Nina Munteanu Talks About Writing and Audiobooks

November 28, 2019November 29, 2022 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

In a recent interview with Jess at Audiobookworm Promotions, I talked about the process of turning The Splintered Universe Trilogy into three audiobooks and the process of writing in general:

Nina Munteanu

Tell us about the process of turning your book into an audiobook.

The process was magical for me. It was professional and proceeded at a pace that felt productive. All of this was mainly because of the professional relationship I had with the narrator. From audition to each step of quality assurance in ensuring character voice, pronunciations, mood, tempo, etc. the narrator and I were in good communication. The final product shows. I can’t recall how long it took for each audiobook to be created, but it didn’t feel long.

How did you select your narrator?

Dawn Harvey

Dawn Harvey auditioned for my first book along with two other narrators through the audiobook publisher, Iambik. I picked Dawn because her voice resonated with my idea of my main character, Rhea Hawke, a cynical badass detective on a mission to save the world–a world she doesn’t understand. Dawn’s voice carried attitude and sarcasm as well as compassion and kindness. It was exactly what I was looking for in my paradoxical character. Given that the book is told in the first person, the main character voice was critical. Dawn just nailed it. When the second and third books came out, I just HAD to have Dawn do them too—not just for consistency, but because in my mind, Dawn WAS Rhea.

How closely did you work with your narrator before and during the recording process? Did you give them any pronunciation tips or special insight into the characters?

We worked closely and well. Dawn took the driver’s seat in it. She was very professional. She sent me sections of audio to check for tone, voice, etc. She created a list of voices (I had at least twenty different alien species she needed to create unique voices for—one with multiple mouths! And another was a kind of “amoeba”—her voices were splendid!) and a list of terms with her pronunciations for me to vet. She had also asked for more information on the characters, which I was able to provide, given I keep a character dossier on all characters I create.

You can listen to samples of her narration of the three audiobooks below:

Are you an audiobook listener? What about the audiobook format appeals to you?

I like to listen to audiobooks in the car, especially when I’m on a long trip. I find it a wonderful way to enjoy a book. It’s very relaxing. When my best friend and I used to do road trips down to California from Vancouver, we took turns reading a novel or nonfiction book out loud as the other drove. It was lots of fun. With audiobooks I can do the same even when I’m the only one in the car!

What gets you out of a writing slump? What about a reading slump?

If I’m in a slump, it’s usually because I can’t figure something out—usually some plot point or character quirk or backstory. What helps me is to put the book I’m working on away and do something else. I know that what I need will come; I just have to let it come on its own terms. The break could even be writing something else, so long as it isn’t my book. Or I could do something else on the book such as edit a certain section or research some element. Other ways I coax my muse back are walks in Nature, reading a good book, visiting the library or a bookstore and cycling. These work really well to take me out of the book and into the muse. When I take my mind out of the direct involvement with the book, I’m letting things outside of me impact me with insight. Invariably that is what happens. I’ll see something or experience something that provides me with a clue or even an epiphany.

What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

Learn your “voice” and how it’s unique from anyone else. Write from the heart, write something that means something to you, and keep writing. Success in writing results from a passion to share. If you infuse your writing with passion, everything else comes with it: the patience and determination to learn craft, marketing, and the persistence in your pursuit.

Do you have any tips for authors going through the process of turning their books into audiobooks?

Know what you’re looking for to represent the “voice” of your book. Know the narrative voice you want for your book and don’t compromise on it. Work respectfully with your narrator: if they are good, they will turn your cherished book into something more than it was. Let it surprise you and delight you. Together, you and your narrator will become more than the sum of the parts. Enjoy the process and don’t rush it.

What’s next for you?

I recently finished my latest novel, A Diary in the Age of Water, which was picked up by Inanna Publications in Toronto and will be out in 2020. I recently launched the third book in my “Alien Guidebook” series of writing guides. This one is called The Ecology of Story: World as Character and I’ve had lots of fun with it!

I’m currently at the idea-premise phase of a feature short story commissioned by a magazine in Vancouver. The story, which may involve a branch of ecology called soundscape ecology, explores a world we hope to live in and how we might get there.

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” will be released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in 2020.

Science Fiction On Water Justice & Climate Change

October 12, 2019October 17, 2019 / thealiennextdoor / 3 Comments

There were stories in sweat. The sweat of a woman bent double in an onion field, working fourteen hours under the hot sun, was different from the sweat of a man as he approached a checkpoint in Mexico, praying to La Santa Muerte that the federales weren’t on the payroll of the enemies he was fleeing…Sweat was a body’s history, compressed into jewels, beaded on the brow, staining shirts with salt. It told you everything about how a person had ended up in the right place at the wrong time, and whether they would survive another day.

So begins Paolo Bacigalupi’s speculative thriller The Water Knife, set in the near-future in the drought-stricken American southwest. Where corrupt state-corporations have supplanted the foundering national government. Where water is the new gold—to barter, steal, and murder for. Corporations have formed militias and shut down borders to climate refugees, fomenting an ecology of poverty and tragedy. Massive resorts—arcadias—constructed across the parched landscape, flaunt their water-wealth in the face of exploited workers and gross ecological disparity. Water is controlled by corrupt gangsters and “water knives” who cleverly navigate the mercurial nature of water rights in a world where “haves” hydrate and “have nots” die of thirst.

Paolo Bacigalupi is just one of many authors of compelling dystopian eco-thrillers that engage readers in climate change—many with strong water themes: Margaret Atwood, Emmi Itäranta, Jeff VanderMeer, Richard Powers, Barbara Kingsolver, Upton Sinclair, Ursula Le Guin, JoeAnn Hart, Frank Herbert, John Yunker, Kim Stanley Robinson, James Bradley, Nathaniel Rich, David Mitchell, Junot Diaz, Claire Vaye Watkins, J.G. Ballard, Marcel Theroux, Thomas Wharton—just to name a few.

