Last weekend, I attended the innaugural When Words Collide conference in Calgary. This festival for readers and writers was organized by a committee of local science fiction and fantasy writers. Previously, this group had organized a Calgary science fiction conference CONnvergence. They felt last year’s CONvergence was too media focused and split to hold a writing conference that would include all writing genres. 

Featured author guests at When Words Collide were Robert J. Sawyer, Jack Whyte, Walter Jon Williams and Rachel Caine;  Brian Hades was the featured publisher guest. If all or most of these names are unfamiliar to you, it is probably because you don’t read science fiction or fantasy. All come from those genres, aside from Whyte, who writes historical fiction.

Science fiction is far from my specialty, but over the years I’ve been a fan of some sci-fi authors, TV shows and movies, such as Star Trek (original series) and author Robert J. Sawyer. At the conference, I felt like a welcome outsider and enjoyed the experience of not-being-in-the-thick-of-it making contact with a different species of writer. I think the organizers of When Words Collide did a bang-up job of including panels and events for those of us not totally into sci-fi. All day Saturday and Sunday, every hour on the hour, they offered seven choices of panels, readings, kaffee klatsches with the featured guests and other happenings. There were always several events in each time slot I would have liked to attend.

Most of Calgary’s local writing organizations contributed. The Writers Guild of Alberta had Bob Stallworthy as liaison (listed in the program as ‘The Person Who Kept us Aware of the Big Wide World’). Mystery Writers INK hosted Detective Sweet’s presentation on Homicide Investigation. Through my Alexandra Writers’ Centre involvement, I sat on a panel on pitches and queries. 

Rather than have a single keynote speaker, the Friday evening address featured all five special guests plus R. Cat Conrad, surrealistic, fantastic and space-oriented artist and husband of Rachel Caine. Each guest was given 20 minutes to speak about whatever he or she wanted.

Caine and Cat, Texans on their first trip to Canada, discussed the differences between Canadians and Americans, although they felt at home when they arrived at the conference motel and saw “Howdy Folks” with a drawing of a cowboy boot painted on the entrance door. Don’t they wash these decorations off after Stampede?

Brian Hades talked about the founding of Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing. Before the conference, I hadn’t known this publishing house was in Calgary.

Jack Whyte played with the conference title When Words Collide.  He said, instead of forcing your words to always work harmoniously, let them collide to create energy and harness the energy to make people think.

Walter Jon Williams presented a meditation on the development of modern science fiction.  In the 1970s, he said, science fiction readers were a closed world. Virtually all of them had read the classic 150 sci-fi books, most of which were unknown to the general public.  Since then, the number of science fiction books has vastly expanded, but the initial homogeneity led to a difference between sci-fi and other genres. In mystery, he claimed, the writers established the norms of the genre, for instance, the “rule” that you must play fair with the reader. Literary fiction has a paid critic class that determines what is good. For science fiction, the norms were established jointly by the writers and those initial readers so familiar with the genre’s classics.     

Robert J. Sawyer picked up on Williams’ comments. Sawyer believes the Canadian literary establishment is more welcoming of genre fiction than the one in the US. Canadian genre writers get invited to festivals like Harbourfront, but are still viewed as second rate. Sawyer was at the 2011 Saskatchewan Festival of Words in Moose Jaw. An audience member asked him, “How does it feel to know you’ll never win the Giller award?” Sawyer replied that he felt less badly about it after signing a television deal for his latest book. He added that about every other year he applies for a Canada Council grant and has never received one, despite being North America’s most award-winning science fiction writer.  

Some felt Sawyer was taking potshots at literary writing, but why shouldn’t he express his views and experience? The next day at the kaffee klatsch he told us not to worry about offending readers. No writer pleases everyone; the worst you can be is bland.

Must the genres mingle entirely in harmony? To paraphrase Jack Whyte, let the genres collide and create energy. There was plenty of energy at When Words Collide last weekend. I plan to be there next year.

I enjoyed this blog post on semi-colons because my editor was so into them.
http://blog.carriemumford.com/2011/08/06/editing-and-my-love-for-the-semicolon/

I always find it hard to return to writing after a break.  This current break has been one of my longest. It began before Christmas and continued through the holidays, a one-month winter vacation, the release of Deadly Fall, my book promotion blitz, two shorter spring and summer trips and visits by relatives. During this time, all I’ve written are blog posts and a few novel chapters that didn’t work. Now it’s time to ease my way back into the saddle and write the sequel to Deadly Fall.  

I had thought the sequel was almost a  slam dunk. My publisher was interested in continuing the series.  Before Deadly Fall was accepted, I wrote a sequel Secret Spring, revised it and gave it to four friends who had read and enjoyed Deadly Fall. All of them thought Secret Spring was a better book. I polished up the manuscript and sent it to my publisher. To my surprise, she and and my editor had problems with it.   

Their arguments convinced me they might be right. I struggled to come up with solutions and took a stab at re-writing Secret Spring. At first, I liked what was happening with the story and especially enjoyed getting back into writing after the long gap. But in Chapter Four, I ran into plot glitches. The new Spring started to feel a bit flat. I had doubts that my changes would fully address my publisher’s and editor’s issues and worried they would reject the manuscript again,  after all that work, and I’d be even further behind.

I decided it was too soon to re-write Secret Spring, but with more brewing the story might work down the road. Meanwhile, my publisher had read my draft of the first half of a third series book and liked it. They suggested I write that story as book two.  When I return to writing in early August, this will be my writing project.  

The new book two – working title Ten Days in Summer – takes place during the Calgary Stampede. I’ll re-set it a year before the action in the original draft, so that it fits between Deadly Fall and Secret Spring.  My protagonist, Paula, will go through the developments in her personal life that happened off-stage between those two books. Among other things, she’s renovating and expanding her bungalow in Ramsay to make space for herself and a man.   

Other characters develop and enter the series. Paula’s mother visits from Montreal and faces decisions in her own life. Paula’s daughter considers changes to her love life and work. The suspects come onto the scene and stir up mischief. 

I hope, as August rolls around, I’ll get excited about this book and find myself so back into writing that I won’t want to leave it for the next break.