Part 9: Wanderlust – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Okay, back to work

Well, the Blogging from A to Z challenge was fun, but now that it’s May it’s time to switch gears and focus on other things. I’ve got about a bazillion projects going on, so it’s definitely going to be a full month! Here’s what I hope to accomplish:

Writing

Finish the first draft of Strangers in Flight (Sons of the Starfarers Book III).
Revise Comrades in Hope (Sons of the Starfarers Book II) and get it ready for publication.
Start writing Star Wanderers: Wanderlust (Part IX).

Publishing

Finish redoing the covers for the Star Wanderers ebooks.
Put all the Star Wanderers books on Google Play, All Romance eBooks, and DriveThru Fiction.
Typeset The Jeremiah Chronicles and Tales of the Far Outworlds for print.
Publish Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers Book I).
Finalize all the print editions for Star Wanderers I-VIII.

That’s pretty much it. Some of it, like redoing the Star Wanderers covers and putting those books up on Google Play and ARe shouldn’t take more than an afternoon. Others are going to take a lot more work to fully realize.

The thing I’m most excited (and nervous!) about is getting Sons of the Starfarers ready for publication. I’ve had an awesome time writing these books so far, and I think you’re really going to love them. Brothers in Exile is with my editor right now, and I’m working with a new cover designer to come up with some awesome cover art. If all goes well, it should be out by May 15th.

In the next few days, I’m going to post some short 250 word excerpts from Brothers in Exile to give you a taste. I’ve never tried something like this before, so let me know what you think! I’ll probably post the first one tonight.

Here’s the book description:

TO WAKE A LOST GIRL FROM THE ICE, TWO BROTHERS MUST FACE AN EMPIRE.

Deep in the Far Outworlds, a derelict space station holds the bones of a long-dead people—and a beautiful young woman locked in cryofreeze. When the star-wandering brothers Isaac and Aaron find the sleeping girl, they soon realize that they are her only hope for rescue. If they don’t take her, then slavers certainly will.

With no way to revive her, they set a course for the New Pleiades in the hopes of finding someone who can help. But a storm is brewing over that region of space. After a series of brutal civil wars, the Gaian Empire has turned its sights outward. A frontier war is on the verge of breaking out, and the brothers are about to be caught in the middle of it.

They both harbor a secret, though. Somewhere else in the Outworlds is another derelict station—one that they used to call home. That secret will either bind them together or draw them apart in

SONS OF THE STARFARERS
BOOK I: BROTHERS IN EXILE

Pretty cool, huh? Keep an eye on this space over the next few days for more!

A few quick updates

So I thought I would post the Y post today for the A to Z challenge, but I didn’t get around to it so it looks like I’ll be doing Y and Z tomorrow. And yes, I know that “expectations” was a cop-out for X, but hey, at least I didn’t spell it “x-pectations.”

As far as other stuff goes, I’m still at work on Sons of the Starfarers, though I’ve been doing a lot more publishing stuff than writing stuff recently, mostly proofing and formatting. Once the second batch of covers for Star Wanderers comes in, I’ll take an afternoon off to update the rest of that series.

It’s nice to have someone else doing the cover art for you, though it’s still very collaborative since you have to approve everything and give feedback for tweaks. Still, these cover designers are doing a much better job than I could on my own.

Speaking of Star Wanderers, I’ve been getting a lot of reviews lately from people saying that they’re disappointed the series is over and wishing that it could continue. Well, be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it! I already mentioned that I’ve been thinking about writing a full-length novel, but I’ve also got some ideas for additional parts with some of the other characters.

Right now, I’m working on Strangers in Flight (Sons of the Starfarers Book III), but I should be finished with that one in May, with an open schedule for a couple months. That should be time enough to write Star Wanderers: Wanderlust (Part IX). I sketched out a couple of scenes for this one last year, but I think I’m going to toss those and start with something new. In particular, I have a great idea for an opening scene with Samson and Heloise (yes, Samson is going to be the star of this one. The title “wanderlust” should have given that away, lol).

Beyond that, it would be interesting to write a story from Captain Elijah’s point of view, and another from Master Korha’s. I suppose it would even be interesting to write a story from Salome’s perspective, though that would be a tough one. If I’m going to expand the Star Wanderers series, I’m going to write at least another four books, so if you guys have suggestions for characters to bring back, let me know.

