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Showing posts with label 2017 Debut Author Challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2017 Debut Author Challenge. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Interview with Craig Cliff, Author of The Mannequin Makers


Please welcome Craig Cliff to The Qwillery as part of the of the 2017 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. The Mannequin Makers is published on December 12th by Milkweed Editions.







TQWelcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Craig:  Thanks for having me.

I’ve always written. Being alone and making things up — being the boss of the page — was a kind of powertrip. Somewhere between the ages of 16 and 21 I got serious about writing for an audience, though it took at least another five years for maturity caught up to ambition.



TQAre you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

Craig:  A total hybrid. I’ve tried both. I have the abandoned manuscripts to prove it.

Nowadays I won’t start writing until I have some sort of schematic that shows how all the elements fit together (for The Mannequin Makers this was a PowerPoint slide with lots of colored boxes and arrows). Something with the shape of the novel, some key events, but still a lot of questions to answer. And once I start, I’m free to go in other directions.



TQWhat is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Craig:  With novels, it is sustaining everything -- my energy, the narrative voice, the reader’s interest - over what is usually two or three years of work.



TQWhat has influenced / influences your writing?

Craig:  I never take off my novelist’s hat, so everything I consume - books, movies, video games, the aggravations of social media - winds up shaping my own work. Even the worst book has some redeeming feature, be it a lesson in what NOT to do, a new way out of an old bind, or a turn of phrase that unlocks something I’d felt but not yet been able to say.



TQDescribe The Mannequin Makers in 140 characters or less.

Craig:  A father raises his twins to perform as the perfect mannequins and trump his rival, a former figurehead carver and castaway.



TQTell us something about The Mannequin Makers that is not found in the book description.

Craig:  Eugen Sandow, the strongman who appears in early on in the novel and whose influence is felt through rest of the story, actually did tour New Zealand in 1902-03, I just made him perform an extra show. He was a fascinating dude. The first body-builder, in many respects. You can watch him flex in one of Thomas Edison’s first films on YouTube.



TQWhat inspired you to write The Mannequin Makers?

Craig:  I had a bunch of ideas - a father raising his children to be living mannequins, a shipwreck in the Southern Ocean, something centred on Eugen Sandow - that I didn’t know would or could fit together, but they had three things in common. They needed to happen in the past. They seemed so far beyond my own experience and what I’d written previously (a.k.a. A CHALLENGE). And they felt like the sorts of scenarios or characters I’d encountered in the kinds of books I devoured as a kid: Dickens, Verne, Dumas. The more I looked into department stores and clipper ships and physical culture, the more connections I found and the harder it became to not take up the challenge.



TQWhat sort of research did you do for The Mannequin Makers?

Craig:  I read. A lot. Books on all the stuff I just mentioned (and more), but also a lot of newspapers from the time period, which were thankfully all digitised and searchable online by the time I started. I travelled around the parts of the South Island here in New Zealand, where the novel opens and closes, but I didn’t go to other major settings - Scotland, Sydney, the sub-Antarctic islands - while writing the book. I made do with photos, maps, documentaries, first-hand accounts and my own imagination.
The highlight was being taken behind the scenes at our national museum and getting to touch items from the old castaway depot on Antipodes Island, like the “looter’s suit” that I later dressed one of my characters in.



TQPlease tell us about the cover for The Mannequin Makers.

Craig:  Covers are weird. This is the fourth cover for this book. The New Zealand and Australian editions are like a game of spot the difference and there’s a Romanian translation. The US one goes in a very different direction. I like how, once you read about ‘human mannequins’ on the back cover, those tools on the front seem more sinister. That’s kind of how the novel works too: things often appear sinister on second glance.



TQIn The Mannequin Makers who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Craig:  The easiest: Avis, who narrates the second part of the novel. For some reason her voice for me clicked early. Perhaps it was all the reading I’d been doing set in that time period. Perhaps it was the diary entry form and/or her extreme ignorance thanks to how she has been raised. After a few days of channelling this sixteen year old female from a hundred years ago, I started to worry it was coming too easily and I was, in fact, writing rubbish. And some of that first rush of words did need to be pared back. But it was still much less work than the other narrators.
The hardest was Eugen, Avis’ brother. He narrates the final section and is looking back on events that took place more than half a century before. He’s changed a lot since then (for starters: he’s learnt to read and write) but he hasn’t changed in other ways as well. It took a long time before I felt he was really talking when I saw his words on my screen.



TQWhy have you chosen to include or not chosen to include social issues in The Mannequin Makers?

Craig:  Any novel worth its salt has something to say about the time in which it is written. So even though the setting is historical, The Mannequin Makers talks about the place of art and artistry within a capitalist society, the dynamics of power and the power of empathy - issues and ideas that are still pressing today.

You can also read it as a manual in how not to raise your kids.



TQWhich question about The Mannequin Makers do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

Craig:  Q: You liveblogged the day you attempted to write at least 6,376 words on the novel’s first draft. How much of those words made it into the final book? Would you ever do it again?

A: Quite a lot survived, actually. Maybe 75%? It’s not like I wrote a large but terrible scene that had to be cut the next day. Would I spend 16 hours straight while writing a first draft again? No way. It took me a week to recover. Better to write 1,000 good words every day until the end!



TQGive us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from The Mannequin Makers.

Craig:  Since I mentioned my struggles to get Eugen’s voice right, how about the first few sentences from his section, to show what he ended up sounding like?

‘Every winter I’m surprised when the wattle blooms. This year even more so for the battering we took in May and June. But somehow the buds clung to their branches as the easterlies clobbered the coast and our waves, shunted on by the king tide, gouged the beach from Collaroy baths to North Narrabeen.’



TQWhat's next?

