The Alien Next Door

Welcome to 2013, The Year of the Snake

2013-01-20T20:36:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

When I entered the post office recently to buy stamps I was reminded that 2013 is also the year of the snake. The stamps displayed elaborate and stylized images of the water snake in celebration of the Chinese Zodiac.

I’m told by followers of the Chinese Zodiac that people born in snake years always seem to have money flowing their way. They are described as intelligent, creative and adventurous. Chinese astrologers use the color black to depict this year. Black is the color of space, the arctic night and the darkness of the abyss and deep waters. The black snake, say the astrologers, will bring people unexpected changes, instability and change. In the wake of “the end of the world” and the dawning of a new age (the seventh golden age) this is not surprising (see my last editorial).

I was born in the “year of the horse” and checked out my prospects for the year of the snake. They were mixed: I was told that “horse people should do everything by themselves instead of turning to others. By that, they can get good fortune. Also the expense will not be that much. In general, their fortune will get better bit by bit.” (Oh boy! Looking forward to those bits!). Astrologers told me that my career life would not be smooth but that I would make good money (sigh with relief!). I was also advised that I should donate blood in early 2013 because I might have an accident in this “snake” year (oh dear!); a kind of karma-thing happening here, I guess! LOL!

Snakes can be found on every continent except Antarctica. Biologists recognize over 3,400 species, ranging from the 10 centimeter Thread Snake to the reticulated 8.7 meter long Python. Most species are non-venomous. Snakes are thought to have evolved from either burrowing or aquatic lizards during the mid-Cretaceous Period.

The snake remains a mysterious creature, steeped in controversy. Considered vile and “evil” by many, it often elicits strong feelings of dislike and fear. It is an elegant cold-blooded reptile, and smooth to the touch (contrary to what most people think: NOT slimy). The snake embraces a rich and metaphoric history, representing a wide range of symbolism that encompasses change, metamorphosis and transformation. In The Dictionary of Mythology (1961) Gertrude Jobes recites a long list of symbols that span from the wicked to the sublime. Perhaps her extensive alphabetized list serves a good representation of this, our year 2013: androgyny, circle, convalescence, cunning, danger, death, deceit, destruction, divine emanation, evil, false appearance fertility, guardianship, generation, grief, health, intelligence, jealousy, lasciviousness, malice, materialism, misfortune, phallus, pleasure, power, prophecy, prudence, renewal, revenge, self- creation, self -indulgence, self -sustenance sensation, sensuality, sin, subtlety, temptation, treachery, the unfathomable, universe circle, vexations, vice, wiliness, wisdom worldliness. Emblem of lightning, physicians, witchcraft.

J.E. Cirlot in A Dictionary of Symbols (1971) suggests that, “If all symbols are really functions and signs of things imbued with energy, then the serpent or snake is, by analogy, symbolic of energy itself—of force pure and simple; hence its ambivalence and multi-valencies. Another reason for its great variety of symbolic meaning derives from the consideration that these meanings may relate either to the serpent as a whole or to any of its major characteristics—for example, to its sinuous movements, its common association with the tree and its formal analogy with the roots and branches of the tree, the way it sheds its skin, its threatening tongue, the undulating pattern of its body, its hiss, its resemblance to a ligament, its method of attacking its victims by coiling itself round them, and so on.”

The serpent’s portrayal as the most common symbol of God—in human psychology and spirituality from Moses, to the Freemasons, Baptists and psychologist Carl Jung and many others—has puzzled anthropologists for years. To Jung, the serpent reflected the Omnipotent and Omnipresent power of God that lives within every human: “The serpent is an adversary and a symbol of enmity, but also a wise bridge that connects right and left through longing, much needed by our life… I have united with the serpent of the beyond. I have accepted everything beyond into myself.”

The ancient Tibetan Book of the Dead tells us that the darker side of one’s own nature may reveal itself in serpentine form in the afterlife. It becomes a mirror through which a person may encounter the feelings or thoughts they repressed when alive.

Chaldeans had only one word for life and snake. The snake’s elegant undulating form symbolizes both soul and libido. In the Hindu tantric belief, it represents the lotus of Kundalini, the coiled force of transcendence that begins at the base of the spine and travels up the chakras toward enlightenment. In Indian mythology, Lord Vishnu sits on a thousand-headed snake, which sets off the primal vibration and the vital source of the Universe. Scholar and mythologist Joseph Campbell suggested that the symbol of snakes coiled around a staff represents the Kundalini physiology. The staff represents the spinal column with the snake(s) being energy channels. In the case of two coiled snakes they usually cross each other seven times, a possible reference to the seven energy centers called chakras.

In religion, mythology, and literature, serpents and snakes represent fertility and/or a creative life force. As snakes shed their skin through sloughing they symbolize rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing. Snakes embrace the paradox of creative-destruction in the form of an Ouroboros, the serpent biting it’s own tail. It reflects a cyclic sexual union within itself, a constant self–fecundation and a perpetual transformation from death to life. The serpent represents sexual desire and passion in the Abrahamic religion and Rabbinic tradition. The circle of the Ouroboros symbolizes eternity but only through the perpetual cycle of regeneration: life from death. The Ouroboros is a ubiquitous symbol of the “all-in-all”, the totality of existence, infinity and the cyclic nature of the cosmos. Believed to have been inspired by the Milky Way (“the serpent of light residing in the heavens”), Ancient Egyptians associated it with serpent gods Wadjet and Hathor. Jormungandr, the World or Midgard Serpent of Norse mythology encircled the world in the ocean’s abyss, biting its own tail.

Every night the Sun enters the underground world ruled by serpents, to become the serpent itself in order to fight them and to reborn in the morning. The Vision Serpent of Mayan mythology lies atop the World Tree as a symbol of rebirth.

Christianity portrays the serpent negatively but sacred texts testify its double aspect. The regenerating Christ itself is sometimes represented as a serpent on the cross. During Medieval times the serpent on the cross was interpreted as the serpent of Eve.

The serpent-encircled staff of Asclepius, the God of medicine and healing, has become the symbol of modern medicine. The snake's venom is associated with the chemicals of plants and fungi that can heal, poison or provide expanded consciousness. The snake was often considered one of the wisest animals. Its divine aspect combined with its habitat in the earth between the roots of plants made it an animal with chthonic properties connected to the afterlife and immortality.

Serpents often guard temples, sacred spaces and deities. At Angor in Cambodia, numerous stone sculptures present hooded multi-headed nagas as guardians of temples and other sacred sites.

In Ancient Egypt, Ra and Atum became the same god, which took on the form of a serpent: The two-headed serpent deity Nehebkau (he who harnesses the souls) guarded the entrance to the underworld. He is often seen as the son of the snake goddess Renenutet or Wadjet, the Egyptian cobra, the patron and protector of the country.

In many myths the chthonic serpent lies coiled around a Tree of Life in a divine garden. In the Genesis story of the Torah and Biblical Old Testament, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil sits in the Garden of Eden together with the Tree of Life and the serpent. In Greek mythology Ladon coiled around the tree in the garden of the Hesperides, protecting the entheogenic golden apples. Nidhogg, the dragon of Norse mythology, eats from the roots of the Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Lastly, the Buddha sat in ecstatic meditation under the Bodhi Tree of Enlightenment. When a storm arose, the mighty serpent king Mucalinda rose up from his place beneath the earth and enveloped the Buddha in seven coils for seven days, not to break his ecstatic state.

The image of the serpent as the embodiment of the wisdom transmitted by Sophia was a Gnostic emblem.

OK. So, what does all of this have to do with 2013 and the Year of the Snake? Why, nothing… Perhaps everything. It depends on whether you are mindful of the symbols around you; whether you think and write metaphorically; whether you are fanciful and whimsical; whether you appreciate the ancient wisdom of humanity and its link to the divine… Whatever your inclination, I wish you a wonderful and productive year of transformation and wonderful surprises. I for one am looking forward to 2013. I’ve decided to embrace the multi-faceted and transformative energy of the snake and intuitively let my muse lead me here. Last year I began to research and this year will be writing two books whose subjects are “medieval wisdom in healing and wellness” and “water”. Appropriate, don’t you think?

Inner Diverse, Book 2 of The Splintered Universe NOW in Bookstores!

2013-01-19T07:42:00.000-08:00

Inner Diverse is now in bookstores!

We Can Change the World...

2013-01-03T15:21:00.002-08:00

Wake Up Your Muse: How My Cat Taught Me the Art of Being

2013-01-01T20:18:00.000-08:00

Sammy enjoying the rooftop garden

I’m not a very patient person--ask my publisher. I make no time for writer’s block or lingering in useless limbo over some plot issue or misbehaving minor character. I write pretty much to a tight schedule: this short story to that market by this date; edits to this book to the editor by that date; blog posts created by such and such a time; an article to another market by another date. It goes on and on. When I go to my computer to write, I write.

Then there’s Sammy. My cat.

Who likes to jump on my lap, make himself all comfortable and then lie over my arm — trapping it along with five of my typing digits. Now what??? Some of you would advise me to simply pull out my pinned arm and/or shove him off. But how can I disturb such a blissful creature? He is so content furled on me, so satisfied that he has captured that wandering appendage of business that is all his now. Content in the bliss of now.

Pinned in the moment, my mind first struggles with the need to pound out the next line. My mind then rephrases and teases out nuances of that line. Finally, it wanders out with my gaze and I find myself daydreaming in a kind of trance. It is here that magic happens. In the being; not in the doing.

This is the irony of writing and the muse. To write we need to live; we need to have something to write about and we need to be in that state of mind that allows us to set it to print. I am at my best as a writer when I am focused on the essence of the story, its heart and soul beating through me with a life of its own.

My cat Sammy isn’t the only vehicle to my magical muses.

Waking up the Muse

Here are a few things that help me entice those capricious muses into action:

Music: music moves me in inexplicable ways. I use music to inspire my “muse”. Every book I write has its thematic music, which I play while I write and when I drive to and from work (where I do my best plot/theme thinking). I even go so far as to have a musical theme for each character.

Walks: going for a walk, particularly in a natural environment, uncluttered with human-made distractions, also unclutters the mind and soul. It grounds you back to the simplicity of life, a good place to start.

Cycling: one of my favorite ways to clear my mind is to cycle (I think any form of exercise would suffice); just getting your heart rate up and pumping those endorphins through you soothes the soul and unleashes the brain to freely run the field.

Attend writer’s functions: go to the library and listen to a writer read from her work. You never know how it might inspire you. Browse the bookshelves of the library or bookstore. Attend a writer’s convention or conference.

Visit an art gallery, go to a movie: art of any kind can inspire creativity. Fine art is open to interpretation and can provoke your mind in ways you hadn’t thought before. If you go with an appreciative friend and discuss what you’ve seen you add another element to the experience.

Go on a trip with a friend: tour the city or, better yet, take a road trip with a good friend or alone (if you are comfortable with it). I find that travelling is a great way to help me focus outward, forget myself, and open my mind and soul to adventure and learning something new. Road trips are metaphoric journeys of the soul.

Form a writer’s group: sharing ideas with people of like mind (or not, but of respectful mind) can both inspire you and provide the seeds of ideas.

Beat the Christmas Frenzy and Find Your Focus

2012-12-24T15:38:00.000-08:00

Sammy in his element

How many of you are still running around preparing for the Christmas celebration or secular family festivity? Buying that last minute gift you’d forgotten or were chasing down since a bazillion days ago? Or making last minute changes to your travel plans, house-cleaning for guests, mailing of cards or parcels or meal preparations?

Well, you’re reading this blog post … That means you’re sitting down and taking a minute to relax and regroup. That’s good. Remember to breathe… while I tell you a story…

I’d just finished a three-day drive through snow and rain storms from Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, to Toronto, Ontario, where I’m staying for two days before catching a flight to Vancouver to spend Christmas with my son and good friends on the west coast. Talk about fast living.

I move around a lot these days. It helps me to appreciate some of the most simple things in life and reminds me of what I love most about Christmas: how it focuses my heart and reconnects me. I don’t mean just with relatives and friends either, although the season certainly does that. I’m talking about my soul and the universe itself. Before I became an itinerant, Christmas bustled with my responsibilities as primary caregiver, social coordinator and hostess of major parties. After I’d said goodbye to our visiting friends and done the dishes and tidied the house, after my husband and son had gone to bed, I sat in the dark living room lit only with the Christmas Tree lights and the flickering candle, and listened to soft Christmas music. My male cat found his rightful place on my lap and settled there, pinning me down with love. And there, as I breathed in the scent of wax and fir, I found myself again.

Most of us think of Christmas as a busy time, of getting together (often dutifully) with family and friends, exchanging presents and feasting. Christmas is certainly this, but that is only a shallow view of a far deeper event; and I don’t mean only for Christians.

Whether celebrating the holy light of Hannukah or the birth of Jesus, or the winter solstice, this season provides us with the opportunity to meditate on far more than the surficial nature of the symbols we have come to associate with the season: the Christmas tree, presents, turkey dinner, Santa Claus or Saint Nicholas—most of which originate from pagan tradition, by the way.

Says Lama Christie McNally (author of The Tibetan Book of Meditation), “once you dive below the surface, you will discover a beautiful clear place—like a diamond hidden beneath the rubble. It is your own mind, uncovered … Tibetans say we have only just begun the process of awakening—that we still have quite a way to go in our evolutionary process. And it has nothing to do with building spaceships or computers. The next step in our evolution takes place within.”

