S.K. Dunstall has just released Alliance, the second book in the Linesman series. We have talked to Sherylyn and Karen about the release and their hope for the future. Many thanks for giving us some time here at SFFWorld.
Thank you for having us.
First of all for those not familiar with your Linesman series can you tell us a bit about it?
Humans didn’t invent faster than light travel, they discovered it on an abandoned alien spaceship that ran on lines, mysterious bands of energy that humans still don’t know much about. Five hundred years later they have used line technology to expand through the galaxy, but they haven’t come across any further evidence of aliens or their ships.
The Linesman series is about Ean Lambert, who repairs the lines on spaceships. He gets caught up in the war between the two main powers in the galaxy, and the discovery of another alien ship. Both sides want that ship, and believe the weapons it has can help them win the war.
Ean is self-taught. He ‘sings’ to the lines, which is totally not done. He is an embarrassment to other linesmen. But he is good at what he does and he may be the only linesman who can get close to the ship.
The Linesman series follows Ean’s story from this time on.
The first book in the series was released last year and has got some great reviews. What are your expectations now that the second book, Alliance has been released?
As you say, Linesman had some great reviews. Readers were very generous with their feedback, which is wonderful to get, especially for a first book. So thank you all.
We don’t know what to expect for Alliance, (we didn’t know what to expect for Linesman either) and have to admit we’re a bit nervous. We only hope that our first readers love the second book as much as they do the first.
So far, the feedback has been positive, which has been a relief.
How do you feel you as authors have grown in the process?
We have grown and learned so much.
When we first got our agent, Caitlin Blasdell, we thought Linesman was good. Looking back now, we can see that it showed promise, but there was still so much to do to. Caitlin, a former editor, gave us fantastic feedback, and we did two major rewrites before she even sold it to Anne (Sowards, our editor at Ace). We rewrote it again for Anne.
Both Anne and Caitlin have taught us so much, and we’re still learning. Our writing is cleaner, we are becoming better at keeping the story-line on track. We’re even working better as co-writers.
There is still so much to learn. Now, if only we can only learn to write faster; it will make deadlines less stressful.
Do you feel you with the Linesman series have managed to bring something unique into the Space Opera setting?
That’s hard to say. We’d love to say there was something unique about what we write, but there are always novels to compare our stories against. If you’d told us back when we started trying to sell Linesman that people would mention McCaffrey or Bujold as comparison titles we’d have been flattered, but would have said, “No way.”
What we hope is that we have delivered an entertaining story that is fresh and fun, along with a neat idea in the lines.
What is it with Space Opera you find fascinating?
Space opera delivers everything for a reader who wants to escape into a different world. It is so much fun.
The only limit is your imagination. Space opera is about character. It has adventure, action, light moments, emotional upset and intrigue. Politics. Humor. You build imaginary worlds and people them with societies you’ve dreamed up, without the constraints of our own world and culture. A really good space opera makes you think.
Then you add space. And cool ideas like the lines. What isn’t there to find fascinating about space opera?
Getting published by a major publisher has to be every author’s dream. Can you tell us a bit about the process that led up to the Linesman series being published?
It is a dream. One we still can’t quite believe has happened.
Long answer, we’ll keep it as brief as we can. It’s taken a while. We’re a textbook example for the tried and true method of write a novel, make it as good as you can, get a list of potential agents, send out your query letters, wait for the rejections to come back in, send out more queries. We made lots of mistakes. Especially that classic newbie trick of sending out manuscripts long before they were ready.
It took eighteen months from our initial contact with our agent, Caitlin (Caitlin Blasdell, of Liza Dawson Associates), to her taking us on as clients. During that time we had occasional mail contact, she gave us feedback and asked if we would be interested in revising and resubmitting. (For all those writers out there who are wondering about the timing, roughly four months between original query and request to read full mss, six months between submit full and a request to revise and resubmit, six months for us to rewrite, and then more discussions at the end.)
After we signed Caitlin sent us a full manuscript critique and we revised the story again. It was only after that she started sending it to editors. That was around mid-2012. Anne Sowards, from Penguin, replied almost straight away, but didn’t accept it until April 2014, and only after another rewrite.
Between 2012 and 2014 Caitlin was sending the book out to other publishers, and we were writing new stories. Two set in the Linesman universe, but with different protagonists, and we’d just started a third outside of Linesman, with what we think is another really cool idea.
Caitlin also passed on feedback from other rejections, most of which were along the lines of, “Ean is a fantastic character, but the second half of the book doesn’t work.”
Anne offered us a three-book contract, based around Ean Lambert’s story. We hadn’t written anything more about him at that time, so we had to come up with two more ideas for Ean. Stories that Anne liked, but that we also knew we could write.
We had nine months to write each of these.
How did you start writing? Was there a particular book or moment in your life that spurred you on?
We have always told stories, always written; even at primary school. There was no one particular book but we read ravenously, especially the science fiction and fantasy books. Our lives were filled with stories by everyone form Andre Norton, Alan E Nourse, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. Our school bought a lot of those Gollancz titles with the yellow covers. We always had one or two of them out on loan.
What books inspired your career as authors, and what authors do you enjoy now?
When we were younger: Andre Norton, Alan E Nourse, Ivan Southall, Arthur Upfield. Then later, Diana Wynne Jones, Anne McCaffrey, Issac Asimov, Charles Sheffield.
Nowadays we’re reading Brandon Sanderson, Robin Hobb, Anne Leckie, Anne Bishop, Sarah Monette/Katherine Addison, John Scalzi, and lots more we haven’t mentioned.
To write, you have to enjoy reading. It above list looks like it is all science fiction and fantasy, but reading has to be broad. We haven’t mentioned Martha Grimes or any of our favourite crime writers yes. An example of a good book. Sherylyn has trouble sleeping when she reads horror, and tends to avoid it mostly. But one time, she picked up the first Odd Thomas book by Dean Koontz that was on the table as a giveaway. She read the first two pages, and didn’t want to put it down. As soon as she got to her room, read the whole book. Very tired next day, but that is what a good book should make you want to do.
Most writers have some other thing they’re passionate about, what’s yours?
We both work full time, so writing is our passion, really. At the moment, all we seem to do is work, write, eat and sleep. That should settle as we get more experience. When we get more time, Karen would like to get back to website design, and Sherylyn would like to buy a new pottery wheel and do more potting.
What’s next, but what are your hopes and dreams for the future? Do you now have a grand plan for your writing career?
Lots of dreams, lots of hopes. We want to keep writing, and we would love to stay with a traditional publisher. We are very happy with our current editor and agent, and don’t want that to change.
We want our readers to keep loving what we write, because we love to write what we do.
Naturally, we would both love to be able to write full time. It is difficult juggling deadlines for both work and writing, and it would be nice to be able to work toward the deadlines we want to work towards.
No matter what happens, we will keep writing. We have so many ideas, just not enough time.
Once again, thank you very much for your time.
Thank you for having us. It has been fun.
*****
Interview by Dag Rambraut – SFFWorld.com © 2016
