Joe Vasicek

Writing at a stroll

I haven’t been writing too much these past few days, or revising much either, but I have been rereading a lot of stuff and getting myself back into the fantasy world of my next big novel. I’ve made a few changes, but decided to keep most of the stuff that I wrote while in Georgia, and that amounts to about 50k words. Just today, I finished the chapter where I’d left off, so now I’m ready to go full steam ahead.

I changed the title from The Sword Keeper to The Sword Bearer, since the story is more about Tamuna than Ivanar, and I may end up adding a subtitle since this is going to turn into a series. Right now, the tentative deadline for the first draft is September 30th, which should be plenty of time to finish it, even with all the traveling I plan to do for the rest of the month.

The projected total word count at this point is 120k words, but I’m not so sure about that anymore. I’m in the middle of Part II, at about 52k words, and while I’ve got a pretty good idea of what happens in the next three chapters, there’s a lot in the middle that I don’t know about. I know how the book is supposed to end, but how to get there is the question, and I’m not sure if it will take me 120k words or 90k words, or upward of 150k words (though I doubt it). I’ll probably have to discovery write most of it.

I’m looking forward to that, though. Some of the best stuff pops out of my head when I have no idea what’s supposed to happen next. Characters take on a life of their own, and reveal some really surprising things about themselves that end up becoming central to the rest of the story. But to do it well, I need to spend some time just thinking about things in a loosely structured way, allowing myself to get immersed in this world. That’s why I haven’t been pushing myself too much.

At the same time, I’ve picked up work on another Star Wanderers story, mostly as a way to keep putting words on the page when I just don’t feel up to working on The Sword Bearer. This is either going to be Part IX or Part X, and frankly I’m really worried about botching it up. A lot of you have really enjoyed the Star Wanderers stories so far, and I’m pretty sure you’ll like this one too once I’m done with it, but I’m going some places in this book that really make me uncomfortable, and I’m not sure how to do it without crossing the line that makes me never want to make it available for the world to read.

I dunno. I’m probably angsting about it too much, and should just write the thing and see how it turns out. But for now, that’s a background project to keep things fresh while I work on The Sword Bearer. And really, I should probably work exclusively on the novel for the next week or so, just to get some momentum going. One day, I’ll be really excited to work on it, while the next, I can barely bring myself to open the manuscript. That’s how I tend to be when I haven’t yet latched onto a project, which seems to be most of the time.

Star Wanderers: Reproach (Part VII) is in the alpha reading stage right now, though if you would like to give it a read, feel free to shoot me an email. I only let people I know in real life read my unpublished stuff, though, and even then only if we’re close friends. Depending on the feedback, it could come out anywhere between the end of August (unlikely) to the end of September (more likely).

This is another one I’ve angsted a lot over, so I’m not sure when it will be ready but I know it will be before the end of the year. Part VIII, on the other hand … Part VIII is probably on the verge of being ready right now, and I really want to get that one out soon, so all the more reason to publish Reproach!

That’s about it for now. I’m heading on the train back to Massachusetts on Tuesday, where I’ll be for most of the rest of the month. I might put together that A to Z blogging challenge thing as an ebook, just to publish something while I’m on vacation. That would be a good diversionary project, something to do while on vacation. Though I certainly plan to write as well–at least 2k words a day, hopefully. Gotta build up that momentum.

Speaking of which, it’s 2am and I should get some sleep. Gnight!

The Dying Earth by Jack Vance

the_dying_earth Do you remember those creepy-weird montages from those old 60s and 70s era Disney movies? The ones like Dumbo, or The Three Caballeros–or heck, the entire thing of Fantasia–where all these weird kaleidoscopic shapes and psychedelic colors just move in and out of each other in twisted, convulsing ways? Well, guess what? Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth is like one of those montages in written form, and I loved it.

I picked up this book in order to familiarize myself a little better with the Sword & Planet subgenre, which I’d like to write in (as you may remember … my WIP is currently on hold, but I’d like to pick it up again soon). This one is a lot different from the Princess of Mars series, with an eerie apocalyptic feel, arcane magic and forbidden knowledge, weird, monstrous creatures, and above all else, a decidedly un-Disney fairy-tale feel that pervades the book with doom and danger.

