Authors of the Roundtable: Carol Berg, Teresa Edgerton, Michael J.Sullivan, Myke Cole

I never look at my sales ranking .... don't even know when it is good or bad. But then again I have a wife who watches them and she lets me know. Every once in a while she'll skype me with a bit of news about how I'm ranked and I'll tweet it - but if it wasn't for her feeding me the information I'd have no clue.

 

I'm definitely in that camp. It makes writing very effortless because they do all the work for me. I'm not sure that it is a sign of "a great writer" it may just be a mental health issue because I have multiple personalities constantly in my head.

 

Years ago, my wife and I were at a neighbor's house playing a game called "Scruples" in it you are asked a question and you can lie, or tell the truth, and if someone challenges you on it then the other vote on whether they believe you or not. It drove my wife CRAZY because I would have everyone believing I thought one way and she could never win a challenge even though she was 100% right each time.

 

I'm comfortable writing both...and I think I do well at both, but as I said I'm pretty good with putting myself in another's shoes. One thing that is kind of interesting about my books is they start out with two men, Royce and Hadrian… but I actually have four main characters (the other two are women). Their story lines don't really come into play to a large degree until part way through the series, so early on people think the women don’t get much attention.

I’m married to a very strong woman and there are parts of her in many of my female roles. One in particular, Arista, is based quite a bit off of her. She is also the character that some people don’t like or connect with…one of which was my daughter ;-). But she is also a character that goes through a lot of growth so I did a lot of “setup” to make her have “issues” that she eventually overcomes. By the end of the series my daughter eventually conceded that she did grow to like Arista…something both I and my wife are glad for.

 

I've not had to do anything different for the female characters than I have for the males.

 

I can't say I like either of them "best" ... I think Royce is a bit more fun to write because he has a very sharp, dry, wit so he gets better lines. I actually channel both characters depending on the situation. If I perceive you as a threat to someone I care about, Royce comes out...he is very protective of the ones he loves and he’ll shield first and ask questions later. Hadrian and I share a very “glass half full” perspective, and we both are pretty laid back and amiable. I’m always amazed when I see people getting worked up “about the small stuff.” I think sometimes they make their lives more stress filled then they need to be. Hadrian always wants to achieve something worthwhile...and I can definitely identify with that.

 

My agent says that if your amazon sales rank is between 25k-75k, then you're selling around 100 copies/week. I use that as a general yardstick, though he admits that is a *very* rough guess.

 

I think I do *okay* writing females, but I have to admit that I agonize over it. I am *so* worried that my female characters will come across as males with female names. A recent column at Romance at Random praised me for writing strong female characters, another review liked the book, but lamented that I was promoting positions "harmful to women." Bottom line is that people in general seem to think that I've gotten it right, with some notable exceptions. I try really hard to listen to those who think my voice isn't spot on and to improve in later books. I really, really want my writing to be accesible to everyone, and since I'm writing military themed stuff, drawing in female readers is something I really work hard on.

 

Many people read for different reasons, for me I read primarily for entertainment and I can’t think of anything that would be more fun than to go on an adventure. By their very nature adventures take you beyond your comfort zone…to explore places where anything can and sometimes does happen. An adventurous spirit is one that seeks to learn new things and experience something different than the same routine.
One of the best things about being a writer, especially in fantasy, is you get to play God. To invent worlds and populate with extraordinary places and creatures, bounded only by your imagination. Adventures allow you to have an extremely wide range of colors on your pallet and provides for a great deal of diversity to draw from.

I can’t really think of any pitfalls to adventures…but I reserve the right to amend my answer once I hear from the other authors as it may trigger something that I can’t think of at the moment.

 

One of the difficult things about this business is never knowing what "good" is...Is 100 a week good? To be honest that doesn't sound like that many books when you consider the entire country...but I don't know what "good" is over the course of a book's release.

I have now officially looked at amazon rankings....

