by john | Mar 31, 2017 | Book Spotlight, Evolution, Writing
Natania Barron is a multi-talented amazing human. She’s a mom, a writer, an audiobook narrator, and a badass cover designer. She is responsible for the covers for Wothwood, Into the Mystic, 85 North, and a bunch of upcoming Falstaff Books releases. Go buy her shit!
Wothwood: Where did you come up with the idea?
It’s pretty corny, but the seeds of Wothwood were planted in a dream.
Generally speaking, I’m a pretty vivid dreamer. I tend to dream on an epic scale, and I’ve slayed a few dragons in my time.
This was different, though. In this dream, a son was mourning his father, a ruler of some kind. I was the son, and the connection I had to my father was intense. Unlike the cliched relationships of fantasy novels, this lord and his heir were deeply connected. That feeling was very real, the world cast in a blue twilight. I started a Pinterest board called “The Hand of the Father” and put it on the back burner for a while.
Even though I started out writing heroic fantasy, it had been a long time since I’d written one. But this idea, really this intensity from the dream, stayed with me.As the months passed, the world of Wothwood began to take shape. I was preoccupied with this concept of frontier fantasy — sort of the opposite of Tolkien where the world is moving on and feels very explored — where the edges of the world are still wild and being discovered. I wanted the land itself to have a character, and so the Wothwood itself came to be.
Next came the character of Braig, who was a take on the young man in my dream, the one that should be the hero, but isn’t. In the story, the prologue begins right after Braig’s father’s funeral. Braig is a complex character throughout the story, and has a rather villainous past n some ways, and while the relationship with his father didn’t end up in the novella directly, I wanted him to have that emotional connection in the background.
Aoda came next, and I wanted to tell a story from a woman with the cards stacked against her. As a medievalist, I have always been aware of how hard life was for many people in time without medicine and vaccinations. Aoda wears the scars of syphillis, and people judge her immediately because she’s so ugly.
Glannon started out as just a bit of a plot device in the prologue, but ended up being the third POV in Wothwood and essential to the eventual story. Unlike powerful characters in much of fantasy who spend their whole time trying to win power, Glannon starts off with the power, and thirsts for more while questioning everything around her.
Really, the emotion from the initial dream is something that I tried to wind into the story as a whole. I wanted character emotions to be as vivid as the backdrop to the wood itself.
You can (and should) pick up Wothwood by clicking on this link – it’ll ask you what kind of e-reader you want to use, and then it’ll take you to that store!
by john | Mar 24, 2017 | Evolution, Guest Blogs, Writing
Nicole Givens Kurtz is awesome on so many levels. She’s a mother, a writer, and a publisher, and an all-around cool person. She sent me an awesome essay – so I’m very happy to run this as the first Evolution post.
Weird Westerns are a sub-genre of speculative fiction. I was first introduced to this sub-genre when I lived in the Southwest and attended MilehiCon. While there, I met David B. Riley and his publishing company, Science Fiction Trails. He and Laura Givens were working on an anthology of weird westerns. Excited by the idea of creating a diverse populous in the old west, I went home and wrote a short story. I submitted “Justice” to them and it was accepted. The story appeared in Six Guns Straight from Hell.
It is from those stories in Six Guns that I fell in love with weird westerns. I was won over by the dynamics of steampunk, aliens, and of course, magic in the west. Will Smith’s turn in The Wild Wild West movie conjured up all the western episodes from my past. The fact of a black man in the west, saving it from destruction, stuck to me, despite its silliness. For once, the hero wore my color skin and he was doing it with guns and a dark, black hat—no white hat heroes here!
Recently two of my short stories have appeared in Wolfsinger Publication’s diverse weird western anthologies, Lost Trails Volumes I and II. Most of my southwest stories are weird. I write often about my time in the Four Corners area, but also focusing solely on people not commonly represented, Native Americans and African Americans.
My love affair with weird westerns extend beyond my stories.
I’m a huge fan of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower and anime favorite, Cowboy Bebop. Other weird westerns favorites include Trigun, Samurai 7, and Samurai Champloo. What I enjoy about each of these titles are the diverse casting, the way the west was interpreted, and the dynamics—desperation–between all of the characters.
I’m just as big a fan of original westerns as I am of the weird kind. My mother used to spend Saturday evenings watching Clint Eastwood movies. While some people love The Magnificent Seven, I enjoy The Outlaw Josey Wells and others. Still, Unforgiven, is perhaps the one I love the most. I always cry when Ned dies. Yes, there are subtle commentary about the black cowboy dying in the film, but it’s Morgan Freeman’s portrayal of Ned that really drives my emotional attachment to him. It’s also Eastwood’s grief-stricken agony that tugs on my heart strings when he orders the town people to ‘take care of Ned.’
And the threat that if they don’t, he will come back for them.
Look for my weird western stories in two upcoming anthologies. One if Baen’s Straight Outta Tombstone and the other is Lawless Land available from Falstaff. Both anthologies have some of the best writers in speculative fiction are contributing! Gail Martin, Misty Massey, and John Hartness to name a few. I’m lucky to discover weird westerns on this side of the Southwest. There are great rewards for those who haven’t contributed. So stop by and boost the signal with a great big YeeHAW!
If you’re weird too, you can find me online at @nicolegkurtz (Twitter), http://www.facebook.com/nicolegkurtz (Facebook) or at Other Worlds Pulp, http://www.nicolegivenskurtz.com
Nicole
by john | Mar 10, 2017 | Guest Blogs, Writing
Free Publicity for Writers!
I’m gonna start a new feature on this here website, entitled “Evolution.” This will tie into my Writer’s Journey podcast, except here writers will be able to talk about where a story came from.
So if you’re a writer with a published book or short story, self-published or otherwise, you can send me an essay, no more than 1,000 words (500-800 is preferable) about where a story came from.
Please email the essay, along with a bio, photo, buy links, and cover image (don’t make those photos huge!) to john AT johnhartness.com. I’ll start running these every Friday, so go ahead and shoot me content
PS – your buy links will be so much easier if you use Books2Read.com – they compile all your buy links into one universal link, so no matter how people want to buy your crap, they don’t have to dig through a ton of links.
This is intended for professional writers, or people working towards becoming professional writers. As such, I will enact some quality control. If your essay is a pile of error-riddled crap, I won’t run it. If your cover looks like it was created by an epileptic three-year-old, I won’t run the essay. If you are a dick, I won’t run the essay. Have a nice day. 🙂
