We're about to start expanding the conversation by expanding the ranks of Clockwork Storybook. The five of us recently put our noggins together and selected four new professional writers to invite into our group. So far two of them have accepted and you'll be meeting them a bit later on in the week. Until then we're going to keep mum on the new Tick Tockers, except to mention that this is no longer an all boys club.With these new perspectives wading in, the conversation about all things writing can only get better. Being an egotistical bunch, we hope that in the not too distant future Clockwork Storybook will be the premiere writing group of our generation, in our chosen genres. Once upon a time The Inklings gave us both JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. That's a pretty high bar they've set. Won't it be fun trying to reach similar heights?
Update: Now all four candidates have accepted membership in Clockwork Storybook, and we are absolutely tickled to have them in. You should be seeing some "Let me introduce myself" posts from them soon.
Sounds cool, but what does becoming a card-carrying member of the CWSB group actually entail? I'm not trying to be snarky, but I am wondering if you guys are thinking about doing another shared setting.
ReplyDeleteSo, are you?
Eh, it might be a bit of a stretch, but I really did enjoy the grand, collaborative effort that was the world of San Cibola. The four of you gave it a lot of breadth and depth, and I still re-read those stories every once in a while.
There may be some collaborative work in the future. In fact there already is, in the sense I am working with Matt on Jack of Fables, I am working with Chris on Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love (where my part is mostly cheering from the sidelines, but I do get to see the lovely art before most others), and I am working with Bill Williams on the Angel stuff, where we're doing coordinated stories in the same ongoing issues.
ReplyDeleteBut that isn't the main purpose of Clockwork, which is now more of a social and "help each other when we can" group of fellow writers, in these particular genres that we love.
For example, I'm among a few other Clockwork fellows (have to learn to stop saying fellows when referring to us now) who get to read Matt's new novel, long before it's published -- as he's writing in, in fact -- because he wants to have a few readers looking at it as he goes, to help keep him honest and on track. But mostly our job so far is to let him know how lovely a story it is. You're going to love it when it comes out.
That said, it's not entirely impossible you might see us in a big prose shared world again, provided that we are all doing it for a publisher, and not directly in business with each other again -- which turned out to be problematic.
Ahhh, fair enough. Thanks for the info.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, have you guys found posting snippets of novels an effective marketing tool? I do read online short stories, but tend to stay away from full novels. If their entirety is posted, it's usually too much to go through on a monitor screen. Conversely, if only snippets appear, then I'm turned off by the fact that I can only get a small bit of the whole text.
Good question. I think the answer isn't a short one and possibly deserves a posting dedicated to it. Stay tuned...
ReplyDelete