First of all can you tell us a bit about The Untold Tale?
The Untold Tale follows Pip, who is pulled against her will into the epic fantasy novel series she’s loved since she was a teenager. However, the world is darker, and far more dangerous than she could have ever predicted, especially when it turns out the hero is a much bigger misogynistic ass than she knew. Pip knows how to circumnavigate the Hero’s Journey and the pitfalls and loopholes of this particular world – but what will happen to her beloved characters outside of the comfort of the fantasy they were written for? And what happens when it’s not the male-power-fantasy hero, but the hero’s overlooked and bullied little brother who proves to be her biggest champion?
Can you give us some insight into your main characters Forsyth and Pip?
I like to think that Forsyth and Pip are two of the many possible versions of the Geek Everyman.
As much as we love our power-fantasy heroes like Aragorn and Hercules, being a geek generally means that we are the “picked on submissive beta male” or the “nerdy unattractive female” – at least, that’s how the media portrays us.
So, I wanted to make a point of finding power in those stereotypes. Not like The Big Bang Theory, where the mainstream “normal” audience is still invited to laugh at the nerds (as opposed to Community where the audience is invited to laugh with the nerds). Forsyth and Pip are fact-collecting, cosplaying, secret-inner-lives-with-rich-imaginations, intelligent, well-read, articulate people.
They both of them, their whole lives, have been the outsider, the ignored one, the one that the world was not made for. At first they bemoaned that, but eventually they find a way to – well, for lack of a better word – weaponize it. They use what makes them different, and outcasts, the way that geeks and nerds now embrace their wonderful weirdness and use it as a spring board for their creativity, their selves, and their social relationships.
They define themselves by what they are not – Forsyth is not the hero, Pip is not the damsel in distress, and yet they also accidentally end up inhabiting those positions too.
And it is their very geek-ness from which they draw their strengths and with which they are able to go on a Hero’s Journey that diverts at every crossing and yet still somehow manages to follow the cycle.
You have a very strong female character in Pip. Are strong female characters important for you?
I think it’s important for there to be strongly written female characters, not just strong violent female characters. The big appeal of Buffy as a SFC, for instance, isn’t that she is as powerful as the male monsters she fights, but that she’s written to be complex and layered. She has desires, she cries, she is strong, she protects her friends, she feels intensely, she loves girly things, she is in love, she is rubbish at relationships… she is a whole person.
Say what you want about the feminism and politics of the characters, but I think Ally McBeal and the ladies from Sex In The City are also strong female characters. They have deeply complex wants and desires, and their actions as characters are motivated by that.
I think, when people say “strong female character”, what they envision is a cat-suit-with-high-heels wearing, gun toting, long-haired hottie kicking serious bad-guy butt and being angry and violent. And yes, those sorts of butt-kicking violent SFC do have a place. Representation matters, not just for the women who take heart and power and inspiration in active, offensive, fit female characters who protect others, but also for everyone else watching the show and internalizing the same message. But at the same time, there are more women out there than those who fit the warrior-damsel binary, and that’s what we don’t see enough of on the screens and in our books.
Yes, Buffy was a SFC, but so was Willow. So was Cordelia, for that matter. So was Joyce.
So much in media – and especially in SF/F – we see female characters who are simply not complexly written. The character exists to be the pursued love interest a.k.a the princess in the tower, with very little deep-down characterization and motivation beyond Looking Pretty For The Hero. Or, they exist only for the sake of a plot point – if they come to harm, it’s to further the hero’s emotional journey or to spur him to action; if they step out into the world, it’s because they’re crazy, or rebellious.
They are maidens to woo, or mothers to raise a child, crazy bitch villains (because only the crazy ones wouldn’t desire to please the hero, right?) or props to harm.
This is all my very long way of saying – as a woman reading epic fantasy novels in my youth, it left a faintly bitter taste in my mouth whenever the heroes met a female character, because these books told me, time and again, that I as a woman was only good for three things in this world – rescue/sex/trophy, as a thing that can be harmed to further the plot/hero’s emotional journey, and as the incubating and nurturing machine for the next generation of heroes. And as a woman, I had no right to any further development, or complex desires.
