As you’d expect, a lot of what I watch is speculative fiction. There’s Doctor Who, of course. It’s campy, light, and only sometimes serious, just enough to keep it grounded while mainly being fun. I liked Primeval when it was on. Same kind of thing: entertaining, quick, impossible science but not distractingly bad, though I admit that it never got as serious as DW (occasionally) can be. But it had dinosaurs, which always makes me happy. Red Dwarf, the original series, is hilarious. The first three seasons of Being Human were well done. Season 1 of Misfits is shockingly good, (though goes downhill almost immediately after) and is similar in feeling to Attack the Block. Black Mirror is the only anthology show I’ve seen that comes close to being what Twilight Zone and Outer Limits were on their best days.

I like comedies, too: Black Adder, Black Books, Coupling, IT Crowd, Doc Martin. Quick, witty dialogue delights me. And I thought Downton Abbey was good during the first two seasons. But I what I really enjoy are the police procedurals. I love the psychology of the characters, I love seeing modern takes on noir–because they’re all in living in noir worlds. The hero isn’t going to wake up one morning having solved every crime there is. They take the small victories when they get them, choose their battles, fall sometimes, but keep getting back up again. They push forward against the dark, even when the dark is pushing back against them.

My favorites, in no particular order:

Wire in the Blood – (2002-08) Stars Robson Green.

It’s the longest-running of these, so if you wanted to get into a crime show with a psychologist lead, this will entertain you for a while. I’d skip the first episode, which has the (common at the time, thankfully less common now) plot of a transgendered person freaking out over their sexuality, which obviously leads to becoming a serial killer. Luckily, the rest of the show holds up well. There is a bit of the fumbling genius about Dr. Tony Hill (Green’s character)–he uses method acting techniques to get into the “mind” of the bad guys. He guesses and gets things wrong and sometimes needs to be saved, but he’s right enough to solve the crimes in the end.

There is a one-off American special, where they brought Tony over to the US to solve a crime, but it’s forgettable. Its one good quality is to showcase the exact cultural difference in television that I mentioned above. It reminds me of when someone thought a season of Torchwood made by a US production company would be a good idea…

Life on Mars – (2006-07) Stars John Simm, aka the most recent iteration of the Master (from Doctor Who)

One of my favorite shows of all time. It’s got speculative fiction elements, and an amazing soundtrack. It combines a fictional 1973 (one filtered through rock music and over-the-top 70s cop shows) mixed with modern criminology. Instead of the episodic crime-fighter format of most detective shows, it has a strong overall arc: the main character, Sam Tyler, has to figure out why he is where he is, and maybe, how to get home.

There’s a lot of fish out of water stuff, mostly having to deal with Tyler pointing out how ridiculous racism and sexism are. It’s also the most hopeful of all the series listed here, with a real potential for the main character to find happiness. Of a sort.

Vera – (2011-present) Stars Brenda Blethyn.

Interesting because the main character, and boss detective, is a middle-aged woman. She’s not slim and sexy, charming criminals into giving a confession–she’s a bit frumpy, sometimes disheveled, but brilliant. She observes her surroundings, chases leads, and doggedly refuses to give up until the crime is solved. There are the usual gender issues, as one character after another tries to turn Vera into a mother, or grandmother, their version of matronly figure, thinking that her hard edge comes from never having bore children, but she handles it the way I would. She ignores what I can, and treats the rest like they are the ones with the problem. Because they are. She’s not perfect, but she’s not broken, and she takes steps to overcome her fears and anti-social tendencies, on her terms.

Wallander – (2008-12) Stars Kenneth Branagh as a middle-aged detective in Sweden (with a curly-haired Tom Hiddleston playing the rookie cop in the first two seasons). Bonus: David Warner as Wallander’s father (aka Sark/MCP from the original Tron, and many other wonderful roles). Adapted from Henning Mankell’s novels.

Wallander is that it is set in country which doesn’t speak English as its primary language, but is aimed at an English-speaking audience. The solution is one of my favorite things about the show. The characters all speak in English, but the print (newspapers, emails) is in Swedish. When Wallander types, he sometimes reads it aloud to himself, and you can see the Swedish text while hearing the English words. It lends to the illusion that the story is happening in Swedish, but by some magic you can understand it anyway. No butchered Swedish, no subtitles, no awkward blending a la Firefly.

Branagh is a fabulous actor, effortlessly stepping into the role. It’s as if he’s moving so quickly that the normal-speed people around him seem to be moving through molasses. Instead, he sometimes seems to be the only real person in scenes full of actors. Luckily it’s not often, as the quality of the rest of the cast really is very good, especially Warner. Among all of the shows listed here, this is the one to watch for the cinematography, as well as the use of long silences. 

Branagh has announced a 4th/final season will be filmed.

Luther – (2010-present) Stars Idris Elba, aka Haimdall in Thor.

