sequels – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Thoughts on sequels and the Desolation of Smaug

So last week I saw the new Hobbit movie, The Desolation of Smaug, and I really, really liked it … right up to the ending. Why?

BECAUSE IT RESOLVED NOTHING!!!

Okay, sorry for the spoiler (though you probably should have guessed there would be spoilers in a post like this). There’s going to be more in this post, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet, read on at your own risk.

Overall, I thought the movie was pretty good. The action was fun, the fantasy elements were very well executed, and Benedict Cumberbatch was excellent as the voice of Smaug. My only real hangups (beside the ending) are relatively minor, such as the impossible physics of Thorin’s luge run down the river of molten metal, or the fact that all of the gold ever mined in the history of the Earth would not fill a tenth of the stockpile in Erebor (seriously, all of the world’s gold would only fill a cube about 20 meters to a side … so maybe half of that big statue they melted at the end?). Oh, and I thought the politics of Laketown were simplified to the point of caricature. That was actually a fairly big issue for me, though I suspect the third movie will either make it or break it.

But all of those are dwarfed (no pun intended … okay, maybe a little) by the movie’s biggest flaw, which is that IT HAS NO RESOLUTION.

Seriously, none of the half-dozen subplots resolve in any meaningful way. The one that comes closest is that love affair between the elf woman and the dwarf, since I guess she kind of saves him from his orc wound. But he doesn’t even regain consciousness, which means that they aren’t even really reunited by the end. And as for the other storylines … well, Smaug is still alive and about to burn Laketown, Gandalf is a prisoner of Sauron, Bard is a prisoner of that fat guy who wasn’t ever in the book and the dwarves still haven’t taken Erebor.

I understand that the middle installment in a series can’t resolve everything, but I still think it should resolve something. Take The Empire Strikes Back, for example. It ends on something of a cliffhanger, but there’s still enough of a resolution that it stands very well on its own. Han Solo is frozen in carbonite, but Leia, Chewie, and the droids have escaped to safety. Luke hasn’t defeated Vader, but he has learned something that completely changes the relationship between them both. The Rebel Alliance hasn’t won yet, but they have gotten away from Hoth without being completely decimated by the Empire.

The Empire Strikes Back is not just part I of The Return of the Jedi–it stands on its own as a complete story. It bridges A New Hope and Jedi by showing the tragic failure of Luke Skywalker to defeat Vader, rescue his friends, and become a Jedi. By the end of the movie, he’s a very different person than he was at the beginning. Could the same be said of Thorin, Bilbo, and the Desolation of Smaug? Not really.

I suppose I have to be a bit cautious here, since there are those who would say that I’m guilty of this myself. I’ll freely admit that I’ve written a few cliffhanger endings, most recently in some of the Star Wanderers stories. However, I always try to resolve something, so that each book can stand at least partly on its own.

In Fidelity, for example, Jeremiah and Noemi haven’t found a home yet, but they do have one to work toward. It starts with their arrival at Oriana Station and it ends with their departure–everything that they need to do there has been done. In Sacrifice, the language barrier, cultural misunderstandings, and Jeremiah’s own personal shortcomings converge until he’s more or less forced to leave Noemi, at least temporarily. It’s not a feel-good ending, but it is a resolution of sorts. And in Reproach, Mariya comes to the horrifying realization that she’s destroyed everything that she was hoping to build.

I guess the key to bridging a series in such a way that the sequels stand on their own is to keep the individual conflicts and subplots distinct, especially the internal and external ones. For example, I thought that The Unexpected Journey had a much better ending, not because the overall plot was resolved, but because Bilbo had transformed from a homebody to an adventurer. The internal conflict had a satisfying resolution, and the growth arc had more or less come full swing. The Desolation of Smaug could have done that with Thorin, and in some ways it seemed to be trying, but by the end it just fell short.

So am I going to see the third movie? Well, yeah, so from a Hollywood perspective, I suppose the movie was a success. But I’m not as excited for it as I was for Return of the Jedi. And the lesson I’m taking from this is that cliffhangers are good, but you’ve got to deliver at least some satisfaction–you’ve got to resolve something. Otherwise, people are going to feel cheated.

