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The Big Idea: David D. Levine

Posted on November 7, 2023    Posted by Athena Scalzi      5 Comments

The circle of inspiration: The work of others inspires creators to make work of their own, which in turn inspires another set of creators. David D. Levine is here to talk about a work that inspired his latest, The Kuiper Belt Job, and how it came to make a difference in his own creation.

DAVID D. LEVINE:

My new novel The Kuiper Belt Job began at the Chicago Worldcon in 2012, where I participated in a panel in which we brainstormed a sequel to Serenity, the Firefly movie. I don’t recall who was on the panel, or who contributed which ideas, but I do remember the basic premise: ten years after the events of Serenity, Mal’s son (of course Mal had a son) shows up out of nowhere to say: dad’s in jail, and I’m putting the gang back together to break him out. 

It was only a tossed-off idea at a science fiction convention panel, but for some reason that premise stuck in my head and would not let go. I kept thinking that I should file the serial numbers off and make a novel of it. So in 2017, after handing in the final edits for Arabella the Traitor of Mars, that was one of three new projects I pitched to my agent and editor. And that was the one they both liked the best.

I knew from the beginning that this project would be all about found family, and specifically about putting a broken found family back together again. But I’d never written an ensemble cast before — all of my previous projects had focused on one or two viewpoint characters. So I started by thinking about what made the characters in Firefly work as an ensemble, and also the characters in Leverage (TV series, 2008-2012, in which a crew of con artists work together to help those who have been hurt by powerful people) which I also wanted to use as a model. And the more I thought about it, the more I recognized that the two ensembles are both implementations of the same basic design.

• Mal, the leader, corresponds with Nate, the Mastermind.
• Zoe, the second in command is Parker, the Thief.
• Kaylee, the engineer, is Alec, the Hacker.
• Jayne, the muscle, is Eliot, the Hitter.
• Inara, the Companion, is Sophie, the Grifter.

The correspondences aren’t exact, of course. Zoe is much more self-confident than Parker, and Kaylee is more innocent than Alec (though Alec is a bit of a naïf in his way). But looking at the two sets of characters I began to get a sense of how their strengths and weaknesses combine to make a group that can’t help but become tightly-knit and independent.

So I came up with my main cast: Strange the mastermind, Alicia the thief, Tai the hacker, Kane the muscle, and Shweta the negotiator. Now, to be sure, Strange isn’t just Mal or Nate with the serial numbers filed off; he is his own person. But thinking about the existing characters helped me to make my own characters richer and more plausible, and especially to shape the relationships between them.

As I began drafting, my characters began to evolve beyond their origins, to become more themselves. I spotted places where they could conflict and places where they could support each other — often those were two sides of the same coin. And I realized that there were other models I could call on to help flesh out the gang.

There’s a concept in anime known as the “five-man band.” (You could look it up in TV Tropes, but I warn you, if you go in there it’ll be a long time before you come out.) The basic idea is that the main characters form a group of five:

• The Leader: the main character, the one in charge
• The Lancer: the leader’s second in command and foil
• The Brain: the smart one, often also the weird one
• The Brawn: the strong one, often also the dumb one
• The Heart: the emotional core of the group

(The Heart used to be called The Chick, obeying the Smurfette Principle that no group can contain more than one female, but we’re better than that now, right?)

The Five-Man Band concept underlies a lot of anime teams, a lot of superhero teams, and a lot of other fictional teams as well. The concept can certainly be overlaid on — or force-fit onto — an existing team, but I’m sure that some more recent teams were created with this model in mind. And why not me? So I decided to apply this idea to my own characters. Strange was obviously the Leader, Alicia the Lancer, Tai the Brain, Kane the Brawn, and Shweta the Heart. 

Looking at my characters from the perspective of this model helped me to understand that Alicia, my Zoe character, was not only the Thief (Parker from Leverage) but also the Lancer — the emotional complement and foil to Strange, my Mal character. And Shweta, my Inara character, was not only the Grifter (Sophie from Leverage) but also the one who was everyone’s auntie, the one who helped everyone through the gang’s darkest places. And there were some dark places indeed.

