Diving Into the Wreck

In an effort to make up for a lack of interviews a month or so ago, I will be doubling up weekly interviews for the next couple of weeks. Enjoy and thanks for your patience.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch, as detailed at her website,  is “an award-winning mystery, romance, science fiction, and fantasy writer. She has written many novels under various names, including Kristine Grayson for romance, and Kris Nelscott for mystery. Her novels have made the bestseller lists–even in London–and have been published in 14 countries and 13 different languages.

“Her novel, Diving into the Wreck, will be published by Pyr in November.  The sixth in her Retrieval Artist series, Duplicate Effort, appeared in February.  Her next short story collection, Recovering Apollo 8 and Other Stories, will appear from Golden Gryphon in spring of 2010.” As informative and interesting as her website clearly is (given how much I just quoted it), I was curious to learn more about her via an e-mail interview. My thanks to Kevin J. Anderson for getting me in contact with Rusch, and even more thanks to Rusch herself for her valuable time.

Tim O’Shea: What can tell folks about your new short story, “Flower Fairies,” which just appeared in the new issue of Realms of Fantasy?

Kristine Kathryn Rusch: I usually let the stories speak for themselves. So I hope people enjoy it!

O’Shea: From 2000 to the mid-2000s, you wrote several books under the pseudonyms “Kris Nelscott” and “Kristine Grayson”. Also you and your husband (Dean Wesley Smith) wrote under the name “Sandy Schofield” in the 1990s. Were the choices to work under different pseudonyms more of a business logistical decision as opposed to a creative choice?

Rusch: It’s both. I am a voracious reader, and I’ve learned that readers don’t always care for everything a writer does. So when I do something radically different, I put an open pen name on it. That way, my Grayson readers who are expecting a light funny romance don’t get surprised by The Fey novels, which are violent fantasy novels with no romance at all.

O’Shea: When did you first come up with the idea for The Freelancer’s Survival Guide–is this your first book to have capitalized upon the Kindle platform?

Rusch: I really haven’t done a lot of Kindle work with it, except to put the blog on Kindle. It’s my first time going directly to the readers, however, and asking them to support what I do rather than going to a publisher first. It’s an experiment. I’m hoping it turns out well, because it’s been fun so far.

O’Shea: When you’re writing a romance novel or another of your genre specialties, do you ever find yourself wanting to rework the concept into another genre?

Rusch: Yes, and I often do. Usually my books come out as short stories first, so you can see the roots of the longer project in the story. If I feel I didn’t handle the concept quite right, I try again, and sometimes get an entirely different book in an entirely different genre. Writing is mysterious, but it’s also fun.

O’Shea: You and your husband regularly host workshops (as shown here at his website), how did this concept first come about?

Rusch: Because of our background—we owned a publishing company, we’ve both edited extensively, and we’ve written in a variety of genres—we started giving short presentations on the business of writing. Then we realized that people needed more. We taught at Clarion, and got in trouble for teaching business (!) We were told writers didn’t need that. Since we both knew writers needed business training more than anything—most writers’ careers have business problems that destroy a less-than-savvy writer—we decided to teach a Master Class to writers who’ve already been published, and whose careers have stalled. So far as I know, we’re the only people in the country (maybe the world, since we’ve had students from England and Germany and Canada) teaching that side of things regularly. We’ve added other master-level courses, and we still occasionally do the short version for newcomers (although “short” is now 2 days long).

O’Shea: Your novels have been “published in 14 countries and 13 different languages”. Is there any particular country that it really surprised you that your work had been translated? Have you ever had an occasion to visit some of these countries for book signings?

Rusch: My mystery novel, Hitler’s Angel (which is being reissued in England next year), was purchased by Israel and became a bestseller there. I didn’t know then, and I know now, that literature about WWII is big in Israel, but at the time, it surprised me. And yes, I’ve been to France a couple of times for book signings. I did a tour in 2007 for my Kris Nelscott mystery novels, and learned it’s tricky to do signings in another country. Even though I speak a little French, I still had to have the customers write out their names for me, since I have no idea how to spell most French names. It was fun, scary, and enlightening, all at the same time.

O’Shea: Did you find out around the same time that your “short story, ‘G-Men,’ will appear in The Best American Mystery Stories and The Year’s Best Science Fiction, the first time the same story will appear in both a mystery and science fiction best of the year collection”?

