NobleDead.org - High/Dark Fantasy Fiction by Barb Hendee and J.C. Hendee

When an article published over at NDAS might be of interest to some who follow NobleDead.org, we will echo it here. In this case, a question and its answer will be of interest to not only would-be and professional authors but also students… or anyone who wishes to try a full and potent but free office suite…

All authors with an online presence receive questions from readers about themselves and their works. We are no different in this.

Since the inception of T·N·D·S: Tales from the world of the Noble Dead Saga, and its first release, we as well began receiving queries specific to this project… and not always about individual tales.

We thought we would share some of those submitted questions and, of course, the answers we gave.

Although the Noble Dead Saga is widely available in ebook format for all major devices and apps, it is not so for our Tales from the world of the Noble Dead Saga. We still get queries from readers who use devices either not sold through our selected “Tales” vendors or which cannot load those vendors’ apps…

We knew this issue would come up sooner or later, and it has come up multiple times through social systems and through the “Contact” page at NobleDead.org.

So it is time for an official response, so to speak, though the answer might not please some. We will try to explain…

With the recent release of the first stories in “Tales from the world of the Noble Dead Saga,” inevitable questions came up. So far, “Tales” has been a fun but sometimes confusing side venture. We did expect some puzzlement from fans and readers as well, so it’s time to share those concerns on both sides…

There’s no doubt that most of us who read a fantasy series or episodic body of work get invested in one or more characters therein. And we don’t want it to end. When a character dies, we may feel it’s the end of everything, and maybe it is the end of that particular body of work. But where the undead are concerned, is it different… or not?

Considering the Creative Commons Copyright notice attached to all articles and news coming out of NobleDead.org, one question has come up several times. The link to the CCC site on the web is enough for most, but some people are still a little confused about what the can / cannot do…

Q: Can I copy / share one of your news items / articles on my own page/site?

A: Yes you can; read the Creative Commons explanation by following its link at the end of any article coming out of  NobleDead.org. Or, as a simple starting point…

You can republish one of our articles so long as…

1. it is presented in its entirety (with one exception),
2. is unchanged in any way, and
3. you provide linked attribution back to its original source… meaning NobleDead.org.

NOTE: If you share via an auto-share function in a social or blog system that creates an article summary and a link, that’s acceptable, too, so long as content of the summary is not altered and the link leads back to NobleDead.org or one of its social system pages.

Our main concern is that news releases serve as intended to help inform people about our work (and our site); and that these are never used improperly or purely for “boxed” self-promotion by other sites. Again, for further details, see the CC link (like at the bottom of this article) or just ask us and our small staff via our contact page. We don’t bite [pun-intended].

It’s actually rare that we get crossover questions related to our old days in college and university. Considering we’re both old English majors, both who taught for a while, it’s possible we get such questions a bit more than some writers. We actually don’t think about it much, but…

Everyone who falls in love with a book or series has favorite characters. Some also have their favorite moments in the story, for they know the characters, like real people, only come alive when the story is in motion. The best characters are never stuck in time, always the same everywhere and everywhen.

It’s no different for the caring authors, though sometimes we have different reasons as “story-makers/tellers” for what sticks with us. But it’s often based in the dynamic rather than static, in the telling of what we want to share with the careful readers.

It isn’t often we get personal queries, and we’re rather private, so few such questions get answered. But some personal questions are aimed at our work life, so we try to answer those. Just like everyone, we want to do at least a little something in our work life that has some personal meaning. So to get personal, or just “person” oriented...

These days, tales of the undead (mostly vampires) are all the rage and have been for a decade plus. Much as we do use the undead (not just vampires) as prominent fixtures and even main characters, that isn’t what we really write. We’ve always considered ourselves “fantasy” writers first where the Noble Dead Saga is concerned.

Regardless, we couldn’t escape that alternative classification of our work. When S1B1: Dhampir first came out, it wasn’t even placed in the Fantasy section of book stores. If a Dark/Urban Fantasy category existed in a particular store, that’s where Dhampir ended up. Fortunately it didn’t matter, as fantasy readers found it just the same. But regardless, we always get questions related to being “vampire” writers, and so...

One of several things we get asked about again and again is collaboration. The other part is just how do we do it. And then comes the further detail of how it has (or hasn’t) changed over time.

