Tag: The Lost Colony (Trunked)

Quick update

Haven’t been writing as much in Ashes these past few days. With my new goal, I need to be doing about 2.5k per day in that work, but things have slowed down considerably. I need to rekindle some excitement for this project.

I will finish it–I’ve made the goal, set the deadline, and determined that this will be one of the big three projects to get ready in time for World Fantasy 2009–but I’m working on the hard parts now, the long and tedius middle. The emotional roller coaster has begun, but I’ll hang on and see this out to the end.

It will probably need another extensive rewrite, however, before World Fantasy. Don’t know when I’m going to slip that in.

But even though I only got about 1,838 words of writing in today, I finished reading through Genesis Earth 2.0 today and completed the 3.0 draft revision notes! I’m WAY excited to work on this project! My goal is to complete it within the next two weeks. It will be a very hard, very intensive rewrite, but I’m psyched up and ready to do it!

I love revising. Drafting is when you start from scratch, with nothing but your ideas to work from. The deeper you get into it, the more you find yourself saying “this is crap, this is crap, THIS IS CRAP AND I SUCK AS A WRITER!” Revising, on the other hand, is when you start with something on the page; something that needs a little (or a lot) of work, but at least you have something besides the story in your head to work with. The deeper you get into it, the more you find yourself saying “it’s so much better now, it’s so much better now, IT’S SO MUCH BETTER NOW AND I AM AN AWESOME WRITER!” That’s the way it works for me, at least.

So I am very excited to start Genesis Earth 3.0 tomorrow!

In other news, I’m starting a writing group with some serious/semi-serious writer friends here in the Provo area. Gosh, this deserves its own post. More on that later.

In still other news…I totally forgot. Blegh. Need sleep.

Oh, and here’s a cool song I found. I love anime…why didn’t I study Japanese?

Oh, and I remembered what I was going to write about! I talked with an academic advisor today, and I have enough credits to finish up my Poli Sci major and graduate in April by doing an internship in Washington DC or Scotland! More on that later, for sure.

Anyway, the LRC is closing and I have to go to bed. Gnight!

Goal shift for Ashes

These past few weeks, I’ve been killing myself trying to write Ashes of the Starry Sea. I’ve made some good progress, as you can see on the sidebar.  Today I broke 200 pages.  Not too bad.

However, the pace has just been killing me.  4k words per day is something I can do…but 4k words per day on the same project?  It’s burning me out.

What’s more, to keep up the pace, I’ll have to put all my other projects completely on hold for the month of July.  That, or write MORE than 4k per day, which would be excruciatingly painful.

So I looked at my calendar tonight and figured that if I pushed back my self-imposed deadline for Ashes to the weekend before school starts, I can cut my daily wordcount in that book in half.  2k per day in Ashes–not bad.  That I can do.

What’s more, with the other 2k, I’ll have enough room to work on my other projects, Genesis Earth 3.0 and Bringing Stella Home 2.0.  I’m starting to get really excited for those, very motivated.  For Bringing Stella Home, I’m practically chomping at the bit.  I want to make that story shine!

Inshallah, juggling two projects at a time will be helpful, not harmful.  During the school year, when I was juggling work, school, and writing, it didn’t work.  Now, however, with writing the only major obligation, I’m hoping that two projects will help keep my creative mind fresh, if that makes sense.  When I get burned out on Ashes at 2pm, I can switch to Genesis Earth and work on something that excites me.  When I get burned out on that at 9pm, I’ll be excited about Ashes again.  Etc etc.

Besides, if I want to be a professional writer, project juggling is an important skill I’ll need to learn.  Inshallah, I’ll get it to work this time.

Wow!  If all goes according to plan, I’ll have all three novels finished and polished before school starts at the end of August!  July to write Genesis Earth 3.0, August to write Bringing Stella Home 2.0, and both months to finish Ashes of the Stary Sea 2.1.  Yeah!

In other news, Charlie finished Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson and reviewed it on her blog.  I was also reading Warbreaker, but about 200 pages in found that it just wasn’t working  for me.  I’ll probably finish  it someday, but for now, it’s on hold.

I hate to say anything bad about it, since Brandon has been something of a mentor to me (and his Mistborn books are some of the best fantasy that I’ve read!), but I shared many of Charlie’s complaints with the book.

The biggest thing, however, was the way he fell into long, frequent info dumps about the world.  Every time, I felt that it stopped the action and jolted me out of the story, like reading a college textbook.  The world was okay, but the way he presented it just didn’t work for me.

