Category: Stars of Blood and Glory

Heart of the Nebula 2.0 is finished!

That’s right: the second draft of Heart of the Nebula, direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, is now finished.  Here are the stats:

words: 90,081
chapters: 20
ms pages: 426
start date: 7 Nov 2011
end date: 4 Dec 2011

And the word splash:

Wordle: Heart of the Nebula 2.0

This was just a quick draft to fix some of the known problems before sending it off to my first readers.  I’d thought that it was missing a whole bunch of stuff, but I ended up taking out more than I’d put in.  Still, it feels like it’s missing something, and I’m not sure what.  Hopefully, my readers will be able to help me figure it out.

I’m starting to notice a pattern with my writing.  The first draft is always the hardest, fraught with all sorts of frustrations and setbacks.  In contrast, the second draft is usually pretty quick, and involves fixing the problems without making any drastic changes.  The third draft is where the story really comes to life, as I start to make connections and tap the latent possibilities.  This may continue in the fourth draft, but anything after that is usually just a matter of polishing the prose.

For those of you who’ve read Bringing Stella Home, this novel takes place five years after and centers around James McCoy and Lars Stewart.  Stella/Sholpan makes a brief appearance, but Danica and the Tajji mercenaries do not; I plan on writing more about them (a LOT more about them) in Stars of Blood and Glory.

I’m going to send this draft out to my first readers and let it settle for a couple of months.  Once I’ve gotten their feedback, I’ll undertake a thorough revision, possibly with some drastic changes to the story.  I don’t want to commit myself to  a specific date, but if all goes well, I may publish it sometime next summer.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in beta reading Heart of the Nebula, shoot me an email–but please, only ask if we know each other IRL.  My next big project is Star Wanderers, which should hopefully be finished by mid-January.  And of course, there’s Desert Stars–I’m in the process of getting the cover art, so it shouldn’t be more than a couple of weeks before it’s up!

So much going on…it’s good to get something finished.

Star Wanderers 0.2 is finished!

That’s right; I just finished the second draft of the beginning of Star Wanderers, the novel that came out of nowhere like a surprise baby.  I’m sending it out to my alpha readers now, so I can get some feedback before submitting it to Writers of the Future.  If I know you in real life and you want to give it a test read, let me know; it’s only about 15k words long, so it shouldn’t take long to read.

So what’s next?  Honestly, I really want to finish Star Wanderers, just to see where it goes.  But I also want to get back to Desert Stars, and after that I’ll probably want to write the untitled sequel to both Desert Stars and Bringing Stella Home…man, so much to write!

One thing I do feel I need to learn, though, is how to write fast.  This might sound crazy, but I’m going to try to finish Star Wanderers in the next two weeks.  The fastest I’ve ever been able to finish a novel before is 6 weeks, but with my job ending on Friday, freeing up a large chunk of time, I think I can do this.

I’d write more, but it’s late and I’ve got work at 8:00 am tomorrow, so I’ll leave you with this: it’s the song that became the unofficial theme song for Star Wanderers.  If you listen to it with the premise of the story in mind, I think it’ll make sense.

Have a good night!

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…

Fighting for a Homeland

For the past few weeks, I’ve been brainstorming ideas for my next big novel project.  One of the ways I’ve been doing this is to by trawling tvtropes and putting together a mashup of the story tropes I’d like to play with.

By far, the one that’s struck me the most is Fighting for a Homeland.  This is basically when a band of displaced warriors is wandering the Earth, trying to find their own promised land.  There are a lot of examples of this on the tropes page, but the coolest one is probably this from real life:

The first Czech legion, after World War one. Their country was then merely a province of Austria-Hungary, who started the war and teamed up with the Germans. The Czechs had very little reason to fight for them, and surrendered to the opposing Russians whenever they could. Through a lot of political scheming, the Russians were convinced to raise a Czech legion of 60,000 men to fight against the Austrians.

Then the Revolution broke out, and with the peace treaty between Russia and Austria, and the vicious warfare and politicking in Russia, they would not get their goal, an independent Czechia, so they turned to the western allies. They could not leave the country through the western side, so the allies chose to rendezvous with them in the port of Vladivostok, on the other side of Russia.

They crossed the country in three years, using the railways that they hijacked, joined with the Russian White Army (anti-communists) and the allies, stole the Tsar’s gold, traded it for free passage to Vladivostok with the advancing reds when they lost, and safely sailed home, to the newly founded country of Czechoslovakia.

Isn’t that friggin awesome?  What’s even cooler is that I might have ancestors who fought in the legion.  My great grandfather emmigrated from Moravia right around that time, perhaps a little before.  Man, if I ever write a historical novel…

But yeah, the trope almost perfectly characterizes Danica and her band of mercenaries, who feature prominently in Bringing Stella Home.  Their homeworld, Tajjur V, was fighting for independence right before the Hameji conquests began, and the New Gaian Empire put down the rebellion rather forcibly.  Later, when the system fell to the Hameji, their homeworld was bombarded and slagged into oblivion, leaving them with nowhere to call their own.

Long story short, the story of the Czech Legions and their epic journey across Siberia has totally inspired me for this next novel.  I’m going to make Roman (Danica’s NCO) a major viewpoint character, bring back the old mercenary team, throw in a few new ones (including a character from Desert Stars)…man, it’s going to be AWESOME!

In other news, “Decision LZ1527” and “From the Ice Incarnate” are both available for free from Diesel Ebooks.  Genesis Earth is also up there too, so if you feel inclined to post a review, I would certainly appreciate it!

