Ask the Authors (Fandemonium)

[Tok'Ra Hostess]

I am seriously considering joining NaNoWriMo in November. Have any of you authors ever done that whole, 50,000 words in 30 days thing? Just curious.

[Elizabeth Christensen]

You'll still have Atlantis' continuity to keep in mind.

And that's a very good thing. Since the question was about SG-1, that's all I was really thinking about. Of course, Atlantis's continuity could impact the SG-1 world; obviously that's not a new concept. More crossover potential now, I would think.

I am seriously considering joining NaNoWriMo in November. Have any of you authors ever done that whole, 50,000 words in 30 days thing? Just curious.

Go for it. I haven't done NaNoWriMo, but I just flew through about 40,000 words in the month of August for my new Atlantis draft. How many of them are good words is something I'll sort out when I get to the end.

[KarenMiller]

Can anyone give us a "preview" of some ideas that might be coming down the line for the novels? Please?

Ah, okay ... you twisted my arm ...

SG-1, offworld, fun guest character, medical crisis, Janet does a whoopsie, Daniel's appendicitis ...

Howzat???

And Alliances is almost ready to roll. Wheee!

[Frostfox]

Ah, okay ... you twisted my arm ...

SG-1, offworld, fun guest character, medical crisis, Janet does a whoopsie, Daniel's appendicitis ...

Howzat???

And Alliances is almost ready to roll. Wheee!

Is it due to be published on schedule?

I finished 'Survival of the Fittest' on Friday, could do with another 'fix'.

FF

[Suzotchka]

Ah, okay ... you twisted my arm ...

SG-1, offworld, fun guest character, medical crisis, Janet does a whoopsie, Daniel's appendicitis ...

Howzat???

And Alliances is almost ready to roll. Wheee!

Thanks! Wheeee!

Can I ask another question? How long does it take between getting the concept for the novel and the actual publication? Maybe you could describe the process it (& you) goes through? Thanks!

[Gate Geek]

And that's a very good thing. Since the question was about SG-1, that's all I was really thinking about. Of course, Atlantis's continuity could impact the SG-1 world; obviously that's not a new concept. More crossover potential now, I would think.

Crossovers? Ach! Please tell me this is not going to happen to the novels. Or at the very least kept very low key......

Go for it. I haven't done NaNoWriMo, but I just flew through about 40,000 words in the month of August for my new Atlantis draft. How many of them are good words is something I'll sort out when I get to the end.

New Atlantis draft huh?? SQUEE!!! Can you provide any insights?? Please, with sugar on top???

[KarenMiller]

Thanks! Wheeee!

Can I ask another question? How long does it take between getting the concept for the novel and the actual publication? Maybe you could describe the process it (& you) goes through? Thanks!

You're welcome! And I'll be happy to answer you but not for a day or two, I'm crunching another major deadline.

[Elizabeth Christensen]

Crossovers? Ach! Please tell me this is not going to happen to the novels. Or at the very least kept very low key......

Sorry, didn't mean to cause panic. I don't have any plans along those lines and don't know that anyone else does either; it just seems to me that if an Atlantis plot had a need for Daniel or Sam to pop up for a scene or two, it would be easier once there's no conclusive evidence that they're doing something other than dropping by Atlantis. Y'know, theoretically. <shrug>

New Atlantis draft huh?? SQUEE!!! Can you provide any insights?? Please, with sugar on top???

Since the book plan is awaiting MGM's thumbs-up, not yet, because any and all aspects could still change. Instead, how about a teaser for the due-in-October Exogenesis, done Karen-style:

Atlantis, chaos on the ocean floor, jumpers flown past their limits, the city itself in peril, a planet with a bizarre legacy, an order disobeyed, the strange place that is Rodney McKay's mind ...

Sonny will have to let me know if I left anything out. And as a quick-hit answer to Suzotchka's question about process: for The Chosen, the first draft took us about ten weeks, then there was a story edit (logic and continuity), a line edit (grammar, etc), and then it went to the producers and MGM for their approval. Total time until print was almost exactly a year. Exo went a bit faster because we were already in a groove.

[Gate Geek]

Since the book plan is awaiting MGM's thumbs-up, not yet, because any and all aspects could still change. Instead, how about a teaser for the due-in-October Exogenesis, done Karen-style:

Atlantis, chaos on the ocean floor, jumpers flown past their limits, the city itself in peril, a planet with a bizarre legacy, an order disobeyed, the strange place that is Rodney McKay's mind ...

I think you should put up an excerpt. *hint hint*

Is it October yet? I'm not a patient person.

