Kim Neville

It’s been almost a year since I got on a Seattle-bound train and left my family for six weeks in order to put some serious time and effort into developing my writing career. The Clarion West Writers Workshop was a life-changing experience. I worked long, hard hours, pushed the boundaries of what I believed I was capable of and wrote some of my best fiction to date. I also drank Fourth of July margaritas with George R.R. Martin, told late-night ghost stories with Kelly Link, sang in public on several occasions while wearing a glittery rocketship sash (if you know me well you will know how unlikely this is) and made a lot of incredible friends.

Clarion West is a non-profit literary organization with the mission to provide a high-quality educational opportunity to writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror. They are very good at carrying out this mission and I want to give back to the organization that’s given me so much. That’s why I am participating in Clarion West’s annual Write-a-thon.

The Write-a-thon runs for the full six weeks of the workshop (this year, from June 23-August 2). As it happens, I’m mid-way through the first draft of a novel and could use a push to get me through to the end. The timing of the Write-a-thon is perfect for keeping me on track.

My writing goal

I plan to finish the first draft of the novel I began shortly after the workshop ended. Here are the specs:

Working Title: Magpie

Genre: Contemporary Fantasy

Description: A junk seller and a hoarder clash over a collection of magical objects

I’ve got about 30,000 words to go. That’s 5,000 per week.

My fundraising goal

I’d like to raise $200 for Clarion West. I’ll be posting a weekly progress update on this blog and will send out the link to all donors. I’m grateful for any support – every dollar counts. However, I am offering some added incentive!

Incentive for my fabulous donors!

My novel is about how we imbue objects with magic through our relationships with them. With that in mind: I want your objects. If you donate $10 or more, you can send a .jpeg of an object to shinythings4Kim@gmail.com and I will write it into my novel. It can be a thing you love or a thing you hate. It can be new or old, beautiful or ugly, ordinary or odd. All I ask is that the object carries meaning for you.

How to donate

You can find my Clarion West Write-a-thon page HERE. Just click on the donate button to contribute.

Thank you, friends!

Cory Skerry tagged me in his Next Big Thing blog post and told me to talk about my WIP, then tag other authors and ask them to talk about their WIPs.

Answering these questions was difficult because “work-in-progress” is a stretch. What I describe below is more of a work-barely-conceived. But it’s the thing I’m currently obsessing over so here you go.

Ten Interview Questions for The Next Big Thing

1. What is the title of your Work in Progress?

Magpie

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

I’m interested in hoarding and collecting and how we imbue objects with magical properties through our connections to them. I tried to express some of my ideas around this in a story at Clarion West but between the one-week deadline and the specter of George R. R. Martin hovering over my shoulder while I typed, they came out all misshapen and half-baked. After the workshop I decided to scrap the story and try a fresh take with a novel in mind.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Contemporary fantasy. Maybe YA, maybe not.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Ev is a girl with a knack for finding trash and selling it as treasure at the Chinatown Night Market. After way too much time fruitlessly Google-searching Asian actresses, I finally settled on an eighteen year-old version of Sook-Yin Lee. This has less to do with her acting skills and more to do with her real-life awesomeness.

Audie is the Protector of All Things Shiny. OR she’s a crazy hoarder lady. Depends who you ask. I imagine her played by Emma Thompson but if pressed I’d also concede to Helena Bonham-Carter.

5. What is a one-sentence synopsis of the book?

A junk seller and a hoarder clash over a collection of magical objects.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Get an agent is Plan A. I haven’t really thought beyond Plan A.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Um. I haven’t actually started the writing part yet. But the first draft will totally be finished by the end of this year.

Shut up.

8. What other books would you compare this story to in your genre?

Cory’s already eating cupcakes with Holly Black, so I’ll say it’d be swell to be compared to the likes of Charles de Lint, Francesca Lia Block or Hiromi Goto.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

When I was in Seattle this summer, a group of us went on an early Sunday morning walk. I watched one of my new friends interact with her environment as we toured UW campus. The attention she paid to colors, textures, shapes and smells was captivating. Everything was touched and deeply appreciated. I walked. She engaged in a reciprocal relationship with the world. It made me think about how human love and appreciation for an object gives it value. Which led to thoughts about what happens when objects absorb so much emotion, positive or negative, that they begin to take on a life of their own. And how might such objects react when they come into contact with a person hyper-attuned to that life?