That, and the way the characters acted.  When Siri got carted off near the beginning to be the wife of the God king, the fact that she hardly showed any fear or anxiety about have sex with the guy just threw me out.  She was just like “oh, well,” and was nervous about everything else EXCEPT for the sex part.  From then on, I had believability issues with her character.

Finally, let me just say that when I write my steampunk flower novel, I want to make one of the characters a Circassian janissary.  I just think it would be really cool to put a Circassian in the book, as either a good guy or a bad guy (or, more likely, a grey-area guy).  If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, check out the video below:

Movin’ along

I submitted a story to the Writers of the Future contest today.  Basically, I took the scene from Genesis Earth that won the Mayhew Contest this year, slapped just enough of an ending on it to make it feel like a coherent story (inshallah), changed a couple of universe details, and sent it out.  Time will tell if anything will come of it.

On Sunday, I home taught this girl who just graduated in astronomy!  She told me all about her capstone project, studying the variance in luminosity of a distant star getting its insides sucked out by a black hole / neutron star / something ridiculously cool.  We geeked out on stars more than on the scriptures!

Now I need to make friends with someone who works at the BYU observatory and hang out with them at their work.  With my next door neighbor the president of the BYU Astronomy club (no joke!) that might be a possibility.  And then we can order heavenly pizza and chill out reading The Leading Edge </inside joke>.

Ashes is coming along.  Did my 4k today, but it feels…like it isn’t going the way I want it to.  I’m  at 30% right now, provided the finished draft is under 150k, which might be difficult to pull off.  Lots and lots of sludging for the next month–I’m in the middle of the blue collar work of writing.  Middles are not my forte, but I think I’ll learn.

Dude, why didn’t I study astronomy in college?  I’m sorely tempted to change my major and go through another three years as an undergrad, just so that after I get my masters I can live at a place like this:

Breaking 20k/7day and a new apartment

Today I broke 20k words for the running seven-day total.  According to my records, the last time that total was over 20k was Monday, June 8th.  Despite the fact that I moved into a new apartment today, I managed to finish with just over 4k for the day.

You should have seem me at the library at 11:39 pm.  I was sprinting. “Just let me finish this scene, just let me finish this scene!” Didn’t finish it, but I only have another 500 words left.   I’ll use it to help get me back into the  zone tomorrow.

Momentum is so important for me as a writer.  I can plow through long chapters and difficult scenes if I know I’m making progress.  Once I get bogged down for a couple of days, it doesn’t matter how exciting the next scene is; it’s going to be painful.  Once I’m up to speed, though, the book practically writes itself.

According to my records, in the 2+ weeks since I started Ashes, I’ve only surpassed 4k on three days.  That’s not good.  I should at least be hitting 3.5k every day through July in order to finish this beast by August 1st.  If my momentum is running steady at 4k, that will be much easier.

I don’t have too many interruptions planned for July–no conferences or major trips.  That’s…good and bad.  I need to get out of Provo.  I can feel it.  But…blegh.

Fortunately, I’ll be getting out tomorrow, touring some ghosttowns with Charlie and some of her friends.  I’m REALLY looking forward to that, and have been for some time.  Man, it’s going to be awesome! I’m going to check out a whole bunch of Western music from the LRC, and we’re going to have a picnic, and it’s going to be great!

In other news, I moved into a new apartment south of campus.  It’s pretty nice and spacious, and since I only have one other roommate, I’ve got a private room.  His name is Brett, and he’s from Colorado.  As of this week, he’s an elementary ed major; even though he could graduate from the Marriott School in April, he realized that that’s not what he wants to do.  He’s also engaged, to a girl he met in his freshman ward.  They’re both RMs now, which is pretty cool; kind of like my parents, they kept in contact through letters and stuff.  She’s in Atlanta now, and they’re getting married in August.  He seems like a pretty cool guy; I think we’ll get along.

Church meets at 8:30 am in the JSB.  Hehe…unless I bring a snack, I’ll probably end up sleeping through most of the meetings.  It’s going to be nice, though, having the rest of the day to do stuff.

Twenty percent, Writers of the Future, and the INTERN

I am now 20% finished with Ashes of the Starry Sea. Huzzah!  The story is definitely picking up steam.

In related news, my seven day totals has peaked higher than it’s been in the last two weeks, up above 17,500 words.  Inshallah, that number will rise to +24,000 befoore the end of the week.

