Heart of the Nebula – Page 3 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Excited for a new old project

So a couple of weeks ago, I picked up the manuscript for a novel I’d written years ago, looking to see how much work it would take to salvage it. It’s a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, with James McCoy (again) as the main character. Long-time readers of this blog may remember it as Heart of the Nebula.

I wrote the first draft in 2010-2011 (started it almost exactly four years ago, in fact), and right from the start I could tell there were a lot of problems with it. I tried to throw in a romantic subplot that backfired horribly, and several of the major plot points weren’t thought out very well. I pushed through and finished it, though, and in spite of a few extra arms growing out of weird places, there was a lot of stuff in there that I liked.

(Come to think of it, I think this was my NaNoWriMo attempt back in 2010. That would explain why I pushed myself to finish the thing, even though I knew it had problems. I dropped it before the end of November and didn’t pick it up again until March, but since the only other books I had going on at the time were Desert Stars and Bringing Stella Home, I forced myself to finish it just so I had another one. This was back when I was under the impression that every book needs at least five or six revisions to be any good, and that most of the work in writing is actually revising. I no longer labor under those myths).

Over the next few years, I went back to it from time to time to dust it off and run it through a revision pass. Unlike my other novels, though, this one was so broken to begin with that revising wasn’t enough. I changed a lot in the 2.0 revision, cutting out most of the worst problems but not really replacing them with anything better. In the 3.0 revision, I mixed things around a bit but didn’t substantially change the story. Then I went through a bunch of incomplete revision attempts, tweaking scenes and rewriting sentences, but not really changing the story as a whole.

Then last year, I read through all the sundry drafts that I’d written of this story and put together a massive set of revision notes for the 4.0 draft. This time, I tore into the heart of the story itself, reworking plot points and adding new subplots to replace the ones that didn’t work. I went through the whole thing by chapter and scene, making a list of bullet points for all the changes that needed to be made. I also made notes for scenes that I needed to write entirely from scratch, and other notes for scenes that I needed to recycle from previous versions.

It was a massive undertaking, and I got about halfway through it before putting it on hold for other projects. That was nine months ago. Between then and now, enough time passed for me to more or less forget most of my ideas for it.

So earlier this month, I had an opening in my schedule and decided to take a look at this one again. Instead of picking it up where I’d left of, I decided to start from the beginning. Immediately, I was struck by how much better the story was. This wasn’t the three-armed baby I’d stuffed into the closet back in 2011–this was a really compelling story, with an intriguing hook and great potential to go places. The further I got in it, the better it became.

There were a couple of scenes early on that just didn’t work. I could tell that I’d reworked them to death, so I threw them out and wrote completely new ones. This time, they actually worked! By completely getting rid of the problem scenes, amputating those mutated limbs at the base, I was able to free the story from the mess in which it had spawned. For some of these scenes, revision is not enough–they need to be tossed and rewritten from scratch.

Over the last two weeks, I’ve really gotten excited about this project. Not only do I think it’s salvageable, I think I can make a really awesome story from it. I just got to the middle of it today, past the part where I’d stopped back in February. For the next few chapters, I think I’m going to throw out the revision notes entirely and just see where the story goes. I’ll probably write toward the stuff I know I want to keep, but throw out everything else.

So yeah, you can expect to see Heart of the Nebula come out sometime next year, probably in the spring. I still want to run it past my first readers, but I don’t think it’s going to need any major revisions after this one (at least, not any that should take more than a week). Keep an eye out for it!

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Don’t worry, I’m still alive

Wow, has it been more than a week since my last post? I think this is the longest I’ve gone without updating this blog since coming back from Georgia.

I wish I could say life has been busy, but it hasn’t really. Just another lazy summer in Utah. I did start dating someone recently, which probably explains where all my time has gone. But don’t worry, I’m still writing–in fact, the first draft of Strangers in Flight (Sons of the Starfarers: Book III) should be finished next week. It’s taken me a lot longer to write this one than I’d expected, but now that I’ve buckled down, it’s really coming together.

Comrades in Hope (Sons of the Starfarers: Book II) should be out by the end of the month, barring something crazy like my editor or cover designer dropping off the face of the Earth. Once they get back to me, all I’ve got to do is run through the edits (which shouldn’t take longer than a day or two) and format the thing (which also shouldn’t take longer than a day or two). So if you’ve read the first book and are eagerly awaiting the second, you shouldn’t have to wait longer than a couple of weeks!

