Joe Vasicek

The Obligatory After-Conference Marriage Post

So in case you didn’t know, General Conference was this past weekend. General Conference is this huge semi- annual conference broadcast live from Salt Lake City, where the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ talk on a number of topics and issues relevant to the church. This year, one of the main recurring themes was the need for young singles, especially men, to get married and settle down.

In a church where the holiest sacrament is temple marriage, where husband, wife, and children are considered sealed to each other “for time and all eternity,” this emphasis on marriage shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. To be honest, I was more amused than anything; just a couple days before, I’d posted a comment on my sister’s blog mentioning how apathetic I am right now about dating and getting married. Youch.

So anyhow, with my whole family nagging me about this–all of whom are married or engaged, by the way–I suppose I ought to give my thoughts on the subject.

This week’s Writing Excuses podcast was on writing romance, and while I found it extremely helpful in my own writing, I also found the points interesting as a young single adult. According to Sarah Eden, a regency romance writer who was a guest in this episode, in order for a romance in a book to work, the characters must:

1) fulfill a need in each other,
2) create a relationship that has emotional resonance, and
3) be something for each other that no-one else can be.

Probably the biggest reason I’m not married right now (foregoing the whole “haven’t met the right person yet” question, which is valid) is because I just don’t feel like I have a need that isn’t being fulfilled. That probably means I’m in a comfort zone, which is a bad thing, but that’s the truth.

It’s not that I’m not attracted to a fair number of women, because I definitely am. It’s just that for most of the women in my life right now, when I ask myself “do I have a real, hungering need for her companionship?” the answer is “no.”

There have been a couple of times in my life where that wasn’t the case–where I felt infatuated with a girl and really, honestly felt that she was or could be something that no one else could be. Long story short, for various reasons (some of which I still don’t understand), it never worked out. Sometimes it was me, sometimes it was her, and now most of my old crushes are happily married…to other people.

And as for why I’m not looking more actively, I could go on a(nother) long rant about why the Utah dating scene really, really sucks for a person like me (doesn’t fit the cookie cutter mold, doesn’t have a secure financial future, isn’t ridiculously attractive, etc etc), but all that is beside the point.

I’ve never really seen the point in dating as a way to get to know people, since first dates are generally awkward and fake, but I’m also really bad at transitioning from friendship to something more than that. So in other words, the advice “go on more dates” helps me about as much as telling someone with clinical depression that they should just “be happy.”

Not that I’m depressed because I’m single. I’m actually okay with it. The thing I’m wondering, though, is whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing?

I should probably force myself to go out more often, or to at least try to connect with more eligible young women and make them a part of my life somehow. And maybe another problem is that I’ve never really seen myself as a married person–though I doubt it, because most of my married friends have jumped into it without really knowing what life is like on the other side.

But the point is, I need to take some time and figure out how to make getting married a priority. And really, that’s the only thing I can say for sure.

Q1 report, 2011

So in terms of writing, this was a pretty decent quarter. Nothing too prolific, but definitely making progress on my writing goals for 2011, which include:

1) finish at least two polished novels,
2) finish at least three new rough drafts,
3) start at least four major new projects.

The spike in the graph from the beginning of the month is from the final revision of Bringing Stella Home, which was pretty much just a final polish. After that was finished, I had a little difficulty picking up the next project, but once I did, I was able to be pretty consistent.

In mid-January, I picked up Worlds Away from Home and worked on that until the beginning of March. This was a pretty huge overhaul, especially for the end, but it still needs a lot of work. Basically, this draft was just to get it to the point where I could send it out to my first readers without being eternally ashamed.

After finishing WAFH 2.1 in the beginning of March, I launched right back into the sequel for BSH, Into the Nebulous Deep. I figured it would be good to have the sequel in hand, in case I decided to go indie with BSH, as well as to practice writing sequels.

All throughout March, the writing was surprisingly steady, but recently things have kind of gone off kilter. Maybe it’s all the increased distractions (job interviews, EPIK application, the TEFL course, other random crap), or maybe it’s just that I’ve become less disciplined, but I don’t feel like I’ve been writing very consistently in the last little while. And the graph doesn’t really show that, because I recently started a few other projects which have sort of taken the place of ITND.

