We Make Books Podcast

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music]Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

Kaelyn: My sister just finished reading the Grisha trilogy. And she was, of course, more of a fan of the Six of Crows after reading that. But one of the things she messaged me- she was like “yeah, the ending was kind of whatever, but it is very clear that this person was reading Harry Potter when they wrote this.”

R: [laughs]

K: And I said “Yeah, that definitely comes through.” She gave me this whole list of like, book two is basically just The Order of the Phoenix, and the end battle with all of the Grisha and the stand downs, all this stuff, and I was like “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” To be honest with you, I kinda limped through the end of that book, I wasn’t thinking about that too much. But anyways, it got me thinking about influences in writing and how writers are influenced and how in some cases that’s something that we’re like “Yes! You can tell that this writer was influenced by such-and-such, and they weave it so beautifully into their story.” And sometimes you get my sister calling me to complain about how she basically just read Harry Potter with Russian witches. 

R: So was your sister accusing the author in any way of plagiarism?

K [overlapping]: Not plagiarism.

R [overlapping]: As a reader I’m curious, like how the reader perceives it when it’s that clear when someone’s been influenced. 

K: I should’ve asked her before we started recording this - and this is something we’ll get to in there - I couldn’t tell if my sister was accusing the author of laziness or unoriginality. 

R: Okay.

K: That’s one of the things I wanted to talk about today as we’re talking about influence. What is influence, how are writers influenced? How’s the best way to leverage and utilize that influence? And when does influence cross into the realm of the negative? When is it no longer praise worthy? When is it, for instance, lazy, contrived, unoriginal, or, in worst case scenario, bordering into plagiarism? 

R: Yeah, because that’s a tricky thing - if we always wrote a completely original story, you wouldn’t have something like Joseph Campbell’s The Hero's Journey. Because we wouldn’t have a set format that a story would take. So when somebody accuses a fantasy book of being “Star Wars with elves,” well, Star Wars was a Greek epic in space. 

K: Oh, I would’ve called it a Western.

R: Okay fine. [overlapping] I mean, people have called it a Western.

K: [overlapping] I mean, both work. Both work. [laughs]

R: Yeah, but I’m just saying, The Hero’s Journey, Joseph Campbell is, he’s studying the ancient literature, so that’s why I decided to say Greek. But if we could always write something that was completely original, there would be no way to study literature with comparisons and contrasts. There are always going to be parallels between stories written in a similar culture by people who are writing in a similar society. Like, a hundred years apart, you would not necessarily detect the influence of Harry Potter in the Grishaverse. But they’re not written a hundred years apart - it was maybe a decade, probably not.

K: I’d be curious to go back and try to time out when

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music]Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

We Make Books Ep. 71 Transcription

Kaelyn: Today we’re talking about villains and antagonists, and why they’re not actually the same thing, except in the cases that they are.

Rekka: Yes, exactly.

K [overlapping]: [laughing]

R: Perfect. I think that nails it. Sometimes they’re not the same thing, sometimes they are.

K: Yeah, and we’ll kinda get to this but, most villains are antagonists - most, not all. Not all antagonists are villains. And in fact you will likely, in any given story, have multiple antagonists, not all of whom are the villain. I went through and really dug up all of this stuff; shockingly, the word ‘hero’ is the one with the most definitions attached to it, and most different con -

R: We’re not talking about heroes today! We’re not!

K [overlapping]: Well we - but we have to, because we don’t get villains without heroes, and we don’t get antagonists without protagonists. Both villains and antagonists are defined and really only exist so that they can oppose or create conflict for the hero or protagonist. It kinda makes you wonder, if left to their own devices, maybe they’re just a mad scientist in a lab somewhere.

R: Maybe they’re the hero of their own story.

K: Yeah, and then suddenly someone shows up to fight them and now they’re the bad guy. [laughing]

R: “I was perfectly lawful and good until you showed up!”