My upcoming novel by Inanna Publications—A Diary in the Age of Water coming out in 2020—explores the socio-political consequences of corruption in Canada, now owned by China and America as an indentured resource ‘reservoir’; it is a story told through four generations of women and their unique relationship with water during a time of great unheralded change. On February 17, 2046, limnologist Lynna writes in her diary about her mother Una:

“Bald, alle das wasser verschwindet,” She said in her quiet voice of certainty. She always spoke in her mother tongue when it came to water. Soon, all the water will be gone. “Und so werden wir.” And so will we. “Es wird das Ende des Zeitalters des Wassers sein.” It will be the end of the Age of Water.

Una always seemed to follow the thalweg. She seemed to always know what water was doing. Even when it braided and curled in on itself. Even when human-made obstructions got in the way; like the increased water tax, followed by the severe water-use quota. Like water, Una found a way around it.

I wish I had that skill.

Science fiction explores our water crisis through premises of extreme water shortage and devastating violence (floods, droughts and storms), water diversion, and hoarding. Premises explore weather manipulation, the consequences of extensive deforestation and the massive extinction of species. As with my own book A Diary in the Age of Water, Claudiu Murgan’s Water Entanglement explores water as a character, as though water has gone rogue, unruly. Perhaps even vengeful…

Today, we control water on a massive scale. Reservoirs around the world hold 10,000 cubic kilometres of water; five times the water of all the rivers on Earth. Most of these great reservoirs lie in the northern hemisphere, and the extra weight has slightly changed how the Earth spins on its axis, speeding its rotation and shortening the day by eight millionths of a second in the last forty years.

Millennia ago, we adapted and lived by the rhythms of the global water cycle. We have since harnessed the power of water; we captured it and diverted it and changed it in ways to suit our own rhythms. Our unprecedented power over the planet’s water has advanced our civilizations immeasurably. But water remains our Achilles’ heel; it has the potential to limit our ambition like no other resource on Earth.

If climate change is the planet’s response to humanity’s relentless exploitation, water is its archangel.

A tidal wave of TV shows and movies currently explore—or at least acknowledge—the devastation we are forcing on the planet. Every week Netflix puts out a new science fiction show that follows this premise of Earth’s devastation: 3%; The 100; The Titan; Orbiter 9; even Lost in Space.

Science fiction is suited to this role; it is the literature of consequence that explores large issues faced by humankind and can provide an important vehicle in raising environmental awareness. Literature in general has always served as a cultural reporter on themes important to humanity. The science fiction genre—and speculative fiction particularly—explores premises based on current scientific and technological paradigms. What if we kept doing this?…What if that went on unchecked?… What if we decided to end this?… These are conveyed through the various predictive visions from cautionary tales (e.g., Atwood’s Year of the Flood) to dystopias (e.g., Itäranta’s The Memory of Water). Science fiction has always been the pre-eminent literature of metaphor and history; it has lately matured in the Anthropocene to incorporate the edgy realism of literary fiction to give us potent environmental relevance. Sub-genres now include eco-fiction, climate fiction, and cli-fi.

Ellen Szabo, author of Saving the World One Word at a Time: Writing Cli-Fi suggests that the ability to make environmental issues less political and more personal (through story) permits more engagement by readers and a higher likelihood of action toward justice: we are more likely to take action on the things we love and know. It’s all about connection.

“Science doesn’t tell us what we should do,” Barbara Kingsolver wrote in Flight Behavior “It only tells us what is.” Stories can never be a solution in themselves, but they have the capacity to inspire action, which is perhaps why cli-fi’s appeal among young adult readers holds such promise. As the scientists and leaders of tomorrow, they may be most capable of addressing climate and water issues where previous generations have failed, writes J.K. Ullrich of The Atlantic. As Margaret Atwood wrote in MaddAddam, “People need such stories, because however dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void.”

We tend to live very much in the here and now, Bacigalupi told an audience at the University of Seattle when describing humanity’s lack of planning for the future. But, he added, “with science fiction, I can give you a [here and now] experience far into the future,” and allow a reader to truly experience “what it’s like to be a climate refugee” or be someone with no legal access to water. An extrapolated science fiction future provides a visceral opportunity to see our future selves in a way that promotes serious consideration, says Bacigalupi. By putting us there, we have a better chance of making those extrapolations into consequence.

For centuries we have hubristically and disrespectfully used, discarded and destroyed just about everything on this beautiful planet. According to the World Wildlife Federation, 10,000 species go extinct every year. That’s mostly on us. They are the casualty of our selfish actions. We’ve become estranged from our environment, lacking connection and compassion. That has translated into a lack of consideration—even for each other. In response to mass shootings of children in schools, the U.S. government does nothing to curb gun-related violence through gun-control measures; instead they suggest arming teachers. We light up our cigarettes in front of people who don’t smoke and blow cancer-causing second-hand smoke in each other’s faces. We litter our streets and we refuse to pick up after others even if it helps the environment and provides beauty for self and others. The garbage we thoughtlessly discard pollutes our oceans with plastic and junk, hurting sea creatures and the ocean ecosystem in unimaginable ways. We consume and discard without consideration.

We do not live lightly on this planet.

We tread with incredibly heavy feet. We behave like bullies and our inclination to self-interest makes us far too prone to suspicion and distrust: when we meet the unknown—the “other” so often portrayed in science fiction—we tend to respond with fear and aggression over curiosity, hope and kindness. Something we need to work on if we are going to survive.

Science fiction—the highest form of metaphoric and visionary art—is telling us something. Are we paying attention?

