first readers – Page 3 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

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!

Writer’s angst & post-convention ennui

In spite of the title of this post, I’ll try not to get too emo. Not sure how well I’ll succeed, but at least I’ll try.

Worldcon was great, but it put me into something of a writing slump and I’m not sure where to go next. I was planning on writing the as-yet untitled New Rigel novel, but I want to get Desert Stars published before Christmas, and that would involve doing another major draft before sending it off for edits.

The trouble is, it typically takes me at least two months to do a rough draft. I can probably finish Desert Stars in about a month, but I’d still want to start that project somewhere around the end of September. Since I don’t expect for my first readers to get back to me until then, that leaves me with a single month to fill.

To further complicate matters, the place I’ve been temping at for the last two months wants to hire me full time. In some ways, that’s awesome; work is work, after all, and even though I won’t exactly be saving the world, it’s not a bad job either. On the other hand, 40 hours of warehouse labor per week is going to make it very difficult to do everything I want with my writing career.

Now, don’t get me wrong–I’m not complaining. This seems to be the dilemma that every aspiring writer faces at one point or another, and most of my friends have understandably chosen the stable paycheck over the ever-elusive lucky break. But with where I’m at–young and single, without any debt or obligations to pay off–and my long term career goals, I worry that I’ll end up settling if I take that path. Besides, I’ve gotten used to “starving” over the last year and a half, and it’s actually not that bad.

What would REALLY be awesome is if they would hire me part time, and I think I might be able to negotiate that. In the meantime, I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to write in September. Here are my options:

Untitled (New Rigel)

This is the project I was most excited about before Worldcon, but now…well, I’m still excited, but post-convention ennui is not a pretty thing. Basically, it’s a full-length novel set within the Gaia Nova universe, and an indirect sequel to Bringing Stella Home.

I’ve already written the prologue and I like where it’s going, but I’d have to really bust my butt to get it done before October. Then again, I usually drop the first draft somewhere in the middle, so allowing for that, it might still be good to go ahead. However, it’s generally a bad idea to plan on screwing things up.

Edenfall

This is the sequel to Genesis Earth, and the second book in a planned trilogy. Since it’s YA, I could probably pull it off in a month–YA is generally shorter than adult fiction, and Genesis Earth took me about a month to pound out once I knew what I was doing. I’ve already got the story outlined and ready to go, so no problems there.

The big reason to do this project is that the first book is starting to have some success, and that’s naturally going to drive reader interest in the sequel. I’ve already gotten some scattered emails and comments about it, asking when it’s going to come out. Also, since there’s less pressure on me right now, bumping it up the queue might be a good idea. There’s a reason some people are afraid of success.

Desert Stars Companion Novella

Now here’s an interesting idea: I could spend the next month working on a companion novel to Desert Stars, much like I spent the last month working on Sholpan. The advantages to this plan are obvious: not only would I have another full-length novel ready before Christmas, but a $.99 novella to go with it–that is, if all goes well.

This is a project I haven’t given much thought to, but it wouldn’t be too hard to come up with something. It would also get me excited for the revision of Desert Stars in October. The main disadvantage is that I don’t know how well this “companion novella” concept will work out in the market–if Sholpan tanks, I might have to scrap it altogether. But as Dean told me at Worldcon, you can’t let thoughts of the commerciality of a project get in the way of the creative process.

That’s what’s on my plate right now. Preferably, I want to choose something I can finish within a month, while juggling work and the publication process for Sholpan. Oh, and I also want to throw in a blog tour for Bringing Stella Home–more on that later.

So, to open it up to my super-awesome hardcore fans (all three or four of you), what do you think? Of these projects, what do you most want to see?

T minus 24 hours and counting…

That’s right! After much wrangling, I formatted it this morning and published it to Amazon this afternoon. In less than 24h hours, it should be up for sale!

In many ways, Bringing Stella Home is a lot different from Genesis Earth. For one, the scope is much larger, with the rise and fall of galactic empires and a war leaving billions dead in its wake.

