by Michael La Ronn | Nov 15, 2018 | Uncategorized
Hello, and welcome to episode 36. In this week’s episode, I wanted to spend some time talking about my process for writing my first short story collection, Reconciled People.
In last month’s Behind the Scenes episode, I talked about the process of writing my first novel, Magic Souls. I thought I’d do the same thing with Reconciled People.
Short stories are different from novels in a number of ways. Since they’re shorter, you have to economize and do more with less. You also have to follow different narrative structure. You can’t really follow most major plotting methods; most short stories revolve around a single event. I’ve always viewed short stories as the equivalent of short films to full-length movies.
Anyway, when I started writing, I said I would never write short stories. I was writing poetry at the time and thought short stories were so complicated and mysterious.
But one of my writer friends dared me to try it, and I did and got hooked.
For a while, I followed Ray Bradbury’s advice and wrote a short story every week, sometimes multiple.
I would go to local places like coffee shops and libraries, pick random people and write long sketches about them, making up details on what their lives might be like. Then I’d adapt those sketches into stories. I did this for about half a year, and most of the sketches were pretty terrible, honestly, since I was honing my craft. This was back in 2012 when I was just starting out.
I forgot about those early stories until I happened across them by pure chance several years later.
As I read through them, they were surprisingly cohesive. They were all sketches of everyday people facing a major fear.
The opening story, “Highwind”, is about a Native American running away from his culture.
Another story, “Origin Story,” is about a priest trying to console a young man who experienced a breakdown after his home burns down.
Another story, “The Lovegram,” is about a family man who has to re-examine his own biases after an act of kindness by a stranger.
While the stories aren’t perfect by any means—nothing a writer does is—they showcased my early curiosity and love of capturing everyday people on the page.
One story in particular is really memorable for me. It’s called “Aww, Shuckies”, and it’s about a girl named Shaquannah, a fifth grader who is set to go to the city museum on a field trip. On this trip, she plans to declare her love for her crush. When the field trip is canceled, she spends the day moping and failing to see anything positive. But one random incident at the end of the story completely changes her perspective.
More than any of the stories in the collection, I drew it directly from my fifth grade experience. The excitement on field trip days, the young crushes, the funny comraderie and witty banter between kids—that was all true for me. And it was fun translating it onto the page.
Anyway, I’d love to spend more time talking about Reconciled People since it’s my least popular book. I’ve sold maybe a dozen copies of it at best, and you can of course find links to it in the show notes.
Next week, since there are five Thursdays in November, I will play a sample from the audiobook version. So stay tuned for an amazing sample next week.
“I love people, watching people interact. It's a lot of psychology. We learn about ourselves by watching other people's lives on the screen.” -Tatiana Maslany
In this week’s episode I go behind the scenes of writing my first short story collection, Reconciled People. This book taught me how to people-watch, and it forced me to become a student of people and places, which served me well in my fiction.
Grab Reconciled People: http://www.michaellaronn.com/reconciledpeople
Links
Show Notes (including a transcript and sound credits): www.michaellaronn.com/episode36
Grab your copy of Reconciled People: http://www.michaellaronn.com/reconciledpeople
Check out all the past episodes on my website: www.michaellaronn.com/podcast
My YouTube Channel for Writers: http://www.youtube.com/authorlevelup
Also, join my Fan Club to get 3 free novels, early launch pricing, and notifications whenever I release a new book: www.michaellaronn.com/fanclub
If you like the show, don't forget to rate and leave a review!
Sound/Music Credits:
Intro/Outro Music: “Kick. Push” by Ryan Little: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/RyanLittle//kickpush
by Michael La Ronn | Oct 15, 2018 | Uncategorized
Hello to all you fantastic people out there!
This is just a quick post to let everyone know that I will no longer be posting social media updates on the following places:
- Google+
- Pinterest
- Goodreads
- Instagram
In addition, I will stop publishing The Writer's Journey episodes to YouTube after next Thursday, October 25th. Almost no one was commenting on the videos, anyway, and I feel bad that some of you did and I missed the comments.
I know some of you use the Goodreads blog feature to follow my content—but I check Goodreads once or twice a year, and it just makes sense for me to turn this off as I would hate for you to comment and me not see it.
