About HWA New England
HWA New England is a regional chapter of the national association for professional horror authors, The Horror Writers Association. HWA New England functions primarily as a networking organization for local authors.

HWA New England is open to all horror authors (novel, short story, poetry) at all experience levels. Our members include full-time, mass market authors with decades of experience as well as unpublished newcomers.

Jeanne Cavelos is a writer, editor, scientist, teacher, and lately, radio host. Her career began as an astrophysicist and mathematician, teaching astronomy at Michigan State University and Cornell University, and working in the Astronaut Training Division at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

After earning my MFA in creative writing, she became a senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell, and launched the Abyss imprint of psychological horror, for which she won the World Fantasy Award. While in publishing, she worked with such authors as William F. Nolan, Robert Anton Wilson, Dennis Etchison, Joan Vinge, Tanith Lee, Kathe Koja, Poppy Z. Brite, J.M. Dillard, David Wingrove, Barry Gifford, Patrick McCabe, Syd Field, Phil Farrand, and Peter Dickinson.

In 1994, she left New York to pursue her writing career. Her latest book, Invoking Darkness, is the third volume in the best-selling The Passing of the Techno-Mages, a trilogy set in the Babylon 5 universe (Del Rey). Also available is her nonfiction book, 'The Science of Star Wars' (St. Martin's) and 'The Science of The X-Files' (Berkley).

Other works include a novella, "Negative Space" (which was given honorable mention in The Year's Best Science Fiction), in the anthology Decalog 5: Wonders (Virgin Publishing) and an essay, "Innovation in Horror," which appears in both Writing Horror: A Handbook by the Horror Writers Association and The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing (Writer's Digest Books). I also put together my first anthology, The Many Faces of Van Helsing, which was published by Berkley in 2004. If you're interested in reading the submission guidelines for this anthology, you can find them here.

In 1996, she created Odyssey, an annual six-week summer writing workshop for writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror in New Hamshire. Odyssey is a place where developing writers can focus on their craft and receive detailed, in-depth feedback on their work. Guest lecturers have included George R. R. Martin, Harlan Ellison, Terry Brooks, Ben Bova, Jane Yolen, and Dan Simmons.

Jeanne has lectured at venues as varied as the Smithsonian Institute, the United States Air Force Revolutionary Technologies Division, the American Chemical Society, Dartmouth College, the Intel International Science Fair, the Discovery Channel, the Sci-Fi Channel, the History Channel, Turner Entertainment, the Art Bell radio program, and many others.

What are you working on right now?

I'm in the middle of writing a near-future thriller about cloning and genetic manipulation, called FATAL SPIRAL. It's part science fiction, part horror. My idea is to attempt to take one of the classics of our genre, FRANKENSTEIN, and flip it upside down. I feel that's an important story that's really never been told. In stories about scientists trying to manipulate or alter life, it seems their alterations are always bad and lead to the creation of monsters. I don't think that's necessarily so. I think humans can be pretty horrible and monstrous on their own. But this is a tough story to tell, so I've already been at work on it for several years, and I probably have another year or two to go before it's done.

I'm also writing a chapter for a book of essays on the TV series FARSCAPE, which will be published by BenBella Books. I'm a huge fan of the series. I'm analyzing FARSCAPE's plots, which often felt like they'd been phoned in from the insane asylum. The series had very little exposition; hardly ever would you hear a character explaining something. Usually the characters didn't understand what was going on themselves, and when they did, they often didn't care. The writers just threw us into a situation, escalated the problems like crazy, and left us to figure it out. I think that studying these plots can be very helpful to writers. They are not the standard SF fare.

You just picked up a gig as a co-host on a Sci-fi/horror radio program. Tell us a little bit about the program and what you hope to accomplish?

