Ida Thoresen, a photography student from Norway, explored the world of fandom this summer, specifically the fandom of the American rock band My Chemical Romance. She was in a young teen when she decided to dedicate her life to the art of photography and has since found her inspiration through music, another huge interest in her life.

”This Is The MCRmy” is the project she’s been working on for the last several months and it’s meant to give an insight to the heart of a die-hard fan. A “fandom” is a term used to refer to a community of fans which grow around a certain area or interest. It can be fans of books, movies, TV shows, common hobbies — or in this case, a band.

“My Chemical Romance tend to have extremely dedicated fans who are passionate about the music, the community they have created, and they are often creative and intelligent people,” said Thoresen. “I wanted to explore who their fans are, why they are fans and get to know them. The result this far is very much a celebration and documentation of their spirit.”

Thoresen has been a fan of My Chemical Romance herself for many years and finds the fandom an interesting phenomena. With this project she asks herself a question that is common among fans of many bands: ‘How can a band become such an important part of people’s lives?’

”I can still become a little puzzled over why on earth one band — four guys who create music together — can mean so much to myself and so many people all over the world,” said Thoresen.

She wanted to get to know these fans to find answers, discuss the matter and find what they might all have in common through the fandom they are all involved in. By talking to fans among her own friends and through other communities she found that it was a question that many were curious about, and so decided to show them through the lens of her camera.

“It would have been easy if I had unlimited time and money, but I was on a strict schedule with no budget,” said Thoresen. “I had to dig deep through Internet communities and even newspaper articles to find fans who lived fairly close to me.”

The project involves photos of teenage and young adult fans who have followed My Chemical Romance from different areas of the band’s existence. Each subject is portrayed with something from the My Chemical Romance world that means a lot to them, everything from tattoos or the band’s designed clothes to their proud collections of records and special editions.

“It surprised me many times through it in terms of the visual direction it was taking and how the story was moving along. But to me it still feels like I’ve just been scratching the surface. I realized before I started that this would be a long-term project, and it’s one that I’m more than willing to pursue,” said Thoresen. “It’s a combination of both my biggest passions, photography and music, so I won’t stop until I can look at a finished project and feel that I’m proud of what I’ve created.”

You can see Ida Thoresen’s project “This is MCRmy” on www.idathoresen.tumblr.com and http://magazine.bildernordic.no/photographers/alumni-2013/ida-thoresen.aspx.

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Sebastian Farmborough is a photographer with a mission: To clear up misconceptions surrounding the Middle East. Armed with his camera and the belief that the Muslim world is severely misunderstood, Sebastian sets out on a photographic project to capture a subject that has been the topic of debates for as long as we can remember: the veil.

He was born and educated in England, but having lived in different countries around the world, Sebastian has bred a love for languages and diverse cultures. Here, he talks about one of his works, ‘An Emerging Mystery’. The photograph has gone viral with almost 20,000 hits from 133 different countries.

Toonari Post (TP): What inspired you to capture this portrait?

Sebastian Farmborough (SF): The image itself was inspired by one of my very first experiences in Saudi Arabia. I headed down to the Arabian Gulf for a dip and there, I became mesmerized by something black and obscure out at sea. It looked like a huge jellyfish. Then, as it approached, I realized that it was in fact a woman.

It was such an overwhelming experience that I just had to capture it for myself. It is entitled ‘An Emerging Mystery’ and I feel as though it is extremely symbolic of the Muslim women’s increasing prominence in the world.

TP: What was your main aim in producing the picture?

SF: Having lived in Saudi Arabia for 3 years and having had some wonderful experiences, I became really fed up of seeing the Saudi veil portrayed in such a degrading way in the Western media. I wanted to produce an image that would convey the beauty and dignity of their women, whilst at the same time respecting their cultural and religious beliefs.

TP: What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions surrounding the veil?

SF: The largest Western misconception is that women are forced to wear it when in fact, most women choose to. With particular reference to Saudi Arabia, it is important to note that the young men are not used to seeing women exposing parts of their body, so should women do so, they run the risk of attracting an awful lot of unwanted attention. I think it is important for Westerners to realize that this is indeed a different world, one which cannot be easily compared to theirs.

Apparently, in the past, it was different. Women typically covered less as they lived in small communities, largely composed of their families. I can imagine that the rapid development and necessity to incorporate themselves into city life must have come as quite a shock. With this considered, it seems quite understandable that a conservative society would encourage greater precaution amongst their women.

TP: How do you intend for the photo to clear up these misconceptions?

SF: I hope that my image can intrigue and encourage Westerners to be more open-minded, while at the same time please those for whom it is both a natural and common occurrence. This is not the face of terrorism, this is a representation of Muslim women as a whole, strong and confident, emerging and progressing into this developed world.

TP: How has the reaction to ‘An Emerging Mystery’ been?

SF: I have received e-mails from women expressing how much the image means to them, and even a lovely e-mail from a Saudi princess. Some Saudi women have even used it as a background to their phones. This image was for them, so I find it enormously fulfilling that they identify with the lady in the water.

Having said this, not every reaction has been a positive one. Some people have become rather enraged, claiming that it is sexual in nature. Though that was never my intention, it is of course enormously difficult to please everyone, particularly where differing cultural perceptions are concerned.

TP: What is in store in the future for your photographic project?

SF: I would love to return to Saudi Arabia and produce a collection of photographs to illustrate the positive aspects of the kingdom. Only negative stories seem to get through in the Western media and I hope that in my lifetime I will be able to do something to redress the balance somewhat. In actual fact, there are many things that we Westerners could learn from Saudis and it would be a real pleasure to convey these to a Western public.

More of Sebastian Farmborough’s work can be found here.

Image Courtesy of Sebastian Farmborough

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Following Toonari Post’s recent review of ‘Jump’, here is an interview with the film’s leading lady Nichola Burley. Nichola is a young actor from Leeds, England who has appeared in such projects as ‘StreetDance 3D’, ‘Shameless’, ‘Scott & Bailey’, and the upcoming ‘Twenty8k’. Here, she tells Toonari Post about the experience of working on ‘Jump’, filming in Northern Ireland and much more.

Toonari Post (TP): Can you describe the initial appeal of ‘Jump’ for you?

Nichola Burley (NB): When I initially read ‘Jump’ I was engrossed by the realism of playing two completely different emotions and scenarios against each other. Happiness and hope against numbness and sadness.

TP: You had to develop a Derry accent for the role. How much of a challenge was this and did you spend any time in Derry prior to filming to get the accent right?

NB: I had thought and learnt [sic] for the most part a general Northern Irish accent. Upon arriving in Belfast for rehearsals, I was asked more precisely to have a Derry accent and I had no idea what it was. It soon became about working with the voice coach on specifics and learning from cast and crew.

TP: Most of ‘Jump’ was shot on location. How did you find this shooting experience in comparison to working primarily on an enclosed set/sound-stage?

NB: It was fantastic to be on location, you can’t fake or pretend the feelings and atmosphere you can get from being in certain places. The Foyle Bridge was beautiful yet daunting. I was told many stories about the Bridge and often found it eery standing on the bridge, looking at beautiful views knowing for some people it symbolised very different things.

TP: Your character Greta is the emotional core of the film. Can you talk about the journey she goes on the film and what perhaps you found either particularly rewarding or challenging about playing her?

NB: Greta is a fantastic person. Someone who at that point in her life, and I believe for a long time, has come to feel numb and empty. She’s surrounded by materialistic things that serve as no real purpose to her and longs a great sense of feeling, belonging and true want. At the pit of this feeling, she meets Pearse (Martin McCann) who, without maybe knowing the extent of his actions, sheds light on to Greta, saving her in a number of ways.

TP: The cast in ‘Jump’ is pretty remarkable and diverse, yet the majority of your scenes are with Martin McCann. What was it like working with Martin, and is there anyone in the cast with whom you would have liked to have had more/any scenes?

NB: The cast of ‘Jump’ are all remarkable and delivered their characters with such ease. I was extremely lucky to have worked with Martin McCann. A very intense, precise and thought-provoking actor.