That’s just about it for now. There are other projects I plan to work on, but Sons of the Starfarers and Star Wanderers should take up most of my focus for the next few months. Hopefully that means I can get the books out to you faster! I’ll certainly do my best.

Writing at a stroll

I haven’t been writing too much these past few days, or revising much either, but I have been rereading a lot of stuff and getting myself back into the fantasy world of my next big novel. I’ve made a few changes, but decided to keep most of the stuff that I wrote while in Georgia, and that amounts to about 50k words. Just today, I finished the chapter where I’d left off, so now I’m ready to go full steam ahead.

I changed the title from The Sword Keeper to The Sword Bearer, since the story is more about Tamuna than Ivanar, and I may end up adding a subtitle since this is going to turn into a series. Right now, the tentative deadline for the first draft is September 30th, which should be plenty of time to finish it, even with all the traveling I plan to do for the rest of the month.

The projected total word count at this point is 120k words, but I’m not so sure about that anymore. I’m in the middle of Part II, at about 52k words, and while I’ve got a pretty good idea of what happens in the next three chapters, there’s a lot in the middle that I don’t know about. I know how the book is supposed to end, but how to get there is the question, and I’m not sure if it will take me 120k words or 90k words, or upward of 150k words (though I doubt it). I’ll probably have to discovery write most of it.

I’m looking forward to that, though. Some of the best stuff pops out of my head when I have no idea what’s supposed to happen next. Characters take on a life of their own, and reveal some really surprising things about themselves that end up becoming central to the rest of the story. But to do it well, I need to spend some time just thinking about things in a loosely structured way, allowing myself to get immersed in this world. That’s why I haven’t been pushing myself too much.

At the same time, I’ve picked up work on another Star Wanderers story, mostly as a way to keep putting words on the page when I just don’t feel up to working on The Sword Bearer. This is either going to be Part IX or Part X, and frankly I’m really worried about botching it up. A lot of you have really enjoyed the Star Wanderers stories so far, and I’m pretty sure you’ll like this one too once I’m done with it, but I’m going some places in this book that really make me uncomfortable, and I’m not sure how to do it without crossing the line that makes me never want to make it available for the world to read.

I dunno. I’m probably angsting about it too much, and should just write the thing and see how it turns out. But for now, that’s a background project to keep things fresh while I work on The Sword Bearer. And really, I should probably work exclusively on the novel for the next week or so, just to get some momentum going. One day, I’ll be really excited to work on it, while the next, I can barely bring myself to open the manuscript. That’s how I tend to be when I haven’t yet latched onto a project, which seems to be most of the time.

Star Wanderers: Reproach (Part VII) is in the alpha reading stage right now, though if you would like to give it a read, feel free to shoot me an email. I only let people I know in real life read my unpublished stuff, though, and even then only if we’re close friends. Depending on the feedback, it could come out anywhere between the end of August (unlikely) to the end of September (more likely).

This is another one I’ve angsted a lot over, so I’m not sure when it will be ready but I know it will be before the end of the year. Part VIII, on the other hand … Part VIII is probably on the verge of being ready right now, and I really want to get that one out soon, so all the more reason to publish Reproach!

That’s about it for now. I’m heading on the train back to Massachusetts on Tuesday, where I’ll be for most of the rest of the month. I might put together that A to Z blogging challenge thing as an ebook, just to publish something while I’m on vacation. That would be a good diversionary project, something to do while on vacation. Though I certainly plan to write as well–at least 2k words a day, hopefully. Gotta build up that momentum.

Speaking of which, it’s 2am and I should get some sleep. Gnight!

No new books this month, but the next few should be stacked.

I’m working on Star Wanderers: Deliverance (Part VIII) right now, and it’s coming along swimmingly. Where the other novellas are pretty much character dramas in a space opera setting, this one is more space adventure with the character / relationship stuff under the surface. It’s all about Mariya and Lucca, how they meet and end up falling for each other in some very extreme circumstances. I think they crash-land on Zarmina in chapter 3, and things just get crazier from there. Today, I wrote a scene with some giant reptilian bird-monsters, and I think I pounded out 1,000 words in 20 minutes.