K: Exactly, yes. The basic difference between a villain and an antagonist is that an antagonist is somebody who is there to contend or oppose the main character, typically the protagonist of the story. They’re there to create opposition. A villain is doing that, but they’re evil.

R: [laughs]

K [laughing]: What they’re doing is, the opposition that they’re creating is either causing harm, causing suffering, will destroy the human race. It could be something more on a micro scale, where they’ve kidnapped the daughter of the main character; maybe they’re trying to get their lemonade stand shut down so that they can sell lemonade that’s gonna turn people into lizard people. An antagonist at the surface is just somebody who’s doing things that’s causing problems for the protagonist. They don’t necessarily have to be evil.

R: They could just be a rival.

K: Yeah. Or any number of other things we’re gonna get to here, but. And in fact as I mentioned, as you’re reading a book, you’re frequently gonna come across antagonists that are not actually evil. There’s gonna be an antagonist who’s the villain who may be evil at some point, not always, but there will be people that are antagonists. I will use an example that we love to use: Gideon the Ninth. Harrow definitely serves as an antagonist to Gideon through the book. But Harrow is not evil.

R: Right.

K: That’s a great example of a villain operating without the audience knowing that the protagonist is coming into direct conflict with them because, we don’t really find out who the villain of the story is until the very very end of it. Then we can look back and go like ‘Ah yes I see all of these things now.’ The villain in the story, and spoilers if you haven’t read Gideon the Ninth, but a

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Episode Transcript (by Rekka)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music]Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

Kaelyn: I love MacGuffins.

R: Or weenies. I think we should start calling them "weenies" again.

K: Go back to the original name. Yeah, it's funny because like, I think MacGuffin has like a negative connotation around it and I love it as a plot device where it's just like, there's this thing. And everyone wants it. In some cases we don't even really know what it does. There's like oh, the suitcase from pulp fiction. That's a great MacGuffin.

R: That was going to be my example.

K: In one of the Mission: Impossible movies, the one with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, you know, they're trying to get this, this thing from this guy. And Phillip Seymour Hoffman is this like the most terrifying crime lord in the world. And he can't get this thing. We literally never find out what it does, why they need to keep it out of his hands so badly and, and have it for themselves. But yeah we kinda conceived of this episode is talking about MacGuffin versus plot devices. So, let's be clear. All MacGuffins are plot devices, not all plot devices are MacGuffins. So as I always like to do a, you know, a little bit of history here, MacGuffin the terms often chalked up as being coined by, Alfred Hitchcock and his friend and screenwriter, MacPhail, but it actually goes back quite a bit before that there was an actress in the 1920s named of Pearl White, which I can only assume as a stage name.

R: Her movies brought to you by Colgate.

K: I genuinely hope that's a stage name. But she was in a lot of spy movies or action movies where everyone was chasing after something. And she was in so many of them that she started calling the items in question "weenies" because it didn't matter. And the, it was almost getting a little formulaic in her movies that it could have been, you know, like a roll of film, a document, a, a key that opens a certain, you know, safe or something. It really didn't matter what they were. It was just, you know, these suspense action inspired movies, everyone trying to chase down the same object.

R: The reason that it doesn't matter is because no one actually ever really uses it. You just want to have it, right?

K: Yeah. Yeah. It's frequently MacGuffin-related plots are resolved by "the real treasure was the friends we made along the way," which is one of the more infuriating endings.

R: I like friends.

K: Friends are great. Yeah. But like, okay. So I was going to get to this, to this later and the thing that, like one of my favorite examples of a MacGuffin that becomes un-MacGuffinned and is National Treasure That film is very rare in that they actually find and maintain hold of the treasure in the end of it, think of like, you know, like the Goonies or Pirates of the Caribbean, like Treasure Planet, they all find the treasure, but they don't really actually get to keep any of it. National Treasure really upended that by, by letting those characters not only find it, but then we find out how much money they got for it.

R: And Disney's Atlantis. They did have the treasure at the end, too.

K: That's true.

