100 Days of Fantasy: Day 30

This is an ongoing series looking at books that have influenced me as a fantasy author.

Swords and Deviltry
by Fritz Leiber

Among the classic Sword and Sorcery authors, the name of Fritz Leiber has long held high regard. As it should. Leiber is the one who came up with the very term "sword and sorcery" in a 1961 issue of the journal Ancalagan.

For me, I first discovered Leiber's writings when I was about 12 or 13 years old. I ran across a collection of Leiber's fantasy works in a local book store, and I had to have them. I recognized Leiber's name from other fantasy sources which I had read, and the cover of the book was interesting, so I decided to give him a try.

Thus, I was first introduced to the pair of miscreants known Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Fafhrd is a northern barbarian. The Mouser is a little guy with some magical talent and who is really good with a dagger. These two are pals, and they get into all kinds of wild and wacky adventures. Most of the tales have a touch of humor to them, but a number are quite dark and sometimes even walk the borders of science fiction.

It was all great fun, and great reading.

Leiber wrote plenty of other fiction, as well, but today he's best remembered for Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

What did I, as a writer, learn from Leiber?

At the time I was reading a lot of dark S&S, mainly Moorcock, so Leiber was a nice change of direction. The humor invested in his tales proved to me that Sword and Sorcery could, indeed, include laughter. I suppose that was part of what I learned, plus it's always interesting to study the literature of great writers.

Up next: Cerebus: High Society

100 Days of Fantasy: Day 29

This is an ongoing series looking at books that have influenced me as a fantasy author.

Elric of Melnibone
by Michael Moorcock

Back in the early 1980s, I was a just hitting my teen years and was still discovering all that the speculative fiction genres had to offer, from science fiction to fantasy to eventually horror. In a bid to help build my reading experience in such genres, I joined the Science Fiction Book Club.

This club works like many book clubs did back then. You join up by paying a dollar, then you get five or six books at no additional cost. The only catch was you had to buy so many books (I believe it was four, in my case) at regular prices within the next year.

That was a no-brainer for me. I joined up and picked out my original group of books. Back in those pre-Internet days, I had a short pamphlet from which to pick my literature. I believe I ended up snagging some Anne McCaffrey, Isaac Asimov and a collection of Elric novels and short stories by Michael Moorcock.

The book Elric of Melnibone was the first part of this Elric collection. I believe what drew me to this first book were the ancient-looking, arcane images on the cover. It had to be good with all that stuff, right?

It opened my eyes to new ways of telling fantasy stories, and introduced me to new, darker types of fantasy characters.

By that time I had read more than a smattering of Sword and Sorcery tales, so I was somewhat familiar with the darker elements of fantasy, but Moorcock's Elric stories were so much strong, and darker.

To keep it brief, Elric is a former prince of the nation of Melnibone. He's not human. He's also an albino. He can put up a fight, but he's mostly a dark mage of sorts. In other words, he's not really a good guy. Oh, and he has this magical sword. It does more than kill. It steals its victim's souls.

Cheery stuff, eh?

I see a lot of Elric influence in today's fantasy literature, especially epic fantasy. I don't know whether the man is a fan of Moorcock or not, but R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt the dark elf character at least visually seems to be a thematic descendant from Elric.

After first dipping into the stories of Elric, I was hooked. I think I spent the next six months hunting down and ordering every book there was available Moorcock had written about Elric. There were a fair number, a half a dozen or so, but not as many as there are today.

Don't you sometimes wish you could re-discover something for the first time? That's how I feel about the Elric tales. Alas, we don't grow younger.

Up next: Swords and Deviltry

City of Rogues in the Indie Spotlight

My epic fantasy novel, City of Rogues: Book I of the Kobalos Trilogy, is featured today at The Indie Spotlight. Over there, I talk a little about the book, but also some about the process of writing and some of my inspirations. There's even a short excerpt from City of Rogues.

Stacey Cochran guest post

For those who might not know, author Stacey Cochran is taking the Kindle publishing world by storm. How big a storm? Just a sprinkle, or a big monsoon? Well, that's for Stacey to decide, but his books are drawing plenty of attention, in large part because he is a master promoter and a darn fine story teller. Today, Stacey takes over my blog temporarily while promoting his latest novel CLAWS 2.

Thanks so much, Ty, for hosting me in the midst of my CLAWS 2 Blog Tour. We chatted via email about my writing this post on the topic “Things I know now I wish I’d known back when I started.” It’s a great topic. I’m happy to write about it.

Probably the single biggest thing I know now I wish I’d known back when I started this life of being a writer some twenty years ago is simply the fundamentals of how to tell a great story. Character, Plot, Setting, Style, and Theme. I’ve done somewhere in neighborhood of 400-500 bookstore, library, television appearances, online interviews, and guest blog post appearances with other authors over the years on all range of topics: how to get a literary agent; how to publish a novel; how to research a non-fiction book; how to write a memoir; how to write thrillers, mysteries, literary fiction, romance, sci-fi, fantasy; how to work with your editor, your publisher; how to choose a writers’ conference; how to self-publish; how to eBook publish.

