Joe Vasicek

When something you’ve written moves you

So I had an interesting experience today as I was revising Star Wanderers: Benefactor (Part VI), and I’m not sure how to describe it without sounding like “that guy” who gushes far too much about his books. At the risk of being “that guy,” here goes.

As writers, it’s far too easy for us to write something in the heat of a creative passion, only to dismiss it later. Perhaps we’re so afraid of screwing up that we yearn to fall back on the story that’s safe rather than the story that rings true, or perhaps we realize just how much of ourselves we’ve put into it that it scares us to death that someone might actually read it. Too often, something else that’s broken about the story distracts us from the stuff that’s actually good, so we end up throwing it all out together. Our critical minds work so differently from our creative ones that when the fires of creative passion turn to smoldering embers, it’s not unusual to feel like we’ve been left completely naked and need to scramble desperately to cover ourselves.

For that reason, I’ve made myself a rule not to revise a story without first making a set of bullet points, chapter by scene, of what I’m going to do. My critical mind has full domain of that list of bullet points, but I will not let him carve up my story. The list contains a series of instructions for my creative mind, who can actually revise quite well when given a little direction. But when he thinks that the direction is wrong, he’s not afraid to push back.

The revision notes for my books always read like a back-and-forth argument between my critical and creative minds. Once I’m finished writing up the bullet point list of revisions, I turn on track changes and cross them off one by one as I complete them. But whenever I get to a point where my creative mind disagrees, I’ll cross it off and write down the reasons why it’s better to go in a different direction. Some of the more recent notes for Benefactor include:

It’s not as much of an issue as you think.

Eh, the dialog works pretty well.

Already there. Better to keep it subtle.

Why? This is good.

No, it works very well with what’s already here. Don’t change it.

So with that as a preface, I got to a scene in Benefactor today where one of the characters has a major life crisis upon learning that his wife is pregnant. The pregnancy catches him completely by surprise, and makes him wake up and wonder if his life is really heading in the direction that he wants. He feels like he’s stumbling into his future blindly, tripping over his feet without knowing where he’s going, and that frightens him.

I’d made some notes to add some stuff for clarification at the end of the scene, but I must have only been skimming it when I made the revision notes because all of that stuff was already there, and expressed more poignantly than I think I could have done. Basically, the character comes to peace with the life he’s giving up by realizing that he will one day lead his son to follow in his footsteps, just as his own father did with him.

My critical mind completely missed that, because he was only looking for problems that needed to be fixed. But when I read it again today, I was actually kind of shocked that this was something I’d written. I don’t want to say that it’s the best thing that’s ever been written, because certainly I have lots of room for improvement, but the passage really moved me, and I wasn’t expecting that.

So yeah, revisions for Star Wanderers: Benefactor (Part VI) are coming along swimmingly. It might be a bit tough to get the final draft proofread in time for a July release, but I’ve got some friends who might be able to help. Just like I don’t trust my critical mind to meddle with the story, I don’t trust my eyeballs to catch all the typos and grammatical errors. But I think that the substantive revisions will be finished by Tuesday, and after that, it’s time to get the publishing wheels grinding.

In the meantime, I was playing around with The Gimp today, and I came up with a cover for Star Wanderers: Reproach (Part VII). Check it out!

SW-VII Reproach (cover) The image is the Orion Nebula, as imaged by the Spitzer Space Telescope. You can find the original here.

I thought it was fitting, considering how Reproach is a parallel novella to Sacrifice, and Sacrifice also features an image of the Orion Nebula on the cover. But the important thing is just that it looks cool and is sufficiently eye-catching.

So that’s about it. I’ve got a lot of heavy revisions to do tomorrow, but even my critical mind agrees that chapters 4 and 5 are actually pretty good. There’s at least one scene missing and a couple of other things that need to be added, but I’m actually looking forward to writing those. Also, a couple of characters need some more fleshing out, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. The Tuesday deadline is quite doable.

Have a good night, and thanks as always for reading!

