The Fantasy Authors Handbook Interviews Vi Lou Anders

THE FANTASY AUTHOR’S HANDBOOK INTERVIEWS VI: LOU ANDERS As part of the process of writing The Guide to Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction, I interviewed a number of key players in the SF/fantasy neighborhood. Their wisdom and generosity is liberally sprinkled throughout the guide, but I couldn’t use every wordâ€"and needed to do some comply with-ups. What follows is an expanded interview with Hugo-nominated editorial director of Pyr books and the editor of a number of critically acclaimed anthologies, Lou Anders. Pyr Editor Lou Anders Philip Athans: What is the commonest mistake that inexperienced authors make in their professional lives? Lou Anders: I would say there are two quite common mistakes, and that they're associated. The first is in assuming that now the novel is written you can sit again and watch your writer give you the results you want, and that, sadly, isn’t true. Publishing houses, especially massive publishing houses, are inclined to throw nearly all of their marketing efforts behind a couple of lucky titles, and do th e naked minimal for the remaining, and even when that isn’t the case (or you're lucky enough to have your book being the one singled out for particular treatment), as many books as are published in a yr and as many distractions as there are to reading, an creator must be prepared to market his/her personal work aggressively and to spend a good deal of time on outreach. What’s extra, we've shifted from a prime-down strategy in marketing to a peer-to-peer world. A few years in the past, you'll have been suggested that having a web site was important. Now it’s a Facebook web page, a Twitter account, appearances on podcasts, etc. You actually need to make yourself available in as many social networking platforms as you'll be able to. All things being equal, if a reader has to decide on between two equally appealing potential purchases, they are going to be extra more likely to choose the e-book the place they feel they already have a relationship with the creator, where they see t he writer as a person they know from on-line, quite than only a name they’ve maybe only just heard of. So the most typical mistake is sitting again and considering you're carried out whenever you kind “the top.” You aren’t by a protracted shot. Masked, now obtainable from Gallery Books. The second mistake is not being able to go on a second guide. You actually risk your profession if you take more than a year between books now, no less than earlier than you're established, and on this media-centric world of near-infinite selection, the place many publishers (Pyr included) are experimenting with publishing books in a sequence in consecutive months, waiting greater than a yr for guide two is going to price you eyeballs. Because loads of shiny objects are going to intrude between from time to time. Finish the guide, sort “the tip,” and then open a brand new file and begin the following one instantly! Athans: What is an important thing to keep in mind when creating a fantasy hero? Anders: Everyone comes from somewhere. Everyone is outlined by their relationships, their background, their history, their idiosyncrasies, their compromises, their wounds, their victories. Everyone married is aware of that you simply don’t just marry your partner, you marry their family as nicely, and in the same way, the lone hero who comes from nowhere, has no previous, has no associations, has no quirks past being “heroic” is as flat as a pancake. All great tales, regardless of the genre, begin with nice characters. Athans: What is an important thing to bear in mind when creating a fantasy villain? Anders: Everyone is a hero in their own mind. I once rejected an otherwise perfectly good manuscript because it let the aspect down when it came to the villain, who was such an unbelievably generic darkish lord that I couldn’t stomach it. There’s a moment in James Enge’s great Blood of Ambrose the place the villain, Lord Urdhven, the Protector, who has murdered his s ister and brother-in-regulation for energy, is definitely quite heroic, and the novel takes time to reflect that really, most likely an excellent many perfectly good rulers came into power in lower than honorable ways. Blood of Ambrose by James Enge Likewise, in Tom Lloyd’s The Twilight Reign novels, the ostensible villain Lord Styrax, is sort of admirable in many ways, and may only be “the villain” as a result of his needs are set in opposition to our hero, Isak’s, personal wants. Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shadows of the Apt has a beautiful villain, an officer in an empire that mixes the most effective of the Romans with the Nazis, who makes a advantage out of loyalty in a paperwork that is sewn with corruption, and at the same time as he opposes our hero’s aims, and represents an invading military, we root for him as he opposes the corruption in his own empire, both above and below his own rank. And, after all, Joe Abercrombie has made his status on characters who are neith er wholly good nor unhealthy. Blood of the Mantis by Adrian Tchaikovsky Athans: When you’re studying a manuscript from a new author, is it a positive or negative if the novel is cast as first in a trilogy or ongoing sequence? Anders: There is nothing better than a sequence that works and that builds from book to guide. And there may be nothing worse than taking something on, and knowing that each successive guide is going to do much less nicely than the one earlier than it. I think it’s risky for a debut writer to “commit trilogy,” and the safer wager is to write the “stand alone novel with the potential of a observe-up.” That being said, I purchase trilogies by new authors all the time, however you must make sure when inserting that type of a bet. Athans: Do you learn reviews of novels you’ve printed? Have you discovered any evaluate to be particularly useful or damaging? Do you encourage the authors you're employed with to read evaluations? Anders: I read evaluations obsessively. I pay as much, or extra attention to bloggers than I do to “traditional retailers,” as a result of finally, a book needs readers, not critics (although, in the end, critics are readers too, aren’t they?) I tend to share critiques with my authors. These days, none of us are more than a few minutes away from a Google Alert telling us that our ears our burning, though, are we? But as for evaluations being helpfulâ€"I don’t know. I am using them to gauge response, not inform the writing. By the time a e-book has come out and been reviewed, the writer is well beyond it and into one other project, and each project is its personal animal. Athans: Can you name a fantasy novel you notably liked that lacked a powerful, motivated villain? Is “man vs. nature,” for instance, a good enough motivator for a protagonist? Anders: In a word, no. I’m certain you can web site counter-examples and I probably can too if I