Craig:  I’m working on a novel about fatherhood, Hollywood and a levitating Franciscan friar. It’s set in 2017 and 2019, but dips back into the seventeenth century, when San Giuseppe da Copertino was doing his thing.



TQThank you for joining us at The Qwillery.





The Mannequin Makers
Milkweed Editions, December 12, 2017
Trade Paperback and eBook, 336 pages

Playfully literate and strikingly original, an unforgettable debut novel about art, imitation, and obsession.

Excitement is rare in the small town of Marumaru, New Zealand. So when a young Maori man arrives on the morning train one day in 1903—announcing the imminent visit of a famous strongman—the entire town turns out to greet him, save one. Colton Kemp, a department store window-dresser, is at home, watching his beloved wife die in premature childbirth. Tormented by grief, he hatches a plan to make his name and thwart his rival, the silent and gifted Carpenter: over the next sixteen years he will raise his newborn twins in secrecy and isolation, to become human mannequins in the world’s most lifelike window display.

From this moment of calamity emerges a work of masterful storytelling, at once wildly entertaining and formally ambitious. The novel leaps fearlessly from the epistolary to the castaway narrative to the picaresque, as Kemp’s plot goes awry and as he, his children, and the Carpenter converge in the New Zealand hinterland.

The Mannequin Makers is an adventure-filled and thoroughly delightful yarn, introducing one of international literature’s most promising young talents to American audiences.
Amazon : Barnes and Noble : Book Depository : Books-A-Million : IndieBound
Google Play : Kobo





About Craig

Craig Cliff is the author of The Mannequin Makers, a novel, and A Man Melting, a collection of short stories, which won the 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. Both were previously published in New Zealand. In 2012 he was a judge for the inaugural Commonwealth Story Prize, and he is the recipient of a Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago. He writes a column for the Dominion Post about his double life as a writer and public servant in Wellington, New Zealand.

Website  ~  Twitter @Craig_Cliff  ~  Blog


Monday, December 11, 2017

2017 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars - November Winner


The winner of the November 2017 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars is Paul Takes the Form of A Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor from Rescue Press with 47% of the votes.


Paul Takes the Form of A Mortal Girl
Rescue Press, November 1, 2017
Trade Paperback, 240 pages

It’s 1993 and Paul Polydoris tends bar at the only gay club in a university town thrumming with politics and partying. He studies queer theory, has a dyke best friend, makes zines, and is a flâneur with a rich dating life. But Paul’s also got a secret: he’s a shapeshifter. Oscillating wildly from Riot Grrrl to leather cub, Women’s Studies major to trade, Paul transforms his body at will in a series of adventures that take him from Iowa City to Boystown to Provincetown and finally to San Francisco—a journey through the deep queer archives of struggle and pleasure.

Andrea Lawlor’s debut novel offers a speculative history of early ’90s identity politics during the heyday of ACT UP and Queer Nation. Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a riotous, razor-sharp bildungsroman whose hero/ine wends his way through a world gutted by loss, pulsing with music, and opening into an array of intimacy and connections.
Amazon : Barnes and Noble : Book Depository : Books-A-Million : IndieBound





The Results






The November 2017 Debuts


Friday, December 01, 2017

2017 Debut Author Challenge - December Debuts





There are 4 debut novels for December.

Please note that we use the publisher's publication date in the United States, not copyright dates or non-US publication dates.

The December debut authors and their novels are listed in alphabetical order by author (not book title or publication date). Take a good look at the covers. Voting for your favorite December cover for the 2017 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars will take place starting on December 15, 2017.

If you are participating as a reader in the Challenge, please let us know in the comments what you are thinking of reading or email us at "DAC . TheQwillery @ gmail . com" (remove the spaces and quotation marks). Please note that we list all debuts for the month (of which we are aware), but not all of these authors will be 2017 Debut Author Challenge featured authors. However, any of these novels may be read by Challenge readers to meet the goal for December 2017 The list is correct as of the day posted.



Craig Cliff

The Mannequin Makers
Milkweed Editions, December 12, 2017
Trade Paperback and eBook, 336 pages
     Literary Fiction, Historical, Magical Realism

Playfully literate and strikingly original, an unforgettable debut novel about art, imitation, and obsession.

Excitement is rare in the small town of Marumaru, New Zealand. So when a young Maori man arrives on the morning train one day in 1903—announcing the imminent visit of a famous strongman—the entire town turns out to greet him, save one. Colton Kemp, a department store window-dresser, is at home, watching his beloved wife die in premature childbirth. Tormented by grief, he hatches a plan to make his name and thwart his rival, the silent and gifted Carpenter: over the next sixteen years he will raise his newborn twins in secrecy and isolation, to become human mannequins in the world’s most lifelike window display.

From this moment of calamity emerges a work of masterful storytelling, at once wildly entertaining and formally ambitious. The novel leaps fearlessly from the epistolary to the castaway narrative to the picaresque, as Kemp’s plot goes awry and as he, his children, and the Carpenter converge in the New Zealand hinterland.

The Mannequin Makers is an adventure-filled and thoroughly delightful yarn, introducing one of international literature’s most promising young talents to American audiences.
Amazon : Barnes and Noble : Book Depository : Books-A-Million : IndieBound





Richard Jeffries

Arachnosaur
Lyrical Underground, December 26, 2017
Trade Paperback and eBook, 238 pages
     Horror / Thriller

Desert Swarm

After his superior officers are killed in action, Corporal Josiah Key assumes command of the 3rd Battalion, Marine Raiders. In the tiny village of Shabhut, Yemen, while trying to put the blast on ISIS forces, an even deadlier enemy emerges: ancient, unreasoning creatures who tear into both U.S. troops and terrorists without mercy, leaving brutally dismembered corpses in their wake.

