The 4th of July was kind of crazy for me. Sold fireworks for twelve hours, then put on a fantastic show at the house of my friend and cowriter, Scott Bascom. But yeah, it was pretty exhausting.
However, I found time over the weekend to publish a short story. This is one I wrote two years ago as part of the Short Blitz challenge, and blogged about it here.
Well, it’s available now for your reading pleasure!
I have a story out in the latest issue of Perihelion! To read “L’enfer, c’est la Solitude,” click here. It’s free to read!
Those of you following the blog for a while will recognize this as a story I wrote almost exactly two years ago. Here’s what I said about it back then:
I can’t stand people who humbrag, so I’m just going to come out and say that this story is awesome. Seriously. Kickass freaking awesome. It may be the best short story I’ve written to date.
I’d like to think that I’ve written much better stories since then, but after re-reading it, it’s still pretty good. So go check it out!
So two years later, what do I think is the most kickass freaking awesome thing I’ve ever written? The fifth Sons of the Starfarers book, of course, which I just recently put up for pre-order!
Captives in Obscurity (Sons of the Starfarers: Book V) is now available for pre-order all across the internets! This the fifth of a nine-book series, and I think it’s pretty kickass freaking awesome. I’m biased, though, so you’ll have to wait until May 15th to read it and make up your own mind.
For those of you following the Sons of the Starfarers series, I’m hoping to get the next book out eight months from now, in November. I am definitely committed to finishing this series, though I have a few other awesome projects that are taking my time as well. The goal at this point is to space out the next four books six months from each other.
But if you’ve been anxiously awaiting Captives in Obscurity, you can pre-order your copy now!
Isaac and Reva are running out of time. Gulchina's cruelty knows no bounds, and on the edge of known space, no one can stop her. But an unexplored planet holds an ancient alien secret that may prove to be a game changer.
There is no escape beyond Star’s End.
The deadliest pirates in the galaxy have stolen the technology that will transform it. Now, on the edge of known space, they are poised to start an empire of their own.
Isaac and Reva are running out of time. Neither of them knows the extent of Gulchina’s plans, or whether the madwoman will keep them both alive after she achieves them.
But an unexplored planet beyond the Far Outworlds holds an ancient alien secret that not even Gulchina has uncovered. That secret will tip the balance in
SONS OF THE STARFARERS
BOOK V: CAPTIVES IN OBSCURITY
Title: Starchild
Genre: Space Opera
Word Count: 3,000
Writing Time: about two weeks
I haven’t trimmed or polished this story yet, but I’m calling it at 3,000 words. If I were stricter about following Heinlein’s rules, I would only give it a proofreading pass, but with shorts I’ve heard that it’s best to cut out as many unnecessary words as possible, so I’ll give it a solid pass before sending it out.
Unlike all of my other short stories so far, this one takes place in the same universe as my novels and novellas. Specifically, it takes place in the Star Wanderers universe, at an unspecified system deep in the Outworld frontier. It’s about a girl in the strictly regimented society of an isolated space colony, who decides to be the first from their outpost to win the heart of a star wanderer. More generally, it’s about the cycle of life on a frontier space station and the inevitable loss of innocence from contact with the outside.
The idea came to me while I was on vacation, so I didn’t do much with it for the first week. I dabbled with it while I was out at the Cape, writing a little here and there, but it wasn’t until I was on the train headed back that I dedicated some serious time and effort to it.
My sister lives in Iowa, at almost the exact midway point between Massachusetts and Utah, so I decided to stop by and pay her a visit along the way. I finished the story this afternoon at her house, and I plan to print it out and submit it to F&SF while I still have access to their printer. What can I say … I’m cheap. :p
I don’t think this will be the last short story that I write in the Star Wanderers universe. If I could write a few good ones that get picked up by a major magazine like Asimov’s or Clarkesworld, that would be a great way to bring in more readers. I figure a story in the same universe as my other books will be much better at that than a generic short story, and since self-publishing is my bread and butter, the more I can get my short stories to serve that, the better.
In any case, now that thing one is done, I can focus all of my attention on Sons of the Starfarers. If all goes well, Book III: Strangers in Flight will be published in the next couple of weeks, and Book IV: Friends in Command
will be finished (at least the rough draft) by mid-October. This was a nice project to work on during vacation, but now that it’s finished, it’s time to get back to work!
Title: A Hill On Which To Die
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Word Count: Word Count: 15,000
Writing Time: About a month
IT IS FINISHED.
Ugh, this story took forever. What started as a short story soon turned into a novelette, and then that novelette got longer and longer … and then life got crazy busy, and I suddenly had a lot less time to write. And then all these weird writerly anxieties started taking over, and I found myself procrastinating during what little writing time I had …
In any case, it is finished now. IT IS FINISHED! And even though it needs a revision, and a couple of scenes need to be changed or rewritten entirely, I can take care of all that tomorrow.