Christmas is, more than anything, a time of embracing paradox. It is an opportunity to still oneself amid the bustle; to find joy in duty; to give of one’s precious time when others have none, to embrace selflessness when surrounded by promoted selfishness, and to be genuine in a commercial and dishonest world.

If one were to look beyond the rhetoric and imposed tradition, the Christmas season represents a time of focus, a time to reflect on one’s genuine nature and altruistic destiny. A time to reconnect with the harmony and balance in our lives.

A time to sit with our cat, pinned with love, and write our next novel.

Inner Diverse by Nina Munteanu released by Starfire

2012-12-13T11:46:00.000-08:00

Full cover art for "Inner Diverse" Book 2 of trilogy

Book Two of Nina Munteanu's Splintered Universe Trilogy, "Inner Diverse" was released today by Starfire World Syndicate with cover art done by Costi Gurgu.

In Book Two of this metaphysical space thriller trilogy, detective Rhea Hawke continues her quest for truth and justice in a world that is not what it seems. Rhea's relentless search takes her to the far reaches of the known universe from the treacherous Boiling Seas of the Weeping Mountains of Horus to the blistering deserts of Upsilon 3. Amidst the turmoil of an imminent extra-galactic war, Rhea holds the key even as those she trusts betray her. No one is what they seem in this fast paced second of three books.

“Nina Munteanu is not only a master of metaphor, she is a creator of fantastic worlds and cultures. She combines her biological background with the infinite possibilities of the cosmos and turns an adventure story into a wonderland of alien rabbit holes. When the action starts it goes into hyper-drive, and her protagonist, Rhea Hawke, is a fresh and multi-faceted heroine. A fascinating and enthralling read.”— Craig H. Bowlsby, author of Horth in Killing Reach and creator of Commander’s Log.

“Hawke is a maverick in the Wild West tradition, up against the world; and a genetic mystery with lethal powers. As always, Munteanu sticks to science in her storytelling, and clips along a brisk pace.”—Lynda Williams, author of the Okal Rel series.

"Am supposed to be recording some pick ups today and working on some accents for three of the audiobooks I'm finishing up but instead I get myself sucked into book two of Nina Munteanu's Splintered Universe trilogy!"—Dawn Harvey, voice artist.

Full cover art for "Outer Diverse" Book 1 of trilogy

For more on Costi Gurgu, the impeccable artist of the Splintered Universe Trilogy, see my previous interview with him here on The Alien Next Door.

Here's a short excerpt below on his Triptych design for the trilogy:

SFgirl: you came up with a “Triptych” design for the Splintered Universe Trilogy. What inspired you to come up with it and what do you like about it?

Costi: There is the danger of spoilers in this answer. The fact is that your main character, Rhea, undergoes a certain evolution from a regular human being to… let’s just say something else. And that evolution has three parts, one for each book of the trilogy and it also has a touch of divine. So, the triptych design, so often used for religious paintings, fits like a glove on the entire concept.

Costi was nominated as a finalist the Aurora Prix Award, Canada's top award for works in the genre of the fantastic, in the category of Best Artist for his work on Book 1 of the trilogy, Outer Diverse.

Nina Munteanu Interview on Speculating Canada

2012-12-07T00:06:00.001-08:00

What does science fiction and ecology have in common? And what can they do together for humanity and the planet?

Derek Newman-Stille of Speculating Canada challenges author and ecologist Nina Munteanu with awesome questions on the nature of speculative fiction and the literature of the strange and fantastic.

On the topic of who exactly is Nina Munteanu: "I'm a bit of a bohemian and enjoy wandering the world in search of the strange and wonderful."

On the topic of curiosity's role in creating a better future: "Curiosity feeds our souls. It slows us down so we can pay attention. It teaches us to be interested in the world, to observe and feel. It helps us crawl outside the box, peer around corners into dark alleys where thrilling adventure lurks."

On the role of SF: "the literature of the fantastic: speculative literature, science fiction, fantasy...explore--nay--celebrate and bridge the gap between logic and imagination, the mundane and the extraordinary, the known and the strange, order and infinite possibility.

On the role of speculative fiction: "Speculative fiction predicts consequence to current conditions. It projects into the future or alternate reality from current paradigms in science, technology, and society. Speculative fiction uses the premise, "What if?": "What if this continued?"; "What if we used that this way?"; "What if this caused that?" It provides the proverbial canary in the mine on society. Speculative fiction doesn't just 'tell us'; it can 'show us'."

About balancing her science and her fiction: "My fiction and my ecology have co-evolved in a synergistic way. My interest in ecology stems from my interest in preserving this planet as well as my fascination for how Gaia works; these themes pervade most of my fiction and much of my non-fiction articles and essays...Both ecology and science fiction explore consequence in a big way."

On how these two pursuits influence the other: "Writing science fiction has opened the doors of creative problem solving in my scientific pursuits; and my science has opened windows of possibilities in my writing."

On the role of SF in raising environmental awareness: "Science fiction is the literature of consequence that explores large issues faced by humankind; it can provide and important vehicle in raising environmental awareness."

On her interest in the outsider, as featured in Darwin's Paradox and The Splintered Universe Trilogy: "I find the concept of the outsider fascinating from a psychological perspective. How we treat the unknown (e.g., with suspicion and fear or with wonder and curiosity) tells so much about who and what we are."

On the role of media in influencing what society considers socially desirable or the biases that develop: "We are a fickle, multiplexing culture who want it now, fast, easily digestible--and already summarized. Letting others decide for you what is newsworthy is so dangerous; it spawns gossip and feeds into propaganda."

On the influence of her Canadian identity in the worlds she creates: "Canada is a truly multi-cultural country and serves an excellent fractal microcosm for writing about mixed civilizations in the universe."

For the complete interview go to Speculating Canada.

2012 World Fantasy Convention in Toronto

2012-11-14T15:04:00.001-08:00

On November 1-4, 2012 I did a cool thing: I participated in a world event about the fantastic. Since its inception in 1975 in Providence, Rhode Island, World Fantasy Convention (WFC) has been held in a different location in the world each year (next year the WFC will be held in Brighton, UK, returning for the first time to England since 1997 when London hosted the WFC). This year, World Fantasy Convention happened on my doorstep: Toronto, Canada. Despite being primarily an author of science fiction, I just had to go. Besides, I’d just released my first fantasy novel “The Last Summoner” (Starfire), currently enjoying some popularity in Canada and the United States.

Themes & Other Terribly Wonderful Things

This year Northern Gothic and Urban Fantasy were featured themes. Special guests included the current deans of urban and gothic fantasy: Patricia Briggs; Charles de Lint; Larry Dixon; Tanya Huff; and Mercedes Lackey; with author guest of honour Elizabeth Hand, recipient of the previous year’s world fantasy award for her novella “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon”.

Convention Chair Peter Halasz and his team of volunteers pulled off another awesome convention. Toastmaster Gary K. Wolfe officially opened the convention Thursday evening to an enthusiastic crowd. Events included an art show and auction, the 2012 World Fantasy Awards and banquet on Sunday to announce and celebrate the winners.

The World Fantasy award for best novel went to Lavie Tidhar’s “Osama”, published by British small press PS Publishing. Tidhar’s story, said to stretch the boundaries of the genre, beat out stiff competition from Stephen King’s “11/22/63”, George RR Martin’s “A Dance With Dragons”, Jo Walton’s “Among Others” and Christopher Buehiman’s “Those Across the River”. For a full list of nominees and winners of the 2012 World Fantasy Awards, you can go to the Tor site.

2012 World Fantasy Awards and Lifetime Achievement winners included Alan Garner and the prolific and well-loved George R. R. Martin.

The con also hosted an immense book signing, in which zealous book collectors had a field day. Snaking line-ups of eager readers with stacks of books under their arms cued for the likes of Elizabeth Hand, Patricia Briggs, Larry Dixon, Charles de Lint, Mercedes Lackey, Patrick Rothfuss, Tanya Huff, Guy Gavriel Kay, Jo Walton, Alan Garner, Joe Haldeman, Robert J. Sawyer, Julie Czerneda, and so many more (too many to name them all here).

Panels & Other Possibilities

Between important meetings at the Hotel’s Spirits Lounge and the nearby Fox & Fiddle drinking establishment with friends, colleagues, future colleagues and strangers who would soon be friends, I attended a few choice panels. Panels were wonderfully diverse and interesting. Subjects included the obvious media topics of Urban Fantasy and Steampunk but also explored more erudite literary areas such as editing, self-publishing and the moving target of other publishing paradigms.

A panel entitled “New Twists on Accepted Myths” moderated by publisher Virginia O’Dine and made up of authors Marie Bilodeau, Mercedes Lackey, and anthropologist Meg Turville-Heitz, had me both laughing and thinking with the lively banter between authors, publisher, and academic. Panelists happily wandered rich territory from the traditional application of classical “King Arthur” to the irreverent slanting of Ragnarok.

L.E. Modesitt and Karen Dales

Several panels were devoted to the blur in fiction between reality and the fantastic. In an early morning session that was mysteriously well-attended, called “Reality Made Fantastic or Fantastic Made Real”, L.E. Modesitt moderated an eclectic and international panel of authors, academic and literary agent. He asked panelists Isobelle Carmody, Sally Harding, Karl Schroeder, Delia Sherman, and Greg Wilson to discuss topics from world-building, urban settings and characterization to why there is always a bowl of unrecognizable green dip in the hospitality suite at world fantasy cons.

Marie having a "Kobo moment"

Several panels discussed the changing face of the industry. Panelists including seasoned professional editors such as Ellen Datlow and Gordon Van Gelder to academics such as Robert Runté discussed topics that ranged from the role of the editor to e-publishing and the rising wave of self-publishing. At some point, discussions naturally slid to personal gripes about anything from devices like Kobo and Kindle to why you should love—or hate—Amazon and the alien-wisdom of Apple.

Hospitality & Why I Really Came

Suzanne Church & Anita Hades

Speaking of the hospitality suite—well, I was a paragraph ago—the food and drink provided to attending members was outstanding. The suite, large and cozy with French-style furniture and tiny tables, became a focal center for foraging nomads. Most times, I had to pick my way through the snaking line of outstretched legs as parked members blithely ate and chatted in the hallway. The suite was a microcosm of the convention, where members met, drank coffee, visited over food and traded stories from around the world.

It is called a World Fantasy Convention, after all. I met people from Sweden, the UK, Iceland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Israel, Australia, USA, and Canada. We discussed anything from the mysterious green dip and American politics (no connection, really) to why American writer Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games” became so popular in North America but not so much in Europe and Asia.

Radio host Winifred H. Smythe

I met old friends I hadn’t seen since I moved from the west coast to the east coast of Canada and renewed my contacts with colleagues, editors, publishers and fellow authors.

In a way, the World Fantasy Convention is really a giant annual business meeting. It is a place and time for professionals in the realm of the fantastic—authors, publishers, editors, reviewers and artists—to congregate at an excellent venue and trade ideas, stories, and history, conduct business, make new contacts, network generally, and have fun. It is an opportunity for those involved in the world of speculative, fantasy, and science fiction literature and art to renew, cross-pollinate and come away changed, vitalized and...well...fantastic.

I traded my business card with more people than I can remember, discovered some interesting opportunities, and counted my experience at this year’s world fantasy convention a great success. I was feeling pretty fantastic.

Next year, Brighton!

Julia's Gift by Nina Munteanu

2012-11-10T17:02:00.000-08:00

A short while ago, I wrote a piece entitled "Writing about Truth and Other Lies". In it, I explored the notion of “truth”: quintessential divine truth, individual truth, corporate truth and so on. I used the example of the recent controversy over Proposition 37 to label genetically modified products in California. I call it controversy, because a debate is raging on the Internet about the benefit of this action. A debate fed by self-interest, greed, and mendacity. Truth has little to do with it, as far as I’m concerned.

Julia's Gift will soon become one of nine stories in a collection that is coming out early next year with Starfire entitled “Natural Selection”.

Julia’s Gift

I inhale deeply to savor the freshness of the air and raise my face to the bright sun bathing in an azure sky. I begin to climb the stairs, averting my eyes from the thousands of people watching me. I falter and nearly stumble as my thoughts sink like a stone in water to Julia and what she did: to that black day twenty-nine years ago when her actions determined who lived and who died, and to the day much later when she ended the curse she’d placed on herself as a result.

Why did she do any of it? Maybe it was because she was the middle child in our family. Psychologists like to say that the middle child acts like an immobile bridge between roles of leadership and childish irresponsibility. Able to see both sides of an argument, they usually make good diplomats, but falter when faced with spontaneous decisions. Like a fish out of water forced to breathe air, Julia gulped in leadership against her nature . . . and destroyed herself.

How different the course of events might have been if she hadn’t acted so boldly that spring day twenty-nine years ago. Would I be here, walking up these steps now? Would Simon have survived? Would Julia still have jumped in front of the tube-jet seventeen years ago? Or would we all have died along with our parents that spring day?

