revising – Page 2 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Revisions, X-COM, and working on my short game

So I finished putting together the revision notes for Heart of the Nebula on Monday, and started working on those today. It was interesting to compare the original rough draft (which was completely broken) with the incomplete revised version that I’d worked on about a year ago (which was also completely broken, but in different ways). Fortunately, even though both drafts are train wrecks, they’re not unsalvageable. In fact, I think there’s a pretty good story underneath it all.

Usually when I write a big novel like this, the first draft works pretty well up until about the middle, then either it falls apart or the scenes start getting out of order, or both. In the first revision pass, I take out all the stuff that isn’t working, but struggle to come up with new stuff to replace it. Usually, I’m just recycling the old stuff, and the result ends up a bit out of place and watered down. On the third pass, I say “screw it” and come up with a bunch of new stuff, which helps me to see where the story is actually going and arrange the scenes in the correct order. It’s not always as straightforward as that, but that’s the pattern.

In fact, I’ve learned a lot of interesting things from this revision, which I’ll probably save for another blog post when my thoughts on this are a lot clearer. The big takeaway is that I need to clearly separate the tasks that should be done in my creative mind (like writing new words and coming up with story) and the ones that should be done in my critical mind (like mapping out what to cut and what to keep or recycle). But more on that later.

About a week ago, I got X-COM: Enemy Unknown on a Steam sale and I’ve been playing it like crazy. It’s a really awesome game! I love the complex tactical thinking and how it really puts you there on the ground with your troops. And then, an enemy pops out of nowhere, flanks you, gets a critical hit, and the next thing you know your favorite soldier who you’ve been meticulously leveling up over the last thirty missions is DEAD! NOOOOO!!!

So yeah, that’s been eating up a lot of time–probably too much of it, to be honest. But I’m still working on various writing projects, including a plan to improve my short game. I put together a spreadsheet of all the major short story markets in the speculative fiction field, and ranked them in order of preference. My plan is to write a short story every week (or at least twice a month) and put it on submission, going right down the line until I’ve exhausted all the appropriate markets. No revisions, no holding stuff back because I think it’s not good enough–just writing and submitting until I’ve mastered that side of the art.

This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, but I’ve been holding back because … well, I don’t know why I’ve been holding back. Maybe I’ve just had it in my head that I’m not any good at short stories? Well, maybe right now I’m not, but I’m sure that it’s something I can learn. It’s a side of creative writing that I haven’t really explored yet, which means that there’s a lot of opportunity to learn and grow. And if/when I do start getting picked up by the major magazines, that’s going to do a lot to advance my career.

Don’t worry, I still plan to keep working on novels and novellas. This short story thing is something I’ll probably do when I need a quick break, to start something that I can finish in a day when I’m stuck in the middle of a gargantuan project. I’ll probably limit my short story writing to Saturdays, so it doesn’t interrupt things too much, and try to write them in one or two sittings if I can.

So that’s what I’ve been up to in the past week. In other news, it has gotten RIDICULOUSLY COLD out here in Utah, and I love it. Cold weather means hot chocolate, borscht, and oatmeal! It also means I need to get myself a bomber jacket–the kind with the awesome pockets on the arm. It’s been years since I had one of those, and they are good quality jackets.

In any case, that’s enough for now. I’ll do what I can to keep this blog updated as I move on with revisions and other stuff. In the meantime, stay warm!

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.

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!

When something you’ve written moves you

So I had an interesting experience today as I was revising Star Wanderers: Benefactor (Part VI), and I’m not sure how to describe it without sounding like “that guy” who gushes far too much about his books. At the risk of being “that guy,” here goes.

As writers, it’s far too easy for us to write something in the heat of a creative passion, only to dismiss it later. Perhaps we’re so afraid of screwing up that we yearn to fall back on the story that’s safe rather than the story that rings true, or perhaps we realize just how much of ourselves we’ve put into it that it scares us to death that someone might actually read it. Too often, something else that’s broken about the story distracts us from the stuff that’s actually good, so we end up throwing it all out together. Our critical minds work so differently from our creative ones that when the fires of creative passion turn to smoldering embers, it’s not unusual to feel like we’ve been left completely naked and need to scramble desperately to cover ourselves.

For that reason, I’ve made myself a rule not to revise a story without first making a set of bullet points, chapter by scene, of what I’m going to do. My critical mind has full domain of that list of bullet points, but I will not let him carve up my story. The list contains a series of instructions for my creative mind, who can actually revise quite well when given a little direction. But when he thinks that the direction is wrong, he’s not afraid to push back.