Trope Tuesday: Knight Templar

For this one, I’m going to pull the description straight from tvtropes itself, since the whole page is pretty good:

Sometimes, the Forces of Light and Goodness get too hardcore. In a deadly combination of Well-Intentioned Extremist, The Fundamentalist and, generally speaking, not so differ ent, they get blinded by themselves and their ideals, and this extreme becomes tyrannical sociopathy.

Usually, the Knight Templar’s primary step (or objective) to his perceived “utopia” is to get rid of that pesky “free will” thing that is the cause of crime and evil. Many Knight Templar types are utterly merciless in dealing with those whom they consider evil, and are prone to consider all crimes to be equal. The lightest offenses are met with Draconian punishments such as full imprisonment, death, brainwashing, or eternal torture.

It’s important to note that despite being villains/villainous within the context of the story, Knights Templar believe fully that they are on the side of righteousness and draw strength from that, and that their opponents are not. Trying to reason with one isn’t much good either, because many Knight Templar types believe that if you’re not with them, you’re against them. Invoking actual goodness and decency will have no effect, save for making Knights Templar demonize your cause as the work of the Devil. After all, they are certain that their own cause is just and noble, and anyone who stands in the way is a deluded fool at best.

Basically, this is what happens when the villain not only believes that he is the hero of the story, but a heroic hero. It’s not himself he’s fighting for, but his cause–and because the righteousness of his cause is unassailable, anything that stands in the way of achieving it must be destroyed.

The name of the trope comes from the Knights Templar, the medieval military order established during the Crusades to maintain European dominance in the Middle East. They were an elite fighting force that became associated with many of the atrocities of the Crusades. When Saladin conquered the Kingdom of Jerusalem, he was careful to avoid civilian casualties but took no prisoners among the Templars and Hospitaliers.

Of all the story tropes I’ve studied, this one reflects reality more accurately than most. When people believe unquestioningly that they’re right, they tend to stop listening to anyone who disagrees with them. They turn the space around them into an echo chamber, like a one-sided Facebook feed or a narrow message board community. When their beliefs reach a certain degree of fervency, they start to become angry not only with those who disagree, but with those who fail to agree with or support them. Once their cause compels them to action, it doesn’t take long for the ends to justify the means. Give them a little power, and you’ve got yourself a real life Knight Templar.

It’s precisely because this trope so closely reflects reality that it’s one of the better ways to create motivations for the villain. It’s not enough to want to take over the world, you’ve got to have some reason to take it over–and what better reason than a cause you firmly believe in? Assuming, of course, that the cause is believable–it’s still quite easy to botch things in the execution.

This is precisely the sort of thing Gandalf was trying to avoid when he refused to take the ring:

Understand. I would use this ring out of a desire to do good. But through me, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine!

Galadriel and Faramir refused the ring for similar reasons. Boromir succumbed to the temptation, but repented for it by giving his life to defend the hobbits against the attack of Saruman’s Uruk-Hai.

In Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, this is also a recurring trope. It’s the main motivation behind Razalgul in Batman Begins, and describes Harvey Dent’s face-heel turn as he transforms from Gotham’s white knight into Two Face. Come to think of it, it seems that the superhero genre in general is teeming with this trope.

There aren’t very many true Knights Templar in my own books, but I’m writing a fantasy series that should feature a few of them. In The Sword Keeper, a brotherhood of sentient swords has passed on the fighting skills of generations of warriors, enabling their bearers to unite the world into a peaceful empire. Then, one by one, the swords go insane, driving their bearers insane with them. It all starts when one of them goes Templar, and ends when all the swords are lost or destroyed … all, that is, except the one whom the hero of prophecy will take up to save the world. And that hero happens to be a backwoods tavern wench who isn’t even strong enough to lift it, much less wield it in battle.

So yeah, even though this isn’t a trope that I’ve played with much, it’s one that really irks me in real life, so that probably means you’ll be seeing it soon my own fiction. If you have any other thoughts or examples to share, please be sure to drop a comment. I’d be very much interested to hear your thoughts on this one.

