Category Archives: The Writing Life

Over the years the Fictorians site has existed we’ve talked a lot about Superstars Writing Seminar. This group wouldn’t exist without Superstars. It’s hard to explain how special this conference and the people who attend it are. But maybe, Lisa Mangum’s post below might give you some idea.

Lisa has loved and worked with books ever since elementary school, when she volunteered at the school library during recess. Her first paying job was shelving books at the Sandy Library. She worked for five years at Waldenbooks while she attended the University of Utah, graduating with honors with a degree in English.

An avid reader of all genres, Lisa crossed over to the publishing side of the industry in 1997. She’s currently the Managing Editor at Shadow Mountain. Lisa loves movies, sunsets, spending time with her family, trips to Disneyland, and vanilla ice cream topped with fresh raspberries. She lives in Utah, with her husband, Tracy. She is the author of the Hourglass Door trilogy and After Hello.

So, Lisa – When is a Purple Unicorn more than just a silly mythical creature?

***

I’ve been working in the publishing industry since 1997, and I’ve seen a lot of books cross my desk. I’ve even written a few books of my own. But I haven’t ever really edited an anthology quite like ONE HORN TO RULE THEM ALL. I mean—purple unicorns? Really?

Yes, really.

The genesis of the collection came about from the Superstars Writing Seminar. I was attending for the first time, and I was both impressed and amused by the fact that a purple unicorn was the example used to illustrate how to be a professional author. The idea was that if an editor asks you for a story about a purple unicorn, you better deliver a story about a purple unicorn.

As the conversation continued, I made a comment on the Superstars Facebook page about how now I kinda wanted to write a purple unicorn story. Enough people agreed with me and responded with title suggestions and more pictures of unicorns than I imagined existed. (Though, hello, Internet, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised.)

The idea stuck with me, though, long after the seminar ended, and one day I emailed Kevin J. Anderson (cofounder of Superstars) and said, “This might be the stupidest idea ever—or the most brilliant.”

Together we hammered out a plan that would result in a collection of twenty stories about purple unicorns. I said I would donate my time to edit the anthology (including reviewing all the stories and editing them) if WordFire Press would publish it, and all sales of the book would benefit a scholarship fund for someone to attend next year’s Superstars.

I’ll be honest. It’s not like I had a lot of time to edit a 100K-word anthology in July. I had a novella of my own to finish writing, plus a Con to attend, plus helping my husband shoot his short film, not to mention all the work that comes with my full-time job as Managing Editor of Shadow Mountain Publishing. And yet…

I wanted to work on the project. I had such an amazing time at the Superstars seminar, and it was such a rich and fulfilling weekend that I wanted other people to enjoy the same thing. Plus, I had made dear friends with the other Superstars attendees, and I wanted to read the stories they would write.

So, as an editor, I asked for unicorn stories. And, as professionals, the Superstar authors delivered.

And oh, the stories they wrote! Some were funny, some were sad. I read stories about detectives and mobsters and fairies and moms and zookeepers and veterans. I traveled to distant planets, to Fairyland, to a Comic-Con.

It has been a joy and a privilege to work on this anthology. The stories are amazing, and best of all, with each book sold, we get that much closer to bringing even more aspiring authors into the Superstars Tribe as we help each other make the leap from amateur to professional.

Being a writer can be a crazy career choice. Publishing can be heartless. It’s a crazy world out there, kids. Best find yourself a Tribe—and bring a unicorn with you if at all possible.

***

Thank you, Lisa. Purple Unicorns are everywhere.

She picked some amazing stories for the anthology. Kevin J. Anderson and the entire WordFire gang will be at Salt Lake ComicCon starting on September 4. Stop by the WordFire Booth to say “hi” and maybe help us fund the Superstars scholarship. If you buy a copy of One Horn To Rule Them All at the Wordfire booth I bet you can get several of the authors to autograph it. The book sells for $14.95 in paperback and $4.99 in E-reader formats:

If you (like me) aren’t able to attend the Salt Lake ComicCon this time, you can find Purple Unicorns here:

Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/one-horn-to-rule-them-all

(Kobo like Shadow Mountain is a Superstars Sponsor so if we can send love/ sales its way, that would be wonderful).

Amazon: One Horn

Barnes & Noble: One Horn To Rule Them All.

Stranger Than Fiction

September 1, 2014

Nancy

Author's Perspective Nancy Greene Storyline Superstars Writing Seminars The Writing Life 1 Comment

We’ve all heard the phrase that “life is stranger than fiction” but what does that really mean? For me, it means that sometimes real life happens in such a way that if I were to use the event verbatim in a fiction story my readers would cry “implausible.” Think about that for a second. Readers accept vampires, zombie detective, purple unicorns, space ships, entire West Virginia towns going back in time to create an alternate universe, (speaking of which) alternate universes, evil twins, a series of coincidences that add up to a twist ending,,, and the list could go on forever.