Rainforest on southern Vancouver Island, B.C. (Photo by Kevin Klassen)

“Ecology of Story: World as Character” Workshop at When Words Collide, Calgary

September 7, 2019March 29, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / 4 Comments

I recently gave a 2-hour workshop on “ecology of story” at Calgary’s When Words Collide writing festival in August, 2019.

The workshop—based on my third writing guidebook: “The Ecology of Story: World as Character”—explored some of the major relationships in functional ecosystems and how to effectively incorporate them in story. We briefly explored how ecosystems and ecological processes work and looked at several of the more bizarre examples of ecological adaptation.

I showed how treating world and place as character provides depth and meaning to story through its integration with plot, theme, and other characters. We looked at these story components as integral to help ground the reader in context and meaning of story. We explored place / setting as metaphor, symbol, archetype, and allegory.

Through literary examples of setting and place, we looked at how readers are drawn into story through metaphor, sensual description, and thematic integration through POV character.

Reviewing the story we created through an exercise

Then came the story-building part of the workshop—a snappy, fast-paced dialogue among all workshop participants. Using the book’s cover image as story-prompt, we worked through the story components of premise, theme, character, plot and setting. Following a lively discussion, we succeeded in creating a stunning first crack at a story that was both original and intriguing. And at whose heart was a strong sense of place and identity.

“The Ecology of Story” had only recently been launched at Type Books in Toronto and saw its first use at the Calgary When Words Collide conference. Books were sold out an hour after the workshop.

“The Ecology of Story” recently achieved Amazon Bestseller status in the Ecology category.

Nina starts her “The Ecology of Story” workshop with Part 1: ecology

Nina talks about some interesting adaptations in reproduction

Stream on Vancouver Island, BC (photo by Kevin Klassen)

Nina is a Canadian scientist and novelist. She worked for 25 years as an environmental consultant in the field of aquatic ecology and limnology, publishing papers and technical reports on water quality and impacts to aquatic systems. Nina has written over a dozen eco-fiction, science fiction and fantasy novels. An award-winning short story writer, and essayist, Nina currently lives in Toronto where she teaches writing at the University of Toronto and George Brown College. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…”—a scientific study and personal journey as limnologist, mother, teacher and environmentalist—was picked by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times as 2016 ‘The Year in Reading’. Nina’s most recent novel “A Diary in the Age of Water”— about four generations of women and their relationship to water in a rapidly changing world—will be released in 2020 by Inanna Publications.

One-Day Writing Intensive in Georgian Bay

August 31, 2019September 6, 2019 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

On June 22, 2019, I joined Honey Novick and Cheryl Antao-Xavier as presenters of a one-day writing intensive at Noël’s Nest Country Bed & Breakfast near Port McNicoll.

writing group at Noel’s Nest

A small group of dedicated writers joined the intensive and we explored topics to do with writing, manuscript preparation and submission, as well as publishing models. This included meaningful discussions and writing exercises, readings and sharing.

I talked about the importance of theme to help determine a story’s beginning and ending. We also discussed the use of theme in memoir to help focus the memoir into a meaningful story with a directed narrative. I discussed the use of the hero’s journey plot approach and its associated archetypes to help determine relevance of events, characters and place: all topics explored in my Alien’s Guidebook series.

As part of the intensive at Noël’s Nest, a magnificent lunch was served along with refreshments. The day was sunny and warm. And perfect in the shade. We ended the intensive with a short nature walk led by naturalist Merridy Cox.

While everyone left at six, I stayed on with a friend. I’d booked the night and looked forward to a restful evening among deer, rustling trees and a chorus of birdsong. The owner had left us some leftovers for supper, and, as we dined on a smorgasbord of gourmet food and wine, I reveled in Nature’s meditative sounds. The night sky opened deep and clear with a million stars.

The next day we enjoyed exploring southern Geogrian Bay, which included the small towns of Port McNicoll, Midland and Penetanguishene. Georgian Bay is part of Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes.

Pine Island by Tom Thompson

The bay itself is quite large, comprising about four-fifths the size of Lake Ontario. Eastern Georgian Bay, where we were exploring, is part of the southern edge of the Canadian Shield. Granite bedrock exposed by the glaciers at the end of the last ice age about 11,000 years ago, forms a rugged coastline dotted by windswept eastern white pine. The rugged beauty of the area inspired landscapes by artists of the Group of Seven.

The shores and waterways of the Georgian Bay are the traditional domain of the Anishinaabeg First Nations peoples to the north and Huron-Petun (Wyandot) to the south.

Georgian Bay at Port McNicoll

The bay was a major Algonquian-Iroquoian trade route when Champlain, the first European to explore and map the area in 1615–1616, arrived and called it “La Mer douce” (the calm sea). Originally named Waasaagamaa by the Ojibwe, the bay was renamed Georgian Bay by Lieutenant Bayfield of a Royal Navy expedition after King George IV.

After driving through Port McNicoll, we drifted into Midland, where we enjoyed a delicious crepe at La Baie Creperie. On the recommendation of a local, we then moved on to Penetanguishene to the Dock Lunch for the best ice cream in Southern Georgian Bay.

La Baie Crêperie in Midland

Upon leaving, I realized that I’d only seen a small portion of the Georgian Bay area and vowed to return soon.

Eager writers work on an exercise I’ve given them

“The Ecology of Story: World as Character” Launched at Type Books, Toronto

August 26, 2019August 21, 2019 / thealiennextdoor / 2 Comments

UofT instructor and writer Nina Munteanu launched the third book in her acclaimed “how to write” series at Type Books, Toronto, on July 4^th, 2019. The launch of “The Ecology of Story: World as Character” celebrated writing and place through readings, songs and talks by local writers, poets and singers.

“The Ecology of Story” was created to address the need for writers to better acknowledge the central role of place in story and better address the interrelatedness of environment with character on a journey.