I’m not sure what cons I’ll be attending this summer/fall. I thought I was going to Westercon, but it turns out my parents are going to be in town that week, and considering that it falls on the fourth of July (which also happens to be my sister’s birthday–who also happens to be pregnant), it looks like I have more important things to do that weekend. Besides, I want to start a new 4th of July tradition with my girlfriend this year: watching Gettysburg.

In any case, it looks like I won’t be doing too many cons this year. Maybe Salt Lake Comic Con, but I don’t know about that one yet either.

Once I’ve finished Strangers in Flight, I’ll probably take some time to work on a novel. There are three projects that I’m thinking about working on:

Star Wanderers: Children of the Starry Sea — I’ve been wanting to write a Star Wanderers novel for some time, but haven’t actually started it yet. It would definitely be fun to revisit the characters from that series, and it seems that a lot of my readers would really be interested in it too. It would also be a good way to tie things in with Sons of the Starfarers, and give some direction to the later books in that series.

The Sword Bearer — I explained the plot of this one to my girlfried, and she really liked it. That got me excited about it again, so I’m thinking very seriously about taking that project off of the back burner for a while. It’s a long-form epic fantasy that will probably turn into a trilogy–very different from the stuff I’m writing now. Still, it has a lot of potential, and the story is definitely solid. If I do pick it up, I’ll probably rename it The Sword Keeper, so that book 2 will be The Sword Bearer, and book 3 will be The Sword Wielder.

Star Wolf, AKA Heart of the Nebula — I’ve been meaning to finish this one for some time, so I might as well knock it off. With the last round of revisions, I got about halfway through, but it’s still very messy, so this would definitely be a project. However, this is the one that is closest to actually being publishable.

So that’s what I’m up to right now. I’ve got a lot more to say, especially about my girlfriend, but for now, I think I’d better get back to writing.

Juggling projects (and trying not to drop them all)

Many, I wish I could write faster. I probably can, but there are times when writing is an uphill slog, and you can’t put your foot on the accelerator too hard or your tires will spin out.

Right now, I’m about halfway through Star Wolf (formerly HEART OF THE NEBULA), and I’m in the part of the manuscript that needs the most work. I’ll probably be throwing out 60%-70% of what’s in there now and rewriting it from scratch, at least until the last five chapters. That’s not the hard part, though–the hard part is untangling the storylines that need to be kept from the storylines that need to be thrown out. I’ve already outlined the basic structure, but for the next couple of chapters, I’ve decided to abandon my revision notes. Now, everything is murky.

So that’s what I’ve been up to in the last few days. Star Wolf is a novel in the Gaia Nova series, and will probably end up around 120,000 words or so. That’s around the same length as Bringing Stella Home, or perhaps a bit longer. Definitely a change of pace from the novellas I’ve written in the last couple of years. As much of a slog as it is now, though, it’s got a lot of good stuff in it. Action, adventure, political intrigue, hard moral choices–not to mention space battles, generation ships, and cryonics gone horribly right.

But really, I want to get this one finished so that I can work on Sons of the Starfarers Book II: Comrades in Hope. I’m so excited about this one, I’m thinking about putting Star Wolf on hold for a few weeks so that I can just write it. Of course, a few weeks will probably turn into one or two months, and by the time it’s finished I’ll want to move immediately on to book 3.

Which actually might not be a bad thing, since I want to launch Sons of the Starfarers as soon as I can. It seems like you guys have really enjoyed Star Wanderers, so I think that you’re going to enjoy Sons of the Starfarers even more. I’m already getting the feedback from my first readers for Book I: Brothers in Exile, and while there are a few minor fixes to make, the story itself seems pretty solid. And the places I want to go with this series … man, it’s going to be awesome.

Just to give you a taste, here’s an excerpt from the first chapter of Brothers in Exile. Isaac and Aaron have just arrived at a derelict station on the fringes of settled space, light-years away from the nearest human being.

“So this is Alnilam station,” he mused as he peered out the forward window. The station’s hull was a dark gray, the beacons at the ends of the antennae a deep flashing red. Though it shone a little as it reflected the stars, their light was too dim to give anything more than the basic shape of the structure. On the inside of the wheels where the windows should have been, there was a blackness as dark as the night on the planet below.

“I’m picking up something,” said Aaron.

“Is it a transmission?”

“No, it’s something else. Radiation signatures, concentrated mostly at the hub.”

Isaac’s heart fell. “That would be one of the station reactors, probably leaking fuel or coolant internally.” Proof that no one’s alive in there after all.

