Interview with J.A. Campbell

I'm not sure when Julie and I became friends.  We've been in Kelley Armstrong's Online Writer's Group (OWG) for years.  One instant message conversation turned into many, as well as mutual beta reading and a (stalled) collaboration.  I was so thrilled to hear the news of her upcoming publication that an outsider would have thought that *I* was getting published, and I am proud that A Writer's Block is a stop on her promotional blog tour.

Hi Angela! Thanks so much for having me today.  I’m not quite sure when we became friends either, but I’m glad it happened.  The IM conversations, beta reading, encouragement and friendship have been so awesome over the last couple of years.

For the readers who will hopefully become your fans, tell us about your Into the West series.

Westward, Yo! is the first of six short stories in the Into the West series.  They are about Jersey teenager Tina who’s life gets turned upside down when she has to move from her close by malls, easy shopping and typical teen life to ghost town Arizona.  Seriously, the nearest mall is over an hour away.  She’ll only survive if she can pursue her one outdoor passion… Horses.  Fortunately a local ranch lets her come ride, and then her adventure really begins.

What makes Westward, Yo! different than other young adult books on the market today?

Well, I wrote it of course.  LOL, oh you meant other than that?  Okay.  Westward, Yo! is a fast paced modern western with paranormal elements.  I’m not aware of too many teen westerns out there right now and I like to think that I bring a different voice to modern westerns since I come from a fantasy, and horse background.  Oh, and I asked one of my friends for help with this question.  Allie O’Connor (horse trainer) says “the author is so awesome?”

I know you've got a lot on your plate in addition to the Into the West Series.  Tell us what's happening in your writing world.

Into the West has six short stories, due monthly.  By itself that is more than enough.  I also have a young adult Urban Fantasy called Senior Year Bites, coming out this summer and a young adult fantasy Arabian Dreams due out August 1^st.  Edits for those projects are keeping me busy.  I’m also hard at work on the sequels to both of those novels.

A Writer's Block is about books--not just the ones I plug, but also my journey in getting (or not getting) published.  Tell us about your road to publication from idea to...well, today!  Meaning go beyond your acceptance letter to the steps that came after.

Well, the first part took years of writing, querying agents, writing more, sending out more queries, almost giving up a few times, rinse and repeat.  Finally, on a whim, I queried too publishers directly at about the same time.  I had one acceptance phone call and one acceptance email within a month of those queries.  I was shocked.  True, they are small press, but there are distinct advantages to small press.  That is another blog post.

Once I got the contracts signed there was a bit of waiting, some edits on Arabian Dreams, more editing, learning to market, getting my name out there, and writing.  Then Echelon Press, the publisher for Arabian Dreams, sent out an email about a short story concept.  I immediately volunteered.  That turned all my plans on their heads.  Now I have to write short stories, and edit, and write my next novels, and I have some very tight deadlines.  All of this on top of working the day job of course.  Honestly it has taken a huge sacrifice of my free time, even more so than before, to keep up.  All I do is write and work and sleep and play with my dog.  Occasionally I make time for my friends, but that is pretty rare right now.  It is completely worth it though.

So that’s what it’s like… lots of hard work J

  

The internet is full of advice for writers.  Some we can use, and a lot we'll twist ourselves into knots over until we realize it doesn't work for us.  What's the worst advice you've gotten?

The worst advice I ever got was “write what you know.”  Followed by the other worst bit of advice, “stories don’t need fantasy to be interesting.” 

Unless there are a lot more vampires, elves, wizards, and unicorns out there than I thought, writing what you know is crap.  I’m not saying don’t do your research, but if you’re writing about horses traveling to other worlds, unless you have my horse, you’re gonna have a hard time experiencing it before you write about it.  (No, you can’t have her)  And damn it, yes it does have to have fantasy in it to be interesting.  To me.  There aren’t many books without fantastical elements in it that will keep my attention for long.  Or even get me to pick it up in the first place. 

Author Bio:

Julie writes fantasy novels. When she’s not out riding her horse, she can usually be found sitting in front of her computer with a cat on her lap and her dog at her side.  You can find out more at her website: www.writerjacampbell.com

Into the West #1, Westward, Yo!

