Write What You Know(?): How Reality Inspires Science Fiction by Jenny Martin

The fabulous Jenny Martin is here today! (Her debut, TRACKED, which I've heard amazing things about, will be released next May by Penguin Random House.) Her book has some fun, unique, fascinating elements that make her the perfect person to talk about how reality can inspire science fiction. Take it away, Jenny!

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True confession: I’ve never raced a stock car. I’ve never tested a jetpack or blasted through folded space. I’ve never even taken a course on high speed intergalactic sports and interstellar geo-political conflict.

And yet…I’ve written about all these things. My upcoming debut, Tracked, is about Phee Van Zant, a spitfire street racer from another far future world, who faces down an empire. You might say I completely ignored the old adage…write what you know.

Or did I?

See, TRACKED isn’t just a wild, shot-in-the-dark yarn. Truthfully, I borrowed a whole lot of its heart and soul from my little world. And I’d bet that many science fiction and fantasy authors do the same, spinning speculative threads from their own reality.

Often, it happens naturally. You experience something, a memory drifts in, and bam—that something filters into your work. Other times, you seek out connections. You research a topic until a burst of inspiration becomes a major plot point. For me, it took a little bit of both—background and sleuthing—to get those jetpacks off the ground.

In building TRACKED’s world, I first relied on memories. Dressing up as a settler for a ‘land run’ in second grade. Watching oil derricks and roustabout workers. Sitting in Oklahoma history class. Taking field trips to Woodward’s Plains Indian and Pioneers museum. It all came back to me when I was writing Phee’s story. Suddenly, I understood the history of her planet. I realized exactly why racing became so important to Castra, and how it evolved over time. Those Earthborn ancestors who raced to claim land in a new galaxy? They weren’t so different from my ancestors, the daring, but not-always-noble Boomers and Sooners who settled my home state and later, discovered oil there.

But memories weren’t enough. I had a more than a world to build. I had to flesh out the specifics of Phee’s sport. What would it be like to street race in a futuristic vehicle? Would virtual reality come into play? What would that look like? Feel like? How would interstellar circuit rallies work?

To answer those questions, I visited nearby Texas Motor Speedway. I interviewed an amateur stock car driver and peeked under the hood of his car. I devoured sources like:

• NASCAR, Rally and Formula One books, especially memoirs by racing superstars and veteran crew. (Despite the dubious title, Real Men Work in the Pits: A Life in NASCAR Racing by Jeff Hammond, is an awesome resource, BTW.)
• Books and articles on futurist gaming and military technology and virtual reality. War Play: Video Games and the Future of Armed Conflict by Corey Mead is a great find, since it covers all three at once!
•  Red Bulletin Magazine. Yep, you read that right. The energy drink empire publishes a magazine. And it’s awesome; an all-around incredible resource on extreme sports, technology, subculture, and futurism. In each issue, you’ll find features on high speed aeronautics, rally racing and other daredevil pursuits. The journalism and helpful info-graphics are truly stellar; I always come away with new info and ideas. Actually…forget I said that. Ignore Red Bulletin. Leave all that inspiration for me. ;) 

But seriously, I’d love to hear about your inspirations. Do you write sci fi or fantasy? How do you draw on real life experiences as you create new worlds?

Jenny Martin is a writer, librarian, and beatle-maniac. She lives in the Dallas/Fort Worth area with her husband and son, where she hoards books and blisses out to all kinds of live and recorded rock. Tracked, her debut, releases 5/05/15 from Dial, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Web site | Goodreads | Twitter

Corinne Duyvis on Capitalizing on What You Know

Today we welcome Corinne Duyvis, Author of Otherbound.

Capitalize On What You Know

Everybody has their own take on the famous adage of Write What You Know. My version is this: Capitalize On What You Know.

That is, if you have a passion, a quirk, knowledge about a particular topic, why not weave it into your writing?

It may not always work. It may not fit the book, or it may feel shoehorned in. That’s completely fair. In some circles, though, authors are often concerned it’ll feel like authorial intrusion.

“Oh, of course that character is a horse fanatic!” readers might say. “Have you ever read the author’s blog? She works with horses herself. So much for originality.”

Sometimes, I feel “originality” gets glamorized to an odd degree. Yes, it’s admirable to fully immerse yourself in a new topic as research for a book. To write something brand-new and wholly separate from yourself. To spend days or weeks researching something you don’t even care about.

You may need to do that level of research to do your book justice. After all, you don’t want to write about your own interests over and over. But why do some people feel the need to avoid those interests at all costs?

The thing is ... it’s your book. It’s your name on the cover. Why should it need to be completely separate from you, as a person? The goal isn’t to stay as anonymous as possible. The goal isn’t to write something that can’t be traced back to you.

The goal is to write a damn good book.

There’s nothing wrong with putting parts of yourself in your stories. Personally, I love discovering something about the author or their passions via their books!

In my debut Otherbound, I needed to build a secondary world, something I’d never done before. I merrily started weaving in parts of Dutch language and landscapes. I’m Dutch, and have lived in the Netherlands all my life; it’s a setting you rarely encounter in American YA, so I figured I’d capitalize on it.

Similarly, I’m bisexual, and so is one of Otherbound’s protagonists. I have novels featuring artists (like me), with autistic protagonists (hi), novels set in Amsterdam (I live here), novels featuring obsessive cat lovers (moi), novels featuring superhero nerds (what’s up), featuring bilingual characters (hoi) ...

I’ve written about a hundred things I’m not familiar with, but in the end, it’s these little bits of me tucked into a corner of the world, sitting on the shoulder of a character, that may help the book come alive. When you’re passionate about a topic, it bleeds through. These are the aspects we can portray with the utmost confidence, with full authenticity.

And in a genre featuring interdimensional travel, murderous vampires, and exploding planets, those aspects can be essential to grounding the story.

A lifelong Amsterdammer, Corinne Duyvis spends her days writing speculative young adult and middle grade novels. She enjoys brutal martial arts and gets her geek on whenever possible. Otherbound, her YA fantasy debut, released from Amulet Books/ABRAMS in the summer of 2014. It has received starred reviews. Kirkus called it "original and compelling; a stunning debut," while the Bulletin praised its "subtle, nuanced examinations of power dynamics and privilege."

