Interview with Sue Bolich
The Blog Ring of Power Presents...
An Interview with Author Sue Bolich
Author Sue Bolich is here today to talk about the creative process and to talk about her Masters of the Elements series. This is a particularly special interview for me - Sue is battling cancer, and the medical bills are piling up. Please help Sue and show your support by purchasing her novels as every little bit of financial help is desperately needed.
This is part three of a five-part interview. Be sure to check out the other BRoP sites for the rest of the interview:
Part 1 @ Sandra's site - Monday, December 3
Part 2 @ Dean's site - Tuesday, December 4
Part 4 @ Teresa's site - Thursday, December 6
Part 5 @ Emily's site - Friday, December 7
BRoP: Where do you get your story ideas?
Sue: Sometimes a strong sensory image will float a whole scene into my head and then I have to go away and write. My writers’ workshop has a Short Story in a Week challenge twice a year where members provide random words that must be used in the story. I’ve gotten great stuff from focusing on one or another of those words. Sometimes ideas just arrive from nowhere while walking through the woods or riding or mowing the yard or whatever. It’s a matter of a relaxed mind, I think. Still another reason to get out of the house and away from the screen.
BRoP: Do you have a specific writing style?
Sue: No. The story dictates how it wants to be told. Sometimes that is first person, others third; sometimes it’s present tense, once even second person present tense (tough sell). I like rich visual images and immersion into the world, but I’ve learned to tone it down in deference to readers who want the story to move a little faster.
BRoP: How do you develop your plots and characters? Do you use any set formula?
Sue: I’ve always been one to let each sentence flow organically to the next and let the story and characters build themselves. Of late, however, I’ve been more organized about characters, trying to find some unique aspect to build on. I now put together matrices that help me know them in advance, what drives them, what they look like, why they act the way they do, etc. I think it deepens the story to know things about your characters that inform what they do but aren’t necessarily part of the plot.
BRoP: Are you a “plotter” or a “pantser” (do you plan/outline the story ahead of time or write “by the seat of your pants”)?
Sue: Oh, I am so definitely a pantser. Outlining would kill the fun of writing for me. I keep a loose chronological outline of plot points that occur to me. Sometimes I write scenes ahead and stick them in that file in order, so I can then write bridges between those scenes and move ahead. But usually the story has to reveal itself to me while I’m writing it. My subconscious just needs the freedom to pull stuff together in the background. It usually delivers something vaguely coherent at some point. Revision can be a long process pulling it together.
BRoP: Do you use critique partners or beta readers? Why or why not?
Sue: I helped found Other Worlds Writers’ Workshop (www.otherworlds.net) back in 1998, and it has been a godsend to improving my writing and helping me get published regularly. There is nothing like a set of voracious, fantasy-loving readers/writers to point out the egregious plot holes and lame characters before they make it in front of an editor.
BRoP: How much time do you spend on research? What type of research do you do?
Sue: I do spend a lot of time on research, especially if it has an historical element. My library is huge, and I love finding original sources like diaries and letters to get inside the minds of people in the past. I read a lot of non-fiction to absorb eras and attitudes and overall historical arcs. When it is straight fantasy I still research things like riverside industries and commerce to understand why towns and cities develop where and how they do and what drives everyday life in the world I imagine. Good worldbuilding comes from having a really well-rounded, functional notion of your world.
BRoP: What format is your book available in (print, e-book, audio book, etc.)?
Jason: Both
Where can readers can stalk you:
Blog | Facebook | Goodreads | Twitter | Amazon
S.A. BOLICH is a full-time freelancer whose books come with warnings from reviewers of sleepless nights and missed bus stops ahead as they suck you in and refuse to let go. Her first novel, "Firedancer," Book 1 of the Masters of the Elements series, was released in September 2011 by Sky Warrior Books, with Book 2, "Windrider," appearing in Spring 2012. Her short fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, On Spec, Damnation Books, Defending the Future IV: No Man's Land, and Wolfsongs 2, among others, and is upcoming in several more. Currently she is working on "Seaborn," Book 3 of Masters of the Elements.
FIREDANCER: What do you suppose that fire thinks about as it cooks your dinner behind its cage of containment stone? Jetta ak'Kal knows--but no one listens to a Firedancer who has failed to protect her assigned village from an assault by living flame. The Ancient, the strange, elemental fire imprisoned at the heart of the world, took her lifemate, her reputation as the most talented Dancer of her generation, and nearly her life. Now her clan demands she redeem herself, yet seem strangely indifferent to her insistence that the Dance itself that has always bound the Ancient seems to be failing. Assigned to Annam, a village with no previous experience of fire, Jetta and her new partner, Settak, find themselves battling the naive ignorance of the villagers, the hostility of arrogant Windriders whose mastery of air could kill them both with the flick of a finger, and occasionally each other as they struggle to find new and more powerful forms of the Dance. Pursued by fire crawling up through every crack, by a new love she does not want, and a nagging suspicion that there is more to her assignment than her clan bothered to tell her, Jetta must forge unprecedented alliances in this high and beautiful place before the Ancient breaks free--for if it does, there will no longer be anything left to fight for.WINDRIDER:
Sheshan ak'Kal has sung to Wind all his life--but he never learned the eerie songs of Wind's angry sister, the Hag. And when the Hag killed his love, she killed his songs, as well. Now she is threatening the hard-won peace and fragile new love he has found with the most unlikely of women. Forced to a journey he does not want to make, Sheshan finds himself pursued by a host of evil memories and a keening, impossible note he does not want to hear...and must learn to sing, or it will kill everything he loves.