Category: Heart of the Nebula

The interior designer’s approach to story

I recently read a fascinating post on John Brown’s blog with an interesting exercise for analyzing the kinds of stories you most like to read.  By finding out what really turns you on in a story, you can have a much better idea what to write, and how to make your own stories better.

He prefaced the exercise with a story about the interior designer who helped them to decorate their house.  The designer spread out a number of home magazines in front of them, and told them to go through and tear out the pictures that most turned them on.  After doing this, they analyzed the pictures to see what they had in common, and thus discovered how to best decorate their house.

The exercise works much the same way.  First, pick out five books you really like that immediately come to mind.  Mine are:

As many of you know, these are some of my favorite books of all time.  I’ve reread three of them, and I intend to reread the other two at some point.

Next, pick out the elements that these books have in common.  Here’s what I came up with:

1) Set in a different time and place.

Not all these books are science fiction, but the all take place in a world far removed from our own.  Only Spin takes place largely on Earth, but the events of the story transform the world as we know it so much that by the end of the novel, it’s completely different. SPOILER (highlight to see) Besides, at the very end, the two main characters leave Earth by going through the giant portal to another planet, so the novel is arguably about escaping the world as we know it.

2) Stakes that are much more personal than global.

This was interesting, and highlights something I realized when I compared Merchanter’s Luck with Downbelow Station.  In all of these stories, the central driving conflicts are extremely intimate and personal.

To be sure, many of these stories also have an epic backdrop; Mistborn certainly does.  However, I was much more interested in Vin’s growth and development than I was in how the Ska would overthrow the Lord Ruler–in fact, Mistborn is my favorite book in the trilogy for that very reason.

3) Encourages deep introspection.

This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise if you’ve followed this blog for a while, but I love love LOVE stories that make me see the world in a new way.  Thrillers and adventures are all fun and good, but if it doesn’t make me think, I’m usually like “meh” at the end.

4) Female characters who aren’t weak or passive.

This one might be a bit more controversial, but in all of these stories, I’ve noticed that the female characters are pretty strong, even if they aren’t all kick-butt Katniss wannabes (ugh…I hate Katniss).  Even in Legend, which is largely dominated by men, you still have the earl’s daughter, who is one heck of a spirited woman.

5) Life and death conflicts.

This is interesting: in all of these books, the threat of death is immanently real.  Some of them, such as Legend and On My Way to Paradise, are among the most violent books I’ve ever read.  I’m not sure what it is, but there’s something about life and death struggles that really draws me.

6) Romantic in a broad sense.

I’m using Tracy Hickman’s definition here, in which romance is all about teaching us to feel and bringing us in touch with our deepest feelings.  That’s the central theme of On My Way to Paradise: learning how to be a man of passion after witnessing some of the worst atrocities of war.

All of these books not only make me feel, they are about the feelings that they inspire.  In other words, the emotional elements of the story are both a part of and deeply embedded in the story’s central theme.

The exercises isn’t complete after this, though.  For the last part, take another five books and analyze them to see how they compare.  My second list includes:

So how does the list stack up?  Let’s see…

  1. Definitely true.  NONE of these stories take place in the world as we know it–and that’s awesome.
  2. A Canticle for Leibowitz might seem like an exception, since it follows the broad rise and fall of human civilization after the nuclear apocalypse.  But the things that really drew me to the story were the more personal elements: the novice who makes the illuminated manuscript of the electrical diagram, for example, or the abbot at the very end who SPOILER tries desperately to convince the single mother not to take her baby to the mercy killing station after the bomb fatally irradiates them.  In any case, it’s telling that A Canticle for Leibowitz made this list, whereas none of Arthur. C. Clarke’s books even came to my mind.
  3. Definitely true.  Even Citizen of the Galaxy, which is more adventure fiction than high concept sf, features a fascinating society of interstellar traders that really made me sit back and think about the way we structure our society.  Heinlein has a really awesome way of doing that with everything he writes.
  4. The only possible exception here might again be Heinlein, who had some very extremist views of women (putting it lightly).  However, if I recall, Citizen of the Galaxy has a female character at the end who helps pull out the main character from his indigent circumstances and helps him to come into his own.  Again, they might not all be kick-butt tramp-stamp vampire slayers, but they certainly aren’t weak.
  5. Less true of The Neverending Story and The Dispossessed, but while the central conflicts might not be about life and death, the threat of death (or a total loss of identity) certainly comes into play.
  6. Definitely true.  Few books have taught me to feel more deeply than The Neverending Story.  An absolutely magnificent piece of literature.

