Category: blog

It’s your party

Hi!

I have recently read your article on the internet about the process of being published etc. I was wondering, just out of curiosity –” is it possible, or just acceptable to publish one story in two different publishers at one time. For example — get the book accepted by both a publisher from UK and USA? Can the author, in that case, accept both of their offers and work with both?

Thank you horribly much for your time,

I hope you can respond,

Best regards.

anonymous

I’m not sure which article you mean, but for those people who are curious, here’s one.

And the answer to your question is, it depends. It’s possible, sure. Most everything depends on how each individual deal is structured.

The approach that I’m most familiar with, since I’m a US writer, is this: an author sells her book to a publisher in the US. That publisher buys the right to publish the book in English in the US , or in North America (US and Canada). Sometimes they also buy foreign edition rights, which means that someone from the publisher offers the book for sale into foreign markets, and in this case the UK would be one of those markets. If that’s the case, then the author cannot go off and make a deal on her own with a UK publisher –” she no longer has the right to do that.

If she doesn’t sell that right to the US publisher, then she and her agent can market the book to other countries, including the UK .

In either of these examples, the US publisher would make sure to publish their edition first, before selling to other markets. Occasionally, for big name authors, a publisher like Random House or HarperCollins, with divisions in the US and UK, will buy the book for both markets and coordinate the publication. For example, I was in the UK when Stephen King’s latest came out, and got the UK edition with the (in my opinion) cooler cover.

As for submitting your novel at the same time to a US and a UK publisher, sure, you can do that if your agent thinks it’s not going to upset anyone. There used to be a firm, fast rule against simultaneous submissions, but it seems less rigid than it used to, although the author and agent need to be very clear with all the parties involved about what’s going on. It makes editors grumpy to make an offer and only then find out that they are in competition with other people.

So the short answer to your question is that you can sell your book in any way you have the right to. And every time you sell the book, you sell some of your rights to it. The game is balancing the short-term money against the long-term potential, your time and energy, et cetera. There’s no one right way.

SBKoE

And another winter goes whizzing by while I was cooking soup and looking for my glasses and fixing the storm door. I’m always amazed when I send off the tax returns and realize it’s spring. (Did you know some people use trees blossoming and nature stuff to tell the changing of the seasons? How about that?)

It hasn’t all been home domesticity and writing time: we also have been to visit Nicola’s family. I hadn’t been to the north of England in February before. It’s cold. A long trip, made longer and more unpleasant on the way home by British Midland Airlines, who will never ever ever get my business again, or yours if I can possibly persuade you.

But it’s well past time to get settled into the virtual pub and catch up on all the news. If you’re interested in chatting, get in touch.

And in the meantime, have fun with this. I certainly did (thanks, Mom).

And this.

Cheers from she who will now be known among you as Sister Boot Knife of Enlightenment.

At least to act as if

The turning of the year always puts me in a reflective mood. It’s a time to think about what I might wish to change or preserve, to strengthen or finally let go.

I set goals, but these days they aren’t so much things I want to do as ways I want to be or feel — the shape of my life for the coming year. It turns out this is more useful for me: things tend to happen in relation to the shape of life. Things fit or they don’t. If I know what I’d like the shape of my life to be, it’s easier to tell when I want to encourage a thing to continue, or whether to let it go. It’s one thing to say, “I’m going to finish a novel this year.” It’s another thing entirely to say, “I’m going to feel that I’m always being the best writer I can be.” The former requires word count, desk time, rigorous attention to craft. The latter requires all of that as well as being open to the idea that finishing the novel might not be the best use of the writer’s time.

It’s a tricky exercise. Goals untethered to vision are less meaningful. Vision without goals is less productive. And so on I go, seeking balance. Growth and peace; comfort and adventure; still moments and big life; clarity and fearlessness; to be, or at least to act as if.

It’s been both a good year and a hard one. Tonight Nicola and I will drink champagne (Thierry Triolet, our new favorite) and talk about the old year and the new. We’re hoping for more good and less hard in 2006, but I expect we’ll take whatever we get and squeeze as much out of it as we can.

Thanks to everyone who visits the virtual pub for a pint every now and then. I value your company, whether you stop to chat or just to listen. My very best to you all. See you again in the new year.

