A cool SF novel cover by Jean-Pierre Normand
I use this picture for my introduction to SF workshop. This SF novel, Winds of Tammerlan, did fare well in 2009!
Posted in Science-fiction
Tagged art, literature, Science-fiction, Sense of Wonder, YA science-fiction
The Clarion foundation helps budding writers of genre (SF, fantasy, fantastique, horror) to develop and mature their style. I had the joy of being invited by Lynda Williams (the author of the Okal Rel saga) to write a few posts from my own perspective of a SF writer with comic artist.
So my first post was about extending our writing roots to achieve a deeper connection with the reader. The illustrations are my own.
The last one is an account of my big, fat, first novel and its endless incarnations!
I am working on four more writing posts. Coming soon: The secret well of ideas, a another take at the well-known fan question: where do you get your ideas?
Posted in Science-fiction, Writing
Tagged budding writers, literature, lynda williams, novel, Science-fiction, Writing, Writing advice
My next SF novel, La spirale de Lar Jubal, will be out in one month. (It will be printed in January to hit the book shops on February, just before the Outaouais Book Fair ( www.slo.qc.ca ).
On Lapsilis, a cylindrical habitat orbiting a devastated planet, young and old work hard to build a spiraling grain crop for their future world. If questor Sirius approves of this zeal which reduces the crime to almost nothing, Chaaas notices many people burning themselves out.
Then a strange disease is decimating harvests. Who would benefit from destroying the dream of Lar Jubal, the brilliant visionary lost too soon?
Lar Corom, a charismatic artist, tipped to succeed the debonair Ludrinn as the colony leader? Noalli, the embittered wife of Corom, overlooking the floating garden ? Ruffan, a fierce supporter of a return to the original purity of the Gardener’s creation ? Or Lar Eimer, a haughty scientific who doubts the merits of the project?
Chaaas must investigate without being distracted by the amber eyes of Lali kha Nakarli … and his warming friendship towards Corom. With the help of Kiumi, a girl acrobat, Chaaas will discover secrets that endanger more than the dream of Lar Jubal…
The novel is in French, and as it is coming soon. If you can read a little French, the book will be available from www.Prologue.ca or www.Amazon.ca websites. If you have read and liked the other novels of the Chaaas series, you may let it know, either by typing a review or rate it on Goodreads.com. If you hated it: do the same thing. There is no bad publicity… :^)
The full coordinates of the novel:
Michèle Laframboise, La spirale de Lar Jubal, Médiaspaul, (coll. Jeunesse-Plus no 16), 208 p.
ISBN 978-89420-852-6.
The cover art is from artist Sybiline. For once, you get to see the protagonist close, and Chaaas is quite handsome!
Posted in Science-fiction, Writing
Tagged Can lit, Chaaas, Children's books, literature, Michele Laframboise, Science-fiction, Speculative fiction, YA novel, Young adult
If there is one question that every published author hears at other events, it is this one : But where do you get all those ideas ?
Many people who dream of becoming a (famous) writer are scratching their head to find this mysterious well of ideas. Most are under the impression that writers form a tight circle around a secret lair of the golden-egg-laying hen. The secret well of inspiration, teeming with ideas!
This belief joins another one : all writers signing at the events are filthy rich! Or if they are not, it must be because they don’t have access to a good well.
This in nonsense, as chance and fashion are the capricious ingredients that make or unmake successes. Also, many are convinced that once this idea has been fished out of the well, the main work is done, the book will write itself! Hence this ubiquitous anguished question : will someone steal my idea?
Relax, it is rather the opposite. Ideas are like dandelion seeds, easy to blow : pfffffuit!
They are blown in the sky half-formed, and many budding writers try to capture them with clumsy fingers ! When they manage to catch one, they notice that there is still a long way between the seed and the grown tree, between the idea and the completed book!
About ideas, the following scene happens often at a signing table (preferably when the writer is alone). A fan walks by, telling of his wonderful idea for a novel, an idea so genial that the writer should leave all his current projects to do the hard work on it! It happens especially with the SF writers…
An idea may be a very small seed at the beginning, so we must not try to pull from it a completed 600-page spy novel !
Les Nuages de Phoenix (The Clouds of Phoenix) was my first SF novel aimed at YA. The novel idea took a long time to grow.
It began with a simple mental picture, a girl looking at the clouds. One of my favorites activities when I was a child. I happened to like meteorology (and I later followed climatology courses when studying Geography). The place took form, Phoenix is another planet with a green sky. Why green? Ah, enter the airborne particles size, and many other explorations.
In that special environment, I found out that the little girl, Blanche, was handicapped, a consequence of a grave accident, and she wears an exosqueleton that gives her legs the capability of running at 80 km/h (a fun fact when I mention it in classrooms). New characters appear : Blanche has a family: an big sister in love , a father worrying about the oxygen production plant, etc. Those characters grow and eventually become like friends of the writer. This is a very nice step in the creative process, and I will come back to it in a future blog entry.
The clouds of Phœnix‘s seed idea took about one year to grow discreetly, before I was ready to write the full-length manuscript. Afterwards, there has been the long rewriting and edition process under my editor’s eye. All in all, the novel took almost two years (working on it part-time) between the seed and the finished work.
I wrote about the challenge of growing a story in my French blog. A story begins as a tiny seed, which we put in soil and water, leaving it for a time. But the idea grows in silence. And nothing prohibits us to have more than one idea growing! Certain will get ripe earlier than the others.
So, our inspiration tree must be fed, in three ways. We draw first from our own life experience, that help to get empathy with what our characters are living through. Then by our readings, any kind of reading: for researching our subject, for fun, for exploring different genres and ways of storytelling.. and last but not least, our imagination, always creating bridges.
Many of those links may be absurd, but some will prove fecund.
A writer cannot get into an ivory tower and tell himself that his fertile imagination will be enough. Our plant needs watering, fertilizer, care: the three inspiration sources interact between themselves. And when the story gets too profuse, the care will later include pruning…
(to be continued…)
Posted in Comics, humor, Writing
Tagged budding writers, Comics, humor, Inspiration tree, literature, Science-fiction, Secret well of ideas, Writing, Writing advice
Echoes of a Sunday artist 