Monday Guest Blogging Post: The Fabulous Janice Hardy

Today on GotYA's Monday Guest Blog segment we have the fabulous Janice Hardy. I had the extreme honor and pleasure of meeting Janice on Saturday at a book signing for Blue Fire. She was approachable and friendly, and I'm so thrilled I got to meet her in person. Truthfully, I'm not really surprised to find her so nice in person since she's been that way since I met her. When I first started out on AbsoluteWrite, Janice was kind enough to review my YAUF query....several times! For the release of The Shifter, Janice held a contest on her blog where you could win an ARC for the best "why did the chicken cross the road" joke. I won with my education inspired "Why did the chicken cross the basketball court? Because the Ref was calling 'fowls'!"

On the biography front, Janice is a long-time fantasy reader. She always wondered about the darker side of healing. For her fantasy trilogy THE HEALING WARS, she tapped into her own dark side to create a world where healing was dangerous, and those with the best intentions often made the worst choices. Her books include THE SHIFTER, and BLUE FIRE from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. She lives in Georgia with her husband, three cats and one very nervous freshwater eel.

Are these FANTASTIC covers or what? Just GORGEOUS!

Unrequited Writing Love
I’m a fantasy writer, with a little science fiction thrown in. All the stories that come to me have some kind of speculative element. As much as I love these kinds of tales (I wouldn’t write them if I didn’t), I also love stories set in the real world with real problems. Dark problems really, tragic ones that I hope no one I care about ever has to go through, but I love reading about them. I’ve tried to write stories like those, and failed miserably.

We’ve all heard it. “Write what you love.” But what do you do when what you love doesn’t love you back?

Identify what you love about those stories
It isn’t the real world aspect that keeps me up late reading about a dying boy. It’s how he deals with his inevitable death and what he does with the time he has left. I realized I like stories about people facing horrific problems and handling them best they could. So when I plan a story, I think about the things I can do that tap into that idea. In my fantasy novel, The Shifter, I used the idea of losing your family and being forced to do terrible things to save the only family member you had left. In the sequel, Blue Fire, it was having to work with the people who killed that family. Survival in the face of tragedy and rising above that. I may have done it differently than my favorite real world writers, but I tried to create that same feeling I get when I read those stories.

Steal ideas. After all, imitation is the highest form of flattery, right?
Naturally you don’t steal real ideas (that would be wrong), but if you love a concept, think about ways to apply that concept to your genre. If you’re drawn to tales of forbidden love, but you write techno-thrillers, looks at ways that forbidden love can affect the terrorist plot you’re working on. Make it more than just a subplot between the hunky hero and the sexy scientist he goes to for help. Make it thematic and let it influence the entire story.

Think outside the book
Every genre has its own tropes (common themes and ideas), but don’t be afraid to think outside of those. All fantasy must have magic? What if it didn’t? What if your fantasy story captured the feel of a historical novel? Westerns need to take place in the Old West? That didn’t stop Star Trek or Firefly. Both TV shows used the “trek into the wild frontier” idea and applied it to science fiction. Just because a genre usually has certain elements doesn’t mean you have to use them all. Maintain the essence of that genre (you can’t have a murder mystery with no murder, for example) and you can do pretty much anything you want. I did this with magic in my books. Instead of traditional fireballs and lightning spells, I made healing something dangerous, something that could kill.

Be true to your story
No matter how much you love one type of story, if it doesn’t work with the idea you have brewing, don’t force it. But that doesn’t mean you have to give it up entirely. If that forbidden romance will feel contrived, see if a forbidden friendship would work better. If there are no terminal illnesses in your sci fi world, then look at things that come to an inevitable end. The “death” doesn’t have to be literal. Concepts can be applied to anything, so find the concept that inspires you and see how that can enhance your story.

A little creative thinking can help you take the themes and ideas you love to read, and apply them to the stories you love to write.

Blue Fire Blurb
Part fugitive, part hero, fifteen-year-old Nya is barely staying ahead of the Duke of Baseer’s trackers. Wanted for a crime she didn’t mean to commit, she risks capture to protect every Taker she can find, determined to prevent the Duke from using them in his fiendish experiments. But resolve isn’t enough to protect any of them, and Nya soon realizes that the only way to keep them all out of the Duke’s clutches is to flee Geveg. Unfortunately, the Duke’s best tracker has other ideas.

Nya finds herself trapped in the last place she ever wanted to be, forced to trust the last people she ever thought she could. More is at stake than just the people of Geveg, and the closer she gets to uncovering the Duke’s plan, the more she discovers how critical she is to his victory. To save Geveg, she just might have to save Baseer—if she doesn’t destroy it first.