TP: The narrative structure of ‘Jump’ is quite ambitious in terms of how many characters and storylines need to be juggled. From reading the script to filming to then finally seeing it all on screen, how satisfied are you with the finished product?

NB: I am extremely pleased and proud with ‘Jump’. Whilst juggling stories and characters, it balances everything wonderfully and allows the audience to follow everyone’s stories in such a way that makes the audience feel moved in many ways.

TP: 10 years ago, Northern Ireland probably couldn’t (or wouldn’t) have been able to make a film like ‘Jump’. As a young actor coming up in the industry, what is your impression of filmmaking in Northern Ireland and of the talent on offer there?

NB: From the actors that I have worked with in Northern Ireland, the talent appears endless. Often growing up in oppression makes you want to fight and strive more to better yourself and things around you. This combined with a great honesty and naturalness makes for the perfect actor/actress.

TP: Leading on from that, another film you have in the pipeline is ‘Twenty8k’ which, like ‘Jump’, has started doing the festival circuit before a potential nationwide cinema release. What can you tell us about that film and your role?

NB: ‘Twenty8k’ has 50+ speaking characters and a very complex story. My character is a bit of a ‘rude girl’ with an ‘I don’t care’ attitude. She initially is with a very messed-up guy who is involved in some heavy situations, she then gets with a character not that much better, however holds slightly better morals. She lets on to a massive secret that could potentially save or disgrace a lot of people.

TP: Finally, what is next for you in your career?

NB: I have ‘Twenty8k’ coming out shortly and have recently completed a film calked ‘Svengali’.

TP: Good luck with it. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us, Nichola.

Watch the trailer for ‘Jump’ here and follow Nichola on Twitter at @nichola_burley.

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Adam WarRock has made a name for himself in the Nerdcore genre of music. His music is not only full of geek references but also contains a real message for all listeners.

You Dare Call That Thing Human?!?, Adam’s second album released in February, is about being  true to yourself, not society’s expectations. The cover of the album is inspired by a most poignant scene from the 1980′s comic book  ‘God Loves Man Kills’ by Chris Claremont and illustrated by Brent Anderson. In the scene, the leader of the X-men, Cyclops, states that mutants, for all their different abilities, are still human and should be treated as such, despite popular belief.

Each track has a fluid sound combined with unique hip-hop beats and WarRock’s geek and pop cultural sensibility. The track 616 is an excellent example of this. Other tracks on the record such as I Kill Giants, Retcon, and the bonus track Andrew Garfield @ SDCC (Joules remix), stand out because of their deeper meanings.

Neo-Tokyo, his newest album released May 13 this year, is inspired by the legendary anime Akira. WarRock brings listeners seven new futuristic tracks that could be an addition to the original Akira soundtrack. Each track focuses on a particular character, place, or event that is featured in the film.

Toonari Post (TP): What inspires you to write and when did you begin writing?

Adam WarRock (AW):I started writing when I was in high school, because I read a lot, and envisioned myself as some kind of intellectual, artistic writer. I filled up notepads with bad short stories and poetry, before I realized I didn’t have the attention span to actually write, and rewrite and edit, and finish anything. Eventually it started turning into spoken word pieces, which eventually turned into lyrics.

TP: How did you get into music?

AW: My parents were always big into music. My mother was a voice major in college, my sister studied piano, music was a constant in the house. As a result, I grew up dabbling in a ton of musical instruments: guitar, trumpet, drums, piano. I just honestly can’t remember a time of my life where music wasn’t one of the most important things in it.

TP: Besides rap, what genres of music are you most influenced by?

AW: I’m definitely influenced by a lot of pop music. It’s impossible to not be somewhat aware of current pop trends, and have it influence your music in little ways. I also love folksy indie music. Jonathan Coulton is a huge influence on my music.

TP: What inspired the albums You Dare Call That Thing Human?!? and Neo Tokyo? What was the creative process?

AW: Most of what causes me to make an album is fairly uninteresting. With Akira, I had a pile of beats from producer DicepticoN, and they sounded so futuristic, like it was the soundtrack to a futuristic motorcycle chase. It made me think of Akira, and I went from there .

With Human?!?, it was after a 3-month straight tour. I wrote that while delirious and tired, and just suffering from homesickness, and sort of punch drunk. I knew I had to have a new album, and it just kind of came out of me in between road trips and tour stops along the way.

TP: You have an excellent work ethic. Where does that come from?

AW: Boredom. I hate being idle, I can’t stand it. Even if I’ve finished an album, if I have nothing to do that day, I’ll probably still record a song or two.

TP: What’s the best thing about being a musician and what’s the hardest?

AW: The best thing about being a musician is getting to feel like you have some sort of legacy, that this artistic endeavor that you do makes any sort of impact or difference in the general scheme of things. I think that deep down, that’s what we all kind of hunger for, and not in a narcissistic way (though there’s a bit of that too). You just want to feel like you’re not some small, insignificant speck in the universe.

The hardest is just being okay with the lack of structure, that you can’t plan for anything. Good and bad things happen, and they’ll happen whether you like it or not. You just have to roll with it, and hope that you can make it from one victory to the next.

TP: What artists are you currently listening to?

AW: I listen to a lot of people I’ve worked with before, like Dual Core, ThoughtCriminals, Jesse Dangerously, MC Frontalot, people like that. And then there’s people whose music I’m just a fan of, like K.Flay, Shad, Doomtree, Brother Ali. And then there’s embarrassing stuff like really bad ’90s R&B, Disney soundtracks, or old Paul Simon records.

TP: What future goals do you hope to achieve with your music? What type of future projects would you like to do?

AW: Honestly, the only goal I want is the financial and personal security to keep making music. I have tons of ideas for subjects and ways to take what I do, and I just want to survive long enough to at least attempt to do them.

TP: What advice can you give musicians who are just starting out?

AW: Write and record as much as you can, as fast as you can. And then put it out there, publicly. Even if you don’t think it’s perfect. You need that public shame and embarrassment to get better, and it has to be a real thing to you. It’s not real until you ask other people to judge it, and hopefully you’re good enough, or you’ll get good enough, to have other people accept it.

But no one just started making music, and was amazing from the get-go. You need to evolve, and it has to be in the public eye, whether you like it or not. If you’re too embarrassed to put something on a website or tweet about something, you definitely don’t have the stomach to stand up to how much harder it will get.

Image Courtesy of  http://www.adamwarrock.com/

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In part three of the interview with Cole Haddon, Cole discusses the way he saw the Jack the Ripper murders and how they influenced ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’. He also discusses the idea he wanted to get across when pitting the Ripper and Hyde against each other.

Toonari Post (TP): Other than classic horror, I also saw you delve into historical references with your antagonist, Jack the Ripper. I was thoroughly impressed with the details you put into the Ripper murders, even going as far as introducing an actual suspect in your comic as one of the plot devices, and especially the letter to “Boss”. What was your interest in the Ripper case, and why did you decide to have Jekyll and Hyde take on one of England’s most infamous murderers?

Cole Haddon (CH): I like the idea of pitting Victorian England’s greatest fictional monster against Victorian England’s greatest historical monster, which just sounded like fun. Jack the Ripper has a great place in history and clearly continues to fascinate people. I also think he’s become very mythologized; he’s almost as much of a fictional character as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

So, incorporating him seemed fun. I remember growing up and loving the first Elsewords’ graphic novel ‘Gotham by Gaslight’ where Batman confronts Jack the Ripper and, I think, that probably had a lingering influence on my smashing of these two characters together.

It also stems from the fact that I wanted to do a sequel to ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’, to return to a character that I loved so much as a kid, but did not feel I could add anything to the original novel. It was a pretty solid novel, but I don’t feel it necessarily holds up today, in terms of its relevance.

The debate between good and evil had been usurped by the concept of ego which Robert Louis Stevenson was wandering around and exploring long before Freud pondered that theory. So, tackling the sequel, to wonder how Hyde might have evolved after he began to learn and think, because you meet him as a very young identity in the novella.