In unrelated news, I’ve decided to recycle my 2009 Mayhew story for the Writers of the Future contest this quarter.  I’ve got until July 1st to get it out, but I have a plan, and I don’t think it will require too much extra work.  That was the thing holding me back (since, really, it’s not a story, it’s just a scene), but now I’ve got something that I think has a chance of working.

It’s funny how reading other people’s manuscripts motivates you to send your own stuff out.  I mean, reading the Leading Edge slushpile, I said to myself “you know, that story you wrote two years ago could probably get a pass.” Lo and behold!  With Writers of the Future, it’s definitely worth a shot.  Definitely.

Oh, and as I skimmed through Genesis Earth 2.0 today, the thought occured to me that I’ve written a kickass story here (pardon the language).  I mean, it’s far from perfect, and it’s not the best book ever written (not by a long shot), but it’s a lot more than a “stuff happens, the end” kind of story.  Maybe I’ll even see it in print someday.  And to think I almost trashed the project a year ago.

As something totally unrelated to personal news at all, check out this awesome new blog:

The straight dope on publishing from publishing’s most fearsome figure—THE INTERN.

Nice tagline!

As I read about the exploits of this publishing intern, I can’t help but think to myself, “hey, that could have been me.” Not quite sure how I feel about that, but I’m really glad to have all this time to write and work on my craft.  I definitely need it.

Dragging behind a bit

My writing slowed down significantly during the Writing and Illustratin for Young Readers conference a week ago, and it hasn’t really picked up at all since then.  For my seven day totals, I’ve only been averaging between 17k and 14k–that means, on average, I’m doing about half what I want to be doing.  Blah.

While I haven’t been writing a whole lot, however, I have been doing a lot of outlining.  It looks like I’m going to be throwing out a ton of scenes, putting other scenes in different chapters, and adding whole new scenes in places where I previously didn’t have any.  Yikes.

In other words, I’m in the process of completely reconceptualizing the structure of this novel–taking a few steps back and looking at the entire project as a whole.  It’s taking up a heck of a lot of time right now,  but hopefully it will help the rewriting process to be more successful.  After all, if I try to stumble through without a clear idea of what I want this story to be, it’s just going to be a waste of time.

But if I’m going to finish this draft before August 1st, I need to pick up the pace.  If this draft runs up to 150k as expected (and at the current rate, it could easily go over), I need to do just under 22k per week.  That means, if I do anything less than 3k per day over the next six weeks, I’m going to fall behind this deadline.

The deadline is entirely arbitrary and artificial, but still, I want to keep it.  Keeping deadlines is a writing skill I want to train myself to do, and I think it will help me out tremendously down the road.

So the goal this week is to pick up the pace again and get the seven day totals back up to 24k by next Sunday.  It’s going to be something of a psychological struggle to get the momentum up again, but it’s something I know I can do.  Inshallah.

In the meantime, I’ve been putting together some awesome ideas for a steampunk novel.  Things are starting to gel for my next big project, and I’m getting REALLY excited.  I still have an enormous amount of research to do before I can begin (like, tons of research), so I won’t get started just yet, but man!  The ideas in my head are hot, I can feel it!

I know I’m speaking in vagaries…but to make up for it, I’ll leave you with a link to this wicked awesome steampunk picture I found the other day. Seriously–how cool would it be to be this guy??


Steampunk Airship Pilot by ~homarusrex on deviantART

something

So…I figure it’s been a week and I should probably post something on this blog.

Wow.

Well, work is underway on Ashes of the Starry Sea, and I’m starting to have a love-hate relationship with it.  Most writers say you first novel isn’t that good, and you just need to get it out of your system so you can write the real stuff.

Well, this is my first finished novel…but it’s not my first novel attempt.  My first novel attempt was in 8th grade, and I am happy to report that it no longer exists.  Anywhere.  No, seriously, I lost (or destroyed) it after my mission, and I am perfectly happy with that.

My second novel attempt was in ninth grade, and I still have a copy of it, though I haven’t looked at it in a while.  Somewhere around page one hundred (single spaced) I realized that the story wasn’t going anywhere, and I got all angsty and depressed about it.  Then, midway through tenth grade, I realized that the problems were fixable, and stopped being angsty and depressed.

And then I got bored and moved onto other things.

For the next two years, I started all sorts of projects but never really got anywhere with them.  This was when I came up with my “great golden idea” that I wanted to hide from the world until I had the skill to turn it into my masterpiece.

I’ll tell you what the idea was right now: a high school kid learns how to control his dreams and realizes that the dream world is just as “real” as the waking world.  An amazonian dream mage named Lachoneus takes him on as his apprentice and he saves the world from demons while struggling to turn his dream-world relationship with his hs crush into a reality in the waking world.

