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Steve Sawicki and B. A. Chepaitis Go To Chat How To Chat Chepaitis' Home Page Sawicki's Home Page

Steve Sawicki Writer, screenwriter, reviewer, Steve Sawicki reviews for Absolute Magnitude, Pirate Writings, Scavengers Newsletter, Dreams of Decadence. He has had short stories published in Transversions, Reality's Escapes, and Absolute Magnitude B.A. Chepaitis B.A. Chepaitis is author of the cyberpunk suspense series that includes The Fear Principle, The Fear Of God, and Learning Fear. She is director of the storytelling group the Snickering Witches, and screenwriter with collaborator Steven Sawicki. Her first mainstream novel, Feeding Christine, is out through Bantam this July.

Cybling How did you get into writing reviews.
Sawicki I started reviewing when I was doing some support writing with a screenwriter. I wanted to do some of my own writing and was getting Scavenger's Newsletter
Sawicki I read that they were looking for a reviewer so I did a sample review and got the job
Sawicki That was thirteen years ago
Cybling Cool. Scavenger's Newsletter is a pretty good way for authors to learn about...
Cybling markets.
Cybling But not a lot of people know about it. Do they have a URL?
Sawicki Yes, it's one of the better market listings
Sawicki There is a URL but it's a weird one.
Sawicki It's
* Cybling likes weird urls
Sawicki http://www.jlgiftshop.com/scav/index.html
Cybling LOL. Yes it is weird.
Cybling You know I got scavengers several years ago when it was a memo newsletter.
Cybling I'm assuming they publish on the web now.
Sawicki Yeah, Janet Fox who is the editor is working on getting a web site up and running. Scav is a part time thing for her so she works two real jobs
Cybling Hi Shadow and hi Serra.
Cybling Hi RedR.
Sawicki Yes, it's changed quite a bit
Cybling We're talking right now with Steve Sawicki. Reviewer, screenwriter.
Sawicki 200+ issues so far
RedR hi
Cybling Excellent.
Cybling Steve, are the reviews you do for Scavenger's Newsletter part of their online content?
Sawicki There really isn't much of an online content right now. Janet focuses on getting out monthly print issues
Sawicki I don't know if, in the future, the reviews will be online as well
Cybling Okay. thanks Steve. BTW, folks, we're not moderating yet, so if you have questions, don't hesitate to ask.
Cybling Steve...you review for other pulp magazines as well.
Cybling Absolute Magnitude, Pirate
Cybling Writings
Cybling are a couple. Did you get those jobs in a similar way?
Cybling By writing a sample review and submitting it?
Sawicki Yes I do. I review for Fantastic which used to be Pirate Writings, Dreams of Decadence and my column from Absolute Magnitude is not in Science Fiction Chronicle.
Sawicki And I got those columns basically by having a body of work behind me and then negotiating with the editors
Sawicki I've had reviews appear in over 30 different magazines altogether
Sawicki as well as online
Cybling Online...magic words. Are any of your reviews online where we can get to them today, Steve?
Sawicki Yes, you can get to my video reviews by going to SFrevu.com
Sawicki you can get to some archived reviews of mine by going to damnaliens.com
Sawicki and there are one or two other places which I don't have the url's for.
Cybling Cool! I'll have to add the link to sfrevu to your link log page.... and if you can email the others I'll add them as well.
Sawicki Okay, I'll sort through them and send them along sometime next week
Cybling Steve, when you started writing reviews and columns was it part of an overall plan to get your fiction published?
Cybling Hi Barbara!
Starlit Does your reviewer side get in the way when you want to write a story?
Sawicki Yes, it was part of my plan to keep my name out there and to get editors to know me as a writer.
Sawicki And the reviewer side doesn't get in the way of my writing at all, but it does get in the way of my reading and viewing
Starlit I can relate to that part
Starlit sometimes I feel I ought to have a blue pencil in hand even when reading for pleasure
Sawicki I think it's worked pretty well since I've got a novella coming out in Absolute Magnitude which I'm sure having the history with the editor helped
Cybling Folks...Chepaitis is B.A.Chepaitis, Steve Sawicki's collaboration partner.
Cybling Re's Barbara.
Sawicki Actually, since Barbara's published more books we consider me to be her partner
Cybling LOL. Okay.
