Category: Desert Stars

Writer’s angst & post-convention ennui

In spite of the title of this post, I’ll try not to get too emo.  Not sure how well I’ll succeed, but at least I’ll try.

Worldcon was great, but it put me into something of a writing slump and I’m not sure where to go next.  I was planning on writing the as-yet untitled New Rigel novel, but I want to get Desert Stars published before Christmas, and that would involve doing another major draft before sending it off for edits.

The trouble is, it typically takes me at least two months to do a rough draft.  I can probably finish Desert Stars in about a month, but I’d still want to start that project somewhere around the end of September.  Since I don’t expect for my first readers to get back to me until then, that leaves me with a single month to fill.

To further complicate matters, the place I’ve been temping at for the last two months wants to hire me full time.  In some ways, that’s awesome; work is work, after all, and even though I won’t exactly be saving the world, it’s not a bad job either.  On the other hand, 40 hours of warehouse labor per week is going to make it very difficult to do everything I want with my writing career.

Now, don’t get me wrong–I’m not complaining.  This seems to be the dilemma that every aspiring writer faces at one point or another, and most of my friends have understandably chosen the stable paycheck over the ever-elusive lucky break.  But with where I’m at–young and single, without any debt or obligations to pay off–and my long term career goals, I worry that I’ll end up settling if I take that path.  Besides, I’ve gotten used to “starving” over the last year and a half, and it’s actually not that bad.

What would REALLY be awesome is if they would hire me part time, and I think I might be able to negotiate that.  In the meantime, I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to write in September.  Here are my options:

Untitled (New Rigel)

This is the project I was most excited about before Worldcon, but now…well, I’m still excited, but post-convention ennui is not a pretty thing.  Basically, it’s a full-length novel set within the Gaia Nova universe, and an indirect sequel to Bringing Stella Home. 

I’ve already written the prologue and I like where it’s going, but I’d have to really bust my butt to get it done before October.  Then again, I usually drop the first draft somewhere in the middle, so allowing for that, it might still be good to go ahead.  However, it’s generally a bad idea to plan on screwing things up.

Edenfall

This is the sequel to Genesis Earth, and the second book in a planned trilogy.  Since it’s YA, I could probably pull it off in a month–YA is generally shorter than adult fiction, and Genesis Earth took me about a month to pound out once I knew what I was doing.  I’ve already got the story outlined and ready to go, so no problems there.

The big reason to do this project is that the first book is starting to have some success, and that’s naturally going to drive reader interest in the sequel.  I’ve already gotten some scattered emails and comments about it, asking when it’s going to come out.  Also, since there’s less pressure on me right now, bumping it up the queue might be a good idea.  There’s a reason some people are afraid of success.

Desert Stars Companion Novella

Now here’s an interesting idea: I could spend the next month working on a companion novel to Desert Stars, much like I spent the last month working on Sholpan.  The advantages to this plan are obvious: not only would I have another full-length novel ready before Christmas, but a $.99 novella to go with it–that is, if all goes well.

This is a project I haven’t given much thought to, but it wouldn’t be too hard to come up with something.  It would also get me excited for the revision of Desert Stars in October.  The main disadvantage is that I don’t know how well this “companion novella” concept will work out in the market–if Sholpan tanks, I might have to scrap it altogether.  But as Dean told me at Worldcon, you can’t let thoughts of the commerciality of a project get in the way of the creative process.

That’s what’s on my plate right now.  Preferably, I want to choose something I can finish within a month, while juggling work and the publication process for Sholpan.  Oh, and I also want to throw in a blog tour for Bringing Stella Home–more on that later.

So, to open it up to my super-awesome hardcore fans (all three or four of you), what do you think?  Of these projects, what do you most want to see?

Worldcon 2011: Friday

Wow, it feels like the second day of Worldcon was forever ago.  Usually, Friday is the first real day of a convention, but since Thursday was the first full day of Worldcon, that wasn’t the case.

I don’t remember a whole lot from it, but there were a few really awesome panels.

In the morning, I went to a social networking panel with Tee Morris and Cory Doctorow, among others.  Awesome, fast paced discussion–pure gold, every second of it.  The main takeaway I got was to try out everything, but only stick with the things I actually enjoy.  There are lots and lots of ways to use social networking tools, and if something is compelling but not enjoyable, it’s not much better than a life-killing addiction.  Also, Facebook is the equivalent of high fructose corn syrup.

In the afternoon, I went to a panel on romantic elements in science fiction, with Louis Master Bujold on it, among others.  She made perhaps the most interesting point I heard all weekend: that in romance, women typically write about love and life, whereas men typically write about love and death.  SO TRUE.  It happens all the time in my own work, to the point where you can set your watch by it.

