Meet Richard White

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author, For a Few Gold Pieces More, GLVWG "Write Stuff", Richard White, Writer Beware

I’m fascinated by your study of the Japanese martial art, Kendo (Way of the Sword). Please tell us how you became involved with it and how far you have progressed. Have your experiences with sword fighting provided material or inspiration for any of your fiction?

White: I’ve been playing with swords since 1978. I started out by taking fencing as a PE class in college. I confused the heck out of my coach when I asked her if she had a left-handed foil. She found the left-handed gear and then watched me fumble with it for a bit. She then noted, “You’re not left-handed,” to which I admitted I was not. “Why do you want to fight left-handed?” I simply replied, “There are 33 of us in the class and everyone’s right-handed. This way, I get to practice against 32 right-handers and they only get to practice against me about once every four classes.” She nodded and said, “I’d like to talk to you about joining the fencing team after you finish this class.” *grin*

After that, I wound up joining up with the local Society for Creative Anachronism and kept it up after I joined the Army. I loved going to fighter practice, especially when I lived in Monterey, CA. It was great stress relief after spending a week beating my head against my desk trying to learn Arabic. I learned broadsword and shield, great sword, Florentine, and battle axe and shield (as a left-hander again). I learned quickly why people hate fighting lefties. If you’re fighting a right-hander against another right-hander and you miss a shot low, you get hit on the bottom. If you fight a lefty and he misses low on you, you get caught straight in the cup. A most unpleasant experience let me assure you. *grin*

I was never knighted or anything like that in the SCA, but I was a herald as well as an apprentice armorer when I wasn’t fighting. I’ve done field heraldry, court heraldry, as well as helping people design their coats of arms. Heraldry is a fascinating field and I loved doing all the research.

I also learned that armor is HEAVY. My suit was metal scales on a leather tunic that hung down to mid-thigh. That was over a padded suit. Then I wore 12-gauge steel arm and leg armor, I had a 10-gauge steel helmet and 14-gauge chain hanging from the helmet to protect my neck. (And, of course, I had a steel cup that fit over the regular baseball cup I used.) I think my armor clocked in somewhere around 50 pounds. Which doesn’t sound like much until you’re wearing it for a couple of hours out in the sun, but believe me, you’ll notice it after a while.

I wound up getting introduced to Kendo in 2001 thanks to a co-worker after I left the Army. I’ve been participating off and on since then and have reached the rank of nidan. I primarily fight ito (or one sword), but I have tried my hand at nito (two-swords). I’ve also been introduced to naginata (polearm) and I’ve watched but never tried kyudo (bow) or jo (staff).

My fighting experience definitely has helped my writing. I’ve been known to grab some of my friends and actually try out a maneuver to see if it’s physically possible or even feasible. I’ve also organized a couple of melees and then just watched and taken notes, which I think helps bring a more realistic feel to my fight scenes.

 

What inspired your short story series, For a Few Gold Pieces More? Is there a common theme that connects each of the stories? There are currently nine installments. Will there be a tenth?

White: For a Few Gold Pieces More started out as a single short story, mainly to prove to myself I could write one. The Demon’s Head was my first serious attempt at writing under 5,000 words and it was painful to try and keep the word count down. When I sent it to a friend for review, she offered to publish it through her small press . . . but could I expand it to a slightly longer story because she wanted a series of stories.

*note: Never give a writer an excuse to go long. It never ends well*

To put together the series, I decided on two things. Since I had not named the main character in the first story, I was never going to name him. In fact, nowhere in the ten stories, do I ever name nor describe the character. I got the idea after watching The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and that’s how my “Rogue with No Name” was born. In fact, I have been known to put on some Clint Eastwood movies to try and get that sound in my head before writing specific scenes.

The second thing was, I wanted to explore folktales and myths, but I wanted to step away from the ones that have been done to death. So, Shades of Blue, my third story is a mash-up of Dracula and Bluebeard; Skin the Cat is the legend of Catskin (the creepy pervy version of Cinderella); Wings of Fire is the Firebird from Russia; and Pearls of Water is the Swan Princess, but a Chinese version of that legend. I hope to use this collection to get people to expand their knowledge of myth and folktales beyond Grimm and Andersen, (although they do have good stories too).