Tina Harker is a typical teenager. She loves hanging with her friends at the malls, shoes, and manicures. More than that, she loves horses. Life is everything she wants it to be, until her father packs their family up and drags them across the world to Arizona. Does he really think she’ll be happy living in a ghost town in the middle of the desert? It’s a million miles to the nearest shopping center, not even a real mall. Her only hope for survival is finding a new horse.


Trying to make the best of her horrible situation, Tina agrees to go on her first cattle drive. When one of the calves wanders off, Tina, in true cowgirl fashion and looking for excitement, rides off to rescue the poor little thing and gets a lot more adventure than she ever expected. A cowboy she’s never met accuses her of stealing cows, bandits kidnap her, and that’s not even the exciting part.

Into The West #1 Westward, Yo! Is available here:

OmniLit
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Smashwords

Drunken New Year's Musing

I love urban fantasy because it makes anything possible right here, right now.  I realized this as my husband and I walked home from my cousin's house.  We paused to speak to a gorgeous woman who could have been Eshu (harkening back to my White Wolf days [and look, totally sauced, I still found yahs a link]--think African storytelling fae) and sidhe/shee by the look of her, or Eshu and pooka, by my desire to have at least one good pooka showing up at any time.  The dark woods nearby most certainly held sluagh (or an urban gang of young werewolves for those not following me and my love for fae).  Near the bottom of my hill is a house that can't decide if it's a Cape or a Tudor, and there is most certainly something magical going on within.  Two houses up from that is a brick Victorian that has definite opinions about its new occupants, though it hasn't shared them with me.

Considering all this I thought, "And any black car that passes might be a horse in its natural form."  Sure enough, a black car slowly rolled down the street.

There was a world of mythic possibility just avoiding ice patches a few blocks on the way home from a party. I like to see that world reflected in what I read.

Jumbled assumptions

The last day of class was Monday (before last, as this has sat here progressing paragraphs at a time), so, despite having a take home final and a rather large paper due this upcoming Monday (no past; someone should have talked me into just revising this completely), I've been an almost total slacker.  I'm doing laundry as I type.  I've taken care of mommy things.  And I've stretched my wee budget to do some Xmas shopping.  But I've done none of the fiction writing I promised to do as soon as I was "free" of academics, nor the academics I should finish to be really free.  Maybe it's the guilt from scholarly procrastination that got me thinking of a class from last semester, and kid in it that I dubbed Mr. Whiner.

I'd blame his attitude on his youth, but since we attend a public, commuter university, the classes are a mix of old folks like me (and older by decades) returning for their degrees, and young, first time college students like him; he's the only one I've met with the attitude.  And it wasn't just the class (which he could have transfered out of in the early weeks, or withdrawn from for quite some time after) or the perfectly lovely teacher (again, it was one of those classes with a bazillion sections from early morning to late night because every student who enters below the grad level must take it, so he could have left if they didn't click)...In addition to ridiculously loud music, he filled my mornings with other complaints like how his dad wouldn't just sell the family business already since he was sick of working there on the weekends.

My edited response was, "You should appreciate what you have."  My inner voice said, "Get a grip, you little twerp!  Someday, when your dreams of being the next celebrity DJ fall through, you're going to be glad your parents worried more about your future than their own early retirement.  Enjoy getting into clubs you're otherwise too young for and the free tickets to more concerts than most folks with real jobs could ever afford; it'll only last so long.


I told you all that to tell you this: Mr. Whiner came to class one day more out of sorts than usual.  I don't remember if I asked or he just assumed I'd receive his venting.  He'd been on the commuter rail, making his way into the city, and dropped his pass.  By the time he realized it and went back, the pass was gone.  He'd been sitting near a black lady (no offense), and now he was out $100+...

Yeah, I was offended.  If I am to be drafted to represent "black ladies" everywhere (offensive in and of itself), how come we're the thieves?  Did she come from a special suburban ghetto and was commuting to her job as crack whore in the city?  (And who visits crack whores at 8am?)  Are all the white suburbanites magically immune to greed?

Never assume--it makes an Ass out of U, though it has relatively little to do with Me.