Sawicki We actually flip flop names on projects depending on who originated it
Cybling How many projects have you worked on so far?
Sawicki and for the novel we wrote together we're trying to come up with a pseudonym
Sawicki We've written one novel, one teleplay and four screenplays with a fifth almost finished.
Starlit anything actually produced so far?
Cybling Produced as in produced out of hollywood, Starlit?
Starlit yes
Sawicki No, nothing produced although we've placed pretty high in some contests and have gotten lots of positive feedback from producers
Cybling Okay. So you're yet to break into that particular market.
Sawicki There are so few actual movies made each year that it's pretty tough to get scripts accepted and bought
Sawicki Watch out the Chepaiti are multiplying
Starlit maybe you need to break out the velcro
Cybling LOL.
Cybling Will the real Barabara Chepaitis please raise her hand.
Sawicki It may be that she's having trouble with the chat client.
Starlit There seem to be movies opening every week. Somebody's writing them
Sawicki Yes, they're being written by lots of people but when you compare movies to books there are far more books being published than movies produced
Starlit No question
Sawicki It's a really strange business the script writing
Cybling True, in many genres, and only about 4 to 5 SF movies seem to come out a year.
Cybling What would you say is the strangest part of script-writing Steve?
Sawicki Yes, sometimes fewer
Chepaitis HI there
Sawicki dealing with producers and agents is the strangest
Starlit hello, 3
Chepaitis I have multiplied like the Elvi
Sawicki I've had producers actually tell me they could not use a script because it was too close to what they wanted.
Starlit ??? (boggle)
RedR that is strange
Cybling LOLOL...too close?
Chepaitis producers are strange.
Sawicki I've had others say the writing was great, the story was wonderful, the characters wonderful but they weren't interested.
Starlit I hear The Suits are a strange breed, anyway
Chepaitis editors can be odd, too, though
Chepaitis I had one who rejected a work...
Chepaitis and said "I like it very much...
Chepaitis I don't know why I"m rejecting it.
Chepaitis It's a mystery
Cybling Hmmmm.
Sawicki yes, writing is only half the battle
Chepaitis I think it's the easy part
Cybling Does a good agent help? Or are there some things young authors can learn to better sell their work?
Sawicki I agree, writing is the easy part
Sawicki I think, if you're a new author that you don't need an agent
Chepaitis I think you have to be very persistent
Sawicki Agents are as hard to get as editors or producers and some of them are outright thieves
Chepaitis And it depends on which market you're selling to.
Sawicki Yes, you don't need an agent for short stories or for non-fiction work
Chepaitis For short stories, on your own works
Chepaitis For novels and screenplays, an agent really helps
Chepaitis But Steve's right, you have to be careful
Cybling So persistence is the main thing a young writer should learn. Don't give up.
Sawicki Although you can sell a novel by yourself without an agent
Chepaitis Yes.
Sawicki A writer should never give up
Cybling Steve, your strength seems to be in the short form and Barbara, you lean more towards Novels. First Steve....
Cybling what draws you to writing shorter fiction?
Sawicki I'm not sure I'm so much drawn as that a lot of what I wrote at first just seemed to end after a couple of thousand words
Sawicki Having said that, though, I think short story writing is a lot tougher than novels or even screenplays
Sawicki You have to get so much right in so little space
Sawicki But, basically, I seem to think that you write to the size of the idea
Sawicki Barbara keeps telling me though that most of my short stories should be novels
Cybling Okay, thanks Steve. Barbara, why is the Novel length the best one for you?
Chepaitis I found that my short stories
Chepaitis wanted to be novels
Chepaitis Or, more accurately, I couldn't sell them as stories
Chepaitis so it seemed logical to me to make them into novels
Chepaitis For some reason I thought that would be easier to sell
Chepaitis I do tend to look at ideas as longer works, though.
Chepaitis I like the room to spread out
Chepaitis take all the ideas to their limits without restriction
Chepaitis I never could stay inside the lines when I COLORED
Cybling Okay. Here's a *very* important question then. How do you know when a short story is telling you it needs to be a novel. Are there clues...other than unsalability?
Chepaitis For me, the biggest clue is if you have a feeling of having left something unsaid
* Cybling hopes unsalability is actually a word
Sawicki I'm clueless.
Chepaitis Or even the feeling of being able to go further.
Starlit When you do multiple viewpoints, do you tend to follow one character to the end...