It’s got potential, but if this is the best idea I ever come up with, I’m going to be very disappointed.  Fortunately, I kept writing through this phase.

My next project that got past page ten happened my senior year.  I created an island fantasy world with a Greek aesthetic and started what I thought was a character study on my sister.  If she ever read it, she probably wouldn’t see any similarities between Sareli and herself, but she was kind of distant from all of  us in those years.

Then my mission happened.  Not much time for writing there, but even so, I had this one idea that was so good that I spent a handful of p-days in my second area writing it out longhand.  It was supposed to be this incredbly poignant allegory based around Lehi’s dream.  I got about two chapters in it before things got too busy for me.

When I came home, I picked up a story that I’d started before the mission and got pretty far with it…word-wise, at least.  The pre-mission version was based on this game I used to play with my Zaks building blocks.  When I got back, I renamed it Planet New America and envisioned it as Jesus’ second coming as experienced by American colonists on another planet, under Chinese occupation.

Sound pretty bad?  Yeah…about 60k words in I realized it had no plot and put it on the “back burner.” I haven’t picked it up since.

Sophomore year went by, and I wrote a short story and an undeveloped novel that I thought was a short story.  Decision LZ150207 was the short story, and it’s getting published!!! in The Leading Edge.  I signed the contract yesterday (woot!).  The Clearest Vision was the undersized novel, and…it was pretty bad.  Cheesy, sentimental, poorly written–but some of the ideas were cool.  Too bad it probably isn’t marketable.

Then, in the summer of 2007, I decided I was going to start another novel!  This one was going to be…<drumroll please> a Final Fantasy 6 fanfic (huh?!).  Thankfully, I had a much more original idea in gestation, and Aneeka convinced me to run with it.

Thus began the rough draft version of Ashes of the Starry Sea, my first finished novel and my current primary project.

So, yeah, they say to throw out your first novel…but I wrote at least five significant partial drafts before I got to Ashes. I think that’s enough to justify my assessment that this story’s going potential.  I still worry about it, though…I’m only in chapter 4 and I’m already struggling with the same angsty doubts that don’t usually hit until about halfway through.

The other day, though, I sent out my first three chapters to Charlie, who read them at work and gave me her assessment.  I thought that the main character, Ian, was weak and boring, that the first chapter didn’t have enough of a hook, that it took too long to get into the action, etc.  To my surprise, this is what she said:

Charlie: “Charlie is the coolest person I know”
say it.
me: charlie is the coolest person I know
Charlie: thank you.
me: because she read my first three chapters
Charlie: I just sent them to you
me: oh, nice
Charlie: 😀
me: they kick my other characters’ trash?
Charlie: yes
me: really?
how so?
Charlie: I like them
I can see their dinstinct characteristics very well
they’re developed subtly and efficiently
me: yeah?
Ian isn’t boring?
Charlie: no
I like him more than michael
me: ???
how?
Charlie: because he has definite character
me: he does?
Charlie: I totally understand how he thinks and his motivations after three chapters
yeah. He’s a passive weenie of a guy, but I like him
me: he’s a passive weenie and he isn’t boring?
Charlie: nope
I like him
me: you like him even though he’s a pansy?
Charlie: yeah
I like him because he’s a pansy
me: really?
huh
I don’t understand
Charlie: I’m sorry?
I like that you don’t have a complacent protagonist
me: Ian isn’t complicated?
sorry for all the questions
I’m just trying to understand
Charlie: no
me: so you like him because you get him
Charlie: that’s part of it, yeah
me: but if he’s weak and doesn’t start being proactive for very long, you’re going to stop liking him
is that right?
Charlie: I am expecting him to grow, yes
me: ah, so it’s the potential for growth that hooks you
Charlie: yeah

Like any first novel, Ashes of the Starry Sea has some serious plot issues, against which I’m currently banging my head.  However, despite the voices inside and outside of my head, it’s probably got potential.  Now I just need to convince myself of that.  Hopefully, as the story progresses, the story itself will do the convincing.  And you know what?  If I shut up and listen to it, it just might do that.

Some updates

Just a few quick updates before I go to bed:

My short story, Decision LZ150207, is getting published in The Leading Edge! Hooray!  This will be my first publication credit.  It certainly won’t be my last!

