Page Created: 11/22/20. Last Updated: 04/16/21.
ALISA KWITNEY
Author Site: http://alisakwitney.com/
FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/alisa.kwitney.sheckley
Twitter: https://twitter.com/akwitney
Alisa Sheckley Fantasy Novels
..........Moon Burn
..........The Better to Hold You
Media Tie-Ins
..........New Avengers Breakout
Graphic Novels
..........Flight of Angels (with Holly Black, et al)
..........Token
..........Sandman: King of Dreams
..........Vertigo Visions
..........Destiny: A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold
Alisa Kwitney Romance & Other Novels
..........Does She Or Doesn't She
..........The Dominant Blonde
..........Flirting in Cars
..........On the Couch
..........Sex as a Second Language
..........Till the Fat Lady Sings
Meeting Date: March 13, 2021.
Meeting Site: Zoom Video Conference.
Attendance: 44.
Meeting Program: Talk / Q & A with Comic Book & Non Fiction Writer / Editor.
Newsletter Account:
The following account is reprinted with permission from THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 2021 Philip J De Parto:
The Saturday, March 13, General Meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County was held as a Zoom Video Conference due to the covid-19 pandemic. Author / editor Alisa Kwitney was our speaker.
Ms Kwitney is best known as an editor / writer for the DC Comics Vertigo line. She has also written urban fantasy, Young Adult, media tie-ins, comics nonfiction, romance, and women's fiction as Alisa Kwitney and as Alisa Sheckley. His is the daughter of science fiction author Robert Sheckley. Our guest has a BA in English from Wesleyan University and a MFA from Columbia Unviersity. Her masters Thesis was published as the women's fiction novel, TILL THE FAT LADY SINGS and was a well-regarded debut.
While reading a bit of everything in her childhood, the comics that really grabbed Ms Kwitney were the DC Comics horror anthologies House of Mystery and House of Secrets. DC was one of the publishers she queried after college. When she mentioned her regard for those long-gone titles, she was steered to Karen Bergen who had started the Vertigo imprint for DC. Our guest started as Ms Berger's assistant and worked her way up the ladder to editor.
Unlike fiction, comics is a collaborative medium. The difference in the two literatures is the difference between figure skating and skating in pairs. Unlike storyboards, where the penciller is there to service the director, in comics, the artist is the author's collaborator, not the authors s bitch. Of course, there can be misunderstandings. One of Alisa's scripts was mistranslated by an overseas artist to whom English was a second language. She was puzzled to find a floor covered with dead bodies for one of her stories. Nonetheless, our guest said that artist Guy Davis taught her so much about writing.
Pacing for comic books can be a real bitch for a writer because the medium has contradictory needs. You want big, eye-catching panels, but you also require space for dialogue and narration. She blamed the demise of Vertigo to the overlords at TimeWarner. TW started with a hands-off approach but in time became convinced that they knew how to do comics better than the people who were working on them.
A highlight of the event was Alisa reading a letter from her father.
Our thanks to Claire Fisher, Kathy Holusha, Carol Gyzander, Kathy Cannarozzi, and everyone who helped make the evening a success. Additional notes appear on the club website at 2021 - 03/2021 Meeting.
Notes: The following bits were omitted from the Newsletter Account due to space considerations.
..........In the pandemic I needed to read horror.
..........Tries to walk through a scene as if I was acting in it.
..........Became obsessed with bubonic plague.
..........Ordered masks in early January.
..........Heroine of Sex as a Second Language is an ESL teacher.
..........If you get writer's block, go for a walk with your dog.
..........Writer's Block: Use the scaffolding method employed by teachers and break things up into smaller units to solve.
..........I began to read the bad reviews of the book which was not published yet because I haven't written it yet.
..........No one knows anything.
..........I like my fantasy hard and my science fiction soft.
..........Flirting in Cars and Sex as a Second Language were labeled as chic lit.
..........John D MacDonald is the pulp writer pros read.
..........Forthcoming Avengers book includes Rogue, who is not an Avenger, but Alisa wanted a second woman in the group.
..........Alisa pitched five ideas for novels. Marvel requires a very full synopsis. She used some characters she was not authorized to use.
Additional Notes:
..........Alisa started writing when she was 5 or 6.
..........Her father (Robert Sheckley) left when she was 6.
..........Had her first publication, a poem, when she was 8.
..........She is a member of SFWA and RWA.
..........She teaches writing & comic book creation.
..........Author Kit Reed was her mentor.
..........Loves John D MacDonald.
College Days
..........Took in depth film class on The Big Sleep which served her well
..........Her Teacher Assistant was young Joss Whedan
..........She dropped out of film school
..........Won the Horgan Prize for Best Short Story by a Student while she was at Wesleyan University
..........Under pressure from her mother, she took a class in Journalism where she made things up
..........Spent two years in Florida writing articles about sex and seniors.
..........Nobody liked her serious fiction writing
..........Enrolled in Columbia University Writing Program
..........Till the Fat Lady Sings is a droll, sarcastic story about a group of self-important Columbia University students written in a faux-Victorian voice.
Werewolf Books as Alisa Sheckley
..........The Better To Hold You and Moonburn
..........Abra Barrow becomes a werewolf because of her cheating veterinarian husband gives her lycanthropy as a STD.
..........Red neck shape shifters / dysfunctional marriage.
YA Books as Alisa Kwitnery
..........Cadaver & Queen (# 1) and Corpse & Crown (# 2)
..........Feminist Frankenstein meets Grey's Anatomy with Biomechanicals
..........Very visual; very romancy
Vertigo / DC
..........She was scheduled for an interview and trudged her way to DC through a snowstorm.
..........Managed traffic between writers, colorists, etc. These were the pre-internet days.
..........She found Mike Carey in the slush pile.
..........One of her first projects was a retrospective on House of Mystery and House of Secrets.
..........She spent two years as an editorial assistant, left for a year, and then returned for another 5 years.
..........Did Sandman: Book of Dreams with Neil Gaiman.
..........Worked on Neil Gaiman's coffee table book, Sandman: Book of Dreams.
..........Zantana Mini-Series.
Marvel
..........Rogue Untouched
..........New Avengers: Breakout
...............She added non-Avenger Rogue to book because she wanted another woman in the story