The Irresponsible Reader

Earlier this morning, I posted my take on the novel Goodbye to the Sun–out today, I should add. Now, I get to present this Q&A the author was gracious enough to participate in with me. There are some great answers here (at least I think there are), hope you enjoy.

Describe your path to publication with this.
Goodbye to the Sun was the second novel I wrote. The first will never see the light of day and I now understand that it was more a personal exercise in getting my “literary legs” than a book to be shared with readers. I’d written academic essays, etc. for years but fiction was an entirely new language. One important piece of feedback I got from an agent on the first book was that while they enjoyed it, especially the world-building and prose, they wanted more investment in the main character – more emotional connection.

I took that to heart and Goodbye to the Sun was the result. I did a good deal of research on how to write characters that are emotionally charged and how to increase empathy and investment in a reader’s relationship to a protagonist. When it came time to construct the plot for Goodbye to the Sun, I decided to model the story off of one of the most heavy-hitting examples I could find – the tragedy. It had everything I needed to ground the story in a rollercoaster of emotional transformations, struggle, and hardship.

After an early structural edit and feedback from a sensitivity reader, Goodbye to the Sun was sent out into the literary agent ether, and then, someone I follow on twitter posted a call for submissions to a small indie press specializing in SFF and horror, Shadow Spark Publishing. They were closing to submissions the next day – talk about luck… I whisked off a query letter (an improvised one, not the official one I’d been using for agents) and got a response back and a request for a partial manuscript. From there a full request followed, and after some back and forth, I signed a three-book deal.

I knew I was in the right place for the series when I read the mission statement that Jessica Moon and Mandy Russell had on the publishing house website. It made clear that they were seeking authors whose works tested boundaries and experimented with approaches – they wanted fiction that pushed in new directions. The POV structure of Goodbye to the Sun is a bit unorthodox and I was thrilled when they read the manuscript and responded positively to the story and my writing. From there, it’s been the usual publication process – editing rounds, proofs, cover designs, etc.

All authors have more ideas running around in their head than they can possibly develop—what was it about this idea that made you commit to it?
This is a great question because I don’t usually stop and reflect on the process of literary invention. As an art historian and educator, much of my recent focus has been on ethics. At the time I was writing Goodbye to the Sun, I was teaching and writing academically about ethics in art and that spirit translated into the Wind Tide universe. One thing I am starting to understand is that while I may not consciously know it, I have something to say in my fiction writing – whether it’s human themes, issues relating to ecology, or just wanting to share an appreciation of the wonders of the imagination (often visual) with others through the written and spoken word (that’s one of the reasons I love my job as an educator – putting visual experience into words and sharing my perspective with others, and engaging in a back-and-forth with others about their impressions, is one of the best parts of being an art historian).

What really made me stick with this story is the characters. Razor and Keen became intimate and close companions and something about them forced me to commit to their journeys and see them through to a narrative resolution. I didn’t grasp it until I’d written Goodbye to the Sun, but I’m a character-driven writer. I adore world-building, both settings and cultures, but when it comes down to it, I build them to put characters into the settings – to live with them in those worlds and experience what they experience, struggle alongside them, and revel in their growth and evolutions.

Clearly, you put a lot of time and effort into the world/culture-building for the novel—were there historical analogues for some/all of these groups? What kind of research did you do for this?
This is one of the reasons why I am enjoying writing science fiction – it presents a whole new, expanded set of research experiences necessary to build convincing and interesting secondary worlds. I spent time reading about tidal cycles, wind, and tropical weather to construct the two main planetary settings for Goodbye to the Sun. Some other random world-building research tangents arose like the nature of cave systems, bioluminescence, and a very intimate reading on trees (Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees) to help develop not only the famed cantinool trees on Heroon but also a broader ecological philosophy emphasizing a hidden biological communication network tied to a cause-and-effect system of human interaction with terraforming, etc.

It was also the time when the most recent cycle of Star Wars movies hit theaters and as a big fan from my childhood, the films drove me to fantasize about living in a similar secondary fictional world. Rogue One was especially inspirational to me. The rebellion, as well as the very complicated set of players mixed up between opposing sides (and the emphasis on family vs. state that related to other important sources like Antigone), played an important role as a precedent. The Motes are indebted to that source as well as giving a nod to the Fremen in Frank Herbert’s Dune.

As a middle-aged person, I’m drawn to stories of people who’ve been pushed back into circumstances of their youthful years, and I’d read Legend by David Gemmell not too long before writing Goodbye to the Sun – Keen Draden probably has some Druss “qualities” sprinkled on him. I’ve also had a lifelong interest in martial philosophy and many texts written over the centuries provided source material for Keen’s warrior philosophy and the fighting scenes. Razor’s voice and tone were strongly influenced by some other writing research I did on character voicing. Although not written in the same POV, I was strongly affected as a writer by Essun in N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season.

What was the biggest surprise about the writing of Goodbye to the Sun itself? Either, “I can’t believe X is so easy!” or “If I had known Y was going to be so hard, I’d have skipped this and watched more TV”
Oh, this one is easy! And I’ll take the, “I’d have skipped this and watched more TV for 200$, please.” Even though I set up plot points and had an outline, as well as a close sense of how this narrative would adapt a tragedy model, I got bogged down at ACT III – halted in my writing tracks. It took a month of talking to myself (out loud on walks with my dog, in my head, and many scribbles that were scrunched up and tossed in the trash) to find my way out. I learned two things from this: first, I needed to be open to change and surprises in writing, but have a general plan and an “arc” for the entire plot, and second, sometimes you need to just sit down and write to get out of a rut. These are, of course, personal reflections and not advice to anyone else writing fiction. I heeded my own words for the second book in the Wind Tide series, Jati’s Wager, and that one went much better with no torturous plot crises.

Let’s play “Online Bookstore Algorithm” (a game I’ve recently invented). What are 3-5 books whose readers may like Goodbye to the Sun?
Gareth Powell, Embers of War
Essa Hansen, Nophek Gloss
James S.A. Corey, The Expanse
Becky Chambers, A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet
Frank Herbert, Dune

Thanks for your time—and thanks for Goodbye to the Sun, and I hope you have plenty of success with it.