Sunday, July 17, 2005
Macbeth Prequels, et cetera

I wrote a prequel to Macbeth once. You see, although my novels are exclusively sci-fi, I exercise a lot more freedom when it comes to my short stories, exploring fantasy, horror, literary mainstream, really any idea that hits me strongly enough. So one day I decide to write a story about Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters. Just how did they come to be and why did they want so badly to destroy Macbeth? I know what you’re saying: Terry Pratchett got here first. But I wanted to take a different approach than he did, one both historical and supernatural, not humorous but horrifying. I called it “Graymalkin,” from the name of the First Witch’s familiar.

So I started my research. Macbeth is based on a real person, and I took the names of my characters both from Shakespeare’s play and fromMacbeth's real-life family tree, except formy protagonist,whom I named after areal-life Scottish woman accused of witchcraft in the thirteenth century.I carefully outlined the political and military situation in Scotland in the time just preceding the play. In my story, the Sisters start as simple merchant’s daughters, imprisoned in a tower for treason. They are accused of conspiring with the rebel leader Macdonwald against King Duncan, and the charges have been trumped up with allegations of witchcraft. In between bouts of torture and interrogation, one of the Sisters is visited by a strange gray cat… or perhaps a being thinly disguised as a cat. In its collar are a series of notes, on which are written poetic riddles. As she tries to interpret the hidden messages in each note, she sets in motion a sequence of events leading to her and her sisters’ transformation into the goddesses of destiny.

I published it to rave reviews on Wild Child magazine, and I have to say it's one of my favorite stories I have written so far. Some people think genre-jumping like this is bad for your career, makes you look like a dilettante, but I disagree. If anything, I think it's good. Exploring different genres with short stories helps broaden your mind, expand your experiences, and will give you a wealth of new ideas to take your primary genre in all kinds of different directions. Also, if you ever compile all your short stories into a single book, it'll make one hell of an eclectic read.

Just random thoughts...

Posted by Robert Williams 2005-07-17 19:22:00

Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Stuffy Old SF

I've been feelingsome dissatisfaction with science fiction lately, mostly because its overrun with franchises. Don't get me wrong, I love Star Trek and Star Wars as much as the next guy, but folks those two have around for about thiry years now, give or take. Bookstores have whole sections devoted them now, hundreds of books have been written set in their respective universes.

While Harry Potter has brought about a renaissance in fantasy, science fiction has begun to stagnate. Going to the SFF bestellers on Amazon.com, only four of the top twenty-five are new SF books (as I write this), and 'new' is a pretty relative term since only two of those four, The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks and Olympos by Dan Simmons, were released this year. Also, only two of those four are relatively new writers. All the others are standbys like Orwell and Huxley. Yet all of those four books (The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger and Philip Roth's The Plot Against America are the other two) have sold well, indicating that readers are hungry for fresh new SF.

Sure, I'm basically here pimping my own book, and of course I'm biased towards its creativity and originality. But I read too, maybe more than most because I'm a writer, and I get tired of the same old thing. But mainstream publishers want to maximize sales, and they will always go with something that has already proved successful. They will rarely take chances on something that is new, challenging, or represents often overlooked members of society, which The Storms of Eternity does. You may have to wade through a lot of drivel to find good SF novels from independent publishers, but you will find it.

God, I make long blog entries.

Posted by Robert Williams 2005-07-13 23:33:56

Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Ideas and Emotions

Feeling rather philosophical today. I was thinking that science fiction is known mostly for its ideas. We read it expecting some kind of vision of the future, usually one that could really happen. The more psychological science fiction, or "soft" sci-fi fantasy, works by authors like Ray Bradbury or Ursula K. Le Guin, are now being called fantasy. In the past, a book like Perdido Street Station would immediately get classified as sci-fi, but now the reviewers call it fantasy. Not that I have anything against fantasy, quite the contrary, I LOVE it. Just seems that the line between it science fiction is getting a little blurry, and that anything that isn't stringently scientifically accurate isn't considered "hard" sf.

Anyway, the point I was making is that sci-fi is always thought of as visionary, prophetic, and at its best making some kind of social statement (like 1984, Brave New World, et. al.) but it's not usually thought of as being very emotional. The further into the future an sf novel is set, the colder and more emotional its characters often seem. Think about those enraged apes at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey and compare them to the astronauts fighting Hal in the spaceship towards the end. Hell, the frigging computer is more emotional than the people are. Remember how Hal begged for his life, but Dave just kept on pulling those plugs? It'sseems to bea common expectationthat people will become less emotional as they evolve. Why should that be true? I would love to read (or even better, write) a new science fiction book that was as moving as it was intellectually stimulating. I sure hope the traditions set down by Bradbury andLe Guin don't fall by the wayside as time passes.