They are known as the Idmonarchne Brasieri, giant prehistoric spiders roused from millennia-long slumber by power-mad terrorists. These aptly-named ‘Arachnosaurs’ are hungry. They’re angry. And they have declared war against all of humanity . . . whose days might just be numbered unless Key and his unit can stop them.

Arachnosaur
Amazon : Barnes and Noble : Book Depository : Books-A-Million : IndieBound
Google Play : iBooks : Kobo





Pamela Kopfler

Better Dead
A B&B Spirits Mystery 1
Kensington, December 26, 2017
Mass Market Paperback and eBook,
    Paranormal Cozy Mystery

As the owner of a charming Louisiana bed and breakfast, Holly Davis believes in South-ern hospitality—but she draws the line at welcoming the ghost of her cheating husband . . .

Burl Davis checked out of this life a little earlier than expected—before Holly could serve him with divorce papers over his extramarital flings. Unfortunately, it was not before he nearly bank-rupted her beloved B&B, Holly Grove, a converted plantation that has been in her family for gen-erations. Holly would never wish anyone dead, but three months later she's feeling a lot more relief than grief.

Until Burl's ghost appears as an unwelcome guest. Before his spirit can move on, her not-so-dearly departed needs Holly’s human help to bust up the drug smuggling ring he was involved with. She has reservations, to say the least, but agrees to assist him if he’ll make a show of haunt-ing the B&B to draw in visitors. But when Holly’s former love, Jake McCann, mysteriously resur-faces in town and checks in, she has to wonder if her B&B is big enough for the ghost of her hus-band and the very real physical presence of her old flame . . .
Amazon : Barnes and Noble : Book Depository : Books-A-Million : IndieBound
Google Play : iBooks : Kobo





Steven Savile

Glass Town
St. Martin's Press, December 5, 2017
Hardcover and eBook, 352 pages
     Contemporary Fantasy

Steven Savile is an international sensation, selling over half a million copies of his novels worldwide and writing for cult favorite television shows including Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Stargate. Now, he is finally making his US debut with Glass Town, a brilliantly composed novel revolving around the magic and mystery lurking in London.

There's always been magic in our worldWe just needed to know where to look for it

In 1924, two brothers both loved Eleanor Raines, a promising young actress from the East End of London. She disappeared during the filming of Alfred Hitchcock’s debut, Number 13, which itself is now lost. It was the crime of the age, capturing the imagination of the city: the beautiful actress never seen again, and the gangster who disappeared the same day.

Generations have passed. Everyone involved is long dead. But even now their dark, twisted secret threatens to tear the city apart.

Joshua Raines is about to enter a world of macabre beauty, of glittering celluloid and the silver screen, of illusion and deception, of impossibly old gangsters and the fiendish creatures they command, and most frighteningly of all, of genuine magic.

He is about to enter Glass Town.

The generations-old obsession with Eleanor Raines’s unsolved case is about to become his obsession, handed down father-to-son through his bloodline like some unwanted inheritance. But first he needs to bury his grandfather and absorb the implications of the confession in his hand, a letter from one of the brothers, Isaiah, claiming to have seen the missing actress. The woman in the red dress hadn’t aged a day, no matter that it was 1994 and she’d been gone seventy years.

Long buried secrets cannot stay secrets forever. Hidden places cannot stay hidden forever.

The magic that destroyed one of the most brutal families in London’s dark history is finally failing, and Joshua Raines is about to discover that everything he dared dream of, everything he has ever feared, is waiting for him in Glass Town.
Amazon : Barnes and Noble : Book Depository : Books-A-Million : IndieBound
Google Play : iBooks : Kobo

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Interview with Ash Fitzsimmons, author of Stranger Magics


Please welcome Ash Fitzsimmons to The Qwillery as part of the of the 2017 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. Stranger Magics is published on November 21st by Harper Voyager Impulse.

Please join The Qwillery in wishing Ash a very Happy Publication Day!






TQWelcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Ash:  Thank you for having me! I’ve always loved reading, and writing gradually became an extension of that. I wrote my first novel at nineteen, and I was hooked.



TQAre you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

Ash:  When I first tried my hand at long-form fiction, I was a pure pantser—I had ideas and general thoughts about scenes, but I felt my way along. With time, I’ve become a plotter. I may not map out every moment in the story before I begin, but I like to have more than a notion of where I’m headed and how I’m getting there. If nothing else, plotting helps me memorialize ideas for scenes I may not write for months, and it’s always nice to go back to your notes and have one of those, “Oh yeah, right,” moments when you think you’re stuck.

Of course, there’s always room for improvisation in writing, and characters tend to surprise you. Once you get to know your cast, some of those carefully plotted chapters begin to unravel. I’ve found that while you can try to force a plot upon characters, it seldom ends well.



TQWhat is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Ash:  Finding enough time! I’m the sort of person who needs to stay at it daily—I get antsy when I’m away for too long, and the story starts to become stagnant in my mind. But responsibilities don’t disappear just because I’d like to spend some quality time with my computer, which can lead to a lot of odd-hours work and a touch of guilt every time I turn on the television.



TQWhat has influenced / influences your writing?

Ash:  I’ve always had a fondness for the fantastic. Fairy tales, mythology, folklore, urban legends, science fiction, horror, and fantasy have long been staples of my bookshelves.



TQDescribe Stranger Magics in 140 characters or less.

Ash:  A lovelorn half-fae bookseller, his amoral brother, a smartass wizard, and an ersatz knight race to save magic and the world. We may be doomed.



TQTell us something about Stranger Magics that is not found in the book description.

AshWizard is an ungendered term in the story, and my wizard protagonist is a talented young woman who’s peeved that she’s been unjustly prevented from using much of her power. But that may be about to change…



TQWhat inspired you to write Stranger Magics? What appeals to you about writing Urban Fantasy? What do you think is the continuing appeal of stories about the fae?

