Nebula Pride

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week - in honor of Pride Month - is to promote LGBTQ+ Artists, Authors, or Creatives. Since I'm fresh this morning from attending SFWA's Nebula Awards last night (online, natch - though next year will be in person again!), and since the awards ceremony was funny and moving and simply an amazing celebration, I'll share those winners. 

Many of the finalists and winners identify as LGBTQ+. Particular congrats to friends Sarah Pinsker and John Wiswell, both proud members of the LGBTQ+ community. The ceremony can be viewed at SFWA’s Facebook page and YouTube channel and their acceptance speeches are well worth listening to. 

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. (SFWA) is pleased to announce the winners of the 56th Annual Nebula Awards®. These awards are given to the writers of the best speculative fiction works released in 2020, as voted on by Full, Associate, and Senior SFWA members. The awards were presented at the live broadcast of the 56th Annual Nebula Awards Ceremony, hosted by Toastmaster Aydrea Walden.

The winners are as follows:

BEST NOVEL
Network Effect, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)

BEST NOVELLA
Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom)

BEST NOVELETTE

“Two Truths and a Lie”, Sarah Pinsker (Tor.com) 

BEST SHORT STORY
“Open House on Haunted Hill”, John Wiswell (Diabolical Plots)  

THE ANDRE NORTON NEBULA AWARD FOR MIDDLE GRADE AND YOUNG ADULT FICTION
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, T. Kingfisher (Argyll) 

BEST GAME WRITING
Hades, Greg Kasavin (Supergiant) 

THE RAY BRADBURY NEBULA AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING DRAMATIC PRESENTATION
The Good Place: “Whenever You’re Ready”, Michael Schur, NBC (Fremulon/3 Arts Entertainment/Universal)  

Additional awards and honors presented:

THE SFWA DAMON KNIGHT MEMORIAL GRAND MASTER AWARD
Nalo Hopkinson

THE KATE WILHELM SOLSTICE AWARD

Jarvis Sheffield
Ben Bova (posthumous)
Rachel Caine (posthumous)

THE KEVIN J. O’DONNELL, JR. SERVICE TO SFWA AWARD

Connie Willis

Presenters joined virtually from around the country, including SFWA President Mary Robinette Kowal, SFWA Vice President Tobias S. Buckell, incoming SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy, and writers and creatives Nisi Shawl, Carrie Patel, Mallory O’Meara, Mark Oshiro, Troy L. Wiggins, and Adam Savage. 

The ceremony can be viewed at SFWA’s Facebook page and YouTube channel.

What's On My Mind: The Fun in Being an Author

 

I had a mini-panic attack this week while working on marketing plans and the final draft of The Witch Collector, which releases on 11/2/21. Instagram tours are being planned, the book will be on NetGalley later, THERE WILL BE REVIEWS *cries,* and I'm working on graphics and thinking of cool ideas for the book launch. I'm also editing for myself, for four other authors, and writing three additional novels. The overwhelm can feel REAL, let me tell you.

But a friend reminded me of something this week when I reached out to her with a marketing question. She told me that "I got this," and that while, yes, the author's journey can be overwhelming and nerve-wracking, it's also exciting. It's the dream I've wanted, and it's here.

It can be easy to overlook our milestones rather than stopping for a minute, appreciating where we are compared to where we began, and experiencing what that feels like in the moment. If you're an author going through a bit of overload, or maybe you can't see your successes for what they are, I encourage you to slow down and remember: There was a time when you longed to be where you are now, and there are many others who long to be where you are now, too.

Just don't forget to stop and smell the roses every now and again.

You deserve it.

Which way do I go?

Earlier this week, a fellow author who'd written a trilogy asked me the prize question: Should I find a small press or should I self publish?

This author has ten books to her name already, but she'd recently broken up with her agent and former publishing house. No earth-shattering reason. It was just a poor genre fit for all parties. So here she is, out on her own. 

You'll be proud of me. For once, I did not say "it depends". Instead, I asked her what she wanted. We went through the pros of each:

Self-Publishing Pros

• You maintain control of every aspect of your books.
• You decide what the covers look like.
• You decide how much covers and formatting cost.
• You decide how quickly or slowly to release your novels.
  