There was one more place where my study of existing teams affected the structure of my novel, and that is that I decided to give each of my five main characters a single long stretch of point-of-view rather than repeatedly switching from one POV to another as is typical in ensemble novels. This permitted me to give each character a good long turn in the spotlight and also to showcase how the characters and their relationships change as the broken gang reassembles itself over the course of the novel. It’s a bit of a risk in terms of writing craft, but I believe it works.

Then I decided to put an interstitial between those five point-of-view sections: a four-part flashback to the moment the gang broke up, ten years in the past. And, because the gang was closer than family back then, basically one mind in five bodies, I put it in the first person plural. Yes, it’s told from the perspective of “we.” Is it a stunt? Maybe. Does it work? 

Well, I’ll leave that up to you.

—

The Kuiper Belt Job: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s

Author Socials: Web Site|Mastodon|Bluesky

Book Trailer: YouTube|TikTok|Instagram

The Big Idea: Ryk Spoor

Posted on November 2, 2023    Posted by Athena Scalzi      2 Comments

Author Ryk Spoor is back on the blog for the debut of his new novel, and first book of The Spirit Warriors trilogy, Choosing the Player. How does this trilogy fit in with and intersect with his other works? Read on to find out.

RYK SPOOR:

The publication of Choosing the Players – the first volume in The Spirit Warriors trilogy – signals the completion of something begun with Phoenix Rising (the Balanced Sword trilogy) back in 2012: three separate, simultaneous adventures by three groups of heroes that might intersect with each other, but who had different missions to accomplish, each of them saving the world in a completely different way. Thus the Balanced Sword trilogy, the Godswar dualogy, and the Spirit Warriors trilogy all take place at the same time, but face completely separate adventures that nonetheless crossed each other at various points. 

In addition, each one was to have certain similarities – dictated by the fact that they were in the same universe, and involved in worldshaking events that would inevitably interact in some fashion – while being quite different in their essential nature. The Balanced Sword was intended to be a mostly-standard epic fantasy adventure that would showcase the world of Zarathan at the same time that it showed one of the most crucial sets of events in that world’s modern era. Godswar was a salute to a specific subgenre (what I call the God-Warrior anime subgenre) and a plot hinging on a single prophecy’s misdirection – since what’s a fantasy world without a little prophecy?

The Spirit Warriors is what I have always called “crossover fantasy” and which is these days often called “isekai”, with the heroes coming from a version of our world and finding themselves stuck in a fantasy universe that seems to somehow echo our own books, games, or movies. It also gives us the best look at the manipulative mage Konstantin Khoros, the prologue showing us his origin and motivation. People have often commented on Khoros’ actions, and in Choosing the Players we get his own view of his work:

Xavier snorted. “You know, if you’re supposed to be the good wizard, you’re really doing a sucky job of it.”

“I am most certainly not ‘the good wizard’, though I am a very skillful wizard – and other things as well,” Khoros said emphatically. “Understand this, my young friends: I intend for you to do good. My ultimate goals will achieve good. I am an enemy of all that is evil and dark. I have spent centuries upon centuries fighting the darkness. But I am in no other sense a good man, and Aurora’s anger and mistrust of me is fully justified.”

This is part of the challenge that the five – Xavier Ross, Nike Engelshand, Toshi Hashima, Aurora Vanderdecken, and Gabriel Dante – must face. Khoros has set them an apparently-impossible task – one that even he cannot accomplish – and given them hardly a lick of instruction.  

Yet it is vital that he do it this way, and another point of The Spirit Warriors is to show that the operation of an epic universe such as this is a matter of multiple layers and balances that make it, paradoxically, much wiser to start your heroes out with as little knowledge and power as feasible than it is to try to train them up and throw them directly at the adversary. 

Why?

Because the adversaries that will most concern a given force are the ones on their own level. The beings threatening the world, or large pieces of it, must focus their operations on the relatively few others on their level that might oppose them. Sure, there may be a new group of heroes out there who will eventually come to be a threat – but there’s a lot of potential heroes. How to know which group’s potentially your nemesis? In a world with a thousand gods, everyone’s got a protector – and a manipulator – that can obfuscate the truth. Perhaps you even have access to a true prophecy… but do you really properly understand what it’s telling you?

