Author Q&A with Joyce Reynolds-Ward

Author Q&A with Joyce Reynolds-Ward

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Joyce Reynolds-Ward writes speculative fiction from Enterprise, Oregon. Her short stories include appearances in Well…It’s Your Cow, Children of a Different Sky, and Fantasy Scroll Magazine. Her agripunk thriller trilogy, The Martiniere Legacy: Inheritance, The Martiniere Legacy: Ascendant, The Martiniere Legacy: Realization, are due for release in November, 2020. Her other books include Shadow Harvest, Choices of Honor, Judgment of Honor, and Klone’s Stronghold. Joyce has edited two anthologies, Pulling Up Stakes (2018), and Whimsical Beasts (2019). Besides writing, Joyce enjoys reading, quilting, horses, and hiking, and is a member of Soroptimist International of Wallowa County and Northwest Independent Writers Association.

1. Tell us about your writing/ published book(s).

Most of my books and short stories include family and/or relationship dynamics in a science fiction or fantasy setting. I mean, why not? Relationships will exist in the future or in other worlds, and be impacted by technologies or magic around them. People will still love, marry, and have children who don’t always do what their parents want. They’ll have lovely and terrible siblings, and then there’s always that oddball we-don’t-know-quite-how-they-fit-in relative. Or terrible Aunt Petunia.

In my first series, The Netwalk Sequence, the dynamic focuses on the interaction of four generations of women with a specific technology that allows personalities to upload at death. The matriarch of the family, Sarah, is uploaded, and has secrets to hide from her descendants which eventually backfire. She also wants to control her legacy. Meanwhile, her daughter Diana, while trying to avoid the mistakes her mother made, becomes overbearing herself. On the other hand, Diana’s daughter Melanie and Melanie’s daughter Bess end up becoming allies as the Earth faces an alien invasion. They win over Sarah and reform Diana.

My second series, Goddess’s Honor, is a non-European setting fantasy. The family dynamics here start out with a multi-generational magical battle between branches of an imperial family that takes place in the former colony that one branch has been exiled to. But one outside member of that family, Katerin, also has to carry the burden of being the unwanted daughter of Terani the God Killer, and the legacy that brings. The battles between humans extend to very real rifts between the Seven Crowned Gods, however…and the revelation that even the Gods can die. Or can they?

My latest series, The Martiniere Legacy, is a near-future agripunk corporate soap opera. In the process of competing against each other to win $3.75 million dollars a year for five years to finance the development of innovative agriculture technology, former rodeo queen Ruby Barkley and her ex-husband Gabe Ramirez discover that there was more going on to cause their divorce twenty-one years ago than either of them realized, tied to Gabe’s hidden past. They have to battle against Gabe’s toxic father Philip to win control of the family megacorporation, the Martiniere Group, and keep their son Brandon from being forced into indentured servitude. But at what cost…and does this mean a future together?

I have earned Semifinalist and Honorable Mention placements in Writers of the Future. Pledges of Honor (Goddess’s Honor) was a 2018 Semifinalist in the Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off. My short stories have been published in assorted anthologies and magazines. I am currently not marketing short stories at the moment since most of my energy needs to go into writing books and not chasing publication in a shrinking short fiction market. What I am doing right now with my short work is either reprinting previously published shorts that I now have the rights to, or else putting up short stories that I write but don’t want to bother with submitting.

Last spring, I told myself I needed to make a choice—short fiction or novels, because I don’t have the time and energy to do both, and I wasn’t following the right strategy to succeed in this current short story market. Novels won. I’ll still write short stories, but in the context of worldbuilding.

2. How do you approach starting a new book? 

Generally, I need to think about elements in that world and what worldbuilding needs to be done. Once I have a rough story concept in my mind, I start sketching out character arcs for the book/series. I build up the main characters as well as their conflicts, and do the research and worldbuilding to support those storylines.

Sometimes I will end up writing a few short stories set in this world because I need to see how the characters interact with each other. What breathes life into their interactions? What doesn’t? What’s the backstory? Or I might end up writing a short story as an outtake while working on the main book.

