My critique group recently proposed recommending the four best books we’ve read in 2024 as a discussion topic. One member suggested we take it a step further into a skills session by speaking about what we learned as a writer from said recommendations. So here are mine. None of these are unanimous 5-star reviewed, they either connect with the reader or not.
Jeff Noon’s 4 John Nyquist books – standalone but much more when considered as an odyssey. Private investigator John Nyquist unveils bits of his past and present self on his diverse journeys and cases. Book 1, A Man of Shadows takes John and the reader from Dayzone to Nocturna – few choose to live outside of one or the other’s perpetual light or dark. Nyquist is forced to search both and the twilight zone in between. Book 2, The Body Library is an extraordinary journey to a city of ideas, where words cover and infect everything. Book 3, Creeping Jenny, takes Nyquist to a zone where the rules change every day. Book 4, Within Without, strands Nyquist and his protégé in a city where borders and boundaries govern everything.
What did I learn? A bizarre setting and idea is only the first step in creating a complete world. Setting as character but as a very deep and intrinsic level. Character and Idea are formed together.

Beneath the World, A Sea by Chris Beckett; twist on Heart if Darkness (classic tale); an unsympathetic protagonist can gain empathy if not likability through others’ ill-founded reactions and his own vulnerabilities which he can’t control (his memory of evil actions). There is little room to stop and explain the setting’s reason for existence, just what was. This book is a lot to absorb and process. On the surface, a policeman is dispatched to a remote, accessible only by boat, delta in South America where alien-looking beings called duendes are being murdered by the local tribe. The Submundo delta doesn’t make time stand still but it renders it meaningless. It lays bare the mind’s attempts at skewing memory. Echoes of Joseph Conrad, JG Ballard and Wade Davis permeate the landscape, the characters and the internal dialogues. The book deceives though, for it is more about tolerance, intolerance, genocide, displacement, natural resource exploitation and madness. Above all, it is about perception. The resolution is not definitive but the journey is compelling and themes will resonate, like a good movie, long after the end. Writerly take-ways: the bizarre setting/world is never fully explained, the reader discovers it along with the protagonist. The protagonist is unsympathetic and unreliable but that is the key to the subconscious part of his character trying to break down the wall to his external reality. The resolution may be unsatisfying to some readers but embraceable by others – authorial choice.

Titanium Noir – A cross genre homage faithful to sf and noir conventions. Done with honour not condescension. Harkaway has dragged noir kicking and screaming from 1940’s trappings into a mildly divergent, contemporary or near-future dystopic reality. A mystery certainly, whodunit and whydunit with suspects, victims and witnesses consisting of and being threatened by Titans. Titans being superhuman in size, ego, wealth and the appropriate power which comes with being nearly invincible and certainly nasty.
Harkoway drags in many hard-boiled conventions as well, mainly speech and wise-ass comments which could have been penned by Spillane, Chandler, Hammett or their imitators. Even the names, like Floyd Otsby, are pure hard-boiled, drawn from rich sources: Conan Doyle, Chandler.
Cal Sounder, the p.i., is hard-boiled rather than noir in that we believe he’s trying to do the right thing, not the advantageous thing. True to convention, he’s the narrator; but must we believe him?
Cal winds his way through danger, leads, memorable characters and too many clues before finding a solution and reaping an ambiguous reward.


Shockwave Rider by John Brunner – one of the journeyman-writer’s break out books in mid-career (with The Sheep Look Up, Stand on Zanzibar and The Jagged Orbit) If you want a look at what cyberpunk looked like before William Gibson’s Neuromancer, this is it. Brunner creates the world web, viral worms, remote work, illicit government oversight, etc. He extrapolates from more than one source here, as he does in the Sheep Look Up and Stand on Zanzibar, from The Club of Rome’s limits to growth, to Marshall McLuhan to Alvin Toffler. More than a synthesis of 1970’s concerns, he presents a grand mystery and compelling tale. Its relevance remains. Why? Because of the fortunate extrapolations? Or that he didn’t stop at scientific extrapolation but integrated it with socio-economic trends? All with a unique interpretation and a protagonist to exploit and suffer from the extremes.
One test of true SF is that the story can’t exist if you take away the science. In these, this is true but also if you take away the setting, the characters cease to exist.

Blog – Points of View

I’ve had the good fortune to work with talented and thorough editors on numerous short stories and novels. Learning their likes and dislikes is only part of the process. Learning new skills is the challenge and the reward.