In the opening scenes of the first episode, a white man, wearing a suit, runs through an abandoned manufacturing plant, chased by a large black man who wears a parka. Elsewhere, police gather, looking for someone they can’t find. The white man, it turns out, is a criminal, and the other guy isn’t a thug but DCI John Luther. Interesting female archnemesis, relationship troubles (all British cops seem to have, I can’t remember one with a stable, happy, home life), internal conflict. I’ve seen it described as being based on both Sherlock Holmes and Columbo; the second is easier to see, if you squint hard enough for Columbo to be both sexier and prone to violent outbursts.

Season 3 isn’t out yet.

Sherlock Holmes – (2010-present) Where Benedict Cumberbatch got famous. Also did lots (deservedly) for Martin Freeman’s career. The acting in this series is brilliant, the writing is clever, and I love this translation of the Holmes stories more than any other. For me the experience is more about watching how they’ll modernize elements of the original stories than any illusion that the plot will be so different as to be surprising.

Everything except Life on Mars is streaming on Netflix, though only season one of Vera is available for instant viewing. Go forth and get your crime on.

Last month, during a physical, my general practitioner noticed my thyroid was swollen, and did a blood test to check for lowered or elevated thyroid levels. (Your thyroid regulates your metabolism, among other things, and so you can see the hormone it excretes in your blood). My levels were okay, so he sent me to the local clinic for a set of sonograms a few weeks ago. The next day I got the results: a solitary 2.9 cm nodule on the right side of my thyroid.

That can still be a lot of things, and not all of them are bad. About 50% people have a thyroid “nodule” (lump) at some point in their life. It could have been a cyst, or scar tissue, or benign tumors or malignant ones, but in most cases it’s harmless. So I was sent for a nuclear imaging scan (where I got two kinds of radioactive tracer over two days; the first was a radioiodine pill, and the second day I got a shot of technetium) that left me nauseated and tired for a few days, but otherwise okay.

That test ruled out thyroid disease and cysts and pretty much everything else except a tumor. I was referred to an endocrinologist who reviewed all of my tests and scans and confirmed the radiologist’s diagnosis. I have an appointment at the end of June for a fine needle aspiration (biopsy) to determine malignancy. The appointment is a couple of hours long, and by the end of it I’ll know the results and have set up a treatment plan.

What’s the likely outcome? I don’t know yet. Because of its size, and some other factors, it’s less likely to be benign but still possible. If it is benign, normally they would have me back in six months to check on its rate of growth, but (again, because of the size) they may recommend surgery now. Which means they would take out my thyroid. You can live without it, apparently. If the tumor is malignant, that’s still not necessarily awful. There are four basic kinds of thyroid cancer, and three of them have a great prognosis. I’d get surgery right away, but once the thyroid is gone, the tumors don’t come back, and somewhere around 95% of those people survive.

The fourth kind is more rare, somewhere around 5% of patients. It’s also an immediate terminal diagnosis, with most patients not surviving more than 12 months.

So I’m somewhere along the spectrum of “fine”, “getting surgery but then I’ll be fine”, and “repent now for the end is fucking nigh”–and I don’t know which one it is. I won’t know for another six weeks. No amount of asking me, or my doctors, or Google, is going to get an answer any faster.

What now? This has already taken up a big chunk of my time the last month, and I have other things I need to focus on. I’m still looking for a job, I’ve got editing to do, and writing, too*. I’ve got to get caught up and out from under deadlines; I owe people work that they’ve kindly let me slide on but still needs to get done. There are a couple of Dagan projects that need finishing or fixing or publishing.

My plan is to try not to think about this all too much, and get back to my normal life for a little while. There’s a very good chance that I will ultimately be fine, and I don’t want to waste a bunch more time sitting around feeling sorry for myself. Life is always hard, one way or another, for everyone, so what I’m dealing with now is nothing special, it’s just different.

I’m leaving comments open in case you have questions or want to say something; this will also be my last post on the subject until I have definitive test results to share. Because, really, there are so many better things to talk about.

* I opened a “tip jar” to help defray my medical bills, and in exchange I am writing stories which I will post here, free to read. I’ve already got a page of Free Fiction with PDFs; please read my work, share, review, discuss… I’d love to know what you think. My first commissioned story is a Mythos noir with an Asian protagonist called, “The Night Hours”, and you can read an excerpt here. I’ll post the whole thing when it’s finished.

The Night Hours

by Carrie Cuinn

It was about eleven o’clock at night, mid-October, and I was supposed to be washing dishes in the back of the steam-filled kitchen. I was wearing my white buttoned shirt, sleeves rolled up, and a stained apron that belonged to the joint. The shirt was mine, along with the black pants and scuffed but comfortable black shoes, but I was required to wear them. I leaned against the doorway, not quite in the bar, and not quite in or out of the kitchen, either. It was a neutral space, that square foot of in-between, where I could claim to be doing other than what I was: watching Willie Green blow the roof off the place with his horn.

“Hey, Chinaman,” the bartender growled. “Stop ogling the skirts, and get back to work.”