The word road

Thanks for the response to my questions about Solitaire. I see your point about not wanting to come out with a disappointing sequel, as they so often are. I think Tolkien is probably the only one whose sequels were as good as the initial novel, and you could argue that they aren’t sequels at all but one huge novel parceled into publishable units. At the same time, Solitaire was such a great book that it would be nice to continue it, and hope that literary lightning strikes the same place twice. I liked your idea re: Jackal/Snow/Scully, assuming the novel is not simply an exploration of Jackal’s melancholy and adjustment. Will she conquer Ko? The world? herself?

Thanks for the favorite books –” I am not familiar with them, but am always happy to hear about quality writing.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing the next novel, whatever it might be.

Julia

Hi, Julia.

Yes, I’m looking forward to the next novel too. I confess that one of my favorite parts of writing is “having written,” if you know what I mean –” it’s nice when it’s done and I can just pat it happily and then go have a beer. It’s not my only favorite part, thought: I’ve learned the hard way that I have to enjoy writing as well as having written.

I’ve read the first chapter of the new book (working title Hollow) twice, to very different audiences (a high school student/faculty audience in New Hampshire, and a group of science fiction readers at the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle). Both readings got a great response, which gives me confidence that I’ve made a good start. Now I just have to not fuck it up.

Hollow is not Solitaire, but it’s already clear to me that I’m exploring some similar questions and concerns. And some different ones, as well –” it’s not a retread. At least I sincerely hope not. I do not want to be a writer who writes one book over and over and over. Makes me think of a fly trapped between a window and the screen, batting itself around trying to find its way out.

I console myself with thinking about how different the book after Hollow will be (I already have some ideas….) But, you know, I bet that someone who has read Solitaire and Hollow will see immediate connections with that one, no matter how “different” I think it is. I’m starting to see my writing as a highway system: a small town might be pretty different from a big city, but the same road can run through both.

Writing and words

Happy Spring, Kelley!

Join me for a pint of Guinness, eh? No, not the stuff sold here in the U.S., but an actual draft from a pub in Ennis, Ireland, where we saw some local musicians jamming three years ago. Tastes better over there somehow.

So much to do, so much to say. I finally got Laura, my wife, to read Solitaire in December. As a schoolteacher, Laura is always too busy to read, but over her winter break, she asked me for a suggestion and your book was the first I put in her hands. I think she finished it in a day or two, couldn’t put it down. But I realized when she was done that the story and characters were no longer fresh enough in my mind to really talk with her about it. In the middle of the holiday season, I filed this away mentally for later review.

So here I am two months later, end of a gloomy February, and checking out VP and I follow your link to the web journals of Jackal and the others and I know it’s time. So I read it again, savoring the words and yet still gobbling them down in two days.

So this story is my usual long set-up for a couple of pints…er, points. First, kudos on a work that wears well. I read a lot, and re-read my favorites frequently. I love it when I continue to get more and more out of a book the more I read it. I’m already looking forward to the next go-round with Solitaire, when it’s time again.

I agree with the hesitation to try a sequel, and at the same time absolutely love the web journals and want more of them. The everyday nature of the journals makes the characters even more human and real to me without forcing them into an artificial plot as many sequels do. Because, in most cases, what I want from a sequel is more time with the people I’ve fallen for in the first installment, and artificial plots detract from that and can even make great characters less consistent and human. So –” love the web journals!

And (at long last) a question: when you’re writing, are you conscious of the words? I was struck during this reading of Solitaire by what seemed a very deliberate choice and positioning of words. I dimly recall a monologue from Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing in which the playwright character compares good writing to a good cricket bat –” he debunks the idea that writing is merely the process of stringing words together in readable sentences, declaring that good writing is a craft which at its best is undetectable –” you can’t see the seams, but you can tell the difference when the ball hits the bat. Well, I’m not saying your seams are showing, merely that as a writer myself I can appreciate the crisp sound of the ball off a good bat as much as I can the resulting line drive to the wall. (Okay, was that three metaphors mixed in a single sentence, not to mention scrambling cricket with baseball? Hmmm… another sip of caffeine…)

Back to the point –” when you are writing, are you consciously crafting the structure at the same time as you are building the plot? Some writers write a draft straight through to get it down, then knock out the dents in rewrites. Some writers revise as they go — not recommended, but possible. Do you rewrite a great deal to make sure every word is properly placed, or do you place words deliberately as you go and tend to stay closer to an original draft?