My most recent book publisher, Cursed Dragon, challenged my comfort zone around points of view, forcing a major rewrite, which led from ‘revise and resubmit’ to Acceptance (yay!). “Barnaby’s Luck” book one in a fantasy trilogy, will launch in January, 2025.

Until this revision, which I’ll get to in a moment, I chosen points of view (POV), appropriate to the length, genre and story. My short fiction was almost always told in third person from the protagonist’s POV. Having multiple, rotating, POV’s complicates short stories, in my opinion.

However, novel length works are different. I usually have multiple plot threads which often require (or so I thought), differing points of reference. Events which are separated in location but not necessarily time, are harder to ‘show’ when only one character is available as witness. More than one POV also adds depth with regard to event and character interpretation, which can drive (or slow – you don’t want that) the plot forward. This person knows something another one does not, leading to conflict.

I changed my normal rotating POV in my recently published mystery novel, “Take Your Best Shot”, choosing to follow the detective genre convention of single, first person, POV. At the time it, first person was especially a mental stretch but I found once I got into the story, it worked really well, allowing me to totally immerse in character. Since Clay’s (the investigator) voice was essentially mine, it went well and I learned the value of a time-linear event sequence.

Now we come to “Barnaby’s Luck”. The submitted manuscript featured one main protagonist, Barnaby, and a few secondary, but important, characters. Their reactions to and impressions of, Barnaby, I felt were key to building his arc and telling the sweeping story. Events critical to the plot happened in places he couldn’t be present because he was elsewhere, conducting his own, usually unsuccessful, schemes. Thus, I had chosen, a multiple (three), third-person POV, narrative style.

The editors, however, saw the advantage of telling the entire book through Barnaby’s eyes only. How to relate the events he was previously absent from without mere ‘telling’ and not ‘showing’? How to add depth to Barnaby’s character without other’s impressions? How to dramatize the events where he wasn’t present? And how to keep the page-turning advantages of switching POV’s from chapter to chapter? Although in “Barnaby’s Luck”, that wasn’t as much of a consideration as my SF novels.

The original draft had interludes featuring a peripheral, but integral, character. Some of these, I was able to keep and expand to add depth to the antagonist. But there were other scenes which needed wholesale changes to keep Barnaby ‘in the loop’. I took small events from those scenes and inserted them into Barnaby’s experiences by bringing him near the events and some minimal ‘telling’ via subsequent dialog or their impact on subsequent happenings where he was front and center.

I replaced Barnaby’s external characterization via previously POV’d characters’ thoughts, with their outward reactions to Barnaby through their words and actions. Calling him out, threatening him, contradicting him, misinterpreting him, and other techniques. It worked well and then allowed me to delve deeper into his character by his acceptance, rejection or outright surprise at other’s opinions of him and his agenda.

It wasn’t easy, changing and occasionally deleting scenes entirely. My precious prose gone with the touch of a key. I survived and so did “Barnaby’s Luck”.

I have two more books to write to complete his trilogy. The second book is in draft stage and I have to say, it goes well, knowing my character better than I did before book one revisions allowed the second novel to proceed linearly and focused. The important stuff happens when Barnaby is present because he makes them happen, he pushes for better or worse. The book is definitely better.

Will I use this in my next SF novel? I will certainly consider it as an option. The choice will effect more than just how I tell the story, it can influence the story itself.

     Once in a long while, a story will appear as a whole in my mind. Everything seems to be there. No false starts, no dead end subplots, no unsatisfying ending. How does this happen and why?

A recent short story was accepted by the first market I submitted to; in fact, the story was written targeting said market, an anthology. “Ghost in the Machinery” was written over a 3-day stretch but the ideas had been floating in my head for a couple of months.

     The kernel came out from a Quirks and Quarks radio segment (link here), a weekly CBC science program hosted by Bob McDonald (sp?). Bob interviewed a materials scientist/researcher who’d adapted a computer search program to sift through reams of published papers, looking for relevant findings which might help their own progress. The program not only highlighted items a human could miss due to the sheer volume of material but also made connections between disparate (on the surface) branches to create a new breakthrough.

     I thought it interesting enough to make a brief note and file away in my subconscious, waiting for the other parts of a possible story to pop out. The anthology’s theme announcement was enough to spur me forward. I had the idea; I needed a protagonist, setting, plot and compelling drama.