I wasn’t, but didn’t argue the point. Mickey, the barrel-shaped Irishman who ran the place, had hired me because he’d heard the Chinese made great cooks, and couldn’t tell us “Orientals” apart. So there were some things I knew to be wrong but didn’t say. Truth is, there were a lot of things like that.

The kitchen was a square, squat, low-ceilinged room with no windows, but it had three entrances. The single maroon door, with the round porthole, I let swing shut behind me as I left the bar. The black double doors led into the restaurant, where round, red, lacquered tables and pretty girls in embroidered satin gave the impression that this was where traditional Chinese cuisine was happening. Except it was New England, and I’d never seen that blend of tables, patterns, and ink-wash paintings in any kitchen I’d even been in. But I’d never been to China, so what did I know?

Mickey didn’t let colors mix in his dining room. Chances were pretty good that no one eating the roast duck and pan-fried rice knew it wasn’t authentic. Or maybe it was now, a new traditional Innsmouth dining experience, the kind we’d all be getting used to soon enough.

That last door, a scratched steel slab, was all that stood between me and freedom at the end of the night. It was the service entrance, which Mickey like to call the “servants” entrance, because the staff wasn’t allowed in any other way. Oh, sometimes, one girl or another would get the privilege of walking in through the front door for a few weeks, but we all knew the price they paid. All through the evening, the sound of loud voices and clanking silverware burst into the kitchen at regular intervals as the waitresses glided through to pick up their orders, and then back out into the fray. Later, the diners would fade away, and the bar would pick up their slack. On a good night the sound of jazz would leak through under the other door, making our last hour of clean up not quite so bad.

If we stayed late enough, and sometimes old Chen dealt cards and we cooked dinner for ourselves, the way our mothers would have, then all of those other sounds faded away, and the only thing creeping in was the pernicious Innsmouth fog, that stuck its fat fingers under doors and slithered in on its belly. Not even the steel could keep it out.

Why? Keep reading:

A lot’s happened to me in the last few weeks. After a routine physical, my doctor discovered a lump on my thyroid, which set off a round of exploratory scans (including a sonogram of my neck, which showed me where all the bits you never see really are). We ruled out “nothing” as a possibility, and then moved on to deciding whether this thing is going to be harmful or not. I’m still leaning toward “not harmful”. I’m perfectly content to let this little lump of cells stay in my neck forever, hitching a ride, doing nothing. Be lazy, little lump! Don’t live up to your potential. I’d appreciate it.

But whether it’s bad or not, by Wednesday morning I’ll have had four doctor’s appointments, two sonograms, and three trips to the hospital for radiology (a different kind of scan). I have health insurance through the state, but I have to pay a percentage of the bill. Having some insurance is the difference between getting these tests done and not being able to, but that part I’m responsible for is up to around the cost of my rent. It’s not something I can cover on my own right now.

The good news from the last week is that I finally found affordable child care for my son. The place is not far from my house, willing to take a child with a disability, and has an opening now. At last, I can go back to full-time office work, which is less interesting than freelancing but infinitely more stable. I’ve blanketed the town with resumes, signed up with the local staffing agencies, and I expect to be working again in a few weeks. (Sooner, I hope.)

What I need now: a little help in getting from here to there. If I can raise enough to pay off these bills and get through the next week or so, I’ll be fine. I know things are looking up now, and I can get back on track with not only my writing but also Dagan Books projects once I have a regular paycheck again.

What you get: Words! I’ve created PDFs for some of my short stories.

What else you can get:Download as many as you like, and use the Paypal link below to send me what you feel they’re worth (the button says “Donate” so that you can choose your own price, but I’d like to think you’re buying the work I’ve written):

• “About the Mirror and its Pieces” – NEW! Never before published. First-person, genre bending, biography of the Snow Queen. (No one starts out evil.) Magic realism, 2300 words. Cuinn.Mirror
• “Annabelle Tree” – Previously published in a charity anthology. One of my favorite pieces, this is a third-person tale, only a little fantastical.  A young girl, looking to be loved, and finding it at the last possible moment. Magic realism, 2400 words. Cuinn.Tree
• “Mrs. Henderson’s Cemetery Dance” – Previously published at Red Penny Papers. Third person, fun, historical horror (though, you know, the happy kind). 4650 words. Cuinn.Dance
• “Monsters, Monsters, Everywhere” – Previously published at Crossed Genres Magazine. The first-person account of monster hunting in the jungles of a future Mexico. SF/Horror. 3875 words. Cuinn.Monsters
• “Mitch’s Girl” – Previously published in the anthology, Rigor Amortis. My zombie erotica story! Short and… well, not sweet at all. Erotic horror. 1200 words. Cuinn.Girl
• ADDED ”All The Right Words” – Previously published at Goldfish Grimm. Third person SF story about a girl done wrong. Different planet, same problems… even when the scenery changes, people may not. 1475 words. Cuinn.Words

More words! I have a few copies of the print books I’ve edited, which I will sign and send to you. Choose from Cthulhurotica, IN SITU, and Fish. $25 includes shipping to a US address.