If you’re looking for straight-up Science Fiction, you’re better off looking elsewhere. This book is even more fantastic than Ray Bradbury’s stuff, and while there’s a little bit of a sci-fi dressing thrown in, there really is no scientific justification for anything. The basic premise is that the Earth is dying, meaning that the sun is growing dimmer and dimmer and will soon go completely out. The last few people eking out an existence on this planet are mostly wizards and witches, each one intent on building their own little empire and cheating or stealing from everyone else. There are a few pure-hearted souls, but the world is completely lawless, and the only way to survive is through magic or brute force.

The chapters are really more like interconnected short stories, where each one stands on its own, and yet may feature a recurring character, or be set in the same place as another. There were only six chapters in the version I read (the 1977 Pocket Book edition), which makes me wonder if I missed any. If I did, I would definitely like to read them, because the stories were absolutely mesmerizing!

Because I read this book to get a feel for the sub-genre, I’m going to list some of the things I really enjoyed about it. Here they are:

The fairy-tale story structure. None of the chapters started out with “there once was a …” but it certainly felt like they did. Each character started off with a quest or dilemma, and then went on a journey of some sort where they faced trials, made friends, and defeated enemies in order to attain some sort of boon at the end.
Lots and lots of world-breaking magic. Seriously. One of the guys sets out on his journey with a spell that basically keeps him from any danger whatsoever, so long as he stays on “the path.” Since he really has no idea where he’s going, “the path” is basically any path he chooses to travel. Since all the rest of the magic is just as world-breaking, you have no idea what could happen next. There’s always a sense that anything could happen.
An elevated sense of diction. The characters don’t speak like we do, they speak like people from the 18th or 19th centuries, with words like “thus,” “whence,” “wherefore,” and grammatical structures like “I know not,” and “half yet remains.” It’s not just the characters, either–the whole book is like that. It really adds to the fantastic, otherworldly feel.
Lots of contrasting extremes. The demons are truly perverse and sadistic, with death and brutality on every other page. At the same time, though, the moments of beauty and love are just as great. My favorite line from the whole book, which practically made me cry, is “My brain is whole! I see–I see the world!” If I explained it any more, it would be a spoiler.
High adventure. LOTS and LOTS of high adventure. There isn’t a viewpoint character in the book who doesn’t leave home to go on some sort of quest through all sorts of wild and creepy dangers. Every character is seeking something, and not in a “meh” kind of way–they are so wholly focused on what they’re seeking that they put their very lives in peril just to obtain it. Almost all the romance is rescue-romance, of the pulpiest possible kind. It’s awesome.

There are more, but those are the big things. Overall, I’d say that this book is about 50% Fantasy, 30% Horror, and 20% Science Fiction, with none of the more modern conventions of any of those genres. It was first published in 1950, but it feels a lot closer to Robert E. Howard and Jules Verne than J.R.R. Tolkien and Arthur C. Clarke. If you’re looking for a good spec-fic throwback with lots of magic and adventure, this is a great one to check out.

Trope Tuesday: Curiosity is a Crapshoot

Is curiosity a bad thing? Well, it depends how genre savvy you are. It seemed to work out pretty well for Alice, but not quite so well for Pandora (or the rest of the ancient Greek world, for that matter). Curious monkeys seem to come out all right, and their constantly curious counterparts also seem to do okay in the end, but anytime you run into schmuck bait you know that things aren’t going to turn out well.

The truth is, for just about every stock Aesop warning about the perils of being overly nosy, you can find another one exalting it as a virtue. In fact, you could say that curiosity is a crapshoot.

But what is curiosity exactly? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “desire to know,” and “interest leading to inquiry.” As you can imagine, there are situations where this could be good or bad. Thus, what a story says about curiosity often changes depending on its genre.

For example, in most horror stories, curiosity and nosiness are usually bad, leading the protagonists to go places where they shouldn’t and uncover things that should never have been uncovered. At the same time, a lack of curiosity can also be fatal … in fact, a lot of things can be fatal in a horror story.

In mythology and folklore, curiosity is often even worse. From Pandora to Eve, Psyche to the proverbial cat, curiosity leads to Very Bad Things. Perhaps this is because these kinds of stories are mostly tales of warning, passed on from generation to generation as a way to preserve our collective knowledge about the dangers of the world, rather than inspire us to go out and face them.

(As a side note, there are a few exceptions in the realm of folklore. In the Bluebeard myth, curiosity killed off all of Bluebeard’s previous wives, but combined with cleverness, faith, and friendship, it saved the last one’s life.)