Starlit and then backtrack for others, or break off and start again with another?
Sawicki I like to do multiple viewpoints in a linear fashion
Sawicki I find it very hard to follow one character and then move to a different character where action is taking place either before or during the piece you've just finished
Sawicki Too confusing.
Cybling Folks, Barbara writes very dark cyberpunk. Barbara, you call your work dark future masteries. Any particular reason (other than your hair not being spiked) that you would shy away from the cyberpunk label?
Cybling .
Starlit if an earthquake occurred in one of Barabara's stories, would that make it punk rock?
Sawicki Barbara is using her son's laptop so she may be having some technical problems
Cybling Steve, then....
Sawicki If I can answer a bit for her, she got the cyberpunk label from the publisher and from reviewers. She tends to think of her writing as more mystery sf than anything else
Starlit whoops. there she went
Sawicki She doesn't quite see how her work fits the label since it's really so different from what you would think of as straight cyberpunk
Cybling do you feel that your strengths in the shorter forms and Barbara's in the longer work together in a special way?
Sawicki Yes, I think that's part of what makes our collaboration much tighter. I'm always telling her we can do without words or scenes and she's always showing me that we need to do things longer or with more detail
Sawicki so it's very complimentary
Starlit hi Dave
DaveKuz Hi!
Cybling Okay this is good. Most collaborators seem to be two novelists or two short-story writers.
Sawicki Barbara also has a cat, El Jihad, which may have jumped on the laptop and disconnected her as well
Cybling Hi Dave. We're talking with Steve Sawicki right now. Feel free to ask questions.
Starlit ca's jealous
Sawicki Yeah, we're actually a novelist, Barbara, and a short story-screenwriter, me
Starlit erk! cat
Sawicki I'm very visual and Barbara is very internal
Cybling You know, screenplays *are* very visual. Probably one of the main...
Cybling reasons so many books don't make it well to the screen is the amount of "internal" that must go on in a book that can't go on onscreen.
Sawicki Screenplays are totally visual which is something that many writers forget when they attempt one. You have to show rather than think
Sawicki And yes, that is a difficulty with books, although
Sawicki the main problem with translation is length
Sawicki the perfect length for a movie is short story or novella
Sawicki say about 10,000 to 20,000 words
Sawicki most novels begin at 65,000 words
Cybling Like the recently redone Dune. A mini-series isn't enough.
Sawicki This means you have to do lots of cutting to make a novel a movie
JELEINEN What's your creative process? Do you do a lot of research and planning before hand or do you just make it up as you go along?
Sawicki Yes, Dune is an excellent example although they still cut out tons of stuff
Sawicki Barbara and I have different processes. I tend to get an idea and chew on it for a long time and then start writing,
Sawicki doing research as needed and Barbara likes to have most of her major research done first
Cybling Thanks!
Cybling Steve, you were talking a little earlier...
Cybling about a project you and Barbara just completed... a novel.
Cybling Can you tell us a little more about that?
Sawicki yes, actually we completed it last year
Sawicki It's a near future love story
Sawicki It's based on a political change
Sawicki the next president appoints very conservative supreme court judges
Sawicki who agree that what the country needs is not new laws but better enforcement of current laws
DaveKuz .
Sawicki So, they establish a pilot project in VA
Sawicki and the novel is set in that area and revolves around something called the Redemption movement
Sawicki which is tasked with doing the enforcement and cleaning things up. At first everything is great, crime drops and things look good,
Sawicki but then they start enforcing littering and some of the laws around marriage and such
DaveKuz and encounter the Uniwriter?
Sawicki The end result is that the wife of the head of the redemption center gets caught in a adultery situation
Sawicki and she gets put into a cell, with her lover, after they are both injected with a chemical which, if they touch, will kill them
Cybling Why did you chose to work on a novel together instead of a screenplay?
Sawicki We actually wrote a screenplay first and then a teleplay and then another screenplay and then turned that teleplay into a novel
Cybling Cause this sounds like it might make a good outer limits.
Sawicki We wrote it for a sci fi channel show which was on two years ago
Sawicki and we had the outer limits in mind too.
Cybling So, this was a case of a screenplay "saying" it needed to be a novel?
Sawicki Yes
Sawicki actually, barbara wanted to answer
Sawicki the question--could two people love each other enough so that death would be a viable solution to a problem
Cybling Cool.