The revision notes for my books always read like a back-and-forth argument between my critical and creative minds. Once I’m finished writing up the bullet point list of revisions, I turn on track changes and cross them off one by one as I complete them. But whenever I get to a point where my creative mind disagrees, I’ll cross it off and write down the reasons why it’s better to go in a different direction. Some of the more recent notes for Benefactor include:

It’s not as much of an issue as you think.

Eh, the dialog works pretty well.

Already there. Better to keep it subtle.

Why? This is good.

No, it works very well with what’s already here. Don’t change it.

So with that as a preface, I got to a scene in Benefactor today where one of the characters has a major life crisis upon learning that his wife is pregnant. The pregnancy catches him completely by surprise, and makes him wake up and wonder if his life is really heading in the direction that he wants. He feels like he’s stumbling into his future blindly, tripping over his feet without knowing where he’s going, and that frightens him.

I’d made some notes to add some stuff for clarification at the end of the scene, but I must have only been skimming it when I made the revision notes because all of that stuff was already there, and expressed more poignantly than I think I could have done. Basically, the character comes to peace with the life he’s giving up by realizing that he will one day lead his son to follow in his footsteps, just as his own father did with him.

My critical mind completely missed that, because he was only looking for problems that needed to be fixed. But when I read it again today, I was actually kind of shocked that this was something I’d written. I don’t want to say that it’s the best thing that’s ever been written, because certainly I have lots of room for improvement, but the passage really moved me, and I wasn’t expecting that.

So yeah, revisions for Star Wanderers: Benefactor (Part VI) are coming along swimmingly. It might be a bit tough to get the final draft proofread in time for a July release, but I’ve got some friends who might be able to help. Just like I don’t trust my critical mind to meddle with the story, I don’t trust my eyeballs to catch all the typos and grammatical errors. But I think that the substantive revisions will be finished by Tuesday, and after that, it’s time to get the publishing wheels grinding.

In the meantime, I was playing around with The Gimp today, and I came up with a cover for Star Wanderers: Reproach (Part VII). Check it out!

SW-VII Reproach (cover) The image is the Orion Nebula, as imaged by the Spitzer Space Telescope. You can find the original here.

I thought it was fitting, considering how Reproach is a parallel novella to Sacrifice, and Sacrifice also features an image of the Orion Nebula on the cover. But the important thing is just that it looks cool and is sufficiently eye-catching.

So that’s about it. I’ve got a lot of heavy revisions to do tomorrow, but even my critical mind agrees that chapters 4 and 5 are actually pretty good. There’s at least one scene missing and a couple of other things that need to be added, but I’m actually looking forward to writing those. Also, a couple of characters need some more fleshing out, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. The Tuesday deadline is quite doable.

Have a good night, and thanks as always for reading!

It’s all there (mostly), just out of order

So I picked up the rough draft of Star Wanderers: Benefactor (Part VI) this week and started making notes for the revision. It turns out that most of the scenes after the first chapter are jumbled and out of order.

This is good, because it means that I don’t have to toss it out and write it from scratch. All I have to do is figure out the right order, rework the transitions, and then maybe add a couple of scenes to smooth things over. Not too difficult, and it should turn this story around from something’s-broken-and-I-don’t-know-what to dang-this-is-awesomesauce.

It’s not so good, though, because it means I’m going to have a real struggle over the next couple of weeks to get at the core essence of this story and draw it out. That’s always tough, when I don’t get it on the first pass.

To be honest, I’ve kind of been avoiding this story for the last couple of months. When I finished the rough draft and put it on the back burner, I had the sense that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. That’s always the worst. Now that I know, it’s just a matter of doing the work. But that’s also daunting, because it’s like I’m standing at the base of a mountain looking up. At least the climb itself is invigorating, so once I get started, it should be pretty straightforward.

Benefactor takes the Star Wanderers series in a bit of a different direction, focusing on Jakob (Mariya’s father) and his struggle to provide for his family when all he’s ever really been is a star wanderer. As an outworlder, he’s always had a certain amount of pride and independence, but as a starbound refugee with a family to look after, that only gets in the way. When he married Salome and settled down, it seemed like they had a bright future, but now he’s trapped in a life he never wanted, and the love he once shared with his wife has grown cold.

Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter, which probably won’t change much in the final draft:

Jakob never felt more bone-weary than when he came off of a twelve-hour shift at the Oriana Station dockyards. His feet ached and his back groaned with pain, even in the low gravity of the tram as it raced from the hub to the rimside habs. As usually, the narrow car was crammed like a vacuum pack, every seat occupied with the hot and sweaty bodies of the other workers. He glanced out the window to catch a glimpse of the stars, but an advertisement for a synthetic protein formula filled the holographic windowpane.

My life is a prison, he thought to himself—silently, as always. It’s a prison of my own making, but it’s a prison nonetheless.

The twelve hour shifts had started only a standard week ago, but already it felt like months. A Gaian Imperial battle group had just arrived from the Coreward Stars, panicking some and causing a lot more work for others. Jakob didn’t have much time to follow interstellar politics, but he knew it meant longer work shifts for the foreseeable future. Which really wasn’t so bad, except that the overtime pay would barely keep the family above water, without paying off any of their debts.

From the quadrant tram station, he took an elevator to the slums on the lowest level. This was always the worst part: getting used to the slightly heavier gravity, after spending so much time in null-gee at the hub. He shuffled down the rimside corridor, barely lifting his feet off the floor. The walls were drab and gray, but spotlessly clean. That was something to say about the immigrant community—they might be poor, but they weren’t dirty.

The pungent odor of Deltan cooking spices met his nose the moment the door hissed open. That would be his mother-in-law, fixing dinner. He stepped inside and dropped his work boots on the floormat, waking his sister-in-law’s baby in the living room. He cringed from the high-pitched wailing almost as much as he did from the tongue-lashing he expected to get for it. But what did it matter? Ignoring the baby’s cries, he trudged off toward the bathroom for a much needed shower.

“Oh, hi Dad!”

His daughter Mariya bounded down the hallway, her black hair bobbing with every step. The bright smile on her sixteen year old face cut through his dark mood, at least momentarily. She gave him a great big hug, and he returned it with a grunt.

“Guess what?” she said, her eyes lit with excitement. “I finally found someone to rent out the spare room to!”

Jakob raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yeah! A couple from Delta Oriana—Megiddo Station, in fact. At least, the girl is from there. Her husband is out working on his ship—he’s a star wanderer, see—but she’s out in the living room right now, talking with Aunt Giuli. Do you want to meet her?”

Her words passed over him like a flurry of raw, unprocessed data. He focused on the important parts and disregarded the rest.

“How long are they going to stay?”

“Oh, not long. They just need a place to stay for a couple weeks until they’ve refitted their ship. Apparently, they—”

“How much are you going to charge them?”

So yeah, it’s a new direction from the previous books, but it’s got a lot of the same characters and ties in quite well with Fidelity, I think. Also, it expands the universe and shows some other aspects of what life is like for star wanderers and outworlders in general.

It’s going to be to be a lot of work making sure I get this one right, but it’s a short novella, so it shouldn’t take too long. Barring no unforeseen complications, I should still be able to get it out before the end of the month. The next two books, Reproach and Deliverance, should be ready soon after that.

In the meantime, I’d better get some shuteye so I can wake up early and work full steam on this book tomorrow. Gnight!

Random thoughts on creativity and a cover preview

I’ve noticed that I tend to go through at least two revisions on most of my stories. The first one generally identifies the problems in the rough draft and eliminates them, while the second one adds anything that’s missing and smooths the story over so that it works as a whole. They both use different parts of my brain: one critical, the other creative. Since both are important, I can’t easily skip either of them, and combining them into one mega-revision doesn’t really work because it’s hard to switch from one mode to the other.

I’m currently in the second revision for Star Wanderers: Dreamweaver, and it’s coming along really well so far. Now that I’m in creative mode, it’s a lot easier to add stuff that was missing from the first draft and tidy up some other parts that seem a little disjointed. With luck, this revision should be finished in a day or two. It’s really only one chapter that needs the bulk of the work–according to my first readers, everything else is pretty good. Far be it from me to fix something that isn’t broken.