Find Corinne at her Twitter or Tumblr. She is a co-founder of Disability in Kidlit and team member of We Need Diverse Books.

Little Things That Make World Building Work

Today’s guest is R.C. Lewis, who has taught math to teenagers for over ten years, including several where she found calculus is just as fun in American Sign Language. After a lifetime of thinking she didn’t have an ounce of creativity, she realized she just needed to switch to metric. Turns out whole liters were waiting to pour out, and she now writes geeky-chic sci-fi when she escapes the classroom. Her debut novel Stitching Snow releases October 14, 2014 from Hyperion. You can find R.C. on Twitter (@RC_Lewis) and at her website.

When you’re writing science fiction, world-building is a major consideration. For some writers, it’s the first consideration. Government structure, social hierarchy, clothes and customs and more.

Language is another aspect, and what I want to focus on. Not the global level—how many languages, who speaks each one, levels of formality. No, what I get caught up in are the tiny details. The individual words.

Sure, we can pretend we’re reading a translation of the “real” language, so anything in English is fair game. Sometimes that works just fine, but if we use certain words without thinking them over, we might kill the immersive nature of the reading experience.

Here are a couple of vocabulary areas I try to keep in mind:

Slang

Every society seems to have some form of slang. Personally, I’m rarely in favor of completely making up words for this purpose. If you think about the slang we have in our own society, it all has a root in something. Those roots can often tell you something about the values or focus of the society in question.

On a related note, this is especially true of swear words, which is why I’m especially not into purely made-up words for cussing. It’s a missed opportunity to show something about your world. Do they have puritanical roots similar to ours? Has a focus on technology taken over everything? Do they have long-standing superstitions that are so ingrained, people no longer actively think about the original meaning?

Units of Measure

Wait, measurement? Like, math and science class “don’t forget the units” measurement?

Yes. Exactly.

Let’s start with time. If we’re on a planet, it’s likely enough that it rotates, so “days” are pretty safe. So are “years,” since that planet is probably revolves around a star. But what about “months”? Only if the planet has a moon—and just one. (Can you imagine the complexity of months with more than one moon?) That is, if your months are going to be anything like ours.

And “weeks”? Forget about it. So arbitrary. Easy enough for a world to have them, but there’s no real reason for them to be seven days long.

There are other measurements to consider, too. Say the world is a dimension parallel to ours, with some common history but a divergence at some point where they became even more scientifically focused. Might be a good idea to go metric. Inches and feet and gallons and ounces? Maybe not as likely.

Another problem is that many of our units are named after people. Personally, if I’m reading a story set in a world that has nothing to do with Earth, it jars me to see someone mention watts or volts or megahertz.

(I might just be picky. And a math teacher.)

We have to draw the line somewhere (or risk cluttering up the narrative), so I often let “hours” stand and pretend they’re roughly the length we know them to be, along with other terms. Sometimes it may best serve the story to stick with the familiar, even if it means miles and pounds.

But it’s a decision that should be actively made. Sometimes thinking up alternatives makes us think more deeply about our world … and can be a lot of fun, too.

Elizabeth Fama on Putting the Sci in Sci Fi

Today we again welcome YA Author Elizabeth Fama. Her novels include Plus One and Monstrous Beauty.

Putting the Sci in Sci Fi 

I majored in Biology in college (I was pre-med), and I took lots of math and statistics both in college and graduate school. For a short stint I worked with rats in an epilepsy lab. I've lived my whole life in a fiercely analytical university community where, for instance, my physicist neighbor made a breakthrough in granular convection while musing over his bowl of breakfast muesli. As a result, I always love it when the science in speculative fiction feels real enough that I don't stumble. Of course, by definition it's fiction, so the science you create doesn't have to be totally real, but it shouldn't be obviously wrong.

Make it Messy

I've discovered that I also prefer invented science to be a little messy. Do you remember how grungy Mos Eisley was in Episode IV of Star Wars? (No, not the CGI-ed version, darn it, but the theatrical release.) And the scrap room in the Jawa Sandcrawler? It looks like everything is depreciating before your eyes; everything has a worn patina or is downright filthy; stuff has been used so much it's busted, and some of it is being junked. I just read Jack McDevitt's Starhawk, which takes place just after human beings have figured out how to travel faster than the speed of light. Except they're still not that good at it: your first jump will get you to the right system, but pretty much in a random spot in that system. It might still take days or weeks to get to your intended target, and you won't know exactly how long until you make the jump. There's some sort of "plus or minus" in the process that future humans don't really have the hang of yet. That feels real to me. It feels like the evolution of a technology. 

Inventing Medical Science

In Plus One, I needed to invent a non-invasive neurosurgical procedure. I knew how pinealectomies, or the removal of the pineal glands from the epithalamus of rodent brains, were performed on Siberian hamsters in Brian Prendergast's lab at the University of Chicago. (My daughter worked in Brian's lab for a year and a half.) In a hamster "PinX," researchers make an incomplete circular cut in the skull and fold the bone over. They use fine-tipped forceps to reach into the confluence of the brain sinuses and remove the tiny, pine-cone-shaped gland. The procedure carries a risk of bleeding and damage to adjacent areas of the brain, and of course a risk of mortality. In humans, then, PinX's would be too risky to perform routinely, and certainly it would be impossible to do them in a clandestine manner on newborns. 

A little research on my part showed that the pineal gland takes up fluoride molecules faster than any other organ of the body. I also knew that brachytherapy is a way to deliver radiation to cancer tumors, via directly-implanted short-range radiation sources, or "seeds," at the site of the tumor. In some cases of brachytherapy, you leave the seeds in permanently, and the radioactivity decays over time until it's gone. So I combined those two ideas: what if you attached a tiny seed of radiation to a fluoride molecule and injected it into the blood stream? Perhaps the pineal gland of the infant would take up the molecule, allowing the radiation to destroy the gland before the radiation decays.

