Brothers in Exile – Page 5 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

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may not put it up somewhere for people to read, but it may have some stuff from projects that are either unfinished or unpublished, so it might be a little obtuse even for the fans.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!

Novella woes and farmers markets

Today I wrote about 2.6 words in my current WIP (Sons of the Starfarers), which didn’t really feel like it because I was constantly getting distracted. Still, 2.6 words is pretty solid–it’s about mid-range for me. If I can hit that every day from here on out (which is doubtful, but hey), the rough draft should be finished before the end of the month.

The crazy thing is that I just hit the inciting incident at the end of today’s writing session, after passing the 6k word mark. For a mid-sized novella, that’s pretty late. In the classic three act structure, the inciting incident usually hits between the 12%-15% mark, but this one is well past 20% for a 30k word novella–and just barely at 16% for a 40k.

So in layman’s terms, how long is this book going to be? Probably longer than any of the Star Wanderers stories, but not quite as long as Genesis Earth. It probably won’t turn into a full-fledged novel, since there’s only one viewpoint character, but I can already tell that it’s going to flirt with the line between novella and novel.

We’ll see how it turns out. I’m still really excited about this story, and even though I don’t have a clear idea how to write the ending, I do know exactly how it’s going to end, if that makes any sense. I’ve got a clear idea of the series arc that this book is going to set up, but I don’t yet have a clear idea of the book’s self-contained arc. Once I figure that out, maybe I’ll be able to trim it down to a 30k novella after all.

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I visited the Stadium Farmer’s Market in Provo for the first time today. It was pretty neat–lots of great produce, a nice community atmosphere, and a few quirky things like Jalapeno Jelly and tie died baby jumpers that you can’t really find in a mainstream grocery store. I came away with some excellent peaches and a hankering to come back next week for more.

Anyhow, the trip got me thinking how indie publishing is kind of like a farmer’s market. You’ve got everything from the guys who sell their produce out of unmarked paint buckets (writers who toss their books up to amazon with hardly a thought) to the local farm operations with pretty banners, pretty baskets, and laminated fact sheets drilling down on every possible difference between Elberta and Briscoe peaches (writers who go to great lengths to organize their own small presses and become Facebook/Twitter/Blogging personalities).

Almost everyone gives away free samples, which actually does a lot to drive sales. In a similar way, most indie writers either have a couple of perma-free titles or free-pulse their books. Everyone at the farmer’s market tries to be friendly and reach out to the customers (kind of like authors on Facebook and Twitter), but for me personally this kind of drives me away. A good entertaining sales pitch, though, can be quite interesting. I listened to the guy selling honey for almost twenty minutes, going on and on about his wares. It’s clear he’s in a business that he loves.

Even though the fruit in the farmer’s market tends to have more blemishes than the stuff you find in the mainstream store, it is WAAAY more fresh and delicious. Similarly, the stuff from the mainstream presses might be a lot more edited and polished, but the true innovation and formula-breaking stuff is happening in the world of self-publishing. Publishers want things to be more predictable and formulaic so that they can have a better idea how something is going to sell, but indies are free to try almost anything.

Those aren’t the only parallels, either. The more I think about it, the more it seems that being a self-published indie writer (or “author-publisher,” a newer term that I think I actually prefer) is a lot like being a local small farmer. I’m sure there are differences, but the similarities are quite striking.

And now I’m really wishing I’d bought some of that honey.

Trope Tuesday: Foolish sibling, responsible sibling

Whenever you’ve got two characters who interact with each other a lot, chances are that one is a foil of the other. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the big reason is that it helps to highlight certain character traits by providing contrast. Because the contrast is the important thing, the relationship between the characters can take a variety of possible forms. It may be that one is the hero and the other the sidekick, or (if they’re villains) perhaps one is the Big Bad and the other is the Dragon. If enemy mine or one of the other frenemy tropes is in play, they might be on opposing sides.

Foolish sibling, responsible sibling is what happens when the character foils are siblings. It’s a subtrope of sibling yin-yang that contrasts the character traits of responsibility and recklessness, duty and prodigality, and how the two opposites somehow manage (or not) to live together and stand up for each other in spite of their differences.