Self-Publishing Cons

• You assume all of the monetary risk.
• You're entirely on your own for marketing.
• You're responsible for every aspect of your books and some days, that's a heavy burden. 
• Print versions of your book may require extra formatting, extra cover costs, and may be priced out of most readers' reach.
  

Small Press Pros

• A sense of legitimacy.
• A contract.
• Editors you don't have to pay for.
  
• You can usually leverage your publishing house mates for mutual marketing boosts.
• Most publishing houses have a marketing coordinator on staff and/or a marketing mailing list where authors can lean on amassed experience.

Small Press Cons

• You may not  have a print run if the press is e-book only.
• Someone else controls the book cover process.
• Your rights are tied up for a few years.
• Some presses tie up more than just print and digital rights.
• Some presses have long publication lead times and cannot guarantee your preferred release schedule.
• Small presses occasionally go out of business and that makes a mess.

As we talked it became clear she wanted one thing - help with marketing. I wish I could tell you what decision she made, but I don't yet know. I suspect she'll opt for a small press, but that's a guess. Which way would you go?

Summertime On My Mind

 The Master of Puppy Naps: Ullr

It’s officially summer! No hotdogs on the grill here, but the kiddos are done with school and the garden is growing! 

That’s basically the entirety of what’s on my mind. I’m still getting over the cold I came down with last weekend and I haven’t had enough concentration to do much in the way of bookish stuff…which includes coming up with a clever writing post. 

Napping though, that I’ve been pretty good at. But I don’t think I’ll ever be as great at it as Ullr.

I hope you’re having a wonderful start to summer!

The Beauty of Starting at Zero

On my mind this week, the beauty of starting at zero.

The final book in my UF series is in the hands of my CP and soon to be handed off to my editors. After seven books of evolving the same world and the same characters, it's time to conceive anew. It's exciting and invigorating. The only thing locked in at this point is that it'll be a trilogy in a sub-genre of fantasy. I've spent the week gorging on books, comics, and anime to replenish my creative well. Now, I'm staring at a blank notebook page plotting, scheming, and leaving no boundaries on my imagination. 

New characters. New worlds. New magics. New rules. New challenges. 

Time to play god and create something beautiful from nothing. 

How delightful.

You're not wrong.

 This week the subject is whatever strikes our fancy, so I'll just put this out there. You're (probably) n0t wrong. When it comes to your method of writing, I mean. There is no right or wrong unless you're not doing it. 

Want to outline the liv8ng hell out of it: By all means. Want to take a chance and pants it? certainly, as long as you're actually doing the writing. I'm sure I've brought her u before, but once upon a time fellow barista working at Starbucks alongside me proudly announced that she was a writer. She would come into the store where we both worked and she 2wouod pull out her laptop, set it up, order a drink, sit down to write, and promptly pick up her phone, where she would spend the next 90minutes to two hours, chatting away. Then she would close up her laptop and head home to her husband and kids. 

To my knowledge, she never finished a single project. We worked together for over 2 years. In that same time, I wrote no less than three novels and a dozen short stories. All of them got published. You want to know what the difference is? I actually WROTE when I was writing. She might have incredible tales to tell, but I never saw her actually write one. Ever.

She rolled her eyes every time I pointed that out to her. She couldn't understand how I was so productive. I told her not to answer the phone when it rang unless it was her kids. I also suggested telling her kids (the youngest was, I believe, fourteen) not to call unless it was urgent.

She's not a writer. She's a dreamer. There's a difference.

If you want to be a writer, WRITE.

End of rant. Go get some writing done.. 

Oh, and this year? One novel finished. One novel started. One novel in the process of being plotted. Three short stories sold. One novella sold. One collaborative novel half-finished. It's my chosen profession. It's what I do.

Keep smiling,

Jim

Author Coaches - How to Spot the Phonies

This week's topic at the SFF Seven is whatever is on our minds. Now that The Promised Queen has been out for nearly a week, I'm once again reminded of the many, many scavengers that begin circling the sparkling and hopeful fresh meat that is a new release. 

So, as a general warning, remember that there are a LOT of people out there looking to make money off of authors. From paid reviews to advertising to various "services," they are targeting authors by searching for new releases in particular, and attempting to capitalize on the mounds of money they hope you're making - or your desperation if you are not.

More specifically, my current MOST LOATHED scavenger critter out there right now is the Author Coach.