The readers of course know who the heroes du jour are, but fortunately their opposition don’t have the ability to break the fourth wall and read the book.

This means that the layer that confronts the protagonists is almost always something at, or near, their current level of capability, unless a more powerful being is already involved for other reasons. Kyri’s true enemy made use of this approach, because he actually wanted Kyri to become stronger, become the actual focus of the faith Kyri fought for. 

Khoros makes use of it in the other direction, putting his Earthly pawns on the board and ensuring that they will develop their own capabilities out of sight of the other major players until it’s too late to prevent the Five from reaching their true levels of power – in fact, he manipulates events and people that the Five will reach those levels at the precise locations that the sudden appearance of a powerful and unknown adversary will utterly disrupt the plans of the hostile forces. 

But all this rests on the Five being very, very specific people, and it is the people that truly matter here. Xavier Ross, nearly killed by his own stupidity, his personal quest for justice interrupted by Khoros. Nike Engelshand, a competent and rational girl fleeing from bulletproof monsters to find herself … elsewhere. Gabriel Dante, a cheerful player and son of a swordmaster, steps from cherry blossoms into a cold and dark otherworld; Toshi Hashima, his coldly determined suicide averted by impossibility; and Aurora Vanderdecken, who finds her parents’ long-held delusions were nothing of the kind when three steps take her from her home streets to the doors of a towering castle.  

Each of these five has their own issues to address, and by being thrown together, they are forced to rely on each other in a totally alien world. This builds a connection, a trust, between five teenagers who would otherwise never have met, and never have seen the strength waiting to be summoned from their unlikely association. For the readers, they also provide a new view of Zarathan, one drawn from the outside rather than from people who have grown up immersed in the magic until it has become commonplace, and one with, perhaps, unique insights that those born here would never have seen.

Join the Five, then, as they first encounter the World of Magic, and begin their journey to truly become the Spirit Warriors.

Choosing the Players: Amazon

Author socials: Website|Facebook

Read an excerpt.

The Big Idea: Greg van Eekhout

Posted on November 1, 2023    Posted by Athena Scalzi      3 Comments

Is death truly the end? Not for the kids in The Ghost Job! Author Greg van Eekhout is bringing you a tale from beyond the grave(s) of his main characters who aren’t letting a little death stop them. Follow along in his Big Idea to see just how this “haunting” idea formed.

GREG VAN EEKHOUT:

The elevator pitch for The Ghost Job goes something like this: Four young ghosts pull heists in hopes of finding a supernatural artifact that can restore them to life. The most promising of these is a device called the Redeemer, owned and operated by a rich necromancer who holds souls hostage for ransom. But a book isn’t always about a big idea. Sometimes a book is more like a rolling  katamari gathering up a bunch of small-to-medium ideas. Then you identify the biggest or best of those ideas and declare it the Big Idea. 

I’m pretty sure that’s how I came up with The Ghost Job, my latest middle-grade novel. (Middle grade is a marketing term referring books pitched to readers aged 8 to 12, which is confusing because here in the US we have middle school, which is generally for kids 11-14, so I usually refer to my books as all ages.) 

Anyway. 

Ghosts are perfect thieves. Maybe that’s the big idea. Think about it. Ghosts move silently. They don’t need doors or windows because they can pass through walls. They don’t show up on cameras (really, they don’t, I don’t care what Discovery Channel tells you) and even if they did, what are the cops going to do, arrest them at a séance? 

They only moved the headstones. Eerie old houses and cemeteries with creeping ivy and grasping leafless trees are fun, but hauntings can happen anywhere, even in warm, sunny places. Maybe that’s the big idea. Here in San Diego, we’ve got Pioneer Park, a pleasant community patch in an affluent neighborhood that was a graveyard until the city pulled up the headstones, chucked them into a ravine, left the bodies under the green grass, and installed a playground. For real, this happened. In The Ghost Job, the 19th and early 20th-century ghosts of Pioneer Park remain with their graves and serve to demonstrate the strength of community ties, even among the dead.

(We’ve got another desecrated cemetery in town upon which now sits a Hunter Steakhouse, but I didn’t put it in my book because I think all Hunter Steakhouses are weird for one reason or another.) 

Everybody hurts, take comfort in your friends. Maybe this is biggest idea in The Ghost Job, but it doesn’t sound as fun as “ghosts pull off heists.” Still, I think it’s an important truth. Laughter in the company of friends is one of the most powerful balms I know for just about any difficult emotion. Almost immediately after an explosion propels my characters into the afterlife, one of them cracks a joke. It’s not even a good joke, but it signals to my newly minted ghosts that things are going to be okay. They’re not alone. They have each other. And as long as that’s so, they have hope.

The book also features ghostly superpowers, cars that drive themselves into the sea, roller coaster enthusiasts who continue to enjoy the ride that killed them, and a good dog who doesn’t care if you’re alive or dead as long as he gets tummy rubs.  (The dog doesn’t die.) 

For me, the real idea was to write a fun book with occasional moments of emotional heft, one with a premise both grim and hopeful, and one that leaves young people feeling that, with the right kind of help, they can handle anything. It may not be the biggest idea, and it’s certainly not the most original, but it’s the driving engine at the core of the katamari. 

The Ghost Job: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Mysterious Galaxy

Author socials: Website|Instagram|Bluesky

The Big Idea: Elly Swartz

Posted on October 31, 2023    Posted by Athena Scalzi      1 Comment

Sometimes, a good thing takes longer than you might thing. Elly Swartz knows a little about this, and in today’s Big Idea, she explains why Hidden Truths was worth the wait.

ELLY SWARTZ:

There are moments in life that define us. Moments in life that imprint on our hearts. But what happens when those moments are defined by others. When those moments are echoed in cultural norms and across middle school cafeterias everywhere. What then? Are we able to take back the power and define our own destinies? Are we able to tell the world exactly who we are.

I wanted to find out. Explore this idea in my middle grade novel, Hidden Truths. And it felt like an organic exploration. Because I started this story in 2001!  Yep, that’s 22 years of writing, revising, reimagining. 

22 years of rejection. 

Some asked why I kept writing? It was a good question. It’s not like I’ve gotten better at being rejected – spoiler, I haven’t. And statistically, it didn’t seem likely that this book was ever going to find its way into the world. Or that I was going to find my way to becoming a published author – that was its own 15 year journey. But I realized somewhere along this long winding path that I was a writer because I wrote. Not because somebody said I was good enough. The world didn’t define me. 

That power was mine if I was willing and courageous enough to own it.

I loved this idea. So I dove into it as I wrote Hidden Truths. Were my two main characters—Dani and Eric—willing to color outside the lines? Own their own narrative? Defy the labels and assumptions that were put upon them?

The answer was yes. 

This story is told from alternating points of view, so the reader hears from both Eric and Dani—their struggles, their doubts, and their discoveries. Eric has ADHD and, at times, is bullied – physically and verbally by his nemesis Leo, and on social media by his bff’s new friend Meadow—which is complicated for a whole host of other reasons. 

But as the story moves forward, Eric learns that he’s much more than the way the world defines him. He is not a loser because Leo called him one. He is not his ADHD. He is a loyal friend, a curious thinker, an innovative problem solver, a kind heart, and a good person. He is not one thing. He is a blend of all the traits he’s proud of and all the ones he’s working on. 

After all, we’re all working on something. Right?

We also see that labels don’t just impact Eric, but Dani, too. She’s been told her whole life that she’ll never make the all-boys baseball team—because she’s a good player, but good for a girl. And that’s somehow different. Unqualifying. But Dani doesn’t listen to the haters. She rises above and defies the gender stereotype. She is later reminded that, “Life is not happening to you….[Y]ou get to choose who you are.” (194)

Choice. It’s an empowering thing.

Dani and Eric are more than the bully’s taunts and societal labels. 

I want all kids to see that they, too, are so much more than the way the world defines them.

I want all kids to own their own narrative. Color outside the lines.

So what did I learn along my 22 year winding path to publication? 