“Well, it can’t be that big, since the wheel engines are obviously still working. And I’m only picking up radiation immediately around the reactors, so it’s not like it’s leaked down to the rim. If anyone’s still alive—”

“They can’t be. If they were, they would have fixed the leak.”

Aaron bristled. “How do you know that? For all we know, the engineers are gone and none of the survivors knows what to do about it.”

“If there are any survivors, why haven’t they hailed us?”

“How should I know? All I know is that it’s possible. You can’t refute that.”

I guess I can’t, Isaac thought. Instead of admitting that, though, he kept silent, peering at the ghostly derelict as if lost in thought.

“We should dock and go in there,” said Aaron. “Peek inside, take a look around. Even if there aren’t any survivors, maybe we can at least find out what happened to them.”

“Are you crazy?” said Isaac, his heart beating a little faster at his brother’s suggestion. “We have no idea what’s in there. For all we know, the place is infested with some sort of disease.”

“So we go in EVA suits and take a quick sterilizing spacewalk before coming back. No big deal.”

“It’s still a dumb idea. We’re not going.”

Aaron scowled and rolled his eyes. “So what, you just want to turn around and leave? Abandon this place without finding out what happened?”

“That’s right. We know that the station is dead, and that’s enough.”

“But we don’t know that,” said Aaron, raising both of his hands. “We don’t know hardly anything. All we know is that no one has answered our transmissions and there’s a small reactor leak at the hub, but everything else looks fine.”

It does not look fine, Isaac thought to himself. His palms felt clammy, and he was already beginning to regret his decision to come to this system at all.

“Listen,” Aaron continued, “even if there aren’t any survivors, maybe we can find some fuel and supplies to make this trip worthwhile. It’s more than a parsec to the nearest settlement, and even if we go straight there we’ve already burned through so much that we’ll have to sell half our cargo hold just to resupply.”

That much was true. Even with the credit they’d built up around this sector, they’d be dangerously low on fuel if they turned around now. The Medea was a small ship, and it could take them almost a year to make up their expenses if they cut their losses now. Still, the thought of setting foot on that derelict made Isaac’s skin crawl.

“It isn’t safe,” he muttered. “Whatever happened here, we shouldn’t get involved.”

“But we are involved,” said Aaron. “We’re involved just by being here. And since we’re already involved anyway, we might as well find out what happened to these people so that we can get their story out. They deserve that much.”

That’s right, Isaac thought. They certainly do.

“Okay, I’ll bring us up to one of the rimside docking nodes so we can go in. But I want you to stick with me, Aaron—understand? No running off—we do this together.”

“Yeah, yeah. Together. Got it.”

I hope you do, Isaac thought as he stared out the forward window at the derelict station. Down below in the planet’s atmosphere, lightning flashed silently, illuminating the tempest for a single instant before the lifeless world returned to darkness.

Oh man … so much awesome stuff to write! When the first three books are written, I’ll publish the first one, and publish the other two soon thereafter. I don’t want there to be a long gap between releases. But between book 3 and book 4, there will probably be a bit more time, since I intend to organize this series in groups of threes.

That’s just about it. Tomorrow, I’ll probably spend most of the day working on short stories, since there’s a story idea that’s screaming at me to be written. With short stories, you’ve got to move fast, because they will get away from you if you don’t write them immediately. But if I get a chance I’m probably going to start Comrades in Hope, because that’s the one I really want to be writing.

So many projects to juggle … I just hope I don’t drop them all!

LTUE, current WIP, and other assorted updates

So even though I haven’t been too good about blogging this past month, I have been busy writing. Besides the short story in my last post, I’ve been steadily revising Star Wolf, formerly titled HEART OF THE NEBULA. It took me a while to get back into this story, but I’m fully involved in it now and it’s coming along nicely.

