Tag: Young Adult

Pulling along

Just a quick post, because it’s 3:30 am and I’ve got a TON of stuff to do tomorrow, such as:

1) cleaning checks
2) replace the air filter in my car
3) go running with my bro in law
4) finish Genesis Earth 5.0
5) band practice
6) watch Inception with a bunch of friends at the dollar theater

Yeah, tons of stuff.  So anyways…

I’m amazed at how quickly I’m pulling through Genesis Earth.  Yesterday I revised through 11.7k words, and today I did about 14.1k.

At this point, most of the work is sentence and paragraph level, and has more to do with voice and rhythm than actual story.  There were a few science issues, mostly having to do with distances and velocities, but thanks to Logan I think I’ve caught most of those.  Thanks so much!

I’m also finding out that this story is much better than I used to think it was.  With all the form rejections I’ve been getting for it, I wondered for a while whether I should put it back in the trunk and let it quietly die.  Now, however, I can see that it has a lot more promise than I’d previously thought.  Even if it isn’t published as my first novel, I really do believe that this story deserves a home.

At the same time, though, I’ve noticed some major differences between my writing in this piece and my writing in the stuff I’ve written more recently.  I’m not sure exactly how to put it, but I think it has something to do with voice.  I don’t want to say that Genesis Earth is more choppy, but it does seem a lot more…matter of fact, if that makes sense.  There are also a lot more rhetorical questions, but I think that’s an artifact of the 1st person perspective.

But even if the voice in this piece is different from my voice now, it’s different in a good way.  It feels more…YA?  I’m not exactly sure, but it seems to work.  The sequels, if/when I write them, will probably be in 3rd person (ala Spin and Axis by Robert Charles Wilson), and that’s going to create a much different feel than this book.

It worked for Axis, though, so I think I can pull it off–that is, if/when Genesis Earth gets picked up by a publisher.  I don’t want to write the other two books in this trilogy until I know the first one is sold.

In unrelated news, I had a job interview today.  It was with a wilderness therapy company, the same that wait listed me for the January training.  I really hope I get in–more than anything at this point in my life, I feel that I need to gain some major life experience.  Probably the biggest stumper question was “what three words would you use to describe yourself in your last job, and what three words would your supervisor use to describe you?” A difficult question, particularly when all your recent jobs have been temp jobs.  I think I did alright, though–now, we just need to wait and see.

In other unrelated news, I threw an awesome movie night tonight.  We watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and maybe fifteen people showed up–most of them from Quark, but a couple of friends from some other places too.  Man, that Scott Pilgrim movie is epic. So hilarious, so entertaining, and at the same time, so true.  And then, we went to Dairy Queen and hung out until midnight hanging out.  It was great.

In still other unrelated news, I recently ordered the anime series Planetes on DVD.  It was at a good price, and I knew I’d buy it eventually, so I allowed myself to splurge.  I am so happy I did, because the science fiction elements are done surprisingly well.  All the little details, from the zero gravity handholds in the walls to the way the stations spin, are surprisingly true to real life, and the show’s vision of 2075 is not beyond the realm of our own possible future.  In other words, Planetes is quite possibly the best rocketpunk anime show out there, and a great source for inspiration.

Well, that’s enough for now.  Tomorrow, I will finish this novel and send it out to the agent who requested it.  In the meantime, though, it’s 4:00 am and I must sleep.

Book Festival and other updates

So last Friday, there was a book fair at the Provo Library.  I only heard about it the night before from Facebook, but there were almost twenty authors on the guest list, so I figured it would be a good place to go to meet other writers.  I wasn’t mistaken!

I biked up to the library just as Brandon Sanderson was walking in.  We chatted for a while, caught up on stuff since the last time I took his class.  I almost got to walk into the author’s only lounge with him, but one of the staff stopped me.  One of these days, though…one of these days!

I also ran into Dan Wells, who remembered me from World Fantasy and gave me a very nice compliment: he said I was very good at approaching people, especially at conventions.  Talked about the different cons this year; according to Dan,  Dragoncon is going to be huge this year, since Worldcon is in Australia and World Fantasy is in Ohio.  I have a friend in Atlanta–I’ll have to look into attending that.

Brandon Sanderson, Clint Johnson, Mette Ivie Harrison, and J. Scott Savage did a panel on writing fantasy.  Fortunately, I had my mp3 player on me and was able to record it.  If you would like to listen to it, you can find it here:

Fantasy Panel, Provo Children’s Book Festival (15 May 2010)

Clint had some interesting advice for me after the panel; he asked about the books I’ve written and said I should submit them to YA agents/editors as well as mainstream adult agents/editors.  Apparently, Genesis Earth and Mercenary Savior could work as YA, since 1) they’re about (relatively) young protagonists having coming-of-age experiences and learning how they want to live their lives, and 2) they don’t have the sense of nostalgia that adults often have when they think about their childhood.

So that was the Provo Children’s Book Festival.  Let me just say, this is one of the reasons why I love Utah: the writing scene for fantasy/sf/YA is HUGE.  Tons of writers, tons of readers, local writing events all the time–it’s great.

In other updates, I got a personalized rejection from Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show! It was a pretty long one, too.  The assistant editor said the writing was pretty good, but it felt too much like a novel.  Hehe…confession, it was part of a novel.  But that’s awesome that he thought the writing was good!

Besides that, he gave a lot of suggestions as to formatting, referring me to this site for detailed ms instructions.  I didn’t think most editors would mind Times New Roman, but if it’s an issue even for a few of them, I should probably just switch to Courier–no editor is going to fault me for using Courier.

