A Creature of Impulse and Instinct: An Interview with Kate E. Lore

 

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Kate E. Lore and I have stories in the upcoming 2018 Spring into Sci-Fi anthology, which is due to be released on March 20th, 2018. It’s available for preorder here.  Kate is both a writer and cartoonist. Her writing has appeared in a number of publications and sites, including Orsum Magazine, Panoply, Weirderary, Sailing to the Moon and Portage Magazine. She has won numerous awards, including first place in creative writing at the Bodies Symposium at Texas A&M Corpus Christi University.

1) Welcome, Kate. Many writers began as a child. Others come upon writing late in life. When did you begin writing?

I was in second grade when I started taking writing seriously. I attempted my first novel in a notebook when I was in second grade. I never finished any until my senior year of high school, though.

2)  You’ve written both fiction and non-fiction. Do you prefer one over the other?

I can’t say that I prefer one over the other. Essentially, both of these are just playing with words. I think doing both keeps you flexible, versatile. You learn more by doing more. I’m all about growth. It’s the same way for me with cartoons/general art. It’s all equally important. It’s all an expression of something I was feeling or trying to convey at the time. It’s just that I switch up my mediums. I suppose I feel like I have more fiction in me than nonfiction. You can only live so much life.

3) How long have you been drawing your cartoon, Melancholy Evil Poptart?

That was actually just a three-year period of my life. I “finished” it back in 2014. The whole thing started as a sort of practice web-comic. I didn’t plan to do anything with it. It’s inspired by a running comic me and my two best friends in middle school would pass around and take turns drawing/making up stories. Poptart was our villain. The whole thing was nostalgic throw-back that turned more therapeutic and, dare-I-say-better, than I expected.

4)  I see you’ve done public readings of both your fiction and non-fiction. Many good writers have a hard time reading their work in public. Any advice on how to do a successful public reading? 

Breathe. If you make a mistake just improv and roll with it. People can tell when you’re being real and they respond better to that. It’s your story, you can’t miss-tell your own words. Maybe think of it as the live version; it’s ok if a few words roll out different. Remember you weren’t asked there to read for no reason. You earned your right to be there. They already like your work. Convince yourself. (I can have a bad habit of going too fast. “Stop and breathe” helps me with that.)

5)  Let’s finish up with a process question. You channel your creative energies into both writing and cartooning. All of us have only limited time to create. How do you split up your creative time? Is it something like cartooning on Monday-Wednesday-Friday, and writing on Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday?

I wish I could create that regularly. I’m not one for a set schedule. What I make is really dependent on what mood I’m in at the time. I’m a creature of impulse and instinct. I have noticed that I can draw on days that I work (my day job) but I cannot write on the days that I work. I think writing is more mentally consuming for me than two dimensional art is. While I can produce much greater quantities of written word, it drains me more mentally. It requires a deeper focus. Art tends to feel more therapeutic for me because it feels lighter. If that makes sense? I go through phases, spurts, and marathons. It’s a poorly balanced chaos that I could probably do better at.

Thank you for your time, Kate!

You can follow Kate E. Lore on Twitter @KateeLore and Facebook @writerlore

What I've Learned About Giving Public Readings, Part Five

I've often recommended that, when going to a public reading, you should bring a selection of stories to choose from.  Once you arrive, size up your audience.  Are they interested in one genre, but not another?  Is the topic of one of your stories not likely to interest them?  You need to pick the right piece for each audience!

(I learned that lesson years ago when I was scheduled on a Monday night during football season.  The audience was all women; all the men were off watching the game.  Unfortunately, I had nothing available to entertain them -- my work was very male-oriented back them.  I bombed.)

However, it's been pointed out to me that new authors don't have a wide variety of work to choose from.  Furthermore, most authors concentrate on just one or two genres.  If all you write is science fiction and fantasy, you've got a very specific fan base.  You probably won't be able to keep an audience of nonfiction or poetry fans entertained.

So, here are my suggestions for a successful public reading when you don't have that many readings to pick from.


1)  Find Out What the Audience Likes to Read

You don't have to wait until you arrive to find this out.  Ask the person who's organizing the event.  If the organizer says that his typical audience loves poetry, but you only write prose, just say "Thanks, but no thanks."  No one can entertain every audience.

When you arrive, LOOK at the crowd.  What if the audience is all young people, and you only write science fiction?  Yes, there are some younger science fiction fans.  But SF fans tend to be older.  (I'm talking about fans of SF books, not movies or video games.)  The people who organize SF conventions even have a name for it: "the graying of fandom."

