Editor Interview: Gabrielle Harbowy

By Angela Roberts

May 18, 2011

gabrielle harbowy

Gabrielle Harbowy is the associate publisher at independent SF and Fantasy publisher, Dragon Moon Press, and also a freelance editor who has edited for authors like Philippa Ballantine and publishers like Pyr Books. She’s also the writer of award-nominated short fiction. The Gloaming’s editor, Angela Roberts, met with Gabrielle at Ad Astra in Toronto, and she sat down with us to discuss her work, editing, writing, and Dragon Moon Press.

Angela: You’re the associate publisher at Dragon Moon Press. Can you tell us about how you got started there?

Gabrielle Harbowy: I was doing sales analysis at Scholastic in New York for about six years. That was my entry into professional publishing. I was proofreading kind of corporate spreadsheets and things like that, and it was a job; it was interesting, looking at trends in publishing data, and what sells and what doesn’t sell and why it sells. And I discovered that I was sitting diagonally across from the person who was proofreading Harry Potter. That was really exciting. And I thought, “I would love to be doing that.” And then I thought, “Why aren’t I doing that? I could do that,” and I set about figuring out how to make myself that kind of editor, and do that kind of work, instead of the work that I was doing.

I had a friend at the time who had a manuscript coming out with a small press – Dragon Moon Press – and I looked it over for him and did some editing, just as a friend, but after that, when I decided that I could go freelance and give this a shot, I contacted Dragon Moon Press and I said, “Hi. I’ve already kind of done work for you. Will you hire me?” And they did. They said, “OK. We have a couple manuscripts that need editing. Here are three synopses; choose one.” And I started getting editing work from them on a fairly regular basis.

A: And then you moved into doing acquisitions.

G: I moved up. August of 2008, my first two books were released, and I got promoted to editor in charge. Then a couple of years after that, I got promoted to associate publisher.

A: What qualities do you look for when selecting works for publication?

G: The standard answer is a good story. That’s really easy to say and it doesn’t really tell you much, but a good story well told is what everybody wants to find. It’s what everybody wants to read. What that involves is usually a certain level of maturity and polish to the writing, technical ability, a strong character voice, an interesting plot that we haven’t seen before. Not the same old thing, but maybe the same old thing with an interesting twist. Character and voice really speak to me. A lot of the stories that we get that we don’t end up taking, they’re not really bad, they’re just kind of unremarkable. They’re bullet point lists of this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then they went here, and then they did this, and there’s no voice to it. There’s nothing to connect to as a reader. I’m looking for things that a reader can connect to and care about and get invested in. Because that’s what makes a story memorable.

A: What is your favorite part about editing? What gets you up in the morning and working?

G: I like the rapport with the authors. I really enjoy building that connection, and I enjoy working on the manuscript with someone, seeing how much they love it, coming to love it and getting invested as much as they are, and really making it a partnership and a team effort and doing what’s best for the manuscript looking at all the ins and outs, and saying, this could be stronger, and this could be clearer, and just polishing it up. And it’s very much a team process, it’s a collaboration, and that’s a lot of fun. Just working with someone, who’s passionate about what I’m passionate about, to make this thing absolutely the best it can be.

A: Do you have a favorite past project?

G: I have a couple. Toothless by JP Moore is a fantastic literary historical fiction zombie book and I acquired it because I fell in love with it; I believe in it very strongly and it’s so different from anything else out there. It’s so well done and the voice is so strong and it’s just a fantastic character in a fantastically bleak different unusual world. The amount of skill and craft that goes into it is so great that it’s invisible, which is as it should be. I just felt really passionately about that story from the start, to the point where I have an agent friend, and I thought, “Maybe I should be passing this one up, because this one could really go places,” but then I thought, “No, it was submitted to me, it’s mine. I want it. It’s just that good. I don’t want to give it up.” And this author is clearly going someplace, and I’ll recommend him to my agent friend for his next book. And that came out and did fantastically. Publisher’s Weekly loved it and everyone who’s read it is really drawn into the story and surprised by it.

And then Triptych by JM Frey was another one that was so different and she thought it was unpublishable because it was so different, and I looked at it and I said, “No. That’s a concept that has a lot of depth and a lot of potential.” And it just needed a little more work to get it there. It’s not a book for everyone. There are gay themes in it, and polyamorous themes, and themes that some people may not like, but at the heart of it is a really poignant, painfully powerful story that I think will grab you no matter who you are.

A: Who are your favorite authors?

G: To read?

A: Yes.

G: Oh gosh. That’s such a hard question because I don’t really do much reading for fun. The reading that I do as pleasure reading is the books of colleagues and co-workers and people that I’ve met at conventions and gotten to know and gotten books signed from.

A: Who were your favorites before you got too busy to do more than that? Who made you want to get into publishing? Because we all have books that made us start writing, reading, editing, etc.

G: David Eddings’ The Belgariad, I read when I was fairly young, and I love that series. It’s ten books and I reread them pretty much once a year. And it’s absolute typical quest fantasy, with the coming-of-age story of the boy who doesn’t realize that he’s going to be King and have all this power. The author says right up front, “I’m writing these books in order to play around with these tropes.” And all the tropes are there, but it’s, I feel, very well told, and everybody’s got a voice, and the cultures that he creates are very well-rounded. It’s not just the world with a single culture on it or a single climate or any of that stuff you see a lot. He’s got the sly little thief, but the sly little thief is interesting, and has a fun past, and has such a fun voice that you just love him as a character. So that sort of took the standard and elevated it into characters that you feel like you know as friends.

Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising, I really got into because I think I was at exactly the right age when I read it. The action starts the day before the boy’s eleventh birthday, and my mother gave it to me the day before my eleventh birthday. It was sort of my first view of magic in the real world and how magic might be hidden all around us. So that was a neat thing to think about.

A little later, I think, I got into more science fiction and more cyberpunk, and Melissa Scott and Walter Jon Williams and William Gibson, and Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, and that was my reading for a while.

And now, kind of anything fantasy, science fiction, remotely related; Clive Barker’s Weaveworld is a favorite of mine. Pretty much anything that you can immerse yourself in is what I look for when I read.

A: When the Hero Comes Home comes out in August. How did that project get started?

G: Ed Greenwood and I met at Ad Astra in 2009, on a panel. He was on the very first panel that I had at my very first convention as a professional. I was moderating a panel with him and Robert J. Sawyer, and I was a little intimidated and both of them were really sweet and welcoming, and made me feel a part of the professional community. It was a great entry to all this for me. Ed and I kept up a correspondence afterwards, and he gave me a lot of great professional advice. I met him again at Ad Astra the next year, last year, and we started talking about how much fun it would be to work together. And he said, “I could give you a short story.” And I said, “I have nothing to put it in.” And he said, “I have this idea for an anthology that I’ve been kicking around for a long time.” And I said, “That would be great. Let’s do it together.”

So he started thinking about writers that he knew that he could invite, and I started thinking about Dragon Moon authors that I could invite, so that it could be a Dragon Moon Press book that would feature Dragon Moon authors but also have bigger names and say, “Hey, if you like the fantasy and science fiction of these people, you might like the fantasy and science fiction of these people you might never have heard of.”

A: You’re editing the anthology (along with Ed Greenwood) and you have a story in it as well. What has your experience been being on both sides of the process?

G: It’s kind of fun. I like writing. I got introduced to writing a little later than editing. I had a client I was editing for who asked me to write a story set in the world of his book for an anthology he was doing. And I said, “Oh no, I couldn’t possibly. I’m busy editing. I don’t write.” And as I continued on the manuscript, the idea came to me and wouldn’t let me go and I had to write it. It turned into a cute little story and it got nominated for a Parsec Award, and I thought, “Well, this was kind of fun, and I can do this.” And I started writing more. I have another story coming out in The Beast Within 2 from Graveside Tales, edited by Jennifer Brozek, and I co-wrote that with Marie Bilodeau. And then I have this story coming out. I also write erotica under a pen name, and I have four stories sold that way.

I think short fiction is more my thing. I don’t think I have the stamina or attention span for a novel. I like writing the really interesting bits where the pivotal things happen and I don’t like writing all the rest of the bits. I can read them, I can process them as an editor, but personally, when I’m writing, I really like to focus on those really intense pivotal scenes. So I really enjoy short fiction. I don’t know if I’ll ever write a novel. I think one of these days if I get the right idea it could be a fun challenge. It’s just, you know, make a string of thirty-forty of those pivotal moments, and then you have a book. But I like the writing. I like the editing better, but the writing is a lot of fun, and it’s also a chance to prove I know what I’m talking about. I do all these things that I make other people do when they write, and maybe it’s a demonstration tool or something. I don’t know. That sounds awfully egotistical.

A: No, you’ll find that a lot of editors are writers too. They’re usually writers who decided to edit. You’re sort of coming to it from the other direction.

G: It’s more about the polishing of it for me. I like to take something that’s there and see how tiny changes can make it better. And just get it as polished up and as powerful as it can be. I like that more than I like starting from scratch. I really have to have the seed of a story idea in order to be able to write. I know that writers get inspired by all sorts of things; what inspires me is calls for submissions that have themes, because that’s an easy way to get inspiration, and then I can take that theme and twist it and make it my own. And then the idea comes. Instead of conceiving of a whole world and what happens in it from scratch. Which might also be a time issue. I don’t feel that I have a couple years to devote to a novel because I’m so busy doing my editing.

A: Can you tell us anything about what’s coming up next from Dragon Moon Press? When is your next publication period?

G: We kind of publish most of the year, Spring to Fall. Next up is The Empress Sword by Paulette Jaxton, which is a Young Adult-ish fantasy with humour about a boy prince who has to protect his kingdom from an invading dragon, and to do so he must find this magical sword that supposedly controls the dragons, but the only problem is that the sword can only be wielded by a girl.

A: That sounds pretty good.

G: It’s really cute. It’s a great book. It started out as a podcast; you can find it on ITunes. And it’s a lot of fun. So we have that coming out at the end of May; that’s launching at Balticon in Baltimore, Maryland.

And then we have When The Hero Comes Home, which I’m really excited about. Which is nearly complete. Nineteen stories by some really great authors. And then we have Scimitar’s Heir, from Chris Jackson. That’s Book 3 in a series. Book 1, Scimitar Moon, won the Foreword Book of the Year Gold Medal for Fantasy. Book 2 launched last Fall, so this one’s going to be launched at DragonCon in September.

And we have Mind over Mind by Karina Fabian, which is sort of a slightly modern fantasy version of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. It’s a boy in an asylum who has voices from other worlds talking to him, but the voices are real. He meets a young psychiatry intern who helps him come to terms with the voices in his head and get used to them instead of trying to banish them, so he can cope in the real world. And that’s kind of neat. It’s kind of a departure, but it’s still got that fantasy element to it.

I know we have other stuff, but that’s all that’s set in stone on the schedule for now.

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