Guest author - Becky Black
Apr. 15th, 2014 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charlie_cochraneI'm happy to welcome that canny lass Becky Black, doyenne of UK Meet, as my guest today. When you were last here we chatted about watching your first book fledge. What does it feel like with the second and the third?
It's still as nail biting. There's no guarantee the next one will be accepted just because the last one was. The waiting on submission never gets easier. As I write this I'm waiting to hear back on my ninth novel submission. And I still jump a mile when I hear my inbox ping. I still check my email as soon as I wake up in the morning - well my tablet is right there... But what comes after acceptance does get easier, usually - if you treat your first time being professionally edited as a learning experience.
What do you think you've learned since you were first published?
Lots of my writing weaknesses - because an editor has no reason to spare my feelings. But also how to fix them. I've learned how to deal with rejections and with Revise and Resubmit rejections, which are a special kind of challenge in themselves. I've learned that most of the world doesn't really care that I had a book published and life doesn't suddenly change overnight. Except on the inside. It is a confidence booster, to have that validation that a publisher accepted my book and then readers bought it. But also that it's no good just staying content with that feeling. I should always be thinking about improving and stretching and trying new things.
What do you wish you'd known when you were first published?
That the stuff they tell you about publishing taking a really really long time is not always the case when working with small presses and digital first publishers. I sent off my first submission back in 2010 and settled down to work on the draft of the next book, expecting to wait for months to hear back. A month later I had a contract and then edits started showing up while I was still drafting - so I had to learn to switch between projects at the drop of a hat (or email.) Times are changing and you can usually expect the publishing process to move faster now.
What inspired the latest book?
Well the last draft I did, which is now edited and on submission, was just a little note in my ideas folder for years as "What if most people in the world didn't sleep. What would it be like for people who still did?" Last year I finally started to figure out somewhere to go with that story and it all grew from there.
May latest release was back in February - Too Good A Man, the second in my Red Dragon series. The very first inspiration for that series was the premise, "The East India Company - In Space." And I did a load of notes about the characters and ideas for it on the journey back from the 2011 UK Meet in Milton Keynes. That was a very productive journey. Now I'm working on Book 3 of the series, which is - probably - the end of the main story. But there might be a spin off story... No promises.
Did you know where Too Good A Man was going from the start or did it take an unexpected turn?
I always have an outline, but I leave it quite flexible and let the outline change as I write. One thing that changed was a character who was just meant to have a cameo role suddenly started tagging along for the ride, because she was a riot to write, and next thing I knew, one of the lead characters was on her ship with no intention of leaving. Which made that part of the book much more fun, but more importantly, gave me a way to set up the ending of the third book. So she'll be back. I can't wait.
Have you ever been writing and discovered something totally unexpected about one of your characters?
There was one, before I turned pro, who in the middle of the story my brain just told me she had a secret daughter. It never even got mentioned in the story, but it made sense of her character and I felt like I could have gone and written a whole story about that if I wanted to. And another couple of characters, brothers, who were only secondaries, decided to tell me that they had this really awesome (well I thought so) back story about being smuggled out of Nazi Germany as babies by their aunt. I could write that one too, if I had the time!
Which book do you wish you'd written and why?
Loads! But then again, no, I wouldn't want to have written the books I love, because I probably wouldn't like them as much if I was the one who'd sweated over them and still thought they weren't as good as they could be.
Which book do you wish somebody else would write?
I have a hankering for a historical romance between an agent of the Special Operations Executive (awesome British agents, many of them women, who worked behind enemy lines in occupied Europe) and say a Resistance fighter or partisan. It can be m/m or m/f or f/f, I'm not fussy. I just want some SOE romance.
Have you got a secret you'd be willing to share?
I got a plan for an F/F romance story...
Too Good a Man.
Alyn and Jarvez’s relationship is evolving, but thanks to Alyn’s principles it will face tests that could destroy it. To get his lover back Jarvez will tell any lie and burn any bridge he has to.
After months of sneaking around, Captain Alyn Evans and Jarvez Kashari have gone public as a couple. Alyn wants to move in together, but Jarvez isn’t ready. As the Red Dragon’s trading mission begins, Jarvez worries that Alyn’s principles will clash with the Company’s sometimes ethically dubious methods. The Company rep aboard ship, he fears he’ll be the one to feel the sharp edge of Alyn’s disapproval and could even lose him.
Alyn’s unbending sense of right and wrong leads him to give asylum to an enslaved man, Sumi, bringing threats of retribution from Sumi’s owner. This leads to tension between Alyn and Jarvez when Alyn makes Sumi his personal steward and Jarvez feels he can no longer get a moment alone with his lover.
Sumi’s owner follows up on his threats and Alyn is brought before a court in a politically charged trial, whose outcome already seems fixed. Kept apart from Alyn, terrified he’ll see him go to prison, Jarvez doesn’t think the situation can get any worse. Until Alyn’s ex shows up. In the end he’ll be driven to beg for help from the one person who’d like to see Alyn out of Jarvez’s life forever.
