Meeting Your Writing Heroes #amwriting #amreading

Since becoming a published author I've had the pleasure of working with, knowing, and even becoming friends with a large number of fellow authors along the way. I haven't always read all of their books but many are on my bookshelves, be they real or virtual, and for those I haven't read I still admire their work and understand the many peculiarities of our craft.

But there are a handful of authors who leave me a bit more...star struck? I've been privileged to meet some of them: the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett and Anne McCaffrey, and more recently (and thankfully still alive) the talented Jaine Fenn (who kindly put up with my shaking her hand three times in the space of five minutes because I was so excited to finally meet her *dies of embarrassment* and who has since referred to me as her favourite stalker) and the lovely Janet Edwards, beloved author of YA scifi devoured by my eldest.

But one author who has made a recent massive impact on my writing was Isaac Marion, author of the Warm Bodies books. Before Warm Bodies, I was not a zombie fan. Not a horror fan at all. I hated them! I've been too prone to nightmares most of my life to watch anything scarier than Doctor Who (and even some of those, especially the New Who stuff, have been touch and go). I came to his work more or less by chance. My editor Dani and fellow author Karen Bynum happened to be talking about the book on Twitter with much enthusiasm. Then Karen mentioned the film. Now, bearing in mind my aversion to horror and particularly zombies, their apparent adoration for this book and film still prompted me to go and check it out. The trailer was a touch comedic (Isaac happened to mention in his Q&A that he didn't think it was a full representation of his book) but it was enough to hook me into straight out buying the DVD, which I would never normally do.

And I LOVED it. There is a certain amount of standard Hollywood zombie apocalypse about it and the horror elements were just about in my tolerance levels, but really this is a film about what it means to be human, and a touch of love conquers all. It's sweet and cute, thought-provoking if a bit cheesy in places, tense, and heart-warming. The book is obviously different in ways to the film, but I am a huge fan of lyrical writing - where it's somewhere between poetry and fiction - and I fell equally in love with the novel. Isaac Marion is now an auto-buy, and I even bought two copies of the prequel - The New Hunger - because they re-released it with added new material. That's a rare thing for me to do.

Not only did this author have the talent to make me like and read zombies, but to actually fall in love with one and empathize with him, AND to then go on and write three stories of my own - two zombie tales that have since been published, and one android story currently in edits. The first of those - Restless In Peaceville - was the hardest thing I've ever had to write to date, the one I resisted at every step but that just wouldn't let me go until it was done. It not only pushed me out of my comfort zone but right over the edge, into a genre I would never have even considered writing and set in a place I've never been and knew nothing about. It's now the piece I'm most proud of for those very reasons.

But Isaac Marion is a US author, and I'm in the UK. I figured the chances of me meeting him were about as high as meeting a real zombie. I knew he had a new book releasing early this year but cash restraints meant I never got around to pre-ordering it for the bonus material promised on his site. Even when it came out, I still didn't have the money to get it straight away. I have this priority called real life and kids. :P

Then the most amazing thing happened. He announced a visit to the UK on a tour to promote the new release, and he was coming to Waterstones in London! That's like an hour and a half train journey for me (a helluva lot closer than the US, lol). This might be my one and only real opportunity to meet him and get the books signed, and a great excuse to pick up the new book as my ticket to the signing came with a copy. Awesome! I booked the tickets, deciding to take my eldest along. She hasn't read the books but she likes horror and zombies, and she's watched Warm Bodies with me, and I love taking her to author events.

I thought I'd take my other Warm Bodies books with me in the hope that I might be able to sneak some extra autographs, but although I had both copies of The New Hunger horror of horrors - I couldn't find my Warm Bodies book anywhere, and on the day of the signing. Eeep! I dashed to the station to pick up our train tickets - eldest had a school trip the same day so I'd basically have to pick her up from the drop off point and fly straight to our train to London - then ran into town to the local indie book shop. As I'd feared, they didn't have a copy in store and could only offer to order it in. No good. My only remaining hope was the local Waterstones - no offence to them, and they were organizing the signing in London, but I don't like to buy from chains (support indie businesses and all that). Just lately, they'd shoved all the speculative fiction upstairs into a room more like a cupboard, which had also annoyed the Hades out of me. I scampered up the stairs without much hope...but my luck was in. They had just one print copy of Warm Bodies on the shelves! I was all set.

