Author Archives: Kim May

Promotion At The Drop Of A Hat

It was really hard to decide on what to focus on for this post. I’ve learned a lot this year. I’ve learned that gender neutral characters are really hard to write, pain management is a good thing, tie-in stories take twice as long to write, and anthology invites come when you least expect it. While all of these were great things to discover, I think the most important truth I’ve learned is to always have a pitch or three ready.

You see, this year my first two short stories were published. Yay me! I’ve been working toward this goal for years. However I thought that after I passed this particular career milestone that the rest of my career would be like the instructions on a shampoo bottle — lather, rinse, repeat. On the writing side of things, yes, it was. Except instead of lather, rinse, repeat it’s write, promote, release. But when I’m not holed up in my writing lair it’s very different.

Perhaps it’s because I work at a bookstore and my readers know where to find me. I’m not sure. Anyway, since the release of those stories every time my readers see me they ask “when is your next story coming out?” I never anticipated to have an eager following this early in my career so hearing that question caught me unprepared. Yes, I knew when my next story’s release date. What I wasn’t prepared to do was give a promotional pitch. It’s a short story. Writers don’t have to write pitches to sell short stories to editors. We just send in the story. But pitches do come in handy when talking to eager fans.

I think another reason it caught me off guard is that I didn’t expect the dividing line between my professional life and my personal life to blur. For a long time I only had writerly interactions when I was at conventions, workshops, book signings, and the like. When I was at work or church or the grocery store I was just Kim. That’s not the case anymore. People know me as Kim May, the local author and bumping into me is — to them — an awesome highlight of their day. Sure, there are times when I’m still an anonymous local but the second a reader recognizes me I have to be ready to snap into “author mode”. I have to be ready to answer questions about what they read and most importantly promote my next story.

Now that I have an eager audience I have to keep them engaged. If I don’t have an update for them they might lose interest and I can’t afford to let that happen. Yes, I could just refer them to my blog for updates but that comes across as lazy. Plus they’ll probably forget by the time they’re back on the internet. Telling them in the moment gives them the information; and even if they forget the release date they’ll still remember that I have something new coming out. It also preserves an air of professionalism. You can never have too much of that.

 

Check out Kim May’s bio to find out more.

Finding Your Voice Through Blogging

Most of us have heard the adage “You have to write a million words…” in some shape or form. Sometimes that million is what finally makes your writing good, sometimes it’s what makes you a “real writer”, and sometimes it’s what you have to do to find your artistic voice. The last one I actually agree with. I know when I first started writing I was trying too hard to write like my favorite grand masters of sci-fi and fantasy. I had yet to discover who I am as a writer and then become comfortable with that identity. I felt more comfortable and confident trying to emulate someone else.

Somewhere along the line I heard the “all serious professional writers have to have a blog” advice so like any dutiful newbie I started a blog — which I actually still post to occasionally. I did my best to come up with interesting topics and share anything that I’d learned in my journey so far…and I did get a decent amount of hits. After about a year of this I had a moment of enlightenment. I realized that when I let go of pretentiousness and let my words be MY WORDS there was a certain way I tended to phrase things and a certain tone and humor that my posts had in common. The biggest realization was that I didn’t hate it. It needed some polish and refinement perhaps but it didn’t suck.

That’s when I thought back to the “million words to find your voice” adage. Nowhere in the adage does it say that all of those million words have to be fiction. Between the blog, a novel and a handful of short stories I probably wrote close to a million words during that year. In that time I learned to relax and let the words come out; and since I was blogging as me and only me it was easier to allow the words to sound like a conversation I’d have with a friend.

Fast forward to 2014. I’d applied my voice to my fiction for a while and had become comfortable doing that but I hadn’t received any professional feedback so I still didn’t know if I was any good. I wrote five short stories in six weeks for an anthology workshop early that year. At the workshop we received critiques from six esteemed editors. Most of them said they wouldn’t have bought any of the stories because of plot or pacing problems but my voice was never a problem. In fact one of them loved my voice and complemented me on it more than once. Well, craft and structure are relatively easy to fix. That just takes study and practice. I can do that! Voice on the other hand is much harder because your personality is much more fixed.

So if you feel that you haven’t found your voice or your writing group comments that your writing doesn’t sound like you then give this a try. You don’t have to do a public blog like I did. You can keep a diary (digital or physical) and write whatever you want in it. If you want to write about your journey to becoming an amazing writer, do it. If you want to write about the struggles of being a writer while working a full-time day job, do it. If you want to philosophize about unicorn poop, do it. It doesn’t matter what the subject is. What matters is that you say what you want to say the way you would say if you were having a conversation with a friend.

Relax and be yourself.

How I Learned to Write Horror by Working in Haunted Houses

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In ’07 and ’08 I worked in a haunted house. This wasn’t an historic house with spectral residents. No, I worked in one of those maze of horrors attractions that pops up every October. I know. It seems like the only way there would be any parallel between horror stories and a cheesy maze is if they had someone dressed up as an iconic character scaring the guests. I won’t say you’re wrong. There’s plenty of that. However professional haunted house organizers and scare aficionados know that it takes more than a guy in a Jason mask to really terrify. It’s a series of psychological manipulations.