In fantasy, curiosity is often a mixed ~~box~~ bag. For example, take the hobbits: most of them are perfectly content to live out their lives in the shire, but the few who are inquisitive enough to venture outside end up saving the world in a way that the elves, dwarves, and humans never could. At the same time, it puts them through a great deal of pain, even after the world is saved–neither Bilbo nor Frodo are ever able to be content in the shire again.

Curiosity, in other words, is complicated. It’s not just a quirk or a character flaw–it’s an underlying quality of the hero’s journey. Without curiosity, either of the world around him or the internal struggles within, the hero would be content to live out an unremarkable life. Certainly he wouldn’t have the capacity for the cleverness, guile, wisdom, and sensitivity that he needs in order to descend into the darkest dungeon, face his own nadir, and return with the elixir of life. Curiosity may lead to sorrow, pain, or even death, but it also leads to adventure.

As a subgenre of fantasy, many of these issues carry over into the realm of science fiction. And yet, as a genre unto itself, science fiction has a distinctly positive view of curiosity compared to other genres. Science is nothing if not the primary process of human inquiry, where curiosity is not only a virtue but the virtue, one of the most important aspects of humanity. Consider these words from Adam Steltzner, one of the leading engineers of the NASA Mars Curiosity mission:

Likewise, curiosity is a staple of science fiction. In Star Trek, it’s the basis of the entire mission: “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.” In Doctor Who, it’s how the Doctor finds his companions. In Babylon 5, it’s Delenn’s curiosity about the humans that ultimately saves all the alien races. And in 2001: A Space Odyssey, it’s the gift from the black monolith that helps monkeys to turn bones into space stations (well, not literally, but you get the idea).

Curiosity isn’t a central theme in most of my books, but it is a major part of Genesis Earth. If anything, that book is about the importance of balancing curiosity about our universe with curiosity about ourselves and what it means to be human. In Star Wanderers, Noemi’s curiosity is a huge part of her story, helping her to turn around a horrible (not to mention awkward) situation. In Desert Stars, curiosity is complicated; it leads Jalil far away from home and puts a schism between him and the girl who loves him, but it also leads him to discover the truth about who he is, giving him the strength to return.

In general, I suppose it all comes down not only to genre, but to the underlying worldview of the author of the story. Since I have a very positive and enthusiastic view of curiosity, it usually works out for the best in the stories that I write. Then again, perhaps that’s why I’m drawn to science fiction … how about you?

Why I don’t like George R.R. Martin

I was thinking today about George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones and the fact that I’ve more or less given up on the series after reading the first book. A lot of my friends are rabid-at-the-mouth crazy about it, both the books and the TV miniseries, but I’m just not all that into it.

Don’t get me wrong—I can see why other people like it so much. The story is engaging, the political intrigue is deliciously complex, the world building is wonderful and immersive, and the fantasy tropes are played quite well. I enjoyed a lot of things about the first book, and intended to read the rest of the series after finishing it. After all, it’s one of the most important works of epic fantasy to come out in the last few decades, with people calling George R.R. Martin an American Tolkien.

But the truth is, I just wasn’t all that into it. And the more I think about it now, the more I’ve realized that this isn’t the kind of series I would enjoy at all.

The strange thing is, I’m a HUGE fan of David Gemmell, who writes almost the exact same sort of thing. Immersive fantasy worlds, dark and gritty characters, shades of gray, lots of fighting, lots of sex, lots of brutality, the realization that anyone can die off at any time … the list goes on and on. And yet, there’s something about David Gemmell’s books that turns me rabid-at-the-mouth and has me squeeing like an otaku fangirl, whereas with George R.R. Martin, all I can manage is “meh.”

I think the reason for this is that Martin’s characters basically fall into one or both of two camps: victim or victimizer. There isn’t any middle ground—at least, none that anyone can stand on for long without dying in some horrific and brutal way. The story requires the characters to all become monsters, and anyone who isn’t willing to do that meets a horrible, tragic end.

There were only two characters in A Game of Thrones that I really cared about: Arya and Ned Stark. Ned was the only character who really tried to stand for something, and Arya was just a spunky little girl who resisted all the stupid girly stuff in favor of more practical stuff like street smarts.

