Sara Lansing

What can I say? It's great to be here!

GLBT Bookshelf was a very welcome surprise and I was so glad to be invited to be one of the founding members. Now, I knew Jade's crowd way back in another life, but our paths had pretty much diverged in recent years as fortunes wavered for each of us. Then, a couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to find a berth for my SF novel Windstream in the DreamCraft list, with the not inconsiderable honour of being the first writer besides the great Mel Keegan (rumble of thunder!) to find his or her way between their covers (no, I didn't say sheets!) and also with no little pride to be the first DC writer to put the 'L' into GLBT!

Unfortunately Windstream was a bit ahead of its time for entirely practical reasons (time and mental capacity to devote to marketing being the only ones that matter) so although the prep work on the book was done and a promotional website was temporarily active, the book was not properly promoted, and since DC switched to overseas POD manufacture my project has languished.

All that is about to change, and this wiki is the reason why. Here is a user-friendly front-end system in which I can develop my own promo materials, control and manage what happens, and interact with the distribution and sales process as necessary. I've been a writer for thirty years but I've never been lucky enough to come across a tool quite like this before, and I have high hopes for the effectiveness it offers.

Starting soon, Windstream will be going through the publication process for paperback and ebook distribution, and will be the first of many to come. I have two more SF novels in prep, and two fantasy/historicals, one finished and ready to go with just a few tweaks and a foreword needed. For the first time in years I'm enthusiastic about the prospects of indie publishing and am ready give it a good, hard shake!

Maybe it's time to put being jaded with the whole industry on the back burner and bring some positive thinking to the fore -- and that makes this an exciting time for storytellers.

Ciao, Sara

Images For Storytellers

It took me a while to find the right image to upload at the head of this page. It had to be something that would embody some hint of myself and my work, my take on the world, and hopefully give a subliminal image to prospective readers as to what they might expect from my writing.

How to embody a broad playing field? I've written in multiple genres in my time, from the depths of space to the depths of the sea, from the past to the future, some thriller content with a political twist here and there, but usually centred on action and exotica, with characterisation supporting the narrative, not vice versa. Yes, I have dabbled in chick-lit relationship material, but found it beyond my skills (or my interest) to write entire volumes in that vein.

I suppose having served in the military has coloured or informed my view of life (show me an ex-serviceperson it hasn't), but that was a long time ago and I got out for my own reasons, especially given the political situation of the first decade of the 21st century. I've been told I write "gunfights, fistfight and dogfights" up there with Ben Bova (Orion in the Stars was the work invoked at the time, this was readers' feedback praising an old actioner I wrote with Barb Jones) and that's something I've always been proud of.

I chose the great bronze statue of Boudicca (anglicized to "Bodicea") that stands by the Thames at Westminster Bridge. This photo was taken by Doctor Mike back in '06 (see more of his work at Digital Kosmos). This is the warrior queen of the Iceni tribe of modern Norfolk, who lead the rebellion against the Romans in AD61, which, though it ended in defeat, has become emblematic to modern times of the will for freedom at any cost. Yes, she's a military symbol, a political symbol, a badge for freedom as a creed, she is a perfect British martyr. But as a figure from history she also embodies other things, such as being a female monarch at a time when, according to conventional scholarship, women were the chattels of a male dominated society. There's academic wiggle room on that and a growing movement of feminist scholars and gender archaeologists are taking such notions to task. So Boudicca is a handy symbol for that struggle too, as well as the sad details of her life being an underlying commentary on the lives of so many women in the here and now that she reminds us of who we were/are/can be if we refuse to wear anyone's chains. Nil illigitimi carborundum -- don't let the bastards grind you down!

So there she is, my adopted symbol for an equitable take on freedom for all ways and forms of being human, gender-based, sex-based or whatever. And she has the exotic edge too: she looked nothing like her 19th century depiction: according to Amianas Marcellinus, writing in the 4th century, she was a terrifying individual, very tall, with red hair down to her knees, strong as a bull and with a voice that struck horror into cultured Romans. Sounds like my kinda woman when it comes to a fight!

