One of my favourite elements of writing a new series is the initial world-building… or, as is often the case in sci-fi, galaxy (or even universe!) building. It’s always an interesting experience to sit down and to try and think how a society operating with just one or two key technological differences might be radically different from ours.
In The Hunt for the Wind’s Howling Rage, this was all about the economy. In a galaxy where all basic needs are met but there is still a capitalistic system underpinning it, what could conceivably be “currency”? My answer there was spice, since I wanted to go with a Caribbean-flair to the adventure that Cici and Mina were on, and from that I decided that all planets were seeded with identical foodstock, but only a few spices could grow in isolated locations, creating an entire spice-trading economy… and the story flowed outwards from there. In contrast, for Starconvoy EH-76, I needed to figure out a way to get submarines in space (hey, if the Trek in the Stars can do it, so can I!), and that led to the entire conflict between the two mighty star empires that forms the foundation of Griff’s voyage. And so on.
For the novel that I’m writing on right now (the working title is The Trojan Stars, but I don’t think I’ll be sticking with it… maybe, but we’ll see), the big thing is figuring out how the FTL interstellar drive works in such a way to produce important strategic points without requiring a lot of fiddly details. Becky Chambers does a fantastic job with this problem in The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, providing a reason for the heroes’ voyage but also a technological foundation that makes the story just sing. It’s a remarkably feat, and while I don’t think I can do it quite that well, I do love the time I spend wrangling my brain to make all the blocks line up in a satisfying way.
So, that’s my work for today! Finish up the universe building (again… I did it a few weeks back before I went into exams, but managed to lose the file to a power outage… sloppy on my part. Always back up your work constantly, people!), and then diving back into writing Chapter 1!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Back to Writing!
Okay, with that my last exam for the semester, and correspondingly my last course until Fall, is over! Woo!
I think I did okay, but whether I did well or not, there’s nothing I can do about it now. It’s in the books, it’s done, it’s finito. Huzzah. Let the celebrations begin!
Honestly, I’m mostly looking forward to getting back to writing more enthusiastically (as opposed to my current method of writing, which I would describe as “desperately”). I have a bunch of ideas I want to work out, and it’ll be nice to have to time to actually work on them!
So, here’s to another semester down, and to being several steps closer to graduating. If everything goes as planned, I should be finished with Laurier in early 2024! Fingers crossed!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
After These Messages...
It’s strange the kinds of things that get lodged in your brain. Like, that little jingle from when I was a very young child watching cartoons… “After these messages… we’ll be right back!”
Anyway, today is devoted to studying for my exam tomorrow. So I’ll be back on Thursday after the exam with progress on my next creative projects!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Studying for Exams
Honestly, I’ve always had a mixed appreciation for exams. On the one hand, I tend to do pretty well in tests. I have the kind of mind that can usually rationalize out a problem in a logical (although not always correct) way that will get me at least partial grades from my profs. Very useful.
On the other hand… what do exams really do? They don’t test retention of knowledge, or ability to process knowledge… they sort of test how much you know about a topic at this moment which, I suppose, is about the best you can hope for? Maybe school would be better if the emphasis was less on “did you learn this fact temporarily” and more on “can you use or understand whatever it is you learnt two, three, or seven years down the road.”
Of course, determining if that’s true or not… totally different issue. But the whole school-bribing scandal from a few years back shows that it doesn’t matter what your grades are (at all), nor does it determine if you will be good at a job or not. Many people paid to get into a school that nominally didn’t deserve to be there, but they ended up doing just as well (or better) than the students who “earned” their spots.
I don’t know. But I am happy that this is my last exam of the semester, and my last exam for a few months at least. My brain can use the rest from the usual school stuff for a bit.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The importance of Play
I’m a big fan of games. Not just video games, but tabletop RPGs, board games, card games… play in general, up to and including many sports. I was raised playing soccer and hockey until I went to University the first time… I was never great, but I was consistently pretty good. If I was able to drop 100lbs at the time I probably would’ve been great. Ah well.
The point is that I love games. Part of it is the sense of community that play fosters. There are few faster ways to make positive memories than by playing a good game with good people (coincidentally, there are bad games and bad people, but a great way to discover either or both of those things is to play games with people!). I’m dabbling in a sci-fi space flight sim these days which is a lot of fun, I’m playing a big dungeon delving board game, and at night I’m reading a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style book that’s almost a solo RPG… oh, and I’m reading the rules for a solo RPG that I’m really excited to play (“Starforged”).
Moral of the story? Play is good. And while there are many hard or difficult or depressing things in my life, the ability to play a game always helps to cheer me up.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Hard Day
This is a tough day for me. It is every year. As a result, I’m keeping my head down, sitting on my couch watching cartoons and Star Wars and just relaxing as best I can, hoping it passes me by less awfully than historically.
