Rants and realities

When Everything Burns…

Smoky cabin 2016

…sounds ominous, but it is.

2016 has been a hard year for what seems like the majority of people around me. It hasn’t been a terrible year for my family as a whole (massive touch wood, since we still have a few more days left), but perhaps I should have listened when David Bowie died and been prepared.

I’ve blogged about how important he was to me creatively and on a personal level as well, so that was not a good start to the year. Then in November I though for sure 2016 was going to kick me in the creative guts once more, when the wildfires hit the Gatlinburg, Tennessee area.

I’ve also blogged about the specialness of that place over the years, as it is where the talented Alex White organises Smoky Writers. Twenty writers, two chefs, moonshine, a beautiful log cabin, and a whole glorious week with nothing to do but soak up the creative environment and write. The Smoky Mountains are simply a stunning place to get in touch with your creative side.

Alex summed it up well when he said ‘this is my Disneyland.’

So right when the Smoky Mountains were at their driest, arsonists struck. Setting a fire on November 23rd, they caused massive and immediate damage to the area. 20,000 acres of the forest were burned, fourteen people died in the flames, and countless more lost homes and businesses.

One of those places was the cabin we had shared this year, and had booked for the next year. It seemed that 2016 was not done kicking people about. This beautiful place where many lived and even more visited was devastated.

I felt just grief thinking of this place, this beautiful place was gone. I thought of the view from the cabin, I thought of the family who owned it, and I thought of the long, winding road that the cabin shared, and that people had fled down while everything burned around them.

If there is a metaphor more suitable for this year, I don’t know one. Still it was hard to know what to do.

And then I realised all I had to do was look around me. In my immediate circle. Alex jumped in to secure us another cabin for 2017. Others set about immediately deciding what we could do. Of course our greatest strength is words, so there will probably be a project springing from the ashes with proceeds to go the community. The family of us Smoky Writers gathered, and found positive things they could offer to the situation. This place might not be where we live but it is our creative home.

Further out, the community of Sevier County began to pick itself up. Its most famous daughter, Dolly Parton, stepped in to help immediately. December 13th she raised 9 million dollars with a telethon, and also started her My People Fund. I’ve always had a soft spot for Dolly since not only is she talented, but she is unabashed about who she is. ‘It’s expensive to look this cheap’- reminds me of Mae West. Our plan is the next Smoky Writers Retreat is to hit Dollywood or the Dixie Stampede.

So we’ll be going back to the Smokys in February, and I am sure we are going to see plenty of devastation, but we will also see tough mountain folk rebuilding their lives. That toughness is the only answer when the world burns.

One foot in front of the other. Together.

The Story Matters

Lately with all the negative and frankly terrifying things in the news, I have been thinking about the importance of story.

In a world of turmoil, how can stories and words possibly matter? As an author you can feel super small in that sea of vitriol and violence. Like you are throwing stones into an endless ocean.

Then I realized the world around us is made up of stories, because we are constantly telling stories to ourselves, as a towns and as nations.

America in the nineteenth century had a powerful story; come to America, and no matter who you are, with hard work, you can make your dreams a reality. New Zealand around the same time had a different, but similar story; everyone gets a fair go here. In America recently it has become ‘America is the greatest nation in the world’, while New Zealand is ‘the little nation that punches above its weight.’ That’s why NZ loves its All Blacks rugby team; it embodies that story. Soldier Field in Chicago was filled with 60,000 people to see the ABs play. A story can be that powerful.

It’s not just nations, but cities too. Wellington, my hometown, told itself it was in the 1980s and 1990s a boring, grey, only the government kind of spot. Then in the new century, they changed that to arts, culture and a foodie paradise. Detroit in the 1890s was The Paris of the West, then the story became Motor City, then more recently depressed and wrecked. Now it is turning to arts, hope, and a we-can-do it attitude.

