BLOG
Editor’s Notes: Surrendering to the Inevitable
BY KRISTINA HARRIS
I suppose editing has always been my calling in life: my family dubbed me “the walking dictionary” when I was just a small child. When I was a teenager, I was promoted to “walking encyclopedia.” Do those hard-bound sets of encyclopedias even exist anymore? I used to read ours just for fun.
English was my favorite subject in school. It actually interested me to learn about different sentence structures, why adverbs and adjectives were different, and when to use a semicolon. But, most of all, I loved reading. I’m told that, by the age of two, I was eagerly devouring words.
I’ve never stopped. Whether it be a novel by Stephen King or Joyce Carol Oates, a nonfiction about someone’s personal history or something interesting in nature, or even Gribben’s search for the fabled Schr?dinger’s Cat, I’ll happily read anything!
All of that reading led me to writing, of course; it’s such a gateway drug! Writing is my secret obsession in life.
So why do I have a degree in business, of all things? All I can say is that it seemed like a sensible thing to do at the time. My husband and I figured that it was an all-around useful degree that would be far more acceptable in the job market than something in the English field.
Obviously I just can’t stay away from my passions though!
A few fun facts about me:
I live in Tucson, where my other job titles are Wife—for 15 years, and Mother—to three teenage boys. Yeah, living in a house full of guys is a dirty job, but my Scentsy and I try to make up for it! (We won’t even talk about the menagerie of animals that lives with us…)
I collect Mister Potato Heads. There are some really neat ones out there. I just learned that there is a steampunk one!
I love to cook. Come on over for dinner; my youngest son will insist you have the meatloaf, and I swear that you’ll love it!
I’m excited to be one of the newest members on The X Team. After being a freelance editor for a long time, and then working in journalism for a short time, landing with a publishing house is a dream come true. I can’t wait to get to know my way around!
Kristina has made reading and writing a focal point in her life. No matter how busy she is, she has always found relaxation in books and editing. She started her published career in her high school newspaper by submitting short stories. Now, she has edited three published works: two adult novels and one children’s book, and has written and edited for numerous national specialty magazines.
Kristina holds a degree in business administration, has been a model for a nationally recognized talent agency, and leads the way in her household, managing a husband, three sons, two dogs, two cats, a guinea pig, and a lizard!
Kristina’s first project with The X, Relative Evil by Debra Erfert, is slated for release in July 2014.
From Our Catalog: Tomorrow Wendell by R. M. Ridley
Editor’s Notes: Stepping Out of the Shadows
BY MEGAN OLIPHANT
I have to say I have a really hard time writing a blog post all about me. It may be because I’ve spent most of my life trying to live in the shadows, using what I have to support others: my husband, my children, other writers. I could give help and direction, but it wasn’t about me. It was about them. The shadows are comfortable. In the shadows, you don’t have to shine.
So telling you about me is challenging. I don’t have the education that others have, having dropped out of college after being sexually assaulted. (And yes, I’m okay now.) But not having a Ph.D. or an M.A. or even a B.A. after my name ever kept me from reading. I always have, and always will, read. I love to immerse myself in another world, walk the dusty streets and wonder how I would have reacted in similar situations. A good book is a wormhole to another person’s universe. No wonder when we’re done with a fabulous book, we feel like we know these characters, and sometimes the author, intimately.
As I’ve grown, however, I have learned to be more discriminating. Where in my teens and twenties I always “had to finish the book”, I don’t have time for that anymore. If it doesn’t hold my attention, I have a million other things to do. With a husband, five kids, two cats, my own stories to write, a house (that always seems to have dishes to be cleaned, laundry to be done, and garbages to be emptied), not to mention working here at Xchyler, I am busy. That story better suck me in right away and keep me there, or it goes into the “Eh” pile, never to be opened again. My Kindle is full of these.