At the same time, however, the stakes are very personal. It’s not about turning the tide of human history or saving millions of lives; it’s about one boy who doesn’t want his world to fall apart, and will do anything to save the people he loves.

I put a content warning in the description because there’s a lot of darkness in this book. It’s not for everyone; I know that some of my friends would find it shocking and offensive. However, it isn’t my intention to glorify evil or celebrate immorality; rather, by portraying it honestly, I hope to make the struggle against it that much more meaningful. There is, after all, an opposition in all things.

Writing this book was a watershed moment for me. Not only is it the first book in a series which I hope to continue across many books, but it marked a shift in my writing. Before the rise of indie publishing, I thought this would be the one that finally broke through the iron gates of the publishing industry and made my debut. Perhaps that was why I was so reluctant to send it out; I didn’t want to experience the crushing blow of rejections from agents who didn’t think they could sell it, or editors who think that science fiction is dead.

But now, I don’t have to break through those iron gates; now, I can send this story out into the world and let the readers decide whether it’s any good. And that’s exactly what I intend to do.

For all those of you who have helped bring this project up to this point, I want to sincerely thank you by giving you a free copy of this ebook. I’ll be sending it out tomorrow, most likely; if for some reason I miss you, please email me and I’ll correct the mistake. They say that writing is a solitary art, but this day and age, that’s no longer true. So once again, thank you.

It’s been an exciting journey thus far, and something tells me that it’s only getting started. I can hardly wait to see what the future will bring!

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:

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.

The blog tour rolls on

I’m writing this post from Leading Edge (the internet is down at my apartment), so I don’t have much time, but I did want to take care of a few items of housekeeping.

First, my next guest post in the Genesis Earth blog tour is up, this one at Charles Millhouse’s blog. Charles is a fellow sf writer whom I met on the Kindleboards, and the post basically explains my writing routine since last year. Of course, since I’ve technically been unemployed since graduation, my routine is a little wacky, but I think you’ll find the post interesting. Check it out!

Desert Stars is coming along. I took yesterday off to finish drafting the revision notes, but I’ve still got the last three chapters to go. It’s going to be awesome, though–I’ve got so many ideas for how to improve the story. Many thanks to all my first readers for your feedback! It’s been immensely helpful.

Also, I decided to take down “From the Ice Incarnate” from Amazon. I still think it’s a good story, but I don’t want someone to buy Genesis Earth, love it, then buy the story and feel ripped off. Also, I think I might have more luck with my short stories if I send them out to print markets instead. I’ve submitted “Decision LZ1527” to Escape Pod; if it sells, hopefully that will drive readers to my ebooks.

And on that note, if you’ve read Genesis Earth and enjoyed it, I would like to ask you to please post a review on Amazon. I don’t want to be one of those guys who secretly boosts his stats by coercing people to write fake reviews, but if you did enjoy the novel, I would appreciate it a ton if you would take the time and share your experience. At this point in my career, that’s probably the thing that would help me out the most.

So anyways, that’s what’s going on here. Hopefully, the internet will be back before the weekend. See you around!

AHHH! It’s uploaded!

That’s right; just a few minutes ago, I uploaded Genesis Earth to the Amazon Kindle store. It’ll take about 24 hours to show up on the site, at which point the entire universe will implode and we’ll all become robots fighting for survival in an artificial reality. So get ready!

That beautiful image on the left is the cover, by the way. Pretty awesome, neh? It turned out even better than I was hoping it would.

Genesis Earth is my first epublished novel, and as such, I feel happy, nervous, excited, and ecstatic about it all at the same time. The short stories were one thing, but this–this is the real deal. This is me jumping in with both feet and not looking back.

It’s been a long and arduous road to publication, and I want to thank all of you who have been a part of it. I plan on sending out a free copy to all of my first readers as a thank you gift; if for some reason I miss you, please let me know and I’ll get that sent out to you.

Finally, if you still want to get in on the blog tour, let me know and I’ll sign you up. I’m not going to set up a strict schedule, but I’ll probably do three or four blogs a week, so either send me a topic to blog about or a set of interview questions, and I’ll get back to you as promptly as I can.