So yeah, I’m having a lot of fun with that. The next one I’m going to publish, though, is Benefactor (Part VI), and I still have to do a lot of revisions on that one. So it probably won’t be out until next month sometime, probably closer to August–I want to make sure it’s as good as I can make it. But since the first draft of Reproach (Part VII) is already finished, it (hopefully) shouldn’t be much longer than that for it to come out, maybe in August. And Deliverance should come out soon after that.

For now, my goal is to finish Deliverance this week, and start the revisions for Benefactor immediately after that. It would be awesome to get these books out in July > August > September, though it might be more like July > September > October. Definitely, I’ll have Part VIII out before the holidays, perhaps even Part IX or X as well.

In the meantime, I just started typesetting the print edition of Stars of Blood and Glory and set Desert Stars and Genesis Earth for expanded distribution through CreateSpace. There’s been some interesting developments in print-on-demand in the past few months, which may make it possible to get my books in bookstores through that venue. I still need to do some research on that end, but I do want to get the print versions out there at least. My first priority, though, is definitely writing.

There’s been a great deal of interest in my Star Wanderers ebooks, not at blockbuster levels but certainly more than I was expecting. And it’s growing, too–June is already my best month ever sales-wise, and most of the reviews have been quite positive. If the momentum keeps up with the next few books in the series, I might (might!) be able to go full-time before the end of the year. Worldcon 2013 is definitely looking like a possibility, and if I can find some friends to room and/or drive down with, chances are good that I’ll be going.

So yeah, thanks for all your support and interest! This has been my dream for a long, long time, so it’s really gratifying to see it finally within my grasp. I definitely don’t take it for granted, so I will do all I can to write more and better stories for you guys. My goal is to write more than a hundred novels & novellas, and I’m already on track to do so!

I’ll leave you with this video from Georgia, which I still miss almost every day. Man, I need to find another place that I can fall in love with as much as I did with that country. A small part of me wants to say “screw it all” and go back … in any case, here’s the video:

Naxvamdis!

G is for Gravity

cmdr_hadfield_juggling — Commander Hadfield planning a zero-g easter egg hunt earlier this month on the ISS.

Possibly one of the most defining aspects of space is the sensation of free fall. Of course, gravity exists in space, the same as it does everywhere else in the universe (probably), but in space we feel its effects differently because we aren’t close enough to a body of sufficient mass to feel a strong pull. That, and our spaceship itself is also in free fall, so if that’s our frame of reference we feel no weight because there’s nothing for weight to push back on … but that’s a concept probably best left for O is for Orbit.

The thing is, as fun as weightlessness can be, in the long-term it can have some negative health effects, such as deterioration of bone and muscles, weakening of the immune system, etc. The effects of micro gravity on human fertility are not very well-studied, but there’s some speculation that conception and gestation would be impossible, since embryos need gravity in order to implant properly. Humans are adapted to live on the surface of Earth, and that means living with a constant 10 m/s² or so of gravitational acceleration.

For future space colonies and spacefaring civilizations, this means we need to find a way to simulate the effects of gravity in a micro-gravity environment. There are a few common ways to deal with this problem:

Artificial Gravity — Applied phlebotinum that creates a field within which the gravity is normal. A necessary weasel hand wave that you’ll see most often in soft sci-fi and space opera, where the plot and characters are more important than the science.
Centrifugal Gravity — The illusion of gravity created by spinning a can-like spaceship or space station in a circle, pressing the humans against the inside wall. You’ll see this in both hard and soft sci-fi. Scale it up, and you get Ringworld Planets.
Powerful Starship Drive — If your starship drive is powerful enough, it can accelerate you at 10 m/s², effectively creating the sensation of gravity. Your starship will be like a flying skyscraper, where “down” is in the direction of the engines. At this rate of acceleration, you should reach 99.9% the speed of light in about a year, which opens up all sorts of possibilities for relativistic space travel (provided you have a sufficiently massive energy source to sustain that reaction). Just be sure to give yourself the same amount of time to decelerate, otherwise bad things may happen.
Baby Planet — An asteroid no larger than a small asteroid that still, for some reason, has normal Earth-like gravity. Think Le Petit Prince. Not nearly as common as the other three, but the existence of gravitational waves means that it may be possible (or at least plausible) to create gravity generators that work this way.
Roll with it — Yeah, so everything is weightless in space. So what? Deal.