The last story wraps up the first arc of my protagonist’s life. Sword of Fate is another mash-up, linking a Scandinavian folktale and Yorba mythology. I got the idea for this story after reading My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola in my African Literature class. If you’re not familiar with this book, I highly recommend it. Why this hasn’t been turned into a fantasy horror movie yet, I do not understand.

I’m not sure if I’m going to continue doing more stories with this character, although I suspect I will. I’ve been writing his tales for nearly three years now. I think it’s time a few other characters got a chance to come out and play.

How did you become involved with Writer Beware and what is its mission?

White: Writer Beware® in a nutshell is the anti-scam committee for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. We do a number of things to help authors, regardless of their experience or genre – we have a database where we keep track of complaints about publishers, we maintain a blog and a Facebook presence to help spread the word of “unusual” practices we observe, we are always willing to review a contract and compare it against other contracts we have on file to try and help spot “unusual” clauses, and things like this. We also go to conventions, writer’s workshops, and talk on college campuses with new and not-so-new writers who may have questions.

Writer Beware® is led by our chairman, Victoria Strauss, and Michael Capobianco and I are the other two team members. We’d love to add some SFWA members from the Midwest or West Coast to help expand our reach, but right now, we’re the team.

I had met Ann Crispin at several conventions and sat through her classes on how to write query letters. Then a few years after that, I ran into Victoria Strauss and Ann at an on-line writer’s forum called Absolute Write Water Cooler. I started out helping over there, checking up on odd claims by small publishers and using my analytic training to spot things that weren’t quite right.

I contacted Ann in 2007 to see if there was anything I could do officially to help out with Writer Beware and joined the team that summer. I’ve been doing a lot of roadwork for the team, going to conventions and doing talks about ways authors can derail their own careers because they get in too much of a hurry to get published. When people get that offer, sometimes the “Oh my gosh, this is it!” rush takes over and they don’t double and triple check things before signing on the dotted line. It never hurts to get a second opinion – especially before you submit, rather than afterward.

For the Write Stuff conference, can you please give us a summary of what you will cover in your Friday night “Writer Beware” session and in your Saturday presentation, “Craft of Writing Historical Fiction”?

White: For the Writer Beware session, I’ll be doing a slideshow presentation I call “How Not to Get Published”. We’ll discuss agents, publishers, and the business of writing as well as talking about self-publishing. If I can get one person to do their research before they send their manuscript into the cold dark night, then it’ll have been a useful session.

For the Historical Fiction talk, I’ll be talking about separating reality from fantasy (aka, don’t believe everything you see on TV). I’ll be promoting good places to do your research as well as sources that might need to be taken with a grain of salt. I’ll discuss my personal research techniques as well as soliciting questions from the audience so I can tailor the talk more to what they want to get from it. Their needs/desires might be quite different what I’m envisioning while I’m typing this, so I need to be flexible to give the audience something useful (and hopefully interesting).

What have you released recently and what publications are on the horizon?

White: I’ve been working on a number of projects. My last story for the collection, Sword of Fate, will be released in December 2014 by Musa Publishing. Also, I have several projects coming out from Pro Se Productions in 2015, to include Black Cat: Mouse Trap, a novella featuring the Golden-Age Black Cat from Harvey Comics, Strikeforce Falcon: Flashpoint, which is an action-adventure short story set in the Pacific theater of WWII, The Full Moon Affair and The Pearls of Darkness Affair, which are two fantasy noir novellas featuring my detective Theron Chase.

Also, I’m finishing up a short story for inclusion in the Origins Gaming Festival anthology. My story, A Gryphon’s Tale, was in the 2014 anthology, Monsters, and this year’s theme is Space. I’ve got an interesting take on a Jules Verne story and I hope the editor agrees with me. *grin*

Beyond that, I have several other projects that have been approved, but the publishers haven’t cleared them for promotion quite yet and, of course, I have other stories and novels I’m working on that I hope to find homes for in the near future.

