Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Touring the bookshops of England and Scotland, I was hugely pleased to
see that the profession of "The New Terry Pratchett" seems to have
been abandoned. Which has its downside in less work for Josh Kirby, I
suppose, but must be a relief. 

How did it feel through the 90s to have hordes of people being
marketed as imitators of you? Did you ever feel the urge to sneak a
look and see what they were doing? (I remember reading page 1s of lots
of them in about 1997, and my teeth hurting at the bad puns that
weren't funny and the... well, the everything that wasn't funny,
really.)

(And yes, doing fine on the various UK lists, thank heavens -- still
climbing, and the reviews have started coming in now which may nudge it
up a bit. Really at this point it's just the word of mouth thing
starting, and the "Beryl in SF's pick of the week" signs in the shops.)
  

    
Dodge,

I've got a lot of land (at least, by UK standards.)  A river runs
through it. And we had a nasty old tennis court converted into a
walled, raised bed garden, which takes a lot of work but is very
productive.  I intent to spend my declining years shuffling around it
in a green baize apron and a Panama hat.

And I read, and go for long fast walks.  But...I'm a writer, I'm doing
what I want to do, and in some ways I'm doing it in every waking
moment.  I cn't quite get alongside the idea of hobbies in the usual
sense.

 Terry
  

    

Neil,

I'm glad you're surviving!

I can say in all honesty that I have never read anyone hailed (at
least by someone unimaginative in the PR department) as 'the next/new
Terry Pratchett'.  I'm not sure why, but I suspect it's out of sheer
distaste at such a dumb thing for a publisher to do to an author. It's
just a sales ploy. And, in any case, I suspect it was done because
someone thought their author wrote like someone else told them I wrote
like, and was wrong...

You were, I think, the fifth or sixth NTP, but someone somewhere
obviously put their foot down, or used an axe, and it stopped real
quick.

Publishers are like that.  Now all the children's departments are
looking for the next J K Rowling when they *ought* to be looking for
the *first* Gladys J. Nightingale.

Don't underestimate Beryl In SF; she had The Power To Give You More
Shelf Exposure (note to Americans: we are talking about mavens here. 
I've never seen the word used in the UK.  On my last tour I've got into
a shop and they'd summon Alice or someone 'because she's our SF
maven'.  They were always nice and knowledgeable people, but I was kind
of disppointed that there wasn't a hint of darkness and feathers.)

I'm not certain that reviews in the UK, good or bad, make any
difference, at least to the likes of us.  I've had stinkers and I've
been praised to the sky by serious writers, and nice thought the latter
is I don't think it makes a ha'porth of difference to what happens in
the shops. But I think good reviews and store exposure *do* make a
difference in the US.

I'm moved to wonder how many 'next Neil Gaimans' have there been...


Terry
  

    
Dodge,

Obsessive?  No, not in the sense I think you mean.  I know DW fans who
have a sort of DW *shrine* in their houses and collect everything
that's even vaguely to do with me, and I've never gone that far.  I
suspect that authors don't.  

Terry
  

    
I think that a shrine would be going a bit far, though
Pratchett books have their own shelf on the wall, and
I did read the Digger series. And I _do_ have the map
of A-M city, just for completeness. (though I rather
regret that purchase, I can't pass up a map)

Hmm. Maybe it's a sort of shrine after all!

Which would you prefer, Mr. P: a fan collecting everything
you've ever written, or a fan learning to write and using
you as a model?
  

    
Jane,

"You know, I've always thought that little ~ key was kinda worthless
and hard to reach."  

It's just that here on The Well I occasionally do *something* while
typing fast that wipes out everything I've just done...

"My question is how much research do you do to write a book?  When you
dive in are you constantly stopping to find out all the obscure
references..."[snip] 

Very little book-specific research.  I did a bit on clocks and
chocolate (one whole box) for ToT, but I had to be careful.  I had to
say: I'm finding out about clocks, so this really fascinating fact
about certain fabrics will have to wait until another day...because
reasearch is something you do all the time, often in obscure books read
for sheer enjoyment. Alas, not so obscure books these days.  I'm
amazed at how much of what I called 'white knowledge, the stuff you I
without every remembering a time when I didn't know it and cannot
remember how I learned it, is getting rarer.  Sure, you can find a lot
on the 'net -- but not if you don't know you don't know it.


"I also would like to say that Susan's acceptance of her name helped
meto understand that sometimes, you just have to go with your name and
be the person it wants you to be."

Sure.  Names are what you make them.  And one day Tiffany will be a
name for old ladies.  Jane at least is timeless:-)

Terry
  

    
Michael,

"Which would you prefer, Mr. P: a fan collecting everything
you've ever written, or a fan learning to write and using
you as a model?"

If they learned to write well, maybe the latter:-) 

Terry
  

    
>a hint of darkness and feathers.

A ghastly, grim, and ancient maven, in fact, from the Night's
Plutonian shore?


I just learned a nice story from Andrew Brown, sometimes known
as (andrewb), author of The Darwin Wars (at www.darwinwars.com
and discussed here in Topic 38), and got permission from him
to post it here.

(Andrew wrote about religion for some time.)

        ...when I was God on the Independent, I was asked to
        preach a sermon at Queen's College, Oxford.  I sort of
        muttered about not really erm believing any of it, but
        they weren't listening.  So I preached on Small Gods,
        and told them that it was the most subtle and
        accurate treatment of belief that could hope to find.

        I wasn't asked back, but it was a whole lot of fun.


That must happen all the time.
  

    
Catlike treader...

I really hate that backspace key...sometimes it throws me right out of
The Well...

Anyway...I heard on the US tour in May that DW had been the subject of
or referred to in sermons/discussions/whatever in four places of
religion, one of them a synagogue.  Small gods tends to be the test of
choice, but Granny Weatherwax seems to turn up too.  It happens a lot
in the UK -- there's usually one or two ministers in the queue
somewhere on the tour.

Now it can be told: a few years ago a nice young lady reached the
front of the queue with a big stack of books and said hurriedly "Can
you sign these? I've brought them for a group of ladies who don't get
out very much".  I said okay, and she started handing them over: "that
one's for Sister Mary Joseph, that one's for sister Concepta..." 

Terry
  

    
I was really blown away by Small Gods when I first read it.  It was so
different from the DW novels I'd read before.  I still think about it every
once in a while.  Was there anything in particular that inspired you to
write a book like Small Gods?
  

    
Vetinari is a very interesting character to me. My second most fave
after Death. I have seen people on forums argue that he is a vampire -
because of his connection in his youth with the lady in Uberwald. But
he goes out in the sunshine sometimes so he can't be. I've also seen
some people suggest that he is Death trying out being human. Based on
the fact his description is so like Death's - Tall, Thin, Blue eyes,
Wears black all the time. Hm. But one thing that really got me thinking
was the Assassins Diary book where they list his degrees... They did
NOT list that he has a degree in languages - yet we know he studied
them. They DO list that he has a degree in Dance & Deportment. And this
raises many thoughts of what Vetinari was like as a young man. One
wonders why he never married? I know you weren't the one that did the
main work on the Diaries.

The actual question is, though, how old is Vetinari? In Fifth
Elephant, Vimes states that he (Vimes) is the same age as Vetinari. I
assumed Vimes was in his late 40's maybe early 50's at the most at that
time. Which would mean that Vetinari became the Patrician of AM at a
rather early age surely?  Now THAT would be a good "fill in the past"
kind of tale - how Vetinari became Patrician. Hm.
  

    
Jeff,

I think that what triggered Small Gods was a TV news story many years
ago showing a complete bastard somewhere in the Middle East standing in
front of a fountain that had been made to flow with fake blood and
telling an audience of young men what a good thing it was to die for
their god.  And I though, I know that's wrong.  A worthwhile god is one
you live for.  And then it stewed in my brain for a few years.

Terry
  

    
>>standing in front of a fountain that had been made to flow with
>>fake blood and telling an audience of young men what a good thing
>>it was to die for their god. 

Sadly unsurprising and yet euurrrrKKKK.

Though Vetrinari seems to care in his own odd way sometimes, he's no
where near caring enough to confuse with Death in my mind.  
  

    
Dodge,

"I know you weren't the one that did the main work on the Diaries."

Oh, really?  You'd be amazed.  Generally, I do rather more than
Stephen! It's a way of trying out new ideas.

Nothing says that Vetinari has to become Patrician at any particular
age...but the book I'm currently working on may throw some light on
this matter, or at least make the darkness more visible:-)

Terry
  

    
My apologies for posting this late.  E-mail from Jane Davis:
 
Thank  you very much for creating such an interesting world to explore
and enjoy.  Many times I've answered a trivia question correctly due to
knowledge gleaned from the Discworld books.  So the question is, how
much do you research all the small bits in the books (you know, all those
little things on the annotated pratchett file and others)?  Also, after
many years of struggling with what career path to take, I was inspired by
the Librarian to break down and embrace the librarian-ness within. 
Although I'm not far enough in the ranks to have been taught the
navigation of L-space, I am positive that the time is not far off. Thank
you again for some of the most delightful books I've ever read again and
again.

Jane Davis
Technical Services Librarian
Cumberland University
jdavis@cumberland.edu
"If information is the currency of democracy, then libraries are the
banks." -- Wendell Ford

 
  

    
"I'm not certain that reviews in the UK, good or bad, make any
difference, at least to the likes of us."

No, I don't think they do, other than to let people know that the book
is out and in the shops.

"But I think good reviews and store exposure *do* make a
difference in the US."

I think SOME reviews make a difference. Entertainment Weekly seems to
sell books, so does USA Today. And then there was that woman in the
bookshop on Fifth Avenue who told us in 1990 that she was waiting for
the New York Times review to see whether her shop got behind Good Omens
or not. And then we got that lousy review in the NYT (and 150 great
reviews everywhere else) and I'm sure she didn't get behind it.

Local US paper reviews seem to sell books too, but I think it's mostly
back to the cheap advertising thing of letting people know it's out.

"I'm moved to wonder how many 'next Neil Gaimans' have there been..."

