Interviews

UK author Nick Stone landed on the noir crime fiction scene with a bang. His debut thriller MR. CLARINET garnered wide praise and two literary awards, the 2006 Crime Writers of America Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, and 2007’s International Thriller Writers Best First Novel. Laser-like dialogue, gruesome crime scenes, and whipsaw pacing are hallmarks of Stone’s style, wielded with great effect for his followup novel, KING OF SWORDS, which released December 2. His scruffy everyman protagonist Max Mingus has struck a chord with demanding thriller readers, no easy feat in a saturated genre.

But his quick rise to the top of must-read thriller lists wasn’t without it’s bumps. Stone mastered the craft of writing the way most of us do: trial and error, studying the masters, and dogged hard work. A wicked sense of humor has also supported him through those years in the wilderness, when most writers either give up or get published. Luckily, it was the latter for Stone.

Please enjoy the first part of our two-part interview with Nick Stone.

Q: Tell us about your road to publication

Nick Stone: My road to publication is a long, crooked, deeply rutted dirt track which suddenly, at the very end, becomes an airport runway.

I started writing when I was 11. Crime fiction. Yup, I was precocious. I’d watched an adaptation of Hammett’s Dain Curse on tv, with James Coburn in the lead role. The next day I started writing my first “novel”. It was a crime/horror hybrid. All the characters became vampires – including the narrator. Like I said, I was precocious. Good thing I grew out of that: from Pasteur to The Ramones, pioneers never get thanked in their lifetimes.

I spent the next twenty odd years trying to finish a novel. I thought I wanted to be a literary writer. Big mistake. I tried to read like whoever I was impressed with at the time. I sent some stuff out and got a rainforest’s worth of rejection slips back. I actually remember doing a mass mailing once and hearing the responses literally landing with a thud. It actually made me laugh at the time. I’m part-Scottish, part-Haitian, which means I can find humour in the bleakest and blackest of times. It’s in my DNA.

I should point out that during those twenty years of “development”, I didn’t read much crime fiction.

Christina Katz, who you may know as the blogsphere’s Writer Mama, knows a thing or two about creating platforms and becoming known. Her first book, Writer Mama: How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids, became a sensation and landed her on Good Morning America, even though she began her venture seven years ago just “for fun.” When I first learned about her new book, Get Known Before the Book Deal, I knew I had to get my hands on it; here was a writer willing to preach what she’d so successfully practiced. We’re thrilled Christina took time out of her busy schedule to talk about the first steps writers should take to build career-launching platforms. Because when it comes to first steps, Mama, of course, knows best. (Psst, it’s also her birthday today!) Enjoy!

Q: What drives you as a writer? What passions have brought you to this place, today?

CK: I’m a teacher by nature, as well as being a writer, so helping writers is my passion and my purpose. I’m especially tuned in to methods that help writers overcome the typical pitfalls—the places where writers tend to get just plain stuck. Because I work with over one hundred writers a year, I’m uniquely tuned in to writers both as individuals and a group. I’ve witnessed too many writers, who were off to a great start, hopping online and quickly becoming very lost. I started to write about platform in Writer Mama, How To Raise A Writing Career Alongside Your Kids, but I eventually noticed that more practical information on platform development was needed. My platform is based on helping others. I have a vested interest in seeing the people I work with—and those who read my book—succeed. Writers are my tribe. Everyone has one. Finding them and serving their interests is the key to success.

Q: Tell us about your new book. Why did you decide to write it? How did you feel it would round out what’s out there in terms of resources for writers?

CK: At every writers conference I gave my presentation of the same name, I took polls and found that about 50 percent of attendees expressed a desire for a clearer understanding of platform. Some were completely in the dark about it, even though they were attending a conference in hopes of landing a book deal. Since book deals are granted based on the impressiveness of a writer’s platform, I noticed a communication gap that needed to be addressed. I realized that writers often underestimate how important platform is and don’t leverage the platform they already have enough.

