Thanks guys!
Really Vreva is that old? Its not how I picture her at all...I mean I guess she's probably in her 30's or 40's but...
Okay, maybe a slightly younger CZJ... Still, she's looking amazing... http://www.healthaim.com/catherine-zeta-jones-shares-anti-ageing-secrets/39 934
Re: Snick - I can't think of any actressess known for that kind of manic energy - which probably says something about how women are cast in Hollywood as much as it does about my memory. (If Snick were male, we'd just cast Bradley Cooper to do his Rocket Raccoon and continue the GotG reunion you've got rolling there.) Catherine Tate could probably do it.
Could grab Essie Davis, Tatiana Maslany, or another actress known for being a chameleon instead of for a particular type of role, instead.
Tatiana Maslany is an amazing actress and could do any part! With perhaps a bit of CG and makeup, I think she could do a manic gnome easily... WIN!!! Thanks for the suggestion!
Isn' it all fan fiction?
Well, we're all fans of Pathfinder, but people don't get paid to write fan fic...or at least most of the time. There are programs where fan fiction approved by the IP owners can earn, but I think the question was about free fan fic. I don't think Paizo would appreciate people writing PFT fan fic and making money on it...
In fact I know they wouldn't like it...
No but all through my listening to Pirates Prophecy my muse was striking to write some. Not sure what the rules are for fan fiction containing Paizo owned characters though.Another question for Mr. Jackson(slow day at work): Would you be surprised if you saw Pirates Honor/Promise/Prophecy fan fiction pop up on the internet?Not really... I would also not be offended if someone chose to write some... Why, did you find some?
Might ask Sutter that question...
I love that audio also.
Snicks new voice took me FOREVER to get used to but eventually the author grew on me.
You mean the new narrator? The one for Pirate's Prophecy? I have not heard that one yet...
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No but all through my listening to Pirates Prophecy my muse was striking to write some. Not sure what the rules are for fan fiction containing Paizo owned characters though.Another question for Mr. Jackson(slow day at work): Would you be surprised if you saw Pirates Honor/Promise/Prophecy fan fiction pop up on the internet?Not really... I would also not be offended if someone chose to write some... Why, did you find some?Might ask Sutter that question...
I love that audio also.
Folks are allowed to write all the fiction with our characters that they want, they just can't make money off it. Fan-fiction is totally great, and in fact both Wayfinder and Pathfinder Chrnoicler are communities dedicated to it!
This might be an appropriate time/place to mention the Community Use Policy.
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Re: Snick - I can't think of any actressess known for that kind of manic energy - which probably says something about how women are cast in Hollywood as much as it does about my memory. (If Snick were male, we'd just cast Bradley Cooper to do his Rocket Raccoon and continue the GotG reunion you've got rolling there.) Catherine Tate could probably do it.
Could grab Essie Davis, Tatiana Maslany, or another actress known for being a chameleon instead of for a particular type of role, instead.
I think Ellen Page could do a really good job with that kind of part. Not sure why I think so, really, but...
Good call.
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Authors: Are there any technical books about writing (punctuation, style grammar, the business side) that you believe helped you significantly as a writer?
Far and away the most useful to me was The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction, by an at-the-time-not-super-famous Cory Doctorow. I also remember finding a lot of great inspiration and important things to consider in Stephen King's On Writing and Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Authors: Are there any technical books about writing (punctuation, style grammar, the business side) that you believe helped you significantly as a writer?
Chicago Manual of Style. For fiction, it's the standard punctuation/style guide for manuscripts. It's what your editor probably uses to look up where that period goes or whether this thing gets quotation marks or italics, and there's no reason authors can't look that stuff up, too.
The reason we're confused about most of the things that confuse us is that different style guides do it differently, so it's nice to be able to find out if there's a rule to follow instead of just making my best guess. They also have an extensive Q/A forum online that sometimes gets amusingly snarky or pop culture friendly, but is always helpful.
Contributor
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@Dave Gross:
Can we expect a new Tale from you in 2017?
Your novels are my favorite ones, not only from Pathfinder, but from all of them.
The only ones i have read more often (6 times each), are the "War of the Spider Queen" ones.