The blood-red dawn promised a warm day in April. By mid-morning the smell of Montreal had dissipated. The sun felt like a heat lamp on my face as I stepped outside the farmhouse, scrambling after my older brother and sister. They were both tall and long of stride, wearing functional bows and arrows slung over their warrior-like shoulders, while I trotted behind like their pet dog. I didn’t mind. I was only ten years old and Simon and Julia were my heroes. They took me on forbidden adventures in the forest. Our parents didn’t allow us outside the farm property because of the threat of stray revolutionaries, but Simon and Julia flagrantly disobeyed them. It probably started on a dare that escalated out of hand. It was as much that dare as anything else that ended up saving one life, sacrificing another and damning the third.

We often spent the better part of the day in the forest and fields beyond the farm property. It was only Simon, who usually made the decision in the first place to stay all day, who had the presence of mind to bring along food—which he seldom shared. During our journey Simon would usually throw a glance back once or twice to make sure I was still keeping up and rebuke my snail’s pace: “Hey dreamer, hurry up or we’ll leave you behind!” Julia would snap at him in my defense: “Claire’s only ten, you idiot! So slow down for the runt!” They would always argue. “Well, you slow down too, then!” he’d shout back. “I slowed down for you already, slug!” she’d rejoin. On it would go as they shoved each other until I caught up to them. They were less than a year apart and I think Julia resented Simon being the eldest and the one who made all the decisions. She wanted to make them but she never did, so she always disagreed with his.

The day started pretty much like any other day. Simon and Julia were arguing as usual by the time we reached the forest. They’d overheard a discussion between Mom and Tante Lise about the revolution.

We moved to the country last summer to get away from the fighting in Montreal. Mom and Dad lost their jobs because of the Gaian revolution. The company they worked for, BioGen Technologies, went up in smoke thanks to the latest rash of fire bombings and Mom got scared that the Gaians would come after the survivors — mainly Dad, who was one of the head honchos there. So we packed up and moved to my Oncle Pierre’s and Tante Lise’s small dairy farm in the Eastern Townships, where the air smelled clean -- well, cleaner than the cities, anyway.

Mom and Dad met at BioGen in Montreal. She was a junior microbiologist in “functional genomics” with unorthodox ideas, and he was one of their chief scientists in nano-technology and transgenic research. BioGen was supposed to save the world, but then one of Dad’s “creations” got away from them and crashed the world’s wheat crop.

“Tante Lise shouldn’t call Dad Frankenstein,” Julia grumbled. “He isn’t a monster.”

“It’s ’cause he made monsters, stupid.” Simon snorted. “Frankenstein’s the name of the mad scientist, not the clone monsters he made.”

“He’s not a mad scientist,” she defended. “And they’re not monsters!”

“The Gaians say they are,” Simon quipped, picking his teeth. “They say that BioGen’s just another multi-national company that’s making too much money. They say BioGen’s technology is irresponsible and that stuff Dad did is wrecking our ecosystems like diversity, evolution and stuff.”

“What do the Gaians know. They’re luddites,” Julia said with disgust, parroting what our father always said. I knew she didn’t know what a luddite was. “Dad just made a little mistake once. Some DNA escaped and went rogue on them. Part of the risk we have to take in GE crops.”

“Yeah, like widespread famine,” Simon muttered, shaking his head.

Julia frowned with worry. “Tante Lise isn’t a Gaian . . . is she?”

“Dunno.” Simon shrugged and absently raked back his mat of straw-coloured hair with his hands. “She doesn’t like what Dad was doing. Lots of people think it’s wrong. Even Mom.”

“Mom’s just scared they’ll find us,” Julia grumbled. “She’s scared of everything,” she murmured more to herself than to Simon, as if trying to convince herself.

As we stepped out of the cool dappled forest into the warm sunshine of a small clearing, Simon announced that we should eat some lunch. I was happy to comply.

“It’s only ten-thirty,” Julia objected.

“Well, I’m hungry. So it’s time to eat.”

“You can’t tell me when to eat,” Julia said tartly. “Pig!”

“That’s because you only brought along some crackers while I made three sandwiches for me! You’re never prepared,” he said smugly. “And now you’re jealous!”

“I’m not jealous,” Julia said haughtily. “I’m just not hungry.”

“You are.”

“Am not!” Her face went pink.

“Are too, dork!” He laughed, then promptly sat down on a patch of matted long grass and swung out his backpack. Without waiting for either of us to agree or join him, Simon fished out a peanut butter and raspberry jam sandwich and bolted it down with gluttonous pleasure as I longed in silence. He wasn’t a particularly tidy eater and left a smear of red jam on his chin. I noticed that his cheeks were flushed already from the heat and sweat glistened on his nose and forehead.

Julia stomped around then finally dropped down and threw her arms against her upraised knees. She glowered at her older brother. Even if she was hungry she wasn’t going to admit to it now. I was ready to confess my hunger in hopes of receiving a morsel, but Julie glared at me as if she’d read my mind. My shoulders drooped in defeat.

After Simon finished his first course of lunch, we plunged back into the forest out of the burning sun. The deer flies buzzed furiously around our heads amid wild arm waving and frustrated outcries. Simon led us up a hill toward a large hemlock grove. He scrambled a steep incline to a narrow long ledge that may have once been a path. The forest floor was carpeted with dead needles and tiny fallen cones and dotted with young maple saplings. Like a man who had found gold, Simon bent down and gathered a handful of cones then darted behind a tree. Julia waited for me catch up before she scrambled up, shrieking at the deluge of cones Simon flung at her face. He sniggered as she practically fell backwards on top of me. She swore furiously at him, her face red with embarrassment.

“Come on!” Simon said enthusiastically. “Let’s play war!”

Eager to play, Julia ran for cover and gathered her own arsenal of weapons.

“You can’t use your hands!” Simon warned just as Julia was about to throw some cones at him. “You have to make a slingshot using a tree like this.” He squatted over a young sapling and bent its branches into a mutilated mess, fit a cone into his makeshift catapult, pulled the sapling back than let it spring naturally towards Julia. The cone flew past her head, barely missing her. Both participants shrieked with pleasure.

As Julia and Simon collected their cones, I, left out of the game as usual, sat back like a dutiful and appreciative audience to watch their creative entertainment. The warriors shot in earnest, sometimes hitting their opponent with a victorious cry, other times -- most of the time -- missing widely. In the process the poor saplings they used were swiftly demolished and they had to forage for a new catapult. During one of her forages, Julia tripped on an exposed root and fell headlong to the ground with a hollow thud. When she didn’t get up right away, Simon jeered, “Hey, clone monster! Get up!”

She jerked to her feet. She wiped her head and pushed back her thick mane of chestnut hair, tucking it behind her ears. I noticed a cut on her dirt-smeared forehead. “Don’t call me that, you moron!” she said, temper flaring.

“You’re the moron! You never do anything on your own,” he bit out. “That’s ’cause Dad made you out of spare parts back at the lab!” That line was usually reserved for me and I was used to it. But Julia couldn’t bear the insult.

“You shut up!” she screamed. “I’m tired of your snotty remarks about Dad. You can keep them to yourself --”

“Until he gets us all killed when they come looking for ‘Doctor Frankenstein’!” Simon mocked.

Julia bolted at him, hands lashing out like raptor’s talons. He jerked out of her clawing hands and tackled her. They rolled among the dead leaves, hands swiping and legs kicking. I couldn’t tell who was winning, but both were crying.

“Stop it! Stop it!” I pleaded and tried to pry them apart. I finally succeeded but only after receiving a kick in the stomach.

Simon stood up first, nose bleeding and an eye already swollen. “You bitch!” he screamed down at her as she pushed herself off the ground and wiped her dirty tear-stained face. “You crazy bitch! You don’t care about Mom. You’re just like Dad: he should have thought about us before he went and made all those monsters!”

“Go to hell!” she shrieked. “You don’t have a clue what he was doing. He was feeding the hungry of the world!”

“Yeah? Meantime we’re polluting it so much we’re killing everyone we’re feeding!”

“Can’t we do both?” I piped up. “Like the plants?”

“What?” They both turned haltingly to me like I was an alien who’d just uttered gibberish.

“Feed the hungry and clean up the pollution,” I said. One day while my brother and sister were in school, my father had pulled me out of class to take me on a tour of the BioGen facility and show me their artificial photosynthesis lab: “How marvelous,” he’d exulted, “if we could copy what chloroplasts do and plug directly into the sun without burning a drop of oil. No more hungry people. No more fossil fuel and no more pollution.”

He’d dropped me off at my mother’s lab and she’d shown me holo-images generated through electron tomography of mitochondria and chloroplasts. While my father had dedicated himself to feeding the starving masses, my mother dreamed of a world where people no longer needed to eat. The mitochondria and chloroplasts shared a common ancestry, she explained to me. They both descended from earlier prokaryotic cells that established themselves as internal symbionts -- endosymbionts, we now call them -- of a larger anaerobic cell. The similarities between these two organelles were uncanny, my mother went on: for instance, they both contained their own DNA and ribosomes; they divided by themselves and used the same enzyme to produce energy in the form of ATP. The only major difference was how they produced ATP. While chloroplasts used chlorophyll to capture the sun’s energy, mitochondria broke down glucose in the food we eat. Inspired by my father’s tools and my mother’s vision, I soared on a dream of people capable of photosynthesis in a Ciamician world.

“Dad told me,” my words rushed out in a torrent, knowing I had seconds before they ignored me again, “about a scientist named Giacomo Ciamician who a hundred years ago dreamed of a world where photosynthesis did everything for us--”

Julia took in a sharp breath and turned back to rail at Simon: “You’re so narrow-minded, just like a Gaian, just like Mom!” She retrieved her bow, scattered arrows and quiver. “Come on, Claire.” Julia took my hand with a last glare at Simon, who was brushing off the mess from his shirt and pants. “We’re going home.” Without waiting for me to decide, she led me at a brisk pace back to the farm.

“Do that!” Simon yelled after us, and sat down on a rock to sulk. I turned my head for a last glimpse at him as Julia tugged me hard down the hill.

“Shouldn’t we wait for him?” I asked innocently when I lost sight of him.

“He can find his own way home,” she muttered, tugging me harder. “He led us here, didn’t he?”

I staggered over the rough terrain to keep up, secretly praying that Julia knew the way. It wasn’t Simon I was worried about. The sun disappeared behind carbon-coloured clouds. They scudded overhead like prey, chased by a biting wind. It howled and sent the Trembling Aspens thrashing above us. Their lanky poles clanked like bones to the moaning wind as the leaves hissed a mad chorus.

“What if we meet a bear?” I asked, starting to feel unsafe.

“There aren’t any bears in the forest, Claire,” Julia said shaking her head sarcastically at me. “Besides, I have my bow and arrows.” She tapped her quiver and bow smugly. She was right, I thought, pacified by her confidence. She was good with that thing and I was a little surprised that she didn’t remind me of the four rabbits and two coyotes she’d killed while all Simon had managed to do with his was wound a single rabbit.

We broke through the perimeter of the dense forest that lined the farm as rain pelted us like missiles, instantly drenching us. As if the stinging rain had warned her, Julia gripped my arm to stay me. I saw her eyes harden as she threw swift glances to the open garden gate and the greenhouse whose door was ajar--

I squeaked in surprise as she clamped a hand over my mouth. “Shhh! Hold still!” she whispered, glaring at me under streams of wet hair. Then she let go and I couldn’t stop trembling while she snatched her bow and loaded it with an arrow. As if in response to her move, the front door of the farmhouse creaked open and a large unshaven man with unwashed hair and eyes glinting of malice lumbered out. He carried a loaded sack in one dirty hand and a blood-covered knife in the other. The man spotted us and I hitched my breath, stiff with terror, not daring to blink the rain off my eyelashes. He grinned, baring yellow teeth, and stomped toward us. I scrambled behind Julia and clutched the leg of her shorts.

Julia glanced from the man’s churlish grin to his knife and raised her bow. He laughed at her. Without hesitation she drew the bow back and let the arrow fly. It sunk into his chest and he inhaled sharply, eyes bulging in disbelief. Then he charged us. I cringed and wet my pants. Julia stood like a statue, her arm a blur of reloading, and struck him with two or more arrows before he staggered and fell dead on his face only meters from us.

Gruff laughter from the side of the house warned us that there were more men. Julia seized my arm and dove for cover in a small thicket by the cherry tree just as Simon broke through the forest into the clearing. I shivered, cowering in our wet hiding place as several armed men marched past us toward the dead man. Toward Simon. Simon stood not far from their dead colleague, hair hanging in his eyes and bow in his hand. They made the logical conclusion.

He must have made his own rightful conclusion and his eyes fleetingly strayed, searching hard, beyond the thugs to where we huddled behind them. Did he see us there? I imagined that he did. But before I could see more, Julia shoved my face down into the dirt. What I didn’t see I could only imagine as my heart slammed up my throat: Simon’s and Julia’s eyes locking, their anguished message of agreement. The rest I heard through the hissing rain: a slashing sound, a clipped gasp and a thud. I was choking but didn’t dare struggle. Hot tears stung my eyes. Julia’s firm hand, now shaking, kept me down for an eternity of smelling dirt and rotting vegetation. Of feeling the wet prickle of soil and leaves against my face. Of listening to men’s grunts and shuffling steps dwindle to a constant sizzle and plopping of rain.

I was young, but I knew perfectly well what had just happened: Simon took the hit for us, and Julia let him. The first -- and last -- decision they’d made together was one made in complicity.

