Tad Williams' Shadowrise
As damn fine a writer and editor that Deborah Beale is, I consider her equally great as a marketing genius. I’ve written before about some of her and husband/business partner/writer Tad Williams marketing ventures before in this post from last October. I recently joined Twitter (find me here as Talkingwithtim) and have started observing how folks that I respect utilize it to their advantage. This March, Volume 3 in Williams’ Shadowmarch series, Shadowrise, will be released. To whet the appetite of fans anticipating the book’s release, Beale is twittering (as MrsTad) excerpts from the book. The most recent series of tweets started on January 23. I had to ask Beale a few questions about the effort, and she was more than happy to oblige me in this mini email interview. My thanks to Beale for her time and efforts, as always.
Tim O’Shea: How did you come up with the idea to start sharing excerpts from Tad’s new novel, Shadowrise via Twitter?
Deborah Beale: It wasn’t a flash-bang moment; it just occurred to me sometime back that it would be a cool thing to do. I was waiting for a finished manuscript from Tad, and I wanted to fit in with the publishers wishes too, which means streaming something close to publication date. Now, of course, I’m wondering who else might be doing something like this. There was one fiction-experiment last year, I can’t remember the details but it didn’t end well. I’m just throwing stuff out there for our followers and mailing list (who got a free short story for Xmas.) And I’m having fun with it.
O’Shea: How logistically challenging has it been to parse out the 140 character increments?
Beale: This is the best, best bit. First of all, as I’m sitting there actually tweeting, it puts Tad’s line-by-line prose into my face, I mean, really up close. And I’ve been amazed all over again by what an EXTREMELY FINE WRITER Tad is. I’ve actually paused as I’ve been doing it, to observe the text. It’s such a beautiful thing.
Secondly, I don’t think about the 140 character limit at all. Instead, I break the text into short pieces that resonate for me, just standing there in that little white box. Some are poetically effective: some end on a word that intrigues or surprises. Some sentences primarily move the story along, or are the punchline to a joke. As a writer, it seems to me that Tad’s text is soaked in surprises – taken slowly, it’s even more evident.
O’Shea: What’s been some of the reactions to the effort–have you lost any followers or if have you gained some (as a result)?
Beale: I think people are enjoying it – they tell me they are. Right now the people who follow us are up close and personal. It might not always be that way, especially when the Otherland game is launched.
O’Shea: Have you heard from other authors interested in trying to do something similar?
Beale: No. But it seems a pretty obvious thing to do, to me.
O’Shea: You use YouTube, your blog, Twitter–how else are you going to harness the potential of the Internet to make people aware of Shadowrise or other projects by you and/or Tad?
Beale: I think I’m going to relax about it and have fun with it all this year. First of all, my businesswoman head says, two novels – Shadowrise and Shadowheart – are being published this year, and there will be marketing and publicity as a result of that. So I’ll grab what opportunities come my way, but probably put less into making opportunities (and put my energy instead into a writing new novel.)
O’Shea: Any other ideas you might test run via Twitter? (or feel free to substitute with another question that you would rather discuss)
Beale: I’ll definitely be tweeting pieces of Shadowheart as the book finalizes – that’ll be in the fall, I think. I’ll be tweeting more episodes from published books, too. I need to formalize it, make it a regular thing – I’m working on that. I’m open to any requests. The shaping thing at the moment is how deliciously Tad’s prose breaks up into little pieces. To steal a metaphor from my friend Ellen Kushner – it tastes so lovely in my mouth!
Can I just add one final point? Tad has always written long novels, and that can be a brake on the wheels for some readers. So I want to say, with the new novel Shadowrise (March, DAW Books in the USA), people who haven’t read Tad’s books before should just read the synopses at the start of the book, and jump right in. There’s a good reason for doing this, if peeps haven’t encountered Tad’s work yet. Shadowrise might possibly be the best book Tad’s written – it’s extraordinary, a peak experience for a fantasy reader, I think. (Usual disclaimer: biased? Moi?) It’s just a dazzlingly, blindingly, good book.