After a long and tiring day, I took off a couple hours before the parties just to decompress (and also blog about Thursday, as you may have noticed).  Got caught up on David Gaughran‘s blog, which as usual had some interesting analysis about the latest news in the ebook revolution.  And then…well, let’s just say I got into a little bit of a discussion with a senior editor at Tor about ebooks and whether it’s a good idea now to self publish.  His parting shot: “You’re not going to win this argument!” To which I wanted to respond: “I don’t care about winning it with you; I care about winning it with the readers.”

Seriously, when it came to ebooks and epublishing, almost every editor, agent, and author at the convention either had deer in the headlights syndrome or was in outright denial.  It’s gotten to a point where they can’t ignore it, but literally everyone who brought up the subject on a panel either dismissed all successful indie writers as outliers, or brought up the flood-of-crap argument that so many people have already debunked.  I don’t think the publishers are quite as stupid as the record labels in the late 90s…but seriously, they aren’t much better.

Not that I was purposefully trying to be antagonistic.  I only brought up the subject with that particular editor because I knew I didn’t have a chance with him.  For the most part, all I did at the con was listen and observe.  But man–there’s a lot of willful ignorance out there.  And after a while, that made me a little disillusioned with the whole convention…but more on that later.

Suffice it to say, Friday was a long and eventful day that went by so quickly I’ve forgotten almost everything else that happened.

Soundtrack for an untitled book

I’ve got this great idea for a novel, with a rough plot outline, an awesome ending, setting and characters all worked out, even the soundtrack–but no title.

I enjoy making soundtracks for my novels, but this is the first time I’ve made one before writing the first draft.  Usually, my first drafts are so all over the place that I end up hating whatever music I try to associate with my work–that, or the feel of the book ends up being so different from the feel of the soundtrack that I just have to abandon it.

In spite of all this, I couldn’t really help myself from putting together a playlist for my next big project, a Gaia Nova novel combining characters from Bringing Stella Home and Desert Stars.  Here it is:

For me, soundtracks are all about the emotion that a story evokes.  I’m going for a tense and gritty feel, with heart-rending losses and soul-crushing defeats interspersed with poignant moments of personal triumph.

The really cool thing is that the soundtrack has helped me out a ton with the outlining process.  I’ve spent a lot of time in the past month hiking in the mountains around Provo, just listening to music and thinking about this story.  Whenever I put on the soundtrack, something would click and I’d see exactly what the story needed.  I kid you not, all of the plot twists and big reveals came to me while listening to this music.

Now if only I could come up with a title…

Quick update

Just an update before I go to bed (and hopefully don’t sleep in like this morning).

My writing’s tapered off a bit this past month, partially because I’ve got a lot on my plate (Worldcon, online TEFL course, moving apartments, working full time, etc), but also because I’m between projects and not totally absorbed in any one.

I’m hoping to finish Sholpan by the end of the week, but that isn’t going to require more than 8k words total.  At the same time, I’m finding it hard to keep myself engaged with that project.  Today, for example, I rebelled a bit and worked on the next Gaia Nova book instead, which doesn’t yet have a title.  Had a blast, but only managed about 800 words.

My writing productivity took a huge dip in the end of July as I got Bringing Stella Home ready to publish, dropping down to between 500 and 1,000 words per day.  I probably won’t be able to raise that significantly until after Worldcon, and even then, I’ll have to juggle a full-time job for probably another month or two (but hey, a job’s a job; I’m not complaining).

Thing is, I really, really, REALLY want to work on this untitled project–so much that I’m treating it as procrastination when I have other stuff to write.  I’m also worried that if I leave off on that project for too long, I’ll lose sight of it.  That’s why I’m juggling it with Sholpan right now, but I think I can handle it, especially since Sholpan should be finished in just a week or two.

I also got an email from a fan (a fan!) asking about Edenfall.  Right now, I don’t have any concrete plans, but I’m hoping to finish the first draft sometime in October/November (after polishing Desert Stars), and have it ready for publication sometime in 2012.  If enough people ask about it, though, I may bump it up in the queue; it all depends.

Other than that, I had a great idea yesterday for a blog series.  It came while I was thinking about my dreams for the future, and the thought came that I should blog about them  But I don’t want it to be just about me; I want to share my thinking about the future and how I’ve come to develop my goals and plans, so that my many friends who are in similar circumstances can glean something useful.

I’ll probably start that in a day or two.  But now…sleep.

