Fable & The Verbivore

In this our last episode of 2020, Fable and the Verbivore dive into Stephanie Garber’s Caraval series - which is one of our comfort reads.

We unpack how the author pulls the reader in and gets them invested in a book while also telling you up front to “Remember, It’s Only a Game”. By placing a character who is highly careful and a poor liar into a game of deceit and where the stakes are high, she made a delicious and intriguing read where the reader is constantly trying to figure out, like Scarlet, what is real and what is not.

As part of this discussion, we talk about the continuous and well-paced world building she uses to keep the story unfolding over time, and how changing locations between the first and second book allows her to open the story up and introduce new characters that have only been heard about in passing in the first book.

We also talk about some of the other things we enjoy about this series. How her use of efficient, colorful, and distinctive descriptions help the reader feel immersed in her world on a visceral level without feeling bogged down. The visual story telling elements the help further the story in the front and back covers, maps, and through the imagery and symbols sprinkled throughout. The choices of which POV characters to use in each book of the series at any given time are masterfully done, allowing her to give out new information and change the perspective on the action.

Stephanie Garber has published three books in the YA Fantasy Caraval series: Caraval, Legendary, and Finale. She also recently announced a new duology set within the Caraval universe called Once Upon A Broken Heart set to be released on September 28, 2021. Her website has some great writing resources, which can be found here.

We hope you enjoy listening to this episode! Keep reading, and writing, and putting your voice out there!

And we look forward to continuing this journey in 2021!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Today’s episode of Fable and the Verbivore finds Bethany and Laura talking about Christmas stories. During this informal discussion, we look back on a difficult year and discuss what connects us emotionally to these stories.

Truths and strong theme are often present in these holiday stories. We unpack the ideas that we resonate with in these stories such as:

Where’s the value in a life?

Life’s a struggle, but it’s a worthwhile one

When we’re looking for love in the world, we see it

While there’s life there’s hope

We take a large portion of our time to discuss the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. This film has great examples where the story demonstrates emotions through action, how the writers built a likeable but flawed character that you then watch struggle for the majority of the film, and how each scene shows something about his character or the changes he’s undergoing.

We also talk about the desire for positive and hopeful messages as we go into the winter season, especially in the year 2020.

We hope you all enjoy this episode as you follow your own traditions, and have a wonderful Christmas and holiday season!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Today marks the one year of the Fable and the Verbivore podcast! Since it’s nearing the end of November, we decided to talk about our writing experiences during NaNoWriMo and our gratitude for this space. And especially our thankfulness for you, our listeners!

In this conversation, we discuss how Beth (Fable) ‘won’ NaNo very early (Nov. 11th) and how important it is to celebrate the milestones we cross and to recognize our strengths in addition to our weaknesses. Laura (the Verbivore) shares some of her experiences researching WWII for the historical fiction novel she’s writing as well as the challenges of shifting through the layers of complexity when digging into any historical timeframe.

We also discuss our different methods for creating. The Verbivore goes back into scenes and edits as she goes, and Fable edits once she has her first draft complete. Fable writes each scene in the order that they occur in her story. The Verbivore writes the scene that she’s emotionally ready to tackle. Though it is humorous just how different our writing processes are, the important thing for any writer is to recognize that all our brains function differently and to find what is most effective for you.

Towards the end, we talk about identifying when our writing is most effective and when it’s not. And how during NaNoWriMo those hours that we don’t use for writing words can be used effectively for research, consuming other creative works, and self-care.

We hope you enjoy this episode and thank you for listening! We will be going on a 3-week hiatus following this episode to finish up our writing projects, have a little down time, and brainstorm future episodes of Fable and The Verbivore. Our Christmas episode will be posting on December 22nd.

Until then - keep reading, and writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Today we are thrilled to share our latest author interview! In this episode, Fable and the Verbivore have the chance to speak with author C.L. (Cami) Walters.