To many people, there’s something rare — or just odd — about spouses who collaborate. Possibly more so than with other collaborative teams who don’t live on top of each. All writers differ a little or a lot in their processes and ways of looking at story-making and story-telling. Since that difference is hard to show with one voice…

Now that the draft for S3B2: The Dog in the Dark is off to our editor, and the raffles have been finished off (for now), it’s time to get back to some Q&As.

Over the months since we moved our two web sites to the Blogger.com system (NobleDead.com became NobleDead.org, BarbHendee.com became BarbHendee.org), a number of readers asked what happened to the “Glossary” from the old site. This usually came up in conjunction with “How do I pronounce such’n’such’s name?”

The old NobleDead.com site had server-side ASP/database services; the new site at NobleDead.org doesn’t have such. We’re investigating ways to emulate database operations through AJAX, JQuery, and XML data, but as yet we haven’t found a solution. We’re determined to succeed, so please be patient. As to pronunciation of names…

They don’t all follow the simplified, four-diacritical shared system we use for languages. You can still find the Pronunciation Guide at NobleDead.org under “Books.” But perhaps we can help out a little with names, though it might not be as simple as you’d assume. We wonder (with a wink) how many of you are would-be “sages” who’ve caught little details along the way and actually pieced them together, because a few of those have to do with names…

Well, we’re behind schedule yet again, Looks like the holidays and finishing another book is not a stable combination for finding that schedule again. But we’ll keep trying.

This time out, we’ll address a, um, well, steamier topic. It’s not really something we care to get into because, um, well... Oh the heck with it… let’s talk sex!  Sort of…

Overall, this is the sort of topic that’s appropriate for what’s coming our way in the near future. We won’t dig too deep but rather answer a basic question around the edges. World-building is most especially a concern — sometimes a misleading obsession — for writers in the premise genres of SF, Science Fantasy, Fantasy, Dark Fantasy and Horror. The trick is how much you do and keeping in mind that it’s all about the story-making, not the world-building. If the latter takes over the focus from the former, then you’ve wander astray.

As to why this topic is so appropriate, we’ll be doing a brief seminar on world-building (as well as workshopping manuscripts from a small group of writers) at the upcoming 2012 Cascade Writers Workshop. More on that coming soon. And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

Many people who end up wanting to be writers, or specifically authors, don’t start out that way. Life leads them down wandering paths, and along the journey to building a life is when such things begin to ferment. It could (and should) be said that story-making and story-telling are two different things. For an anyone working in any medium of expression, prose or otherwise, these are two different talents. When they are refined into skill sets, they must be integrated at the most intimate as well as pragmatic levels. That’s quite a feat, and some who don’t end up as “story-tellers” nonetheless begin early in life as “story-makers”… and they may not even know it…

And we’re back again after a slight delay, though a little earlier in the catch-up than previously announced. Sometimes (as you’ve seen in our previous Q&As) the line between the perspective of readers and writers isn’t distinct. The interests of one audience leads to the other, and visa versa. So it is, this time out, with a peek into the past. Appropriate considering that this coming January 2012, with the release of S3B1: Between Their Worlds, we’ll be ten years into the saga from the readers’ side, and over twelve years for us on the writers’ side…

The latest Q&A is running late (as it should have been up this last Friday) because we've been at it hard working on the S3B2: The Dog in the Dark even as we're all waiting for S3B1: Between Their Worlds to hit the shelves. Oh, and we have to prepare for a signing tomorrow evening. The next Q&A entry should be ready and published by Monday afternoon (PST). We'll be back on schedule for this series by the following Friday.

For our first entry in this ongoing series, we chose both an old question from interviews [adapted] and a new one from those recently submitted by readers. We’ll try to keep things mixed up that way as often as we can. This will likely lead to further expansion and reorganization of the site’s FAQs when we have time. The title of each Q&A article will reflect the topic(s) addressed and possibly where they will be filed under old and new headings in the FAQs.

We’ve been asked many questions concerning the Noble Dead saga, authorship, and fiction writing. Some have been answered in past published interviews, but most of those are out of print. Many readers have also submitted questions through our old site, and we answered through email, one by one. Time for a change…