So when I created Pip, I made a point of writing a strongly written female character, with motivations and desires that yeah, sometimes are at odds with themselves, like they are in real life. She’s not violent, she can’t fight back. She is harmed for the sake of the plot. She is, in fact, rescued. But Pip’s strength comes from embracing the tropes that fantasy literature imposes on her simply because she is a woman, and using them to her own advantage and power. Pip is a strong female character because of her wit, her intellect, and from that very thing that makes all female fantasy readers powerful – her fannishness.
There is power in being a fangirl, and there is a complexity there to, in loving the problematic. And that is why Pip is a SFC, and why she needed to be one, too. For all that The Accidental Turn series is told from Forsyth’s POV, he’s not really the hero of this tale. Pip is. Even though she doesn’t think she is. Which makes her the hero even more.
In The Untold Tale you poke fun at sacred fantasy tropes and you have somewhat turned things upside down. What would you say is unique about your story?
You only poke fun at what you love, right? I think what makes my story unique is that I’m coming to it not from the perspective of the Chosen One or Hero, but from a place just slightly left of that centre, where there is more perspective and more introspection. I mean, how many times have we been reading or watching a fantasy, thrown up our arms and shouted “Oh, come on! Gandalf, just ride the damn Eagles to Mordor!” or something similar. We have the privilege of the outside perspective, of seeing the picture on a bigger scale, like in Patrick Ness’ The Rest of Us Just Live Here.
And I wanted to tell the story from there – from the geek-seat if you will. And I also wanted to show that being in the middle of things is harder than it looks from the outside, too.
What are your plans for The Accidental Turn Series now that the first book is being published?
Well, the series is, to steal from Douglas Adams, a trilogy in six parts. Reuts Publications is publishing the three epic-length novels. They’ll be out six months apart – December 2015, June 2016, and December 2016. Between each novel, however, a little novella told from another character’s perspective will be released, probably in e-versions only. They aren’t necessary to the big novels, you can read the books without them, but they will offer some more depth to the story and the world. And of course, I’m having a lot of fun getting to get into the heads of other characters in this setting!
There’s also been a lot of interest in what happens to Pip prior to her being introduced at the start of The Untold Tale, so with the help of the talented K.B. Fesmire, we’re serialising a short prequel comic right now, for free, on my Tumblr blog. You can read it here. Once the whole comic is online, I’ll be compiling it into a little ‘zine style book so people who prefer to read it in tree-ware version are able to.
What I’m really hoping for is a thriving fanfiction community growing out of these books. I mean, I’m such a big fat SF/F nerd that I adore the fandoms that grow up out of the media texts I consumed. I learned to write by writing fanfic. I learned to draw (not that I’m very good at it) by drawing Sailor Moon fan art. Fandom was the outlet for all my urges of creativity, so I’m super into encouraging fan creators to come play in my sandbox. I’ve even set up a website to celebrate the fanart and fanfiction I’ve already received. It’s meant to look like it’s a website for the faux fantasy writer in The Untold Tale, a character called Elgar Reed. Fandom is important, especially creative fandom, and I want to do everything I can to support and foster those creators.
Of course, I’d love to see a miniseries or television adaptation of the books, and I think it’s especially relevant now that the world is loving Game of Thrones, Galavant, and the recently-announced His Dark Materials and Shannara. But I unfortunately have no control over that.
I’d also love to see the books turned into audiobooks, but that’s a conversation that will be happening with my agent and a producer/production house after the book is out and we see what the numbers are like. I’d love to have someone with a nice crisp British accent reading it. And I’ll confess that in my head, Forsyth Turn sounds exactly like Mark Gatiss. If I could pick my narrator, it would be him.
What is with the Fantasy genre you find fascinating?
I love the worldbuilding. Honestly, I am always so eager for fantastic culture-porn. My Master’s degree had a lot of anthropology components, and my favourite non-ficiton books are the ones like Sex and Dawn, Wrong About Japan, Stiff, and Red: The History of the Redhead, where the scholar investigates elements of current society with an anthropological eye.