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The other day, an old friend of mine emailed me with a question about the world building / plotting process I followed for Star Wanderers. I wrote a fairly lengthy response, and while most of it was a more detailed explanation of the stuff I’ve already included in the various author’s notes, I came up with some advice that surprised me:

If I had to give any advice, I’d say that the most important thing is to just feed your creativity. You can’t force your imagination, just like you can’t get any more golden eggs by killing the goose that lays them. However, you can organize your life and your environment in such a way that bursts of creativity are longer and more frequent. A huge and important part of it is learning to turn off your internal critic, especially on the rough draft. Sometimes, if I spend too much time thinking about writing, it paralyzes me so that I can’t actually write–but if I trick myself into opening my WIP without really thinking about it, then ten minutes later I’m plugging away and the ideas are flowing. And just as bad habits can be very harmful, good habits can be very helpful.

I think a lot of us creative types tend to force ourselves a little too much, especially when we’re first getting started. We want to be productive, we want to have something that we can show for ourselves in order to feel validated, especially with so many people raising eyebrows at our dreams and creative pursuits. But productivity goals, while important, are really only a means to an end–and they’re not even the most important means most of the time.

If you want your work to ring with authenticity, or to reflect the truth and beauty you see in the universe, you have to be in touch with that kind of stuff. And once you get back in touch with the stuff that drove you to create in the first place, there’s nothing that you want to do more.

This morning, I wrote for three hours in one sitting, and I wasn’t tempted by any distractions at all. I only produced about 1.3k words, but they were good words that added both to the story and my understanding of the story. I got back in touch with the spark that drove me to write it in the first place, and hopefully that spark will carry through to the readers. I think that it will.

So yeah–it’s not about productivity goals, or reworking our creative process to be more like someone else’s, or any number of other writerly insecurities. It’s all about story, and everything that drives us to tell them.

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All right, if you’re still reading (or even if you cheated and skipped ahead), I have a treat for you. I just found the AWESOMEST image for the cover of Star Wanderers: Benefactor, which I hope to finish up later this week after finalizing the revisions for Dreamweaver. Here’s the cover:

Pretty cool, eh? I <3 NASA. 😀

The picture is of Comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT), taken by the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. It was taken on 7 May 2004, and covers an area roughly five times the size of the moon. As with all NASA images, it’s in the public domain.

The inspiration actually came from comet PANSTARRS, which is visible in the sky right now. I tried to catch a glimpse of it tonight from the Y Mountain trail head, but there were too many clouds on the horizon to see it clearly. Hopefully, the skies will be clearer tomorrow.

In related news, comet ISON later this year is expected to put on a really incredible show. Astronomers think that for a brief time, it may even shine brighter than the moon, making it visible even during the day! If that happens, it’s going to be AWESOME. Mark it on your calendars for November–it’s going to be great!

That’s just about it for now. I’d better get back to forming those good habits I mentioned earlier–like actually getting to bed at a reasonable hour. Later!

Well, that was a quick revision

First of all, sorry for forgetting to do a Trope Tuesday post (again!). I guess I’m really flaky about doing those. Oh well–better to be flaky about blogging than flaky about writing, right?

In fact, the reason I didn’t write-up the post was because I was busy doing a 2.0 revision pass for Star Wanderers: Dreamweaver. This is the novella that retells the events of Outworlder, but from Noemi’s point of view. I hadn’t looked at it in the eight months since I wrote it, but sometime over the summer I gave it to Laura to alpha read, and she just got back with her comments a couple of days ago.

Well. Reading through those comments was simultaneously the most excruciating and most invigorating thing I’ve been through in a while. I’ve changed a lot since I wrote the first draft, and a lot of things about it are horribly embarrassing, but the story … the story is actually pretty solid. Oh, some of Noemi’s motivations weren’t close enough to the page, and some other elements needed a bit of pruning, but the structure, the bones–it all seems to be there.

So, long story short: I got Laura’s comments on Monday, and finished the revisions today. TODAY. Of course, it still needs to be proofread, and I’d like to send the new version out to some other first readers … but I don’t anticipate making any major, earth-shattering changes to the story. In fact, I could publish it tomorrow, and most of you would probably love it.

So far, my Star Wanderers books are selling much better than any of my other titles. They’re also much shorter, which means that I can put them out a lot faster–or should, at least. I probably angst over them more than I should, trying to make everything perfect. But I’ve got the extended series planned out to Part X, and I’ve already written half of Part VI. Some of those might get moved up or down, depending on demand, but the more I write in this universe, the more stories present themselves. And hey, if that’s what you want to read, I’ll be more than happy to write more of them.