The first of these is currently untitled, but it takes place in a post-apocalyptic version of our world which I’ve code named “The Blight.” I don’t want to say much about it, but it’s REALLY REALLY REALLY cool…trust me. Think lone man, wandering the ruins of civilization two hundred years after its fall, trying to make a life for himself when everyone else around him dies at a ridiculously early age because of this blight that has swept across all of humanity.

I’m having a TON of fun building this world, and the story is practically writing itself. In the interest of finishing what I start, though, I’m going to sideline it until ITND is completely finished (which should be by the end of April, inshallah…).

The other project is a novella version of BSH, basically taking just Stella’s viewpoints and telling the story of her capture and eventual ascension to the Hameji throne. This project shouldn’t be too hard–basically, I’m just frankensteining it from BSH, with a few tweaks. My main reason for writing it is to have a novella-length work that I can release as an ebook, possibly to generate interest in Bringing Stella Home.

Speaking of which, in March I released a couple of short stories as ebooks on Amazon. It’s a little early to gauge how well they’re doing, but I’m learning a lot from the experience, and the sales are gradually trickling in. Once I release a few more works and start promoting them, I expect the sales will grow.

So in the last three months, I’ve finished one polished novel (Bringing Stella Home), started two new projects (Sholpan and untitled (the blight)), and made progress on polishing Worlds Away from Home. I wrote / revised through 170k words, about 30k to 50k of which were all new material. I also ventured into indie publishing and released two short stories on Amazon, which are earning me a buck or two each week.

Overall, it hasn’t been as prolific as other quarters, but it’s not been too bad either. Now to finish ITND and make some progress on that freaking nashostomo…

Decision LZ1527 is now live

My second indie published short story, “Decision LZ1527,” is now available for $.99 from Amazon. This is the same story that was published in the December 2009 issue of Leading Edge. I’ve also included a short author’s note at the end, explaining the writing process from idea to publication.

As with “Memoirs of a Snowflake,” the epublishing process wasn’t that complicated. The story was short enough that I didn’t feel a need for a table of contents, and Amazon reformatted the uploaded .doc file without any problems.

The biggest difference with this one was that I contacted the artist from the December issue and bought the rights to use the art. It cost a bit, but not much more than what Leading Edge paid for the story, so overall I haven’t taken much of a loss.

I wrote “Decision LZ1527” back in 2006, when I was a sophomore in college trying to navigate the bizarre dating world of BYU. It’s about a boy trying to find the courage to ask out his secret crush, as told from the point of view of the little men inside his head, piloting him like some kind of spaceship.

So yeah, I hope you check it out and enjoy it! If you don’t have a Kindle, Amazon has a number of free apps that will allow you to read it on just about any platform (including your computer). And if you haven’t already picked up “Memoirs of a Snowflake,” you can get it for $.99 too.

I’ll do an update in a week or two about my indie publishing venture, but so far it’s been pretty fun! Hopefully, by putting out these stories, I’ll be able to share them with more people than would have read them otherwise. So thanks, and I hope you enjoy!

NaShoStoMo

So Dan Wells is taking a page from NaNoWriMo and starting his own writing thing for April, NaShoStoMo, aka National Short Story Month. The rules are as follows:

You must write 30 all new short stories between April 1st and April 30th.
Each story must have a distinct beginning, middle, and end.
Each story must be at least 200 words.
You may write more than one story per day to make up for lost days.

It seems like an awesome idea, and I’m going to try it. I’m not much of a short story writer, but I wish I were, because there are some really awesome short stories out there that I admire–like Endosymbiont, quite possibly the best singularity story that I have ever read (and available for free from Escape Pod). Novels and short stories are different arts, but they’re both forms of storytelling, so I figure that no matter what happens I’ll learn something from it.

I’m not sure how many of these stories will take place in universes that I’ve already built, but probably a good number of them will. I have a few characters from Bringing Stella Home that I would like to do little sketches on, possibly for a later novel, and some things I’d like to do in the worlds I’ve already created.

At the same time, though, I’ve got some crazy ideas for standalone stuff that I’d like to play with, like a crazy awesome dream I had last night that made me lie awake just thinking about it for almost an hour. It was insane...but I guess you had to be there.