Image source: Templar Knight in Battle Dress

It’s all there (mostly), just out of order

So I picked up the rough draft of Star Wanderers: Benefactor (Part VI) this week and started making notes for the revision. It turns out that most of the scenes after the first chapter are jumbled and out of order.

This is good, because it means that I don’t have to toss it out and write it from scratch. All I have to do is figure out the right order, rework the transitions, and then maybe add a couple of scenes to smooth things over. Not too difficult, and it should turn this story around from something’s-broken-and-I-don’t-know-what to dang-this-is-awesomesauce.

It’s not so good, though, because it means I’m going to have a real struggle over the next couple of weeks to get at the core essence of this story and draw it out. That’s always tough, when I don’t get it on the first pass.

To be honest, I’ve kind of been avoiding this story for the last couple of months. When I finished the rough draft and put it on the back burner, I had the sense that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. That’s always the worst. Now that I know, it’s just a matter of doing the work. But that’s also daunting, because it’s like I’m standing at the base of a mountain looking up. At least the climb itself is invigorating, so once I get started, it should be pretty straightforward.

Benefactor takes the Star Wanderers series in a bit of a different direction, focusing on Jakob (Mariya’s father) and his struggle to provide for his family when all he’s ever really been is a star wanderer. As an outworlder, he’s always had a certain amount of pride and independence, but as a starbound refugee with a family to look after, that only gets in the way. When he married Salome and settled down, it seemed like they had a bright future, but now he’s trapped in a life he never wanted, and the love he once shared with his wife has grown cold.

Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter, which probably won’t change much in the final draft:

Jakob never felt more bone-weary than when he came off of a twelve-hour shift at the Oriana Station dockyards. His feet ached and his back groaned with pain, even in the low gravity of the tram as it raced from the hub to the rimside habs. As usually, the narrow car was crammed like a vacuum pack, every seat occupied with the hot and sweaty bodies of the other workers. He glanced out the window to catch a glimpse of the stars, but an advertisement for a synthetic protein formula filled the holographic windowpane.

My life is a prison, he thought to himself—silently, as always. It’s a prison of my own making, but it’s a prison nonetheless.

The twelve hour shifts had started only a standard week ago, but already it felt like months. A Gaian Imperial battle group had just arrived from the Coreward Stars, panicking some and causing a lot more work for others. Jakob didn’t have much time to follow interstellar politics, but he knew it meant longer work shifts for the foreseeable future. Which really wasn’t so bad, except that the overtime pay would barely keep the family above water, without paying off any of their debts.

From the quadrant tram station, he took an elevator to the slums on the lowest level. This was always the worst part: getting used to the slightly heavier gravity, after spending so much time in null-gee at the hub. He shuffled down the rimside corridor, barely lifting his feet off the floor. The walls were drab and gray, but spotlessly clean. That was something to say about the immigrant community—they might be poor, but they weren’t dirty.

The pungent odor of Deltan cooking spices met his nose the moment the door hissed open. That would be his mother-in-law, fixing dinner. He stepped inside and dropped his work boots on the floormat, waking his sister-in-law’s baby in the living room. He cringed from the high-pitched wailing almost as much as he did from the tongue-lashing he expected to get for it. But what did it matter? Ignoring the baby’s cries, he trudged off toward the bathroom for a much needed shower.

“Oh, hi Dad!”

His daughter Mariya bounded down the hallway, her black hair bobbing with every step. The bright smile on her sixteen year old face cut through his dark mood, at least momentarily. She gave him a great big hug, and he returned it with a grunt.

“Guess what?” she said, her eyes lit with excitement. “I finally found someone to rent out the spare room to!”

Jakob raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yeah! A couple from Delta Oriana—Megiddo Station, in fact. At least, the girl is from there. Her husband is out working on his ship—he’s a star wanderer, see—but she’s out in the living room right now, talking with Aunt Giuli. Do you want to meet her?”

Her words passed over him like a flurry of raw, unprocessed data. He focused on the important parts and disregarded the rest.

