137: Avengers For at Least a Few Years

Get your story straight with us this week as we talk to legendary comics writer Kurt Busiek about continuity, diversity, and how much he actually got paid to resurrect Jean Grey! Plus, we talk the news of the geek world, we review the season opener of Game of Thrones *AND* we announce a new show coming soon to the JET network! JETwork? Did we mention Kurt Busiek? GET THIS SHOW

I think we're gonna go with 'JETwork'...

134: The Mage-tricks Reloaded

Spot the fnords with us this week as we recap 2016's Emerald City Comic Con and present interviews with a trio of amazing creators: Camilla d'Errico, Comfort and Adam, and Mitch Gerads! Plus, news of the geek world *AND* we frolic with the Machine Elves as we read Grant Morrison's THE INVISIBLES for Comic Book Club! --BARBELITH--

CON CRUD IS REAL

ECCC 2016 Day 3(.14)

Our brains are nearly full to the brim with nerd juice and so is this show as we look back at Day 3 of Emerald City Comic Con! We talk PBS's Doctor Who offering in the 80's, changes in the con this year and next, art by the amazing Camilla d'Errico, Kal's mental map of the seedier side of the con *AND* we interview Pia Guerra of Y: THE LAST MAN! If you only listen to one show about the Saturday of ECCC 2016 hosted by us, MAKE IT THIS ONE!

To sleep, perchance to dream of feet that don't hurt...

ECCC 2016 Day 2(NOT 1)

We are back for our first day of Emerald City Comic Con 2016! Listen in as we talk naked pedestrians, salty bus drivers, and Hard Wok! Oh, *AND* news from the show floor, merch reviews, a whole mess of cosplay, and interviews with some of the hottest talent comics has to offer. On this show, we speak with rising talent and SCHOOL SPIRIT artist Arielle Jovellanos! Get this show in your head!

HARD WOK

ECCC 2016 Day 0(?)

What day is it even...we have no idea. As Emerald City Comic Con opens in Seattle, Image pulls of the heist of the century by kickstarting con a day early with Image Expo! We talk the announcements from that, run down a bit of the week's news, review Black Panther #1 (hot from the shelves!), and we let you know where we'll be this weekend at ECCC! PLUS, another installment of Comic Book Club where we gawp in awe at Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross's Marvels!

What exactly *is* up with Geoff Johns?

Emerald City Comic Con 2016!

Stress can be fun and powdered teeth taste amazing! That's what we're telling ourselves this week as we get ready for Emerald City Comic Con. We'll be at the show, which runs April 7-10, bringing you news and updates from the show floor, plus coverage of post-show parties and events, pictures and video, reviews of merch, and your little dog, too!

Here's some links to our social media outlets, in case you forgot. Follow us for updates from the show!

https://www.facebook.com/JustEnoughTrope/
https://twitter.com/justenoughtrope/
https://www.instagram.com/justenoughtrope/

Also at the show, we have been humbled by getting the chance to talk to some of the comic industry's hottest new talents and its influential legends. Here's who we're interviewing at the show:

Vanesa R. Del Rey
Comfort Love and Adam Withers
Sam Humphries
Ben Templesmith
Aaron McConnell
Mike McGhee
Corin Howell
Mikeatron
Sanford Greene
Kyle Strahm
Tamra Bonvillain
Steve Lieber
Ed Brisson
Jen Wang
Pia Guerra
Arielle Jovellanos
Bryan JL Glass
Matt Wilson
Jamie McKelvie
Jim Mahfood
Chrissie Zullo
Curt Pires
Kurt Busiek
Kevin Wada
Mitch Gerads
Faith Erin Hicks
Camilla d'Errico
and
Jay and Miles from XPlain the X-Men!

Clearly, someone has made a mistake and that mistake will be rectified when we are thrown, bodily, out of the con and onto Interstate 5, but until then! We will be bringing you stimulating and entertaining talk from these amazing people.

So click those links above, check out our Patreon page to increase our chances of getting home, and take this journey with us to the Emerald City!

Keep the geek fires burning!

133: The Manly Marvel Marching Society

Grab a plate and a slice of beefcake this week as we talk the Mighty Men of Marvel, BvS (again), a new Dungeons and Dragons film, and the new home release of Assassin's Creed: Dunsinane! I mean, Macbeth! Plus, we play Con Bingo *AND* a HUGE announcement about next weekend's ECCC! #swollfie #legday #SpotMeBro

Miles is pretty young...we try not to sexualize him.

An Interview with Paolo Bacigalupi

Below is one of the interviews we conducted with the fabulous featured guests at Nerdcon: Stories 2015 in Minneapolis, MN. Originally, there was audio for all of our interviews but our engineer (Kal) is a schmuck and some of them didn't turn out very good. So, transcribed here, is the text of our interview with Paolo Bacigalupi, which Kal was forced to type in a snake-filled pit as punishment. You can check out some of the interviews that *did* work elsewhere on the site or on iTunes @ The Just Enough Trope Podcast. Enjoy! (whip cracks) Keep typing, Kal! Asps! Very dangerous!

