I saw The Force Awakens again yesterday. And I loved it with every fiber of my being.
I am the person and writer I am in no small part due to Star Wars. I know I’m not alone in this. I’m not claiming to be singularly influenced in a deeper way than anyone else, yadda yadda. But here this is my story. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I don’t remember a time when I hadn’t seen Star Wars. Its structure and tone has left an indelible mark on me.
A couple of weeks ago, I announced that I was joining Speculate! The Podcast for Writers, Readers, and Fans, taking up the duties of co-host while co-founder Bradley P. Beaulieu takes a temporary hiatus to focus on his writing.
I listen to a *lot* of podcasts. The first one I remember is I Should Be Writing, which was my lifeline to the world of SF/F writing during my MA work in Oregon. I picked the habit back up when I was working as a traveling book rep, since my working week often included 20+ hours of driving.
So now that I work from home, I find that I’ve got way more podcasts that I’m interested in than I can make time to listen to them, even listening over breakfast, lunch, dishes, and afternoon walks.
And since misery loves company, I’m going to recommend some podcasts and episodes, so you too can know the joy of having too many wonderful things to listen to:
Ditch Diggers – A Must-listen for working writers, especially in the SF/F prose world. Hosts Mur Lafferty (of I Should Be Writing Fame) and Matt Wallace give you the no-BS look at what it’s like to write for a living. Ditch Diggers is the Business of Writing Podcast I would have started if they hadn’t gotten to it first – I’m very grateful that they did, because they’re doing a great job.
PlayWell – Games for the Greater Chaotic Good with Adam Koebel – I absolutely love the way Adam talks about making game spaces inclusive and using them to help talk people through difficult topics.
Book Riot – The flagship podcast of the Bookish site Book Riot. Lots of news about the publishing world, with a focus on Literary Fiction.
The Roundtable Podcast – Hosted by Dave “Creageous” Robison, The Roundtable Podcast not only does creator interviews, but they also do regular brainstorming sessions, where a guest writer will bring in an idea or in-progress story, and the hosts (including a working professional Guest Host) help take the idea up to the next level. I’ve appeared on the show a few times, and it’s some of the most fun I’ve had on a podcast as a guest.
And of course, you can hear me on The Skiffy and Fanty Show, mostly talking about media, and also now on Speculate! The Podcast for Writers, Readers, and Fans.
So, now I turn the mic. What are some of your favorite podcasts?
Hi folks.
Today is the release of my seventh book, The Shootout Solution. It’s the beginning of my Genrenauts series, and I think it’s my strongest work to date. It’s about a group of storytellers that travel between dimensions, each other world being the home of a story genre (Fantasy, Mystery, Romance, etc.). They find and fix broken stories in order to protect their Earth. Genrenauts lets me explore my thoughts about the social and psychological role of genres and storytelling. It’s also a chance for me to try to tell a big, dramatic story while staying optimistic.
It’s like Leverage meets Jasper Fforde, or Leverage for stories. It’s a great match for Ree Reyes fans, or for anyone that likes action/adventure or genre-bending SF/F.
Some of you have been with me since Geekomancy released in 2012, others are probably just now finding my work. Whoever you are, however you got here, thank you for completing the storytelling circuit. I write these books to communicate, to get my thoughts out into the world, and to entertain. Without you, without readers, I’m just talking to myself.
I’m incredibly excited about this series, as you have already seen. I’ve got a five-seasons planned for the series, and I’ve already written all six episodes of season 1. I want to take this one all the way.
Now, it’s up to you, the readers, to see if you like the book. Because if you do, there’s plenty more to come. Not just from me, but from the entire Tor.com Publishing imprint. They’ve got stand-alone novellas and series like mine across every corner of SF/F, from gritty revenge stories starring anthropomorphic animals to lyrical tales about outsider witches, stand-alone epic fantasy, and more.
If you’re here, it’s probably because you already know me from my books, from Twitter, from Angry Robot, or from a podcast. However you got here, welcome. I work from home, so a lot of my socializing happens through the internet – I thrive off of that interaction, and I appreciate having you here.
