From pizza girl to nuclear physicist, Web development to selling beads, Syne Mitchell’s work experience runs a wide and intriguing gamut. Fortunately for us, however, she decided to make a full-time career out of her first love: writing speculative fiction. With three well received novels to her credit (Murphy’s Gambit, Technogenesis, and The Changeling Plague) and another scheduled for 2005 (End in Fire), Ms. Mitchell is quickly becoming a prominent name in the halls of science fiction.
Ms. Mitchell was born in Jackson, Mississippi at the beginning of 1970. With college professors for parents, mother in Humanities and father in Physics, she was destined to grow up to be a science fiction writer. Education and literature continued to play a large role during her youth, although the physical sciences would dominate her academic pursuits. At the age of thirteen, Ms. Mitchell entered Saint Leo’s College in Florida to study Business Administration. After obtaining her bachelor’s degree at the wizened age of fifteen, she transferred to Florida State University (FSU) to pursue a master’s degree in solid-state physics.
After graduating from FSU summa cum laude, she moved northward to Madison, Wisconsin, seeking employment. Unfortunately, work was less than forthcoming due to a poor job market. During the next few years, she survived by doing odd jobs, both in name and aspect. These jobs ranged from piercing ears to washing test tubes at the Madison Area Technical College, with a little pizza delivery on the side. However, science fiction continued to play a big part in Ms. Mitchell’s life. She attended writing classes and participated in a local writer’s group.
A friend in this writer’s group, Kelly Winters, inspired Ms. Mitchell to apply to Clarion West, an intensive six-week workshop for science fiction and fantasy writers. Not only was she accepted into the course, but she also received a Susan C. Petrey scholarship. Together she and Winters traveled to Seattle, Washington to participate in one of the most rigorous writing workshops known. Not long after this “make-or-break experience,” Ms. Mitchell went on to publish her first award-winning novel, Murphy’s Gambit. An additional and decided benefit to attending Clarion West was meeting her future husband, novelist Eric S. Nylund.
Despite her initial success as a science fiction author, the ability to eat remained a vital goal in Ms. Mitchell’s life. As such, she continued to support her writing with other jobs, including teaching high school physics, desktop publishing, and Web development. Her experience with programming code for the Internet would help inspire her second novel, Technogenesis. Several of her short works were also published in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine (MZB) and related anthologies, as well as Talebones and Cabaret.
Almost a year after her decision to become a full-time writer, Ms. Mitchell published her third novel, The Changeling Plague, in 2003. However, she is most proud of her recent collaboration with her husband; their son, Kai Mitchell Nylund. Having recently returned from the Maui Writer’s Retreat, Ms. Mitchell is preparing for the publication of her fourth speculative fiction novel, End in Fire. She graciously took time out of her busy schedule to talk with us at the Rose & Thorn Ezine.
R&T: You’ve stated that your experiences in Mississippi motivated your first novel, Murphy’s Gambit. What other elements of your life have inspired your novels and short stories?
Mitchell: I don't write autobiographical fiction, but since everything that goes into the books filters through me, bits slip in. The books are like encrypted diaries. You'd have to be me to get the references, but I can read through a book and when a minor character makes a gesture, I'll remember a whole afternoon and the man on the bus who inspired that scene.
Technogenesis, my second novel, was inspired by the Web development work I did for Microsoft's Internet Gaming Zone. To stay cutting-edge, I subscribed to email newsletters about the latest developments in computer science, and was steeped in Web technology. Then I fell to musing about what the world would be like when everyone was connected to the Web 24-7.
The Changeling Plague was inspired by a picture of a bacteriophage, my enduring fascination with genetics, and a story I heard on NPR about a man living with cystic fibrosis.
Readers of my fourth book, End in Fire (out June 2005), will notice that for the first time one of the main protagonists is a parent. A result of the book being written during the nine months after my son was born.
R&T: Where do you feel that your fascination with speculative fiction has stemmed from?
Mitchell: As a child, my favorite stories were myths and fairy tales. My mother had a Ph.D. in Humanities and taught me classical Greek mythology. Later, my father bought me the complete collection of Grimm Fairy Tales. So I loved stories of the fantastic from childhood. My father, who had a Ph.D. in Physics, instilled in me a love of science. Science fiction was a logical progression. There's also a really bad pun about why I chose this genre: Everything I wrote was Syne's fiction.