So there you have it.  According to this exercise, I should write books set in another time and place, where strong female characters face life and death decisions that personally impact the people in their lives and make the readers think and feel.  Interestingly enough, that is a PERFECT description of Bringing Stella Home, as well as Desert Stars and Into the Nebulous Deep.

Cool stuff.  Makes me want to write.  So on that note, I think I will.

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…

Into the Nebulous Deep 1.1 is finished!

That’s right; my fifth novel, Into the Nebulous Deep, is finished! Here are the stats:

ms pages: 447
words: 101,215
file size: 230 KB
chapters: 20
start date: 7 March 2011
end date: 14 May 2011

And the wordle:

Wordle: Into the Nebulous Deep 1.1

This novel is a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, and takes place within the same universe as Worlds Away from Home (note to self: find new title for that one). I got the idea for the novel from a conversation with one of my first readers for BSH, who mentioned that James didn’t get a whole lot of closure at the end and still had a lot of maturing to do. Immediately, I saw that there was a story there, and got to work figuring out how to tell it.

This was back in October, and like so many other things, the project quickly started going in about twenty different directions. I was still on something of an sf romance binge, so I decided to throw in a love story, and that quickly turned into a love triangle with a weird sf twist. But then, I started getting interested in the girls’ stories, which led to other subplots, which led to more stuff…and…and…

Actually, for a rough draft, I feel I pulled it off pretty well. I dropped the ball on some aspects of the story (didn’t develop the techno-democracy elements of the Colony hardly at all, and dropped James’s sidekick without giving his character a satisfying arc), and forgot to throw in other stuff until well past midway through (the wolf vs. sheepdog debate–Lars has a rather feisty take on that, which should be interesting), but I think the overall structure is mostly intact. For a rough draft, I’m rather pleased.

Of course, it will need a major triage edit before I can send it out to any first readers. It has problems, I know what they are, and I need to give the draft a major overhaul to get it to the point where feedback would be helpful.

But after ten weeks of working on this thing, I’m ready to move on to something else. Next up: my second revision of Worlds Away from Home. I am sooo stoked to get working on this project–it’s going to be AWESOME!

The song that had the biggest impact on my as I wrote ITND was probably this remix of hot head bop on ocremix. I think the lyrics sum up James’s character pretty well, especially in this book:

Now, onto other exciting things!

Thoughts on outlining

I’m on track to finish my fifth novel in a couple days, and surprisingly, the writing has been going very smoothly.

Usually by this point, my eyes are bleeding and I feel as if I have a hundred caltrops in my pants.  Finishing a rough draft is still the hardest part for me, since by the end everything seems to suck and I just want to trash the whole project.

I still feel a little bit of that with Into the Nebulous Deep, but not nearly as much as with my previous stuff.  Part of that is probably because I feel confident that I can fix whatever I screw up, but the other part probably has to do with the way I’ve learned to outline.  In one short sentence, here’s what I’ve learned:

An outline is simply the story you tell yourself to help you tell the story.

I don’t think there’s any mortal writer on this planet who can keep a whole novel in their head at one time.  Scenes, yes; chapters, maybe; novels, absolutely not.