Julia and I made it out of there, after she confirmed that Simon was dead and found our parents and relatives murdered inside the house. We had a difficult journey but were eventually taken in by a kind family, where we rode out the remaining years of war until the Gaians established a new government and peace was reinstated.

I found a calling in micro-biomimicry -- the Gaian’s answer to aimless technology -- at Concordia University in Montreal. Julia never returned to school. She got a job as a waitress and helped me through university. I met André, a med student, and eventually married while Julia wandered like a nomad from one relationship to another. We saw less and less of one another, until I started to think she was avoiding me. When she committed suicide I was shocked. But not surprised.

Had she been running the same thought loop I had? How it might have played if she hadn’t killed that Gaian and run instead.

Had she needlessly killed a man -- albeit a murderer -- and needlessly caused Simon’s death? If we’d run instead would they have chased us or let us go? They were paid assassins, after all, on a mission to ‘take out’ our father. Not child murderers. Maybe Simon would still be with us and Julia wouldn’t have destroyed herself out of irreconcilable guilt for her inaction in Simon’s murder—on account of her initial violence—to save the two of us. . . .

Or had she tapped into some divine providence when she let the arrow fly and saved my life the only way it could have been saved . . . at Simon’s expense . . . and consequently her own? . . .

I turn to the audience and spot André and our two children. They blur through my tears. As a scientist I understand that one cannot know the future or one’s destiny; but my heart tells me differently. Like most things for him, my brother’s choice was clearly laid before him. For Julia, as always, it was not so simple. And yet, that spring day she became more than she was and with fluid motions enacted her part in the cruel miracle that brought me here today.

The heaviness in my legs lifts as I take the last steps to the podium in the open-air auditorium that celebrates our clean air. I am finally ready to accept my Nobel Prize. And I know at last what I am going to say:

I’m here today accepting this award for the creation of photosynthetic symbionts in human mitochondria, because of my brother and sister. I share this honor with them. If not for their heroism on a day long ago, I would not have survived with the burning motivation and tenacity to pursue a lifelong dream: to serve the human race and the planet with the gift of an alternate and clean source of fuel and food -- a way for humanity to directly harness energy from the sun . . . Julia’s gift.

~ The End ~

Post Script:

As a postscript to the subject of genetic engineering, which formed the basis for the premise of this short story, I must report that Proposition 37 (to identify all foods that have been genetically altered), was defeated through a vote by Californians. I am appalled and dismayed that otherwise intelligent citizens would choose to vote against their own and others best interests: the simple right to know a characteristic of their food product. It's not unlike making the choice between food that was grown a particular way vs. another (e.g., eco-friendly vs. not, or fish that were processed in one way vs another). Voting "No" to GE labeling is like saying "No" to labeling. It's like saying, "I don't want to know the expiration date of this luncheon meat I'm buying or that it has peanut-residuals in it that might not affect me but might affect little Billy down the street."

The FDA has decreed that there's no difference between genetically engineered and non-engineered plants. That's ridiculous. Of course they are different: one is engineered and the other isn't. It's that simple. So, why the great big fight then? Why did those huge companies like Monsanto, Dupont, Nestle, Coca Cola, Conagra, Kellogg, Dow, Bayer, BASF, Syngenta and others spend millions to defeat a bill that just asked them to label their oh-so-not-so-different product??? What are they afraid of?

We could chalk one more for the bullies ... likewise, we could chalk another one for a surrendered freedom ... Or, citizens can choose to learn something from it. And do our own labelling, based on the companies that chose against disclosure.

Here's my verdict and decision: I've chosen NOT to purchase anything by any company that chose against disclosure. Why? I no longer trust them. It's that simple. Thanks for revealing yourselves.

What does this have to do with "Julia's Gift"? Nothing ... Everything ...

Why You Want to Go To A Writer’s Convention

2012-10-31T16:51:00.001-07:00

Nina Munteanu and Tom Doherty share a panel on ecology

I'm about to attend (and participate as a panelist and guest author) tomorrow for four days at the World Fantasy Convention in greater Toronto (The Sheraton Hotel in Richmond Hill). And I’m all jazzed about it! Why?... Well, let me tell you why…

If you haven’t yet attended a writer’s conference or convention, it’s high time you did. Because, not only are you missing out on an education, you are missing out on a sub-culture that may change your life as a writer, help feed the hungry and align the universe.

The last World Fantasy Convention I attended was several years ago in 2008. It was held in Calgary, Alberta, when I still lived in Vancouver, British Columbia. The ten-hour drive through some of the most glorious Canadian wilderness and mountains was bracing and we were lucky that the weather played fair. It was an auspicious start to a wonderful journey of self-discovery.

Nina introduces Toulouse to author Lynda Williams

Hosted by toastmaster Tad Williams, this world-class convention featured guests of honor, David Morrell, Barbara Hambly, Tom Doherty and Todd Lockwood. The World Fantasy Convention promised great things and delivered them. And I’m not just talking about that white chocolate cranberry-date-nut dip that had me loitering at the hospitality suite. Or all those midnight parties that served savory wine with salted almonds, sharp cheese and colorful conversation with the likes of David Hartwell, Tor editor and impeccable dresser (gotta love those ties!). I’m not even talking about the hot tub that sprung a leak on the 18^th floor at 1 am or the entertaining panels and readings, which rocked for both writer and reader.

What made the con great for me was seeing my writing community (both writing colleagues and readers who followed my writing) and meeting new people, all lovers of books.

Nina meets an old friend...

I was rudely eyeballing someone’s nametag on his chest, when I collided with the Prince George crowd that included authors, Lynda Williams (herself responsible for some pretty nasty intergalactic wars), Nathalie Mallet (who cages princes) and publisher Virginia O’Dine of Bundoran Press (rumored to have been somehow responsible for the hot tub fiasco). I also chummed with Jennifer Rahn, author of The Longevity Thesis, who was charmed by my sly cat (she’s a softy at heart). Toulouse just kept charming his way through the crowd right to the book fair. We wandered to the back where Anita Hades of Edge Books gave Toulouse her usual greeting (a feline move that was a cross between Sophie Marceau and Brigitte Helm; both she and Toulouse have French blood coursing through their veins, after all—c’est vrai!).

I’d come a long way from the first writer’s conference I went to as a budding writer of a few short stories and non-fiction articles…

Toulouse meets all the babes...

Here’s what author Susan Denney says about her first writer’s conference: “Going to my first writers' conference was an act of faith. I was just starting to make some freelance sales when the members of my writers' group encouraged me to join them at a conference a few hundred miles away. The expense didn't seem justified to me. The cost was far more than I had earned through writing that year. But they convinced me at last and it proved to be a great investment. The benefits of a writers' conference are there for anyone who has a desire to be a better writer.”

Here are some reasons why you can’t afford NOT to go to a conference or convention:

Contacts: you will make contacts with people working in the industry, an extremely valuable asset; this industry is a social one, based on trust, respect and joyfulness. While there’s no guarantee that you will meet anyone famous or influential, you will definitely meet people who know more about writing than you do. Just hanging out with professional writers, editors and agents is educational. If nothing else, you will gain some confidence and ease with industry people, who are real people too. Some may become friends; some may become colleagues; some will become both.

Appointments: through agent/editor/author appointments, you will have a chance to have a quality private conversation with a professional on all aspects of writing and publishing. This is your chance to pitch your novel or ask that one burning question. You know you’ll get a candid and professional answer. That in itself is invaluable and may be enough reason to attend the con. Appointments are also your best chance of getting your manuscript read. This is because it bypasses the slush-pile and months of waiting for a response. More and more editors and agents look to conferences to meet potential authors. For them, meeting an author in person is a bonus to their gauging potential success in a relationship with them.

Toulouse meets an old friend...

Education on Craft & Marketing: you will learn something about craft and marketing, no matter what stage you are in your writing career. Depending on the conference or convention, aside from good information from panels, you may also get personal mentoring, 1-page critiques, or attend small themed workshops. Feedback from an experienced writer can save you months of frustration and grief. Just hearing about what is currently going on in the industry is also valuable and conferences are a good way to get the skinny on what the current issues in the writing and publishing industry are. Getting it from those who are working inside avoids the idle and potentially harmful gossip.

Community: you will be exposed to a community of writers, hundreds of creative people in various stages of their careers. By interacting with both those you can help and those who can help you, you will gain a measure of both humility and confidence and satisfaction. We learn so much by helping others. Simply being with other writers can help hone your people-skills, the same ones you will need when approaching agents, editors, publishers and research sources during your career as a professional. Remember, if you aren’t having fun, you are missing one of the most important aspects of attending a writer’s conference, and you will lose your own effectiveness.

Energy: there is nothing more energizing than a common sharing among those of like-minded thought and vision. Writing is primarily an individual pursuit, often thought to belong to the introvert; but, to succeed in the writing/publishing industry a writer must display staying power, persistence, confidence and enduring energy. There is nothing quite as inspirational as hearing an accomplished writer provide their story of victory against odds. I will never forget the moving words of Ray Bradbury at a conference in Palm Springs years ago. I have repeated those words many times since. If you come to a conference with the right mind-set, I guarantee that you will leave with more energy than you came and with a burning need to write.

Nina meets an old friend too...

Exposure: depending on the kind of conference or convention you attend, you will have the opportunity to expose yourself to something different (e.g., different fiction genres and associated communities; fiction vs. non-fiction; different media; etc.). I attended a romance writers conference a few years back (I write mostly science fiction and fantasy—but often with romance elements in them) and found it bracingly educational.

New Markets & Ideas: conferences attract writers of all kinds. Conferences provide fertile ground for cross-pollination of ideas, markets and marketing ploys. Writers, like you, are generally a nice crowd; most are willing and eager to share their successes and failures. And contacts. Sharing is one of the great things that happens at conferences. There may be a common pin board set up for people to share. Most conferences are Twitter and Facebook enabled for quick and easy viral sharing. If you don’t come away from a conference with at least one new idea, contact or market, you haven’t done your job: talk to people.

Here are a few do’s and don’ts for when you go conferencing:

1. Wear comfortable but not sloppy clothing and shoes (it’s likely that you will be doing a fair bit of standing and walking); you want to make a good impression. Be yourself and dress accordingly.

2. Bring promotional material with you (e.g., business cards, flyers on your book, stories, etc.). Have something to share and exchange with other writers and professionals. Most conferences also have tables devoted to shareware. This is your chance to introduce you and your writing to others.

3. Take something to write with (e.g., notebook and pen or iPad, etc.).

4. Talk to people. Chances are that everyone there is interesting.

5. Respect the time, particularly other people’s time, and keep your appointments and meetings.

6. Don’t bring your heavy manuscript with you to the conference. Agents and editors don’t have the time or inclination or space in their suitcase for it. Use the conference to make an impression and get an invitation for something later in writing.

7. Keep all of your interactions verbal and face-to-face. Don’t rely on memorized speeches or a folded up written pitch in your pocket. Keep it casually professional. Make eye contact and speak from the heart. Show your passion.

8. Have fun. And don’t be afraid to show it; there’s nothing more infectious and attractive than someone having fun.
j

Writing About Truth…and Other Lies

2012-10-14T13:15:00.001-07:00

So, what is it to write about truth?

Many of you are familiar with the term “write what you know”. I wrote an article on Scribophile about this topic. In it I shared some excellent advice from Literary Agent Rachelle Gardner: “Write what you know means write with authenticity about thoughts, feelings, experiences of life. Be honest. Write from a deep place. Don't write from the surface. Whether you're writing about parenthood or cancer or anything else... be real. Don't reflect what you know from other people or the media... write what you know from your own inner life.” The advice write what you know isn’t about literal truths; it’s about what you know inside. And as SF author Marg Gilks says, “You know more than you think.”

So, what is it to write about the truth?

vote yes to Proposition 37

Here’s a bit of truth from New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom in an article on September 19^th, 2012, entitled Uneasy Allies in the Grocery Aisle: “Giant bioengineering companies like Monsanto and DuPont are spending millions of dollars to fight a California ballot initiative aimed at requiring the labeling of genetically modified foods. That surprises no one, least of all the proponents of the law, which if approved by voters would become the first of its kind in the nation.”

Let’s dig a bit deeper into this truth: “companies behind some of the biggest organic brands in the country—Kashi, Cascadian Farm, Horizon Organic—also have joined the anti-labeling effort, adding millions of dollars to defeat the initiative, known as Proposition 37.”

Strom reveals even deeper truths when she discloses that these well-known “organic” companies are owned by larger conglomerates like Kellogg, General Mills, Dean Foods, Smucker’s and Coca-Cola. Other food companies who have thrown in funds to help defeat the bill for transparency include PepsiCo., Neslé, and ConAgra Foods.

Strom reports that those who support the bill to label GMO products include Whole Foods, Nature’s Path (a Canadian company) Organic Valley, Cliff Bar and Amy’s Kitchen.

Whenever an issue of importance arises, the truth reveals itself. And sometimes in the oddest way. It often slides in through a back door in nuance, motion, color. I’m not just talking about factual truth; I’m talking about resonating hair-standing gut-grabbing truth. The kind of truth that resonates through you in a scintillating frisson that sparks of thrilling unfamiliar yet calms you with the warmth of home. The kind of truth that stops you mid-stride, like someone shouting your name. Subversive truth. The kind of truth that vibrates deep inside and radiates out in a warm flood of epiphany. The kind of truth that stirs your heart in a relentless wave of flaming light.

