Self Publishing By Eve Garner

Is Self-Publishing Opening the Door to a Space Opera Renaissance?

When e-readers first hit the shelves in the early 2000s, many book lovers predicted the end of printed books and saw this emerging technology as a threat. But now, a good few years later, we can see that both digital and print books have a place in the market. We all have our favorite Kindle books, and fans of the pulp genre are particularly spoiled by the fact that digital publishing is so accessible for all. In fact, if you look at the most popular titles on various Amazon charts, you’ll notice that self-publishing is becoming a huge chunk of books sold. And with that, new (and old) genres are emerging to become real favorites. Take the space opera for example – in the 70s and 80s, the genre was big business, but these days it seems to have died down somewhat. But could self-publishing be opening the door to a renaissance for this oft-neglected genre? Let’s find out.

The early days of the space opera

So where did this most prestigious of science fiction sub-genres begin? Well, without going into too much detail and writing a tome on the topic, there were a number of authors in the late 1800s who did write on the topic of space; however few refer to these as true space operas. Examples include Star ou Psi de Cassiopée, written by French author C. I. Defontenay in 1854. There is some division, therefore, on which title truly is the first space opera. Some believe it to be The Struggle for Empire: A Story of the Year 2236 by Robert William Cole in 1900. It wasn’t until around the late 1920s that space operas began to appear as part of pulp magazines.  In fact, in the August/October 1928 issue of Amazing Stories, a story called The Skylark of Space E. E. Smith was published. This is a tale of planetary exploration, romance, and all the other elements that make up a ‘true’ space opera. Many refer to Skylark as the first genuine example of a literary space opera.

The modern space opera

So now we know where it all began, what has become of this sub-genre? Well, it seems to have slipped into somewhat of a niche. Authors such as Ian M Banks (and his famous Culture series), Alastair Reynolds and Peter F Hamilton are all well-known proponents of the space opera genre. One of the hallmarks of a space opera is its tendency to span multiple books. Because these stories are so huge and expansive, it’s often necessary to do this – and it helps add to the grand scale of the worlds these authors are creating in their works. Despite so many authors working to add to the genre, it is certainly a niche offering, with only a handful of writers doing this work (as opposed to crime or other genres which have thousands of ‘big name’ authors).

The role of self-publishing

It’s never been easier to become a paid writer through Amazon’s marketplace, all thanks to the low barrier to entry set by the company. Anyone can throw their work up on the site to be purchased by others. With this open door policy comes the potential for sub-genres such as space opera to come back into favor – not through the preference of a publisher, but by people voting with their wallets. Just look at the science fiction charts for Kindle and you’ll see many examples of new space operas. One great example is the Expanse series by James S. A. Corey. It may not be self-published, but it’s a breakout hit for the genre and a proponent of digital sci-fi.

Do you have what it takes?

If you think you could add to this new renaissance and interest in space opera, there are lots of ways that you can hone your craft and become the next big sci-fi writer. But before you write anything down, be sure your skills are up to scratch – there’s nothing worse than a digital book full of typos and grammatical issues. One idea is to become a freelance writer to really sharpen your skills. By writing for a content service like wait.co.uk, you can fill your days writing about a range of different topics – and really give your writing a shot in the arm. The life of a writer is not for everyone, of course, but if you find yourself tapping away at the keyboard like it’s some kind of compulsion, getting involved in becoming a paid writer is a fantastic thing to do.

Who knows? You may well be the tip of the spear when it comes to the reinvention of the space opera. By joining the many fresh authors who are self-publishing to the Kindle store, you can help drive forward a movement that puts the power in the hands of the people, not the publishers. So isn’t it time you did some brainstorming? That space opera won’t write itself!

JoAnna Senger - Guest Blog

What Writing Means To Me

Around the age of four, I fell in love with the letters of the alphabet. Following the philosophy of the day, my parents would not teach me to read but spent dutiful hours reading to me. The letter “y” and the “w” with all its syllables sounded so exotic.  I would hear my parents spell out words (y-e-s spells “yes”), but I didn’t know which of the squiggles in my books was a “y” or a “w.”  Fascinating and frustrating. 