Carrying that forward, I found a very interesting character, with regards to philosophy and how the world really is, but I didn’t really think he was the bad guy anymore. If anything, he was possibly right in the train of thought I had followed.  I needed a villain worse than him, and the wondrous thing about Victorian monsters is that very few of them are true, outright villains.

Maybe the Invisible Man and Mr. Hyde are just mad, evil sons of bitches, but most of the characters have some sympathy, and the Ripper seemed like a great antagonist for a character who already was the boogieman of London.

Could there be a villain that Hyde’s ego couldn’t bear the thought of? You know, a character that was proud of the thought that he was the baddest of the bad, that he was the guy that parents warned their kids about when they went to sleep, so they would behave. The fact that someone existed to challenge that title also seemed to be very appealing, and somehow Jack the Ripper fell into that.

He just seemed like the ideal choice, and that helped establish the identity of the ‘Strange Case’ series, as it hopefully moves forward, which is not only mashing up a lot of the Victorian monsters in science fiction that I enjoyed so much as a kid, but mashing it up with actual history, rather than allowing it to exist in a bubble.

TP: I really appreciate your time with me today, and I just want to congratulate you on an amazing story and the amazing job you’ve done. I absolutely loved the comic. It was incredible! I really want to wish you luck, and I hope you continue on further with your career!

CH: Alright! Thank you so much!

‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’ collection comes out February 22 from Dark Horse Entertainment.

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In part two of the Cole Haddon interview, Cole goes into how he was able to put ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’ together, along with the many inspirations and influences he had when making the comic.

Toonari Post (TP): About your comic, ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’, your first issue was released in April 27 of 2011. Since then, you’ve released three other volumes, and now, in February, Dark Horse will be coming out with the four volume package. The one thing I was immediately impressed with was the artwork by M.S. Corley. How did you two come together for the project?

Cole Haddon (CH): M.S., I actually forgot what that stands for, but I know ‘M’ stands for Mike. At the time that the deal had been made and we were moving forward on ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’, my editor at the time, Dave Land, who has moved on from Dark Horse since then, sent me five or six really talented artists to consider, people who actually had name recognition. But a lot of it was, I don’t mean this as a slight, but it was the more conventional stuff.

There were a few that were a little out there, but for the most part, it was styles that I was familiar with. I knew from the start that I wanted ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’ to just look different, that when someone picked up the comic book to just immediately think that “this is something different, maybe I should pay attention to it.”

After going back and forth a little bit, they sent me Mike’s work, which I was immediately struck by because it didn’t look like other things that were out there. But he also didn’t have much of a history in comic books.

He had illustrated an eight-page story for Dark Horse Presents’ MySpace page. I believe that’s how it worked, which ironically enough involved Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Jack the Ripper, very odd, but a much more monstrous version of everything.

So it struck me as different and special, and we got on the phone and didn’t stop talking for like 90 minutes about how much we loved classic horror movies. Of course, that inspired ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’, and by the end, it just seemed clear Mike wanted to work on the research and figure out how to put on the page what I saw in my head.

I haven’t regretted the decision since. He’s done nothing, but amazing work and pushed himself every step of the way, even when there could have been easier ways of doing things. He consistently challenged the instincts that both of us had.

TP: At the point when Adye and Jekyll meet up with Newcomen in the Museum of Waxworks, that made me think of ‘The House of Wax’ with Vincent Price. What would you say your biggest influence for making this comic is?

CH: I think probably as an aesthetic storyteller, everything has come, for me, from film. Film has led me to every classic book I’ve ever read. It’s sort of the launching pad to my entire existence. Probably several years ago, upon seeing ‘Pulp Fiction’, it was the first time I realized that my natural instinct to mash things together, just because I thought it was cool, actually could work.

For instance, something that Tarantino has been doing ever since, is mashing together genres and films that have no business being in the same movie, but somehow works. I could only dream that I’m remotely effective as he is.

But that was really the launching point for combining a love of a lot of classic horror from Universal Pictures Monster movies of the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, which had a huge impact on this series, to the Hammer Horrors to the ’50s, ’60s, and early ’70s before they went off the rails.

That had a huge impact. In fact, there is a Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee cameo in the series if you look very carefully. It was always the intention to draw inspiration to from the films that had such an impact on me as a child, to somehow reintroduce that feeling, that love of Gothic horror to a reader who might not be all that familiar with it.

The colorist, Jim Campbell, did some remarkable work, I think. He was probably chiefly responsible for invoking the feel of those Hammer films, in particular with the color pallet he chose. Contrast, saturated, and de-saturated colors between the upper-class and the lower-class to thematic colors for characters, the use of the brightest, most garish red we could come up with for blood that is never diluted by shadows or distance.

Blood, just like in all of the Hammer films, just has to scream at the audience. Even the ‘House of Wax’ reference is correct. Madame Tussauds is a real location.

Because the film goes hand-in-hand with the comic book, it was important that there were set pieces, major set pieces that people would recognize and would be exciting to see on the screen, and Madame Tussauds was one of those just for what it offered in terms of action, in terms of being able to actually have a visual representation of what the popular idea of what Hyde is.

There is also the fact that I love the Vincent Price ‘House of Wax’ and go all the way back to the Michael Curtiz’s ‘Mystery of the Wax Museum’, which is an old, two-color inspiration for the ‘House of Wax’.

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Recently, Toonari Post spoke with Cole Haddon, author of ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’. The comic, by Dark Horse, was a successful four volume series which has recently breached Hollywood and will become a full-length motion picture. Cole Haddon explained to us how he got his start and how he came up with the story behind ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’.

Toonari Post (TP): How did you start your current career?

Cole Haddon (CH): I moved out here to L. A. six years ago with the intention of breaking into the film business as a screenwriter. That took about three years with the help of friends I made, because I got representation and got some attention on some scripts I was working on. That led to reaching the comic book world to a meeting with Dark Horse Entertainment, and that’s how I became a comic book writer. But, for the screenplay stuff, that was just hard work and people eventually liking what I was doing, and it paid off.

TP: How long have you been focused on screenwriting, and then evolved to comics?

CH: As long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a storyteller. I think I’ve just gone with that title as an umbrella for what I wanted to do, because I drifted between so many different mediums. When I was 13, I thought I was going to be a comic book writer, and I was also an illustrator.

So I was trying to break into the business just as the image boom was exploding around the country. But it took me forever to draw a comic book. Where other people do it quite naturally, I would have been spending two years to do two issues. But I enjoyed the stories so much and transitioned into screenwriting, and then went off to college where I then again transitioned into writing novels and short stories.

Until about 28 or so, I just realized film was where my heart had always been, and I was just running in circles around it, because I think in Michigan, where I’m from, you’re largely told that’s a dream for other people, that you should just go get a job at General Motor or if you get your degree and become an engineer, or a lawyer, or doctor, or something simple and easy and clearly lucrative.

So I ran from diving in for a long time, and I just gave up on running and got in the car and drove out here, and I’ve been here ever since. Very long and winding, and not at all a direct path, but I always knew that I wanted to be telling stories, and that, so far, looks like what I have to do.

TP: When you went into making the comic, was there anything specific you wanted to introduce into the comic world? What did you feel was missing and that you wanted to add in the comic book industry?

CH: I’ve been a comic book fan since I was probably eight and worked at comic book stores, and like I said, I thought I was going to work in the comic book industry from a very young age. That was mostly from the love of super hero comic books, and as I got older, though, I found I wanted more and more sophisticated stories, which weren’t always to be found in the super hero series.

So, I think when I finally got the opportunity to move into the medium, thanks to Dark Horse, I really wanted to use it as a means to explore themes that I wasn’t really allowed to touch in my screenwriting career.

In many ways, I call comic books my independent film because it pays like shit, but the satisfaction is through the roof. I control everything, and you get to create your own property, such as ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’.

So having that freedom to explore ideas, sometimes challenging ideas about society and religion and politics and many of these things that I found in the medium that I wanted to play with, and I didn’t necessarily see enough. There is much of it out there, but it’s stuff I had to look for. So when I finally got into it, I wanted to, at least, focus on that myself.

