Interview: Douglas Cohen

Douglas Cohen is a 2000 graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy and Science Fiction Writing Workshop.  He is the former editor of Realms of Fantasy, where he worked for six and a half years.  In the magazine’s final year, they published their 100^th issue, won a Nebula Award, and were nominated for a second one.  Along with John Joseph Adams, he is the co-editor of Oz Reimagined, whose contributors include Seanan McGuire, Tad Williams and Jane Yolen, among many more.  His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in such venues as Space & Time, Fantastic Stories, Weird Tales, and Interzone.  He is currently putting another layer of polish on his novel.

Find Douglas Cohen on Twitter: @Douglas_Cohen.

Keep up with Oz Reimagined news at:  http://www.johnjosephadams.com/oz-reimagined/.

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Congratulations on the launch of Oz Reimagined!  What first brought this idea to light?

Interview: Author Patricia Bray

Author Patricia Bray will be a guest lecturer at this summer’s Odyssey Writing Workshop. She has written a dozen novels, including Devlin’s Luck, which won the 2003 Compton Crook Award for the best first novel in the field of science fiction or fantasy.  A multi-genre author whose career spans both epic fantasy and Regency romance, her books have been translated into Russian, German, Portuguese and Hebrew.  She’s also spent time on the editorial side of the business, as the co-editor of After Hours: Tales from the Ur-Bar (DAW, March 2011) and The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity (DAW, March 2012).

Patricia lives in a New England college town, where she combines her writing with a full-time career as a Systems Analyst, ensuring that she is never more than a few feet away from a keyboard.  Visit her website and blog at http://www.patriciabray.com.

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You are a multi-genre author: how do you find the writing techniques for epic fantasy and Regency romance compare?

Interview: Adam-Troy Castro

Author Adam-Troy Castro will be a guest lecturer at this summer’s Odyssey Writing Workshop.  He is the author of the novel Emissaries from the Dead (winner of the Philip K. Dick Award) and co-author of the novella “The Astronaut from Wyoming” (winner of the Seiun). His short fiction has been nominated for eight Nebulas, three Stokers, and two Hugos.  His most recent project is a series of six middle-grade novels that includes Gustav Gloom and the People Taker and the recently released Gustav Gloom and the Nightmare Vault, which bring his total number of books well into the mid-twenties.  Adam lives in Boynton Beach, Florida, with his wife Judi and a manic assortment of cats that include Uma Furman, Meow Farrow, and Harley Quinn.

Visit Adam on the Web at http://sff.net/people/adam-troy/index2.html

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You write both short and novel-length fiction. Do you have a favorite? Are the tools required different for each?

Interview: Holly Black

Author Holly Black will be a guest lecturer at this summer’s Odyssey Writing Workshop.  She is the bestselling author of contemporary fantasy novels for teens and children.  Her first book, Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale, was published in 2002 by Simon & Schuster and received starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, and was included in the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults. Two other books share the same universe: Valiant (2005), and Ironside, the sequel to Tithe.  Valiant was a finalist for the Mythopoeic Award for Young Readers and the recipient of the Andre Norton Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature.

Holly collaborated with Caldecott award-winning artist Tony DiTerlizzi to create the bestselling Spiderwick Chronicles: The Field Guide, The Seeing Stone, Lucinda’s Secret, The Ironwood Tree and The Wrath of Mulgarath, the last of which climbed to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. These were followed by the lavishly illustrated Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to The Fantastical World Around You, The Notebook for Fantastical Observations, and Care and Feeding of Sprites. To date, the books have been translated into 32 languages. The Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles series also includes The Nixie’s Song, A Giant Problem and The Wyrm King.

The Spiderwick Chronicles were adapted into a film by Paramount Pictures in conjunction with Nickelodeon Films. Released in February 2008, the film stars Freddie Highmore and Sarah Bolger, with Mark Waters as the director.

Holly frequently contributes to anthologies, and has co-edited three of them: Geektastic (with Cecil Castellucci, 2009), Zombies vs. Unicorns (with Justine Larbalestier, 2010), and Bordertown (with Ellen Kushner, 2011). Her first collection of short fiction, Poison Eaters and Other Stories, came out in 2010 from Small Beer Press. She has just finished the third book in her Eisner-nominated graphic novel series, The Good Neighbors, and is working on Red Glove, the second novel in The Curse Workers series; White Cat, the first in the series, came out in May 2010.

Holly lives in Massachusetts with her husband, Theo, in a house with a secret library.  For more about Holly Black, visit her website at http://www.blackholly.com/ or her blog at http://blackholly.livejournal.com.

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Once you started writing seriously, how long did it take you to sell your first piece? What were you doing wrong in your writing in those early days?

Interview: Jack Ketchum

Jack Ketchum will be a guest lecturer at this summer’s Odyssey Writing Workshop. Ketchum is the pseudonym for a former actor, singer, teacher, literary agent, lumber salesman, and soda jerk–a former flower child and baby boomer who figures that in 1956 Elvis, dinosaurs and horror probably saved his life. His first novel, Off Season, prompted the Village Voice to publicly scold its publisher in print for publishing violent pornography. He personally disagrees but is perfectly happy to let you decide for yourself. His short story “The Box” won a 1994 Bram Stoker Award from the HWA, his story “Gone” won again in 2000–and in 2003 he won Stokers for both best collection for Peaceable Kingdom and best long fiction for Closing Time. He has written over twenty novels and novellas, the latest of which are The Woman and I’m Not Sam, both written with director Lucky McKee. Five of his books have been filmed to date–The Girl Next Door, The Lost, Red, Offspring and The Woman, the last of which won him and McKee the Best Screenplay Award at the prestigious Sitges Film Festival in Germany. His stories are collected in The Exit At Toledo Blade Boulevard, Broken on the Wheel of Sex, Sleep Disorder (with Edward Lee), Peaceable Kingdom and Closing Time and Other Stories. His novella The Crossings was cited by Stephen King in his speech at the 2003 National Book Awards. In 2011 he was elected Grand Master by the World Horror Convention. You can learn more about Jack Ketchum at his website http://www.jackketchum.net.

