I’ve added a new static page to the site for Major Publications and Works-in-Progress. This will always be available on the top menu of the site and will be updated periodically.
Category Archives: books
New Static Page for Major Publications and Works-in-Progress
Filed under blog, books, news, publications
Confessions of a Writer, Part 6
To celebrate next year’s release of my first science fiction novel, The Curiosity Killers, I’ve posted my responses to the Confessions of a Writer Tag survey (http://nicoletteelie.com/2015/10/02/the-confessions-of-a-writertag), with a few responses to each of the twenty questions parsed out over October and November interspersed with other news and events. This is the last post in the series. You can find the earlier parts all linked at the end of this set of questions.
1. Who is your favorite author?
Because he’s the first popular fiction author who really got me reading voraciously, Stephen King. It isn’t so much that individual books of his stand out among my favorites, but he definitely taught me through all his work about character and dialogue and the fact that “horror” can mean a lot of different things and be just as subtle a genre as any other.
2. What are your plans for the rest of the year in terms of your writing?
I have several Sam Brody/Red Eye projects I’m working on as well as working on the sequel to The Curiosity Killers, tentatively titled The Girl with Mechanical Wings. I’m also putting out a new edition of my self-published short story collection Grinning Cracks and just released an audio version of my short story “Method Writing.”
3. Where else can we find you online?
Blog: kwtaylorwriter.com, Twitter: @kwtaylorwriter, Facebook: facebook.com/kwtaylorwriter, Instagram: @kwtk, and Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/K.W.-Taylor/e/B005Y183PE
The rest of my Confessions of a Writer series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
Filed under blog, books, coming soon, news, publications, steampunk, the curiosity killers, the red eye, writing advice
Exciting audiobook news!
The audio version of my Kindle short story, “Method Writing,” is finally available just in time for Halloween! And the best part is Audible subscribers can get the title for FREE!
If you don’t already use Audible, you can grab it for just $3.46 over on Amazon (or search for it on iTunes). I’m delighted with the work of actor Mark McClain Wilson, who did a fabulous job making my grim, creepy story come to life.
This is the perfect story to listen to while driving down a dark country road late at night. Happy Halloween!
Filed under audiobooks, books, horror, publications
Confessions of a Writer, Part 4
To celebrate next year’s release of my first science fiction novel, The Curiosity Killers, I will be posting my responses to the Confessions of a Writer Tag survey (http://nicoletteelie.com/2015/10/02/the-confessions-of-a-writertag), with a few responses to each of the twenty questions parsed out over October and November interspersed with other news and events.
1. What is the best writing advice that anyone has given you?
One of my thesis advisors told me once to focus on one thing at a time, as I’m a habitual multitasker and overextend myself in all areas of my life. As a result, it was hard to get anything done with too many works in progress and too many obligations generally. I’ve learned to better zero in on what’s most important and try hard to get that completed before moving on to the next thing. I now have a color-coded priority list of my writing projects and am doing better with putting some pieces on the back burner. I’ve also learned to say “no” in other areas of my life and understand that to really master your craft, sometimes you have to let go of being the best at absolutely everything in your life. I can be a fabulous writer, but I probably shouldn’t also take up the trombone and expect to be great at that as well. I also probably shouldn’t volunteer to add extra things to my plate unless I’m sure I can devote reasonable time to them. A lot of a writer’s life is time management and prioritizing. When I was finishing the first draft of The Curiosity Killers, I was working full-time, teaching two college classes, and taking three graduate classes. I never sacrificed sleep, but I sacrificed a lot of leisure time. For the overscheduled writer, learn to take tiny breaks and soak up as much joy as you can from them, because they may be few and far between.
2. What advice would you give to another writer?
Perseverance is half the battle. If you really want to be good and successful, don’t give up. Things will happen that discourage you, but if you put your focus on your own work, try to make it high quality, and don’t compare yourself to others, you will likely find a lot of satisfaction. Also, don’t go into this thinking you’re getting a six-figure, 1970s-style multi-book deal. Money shouldn’t be your endgame, nor should quitting your day job. That era is gone, if it ever existed. Carve out a niche for yourself among your peers, among people who like the kind of stories you tell, and with publishers who believe in your work, and keep at it. Keep making it better. Keep taking the advice of people who’ve been doing it longer and whose work you admire on artistic merits. The saying used to be “Do what you love; the money will follow.” I think in the current state of the industry, it should instead be “Do what you love, get better, don’t stop, and you will achieve something with your work that will bring you satisfaction.” For some people, that satisfaction might come in the form of money, but for others, it might come solely from critical acclaim or respect from peers or students. And if you’re writing what you really believe in, that will be more than enough.
