Sons of the Starfarers – Page 17 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

STAR WANDERERS: DELIVERANCE (PART VIII) is now available!

Well, guys, it looks like I’ve gone and published another book! Star Wanderer: Deliverance (Part VIII) is now live on Amazon, Smashwords, and Kobo, and will soon be up on Barnes & Noble, Sony, and the iBookstore. In the next couple of months, I’ll probably put it up on Google Play and DriveThru Fiction as well.

This is the eighth Star Wanderers book, and more or less brings the series to a close. That doesn’t mean that I’m finished with this universe or these characters, though. I plan to bring a lot of them back with Sons of the Starfarers, a spinoff series that will follow Mariya’s brothers, Isaac and Aaron, as they fight to keep the Outworlds free from Gaian Imperial domination. That series will also tie everything in with the Gaia Nova novels, and show the origins of the Hameji. So be sure to look out for those!

Also, I’m happy to report that the print editions of Outworlder (Part I), Fidelity (Part II), Sacrifice (Part III), and Homeworld (Part IV) are now available on Amazon! Each costs about $5, and is between 75 to 100 pages. The print versions for Dreamweaver (Part V), Benefactor (Part VI), Reproach (VII), and Deliverance (Part VIII) will hopefully be out before the end of the month!

A note about the print editions: I’m currently using the same covers as the ebooks, with the generic NASA space art. However, I recently made an agreement with Derek Murphy of CreativIndie Covers to redo the book covers for the entire series. This includes the print versions, so once I have the new covers, I will replace them and the old versions will be unavailable.

If you want the best looking print book, it’s probably best to wait. Derek did a really awesome job on Part I: Outworlder, and I expect that the rest of the covers will be just as stunning. However, since there’s only going to be a limited number of the original versions, there is a chance that they might become more valuable if these books really take off. I can’t make any promises about that, since I really have no idea, but if you would like to get the original versions, they will only be up for a couple of months as I gradually replace them. I will have matching versions for each book in the series, though, so if you want to collect a complete set with the original cover art, you’ll definitely be able to do that.

That just about does it. As always, thanks for reading!

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?

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.

Nanowrimo is kicking my butt

… but that’s a good thing. While procrastinating my daily word count, I’ve almost finished Book I of Sons of the Starfarers, formatted and orders proofs for the first four Star Wanderers novellas, alpha-read most of another book for a friend, and done a bunch of other things (which is nothing compared to a friend of mine, who procrastinated by getting a job).

Right now, I’ve got about 3,500 words written, which means I need to write about 2,000 words a day in order to hit 50k words before the end of the month. Actually, that shouldn’t be too hard–most of the difficulty of writing is just getting out of the way, so when I put my hands on the keyboard and say “whatever you do, DON’T STOP WRITING,” good things actually happen. At a nanowrimo get-together at Dragon’s Keep in Provo, I knocked out 1500 words in about an hour using that method. It’s actually quite liberating–I should do it this way more often.

So why only 3,500 words, instead of the 11,666 that I’m supposed to have? Because I REALLY REALLY REALLY have to finish this Sons of the Starfarers book, and that’s been taking up virtually all of my time and mental space. I hit the action stuff a couple of days ago, and things were just flowing, but now it’s that last crucial scene and I’m not quite sure how to pull it off. Probably I’ll write something and change it later, or tell myself that at least so I can just finish it and move on.

But UURGHH!

Anyways, that is all. Back to writing.

Trope Tuesday: Made a Slave

Just because something is heinous doesn’t mean that it won’t make a good story. In fact, the Rule of Drama practically guarantees that it will make a good story. For some weird reason, we humans are fascinated by things in fiction that would horrify us in real life, and love it when our favorite characters are put into situations where we would never want to find our loved ones. Perhaps there are many reasons for this, some of them better than others.

One of the worst situations in which anyone can find themselves is slavery, in which they basically become the property of someone else. Slavery takes many different forms (and has many different tropes), but the thing they all have in common is the denial of freedom, dignity, and the basic human rights that most of us take for granted. So when a character who’s free gets made a slave, you can usually expect to see some pretty high drama as a result.

As the tvtropes page for this trope explains it:

There is often a scene in which the character is being sold on the slave market, showcasing all the evils of slavery; the protagonist will witness how families are torn apart, will have to undress and be examined like an animal, and will perhaps be beaten … If he looks strong, he will be told that he will go to the galleys or the mines — a Fate Worse Than Death — or perhaps to the Gladiator Games. If she (or occasionally he) is attractive, she will be told that she will make a buyer very happy indeed.