At first glance it’s rather obvious why those fighting the bill are against it: they have something to lose in transparency. The question is, why do they think that way? These giant biotech food companies are feeding the entire world, after all, with revolutionary strains of super-plants. They are doing a great good, surely. Could it simply be a concern that they may lose some customers who do not wish to consume GE products but who are unwittingly doing so now? That is being dishonestly self-serving as well as short-sighted (the European Union has required biotech labeling since 1997—it’s just a matter of time).

Could it be the recent bad publicity from findings of the long-term effects of GMO products and Roundup on test animals? (See the incendiary paper by French and Italian scientists in Food Chem. Toxicol., referenced below). Despite the barrage of bad press (wonder who’s behind most of that?), the paper’s results cannot be refuted entirely or ignored (if only from the basis of scientific inquiry and professional due diligence to do with Type II Error).

Or is it more insidious?

There is something far more insidious than a lie; that is to dissemble with a half-lie—or half-truth—a truth that veils a festering lie beneath its candy-coated mantle of equivocation. A “truth” so delicious that we want to believe it, even when we see the lie lurking beneath. Little lies always hide bigger lies.

For more than a decade, consumers in North America have purchased cereals, snack foods, and salad dressings, among other products, blithely unaware that these products contained ingredients from plants whose DNA was manipulated in a laboratory.

Here’s my witnessed truth: The aggressive multi-million dollar campaign waged by multi-national corporations against transparency in food labeling in the USA is the culmination of self-serving protectionism in a most heinous way. Their decade-long silence and current reluctance to label their products (and all this before the Seralini et al. study) points to a far greater lie.

Since the long-term toxicity study by Seralini et al. was released in Food & Chemical Toxicology last week, a massive campaign to discredit the study has been waged on the Internet. This despite the soundness of the 2-year study, its glaringly obvious results (e.g. test animals died 2-3 times more quickly than controls among many other findings) and the fact that it sets precedent by being the longest and most detailed study ever conducted on a herbicide and a GMO to date; all previous studies by Monsanto labs and others were only 90-day trials.

So, what is it to write about the truth?

I’ve been a practicing scientist for over twenty years. I did research and wrote papers that were published in scientific peer-reviewed journals. I diligently used the scientific method, hypothesis-testing, objective observation and appropriate statistics to my work. I also write articles for magazines, blogs and places like this site. I write short stories and novels. I write how-to books and guidebooks. And I write letters. Lots of letters. In all this, I have made a point to do my research. I try always to go to the source and verify my information through cross-checking, and various other quality assurance procedures I learned over the years to best represent and communicate the truth.

For instance, in writing this article, I perused many articles that presented both sides of the several issues I covered, including the source paper by Seralini et al.

Science is the rationale tool for the pursuit of the truth. This is why scientists are burdened to proceed under an objective protocol in their premise presentation, experimental design, methodology and interpretation and conclusions drawn. Because the introduction of error and bias is possible in each of these steps, researchers with integrity ensure through design and quality assurance protocol that these errors and biases are minimized. This includes the use of contols, sufficient sample size and statistical power, blind or even double-blind experiments and more. Experiments are reported with sufficient transparency to be replicated (an icon of good science). Once they are reported in a paper, results transform from science into politics.

Science and its close cousin “pseudo-science” are the weapons waged in this issue of GMO food labeling. But science is just a soldier. Who are the politicians behind the soldiers of science and what are their motives? That is where the truth lies.

In the end, I have found that listening to the conviction of my heart, to my inner “soul wisdom”, best serves the truth. Then again I prefer the resonating hair-standing gut-grabbing truth.

You may be interested in a previous article I wrote here back in 2007 about the potential ecological dangers posed by GE practices, the wisdom of labelling GE products and Nature's alternatives to GE. Here is an excerpt:

While developers of genetically engineered foods (GEF) strive to produce hardier and higher-yielding plants, ecologists throughout the world eye transgenics skeptically. They fear that these genetically altered plants, may escape into the wild and displace native plants with unforeseen and potentially devastating results. Dr. Wes Jackson, director of the Land Institute in Kansas, a non-profit research facility devoted to alternative agricultural practices, warns that, if misused, biotechnology may lead to the human-induced degradation of the genomes of plant species. “What is being more or less ignored” in the rush to biotechnology, he said in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, “is that some of the same principles and processes that govern an ecosystem, like a forest or a prairie, also operate with genomes. The genome is a miniature ecosystem.”1 Thinking along the same lines, Jane Rissler of the Union of Concerned Scientists of America suggested that transgenic science practices may release a seemingly harmless gene into our food supply with life-threatening consequences.

Growing knowledge of potential risks to ecosystem and human health is prompting many to insist that GEFs be identified and segregated so that consumers can make a choice for or against them. Which brings us to the obvious question: what alternative to the use of GEFs will we find to feed our ever-growing populations? Rissler advocates an alternative vision for agriculture, one based on nature’s own balance, which she calls “sustainable agriculture” or biomimicry.

Go here to read the entire article, "Biomimicy: Nature's Alternative to Genetically Engineered Foods".

If you live in California, or even if you don't, I exhort you to support Proposition 37 this November any way you can. Our freedom--and truth--is at stake.

Reference:

Seralini, G.-E., et al. Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize. Food Chem. Toxicol. (2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.201208.005

Why I Miss Ray Bradbury

2012-09-28T14:48:00.003-07:00

Ray Bradbury

In June of this year, Ray Bradbury—science fiction & fantasy master and visionary and my hero—passed away at age 91.

Visionary premise and large ideas reign in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror (whose borders Bradbury’s writing seamlessly subverted: “What I have always been is a hybrid author” Bradbury said in 2009). But Bradbury was far more than a brilliant visionary like Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein. He was the undisputed King of Metaphor. His subtle exploration and layered interpretations of the human psyche resonate deeply. At the soul-level.

Ray Bradbury once told me that everything I wrote was metaphor—every single word: from the verb I chose to move a sentence to the name of a character. I remember coming close to tears the last time I watched him speak at a conference several years ago in Palm Springs; when he spoke so eloquently in that homespun sing-song voice about the role of the writer as artist. It resonated so powerfully.

A while back, I wrote an article on Bradbury’s writing as an example of the power of metaphor. The article was entitled “The Martian Chronicles and Other Metaphors”:

They came because they were afraid or unafraid, happy or unhappy. There was a reason for each man. They were coming to find something or get something, or to dig up something or bury something. They were coming with small dreams or big dreams or none at all —Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles

When I was but a sprite, and before I became an avid reader of books (I preferred comic books), I read Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. It changed me. It changed what I thought of books and what I felt about the power of stories. It made me cry. And perhaps that was when I decided to become a writer. I wanted to move people as Bradbury had moved me.

The Martian Chronicles isn’t really about Mars. It’s about us. Who we are, what we are, and what we may become. What we inadvertently do—to others, and finally to ourselves—and how the irony of chance can change everything.

The 1970 Bantam book jacket so aptly calls The Martian Chronicles, “a story of familiar people and familiar passions set against incredible beauties of a new world … A skillful blending of fancy and satire, terror and tenderness, wonder and contempt.”

Written in the 1940s, the chronicles drip with a nostalgic atmosphere — shady porches with tinkling pitchers of lemonade, grandfather clocks, chintz-covered sofas. But longing for this comfortable past proves dangerous in every way to Bradbury's characters — the golden-eyed Martians as well as the humans. Starting in the far-flung future of 1999, expedition after expedition leaves Earth to investigate Mars. The Martians guard their mysteries well, but soon succumb to the diseases that arrive with the rockets — recapitulating the tragedies that European colonization caused our indigenous peoples. Colonists appear on Mars, most of them with ideas no more lofty than starting a hot-dog stand, and with little respect for the culture they are displacing.

Bradbury weaves metaphor into everything he writes, from setting to a character’s name. I didn’t know this when I was a young girl, enthralled by his stories, his characters, his scenes and words. I just responded viscerally to what he’d created.

This is why Bradbury is one of my favorite writers (possibly my very favorite; though he comes close to Thomas Hardy). Bradbury, more than any other writer I know takes the strange—the other—to show us who we are.

The Martian Chronicles prophesized the banning of books, especially works of fantasy, a theme Bradbury would take on fully in the 1953 release, Fahrenheit 451. Inspired by the Cold War, the rise of television and the author's passion for libraries, it was an apocalyptic narrative of nuclear war abroad and empty pleasure at home, with firefighters assigned to burn books instead of putting blazes out.

In the 1967 introduction of his novel, Fahrenheit 451 (based on his novella, The Fireman), Ray Bradbury implied that the Nazi book burnings helped compel him to write his story: "It follows then that when Hitler burned a book I felt it as keenly, please forgive me, as his killing a human, for in the long sum of history they are one in the same flesh." For those of you who haven't yet read his novel (one of my favourite books, ever), this cautionary tale explores a fictional future society that has institutionalized book burning in an effort by authorities to maintain order and 'happiness'. In this world, firemen don't put out fires; they start them. By the way, 451 degrees F is the temperature that paper catches fire and burns. The story begins with Montag, an ordinary fireman:

"It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history...Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by the flame. He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror."

Bradbury’s cautionary metaphoric tale reminds us that it isn’t just them; it’s us:

In his 1821 play, Almansor, the German writer Heinrich Heine (referring to the burning of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, during the Spanish Inquisition) wrote: Dort, wo man Bucher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen—"Where they burn books, they will end in burning human beings." A century later, on May 6th, 1933, Heine's books were among the thousands of volumes publicly hauled out and burned in the streets by the Nazis in Berlin's Opernplatz. A violent outburst that, in fact, did foreshadow the blazing ovens of the Holocaust.

Fahrenheit 451 was Bradbury's only true science-fiction work, according to the author, who said all his other works should have been called fantasy. "It was a book based on real facts and also on my hatred for people who burn books," he told The Associated Press in 2002.

A futuristic classic often taught alongside George Orwell's "1984" and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," Bradbury's novel anticipated iPods, interactive television, electronic surveillance and live, sensational media events, including televised police pursuits.

"I'm not afraid of machines," Bradbury told Writer's Digest in 1976. "I don't think the robots are taking over. I think the men who play with toys have taken over. And if we don't take the toys out of their hands, we're fools."

In 2009, during a lecture in a small library in Southern California, Bradbury exhorted his listeners to live their lives as he had lived his: "Do what you love and love what you do…If someone tells you to do something for money, tell them to go to hell."

Good advice, Ray. I will miss you.

Ontario Arts Council Grants Available for Writers

2012-09-20T17:24:00.000-07:00

WRITERS' RESERVE

THE ONTARIO ARTS COUNCIL IS PROVIDING ONTARIO WRITERS WITH GRANTS TO CREATE NEW WORKS:

Program for: Individuals

Purpose: To assist professional writers in the creation of new work. This program is administered by third-party recommenders from the literary community.

Eligibility: This program is open to published Ontario-based professional writers working on projects in fiction, poetry, literary criticism, commentary on the arts, graphic novels, history, biography, political or social issues, science or travel. These categories also apply to writing for children, multimedia, CD-ROM or edited electronic media (other than radio or film documentary or drama).

You are a professional writer by the OAC's definition if you have:

at least one professionally published book for which you have a publishing contract and receive royalties or
at least three separately published essays, short stories, poems or other work for which you have received payment.

If you are an active professional documentary or drama writer for non-print media (radio, stage, screen, theatre, etc.) you must have at least two recent production credits for which you have received payment.

We do not accept student or academic publications or work that you did as part of your employment (unless you are a professional journalist) as part of a professional publishing history. If you are employed full time and receive a grant, you should be prepared to take a full or partial leave of absence so you can devote time to writing.

Third-party recommenders are Ontario-based, Canadian-owned book and literary magazine publishers chosen by the OAC to make recommendations to us for writing grants in this program.

If you wish to receive an application package that includes the program guidelines, application forms and a list of recommenders, please call 416-961-1660 or 1-800-387-0058, or email info@arts.on.ca. Or, you can download the material below. The application form can be filled in on your screen, then printed out. You will have to make copies of the completed, signed application form. For detailed information, please see the Writers' Reserve program guidelines.

Deadline: This program runs from September 4, 2012 to January 31, 2013.

For more information

Helen Floros, Program Assistant, 416-969-7440, toll-free 1-800-387-0058 extension 7440, hfloros@arts.on.ca.

THE SITE PROVIDES FORTY EXCELLENT SOURCES FOR PUBLICATION (RECOMMENDERS) WITH DESCRIPTION OF PUBLISHING GUIDELINES for which writers can apply.

Dawn Harvey Voice of Rhea Hawke in Outer Diverse Audiobook

2012-09-02T20:43:00.002-07:00

When Iambik picked up the contract to do an audiobook of OuterDiverse (Book 1 of The Splintered Universe Trilogy by Starfire), I was already excited. I had no idea how fun and fulfilling the experience was going to be.