As you can see from the progress bar to the right, I’ve started work on draft 2.2 of Ashes of the Starry Sea, the novel that I finished back in April of 2008 (my first “finished” novel–and the project that spawned this blog).  My goal is to finish this draft by August 1st, 2009.

It is a beast of a novel–I’m predicting it will be at least 150,000 words.  The draft is currently at 158,000 words, but I’m going to have to add several scenes as well as vigorously trim out the bad writing.

And boy, is there a lot of bad writing in this draft!  I knew, when I wrote it, that I wasn’t that good, but holy cow!  Way too much introspection, way too much “tell”-iness, not nearly enough concrete details.  Too many adverbs, too much wordiness, especially in the scenes with the action.  This is going to be a deep revision.

BYU’s writing conference was a blast!  I’ll try to post more about it in the near future, hopefully tomorrow if I can get around to it.  The three editors who attended are open to submissions from the conference, and one of them prefers full manuscripts to partials, so on Saturday I printed up the full 2.0 draft of Genesis Earth.

Holding the full manuscript in my hands was surreal.  It’s one thing to write it out digitally and see it on your screen, but it is something else entirely to hold the tangible, physical thing in your hands.  I just…keep wanting to hold it.  It feels so real.

But yeah, I’m kind of uneasy sending the full manuscript off to this editor, especially since she hasn’t asked me for it specifically (she just told all the conference-goers that she prefers full manuscripts).  I don’t want to get in trouble sending my full ms out to multiple places, so my game plan is to send this to her ASAP so it can get rejected within the next 1-4 months (what she claimed was her turnaround time).

Because of that, I’m sending her a draft which could be more polished, but oh well.  Anything could be more polished–eventually, you just have to send your stuff out.  Besides, as pessimistic as this might sound, I do think that my mss has a fighting chance.  We’ll see what comes of this.

On your mark, get set…

This post will be really quick, since it’s after midnight and I want to get up at seven tomorrow.

I’ve decided to work on The Phoenix of Nova Terra for my next project.  Except…I’m renaming it (yet again!) to…

<drumroll, please>

Ashes of the Starry Sea.

I like this title much more than the previous one.  I think that just about everyone, when they first start out, comes up with a somewhat cliche title having something to do with a phoenix.

Even though this is the first novel I ever wrote and finished, I think it has a lot of potential.  People always say that your first novel is never publishable, but this one wasn’t my first attempt at writing a novel (it’s something like my sixth or seventh).  Besides, when judging these things, you need to look at the work itself, not on these general rules that everyone always throws around.

The story itself is pretty decent, I think.  The main things to improve are 1) the worldbuilding/research aspect, and 2) the nuts and bolts writing.  To help out with that, I’ve decided to follow some of David Louis Edelmen’s revision advice and completely transcribe every  word of this revision draft in a new word document.  Hopefully, that level of focus will help me to improve things on the word, sentence, and paragraph levels.

At the same time, I need a very clear macro-level view of this project–after all, it’s been over a year since I finished the rough draft.  To do that, I started a wikidpad file that will become the story bible for the new draft.  I’ll use it to do the things I mentioned in my previous post, “Outlining for discovery writers.”

I’ll also spend the next week or so reading the most recent draft from start to finish, figuring out my revision notes.  This will be hard, since I stopped  ennumerating the chapters towards the beginning, but I’ll figure it out.

Gah, everything is so disorganized for this project!  I’ve got revision notes for the 2.0 and 2.1 versions, files scattered everywhere, feedback from a friend of mine from the FLSR that I haven’t even looked at yet…just too much.  The draft needs a TON of work, too.

If I can polish this draft to a satisfactory, presentable second draft in the next month, I’ll be happy.  That’s prettymuch my goal.  140,000 words in five weeks…let’s go!

Miscellaneous news updates

I’m so bad at writing catchy titles for my blog posts.  CORRECTION: I can come up with catchy, sexy, exciting titles for my blog posts, it’s just that the first one that comes to mind is always dull and uninteresting.  Well, too bad.  To quote my mother: “suffer!”

Item One: State of the summer plans

Real quick: still haven’t heard back from the guys at JABberwocky.  I’m starting to think their either really disorganized (not out of the realm of possibility), or they’ve picked someone for the internship and it’s not much of a priority for them to get back to me.  I’ll email them tomorrow or Friday and ask what’s going on; probably I’ll stay in Provo, at least for spring.  But you know what?  I’m actually okay with that.