Mika: We’re here talking to science fiction author Paolo Bacigalupi. He has written books that span from the adult bio-punk The Windup Girl to the young reader book Zombie Baseball Beatdown. Welcome, Paolo.

Paolo Bacigalupi: Glad to be here.

M: You once said in an interview that “YA is where plot and story is celebrated”. Do you think that’s what makes YA stand out as a genre and why it’s had a huge burst of popularity, even with adults?

PB: Yeah, I do think that there are some things going on there, where you see…especially with adult crossover readers where they’re interested in fast-moving stories, they’re interested in characters with big hopes and dreams and big conflicts and all that stuff and so I think those stories provide a lot of genuine escape or the potential for it. Yeah, there’s definitely some core story tools that get used and celebrated in YA in ways that, when you look at something like literary fiction, maybe aren’t.

M: You’ve written for a wide range of readers from middle grade to YA to adult…is there a particular age group that you enjoy writing for most?

PB: I sort of think of all those things as being different facets of my own writing personality. There’s different toolsets that you use, there’s different ways you express yourself and the reality is that I think a lot of times writers will get sort of channeled into one particular zone. You’re supposed to be this kind of brand, you’re supposed to be this kind of voice and it’s really good from a product packaging standpoint but it’s terrible from a creative artist standpoint. You want to be able to play, you want to be able to stretch other muscles, you want to be able to crack jokes at one moment and be serious in another. You want to play with language in ornate usage in one moment and you want to just get to a point where you make things explode in another and all of those things are maybe contained inside of your artistic pleasures, but you don’t always have room to do that. So, for me, by splitting into those different genres, what I have is that opportunity to say “Now I can plot this aspect of myself or that aspect of myself”. A lot of times, it’s not so much that there’s a favorite genre or a favorite age, it’s more like “This is how I feel like being today; this is the kind of story I feel like telling today” or “This particular story will work really well in this particular age bracket” and that’s more what you’re looking at.

M: Do you write more than one book or story at a time?

PB: I have been, actually. A lot of times what I’ll have is a main project and then oftentimes I’ll have either a secret project or have short stories going at the same time. When I was working on The Drowned Cities, there was a point where I really bogged down and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing with it and so I sort of snuck off and wrote Zombie Baseball Beatdown to sort of do something else…and then came back to The Drowned Cities and finally could see it and I was like “Oh! I see what’s wrong; I can fix it now” and it was great. But being able to take that break and go do something else instead of just staying in the groove and focusing on the single book…it was necessary and since then I’ve realized, in the very beginning at least, when I first started out writing, I always thought “If I start a book, I have to finish writing that book before I’m allowed to start another”, because I was so terrified that I wasn’t going to be a finisher. I know people who aren’t finishers and you’re not going to be a writer if you’re not a finisher. But then there was a point where I was like, “No, I *can* finish things. I will finish things! I’m not deluding myself”…

M: (laughs)

PB: …and then there’s this thing where you start thinking is “What I really need to do actually is be creatively alive”, especially when writing becomes your full time job, it’s not an escape anymore: it’s the core of what you do. Than you start thinking, “Ok, I need to have other things in my life for a balance of different projects” and so…I’ve started working on a smorgasbord of models…”I think I’ll take a little bit of that, a little this, maybe I’ll spend some time over here” and then deadlines get in the way and then you *do* have to focus in. When I was writing The Water Knife, I was also writing The Doubt Factory at the same time and that was actually interesting and useful for me to be able to set that one project down and start up another and go back and forth.

M: Your debut novel The Windup Girl won a Hugo in 2010. How do you feel about the recent controversy surrounding the Hugos and how books are nominated? And as a side question: have you ever attended one of George R.R. Martin’s Hugo Loser Parties?

PB: Yes, I’ve attended one of George’s Hugo Loser Parties…he throws lovely parties…

M: (laughs)

PB: You know, this is sort of an interesting thing…awards are really fascinating because they’re arbitrary. I remember that the year that I won, I tied with The City and the City by China Miéville, but as I recall, Cat Valente’s book Palimpsest was also on the ballot…I’m trying to think…there were other good books on that ballot and I remember thinking at some point, you’ve moved past the question of what’s good and moved into a spot of taste or affection for a writer or affection for a writer’s career or a sense that “Oh, this person is working and we want to recognize them and boost them up”. There are so many other things that go into that awarding process and some of it’s just “I really like ornate language” or “I really like things that explode”. There’s so many arbitrary layers there…you’re sort of grateful when that attention focuses on you and says “Hey, we like what you’re doing; keep going” and you feel really grateful for that. But, you don’t necessarily say “You know what? This makes me the *best*!”