Man, this is exciting! I’m sure that the road ahead won’t be easy, but at least things are now in motion. This awesome novel has sat on my flash drive for far too long–time to put it out for people to discover. It might take months for it to find its natural readership, but I’m confident that it eventually will.

Expect a post in the next 24 hours with more details. Until then, prepare yourselves!

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:

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!

Worlds Away from Home 2.1 is finished!

Yep, that’s right! I finished another novel, in this case the second draft of my fourth. It’s not without its flaws, but good enough that I won’t feel humiliated for life by sending it out to my first readers.

Anyhow, here are the stats:

Worlds Away from Home 2.1
ms pages: 450
words: 96,212
file size: 219 KB
chapters: 20 + prologue
start date: 14 Jan 11
end date: 4 Mar 11

And the wordle:

Yeah, there are a few words that appeared a bit too frequently there. At least I know what to cut out in the next draft.

As for the song that best encapsulates the experience of writing it..hmm, I don’t know. The last couple chapters, I was kind of on a Metroid trip, so even though the old NES game has absolutely nothing to do with my story, I suppose I’d have to go with the Metroid title theme:

So yeah, those are the stats. As for my thoughts, here goes:

This draft was tough, but a lot more fun to write than the rough draft. Most of the struggle happened with the outline, which took about three or four weeks to actually come together, which is unusual for me.

I did a complete read through back in the first week of December, putting everything else on hold just to write the revision notes, and ended up following almost none of it. However, it wasn’t a complete loss, because outlining it helped me to cut out a bunch of useless filler and dead-end subplots.

I tend to do a lot of shotgun writing on my rough drafts, which means I spew out all my ideas in every which direction, going off on useless tangents and failing to properly foreshadow the major central conflicts.

However, by writing this way, I often discover things that I never could have foreseen from the outset. So long as I’m careful to outline each successive draft and cut out all the filler crap (even the crap that I love), it usually works out in the end.

This draft is somewhere on the crappier side of rough draft vs. finished, polished product, but it’s definitely better than the first one. If the third draft is this much better than the second, I’m optimistic that I’ll have this thing polished and ready to send out before the end of the year.

But before then, I need the help that only a few dozen pairs of eyes besides my own can give. That, and a few months to sit so that I can come back to it with new eyes.

If I know you IRL and you’re interested in being a first reader, please contact me. I’m especially looking for male readers, since the target audience is probably more male than female, but I’m open to pretty much anyone who enjoys reading science fiction.

So anyways, enough of that. On to the next project!

Beard pics and other updates

In case you didn’t know, I’ve been experimenting a bit with facial hair recently. I figure, hey, I’m no longer a BYU student, so I might as well, right? Well, the results are in, and I must say I’m quite pleased.

I mean, check out how awesome I look:

Alright, fine, so that’s actually Waylander from David Gemmell’s Drenai series, but hey, a man can dream, right?

So anyways, here’s what the beard REALLY looks like:

I figured it would be good to keep it short, and trim around the neck and cheek; kind of like Riker, actually (no joke–his look was kind of what I was shooting for).

One of the funny things I’ve noticed is how many girls have actually complimented me on this thing. It struck me as quite a surprise, because from previous conversations with the opposite sex, growing a beard is something of a kiss (or lack thereof) of death. Interestingly enough, I’ve gotten as many or more compliments from women as I have from men. How does that work?

I guess that girls are opposed to beards as an idea, but (like most guys) they just don’t know what they want until they see it.

Probably the most hilarious about-face was from my sister Kate (who just started a new blog, hey!). When I was contemplating growing it earlier this winter, she kept telling me not to–that it would look hideous, that no girl would ever want to date me, that it would ruin my social life, etc. Well, guess what she said today?