SCI-FI SATURDAY NIGHT is a weekly radio program running from 6:00 - 9:00 PM on the AM stations WGIR, WGIN, and WGIP in New Hampshire. Some areas in Massachusetts and Maine can also pick up the program. Our first show was Jan. 29, so this is all very new. With my two co-hosts, Mr. K and the Dome, and various guests, we discuss what's new in science fiction, horror, and fantasy--books, movies, DVDs, comics, games--and new discoveries in science. I hope that we'll be able to highlight some high-quality SF/H/F, educate casual fans about the field, feature great books and great authors, and build the genre community. The show is not yet available for streaming on the Internet; that may come in the spring. You can get more information at www.wgiram.com/scifi.html

What can you tell us about Odyssey 2005? As the director of the event since 1996, how does Odyssey stand out from other writing workshops?

Odyssey is a six-week summer workshop for writers of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. This year's workshop runs from June 13 - July 22 and will be held at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH. Developing writers whose work is approaching publication quality apply from all over the world. The application deadline is April 15. This will be a great year for horror writers to attend, since our writers-in-residence are Melanie Tem and Steve Rasnic Tem. Guest lecturers include Elizabeth Hand, James Morrow, Allen Steele, Sheila Williams, and P. D. Cacek.

I started Odyssey in 1996 for two main reasons. I had just left my position as senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell to focus on my own writing. My job had become so time-consuming that I had no time to write. Yet I loved working with other authors, helping them to improve their work. So I wanted to create a place where I could interact with authors and provide them in-depth feedback and guidance. My second reason for creating Odyssey was my own experience getting a master's degree in creative writing. My teachers didn't read SF/F/H or know much of anything about it, so the degree to which they could help me was limited. And I've heard horror stories from many other creative writing students who haven't even been allowed to turn in genre stories to class. I wanted to create the equivalent of a master's-level writing workshop that focused on genre fiction, where all the teachers and students knew and loved the genres, and could tell students how their work stacked up in the field.

Odyssey is structured unlike any other workshop I know. I'm the primary instructor for the six weeks, teaching students about all the major elements of fiction, critiquing a large amount of their work, charting their progress, and guiding them in private meetings through the various challenges they face in their writing. This continuity of feedback from me is mixed with input from various guest writers and editors. A guest lecturer comes in for a 24-hour period each week, offering his own insights into the writing process and giving students feedback on their work. The writers-in-residence come for an entire week, so students get to work more intensively with them. This combination seems to work very well in offering students a variety of viewpoints and yet also consistent guidance from someone who has read a lot of their work.

Odyssey is also the only workshop of its kind run by an editor, which I think gives the program a different perspective. I don't tell students to write the way I write. I know, from working with many authors, that each one has a different process. So my goal is to help each student find the best process for him.

We also allow students to work on novels at the workshop, which many other workshops don't allow. And we've had a very high success rate, with 40% of graduates going on to be professionally published. You can find out more at www.sff.net/odyssey.

How is your approach to writing horror fiction different from other genres?

I don't really think it's that different, but much of my horror is mixed with SF. When I'm writing a story that's purely horror, or a scene in an SF/H story that's supposed to evoke strong fear or horror, I generally describe much more, slowing down the action to increase the reader's apprehension and to make the situation more vivid, intense, and inescapable. One of my favorite examples of this kind of writing is the staircase scene in Stephen King's THE SHINING. The way he manipulates the pace in that scene is completely brilliant. When Jack Torrence brings the roque mallet down, it's fast and unstoppable. When the roque mallet hits Wendy, her reaction and her pain are slow and drawn out.

How did you get involved in writing media tie-in books for Babylon 5? From your perspective, how is the process for writing a media tie-in different from writing an original work?

I never planned to write media tie-ins. I got involved through a strange sequence of circumstances. I was working at Bantam Doubleday Dell when Babylon 5 first aired. I was very excited about the promise of the show, and the idea that the creator, Joe Straczynski, was in essence writing a five-year-long TV novel. I contacted Joe and told him we'd be interested in publishing some B5 novels. He liked the idea, so we moved ahead. Several years later, I left to pursue my own writing career. I had a half-finished novel that I was determined to complete. Bantam Doubleday Dell asked me to continue editing the B5 books as a freelancer, and I agreed. In one of my conversations with Warner Brothers, the B5 studio, the publishing liaison said she wished I would write a B5 novel for them. She thought I would do a great job. I told her I wasn't interested, but the seed had been planted, and I found myself thinking about what sort of B5 novel I would write, if I ever wrote one. I got very excited about a particular idea, wrote a proposal, and sent it in. They liked it, and that turned into THE SHADOW WITHIN.

