STACKED

books

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong — Faith Erin Hicks on the collaborative effort

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We have a really fun guest post today about Prudence Shen and Faith Erin Hicks’s graphic novel Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong (reviewed yesterday). I was curious what the collaborative process was like — how do you take a story idea in words and make it into a graphic novel and do so without sacrificing the art or story? Lucky for me, Faith was happy to answer, and I find this totally fascinating. I hope you do, too.


As a bonus, we have a copy of Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong up for grabs, too, to one reader in the US. Just fill out the painless form and I’ll pick a winner in a couple of weeks.


Hi, I’m Faith Erin Hicks, and I write and draw comics for a living. I took a very funny, very sweet prose novel called Voted Most Likely by Prudence Shen, and turned it into a graphic novel now called Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, which is being published by First Second Books this week.

Let me set the stage for you: it is 2010, and it is the hottest week I’ve ever experienced in the five years I’ve lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Temperatures reached at least 30 degrees Celsius. I had recently finished work on my graphic novel Friends With Boys (also published by First Second Books), and was casting around for my next project. Cartoonists are a lot like sharks: we are constantly hungry and consume everything in our path, and if we don’t keep moving (that is to say, working), we die.

My editor at First Second books emailed me with a proposal: she had a prose novel, one she assured me was very funny and very cool, that she wanted turned into a comic. Was I interested? I printed out a copy of Prudence’s novel, and headed to a nearby air-conditioned coffee-shop to read and beat the heat. I spent most of the next four days there, reading Prudence’s novel and nursing a lemonade.

I liked Voted Most Likely. It had comedy, it had heart, and most importantly, I thought it would be a lot of fun to draw, and would translate well to the medium of comic books.

The trickiest thing about turning something that’s one artistic thing (a prose novel) into another thing (a graphic novel) is you have to be sure to honour the original of the story, but the final product must still be something wholly different from it. I couldn’t just take Prudence’s original novel, strip out the dialogue and slap some pictures down on the page. I had to transform her story, taking the subtlety of the characters’ interactions, their inner thoughts and development, and make it visual art. It’s tough!

I started with an outline. I read through Voted Most Likely several times, picked out the parts I thought were the most important, and wrote an outline. That outline I passed to my editor and Prudence, and once they approved it, I went forward with writing a script. I did a lot of cutting of Prudence’s story. Nate’s long suffering family, including his sister? Cut. Charlie’s school basketball team making a run at serious competition? Cut. The details of the election sabotage? Cut cut cut. Some of the cuts I felt bad about, but I knew unless I wanted to spend the next ten yeas drawing a 1,000 page graphic novel, they were necessary.

When I script, I thumbnail at the same time. I get a thick lined notebook and fill it full of tiny stick people drawings and lay out the entire graphic novel, inserting dialogue in where it needs to be. This allows me to pay attention to the pacing of the comic while I’m writing the script. This is my personal choice to work this way (other cartoonists work differently), but I like it. Comics are a symbiosis of art and writing; in the best comics, I think, one does not take precedence over the other. Doing thumbnails and the script for a comic at the same time allows me to develop them both in tandem.

After I finished my rough handwritten script (and thumbnails), I typed the script up and sent it to my editor and Prudence. I stuck close to Prudence’s original story, except for a few things at the end: I felt for a satisfying arc, the Science Club needed to face down a nemesis at the Robot Rumble, something that was lacking in the original story, and the ending would need to be a little different, as much of Charlie’s basketball-related story had been cut. Prudence agreed, and we worked on the revamped scenes together.

For the most part, we worked separately, me slaving away at my drawing desk for a year and a half, Prudence … I believe she was in the UK for at least some of the time I was working on Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong. Maybe she is secretly James Bond. Finally I emerged from my cartooning hole in the ground with the finished comic, flush with the success of completion, and craving breakfast food. And soon you will be able to read it! I hope you enjoy Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong. It is especially nice when read in an air conditioned coffee-shop during a heat wave.

Guest Post: Victoria Schwab on The Archived

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Victoria Schwab, author of The Near Witch (read Kelly’s review here), has a new novel coming out January 22, and we’re pleased to be a stop on the vlog tour leading up to its publication! The concept stood out to me immediately: the Archive is a library of the dead, where those dead act as books of history. There are certain people – librarians – who have the ability to “read” these histories of people’s lives. 
Sounds cool, right? Goodreads has a more detailed synopsis:
Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books.

Each
body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures that only Librarians
can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which
they rest is the Archive.

Da first brought Mackenzie Bishop here
four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined
to prove herself. Now Da is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once
was, a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often-violent Histories
from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the
people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for
staying alive.