Besides all that, I’m well on my way to finishing Mercenary Savior 3.0 before CONduit.  My goal right now is to finish it next Tuesday and spend Wednesday and Thursday sending it out.  After CONduit, I plan on starting Hero in Exile (except the name will change), and I have a TON of great ideas for it.  Funny how sometimes in order to finish a book, you need to write another one first.

Jemma 7729 by Phoebe Wray

The following is a book review I wrote for The Leading Edge. It will be coming out in the November issue, along with my short story Decision LZ150207.  The editors gave me permission to post the review here.  Be sure to pick up a copy of the magazine when it comes out!

Jemma is a rebel, fighting against a system that teaches women to be obedient and submissive and “alters” those who refuse to assimilate.  After escaping the giant dome cities of a post-apocalyptic California, Jemma joins with a band of rebels known as the Movers in the free, uncultivated country.  But as her reputation grows and the people in the domes begin to take up arms, the government stops at nothing to hunt Jemma down and silence her for good.

With images reminiscent of Brave New World, 1984, and A Handmaid’s Tale, Jemma7729 is a dystopian, post-apocalyptic novel with a YA feel.  The first half of the book details Jemma’s childhood and her transformation from daughter of two mid-level government workers to a rebel fighting to overthrow the system.  I enjoyed the first part of this novel, with its intimate human drama and its resourceful, sympathetic viewpoint character.  The story was paced well and kept my interest.

The second half of the book, however, was somewhat disappointing.  Once Jemma escapes the domes and begins her campaign as a rebel terrorist, the story loses a lot of tension.  Even though she is barely a twelve year old girl, she still, without any outside assistance, manages to blow up almost a dozen government facilities without getting caught or killed.  The villains’ reasons for creating such an oppressive, anti-feminist regime are never adequately explained, and when Jemma starts to fight back, the government is too weak to put up a believable resistance.  The middle of the novel lags considerably, with very little real action or suspense.

When the pace finally does pick up again, about forty pages from the end, the action is so confusing and happens so quickly that I felt completely lost.  The main character’s voice gets lost in a blow-by-blow account of impossibly rapid events, as if the author was trying to compress two hundred pages of story into less than a quarter of that space.  I fount it disappointing and inconsistent with the tone of the rest of the book.  However, the twist at the end caught me by surprise and gave me some degree of satisfaction as I finished the book, though I would have been more satisfied if the last half of the book had been as good as the first half.

Review of JEMMA7729
Joe Vasicek
Jemma is a rebel, fighting against a system that teaches women to be obedient and submissive and “alters” those who refuse to assimilate.  After escaping the giant dome cities of a post-apocalyptic California, Jemma joins with a band of rebels known as the Movers in the free, uncultivated country.  But as her reputation grows and the people in the domes begin to take up arms, the government stops at nothing to hunt Jemma down and silence her for good.
With images reminiscent of Brave New World, 1984, and A Handmaid’s Tale, Jemma7729 is a dystopian, post-apocalyptic novel with a YA feel.  The first half of the book details Jemma’s childhood and her transformation from daughter of two mid-level government workers to a rebel fighting to overthrow the system.  I enjoyed the first part of this novel, with its intimate human drama and its resourceful, sympathetic viewpoint character.  The story was paced well and kept my interest.
The second half of the book, however, was somewhat disappointing.  Once Jemma escapes the domes and begins her campaign as a rebel terrorist, the story loses a lot of tension.  Even though she is barely a twelve year old girl, she still, without any outside assistance, manages to blow up almost a dozen government facilities without getting caught or killed.  The villains’ reasons for creating such an oppressive, anti-feminist regime are never adequately explained, and when Jemma starts to fight back, the government is too weak to put up a believable resistance.  The middle of the novel lags considerably, with very little real action or suspense.
When the pace finally does pick up again, about forty pages from the end, the action is so confusing and happens so quickly that I felt completely lost.  The main character’s voice gets lost in a blow-by-blow account of impossibly rapid events, as if the author was trying to compress two hundred pages of story into less than a quarter of that space.  I fount it disappointing and inconsistent with the tone of the rest of the book.  However, the twist at the end caught me by surprise and gave me some degree of satisfaction as I finished the book, though I would have been more satisfied if the last half of the book had been as good as the first half.

Genesis Earth 3.0 is finished!

That’s right!  Here are the stats:

ms pages: 269
words: 74,687
file size: 525 KB
chapters: 16, prologue & epilogue
start date: 8 July 2009
end date: 25 July 2009

Wordle: Genesis Earth 3.0

Wow, I finished this rewrite in seventeen days. Seventeen days! Hard to believe it’s only been that long. I hope the quality of this work went up in that time. I still feel like I need to run through and proofread it, make sure that the language flows well and the dialogue isn’t stilted.

In the process of writing this draft, I added or deleted 37,159 words from the previous draft. Going by the wordcount of the previous draft, 51.98% of the text changed.

Now I need to start submitting this book. It’s going to be kind of hard–I’m not sure whether it’s YA or not. On the one hand, the main characters are older teenagers and experience a lot of personal growth over the course of the novel. On the other hand, the (pseudo)science is a little dense, and the prose isn’t…well, it doesn’t read like most of the YA that I’ve read.

Well, I guess the only thing to do is shop it around and see who picks it up. In the meantime, I’m going to put everything I have into finishing Bringing Stella Home. The 2.0 draft of that novel is going to be AWESOME!