If all goes well, Dreamweaver will be out in the first half of April, perhaps as early as the end of March. As always, newsletter subscribers will get a two-week coupon code to download the book for free on Smashwords. This also provides access to all future editions, in all ebook formats, completely DRM free. If you enjoy it, I hope you’ll review it or tell a friend about it. I’m not sure how I’ll end up pricing it, but I don’t anticipate going higher than $2.99.

In the meantime, here’s something to leave you with: an awesome remix of Jewel by Solarstone & Clare Stagg. Man, I love Solarstone’s work. I picked up his newest album, Pure, over the summer, and have been pulling songs from it for book soundtracks ever since.

Night! 🙂

Stars of Blood and Glory coming out soon

So last year about this time, I wrote a novel in the Gaia Nova universe. Usually when I sit down to write a novel, it falls apart about midway through the first draft, or I have some kind of a break down, or something else comes up and I have to put it on hold for a while.

From start to finish, this one came out in about six weeks.

Even the title, Stars of Blood and Glory, really seemed to stick (usually, I go through three or four lame titles before finding one that works). It took a lot of energy to write it, but the writing process itself was fun. Seriously, everything just came together and the story practically wrote itself.

However, writers can often be notorious judges of their own work. For that reason, I set it aside and tried not to touch it for a few months (I did rework the first couple chapters, but later ended up cutting out most of that stuff and going back to the original version, which was better). Over the summer, I picked it up for the first revision, and while the scenes were out-of-order and a few of them were missing, but for the most part, everything that was there seemed pretty good.

Just to be safe, I sent it out to some first readers and laid it aside for another six months. I didn’t hear back from everyone I sent it to, but those who did read it said it was pretty good. The problems they found were relatively minor, or could be fixed relatively quickly, without having to overhaul the story.

To be perfectly honest, this blew me away. My first drafts are usually really messy, and require a lot of work before they’re any good. But this one…this one seems different. This one, I might have just nailed it <fingers crossed>. And if that’s indeed the case, it’s probably better not to risk revising it to death, or polishing the voice right out of it.

It’s always a scary thing to send a book out into the world. However, I think the time to send out this one has come. I’m going to do one last revision pass, just to make sure there isn’t anything too egregious, and then I’ll send it out to my editor and commission the cover art. If all goes well, I’ll finish the revision next week, and publish it in ebook and print-on-demand sometime in February.

As an indirect sequel to Bringing Stella Home and Desert Stars, Stars of Blood and Glory has a lot of recurring characters. Here are some of them:

Captain Danica Nova
Master Sergeant Roman Andrei Krikoryan
Rina Al-Najmi
Stella McCoy, aka Sholpan

Besides that, here are some of the other cool things you can expect to see:

A far future Japanese-Polynesian society on an ocean planet with giant floating cities.
A Hameji offensive, with massive space battles and planetary slaggings.
A lonely boy emperor who fears that he’ll never live up to his father’s dying wish.
A runaway princess who wants to experience everything the universe has to offer.
A young Hameji prince who yearns to prove himself in the field of battle.
A cyborg mercenary who feels like his humanity is slowly fading into irrelevance.
An unlikely assassin whose mind and body are not completely her own.

All of this comes together in a war of epic proportions that will determine the fate of the last free worlds in the galaxy.

So yeah, I’m really excited about this story. It’s a departure from some of the more intimate (and less action-y) science fiction romances I’ve been putting out lately, but in all of the right ways. If you read Bringing Stella Home and wondered when you’d get a worthy sequel, well, this is it. And hopefully, it’s just the first of many.

Expect it to be out in ebook and print-on-demand sometime next month.

Have internet, will blog

Hey guys, I’m back in Kutaisi today, so I thought I’d drop in and post an update on this (much neglected as of late) blog. Life hasn’t been too eventful, but there are a couple of things that I thought you might want to know about.

First of all, I’ll be participating in an ebook promo with some other sci-fi indie authors this cyber monday (the online equivalent of black friday). My book Star Wanderers: Outworlder is already available for free, but if you’re a fan of science fiction and free / $.99 ebooks, be sure to check it out! Here’s the link:

Also, if you check out the CURRENT PROJECTS section in the sidebar (over there ———>), you’ll see that I recently dusted off Heart of the Nebula for another revision pass. This is a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, featuring many of the same characters (James, Lars, Stella) plus a few new ones. I’m about midway through chapter 4 right now, and really getting into the story.