Link to Blue Fire Online Retailers
http://www.harpercollins.com/book/pre-order.aspx?isbn13=9780061747410

Website
www.janicehardy.com

The Other Side of the Story Blog
http://storyflip.blogspot.com/

Thank you so much, Janice, for guest blogging with us. I can't wait to snuggle up my coveted autographed copy of Blue Fire!!!

5 minute book club - The Shifter

It's the first Thursday of the month and time for the 5 minute book club. This month's book is The Shifter by Janice Hardy. Janice is a fellow member of Absolute Write, a forum where writers can connect. I think most of you will notice that many of our book club choices come from AW. I think it's awesome to be part of a writing group for many reasons, and one reason is support.


Here's what The Shifter is all about:

Fifteen-year-old Nya is an orphan struggling for survival in a city
crippled by war. She is also a Taker—with her touch, she can heal injuries,
pulling pain from another person and storing it inside her own body. But
unlike her sister Tali and the other Takers who become Healer’s League
apprentices, Nya’s skill is flawed: she can’t push that pain into pynvium,
the enchanted metal used to store person to person, a dangerous skill
that she must keep hidden from forces occupying her city. If
discovered, she’d be used as a human weapon against her own people.

Rumors of another war make Nya’s life harder, forcing her to take
desperate risks just to find work and food. She pushes her luck too
far and exposes her secret to a pain merchant eager to use her
shifting ability for his own sinister purpose. At first, Nya refuses, but
faced with some difficult choices. As her father used to say,
principles are a bargain at any price, but how many will Nya have to
sell to get Tali back alive?




Here's what we have to say about the book:

Krista:

I was fortunate to win an ARC of Shifter through a “chicken joke”* contest on Janice’s blog. The first weekend I had the book, I took it with me to the beach in the hopes of reading it...my good buddy and 2nd mom picked it up, and I didn’t see it again the entire weekend! Well, except for when I’d eye her reaching it on the beach. When I returned home, I finally got the chance to read it. First, Janice is a totally stand-up person as well as author who gave of her time to help me when I was smoldering in Query Letter Hell. Second, she is truly amazing in the fantasy world and story she weaves.

Since I love the anti-damsel in distress/kickass heroines, I totally dug Nya. She completely holds her own even when the deck is stacked against her. You certainly feel for her always having to be on her toes and always having to put herself out there for others. I enjoyed how at such a young age, Nya is forced to weigh the eternal options of good verses evil and what do with the gifts that have been given to me. There’s also a great cast of secondary characters that enhance the fantasy world.

I’ll be interested to find out what happens to Nya, Talia, and Danello in the rest of the series.

*Wanna know my joke? It was “Why did the chicken cross the basketball court? Because the referee was calling fowls!” Yuk, yuk! LOL


Jennifer:

My daughter grabbed this book and read it before I had a chance and she absolutely loved it. When I started reading it I was sucked in. The fantasy world she has created is so real, I loved the voice and was entranced with the characters. It's so nice to read a book where I'm rooting for the characters, especially when there is so much unfairness in their lives.

If you ever want to read an exceptional-suck-you-in-lighthearted yet heavy beginning then I highly recommend you read The Shifter's. My daughter and I can't wait for the sequel. And the cover's to die for!

Kathleen:

Of all the books I’ve discovered through Absolute Write, The Shifter by Janice Hardy was the one I was most looking forward to. It all started when she posted the first few lines... *cue flashback sequence of Kath surfing AW*

"Stealing eggs is a lot harder than stealing the whole chicken. With chickens, you just grab a hen, stuff her in a sack and, make your escape. But for eggs, you have to stick your hand under a sleeping chicken. Chickens don't like this. They wake all spooked and start pecking holes in your arm, or your face, if it's close. And they squawk something terrible."

How can you not fall for lines like that? It’s impossible. How could an entire book live up to the promise of those lines? Somehow, The Shifter did.

Maybe it’s because Janice is a graphic designer, but The Shifter was one of the most tactile books I’ve read. I felt like I could visualize everything perfectly. The colours, the shapes, the people and the bustle, the tang of salt in the air. When I read her excellent post on world building (http://storyflip.blogspot.com/2009/04/what-wonderful-world.html), I had a complete a complete “Ah-ha!” moment because the sources she took inspiration for were almost exactly what I pictured when I read the book.

The Shifter is one of the most finely crafted, richly detailed fantasy books I’ve had the pleasure of reading. The fact that it was written by someone that I genuinely like, someone who takes time to weigh in on AW, help fledging writers with the occasional query (thanks!), and writes one of the best writing blogs around is just the icing on the cake.

Have you read The Shifter? What did you think?