Karina Fabian is a mild-mannered writer for Top Ten Reviews
and mother of four. But in her other lives, she's a snarky dragon detective, a
nun doing dangerous rescue missions beyond Mars, a psychic driven insane by his
abilities, a zombie exterminator… Her rich fantasy life has compelled her to
become a writer, and she has written 9 science fiction, fantasy or horror
novels and has stories in dozens of anthologies and magazines. She's won
multiple awards for her fiction, but the best reward is when an editor or fan
asks her to write some more.
Because her imagination suffers from "squirrel!"
syndrome even worse than the dogs in UP, she alternates her writing efforts
among multiple universes. She recently submitted the last novel in the Mind
Over Trilogy and wrote a novella to marry off two of the main characters. Her
serial novella coming out in Liberty Island in November features zombie
Exterminators Neeta Lyffe and Ted Hacker as they take on skiing zombies on the
slopes of Utah. Neeta Lyffe's first book, Neeta Lyffe: Zombie Exterminator, is
now out in audiobook as well. She has two science fiction novels with
publishers for consideration and is working on the next DragonEye, and maybe…
SQUIRREL!
Karina also writes about the lives of the saints for a
Catholic service called SaintConnection, plus homilies for FAITH Catholic. And,
of course, her new full-time job is writing reviews of small-medium business
services like eCommerce and social media monitoring software. In addition to
writing, Karina has taught online classes on aspects of writing and marketing
from worldbuilding to time management and even housekeeping for writers.
You can learn more at http://fabianspace.com
"One of my favorite
metaphors comes from Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time Trilogy. She describes life as a sonnet: we are all
given a strict structure and rules, yet have complete freedom within those
rules to create ourselves into unique individuals.
Fiction writing is like that: There are rules to follow on grammar and story
structure, yet we have incredible freedom of imagination. No matter how strict the rules, no two people
will create the same thing. My story, Greater Treasures, is a good example of
this. I wrote this story while watching The Maltese
Falcon,( http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-maltesefalcon/chapanal012.html)
so while I watched the movie, I took careful note of the plot progression and
iconic scenes, like the confrontation between Sam Spade and the police
chief. So I had the structure and basic
character set: detective, partner, police chief, damsel in distress with a dark
secret, even the competing treasure hunter and his henchman. Then, I exercised my creativity by placing
this structure into my DragonEye universe and let my characters in that world
play out their parts.
The result is a very different story from the one written by
Dashiell Hammet. The stakes are
higher: the life of Vern’s best friend
(Sister Grace) vs. the fate of an entire world (one that has not treated Vern
very well). The femme fatal, of course,
would not be able to use her feminine wiles on Vern, who’s a dragon. She needed a different pull. In addition, Vern is a little more savvy than
Sam Spade (Sorry, Sam); plus, he’s seen The
Maltese Falcon. If you’ve seen or
read The Maltese Falcon, then you
might recognize some of the events and catch a couple of in-jokes; however,
there’s no mistaking Greater Treasures
for the noir classic—if it becomes a classic itself, it will do so on its own
terms.
There’s a saying that
there are only 10 original ideas (or 4 or 42 or…) The number does not really matter, because
it’s not the idea or the structure that define the story. It’s what you do within that structure that
makes it yours."Karina, thanks for visiting us and letting us get to know you better and for sharing a glimpse of your work and some great writing advice!
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