Ash:  There are so many current interpretations of the fae, ranging from benevolent (or at least benign) to malicious, making them fairly malleable for story purposes. But even when they look like us, they remain something other, which I think is a large part of their appeal.

As for Stranger Magics, it began as a bit of rumination: take an ancient being with extraordinary power, mostly human sensibilities, and a strong aversion to iron, plop him down in the modern world, and what would he do with himself? The rest of the story and its setting gradually came forth.



TQWhat sort of research did you do for Stranger Magics?

Ash:  I revisited the folk and fairy tales I knew, looked into the mythology surrounding the older interpretations of fae creatures, dusted off my Shakespeare, and used all of that as a jumping-off point. On a more nuts-and-bolts note, once into the story, I spent considerable time on Google Maps, trying to plot routes (sometimes from nonexistent places!) and keep a plausible timeline. Juggling multiple time zones can be tricky.



TQPlease tell us about the cover for Stranger Magics?

Ash:  The cover design is by Alicia Tatone, and I love how it turned out. An old book is featured heavily in the story, and…nope, no spoilers!



TQIn Stranger Magics who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Ash:  Toula, the wizard, was probably the easiest character for me to write. She seemed to appear fully formed—blue-tipped hair, attitude, and all. Robin, a faerie, was less forthcoming, but since he’s at best an annoyance to every other character in the story, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that he was sometimes difficult to pin down.



TQWhich question about Stranger Magics do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

Ash:  “This is your first novel, right?”

Published novel? Absolutely. But as I mentioned, I wrote my first novel back in college. It was a 270,000-word doozy, a great learning experience for me but unpublishable at the time. That realization came as a disappointment back then, but in retrospect, I’m glad that novel wasn’t “The One.” After all, writing is like any other skill: it takes work and plenty of practice, and your first attempt will probably not be your best product. By my count, and depending on whether I choose to remember an unfortunate cycle of short stories, Stranger Magics is my thirteenth novel-length work.



TQGive us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from Stranger Magics.

Ash:  Sure thing. Robin to Colin, in a moment of brotherly…well, tolerance:

He stood, took a long last draw, then stubbed the cigarillo out and threw it toward the street. “You’re a high lord of Faerie,” he said, clasping my shoulder. “Try to act like it. Right now—and I’m quite serious about this—you’re embarrassing me.”


TQWhat's next?

Ash:  While nothing is set in stone yet, I’d love to continue the story begun in Stranger Magics. We’ll see!



TQThank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Ash:  Thank you!





Stranger Magics
Harper Voyager Impulse, November 21, 2017
eBook, 400 pages

No one holds a grudge quite like a faerie . . .

All Colin Leffee wants is to be left alone: to run his used bookstore in peace, and to quietly drink himself to sleep every night in an attempt to drown out the memories of eight-hundred-plus years of existence.

Unfortunately, when a sullen teenage changeling is flung out of Faerie and onto his doorstep, the long-suffering, wayward son of Titania knows his dreams of solitude are dust. Colin—or Lord Coileán, as he is known to the Faerie court—must track down Meggy, the love of his life, and figure out how her child ended up in Titania’s clutches to begin with.

But with family, it’s never simple. He finds Meggy, only to see her yanked into Faerie—and the doors between the realms slammed and locked behind her. Now, it’s not just her life& at stake . . . but the fate of magic itself.

Always the loner, Colin reluctantly joins forces with an intensely stubborn wizard, a young priest-in-training who fancies himself a knight, and his half brother Robin (the last most definitely not by choice) on a quest to reopen the doors and restore the balance between the realms. And with exiled queen Mab plotting in the shadows to take Titania’s throne, and the wizards of the governing Arcanum hiding their own agenda, Colin can’t be sure whom to trust—or whether he’ll live long enough to see the mission through.
Amazon : Barnes and Noble : Books-A-Million : Google Play : iBooks : Kobo





About Ash

Photograph courtesy of Art Meripol
When not writing fiction, ASH FITZSIMMONS is an appellate attorney and an unrepentant car singer. Visit her at www.ashfitzsimmons.com.














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Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Interview with Tracy Townsend, author of The Nine


Please welcome Tracy Townsend to The Qwillery as part of the of the 2017 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. The Nine is published on November 14th by Pyr.

Please join The Qwillery in wishing Tracy a very Happy Publication Day!







TQWelcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Tracy:  Thanks for having me! I started writing when I was very young -- second or third grade -- and my earliest projects were all comics, mostly featuring talking animals in Sunday morning funnies-type situations. I read broadly, everything from Beverly Cleary to Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. By the time I was in middle school, I’d graduated into creating what folks today would call fan fic, though I don’t know that I knew the term or if it was really widely in use in the early 90s. My first major project was a James Bond fan fic novella written entirely in longhand in a spiral notebook that was supposed to have been for history notes. I wrote because I admired certain storytellers and I wanted to understand how they created these remarkable things I admired so much. I’d gone to writing workshops and been in writing clubs, but all but the best of those experiences felt like the blind leading the blind. The only way to figure out how the magic was done was to crawl up inside the stories and reverse engineer them myself, in my own way. I kept in the habit throughout high school, writing episodic series on demand for friends with really specific tastes, and writing short stories featuring characters my friends and I played in tabletop RPGs. I loved writing to my friends’ prompts best of all; it was this perfect gift for them I could create, something we shared together. It wasn’t until I went to college that I realized I really wanted to write professionally. Prior to meeting some really formative peers and instructors there, it had always just been something I was good at, but felt like a bit of an impostor actually doing.