M: (laughs)

PB: “This matters exactly in some larger sense. Thank you so much!” But it’s nothing more than luck in a moment, too. What’s interesting to me is watching…when I was growing up, I knew about the Hugos and it was one of those lifetime dreams to have won a Hugo, so it’s a really powerful thing but it’s really interesting to me that the idea became “Because someone else won a Hugo that takes something away from me”…I’ve been on the Hugo ballot enough times before I won with The Windup Girl…I’d been on it for short stories numerous times…

M: Sure.

PB: …and the interesting thing was at that time, what would happen would be that you’d get nominated and everybody else would take a look at that story and they’d be like “Oh no, we hate this” and you’d get voted to the bottom of the ballot and that’s where you say “It’s an honor to be nominated”. Some people like my work enough to support it and to put it up here and to all agree that this is neat. You’re delighted by that and then it’s interesting to see everyone else get a taste of it and say “It’s not my taste” and you’re like “Ah! Ok…fair enough”. And yet, none of the things where you get nominated or this story gets nominated or that story doesn’t get nominated or it won or it didn’t win…none of those moments had ever made me think “You know what? Someone’s out to get me!”

M: Right.

PB: “You know what? Someone’s trying to keep me out ‘cause they just don’t like my environmental stuff. That’s why I got stuck at the bottom of the ballot!” Never occurred to me. That’s the thing…when I look at the Hugo controversy stuff, it’s a group of people sat around convinced that there is a cabal of dislike that is organized and focused on them and not a bunch of people looking at stuff and saying “Not really my taste. Thanks; I’ll pass” or “Yeah, this is kinda cool but no, it’s not going to be the winner because I think *this* is actually much more hardcore. This is much more interesting; this is much more ambitious”, whatever those things are. Any of those people who decided to game the Hugos, never in their minds, apparently, did they sit down and think “You know what? Maybe I need to write a better story…”

M: (laughs)

PB: “Maybe I need to focus on myself and think about what worked. I got nominated; what worked? I got onto this ballot; that’s a good thing. What didn’t work? Apparently other people don’t like it. Hmm, maybe I should look at myself and think about what else I can do to make people unable to stop themselves from voting for me the next time. How can I be a better writer?” I think the only thing we authors have control over is what we write. We have control over writing the best possible thing we can and I think that there’s a real sickness when you start spending all of your time worrying about how you can get awarded, how many book sales you get, what kind of external rewards are out there because you do not control those things. That’s the thing that stands out the most to me about that whole thing is that these particular writers did not sit there and say “How can I make myself better, how can I do better craft, how can I make my readers more delighted?” That’s astounding to me.

M: Your books cover a wide range of topics from climate change to bioengineering to the meat packing industry and they also possess a lot of political themes. How do you approach starting research for a project and how did your interest or curiosity in environmental issues arise?

PB: I think I’m researching almost all the time, you know…your life is kind of a process of researching. You start seeing news items that are interesting, you start seeing little pieces of data that at some point will coalesce into something relevant. Something like The Water Knife, if I’m looking at that book, there were key moments that built up to me deciding that I was going to write that book. It wasn’t like I was doing research, exactly, but there were moments that would suddenly stick in my head. There’s this moment when I’m down in Texas in 2011, during their drought, and their drought was exactly like what climate models predict is going to be the future of Texas…and then at the same time, the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, was going around and praying for rain. In that moment, you’re thinking “Ah!” I was going down there for Armadillo Con, I didn’t think I was doing research. On some level, you’re like “That is a devastating drought; it looks really bad out here” and then you see Rick Perry telling everybody they should pray for rain…

M: That’s not really what you want from your elected officials…

PB: No, and when you think about the future, you think “That doesn’t lead to a good future, does it?” They’re in reality denial…and that’s the moment when you pause and you realize you’ve been collecting a lot of information in your head for a while, that you’ve seen a pattern. You see the thing that tells you, “That’s worthwhile. That’s interesting; I’m going to work on that.” At that point is when you start doing your actual research. That’s when you start hunting around for information about how the Central Arizona Project works, for maps about how aquifers are getting pumped out of the Phoenix basin, whatever the thing is. “How does the Southern Nevada Water Authority work?” You start with that seed moment where you’re gathering a lot of stuff and then you actually focus in on the details.

M: I read something briefly about how your book The Water Knife came out earlier this year, right before it was well publicized that California was going through a drought, and the article said it was “perfect timing”…

PB: Actually, it wasn’t just perfect timing; Knopf (Doubleday Publishing) put a lot of marketing money into weather control. It was great!

M: (laughs)

PB: I feel like my publisher did great work there. We needed a timely book and they put it all into weather control to make it timely.

M: A lot of your books take place in the near future, where climate change has occurred and resources are scarce. Is there anything you think the general public can do to prevent such a bleak future?

