The next authors to share their insights on the Writer’s Blog Hop is the very talented Elizabeth Bourne and Tim Susman.
Please check out Tim’s blog timsusman.wordpress.com to read his answers to the four questions.
Elizabeth has the distinction of being my very first GUEST AUTHOR on my blog.
Elizabeth Bourne has published short fiction in several Fantasy & Science Fiction venues
Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine (A History of Cadmium, What the Red Oaks Knew)
Interzone (Beasts),
Clarkesworld (One Flesh)
(Evening, Echeconnee Creek) Black Lantern
Currently, Elizabeth is working on a trilogy of novels set in ancient Alexandria, a mystery set in 1920s San Francisco, and a second-world fantasy that wonders what it would be like if you could change your luck. Bourne grew up in Lovecraft country and assures you that his work wasn’t fiction. Elizabeth currently lives in Seattle where trolls do, in fact, live under bridges, and is advised on her writing by her dog, Kai, who eats the bad pages.
What am I working on?
My current work-in-progress is a second world fantasy (that means a place that may or may not be earth-like, but isn’t earth; for example, “Dune” is a second world fantasy).
My current book concerns itself with Titianmar, one city out of the seven cities that are all that remain from a long-ago empire. In Titianmar, luck is palpable—at least for some people. If you’re gifted, you can see luck, and it can be manipulated for both good and bad ends. But now, the luck is beginning to fade away, and thanks to the choices made by Mora, who rules Titianmar with an iron fist, it may be destroyed completely. Can the luck of Titianmar be saved, and is it worth saving? After all, everyone –wants- to have good luck. But is that really what we need?
How does my work differ from others in its genre?
This isn’t another medieval or steam punk fantasy world. There’s no magic; even the reason for Titianmar’s luck is science-based. I’m not interested, nor do I believe in, a world that’s incapable of developing technological advances beyond the wheel and the crossbow. So my world has technology, albeit not 21st century technology, which might as well be magic. Also, I care a lot about gender. My primary heroes and villains are women. They have adventures and they don’t need saving by anyone. Men take up the secondary roles – the supporting cast as it were – but they aren’t the main actors. If I could write a gender-switch “The Stars My Destination” I would.
Why do I write what I do?
For my own pleasure. No one (very few people) can make a living by writing fiction. Most writers are not paid well, if indeed they get anything resembling money at all. So if you must have a day job to pay the bills, the only reason to put in the hours it takes to compose a short story, never mind a novel, is because you love it. Because you need to know what happens next. Because a piece of you will die if you don’t. So I write the ideas and characters that are alive for me, that keep my interest, and give me joy.
How does my writing process work?
Process? There’s process? I thought you just wrote until you ran out of gin… I’m a pantser, which means I don’t develop much of an outline or a plot ahead of time. I try to get what I call tent posts in place – at least a few things I know must happen – and then write to those markers. Stop, and then figure out a few more tent posts. The hope is that eventually, all the tent posts will be covered by canvas, and the circus can come to town. That’s how I think of it. And also, the gin.