Also, I am collecting up my old world-building column Terra Incognito that I did for Penumbra magazine and will be releasing it as a non-fiction book in 2015. I’ve got a friend who’s an editor who’ll be helping me smooth out some of the transitions – what works in a magazine doesn’t quite work as a book sometimes – and then we’ll be releasing it under my old company banner, Nightwolf Graphics.

Meet Michael Jan Friedman

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author, Crazy 8 Press, GLVWG "Write Stuff", Michael Jan Friedman, The Vidar Saga

For thirty years, Michael Jan Friedman has written SF, Fantasy, paranormal, media tie-in, biographies, and comic books for both DC and Marvel. He is one of most prolific authors out there. We are honored to have him join us for the 2015 Write Stuff conference. So, let’s get talkin’ to Michael Jan Friedman!

You co-wrote a season two episode of Star Trek: Voyager called “Resistance”. How did that opportunity come about? What else have you written for television and/or radio?

Actually, my partner and I pitched to the various Star Trek shows several times before we struck gold and sold a story. The Trek programs were pretty much the only shows around that took pitches from pretty much anybody. Each time my partner and I sat down with the producers, they listened, smiled, and told us that they had our ideas in production already. That was discouraging and encouraging at the same time. Finally, we sold a pitch that was basically “Janeway plays Dulcinea to a Kazon Don Quixote.” Jeri Taylor, the show runner on Voyager, loved it and bought it almost on the spot. The next day, she called us and said she had gotten substantially the same pitch from someone else. Had we spoken to her a day later, she would have had to accept the other pitch rather than ours.

On the television side, I’ve also written on-air promos for Nick at Nite. The one that sticks out in my mind is “The Gunther Toody School of Public Speaking.” Toody and Fred Gwynn’s character, Muldoon, were the two lead cops on Car 54. Toody was known for saying “Ooh, ohh,” when he got excited, so all he said in the promo as a model of public speaking was “Ooh, ooh.”

In radio, I wrote a series of spots for restaurant critic Bob Lape advertising Freixenet sparkling wine. Each spot talked about how Freixenet went with one cuisine or another. They were interesting, actually. If you were into cooking, you could actually learn something from them.

You are currently in the process of re-releasing your first original fantasy trilogy, The Vidar Saga. Can you tell us a bit about the story? What made you decide to re-issue the series this year and with all new cover art?

The Vidar Saga is a heroic fantasy. Vidar, a bastard son of Odin, is often said to be one of the survivors of Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Norse Gods. I took him and plunked him down in the 20^th century, and then pulled him back into a resurgence of the old conflicts that destroyed Odin’s Asgard.

I’m re-releasing the series (The Hammer and The Horn, the first book, is already available as either a hard copy or an e-book through Amazon and BN.com) as part of our push at Crazy 8 Press to get our founding members’ older works back in print.

Meet Donna Galanti

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A Human Element, author, Donna Galanti, GLVWG "Write Stuff", Month9Books

On your website, the first point under Fun Facts is that you read the first and last page of a book before buying it. Is that something you always did? If not, what prompted that habit?

I’ve done that for years, yes! But I can edit that down now to just reading the first and last line. I love openings and endings and I figure if I love the first line and the last line then it’s a good indicator I will love the book all the way to through.

What about the first and last page persuades you to buy a book?

It’s an emotional pull for me and usually physical. If a book’s beginning (or ending) makes me hold my breath, gasp, or freeze in place – I know it’s a good sign. It’s amazing how powerful words can be in transforming how we feel.

You served as a US Navy Photographer. Did that experience inspire any stories for your writing? How so?

Yes! In A Human Element, book 1 in the Element Trilogy, my male lead, Ben, is a Naval photographer stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, like I was many years ago. Ben gets himself in a wee bit of trouble with the locals at a secluded spot on the island of Oahu. As military service people we were warned to stay away from certain island locales, like the Pali Lookout where the ghosts of ancient Hawaiian people were rumored to haunt. There were also rumors of non-locals disappearing at the lookout. Thrown off the edge? Who knows for sure, but it drove my imagination to include a dark event surrounding this place in my book.