I have approached the topic of being a writer from every conceivable angle, have interviewed numerous #1 New York Times bestsellers and local self-published writers. Literary agents and major publishing editors, publicists, marketing directors, book reviewers.

This is what I’ve spent my life doing, and the realization that I’ve come down to is that success in this business boils down to who can create the best story. Success in this business comes down to who can create for their audience the best character, plot, setting, style, and theme.

There is no secret handshake. There is no “in” club you’ve got to figure out how to get into. There is no particular way to kiss ass or flatter your way to stardom.

There is simply at the end of the day five fundamentals you have to master: character, plot, setting, style, and theme.

It’s remarkable how many aspiring writers I’ve met who harbor the notion of writing a book as a “get rich quick” scheme. They come to events on publishing at bookstores and want to know how to make their book (or sometimes just an idea) a bestseller so they can retire to fame and fortune and watch the royalty checks pour in like some endless spring of money.

I’ve learned to recognize these folks over the years. They send me messages through my websites, ranging from talented, courteous and hopeful to abrasive, demanding and wholly incoherent. But underneath it all, there’s a writer who has a book or idea that he/she believes is important and that he/she believes readers everywhere will want to read.

The reality is that unless this person has mastered the five fundamentals, it will never happen.

Mastering character alone can take thirty years. For the vast majority of writers (literally 9,999/10,000), they will never master the nuances of what makes for a character that connects to hundreds of thousands of readers. Add to this plot and setting, and the odds of mastery rise into the neighborhood of sweepstakes winners. Then consider that only three writers in American literary history have wholly re-invented style (Poe, Hemingway, and King), and you begin to understand what you’re up against if you truly want that kind of success.

I used to study chess. I was fascinated by the grandmasters and the prodigies who seemed to possess “genius” level analytical, creative, and tactical skill. I came to wonder if for someone like Bobby Fischer or Gary Kasparov the game was actually quite simple. While tens of thousands of people studied their moves and their great games trying to understand the artistry of their play, to the players themselves chess was simply a matter of picking up the right piece and moving it to the best square on the board.

For writers, our board consists of five fundamentals: character, plot, setting, style, and theme.

They’re there in front of you like life itself.

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Bio: Stacey Cochran was born in the Carolinas, where his family traces its roots to the mid 1800s. In 1998 he was selected as a finalist in the Dell Magazines undergraduate fiction competition, and he made his first professional short story sale to CutBank in 2001. In 2004, he was selected as a finalist in the St. Martin's Press/PWA Best First Private Eye Novel Contest. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife Dr. Susan K. Miller-Cochran and their son Sam, and he teaches writing at North Carolina State University.

100 Days of Fantasy: Day 28

This is an ongoing series looking at books that have influenced me as a fantasy author.

Spaceling
by Doris Piserchia

Doris Piserchia is one of those author's who is still living but hasn't published anything in nearly 30 years. Of course she is is her seventies now, so has probably mostly retired from writing. Back in the 1970s and early 1980s she was known as a feminist science fiction writer and had more than a dozen books to her name.

But none of that was important to the 12-year-old me who discovered her novel Spaceling at my school library in seventh grade junior high.

I was still young and feeling out my interests in speculative fiction. I was going through a phase of reading science fiction and the cover for this book caught my eye. There was a background of molten lava and black rocks. In the foreground was a great big fuzzy monster-like beast. And the title alone, Spaceling, screamed science fiction.

I thought I'd give it a try. So I suppose that is one of the few times in my life I picked up a book because of the cover.

This story blew my mind. It was one of the most original science fiction stories I had read, and still is to this day nearly 30 years later.

This story is about a girl who can travel to other dimensions through the use of colored rings floating in the air. Only she and a few other people can see the rings. And not only can she travel to these other dimensions, but once she enters the other dimensions she is no longer human but turns into a creature that can survive in the particular dimension where she finds herself. There are also lots of twists to the plot, and it comes with an unexpected, but mostly happy ending.

One of the things that made me love this book is it is one of the earliest novels I remember reading that had a young person as the protagonists, and it worked very well.

There. That says a fair amount without giving anything away. I liked this book a lot, and it's one of the few in my life I've read more than once.

Perhaps it's time I got out my old copy again.

Up next: Elric of Melnibone

Win a free Kindle from author Zoe Winters

Want a Kindle? Without having to pay for it?

No tricks. No gimmicks. Just help to promote indie author Zoe Winters' new book and e-book Blood Lust.

It's simple.

And you can win a free Kindle. It's even one of the new fancy Kindles with 3G.

How to get started? What are the rules? Check out Zoe's blog post about her Kindle giveaway contest. Heck, she might even give away two Kindles.

What are you waiting for? Get to promoting!

American Crossroads, a new short story collection

American Crossroads, a collection of five short stories, is now available in digital format.

The price is only $1.

If you are a Kindle owner, you can check out a preview or purchase the e-book of American Crossroads at this link.

For everyone else, American Crossroads is available in all major digital formats online at Smashwords. You can also check out a free preview there, as well.

Also, while most of my work is in the fantasy or horror genres, this collection are all non-genre tales. If I had to classify them, I suppose they are sort of Appalachian literature for the most part.

Hope you enjoy the reads!