Shades of Milk and Honey
We often joke that Shades of Milk and Honey is like Jane Austen with magic. I'm an Austen fan, as well as being long-time reader of science-fiction and fantasy. I wanted to read a novel that dealt with small scale, intimate family dramas, the way Austen did, but with the wonder of magic added. I couldn't find one, so I decided to write it. Now, Austen would never have written a fantasy so I decided to approach this as if she lived in a world where magic worked. What would she write then? Exactly the same sort of book, but with magic.
That means that you have a young lady of quality as a main character, who learned glamour -- my magic system -- the same way she learns other accomplishments like painting music, and dancing. From there chaos and then matrimony ensue.
You are a professional puppeteer and voice actor, so at what point did you decide that you wanted to write?
I was one of those children who wanted to do everything, so I was writing quite young. I set it aside when I started working as a puppeteer because I was getting my creative jollies in theater. I didn't rediscover that it was something I enjoyed until I was in my mid-thirties and had a wrist injury that kept me out of performance for about two years. During that time, my brother moved to China with his family, so I started writing a serial to send to my niece and nephew. It reminded me how much I enjoyed writing.
You have seventeen manual type writers in your house, so do you write your stories on these first?
Almost never. I usually use the computer to write fiction, but sometimes I'll break out a typewriter when I want to change my rhythm. One of the things that I find fascinating about technology is how each thing affects the way you compose a story. I type fast enough that it's almost as fast as I compose sentences, which means that most of the editing happens on the page. When I use a typewriter, it's a little slower plus there are built-in micro pauses at each line break, and large ones when I change a sheet of paper. It means that more of the composing and editing happens in my head.
Along those lines, I spent a weekend using an actual quill to see what it was like. You can write about four lines of text before you have to dip the pen. I found that I developed longer and more complex sentence structures doing that. So now, I'll sometimes switch things up by moving to a different writing tool to alter the voice of the story.
Please can you tell us about your background as a puppeteer?
I did puppetry as a hobby until I went to college. I majored in art education with a minor in theater, which was the closest I could come to combining everything that I loved to do. Later I learned about colleges, like the University of Connecticut, that had puppetry programs but at the time, I thought it was just something fun. My sophomore year, the college did Little Shop of Horrors and I was the man-eating plant.
Then a professional puppeteer came to see the show. Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that someone would actually get paid to do puppetry. I pretty much changed career choices on the spot. By the end of the first summer, I was making more money doing puppetry than my part-time job.
From there I went to the Centre for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, GA for an internship. Then I started touring. I've performed with marionettes, hand puppets, shadow puppets, body puppets and plain old found objects. While most of my career has been on the stage, I've also done film and television for companies such as Jim Henson Productions and LazyTown.
With the exception of a two-year break due to a wrist injury, I made my living as a puppeteer for over twenty years.
You also record fiction for authors such as Kage Baker, Cory Doctrow and John Scalzi, so what is this process like?
Basically, they lock you in a soundproof room with a microphone and force you to read books out loud. The horror. The horror. Outside the recording booth, I have an engineer and a director who are responsible for all the technical aspects. As we go, we do what's called punch and roll recording. That means that when I make a mistake, the director flags it and the engineer backs us up to a pause in the audio. Sometimes that's a comma, sometimes it's a period, sometimes it's just a dramatic breath. He plays a little bit of the track that comes before it and then “punches” the record button and I start talking. It gives a fairly seamless recording as the end product.
You were the Vice President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, so what does this role involve?
It was much like sitting on the board of any service organization. There were a lot of board meetings. The place where it differed was that I was often the one sent to meet with publishers or agents who were problematic in how they were treating writers. Most of the best work that SFWA did, and does, are things that the organization can't talk about because we were stepping in to resolve contract disputes for authors who didn't have other resources. Publishers were willing to work with us to resolve things backstage that they wouldn't have if the dispute went public. It was often exhausting, but totally worthwhile to have the opportunity to try to make things better for working writers.
The book has been compared to Jane Eyre and Jane Austen, so how does that make you feel?
The Austen comparisons delight me, because I was actively creating an homage to her work with the first book. The Jane Eyre comparisons surprised me, to be honest, but in hindsight it's easy to see why people make the connection. Both Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë created the romantic leads in the Byronic vein. I suspect any time you have a period novel with a brooding male lead that those two authors will be invoked. What is interesting to me is how very different Darcy and Rochester are. Darcy seems afflicted with serious social anxiety and clings to rigid conventions as a sort of safety net. Rochester on the other hand, flouts social conventions left and right. What they have in common is wealth and the smoldering eye.
How much research was required for the book?
So. Much. Research. The thing about writing in the Regency is that there are a lot of people out there who know there stuff. What pleases me most about the UK edition of Shades of Milk and Honey is that I was able to correct some of the errors in the US edition. One of the things I did was to create a Jane Austen spellcheck dictionary that flags words she didn't use. That allows me to look up the word to see if it existed and if it didn't I can decide what my options are. Usually I can find a synonym that is period correct, but occasionally I leave it alone.
What is your writing process?
I start with a general idea for the story, which I call my "thumbnail sketch." This is mostly about the structure of the story in terms of big events and emotional arc. I use that to guide some general research to see what historical events I can tie into. I create a synopsis, which goes into more detail and starts incorporating history. At that point, I begin two parallel processes. I start the scene by scene outline while doing heavy reading about whatever period I'm working in. As I read, I adjust the outline to incorporate pieces of history that resonate with the story I'm trying to tell. Depending on the novel, this can take a couple of months to more than a year. With the Glamourist Histories, it's usually on the shorter end these days because I have a familiarity with the Regency at this point.
Once I have my outline, I sit down and start writing, aiming for a minimum of 2000 words per day. I adjust the outline as I go. For me, it's a roadmap to remind me of where I want the story to go. As with any map, sometimes you discover that you need to route around an unexpected obstacle. At the three-quarter mark, I stop, re-read everything that I've written and make adjustments before starting to tie things up. I have people reading along as I write, which helps me know if the story is playing as I intend it to, but still, going back to get the overview is helpful.
I finish by going back to fix the problems in a structure pass. Then I do what I call the language pass, which is where I tweak sentences to make them flow. My last step, before handing it to my editor is to read the entire thing aloud.
What is next for you?
I'm working on Of Noble Family, the fifth book in The Glamorist Histories and am in the research and outline phase. I'm planning to start writing that in November. It's set in 1818 and we go to the West Indies, so the research is a lot heavier than for some of the other novels. There's a pretty steep learning curve, which is one of my favorite things about working historical fantasy. I think it gives us another way to look at the world and tipping it slightly to the side, with the addition of magic, let's us see things from a new perspective. I love the possibilities.