The Confabulator Cafe

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  • Selling Out

    There comes a time in each person’s life when you have to give up on the dream of becoming a dot-com millionaire by thirty and take whatever job will keep a roof over your head and allow you to visit the dentist on occasion. If you’re really lucky, you’ll even earn enough to buy the expensive food— the kind that comes with both flavor and nutrition. So I write to order in exchange for money. If it’s a program manual or an annual report or a web page or a property history, I’ll write it because that’s what my employer needs. If I worked for somebody else, I’d be writing something else.

    Is writing for a salary a giant time suck that takes up energy and attention and creative juices? Yes, it is. Does it use up resources I could be using towards producing a pretentiously significant work of Great Art? Damn right it does. Bur here’s the secret, from someone who has been there— so is poverty. Dealing with the day to day hustle of surviving on no money is a giant, soul-killing hassle. I worked harder at being poor than I ever have at a day job, and while at the end I suppose that “my time was my own” to work on my own projects, I was perfectly happy to trade 40 hours or so a week for a modest yet sufficient paycheck.

    All that said, if I weren’t paid to write, would I still do so? Probably. I am first and foremost and from time immemorial a reader, and reading led me to a friend who led me to a friend who led me to Nanowrimo, which has led me to more friends, who led me here, to the Cafe. I find as I get older and inadvertently somewhat wiser, I have more things to write about, so let’s see where it goes from here.

  • Heroes and Villains

    Superman by Alex Ross
    Superman/Clark Kent by Alex Ross in Superman: Peace on Earth. ©1998 DC Comics.

    When people ask me what I write, it’s not easy for me to give a simple answer. I’m a writer, and I write short stories, novels and even a little poetry.

    I’ve written in a number of genres, including contemporary fiction. And though most of my writing falls into the fantasy genre, most people upon hearing the word “fantasy” immediately think I write stories of wizards and dragons — which I never have done.

    I could explain that my current work-in-progress is in the fantasy superhero sub-genre, but that almost always leads people to think I write comic books. (I wish. I’ve often dreamed of getting a shot at writing a Superman story — finding the perfect blend of action and drama.)

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  • Will Write for Cash

    fairy cashWithin the cozy, virtual walls of the Confabulator Café, I write whatever genre takes my fancy. The monthly writing prompts let my imagination grab whatever idea floats by on the wind, and I can fly off wherever it takes me. I push myself to come up with something different whenever possible. This is a playground. It’s our playground. We can fill it with whatever toys and games we want to play with, and it makes us better writers when we explore uncharted corners.

    Outside the Café, I write urban fantasy. I chose that genre for several reasons, not all of them creative. I’m going to lay a little honesty on you here, and I hope you don’t think less of me for it by the time I’m done. (more…)

  • Learning to Dream, One Book at a Time

    The books I read as a child and teenager shaped my perception of the world and molded me into who I am today. From those books I learned friendship. I learned to dream. I learned love. I learned sorrow. I learned happiness. I learned that no matter what happens, as long as there are still books in the world, I will never truly be alone.

    Hopefully the books I write will create that same sense of yearning for adventure in other children. Even if I don’t accomplish that goal, my writing brings me back to those days of discovery. (more…)

  • What Genre is This?

    To be completely honest, I never really thought much about genre before about three years ago. I had little interest in publication (at least not serious interest), so it didn’t matter how to categorize it. I wrote what I wanted to read.

    I still do that, to an extent. I write what moves me. When an idea inspires me, I write it. When dark things happen, it’s because it’s visceral and it resonates with me. If I look back and see that it’s horror, than let it be so.

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  • The Indeterminate Genre

    To answer a question about why I write my genre, I first would need to pick a genre as “mine.” And I can’t really do that. Sci-fi, fantasy, horror, romance, all these (and more!) appeal to me at different times. I can’t lock down on one genre as my favorite, or even having a preference. I’m much more likely to figure out the genre once I get a decent story idea in place, rather then say, “I’m going to write a fantasy story.” When I set about to writing something genre, I find it full of stereotypes and cliches. Deciding from the beginning to write a genre story is too constricting for me. When I make a plot, and a real character or two, and work the genre around them, I find myself with a much more interesting story.

    Looking over the past year of writing though, there’s one thing that most of my stories have in common: they’re almost always set in a contemporary setting with at least one foot in normalcy. Where that other foot steps is always the question. One story might be a monster-hunting horror story, another might be an alien invasion, and another might look into the heart and soul of loneliness, but in order for me to have relatable, sympathetic protagonists, I want that anchor in the real world. These stories always start out with a basic plot and character and go from there. The genre writes itself. Is it a comedy? Horror? Does it take place in the past or future? These are questions that don’t have answers until I have a story, and every story goes on a different path.

    Not to say a pure genre story is terribly hard to write or read, but I will usually find the story more enjoyable if I can look out the window and see some of the same things my protagonist would see. I guess you might call my favorite genre “urban”. Instead of a fantasy story in a mystical land, I’d much rather put the elves and magic in the modern, contemporary world and see what kind of trouble happens. It can even be set in the past or future, as long as it’s about real people doing real things. A Sci-Fi story about space battles doesn’t interest me; I’m much more likely to write about the people down at the planets surface and the effects of said space battle on their lives.