thought of it, but your protagonists will need to have c oncrete objectives and overcome concrete obstacles, simply as a need to “be happy” is not as powerful as a desire to win the love of a particular particular person within the hopes that that may make you happy, so feeling like circumstances are in opposition to you just isn't as powerful as seeing those circumstances personified. Athans: How necessary is the “one scene, one POV” rule to you? How do you advise authors on managing viewpoint? Anders: I’d say that it isn’t about whether you break the rule, it’s about whether you are breaking the rule knowingly or out of ignorance, whether or not you're breaking it expertly or ineptly. Authors like Kay Kenyon and James Enge handle multiple POV very properly. You can do something so long as you can pull it off, however that’s the tough half, isn’t it? Prince of Storms by Kay Kenyon Athans: Are you extra inclined to one sort of fantasy world (the created world ala Moorcock’s Young Empires, the mythological world ala Tol kien, historic fantasy ala Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and so on.) over one other? Do you feel that there’s a bigger readership for “more accessible” fantasy, and in your opinion, what is extra accessible? Anders: I grew up on Moorcock, Leiber, Burroughs, and Tolkien. I liked Middle Earth, Newhon, the Young Kingdoms . . . Secondary world fantasy will all the time have a particular place in my heart, and, actually, I’m rediscovering the joy that Fritz Leiber introduced me then on the planet of Laent that options in James Enge’s tales of Morlock Ambrosius. That being said, I don’t assume it’s where your story takes place, it’s the ability with which you inform it. Mark Chadbourn’s The Silver Skull is ready in 1588, in England and Spain, and is an totally gripping fantasy journey (as are the books of Naomi Novik). Good stories, properly informed, are what matters. Whether you obsessively build maps, or disdain them as Joe Abercrombie and M. John Harrison do, what you do in them is what counts. The Silver Skull by Mark Chadbourn I will say that the word “accessible” is difficult. Do I suppose there's a bigger readership for entertaining fiction than there's for navel-gazing? Why yes. I surprise why that must be . . . Athans: In your opinion, how “pattern-driven” is the fantasy genre? Anders: Have you seen the ocean of tattooed girl’s backs on guide covers recently? But the issue with chasing developments is that by the point you write, promote/acquire, edit, package deal, and produce a guide, the winds might have modified. Write the most effective story you can write, the winds will come again around to it eventually if they are currently blowing in one other course. Athans: What’s the one most necessary thing an agent can do for an writer? Anders: Get him learn. Athans: Do you learn unsolicited submissions? What’s your best advice for an unpublished writer making an attempt to get his or her work in front of an editor or agent? Anders: I have a coverage against unsolicited, unagented submissions, and I ask brokers to please question first with an email containing a really brief synopsis. I am studying for very particular issues, and I can save everybody a lot of time if I am sent a one-to-three paragraph description first. Although I do tend to get unsolicited, agented manuscripts in the publish, these go in a pile by my desk and do not get the identical velocity of response that one thing I even have given prior settlement to learn will get. The purpose for this, least all of it sound harsh, is that I get pitched perhaps 1-three instances a day, and I am a really slow reader! As to the way to get your work in entrance of an editorâ€"get an agent. And as to tips on how to get an agent? I would say that you'll help your self enormously if you be a part of and participate within the SF&F neighborhood. Not solely is there a great deal of learning by osmosis to be done, however you'll already be part of the i ndustry you want to turn out to be part of. All enterprise endeavors profit from relationships. Publishing isn't any different. This does not mean that when you purchase an editor a beer he/she is going to purchase your manuscript! But that if you wish to learn concerning the enterprise you are trying to interrupt into, going to the place that enterprise is carried out could be a clever move. Likewise, despite the dwindling sales of the standard brief fiction print markets, it's still attainable for a author to interrupt in through short fiction gross sales, in addition to to construct a status that may assist land a guide deal. Athans: Are self-printed novels, or their authors, ever taken seriously by the mainstream publishing trade? Anders: Yes, all the time. In fact, I even have two novels in the Pyr listing that started life as self-revealed books. However, these are exceptions, not the rule, and in each circumstances, I sought out these books after the authors had already made a name for themselves in skilled venues (in the one case, through brief story gross sales to Asimov’s and elsewhere, and within the different, in comedian books written for a significant comics writer). So, you'll find dozens of tales of self-printed materials getting picked up by a serious home. However, that being mentioned, when you write me and ask when you can send me your self-revealed novel, the prospect is I will in all probability say no. Athans: What is the one novel every aspiring fantasy author has to learn? Anders: It isn’t The Lord of the Rings. I can’t inform you how many people pitch me with their good fantasy concept, and once I grill them on who they read, it’s Tolkien and no one else or since. If you want to sell fantasy in today’s market, then you have to have learn George R.R. Martin, Steven Erikson, Patrick Rothfuss, Joe Abercrombie, David Anthony Durham, Brent Weeks. Look at what’s promoting now. Read what’s promoting now. Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie Athans: Give me some general phrases of warning for the aspiring fantasy writer. Anders: You should be better than good. There are so so so so many fantasy manuscripts doing the rounds out there. And the problem isn’t that it’s all drek. It’s that it’s all common, competent, however not exuberantly good. Your writing needs to make an editor leap up out of his/her chair. This isn’t a query of whether or not you hew near the traditional forms or strike off by yourself. The frequent component between Joe Abercrombie and China Miéville is that they are both damn good writers, even as one hews very close to Tolkien/Arthurian archetypes and the other goes a lot farther afield for his plots and creatures. Good writing outs. And so does good modifyingâ€"thanks, Lou. â€"Philip Athans About Philip Athans Excellent interview, Philip and Lou. Thanks for making this available. Thanks very much for the forum! I should level out that MASKED is not truly a Pyr guide. I did that one for Gallery Books.