Filed under blog, books, coming soon, publications, the curiosity killers, writing advice
Confessions of a Writer, Part 3
To celebrate next year’s release of my first science fiction novel, The Curiosity Killers, I will be posting my responses to the Confessions of a Writer Tag survey (http://nicoletteelie.com/2015/10/02/the-confessions-of-a-writertag), with a few responses to each of the twenty questions parsed out over October and November interspersed with other news and events.
1. How much time a day/week do you get to write? When is the best time for you to write (morning or night)?
I don’t get to write every day, but I try to, even if it’s just for fifteen minutes. I write either on my lunch hour or for a few hours in the early evening. Weekends are tough while the weather’s still good, because I like to get outside and gather inspiration. When I do NaNoWriMo, I sometimes do a bootcamp weekend day of writing for up to eight hours with just a few breaks. When I start to get in the “zone,” I try not to stop! The last few chapters of The Curiosity Killers were written on weekend-long writing binges, and I distinctly remember working for hours on my laptop at my dining room table one fall evening, beaming with excitement when I could finally type “The End.”
2. Did you go to college for writing?
I did my undergrad in communication, focusing on radio and TV broadcasting. At the time, I thought I wanted to be a disc jockey (instead, I used that experience as inspiration for Sam Brody’s career and workplace in The Red Eye). As I took more classes in literature and writing, however, I considered changing my major to English but was too far invested in finishing within four years. I went to grad school, first getting an MA in literature with a little creative writing coursework and then in June of ’15, I finished an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction. Even my com major had a lot of writing in it, however, including a course in TV screenwriting, which is something I’d like to do more of in the future.
3. What bothers you more: spelling errors, punctuation errors, or grammar errors?
None of these are awesome. Spelling errors bother me the most, because in this age of spellcheck, we should all know better. I am a comma perfectionist and realize not everyone else can be, so punctuation errors don’t bother me quite so much. Grammar errors get fuzzy once we’re talking about creative writing or style choices, and grammatical rules evolve over time. I’m becoming less of a prescriptivist the older I get.
Filed under blog, books, coming soon, graduate school, publications, school, the curiosity killers, the red eye, writing advice
Confessions of a Writer, Part 2
To celebrate next year’s release of my first science fiction novel, The Curiosity Killers, I will be posting my responses to the Confessions of a Writer Tag survey (http://nicoletteelie.com/2015/10/02/the-confessions-of-a-writertag), with a few responses to each of the twenty questions parsed out over October and November interspersed with other news and events.
- What was your first piece that you can remember writing? What was it about?
The first concrete piece I remember writing that I think would qualify as a real piece of fiction was a short story I wrote in high school called “The Conspiracy to Catch Dierdre Long.” It was a romantic comedy about two teachers set up by their students. I also remember writing a horror romance in early college—the title now escapes me—about a rock star who quits performing to lead a quite life out of the spotlight but is then found out by a stalker.
- What’s the best part about writing?
The best part about writing is shutting out the real world for a bit and envisioning my scene. I try to engage all five senses and truly feel as if I’m my point-of-view character, then just allow the scene to play out, seeing how it would unfold both adhering to my outline and perhaps deviating from it, and experiencing moments for their greatest emotional and thematic impact. I like being able to slow moments down and speed them up and experiment with them until I’m happy with how they look and feel in my mind’s eye as I get that first draft down on paper. Revision is somewhat painful and tedious, though necessary of course, and pre-writing activities (outlining, character creation, getting the essential elements decided) is also sometimes tedious. The idea generation stage doesn’t bother me, as I tend to have strange concepts occur to me at odd times, which I then just file away in a notepad document on my phone to comb through later when it’s time for the next project. But it’s that golden time of the actual hands on the keyboard, first draft where everything just flows out and gets filtered through my brain that is the most creative, zen-like time of my day. I can imagine and create and first draft for several hours at a time and feel like barely a second has passed. That is when I truly feel like my best self, like I’m engaged in what I was always meant to do.
- What’s the worst part about writing?
Even worse than revision is proofreading copy prior to going to press. By that point, I’ve read and re-read the material so much that I’m blind to the tiniest of errors. I usually read aloud, very slowly, or enlist a second reader to help so that I can actually catch any final typos that even my editor missed.
- What’s the name of your favorite character and why?