Unlike my usual trips to London, I knew exactly where I was going right down to the correct underground exit to reach Waterstones Piccadilly. As an FYI to Waterstones, some signs would have been useful rather than having to ask at the till where to go. We were in a large sealed room off to one side of the lower floor, with glasses of wine on offer and a big stack of The Burning World to take our copy from.

It was a small gathering, about 30 of us in all and mostly female. Until this point, I hadn't even known it was a Q&A session with signings, and half an hour longer than the ticket said, but hey! Bonus! Isaac Marion is a very tall, soft spoken and articulate man with tattoos, and it was a pleasure to hear him speak, even when the audience came up with very complex, long-winded questions toward the end of the session. I barely even noticed his American accent (although possibly because I'd heard him speak on the Warm Bodies DVD extras, so I knew what he sounded like).Lots of the things he said struck a chord with me, and came as a necessary and helpful reminder of why I started in this whole writing and publishing rigmarole in the first place. He spoke about how Warm Bodies came from a dark period in his life when he didn't really know who or what he was - something I was experiencing myself when I wrote Keir after a decade of not really writing anything at all. We even got an impromptu reading from the book in answer to someone's question about why the airport was significant to R. But you'll have to read it for yourself to find that out.

My own personal question got answered in the first few minutes, having been asked by the interviewer and not me - I guess it was either an obvious question or the Waterstones guy was telepathic. Probably the former. I behaved myself and only got two books signed - the copy of Warm Bodies that I'd had to go to such trouble to replace, and The Burning World. My eldest got hers signed after some fun spelling out her name (it's not that hard, just unusual). There was apparently a pub crawl afterward, but with a hungry, tired and underage teen in tow, unfortunately I couldn't tag along. I have no regrets. I've achieved a wish I thought could never come true, and I thank Isaac for making it possible, and for reminding me why I write and how it saved my sanity. Now I just need to find my passion for it again.

My now extra precious print edition
of Warm Bodies - the book that
started it all!

Eldest spelling out her name to Isaac

Happenings

So while on the train back home from the Isaac Marion signing, I was rather startled to get this tweet from my editor, cover designer and all-round cheerleader Danielle Fine:

So apparently I'm an Ariana Award Finalist for Dead Awakened, @pippajaygreen :D I didn't even know you'd entered that cover. <3 pic.twitter.com/rzdK5dEmSs

— Danielle Fine (@DanielleFine1) March 7, 2017

I'd forgotten I'd even entered that cover alongside Quickshot (I remembered I'd put that one in) and Dani had forgotten I'd asked permission for it. But yay for a nice surprise for both of us?

A spooky coincidence to get the notification on the same day, since this is one of the zombie stories inspired by Warm Bodies. Of course, this isn't my first cover in a final, nor Dani's. Keir finaled two  years ago in the Ariana, and Dani has done numerous covers for other members of the Spacefreighters crew. If you're on the hunt for artwork, go visit her site HERE.

Status Update
Keir's Shadow is 20% done on revisions, and has stabilized at 85K as I'm both adding and deleting content now. I picked up fabric for the Tauriel cosplay yesterday, but forgot the bias tape so it's progressing, just...slowly as I wait on more materials. Sigh.

Chook Update
Yesterday the girls and I took full advantage of an absolutely beautiful spring day and enjoyed the garden (though I spent most of it in the back room with the patio doors open while I worked on the Tauriel cosplay).

Pitch and Fizzgig

Pitch attempts to steal Scoop's patch of sun...

...only for Fizzgig to do the same to her!

And a familiar, unwanted visitor returned that afternoon - the fox is back! Sigh. Looking mangier than ever but still alive and far too interested in my girls. However, staring at them through the wire is about all it can do with our fox-proof coop and a mad woman with a stick who loves nothing better than running down the garden wielding her piece of copper pipe and screaming blue murder. I hope it burns lots of calories...

Spring Is Coming!