Laying the groundwork for a couple new series

So I just got back from vacation at Cape Cod, which turned out completely different from what I’d expected. When I left, I said that I’d probably just write like I usually do, except in a different place. Instead, I took a break from my WIPs long enough to catch a new vision for my career and come up with a really good idea for a new spin-off series in the same universe as Star Wanderers.

The story idea is really awesome. I don’t want to talk about it too much, since I haven’t even written it yet, but the main characters will be Isaac and Aaron from Benefactor, and the basic premise will start out fairly similar to Outworlder. From there, though, I expect it to take shape in some very different ways, turning into much more of an epic space opera.

I plan to stick with the novella series format, since I’ve had a lot of success with that so far. I know that some readers complain about shorter works, but when doing a series of this type, it’s important to put out new titles regularly, and I can do that much easier with novellas than with novels. Besides, there are a lot of other reasons why I prefer novellas, as I pointed out in this post.

That said, I expect these ones to run a little longer, such as the 30k-40k word (90-140 page) range. But I won’t really know until I’ve written them.

Before that, I’ve got two more Star Wanderers stories to put out: Reproach (Part VII) and Deliverance (Part VIII). Both of those are already written; I just have to run them by my first readers and make some revisions before putting them out. If all goes well, Reproach should be out in September and Deliverance should be out in October.

So that’s the plan. Career-wise, what I really need to do is replicate the success of Star Wanderers by starting some new storylines that follow the same series format. It’s a little unnerving, since I don’t know what will stick, but I don’t want to be dependent on just one series–you’ve got to have multiple entry points. Besides, this new series is a spinoff, so hopefully readers from the first one will carry over.

It’s at this point that I’m hitting myself, because what I really need is to have three books that I can release before Christmas. In general, I’ve found that it’s better to wait until you have three books out before you make the first in a series permanently free. I wish I’d spent a lot more time this summer writing new things, rather than revising old stuff or finishing up old series. But oh well–better to start now than wait until next year. And who knows? Maybe I can still pull it off.

For this new series, I plan to invest a little more in cover art. The NASA images have been good for Star Wanderers, but to really hit the publishing trifecta (title, cover, blurb), I need to commission some original art. I have the money now, and probably the best thing I can do at this point is reinvest it. Expect those covers to be awesome.

Oh, and the other elements of the trifecta? I don’t have a blurb yet, but the working title is Sons of the Starfarers. Pretty cool, eh?

So there’s that. I’m currently revising Reproach, but I think I can finish that on the train and send it out to my beta readers before the end of August. As for The Sword Bearer, I’m going to put that project on hold again, mostly so I can focus on this. I’ve also been running into some problems with that project, mostly having to do with the worldbuilding.

For that reason, I’m thinking of doing a series of prequel novellas in order to flesh out that world and the backstory. If it goes well, that should turn into its own thing, kind of like how Star Wanderers fleshes out the background for my Gaia Nova books. I’m thinking of something along the lines of David Gemmell: heroic fantasy with a real focus on courage, valor, and unlikely heroism. I’ve already got the first scene of the first book in my head, and it’s pretty dang awesome.

So many stories, so little time … I’d better get back to writing!

Update on STAR WANDERERS and a sneak peek at some cover art

So in case you didn’t know, I’ve been getting an omnibus edition ready for Star Wanderers. It’s subtitled The Jeremiah Chronicles, and contains parts I-IV (Outworlder, Fidelity, Sacrifice, and Homeworld). This covers the first major series arc, with all of the stories from Jeremiah’s point of view–hence the title.

I commissioned Ina Wong from Deviant Art for the cover, and this the result:

I must say, I’m rather pleased. It’s got a very different feel from the current space photography covers, but I think this is a lot truer to the actual story. I can’t commission art like this for the individual installments, of course, but for an omnibus edition, I figure it’s alright to go all out.