Being a Keeper isn’t just dangerous-it’s a
constant reminder of those Mac has lost. Da’s death was hard enough, but
now her little brother is gone too. Mac starts to wonder about the
boundary between living and dying, sleeping and waking. In the Archive,
the dead must never be disturbed. And yet, someone is deliberately
altering Histories, erasing essential chapters. Unless Mac can piece
together what remains, the Archive itself might crumble and fall.

In
this haunting, richly imagined novel, Victoria Schwab reveals the thin
lines between past and present, love and pain, trust and deceit,
unbearable loss and hard-won redemption.

As part of the tour, Victoria has created a series of vlogs that tell a little about what a person could read if she were a History in the Archive. STACKED is stop 12 on the tour, and we get a story about Neil Gaiman and hugs – both things worthy of discussion!

Victoria introduces the idea of the Archived and the vlog tour in the video below:



And you can read her History in this video:


To view all the videos in the vlog tour, including part one of the Neil Gaiman story, you can visit Victoria’s Youtube channel. Victoria’s also given us a swag pack to give away to one lucky reader (a tote bag and a couple of bookmarks), and I’ve thrown in a finished copy of the book when it publishes in January! To enter the giveaway, fill out the form below:

Guest Post: Ilsa Bick on Horror

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Today, Ilsa Bick – author of Ashes and its newly released sequel, Shadows – joins us for a guest post on horror influences as part of our month-long celebration of horror writing. We were curious about Bick’s own favorite horror movies and if they had any influence on her books. The answer: not really, but we get a funny story anyway. And I love how she refers to the Changed as having undergone a “lifestyle change.” That’s one way to put it.

What are your favorite horror movies?
Well, I don’t actually watch or enjoy most of what’s offered these days as horror. Slashers are just boring; and, honestly, life is tough enough. Yeah, these kinds of films are horrific, but . . . snore . . . I mean, if you’re into blood and stuff, sure, but way too many people equate a ton of gore with what’s scary. Most of these slasher flicks with the guts and the sadistic chop-em-up sequences? Meh. It’s corn syrup, folks.

What’s much more intriguing/frightening/scarilicious are the things you only imagine and don’t see: that Boogey-Man under your bed, for example, or what you only see out of the corner of your eye. So I guess I really only have two favorite horror films. The first Blair Witch was super because it exploited the unseen. I think I must’ve poked my husband a couple hundred times: What did he say? Did you see that? What was that? I kept trying to see better. You know, squint and bring things into focus? It was brilliant.

My second favorite is Alien. (I just adore and, in my film academia days, wrote about those films, although I have not seen Prometheus and got zip interest in doing so). That first film is another superb example of things that are scariest when they are a) unexpected and b) ever-shifting/hardly seen. Alien is a haunted house-Halloween-style film set on a ship in outer space (and, no, I actually don’t care for Halloween).

And, frankly, the real reason I will always have a soft spot for Alien: the film made my date scream like a girl.

What influences, if any, did these movies have on the Ashes trilogy?
None, really, although I guess you could say that the Changed being so unknowable is a bit like worrying about that Boogey-Man under the bed. They’re creepy because you can’t really get into their heads—and, yeah, they’ve undergone this major lifestyle change.

Now, I can understand where people would think I’m big into slashers or something, but I’m not. Anything I put in a novel is there for a purpose, not simply to amp up the gross-out factor, or because I’ve run out of ideas. My characters are in horrific, horrible circumstances. For me, it’s not about the gore. It’s about what people are capable of doing to one another: the horror of brutality.

I’ll be writing more about the book a bit later, but I can say that the horror of brutality is definitely a part of Shadows, much more so than Ashes. Are you ready to read about being eaten by a zombie from the perspective of the eaten? If so, then you are ready for Shadows.

Guest Post: An Unashamed Love Letter to Stephen King

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Matthew Jackson returns for a special Halloween guest post. Jackson has been sporadically guesting for us for a while now, most notably his series on Horror Lit 101. An avid reader and reviewer, he reviews adult fiction for BookPage, is an entertainment journalist at Blastr.com, and has a short story in the current issue (#360) of Weird Tales Magazine. You can visit him online at his Tumblr and Twitter.