     Spoiler alert: some of the following may reveal more of the story than you’d like, if you haven’t read it. I suggest you proceed to that step and then come back. Machines That Make Us (tychebooks.com)

     Now that you’ve finished the tale and returned, welcome back. The protagonist wasn’t a huge stretch; this is science fiction so he or she would be a scientist. Something a bit more interesting that a materials engineer. Hence a SETI researcher; lots of neat stuff still to be plumbed from there. But he needed to be more than interesting because of his work, this was science fiction, he needed dramatic motivation. Pressure. Okay, I’ll load the poor sap with pressure. Scientific research demands results; his so far were uninspiring to the supporters. So he needed financial pressure. The fellow’s now under the gun to produce or the project’s over, no more money. A start; what else could twist the knife in his ribs? Time pressure. Okay, Mr. Brilliant Scientist, you have no more time.

     He struggles, using determination, self-sacrifice (his own money) and insight (he’s supposed to be smart and intuitive if he’s any kind of decent scientist). He can’t overcome all of the barriers I’ve created but succeeds in a way he, and hopefully the reader, didn’t anticipate.

     Idea, genesis, sudden market announcement which might fit (at least serve as a goal to finish the tale), seat of pants to chair and fingers to keyboard, and presto: completed story.

     They don’t all happen this easily. The fully-developed story rarely blooms on the first draft. But sometimes they do. Not due to brilliance of the writer but because the story has been maturing in my subconscious long enough that when I finally commit it to page, it appears as a whole. Got lucky this time. As Sam Goldwyn said, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” The more I write, the more of a writer I become.

I had the good fortune to have my first four novels published conventionally through a wonderful small press (Bundoran) specializing in science fiction. All things must pass. Sadly for me, but time for the principal of Bundoran to reclaim his own writing freedom, Bundoran closed their doors in October 2020. My books reverted to me and I re-released them under my control solely as ebooks through Amazon and Kobo.

It got my feet wet in the digital publishing world and gave me impetus to evaluate various finished book projects still seeking a home with another publisher or agent. The submission-response process takes time and I write faster than many respond. Self-publishing has gained serious momentum and I decided it was time. I’d sat in on numerous panels over the years at When Words Collide on the pros (many) and cons (few). The cons were mostly from one presenter who’d self-published a number of his own books but when he started to list all the formatting software needed, it seemed daunting.

That was before the emergence of one-stop conversion shops like Draft2Digital. D2D works in partnership with the writer to convert (author supplies manuscript, cover and other small details) your documents and market the ebook through numerous online sales and lending platforms, not just Amazon and Kobo. In return, they collect a reasonable (in my opinion) percentage of your sales.

Despite the attraction of their service, was I ready to make the plunge? I evaluated the chances of finding another Bundoran, slim though there could exist another editor/publisher who aligned with my vision and style. I could continue to submit and pile up more novels-in-waiting while waiting, or get on with it. I’m relatively prolific, an advantage apparently in the ebook world, and I have a few potential series characters/worlds to revisit, another advantage. I also write compressed novels in the range of sixty to eighty thousand words, ideal for ebook readers but on the low side for conventional publishers.

I’m not a patient learner with the vagaries displayed by many online rabbit holes but I got on well with Draft2Digital, thanks to a marvellous YouTube tutorial posted by Bethany Atazadeh (there are others too). I only had to navigate back and forth a few times to get the manuscript formatting right (didn’t have a proper title page), and presto, The Fourth Vertex (Jake Nourth book 2) was in the cue to be published.

In my previous professions in the energy industry, I learned early on to take charge of my own career, rather than letting the corporation be in control. I was able to push through barriers and advance my positions from financial analyst to landman to geophysicist to independent consultant to manager, all the time keeping passionate about what I did and what I learned. I realize my writing career should be no different if I’m to maximize the satisfaction from doing something I really love. Self-publishing, so far, looks to me like the way to take and maintain charge of my art.

My writers group often adds a skill session to provide a change from our main critiquing task. Earlier this year, it was suggested we comment on a recent book we’ve read in terms of what lessons we gleaned, if any. I chose two stories, for contrast. One disappointing novel (which I’ll discuss but won’t name) and an outstanding, classic novella.

