Neil Gaiman and Chinese Sci-Fi

Sechin Tower

@SechinTower

Last week, renowned author Neil Gaiman gave a speech for The Reading Agency in which he defended the idea of books and libraries in the digital age. His argument hinges on 3 points: 1) books are crucial to our development as thinking creatures, 2) it doesn’t much matter what a child chooses to read so long as that child grow up passionate about reading, and 3) librarians are essential because they’re in a unique position to introduce new books to readers. His words are inspiring and profound, and definitely worth reading in their entirety.

To support his position, Gaiman recounts an experience he had at a Chinese science fiction convention. He approached one of the organizers of the event and asked, given that the People’s Republic has traditionally frowned upon fantastical fiction (and even went so far as to ban stories about time travel), why is China now suddenly so interested in sci-fi?

The answer given to Gaiman was startling only in that it came from the mouth of a government official. The event organizer stated that Chinese technologists have always excelled at implementing other people’s ideas, but not at coming up with their own. So they created a task force to examine creative professionals in science and industry around the world and discovered that they all had one thing in common: imaginative fiction. You don’t have to be a Ph.D. to see that reading inspires imagination, and imagination means creative problem solving and new ideas that drive our world forward.

The idea that imaginative literature is more than mere escapism is certainly a validation for someone like me, whose greatest joy is writing about robots and jet packs. And I don’t think it’s just science fiction that can take credit, because fantasies, thrillers, and all other genres can serve equally well to get us thinking, predicting, and imagining.

Once upon a time, I visited China and had an experience which might confirm the notion that fiction improves us. I was a college student travelling abroad, and two friends and I decided to take a detour for Tai Shan, a mountain famed for its amazing sunrise vista—and the seven thousand steps one needed to climb to see that sunrise. We had trudged along all day and into the night, and we were so tired that we felt ready to give up. We went so far as checking into an inn and taking off our shoes.

Only a thousand steps up, we were already beat

Then a funny thing happened. The three of us had been passing around a book about a dragon slayer—I think it was by Barbara Hambly, but it was so long ago I can’t even remember the title. The important thing was that the protagonist was both brave and clever, and we started talking about how he would never spend the night in an inn while the peak awaited. We agreed to emulate the hero’s courage by pressing on for the top that very night, so we resumed our march in the dark. We also decided to be wise like the hero by improvising warm ground covers and stools so that we wouldn’t freeze on the rocky ground as we waited for dawn. We made it, and we didn’t even die of hypothermia in the process (which was a real, if remote, danger).

The sunrise on Tai Shan had not been oversold by the generations of Chinese philosophers, poets, and artists who praised it. As the first vermilion rays crept into the sky (China’s pollution has added some amazing pigments to the celestial pallet), I realized that I was seeing it through my eyes, and also the eyes of all those poets who had put its beauty into verse. At the same time, I saw it as the dragon slayer in our shared book would have seen it: a reward for hard work and sacrifice. And as Bilbo might have seen it: the promise of a new day and new adventures. And as Mr. Spock might have seen it: a roiling mass of fusing helium atoms, all the more beautiful for being measurable and understandable.

Viewing that sunrise through all those different lenses didn’t distract me from the majesty of the event, but rather multiplied my appreciation for it. Fiction helped me see reality more clearly, and it helped me reach the peak of the mountain, both figuratively and literally. This, I think, is only one part of the power of books. I wholeheartedly agree with Gaiman’s argument, and I wish the Chinese great success in their public campaign to stimulate imagination.

How about you? Has a book ever inspired you to do something? If so, I’d love for you to leave a comment below to tell me about it.