If the main character is a slave, this is usually a part of his (or her) backstory; it’s fairly rare for a character to be born into slavery these days, probably because slavery is no longer considered an acceptable social institution in our modern Western society. In older stories, the slave character may be of noble birth, setting up a sort of Cinderella story where they realize who they are and eventually come into their own. That still happens, though usually it’s more about them taking power into their own hands to rise above their awful circumstances.

Surprisingly, this is a trope you’ll see with some frequency in science fiction. Heinlein wrote a novel about it, pictured to the left (one of his better ones, in my opinion). It happens quite a bit in the Sword and Planet subgenre, as well as any gladiator-type tale. You’d think at some point our technology would become sufficiently advanced that we wouldn’t need to enslave each other, but apparently we will use manual labor in the future. Besides, at it’s core, slavery isn’t about acquiring cheap labor–it’s about owning someone, taking away their freedom and control. Until human nature itself changes, we’re probably going to have to deal with slavery in one form or another for the forseeable future.

In any case, there’s something rousing–perhaps even inspiring–about the story of a character who rises above such an awful situation to win back, against all odds, their rights and freedoms. That’s probably why we still enjoy retelling this trope. A character can’t truly rise until they’ve bottomed out somewhere, and as far as hitting rock bottom goes, getting made a slave is pretty dang low.

I’ve played with this trope in a couple of my books. In Sholpan and Bringing Stella Home, Stella goes through pretty much everything on the tvtropes page, which sets things up pretty well for … well, I won’t spoil it. 😉 In Stars of Blood and Glory, Abaqa tries to make the Princess Hikaru his slave, but since they’re both teenagers and he’s younger than her, it ends up being rather hilarious (she gets rescued soon afterward too, so it doesn’t stick long enough for the really bad stuff to happen. And then the rescuers … well, I won’t spoil that either).

Right now, I’m playing with it a bit in Sons of the Starfarers, though I’m not sure where it’ll end up exactly. Probably not so far as this trope, but I never really know what my characters will do–or what will happen to them.

Nanowrimo anyone?

November is coming up, and with it, nanowrimo. I’ve always wanted to participate, but every time it rolls around, it seems like I’ve got another project going on that’s more important.

This year is no exception, but I think I have a way around that. The goal for nanowrimo is just to write something–it doesn’t have to be any good. I’ve got a bunch of projects I’m currently working on, including Star Wanderers: Deliverance (Part VIII) which I hope to publish by Thanksgiving, but I think I can still do a just-for-fun sort of thing on the side, with the understanding that it doesn’t have to be serious.

What I think I’ll do is write a story where all of the characters from all of my previous books get caught up in some sort of a weird time-space dimensional warping thing, so that they end up in books where they don’t belong and universes where they never existed. It should be a fun way to revisit some of them, especially the ones from the Gaia Nova books, which I haven’t really done much with in a while.

It’s probably not going to make much sense to anyone who hasn’t read my books, but who cares? That’s not the point. I may or may not put it up somewhere for people to read, but it may have some stuff from projects that are either unfinished or unpublished, so it might be a little obtuse even for the fans. However, it seems like a really fun project, one that I can really run with, and that’s all that really matters for nanowrimo.

As far as my other projects go, right now I’m working on a heroic fantasy novel that’s a prequel of sorts to The Sword Bearer. I have no idea where it’s going to go, but I’m taking a page from my favorite writer of all time (David Gemmell), with lots of violence, lots of blood, and lots of true grit and heroism.

At the same time, I’m still working on Sons of the Starfarers off and on, though I may end up putting that one on hold for a while as I figure things out with this heroic fantasy story. It will get done, though–it’s definitely a story I’m itching to tell. In a couple of reviews and emails, readers have asked whether I’ll ever write an origin story for the Hameji. Well, that’s what Sons of the Starfarers is going to be, though the connection might not happen until well into the series.

There’s a couple of other Gaia Nova books I’ve been meaning to write for a long, long time, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to get to them anytime soon. This nanowrimo project might spark something, though, since I’ll be revisiting a lot of those old characters. And even if the nanowrimo novel itself is pretty bad, if it gets those projects on the back burner simmering again, then that will definitely be something.