Editing! I’m still open to freelance clients. 1/2 cent a word. For short pieces send the story (and any notes about what you hope to get from the editing process) to carriecuinn@gmail.com — payment via Paypal to the same address.

Dagan Books drm-free ebooks! That money doesn’t go to me, but it will go to pay contributors, ship items, and so on. It helps. View our shop here: http://www.e-junkie.com/daganbooks We’ve got links for our anthologies, and KV Taylor’s new novella, “Inedible Sins”.

Plus:

If I can raise $200, I’ll write a new story and post it free to read, here. If I raise more than that, I’ll do a new story for every $200 that comes in.

No matter what, please download and read my stories, even if you can’t pay for them now. If you like them, review them. Share this post on Facebook or Twitter–every bit helps. I’ll let you all know when I know something more. And, no matter what happens, thank you for your support.

Read

• Billy Hazelnuts, a graphic novel by Tony Millionaire. (109 pages)
• Alternative Alanmat, edited by Paolo Chikiamco (collection of speculative fiction based on Filipino mythology)

Wrote

• started and wrote 1201 words on “Family”, a new short story (SF)
• added 400 words to “A Cage, Her Arms”, a short story I’d written last year. Revised it, and submitted it.
• added 251 words to “Snow”, a short story I’d started two years ago.
• blog posts here, including:
  • Barbie, Burquas, April Fool’s Jokes, Writer’s Advice: Small Failures Hurt Us In Big Ways – my most viewed blog post ever (1234 words)
  • All Our Young Potential (911 words)
  • ADHD, a Serious Caffeine Addiction, and Me (925 words)
  • Editing Tips #1 (897 words)
  • Editing Tips #2 (1596 words)
• reviews of Richard S. Carbonneau’s “The Marvel: A Biography of Jack Parsons” for SF Signal (697 words) and Billy Hazelnuts (see above, 600 words)

Edited

• erotica for a client (4 stories, 40,000 words)

Published

• Print edition of FISH
  
• Inedible Sins, our Spring 2013 novella

And

• was written up as part of “Women in Genre” month – read my post about that here (also includes links to free fiction by me)
• and on AC Wise’s list of “Women to Read“
• been more active in the SFWA, including:
  • participating in forum discussions
  • volunteering with the Bulletin as a proofreader
  • interviewed outgoing SFWA President John Scalzi for the June issue of the Bulletin
• started using the StoneCoast “Magic Spreadsheet” on April 14. I wrote fiction on the 14th, 15th, 21st… for a total of 1,298 words.

Overall, I:

Wrote 7,140 words of non-fiction and 1,852 of fiction. Worked on one new story and two older stories I’d held on to (which is why we always save old, unfinished, work). Submitted one story to a magazine (will hear back around the end of May). Edited 40,000 words as freelancer, and got a couple of Dagan Books projects out.

Honestly, it wasn’t enough. I should have done twice as much as I did. I should be getting more done each month, making more money, writing more words. I had a lot going on during April–medical stuff, personal drama, job hunting, multiple meetings for Logan’s school/services–but I don’t feel justified in how little I accomplished. I had to step back from my SF Signal column, which bothers me because I asked for that opportunity, and because I love reading & writing about comics.

I have to remind myself that one bad day, bad fight, bad week… it’s not the end of the world. Being upset and stressing over what I lost takes up more time than the event that caused the drama in the first place. Everyone kept telling me that “April is the cruelest month” and perhaps that’s true. But if it is, April’s over now, and I need to start thinking that May is going to be different. Better.

No advice for May. Instead, let me know what your goals for the month are.

Looking for a previous month’s stats? Check out January, February and March.

1. Your first two novels are scheduled to be published by Angry Robot books this year. You originally submitted during AR’s “Open Door Month” in 2011. What was that process like?

The Great Angry Robot Open Submission was probably one of the most fantastic and angst filled experiences of my life, which is unusual for me because I usually live a pretty happy, zero-angst life. I’m like a cross between that singing meerkat in Lion King and a Labrador Retriever.

The robot overlords, Marc Gascoigne and Lee Harris, opened their doors to subs for one month in March of 2011. The subs went through four levels of review, from query and chapters, full manuscript, editorial and finally to acquisitions. At the end, out of a nearly a thousand submissions, twenty-five manuscripts made it to editorials and five received deals. The entire process from submission to signing the deal took fourteen months.

An added bonus about the open sub process was that fourteen of us in the editorial stage bonded on the Absolute Write forums and created our own social Group: Anxious Appliances. Since our inception, we’ve been the most active writing group on AW. Not gonna lie. Those guys kept me sane. I got pretty batshit crazy as the process drew to a close.

2. Once your book was in to the final stages of consideration, you got an agent. How did you find yours? Looking back on it, should you have started looking sooner, or waited longer?