PB: Yes. There’s something really simple we can do: we can tax carbon. We can put consumer carbon tax out there at the corporate level and the consumer level. I think the free market actually can solve a huge amount of problems; I really feel like marketplaces are great problem-solvers but you have to give them the right pricing signals in order for them to function effectively. We run in this idea that a free market in the US should function unfettered and that the wisdom of the markets is there. But instead, you set guidelines and fences around the free market and then it will charge in the direction you want it to go. Right now, Washington State is looking to put a carbon tax on their ballot and I’d really like to see more states that can do direct ballot measures to enact laws. That would be something people can do: start gathering signatures to get carbon tax on the ballot. We don’t have to wait for our politicians to decide, we don’t have to wait for Democrats and Republicans to duke it out one way or the other. This is stuff where there is direct actions and levers we can use and ultimately, the thing that terrifies governments and politicians more than anything is us enacting our own laws. That would start driving actual federal carbon tax policy. I think if we tax and make something like gasoline expensive, then it starts making us think much more seriously about all the other alternatives, because the pricing signals are correct. “This is expensive; this appears to be cheap. Where are we going to put our investments if we know that over the next 10 years, taxes on carbon will increase say, 10 cents a gallon per year?” Once you have a steady, clear, definitive set of price signals in place, we can plan on “in 10 years, gas will be *this* much more expensive.” If you know that, then you can start making different kinds of plans. Right now, we don’t have clear price signals in the marketplace, so you can’t make plans like that. Those are the kind of things I think you can do and have a lot of impact with.

M: Speaking of the drama of scarcity, have you seen Mad Max: Fury Road?

PB: I have.

M: What did you think of the film?

PB: I thought it was a really dumb movie…

M: What?! (laughs)

PB: I mean, this is a complicated thing, because friends of mine love this movie in many ways and I understand the juicy parts about that movie that they enjoy. To me though, it struck me as being another apocalypse with bad people roaming around in their cars with their guns…there’s sort of a stereotypical “apocalypse” trope which involves plucky bands of people being chased by gangs…

M: Right!

PB: …and it shows up again and again. This is the best and most beautiful rendition of this really dumb trope. Because, honestly, I’m fascinated again and again that our assumption about apocalypses is that as soon as an apocalypse happens, we all hunker down and get our guns and we all f*ck each other over. This is not typically how human beings succeed. Human beings typically succeed when we all work together and take care of each other. For me, the problem with something like Mad Max is that it’s working in a wheelhouse that I’m really focused on, the idea of resource scarcities, how that affects things. One of the things that broke it almost immediately was the idea that they have those huge water pumps…he turns on the water that pours down on the people and then he turns it off. If that water is scarce, that would sort of make sense even though his water distribution policy is really weird, because it’s not very efficient…

M: (laughs)

PB: …so already it’s dumb, it’s like “ha ha! I’m using water to abuse you!” Except you’re thinking, “Wait…why would you do that? I don’t understand…” Because he’s already got a monopoly on military power and on violence…if you’ve got a monopoly on violence, why would you use water to control people? You’d use the water as efficiently as you can; violence is what you’d use to control people. You beat the sh*t out of them with your war boys! And then, at the very end of the movie, they open up the water gates and it turns out that there was no scarcity. This was just a guy arbitrarily holding on to the water that he had. He just had control over it and when they opened up the gates at the end, it breaks entirely because for me, the thing that really stood out is that this was a crazy psychopath who is willing to go across the desert chasing beautiful women and that *they* were a scarce resource to him. But it’s like, if he was really obsessed with women that much, he probably would have just let the water flow and let lots of people have babies and then more people would have had beautiful children and then he would have had a chance to have more beautiful women!

M: That’s true!

PB: His resource maximization policies were wrong! They made no sense. Even for a psychopath, it’s just too dumb…

Kaliban: Do you think…I don’t want to get too topical…do you think the religious aspects were a commentary by the filmmakers in that? Because he has a religion in terms of the V8 thing and their religion of violence…do you think it reflects our current political landscape? As you pointed out before with the Rick Perry thing, “Why are we letting these people run things?”, but it’s because we believe they’ve been “chosen” by someone or other…

PB: You know, it’s possible. Honestly, I think that there are certain…someone just recently suggested that I should watch Fury Road again…

M: (laughs)

PB: Fury Road was probably already spoiled for me before I even saw it because I saw Twitter light up and people that I know and love, they *love* that movie so much and I was like “OK!” I was going in looking for a religious experience myself at that point. I think my expectations were already screwed up as I was going into the movie and so I felt really remote from it as I watched it and not really connecting with the characters. I could see everything going on visually but at the same time, I was pulling it apart already intellectually…which isn’t a fair way, honestly, to engage with almost any art. You should be immersing and saying “Here I am; wash over me.” Instead I’m going in like *pick pick pick*…

K: That was my exact experience with Interstellar.

PB: Ok, yeah. What you’re trying to do is see the thing on its terms and do your picking afterwards, but I was so primed to be overwhelmed with love for it that I was too set already in a way to see what was so amazing.