“How long are they going to stay?”

“Oh, not long. They just need a place to stay for a couple weeks until they’ve refitted their ship. Apparently, they—”

“How much are you going to charge them?”

So yeah, it’s a new direction from the previous books, but it’s got a lot of the same characters and ties in quite well with Fidelity, I think. Also, it expands the universe and shows some other aspects of what life is like for star wanderers and outworlders in general.

It’s going to be to be a lot of work making sure I get this one right, but it’s a short novella, so it shouldn’t take too long. Barring no unforeseen complications, I should still be able to get it out before the end of the month. The next two books, Reproach and Deliverance, should be ready soon after that.

In the meantime, I’d better get some shuteye so I can wake up early and work full steam on this book tomorrow. Gnight!

Why I love writing novellas

For the first half of this year, almost every project I’ve worked on (with the exception of an unfinished short novel) has been a novella. It’s not a form I was familiar with when I first started writing, but I’ve come to enjoy it immensely, and look forward to writing much more in the future.

The technical definition of a novella is pretty simple, at least according to SFWA. It mainly has to do with word length:

Novel — 40,000 words or more
Novella — 17,500–39,999 words
Novelette — 7,500–17,499 words
Short Story — 7,499 words or fewer

That one simple distinction leads to a host of other differences, though, since words and story length are so crucial to the different types of stories you can tell.

Short stories tend to be more situational. A good short story writer (which I am not) can use the form to explore all sorts of other story elements, but there’s always something of a tradeoff. A good short story will have strong characterization but a simplistic or nonexistent plot, or center around a compelling concept but not provide an immersive setting. It’s a very minimalistic form–there’s always something of a sacrifice.

A good short story can pack a real punch, but it doesn’t really immerse you in another world. It might resonate for a long time after you read it, but you finish it almost as soon as you start it. It’s a form that I enjoy in audio form, but don’t actually read very much. It’s great for the commute or a road trip, but not so great when I’m curled up in the lovesack looking to get lost in a book.

That’s just me, at least. And as for writing them, I need a lot more practice before I have anything useful to say on that.

With novels, it’s exactly the opposite. They are so expansive that they tend to have multiple viewpoints, subplots, character arcs, and setting elements all woven together in one sprawling whole. There are differences, of course, between a 200k word fantasy epic and a short 60k word thriller, but complexity is an important part of the form. It’s not enough to have an interesting situation, or a single mind-blowing idea–you have to have several, and they have to work together.

When done well, the effect can be tremendous. A good novel is much more than just the sum of its parts, and the climactic moments when everything comes together can be truly spectacular. They’re incredibly immersive, too–I’m pretty sure that some of my childhood memories are things that never happened except in the pages of a book.

But sometimes, it can be hard to get into a novel, either because it starts off slow or because from the very beginning it’s so complex. Also, it requires much more of an investment, especially in time. I can’t tell you how many novels I’ve checked out from the library, only to return a few weeks later with a hefty overdue fine on my account–not because I didn’t like them, but because I just couldn’t find the time to finish.

In terms of writing, all of that storytelling complexity can make the task positively gargantuan. It depends on the length of the novel, of course, but the longer it gets, the harder it is to keep everything straight. And when something is off and the story just doesn’t seem to be coming together, it can be incredibly difficult to figure out exactly what is broken. Even if it’s small, or something that’s easy to fix, you can easily find yourself revising in circles.

The novella falls more or less in the “Goldilocks” zone of these other forms. It’s long enough to give you the space you need to play with things on a novelistic scale, but short enough that you don’t have to worry about bringing all that complexity to the page.

Generally, I’ve found that there isn’t much of a difference between novellas and novelettes. I’ve dabbled with both, and found that the difference has more to do with brevity and less to do with actual structure or form. A well-written novelette can do all (or at least most) of the things a novella can do, just in a slightly more economical fashion. And of course, the differences in all of these forms is subjective and fuzzy. Your experience could very well be different.