You hold the power to tell the world exactly who you are.

Own it! Embrace it! And never give it away!

Hidden Truths: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s

Author Socials: Website|Twitter|Instagram

The Big Idea: Annie Carl

Posted on October 30, 2023    Posted by Athena Scalzi      3 Comments

Author Annie Carl is on a mission to bring the disabled writing community into the spotlight with her newest anthology, Soul Jar, written entirely by disabled authors. Come along in her Big Idea as she tells us how she came up with the idea for this anthology, and what led to her desire to make it happen.

ANNIE CARL:

I’ve been disabled my whole life. And a reader for the better part of my life. And a nerd since before I knew what that word meant. 

Society likes to ignore the disabled community until a story comes along about a person “overcoming the odds” or some other such inspiration porn bullshit. Once that news cycle blurs into obscurity, it’s back to being the invisible minority again.

I was invisible over and over growing up. Occasionally my peers would pay attention, but it was usually just after another surgery. They’d come visit while I was in the hospital or at home. Then I would be out of their lives until the next surgery. 

It was traumatic being the sad, pathetic disabled child, dropped as soon as I wasn’t interesting. For a long time, I did my best to ignore my disabilities. I didn’t want to be identified by them; I wanted to be appreciated for being me, not someone impacted by medical trauma. Then, in 2017 during a bookseller trade show in a panel for diversity, the panelists discussed authors and books from and about people of color, different religious backgrounds, and the LBTQIA+ community. I kept hoping the panelists would pull disabilities out of their proverbial back pocket. They never did. So I threw my hand up the moment the audience Q&A arrived. I demanded, rather timidly to be honest, if the panelists had any information about disabled representation. Surprise, surprise, they did not. It was suddenly important to me to bring the conversation back to disabilities. I even cornered one of the panelists after the event. 

The lack of information and hollow promises of “more information next time” still echo in my mind. That was the moment I accepted my disabilities and became an advocate. I decided when there was a next time, I wanted to speak as a panelist, to share my story instead of just listening to others tell theirs. 

Over the next four years, I presented about disability and my own journey on multiple panels with other authors and booksellers. I curated a Disability in Fiction section in my bookstore. I wrote My Tropey Life, a chapbook about disabled representation in pop culture. But I still wasn’t seeing myself in the genres I love—specifically science fiction and fantasy. 

When I did come across disabled characters, they were often the villains: a tactic society has had in place for centuries of storytelling. Either that, or they were dismissed as unimportant side characters, cured, or killed. Death of a disabled characters seems to be popular plot device. 

During summer of 2021, I decided I wanted to produce an anthology of science fiction and fantasy with positive disabled representation. Written by disabled authors, not able-bodied authors trying to imagine characters with differences. That was very important to me. The publishing and bookselling worlds are ridiculous gatekeepers when it comes to certain kinds of authors and the positive representation of specific people. I decided to pitch my book idea to Laura Stanfill of Forest Avenue Press, who introduced herself to me after that 2017 panel. I remember being super nervous, even though Laura and I were good friends by that point. But she would be answering as a professional, not as my friend. Laura was about to publish Dispatches from Anarres: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. LeGuin, and I wasn’t sure if she wanted to do another sci-fi/fantasy anthology so soon. 

But Laura, being disabled herself, was absolutely on board and excited! 

The work on Soul Jar: 31 Fantastical Tales by Disabled Authors began soon after. We needed authors! We needed someone to write the foreword! We needed the disabled writing community.

Laura and I hit the jackpot in fall 2021 while at the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association’s yearly trade show. Nicola Griffith just happened to be presenting her latest novel, Spear, to the booksellers in attendance. Laura and I thought she would be perfect to write the foreword, and Nicola said yes! We had our first story and a promise for a foreword.

Story submissions opened at the end of January 2022 and they poured in. We caught the attention of disabled authors across the nation. People like me who worked hard to come out of the invisibility shrouding the disabled community. Writers who also witnessed the disparity between the attention for other marginalized authors and the disabled writing and publishing community.