So far, I’ve only been revising through about 2k words per day. I’m hoping to push that up to at least 4k words, though, which means that I should finish it in the first week of February. I definitely want to get it done before LTUE, because there are other projects I’m anxious to get working on, especially Sons of the Starfarers. I want to launch that series this summer, but I still have to write books 2 and 3 … gah! Must … write … faster …

In other news, I recently got my schedule for LTUE. It looks like I’ll be on 5 panels this year, including on one with Eric James Stone and Dave Farland. Am I feeling imposter syndrome right about now? Why, yes, thank you for asking. :p In any case, here’s what the schedule currently looks like:

Thursday, February 13, 2014

4:00 pm — Being a Foreign Speaker
6:00 pm — Planet Building

Friday, February 14, 2014

12:00 pm — Writing Romance

Saturday, February 15, 2014

12:00 pm — ePublishing Short Stories
6:00 pm — Starting the Next Project

I’m definitely excited for this year’s symposium! Orson Scott Card is going to be there, as well as Brandon Sanderson, Dave Farland, LE Modesitt, and pretty much all the regulars (except for Howard Tayler–I heard he’s not coming). I’ve also got a bunch of long-time writer friends who will be there, many of whom are on panels of their own. It’s going to be big this year, and definitely a lot of fun!

In other news, a couple of days after posting about my goal to travel to the Czech Republic, a job landed in my lap that seems like the perfect way to save up the money. It’s with Google Fiber, and involves escorting technicians to the various utility huts scattered throughout the city, opening the doors for them, and sitting around while they do their work. With luck, I’ll be able to get a fair amount of writing done while I’m on the clock. And even though it’s an on-call position that might only go 10 or 20 hours some weeks, I’ll be paid for the full 40 hours (and not at minimum wage).

I have no idea how the job will work out yet, but it seems like a great opportunity to save up a lot of money while still having plenty of time to write. We’ll see how it goes.

In other news, Brothers in Exile is out with my first readers right now. One of them already finished it, which kind of shocked me. If they don’t find any major problems, I’ll go ahead and write the next one, hopefully finishing it before the end of March.

Sons of the Starfarers is going to be another novella series like Star Wanderers, but I’m going to go a bit longer on the individual books, like around the 35k to 45k word range. The omnibus editions will be in groups of three, so books I-III for the first omnibus, IV-VI for the second, VII-IX for the third, etc. I’d like to go to at least nine books in this series, though it could certainly end up going longer. I only have a very loose idea of where it’s going, but it feels like nine books at least.

That just about does it. Right now, I’m up to my knees in Star Wolf, so that definitely takes priority. But I definitely want to get back to Sons of the Starfarers, so I’ll try to finish it as soon as I can. If only I was one of those writers who could knock out 10k words every day … maybe someday. In the meantime, I’ll just keep plugging along as best I can.

Later!

Looking for a new title

So I’m about a quarter of the way through the revisions for the next Gaia Nova book, currently titled Heart of the Nebula. The thing is, the story is changing a lot in the revision, to the point where that title doesn’t really make sense any more.

This tends to happen with most of my longer books. The original working title for Genesis Earth was THE WORMHOLE PARADIGM. Desert Stars started out as HERO IN EXILE, switched to WORLDS AWAY FROM HOME, then simplified briefly to WORLDS AWAY before finally settling on its current tile. Bringing Stella Home is actually the original working title for that book, but it briefly changed to MERCENARY SAVIOR before switching back again. The only novel of mine that hasn’t had two or three different titles is Stars of Blood and Glory, but that book was unusual in a number of ways.

In fact, Heart of the Nebula has already gone through one title change. It started out as “Into the Nebulous Deep,” not the most inspiring title but definitely accurate (perhaps even mildly spoilerific). I thought about changing it to “Into the Heart of the Nebula” before shortening that to the title it has now.

Anyway. For reasons I don’t really care to get into, I need a new title for this one. Here are some of the ones I’ve come up with so far:

STAR WOLF
THE LONE WOLF OF THE NEBULA
HOPE OF THE FREEDOM STAR
LEGEND OF THE FREEDOM STAR
EXODUS OF THE FREEDOM STAR
LONE WOLF OF THE FREEDOM STAR

I really like the words “wolf,” “legend,” “exodus,” and “freedom star,” but I’m not sure how to combine them in the best way. I’m kind of partial to STAR WOLF, just because it’s shortest, but LONE WOLF OF THE FREEDOM STAR has a ring to it that comes closest to what I’m shooting for.

Those are my thoughts for the moment, anyway. What do you guys think?

So what should I work on next?

Now that Star Wanderers: Deliverance (Part VIII) is published, I’m back in the position of trying to figure out what to write next. Usually, I just do this on my own, but this time I thought I’d run it by my readers and see what you guys have to say. Here are the options:

Heart of the Nebula — This is a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home. It follows James, Lars, Stella, and several new characters as they struggle to keep the Colony from falling apart following the collapse of the New Gaian Empire. This one is mostly a space opera story, with lots of action and political intrigue. It also explores the wolf/sheepdog analogy that Danica brought up in Bringing Stella Home, with Lars’s rebuttal.