I grew up reading and loving tie-ins, such as the James Blish STAR TREK novels, and so I take writing tie-ins very seriously. I feel they can be great art just as an episode of a TV series can be great art, and I do my best to create something of as high a quality as I can. Approaching it that way, writing a novel set in someone else's universe can be very challenging. I think it really depends a lot on the specific universe and the circumstances. Since B5 was a continuing story, with many complex story threads, it was difficult to write a story consistent with all of these. I wrote THE SHADOW WITHIN while the series was still on the air, and new revelations were coming to light each week. Authors of the novels received very little information about what was coming up, so that future storylines weren't leaked. At one point, near my due date, I had people in England sending me videotapes of episodes that had aired there, but not yet here.

Tie-in authors have to do research just like regular authors, but the research involves watching episodes over and over, noting not only the plots, but also details of setting, character gestures, intonations. You also have the challenge of trying to reconcile any inconsistencies you find, or make sense of things in that universe that don't seem to make sense. You are, in a sense, creating a puzzle piece for a puzzle that is otherwise complete. Yours has to fit into the outline that has been created, and the colors have to generally go with the surrounding colors. If you love the show, the way I loved B5, the task is a joy.

Which writers (genre or otherwise) influence or inspire you? Why?

I love a lot of the older writers -- Wells, Lovecraft, Aeschylus, Tolkien, Kafka, Conrad, Poe.

Of more contemporary writers, I find reading the works of Ian McEwan, Stephen King, Ursula Le Guin, Arthur C. Clarke very inspiring.

I love to find one short story or one scene that I really love and then read it about twenty times and study it, figuring out what makes it so great.

Tell us a little bit about your writing process. What's your schedule? Do you outline your stories? How do you edit / revise your stories?

I have five jobs these days--writing, freelance editing, teaching, running Odyssey, and co-hosting the radio show. So the number of hours I spend on each varies as deadlines come and particular tasks demand my time. In general, I try very hard to write each day. I've found that if I skip days, then weeks and months often go by before I'm able to get back to it. I spend about three hours a day working on my novel, and right now I'm spending about three hours a day working on the FARSCAPE essay. When I get that done, I'll go back to spending six hours a day on the novel. I spend about three hours a day editing, and then additional hours doing email, planning for this summer's Odyssey, and preparing for the radio show. I usually work about twelve hours, six days a week, and then about six hours on the seventh day.

I'm a great believer in outlining, and I write long outlines for all my books (I even outline my short stories). This doesn't mean I always follow the outline. I don't see the outline as some ball and chain constraining my creativity. I think it's a snapshot of my thoughts about the book at a particular point, and I can change it constantly or throw it out, as best serves the book. On my current book, I've now thrown the 90-page outline out the window. But I feel I've come to know the characters and the situation well enough that I know what I'm doing without it.

What are the most positive trends in genre fiction / publishing today?

The rise of the small press allows many books that wouldn't otherwise be published to be made available to readers. Internet booksellers like Amazon also allow smaller books and older books to retain visibility and availability.

Passionate editors continue to be a strength in our field. People who believe in SF/F/H and love it are always good to have in positions of power, and despite the mergers and conglomerates, we continue to have passionate editors who are willing to fight for books they believe in.

What are the most negative trends in genre fiction / publishing today?

While many great editors remain in the field, some editors don't have time to edit these days, or don't have the inclination, since editing skills in and of themselves are not highly valued in publishing. I don't know any editor who has received a promotion because they did a really good editing job on a manuscript. My own books, for the most part, have been very lightly edited, and while I'd like to think that's because I'm brilliant, I think the real reason is that the editor didn't spend a lot of time on the manuscript.

I could complain about the proliferation of series books, derivative books, doorstop fantasies, and so on, but hey -- that's life. Publishers jump on the bandwagon of whatever's hot.

Feel free to add any closing comments of your own.

I think I've probably gone on too long already . . .

Posted 02.04.05