In everything I write, I tend to get a favorite character and enjoy working on their scenes quite a bit. In my Red Eye series, it’s Sam Brody, a damaged, snarky guy who’s flippant to a fault. With Sam, I tried to design a character around the premise “What if the ‘breakout character,’ the audience favorite, the comic relief, the ‘Fonzie,’ if you will, was the protagonist?” The thing about a comic relief character is that you don’t necessarily want them foregrounded all the time, as their attitude can often be their downfall. It definitely is with Sam, which is why he’s kind of an almost anti-hero in a way, suffering from a need to entertain himself and others even when the fate of the world is at stake. In my upcoming science fiction novel The Curiosity Killers, I’m quite fond of Eddy Vere, the “mad scientist” character, as well as Rupert Cob, the playboy adventurer. Both are complex creatures, but Vere is more damaged and full of gravitas, while Cob is more a mixture of two types of hero: comedic and tragic.
Filed under blog, books, coming soon, publications, the curiosity killers, the red eye, Uncategorized, writing advice
Confessions of a Writer, Part 1
To celebrate next year’s release of my first science fiction novel, The Curiosity Killers, I will be posting my responses to the Confessions of a Writer Tag survey (http://nicoletteelie.com/2015/10/02/the-confessions-of-a-writertag), with a few responses to each of the twenty questions parsed out over October and November interspersed with other news and events.
When did you first start writing? Was being a writer something you always aspired to be?
I first began writing in early elementary school, spending my summers on short stories that, in retrospect, were obviously terrible. By high school, I had better figured out that character and plot were vital to storytelling. I used to want to be an actor, actually, until I figured out that writers are actually actors, directors, art directors, cinematographers, and producers of their own movies in a way. Writing a book, therefore, is more creatively fulfilling than just doing one of those jobs.
What genre do you write?
I write science fiction, fantasy, horror, experimental fiction, and have lately been trying some romance, YA, and mystery, though just in the planning stages so far. I don’t want to be constrained to a specific genre but want to tell the best stories I can that continue to challenge me. With my short fiction, I tend to be more offbeat and try things out that I might not do in a full-length novel, making my short pieces much more surreal as a result.
Can you tell us a little about your current work in progress? When did you start working on this project?
I have two main works-in-progress going right now: finalizing things with my forthcoming novel The Curiosity Killers, to be released in 2016 from Dog Star Books, and The Skittering, the next work in my Red Eye series (the first two volumes of which were released by Alliteration Ink in 2014). The Curiosity Killers began life as a short story back in 2011. I fleshed out the idea into a full novel and used it as my MFA thesis at Seton Hill University from 2013 to 2015. It’s my first science fiction novel—I’ve written a lot of short SF before but never anything this long or this ambitious—and it required lots of historical research due to its time travel plot. I began The Skittering in late 2014 but haven’t been able to prioritize it until the first draft of The Curiosity Killers was done. My Red Eye series as a whole has been a long time in the works—the first book was originally a NaNoWriMo project several years before its eventual release. After The Skittering, I have at least one more book planned in the series.
Filed under blog, books, coming soon, the curiosity killers, the red eye, writing advice
Big news: The Curiosity Killers to be released by Dog Star Books in 2016
I’m delighted to announce that my first full-length science fiction novel, The Curiosity Killers, will be released by Dog Star Books in 2016. Dog Star is the science fiction imprint for Raw Dog Screaming Press, home to Stoker Award winners and all-around amazing writers, scholars, and imaginative folks. I am honored to be in such good company.
Fellow newly-Dog Star-ified author J.L. Gribble (Steel Victory) covered my book’s acquisition on her own blog recently, where earlier in the month she completed the Confessions of a Writer Tag survey. I’ll be blogging my own answers to those questions in batches over the next few days to celebrate The Curiosity Killers.
While I will obviously acknowledge these folks and more in my book itself, I want to take a big of space here to give special thanks not only to the aforementioned MC Scribble Gribble but also to Heidi Ruby Miller and Tim Waggoner for helping me get this book in great shape, all my critique partners (Todd, Chris, Crystal, Anna, Carrie, and Jen), members of my old writing group who read bits of this in its infancy (Steve, Mike, and Cynthia), and my husband Tom, the editing guru, for being willing to do a continuity edit on what is admittedly a very convoluted time travel knot. Tom is single-handedly responsible for helping me remain paradox free!
Huge, huge thanks, too, to Dog Star’s delightful Jennifer Barnes for taking a chance on this book. I’m excited to see what the future holds.
