2014 - 06/2014 Meeting

Page Created: 04/17/14. Last Update: 07/03/14.

JONATHAN WOOD

Novels:

.....No Hero

.....Yesterday's Hero (September 2014 Release)

.....Anti-Hero (March 2015 Release)

Short Fiction

.....The Nyarlahotep Event (The Book of Cthulhu 2)

.....The Leviathan (Kaiju Rising - forthcoming)

.....The Mathematics of Faith (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

.....Preservation (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

LINKS:

.....Official Site: http://jonathanwoodauthor.com/

.....Blog: http://jonathanwoodauthor.com/blog-2/

NOTES:

Additional information about the author's talk will appear below the NEWSLETTER ACCOUNT.

MEETING SUMMARY:

Meeting Date: June 14, 2014.

Meeting Site: HobbyTown USA. Nanuet, New York.

Official Attendance: 15.

Meeting Program: Talk / Q & A with Contemporary Fantasy Author.

NEWSLETTER ACCOUNT:

The monthly General meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County was held on Saturday, June 14, 2014 at HobbyTown USA in Nanuet, New York. Contemporary fantasy writer Jonathan Wood was our speaker.

The Ice Nine discussion primarily focused on movies made from comic books, as well as the comic book source material. These included the forthcoming ANT MAN and ARCHIE movies, the 1960s BATMAN television series, and X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. The TV show, THE 100, and the movies GRAVITY and EUROPA REPORT were also discussed.

Jonathan Wood is the author of a contemporary fantasy series which begins in NO HERO and continues with the forthcoming YESTERDAY'S HERO and ANTI-HERO and an untitled work. the author's short fiction has appeared in BENEATH CEASELESS SKIES, THE BOOK OF CTHULHU 2, CHIZINE, WEIRD TALES and the upcoming anthologoy, KAIJU RISING: AGE OF MONSTERS.

Our guest grew up a horrendous geek in England. He absolutely loved his Transformers cartoons and comic books. Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles was another early favorite. Like fans throughout the world, Jonathan wrote bad science fiction stories in his youth. He later attempted a career as a television scriptwriter, but that did not work out.

Mr Wood met his future wife, an American studying at Oxford, while studying to be a doctor. She was dating a friend of our guest at the time. She returned to New York and he followed, visiting twice before making the move permanent. They married and have two children, a seven year old daughter and a five year old son.

Our speaker was able to parley his literary and medical backgrounds into a career as an advertising copywriter for the pharmaceutical industry. The demands of advertising copy honed his skills to write concisely ("Twitter also does that," he said.) Mr Wood commutes to Manhattan from Long island and normally writes only during the hour-long train ride in each direction.

Jonathan Wood has a very visual orientation and collects interesting images he discovers online. These go into a Tumbler Idea File which he uses as writing prompts. The idea of the conjoined three Sheilas in NO HERO came from an artist who did three sketches of the same woman. Our guest constructs a number of image-based short scenes before he starts plotting out his novel.

Mr Wood wrote several books before NO HERO. His first was a Young Adult novel. When the work was complete, our speaker looked it over and realized that he had no idea what he was doing. He researched books and writers and incorporated their methodology into his next work. This was also unpublishable, but the exercise allowed Jonathan to internalize much of the process.

The Arthur Wallace (NO HERO) series is the author's attempt to infuse the fast-paced, larger-than-life aspects of pulp adventures with believable characters and better writing. Our every man hero must cope with Lovecraftian horrors, time-travelling Russian Communists, a zombie apocalypse and Nazi robots as the series continues.

While his earlier books took a couple of years to write, Jonathan Wood banged out NO HERO in six months. The original version was quite a bit different than what was published, but it was good enough to interest agent Howard Morhaim. His agent insisted on a rewrite that took three additional months, but the result was a sale to small press Nightshade Books. The company also published YESTERDAY'S HERO before having to suspend operations due to budgetary constraints.

Mr Morhaim was able to negotiate a reversion of rights to the books and then resold them to Titan Books. The company has previously published media tie-ins, but the Arthur Wallace books are their first foray into original releases. The titles have been released as mass market paperbacks since Nightshade had already issued them in hardcover and trade paperback.

Write up continues on the club website on 06/2014 Meeting Page.

NOTES:

(Just jotting them down right now. Hope to organize them later.)

The author wrote flash fiction for the Daily Cabal site.

Researched how to write:

..........The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler

..........Story by Robert McKee

..........Hatrack River Writers' Workshop

Influences / Likes

..........The New Weird

..........China Mieville

..........Jeff and Ann Vadermeer

..........James Rollins (for plot pacing)

..........Airport novels in general (plot / action driven quick reads)

NO HERO

..........was intended as a practice novel which happened to sell.

..........original draft was first person.

..........original was very nourish.

..........first book marked by "obsessive plotting".

..........a co-worker would not speak to him for two weeks after reading the death of a character.

Arthur Wood series

..........Irresponsible characters must be believable.

..........Clyde dialogue: blather, blather, blather

..........Heroes are defined by what they sacrifice

Personal

..........Loved Chris Claremont's run on X-MEN through the Phoenix Saga.

..........His children have made him prioritize his time.

..........Listens to lots of audio books.

..........Writers get readers block

..........He was surprised how ugly NYC is.

..........Artist James Jean (Fables) is a favorite artist.

Writing Matters:

..........it hurts to read negative reviews, but you can learn from them.

..........BADLANDS (unpublished) went through seven rewrites he sent it out.

.........Current approach to writing:

...............Write first draft as muscle draft

...............Do moderate rewrite of novel

...............Polish first chapter

...............Send to agent for comment

..........Because of his profession, his natural lexicon is American, not British.

..........He loves Google Maps, but is generally a terrible researcher.

..........You can gauge his familiarity with a place by the amount of detail he provides.

..........There's much more detail about Oxford than anywhere else in his books.

..........Humor is a pacing tool which lets you get through a boring bit of exposition with a joke or two.

..........Every scene should either display either action or sense-of-wonder.