Meet Aaron Rosenberg

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Aaron Rosenberg, author, Daemon’s Gate trilogy, GLVWG "Write Stuff", Pete and Penny’s Pizza Puzzles, World of Warcraft

You’ve worked extensively as a designer of role-playing games, which presumably led to your two World of Warcraft novels and the Daemon’s Gate trilogy. How did your involvement in gaming come about? Are there any particular favorites among the games that you designed?

I started in gaming the way most of us do—as a gamer. Back in fifth grade, my friends and I discovered this strange box called Dungeons & Dragons, and my parents were kind enough—and open-minded enough—to get it for me. I played D&D for years, right up into high school, and then when I went to college I discovered that my school (the University of Kansas) had a very strong roleplaying society, so I joined. My friends and I continued to game for several years, and then we got the crazy idea to create an RPG of our own. We debuted it at GenCon in 1994, and I used that as a springboard to speak to other game publishers. That led to a few small projects, which led to bigger projects, and so on. I think I’ve done somewhere around eighty game projects at this point, from short bits to full books.

As far as particular favorites, that’s always tough. I had a great time doing my Warhammer supplement, Lure of the Lich Lord, because it was actually based on the second novel in my Warhammer trilogy—I’d already planned to focus that book on a dungeon crawl, essentially, so I suggested to my editor that it would be fun to do the dungeon as a game supplement and they went for it. Others that I enjoyed writing were my Deadlands supplement, Great Weird North, and the Deryni roleplaying game, plus the recent pieces I just did for the Firefly RPG supplement, The Smuggler’s Guide to the Rim. They’re all fun, though—that’s why we write them, after all, is because we love doing them.

Your media tie-in works include Star Trek’s SCE series (Starfleet Corps of Engineers), a Stargate: Atlantis novel, Hunt and Run, and your two Eureka novels. How did you become involved in media tie-in?

Well, I moved to New York in 1998, right after leaving grad school. One of the people I knew in NY was a fellow KU alum who had gone on to become an editor on the Star Trek line. He invited me to pitch for the all-new Star Trek: SCE line, and that became my first SCE novel, The Riddled Post. Tie-in writing is one of those funny things where it’s really hard to break in but once you have, if you show that you can do good work on time and to direction, you have a good chance of getting offered more. That’s basically what happened with me—I wound up doing five SCE novels, and between those and all my RPG work, several editors invited me to work on other properties, like Stargate: Atlantis and Eureka.

How did you come to write children’s books such as the Pete and Penny’s Pizza Puzzles series?

Back in 2002, an editor I knew at Scholastic was looking for authors for PowerPuff Girls books. I was available at the time, and already knew and loved the show, and I came up with a pitch she liked, so that was my first children’s book. That same year, another editor I knew needed an author to do a young adult educational book on the Bermuda Triangle, and I thought that sounded fun so I said “sure!” I wound up writing a bunch of educational books for that same publisher over the next few years, and then got a chance to do two Transformers Animated books for HarperCollins. Then a friend introduced me to an editor at Grosset & Dunlap, who offered me my first junior novelization, for the movie Bandslam. That book won a Scribe Award, and afterward, the editor asked me if I’d like to do an original children’s book series with them. That became Pete and Penny’s Pizza Puzzles. I still get emails and letters occasionally asking if there are going to be more books to that series.

Can you tell us about some of the educational books you’ve written for Scholastic and Zenoscope?

Ha, I guess I just did a little bit! J As is often the case, once you write something for one publisher, if you do a good job, other publishers notice and keep you in mind when they have similar projects. That’s how I wound up writing for Scholastic, that and because one of my editors at Penguin moved to Scholastic and mentioned me when a fellow editor needed an author. I started writing for Zenoscope because a friend was hired to develop two books for them and asked me and several others to contribute. They liked me enough that they offered me a third book after those two were done. I really like doing the educational books—they satisfy my old teacher urges, they’re a lot of fun, and I often learn all kinds of things in the process! Plus, it’s really exciting to go to schools and see the kids get all excited about things like the Civil War.