This method serves the two criteria that I love in sci-fi: plausibility and messiness. The plausibility: this non-surgical PinX is based on medical knowledge and procedures that we already have, combined in new ways. The messiness: I included a risk of complications. The mildest complication is familiar to anyone with children who have been vaccinated: some infants experience soreness at the injection site. A more serious complication is exhaustion and lethargy from the radiation. (It sounds believable, right?) And the most dangerous complication, at a rate of one in fifty thousand, is a radiation-induced leukemia or lymphoma.

Takeaway

Whenever you're developing a new technology in your sci-fi piece, first make sure it's not overtly wrong. Then, aim to make it feel real, based on technologies we already have. And finally, add a little messiness, because the world--even a futuristic one--will never be shiny and perfect.

Find out more about Plus One and Elizabeth Fama at her website.

Elizabeth Fama on Science Fiction as Metaphor

Today we welcome YA Author Elizabeth Fama. Her novels include Plus One and Monstrous Beauty.

Science Fiction as Metaphor

To me, the fun of writing science fiction or fantasy is in exploring deeper themes using an invented setting, and everything is in service of those themes. But I'm learning that this isn't true of all sci-fi/fantasy writers, who sometimes just love the aesthetic and the romp, and I'm finding that many readers also prefer to see the story in a purely literal sense. This sort of reader will search for internal consistency, plausibility, and detailed world-building. But in the end, as the author, you're the one who must feel comfortable with the balance you've chosen.

My alternate-history thriller, Plus One, imagines the world took a different course during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. In order to relieve the burden on medical staff and limit the spread of the disease, our government took a series of steps that gradually split the population in two: a Day group and Night group, with mandated curfews. For me, the world I invented seemed just as plausible as women not having the vote, and black and white children not being allowed to go to the same schools--heck, as plausible as gay people not being allowed to marry, and 20,000 Romani people being deported from France. We've lived this kind of insanity in multiple ways on our planet. Add in the fact that Woodrow Wilson was a president who was happy to sacrifice civil liberties, and I felt I'd found my metaphorical world.

Historical precedent

The background given for the Day/Night divide in the book is based in historical fact: during the Spanish flu pandemic, medical staff couldn't keep up with the sick and dying, doctors and nurses often fell from exhaustion, and there was evidence that restricting the movements of citizens helped control the spread of the disease. For instance, in St. Louis the City Health Commissioner, Max Starkloff, persuaded the mayor, Henry Kiel, to implement a regime Starkloff called "social distancing." Mayor Kiel closed schools, banned public gatherings, allowed no standing passengers on public transportation, and shut down or limited all businesses "except those supplying sustenance, medical attention, or the conduct of the war." As a result, St. Louis had the lowest big-city death rate at 3 per 1,000 people, whereas Pittsburgh and San Francisco had up to 12 deaths per 1,000. In Plus One I dramatized this regime by having the government divide medical staffs into two groups and beef up their numbers with young-adult apprentices. (Yay! that makes it YA!). The policy was gradually extended to all industries supporting hospitals, and culminated with curfews for the entire population when it became clear that reduced crowding slowed the spread of the disease. In other words, imagine that Starkloff and Kiel had authority over the whole country, rather than just one city.

In character for President Wilson 

Once I read up a bit on Woodrow Wilson's affection for regulation (he invented the Federal Trade Commission and Daylight Savings Time among other programs), his complete disregard for civil liberties leading up to our involvement in WWI (and after), and his not-very-well-hidden racism and segregationism, I knew I had found my man. "The Committee on Public Information" in Plus One is a real thing Wilson created, supposedly to help Americans understand the war effort--but really to enact censorship privileges against the press. This, combined with how tenaciously he held onto the presidency even when he was too ill to do the job, made it seem that the Day/Night divide could have become good and entrenched by the time he left office in 1921.

How much implausibility is okay?

In terms of strict plausibility, however, if you delve deeply you'll uncover technical questions about the Day/Night divide. I saw them as I wrote--the practical ways in which the Day/Night system would be complicated by reality. For instance, do people near the arctic circle spend months at a time in their homes? (In the northernmost inhabited area of Norway the sun is visible for 24 hours from roughly mid-April to mid-August. How would Night people shop for groceries or go to school? And vice versa for Day people in the winter.) How is transcontinental travel possible? While writing the book I mulled over these issues (among others) and came to my own conclusions that didn't make it into the book because 1. they're not pertinent to Sol's journey, and 2. for me, this whole world is a parable (see: title of post).

Takeaway 

As writers of science fiction and fantasy, we each have to come to our bliss point about world building. If the deeper layers of meaning are more important to you than the perfection of the set-up, you may be comfortable--as I was--not addressing the minor glitches that you see in the system. If creating an adventure in a gorgeously-imagined setting is your primary interest, you may want more detailed world-building. My goal in Plus One was simply to make this alternate view of our world feel reasonable enough historically (and also scientifically, but that's another post) to have the reader accept it as a metaphor for social injustice and inequality based on arbitrary constructs--which is what all limits on freedom and equality really are.

Find out more about Plus One and Elizabeth Fama at her website.

ABANDON Scavenger Hunt!

Okay, so today I’m talking about a city in the Association that became pivotal. Castledale. I first had Gunner land in Castledale at the end of Surrender after he fled Freedom. True to how I write, I had no idea how important Castledale would become.

If you’ve read Surrender, you might remember that Gunner had help there that came in the form of a green-eyed guy. As I pondered who that might be and why he might be important, I realized how much this city—and that guy—meant to the Resistance.

So as I wrote ABANDON, I knew that my traveling team would need to go to Castledale, and I knew that the Resistance would have to be alive and thriving in the city. I had to have other people, other cities, that were doing as much as Jag was doing. I mean, he’s just one guy. He can’t be everywhere across thousands of miles.

I knew I had to have cities that were anxiously engaged in his cause, and Castledale became the hub of activity for the Resistance when I needed it. I’m still sort of surprised how it all came together. Ha!

I'm running a scavenger hunt all over the Association. It ends this Friday, but you can get caught up (all the way back to June 4) and enter to win with the links and Rafflecopter below.

