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Post by marianne on Aug 16, 2007 21:44:29 GMT
Hi Jon,
yes, like you I have too many projects on the boil and not enough time. To make it worse I am a slow writer, not one to slap words down.
Your new series sound fascinating.
How are you finding the US market? It is so different from the UK I find.
And please tell us a little about your writing habits. I think I read that you write in cafes. Do you prefer the white noise thing to silence?
I'm interviewing Kevin J Anderson at the Brisbane Writers Festival in a couple of weeks. I believe he dictates while mountain climbing.
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Post by Sheyana on Aug 16, 2007 23:50:03 GMT
Hi Jon, sorry to join the party a little late!
more a curiosity question than anything else, have you got any books hidden in a drawer/box/computer folder that are half-written or written but not looked at for years or that kind of thing?
And if so, how many and do you think they'll ever get resurrected when you're stuck for something to write (not that that's likely)?
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Post by iain on Aug 17, 2007 6:32:00 GMT
Hi Jon I've been reading your books since ReMix and have enjoyed them all, particularly Stamping Butterflies and the Ashraf series. When you get the time to write the next Ashraf novel I was hoping there might be a bit more revealed about the intruiging alternate world he inhabits (disclaimer: I'm not an alternate history buff, just interested!). On a more prosaic note, as I bookseller I'm often asked about reprints of ReMix, Red Robe and Lucifer's Dragon. Now that Gollancz are doing the Ashraf omnibus is there any chance they'll be doing the others? Thanks Iain
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Post by trentj on Aug 17, 2007 13:04:08 GMT
Hi Jon, I'm interested in your influences. Are there any writers that you can say drew you to genre fiction? And what are you reading now?
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Post by JonCG on Aug 17, 2007 15:52:45 GMT
Marianne: writing this in a cafe now... Sitting in the centre of London and listening to bad muzak and the coming and going of the crowds. Hadn't thought of it as white noise but I guess that's what it is. Find silence hard and working from home impossible. I go for a walk, get out on my motorbike, do the washing, pretty much anything to avoid writing. I make myself do 1500 words a day, seven days a week, unless I'm editing, when it has to be 20 pages. Deadlines and targets, even self imposed ones, and the only thing that make me function.
Quite like the US market. They certainly do much better covers. Although, that said, the Gollancz omnibus cover for Arabesk, the combined Raf books, is pretty neat.
Sheyana: I bin everything. That includes scripts, edits, proofs and half written books. Partly it's having trained as a journalist. Reusing or recycling old material has never worked for me. Although it works well for others - and that's not an insult!
Iain: Lucifer's Dragon is in print with Simon & Schuster UK, the other two are out of print and have reverted to me! There's a chance Gollancz will do them. Alternatively someone else might well. As soon as I get time I'll write the next Raf book, promise... I really do want to get started on it, but there's so much else that needs writing first.
Trent: Just finished The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and was blown away. Am about to start the Yiddish Policeman's Union by the same author (alternate world, set in Alaska!) Haruki Murakami I love and buy obsessively. Same for William Gibson. If you like crime novels then it's hard to beat Ian Rankin's Rebus novels or the Mallory novels from Carol O'Connel. (Also have a soft spot for Marianne's novels, which I guess is how I ended up here in the first place<g>)
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Post by marianne on Aug 17, 2007 22:32:35 GMT
Hah! A soft spot! I'm blushing - truly <g>
hey Iain, now THERE's a project for Pulp Fiction Press.
Jon, (correct me if I'm wrong) but I think your partner is a writer. How do you find that e/affects your own work. I'm married to an engineer who is extremely useful when I have to fudge physics.
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Post by mark64 on Aug 18, 2007 7:50:35 GMT
Hello Jon. Hope it's dried up weatherwise in London!
OK: To questions: I understand writing for newspapers (even the Guardian!) can be a very different experience from writing a novel. Do you find the two styles compatible, or when writing your books do you have to divorce the novelist from the newspaper writer?
Each book you write is a development from the last. Which book are you most proud of and which has parts that now makes you wince?
I loved the Japan stuff in End of the World Blues. Based (I guess in part) on the time you live there? What is it you love (or hate!) about the Japanese culture?
As your new work is at least partly Mexico City, I see a trend! Is this a conscious plan on your part: to travelogue different places through your work?
I'm also interested in writing habits and patterns. You've mentioned the cafe experience above: to get your 1500 words (which sounds a lot btw!) are you a writer that has to set times and personal deadlines or do you write when and where you can?
Thanks!
Mark
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Post by cassiphone on Aug 18, 2007 9:17:03 GMT
Hi Jon
A lot of your work (including the current project, by the sounds of it!) combine speculative/alternate historical elements with plots and influences from crime fiction. What is it about crime fiction that appeals to you as a genre, and why do you think it combines so well with spec fic? (I was going to also ask your crime writer influences, but you've answered that above already!)
Cheers, Tansy RR
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Post by JonCG on Aug 18, 2007 12:49:47 GMT
Marianne: An engineer, yes I can see how that would be useful (I steal all my science from New Scientist...)! My partner Sam resigned from her job as editor of a magazine to write crime novels, wrote one (Fashion Victim), decided she hated being freelance and went back to work. She's just written her second (This Year's Model), but has to fit writing in around running a magazine. We live in different cities during the week but hook up at weekend, and tend to spend them camped in cafes writing and cursing deadlines (although actually we're spending this weekend putting up shelves as the books have been breeding again.)
Mark: Still raining! I find it fairly easy to switch writing modes. Journalism is quick bite stuff, an intro and a couple of statistics, a quote from an expert, a bit of opinion and a conclusion. You learn to do it pretty quickly. The books are the stuff I dream about and think I see the characters on the streets. I life the books, but I don't live the journalism.
I have a real fondness for redRobe. I'm pround of 9tail Fox and I like the Raf books. End of the World Blues is personal for me and I currently like the most. neoAddix I dislike so much I haven't allowed it go back into print and Lucifer's Dragon is the book where I vaguely learnt how to write about half way through. I can't tell you what I think of Thrones & Powers, the Mexico book, as it's too close at the moment.
Japan I adore and I made three trips to Tokyo to do the reseach for End of the World Blues. The first was to nail down locations, mainly the nightclub districts of Ropongi and Shinjuku, the second was to take a closer look at the food and music, and the third was because there were still things I needed to nail down about the night clubs and biker culture and I didn't want to bluff it. I try to use real locations and have them exactly as they are in life, but then have impossible things happen there.
Cassiphone/Tansy: I think, for me, crime fiction and SF share one thing in common. You can write pretty much anything you want and call it crime or SF. All right, crime will need a crime, but that can be anything (and I've read a couple of Dona Leon crime novels where there isn't really a crime at all). And SF needs a speculative element. But outside of that you can write romance, cowboy books, historical fiction, thrillers, literary fiction and still claim it's crime or SF!
Also, the unravelling of a culture in an SF novel mirrors the unravelling of clues in a crime novel. In the Ashraf Bey mysteries, Raf is finding his way round El Iskandriya at the same time as he's investigating the crimes, at the same time as the reader is finding his/her way round both the alternate world and the back story.
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Post by marianne on Aug 18, 2007 22:11:38 GMT
Well Jon,
thank you SO much for taking the time to talk to us. It's been insightful and fun.
All the best for the next series. I know it will be a huge success.
Please come back and visit your thread here anytime if you have any news you wish to share
bests MDP
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Post by JonCG on Aug 19, 2007 9:38:20 GMT
A pleasure and thanks for suggesting it. Good luck with the deadlines. All the best jon
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