TQAre you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

Tracy:  Oh, I’m definitely a hybrid -- just one trouser leg on at any given time. I tend to start with a very vivid concept or character, and I start building up scenes and situations to explore it. I keep myself moving by jumping from each clearly visualized moment to the next. After I’ve built a good head of steam doing that, I step back to review what I’ve created and figure out what pulls it all together. What are the events I’m focused on, and how are plot beats coming into being? Do I have things in the right order? What’s the throughline? It’s during that pause, answering those questions, that I plot out the gaps in my narrative, and only then do I resume writing. The fact that I love writing in close third from multiple characters’ points of view means this kind of hop-around drafting process works when I’m getting a project off the ground. The downside is that knitting all the pieces together can be intensely surgical -- and sometimes leads to dead ends, scenes that end up on the proverbial cutting room floor. I admire writers with fast, efficient plotting and drafting processes, but I’ve never been able to create a project that interests me if I have to imagine the whole narrative from a cold start.



TQWhat is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Tracy:  I work full time as a teacher at a public boarding school for gifted students. I know a lot of other writers who are also teachers and parents, too, of course, but the particular kind of school where I teach involves a level of hands-on stewardship of the students -- involvement in their clubs, their social events, their lives in the early and late hours of the work day -- that’s pretty atypical. Everyone struggles to achieve work-life balance. But in a lot of senses, my work is my life, and I tend to wear myself down serving both masters. I can’t stand disappointing people, so if something’s going to get short shrift when time and energy are at a premium, it will almost always be me.



TQWhat has influenced / influences your writing?

Tracy:  I grew up reading comics (X-Men, Elfquest, Wolverine, Bone) and playing tabletop board games, so my whole youth revolved around variations on the “mismatched people bound by circumstance save the world” theme. I love that trope and there’s always some piece of it in anything I write. I love it because it’s much less about the “save the world” stuff and really more about a given story’s take on “found family.” I grew up far away from my nearest relatives, aside from my parents and brother, and so the “family” I turned to most often was the family of friends I collected, through school and writing and general geekdom. The way people who love each other because they chose each other bond, and how those bonds push and pull at them just as fiercely as blood-bonds, fascinates me because it’s so much a part of my lived experience. My husband teases me all the time about plot just being my excuse to get people in a room being emotional at each other. Really, he’s not wrong.



TQDescribe The Nine in 140 characters or less.

Tracy:  2 ret. mercs & a teen thief are nobody's 1st choice heroes, but when God's lab book is stolen, its 2nd best or seconds left 2 save humanity



TQTell us something about The Nine that is not found in the book description.

Tracy:  I wrote The Nine to be a fantasy work that mashes up a lot of my favorite things -- political machinations, conspiracies, heists, found family, “mandatory unretirement,” steam- and clockpunk stylings, redemption arcs, interspecies conflict, gray morality. That’s far more than back cover copy alone could address, sure. But the thing I’m proudest of was Publishers Weekly’s review of The Nine’s “nearly flawless writing.” I about fell out of my chair in shock -- and relief that the effort had been recognized! I wanted to give my readers a feeling of prose-level care and craft that no back cover copy can effectively promise. I wanted to make a beautiful monster. It’s up to everyone else to decide if I succeeded.



TQWhat inspired you to write The Nine? What appeals to you about writing Fantasy?

Tracy:  The idea for The Nine actually comes from Talmudic legend: the lamed wufniks, which Jorge Luis Borges writes about briefly in his Book of Imaginary Beings. Reading Borges piqued my interest and got me reading the Talmud and Kabbalah for details that eventually became important to the idea of the fate of mankind resting on the shoulders of a kind of “sample” population.

It’s only through a genre like fantasy that I could take my next thought -- that this seemed like a very strange cosmological variation on a scientific experiment -- and turn that into the premise of a novel. I love the slipperiness of fantasy, how it bends everyday logic and supplants it with its own sets of rules of conditions. It can be heroic, cautionary, escapist, political, pessimistic, or hopeful. I knew The Nine needed to be fantasy because I needed to bend and break a lot of rules and fuse together a lot of different visual and narrative styles to pull it off. But really, much more than it being the right tool for this particular story, it was the one I wanted most to explore and push into the shape I desired. They say you should write the book you wish was already out there for you to read. The Nine is the book I needed and wanted but never quite found.



TQWhat sort of research did you do for The Nine?

Tracy:  Oh, God, so much research. I researched autopsies and human anatomy. I researched Gothic architecture. I researched early photographic technologies, and deadly toxins, and period hats and footwear, guns and ammo, rappelling gear, and particle physics. And all of that was before my first round of revisions.



TQPlease tell us about the cover for The Nine.

Tracy:  Adam Doyle (whose amazing portfolio of work you can find here) was my cover artist, and I couldn’t be happier. I hope he does the art for the rest of the series. He’s done covers for Chuck Wendig and Maggie Stiefvater (which was great for my six degrees of publishing separation ego, let me tell you) and illustrations for Fantasy Flight Games. That last credit was hugely exciting for my friends and me, because we’ve played many of the games he’s contributed to. Adam starts with sketches and ultimately creates paintings which are later rendered into the cover images. That’s what gives The Nine’s cover that murky, swirling depth. If you look closely, there are a lot of smaller images buried in the background of the city behind the pictured characters -- gears and pipes and skulls, great atmospheric notes. Adam read the book in manuscript form and asked me for some additional information about the named character from it so he could refine his vision of individual figures. I’ve never asked him if he had a specific moment from the book in mind for the cover, but honestly, that’s because I feel I already know the answer, down to chapter and page. This “Avengers, assemble!” moment featuring Rowena, the Alchemist, and Anselm really helps focus the sprawling narrative around the characters whose actions will do the most to shape its outcome.