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British publishers Angry Robot recently announced that they will be publishing two new books by one of urban fantasy’s stars, Mike Shevdon. His debut novel, Sixty-One Nails, was published in 2009 to great acclaim and he subsequently published a sequel entitled The Road to Bedlam in 2010. Shevdon was kind enough to answer the Post’s questions in a wide-ranging interview.

Toonari Post: When did you first realize that you wanted to be an author?

Mike Shevdon: I didn’t even consider becoming an author until well into my forties. I’d been a keen reader since childhood, and I’ve always liked telling stories, but it didn’t occur to me that I could be a writer until comparatively recently. I’d been reading a friend’s drafts for some years and began to see by osmosis how stories were constructed. Even then it was some time before I wrote anything worthwhile. I was quite naive about it, but if I’d known how difficult it really was I probably would never have started.

TP: Could you describe your journey from aspiring writer to published author?

MS: One of the advantages I had was that I knew the story I wanted to write. It started a chapter at a time and at that stage I only shared it with one good friend. He encouraged me to write more and gradually it accumulated. The first time you write those magic words, The End, is a real buzz, but of course you’ve only just started. What I had was a first draft and a pretty rough one at that. I worked on it and polished it until it was as good as I could make it.

Only then did I dare to share it with my friend whose drafts I had been beta-reading. She asked me if I wanted her views as a friend, or as an author. I chose the latter, and though it was hard to hear that all my hard work did not yet make the grade it was the right things to do. I went back to the draft and moved it up another level.

After that, test readers, workshops, beta readers – even when you think you’re finished you’re really not. You have to take a big step back, gain some perspective and try again. I look back and still think there are things I could have done better, but then I learn more every time I do this.

TP: What are some of your literary influences?

MS: The first fantasy I came across was The Hobbit while at school, then I read the Narnia books one after another. John Wyndham, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein – and then Ursula Le Guin,and Alan Garner. Later I got into John Le Carre’s spy novels, which I devoured. I read all Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Homes stories and am a big fan of Robert Crais’ thrillers.

Alan Moore is a great inspiration, I loved Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series and the contrast between American Gods and Anansi Boys. My current favourites are Mike Carey’s Felix Castor books and Joe Abercrombie’s, First Law trilogy – Joe restarted my love of fantasy – he took all the tropes and twisted them delightfully.

TP: For many aspiring authors, the idea of searching for an agent is quite nerve-racking. How did you find your agent, and what advice do you have regarding the dreaded query letter?

MS: I found my agent after extensive research, what agents like and who they represent. I wrote a specific query for her and one other agent who also matched my criteria. I got a request for a partial from one, and a polite and encouraging rejection from the other. It seems to me that too many try the shotgun approach and shoot their query out to as many people as possible in the hope that it will stick somewhere. Don’t hope – do your research and discover what your chosen agent wants to see, then give it to them.

For the query, understand what your story is about. Tell that story in 200 words. The query should make the agent want to ready your sample pages. Your sample pages should make the agent want to request a partial. The partial should make them want to read it all. If it’s not working, ask yourself why? Is the problem your query or your story? Have you targeted the right agent?

TP: What’s your writing routine? For example, do you write in a specific location or listen to a certain type of music?

MS: I used to write on the train while commuting to and from work, so I got used to distractions and can write pretty much anywhere. I immerse myself in the story and found it best to set an alarm after I missed my station and ended up 15 miles down the track past my stop. I try to avoid dependency on any one thing, though. It only makes it harder when that one thing isn’t available.

TP: You’ve written quite a bit on your blog about the various technological tools available to writers. What are some of your favorites?

MS: For sitting down and working out a plot I find FreeMind a great tool. It’s quick, makes it easy to rearrange things, and is abstract enough to allow for non-linear development. I wrote Sixty-One Nails using RoughDraft, but nowadays I use Scrivener on the Mac almost exclusively. It has all the tools I need and is aimed at writing large complex pieces where you need to focus on the detail but keep an eye on the big picture. For small articles I use Bean, which is a very nice RTF text editor.

TP: We’ve all heard the hype about how traditional publishing is dying, and self-publishing via e-readers is the way of the future. What do you think? Will there always be a place for traditional publishing? What made you decide to go with a traditional publisher?

MS: I don’t think self-publishing will replace traditional publishing. In 2009, my agent Jennifer Jackson, read 8,004 queries, from which she signed 5 new clients. The other 7,999 writers could theoretically self-publish their work without an agent or publisher, but you have to ask yourself, were they ready for publication? That’s just one agent. There are hundreds of agents and publishers, and their slush-piles are similarly full. As a reader, how do I find the one brilliant self-published masterpiece from the hundreds of thousands of novels that just weren’t quite ready?

Having said that, the publishing business is being forced to change. The economics are harsh but simple. We’ve seen similar scenarios in the music business where bands now make money from touring because their music is sold for cents and freely pirated on the Internet. They can’t make enough from sales to keep going and the result is that you have to pay £50 a ticket to see a band. Authors are not going to be able to do that.

The app model of publishing where the publisher sells novels for 99c works for the publisher if they can produce enough titles. Two hundred titles selling a thousand copies each nets over a hundred thousand dollars. It doesn’t work for authors, though. Even at 25% of gross, that’s only $250. It doesn’t pay your bills.

I believe that readers want new and inspired voices producing work that is original and exciting, and that publishers are able to find and develop those authors successfully and bring them to market. All we have to figure out is how to fund it such that it becomes a sustainable business model and everyone will benefit as a result.

TP: What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

MS: I am a keen target archer and spend quite a bit of time sending pointed missiles across a field at paper circles. There is a beautiful simplicity in archery. All you have to do is draw the bow back and let the arrow go in a way that is clean and consistent. It sounds easy but in turns it is both challenging and frustrating, and wonderfully rewarding when you get it right. As Eugen Herrigel noticed, there is zen in the art of archery.

TP: Since I live in Wisconsin, the land of cheese, I was interested to see on your website that you’ve invented “Squeaky Cheese Curry.” What’s that?

MS: Squeaky cheese is our family name for Halloumi, a cheese from Cyprus which can stand cooking heat without melting or falling apart. It’s salty and has a texture that, when you bite it, squeaks against your teeth. When planning a meal for vegetarian friends I made a massaman curry with Halloumi instead of meat, grilling the surface of the cheese to keep it firm, adding massaman paste, lime leaves and star anise into coconut milk, and Squeaky Cheese Curry was born. It’s now a firm favourite with vegetarian and non-vegetarian friends alike.

TP: What are the top three things on your “bucket list”?

MS: I would like to sail around the Greek Islands, stopping off at little villages and tiny fishing harbours and immersing myself in Greek culture, food and hospitality. I would like to explore New Zealand; my visit in 1990 left me wanting to see more of that beautiful country, and I would like to be on the New York Times Bestseller List.

TP: The Quit-Rent ceremony is a huge part of your debut novel, Sixty-One Nails. What made you decide to build a novel around this little bit of legal arcana?

MS: I was researching English folklore and was following a thread to do with iron and its role as a protection against magical influence, particularly with respect to blacksmiths and horse-shoes, when I came across the ceremony.

When you find a ceremony involving six iron horse-shoes and twin knives, one blunt and one sharp, you have to accept the gift and write a story about it. When I realised that they had been carrying out the ceremony for eight-hundred years it started me thinking – why?

I realised that if you wanted something done long past any individual person’s life-span, and you needed it to be done perfectly and regularly, every year, come what may, then this would be a perfect way to achieve that. It was a mystery hidden in plain sight. The question was, what was it hiding?

TP: What was the reaction of the staff at the Royal Courts of Justice when you told them why you were interested the Quit-Rent ceremony? Did you ever get to meet the Queen’s Remembrancer?

MS: I have always found the staff at the Royal Courts of Justice to been wonderfully polite, helpful and tolerant. After all, they deal with people every day who are in the most difficult of situations and my enquiries were, perhaps, light relief from their more serious role.

I’ve attended the ceremony several times, including 2009 after the book was launched, and I got to meet the Remembrancer and the Chief Clerk, who were both bemused, I think, by the enthusiasm with which I told them about the book. I did send the retiring clerk a copy, but I’m not sure if she read it. I also got to chat with the smith who made the knives. Lovely people, and the ceremony itself is absolutely fascinating.

