Sleuths, Bombers and Mystics: In the World of Genre Fiction

February 16, 2012 4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.


Join writers Carol Berg, Janet Fogg, and Mark Stevens for a panel on writing and publishing genre fiction, which will culminate with a short reading of their works. These writers have been on the Denver Best Seller List and the Military Book Club bestseller list, and won awards such as the HOLT Medallion Award of Merit, Colorado Book Awards, the Prism Award, the Geffen Award, and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. All come to ACC with great accolades from the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. $5 suggested donation for the Writers Studio Scholarship fund. Location: Arapahoe Community College Main Campus, Rm M4750, Denver, CO.


Janet Fogg’s focus on writing began in the 1990s when she was CFO for the coolest architectural firm in Boulder. Fifteen writing awards later, Janet resigned from the firm to write full-time, and ten months after that she signed a contract for Soliloquy, her award-winning WWII historical romance.

In 2011 Casemate Publishing released Fogg in the Cockpit, a Military Book Club bestseller co-authored by Janet and her husband Richard Fogg. Based on the wartime diary of Richard’s father, Fogg in the Cockpit offers a first hand look at Howard Fogg’s fascinating and often unexpected story as a fighter pilot during WWII.

Janet was the 2010 Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Published Author Liaison, is a long-time member of RMFW, Pikes Peak Writers, and two fantastic critique groups. In her free time she has fun with cars with Richard. Her website is at www.janetfogg.com.


Former software engineer Carol Berg majored in mathematics at Rice University and computer science at the University of Colorado. But it is her thirteen epic fantasy novels that have won national and international awards, including multiple Colorado Book Awards, the Prism Award, the Geffen Award, and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. They’ve been translated into multiple languages, appeared on bestseller lists, and been read, so readers tell her, on five continents, on a submarine under the Mediterranean, in the war zone of Iraq, and on the slopes of Denali. Her novels of the Collegia Magica have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, using words like compelling, intelligent, complex, enthralling, and superbly realized. The latest is The Daemon Prism. Her website is at http://www.sff.net/people/carolberg/.


The son of two librarians, Mark Stevens was raised in Lincoln, Massachusetts, graduated from Principia College in Illinois. He worked as a reporter for The Christian Science Monitor in Boston and Los Angeles; worked for The Rocky Mountain News, covering City Hall for three years. He produced television news for The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour in the United States and Latin America. He covered the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, NASA’s space shuttle disaster, a volcano eruption in Colombia, political upheavals in Nicaragua, and mudslides in Puerto Rico. After tending bar for a year on a self-financed sabbatical (and to write fiction), he joined The Denver Post to cover education. Those five years of reporting led to a position as Director of Communications with Denver Public Schools for more 11 years and then with the Greeley school district and the state department of education. He now works in public relations. After two decades of writing fiction, Mark was published in 2007. His first Allison Coil Mystery, Antler Dust, hit the Denver Post best seller list when it was published and again in 2009. The sequel, Buried by the Roan, was published in August, 2011 and is receiving excellent reviews. Both books are set in the Flat Tops Wilderness of Western Colorado and feature hunting guide and amateur sleuth Allison Coil. The third book is on the way and tentatively scheduled for release in 2013. His website is at http://www.antlerdust.com/.

MAKE YOUR CHARACTER DO WHAT SHE WOULD NEVER DO

Life is a series of choices.

They are the keys to great fiction.

Thank you, Donald Maass, for emphasizing this technique. Hard choices make for powerful climaxes.

Force your hero into making a choice between

1) Action that will force him to lose what he holds most dear
or
2) Action that will force someone he loves to lose what she holds most dear

Be sure we know ahead of time what those dear things are. Maybe seeing them in action twice before.

In The Help, the most resistant maid spills the beans, though she takes a big risk and she is bitter about her lot in life symbolized by the journalist she has to spill the beans to.

In Pet Cemetery Steven King must choose between allowing his dead son to rest in peace or let him be reanimated knowing he’ll come back as a murderous, mad beast.

In The Godfather: Michael accepts the honor and responsibility of being the godfather of Connie’s son at the baptism simultaneous to a mass hit ordered by him.

In Fiddler on the Roof, the third daughter must choose between her family and her lover who is heading to Siberia.

In the first Star Wars trilogy, Luke must battle his own father, Darth Vader.

In The Matrix Neo accepts that he’s The One and sacrifices himself to save Zion.

And my favorite protagonist, Harold, in Harold and Maude, must choose between suicide after this 80-year-old lover’s death and the unlikely option of continuing to live with the new gusto that she taught him.

In one of my novels, Catharsis, my protagonist must admit she hired and encouraged the man who turned out to be the killer.

