CL WERNER ON WRITING: An Interview

I met C.L. Werner, in the virtual world, while writing for FLASHING SWORDS EZINE wa-ay back in, eegad, 2006-ish. (When Howard A Jones was editor so...a while ago.) I had read some of his shorter works for Black Library, which led to picking up some of his novel-length works, the first being the Matthias Thulmann: WITCH HUNTER omnibus. Once I read that, I was hooked.

So without rambling like a fanboy, here is Mr. C.L. Werner...

Oh, and his most recent work is the image above: LORD OF UNDEATH

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CREATIVES HELP BOARD: When did you first realize that HEY, THIS WRITING THING. CREATING FANTASTIC TALES. WELL...IT KIND OF ROCKS!

CL WERNER: The first piece of writing I can recall working on was in elementary school. I did a Sherlock Holmes story that ran over fifty pages of loose leaf. So I guess that would be the first thing I wrote. The 'bug' as it were didn't really hit me until I was finishing up high school. I tried my hand at horror short stories, submitting to any magazine I'd stumble on. Nothing landed and over the course of the next ten years the only things I placed were in small press magazines like Eldritch Tales and Cthulhu Codex. Not until I had a piece accepted into Black Library's Inferno! Magazine did I really get that sense of finally creating something that would have a wider reach.

CHB: What was your very first published piece?

CLW: My first published work was a scenario called 'The Old Dark House' for the Call of Cthulhu RPG which was published by Pagan Publishing in Alone on Halloween. That was in 1991. I didn't have another paying published piece until 1999 with 'A Choice of Hatreds' in Inferno! #22. That was the first piece of fiction that I was paid for writing.

CHB: There may be probably many obvious answers, but compared to that first piece, how has your writing, writing skill, writing focus changed?

CLW: I think any writer will improve as they continue to tell stories. The more you read, watch, experience – all of that will inform new ideas and characters. Any book or movie can teach you new things about style and pacing, tone and direction. What works to sustain a mood or what makes for an engaging character. To be certain, you can also learn a great deal about what doesn't work from these things too. A badly written book can be even more instructive than a well-crafted masterpiece, highlighting things to avoid and some of the pitfalls that can sabotage a narrative.

Over the years, I think that the biggest thing which has changed in my writing is an appreciation for different perspectives. To be certain there are rare instances of a character who is unabashedly evil, but for the most part everyone believes themselves to be justified in what they are doing. A thief rationalizes his robberies, a tyrant has a defined rationale for his manifold oppressions, a tyranid has – well – the expansion of the species. Each character, no matter how despicable, is something I try to approach as an individual, to make them more than just a one-note simulacrum of villainy. It makes the contrast all the more vivid and unsettling when a murderer has all these fine qualities yet at the end of the day is still the perpetrator of heinous crimes. And by the same token, it is equally disarming when the noble hero is endowed with some less than sterling attributes.

CHB: What is your writing routine? Tons of coffee? A full nights sleep then hit the keyboards?

CLW: Much of my writing is done at night, when it is quiet outside and the air is a bit cooler. The dark, I suppose, lends itself to some of the grim things I write about. Sometimes I'll have marathons where I write for nine and ten hours at a stretch. Other times it is difficult to stay at it for two in one sitting. The dreaded curse of writer's block can sometimes be mitigated by jumping ahead in the narrative and coming back to the problem spot, which is usually best approached after stepping away for a little while. I find if I try to jump without that break it causes a sense of disorientation – a befuddlement so far as the pacing of the piece goes. I'm always very aware of pacing and try to ensure scenes are neither too ponderous or too abrupt (unless of course that is the intended effect).

On the matter of coffee, I'll likely be branded a heretic but I can't stand the stuff. Even the smell of coffee disturbs me. In hot weather I resort to energy drinks and in cold weather it is lots of tea.

CHB: Are you a plotter or a pantster? (I hate that latter word for folks who loosing plot and fly by the seat of their pants, but, meh, guess it fits.)

CLW: Detailed outlines are something I always try to work from. As mentioned above, I find that having a map of where the story is going will allow me to jump ahead of any problem spot I encounter. When I start a new chapter, I'll go to the outline and break down each individual scene and then lay them out in sequence within the chapter. Then, as I write, I can see at a quick glance how much material is yet to go. I can judge the pacing more closely, so if a scene with a dragon eating goats runs into a thousand words I can then evaluate how much more story I'm trying to fit into the chapter. Except when I'm going for a particular effect, I try to keep chapters between 5,000 and 6,000 words, which I feel is the ideal size for a reader to tackle over their lunch break, riding the train home from work, or some other situation where their time is restricted. If I find that there's a bit more story than I still have room for in the chapter, I'll evaluate if a scene should be moved into the subsequent or preceding chapter. Working like this, I've come to attack a novel in blocks of three chapters at a time – which is fine early on but becomes a problem if your deadline is in arrears.

CHB: What is the best way to market one's written work, in your opinion.

CLW: To be honest, I'm not certain what the best way to market one's work is. There are so many options out there these days. The scope of anthologies and magazines to submit short stories to is much broader than it was in the days before the internet. There are a great many small and mid-range publishers out there that either have open submission windows or will have 'open calls' at set periods of the year. This includes some of the tie-in publishers as well, so if a writer is an enthusiast of a particular game or film series or what have you, then it might not be remiss to keep one ear to the ground.

Online retailers have made self-publishing a much more feasible enterprise for those of us without hefty inheritances to squander or wealthy relations to exploit. The pitfall of this route is that the onerous of generating buzz and advertising the book falls on the author, and not all of us are so skilled at marketeering as we are at composing. Beyond the time involved writing the book, there's usually some manner of fee for listing the volume with the retailer.

One thing that I was always advised against, and which I will pass along, is to be very wary of any business that wants you to pay them to publish your book. This is different from services that offer editing and formatting – in this instance we're talking about businesses that promise to do everything but write it. There's a reason that so-called 'vanity presses' have a bad reputation as they can be predatory and promise far more than they deliver. Approach anybody who wants you to pay them to be published with a wary eye and do your homework before agreeing to anything.

CHB: Words of advice for new writers?

CLW: The first and most important thing I'd advise any new writer is to look very long and hard into why you want to write. If it is for the passion of story-telling, if it is something you'd do even without a dime of remuneration, then I think it is something you have to pursue. Constantly improve your craft, when you read the work of someone else, analyse it like a mechanic taking apart an engine. See what makes something effective work and see how you can develop your own technique to be as effective. When rejection comes, and sadly it will, try to see if there is any hint to how to improve in the editor's feedback – but by the same token recognize when the fault is simply that it wasn't the kind of story that was right for that particular market.

If you are pursuing a career as a writer for the financial aspect, go in understanding that a great many authors have to maintain day jobs to make ends meet. The big celebrity authors who make a zillion dollars a year are very much the exception rather than the rule. It is a very fortunate creator who can achieve a degree of success where they can comfortably extricate themselves from the daily grind and devote all their resources to writing. A goal to pursue, but also a caution to bear in mind.

CHB: What does being able to write, to put the story "on paper" do for you? (Obviously put a little extra cash on the table, but what else. Myself personally, it often gives me something to look forward to when the day job and life are rough.)

CLW: For myself, personally, being able to write gives me a sense of accomplishment. It is the one thing in my existence that at all excuses it. I've seen for myself that my writing has helped carry readers through tough times in their lives, providing them with an escape from their troubles even if only for the briefest spell. I've had a few writers say they drew inspiration from my own stories and that helped them develop their own skills and pursue their own publication. It is a very humbling thing to consider having such an impact on somebody's life and ultimately makes it worthwhile. Even if you don't become rich, even if your work doesn't become famous, even if you fear there will be no posterity to leave it to, you can still help others through your work. Sometimes you're even blessed enough to find out about it. It's the old adage about the stone thrown into a pond – you don't always see the ripples or where they go, but the ripples are there just the same.

Thanks for your time, Clint.


AUTHOR BIO
C. L. Werner has written a number of pulp-style horror stories for assorted small press publications, including Inferno! magazine. Some of his Black Library credits include the Chaos Wastes books, the Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter novels, the Brunner the Bounty Hunter trilogy, and the Thanquol and Boneripper series. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the Warhammer World.

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Some other great interviews with C.L. Werner (not associated with this blog)
The Bloghole Interview
Interview on Snowbooks Site
MengelMiniatures Interview

William King talks Kormak and Writing

Adventure equals Kormak and Writing

By William King

Sword of Wrath

(Book 8 in the Kormak Saga)

En route to the distant colonies of Terra Nova on a secret mission for the King-Emperor, Kormak and his companions find themselves stranded on a remote island. They must solve the terrible mystery of what happened to the missing population before a monstrous scourge overwhelms them too. And, all the while, a treacherous, sorcerous assassin lurks in the background waiting for his chance to kill.

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I'd always dreamed of writing a series of books in the style of the pulp sword and sword sorcery I consumed as a teenager. I wanted to pen the sort of thing I used to find in the spinner racks and library shelves of my youth; short, action-packed novels with well-developed worlds and interesting characterization.

I had written one well-received short story about the monster hunter Kormak that would not have been out of place in Weird Tales. It was a set in a world where medieval humanity rubbed shoulders with the remnants of elder races and Lovecraftian monsters. Kormak himself might be best described as Conan, if Conan's entire family had been wiped out by demons when he was a child, and he had been trained by an ancient order of D&D paladins to hunt the monsters down. He was a hero of the old school, the sort of mysterious stranger who arrives in town, cleans out the villains and moves on before anyone has a chance to thank him.

I had tried writing novels about him before but they had been shaped to fit the templates of commercial fantasy in the pre-Indie era. The sort of stories I had in mind were just not salable in the era of fat book fantasy and a quota of 90000 words minimum. I could not make my vision of what I wanted fit into that length so I put the project on the shelf for years.

Then along came the Kindle. I released the Terrarch series and it did relatively well. It  opened my eyes to the  potential of indie publishing. At the time, I was making my living writing tie-in novels set in the Warhammer universe. I started writing the Kormak novels while I was waiting for the editors to get back to me with feedback about those books.

I wrote the first draft of Stealer of Flesh in about 3-4 weeks. It was a collection of novellas that linked together to tell one overarching tale. I chose the format because it resembled the stories of Robert E Howard and Michael Moorcock I remembered so fondly. Also they took a relatively short time to write and I could drop a novella and pick it up as and when needed.

I was pleased with the results. Stealer of Flesh was exactly the sort of book I wanted to write when I first started out. Also it was exactly the sort of book there was zero chance of getting into print through a trad publisher.

I released it with terrible covers I made myself. It still managed to sell well enough to justify writing more.

I came up with a plan. I would write books each of which would explore a different area or facet of Kormak's world, each standing alone and each telling a complete tale. You could enter the series at any point and get something out of it. Most of my previous work had been set in worlds which had been handed to me fully formed, or for which I had been a game developer. For my Terrarch series, I had written a 50000 word bible in exactly the style I would have written a Warhammer Army book. With Kormak I was going to do something different. I was going to explore the world with the hero, making it up as I went along.

Defiler of Tombs dealt with necromancers, and the haunted Northlands of Kormak's world. Weaver of Shadow with elves and the Elfwood. City of Strife looked at the politics of a great commercial city state being overrun by were-rats and sorcerers. Taker of Skulls was Mad Max set in Moria. Ocean of Fear dealt with pirates, plunder and a sea monster the size of a city. Born of Darkness was a monster hunt set deep beneath the palace of a king, and featuring one of the resurrected demon gods of Kormak's world.

All of the books deepened and enriched the background of the world. The world built itself incrementally with every book. New aspects of its history drifted into view. New elements of its geography were revealed. The story has rumbled on for 8 books now with another 3 written and undergoing editing.

I learned a lot, some of which I feel I should have known from the start, some of which was the sort of stuff that can come only from experience.

One mistake I made was to take the pulps as my model. These were written in the era when the majority of stories appeared in magazines and as far as most readers were concerned disappeared forever a month or less after they appeared on the shelves. Every tale had to stand alone. The reader had to be able to grasp all elements of the world from reading that single tale. The stories might have the same hero but they could be read out of order and with no previous knowledge.

I followed the model but I did not have to. It took me six books to realize this. In the age of ebooks, you can always find the first book in a series and read them in chronological order if you want to. Ebooks never go out of print. You don't need to search second bookshops to find lost volumes of series you like. I was even giving away the first volume of the series free to try and entice readers.

From a marketing point of view, my emphasis on single volume story lines was probably a mistake. Modern fantasy readers are accustomed to long intricate plots that flow from book to book. They expect them. Also I did not have any cliffhangers which might push the reader to race out and buy the next volume of the series.

From a writer's point of view, I was starting afresh with every book. The only consistent element was Kormak. All of the other characters had to be introduced. An entirely new setting had to be created for each story. It was a lot of work.

It was also a lot of fun. And the format had some advantages. I could butcher characters with the merry abandon of George RR Martin in a bad mood, if I felt like it, and I often did. It certainly raised the stakes tension-wise, a useful thing when you're writing a single character series. The reader can be pretty certain the guy whose name is on the cover of the book will survive but they can't be sure that anyone else will live, even the people they like. It adds a note of realism.

I had written a number of series before and they had all had ongoing plot lines. I enjoyed writing them. More than that, in some ways, they were easier to write. The stories took on a momentum of their own, and events in earlier books suggested plot developments in later ones. By making each book self-contained, I was cutting myself off from that, and I missed it.

By the time I hit book 6, it dawned on me that I did not absolutely have to make each book stand alone. I could, in the tradition of comic books, have mini-series and story arcs that continued from book to book.

So recently there's been a change of direction. A number of characters have stuck around in the past couple of books and will be around for a couple more. Kormak is headed off on an extended quest to Terra Nova, his world's equivalent of the Conquistador Empire in Mexico and South America. Shape-shifting assassins pursue him from book to book. An ongoing plot involved sinister cults and Lovecraftian Gods is rumbling along in its Apocalyptic way.

What else have I learned writing the Kormak series? The most important thing is that in the new world of indie publishing it's possible to follow your heart and still make a living.

The Kormak books are short-- between 40000 and 60000 words in length. The fantasy genre is typically one where longer works do better. I suspect I could have sold more books if I had written to greater length but that just was not possible with these books. 

Right from the start, I decided I wasn't going to pad these stories to meet a word count. They are the length they are because that was the length the story needed to be. Not every fantasy story needs to be bulked up and on steroids. Most of the books I loved as a kid were not, and they were none the worse for it. That does not mean I don't want to write longer stories. It just means that I don't have to.

There is a freedom available to the indie that you just don't get in traditional publishing. I think that is the single most important development in the industry in a very long time.


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Author Bio

Bill King is the author of over 20 novels, an Origins Award-winning game designer, husband, father, and player of MMOs. His short stories have appeared in Interzone and Years Best SF. He is the author of the World of Warcraft novel Illidan. Over a million of his books are in print in English. Blood of Aenarion was shortlisted for the 2012 David Gemmell Legend Award. He lives in Prague, Czech Republic.

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