In comics, four or five, but the fact I'd vacated that ecological
niche meant they didn't stay there for long. In books... none yet, that
I've seen, but that's probably because none of the books sits in the
same box.

http://www.dynamism.com/index.shtml is the place I got the libretto
from. They're good.
  

    
Valerie,

I'd suggest that Vetinari cares for the general, rather than the city.
 If civilisation (ie, Ankh-Morpork) survives, then that is good for
everyone.  If policies to ensure that survival have unfortunate
fall-out for individuals, then that is...unfortunate...

Terry
  

    
Neil,

" And then there was that woman in the
bookshop on Fifth Avenue who told us in 1990 that she was waiting for
the New York Times review to see whether her shop got behind Good
Omens or not. And then we got that lousy review in the NYT (and 150
great reviews everywhere else) and I'm sure she didn't get behind it."

And it's still in print, ten years on... 

On a signing, if I'm given one book to sign, it'll be the latest
harcover; if there are two, the second will be the previous hardcover
or latest paperback; if there are three, the third will be a copy of GO
with dog-eared covers, yellowing pages that with the wavy look of
paper that at some point been dropped in liquid, and the whole thing
will be barely held together by sticky transparent tape, brown with
age.  And the owner will tell me it's their third copy, because the
first two got loaned to friends who didn't return them.  And the damn
book didn't even get into the first four in the World Fantasy Awards
that year, which just goes to show, although I don't what it shows.

I'll take a look at that URL.  In passing, I've noted how difficult it
is for some US companies who alleged deal internationally to handle
the fact that there are Other Countries.  Recently I had to be on the
phone to a company's help desk so that the lady could help me banjax
their Web site's on-line'automated ordering' procedure, which
absolutely refused to accept that anyone didn't live in the USA, Canada
or Mexico...

Terry
  

    
Jane (via Linda)  Re: reseach

As I've said -- and as I suspect Neil will agree -- research is what
you do all the time.  Sometimes I'll do some very specific research
germane to the current plot (which might involve reading, or may
involve just talking to people -- it's amazing what old coppers will
tell you!) but mostly the contents of the books just evolve from
voracious and ill-directed reading over 40 years.

In short, I've just read anything that interested me and been
fortunate enough to have been interested in everything.

Embrace the Inner Librarian!

Terry
  

    
>If policies to ensure that survival have unfortunate
>fall-out for individuals, then that is...unfortunate...

That's exactly what I meant when I said 'his own odd way'  
  

    

  Terry --

  > In short, I've just read anything that interested me and been
  > fortunate enough to have been interested in everything.

  I've done this for many years myself, but my problem seems to be
that remembering _where_ I read or learned something can border on
impossible, which makes it very hard to re-check things in case I'm
not remembering them right or just need more information.  So even
though I *know* I've read a lot about something, I often find myself
doing new research anyway.  Have you encountered any similar problem(s),
and if so do you have any suggestions for how to deal with it?  Do you
use anything special in the way of a filing system, for example?
  

    
Rab -- but that's why one writes fiction, in my opinion. I'd rather
let the research have composted down in the back of my head to a
general sort of memory of,  say, the mudlarks living in the Thames in
Victorian London, finding the dropped bits of coal and so forth in the
river mud and then come forward from there, than to be about to write
about mudlarks and go and reread one's Mayhew to male sure the details
are right. Because what you kind of remember is truer, normally, or
feels more right.

As Terry says, research is what you do all the time.  It's suddenly
developing an interest in things and reading about them, or finding an
odd book on something you know nothing about and suddenly needing to
educate yourself on a whole new area.
  

    
Rab,

What he said:-)

Everything about Harry King (King of the Golden River) in The Truth
was based on real life and references in maybe six or seven books, most
of which I'd never find again.  

The kind of stuff I think you and others in this thread like *can't*
be looked up, because until you know it you don't know that you didn't
know it. I suppose what we are talking about here is 'an education',
not to *do* anything, but just to be, well, educated.  You can't take
notes because you don't know, at the time, what is going to be
noteworthy.  It all goes down in the compost.

No filing system, no notes as such -- but I have got a large file of
stuff on my PC and on the Palm V which is full of gnomic little
sentences to remind me about certain things I've heard, read or thought
of.  They're not facts, they're more like connections and insights and
would probably bewilder anyone who read them.

So we read, and new stuff gets piled on old stuff, like some kind of
toxic ideas dump, and ideas are formed.  When people say 'where do you
get you ideas from?' the answer has to be: they're made up in my head,
out of the broken bits of hundreds of other things, filtered through
time and altered by association.

Terry 
  

    

  Thanks, Terry -- I actually find that very encouraging, in a way,
because it means that I'm not totally hopeless....  {smirk}
  

    
E-mail from Lisa:

I have a copy of GO just like that<g>.... I have always been curious
whether or not you were aware that modern magical studies, especially
chaos magic had borrowed terminology and ideas from you; the concepts of
octarine being the color of magic, and 'headology' come immediately to
mind. I enjoy your books immensely and in some alternate universe there
is a happy me that got to see you at Capricon some years back <g>
....Lisa