Back from half term holiday, and this week I'm going to be a typical Brit: I'm going to talk about the weather (and not just because Greta posted about it last week, lol). Just over a week ago when temperatures had began that small rise hinting at the end of winter, we were swiftly plummeted back into the cold and even had snow. That's not unheard of for the time of year. I've seen snowy Valentine's Days, and the year my youngest was born the older two were making snow bunnies for Easter with their dad (although it was an early Easter that year).
But now the temperatures have taken a definite upward swoop, well into double figures, and the plants are registering the change. Snowdrops have been open for a week, and now the crocuses and other bulbs are up and opening, and green buds are on the hawthorn bushes as we walk to school. And this morning I spotted a couple of frogs in the pond...well, shall we say 'celebrating' the warmer weather? :P
We're still not free of a risk of ice and snow, or at least several hard frosts in the coming weeks, but I can feel the change in the air, see it in the surroundings. And it means I've survived winter. I suffer from SAD, and increasingly over the past few years it seem to have hit me harder and harder each winter. Not so this year. I think despite the cold we had a brighter winter - more sharp cold and clear skies rather than the terrible damp greyness that feels like it's lasting forever. We had days cold enough to numb the skin on my legs which hurt like hell on getting back into the warm, but being out in the sun makes such a difference to my mood. So I'm feeling more hopeful as we move into 2017, despite the horrendous political mire both sides of the Atlantic. Sigh. Still, there's good stuff to come...

Status Update
Keir's Shadow is progressing, but mostly as notes emailed to myself. It's probably my weirdest method of revising to date, but ideas for fixing the plot holes mostly occur while I'm off on my morning walk. I've added over 8K words already, but haven't really got far past the first chapter, patching other random scenes, and fixing the closing scenes. It gives you some idea of how much of a mess this work is in...

Happenings
I was super excited to learn this morning that one of my favourite authors is coming to the UK in a couple of weeks! Being as my chances of going to the US were pretty minute (plus I'm not sure I want to go there in the current conditions), I'm amazed at getting the chance to meet Isaac Marion, author of Warm Bodies and related zombie books. I'm sure I've raved enough about my love for the books for it to be obvious. He'll be visiting three locations in the UK and one in Scotland, and you can find details HERE if interested.

Cosplay Update
I finished youngest's Luigi cosplay just before the half term holiday, then finished part four of a super secret five part project last week. I can't tell you about those until the SFR author who commissioned it has done their reveal. ;) The final part requires further design consultation.
In the meantime I've moved onto eldest's Tauriel cosplay, which includes fletching some arrows. The arrows will never be shot (you're not allowed fireable weapons at most conventions anyway, so the string will be coming off the bow we're taking) but I used to do archery so I want them to look as convincing as possible.

Chook Update
With the warmer weather, I've been spending some time out in the garden with my girls. And they've been busy - we're now getting one or two eggs a day. After her traumatic encounter with the fox last year, Kyru appears very reluctant to venture outside the coop anymore, but the others are enjoying the return of this extra freedom.

Left to right: Kyru, Scoop, Pitch, Fizzgig (Effie behind)

Back to the job hunting...

Warm Bodies was strangely heart-warming...

Donna is normally our resident film critic, but I wanted to share this one. I know zombies aren't technically scifi - they have their own genre, and I'm seeing the odd zombie romance springing up (ZR?) - but I thought I could sneak this in as a kind of dystopian romance. ;)
I'm going to format this as I do my book review - what I liked, what I didn't like, and my conclusion. Let's start with a blurb and trailer.

Blurb:

Life for Julie (Teresa Palmer) and R (Nicholas Hoult) couldn’t be more different. R is a zombie; with a great record collection; limited vocab and an overpowering love of brain food.  Julie is a human; beautiful; strong; open minded and all heart. When R makes an unexpected decision and rescues Julie from a zombie attack, his lifeless existence begins to have a purpose. As the unlikely relationship develops, R’s choice to protect her sets in motion a sequence of events that might just change both of their worlds forever.  Directed by Jonathan Levine (50/50) and based on the debut novel by Isaac Marion, the heart-warming Warm Bodies is 2013’s zom-rom-com with a twist.

Trailer:



What I didn't like:

Okay, there were plot holes. Why didn't the Bonies (the super scary zombies) attack the human city waaaay before they did in the film? For a matter of fact why didn't the 'normal' zombies (Corpses)? How convenient that the best looking and teen zombie fell for the pretty blonde? (Okay, that latter bit is sort of explained in the film, and a suitably 'eww' reason - we ARE talking zombies after all). And oh how I cringed at the balcony scene, bearing in mind the girl is Julie and the zombie hero is R. It might have had Shakespeare crawl out of his grave to eat brains. A lot of things were rather convenient and/or kind of glossed over. The 'cure' seemed too simplistic, but I suppose the idea is that love conquers all, even the zombie apocalypse. (Some of this is explained in the book, but the book is different, and I still think some of it could have been explained in the film).