Mercenary Savior — Another Gaia Nova novel, this one showing the origins of Danica Nova and her band of Tajji mercenaries. I’ve got a lot of ideas for this one, though I’ve only written the prologue so far. This is going to be a military sci-fi story, with lots of action, lots of violence, and (hopefully) a few heart-wrenching moments as well. Danica, Roman, Mikhail, Artyom, and several of the other mercenaries will appear in this one.

Empress of the Free Stars — Yet another Gaia Nova novel, this one a direct sequel of Stars of Blood and Glory. It brings back Princess Hikaru, now the Empress of Shinihon, and shows her struggle to ensure the safety and freedom of her people in the face of a Federation that is fast transforming into an autocratic, totalitarian empire. Colonel Webb is at the heart of the political intrigue in this one, and the stakes are as high as they’ve ever been.

Sons of the Starfarers — This is the spinoff series I’m writing to follow up Star Wanderers. It takes place in the same universe as the Gaia Nova novels, except a thousand years before, and will eventually show the origins of the Hameji and tie all of these books together. This is the one I’m most excited to write, as it brings back a bunch of characters from Star Wanderers and puts them into some interesting situations. Hopefully, it will have the same stuff that made Star Wanderers so great while adding a bit more action/adventure stuff into the mix.

Edenfall — This one is the sequel to Genesis Earth, and the second book in what will eventually become a trilogy. Basically, about fifteen years after Michael and Terra settle down on Icaria, a military expedition arrives from Earth, shattering the idyllic life they’ve made for themselves. They try to convince the military people that there is no alien threat, but before they can do that, the ghost ship comes back, throwing everything out of balance. This story is mostly from the point of view of Estee, Michael and Terra’s daughter, whose whole world is changed when the other humans appear.

Lifewalker — I’ve mentioned this one only a couple of times on my blog, but everyone who’s read the first chapter tells me that they want more. This one is a completely different project from anything else I’ve done. It’s a post-apocalyptic tale told from the point of view of a man who lives out his natural life where everyone else is infected with a disease that kills them at age 25. After the first chapter, the he starts down the ruins of I-15 with a bible, a bicycle, and a copy of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn, searching for the mythical city of light known by the forefathers as Lavegas. Little does he know, that place is now populated by cannibals.

The Sword Bearer — An epic fantasy about an ancient brotherhood of sentient swords who pass down the knowledge and skills of each bearer down through the generations. The brotherhood has been broken, and the few swords that haven’t been lost have driven their bearers insane to the point where they’re now amassing an army to conquer and enslave the whole world. The only sword who hasn’t gone down that path is the one prophesied to be wielded in the final battle to defeat this great evil, but it hasn’t taken a bearer for almost a thousand years–that is, until a curious young tavern girl from the mountains accidentally stumbles upon it.

Those are pretty much all the major options. I have a couple ideas for other books, but nothing that I’ve really started. Even though I have my preferences, I could go almost any way depending on what you guys want to read. So if there’s one or two that you really want me to work on next, feel free to let me know!

Resolutions and such for 2014

Yes, I know this post is a couple of days late. Yesterday I was busy publishing Star Wanderers: Deliverance (Part VIII), though, and the day before that I was on the train, and today I had to renew my vehicle registration … enough! On to the resolutions.

1. Publish something every 6 weeks.

One thing I really need to get better about is publishing new work. So this year, I’m going to do my damnedest to follow a regular publishing schedule. I don’t know what I’ll be publishing, exactly, but I have a pretty good idea, and surprisingly enough it actually works out to a lot less work than you’d think:

WEEK 1: SW-VIII: Deliverance (already done)
WEEK 7: SW V-VIII: Tales of the Far Outworlds (the second STAR WANDERERS omnibus–basically, I just need to write the Author’s Note and get a cover, since the stories have already been written).
WEEK 13: Science Fiction from A to Z (a book version of last year’s A to Z blogging challenge, released just in time for this year’s A to Z, for which I’ve already thought of an awesome theme).
WEEK 19: Heart of the Nebula (rough draft already written, just need to rewrite/revise).
WEEK 25: Sons of the Starfarers Book I: Brothers in Exile (already written).
WEEK 31: Sons of the Starfarers Book II: ??? (this one I still have to write).
WEEK 37: Sons of the Starfarers Book III: ??? (also need to write, but both of these are novellas so they shouldn’t take too long).
WEEK 43: Open slot–maybe I’ll publish Lifewalker in this slot.
WEEK 49: Sons of the Starfarers Omnibus I-III (just in time for Christmas).