But personally, I find novellas (and novelettes) much more fun to write because it allows me, sometimes even forces me, to get a lot more intimate with my characters and their individual points of view. A situation or idea alone is not enough to carry the story for the required length, but exploring multiple viewpoints (or at least more than two) tends to push the story too far. Consequently, I find myself really diving into my characters and trying to see things from their perspective.

It’s similar with novels, but without all the other subplots or character arcs, there are fewer distractions–and fewer ways to screw up. I can stay in the character’s head without having to break out to fix something else. Also, my first drafts tend to be a lot cleaner, with less need for massive substantial revisions. And even if the draft is irredeemable, I can toss it out and rewrite from scratch with a lot less pain, since it’s only 30k or 40k words.

So yeah, I really love writing novellas, which is something that would have surprised me only three or four years ago. There aren’t a whole lot of traditional markets to sell them to, but that doesn’t matter because they’re perfect for ebooks and self-publishing. It’s also a lot easier to take a loss on a perma-free novella than it is on a full-length novel.

I’ve found that I can write a good first draft of a novella in anywhere between two and six weeks. I wish I could do it quicker, but I’m not a very fast writer, so thirty days is a pretty good cap for a deadline. And because they’re shorter, they tend to be quicker to revise, and easier to hand off to alpha readers who will give you a good turn-around time for feedback.

For those of you who prefer more long-form stories, don’t worry–I haven’t given up on writing novels. In fact, I’ve got a half-finished epic fantasy novel that I’ll probably work on next, once Star Wanderers: Benefactor (Part VI) has gone through a major revision pass. But if you enjoy reading novellas as much as I enjoy writing them, then you’ve got a treat, because I’ve got a bunch of Star Wanderers novellas that will be coming out in the next few months!

And after that? Who knows …

I will finish this novella tomorrow, I SWEAR.

I was going to finish it two weeks ago. I really was. But then, things were slow for a while as I adjusted to the new swing-shift job, and it wasn’t looking like I could do it, so I pushed the deadline back a week and went hiking instead. No worries.

Then, the internet exploded and I got distracted. So no book Saturday. No worries, I told myself. I’ll just finish it on Monday and go for another hike on Tuesday, my day off.

So. Went grocery shopping on Monday, putzed around, wrote a bit, but didn’t really finish it. I don’t know why. Maybe I was still distracted. Still, I figured I’d just call off the hike and finish it the next day. Since it was supposed to be my day off, I could cook a nice batch of koshary too.

Tuesday, I cooked a nice batch of koshary, had some friends over, life was good, sat down to write … and got a call from my supervisor (who I’ve seen exactly once) that the regular employees have the 4th of July off, so could I please come in and work?

AAARGH!!!!

Did I mention that it’s been a hundred degrees here recently? I’ve been sleeping practically naked and still sweating like crazy. That’s probably more than you wanted to know, but I mention it only because I’ve been getting up progressively later. Though the smart thing, of course, would be to wake up earlier when it’s still somewhat cool outside …

So anyways, Wednesday rolls around, and I get some good writing in. I start the final chapter, with only two more scenes to go before it’s finished. But it’s my sister’s birthday tomorrow, and I ought to stop by and say hi, which of course turns into a youtube party and playing with my nephew. Also, my tomatoes are dying, so I really should pick up some fertilizer and see what I can do to revive them, but of course I don’t know hardly anything about fertilizer so it takes forever to find something that might actually do the trick. Also, Institute is on Wednesdays, and I really should attend that more often (but I can’t, because of the job), so I go to that for a few hours. Good times, meet some new people and chat up with friends, head back to my apartment but then the guy two doors down asks if I want to join him and a couple of girls for a game of cards, and since I really don’t have much of a social life (again, because of the job), I say yes and end up hanging out with them until midnight.

So tomorrow is the 4th of July. There’s all sorts of stuff going on, including a family barbecue, the fair downtown, my sister’s birthday, my Mom coming into town, but #^$%@^#%^#@ I will finish this book!!!!1!!1!!! Even if it means getting up at 7am, which it probably will.

