The Importance of a Writer’s Group—Online or Off by Karina Fabian

Guest post by Karina Fabian, author of the newly released, I Left My Brains in San Francisco.

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It’s a myth that writers are solitary creatures. Writers have always benefited from meeting in groups to share their works and discuss the issues of writing and living. In a really good group, you get far more than simple critique or support. You’ll find leads, get ideas, and maybe even find yourself moving in a unexpected direction.

In September, my latest book, I Left My Brains in San Francisco, came out from Damnation Books. As with the first book in this series, Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator, it came about as a direct result of being a part of The Writer’s Chat Room, http://writerschatroom.com.

The Writer’s Chat Room is an informal group in that the membership is always changing, and there are no rules for joining, other than basic chat etiquette. Sunday nights, we have a guest author who talks about their books and career. Wednesdays, we have a guided chat on a writing topic for an hour, then open chat where we answer questions, talk about our books, or catch up on each other’s lives. Sometimes, we just get silly. We have multi-published authors, brand new authors, avid readers, and now and again someone best-selling famous pops in. (A running joke is, “Was that Stephen King?”)

A few years ago, one of our members, Kim Richards, decided to start her own publishing company, Damnation Books, for horror and dark fiction, and she wanted to do an anthology called The Zombie Cookbook to kick off the company. I believe we’d gotten silly one chat about cooking and zombies, so she invited—then begged—us to submit our stories, poems, and even recipes for the book. I’m not much for zombies, personally, but at the urging of a friend from the group, Becca Butcher, I whipped up two—“My Big, Fat, Zombie Wedding,” and “Wokking Dead,” about an exterminator, Neeta Lyffe, who gets called in to take out an infestation of zombies in a Korean restaurant. Full of puns and silliness, I expected little to come from it aside from helping out a TWC friend.

People loved “Wokking Dead,” but even more important, another TWC member, Kim Bacceilia, suggested to Kim that I write a novel with Neeta Lyffe. So she asked me, and I put it off because I didn’t really have an idea for Neeta. However, she asked again, during the Wednesday chat, when the topics du jour were reality TV and favorite first lines. Someone put up, “They ate Jorgenson first.” WHAM! I had the perfect idea—a reality TV show based on training zombie exterminators. Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator is out by Damnation and has won several awards.

Another fun thing we do in TWC is writing prompts, where the TWC Coordinator, Audrey Shaffer, gives us an idea and time limit, and we post a quick writing. One of those prompts was “Write advertising for a car that runs on manure.”  In Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator, I had a fake car company, GovMo, so I created the GovMo Crapmaster.

Caption for the video: I had such fun, I made some commercials

About the same time as the prompt, my brother-in-law suggested a zombie attack at a refinery would make a fun book, and those ideas combined into I Left My Brains in San Francisco, in which Neeta and her partner, Ted, go to an exterminator’s convention in San Francisco and end up fighting zombies at a refinery that turns crap into fuel.

Writing groups, done well, are a source of inspiration, support, practical advice, and friendship. At their best, they can lead directly to book sales, as has been the case for me with the Zombie Exterminator series. If you are not in a group, I encourage you to find one, online or off, and give it a try.

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About the Author

Karina Fabian is an award-winning fantasy, science fiction and horror author, whose books make people laugh, cry or think—sometimes all three. Check out her latest news at http://fabianspace.com.

PS from Karina: “Are You the Next Zombie Idol?” singing contest! Damnation Books and I are looking for someone to sing the theme song I wrote for I Left My Brains in San Francisco. I have the words and the tune; but we need a singer. We are offering prizes for the best singer, the most creative audition video, and are giving one in ten entries a copy of the e-book. Hurry! Contest ends nov. 1^st. The details are at http://fabianspace.blogspot.com/p/are-you-next-zombie-idol.html