TP: The Quit-Rent ceremony is of course just one of many historical oddities that are part of the British constitution. What would you say to those who would love nothing more than to sweep such things away?

MS: Britain’s constitution is written not in one document, but in many. It is formed by the precedent and practice, by challenge and convention. As such it is a living document with roots in the birth of nation states. If you will sweep that away, what will you replace it with?

TP: You recently announced on your website that Angry Robot will be publishing two more books in The Courts of the Feyre series. Can you tell us a little bit about what’s going to happen in the next two books?

MS: The Road to Bedlam ended with Niall rescuing Alex and releasing the inmates from Porton Down into the wider world. In Strangeness & Charm we see what happens to these individuals, how people who have been mistreated by the state react when granted freedom, and what they do with their power and liberty when they find that society has no place for them.

We also see the relationships between Niall and Blackbird change with the birth of their baby, and how that affects Alex, a teenage girl who has endured torture and cannot return to the way she was.

The Eighth Court is where all the threads come together and the plans of those behind the scenes are finally revealed. The grand experiment comes to fruition and all the pigeons come home to roost. Sides will be chosen, friend will fight friend, and old scores will be settled in blood.

TP: If Hollywood were to come calling, who would you want to play Niall? Blackbird?

MS: You need an English Rose to play the young Blackbird – Keira Knightley or Kate Winslet, perhaps, and I would love Dame Judi Dench to play the older Blackbird. She has that instant presence. Niall is harder to cast. You need someone understated and subtle, who can portray someone who has closed themselves off from the world and is then slowly revealed. Having seen Colin Firth in The King’s Speech, I can see him in that role.

TP: As you know, there’s a long-standing debate within the writing community about the merits of first-person narrators vs. third-person narrators. What made you decide to write in the first person?

MS: Sixty-One Nails is about discovering that the world is a stranger and more wonderful place than it appears. It’s about opening up to new ideas and new ways of being. For me, the best way to portray that was to follow someone who is going through that experience, so that you can be with them as it happens.

In The Road to Bedlam, Niall and Blackbird become separated and we see Blackbird from a third-person perspective. This is because I don’t want the reader to have access to Blackbird’s knowledge and experience of the fey world. That would undermine Niall’s perspective by giving the reader more knowledge about the world than Niall possesses. Neither is right or wrong. It’s about what’s appropriate for that character.

TP: For me, one of the most chilling parts of Sixty-One Nails was the scene in Niall’s apartment with the Darkspore. What was the inspiration behind it?

MS: My house is surrounded by large trees which are host to many moulds and spores, and I have a constant battle against mildew gaining a foothold between tiles or around windows because the spores are in the air. I’d already formed the view that magic in The Courts of the Feyre would be innate rather than learned, and wanted to bring in some unusual aspects to that power. Darkspore was one of those wonderful moments when a problem and an idea come together.

TP: What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

MS: Write. Keep writing. Challenge yourself to get better. Share your writing with people who will be honest and give you constructive feedback. Join a writing group. Learn to see your own mistakes by critiquing the work of others. Never stop learning.

TP: Do you plot your stories beforehand, or do you write by the seat of your pants?

MS: My approach is a hybrid of the two. I have a rough outline in one-line sentences, and I use that to structure the story. I don’t always stick to it though, and if the writing goes off in an interesting direction then I follow it. I may end up deleting it all later, but it’s worth the time to chase a thread – it can lead you to some really interesting places.

Having said that, I have a very clear picture of some scenes – the funeral scene from The Road to Bedlam is an example, and you’ll know what I mean if you’ve read it. It emerged as part of the plot and I knew how it would have to go before I started typing. It didn’t make it any easier to write, but I knew it had to have that emotional weight to deliver the impetus for what comes after.

TP: What are your plans once you’ve finished The Courts of Feyre series?

MS: At the moment I’m immersed in the Courts of the Feyre, and I don’t want to think too far beyond that. I have an idea for a stand-alone novel I want to write – a modern haunting, not horror but a psychological thriller, and I also have ideas for a trilogy, set in a different world with an entirely new set of characters, but that needs work to bring the ideas into focus and I don’t have time to work on that while I’m busily writing Strangeness & Charm, so it’s gone into the ‘later’ folder until I can spend more time on it.

Please click below to purchase one of Mike Shevdon Books:

• Sixty-One Nails: Courts of the Feyre, Book 1   Buy At Amazon
• Road to Bedlam: Courts of the Feyre, Book 2  Buy At Amazon

For more information about Mike Shevdon, visit his website or follow him on Twitter.

Image courtesy: Mark Lewis Photography

The article Mike Shevdon, One of Urban Fantasy’s Freshest Voices appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

French author Aliette de Bodard has established herself as one of fantasy’s rising stars. She is the author of the genre-crossing Obsidian and Blood series, which follows Acatl, the Aztec High Priest of the Dead, as he investigates supernatural crimes in pre-Columbian Mexico. The series currently has two books: Servant of the Underworld (Angry Robot, 2010) and Harbinger of the Storm (Angry Robot, 2011). A third book, Master of the House of Darts, will be released by Angry Robot in October of this year.

In addition to her novel-length works, de Bodard has also published short fiction in such publications as Azimov’s, Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction.

De Bodard was kind enough to answer the Toonari Post’s questions via email.

Toonari Post: When did you first realize that you wanted to be a writer?

Aliette de Bodard: It depends… I started writing when I was eight, but I didn’t have much organisation or drive at the time. I guess the starting point was my deciding I wanted to publish a novel: I was sixteen at the time and living in London, and I found a book by Orson Scott Card about “How to Write Fantasy and Science Fiction”, which explained the nuts and bolts of craft. I immediately started working on a novel (I still remember cutting out my own index cards). I didn’t ever finish that novel, because the hard disk it was on was fried on the move back to Paris–which taught me a very important lesson on the value of backups–but I never looked back after that.

TP: Could you describe your journey from aspiring writer to published author?

AdB: I have the inconvenience of not living in an English-speaking part of the world, so for a while I was struggling to find like-minded people. I finally joined up an online crit group at Hatrack, and started writing short fiction, which I religiously submitted to Writers of the Future every quarter. For a few years, I skipped between crit groups, trying to find one that would work for me–I finally joined OWW, which provided a big breakthrough in terms of craft: I could crit the numerous stories posted there on my free time, which enabled me to gain a much better understanding of the things that worked and didn’t work for me, and I could get fast feedback on a piece.

I kept submitting (and collecting rejections, which I pinned to the wall behind the dining room table where I worked), and I finally got two big breakthroughs at nearly the same time: first, Jetse de Vries told me he was buying my short story “Deer Flight” for Interzone; and, about a month after that, I got a call from Writers of the Future telling me I’d placed second in my quarter.

TP: What made you decide to write about the Aztecs?

AdB: I had had exposure to the myths and legends of many cultures when I was young, but somehow I’d managed to always skip the Aztecs: the first I heard of them was through my Spanish courses. At the time, the consensus was that of the conquistadores: that the Aztecs were a barbaric, bloodthirsty people. I twigged on pretty early that the conquistadores were not very nice people, and it made me wonder what they’d managed to distort in their reports on the Aztecs. And, sure enough, it only took a little bit of digging to find out about a fascinating civilisation, who was way ahead of Europe in lots of ways (gender equality, medicine, astrology), and whose empire managed to span the entire length of Mexico (no mean feat considering their armies were basically on foot and had to cross mountains and deserts). And I thought it was a real shame that this entire culture had been basically reduced to bloodthirsty villains. I don’t personally agree with human sacrifice, but I can see why they would have thought it was necessary given their belief system (and God knows the Middle Ages that their raft of practices I personally find unsavory, such as torture–something which actually shocked the Aztecs, as they couldn’t understand why something as sacred as pain and blood would be so casually used). So I decided to write stories set in that milieu, partly as a way to explore the culture, and also partly seeking to do my bit to redress the balance (though I’m aware it’s going to take more than a few books to change perceptions, but I can at least try).