And if I end up sleeping in again … no, that totally isn’t going to happen. And it’s not going to happen because I’m going to bed RIGHT NOW.

Trope Tuesday: Gone Horribly Wrong

For this week’s Trope Tuesday post, I’ve invited a guest blogger to come on and discuss one of the tropes in his most recent book. Andrew Saxsma is the author of Lonely Moon, a space opera / horror novel. I haven’t read it yet so I can’t say much about it, but it looks interesting, and I’m a sucker for space opera. So without further ado, here we go!

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This trope is all about Science gone horribly, sometimes violently wrong. Morality’s been thrown out of the window, compromised in favor of delicious success. Maybe the Mad Scientist played God; maybe mankind has accidentally awakened a Sleeping Giant.

This trope has many faces and masks and plays out in many different ways. In all cases, ethics are thrown to the wolves, and the big payoff is not as much a payoff as it is a new impeding doom the hero must now overcome.

Classically, this trope is mostly derived, if not invented, by Mary Shelley in her novel Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein’s obsession leads him to create what would eventually become the bane of his very existence. He unwittingly unleashes the mad dog from its dormant cage and makes it his mission to put it down. You might also recognize this trope from Deep Blue Sea, where scientists genetically enhance sharks for cancer research, but the predators get loose and begin eating their masters.

The key element is the backfire, the unforeseen consequence. It’s born of an innate character flaw, the inability to see beyond one’s good intentions. The character has a vision of a greater good in sight–to cheat death, to cure cancer. They’re so focused they never stop to think: was it worth it? Is this a line we should cross?

To make matters worse, this trope can become complicated when one’s intentions are infused with emotions. A dead loved one, revenge, a preemptive strike. Sometimes the choice is long decided before it is made.

In my book, Lonely Moon, the hero, Captain Hane, has a crisis of the monster. He faces a morally weighted fork in the road. Does he open a forbidden gate, opening our galaxy to a potentially devastating entity in an attempt to save us from an equally evil threat, or does he choose the path of uncertainty in hopes of finding a safer, less dangerous option?

Gone Horribly Wrong is a particularly fun trope to play with from a writer’s aspect, and I’m not sure if it’s a one and done. I plan on playing with this one again in the future.

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Thanks, Andrew. I think the Rule of Drama is one of the keys to doing this trope well. Never pass up an opportunity to make things go wrong for your characters. And if the problems are of their own making, that makes it all the juicier, especially when it adds the internal conflict of knowing that they’re the ones to blame. We all love to watch a train wreck, especially in the world of fiction.

What do you guys think of bringing on more guest bloggers for the Trope Tuesday posts? It’s something I’ve done occasionally in the past, but I’m thinking of doing it much more in the future. I think it could be interesting to get some different points of view besides my own, and maybe introduce you guys to some new authors you might like. Maybe it’s something I could rotate every other week.

If you’re looking for the post I took down yesterday…

If there's anything I've learned in the past few days, it's that any SF&F writer w a social agenda is toxic (even if I agree w their views).

— Joe Vasicek (@onelowerlight) July 1, 2013

That is all.

July Smashwords sale–all books 50% off!

Every summer, Smashwords does a sale in which authors can enroll their books. This year, I’ve enrolled all of mine at 50% off, so all of them are under $2.50. Check it out!

Genesis Earth
A boy and a girl on a voyage to an alien star.
Price: ~~$4.95~~ $2.48

Bringing Stella Home
He’ll go to the ends of the galaxy to save his brother and sister.
Price: ~~$4.95~~ $2.48

Desert Stars
A tale of adventure and romance from the fringes of an interstellar empire that has forgotten its holiest legend: the story of Earth.
Price: ~~$4.95~~ $2.48

Stars of Blood and Glory
The only hope for the last free stars now lies on the path of blood and glory.
Price: ~~$4.95~~ $2.48

Star Wanderers: The Jeremiah Chronicles (I-IV)
He wanders the stars in search of a home. Instead, he got a girl without one.
Price: ~~$4.99~~ $2.49

Star Wanderers: Fidelity (Part II)
Is fidelity worth the price of freedom? Can love take root beyond the stars?
Price: ~~$.99~~ free!