“The Ecology of Story” appears in two parts; Part 1 is dedicated to basic ecology with a focus on strange and wonderful relationships in the natural world; Part 2 integrates metaphoric connections between character and place/environment to deepen meaning in story.

Launch at Type Books

From Habitats and Trophic Levels to Metaphor and Archetype…

“The Ecology of Story” teaches the fundamentals of ecology, insights of world-building, and how to master layering-in of metaphoric connections between setting and character in fiction. For excerpts of the book go to EcologyOfStory.

Launch presenters

Launch at Type Books

Poet and song writer Honey Novick opened the launch with an inspirational song. Ted Nolan, Maureen Scott Harris and Nehal El-Hadi read poems and works that addressed lost rivers, particularly of Toronto. Merridy Cox discussed the science of binomials. Costi Gurgu read from his most recent work Reciparium, and Cheryl Xavier read her poem to the Banyan tree. Honey closed with another song, ending the formal part of the event.

Launch Presenters

Honey Novick is a poet, voice teacher, singer and songwriter. Honey is the winner of the Empowered Poet Award, CAPAC, Yamaha Classical Music Competition in Japan, among others. Honey wrote music for CBC’s Morningside and sang for Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau.

Ted Nolan—E. Martin Nolan—is a poet, essayist, editor and voice of the trees. He teaches in the Engineering Communication Program at the University of Toronto and is a PhD Candidate in Applied Linguistics at York University. His latest work is a chapbook written in collaboration with some trees entitled: “Trees Hate Us.”

Maureen Scott Harris is a poet, essayist, and rare books cataloguer. A UofT grad in Library Science, she received the Trillium Book Award for poetry for Drowning Lessons and was the first non-Australian to be awarded the 2009 WildCare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize for her essay, “Broken Mouth: Offerings for the Don River, Toronto.”

Nehal El-Hadi is a writer, researcher, editor and journalist, who explores the intersections of body, technology, and space. Her writing has appeared in academic journals, literary magazines, and forthcoming in anthologies and edited collections. She is currently a visiting scholar at York University and sessional faculty at the University of Toronto.

Merridy Cox is a naturalist, photographer, editor, indexer and poet. She is also managing editor of Lyrical Leaf Publishing. Merridy has a degree in biology and museum studies; her poetry focuses mostly on the natural world around her; her poems and photographs are published in several literary anthologies. She has edited several books, including this one!

Costi Gurgu is a graphic designer and illustrator as well as an award-winning science fiction and fantasy novelist and short story writer who is published in anthologies and magazines throughout the world. He is a former lawyer and was art director for lifestyle and fashion magazines in Europe before moving to Canada. His latest novel—RecipeArium—was called the new new weird by Robert J. Sawyer and was nominated for an Aurora Award.

Cheryl Antao-Xavier is an editor, interior book designer and publisher with IOWI. She has been publishing emergent writers since 2008 and continues to offer self-publishing solutions to writers and companies and organizations. She recently released her book: “Self-Publishing the Professional Way: 5 Steps from Raw Manuscript to Publishing.”

On Writing “A Diary in the Age of Water”

July 27, 2019March 29, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / 7 Comments

How does any fire begin? With a spark…

In Summer of 2016, I attended a talk given by Maude Barlow on water justice. The radical talk was based on her recent book “Boiling Point”, a comprehensive exploration of Canada’s water crisis—a crisis that most Canadians weren’t—and still aren’t—aware. Canada is steward to a fifth of the world’s fresh water, after all. It is a water-rich country. Of the dozen largest inland lakes in the world, Canada holds eight of them. So, why water crisis? Well, Maude explains. And you should read “Boiling Point.” It will open your eyes to the politics of water and how multinational corporations—like Nestlé—are already grabbing and funneling water away from Canadians and into the global profit machine.

Maude’s talk was in a church on Bloor Street in Toronto. I sat close to the front to best see her. But I soon noticed that many people had elected to sit in the gallery above. I found myself focusing on a young mother and her little girl. The girl had some paper and crayons and was busy with that as the enthusiastic mother listened to Maude deliver dire facts about corporate water high-jacking and government complicity.

I saw a story there.

What mother would take her pre-school child to a socio-political talk on water? I would later reflect that memory of the mother and her little girl through my characters Una and her little daughter Lynna, the diarist in my novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” (due for publication in 2020 with Inanna Publications).

Reflections on the Eramosa River, Ontario (photo by Nina Munteanu)

The spark for my novel began with a short story I was invited to write in 2015 about water and politics in Canada. I had long been thinking of potential ironies in Canada’s water-rich heritage. The premise I wanted to explore was the irony of people in a water-rich nation experiencing water scarcity: living under a government-imposed daily water quota of 5 litres as water bottling and utility companies took it all.

I named the story “The Way of Water.” It was about a young woman (Hilda) in near-future Toronto who has run out of water credits for the public iTap; by this time houses no longer have potable water and their water taps have been cemented shut; the only way to get water is through the public iTaps—at great cost. She is two metres from water—in a line of people waiting to use the tap—and dying of thirst.

“The Way of Water” captures a vision that explores the nuances of corporate and government corruption and deceit together with global resource warfare. In this near-future, Canada is mined of all its water by thirsty Chinese and US multinationals—leaving nothing for the Canadians. Rain has not fallen on Canadian soil in years due to advances in geoengineering and weather manipulation that prevent rain clouds from going anywhere north of the Canada-US border. If you’re wondering if this is possible, it’s already happening in China and surrounding countries.

The story first appeared in 2015 in Future Fiction, edited by Francesco Verso, and in 2016 as a bilingual (English and Italian) book and essay published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. The story was reprinted in magazines and anthologies several times since, including “Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change Anthology” (Exile Editions, Bruce Meyer, ed), in 2017, Future Fiction: New Dimensions in International Science Fiction (Francesco Verso & Bill Campbell, eds; Future Fiction / Rosarium Publishing, Rome and Greenbelt, MD) in 2018; and in Little Blue Marble Magazine (Katrina Archer, ed) in January, 2019. “The Way of Water” received generous praise from review sites and the press worldwide.