Moving forward, if you want to contact me, the best way to do so is the following:
- Twitter
- Facebook (either my profile or my Michael La Ronn page)
- My contact form
By streamlining this, it will make it easier for me to connect with anyone who does want to send me a quick email or message.
Thanks for reading, and enjoy the rest of your day.
by Michael La Ronn | Sep 19, 2018 | Uncategorized, Writer's Journey: Behind the Scenes
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This week's episode is sponsored by my “Why I Quit Writing” Video on Author Level Up. Learn more about my decision to quit my Sound Mage Sonata series.
SHOW NOTES
In this week’s episode I talk about why I stopped writing my latest series and why I have no problem failing in public.
TRANSCRIPT
Sometimes you’ve just got to call it quits on a novel.
I don’t normally believe in quitting, but in this week’s episode I’m going to talk about why I stopped writing my Sound Mage Sonata urban fantasy series, and how I failed miserably in public.
***
Hello, and welcome to episode 28.
I wanted to give you guys an update on my Sound Mage Sonata series.
If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you probably heard me talk about it a lot. Some of you wrote me and told me that you were interested in it.
And then I stopped talking about it.
Why?
I take pride in the fact that I don’t usually quit my novels. I write them from start to finish, even when things get rough.
I just prefer to finish what I start, and I’m always glad that I did when I look back on the project.
But this project proved too difficult for me to continue.
In episode 3, I talked about the research I was doing for the Sound Mage Sonata series. I talked about the research I’d done into Islam, Dubai, Middle Eastern customs and culture, and music.
At this point I had spent a fair number of hours on research and I had a lot to show for it.
I was about 10,000 words into the novel when I hit a roadblock. At first, I couldn’t figure out what it was.
So I did some more research, and I discovered a problem.
It would be a very bad idea to mix Muslims and magic together.
In Islam, Magic is something to be feared. It’s the mark of dishonesty. To even dabble with it invites danger into your life, and it is frowned upon. Now, not all Muslims feel this way, but I started researching magic use and Muslims and most sources I found agreed.
That was a problem because my main character was a Muslim and he used magic. I mean, you can’t have urban fantasy without magic.
So I had a problem.
***
I played around with the idea of inventing a religion instead—but that didn’t work because the setting was very clearly in a city inspired by Dubai. To set something in a Middle Eastern setting and use any other religion than Islam just didn’t feel right. It also didn’t help that the story featured jinn prominently.
I couldn’t put jinn in the story without the culture that they came from. While that works for Western mythology and creatures, it doesn’t really work for Middle Eastern folklore, at least not in a way that feels genuine.
I realized it would be exceedingly difficult to do this story without crossing some kind of line.
It’s important to me that my stories are inclusive and not misappropriation in any way, so I ultimately made the decision to quit writing the series until I could make it work. And in order to do that, I’d have to do a lot more research, something that would require travel and a lot of time I didn’t have.
So I stopped.
That was a career first for me, but it’s important to me that I write stories that respect my readers. The last thing I want to do is offend or insult someone who has spent their hard earned money on my work—at least not intentionally.
But I learned a lot of things about the Middle East that I can use for future novels, and I look forward to that day.
Until then, the Sound Mage Sonata series is going in my someday pile.
Sometimes failure happens. I definitely failed with this series.
I mean, I talked about it in public, put myself out there. Most people would wait until the book was done before talking about it.
I definitely failed in public in front of all of you guys, but it doesn’t bother me. I don’t really see it as a failure. In fact, the idea that I failed never even occurred to me until I was writing this episode. I learned a lot about a culture, wrote 10,000 words of a novel, and ultimately made a hard decision with my readers in mind. That’s a win in my mind, and practice for the next time something like this happens.
So at the end of the day, I’m going to keep on keeping on, and I’m going to write a new urban fantasy series that I know you guys will love.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS WEEK'S EPISODE?
Let me know!
by Michael La Ronn | Dec 23, 2016 | Uncategorized
How'd you like that story?
Well, I have another one for you…
The story below, “Staff Meeting” originally part of Reconciled People, but I cut it from the ebook version at the last minute because the format was a little different.
This is a story in the form of a chatroom transcript, circa the 1990s. Enjoy it.
Get Staff Meeting (5 min reading time)