Prince of Wolves 5 times, i read it every year or so.
There's none in the works, but I appreciate your kind words. I hope some of those books stand up to re-reading.
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They do! My wife just reread Prince of Wolves and said it was even better the second time around. :-)
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Any Starfinder Tales in the works anyone can talk about?
I'd love to, but first we have to make the game. :)
I just finished Liar's Bargain, and was kind of surprised to see The Specialist instead of just using Alaeron, who has the same skill set and fundamental motivations. Sure, he stole Rodrick's boots, but would the two of them even recognize each other at this point?
I may have missed it somewhere else, but is there an Official Reading List of both In Universe Chronological Order, & Publish Date of all the Tales?
If I'm not mistaken, Prince of Wolves should be the first Novel in Publication, but not the first in Chronological order.
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Hm. Prince of Wolves is, I think the first novel chronologically in that series, but I hadn't considered where all the novels fit in the Golarion timeline. I'm not sure there is a definitive answer.
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I may have missed it somewhere else, but is there an Official Reading List of both In Universe Chronological Order, & Publish Date of all the Tales?
If I'm not mistaken, Prince of Wolves should be the first Novel in Publication, but not the first in Chronological order.
I believe the intent is they can mostly be read in any order - Reign of Stars isn't really impacted by Prince of Wolves or vice versa. Only books by the same author, featuring the same characters, really have a definitive order. There are occasional Easter eggs, like Reign of Stars name-dropping Gad from The Worldwound Gambit, but the plots are generally not interlocked.
Also, in general Pathfinder products are assumed to occur in the 'present', so publication order will roughly mirror in-universe order.
If you go to the Pathfinder Tales page in the store, you should be able to sort by 'Oldest First' or 'Newest First', which will get you publication order.
Thanks for the info, both of you. :-)
Will any of the Tale Tellers be at GenCon and be willing to autograph their works?
Will any of the Tale Tellers be at GenCon and be willing to autograph their works?
Sorry I missed this post, Athos! Yes, several of us were there. Paizo always arranges signing times at their booth (schedule is posted on the side of the big purple wall.) I'm pretty much always going to be at GenCon and DragonCon, at the very least.
Liar's Island featured some material from
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Liar's Island featured some material from** spoiler omitted **, is there any other Pathfinder Tales that have any of the occult classes show up ?
While I can't think of any off the top of my head, Meligaster from occult Adventures features prominently in the Pathfinder: Hollow Mountain comics! :D
Orlin from Perfumer's Apprentice and Thieves Vinegar (web fiction) is arguably a Spiritualist before the class even existed.
Good call. I think in that context he's supposed to be a Haunted Oracle, but Spiritualist fits him well.
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Neither!
If a spell has expensive components in the game rules, then it will (or should, unless I made a mistake and overlooked it) similarly cost a ton in any story I write.
I think that's sort of fun, actually; any time you have cost, you have potential conflict (think of all the other things that money could buy!), and then you have a plot driver. It isn't always a big issue in the story, but it's always there. For example, in the story I'm currently tinkering with, the cost of Limited Wish is a minor point. It doesn't get a ton of emphasis and it's not critical to the story. But it's there, because the rules say it's there, and that drives certain characters' behavior in certain directions.
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When including spells with expensive components and creation of magic items, do you ignore the material requirements from the game mechanics or do you include something else?
Liane is much more detail oriented there than I. I sometimes get into spell components when it's a major issue, like casting scry, you have to have a silver mirror, so Celeste had to buy one, and that was kind of tricky because she was casting it from a scroll, but the mirror made sense to keep, so it was kept. I certainly don't use spell components as plot points much, but sometimes as a financial burden. In my novels, I've never had anyone in the story create a magical item. I tend to write sorcerers more than wizards. I do keep track of how much magical items cost, however. Not many pirates can dump 10K gold on a trinket!
So are the PF Tales authors excited about StarFinder and a chance to write sci-fantasy?
Science fantasy (science fiction in general, really) is a bit outside my wheelhouse. Should Starfinder prove popular enough to support a novel line, I'll happily cheer it on, but I doubt I'd be able to produce work of the quality it deserves. :)
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So are the PF Tales authors excited about StarFinder and a chance to write sci-fantasy?