However, since everyone’s creative mind works a little differently, everyone has to find the process that works for them.  Brandon Sanderson, for example, writes story bibles that are almost 100k words long.  If I were to try to do that, I’d get bored halfway through and spend the rest of the day dorking around on youtube.  Other people prefer to fly by the seat of their pants, and while there’s something to say about trusting your subconscious, I need a little structure to keep from getting totally lost.

It took me a while to figure out the process that best works for me, but based on how ITND has been going, I think I’ve hit my stride.  Breaking it down into plot, setting, and character, here’s how I basically do it:

Plot

For me, the basic plot of the story comes in a flash of creative insight once all the ideas in my head have reached a critical mass.  It’s like watching a fissure shoot across a smashed window pane, or lightning arcing from the ground to the sky.

If I don’t have time to start the project right away, I’ll let the plot mull around in my head for a couple days, then open up notepad and free write the basic structure of the story in an unedited stream of consciousness.  When I do start the project, I’ll look back to the free write to refresh my memory, but otherwise work out of what’s in my head (which may have changed).

While the project is ongoing, I’ll divide the whole novel into parts, chapters, and scenes.  For the chapter I’m currently working on, I’ll have the various scenes listed in bold with their corresponding point of view character (eg: “1.1: James“), followed by a brief one or two line description of the action and plot significance.  If I introduce a new character in that scene, I’ll write their name in ALL CAPS (I believe that’s a screenwriting convention I picked up from my old college roommate).

For chapters I haven’t written yet, I just write a few lines of description for what I envision happening in them.  When I first start out, I usually have a clear idea where I want the story to end, but I don’t bother outlining all the stuff in the middle since that usually changes based on stuff that comes before.  I only keep my outline a few chapters ahead of where I currently am, and may change things completely if something new comes up.

This process works very well for me.  I use it for every draft, and refer to it often.

Character

I’ve found that I need to do a lot more outlining to figure out my characters than I do with my plot.  However, it’s like Tracy Hickman said with the marbles: don’t hold onto your outline too tight, or all the marbles will slip out between your fingers.

The things I absolutely need to know about my characters are:

  • back story
  • motivations
  • first impressions
  • flaws & handicaps
  • strengths & advantages
  • why the reader should care about / sympathize with them

For some odd reason, I find it most helpful to write this out longhand, usually while taking a walk.  For additional help, sometimes I’ll take a personality test on behalf of my character and get a handle on them through their personality type; for that, I prefer the Meyers-Briggs typology.

But once I feel I have a solid handle on a character, I’ll throw everything out if it feels instinctively right for a character to do something completely different.  Thing is, I need the outline (especially the motivations and back story) to get to the point where I know the character well enough to let them take over.

And for some reason, all my main characters feel too…generic.  I’m not sure why, but that’s something I’ve got to work on.

Setting

Setting, for me, is all about discovery writing.  I’ve tried using wikidpad to worldbuild my universe before I start, but that’s never worked.  Instead, I daydream a lot and trust my subconscious to give me what I need when I need it.

That’s not to say I don’t do research–just that most of my research is on the fly.  If I only stay on wikipedia and the footnotes and references, no problem; if I get sidetracked on facebook, however…

Often, when I’m doing setting descriptions, I’ll run a quick google image search to pull up pictures to give me a better visual idea of what I’m describing.  I especially use this for clothing; that’s why, if you check my search history (please don’t), you’ll find all these weird, girly terms like “ottoman dress,” “jumpsuit,” “leather jerkin,” and “full frontal snogging” (whoops, where did THAT come from??).

The big problem is when I figure something at the beginning of the book and then forget about it halfway through.  For that reason, I should probably invest in a good copy editor when I start to publish.  I should also take the time to draw out a starmap, since it’s getting REALLY hard for me to remember where the Belarian system is in relation to Tajjur and Karduna Prime…hmm…

I should probably figure out a better system to keep track of my settings, but as far as outlining them goes, the less the better.  I love waving my hand and creating stuff–it’s one of the main reasons why I’m a science fiction writer.