I love complex words where norms and taboos are different but have a logical explanation, where food is different, where customs, beliefs, and rituals are based on actual visible phenomena. I love looking at how magic, and creatures, and different races are explained. I love fantasy and science fiction books that involve societies where our patriarchical gender-binary is not present, and that explain how, and why; or books set in worlds where people are truly colourblind; or where heterosexual monogamy is considered weird and selfish. I love stories that take the hegemonic tennents of our lived lives and questions them.
And I think it’s important and powerful that these sorts of books keep getting published, because people should be learning, and evolving, and questioning. That’s the very great privilege of being an author – you can sneak teachable moments into gripping fiction, you can question he norms of now by setting it elsewhere, like classic Star Trek did, you can better the world simply by writing stories that people love. You can write fun, adventurous, sexy, interesting, engaging fiction and still impart knowledge and encourage reflection, and foster thoughtfulness. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. It doesn’t have to be mindless-gripping-action-take vs. text book. It can be both. It should be both. Fiction, especially fantasy and science fiction, has always been on the bleeding edge of social change and commentary.
How did you start writing? Was there a particular book or moment in your life that spurred you on?
The first book that really made me love books, that taught me the power of stories and that maybe this was something I could happily do for the rest of my life was Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. It was just so clever, and thoughtful, and well put together. The world was beautiful, the characters were complex, and this was a book that questioned how powerful words and stories really could be. I still have the first two sentences memorized. It made me wonder what I could do with stories, and it taught me that stories were malleable and that words could be alchemy.
What has been most surprising to you in your writing and publishing career?
How much work goes into a book after it’s written. When you see a writer’s story on TV or in film, it’s like a romance, right? In a RomCom, the film ends when they couple admits their love for one another, and get together. Sometimes they get engaged, or get married. But what you don’t see is the compromise, and hard work that goes into that relationship after the Happily Ever After.
And watching films and TV, and reading about writers, is very similar. The Happily Ever After happens when the writer’s struggles are finally over and they’ve convinced an agent/publisher/gatekeeper that their work has merit and their efforts have not been in vain and they get a contract.
What you don’t see is the hours editing, the rewrites, the many many emails about ideas for the cover and the interior design, the marketing brainstorming sessions, all the work that goes into planning the launch party, the massive amount of work that goes into soliciting reviews, submitting books to awards for consideration, and trying to find ways to get your book talked about in the mainstream media. It is a lot of work, which I just didn’t expect, because you never see it in media representations of the writerly life.
I sort of hoped that I would make massive amounts of money straight off, so I could buy a cabin and live out the fantasy of being alone with my computer and the muse, and that the business side of things would be handled by some crack team that I’ve never met. It’s this really strange ideal fantasy that a lot of writers have internalized. We all secretly dream of that.
But the truth of it is that the author is just as much an integral aspect of the marketing as the book. You’re trying to get readers to buy into the novel and the brand that your name represents. You’re trying to build not just fans of this one book, but fans of your whole career.
Which is no little amount of work. I spend just as much time in interviews, answering questions on social media, in radio and TV stations, and writing blog posts as I do in front of the keyboard writing novels. It’s one of the reasons I started a vlog – because it’s a faster way of doing what I was already doing on my blog.
And all this “after the happily ever after” work is unexpectedly fun, too.
I have theatre training, so talking live at conventions, being on panels, doing readings, all of that doesn’t phase me, and the more I do it the more I realize what a blast it is, getting to interact with my readers directly. Because I also came up through fandom, I love trying to find ways to include my colleagues in that sphere in the process. I really enjoy engaging with fandom, and coming out from behind the table or off the stage and just being among my tribe, you know? I like thinking of little gifts to give them in the prose, and in the marketing.
There’s something really creative about the marketing side, and I enjoy using my imagination in different ways, with different aims. It’s a lot of work, and it’s many long hours, especially when you’re not being published by the Big 5 and there’s simply not that much budget available to help you out or take some of the burden from you. But it’s also an exhilarating challenge to find ways to track effectiveness, work with a small budget, and to find ways to reach out to new readers and invite them in.
How do you go about the marketing aspect and especially related to your online presence? Anything you’ve seen work better than other things?
Oh! I think I accidentally answered this question above!