Whenever people find out that I’m sort of a book person, and especially when people find out that I’m an actual real-live professional writer (we don’t get out in the wild much), they try to find something to ask me that I can reliably answer without either boring them with technical details or boring them with philosophical double talk (writers, I think are either experts at philosophical double talk or experts at evading any philosophical talk whatsoever). So they ask me some version of this:

“Who’s your favorite writer?”
There was a time when I considered this an opportunity to display my reading range, to reveal that I’d taken on some really heavy stuff, man, and I got it. So, for the longest time, my answer was William Faulkner (a 17-year-old saying his favorite writer was Faulkner was, I thought, rather impressive). The answer occasionally evolved to include writers like Cormac McCarthy and Allen Ginsberg, and then Joyce Carol Oates. But while all four of those writers are among the most gifted and brilliant I’ve ever read, and while they all no doubt rank among my favorites, I wasn’t being truthful. If you ask me who my favorite writer is, and I’m giving the most honest answer from deep down in my bones, it’s not any of those people, nor is it Michael Chabon or Philip Roth or Ernest Hemingway.

My favorite writer is Stephen King.
I will admit to once being embarrassed by this knowledge, and therefore not admitting it, I suppose because I wanted to give an answer that was more in-line with the conventions of the literary establishment. But I give this answer loudly and cheerfully now, no matter who I’m talking to, because I long ago came to the conclusion (as should we all) that the “literary establishment” can go to hell. Stephen King is my favorite writer, and what’s more, the competition for the top spot isn’t even close. Even among all those great writers I mentioned above, he towers over everyone. He’s at the top of my literary universe. There are a number of reasons for this, but I think the simplest (and truest) one is that there’s some intangible bit of his fictional universes that fill up my brain as I’m reading. The best books are always the most immersive, and whenever I read a Stephen King novel, his world is my world.

But it’s also about roots. King was the first “grown-up” writer I ever sought out. See, I grew up in the ‘90s, and that was a time when Stephen King was still the biggest publishing juggernaut on the planet (this was when J. K. Rowling was still in her superstar infancy). He was the only writer I’d ever seen who had TV commercials to promote his books. His paperbacks were in every grocery store, at everyone’s yard sales. It’s still true, but back then it was somehow truer: Stephen King was ubiquitous.

So, in my adolescent brain, reading a Stephen King novel meant that you’d somehow arrived at adulthood. You were part of that great mass that King himself has come to call “Constant Reader.” But my introduction to the King canon was likely different than most. For whatever reason, rather than picking up something short but iconic – The Shining, perhaps, or Pet Sematary – I picked up what remains King’s longest, most ambitious single novel: The Stand.

Even after a career of nearly four decades encompassing all manner of scary and non-scary stories, I still consider The Stand to be King’s best work. It’s sprawling and majestic and so clear in my head that it still stands as my favorite novel. On the other end there’s Gerald’s Game, perhaps the only King novel I outright loathe, but overall his body of work is one that keeps me coming back. I re-read his longest novels over and over again, I reach for particular short stories to brighten my day, and I keep re-visiting the audio version of his memoir On Writing (which he reads). No other writer has ever kept me so hungry for the words.

Why, you ask? Well, apart from King’s role in my reading youth, it’s kind of hard to say. I’m not trying to cop out here, but I really feel that when you talk about favorite writers, what really causes that connection is something invisible. I could talk about how he manages to be extremely attentive to detail while never being overwhelming about it. I could talk about his incredible ear for dialogue. I could talk about the almost cinematic images he crafts that haunt me even years after reading them (the old woman in the tub from The Shining, the sandalwood handles on Roland the Gunslinger’s revolvers). I could talk about the fantastic blend of fear and humor. I could talk about his ability to travel far beyond his “horror master” label and deliver fantastic tales of human hope, compassion, and love. I could talk about all of that, but if you ask me why Stephen King is my favorite writer, and I really think about it, I find the honest answer is much, much simpler.

Stephen King’s writing just feels like home.

So, in the spirit of Halloween sharing, I’ve shared my favorite writer with you, but since this is a blog about reading, and I believe it would be a kindness to leave you with some useful information, I would like to present a brief reading list for the works of my favorite author. If you’d like some chills this Halloween courtesy of Mr. King, here’s where you can go.

High School Hell: Carrie
Vampires That Don’t Sparkle: Salem’s Lot
Haunted Houses, Haunted People: The Shining
ZOMBIES!!!: Cell
The Ultimate Monster: IT
The End of the World As We Know It: The Stand
The Horror Variety Pack: Night Shift
The Horror Within: The Dead Zone, The Dark Half
Spooky Pets: Cujo, Pet Sematary
Horror-Free: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, 11/22/63, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger

Happy All Hallow’s Read, gang.

