Tasha is an award-winning author, occasional librarian and cat owner. Her books include the Books of Ambha duology and The Jasmine Throne, (which is out now).

When she isn’t writing, Tasha likes to cry over TV shows, buy too many notebooks, and indulge her geeky passion for reading about South Asian history. She lives with her family in a mildly haunted house in London.

In this episode Tasha and I discuss:

• Why she wanted to depict different kinds of strength and how she pulled it off.
• Her advice for tying together multiple points of view. (Her novel has ten POVs!)
• How to write a book proposal for a novel and other advice for getting published.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Tasha Suri

Tasha Suri is an award-winning author, occasional librarian and cat owner. Her books include the Books of Ambha duology and The Jasmine Throne, out in June. When she isn’t writing, Tasha likes to cry over TV shows, buy too many notebooks, and indulge her geeky passion for reading about South Asian history. She lives with her family in a mildly haunted house in London.

You can find Tasha on her website or follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The Jasmine Throne

Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne begins the powerful Burning Kingdoms trilogy, in which two women—a long-imprisoned princess and a maidservant in possession of forbidden magic—come together to rewrite the fate of an empire.

Exiled by her despotic brother when he claimed their father’s kingdom, Malini spends her days trapped in the Hirana: an ancient, cliffside temple that was once the source of the magical deathless waters, but is now little more than a decaying ruin.

A servant in the regent’s household, Priya makes the treacherous climb to the top of the Hirana every night to clean Malini’s chambers. She is happy to play the role of a drudge so long as it keeps anyone from discovering her ties to the temple and the dark secret of her past.

One is a vengeful princess seeking to steal a throne. The other is a powerful priestess seeking to save her family. Their destinies will become irrevocably tangled.

And together, they will set an empire ablaze.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 361

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 361: Villains and Villainy, Antagonists and Obstacles: Crafting Conflict in Epic Fantasy – Interview with Tasha Suri appeared first on DIY MFA.

When I read Gail Carriger’s interpretation of the heroine’s journey, it struck a chord with me (imagine angelic chorus here). I thought that Instead of reviewing the structure and analyzing a genre story using the structure, as I did with the hero’s journey and the virgin’s promise, I’m going to let you know about Carriger’s approach to the heroine’s journey, its structure, and what it taught me about the stories I gravitate toward.

Carriger’s Background

Gail Carriger graduated university with an honors degree in archaeology, with minors in theology, geology, anthropology, philosophy, and classics. She is a hugely successful author, has taught classes, sat on panels, and discussed mythic books with readers, librarians, and booksellers.

Every time she mentioned the heroine’s journey, people asked her what she meant. So, she decided to put her years of learning and practice into a book.

Her Approach

After reviewing the hero’s journey for context, Carriger uses three core goddess-based ancient myths as the basis for an understanding of the heroine’s journey narrative beats and themes. She draws on Demeter from ancient Greek myth, Isis from ancient Egyptian myth, and Inanna from ancient Sumerian myth.

Then, she explores the critical, social, and academic disenfranchisement of the heroine’s journey in contrast to its commercial success. Carriger finishes with a breakdown of how the heroine’s journey can be used to create a compelling narrative in a variety of genres. I encourage you to pick up The Heroine’s Journey for yourselves if you want to dig into these last two points.

The Structure

Carriger presents the heroine’s journey beats in a simple list with italics to demark the major divisions. I’m going to add a little formatting to make the structure even clearer.

·         Act 1: The Descent

1.       Descent precipitated by a broken familial network.

2.       Heroine’s pleas are ignored, and she abdicates power.

3.       Withdrawal is involuntary.

4.       Family offers aid but no solution.

·         Act 2: The Search

5.       Heroine’s loss of family yields isolation/risk.

6.       She employs disguise/subversion and alters her identity.

7.       She appeals to and forms a surrogate network (found family).

8.       She visits the underworld, aided by friends/family.

·         Act 3: The Ascent

9.       Success in her search results in a new or reborn familial network.

10.     This ties to negotiation and compromise that will benefit all.

What I learned from The Heroine’s Journey

While Carriger’s heroine’s journey shares much with Kim Hudson’s virgin’s promise (family issues, disguise, emphasis on healing family rifts or newfound family, the heroine or virgin may be of either gender/any sexual identity), Hudson’s book, though I liked it better than Vogler’s (The Writer’s Journey), didn’t resonate with me in the same way as Carriger’s. I had to sit with the thought for a while before I figured out why.