So anyways, that’s more or less the outlining system I currently use.  I might end up outgrowing certain aspects of it, or finding a better system, but this is what works best for me now.

Of course, I still have a lot to learn.

Back in Mass

Mass = Massachusetts = “back east,” for all you unwashed Utahans!

My sister’s wedding is this weekend, so I’m back at my parents’ place helping them get everything set up.  It’s going to be a busy day tomorrow, but I’ve got my netbook and will probably get a couple good hours of writing in.

I managed to write a bit on the plane today, but not as much as I was hoping.  My goal is still to finish Into the Nebulous Deep 1.1 by May 14th; I’ve got about 15k-20k left to go, and since I’m taking the next few weeks off to work on writing projects, I shouldn’t have any problems meeting that deadline.

Yesterday, I took the unedited manuscript of Genesis Earth and formatted it nice and pretty so my friend Laura could read it on her Kindle, and…man, it looks like a real book!  There’s something about seeing your work in the actual form that people are going to read it in that is just…well, for lack of a better word, magical.  It’s definitely motivated me to get GE up quickly, as well as Journey to Jordan.  More on that in the next few days and weeks to come.

It’s getting late out here and I’d better get some sleep, but before I do, I want to put a plug in for my new favorite webcomic, The Zombie Hunters.  Ross Wolfe, Quark’s renowned zombie expert, introduced me to the comic a couple months ago, and I have been totally hooked ever since.

The comic is set in our world after the zombie apocalypse, where a band of five thousand survivors struggles to rebuild civilization on an island that was previously the site of a major research campus.  The zombie plague has a dormant phase, where the infected can live normal lives, but turn into zombies when they die.

The infected live in segregated barracks as second class citizens, but teams of them regularly venture out into the wastelands to salvage supplies from the zombie-infested ruins.  The comic basically centers around one of these teams of zombie hunters; their struggles and challenges, their relationships with each other, and their hopes and dreams for the future.

The storytelling is fantastic, the characters are engaging and real, the post-apocalyptic setting dark, gritty, and yet totally immersive and frighteningly believable–man, it’s just awesome.  And the longer it runs, the better it gets!  I can’t wait to find out how Charlie the half-life fits in with his ability to communicate with the zombies, or to get the full backstory with Jenny and Milo.  And I love the banter between Jenny and Sammie, her alcoholic sociopath best friend.

Right now, though, the main storyline is on hold while the author works through some business problems, but the short story is absolutely fantastic.  I love her fantastic use of point of view–how she gets into the little boy’s head and shows the apocalypse unfold from his perspective.  And the kid’s grisly end…man, zombies are even freakier when you never see their faces!  I wouldn’t be surprised if I have nightmares tonight about it–I have in the past.  Crazy awesome zombie nightmares, heh.

As a side note, may I point out what may quite possibly be the perfect weapon for the zombie apocalypse, the AA-12 shotgun.  All it needs is a bayonet and like a bajillion clips of ammo.  A must-have for any zombie contingency plan.

But yeah, let me just say I am in awe of The Zombie Hunters.  Awesome, awesome story–every time it updates, I get immersed again in the post-apocalyptic world, and it is amazing.  If I ever end up writing a zombie apocalypse story (which will probably involve starships and space travel in some fashion), I would be tickled if it’s even half as good as this excellent webcomic.

Goals for May

The last two weeks have pretty much decimated my writing routine.  Between family stuff and a 40 hour per week temp job, I’ve pretty much fallen behind on everything.

However, the good news is that with the money from the temp job, I can afford to take a month off to work exclusively on writing projects.  Here’s what I plan to accomplish, in order of importance:

  • Finish Into the Nebulous Deep 1.1.
  • Finish the online TEFL class.
  • Publish Journey to Jordan on the Kindle.
  • Finish >50% of Worlds Away from Home 3.0.
  • Prepare Genesis Earth for publication.
  • Release the short stories on Nook, Smashwords.
  • Switch to Linux.

