Untitled Writers' Group

Interviews--Steven Harper Piziks

Two interviews with me came on-line at the same time! You can find them at:

http://www.bookhelpweb.com/ or
http://www.bookhelpweb.com/authors/piziks/piziksprint.htm

and

http://www.quartertofour.com/bloodynews/interviews/piziks.html

--Steven

Anne Harris' Inventing Memory, lovingly reviewed by Catherine Shaffer

I'm ashamed to say I only *just* got around to reading Anne Harris' masterpiece, Inventing Memory. This is a &$#@ing brilliant book. After I read it, I found myself rolling around on the floor, screaming, "Yes, yes, yes!" There's not too much I can say about the story without spoiling it, but it sucked me right in and dragged me through to the very sublime and thoroughly real ending. Anne transcends herself with this book, and you can almost imagine that it's guided by the hand of one of the story's goddesses. This book is rigorously imagined, surprising, touching, exciting, improbable, and completely, one-hundred percent true.

It was a good read. It was completely untouched by the UWG critiquing machine. I'm not sure what that says for us all...

EXORCIST--Steven Harper Piziks

EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING has only just hit the stands (the movie doesn't open until August 20), and the fan mail is already coming in. Hmmf. My Silent Empire books never got this kind of attention.

Maybe there will actually be some crossover readership--they got my e-mail address from my web site, so they must know I write other books under another name. Yeah, yeah. That's the ticket.

Leave 'em Satisfied

Both of my parents are aspiring fiction writers, so we quite frequently chat about writing on the phone. The other day my dad startled me by saying, "I've figured something out. When you're writing, all you have to do is get the reader interested, keep them interested all the way through, and leave 'em satisfied." It startled me, because it's SO true. This is a revelation I had a couple of years ago. Forget the "rules," forget style, forget plot, forget character. All of these things are just ways to reach the ultimate zen of "keep 'em itnerested, leave 'em satisfied." So easy, yet so hard. I was surprised, though, that my father had come to such an identical conclusion as I had. Is this something all writers figure out at some point? Or are my father and I exhibiting father-daughter brain-likeness?

I told my dad that I thought the "leave 'em satisfied" part was hardest. It requires knowing and understanding what the reader is after and giving it to them, often in spite of their own conscious wishes. Tricky stuff. How about everyone else? How do you keep 'em interested and leave 'em satisfied?

Analog Publication by Catherine Shaffer

My story, "Midnight on Tabula," is in the current issue of Analog (October). Get thee to a book store, while supplies last! It will be easy to find, because for some reason my name is on the cover. Yeah! Woohoo! Yippee!

I tried to avoid reading it, then accidentally flipped to the first page and got sucked right in, not because it's the best story in the world, but because I was obsessively proofreading. *smack* Bad writer! To my disappointment, they didn't choose to illustrate it. But my name IS on the cover, so I won't complain even one tiny bit.

This is my first "big time" pro sale. I am now a professional sf writer by every standard. SFWA. Writers of the Future. Campbell Awards. It's very exciting. Of course I've been at it long enough to know I shouldn't wait for an avalanche of fan mail, or probably any response of any kind, at least not for some months. At some point perhaps a review will appear in Tangent or Locus. If I'm lucky the review will be good. I am not unexperienced with negative reviews, so I think I won't die if that happens. I think.

But for most stories, unless they get onto an award ballot or get reprinted in best-ofs, they have their day in the sun and then quietly disappear. I'm prepared for that, too. There's more stories where that one came from. I've been waiting seven years since Clarion to get to this point. I've got

The Grammar Punk Slaps You Around - Erica Schippers

Right. Some current peeves of mine. Why, with all the l33t-speak, lack of capitalization, and inability to type in sentences or, heaven forfend, paragraphs out on the web, do these little things bother me? I don't know, but I'm going to snark about them anyway. (And yes, I know I'm preaching to the choir.)

Rediculous - it's ridiculous with an 'i'. I don't care how you say it, that's how you spell it.

Apaulled - I don't even know what to make of this. 'Paul' is a name. 'Pal' in appalled has the same root as 'pale'. If you are appalled, you are filled with consternation or dismay. By the same logic, if you are apaulled (or appaulled), I really don't want to know about it.

Payed - Yes, stayed and staid are two different words with two different meanings. Paid and payed are not. Why is this? Because 'payed' isn't a word. Even if it was, the word you were looking for is 'paid'.

Thank you. Come again.