Dang, I really want to get started with nanowrimo now! So many wacky ideas … it’s like writing fanfiction for one of your own books! In any case, I’d better get back to writing before I get too excited. Don’t want to spend so much time thinking about writing that it becomes hard when I actually sit down to do it.

Later!

Busy, busy, busy

No, I haven’t dropped off the face of the planet–I’ve just been crazy crazy busy this past week.

On Sunday, after one BSOD too many, I finally switched from Windows to Ubuntu. I’ve wanted to give Linux a try ever since high school, but I’m not a computer programmer or anything so a lot of it is way over my head. So far, though, it hasn’t been too bad. The most complicated thing I had to do was change the firmware on my mp3 player (an iRiver T10 … yeah, laugh, whatever).

This is just an initial impression, but it seems that the difference between Linux, Windows, and Apple is a lot like the difference between cooking your own food, popping a frozen meal into the microwave, and paying someone to cook for you. With Linux, you have to at least dabble in the actual code in order to get anything to work, but it works WAAAAY better than anything else (just like real food is healthier than fake food). With Windows, yeah, you can kind of hack stuff, but you’re still at the mercy of Microsoft. And with Apple, you’re basically paying through the nose for someone to hold your hand every time you use your device.

So anyways, that’s been quite an adjustment, with a steep learning curve that I’m still trying to climb. Hopefully, I’ll get it all figured out before I publish my next book, because otherwise there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Actually, scratch that–the wailing and gnashing of teeth will happen anyway (heck, it’s happening now!), but if I don’t have it figured out, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth AND a delay getting the next book out. But that’s not going to happen.

The other thing that’s kept me busy (and really, the main thing sucking up all my time) has been a construction job that the temp agency suckered me into taking. They said it was supposed to end on Monday … but no, it lasted all week. I did learn a lot of interesting things, though. For example, I learned how to take out and re-install a toilet. I also learned that painters are among the most disgusting creatures on Earth, so if I ever want to paint the interior of my house, I’d be better off buying the supplies and doing it myself.

There were a couple of other things that kept me busy, but I’m not sure how much I can talk about them yet. The most exciting thing has to do with the next issue of Mormon Artist magazine, which should be coming out in about a month. Also, I’ve been working with some other sci-fi indie writers to put together a group promo–more on that later.

So that’s what I’ve been doing instead of blogging. I’ve also made some progress in Sons of the Starfarers, though not as much as I’d like. Ideally, I’d like to finish the rough draft in about two weeks, which is pushing it but definitely possible. I figure that writing is more important than blogging, so if you don’t see another post here for a while, that’s what I’m up to.

So much for that. I’ll leave you with this:

Okay, chances are you’ve probably seen it already. Maybe it made you sad, maybe it made you cry, or maybe it made you laugh in a guilty, self-conscious sort of way. However, I am not ashamed to say that I found this clip absolutely hilarious. Sure, maybe it left that poor little girl a bit traumatized, but I’d rather her learn about death from an eagle and a rabbit than from someone in her family passing away.

Rabbits are pests. Eagles are beautiful, majestic creatures who have every right to live as rabbits do. What the eagle did was not malicious, or hateful, or evil–it was natural. Eagles have to eat too, and by golly they sure work for their food a lot more than rabbits do. So here’s to the eagles, the hawks, and all the other majestic birds of prey for being awesome.

I could make a joke here about the rabbit being a PC and the eagle being a Linux user, but it’s getting late and I’d better go write. Later!

SW-VII: REPROACH is now out!

If you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to lately, I’ve been busy publishing a new book! Star Wanderers: Reproach (Part VII) is now out on Amazon, Smashwords, and Kobo as a $2.99 ebook, and should be up on Barnes & Noble and iTunes in a couple of weeks.

This now brings the total number of books I’ve published to 17. Part VIII: Deliverance should be out in early- to mid-November, and if things go well, I should be able to put out at least one more ebook before the end of the year.

My main publishing goal, though, is to get print versions out of every Star Wanderers story before Christmas. I got the first proof of Outworlder a few days ago, and fixed the issues with it over the weekend. Just have to order another proof and make sure it looks good, then it’s just a matter of clicking a couple buttons and it should be up on Amazon. Because it’s a small book, it should sell for between $4 to $6–I know there are a lot of books in this series, so I’ll do what I can to keep the prices low!