A hefty bill, especially considering that my youngest sister’s wedding is next weekend.  However, I think I can definitely do it.  I’ve got about 18k words left in ITND, and with the feedback from my first readers, I’ve got tons of ideas for WAFH.  That project is going to be fun.

Journey to Jordan shouldn’t be too hard, either.  I found a good WYSIWYG html editor and played around with some test files today until I figured out how to make it work.  Now, I just need to play around with an actual Kindle to see how small I need to make the interior illustrations/photos to make sure they look good.  After that, it’s just copy and paste from old blogs, with a little spot editing and some time to write a foreword.

Journey to Jordan is going to be a lot of fun.  It’s a travel journal, not a science fiction novel, but my experiences in the Middle East definitely shaped my writing style, and it might be fun for readers of my novels/stories to see where the influences came from.  If all goes well, I can have it up by the 14th.

But above all else, my priority is going to be writing. I want to get back into a steady routine, plugging out a good +2.5k words each day until ITND is finished.  The deadline for that is the 14th, but I want to have it finished sooner if possible.  It’s going to be hard with my sister’s wedding, but I’ll do the best I can.

Of course, this is all assuming that I can take the whole month of May off.  However, Pioneer Book called me up on Saturday to set up an interview–they’ve got a position open, and I’m pretty optimistic that they’ll want to hire me.

If that happens, great!  I’ll just push some of this stuff back into June and juggle part time work with these writing projects.  Full time work is much harder to juggle, but if things don’t work with Pioneer Book, the guys at the temp job want me to come back in June.  So either way, I won’t be broke (inshallah).

The ultimate goal, of course, is to make the writing pay the bills.  That seems more possible to me now than ever before, but it’s still a ways out there.  2015, though–that’s the goal.  I want to me making a full time living as a writer by 2015.

But for now, I’d better get some sleep.  After all, I want to write +4k words tomorrow.  Wish me luck!

Killing the sacred cows while doing data entry

Sorry for the lack of blog posts; I’ve been working 40 hours a week at this temp job, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for other things outside of writing.  I’m still plugging along at about 1k to 2k words per day, but a lot of other stuff is falling behind.  Fortunately, the job only lasts another two weeks, and that should earn me enough to take the next month off and focus on writing.  I’m really looking forward to that.

This job isn’t too bad; it’s tedious, but I can read blogs and listen to podcasts and music while I do it, so I’ve been catching up on a lot of business research.  Last week, I read all of Kris Rusch’s The Business Rusch Publishing blog series, and right now I’m working my way through Dean Wesley Smith’s Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing.

Let me just say, this stuff is pure gold.  Every post (and a surprising number of the comments, especially those by Laura Resnick) have been extremely eye opening.  At the outset, almost everything Dean or Laura say about the industry seems absolutely blasphemous…but it all makes so much sense.

Like the post about how agents shouldn’t be giving authors any career advice… because they’ll usually advise you to write to the market, not to what you’re passionate about (and can therefore write well). Or how if you’re a midlister, it’s usually in the agent’s best interest to side with the editor, since they may have ten or more clients at stake in this house and you only represent a $3k annual revenue stream to them (or less).

The best piece of advice across the whole series so far comes from Dean:

Don’t listen to rules (myths) and do what works for you and if it doesn’t work, try something else, and when that stops working, try something else. Don’t do it my way or Larry Brooks way or Laura’s way or Harlan’s way. Steal parts from all of us and do it your way.

The thing I find most gratifying, however, is the fact that I figured out on my own that submitting to agents first probably isn’t the best way to break in. But man, there is so much awesome, paradigm-shifting stuff in these posts, it is amazing.  Pure gold.

In the meantime, Into the Nebulous Deep is going surprisingly well.  I should have it finished by mid-May, and though it will probably need some serious revision (unlike Dean, my creative mind gets more fired up in the revision process than the drafting process), the major story arc is coming along very nicely.