M: You were hyped up…

PB: “Is this amazing? Is that the amazing part? I don’t know…” At some point, I was like “Oh, it’s There and Back Again…it’s the Hobbit. That’s what this is.”

M: (laughs)

PB: I have the wrong brain in my head already as I’m going into the movie…and it breaks my heart because my whole tribe loves this movie SO MUCH and I’m like “Why am I so wrong? The water wasn’t scarce…it’s a terrible dystopic police state but it wouldn’t be this one!” It’s my wheelhouse; I do obsess over “Why does a terrible society get constructed?” and “What is the logic that underlies it?” and that’s not necessarily where cinema focuses. Cinema focuses on visuals and excitement and adrenaline. There are lovely moments but it doesn’t quite hang together for me.

M: If you could only read either William Gibson or JRR Tolkien for the rest of your life, which would you choose?

PB: Oh, it would be Gibson. I feel like every time I read Gibson there’s more there, there’s another layer. Sometimes I’m astonished at the layering he goes through to fill his books; it’s extraordinary. When I read one of his books, I’ll think I’ve got it all and later I’m reading it again and I’m getting new information about design or about technology and there’s something really cool about that.

K: Something that I appreciate about him, which I’m sure you can appreciate being an author, is how he’s remained relevant and I don’t think it’s any particular strategy of his…he’s the guy who invented ‘cyberspace’ or at least divined it as it was happening…that guy could try to write *that* book over and over again and he certainly didn’t do that. Something that I think is crazy about how he writes is that he wrote in the far future initially but, as his books have gone on and our present gets closer to that, he’s gone the other way and is writing in the modern day now and yet still ahead of the curve.

PB: Yeah; you’re looking for those writers who are constantly curious and are constantly looking at the world and I think Gibson is one of a very few number of writers who are actively looking and trying to say “What does this mean? How do I pull all these things together?”

M: Thank you so much, Paolo, for taking time to talk with us today. Where can people find you online?

PB: Online, I’m at windupstories.com. I’m also on Twitter as @paolobacigalupi.

M: Thanks for joining us, Paolo!

PB: Thank you.

Paolo's latest novel, The Water Knife, as well as his previous works, can be found on Amazon and anywhere books are sold.

An Interview with Mary Robinette Kowal

Below is one of the interviews we conducted with the fabulous featured guests at Nerdcon: Stories 2015 in Minneapolis, MN. Originally, there was audio for all of our interviews but our engineer (Kal) is a schmuck and some of them didn't turn out very good. So, transcribed here, is the text of our interview with Mary Robinette Kowal, which Kal was forced to type with 1000 monkeys as punishment. You can check out some of the interviews that *did* work elsewhere on the site or on iTunes @ The Just Enough Trope Podcast. Enjoy! (whip cracks) Keep typing, monkeys! Rehearsal for Hamlet starts in an hour!

Kaliban: You have a theater background, don’t you?

MRK: Yes.

K: So, you must have taken improv classes before…

MRK: Not since high school.

K: That’s a little while.

MRK: Yeah.

K: But do you find those muscles…I have an acting background, too, and I find that, when I’m doing improv or doing it often, it comes really easy.

MRK: Yes.

K: But, I don’t know if it’s the day after or the week after, but those muscles begin to immediately get stiff.

MRK: Absolutely.

K: And when I have to do it again, it’s like “…all right, ok, ‘yes and’…”

MRK: (laughs)

K: But then you work it out and it’s like “Oh! I remember this!”

MRK: Yeah, that’s very much it, which is why I’m so glad that I *just* had taken a workshop.

K: Because it made the show better.

MRK: Yeah. “Look at me being able to draw these skills in from other places!”

K: Did you go to the open mic (ed. note: on Thurs. night @ Nerdcon) at all?

MRK: No.

K: Yeah, I didn’t either, although I kind of wanted to.

MRK: I wanted to but I had puppet rehearsal.

K: Oh! What are you rehearsing for?

MRK: We have a show here at Nerdcon. (ed. note: which was *awesome*, btw)

K: Oh! Of course. Ok. And you had to rehearse.

MRK: Yes…you know. It’s a thing we do.

K: (laughs) I should say that we are here with Mary Robinette Kowal, Hugo award-winning author of Shades of Milk and Honey amongst other works. You are a voice actor and a puppeteer; how did you get started with puppets?

MRK: The short story version is that I was already doing puppets in high school and by the time I got to college, I was one of those kids who wanted to do everything, so a career in Art Education with a minor in Theatre and Speech was the closest I could come to doing everything I wanted to do. I was doing Little Shop of Horrors as the giant man-eating plant and a professional puppeteer came to see the show and I was like “Wait, people give you money to do this?!” and pretty much changed career choices on the spot. Because it does combine everything I want to do. You have to sing, you have to act, you have to lift giant heavy things…

K: (laughs)

MRK: …there’s sculpture, there’s painting, there’s writing, it’s everything I want to do.

K: I had a similar experience; I was pre-med in college but I had acted as a kid and it wasn’t until I got to college and saw other kids who had gone to arts high schools and who had thought about this and done it their whole lives, that I realized, ”oh, this is a career, people actually get paid to do this!”

MRK: Yeah!

K: My mom would drive me in on Saturdays, just to be in a little show or something like that…of course, I’m not an actor now, but those tools…I enjoyed that sort of thing and that world.

MRK: Yeah.

K: Tell me more about puppeteering in general. I understand performing, but when you’re being a puppeteer or you’re being a character, how do use those acting skills?

MRK: One of the things about puppetry is that a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that it’s not acting and it totally is. It’s just that we’re using a different tool. A “meat” actor or “fleshie”—

K: (laughs)

MRK: —uses their own body. Whereas a puppeteer is using an external thing. Because of that, one of the advantages that we have is that we can see the body language of our character very clearly. But the other thing is that we cannot do things on instinct quite as much as a fleshie actor can. Like we have to sit down and break apart “what is it that makes a person look scared? What is the body language?” So, because of that, in a lot of ways, we’re able to use our tools much more deliberately and make more conscious choices…not always, because there are some fleshie actors who think about it that deeply. But it’s something that is just inherent in puppetry.

K: What’s Iceland like?

MRK: Iceland is amazing! Everyone needs to go to Iceland.

K: You worked on a show there.

MRK: I worked on a show called LazyTown…it’s still on television. I’m not on the show anymore because my writing career took off, which is lovely. Iceland is the most magical place I have ever lived. It is like stepping out of Earth and into another realm altogether. The landscape is ethereal; there aren’t trees, so you can see the raw, rugged power of the land and you can see to the horizon line.

K: But it isn’t just blasted landscape…

MRK: No, no…it’s…well, parts of it are. Some of the inland is, but the other places are like Middle-Earth. There’s this area that I call the Land of a Thousand Throw-Pillows.

K: (laughs)

MRK: It’s a lava-scape, so it’s old lava but it’s all been covered over with moss and the moss is four knuckles deep. So you can stick your hand into it all the way, so all of your fingers are completely hidden and it looks like someone has come and upholstered the entire landscape with green shag throw-pillows.

K: Luxurious!

MRK: Yes.

K: How did you get set up with LazyTown? How did you get the job?

MRK: I auditioned!

K: Oh, really?

MRK: Yes, I know it’s a strange thing…

K: When you auditioned, did you know that it was—

MRK: In Iceland?

K: Yeah.

MRK: What happened was, I had auditioned when they were originally casting and to do an audition, you send in a tape and then you go and if you get to the next level, you do a live audition. I was not picked for one of the parts but they had to do a mid-season replacement and so they called me on a Thursday and said (Icelandic accent) “Hello. We would like to ask you to come. Can you be here Monday?” And I was like “YES. Of course! Absolutely!”

K: “I’ll start swimming now!”

MRK: Yes. “Iceland? Check!”

K: (laughs)

MRK: But it was a two week trial, so I had to pack not knowing if I was coming back at the end of two weeks or if I would be there for another six months.

K: Right.

MRK: So it was six months…we had about a year off and then we went back. So it was a year and a half in Iceland.

K: Nice.

MRK: The second time, my husband went with me.

K: I hear the upholstered rocks are *lovely*.

MRK: Yes. The hot springs are better, though.

K: Oh, yeah!

MRK: Yeah.

K: Let’s talk about writing: when you write…I’m sure you get this a lot, having started so recently and having been so prolific in such a short time…what aspects of your process have helped you accomplish that? There are authors who struggle to push out one book within a certain amount of time.

MRK: Honestly, coming from a theatre background.

K: Oh, good! That’s good news for me…

MRK: Yeah, isn’t it?

K: (laughs)

MRK: Because one of the things about working in theatre, is that I can’t wait to be creative. I have to be able to turn it on on demand. There are deadlines in which I am collaborating with other people, so when I’m designing something or creating anything, it’s like “Nope. I have to be creative right now.” And as a result of that, I learned a different work ethic which is “I’m in this place and now I will sit down and do this creative thing. Because it’s due.” I’ve spent my entire adult life as a freelancer, juggling multiple different projects and different deadlines, so that has been enormously helpful. The other thing…again, because I had to actually, consciously think about how to convey an emotion with an inanimate object to an audience…and I’ve spent 20+ years honing that audience/storyteller relationship. When I went to go translate that to prose, I found that a lot of the puppetry skills translated directly into prose, in terms of the ways that you manipulate an audience, in terms of the body language a character uses to convey things, how you use focus, what your character is thinking and looking about to convey stuff to the audience. A lot of that translated directly across.

K: That’s a very particular sort of tool or set of skills or sensorium. People who act are used to probing their own emotional spectrum and reactions to things. Whereas, somebody who just wants to write might set the scene or the plot but wouldn’t think about that. The few times I’ve tried to write stuff, I feel like I focused on the dialogue a lot, how people talk back and forth and people’s emotions. But then I have to write…”The trees were…something. I hate this part!”