Like I said, it’s my book birthday, so here’s my wish: Please buy The Shootout Solution. And if you like it, tell your friends. Tell your co-workers. Find the people in your life that you think would enjoy the series, and share it with them. And then, consider trying some of the other novellas from Tor.com. We’re all in this boat together.
Every book that does well makes it more likely that Tor.com Publishing will succeed. Because I tell you what – Macmillan aren’t the only ones watching. You can guarantee that other publishers are watching what happens with Tor.com Publishing and deciding what to do about novellas, about innovative publishing strategies.
This entire imprint is an experiment by Macmillan, which does a perfectly good business in SF/F with their existing imprints (Tor Books is the largest North American publisher of SF/F, with many of the biggest writers in the genre). Macmillan is taking a big risk and investing a lot in trying to make this new model work, but it will only succeed if readers get as excited about novellas as the staff and writers for the imprint are.
I’ve found writing novellas to be incredibly rewarding – they’re long enough to establish an interesting world and tell a meaty story, but they don’t come with the expectations of a full-length novel. You can get in, tell your story, and get out, without the need to elongate the story with sub-plots and additional try-fail cycles. I still love writing novels, but this series has taught me to appreciate the versatility and beauty of the novella form. And for episodic storytelling in prose? Novellas are the place to be.
So if you’re excited about novellas, too – whether it’s from reading Genrenauts already, other novellas, or from any of the other Tor.com Publishing books, please spread the word. Recommend novellas to your friends, buy novellas as gifts for the holidays, and be sure to review the novellas you’ve read on retailer sites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, as well as Goodreads.
So, here’s the take-away:
P.S. If you buy the book before November 23rd, or if you’ve already pre-ordered, you can enter to win a signed & personalized print galley of The Absconded Ambassador, Genrenauts Episode 2. I’m doing this because early sales are a huge deal, I greatly appreciate them, and this is a way I can show that appreciation.
The way I see it, creative work succeeds when it makes an impact. Whether that’s just being a pleasant distraction during your commute or a way to focus during a flight, changing your mind or how you see the world, or providing a way to fill a lazy afternoon – however you partake, the fact that you care is the biggest magic of all.
Because it’s the beginning of what I hope to be a big, ambitious series, it’s really important for the first book to sell well. That’s why I’ve been running around the entire internet doing podcasts, written interviews, guest posts, videos, etc. I’ve been doing my best to spread the word and get people excited about it.
Thanks for coming this far, and I hope you’ll come back as Genrenauts continues February 23rd, 2016, with Episode 2 – The Absconded Ambassador.
Several things popped up in rapid succession that got me thinking. The first was this announcement regarding YouTube Red, the new ad-free paid tier of YouTube. The second was the news of a new Star Trek series, to be aired (almost?) exclusively on CBS All Access, a streaming service. And then, just as I was writing this post, Amazon announced Amazon Books – a Bricks & Mortar test store.
So now, I’m going to put on my digital media scholar hat once more and talk about some high-level stuff going on right now. Some pitfalls and pain points I see, as well as opportunities.
YouTube Red has been some time in the making. January of this year, musician Zoë Keating got a lot of shares and chatter with her post “What should I do about YouTube?” on this very topic. I see this move as part of an overall shift in the landscape toward more and more de-centralization of content, where 1st-party streaming systems and subscriptions replace once-agnostic content aggregation-esque systems like YouTube, Hulu, etc.
Here’s YouTube creator Hank Green discussing some of the ins and outs of this move.
I appreciate him spending the time to talk about the positives and negatives, avoiding a hard knee-jerk reaction. I’m worried about the independent creators who had found an equilibrium between Patreon, YouTube, and other venues who now have to pivot and adjust in a big way. It’s the way of life, but any logistical interruption costs creators money, because have to spend spend more of their time on admin and strategy rather than the actual creation.
And then, just hours later, I saw the news about the new Star Trek show, and that it was going to be almost exclusively available on CBS All Access, a paid streaming subscription which currently costs $5.99 a month.