The previous drafts had some issues, but I think I’ve got a better handle on them now. I have no idea when it will be ready to be published, but I’m shooting for sometime next summer. With luck, this next revision will be finished in December, at which point I’ll send it out to my first readers and see what they think of it.

Also, I took some time out to work on meta-writing stuff, like goal setting and such. I’ll save that discussion for new years, though, since that seems like a much better time to discuss goals and resolutions. Also, it will give me a chance to refine them a bit in the intervening month. Long story short, I was experiencing a creative block due to some unrealistic personal expectations, but I think I’ve more or less worked it out.

Other than that, life is pretty good. I got to see my host family from last year a couple of days ago, when I came in late from Tbilisi and missed the last marshrutkka to my village. Called up the family, and they were kind enough to let me spend the night on their couch. Today, I said thank you by dropping by with a box of chocolates.

It was great to see them again and spend some time in the neighborhood where I lived last semester. Also: twix cookies. The market in Batoni next to ProCredit Bank is one of the few places in Kutaisi that sells them. If you’ve ever spent any significant time in Georgia, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

So that’s just about it for now. If all goes well, I should hear back from my first readers on Star Wanderers: Homeworld sometime during the Thanksgiving break. Depending on their feedback, it’ll come out anywhere between 1-3 weeks later. This will conclude the main story arc for Star Wanderers (at least, the first arc), but it won’t be the last book in the series. More on that later, though.

Take care!

New Kindle! And some new old projects as well

So I came out to Tbilisi today, because MY NEW KINDLE PAPERWHITE JUST ARRIVED!

Okay, sorry for the all-caps shouting, but I’m really happy that it finally got here. My old kindle broke down a few months ago, leaving me stranded in my tiny village without any books. With the weather getting worse and the power outages becoming more frequent, cabin fever has started to become a problem. So really, it couldn’t have come at a better time.

It shipped out almost a month ago, but Georgia (the country, not the state) is a fairly remote place, so it’s taken a looong time to get here. The wait has definitely been worth it, though. I love this device, especially the cover browsing function. And the backlight is going to be very, very useful, what with all the power outages we get in the village.

So I’m about 100 pages into The Sword Keeper, my latest project, and I realized that I need to do a lot more worldbuilding before I can continue. I’ve got a good handle on the characters and have more or less figured out the plot, but there are still a lot of holes in the setting. This new project is a fantasy novel, and it seems to be leaning more towards epic than heroic, so I probably should take the time to really build the world before trying to finish the story.

I’ve been drawing a lot of inspiration from my experience here in Georgia, but right now, I feel like I’m too close to it to really take it in the right direction. The time I spent in Jordan was a huge influence in Desert Stars, but I didn’t start it until I came home (and didn’t finish the first draft until almost two years later). Ideas are like wine: sometimes, you just need to let them sit in the back of your head and age for a while.

So long story short, I’ve decided to put The Sword Keeper on the back burner for a while. I’m sure I’ll come back to it, though–the story is far too interesting to let go. Magical thinking swords that meld with the minds of those who wield them, ancient prophecies and a secret order of warrior monks–and that’s just the backdrop. The characters themselves are much more interesting–I have got to tell their story!

But for now, I’m going to revisit the Gaia Nova universe and finish the revisions for Heart of the Nebula. This one is a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, and while it definitely still needs work, I feel like it’s almost there. The first draft had some major problems and needed to be revamped, especially toward the end. If all goes well, I should finish this pass before the end of November, with enough time to write another Star Wanderers story before the end of the year.

Stars of Blood and Glory is still with my first readers, but if they give it the green light, I hope to publish it sometime in February. This one is also a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, with Danica, Roman, Stella, and Stella’s son Abaqa, and a couple of characters from Desert Stars as well. I’m really excited about this story, but I figure it’s best to get some more feedback first before putting it out.

Which brings me to Star Wanderers: Homeworld (Part IV). I can’t promise that it will be out before the end of November, but that’s what I’m shooting for. Of course, I’m not going to put it out until I’m satisfied that it represents my best work, but even my first readers do come back with problems, I’m 99% confident I can fix them all by December at the latest. There is nothing–absolutely nothing–like the feeling you get when you finish a story where everything just comes together. I may not be the best judge of my own work, but I know that feeling. You can definitely expect to see this story come out before the end of the year.

That’s about all for now. Internet is spotty out in the village, but I’ve got a couple of interesting posts brewing in the back of my mind. I’ll probably write them up in the next few days, and post them the next time I get a chance. Until then, see you around!