Also, if you REALLY want to help, drop by the Amazon pages for “Decision LZ1527” and “From the Ice Incarnate” and fill out the little form where it says “tell us about a lower price.” I’m trying to get Amazon to offer my short stories for free, but the only way to do that is to make it free somewhere else and get Amazon to price match.

Hopefully, by making them free it will get me more exposure and drive more interest in the novels.  Moses Siregar did a guest post on that just this morning.

Also, I think I’ve found a new template that might work well for this blog.  What do you think?  Obviously, I would tweak the background and header (and possibly the color scheme as well). The main thing is that it has multiple sidebars, which will make more room for my books.  But if you have a better suggestion, please let me know.

Desert Stars 3.0 is finished!

That’s right; after almost exactly two months of writing, the third draft of Desert Stars is now complete!

This is the first draft where I feel that things are truly coming together the way they should be, where the story is transforming into something that not only works, but is actually fairly awesome. I’m probably not the best judge, though, so I’ll have to send it out to another round of first readers to get their reactions to it, but I don’t think this will need more than one more draft before it’s ready to go to a copy editor.

Anyhow, here are the stats:

ms pages: 505
words: 108,468
file size: 246 KB
chapters: 22, prologue & epilogue
start date: 16 May 2011
end date: 18 Jul 2011

And the Wordle:

Wordle: Desert Stars 3.0

The most influential song in the writing of this draft comes from an mp3 cd of Arabic music that a friend in Jordan gave me while I was studying over there in 2008. The title is فرحة عمرانة بالدار, which apparently translates to “The Joy of _____ in Casablanca.” I know absolutely nothing else about it, other than it sounds very Arab. Since Desert Stars is essentially about a far-future Arab society, it resonated quite well.

The hardest part of writing this draft was probably at the very end, when my daily routine fell to pieces and I completely lost my stride. This seems to happen a lot whenever I’m trying to finish something, which reflects in my daily word count charts.

But the ending itself was not particularly hard to write; in fact, it was quite fun. A bunch of previous changes came together in a way that just clicked, including some spontaneous ones that I hadn’t planned for at all. As a result, I’m really excited about this draft and hope to get it out as an ebook before Christmas.

One question, for those of you who have read the previous draft: do you think I could justify splitting the story into two separate novels and selling them each at a lower cost? I hate books that end on a cliffhanger, but one of my first readers thought that this might work, and it would certainly give me more stuff to epublish.

Also, if you haven’t read a previous draft and would like to be a first reader, please let me know. I only send my rough work out to people I know in real life, however, so if our only interaction has been online, please don’t ask. I’ll probably start the fourth draft sometime in September, so you’ll have until the end of the summer (and possibly a little more) to finish it.

Next project? Publishing Bringing Stella Home and putting together the spin-off novella Sholpan. Shouldn’t take more than a couple weeks. After that, I think I’ll start the indirect sequel that I mentioned before. In the meantime, on with business as usual.

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…

First Radio interview and other such stuff

Dude, check it out–my first radio interview just went live on the Dungeon Crawler’s Radio website!

I met these guys at CONduit last month, where they had a booth and were recording all sorts of authors and artist.  They were way cool when I talked with them, and when they found out I was a writer invited me on!

Hehe, considering how many big name authors they have on their show, I think I totally bombed–but it was still awesome.  The guys who run the show were really great, too; it was a ton of fun hanging out with them.  So thanks, guys, for having me on!

In other news, I just uploaded Genesis Earth to Smashwords, and I think it’s already live.  So for all those of you who want to get it from somewhere other than Amazon, it’s now available!  I’m still working through all the formatting kinks, so if you buy it and find some errors, let me know and I’ll send you a fixed copy.

Also, the cool thing about Smashwords is that you can generate coupon codes and even give the book away for free.  What I’m hoping to do is print up a few business cards with the code for a free book, then distribute them at conventions like Worldcon.  Hehe, imagine walking up to an editor and being like “hey, want my book?  Here you go!” Or even just dropping off a stack at the freebies table; I think it could be an awesome way to get exposure.

Man, there’s so much exciting stuff going on!  This is a great time to be a writer.

On the writing front, I’m making excellent progress on my current WIP (work in progress), Desert Stars. I’ve read through all the feedback from my first readers, and have a ton of fantastic ideas for how to make this story really shine.  I revised through about 2.1k words this morning before work, and I’m hoping to do at least two and a half chapters before this weekend.

Also, a couple days ago at work, I was trawling through tvtropes (one of the advantages of doing data entry is that you can afford to feed the addiction, hehe), and I had a SUPER awesome idea for the next book in the Gaia Nova series.

Since Bringing Stella Home is basically the Mongol conquests set in space, the big story to conclude that arc would be the battle of Ayn Jalut, where the Mongols suffered their first decisive defeat.  I did a little bit of setup for that in Into the Nebulous Deep, with the remnants of the Gaian Empire gathering at New Rigel.

Well, here’s what I’m thinking: I’ll bring back Danica’s team of mercenaries from Bringing Stella Home, make Roman a viewpoint character, and have Rina from Desert Stars join up with them as a quiet little girl in black who seems painfully shy, but is actually a deadly effective assassin whose weapon of choice is a bowcaster.

Oh yeah, I think this has some crazy awesome potential.

In any case, I should probably get to bed so I can get up early and write tomorrow. I hope to finish Desert Stars 3.0 by July 10th, and even though it’s going to take a lot of work, I think I can make it happen.

And after that…well, things just keep getting more and more awesome. I love writing!