It looks to me (and others, from what I’ve seen), that this is CBS positioning the new show as a Killer App for their streaming service, which I’d not heard of before today (I’m mostly out of the Media Criticism game day-to-day, thanks to having two other careers).
It’s potentially a very smart approach – and one that most of these proliferating paid services are following. HBO, Netflix, Hulu, Kindle Unlimited, all of them are bringing in or commissioning exclusive content to serve as Killer Apps for their individual services.
But here’s the thing about that proliferation – if every service has its own killer apps behind their pay walls, most consumers are very quickly going to max out on the $ they can or choose to pay for these services.
Consumer Side
An example – I have a steady, middle-class day job and I have a writing career. I’m married to someone who also has a steady job, and we have no kids. So we have more disposable income than a lot of US families. Between us, we pay for Netflix, Hulu, and High-speed internet. I get my razors on a subscription, I subscribe to a fiction serial (Bookburners), I’ve been an intermittent subscriber to Oyster and Scribd, as well as supporting a half-dozen creators on Patreon and intermittent subscriptions to broadcasters on Twitch.tv. As a household, we’re probably in the top quartile of subscription service users in the US. And I’m very much at the point of ‘Okay, that’s all I can do’ when it comes to subscription services. If I add one at this point, it probably involves dropping another.
And there are *so many* of them these days:
Twitch, YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, HBO Now, CBS Access, Spotify, Apple Music, Kindle Unlimited, Scribd, Amazon Prime, etc.
And that’s not even counting subscription boxes (L00tCrate, etc.) and subscription services outside of entertainment, like Harry’s, Blue Apron, StitchFix, etc.
Economic recovery in the US is happening, but it’s slow, and it’s accompanied by wage stagnation and income inequality (I can’t speak well to the economic situation elsewhere, so I won’t). So the % of people in the US that can afford numerous subscription services without seriously re-framing their budget is still not too large, from what I can tell. Whether this is part of an overall paradigm shift in how people budget and consume content is a different discussion (there are too many ways this could go – I have to focus).
Creator Side
Switching hats now – what does this look like on the creator side of the equation?
I see this proliferation of paid/gated services as a double-edged facet of the overall creative & commercial ecosystem. There are opportunities, but they’re potentially fraught.
Here’s what I see as the dominant progression for a creator trying to make money from their work (visual art, music, prose, comics, video, etc.)
Level 1 – Start small, give stuff away for free, sell some stuff. At Level 1, a creator is almost totally reliant on big systems, for both discovery and fulfillment/delivery. Basically no one knows who they are, so they join larger infrastructures and services to get the word out about their material through algorithmic and organic discovery.
Level 2 – Building Audience & Relationships — At this level, it becomes viable to sell some merch (T-shirts, mugs, stickers, patches, etc. Here, a creator can bring dedicated fans onto a growing mailing list. This level enables direct sales and stronger performance on retail sites, but the creator may still be largely dependent for discovery-enabled growth and a lot of fulfillment/delivery
Level 3 – Big Creators – Here, creators have a dedicated audience large enough they can get a living wage directly from their base, either totally direct or through Patreon/Kickstarter. Maybe they supplement their income speaking/appearance fees etc., being large enough that they are in demand not just as creators, but as entrepreneurs/thought leaders in their field. They may still use large systems, but if they do, they do so from a far stronger position – they are less dependent on any given system, since their base is strong, a base that is specific and mobilized, not platform-dependent.
This system is reductive, and by applying it broadly across media, I lose some nuance. Musicians can tour and get money from in-person appearances and sell merch there – novelists and poets largely cannot. Visual artists can sell commissions at conventions for solid income, writers have less opportunities in such situations. Etc.
Some take the pure indie path and are less reliant on the bigger systems, but then don’t have access to their discovery engine.
As the landscape moves toward more gated content, more push for exclusives as killer apps, more and more places to publish and publicize, creators have to have our eyes wide frakking open as we consider every new platform, every new distributor agreement, every new book deal, and so on.