I did query an earlier draft of The Lives of Tao a few years ago. I received some great feedback, and a request for a rewrite, but things fell through. It was still a great learning experience and helped me develop as a writer. It’s fair to say the book wouldn’t be what it is without the suggestions and changes I made from their critiques. I took a year off from the book and then rewrote it with a fresh pair of eyes.

After the manuscript was promoted to editorial during the open sub, I leveraged the potential deal and began querying again, and received offers from two agencies for representation. I was very fortunate to sign with Russell Galen of Scovil Galen Ghosh, who was one of my top targeted agencies. What better person to lead your career than the guy who represented the authors that wrote the books and movies you grew up with (Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Screamers)?

3. You have a wife, an executive-level job for a major corporation, family, friends, and a dog. How do you find time to write?

There’s a lot of time in the day. You just have to figure out how to prioritize what is important and what isn’t. I admit to being an OCD kind of guy. I am a single purpose driven machine, like a Phillips screw driver.

During my hardcore martial art days, I used to drive an hour to my friend Tony Marquez’s school (he was the original Kung Lao in Mortal Kombat), Extreme Kung Fu, and train at his facility. Then afterward, I drove thirty minutes to another school where I learned from a Bagua Zhang/Tai Chi master. It was four hours of training a day, six days a week. This went on for many several years.

One day, I thought to myself. “Man, I’ve always wanted to write a book. I don’t know how, but I’m going to figure it out.”

So I gave it a shot. Without knowing what I was doing, I began to write when I had the free time. Eventually, writing took over all my other hobbies. I stopped clubbing. I retired from martial arts. I quit raiding in Wow (that freed up a crap ton of time), and focused on what was really important to me.

4. What local authors groups or online communities do you actively participate in? Does that affect your writing?

Besides my Anxious Appliance group, I’ve recently discovered the writing community here in Chicago. I now try to be a regular at Bill Shunn’s Tuesday Funk and I meet with several others on a weekly basis to get our write on.

I admit to only having joined Facebook and twitter last year and now I’m hooked. I can’t believe I spent ten years squatting at cafes all by my lonesome when there’s a whole world of like-minded people just within a keyboard stroke’s reach.

Now, I try to be as involved as possible within the community as well as within the industry. Eric Flint put it succinctly in the last issue of SFWA magazine. Writing is one of the most isolated jobs out there and going to conventions is a great way to make connections and establish lasting relationships.

Now with a supportive community and friends I’ve met through writing, I’m no longer a guy on his own island.

5. Your debut novel, The Lives of Tao, mixes a lot of historical information and political analysis into the plot. Your employment background is in tech and martial arts – where does the rest come from?

I love politics. My favorite show in the world is The West Wing, I was a poll monitor for the past presidential election, and my part of my daily morning ritual is reading through a dozen political sites with my cup of coffee.

I harbor this secret fantasy where I run for office for a parliament seat in Taiwan. Taiwan parliament is infamous for degenerating into full scale brawls. That way, I can combine two of my loves: fighting and politics.

History, on the other hand, has always fascinated me. I’ve always wondered how we as a civilization got to where we are, how the cause and effect of people’s choices made a long time ago affects us now. It’s something I tried to explore that in The Lives of Tao.

6. Your main character, Roen, has to change his life unexpectedly. He sets out to make changes, and over time works his way toward his goals. Why not just write him as a the hero to begin with?

I’ve always disliked the special person or chosen one concept where the main character was destined since his birth to be the prophesized hero that will fix everything wrong with the world. Harry has his scar, Rand’s coming was predicted on Dragonmount, and Bruce Wayne is a billionaire (that’s a special power too).

Given, having an alien in one’s head is pretty special too, but I try to make Roen’s accomplishments his own. One of the observations people have made in The Lives of Tao is that I spend a lot of time in the book training him. You damn right I do! Do you know how long and hard it is to lose a ton of weight and to make the grade as a super spy? To go from where he was at the beginning of the book to how he ends up takes a lot of frigging work and sweat equity! This isn’t like Wanted where the kid became an assassin in 6 weeks.

7. You used to work in the entertainment industry as a stunt man and actor – what made you transition to your current role as a writer with a day job?

There’s not a large market for male Asian actors, and most of them are still stereotypes. Besides playing the roles of doctor, computer dude, or token ethnic guy, or of course the martial arts guy, we’re pretty limited.

To be honest, I don’t enjoy the process of being a professional actor and was never one of those all-in guys when it came to the art. The business is tough, auditioning is pretty degrading, and your options become limited once you hit a certain age. Toss in a minority ethnicity, height limitations, and a sea of good looking talented white people, it wasn’t a hard choice.

As for transitioning to becoming a writer, I’ve always wanted to be one since I was young. I don’t think most writers choose to write as a career. It chooses us. I think most writers can’t help but write. Fact is, it’s very difficult to make a living writing fiction. My father is an English professor and he basically said “hell no” when I told him I thought about following his footsteps. I ended up studying computer science.