Be good, and dream crazy dreams,

Sechin Tower is a teacher, a table-top game designer, and the author of Mad Science Institute. You can read more about him and his books on SechinTower.com and his games on SiegeTowerGames.com

Shapeshifters

So I’ve got a book about to peek its head into the world. Now six months in advance, each character is jostling for recognition. Each wants star billing. And as I look over the odd assortment of people and creatures populating Beyond the Door, my gaze settles fondly on the Greenman. Half-man, half tree, his shape shifts with the seasons. But then I realize that he is not the only shifter in my story. There’s Herne the horned man and Gwydon the wolf who was once a story teller. Shapeshifters. We love them. We fear them. Mostly they fascinate us. Myth is peopled with creatures that change from one being to another. The gods of myth, like Odin or Zeus, often take the form of animals. And in some myths, like the story of the selkie or seal woman, animals become human.  One of the most famous myths is the story of Tam Lin who must be held in the arms of the woman who loves him as he changes from animal to animal.

Maybe we identify because we are all shapeshifters. We play one role in life and then another. But that answer is too easy. In shapeshifting you give up who you are to become something else. There is no promise of return. It is crossing a boundary. You have no guarantee of being the same again ever.  And you won’t. Shapeshifters are always marked. Think of Merlin teaching the young Arthur. In T.H. White’s version of the story, Arthur learns about the world through  the perspective of various animals. And it changes him. He is more insightful, but with insight we open ourselves to pain. We can sympathize with a hurting world, we empathize when we feel its pain. The selkie can reclaim her skin and return to the sea, but she leaves part of her heart on shore. Forever. The werewolf, knows the loneliness of night, the drive that compels him. He fears who he becomes. He is split between two worlds, between  two natures and wonders which one is his. It is a question we never escape, who am I? At times, we are afraid to learn the answer. And this is the territory of writers.  The deep place we must be willing to travel with each of our characters.

Neil Gaiman says,”… the best way to show people true things is from a direction that they had not imagined the truth coming.”  Today I share with you one of my poems in hopes that looking at a topic from a different direction will add a little bit of clarity. It first appeared in the Journal of Mythic Arts.

Shapeshifter

There is a moment
when the creature seems to disappear.
Nothing remains, but a quivering
in the air, the invisible finger
that runs your ridge of spine

Beauty and the Beast, by Anne Anderson, Wikipedia

My students ask if it hurts
to become another. We’ve read
the stories of humans furred,
flesh erupting to wings, or scales,
gill-gasp of transformation.
I tell them some are stories of pursuit,
a dove answered with a hawk,
a hare with greyhound as reply.
Pursuer and pursued, their deft dance
that ended once with a grain of corn,
swallowed by a hen who birthed
the storyteller, Taliesin.
But what the students want to know is pain.
That remembered moment when
quills pierce skin, fingernails bleed
to claws. Beyond the window
winter’s first kiss startles the grass with frost.
I tell them yes,
there is always pain at birth or when,
our tent of flesh opens
like a door to the sky,
and something more, you must
lean close to hear
the single note of joy.

Self-Publish Your Audio Book

By Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

Exclusive sneak peek at the new audio cover for IN THE ARMS OF STONE ANGELS!

For this post, I wanted to share my recent experiences with creating an audio book for my YA debut, In the Arms of Stone Angels. I had an opportunity to try Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), a site from Audible that I learned about through the International Thriller Writers (ITW). Others  using ACX are: Neil Gaiman, M. J. Rose, award winning voice talent Tavia Gilbert, Tantor Audio, and Random House (a key ACX launch partner). ANY narrator with a home studio (or access to a studio) can be listed as a voice actor and audition for work.

ACX provides a central location where authors, publishers, agents, narrators, studio producers, and other rights holders can match up projects to create an audiobook for distribution through Audible (and elsewhere) under two different royalty models.

Parties can create a profile of the project for others to see. Narrators can audition, audiobook publishers can express interest, producers can make offers, and rights holders don’t have to let their rights languish. Setting up a profile is easy. I started the project in July and listed my book. Within a short while I had narrators auditioning, but I waited to see if I could get an audiobook publisher or producer interested, since I had no experience with this.