Rusch: I found out in the same month—January. Boy, was I a happy camper.

O’Shea: Could you give me a little background on your Diving into the Wreck universe (which includes the upcoming November novel of the same name as well as the novella, “Room of Lost Souls”)?

Rusch: I had the idea for “Diving” for a long time. Dean used to scuba dive (and teach it), and he had stories that intrigued me. I thought about wrecks in space, and I thought about exploring them. And suddenly, I had the first novella. The second I thought would be a different universe, but it wasn’t. Then there’s a third (with different characters) called “The Spires of Denon” which was in Asimov’s April/May issue. I’m currently working on a fourth from yet another point of view. The novel is coming out in November, and so far I’m very pleased with everything. The cover is spectacular, and Pyr has even advertised in Asimov’s to let the readers who follow the series of novellas know that the book is coming.

O’Shea: You released the seventh volume in the Retrieval Artist series this year, Duplicate Effort. Do you have a finite end in mind for the seires, or do you hope to be writing the series for several years to come?

Rusch: I see my Retrieval Artist books as my 87th Precinct novels. For your readers who aren’t familiar with Ed McBain, let me say that he wrote (I believe) 80 of them, from differing points of view, from the 1960s until his death a year or so ago. So no finite end. Right now, though, Miles Flint is on hiatus to raise his daughter. He has come back already in a novella that Analog will publish in its January/February issue. I’m hoping to sell a book about his daughter Talia, and publishers are considering it at the moment. And eventually, DeRicci will have her own book, and so will Nyquist, and several others. The universe is big; there are many stories to tell.

Which contemporary writers do you think should be getting more critical and mainstream attention?

Honestly, I care less about attention than sales. I want all of my favorite writers to be bestsellers so that they can continue writing without worrying about money. Of course, that won’t happen. Mostly, I have no idea what’s happening with other people’s careers. I write about the writers I enjoy in the Recommended Reading section of my blog. I also have trouble remembering who is where because I read a lot of my students’ work before it gets published. So I’m seeing a lot of really good stuff in manuscript that eventually hits print months/years later.

Tim O’Shea: Back in 2005, in excerpts from a Locus Online interview of you, you admitted: “I’m worried about what’s happening in the United States now with the right wing.” How much would you say the political climate of the world inspires some of your fiction (if at all)? Are you more or less worried about the United States these days?

Jack McDevitt: It’s four years ago. I suspect I was thinking about the tendency of the right to substitute flag-waving for thought. The primary responsibility of a citizen in a democracy is to keep informed, and to recognize that authority figures of whatever political stripe need to be watched. And controled. An extreme example came when the President took us to war without presenting any evidence. I will never forget JFK going on TV when he was getting ready to impose the Cuban missile blockade. Here are the photos. There are the missile sites. These are the capabilities that these missiles will have. Etc. We never saw any of that from Bush. Trust me. Let’s go get Saddam. The Republicans, who are now so concerned about waste, got in line. And the Democrats, with few exceptions, put political expediency before the nation’s welfare, and also climbed on board. Then, after we’d killed God knows how many innocent Arabs –Remember Shock and Awe?–, we re-elected the administration. Before the world, the American people showed their approval of what we’d done.

I don’t know to what degree current politics inspires my work. History is full of halfwits in power. Tom Paine points out that the British generals during the Revolution were killing people –and getting their own soldiers killed– because a moron had told them to do so. On the other hand, sometimes you get quality leaders. It happens. But not always. And it’s why we need to watch people in power. It’s why we shouldn’t claim we stand for freedom of speech while simultaneously demanding that a singing group be boycotted because they’ve taken a stand, whether we approve of the stand or not.

We live in a dangerous world. Loose nukes, runaway population growth, tribalism, climate change, crazy people who think it’s a good idea to kill unbelievers. Two years ago, I attended a NASA/SETI conference seeking to answer the question why SETI has, in fifty years, never heard a peep. It might be because civilization breeds technology and technology increases vulnerability while making lethal weaponry available to lunatics. I think the U.S., at present, especially needs an objective, talented, hard-driving media. Objectivity is especially hard to come by. I don’t even trust my own any more.