***
I have fairly exciting other publication news going on as well. My Kindle exclusive “Method Writing” is doing great and will soon be my very first audiobook, available through Audible on Amazon and iTunes. The ebook is still only 99 cents (free for Kindle Unlimited customers). More news on the audio when it’s all done.
A brand-new second edition of Grinning Cracks, my short story collection, is coming out in November. As a teaser, here’s an excerpt from the back-copy blurb:
Thirty-five short works filled with the upsetting and uncanny, from the author of the urban fantasy Sam Brody series (Alliteration Ink) and the horror novella We Shadows Have Offended (Etopia Press). This newly revised and updated second edition includes eight pieces not found in the first release, featuring the never before published stories “The Apple Box,” “Colleagues,” and the poems “Floater” and “Il Necromantiosmo.” Taylor reimagines both classic, familiar fairytales and superstitions (“Abaddon,” “The Apple Box,” “Rabbit Rabbit,” “Trichotomy”) and a sequence of Breton folk stories (“The Ankou,” “Bugul Noz,” “Dahut and the Destruction of Ys,” “Gradlon,” “Iannic-ann-ôd,” “The Korrigan,” “Les Lavandières,” “The Lovers,” “The Morgen,” and “Yan-Gant-Y-Tan”). She experiments with surrealist science fiction (“Alter Ego,” “Arcus Senilis,” “Encounter,” “Eden”) as well as gruesome body horror (“Ornithology,” “Pseudanor”), crime noir (the multi-chapter “Christmas Wrapping”), and a literary fiction cycle based on the concept of the four humors of Hipprocratic medicine (“Choleric,” “Melancholic,” “Phlegmatic,” and “Sanguine”).
This one should be out well before holiday shopping time in trade paperback and (for the first time) Kindle edition. I’m planning an audio version of this as well but it may be abridged and a 2016 release. A few other things are in the priority queue ahead of that, but I think you’ll be excited about what they are.
Filed under books, coming soon, publications, steampunk, the curiosity killers, time travel
New web exclusive!
Included in the SAM BRODY BUNDLE for only $25 (free shipping!) are signed copies of The Red Eye, The House on Concordia Drive, a RED EYE pen, and a signed postcard. Act now–supplies are limited!
Filed under books, publications, the red eye
Time Travel Media March: 10 Greatest Time Travel Novels
All this month, I’ll be blogging about time travel media (TV, film, and literature). For the past two years, I’ve been working steadily on a time travel novel, The Curiosity Killers, as my thesis project for Seton Hill University’s MFA in Writing Popular Fiction. As I inch closer and closer to graduation this June, I want to celebrate some things that inspired the writing of that book.
For today, I offer my favorite time travel books. What are yours? What have I missed?
1. The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger, 2003
I read this when I had the flu, and all I could do was cry and sneeze, becoming a snotty, snobby messy. Clare and Henry are like any other couple—except that Henry randomly time travels without control or warning. This results in twisted interconnected existences, with the two crossing paths from childhood to old age at different stages of each other’s lifetimes. There is also a broader metaphor at work here of genetic disorders—if you knew your child would suffer from something dangerous and heartbreaking, would you still try to become a parent? Clare and Henry have to decide all this and more in this twenty hanky tearjerker.
2. The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers, 1983
The Anubis Gates is sometimes cited as one of the first steampunk novels, though it contains no actual steam-powered technology; it is, however, steeped in Victorian atmosphere. Professor Brendan Doyle goes on a time travel trip with an eccentric millionaire and winds up stuck in 19th century London. Forced to assume a false identity and scratch together a living, he falls in with a group of pickpockets, is kidnapped by magicians, finds love, and causes a paradox. This novel is especially appealing for literature nerds, as Doyle has a very special connection with one of his favorite poets.
3. Kindred, Octavia E. Butler, 1979
I’ve been teaching Kindred in my college literature course for several years, and students tend to respond well to it. This is a study not just in paradox (although it’s a great tool for discussing this concept, as well as questions of logic in literature) but also historical fiction, African American literature, and feminist literature. Dana is a 20th century African American woman married to a white man. She begins time traveling abruptly to the pre-Civil War South, where she meets her ancestor, the son of a plantation owner, and cannot return to her own time until she saves him from some dangerous situation that threatens his life. If she’s physically connected to her husband, she can bring him back to the past with her as well, which leads to the couple having to pretend to be master and slave. Stark, upsetting questions about identity and privilege are raised, and Butler is unflinching in her portrayal of plantations as sites of unspeakable violence. This is a time travel novel about so much more than just the science fiction/fantasy elements; it’s about the human element and trauma reprocessing, both on a personal and cultural level.