Narrators can be their own producers. I could have been more aggressive about seeking narrators and sending them a message through ACX, but I waited to see what would happen. In October, Audible added a stipend incentive to my project, meaning they offered to subsidize a producer to create my book by giving them $150/finished hour (up to $2500) for a 10-hour completed project. This stipend flag brought more auditions and producers to my project. The stipend had a deadline so Audible could get my book by year end for the holidays.

Once I decided to be more proactive in pushing my project, I decided on a narrator who had experience, awards, and a solid producer to go along with her voice actor talent. The steps from there are all online. I extended the offer, based on a royalty sharing model with my narrator, so I wouldn’t have to shell out money. The Audible stipend helped entice the narrator and producer I chose. Royalty rates will vary depending upon whether you give Audible exclusive or no-exclusive distribution rights. You decide how this can work and set it up. For more details on how ACX works, click HERE. For FAQ, click HERE.

Once I extended the offer and the deadlines ACX wanted for the stipend, I got a standard agreement printed through ACX between the parties, and my narrator had her deadline for acceptance (up to 72 hours). I talked with my narrator on the phone to share my thoughts on my central character, to help her create the voice of my teen girl, sent my book in PDF for her to read, and a 15-minute narration came within 5 days for my approval. In 60 days, I will have a finished audiobook to approve, but Audible will also act as a quality control checkpoint. If you opt for Audible to be your distributor, your book will be set up for distribution through Audible, Amazon, and iTunes. If you don’t give Audible exclusivity, you can distribute your audiobook anywhere you want to go.

I’m very excited to “hear” the voice of Brenna Nash, my character, through my award-winning narrator, Michelle Ann Dunphy. ACX has been very easy to use and I like the control aspects I keep with this project. I worked with my German cover designer (Frauke Spanuth at Croco Designs) to develop the audiobook cover. ACX is self-publishing for audio.

I hope to have a Goodreads Contest offering my audio book as a giveaway. Stay tuned!

If you’re an author, do you retain your audio rights? How many of you like to listen to audiobooks? I love them for long road trips and for camping, listening to a story over a blazing fire.

Enjoying the Ride

If you've been out of town or off-grid for the last few days, then you probably missed hearing about Neil Gaiman's commencement address to graduates of the University of the Arts.  Even if you've heard about and/or listened, it's a speech well worth listening to again.  So, go ahead; I'll wait.




Now, there's a lot in this particular speech worth focusing on, especially the stuff about making your own rules. On the other hand, I'll be honest: I did that way back. Figured out which rules I could break and the ones I had to stick to, and then acted accordingly. Would I have gotten further faster if I'd stuck to the rules back then? Again, being honest? The answer is no. I did stuff you weren't supposed to, but I'd gone by the rules for a while, gotten nowhere, and decided I couldn't be doing any worse , so . . . why not? Of course, it also might have been that what I'd actually written before wasn't what it needed to be to break in. But I don't necessarily believe that either because I'd been playing by the rules with stuff that kept being routinely rejected--but which got accepted, pretty much right away, once I decided to break the rules.

But that's not actually what I'm writing about today. Nor do I agree with every single one of Gaiman's points because, honestly, you really DO need to a) be a pro, b) be on time and c) be turning in good stuff. I don't know anyone at this stage of the game who can be an absolute schmuck and yet be so totally brilliant that everyone just puts up with it . . . but then again, I don't move in the same circles as Gaiman and King and anyone else who's a mega-bestseller.


No, the part of Gaiman's address that I breezed right past--but which was, for me, the most important part--and something I still need to focus on is that whole enjoyment thing. It's really fascinating that while I heard it, I didn't "hear" it and it took a friend to point out to me what I'd missed. That's because he knows me, very well, and I'd just been stressing about everything I needed to get done in x-amount of time. He knew what he was hearing and how to rein me in.