Wow. Like Jackal, I’m tempted to delete this rambling post in favor of a simpler, less revealing howdy. But what would be the fun in that?

Thanks for the ear and the forum. Not to mention the now-empty glasses on the bar…

Keep passing the open windows,

Adam Diamond

Hey, Adam.

Isn’t it true about Guinness? We went to Dublin about four years ago, and I fell in love with everything about the place. Wonderful time, which included my first taste of Guinness (“The Guinness,” as the barman called it when he drew it for us….) There’s an Irish pub in our old neighborhood in Seattle that sometimes manages to make the Guinness taste like the memory of that trip, for which I’m grateful.

I’m glad Laura enjoyed Solitaire. I always feel an inordinate glee when Nicola likes a book I’ve recommended, since it often doesn’t work out that way. We dislike many of the same books, and we have a short but precious list of books that are treasures for us both, but there’s a vast middle ground that we just shake our heads across in fond bemusement. Then she curls up with treatises about the plague in the Middle Ages, and I go back to Stephen King and Carlos Castaneda (huh, Castaneda –” haven’t read him in a while. So there you go, that’s the next book that’s coming off the shelf).

I have begun updating the journals on a more regular basis, and am hoping to keep them more active. I’m feeling my way through questions like “how often” and “how much overlap,” and the balance between daily details and “plot.” There is some plot there, a story that’s slowly taking shape in my head. But I’m with you on the point being more time with the characters, as opposed to Great Big Fast-Moving Story. The more I work with the journal format, the more potential I see in it for really interesting forms of story –” multiple viewpoints, multiple points of entry for readers, and (at least for me) a sense that it’s more difficult for the writer (me) to force an agenda on the characters. And it’s an incredible chance to explore the accretion of small daily consistencies and changes that make a life and a person. So do please keep reading, if you haven’t been back in a while.

For those who may not have found all the links:

Jackal
Snow
Scully
Crichton
Estar
Zack the cat
Solitaire

As for writing and words, well…. big question. Short answer: the words have to be right before I can move on. This doesn’t mean that it’s perfect on the first draft (I so wish). But I can’t just write any damn sentence in order to get the plot down on paper. I’m constantly refining as I work. I find it hard to separate “plot” from “character” from “the writing” –” to me, it’s the choice of words that builds character and story. The right words are an integral part of the story, not a layer that I put on top of it like icing. If the sentences aren’t right, then they won’t build the right story.

Although I outline, there’s so much of the story that only emerges in the emotional and psychological connections that form the conscious and unconscious structure of the work. And most times, I don’t know what those are until I see them on paper. If a scene is right, on the writing level as well as the “plot” level, then the story becomes deeper.

In our essay in Bookmark Now, Nicola talks about the fact that expert writers can paper over the cracks in a flawed story, but unless the flaws are dealt with, the story won’t ring true. I think this is absolutely right. I have just recently tossed about 5,000 words of Hollow (the new book) because they weren’t right. They were really nice words, beautiful sentences, great scenes with lots of feelings-n’-stuff –” all my stock in trade –” but they weren’t right for the story. I was able to go back pretty quickly and find the weak point, and rebuild from there. I don’t think I would have been able to do that if I didn’t have essential confidence that the book up to that point was solid. And I only have the confidence when the words are basically right.

This kind of rewriting happens all the time for me. It’s a constant process of refining the words to polish the rhythms and resonances, to solidify the emotional through-line, to balance the interior and exterior worlds of the characters. For me, it’s the only way to discover the deeper levels of story that I’m sometimes not aware of when I develop an outline. My work is all about character, and humans manifest themselves through large and small reactions to the world, through feeling and action. These can be subtle things, and require attention to nuance: a certain precision, even in a first draft.

Some writers would think this means I “waste” a lot of words. I don’t see it that way. For me, building a work is a three-dimensional process, a weaving rather than a layering.

This is hard to articulate. It’s one of the deepest, most fundamental aspects of my writing. If I’m not making sense, or need to clarify, I hope you’ll let me know.