Me: so you like my beard, eh?
oh ye of little faith
Kate: yes
…
Kate: I like it
I think it makes you look good
you need to be sure to keep it trimmed
it looks good
I’m really surprised
Me: hehehe
Kate: I eat my worrds
Me: so why are you so surprised?
Kate: hahaaha

So anyways, what do you think? Should it stay, or should it go? I’m kind of partial to it, but I’m open to hearing any contrary opinions, if there are any.

In unrelated news, I am sooo freaking close to finishing WAFH 2.0, and it orders of magnitude better than the first draft. Still, it needs a lot of work, so I’m looking for first readers to help me out with it. If you’d be willing to help out, please let me know (and please, only people I know in real life–as much as I love you for reading this blog, I’d prefer not to hand out my work to complete strangers) (also, some of you have already emailed me and I haven’t gotten back to you yet, but don’t worry–I haven’t forgotten. Expect an email about it sometime in the next week).

If you’d like to volunteer as a first reader for WAFH, I’d ask you to finish it by April 15 (tax day, joy!). My next project is Edenfall, and I expect that to take me at least a month and a half. I’m really hoping to get WAFH publishable before the end of the year, so I’ll probably start the next draft by May.

In other totally unrelated news, I’m going to write Edenfall 1.0 entirely in longhand. Crazy? Perhaps. I’ve got the notebook for it, though, and did some arts and crafts with it over the weekend–pictures to follow. Also, I’ll be sure to let you know what it’s like to write a novel in longhand; it should be interesting.

Aaand that’s about it for now. Gotta write!

Looking for alpha readers and planning the next project

Worlds Away from Home 2.1 is going along well. I had a hard time switching from Bringing Stella Home back to this other project, but I’ve got some good momentum going and assuming no major interruptions, should be able to do about 3k words a day for the rest of the week.

Then again, if I get interrupted by work, that might be a good thing…

The second draft is going to be pretty rough, but good enough to start sending out to alpha readers. Anyone want to volunteer? It’s basically a far future love story on a planet with desert-dwelling tribal nomads who drive micronuclear powered dune buggies and centuries-old arcologies under giant continent-sized domes. Earth is an ancient, mythical legend, and roving bands of starfaring nomads stand poised to crush the galactic empire.

I hope to be finished with the second draft by March 1st, and I’d want to get feedback no later than the end of April. If you’ve been one of my alpha readers before, or if we’re friends IRL, let me know if you’re interested.

So earlier today, I was thinking about the project I want to do after WAFH–a sequel to Genesis Earth. I’ve been toying with the idea of releasing GE as an ebook, but I don’t want to do that until I have a sequel in the works. Anyhow, I was thinking of ideas for the title, and out of the blue, it struck me:

EDENFALL.

Kind of plays on the subtle Adam and Eve theme of the first one (and no, Genesis Earth isn’t technically a sci-fi Adam and Eve story…but it kind of evokes one). I like it because it fits well with my ideas for the story, which basically center around shattering the Edenic paradise that Michael and Terra reach at the end of GE.

I’ve got a lot of ideas for this book, and I think they’re reaching a critical mass. Just last month, I came up with a great name for the main female protagonist: Estee. She’s the eldest daughter of Terra and Michael, and kind of takes after her mother’s personality. The male protagonist will be a young soldier from the military force sent out by panicky Earth officials to neutralize any threat on Icaria–which gives the commanders of the expedition a broad mandate to do whatever the hell they want. As you can imagine, conflict ensues.

I know how this story begins, and I know how it’s supposed to end (and thereby set things up for an awesome third book in the trilogy), but I have no idea how to build things up to the crazy twist ending. It’s going to require some serious worldbuilding, and that’s going to take some time. Daydreaming is such hard work, after all.

Anyhow, I should be ready by the time I finish WAFH 2.1. As an experiment, I’m going to write the rough draft entirely in longhand. Am I crazy? Perhaps. But I also want to spend some time in the Utah wilderness for inspiration while I’m writing it, so pen and paper is probably the best medium for that.

So those are my plans. To close, let me link to this awesome cover of “Something About Us” by Daft Punk. Now that’s some sweet theremin action…enjoy!