Yes, younger SF fans do exist.  They're the ones most likely to dress oddly.  I've even seen them dressed like characters from their favorite books.  But if you've got an audience of, say, serious college students who want to hear serious literature, you're in trouble.

Another possible problem is if your work is adult...but the audience includes children.  If you can't censor yourself and change the curse words in your story, maybe you shouldn't present it.

And, once again, after you've arrived, ask the organizer, "what do these people like to read?"  Maybe they aren't the people the organizer expected when he or she spoke to you before the event. 

If you feel you have nothing to entertain them...well, as long as there are other readers, maybe you should back out.  Or at least lower your expectations.


2)  Make Your Selection SHORT

Keep to your allotted time.  If there are several readers, you are probably allotted either five or ten minutes.

Practice reading your piece, and know how long it takes to present.  If it's too long, cut it down.

At a recent reading, the only complaint I heard from the audience was that one reader went on too long.  Believe me, too short is much better than too long.

I notate my expected reading time of each piece right on my script, so I know how long it should take to deliver. 

As the saying goes, "Leave them wanting more."


3)  Don't Rush!

Another rookie mistake is to read too quickly.

Sometimes this happens when you're trying to fit a seven-minute piece into a five-minute slot.  Don't try it.  Cut the piece down to a leisurely five minutes.  Or, better yet, four-and-a-half minutes -- that way you have a cushion.  And time for the audience to laugh at the jokes (if any).

Other times, the reader speeds up because he or she is nervous.  Experience should help you get over your nervousness.  If it doesn't, my best suggestion is to time not only your piece, but each page.  Write that time on each page.  Then put a timepiece where it's clearly visible to you.  That will let you know that you should be done (for example) page 2 at the 3 minute-mark.  If you're not at 3 minutes when you finish page 2, you'll know you're going too fast.

(I don't know if anyone makes an "click track" app for readers, but that might be helpful.  A click track is an even, regular, metronome-like sound that is piped over a singer's headphones in a recording studio.  It's a way to keep a singer from speeding up.  But then you'd have to wear an earpiece while you read -- which might be too much of a distraction.)


4)  Finally, Pick a Piece You Can Deliver

Everybody stumbles over some words.  Maybe it's a multi-syllabic word.  Maybe it's a technical term.  (I was acting in a medical video recently, and my partner had to repeat her part ten times in order to correctly pronounce some medical terms!)  Or perhaps it's a foreign word that causes problems.  I was once in a play in which a character had to refer to a type of French white wine called Pouilly Fuisse.  He couldn't do it.  We finally changed it to Chianti.

So, if you have trouble with a word, change it.

Another obstacle to presenting a piece: I recently saw a writer who read a piece that was so emotionally affecting to her that she broke down during the reading.  She choked up, then coughed repeatedly.  The organizer brought her a glass of water.  She drank the water, but it didn't help.  Eventually, she was so overcome with emotion, she had to complete her reading while sitting down.

Don't do this.  If a piece has such emotional resonance for you that you can't deliver it without breaking up, don't read it.


Those are my suggestions.  Happy reading!

Five Ways to Rock a Public Reading

Now that this guest post of mine has been up on the diymfa.com site for several days, I'm re-posting it on my own blog.

5OnFri: Five Ways to Rock a Public Reading

Oct 14, 2016 by Tony Conaway

published in Community

A guest post on the diymfa.com website 

 

It’s an old observation, but an accurate one: public speaking is the #1 fear for many people. This, unfortunately, includes many writers.
 

Public speaking, like most things, is less scary when you’re well-prepared. I’ve been reading my work in public for many years, and here are some things I’ve learned. They may help you.

1) Practice

I go to many readings given by authors, and I’m amazed how often they seem to be unprepared. I understand that, if you’re reading a new piece – or a work in progress – your reading might not be as polished. But you’ve got to read it – out loud – several times before you do it in public. You also need to time the piece, and make a note of that. If you only have ten minutes to read, you don’t want to pull out a work that will take twenty minutes.

2) Select the right piece for your audience

You may have a racy, R-rated piece, only to find out that some of the audience has brought children along. Another possibility is that a recent event would make your piece feel insensitive. What if you’d planned to read a story that involved an airplane crash, and, as you drove to the venue, you found out that an airplane really did just crash? Or (this happened to me) you’re scheduled to read on a Monday night during football season. Monday Night Football is on, and your audience turns out to be entirely female. Will they appreciate your planned piece on boxing as much as a mixed-gender audience would?
 

The best way to handle this is to have more than one piece prepared. Bring a clean piece and an R-rated piece, or a funny piece and a sad piece. Give yourself options. Even if you’re there to promote your latest book, have at least two sections (clean vs. blue, or funny vs. sad) of the book prepared.

3) Don’t read directly out of your book!

Surely you have an electronic copy of your book – print that out, double-spaced, in large type, preferably on cover stock. Why? Because the lighting where you read may be poor. (At the last Noir at the Bar event I attended, the lighting was so bad the audience could barely see the author!) If it’s double-spaced with large type, it’s easier to read – even in bad lighting. And printing it on stiff cover stock will keep the pages from crinkling as you progress, and make it less likely for them to blow away if someone opens an outside door and lets in a sudden breeze.
 

I’ve only ever seen one author who could justify reading out of his book. This was a fantasy author who drew over 75 fans to a bookstore reading. Some of the fans were so ardent that they actually dressed up as characters from his books! The author began by announcing, “I’m going to read the first chapter of my new book. I see many of you have purchased it already. Would one of you like to lend me your book to read from? Afterward, I’ll autograph it, noting that I read from it tonight.” 

 

Unfortunately, I don’t have fans like that, and you probably don’t either. So read from pages, not a bound book.

4) Prepare your script

This is another reason to read from double-spaced pages rather than your book. If you can do character voices (as I do), you can eliminate some of the “he said/she said” attributions – it will be obvious from your voice who is speaking. You also might want to cut or change some words from the book version: homonyms that might be confusing, curse words, or simply words you have difficulty pronouncing. And finally, there is much more room to make notes on a double-spaced page than in the tight confines of a bound book. I make marks and notes on the page, indicating that I should pause here, or look up at the audience here. I even differentiate the dialogue of different characters by typing in different colors. I read a noir story last night at a library event. On my pages, the narrator’s dialogue was in blue, the character of “Colin” had his dialogue in red, and the very loud thug called “Moose” was in boldface. That kept me from getting confused, and my character voices were spot-on.

5) Type your introduction

Someone invited you to speak: an organizer, a librarian, a bookstore owner, whomever. They might or might not be a good public speaker. Make things simpler by handing them your introduction before you start. Do it the same way you prepared your script: large type, double spaced, on stiff cover stock. You’re making their lives easier, and you’ve increased your chances of getting an accurate introduction immensely.
 

If you’re truly phobic about public speaking, following these tips might not be enough to make these events fun. But you’ll feel more confident if you’re well prepared.

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Tony Conaway is a freelance writer, ghostwriter and editor. He has co-written ten business books for such publishers as McGraw-Hill, Macmillan and Prentice Hall. His fiction has appeared in eight anthologies and many publications, including Blue Lake Review, Danse Macabre, Rind Literary Magazine, the Rusty Nail, and Typehouse Literary Magazine.
 

Some of his odder writing gigs included writing a script for a planetarium show, and co-writing jokes used by Jay Leno on The Tonight Show. He has blogged often about reading in public; you can find his most recent post on the subject (with links to previous posts) right here.
 

You can Tweet him at @tonyconaway or contact him at tonyconaway@yahoo.com.

All It Took Was a Change of Title

All writers produce stories they like more than others.  One of my favorites has just been "reprinted" on the Literally Stories site.  It originally appeared two years ago in the Rind Literary Magazine.

I knew this was a successful short story, because I presented it several times at public readings.  It always got laughs in the right places.  Nevertheless, I couldn't seem to sell the story to a magazine.  It kept getting rejected, over and over.

Eventually, I decided that the original title was the problem.  The story is about a drunk writer who shows up at the house of his ex-girlfriend late one winter night.  I called it "Reunion at 3 a.m."  That title didn't pop -- it didn't make an editor want to publish it.

I decided to change the title and submit it to literary magazines.  So I gave it the oh-so-pretentious title of "The 3 a.m. Litterateur."

That's all it took.  The Rind Literary Magazine picked it up immediately.  And now it's up again, on a new site.

Sometimes it pays to be pretentious.

What I've Learned About Giving Public Readings, Part Four

When you become a star, you can make people wait.

Until then, here's some advice: when giving a public reading, get to the reading area (lectern, podium, stage, whatever) BEFORE the applause stops!

Last night, I did a group reading in front of about 25 people.  The audience consisted of other writers, so they were attentive and polite.

The host had a written introduction for each person reading.  He would read the introduction, ending with the name of the writer.  The audience applauded.

And, in every single case, the writer took his or her time going to the podium.  The applause was long over by the time they began to read.

(That happened to me, too...but I had a good excuse.  The host forgot to read my introduction.  Instead, he just announced my name.  Believe me, if he had read my intro, I would've been standing next to him by the time he finished.  And if I'd known that I was going to read next, I would've been there.  However, the host elected to keep the order of readers unknown to everyone except himself.  That's unusual, but it was his show and his rules.)

Folks, in the broadcast business, this is what they call dead air.  It's a span of time in which nothing is going on.  Broadcasters hate it.  (I assume they still call it "dead air."  I haven't been in a radio or TV studio in years.)

If and when you become such a famous personality that you can make a grand entrance...and people are paying to see you...and there's a big proscenium arch with a curtain for you to step out of...then you can make people wait.

Until then, don't inflict dead air on your audience.  Get to the podium quickly, before the applause dies.  OK?

My previous posts in this series:
Part Three of What I've Learned About Giving Public Readings
Part Two of What I've Learned About Giving Public Readings
Part One of What I've Learned About Giving Public Readings

What I've Learned About Giving Public Readings, Part Two

In Part One, we covered the importance of having several different selections ready to read, in order to appeal to your audience.  Now we'll examine the physical aspects of your reading.

There's always a temptation to read straight out of a copy of your book.  Don't do it.  It's much easier to hold a few sheets of manuscript than an entire book.  Furthermore, you should make notes and changes to your piece, and there's little room to do that in a book.

Print out your selection, preferably on white or ivory cover stock.  Actual paper can blow away if there's a breeze.  Yes, you're inside...but a stiff breeze can scatter unsecured paper when someone opens the door to enter.  If you don't want to use cover stock on your home printer, print it on plain paper and take it to a photocopy shop.  Have them transfer it to the cover stock – their photocopy process will probably be better, anyway.  Your home printer may use water-soluble ink.

Of course, number your pages.  If they do get mixed up, you want to be able to quickly get them in the correct order.

At the top, I include the word count, and include a note as to how long it should take me to read this piece.  If I only have five minutes to read, I don't want to select a piece that takes ten minutes.

Assuming the piece has already been published, I include the information as to where it was published. If there's a website link, I add that.

Underneath that is my “key” - my guide to the different characters.  I put it in color, like so:

Waldo - blue

Victor – green

Bartender – black/boldface

Pirate Queen – red

When I read, I'm going to do different voices for each character, and the different colors remind me which character is which.  (Yellow doesn't show up well, so I print black in a different typeface instead.)  If I wanted, I could add a vocal characteristic, like “gruff,” “strong,” or “fearful.”

In the top center, I put the title of the piece, followed by my name.  No, I don't think I'll forget my name, but I might lose the manuscript.  If my name is on it, it might get returned to me.  But the current title is something I MIGHT forget, so it's good to have it on the page.  (I often change titles, so they're not fixed in my mind.)

The type is double-spaced, of course.  And, because you can't guarantee that the lighting will be good at a lectern, I bump up the point size from my standard 12 point to 14 point. 

In the body of the manuscript, I add diacritical marks to remind me of what I want to do.  If I want to emphasize a point, I put it in ALL CAPS.  I add a slash  /  where I want to pause.  (Technically, it's called a bar, but I've never heard anyone call it anything but a slash.)  A long pause gets two slashes, like so:  //.  And, since eye contact is important, type LOOK UP to remind myself that I want to to look up at the audience at that point.  The LOOK UP note also keeps me from losing my place when I go back to looking at the page.  I pick a spot with just a few words (easy to remember).  After all, I'm not just looking up at the audience - I'm also continuing to speak.  The punch line of a joke is perfect for this.

Then I put all the dialogue in the appropriate color, and delete most of the attributions.  You don't need me to say, “Victor said” when I'm doing Victor's voice.

Finally, I look at the text.  Are there any words I might stumble upon when I read?  Or words that might be obvious to a reader but can be confusing when heard?  (Homonyms, like whine and wine, for example.)  If there are any in the text, I change them.

Remember, you're there to entertain the audience – not confuse them.  You didn't take an oath that the version you're reading is identical to the one they would purchase.  Deliver the best reading you can, even if you have to make minor changes to the text.  And, like any other art form, you must practice, practice, practice!  Read the piece out loud, timing yourself.

Thanks for reading this blog post.  I hope it has been of help to you.  Please comment below – do you agree or disagree with the points raised?  And feel free to comment on your own experiences.