[Suzotchka]

Since the book plan is awaiting MGM's thumbs-up, not yet, because any and all aspects could still change. Instead, how about a teaser for the due-in-October Exogenesis, done Karen-style:

Atlantis, chaos on the ocean floor, jumpers flown past their limits, the city itself in peril, a planet with a bizarre legacy, an order disobeyed, the strange place that is Rodney McKay's mind ...

Ooooo! *Wonders who disobeys an order* Thanks for the teaser!

Sonny will have to let me know if I left anything out. And as a quick-hit answer to Suzotchka's question about process: for The Chosen, the first draft took us about ten weeks, then there was a story edit (logic and continuity), a line edit (grammar, etc), and then it went to the producers and MGM for their approval. Total time until print was almost exactly a year. Exo went a bit faster because we were already in a groove.

Thanks for the quick-hit-answer. I appreciate it. I thought there had to be more steps than: you write it, it gets spell-checked, it gets printed.

[sonny1]

Ooooo! *Wonders who disobeys an order* Thanks for the teaser!

Thanks for the quick-hit-answer. I appreciate it. I thought there had to be more steps than: you write it, it gets spell-checked, it gets printed.

Hi Suzotchka,

Yeah, there are, Beth abbreviated for brevity.

The speed at which Exogenesis was written was a rare exception because the entire story and all its permutations were fully formed in my head before a word was written (okay, aside from two scenes that I'll mention below).

The core idea for The Chosen was more Beth's idea, and since we wrote it first, Exogenesis was bubbling away in my brain and fermenting nicely. With The Chosen away, I then wrote out a 4,000 word book plan, Exogenesis, for Fandemonium and MGM. Once it was okayed in principle, which was mid February, I started bashing out the most amazing crud that was, in essence, just 'this bit has to go here, and these guys over here do this' then emailed it to Beth every night. Since we're on opposite sides of the planet, by the time I started back to work on it the next day, Beth had converted the previous night’s mash into incredibly well-rendered prose with some amazing one-liners. We had the rough draft, probably about 60K of it, down in about 2 weeks, and a reasonably good first draft in 6 weeks. Not much sleep or social life, but when you're on a roll... Still, going through my files, we had over 30 versions (the difference between versions towards the end might only be a few words) of some chapters before it reached the story edit phase.

The story edit required changing the order of two earlier scenes and the addition of one scene that involves Rodney poking through the guts of some tech, and being very edgy about it considering what he can see through a glass window (it made sense to add this as a connective scene). Because there is so much happening in three, and then four, locations, all of which was impacting the other locations, and time dependent, we couldn't fiddle too much with story edit aside from that first addition. Yet even those few details took me a couple of weeks - partly because we did have to be so careful with continuity, but also because as you’re going through it, you pick up other rough spots, and then that causes ripple effects throughout. A story edit can take a long time for that reason, but it’s also a great way to tweak the whole novel and smooth out bumps. Once I'd done the rough story edit, I'd send it to Beth, who them turned it into something legible (Beth can read minds, BTW).

Not sure how long it took for Beth to do the line edit but I recall one chapter needed a lot of weeding. Not surprisingly, this was the one chapter I hadn't done as much mental homework in terms of pre-planning, which is unusual for me because this was about the local culture, and I normally do a lot of work on that. I think in this instance the problem was that a slight continuity change caused a bit of double writing by both of us. In terms of teaching writing, I always impress upon people, integrate your culture with events, so the reason why events or actions are occurring is a cultural imperative (ie, character driven) instead of describing the culture as a flat info dump. In other words, create a culture on a separate document (even if it is only in your head), then dip into it as needed. I think this chapter was a bit info dump, and needed to be trimmed.

We didn’t need a second line edit except for this one chapter, but that’s more a function of working in a partnership, because you pick up each other’s idiosyncrasies and adjust as you write, more or less canceling most out as you go. Then the publisher goes over the ‘finished’ draft, may make a few more suggestions, and then the ‘final’ draft goes off to MGM, including their legal department. It only took about 2 hours to amend MGM’s comments in The Chosen and that was all to do with ratings (ie, some passages sounded a bit M rated, cut them back to PG), to amend something and have it back to the publisher. Fingers crossed that will be the same this time. Sometimes it’s just a case of justifying a remark, or even expletive, to MGM. For example, Carson Beckett used ‘holy crap’ in The Rising, so I used it in The Chosen, and gave a reference to the fact that it had been used on the show.

Next comes the galley proof. That’s what it looks like when it’s printed as a novel. As writers you tend to pick up a lot of tiny errors on a galley, because printed text on an A4 paper in 12 pt font Time double spaced can look a whole lot different on a paperback sized page in Baker 10 font single spaced.

