Voices in Time

by S. L. Duncan

When asked, most editors say what draws them to a submitted project is voice. Don’t you just hate that? Because, inevitably, when asked what defines a good voice they sort of shrug their shoulders, don their beret, take a large puff of cigarette and say, “Je ne sais quoi.”

Well, they do in my head at least.

There’s been a lot of excellent coverage of what voice can be here at FTWA, so feel free to review that for a moment. The kind of voice I want to talk specifically about, is the voice necessary to tell a story that takes place in a different time period.

So on the elements of what voice is, or can be, let me add this: authenticity.

I’m turning in my second book to my agent this week and the last thing I did was take a final read and make sure that the voice is authentic to the time period. A great way to see how the times affect voice is look at recent decades. Compare how kids spoke in the 80s to how they speak now. Slang aside, there are subtle differences in how they relate to each other. Do they lock eyes and twirl their gum when they speak, or are they focused on their iPhone, droning on like a zombie?

And it isn’t just vernacular. Society and culture influence voice as well. Take a 1940s London fourteen-year-old. The scarcity of that time and the living day to day in a harrowing environment grants a certain patience and appreciation for things, which should show up in the voice of the character.

So how do you get there? How do you make a voice authentic to its time? I looked at old newspapers, movies from the era, and radio recordings. The best are archived private journals. But, wait! What if your time period is waaay back? Keep digging! Look closely at all aspects of the culture. Crack a history book or two. Read, read, read, books from leading experts in the field.

All these things will play a part in the voice of the story and your individual character's voices. A good example is Sophie Perinot's work. She captures the tone and voice of her time period perfectly, but she does the research.

And I know I said it before, but you gotta read. Read stuff that's similar to what you want to write. Read in your genre. Read brilliant books, and just as importantly I think, read horrible books.

Authentic voice is a lot of things. There isn’t really any one way to master it, and more often than not, it kinda just happens after you've put in the work. Take the time, though, if you’re writing to a specific moment in history to really get in the head of that moment in history. You’ll be surprised at how it affects the voice.

S. L. Duncan writes young adult fiction, including his debut, the first book in The Revelation Saga, due in 2014 from Medallion Press. You can find him blogging on INKROCK.com and on Twitter.

Many Paths to Publication... And Sex? Baltimore Book Festival Recap

by J. Lea López

I had the pleasure of attending the 2012 Baltimore Book Festival this past weekend. I learned about the festival after our own Sophie Perinot announced she would be attending and speaking on a few panels there. After checking out the website, I knew I had to be there. It was part book sale, part street fair, and part writing conference that took place over three days. I was only able to attend Saturday and part of Sunday, but it was more than enough to know I'll likely attend again in future years. Today I'll be sharing with you some of my thoughts on two excellent panels.

There were a lot of great things going on at once, so I didn't make it to Sophie's women's fiction panel, but if you all know me, you'll know I couldn't possibly miss her panel about SEX! Okay, it was about sex and the historical fiction writer, but really.... it was about sex. I don't even write historical fiction, and I honestly don't read much of it, either. But this was a fun and informative panel. (Let me take a second to point something out: Sophie is such a sweetheart! And so funny!)

One of the panelists mentioned that there is a misconception that women's rights and women's roles in society have progressed in a linear manner throughout history, which isn't true. I admit I had the same impression until the panelists pointed out some of the aspects of ancient civilizations that show how women often had greater roles than we give them credit for. A few examples:

• There's a theory that the royal bloodline passed through the females in ancient Egypt. So if you wanted to be Pharaoh one day, you'd better marry Pharaoh’s daughter.

• In some societies/cultures, divorce was commonplace and not frowned upon. The wife could often take part or all of her dowry back if the couple split.

• Women could own property, and ownership of it did not (always) immediately transfer to her husband when they married, or after her death if she died first.

• Best of all, even though a husband may have practically owned his wife's body, there was this little thing called the marriage debt. Sex was a husband's duty and something he OWED his wife.

Yeah, you hear that, ladies? Bring that up next time your husband wants a sandwich! By which I obviously mean, Take that historically accurate information to heart next time you're writing some old-timey sex!

Look, it's Sophie! And her book!

The last panel I attended was on Sunday afternoon, about the many paths to publication. There were six authors on this panel, speaking about their experience with everything from self-publishing to ebook-only publishers and small presses, to the traditional agent route to publishing. Most of them had hands in two or all three publishing processes. It was refreshing to see a group of authors in agreement that there isn't one “right” path to publication and that one isn't necessarily better or worse than another. There are two main points that I took away from this panel that I think are useful.

