Family Friendly Journal

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/25/the-big-idea-l-d-colter/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57460

The retelling of myths is a tradition practically as old as the myths themselves. Author L. D. Colter has implemented some Greek mythology to help write her newest novel, While the Gods Sleep. Follow along in her Big Idea to see how a lifelong interest in any and all types of myths led to writing tales of her own.

L. D. COLTER:

I remember sitting on the floor of the library at my school (a junior high and high school combined and small enough that my graduating class had twenty-five seniors), pouring over a translation of the Bhagavad-Gita. This would have been about the same time I asked a friend’s neighbor if I could learn some Hindi from her. I remember researching the Buddha after reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and looking up bits of translation of the Qur’an. I searched, pre-internet, for anything I could find on Asian and African myths and their ancient gods, though I found little. Same with Norse mythology—astoundingly hard for me to find until this millennium (but, ah, had I only discovered the rich fantasy worlds of the right comic books back then…).

Years before all this, as a child, a favorite book of mine was a tall, beautifully illustrated book of Russian folklore, given as a gift by my aunt. I still have that book today. Also sprinkled across those years was my fascination with old stories from the British Isles and all things fae: the Arthurian tales, Tristan and Iseult, the Ballad of Tam Lin (and the tale of Thomas the Rhymer, thought possibly to be the same character in tales told centuries apart). Lastly, of course, have been my decades of reading fantasy books of all stripes, especially ones with themes of myths or pantheons or faerie or folklore.

Standing out strongly across these years, though, has been my love of Greek mythology. I checked out copies of The Odyssey and The Iliad from the city library to read over summer break in high school and read and re-read my copy of Bulfinch’s The Age of Myth until I rubbed the gold lettering from the fabric cover. (Seriously. I still have that book as well, and the cover and spine are plain brown.) I bought tickets to myth-based movies—the good and the bad—and sought out novels with retellings and reimaginings of Greek myth.

Armed with this lifelong love of tales from around the world I wrote my first novel, an epic fantasy with my own version of the Celtic Seelie and Unseelie and—in my imagined secondary world—the gods who had abandoned them. It was rewritten many times as I learned the art of storytelling and was, at last, published as The Halfblood War in 2017. Meanwhile, my second novel, A Borrowed Hell (a portal/journey story), ended up being my debut novel in 2016. And then, finally, I tackled the set of three myth-based novels I’d long been wanting to write. Unsurprisingly, I began with Greek mythology.

My formative reading had been filled with Tolkien, Vonnegut, Pat McKillip, Ursula Le Guin, Gene Wolfe and others, but at the time I wrote While the Gods Sleep, I was heavily influenced by China Miéville and Tim Powers. In this book, I wanted to explore my own boundaries of weird fiction, big endings, and gods as characters—in other words, my big idea. What I discovered the hard way was that leaning weird was harder than it looked from the outside: I got my main character into the underworld with some fun weirdness along the way but then had to maintain the weird while worldbuilding an entire underworld.

But the biggest hitch to my big idea came when I discovered that writing an ordinary mortal into trouble with a pantheon of gods and demigods had been the easy part. Writing him out of it was the real challenge. My “messy middle” (as every author I’ve known encounters somewhere between that inspired beginning and the ending you’re working toward) was starting to look more like quicksand. It was suddenly very clear to me why the “chosen one” trope was so popular—at least you have one card up your sleeve to help your character win.

I persisted, though, and fortunately managed to surprise myself with plot twists that I never saw coming until I got there. When all was said and done, I like to think I ended up with a dark-fantasy thriller that does indeed lean weird and keeps picking up steam right into the final pages. Best of all, I finally satisfied my years-long goal to write a book that borrows from Greek mythology while getting to tell my own unique story.

While the Gods Sleep: Amazon|Amazon UK|Barnes & Noble|Kobo

Author socials: Website|Instagram|Facebook|Bluesky

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Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/24/the-shattering-peace-is-a-new-york-times-bestseller/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57452

Specifically, it’s at #9 on the Combined Print and eBook Fiction list, which, if I’m being honest, is higher than I expected, inasmuch as I expected it to be at 14 or 15 if it got onto the list at all (the competition for the NYT list is significant right about now). I am, as the kids do not say, gobsmacked. This is a very good day.

If you pre-ordered or bought the book in the first week, thank you. You’re my favorite. And if you haven’t gotten it yet, it’s not too late! Copies are still available!

And to celebrate: I’m gonna have some pizza. And then go to sleep. I’m still on tour and have to get up in the morning.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/24/the-shattering-peace-is-a-new-york-times-bestseller/

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Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/24/the-big-idea-cadwell-turnbull/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57440

Reality can oftentimes be stranger than fiction. Author Cadwell Turnbull speculates on this funny thing we call reality in the Big Idea for his newest novel, A Ruin, Great and Free. Follow along to see how our reality helped shape the world for the final novel in the Convergence saga.

CADWELL TURNBULL:

Back in the early months of 2020, a lot was happening. In January, the then-Trump administration killed an Iranian general in a drone strike, an “arbitrary killing” that, according to the United Nations, violated international law. At the same time, cases of infections from a new virus were being reported across the globe.