Theft of Swords...1,971 (kindle)...2,977 (print)
Rise of Empire......2,017 (kindle)...4,064 (print)
Heir of Novron......1,347 (kindle)...3,728 (print)

So I guess I can join the ranks of authors who watch their rankings. Although I'm not sure once is much of a "watching"

 

I can honestly say that fantasy chose me, rather than the other way around. The first story I ever wrote was fantasy, I tried a few other genres while I was growing up, and after my late teens I found that there was nothing else that I really wanted to write. Stories that are not fantasy come to me from time to time, but they never have such a strong hold on my imagination that I want to write them down.

Everything of novel length I've ever written has alternated between viewpoints, male and female. In the beginning, it never occurred to me that might be a problem. Obviously I could write from a female point of view, and being the age I am and growing up when I did, all but one of the books I was required to study in English classes, and most of those on recommended reading lists, were written by men and generally from a man's perspective. So that seemed natural, too.

It was only after I'd written Child of Saturn and started talking to other writers that the question of whether men could write about women or women about men first came up. Since my first reader has always been my husband, I didn't worry about it. I thought if I ever went off in the wrong direction he would tell me.

I just write about people, and people come in all sorts.

I have a little trouble writing action sequences, because I'm a bit dyslexic and it's hard for me to picture in my head what people are doing. Fortunately, my husband has a good background for helping me to choreograph things like battles and sword fights.

But adventure as a whole ... that's not a problem. It's always easy to keep readers interested when something big is happening or people are in danger. It's the quieter moments, the more subtle interactions, that present a real challenge.

It's good to see you here. I have trouble keeping up with this kind of discussion, and you can give me moral support.

 

Hey there. I'm not an active participant on this forum but have browsed the site quite regularly over the years. I'm also a member at a different website Teresa frequents, although admittedly my presence there has also dwindled over the years as my studies have increased. Most of the books listed in the original post are familiar to me. I've enjoyed the lot!

My question is open to anyone:

8.) How, if at all, has your process of outlining a novel changed since you first started? In particular, do you now outline individual chapters, the story as a whole, or just sit down and write after being inspired?

 

I've got thirteen books out. Two are entirely from a female point of view. Seven from entirely male. Five are from multiple POVs, at least one male, one female. Despite being a woman, I actually find the male POV slightly easier. Maybe because I have husband and three sons?? Or maybe I've spent more time observing? I suppose it is more difficult writing my own gender because it is harder to disentangle my own thoughts and perspectives from hers.

In either case, I find I have to get inside that person's head and figure out how he or she thinks. I have to consider all those things I mentioned before - goals, motivations, as well as how the past has affected those desires. I believe that doing it well involves a lot of attention to word choice - not just in dialogue, but in narrative. Also in the choice of what that POV character observes and how he or she reacts to those observations. To me, creating a character that comes alive for me, whether a hero or a minor character is one of the greatest joys of writing.

 

I write the kind of stories I like to read. Multi-threaded adventures with interesting people and complex issues, magic and mysteries to solve and plenty of angst. I like heroic adventures where the heroes and heroines are not perfect. They make mistakes and have to face the consequences. I consider these romantic tales -romantic in the larger literary sense (sometimes my poor heroes don't get very much in the way of personal romance!) What could be more fun than spending your days coming up with such adventures and working out how in heaven's name you're going to get the twisty plot to come out right? (Well, ok, that last can get tricky!)

I'd say the peril in spending yourself on this kind of story comes if you want to be taken seriously as a writer outside the genre community. Look at the expression that falls over many, many faces when you answer that eager Oh, you're published; what do you write? with epic fantasy, a bit on the darkish side. And then you have to explain that it's not all Harry Potter out there. But I firmly believe that every human story can be told beautifully and effectively in our genre.

 

Yes, yes. Very well said, Myke.

 

I'm always asked if the people in my stories are people I know. And I always answer that I would never be so cruel as to put people I know into my adventures. None of my characters are me or my husband. How boring that would be! If I am writing about a slave who was once a warrior who could walk into the physical landscape of a human soul and battle demons, I have to think about what kind of a person was capable of doing such a thing, and why, and what it is like for him not to be able to do it anymore, and how he copes with being a slave... This is not anyone I know personally...well it is now, as I spent many hours a day for about four years with him!