Guest Post: Two New-to-YA Publishers Worth Knowing

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Last month, I talked about how you have to put in the time and effort in order to become knowledgeable about something and I highlighted the publishers and imprints working with YA fiction. In that post, I mentioned two new-to-me publishers, Strange Chemistry (an imprint of Angry Robot) and Entangled Publishing. After posting, I had authors from both contact me to talk about what their publishers are doing, and both were eager to share a little more about that. Welcome Gwenda Bond and Amy Spalding, who will talk a bit about their publishers, the process in working with new YA publishing endeavors, and, of course, their forthcoming titles.

Gwenda Bond & Strange Chemistry

I fell into almost everything I know about publishing by loving books first. (I think this is true of most people who write and/or work in any capacity in publishing–and definitely true of most people you’d want to work with as a writer.) Anyway, I was always a writer and a reader, and then at some point I also started blogging, which in a roundabout way led to me covering publishing in features for Publishers Weekly and then later some reviewing, and so on. So while I was working toward becoming a published author, I also got to talk to lots of people in the big six and outside it (and still do), about their business and how it works–something I find fascinating, and one of the reasons I was excited when Kelly invited this guest post. 

Up front I’ll also say I don’t know much about non-traditional publishing. Big or small, part of a giant publishing conglomerate or an independent house, the traditional publishing model is what I’m talking about here. I’d define that broadly as a publisher with a means of distribution, buying a certain set of rights for publication and paying an advance, including a fair royalty rate, and the rest of the things entailed by that as part of a business enterprise.

So…the new imprint Strange Chemistry. Who are they and how did my debut YA novel Blackwood end up as one of their launch titles, and what has that been like?

(One last caveat: I speak only for myself, not my publisher, obviously. Though I *blow kisses to them*. )

Strange Chemistry is the YA imprint being started by Angry Robot Books, a science fiction and fantasy publisher owned by the Osprey Group that burst onto the SFF scene and took it by storm with beautiful design, a fresh perspective on how they did things, and some truly marvelous books (Lauren Beukes’Zoo City, Adam Christopher’s Empire State, and Chuck Wendig’s Blackbirds are all excellent starting points, to single out a few Angry Robot titles). The publisher is based in England, but their books release simultaneously in the U.S., the UK and Australia, in paperback (usually) and as e-books (with DRM-free versions always available), along with audio for select titles. Their U.S. distribution is through Random House. (Who are the best sales team! I might have a biased opinion based on how wonderful they’ve been, and I now definitely have a greater appreciation for how crucial sales reps are. *blows more kisses*)

In 2011, Angry Robot announced they were launching Strange Chemistry, to be headed by Amanda Rutter. My agent–the divine Jennifer Laughran–and I immediately emailed each other; this could be a good place to submit the Roanoke Island-set gothic fantasy/nerd romance/thriller I’d been working on. Blackwood is about two smart 17-year-olds–Miranda Blackwood and Phillips Rawling–who are drawn into the investigation of a mass disappearance on modern-day Roanoke Island and uncover their own connections to the original history of the Lost Colony as they work to save the missing people and themselves.

Once Amanda started reading submissions, in the book went and we heard from her not that long after–she wanted it and she was really excited about it, though the Editorial Board (dreaded by all writers) still lay ahead. But the ed board said YES. Hallelujah, heavenly choirs, the usual. As a debut author at a small publisher, you can’t expect a “shut up, you’re buying this round”deal. BUT that’s also true as a debut author–or a midlist one, for that matter–at many larger publishers. Giant deals are far fewer than it seems. Really. What giant deals also result in is immense pressure for everyone involved to deliver big sales numbers, something which is very hard to make happen even with a huge marketing budget. But, regardless, those marketing dollars can be very loud, and sometimes drown out other voices–one reason Kelly’s excellent post on finding out about non-bestsellers and books from smaller houses was so great.

This is something I really and truly believe, having witnessed many triumphs and tragedies among author friends: the most important thing is that the editor is behind your work, and the best scenario is that the whole team is. One thing I knew going in was that Strange Chemistry was building an imprint. That’s not done haphazardly. And having since gotten to listen to my editor, Amanda, describing the launch list in meetings at BEA, I can say that she advocates for every single book on her list strongly, passionately. I am definitely not saying this isn’t the case at other publishers, just that it may be a little easier to accomplish when a list is smaller. (You can read more about the vision for the imprint and its expansion plans in this SFX interview with Amanda.)

Because this is a brand new imprint and I’m lucky enough to have Blackwood be one of the first two titles coming out this September (alongside Kim Curran’s excellent Shift), we have all been working very intensely since the sale–first rounds of edits, then copy edits, ARCs going out, and etcetera. Only, in this case, on a timeline with wayyy less slack in it–new imprint and all.

