Twice Upon a Time Blog Tour: Interview with AJ Bauers

CONTRARY to the title of this anthology, working with such a talented cast of writers is an opportunity that usually comes once in a lifetime. From best-selling to greenhorn, independent or traditionally-published, the authors in this anthology span all ranges in addition to spanning the globe—from England to Australia and all over the United States. I've had the privilege of getting to know each and every one of them, and they have become a part of my extended family. I've even caught a glimpse of a secret side of them that only another writer...editor...is privy to witness through their words.

Through this series of posts, I plan on introducing you to my new family through a mini-interview of each. You may not get a chance to see their secret side, but you'll get a sneak-peek into their minds, their passions and inspirations, and what made them the writers they are today.

..The Mini Interview..

1. At what age did you start writing?

I didn't seriously start writing until after college. I had dabbled in some short stories and scripts before, but I never thought of it going anywhere. It wasn't until my husband encouraged me to write a story based on a dream I had that I even considered becoming an author. Now, I can't see how I ever dreamed of anything else.

2. Which book introduced you to Speculative Fiction?

It was either one of the "classics made for children books" (like The Time Machine or Frankenstein) or something I stole from my dad's shelf (like Jurassic Park or Timeline). I grew up reading this stuff so it's hard to remember where it all started.

3. Do you have an all-time favorite book? What about it makes it your favorite?

Just one? Gosh. Probably Harry Potter. If I had to be extremely specific, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Harry Potter was the book series that let me escape. I had gotten mega-grounded when I was in seventh grade. For six months, the only thing I was allowed to do for fun was read. I finally decided to try Harry Potter once the movie came out. Previously, I had mocked the books as stupid (because I was weak-willed and followed the crowd blindly back then). I instantly became sucked into Rowling's amazing world. This book not only opened up my imagination, it allowed me to accept the things I liked whether or not the popular kids liked it as well.

4. Which author and/or book inspired you to start writing?

It's probably not too surprising that J.K. Rowling is my inspiration. Of course, back in seventh grade, I never dreamed that I would be able to write anything original, so I settled for fan-fiction. My stories had terrible description, cliched dialogue, and predictable plots, but wow did I have fun.

Now, fifteen years later, as I'm attempting to write my own stories, I still look to J.K. Rowling for inspiration. I want to make my worlds like hers—immersive with the ability to provide an escape to those who seek one. Do I think I'll ever be on her level? Please, I'm not that naive. But she is my standard for writing.

5. What would you say is the most important lesson all writers should learn?

When you get that first bad critique, don't hide from it. Embrace it. It's going to hurt like hell, especially if it's the first time you ever show your work to someone, but it's going to make you and your work stronger.

6. Of the entire publishing process, which would you say is the most difficult aspect to endure?

Waiting on the acceptance/rejection letter. It's like handing someone a sword—they're either going to knight you or stab you.

7. From where did the inspiration for your submission arise?

Honestly? I chose Jack and the Beanstalk and "rolled" for a genre from a list of 20 different types of speculative fiction. I got space opera and instantly thought, "This is perfect!" Since space operas emphasize on traveling, why not use the beanstalks as a way to travel through space? Hard brainstorming and daydreaming in the shower took care of the remaining story details.

8. If applicable, did you have a favorite character (to write) from your story? If so, what sets them apart from the others?

Jack, my titular character, was my favorite. As soon as I wrote him, I wanted to be friends with him. I loved him for his self-depreciating wit, fear, and accidental courage. He's a sharp contrast against the other main character Sasha, who's more serious and focused than Jack thinks any person has a right to be.

9. On what projects are you currently working?

Right now I'm working on a soft sci-fi adult novel through my MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. I'd rather not go into any specific details, but I will share the quote that inspired my story.

“According to Greek Mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate beings, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”-Plato’s The Symposium

Read AJ's story, The Screw-Up, in your very own copy of Twice Upon A Time today!

..About the Author..

AJBAUERS finally accomplished her secret dream of writing a novel one year ago. Since then, she has packed her bags and moved from North Dakota to Maine to enroll in the University of Southern Maine’s Masters program in Popular Fiction. The Screw-Up is AJ’s first publication on her path to becoming a full-time writer. Follow her blog, listed below, for short stories and more.

..Connect with the Author..

The TUAT Blog Tour Resumes! Interview with Bo Balder

CONTRARY to the title of this anthology, working with such a talented cast of writers is an opportunity that usually comes once in a lifetime. From best-selling to greenhorn, independent or traditionally-published, the authors in this anthology span all ranges in addition to spanning the globe—from England to Australia and all over the United States. I've had the privilege of getting to know each and every one of them, and they have become a part of my extended family. I've even caught a glimpse of a secret side of them that only another writer...editor...is privy to witness through their words.