10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

It’s set in Vancouver, because I love fantasies set in real-life cities and because I think Vancouver could use a little more magic. Also, it’s the first novel I’ve written that does not contain fairies.

Include the link of who tagged you and this explanation for the people you have tagged.

Cory Skerry tagged me. You should check out his blog and also follow him on Twitter because he’s funny and brilliant.

I’m tagging a few of my favourite writer friends, who now have a week (give or take) to post their answers.

Blythe Woolsten is a sublime human and also the author of Freak Observer and Catch and Release.

Karen Woodward writes urban fantasy and blogs extensively about the business and craft of writing fiction.

Kim Aippersbach posts fabulous YA & MG book reviews over at Dead Houseplants and writes stories too, when she doesn’t have her nose in a book.

Today marks fifteen years since my husband and I shared our first kiss while standing on a street corner waiting for a late night bus.

Fifteen years is also the approximate age of the can of beans in the photograph above. They look ordinary but in fact they are magical beans.

I’m not sure exactly when the can of beans was originally purchased. My husband moved it into our first apartment, shortly after our one-year dating anniversary. I hate pork and beans, always have. I pushed the can to the back of a cupboard and there it was forgotten. When we moved, it was packed up along with the other pantry items and put in the back of a new cupboard.

The years passed. The can of beans moved to Vancouver Island and back to the Mainland. We talked about throwing the can away. We were never going to eat those beans. And the can was too old to donate to a food bank in good conscience.

We couldn’t do it. Because by then, the can of beans had become something else. See, my husband and I had what seemed, at least to us, to be a charmed relationship. Things had started off good and gotten continuously better. It was different than other relationships — for both of us. Mutual respect and support, an effortless friendship, good kissing…it was almost too easy.

The beans had been around as long as our relationship. So…what if?

My husband was the one that said it out loud. What if we got rid of the beans and everything fell apart? Obviously, once someone says a thing like this out loud, it becomes a possibility. Losing the beans became a gamble, a chance neither of us was willing to take. So from then on, for better or worse, the beans were a saucy high-fibre symbol of our love.

We became homeowners. The beans moved into our condo with us.

We got married. Had a baby. We moved ourselves, the baby and the beans to the other side of Canada. We moved it all back again.

Since those early days, challenges have arisen, but we always come through them stronger and more committed than before. Meanwhile, that can has been packed and unpacked eight times. There are some spots of rust and frankly, I’m afraid of what’s inside it. But it’s staying in our cupboard.

I’m not willing to risk a fifteen-year run of happiness.

The other day I took a different route home from the bus stop and noticed a fairy door. I don’t often walk down this particular street. Perhaps the door has been there all along, or perhaps we have new neighbours. It doesn’t much matter either way. Naturally, we had to stop by and say hello.

No one answered the door despite the fact that we tried several knocking styles and called into a largish crack in the trunk of the tree. My daughter suggested there might be a key hidden nearby for clever children to discover. We tried various twigs and feathers with no luck.

Tickling the door with a blade of grass didn’t open it either.

On the way home we realized we’d forgotten to bring a gift. A terrible oversight on our part. No wonder nobody came out to visit. We are currently collecting shiny stones and pearly seashells for a more neighbourly welcome.

Actually, I’ve been home for almost four weeks but I’ve been having a hard time sitting down and writing about it. I’m not sure what to say. I tell everyone who asks that it was amazing, totally worth it, I learned a ton. All of that’s true and at the same time inadequate.

I expect I’ll write about some of what I learned over the next few months, once I’ve had a chance to process it. Until then, here’s a photo of me, at the end of Week Five, looking ridiculously happy to be in a kayak. Which I was. Probably I wore that blissed out expression a lot during the six weeks. It was that good.

Right now what I feel is an overwhelming sense of gratitude. I’m grateful for the generosity of my incredible teachers and the workshop organizers, for the divine chemistry of my class, which turned out to be full to the brim with talented and fabulous humans, for the wholehearted support of the wider CW community. And I’m especially grateful for my family, who made so many sacrifices to allow me to take advantage of this opportunity. Thank you, everyone.