It's a side note, since he was already wrong without it, but at the start of the next class, he tried to sell his commuter rail pass.  The woman had indeed seen the pass left where he had been sitting, and tried to locate him to return it.  Like a modern romantic comedy, they must have just missed each other, but came so close to the meeting that would have changed the course of the story before it became tedious to its audience.

No, he did not apologize to me about his accusations toward her, which I would have accepted as the representative of black ladies everywhere.

The original plan, in keeping with this being a writing themed blog (as opposed to my free-for-all LiveJournal or the blog I should open for non-writerly things), was to write something witty about assumptions in fiction, and then turn that into a launch pad for why I love Kelley Armstrong's books...

But I came across Elif Shafak's "The Politics of Fiction" and thought that fit so well:

::whimper::

I want to curl up in a ball and just stay there.

For a week, I was sick.  I have lupus, it's a fact of life, blah-blah.  I couldn't concentrate so I struggled to be just a little behind on school work (technically, I'm not behind in the two classes that I dreaded it most in...I just feel behind).  My professors for the two classes I most worried about were great--understanding that it's a chronic illness, and if I could manage my work, so be it.  In my 3rd class, it hasn't been an issue.  It's just once a week on Mondays--I am a paper behind, but I've been averaging an A and the last class was canceled anyway.  Now worries...

...X's "stomach virus" put him in emergency surgery to remove his appendix.  (I wrote that and remembered this is not my journal and not everyone reading this knows that X is my husband.  Now you know.)  It was horrible.  I was a little scared by the time that I got him into my brother's car to go to the hospital, but at that point, it was 1am; I needed to get my daughter and nephew to school in the morning and get myself to class, and I still believed that he'd get IV fluids and better meds than I'd gotten him over the counter.   He called at 5am to tell me that his appendix had burst and they were about to prep him for surgery.

I was so not going to class.  I explained the situation to the lovely two professors mentioned above with my assignments attached.  They were great about it.  So I foolishly didn't think to get anything on hospital letterhead explaining what happened.  I was worried about how weak he looked, how I needed to feed him. They only kept him one more night, but he was so much stronger that I didn't question that.  All I cared about was what I needed to know for his post-op care.  So guess what Professor #4 wants to not smash my grade over my absences?

Hopefully, it will be easier to get in touch with someone who can give me something on hospital letterhead once the weekend is over.  My bitchy-self says, "Or I'll just show her all the post-op info sheets and she can take 'em or leave 'em."  My regular self is tired...tired from being so worried about my partner...tired from being worried about my grades...tired from my lupus flare...

I want to call in dead for the rest of the semester.

And I want to write.

In all the stress, I turned to fiction.  Having read an *almost* satisfying novel, I want to put my own words on the page as though I might make a million and one mistakes, but I've been inoculated against those that made that piece of work *almost*.  And that fear from suddenly learning that X was going into surgery and the awareness of what can go wrong even in simple procedures is with me in a little ball that I can't throw away despite it all ending well.  I want to fictionalize it so it has a place outside my body.

But I can't phone the semester in so I'm going to hit the books.

...Screw it.  I'll hit the books after writing for half an hour.

What the hell am I doing?!

It's that time again...or, several times again.  Halloween is just days away; beyond the anticipation of dressing the Wee One up, another Halloween means another year of staring at a computer screen at the moment--Eastern Standard Time--that October becomes November.  November, of course, is National Novel Writing Month.

I do it every year, even when I shouldn't, like this year.  I've done almost no writing that wasn't academic since the semester began.  On the one hand, I've never "won" NaNo so what's one more time of not reaching the goal?   On the other, I need the pressure I put on myself during NaNo like I need...something more creative than a hole in my head.

And thinking about it has me back in this place of, "What the hell an I doing?  I'm not a novelist."

I am a writer.  We've established that, right?  I write great openings and decent endings, and shitty middles that never seem to get revised no matter how often I sit down to revise them.  When do I say enough?

...Apparently not now.  I had this great dream a few weeks ago; it was basically an introduction to a character--a woman who lets lost souls pass though her into...well, wherever they go.  I dig her, dig the relationship with her sister and the potential relationship with the man I dreamt her meeting in a dark alley before a rift in the fabric of reality.  All of my non-academic time has been spent between learning the Savage Mojo   material for a project I've been tapped for and failing to build a story around this woman.

