Tag: Stephen

Plans for Edenfall

I’m trying something a little different with Edenfall: I’m writing the first draft entirely in longhand.

I first got the idea a couple of years ago, when I was camping in Moab.  The beautiful landscape of southern Utah made me realize that I wanted to write Edenfall while experiencing that sort of connection with nature, and pen and paper seemed to be the best format in which to do that.  This year, when I decided that I’d definitely write it, I ordered the notebook on the left and fitted it out for the project.

With every novel I write, I like to challenge myself in some new way.  In Genesis Earth, I tried out a first person POV with an unreliable narrator.  In Bringing Stella Home, I tried to write a believable female viewpoint character.  I also like to experiment with my writing process, trying out different outlining techniques and writing schedules.  Sometimes, these experiments fail spectacularly, but they also teach me a lot and keep me sharp.

The goal with this experiment is to see how divorcing myself from my computer (with all its myriad distractions) and getting out in nature changes my writing.  I live a short bike ride from the Provo River Trail, and weather permitting, that’s where I’ll probably spend most of my writing time in the next few days. Besides, I want to see how much of a difference the format makes.

Books existed long before word processors, so I have no doubt that writing a novel longhand is entirely possible.  How much of an adjustment it will be remains to be seen.  My handwriting is messy, and I can’t write as fast as I can type, but that hardly matters since rough drafts are slow going for me anyways.

In any case, it’s going to be interesting to see how it turns out.  It’s been a little slow so far, but that’s mostly because I haven’t settled into a routine yet.  By the end of this week, I hope to be fully immersed in the world of this story.

In other news, I sent off the manuscript for Sholpan to my editor, and he just got finished with his first pass, so I’m hoping to get the edits back in a couple weeks and have it epublished by mid-September.  More on that as things develop.

Also, an old friend from Brandon’s 318 class posted a favorable review of Bringing Stella Home up on Amazon.  He was one of my first readers back when the story had a lot of problems, so I’m glad he enjoyed the final version.  Thanks Stephen!  And yes, I’ve got a lot more novels forthcoming in the Gaia Nova universe, including a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home.  Will the McCoy family save the universe from the Hameji?  Well…you’ll see. 🙂

Finally, I plan on participating in the Out of This World blog tour being organized by the SFR Brigade, which means you’ll be seeing some guest posters in the near future.  That’ll probably wrap up the Genesis Earth blog tour too, since it’s been winding down for the last month or so.  If I agreed to write a guest post for your blog and haven’t done so yet, let me know and I’ll do my best to get that out to you.  Sorry to be a bit of a flake these past few weeks; I’ll try to organize my next tour a little better.

And that just about does it for now.  I’ll be sure to keep you posted on how things go with Edenfall.  Until then, take care, and thanks for reading!

Dinner with friends

I had dinner tonight with one of my classmates from English 318 last year, who is a frequent commenter on this blog.  He and his wife were kind enough to invite me over to their apartment, where we ate, talked, hung out, and had a general good time.

It was great to see an old friend from Sanderson’s class!  We talked a lot about writing, and that was way cool–I haven’t been around people who can talk writing since I left Provo (not counting the IM conversations I have with Chuck every other day).  At one point, his wife had to stop and say “wait, let’s put this conversation on pause and let me get to know this guy”!

He showed me this interesting online compendium of Wheel of Time characters, which blew me away; I haven’t read the Wheel of Time series yet, but just looking at how many characters are in the books, I have no idea how anyone could write something like that.  I guess that’s the direction Fantasy is going in–enormous worlds, long books, dozens and even hundreds of characters.

We talked about all kinds of other things, too–school and work, career decisions, future plans, social pressures, life in general, etc.  It was great being with interesting people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say.  I tend to be a little self-conscious about the fact that I talk too much, but they got me to talk a lot–about how I decided to be a writer, how I wrote Genesis Earth from story idea to the latest draft, my future goals as a writer, etc etc.  It was a lot of fun.

We also talked about my current project (working title: Bringing Stella Home), and I shared the 30 second story blurb.  I then asked them what they think the title should be, and together we came up with an interesting title idea: Saving Ben and Stella.

What do you think of it?  I kindof think it has a nice ring to it.  Mentions Ben and Stella, which shows that Ben’s storyline is important as well as Stella’s. Then again, it’s not much of a change from the previous one.

In any case, I had an awesome time with Stephen and his wife.  It’s great to have friends wherever you travel, and meet up with old classmates after graduating from college.  Thanks guys!