4. The Time Machine, H.G. Wells, 1895
When we think of time travel fiction, we think of The Time Machine. H.G. Wells may not have invented the concept but he certainly popularized it in this story of an inventor who hits upon a way to travel through time. He goes far into the future and encounters post-human creatures engaged in class warfare and suffering grave societal ills. Much of the Time Traveler’s observations of the Eloi and Morlock factions of beings exemplify Wells’ own social and political leanings. This isn’t a mere surface novel of adventure but rather a castigation of the stratification of elite and working classes in the Victorian era.
5. 11/22/63, Stephen King, 2011
This book is 880 pages long—not the weightiest tome Stephen King has ever penned, but longer than I normally have time to devote to a single novel these days. However, I devoured this in less than a month, binging on it whenever I had a free second. I distinctly recall reading it while walking to meetings, even, reading the ebook version on my phone as if my life depended on it. High school English teacher Jake Epping discovers a portal connecting the back room of a diner in 2011 to September 9, 1958 at 11:58 a.m. Jake eventually decides to use the portal to live in the past for five years and try to save John F. Kennedy from being assassinated. As Jake learns, preventing a tragedy on this magnitude is no easy task. The main reason I love this book so much is the clear attention to detail and research King took with it. He began work on it as far back as the early 1970s, and then later worked with a researcher to make every detail period appropriate and accurate, down the price of a pint of root beer. My own research for The Curiosity Killers took a long time, particularly for my Jack the Ripper, Black Dahlia, and Mothman storylines. Readers appreciate it when time travel stories exhibit as much painstaking historical accuracy as possible.
6. Outlander, Diana Gabaldon, 1991
This series is making a big splash these days via its TV series adaptation on Starz. A World War II British Army nurse is pulled backward in time to mid-18th century Scotland. There, she falls in love with a highlander and marries him, despite being married in the 1940s. This is a tale of culture clashes as well as a love story with enough ambiguity to keep it from simply being a standard romance.
7. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut, 1969
A work of tremendous experimentation, Vonnegut’s novel is less a plot-driven story and more an examination of how fiction works. Books are referenced within the text. Events are told non-linearly, both through time travel devices, flashbacks, and a jigsaw puzzle order of scenes. The gist of the work is that it describes the aftermath of the WWII bombing of Dresden, which Vonnegut himself witnessed. When taken as an allegory for war experiences, it can read as a study in PTSD (protagonist Billy Pilgrim becomes “unstuck in time” as a result of what he went through in the war), decades prior to its formalization as a psychiatric diagnosis.
8. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle, 1962
To be clear, the characters in A Wrinkle in Time do not travel to different times. Thus, this isn’t often classified as a time travel novel per se. However, the method by which the Murry children travel to other planets and dimensions is through a concept called a “tesseract,” which the novel defines as folding the fabric of space and time (very Doctor Who’s TARDIS, in fact, which is a device that can travel in both space and time). If one folds this fabric, after a fashion, they’re able to use it to shorten great distances and reach places otherwise inaccessible to one another. Though “tesseract” is a real term in mathematics and geometry, the concept as described in this and L’Engle’s other Murry novels is akin to a wormhole, which is often put to great use in other SF works dealing with space and time travel.
9. Lightning, Dean Koontz, 1988
Lightning was probably one of the first contemporary novels about time travel I ever read. A mysterious stranger named Stefan rescues author Laura Shane at several pivotal points in her life, culminating in the reveal that he’s actually part of a World War II time travel experiment. Unlike some of the other books on this list, Koontz employs a mechanism whereby paradoxes are impossible, although I would argue that Stefan’s repeated rescuing of Laura by itself represents the creation of a paradox. But hey, paradoxes are fun to dissect and untangle, and I’m a big believer in readers cultivating a willing suspension of disbelief.
10. The Door into Summer, Robert A. Heinlein, 1957
This is the brand of time travel that doesn’t only involve machines and wormholes but also sustained sleep. Dan goes into suspended animation in the year 1970 and awakens in 2000. Through using time travel, he is able to witness alternate versions of himself and work out his best possible future. Here, paradox is used to its fullest effect to manufacture personal and professional change—a fantasy very relatable to audiences of the mid-1950s, struggling with the aftermath of WWII and the beginnings of the Cold War.
Watch this space for my top ten time travel movies, coming later this month! You can see my top ten time travel TV shows here.
Filed under blog, books, genres, graduate school, literature, pop culture, school, the curiosity killers, time travel
K.W. Taylor 