I create enjoyable characters.  Sometimes, I string words together nicely.  Whatever made me thing that would translate into being a novelist?

In a week when I've carved time out from my studies and I'm writing, I'll feel better.  In a month when I've got a neat beginning, a character I enjoy with a pretty cool supporting cast, and nowhere to take them...I'll be right back here wondering what the hell I'm doing.

A Whine with My Cheese

Actually, I get to pimp books while I whine. What could be better?

I'd long thought of writing a story from the omega's point of view rather than the alpha's--that is from the weakest member of the group's pov rather than the leader's. When I focused on epic fantasy, I thought I would feature the sidekick who would change and grow yet not be the hero who saves the world. In urban fantasy, I imagined a story told by the lowest shifter in the pecking order who sees everything but is largely ignored.

So was excited (in that, "Great book, but damn, I wish I'd stop thinking about writing these things and actually do it before every old idea I have is done by someone else first" kind of way) when I started reading Kitty an the Midnight Hour and discovered she was just such a character. Kitty's a werewolf--yeah, ha ha--but don't let the humor fool you. After the brutal attack that changed Kitty, she was stuck with a pack lead by a brutal alpha pair. It's been years since the book debuted, but I vividly remember how I cringed and couldn't decide what was worse: what she suffered through or the fact that she took it. She had two sustaining things in her life--a good friend and job as a radio D.J. When the pack's alpha male tried to take the latter away, Kitty stuck up for herself and got on the path from victim to victor.

Each book was better than the last with character growth and more revealed not just about lycanthrops, but vampires as well. I *almost* missed out on book 4 having somehow convinced myself that I'd read it. Certain things had drastically changed in the opening of book 5, though, so I went back and devoured the story. Kitty came full circle, and with a vengeance.

That's where my whining came in. Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand isn't bad, but that's not exactly a glowing recommendation. How do I describe it without giving spoilers? Let's say it's a good idea gone a bit cheesy. By the time the steaks rose to an emotional high, my response was, "So what? Whatever." There were definitely some interesting things in the story. Sooner or later, series like this tend to take on the question of who's really a monster, and this book did it well. And when we got a peek of some of what's out there besides vampires and lycanthropes that actually made me tingle. Otherwise, it was like the comic relief episode in a serious show.

You know...horrible murders, more powerful that last demons combined enemy, and an oncoming apocalypse for the poor, hunky hunters of Supernatural leads an episode featuring a six foot tall, depressed teddy bear and bullied nine year old who gets his by canneling Zod a la Superman. Kneel before Todd! Only it's not so brilliant in the book.

I started asking a question that I know the answer to. How do you know when you've got a hit? Of course, you don't know. As writers we doubt our work when the stories are great. We cling to bad ideas, or good ideas with bad execution. And there's no way to know which is which except by trusting others who may also be wrong.

My story has gotten a few fans before it's ready to be seen by agents. What if those are the only fans it ever gets? What if the agents hate it? Worse...what if an agent loves it and convinces an editor who gets his publishing house to give me a fat advance, but then the book comes out and everyone declares it the worst book since what they thought was the worst book possible and... Yeah, I was panting by this point, lost in my own newbie hell.

I got over it. Mostly. Even better, when I went to mark this off as 'read' in my litte virtual bookshelf, I saw reviews from a whole lot of people who also thought that book 5 was good-but-not-Carrie-Vaughn-good and they say that book six rocks. I'll be getting that soon as I can. If you haven't tried the series, check 'em out!

Kitty and the Midnight Hour
Kitty Goes to Washington
Kitty Takes a Holiday
Kitty and the Silver Bullet
Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand
Kitty Raises Hell

Soundtrack Revisions?

Whenever I hear anything off the Violent Femmes debut album, I'm sixteen again, just for a little bit. "Blister in the Sun" in particular brings me back to summer days spent with my friends, screaming lyrics out in a buddy's garage.

Tori Amos's album, "Little Earthquakes", isn't actually about multiple generations of a psychic Franco-American family struggling with their powers while the world teeters on the brink of catastrophic war, but you wouldn't know that by me. The CD was on such heavy rotation while I read Julian May's Intervention (out of print again, but worth getting used) that hearing one of the songs brings certain scenes or characters right into my mind.