R&T: When you are developing a story, do you prefer approach it from the style of Hard SF (the hard sciences) or Soft SF (sociological)? Why?
Mitchell: It varies, depending on the story, but I usually start by extrapolating a technology to the Nth degree, which I guess is a very hard-SF way to start. Once I've got some idea of the possibilities of the technology, I ask questions like: "Who does this hurt?" and "Who benefits?" Which brings in characterization and the sociological aspects. I like to think of my work as "Firm SF." I work hard to get the science right, but ultimately the story is about people.
R&T: Technological progress is advancing at a stunning rate; many of the concepts written as “fiction” are now reality. Do you believe that current progress will create a utopian or dystopian future? Does this belief reflect in your writing?
Mitchell: I don't believe in utopias or dystopias. Some things about the future will be wondrous, and others will be horrible. My fiction is a way for me to make readers aware of the potential triumphs and problems of technology. So an informed public can create a future that is more wondrous than horrible.
At a Vancouver convention, I had a conversation with Spider Robinson <Callahan’s Cross-time Saloon> about why so many science fiction novels depict dystopias. My position is that it's easier tell a story with a lot of dramatic tension when you put the character in a world with a lot of conflict and strife. So that's what most writers do.
Writing a suspenseful story in a utopia is hard.
R&T: Please discuss your experience at Clarion West. Do you believe authors can benefit from attending similar workshops and seminars?
Mitchell: Clarion West had a huge impact on my life. The workshop helped me break out of a bad place in my life and set my feet on a path to commercial success and personal happiness. For six weeks I lived the life of a full-time science fiction writer. It was a great reality check of "is this what I want to do with my life?" And my answer was an enthusiastic "Yes." I also met my husband and the love-of-my-life there.
A huge part of any type of workshop experience is the other students. I was very lucky in that many talented and hard-working people attended Clarion West in 1994. The instructors were amazing, the students fun and driven. We worked hard, played hard, and I'm in touch with most of them today, ten years later.
But I don't think my experience was typical. I was ready for change, and so eager to learn how to write science fiction that I sold most of my possessions to finance the workshop. (Thank goodness the Susan Petrey Scholarship picked up the rest, or I'd have had to sell my car.)
For writers considering whether to attend a workshop, I'd tell them to take a good look at who the other students are. Ideally, you want to get into a workshop where the other students are working at your level and above. Go to it with an open mind, ready to hear criticism without either allowing it to destroy you, or accepting it so readily that you lose your own style.
Workshops aren't for everyone. I know some people come away from a Clarion experience never wanting to write again. And you certainly don't need to attend a workshop to be a successful writer. What I got from Clarion was two years worth of learning how to write, condensed into six weeks.
I'd also like to put in a plug for the Maui Writer's Retreat. This summer I studied how to write literary fiction with Dorothy Allison. She was a brilliant and passionate teacher, and surprisingly open to science fiction. My plan is to take all the juicy characterization and realism of literary fiction and bring it into my novels.
I'd also like to warn perspective writers of the dangers of workshop addiction. It is possible to attend too many workshops, have too many other voices influence your work, and lose your writing momentum.
R&T: When you have been inspired to write a story, what steps do you take to develop an idea from concept to the final product?
Mitchell: My process is always evolving. I try to make each book better than the one before it, so I experiment with new ways of thinking about story and writing in general. Right now I'm even playing around with logistics of writing. I get different types of fiction from handwriting, typing, and dictation.
In general, however, I start with the germ of an idea and then begin accreting other details like a decorator crab. For example, with The Changeling Plague, I was fascinated with the image of a bacteriophage, a virus that infects bacteria. The electron microscope picture looked like a moon-lander touching down on an asteroid. This got me interested in microbiology, so I read about retroviruses and gene therapies. Then I heard an NPR story about a man living with cystic fibrosis and that became part of the story.
After I've got a critical mass of "story stuff" I create an outline. I'm a graphical learner, so the early stage of this involves a huge piece of paper and a flowchart. For The Changeling Plague used a different colored pen for each of the three main characters. This gets refined and distilled down into a prose outline that has a 50-word paragraph for each chapter.
This is my process; it makes me happy. I know there are other writers who would rather chew off their left leg than outline. And many of them are brilliant and successful (eg: Stephen King.)