Windows open, weather is fine. Enjoy your summer.

Wonderland

Kelley, sounds like you had a lovely time at St. Paul’s. Thanks for sharing the article by Jana Brown on how your teaching and acceptance was seen by the students and the staff.

Sly

It was a great time, and a dream come true for me. Those of you who have been visiting the pub for a while know that St. Paul’s is very special to me. Going back as a writer in residence was a chance for me to reconnect at many different levels.

I got there on a Saturday night after a Very Long Trip ( Seattle to Concord, NH is not the easiest journey, especially in February). My first event was scheduled for Sunday evening, so during the day Sunday I was on my own, which was great. I went to brunch in the school cafeteria; indulged myself with my adolescent breakfast of toast, peanut butter, bacon and tea; and watched the students come and go. Brought back many memories.

This isn’t a “glory days” thing, I wasn’t exactly one of the hip kids in high school: it’s more that for me, St. Paul’s was an absolute wonderland. Do you know the story of the Little Match Girl? What if the wall had opened for her and someone had invited her in, given her a seat near the fire and a lovely plate of roast goose, maybe a squashy chocolate bun, had overlooked her bad clothes and complete lack of awareness of Sax Fifth Avenue? That’s how St. Paul’s felt to me. Maybe this sounds exaggerated, but I promise, it’s not. For a kid like me, prep school was as unimaginable as flying to the moon, and when I understood what it was, what it could be, I wanted it more fiercely than I had ever wanted anything in my short life. Not all my memories of school are wonderful, but they are all…I don’t know what word to use. Embedded, maybe. My time at St. Paul’s is stamped into me like the maker’s mark on silver.

On Sunday night I did a reading for faculty, staff and students: as a special (well, at least for me) gift, I read the first chapter of the new novel, which only Nicola had seen up to that point. Afterwards, a member of faculty hosted a dinner party. A couple of students invited me to join them and their friends in their dorm basement to talk and listen to music, but I couldn’t because I was already committed to the dinner. I thoroughly enjoyed it –” there were teachers at the table who were teaching when I was a student, and it was fantastic to connect with them as a peer –” but I also wish so much that I could have spent that time with those students.

On Monday, I taught five classes. How did it go? Who knows? (grin). My head was spinning by the end of the day. It was odd to be on the teaching side of the equation, but I enjoyed it. I wish I’d had more time (my visit had to be shortened because of a school holiday), and I wish there had been more chance for me to connect with students in more personal ways. I think some students found a few things helpful, and some were probably bored rigid. I’d do a couple of things differently the next time around, but in general I didn’t make a complete idiot of myself, and so was happy.

The students were amazing. I fell in love with all of them: attentive, eclectic, good haircuts and shoes, great manners; the entire spectrum of teenage body language (everything from I so rock to I am so not here); questioning minds that have been encouraged to think, to range, to take a few chances and make some leaps. It’s a different school from the one I went to in many ways, but that part is exactly the same.

And it’s so beautiful there. Still a wonderland. There’s a part of me that will never get over that place.

Life/story

Hello!

Thank you for writing Solitaire, it’s a beautiful book. Having live journal pages for Solitaire characters is a great idea. I especially like the pages of Snow, Estar, and the cat (so cute). When did you think of the idea? Thanks.

Adrienne

I’m glad you like the book.

I thought of the idea for the journals last year when I discovered a Live Journal community that was a Harry Potter role-playing game. Each player was a character from the books. Each character had their own journal, and all the posts were collected together in the community journal. It was as if you were reading an ongoing report from various points of view of what was happening at Hogwarts. I thought it was a great idea, really creative, and then I thought, hmmm…. these folks are playing a game, creating a community story, but why not use this structure to create a different kind of fiction?

The beauty of the journal format is its flexibility. Journals are by their nature a mix of the daily and the Big Event. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to wander around more in the world, hang out with people in Solitaire when nothing in particular is happening, have extraneous conversations…. Then there’s the chance to get more into the heads of Snow, Scully, Crichton, and Estar, the layering of different points of view on the same events. I have lots of ideas. And of course, there will also be a story unfolding, because otherwise it just seems self-indulgent. So that’s a challenge for me –” a new kind of story, an accretion of daily details.