My intention was that Get Known would be the book every writer would want to read before attending a writer’s conference, and that it would increase any writer’s chances of writing a saleable proposal and landing a book deal whether they pitched the book in-person or by query. As I was writing the book, I saw how this type of information was often being offered as “insider secrets” at outrageous prices. No one should have to pay thousands of dollars for the information they can find in my book […]

She doesn’t plot in advance, has no compunction at all over plunging forward into a scene without knowing how it will end up, and doesn’t worry about “the market” . . . she trusts in her readers. Fearlessness is Diana Gabaldon’s secret weapon when it comes to her writing. With a slew of bestsellers and more on the way, Gabaldon doesn’t waste any time handwringing. She just gets down to business and trusts that the magic will happen through the writing. For me as a writer, it’s been incredibly inspiring and reassuring. (Missed parts one and two? Click HERE)

Enjoy the final installment of our interview with Diana Gabaldon.

Q: You’ve written your books in both first and third person. What’s the deciding factor for you in choosing POV?

DG: It’s just a matter of who’s talking to me. I wrote OUTLANDER as a first-person narrative, both because Claire Randall seemed to want to talk that way and because it seemed like the easiest thing to do—I wrote that book for practice, in order to learn what it took to write a novel, and didn’t see any point in making things more complicated than necessary.

First person has substantial advantages, in terms of intimacy and immediacy, but there are a couple of minor limitations—the main one being the difficulty of describing events that take place outside the narrator’s presence. There are technical ways of getting around that, though. And if you use more than one point of view in a novel, it really doesn’t matter that much whether these are all first, third, or a mixture.

Claire is the only character in the OUTLANDER universe who does speak in first person—but I use multiple third-person POV’s (in fact, someone recently pointed out to me that I’d been adding one new POV per book, which I hadn’t consciously realized), as needed.

Now, the protagonist of a contemporary crime novel that I’ve had cooking (slowly) for some time also speaks to me in first person, though Tom Kolodzi’s voice is different than Claire’s:

RED ANT’S HEAD

Copyright 2008 Diana Gabaldon

It’s part of Diana Gabaldon lore that she wrote her first novel OUTLANDER for practice, little dreaming it would end up published, let alone a best-selling phenomenon. Would that anyone’s first novel land on the bestseller lists rather than the dustbin, but it’s a testament to Gabaldon’s skill as a natural storyteller that her novice effort captivated millions of readers world-wide.

Perhaps that’s why Gabaldon is content to let the plot unfold as she writes, rather than plot extensively in advance. For Gabaldon, the story reveals itself organically, and she doesn’t panic if a resolution or plot twist steers the story in another direction entirely. The result is a book that keeps the reader on edge wondering and worrying where their beloved characters will end up.

Gabaldon also has a gift for weaving history into her story so that we are treated with not only a great yarn but an informative excursion into the 18th century with blood, grime, smells and less than stellar dentistry.

We are pleased to present part two of our interview with Diana Gabaldon (missed part one? Click HERE).

Q: Your books are extremely detailed with period detail ranging from the big macro world of politics to the smallest everyday moment. What research method works best for you? What are some tips you could give writers to use historical resources to their fullest?

DG: It would be stretching things to dignify the way I do research as one “method,” let alone several. Hmm. Well, let’s see—for one thing, I do the research and the writing concurrently, and they feed off each other. That is, I may be writing along and discover that I need to know X. I go and look for X—but along the way, I happen to find out something utterly fascinating about Y (which I would never have thought of looking for in the first place), which in turn gives me the kernel for a new scene. Which I write, and in the process, need to find material regarding Z. And in the process of researching Z… it’s a positive feedback loop.

Beyond that…well, let’s do a brief example.

She’s been breaking “the rules” of writing and publishing since she first wrote a story about a World War II nurse who travels back in time to fall in love with a Scots highlander, which, incidentally, was twice as long as a standard commercial novel. Her publisher didn’t know how to market the book. Reviewers tried to pigeonhole it as a romance. Or historical-adventure. Or a paranormal. Or . . . whatever.

