Guest blogger: SF novelist Susan Jane Bigelow

Please welcome today's guest! Susan Jane Bigelow is the author of Broken, a dystopian sci fi superhero novel from Candlemark & Gleam. Its sequel, Fly Into Fire, is due out in January. I asked Susan to talk about writing superhero characters.

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Hi. I'm Susan, and I write about superheroes. Sort of.

Superheroes, or any kind of super-powered character, can be a great vehicle for incredible storytelling. The problem, unfortunately, is that we tend to think of superheroes in terms of heroic archetypes in tight costumes Doing Good Things, because that's the image we usually have of them from comic books, cartoons and movies. If you don't read a lot of superhero stories, or even if you do, this is likely where your sense of them begins and ends. The challenge, then, is to turn a type of character that most people expect to be cardboard and cartoonish into someone they can relate to and understand.

Lots of writers and directors have done this well. Peter David's run with Supergirl was one of my favorites for just this reason, even though a lot of other fans don't like it. Supergirl is this impossible character to write, but David's reboot of her allows her to become more human (how, you ask? Well, it involves a pile of pink goo and... um, maybe it's better not to know), and he lets us see her ambivalence alongside her pride in who she is, and her desperate need to belong and fit in. The final arc of his run, with its mix of the human and the heroic, is one of the better superhero stories I've read.

That's the kind of thing I strive for when I'm writing these kinds of characters. I like to make lists, so here is a list of questions I start off with when creating super-powered people in my stories:

1.      Powers – what are they? What exactly can this character do/not do? It's good to know about limits. Can they leap a tall building in a single bound? Two or three? And how tall is “tall,” anyway?

2.      Powers – what's it like having them? How does the character feel about different aspects of their power? As in, if they can light fires, is that comfortable to do emotionally? What about physically? How does it feel to shoot fire from their fingertips? Is it hot? Do they mind if it is? Are they kind of a pyromaniac, or do they want to hide under the bed when someone lights a cigarette?

3.      Super-visibility or super-stealth? Is being a superhero or a differently-powered person visible? Do other people around the person know? Is there a lot of hiding going on? What's that like? Bruce Wayne seems to get a kick out of hiding his “true” bat-self from board meetings at the Wayne Foundation, but not everyone might react in the same way. If there is a secret identity, which one is the mask and which is the real person? Is it some mix of the two? Is it more difficult to hide, or more difficult to be seen?

4.      What's it like being different? And that's another important thing: super-powered people are going to be markedly different, sometimes in extremely visible ways, from everyone around them. How does this character react to that? How does anybody react to being different from the “norm” in some fundamental way? I think this is one of the questions that matters the most, at least in the stories I write.

5.      Are you a hero, a villain, or something else? Is this character heroic? Evil? Avoids the subject altogether? Never uses their powers except to get that can of applesauce open? Can a healer walk past a hospital and not help? Can a firestarter walk by a camp full of shivering people and not make them warm? What do we do in moments where we're tested? This is such a key question, and it's often central to the best stories. When the moment comes, whatever that moment may be, what do you do? Do you run away? Stand your ground? Set a city block on fire with your mind? The answer may surprise you.

There are other questions, of course, but it's the intersection of humanity and super-humanity that I think makes for the most compelling and interesting stories. After all, it's not the alien birth of Superman that interests us, but the human he's become.

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You can visit Susan Jane Bigelow on her website.
You can purchase Broken on Amazon.
You can find the pre-order Kickstarter campaign for Fly Into Fire here.

Revision Vision

Today I'll finish proofreading revisions that my editor requested for my science fiction novel, Green Light Delivery. Doing these revisions has been a fascinating experience, and the first time I've revised a novel under editorial instructions, rather than in the pre-submission stage.

The editor asked me to flesh out a character who doesn't actually show up until the end, yet on whom the story hinges. Therefore, although the bulk of my changes were in the last fifth of the novel, I needed to prepare the reader better to meet this character by leaving hints and stepping stones throughout the earlier chapters.

At first I worried that inserting and changing elements all the way through would be like wiggling bolts and nails in a building structure: it could make everything fall down. But instead, it made me rethink every sentence with this new purpose in mind and make changes that shored up and strengthened the work overall.