Of course, this is all just a tentative schedule–I could definitely change it depending on which stories you guys want me most to write. The point is that it’s doable–surprisingliy doable. I might even break the schedule once or twice to release a surprise project, depending on how things go.

Then again, I might need the extra writing time in order to finish my second resolution, which is:

2. Write at least 2 short stories per month and submit them to traditional markets.

In other words, Operation Short Blitz. Since I’ve already outlined my goals and objectives for that one, on to resolution 3:

3. Read a book every week

Or at least 50 books before the end of the year. This is a recurring one that I’ve never quite been able to do, but I really need to read more, so I figured I’d bring it back. It’s also a good excuse to get more active on Goodreads, which I’ve been meaning to do for some time.

Now for some non-writing related resolutions:

4. Keep a detailed weekly personal journal

I’ve kept a journal off and on since 2nd grade, but in the past few years I’ve been really lax about it. My excuse was that the blog counts sort of as a journal, but that’s not really true, because there are things in my life that I would never want to talk about publically on this platform. At the same time, I’m not a teenager anymore–I don’t need to keep a super secret diary stashed beneath my mattress in order to cathartically vent my hormones and thus maintain my sanity.

So for this year, I’m going to completely redo the way I do journal writing. Instead of free-writing, I’m going to keep it deliberately structured. Instead of writing it only for myself, I’m going to write it for the benefit of my future kids and grandkids. I’ll include some private stuff in there, but nothing I wouldn’t mind being read years later.

Honestly, I still haven’t figured out exactly what I’m going to do for this goal, but I plan to at least write in it every week. In any case, it makes for a good Sunday project–not just writing in it, but figuring out exactly where I want to go with it.

5. Get to the point where I can run a mile ever day.

Writing is a sedentary activity, and I definitely need to get out and be more active. My grandpa got fit and lost a lot of weight later in his life, and one of the things he told me that was key was to run a mile a day. Currently, I can’t quite do that–I tried that about a month ago, and I pulled something on the third day that put me out for about a week. But it’s definitely something I can work up to.

My brother-in-law is a runner, and he advised me to start by walking. Walk at least a mile a day for a week, then the next week walk two, then the week after that walk for most of the days but throw in a running day somewhere in there. Gradually work up until you’re running more than walking, then soon enough you’ll be running every day.

So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m starting out with the two-mile walks, since the one-milers are way too easy. Maybe I’ll hike the Y a few times before I start running, just to build up muscle strength. And when the snow melts, I’ll definitely be climbing some mountains.

What I’d really like to do is get a treadmill desk. Those things are expensive, though, and there isn’t much room for them where I’m currently living. In any case, the best resolutions are the ones that don’t require a huge monetary investment or a massive shift from your current lifestyle, since those are the ones that are most likely to get done.

And just for the heck of it, here’s a crazy impossible stretch goal:

6. Finish hiking the 7 peaks.

Those of you who have been following me for a while probably remember that last year, I made only one resolution, and that was to climb four of the seven peaks here in Utah county. Well, I only got to two of them: Spanish Fork Peak and Santaquin Peak. And guys–they were amazing! Real adventures. Santaquin peak especially was just spectacular–without a doubt, the most perfect hike of my life. But then things got busy and I never got around to hiking the other two, blah blah blah lame excuses.

So this year, I want to revisit that goal, and since four is a lame number to stop at, I figure I’ll just shoot for all seven of them. It’s going to be tough–Cascade Mountain is a beast, and from what I’ve heard, Lone Peak has some cliffs that are especially harrowing–but by golly, I’m going to do it!

And if I hike Mount Timpanogos this year, maybe I’ll finally break the curse that is keeping me trapped here in Provo.

In any case, those are my resolutions for 2014. What are yours?

Revisions, X-COM, and working on my short game

So I finished putting together the revision notes for Heart of the Nebula on Monday, and started working on those today. It was interesting to compare the original rough draft (which was completely broken) with the incomplete revised version that I’d worked on about a year ago (which was also completely broken, but in different ways). Fortunately, even though both drafts are train wrecks, they’re not unsalvageable. In fact, I think there’s a pretty good story underneath it all.