What I did like:

I don't watch zombie films and I don't like horror. But after seeing my editor and a fellow author raving about the book, then seeing the trailer on TV, I decided to give it a try. And I loved it! The horror element ( the super scary bonies) WAS scary (I don't like to be scared), but not enough to make me uncomfortable or give me nightmares. It was nicely balanced out by the sweet romance, the humor, and the intriguing idea that zombies could change, and an insight to a zombie's mind - such as they have. There's a bit of an Edward Scissorhands feel to it. I never quite knew where the story was going and how they were going to make it work - it surprised me a few times. Nothing came out quite how I expected, which was refreshing. And R's fellow zombie Marcus was a great supporting character. Two favourite bits - Julie attempts to play dead at R's prompting, and he has to tell her 'Too much.' When Julie confesses she's missing R to her best friend, the comment was 'I know it's hard to find guys, what with the zombie apocalypse and all...' The casting for R and Marcus was, for me, genius.

In conclusion:

This is a teen love story, but without the often whiny teenage angst - when they did whine, they seriously had things that deserved to be whined about! Essentially a Beauty and the Beast type trope. The idea of setting something AFTER the zombie apocalypse, and from the zombie's point of view made an intriguing change. Horror/undead fans will probably be hugely disappointed by the lack of gore and things to make you jump out of your skin, while Shaun of the Dead fans might enjoy it. This is also probably a bit on the light side for those who want a deeply meaningful, cerebral kind of film, scifi or otherwise. While it might be in the Twilight camp of films, I quit Twilight 40 minutes in out of sheer boredom but can't wait to watch this again! (note - I *have* watched it again, and loved it even more on the second run. And I got the book from the library. Different, but still loved it. I'm still trying to figure out how the author made me empathize with a flesh eating, brain-craving monster!). I want more!

Pippa's Journal

I'm away from my computer this week, so there'll be no last minute updates  before this post goes live. Next week my little monsters go back to school and my work will restart in earnest. I have three short stories to write/finish, and my decopunk superhero story to complete. Perhaps inspired by Warm Bodies I'm currently 6K into a brand new Venus Ascendant story (to go with Terms & Conditions Apply, although with completely new characters). My dealers table at LonCon 3 has just. been paid for. And I've just been invited to blog once a month at Romancing the Genre. The fun never stops!

Ping Pong

Donna, loved the post on making fight scenes realistic. It's one of those things I fret over having no experience, but like everything else research is the key.

How Bad should the Bad Guys be?

I love reviews where readers have picked up on the details, themes or images I'm trying to get across. I'm even interested in the bad reviews, to see what didn't work or simply wasn't to the reader's taste. But I'm even more fascinated by things readers comment on that hadn't even crossed my mind. For instance...


A recent review for Gethyon mentioned how all my bad 'guys' in the story had no redeeming features (in all but one case I agree, although I know something about one of the villains that readers have yet to learn. Shhh!). They were, to quote 'just bad, plain and simple.' So that got me thinking. Does an antagonist have to have any redeeming elements? Should they? And exactly how 'bad' should they be?

I'm not someone who believes a villain should or needs to rape, murder and pillage (in fact, too much of that completely turns me off a book no matter how good the rest of it might be. I quit reading the Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks because the volume of rape, not just of women incidentally, and the number of significant characters killed off by the start of the second book just destroyed my enjoyment of the story and writing. I no longer cared if the good guys won because I'd had enough. Generally, if I know a book has a detailed rape scene, even if not done to glorify it (and I don't understand anyone who would write a story that does glorify it) I won't buy/read it. That's a personal turn off.

