Broad Universe Blog Out: Lynn Flewelling

On this second post of the Great Broad Universe Blog Out, it's my pleasure to introduce you - for a second time to Novel Friend - to Lynn Flewelling! Lynn has posted here before about loving your characters, and I'm glad to host her again.
Lynn is the author of some fabulous books and has grown a loyal fan base with her characters that challenge sexual conventions. She is also hosting a writer's workshop in a CRUISE this spring!

Lynn, what made you into a writer?
The inability to stop daydreaming when I grew up.

So, please, tell us about your writing: What genre do you prefer to write? What books, stories, other publications that you've written are your personal favorites? Anything new coming up?

I am a fantasy novelist, author of the ongoing Nightrunner Series and the Tamír Triad. I have a few short stories in anthos to my credit, but that's not my forte.

My favorite short story is "Perfection," which appears in Elemental: The Tsunami Relief Anthology. All of the contributors donated the profits to the relief efforts for the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka.

As far as my books go, I'm especially fond of The Bone Doll's Twin, the first book of the Tamír Triad. It's dark fantasy, it's a ghost story, it's a hidden child story, and it deals with issues of gender and identity. As for the Nightrunner Series, they're all so different that I can't really claim a favorite. I modeled the series on the Sherlock Holmes model; a series of book-length adventures loosely tied together, but complete in themselves, although some of them are duologies within the series, rather than a single long epic. The main characters are rather dashing spies who solve problems with wits as often as they do with weapons. They are both men and end up becoming lovers as well, although that is not the focus of the books, just an aspect of their characters.

My upcoming publication is the fifth book in the series, titled The White Road. That's coming out on May 25. It's the sequel to Shadows Return—one of those duologies I mentioned. At the moment I'm at work on a sixth Nightrunner book, with a seventh under contract.

What's the best or most memorable piece of fan mail you ever received? What's the worst/weirdest?

I do get a lot of fan mail from readers all over the world. For the best, I can't really narrow it down to a single letter so much as a type: many gay readers have written to thank me for Seregil and Alec, heroes they can identify with. They've used the books to get through rough times in their lives, even to come out to family and friends. When I created the characters, I never imagined anything like that.

The weirdest fan letter, if you can call it that, was definitely one I got from a man who wrote to tell me, at length, in tiny hand printing, over six sheets of paper, how I was "destroying the fabric of the American family." The return address was a state prison.

What gets your creative juices going? Do you write to a music, and do you want to share your playlist?

Tea and music, both chosen to suit my mood. Lately I've been drinking a lot of matcha and listening to Tom Waits, Apocalytica, and the sound tracks to Alice in Wonderland and Henry V.

What is your favorite guilty pleasure (be it food, a habit, a show…)? And how do you rationalize giving into it?

"Ghost Whisperer" It's on Fridays when my work week is over, and it has ghosts in it. I'll watch just about anything that has ghosts in it.

What's the best thing about being a writer? What's the worst?

The best thing is that freedom to bring the visions from inside my head out into the world to see. I love entertaining people, and the fact that the stories I tell do that is deeply satisfying, but the actual creative act is the best of it. It's not always fun, but I can't think of anything I'd rather do.

The worst part is the isolation. Years ago I worked in an office with people I liked, and the socializing was a big part of my day. Working alone all day with only the dogs for company wears on me at times. So does being the only person at a party who does what I do. I don't live around many other writers. It's such a relief to get to a convention and sit around with other writers, comparing notes, bitching and complaining about the same things, talking shop and everyone around the table is nodding and saying "Oh I know!" It's good to be among your own.

What brought you to Broad Universe, and what do you like best about the organization?

A friend told me about Broad Universe and I appreciate it as a place that supports women writers. It's a great networking site, and I've met some great women through the organization.

What do you feel is the greatest challenge and the greatest asset of being a woman author?

To be honest, I don't think of myself in those terms most of the time. I am a writer. I write what I am moved to write and have been fortunate that my audience embraces both genders in equal measure. My agent is a woman and so is my editor. Perhaps that's smoothed my way? I don't know. As far as an asset, I think every author benefits from their own life experiences. We writers are who we are, the sum of all our parts, and we draw from it.

Any advice you'd like to share about writing?