The novel, though unworthy of a positive review from me, still highlighted lessons to be learned, or perhaps in this case, avoided. The solar system exploration tale was populated with cardboard characters acting out predictable situations. The evil mastermind’s motivation was to be evil. The main takeaway for me was to honour Erle Stanley Gardner’s “eliminate all stock situations” rule (in fact extend it to stock characters and stock motivations).

The painful lack of surprise in most scenes got me to thinking more about scene construction. If a scene fails to ignite, what might be an alternative approach? Instead of choosing the most likely character’s point of view to relate and observe the action, choose the least likely; it might be more dramatic.

In terms of the one-dimensional characters, what might be an alternative approach? Switch motivations? Antagonists who block the protagonists’ desires, are more interesting when they truly believe their actions are for the good, that’s pretty standard (outside this book anyway). Conflicting motivations and subsequent actions by the protagonists can lead to a more complex, satisfying read.

Speaking of satisfying reads, the novella The Moon Moth by Jack Vance (Science Fiction Hall of Fame vol. IIB), is such a read. Vance creates an alien society where masks are mandatory in public and must reflect the wearer’s mood and station. If you wear the mask of an aggressive icon, you must be willing to back it up by appropriate action if challenged. In drops a newly-arrived human diplomat who errs in his initial mask choice and narrowly escapes being killed by the locals for his transgression. Complication arises when a human murderer reaches the planet and the protagonist must identify and capture the incognito villain. Using logic and deduction which are unique to the alien society’s mores, the protagonist succeeds, overcoming the handicaps of his low-caste position.

Vance layers human societal commentary into the alien standard, distinguishing how the aliens make their system work versus the human failure to enforce the consequences of adopting a disingenuous persona. Then he adds a mystery, a time bomb which will mean more deaths, the loss of respect for humans in general and a miserable individual fate for the protagonist if the murderer isn’t caught.

The Moon Moth is a shining example of science fiction. A believable, internally logical alien society where humans must adapt. Outsiders haven’t earned the right to ask ‘why?’ but instead should ask ‘why not?’. The story is timeless and Vance makes it look easy.

Lesson? Awkwardly spelled names, seven limbs and a green sun do not an alien society make. True differences in thought do. If the author can use the differences to objectively yet subtly reflect upon a human foible, well done!

My father recently passed away at 103 years old. Universal among condolences from family and friends was the comment of the great stories he told. Having been around him all my life, I took his talent for granted but now I want to examine his memory closer. Was it the stories themselves, the way he told them or a combination of both? And can his skill be transferred to a son who never lived through his experiences?

Born near Prince Albert, Saskatchewan in 1916, dad was fourteen in 1930 when the Great Depression’s wrath slammed the prairies already suffering drought. He and a chum hit the rails and rode freight cars in search of a better life. Clearing the Frank Slide, picking Okanagan fruit, panning for gold, selling household chemicals door-to-door in the poorest Vancouver tenements and eventually fishing and working in sawmills on north Vancouver Island, the 1930’s were filled with Steinbeckian misadventures.

WWII brought some relief in terms of steady employment in the Vancouver shipyards before dad joined the army. Basic training, meeting and marrying my mother in a whirlwind romance before shipping overseas to England (weird coincidence, his younger brother whom he hadn’t seen in years, was on the same troopship), and combat episodes in Holland and France provided more epic material for his stories.

Despite this tough life, dad never viewed it as anything other than ‘life’. Not to be merely endured, but to be harvested for the good times and the good people he met. That was the success content in his stories. No matter the bleak moments, the closure often, though not always, provided a positive takeaway. Life carried on and one gave back when and where one could.

He had the travails but he wasn’t unique. Many people suffered similar hard times in the ’30’s depression, the war and the post-war struggle to build security for a new family. He told his tales with a great ear for dialect. He plucked the humour from the embarrassing and frightening moments. He put his heart into the description. He could pick out a visual cue which brought an image full-blown to the listener’s mind and nailed the story down for future remembrance.

Now to my author part of the exercise, though I do treasure the chance to share his memories: how to adapt verbal storytelling skills to the written page? To my mind, the shared ingredients are: pathos (honest emotion), believable dialogue, risk (stakes), triumph or defeat (conclusion, not ‘closure’, for the story goes on after the last page), and a key to tie it all together with style (presentation is the divider between those who can tell their story well and those who have a good story but can’t deliver it memorably).