Q2 roundup

For those of you who don’t know, I keep a spreadsheet with my daily writing word count and use that to help set personal deadlines for various projects.  In order to keep myself honest, I do a report every quarter on how I kept up with my writing goals in the past three months.

So, without further ado, here are last quarter’s numbers:

The red line represents daily word counts, the blue line is simply a running total of the past 7 days.  Because I’m a discovery writer who often does the heavy work of shaping the story in the revision process, I include revision notes and second / third / fourth drafts in these counts.  I do not include proofreading, though, or sentence / paragraph level revisions for basic errors.

In April, I was plugging through the middle of the first draft of Into the Nebulous Deep and working a temp job full-time doing data entry.  I had just indie published my first three short stories and was still trying to figure out how the system works.  Despite this, I was able to keep up a pretty consistent word count for most of the month, though 10k per week is lower than I would have liked.

Endings are probably the hardest thing for me to write, so at the end of the month things came to a head and my word count dropped significantly.  This was also the week before my youngest sister got married, so that threw a kink in the works.  The job also caught up to me, so in the last week of April my productivity took a real hit.

In May, however, I took time off from the job to “pursue a freelance project” (aka epublish Genesis Earth).  My boss had told me he’d like to have me back once the freelance project was finished, so I felt pretty good about taking the month off.

It took a while for my editor and cover artist to get back with the final product, though, so I spent most of May working on Desert Stars.  This was the third draft, so I was WAY stoked to work on it.  Outlined my revision notes for the first half in a matter of days, which led to the huge peak around the 19th, and launched right into the project full steam ahead.  It was glorious.

When my editor and cover artist got back to me at the end of the month, however, I put Desert Stars on the back burner for about a week to go over the copy edits for Genesis Earth and give it one final proofread.  That’s why things dropped off again toward the end of the month.

In June, I went back to the temp job to save up for Worldcon.  Fortunately, I was able to strike a pretty good balance between writing and work that lasted for the rest of the quarter.  If I didn’t have to juggle a full time job with my full time writing, I probably would have written more, but at 15k per week I was able to keep up pretty well with my personal deadlines.

So yeah, it was a pretty routine quarter.  Nothing too spectacular, though there were some ups and downs.  If you count Bringing Stella Home, I’m on track to complete two polished books this year once I finish Desert Stars.  The latest draft is pretty good, but I think it will need at least one more run through with first readers to make sure the changes to the story are good (and I’ve made a LOT of changes to the story).  Still, I’m averaging about two months per draft per book, so I’m optimistic about getting it out in time for Christmas.

My next project after Desert Stars will probably be the sequel to Into the Nebulous Deep.  I’ll work as hard on that until it stalls, then spend a couple of weeks to put together Sholpan, a novella with the events of Bringing Stella Home told entirely from Stella’s point of view.  I’ll probably put that one up for $.99 or so to generate interest in Bringing Stella Home.

So yeah, that’s what things look like for the immediate future.  Still working, still saving for Worldcon, but the writing is coming along and I should be publishing a few more ebooks in the near future.  So stay tuned!

Deciding on the next project

First, you know how I said I’d raise the price of Genesis Earth as an experiment?  Well, after thinking it through a little more, I figured that it’s more important at this point to build a following, and to do that I should probably have at least one novel at the $2.99 price point.  Since Genesis Earth is the only novel I have out right now, I decided to drop the price, where it will probably stay for a while.  Flakey, I know, but so be it.

More importantly, I’m coming up on the end of the third draft of Desert Stars.  It’s going to be a push, but I hope to finish it by the end of the week.  It’s an awesome book and I’m way excited with it, but it leaves me wondering: what next?

I’m currently torn between two projects.  The first one, Edenfall, is the sequel to Genesis Earth, and the second in the trilogy.  It’s been kicking around in my mind for a long time, and I’ve already got it all outlined and ready to go.

But…the flashier, more exciting project to me right now is the next book in the Gaia Nova series, an indirect sequel to both Desert Stars and Bringing Stella Home, which I hope to epublish later this month.  Even though I have a ton of ideas for it, I have absolutely NO outline whatsoever.  Nothing.  All I know is that it’s basically the Battle of Ain Jalut in space, with Rina from Desert Stars and Danica, Roman, and the other mercenaries from Bringing Stella Home.  Oh, and Stella and Qasar’s son, a Hameji prince who makes an appearance in Into the Nebulous Deep.  That’s it.

And yet…I am sooo excited to work on it.  You have no idea.

So…should I go with the safe, reliable project?  Or the sexy, mysterious one?  There are good reasons to go with either.  Edenfall should be fairly straightforward, taking no more than two months.  With the first in the series already out and selling, I should probably write it sooner rather than later.  However, the Gaia Nova series is much more expansive, and since I’m already immersed in that universe from working on Desert Stars, it would be much easier to jump right into it.