TQIn The Nine who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Tracy:  Often, my easiest character to write is Anselm. He’s easy because his way of seeing other people is so entirely alien to me. He’s a cynical, manipulative, self-assured egoist, smart and acid-tongued -- the sort of person you want on your side because it’s too dangerous having him against you. Writing characters less like me is easier than the ones more like me, because I think of it as deep character acting. (I worked in theater quite a bit years ago, and though I’m an indifferent actor, I’m a very good line coach, and in a lot of ways, that’s what writing a close POV really is -- line coaching yourself as author.) When the character itself chafes me, I’m more conscious of the need to stay in character, and that keeps me focused.

Haadiyaa Gammon, on the other hand, is very hard for me to write most days. I understand her completely, and even relate to the pressures she feels. That makes me work harder to ensure I’m examining her choices thoughtfully. She’s done things she regrets, but did them because she didn’t trust anyone else to do the right thing in her place. Gammon isn’t afraid of the sacrifices it takes to serve the pragmatic good or of being the bad guy for the right cause. I’ve been there, in my own way.



TQWhy have you chosen to include or not chosen to include social issues in The Nine?

Tracy:  I don’t even think twice about “including social issues” in my writing because if I’m doing my job right, they’re already there. Part of the reason genre fiction is so powerful is that it defamiliarizes the conditions of our world, or extrapolates them through thought experiment, or supplants them with foreign elements, all with the hope of giving us insight into human nature. Authors and readers stare down a funhouse mirror of reality through so-called “escapist” fiction. Genre has always done this, to varying degrees. It’s just begun to do it more overtly in recent years, which is what makes it seem to some readers as if “social issues” are suddenly everywhere. They always were there. Now, authors are simply doing more to highlight them in their narratives.

As for this book, the world of The Nine is full of the problems caused by plutocracy, imperialism, xenophobia, and exceptionalist ideas of power and influence. Sometimes, these issues are present the way air in a room is. Other times, they’re spoken of directly. Since the crux of the plot is about mankind’s survival -- whether it can prove itself worthy of its place in existence -- I have to hold humanity accountable for what it’s done. That’s where the anxiety about our fate really lies. Are we worth it? Do we deserve this world? Is it too late to make good on the ills we’ve done, as individuals or as a people?



TQWhich question about The Nine do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

Tracy:  You know, nobody asks about character names, and I wish they would. There’s a specific story behind almost every one. I agonize over names. They do a lot to form a character, and often to Easter egg in details about who or what they really are. Probably the best name story of all is Rare’s.

Rare is an important secondary character in The Nine, and part of the web of happenstance and conspiracy that pulls the three main characters (Rowena, Anselm, and the Alchemist) together. I was listening to an excellent BBC radio drama production of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris at the time I was first drafting The Nine. There was a character whose name I kept hearing as “Rare.” (Important to remember here that the actors all had quite perfect English accents, and so the rhotic pronunciation was strongly in evidence throughout the recording.) I thought it was simply marvelous that this character -- a love interest central to the main character’s emotional trauma -- had such a lovely, unusual name. I also knew the character I was writing at the time was going to be at the center of a lot of bad emotional history for the main characters in The Nine. It was perfect, so like a good little magpie, I stole the name.

Much later, long after the first draft was complete, I was in a used bookshop and saw a copy of Solaris on the shelf. I grabbed it and started leafing through, only to discover that the character in question’s name was actually Rhea. The actors’ rhotic “r” following the “a” had totally thrown me. But by then, I was too attached to Rare being Rare to possibly rename her.



TQGive us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from The Nine.

Tracy:  It’s up to readers to find where these moments come from. This first one is for the sheer pleasure of banter: “Turpitude is my problem, not degeneracy. A law-abiding life was out of the question from the start.”

This second comes from a moment a little further on: “He could feel his convictions yawning like an unknotted purse, dropping in bits and pieces from his mental vault.”



TQWhat's next?

Tracy:  It’s time for The Nine’s sequel! It has a working title and hopefully it doesn’t change along the way, but I’ll be keeping it secret for at least awhile longer. You can expect to hear more about the series and what’s in store for its characters soon. For now, suffice it to say the drama surrounding the missing book, the Ecclesiastical Commission, and the aigamuxa and lanyani species is far from resolved. Pursuing its loose ends will take the characters outside of Corma, the city setting for the first book, and into the rest of the world the so-called Grand Unity shaped.



TQThank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

Tracy:  Thank you! I’d love to hear from your readers. Talk to me via email at tracy at tracytownsend dot net or on Twitter (@TheStorymatic).





The Nine
Thieves of Fate 1
Pyr, November 14, 2017
Trade Paperback and eBook, 400 pages

A book that some would kill for…

Black market courier Rowena Downshire is doing everything she can to stay off the streets and earn enough to pay her mother’s way to freedom. But an urgent and unexpected delivery leads her face to face with a creature out of nightmares.

The Alchemist knows things few men have lived to tell about, but when a frightened and empty-handed courier shows up on his doorstep he knows better than to turn her away. What he discovers leads him to ask for help from the last man he wants to see—the former mercenary, Anselm Meteron.

Reverend Phillip Chalmers awakes in a cell, bloodied and bruised, facing a creature twice his size. Translating a stolen book that writes itself may be his only hope for survival; however, he soon learns the text may have been written by the Creator himself, tracking the nine human subjects of his Grand Experiment. In the wrong hands, it could mean the end of humanity.