It may be used to set up an aesop, usually along the lines of “be like the responsible sibling, not the foolish one,” but that’s not always the case. It might be that the younger sibling is closer to earth and the uptight responsible one needs to learn how to loosen up. Simon from Firefly kind of fits that mold, though he learns to loosen up not from his sister River so much as from the rest of Mal’s crew.

In a lot of stories, it’s not necessarily meant to send a message so much as set up an interesting dynamic between two equally sympathetic characters. In the movie Gettysburg, for example, Lawrence Chamberlain is the commanding officer of the regiment, and thus has to lead the men, follow military protocol, etc, while his annoying younger brother Tom calls him by name and forgets to salute him, runs around chatting it up with union soldiers and rebel prisoners alike, and generally seems a lot more loose and carefree.

Usually, the responsible character is the older sibling, for reasons that should be fairly obvious to anyone who grew up with siblings. As the oldest child in my own family, I can readily sympathize with the dutiful son, since I more or less was one. That’s not always the case, though. In sitcoms where the middle child is the main character, usually it falls on them to thanklessly pick up the slack (yeah, being the middle child pretty much sucks). Bart and Lisa from The Simpsons are a good example of this.

I played with this a little in Desert Stars with some of the minor characters: as the second oldest, Surayya generally tries to do things by the book, whereas Amina tends to be more mischievous and conniving. Michelle and Lars also fall into this trope, with Lars a carefree academy dropout and Michelle a hardworking (though also fun-loving) mechanic on her father’s ship. Between Desert Stars and Bringing Stella Home, though, Lars completely turns around, so that by Heart of the Nebula (not yet published) he’s quite possibly one of the most responsible characters in the book (and I still have yet to give him a viewpoint … hmmm).

In Sons of the Starfarers, I’m playing with this character dynamic a lot. Isaac is the oldest son, who always knew he would leave on his father’s starship to fulfill the Outworld traditions and seek his fortune as a star wanderer. Aaron, on the other hand, kind of got roped into the whole thing unexpectedly (see Star Wanderers: Benefactor) and hasn’t yet matured. The events of the story will no doubt give him a growth arc, but in the meantime, the dynamic between the two of them is a lot of fun to write.

There are a lot of other issues in that relationship to play with too, such as promotion to parent and always someone better, but I’ll save those for another Tuesday.

Addicted to typesetting

So I just realized it’s been a looong time since I posted anything besides Trope Tuesday posts on this blog. A lot of things have happened, and I’ve got a lot of things I want to blog about, but really all my spare time has been spent happily typesetting for Stars of Blood and Glory and Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I).

I always tell people that if I wasn’t a writer, I’d be a typesetter because I enjoy it so much. I’m not sure if that’s true, because it can get a little mind-numbing after a while, but as an indie writer who only has to do it every now and again, it’s really fun! The best part, of course, is getting to that finished product, a book full of words and paragraphs and chapters that look so beautiful on the page, which you can flip through and say “wow, I wrote that!”

The whole process is great, though, even with the frustrations like computer crashes and formatting struggles. Fortunately, those don’t happen quite as often since I’ve more or less figured out the tools. I use LibreOffice almost exclusively for the interior (yes, I know In Design is awesome but LibreOffice works well too), and The Gimp for the cover art.

Yesterday, I started on the cover art for Stars of Blood and Glory, thinking it would take me a few days to finish it. Well, one thing led to another, and a few hours later I had this:

Not bad. I think I was able to do it so quickly because I followed the same basic pattern as Bringing Stella Home and Desert Stars. Once you know what you’re doing, it doesn’t take very long to do it. It also helped to have such great art (shout-out to Hideyoshi)!

So yeah, the only thing I have to do now is order the proofs and approve them. After that, the print edition of Stars of Blood and Glory should be up on Amazon in just a couple of days, so keep an eye out for that!

Also, I don’t think Amazon has announced this to the general public yet, but this Christmas they’re starting a program where you can get the ebook edition of a participating book bundled with the print edition of the book for an extra $2.99 or less. It’s called Matchbook, and I’m happy to announce that all of my novels will be in the program! They’ll be priced at either $1.99 or $.99, so if you’re looking for a Christmas gift, you can buy one of my print books and get the ebook for yourself for more than 50% of the price. The Star Wanderers books, when I have the print versions up (and I’m working on that now), will bundle the ebooks for free!