Cybling Steve, I'm assuming that this novel has been placed with your agent?
Sawicki I told her, initially, that I thought the idea might be a short story, tops
DaveKuz By the way, if you need info on Va, I live in Petersburg, Va and work currently at the Va State Health Dept.
Sawicki The novel is with our agent who is currently shopping it around
Starlit the Redemption Center?
Sawicki it's at Tor at the moment and heading for other places as well.
Sawicki We were in Lee, MA and we were trying to think of a name for the movement and we were also trying to find a place for lunch
Starlit if they buy it, would that make it a torrid novel?
Cybling Cool.
* Cybling thwaps starlit.
Sawicki and we entered this dead end road to turn around and there was a huge building with the words Redemption center on it and that's how we got the name
Starlit shields up
Sawicki I've got Barbara on the phone
Cybling Excellent.
Sawicki She has had technical problems
Cybling Steve, I'll get in contact with Barbara a little later... tomorrow...and we'll figure out something...
Sawicki Okay
Starlit I suppose you are a little young to remember the trading stamps and their redemption centers
Cybling so she can come out and talk about the Fear Novels at a later date. Cool?
Sawicki green stamps
Starlit them's one
Sawicki my mom traded them
Starlit ah
Sawicki I'll pass it on to Barbara
Cybling Steve, what are the advantages of a pseudonym? Why would the two of you even consider that?
DaveKuz Actually, S&H Green Stamps is still around and online, too, now.
Starlit I've not seen any for a very long time
Sawicki Ask our agent, she's the one who thinks the name thing would be a good idea
Sawicki part of it is creating a new identity as well
Cybling A way of seeing the two of you as a single writing entity separate from your individual works?
Sawicki exactly
Cybling Steve, you mentioned earlier that you have a novella coming out.
Cybling What magazine is it in again?
Sawicki the novella will be in Absolute Magnitude this month, end of Dec
Sawicki Barbara says to tell you that she loves it
Sawicki it's called Invisible Friends and is illustrated by George Barr
Starlit do you do anything in particular to start writing, or is sitting in front of the computer enough?
Sawicki Both Barbara and I area idea factories
Sawicki so we literally just have to sit down and write
Cybling So "Invisible Friends" will be in the January issue of Absolute Magnitude?
Cybling (for those of us without a subscription).
Sawicki I think it will be in the December issue or January issue, Absolute Magnitude is a quarterly magazine
Starlit where do we find the 'zine?
Cybling You know, our Barnes and Noble carries a lot of SF zines...but I do believe Absolute Magnitude has a web presence.
JELEINEN That's what I was going to ask.
Sawicki You can find it in most Barnes and Nobles and most big chains actually or you can subscribe by going to dnapublications.com
Starlit tmta
Sawicki you can get to a lot of the magazines by going through the SFsite at sfsite.com
Cybling Steve, do you have any other short stories or novellas in the works now?
Sawicki I have a short story out right now in Transversions which is a Canadian anthology
Sawicki I have another short story coming out in Realities Escapes in Jan or Feb
Sawicki I have nothing else sold at the moment although there are four or five making the rounds and two or three more just about finished. I'm also almost done with a follow up novella to the first
Cybling Oh cool. Steve, are your stories future mysteries as well or would you class your work in a different sub-genre?
Sawicki Barbara's works are future mysteries, most of mine are fantasies actually
Sawicki and I border on magic realism
Sawicki the novella is a comedy, sort of a science fiction satire
Cybling Hmmm...now that's interesting.
Cybling Do you find there is a conflict between your view of fantastic fiction and Barbara's?
Sawicki We have occasional arguments about things, but basically we agree
Sawicki Barbara has more mainstream experience
Sawicki and has a mainstream novel out right now
Sawicki and another coming out next year
DaveKuz .
Cybling I would never have believed that Fantasy and SF could mix, until CHICON of course. I should think there would be too many differences in format.
Sawicki Actually they're the same thing from different perspectives
Sawicki both have rules and it's really just about the writing
Sawicki The story is what is most important, the rest is just trappings. If you think about it you can write almost any story in any genre
Cybling Steve, can I ask you a little about the mechanics of your collaboration?
Sawicki sure
Cybling In the old days, writers either lived near each other or mailed. Do you and Barbara meet to work on the stories?