But millions of readers didn’t care where it sat on the bookshelves, all they knew was that she’d written a great book. Diana Gabaldon’s debut novel Outlander became a word-of-mouth success and left readers hungry for more adventures of protagonists Claire Beauchamp Randall and Jamie Fraser.

Gabaldon’s since gone on to write six books in the Outlander series, with a seventh in progress, and the Lord John books, which started as a short story about a minor character in the Outlander series, but has since taken a life of its own. She’s garnered a loyal readership, and has satisfied their demands for details about the world she’s created by publishing The Outlandish Companion, a compendium of all Outlander errata for fans.

Gabaldon’s books are genre fiction at its best. Vivid imagery, authentic dialogue, characters readers fall in love with, inventive plot-twists and historical accuracy combine in a page-turning read. I clear the decks for at least a week when I start a Gabaldon novel, because I know I’m not going to get anything else done, and I spend a lot of time muttering, “how does she do it?” She takes her craft seriously, but there’s also a certain magic to her prose that no craft book can impart.

We were thrilled when she agreed to a Q&A with Writer Unboxed, because her work is the epitome of unboxed writing.

Please settle back and enjoy part one of our interview with Diana Gabaldon.

Q: You came from academia and were a pioneer in the use of computers for scientific analysis. What made you decide to pursue writing fiction? Did you have any notion that you could become a full-time novelist at the time?

Diana Gabaldon: I’m tempted to say, “See the Prologue in THE OUTLANDISH COMPANION.” Everybody asks this. And it’s either the nine-page Whole Story , or the short version: i.e., I always knew I wanted to be a novelist, so I thought I’d write a book for practice to learn how. I did. That was OUTLANDER. Having decided that apparently I could write a decent novel, I kept doing it.

And yes, I did have a notion that I could become a full-time novelist. I didn’t know for sure—no one does—but I certainly thought it was possible. As I not infrequently point out to people, the fact that I had not written a novel prior to OUTLANDER didn’t mean that I had no idea what a sentence was. I’d been writing—and selling—nonfiction as a freelance for years: I wrote not only academic texts and scholarly articles, but encyclopedia articles, software documentation, training materials, reviews for computer magazines, popular science articles and Walt Disney comic books. No, wait, […]

When we heard about entrepreneur Mark Levin’s book, The Fine Print of Self Publishing: The Contracts & Services of 45 Self-Publishing Companies Analyzed Ranked & Exposed, we were immediately intrigued. We don’t know a lot about self-publishing, to be honest, but we know the idea of it appeals to many of you, including our own Ray Rhamey. How does one go about having their work self-published? Are some companies more reputable than others? What, exactly, does a writer need to be aware of — and beWare of?

(Would you like a copy of Mark’s book for yourself? Read on to find out how you might be eligible.)

We’re thrilled that Mark Levine took some time out to talk to us about his book and about self-publishing in general. Enjoy!

Q: What inspired you to write The Fine Print of Self-Publishing?

ML: A fellow author published by the publisher of my first novel contacted me and asked if I could help him get out of a contract he signed with a self-publishing company. The contract was awful and gave this company the rights to the author’s book for the term of the copyright (the life of the author, plus 70 years). This author also happened to be a professor at UC-Berkley. I figured if a guy this educated was signing a contract just to get published, there were probably thousands of writers out there in the same boat. That one incident was my market research before I wrote the first edition of The Fine Print in 2004.

Q: What’s your background, what do you do now?

ML: I was a lawyer by training, but was very entrepreneurial and wanted to own a business. In 2000, I started an Internet company, Click Industries that did online business filings (corporations, copyright registrations, assumed business names, etc.). That company has grown an expanded to 35+ websites across many different fields, including book publishing. In addition to running Click, I’ve published three books (including The Fine Print).

Q: Do you think e-publishing and self publishing will increase or decrease in the future, and why?

If you missed part 1 of my interview with debut novelist and Backspace co-founder Karen Dionne, click HERE, then come back. Today, Karen and I chat a little more about her process and challenges while writing her novel, Freezing Point–an environmental thriller. We’ll also discuss her unboxed publicity efforts and her other baby, Backspace.

Enjoy!