Today's scavenger hunt can begin here! Somewhere on this map of the Association is the winning city. I've mentioned here in this post, and you can find references to it in all of today's posts. (See complete hunt details here.)

When you know today's scavenger hunt city, enter it in this form for a chance to win one of six Possession series paperback packages and a $50 Amazon gift card!

Continue the scavenger hunt at Kissed By Ink, where Amy has another clue for today's city!

As if that weren't enough, there will be a daily winner of Possession series swag! Enter in the Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway


If you get lost, you can always go to Elana's blog to find your place. Happy hunting!

LEARN TO PACE YOURSELF

League readers, today’s guest blogger is Jennifer Rush. I read and blurbed her terrific, fast-paced YA debut Altered, which releases January of next year.  Learn from her advice on pacing – Lissa.

 

 

THREE TIPS FOR BETTER PACING

I started writing Altered before I really knew what it was I was writing. I knew I wanted to write a Jason Bourne type novel for YA readers, with lots of action, but with quieter moments interspersed throughout. It wasn’t until my agent went out with Altered that I learned it was technically a thriller. Up until that point, I’d always pictured thrillers as being a mix of Robert Ludlum and Michael Jackson’s zombie music video. Thriller was a genre I had little experience with. And one of the biggest characteristics of the genre is fast pacing.

 

As my editor said, “…the pacing is expected to be tightly-wound.” And before I started working with her, I had no idea how to tightly wind anything. It was only because of her, and her brilliant editing skills, that I was able to make Altered a better thriller. So, I’m going to share with you my top three tips for upping the pacing in your novel.

 

1. Never a Dull Moment

As my editor pointed out in my first revision letter, a large part of my action sequences were in the last third of my novel. She suggested I either move some action scenes closer to the beginning, or add new ones. Since I’m a visual learner, I used the notecard method and wrote out each chapter on one notecard. I also used different colored pens for different types of scenes. So, for example, action sequences were written in green.

When I spread the cards out and stepped back, it became immediately clear that my editor was right. There was a lot of green near the end, but far too much blue (what I considered “quieter” moments) in the beginning.

By adding notes in the correlating pen colors, I was able to balance out the scenes on the index cards before even tackling the revision. This helped immensely. And, despite the fact that I absolutely hate the notecard method, I’ve used it for every major revision since then. It works!

 

2. Cut the Grocery Shopping

This is an expansion of tip #1. Grocery shopping is dull. And it wasn’t until my editor pointed it out that I had an unusually large number of grocery shopping scenes. I knew my characters had to eat, but buying the food didn’t help the plot at all, and it certainly didn’t help the pacing.

 

If you find your characters doing mundane every-day things---shopping, sitting in a classroom, surfing the Internet---make sure it’s absolutely integral to furthering the plot along. If it’s not, CUT IT.

3. Never Let Your Characters Relax

Even if your characters have momentarily escaped the bad guy, even if they’re holed up in a cushy hotel room, do not let them relax.

 

Put yourself in their shoes---if you were hunted by someone, or your life was in danger, would you be hanging out on the couch watching TV? Maybe, maybe your friends and family have no idea you’re in danger, but that doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten about it.

Make your character jumpy. Make them check (and double-check) the locks on the doors. Make them toss and turn in bed. Make them set up booby traps. Something to remind the reader that even though there’s nothing dangerous currently in the room, there could be something lurking just outside a darkened window.

Jennifer Rush began telling lies at the age of five and was immediately hooked. Fiction was far better than reality, and she spent most of her teens writing (about vampires, naturally). She currently lives in Michigan with her husband and two kids and enjoys eating ice cream in her spare time. Altered is her debut novel. You can find out more on her website at www.jennrush.com or follow her on twitter @jenn_rush

Conventions: Think Outside Your Genre

Leaguers, meet Amie Kaufman, an Australian-based writer coming out next year with her YA science fiction debut titled THESE BROKEN STARS.

I’ve just come home from the inaugural GenreCon, an Australian convention for “anyone who gets their own section in the bookstore”. I met authors of romance, mystery, science fiction, fantasy, crime, horror, thrillers and more. It changed the way I see conferences and conventions.

Writers, editors, agents and the occasional reader (without whom we are nothing!) attended discussion panels at GenreCon on everything from “writing adult themes” (that one ran late at night, after drinks!), to research, career tips, world building and so much more. Multi-award winning authors taught workshops on everything from writing effective fight scenes to author platform. Teams lined up for a hilarious Plotters vs Pantsers debate. Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books gave us some live cover snark and introduced us to the were-platypus. International guest of honor, author Joe Abercrombie, admitted he’s just like the rest of us—he would totally sleep with Mr. Darcy to get Pemberley.

While the Aussies were having a fantastic time at GenreCon, half my Twitter feed was in Toronto at the World Fantasy Convention. All year I watch friends head off to WorldCon (the world science fiction convention) or the RWA Conference, or recently (to my intense envy!) LeakyCon – that’s right, Harry Potter!

There are lots of reasons to go to these conferences and conventions. You can improve your craft, meet your heroes, network like crazy to find anything from a critique partner to an agent, hear all the news that’s too hot to print, and remind yourself that although writing can feel like a solo sport, it’s anything but. I go for all those reasons.

But at GenreCon, I found something a little different. I took a workshop with award-winning historical romance author Anna Campbell - on how to research historical fiction. Incredibly useful for the steampunk book I’m tinkering with, and the romance authors in the room came at the question of setting the scene from a different angle to my science fiction brain. I listened to Aussie horror author Martin Livings talk about the visceral thrill of a horrifying moment, and what draws a reader to pursue it. I look for these moments in my work, but Martin has more experience than I ever will in this genre, and he knows his craft. I listened to Sarah Wendell talk passionately (and hilariously) about why romance challenges those who criticize it, and the strength of plots that empower women—a lesson that can go far beyond the romance world. I attended a world building panel featuring a fantasy author, a crime writer and a regency romance author, and heard three distinct points of view. I chaired a panel on researching your world, and heard from a historical author, a science fiction author and a medical/crime author—again, they all brought wonderfully different perspectives to the same question. They challenged the way I thought.