At least I hope it did! Currently I'm at that stage where I've stared at it so long that it all looks ridiculous.

How do you feel about the process of novel-revision?

Guest blogger: Pat McDermott Writes about Fairies

Please join me in welcoming the delightful Pat McDermott, whose new novel Glancing Through the Glimmer is a paranormal young adult fantasy. It's now available from MuseItUp. I asked Pat to discuss what it's like to write on the ancient topic of fairies in Ireland.

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Fairies and their cousins appear in the folklore of every culture in the world. They’ve inspired many tales, including Glancing Through the Glimmer, my new young adult adventure. The title is a phrase from The Fairy Thorn, an old Irish poem by Sir Samuel Ferguson. The story, a blend of alternate Irish history, romance, and fairy magic, has been a joy to research. I’ve found countless web sites devoted to fairies, faeries, fae, fay, etc. and have added several volumes on the “Other Crowd” to my personal library.
Most fairies are small, benevolent beings, but in Ireland the “Good Folk” aren’t the cute little Tinker Bell types we know and love. Many are man-sized, and they can be downright mean. Mortals foolish enough to annoy them risk losing their hair, eyes, teeth, even toenails. (As I still have mine, I trust that the fairies in Glancing Through the Glimmer were happy to join the cast.)
I had always thought of Irish fairies as leprechauns. Not so, I learned while exploring the wealth of literature depicting these elusive beings. Leprechauns belong to the class of Solitary Fairies, which includes cluricauns, dullahans, pookas, merrows, silkies, and banshees.

Then we have the Trooping Fairies, bands of rascals who live beneath the hills and lakes of Ireland. One of these troops, the Connaught Fairies, inhabits a crystal palace beneath Knock Ma, a gentle hill in Galway. Their king, a frisky rogue named Finvarra, likes a good dance now and then, though he prefers mortal dancing partners. Over the centuries, he’s stolen quite a few, and he’s still at it, as American teenager Janet Gleason learns to her dismay in Glancing Through the Glimmer.
During a recent trip to the Emerald Isle, I decided to visit Knock Ma. My husband and I drove to Tuam, a small town 20 miles north of Galway City. The town’s name comes from the Latin word tumulus, which means burial mound. Thousands of years ago, the people who lived there used the area as a burial ground, which no doubt gave rise to the local fairy legends. In one of my favorites, an Irish chieftain sets his men to work digging into Knock Ma to rescue his wife, whom Finvarra had kidnapped. The trench they supposedly dug, known as The Fairy’s Glen, is still visible.
We found Knock Ma, and though Finvarra and his troop kept to themselves that day, the postman assured us they were there. “Ah, they’re all over the place,” he said.
Perhaps we’ll meet them another time. It’s their decision, of course.
Many roads twist in Ireland because the builders refused to cut down fairy trees. My grandmother once told me that when she was a child in County Sligo (around 1910), her father would set out a row of stones before erecting any outbuildings on their farm. If in the morning the stones were still where he’d placed them, he knew the fairies had no objections, and he was good to go. If not, then the Good Folk had disapproved of his choice, and he had to try again.
Superstitious nonsense?
I’ve heard too many strange things to be sure. What do you think?

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You can purchase Glancing Through the Glimmer here,
and visit Pat McDermott at her website.

"Big Rock in the Big Slime River" published in Knowonder! e-zine

Here's a link to my latest published children's sci fi story. Please leave a comment on the Knowonder! site if you get a chance to read it.

Big Rock in the Big Slime River


In other news, the release date for the charity anthology Resilience has been pushed back to January, but the cover is done.

Also checked on the Etched Offerings anthology from Misanthrope Press. They're behind, too, but do seem to be moving forward.

Guest blogger: SF novelist Bryan Thomas Schmidt

I'm very happy to welcome today's guest, science fiction author Bryan Thomas Schmidt. He categorizes his new novel, The Worker Prince, as a space opera, so I asked him to discuss what that means.