Cover art is undeniably important and I couldn’t be happier with Steven Wood’s gorgeous artwork as mine–and which I was consulted on the concept for. While some people might prefer to debut in hardback, I’m actually happy to have my first book come out in trade paperback. I know I’m personally more likely to try a new author in paperback–I feel it’s a smart strategy, and the reason why (it seems at least) there have been more YA paperback originals in recent years. As I already mentioned, the Osprey and Random House sales teams have been amazing, going out and, well, selling the book to the places where people buy or look for books. At the same time, the publisher has been doing a great job of building an identity for the imprint and starting to communicate directly with readers via twitter, the blog, Facebook, their mailing list, etcetera, as well as working to make ARCs available to more reviewers through NetGalley. They’ve set up and/or helped set up events and other launch activities, and talked me down from the occasional panic attack every new author has from time to time. There is also a real sense of camaraderie among us first Strange Chemistry authors.

My next book–unrelated to Blackwood–will be out next year. It’s a near future urban fantasy called The Woken Gods, a title we all spent a considerable amount of time to arrive at and a direction I’m beyond happy the publisher was on board with. I’m grateful that I never felt a smidge of pressure to force a Blackwood sequel, when it was always meant as a standalone. (If I ever do another related book, it’ll likely involve different characters, and a different mystery, but I suppose never say never.)

So, in short (okay, in loooong), my experience with this small publisher has been all I could’ve hoped for. The book’s out soon (September 4! eek!), and fingers crossed, some of you will read it and like it. I hope this post will also encourage some of you to keep an eye on Strange Chemistry, and look at the other wonderful books they have coming. I’m grateful to be a part of this imprint as it starts up, and no matter where my career may wander in the future, that won’t change. Having a mix of big and small publishers in the world is good for all of us; it’s good for books.

I’m happy to answer any questions I can in the comments, and thanks so much to Kelly for the invitation to soapbox and letting me ramble (on and on…).

Amy Spalding & Entangled Publishing
My experience with Entangled started early this year. My agent told me she’d sent both of my manuscripts to Entangled, and provided me with a link to a story in USA Today about them. When I saw the link, I didn’t know what to think. All the books pictured were adult romances, with glistening abs and pecs on the covers. That was about as far from my contemporary YA novels as you could get. I freaked out a little and emailed a bunch of other author/publishing types to see what they thought.
 
Their answers were unanimous, and a little surprising. Everyone said I’d be lucky to be with Entangled, that they really had new and exciting ideas about publishing, their teen line wasn’t about glistening dudes (well, not entirely…) and they’d just hired an amazing editor, Stacy Cantor Abrams, who apparently I’d be lucky to work with.
 
Suddenly I couldn’t believe my luck because that was exactly who my manuscripts were sitting with. Now I figured I was set for rejection because I’d never seen so many people proclaim love for an editor before. So what were my chances?
 
But a few weeks later, I got an offer. For both books. And my phone call with Stacy was just phenomenal; she clearly got what I’m all about, and I knew she’d provide me with amazing editorial guidance.
 
My main concern with Entangled was that I wasn’t sure if they could actually get books into brick and mortar bookstores. And despite Amazon’s hold on the publishing industry (sigh) I knew bookstore presence could really make or break my career. The great news was that Entangled had recently partnered with Publishers Group West, and had great distribution possibilities. The even better news was that for particularly the Entangled Teen line, this was going to be a priority. Teens are buying books at bookstores, so it’s vital to be there.
 
After this assurance and my call with Stacy, I was happy to relay back to my agent that I wanted to accept the offer. Since then I have been continuously impressed with Entangled. I listen sympathetically as other friends wait weeks and even months beyond when they were promised editorial notes. Mine came in exactly as promised.
 

For me, Entangled is a great place to be. I don’t write big, high-concept books. I’m interested in girls and their families and their friendships and, of course, the boys with great hair that intrigue them. As of now, at least, there is no vampire or mermaid book within me. So being at a small publisher that has a lot of time and attention for me even at the start of my career has been an incredibly positive experience. I work in indie film, so being at an indie publisher has been an appropriate fit for me.

My first book with Entangled, The Reece Malcolm List, will be released February 12, 2013. It is about family, musical theatre, and boys with good hair. Ink Is Thicker than Water will be available late 2013. You can visit my web site at www.theamyspalding.com and follow me on Twitter at @TheAmes. If you want to check out the behind-the-scenes of the cover design (which Amy had a ton of input on!), then check out the stops along the cover reveal blog tour.