TP: How did you find your agent? Do you have any advice for writers who are struggling with the dreaded query letter?

AdB: I found my agent through a series of weird coincidences. Basically, we met at World Fantasy in Calgary, in 2008, through a friend we had in common; but it’s likely nothing would have come of it if my plane back to Heathrow hadn’t been canceled, leaving my agent, me and Marc Gascoigne (who was editing for Angry Robot) stuck in the same hotel lobby with nothing much to do. They both coaxed me into pitching Servant of the Underworld to them; and, after the first moment of panic, I managed to condense my query letter into something short and punchy–and that’s how I ultimately got both my agent and my editor.

I have struggled with the query letter myself, and I think a lot of the problems I had was trying to summarise the entire book in two paragraphs, which is just impossible. I found that it helped me to think of the query letter as a short introductory paragraph setting out why you’re contacting this particular agent, the book title and word number, two or three short paragraphs of book summary, and a paragraph about the relevant bits of your experience as an author (mention previous publications, and other credits if they are relevant to the book). The main problem I had was with the book summary, and I solved it by thinking of it, not as a summary, but as that little blurb you put at the back of the book to make readers want to pick it. I got books from the library and studied the blurbs for a while, and I saw that they were focusing on one aspect of the book and one cool character, and that was about all they had space for. That’s how I wrote my own summary.

TP: Do you have a particular routine for writing? For example, do you set aside a specific time to do it? Do you aim to write a certain number of words/pages per day?

AdB: I wish I had a routine, but the sad fact is that with the day job and the irregular evenings, I don’t have much of one. I basically slot writing into the empty spaces of my schedule. I tried aiming for a certain number of words or pages, but it didn’t work for me, because I can be so irregular. I prefer to set aside, say, 1-2 hours during which I do nothing but write, and accept that sometimes I’ll have 500 words at the end of it, and sometimes 100 words–and sometimes negative words, because I’ve been editing and had to excise an entire section…

TP: Do you do anything special to get yourself in the mood to write, such as listening to a particular kind of music?

AdB: I do have music I listen to, which helps me maintain the mood across the various computers I write on. What I usually do is brew a teapot full of tea (or a herbal brew if it’s too late in the evening), and bring it to my writing desk. I then answer a few emails and browse forums for a bit; and then I start writing by turning the music on.

For music, I mostly go for singer-songwriters such as Vienna Teng, Dar Williams, Girlyman (my new favourite), or for ambiant mood pieces such as traditional Asian songs. I used to listen to last.fm to get my songs, but we got a home stereo with way better sound, so now I tend to put a CD on the stereo and listen to that. It has the advantage of giving me a break when I get up to change the CD.

TP: Given the prominence of human sacrifice in Aztec culture, some readers may find it odd that Acatl never sacrifices anyone as part of his duties as High Priest of the Dead. Could you explain why you chose to omit human sacrifice from the cult of Mictlantecuhtli?

AdB: I did it for a couple reasons. The first was that I was a very green writer when I started writing Servant of the Underworld, and I took one look at the possibility of writing a scene with an actual human sacrifice–and just didn’t think I could pull it off in a way that wouldn’t be corny.

The other one was a basic sympathy problem: the Aztec civilisation is already fairly brutal and fairly distant from our current society, and I didn’t want to add to that distance by having an utterly unsympathetic main character (and I was already running into enough trouble with the animal sacrifices, which put some people off). Acatl was the reader’s only viewpoint in the society, and so he had to create some reasonable empathy with the reader, since I wasn’t going to be able to use someone else as a counterpoint in the narration. I had already given him a sense of duty and a distaste for political manoeuvering, but he remained fairly distant as a narrator, and I thought having him offer human sacrifices in the name of his god would break the fragile balance of empathy I was trying to achieve. So I decided that I was going to skip the human sacrifice part from the clergy of Mictlantecuhtli, but also that it would be disingenuous to remove it from the society. I tried to include some of it in Servant of the Underworld, but I think I was more successful in integrating human sacrifice in both Harbinger of the Storm and the forthcoming Master of the House of Darts.

It’s been three years since that first draft now, and I feel more confident that I could pull this off and still draw the reader into the story, but still… it would be a very difficult juggling act, since the main explanation I could offer would be religious belief, and a lot of people in the US either find religion repulsive, or follow a religion that categorically forbids human sacrifice as an aberration.

TP: What are your influences as a writer?

AdB: Every book I read! More seriously, in genre, I’m very much influenced by Patricia McKillip (I love her style, and her evocation of magic as something mysterious and deadly, not as a system that can ever be mastered and fully understood), Ursula Le Guin (who always has such lovely wordbuilding, and very efficiently manages to question what we think of as the fundamentals of genre and society, such as gender, or political systems, or religions), and I’m indebted to Roger Zelazny for the flamboyant use of style and mythology in his books such as Lord of Light.

Out of genre, I got a lot from mysteries: I love Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael for so accurately nailing the mindset of the Middle Ages, and for presenting a character for whom faith is the centre of the universe; I read Elizabeth George for her depiction of the devastation left by a murder and her fine psychological studies of characters; and I probably wouldn’t have written [the Obsidian and Blood series] if not for Christian Jacq and his books set in ancient Egypt, and Robert Van Gulik and his Judge Dee mysteries.

TP: Could you give us a taste of what will happen in Master of the House of Darts?

AdB: Ha! Master of the House of Darts is, basically, the consequences of what happened at the end of Harbinger of the Storm. (trying not to spoil the end of the second book here…) The main characters made an important decision at the end of that book, but they didn’t pause too much to consider what it would do to the Fifth World. There were also a number of unsolved conflicts, particularly between Teomitl and Tizoc-tzin, that will take centre-stage in this book; and Acatl is in for a number of surprises from people he took for granted.

TP: How do you go about making the past accessible for readers who might not have much historical knowledge?

AdB: Making the past accessible boils down to two things for me: one, making the mindset accessible, and two, getting the details right; The mindset is pretty much vital, but it has to be explained enough. I can tell you that someone I know took a job at a bank manager, and you’d guess they did that because they liked finance and/or wanted a high-paying job; but I tell you that my main character wants to die as a human sacrifice, and I’m going to have to do much more explaining so that you don’t get the wrong idea. It’s the gulf between our Western mindset today and the mindset of an unfamiliar culture in the past.

The second things is details: once again, I can tell you that me and my friends went for Chinese food, and you’ll probably be able to fill in the gaps. If I say that my main character had a typical Mexica meal without telling you what, you have few ways of guessing. So I have to fill in the gaps: tell you what he ate, what it tasted like: I could also do it for me and my friends, and it would reveal things about our characters; but here’s it’s a far more basic need. I have to tell you so you can imagine it. And the more details I give you about the food, about the houses, about the rhythm of daily life, the more real the setting is going to feel to you. There is an upper limit, though, beyond which anything I tell you is just infodumping, but the reader tolerance to details can be fairly high.

It’s also very easy to get details wrong or slip into the wrong mindset (i.e. back into the 21st Century): a writer friend and I once had a good laugh over the fact that his main character in a medieval fantasy had just had donuts–I surmised he must have been hungry at the time.

TP: In addition to your historical fantasy, you’ve also tried your hand at alternate history in the form of your Xuya universe. Could you briefly describe Xuya, as well as your inspiration for it?

AdB: Xuya is what I think of as my sandbox of cultures: it’s what would have happened in North America if the Europeans hadn’t arrived first. The basic premise is that Chinese ships land in America in 1411 (this would have been technologically possible, because Chinese ships were much more advanced than European ships of the same time period; it just didn’t happen because various factors caused China to all but close its borders and fall back into hardcore Confucianism). Because the Chinese were more interested in prestige than in conquest, I imagined that as when they met the Mesoamerican Empires, they would prefer trade to conquest. And, because China already has a foothold in America (and brought gunpowder and smallpox ahead of schedule), the Spanish find it much harder to land at the end of the 15th Century.