The only content in the omnibus that isn’t already in parts I-IV will be the author’s note, which I’ll either post here or include as a PDF to my newsletter subscribers. In other words, don’t worry about missing out on anything if you’ve already read the individual installments.

I’m getting feedback from my alpha readers for Benefactor, the next part in the series, so I’ll probably release that one in the next six weeks. In the meantime, I’ve picked up work on Reproach again (Part VII), and hope to finish the first draft before the end of the month.

Just as Dreamweaver is a parallel novella to Outworlder (from Noemi’s POV), Benefactor is a parallel novella to Fidelity (from Jakob’s POV) and Reproach is a parallel novella to Sacrifice (from Noemi and Mariya’s POVs). After that, I’ll do a parallel novella to Homeworld with Lucca and Mariya as the main POV characters, and then branch out into some other characters and storylines.

The fun part about writing this series is that each new story seeds at least two or three others. I just wish I could keep up!

I haven’t abandoned Lifewalker, but I did reach a point where I figured it would be good to take a short break just to keep things fresh. My creative process seems to work that way. As much as I’d like to train myself to stay on project until it was finished, creativity can’t be trained so much as fostered. I set myself a deadline to finish something by May 31st, so now it looks like that’s going to be Reproach.

As for The Jeremiah Chronicles, all I have left is to write the author’s note and book description. It should be out on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords by this time next week. In the meantime, I’ll keep working on Reproach so you guys can have plenty more stories to read!

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.

Edenfall update

So I haven’t exactly gotten into a good writing routine yet, but Edenfall is coming along pretty well. I’m just about finished with the first chapter, and the dominoes are already starting to fall.

It’s fun to revisit the world of Genesis Earth, but I’m not going to get too bogged down in recapping the events of the first book or setting things up. I hate it when sequels do that. Fortunately, since the majority of this story is going to be from a new character’s point of view (Michael and Terra’s oldest daughter), I don’t really have to do that, except to lampshade some of the worldbuilding.

One thing I need to do is get more in the mood of the first book, which was a lot more introspective and big-picture than my other science fiction. To do that, I found an excellent collection of videos called The Sagan Series. Here is my favorite:

Man, I get shivers every time I watch that. “Sailors on a becalmed sea…”

Another good video is this one from The Piano Guys:

I know it says “Southern Utah,” but you could substitute that for “Icaria” and it wouldn’t be that far off. In particular, the night clip from the bottom of the slot canyon at 2:05 looks like something straight out of Genesis Earth. Throw in some primitive natives, a few giant lizards and various avians and insectoids, and you’re pretty much there.

I’m still adjusting to writing in longhand, but so far I think it’s going to work out well. Because the writing process itself is much slower, it’s much more time intensive but surprisingly easy to jump in and get started. Once I’ve got some momentum going, I think the story will practically write itself.

I do have a confession to make, though. A couple days ago, I had an idea for another science fiction story that was just so awesome I decided to run with it. At first, I thought I could keep it down to a short story, or perhaps a novella at most, but…well, I think it’s going to be a bit longer than that.

Don’t worry: Edenfall is still my primary project, and if juggling them both becomes too difficult (which it probably will), I’ll put this new one on the back burner until Edenfall is finished. It’s kind of a guilty pleasure anyways, a sci-fi romance that draws heavily on tropes from old westerns (Jeremiah Johnson in particular). I have no idea where it’s going to go (well, nothing more than a vague idea about the twist at the end), but that just makes it all the more exciting to write.

So anyhow, that’s what I’ve been up to these last few days. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to writing. See you around!

Bringing Stella Home is now up on Amazon!

That’s right–after a whole lot of work, my novel is now up on Amazon for $3.95. Check it out!

This novel is the first of a much larger series that I have planned. It’s not a series like Ender’s Game or Song of Ice and Fire, though; all of the novels are supposed to stand alone, though they share the same setting and feature recurring characters. In that sense, it’s more like Gemmell’s Drenai series.

Even though the series is space opera, I tried to keep the science plausible at least on a high school level. So while there’s “magic” like FTL and artificial gravity, I’ve tried to bend rather than break the laws of physics.