After the success of this short story, I realized that I needed to tell the larger story—how did the world—Canada—get to where Hilda was? Her mysterious mother, the limnologist Lynna who was taken away by the RCMP in 2063, clamored for more attention. I remembered that four-year old girl and her mother in the gallery at Maude Barlow’s talk on water politics. And I thought of my characters: young Lynna and her mother Una. How does a daughter of an activist mother behave and think? How best to express her voice?

I had earlier written a short story that was a mix of correspondence (emails) and third person narrative (“The Arc of Time” in Natural Selection), which I felt captured the voices of the characters well. I realized that a diary by Lynna would be an ideal way for her to express her unique worldview and cynicism—yet allow her vulnerable humanity to reveal itself through this unique relationship with her diary. The remaining characters and their narratives emerged easily from there: Una, her activist mother; Daniel, her conspiracy theorist colleague (and her conscience); Orvil, the water baron (and lover she betrayed); and Hilda, her “wayward” supposedly mind-challenged daughter—who appears in the short story that takes place later.

I had a lot of material; I had already been researching water issues and climate change in my activism as a science reporter. I had recently published “Water Is… The Meaning of Water”, essentially a biography of water, written from the perspective of mother, environmentalist and scientist. I had practiced as a limnologist for over twenty-five years and could mine my various personal experiences in the field, lab and office with genuine realism. I chose Robert Wetzel’s Limnology (the classic text book I used in my introductory limnology course) for quotes to each of Lynna’s entries; this added an opportunity to provide additional metaphor and irony through Lynna’s scientific voice. I placed the child Lynna (who was born in 2012) into actual events in Toronto, where I currently live. This pushed the story further into the area of documentary and blurred the lines between fiction and non-fiction to achieve a gritty and textured reality. Lynna also taught limnology at the University of Toronto, where I currently teach.

Just as “Water Is…” served as a watershed for all my relevant experiences as mother, environmentalist and scientist, “A Diary in the Age of Water” would galvanize many of my personal experiences, doubts, challenges and victories into compelling story. Although parts of the story wrote themselves, the entire book was not easy to write. There were times when I had to walk away from the book to gain some perspective—and optimism—before continuing. When I found myself drowning in Lynna’s voice, I invoked Hilda to guide me to shore. I found a balance that worked and compelled. Ultimately this opened to some of the best internal conflict and tension I have experienced in my writing.

Like water itself, A Diary in the Age of Water expresses through many vessels and in many perspectives, spanning hundreds of years—and four generations of women—with a context wider than human life. Through its characters, A Diary in the Age of Water explores the big question of humanity’s deadlock with planetary wellness and whether one is worth saving at the expense of the other. One of the characters asks Lynna the hard question: “If you had the chance to save the planet [stop the mass extinctions, deforestation and pollution ravaging the planet], but it was at the expense of humanity, would you do it?”

Water is, in fact, a character in the book—sometimes subtle and revealed in subtext, other times horrific and roaring with a clamorous voice. Water plays both metaphoric and literal roles in this allegorical tale of humanity’s final journey from home. The story explores identity and our concept of what is “normal”—as a nation and an individual—in a world that is rapidly and incomprehensibly changing—and in which each of us plays a vital role simply by doing or not doing.

“A Diary in the Age of Water” promises to leave you adjusting your frame of reference to see the world, yourself—and water—in a different way. “A Diary in the Age of Water” is scheduled for release by Inanna Publications in 2020.

Water drops (photo by Peter James)

Write and Publish, Part 8: The Hero’s Journey Plot Approach

June 29, 2019May 28, 2024 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

Plot your way to success. nine-time novelist and short story author Nina Munteanu describes successful plot approaches in storytelling, including The Hero’s Journey.

The Write and Publish Series

You want to write but don’t know how to get started? The Write and Publish Series focuses on:

How to find time to write around your busy schedule
How to make the most of your present resources
How to get inspired and motivate yourself to write
How to write, finish and submit your work

This 7-part series of lectures consists of: 1) Nina’s 5-Ps to Success; 2) Redefine Yourself as an Author; 3) Time and Space to Write; 4) Adopt a Winning Attitude; 5) Write What Excites You; 6) How to Beat Writer’s Block; 7) How to Keep Motivated; and 8) Plot Approaches including the Hero’s Journey.

The Writer’s Toolkit

This series of lectures and workshops is part of Nina Munteanu’s “The Writer’s Toolkit”, available as three workshops and DVDs for writers wishing to get published. This 6-hour set of three discs contains lectures, examples and exercises on how to get started and finish, writing craft, marketing and promotion. Available through the author (nina.sfgirl@gmail.com).

Nina gives a writing workshop in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia

“I was fascinated by Nina’s clear and extremely interesting lecture on the hero’s journey. Maybe all writers have a novel in their heads they want to write one day, and the techniques Nina shared with us will help me when I get to that point. In fact, because of her, I may get there a lot sooner than I had planned.”— Zoe M. Hicks, Saint Simon’s Island, GA

“Nina Munteanu’s command of the subject matter and her ability to explain in a way that the audience understood was excellent. As a hopeful author, I found her words inspiring.”—Amanda Lott, Scribblers Writers’ Retreat, GA

“Rarely have I encountered someone of Nina’s considerable talent and intellect tied to such an extraordinary work ethic…A gifted and inventive writer, Nina is also an excellent speaker who is able to communicate complicated ideas in simple terms and generate creative thought in others. Her accessible, positive approach and delightful sense of humor set people at ease almost immediately.”–Heather Dugan, Ohio writer and voice artist

“What you’ve done for me, Nina, is you’ve just opened up a whole new world. You’ve shown me how to put soul into my books.”–Hectorine Roy, Nova Scotia writer

nina-teaching-with-fiction-writer_edited-1

Nina teaching a workshop in Halifax, Nova Scotia

The Writer’s Toolkit workshops were based on my award-nominated fiction writing guide: The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! Chapter P describes various plot approaches and Chapter J focuses specifically on the Hero’s Journey Plot Approach.