It was fantastic and different to mix it up with authors of crime, romance and horror, none of which are familiar to me as a reader or an author. I saw ideas through a new lens, found new plans of attack for old problems, and drew a new kind of energy from the discussion.

You know what was the same, though? The fact that no matter what genre you’re talking about, the genre community rocks. Everyone I met was warm, inclusive and welcoming, whether they were talking to a guest of honor, or an aspiring writer.

In 2013, I challenge you to look outside the box for conferences and conventions in your area—try something that’s not of your genre, and see what you learn! I guarantee you’ll find a new angle on your work.

Amie is the co-author of THESE BROKEN STARS, a YA sci-fi novel coming in 2013 from Disney-Hyperion. You can find Amie at her blog, on Twitter or on Facebook. Amie lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her husband and rescue dog, and this week she's reading her first ever regency romance.

http://twitter.com/amiekaufman
http://www.facebook.com/AmieKaufmanAuthor
http://amiekaufman.com/

Post-Apocalyptic Jello and Caviar Delight

Today we have a guest post from Peggy Eddleman, author of Through the Bomb's Breath, a MG post-apocalyptic adventure coming in September 2013.  Learn more about Peggy below.

Let's say that you're a chef instead of a writer. (Just go with me on this one for a minute.) And you come up with the BEST recipe EVER. One that you love. You may have some different tastes in foods, but you know plenty of other people with different tastes in foods, and you know they will LOVE what you made, too. So you work hard and perfect your creation, which you've named Cheeto Peanut Butter Rainbow Jello Delight, Topped with Pineapple and Caviar. And it's truly incredible. You know not many people eat something like it every day, but if you could just get a major chain restaurant to put it on their menu, Cheeto Peanut Butter Rainbow Jello Delight, Topped with Pineapple and Caviar-loving people everywhere will cheer.

Permission granted by Mark Fickett, and by freestock.ca [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons, and by Maks D. (My dinner) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

So you present your perfected creation to Olive Garden, P.F. Changs, Texas Roadhouse, Red Lobster, Applebees, and The Cheesecake Factory.

Every single one of them turns you down.

And they all give you the same reason-- they don't think there's a big enough market for Cheeto Peanut Butter Rainbow Jello Delight, Topped with Pineapple and Caviar to justify carrying all the ingredients in all their restaurants, training all their chefs on how to make it, advertising, and reprinting all the menus.

And really, can you blame them? They are, after all, a business. If they put things on their menu that would lose them money, how are they supposed to stay afloat? So... does that mean Cheeto Peanut Butter Rainbow Jello Delight, Topped with Pineapple and Caviar is awful? Not necessarily. Should you just give up on your dream of people eating it?

Well, that depends on what, exactly, your dream is.

If your dream is to get people to eat Cheeto Peanut Butter Rainbow Jello Delight, Topped with Pineapple and Caviar, then no-- don't give up on it! There's not a lot of Cheeto Peanut Butter Rainbow Jello Delight, Topped with Pineapple and Caviar out there, and you'd be filling a niche that not many others are.You just need to find the right way to sell it. A food truck. A roadside stand. Your own restaurant. By mail order. 

If your dream is to get one of your creations in a major restaurant chain, then yes. Maybe it's time to re-evaluate the kinds of things you're submitting.

(You do get the analogy here, right?)

So what? You're telling me to give up on writing what I'm passionate

about and only write things that are commercial?!

Pshaw. Heck no. Let's take HUNGER GAMES / GREGOR THE OVERLANDER author Suzanne Collins for example. She is the daughter of a military officer, so hearing about wars and strategies and the harsh realities of what happens to children in a war-ridden country were common dinner table discussions. It fascinated her. She could've very easily taken that knowledge and fascination and written a Vietnam War narrative. Or went non-fiction, and wrote about the history behind war. She probably would've really enjoyed writing them, and some people would've really enjoyed reading them. They probably wouldn't have sold a ton of copies. Would that have been bad? ABSOLUTELY NOT. She would've been writing what she was passionate about and getting it out there for people to read. Instead, she chose to take that same knowledge and fascination and wrote something that would appeal to a much broader audience. She really enjoyed writing them, and people really enjoy reading them. Does that mean she sold out? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Because she was still writing what she was passionate about and getting it out there for people to read.

Everyone has different writing / publishing dreams and goals. Yours are more than likely exactly perfect for you. If your dream is about a specific creation, (a.k.a. a specific manuscript), no matter how outside of mainstream it is, then follow that dream! If it's about getting yours to a major publishing house, then take that fascination and passion burning inside of you, and look at what is also going to appeal to the broadest range of people.

Because like it or not, publishing is a business.

Peggy Eddleman is the author of THROUGH THE BOMB'S BREATH, a post-apocalyptic adventure for middle grade readers about a girl who can't invent, in a town where it's the most important thing. When bandits invade, inventing won't help, but the daring and risk-taking that usually gets her into trouble just might. THROUGH THE BOMB'S BREATH releases from Random House in September 2013. You can find out more about Peggy and her book at:

Blog: www.peggyeddleman.blogspot.com

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13411048-through-the-bomb-s-breath

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PeggyEddleman

Guest Post: The Anything-Goes Attitude of Post-Apoc

Today I'm hosting the fabulous Mindy McGinnis, author of the forthcoming YA novel Not a Drop to Drink. I met Mindy in the querying trenches, and I can tell you she writes one excellent blog post. You are in for a treat, dear readers. To learn more about Mindy, check out her bio below.

 The Anything-Goes Attitude of Post-Apoc

A lot of people wonder where the sudden surge of dystopian and post-apocalyptic literature is coming from. I’ve got a fast and quick answer – our inner psyche. But we don’t have to ruminate on that. There’s a really fun explanation too, and that’s the fact that anything goes in a world we create on our own.

Dystopian and post-apocalyptic literature moves us beyond the “what-if” to the “who-are-we, really?” as individuals, and as a human race. If there weren’t police would we obey traffic laws? If there were no enforcement of a moral code would we kill each other without regret? And even more important – are you scared of heights?