Because things are moving fast, and these big platforms are only allies for as long as we’re useful to them. ACX changed its payout terms last February, and because ACX was the only real game in their town (self-publishing audiobook service), creators were forced to sign the new terms or walk from that service entirely. It’s the same type of choice YouTube creators have been forced into, though with notable differences (ACX was a flat-out rate cut, YouTube might come with additional payment, but requires more opt-in and cuts off other options). Any creator that relies on a single or small # of services/sites/retailers for a large % of their business is vulnerable to disruption, as Chuck says in the link re: ACX.
Anytime one of these big companies makes a shift, it causes huge ripples, and creators, especially those of us reliant on platforms for fulfillment, discovery, or other services/opportunities they offer have to roll with the changing tides.
In my opinion, creators right now have more to fear from Monopsonies and monopsonic behavior, than monopolies. Since so many creators are currently beholden to retailers and/or content services (writers and Amazon/B&N/Kobo/iTunes/Physical Bookstores, musicians and iTunes/Spotify/Pandora), if a creator wants to retail their work but doesn’t have enough reach/audience on their own, they use a seller/vendor. But if there are few enough vendors in their world, and those limited vendors exhibit monopsonic behavior, the result tends to be a major squeeze on the creators.
Paradoxically, the creators are the only reason the monopsonists can survive – if a majority of creators pulled out of monopsonic vendors, those vendors would collapse. But in the meantime, the lost income, the lost access could easily bankrupt a huge % of the creators pulling away from the monopsonist.
In a healthy market, there are a range of options, and creators can respond to a change of terms they dislike by removing their content from that platform. But for most video creators, removing everything from YouTube stands to present a loss of a huge % of their access and income, just as a prose writer would stand to lose a huge % of their access and income if they decided to not sell through Amazon.
Monopsonic behavior also impacts larger creator groups, like publishers – if one retailer or wholesaler gets too strong, it can create problems. It’s the WalMart problem. Wal-Mart pushes down prices, then makes up their $ in volume and by demanding better terms from their vendors, The vendors (publishers, manufacturers, etc.) then get to choose – pull out of the single-largest physical retailer, or accept the terms. Because individually, Wal-Mart doesn’t need most vendors. They need a plurality or majority, but as long as the selection adds up, individual vendors can come and go.
So when you’re one of those vendors, one of those creators, you end up in a really terrible situation. And that worries me. I want a healthy marketplace, where creators (authors, musicians, etc.) and the publishers/labels/etc that work with them have options, have recourse for if/when terms change in a way that becomes untenable.
The sky is not falling. But I will continue to point out rain clouds when I see them forming. Because then the smart folks can put out buckets and save on the water bill, or pull the lawn furniture inside before the storm breaks.
I’ll stop there before torturing the metaphor any further.
What do you all think about these streaming service moves – YouTube Red, and Star Trek on CBS All Access?
—
Mike’s latest book is Hexomancy, the fourth Ree Reyes urban fantasy. Geek magic squares off against a quartet of fate witches hell-bent on revenge.
So, you’ve got your setting and your premise for the story. But you don’t know who the characters are, don’t know how to make the premise personal.
Here’s some questions to ask yourself that might help put a face to the story you’re looking to tell.
Who has the most to gain? What would they need to do to accomplish it? Who would stand in their way?
Who has the most to lose? How can they resist such a loss? Who is taking it from them? How?
Who does this setting exploit? To what end? What recourse to they have?
Who does this setting/situation deprive of a voice? What systems or characters enforce that oppression?
If you’ve got a gee-whiz worldbuilding element – a magic style, a new technology, a weird feature of the world, think about these questions:
Who uses the magic/tech? Who can use it, and who uses it when they’re not supposed to?
What does the magic/tech make easier? Whose work or power does it undermine? Who does it most benefit from it?
Who lives in the special place? Who is most disadvantaged by the special place? Who stands to gain the most from the existence of the special place?
These questions are informed by a number of theories and ideas. There’s a thread of postcolonial scholarship called Subaltern Studies, focusing on post-colonial/post-imperial societies, many of whom practice an approach called ‘history from below,’ which I think is a great framework for going back to first assumptions in casting a story, especially in traditional fantasy.