I’ll close with a short anecdote about dad. During a lunch many years ago, my folks had long-time friends visiting from out of town. Following one of my dad’s tales, one guest commented that he should write a book. Dad’s normal answer I’d heard many times was “no one would believe it”. This time he threw me, his response was, “I’ve done too many things I’m not proud of.” Dad, I get the final word this time and it is, “No you haven’t. I’m proud of everything you did and accomplished.” Thanks for the stories and the gift (I hope) to tell them.

A recent discussion topic with my writing critique group was backstory – what happened before the current story began to make the story. We debated when it’s needed, how it’s woven into the story and what pitfalls to avoid. It led me to examine posthumously how I inserted backstory into my Transient City/Rogue Town duology. My comments below apply mainly to novel-length work. Short stories are a different breed. In the short form, one begins ‘as late as possible’ and provides only what is absolutely necessary in the way of backstory.

First, the need. Background information about character and physical and social setting enhances the reader’s appreciation for motivation and the obstacles blocking the characters’ goals. Understanding motivation can increase a reader’s dopamine level, many readers seek personal identification with the characters presented. Additional layers of world and persona-building give depth in novel-length works. The incremental ‘reveals’ judiciously sprinkled through the tale keep the reader’s interest and if they can share in assembling the parts, the act of participation rewards through that old dopamine rush. If done well.

If done well. The techniques vary from smooth integration in dialog to clumsy exposition. Verbal exchanges can ‘worm’ information from a character who has their own reason for reluctance. Withholding key data could be an embarrassing or shaming experience. It could be for safety reasons. Doling it out piecemeal as the plot’s stakes rise adds tension, the key element in moving all fiction forward.

Sensory or emotional triggers can produce flashbacks which function to explain why the character reacts as he/she does. A place, a word, a person from the past can cause a sudden recollection. Dreams and hallucinations can offer similar opportunity for the author to slip in crucial information.

Other less subtle techniques include news items garnering the protagonist’s attention. Journal or logbook entries break up the narrative flow but handled with care, can still evoke genuine emotions in character and reader. Larger chunks of exposition giving history can slow the pace and are to be used with care, if at all.

Victor Stromboli, my lead character in Transient City, has a gift in the form of perfect memory. The talent allows him to eke out an existence as a crime-scene ‘witness’ for the City’s police. The procedure involved in locking down the memories is an ordeal for Victor every time. I wanted the reader to question how Victor came by his talent in the first place. Before the book ends, I outline an incident from his early life which not only reveals his discovery of the ability but also served to elaborate on his socio-economic position in Transient’s hierarchy. One event, multiple functions.

Transient City is Victor’s story. It’s sequel, Rogue Town, is Shoes’ story. Shoes is a secondary but enigmatic, character in the first book. Rogue Town gave me the chance to background her past. This time I dovetailed another character’s previous career into Shoes’ past trauma. It provided more information for both characters, a nasty bit of ‘City’ history and created mistrust (i.e. tension) for Shoes to be working with that character.

If you want to see if I’ve succeeded, read this blog no further until you acquire the books.

You’re back? Excellent. I hope you enjoyed the novels. You will have noticed secondary character backstories were also woven in as part of TC’s history, for the City too is an important character.

A caution. One can get carried away with backstory. Background detail can be like research: you need it to write the story but it doesn’t all need to be in the final product.

From a writer’s viewpoint, backstory supplies one additional service. It can provide the inspiration for prequel stories or other tales contemporary with the source. A canon of Sherlock Holmes stories and scripts have been inspired by unpursued (by Conan Doyle) references littered through the original series. Asimov went backward in time as well as forward in his Foundation and Robot series, taking advantage of the rich background created for the initial novels.