Edit, edit, edit

All of the panelists mentioned quality editing several times in the hour-long discussion, expressing that it is very difficult to get the quality you want all on your own.

Kate Dolan said “Regardless of the path you take to publication, the editing is so important.” She stressed that you really need to get your book into the hands of someone who “can tell you what you don't want to hear.” She also mentioned that the quality of editing will vary, even between editors from the same house.

Christi Barth shared that she had one editor who made her remove all semi-colons from her manuscript because it was a “house rule” despite the fact that semi-colons are a perfectly legitimate form of punctuation.

Amy Villalba, who is self-publishing her novel, said that the editor she uses initially charged her $2.25/page. Six months later, due to increased demand, her rates had increased to $6/page. Because she was a repeat customer, she was able to get her down to less than $4/page. She estimated that you should budget $2,500 to $3,000 per book to get a good product out there. (That amount included editing and paid advertising on sites such as Kindle Nation Daily.)

Other panelists also mentioned bartering your own skills with other writers for editing (and other) services. Networking and simply being around other writerly types in order to learn and ask questions was another theme during the discussion.

There are reasons...

To self-publish. To seek an agent and a traditional book deal. Or a small press. Or an ebook-only publisher. In other words, there are reasons which validate each path. Self-publishing just because you don't want to deal with the “hassle” or process of querying an agent is not a good reason. And quite frankly, if you don't want to deal with that hassle, you likely won't enjoy the hassle of going it alone, either.

The biggest pro to self-publishing is also the biggest con: you have complete control over your project from beginning to end. Complete control means complete responsibility, even for the aspects you may not be comfortable doing yourself. So you pay someone to do it for you.

Publicity support varies. Eliza pointed out that while some small presses do have at least a little bit of publicity support, such as a publisher blog where authors can write posts, not all of them do. One small press she was with had no advertising or publicity at all. Traditional publishing often has more marketing and publicity support because they have the money to do so.

However, no one was suggesting that traditional publishing means the author can sit back and relax on the publicity front. I think we all know what the panelists stated: even with traditional publishing, authors are still expected to do as much as they can to get their name out there. Marketing and publicity will vary across big and small presses and is something else to take into consideration when blazing your path to publication.

Royalties. It's no secret that you can get the biggest royalty percentage with self-publishing, and the least with traditional publishing. But traditional publishing gives you a bigger amount up front, which can be great. Self-publishing pays you smaller increments, but more often. Small presses are somewhere in the middle. Different situations will work for different people.

The market. Megan Hart, who admittedly likes “a lot of people to take care of a lot of things for me” had an idea for a 10-part horror serial. She wanted to put a new one out each month. There isn't really a traditional place to go with that, but it's perfect for self-publishing. Christi talked about how, after not having much luck shopping a particular manuscript, she realized that it was a good book, just not for that market. “Sometimes publishers stick with tropes,” she said, and if your book doesn't fit into a particular trope at that time, you're out of luck. Not because you aren't a good writer, but because that publisher wants more vampires when you're querying zombies.

I have even more thoughts to share about the 2012 Baltimore Book Festival, including my experience at the erotica discussion and reading, so if you'd like to hear more, please join me at my personal blog.

Have you ever been to the Baltimore Book Festival or similar event near you? What was your experience?

J. Lea López is a writer with a penchant for jello and a loathing for writing bios. Find her on Twitter or her blog, Jello World. She has had some short stories published, most recently in the Spring Fevers anthology.

Perspective on Our Times

by R.S. Mellette

My neighbor will turn 100 years old this month. She was as old as I am now when I was born. When she was one year old, the first drive-in gas station was built, bringing the total number of gasoline-purposed buildings up to 3 in the whole country.

I think of her every time I see commercials on TV for natural gas drilling in America, where they say that—using fracking—we have 100 years of gas reserves. By the time I'm my neighbor's age, the country will be halfway out of gas. By the time someone born today is her age, we will have no gas reserves at all, so I wonder what the gas lobby is bragging about.

Why do I bring this enviro-political hot potato up in a writing blog? Because of something a Turkish acting teacher told our class at North Carolina School of the Arts 30 years ago. "Know the politics of your character," she said, and followed up with, "the politics of most American characters is none at all, which is just as telling."

And I think of Steinbeck, who was 10 years old when my neighbor was born. He told stories of families and working class individuals against the backdrop of the only economic times worse than those we are living in today.

I think of Mark Twain, who died just two years before my neighbor was born. He recorded the voices of America from his youth, when this was not a free country for many of the people who built it.