Do it. Do the work. Write those awful stories and terrible books that you have to write on your way to becoming good. Classes and workshops can help, but you learn the most about writing by writing, and learning to look at your work with a critical eye. A good writer's group can be a wonderful resource and source of inspiration. Feedback can help you pinpoint weaknesses, and strengths in your writing. And, very importantly, when you're first starting out, don't worry whether you're "good enough." To publish? You're not. You won't be if you don't do the work. To write? All it takes is a willingness to apply pen to paper or fingers to keys on a regular basis and work on those basics: character, plot, theme, dialog, etc.

What is your favorite organizational trick for meeting all of your goals and deadlines?

Ha! I wish I had some!

What special appearances or events are coming up for you?

I'll be doing books signings at Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in San Diego on June 5, and another at some point during Comic Con, also in San Diego. In October I'll be a guest at Yaoi Con. I don't write yaoi, but because of the Nightrunner books, I have a lot of overlap with that fandom.

Most exciting of all, however, is the writing workshop I will be teaching aboard a Royal Caribbean cruise ship May 23-30. It's going to be a lot of fun. We'll be cruising in the Caribbean, and alternating between at sea workshop days, and four ports of call, days when people can get off the boat and explore exotic places. We still have some space in the workshop. The cruise price includes the cruise and all the amenities, including meals, and the workshop. For more information:
http://www.connectiontocruise.com/cruises/offerdetail.asp?priceid=1612862&sid=11239

Find out more about Lynn at any of these places:
Email: lbflewelling@roadrunner.com
Website: http://www.sff.net/people/lynn.flewelling
Live Journal: http://otterdance.livejournal.com/
Facebook Personal Page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=532719346
Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lynn-Flewelling/145593970532?ref=ts
Yahoo Groups: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Flewelling
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LynnFlewelling

"The LJ is my main hangout these days, but I repost to the FB fan page, Yahoo, and Twitter, too."

Lynn also has a special treat for anyone who comments!!! She will send bookmarks to the first 10 people who comment and the eleventh person to comment will get a signed copy of her newest release, The White Road, as soon as it comes out.

So, leave comments for Lynn!! (Or me, or anything - but leave a comment! J I will count you no matter if you are on LJ, Facebook, OR Blogger!)

Lynn Flewelling on Loving your Characters

Thanks for giving me this blog space, Trisha!

Well, first of all, let's get the shameless shill out of the way. May 23-May 30, 2010, I'm going to be teaching a three-day writing workshop aboard Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas—the world's largest luxury liner—in the Caribbean. As you can see from the dates, there will be plenty of 'free days' to just kick back and soak up the sun and the luxury of ship-board life, and visit four exotic ports of call, including St. Thomas and St. Maarten. Or work on your writing. Or both! The cost of the cruise includes the three-day workshop, evening writers' salons for sharing your work, dinners and cocktail parties with me, fabulous food and drink (except alcohol and soda), and all sorts of wonderful shipboard entertainments. The first fifty people who send in a deposit are also entered into a raffle to win an advanced reading copy (ARC) of my new Nightrunner book, THE WHITE ROAD. I toured a similar ship a few weeks ago and believe me, "luxury" is operative word in luxury liner. The chambermaids even make your towels into animals every day. How cool is that?

As for the workshop, we'll be doing intensive work on various elements of novel/story building, including characterization, dialogue, and plotting, as well as insider information on how to market your work, including how to write a winning query letter. With the dinners and salons, there'll be plenty of time to talk shop, too. These will be interactive work shops, with lots of Q&A and writing prompt assignments. While much of the focus will be on genre writing, these building blocks of good writing apply to all forms. Whether you're someone who's just trying to get started putting pen to paper or fingers to keys, or someone with a book in progress, there will be lots of valuable information and experience. I'll also be talking a bit about my own work and journey as a writer, and maybe even giving a sneak peek of WHITE ROAD.

For more information, see: http://www.sff.net/people/Lynn.Flewelling
For news, updates, and just cool places to hang out:
My Live Journal: http://otterdance.livejournal.com/
My Face Book: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lynn-Flewelling/145593970532?ref=ts

There, that's out of the way. What I'd like to blog about today is "Staying in Love With Your Characters." This is something I know more than a little bit about. For those of you unfamiliar with my work, my best known work is my ongoing Nightrunner series, which features medieval rogues Seregil and Alec, who lead double lives as "young nobles of little account" in the grand city of Rhíminee, and as master spies for a shadowy organization called the Watchers, work that takes them into some very dangerous and exotic situations. The books are fantasy/mystery crossovers, with plenty of magic and spooky stuff, and some sex and humor, too.