I wonder if that has to do with the fact that ITND will be my fifth completed novel.  My first one, Ashes of the Starry Sea, was mostly smooth to write, but it was also a practice novel and as such royally sucks.  Genesis Earth went through an EXTREMELY convoluted writing process, but it was good enough to get to the quarter-finalist stage of the 2011 ABNA contest (and in two days, I’ll find out if it made the semi finals…<fingers crossed>).  Bringing Stella Home was also pretty tough to write, as was Worlds Away from Home, though the revisions have been more straightforward so far.

So does this mean I’m starting to come into my stride as a novelist?  I hope so, because I want to start pushing myself.  After ITND, I want to revise WAFH in six weeks or less–and I’ll probably throw out 1/3 to 1/2 of the material and completely rewrite it.  After that, I want to do Sholpan in two or three weeks–but that shouldn’t be hard, because the material is mostly there already.  Whether Genesis Earth wins or loses the ABNA contest, I’ll want to write Edenfall–before August, if I can manage it.  And then, there’s always that post-apocalyptic blight project…

Anyhow, sorry for the rambling.  The point is, I want to take my writing to a new level this summer, and after this temp job is finished, I’ll be in a great position to do it.  In the meantime, I’ll merrily watch Dean kill the sacred cows while I fill out UPS shipping data for the next two weeks.

And now, here’s some candy for your ears:

A word about ebook formatting

So it turns out that ebook formatting is a lot harder than I’d thought. I was hoping to finish chapter 13 in ITND tonight, but I’ve spent the whole #$@! time just trying to get “From the Ice Incarnate” up on Amazon.

Fortunately, I think I have a much better idea of what I’m doing now.

For “Memoirs of a Snowflake” and “Decision LZ1527,” I just uploaded the .doc file and had Amazon reformat it automatically.  The stories were short and simple enough that it worked rather well.

Then I decided I wanted to put the cover in the body of the ebook, and foolishly thought I’d just put it on the first page of the .doc file I was uploading.  Long story short, I discovered that that’s not a good idea–the ereader doesn’t read it as a cover, and it looks like crap.

Also, I discovered that the ideal size for an ebook cover is 600×900 pixels (for a standard 2:3 aspect ratio).  From now on, all the covers I upload will be 600×900.

So then, when I uploaded “From the Ice Incarnate,” I kept noticing these weird indenting problems in the preview.  No matter what I did to change the .doc file, it wouldn’t go away.  Out of frustration, I downloaded the html file that Amazon had formatted it into and noticed these weird <div> tags popping up on short, one line paragraphs where they should have been <p> tags.  Don’t ask me how they got there, but they were a pain to fix.

So then, I tried uploading the modified html file, and found to my great joy that the problem had been fixed.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t see any way to put in the cover–and the cover for “From the Ice Incarnate” is REALLY awesome.

Frustrated but undaunted, I turned to Mobipocket Creator, an open source ebook creating program.  I’d tried playing with it before, but found it complicated and confusing.  Well, now that I knew what I wanted it to do, it wasn’t hard at all to figure out how to make it work.

First, I created a new project in its own designated folder.  Then, I added the corrected html file to the “publication files” page.  Where it asked for a cover image, I uploaded the 600×900 jpeg (I do all my editting in The Gimp, in a much larger .xcf file).  Then, I filled in the metadata, such as book description, suggested cover price, etc.

When I was finished, I hit “build,” and voila!  A slick looking .prc ebook file that looked EXACTLY how I wanted it to.

I uploaded it to Amazon, and it looked great in the preview.  I’m not sure what it’ll look like in the finished product  yet, since it takes 24 hours to upload, but I fixed “Decision LZ1527” as well.  Once I knew what I was doing, it took maybe five minutes to create the ebook on Mobipocket Creator.