Part 2: Interview with Karen Dionne

Q: As a debut novelist, have you learned anything about the publishing industry that has surprised you?

KD: I think the thing that most surprised me about the publishing industry was its glacial pace. My novel sold in January of 2007, with a publication date of October 2008. Twenty-one months – that’s the gestation period of an elephant!

Q: What efforts are you taking to promote your work? Can you share any promotional tips and/or advice with us?

KD: I discovered an interesting thing about myself on the road to publication: I like marketing and promotion. I enjoy thinking up promotional ideas that are a good fit for me and my novel. And because I’d much rather lead the pack than follow it, some of the things I’ve tried are a little outside the norm. I sent my novel on a “Freezing Point Pre-Publication World Book Tour” without me (a reasonable success), and set up a Freezing Point “Star in My Book Video” contest (not quite as successful).

But the centerpiece of my personal marketing plans was the online book launch party I threw the week my novel published, which turned out to be every bit as wonderful as I had hoped.

Karen Dionne isn’t just the co-founder of one of the Internet’s most valuable resource sites for writers, Backspace, she’s also a debut novelist. Her book, Freezing Point, offers readers something new–a gripping blend of suspense and horror, with a scientific edge. Intrigued? Here’s a potent teaser swiped from Karen’s website:

As he faces the frozen behemoth of a giant iceberg, environmental activist Ben Maki sees Earth’s future. Clean drinking water for millions, waiting to be tapped from the polar ice. The Soldyne Corporation backs Ben’s grand philanthropic vision for a better today—while making its own plans for a very profitable tomorrow.

Rebecca Sweet lives for the cause—an eco-terrorist who will do whatever she must to protect the earth. And Ben Maki’s ideas have set her on the path to war…

All of them will be drawn into a battle between hope and helplessness, power and pride. But they are about to discover that deep within the ice waits an enemy more deadly than any could imagine—an apocalyptic horror mankind may not survive.

We’re thrilled Karen took some time out to talk about her novel and her process with us. Enjoy!

Part 1: Interview with Karen Dionne

Q: Tell us a little about your journey. Was writing a novel something you always wanted to do? What was it about writing environmental thrillers that attracted you?

KD: I came to novel writing relatively late in life. I was never the kind of person who felt compelled to tell stories, though I was always involved in creative pursuits of one sort or another – gardening, weaving, N-scale model train layouts. But ten years ago when my son was a teenager and I was encouraging him to enter the same writing contest in which I’d won awards when I was in high school, I started thinking, “What about me? I used to be a pretty good writer.” I’ve always loved science, and at the time, I was reading science thrillers by Michael Crichton and Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, so naturally, that’s what came out. I didn’t deliberately set out to write an environmental thriller, but writers tend to write their passion, and I’ve always had strong feelings about the way man is ruining the earth.

Q: Your debut novel, Freezing Point, is about a man who hopes to tap into a new water source by melting polar ice caps via satellite-delivered microwaves, unearthing a deadly force in the process. The book is part thriller, part horror, and propelled by all things science. You’ve written, though, that you’re not a scientist. What prompted the idea for Freezing Point, and how did you go about researching and writing it?

“Think authenticity and heart.” 

That’s the advice that acclaimed YA author K.L. Going shared in Part One of her two-part interview with Writer Unboxed, and that pretty much sums up her books: authentic characters facing harrowing problems, and written in a spare, literary voice that never talks down to the audience.  Her books consistently land on recommended reading lists and garner critical reviews.  I read her novel St. Iggy, a story about a teen looking for his crack-addicted mother and a bit of redemption, and was blown away by the character-driven story of heartbreak and hope.  Going is a must-read for those who wish to write contemporary YA literature.

Going’s how-to book for Writer’s Digest, Writing and Selling the Young Adult Novel, not only delves into the nuts ‘n bolts of writing for the exploding YA market, but also explains the process of submission, and what picky teens expect from their books.

Please enjoy part two of our two-part interview with K.L. Going. 

Q: Do you feel that the market has changed since you started writing YA?