O’Shea: When you voice your political opinion on matters, do you ever fear alienating some aspect of your audience, or is that never a concern of yours?

McDevitt: I think my readers are adults. I don’t normally get into left-right politics. (At least, I think I don’t.) This is about as much as I’ve done in a public forum. And I suspect your readers are also willing to be tolerant.

O’Shea: In addition to your standalone novels, you have done series with characters like Priscilla Hutchins and Alex Benedict. What attracts you to working with these characters in more than one novel?

McDevitt: There’s a technical advantage: You become familiar with the furniture: The name of the space station. The name and character of the aliens (or the fact that they don’t seem to exist). The velocity of the starships. The protagonist’s favorite restaurant. The capital of Louie’s World. Whatever. If you get caught up doing novels in which the action occurs in a basically similar milieu, it helps not to have to reinvent everything all the time. But the real reason is that you develop a familiarity with, and an affection for, the characters. And I can imagine how that sounds. But it’s true. And it affects the readers as well. I’ve had, e.g., a number of queries as to whether Hutch, or Chase Kolpath, is available.

O’Shea: When you write a novel, what gives you more creative satisfaction, entertaining the reader or intellectually challenging the reader (in addition to yourself) with your writing?

McDevitt: I’m not sure there’s a clear division between the two. Often, when I ask aspiring writers what a writer does, they will say she tells a story. When people tell stories, though, everyone around them tends to go to sleep. A writer strives, not to tell a story, but to create an experience. The reader is expected to hang by his fingertips while the protagonist is lifted to safety by a cable a thousand feet over the sea; he will fall in love on a rainy night in Paris; he will glide through Saturn’s rings and gape at the spectacle; he will get tossed over the side by the woman of his dreams. When it rains in a novel, the reader should get wet.

So I can’t separate intellectual challenge from entertainment. It’s a ride, baby. Over the moon and on to the north star.

O’Shea: In mapping out a time travel story, how do you track the “timeline” of the tale as you write it? What is the biggest challenge to writing about time travel?

McDevitt: The only long time travel work I’ve done is the forthcoming Time Travelers Never Die. It’s based on a novella from the 90′s. I had to make charts in some cases. E.g., a character who doesn’t realize he is playing with a time device is transported a few hours ahead and into some woods 200 miles away from where he started. It’s suddenly morning. He calls into work to tell his boss he won’t make it. But she keeps hanging up on him. Won’t believe he is who he says he is. He gets a ride home that night, and accidentally triggers the device, which returns him to the moment at which he’d left the night before. But he doesn’t know it. Next day, he goes to work and discovers that everyone insists he had in fact been there the day before. While he’s there, someone calls, claiming to be him. The boss hangs up on the guy. And if this is giving anyone a headache, I understand.

The problem for a time traveler protagonist is that he can always go back and repair the situation. Time travelers never wait in line. The biggest challenge is sorting things out so they can’t do that. What usually happens is that the writer invents a rule. E.g., you can’t be in two places at once, so you can’t go into any time period where you already exist. But that takes all the fun out of it. If you have a time travel device, really have one, you can play all nine positions simultaneously on your baseball team. You can come to your own assistance. And you never have to say goodbye.

O’Shea: Am I correct in thinking some of your older novels are being re-released for Kindle? By getting them on Kindle is it your hope to expose your work to young readership or what is your thinking on that?

McDevitt: Don’t know. I don’t pay much attention to any of that. I leave it to my agent. I have my hands full just getting the writing assignments done.

O’Shea: Why do you think you’re so successful at writing strong female characters, like Priscilla Hutchins? What is the key to writing engaging characters, no matter their gender?

McDevitt: Second question first: Make them human. They mean well, but they don’t know everything, and they’re flawed. One of the most common mistakes aspiring writers make is that they make their characters too heroic, too skilled, too good. The guy is never simply a skier; he’s the best on the planet. Characters who don’t get scared when they look up and see that a train is about to run them down. Characters whose problems are always black and white, who never have to make a morally ambiguous decision. The interesting character is the person who’s like the vast majority of us: Means well, would prefer to avoid confrontation, would hesitate before running into a burning building to attempt a rescue, gets a bit nervous when he’s about to make a play for an attractive woman (or guy), and so on. These are the characters we enjoy reading about.

