#WritersCoffeeClub 10/10: Have you written a likeable antagonist?

Yes, but not in the current WIPs. (In the Laundry Files, sure: there's a likable evil Elder God-thing, even!)

#WritersCoffeeClub 9 Recommend a fellow writer you believe is under appreciated.

@cstross Seconding Graydon Saunders.
Fantasy with unique politics and economics, and a really interesting mix of magic plus realistic engineering. (When the production of your magical artillery is gated by the availability of samarium and cobalt, you know this is not your usual fantasy).

I also liked his "The Human Dress", which is an equally different and cool take on dinosaurs + vikings + zombies.

#WritersCoffeeClub Oct 9: Recommend a fellow writer you believe is under appreciated.

Graydon Saunders. (Self-publishes a series of fantasy novels. Ebooks only, refuses to work with Amazon or anyone else who requires DRM, so best sought on Kobo. Absolutely madly different to anything else that fits the label "high fantasy" because, to start with, he's anti-monarchist and anti-aristrocratic *and so are his protagonists*.

#WritersCoffeeClub 8. How many narrative voices does your current WIP have?

Current WIP is boring: it's mostly tight third following two alternating MCs (romance-style), with intermissions of omniscient third (it's an elaborate setting/plot, reader needs to be able to seethings the MCs are unaware of).

But I've written novels that mixed it up. eg. "Rule 34" was multi-POV 2nd person present, with an implicit narrator that is a non-conscious AI (not an LLM; LLMs didn't exist when I wrote it).

#writersCoffeeClub 10/7: Have you ever gone away somewhere special expressly to write?

My office! With the door shut.

(I actually *can't* write when I'm away from home; it feels like I'm wasting the opportunity to enrich myself through travel.)

#WritersCoffeeClub - 6 Oct. What size casts do you tend towards? Why?

I prefer in-depth characterization, which militates against having a cast of thousands—unless I'm writing a large multibook series (like the Merchant Princes or Laundry Files).

Large casts are easier to portray if you have a contemporary/historical setting that doesn't require lots of worldbuilding. (In SF/F, the world is a character.) There's a reason why big cast far future SF usually has thin characterisation.

#WritersCoffeeClub Oct 5: Have you ever included real-world disproven science in a work?

Oh certainly. I write a lot of historical fiction, so some of it is what people believed at the time. There's an extended discussion at the beginning of Lament of the Batavii about how the Romans viewed genealogy. Sometimes I write the science as disproven but still believed, but also sometimes I write as though the science is accurate. I have a half-finished story somewhere that's basically what if Lamarck was right, and one of my future pieces involves a man falling through space and time to a world where major conspiracy theories are all true.

#WritersCoffeeClub Oct 5: Have you ever included real-world disproven science in a work?

Oh certainly. I write a lot of historical fiction, so some of it is what people believed at the time. There's an extended discussion at the beginning of Lament of the Batavii about how the Romans viewed genealogy. Sometimes I write the science as disproven but still believed, but also sometimes I write as though the science is accurate. I have a half-finished story somewhere that's basically what if Lamarck was right, and one of my future pieces involves a man falling through space and time to a world where major conspiracy theories are all true.

#WritersCoffeeClub Have you ever included real-world disproven science in a work?

For sure!

I write SF/F and try to make the ideas crunchy. So I probably have written stuff that relied on subsequently-disproven science, *or* used the disproven stuff anyway because I like to play what-if games with the implications of ideas: "yes, but WHAT IF phlogiston theory was true? What would be the implications for stochiometry? Or steam engines and heavier-than-air flight?"

#WritersCoffeeClub Oct 4: What's a sure sign an author is a master of their craft?

Whenever you read a new book/story by this author, it still manages to surprise you.

(Consider Terry Pratchett as an example. He managed to write 40-something Discworld books without becoming repetitive or formulaic. It's easy to write a series that follows a set template: it's much harder to avoid pandering to the reader's preconceptions.)

#WritersCoffeeClub 10/3. How do you transition into writing mode?

I ... don't?

Short term, I write at my office desk because it's set up for it and it's a familiar, mostly distraction-free place. Long term, when I'm in writing mode wrt. a book, even if my fingers aren't moving or I'm snoring, I'm still in write mode: the ideas never stop coming, they maybe speed up or slow down a bit.

#WritersCoffeeClub Oct 2: Do you tend to include prologues? Why?

Not as such.

If it's a book in a lengthy ongoing series I will try to drop in as much back-story as I deem necessary to orient a reader who last picked up a book in the series one or more years ago, but I try to interleave it with actual story development so that chapter 1 doesn't drag.

I try to open an entirely new book with a hook/jeopardy to suck the reader in. (Ideally get their attention with the first sentence.)

#WritersCoffeeClub Oct 1: Have you written in an epistolary format?

Nope—at least not at anything longer than short-short story length. Not really interested in it.

#WritersCoffeeClub 1 Oct
Have you written in an epistolary format?

For short stories. Yet Here We Are is told in increasingly surreal letters and telegrams from a young man to his possibly indifferent love interest. Journal is, unsurprisingly, journal entries, by a creature trying to piece together the secrets and motivation of his creator.

Letters are great fun in settings that have them. A character gets to say whatever they want without interruption but without certainty of understanding.

#WritersCoffeeClub Sep 30 — Were you able to accomplish your goals this month?

Shockingly, yes.

(Managed to finish first draft of WIP number two. Sent it to my agent for feedback. Then got my accounts in order. Sending 'em to my accountant later today. And that's the job.)

#writerscoffeeclub 9/27: How do you support your fellow writers?

Beta read, edit, mentor, encourage, and/or help publish, oh, and of course buy and, most importantly, give them a write-up and star rating.

#WritersCoffeeClub 28.Have you ever added to a work after it was ‘finished’?

This feels like a particular call out. Like I said, I got the rights back to my debut YA from 2010. I feel ridiculous spending the month adding to a book that I’d crossed off the list 15 years ago!

I have lots of finished manuscripts that I haven’t been able to emotionally mark as “done” until I get them to a final published form. And here I am returning to a work that DID appear in a final published form. Tsk.

#WritersCoffeeClub 28
add to a work after it’s “finished”

I like how the quotes ostensively provide a definition for the word.

To this point, I’ve never added to a work after its final edit, meaning the point when I’m ready to begin formatting.

I’m painstaking in all my stages of preparation in an effort to avoid having to fix mistakes. I also don’t meddle with a published book. It becomes canon, & I’ve too many other works wanting my attention.

#AmWriting #WritingCommunity

#WritersCoffeeClub 9/27 How do you support your fellow writers?

I boost!

I boost sales (as best I can)
I boost toots and promos
But mostly, I'm here to boost your confidence.

Did I mention how that outfit looks quite stunning on you today?

#WritersCoffeeClub Sep 29. Speaking for yourself, what would make a work ‘obscene’?

If I find it, I'll let you know? (I like to jolt my readers out of their sense of safety/complacency every so often! No prosecutions or library bans so far, alas. I'm hoping the explicit ovipositor/marsupium erotica in the first space opera gets me banned in Texas.)