Through this series of posts, I plan on introducing you to my new family through a mini-interview of each. You may not get a chance to see their secret side, but you'll get a sneak-peek into their minds, their passions and inspirations, and what made them the writers they are today.

..The Mini Interview..

1. At what age did you start writing?

As soon as I could—6 or 7?

2. Which book introduced you to Speculative Fiction?

John Christopher's Tripod series. I was stunned to realize people could think about exciting stuff like that. I wanted more...

3. Do you have an all-time favorite book? What about it makes it your favorite?

The Crown of Stars by Kate Elliott. Not only does it depict a greatly realistic, detailed early Middle Ages, it has a kickass heroine, a wide scope, mythic creatures, love, wars, magic...
I can keep rereading it, it's too complex to keep in your head so there's never any boredom.

4. Which author and/or book inspired you to start writing?

Jack Vance. I just loved his ironic details and grotesque imagination. I wanted to be just like him...all my teenage work is one big Vance pastiche.

5. What would you say is the most important lesson all writers should learn?

You have to find a way to show yourself through your words.

6. Of the entire publishing process, which would you say is the most difficult aspect to endure?

The waiting. Months, sometimes even years, to get an answer from a publisher or a magazine.

7. From where did the inspiration for your submission arise?

The Yde Girl was an actual bog corpse found in my country.

8. If applicable, did you have a favorite character (to write) from your story? If so, what sets them apart from the others?

My protagonist, because she tries so hard to fit in and to be loyal, and she has to make a choice to leave her family.

9. On what projects are you currently working?

A near-future, optimistic sf novel/series of shorts. I took up the challenge to write utopian instead of dystopian for a change....

Read Bo's story, Bog Trade, in your very own copy of Twice Upon A Time today!

..About the Author..

Bo is a freelance writer who lives and works in the ancient Dutch city of Utrecht, close to Amsterdam. When she isn't writing, you can find her madly designing knitwear, painting, or reading anything and everything from Kate Elliott to Iain M. Banks or Jared Diamond.
Her fiction has appeared in Penumbra, Electric Spec and quite a few anthologies. Her sf novel, The Wan, will be published in 2015 by Pink Narcissus Press.

..Connect with the Author..

Review: The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss

Blurb:

"Deep below the University, there is a dark place. Few people know of it: a broken web of ancient passageways and abandoned rooms. A young woman lives there, tucked among the sprawling tunnels of the Underthing, snug in the heart of this forgotten place.

"Her name is Auri, and she is full of mysteries.

"The Slow Regard of Silent Things is a brief, bittersweet glimpse of Auri’s life, a small adventure all her own. At once joyous and haunting, this story offers a chance to see the world through Auri’s eyes. And it gives the reader a chance to learn things that only Auri knows....

"In this book, Patrick Rothfuss brings us into the world of one of The Kingkiller Chronicle’s most enigmatic characters. Full of secrets and mysteries, The Slow Regard of Silent Things is the story of a broken girl trying to live in a broken world."

Review:

While eagerly awaiting Day 3 of Patrick Rothfuss's The Kingkiller Chronicles, I hunted down a copy of Slow Regard, thinking it was Day 3 (shows how much I did my research, eh?). I saw the book sitting on the shelf at Barnes & Noble and thought, "That is waaaay too skinny to be a proper conclusion to Kvothe's adventures. Gasp. So what treasure is this?"

Treasure, indeed. As the blurb indicates, this novella focuses on Auri, the girl who lives beneath the University featured in The Kingkiller Chronicles. Auri happens to be one of my favorite characters in the series, maybe even one of my favorite characters ever written. Right alongside Tyrion and Samwise. So when I saw that this slender volume was all about Auri, I snatched it up and devoured it the first chance I got.

The Slow Regard of Silent Things is not a typical story. Even Mr. Rothfuss explains in the Author's Endnote, "It doesn't do the things a story is supposed to do. A story should have dialog, action, conflict. A story should have more than one character." Well, it doesn't, and the story works magnificently. The conflict, the tension, comes from a race against time. Auri has only six days until her friend returns for a visit. Everything must be just so in Auri's world, and if something is out of place, she must find a proper place, and if she cannot, her brokenness surfaces in very convincing panic attacks.

In truth, I was hoping for some spoilers, hoping for some insight into Auri's past, who she was before she was broken, how she came to be broken, what she knows that might help Kvothe the Bloodless in his search for the villains who ... (no spoilers, if you've read the series, you know what I almost let slip). While I was disappointed that the novella didn't cough up any of these secrets (maybe just a hint about Auri's past), it was still a delight to explore this strange, magical girl's day-to-day and the facets of her unique and shattered mind. I learned that Auri is obsessive-compulsive, and that she's a Namer. Two things I hadn't realized while reading the novels (how I missed the latter, I don't know).