This unlikely team must try to keep the book from those who would misuse it. But how can they be sure who the enemy is when they can barely trust each other? And what will happen to them when it reveals a secret no human was meant to know?
Amazon : Barnes and Noble : Book Depository : Books-A-Million : IndieBound
iBooks : Kobo





About Tracy

Photo by Jennifer Bronson
Debut author Tracy Townsend holds a master’s degree in writing and rhetoric from DePaul University and a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from DePauw University, a source of regular consternation when proofreading her credentials. She is chair of the English Department at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, an elite public boarding school, where she teaches creative writing and science fiction and fantasy literature. She has been a martial arts instructor, a stage combat and accent coach, and a short-order cook for houses full of tired gamers. Now she lives in Bolingbrook, Illinois with two bumptious hounds, two remarkable children, and one very patient husband. Her short story “Late Arrivals” was published by Luna Station Quarterly in March 2016.


Website  ~  Twitter @TheStorymatic  ~  Facebook



Saturday, November 04, 2017

2017 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars - October Winner


The winner of the September 2017 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars is The Astonishing Thing by Sandi Ward from Kensington with 31% of the votes.


The Astonishing Thing
Kensington, October 31, 2017
Trade Paperback and eBook, 304 pages

In her inventive, sometimes bittersweet, ultimately uplifting debut, Sandi Ward draws readers into one extraordinary cat’s quest to make sense of her world, illuminating the limits and mysterious depths of love . . .

Pet owners know that a cat’s loyalty is not easily earned. Boo, a resourceful young feline with a keen eye and inquiring mind, has nonetheless grown intensely devoted to her human companion, Carrie. Several days ago, Carrie—or Mother, as Boo calls her—suddenly went away, leaving her family, including Boo, in disarray. Carrie’s husband, Tommy, is distant and distracted even as he does his best to care for Boo’s human siblings, especially baby Finn.

Boo worries about who will fill her food dish, and provide a warm lap to nestle into. More pressing still, she’s trying to uncover the complicated truth about why Carrie left. Though frequently mystified by human behavior, Boo is sure that Carrie once cared passionately for Tommy and adores her children, even the non-feline ones. But she also sees it may not be enough to make things right. Perhaps only a cat—a wise, observant, very determined cat—can do that . . .

Wonderfully tender and insightful, The Astonishing Thing explores the intricacies of marriage and family through an unforgettable perspective at the center of it all.
Amazon : Barnes and Noble : Book Depository : Books-A-Million : IndieBound





The Results






 The October 2017 Debuts


Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Interview with R.E. Stearns, author of Barbary Station


Please welcome R.E. Stearns to The Qwillery as part of the of the 2017 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. Barbary Station is published on October 31st by Saga Press.

Please join The Qwillery in wishing R.E. a very Happy Publication Day!







TQWelcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

R.E.:  I've been writing short stories for as long as I can remember. I write to think, and because I have a terrible memory. When I discovered NaNoWrimo in 2008, I started writing novels.



TQAre you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

R.E.:  I rely on enormous, color-coded plot outlines and accompanying color-coded timelines.



TQWhat is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

R.E.:  Emotional scenes are challenging, because I am not an emotional person. I have to set my writing mood with music and pictures, and it's stressful and melodramatic. Then my agent or editor reads those supposedly melodramatic scenes and says "That's a pretty chill reaction for what just happened," and I do it all over again.



TQWhat has influenced / influences your writing?

R.E.:  Real-life space exploration is very exciting! In fiction, the Expanse series (James S. A. Corey, 2012), Neuromancer (William Gibson, 1984), Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), and Firefly (Joss Whedon, 2002) all contributed to the foundation of this novel.



TQDescribe Barbary Station in 140 characters or less.

R.E.:  Two join a pirate crew, two engineers take on a security AI which has trapped the crew, and our heroines, on an abandoned space station.



TQTell us something about Barbary Station that is not found in the book description.

Adda and Iridian are romantic partners, not just professional ones.



TQWhat inspired you to write Barbary Station? What appeals to you about writing Science Fiction?

R.E.:  SpaceX was just beginning to have success with its Grasshopper rocket when I was writing up ideas for Barbary Station. That got me thinking about what it would be like if modern corporations were given absolute freedom in scientific development and resource exploitation simultaneously, perhaps in the aftermath of a colonial war for independence. That's all a solid sci fi setting, but it wasn't anything like a novel until Iridian and Adda came together as characters. Sci fi is appealing because our present is always changing, which means the future is always changing in big ways. There are fewer locked-in expectations in sci fi than in fantasy.



TQWhat sort of research did you do for Barbary Station?

R.E.:  I am conveniently married to a computer engineer, so I pestered him with questions like "Does this sound plausible?" and "Is this how you'd say that?" I also spent a lot of time reading on the NASA website, and downloading articles in college libraries. Packing for Mars by Mary Roach (2010) was a great resource, too. It's full of expert observations on the logistics of life in space, and it was so funny and disturbing that I kept having to remind myself to take notes.



TQPlease tell us about the cover for Barbary Station?

R.E.:  That cover is amazing, isn't it? That is Martin Deschambault's beautiful rendering of Barbary Station itself. I love that you can see the station's ring shape on the edges. The planets were necessary for lighting purposes but aren't present in the narrative, so in story terms, this is what Adda might see if she put the station exterior into her hallucinographic workspace.



TQIn Barbary Station who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

R.E.:  Adda and I have a lot in common, so she was the easiest. We're about the same size, we obsess over projects we're working on, and we are similarly disconnected from most people around us. The main antagonist, the security AI, was toughest. It's hard for experts (which I am not) to predict what will go right and wrong with the learning algorithms we have today, let alone the monstrously complex stuff I'd expect to be developed 400 years from now. I had to make, and then keep track of, a lot of assumptions.



TQGive us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from Barbary Station.

R.E.:  That was Earther thinking, as if air, light, humidity, temperature, pressure, and gravity were unrelated forces outside human control. It would’ve been enough to say the enviro wasn’t healthy.



TQWhat's next?