Usually when I write a big novel like this, the first draft works pretty well up until about the middle, then either it falls apart or the scenes start getting out of order, or both. In the first revision pass, I take out all the stuff that isn’t working, but struggle to come up with new stuff to replace it. Usually, I’m just recycling the old stuff, and the result ends up a bit out of place and watered down. On the third pass, I say “screw it” and come up with a bunch of new stuff, which helps me to see where the story is actually going and arrange the scenes in the correct order. It’s not always as straightforward as that, but that’s the pattern.

In fact, I’ve learned a lot of interesting things from this revision, which I’ll probably save for another blog post when my thoughts on this are a lot clearer. The big takeaway is that I need to clearly separate the tasks that should be done in my creative mind (like writing new words and coming up with story) and the ones that should be done in my critical mind (like mapping out what to cut and what to keep or recycle). But more on that later.

About a week ago, I got X-COM: Enemy Unknown on a Steam sale and I’ve been playing it like crazy. It’s a really awesome game! I love the complex tactical thinking and how it really puts you there on the ground with your troops. And then, an enemy pops out of nowhere, flanks you, gets a critical hit, and the next thing you know your favorite soldier who you’ve been meticulously leveling up over the last thirty missions is DEAD! NOOOOO!!!

So yeah, that’s been eating up a lot of time–probably too much of it, to be honest. But I’m still working on various writing projects, including a plan to improve my short game. I put together a spreadsheet of all the major short story markets in the speculative fiction field, and ranked them in order of preference. My plan is to write a short story every week (or at least twice a month) and put it on submission, going right down the line until I’ve exhausted all the appropriate markets. No revisions, no holding stuff back because I think it’s not good enough–just writing and submitting until I’ve mastered that side of the art.

This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, but I’ve been holding back because … well, I don’t know why I’ve been holding back. Maybe I’ve just had it in my head that I’m not any good at short stories? Well, maybe right now I’m not, but I’m sure that it’s something I can learn. It’s a side of creative writing that I haven’t really explored yet, which means that there’s a lot of opportunity to learn and grow. And if/when I do start getting picked up by the major magazines, that’s going to do a lot to advance my career.

Don’t worry, I still plan to keep working on novels and novellas. This short story thing is something I’ll probably do when I need a quick break, to start something that I can finish in a day when I’m stuck in the middle of a gargantuan project. I’ll probably limit my short story writing to Saturdays, so it doesn’t interrupt things too much, and try to write them in one or two sittings if I can.

So that’s what I’ve been up to in the past week. In other news, it has gotten RIDICULOUSLY COLD out here in Utah, and I love it. Cold weather means hot chocolate, borscht, and oatmeal! It also means I need to get myself a bomber jacket–the kind with the awesome pockets on the arm. It’s been years since I had one of those, and they are good quality jackets.

In any case, that’s enough for now. I’ll do what I can to keep this blog updated as I move on with revisions and other stuff. In the meantime, stay warm!

Back to novels again

So yesterday I finished the rough draft of Sons of the Starfarers: Brothers in Exile. It needs work, but at least I’ve got something to work with. Of course, before I can do that, I need to take a break and work on something else.

For my next project, I’m going to do a massive revision of a novel I wrote almost three years ago. Heart of the Nebula is a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, and features James McCoy as the main character. He’s older and (somewhat) wiser, with a lot more responsibility resting on his shoulders as an officer in the Civil Defense Corps of the Colony. With the Hameji occupation driving them into famine and poverty, the stakes are a lot higher than the first book, and the dangers and intrigue a lot more complex. Not only are there pirates and criminals to deal with, but the Patrician is playing his own game, and James soon gets caught up in it.

Currently, this book is a real mess. I’ve attempted numerous revisions of it before, but finished none of them. The first part of the book is probably pretty close to where it needs to be, but then there are a bunch of broken subplots, characters who were excised from certain sections and left in others, scenes and chapters out of order, and relationships that develop either way too fast or hardly at all.

Before I dive in, I’m reading through the whole draft and making notes on a scene by scene basis. I’ve got a map set up for where all the scenes need to go, and I’m putting together a checklist of all the changes I have to make. I did the same thing when I wrote Bringing Stella Home and Genesis Earth (come to think of it, Desert Stars as well). Hopefully, this will help the revision to go quickly and to fix all the broken elements without watering down or polishing out the good stuff.