Murder/theft/war/violence are different things. People kill, steal, or go to war for lots of reasons, and readers may or may not forgive a character for it. One of my early crit partners for Gethyon told me I needed to make his character more sympathetic because she was having a hard time empathizing with him despite the circumstances. Fair enough on the protag. You want your reader to have some reason to cheer him/her/them on. But what about the villain? They may feel totally justified in killing. A recent example that springs to mind is Serene Galahad in Neal Asher's Owner trilogy. She felt completely vindicated in killing off Zero Asset citizens - those who had nothing to offer humanity, who were putting a greater strain on the potential survival of the human race at all, and who would die anyway - for the benefit of society as a whole. Harsh, but you could see the logic of it, in terms of a global viewpoint. Of course, ultimately she veers away from her good intentions as revenge, personal necessity and a gradual descent into megalomania take over. But faced with the realities she was, perhaps even the 'good' guys would make the same initial choice. Societies go to war for what they often see as necessary - ideals such as freedom, crushing oppressors, religious fervour, destroying a global threat, etc Both sides may have their justification, and it's always the winning side who declare the bad guys as those who lost.

It made me look at my villains again, and their motivations. The Siah-dhu, for instance, isn't human. It's a dark entity composed of many minds, a thing from your nightmares...well, my nightmares. Faceless, voiceless, it's the shadow you see out of the corner of your eye. It has no conscience, and easily destroys a whole planet without remorse to achieve its aim. It wants Gethyon and Quin for their abilities to travel through space, and the reader never really gets to know why. By Keir, its powers have been severely limited, but its acts are no less evil. It's certainly not intended to be a redeemable, or in any way likeable, character.

Commander Rialto, who made Keir's life hell, also doesn't give us any reason to forgive him. Neither do Neoris or Dephon in Gethyon. Jinx - well, she's a killer, sassy, dangerous, and her motives for hunting Gethyon certainly don't earn any sympathy. The Emmisary in Keir doesn't get any gold stars for redemption either, although we learn something of his motivation. The thing is, I like my bad guys to be BAD, and sometimes even my good guys). Because everybody makes mistakes. It's their choices, and how those mistakes change them that shapes their definition of good and bad.

But readers will forgive some things over others. For instance, I'm not a fan of forced seduction/kidnap scenarios where the heroine falls for her captor, or the 'Mars needs Women' tropes. I watched a discussion on Twitter where a reader verbally shredded a book which had a kidnap with the hero determined the heroine should be his (although there was no forced seduction/rape) but he was being a total jerk, and yet the heroine fell for him. The reader was unimpressed to say the least (I never did find out what the book was though). But as Marcella Burnard proved to me with Nobody's Present in Tales from the SFR Brigade, I'll even enjoy a 'Mars needs Women' story if I like the characters. There it's down to not only the reader, but how exactly the author portrays the characters and writes the story. If they succeed in casting them in a sympathetic light, or give reasons why they've been driven to such desperate measures, you can at least understand, if not completely empathize. It's all a question of perspective.

So how bad DO you want your villain? Would you rather the protag was a redeemable bad guy/gal you can forgive? Or should that be the antagonist's role? Or would you rather the bad guys were just plain BAD?

Pippa's Journal

So, I have good news and bad news. Firstly the bad. My cyberpunk short story Reboot did not make the Sword and Laser anthology. Boo! However, since they took just 20 entries out of nearly a thousand, I don't feel quite so bad. Reboot will find a home, and if not, the benefit of self publishing is I can always release it myself. Another candidate for doing my own print anthology at some point.
The good news? Keir became a RomCon winner last week. Woo hoo! He now has a nice collection of shinies. :)

Bookshelf
I hate zombie movies. I hate horror. I'm not a fan of teen romances. And yet, despite all that, I found myself watching, then reading Warm Bodies, and absolutely loving it! I can't quite explain why. I think part of it is this isn't your average zombie story for one. It's actually a sweet romance with some comedy and humour, and while the blurb calls it Romeo and Juliet, I'd say more Beauty and the Beast. While both those tropes have been done, for some reason it all just worked in this story for me. It was themes redone, but with a new twist. While I think I prefer the film over the book (but do read the book because despite the overused 'F' word and more grimness, and perhaps a less feasible plot, you get to hear more of the working inside R's mind and how it all came about), I devoured both. The fact that the author got me to overcome my revulsion for three genres AND something written in first person, and got me to sympathize with and cheer for a rotting, flesh-eating monster means he did something totally right. I just need to pin down how he did it...

In the meantime, I'll be posting a review of the film next week. I'll also be away from my computer (dragged away kicking and screaming, argh!) so I look forward to the comments on that on my return.

Ping Pong
Sharon, huge congrats on news of a third publication with TOR!

Donna, I am thankful for the teacher I met who inspired me just as yours did.

Laurie, hope to see you back soon as August winds toward its end...