In unrelated news, my writer friend Charlie got me a thing of sparkling grape juice, for me to open when I celebrate my first major publishing deal (though I suspect another motivation was to make me look like a wino while walking around on BYU campus).

Honestly, I was quite surprised–thanks! I’ll use it to christen my first yacht that I buy from my multimillion dollar first deal, hehe.

Oh, and in other totally unrelated news, my other writer friend Laura started a blog. So go check it out!

ABNA reviews of Genesis Earth

Today I checked up on my entry for the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, and saw that it garnered a couple of very encouraging reviews!

Here’s the first one:

ABNA Expert Reviewer

What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?

I enjoyed the background of this excerpt immensely. The futuristic technology like images projected onto walls, transparent floors, milky skies, cryofreeze.

What aspect needs the most work?

I would avoid using the term “ground zero” as it has such a close association with 9/11.

The idea of generating a wormhole was popularized with Star Trek’s Deep Space 9 series, so this is not an entirely original idea. What is going to set this book apart from existing media on this idea?

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?

This is a strong piece of work. Nicely edited. While the idea of going through a wormhole to explore new worlds is not an original idea, I am curious what this young explorer will find out there? And what will he find within himself and his co-explorer when they wake from cryofreeze? There is potential here.

Not bad! I’m glad to see the reviewer feels that the story is well edited–I certainly spent a lot of time revising it, and it looks like that’s paid off. As for the criticism about the wormhole, I’m not too worried about that, since it’s more background information for the story than a central element in the story itself.

Here’s the second one:

ABNA Expert Reviewer

What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?

The idea of space travel and finding a ‘new Earth’ isn’t a new one. For years Sci-Fi authors have written about the non-sustainability of our planet, of the melting ice caps, the over population and crowding. This author has taken that concept and twisted it into something more unique and young. Our hero is a 17 year old who went on to school at 14 to become a Planetologist. You see his family and friends live in deep space, they’re trying to create an artificial worm hole and find a new Earth. The younger take on how Michael feels trapped both by his parents and the ghost of Earth is fantastic. I love the author’s voice through Michael on deep space, cryogenics and alien life form.

What aspect needs the most work?

The one thing to me that stood out was that it seemed rushed. I think the author knew this and that was why the author even addressed it in the excerpt through Michael and his mentor as he prepares to leave. They just found the other side of the worm hole, there might be alien life, and they send two people within a couple days into the wormhole, knowing they won’t be back for 80 years. I just wish there was a more valid reason then Earth people (who are light years away) would try to send the military first. There has to be away of not making it seem so pushed and rushed.

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?

Overall this story got me; I really want to know when the full book comes out (or if it’s already out) and read the rest. What about Terra who has a slight sway to schizophrenia? Or the fact that 80 years is a long time and anything can happen, will there be alien life? Is it just another dimension and time? The hook was there and reeling me in trying to get me to keep turning the pages, long past the last word of the excerpt.

Wow, what a nice review! I was especially surprised to see this person wondering when the full book is coming out. I don’t have a deal for it (yet), but hopefully, it won’t be long. Also, it’s good to see that someone really enjoyed the narrator’s voice. Young Adult can be hard, not just from an artistic perspective but because of so many differing editorial opinions on what a “YA voice” is supposed to feel like. Good to see that someone thought I got it right.

As for the criticism, I can definitely see how it’s valid. Part of the reason for rushing Michael and Terra out so fast is to set things up for the sequel, but I suppose I could have them wait a few months before launching the mission. I thought that’s what I’d done, but I suppose I need to make it more clear.

If you would like to read the 3,000 word excerpt for Genesis Earth, you can download it for free here. You might need to download some software from Amazon if you don’t have an ereader, but it shouldn’t be too hard. Their Kindle for PC program is free, so I just use that.

So yeah, check it out. I hope you enjoy it!

Memoirs of a Snowflake available on Amazon

I just released my first short story on the Kindle. “Memoirs of a Snowflake,” a whimsical short story about the life and times of a December snowflake, is available for $.99 on Amazon.

The publishing process was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. Because this is a short story, I didn’t have to worry about formatting for a table of contents or other stuff. All I did was upload the .doc file, and Amazon automatically did the formatting.

Bryan and I did try to upload it as an html file, which failed miserably for reasons we don’t understand. Also, Amazon automatically generated the free sample for it, which is something I’d like to figure out how to control in the future.