The real treasure, however, is Auri's voice. The trove of words found in this book, many of them made up, left my mouth feeling full of moonlight and unicorns. Seriously. The language Rothfuss speaks through Auri is magical and so very appropriate. The mashed-up syllables all work beautifully together, and bring to mind the word-magic of Lewis Carroll. Only, Auri's word-magic is actually decipherable.

And let's not forget the illustrations. Yes! This book is illustrated. Nate Taylor's sketches depict the things that Auri slowly regards in lovely detail. Honestly, without the illustrations, I might've had trouble imagining the brazen gear and the steamworks running through the tunnels. They brought the pages to life.

Conclusion:

The Slow Regard of Silent Things is poetry and a meandering exploration of a world underground. Your host is shy, selfless, reclusive, and creative. Bring Auri a gift, tell her what's inside it, and she'll lead you into her world, and in her world, a sewer, a boiler room, an abandoned brothel become places of wonder.

In short, it's been a while since a story has enchanted me from beginning to end. Hell, even the Author's Endnote had me sniffling. Yes, broken. Me too.

Rating:

5/5 Magic Wands

The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss is published by DAW Books, 2014. It is available at Amazon and all major book retailers and at your local library.

Cover Reveal, Falcons Progress Report

I have completed (I think) the arduous task of reworking each cover for the Falcons Saga. Some time ago, Amazon reworked how they want books in a series titled and numbered, so it's possible that Blood of the Falcon, vol. 2 is getting a bit cheated on exposure.

Even though volumes 1 and 2 are meant to be a single book and read together, I had to reconcile myself to the fact that I need to officially split them up. Which means new title, new covers, new blurb, new uploads. Fun stuff. :/ In the near future, Blood of the Falcon, vol. 2 is going to be re-released as Sword of the Falcon, an obvious and very fitting title, since the volume focuses heavily on Kelyn's personal journey. All I need is a blurb for the back and minor edits to the actual text and formatting. Not sure when this re-release will happen, but I'll be sure to post when it does.

For now, here's a peek at what the front cover will probably look like:

Still working on the cover for Book 4, Cry of the Falcon, so no sneak peeks on that one yet. But chapters are coming right along.

Project: CRY OF THE FALCON
Pages revised: 3.5
Became X Pages: 9
Scenes cut: 0
Scenes added: 1
Deaths: 2
Good things that happened: ... I'm sure there's something ... Um, nope, can't find a thing.
Bad things that happened: There is no option left to retreat.

First Friday Writing Prompt: combining ideas

This month, instead of making use of a single image to inspire a story or poem, I'm going to be taking a single element out of two random images and smashing them together to produce (hopefully) strange and wonderful results. I learned this exercise in Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, edited by Laurie Lamson.

Image #1 "Lantern Festival" by Sharleen Chao

Image #2 "For a minute there, I lost myself" by Thorvaala

Hmm, the two elements to be mashed together in the (Questionably) Great Collider in my brain: a flower made of light and a basketball.

This might take a while...

(If you find inspiration and wish to share your creation with me, please do the following:
* DO paste a link to your creation as a comment to the prompt you’ve used.
* DO include a link back to my blog, Wordweaver.
* DO NOT copy anyone else’s work and publicize it as your own.

Prompt History
January's Prompt

February's Prompt

AGoT fan prefers the books...

So, I started reading Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire years ago, right after Book 3 came out. I love the grotequery of the characters so much that I haven't wanted to watch the HBO series and have someone else's vision of the story mess with the lovely (ugly?) vision in my head, not until well after the last book is released and I've read it a couple times.

However, if I were to watch any version of A Game of Thrones, it would be this one, which I found on Sploid today:

(the full length animated version is at the bottom of the Sploid post)

Twice Upon a Time Blog Tour: Interview with Dale W. Glaser

CONTRARY to the title of this anthology, working with such a talented cast of writers is an opportunity that usually comes once in a lifetime. From best-selling to greenhorn, independent or traditionally-published, the authors in this anthology span all ranges in addition to spanning the globe—from England to Australia and all over the United States. I've had the privilege of getting to know each and every one of them, and they have become a part of my extended family. I've even caught a glimpse of a secret side of them that only another writer...editor...is privy to witness through their words.

Through this series of posts, I plan on introducing you to my new family through a mini-interview of each. You may not get a chance to see their secret side, but you'll get a sneak-peek into their minds, their passions and inspirations, and what made them the writers they are today.

..The Mini Interview..