Anyways, this story is about a band of orcs that leaves their clan to start a new one. The main character is an old veteran war chief who has lived beyond his prime and fully expects to die. There’s blood, carnage, rape, and all sorts of violence. There’s also courage, loyalty, hope, sacrifice, and devotion to a higher cause. It’s a bit like Watership Down, except with orcs instead of rabbits.
In spite of all the trouble this story gave me, I had a lot of fun with it. I’d like to self-publish it, but first I suppose I should send it off to the relevant markets. According to my spreadsheet, there are only five pro-markets that take stories over 15,000 words:
Leading Edge is a semi-pro market that takes stories up to 15,000 words, but I know for a fact that the content in this one is not BYU appropriate. It’s a lot darker than I usually write, with some sexual violence that almost certainly needs a trigger warning if/when I self-publish.
But even though it depicts a lot of violence, I don’t think it crosses the line into glorifying it. Certainly not the sexual violence, which even the main character admits is wrong. And it’s not like the women are in there just to get raped, either–there’s actually a band of female orc warriors who beat the male orcs at their own game.
In any case, with only five markets that I know of that accept stories of this kind, I figure it won’t be too long before this story returns to me and I can self-publish it for you all to read. If any of you know of any other markets to send this place, let me know!
So for the past three weeks while waiting for my first readers to get back to me with their comments on Strangers in Flight, I’ve been working on short stories. It’s a great way to stay busy and productive between projects, and feels really gratifying too because it only takes a week or two to finish things.
The really gratifying thing for me, though, is sending off my stories to the magazines and having half a dozen or more on submission at any time. I love self-publishing, but for short stories, it makes a lot more sense to shoot for publication in one of the traditional markets first. They don’t buy exclusive rights, so you’re free to self-publish later, and they put your writing in front of a new audience, giving you some great exposure–all while paying you!
So far, the only market I’ve cracked has been Leading Edge. But the more I write, the sooner that will change! And since I still have the option to self-publish, the rejections don’t feel quite so discouraging. Instead, it’s almost like a friendly competition with myself to see how many rejections I can rack up, and how many stories I can have on submission at one time.
Lately, I’ve been working on a Sword & Sorcery story titled “A Hill On Which To Die.” It started off as a short story, but then it morphed into a novelette–not quite as long as Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I), but long enough that most of the markets won’t take it. It’s also long enough that it will probably need a revision once it’s done, and I may run it past a reader or two. It’s definitely turned out to be more work than I’d bargained for.
There’s another story I’m working on about a naturally occurring time portal in rural Pennsylvania, and how the Amish are so isolated from modern society because they’re the ones guarding it. Then I’d like to rewrite “The Infiltrator,” to cut out most of the stuff at the beginning and dive straight into the action. That should take only a day or two. And then, there’s that story about the uplifted Deinonychus that my girlfriend really wanted to read …
Gah! So many ideas to play with! I cannot possibly write fast enough to keep up with them. It’s the most frustrating thing in the world!
I suppose for most of my readers, this talk of short stories is kind of frustrating too, since they probably won’t be available for you to read for a while. But one way or another, they will come out eventually! And it’s definitely better to write something while in that weird space between projects. At least I’m finishing stuff.
So that’s what I’ve been up to lately. I’ll probably finish “A Hill On Which To Die” in a day or two, then work on “That Which Is About is” until it’s finished. It’s an Amish sci-fi romance–I can barely wait to get it all down on the page!c And after that, I’ll probably move on to Strangers in Flight, making the revisions and getting it ready to publish in August.
Title: The Gettysburg Paradox
Genre: Science Fiction
Word Count: 3,650
Writing Time: about 1 week
Ever since I read The Killer Angels, I’ve been something of a Civil War geek. For July 4th this year, I rewatched Gettysburg and read Gods and Generals. I’m also reading Gone with the Wind right now, and plan to read The Last Full Measure after that. Needless to say, the Civil War has been on my mind.
The basic premise of this story is that a time tourist at the Battle of Gettysburg discovers that most of the combatants are time travelers–that the battle is actually a clash of competing timelines and futures. Appalled, he runs out onto the field in the midst of Pickett’s Charge shouting “We’re all time travelers!” but no one pays him any heed. They don’t find it disturbing at all that the battle–indeed, the entire war–may be a fabrication from time travelers desperate to change their future.
This was a fun one. The idea came to me a few months ago, though I didn’t associate it with Gettysburg until just a few weeks ago. Originally, I thought I’d have someone from the far future come back to a battle in the near future, since that would be easier to write. But I’m glad I decided to go with a real historical battle, because that makes it a lot more interesting.