So as far as practice goes, this story perhaps wasn’t the best one to learn on. However, it’s good to see how the publishing process works–and really, it’s not that hard. The hardest part was reading all the terms and conditions, which took maybe an hour. Everything else was just uploading files, filling in fields, and checking off boxes.

The cover art was fun. To make it, I took this image from Wikimedia Commons (where practically everything is in the public domain), photoshopped it with The Gimp (“gimped” it?), and added the lettering. Voila! I don’t know if it’s my best work, but for a short story, I think it’s decent.

$.99 is the lowest that Amazon will allow me to price it. For every sale, I make about $.35, and Amazon starts transferring money to my account after I earn $10. You can download it to your Kindle device, or you can read it on your computer with Amazon’s Kindle for PC program (where you can also read a two paragraph free sample, heh).

So far, I’ve made two sales and gotten one review–a pretty good one, too! I posted the story on Facebook and Chuck has blogged about it, but that hasn’t translated into sales yet. But after reading this, you all are going to go out and buy it, aren’t you? AREN’T YOU?? Hehe, just kidding.

Next week, I’ll probably release “Decision LZ1527,” after I figure out the cover art. It’s a little more complicated, because I wanted to buy the art that was in the magazine in which it was originally published. But I’ve got that squared away, now just tweaking it. And I’ll probably add an author’s note at the end, too.

This is exciting stuff! I’m interested to see how the stories take off. For those of my writer friends who are thinking of doing something like this for their own stuff, I’ll be sure to let you know how they do!

Spinning out

Just a quick post before I go to bed…and I really should, because it’s freaking late.

I feel like I’ve been getting more and more busy, yet less and less productive. It’s @%$! frustrating. In the last two weeks, I’ve had numerous job applications and interviews (though not as many interviews as I’d like), tons of complicated paperwork for the EPIK job in Korea I’m hoping to take come September, the only TEFL course I’m taking (in which I feel I am constantly behind), and all sorts of other random crap.

Oh, and then there’s writing. I’ve been averaging only about 1.5k words per day, which is kind of pathetic when you realize that I don’t have regular work.

I wish I could say that I’ve been spending a lot of this extra time socializing, but sadly that isn’t the case. I haven’t gone out on a date in months, and with each passing week I drift further and further from the people in my ward. I’ve been pretty active with Quark, though, so that sort of makes up for things, but not enough.

One of the good things, though, is that I’ve been getting up relatively early all week–and by “relatively,” I mean before 9:00 am. Next week’s goal: go to bed by 1:00, and get up before 8:00. The timestamp on this post can probably tell you how much of a head start I’ve got.

Oh, and I have been exercising regularly. That’s a good thing, I suppose. Haven’t seen many results of that, except perhaps a slightly more active lifestyle, but it’s fun and I’ll keep it up. Running is where I catch up on old podcasts, and I subscribe to quite a few.

I don’t know if this late night rant is useful in any way, except maybe to empathize with what it’s like when you’re busy all the time but never feel like you’re getting enough done. I guess most people feel like that at one point or another, but it’s good to look back and see what you accomplished, like I did here. For all the spinning out, I suppose it wasn’t a total wash. And really, it almost never is.

But yeah, the main thing that makes me angsty is that I never feel that I’m writing enough. I hear from everyone that with the way the publishing world is changing, fast writers have a huge advantage over slow ones. And I know I have the ability to write fast, it’s just that I never really do it consistently.

Fast, in my mind, is 4k words or more per day. I can hit it when I’m on, but that’s fairly rare. Most of the time, I average between 2k and 2.5k, and my personal deadlines reflect that.

At least with ITND, however, I’ve been writing consistently every day…except today, when I took time off to revamp a short story (“From the Ice Incarnate”). But my wordcount graph hasn’t had any huge spikes or valleys, which is good I suppose. The novel is coming along, if slowly, and that’s a good sign.

Anyhow, enough of this rant. Time for bed.

Quarter Finalist? AAAHHHH!!!

Holy crap, Genesis Earth made the quarter finals for the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest!

That means that it’s one of 250 other entries that will go on to the next round of voting. The grand prize is a publishing contract with Penguin for a $15k advance.