These writers were given a unique opportunity to tell magical, otherworldly, and terrifying stories about themselves and others like them. A moment like this one does not happen often for the disabled writing community. Rarely are we given any sort of chance to shine outside of the bootstrapping, inspiration porn narratives. Astronauts have to be in the best possible physical and psychological shape to get to space. Questing through magical lands usually does not involve a wheelchair, and often does involve massive sensory overload. It’s not easy, trying to exist in alternative realities with Deafness or mobility aids. 

So where do we, disabled people, land in the narrative?

Right in the middle of it. Because disabled people are just that, people on quests and flying through space and having adventures, just like everyone else.

Soul Jar: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s

Author’s socials: Website|Facebook|Instagram

The Big Idea: Greta Kelly

Posted on October 26, 2023    Posted by John Scalzi      2 Comments

Well-worn phrases can still have life in them, as author Greta Kelly discovered in the writing of her latest, The Queen of Days. What maxim has her attention, and will it have yours? Read on to find out.

GRETA KELLY:

Blood is thicker than water.

It’s an idiom so well worn we barely even have to think to understand it. And yet stories about families—whether through birth or the happenstance of fate, are ones that I find myself drawn to like the proverbial moth. So it may not be a huge surprise to find out that the Talion Gang—the crime family at the heart of The Queen of Days—act more like a chaotic group of unruly siblings than a band of criminals looking to go pro.

Capturing their interactions was some of most joyous writing I’ve ever done, in part because their quirks and turns of phrase were so deeply inspired by my own siblings. (I suppose there is something to be said about writing what you know—another adage so well-worn its fraying at the edges.) Their arguments and inside jokes and easy affection almost seemed to write themselves. And for all their charm and endless banter, they were also supremely practical in assessing their own shortcomings. And they are manifold.

In broad strokes The Queen of Days is about a crew of thieves setting out to stop their city’s governor from resurrecting a fallen god. Nothing about that sentence accurately conveys how out of their depth they are. And they know it. They’re thieves in the most 1920’s sense of the word; they’re the kind to toss a bomb into a bank and clear out the vault in the chaos. But stick around to clean up the mess they made? Hard pass. To say these gremlins are a grudging band of heroes is an understatement. Hell, I had to take their city and chuck it out to sea just to make it harder for them to run away.

If they had any chance of surviving this story, let alone come out on top, they’d need help. A weapon of last resort. They’d need The Queen of Days. They’d need Tassiel.

But the Talion Gang was already bound together so deeply by blood that the idea of bringing a stranger into the mix was a daunting one. It was clear what the Talion were getting from the deal—Tassiel was vastly more powerful than the motley group of humans. She was very clearly their best chance of survival. But she was more mysterious too. Alien in a slightly off-putting kind of way. And in early drafts of the book, I found myself wondering what she got out of all this mess.

I wrote in circles trying to untangle her reasons for agreeing to join the gang in this fool’s venture. Revising and refining. Draft after draft, I finally threw my hands in the air and gave her her own point of view chapters…and they just didn’t work. The majority of the book was written in first person perspective from the leader of the Talion, Bal—which suited him to the hilt and helped me illustrate his brazenness and impulsivity, his fears and vulnerabilities. But that wasn’t working for Tass.

And then it hit me. For all her strength and magic and power, Bal and his crew had the one thing she didn’t: each other. Tass’s family cast her out, left her for dead and never looked back. And so seeing the Talion, working among them, must have been torturous for her. But Tass would never acknowledge that pain, nor the desire behind it. She was an unreliable narrator, not out of malice, but for the simple fact that there are things she couldn’t admit. Not to herself. Not out loud.

And so I took a chance and rewrote her chapters in third person. Mind you, it was still a close third person, but the change made all the difference. It allowed me to pull back the lens just enough to let her wounds see the light of day. To reveal where she’d lied—to herself more than anyone else.

What she wanted, more than money or vengeance or redemption, was a home. A family. All it took was a slight shift in perspective for me to see it. For Bal to see it too. And suddenly the way forward became clear. If Tass was going to join the crew, she’d have to join the family too.

Blood may be thicker than water.

But the strongest bonds come from time served.

—-

The Queen of Days: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s

Author Socials: Website|Twitter|Facebook