I grew up in an era when the female characters were there simply to be rescued by the hero. Things got bad for Flash, you could always count on Dale to faint. I did management seminars for the Customs Service, and we used to break the participants into groups of five and present them with a situation that required them to talk with each other, and come up with a smart strategy. Failure to do that usually got them killed. (Virtually, of course.) For example, they’d be in a plane, and we’d crash the plane in the desert. Temperatures at 130. Do they set out for the settlement they saw sixty miles away? Do they wait for help?

We divided them sometimes by job description, inspectors in one group, agents in another, and so on. We divided them by type of assignment, airport, land border, seaport; we divided them by gender, all-male, all female, mixed. Our experience was that there was never any difference in the results. They lived and died at about the same rates in all the types of groups except one: gender.

The all-female groups usually survived. They’re better at talking things out. And at listening. The groups that almost always died? Not the all-male groups, which is what I bet you were thinking. In fact, it was the mixed group that went down constantly. Why? Because the males, in the company of women, became more masculine, and were willing to take chances they wouldn’t otherwise have taken. And, to make matters worse, the women became more passive. They let the guys, with their testosterone at full flood, make the decisions.

I started with Hutch because of what I’d seen so many times in those exercises. I wanted a woman who could go toe to toe with the males. She’s not always right, and she’s occasionally given in when she shouldn’t, but she’s learned from her experiences. I discovered I simply enjoyed writing about her, and about Chase Kolpath.

O’Shea: Your writing has been nominated and/or received several awards, after a number of years full of nominations and awards do you ever get jaded aboit winning or being nominated?

McDevitt: No. It’s always an honor. And a confirmation that I’m at least partially successful at what I’m trying to do.

O’Shea: Would you agree that writing fiction for an audience, on a certain level is an act of trust? You as the writer are trusting that the audience will be able to use their imagination to tap into the ideas you’re exploring–or am I wrong with this thinking?

McDevitt: Sure. One of the advantages of writing SF, and of living in an email world, is that I get to meet, or hear from, a lot of readers. I think we all share a sense of wonder about the place we live in. We have a lot in common. I never even think about whether I can trust them. I know too many of them. But they probably have to make some decisions on whether they can trust me.

O’Shea: Are there certain science fiction concepts you developed in your earlier novels that closely resemble any present day new or current technology?

McDevitt: My biggest breakthrough was a novel I planned back in 1963, before my writing career started. It predicted a moon landing with extensive media coverage. Unfortunately I never wrote the book. (Or, considering where I was in 1964, it probably isn’t so unfortunate.)

There’s a book around somewhere that addresses this subject, and I got credit for something, but I don’t recall what it was.

O’Shea: Are there certain kinds of scientific concepts/constructs that you think are overused in fiction?

McDevitt: We probably write too many interstellar war novels. I suspect that would never happen, for a number of reasons. One of them is Charles Pellegrino‘s idea that all you need is one ship approaching the speed of light. Ram it into someone’s home world and it’s lights out.

I suppose starships going out and doing exploration is overused. And I’d have to be among the first to plead guilty to that one. But it’s so much fun….

O’Shea: Is there anything you’d like to discuss that I neglected to ask you about?

McDevitt: Just that over the years, a number of people, including some established writers in other fields, have asked me “why do you write this stuff”? Why not write something serious? I had a relative who couldn’t understand why I didn’t write history novels. The answer to that, I suppose, is that I love the horizons provided by SF. I’m not much interested in doing a Civil War novel, where the only solution for the infection in your leg is to take off the leg, and they have all that slavery to deal with. Nor have I any interest in writing about serial killers or professors who are looking to seduce one of their students. Or about another marriage gone bad in the suburbs. It all just flat out bores me. No, put me on the Centauri express.

Two nations at war, fighting for dominion over the known, and undiscovered, world, pin their last hopes at ultimate victory on finding a land out of legend.

Each will send their ships to brave the untamed seas, wild storms, sea serpents, and darker dangers unknown to any man. It is a perilous undertaking, but there will always be the impetuous, the brave and the mad who are willing to leave their homes to explore the unknown.

Even unto the edge of the world…

Kevin J. Anderson’s spectacular fantasy debut is a sweeping tale of adventure on the high seas, as two warring kingdoms vie for the greatest treasure of them all.”