Traditional fantasy is history from above – it’s the story of kings and princes and powerful wizards, of conquerors and saviors. Some fantasy stories to take the history from below perspective, but I think that there is a lot more to be done there. Many writers come to the genre and default into the expected cast – writing fantasy without princesses and grand wizards and mighty knights is missing the point for some people.
Another interesting thing that happens if you take a history from below approach is that the scope and scale of stories change. The destined farmboy seldom stays at his low socio-economic status as he becomes the hero. The orphan girl who is secretly the princess gets her inheritance, is raised to the nobility.
But what happens when you have a lead who starts and stays in their low socio-economic status? Not just a hero who has grand adventures and then settles down, but someone who is constrained by society such that the grand adventures they have are similarly bounded. There’s a danger in SF/F of taking the low-status hero and removing them entirely from their original context, which creates a kind of brain-drain and erasure – the poor orphan is chosen as a hero because they can then have an epic rise in status and leave their dreary old life behind. But the story quickly leaves their original context and seldom returns – it’s a story more about knights and princes and kingdoms at war, where the hero’s original life and concerns are left entirely behind.
Escaping a bad situation to make a better life for yourself is all well and good, but there’s a lot to be said for taking a different approach, where characters deal directly with their social situation, struggling directly with oppression, marginalization, systemic injustice, and so on. Because billions of real people deal with that every day. And if the only stories we write are ‘be lucky enough to escape your situation and everything will be better!’ it re-enforces the cultural notion that people deserving enough will escape the bad situation, that poverty and marginalization can only be escaped by the lucky few. It reifies the idea that marginalization, poverty, and exploitative circumstances are just back story, not a real lived reality that has to be addressed.
Stories can be anything, about anyone. I invite my fellow storytellers to feel empowered and invited to approach stories from all angles, for all peoples, to create alternatives, strategies not only for throwing down the Evil Overlord who would make night last forever, out-smarting the evil corporation to keep them from copyrighting drinking water, but also how to keep your landlord from screwing you over, how the street finds its own uses for things, and how to build a support network of people who can help one another out when the whole world is stepping on their neck.
Stories are for everyone, especially those with the fewest options.
So, this article about MFA programs has been going around for the last couple of days.
Unsurprisingly, the ever-thoughtful, ever-incisive hilarious Chuck Wendig has a point-by-point response which is dead-on (standard heads-up: Chuck is virtuoso of inventive swearing).
So rather than add my own point-by-point response, I want to take the conversation in a bit of a different direction, which is to say toward genre fiction.
The State of the Field
This whole article and the discussion around it reminds me of how poorly-served I think a lot of genre writers are vis a vis the MFA establishment in the USA. There are some MFA programs that are more oriented toward commercial fiction, like Seton Hill and USC, and some genre-friendly programs with SF/F writers on-staff like NC State, Temple, and Stonecoast (and there may be some others with Crime or Romance writers), but as recently as 2011, when I was looking at MFA programs, the schools listed above seemed to be pretty much the extent of places where a SF/F fiction writer could go and expect to not just be tolerated, but to be at least marginally well-served – with instructors qualified to assist the writer in becoming better in their chosen genre. When I applied to MFA programs, I got zero feedback as to why. No ‘we had to many genre fiction writers apply this year,’ no ‘your writing sample wasn’t quite up to snuff because <insert craft element>. Just a form rejection. Alas.
So when I sold Geekomancy the next year, I didn’t bother applying again to programs. I have a career in writing, I can share my knowledge through classes offered on the web, and I have the skills to sell stories and novels to professional markets.
Which is annoying, because I *really like* teaching (I’ve taught creative writing, tango, web design, public speaking, and historical martial arts), and I especially love talking shop and sharing knowledge about writing and the business of writing.
Word on the net and in the business is that for most MFA programs, genre fiction is at best an also-ran, at worst an outcast forbidden style. And that seems silly, given how many writers want to specialize in these genres, and how much money those genres make in the industry. So many MFA programs seem to be designed to very specifically train writers to become teachers at MFA programs, to just replicate across the literary fiction landscape. Except that just like almost everywhere else in academia, there are nowhere near enough jobs for the # of MFAs granted. So an MFA can be a teaching credential, but it’s often more a chance to spend two years focusing on craft. And that’s cool.
Unless you’re a genre writer interested in writing commercial fiction as a career.
So What?
Here’s the fun part.
One of my ‘If I Had All Of The Money’ dreams would be to found and endow a brand-new, world-class Genre Fiction MFA program, with faculty in Crime, Romance, SF, Fantasy, etc – adult and YA. The program would focus exclusively on genre fiction, and whwre most MFA programs do their cross-training between fiction and poetry, or fiction and memoir, this program would cross-train between fiction genres – since those three main genres cross over so much as-is, and current publishing trends are inviting that hybridization.
Some of the faculty would be chosen as much if not more for their business acumen as for their writing experience – their chairs would be for that business knowledge. And as a result, my dream MFA program would have a strong professional development/business knowledge component. Every MFA that graduates from my program would have training in pitching a book, participating in panels, hand-selling in a convention environment, writing query letters & synopsis, self-publishing skills (art direction, hiring freelancers, etc.) social media skills, as well as managing their writing as a business (taxes, expenses, budgeting). You know, skills a professional writer needs to prosper.
I love Clarion West. It taught me a ton about writing. But CW is not a be-all-end-all writing and professional development course. It can’t be.
But you know what can be? A modern two-year MFA program. A good curriculum, consistently evolving to adjust with publishing trends, should be able to give its graduates the most up-to-date information and help them launch their own careers, while also making them incredibly enticing to any smart Creative Writing program, which should leap at candidates with not only craft skills, but business skills. The Low-Residency MFA programs just don’t allow for as much teaching experience, which I would think puts those MFAs in a weaker position when applying for teaching posts, something likely exacerbated by their genre fiction focus. (Note here: much of this is based on limited knowledge – folks are welcome to correct me).
In a few years, it would become The Ultimate Genre Fiction MFA, and other people would copy the model, either adding strong commercial fiction and business development aspects to their programs or retrofitting them entirely.
Yes, it’s a pipe dream. But boy would I love to give it a try. I think the writing would would be notably better for it – as-is, the MFA ecosystem seems to be dominated by literary fiction and poetry, while leaving commercial fiction and genre fiction largely out in the cold, which serves to re-instantiate that divide, as commercial writers often avoid the MFA system and develop their skills elsewhere, or focus on developing their basic craft elements without getting support with genre-specific skills or business development.
Those of you out there who have attended MFA programs, either with or without a commercial fiction focus, low or full-residency – how were (are) your experiences? What would you want out of a MFA program if you could start over?
When I heard the news of Tor.com launching a novella imprint, focusing on digital sales and experimenting with different sales and promotion strategies, as well as offering a higher royalty rate on digital sales, Macmillan had my curiosity.
When they hired my former Angry Robot colleague Lee Harris as the Imprint’s Senior Editor, well…
Late Tuesday afternoon, SFWA announced that it was revising its membership requirements to specifically allow self-published/indie/author-published and small press writers. This move had been under discussion for quite some time, and like many professional organizations, SFWA is somewhat slow to make large policy changes. But changed it has.
I am incredibly pleased by this change. There are many writers who have already been operating at professional levels who had not been allowed to join under the old rules. I hope that this leads to a notable membership boost, and allows SFWA members and officers to broaden the remit of SFWA to support writers regardless of the publishing path they pursue.
SFWA has done a lot for me and meant a lot to me since I joined in 2012. I’ve made connections and friends through events, I’ve had the chance to promote my work at convetions (especially the Baltimore Book Festival), and I’ve benefited from the professional insights shared on the forum and in the revamped SFWA bulletin.
Here’s to a new era for SFWA and for SFF prose writing!
There’s a scene in The 5th Element (one of my favorite SF films – go see it if you haven’t) where the co-lead is reconstructed from a sliver of DNA and 3D printed back into existence.
I put together my stories kind of like that. In fact, exactly like that. I have a 3D story printer and it whirs away while I play video games and read comics. Secret revealed! *twirls mustache*
What I actually mean is that I put together a story from the inside out.