Ask anyone who knows me, and they'll tell you: I'm a glass half-empty girl. Nothing's ever quite good enough nor do I believe that anything good--except my husband--lasts (and there are days when I wonder how much longer he'll put up with me). Call it a Freudian thing, or a result of being a kid whose dad was in a coupla different concentration camps, but I just don't trust that good things won't evaporate. I guess you could say that I'm not a look-on-the-bright-side kind of gal.

I tend to stress. I tend to do exactly what Gaiman talks about. I am ALWAYS thinking ahead to the next day, the next book, the next project, when I just MUST get a new book out there . . . all that stuff. Any enjoyment--even the accomplishment of FINISHING A BOOK (which is HUGE, guys, HUGE)--only lasts for a small span before I get restless, need to move on, have to edit. That kind of thing.

Now this type of restlessness is very good for, say, a medical student. An intern. A doctor, who's always leapfrogging ahead, thinking down the road, trying to figure out what might help someone in distress. In psychiatry, you're always in multiple times at once: in the moment with your patient; in their past, trying to tie what you're hearing to what's come up before; and in the patient's future, thinking about you might do or suggest that will help down the road. But in terms of actually ENJOYING the moment--the fact that I'm holding a book I wrote in my hand?

Well, I do . . . and I don't.

I remember when all I wanted was to publish a short story. Then, it was I'd like to keep on publishing short stories. Then, it was holding a book I'd written in my hand. Then, breaking out of work for hire and into seeing my own stuff in print. Then . . . You get the picture. It's very Roseanne Rosanneadanna: always something.

I also think that I breezed past that part of Gaiman's address because I must have some fantasy of what making it to that point entails. Unlike Gaiman, I don't have long signing lines and all that; I'm not a tenth of the way to where he was when Stephen King gave him that advice. Putting aside the fact that if Stephen King liked ANYTHING I'd written and told me so and then gave me advice, TOO, I'd probably have a heart attack . . . I think that Gaiman's inability to take the advice points up a fundamental insecurity we writers have--and, maybe, always should.

A friend of mine makes distinctions between an author and a writer. Authors live in Author-Land, a lovely alternative universe where they rest on accolades, hob-nob with influential people, are quite fun at parties, tell super stories--but don't write a darn thing, or--if they do--not a lot or very good anymore. They live on what they've done. Think . . . Truman Capote, J.D. Salinger, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner . . . or any writer who's effectively stopped writing but still has THE NAME.

Then, there are writers: people who grind it out, like golfers, every day. They do the work. They produce. They're in the trenches. The thing is, I think Gaiman was being a writer: someone who had to look ahead to the next book, the next paycheck, the next series . . . whatever. I think that, if he's honest, Stephen King was and might still be that kind of writer, too: a man who could live on Author Island but has both the drive and the inability to stop writing. Both are successful precisely because they never could NOT look ahead to the next project. Oh, and yeah, they write well.

But you understand what I'm saying. Most of us will always be only as good as the next book, which means that being in the moment and enjoying the ride take as much work as . . . well . . . the work. For me, there's the flip-side, too: when the writing is going well, I BLOODY LOVE IT. There is NOTHING in the universe I'd rather do--and then I am enjoying the ride. So, maybe, enjoying the ride is about enjoying the process of writing: the craft, the discovery, the desire to push oneself just a little harder, try something just a little different. Failing sucks, no question. But when you succeed--when you KNOW you nailed it--there's nothing finer.  What's even better is when you get to share this with other people; when you entertain them with the world you've created. Enjoying THAT ride is just as important.

I think the take-home here is figuring out what "the ride" is and means to you, and understanding that the ride may change over time as you mature as a writer and go further along in your career. Recognize that enjoying the ride may mean something as profound as holding a bestseller YOU WROTE in your hand or allowing your SO to drag you to a movie because you've put in a hard day, sweating over that keyboard.

So, be flexible. Enjoy. And, remember: it's never a bad day when there's cake.