R: They didn't tell anyone they had treasure. They just suddenly

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Mentioned in this episode:

Glitter + Ashes edited by dave ring

Silk & Steel edited by Janine A. Southard 

Grace's Links:

Website

ArtStation portfolio

Twitter

Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music]Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

R: Today we are talking to Grace Fong about book art. Now we’ve had someone on in the past to talk about cover art and art-directing a commissioned cover. However, I think Colin would forgive me for saying that you do not want Colin to do the artwork.

Kaelyn: He would, yes.

R: Yes. [laughing] Would you like to introduce yourself?

Grace: Hi, I’m Grace! My pronouns are she/her, I work on the narrative design team over at Wizards of the Coast for Magic: The Gathering. I am also a sometimes-writer, and for the past five years I’ve been doing illustration work for various speculative fiction magazines, such as Strange Horizons, and some anthologies like Silk & Steel and Glitter + Ashes.

K: Rekka this is our first like, real artist.

R: It is difficult to get an artist on a podcast. I have tried -

K [overlapping]: [laughing]

R: - for this podcast and the previous one and it is a tricky business. So Grace, you live up to your name in showing up.

G [laughing]: We don’t like talking to people, we just like sitting at our computers.

R: I completely understand, but doesn’t mean I’m gonna give up trying, so. We’ve finally done it.

K: Awesome. So I have been involved in some cover art not as the primary person but as the editor, where I have to look at it and go ‘yeah okay that kinda tracks with what’s happening here.’ We have talked a lot on this podcast before about what to expect out of your cover art, and how involved the writers are going to be in it, and the answer is typically not very, at all. So, when you’re doing this, who is it that you’re primarily working with?

G: When I do work for magazines and books I’m usually working with the editor of the publication, so for the anthology it’s usually an anthology editor, or for a short fiction magazine it is usually the art director of the magazine or the editor of the magazine.

K: Can you walk us through the process of how you get started on this? They’re obviously not coming to you with a blank slate, they’re coming to you with a series of stories that may or may not have a theme. How do you get started working with this editor?

G: It really varies, depending on the type of publication. So for anthologies, because they cover a lot of different narrative ground, usually we try to come up with an image that encapsulates the theme of the anthology. Like for Silk & Steel, I was doing one of the promotional postcards for them. We knew we were doing femme-femme, high fantasy, sword-and-scorcery kind of stuff. So I knew that those characters would have to be reflective of the book’s content. Sometimes editors will give me a particular story that they aim to showcase for the publication, in which case I’ll usually read the story if it’s under 6,000 words, and try and come up with a composition that fits it the best that I possibly can. This is how I work with Strange Horizons.

K: At what point do you usually come into the process? Are you typically involved rig

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

 

Transcript (by Rekka)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music]Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

Rekka: So today's episode is, uh, from a listener request, but I put it in the same batch of listener requests where I didn't write down the names to credit people. So you know who you are. Thank you for the idea.

Kaelyn: If you were this listener, get us on Twitter and yell at us.

Rekka: We'll add it in the show notes posthumously. Well, hopefully not posthumously.

Kaelyn: I was gonna say, "What?!"

Rekka: Posthumous to the episode.

Kaelyn: All right.

Rekka: So today we are talking about writing body language.

Kaelyn: This is, I think one of the harder things to do.

Rekka: How to be hyper-aware of where you put your hands.

Kaelyn: I have, while editing books, actually acted it out and recorded myself.

Rekka: Okay. So you have mentioned on the podcast before that you act these out, but you never mentioned that there was footage.

Kaelyn: Oh, it's gone. Don't worry. No, it doesn't, it doesn't exist.

Rekka: It's never really gone, Kaelyn.

Kaelyn: You will not see it, um. Figuring out, you know, body language without slowing down the pace of, you know, the story or the dialogue is, is difficult. So, um, I'd recorded these and then kind of gone like, okay, well, what am I doing here? Does that match up with what I'm reading? So, yeah, it's, it's hard. It's I think one of the more challenging things to do.