In hindsight, I’m glad things shook out the way they did. Having a steady career gave me the luxury to write, not the necessity. With where I’m at right now, if this whole writing thing doesn’t pan out, I won’t starve. I think it’s a very solid lesson for most aspiring writers. Chase your dream and be diligent, but be smart about how you chase that dream.

8. Do you write short fiction as well as novels? 

I haven’t written short fiction since college, and would love to get back into it. However, I have four to five novels queued up in my head that I want to get out first.

Writing short fiction and novellas is a whole different beast than novels. The pacing is different and every word has to be exact in a short story. Personally, I think they’re much harder to write than novels. I started out writing novels and have gotten used to the luxury of 120k word manuscripts.

9. What’s your convention schedule look like for 2013? Which one(s) are you most looking forward to?

Oh man, 2013 is my debut year so I’m trying to do it right. On the slate are the following cons: Immortal Confusion, Wiscon, Nebulas (maybe), San Diego Comicon, Readercon, Gencon, Worldcon, New York Comicon (maybe), and World Fantasy.

I’m a relative newcomer at conventions. Chicon 2012 was my first con ever. I remembered afterward thinking to myself “what the hell have I been missing all my life?” It’s been such a wonderful experience and I look forward to every single upcoming one.

The con that I’m most looking forward to in 2013 is World Fantasy in Brighton. I had such a great time at WFC Toronto last year. Also, my publisher, Angry Robot Books is based in the UK so I get to report in to the hive collective.

10. You talk about food a lot – what a perfect meal look like to you?

I never considered myself a foodie, but I do love trying new foods. On a recent trip to Taiwan and Thailand, I learned how to make authentic Thai food from scratch, and then ate a bunch of crazy street food in Taiwan. If you ever get the chance to try it, stinky tofu rocks. I’m also lucky to live in Chicago, a great culinary city. We’re not one of the fattest cities in the country without good reason after all.

The perfect meal is a tough thing to nail down. I’m going to go a little lame and say mom’s pot stickers. Handmade from scratch mind you, not cheating with that pre-made dough crap. Way I see it, a good meal is not only delicious but a great experience as well. It should tell a story and invoke an emotional response. I survived college off those pot stickers, and every time I eat them, I’m pretty damn happy. So I’m going to stick with mom’s pot stickers. Add a fruity beer and I’m set.

Buy the book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, now!

Nov 1985, a few weeks before I turned 12

I’m on the left. My younger sister Lisa is on the right. That’s the dorkiest I’ve ever seen her, by the way. She must have been going through a phase I don’t remember. I have the long hair I’d keep until part way through high school, when I went daring and cut it to just about my shoulders. The outfit… well, it was the 80s.

Summer of 1991. I’m 17.

In the first picture I was unselfconscious, still a tomboy who spent half of her days in the tree in the back yard. That was when we lived in Ceres, a flat little agricultural town in the middle of the Central Valley. By the time the second was taken, I’d been through a move, three more high schools, a stint living on my own, and a lot more. I’m standing in my mom’s bedroom, in Sonora, CA (the former gold-rush town in the Sierra Nevada foothills that I still think of as my hometown). Baggy clothes, stiff posture, hiding behind my hair–not even six years and I’m a different person entirely.

But what I see when I look at these pictures isn’t me, it’s my mother. The Harley motif is all her–she’s been a biker as far back as I can remember. The big speaker in the living room in 1985 is one of two, and they got better and bigger as we got older. Music was part of everyday life at my house. The knicknacks on the table in the first pic were ducks (no, I don’t know why we had them, but I always get a little happier when I see them around town), a Dalmatian (something my grandmother had before she died) and a unicorn. My tough, Harley-riding mother liked unicorns, and the print she has of one was the subject of the first story I ever wrote, back when I was four.

Oh, and that third picture? Let’s just say the late 80s, a perm, and dinosaur earrings don’t make the best school photo ever. It’s best I keep that one to myself.

Developmental Editing

Also called structural editing, deep (or heavy) editing, or collaborative editing. This is the first round. Here an editor will help you with your story structure, ask important questions about the character, language, or setting, and suggest improvements. An editor can break up long chunks of narrative exposition with more action, or a too much internal monologue can be externalized into dialogue. Your plot will be checked for continuity. Maybe you’re using food words to describe people of color, or you’re inconsistently using the language you’ve made up for your alien race. If there’s something problematic about your characters or story, this is where you’d find out.

Paragraphs may get moved around, dialogue cut or rewritten, and the “comment” function will be used to add notes on a range of topics. This kind of editing fixes stories where the idea was good but the author had trouble making it work. It’s rare to get much developmental editing (DE) after you’ve sold a short story, though the market may want you to change one or two things that impact the story but aren’t indicative of a problem with the entire piece. DE is largely done for novels (after acquisition) or for anything you want to make better before you submit it.

While novelists often realize the value of having an editor on board here, I wish more short story authors hired editors at this stage of their writing. I’ve had to turn down so many shorts and novellas that we would have otherwise bought for Dagan Books, because the idea was stronger than the execution.