That last one might feel like a left-field question, but it nipped me in my creative bud earlier this spring. My debut NOT A DROP TO DRINK (Katherine Tegen / Harper Collins, Fall 2013) revolves around a teen girl who protects her pond in a world where water is scarce by sniping strangers from her roof. I wanted a few nice aerial shots for what I hope will eventually develop into my trailer, so I looped a camera around my neck, dug out a ladder, and proceeded to freeze up about ten feet off the ground.

Yep. Ten feet. I had another solid ten to go, and then a scramble onto the shingles before I could even pretend to be the feral creature my MC is. And it totally didn’t happen. I meekly crept back down, put the ladder away, and got some nice still shots of the placid surface of my pond.

Now, if there had been some kind of motivating favor, like say, a tiger chasing me across my yard, then yes – I probably would’ve scurried on up the ladder. But there was no tiger, and I don’t feel the need to shoot people who take water from my pond, mainly because nobody does. Who the hell drinks pond water when you don’t have to?

But what if you did have to?

What if that pond was the only thing keeping me alive?

What kind of person survives in a world like that?

This is what I like about my little corner of the writing world, and have liked about it since I read THE STAND when I was… well, when I was too young to be reading it. Post-apoc and dystopian give writers the chance to throw our characters into a place that has only the laws we set, and then see how they eek out a life within those parameters.

They’re amazing people, these fictional characters that survive the brutal punishments we put them through. They’re little glimpses of a tougher, leaner human race that are asking the same questions we are, but in a different environment. Who am I? What do I stand for?
And while it may seem that I’ve circled back around to the inner-psyche, the more relevant question in most dystopian is – will I live through tomorrow? That kind of pressure hovering over each minute refines our characters, making every movement inform the reader.

When the difference between making it to the roof is losing a good photo-op or losing your foot to a tiger, minor inconveniences like fear are overlooked. Anything goes in our brave new worlds, and the things that go leave us with a stripped person, who we build back up with the blocks of our own making.

There’s so much creative freedom in dystopian, which is why we see such a glut of titles these days, each of them with it’s own unique world and characters. Enjoy them all, but don’t dismiss any of them as “been-there-done-that.”

Chances are, you haven’t.

Mindy McGinnis is a YA author and librarian. Her debut dystopian, NOT A DROP TO DRINK, will be available from Katherine Tegen / Harper Collins Fall, 2013. She blogs at Writer, Writer Pants on Fire and contributes to the group blogs From the Write Angle, Book Pregnant, Friday the Thirteeners and The Lucky 13s. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook. 

Literary Palimpsest (Don't Worry, I Don't Know What That is Either)

Okay, so I meet the greatest people at book signings. Toni Pilcher was one said person. She is amazing, and I begged asked her to blog for me on the League today.

A little bit about her first: She is simply a graduate student at BYU pursuing her MA in English, writing her thesis on young adult literature. Even though she's a starving student, she spends her grocery money on books, and she has frequent nightmares that her bookshelves are empty.

She is so much smarter than me! So let's have her take it away!

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Last summer, I attended Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers in Salt Lake City. I came with questions because I was struggling with my dystopian WIP: the story was just not progressing. At the conference, Martine Leavitt, author of Keturah and Lord Death and other wonderful YA novels, introduced me to the concept of the palimpsest. In technical terms, a palimpsest results when the writing on a clay tablet or a piece of vellum is scraped away and replaced by new writing. Often, the original words can still be seen through the new words. In a similar way, as Martine pointed out, an older story can illuminate the themes of a new story.

Now, this literary palimpsest is no new thing in YA lit. Many books are retellings of older stories. Fairy tale retellings are easy to recognize, but some retellings are more disguised. It wasn’t until after I finished Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book that I realized it was a unique retelling of The Jungle Book. With this knowledge, my second reading was much more interesting!

Other books borrow plot structures. The most famous structure is probably the hero’s journey. But think of how Rick Riordan adapts plots from mythology without simply retelling the myths. And in Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me, aspects of the main character’s favorite book, A Wrinkle in Time, become very important to the plot.

Some books simply make references to characters or lines or themes. The characters in S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders read Gone with the Wind, and the idea of becoming Southern gentlemen informs their decisions later in the novel. Poetry is also an important influence in The Outsiders (Stay gold, Ponyboy!), as it is in many other books. Most recently, poetry has provided motivation for the characters in Ally Condie’s Matched and Crossed. Literary palimpsest works on many levels.

After getting this great idea from Martine, I immediately began to brainstorm “master” stories that could illuminate the themes in my WIP. I settled on Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, and my WIP exploded—in a good way. I have so much more insight into my characters! I’m using some of my favorite lines from Winter’s Tale, including the line that gave the play its name (“a sad tale’s best for winter”), as guides for plot, dialogue, and character development. Though I have a different character line-up and setting than the original, I’m borrowing the basic plot structure and reworking some iconic scenes. And yes, I’m even using the famous stage direction, “Exit, pursued by bear.”

Whether or not readers actually recognize the story beneath the story, I think literary palimpsest can strengthen a manuscript. For a writer, it’s like being an apprentice to a great wordsmith and having something to show for it.

Do you follow a master story when you write? Do you recognize the influence of master stories on the books you read?

How To Survive the Edit Letter

Okay, my feathered friends, today we've got another guest blogger! Welcome Shari Arnold, who's here to help you curb your neurosis...er, manage your edit letter.

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How To Survive the Edit Letter:

I know, I know. We're not supposed to talk about it. It's one of the mysteries of the publishing world, an essential part of how a book becomes a book. And everyone does it. I mean, without edits the libraries and bookstores would be empty. Books would not exist.

But for those of you wondering how to get from point A (the revision you finished a month ago) to point B (the re-revision you need to finish a month from now) here are a few suggestions:

1. Read the letter and then take some time to ignore it.
Seriously. Banish it. Hide it in a dark corner where you can't see its beady little eyes berating you and your tell-not-show self. It's important to let your editor's suggestions, questions, and comments sink in before you write her that email that explains how you JUST CAN'T MAKE IT ANY BETTER!