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Thanks to Anne for the opportunity to guest post today. My debut novel, The Worker Prince, came out last month. A space opera, like Star Wars, it retells the Moses story with a unique setting amongst colonists from Earth who settled the stars. It departs quite a bit from some aspects of the biblical story. In part, this came from a desire to keep it surprising and original. And in part, it resulted from the nature of the space opera setting.

According to Wikipedia: “Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in outer space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing advanced technologies and abilities. Perhaps the most significant trait of space opera is that settings, characters, battles, powers, and themes tend to be very large-scale.” Star Wars, Star Trek, Farscape, Babylon Five, these are all space operas you might be familiar with. Filled with larger than life characters, space ships, flying craft of all sorts, laser guns, space battles and lots of action in a battle between good and evil, The Worker Prince frequently evokes memories of Golden Age science fiction stories amongst readers. The similarity is deliberate.

When I set out to write the story, I’d had it in mind for twenty-five years. I wanted to capture the sense of hope, wonder and fun of the stories which had delighted me as a youth and first made me fall in love with science fiction. Given our dark times, I also wanted to write something hopeful and encouraging with a  happy ending and good triumphing over evil. So much of the nihilism of our times leaks into our storytelling, and yet, I still believe there’s hope; that one person can make a difference by doing what’s right. So I wanted to tell a story which echoes those beliefs.

When writing a genre like space opera, there are tropes one must reckon with. Readers who are fans of the genre, expect certain things. I mentioned several above: laser guns, space ships, flying craft. My story also has robots, high tech computers, and planets far away. The solar system I created has twin suns and thirteen planets. It’s both similar and different from our system in many ways, with humans only one of many species inhabiting the worlds.  I also have a romantic subplot, themes of family, political scheming, and themes of ideological differences.

While the story is intended primarily to entertain, the theme of bigotry is a big part of it. That came naturally from the Moses story itself but also was drawn from present times where we see people of opposing views so often in conflict and fighting with each other. Space opera and science fiction are great mediums to examine contemporary themes through a distant, fresh lens. And certainly as writers, we tend to work in things we are passionate about. Our characters often reflect our beliefs and values and speak into situations we have opinions about. The advantage of doing this from a setting different and distant from our own is it enables readers to distance themselves in ways that allow fresh perspective. And space opera being full of action and high entertainment value, the stories deliver any messages lightly without hitting readers over the heads.

My goal above all, as with any good space opera, is to provide readers with an escape and entertainment to take them away from the worries of their world. I’m told The Worker Prince delivers that in spades, which is gratifying to hear because we all need an escape these days. I’m happy the adventures of Davi Rhii and his friends can provide that for many.

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Bryan Thomas Schmidt can be found online as @BryanThomasS on Twitter or via his website. Excerpts from The Worker Prince can be found on his blog.
THE WORKER PRINCE is available for Kindle and Nook , or in paperback.

Interview about Ebenezer's Locker

Please pop around to C.K. Volnek's blog, where she interviews me about my middle grade paranormal mystery novel, Ebenezer's Locker, and about writing in general.

Click here for C. K. Volnek's blog.

The Rule of Exceptional School

In my upcoming novel, Ebenezer's Locker, an ordinary public school has some unruly spirits floating around. I've been thinking a lot lately about the prominence of schools in middle-grade literature. On the face of it, you'd think kids wouldn't want to read about schools. I mean, reading fiction is their chance to escape. So why pray for snow days even in April, yet choose books---especially books with fantastical elements---that take place in school?

But I've noticed a recurring theme in the more popular MG novels about schools: They all make schools into an extraordinary thing. Look at Trenton Lee Stewart's Mysterious Benedict Society, where a handful of students are specially recruited into this boarding-school-cum-adventure-operation. The same sort of thing happens in Gitty Daneshvari's School of Fear, in which the kids' oddest characteristics are turned into their greatest strengths.

Oh, and I've heard a few mentions of another series that's met with some success... Something about a school for wizards?

My theory is that kids long for the day when going to school is an amazing experience. They want it to be a place where they feel special, as if they have unique abilities that are necessary for saving the world. Of course, they really do, but schools don't always make kids feel that way.

What other middle-grade fantastical novels have you read that are based in schools?