Then…school!  I remember being so surprised at the appearance of a “y.”  What a disappointing letter!  It was squat and had an appendage hanging down below the line.  I thought it should look more like a “b” or a “d.” As time went on, I got used to its appearance and forgave the “y” for laying down on the job, so to speak.  I learned all my letters.  Letters began to make words, words became stories, and then teachers were asking me to write! 

         Was I a big girl or what?!

         Since those grade school days, I have written skits, essays, stories, policies and procedures, legal documents, books, anything else assigned to me, and other stuff just for fun. 

         Writing is so self-indulgent that I often wonder why everyone doesn’t spend their free time with a pen in hand (or a keyboard at their fingers).  Don’t like someone?  Bump them off.  Someone is a pompous jerk?  Hold them up to ridicule.  Spouse is an affront to the human race?  Take a lover…between the pages.

         Finally, serious fiction called to me.  At least, I was serious about writing it, primarily mysteries and horror.  Distinct genres in the bookstores, they are just slants on real life as far as I am concerned.  Mysteries have entertained me all my reading life, so I try to return the favor.  The analyst in me loves the precision of mystery plot development, clues appearing all along the way but in a manner to elude or mislead the reader.  The clues have to be there, the author must play fair.  Without the clues, the book becomes crime detection, another entertaining genre but not a mystery.  I particularly like mysteries in which the reader figures out “who dun it” but the characters don’t, plodding on in dull ignorance of the carnage all around them.

         Like garlic, horror is a strong flavor best introduced slowly until the reader is saturated with its odor.  Of all the literary genres, horror has the most difficulty in achieving respectability, yet its power is the least diminished over time.  Only the romance is as enduring.  The fear of darkness, the sinking despair of betrayal, the panic of confinement and torture, the irresistible urge to open the locked door, these are all horror literary devices and still effective when done skillfully. 

I prefer horror which is just one step outside of daily life, a small but jarring detail only slightly out of place, like a piece of glass in your ice cream cone.  Oh well, remove it and keep on eating.  Licking.  Enjoying all that creamy coldness until you find another piece of glass, and this one cuts.  You look around and everyone in the ice cream parlor is looking at you, and all of them are bleeding from the mouth.  And smiling.

         You get the idea.

         Regardless of what we write or how we write it, those words on paper are our ticket to the grand show: the unbroken human story-telling tradition that began on cave walls, got chiseled into stone tablets, engraved and painted on pyramid chambers, copied laboriously by armies of scribes and monks, and now flies through the ether according to physical principles that most of us poorly understand if we understand them at all.

         Why do we do it?  Paid or not, published or not, successful or not, we just want to tell a story.  It’s the story that matters, not the method or the language or even the writer. 

And we all know it.

JoAnna Senger

Featured Author On NTD

I’m the featured author on NTD this week. I talk about my YA novel, “Three Go Back”, and my interest in paleontology. Plus there is a short bio included. There is a place for Comments at the bottom of the Page, so please leave a comment. My publisher doesn’t think I have any friends (LOL). Go here http://bloodredshadow.com/2013/08/26/the-genesis-of-tom-johnsons-three-go-back 

Tom

Most of my life I have had a deep interest in paleontology and entomology. In school, while we were reading Shakespeare, I was thinking about bugs. And during History class, I wondered what new discovery was being uncovered in fossil beds around the world. The only reason I passed 9^th grade History in the 9^th Grade was due to my artistic talent at the time. The teacher asked me to draw Hannibal crossing the Alps with his elephants.

I knew I wanted to write as far back as age ten, when I wrote a comic book story. Of course, it was terrible, but the fire was there. Then about age 25, while stationed in France, I started creating plots and characters, and putting them on paper. Naturally, the stories involved animals. One plot eventually became the Jur series several years later. I was finally living my dream, and creating stories to be read.