R.E.:  I'm working on the sequel to Barbary Station!



TQThank you for joining us at The Qwillery.





Barbary Station
Saga Press, October 31, 2017
Trade Paperback, Hardcover, and eBook, 448 pages

Two engineers hijack a spaceship to join some space pirates—only to discover the pirates are hiding from a malevolent AI. Now they have to outwit the AI if they want to join the pirate crew—and survive long enough to enjoy it.

Adda and Iridian are newly minted engineers, but aren’t able to find any work in a solar system ruined by economic collapse after an interplanetary war. Desperate for employment, they hijack a colony ship and plan to join a famed pirate crew living in luxury at Barbary Station, an abandoned shipbreaking station in deep space.

But when they arrive there, nothing is as expected. The pirates aren’t living in luxury—they’re hiding in a makeshift base welded onto the station’s exterior hull. The artificial intelligence controlling the station’s security system has gone mad, trying to kill all station residents and shooting down any ship that attempts to leave—so there’s no way out.

Adda and Iridian have one chance to earn a place on the pirate crew: destroy the artificial intelligence. The last engineer who went up against the AI met an untimely end, and the pirates are taking bets on how the newcomers will die. But Adda and Iridian plan to beat the odds.

There’s a glorious future in piracy…if only they can survive long enough.
Amazon : Barnes and Noble : Book Depository : Books-A-Million : IndieBound





About R.E. Stearns

Photography by Carlos Romero
R.E. Stearns wrote her first story on an Apple IIe computer and still kind of misses green text on a black screen. She went on to annoy all of her teachers by reading books while they lectured. Eventually she read and wrote enough to earn a master's degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of Central Florida. She is hoping for an honorary doctorate. When not writing or working, R.E. Stearns reads, plays PC games, and references Internet memes in meatspace. She lives near Orlando, FL with her husband/computer engineer and a cat.

Website  ~  Twitter @re_stearns  ~  Facebook

Saturday, October 28, 2017

Interview with Michael Shou-Yung Shum, author of Queen of Spades


Please welcome Michael Shou-Yung Shum to The Qwillery as part of the of the 2017 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. The Queen of Spades was published on October 10th by Forest Avenue Press.







TQWelcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

Michael:  I have been composing my own stories since I was a young child. I guess I've always felt compelled to write, although it is impossible to say why!



TQAre you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

Michael:  I definitely write by the seat of my pants. It comes from composing stories as a child, where you would begin a story and have no idea where it would lead.



TQWhat is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Michael:  Coming up with an attractive form that interests me.



TQWhat has influenced / influences your writing?

Michael:  Great writing and ideas by other writers--especially living with a great writer like Jaclyn Watterson to bounce ideas off.



TQDescribe Queen of Spades in 140 characters or less.

Michael:  The story behind the Strangest Hand Ever Dealt.



TQTell us something about Queen of Spades that is not found in the book description.

Michael:  It was originally started as a long short story or novelette, and not a novel.



TQWhat inspired you to write Queen of Spades? What appealed to you about Pushkin's Queen of Spades?

Michael:  Pushkin's "The Queen of Spades" is one of my favorite short stories--and one of the few stories that elevate gambling to a high art.



TQWhat sort of research did you do for Queen of Spades?

Michael:  Although I didn't know it was research at the time, I spent over two years working as a poker dealer in a small cardroom in Lake Stevens, Washington, learning the ins and outs of what goes on behind the scenes.



TQPlease tell us about the cover for Queen of Spades?

Michael:  The cover was designed by Forest Avenue's brilliant in-house designer, Gigi Little. She really hit it out of the park with this one!



TQIn Queen of Spades who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

Michael:  The easiest was Barbara because she was the most fun to follow. The hardest was Chan because in many ways he began as a blank slate that I had to fill in along the way--even still, he remains something of a mystery to me.



TQWhy have you chosen to include or not chosen to include social issues in Queen of Spades?

Michael:  I intentionally made all the traditional "power roles" filled by women. It might seem like a small thing, but it's a start to reconditioning (or deconditioning) our gender expectations.



TQWhich question about Queen of Spades do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

Michael:  How would you like readers to be transformed by reading the novel? First, I hope the novel offers readers some consolation in very challenging and difficult times. Second, I hope readers become better persons in some small but not insignificant way. Finally, I hope reading the novel makes readers want to take some risks as a means of improving their life.



TQGive us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from Queen of Spades.

Michael:  Everything coheres with what comes before--and what comes after.



TQWhat's next?

Michael:  I am working on a novel-in-stories tentatively entitled Portmanteau.



TQThank you for joining us at The Qwillery.





Queen of Spades
Forest Avenue Press, October 10, 2017
Trade Paperback and eBook, 256 pages

Queen of Spades revamps the classic Pushkin fable of the same name, transplanted to a mysterious Seattle-area casino populated by a pit boss with six months to live, a dealer obsessing over the mysterious methods of an elderly customer known as the Countess, and a recovering gambler who finds herself trapped in a cultish twelve-step program. With a breathtaking climax that rivals the best Hong Kong gambling movies, Michael Shou-Yung Shum’s debut novel delivers the thrilling highs and lows that come when we cede control of our futures to the roll of the dice and the turn of a card.
Amazon : Barnes and Noble : Book Depository : Books-A-Million : IndieBound





About Michael

Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Michael Shou-Yung Shum eventually found himself dealing poker in a dead-end casino in Lake Stevens, Washington. Two doctorates bookend this strange turn of events: the first in Psychology from Northwestern, and the second in English from University of Tennessee. Along the way, Michael spent a dozen years in Chicago, touring the country as a rave DJ. He currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia, with his spouse and three cats. Queen of Spades is his first novel.


Website  ~  Twitter @dr_shum