More ramblings from Lansing's World in future, and stay tuned for developments in the book department.

Ciao, Sara

The Front Page is Always Tackled Last

I was delighted to see Jade launch her gallery page here! I've been a big fan of her work for years and enjoyed seeing it mature as she has laboured intensively for the DC Keegan editions, in fact her name is linked with Keegan the way Nick Stathopoulous is linked with Terry Dowling (or Chris Foss with E.E. Smith in the 70s, and Frank Frazetta with R. E. Howard in the 60s... In fact right up to the present day.) I speak from experience too, as Jade knocked out the cover for the DC edition of Windstream and I had the privilege of being consulted. The airship Montgolfier I was built as a CGI model and applied over the digital painting of the eruption and evening sky, and it really did approximate the kind of scene I was describing in the middle chapters of the book.

Where will the future take me, though? I'm no artist, at least not of the calibre to offer up a cover. I write what goes between the covers and a writer thinks about his or her jacket design absolutely last, in fact in most traditional publishing it has nothing to do with the writer. POD is another matter, and working with a team as approachable and businesslike as DC it just comes naturally. And with the illustrating load Jade has perpetually on her slate, it stands to reason other hands may eventually be involved.

One possible hand is Doctor Mike, best known in this network so far as a photographer, but he's also been an artist most of his life, working in dinosaur illustration for Australian publishers twenty years ago. He painted postcards for the South Australian Museum, and the cover for the 1996 Monstrosities catalog, and has enough of a portfolio to be an interesting choice for cover artist. Stay tuned, there may be some conventional, rather than digital, paintings out there on the horizon. We chatted about some ideas and a rough now exists for my SF adventure Jaganat, which may become an iconic motif if that one spins off the series it just might. And he's been in SF illustration in one form or another for thirty years: who do you think designed the fighter on the cover of Mel's Aphelion?

As ever, watch this space for the latest from the Lansingverse,

Ciao, Sara

Agent Burns

No, he's not an operative for UNCLE, or any of the more tangible organisations that safeguard our freedoms (tongue firmly in cheek, here), nor is his first name Frank. No, I'm talking about when you get burnt by an agent.

Agents who charge put their fees up front, and they charge a LOT. They charge their lifestyle income to you and you must have enough disposable income to support their lifestyle in exchange for the possibility that they might sell your book at some point. That's the deal, and plenty of writers can afford it, or used to be able to before the global economy began it's death-dive. Then there are agents who don't charge, who work with your material in good faith and take their percentage from your income after a sale has taken place. Naturally, they're in the extreme minority these days, though they used to be able to make that work in the glory days of publishing, when books were cheap and most people read.

But what about the others? The ones who claim they don't charge, but really do? Check out Writer Beware, a safeguard organisation that tracks shonky behaviour and which publishers and agents are being taken to court by class actions mounted by their cheated clients. That's the sort I mean. Which of us hasn't been through it? The agency which advertises that they don't charge fees, and which fawns over your outline and sample chapters, urgently requests to read your complete manuscript... Then the blade falls. It's woefully un-ready for publication and requires major editing, a service they provide at an hourly rate sure to make them thousands if you're dumb enough to fall for it. Mel calls that "bate and switch," a term I have always thought was highly accurate.

Yep, I tasted the same lemon of a deal many years ago, and was happy to see the agency involved in court for their practices eventually. I paid them nothing, nothing was published. Square one, though the writer's stock of experiences grows in these episodes, and his or her cynicism gets a workout.

There are probably decent agents out there, but agencies are the intermediates of an industry in danger of destruction. People are reading less, those who are reading ever-more frequently preferi electronic media, the ever-shrinking market for paper books is driving their price to stratospheric levels, and the author is the overpopulated portion of the business that the industry really can do without.

That's why POD is here to stay, and the old tern 'vanity publishing' is heard less and less. It's not vanity to self-promote and self-publish: in a real and urgent sense it may be sheer survival. Heck, what else are we all doing here?

Ciao, Sarah

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