At its core, the story is more about the characters than the setting or even the plot. It follows a young boy who is determined, at all costs, to save his brother and sister, even as his world quite literally falls to pieces all around him. Along the way, he meets up with a mercenary captain who is running from some demons of her own. The way they help each other overcome their personal challenges is a major driving force throughout the book.

Anyhow, I suppose that’s enough. I could ramble on forever, but I don’t want to get in the way too much. Thanks so much, and I hope you enjoy it!

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.

Deciding on the next project

First, you know how I said I’d raise the price of Genesis Earth as an experiment? Well, after thinking it through a little more, I figured that it’s more important at this point to build a following, and to do that I should probably have at least one novel at the $2.99 price point. Since Genesis Earth is the only novel I have out right now, I decided to drop the price, where it will probably stay for a while. Flakey, I know, but so be it.

More importantly, I’m coming up on the end of the third draft of Desert Stars. It’s going to be a push, but I hope to finish it by the end of the week. It’s an awesome book and I’m way excited with it, but it leaves me wondering: what next?

I’m currently torn between two projects. The first one, Edenfall, is the sequel to Genesis Earth, and the second in the trilogy. It’s been kicking around in my mind for a long time, and I’ve already got it all outlined and ready to go.

But…the flashier, more exciting project to me right now is the next book in the Gaia Nova series, an indirect sequel to both Desert Stars and Bringing Stella Home, which I hope to epublish later this month. Even though I have a ton of ideas for it, I have absolutely NO outline whatsoever. Nothing. All I know is that it’s basically the Battle of Ain Jalut in space, with Rina from Desert Stars and Danica, Roman, and the other mercenaries from Bringing Stella Home. Oh, and Stella and Qasar’s son, a Hameji prince who makes an appearance in Into the Nebulous Deep. That’s it.

And yet…I am sooo excited to work on it. You have no idea.

So…should I go with the safe, reliable project? Or the sexy, mysterious one? There are good reasons to go with either. Edenfall should be fairly straightforward, taking no more than two months. With the first in the series already out and selling, I should probably write it sooner rather than later. However, the Gaia Nova series is much more expansive, and since I’m already immersed in that universe from working on Desert Stars, it would be much easier to jump right into it.

Right now, I’m leaning more toward the second project, but knowing my personal writing process, I’ll probably get stuck somewhere in the middle and switch to Edenfall. But hey, if it works, it works. That’s how I’ve written all of my other books so far: start the rough draft with a frenzied burst of creative energy, then let it sit for a while and move on to other projects before coming back and finishing the first.

Either way, I’m not going to pull a Rothfuss or a Martin. My goal is to finish my next project in 8 weeks or less, which will be tough with my current job, but not impossible. Which reminds me of yet another reason why I never want to be salaried (unless I’m the one running the business). Not that I plan on ever being pregnant…

The Swords of Night and Day by David Gemmell

A thousand years ago, a young warrior named Skilgannon helped the princess Jianna escape an attempt on her life. They became lovers, and when she retook her throne, she made Skilgannon her chief general. When she ordered the abject annihilation of her enemies, he loved her too much to refuse her–and thus became Skilgannon the Damned.

Now, the wizard Landis has recalled Skilgannon back from Hell to defeat the tyrant queen known as the Eternal. For hundreds of years, the Eternal has ruled the world, using the arcane arts of a fallen civilization to achieve immortality and crush all who oppose her.

When the Eternal learns of Landis’s treachery, the only hope for freedom lies with Skilgannon, the axeman Harad, the huntress Askari, and the Drenai ranger Alahir. But how can they defeat an enemy who commands nearly all the armies of the world? Who has lived a dozen lifetimes and simply steals the bodies of her clones whenever she is killed?

But most of all, how can Skilgannon defeat the Eternal when she is none other than Jianna, his beloved?

The Swords of Night and Day is a direct sequel to White Wolf, the first David Gemmell novel that I read. I have to admit, I wasn’t particularly impressed with White Wolf; it meandered a lot and didn’t seem to have any clear direction.