And yeah... I'm fully aware of that irony, as I do offer author coaching myself. I justify this in my own mind in that I'm simply asking to be paid for the kind of thing I was already doing for free. I love mentoring! But I also have to watch how I distribute my time. Writing books is my number one commitment. By charging for the advice I used to give for free, that puts a value on my time and reminds me where my priorities should remain.

Which segues nicely into what I see happening in some of these other "business" offerings.

These people offer to teach you how to write a novel - in whatever time frame sounds sexiest at the moment - and they tell you they can teach you how to make it into a bestseller, via amazing story tricks or marketing know-how, etc.

They have snazzy, clickable titles that promise ways to get your book in front of everyone, to write a breakout novel, to write a bestseller, to write your first novel, to make a viral book video, to get reader email addresses, and so forth. Yes, these are all things many of us would like to be able to do. That's the hook.

The question is: can they actually teach that?

BECAUSE - and this is the bit I always come around to - if they know so much about how to do the thing, why aren't they actually DOING it?

In the case of one famous agent who's built a considerable career selling books and workshops on writing a bestselling novel, I have always wanted to ask why, if he can teach this, aren't all of his clients bestsellers? I mean, wouldn't he want that? 

If an author is a bestselling rolling in royalties, why on earth would they be spending their time teaching anyone how to make viral Tik Tok videos? If a writer is making easy money writing books, why are they spending money on Instagram ads extolling their author coach services? Writers like Nora Roberts aren't spamming your IG feed with ads to teach you her secrets. Because she's making her money from actually writing.

In this era where anyone can add "Bestselling Author" to their credits either by a) lying, b) fudging the exact list, or c) buying their way onto a list, then it's become meaningless. And if being a Bestselling Author is their sole credential for teaching you anything, I'd take a hard second look at what they've actually done.

Frankly, the slicker the business site looks? The faster I'd run away. 

 I'm not saying there aren't good and helpful people out there - I like to think I'm one of them - but look very carefully at what these folks are promising vs. what they're actually doing. 

War of the Character Clones

Characters on stage need motivation - as much as I hate that old 'what's my motivation' chestnut. It's more nuanced than that, and also, if you're the actor, it's literally your job to work out motivation based on the script. I'd say 'that's a rant for another time' but it isn't. It plays directly into our topic this week: Carbon Copy Characters. 

How many Hamlet movies do we have? I can think of three off the top of my head. There are scads more. While the words for Hamlet never change, and the action of the story never changes, the character changes between movie versions because of the person playing the character. Each individual brings their own experience, their own emotional weight, their own interpretation to the lines that haven't changed in hundreds of years. I think my favorite illustration is the Unsolicited Advice skit. 8 actors and 1 crown prince read a single line of Hamlet's soliloquy - for comedy, of course, but you still get a sense in that bit of how different each of their Hamlets would be. 

Authors working with characters need to take a cue from the great variety of Hamlets across the history of the play. Go to YouTube and search 'To Be or Not to Be'. Look at how many videos come up. What makes us willing to watch so many Hamlets? 

Because when we watch Hamlet, caught between life and death in one short soliloquy, we aren't watching a single character grapple with suicidal ideation and the fear of mortality. We're watching individual human beings each bringing their own fears, their own disappointments, their own unique sorrows to bear. We're watching THEM as Hamlet, not Hamlet played by them. Fine distinction, but it matters.

For authors, that translates to bringing unique wounds to each character we write. I suspect this is much easier for character driven writers than for plot driven writers. Because a character driven process begins with characters and finding character voices, it's never a conscious thought for me to make characters across books different from one another. It follows naturally from my need to understand how each character starts a story broken. It's from that place of brokenness that plot flows. Even if two characters share a basic wound - it isn't safe to trust others, for example - that wound will have come from different experiences. The responses to that common wound will be utterly different based on who these people are. 

Creating unique characters isn't about what they do. Sally in this book is a hairdresser, and Sarah in that book is a truck driver. That's window dressing. What makes these characters distinct from each other is emotion. Their responses to conflict and obstacles. They likely have different goals and different tactics they use to achieve their goals.  Those are the tools in the writer's toolbox that build characters that will stand apart no matter how many books - or Hamlets - you subject yourself to.