So, how bizarre does an event have to be before it’s “stranger than fiction?”

Do the events have to be so coincidental that the odds of the event happening are astronomical? Does the main character have to be dumber than a fence post not to see the results of her actions? For me, I think the situation has to be so divorced from what we consider “normal” that we sit back and say, “no. No one (Nothing) could be that….” Judge for yourself though as we spend September exploring events that are “Stranger Than Fiction.”

Let me start.

Most of the things I’ve seen or heard as a lawyer I can’t repeat. Sometimes though it’s the other side’s client who does the unbelievable thing. When that’s the case there’s nothing that prevents disclosure. Still, I’ve changed names and occupation.

HOW TO BE YOUR OWN WORST ENEMY

A husband and wife started an interior decorating business. Mary was responsible for getting and performing the work. John took care of the back office tasks – staffing, bookkeeping, banking, billing and the like. Years into the business they were doing well on a professional front (millions of dollars in gross revenue) but not so much on the personal one. Suspicion and distrust ran deep. A little deeper on one side than the other. Eventually, Mary accused John of embezzling. Mary hired an attorney (not me) to file for divorce and seek a court appointed receiver for the business. John hired an attorney (again, not me) to counter-sue for divorce and defend the theft allegations.

Mary alleged John would go to the bank every Friday with pizza for the bank tellers. In return, the bank tellers of a national bank would cash checks for John, andl hand him bundles of cash. The tellers would then create a false bank statements that wouldn’t show the deposit (if the check had come from a company client) or the withdraw (if the check being cashed were a company one). John believed that every gap in the checks sequence on the bank statements represented a check Mary used wrongfully withdraw the money from the company. She thought John stole millions of dollars this way. After all the company had margins of 60% so where was the money? Mary’s definition of “margin” didn’t include most of the company’s salaries or overhead. Mary also thought John was stealing her paychecks.

The receiver (yup, this is where I come in) obtained copies of all the bank statements from the national bank (not the branch John was allegedly feeding) and payments from the company’s client. Like most businesses some of the jobs from a gross profit number were very profitable and others were dead losers. Once you took out the operating cost including a HUGE monthly payment for their house the company ran deeply in the red. There was no proof of a national conspiracy. The checks…checked out. And those paychecks? They were deposited into a joint bank account. From the company’s standpoint there was no misappropriation of funds.

We met with Mary’s attorney for hours to explain the situation. Mary fired the attorney when she agreed with the Receiver. Mary hired another attorney to pursue the claim. He lasted as long as her retainer did. No amount of reason could shake Mary’s belief that John had robbed her blind. She accused the Receiver of being paid off by John (NOT) when the Receiver wouldn’t support her theories.

Mary threatened to report that the tax returns were false to the appropriate authorities when the Receiver wouldn’t amend the returns to show the “missing” income. We said she needed to do what she needed to do but we didn’t have any evidence to support her position. While there were substantial tax debt owed the various agencies had been mostly silent on collection since no one had any money. Ultimately, Mary called the governmental entity designed to ensure that people paid their taxes to report that John had under-reported the company’s income for years. She didn’t think about the fact that she was listed as a 51% co-owner or that she would be deemed to have received 51% of the “stolen” money as a result.

Well, the taxing agencies were no longer willing to wait to see if the Receiver collected enough money to pay them. After all, Mary just advised them that the couple had vastly under-reported their income for years. So, now Mary has some tax issues to deal with. And she still insists that John stole millions of dollars.

Write On

August 29, 2014

Frank Morin

Author's Perspective Frank Morin Motivation Reflection Self-Awareness The Writing Life No Comments

Have you ever heard anyone say, “Wouldn’t it be great to go back in time to high school and re-live those days knowing what we know now?”

I’ve always thought, “No way!”

If I could take my hard-won experience back in time, it wouldn’t be to high school. Maybe to college. At least then I’d be an adult and I could apply that knowledge to something useful. High school was a pretty crazy time. I didn’t know who I was yet, and no one around me knew who they were either. Getting stuck there with the wisdom and experience of an adult would probably drive me nuts.

There are no shortcuts to wisdom, and that’s probably a good thing.

One ancient proverb says:

Wisdom is knowing when not to do something stupid.

Wisdom is gained through experience after doing something stupid.

We can’t go back in time, but enough wisdom has been shared this month to prevent us from wasting a whole lot more time than we might have to if we all had to learn it all the hard way. I’d like to thank everyone who participated this month. Writing is a long-term commitment and the journey is rarely a simple cruise with smooth sailing. Then again, it’s from those struggles of life that we glimpse the greatest truths and learn the hard-won lessons that really matter. Hopefully now we understand a little better how to pick our battles.

Thanks to the excellent guest bloggers this month. Mark Leslie, Bobbi Schemerhorn, Lisa Mangum, Brian Herbert, and Peter Wacks.