The trouble was that Ned was a complete idiot, trusting in the honor of a guy who explicitly said “do not trust me” and making stupid decisions that ended up getting half of House Stark killed or captured. It’s almost as if Martin purposefully set him up to be a straw man character—that he wanted this one character to represent all the goody-goodies of the world, and knocked him off in the most brutal way possible. It’s like Martin killed him off to make a point, and had the story drive the character rather than the character drive his own story.

And Arya … I forget exactly what happened to her, but she basically became a victim in such a horrible, twisted way that I could tell she’d be scarred for the rest of the series. If she didn’t die off herself, she’d probably become a dirty street rat—the slit-your-throat-for-a-copper kind, not the Disney version. So yeah, I pretty much gave up on her.

Jon Snow was okay, but he was so far removed from everything else in the story that I just got bored with him. Tyrion was funny, but he was also a pervert, and all the reasons to sympathize with him basically revolved around “I’m a dwarf, everyone mistreats me”—again, the victim vs. victimizer thing. Lady Catelyn was pretty cool, but I always saw her as more of a supporting character, and while I found myself rooting for Daenerys at the end, it was only out of frustration with all of the other douchebags in Westeros—I just wanted her to come over the sea and claim the throne so that everyone else would die.

It was a pretty good book, I’ll admit—other than the fact that I didn’t really like any of the characters, everything else was quite enjoyable. It certainly held my attention long enough to finish the thing. But I didn’t really feel compelled to read the next one because I frankly didn’t care what happened to any of the characters. You could give me a list of all of the ones who die off, and I would just shrug and say “oh well.”

In contrast, with every David Gemmell book I’ve read, I fall in love with the characters after reading just a paragraph or two in their viewpoint. Drenai or Nadir, civilized or barbarian, I not only like the characters, I fall deeply in love with them. I care about them right from the outset, even the ones with a dark past, like Skilgannon or Waylander. In fact, Waylander is probably my favorite of them all.

The fact that I know that some of these guys are going to die only makes me more invested, because even though Gemmell kills of most of his characters in any given book, the main characters’ deaths almost always mean something. Maybe they have some awful secret that they finally are able to give up, or maybe they’ve been running from a fate that they finally gather the courage to face. Or maybe they just happen to be in a circumstance that requires them to give up their lives, and they rise to meet the occasion. Not every death is cathartic, but Gemmell never kills off a character merely for the sake of killing off a character, whereas with Martin, I get the sense that that’s sometimes the only reason.

But the biggest difference between the two is that with Gemmell, the victim vs. victimizer paradigm just doesn’t exist. Gemmell’s books are all about unlikely heroism—characters in situations that require them to be something more, or do something beyond looking out for just themselves. Anyone can be a hero, because a hero is nothing more than someone who does something heroic. No matter your past, no matter your fears, no matter your weaknesses, when the chips are down, we’re not all that different.

The counter argument I’ve heard is that all of this heroism stuff is superfluous, and Martin is trying to get beyond it, kind of like the 19th and 20th century philosophers who were trying to get beyond morality. The thing is, if that’s the case, then Martin has to have the darkest and most depressing view of human nature of almost any fantasy writer alive. If his point is that there’s nothing intrinsically heroic about anyone, that being a hero is just a matter of rising to a role and becoming a figure in one of the stories that people tell to make sense of the world—if his point is to show that every hero is really just a douchebag, there’s something about the world that he’s really missing.

In Gemmell’s books, there are douchebags who rise to the heroic roles required of them—but in the act of filling that role, something about them changes, and you see that they’re really not as evil as you thought they were. Because in Gemmell’s view, people are essentially good and everyone is redeemable, even the rapists and murderers. One of his darkest characters, Skilgannon the Damned, learns at the end of his story that the difference between salvation and damnation is allowing yourself to receive the light—that the only thing damning you is yourself. Whether or not you agree with that, you have to admit that’s a pretty optimistic way of seeing the world.

In the end, that’s why I love David Gemmell’s books so much—not just because anyone can die, but because anyone can be redeemed too, sometimes at the very same time. From what I’ve read of George R.R. Martin, it seems that he redeems no one—that to the extent I’m rooting for any one character, it’s only because I can’t wait for them to kill or brutalize all the other horrible monsters in the book. And frankly, I find that pointless and tiresome.

There are moments in almost every David Gemmell book I’ve read that stand out to me with great clarity, so that sometimes while I’m standing in line at the grocery store, or walking down the street to the library, they pop into my head completely unbidden. With George R.R. Martin, that has never happened to me, even for the books of his that I’ve enjoyed.