At the same time, Anderson is involved in Terra Incognita: Beyond the Horizon, a progressive rock CD companion effort to the trilogy by Roswell Six. Here’s the official description on the CD (Now available from ProgRock Records):

“Kevin and [his wife] Rebecca [Moesta] have written the lyrics for all songs on a new CD with music by accomplished keyboardist/composer Erik Norlander (Rocket Scientists). Vocals by rock legends James LaBrie (DREAM THEATER), Michael Sadler (ex-SAGA), John Payne (ASIA Featuring John Payne), and Lana Lane (the Queen of Symphonic Rock). Performers include David Ragsdale (KANSAS), Gary Wehrkamp (SHADOW GALLERY), Kurt Barabas (AMARAN’S PLIGHT), Chris Brown (GHOST CIRCUS), Chris Quirarte (PRYMARY), and Mike Alvarez.”

Last month I was able to talk to Anderson about Enemies and Allies (a “prose novel is set in the 1950s and tells of the first meeting between Batman and Superman. “) over at my comics blog home, Robot 6. And he piqued my curiosity so much about the multimedia efforts behind  Terra Incognita that I asked to interview him here about it. My thanks to Anderson for his time.

Tim O’Shea: In a YouTube clip discussing Terra Incognita, you describe this as having the most emotions packed into a book-more than any of your past books. How emotionally draining is it for you when you set out to escalate the level of emotion in your writing?

Kevin J. Anderson: The nature of this story — a clash of religions, the breathtaking sense of discovery, the escalating cycle of hatred and revenge between two societies — both requires and inspires an intensity of emotion that a straightforward adventure story, no matter how exciting, will. Terrible tragedies happen to some of the characters, and I was very worked up and upset while writing them, because the characters were so real to me…and the events themselves so much like what truly happens in our world.

O’Shea: In the fast-paced/short-attention span world that we live in (and consumers grow accustomed to), how important is it to convey a level of urgency and intensity to the pacing of your novel, when your story is set on sea-faring ships?

Anderson: Parts of the story take place on long sea voyages, but I have a great many storylines and characters going concurrently, so that I can keep the prose focused on the most interesting thing happening. There are numerous points of view, numerous locations, all moving along like a marching army.

O’Shea: In addition to the novel, under the band name Roswell Six, you and several musicians have created a CD of music (distributed by ProgRock Records) called Terra Incognita: Beyond the Horizon. Given that music influences your writing and vice versa, I wonder do you think on some level this is an example of intertextuality in your work?

Anderson: Creativity can be expressed in many ways, in writing and music and artwork (and when you add all the paintings in the CD booklet, then we hit all those points). With the CD and the novel working synergistically, the layers build together to an experience greater than the individual parts. I think the music truly enhances the power of the characters and the drama…and developing the music while I polished the novel manuscript helped to add intensity to the book, too.

O’Shea: Muscially, out of the 13 cuts, which piece (or pieces) went under the greatest evolution from where you initially envisioned it to where you and the fellow musicians ultimately took the concept

Anderson: “Call of the Sea” was probably the biggest challenge for us — the song is about the eager young sailor jazzed about going off to sea to find the unknown, but knowing he will miss his wife…and his wife being happy for him, but also desperately sad. Erik Norlander also struggled with getting the balance of the music just right. (We must have succeeded, since that is one of the tracks that most often gets airplay internationally.)

O’Shea: Which song has grown on you the most in your repeated listenings to the project?

Anderson: “Letters in a Bottle” floored me from the very start, and it still does with Michael Sadler’s jaw-dropping vocals and David Ragsdale’s heart-wrenching violin. But the one that got better and better with each iteration was “Swept Away” and I think it’s a very compelling song.

O’Shea: How did you and Rebecca Moesta divvy up songwriting duties on the CD?

Anderson: First, note that Erik Norlander wrote all the music. When Rebecca and I planned out the CD (on a vacation trip to Roswell, New Mexico, which was one of the reasons for the name of the band), we plotted the tracks out like chapters in a novel, knowing which song had to tell which part and from what character/singer. In some cases, I knew very clearly what I wanted for the lyrics and I wrote the first draft. “Letters in a Bottle,” “Anchored,” “Here Be Monsters,” and “Ishalem” are examples — “Here Be Monsters,” in fact, I wrote in the hospital emergency room while waiting for Rebecca to be treated for acute pancreatitis. Other songs, Rebecca had in her head from the start — Swept Away, Call of the Sea, Halfway. Rebecca has a much better musical sense than I do, a better ear for rhythm in words, and she would revise my lyrics…and I would go over hers. And then the vocalists sometimes had to make a few minor changes when it actually came time to sing.