“…Like the good Doctor’s Tardis, The Fiction Writer is larger than it appears… Get Get Published, Write Now! right now.”—David Merchant, Creative Writing Instructor

The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! (Starfire World Syndicate) is a digest of how-to’s in writing fiction and creative non-fiction by masters of the craft from over the last century. Packaged into 26 chapters of well-researched and easy to read instruction, novelist and teacher Nina Munteanu brings in entertaining real-life examples and practical exercises. The Fiction Writer will help you learn the basic, tried and true lessons of a professional writer: 1) how to craft a compelling story; 2) how to give editors and agents what they want and 3) how to maintain a winning attitude.

“The Fiction Writer is at the top of the required reading list for my Writer’s Workshop students. With its engagingly direct, conversational style and easily accessible format, it is a veritable cornucopia of hands-on help for aspiring writers of any age…the quintessential guidebook for the soon-to-be-published.”—Susan McLemore, Writing Instructor

“As important a tool as your laptop or your pen.”—Cathi Urbonas, Halifax writer

“Has become my writing bible.”—Carina Burns, author of The Syrian Jewelry Box

“I highly recommend this book for any writer wishing to get published.”—Marie Bilodeau, acclaimed author of Destiny’s Blood

“I’m thoroughly enjoying the book and even learning a thing or two!”—Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Wake

Nina teaching a workshop in Calgary, Alberta

The Fiction Writer is the first of a series of writing guides, which consist so far of: The Journal Writer: Finding Your Voice; and The Ecology of Story: World as Character.

Nina Munteanu next to metasequoia tree in The Beach (photo by Richard Lautens)

Ecology of Story: Place as Symbol

June 22, 2019April 22, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / 2 Comments

Birds over Deer Lake, BC (photo by Nina Munteanu)

“In their simplest form, symbols are anything outward that stands in for anything inward or abstract, such as a mood or an idea,” writes Donald Maass in Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. As representations, symbols often serve as markers in a story. They may be a talisman, a totem that inspires a shift or awakening. In story, a symbol—particularly as talisman—may come as a gift to a character in need of inspiration. In the Hero’s Journey trope, this is often provided by a mentor archetype.

An example in story is the light saber that Obi Wan Kenobi presents to Luke Skywalker to aid him on his journey as a Jedi master. Symbols often reoccur as motif to incite an emotional trigger or turning point for a character.

Symbolism in literature provides richness, colour and depth of meaning. Use of symbols helps deepen theme beyond conscious appreciation and into emotional and subconscious levels. Symbolism can be portrayed through figure of speech in which an object or situation has another meaning than its literal meaning. It can also express through the actions and observations of a character, language or event that creates deeper meaning through context.

Maass provides the example of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible to depict superb use of symbol in storytelling:

She is inhumanly alone. And then, all at once, she isn’t. A beautiful animal stands on the other side of the water. They look up from their lives, woman and animal, amazed to find themselves in the same place. He freezes, inspecting her with his black-tipped ears. His back is purplish-brown in the dim light, sloping downward from the gentle hump of his shoulders. The forest’s shadows fall into lines across his white-striped flanks. His stiff forelegs play out to the sides like stilts, for he’s been caught in the act of reaching down for water. Without taking his eyes from her, he twitches a little at the knee, then the shoulder, where a fly devils him. Finally he surrenders his surprise, looks away, and drinks. She can feel the touch of his long, curled tongue on the water’s skin, as if he were lapping from her hand. His head bobs gently, nodding small, velvet horns lit white from behind like new leaves.

It lasted just a moment, whatever that is. One held breath? An ant’s afternoon? It was brief, I can promise that much, for although it’s been many years now since my children ruled my life, a mother recalls the measure of the silences. I never had more than five minutes peace unbroken. I was that woman on the stream bank, of course. Orleanna Price, Southern Baptist by marriage, mother of children living and dead. That one time and no other the okapi came to the stream, and I was the only one to see it.

In this opening to her novel, Kingsolver explores a multi-layered symbol for her main character’s bewilderment at the mystery and beauty of the environment around her, tied into her own essential helplessness, says Maass. “Part of what makes [Kingsolver’s] symbols poetic is that all of them emerge from the natural world around her characters,” he adds. Nature’s symbols are powerful archetypes that reveal compelling story. These symbols abound in Kingsolver’s novel that explores the relationships of five women with their environment and the rigid ignorance of their patriarch, Nathan Price. The garden, Maass tells us, provides many examples of this. Price has planted his seeds in a flat, not accounting for the torrential afternoon downpours, which wash away his garden in a flash. Later, the poisonwood tree in their yard gives Price a horrid rash, suggesting that he is messing with a place he does not understand or respect. How each of the women interacts with her environment over time provides a deeply felt and metaphoric revelation of how she relates to others and to herself—all reflecting her personal journey in the story. As the quote indicates, Orleanna Price experienced a turning point through discovery. In this example the discovery occurred through a sudden encounter with a natural element.