I dunno. Everyone is different. Maybe George R.R. Martin really strikes a chord in you, so that you feel for him like I do for David Gemmell. Maybe you actually like some of the characters whom I’ve dismissed as douchebags. Or maybe you don’t read fantasy for the same things I do. This post isn’t to knock you for that, it’s just to point out and analyze why I don’t like George R.R. Martin’s stuff as much as most other fantasy fans seem to. And if you do feel about this the same way that I do, then my point is to declare that that’s all right. You can still be a fantasy geek and not like A Sword of Ice and Fire or anything else by George R.R. Martin, no matter how much it’s hyped. That’s perfectly okay.

I’m writing an epic fantasy right now, and it’s not going to be anything like A Sword of Ice and Fire. It’s probably not going to be much like any of David Gemmell’s books either, but Gemmell is certainly a bigger influence on me than Martin. We’ll have to see how it turns out.

And now for something completely random…

Do you like your chapters named or numbered?

There’s an interesting article linked on The Passive Voice blog about the importance of a table of contents, especially in ebooks. The article is geared mostly for non-fiction, which is a whole different beast from novels and novellas, but the discussion on TPV got me thinking: for ebooks, is it better to name chapters or to merely number them?

In the comments section on TPV, Jamie makes an interesting point:

With e-books in particular I think there needs to be more care taken with the TOC. I can easily find my place with a print book even without a book mark, but with an e-reader, it’s possible to lose your place very easily, and “loc 4950″ is not going to be committed to my memory banks. I know what happens in the chapter titled “His Grace of Avon Takes Command of the Game,” but I’m not sure if that was chapter 16 or 15 “loc 1730″ or what. I won’t remember the number.

For organizational purposes for my own use I title my chapters, and I believe that readers will appreciate that habit, too, and will be more forgiving if they use the Look Inside feature and see those headers vs. if they just see “1, 2, 3.”

I try to make sure the titles are enticing and pique the curiosity of anyone who would see them in a TOC. They’re not spoilers, because unless you’ve made it to the end of the previous chapter, you’ll likely have no idea what the next chapter’s title is referring to (and if it is obvious, it simply increases the suspense/curiosity). The titles Makes Sense in Context (TM).

When I first learned how to make an ebook, the concept of a table of contents for a novel seemed pretty weird. I was used to reading print books, which you can flip through much easier and find what you’re looking for just from the feel of the pages. But with ebooks, obviously that’s much different. A table of contents is more than just a list of chapters, it’s an important navigational tool that can’t be overlooked.

But if chapter hyperlinks are perhaps the only way to flip through the middle of the book, does that mean that merely numbering the chapters is insufficient? I have to admit, the concept of naming each chapter seems a bit old-fashioned, but the technology has changed and as writers, we need to change with it.

In the context of a hyperlinked table of contents, numbers are practically meaningless. They can even be quite ugly, if there’s a huge list of them that sprawls beyond the screen. Chapter titles can sprawl even more, but they at least provide some idea of what lies on the other side of the link.

I’ve done it both ways. For example, the table of contents for Genesis Earth looks like this:

Table of Contents

Author’s Note | Acknowledgments

Most of the chapter titles are pretty mysterious, but I was kind of going for that. And in any case, is it possible to make them completely unambiguous without spoiling key parts of the story? It seems like the art of naming chapters is much subtler and more complex than you’d think at a first glance.

In contrast, the table of contents for Desert Stars looks like this:

Table of Contents

Prologue
Book I: Dome and Desert
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
Book II: Sand and Stars
11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22

Author’s Note | Acknowledgments

I kept the numbers for the chapters, but divided the novel into two sections or “books” and listed the numbered chapters as minimally as possible, to save space. I suppose it looks all right, but as a guide to navigating the book, I’m not sure how useful it is–not to mention how hard it can be to click on a hyperlink that’s only one character long, especially on a touchscreen.

For Journey to Jordan, there were so many entries that I didn’t bother listing them all in the table of contents. Instead, I divided each part into sections based on location, then listed the locations in the table of contents and the posts/chapters at the head of each section, complete with hyperlinks.

