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Author: Karen Myers

Karen Myers is a fantasy and science fiction author, best known for her heroic fantasy novels. Her stories feature heroes in real and imagined worlds filled with magic, space travel, and adventure.

January 3, 2016
Karen Myers
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Out of the darkness, into the light

Posted in Characters, Plot, The Chained Adept, and The Chained Adept

Winding Path (Bob Kimball)
Winding Path (Bob Kimball)

Endings are terrific.

I'm just finishing up The Chained Adept now, having extricated myself from the swamp of my misconceived 3rd act. I love doing endings. I know exactly where I'm going, what's left to do, and what I need to wrap up.

Some genres, and some authors, too, like to end their books with a bang. Kill the villain, defeat the army, save the alien princess — done!

I find that I prefer a bit of a cool down at the end, a reflection on what's happened, perhaps the foundation of a new vector for the next book. My characters need it, a way to recover from peril and stress. (As one of my friends would say with a wink and a leer, “it's just not the same if you don't get to smoke a cigarette afterward.”)

It's the light my characters work toward, whatever form that takes, whatever the darkness that impedes them. They need some of that light at the end to sustain them.

January 1, 2016
Karen Myers
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Taking stock of 2015

Posted in Goals

Still Life and Street, M.C. Escher, 1937It's time to look back on 2015 and take stock — what worked, what didn't, and where I spent my time.

Accomplishments

I doubled 2014's word count (which isn't saying much), even though I spent 5 months working on something else. That put me on track for equaling my annual word count for 2012 and 2013, if I had written for the full year.

I wrote two more short stories for my eventual collection.

My first short story submission was accepted and released.

I wrote a fantasy novel which will be out early in 2016 — The Chained Adept, the first in a series.

I researched methods of working with the Constructed Language (CONLANG) community and formed a professional relationship with a conlanger. Here's how it's worked out.

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January 1, 2016
Karen Myers
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Word Count 2015

Posted in Goals

table_abacus-gregor_reisch_margarita_philosophica_1508

Always good to know what the numbers say…

Words of fiction

2015 – 119,603
2014 –    65,736
2013 – 210,470
2012 – 270,600

Total – 666,399

Goal for fiction for the new year

2016 – 365,000

Blog posts

2015 – 30,619
2014 – 34,214
2013 – 28,714
2012 – 18,347

Total – 111,894

December 29, 2015
Karen Myers
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Valar Morghulis

Posted in Characters, Heroes, Plot, The Chained Adept, and The Chained Adept

ValarMorghulis
“All Men Must Die” — The motto of George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones

We're part way through a multi-day marathon of the entire 5 or 6-season run of Game of Thrones on cable, and it's been on non-stop for the last couple of days, downstairs in this small cabin. Periodically I go and get some lunch or dinner, and make sure my husband is still breathing, in front of the TV.

No doubt about it — this is quality programming, and I've seen all the episodes (and read the books). Upstairs at my writing desk, where I can hear snatches of the dialogue, much of the music, and all of the screaming, I'm having no trouble following along with the episodes as they go by.

This is having two effects on my writing…

I am oh-so-glad that George R R Martin is not the god of my personal universe

When novels first became popular in the 16th/17th century, readers felt that they held up a mirror to life. My opinion is: yes, and no.

Yes, in that the characters must emulate real people, or the story they tell has no foundation, no reality, and is nothing but fable, with puppets moved at whim by the author.

No, in that the author is the god of his created world, and it is only a pretense to abdicate that responsibility. It is not fate that kills his characters, or accident, or evil — it is the author's pen, disclaim it how he may. Even when writing a novelized version of historical events, the author cannot help but take sides, offer explanations, create a reality where the events make some sort of fictional sense. It's his story, and he has shaped it as he wants it.

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December 29, 2015
Karen Myers
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Words and history

Posted in Fantasy, Language, The Chained Adept, and The Chained Adept

Anachronisms
Anachronisms

There's one thing a writer of fiction learns early — don't knock a reader out of your story because of words that mean what you want, but that the character would never have used.

If you're writing a work of contemporary fiction, that usually means matching your dialogue to your characters. The impoverished nine-year-old is not likely to use gold-plated words, except perhaps as a comic gesture.

For non-contemporary fiction, the bigger problem is anachronism. When you remember that “khaki” comes out of British imperial rule in India, you are well-advised to avoid it as a descriptive term in a book on the Crusades, or in a fantasy world where neither Britain nor India have ever existed.

When I read books, I find the worst offenders are phrases based on technology that the author forgot is modern, or at least, too modern for the context. “He's never learned to put on the brakes”, “He's just blowing off steam”, “He's a real live wire, isn't he?” — these are a slap in the reader's face in the wrong context.

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December 4, 2015
Karen Myers
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Lost in the tepid swamp of niceness

Posted in Plot, The Chained Adept, and The Chained Adept

Lost in the swamp

There you are, writing along at a good clip, and suddenly you find your story buried in mud, all its energy lost.

Now, I'm still rather new at this fiction writing life — a bit shy of my first million words. Aside from working on the craft itself, which I enjoy, much of the challenge is understanding your own psychology well enough to control your productivity.

In my case, there are two issues: what to do when the story grinds to a halt, and how to avoid procrastination. Now, I don't know anyone who can successfully discipline their work habits through will alone (if we had that much will, we'd all eat healthy and exercise regularly, not to mention watch our budgets and clean our houses). Most of us are better off coaxing ourselves into a regular routine and lowering all barriers that might derail it.

Alas, I have an alarm system that slams a wall down in front of my creativity when it senses “wrong path taken” for the story. I push my way forward from that point with great difficulty and at my peril, and I've found it's always a mistake to do so.

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November 24, 2015
Karen Myers
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Languages for Sale – Part 3

Posted in Just for Writers, and Language

This is the third of three posts on how to improve the use of languages in constructed worlds.  Part 1, an introduction of the topic for authors, is here. Part 2, an exploration for conlangers (the folks who invent CONstructed LANGuages) of what authors need is here. This final part is addressed to authors of fantasy and science fiction who might want to work with conlangers.

And if you want to see how this all worked out for my individual project, that report is here.

Why should my world building include language specialists?

A convincing world has history and context. It has artifacts from various cultures, some of the names of which came with the objects. It has transient fashions in names, and rulers or gods may be named differently from peasants. It may have non-human characters who don't use human phonemes to communicate.

Language also has history and context. It changes. It reflects the influence of other cultures. It memorializes conquest and trade. Each culture may have its own dialects and languages, possibly several. Characters from different cultures have different fluency in the default language (the one the book is written in).

Even if set in the future of our own quotidian world, the fashion in names will have changed, cultures will continue to mingle in unpredictable ways, new brands and technologies will come into existence and need names, and alien beings may make an appearance.

All of these things need names and convincing snippits of language to convey the appearance of a well-rounded historically-grounded plausibly realistic world.

Why can't I do it myself?

I can fake expertise (to some degree) in geology, biology, ecology, forensics, combat, medicine, physics, etc. And language. So can you. The question is: can we convince everyone?

Read moreLanguages for Sale – Part 3