Right now, I’m leaning more toward the second project, but knowing my personal writing process, I’ll probably get stuck somewhere in the middle and switch to Edenfall.  But hey, if it works, it works.  That’s how I’ve written all of my other books so far: start the rough draft with a frenzied burst of creative energy, then let it sit for a while and move on to other projects before coming back and finishing the first.

Either way, I’m not going to pull a Rothfuss or a Martin.  My goal is to finish my next project in 8 weeks or less, which will be tough with my current job, but not impossible.  Which reminds me of yet another reason why I never want to be salaried (unless I’m the one running the business).  Not that I plan on ever being pregnant…

Craving another retreat

Last night, I got together with an old friend from last year and went camping down in Sanpete county, in the Manti-Lasal National Forest.  Even though I didn’t get a whole lot of writing done, it was a much needed change of scenery.

Man, southern Utah is so different from the Salt Lake and Utah valleys.  More rural, more laid back, more of a back-country attitude but not in a California kind of way…I don’t know if that makes any sense, but I like it out there.  It feels like the kind of place you’d pass through on a road trip, that mystic old-time Americana that always feels like it’s just out of reach.  Part of me wants to settle down in a place like that someday, while the other part doesn’t want to settle down ever.

Spending time away like that gives you a renewed perspective.  I wouldn’t say that I feel more “centered” now, but getting out in the wilderness certainly made me see the daily grind here in Provo a little differently.  It’s so easy to get caught up in a routine, where the weeks and months go by until suddenly it’s summer again and you don’t know where the last year went.  Unless you take the time to step back, you can never get perspective.

Unfortunately, in order to save up for Worldcon this August, I’m going to need to work 40 hours per week almost right up to the convention weekend itself.  I’m not complaining; I feel blessed to have a steady source of income right now, especially in this economy.  But as a writer, it’s hard when your job takes so much time and energy away from your writing time.

Lately, I’ve only been spending two or three hours a day writing, and a lot of that time is filled with interruptions.  Part of it is just procrastination, but another part is that my day is so split up that the only periods of unbroken free time are from 9 pm to 8 am. That’s tough, because I need a big chunk of writing time to do my best work.

Even though I’ve been making decent progress on Desert Stars, I feel like I could be doing so much more.  If I could take a week off for a retreat where I did nothing but focused on my writing, I could probably finish this draft in a matter of days, with time to start a bunch of new projects.  In fact, I already have about a half dozen stories in embryo, with scenes and characters just begging to be written.  Once this latest project is finished, I don’t quite know what I’ll be starting next.

Since I should be writing right now instead of posting to this blog, I’ll wrap up by saying that I really wish I could take some time off for another retreat, this time to focus solely on my writing.  But since I can’t, I’ll do my best to carve away large periods of unbroken time for writing, and unplugging myself from distractions both online and off in order to make the most of it.

It’s a difficult balance, one that’s a constant struggle to maintain.  Right now, I feel like I’m on the losing side of the battle, which means it’s time for a change of routine.  Thankfully, taking some time off in the wilderness has helped me to better see what I need to do.  I only hope I can maintain that perspective in order to break out of this stifling routine.

<sigh> One of these days, when writing is my primary source of income, this will not be nearly so difficult of a problem.  You have no idea how much I want to make that happen.  In the meantime, back to work.

Civilized internet trolling and things to look out for

The Genesis Earth blog tour rolls on; just recently, I did an interview with Cindy Borgne of Dreamer’s Perch.  She’s been showcasing a number of other indie writers on her site, and the interviews are quite interesting, so check it out!

Also, Moses Siregar is up to an interesting new project called Indie Author Rockstar.  I’m not sure exactly how it will work, but it’s basically a community book blog / monthly book contest.  Genesis Earth will be participating in that, so be sure to check it out once it goes live (and also check out the site’s twitter feed)!

Finally, I got embroiled in a somewhat heated discussion with Howard Tayler on the comment thread of the latest Writing Excuses podcast.  The question we circled around was: “is traditional publishing still safe?” I’m not totally sure what ‘safe’ means in this context, since writing has never been truly ‘safe,’ but it was an interesting if somewhat exasperating discussion. 

Fortunately, it ended well, meaning that I didn’t get banned (though I think Howard was contemplating it). I don’t think either of us ‘won,’ but several onlookers came away feeling enlightened–and most of them agreed that the discussion was generally polite. So if I’m a troll, at least I’m a civilized one. If that’s even possible.