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What is it about horror that fascinates you? Is there a certain element or style that always has to be present for a story to be horror?

ODYSSEY WRITING WORKSHOPS CHARITABLE TRUST ANNOUNCES SUMMER 2013 WORKSHOP

Make a quantum leap in your writing this summer! The Odyssey Writing Workshop for fantasy, science fiction, and horror writers will run from June 10 to July 19 in Manchester, NH. Participate in the program that has led 58% of graduates to professional publication, with their work appearing in top magazines and published by major publishing houses. Challenge yourself and pack two years of learning into six weeks of intense work. Four-hour classes five days a week, an advanced curriculum, daily writing and critiquing assignments, weekly stories/chapters due, in-depth feedback on your work, personal guidance from Jeanne Cavelos, former senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell and winner of the World Fantasy Award, and guests Nancy Holder, Holly Black, Adam-Troy Castro, Jack Ketchum, Patricia Bray, and Sheila Williams. The early action application deadline is January 31, and regular application deadline is April 8. Four scholarships and one work/study position are available. Read more here: http://www.sff.net/odyssey/workshop.html.

Interview: Sheila Williams

Sheila Williams will be a guest lecturer at this summer’s Odyssey Writing Workshop. She is the two-time Hugo-Award-winning editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine. She started at Asimov’s in June  1982 and served as the executive editor of Analog from 1998 until 2004. She is also the co-founder of the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing  (formerly the Isaac Asimov Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing). In addition, she coordinates the websites for Asimov’s(www.asimovs.com).

Sheila is the editor or co-editor of twenty-five anthologies. The most recent are Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine’s 30th Anniversary Anthology (Tachyon Publications, 2007), which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was on the 2007 Locus Recommended Reading list, and the 2010 Enter A Future: Fantastic Tales from Asimov’s Science Fiction, which is exclusively available for Amazon’s Kindle.

Sheila received her bachelor’s degree from Elmira College in Elmira, New York, and her master’s from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. During her junior year she studied at the London School of Economics. She lives in New York City with her husband, David Bruce, and her two daughters.

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What is the most common mistake that writers make in their manuscript submissions to you? Most editors develop pet peeves as they encounter manuscripts that continually violate submission guidelines or make some other irritating mistake. Which one bothers you the most?

ODYSSEY WRITING WORKSHOPS CHARITABLE TRUST ANNOUNCES WINTER 2013 ONLINE CLASSES

For seventeen years, Odyssey has pursued its mission to help developing writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror improve their work by holding its annual six-week, in-person workshop in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Three years ago, Odyssey expanded its mission, taking the teaching techniques that are so effective at the workshop and adapting them to create online classes. Director Jeanne Cavelos explains, “Technology allows us to hold live online class meetings, so students can ask questions and participate in the class. Each course is designed to provide intensive focus on a particular aspect of fiction writing, and challenging homework assignments help students to improve their skills. Feedback from the instructor and from classmates allows students to gauge their progress. Each student also has an individual meeting with instructor.” Courses provide a supportive yet challenging, energizing atmosphere, with class size limited to fourteen students. While courses are designed for adult writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, interested writers of other genres are welcome to apply.

Last winter, Odyssey had a huge response to the three online courses offered. Writers from all over the world applied. This year, Odyssey is offering three different online courses covering some of the most critical issues for developing writers:

Interview: Nancy Holder

Nancy Holder will be the writer-in-residence at this summer’s Odyssey Writing Workshop. She is an award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of adult, young adult, middle grade, and early reader work, both fiction and nonfiction. She has sold approximately 80 novels and 200 short stories, comic books, and essays in various genres. She has taught creative writing classes at the University of California at San Diego, the Maui Writers Retreat and Conference, and other conferences and colleges, and has been on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing for seven years. She has also served on the boards of Clarion (San Diego) and the Horror Writers Association. You can learn more about Nancy and her work at her website: http://nancyholder.com/

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You are an incredibly busy and successful writer, writing in different genres, for different ages, in different formats. How do you keep up? Is there ever a danger of having too much on the go?

Interview: Alex Hughes

Alex has written since early childhood, and loves great stories in any form including science fiction, fantasy, and mystery. Over the years, Alex has lived in many neighborhoods of the sprawling metro Atlanta area. Decatur, the neighborhood on which Clean is centered, was Alex’s college home.

On any given week you can find Alex in the kitchen cooking gourmet Italian food, watching hours of police procedural dramas, and typing madly.

Alex is a graduate of the 2011 Odyssey Writing Workshop. You can learn more about Alex at www.ahugheswriter.com.

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Congratulations on the upcoming launch of Clean! It’s been great to see so many success stories among the Odyssey alumni. Can you tell us about this dystopian thriller?