But to expand a little – things that really don’t work online is only pushing your book in your social media. People follow celebrities because they want a glimpse into their everyday lived lives. They want to know when the celebrity had a great meal out, or had a rotten experience travelling, or played with their dog, or hung out with their celebrity friends. They want a peek behind the curtain. (Even if we all know that most of the “real life” stuff we see is carefully curated and probably managed by the celebrity’s publicity team.)
The point is, we all want to see the person behind the product. If your social media feed is more than just “buy my book!!” then you are an enjoyable person to follow. Your followers will be more inclined to keep following you, and to listen when you do talk about your work, because they’re not exhausted by your constant sales pitches.
(Having said that, I also make sure to maintain a FB group where the only thing I talk about is my work, so those who want to follow solely for information about my projects can go to get it, without having to sift through the social part of my social media.)
And writing is no different – in fact, I think people want to follow a writer even more than a celebrity because they’re also looking for tips, advice, and conversation. I always try to be very honest on my social media feeds and answer any questions put to me, as much as I can. Folks who want to be writers always have questions about how to become a writer, and the great thing about being a writer is the community that supporting one another fosters.
Publishing is not a zero-sum-game, and we as writers are not competing with one another for sales and klout. A reader who buys my book will buy someone else’s too, and the best way to get both of our books bought is to help each other.
And it makes it more fun, too. I’ve made fantastic online friends and that means it’s more likely that they’ll suggest me for their own local cons and to their media, just as I’ll suggest them to my local outlets and conventions. This way we each have exposure to markets that might not otherwise know who we are. (And, okay, I’ll admit it: it’s also a bit selfish… I mean, I want them to come to my local con because I want to hang out with them!)
What kind of books do you read, any favourite authors?
I am so into Fraction and Aja’s Hawkeye right now, I can’t even. These comics are glorious.
I don’t have much time for reading right now, because I have six books out in the next three years and about a quarter of that work is currently finished. Add to that the books I read to blurb, and those written by my friends and critique partners, and that leaves me very little brain power, time, and focus to invest in novels. (Much to my despair).
I generally prefer to read something quicker lately, a small satisfying bite instead of a five course meal, so I’ve been reading a lot of short fiction anthologies, graphic novels, and fanfiction. (Fanfiction will always and forever be my comfort food).
I am also working my very slow way through the wonderful female-written novels of the Georgian and Victorian eras. I have just finished all of Jane Austen’s published oeuvre, and am partway through Sanditon. I just have her Juvenilia after that. When I’ve finished with Austen, I’m going to pick up the Elizabeth Gaskell books.
I know a lot of British readers are probably groaning, because they had Austen and Gaskell jammed down their throats at school, but I never had the opportunity to study game-changing female authors (and Austen and Gaskell absolutely did affect the modern novel). Except for The Stone Angel, I can’t actually recall any play, poem, or novel we studied in high school that was authored by a woman.
I didn’t grow up in the kind of household where I was read to a lot as a kid, I don’t actually remember either of my parents ever reading me a bedtime story. They must have done, but I have no memory of it. We have only a handful of kid’s books still in the house. I only remember Mom reading to me once when I was at the Doctor’s office, waiting for my allergy tests to start to cause a reaction. It was The Slime That Ate Sweet Valley, a Sweet Valley Twins book. But no one ever handed me a book and said “You have to read this,” or “This was my favourite at your age. Go on, you’ll love it.”
So the only fiction I read was what was assigned in school, and that looked interesting in the library. And because I did all the looking for books myself, I sometimes feel like I missed out on what I was supposed to be reading – I’ve still only read one Orson Scott Card novel, and it wasn’t Ender. I’ve never read Hubbord, or Asimov, or Robert Jordan. I didn’t even know what Lord of the Rings was when my date at the movies saw the first trailer and made a gasping noise and grabbed my arm so hard there were bruises for a week.
And that is especially true of the female authors.
I feel like there’s this whole other exciting horde of books that I never knew existed until recently (seriously, I was only introduced to Gaskell like, a year ago. I had no idea.) Now suddenly there’s a whole other wing of the library that I’d missed the first time I perused the shelves. I didn’t even know who Anne McCaffrey was until her son introduced himself asked for a copy of my debut book at my launch party. (Don’t worry, I rectified that soon after. I really loved The Ship Who Sang, and I bought and read Dragonflight the first time the day Todd emailed me to tell me his mom had passed. Oh, how I cried.)