    The discussion arises from my own experience examining the writing process and on this topic, breaks down into two considerations. The first looks at common sources open to all writers ‘combing the ether’ for ideas. That which roots in the outside world. The second is more personal and deals with the known vs. the unknown sources inside the writing brain.
    Most writers are receptive to their surrounding world. We note news items ranging from the major to the inconsequential and file them away in our memory, or write them down. As long as they hold interest, they are worth saving for future use in our stories, sometimes on their own, more often combined with other, disparate items, characters, settings or plots. I often read a short story or piece of a novel and see exactly where the inspiration originated because I too took notice of the source material and have either used it in one of my stories or was waiting for the right time and ninety-degree turns to make it interesting. You can’t wait too long, I think these ideas have a shelf-life of one or two years. After that, your idea has been exploited by another writer or the topicality has passed.
    As always, the originality arises in the way each author interprets the key elements and applies them to a human condition worth dramatizing. I’m not saying there’s no such thing as creativity from thin air but we share experience and environment. We need to have depth in our writing and to be accessible to readers who may or may not seek subtext commonality but do seek a unique, accessible and entertaining take on a subject.
    The second manifestation of this subconscious phenomena comes to me in the form of my direct inspirations in novel writing.
    My book “Transient City” owes a bow to Christopher Priest’s “Inverted World” (one Goodreads reviewer got it!). Priest’s mobile city concept struck a chord years ago when I read it and seemed the ideal setting for my tale of endless memory and homage to 1960’s British pop culture. This was a conscious attempt on my part to acknowledge but not imitate.
    I will occasionally re-read a previously-enjoyed book and be surprised by a scene or plot thread which I recognize came forth to a conscious level during my creative process, one I didn’t trace back to source when madly writing a new scene but nevertheless has enough similarity in origin to tag it after the fact. It doesn’t happen a lot but I estimate one or two significant ideas per book which I thought were all me likely have an outside source, though re-imagined to fit my experience and need. This raises a greater question: does the unrestrained, non-editorial free-flow of early drafts/new scenes unleash the creative mind or plumb the memory? Memory isn’t a filing cabinet; it usually doesn’t offer up exact copies of an event. It recreates the event from additive experience to closely resemble the original. Another level of modification or creativity, depending on how askew the ‘new’ differs from the source.
    A mildly scary epilogue to “Transient City” is an old SF novel I discovered recently by Mack Reynolds called “Rolltown”. The cover depicts a large RV, a micro-habitat on treads. The cover of Transient depicts my imagined city perfectly – a town-sized complex on treads. It is coincidence; the similarity ends with the cover. Reynolds’ story takes place on post-catastrophe dystopic Earth, involving masses of RV’s travelling together for safety. I neither saw nor read the book when it came out in 1976 but seeing that cover in the used book store less than a year ago gave me a moment of shock. Perhaps I plumbed forty-year old ether for that one.
    Writers and readers share enough experience, whether cultural, anthropological or global zeitgeist to survive the translation from author’s mind to page to reader’s eyes to their mind hopefully consistent with the creator’s intent. Striking the reader’s tuning fork melodiously is what I seek as a writer. Understanding how I got there is more complex than typing the words on a screen. Who is in charge? In my case, it varies. The end result always amazes my conscious mind, the first reward for hours spent at the screen. The second reward is when a publisher finds it as amazing. The third and most important is when the reader discovers it.

Often in my critiquing group, the discussion turns to a classic work in the genre or out and the group will be divided into those who’ve read the subject work, those who haven’t and those who’ve never heard of it. The latter two usually ask, “Why should I read it?” There are reasons for and against and all valid to some respect. Though I fall mainly on the ‘why’ side, I’ll examine the ‘why not’ and the ‘don’t bother’ position.

Let’s examine the why first. You never suffer by reading an outstanding story or novel. As a writer, you can read jointly for enjoyment and to study technique of someone who pulled magic from the muse to create a classic. There’s another reason besides entertainment or craft building. Most ‘How-To’ genre writing books emphasize early on that one should ‘know what has gone before’. Science Fiction has a rich century-plus legacy. A burgeoning author can attempt a story about a Martian invasion failing due to earth virus/bacterial infection (or an alternate history Mayan invasion of medieval Europe defeated by smallpox) but know the ground has been well-tilled by H.G. Wells. This is an extreme example but many such classics exist without a series of movie adaptations. One could craft a story about a desert planet civilization breeding the finest warriors in the galaxy but don’t try to market a Dune clone out of ignorance of its existence. A chance exists your first-reader group may not have read it either but a competent editor (and well-read fans) will have. Your work will be compared to precedents as well as contemporaries. If found to be a weak imitation of a landmark story of years ago, it may not pass the slush pile.

One of the reasons I hear for not reading this or that particular seminal work is a frustration in style evolution or biases no longer politically correct. But such differences can often inspire a new take. Consider Don Sakers’ ‘The Cold Solution’, a more culturally acceptable answer to Tom Godwin’s classic ‘The Cold Equations’. Sakers created a classic of his own while paying homage to a decades-old but perceived out-of-date standard of the genre.