One of my favorite comic strips is Luann, and while reading the strip one day, I began thinking, why does’t that evil little Elvis guy hire a scientist to build a time machine, and accidentally send Luann and her girlfriends, Delta and Bernice back in time. Then someone could go after them, naturally. Well, I figured that would never happen, but I liked the idea. And that meant I started thinking about writing it myself, only not with Luann and her friends, but with girls in their mold.

Thus, “Three Go Back” was conceived. I set my tale in the future, where the common transportation system was teleport machines. My problem was coming up with the time machine angle for the story. Okay, so what if my characters were teleporting at the same time a magnetic solar flare struck the planet, burning out the teleport circuits, and turning it into a time machine?  Bang. That became my gimmick.

So using those concepts, my story almost wrote itself. My big problem was finding a publisher. You see, I used scientific names for the animals they encounter in their journey back through time, and publishers told me they would never find an editor who knew if the names were real, or misspelled, and were in the correct time period. They kindly but firmly rejected the story. I sent a proposal to Barbara Custer at Night To Dawn, who knew my background in prehistoric animal life, and my extensive study on the subject, and she took a chance. Actually, anyone with a computer can type the names I use and do a Google search, and it will show the data on any creature. But I understood the publishers’ decision to reject the book because of the editing difficulties. It can add a lot of work to an editor’s already hectic job. And you do come upon variation of names, which can confuse you.

I live in the Permian Basin of Texas, which is an area rich in Permian fossils. The Permian Period in our prehistory was over 250 million years ago, or roughly 60 million years before the dinosaurs, so this area is famous for reptiles and amphibians. There is an important dig in our area, the Craddock Redbeds, and Dr. Bakkar, a famous paleontologist brings a team up from the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences every year. Our town, Seymour even has a reptile/amphibian named after it – the Seymouria. So my childhood was naturally drawn towards the study, and that’s why I write so much about prehistoric life. They do say to write what you know and love.

Besides “Three Go Back”, and other novels set in prehistoric times, I also write action and adventure novels in the tradition of the pulp magazines of the 1930s and ‘40s, a period I also love. My interest varies from western to detective and space ships. Whether in the far-flung galactic worlds of the future, or the eons in our past, to the modern day mystery, I love the written word, and enjoy telling a story. I hope you will read my stories, and I’m sure you will see that love I project into my characters.

Blog http://jurnovels.blogspot.com

Blog http://pulplair.blogspot.com

Tom’s Amazon Page http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B008MM81CM

Tom’s Website http://www15.brinkster.com/jur1/index.html

Tom’s Bio

            I was born in 1940, going through elementary schools in Seymour and Wichita Falls, Texas. My dad was a cowboy and cook, and often worked at each profession, which required a lot of moves. He wanted me to follow in his footsteps, but I had more of a studious nature, and didn’t want to spend my life on farms and ranches. I was different from most kids my age, I didn’t want to be a cowboy, and never liked riding horses. My family lived something of an itinerant’s lifestyle, and we never stayed in one place long enough for me to develop friendships. In high school I was working on the ranch my dad was foreman of while other high school students my age were dating.

            When I turned 18, I joined the Army as an MP, and was off to see the world, never regretting my decision to leave the life my family had. I had some pretty good assignments, such as a three-year tour in France, but then there was a one-year period patrolling the DMZ between North and South Korea under fire, and 13 months in Vietnam. But I did enjoy my twenty years as a military cop, and took some college courses in the process.

            After retirement, my wife, Ginger and I started FADING SHADOWS, a small press imprint, publishing a hobby magazine, ECHOES, for the next twenty years, as well as half a dozen genre fiction titles, which re-fired my interest in writing.

            Today I leave the publishing for others, and continue my love of writing. It has been a good life, and I in no way degrade those men and women on ranches and farms. It just wasn’t a life for me.