2023 - 12/2023 Meeting
Page Created: 09/15/23. Last Updated: 12/22/23.
JONATHAN NEVAIR
ONLINE
Website: https://www.jonathannevair.com/
SOCIAL MEDIA
FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/jnevair
GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21374815.Jonathan_Nevair
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jnevair/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JNevair
BOOKS
..........Wind Tide Series (Space Opera)
1 - Goodbye to the Sun
2 - Jati's Wager
3 - No Song, But Silence
..........Agent Renault (Spy-Fi)
1 - To Spy a Star
2 - Stellar Instinct
Meeting Date: December 9, 2023
Meeting Site: Bergen Highlands United Methodist Church. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
Attendance: 30 + 5.
Meeting Program: Talk, Q & A with Science Fiction Author.
Notes:
Newsletter Account:
The following account is reprinted with permission THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 2024 Philip J De Parto:
The December 9, 2023 General Meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County was held at the Bergen Highlands United Methodist Church in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Science Fiction Writer Jonathan Nevair was the evening's speaker.
We once again conducted a pre-meeting cafe starting at 7:00 PM. The club furnished coffee and tea. The attendees brought desserts. Dishes brought by members icluded cranberry-raisin bread (Jerri & Klaus Angermueller), organic pastries (Lonny Buinis), coffee cake (Philip De Parto), eggnog, apple cider, lemonade, & soda (Charles Garofalo), brownie cookies (Joe Girard), chocolate gansche (Steven Herr), carrot cake (John Jurich), tiramisu cake (Christiann Langworthy), mini eclairs (Angela Mallon), homemade cookies (Caryl Neufeld), homemade cookies (Randie O'Neil), triple chocolate brownies (Al Prezkupowski), black forest cake (Monica Simon), cookies (Ingrid Staats), cinnamon babka ( Claire & Drew Sterling), panettone (James Sullivan), homemade cinnamon buns (John Upton), fruit platter & Cool Whip dip (Pamela Webber), and fruit-filled pastries (Mose Yuda).
Science fiction author Jonathan Nevair was our speaker. Mr Nevair has written the Wind Tide trilogy: GOODBYE TO THE SUN; JATI's WAGER; and NO SONG, BUT SILENCE; as well as the Agent Renault adventures: TO SPY A STAR and STELLAR INSTINCT.
Our speaker's day job is being a college professor where he teaches as Jonathan Wallace (his mother taught art; his father taught history; he teaches art history, along with philosophy & writing). He uses a pseudonym for his genre writing to keep it separate from his academic writing.
Jonathan Nevair was a child when the saw the first STAR WARS movie and was bowled over by the sight of the two suns in the sky of Tatoonine. His dream project would be to write a book in the Lucas universe, but for now he settles for writing books which have that sort of flavor.
His first book was GOODBYE TO THE SUN, which he characterized as ROUGE ONE meets DUNE. He sent it to agents without success, but the feedback was helpful. They said that the world building was strong but the characterization was weak. Our speaker did a major rewrite, using the conflict to one's duty to family vs one's duty to the state from ANTIGONE by Sophocles as his story arc. The work alternates between first and third person omniscient viewpoints, with third person filling the role of the Greek Chorus.
This is an unusual structure and he had just about given up finding a publisher for the book when a small press looking for unorthodox and interesting work made him an offer. Unfortunately, the publisher was a new venture by people who didn't understand the publishing business and the trilogy sank. Still, it looks good on the academic resume. He got the rights back and self-published it with professional-quality covers, art design, and so on.
Our guest is currently working on a spi-fi series featuring agent Lilline Renault, who is like James Bond (without the sex and sexism) in a STAR WARS universe. The problem with Bond is that he is a superman who is good at everything. Jonathan wanted someone who wasn't perfect, so he made Renault a poetry lover who writes very bad poetry.
Additional material appears in the Meeting Notes at the club website. Our thanks to everyone who helped with the set up and clean up.
Additional Notes from the meeting:
Also loved adventure stories like Treasure Island.
Fan of fantasy.
Didn't become a fan of traditional sf until he read Arthur C Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama.
Later became a fan of New Wave science fiction.
Likes to give a try to anything he enjoys.
First attempt at writing a sf novel had every cliche in the dictionary and will never see print.
Rewrote it to be the first book in a fantasy series inspired by the conflict between duty to family and duty to state found in Antigones. This is an inspiration, not a rewrite.
He sent out the rewrite. Some of the agents thought it was a great book but did not think they could sell it.
He decided to follow the advice fantasy writer Steven Erickson put in the afterward of his first novel: Follow your heart, and left it alone rather than try to rewrite it to be more marketable.
He was preparing to self-publish it when he heard back from a small press offering to publish it. Small press publication looks good on the academic resume, so he accepted the offer.
The good news was that the press was looking for unorthodox and interesting work. The bad news is they were a new publisher who had little knowledge of how the industry worked. He had no input on anything once he turned in the manuscript. The publisher quickly ran into financial problems, but granted a rights reversion, at which point he self-published it.
Jonathan had been unhappy about the cover used by the publisher, so when Goodbye to the Sun was reverted, he hired an artist to do the cover art and a designer to put together the cover.
He has nothing against traditional publication. His new series is published by Cantinool Books.
He uses the Vellum program for his writing.
Likes Ann Leckie.
Likes Becky Chambers.
Set on a world with a wind-energy monopoly.
Writes character-driven stories.
The characters shape the story.
He is a fantasy author who writes in a science fiction world.
Interested in planets, not space ships.
The trilogy took a lot out of him. It was written during the Black Rights Matter movement and the transition from Obama to Trump.
His new series is a science fiction thriller / espionage. He studied Ken Martin Follett to learn how to write the thriller genre. Dan Brown's Master Class on thrillers is excellent.
He had to google information about guns and explosives and is sure that he (and lots of other writers) is on an FBI list.
Retired CIA Chief of Disguise Jonna Mendez doing YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD841NmJbjM.
Also learned from Suspense Thriller by Paul Tomlinson.
Had to learn quick pacing.
Scenes: Get in late. Leave early.
Lean language.
Lilliene has a flat character arc. She's the same person at the end of the book that she was at the start of the book.
You don't get what you want. You get what you need.
Trilogy: Genxxx (illegible) languages.
He has been forced to plot more thoroughly.
Like cooking - what everyone likes on their pizza is different.
Does not read his reviews.
His Amazon Cyberpunk adds have been his most effective marketing.
Originally went wide. Now he is exclusive to kindle unlimited.
Kindle is very good about guiding you to convert your manuscript files and your art when you are starting out.
Does five drafts before sending it to his beta readers.
Beta readers: Be strategic. Find readers with different strengths.
After revising per the beta readers, he shares it with his critique partner.
After that it goes to a copy editor.
He lets it sit when it comes back
Then he changes the font and does a final read through.
Characters have a mind of their own and don't always do what you want them to.
Thrillers are hard. You need to figure out your ending before you start writing.
Loves a good ending where you pay off all your set-ups.
Liked the D & D movie (which does the pay off well).
Recommends the N K Jemisin podcast
90% of world building does not make it into the book.
World building is about consistency.
He builds down from the macro to the micro.
Takes an anthropological slant to his world building.
Likes Downward to Earth by Robert Silverberg.
Telling / exposition is great if you can make it work.
You don't need a killer first line.
Book sales from 2022 were around $ 1,000.00.