In any case, the next step is the creation of either a scene-by-scene character matrix (for multiple point of view stories) or a synopsis (for single point of view stories). Why use a matrix for multiple POVs? In part it’s because I want to keep the points of view balanced in a multiple POV story, so that we are getting the perspectives of each of those characters. They are POV characters for a reason. I need to ensure that their voices are heard. If I don’t do that, then I run the risk of one POV dominating the story—and I need to reconsider if a lesser POV is necessary. Plus, with multiple POVs, I need to know where the other characters are, what they are doing, and how they will react to what’s happening.

Once the matrix or synopsis is created, then I start writing, usually in a linear fashion. My current work in progress, The Heritage of Michael Martiniere, a coda to The Martiniere Legacy, is not linear. I don’t know why but it just wanted to come out that way. I’m viewing it as a break from writing five full-length books in the course of a year (the three books of The Martiniere Legacy and the last two books of Goddess’s Honor). It’s also more of an emotional piece as Michael grapples with the nature of being the clone of an evil, manipulative person, and his struggle to not be what his progenitor was.

3. Have you always wanted to write?

Yes. I started writing horse stories when I was in fifth grade, and wrote off and on for years. I started writing and submitting short stories back in the 90s, then got into selling essays and book reviews to the Portland (Oregon) alternative press scene during that era. When I was in grad school getting my teaching certificate, I wrote opinion columns for Portland State University’s newspaper, The Vanguard. During my tenure as a middle school special education teacher, I wrote blogs about special education. One of those blogs was included in a National Association of Special Education Teachers Special Report.

I started getting serious about writing books again after a rough year teaching and special education case managing where I spent a lot of time writing technical reports. Once I retired, I had the time to really focus on my work. I have a lot of stories I want to tell and I don’t think I’ll be able to get them all written. Sigh.

 

4. Tell us about a scene that you loved but had to edit out of your book.

Grin. What I usually do in these situations is to create an outtake or short story. Most recently, while writing Realization, I really, really wanted to write a flashback scene about Ruby and Gabe’s first encounters. I ended up amending it significantly in Realization, then writing a short story about it (First Meetings). Ruby was riding a young horse in a barrel race. Sunshine had been mishandled by a previous owner so she was prone to bucking fits out of the blue, without cause. Sunshine blows up in a barrel race at a little rodeo where Gabe is also riding saddle broncs. He follows Ruby and Sunshine over to a warmup arena where Ruby rides through Sunshine’s blowup, and they talk. Then Ruby watches Gabe ride a great bronc, Skydancer, where horse and rider are in sync. After the pickup men get Gabe off Skydancer, man and horse end up saluting each other briefly—Skydancer rearing and tossing his head, Gabe bowing to Skydancer and tossing his head in response.

What Ruby doesn’t know—then—is that Gabe is on the run because he testified against the family business in a Federal criminal case involving human trafficking and illegal technology. He tells her that he’s on the run because he owes a lot of student debt, so he’s avoiding the bounty hawks that will force him to spend time in indentured servitude. Gabe’s choice to hide his family background comes back to cause both Ruby and Gabe a lot of grief. So there’s a little of that sort of foreshadowing in the finished story, and it helped me clarify some elements during the revisions of all three books in the series.

 

5. How do you fit writing into your everyday life?

Since I pretty much retired when my husband did (though I did a stint teaching online PE and Health as well as substitute teaching), writing is my job. I will go into my office and write for a little bit after breakfast, then go do chores, ride my horse, or do something in the woods with my husband (we cut our own firewood and like to get out into our local mountains). Then I’ll come back and write some more. My writing day right now pretty much runs from morning until night, in little bits and pieces. Once I’ve hit 2000 words for the day, I’ll usually call it quits unless I’ve got something burning to get written down. My secret is that I keep on coming back to add just a little bit more throughout the day until about 9 pm. Then I call it a night. Unless I am really hot on the trail of a story, I do not write in one long sustained session. When I’m in the middle of writing my first draft I usually write about 2000-5000 words a day.

 

6. Would you want your book made into a film?

Actually, I think that The Martiniere Legacy would make a better miniseries. But yes, I think it would have some good characteristics that transfer to film—visuals, drama, and action. I even have a partial dream cast—A. Martinez as Gabe, Gillian Anderson as Ruby, Cate Blanchett as Justine, Meryl Streep as Donna-gran. The younger characters are more difficult simply because I’m just not up-to-date. I don’t watch a lot of TV or movies any more, simply because I’m devoting that time to writing or reading.

Joyce’s latest release can be found below.

 

You can find Joyce on Twitter.