As I write, it’s the day after a pretty good Christmas. Among the scraps of ribbon, the bits of confetti, the sounds of new toys (and the feline enjoyment of the first two and the boxes the third came in), my eye is inexorably drawn to the next holiday. My eye is also drawn to the remnants scattered across the lovely tray of cookies I received, but we’ll ignore that. As hard as we can.
I’ve had some pretty crappy things happen in the past few months, things that have tested my strength and the strength of my marriage. However, I have much to be grateful for. I have an amazing family. Not only are they generous and wonderful, but they’ve all helped my husband and I when we needed it, especially during this time. They gave us things they didn’t have to give. They’ve tried to keep our spirits up. My in-laws even dropped everything and came over just to talk. To give us love and support, something we really needed. In the wake of what happened (and I’m intentionally being vague for privacy reasons), I was very, very angry. Mostly at the other people involved, at our circumstances, and at myself. While it wasn’t my fault or my husband’s, I felt responsible for our financial well-being and got down on myself for not making enough money to carry us. Typical me, though. I’ve always had the highest expectations of myself.
I wish I had a lovely tale like Siri does about the background of my story, Frozen, for the Winter’s Night anthology. One that invokes childhood memories and beliefs. But I don’t, because, unfortunately, my brain works in a much more convoluted way and I long ago learned to let it do as it will.
To celebrate the release of our new anthology, Winter’s Night, I’d like to share the inspiration behind the short story I’ve included in the anthology. I’ve always loved Christmas – the lights and the glitter, the sense of mystery, the traditions, the celebration at the coldest and darkest time of year. And this from a northern Canadian. But for our winter anthology, I decided instead to write about Inuit mythology.
Siri here. I’m very pleased to introduce our guest blogger for today, Nancy Kelley. Nancy is a friendly Tweeter, a hardworking writer, and an indie author with a twist. Here she is to explain… — I write Jane Austen sequels. My new book, His Good Opinion, is Pride and Prejudice from Mr. Darcy’s point of view. The novel I wrote this year during National Novel Writing Month is a sequel to P&P, focusing on Colonel Fitzwilliam and Georgiana Darcy. I have two additional Austen novels turning over in the back of my mind, waiting for their turn. A humorous conversation plays out many times when I tell people I’m an author. “Oh really! What’s your book called?” “His Good Opinion. It’s a Pride and Prejudice sequel.” (Long pause, often accompanied by a blank look) “Oh. People do that?”
Edited by Siri Paulson With works by Kit Campbell, Siri Paulson, KD Sarge, and Erin Zarro. A Marine on leave. A heartfelt rondeau. An Inuit on the edge. A dreamer on a quest. What do they all have in common? They’re in the Turtleduck Press anthology Winter’s Night. Created as a sampling of our work, the anthology benefits UNICEF. Purchase for Kindle here, (UK here), or in one of the many formats offered by Smashwords. A paperback version is available from CreateSpace.
We’re pretty excited around here about our anthology Winter’s Night. This blog will be pretty short because we’re still working on it, making it awesomer! It amuses me because when we talked about doing an anthology, I mentioned that the story I had in mind was Christmas-related, but I hoped the whole collection wouldn’t be. I needn’t have worried. Winter’s Night has a Christmas story. It has a fairy tale. It has a rondeau, as well as two other poems. It has a story set in Inuit mythology. Turtleduckers…what can I say? We don’t do anything the traditional way. I hope you’ll check out Winter’s Night on December 1st. A percentage of our profits will be donated to UNICEF.
Any writer will tell you that there’s no shortage of ideas out there. Book ideas lurk around every corner, waiting to pounce. Short story ideas hide under your bed, ready to grab you by the ankle. There is no avoiding them. However, sometimes you are approached for something specific, and while you may have more ideas than you know what to with, you may not have anything ready to go.
At this time of year, the blogosphere is full of chatter about NaNoWriMo. Many writers love it. Other writers hate it. (Full disclosure: I fall into the former camp. This will be my seventh NaNo.) But what if you fall in between? What if you like the idea but you know there’s no way you can hit 50,000 words on a new novel in November? Here are some suggestions that might help, from least to most radical… 1. Do NaNo in another month. If you want to try a writing challenge but November is just a bad month, you have options! This year, the NaNoWriMo people put on Camp NaNoWriMo in the summer. They also do a screenwriting challenge, Script Frenzy. Other challenges have sprung up using the same model – NaNo-style challenges in most other months, National Novel Editing Month, National Novel Writing Year, and so on. Pick the one that works for you.
In the writing world, lots of advice gets flung about. Show, don’t tell. No prologues ever. Write with the reader in mind. One bit of dogma oft-repeated is that if you’re thinking of a genre story, ask yourself what makes it genre. Why does it need to be, say, science fiction? If it can occur just anywhere, why put it in outer space? Putting aside the implied stigma of “oh noes, don’t write genre if you don’t have to!” it’s actually a legitimate planning question. I’m all for chasing inspiration, but one should be sure it’s inspiration one follows, and not merely habit. So why am I writing SF? Especially unscientific SF, or as a friend on Twitter recently put it, “fantasy-ish stuff?” Even in the slums of genre, you see, a pecking order exists, and space opera is pretty low in the ranks. SF is about ideas, some will announce, forgetting the origins of SF in the pulp magazines. SF is about science, some will sneer. Faster Than Light travel is fantasy.* Why am I, then, writing stuff that makes me that oddest of creatures, a Turtleduck?