I’ve just read my first Margaret Atwood book too, and I’d like to read a few more of hers. After that, maybe the great Gothic Romances? Especially the ones by Ann Radcliffe. Oh, and the work of Octavia Butler and Usula K. Le Guin, and James Tiptree Jr, and Wynne’s Christomanci series, and the amazing new spec fic YA and NA books that are being published now and… there’s just too many to name! I look forward to getting to dig into them all.
Most writers have some other thing they’re passionate about, what’s yours?
If you had asked me this three years ago, I would have said cosplay! I was a hardcore cosplayer for years and years. I still love it, and I still like dressing up for the Saturday-night dance when I go to cons, but I just don’t have the time to invest in the hobby any more. Luckily I still have most of my costumes, so I have lots to choose from. My favourites are here in my cosplay tag.
I still like doing community theatre – I did it constantly in my local area, from 1994 on up. Off the top of my head I couldn’t even tell you the names of all the productions I’ve done. But I played Annie, and that was the highlight of my career so far – I had so much fun.
I did my undergrad in theatre and pounded the pavement after that for paid film, TV, and theatre work, but it’s extremely competitive and truth of the matter is that physically I’m just not what they look for in an actress. It took me a while to accept that, and now I perform and do crew jobs for fun. (Though if people offer to pay me, I don’t say no!) Mostly I freelance voice act at this point, and my dream is to be the recurring voice of an anime or cartoon character.
I did some paid background work when I lived in Toronto, and appeared in some indie films, and things like that, and that was really fun and interesting.
I just finished a community theatre production, actually. It was live version of War of the Worlds where the stage was done up like the CBS recording studios. We weren’t playing Professor Pierson and all that, we were playing Orson Welles playing Professor Pierson. We had live music and foley on stage, and I got all dolled up and sang a few numbers in the musical interludes. It was a really beautiful production.
I also really like webseries, which is sort of like community theatre for film, I guess. I know some people do it professionally, and some people do it because it’s just good fun. Maybe I can parlay it into profession film work one day, but for now I like volunteering on sets and learning about all the different skills and jobs that go into making film.
Ideally, I’d love to return to background acting because the pay was good, there was lots of downtime on set which allowed me to write and edit in the holding area, and because I am fascinated with the filmmaking process and it was always very engaging to watch the director and the crew work. But the gigs are spotty and I just don’t live in a film-center any more. Maybe one day!
What’s next? Do you have more exciting new projects you’re working on?
More than I can really handle!
The Untold Tale comes out in December, so there’s all the lead-up for that, and then of course I have to get my nose to the grindstone and write the final book in The Accidental Turn series. Book #2 is in the midst of the editing process.
After that, I’ve signed another three-book deal for The Skylark’s Saga trilogy. The first book of that series is done, though I haven’t gone through editing with the publisher on that one yet, and of course then I need to write the next two. It will be debuting summer 2017. Man, that seems so far away, but in terms of the publishing timeline it’s really, really not.
My agent is currently reading a book I turned into her this year, and which could either be a one-off or a six-book series, depending on what the publisher that acquires it wants to do with the world of the book.
And right this moment, I’m writing a feature-length screenplay for NaNoWriMo. I pitched the project to a producer, and she was really keen about the idea. It’s still on-spec work, but if the production team likes it and decides to acquire it, I’ll have made my first step into screenwriting, which is something I’ve always really wanted to do. And if they don’t, well then, hey, at least I have an original screenplay completed! I have a handful of other specs – for TV and film adaptations – but this is the first one I’ve written where it’s 100% my concept and characters.
There’s some other things in the works, but they’re all hush-hush right now. There’s also been some discussion of me writing a nice, juicy, long graphic novel, and some other discussion of writing a Welcome To Nightvale-style radio drama, but those are so up in the air right now that I honestly couldn’t tell you if they’re actually going to happen and when (though of course I really want them to!). You’ll just have to follow me on Twitter or Tumblr to get the scoop!
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Interview by Dag Rambraut – SFFWorld.com © 2015