KL: Yes, I do. When I wrote my first YA novel about the gay straight student alliance group this was a topic that had hardly been covered in teen books. I searched for novels on the subject and they were few and far between. That novel actually had two editors interested in it, and we only ever sent it to five editors in total… then I got distracted by Fat Kid Rules the World, which sold very quickly, and by the time I got back to that first book, I found that the market had changed significantly. Now there are many, many books that deal with gay, lesbian, and transgender issues, and I found that my book was very quickly outdated. This seems to be part of an overall trend of YA books becoming more and more diverse. You’ll see many different types of narrators represented in YA now.

Q: Your own novels have won literary prizes and have appeared on several editors’ choice and library recommends lists. How did that feel when your first novel FAT KID RULES THE WORLD garnered so much praise? Did you feel pressured in subsequent novels to live up to the reputation?

WU contributor Allison Winn Scotch‘s second novel, Time of My Life, releases today, October 7th. How does this novel differ from her first, The Department of Lost and Found? First off, Time of My Life has a new publisher–Shaye Areheart Books, an imprint of Random House. It also has an intriguing high-concept twist (psst, you can read an excerpt of ToML at Allison’s site right now, HERE). But there are plenty of other differences, too…

We caught up with Allison to ask a few questions about her new book, including its unique challenges and rewards.

Q: What’s the premise of your new book?

AWS: The external premise is the story of a woman who, superficially, seems to have it all – a loving husband, a cherubic daughter, a huge suburban house – but who feels nevertheless empty and is haunted by her “what ifs.” She wakes up one morning seven years in the past and has the opportunity to relive her life, correcting her so-called mistakes and righting, if she so chooses, her previous course. The deeper premise explores those what ifs and what it takes – in our marriage, in our parenting, in our jobs – to make us happy and let go of those lingering doubts that, all too often, can shadow our lives and our psyches.

Q: What would you like people to know about the story itself?

AWS: I think people open up the book and expect it to be lighter fare – and yes, part of that is – but I also think (and hope) that I dug deeper than what you might expect. I’ve had a lot of early readers tell me that Jillian’s story really stuck with them for days on end, that it helped them consider their marriages and their “what if” moments, and see where and how their lives could have been shaped differently…and also why they’re so happy with their current course. The book explores a lot of themes – motherhood, working women, marital burnout, infertility, parental discord – and I really hope that some of these themes resonate for every single reader, even if none of us have ever had the opportunity to wake up seven years in the past and reinvent our lives.

Q: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?

With four critically-acclaimed YA novels under her belt and a slew of writing credits, including freelance book-doctor, K.L. Going was the perfect person for Writer’s Digest to turn to for a comprehensive how-to book on writing for the exploding teen fiction market. In WRITING AND SELLING THE YA NOVEL, Going dissects this hot market and offers useful techniques for crafting a novel that appeals to a mercurial teen readership.

A former assistant for the Curtis Brown Literary Agency, Going has had her finger on the pulse of this demographic since she hit the library starred booklists for her debut novel FAT KID RULES THE WORLD, which garnered critical praise and a Michael L. Printz honor. Her contemporary novels explore how teens cope with the unpalatable realities of poverty and drug abuse in graceful and often funny narratives. With an edgy writer’s voice and a willingness to explore the darker edge of teen life, she has earned a long list of accolades.

We are pleased to present part one of our two-part interview with K. L. Going.

Q: Can you share with us your journey to publication? What was it about writing for teens that attracted you?

KL Going: I never thought I’d become an author, but I always loved to write and had been doing so as a hobby for years. In fact, I wrote my first novel in high school. It was a fantasy novel. I didn’t start writing for teens until much later in life when I happened upon an article in Newsweek that so intrigued me I decided to write a novel about it. The story was about a group of teens in a small midwestern town who were trying to start a gay-straight student alliance group and running into major opposition from people in their school and in their town. That novel didn’t end up getting published, but it did lead me into the young adult genre, which was a perfect fit for me. I love the emotions you can delve into and the whole process of coming-of-age is fascinating to me. After that book, I wrote Fat Kid Rules the World and that sold very quickly. I’ve been publishing books ever since.