As a side note, it’s actually pretty amazing how internal hyperlinks can change the experience of the book. For one thing, it opens up all sorts of possibilities for alternate endings and “Choose Your Own Adventure” type stories. Is it possible to list a chapter in the <manifest> without including it in the <spine>? I don’t think it is (at least, not in a well-formatted ebook), but if you could find a way to do that, you could add all sorts of hidden content and Easter eggs …

In any case, for my shorter Star Wanderers novellas, I think I actually prefer numbered chapters. The stories are short enough that the numbered subdivisions still have meaning, and the chapter lists aren’t long enough to look too cluttered. Besides, I’ve already started the series in this particular format so I think it will be better to keep it this way.

But for future books and future series … I don’t know. What do you think? Are ebook chapters better off named or numbered?

Last chance to get my books 50% off on Smashwords!

Hey guys, just a heads up that tomorrow and Wednesday are the last days to get all my books 50% off on Smashwords for the annual summer sale. Everything is under $2.50 USD, and the $.99 stuff is free! That might seem like a pretty steep discount, but I actually earn as much from each sale as I would for a trade paperback sale if my books were traditionally published, and I don’t mind passing on the savings to you.

Also, my friend and fellow writer Ben Keeley did a blog post about our low-key backpacking trip up Rock Canyon, so if that interests you, you can check it out on his blog. That rattlesnake was pretty freaky! Good thing he was about as eager to get away from us as we were to get away from him. We didn’t climb any mountains on this one, but we did find a gorgeous campsite on the side of a steep ravine. I definitely want to go camp there again sometime.

I’m taking it easy as far as the writing goes, but making some progress on The Sword Keeper. A lot of it right now is gathering ideas and reviewing what I’ve written so far (eleven chapters, or about 50k words). The first chapter requires some changes, but the rest I’ll probably let stand as it is and pick up where I left off. Once I’m fully immersed in this story again, I think the rest will come quite readily.

In the meantime, here’s a video of Mariam Elieshvili singing “ჩვენ ახლა ერთურთს,” chven axla erturts. I have no idea what the lyrics mean (something about looking for love in each others’ eyes), but Mariam’s voice is amazing and I think I may have a small celebrity crush on her. All this Georgian music definitely puts me in the mood to work on The Sword Keeper, kind of like how all that Arabic music helped me to write Desert Stars.

… and now I want to go back to Georgia. Again. :'(

SW-VI: BENEFACTOR is now out on Amazon, Smashwords, and Kobo!

That’s right! My latest book, Star Wanderers: Benefactor (Part VI) is now available on Amazon, Smashwords, and Kobo! It’s $2.99, but for the next couple of days until the end of June, you can get it for $1.49 from Smashwords with the summer promotion code.

This one took a long time to write, especially for a novella, but I’m very satisfied with the result. It shows the events of Fidelity from Jakob’s point of view, really diving into his character and exploring his background as a star wanderer who settled down and now struggles to take care of his family. There are overtones of an impending conflict between the Outworlders and the Gaian Empire, which I plan to make a major part of the overworld story arc, and some new characters introduced as well.

Here’s the teaser:

IN A COLD AND LONELY UNIVERSE, A SIMPLE ACT OF GRACE CAN RESONATE ACROSS WORLDS.

An outworlder is nothing if not fiercely independent, and Jakob is no exception. But ever since he brought his family of starbound refugees to Alpha Oriana, he’s felt increasingly powerless. With the recent Imperial takeover and rumors of job cuts at the dockyards, it’s only a matter of time before they’re forced to move on—again.

When a young man and woman with an unusual story show up from his wife’s homeworld, he takes them in, if for no other reason than that they remind him of a time when he was young and still in love. Ever since he sent his sons away, his marriage has been a nightmare—but all he wanted was to give them a chance at a better life out among the stars. Whether or not that was a mistake, his wife has never forgiven him for it.

In the face of so many challenges, it’s not clear how long the family can hold together, but Jakob will sacrifice everything before he asks for help—even if the only way out lies through an open airlock.

Star Wanderers: Benefactor (Part VI) should be up on Barnes & Noble shortly, as well as Drivethru Fiction and All Romance eBooks. In a couple of weeks, it should be out on iTunes, Sony, and Diesel as well. If you want to add it to your Goodreads library, you can find it here.

Thanks guys! I’m heading out on a short backpacking trip this weekend, but I’ll be back in a couple of days with more updates. Later!

Trope Tuesday: Smart People Play Chess

Why? Because Anastasia Gavrilova playing chess is HOT. — And if you’re Anastasia Gavrilova, chess gives you +10 charisma as well.