Iambik provided me with a few voice artists, all who were great, to narrate Outer Diverse. Something about Dawn’s voice—how she spoke as Rhea Hawke—resonated with me. I was vindicated a thousand fold in selecting her to be the “voice” for Outer Diverse. Working with Dawn was a pleasure. Dawn is a dedicated professional; she created unique and consistent voices for the book’s thirty-odd mostly alien characters. She ensured that each character had the appropriate vernacular, tone, accent and cadence. Then she did proofs and confirmed them with me. She also tackled the “alien” vocabulary; Rhea’s universe is full of strange and foreign terms. Dawn sent me a list to make sure she was pronouncing everything correctly—mostly made-up words. This lady is dedicated to her craft and her art!

I recently invited her to my ship for a pockta nectar and a chat about her world. Here’s a snippet of the interview (she’s also a lawyer so I had to condense the 30-odd pages into these; I’m sure you appreciate that. For a small fee I will send you a full version of the interview.)

*SF Girl:*	Dawn, you’re an actress and voice over artist through your company Dawn of Voice. Tell us a little bit about how you got there. Where did you come from, what were your dreams and aspirations, and where are you going?
Dawn:	Oh my, such a simple question but never a simple answer. First off, I'm over 50 and, as you know, the older you get, the longer the stories get. I'll try to just include the highlights. I started singing basically when I started talking and first was paid to sing when I was 10 years old. Then, in high school, I became a drama geek and finished three years of high school drama in a year and a half. In grade 11, I took a law course, which I really loved. So, I was torn between going into acting or law. In the end, I decided law was too much school so I became an actress. Little did I realize that I would still be "going to school" 35 years later! I entered the University of Calgary, studying fine arts. Subsequently, I got married and left university. I then went into the oil industry, working in an area dealing with contracts and leases so, very legal related. I obtained a certificate in Land Management by taking night classes at what was then Mount Royal College; it's now Mount Royal University. I started trying to have babies and, after several failed attempts, began to reconcile myself to the fact that I was not going to be a mother. That being the case, I decided that I would become a lawyer so began doing the work to make that happen. Two years of university was required at a minimum to be accepted into law school although most people already have an undergraduate degree when they start. So, I returned to night school, this time at the University of Calgary, in pursuit of a degree in Psychology, my back up plan to a law degree. When I had achieved the number of courses required for the equivalent of 2 years of university (not that many given my fine arts courses and my transfer courses from MRC), I began applying to law schools. Always the overachiever, I applied to 10 schools and was accepted into 7. I attended Dalhousie University in Halifax and obtained my law degree in the spring of 1991 - after giving birth to my first child (pregnancy number 6) in the fall of 1990. During all of this time, I continued to act in community and semi-professional theatre productions to quench my thirst for performing. (Told you this was a long story!) On graduation, we moved to Vancouver where I began practicing family and criminal law and had my second child (pregnancy number 7 - they told me I wouldn't get pregnant again unless I used fertility drugs. They were wrong. Don't believe anything they say when it comes to having babies!) After a few years of that life, it became apparent to me that to practice family law, I would have to become "emotionally hard". You can't be reduced to tears sitting in family court listening to all of the horror stories that go on there when you're the lawyer! I'm the kind of person who cries at every episode of Little House on the Prairie and I like it that way. So, I decided to leave that kind of law and I returned to Calgary and the oil industry where my law degree would also serve me well. A couple of years later, pregnancy number 10 produced baby number 3. Another "oops" and a true miracle that one. I continued to work part-time in community and semi-professional stage work and obtained an agent so I could also do film work. So, now I seemingly had it all - lawyer, actress, mother. In the midst of this, I stumbled into a Masters Degree in law, thinking I would teach. After the birth of my third child, I was stricken with arthritis in both my knees at a very early age. I began to fear that I would end up in a wheel chair way too young and was devastated thinking about not being able to perform anymore should that happen. Although I only did it part-time, if you are stricken with the performing bug, you simply can't imagine how you could live if you didn't have that outlet. So, in the early 2000's, I began my voice over training. In 2009, I decided that I could not continue to work full-time in the oil industry and part-time in the performing world. I had denied myself long enough - I began a five year mission to leave the oil industry and go into acting and voicing full-time. So now, I am 1/2 way through that plan and working 14 hour days, basically 7 days a week, in order to keep all of the balls in the air. I am on track though. My audiobook career is now taking off; I am in the middle of narrating two more titles for Iambik, a psychology textbook and a collection of short stories. In addition, I have a lead role in a television series called Poker Girls. So, my long term plan is to continue to build my VO career, focusing on audiobooks, narration and animation. My current audiobook goal is to be the go-to female narrator for both John Grisham (I AM a lawyer after all) and Stephen King (I AM his number one fan after all!). So, if anyone out there can hook me up with either of those guys, I'll gladly purchase a copy of *Outer Diverse* for each of them so they can sample my work. And, I want to also continue to build on my film and television acting career. And, I want to say bye bye to oil and gas very soon!
*SF Girl:*	Sounds like that time is coming soon! Outer Diverse is the first book in The Splintered Universe Trilogy. What was the first thing you thought of when you read Outer Diverse? What do you think of Rhea Hawke? She’s had quite a ride already in Book 1. Will she make it to Book 3? (cheeky grin)
Dawn:	*Outer Diverse* is the first full-length novel I have ever voiced. When I auditioned for it, I had only a page or two of the book to review so imagine my shock and surprise upon reading the book and realizing that I was going to be voicing over 30 different characters from over 20 different species! So, my first thought upon completing my first read was, OMG—what have I gotten myself into!?!?!?! I love Rhea. She is so strong yet also so fragile; like many of us. She is also headstrong, determined and fearless. I guess I can relate to her as I am also all of those things. People don't usually see the fragile in either of us but it is certainly there. And yes, she will make it to Book 3. At least she'd better!
*SF Girl:*	How do you prepare yourself for a reading? Do you have a protocol that you follow?
Dawn:	I've taken a lot of training so have lots of advice to draw on from some amazing teachers. Most of my training has been with Pat Fraley and Vanessa Hart but I have also trained with Scott Brick, Jeffrey Kafer, Kathy Garver and many others. But, in the end, you have to come up with the process that works best for you. I'm a real spreadsheet girl so make use of them to help me keep everything organized. So, the first thing I do is read the book, cover to cover, to get a feel for the characters and the story. I then go through the book again and start making my spreadsheets which set out information about the characters including any personal characteristics described in the book by the narrator, the character himself and anyone else in the book that interacts with or talks about the character. When I have all of that information gathered, I then complete a matrix on each character that addresses voice characteristics for each. From those characteristics, I come up with each character's voice. Then, I'm ready to begin actually recording
*SF Girl:*	How long can you read for any stretch? What are the best things about readings? What are the worst things?
Dawn:	When I was a kid, all of my report cards said "Dawn is a good student but she talks too much" so I guess I've always been in training. So far, I haven't hit the limit of how long I can read. I take my laptop down into my booth and start working. I usually have an objective in mind for how much I want to get done at a session and generally won't quit until I reach that target. I always go with a fully charged laptop and will often work until I run out of power and the thing shuts down! I could plug it in but I figure that, 2-2.5 hours is probably as much as I should ever do without taking a break and that's about how long my laptop will go without needing a charge, so this ensures that I won't overstay my welcome in the booth! I get totally lost in the reading. I've always loved reading out loud. I have absolutely no idea why it took me so long to figure out I could do this for a living as I've been listening to audiobooks for years. They're great for long car trips with kids. The worst thing would have to be pronouncing foreign words. I want to do them justice so try really hard to get them right but am not always confident I have done so. Later today I have to record a few phrases in Mandarin for a book I'm currently working on. I got assistance from an Asian friend of mine but I'm so not looking forward to trying to make those words flow naturally out of my mouth!
*SF Girl:*	What equipment do you use for narration?
Dawn:	My recording software is Twisted Wave and I record on an Apple lap top. My audio interface is an Apogee One and my mic an MXL-990. Been thinking about upgrading that lately. I read the text using my iPad. I edit on a desktop Mac using Rokit 5 speakers. Yes, I have drunk all of the Apple kool-aid. It is better than a PC for doing audio and video work and so it has taken over my world.
*SF Girl:*	You did at least twenty distinctive voices in Outer Diverse. Voices ranged from a New Jersey-like accent for a Xhix to a multi-timbral resonance for a Venik trader. How did you decide on which one to use and how do you keep it all consistent in your head?
Dawn:	I take my character clues from the script. In the case of Outer Diverse, I felt the need to run my final decision for the characters by the author. As this is part of a three book series, and I didn't know what was coming in books 2 and 3, I felt it was very important to do this. I'd hate to get to book three and then find out that character XYZ was supposed to have a lisp! In the case of this book, I grouped the characters by species. I felt it was important to have a "sameness" to the voices of the species and then could vary each character within the confines of their particular species. The easiest way for me to keep consistency for each character is to give each a "representational" character. So, for example, the voice of Rhea's boss, is my version of Lou Grant from the old Mary Tyler Moore series. He may not sound like Lou Grant to anybody else, and it's probably better if he doesn't, but when I do MY impersonation of Lou Grant, the voice comes out the same every time. So, that really works for me. The hard part is coming up with the representational character to go with the description I have of the character. So, sometimes, I have to modify it somehow like maybe a character would be Lou Grant if he talked out of the right side of his mouth or in a higher pitch, for example. Every time you add a little twist like that, you get a new character voice. I had a multi-tabbed spreadsheet to help me as well. One tab listed all of the characters and the chapters they were in with color-coding to remind me of what species they were. Another tab had each character's voice description and representational character. So, when I went into the studio with a plan of which chapters I would be reading, I could quickly see which characters were in those chapters and then familiarize myself with their voices before I started. If one had spoken several chapters ago, I could also go back to that earlier chapter and just refresh my memory of that voice. Don't let anyone tell you this isn't a lot of work!
*SF Girl:*	What was the most challenging voice in Outer Diverse* and why?*
Dawn:	The most challenging voice for me was Shlsh Shle She. He was described as having a squealing, slobbery, mushy voice like he had a mouth full of wet food. His speaking apparatus was made up of a number of wet folds resembling female genitalia. It was a real challenge to honour his physical characteristics while still being understood. Not much point in speaking if the listener can't understand what I'm saying. I cringed when I did my character analysis and realized how many lines he had! Apparently it all worked out ok in the end but that was scary!
*Sf Girl:*	What is your favorite voice in Outer Diverse and why?
Dawn:	My favorite voice is Benny, Rhea's ship. He's my version of C3PO from Star Wars. I just love his character and he has the same name as my youngest son who, though named Benjamin, decided he was to be called Benny when he was 5 years old. At 15, he's still Benny! I just loved the coincidence.
*SF Girl:*	How did you end up with Iambik? How do you like it there? How does Iambik compare with other audiobook companies, say Audiobook?
Dawn:	I submitted my audiobook demo to them in the fall of 2011 and was accepted onto their roster. When the next set of auditions came up, *Outer Diverse* was among them so I auditioned, and the rest is history. Since this was my first book, I can't really compare to other companies. However, I understand that the big publishers do the editing for you so I'm looking forward to working with them. As much work as the audiobook preparation is, the editing takes twice as long yet again. I would be so much happier if my job ended at the mic!
*SF Girl:*	Tell us a little about the process with Iambik from receiving the book in your hands to the final proofs and edits.
Dawn:	Iambik sends me the book, we agree on a delivery deadline and sign a contract. Iambik loads the book up into a shared Dropbox folder and I download it and start my review. After I have recorded and edited a chapter, I upload it to the same Dropbox folder. A proof listener reviews the file and send me any corrections required. I do the corrections and upload it again. They check it again. This continues until all is well and is repeated for each chapter. We work from a shared spreadsheet (see, spreadsheets are my life) so we can keep track of where we are with each chapter. Once all of the chapters are complete, Iambik compiles them into one document to be ready for download and releases then to the public.
*SF Girl:*	Have you ever turned down a narration job and why?
Dawn:	Yes, but so far only because I didn't have time to fit it into my schedule.
*SF Girl:*	Tell us about Poker Girls…I know you want to (big silly knowing grin). What other roles have you played as an actress that you are particularly proud of?
Dawn:	Poker Girls is a 1/2 hour crime drama whose central character is Summer, an undercover cop, who uses the game of poker to catch unsuspecting criminals. I play Theresa, an alcoholic judge who was just recently kicked off of the bench by her boss, Sophia, played by Judy Norton (Mary Ellen from the Waltons). Poker Girls began as a film making apprenticeship assignment and morphed into a webseries and now a TV series. The creator, writer and executive producer, Jewelle Colwell, who also plays the lead role of Summer, has put her heart, soul and a lot of money into making this happen for over a year now and, as always, persistence pays off. We have been picked up by the Converge network who has a contract to provide roughly 240 hours of programming in China. Poker Girls will be on that line up. Converge will also air in Florida and they continue to seek a wider, international audience. We are committed to providing 10 episodes but have only one "in the can" as they say in the biz. Just a few weeks ago, the financing was secured to shoot the remaining nine episodes so we expect to begin shooting next month. For anyone interested, we continue to seek product placement opportunities. Give us a product and the next thing you know, it'll be in an episode of Poker Girls, being viewed in China with a potential audience of 2.5 billion! You can find us on Facebook if you'd like to make contact with Jewelle (Poker Girls, TV Series).
*SF Girl:*	Dawn you are BOSS! Are there any awards or accolades out there for voice artist? If so, can you name them so I can vote you in. Also, how can we help promote Dawn Harvey? How can people show their appreciation for your fantastic voice and dedicated artistry?
Dawn:	There are awards. Those I know of are the Audies (the academy awards of Audiobooks), the Audiophile Earphone awards and you can become a Golden Voice. I think the latter requires a few more books in the "amazing" category than I have so far - LOL. Someday. I looked in Wikipedia and it lists five awards, the Audies, Galaxy National Book Awards, Odyssey Award, Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album, and TDK Australian Audio Book Awards. I don't know about all of the other awards but I do know that for the Audies, the 2012 deadline for books released by the end of July is Aug 31 but the submission has to be made by the publisher. That's about all I know As far as helping me, the best you can do is download the book, listen to it, love it, tell all of your friends about it. You can contribute reviews to the Iambik site and, once it is available on Audio, you can contribute reviews there as well. You could also put comments on my website, DawnofVoice.com. Oh, and don't forget to help me get in touch with Stephen and John - let's get that 6 degrees of separation thing working for me, shall we?
SF Girl:	Thanks so much for joining me here on my ship and answering all my annoying questions.
Dawn:	Thanks for giving me this opportunity to spew forth ad nauseum.
SF Girl:	No problem. I’ve been having some issues with parking my ship lately—orbit taxes and such—so, I might be coming to you for advice…
Dawn:	Sure. I’d be happy to help.