This leads to a tripartite North America: you have a Chinese colony in the West (but with far more rights given to the Native Americans), the northern tip of the Mexica Dominion (the Aztecs) in the South, and the much diminished and much impoverished United States. This is the setting for the modern stories; I also took this forward into space, and imagined civilisations centred around Minds, artificial intelligences incubated in human wombs.

TP: On your website, you say that you’ve written novels set in the Xuya universe. Do you have any plans to publish them?

AdB: I do have plans! My SF thriller set in the Xuya universe, Foreign Ghosts, is undergoing revisions at the moment, and I’m brainstorming a few sequel ideas. Then it’s going out on submission, and we’ll see what happens.

TP: There are all kinds of stories now about authors finding success by self publishing on the Kindle. What made you decide to go with a traditional publisher? What are your thoughts on the future of the publishing industry? Do you think self publishing will be the way of the future, or will there always be a place for traditional publishers?

AdB: I’m not really in a position to know, I confess (I live in a country where Kindle access is fairly limited). I wanted to have a physical book, and one that would be sold in major bookstores, which pretty much ruled out self-publishing (and, at the time I was writing, self-publishing was just taking off, and the Kindle was barely out).

I think there will always be a place for traditional publishers, both as gatekeepers, and as people doing the work authors don’t want to do. It’s a bit like agenting: I could negotiate my own contracts, but I don’t have the will, the time or the competences to do so. Similarly, I was listening to Michael J. Sullivan at the Nebulas weekend, and he was saying that doing the covers, editing and proofreading his work had been very much time-consuming–and I totally believe him, because I’ve seen how much work went into friends putting up even a simple short story on the Kindle. I have a dayjob; and I admit I just don’t have the energy to do all of this.

TP: What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

AdB: Believe in yourself, and keep writing. And beware of rules: you have to know and understand why they exist, but after you do that, you must allow yourself to break them. Otherwise you’re just limiting yourself.

TP: What’s next for Aliette de Bodard?

AdB: Several things are in the pipeline: I have a novella I hope to finish one day, and then I’ll move to editing the Xuya novel, Foreign Ghosts, as well as planning its sequels. Then we’ll see; I reckon that should keep me busy for a bit.

To learn more about Aliette de Bodard, check out her website . You may also follow her on Twitter or ‘like’ her fan page on Facebook.

The article Aliette de Bodard, One of the Rising Stars of Fantasy Fiction appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

For a man who was about to play a sold-out show in New York City, Aaron Bruno, the lead singer of AWOLNATION, was surprisingly calm and relaxed. Sitting on couches in the upstairs dressing room of the Bowery Ballroom, he told of the sub sandwich he had in Cleveland, how he schools kids on the drums at random Guitar Centers across the country and not to take his weird mood personally because there was glass in his feet from walking around barefoot most of the time.

He told of albums he had on cassette when he was younger, his passion for surfing as well as his dislike for surfer music. It was an average, run-of-the-mill conversation coming from a person who is creating music that is anything but average, music that people were becoming obsessed with basically over night, stemming from the band’s first single “Sail” playing on a radio station in Austin, Texas.

“I didn’t even know about that,” Bruno said. “But he started playing it, and I got a call a week later that we were number one in phone requests and all this sexy stuff, and then we went over there and had this outrageous show and it was packed and everybody sang all the words and that sort of had a domino effect throughout the rest of the country.”

Currently, AWOLNATION is playing on the airwaves in every city, except one: ironically Cleveland, Ohio.

The idea of becoming a musician professionally just came to Bruno much like a simple decision people make on an everyday basis.

“I never decided I wanted to,” Bruno said. “It just happened. I was in different punk bands and hardcore bands and I think there was a certain moment where there were bands around our neighborhood who were starting to get record deals. So I think at one point we decided to get kind of serious in just trying more and becoming professional and rehearse every day and so forth and so on.”

After a semi-successful career with other bands and other labels, Bruno is currently working on AWOLNATION, his solo project, signed to Red Bull Records. AWOLNATION has released an EP as well as a full-length album since signing to Red Bull Records in 2009. The music has been described as rock and roll with an electronic influence, a union Bruno didn’t set out to create but rather just let happen.

“They’re just sort of ideas that come to me or certain things I’ve always wanted to do since I was a little kid that I didn’t have to means to do,” Bruno said. “So when the time to make art and music that no one else had a decision in but me, of course it’s just an extension of really what I like. Anything you see or hear is what I’m a fan of basically coming out in my own way… It’s just me, so this is just who I am.”

Bruno said in an interview with LA Music Blog the band’s name actually stems from a nickname he had in high school.

AWOLNATION is currently on tour, something that Bruno has mixed feelings. He says he doesn’t like all the down time and hates flying on an airplanes, but he really enjoys playing shows because he gets to be closer to his fans.

“I get kind of bored,” Bruno said. “You know, I get very restless throughout the day so when we play it’s just like all the cliché things you hear from other bands, most of those things are true, but for me, you’re just jamming with your friends. You’re literally playing for a living, so no complaints there, but to have an energetic show where people are jumping around, sweating, singing all the words, that’s the ultimate goal for me.”

Even fans that don’t know all of AWOLNATION’s lyrics still have an affect on Bruno.

“Chewing gum, as we call it when people are just chewing gum and acting like they know the words when they don’t. I see a lot of gum chewing at our shows, which is really cute, but I’m appreciative that they want me to think that they know the words at least.”

With a wide variety of music interests such as Michael Jackson and Neil Young, it is easy to see where Bruno finds inspiration for his songs. He works hard at making songs he thinks people will like, all the while staying true to himself.

When asked what he would be doing if he weren’t in a band, he took a second and then said, “That’s an impossible question to answer because I don’t know. I wouldn’t be me, you know?”

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“I love music. The best thing of doing music is the people you get to meet and the opportunities you get to have to help people out. I’m grateful that we are able to do something that can benefit others.” These are the words of Simeon Lawrence, Jr. (“Young Sim”) talking about his Record Label Feel Good Music Coalition.

Feel Good Music Coalition, is a unique record label that tries to make a difference in regards to its music and production. In a personal interview, we had the pleasure to speak with Simeon, the CEO, Founder and Artist of the record label. Young Sim talked to us and gave us an inside look into his music production, the values and mission of the record label, along with some insight into the rest of the members forming the project.

At the beginning of the interview he told us about his background and roots. Young Sim was born in 1984 in Monrovia, Liberia. At the young age of 4, Simeon and his family left Liberia due to the civil war and ended up moving to United States. When asked about how this experience affected him as a person Simeon responded, “That is probably one of the most poignant experiences in my life as you know my character concerned.”

He explained how he and his family ended up moving to the US to seek political asylum. The Lawrence family found roots in Upper Darby (West Philadelphia), PA and restarted their whole life over from nothing. “Growing up as an urban kid and all of that just instilled me with the confidence that you can make something out of anything out of nothing,” Simeon said. “That was a very poignant experience in my life that shaped me as far as the man I am today.”

Growing up in Philadelphia, Young Sim fell in love with music and sounds. At the age of 7 while at Stonehurst Hills Elementary, Simeon began playing the Viola and continued until he graduated high school. “I don’t even know why I picked the Viola,” he said. “I just liked the sound and kept playing until I graduated. That really shaped my mind with how sounds are concerned. I fell in love with how sounds can set your emotions.” A lot of people don’t know that Simeon can still play the viola today. His label mates try to get him to pick it back up, but I have a feeling we won’t be seeing Young Sim with the viola in any videos any time soon. Listen to any of Young Sim’s tracks and you will hear his passion for music and different sounds and you’ll feel his emotion through your speakers.

When asked about the relation of his music and emotions Simeon replied, “For me music has the ability to take me to specific time periods. It has the ability to take me to specific settings. My beats are like the soundtrack of my life. How I feel is one of the first things I tackle in order to write a song.” Simeon’s passion for music and urban environment led him to the ever evolving world of hip hop.

“I was a victim of my circumstances,” he said chuckling. “When we came to the United States, we moved to West Philadelphia, and that’s a hot bed for hip hop. I grew up listening to Will Smith, DJ Jazzy Jeff and all the pioneers. And that was just the voice for our culture.” Simeon’s experiences, love of music and frustration with the corporate structure of the music industry led him to start his own label. “I was 17 when the idea came up,” Simeon said.