But I'm the kind of person who gets satisfaction from alphabetizing her spice rack. It gives me great comfort to have the skeleton of the story in place before I start adding on the flesh. For me, the outline frees me creatively. I can get as wild as I want within each chapter, knowing that as long as the 50-word objective for the plot is met, all is well. And, of course, I feel free to change my outline mid-stream if things aren't working, or I come up with a better story.
R&T: Speculative fiction is strongly based in science. How important do you believe research is to the writing process? How familiar with a subject should the author be?
Mitchell: I grew up in an education family (both my parents were college professors, and my grandparents were teachers and principals) so I feel that fiction, and science fiction in particular, has an obligation to get the facts right. Writers have a wonderful opportunity to sneak knowledge into the reader's minds. I consider it unfortunate when I read a book that has bad science. I know that some readers won't see the mistake and will unknowingly absorb wrong information.
I once spoke to a high school class about space physics and discovered that they all believed that people in weightlessness had to move very slowly, that there was some property of zero-gee physics that caused it. Every image they'd seen of astronauts on television showed slow, careful motions, and they'd unconsciously formed a misconception about physics. They didn't even realize what they'd done until I pointed it out.
Bad information is pernicious. I think every writer should get the science/history/facts as accurate as possible while still telling an entertaining story.
R&T: Idaho, a key protagonist in The Changeling Plague, walks a thin line between hero and villain. Many of his actions are morally questionable. Do you prefer to write about characters with strong flaws and/or dubious motivations? Why?
Mitchell: Human beings are flawed. So if you want to represent realistic and multi-faceted characters, they need imperfections. I also don't believe that people wake up and decide to do dastardly deeds just for the heck of it. Villains believe their actions are justified, even if from a very selfish point-of-view: "Of course I should rule the world; who else could do it better?"
That said, I never considered Idaho Blue a villain. In some ways, Geoffrey Allen—for all his good intentions—is more of a villain than Idaho Blue in that he selfishly breaks the law and kicks off a plague that threatens humanity. Idaho is just a guy who had a really, really, bad childhood, which has left him a bit twisted.
But to get back to your question, yes, I like writing about unusual characters with powerful motivations. It's the kid in me playing pretend. She'd rather be a Himalayan acrobat with an addiction to pickled herring than Joe Smith, insurance salesman.
R&T: What are your feelings on the editorial process? How may rewrites do you typically undertake? Are you your own worst critic?
Mitchell: I used to think I was my own worst critic—until I read my Amazon.com reviews.
But seriously, for reasons that are too complicated to explain here, I ended up taking a college poetry class when I was thirteen. The students and instructor thought I was eighteen or older, so I got adult-level critiques on poetry--the most personal and difficult form of writing--every Wednesday night for an twelve-week semester. I tried very hard to be brave, but ended up crying in the bathroom after every class.
It was horrible and rough, but I learned a tremendous amount about word choice and shades of meaning--and after that, I'm pretty rugged when it comes to hearing critiques of my work.
As for working with editors, I find them to be excellent at pointing out problems in work, and somewhat less successful at providing the right fix. When an editor suggests a change, I puzzle out the underlying problem, consider their fix, then see if I can't figure out something better.
R&T: Of your work, up-to-date, which story are you most proud of? Why?
Mitchell: I'm proud of them all in different ways: Murphy’s Gambit was my first book and is full of youthful enthusiasm. I loved the Dixon Tully character in Technogenesis. The Changeling Plague was my first attempt at multiple points of view and I'm proud of how I balanced the different stories. And End in Fire, which I just finished, is a bigger story than I've written before and with more emotional depth. Asking me for a favorite book is like asking a mother to pick her favorite child.
R&T: Is there a certain environment that you prefer to write in? Do you need music or certain stimuli to help the writing process? Is there anything that can distract you from the writing process?
Mitchell: Before I had my son, I did my best writing first thing in the morning, in total silence, with a cup of tea at my side. Since then, trying to write with a young child around has taught me to write anytime, anywhere. I've learned that my muse is less delicate than I'd imagined.
R&T: What was the experience of having your first novel published like? When did you feel ready to write full time?
Mitchell: I've felt ready to write full time since second grade. It was justifying it financially that took me two-and-a-half decades. Actually, my husband and I have a deal. One of us takes five years off to write while the other works, then we switch.
