About a month ago, I stopped working on my novel Bringing Estella Home because I hit a roadblock. Basically, I realized at the end of the second part that I had failed to work out all of the secondary characters and their duties and responsibilities in the mercenary group that the protagonist hires. I had a… Continue reading Breaking a roadblock
Author: Joe Vasicek
Joe Vasicek is the author of more than twenty science fiction books, including the Star Wanderers and Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus. He claims Utah as his home.
Miscellaneous news updates
I’m so bad at writing catchy titles for my blog posts. CORRECTION: I can come up with catchy, sexy, exciting titles for my blog posts, it’s just that the first one that comes to mind is always dull and uninteresting. Well, too bad. To quote my mother: “suffer!” Item One: State of the summer plans Real… Continue reading Miscellaneous news updates
Happy progress
Now that school is out and I don’t have any pressing obligations to keep me busy, I’m making some excellent progress on my writing. Really good progress, actually. I revised about five thousand words today, which, according to openoffice’s wordcounting algorithm, puts me at 73% finished. Wow. At that rate, I could be finished with… Continue reading Happy progress
Living in a state of limbo
Graduation was today. I’ve got another year left, but a lot of my friends are moving on. I took my last exam of the semester on Monday, and my contract at the FLSR ends Saturday morning at 10 am. And I have no idea where I’ll be living for the summer. There’s a chance I… Continue reading Living in a state of limbo
Almost halfway…
I crossed the 30,000 word mark on my revision of Genesis Earth today. In the old draft, that would be more than halfway through. However, a lot of that (about 1,700, to be more precise) was adding in new material to fill in some gaps. It’s not quite halfway done yet. I think I’m mostly… Continue reading Almost halfway…
Revision, revision, revision
I finished revising chapter 6 of Genesis Earth today. It took a lot more time and effort than I’d expected. Even though I’d revised half the chapter yesterday, I started from the beginning and changed a lot of the other revisions I’d made. I think this version is stronger, but I’m not sure how it’ll… Continue reading Revision, revision, revision
Dreaming up steampunkery
I had the coolest dream last night. I dreamed that I was in some kind of a steampunk/regency universe–basically, everyone dressed up like the Victorian era and fought with fencing sabers. I was contracted to go and fight the phantom of the opera, who for some reason was holed up in the JFSB (except, it… Continue reading Dreaming up steampunkery
Running the gauntlet
In the past five days, I have written somewhere on the order of 10,000 words. None of them has been fiction (at least, not explicitly–more BS, if anything). One monster history term paper, one middling poli sci essay, and two exams requiring 2,000 and 1,000 word essays. Blegh. Like pulling teeth. The upside is, it’s… Continue reading Running the gauntlet
Brief intermission
The last two weeks have been crazy. And it’s not over. Papers, finals, projects–it’s all coming due right now. That’s why my writing (and blogging) has been sparse. Fortunately, after Friday, almost all of my work is behind me. Just two more days…
Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh
“The stars, like all man’s other ventures, were an obvious impracticality, as rash and improbable an ambition as the first venture of man onto Earth’s own great oceans, or into the air, or into space.” Thus begins Downbelow Station, an epic tale of man’s future beyond Earth. The outer colonies of Earth have rebelled and… Continue reading Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh