The Vorkosigan Companion (12 page)

I've discovered as my career advances that "take the money and run" is not an option for a responsible writer. By the time one's latest book arrives on bookstore shelves, a lot of other folks have bet their own time, money, and reputation on its success, only starting with its purchasing editor and publisher. The book needs to succeed for them, as well. So I've discovered that some degree of financial independence doesn't actually free me from needing to compete, after all, and that I still care.

Which brings me to authoring. Which is another whole job, demanding yet another skill-set.

While in normal speech "author" and "writer" are used interchangeably, I've found it handy to hijack the terms in order to make a useful distinction. Using the two synonyms gives me a way to talk about two separate aspects of a writing career: the actual sweat and uncertainty and frustration and joy of writing, which no one sees (and which would be very boring to watch); and the promotion, which is where the author gets out in public, but which has nothing to do with writing and can sometimes, for the shy or low-energy writer, be actively detrimental to creativity. The promotional/"author" side involves things like interviews, book tours, convention or speaking engagements, Net-based promotion, writing
about
one's writing (as I'm doing here), answering fan mail, and the like.

The people who imagine that writing is a glamorous profession tend to be looking at the "author" side of things; reasonably enough, since that's the most visible, and when a writer is out in public like that, he or she is usually trying to look as attractive as possible, in hopes of luring readers to their prose. At home we are much grubbier.

There are moments when one is "only" an author, books tours for example. I certainly get no writing done on book tours. All my attention is taken up with not missing planes, trying not to get sick from the travel stress, trying to pay close attention to a rapid succession of people, and never, ever losing my cool with a reader, even if it's the thirtieth time I've been asked the same question that week. After about the third stop I can get pretty tired of listening to myself. And I develop nightmares about airports.

It takes me two to four weeks to recover enough from such a tour to pick up my thread of thought and begin writing again. About the same for an international trip. So they are very expensive in terms of lost writing time. But then, book tours can feed the writer part of my brain just through being intense experiences—getting out and glimpsing new places and meeting folks and listening to the stories they tell me, not to mention sometimes staying in fascinating hotels that would normally be quite beyond my budget.

After I'd been on a few book tours, I really began to wonder about their economic utility for my publishers, not just their huge time and energy costs for me. It's exhilarating when a mob of readers turn out for a stop, and booksellers are always cool folks to chat with, but surely anyone who'd come to an author's signing would have bought the book anyway . . . ? Book tours alone can't increase sales that much, though they may cluster them in early weeks in an effort to game the system of best-seller lists. It all harks back, I finally realized, to those middlemen again. I theorize that having a tour signals a book as receiving a major push from its publisher, just as raised gold foil lettering once did, and so the wholesalers presumably order more copies nationwide. Either that, or it's pure cargo-cult thinking, or a trap like the returns system; a few people tried tours, sales went up, everyone got into the act, and now no one dares be the first to stop. As they said in
Shakespeare in Love
, one of my favorite films about writing: "No one knows. It's a mystery."

I've been asked whether I think high-profile author blurbs are important to the sales of books. In my experience, readers are largely indifferent to blurbs. The place they seem to be important is, again, during the pre-selling phase, just like the gold lettering and book tours. Like sausages and the law, it is perhaps unsettling to know too much about how books are made—or at least, sold.

One less baffling perk of being an "author" is the authorial meal with an editor. These have various subtle social functions that took me a while to figure out. They are not, as I had somehow expected in dithering anticipation of my first official editorial meal—a breakfast at the '86 Atlanta Worldcon with my then-new publisher Jim Baen—to work out the details of book contracts. Those are done by telephone, with lots of long, thoughtful pauses between calls. What these meals are for is to make the next phone call easier. When you've never met face-to-face, the lack of visual cues over the phone, and the presence of unrestrained writerly imagination, can create confusion and misunderstanding. When you can picture the real person, with their actual tics and tones and grimaces and grins, those phone calls somehow go more smoothly ever after. Still, it's a bit startling in the convention green room to witness the fannish cry of "We're hungry—let's go find a restaurant" transmute into the authorial version of, "We're hungry—let's go find an editor!"

The other charm of editorial dining, of course, is the chance to venture into upscale restaurants that neither writer nor editor, in our scruffy at-home personas and income levels, would ever get within whiffing distance of. An editorial dinner was the first time I ever had a waiter come around between courses and rake the tablecloth free of detritus (the area around my plate always seems to have lots) with one of those cute little brass scrapers. At such a dinner with my friend Lillian's editor at a convention hotel restaurant in Dallas, we were all charmed and boggled when we were each brought, between courses to clear our palates between courses, a small scoop of sorbet—sitting on half a lime—sitting in an individual sculptured ice swan about a foot high with a tiny white Christmas light in the base. I swear we hadn't even ordered lighted swans; they just swanned in, as if naturally.

That wasn't quite as surreal, however, as the editorial dinner at Chicon V in Chicago, when Jim and editor Toni Weisskopf took Elizabeth Moon and me out to some tower of power reached only by marble-lined elevators. The vegetable course, a mounded puree of what I dimly remember as featuring mainly turnips, arrived—decorated with a microscopically thin layer of gold foil about five inches square. As a science fiction writer, I take it as my duty to try any food once, a dubious rule that once led me to eat a wichetty grub, but that's another story. Elizabeth, however, was quietly horrified by the gold, and carefully ate around it and under it, cautiously excavating with her spoon. "Elizabeth!" I murmured in maternal reproval. "You're not eating your gold!" We let her have her dessert anyway.

I've been asked what has surprised me most about writing and the writing business. Actually, I live in a state of perpetual surprise. "My God! The Bulgarians paid me after all! I signed that contract three years ago!" "Good heavens! The Dutch sub-agent has disappeared with all the receipts!" "
Publishers Weekly
gave me a starred review!" "My first quarter's estimated taxes are higher than my first quarter's income!" "The fans put/didn't put
that
one on the Hugo ballot?!" "They're putting
that
cover on my book? Eep!" "They're putting
that
cover on my book? Hallelujah!" "They went to six figures?! Oh! . . . well . . . 
how
much past?" "Somebody e-mailed me from Kazakhstan/Alice Springs/Finland/South Africa/Portugal/Pakistan/Croatia?" "What's '
The New York Times
Extended list'?" "A fan who is dying from cancer wants to see my book early?" "The fan I sent the story to last month passed away yesterday." "I've been stuck on this same damned plot point for 2/3/4/5/6 weeks!" "Pirated in Greece? I didn't even know they read SF in Greece!" "My brother/mother/cousin actually read my latest novel!" "How many days ago did you mail it overnight express?" "Korean rights?" "I can't figure out what the devil happens in Chapter 4." "The Russian fans are holding a Bujold convention in Moscow!" "The new minor character, who I hadn't even imagined last week, just hijacked Chapter 4 and is closing in rapidly on 5 and 6. Will my putative hero ever get another sentence in edgewise?" "We got a blurb from
her
? Wow!" "Perth?" "Spain?" "London? . . . England?" "St. Petersburg? You mean the one in Russia?" "Where is Zagreb?" "New Zealand?"

All real examples. If a week goes by without a surprise, these days, I get pettish. From fried wichetty grubs to gold-plated turnips, when you're a writer you never know what's going to appear on your plate next. It keeps a woman alert, it does.

Toni Weisskopf has been working closely with Lois almost from the very beginning, when she was establishing the Vorkosigan Saga. As the current Editor-in-Chief at Baen Books, she has been instrumental in bringing out another Miles novel, as well as editing practically all of the books in the series. I asked her to share what it has been like working with Lois, and here is what she had to say.

How did Lois get discovered by Baen?

This was actually before my time at Baen, but legend has it that the three novel manuscripts
The Warrior's Apprentice
,
Shards of Honor
, and
Ethan of Athos
had made the rounds of all the older, established publishers, and that they had either been rejected or languished unappreciated, before they came to Baen Books, which had just shipped its first books in 1984. Jim took one look at
The Warrior's Apprentice
and called Lois up to ask her if she had more. She did, two more novels, and Jim bought all three on the spot.

Did anyone see her potential during that early time?

Jim Baen certainly did. They were the first books he told me to read when I was hired at Baen as an editorial assistant. I was so jaded (straight out of college and already jaded!) that I didn't believe new SF authors could bring anything fresh to the table. Jim and Lois proved me wrong, gloriously wrong.

What do you remember best about the first time you read one of Lois's manuscripts?

The first time I spoke to Lois after reading her books, I offered to have her baby. Luckily, she declined. They made a tremendous impact on me. I started with
The Warrior's Apprentice
and never looked back. I got the same sort of feeling reading her works as I had gotten from classic Heinlein: a renewed faith in humanity and a desire to explore and do good in the universe. Great feeling.

Did Lois have a clear idea of what she wanted to accomplish with the Miles novels at the time, or did the series evolve in scope as the books were written?

That one you'll have to ask Lois directly, but I do know there was some give-and-take between Jim and Lois about the nature and direction of the series. Jim, of course, wanted more like
The Warrior's Apprentice
, with the military concerns that were so close to his interests—and pocketbook. It was the clear front-runner for sales for a long time.

Please describe the typical editorial process with one of Lois's books.

She writes, I read. It seems to me Lois really doesn't require a lot of editorial input. There have been occasions, as with any writer, that a particular point will need talking out, and I'm happy to be able to provide an interested ear for that process. Sometimes a stray comment, like mentioning I thought
A Civil Campaign
needed more of a science fictional feel, will be answered in odd ways, like, say, butter bugs.

How has Lois's writing changed over the years that you've been working with her?

She's always been an accomplished, smooth writer.

Do you feel there are any publishing decisions that you made that have helped Lois's books achieve their success? If so, what?

I think Jim's stubbornness and obstinacy helped build the audience for the books. Baen from the very beginning has been good about keeping backlist titles of series in print, and that was essential to the Vorkosigan Saga, especially since they weren't written in chronological order.

Jim also went against the common wisdom and published those first three books within the space of a year, and I think that jump-started the series and the awareness of Bujold within the SF community. It might have cost Lois a Campbell Award, since she didn't have the traditional career path of a Campbell winner and it looked liked she'd been writing for a long time!

On a more minor note, I think putting the Vorkosigan Saga Timeline in the back of the books has been helpful—I'd asked my colleague Hank Davis to put it together for me originally just so I could keep the books straight in my own mind, but I think it's helped a lot of readers sort the series out.

What are your favorite books in the Miles series, and why?

My favorites are the
Shards of Honor
and
Barrayar
combo published under one roof as
Cordelia's Honor
. One of my favorite scenes is in
Barrayar
, when Cordelia comes back from "shopping" in the city and rolls the head of the pretender onto the conference table in the midst of military men. In fact, I have a shopping bag from Siegling's (from Steve Salaba's authorized line of Vorkosigan memorabilia) in honor of that scene; I use it as my range bag and carry my ammo and ear protection in it!

Who are your favorite characters, and why?

I have a soft spot for Ivan, but don't tell anyone. . . . I like Cordelia, obviously. And I like Taura, the werewolf girl. As for why—I guess because they are all honorable people doing the best they can in situations that are not "normal" for them.

What do you think readers see in the Miles series that keeps bringing them back to the series?

There's the charm, the wit, the nice touch of invention. The intricate plotting, the real characters—and the reality is, at bottom, the key. Lois creates real people, behaving in ways you can believe in—intelligent people act intelligently, venal people are venal, and the Cetagandans have loooong plans. It all feels right. Lois has talked about the writer/reader collaboration—for that to click, there has to be enough meat for the reader to chew on. Lois gives filet mignon.