I already am writing some Pathfinder "Swords and Planets" fiction for a third party company, Legendary Games. The Legendary Planets AP isn't Starfinder, a lot more like John Carter of Mars meets Pathfinder, but it is a beautiful product. Seven installments coming, the first two and a primer are already out.
As for writing for Starfinder...That'd be fun, but there's no one even talking about that yet... Gotta get the game out first!
How does a novel get commissioned? Do you guys go to James Sutter with a story idea and pitch it to him, does he come to you? Does it generally start as something loose: "We want you to write a pirate novel" or is it more defined: "Here's a completish outline of the story we want written - note the goblin with a lisp in chapter four"?
Is Hrym an artifact or a really expensive magic item?
Has Hrym ever been stated up?
Would Merihim and Prinn be an example of a character with the leadership feat it they were ingame?
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How does a novel get commissioned? Do you guys go to James Sutter with a story idea and pitch it to him, does he come to you? Does it generally start as something loose: "We want you to write a pirate novel" or is it more defined: "Here's a completish outline of the story we want written - note the goblin with a lisp in chapter four"?
It varies, but the first stage is generally pretty open-ended. If it's going to be a story with a totally new character (for example, when I switched from Isiem's story in Nightglass and Nightblade to writing a new protagonist, Jheraal, for Hellknight), then typically there's a little more guidance in the sense of "here's a protagonist we'd like to see, and here's a part of the world that would showcase that protagonist's unique traits," but it's still pretty broad, and there's a fair amount of back-and-forth in working out the details.
So for Nightglass and Hellknight, there was a suggestion that Nidal and Cheliax, respectively, were parts of Golarion that hadn't been heavily represented in the novel line at the time that I was looking for new projects, and for Hellknight there was a brief to write a story about (duh) a Hellknight, but I had a great deal of leeway to design the specifics of the characters beyond that. Nobody specified that Jheraal needed to be a hellspawn, or female, or in the Order of the Scourge as opposed to any other Hellknight order; those were all decisions that I made because I felt they'd make an interesting combination.
Sometimes pitches get shot down because they're too close to what someone else is working on. After Hellknight, I pitched a story about the Bellflower Network, but plotwise it ran too close to a couple of other projects (and, after Hell's Rebels/Hell's Vengeance, there was a sense that maybe the fans would prefer to move away from Cheliax for a bit), so that was a no-go. I think Sutter tries hard to ensure that a variety of locations, protagonists, and adversaries get showcased in the Tales, so if several other authors happen to be writing books that feature gnomes and rogues in major roles, then your gnome rogue is probably going to have a harder time getting approved.
Once a basic pitch gets approved, then you work up a chapter-by-chapter outline and send that in. Often there'll be (very helpful) comments about structural issues or plot points that are too similar to what another author is doing. Once those have been suitably adjusted, the project gets a green light, and then it's off to the (extremely slow, in my case) races. :)
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I'd like to thank all the authors that take the time to answer questions here and all the great products you produce for everyone.
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How does a novel get commissioned? Do you guys go to James Sutter with a story idea and pitch it to him, does he come to you? Does it generally start as something loose: "We want you to write a pirate novel" or is it more defined: "Here's a completish outline of the story we want written - note the goblin with a lisp in chapter four"?
Pretty much what Liane just said...
My first approach to Paizo was at Gencon, and I pitched myself as a nautical fantasy writer, not with any specific idea for a story in mind. I talked to Sutter directly, and just happened to have something that nobody else was pitching at that point.
It varies from novel to novel a lot for me how much input I get from the editor on story plot. As Liane stated, we pitch an idea, then get approval or approval with changes or suggestions, then hand in a chapter-by-chapter outline. For me this is no problem, since that's how I start anyway. Maybe that's one reason I like working for Paizo so much...we are on the same page on a lot of things.
I'd like to thank all the authors that take the time to answer questions here and all the great products you produce for everyone.
You are most welcome... but we're all gamers, too, so, for me at least, this is truly a labor of love.