Q: It seems as if you’ve always been drawn to the book world and worked in many segments of the industry: bookseller, assistant in at Curtis Brown Literary Agency, and now author and freelance book doctor. What were some of the things that you learned from these different experiences that helped you with writing your novels?

KL: The most important thing I learned was perspective.

Please note: This interview was conducted by fantasy author, and WU contributor, Juliet Marillier. If you missed parts one and two, click HERE and HERE.

In the final part of our interview, British fantasy author Joe Abercombie talks about battles, fantasy names, the art of juggling three separate story lines, and what’s in store for him now his trilogy, The First Law, is complete.

Q: Before They Are Hanged, the second book in The First Law, is structured around three sets of characters – one set on an epic journey, another in a besieged city, a third waging war out in the countryside. They don’t all converge even at the end (I didn’t mind because I had the third book all ready to read.) Did you write Before They are Hanged in chapter by chapter sequence or did you work on each separate strand on its own? What was your planning process for the book – deciding where to cut between threads, keeping the timing correct and so on?

JA: I tend to mix and match approaches as it seems appropriate, and to try and keep myself as interested as possible. In the case of that second book, which as you say is split into three separate strands, I wrote each strand separately, then intercut the different chapters, later perhaps introduced some links between them. I tried to vary the rhythm to keep things interesting for the reader as much as possible, so as the three stories all come to a climax half way through the book, they cut faster and faster between with shorter and shorter chapters. Kind of a trick applied from film editing, I guess.

Q: Names of people and places in epic fantasy are all too often a mish-mash of different cultures and times, or inventions full of x’s, z’s and apostrophes. I was convinced by the names in The First Law, which are loosely based on various real language groups, such as Dutch, Spanish and perhaps Arabic. How did you decide on your names? Is your world loosely based on the Mediterranean region?

Please note: This three-part interview was conducted by fantasy author, and WU contributor, Juliet Marillier. If you missed part one, click HERE.

In his epic fantasy trilogy, The First Law, British author Joe Abercrombie takes a bold and irreverent approach to the conventions of the genre. Even more remarkable than his unconventional storytelling is the way he draws the reader right into the minds and hearts of his damaged, troubled, less-than-admirable central characters. This week, Joe talks about his approach to characterization and voice.

Q: Of the six POV characters in The First Law trilogy, five are men, and within your tight third person narrative each has a very distinct voice. How did you go about developing those voices? Was the process, initially at least, more conscious or instinctive? What writing techniques did you employ?

JA: It always seemed the right way to go to give the different point of view characters their own tone of voice, to let the feel of the prose hopefully communicate something about that character. That’s the kind of prose I like myself, so that’s the kind I try to write. It also allowed me to get some variety of style in there, which hopefully is good for both reader and writer in such lengthy books. I had a few basic approaches I wanted to try, some of them major – Glokta’s thoughts are in italics, Logen has his repeated catchphrases, the Dogman thinks in his earthy Northern dialect, and some more subtle – Ferro’s chapters tend to be in short, staccato sentences, with long paragraphs then emphasized single lines, and as she’s colour-blind, there are never any colours used in her descriptive paragraphs, which I felt worked well with her emotional flatness.

Largely the development of the voices was trial and error and, to begin with at least, an awful lot of revision, feeling out what worked and then applying it to other sections from the same point of view. Generally when the books had been drafted I’d go over all the chapters or pieces from a given point of view and revise them together for a few days, try and get as much of the feel of that character’s individual voice as possible into my head and onto the page.

Q: Over the course of your epic story, your protagonists journey, suffer and struggle. They fight and flee, they torture, maim and kill, they plot and scheme, they form lasting bonds and deliver wounding betrayals. This is a story about men and the relationships between men (leader / follower; brothers / comrades; mentor / protégé) As a female reader I found the insight into male psychology in your books fascinating. On the other hand there are very few female characters, and the only one who has POV scenes is as atypical a female as you could find. Is this imbalance purely because of the nature of the story, with its focus on war? Are you equally comfortable writing male and female POV?