Rekka: I don't always think about it that way. So the reason that my characters will scratch their neck or, you know, look around the room or, um, fiddle with pages on their desk is frequently because I want to avoid using a dialogue tag because I had too many or, um, or that she said, or whatever messes with the rhythm of my, of my paragraph. So for me, I use body language as a way to use the name of the character that is saying the words without saying "character said."

Kaelyn: Yeah. So let's, uh, let's backtrack here a little bit. Why you write body language and how it's useful. So obviously the why is because we kind of need to know what the characters are doing.

Rekka: Yep. That's helpful.

Kaelyn: Everyone isn't standing perfectly rod straight in a room, staring at each other and taking turns to talk. Body language is very helpful for conveying things that are happening with the characters without actually having to say what's happening. Cultures around the world... There are certain ways that people act there are certain things that they do that convey an emotion or a feeling, even just the situation that they're in. Something like a character wringing their hands is going to convey nervousness or maybe trying to piece their thoughts together. Body language is a non-verbal form of communication that you're giving the reader. You're trying to explain what they're thinking or what they're feeling without having to actually do it. This is a very "show me, don't tell me" tool for writing.

Rekka: And that is how I find it most useful. Not because I'm worried about choreographing the perfect movements of my character across the room, but because it helps break up the inner kinda monologues, it helps break up the exposition. It helps break up the dialogue. It's like

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Mentioned in this episode:

Unfettered Hexes Kickstarter

Infomocracy Redbubble Shop

dave-ring.com

neonhemlock.com

neonapothecary.com

dave is @slickhop on Twitter and Instagram

Neon Hemlock Press is @neonhemlock on Twitter and Instagram

VOIDMERCH

Neon Hemlock's Threadless shop

Riddle’s Tea Shoppe

Hailey Piper

Glitter + Ashes anthology

Matthew Spencer, illustrator

This is How We Lose the Time War

Tracy Townsend

Dancing Star Press

Transcript (by TK)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music]Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

R: Let’s see what happens if you drape the oracle cloth over top.

dave: I have a thousand of those.

R [laughing]: Yeah.

Kaelyn: Speaking of SWAG.

d: Does that help?

R: Exhale.

d: [wheezing]

R: Yes.

K: Yes!

R: It’s not just good for laying your cards out on.

K: [laughing]

d [overlapping]: [laughing]

R: Okay! I’m gonna have to leave this in.

d: [laughing]

K [overlapping]: [laughing]

R: dave, why don’t you introduce yourself to start, and then we’ll get going?

d: My name’s dave ring, I’m a writer and editor of speculative fiction. I’m also the managing editor and publisher over at Neon Hemlock Press. Which comes with a bevy of other, like graphic design layout, and -

K: [laughing]

d: - products, placements, whatever else I’ve come up with lately!

K: Many, many other hats in different shapes and sizes.

R: So the reason I wanted to have dave on the podcast was because it occurred to me that something that comes up pretty frequently, especially around conference season when we’re meeting in person and around book launches as well, is that authors wanna know like ‘do I need a bookmark? How do I do a bookmark? What else can I do?’

K: ‘Do I need swag?’

R: Yeah, so swag. Swag - Kaelyn, I’m just gonna cut in to your definition and say that swag is an acronym for Stuff We All Get. So -

K [overlapping]: [laughing]

R: To that point, this is not going to be all free swag.

K: Yes.

R: Swag implies that it is free, that you’ll pick it up as you visit the author’s signing table, or that you’ll get it in the mail for preordering, or some little bonus bit like that. The person that we are speaking to today has taken book tie-in items and - what would you wanna call it? I don’t wanna say paraphernalia, but I love that word, so there. You’ve taken it to a whole new level. And a lot of it has to do with Kickstarter, would you blame Kickstarter for this?

d: Maybe some of it. And I like paraphernalia, the word that I am often drawn to is ‘ephemera,’ but I like both. Depending on the particular object, maybe one is more appropriate than the other. But I blame Kickstarter for a lot of things in terms -

R [overlapping]: [laughing]

d: - of connecting with a lot of the people who are buying the books that Neon Hemlock’s been putting out.