So who makes these stories? What winds of change blow through to make these narratives change? It’s a gathering of wills, a change in the mindset of the people. While one person can instigate change, it has to be picked up and carried by the people as a whole. They have to buy into that story and move it forward, making it a reality.

So in our world it is the people that make the change. Right now, it feels like America is still trying to find its new story, and as a writer I can tell you, finding a new story, and working it properly can be difficult.

So in this national emotional turmoil, I still manage to find a story to write, inspired by this storytelling of place and heart. It’s one about that human mind-meld, and a little bit about the spirits of the Fey. (You didn’t think Chasing the Bard was the only story I had to tell with them) It also contains the Iron Lily, my 19th century strong-woman, and an older immigrant grandmother in New York City. It’s about a city finding its story, and who gets to decide what that will be.

It’ll be told in multiple first person stories, a first for me, but one that works well for this story I think.

It’ll be full of the joy, the madness, the beauty and the darkness of New York City, whose history I am falling in love with.

And it will reflect the importance of the stories we tell ourselves and each other. Hope among the shadows.

The Face of Your Story

Facebook certainly has developed a way to remind you rather forcefully of the passing of time. Yes, logging onto Facebook this morning, the memories popped up and reminded me it was six years ago that I was shown my cover art for Geist.

Six years ago.

However, I do remember it very well. It was my first NYC publishing cover, and at that stage I had zero input into what it looked like. Yep, it was a total dice roll. Luckily I must have rolled a natural 20, because what Jason Chan produced was absolutely gorgeous. It showed my character (MY CHARACTER, my mind screamed when I saw it), Sorcha Faris. She was dressed exactly as I had written her, but he had captured an expression on her face that reflected the character beneath.

And it wasn’t just me with my bias that thought so. That cover went on to win the Chesley for Paperback Book Cover Illustration. Jason wasn’t at the event, but I got to accept the award on his behalf. I nearly cried.

So yes, authors can get very, very attached to their covers.

After ten books with big publishing, the cover process changed. I was asked if I had ideas, to supply images to give the artist ideas, and even my opinion on the cover before it was released. I got a change made to a dragon!

I was extremely lucky, over and over again. Artists like Jason Chan, and Karla Ortiz brought my vision to light, and in turn inspired me to write the sequels. It was a delicious loop.

I have tried doing my own covers. Once. Early on.

Yeah, I quit doing that…however, I do know what I like.

I like characters to have heads. I know in the romance genre the reasoning goes that it allows the reader to identify with the main character, or to imagine themselves in that place…but for fantasy I need a face.

I need the front cover image to convey a feeling, and a mood that goes with the book.

I love to see real art and care.

Recently I’ve been lucky enough to work even closer with artist for my own independent books. Alex White for Weather Child and Ministry Protocol. Most recently Michael Ward of Go ForWard Photography and Starla Huchton of Designed by Starla for The Ghost Rebellion.

And I learned some things. If you are working with good people, let them be good. Even though now I am paying for these shoots and covers, I am a writer. They are the visual artists. Some of these shoots I have known exactly what I wanted (‘hey Alex, I want to see a women hovering in mid-air in the middle of the thunder-storm’) and others we’ve given them free rein.

Sure, as the person paying we have the final say, and we are consulted with about what is happening, but often the magic of the cover is uncovered in the process of creation. Watching Michael Ward, move the models around, work the lighting and the composition…yeah, I just sat back and let him work his magic.

Hopefully my good luck with cover art continues, but I will never forget the fear and trepidation on getting that email with the subject ‘here’s your cover art’. It was swiftly followed by the delight of an author that finds an artist has truly brought her ideas to life.

The Struggle is Real

Leaping into writing is a wonderful thing. It’s magic and inspiration and worlds only you can build.

For many folks it is the culmination of their dreams to get published. They push and they push. They hack out little spaces of time to write. They wrestle with real life, while trying to create an imaginary one. They try so hard to be the author they always wanted to be.

That is difficult enough, right? That should be the whole struggle.

It isn’t.

One thing emerging writers don’t understand, is that those initial pains are not the only pains ahead. You think once you are past those initial struggles everything will be alright. You’ll reach the promised land of publication and all will be well.

However it isn’t. Wow…that sounds awful to say to writers…but it doesn’t get better. There will always be pains and struggle in being an author, and they don’t stop coming when you ‘make it’ either. To say otherwise would be disingenuous, and I think by not saying it, many writers early in their careers are shocked when they encounter them.

Perhaps people don’t talk about those struggles, but they are real. Reviewers might not like your book. Publishers might not do the things they promised they would do. Sometimes payment is that thing. You might get a cover that horrifies you. Rejection, which you thought you had left behind, still can haunt you. Editors may rip apart your manuscript. Heck, I know of one author who had a contract for their second book, and when they delivered it was told nothing about it was what they want it. That author had to write a whole new book.

My first manuscript edit made me cry at the sea of red ink, and I was sure there was nothing to be done with my sad, sorry self.

However, I did pick myself up. Eventually, I found that my determination to write was greater than the despair. The urge to write was stronger than all of those things put in front of me.

That is what you as a writer have to feel, all the way through your career. Some don’t. Plenty of writers get a book or two published, and decide that it isn’t really for them. They’ve scratched that itch, and there might be other things that become more attractive to them than writing. That’s OK. Constant rejection and pain will be worth it for some, and for others it will be too much of an emotional burden to bear.

Are words really worth all that effort?

For me, yes they are, but I also know there are the highs that make the struggle through the problems worth it.

As you set out on this journey, the best weapon you have is knowledge. There will be struggles. Just like life. It is up to you as a person to decide if you are prepared to fight through that.

If you are, pick up that pen, and join me on the journey.

Rumination on Ten Years of Podcasting

Ten years ago this month I released my very first podcast episode. This realization struck me last Christmas, and I was once again reminded, damn time flies.

Weaver’s Web was my first novel that I had finished, and I had sold it to a small Australian ebook publish in 2002. Ebooks back then were…well they weren’t a thing, and the amount of money I made in a year was perhaps enough to buy a cup of coffee.

Then the second book I sold was Chasing the Bard, to DragonMoon Press, and that was when everything changed, and not just writing wise. I was soon corresponding with another author, Tee Morris, and it was he that convinced me to get into podcasting. So I took my first book that wasn’t doing anything, bought myself a microphone, and leapt into it.

Since that moment I have recorded and released four complete novels as podcasts, produced nearing seventy short stories, and done three chat-style podcasts. I’ve learned to work with guest voices, wrangle sound effects and bed music, and mix it all into an mp3.

But it is far more than the technical strides I have made over these last ten years. A lot more. In podcasting I found an online home. It has given me a voice, a particularly New Zealand voice, on the internet. Along the way I made friends. So many friends. More than I had in New Zealand, and in places I had never even heard of. I remember getting an email from Estonia about how much a listener had enjoyed Chasing the Bard. These were the kind of things I could never have imagined happening when I tentatively posted my first episode of Weaver’s Web.

It also gave me that necessary but required thing, a platform. When I got the first nibbles from Ace publishing about Geist, they wanted to know my author platform, my numbers, and podcasting was definitely one of those things. All together they counted, and Ace took a chance on me and my writing.

Podcasting has come a long way in those ten years, and yet in someways is still exactly the same. Big business has moved into the sphere and many of the faces I used to see at the top of the podcasting category in iTunes have been pushed further down. However, the success of podcasts like Welcome to Nightvale do show that there is still plenty of room for great story-telling. And even better, a lot of the people I listened to are still podcasting in some form or other.

I am sure that podcasting has changed a lot of lives, not just mine.

In short, I don’t know how my life would have gone without podcasting. I wouldn’t be living in America, a mother, or with half of what I have done accomplishedâ€”if anything. I look back on that first choice to pick up a microphone as one of the important pivot points of my life.

And most of all, I have no plans to stop podcasting anytime soon.