1. At what age did you start writing?

I always answer this question with "seven," which is approximately right, and as close as I'm going to get since I don't remember specifically. Maybe as young as six, maybe not until I was eight, somewhere around there. I can remember sitting at the kitchen table, writing and illustrating stories about an anthropomorphic raccoon and squirrel who were detectives/crimefighters, but not exactly how old I was. I can also remember writing a text-only fantasy story about warriors slaying a monster, specifically using the phrase "blood and guts," which I was so proud of I asked my teacher if I could read it to the class. I'm reasonably sure that was third grade at the latest.

2. Which book introduced you to Speculative Fiction?

I feel like speculative fiction was always all around me. Star Wars came out before I turned three, I had a steady supply of superhero comic books as I was learning to read, and my favorite Saturday morning cartoons were things like Space Ghost and Thundarr the Barbarian. It's probably more apt to say that speculative fiction was my gateway to reading grown-up novels at a young age, to get my fix of alternate world-building, and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien was my entry point.

3. Do you have an all-time favorite book? What about it makes it your favorite?

It's a toss-up between The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. In both cases I love the overall sense of humor of the work. They're written by people who know and love spec-fic, and therefore recognize many of the things inherent to the genre which are fairly ridiculous. So they poke fun at the tropes, not mean-spiritedly, but while embracing them. It's a neat and highly entertaining trick.

4. Which author and/or book inspired you to start writing?

When I was very young I started writing down the stories in my head just because it felt like the thing to do, but when I was a teenager I became utterly addicted to Stephen King. I had been reading novels by various authors for years, and I thought of short stories as assignments for English class, but King's collections like Night Shift and Skeleton Crew made me realize that writers didn't have to spend years cranking out doorstop epics. That was the point at which I started getting serious about my own short fiction again.

5. What would you say is the most important lesson all writers should learn?

First drafts are supposed to be terrible, and no story can exist without running that gauntlet. I have heard other writers lament, and know I have felt the pains myself as well, how they start a story and can't bear to finish it because it isn't turning out as well as they'd hoped. An unfinished, abandoned story is such a shame. Better to plug away at the first draft and recognize it as one step in the process, finish it, take a breather, and come back to it. Alone or with help, a first draft can be reworked into a second, and ultimately into something worthwhile. It's not easy, but if it were easy, everyone would do it, right?

6. Of the entire publishing process, which would you say is the most difficult aspect to endure?

Waiting for feedback, or in some cases having to live without it. In my ideal world, every time I started to write a story it would be because of a pre-existing demand, and every progress update I gave would bring a rapturous response, and once I got the story done I would be spoiled for choice of people with whom I could discuss the results. Instead, a story is written mostly in isolation, submitted blindly, and often as not rejected without comment. If it's accepted, it still remains unseen for a long time during the production process, and then once it's unleashed upon the world, it's extremely unlikely to receive one percent of the attention that its creation took from me. Fortunately I tend to see having a story published at all as its own worthwhile reward, because if I waited for spontaneous praise I'd be in a near-constant state of disappointment.

7. From where did the inspiration for your submission arise?

To name-check the fairy tale that inspired my submission would give away one of the twists it's built around, so I will coyly avoid specifics here. I will say that the concept of the anthology, not only re-telling fairy tales but mashing them up with other genres, was an inspiration itself, as I decided to take things in a dark science-fiction direction in order to create a rational explanation for the fantastic elements of the original. The original fairy tale is an old favorite of mine, largely because it was never Disney-fied. (I think it was probably adapted by other animation studios, but I never sought those out.) Nothing against the Disney classics, but there's a lot of appeal in working with less well-covered source material.

8. If applicable, did you have a favorite character (to write) from your story? If so, what sets them apart from the others?

My story is largely a one-woman show, so obviously she's my favorite. I did enjoy writing Melise, given her unique position as essentially a blank slate, not being acted upon by other characters, only reacting to her environment and driven by her internal desire to figure herself out.

9. On what projects are you currently working?

I have a story in the editing process now for the upcoming Pro Se anthology PIRATES AND MONSTERS. I'm also working on the next adventure of Kellan Oakes, private investigator and son of a druid, a sequel to his holiday adventure from the PulpWork Christmas Special 2014, which should be part of the 2015 edition. Lots of other unofficial stuff in the hopper, too. These days I'm never not writing!

Read Dale's story, My Name is Melise, in your very own copy of Twice Upon A Time today!

Choose a format... Amazon|Kindle Amazon|Paperback

..About the Author..

DALE W. GLASER is a lifelong collector, re-teller and occasional inventor of fantasy tales. His short stories have previously been published in How the West Was Weird (Volumes II and III). He currently lives in Virginia with his wife and three children, none of whom have been definitively proven to be changelings (yet).

..Connect with the Author..