Interview with Janine A. Southard

By Anders Monsen

Kickstarter has funded many projects, from million-dollar movies to t-shirt designs costing a few hundred dollars. Many readers probably have kicked in funding for several projects, as this is a way to participate in bringing to fruition something we support; and we can actually see our contribitions at work. Janine A. Southard's novel Queen & Commander drew funding from a Kickstarter project, which funded copy-editing and design. It's very likely that more and more book projects like this may derive support through crowd-fund options like Kickstarter. Prometheus editor Anders Monsen speaks with author Janine Southard to try to discover how she Kickstarted her novel, what went into writing and publishing the book, and what lies ahead.

You took an unusual approach to your novel, funding it though a Kickstarter effort. What made you decide on this approach?

I've worked off and on in the games industry for the last five years, and indie game developers were having great success with Kickstarter. Money was pouring in for them, enabling creation of new and exciting games. When I saw that Kickstarter also had a publishing/fiction category, I thought, “That'll be a good way to raise funds.”

What did you learn from the Kickstarter process, and would it change how you approach any new books?

Top thing I learned: If you're not already famous (or making a game), don't expect to be rolling in the Kickstarter Benjamins. You can probably subsidize your project, but not recoup all the money you're spending on highly talented professionals. I did not, like so many others I've seen, blow past my stretch goals in the first week.

Second thing: I love it! I love the idea that real people decide to fund a project based on how interested they are. I love the meritocracy aspect: that the video or sample chapter made a difference to potential investors. I love that I'm connected (and accountable!) to my readers directly.

Third thing: Coming up with a good reward tier structure is hard, particularly where physical goods are involved. For instance, if I offer a reward that includes a poster, then I need to pay for the poster, the special packaging tubes, and the shipping of an unwieldy object. At best, this ends up costing around $30. So it's easy to end up at break-even or underwater at a particular increment, otherwise potential backers see “an extra $30 for just a poster? That's highway robbery.”

As for new books, I'm definitely putting my next two projects on Kickstarter! The sequel to Queen & Commander (tentatively titled Hive & Heist) will find most of its funds there. And I have an unrelated SF novella in the works which should be going live any day now, These Convergent Stars.

Welsh mythology and culture heavily influences the main world in Q&C. What made you choose a Welsh background versus inventing something from scratch?

Honestly, I named the spaceship. Our heroes fly about in the Ceridwen's Cauldron, and they have since the very first draft. The name has such great symbolism for coming together and creating something exciting. Later, when the heroes outgrow the name Ceridwen's Cauldron, when they became sick of authority figures who take advantage, they change the ship's registry to the Manawyddan's Mousetrap. (Note: this still hasn't happened, even though I just finished the draft of book two.)

When it was just the ship name, I could still have just figured Rhiannon, the main heroine, likes Welsh mythology. But… as I was researching the physics of the faster-than-light technology I wanted to use, I learned that the science was based on the work of Alcubierre (learn about Alcubierre drives on Wikipedia) who had done graduate work at the University of Wales, Cardiff.

That was the coincidence that tipped me over into putting more Welsh characters into the story.

Still, it's pretty fictionalized. For example, I made up most of the druidic aspects by starting with the Medieval texts (e.g., the Mabinogion) and deciding how that would sensibly go forward a few hundred years from now. Sure, I also took up listening to DruidCast on iTunes (an amazing show from the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids with music and philosophy and a lot of academic lectures), but my bizarre Hive-world druids have very little in common with modern druidry. Today's practitioners would be appalled at the idea of a set doctrine, for instance, or that you could possibly be a “secular druid.”

Thankfully, my UK copyeditor is also Welsh, so the most egregious of my cultural errors got caught early. (Rhian E. Jones)

How has your experience working with gaming companies influenced or affected your fiction?

Well, it's a large part of why I chose Kickstarter! It's also been really great for my dialogue writing (so people tell me). I mean, I get paid to spice up the millionth iteration of “go into the forest and kill five rabbits” and to make it tight, character-building, and informative.