Here’s a passage that I’m particularly proud of:
It was madness–sheer madness. Soldiers from the future fighting a battle in the past. And did Gettysburg even belong to the nineteenth century anymore? Had it ever? States’ rights and the Union, secession and the constitution, slavery and equality, freedom and independence, the clash of American civilizations and the baptism by fire of democracy and the modern world. Never before and perhaps never since would so much of the future hang on so brief a moment in history. And so, here they were, men of the twenty-second and twenty-third centuries disguised as natives of the nineteenth to give their lives for the future they had never had. How much of it was even real anymore? How much of it was meddling from so many broken timelines? And what if the war itself was merely a fabrication to bring about this great and terrible day?
I wrote this story in three days over the course of about a week. At first, it seemed daunting, considering all the historical details that I wanted to get right. Fortunate, Gettysburg is right up my alley, and I had a lot less trouble with it than I’d thought I would. The rough draft came in at about 4,000 words, so I gave it a quick revision and cut 10% to make it closer to 3,600.
It feels good to write a short story for a change. I’m particularly satisfied with this one and would love to see it in a magazine. The plan for now is to keep it on submission until it finds a home. Then, when it does, I’ll self-publish.
On to the next one!
Title: The Curse of the Lifewalker
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic
Word Count: 4,340
Time: 1 day (sort of)
So after “L’enfer, c’est la solitude,” I was kind of in a short story mood for a couple of days and decided to bang out another one. This one is actually an adaptation from my novel Lifewalker, a post-apocalyptic tale where a global pandemic kills everyone older than 25. The story takes place several hundred years after the apocalypse, where a society of children and teenage adults has evolved to fill the void left over by the collapse. It’s told from the point of view of a “lifewalker,” someone who is naturally immune and lives out a normal lifespan. Normal to us, at least–not to anyone else in the new society.
It actually wasn’t that hard to adapt the first chapter to a short story. It very much has its own narrative structure, with a beginning, middle and end. Obviously, it finishes on a rather open-ended note, but I think I was able to turn it around and focus on the premise: “when all the world is afflicted by the plague, sometimes the greater curse is to be whole.” Touched up the first couple of pages quite a bit, setting the stage for a short story and not a full novel, then went over the rest of it with a light pass and wrote a summation paragraph at the end to wrap things up.
Obviously, it took me more than one day to write the bulk of the chapter–in fact, I think it’s been through a couple of drafts now. But the adaptation to short story form went fairly well, and I’m quite pleased with the result.
Since I’ve already got stories at the top three markets (Writers of the Future, Asimov’s, Analog) and Clarkesworld is on cool-down, I sent the story to the next magazine on the list, Fantasy & Science Fiction. They only take snail mail, though, so I had to print out the story, print out a cover letter, take it to the post office, buy a letter envelope, stamp, manila envelope, fill out the SASE, etc etc. It was like a blast from the 00s or something.
Anyway, as I was walking over to the post office, I had this AWESOME epiphany in which the end of the novel came to me. It’s SO MUCH BETTER than what I’d originally had in mind, and actually got me excited to work on Lifewalker again. I probably won’t pick it up until I’ve finished the first three Sons of the Starfarers books, but now I have an awesome, amazing ending to work toward.
All I have to do is write it. 😛
Title: L’enfer, c’est la solitude
Genre: Science Fiction
Word Count: 6,962
Time: about 40 days
I can’t stand people who humbrag, so I’m just going to come out and say that this story is awesome. Seriously. Kickass freaking awesome. It may be the best short story I’ve written to date. Six months from now, I may come to hate it (like I’ve come to hate some of my other stories), but I seriously doubt that will be the case with this one. This represents some of my best work, and I’m extremely proud of it.
Now that that’s out of the way, I guess I should explain a little what this story is about. The title (which I didn’t figure out until after I’d written the story) is a play on the Sartre quote: “L’enfer, c’est les autres” (“hell is other people”). The story basically takes the exact opposite point of view, by showing how two people from opposing planets stranded on an isolated post basically go through hell because of their isolation, and the way it both brings them together and pits them against each other.
The idea for the story came to me years ago, when I was studying political science and modern philosophy. I imagined a situation where two worlds in a cold war type standoff both claimed an isolated, unpopulated planet somewhere, where each maintained a tiny outpost with only one person in order to stake the claim. Even though they’re enemies, the two opposing soldiers would, in many ways, be closer to each other than to their other comrades. Or would they?
The balance of power changes when one soldier’s station goes down in a meteoroid collision and he’s forced to go over to the other soldier’s station in order to survive. On the way, though, he gets a transmission from his superiors that their two worlds are now at war, and he has orders to kill the enemy soldier who has just saved his life. Can he carry them out? Is it right for him to do so? Or did the other soldier receive the same order, and is he now planning to kill him?