Thursday I dive back into the novel. Maybe even tomorrow if I get the opportunity!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Assignments Done
Well, I have submitted the last of my assignments due for this semester. It’s a nice feeling… sure, I still have an exam in a week, but there isn’t a whole lot I can do about that other than study. And I’ll do that, but studying for an English exam is a matter of hours, not days, like these essays were.
Still, it will be weird not to have summer courses this year. There aren’t any offered that are of interest… which pushes back my hoped-for graduation until 2024, but I’m not doing this for a specific deadline, but to become a better and more broadly-capable writer, so if it takes a bit longer, so be it.
Anyway, with that done I can dive back into writing the novel (woo!), and a few scripts for animations I want to make. It’s good to be back!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Happy Long Weekend!
To those who celebrate, happy long weekend! I, unfortunately, have to work retail in order to pay for my writing and living costs, so while I have today off, I am back at work tomorrow… and then off Sunday and working Monday.
Also, I have a massive assignment and a little assignment both due on Monday, and I really need to get those done, so I’ll be spending most of today doing that. The essay (worth a whopping 40%) is going to be the lion’s share of the work, and while I am not “excited” about doing it, I think it’ll probably be fine. Plus, I had an assignment for this course due back in January, and nothing since, so I can’t really complain.
The little assignment, also due on Monday for my other course, will just be cranked out in an hour or so. Enough to read, edit, and then submit it. It’s only worth 2%, it’s barely worth the effort, but by the same token there’s no reason not to do it. So I’ll do it after I finish the big essay.
And then I have an exam to study for (I’m not worried about it, but I still want to do well so I have to put some time into prep), and then I’m done until September! Lots of opportunity to write and shoot Stop Motion and all sorts of wonderful stuff like that! Whee!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Done and posted!
If you are a Patreon supporter, you already know that I posted the first Stop Motion video I did on ye olde ‘Tube a few days ago… but if you don’t follow me there, you might not know!
Here’s a link!
Only trouble is that if you don’t know the source material, it’s gonna make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Basically, it’s a hypothetical discussion between two Trickster demigods: Nanabush/Nanabozho and Loki. I figured they would instantly dislike each other and get into a brief competition.
Even not knowing the source material, I figured it was worth posting because that way I have a benchmark to measure my future work against. And while it is rough (there is some definitely lessons learnt!), I’m still proud of how it turned out. So give it a look!
And hey, let me know what you think!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
One Stop Motion Done!
Well, the Stop Motion animation I was working on for class is finished… well, almost finished. I have a buddy doing music for it. But when he’s done, then it will be completely done. I’m really happy with how it turned out, and more importantly I learnt an awful lot from the process… like how much I like writing scripts and doing these sorts of silly things!
Future animated shorts will be… shorter… but I have to be more mindful of interstitials and transitions. This one had 4 or 5 that I had to do last-minute because I only realized I needed them after I had disassembled the set (which is also a useful thing to know. I set up everything so I could shoot everything on a set before changing it, but in the future I might just make multiple sets so I can go back and reshoot as needed).
Anyway, I’ll probably be posting the video to ye olde ‘Tube before too long, and I’ll put a link here when I do. It will make almost no sense to anyone who hasn’t read Motorcycles and Sweetgrass by Drew Hayden Taylor, but it might be interesting as a benchmark for my future work. Kinda like I still love the work I did with the Tintian series, but I would write them much differently (and better!) now.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Other Projects!
So I think I mentioned a while back that I’ve started to dabble in some side creative projects.
That’s actually unfair: I am always doing other creative projects in addition to writing novels. I write some short stories (admittedly, not recently), I paint, I play guitar, I draw occasionally (again, something I haven’t done in years, but I love doing it)…
But with the availability of solid Stop Motion software on phones (and the power of modern cameras), I’ve started to dabble in a little stop motion animation. The one I’m doing currently (my first!) is for school… but although it is only halfway finished, I’m really quite proud of it. Writing scripts for audio format is something I’ve done for years (I’ve written and performed several audio stories), and adding visuals to that… well, it’s just lovely.
So! I think I’ll post that video up in a bit. It’s a little rough… the lighting is the big issue. I only have 2-point lighting at this point, and I really want/need 3-point to make everything clearer, and there are a few moments that the camera is making the image brighter or darker, but hopefully not a big flicker issue. I guess we’ll see once I stitch everything together!
At least something to look forward to, yeah? Yeah!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Long Sentences
For one of my courses (“Caribbean Literature”) I have to read The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon.
It’s not the worst thing I’ve had to read this semester by a long shot, but I just finished a sentence that, without exaggeration, lasted ten pages. One sentence, lots of commas and hyphens, but no periods or full-stop punctuation. It was sorta stream of consciousness, but mostly it was annoying.
Granted, Selvon was writing decades ago, and his specific style was to bring a sort of Caribbean patois to English literature, and boy howdy did he succeed there. The book itself has been mostly enjoyable (aside from some blatant sexism, but again, the book is just shy of a century old at this point and while not acceptable it isn’t surprising either), but this one sentence annoyed me. A lot.