R: So it’s hard to say ‘blame’ in that sense.

d: To [unintelligible] - blame.

K: [laughing]

d: Yeah. But some of that’s been driven from that, and some of it’s been driven from just sort of nerdish excitement over different things. And then because I’m the one in charge, no one says no to me, so -

K [overlapping]: [laughing]

d: I just keep having ideas and doing the thing!

K: Let’s talk about some of the different kinds of swag, of paraphe

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Mentioned in this episode:

The Dancing Plague of 1518

MICE quotient

The House of Untold Stories 

storyenginedeck.com/demo

deckofworlds.com

Peter on Twitter and everywhere

 

Transcript (by TK)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music]Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

Kaelyn: We’re talking about tropes today, which is something that I think a lot of people hear spoken about in a negative context: falling back on using too many tropes, or stories following really common tropes.

Rekka: And we don’t appreciate that kind of shaming.

K [laughs]: No, we certainly do not trope sh--see this is gonna be a problem because I was doing research for this and the word ‘trope’ is difficult to say over and over again.

R: Trope, trope, trope, trope, trope.

K: It’s, what do they call that, when a word becomes a sound? Semantic satiation.

R: Yes.

K: Yes. The word ‘trope’ has become more of a sound to me and it’s sort of lost meaning [laughing] at times but--So quick definitions, there’s the actual word ‘trope’ comes from Greek, because of course it does, it all does--

R: You mean it isn’t a contraction of tightrope?

K: It should be, that would be so much better.

R: [laughs]

K: A literary trope is using figurative language, like words, phrases, images, for artistic effect. So there’s a bunch of different kinds of tropes that fall under literary tropes. Things like metaphors, irony, allegory, oxymorons; those are all considered tropes. Hyperbole is another good example of that, really over-exaggerating. The way this came about was, apparently, because it is Greek and it’s from Greek theatre, of course, ‘to alter, to direct, to change, to turn’--all of these translations kinda line up with that, but they’re considered an important element of classical rhetoric. Especially in Greek theatre where it was very dialogue-heavy, and so you had to sort of use all of these words and everything to paint a picture to explain to the audience what was going on. All of that said, we’re not really here to talk about literary tropes today. They’re an important story-telling device, though, and they’re something that is considered, I would say, necessary to higher literature and writing and if you’re panicking going ‘oh my God, I don’t know all of this stuff’--well the thing is you’re probably doing this anyway and not realizing.

R: A lot of writers don’t come from writing backgrounds and don’t know the terms for the thing, don’t stress too much about it.

K: We’re talking today primarily about story tropes. I think a lot of times you’re gonna encounter this in a negative light. It’s a frequent criticism I feel like that’s leveraged especially against fiction, especially against fantasy and science fiction books and writing; in some areas of fiction it’s actually celebrated.

R: Right.

K: You pick which trope you’re gonna write.

R: You cannot proceed without mentioning the other half of that, which is that some people are like ‘Okay, I pick my books based on the tropes I wanna read about.’

K: Yes.

R: Like, ‘Where’s my time travel?’

K [laughs]: Yeah. We wanted to talk about why that is. We wanted to talk about what story tropes are, and why they’re not necessarily as bad and, in our humble opinions--

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Mentioned in this episode:

The Dancing Plague of 1518

MICE quotient

The House of Untold Stories 

storyenginedeck.com/demo

deckofworlds.com

Peter on Twitter and everywhere

 

Transcript (by Rekka, uncaught mistakes by Temi)

 

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music]Rekka:

This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

 

Rekka:

Peter, I'm going to have you introduce yourself—because I completely failed to have you pronounce your name for me before we started recording—and tell us how you came to stories.