My Work in Progress has been years in the making. I'd been working on a story that was important to me, but wasn't going anywhere. I had the main character and the idea, but idea does not equal plot. Then things came together, like they sometimes will in writing. I'd started fleshing out secondary and lesser characters in hopes of creating story from conflicting motivations. One of them insisted (in that way that is not schizophrenia) that he deserved attention. Low and behold, I'd already started telling his story in bits and pieces, I just hadn't known it belonged to him. When his theme song popped into my head, I knew that I knew this guy.

As important as knowing him, was being able to find him again.

Sometimes I suffered from writer's block. OK, I felt blocked a lot. Other times, I succumbed to the imaginary pressure from being surrounded by romance and paranormal romance writers. Was there a place in urban fantasy for my non-female driven work? Quinn got put on the back burner as I explored stories that didn't mean much to me but might mean something to one of the many editors seeking the next kick-ass heroine. I'd lose the feel of him. A play through (or five) of his song, though, and I was back in his head space.

Considering all that, plus that I've discussed the use of music while writing in various forums, I have no idea why it took a post over at Something Wicked to get me to expand Quinn's theme song into a full soundtrack. I have yet to write with the playlist, but it's already helped to block out the dozens of distractions that tend to suck me right out of my story and send me down various rabbit holes.

Race in Spec Fic

Here's a crappy thing: there aren't a lot of people of color in spec fiction. I don't totally feel one way or another about it, so you're safe from a rant (um, from me; there will be links). On the one hand, all I'm looking for is a story that will hold my interest. Hopefully with something magical. Maybe with robots. If you make a world that I want to live in, or at least visit frequently, I don't particularly care who you people with. Mostly.

On the other hand, I vividly remember the first moment Lando Calrissian filled my eyes. I remember Uhura and Sulu on deck, just doing their jobs, a part of the crew like everybody else. And if these characters meant the world to me on screen in sci-fi--my vacation spot--there aren't even words for finding people who looked like me in fantasy novels, my home!

Yet as an adult would-be-novelist, race isn't a focus of my work. I don't have an agenda; I have characters in my head that clamour to be out onto the page and a bit of natural writing talent that I hope to hone into real skill. My characters aren't multi-cultural because I want to make a social or political statement; they're multi-cultural because my world is.

Recently, a certain section of the blogosphere has blown up with discussions of race. Mostly, I've watched in silence as anger rose and feelings were hurt. I couldn't be much help, except maybe as a target. Dear anti-racist people of color: you've got great points, but you've got to understand that your world view is not the only right way to see things (and your delivery ensures that those who don't already agree with you won't). And: Dear white authors, editors, and assorted spec-fic fans: You aren't necessarily wrong, but it's not all about you. Listen and you might just learn something.

Both groups (in this example of imagination) then turn and rip chunks out of An. But they would be united in kicking my ass, and unity is good, right?

I passed on chiming in. But I believe that the conversation is an important one, and I've watched it get dismissed out of hand in other forums. Through it all, I thought of authors who'd been asked why none of their characters were [insert whatever they may consider Other]. The answer is generally some version of, "I don't know how" or "I'm afraid I couldn't get it right."

Sci-fi/fantasy author, Elizabeth Bear, wrote a great blog post on the subject. If you get there and cringe at the length of the scroll bar, take heart. Most of that length is due to comments on the post. But then, the comments are, at times, really important, too. This is a subject we should all take our time with; Bear titled her post "whatever you're doing, you're probably wrong" and she was right.

And that goes for everyone. When I wrote started the novel that would be my jump from playing with classic fantasy (classic because I can't stretch my imagination enough to call my little attempts "epic") to really writing urban fantasy, I stalled out, in part, due to a Middle Eastern major character. Could I do him justice or would he look Middle Eastern but be a combination of the black and white men in my life?

Back to the linkage. Here is an Open Letter in response to Bear's essay. Harsh? Yeah. Right? Yeah. While I could argue that it should be two posts as Bear isn't responsible for twenty years of Roddenbderry-done-wrong and Sci-fi Channel fuck ups, it's all part of the same conversation. And don't miss out on the link to Deepad's essay there.