Speaking of print editions, the trade paperback of Stars of Blood and Glory is now out on Amazon and the CreateSpace store! If you prefer to read in paper or just want a copy for your bookshelf, you can pick it up now. I’ve gotten some requests for signed copies, so I’m going to order a few from CreateSpace and try to get those sent out in the next few weeks. If you’re interested, shoot me an email at joseph [dot] vasicek [at] gmail [dot] com, and I’ll see what I can do.

That’s just about it. So much publishing–when am I going to get a chance to just write? It’s been a lot of fun though, and I’m happy to get these books out to you guys. Next week, I’ll turn my focus back to Sons of the Starfarers and hopefully make some good progress on the first book of that series.

Thanks for reading!

Quick update and a funny thing

First, just a quick update on my latest writing projects. I got the feedback from my second round of test readers for Star Wanderers: Reproach (Part VII), and while I think the story still needs work, it’s getting closer. I probably won’t be able to get it out by the end of September, but first or second week of October it should be ready.

It’s funny–I sent it to a guy and a girl, and while the guy thought it didn’t need any changes (and he’s studying to be an editor), the girl pointed out a few things that need a little more reinforcement and development. It’s mostly just minor changes I think, getting more into Noemi’s viewpoint and figuring out exactly what she’s going through, and making that clear to the reader. So yeah, it shouldn’t be too hard.

In some ways, writing this book has been like writing myself out of a corner. The story in Reproach runs parallel with the events of Sacrifice, and some of the stuff that happens there is pretty complicated. For example, it’s got a sixteen year old girl who feels like her only hope at happiness is to convince her best friend to share her husband, and the best friend actually kind of comes around to it by the end, though the whole ordeal is almost unbearable for her.

Writing about monogamous relationships is hard enough when you’ve always been single–it’s doubly hard when you’re writing about polygamy. But I’m actually fairly pleased with the way it’s come out so far–even though it’s not quite ready to be published, everyone who’s read it has really gotten into it, even the readers who haven’t yet read the earlier books in the series. It’s been a challenging book to write, but it’s been a gratifying one, and I think you guys are going to enjoy it.

Of course, all of this is yanking me away from Sons of the Starfarers, which is really kind of aggravating. On an interview I listened to recently, Jim Butcher said that writers are either writing, thinking about what they’re writing, or thinking about what they’ve written. The way my brain is wired, I can only really do one of those things at a time, and I’d much rather write or think about what I’m writing than think about what I’ve written. But yeah, Reproach is more important, so after finishing the current chapter I’ll put Sons of the Starfarers on hold for a couple weeks.

Also, I’m working to get print editions out for all of my Star Wanderers books before Christmas. Part of this is because of the new Matchbook program from Amazon, but mostly it’s just because … well, why not? For those of you who want paperback versions of these novellas, that will soon be an option. I’m having a little trouble figuring out the cover art (RBG vs. CMYK, getting the covers to print attractively instead of turning out way too dark, etc), but that shouldn’t take longer than a few weeks to iron out. Expect to see parts I-IV out by November.

Finally, a funny thing happened to me at Leading Edge. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a student-run science fiction & fantasy magazine where student volunteers read every story submission and write a critique for the author. Well, while sitting in the slushpile, one of the editors came in and showed me a story that I’d critiqued … twice! The first time, I’d given it a rejection. The second time, I’d actually recommended that the editors buy it!

Well, I racked my brain a little bit to figure out what had happened, and as close as I can tell the only real difference was in how distracted I’d been when I’d read it. The first time, it had been fairly noisy and there’d been a lot of distractions. The story had some good parts to it, which I mentioned in the letter, but I didn’t really pick up on the character motivations well, so I rejected it based on that. The second time, though, it had been quiet enough for me to really pay attention to the story, enough to really get what was going on. I finished it, and the ending moved me so much that I knew I’d have to recommend that we publish it.

The editor wanted to keep the rejection sheet anyway, but I tossed it in the garbage since really it wasn’t all that helpful anyway. And the moral, if there is one, is to pick up every story with the idea firmly in mind that you’ve got a potential gem in your hands. Too often, I think we read stuff flippantly, as if we already know that it’s not worth our time and attention. Well, don’t do that! Who knows but what you’ve got your new favorite story of all time sitting right in front of you? Give it a chance!

And on that note, I leave you with this:

See you guys around!