2. Don't Send The Email.
I know you want to write it. I know you've probably saved the draft and you'll continue to add a new excuse every few minutes (the excuses get better the longer you sit at the computer). I can even tell you exactly what your opening lines will be: I DO TOO KNOW MY CHARACTERS! Ask me anything! I could even tell you what song my MC is listening to AT THIS VERY MINUTE!

3. Do the character study.
Believe me. You don't always know the answers. And when you finally do, your characters will come alive, jump off the page and dance around your room. And it's okay to dance with them. They're just as excited to be alive.

4. Plotting and Pacing aren't here to hurt you.
You may think you've got it all figured out because your mom, best friend, and your two amazing critique partners love your book and tell you you're fabulous, but it's your editor's job to make your book better. And you want it to be better. You do. If you don't believe me, go ask Goodreads.

5. New scenes are like rainbows and unicorns.
Now that you know your characters, and you've been told exactly where the readers are going to drop off like flies, it's time to write some new stuff.

And that's the fun part. Remember this. It's very important.

Writing is what you love. You love to write.

Because you do. If you didn't you wouldn't be sitting all alone at a computer, making stuff up in your head, while the rest of the world is living and breathing reality.

So go write.

Oh. And chocolate helps. I recommend Junior Mints.

Shari Arnold is the author of MYSTIQUE coming Fall 2012 from Chronicle Books. Check out her blog or follow her on Twitter.

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Thanks, Shari! Those of you who've done major revisions, is she right or what? Don't we often just need a few days away from a critique in order to incorporate it? My vote is yes.

Is This A Kissing Book?

Dude, how can you not read a post with that title? Impossible. Also, if you know the movie it comes from, you get two gold stars. If I had some gold stars... Sadly, I don't. What I do have is another fabulous guest blogger! Heather Anastasiu (author of the forthcoming GLITCH) is here to talk romance!

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SO, full confession time: I love Twilight. I read it before it got big and I love, love, loved it. It’s the only book I’ve re-read this decade, and I’ve read it about 7 times.

Yes, there are problematic things in it as you examine gender stereotypes and troublesome relationship elements that, if translated to the real world, could be bad (hello creepy stalker boyfriend who follows you everywhere without your knowledge and spends all night outside your bedroom watching you).

But. BUT! There is something about those books that are so compulsively readable, a fantasy so delicious it just makes readers want to relive and relive and relive it. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out HOW Twilight does this. In my Master’s in Literature program, I wrote several papers about it, trying to figure it out. I’ve looked at from a psychoanalytical standpoint, looked at it as a hero myth, as lush escapism, as a means of comforting oneself about structure and order in a chaotic world.

But from a writer’s standpoint, looking at Meyer’s engaging style, I wonder if a big part of it isn’t because she just spends so much time letting us peek into this extraordinary relationship. There’s so much talking. The talking and scenarios have tension to be sure—Edward might lose control and drain her dry at any moment—but you know how in movies the camera will zoom out and/or do a montage of different times where the couple is talking and laughing and getting to know each other? Well, Twilight lets you watch it all without much fast forwarding. There’s not a lot of fade-to-black “and then they talked all night” summaries.

And I love it. I love some of those conversations. I go back and re-read them. Books that follow a standard romantic formula tend to skip over this part—the part where the lovers actually get to know each other! It’s all: he was so handsome and muscular and looked at her darkly/hungrily/lustily and the girl’s all: muscles! Love at first sight! Soul mate! Bad boy I can save!

Ahem. Ok, ok, so that’s just a particular type of romance pattern, but the immediate intense eternal love thing without bunches of talking and getting to know each other—I don’t like it. I don’t like it when action in a book eclipses these emotional talking moments either. The parts of my own book that make me happiest are the talking/getting to know each other moments. Thank God for my agent who’s always nudging me: maybe some more action here, oh, and maybe we could make something explode now? *winks at Agent Charlie* (and yes, my dystopian debut Glitch actually DOES have a lot of action too).

Because in the end, Twilight had TOO LITTLE action—or it was weird, forced, inorganic, and in the end (especially in Breaking Dawn), ultimately unsatisfying. I like a little sacrifice to be involved in happy endings, otherwise it doesn’t seem real, not hard-fought enough to be satisfying.

So yes, I like action books, and I like kissing books *shout out to Princess Bride* But I like them best when there’s talking too, where characters seem to genuinely get to know each other and connect.

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Wow. I don't know if I'm more awed by Heather reading Twilight 7 times or that she wrote papers on it, or simply the pure fact that she's absolutely right! What do you think?

Thank you, Heather, for being here! And dude, GLITCH is a dystopian you're going to want to keep your eyes on...

About Heather: Heather Anastasiu is the author of GLITCH (St. Martin's Press/Spring 2012) Glitch in three words: Dystopia, Superpowers, & Love :) Check out her website for more info, news, and updates.

Villains: Cardboard Cut-outs Need Not Apply

Today we have another fabulous guest blogger, Gennifer Albin! She's got a great book, CREWEL, coming out next year, and she's here today to help you take your villains to the next level. Take it away!

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Ever watched a movie and found yourself secretly rooting for the villain? Sometimes those heroes can be so damn good, but a villain says the outrageous things or is brooding or has a pretty good argument. The thing is a good villain can steal the show right out of goody-two-shoe-hero-boy's hands. So while I don't advise making your main characters so Mary Sue that everyone loves the villain more, I do think your readers should feel torn.

Consider this:
Does your villain secretly make you feel a little naughty? Can you imagine someone delicious like Colin Firth or Robert Downey, Jr. or Angelina Jolie playing the part?

or

Does your villain make a good point? Is his/her argument not only persuasive but as well-reasoned as the protagonist's? Don't get me wrong the villain can still be wrong, but he should at least be somewhat right

or

Is your villain hilariously funny with a dry wit and the perfect comeback for every situation?

The sad truth is that we spend a lot of time as writers developing our protagonists. We give them backstories, emotional arcs, love interests, and our villains? They're only around to foil our lovely well-developed hero.

