Independently published books have changed a lot since I started reviewing and blogging. I’ve had the pleasure recently to read some exceptional work, written and produced by authors working outside of the traditional publishing platform. Point in case are Amanda King and Michael R. Swanson’s books both of whom were kind enough to answer some questions about their process, the work and what is next.
Firstly, thank you for taking the time to do this interview – it’s a fascinating read. Can you explain a little about the writing process – how you developed and wrote the novels together?
Amanda: We started developing Ismae as a setting through RPG gaming back in 2004. Writing down stories for the game turned into a full-blown novel by 2015—though it still took us another four years to publish Things They Buried.
As far as how we write, it’s a little messy. We do a lot of brainstorming together—pinning down a beginning and end, character personalities and growth arcs, and any touchpoint events. From there we do a rolling outline, meaning the further out we get from what we’re writing, the less detailed the outline is. When we hit key points, we do more brainstorming and detailed outlining.
I rough draft, and Michael reads behind me, adding his own draft content and notes. We discuss and course correct as we go. After that, it’s editing tag—go back and forth tweaking and approving until we get to a draft we’re both happy with. Somewhere in there, it goes to our development editor and beta readers. We review their notes together, generally do some serious revising and more editing tag, then sit down and read the whole thing aloud to each other. You’d be surprised what you notice during an out-loud readthrough. Finally, it goes out for a line edit.
It can be a colorful process—we’ll get in some heated discussions about the smallest bits of dialogue. Both of us have “our characters,” meaning one of us breathed life into them and therefore makes decisions around them if we can’t reach a compromise. I get the final say on Aliara, Schmalch, and Dreg while Michael has last word on Syl and Haus.
One of our favorite stories about our process came when we were reworking the Prologue (Maloose) to Things They Buried. I couldn’t come up with Orono’s bait—how he attracts his victims. Michael was still at his IT job then, and when I asked him for input, he was in a foul mood. He grumbled a little, told me he was too busy to give it much thought, and finally said “Dammit, I don’t know. He smells like cookies.” He was just being flip, but the idea clicked for me—genetic monster needs a way to attract his prey, children, who happen to love sweets. Ergo, Orono emits the odor of baking cookies.
We also leave a ton of notes for one another when we’re writing. Mostly about what needs to be filled in, different ideas to discuss, or plot holes, but we also leave jokes and references for one another to enjoy. We leave some for the readers, too—if you’re a nerd for sci-fi, fantasy, horror, or comedy, you’ll probably find some.
The world of Dockhaven is a unique setting, unlike much I’ve read before – what were the influences or thoughts going into its creation?
Michael: Place as character is a fixation of mine, and cities make great many-layered characters. Dockhaven was created directly due to my love of Lankhmar and seaports. At the time I was looking to create an adventure setting that got away from bucolic towns with jolly tavern owners and too much Tudor-inspired architecture.
It grew substantially as Things They Buried was being written.We added many elements from places we’ve visited or lived. I puttered around on a 3D terrain modelling program and that’s when Dockhaven became an atoll. A lot of problem solving comes into play as you write—things like, “How do the workers from the Rabbles get to the Big Island and Nest?” “Let’s add a big cable car!”
The city’s development continues to be a very organic process—we have all the broad strokes, and we detail as we go. There were a substantial number of additions to the city for the second book, They Eat Their Own. Neighborhoods not developed in TTB received street names, landmarks, businesses, gangs, crime bosses, etc. As well as cultural touchstones like the Sower’s Festival and how the people celebrate the coming of Spring.
And now for the corpo-drone speak synonym for “but”: all that said, Dockhaven is just one dirty city that happens to be in the center of the known world of Ismae. Our readers will soon be seeing stories from outside of the city. We hope they are as well accepted as those set in Dockhaven exclusively.
The depth of cultures and races adds another, intriguing layer – yet one that is accepted but not drawn out overtly – what was behind this idea?
Michael: We actively avoid using race as a descriptor because—on Ismae—people are divided by species and culture, not arbitrary physical characteristics. Deciding that and that their hang-ups surrounding sexuality and gender are different than those of earthlings has done wonders for our character building.It forces us to look closer at what makes people the same. That’s not to say the people of Ismae have no prejudices. They’re still loaded with vanity, greed, hate, etc. As petty and ugly as those shared qualities may be, we try to show the beautiful ones as well.
Amanda: A favorite quote from Patricia Highsmith’s Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction goes, “…Baudelaire, said that the only good parts of a book are the explanations that are left out.”
I hate being beaten over the head with the point of story—I prefer to read and suss out the themes and messages myself. We try to reflect personal and social issues in dialog, behavior, situations, and internal monologues instead of info dumping about it.
Your book is an original dark sci-fi fantasy – one that stands apart for a number of reasons – was your decision to publish independently a choice; a way to create something outside of the normal big publishing catalogue?