I’m happy to see I’m not the only old time Quarkie to make the cut; Drek also made it, with his novel Fires of Besowin. We’re having something of a friendly competition with this contest, but I think it’s pretty dang awesome that the two of us made it this far. Best of luck on the next round; I have a feeling we’re both going to need it…

The 50 finalists will be announced April 26nd. Until then, wish me luck!

A Fascinating Moral Dilemma

For FHE* tonight, we had an interesting discussion about ethical dilemmas and moral absolutes. It started with the following question:

If you were a prisoner of war, would you consent to have sex with the prison warden if it would set you free?

The overwhelming answer, predictably enough (at least from a bunch of Mormons), was “heck no!” So then, the teacher upped the ante by asking: what if it would free one hundred other prisoners who were scheduled to die the next day?

I was a little surprised (but not really) when I was the only one who admitted that I probably would. After all, there’s precedent for something similar in the Book of Mormon, and a very real question of whether or not the blood of the dead prisoners would be on your hands if you didn’t. Also, I would still consider it rape, since I draw a distinction between the act of sex and the act of saving lives–IOW, the sex itself isn’t strictly consensual; it’s the cost of saving the other prisoners.

Laying aside completely the question of whether or not you can take the warden at his word, it’s a very interesting dilemma, and one that gets at the heart of what people really believe. The fact that so many of my Mormon peers wouldn’t sleep with the guy tells you a lot about Mormon culture. My follow up question would be: if it meant freeing yourself and the other prisoners, would you kill the warden? Because I’m pretty sure most of them would say “heck, yes!” even though murder is typically considered to be a more heinous sin than fornication.

But anyway, the point here is that all of this makes excellent story material. For your characters, what are the moral lines that they absolutely will not cross? The ones where they’re a little more fuzzy? What, for example, would a character be like whose method for choosing between two undesirable courses of action was to flip a coin–no matter the stakes? And what about the characters like Ender Wiggins who flip the dilemma on its head by stabbing the giant in the eye?

This is the kind of stuff I love to read, and the stuff I love to write as well. I’m hoping to pull off a really good one in Into the Nebulous Deep, but not for a couple of chapters. Gotta set things up, get the story moving, and give the romance a little momentum. But once the characters are all fleshed out and the stakes are insanely high, that’s when the fun begins. Bwahahahaha!!

Man, I would make an awesome prison warden. ;P

Image courtesy postsecret.

*FHE (Family Home Evening) is, for young single Mormons, roughly the equivalent of a college-aged church youth group meeting.

A few additional thoughts

So, after the last post on my ebook venture, I have a few thoughts:

I haven’t yet decided to go all out indie, so don’t think that I am. All I’m doing right now is putting out a couple of my short stories, mostly so I can learn hands-on how the epublishing process works (and make all my mistakes with something that isn’t a full-length novel).

I write mostly space opera and science fiction adventure, and those are apparently selling pretty well. I don’t know about horror or epic fantasy, so to all you horror / epic fantasy friends of mine, realize that my experience might not be your experience.

After looking into DBAs, LLCs, business licenses, and taxes, I’ve decided not to register as a business or set up a separate account for this venture–at least, not until I sell more than $500, which from what I understand is when the IRS requires Amazon to start reporting earnings (I could be wrong; I’m not a lawyer). Again, I’m not doing this for the money right now, more for the experience and to learn how to do it.

Why, then, am I putting together a formal business plan? Well, it’s more of a self-discipline thing; as a writer, I am in the eyes of the world a self-employed owner of a small business, so I want to discipline myself so that I can be successful as such.

And honestly, I think this is very exciting. I’ve found, over the past year, that I’m the kind of guy who would rather work for himself or as an independent contractor than work for a corporation and take a salary–firstly, because I believe that the corporate paradigm is fundamentally evil, and second, because I enjoy the independence, the control over my livelihood, and the adventure of being an entrepreneur.

Anyhow, my CS friend Bryan is going to help me figure out how to publish on Kindle this Tuesday, so my short story “Memoirs of a Snowflake” will probably go live that afternoon. As for “Decision LZ1527,” I’m probably going to spend some money on the cover art, which means figuring out contracts, payments, pricing, etc. My my goal is to put it out sometime in April, though, and between now and then, I might put up something else. So keep an eye out!