Cami is the author of five contemporary YA novels and is just starting to work on the world building process for a YA fantasy. During our conversation, we focus our conversation on her latest self-published YA contemporary romance The Stories Stars Tell which debuted on October 13th of this year. She has also writen the books The Letters She Left Behind and the Cantos Chronicles (Swimming Sideway, The Ugly Truth, The Bones of Who We Are) which take place in her home state of Hawaii.

In this episode, Cami discusses getting vulnerable and digging deep to help find the emotional core of a story. She walks us through the interviewing process that she uses in her character development to help her identify not just the character’s want, but the root of that want (the why). She also gives some great advice on reading widely and using that process to help open new frontiers within your own writing.

We also touch on the ways in which her current novel explores purity culture and important topics of consent, sexuality, and finding your voice to say what you do and do not want. Towards the end of our conversation, Cami gives a timely bit of advice that our work is best and resonates most when we are willing to bravely share our voice.  

Cami shared lot of wisdom on the topics of managing the self-publication process and how to approach running a book release marketing campaign on Instagram. We also highly recommend checking out her work and connecting with her on her Instagram account @cl.walters and on her website at  https://www.clwalters.net/.

We hope you enjoy this episode! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

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Fable & The Verbivore

For today’s episode, Fable and the Verbivore continue exploring the topic of mystery novels by digging into Agatha Christie’s Crooked House. Mystery author George Dyer said that “Writing a mystery story is like playing a game of chess with a thousand unknown opponents”, and Christie was one of the experts.

Spoiler alert for this episode as we dissect some of the plot twists and the end of this book.

Throughout this episode, we discuss how the author uses her knowledge of the psychology of her characters to weave a complicated web of possible suspects who could have committed the murder of the larger than life family patriarch Aristide Leonides by slowly revealing their layers, unique relationships, and circumstances over time. We also dive into how, in this story about a house filled with ruthless family members - all of who have secrets to keep, the author uses many tricks of misdirection in the placing of her clues as well as timely reveals and reversals to keep the story spinning into new directions and the reader guessing.

We also unpack how she creates a fair game with a puzzle that could be solved, but she uses writing techniques to mask or give more than one interpretation to the information presented. Like the character Watson in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series, the amateur sleuth Charles is both a biased observer and often comes to the wrong conclusion. She also uses the prejudices and bias of her society to cast suspicion on some characters and remove it from others.

Agatha Christie (lived 1890 to 1976) is known as one of the most prolific writers in the Mystery and Thriller genre, having published sixty-six detective novels and fourteen short story collections between. She is considered to be one of the early trailblazers in the Mystery genre and many authors use the ideas, devices, and tropes found in her work in their modern mysteries. Many of her novels include one of her two famous sleuths Poirot and Miss Marple. Crooked House is a standalone book within an amateur sleuth. It was one of her later written works and a personal favorite.

We hope you enjoy listening to this episode! Keep reading, and writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Today we have Sabrina Attwell, also known as S.Z. Attwell, with us talking about her writing rituals, routines, and tools.

S.Z. Attwell is the author of Aestus, an epic dystopian science-fiction series that focuses on the long-term societal effects of severe climate change. It's been described by reviewers as "...masterful...on par with the best in the genre..." and "a phenomenal read," as well as "the best fiction book I've read this year." She chose to focus on this subject because she considers it vitally important that we do something about climate change and environmental issues NOW.

Sabrina's a part-time science writer in her everyday life, and has an M.A. in media studies; she does photography and archery on the side. She lives in New England, though she was raised in the Pacific Northwest and still misses the open land (and her cats).

She loves interacting with readers/other writers and is active on social media (especially Twitter)!

We hope you enjoy this mini-episode and that it leaves you feeling inspired to find the things that help put you in the right mood to write.

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

In today’s episode, Fable and the Verbivore dig into all things mystery from the art of building questions in your reader’s mind to the basic elements that make up stories within this genre.