So here’s what I’m going to do from now on.  I’m going to bypass the whole .doc thing altogether (since I use Open Office, not MS Word) and go straight from .odt to .html using a WYSIWYG html editor.  For the cover, I’ll use The Gimp, with the project files as .xcf and the finished images as 600×900 .jpegs.  I’ll combine it all in Mobipocket Creator, and upload the .prc ebook file to Amazon / Pubit / Smashwords / wherever.

Sound daunting? (Charlie, I’m talking to you, hehe)  It’s actually a TON of fun, once you get the hang of it.  And let me tell you, when I saw the finished product, it was awesome.  Totally worth it.

Trouble is, I haven’t had any time to work on my novel, which is frustrating, because I’m working an 8 to 5 job now.  It’s temporary, which is nice for a full time artist/creator like me, but man, I’m going to miss all the free time I used to have.  I want to finish ITND before the end of the month, but I’ve still got a long ways to go.

In the meantime, let me give you a sneak peek on my next ebook.  It’s a short story based on an excerpt from Genesis Earth, which won first place in the 2009 Mayhew short story contest at BYU.  Of the stuff I’ve posted up to Amazon so far, I think this one is far and away the best.

Here’s the cover:

Pretty cool, eh?  I ripped the font from Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri.  The image is from NASA, taken by the Hubble space telescope.

So anyways, that’s what’s going on with my ebook venture.  I’m kind of glad I haven’t done much to publicize the other stories, because they need a lot of work.  If you bought one already, don’t worry; the stories haven’t changed at all, just the formatting.  I’m not sure if you can re-download those once you’ve bought them, but if you want one of the new ones, let me know and I’ll figure it out.

And if I’m missing something in terms of html or ebook formatting, please let me know.  I’m not quite hopeless, but I’m still horribly ignorant when it comes to this kind of stuff.  Any suggestions (especially for a good WYSIWYG editor) would me much appreciated.

Just another update

A few updates, in case you’re interested in what’s going on with me:

I’m getting ready to post a new story to Amazon.  This is going to be the one that won first place in the 2009 Mayhew short story contest at BYU.  It’s also an excerpt for Genesis Earth, which is currently in the quarter finals for the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.  More news on that as it comes out.

Into the Nebulous Deep is coming along.  Surprisingly, the rough draft follows a very tight, coherent plot structure.  At this stage, every other novel I’ve written is usually all over the place.  This one looks like it’s going to be twenty chapters, with four parts of five chapters each.

Right now, I’m in the middle of chapter 13.  I was hoping to finish it this week, but my sister was in town this weekend, so I spent most of my time with her instead.  Not that that’s a problem; I can probably catch up tomorrow.  I’m hoping to finish part III before the end of next week.

It’s going to be tough, though, because I’m starting a new temp job on Monday.  It’s 40 hours per week at $9, which is pretty sweet, especially since my tax return is basically going to cover all my expenses this month.  Hooray for cheap Utah summers!  The full time work is going to be tough on the writing, though.

Which brings me to my last update: the guys at Pioneer Book called me back today and set up a job interview on Tuesday!  Hooray!  I’m totally stoked–this bookstore job would be awesome.  I might even postpone my TEFL plans for a while if I get the job.  It probably won’t be full time or pay much more than minimum wage, but dude, it’s a bookstore. Plus, part time work is perfect for writing.  As long as I have enough to get by, I’ll be happy.

And to close, let me leave you with this awesome trailer my brother in law shared with me.  I haven’t seen this movie, but it looks absolutely freaking awesome–like the kind of film my old roommate Steve Dethloff would make.

Man, Steve and I would make an awesome duo in a post-apocalyptic world. I should move to Dallas just so we can be ready to team up when it happens. If they made a movie of our exploits together, it would totally be just like this. Lost Vegas…

Steve, if you’re reading this, I want you to know that there’s no one I’d rather be killing zombies with than you.

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…