In another, American Moon, my protagonist hits her beloved father with her car while backing up to meet her lover who she believes is her ticket to becoming legal in the U.S.

Life is a series of choices and in fiction they need to be big choices.

- Inkpot

“Happy Fiftieth Birthday Karen Lin!” Tribute: Fifty Nifty Tips On Writing and the Writing Life Collected From Our Beloved Inkpot Over Twenty Years

Happy Birthday, Karen! You’re an amazing writer and writer-friend, loved by all who know you. Thank you for your willingness to be a patient teacher of the craft, manuscript after manuscript, draft after draft, year after year. Even more heartfelt thanks for being a treasured friend who walks this path with us every day. Don’t know where we’d be without you!

The First Ten Tips On Writing and the Writing Life From Karen Lin

1. If you know of a writer-friend who’s been accepted, rejected, discouraged, or approaching a deadline, take food! Writer-friend food possesses magical powers.
2. Search and delete your ms for the word “then.”
3. Don’t be afraid to be a poet and use words in unusual and evocative ways, as long as it doesn’t distract your reader.
4. When using color in a description think of something that evokes a vivid image of that color, not the name of the color itself, e.g., emerald grass.
5. There is a shadow side to even the sunniest story and character. Don’t ignore it, or your story will suffer.
6. Don’t circle around what you want to say; come out and say it directly. Help the reader (and the acquiring editor/agent) move through the story effortlessly and without distractions.
7. Your villain is the hero of his own story. Give him his due.
8. Be careful not to pop the balloon of suspense. Tell the story as it unfolds, not by looking backward from a position of safety, which reveals that your character survived to tell the tale. (Unless you’ve chosen that style deliberately, for a Daphne du Maurier effect, with all that entails.) Also, don’t remove tension by starting with temptingly dramatic statements like “It was over” before you describe what happened.
9. Keep the thesaurus open on your screen!
10. Be on the lookout for passive statements that suck the energy out of prose.

Happy Birthday, Inkpot, with heartfelt thanks from a grateful Sister of the Quill and all your pupils!

I’m Joining the Movement!

I’ve decided to join the movement – to self-publish! While I thoroughly enjoyed having two books "traditionally" published and hope to walk that path again, the idea of self-publishing a collection of short stories is rather exciting.

It’s been over a decade since I submitted one of the stories to a few magazines, only to learn there was no interest in my anthropomorphic blackbird. But as I looked over my somewhat dusty drafts I also found flaws in the writing, which further explains the rejections. So there’s editing in my immediate future along with additional research on which service to use. Amazon? Smashwords? Lulu? Do I want an ebook and hard copies or just an ebook? What about the title? Do I really like Tail Winds or should it be Trail Winds? Decisions, decisions, decisions! All good. All fun.

Speaking of fun, as you can see I’ve already developed the first draft of my cover, though it needs more work. Now that was a blast! No fretting over what the publisher or cover artist might want, just me and Photoshop in the dark of the night. Heh!

I’m joining the movement! Are you?

~ Folio

TEARING DOWN CHRISTMAS

One ornament broke this year. Maybe a record. A snowman left without a head. It makes for a good picture and a great symbol of the pain-after-Christmas blues and one of the worst realizations that comes during my edits. For me, tearing down Christmas (or the remnants of the celebration) is like pulling out a beloved chapter from my book after so many drafts. I’ve realized those lovely twenty pages are not necessary to the plotline.

Christmas season is when the chapter emerges and grows, takes better shape and gets cut and paste into the rest of the book. The ornaments added, friends seen after a long time. I love it. It's pretty. It's festive and brilliant.

But Christmas is crazy. Too busy. So many emotions associated with soldered memories. Rushing about getting ready for parties: cleaning, cooking, and decorating. Essentially it is the equivalent of writing the book. And when it's all over, the worst part comes: tearing it all down and stuffing it under the crawl space. For the book, editing and letting it simmer.

But the infatuation with the words, like the Christmas decor, must go. It crowds the living room. It crowds and waters down the book. It must go. Snip snip, into the dump folder.

What does removing a precious chapter from your work-in-progress feel like to you?

The Book Release Blues

Is post-liber libero depression (also known as PLLD) afflicting you? Don’t worry, books are released every day and you don’t have to suffer alone!

Symptoms of PLLD vary, but may include:

-Social media overload
-Desire to check your Amazon ranking several times a day
-Lack of desire to continue working on your new manuscript
-Inability to be witty when signing a book (especially for friends)
-Vague embarrassment when people rave about your book
-Vague embarrassment when you explain to a stranger that you’re a writer
-Vague embarrassment when you re-read your new book – and really enjoy it

Writing a book and getting it published requires an extraordinary amount of effort, focus, and care. Research suggests that PLLD could be a functional component of an author’s post-book release decision making process, supporting the notion that PLLD is a normal phenomenon experienced by authors in varying degrees, and most typically alternating with a sense of euphoria and delight. (See “Whiplash Effect.”)