Star Wanderers: Sacrifice (Part III)
She gave up everything to wander the stars with him. Now, he must do the same.
Price: ~~$2.99~~ $1.49

Star Wanderers: Homeworld (Part IV)
They’ve finally found a world to call home. But first, they have to fight for it.
Price: ~~$2.99~~ $1.49

Star Wanderers: Dreamweaver (Part V)
He saved her from death, but to save him, she must command the power of dreams.
Price: ~~$2.99~~ $1.49

Journey to Jordan
Travels of a young Mormon writer to Jordan, Egypt, and the Holy Land.
Price: ~~$2.99~~ $1.49

Decision LZ1527
A boy, a girl, and a whole crew of matchmakers.
Price: ~~$.99~~ free!

One of the great things about Smashwords is that these prices are the same throughout the world–no extra surcharge for international sales. So if you live outside the United States and don’t have a US bank account, these are the best prices you’re going to find.

These books will remain 50% off on Smashwords through the month of July. Just use the coupon code SSW50 to get the discount. Smashwords does accept Paypal, so you don’t have to sign up for an account or share your credit card information to purchase.

If you’ve been meaning to check out some of these books but haven’t gotten around to it, this is a great way to try them out. And if you want to sample them first, the first 15% to 25% is available on each book’s Smashword’s page.

Enjoy! 😀

Thoughts on the recent drama in the SF&F community

NOTE: I’ve since changed my views and retracted many of the things I said in this blog post. You can find a link to the retraction here.

Oh, boy, has there been a lot of drama in the science fiction & fantasy community recently. From the trouble with the SFWA bulletin to the revelation of accusations of serial sexual harassment by a senior editor at Tor, it seems like the whole community (or at least, the part that sees itself as part of a wider community) is up in arms. And while a lot of the response has been balanced and civil, I’ve also seen some things that I find troubling.

For the benefit of the doubt, let me just say that I support the people who are coming forward with stories of harassment and abuse. It’s clear that this is a problem, and that it needs to be addressed in a way that brings about real change. Also, I agree that the community has a history of demeaning or undervaluing the women within it, making it a lot more difficult for female writers to earn the same level of respect as their male counterparts. That, too, needs to change.

But guys … can’t we get along? Can’t we come together and get back to what this community is really about–sharing and telling good, fun stories?

Don’t get me wrong–I’m not trying to minimize any of the problems causing this drama. They need to be fixed, and it’s going to take time to do so. But are they going to become the focus of everything we talk about, or are we going to turn back to the things that unite us, and pull together as a stronger and better community than we were to start out with?

Right now, I get the impression that the majority of members who are active in the SF&F community mean well and want it to be a welcoming space. They may have their faults, but they’re working on them. And most of their faults are not causing direct harm to others.

Then there’s a small but outspoken minority who wants change, wants it now, and wants it so badly that they see problems everywhere. Many of them have legitimate concerns, and people from the less outspoken majority are coming out and confirming that. But many of them are dangerously overzealous–and since we have in this community some of the most imaginative minds in the world, it doesn’t take much for people to start projecting onto people they disagree with, or reading things into comments that aren’t actually there, or seeing those who question or disagree as The Enemy.

I cannot control how others perceive me. I cannot speak without risking that someone is going to misconstrue my intent and feel “silenced,” or “afraid,” or whatever. I can reach out to people privately, though, so if you feel like I’m part of the problem, please contact me and let me know.

This whole thing reminds me of my time from ’03 to ’05 as a Mormon missionary. Oh boy, was there drama. Imagine a couple hundred sexually repressed, 19-21 year-old boys (and a couple dozen young women) in a rigidly structured environment, with tremendous emotional pressures and very little direct supervision. There was drama, and I hated it. The best times on my mission were when I never saw anyone but my companion (Mormon missionaries live and work together in pairs) and maybe the four or six other members of the district once a week or so.