In my near-future speculative novel A Diary in the Age of Water, cynical limnologist Lynna sees everything in her life through limnological metaphors, ironically predicting her own future:

An oligotrophic lake is basically a young lake. Still immature and undeveloped, an oligotrophic lake often displays a rugged untamed beauty. An oligotrophic lakes hungers for the stuff of life. Sediments from incoming rivers slowly feed it with dissolved nutrients and particulate organic matter. Detritus and associated microbes slowly seed the lake. Phytoplankton eventually flourish, food for zooplankton and fish. The shores then gradually slide and fill, as does the very bottom. Deltas form and macrophytes colonize the shallows. Birds bring in more creatures. And so on. Succession is the engine of destiny and trophic status its shibboleth.

As Nature tames the unruly lake over time, one thing replaces another. As a lake undergoes its natural succession from oligotrophic to highly productive eutrophic lake, its beauty mellows and it surrenders to the complexities of destiny. Minimalism yields to a baroque richness that, in turn, heralds extinction. The lake shrinks to a swamp then buries itself under a meadow.

We hold ourselves apart from our profligate nature. But we aren’t unique. We are more part of Nature than we admit. Using the thread of epigenetics and horizontal gene transfer, Nature stitches in us a moving tapestry of terrible irony. The irony lies in our conviction that we were made in the inimitable divine image of God. That we are special. Yet over a third of the human population is secular—atheists and agnostics—who do not believe in God. Or anything, for that matter.

Water flows endlessly through us, whether we’re devout Catholics or empty vessels with no purpose. Water makes no distinction. It flows through us even after we bury ourselves.

In the following excerpt from Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx uses a mix of senses—but mostly smell—in an evocative description of two shirts to symbolize a love loss:

The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack’s sleeves. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he’d thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack’s own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack, but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.

In my short story The Way of Water, water’s connection with love flows throughout the story:

They met in the lobby of a shabby downtown Toronto hotel. Hilda barely knew what she looked like but when Hanna entered the lobby through the front doors, Hilda knew every bit of her. Hanna swept in like a stray summer rainstorm, beaming with the self- conscious optimism of someone who recognized a twin sister. She reminded Hilda of her first boyfriend, clutching flowers in one hand and chocolate in the other. When their eyes met, Hilda knew. For an instant, she knew all of Hanna. For an instant, she’d glimpsed eternity. What she didn’t know then was that it was love.

Love flowed like water, gliding into backwaters and lagoons with ease, filling every swale and mire. Connecting, looking for home. Easing from crystal to liquid to vapour then back, water recognized its hydrophilic likeness, and its complement. Before the inevitable decoherence, remnants of the entanglement lingered like a quantum vapour, infusing everything. Hilda always knew where and when to find Hanna on Oracle, as though water inhabited the machine and told her. Water even whispered to her when her wandering friend was about to return from the dark abyss and land unannounced on her doorstep.

In a world of severe water scarcity through climate catastrophe and geopolitical oppression, the bond of these two girls—to each other through water and with water—is like the shifting covalent bond of a complex molecule, a bond that fuses a relationship of paradox linked to the paradoxical properties of water. Just as two water drops join, the two women find each other in the wasteland of intrigue. Hilda’s relationship with Hanna—as with water—is both complex and shifting according to the bonds they make and break.

This article is an excerpt from “The Ecology of Story: World as Character” released in June 2019 by Pixl Press.

From Habitats and Trophic Levels to Metaphor and Archetype…

Learn the fundamentals of ecology, insights of world-building, and how to master layering-in of metaphoric connections between setting and character. “Ecology of Story: World as Character” is the 3^rd guidebook in Nina Munteanu’s acclaimed “how to write” series for novice to professional writers.

Write and Publish, Part 7: How to Keep Motivated

June 14, 2019April 5, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

Author and university writing instructor Nina Munteanu shares how to stay motivated in your writing by participating—connecting—with your community

The Write and Publish Series

You want to write but don’t know how to get started? The Write and Publish Series focuses on:

How to find time to write around your busy schedule
How to make the most of your present resources
How to get inspired and motivate yourself to write
How to write, finish and submit your work

The Writer’s Toolkit

“I was fascinated by Nina’s clear and extremely interesting lecture on the hero’s journey. Maybe all writers have a novel in their heads they want to write one day, and the techniques Nina shared with us will help me when I get to that point. In fact, because of her, I may get there a lot sooner than I had planned.”— Zoe M. Hicks, Saint Simon’s Island, GA

“Nina Munteanu’s command of the subject matter and her ability to explain in a way that the audience understood was excellent. As a hopeful author, I found her words inspiring.”—Amanda Lott, Scribblers Writers’ Retreat, GA

“Rarely have I encountered someone of Nina’s considerable talent and intellect tied to such an extraordinary work ethic…A gifted and inventive writer, Nina is also an excellent speaker who is able to communicate complicated ideas in simple terms and generate creative thought in others. Her accessible, positive approach and delightful sense of humor set people at ease almost immediately.”–Heather Dugan, Ohio writer and voice artist

“What you’ve done for me, Nina, is you’ve just opened up a whole new world. You’ve shown me how to put soul into my books.”–Hectorine Roy, Nova Scotia writer

The Writer’s Toolkit workshops were based on my award-nominated fiction writing guide: The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now!

“…Like the good Doctor’s Tardis, The Fiction Writer is larger than it appears… Get Get Published, Write Now! right now.”—David Merchant, Creative Writing Instructor

“The Fiction Writer is at the top of the required reading list for my Writer’s Workshop students. With its engagingly direct, conversational style and easily accessible format, it is a veritable cornucopia of hands-on help for aspiring writers of any age…the quintessential guidebook for the soon-to-be-published.”—Susan McLemore, Writing Instructor

“As important a tool as your laptop or your pen.”—Cathi Urbonas, Halifax writer

“Has become my writing bible.”—Carina Burns, author of The Syrian Jewelry Box

“I highly recommend this book for any writer wishing to get published.”—Marie Bilodeau, acclaimed author of Destiny’s Blood

“I’m thoroughly enjoying the book and even learning a thing or two!”—Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Wake

Nina Munteanu in front of metasequoia tree in The Beach, Ontario (photo by Richard Lautens)

The Fiction Writer is the first of a series of writing guides, which consist so far of: The Journal Writer: Finding Your Voice; and The Ecology of Story: World as Character.