In November 2019, I read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel just as the first cases of coronavirus were being reported. Station Eleven told the story of several characters before, during, and after an influenza pandemic which kills most of the world’s population.

I promptly began talking about the coronavirus cases with my friends. Even now, I recognize that what I’d been reading was guiding much of my anxiety on the matter. I possessed no special knowledge.

But then the moment came where it was clear to everyone that this thing was indeed happening. Or it should have been clear to everyone. Instead, there was a split in our collective sense of what was happening—a fracture. As people died, I witnessed personally a very stubborn denialism take hold. As city streets lay empty and hospitals filled beyond capacity, people began protesting the need for lockdowns and other such precautions. The pandemic became a partisan issue. But even on the personal level, among friends and family with politics all across the spectrum, I witnessed a range in how the pandemic was being perceived.

I was surprised and not surprised. The effects of the pandemic were terrifying, but we all weren’t terrified by the same things. It also confirmed in a very dramatic way a speculative hunch I’d embedded into the project I was working on at the time. 

Almost a full year before the pandemic I’d created a fictional fracture of my own. It was at the heart of No Gods, No Monsters, the first in what would become the Convergence Saga. In the novel, evidence of the existence of monsters from folklore and popular culture is released to the public. Almost immediately this evidence—two videos: an officer-involved shooting of a werewolf and an act of protest from said werewolf’s wolfpack—is seemingly erased from everywhere all at once.

With the loss of the evidence, the collective sense of reality splits. Some people become obsessed with the videos and their disappearance. But other people—most people, in fact—self-delete the event from their own minds. The reasons for both responses were the same. A terrifying truth can take over a person’s mind or cause a person to look away completely. In the series, I was tying this fracture idea to a bigger one, a question at the center of reality itself, a real-world counterpart to a cosmic puzzle.

As I was drafting No Gods, No Monsters, I struggled a bit with the believability of this fracture idea. Peers that workshopped early parts of the novel questioned it. I also kept questioning the idea. Right up until the pandemic forced the world into lockdown and some people still didn’t believe it was happening.

I started No Gods, No Monsters in late 2018 and it was released in 2021. The following book, We Are the Crisis, was released in 2023. And the final book, A Ruin, Great and Free, was released on September 16th. My work on this series has spanned a very interesting time in our American (and global) politics. 

Sometimes basic facts of our current life feel so strange to me that I wonder if we’re all trapped in some collective nightmare. I’m constantly reminded of The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin, where protagonist George Orr has dreams that can alter reality itself. This personal quirk is then amplified by use of a machine called the Augmentor, weaponised by Dr. William Haber, a psychiatrist with goals of remaking the world into a utopia. Naturally that doesn’t quite work out, as Le Guin masterfully shows us the disastrous results of Haber’s hubris.

The Lathe of Heaven envisions for us what it might look like if a subjective ideal is imposed on the objective world. If one person can determine (either by accident or manipulation) what the world looks like, what is the cost? 

I think we know this speculative premise has real-world counterparts. As individuals and collectives, we are constantly remaking reality according to our ideals.

In the Convergence Saga a shadowy kabal tries to manipulate the world for its own purposes. Like in The Lathe of Heaven there is a supernatural reality-warping effect at work in the story’s world, but there’s also a very natural one. Ideas have a heat to them. They can be felt, drawing us in. Ideas can make us ignore things right in front of us. They can also make us imagine things that aren’t there. And once we’re under the spell of certain ideas, it can be difficult to root them out. An idea embeds itself.

Like a lot of people right now I’ve been obsessively watching the news. I find it frustrating how much of the news is political commentary. I am even more frustrated by the reality-warping effectiveness of bad-faith commentators on our current reality. Once again I find myself catastrophizing about a future I don’t want to live in, but we seem to be slipping toward. At the same time, I see the split happening. We can’t agree on what we’re seeing.

If the Convergence Saga is about the questioning of reality, it is also about expanding empathy. Trying to find healing for a fractured world. Trying to mend what has been broken. The story does not neatly provide an answer—because I personally don’t have one—but it shows an earnest attempt by the characters to find a way out of the political upheaval they’re facing. Much of that work is in finding new communities, forming new coalitions, and building solidarity networks for economic support and mutual aid. Occasionally, these coalitions of monsters, humans, and cosmic beings have to do battle against nefarious organizations and supremacist groups.

Turns out that in our world there are more people that want a fascist, white supremacist future than we thought. And we’re already glimpsing what that future could look like.

Fortunately, reality remains a collective act. And they’re not the only ones out here. We also get a say in what the future looks like. 

A Ruin, Great and Free: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s

Author socials: Website|Instagram|Bluesky

Read an excerpt here. 

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/24/the-big-idea-cadwell-turnbull/

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Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/22/the-big-idea-delilah-s-dawson-5/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57434

Writing a book is like riding a bike: once you’ve got it down, you never have to learn how to do it again, right? Such may not be the case. In her Big Idea, author Delilah S. Dawson delves into the writing process and learning curves she faced, even after numerous novels. Follow along to see what challenges and changes came with creating her newest book, Thor & Loki: Epic Tales From Marvel Mythology.

DELILAH S. DAWSON:

The Big Idea: Sometimes Your Process Changes, and That’s Okay

I’ve written over forty books and had thirty-two of them—the good ones—published, so you’d think that I know how to write a book.

As it turns out, you would be wrong.

At least partially.

Because the thing about writing books is that just because you know how to write one book does not mean you know how to write another. Books are like fingerprints in that each one is wholly individual, unique in all the world. Books are unlike fingerprints in that they cannot be easily compared to koala bears. 

Except—

Well, koala bears are notoriously single-minded and stubborn, and writers can be like that, too. Hopefully, I will convince you otherwise.

When I write a novel, I write the story straight through from the first page to the last page. I don’t jump around chapters, reread extensively, or edit as I go. I think of it like carrying hot laundry from the dryer to the bed: you wrap it in your arms and run, and if you drop a sock, you leave it behind because we all know that one hasty squat can topple the entire basket. I do multiple revisions, lest you think I am publishing the equivalent of inside-out, cat-hair covered socks, but that initial run from page one to THE END is the skeleton on which the meat of my story rests.

This method worked for thirty-one books, and then suddenly, it didn’t.

When I was invited to write Thor and Loki: Epic Tales from Marvel Mythology, I quickly realized that my Hot Laundry Process could not serve me. Instead of weaving a story from my own brain and heart, creating a new world out of the threads crafted from my creative spinnerets, I was tasked with taking an existing mythology and retelling it for a modern audience through the well-known voices of Marvel’s Thor and Loki. The Norse myths spring from an oral tradition, and there is no one, total, mutually accepted, complete source to study. Not only that, but there is no one specific Thor or Loki. Like the myths that bore them, these two ancient gods have been depicted in multiple movies, TV shows, and comics, and each individual fan has a favorite Thor or Loki, a platonic ideal of the character that they hold in their heart.

Thus, my task was to take two well-known, beloved characters that have existed simultaneously as gods and goofs for the past twelve hundred or more years, distill them into a fine mead, and then syphon that golden sauce through the sieve of collective comic memory and Icelandic poetry.

Can’t believe I’m saying this, but it might be easier to do laundry.

I don’t generally suffer from Writer’s Block, not only because I have deadlines and a mortgage, but also because I trust in my process. And yet you must believe me when I tell you that I came to a standstill on this project and began to dread it. When I invent a world, I become its god, and every decision I make solidifies the character and story. In that realm, I am always correct, and reality conforms to my whims. But in the realm of Thor, Loki, and their shared mythology, I had to instead become the bard.

In the Norse tradition, the bard is the keeper of story and memory, a vaunted figure; Odin is considered the god of poetry, and one of the myths that has lasted through the centuries tells the tale of the first bard and the mead of poetry. The bard’s job is not to spin tales from the ether, but rather to pass down the stories from one generation to the next, to remember them in a time with no written record. Each bard carried the myths and told them in a unique fashion, reminding the tavern’s occupants how to live and worship while entertaining them.

Once I realized that my job was to take up the bard’s tankard, suddenly the book actually began to flow. Instead of telling my own story, I broke the project down into chapters, and each day, my task was to look at a particular myth from several different sources and spin my own version. Or, more accurately, to channel the voices of Loki and Thor as they each compete to woo the Avengers to their side using all the bard’s techniques of enchantment and, well, propaganda. Adding in a few famous Thor and Loki tales from the Marvel comics was even more of a challenge. From The First Avenger in 1963 to Thor, Frog of Thunder and the more recent Loki for President, it was a delight to create my own poetry from famous stories never before told in prose.

For the first time, my chapters jumped around. I wasn’t carrying laundry from point A to point B; I was putting a puzzle together. Unlike all my other books, the Norse myths don’t have a specific chronology. Although there is a very distinct beginning, which involves a very large cow licking a giant, and a very distinct ending, known as Ragnarok, what happens in between is fluid. As Loki tells the Avengers, the myths exist to entertain and teach, not help you draw up an accurate timeline. Part of the bard’s art is selecting just the right story to tell. 

Now, this is not the first time I’ve had to completely change my process. Writing my first novella, also known as ‘a book that is only 40% of a book’, had quite the learning curve, and I did such a bad job writing my first comic that I burst out crying at a hotel buffet during a Santa Claus convention. I’ve been writing professionally since 2012, and I’ve learned to always trust my process, and when that process stops working, to find a new process. There is no one way to write a book. A writer’s process may change over decades, years, projects, or chapters. Whatever gets the book done? That’s your process.

If you don’t have a process yet, I highly recommend the book Story Genius by Lisa Cron, which teaches you to outline by marrying character arc to plot using the third rail of emotion. And if you already have a process, maybe don’t cling to it too tightly. Don’t be that koala that will only eat eucalyptus if it’s on the branch. Writing is about fluidity and play and experimentation. As Charles De Mar says in Better Off Dead: Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.

Thor & Loki: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s

Author socials: Website|Instagram|Bluesky

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