The idea for this story bounced around in my head for a long, long time, but I never sat down to write it because I didn’t know how to resolve it. Then, a little over a month ago, I got a crazy awesome idea for how to do it. All the other details came together, and I knew exactly what was supposed to happen.
I wish I could say that the story practically wrote itself from there, but unfortunately that was not the case. I started it back in early February, but kept putting it off because the story in my mind was so awesome, I didn’t know if I could do it justice on the page. That fear was absolutely crippling, and it’s the main reason I didn’t write any short stories at all for the month of February. It wasn’t that what I had written was bad–in fact, the beginning was pretty good. It was the fear that my skills just weren’t yet up to writing this one.
Well, those fears were pretty unfounded. While talking about the story with some friends this last Tuesday, I realized that the whole thing was silly and I should just sit down and write it. Two days later, the story was finished–and it was actually pretty good.
I know as a part of this short story challenge, I’m supposed to keep Heinlein’s rules, including rule 3 which states “you must refrain from revising, except to editorial order.” I mostly kept to that rule for this one, but not entirely. I did a lot of cycling–reading through and tweaking previous sections before putting new words on the page–as well as some significant cutting. The original draft clocked in at about 7,700 words, and Analog puts a cap at 7,000, so I went through and cut about 10%. Hopefully, though, that will just make it stronger.
I really, really like this story. It’s in first person, and the voice is quite a bit darker than some of my other stuff, but I really connected with the viewpoint character and I think it shows. Besides that, the buildup and suspense was just a ton of fun. I really hope this story gets picked up soon, because I think you’re really going to enjoy it!
This brings the number of short stories on submission now to three. I’ve garnered two rejections for “The Infiltrator,” but that’s it so far. I’m honestly not sure whether to just trunk that one, but I’ll keep it on submission for a while just in case. As Kris Rusch said in a recent blog post, you should let the editor decide what goes in her magazine without pre-editing for her.
That’s just about it. One short down for March–seventeen days to write the second one. Let’s do it!
Title: The Open Source Time Machine
Genre: Science Fiction
Word Count: 3,247
Time: About 10 days
I felt really good after finishing this short story. The last line in particular surprised me, which is always a good sign. I think this story is going to go places.
The idea for this one actually came about 4 months ago. I imagined an inventor trying to convince a bunch of investors to fund his time travel development project by calling on his future self to appear to them. He fails–his future self never shows up–but after the meeting has ended in failure, he goes home and finds his future self waiting for him there. Why wouldn’t he go back in time to help himself get the funding to develop his project? That was the core idea that became this story.
I wrote out a couple of pages of that one before getting frustrated and trunking it. Then, about ten days ago, I broke my operating system (Ubuntu) and had to upgrade/reinstall it three times before it would work again. For Linux users, that’s kind of like a rite of passage. It was frustrating, but also kind of awesome because of all the stuff I learned from it. Open source technology is really, really cool.
Around the same time, I read Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age by Douglas Rushkoff. Fascinating book, especially if you’ve got a job/lifestyle where you spend +50% of your waking life in front of a screen. Rushkoff is a technology theorist, and this book is about all the subtle ways in which computers, social media, the internet, and other modern technologies can be used to manipulate us if we aren’t careful. His ideas are brilliant and his perspective is fascinating, so his book definitely got me thinking about things.
With both of these things on my mind, I went for a long walk while taking a break from my writing. Short stories were also on the mind, since I was wondering what I should write about for the month of January. The old time travel idea popped up, and everything just sort of melded together until I had the story.
I wrote the first half of it the next day … and then sat on it for a little over a week. I’m not sure why I did that–maybe I was just nervous about screwing it up or something. By far, the hardest part about writing is getting out of your own damned way. Yesterday, I finally buckled down and forced myself to finish the thing, and it actually turned out pretty well. Took the whole day to finish it, but it’s finished and that’s what’s important.
So after touching it up this morning, running a spell check and tweaking a couple of relatively minor things, I put it out on submission. That’s two stories I have on submission now: “The Infiltrator” got rejected from Clarkesworld, but it’s out at Analog now so we’ll see how that goes.
I think my short form is getting better, though there’s still a lot of room for improvement. I’m going to start running these stories through Kindal’s writing group, even though I’ll put them out on submission as soon as they’re finished. The feedback will be useful in writing the next one.
No idea what the next short story is going to be about. Maybe I’ll go through some of my old story idea notebooks and see what comes together. Or maybe a story will just come to me, and I need to position myself so that I’m ready to capture it on paper when it comes.
We’ll see. In the meantime, I’m very pleased with this one.
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:
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?