Lately, I’ve been staying at my sister’s apartment, hanging out with her and her husband, and spending most of the day at the HBLL writing (and chatting with Charlie, who seems to be perpetually bored at her nine-to-five job).  Should I end up staying in Provo, I don’t think that’s going to  change much.  I might work a couple part-time and/or temp jobs, and definitely attend a few cons and writers’ conferences, but that’s about it.

Oh, and maybe go on a random road trip every once and a while.  Fun! 🙂

Item Two: State of Genesis Earth

The rewrite is coming along very well!  I’m over 80% finished now and I think it’s getting better.  Incrementally, certainly, and there remains a lot of room for improvement, but at least it’s headed in the right direction.

I’ll probably write a different blog post on this, but I got Brandon’s comments back on the first three chapters (I submitted those for the final) and his comments were…interesting.  Helpful, certainly, but a lot more negative than I thought they would be.  Basically, he got really confused in chapter 2, and that ruined it for him.  I’ve got to completely overhaul a couple of those scenes to make sure they’re clear.  Fortunately, he really liked chapter 1, so if I can fix chapter 2 in the same way I fixed chapter 1, I think I’ll be in business.

Item Three: Other projects

With all this free time, now that school’s out, I think I should take on another writing project.  Back in the fall, I tried to do this and utterly failed at it, but now that I’ve got the time I think I can manage.  The question is, which project should I choose to work on first?

Option 1: Bringing Estella Home

Summary: When their home system is conquered by the ruthless Hameji barbarian warfleet, James leaves his home and sets out to rescue his older brother and sister, who have been captured and enslaved.  Little does he know, his brother is being turned into a Hameji killing machine and his sister has become one of the Hameji overlord’s personal concubines.

This is the most recent project.  It’s about half finished, but it needs some major revision work before I can comfortably continue where I left off.  It’s got a lot of action, but it’s also pretty dark and tragic.  Not a happy space opera, that’s for sure.

Option 2: Hero in Exile

Summary: Tristen (lamest name ever–I’m totally going to change his name if/when I pick up this project again) fell from the sky in an escape pod when he was only eight years old and was raised in the desert of Nova Gaia by a clan of desert tribesmen.  When he sets out with Mira, the chieftain’s daughter, for the legendary Temple of a Thousand Suns to ask the keepers of the Holy Archives of the Earth of Legend about his true parentage, he has no idea of the disparity, depravity, and danger he will meet in the world outside the small, isolated community of local tribesmen–or of the corruption and intrigue within.

I started this one in the fall, planned it out extensively, and then, halfway through…realizing I was writing a completely different story.  If I pick up this project, I have virtually no idea where I’ll end up with it.  However, it’s a fun space opera with a lot of action and a fair amount of romance (unlike Bringing Estella Home which has virtually zero romance.  No, slaves and concubines don’t count).

Option 3: The Phoenix of Nova Terra

Summary: When Ian finds himself stranded on a distant planet, the only thing he wants is to meet up with the rest of his crew and go home.  Little does he know, the native humans already venerate him as their chosen savior and their king has selected his daughter to be his wife.  When his journey takes deep into the forbidden lands, from which no-one has ever returned alive, Ian begins to uncover the secrets of this long-lost world, and the alien artifacts that will forever alter the paradigm of galactic human civilization–for its good or its destruction.

Gosh, how do you write a paragraph summary for a 168,000 word epic?  This is the first complete rough draft of a novel that I’ve written, and it is HUGE.  It spans dozens of worlds, six separate civilizations (including one alien and one AI), seven or eight viewpoint characters, and a friggin boatload of internal and external conflicts.  INSANE.  What’s more, it requires a lot of work–the rough draft was REALLY bad.  But you know what?  It might be kind of fun to try out.  It’s definitely a very fun, very positive story, with lots of intrigue and lots of romance.

So, the question is: which one should I pick up first?  Which ones should I work on this summer?  I’ll probably only be able to do two, plus Genesis Earth; which ones should I choose?

Item Four: Looking for Beta readers

 

This last item is pretty brief: I’m about to finish up with the Genesis Earth rewrite, and I need some beta readers to help out with it.  I’ve already got about a dozen people or so, but it wouldn’t hurt to have some more.  I’m looking for as much criticism and feedback as you can give me–anything helpful, including specific problems as well as your broader, overall impressions.  

Who wants to help out that can read this story by the end of May?  I really appreciate it!  Email me or post a comment if you want in (but please don’t ask to read it unless I already know you from real life).

Aaaaand…this post is almost 1,100 words long.  Yikes!  See y’all around!

(images courtesy Inkygirl: Daily Diversions for Writers)