I sold my first novel on an extremely hectic day at the Internet Gaming Zone when we were fixing bugs at a frenetic pace in preparation for a launch. Everything was going wrong, and people were losing their minds. My agent called, "ROC might make an offer." "Yeah, great," I mumbled back, too busy checking my code to really think about it. She kept phoning me with updates every so often throughout the day. It was very surreal. This goal I'd been working towards for the past five years happened, and I was too busy to have an emotional reaction. I mentioned it in passing to a coworker during
a bug consultation, "Oh yeah, I think I just sold my novel."
So why don't I tell you how it felt to sell my first short story... I had read all of MZB’s Sword and Sorceress anthologies (1-8 at that point) and her editorial notes were rife with details about what she was looking for in a story and the success stories of first-time authors. I decided that at twenty-one, if I really and truly wanted to be a writer I should go about the business of collecting rejection slips. So encouraged by her anthologies, I sent MZB a story. When the SASE came back, I was completely flabbergasted to find the words "I am happy to..." at the top of the page and in the envelope, a contract.
I literally fell down on my living room floor and laughed for about five minutes solid. Utterly delighted. For the next two weeks I floated about three inches off the ground and would break into a wide grin at odd moments.
R&T: What book (or books) are you reading right now? What books do you reread on a regular basis, if any?
Mitchell: I'm currently a judge for the Phillip K. Dick award, so right now I'm reading all the paperback original science fiction published in 2004. I also subscribe to several popular science magazines, gleaning story material. I'm an omnivorous and voracious reader, I'll read anything: literary fiction, science fiction, Fantasy, Mysteries, Young Adult, Oprah books, classics, biographies, lots of non-fiction, etc.
R&T: How do you see the future of speculative fiction, as compared to that in the twenty-first century?
Mitchell: I believe speculative fiction will become more mainstream. We're already seeing the public's willingness to entertain SF ideas in movies like the Matrix and Terminator. At the same time, SF writers are becoming more skilled and diverse, branching out into literary SF, mysteries with SF elements, thrillers like Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, etc.
R&T: What are your plans for the near future? Any new books in development?
Mitchell: I just finished End in Fire, a near-future space thriller. It starts with astronauts witnessing a nuclear explosion on Earth, and things pick up from there. It's my most ambitious novel to date. I'm currently working on a far-future nanotech book, whose working title is The End of Immortality. I never talk too much about my books while they're in progress, because I find it saps my compulsion to write them. I'm having fun with the research, and plan to spend next week interviewing researchers at the Center for Nanotechnology at the University of Washington.
Novels
Murphy's Gambit, ROC, November 2000
Technogenesis, ROC, January 2002
The Changeling Plague, ROC, February 2003
End in Fire, ROC (coming June 2005)
Short Fiction
"Tiger's Eye" - Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword & Sorceress Anthology IX
1992
"Amber" - Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword & Sorceress Anthology XI 1994
"Double Blind" - Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword & Sorceress Antho XIII
96
"New Leaves" - Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine #32
"Devil's Advocate" - L. Ron Hubbard's Writer's of the Future Antho XII
96
"Economy of Emotion" - Cabaret Magazine 97
"Gratuities" - Talebones Magazine #6, Winter 1997
"Silver Bands" - Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword & Sorceress Antho XIV
1997
"Rehabilitation" - Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Worlds 1998
"Partial Birth" - Talebones Magazine #14 Winter 1999
"Stately's Pleasure Dome" - Imagination Fully Dilated: Science Fiction
2003
Much of Jason's early childhood in rural Alberta was spent at the Edson Public Library. While other boys were playing hockey, he was busy reading everything he could get his hands on. Books dominated his life to the point that his family had to frequently stop Jason from reading, otherwise he wouldn’t eat. When his nose wasn’t in a book, he was exploring every ravine, bog, forest, or abandoned building he encountered (those were different
times).
With a mind crowded of inspiration and literature, Jason thought becoming a writer was the next logical step.
What followed were a journalism degree and several day jobs to supplement his dream. Along the way, he published several short stories, as well as scientific, socio-historical, and medical articles. He also won a few writing awards; one of which got him involved with the Rose & Thorn E-zine.
Jason currently resides in rural Texas, which is like Alberta in many ways (only much, much hotter). When he's not working full-time, painting, reading, watching horror movies, or succumbing to the lure of X-Box, he's trying to finish his first fantasy novel.