Carriger’s beats are more accessible. They’re unambiguous. I didn’t have to work out what they might refer to. And I saw—so clearly—that this pattern is present in all my stories. Every. Single. One. I’ve been inadvertently trying to make heroes out of my heroines, and it’s caused all kinds of writerly problems. Carriger’s book was a revelation. It will help me to stay true to my stories, my characters, and their arcs.

Though the heroine’s journey is ideally suited to romance, mythic or fairy tale retellings, and middle grade and young adult stories, it can apply to many genres and categories. If readers are expecting a mythic hero’s journey, however, they may be disappointed when confronted by a heroine’s journey story. The key is to clearly signal what kind of story you’re writing and to set up reader expectations so they won’t feel betrayed. Again, I’ll defer to Carriger with respect to how to do this and invite you to read her book.

Over to You

I’ve shared my experience with The Heroine’s Journey in the hope that it might prove helpful to other writers of mythic journeys. If you’ve felt that your stories or characters are like square pegs trying to fit into hound holes (or, vice versa), you may be relying too heavily on a journey or archetypes that aren’t suited to the stories you want to tell.

Have you read a writing craft book or attended a workshop that shed a revelatory light on your work or process? If you have, and you’re willing to, please share your experience in the comments. You never know who it might help.

Until next time, keep speculating and see where it takes you!

Melanie Marttila creates worlds from whole cloth. She’s a dreamsinger, an ink alchemist, and an unabashed learning mutt. Her speculative short fiction has appeared in Bastion Science Fiction Magazine, On Spec Magazine, and Sudbury Ink. She lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, where she spends her days working as a corporate trainer. She blogs at https://www.melaniemarttila.ca and you can find her on Facebook and Twitter.

The post Mythic Storytelling: The Heroine’s Journey by Gail Carriger appeared first on DIY MFA.

About Sherry Thomas

USA Today bestseller Sherry Thomas is one of the most acclaimed historical romance authors writing today and a two-time RITA award winner.

The Interview

Sara Farmer: I love how Mrs. Treadles deals with the men in her office. It’s a scene that some might see as imposing modern sensibilities on the past. But I’ve learned lately that the Victorian era was much more fluid in terms of the role of women than has traditionally been thought. As the author of a series filled with strong Victorian women, can you speak to that? Has it been challenging to preserve the authenticity of the women in the series? 

Sherry Thomas: Long ago, to research a historical romance set in the Northwest Frontier of the British Raj (today’s Pakistan, near where Osama Bin Laden hid out for many years), I read a travelogue written by a Victorian female big game hunter. To this day, I don’t think I’ve come across a more resolute or more opinionated person. This woman knew exactly what she wanted and did exactly what she wanted. And the best thing?  Nowhere in her narrative did she ever give the impression that she was the only one of her kind, that she wasn’t “like the other women.” To the contrary, I had the feeling she knew plenty of women like her.

Now this woman was also a product of her time: casual prejudice rolled off her commentary. So while she might hold many beliefs we find abhorrent today, she didn’t have any doubts about her ability or her right to conduct her life as she wished. 

I think today’s audience, especially today’s American audience, sometimes forget how deeply Victorian women of a certain class believed in their own superiority. They were definitely strong-willed, lol, bolstered by all that class privilege. They’d directed servants and other lesser beings their entire lives; they might have paid lip service to the more traditionally “feminine” virtues, but there was very little meekness in them. 

This is what Mrs. Watson reminded Mrs. Treadles about, in the scene before Mrs. Treadles’s confrontation with the managers and directors of the company: the power she already had, by being the lawful owner of the enterprise. That she had the right to fire the men who ran the company.