But the way things are playing out right now, I wonder if the outspoken minority is so determined to reshape the SF&F community in their own image that they’re tearing it apart. Orson Scott Card, for example, has been tarred and feathered multiple times and thrown out of the community on a rail. And yet, Ender’s Game is still one of the best (and bestselling) science fiction books ever written. Mike Resnick, for all his chauvinism, has written a lot of really good books and stories too. Jim Frenkel, for all his creepiness, has been instrumental in bringing us great books from Tor.

Does this excuse their faults? Of course not. But guys, these authors and editors aren’t The Enemy–they’re part of the community just as much as you are. And you deal with offenders within the community differently than you do with offenders who are not.

A lot of people are congratulating themselves and saying that we’re doing a good job rooting out these problems and dealing with them in an open and reasonable way. And to an extent, I think that’s true. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from all this drama, it’s that the SF&F community is a lot more fractious than I’d previously realized, and that the ties that bind us really aren’t that strong at all. And that makes me wonder if it’s better just to forget the whole thing–forget the conventions, forget SFWA, forget the major blogs–and just do my own thing independently of everyone else.

And honestly, it would appear that a large number (perhaps even a majority) of SF&F writers are doing just that, especially the self-published ones who don’t really care about courting publishers or winning awards. For these guys, it’s all about the readers–and isn’t that the way it should be?

No new books this month, but the next few should be stacked.

I’m working on Star Wanderers: Deliverance (Part VIII) right now, and it’s coming along swimmingly. Where the other novellas are pretty much character dramas in a space opera setting, this one is more space adventure with the character / relationship stuff under the surface. It’s all about Mariya and Lucca, how they meet and end up falling for each other in some very extreme circumstances. I think they crash-land on Zarmina in chapter 3, and things just get crazier from there. Today, I wrote a scene with some giant reptilian bird-monsters, and I think I pounded out 1,000 words in 20 minutes.

So yeah, I’m having a lot of fun with that. The next one I’m going to publish, though, is Benefactor (Part VI), and I still have to do a lot of revisions on that one. So it probably won’t be out until next month sometime, probably closer to August–I want to make sure it’s as good as I can make it. But since the first draft of Reproach (Part VII) is already finished, it (hopefully) shouldn’t be much longer than that for it to come out, maybe in August. And Deliverance should come out soon after that.

For now, my goal is to finish Deliverance this week, and start the revisions for Benefactor immediately after that. It would be awesome to get these books out in July > August > September, though it might be more like July > September > October. Definitely, I’ll have Part VIII out before the holidays, perhaps even Part IX or X as well.

In the meantime, I just started typesetting the print edition of Stars of Blood and Glory and set Desert Stars and Genesis Earth for expanded distribution through CreateSpace. There’s been some interesting developments in print-on-demand in the past few months, which may make it possible to get my books in bookstores through that venue. I still need to do some research on that end, but I do want to get the print versions out there at least. My first priority, though, is definitely writing.

There’s been a great deal of interest in my Star Wanderers ebooks, not at blockbuster levels but certainly more than I was expecting. And it’s growing, too–June is already my best month ever sales-wise, and most of the reviews have been quite positive. If the momentum keeps up with the next few books in the series, I might (might!) be able to go full-time before the end of the year. Worldcon 2013 is definitely looking like a possibility, and if I can find some friends to room and/or drive down with, chances are good that I’ll be going.

So yeah, thanks for all your support and interest! This has been my dream for a long, long time, so it’s really gratifying to see it finally within my grasp. I definitely don’t take it for granted, so I will do all I can to write more and better stories for you guys. My goal is to write more than a hundred novels & novellas, and I’m already on track to do so!

I’ll leave you with this video from Georgia, which I still miss almost every day. Man, I need to find another place that I can fall in love with as much as I did with that country. A small part of me wants to say “screw it all” and go back … in any case, here’s the video:

Naxvamdis!