“I was frustrated that a lot of my friends were making good music, and they were being asked to cater to the executives, who think they know the culture and know what people want to hear. I am a big fan of putting the power right back in the hands of the people, and so the only way to do that is to do it from the ground up, revolutionary style. So I just figured, I am going to set my guidelines and how I feel about music, and anyone that wants to join me can”.

Once Young Sim went full steam ahead, he created the record label and decided to name it Feel Good Music Coalition. When asked about how the name came about, he laughs. “That’s a good question,” he said. “In hind sight, it came from the emotion of the music. People used to come up and say I can really feel what you’re saying in your music and it makes me feel good. Then I just started saying we make that feel good music. And then coalition is just because I am trying to build it into something bigger than myself. I want this movement entertainment company to outlive me.”

Feel Good Music Coalition is a unique hip hop record label and is not willing to stray from their definition of good music. They also differ from other hip-hop labels in the sense that they don’t curse or use sexual innuendo in any of the lyrics. “It is just something I am uncomfortable with,” Simeon said. “I got a mother who wouldn’t listen to my music if it was like that. I got a grandmother and I just take the responsibility as a person that feels responsible for his actions. I just refuse to do something that I wouldn’t feel comfortable having them listen to.” Some may think that being based in Utah, Feel Good Music would have a difficult time being embraced by the community, but that would be a misconception. Simeon told us, “The community has been great in embracing us. They appreciate good music. And the hip hop community in Utah itself can hold their own against any city in the United States.”

The team at Feel Good Music Coalition is large and growing. Simeon refers to them just as one big family that loves music. “We are always looking to add to the label. Right now we are focused on a lot of individual projects, but we are looking to put a compilation album for everyone to get to know the label.”

For those of you not familiar with Feel Good Music Coalition, you can check out their song “Teach Me How to Jimmer” track, which went viral a day after being released. “That was crazy,” Young Sim said. “That song definitely got us a lot of buzz here in Utah. Definit approached me to do the chorus. And it actually sat in my in box for a day. After I listened to it, I thought it had some potential. So I did the chorus and added a verse and the very next day we put it out and it went crazy.” I highly recommend picking up a copy of Young Sim’s “Audio Diary” available on iTunes.

There you will get a look into the label and some of his label mates such as Definit, another younger talent with an interesting story. So far, Feel Good Music has experienced some success but is has all come from hard work. Anyone that knows Simeon knows that he is really low key, but a workaholic. He is ether in the Studio, shooting a video or doing an interview every day.

Young Sim has a very positive outlook on life and knows it’s take a lot of hard work to be successful. He lives his life with the motto, “Progress is a process, period.” He believes life is supposed to be hard and it’s supposed to be fun. “I feel like take the opportunities that you have to succeed and don’t live for yourself. Don’t be selfish. Do what you can to help others, and you’ll have a much more enjoyable life.”

His main message would be if you have a dream, focus and do what you can independent what other say.” You check out Feel Good Music Coalition’s tracks, projects, events and upcoming shows on their site anytime: www.feelgoodmusiccoalition.com.

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As more reports of protestors being shot dead in Syria are coming in, so are international calls for the Syrian government to back down or stop their violent crackdown on demonstrators. It is easy to get caught in the political tailspin as the global community holds its breath while observing the so-called Arab Spring. However, for the Syrian people the facts are on the ground, where government troops show little restraint as they attempt to exert the will of the regime.

I met Nizar, not his real name, by chance in the capital of Germany. He had left his home in Syria about a month ago and agreed to speak to me about his country and his thoughts on the conflict.

“I’m in love with my country,” he told me. “I love everything about it – the people, the food, the trees, the ground, the buildings, the stones, everything.”

“What I love about my people is that we’re so hospitable – when you come into our home, we offer you a place to stay, a bed to sleep in and food to eat, lots of food! Eat, eat, eat. We would get on your nerves with offering food because we are afraid you’re too shy to ask!” He told me he misses his country, but continues to have faith in the people “Syrians are such hard workers, they always find a way.”

Nizar is from a Christian, middle-class background. His parents run a restaurant and are both educated. Nizar himself is a student.

During our conversation, I gathered a few important traits of the Syrian society. First of all, communication systems in the country are limited, and internet censorship has been in place for years. Users are constantly monitored, while websites such as Facebook and youtube have only recently been allowed. Nizar tells me that the ban on Facebook didn’t prevent people from using it through proxy, but that the government felt no urgency to crack down on the proxies. Why, I wondered?

“People only use Facebook for fun,” he answered and continued to tell me that it is generally uncommon to speak about politics – unheard of in public. The fear that the wrong words could end you up in prison deters that form of conversations. Despite this, he tells me that people still keep themselves up-to-date about the world, and that most are well-educated in society and politics.

When we spoke about the regime, Nizar explained to me that the system in Syria is innately corrupt. “Not like South America because there’s a high level of security [...] but the Syrian people have fallen into a pattern that says solving problems is easier done with money.” He is not shy to blame Syrians for letting it come to this. “If you are an important person, and the people around you don’t take advantage of knowing you in this position,  then they are considered naive and bound to fall behind.”

Meanwhile, Nizar loves his country for its inclusiveness and social community, but he has also seen the ugly side of so social of a society. He and his family have been through a difficult ordeal which proves that the injustice of the regime can get to anyone. He gave me a very personal account of how the regime affected his life which, for the sake of his family, will not be published. He told me that the sense of community in Syria could sometimes become too much for him, and that people were quick to pass judgement and delve in rumors because “everyone knows everyone’s business.”

I asked him about his emotions towards Bashar al-Assad and the regime, but he was quick to correct me, “Bashar and the regime are two very different things.” In his and many fellow Syrian’s view, Bashar was never a man of the military but forced into his position after the unexpected death of his brother. Nizar explains that his emotions are based in a gut-feeling because society has taught him that Bashar as a person is humble and not dangerous. When he came to power, he came with a lot of hope that he could improve the country.

The problem is the regime. The majority of the Syrian society is Sunni, while its rulers are from the minority Alawite sect of Shiite Islam. Nizar described the rulers of his country as stubborn people, very strict, who have forged their power on fear and social unity. It is, however, also the perfect soil for corruption and injustice.

As we began talking about the current situation he told me “today, many Syrians are frustrated.” Why, he asked me. “Security.”

Although the nation lived under a strict and corrupt system, security was always first priority. “The security forces are very powerful, yes, and they can interfere with your life in a second, true, but they kept my society safe.” He had an interesting interpretation of the present situation. “If I had to choose between a liberal society or security in my country, I would choose to be safe.” He elaborated on his conclusion saying that minorities in Syria fear that, like Egypt, the introduction of ‘majority rules’ would grant full power to a religious segment, which could potentially turn the country into an Islamic state. Nizar’s worry is that failure to separate religion and society, like the regime did, could end up alienating him and others of the Christian minority.

Briefly, we spoke about his irritation with the presence of American politics in the region. He noted that he had nothing against Americans, or any other communities of people, but that he was annoyed with the idea of “America’s Freedom Packages” – as was satirically coined by the American comedian John Stewart. “If the revolutionary movement in Syria turn to support from the West and succeeds, it would be like stabbing their country in the back.” He believes millions of Syrians will reject these freedom packages. “Our society is different, you can’t expect our traditions to suddenly coexist with western ideas let alone change overnight.” He sees the solution as a much longer process: “Syria needs to change by itself, and it will take education.”

I finally asked him about the developments of the protests. “I am so sorry for the violence in my country, no matter what war is being fought, I never wished this for us.” Still, he doesn’t see it ending before the goal is reached. “The problem is that there is no real opposition to the regime, and it’s scary to follow the developments. I want change in my society, but I don’t know who I should support. The religions? The capitalists? who? I believe people would calm down if the old crooks were to be judged under the law. I think an independent law system could bring freedom.”

The article For the Love of Syria, Interview on Syrian Society and Conflict appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.