It's still as nail biting. There's no guarantee the next one will be accepted just because the last one was. The waiting on submission never gets easier. As I write this I'm waiting to hear back on my ninth novel submission. And I still jump a mile when I hear my inbox ping. I still check my email as soon as I wake up in the morning - well my tablet is right there... But what comes after acceptance does get easier, usually - if you treat your first time being professionally edited as a learning experience.
What do you think you've learned since you were first published?
Lots of my writing weaknesses - because an editor has no reason to spare my feelings. But also how to fix them. I've learned how to deal with rejections and with Revise and Resubmit rejections, which are a special kind of challenge in themselves. I've learned that most of the world doesn't really care that I had a book published and life doesn't suddenly change overnight. Except on the inside. It is a confidence booster, to have that validation that a publisher accepted my book and then readers bought it. But also that it's no good just staying content with that feeling. I should always be thinking about improving and stretching and trying new things.
What do you wish you'd known when you were first published?
That the stuff they tell you about publishing taking a really really long time is not always the case when working with small presses and digital first publishers. I sent off my first submission back in 2010 and settled down to work on the draft of the next book, expecting to wait for months to hear back. A month later I had a contract and then edits started showing up while I was still drafting - so I had to learn to switch between projects at the drop of a hat (or email.) Times are changing and you can usually expect the publishing process to move faster now.
What inspired the latest book?
Well the last draft I did, which is now edited and on submission, was just a little note in my ideas folder for years as "What if most people in the world didn't sleep. What would it be like for people who still did?" Last year I finally started to figure out somewhere to go with that story and it all grew from there.
May latest release was back in February - Too Good A Man, the second in my Red Dragon series. The very first inspiration for that series was the premise, "The East India Company - In Space." And I did a load of notes about the characters and ideas for it on the journey back from the 2011 UK Meet in Milton Keynes. That was a very productive journey. Now I'm working on Book 3 of the series, which is - probably - the end of the main story. But there might be a spin off story... No promises.
Did you know where Too Good A Man was going from the start or did it take an unexpected turn?
I always have an outline, but I leave it quite flexible and let the outline change as I write. One thing that changed was a character who was just meant to have a cameo role suddenly started tagging along for the ride, because she was a riot to write, and next thing I knew, one of the lead characters was on her ship with no intention of leaving. Which made that part of the book much more fun, but more importantly, gave me a way to set up the ending of the third book. So she'll be back. I can't wait.
Have you ever been writing and discovered something totally unexpected about one of your characters?
There was one, before I turned pro, who in the middle of the story my brain just told me she had a secret daughter. It never even got mentioned in the story, but it made sense of her character and I felt like I could have gone and written a whole story about that if I wanted to. And another couple of characters, brothers, who were only secondaries, decided to tell me that they had this really awesome (well I thought so) back story about being smuggled out of Nazi Germany as babies by their aunt. I could write that one too, if I had the time!
Which book do you wish you'd written and why?
Loads! But then again, no, I wouldn't want to have written the books I love, because I probably wouldn't like them as much if I was the one who'd sweated over them and still thought they weren't as good as they could be.
Which book do you wish somebody else would write?
I have a hankering for a historical romance between an agent of the Special Operations Executive (awesome British agents, many of them women, who worked behind enemy lines in occupied Europe) and say a Resistance fighter or partisan. It can be m/m or m/f or f/f, I'm not fussy. I just want some SOE romance.
Have you got a secret you'd be willing to share?
I got a plan for an F/F romance story...
Too Good a Man.
Alyn and Jarvez’s relationship is evolving, but thanks to Alyn’s principles it will face tests that could destroy it. To get his lover back Jarvez will tell any lie and burn any bridge he has to.
After months of sneaking around, Captain Alyn Evans and Jarvez Kashari have gone public as a couple. Alyn wants to move in together, but Jarvez isn’t ready. As the Red Dragon’s trading mission begins, Jarvez worries that Alyn’s principles will clash with the Company’s sometimes ethically dubious methods. The Company rep aboard ship, he fears he’ll be the one to feel the sharp edge of Alyn’s disapproval and could even lose him.
Alyn’s unbending sense of right and wrong leads him to give asylum to an enslaved man, Sumi, bringing threats of retribution from Sumi’s owner. This leads to tension between Alyn and Jarvez when Alyn makes Sumi his personal steward and Jarvez feels he can no longer get a moment alone with his lover.
Sumi’s owner follows up on his threats and Alyn is brought before a court in a politically charged trial, whose outcome already seems fixed. Kept apart from Alyn, terrified he’ll see him go to prison, Jarvez doesn’t think the situation can get any worse. Until Alyn’s ex shows up. In the end he’ll be driven to beg for help from the one person who’d like to see Alyn out of Jarvez’s life forever.
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Date: 2014-04-15 07:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-04-15 07:27 pm (UTC)