I have worked and studied to perfect my craft and my understanding of good writing over the years, however, and found that joining a writer’s group like ANWA (American Night Writers Association) was key to my continued movement forward. You have to be willing to get your writing out to people to see what works and what doesn’t. You may not be ready to send it to an editor or agent or even publish it yourself yet, but you need a second opinion. Or five. Just like you look in the mirror before you leave the house to make sure you don’t have turkey tails or a makeup smear, you need your work mirrored back to you by someone else so you can see the flaws and know where to repair.
No book is perfect. Even the most scrupulous editorial staff will miss a homophone once in a while. But it had better be pretty darn close, because every mistake or slow moving scene or cliche filled character will kick your reader right out of the story. And that’s why I’m here at Xchyler, to help you get that book as close to perfect as we can. And maybe together, we can step out of the shadows.
Unless you’re writing a book about shadows, of course. In that case, welcome home.
Megan Oliphant has studied creative writing since college, taking classes from the founder of LTUE, Marion K. “Doc” Smith at BYU and will attend Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp in late June. Her primary interests are in fantasy, ranging from dark urban to high epic, but she’s a sucker for a good mystery that she can’t guess the ending to before she gets there. She divides her time between reading, writing, and “familying” with her husband and five children in North Carolina.
Megan joined The X Team in May of 2014. Her first project, Accidental Apprentice, by Anika Arrington, is slated for release in September of 2014. She is project lead on Darkness Rising, a young adult fantasy by Elizabeth Lunyou, slated for release in 2015.
Sound-off Saturday (sort of): Girlie Man
BY J. M. SALYARDS
Feedback and reviews for Shadow of the Last Men have been largely positive, but there is a common refrain from those readers who perhaps were not prepared for some of the more intense scenes in the work.
“Expect a fair amount of blood and gore…”
“Violence is also another matter articulately written in this book…”
“… the book is extremely graphically violent, and Salyards does not shield the reader from the reality of the violence incurred in the story … it is worth a word of caution to squeamish readers.”
“More violent than I am used to…”
Many of these comments are then amended with the thought that the bloodshed in Shadow of the Last Man is “appropriate”, or “not done for shock value”, or “well shy of gruesomeness”—which is certainly something the editorial team at Xchyler and I strove for in the editing phase. The work needed a balance. It is a story of war, not a more noir-esque thriller, and the light that is shed on acts of aggression and brutality must appear under clear, bright light. We accomplished this, I believe, without wallowing in savagery.
So why bring it up? Violence makes an impression. We are surrounded by it, in all forms of media.
The Hunger Games is a popular dystopian series in a similar vein as The Next Man Saga. I have noticed that it is not often decried, much less by its fans, for its own violence.
Indeed, the story revolves around a group of children who are kidnapped and forced to murder one another in a grand spectator sport. (Note that though Katniss “volunteers” to be kidnapped in order to spare another child, it does not change the fact that she is, for all intents and purposes, kidnapped at gunpoint).
They are children, bludgeoned to death with hammers, and torn apart by ferocious dogs. Yet, the screenplay for the film adaptation was altered, to allow for a PG-13 rating. Ostensibly, this was to widen the viewing audience to include teenagers, and even preteens who brought an adult with them, so that they too could partake in the bloody spectacle.
Violence is perhaps little issue when a kidnapped teenage girl is forced to shoot other kidnapped teenagers full of arrows with her bow, for the entertainment of onlookers.
Somehow it is easier to appall a reader when a large, aggressive, powerfully built man uses firearms, his fists, or a knife to right the wrongs of his own dystopian world.
This makes sense, of course. Men can be terrifying. “Harrow” from Shadow of the Last Men earns his moniker throughout the book. He is a tall, muscular figure, well-armed, possessed of cunning and a honed sense of tactics. He is vicious toward his enemies; wild, unpredictable, uncontrollable, free to do as and how he pleases. That has had unintended consequences among the female readership of The Next Man Saga. He is a nightmare of roiling masculinity. The thought of him seems to make people uncomfortable, consciously or not.
Few people have ever been frightened of a teenage girl.