Amanda: Our decision was based more on not wanting to deal with years of submissions and rejections. We tried a few agents but submitting is a ton of work just to be ignored. Ultimately, we wanted to be writing books, not pitching them—though there’s still plenty of that as an indie author.
Michael: Absolutely. Independence allows us to create withoutconcern for the needs of an organization. We’ve accepted that we’re fortunate to make a modest living doing work we enjoy.
The combination of sci-fi and fantasy along with dark horror elements is cleverly mixed – how did this blend come together?
Amanda: Chaotically. We started with the characters we’d developed through the RPG game, dropped them in at a point in time, and let their backstories drive the action. I’m a horror geek, so bringing in that element was natural for me.
Michael: When I was a young reader, science-fiction wasn’t subdivided like it is today. Asimov, Dick, King, Le Guin,Lovecraft, Tolkien were on the same set of shelves at the bookstore. The greats of yesterday weren’t chained to the dictates of sub-genre classification to the degree we are today.
I was reminded of a great example of how muddy the lines were recently when discussing the term science-fantasy at a conference. The Dragon Riders of Pern, many people lump that series into fantasy because there are dragons in it. Anne McCaffery was quite vehement that they are sci-fi, not fantasy.
It also deals with a heavy backstory – one that fuels the plot – but also highlights an aspect of the world: how tricky was that to navigate as writers?
Amanda: Quite tricky at times. The whole midpoint sequence in the Orono Mansion was re-written a lot to both sync up the multi-front action and ensure a smooth reveal of what had reallyled to the confrontation. So, working with heavy backstory can be tricky from a plot perspective—however, it helps immensely from a character perspective. A meaty backstory makes it easier for me to write a fully realized character with a natural voice. In the real world, life experiences change us, color our reactions, and direct how we behave—and we wanted to bring that to our characters. You understand pretty quickly why Aliara’s so taciturn when you realize how she was raised—why Schmalch is so desperate for approval, why Syl has such a burning need to be in control, and so on.
That’s where our Index (story bible) comes in—any character with a name or line of dialog gets entered in the index with basic info about them, who they know, and what book they’re in. The more they appear in the story, the more detailed and developed their entry is. We also maintain a world calendar to make surewe avoid conflicts and paradoxes. Readers are pretty sophisticated these days, and if they like what you’re doing, they’ll learn the details, so we try to be sure we’re consistent and accurate.
Michael: We all have a heavy backstory. I believe that our stories wouldn’t resonate with readers if we didn’t present that.
There’s so much to explore in your work – is it tempting to write more for each character (such as Schmalch)?
Amanda: Schmalch was originally supposed to die at the end of Part 1 of Things They Buried, but the little guy just wouldn’t let go. I fell in love with writing his POV—his humor helps as anxiety relief for readers and his naiveté give us an organic way to deliver worldbuilding details. His chapter kicking off the midpoint conflict—drunkenly dancing in the moonlight in Orono’s old bedroom—is one of my favorites.
And yes, we have written a ton more about Schmalch and many others. We’ve done short pieces before focusing on specific characters (Schmalch, Sviroosa, Skeln), and right now we’re putting the finishing touches on a great day-in-the-life story for Luugrar, who’s another favorite of mine. We have shorts and novels started for characters who have briefly popped up or haven’t even appeared in a book yet—Lady Orilausko from They Eat Their Own, for example. She has a massive backstory. We’ve already drafted one and outlined another novel with her as a main character. We’ve drafted a novella about what happens to Dreg after the events of book two, same for Idra. The novel we’re currently working on won’t even feature Syl or Aliara (or Schmalch, sorry)—it’s about what Haus has been up to since book one. It can be tough to keep our arms around all their backstories but doing so makes them much more fully realized characters.
Michael: We’ve previously had several shorts available on https://ismae.com. During the recent redesign of the site, we decided to remove them and do a little revision before republishing. If after this interview, we hear a demand for their return, we’ll make that a high priority.
Finally, there’s currently two books – what else can readers look out for?
Amanda: We anticipate the story arc begun with Things They Buried being about six installments. To that end, we’re working on the Haus-led novel I mentioned as well as a parallel Syl/Aliara/Schmalch one—both will take our characters away from Dockhaven, so readers can explore more of the world. While we were at a con recently, we outlined a novelette about what Schmalch was doing just before Things They Buried—for all the Schmalch fans out there. We’ve also started work on a couple other series, but everything takes place on Ismae.Unfortunately, due to some major life changes this year, we’ve been delayed. The rest of this year, we’ll be writing like maniacs.
Michael: We have so many stubs, rough drafts, outlines, and fragments just waiting on us. The life changes she mentioned thankfully open us up to being more productive. Readers can also expect us to continue playing with sub-genre. The setting is science fiction, the plot may be thriller, horror, romance, mystery, heist, road movie…
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