That is most certainly not the case with The Swords of Night and Day, however. I was hooked from the very beginning, and could hardly put it down until the shocking, mind-bending twist at the end. It tied up all the loose ends from White Wolf and completed Skilgannon’s character arc in a surprising yet satisfying way.

One of the reasons I think I love David Gemmell so much is because he captures so perfectly the experience of being a man. In that, I suspect that Gemmell is to me what Jane Austen is to most women.

But even though Gemmell’s characters might be crass, vulgar, chauvanistic, and downright detestable at times, there is always something heroic deep inside of them–something worth redeeming. And when he does redeem them, it surprises me how powerful it is–even when he redeems someone I don’t want him to.

With The Swords of Night and Day in particular, one of the things that particularly fascinated me was the fictional cosmology of the Drenai universe. With magic that can resurrect people’s spirits from hell, the story must inevitably deal with questions of the afterlife. Yet even so, there’s still enough ambiguity and latent potential that it never felt stilted or labored. If anything, it felt a bit like Tolkien’s cosmology in The Silmarillion, where all the stuff about gods, angels, and the undying lands only added to the sense of wonder.

I love just about all of David Gemmell’s books, but this one in particular was well worth the time and experience reading it. I wouldn’t recommend starting with this one, though: better to read Legend, White Wolf, and The King Beyond The Gate first. But if you’ve read and enjoyed those ones, you will DEFINITELY love this one. I certainly did.

First Radio interview and other such stuff

Dude, check it out–my first radio interview just went live on the Dungeon Crawler’s Radio website!

I met these guys at CONduit last month, where they had a booth and were recording all sorts of authors and artist. They were way cool when I talked with them, and when they found out I was a writer invited me on!

Hehe, considering how many big name authors they have on their show, I think I totally bombed–but it was still awesome. The guys who run the show were really great, too; it was a ton of fun hanging out with them. So thanks, guys, for having me on!

In other news, I just uploaded Genesis Earth to Smashwords, and I think it’s already live. So for all those of you who want to get it from somewhere other than Amazon, it’s now available! I’m still working through all the formatting kinks, so if you buy it and find some errors, let me know and I’ll send you a fixed copy.

Also, the cool thing about Smashwords is that you can generate coupon codes and even give the book away for free. What I’m hoping to do is print up a few business cards with the code for a free book, then distribute them at conventions like Worldcon. Hehe, imagine walking up to an editor and being like “hey, want my book? Here you go!” Or even just dropping off a stack at the freebies table; I think it could be an awesome way to get exposure.

Man, there’s so much exciting stuff going on! This is a great time to be a writer.

On the writing front, I’m making excellent progress on my current WIP (work in progress), Desert Stars. I’ve read through all the feedback from my first readers, and have a ton of fantastic ideas for how to make this story really shine. I revised through about 2.1k words this morning before work, and I’m hoping to do at least two and a half chapters before this weekend.

Also, a couple days ago at work, I was trawling through tvtropes (one of the advantages of doing data entry is that you can afford to feed the addiction, hehe), and I had a SUPER awesome idea for the next book in the Gaia Nova series.

Since Bringing Stella Home is basically the Mongol conquests set in space, the big story to conclude that arc would be the battle of Ayn Jalut, where the Mongols suffered their first decisive defeat. I did a little bit of setup for that in Into the Nebulous Deep, with the remnants of the Gaian Empire gathering at New Rigel.

Well, here’s what I’m thinking: I’ll bring back Danica’s team of mercenaries from Bringing Stella Home, make Roman a viewpoint character, and have Rina from Desert Stars join up with them as a quiet little girl in black who seems painfully shy, but is actually a deadly effective assassin whose weapon of choice is a bowcaster.

Oh yeah, I think this has some crazy awesome potential.

In any case, I should probably get to bed so I can get up early and write tomorrow. I hope to finish Desert Stars 3.0 by July 10th, and even though it’s going to take a lot of work, I think I can make it happen.

And after that…well, things just keep getting more and more awesome. I love writing!