So I’ve never found it remotely inauthentic to write strong women set in the Victorian times—hello, Irene Adler. What I do feel a twinge about, now and then, is how free my characters are from the other prejudices of their racist, colonial, homophobic, snobbish, and judgmental era. But then again, I am not writing for Victorians, but 21^st century readers and so I’ve decided that they are exceptions, women of true wisdom and clarity of view who understand what’s really important and which rules and prejudices exist only to reinforce existing social hierarchies.  

Sara: The cast of characters in the “Lady Sherlock” series is made up of societal “others,” even though some, like Lord Ingram, have learned to play the part. When I took a Writers’ League class with you a year ago, you mentioned that English is your second language. Did that experience inform the creation of your characters? Do you feel that your different perspective on the English language brings something special to your writing? Is there any aspect that consistently gives you trouble?

Sherry: It wasn’t until recently that I came to see how almost all my main and significant secondary characters in all my books have been others or outsiders in one sense or another. My immigrant experience must have wielded a large influence in that regard, but in fact, even before I left China, the experience of being different was already ingrained in my life. My parents were divorced when divorces were very rare. I grew up in the North of China, but my grandparents were originally from the South; my classmates were shocked that I didn’t know what yeast was since my diet was rice-based, whereas everyone else made their own steamed bread at home. 

I don’t feel that I have a different perspective on the English language than anyone else. I do consistently have trouble with things such as the subjunctive tense. If you hear me speak, I’m not always on the ball when it comes to subject-verb agreement. But overall, for nearly three decades now, English has been the language in which I think. I can judge its effect on my Chinese more readily than I can gauge the other way around.  

Sara: Are you similar to Charlotte? If not, is there a character you identify with?

Sherry: I love cake. I love cake and pastry and other desserts a lot. My powers of observation would impress no one, but like Charlotte I do have a cool disposition. I don’t excite easily and I don’t get anxious.

Sara: What inspired you to write a Sherlock story? How did you come up with this unique spin to set yourself apart in a market saturated with Sherlock? 

Sherry: It must have been around 2005 or 2006 when I read Laurie R. King’s The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, in which a retired Sherlock Holmes takes on a young female apprentice whose brain works the exact same way his does. The Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes books so enraptured me that for the first time in my life I thought to myself, I’d like to do something like this, to write my own take of a Sherlock Holmes story. 

But I’d never written a mystery, so I put that aspiration on the backburner. Fast forward to BBC Sherlock. The first season wowed me and the desire to write my own Sherlock Holmes story came roaring back. I figured if BBC Sherlock already moved Sherlock to the 21^st century and Elementary on CBS already made Watson a woman, then the only thing left to do was to make Sherlock a woman. I googled, found out that it hadn’t been done yet, and thought, well, why not me? 

It helped that by the time I proposed this series to my publishing house in 2014, I’d already written a mystery. To be sure it was also a fantasy, book 2 of my YA fantasy trilogy, but its central story question was very much one of “What happened?”  So, I was ready to tackle a real mystery.  

Sara: The plots have become increasingly twisty and are tied to series arcs that span multiple books. How do you construct these intricate plots? How do you keep track of it all? 

Sherry: Lol, I keep track by listening to all the previous books on audio before finalizing the next book. The close-linking of the stories happen, because I’m typically at a loss when I start a new book, so I look at what I’d done in the previous books to figure out where the big overall story should go.

And I’m not a natural plotter so my plots are often reverse-engineered. I don’t know exactly what should happen—I tend to have a better sense of where something does need to happen. So, I leave room for discoveries and secrets, etc., as I write my way forward, very much as if I’m a reader encountering this story for the first time, then when I finally figure the story out, I go back and patch everything together. 

Writing a story is not like chiseling in marble, one mistake and your statue would forever be without an arm. It is much more like making pottery from clay: You can crunch the whole thing down and restart and you can adjust as you go. 

Sara: How long did it take you to write your first novel? Do you have drawer novels?

Sherry: It took me about a year and a half to write my first novel. Years later, I would need another 10 months to tear the whole thing down and rewrite it from the ground up.