  • Tales of a Genre Orphan

    Okay, here’s the thing about genre: I don’t know where I fit.

    The first novel I ever wrote . . . (well, let’s be honest, it was the first novel I tried to write) was a terrible science fiction story about a civil war between the Earth and the moon. It was amazingly awful and it clocked in at just over 50,000 words.

    I’d written it for a class and my professor gave me a kind and much understated critique:  “It needs work.”

    Boy did it ever. I think there was only a single scene in the entire novel where she’d penned “This is good.” Everything else was a blood bath of editing marks and suggestions.

    Still, though, I was undeterred. I had the overconfidence of youth and I was sure that my genius would eventually be recognized. (Did I mention that during the writing of that novel I had decided that dialogue was overrated and that the reader would spend most of their time in the characters’ minds and the majority of my novel would be told through story action? I don’t think I can accurately describe what a train wreck this was.)

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  • From the Shadows

    I still remember the first horror book I ever read. Scary Stories to Read in the Dark sat on the bookshelf in the back of my third grade classroom. I read over and over about just-missed encounters with hook-handed psychopaths and puzzle nights that foretold the murdering maniac crawling through the apartment window.

    My horror education remained pretty basic till my teen years. It felt like something forbidden. Stephen King and friends seemed like corruptors of souls, as if being caught with a hardcover of The Stand might condemn your eternal soul. I read a lot of classic horror and science fiction, which I could argue as classic instead of genre. Stevenson, Dickinson, Wells, Verne, Poe, and a variety of classic terrifying dishes were read greedily, as if any moment, I would be found out.

    What is the quickest route to the shadows? Tell someone there is nothing there in the dark worth their time. Their curiosity will be peaked, and they will go in search for what lays waiting just outside the narrow vision of the flashlight beam. (more…)

  • Putting on the Sorting Hat (Week of 13 January 2013)

    Genre is a French word meaning “kind” or “sort” according to Wikipedia. Genre, though, for writers is what we write, how we express ourselves, where we want to take our readers away from their everyday lives. Certain genres are overdone, some are less explored, and many are confused with the medium in which they are delivered. TV westerns are not necessarily the same as Hollywood westerns which are different still from Pulp westerns. However, they are ALL westerns.

    Some of us here in the Cafe write in distinct genres, others still crossover from into another and then back again or perhaps into a third. As readers we are attracted to certain genres for entertainment: science fiction, romance, urban fantasy, high fantasy, etc… As writers sometimes we eschew what entertains us in favor of what we like to write or are good at. Or think we’re good at.

    This week we’re exploring why we write in the genre we’ve chosen. We’re going to tell you what’s attractive about that genre to us and we hope you’ll tell us what you like. The regulars here know we run the gamut of any list of genre you might find anywhere, but why we write in these milieux is a topic of conversation over coffee, tea, or cocoa on a cold winter’s day.

    Pull up a chair. You’re always welcome here but you’ll have to bus your  own dishes.

  • Ephemera – The End of the World

    Among the Confabulators, we have several sci-fi and fantasy writers, along with a few horror writers, as well. Most of us are also Joss Whedon and/or Doctor Who fans. Those things combined lend themselves to the possibility of our writing bringing about the end of the world, and possibly the world being saved. Out of morbid curiosity, this week we asked the Confabulators how many stories we’ve written where the world has either ended or been saved from ending.

    Jason Arnett

    Every time I write a science fiction story it’s the end of someone’s world. That’s the point of writing any fiction, isn’t it? To change the world of the main character? As for the end of the physical world, well, what’s more fun than writing that? I haven’t destroyed the world yet. Someone’s always managed to come through. So far…

    Jack Campbell, Jr.

    “Flute of the Dead” is about the end of the Anasazi culture. It will be in Bete Noire Magazine in October. “Collectors,” which appeared here and will be reprinted in Separate Worlds Magazine, involves bumbling demons collecting souls in preparation for the card game that will decide the fate of the world. I’ve also written a nuclear holocaust short-short entitled “A Moment before Dying.” I’m currently seeking a publisher for that piece. Generally, however, I prefer small, personal disasters to the literal end of the world.

    Christie Holland

    I have only written a story where the world was saved once. It was the very first novel I wrote, during NaNoWriMo 2010. An evil wizard threatened to destroy/take over the world and my main character saved it at the very last moment! I’ve also written several stories where the world was already broken, or it was ambiguous to how much destruction was caused that might have led to the end of the world. Interestingly, these not-quite-world-destroying stories were all posted here at the Cafe.

    Sara Lundberg

    I wrote a Doctor Who fanfiction once, so of course the world was in trouble. It actually took place in Kansas, not Great Britain for once! I wrote a post-apocalyptic flash fiction for the Cafe last year, so the world as everyone had known it was gone. The novel I wrote for NaNo 2012 certainly had implications that the world might end in the sequel if certain things came to pass. It hasn’t been saved yet. I’ll let you know when I decide what happens. Or what my protagonist decides to do, rather.