Copy Editing

The is the most common kind of editing, because everyone goes through it. When you sell a story, it’s going to be copy edited. Hire an editor? They’ll do this for you. Your work may not need developmental editing, but it will certainly need to be checked for spelling and grammar problems. A copy editor (CE) will find and correct homonyms, or other correctly-spelled but incorrect words your spell checker function won’t point out (like “heir” instead of “their” or “an” instead of “and”). They will catch the little things you missed: italicizing the wrong words, run-on sentences, and paragraphs that need to be broken in two (or those that should be joined with the one next to it).

The CE isn’t there to rewrite your work, or to substantially change it from what it was. The editor is there to see your vision, your ideas, and clear away anything getting in the way of your reader seeing it, too.

When your piece needs developmental editing as well, you’ll usually get copy editing notes at the same time. Unless the work needs major overhaul, to the point that it’s basically being arranged and rewritten, it’s easier to do the DE and CE passes together. Then, you can make all of the corrections at once. DE and CE will be done in an office document program like Word of LibreOffice, with the “track changes” function on. This way you can see all of the suggested changes, and instead of asking a question about each item, the editor can go ahead and make the change (if small enough–you don’t need to be asked if it’s okay to correct a misspelling of your character’s name, for example). I never edit a piece without track changes being on, because my job is to help you make it your own, not to write it for you. Don’t work with an editor who won’t show you the same respect.

When you send it back, it will go through a “final editing” pass, and as long as there aren’t any more questions, the piece will be sent along to the person who puts it into the publication’s preferred format for publication. If you’ve hired an editor to help you with a story you haven’t sold yet, or a novel you’re shopping to agents, once the editing passes are done it would be left in manuscript format. The next two steps are part of the publication process, and you may not be involved.

Typesetting

Once the piece is considered finished, it’s formatted for publication. The font, page size, and even type color are changed. Tab indents are set to a specific size, the text is justified, and images are added–in short, everything that needs to happen for it to look pretty on the page. Ebooks also have to be typeset, in a very similar way to the print process, or they don’t look professionally assembled. Making readable books or magazines is a skill, and it’s more difficult than most people imagine, though you can always tell when something doesn’t look “good”.

Once it’s typeset, a “page proof” is created. Unless you are self-publishing, you don’t need to be involved in the typesetting process.*

Proofreading

Unlike DE and CE, this is done on a PDF, because that accurately presents how a printed page will look, and nothing moves around while you’re checking it. The proofreader will make sure the text is properly placed on the page, that no “orphans” or “widows” (small parts of a sentence left over at the beginning or end of a page) are present, and that the previous changes were all made correctly. It’s possible that a word meant to be deleted is left over from an editing pass, for example. Whatever changes need to be made, this is the last chance. The proofreader will mark up the PDF document if anything is wrong, and send it back to typesetting to be corrected.

When there’s time, an author may see the page proofs, but not always. It depends on if it’s a short story or novel, how many editing passes it went through, and so on. Stories with strange formatting, such as wrapping the text around an oddly-shaped image, should be seen by the author during the proofing phase, to double check the placement, but many times the editor can check the proof instead.

Costs

Some editors charge by the hour, and some by the word. It’s the same, really–a “by the hour” editor has simply estimated how many pages per hour, based on a standard number of words (250 per page). Never be afraid to ask how many hours they will charge you for your piece! I prefer to charge by the word, personally, because it’s a concrete number and then there’s no question of whether I worked as fast as I could, or too slow, but it’s the just how you write the math down that’s different, not the actual cost.

Developmental editing costs the most. It should. The DE has to know all of the same skills as a CE, but they also have to be familiar with your genre. They have to read the whole work first, before editing, and keep that in mind as they go through. They have to be able to see the big picture of what your story is meant to be while also being able to catch the tiny details, fixing your punctuation along with your character’s arc. Copy editing is easier, and so can charge less, though if the work is in need of heavy copy editing (which means that it’s still line editing but there’s lots of errors), the rate might be higher. Final editing and proofing are less expensive, and typesetting (page layout) is a different skill/rate.

The EFA (Editorial Freelancers Association) puts out an annual list of average rates, based on a survey it conducts of its members. You can find it here. Some highlights are:

I charge less than this right now because I don’t have enough work to make it through a month. As I get more clients, get closer to full-time, I’ll be able to raise my rates. I’d like to be making closer to the industry standard, but when it’s a choice between working for less or not working, I’ll take what I can get. That’s because I’d been freelance editing part-time, in between other writing and publishing projects, so I didn’t broadcast that I was available. Now that I’m spreading the word, work is picking up.

Which means that if you want an excellent editor and bargain rates, contact me now, while I still have room in my schedule!