The cat sends his regards. He agrees that he is very cute (grin). You might be interested to know that Nicola channels the cat for these journals. It’s fun to have her come play in my world. This collaborating thing might become addictive….

Continuation

You said:

You ask about a sequel. Those who have expressed an opinion seem divided between wanting to know more about what happens, and being concerned that a sequel will be more disappointing than rewarding. That’s a legitimate concern–”sequels are hard. I’ve said several times here in the virtual pub that I’m not planning a sequel, and that’s still true. And yet I do think about Jackal and her people, and I am currently interested in exploring new ways of making story, new ways of staying connected with these characters that I love.

As I was reading this I thought that it isn’t really necessary to think of additions to your story as a sequel in my mind. In fact I prefer to think of any story that has the same characters and settings as a continuation of the world you’ve created.

So here’s a notion I’m playing with. I’d be interested in comments.

Yes, like that; just how are these people getting on in their lives after VC or any touch they’ve experienced through the process and/or people they know who are involved with such. I’d sure like to spend more time with the folks and in the world you made. And what is the fate of Solitaire, does it really work, can people really survive it and be better for it? It doesn’t seem to me like a story with an end, there seems to be lots of stories in there yet. (I hope).

Sly in Anchorage

Hey Sly, how are things in Anchorage?

I like your perspective. A sequel is a whole new story, another complete arc of the characters and events, and that’s not what I want. But continuing, looking at smaller everyday moments and building a slower, more gradual story… that appeals to me. One thing I like about this approach is that it anyone who has read Solitaire doesn’t have to do any catching up (and anyone who hasn’t read the book will probably just wonder what’s up with the funny dates..)

I hope there are lots of stories in there too.

I haven’t updated any of the journals since I posted them, but that’s due to lack of time, and also to a need to let them simmer for a bit. I’m just about ready to get back into them. Stick with me (smile) — there is definitely more to come.

Edited in 2009 to add: And they have waxed and waned, but are often in the back of my mind as an interesting way to make story. Still thinking…

Hope for the elections and everything else

Hit me with a double. Or a double-double.

Morning after the election and as an Ohio resident, I can’t escape the feeling in the pit of my stomach that Ohioans are going to get more blame for the re-election of Bush than anyone else, even though more than half the population was gullible enough, ignorant enough, blind enough to vote for the bastard. My apologies if you’re a Bush supporter, Kelley — I’m making the assumption that you’re not, based on what you’ve written here and in other spaces.

Sitting here trying to work, trying to silently talk myself out of falling into a deep depression (my therapist would tell me to allow myself to grieve, but I feel ridiculous grieving over a political race like this. I feel a little bit like Red Sox fans felt until a week ago. The grief is real, but I’m finding it hard to admit to myself that I was that emotionally invested in something guaranteed to disappoint me.), I find an old question floating back to the surface. Indulge me in a brief flashback…

In my senior year of college, I landed the weekly opinion column in the school paper. One week, I wrote a column about labeling people in which I talked about how fun and helpful labeling is. I thought I was being subtly ironic, but I was too subtle for at least one reader, who wrote an impassioned letter to the paper decrying my column. I was reminded at the time of Randy Newman, whose early and best songs took this same boldly ironic approach. And I felt better at the time, thinking that for every person or few people who didn’t get what I was trying to do, there would be someone who did.

But now Randy Newman makes money writing unsubtle pop songs for Disney (not that this takes away from what he has done in the past, but still…). If the results of the election yesterday show me anything, it’s that the voting public, in spite of turning out in record numbers, is the opposite of subtle. They’re boneheads, dumbasses who are content to be led around by their noses, lacking the interest to make even a cursory attempt to question what they’re told. It takes hardly any effort at all to see the lies and misleading statements that Bush and his administration make constantly. They don’t even try to be subtle about lying or misdirecting anymore because they know no one will question them, including those whose job it is to question.

So is subtlety a lost skill? Is it fading out of popular art because the mass audience is too stupid to get it and so won’t pay for it? Or is it still alive and I’m just myopic with grief at the moment? As I type that, I can think of examples I’ve seen recently — Tony Kushner, South Park, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. But is this enough? Is there hope? What keeps you going when you fall into moods like this?

