Sonny Whitelaw

[marianne]

Stargate author, author of her own fiction and web guru
coming soon!

www.sonnywhitelaw.com

[Sheyana]

YAY! ;D questions were forming as soon as I saw her name...this is gonna be fun!

[Chirugal]

Ooh, new guest authors popping up all over the place. Nice one.

[marianne]

Sonny will be our next guest. Dates to be confirmed. Her new Stargate Atlantis novel is going gang-busters and she has just put together a reprint anthology that you can see here.

www.journeysanthology.com

(gas cover illustration too)

It contains - amongst many great stories - my little cpunk piece called Nikei Love.

check it out

MDP

[marianne]

OK, Sonny will be here on the 10,11 and 12 August.

If you want to know how to get the most out of your time - this is the writer to talk to!

I would also add that while Sonny is happy to talk about Stargate she cannot read or discuss potential Stargate stories.

cheers

MDP

[sonny]

Looking forward to it!

Cheers

Sonny

[Sheyana]

eeexcellent...I'll have to keep those dates free...has anyone emailed Chir to remind her?

[marianne]

Here's a website address for a podcast featuring Sonny, myself and another Stargate writer called Sabine Bauer.

supanova.joffrestreetproductions.com/

[Sheyana]

LOL, listening to the podcast now...nice plug for Conflux slipped in there Marianne!

I think I'll have to bring up some of the stuff mentioned while Sonny is around - especially the future stuff (and possibly the photo journalism)...I think I'll have to start writing questions down!

Anyone who hasn't listened to it I'd reccomend it - it can get quite funny as well as very interesting!

[Chirugal]

*runs in* I'll do my best to be here! My parents are on holiday on those dates, so I should have enough computer access to make it. ^_^

Will check out the podcast then, too.

[marianne]

Hi Sonny,

Thanks for coming on. I know how hectic your current schedule is.

I usually start the ball rolling, so...

Tell us how you got into the tie-in circle, and what are the best and worse things about writing for a TV series.

bests
Marianne

[Sheyana]

Hey Sonny!

Just to add another question onto that...

What did you do before you found Stargate (or they found you...)

[sonny]

marianne said:

Hi Sonny,

Thanks for coming on. I know how hectic your current schedule is.

I usually start the ball rolling, so...

Tell us how you got into the tie-in circle, and what are the best and worse things about writing for a TV series.

bests
Marianne

G'day Marianne!
First up, thanks for having me, I feel very privileged to be here.

I’m a bit wined and dined at the moment; my kids just took me out for my 50th birthday (which freaks me out no end, but let’s not go there, shall we ?) So….how did I get in? Like most such stories, it's somewhat convoluted!

I didn’t live in Australia until 2001, and while I watched SG-1 occasionally it was kind of frustrating not knowing the back story. So, Christmas 2003 I bought the first 6 seasons on DVD as family Christmas present. My house is small, and tends to be a pit stop for teenage kids. While I never seemed to be able to the sit down and watch the DVDs, Stargate was playing at all hours of the day and night.

Around the same time, I was writing a short story on time travel. A friend of mind living in London, Sabine C Bauer, was also writing for the same publication. I was aware that Sabine had almost finished the first of the new Stargate SG-1 novels, but didn't give it much thought until we critiqued each other’s short stories.

Sabine almost busted a gut laughing when she read mine because, in her words, I was channeling two key characters in SG-1.
Now, that may not seem such a big deal, but in fact I was a little ticked off, because I wanted *my* characters! Sabine suggested the cure was to write a stargate novel.

As it turned out, the publishers needed another book by a set date, as one they had in the pipeline wasn’t working out; would I be interested? It took me a couple of weeks to agree, because to be honest, the idea of writing a tie-in for a show with a worldwide audience of something like 17 million people a week, was a little freaky. But everyone involved, right down to the MGM lawyers, were incredibly helpful, so it was a fun project.

Best and worst things. Hm…I could write a thesis on that subject! There’s a temptation to think it’s easier to write in an established world, but in fact it’s considerably harder. Stargate is a mythology heavy show so anything we write must stay well within canon, and yet must also be original. And because the show is ongoing, we must reset the world and the characters to zero at the end of the book, without resorting to devices such as ‘it was all a dream’. That's probably the hardest thing.

One way around that is to use a prior episode as the springboard to an entire new story. I majored in anthropology and geomorphology, so in my first SG novel, Stargate SG-1 City of the Gods, I took as the premise the third season episode, Crystal Skull, and carted everyone off to a huge Aztec empire, which has not been dealt with much in the series. Then, following Brad Wright’s maxim of ‘make it bigger!’ I added volcanoes into the mix and did things that you normally couldn’t do in a novel of that size, simply because it takes a lot more to set up. And that, I think, is the advantage of having a pre-existent background world. Your audience is already positioned to believe the underlying premise of the story, and they’re familiar with the technology and main characters. That allows you to get on with telling your story, very quickly.

The best thing, though, I would have to say, is getting to spend time with some of the amazingly talented people involved in bringing the show to life.

[sonny]

quote author=sheyana board=auth thread=1147316023 post=1155108543]Hey Sonny!

Just to add another question onto that...

What did you do before you found Stargate (or they found you...)[/quote]

Hi Sheyana!

I get bored very quickly, so I tend to change professions on a semi-regular basis. However, amongst other things, I've been a freelance journalist and writer for some twenty five years.

Prior to Stargate I had published two novels, The Rhesus Factor, an eco-thriller (about half of which has come or is coming true), and Ark Ship, an SF novel. I've since written two additional Stargate novels, Stargate Atlantis The Chosen, and Stargate Atlantis Exogenesis, both with Beth Christensen, and am currently working on another SG-1 title.

[Sheyana]

Cool!!

What was it like trying to get your first novel/article published? And did the experience change for subsequent ones?