I generally format a near finished draft in Quark anyway, send it to Beth and we both print it out and read it (out loud is always the best) before it goes to MGM, so the galley step may be missed for us if there is a deadline at the printers (miss the deadline and it can throw it out by as much as a month), and the Quark version that I create, although not the same, is a close facsimile to the version Fandemonium creates.

Hopefully we’ll have a chance this time with Exogenesis to read a full pre-print galley, but that will depend on whether MGM gets it back in time, and since they have a zillion other tasks on their hands or may need to check something with Legal (could be something very simple like any copyright issues using a pop culture reference like, say, Star Trek references), the delays can compound. That can result in a delayed publishing, through no fault of anyone, it's just the way the industry is.

In between all that, Beth and I ask key people to read one of the final drafts. In my case, since Exogenesis is actually part of my thesis (the other parts include my other Stargate novels) several of my cohort group, well-published writers all, have also read it. That picked up very little, but there’s always good feedbackand in one instance, a very crucial continuity glitch involving one word.

Having several top name writer, both fans and non-fans of Stargate (which give an excellent perspective) run their eyes over it and comment, and give it the thumbs up (between them, they have something like 30 million books in print), is also an invaluable ‘unofficial’ editing process that many published writers, including top name writers, use in one form or another. For example, I’m reading Jennifer Fallon’s draft of the second novel from the Tide Lords series, The Gods of Amyrantha due for publication in November 2007. (First novel, The Immortal Prince is due for worldwide publication in January 2007). Brilliantly executed story, BTW. I’m not a fantasy reader much, I’m more SF, but this has me utterly hooked.

So, as you can see, the process is not so simple or so short, it’s just very compacted in our case, and all involved are like the hapless storyteller from the wonderful film Allegro Non Troppo.

Just pre-empting any questons about writing partnerships; we don't work to a hard and fast rule. Beth and I compliment each other's skills, and we tend to roll with whatever happens to work at the time. For instance, Beth had written the entire 'who disobeys an order' scene(s) with its consequences and conversation at the end of the book, and the first thing I wrote even before the book plan, because it triggered the entire story idea of how this had happened and what would be the consequences, were the Rodney and Turpi scenes. Beth and I each wrote those scenes unrelated to one another, waiting for the line edit on The Chosen (Beth knew the broad idea of Exgenesis), and they became key scenes around which much of the personal drama (versus physical drama) evolved . And, naturally, during the writing, we each tweaked those scenes at different points without any specific reference to who wrote what. By the time you reach the end, it's impossible to untangle who wrote what bit, as the writing process is very organic, very synergistic.


Sonny

[Suzotchka]

So, as you can see, the process is not so simple or so short, it’s just very compacted in our case, and all involved are like the hapless storyteller from the wonderful film Allegro Non Troppo.

Sonny

Thank you for elaborating. It seems as if it is a very complex process. I give all of you a lot of credit. I don't think this is something I could ever do. And you all seem to really enjoy it (writing).

As I said before, I am enjoying all the novels - so thank you all again!

~ Suz

[Cinc1]

Is this correct for what’s coming up?

SG-1 #8: Alliances by Karen Miller due out September 15, 2006
SGA #5: Exogenesis by Sonny Whitelaw & Elizabeth Christensen due mid-October 2006
SG-1 short story (untitled?) by Sabine C. Bauer in Stargate SG-1/Atlantis The Official Magazine #13 due late October 2006

Is this all that’s been announced so far? That only covers the next six weeks or so and nothing beyond. Does Fandemonium hope to continue with the same schedule?

SG-1 #9 in mid-November 2006
SGA #6 in mid-December 2006
SGA short story in The Official Magazine #14 in late December 2006
SG-1 #10 in mid-January 2007
SGA #7 in mid-February 2007

I guess I’m hooked on these books and stories! I want to thank the authors again for producing such great entertainment. I can’t wait to find out what’s next!

[KarenMiller]

Is this correct for what’s coming up?

SG-1 #8: Alliances by Karen Miller due out September 15, 2006

I guess I’m hooked on these books and stories! I want to thank the authors again for producing such great entertainment. I can’t wait to find out what’s next!

My book will be a bit later than the 15th, due to delays with cover approval. It's at the printer now, though, so should be ready pretty soon! I'm all excited ...

As far as the rest of the schedule is concerned, if you check out the website

http://www.stargatenovels.com

you'll see the schedule.

Thanks so much for your enthusiasm, I know all the authors really really appreciate it!

[Tok'Ra Hostess]

Ooh! I just saw on the site that the SG-1 books are now also available to be shipped from the US and for a relatively reasonable price.