 

Peter:

Yeah. so my name is Peter Chiykowski, or at least that's how I say it. And I write, I illustrate I do some graphic design. I've designed some creative tools for writers and artists and storytellers. And I do create content for tabletop RPGs. And I write songs as well—Um mostly like comedy styled songs. But I do, I do a bunch of things creatively. And I would say that story has been a very big link between them. And definitely one of my passion areas is looking at how different creative disciplines and different like creative techniques and skillsets can combine to create story in different ways or to tell stories in different ways. Or even if like you're not doing something multimedia and you're only working in your one medium, how learning from other mediums gives you more tools for telling stories.

 

Peter:

And I always find that really exciting. But yeah, I think like my, before I was writing anything as a kid, I loved role-playing games. I remember there was this sort of very improvised six-sided die-based game that my friends and I would play in at recess in like grade three that was, there were no rules written down. I don't think it was based on anything, but I do think that we, one of our dads had played D&D and had somehow rubbed off the concept of like rolling dice to tell a story and telling a story collectively. And there was no table top because we were not at a table. We were like out on the playground at recess, but we would like bowl these dice across the entire playground and then run and see what the number was and the story would evolve from there.

 

Peter:

And it was all kinds of silly fantasy adventure stuff. That's the first time that I remember like really getting hooked into telling the story and getting excited about collaborative storytelling. And then it's all been downhill from there. Once, once, once tabletop roleplay gets its hooks into you you, you get, yeah, you look for any avenue to tell stories. So I've done everything from like poetry to short fiction. I've written campaigns for tabletop RPGs, like Ember Wind. I wrote a bunch of poems for a video game. That's now unintended switch called Fracter. We were trying to tell story, but also give clues for solving puzzles in this like existential platform or game, called Fracter. And I've just kind of loved playing in the story space and finding different ways to tell stories. Yeah, and that's kind of the weird mixed bag of experiences that I, I come to story with, but it's such a, such a passion area for me.

 

Rekka:

It does seem like you're absolutely perfect for the topic that we're going to talk about today. You're the perfect person to put this together, and that is the Story Engine, w

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Mentioned in this episode:

Premee Mohamed's website

@premeesaurus on Twitter

Premee on Curious Fictions

Beneath the Rising (Book One of Two!no!Three!)

A Broken Darkness (Book Two of Two!no!Three!)

The Void Ascendant (Book Three of Two????)

These Lifeless Things – 5 Feb 21, Solaris Books (Satellites)

The Annual Migration of Clouds – 28 Sept 21, ECW Press

And What Can We Offer You Tonight – July 21, Neon Hemlock Press 

The Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin

 

Transcript for this episode (by @Betty_Bett_)

Rekka: In episode 58, Kaelyn and I talked about writing book two in a series of three or more. In Episode 59, we capped that conversation off by talking about book two in a duology. And what more do you need to know because that's it. Well, that's the only kind of book two you would write, of course. So, also of course, we are here today with Premee Mohamed, and we are going to talk about writing book three in a duology. So, Premee, you are here because you are now the new expert on this. [laughs]

Premee: I think I would like to become an expert on this. It fell on me like a meteorite.

Rekka: So, why don't we start by having you introduce yourself and talk about books one and two in this duology?

Premee: Let's talk about that. Sure. So yeah, I'm Premee Mohamed. I'm based in Edmonton, Alberta, which is in Canada. And I'm a scientist, and I write short stories and novellas and novels. My debut novel came out in 2020, that was called Beneath the Rising. My second came out this March and was called A Broken Darkness. And I also have three other books out this year. In February, there was These Lifeless Things which was a novella that came out with Rebellion's new novella imprint which is called Satellites. And in July, we're looking at And What Can We Offer You Tonight from Neon Hemlock Press, another novella. And in September, ECW Press is publishing The Annual Migration of Clouds which is a cli-fi novella. So I'm excited about all that.

Kaelyn: So you've been busy?