And I wonder what young Twain might live in Arizona? What Steinbeck might now be on the road to a North Dakota oil boomtown? For the first time in world history, we have to change our economy from a high-density fuel source (fossil fuels) to a lower one (hydrogen, solar, wind). Will we have a writer to take us through this change the way Charles Dickens (died 42 years before my neighbor was born) took us from wood to coal, or Upton Sinclair (34 when my neighbor was born) from coal to oil?

Sure, you might not write about these world changing events, but if your stories are contemporary, they should be included. They play in the background. They are the undertow to the waves your characters face. And we, as authors, owe it to our society to record their effects.

We writers are all Tom Joad. He promised to "be there" and so should we.

R.S. Mellette is an experienced screenwriter, actor, director, and novelist. You can find him at the Dances With Films festival blog, and on Twitter, or read him in the Spring Fevers anthology.

Back to the Future: Practitioners of Historical Fiction Look at the Future of Their Genre & the Publishing Industry

by Sophie Perinot

June 17th to 19th marked the 4th North American Conference of the Historical Novel Society. I am a sucker for this conference. I’ve attended them all. Why? Well in addition to the fellowship (and this group of writers feels and behaves like one big, happy, and occasionally dysfunctional family) I go because I LEARN. I learn about my craft, and I learn about the trends and issues in my genre.

There have been a number of super “wrap ups” of the HNS conference. If you want to savor the minutiae—who sat with whom at dinner, the details of a particular panel—I suggest you have a look at one of them (e.g. Kate Quinn's or Susan Higginbotham's or Dora Levy Mossanen's). Just remember whatever you read about me in the lobby of the hotel at 2 a.m. on Saturday night is likely an exaggeration.

My goal in this post is not to recount all that happened during my 3 days in San Diego, but rather to highlight a few, select, personal impressions & conclusions that may be useful to those pursuing publication.

Reports of the death of traditional publishing are premature. Sure “It’s the wild west out there” as editor Shana Drehs of Sourcebooks (largest woman-owned publisher. 11 national best sellers in the past 5 months) put it, but if you can land a spot with a traditional publisher they still “add value” to your product. Some examples: production, editing, meta data management, distribution, licensing and rights, tradeshow attendance ... the list goes on.

Yes, all authors need to be their own (or if their advances warrant it, hire their own) publicists, but your in-house publicity and marketing departments will do more than all the big-house-trashing on the web these days might lead you to believe. This can include coop (placement on that coveted “new release” table), store level promotions, hardcopy marketing and advertising, coordinating blog tours, and sending out reams and reams of review copies (ARCs), and more.

And let’s not forget there are purely practical, sales related matters attendant upon self-publishing (at least in paper copies). A conference highlights these. No, people were not selling books out of their suitcases or trunks. In fact, that would not have been possible because conferences have vendors. For example, at the HNS conference a vendor was selected to set up a conference bookstore. This vendor only “ordered in” books that could be returned if they didn’t sell (basically books published by large publishers and established indie houses). So, those authors with micro-houses or whose novels were self-published had to supply copies of their books on consignment (with all the lugging or shipping of books that entailed) and pay a percentage of sales to have their books stocked.

Finally, though it may not be politically correct to bring it up, the intangible “cachet” of being with a major publisher is still there. It may be waning, but it’s not gone. I am not going to belabor this, but attend a conference yourself and you will see what I mean.

If you write historical fiction, big-name historical characters still have value. Are marquee names really necessary in writing (and more importantly selling) a work of historical fiction? There was an entire panel devoted to this, folks, and a heated panel too. Yes, we’ve come along way in introducing “average people” and giving their stories value and importance (both in academic history and in historical fiction) but my conclusion is that famous names sure do help—especially if you are a debut novelist seeking to break in and stay in.

Why? Look around you, folks, we are a celebrity-fixated culture (but don’t feel bad, we always have been). Real characters (preferably famous ones) DO attract more attention and big names can equal big sales. BUT—and this may be the most interesting idea I brought home from the conference—the “marquee” that hooks an agent, an editor and ultimately readers DOESN’T have to be your main character; heck, it doesn’t even have to be a person. IDENTIFY what is marquee in your story and bring it forward—it could be your setting (major historical event, time period that fascinates readers—Tudor period anyone—etc), it could be a secondary character that your MC interacts with (or more than one, someone at the conference mentioned a book in which the protagonist interacted with numerous famous figures including Shakespeare). But, if you can’t find someone or something that’s “marquee” as a hook for a story that you are passionate about telling, write it anyway. As multi-published author C.W. Gortner said, “It doesn’t sell until it sells—it is never, never in publishing.”