The first Nightrunner book, LUCK IN THE SHADOWS, was published by Bantam Spectra in 1996, but Alec and Seregil emerged from the Great Cosmic Compost Heap of my imagination in 1983 or 84. In the intervening years I basically taught myself to write, wrote many, many, many drafts, learned how to market a book and tried to sell an unsellable manuscript, went back to the drawing board, and finally came up with two marketable books, LUCK and the sequel, STALKING DARKNESS, got an agent, and made my first sale in 1995. (Come take my workshop; I'll make sure it doesn't take you that long!)

Of the six novels I've written since then, three of them have been Nightrunner books, the most recent being SHADOWS RETURN (Bantam Spectra, 2008)—which I wrote after taking a nine-year hiatus to write my Tamír Triad—and the forthcoming WHITE ROAD (Bantam Spectra, May 2010). Even with a break in the middle, that's a very long time to live with the same characters, to keep them fresh and vital and love them. How do you stay in love with your characters? My answer: change. Whether you're writing a stand alone book, or a multi book series, the characters have to be different on page 427 than they were on page 1.

Otherwise they become static cartoon characters, always described in the same words, always reacting in the same way, and encountering the same situations. For example, Alec is sixteen when we first meet him, and twenty one in WHITE ROAD; in LUCK he's the innocent, callow youth at the beginning of his hero's journey, and becomes the experienced, worldly Seregil's spy-in-training, as well as his companion and gradually, step by step, friend, lover and equal over the course of the next four books. Seregil, for his part, is haunted by an unhappy and guilty past. While this has molded him and colors his actions, interacting with Alec constitutes a major change for him, with long range effects. Change.

So, you have two main characters acting upon and changing each other. Good. But they also move in and are acted upon by the larger world, for good and ill. They suffer. They grow. They learn. They carry scars on skin and soul. It's not like you can just hit the "reset" button at the beginning of every book: "OK, Alec has blond hair, dark blue eyes, he's 16 (even though the last book took a year of story time), he has a fear of heights, and he's recently orphaned." And? What happened to him in Book 2, Book 3, Book 4? Time, victories, defeats, new friends, lost friends, traumas, first love, keeping love going, and on and on. In the hands of a good writer, all of these things leave their mark.

This presents some challenges. Coming up with new situations? Yes. Deciding how they will react to new situations? Yes. But you have to keep track of all those changes and scars, too! "On which ear did the dragonling bite Alec ?" "How old was Seregil when he met so-and-so?" "Why is Alec still carrying a dagger he lost two books ago!?" I'd like to tell you that I keep neat and copious notes but a couple of computer crashes have wiped out important files and now I have to use the previously published books as my references. Memory is a faulty thing to rely on, at least for me. I must admit, I made a real goof in SHADOWS RETURN; I mentioned the death of Alec's father and mentally defaulted to how he died in an earlier draft, not in the final, in-print book. And it got by my editor and copy editor, too. But not my faithful readers! Yeah, I got letters. At the moment I'm writing a sixth Nightrunner book, and believe me, I'm taking more notes.
So change is necessary, and really, change is fun! If you've ever raised a pet, a child, a houseplant, or a garden, you know the joy of watching those small, steady changes. As a writer, you get to orchestrate them. But it takes care. Some writers have a very long range vision, they can plan out a whole series of books and everything that happens in them. I am not one of them. I have a general idea of each book, the arc I want it to cover and the changes I want to happen, but much of it happens at the keyboard. For me, the changes must be a continuous, logical flow: if A + B = C, then D. It's like playing music by ear, and the guiding precept is: "Does this change make sense?" I've learned through hard and ongoing experience that if I try to force events or characters in an illogical direction for the sake of some plot point, I invariably end up stuck solid, unable to proceed until I figure it out and stop trying to push the story in that direction. My characters keep me honest.

Characters that grow and change makes for more interesting reading, but also more interesting writing. Keep that love flowing!