During my time as a historical romance writer, I’d already pulled out just about every drawer novel I had and rewritten them for publication. One remains. Not too long ago, I took a look at it and it was so bad I couldn’t even make it past the first page. So that one will forever stay where it belongs, in the dusty corners of my hard drive.

Sara Farmer lives in Austin, TX, with her husband, three kids, and two cats. When she’s not chasing kids and cats, she reads and writes mysteries. You can find her at www.kittymomma.com and on Twitter @avonlea79.

The post Interview with Sherry Thomas appeared first on DIY MFA.

Veena Rao is the author of Purple Lotus: A Novel (She Writes Press), as well as founder, publisher and editor-in-chief of NRI Pulse, a popular Atlanta-based Indian-American news publication. She is in the Limca Book of Records as the first Indian-origin woman to edit and publish a newspaper outside India.

Veena Rao has a background in print journalism, having worked on the news desk of The Indian Express in India, and a couple of community publications in Atlanta as editor. She has a Masters’ Diploma in Journalism and Communication from Symbiosis International University and a Masters’ in Economics from Fergusson College, India. 

She has been featured in several major Asian print publications including the BBC Telugu, the Hindu, Indian Express, Gulf News, the Khaleej Times, India Review etc. She currently lives in Tucker, GA.

In this episode Veena and I discuss:

• How her life circumstances forced her creative writing to take a backseat and how she got her writing life back.
• What skills her journalism background afforded her when approaching difficult topics such as domestic abuse and mental illness.
• Why She Writes Press was a great fit for the kind of book Veena wanted to write.

Plus, their #1 tip for writers.

About the Author

Veena Rao is the author of Purple Lotus: A Novel (She Writes Press), as well as founder, publisher and editor-in-chief of NRI Pulse, a popular Atlanta-based Indian-American news publication. She is in the Limca Book of Records as the first Indian-origin woman to edit and publish a newspaper outside India.

Veena Rao has a background in print journalism, having worked on the news desk of The Indian Express in India, and a couple of community publications in Atlanta as editor. She has a Masters’ Diploma in Journalism and Communication from Symbiosis International University and a Masters’ in Economics from Fergusson College, India. 

She has been featured in several major Asian print publications including the BBC Telugu, the Hindu, Indian Express, Gulf News, the Khaleej Times, India Review etc. She currently lives in Tucker, GA.

You can find out more about Veena on her website. You can also follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

 PURPLE LOTUS: A Novel by Veena Rao

 Providing the reader with a glimpse into small town Indian culture in the American South, the forthcoming debut Purple Lotus: A Novel by Veena Rao (on sale September 29, She Writes Press) is a timely and important addition to Southern literature that takes an oft told immigrant story of identity and assimilation and makes it a visceral, layered, ultimately feminist narrative of a woman’s journey in America. 

Winner of the She Writes Press and SparkPress Toward Equality in Publishing (STEP) contest, Purple Lotus is an invaluable #OwnVoices story personalizing the immigrant experience with a universal message: there’s hope even if you feel inadequate, powerless, fearful. It is never too late to take control of your life – we must choose to live, not just exist. Dealing with themes of domestic violence, fighting the patriarchy, and seeking the right to self-determination, Purple Lotus is a story inspired by Rao’s own experiences as an Indian immigrant in Atlanta, GA.

Three years after her arranged marriage to tech executive Sanjay, Tara moves to the American South from Mangalore, India. Tara’s memories of childhood abandonment and isolation mirror her present life of loneliness and escalating abuse at the hands of her husband. Constantly pressured by her patriarchal family to make peace with her circumstances, Tara learns to confront the victim-shaming society she was raised within, finding strength, self-worth and support in kind-hearted strangers, new friends and her first love. 

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 334

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio or Google Play and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 334: The Unexpected Female Protagonist – Interview with Veena Rao appeared first on DIY MFA.

Today I have the absolute pleasure of speaking with Glynn Stewart on the show!