There are many methods of coping, including strategies such as long trips to the Arctic or learning to read hieroglyphics, but it might be helpful to understand that these may not resolve the problem and could negatively impact the author’s long-term work strategy. So it’s best to avoid avoidance. Seek support from writer friends. Re-read every positive book review. Celebrate. You really are an author. Give yourself permission to be proud.

Then get back to work.

~Folio

The Power of An Outrageous Voice

I plunged in twenty years ago, started writing from the seat of my pants, and just kept going. (Definitely leaving myself open to scatological humor there!) Well, over the past year or so it’s been time out for continuing education. I feel as though I’ve awakened to writing skills after a long slumber. A great deal of what I’ve learned has come from the wise Sisters of the Quill, but precious nuggets have also been gleaned from teachers at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. A powerful lesson on voice came from that source.

For Gordon Mennenga’s Beginning the Novel course this past summer, we submitted our first fifty pages in advance. By the time the class gathered he’d read and evaluated them all. He’s wonderful; he may have saved my writing career.

But I felt sucker-punched when I read his comments scrawled across the top of my first page. They delivered a hard truth: You haven’t found your character’s voice. My first instinct was to scramble a defense. But but but…I’ve been working on this novel for many years now (many many years, in fact). I know how my character looks, what makes her tick, where she sleeps, what she eats, whom she loves, what she’s proud of. I even know her dreams. How could I not know her voice? This reaction was exacerbated by having once been utterly at one with the voice of an earlier character, the subject of six published mystery novels in the 1990s. I thought I understood voice.

But beneath it all I recognized the still, calm voice of truth. From the start I’d had trouble with how my new character expressed herself. She was too bland, too nice. Her voice didn’t flow easily, with the force of a real person. If I were honest with myself, deep down I’d known it all along.

I’ll never forget walking back to my room after that class in a sort of daze, a form of shock, and immediately hunkering down with the laptop. I was excited; I could feel I was on the edge of something big. Starting over in a new voice was like jumping off a cliff. Did I have the courage to make such a daring departure? My character’s “out there” voice had been lurking in the back of my mind, but I’d been ignoring it. I opened a document called New Voice and started typing. It came. She was there, ready and waiting.

How do you capture your character’s pure, authentic voice? I have a few ideas. But first you have to be honest enough with yourself to admit that you don’t have it, and that sort of honesty can be difficult. Ask yourself right now: are you certain your character grabs your reader and doesn’t let go? No excuses allowed; it won’t matter to the editor how many years you’ve been working on it. Do you have a “Call me Ishmael” power opening? Will something about your character linger in your reader’s mind? If not, you’d better fix it. You know the mantra: don’t give them a reason to reject your book.

Once you’ve decided to head into the fray, here are some tips for capturing your character’s voice:

Don’t be afraid to make your character different from you. Really different from you. In fact, the more different your character is from you, the more easily their voice will come. I hate offending people, so it was helpful to make my character the opposite of myself. My character is now so offensive to others, and so unconcerned about it, that it’s impossible to slip into a bland voice again. And writing with attitude is fun!

Get extreme. Look at Lady Gaga: she wants you to notice her, so she isn’t subtle. And it works! She’s met the Queen, for heaven’s sake! Yes, she’s good at what she does, but you’re probably good at what you do, too. You just need to get noticed to get published. So don’t be subtle. Go over the top. My current protagonist’s voice feels over the top to me, but I don’t think she would be to you. And you might remember her.

Go deep. The things that make a character memorable are often painful. Dig into the ugly truth of what makes him/her behave this way, talk this way, think this way. The kernel will probably be some sort of pain or loss. This may well come from your own experience, so it can be tough to go there. Discipline yourself for the sake of your craft, if you want a breakthrough onto a new level. Visit the hardest places to go within yourself, your toughest memories, most painful lessons. That’s where the power is. That zing you feel? You want your readers to feel that.

To illustrate, here are my before-and-after first lines.
Old voice: “They came for him at midnight.” This sentence isn’t bad, but it’s passive, distant, impersonal. It doesn’t tell you anything about either character. And the 449 pages that followed were rejected about a million times.
New voice: “Pepys calls me his Stormy Petrel.” This reveals a relationship, and something about each character. It’s active, and starts out talking about “me,” not “him;” it’s more immediate and direct. It has attitude, at least for the year 1670. I’ll let you know what happens.

Go for it! Jump off that cliff and open a new file. What have you got to lose? Nothing but a rejection.

Wishing you joyful writing,

Stormy P.