Mysteries are intriguing to us as readers and we’ve found the study of the techniques that mystery authors use to craft their stories fascinating as writers. We start by breaking the concept of “what is a mystery?” free from its genre and explore the dictionary definition that says it’s “something that is difficult to understand or explain - a puzzle, an enigma, a conundrum, a riddle, a secret, or an unsolved problem.”

In this episode, we delve into how stories from all genres can contain mystery elements that create tension, uncertainty, and help the readers become more invested in finding out what happens next. We discuss how mystery writers are masters in strategies of misdirection. They cloak clues by hiding them in paragraphs of setting description, buried in lists of information, and quickly move focus away by directing the reader’s attention to character interactions where the reader is invested in the outcome.  

We also discuss examples of where books outside the mystery genre used mystery elements to great effect as in Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and The Magnolia Sword by Sherry Thomas, and how writer/director Rian Johnson intercut thriller plot beats within the who-dun-it film Knives Out to create a fascinating story that challenges the assumptions of what mystery stories can be.

We hope you enjoy this episode! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Hello, Readers & Writers! Today we have LP Savage with us for an Author Answers mini-episode in which she shares about her writing routine and rituals.

LP Savage is a YA fantasy writer who loves to create both new epic worlds and speculative elements in our own contemporary world. She currently has two manuscripts titled Secrets of Sorcery and Kingdom in Shadow, which she plans to query this fall/winter. She also publishes weekly articles about writing tips, topics, and personal experiences on her blog, Newbie to Novelist. 

We love what Savage shares about creating habits for yourself and finding what works for you, which might be different from other writers. Thanks so much for sharing your experience with us, LP Savage!

Into the Woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Leaning into the Halloween season, Fable and the Verbivore are unpacking the beautiful creepy complexity of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s gothic horror novel Mexican Gothic.

We jump right into this topic by discussing the oppressive and claustrophobic gothic atmosphere that the author creates, sitting within the realm of traditional classic gothic novels such as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Rebecca while also channeling a Lovecraftian level of unease and (mostly) bloodless horror. To her unique and atmospheric style, she also focuses a modern lens and light on the ugly and sometimes overlooked truths of the past as well as the present.

In this episode, we discuss Silvia’s masterful setup of intriguing questions within the first chapter - especially the first line, while also fully establishing Noemí Taboada‘s vibrant and strong-willed character prior to her entering into the murky and secretive world of the house at High Place. We discuss how well the elements of the cover art work together to tell part of Noemí’s story, before even cracking open the book and reading one word.

There are also many symbols that she uses throughout the story to help visually show the toxic and parasitic relationships that have been allowed to run rampant and fester within the family. If you are looking for a thoughtfully and exquisitely crafted gothic horror novel, we highly recommend this book!

Author Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s work in many ways feels like it defies categorization or genre, but she seems to write wherever her imagination takes her - having published works in speculative fiction and fantasy, with a recent expansion into crime fiction. We wouldn’t have it any other way and look forward to reading more of her work. Some of her more recent novels include the Mayan myth retelling Gods of Jade and Shadow, sweeping fantasy The Beautiful Ones, and the quiet thriller Untamed Shore.

We hope you enjoy listening to this episode! It was fascinating to share with each other how this story was able to make us feel and the visceral reactions we had to some of the scenes. Keep reading, and writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Today we have Dicky Kitchen Jr. sharing about his writing routine for our Author Answers mini-podcast episode.

We got connected with Dicky over instagram, when he started commenting on our posts. His comments often gave us something new to think about and regularly made us laugh out loud. Dicky just self-published his first book, Prey/Pray: Origin of The Average Man, which is a fast-paced psychological thriller. In addition to psychological thrillers, he's working on a few horror stories, and, as a father himself, he's also currently writing a children's story. 

Dicky shares a little bit about how his writing routine has changed this year and how he sets himself up to get the most out of his writing time.

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore