Brian D. Buckley

With all respect, I am not a big fan of Neil Gaiman’s fiction. American Gods and The Graveyard Book both left me flat.

But I could listen to that man talk about writing all day.

Yesterday I stumbled into his Wikiquote page, and it was like coming home. Listen to this:

Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.

That’s what fiction writing is all about, isn’t it? Reaching inside yourself to show someone else your magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing world.

I spent an hour in a moon-eyed Gaiman-induced haze of writerly warm fuzzies, but I’ll spare you the rambling and cut to the quote that really got me:

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why you’re doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising (“but of course that’s why he was doing that, and that means that…”) and it’s magic and wonderful and strange.

This is eloquent and true any day of the week, but it really clobbered me yesterday, because I’d just had that very experience only an hour before.

“The story catches fire” is exactly the right way to say this. You have these characters, this plot, this world, and you’re excited and everything seems good and you don’t even know there’s anything missing. And then for no special reason you happen to say “Well I guess her struggle parallels this other conflict,” and suddenly that little sub-plot you were toying with becomes the story, becomes what the entire book is about, and maybe even what life is about and you get all giggly and useless to anybody else for upwards of ninety minutes.

It’s like turning the key in a Mustang, the difference between admiring its sleek lines in a parking lot and roaring down the freeway. And this is coming from a guy who drives a four-cylinder Honda Accord.

I guess what I’m trying to say is: I’m happy. And I hope you are too. And if you’re not, then dammit, I’m going to try my best to write a book that will take you there.

As for Neil Gaiman, I’m going to read his Sandman series. I may not have fallen in love with some of his other books, but damned if Sandman doesn’t look amazing. And every book is a fresh start – right?

Don’t forget to submit your question for Ask Brian Anything by the end of the week! The questions so far have been top-notch, grade-A material, on account of you guys rock. Keep ’em coming!

The central character in The Crane Girl is called the Vorschkraag.

Note, I said the central character, not the main character. The main character, the hero, the reader surrogate, the Crane Girl herself, is a woman named Rana. But on the island where Rana lives, the Vorschkraag is the center of everything: geographically, politically, spiritually, even (gulp) ontologically.

The V won’t get much screen time. She’ll only appear in a couple chapters at the end of the book. But it’s her book.

I picture the V as a girl, about ten years old, although strictly speaking she’s genderless and immortal and definitely not human. She’s the quintessential demiurge, a spirit who creates for the sheer joy of creating, a lover of everything that’s alive and free. She’s an empress without laws, a sleeper whose dreams are the same as reality. If she’s a goddess, then she’s a goddess like no other: not a mother like Gaia, nor a wife like Hera, nor concerned with sexual chastity like Artemis; an accidental goddess, not interested in obedience or worship, only interested in making a world.

Her eyes are silver-in-silver and glow in the dark.

I keep searching for a picture that sums up the way I think about this character. I’m hunting Google Image Search and DeviantArt, cropping and altering and splicing images together, trying to figure her out. Sometimes she’s five years old and sometimes she’s thirty. Sometimes she’s a queen and sometimes she’s a little kid curled up in a ball. (I’d post the images, but most are copyrighted.)

I don’t know just who she is yet.

But I’m going to find out, and if you’re interested, you can too.

Image source

I’ve started another novel.

I stopped working on the last one, The Counterfeit Emperor, nearly two years ago. That was a difficult decision, but I think it worked out. I spent some time  exploring AI, and recovering from novel-writing burnout.

Well, I’m recovered. Let’s rock and roll.

I’m not picking up Emperor again. First, because I still have a bad taste left over from before. And second, because I think the main character is fundamentally flawed. Going back would mean rewriting almost from scratch, so I might as well start something new – something I’m excited about.

The next novel is called The Crane Girl. Fantasy this time, rather than sci fi, although the lines get blurred in my stories anyway. I’m uber pumped for it, planning to do a lot of things differently.

For one, the hero is going to be strong, active, and (gasp) perhaps even likeable. I’m also doing a lot more research this time around. I’m taking my worldbuilding nice and slow, basing my nations on real historical empires (like the Byzantine Empire) rather than trying to imagine it all from scratch.

And I’m using images a lot more, searching online for photos and paintings that match the way I imagine my characters, locations, etc. This helps me get a good visual sense of what my story looks like. It’s a new technique for me, but I’m loving it. Everything feels so much more…alive.

More details to come. This is a writer’s blog, after all.

And don’t forget, you have till the end of the week to Ask Me Anything. I’ve gotten four great questions already. Keep ’em coming!