Thanks for letting me vent. I’m sure I won’t be the only one venting today, but I hope I’ve done so here in a respectable way.

Stranded in Ohio ,

Adam Diamond

Hey Adam,

You know that I’m sorry for the delay in answering this, because I’ve already apologized in private and will do so now again. Many sorries. You get the Kelley Eskridge Big Patience Award (grin).

Nicola and I were entering the Hideous Time of Moving in the days before the election: we had seen the new house, made an offer, and gone into scramble mode about inspections and contractor estimates for remodeling. By election day we were stunned with the promise of debt and the enormity of having to clean up nine years’ of accumulated “well, we’ll get to this someday” junk so that we could put our house on the market…. I was so tired that all I could really feel was a faint, fatalistic sadness that so many people were so scared.

Because I do think that Bush’s re-election is a prime example of large-scale fear in action. I know I go on a lot about fear and love and joy in the virtual pub; give me a beer and I just seem to want to talk about the big stuff. From that perspective, I think that Bush lives in fear, leads from fear, and will do most anything to make the rest of us afraid so that we believe he’s right to do what he does. I think he surrounds himself with people who are well versed in the art of instilling and managing fear.

But I’m also thinking about something I read recently. I’m not sure who said, “we have met the enemy and he is partly right,” but it stopped me in my tracks. It is this “partly right” that can change the world, for better or worse. It’s the “partly right” that makes us wish to stamp out the opposition so the ambiguity no longer exists, or that allows us to suck it up and see other people as real, even if we think they are real assholes. I believe that people voted for Bush thinking he would make them feel safer, and for some of them, this will happen. I don’t think that’s about subtlety or its lack: I think it’s about fear of difference, fear of ambiguity, fear of annihilation. Fear of meeting the enemy and finding (all props to Pogo) that they are us.

I get that, you know? I have those fears too. I just hope they never get that kind of grip on me.

I don’t think subtlety is dead. I just don’t think it works on everyone. It’s about nuance, and the current cultural struggle is in a fairly bold-strokes phase. I’m doing that myself, in this post: I haven’t yet offered any consideration that Bush and his folks might be people with whom I could share a margarita and some chips and salsa and maybe even a joke or two. That they are people who love their families, who maybe enjoy a sunset or the smell of honeysuckle. Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t make me like them or their choices any better. It just means that I know that in some ways, in the human spectrum, they are “partly right” (a concept which is a giant pain in the ass, you know? It is simpler to push people away).

I just reviewed a book for @U2 called Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas (whom I also interviewed for the site). It includes a story that speaks to this. Bono relates a story told to him by Harry Belafonte. Belafonte met with Martin Luther King, Jr. just after John F. Kennedy made Bobby Kennedy the Attorney General. Belafonte tells Bono that it was “a very depressing moment, a very bad day for the Civil Rights movement.” Bono asks why, and Belafonte says:

Oh, you see, you forget. Bobby Kennedy was Irish. Those Irish were real racists, they didn’t like the black man. They were just one step above the black man on the social ladder, and they made us feel it. They were all the police, they were the people who broke our balls on a daily basis. Bobby at that time was famously not interested in the Civil Rights Movement…. We knew we were in deep trouble. We were crestfallen, in despair, talking to Martin, moaning and groaning about the turn of events when Dr. King slammed his hand down and ordered us to stop the bitchin’: “Enough of this!” he said. “Is there nobody here who’s got something good to say about Bobby Kennedy?” We said, “Martin, that’s what we’re telling ya! There is no one… There is nothing good to say about him. The guy’s an Irish Catholic conservative bad ass, he’s bad news….” To which Martin replied: “Well, then, let’s call this meeting to a close. We will re-adjourn when somebody has found one redeeming thing to say about Bobby Kennedy, because that, my friends, is the door through which our movement will pass.”
— from Bono: In Conversation with Mischka Assayas

Talk about the long view. King was willing to allow that there was something about Kennedy that was partly right. It’s part of what made King such an amazing force. But it requires geologic patience and an ability to persevere in a constant state of ambiguity. To stay engaged on that level takes enormous energy. I think part of what’s happened in our country is that about 50 percent of us believe that we don’t have the energy for it right now; we’re too scared to find the redeeming thing.