Titles and covers matter (a lot). According to one publishing house insider, more books fail because of titling and positioning than any other factor. As for covers—we denizens of the historical genre are often obsessed with accuracy (is the costume on the cover figure right? Why is the figure standing on a moor when there is no moor in the book?), but being INTRIGUING is more important than being accurate. If your cover doesn’t catch a reader’s eye in a split second you are in trouble! The art & marketing departments at publishing houses know this business. They (and your editor) often reject many versions of a cover before shouting “that’s it” (Shana D from Sourcebooks told us the record for a book she’s edited was 120 cover versions. Yeah 120).

Don’t be tyrannized by fact. This is not academic history we are writing. Does accuracy matter in historical fiction? You bet your farthingale it does, but “fictional art can show truth that goes deeper than a collection of fact; it can show us what it felt like to be a particular person at a particular time.” (Susan Vreeland). And besides, “as soon as something happens people start lying about it” (Cecelia Holland) so “truth” in history can legitimately be debated.

Award winning author Susan Vreeland pointed out that selection (and correspondingly, elimination) of facts is part of the process of writing compelling historical fiction. As an author you need to select only those aspects and events in a character’s life or time period that relate to or reflect the themes and premise of your book. It doesn’t matter how pivotal an event is (Susan gave the example of the death of a beloved brother that stuck with one of her main characters for the rest of his life), if it doesn’t move the plot of your individual book forward than it needs to be left out.

Invention is also a part of historical fiction—embrace it. Invent characters, invent events, put words into the mouths of your characters, but make sure your inventions contribute to the narrative arc of your story and are in keeping with what your research has revealed to you about the nature and personality of your characters. Author Margaret George suggested this quick “gut check” for whether your invention is appropriate—imagine you are writing for the character herself/himself. Would he/she be pleased? Margaret also posited that if someone was writing about you, you might be very happy to have some things fudged.

Fess up when you stray. The general consensus among attendees was that pointing out where you deliberately deviate from the historical record in a good author’s note is a must (and not just to save you from ranting, 8-point-type, single-spaced letters from readers who feel you gotten something dead wrong). You need not point out the obvious (like you imagined the dialogue between characters dead 500 years) but if you’ve moved a battle by a year, etc. then come clean (but don’t apologize).

The author to reader connection is closer than it has ever been. As writers we need to be accessible to our readers—that means having a home base (website) but not just staying there sipping coffee and eating bon-bons. Think blog tours, think social media, think outside those boxes as well. But most of all, remember that the author-to-reader relationship is NOT about you. Make it all about the reader and her/his experience and you will sell books better.

The pace at which consumers are learning to love e-books is exponential. Here are one publisher’s numbers. In September of 2010 6.7% of publisher X’s $ from sales came from e-books. In January of 2011 (that’s 4 months later) 35% of $ from sales were e-book generated. While only 25% of print books sold are adult fiction, fiction has a much bigger slice of the pie in the e-book world. Why do readers buy e-books: affordability, ease of download (allowing readers to connect with books anytime and any place), searchablity, and portability.

I will close with a few “sound-bites” answering “ever wonder” questions:

Ever wondered how historical fiction writers handle conflicting historical sources?

There are three main approaches to this—each with its devotees. First, you can “pull back” to a point where there is general agreement in the historical sources (but this can leave you in limbo if your narrative arc demands an answer to a certain historical question). Second, you can go with “majority rules” (but if you want to paint a picture that goes against the grain this approach will not suit). Finally, you can view this as “writers choice,” picking the facts as you need them and knowing that you do have a credible source (or perhaps more than one) to cite if challenged.

Ever wonder why it takes so long for a book to hit the shelves once it’s acquired?

Here’s the breakdown of the time from a publishers perspective—3 months for editing, 7 months for production, 5-6 months for pre-publication publicity (including getting the accounts on board) = a minimum 10 months from acquisition to publication.

Ever wonder what three questions editors ask when they look at your manuscript?

1) Is it good? (obvious)
2) Will it sell? (data helps answer this—especially sales data on comparable titles)
3) Is it right for our list? (this is the one an author can’t control)

Ever wonder how can you think about positioning for your novel?

1) Familiarize yourself with your book’s subcategory inside and out. What sort of things are being written and about whom? Do you want to go with the grain of existing novels or against it?
2) Consider how you would tweet what your novel is about (try it—140 characters is not a lot)

Ever wonder when this post will come to an end? Relax, you just got there.