Another problem related to gravity is rapid deceleration. Unless you don’t mind splattering everyone in your starship all over the walls and ceilings, you can’t go from zero to near-light speeds (or vice versa) without some way to counteract the sharp change in momentum. Space opera and soft sci-fi gets around this by using inertial dampers–basically, magical devices that give the starship a nice, soft ride (unless you want the bridge to explode, of course). As you might expect, stories on the harder side of sci-fi tend to play around with this a lot more.

My first exposure to artificial gravity came when I read a comic book version of The Norby Chronicles by Isaac Asimov. The characters had a device that would basically allow them to levitate, and I thought that was so cool. It wasn’t until I read the Corellia Trilogy by Roger Allen McBride that I realized that every starship in the Star Wars universe had a machine that could manipulate gravity like this. At one point, the artificial gravity generators on one of the ships failed. My mind was blown, and I’ve never looked at gravity the same since.

I tend to write stories where the characters and plot are more central than the science, so I’ll often just fall back on the standard artificial gravity field like most space opera. During combat maneuvers, though, things get a bit more tricky, with dampers on the bridge that mitigate (but don’t erase) the worst effects of rapid deceleration, and special coffin-like chambers for the crew below decks to keep them from getting splattered. In my Star Wanderers series, I also use centrifugal gravity for the larger space stations, since I figure the energy costs of artificial gravity tend to scale up.

In short, science fiction stories that address the problem of gravity in a real and thoughtful way tend to be a lot more believable and immersive, even if the solution to the problem is basically magic. As with anything in science fiction, there are so many imaginative ways of dealing with the problem that it’s actually more of an opportunity than anything else.

Unstuck again

For the past few weeks, I’ve been kind of stuck on chapter 3 in Star Wanderers: Benefactor. This one is a parallel novella to Fidelity, from Jakob’s point of view. It’s been a lot of fun to write so far–Jakob struggles with a lot of the same issues I do, like self-reliance and independence vs. accepting help from others–but there was this one scene that just kind of knocked the momentum out of it for me.

Well, I started out the day by rereading Fidelity. Actually, I started reading it yesterday right as I was falling asleep, and had some really weird dreams that I’ve since forgotten. After rereading Fidelity, I went to the Provo Library to write, and everything just sort of clicked. Finished the chapter today, and if all goes well, I’ll finish the first draft sometime this week or next.

I think the thing that was blocking me was that I wasn’t as familiar with the story I was writing parallel to. Which is funny, because Benefactor has very little overlap with Fidelity, even in terms of plotting. This is Jakob’s story, and it’s very different from Jeremiah’s or Noemi’s. Even so, the nagging feeling that I was missing something really slowed me down. When you’re in a dark, empty room and can’t see anything, you’re not going to run across it even if you know there isn’t anything to trip on.

###

Just recently, I added some new book teasers to the back matter of the Star Wanderers ebooks. They look a little like this:

If you enjoyed Star Wanderers: Outworlder, be sure to check out Part II: Fidelity!

IS FIDELITY WORTH THE PRICE OF FREEDOM? CAN LOVE TAKE ROOT BEYOND THE STARS?

Oriana Station: a bustling frontier settlement between the Outworlds and the Coreward Stars. A popular port-of-call for free traders and independent starfarers alike—and the latest target in the aggressively expansionist plans of the Gaian Empire.

Life was simple for Jeremiah and Noemi before they arrived. Though neither of them speak the same language, they’ve reached an understanding that goes beyond words. But when the colonial authorities make them into second-class citizens of a fractured empire, even that might not be enough.

Their newfound friends in the immigrant community can only do so much. With Noemi and her people depending on him, Jeremiah must find a way back to the Outworlds—before they lose everything that they came for.

Each one has a teaser for the next one in the series, including Homeworld (for the as-yet unpublished Dreamweaver). Ideally, I’d like to put out a new Star Wanderers novella every month or two, but time things so that I can have the teaser for the next one ready before publishing the one previous.

So far, the Star Wanderers series has been selling a lot better than anything else I’ve published. That’s great, because I really enjoy writing in this universe! The short novella length is perfect for exploring one or two characters in-depth over the course of a much more intimate story than you usually see in a novel. The really cool thing, though, is that the more I write in this universe, the more characters and storylines unfold. It’s like watching a flower bloom, where each individual petal is a single story.