MRK: That was the other thing that, again, coming from not just the performance background but also as an art major in college, the process was always about layering things; you never jump straight to the finished product. For me, it’s very natural…there’s times when I will, in fact, just write the dialogue in a scene and then go back and add the action. Because, I’m like “ok, I can follow this emotional through-line straight through the scene” and then when I go back in and I’m using the description, part of what I’m doing with that is not just setting the scene, but I’m also using it to control the pacing. I’ll have a spot where it says “she paused” and I’ll take that out and put in a physical pause. “What is she doing in that pause?” and I can use that to describe the scene. So, for me, I wind up layering stuff, which is also, I think, what allows me to write fairly quickly because I don’t labor over each individual word as I go along. I go back and I polish the ones that need to be polished.

K: How do you edit? Now that we’re talking about process…

MRK: The way my process works is I do an outline first and the reason I’m mentioning this in response to the editing question is that my first layer of editing actually happens then; it’s where I’m getting my structure right. After I’ve got that, I write the thing and I write it fairly quickly. When I go to edit, the first thing I do is I’ve had beta readers reading along and I incorporate the notes that I’ve been given from them that I know how to fix. Then I go through and I read, making notes in the manuscript about changes that I need to make but I don’t immediately make them. Because, sometimes I’ve found that I will make a change and there will be an unintended cascading effect…

K: Sure.

MRK: …and sometimes I’ve found that if I get farther into the work, that I can fix it later much easier than an earlier fix. So I just make notes and then I go back through and fix those. Once I have that structural pass, I give it to a different set of beta readers to make sure I’m structurally sound. Then, I go through and do a language pass where I smooth out the language.

K: So, the readers are an integral part of the process…

MRK: For me, absolutely.

K: How early do you give it to the people and say “check this out”?

MRK: I give it to the people in the raw. And again, this is because I come from a theatre background. I’ve tried not doing that and that is the only time I go into the ‘neurotic writer head-space’.

K: It’s like rehearsal.

MRK: Exactly.

K: You’re not just going to see the finished show. Let’s get notes.

MRK: Exactly, and I train my readers…“I’m going to be giving this to you in the raw. All I’m worried about is the structure. Is this playing for you? Do not give me any notes about dialogue or about line-level stuff.”

K: “Oh, this is spelled wrong” or whatever.

MRK: Yeah, none of that “this sentence is awkward” because I will obsess on that and that will stop the forward…it’s like you don’t go into someone’s rehearsal and say ”well, I don’t like your costume very much” and you’re like “I’m wearing my street clothes”.

K: Right. “Get a haircut.”

MRK: “I don’t wear a costume until dress rehearsal.”

Mika: A lot of your books, like Shades of Milk and Honey, are based on Jane Austen but with a magical, sci-fi bent to it. How did you come up with that idea in general? I’m a huge Jane Austen fan, I love the stories and the premise and adding magic to it is just awesome.

MRK: Well, that’s basically why.

M: Ok. (laughs)

MRK: I was a huge Jane Austen fan; Persuasion is my favorite. I had just finished reading a giant, epic fantasy and I’m a lifelong science fiction and fantasy reader. I was doing a reread of Persuasion as a palate cleanser and get to the proposal scene and I’m weeping, which I do every time I get to that scene and I’m like, “why is it that Jane Austen can move me to tears when nothing is at stake here except ‘are these two people going to get married?’’’…

M: (laughs)

MRK: Not even Anne Elliot…she’s got another marriage offer on the table, she’s beloved of her family, she maybe doesn’t have the best father, but nothing is at stake for her except is she going to get married to that particular guy. And yet in fantasy, the fate of the world is at stake and evil overlords! I enjoyed that but it didn’t move me in the same way. So, I was like what I want to see is “can I take fantasy, which I love, and shove it into a Jane Austen plot mold and have an intimate family drama, which is what I want. I also started trying to think of intimate family dramas in fantasy and I was striking out and I’m like “is there something inherent about fantasy that doesn’t allow that?” or is it just that we love our evil overlords so much?

M: (laughs)

MRK: The second book was great because I had Napoleon so I did get to have my evil overlord AND my Jane Austen. It was great. But that’s basically why; it was a book I wanted to read and it didn’t exist and so I wrote it. Now I’m finding other books that are kind of in that vein, but it was a book I wanted to read.

K: You’re a podcaster as well on Writing Excuses. Your shows are 15 minutes long…

MRK: In theory.

K: How? How do you do it? Our shows go on forever and ever.

MRK: We pre-plan a little bit. We use a timer.

M: We tried that a couple of times…

MRK: And we’re also only dealing with a single topic, a single question.

K: Ok.

MRK: If you picked one of the questions we’re talking about and we just spent time drilling into my life as a puppeteer…

K: Right.