You can hear a sample of Dawn’s work on "Outer Diverse", the Prologue, on my Tumblr site, SF Girl:

To get your copy of the audiobook go to the Iambik Audiobook site. Purchase your copy for $6.99 and enjoy some pure entertainment. Thanks, Dawn!

The Last Summoner by Nina Munteanu NOW OUT

2012-08-29T22:13:00.002-07:00

Nina Munteanu’s latest book The Last Summoner is a Historical Time Travel Fantasy. Now available at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, The Book Depository (UK), Barnes & Noble and Chapters and other quality bookstores near you.

Every Choice Has Its Price…

On June 14th, 1410 in Grunwald, Prussia, one of medieval history’s most decisive battles is about to destroy the powerful Teutonic Order, slaughtering virtually all its monk knights. How would history have changed if this arrogant Nazi-like order had not underestimated its enemy and had instead won to continue sweeping through north-east Europe, unscathed, in its ambitious crusade for Christendom?

As a result of an impetuous choice, young 14-year old Vivianne Schoen, Baroness von Grunwald makes the startling discovery that she can alter history—but not before she’s branded a witch and must flee through a time-space tear into an alternate present-day France that she "authored" -- a France ruled by fascists. There, she will learn that every choice has its price.

Enjoy this Canadian bestseller in print form or on your iPhone or similar device through Kindle.

Nina Munteanu is ”…A master of metaphor.”— Craig Bowlsby

Nina Munteanu's SF Thriller Now Audiobook

2012-08-23T19:23:00.000-07:00

Nina Munteanu's space thriller Outer Diverse is now a scintillating audiobook by Iambik Audiobooks, narrated exquisitely by Dawn Harvey. Harvey breathes incredible life into this fast paced metaphysical thriller about a female detective who must solve the mystery of a spiritual sect massacre. Rhea comes alive alongside a gaggle of sordid and macabre characters in Harvey's rich narrative. A rollercoaster ride guaranteed to entertain.

Who needs coffee when you have Dawn Harvey!

Outer Diverse is the first book of the Splintered Universe Trilogy, set in and around the Milky Way Galaxy. The first book begins as Galactic Guardian Rhea Hawke investigates the massacre of an entire religious sect, catapulting her into a treacherous storm of politics, conspiracy and self-discovery. Her quest for justice leads her into the heart of a universal struggle and toward an unbearable truth she's hidden from herself since she murdered an innocent man.

What people are saying about Outer Diverse:

"A master of metaphor, Munteanu turns an adventure story into a wonderland of alien rabbit holes...a fascinating and enthralling read."--Craig Bowlsby, author of Commander's Log

"A rollicking science fiction plot with all the trappings...Hawke is a maverick in teh wild west tradition...a genetic mystery with lethal powers."--Lynda Williams, author of Okal Rel series

What people are saying about Dawn Harvey:

"I just finished and thoroughly enjoyed "Outer Diverse". A metaphysical Sci Fi thriller with rich characters. Dawn Harvey told the story brilliantly and played the characters wonderfully. Definitely worth listening to."--Dan Wallace, narrator Lions Den Productions

"I am absolutely thrilled to recommend Nina Munteanu's audio book. Dawn has transported me into a new world of inspiration. Dawn is absolutely magic."--Vanessa Rottner

You can purchase this audiobook directly from Iambik for download to your Iphone or other device. It costs $6.99.

Go to my Tumbr site to hear a sample:

Writer's Salon with Nina Munteanu

2012-08-20T08:27:00.002-07:00

Join Nina and fellow writers every Tuesday at 7 pm at the Beacher Cafe in the Beaches of Toronto for lively discussions on all aspects of writing and publishing. Bring your WIP. Eat, drink, and discuss over a cappuccino and dessert or a delicious meal.

Next meeting is this Tuesday, August 21st. See you there!

Costi Gurgu Aurora Prix Best Artist Finalist for Outer Diverse

2012-08-17T09:16:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Costi Gurgu for being celebrated by the Aurora Prix Awards for his stunning cover art on the book cover of Outer Diverse (first book of The Splintered Universe Trilogy by Starfire World Syndicate).

Costi was recently honoured by the Auroras for his imaginative and elegant cover art that resonates impeccably with the story inside.

I recently interviewed Costi about his art and particularly what he created for Outer Diverse. Costi used a triptych approach for the three covers of the trilogy to reflect the evolution of the entire trilogy and the fractal relationship of the worlds represented.

Costi came up with the triptych approach to the three covers after a discussion about the story arc of the protagonist Rhea Hawke (a determined but troubled Galactic Guardian tasked with solving the mysterious massacre of an entire spiritual sect). Rhea Hawke is a complex character. Her journey of self-discovery and her three-stage evolution is reflected eloquently in Costi's cover art and design of the trilogy. What more could a writer ask for? I am honoured by his work.

Look for more of Costi's work in Books 2 and 3 of The Splintered Universe Trilogy. They are scheduled for release by Starfire in fall/winter of 2012 (Inner Diverse) and spring 2013 (Metaverse).

Writing in Sync

2012-08-06T21:40:00.000-07:00

“At the heart of the universe is a steady, insistent beat: the sound of cycles in sync,” says Steven Strogatz in the opening to his compelling book, Sync: the emerging science of spontaneous order. He then describes how every night along the tidal rivers of Malaysia, thousands of fireflies congregate in the mangroves and flash in unison, without any leader or cue from the environment. “Even our bodies are symphonies of rhythm, kept alive by the relentless, coordinated firing of thousands of pacemaker cells in our hearts...almost as if nature has an eerie yearning for order,” adds Strogatz. The tendency to synchronize pervades the universe, from atoms to animals, and people to planets.

To be in sync is to intuitively connect (which is what spontaneous order is) and “know”… Each of you has felt that “knowing”: that otherworldly, euphoric wave of resonating with something that is more than the visible world: when the hairs on the back of your neck tingle as you write that significant scene or trembling with giddy energy as you create that perfect line on a painting … or glowing with a deep abiding warmth when you defend a principle … or the surging frisson you share with fellow musicians on that exquisite set piece …

These are all what I call God moments. And they don’t happen by chasing after them; they sneak up on us when we’re not looking. They come to us when we focus outward and embrace our wonder for this world. When we quiet our minds and nurture our souls with beauty. It is then that what we had been seeking naturally comes to us. Like a gift.

It’s the blue pill to a new world of synchrony.

This teaches us above all else that we are all journeying together and part of something greater.

I want to share with you my own experience of synchronicity in art. When I’m working on a story, I find that events, opportunities, actions and resources directly germane to my project present themselves: watching an applicable movie that a friend chose for us to see; picking up a newspaper (which I seldom do) and reading a relevant article; looking for something on the internet and finding something totally different (ok; that happens to me all the time); a friend out of the blue introduces a pertinent topic, or someone you haven’t seen in a long time bumps into you with significant news. As though the universe was providing me with what I needed. Well, maybe it was! Of course, my mind was focused on anything to do with my current piece. It was as though I had donned a concentrating filter, one that would amplify relevant details. I’ll go further: I was unconsciously acting in a way that was bringing me more information relevant to my project. Ask and you shall receive.

Jake Kotze says it this way: “Synchronicity happens when we notice the bleed-through from one seemingly separate thing into another—or when we for a brief moment move beyond the mind’s divisions of the world.” Swiss psychologist Carl Jung introduced synchrony in the 1920s as “temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events.” The idea of seemingly unrelated events intersecting to produce meaningful patterns has spawned new notions of thought from the scientific study of spontaneous order in the universe (synchrony), to Synchromysticism — the discovery of convergent archetypal symbols in pop culture (e.g., books, music and film). Author Sibyl Hunter tells us that “Sync operates as an undercurrent of divine awareness personified through the myriad processes and symbols that make up the building blocks of our reality. Within that current, we spin our modern-day myths into books, fairy tales and movies, subconsciously retelling ourselves the same story over and over.”

As the myth builders of today, authors tap in to the synchronicity of ancient story, of resonating archetypes and metaphor and the “mythic journey”. To write in sync.

Joseph Campbell reminds us that, "Anyone writing a creative work knows that you yield yourself, and the book talks to you and builds itself ... you become the carrier of something that is given to you from the Muses or God. What the shaman or seer [or artist] brings forth is something that is waiting to be brought forth in everyone.” It’s sync in action.

Moving From Prosaic to Spectacular

2012-05-03T00:01:00.002-07:00

What makes some writing stunning and other writing lackluster? Mostly, it’s the language—the words—you use. And, it isn’t just what words you use; it’s how you use them. Here are a few things you need to consider when translating your work into something that “sings”.

Use Active Verbs and Reduce Modifiers

Many writers, not just beginners, slide into the pattern of using passive and weak verbs (e.g., were, was, being, etc.). Then they add a modifier to strengthen it. It doesn’t. Actively look for strong, vivid verbs. This is the key to good writing. Active and powerful verbs move a story forward. For instance, which version is more compelling?

Jill was walking quickly into the room.

or…

Jill stormed into the room.

The second example not only more quickly and efficiently demonstrates how Jill entered the room, but demonstrates with what attitude. There is no substitute for the use of powerful, appropriate verbs in sentences.

Avoid Excessive & Meaningless Prose

Novice writers often use too many words to describe an event, action or scene. An overabundance of words slows down the story and obscures plot and action. Excessive prose includes:

Repetition: many beginning writers will often first tell then show in a scene. You don’t need to do both; trust the reader to get the “show”.

Extraneous words: e.g. “he started to think” instead of “he thought”; use of the obvious such as “she saw the big man lying on the bed” instead of “a big man lay on the bed” (“she saw” is implied through her POV). This second example also demonstrates how you can shift the readers’ attention from “her seeing” (in the first phrase) to “the man lying” on the bed (in the revised phrase). This simple change can create a much more powerful sentence through the seamless shift in reader attention.

Dull description not related to plot: I recently edited a writer’s over 400-page urban fantasy that contained far too much ordinary detail. Detail that, in small doses, may have enlightened the reader on the qualities of the protagonist; but in larger doses ground the narrative to a boring halt.

When you look for a more efficient and purposeful way to say something, you cut out unnecessary detail. Remember that virtually all description should be related to the plot and theme of the story.

Alliteration, Metaphor, Simile, Personification

These devices bring lyricism and cadence and powerful imagery to your prose. However, as with anything powerful, you need to use these judiciously. Use them where you wish to convey a strong image and to punctuate your prose.

Be Mindful of Word Accuracy

More often than you might think, a writer inadvertently misuses a word to convey an idea or emotion. For instance, let’s consider the following sentence, which describes a character’s reaction to a dog being cruelly mishandled:

“What are they doing?” Jack said crossly.

The modifier crossly suggests that Reginald lacks compassion; it infers petulant annoyance.

“What are they doing?” Jack scowled.

Scowled still suggests the same icy disdain, though it may have been delivered with false bravado or through genuine discomfort from a hidden compassion. If the writer wished to convey shock, disgust or compassion, the following would better represent that sentiment:

“What are they doing?” Jack said, eyes wide.

or:..

“What are they doing?” Jack stammered.

Avoid Using Words like “Felt” or “Seem”

These “telly” words prevent the reader from directly experiencing the story by imposing a level of interpretation. For example, “he felt himself falling” can be improved to “he fell”. If you want to spice up the phrase, use another verb: “he toppled” “he stumbled” or “he crashed”.

Read your Writing Aloud & Punctuate Your Pauses

It isn’t just a clever metaphor when they say your writing style is called your “voice”; because your readers “listen” to what you write. Reading out loud helps define cadence, tone and pace of your prose and streamlines your writing. When you read aloud, pay attention to where you naturally pause. You may wish to put in a comma, semi-colon or period there.