As a GM, I learned story telling and how cool it was to create something people could enjoy. From that, and a ton of practice, I get the same joy out of people enjoying my fantasy tales...
There's nothing better than getting a thank you from a fan, so, in turn, thank you for enjoying my work.
There's none in the works, but I appreciate your kind words. I hope some of those books stand up to re-reading.@Dave Gross:
Can we expect a new Tale from you in 2017?
Your novels are my favorite ones, not only from Pathfinder, but from all of them.
The only ones i have read more often (6 times each), are the "War of the Spider Queen" ones.
Prince of Wolves 5 times, i read it every year or so.
Dear Mr. Gross! I hope the above will change in the not-so-distant future! The Count and Radovan are among my all-time favorite fantasy characters and your books really got me hooked in Golarion and I feel there is much to their story still!
Since it looks Erin M. Evans's Brimstone Angels series is truly ending, it'd be really sad to lose another great set of characters from an likewise great author. I understand that sometimes it's best to take a rest than churning out a mediocre book, just please don't abandon the guys (that's also adressed to Paizo in general)!
In the meantime, I'm reading Bloodbound now and it's also very good so far, I'm already hoping it'd get sequeled!
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Necroposting, but hey...why not. If no one answers, that's fine.
Hi again, Liane! (You probably won't remember, last I said anything was about 4 years ago.)
I just finished Nightglass again, read Misery's Mirror, and am about 76% (pg 285) through Nightblade. Thank you for theseee. They inspired my Kuthite wizard (who's probably not very good, but that's more me being bad at making characters) who's currently bumbling through Strange Aeons.
That said, the question! Are you planning to write anything else set in Nidal? Maybe outside of Dusk Hall in Pangolais? We didn't actually get to see much of the city itself, outside of the market. Or Nisroch? Seemed like a. . .ah, interesting place. Or something about the Shades of the Uskwood?
Basically, I'm so close to the end of Nightblade and I really don't wanna leave. XD Any suggestions for after? (Other than Hellknight, which I'm already planning to pick up.)
P.S. Love Isiem, and Ascaros is kind of an ass and has made me laugh in wicked glee a few times. And Teglias is just <3 - though for a bit there, I was squinting with crazy theories of him being a certain immortality seeking wizard in disguise. I've mostly discarded that one - feel free to have a chuckle about that.
Also, how is 50 Shades of Nidal coming? ;3
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So are the PF Tales authors excited about StarFinder and a chance to write sci-fantasy?
The more I see of Starfinder the more excited I am about it. I'm sure the moment I start to play it, I'll be full of ideas of stories I want to tell. :)
That said, they've got to get the game out there before they start worrying about the fiction!
Are you planning to write anything else set in Nidal? Maybe outside of Dusk Hall in Pangolais? We didn't actually get to see much of the city itself, outside of the market. Or Nisroch? Seemed like a. . .ah, interesting place. Or something about the Shades of the Uskwood?
Basically, I'm so close to the end of Nightblade and I really don't wanna leave. XD Any suggestions for after? (Other than Hellknight, which I'm already planning to pick up.)
P.S. Love Isiem, and Ascaros is kind of an ass and has made me laugh in wicked glee a few times. And Teglias is just <3 - though for a bit there, I was squinting with crazy theories of him being a certain immortality seeking wizard in disguise. I've mostly discarded that one - feel free to have a chuckle about that.
Also, how is 50 Shades of Nidal coming? ;3
hey hey!!
I'm so happy you had fun with those! (And that is a really fun idea re: Teglias, I am sad I didn't think of it myself. BUMMER. Wouldn't that have been a neat lil' plot twist? An entirely different book, but... well, I'll put it away in the "maybe someday" file.)
Hellknight would honestly be my main follow-up suggestion. I'll go ahead and spoil you now (sorry) that Isiem and Ascaros do not reappear, but there are a couple of familiar faces from earlier books and stories in that one.
...and also that's my answer to the "50 Shades of Nidal" question, actually. Since you ask: that pretty much all went into _Hellknight._ It is, to be sure, a story set in and about Cheliax rather than Nidal, but... yeah.
Any chance we'll see Jheraal again ?