At the beginning of the month, I suggested we’d hear some great advice, and this month’s posts exceeded my expectations. I hope you enjoyed the outpouring of hard-won wisdom and can apply some of it to your life and/or your writing.

Write on.

Notes to My Younger Self

August 28, 2014

fictorians

Guest Posts Reflection Self-Awareness Starting a Career The Writing Life 1 Comment

A guest post by Mark Leslie.

For almost as far back as I can remember I knew that I wanted to be a writer. One of the most prevalent memories was the summer that I spent down in the basement hammering out a Dungeons & Dragons inspired fantasy adventure novel. There I was, thirteen years old and hunkered down with my notes, my hand-written first draft, my research material and the typewriter, working hard at typing the revised draft of what I felt was an epic that the world was eagerly awaiting: The Story of Aaron Boc. The rise and fall of a noble barbarian whose name would ever be hailed in the history books of my fictitious universe.

My friends were out on their bikes, hanging out at the beach or playing football or baseball to pass away those two precious summer months that seemed so fleeting to a child. And I remember, clearly, feeling the angst of not being with them, not participating in the social activities that I really wanted, because, to me, finishing that novel was something I wanted even more.

So it seems that, even at that young age, I knew in order to be a writer, you had to actually write. And that meant making time for writing, which often involved sacrificing other activities that you might be doing at that same time. I later found a quote from Hugh Prather from his book Notes to Myself that reads: “If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire is not to write.

So, no, I wouldn’t go back to ensure that my younger self knew the importance of carving time, ideally every day, in order to write, and that would mean lots of sacrifice.

I might be tempted to ensure that the thirteen year old Mark knew that it was okay to suck in the first draft; that you could always revise and improve upon mistakes from the first draft when you wrote the second one. But it appears that the thirteen year old Mark who hand-wrote the first draft before typing in the revision had already begun to appreciate that concept.

But when I look at this young and eager writer, I do find something that I believe I can share with him after three decades of experience as a writer who has come to embrace both traditional publishing and self-publishing.

I think I might tell him that, despite his deepest inner belief and the thrill coursing through his heart, that the world isn’t waiting to read his stuff.

Yeah, I know, it seems cruel to tell him that, but that statement would immediately be followed by the fact that while the world isn’t just waiting, breathlessly, for his epic novel, there WILL be people who will enjoy his writing enough to eagerly anticipate his next piece. And THAT is what counts.

No, there won’t be hoards of people flocking to bookstores asking, every day, if the next Mark Leslie book has arrived. But there will be some folks who, having enjoyed his previous works, seek out his latest.

The lesson, I suppose, is for him to not lose focus on the story he is trying to write, and ensuring it’s the best possible story, true, entirely, to itself, and nothing else, if perhaps a single adoring reader. That if he pauses and tries to consider the larger picture, of how that story might appeal to a broad, mass audience, he might lose sight of the actual readers who are quite pleased with the words that naturally flow from his pen.

Write the story you feel deep inside. Be true to the tale that you are creating. Don’t worry about whether or not the masses will love it – worry about whether or not you love it, whether or not the story is honest and real. Be true in that first draft, and then work at polishing and carving out the uglier bits in the second and third drafts.

And sometimes the entire manuscript becomes an ugly bit that will never see the light of day, but indeed does contribute greatly to your craft and skill. The Story of Aaron Boc and the sequel novel written the following summer, The Search for Aaron Boc remain in drawers and will likely remain there permanently. They weren’t the best written books, some might even suggest they were terrible, but they were written with heart and passion, and the process of writing them taught me so much about the mechanics of plot and sub-plot, of character and setting. I had to write those novels in order to hone my skill. And that ongoing learning as a writer never goes away.

Oh, and I’d also suggest that the younger Mark enjoy the feeling of having hair while he still can, because as fleeting as the thrill of having finished and published a work can be, so too can that fleeting moment in life where one’s hair is thick and rich and full.

But if I start offering advice about things like that, we could be here all day. And you have stuff to write, don’t you?

Guest Writer Bio: Mark Leslie lives in Hamilton, Ontario and has been courting a serious addiction to writing since discovering his mother’s Underwood typewriter at the age of thirteen. The editor of speculative fiction anthologies such as North of Infinity II (2006), Campus Chills (2009) and Tesseracts Sixteen (2012), Mark also writes a series of non-fiction paranormal books for Dundurn which include Haunted Hamilton (2012), Spooky Sudbury (2013) and Tomes of Terror: Haunted Bookstores & Libraries (2014). Mark’s first full length novel, I, Death is out in the fall of 2014. When he’s not writing, Mark tacks “Lefebvre” back onto his name and works as Director of Self-Publishing & Author Relations for Rakuten Kobo, Inc. where he heads up the Kobo Writing Life team.

Images: 1) Mark Leslie at the age of thirteen, working on his “epic fantasy novel” while his cousins play video games and his Baba tries to get him to stop writing and come eat some lunch. 2) Author pic