Posted by Robert Williams 2005-07-12 12:08:04

Saturday, July 9, 2005
Hurry Up and Wait

Hello once again. It's been a little over a week since my last blog entry, since I have been busy moving to a new apartment. Seems when I left off I was going to tell everyone how I came to publish my book with a print-on-demand publisher. I suppose time was the most important factor.

Consider this: You spend a year-plus working and struggling to write your book. You pour your heart and soul into it, and when it's ready you mail off query letters to agents, most of whom don't want to consider a book that isn't already finished. Thinking conservatively, say you send out fifty query letters. 50 times 0.37 = $18.50. Let's say there is an average response time of a month and about half of the agents want to see more of your work. (These are VERY optimistic estimates.) So you send out the first three chapters and a synopsis, and you want to save time, because it has already been over thirteen months since you started this book, so you mail it out priority. 25.00 times $3.50 = $87.50. Give each agent three to six months to consider your work. We'll assume your writing is so good that it makes the short pile, and the agents take more time to seriously consider your work, and between the agents who send back a form rejection and those who take longer to actually read it, you get an average response time of four months. Now we're up to seventeen months and $106.00. Three agents want to see the complete manuscript now. 3 times $7.50 postage (we assume first class now) = $22.50. And after six months waiting, you get a letter of acceptance from one. Congratulations! You now have an agent after 23 months and $128.50. Not bad at all!

Now your agent has to submit your manuscript to publishers. This takes a less time for agents to get a response than writers, but we're still looking at around a six-to-nine month response time. But you have a true crack agent, and he gets youa publishing deal in only seven months. In all this time though, you've been covering costs of postage, copies, etc. All the expenses agents normally incur for the benefit of their writers. That's okay though, because they can deduct that from the advance from the publisher (if you get one). Then after an 18-month wait while the publisher designs your book, sends you copies for feedback, and get the final draft all done and the first printing ready, your book isshipped tothe stores. After a four-year wait, you now, as a no-name, must work your butt off in promotion.

Now by yourself with a POD publisher, you don't have a traditional publishing house's resources to promote your book. But for authors like me, the pleasure is in seeing your book in print, no waiting, no rejections, no getting strung along simply by the nature of the publishing system. In my case, I had to sit on my book for over a year due to a period of financial difficulty where I couldn't afford to send out letters and sample chapters. With my POD publisher, I could design my own cover and layout for my book. No, you can't hope to get the kind of sales you can get through traditional publishers,but truthfully I suspect most traditional agents and publishers don't consider new authors, whom they haven't met or even spoken to beforehand.

Also, I think there are a lot of readers out there frustrated with the state of fiction today, especially science fiction, and are desperate for a new original voice, something you're not going to see coming from big-league publishers, who want to guarantee profits with tired old franchises. These readers, I am certain, will be willing to give my book a chance. So, for me, print-on-demand was the way to go.

Wow, what a long entry. But I've vented and think we all feel better now.*smile*

Posted by Robert Williams 2005-07-09 20:22:51

Friday, July 1, 2005
Book History

I guess I should provide a little background on how this venture came to be. I first got the idea for Storms about five years ago, but back then, the whole idea was pretty vague. I was working at the VLA then, a rotating schedule that changed every week. So one week it would be day shift, next week second shift, next week graveyard, and then back to days again. Needless to say, it was a stressful time.

One day while I'm trying to go to sleep, I get this mental image of a sailboat on the ocean at sunset (or sunrise), and a tornado comes up out of nowhere and sweeps up the boat. It was a pretty spectacular image, sunlight shining under clouds, the tornado on the water kicking up all these waves and foam. And out of the mist rising from the water I saw all these other, shadowy thingsjumping out at the people on the boat. Didn't quite know what they were, and it was, in all, a pretty freaky dream. The image stuck with me, and over the next several weeks and months I started to develop a story around it, and eventually I realized I was getting an idea for a book. I typed out about fifty pages of manuscript and was really starting to get into it, when there was a power outtage while I was in the middle of writing. The computer survived, but the disk I was saving the manuscript to did not. It was completely fried, and everything I had written was lost. Let this be a lesson, boys and girls, always make a second copy.

The book didn't go away, obviously. As a matter of fact, the ideas just wouldn't stop coming, and the second draft of the novel came out even quicker and easier (and better, too) than the first. Some parts I wrote longhand, when I didn't have a computer handy. And before I knew it, it was done. In my next entry I'll go into why it took so long to get it published and why I eventually chose to go POD with it, but I think this entry is long enough for now. Cheers.

Posted by Robert Williams 2005-07-01 18:51:58