My experience in gaming also taught me how to be a hack. You get your words out on time, or you don't hit your release date. There's no "I don't feel the muse" or whatever. You have a scene and a dialogue box and a plot line, and you have to get the player from one end to the other before the game ships. I treat writing a lot more like a business now than I did before, and it's made me a much better writer. (I'm a lot more prolific, and I like to think that the constant practice has made my work more fun to read.)

You chose teenagers as main characters. Given that they take control of a spaceship and need to learn quickly how to work in space, and with each other, did you deal with challenges that older characters in the same situations might not have faced?

The characters came before the plot. First, I did the worldbuilding (with the Hive social system and the Testing), and then I made the characters. I knew immediately they were teenagers. Partially because I wanted them to take a mandatory STRONG-SAT, but partially because that's how I saw them. So it's hard to imagine how things would have been different with adults.

As you point out, they take control of a spaceship and need to quickly learn how to work in space. They are clueless. And that's okay. They figure things out—not with knowledge and experience, but by being smart. Luciano reads the manuals. Gavin draws on his experience with building theatre sets to make sure that the ship stays in one piece. Only Gwyn does what she's trained to with plants and she's the character who gets no on-the-job screentime.

Adults, then, would probably already know how to use their spaceship. As characters, they'd have spent more time on relationships. They'd have started out with a lot more arguing because everyone would have an informed opinion (i.e., how to spend money, what to do over the next five years, who should be in charge of making dinner), and they'd also have segued pretty smoothly into teambuilding exercises because they know “learning to get along” is necessary. You'll notice that at the end of Queen & Commander our heroes have worked together and become closer, but they're not a full-on team yet like adults would try to be, and it doesn't occur to them that they'll fracture if they don't work on it.

Their lack of experience almost gets them killed several times. These kids are forced to grow up quickly. How does this affect the dynamic of the group?

Like any adventure story, the potential consequences give every action taken a whole ‘nother depth. But they're also teenagers, so every choice they make has a personal consequence: it shapes their self-perception. There's a moment where Victor (who's supposed to be a computer engineer) is waffling about how he's useless on the ship, and it's at that very point that his deepest secret is exposed. This cements that he really is useless (at least, as an engineer), and that fact becomes part of his self-image.

They also have the chance to see, early on in their association, who can be relied on and who can't. No one in this situation—where you're a force-knit group of six, depending on each other for everything—wants to be the unreliable person, so there's a lot of redemption going on. But it's hard to dig out of that hole. Which leads to cliquishness and avoidance, in true teenage fashion. (Though I doubt I'd do any better.)

Since this is Book One of the Hive Queen saga, can you talk a bit about Book Two and beyond? Where do you see this young crew taking their futures?

I have the next two books planned out, and Book Two should be coming out next year. In fact, there should be a Kickstarter for it this fall/winter 2013.

I'd envisioned the plot arc as a triptych. Book 1: characters leave home. Book 2: Characters kick around and learn stuff outside of home. Book 3: Characters return home and are revered (for new knowledge) or reviled (for trying to change the old ways).

Book Two (tentatively titled Hive & Heist) picks up directly where Queen & Commander left off: in space. It also sees the introduction of a new character, an American Space Ranger who happens to be a sentient robot. Actually, the first full story I ever wrote in the Hive Queen universe was the origin story for the robot, M3L-155-A. As research, I went deep into reading about the first wave of Texas Rangers, who worked alone and had to always be smarter, better, faster. The Rangers also accepted all sorts into their ranks, making it the perfect home for one of the few sentient robots in the cosmos.

At the same time, Hive & Heist develops the “Meanwhile back on Dyfed” plot a bit more, touching on some of the science involving the incarcerated Queens.

All the ensemble characters have strong motivations for their lives, and the “will they or won’t they” question gives me a lot to play with. Will Luciano ever be trained as a doctor? Will Alan ever get to work in a high-profile lab? Will Rhiannon ever figure out how to lead her people? Will any of them decide what to do with their spaceship besides go road-tripping in it?

I can't tell you much about Book 3 right now without giving everything away. But I can tell you that I'm 75% sure there'll also be an alternate universe version of it. I desperately want to write the novella where Rhiannon doesn't cheat her high school exit exams. Instead of becoming a Queen and going off amongst the stars, she goes to college on the home world. I've got pages of notes about this alternate version, which is probably a murder mystery.