I am trying not to join the 50% in this regard. Some days are better than others.

And sure, there’s hope (the day I cannot find a shred of hope in my soul will be a very, very bad day indeed). There are people of goodwill in all parts of the process who are trying to find the doors through which we can all pass. And at the risk of sounding all fluffy and dewy-eyed, I believe that whenever any of us does this in our everyday life, it ripples out in directions we might not imagine, it touches others in ways we don’t perceive, and it makes a difference. I believe this, and it helps me.

And here’s to Ohio, a fine state. Cheers.

Staying connected

My two cents—for whatever they are worth. I am a scientist, not a novelist! I really enjoyed Solitaire. It was refreshing to read a scifi novel with all the important elements covered. First, there was actually some science here, not the all-too-frequent drama-in-spaceship that could just as easily be drama-in-hotel or whatever. There was also a real plot with a beginning middle and end, and you succeeded admirably where few authors do — in development of a believable character.

This theme of an exceptional individual overcoming tragedy has also been used in a few other great scifi novels, including Dune, Slow River and Contact. What if any works influenced you, or are personal favorites?

In the end, the final “resolution” of Jackal’s personal dilemma was the creation of a web. I was curious about this, since you did not develop this concept as a central theme. Rather, you stressed the search for self and love — could you comment on this? Are you planning a sequel to this novel?

Anonymous

A huge apology to you for taking so long to respond to your question. Bad author. No cookie.

I’m pleased that as a scientist you aren’t rolling on the floor laughing your ass off over Solitaire (which I often refer to as “waving at science on the way past”). Some of the temporal lobe technology does exist, and of course virtual reality is moving so fast that it’s hard to keep up. But part of the reason I don’t think of myself as a science fiction writer is that I have so little intuitive understanding of science as an art, a discipline, and a world view. This is one way in which Nicola and I differ greatly, and it’s not at all unusual for me to respond to an observation of hers with, “That’s physics, right?” Why did I start out in speculative fiction? I don’t know. It’s a mystery.

Drama-in-spaceship science fiction is a nice phrase (made me smile). My next novel is not science fiction for precisely this reason — science just isn’t a key component of the story.

Everything I read influences me on some level (even if only on the level of Yikes, I don’t ever want to publish anything this bad). Part of my challenge is to filter the influence of other books and other writers through my own lens, so as to avoid directly imitating my betters. There are some things I’d love to write but am not sure I’ll ever be able to (I admire anyone who can write Epic Fantasy about Noble People without sounding like lukewarm Tolkien). I’m reluctant to name favorites (although I do have them) because I turn to particular books at different times for different reasons. Some books I love, and some I admire, and they aren’t always the same. But I will tell you that the three earliest “exceptional individual overcomes difficulty” books that grabbed me and still haven’t let go are The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken, Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin , and Emergence by David R. Palmer. I’m sure that psychologists and academics can amuse themselves to no end with this bit of information.

It’s true that the web is not an overt central theme of the story, but for me it rings through everything Jackal does. Her web is an essential part of her identity — her early decisions leading to the accident and VC are a direct result of her sense of responsibility to the web. In VC, she breaks herself in part by breaking her connection to the web. Then she returns to the ‘real’ world, and everything she does is (in my opinion) part of a larger quest to understand her identity as a self alone and a self connected. How should she connect now? To whom? Where is her balance? Can she be herself if other people constantly bump up against her emotionally? Can she be herself without it?

Identity fascinates me, as does the balance between self and other. I think that defining this balance is one of the most compelling, complex and fundamental decisions that each of us makes, one that ripples through our entire life in horizontal and vertical ways. By that I mean both along our span of days (the horizontal axis) and throughout our internal layers of psychology, emotion, behavior, response, values, fears, joys (the vertical). This is territory I want to explore as much as I can.

You ask about a sequel. Those who have expressed an opinion seem divided between wanting to know more about what happens, and being concerned that a sequel will be more disappointing than rewarding. That’s a legitimate concern — sequels are hard. I’ve said several times here in the virtual pub that I’m not planning a sequel, and that’s still true. And yet I do think about Jackal and her people, and I am currently interested in exploring new ways of making story, new ways of staying connected with these characters that I love.

So here’s a notion I’m playing with. I’d be interested in comments.