Anyhow. I’m really excited to keep writing in this series. Some of the stories I have kicking around in my head:

A parallel novella to Sacrifice, primarily in Mariya’s point of view but also perhaps with a bit of Noemi. Basically, something exploring the subtext behind the polygamy that drove most of the conflict in Sacrifice.
A parallel novella to Homeworld, from both Lucca’s and Mariya’s points of view. Basically, an adventure romance that actually shows the final battle between Captain Helena and the colonists. In Homeworld, it didn’t make sense to show that battle since the story was about Jeremiah and Noemi, and both of them were plugged into a simulator at the time. But my first readers really want to read a story about the battle itself, so that’s one story I definitely have to write.
A story from Master Korha’s point of view, showing the gradual collapse of Megiddo Station and the buildup to his decision to give his daughters away. This one is going to be more tragic, or at the very least, bittersweet. But hey, I kinda like bittersweet endings.
A story from Samson’s point of view. Actually, I’ve already got this one plotted and ready to go. The only trouble is, well, it’s Samson. With his ethical slut mentality, whatever I write, my family is going to be scandalized by it (and I might be, too, when my kids are old enough to read it). Don’t worry, though–I’ll get around to it eventually. This isn’t a story that I can just walk away from.
Something from Jakob’s sons’ point of view, Isaac and Aaron. Except … I can’t really say much about this, because Benefactor isn’t out yet. o.0
At some point, I’d like to write a full-length novel from the point of view of Jeremiah and Noemi’s kids. I don’t have a plot or anything else figured out for this one, but I’d really like to revisit their world again through their kids’ eyes. I even have a title: Children of the Starry Sea. But yeah, that’s probably not going to come out for another couple of years or so.

So yeah, those are some of the things kicking around in my mind. Once I finish the parallel novellas to Fidelity, Sacrifice, and Homeworld, anything is free game really. Is there any story in particular that you guys would like to see? Now’s the time to drop-kick my imagination–once it gets fixated on something, it won’t give me any rest until a story comes out the other end.

And that’s enough for now. Tomorrow, I promise, I’ll do a Trope Tuesday post. I’ve got a job interview in the morning and probably won’t have work for the rest of the day, so while that kind of puts a cramp on my wallet, it means you’re more likely to get a blog post. In the meantime, I’d better get some sleep.

Later!

Projects, projects everywhere …

… and not a clue where to start.

Seriously, I feel like that guy in the Russian proverb who’s chasing two rabbits. Except, in my case, it’s more like a dozen. Here’s what I currently have to choose from:

Stars of Blood and Glory — This one is in publishing mode, and should be out in a week or two. I’ve gone through all the line/copy edits from my editor, finalized the book teaser–all that’s left is the formatting and cover art. The preliminary sketches look really good, so it shouldn’t be too much longer before it’s ready to go. Of course, it’s more of a publishing thing than a writing thing, but still important.

Lifewalker — This is a rough draft that’s only about 15% to 20% finished. It’s in a totally different genre than I’m used to writing (post-apocalyptic / weird western), but so far it seems to be coming along fairly well. I hit a block a couple of weeks ago and put it on the back burner for a while, but I may be ready to pick it up again.

Star Wanderers: Benefactor — This is another rough draft, about 35% to 40% finished. It’s a parallel novella to Star Wanderers: Fidelity, except from Jakob’s point of view. Right now, I’m in the phase where everything sucks and I don’t know where to go with it. It’ll probably turn out just fine, but I may have to put it on hold for a while. However, if I could just push through and finish the damn thing, that would be preferable. It’s only another 15,000 words …

Star Wanderers: Dreamweaver — This is a first draft that I need to revise. Last night, I looked over it for the first time in eight months. Opening the file was like pulling out an unopened bottle of wine that’s been sitting for years in the back corner of the wine cellar. So far, it seems pretty good, but I’m going to wait until I hear back from one of my first readers before doing any serious revisions. After that, maybe run the first chapter through Kindal’s writing group, and if everything seems good, I’ll probably publish it sometime in April/May.