Size and Vary Your Paragraphs

Paragraphs are visual elements that help people read; they break up text on a page in logical places to provide white space for reader ease. I’ve heard people quote the “two-inch” rule for maximum paragraph length and I concur. This is one of the reasons some passages are harder to read than others; long paragraphs are more tiring to the eye. Find those logical breaks and put them in. Varying paragraph length creates a more interesting story “landscape” for the reader. Don’t be afraid to go to some extremes like using the one sentence – or even one word – paragraph.

Size and Vary Your Sentences

As with paragraphs, overly long sentences can try a reader’s patience and you may lose them entirely. Too many short choppy sentences can also reduce your prose to a mundane level. Varying your sentence length in a paragraph creates the lyricism and cadence that makes prose enjoyable to read.

Importance of Setting in a Novel

2012-04-11T22:26:00.000-07:00

Create memorable settings using time, place and circumstance.

Setting grounds your writing in the reality of place and depicts the theme of your story through powerful metaphor. Without setting, characters are simply there, in a vacuum, with no reason to act and most importantly, no reason to care. Without a place there is no story. Setting serves multipurpose roles in story. It helps with plot, determines and describes character and gives metaphoric links to theme. Setting, like the force in Star Wars, provides a landscape that binds everything into context and meaning.

Place Your Story

According to acclaimed novelist Richard Russo, if you’re not writing stories that occur in a specific place, you’re missing the opportunity to add depth and character to your writing. We are creatures of our environment, adds Robert Louis Stevenson. Our outlook on life is colored by the setting in which we find ourselves. Editors have told me that they have little faith in the vision of writers who don’t clearly depict the world their characters inhabit. Imagine Thomas Hardy’s characters without Egdon Heath or Scarlet O’Hara without her beloved Tara or Dorothy without the Land of Oz.

Setting includes time, place and circumstance. These three form a kind of critical mass that creates the particular setting best suited to your story. If you change any of these it will affect the quality of the others.

Setting as Character

Settings can not only have character; they can be a character in their own right. A novelist, when portraying several characters, may often find herself painting a portrait of “place”. This is setting being “character”. The setting functions as a catalyst, and molds the more traditional characters that animate a story. The central character is often really the place, which is often linked to the protagonist. In Lord of the Rings, for instance, Frodo is very much an extension of his beloved Shire. Setting, then, comes to mean so much more. Setting ultimately portrays what lies at the heart of the story.

Setting as Metaphor

When you choose your setting, remember that its primary metaphoric role is to help depict theme. This is because place is destiny. Russo tells us that place is crucial to human destiny and the formation of human personality. “The more specific and individual things become, the more universal they feel,” says Russo. This is not an oxymoron, but an example of the principle of a truism, which comes to us in the form of paradox (like all good truisms).

Detail provides the color and texture of your story and helps it resonate with a sense of place. This does not necessarily translate into lots of exposition; but it does require creative choice of words. So, instead of “John took a drag from his cigarette as he drove his sports car along a winding road in the country” (twenty words) try something like “Vinnie sucked on a Camel as his red Corvette careered the hair-pinned curves of Hell’s Gate” (seventeen words).

Setting & Emotion

The setting may amplify a character’s emotions or contradict them, depending on the circumstance of the character, her mood, disposition, tendencies, and observational skills. And the kind of story you’re telling. Either way, setting provides an “emotional landscape” upon which a character’s own temperament may play counterpoint or may resonate in a wonderful symphony. The writer should think of the less obvious, of contrast, and how you can increase tension and emphasize the character’s situation.

Setting as Weather

Weather conveys the mood and tone of both story and character. Weather is not just part of the scenery. To a writer, weather is a device used in plot and theme. A good example is Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and how he used the desert setting and the hot winds to evoke mood, character, tension, theme and ultimately story:

“The desert could not be claimed or owned—it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names long before Canterbury existed, long before battles and treaties quilted Europe and the East”

In summary, here are some suggestions that will help you create vivid, memorable and meaningful settings:

• Don’t “tack” setting in; make it an integral part of the story; give it purpose
• Describe selectively and with purpose—through integration in “scene” rather than exposition
• Be specific (e.g., soft pink rose, not flower; beat up Chevy, not car; old clapboard cottage, not house)
• Use similes, metaphors, and personification to breathe life into setting
• Use the senses like sight, sound, smell, taste, feel
• Don’t tell, show (e.g., don’t say the time is the 1920s; show the cars and dresses. Don’t tell the reader it’s raining; show them by describing the dripping trees, etc.)
• Compare and contrast settings and relate them to the point of view characters
• Don’t describe setting all at once in the beginning; work it in slowly throughout the story; let it unfold as the story does

Thrive: What on Earth Will it Take

2012-04-06T12:45:00.005-07:00

Happy Easter! Jesus gave his life so that humanity could THRIVE in peace, harmony, compassion and love on a planet itself thriving in a living intelligent universe. This is my Easter message for you. Enjoy and God Bless...

Nominate for Artistic Achievement in the Auroros

2012-03-16T17:02:00.004-07:00

You have until March 31, 2012 to nominate eligible works by Canadian artists (writers, fine artists and creative fans) in the publishing of science fiction, fantasy and horror. If you are a Canadian, please consider nominating your fellow Canadian artists.

It might be a little late to nominate written works you haven't yet read. But the advantage of the ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT category is that you just have to look at the artwork to make your choice.

So, here are the eligible artworks of five Canadian artists and cover designers who are currently eligible for an Aurora Award for ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT. Pick and NOMINATE!

Blaine, Janice. Cover of Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine, Issue 20

Bridgman, Rae. Interior illustrations for Kingdom of Trolls. (Sybertooth) February 2011.

Choi, Connie. Cover art for The Black Box. (Sybertooth) February 2011.

Dales, Evan. The cover art for Shadow of Death: Book Two of The Chosen Chronicles and the covers for the reissues of Changeling: Prelude to the Chosen Chronicles (May 2011) and Angel of Death: Book One of the Chosen Chronicles (May 2011) published by Dark Dragon Publishing

Laframboise, Michèle, Otaku Ladies, a cyberpunk Webcomic, since January 2011

Gurgu, Costi. Cover art for Outer Diverse (Starfire World Syndicate) October 2011. You can read a revealing interview of Costi and the process of creating cover design right here on The Alien Next Door.

Now, go nominate!

Should You Judge a Book by its Cover?

2012-03-01T00:07:00.001-08:00

Most readers—me included—will pick a book off the bookstore shelf because its cover interests us: the title intrigues; the cover illustration attracts; the author’s name is one we trust.

If you don’t know the author of the book, the nature—and implied promise—of the cover becomes even more important.

If the book does not deliver on the promise of the cover, it will fail with many readers despite its intrinsic value. A broken promise is still a broken promise. I say cover, not necessarily the back jacket blurb, because the front cover is our first and most potent introduction to the quality of the story inside. How many of us have picked up a book, intrigued by its alluring front cover, read the blurb that seemed to resonate with the title and image, then upon reading our cherished purchase been disillusioned with the story and decided we disliked it and its author?

This is because, as readers, from the moment we pick up a book, we engage in a covenant with the story’s author (but in actual fact with the entire publishing company) for a story whose promise we have interpreted from its cover image, title and blurb. It begins with the cover. A book’s cover is its sales pitch: “This is what I’m about!” the cover proclaims in shades of color and texture. The cover sets the tone and attitude with which a reader will interpret the book’s title and back jacket blurb and its interior.

It had better be true.

Let me tell you a story…

Some time ago, a writer colleague of mine secured a New York agent—based on her excellent query and synopsis—for her imaginative dragon fantasy. The agent pitched the book to a large publishing company, who made my friend an offer, and the agent secured a three book deal on her behalf. My writing friend’s career as a published author was launched.

Because the publishing company was one of the large firms, my friend’s ability to participate—never mind influence—the cover design and blurb was restricted. Decisions lay in the hands of the people in the marketing department, who may or may not have read the book (most likely not). This is why it is so important to write a blurb/query/pitch that both scintillates AND accurately portrays the story. All too often, the marketing department misrepresents the story (to sell more books) and you end up with an unsatisfied reader. This is what happened to my friend. Through no fault of hers, the marketing people developed a cover that did not reflect the true nature of her story. The trilogy my friend had developed was a dark tale of deceit, betrayal and suffering. The cover portrayed a lively and sultry seductress, draped with flowing robes and bared thighs against her dragon; hardly the ponderous story shrouded within. The blurb at the back was sufficiently vague to aid and abet the deception.

What followed the book’s launch and accompanying ad campaign was a barrage of bad reviews and censure, unfortunately aimed mostly at the author. It was unfortunate that my friend suffered the brunt of the accusations for breaking her promise to the readers, when she had done no such thing; her publisher and marketers had created false expectations. And now she was paying for it.

I, too, experienced the effects of mis-marketing. I’d written a dark science fiction romance that ended with resolution but was far from the traditional happy ending typical of a romance. The publisher marketed it as a romance with science fiction elements instead of a science fiction with romance elements. Reviewers applauded it but it bombed with romance readers, who expected a different kind of resolution. Science fiction readers, however, enjoyed it; they didn’t have the same expectations.

The take home lesson for writers is this: write a scintillating but accurate synopsis, blurb, pitch and query that clearly establishes your genre and audience. Chances are your publishers will use it in their marketing department. If you don’t get in with the “Big Boys”, and decide to go with the small presses, chances are very good that you will have more control over marketing and cover design; that is a big bonus. If you are like me, creative control of your intellectual property is more important than the big bucks you get at the expense of your art. Don’t give in to the temptations of wolf-marketing.

I’m still learning that lesson.

The take home lesson for readers is this: don’t judge a book by its cover; certainly pick up the book if it looks interesting, then read with an open mind and let the story take you to where it needs to, despite what you may have expected from the false advertising. Chances are, the unexpected journey visited upon you may be a welcome surprise. And don’t blame the writer for something he didn’t have control over.

I’m still learning that lesson too.

Spring 2012 Online Writing Courses are now open for registration. Courses include: "Hero's Journey", "Get Published, Write Now", "Self-Editing and Polishing" and "Writing the Memoir". All courses are 2-day weekend courses and cost $100. REGISTER HERE.

Finding the Courage to Write ... and Publish

2012-02-22T13:19:00.000-08:00

Are you afraid to write, to answer the call of your creative urges? Good. If you’re not scared, you’re not writing — Ralph Keyes

“Being creative means giving yourself the freedom to be who you really are,” says Nancy Slonim Aronie, author of Writing from the Heart: Tapping the Power of Your Inner Voice.

But that takes courage. A lot of courage.

Ralph Keyes, author of The Courage to Write, admits that “what makes writing so scary is the perpetual vulnerability of the writer. It’s not the writing as such that provokes our fear so much as other people’s reaction to our writing.” In fact, adds Keyes, “the most common disguise is fear of them, their opinion of us, when it’s actually our own opinion of ourselves that we’re worried about.” Keyes suggests that ultimately “mastering techniques [of style and craft] will do far less to improve writing than finding the will, the nerve, the guts to put on paper what you really want to say.”

I was recently in Montreal at a writers’ convention, launching my new book Outer Diverse along with several other authors and I recall one admitting to feeling terror when her first short story — whose main antagonist was based on her mother — was accepted by a magazine. Her first thought was: what have I done?

Says Keyes: “Any writing lays the writer open to judgment about the quality of his work and thought. The closer he gets to painful personal truths, the more fear mounts — not just about what he might reveal, but about what he might discover should he venture too deeply inside. But to write well, that’s exactly where we must venture.”

So, why do it, then? Why bother? Is it worth it to make yourself totally vulnerable to the possible censure and ridicule of your peers, friends, and relatives? To serve up your heart on a platter to just have them “drag it around” as Stevie Nicks would say…

Welcome to the threshold of your career as a writer. This is where many aspiring writers stop: in abject fear, not of failure but of “success”. The only difference between those that don’t and those that do, is that the former come to terms with their fears, in fact learn to use them as a barometer to what is important.

How do you get past the fear of being “exposed”, past the anticipated disappointment of peers, past the terror of success?

The answer is passion.

If you are writing about something you are passionate about, you will find the courage to see it through. Says Keyes, “the best writing flows less from acquired skill than conviction expressed with courage. By this I don’t mean moral convictions, but the sense that what one has to say is something others need to know.”

This is ultimately what drives a writer to not just write but to publish: the need to share one’s story, over and over again. To prevail, persist, and ultimately succeed, a writer must have conviction and believe in his or her writing. You must believe that you have something to say that others want to read. Ask yourself why you are a writer. Your answer might surprise you.

Every writer is an artist. And every artist is a cultural reporter, whose business is to report the truth and sometimes hold a culture accountable.

“Real art,” says Susan Sontag, “makes us nervous.”

The first step is to acknowledge your passion and own it. Flaunt it, even. Find your conviction, define what matters and explore it to the fullest. You will find that such an acknowledgement will give you the strength and fortitude to persist and persevere, particularly in the face of those fears. Use the fears to guide you into that journey of personal truths. Frederick Busch described it this way: “You go to dark places … to steal the trophy and get out.” You are the hero.

Every writer, like his or her protagonist, is on a Hero’s Journey. Like the Hero of our epic, we too must acknowledge the call, pass the threshold guardian, maneuver the abyss and face the beast before we can return “home” with our prize.

“If you long to excel as a writer,” says Finke, “treasure the passion that is unique within yourself. Take the irreplaceable elements of your life and craft them into your own personal contribution to the world.” And worry about the rest later.