Cybling Or do you use the internet extensively?
Sawicki Barbara and I usually use email to start a discussion about a topic or plot
Sawicki then we start to outline things
Sawicki and we assign which of us is going to write which part
Sawicki We usually only outline two or three chapters or scenes into the future then write then share then meet to outline again
Sawicki we do this until we have a finished product then we do a read through out loud and tweak
Cybling Ah...so you actually divvy it up. Do either of you critique the other's work or have last say?
Sawicki Generally the person who's idea it is has last say
Cybling Cool...so there's a lot of give and take.
Sawicki yes, much give and take. We write pretty fluidly without much conflict
Cybling Well that's a plus.
Sawicki Yes, I've heard of collaborations that were stressful and full of argument
Sawicki and I wonder why you would bother
Cybling Yes, and I've heard of collaborations where One author has the connections and the...
Cybling other does the work, and the first author gets top billing.
Sawicki Yes, there is that as well
JELEINEN How long does it take to get something written? Do you ever have to stop and come back to something later?
DaveKuz Do you generally give the last say on certain technical writing aspects to the one who's better?
Sawicki We write fairly quickly
Sawicki we've done screenplays in two months
Sawicki we did the novel in 6 months
Cybling That's fast.
Sawicki we could be quicker but Barbara writes other books at the same time
Sawicki and I do roughly 6,000 words of columns per month and work full time as well
Cybling Dave asked something up there...
Sawicki Dave, we can't agree on who's better
Cybling Do you generally give the last say on certain technical writing aspects to the one who's better?
Sawicki Barbara says I am and I think Barbara is
Cybling Okay...narrowing it down a little...
Cybling if an important part of the story is say...more science fictiony than fantasy or mainstream...
Cybling Well...nix that. I'm prying more than I should, I think.
Sawicki you can ask
Sawicki we each have our areas of expertise and follow that
Cybling Okay...would B.A. have final say on something you both agreed was more SF than fantasy?
Sawicki Barbara is not a great technologist which is why she's on the phone and not here
Sawicki No
Cybling 8^D, well we'll work on that.
Sawicki It would depend on who had more knowledge about the thing we were writing about
Cybling Okay. Thanks.
Sawicki and basically it always comes down to the person who had the idea has the last say
Cybling Folks, we've kept Steve online here for over an hour answering our questions.
Sawicki It's been a pleasure, although less so for Barbara
Cybling Do we have more questions for him here, or can we move on to the coffee-klatch portion?
Cybling Well, Steve, thanks for coming out today. I'm sorry that Barbara had some problems we didn't get a chance to address beforehand.
Cybling I'll be sending you both a text version of the log so you can look it over.
Sawicki You are welcome and Barbara says she'd love to come back and talk about Jaguar and the Fear series
Cybling And I'll email with Barbara to get her set up to do chat with an IRC client instead of the java applet.
Sawicki Okay, thanks for having us.
Cybling Thank you for poking me and reminding me that I can't just work for a living... I need my fantastic arts.
Sawicki You are right about that, reading is very important for the mind and soul
Sawicki Plus, books will keep you warm in winter, so long as you tear the pages out first.
Cybling Too true. I pretty much burned through at CHICON and am just now recovering. Are the two of you going to the next world SF convention?
Sawicki before you throw them onto the fire
Cybling tsk tsk tsk.
Sawicki Yes, we'll be there
Cybling Excellent. Maybe I'll actually be able to scratch together air fare.
Sawicki We'll also be at Boskone, Lunacon, Readercon, and Worldcon plus Albacon
Cybling But I won't be bring the computer. You two do a lot of conventions?
Sawicki We try to do most of the local ones for us. It pays to keep your name out there and it's a great way to stay in contact with other writers and editors
JELEINEN I just read your review of Mononoke Hime on sfrevu.com and it's great to see someone else who thought the Japanese version was better than the english.
Sawicki Thanks, I think it's important to view a work in the original language and format
Cybling You speak japanese, Steve?
Sawicki Well, I have to go now. Barbara says she'll see you some time in the future.
Sawicki I don't speak japanese, I saw the subtitled version
Sawicki which was more accurate
JELEINEN Nice meeting you.
Cybling Thanks Steve. Talk to you again soon.
Sawicki thank you all for coming.
Sawicki see you.

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