So yeah, that’s what’s been taking away from my blogging time. Salt Lake Comic Con was also pretty cool–it was my first Comic Con experience, so I should probably blog about that too. Also, some book reviews, some stuff that exploded on the internet recently that I want to react to … yeah, I’ve fallen a bit behind.

But above and beyond all this blogging / typesetting / publishing stuff, writing is still my #1 priority. I started the first Sons of the Starfarers novella just last week, and have been working on it a little every day since. I’m way excited about this next project–it’s going to be amazing! Like a spinoff of Star Wanderers, but sooo much more. But I’ll wait until tuesday to talk about that.

In the meantime, keep an eye out for the print edition of Stars of Blood and Glory! It should be out in the next week or so. And as for Star Wanderers, the print editions should be coming out this month or next, depending on how effectively (or not) I can manage this typesetting addiction.

Later!

Trope Tuesday: Forbidden Zone

For the next few Trope Tuesday posts, I’m going to pick apart some of the tropes I’m playing with in my latest WIP, Sons of the Starfarers. One of the things I love to do when brainstorming a new story is to use tvtropes like a menu, finding the tropes that best fit my story ideas and combining them with other tropes to get even more ideas.

It’s not often hard to spot the forbidden zone in a fantastical world. Perhaps it has an ominous name (bonus points if it has the word “doom” in it), or perhaps there’s some sort of sign saying “do not enter.” Either way, this is definitely a place where no one goes, and no one is supposed to go.

Of course, you can pretty much guarantee that the main characters are going to go there. It’s like the forbidden fruit: the very fact that it’s off limits makes it more alluring. If genre blindness is in effect, someone will probably make the mistake of saying “what could possibly go wrong?”

There are many reasons why the zone may be forbidden. Perhaps it’s a death world, where the characters will soon find themselves running for their lives. Perhaps it’s not quite so dangerous, but once you go, you can never come back. Or perhaps all the warnings were lies, and the so-called forbidden zone is actually the place that the characters needed to get to all along. If that’s the case, then the mentor was probably a broken pedestal or the Svengali.

In any case, the forbidden zone definitely lies in the realm of adventure. Depending on how soon or how late in the story the characters go there, it may lie just on the other side of the threshold, at the bottom of the belly of the whale, or at the very heart of the character’s nadir.

The Mines of Moria, the Toxic Jungle, Area 51, the Elephant Graveyard, and the Fire Swamp are all classic examples. In C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, Earth itself is a forbidden zone to all the other inhabitants of the solar system, which is why it’s called the silent planet.

In real life, there are plenty of these as well. Just look at the DMZ on the Korean Peninsula, or the fallout zone around Chernobyl. When I was living in Georgia, Abkhazia was off limits to the TLG volunteers, meaning that if you went there (and the Ministry of Education found out about it) it was grounds for immediate firing. Of course, that only encouraged some of my TLG friends to go there even more–remember the forbidden fruit? Others waited until their contracts were over and practically made a tour of the many forbidden zones of the Caucasus, including Nagorny Karabakh, which one friend described as safer than Philadelphia.

I’ve toyed with this trope in my own work, but never too explicitly. The best example is probably the alien ghost ship from Genesis Earth. It’s not exactly forbidden, since there’s no one around to tell Mike not to go there, but Terra definitely doesn’t want him to go. Earlier in the same book, she forbids him from entering her workspace in the observatory, which leads to some complications and a major reveal when he inevitably does. In the Gaia Nova series, the Outer Reaches qualify as a forbidden zone, since the only people who live out there are murderous barbarians like the Hameji.

In my new series, Sons of the Starfarers, the first book starts out with a forbidden zone–a derelict space colony, where everyone has died of an unknown cause. Since the nearest settlement is light-years away (and because Aaron is perhaps too curious for his own good), that’s where Isaac and Aaron go. What they find there propels the rest of the book–and quite possibly the rest of the series.

Check back next week for more!