Probably the most important thing about revision notes is that they help me to separate my critical mind from my creative mind. When I’m looking at the book in my critical mind, I want to throw out the stuff that isn’t perfect and make lots of changes to the story. However, that can be a lot more destructive than constructive, since it’s the creative mind that really makes the good stuff. By writing a set of notes before diving into revisions, I can keep my critical mind from making too many changes to the actual story, and identify the problems so that when I go back to make the changes, I can switch the critical mind off and keep the creative mind on. And often, instead of making the changes I told myself to make (or rather, the changes my critical mind told me to make), my creative mind comes up with something else that puts the story on a much better path.

That’s the theory, anyway. We’ll see how it goes. The revision notes are going pretty quickly now, and even though things are going to get more complicated deeper into the book, I don’t think it will take me more than three or four days to finish them (unless I get called in to a job somewhere). Once that’s done, I’ll dive right into the book, probably tossing half of it and rewriting from scratch.

Thing is, it’s been a long time since I’ve worked on a novel this way. All last year, I’ve been writing novellas, and while some of them have required overhauls, it’s never been too complicated. With novels, though, it can be a mess. I’m sure I can do it, but I’m not sure how long it will take me. Hopefully no longer than a month, but I’m not going to stress it. The important thing is to do it right, and to really immerse myself back into this world.

So that’s what I’m working on now. I hope these updates on my writing projects aren’t too boring. They’re really helpful in writing the Author’s Notes at the end of each book, because I can go back to my blog, drill down the categories by book title, and see what I was working on at various different times when other stuff was happening in my life. For a book like Heart of the Nebula, that’s going to be important, because it’s been almost three years in the making. For most of that time, it was just sitting on the back burner (or, more accurately, the fridge), but it’s out again now and I’m focusing on it again. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m not going to talk about nanowrimo

I’m not going to talk about nanowrimo because … yeah, I’m not going to talk about nanowrimo.

I’ve been doing a lot to get the print versions of the Star Wanderers novellas up, but beyond that, not a whole lot of writing. Still one scene to go in Sons of the Starfarers: Brothers in Exile (that’s the working title, anyway), but I keep putting it off because … I dunno. So many other things going on, maybe? Sometimes it’s the easy stuff you put off the longest, sometimes, the hardest stuff. But I already said I wasn’t going to talk about nanowrimo …

In any case, I set Thanksgiving as the deadline to get all the print versions out for Star Wanderers, and it looks like I’ll be able to hit it. Outworlder, Fidelity, Sacrifice, and Homeworld are already up, and should propagate to Amazon in the next couple of days. Dreamweaver is in the proofing process, and I should be able to typeset Benefactor and Reproach in the next couple of days. It’s a relaxing thing to do while listening to podcasts, and the books are short enough that I can get all the work done in just a few hours.

In December, I hope to release a new Star Wanderers book: Deliverance, which covers the events of Homeworld from Mariya and Lucca’s points of view. This was a fun one to write, so I’m looking forward to getting it out there for you guys to read. It’s with my first readers now, who should get back to me by the first week of December or so. The draft is already pretty clean, so unless they bring up some major issues, I should be able to get it out fairly quickly.

And after that, I think I’m going to take a break from the Star Wanderers universe for a while to work on some novels. It’s been fun doing the shorter stuff, and I’ll definitely return to the novella form in the future, but there are a bunch of unfinished projects screaming at me to work on them. First among them is probably Heart of the Nebula, which I haven’t even touched in almost a year. It needs a huge overhaul–I’ll probably scrap a good half or so from the middle, probably more. But the ideas behind the story are solid, and I would really like to get another Gaia Nova novel out soon.

But the one that’s calling the most to me is probably Lifewalker. That’s the post-apocalyptic one with the guy wandering down the ruins of I-15 with a copy of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn toward a Las Vegas populated by cannibals. There’s actually a lot more to it than that, but that’s the 10 second pitch I’ve been giving people. The voice on that one was so different from anything else I’ve done, I had to take a break from it after I got to a good stopping place. But recently, it’s been calling out to me to finish it. I’ll probably move on to that one if I don’t go to Heart of the Nebula first.

Then there’s Edenfall, The Sword Bearer, a couple of other untitled ones, that Sword & Planet story I said I’d write … holy crap, so many unfinished books. I feel like I’m a bad writer whenever I don’t finish everything I start, but that just seems to be part of my process. Hopefully none of my readers are too impatient to get any particular book–although, come to think of it, that kind of pressure might be just what I need.

Either way, I really need to get back to writing. But I already said I wasn’t going to talk about nanowrimo (I wonder if this blog post counts?)

😛 Later.