Katniss does not strike fear into others. She is approachable, in particular when she is portrayed by a charismatic young actress. One could ask her to the junior prom, even when she has a bow and arrows in her hands. That is the difference.
Large, aggressive and powerfully built men are traditionally and historically masters of violence. That is not to say that they are historically the cause of violence, but rather that they are good at it. Teenage girls do not excel at violence, in comparison.
It has been put to me that if anything will destroy the human race, it is men. That may be the case. If so, the only thing that can protect the human race is also men. Men can also aggressively protect, and if they are intelligent, they use the most efficient tools they can to do so.
So perhaps by disarming and emasculating all men, even in fiction, we can keep them from destroying the human race. But we will also rob them of the ability to protect it.
And in the process, we will become nothing which can be called “free”.
Harrow would never have ended up in the Hunger Games. Even as a surly teenager, he’d have killed anyone who tried to put him there.
J. M. Salyards lives in Maryland with his wife and daughter. In his rare escapes from “girly world”, he enjoys shooting sports, football and tabletop gaming.
Shadow of the Last Men is his first step in becoming a man of a million words.
Follow Salyards on:
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Google + | Amazon | Goodreads
? Editor’s note: what we think
Author Spotlight: S. D. Simper
Writing Is Serious Business
The initial inklings of “Priority Passage” came as the result of binge listening to both Imagine Dragons and Florence + The Machine. True story.
But why Priority Passage? The initial draft was, if I’m being perfectly honest with myself, more of a therapy session than a fully fleshed story. It was the written manifestation of many of my own real-life fears; a wish-fulfillment sort of ending; interpersonal relationships I hoped to emulate. Needless to say, like any wish-fulfillment story, it needed quite the make-over. The end result is a far cry different than what I started with in many ways, but the central themes remain.
Though the setting of “Priority Passage” is heavily infused with Steampunk, it is, at its heart, a very human story. The story follows Marina, an engineer with a prosthetic limb, whose two great loves are her Zeppelin and her much younger sister, Larissa, whom she must care for. The two are at constant odds in her mind—the metaphorical battle between freedom and duty.
There is also another element that pervades the story: the relationship between Marina and her father, whose legacy she is determined to preserve even after his death. It’s a theme that has always come very naturally to me in my writing, as my own father has always been one of my greatest confidants and dearest friends.
The writing process itself, especially in the initial drafting phase, was certainly a sight to behold to those who would watch me work. Like many writers, my mind over-analyzes, over-thinks, and generally refuses to actually let me plot anything onto paper. In other words, I choke up, and nothing gets written.
Unless . . . I exhaust myself to the point of not even caring anymore. So, at 4am every night for nearly a week, I would crank out another couple thousand words of my soon-to-be short story.
In related news, I do have to extend my gratitude to my editors, who were able to reassemble my delirious ramblings into something at least mildly coherent. This is also where I feel I must give proper thanks to my mom (and not only because she thanked me in her own blog post), as she was certainly one of my best cheerleaders during this phase, talking to me at odd hours, excited because she’d come up with the perfect name for my heroine, determined to help me brainstorm whether I was willing to or not. I can honestly say I wouldn’t be here without her.
But I digress; again, why Priority Passage?
“Priority Passage” is a story for those who struggle against the norm, who, perhaps, long for a life beyond the boundaries they were expected to comply with. It’s a story of overcoming disability, or of turning a piece of you once thought was wrong into a strength. It’s a story for those who love their family, even if their dreams set them at odds.
And it is, at its core, a story about love.
“Priority Passage” is my tentative first step into the world of publishing. I say tentative because I now understand the process, the finesse that goes into each decision. I’ve been an editor. Now I’m a writer. And next time, I plan on coming in with a bang.
S. D. Simper really doesn’t sound this pretentious in real life. For realz. She’s a college student from Arizona who’s temporarily living the retail dream in Alaska and adapting to the minimal internet access.
Follow S. D. Simper on the web:
Facebook | Twitter | Google + | Goodreads