Glynn was liberated from a bleak future of being an accountant by his unstoppable writing habit which led him to write several science-fiction, space opera, and fantasy series.

He is the author of the Starship’s Mage, a bestselling science fiction and fantasy series where faster-than-light travel is possible—but only because of magic. His other works include science fiction series Exile and Castle Federation, as well as the urban fantasy series ONSET and Changeling Blood.

Glynn is also the author of the space opera trilogy Duchy of Terra as well as its sequel series Light of Terra, the first book of which (Darkness Beyond) was released in October of 2018.

I am in the midst of reading the first book in the original Duchy of Terra series, and OMG it is so awesome! It combines my two favorite things, pirates and outer space, into one epic story.

So listen in as Glynn and I talk about this amazing series, and turning the tropes of military science fiction upside down.

In this episode Glynn and I discuss:

• Crafting a strong female protagonist in military science fiction the right way.
• The art of using a point of view that is both limited and omniscient.
• How to create alien species that don’t feel earthbound.
• Worldbuilding through phased info dumps.
• Using history to inform your science fiction.

Plus, Glynn’s #1 tip for writers.

About Glynn Stewart

Glynn Stewart is the author of Starship’s Mage, a bestselling science fiction and fantasy series where faster-than-light travel is possible—but only because of magic. His other works include science fiction series Exile, Duchy of Terra, Castle Federation and Vigilante, as well as the urban fantasy series ONSET and Changeling Blood.

Writing managed to liberate Glynn from a bleak future as an accountant. With his personality and hope for a high-tech future intact, he lives in Kitchener, Ontario with his wife, their cats, and an unstoppable writing habit.

To connect with Glynn check out his website at www.glynnstewart.com.

Duchy of Terra Trilogy

Book 1: The Terran Privateer

Earth is conquered.

Sol is lost.

One ship is tasked to free them.

One Captain to save them all.

When an alien armada destroys the United Earth Space Force and takes control of the human homeworld, newly reinstated Captain Annette Bond must take her experimental hyperspace cruiser Tornado into exile as Terra’s only interstellar privateer.

She has inferior technology, crude maps and no concept of her enemy, but the seedy underbelly of galactic society welcomes her so long as she has prizes to sell and money to spend.

But when your only allies are pirates and slavers, things are never as they seem—and if you become all that you were sworn to destroy, what are you fighting for?

Book 2: Duchess of Terra

When Terra knelt to an alien Imperium

They guaranteed our safety and our future

But now their enemies are coming for us

To preserve humanity’s survival and freedom in a hostile galaxy, Annette Bond tied her world to the A!Tol Imperium, taking on the mantle of Duchess of Terra to rule humanity in the Imperium’s name.

The A!Tol have provided technology, ships, and money to uplift the new Duchy of Terra, but those gifts come with strings attached. The Imperium has their own plan for Terra—but Bond has tricks of her own.

With enough time, she can build Earth a place in the galaxy. But as Bond’s many enemies gather their forces, the clouds of war threaten not only the recovering Terra but the entire Imperium.

Book 3: Terra and Imperium

Secrets both ancient and new.

Powers great and greater—

With Terra caught in the middle

Humanity’s first colony is a project neither the Duchy of Terra nor the A!Tol Imperium can allow to fail. The planet Hope in the Alpha Centauri system has been lavished with resources and attention—but when an unknown alien force attacks the system, all of that is in danger.

An ancient alien artifact is the apparent target of the attack, an artifact older than known galactic civilization. Suddenly, the backwater colony of a second-rate power is the gathering point for a confrontation of the galaxy’s greatest powers.

Duchess Annette Bond might be pregnant. She might be five light years away. She might have another galactic power on her doorstep demanding she surrender their rebels who’ve settled on Earth.

But she speaks for both Terra and the Imperium—and the galaxy will listen.

If you decide to check out the books in the Duchy of Terra series—The Terran Privateer, Duchess of Terra, and Terra and Imperium—we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate links, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 241

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio or Google Play and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 241: Twisting the Tropes of Military Science Fiction — Interview with Glynn Stewart appeared first on DIY MFA.