So that’s what’s going on here.  Genesis Earth is still selling at a slow but steady pace, and the revision of Desert Stars is going very, very well.  This is going to be such an AWESOME book–I can’t wait until I’ve got it up for you guys to check it out!

In parting, let me leave you with this amazing trance song I discovered while working data entry. That’s one of the advantages of doing boring computer work all day–it frees you in some ways to do other things. Enjoy!

Another publication in Leading Edge!

That’s right!  My poem “Zarmina,” dedicated to Gliese 581 g (the first exoplanet discovered in its sun’s habitable zone) is published on page 98 of issue 61 of Leading Edge!

Also included in this issue is an excellent essay by Brandon Sanderson, in which he introduces his second law of magic systems.  It’s an excellent essay, and has made me rethink how I do FTL systems, especially for the Gaia Nova universe.  I’ll have to do a post a little later on that.

Besides this landmark essay by Brandon Sanderson, this issue features stories by Dan Wells and Dave Farland, as well as an interview with Howard Tayler.  And as always, it includes a number of excellent stories and illustrations.  Check it out!

(Full disclosure, I volunteer as a slushpile reader and occasional copy editor for the magazine.  However, my work always goes through the submission process under a pen name, where only the head editor knows who I am until the decision on whether to acquire the story has been made.)

In other news, Genesis Earth is now up on Goodreads, so go check that out as well!  The nice thing about Goodreads is that you can give the book a # star rating without having to write out anything else.  If you’re so inclined, I would very much appreciate an honest review–but if you do give it a rating, please be honest.  Don’t worry; even if you give me less than five stars, I won’t hunt you down like this crazy author (hint: get some popcorn and read the comments).

So anyhow, that’s what’s been going on here.  Desert Stars is coming along slowly but surely, and I’m working on getting some cover art for Bringing Stella Home.  If you have any ideas or suggestions on the art, please let me know.  I’ll probably go through my back issues of Leading Edge to search out good sf artists.  For some reason, I’m having a hard time finding anything that clicks on deviantart.  My goal is to epublish that book by the end of July.

I need a productivity boost

Yeah…today wasn’t that great.  I revised through about 2k words in Desert Stars, but none of it was new material, and I only worked on it for maybe 3 cumulative hours.  I’m working full time now, but even so, I can do better than this.

My self-imposed deadline for Desert Stars is July 9th.  That needs I need to do three chapters per week, and last week, I only did two.  Some of the later chapters are going to require tossing out everything and starting from scratch, but for the next four or five, I probably just need to shuffle scenes around without changing too much.  Hopefully, I can get through three this week, perhaps even four.

Genesis Earth continues to do well, though.  I checked it at work, and saw that 69% of the people who view the Amazon page end up buying the book.  That’s huge.  Some glitches over the weekend have made sales updates sporadic, but it’s still selling a good 1.5 copies per day.  So to all of you who have bought a copy: thanks so much!

There’s still a lot I need to do for Genesis Earth on the epublishing front, however.  Here’s my to do list for this week:

  • Send GE to +5 review sites.
  • Publish GE to the nook.
  • Get GE listed on Goodreads.
  • Do 3 guest posts / interviews for the blog tour.
  • Create an index for the blog tour.

Should be pretty straightforward…if I can balance writing time with non-writing publishing/promotion time (along with full time job time).  It’s going to be tricky, but I think I can do it.

Here’s my plan: I’ll get up at 6:30 each morning and write for at least half an hour, exercise, get ready for work, etc.  When I get  home at 5:30, I’ll eat a quick dinner and then devote myself to writing until about 7:30 (I have events going on every weekday evening that start at 7:30).  In the late night, I’ll maybe write a little, but that won’t be my primary writing time (since I never get much done when it is).

So anyways, that’s my tentative plan for this week.  Hopefully, that productivity boost will kick in soon, and I’ll be writing 3.5k words a day again.

In unrelated news, Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing posted an awesome interview of Kristine Katherine Rusch up on their podcast yesterday.  To all my writing friends: you really should check it out and listen to it.  Kris is an amazing veteran professional in the sf&f field, and has loads of good advice.  I read her blog religiously and recommend that all other aspiring writers do the same.

Which reminds me: Robin Sullivan was interviewed last week on another podcast, and this one is also very much worth checking out.  Robin runs a small press called Ridan, which is embracing unorthodox business practices and doing surprisingly well in today’s publishing climate.  I’ve said that I’m on hiatus from seeking a publishing house for the next three years…but if I could get into Ridan, I would in a heartbeat.

Finally, let me end this post with a cool trance song I discovered the other day.  Way mellow, with sweet vocals that fit surprisingly well with my current WIP.