What can you tell us about the origins of the Scattered Earth science fiction series and the universe in which the stories are set?

The Scattered Earth began with an email from a buddy of mine, Steve Savile. Steve told me that he and another friend, David Niall Wilson, had been talking about wanting to do an epic space-opera series, and they were wondering if I might be interested in participating. I said yes, of course, so the three of us started brainstorming. Steve ultimately wound up having to step down because he got too busy with other projects, but David and I continued it. The basic premise is that, a long time ago, the Earth was shattered into bits, and those bits floated out into the cosmos. Many of them were restored by other races, and humanity was reseeded on those newly revived fragments, but each place was skewed by its rescuers, so every group is different. And every group believes it is the one and only Earth. Many of them even believe they are alone in the universe—until an event makes them look beyond their own horizons and question everything they know about themselves and their place in the cosmos.

My novel The Birth of the Dread Remora was the first Scattered Earth book, followed by David’s The Second Veil. Our plan from the start was to do distinct but connected series, and we plotted out ways our two storylines would intersect down the road. Then we opened the setting up to other authors, providing a series bible and guidelines so others could write stories that would link up with our own. It’s been a great deal of fun, and we’ve got several more books in the works, both our own and by other authors.

For the Write Stuff conference, can you please give us a sneak peak into what you will talk about in your Saturday presentations, “Trends in Early Reader Books” and “Creating a Captivating Cover”?

For the first one, I’m going to talk about not only how to write a middle-grade or young adult book, but also what publishers are looking for in terms of length, style, genre, series, etc. I’ve had a lot of experience with children’s books, both writing them and working on the publishing side, so I’ve seen a lot of things most writers haven’t. I’m going to provide a lot of tips that will help aspiring authors really focus their work in those areas.

For the second presentation, I’m going to talk about covers, obviously. I’m a professional graphic designer, and the print manager for two different small presses, so I build a lot of covers and work on a lot of covers. Most writers aren’t artists themselves, so I’m going to offer tips on what sort of thing you want for your cover, how to work with an artist, what you need to provide to a printer, and more details to really help writers get the best cover for their particular book.

What have you published recently and what can readers expect from you next?

My latest novel is the third book in my humorous SF series The Adventures of DuckBob Spinowitz, which follows a man who was modified by aliens and given the head of a duck, and who also wound up becoming the unlikely protector of the universe. The novel is Three Small Coinkydinks, and it deals with DuckBob, his friend Ned, Ned’s home world, and its bizarre similarities to Brooklyn, tons of aliens, and, of course, a plot to take over the universe.

Coming next, I’ve got a thriller novel I’m doing with Steve Savile called Lost Cause. It’s the next book in his Ogmios series about a top secret British espionage team that is sent in when the government can’t officially get involved. Lost Cause is set in Japan and centers around a British businessman and a plot to steal the Japanese Imperial Regalia.

I’ve also got short stories coming out for The X-Files, V-Wars, Shadowrun, and Crusader Kings II, the aforementioned Firefly RPG supplement The Smuggler’s Guide to the Rim, an epic fantasy novel set in an Asian-inspired world, and an urban fantasy novel. I like to keep busy. J

A New Conference Begins…

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conference, conference faculty, Kristen Lamb

As some of you may know and others to be surprised, our former All the Write Stuff conference blog was hacked. Saying that, please do not despair that all of yesteryears’ tidbits and interviews are gone.  One of the admin’s has access to be able to “cut and paste” them and that will be ongoing. But for now, please allow us to welcome the upcoming 2015 “Write Stuff” conference with keynote speaker Kristen Lamb, author of the new best-selling book, “Rise of the Machines–Human Authors in a Digital World” in addition to the #1 best-selling books “We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media” and “Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer.”

Lots of interviews from our many conference faculty. Stay tuned!

And as always for more information, go to http://www.glvwg.org.