Knowing the history of the genre one is writing in can be essential not to unknowingly imitate a common theme or idea and can stimulate an entirely fresh approach. What if the classic’s assumptions are wrong? What advances in technology or human understanding render the original obsolete? Respond with a modern interpretation.

Writers must be judicious in their time budgeting. The question arises of ‘Why should I devote precious writing time to reading time?’ A valid point, if the two are interchangeable. Twenty minutes on a bus ride or in a doctor’s office could be more rewarding as a reading session than a writing one. Often for me, reading recharges the muse, plants ideas in the conscious or subconscious for future exploitation during the creativity process.

A more gut response to not pursuing the classics is sometimes just being contradictory for its own sake. Writers are a quirky bunch and expecting them all to react or behave as I do isn’t realistic. I recognize the diverse personalities and respect their unique approaches to the creative process. The diversity is welcome when it comes to critiquing, if you please everyone, you’re not doing it right.

The response is the ‘I’m unfamiliar with that story’. Again, a valid position but not for the growing writer. Occasionally we have mystery and horror stories tabled for critiquing by our group. I’ve heard the ‘I’ve written a cozy mystery but have never read one so I don’t know what they are or if this qualifies’ introduction. I leave it to the reader to react without editorial comment from me.

I remain on the ‘for’ side. I like being entertained and stimulated by reading the best, and this extends beyond the classics to the yearly Best collections to see what’s being explored recently. I can appreciate the idea some writers don’t want to be influenced by another author’s take on a familiar theme. But most SF themes are familiar, it’s the fresh execution which elevates your story out of the slushpile.

I often hear authors and editors referring to a novel where they believe the writer has ‘found their voice’. What is this mysterious benchmark and how does one know when it has been achieved?

Authorial ‘voice’ is different from the point of view character voice. It is the author’s ‘persona’, the voice behind the curtain whose outlook determines the tone of the novel. This tone can be humourous, optimistic, cynical or downright bleak. The subject matter and plot may not determine the tone, it is the author who makes the choice.

Carl Hiaasen writes from a humourous slant but his books are full of deceit, crooked politicians, violent deaths and serious societal issues. He’s chosen a funny delivery either because of his personal view of the world or he’s deemed it the most effective way of conveying his theme.

On the optimistic side, many SF writers from Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke and forward view the future with hope. Star Trek too had a positive, almost utopian, vision of man’s future. The significant hurdles to reach such a future are myriad and the challenge is often the crux of their stories.

Cynical voices in the SF world would include Richard Morgan, whose homages to the noir-detective genre are almost necessarily cynical, echoing Philip Marlowe. The first-person point of view convention in this case blurs the distinction between author and protagonist voice.

Bleak books are often dystopias (1984 for example). Things are bad and they’re only going to get worse. Christopher Moore bridges depression and humour brilliantly. A subset, or perhaps a set on its own, would be the novels of a world or universe in chaos. Nothing follows the rules we understand; action generates overwhelmingly unequal and nihilistic or discordant reaction. China Mieville’s compelling novels seem rooted in such a null-value system.

To the question of finding one’s own voice. It may or may not reflect the writer’s outlook on life. It can be chosen to distance the writer from the material in order to tell the story more effectively. Damon Knight wrote that his fiction improved dramatically after he invented a writer to write his stories for him, one who was more mature, skilled, inventive and knowledgeable than he. I think he does himself a disservice here, he likely became all of those with experience as a writer and maturity as a person. It’s worth exploring the value of donning a mantle when one does write. That mantle can certainly be of a ‘better’ writer. You put yourself into this new creation running the keyboard and then proceed to tell the story from within the disguise. The voice takes on a new identity, separate from the person owning the byline.

One need only look at the titles of many authors’ websites to see the persona adopted by them as illustration of the above. They have found a mantle. My analysis and categorization convince me voice exists. But do writers really ‘find their voice’ or do they just become better writers? Does voice translate into reader popularity?

My next novel, The Sixth Helix (currently scheduled for late 2018 release) is a better book than its predecessors. Have I found my voice or just refined it from Transient City and Rogue Town? I was more confident in writing it from page 1 of draft 1. Confident in the story, the characters and setting. The mantle I found in this case was the self-assurance of my skill being up to completing the book as I imagined it, no falling short of my ambition. I hope readers will agree.