Star Wanderers: The Jeremiah Chronicles — This is purely a publishing project. Basically, I want to bundle the first four Star Wanderers stories and release them as an omnibus. To do this right, though, I’d have to commission some cover art, which takes time and money. Since it’s not a writing project, and I already have enough publishing projects on my plate, I’ll probably put this one off until Dreamweaver is out.

Mercenary Savior — Long term followers of this blog might recognize this as the old title for the novel that became Bringing Stella Home. Well, I plan to recycle that title, as well as the original prologue, in a prequel novel that basically tells the origin story of Danica Nova and her band of mercenaries. So far, I’ve got the prologue and the beginnings of the first chapter. Haven’t looked at it in a few months, but if I get stuck on these other projects, I just might pick it up again.

Heart of the Nebula — A second or third draft that needs a deep revision. This is probably going to consume all my writing time for six to eight weeks, and I’d rather do it all at once rather than in chunks. It’s been on the back burner long enough that I can probably pick it up again, but I want to finish a rough draft first.

The Sword Keeper — I’ve still got this one on the current projects bar, but it’s been a while since I’ve worked on it, so it’s pretty much on the back burner. I think it’s at about the 40% mark, though honestly I have no idea. It’s an epic fantasy novel, a bit outside my usual scope, and it’s turning into a beast of a book. The story is pretty solid, though, so I’ll probably finish it before the end of the year–that is, unless the muse drops an anvil on me (which has definitely happened before).

Empress of the Free Stars — An unwritten novel that’s been kicking around in my head ever since I finished Stars of Blood and Glory. Basically, it’s a direct sequel from Hikaru’s point of view … except that I can’t really discuss it without giving away spoilers (TO A BOOK THAT ISN’T EVEN OUT YET). In any case, the prologue has been beating on me to get written, and I finally caved and started it last night. I’ve got a pretty good idea for what’s supposed to happen in this novel, but there’s still a whole lot of room for the story to surprise me.

Edenfall — Ah, Edenfall … this is probably my most neglected story. I started it a little over a year ago, but hit a block, and then Star Wanderers happened. I’ll pick it up eventually, but to really do it justice, I feel like I need to go backpacking in the wilderness for a week or two. The weather isn’t good for that right now, so it will probably have to wait until spring. Or maybe I’m just making things too complicated. We’ll see.

Star Wanderers; Wanderlust — A Star Wanderers story from Samson’s point of view. This one is going to be tricky, but I’ve actually got the whole thing plotted out already. However, I don’t want to write it just yet, because there’s still a bunch of other Star Wanderers stories that need to come first. Or maybe I will write it, and let it sit for a while until I write the others. Maybe it’s better to finish it first and let it sit for a while, just to be safe …

Those are pretty much all the projects with titles that are floating around in my head right now. There are a few others, like parts VII and VIII of Star Wanderers (from Mariya and Lucca’s points of view, respectively), but those aren’t quite ready to start. With all of these, I’ve at least got some words on the page.

So now that I’m in that frustrating space between projects, I think I’m going to take a week or two to just let my creative mind do whatever the heck it wants. Hopefully, I’ll get excited enough about one of them to see it all the way through. I’m not going to stress about word counts so much as putting time in at my chair, doing something.

Man, I wish my creative side weren’t so scatterbrained. Though as long as I’m still finishing stuff, I guess it’s all right.

And now that I’ve procrastinated long enough by writing this blog post, it’s time to go hang out with my friends and procrastinate some more. Later!

Trope Tuesday: Planetville (aka Adventure Planets)

Adventure towns…IN SPAAACE!!!

Seriously, that’s the best way to describe it. In Westerns and TV serials, the heroes travel from town to town, with a new adventure in each place. Well, in science fiction, we don’t hop towns, we hop planets. Why? Because we can.

Unfortunately, since planets and towns are actually pretty different kinds of places, there’s a lot of room to do things poorly and turn this trope into a cliche. Any story that doesn’t consider (or at least lampshade) the implications of space travel and planetary colonization is in danger of becoming over-the-top campy–although, to be fair, there is an audience for that.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for this trope in fiction that takes itself a little more seriously. In fact, I take issue with some of the descriptions on the Planetville page. From tvtropes:

Unfortunately, because Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale, stories about Planetville make no sense. Nobody seems to realize how BIG a planet is — everything in Planetville takes the same amount of time as stories set in towns or countries. In the updated Wild West story, the outlaws are “exiled from the planet” just like they’d be exiled from Dodge City, and have to quietly leave… instead of flat out challenging the authorities to find them when they have an entire planet in which to hide. When the space Nazis invade, they seem to need the same number of soldiers and time as the Earth Nazis needed to invade Europe. And when the crew of the Cool Starship finds the cure for the alien plague, the logistical issues of distributing it to an entire planet rarely get mentioned at all. These considerations are minimized or left out entirely in many stories.

