2021 - 10/2021 Meeting
Page Created: 07/17/21. Last Updated: 11/06/21.
A C WISE
NOVELS
..........Wendy, Darling (Titan Books)
COLLECTIONS
..........The Ghost Sequences (Undertow Books)
..........The Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron Saves the World Again (Lethe Press)
..........The Kissing Booth Girl & Other Stories (Lethe Press)
Meeting Date: October 9, 2021.
Meeting Site: Bergen Highlands United Methodist Church. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
Attendance: 17 + 4.
Meeting Program: Talk, Q & A with Fantasy Writer.
Notes:
There was no Ice Nine Pre-Meeting discussion. Milind Padki, Bill Struwe, and Moshe Yuda went to the Stateline Diner after the meeting.
Here is a link to the short story of the same name published at Daily Science Fiction in 2017: https://dailysciencefiction.com/fantasy/fairy-tales/a-c-wise/wendy-darling.
Newsletter Account:
The following account is reprinted with permission from THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 2021 Philip J De Parto:
A C Wise spoke ad answered questions at the October 9, 2021 General Meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Ms Wise is a prolific short story writer with three collections (THE GHOST SEQUENCES, THE ULTRA FABULOUS GLITTER SQUADRON SAVES THE WORLD AGAIN, THE KISSING BOOTH GIRL AND OTHER STORIES) whose first novel, WENDY, DARLING, was recently published by Titan Books. She is a past co-editor of UNLIKELY STORIES and reviews for APEX MAGAZINE.
Her novel grew out of a short story published at DAILY SCIENCE FICTION. The premise is what if the movie, TAKEN, were crossed with PETER PAN. Twenty years after Darling siblings returned from Wonderland, Peter returns for Wendy's daughter, Jane. Wendy is determined to get her back.
More information appears at 2021 - 10/2021 Meeting at the club website.
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Additional Notes for Meeting Account Write Up:
HOOKED, the sequel to WENDY, DARLING, will be released in July 2022.
A C Wise has reviewed for SF Signal and Apex Magazine.
Born & raised in Canada; moved to New Jersey 20 years ago. She is from Montreal. Her husband is American. Met husband through a mutual friend when they were in college.
Works in Grant Writing / Fund Raising for a Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Museum & College in Philadelphia. Writing Grant applications is telling narratives to get money.
Speaker was always a fan and a writer. Her mother has a binder of stories from when she was 5 years old.
First pro publication was when in 2004. It was to Coffee House Fiction which printed a flash fiction story on the label of the coffee cans they sold.
First Science Fiction Convention was at the Worldcon in Montreal. She attended her first critique group there and still workshops with some of the people she met there.
Mothers in YA don't get to go on adventures.
In the novel, the father spends a lot of time beating himself up about not having had a nanny who could have stopped their daughter, Jane's, abduction.
Television series ONCE UPON A TIME was official Disney fan fiction.
Literary agent Barry Goldblatt liked her short fiction and told her to contact him if she ever did a novel. He sold the book to Sophie Robinson at Titan Books. The book was edited in the UK where there was a consulting editor who was a specialist on London's history who made sure that the period details were all correct.
There will be a Russian version.
Titan was not interested in an audio book release, so our speaker retains those rights and hopes to produce one in the future.
It took our speaker 18 months to write the book in fits and starts.
Drafting is quick, but editing the draft is long and tedious.
A good editor sees the author's vision and want to help communicate it.
The next book is a companion novel rather than a sequel, per se, and focuses on Hook.
Is Peter Pan a rogue Time Lord? Matt Smith abandoned his companions when they aged up.
Most of our speaker's reading is done in her 1-1/2 hour commute. She mostly reads sf / fantasy. She writes and edits during her lunch hour.
Her early reading consisted on faerie tales and ghost stories. She moved on to Christopher Pike, Caroline B Cooney, and R L Stine. Later on Ray Bradbury and Star Trek Tie-Ins.
She is mostly a pantser who uses some bullet points to show where the story needs to go.
The Glitter Squadron is a collection of linked stories
Ghost Sequence focuses on Halloween.
The pandemic has not given her writers' block. She used the commute time saved to write and work on other things.
The Titan publicist helped her connect for an interview on Canada's CBC radio. She has also done readings, panels, and guest blog posts to promote the book.