....Feel free to come back here and tell me what you think.

Shiny New Year

I perhaps should have named this blog "How to Post Irregularly and Expect People to Still Be Around When You Manage to Update Again."

Generally, I don't do New Year's resolutions. I've found that if I haven't forgotten them by the time I remember to write the correct date, I've put them aside anyway. Still, it's a good time to rearrange priorities and my writing, both of the blog and of fiction, are shooting to the top of mine.

A Writer's Block will still be about reading and writing with a heavy emphasis on my beloved urban fantasy. I will still post whenever I want, but it'll be with a minimum of once a week. Oh, and it will still have much to do about my shift--or lack thereof--from would-be novelist to novelist.

Welcome to my shiny New Year.

Breakthrough

Write what you love.

Every fledgling novelist hungry for the piece of advice that will make it all come together for them has heard that little gem. It--like most of the advice we receive--is fairly common sense. I mean, if you write something just because you think that's the way the market is going, at the very best, you could end up with a contract to produce more stuff that you don't even enjoy writing. More likely, you either won't finish at all, or perhaps will finish only to have a story that doesn't excite editors any more than it does you.

I know this as well as anyone, but when Kelley Armstrong announced the Shomi contest to her Online Writing Group, I jumped. Pushing aside my misgivings about the writer's guidelines, I decided that I would write the best sci-fi meets fantasy meets magic ever written. It would be the love child of William Gibson and Nora Roberts with heavy influence of the anime I try so desperately to ignore when my husband monopolizes the TV with them. And it would have dragons!

Surely, my excitement over the dragons would outweigh the youth of the characters, the irritation at the automatic happy ending, and everything else that told me this wasn't for me. I launched into character creation and world building. I got a notebook and started brainstorming, then plotting. I wrote the first chapter. And I wrote it again. And, I think, one more time.

The story was interesting; if I ran across it in a bookstore, I'd pick it up. So why couldn't I write it?

Well, part of it was that I didn't really feel like it was my story. My characters generally seem more born than created, arising out of my subconscious until I notice there's someone new there who wants attention. The bigger part was that I wasn't writing what I love. I would enjoy reading it--and I think I can work on the story until it deepens for me--but it wasn't it.

One night during the struggle for over all this, I had a dream. I was me, but not, and still in the military, but not as graphic specialist/admin role I'd taking to get into military intelligence and psy-ops. This me was trained in what such units actually did. And in the middle of this weird adventure, there was an ex-boyfriend. Not the skinny kid I knew, but a sexy, almost dangerous man. I woke up knowing that I had my story.

In fact, I had too much of my story. The more I wrote, the less sci-fi/anime it was and the more it became the sort of urban fantasy I enjoy.

I gave up on Shomi, put the story away, and went on--just a little bitter that I'd done so much work with nothing to show. Until, maybe, yesterday.

While I was not panicking about misplacing my memory stick, I sat down to write something brand new and found...nothing. Oh, characters danced in my head, but they mocked me. "What of your current stories?" they asked. OK. They didn't, really. I may be odd, but I don't hear voices. Usually. Yet, though that isn't literally what happened, there's truth to the sentiment.

Eventually, I stopped pushing for old stories or new. I stopped grappling with my muse or my subconscious, or whatever it is that drives me nuts at times like this. I did the laundry, I hung out with the family, I listened to music....and I got slapped on the back of the head with inspiration. There, out of nowhere, appeared what was missing with this story. It may not make it perfect, but that's not the point.

I've gotten the progress that I needed, and I may have just learned something new along the way.

(Shomi novel written by fellow OWG member, A.J. Menden.)

Now for something new?

My memory stick took and unknown detour somewhere between my husband's computer and mine. This could be cause for panic. Pretty much everything of importance is on there, and some of it--like ShadowDark revisions--don't have a copy elsewhere. Not cool.

But I know it hasn't been taken out of the house so, assuming the toddler didn't flush it, it's all safe, just momentarily out of reach. For now, at least, rather than panic, I'm thinking of playing around with the stories that keep tickling my imagination...