Long before the first guest walked through the front door the layout of the maze and the contents therein were carefully planned. The main goal was for the guest to leave terrified but with their trousers unsoiled (because no one wanted to clean that up) and we definitely didn’t want anyone to die of a heart attack. To accomplish that we started the maze with mild scares like a room full of creepy dolls or a Gypsy fortune teller that only predicts death, and then gradually worked up to the really big final scare. However doing one scare after another doesn’t work. In fact it tends to decrease the efficacy of the subsequent scares. In order for the bigger elements to have full affect the guests needed periodic breathers so they could finish processing the previous scare and catch their breath before screaming for the next.

Any of this sound familiar?

That’s right. I’m talking about pacing.

Normally pacing is used to keep the reader from getting bored or psychologically overwhelmed. The latter is certainly the most pertinent point for horror but there are other reasons and pitfalls that other genres may not have. For instance in both fiction and haunted houses the number of breathers that you should include will mostly depend on the length and intensity of the work. A short story won’t need any low points since it’s over by the time the reader reaches their limit. In a longer work you do need to give your audience periodic breathers so they don’t wet their trousers but you need to be sure that those breathers still move the story. You also don’t want to be predictable. Horror readers are clever. If you fall into a pattern — medium scare, breather, big scare, etc — they’re going figure it out pretty quickly.

Horror readers are expecting, even daring you to scare them. They know the tropes and common tricks and can spot plot device faster than you can say Cthulhu. You can have the most original concept and unique scares but if you fall into a predictable pattern it will undermine everything. Be unexpected. One year we had a creepy undertaker measure guests for coffins before they even walked in the door. Another year we had a guy with a chainsaw (sans blades for safety) jump out from behind a bush after guests exited the maze. Some of our scariest rooms were where we took things that people found mildly creepy — porcelain dolls, dentists, spiders — and turned it up to 11.

You can also use the same breathers I mentioned earlier to increase the potency of a smaller scare. My last year at the haunted house was right after the Weeping Angels debuted on Doctor Who. The show hadn’t yet reached the level popularity that it has now so we were able to borrow the idea without the guests catching on to what we were up to. We, the angels, were in a hall between two scare rooms. The room after us was a medium scare (a knife-wielding maniac).

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(Photo courtesy of Takara Zavala.)

(That’s me on the right.)

In full light our costumes don’t look much like the original; in fact they looked as inexpensive as they were but in in the dim light of the maze it was chilling. The low light made our skin look like it was the same color as the toga and wings — completing the statue effect — and the eye holes in the masks turned into dark, bottomless caverns that sent shivers down many spines. We stood next to the wall, motionless, in a praying pose that gave guests a false sense of security. As they passed we would follow them into the next room. Some would notice us right away and walk faster to the next room. Others wouldn’t notice us until they were in the next room, which was actually better because we blocked the way back. They couldn’t run past the threats they already knew about. They had no choice but to face the unknown scares beyond. The overall affect was enough to make frat boys scream like little girls.

The same thing can be done in fiction. After a big scare you can slow down the pacing or remove the threat enough to give that false sense of security, that moment to catch their breath before the character and readers realize that they aren’t safe at all. Because of the big scare that preceded the break is still fresh in the reader’s mind if you put a mild scare after that, the moment will feel much larger than it really is. Having a short break like that is also a great trick because not only does it makes the story less predictable, you don’t lose any of the tension and fear that you’ve carefully built. 

See Kim May’s bio page.

Rose City Comic Con

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Even though Rose City Comic Con is only four years old it’s one of the premier events in Portland, Oregon. It helps that a lot of comic book companies, artists, and game developers call the Pacific Northwest (and Portland in particular) home. There also isn’t a shortage of celebrities willing to come to Rose City. This year’s guests included Carrie Fisher, Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, Elizabeth Henstridge, Wil Wheaton, Robert Englund, and the legendary Caroll Spinney.

Last year I went as an attendee and had a blast! The heads of programming do a fantastic job of making sure there’s something for everyone. The celebrity guests have their Q&A panels, there’s cosplay tutorials, gaming, concerts, comic book writing panels, photo ops, and interviews with voice actors. Artist’s Alley and the dealer’s room are full of wonderful things that make me wish I didn’t have a budget.

This year I helped out at the Wordfire Press booth in the dealer room and that gave me a completely different view of the convention. The first difference is that I have a much deeper appreciation for the venders. They’re there ALL DAY. Yes, we get breaks so we can eat or pee but other than that we’re at the booth from open to close, standing on an unforgiving concrete floor, answering questions about the merchandise, shouting over the din of 30,000 people just so the person standing two feet away can hear you, and wearing our biggest smile for the attendees. IT’S EXHAUSTING! On top of that you’re hoping that your sales are enough to cover the cost of being there.

That aside it’s still a lot of fun. You get to know your booth neighbors, see all the awesome cosplayers, and watch fans burst into tears when they meet the author they idolize. I got to see a line of R2 and R4 units parade around the dealer hall before it opened to the public. I got to be a part of the marvelous organized chaos that is booth take down. Seriously, it’s fun! Everyone is so tired at that point it makes the jokes and double entendres twice as hilarious.

As much as I would have liked to go to panels with my friends I don’t regret spending the entire weekend at the booth. Instead of just attending the convention I got to be a part of it and that’s a higher level of awesome.