Want a fast and easy way to show that your characters are smart? Not bookish, necessarily, or nerdy, or even the designated smart guy in the five-man band, but intellectually adept no matter what else their role in the story? Well, you could indicate that through inordinate loquaciousness, but too much of that tends to make your dialog unreadable (not to mention, it’s way overdone). You could have them rock a chalkboard, but not every story takes place in high school, and finding a chalkboard outside of academia is a bit of a challenge. So what else can you do to indicate a high level of intelligence?

Show them playing chess.

It’s true. Stereotypes aside, one of the most effective ways to indicate that your characters are intelligent is to show them playing chess. From Star Trek to Discworld, Independence day to Doctor Who, Big Bang Theory to Harry Potter to Command & Conquer, chess is a fast, dirty, and effective way to show intelligence. And while popular conceptions of chess nerds give the game a bit of baggage, it’s not as bad as you might think. Sure, Sheldon might fit the stereotype, but Cain and Spock certainly don’t. Even David Levinson from Independence Day turns out to be something of a badass in the end.

So why is chess such an effective way to show that a character is smart? Probably because of all the other tropes associated with chess. As one of the oldest and deepest strategy games of all time, chess is thoroughly embedded into our cultural consciousness. Chess motifs are common in all sorts of stories, and the chess master is a significant character archetype. There’s a reason we call the most complicated gambit pileup Xanatos Speed Chess.

Besides all the archetypal reasons for this trope, there are quite a few real-world reasons as well. Playing chess can potentially do all sorts of interesting things to your brain, like stave off Alzheimer’s and improve your concentration and problem-solving skills. All over the world, people associate chess skills with intellectual prowess, and after you’ve played a few games, it’s not hard to see why. According to Carl Sagan, the game requires “strategy, foresight, analytical powers, and the ability to cross-correlate large numbers of variables and learn from experience.” If you’ve got all of those, chances are you’re at least above average.

Of course, this trope can be inverted in some clever and interesting ways. In Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, for example, the ditzy main characters challenge Death to games of Battleship, Clue, Twister … basically, a whole host of non-cerebral games, in lieu of the expected trope. In Foxtrot, the only character who loves chess is the Dad, who is rather dumb compared to his kids (maybe they all got bored of it?). The classic example, though, has got to be Star Wars, where Chewbacca’s emotional impulsiveness is lampshaded over a game of <X> chess:

I haven’t used this trope a whole lot in my own work yet, but I just started work again on The Sword Keeper, an epic fantasy novel where chess tropes are going to be a major part of the story. The mentor figure is something of a chess master, though because he’s a sentient sword he can’t experience or interact with the world except through his telepathic connection with the main character, a simple tavern girl. She knows the basic rules of chess, however, (“chadrak” in this universe) and so one of the ways the sword trains her is through putting her through chess scenarios. Later, it becomes apparent that the story itself is kind of like a game of chess, with the major characters loosely correlating with the different pieces, and the main character as the queen. I’m excited–it’s going to be really cool. 😀

So yeah, this is definitely a trope you’re going to see from me in the future, and not just as a one-scene throwaway either. Stay tuned for more!

New STAR WANDERERS story coming soon!

So last night I finished the 2.0 draft of Star Wanderers: Benefactor (Part VI), and I have to say, it’s pretty good. With the first draft, there were parts of it that worked well, but as a whole it didn’t seem to really cohere together, and I didn’t know why. After getting some helpful feedback from first readers, I think I’ve figured it out and brought it together.

I’ve sent it out to some friends for proofreading, and that should be done before the end of next week. While they’re doing that, I’ll write up the author’s note, figure out the teaser for Reproach (Part VII), and get everything else squared away for publication. With luck, I’ll format the ebooks over the weekend of the 27th and have them up on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords before the end of the month.

I’m really happy with the way this one turned out. It doesn’t have a whole lot of action, but it really gets into the personal conflicts and struggles of the characters. It also explores some of the implications of what it means to live in a culture where the oldest son of nearly every family leaves his homeworld at age 19 to venture across the stars, never to return again. The other stories explore this from the perspective of one of the sons; this one explores that from the perspective of one of the fathers.

As always, if you’d like a free copy of this one, be sure to sign up for my mailing list; I’ll send out a Smashwords coupon code for email subscribers to download it for free. The next one, Reproach, should be out in August/September (hopefully closer to August).