To address these criticisms point by point:

1) Scale is relative to technology and the predominant modes of transportation. When my ancestors crossed the plains to settle in modern-day Utah, they had to walk. It took them months to get here and many of their family members died along the way. Today, I can make the same trip by car in a day or two. As technology changes, so does the sense of scale.

2) Unlike what some tropes would have you believe, not all planets are Earth-like. In fact, it appears that most planets outside our solar system are wildly different. In practical story terms, this means that any part of the world that’s remotely habitable is probably going to be immediately around the colony. Consequently, the local authorities probably will have the power to exile trouble makers from an entire planet, since exile from the colony would mean de facto exile from the planet as well.

3) Anyone venturing outside of the dome would have to carry just about everything necessary for life, including air, water, food, etc. You might as well try to hide in Antarctica as hide on an alien planet. It can be done, of course, but to do all that and stay hidden, that’s going to be tough. You might as well set up a rival colony for all the effort–but at that point, the story is about a lot more than just hiding from the authorities.

4) If your planetary colonies are only as populous as an average WWII era city/town, then yeah, you’ll only need as many soldiers as it took to conquer them. The biggest difference is that they’ll fly a really cool starship.

5) Again, if the planet isn’t habitable and the population is contained within a handful of relatively small colonies, then distribution shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

However, the tvtropes page does make this valid point:

A side effect of this is that the characters never realize that things can happen in parts of planets. You will never see aliens trying to capture a planet’s equator, or its polar caps — it’s the whole planet or bust.

In the end, I think the key to doing this trope well is to know your setting well enough to fit the story to it. Tropes are tools, and when done well, this trope can accomplish everything it sets out to do while making perfect sense within the context of the story.

In my own work, this trope is most prevalent in the Star Wanderers series. Every novella takes place at a different planet or space station, sometimes multiple planets per station. Because most of the stars in this universe have only recently been settled, the colonies are small and terraforming is quite limited. In Desert Stars, I used a similar concept, except with large domed areas of a single planet, instead of multiple planets (Adventure towns…UNDER THE DOME!!!). In cases where the planets are Earth-like, however, or where travel between planets is costly and difficult, this trope doesn’t really ever come into play.

STAR WANDERERS: HOMEWORLD is now available on Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and Smashwords!

That’s right! Part IV of the Star Wanderers series is available for $2.99 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords. You can also find it listed on Goodreads here. Newsletter subscribers should get the Smashwords coupon code in an hour or two.

From the book description:

THEY’VE FINALLY FOUND A WORLD TO CALL HOME—BUT FIRST, THEY HAVE TO FIGHT FOR IT.

For years, Jeremiah has wandered the stars in search of a home. With his wife Noemi about to have a baby, he thinks he’s finally found a place to settle down. The Zarmina system lies on the edge of the Outworld frontier, but together with their friends, they hope to establish a thriving new colony. The only problem is that the system is already inhabited—by pirates.

The colonists no sooner arrive than they fall prisoner to Captain Helena and her band of rogues from the New Pleiades. She gives them an ultimatum: live like slaves on the planet’s surface, or breathe vacuum. With all their dreams about to be shattered, they have to find a way to fight back. But to do so may endanger everything—including the lives of the ones they love most.

This one was a lot of fun to write. Everything from all the previous parts came together wonderfully, and the ending just blew me away. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

This novella concludes the main series arc for Star Wanderers, but I still have a lot of stories that I want to tell in this universe. I plan to write a few stand-alone novelettes and novellas from the other characters’ points of view, perhaps expanding the series to include another arc. Part V, Dreamweaver, is already written, and if all goes well, I should write Part VI (Wanderlust) over the next couple of weeks.

That’s just about all for now. Thanks so much to everyone who has liked, shared, or reviewed the other Star Wanderers stories! I think you’re going to like this one. Enjoy!