O’Shea: If response is strong enough to the CD, is there any interest in doing follow-up CDs to coincide with future novel releases in the series?

Anderson: Short answer, Definitely. And so far everyone we’ve asked has said they want to come back, if it fits with their schedule.

O’Shea: Is there any chance of the band playing parts of the album live in the near to long term?

Anderson: Probably unlikely, not because the band members didn’t get along, but because they are all part of very successful major bands. Trying to get them all together at the same time and place when they aren’t already touring seems like an impossible task.

O’Shea: It’s really quite a marketing feat you pulled off here, having three products from three different companies (the Terra Incognita CD and book, as well as your new Enemies & Allies novel) and having their releases so closely together. How challenging was it for you to work with the various parties to pull this off–was it great planning on your part or a mixture of planning and sheer coincidence?

Anderson: The Terra Incognita novel and CD were of course carefully orchestrated (no pun intended) to come out simultaneously. I had turned in the book to Orbit more than a year in advance, so their publication schedule was on the calendar. We had a lot of communication between the publisher, the publisher’s publicity team, and the record label. Knowing the release date of the novel, that was the target for “Roswell Six” to get the CD finished on time. Erik Norlander worked like crazy to finish the mixing, and Chris Brown was mastering the CD practically round the clock; Tim Jones, our graphic designer, scrambled to get the CD booklet finished and turned in to press at the same time.

ENEMIES & ALLIES coming out a month earlier was just a coincidence, but it did give us some interesting crossover publicity opportunities — in both directions. ENEMIES & ALLIES is about the first meeting of Batman and Superman in the 1950s during the Cold War…a completely different book from the sailing ships and sea-monsters adventure of “Terra Incognita.” However, a lot of interviewers wanted to talk about all the projects.

And let’s not forget, THE WINDS OF DUNE comes out in August, and I’m already doing publicity for that. It’ll be a busy summer.

O’Shea: Have you been pleasantly surprised by the international response to the CD–for example you were interviewed on by a Copenhagen radio station on the eve of their annual music festival–for a half hour?

Anderson: And I’ve got my first review ever from Uzbekistan. The publisher of Orbit wrote me today and said he thought that was the first for the whole publishing house. Progressive Rock is very popular internationally, and we hope that this helps get translations of the novel. Our female vocalist, Lana Lane, is extremely popular in Japan — so much so that she has her own record label. Michael Sadler (from Saga) is huge in Germany, James LaBrie (Dream Theater) is a superstar in all of Europe and Japan. Because of the innovative novel and CD crossover, I’m getting interviewed on a lot of rock programs…and I’m discovering that many of the listeners are also fans of the new Dune novels.

O’Shea: What new marketing opportunities are you employing on this round of projects–for example, when did you come up with idea of a Kevin Anderson Facebook group–and how many members have you attracted in the short time you’ve had it formed?

Anderson: We’ve had a lot of spontaneous support from fans — Bebo, Facebook, YouTube music videos, discussion groups, fan pages…On Facebook, we’ve got about five hundred members; on MySpace we’ve got 15,000 friends. This whole project has really energized the community in ways I haven’t seen before for my other novels.

O’Shea: How many novels will it take to tell the construct the whole Terra Incognita universe and narrative?

Anderson: It’s a trilogy. Three books, honest.

O’Shea: What were the most challenging aspects in the first Terra Incognita novel to research?

Anderson: I’ve spent most of my career in science fiction, and my degree is in astronomy and physics. Shifting to a historical milieu and fantasy details was quite a shift…and living in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado doesn’t give me very many opportunities to go aboard sailing ships for research. Fortunately, I’ve got friends who know a lot more about nautical items and sailing (in particular, the husband of fantasy author Robin Hobb).

But the story and the characters really swept me away and I really loved writing the novel. I have already finished the second book, THE MAP OF ALL THINGS, and I’m polishing the fourth draft right now.