Ecology of Story: Place as Metaphor

June 8, 2019April 22, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / 2 Comments

Birds flying over Deer Lake, BC (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Ray Bradbury once told me that everything in story is metaphor. That is no more apparent than in setting and place, in which a story is embedded and through which characters move and interact. Metaphor is the subtext that provides subtleties in story, subtleties that evoke mood, anticipation, and memorable scenes. Richard Russo says, “to know the rhythms, the textures, the feel of a place is to know more deeply and truly its people.” When you choose your setting, remember that its primary metaphoric role is to help depict theme. This is because place is destiny.

Metaphor provides similarity to two dissimilar things through meaning. In the metaphor “Love danced in her heart” or the simile “his love was like a slow dance”, love is equated with the joy of dance. By providing figurative rather than literal description to something, metaphor invites participation through interpretation.

When I write “John’s office was a prison,” I am efficiently and sparingly suggesting in five words—in what would normally take a paragraph—how John felt about his workplace. The reader would conjure imagery suggested by their knowledge of a prison cell: that John felt trapped, cramped, solitary, stifled, oppressed—even frightened and threatened. Metaphor relies on sub-text knowledge.

This is why metaphor is so powerful and universally relevant: the reader fully participates—the reader brings in relevance through their personal knowledge and experience and this creates the memorable aspect to the scene.

Russo tells us that place is crucial to human destiny and the formation of human personality. “The more specific and individual things become, the more universal they feel,” says Russo. This is not an oxymoron, but an example of the principle of a truism that primarily comes to us in the form of paradox (like all good truisms). Detail provides the color and texture of your story and helps it resonate with a sense of place. This does not necessarily translate into a lot of exposition; but it does require creative choice of words. So, instead of “He took a drag from his cigarette as he drove his sports car along a winding road in the country”; (twenty words) try something like “Vinnie sucked on a Camel as his red Corvette careered the hair-pinned curves of Hell’s Gate.” (seventeen words).

Place Personified

Old yellow birch tree in Little Rouge woodland (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Personification is powerful metaphor that gives nonhuman things human qualities. It personalizes, energizes and emotionalizes. Place described through personification can illuminate both characters and their environment in compelling ways. By giving an object, place, or animal the qualities of a person, personification provides subtle aspects of mood and links the reader to a cocktail subtext of human feelings and struggles. Personification can connect the reader to “lifeless” objects such as water, soil, rock, the sun, moon, planet, concrete, paper, etc., to map the larger meaning of the story. Putting a character’s feelings into the objects around her—as POV character—creates a subtle but deep connection with the reader: “The darkness embraced her”; “The open-throated roar of the river pulled her near.”

D.H. Lawrence’s creates strong personification of Thomas Hardy’s Egdon Heath in Return of the Native:

…Egdon, whose dark soil was strong and crude and organic as the body of a beast.

In The Handmaid’s Tale—a dystopian tale of oppression and intrigue—Margaret Atwood writes:

There is something subversive about this garden of Serena’s, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced will clamour to be heard, though silently … Light pours down upon it from the sun, true, but also heat rises, from the flowers themselves, you can feel it: like holding your hand an inch above an arm, a shoulder. It breathes, in the warmth, breathing itself in.

Martin Nolan’s Still Point creates powerful imagery of a storm aftermath through an abandoned old shed and contrasts its loneliness to the half-wild woods nearby:

A deserted shed by the road, buckling under its roof, kneels into the tall grass. The woods beyond it hide the river … I turn back to the half-wild woods. These trees speak to each other, are wild enough for that. They live together, holding the riverbanks in place.

Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem—set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution—follows Wenji Ye, disillusioned by the massive environmental deforestation in the labour camps she is sent to work:

Her company wielded hundreds of chain saws like a swarm of steel locusts, and after they passed, only stumps were left. The fallen Dahurian larch, now bereft of branches, was ready to be taken away by tractor. Ye gently caressed the freshly exposed cross section of the felled trunk. She did this often, as though such surfaces were giant wounds, as though she could feel the tree’s pain …

Clearcut in Gordon Valley, British Columbia (photo by T.J. Watts)

In Memory of Water, Emmi Itäranta personifies this life-giving substance whose very nature is tightly interwoven with her main character. As companion and harbinger, water is portrayed simultaneously as friend and enemy. As giver and taker of life.

Water is the most versatile of all elements … Water walks with the moon and embraces the earth, and it isn’t afraid to die in fire or live in air. When you step into it, it will be as close as your own skin, but if you hit it too hard, it will shatter you … Death is water’s close companion. The two cannot be separated, and neither can be separated from us, for they are what we are ultimately made of: the versatility of water, and the closeness of death. Water has no beginning and no end, but death has both. Death is both. Sometimes death travels hidden in water, and sometimes water will chase death away, but they go together always, in the world and in us.

Personification of natural things provides the reader with an image they can clearly and emotionally relate to and care about. When a point-of-view character does the describing, we get a powerful and intimate indication of their thoughts and feelings—mainly in how they connect to place (often as symbol). When this happens, place and perception entwine in powerful force.

This article is an excerpt from “The Ecology of Story: World as Character” due in June 2019 by Pixl Press.

From Habitats and Trophic Levels to Metaphor and Archetype…

Learn the fundamentals of ecology, insights of world-building, and how to master layering-in of metaphoric connections between setting and character. “Ecology of Story: World as Character” is the 3^rd guidebook in Nina Munteanu’s acclaimed “how to write” series for novice to professional writers.