Premee: I have been busy. It also sounds like I'm a lot busier than I am, but Clouds was written in 2019 and just got published this year. And Lifeless was written in 2017 and had a home, and then it was kicked out of its home and went wandering around for a little while, and then got rehomed. So it's not like everything's been written and published immediately. Publishing is like transit, like sometimes four buses show up at once. [laughing]

Rekka: Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it.

Premee: Yeah, the first book, I wrote actually when I was an undergrad, my first degree. So when I was writing it, I was actually sort of a peer with Nick the narrator. So it starts when he's about 18. And I was about 18 when I started it. And I finished it the year I graduated, and I was 20. And I set it aside because that's what I did with everything I wrote because writing was—is—still my hobby. If I played golf with my friends, I wouldn't go out and tell everybody to come watch me play golf or pay me to play golf or try to get into the PGA or whatever. It was just something I did because I like to do it. And it was a good number of years before there was any evidence at all that I might be good enough to make money off my hobby. So when that became clear, I started trying to publish short stories. And then my friends were nudging me or bugging me, "We know that you've got a trunk full of books. Why don't you try to publish some of them, you could make more money than a short story?" And I was like, "More money than a short story, you say?" Well, everyone has their price—mine is low. S

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

Instagram: @WMBCast 

Patreon.com/WMBCast

Mentioned in this episode:

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

A Ship With No Parrot by R J Theodore (MetaStellar)

Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music]This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

Kaelyn: We’re talking today about writing with a friend. Hopefully a friend. If not a friend, then a partner.

Rekka: Hopefully a friend for longer than it takes to write the project.

K: Hopefully a friend after you’re done. [laughing]

R: Yes, before and after. Hey, even after is probably more important than before. Let’s be clear that you don’t wanna destroy a relationship, but you can make a new friend.

K: Yes, absolutely. Let’s talk first about, why would you do this?

R: [giggles]

K: Why would you want to - and, okay so maybe a little context first. I will admit I have never worked on a project that a single story had been written or contributed to by two different people.

R: As an editor, you mean?

K: Yes.

R: Ok.

K: So why would you do this? It seems like a difficult thing to do. And for context, Rekka has done this a couple times. So Rekka, why would you do this?

R: Because writing is lonely, and the idea that someone else will work on a project with you is just like the biggest longest most creative sleepover ever.

K: Okay!

R: It’s a good reason.

K: That is certainly a good reason, writing is lonely. I think a lot of writers, their editor when they get one is the first time they’re really having somebody to collaborate with, and to talk to.

R: To go back and forth.

K: Yeah, but the editor is not writing the book.

R: I know! Which is unfair, honestly.

K [overlapping]: [laughing]

R: I wanna know who I talk to about this.

K: Yeah but you know what you’re right, writing is a lonely process. There’s a lot of time spent sitting by yourself just having to think.

R: And having feelings.

K: Yeah. If you’re writing with someone, you get to share those with someone else.

R: And shout about things.

K: Absolutely. Shouting is a necessary component to that 100% —

R: It’s actually kinda how it gets started, there’s a lot of enthusiastic shouting about an idea.

K: [laughing]

R: But you know what stinks? Is that you still have to write alone.

K: Well and that’s exactly what I was gonna ask you. So okay, let’s go through this. You’ve decided I’m tired of being alone here, I want to also inflict this upon somebody else. So what do you do?

R: [deep sigh] How do you find someone else to inflict things upon? So the first person that I sat down to write a project with was a friend, and we said like hey we should try this out! And we were both writers to begin with, writing in fairly different genres but still genre fiction. And we decided we were going to do a project and we said hey, it will be this, like we outlined it together. We - or we didn’t so much outline it together but we concepted it out together.

K: Okay.

R: And then we each created a POV character as part of that concept. And then we wrote our chapters back and forth, so that the tone, the voice, for that POV character is consistent.

K: Mhm.

R: And so that you can have a character that’s slightly unreliable, just becau