* If you are self-publishing, hiring an editor and layout person are even more important! No one person can do every step of the publishing process by themselves without errors. Even in my work as editor for Dagan Books, I have at least two other people (usually more) look over a project before it’s published. If you’re self-publishing, and can’t afford standard rates for editing and layout, let me know. If I can fit you in at a reduced rate, I will.

Niteblade puts out horror and fantasy short stories as well as poems. They’re  a tiny publication, run by a small staff of volunteers, but they’ve consistently put out a quarterly magazine since 2007. The business model is goal-driven: the costs of creating each issue are calculated and once that amount is met (through ad sales, subscriptions, and so on) the issue is released, free for the public to read. I love that they’re supporting speculative fiction poetry, and giving a lot of new authors their first sale*.

If the IndieGoGo campaign meets its stretch goals, they’ll randomly select winners for a bunch of prizes including:

• digital issues of the full Niteblade library
• query critiques
• signed copy of the poetry special issue
• a chance to be the cover model for an upcoming issue
• A full edit up to 20,000 words by me (fully transferable in the event you are not a writer)

That’s in addition to the reward you choose when you make your donation.

When we support small presses, no matter how small, we’re supporting a community of writers and readers. We’re investing in those who create the stories we want to read. What are you waiting for?

Go here to donate: http://igg.me/at/Niteblade

* Note: I’m not on their staff, and I’ve never been published by them.

Today’s suggestion is a foundation for a lot of the later tips to build on: create your own style sheet.

A style guide is a set of guidelines an editing house follows. It allows an organization to maintain uniformity across multiple publications. Editors are often given a style guide to work from, and while they average around 5 pages, I’ve worked from guides that were 20 pages long. It’s different for each publisher, and often changes depending on the field.

I’m suggesting something less comprehensive: a single-page style sheet. You can skip a lot of the formatting notes because you’ll be using a standard manuscript format for your submission, or tailoring it to a publishers specific request, and that means you won’t need to have those rules in front of you when you edit the first time. (I always put my ms. in standard formatting from the beginning, and then double-check a house’s rules right before submitting.) What you need is a handy go-to guide that reminds you of all the little mistakes you commonly make but might not be thinking about.

Your personal style sheet will evolve as you go along, and it should. Maybe you’ll learn you were using a word or type of punctuation wrong; you might successfully teach yourself to stop making one mistake only to develop another. It happens. What matters is that you update your style sheet whenever you need to, and refer back to as you edit.

At the beginning you can write down three types of rules, and feel confident it will cover a lot of the errors you might make. If you can’t think of any off the top of your head, go back to the last piece of writing you had edited (by a beta-reader, or the editor at the magazine who bought your story) and base your sheet on the notes you got there. It doesn’t have to be comprehensive to start.

First, make a list of the grammar rules you usually get wrong. Some examples are:

• Use the Oxford (serial) comma when making lists or using multiple adjectives. 
  • INCORRECT: She ordered a pizza with extra cheese, pepperoni and black olives.
  • CORRECT: Bob bought milk, eggs, licorice, and butter at the store.
  • CORRECT: His hair was dark brown, soft, and shiny.
• Use the appropriate male or female adjective spellings when using gendered pronouns.
  • INCORRECT: He had a blonde mustache but brunette hair.
  • CORRECT: He had a blond mustache but brunet hair.

Next, list punctuation rules you often forget. Some examples are:

• Names of songs, short stories, and short films should be in quotation marks; films, books,magazines, newspapers, albums, and other long works should be italicized.
  • My story, “Bob and Sue Go To War”, was published in the Spring issue of A Children’s Guide to Field Tactics.
• Scare quotes should be used around sarcasm, lies, or other sections of narration when the author means to emphasize that something is not meant the way that it is said.
  • We all knew Bob was an “expert” but we didn’t agree on what.
• Don’t use two spaces after the end of a sentence. One is enough.

Finally, list words you commonly overuse, or use incorrectly. Many people don’t realize how often words like took, got, still, stood, oh, sure, or then are repeated in a text. If you read three paragraphs of your writing and find a word used more than four times (with the obvious exception of words like a, the, or and) you should change some of those instances to another word.

Using the style guide

I find the hardest part of editing your own work is looking at it as if it isn’t yours. Working from a style sheet, and using the “track changes” and “find” functions in your document can help with that. First, turn on “track changes”. That way you’ll see each of the changes you make, and your document will begin to be peppered with differently-colored notes, just the way it is when someone else edits you. That will confuse your brain a little, making it harder for you to glaze over your original mistakes.

Then, run a spell check. Make sure you’ve got it set to either US or UK settings, depending on your target audience.

Next, use the “find” function to root out all of those overused words. Change them as you go along. You can use it to find certain other errors too, such as whether you put a comma after an interjection like “Oh” or “Hey” when it begins a sentence. Find all of those double spaces too, and replace them with a single space.

Now that your document is partially marked-up, go back to the beginning and read over it. Keep that style sheet at hand so you can double check your rules as you edit. Once you’re all done, you can go through and accept your changes, and your document will be in much better shape than it was before you edited it.