It’s been a while since I did the weekly Trope Tuesday posts, but those were a lot of fun and they still get a lot of traffic, so I’m going to bring them back with a couple of changes. Instead of focusing on the trope itself, essentially rewriting the description on the tvtropes page, I’m… Continue reading Trope Tuesday: Colony Ship
Tag: FTL technology
F is for Faster Than Light
Remember that moment in Star Wars when the Millennium Falcon went into hyperspace? When Harrison Ford shouted “go strap yourselves in, I’m going to make the jump to light speed,” and the sky lit up as the stars streaked by? That was my first introduction to faster-than-light (FTL) travel, and I haven’t looked back since.… Continue reading F is for Faster Than Light
C is for Cryo
I think every science fiction writer has a cryo (aka “human popsicle“) story sitting around somewhere, even if it’s just in the back of their head. It’s one of those tropes that keeps coming back, just like the alien invasion, the robot apocalypse, and the Adam and Eve plot. The basic concept is pretty simple,… Continue reading C is for Cryo
Trope Tuesday: Recycled IN SPACE!
Or, as my friends at Leading Edge would say, IN SPAAACE!!! The basic idea behind this trope is that setting a story in space makes it cool and different. The tvtropes article focuses mainly on how this trope is used in children’s cartoons, but it actually goes much wider. In fact, most space stories are… Continue reading Trope Tuesday: Recycled IN SPACE!
Bringing Stella Home is now up on Amazon!
That’s right–after a whole lot of work, my novel is now up on Amazon for $3.95. Check it out! This novel is the first of a much larger series that I have planned. It’s not a series like Ender’s Game or Song of Ice and Fire, though; all of the novels are supposed to stand… Continue reading Bringing Stella Home is now up on Amazon!
Another publication in Leading Edge!
That’s right! My poem “Zarmina,” dedicated to Gliese 581 g (the first exoplanet discovered in its sun’s habitable zone) is published on page 98 of issue 61 of Leading Edge! Also included in this issue is an excellent essay by Brandon Sanderson, in which he introduces his second law of magic systems. It’s an excellent… Continue reading Another publication in Leading Edge!
Drawing up the starmaps
I’m a big fan of indirect sequels, where each book tells a standalone story but incorporates many of the same characters as other works and is set in the same world. Sharon Creech did this with Walk Two Moons and Absolutely Normal Chaos: the main character from ANC was a minor character in WTM. The… Continue reading Drawing up the starmaps
New projects and other stuff
So I started the sequel to Mercenary Savior today; I figure I can take a couple months off to finish the rough draft, then leave it in the trunk until the first one sells. The working title of this one is Into the Nebulous Deep, which captures the main premise quite nicely (though let me… Continue reading New projects and other stuff
Old story notebook, part 2
Alright, here is the second part of my oldest story notebook, the one that I just found a couple days ago. These ideas date from 2007 when I started pursuing writing as more than a hobby, up to the summer of 2008 when I went to Jordan on the BYU study abroad program. The Singularity:… Continue reading Old story notebook, part 2
Worldbuilding
This is what I was doing the other day. The FLSR (Foreign Language Student Residence) at BYU has chalkboards in the common rooms, and I just discovered that those can be WAY useful for diagramming your story. On this occasion, I drew out a couple of space battles, according to how they’d play out with… Continue reading Worldbuilding