MRK: But that’s basically what we do is we pick a single, very specific, very tiny point about writing and drill into it.

K: And there’s 4 hosts?

MRK: 4 hosts.

K: But that’s 4 people…15 minutes…is it like one of those cable news shows? Does everybody have to have their blurb?

MRK: We don’t always all chime in on every single point, but it’s a conversation. We do it live, not in front of an audience all the time, but we don’t do it over Skype so we can see each other and can jump in and over the years have learned “someone has already made this point so I do not need to”.

K: We’re coming to the end here…we had a bunch of questions about the SFWA flap (ed. note: covered by us at http://justenoughtrope.blogspot.com/2015/08/sexism-in-sff-publishing.html and http://justenoughtrope.blogspot.com/2015/08/beat-wings-not-angels.html) but I’m sure you’re sick of talking about that and I can throw them away. But I did want to say that, with everything that went on, how composed you were and I admire your poise and how you dealt with it.

MRK: Thank you. Which “flap”?

K: Everything that went on with the controversy over the Bulletin—

MRK: Oh, that.

K: —yeah, and everything that lead into what was going on with the Hugos this year…

MRK: That’s why I wanted to check, because the Hugos have nothing to do with SFWA.

K: Right, but the whole conversation of Diversity in SFF.

MRK: Yeah, let me talk about that just a little bit.

K: Please.

MRK: The thing for me about this that I really think is important for people to understand is that the sexism, misogyny, racism…all of these things are part of the larger fabric of society. They are not any worse in science fiction and fantasy. The reason it is so vocal and prominent right now is because in science fiction and fantasy, that behavior is no longer acceptable and it’s being called out. People who have been getting away with behavior for a really long time feel like the rules are being changed and in some ways it’s true but in other ways it’s like “no, it’s actually never been acceptable to grope a woman”. It’s just now you’re getting caught and you’re getting called out.

K: The light’s being shined on it.

MRK: Yes, and that is the thing that I really want, especially women, to understand and people of color who feel like science fiction conventions are not safe spaces for them, that we are in a transition period right now and that the reason that they’re hearing so much really ugly stuff is because it is being called out and because it will be called out and it is not acceptable and that these spaces are in fact safer than a lot of other spaces because we won’t let that happen anymore.

K: Yes. I don’t know if we’ve earned it but…I hear you have a story about Sting?

MRK: (laughs) I do. It’s not nearly as…

K: (laughs)

MRK: I will make it sound fancy.

K: Dress it up.

MRK: (adopting affected English accent) So…

K: (laughs)

MRK: Back when I was in college…

K: Here we go…

MRK: I met Sting and taught him a song…

K: (laughs)

MRK: …and then later I saw him again…I went to the opening night cast party after the premiere of his new show “The Last Ship”…I’ll just say that Sting has very warm hands.

K: (laughs) *ahem* You heard it here…

MRK: So, the way this story actually goes is that I went to go see Sting’s show when I was in college and knew somebody who was working on the show and went backstage with them afterwards and was waiting for them to get ready to go. And Sting was standing like, right there. (mimics wide-eyed surprise)

K: (laughs)

MRK: And I’m like “I’m cool. I’m cool. Totally fine.” For his curtain call, he had done…this is in North Carolina…he had sung “Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning…” (as Sting) “Next time I’ll know the rest of the lyrics when I’m here.” And we all laughed because that’s a good way to pay homage and not have to actually sing the entire song. But he’s backstage and he’s going (sotto voce) “nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning…nothing could be…da da da dum da da…nothing could be…da da da dum…” And so I just turned to him and I said “Nothing could be sweeter than your sweetie when you meet her in the morning.” And he sings it back to me and he says “thank you”. And the warm hands is that I did get to go to the cast party because I had a friend, again, who was working on the show and I shook Sting’s hand. And he had, obviously no memory of meeting me before. But it sounds much fancier…

K: “I’m the Carolina girl!”

MRK: Yeah! “Don’t you remember? ‘Nothing could be sweeter’? We had a moment!”

K: “I helped you!”

MRK: “I taught you a song…”

K: I feel like you have to…if Sting is struggling, you have to help him. I’ve seen…I love The Police and Sting’s one of my favorite artists and I’ve seen so much film of him and I feel like so much of that film has been him screwing around or trying to ‘work through’ something…

MRK: Yeah.

K: So I almost feel like “I have to help him” but then “Maybe I shouldn’t help him”. Let him learn. Let Sting learn.

MRK: That’s why I only gave him that one line.

K: (laughs)

MRK: I stood there and let him struggle with it for a while until it was obvious he was not going to get the next lyric. And this was in the days before google so he couldn’t just pull out his phone.

K: He’s at a cultural disadvantage.

MRK: Exactly.

K: Mary, thanks so much for talking with us today.

MRK: Thank you. This was a great deal of fun.

Mary's most recent novel Valour and Vanity is available online and wherever books are sold. She can be found online at http://maryrobinettekowal.com.