Recently, I enjoyed the kids films MegaMind and Despicable Me (don't judge, I have a 4 year-old!). Both movies are all about the villain and how flawed and funny and misunderstood they are. I'm not saying you have to rewrite your book from the villain's perspective or even spend so much time making them sympathetic, but could you do those things if you had to? Do you know your villain well enough to write the book through their voice?

Here's one of my favorite exercises for rounding out a villain:
Give them layers of logic. Ever villain has a reason for what they do. But how can you make the stakes of their actions even higher? Think of something and right it down. Got it? Good.

Make it even more important that their plans work. Fate of the world important. Think about it. Take your time and write it down. Got it? Good.

Take it up another notch.

Do this until your mind is bleeding with the amount of effort you have put into this.

Now figure out ways to organically include this in your text. Don't just write out a monologue and plop it in. Hint at it. Make your protagonist recognize the truth of the villains words. Get your villain to the point where even you believe him. Make your readers love him or love to hate him, but give him that third dimension. It makes all the difference.

Gennifer Albin has a penchant for villainy, but don't tell anyone. Her debut novel, CREWEL, the first in a trilogy set in a world where Spinsters weave the fabric of life, will be released in Fall 2012 by FSG/Macmillan. She blogs about the publishing and writing tips for moms at Authorize (http://blog.genniferalbin.com). You can also tweet with her at http://twitter.com/#!/GenniferAlbin.

A Brief History of Fictional Cyborgs

Today, we have a sensational guest blogger, Marissa Meyer, author of the forthcoming CINDER. She's here to talk about Fictional Cyborgs, and man, I can't wait!

My debut novel, Cinder, is a take on the classic Cinderella fairy tale . . . except it’s set in the future, and my Cinderella is a cyborg. When I tell people this, I usually get one of two reactions.

Either: “What’s a cyborg?”

Or: “That’s awesome! I love cyborgs!”

Because who doesn’t love cyborgs? Although modern science has made the potential for cybernetic organisms very real through the use of prosthetic limbs and advances in neural engineering, we still tend to imagine cyborgs as being superhuman. Once-normal people who’ve been retrofitted with super strength, super intelligence, high-tech weapons and gadgets concealed beneath titanium plating . . . and with each new scientific advance, our cyborg expectations only go higher.

Here are seven fictional cyborgs, going as far back as the 12th century, that demonstrate our very human fascination with people who aren’t entirely human.

Nuada of the Silver Arm
From: Irish Mythology
Timeline: Written records pre-date the 12th century, actual story is much older
The story: After losing an arm in battle, a king is forced to abdicate his throne due to a law that states only whole men can rule. He later has his missing limb replaced with a working silver one and reclaims his throne from an oppressive enemy.
How cyborg?: Though mythology is rife with limbs and even whole people made out of precious metals, the idea that the silver arm was functional (rather than just a placeholder) makes Nuada the earliest cyborg I’ve come across. (Thanks to LiveJournal commenter Roseaponi for introducing me to this tale!)

Frankenstein’s Creature
From: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Timeline: 1818
The story: A doctor pieces together human remains fresh from the grave, along with materials found in “the dissecting-room and the slaughter-house,” to create his own horrific creature.
How cyborg?: The doctor uses galvanism, a method of applied electricity, to animate the creature. Though Shelley doesn’t go into detail, I suspect some Energizer batteries were at play.

John A.B.C. Smith
From: “The Man that Was Used Up” by Edgar Allen Poe
Timeline: 1839
The story: A narrator goes to speak to a much-admired Brigadier General, only to find his many parts scattered across the floor. Turns out he was mutilated by Native American warriors and now his servants have to piece him back together every day before he’s fit to be seen in public.
How cyborg?: False teeth, a glass eye, and any number of other prostheses needed to complete him. Supposedly the prostheses are quite life-like, though probably not when they’re strewn across the living room.

Nick Chopper (a.k.a. The Tin Man)
From: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum, and other Oz books
Timeline: First appeared in 1900
The story: Once an ordinary man, poor Nick’s downfall came when the Wicked Witch of the East enchanted his axe and it started to chop off his limbs, one by one. Nick continued to replace each limb with a tin prosthetic until there was no organic tissue left.
How Cyborg?: He gradually goes from all organic to all synthetic. After Dorothy comes along, he at least gets his heart back.

Steve Austin:
From: “The Six Million Dollar Man” TV series, based on the book Cyborg by Martin Caidin
Timeline: 1974 to 1978
The story: After nearly dying in a plane crash, former astronaut Steve Austin is rebuilt using bionics. He spends the next four seasons defeating bad guys and kicking ass.
How cyborg?: An eye that includes an infrared filter and a zoom lens, legs that make him crazy fast, and an arm with super strength and the ability to detect nuclear radiation. Pretty much, he was the first cyborg to take advantage of how awesome cyborgs are!

Anakin Skywalker (a.k.a. Darth Vader):
From: Star Wars
Timeline: 1977 (Episode IV) to 2008 (Episode III)
The story: After a slow descent into the dark side, Anakin Skywalker is left for dead on the volcanic planet Mustafar, but rescued by Darth Sidious and given a life-sustaining suit and his own cape.
How cyborg?: “He is more machine now than man.”

The Borg:
From: Star Trek
Timeline: First appeared in 1989
The story: A humanoid alien race assimilates other species and cybernetic technologies in search for physical and mental perfection.
How cyborg?: Not only one, but an entire species of interconnected, assimilated beings? It’s about as cyborg as it gets. Resistance is futile.

This is only a small sampling of hundreds of cyborgs that have entered our culture, particularly in the last thirty years or so, with everything from “The Terminator” to “Cowboy Bebop” employing the potential of man-machine superstars.

Do you have a favorite fictional cyborg that I’ve left out?

Marissa Meyer is not a cyborg, unless you count a newfound dependency on her iPhone. Her debut novel, CINDER, is the first in a four-book series and will be released on January 3, 2012. Follow her escapades at http://marissameyer.livejournal.com or on Twitter: @marissa_meyer.