goodreads if you don't know and read them. Read as much as you can and start to notice the similarities. Is there always a Gandalf or Dumbledore who helps along the way? Does a mysterious warrior save the day? Are the aliens misunderstood? How is the coming-of-age character described as insufficient (or shy or unaware of their power) at the start and how do they develop throughout the story? Ask questions and be observant.

Study, study, study

 I am an obsessive plotter and pre-writer. The longer I can sit with the ideas and imagine my story before I write a first draft, the more confident I feel about the characters and narrative. 

Jeffe, in her post, reminds us that writers start as readers--and we can't take shortcuts in learning our craft.

As part of my pre-writing, I love reading about plot frameworks and researching craft advice by more experienced authors. Find the big writing books in your field, read them, and take notes. Inspire yourself by reading blogs and reviewing story beat templates. 

Here are a few of my favourites:

• Story Grid is such a helpful framework, if overwhelming for beginning writers. You don't need to follow it slavishly, but their studies of major novels and movies helps you to see the patterns at work.
• The Hero's Journey and Save the Cat are two helpful outlining/beat tools. There are many others out there--look around and see which ones appeal to you.
• Wonderbook is a feast for the eyes and a great way to push your thinking about setting and creating world outside of the box.
• KM Weiland is one of many bloggers and writers who are worth following.

Look at tropes lists

When I first started writing, I thought I only needed to have some good characters and a solid sense of the beats. Tropes were too cliche. Now I see that tropes are a short-hand to help readers find SFF stories they like. Some fantasy romance readers love enemies-to-lovers, while others champion friends-to-lovers. In YA dystopian fiction and Urban Fantasy, the bad-ass female warrior never seems to go out of style, but her appearance and personality change with time. Alien relationships have changed forever thanks to Ice Planet Barbarians--and readers can't get enough of them.

As a writer, you will have your favourites, so lean into those and have fun with them. Do you like the Archie-Veronica-Betty triangle? Gender swap and put them in a world governed by strict class and geographical boundaries and make it life or death (aka The Hunger Games). Do you love a good seduction and abandonment story? Make it vampires and set it in New Orleans (aka The Vampire Lestat). There are so many possibilities!

You can find some fun tropes lists here:

• 101 Science Fiction Tropes For Writers. (Funny if you like Sci Fi blockbuster franchises)
• 80 Sci-Fi Tropes for Writers (More informative and helpful)
• 10 Fantasy and Sci-Fi Tropes Fans Love (a bit of hodge podge, but spot on) 
• 21 Popular Fantasy Tropes for Writers (you will recognize all of these)

And everyone should listen to this podcast to be responsible in their representations of indigenous peoples in SFF:

• Métis in Space  (important considerations of indigenous steretypes in SFF)

Join reader groups

In her post this week, Marcella describes her experiences listening to fandom readers talk about what matters to them. Writers have amazing opportunities to hear from readers today and to learn what expectations they have. Scroll through Goodreads, join some Facebook groups or watch videos from Booktok. This research will help you understand your audience and what they want.

Remember that everything you read, study, and hear goes into the simmering pot of your story. You have to find the sweet spot between genre expectations and the book inside of you. But ignore genre expectations at your peril!

“Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.” – Lisa See 

Until next time, Mimi

Don't Forget to Read

When you pick up a mystery book you’d be disappointed if it ended up being a portal fantasy—even if it’s an excellent portal fantasy. So, as an author, how do you analyze genre expectations for the genre you’re writing in?

READ

Yes, KAK and Jeffe said this already this week, but it’s worth saying again. When you’re ready to put your book out in the world, be it querying an agent, submitting to a publisher directly, or self publishing, you need to understand your story in order to sell it. And if you describe something other than what you wrote, your reader will be disappointed.

What have you read recently? Was it in the same genre as your current WIP?

Analyzing Genre Expectations

I just returned from WisCon, which was a delightful, warm, sort-of summer-camp version of a con. I had a great time. I also got to visit the farmer's market and get a wonderful jump start on spring. 

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is: How to analyze genre expectations for your genre.

You know, I have one answer to this question, which is pretty much the same as what KAK said yesterday: READ.

I feel like people are often looking for the shortcuts in this business. And certainly there are the shovel-salesmen eager to sell the gold-miners the newest-fangled device that will make their job SO MUCH EASIER. So, sure - there are tools and surveys out there that purport to analyze trends and bullet-point the expectations of the hot genres. 

But nothing substitutes for reading. And reading what's current, as well as the canon the new stuff builds upon. Genre and the expectations readers bring to their reading are fluid and ever changing. I once advised an aspiring author - a woman who'd been very well published 20 years before, had a life-lull, and was looking to get back into it - who hadn't read anything published in her genre in the last couple of decades. She couldn't understand the feedback she was getting from agents and editors because her reading lens was calibrated to what amounted to ancient history genre-wise.

Also, reading refills the creative well. All writers begin as readers first. (At least, I hope so. A writer who doesn't love reading seems to me like a fish who swims but doesn't like water.) If you don't have time to read, make the time. Replace watching shows or scrolling on your phone with READING. You don't have to finish everything you read (I certainly don't), but you should read at least some of what's popular and what your readers are reading.

Did I mention read? Yeah: do that. 

 

Want to be a better Beta Reader?

Critique Partner: a fellow writer who you exchange chapters, manuscripts, partials with for feedback.

Beta Reader: a reader who gives feedback to an author on their work in progress.

Definitions for these two roles vary, but at their heart they provide feedback to the writer. Editing help for free, it hardly gets any better! But not all advice is useful, so how do you become a better beta reader or CP?

Read

Yes, I seem to keep saying that, but it applies in so many areas. The more you read the better you’ll become, even subconsciously, at recognizing issues with plot, characters, pacing, you name it! So keep reading! 

Beyond that fun assignment, there are a number of things you can consciously do to become a better beta/CP. 

First, and I’ll argue the most important: make sure you read the genre they are writing in and vice versa. You may have well meaning writing friends, but if they only read say, historicals, they may not be the best fit for your fantasy. 

Second: determine what kind of feedback the writer is looking for. If someone wants commentary throughout of what works and what doesn’t, but you read it through and offer your impression at the end, they won’t be happy. Is it a line edit? Would correcting typos help or get in the way of unraveling the plot hole? So many questions that need answering!

Third: be specific when pointing out problems. Telling someone the story just didn’t hook you isn’t nearly as helpful as hearing their character’s personality changes after the third chapter without any reason why. Or if a scene isn’t necessary, help point out why it drags or lacks connection to the goals/plot. 

Fourth: let the author tell their story. It’s a fine line to help improve a story and attempting to make it sound like your voice. You’re offering suggestions, but in the end it’s their opinion that matters.

And here’s a fifth that’s more than a cherry on top: remember to point out what works. Even writers who want feedback and are expecting their work to be torn apart need to hear some positives sprinkled in here and there. There are always good parts to be found, make sure you point some out!