Because of these several impediments, as well as other technical difficulties, you will find typos and occasional replication of text. In our humble opinion, typos show that the logs are of *live* chats, not canned interviews, and minimal editing of these logs has taken place.

Steve Sawicki's Home Page

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] Steve, welcome to the Chicon chatroom!
[Samantha] Hey Steve
[Ryan] Hi there.
[Stormwindz] Yo
[Sawicki] thanks, it's great to be here
[Cybling] Steve, your Chicon bio says you're a writer, screenwriter, and reviewer...
[Cybling] which hat do you prefer wearing?
[Sawicki] I enjoy them all but if I had to pick one it would be screenwriting
[Cybling] That must be exciting. Don't you have to live in LA to be a screenwriter?
[Sawicki] not anymore. With computers and electronic communication better travel you can live anywhere
[Cybling] That's good. I've heard that writing a screenplay is nothing like writing a novel, true?
[Sawicki] no, it's very different. Screenplays are very visual with no internal dialogue
[Sawicki] novels spend much more time ina characters head while screenplays
[Sawicki] are showing what characters do
[Cybling] So would you suggest that young writers take at least one screen-writing course before deciding to become novelists?
[Cybling] Or is this something you can learn on your own?
[Sawicki] i Think that you should be free to try both but since they are so different at some point you need to pick one
[Sawicki] over the other
[Cybling] I see.
[Cybling] Steve, you write reviews for Absolute Magnitude, Pirate Writings, Scavengers Newsletter, Dreams of Decadence...
[Sawicki] And now Science Fiction Chronicle as well
[Cybling] Do you set aside different times and different mind sets between writing fiction and writing reviews?
[Sawicki] Well, I write to deadline so I tend to work on what's due But, each column has a different voice. the scav column is much more humerous while the SFC column is prety mcuh straightforward
[Cybling] Okay...humerous? How so?
[Sawicki] I hav a novella coming out in the fall issue of absolute magnitude and it basically started as part of my scavengers columns. it involves aliens, monkeys, fish and a dog that drives
[Cybling] LOL!
[Sawicki] It's thatgroup moreor less commenting on human life
[Cybling] lol...Steve. Do you review only fiction or do you review movies as well, I see that you were on the Bad Sci-Fi movies panel?
[Sawicki] I review everything pretty much. If it has to do with sf I review it, books, magazines, movies. Ihave friends who won't eat with me because they hate the fact that I review the meal
[Barbara] Hi there
[Cybling] Folks, B.A. Chepaitis has just joined us.
[Sawicki] Barbara and I write screenplays together and we'vealso done a novel
[Cybling] Excellent...what's the title of the novel?
[Sawicki] the novel is called Finite Heart
[Cybling] Cool, Barbara is also the author of The Fear Principle, The Fear Of God, and Learning Fear.
[Cybling] Barbara...would you say you're a cyberpunk author?
[Barbara] I'm not sure if I have the right hair for that
[Cybling] LOL
[Cybling] (it's long and brown folks not spiked at all)
[Barbara] But that's how the books are sold. I think of them as future mysteries
[Cybling] (no bald patch in back ready for the computer connection)
[Sawicki] They are very good
[Barbara] NOt yet
[Cybling] Interesting...so a dark mysterious future.
[Cybling] The two of you collaborate on Screenplays. anything...
[Cybling] we may have seen yet, or something coming out soon?
[Barbara] Not quite. We've got an agent
[Sawicki] We';ve done a teleplay, a novel and fourscreenplays so far
[Barbara] Busy busy
[Sawicki] We're working on one right now and have ideas for two or three more and a couple more novels
[Cybling] This sounds like a lot of work to do on speculation.
[Barbara] At least
[Cybling] Is that part of writing? Creating a lot with no guarantees of sales?
[Sawicki] It's the way writing works
[Sawicki] you write a lot and at some point you start selling
[Barbara] And then you have a lot to sell all ready
[Cybling] Steve and Barbara...a lot of the folks on this network do RPGs....
* Ryan nods
[Cybling] I've always thought that this might be an interesting step into screenwriting...
[Cybling] is it similar?
[Sawicki] I've done D&D and someothers and yes they would make a good movie
[Sawicki] it's good for character development and plotting
[Cybling] So, when someone is writing an outline for a RPG...they're writing a very simple screen play?
[Barbara] To me it seems like that would hel[p with plot, and something like poetry would help more with images
[Sawicki] Mopre or less, yes. The main difference is that in a RPG you leave places for characters ot make choices where screenplays are pretty set and linear'
[Cybling] Finite Heart, the novel the two of you collaborated on...is it on the shelves now? Due out soon?
[Barbara] Finite heart is with our agent, who has approved
[Barbara] and is deciding what to do next
[Barbara] It's not easy to get her approval, which
[Barbara] makes me feel confidenct
[Cybling] This is good.
[Cybling] So it means if she places it with a publisher...
[Cybling] it will go into the pipeline and we should see it in...
[Cybling] 1 to 2 years?
[Barbara] yup
[Cybling] Must we wait, or have you put any of it on the internet?
[Sawicki] Hopefully less
[Sawicki] We don't haveanything on the net yet but we should probably talk about it
[Cybling] We'd love to see a first chapter...or the first few pages.
[Barbara] Sure.
[Cybling]
[==is good at begging.
[Barbara] Ending's better
[Sawicki] The firstcouple of chapters is dynamite
[Barbara] But we can't give that away
[Cybling] I wanted to ask you two how you met and decided to collaborate.
[Cybling] At a con? through your publisher?
[Sawicki] It was a dark and stormy night
[Cybling] LOLOL
[Barbara] in a bar
[Sawicki] at a con
[Barbara] I had a radiant smile and rice in my hair
[Sawicki] it's been downhill since then
[Cybling] In a bar, at a con. LOL...
[Cybling] Barbara, Steve...
[Ryan] in a bar at a con :P
[Cybling] I'm sorry that our time today was so short...
[Cybling] but I'd like to get in touch with you to come online in the future after the con...
[Cybling] and talk to us a little about the art of screenwriting if you don't mind?
[Sawicki] it was a pleasure being here and we'd be pleased to return
[Barbara] I'd love to chat again
[Cybling] Excellent. Will be emailing you soon then!
[Cybling] Folks, let's thank Barbara and Steve!
* Cybling applauds!
* Lady-Aelexis nods to Barbara and Steve Thanking them for comming and talking with us
* Lady-Aelexis applauds ....
* Lady-Aelexis shakes hands with both of them