It’s hard to read! It’s specifically anti-readability. It always strikes me as the author sticking their nose in the air and saying with a snooty attitude “Well good readers will understand!” A sort of “No True Scotsman” argument for writing or reading… if you don’t like it, you’re not a “real” reader. Like… oh, I dunno, post-modernist crap that wanders around without ever actually telling a story and that’s supposed to be the story. Although not that bad.
Anyway. Makes me appreciate that my particular stylistic difficulties (parenthetical asides and ellipses) don’t really impact readability that much. A bit, no question, and I have to be careful with them, but yeah. Long sentences. Selvon couldn’t pull ‘em off, and I ain’t gonna try!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Better than Before!
One of the only upsides to losing the first chapter of the novel I’m working on is that I’m pretty sure that I’m writing it better. I have a better idea of how I want the chapter to go, at least.
The “problem” is now wanting to put all-the-things in that first chapter. Like an alien race… I almost never write aliens because I don’t have a mind that works well on the concept of “not human.” Like, most aliens you think of are usually just humans with some slight cosmetic changes. David Brin does some incredible things with properly-alien aliens in the Uplift series, but I have no illusions of being able to replicate that. Sometimes my humans are somewhat weird humans, though… atypical, at the very least. So maybe I’ll do that for this novel? Future humans meeting more primitive humans? That’s basically alien (or magic, depending on who you ask).
Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be putting aliens in this novel. But maybe. Might be a nice change of pace…
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Always Save Your Work
Whelp, that was a lot of lost work…
My computer froze up yesterday, and in the process of rebooting it I lost all my notes for the novel, plus about a chapter that I had written. The notes are the real blow… I’m too demoralized about this stupid mistake to rewrite them right now, but I’ll have to fill them in as I go along. Just stupid of me to not save my multi-day work at all.
Let this be a lesson to everyone: save your work, and backup your computers!
Ah well. No point crying over spilled milk. I’ve started rewriting the lost chapter already and hey, who knows, maybe it’ll be even better this time!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Big Stompy Robots
I am an unapologetic fan of big stompy robots. From the early days of Kaiju (Godzilla-style) films with actors inside robot-suits, to anime and cartoons, to Battletech and WarHammer, and to modern video games and movies… I just love big stompy robots.
I don’t think they “make sense” in a traditional way. There are shockingly few situations where having a 20-100m tall robot makes any logical sense. But the same could be said of airships, which I love, and landships, which I think are hilarious but still love. It doesn’t have to make sense to be cool… heck, most FTL systems don’t make sense, but they’re still cool regardless.
But I don’t know if I could write a big stompy story. A lot of the joy in these stories are the visuals… which isn’t to say the Battletech books aren’t fun. They are! But they’re predicated on decades of people kinda knowing what those robots look like. As a random example, the Robotech/Macross series of books just weren’t as good… the comics were great, the anime/cartoons were great, but as words on a page, they just lacked the oomph of other stories. So the ability to translate giant mecha into narrative story, I think, relies on an understanding of what the mecha “are” (in universe at least), and then a hefty suspension of disbelief.
Maybe I’ll try one out in a few books (my next 2 at least don’t involve mecha). Always good to stretch your creative comfort zone!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Page 1!
Like any great expedition, the start of a new book is an exciting time. Everything is full of hope and opportunity! Who knows where this story will take us!?
Certainly not me.
I mean, I have a rough idea. I have the skeleton of an outline, the framework upon which the rest of the story will hang. I used to not even do this… I would just embark in a direction and see where I ended up. But I have learned that this is a “bad idea” when I write… I like my endings to be Sudden But Inevitable, and in order for those to land you kinda need to telegraph key moments. And in order to do that you need to do some planning.
Not a lot. I name characters and locations, but I’ll still discover elements of each of those as we go. I’ll redefine aspects of everyone, of the technology and the conflict and the universe, on the fly.
Which is why I’m always so excited as those first few words, which soon become the first few thousand words, flow out onto the page. There’s still so much potential! Can’t wait to see where this one will take us… I’m calling this story “The Trojan Stars” for now, despite that being a bad name for a myriad of reasons, it makes sense thematically. It’s all about… well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Importance of Being True
I love sci-fi. I don’t think I’ve made that a secret at any point in my life. It is one of my great, if not my greatest, ambitions to be a full-time sci-fi author.
Sure, I love fantasy and speculative fiction and a smattering of alternate-history stuff, but in my heart of hearts, what I love is sci-fi.
That’s why it feels so nice to come back to a space opera. Cyberpunk is still sci-fi, but at its core cyberpunk is really about rebellion and theft (not necessarily in that order!). They’re heist stories or resistance stories first, and sci-fi stories second. And that’s fine! I’m not saying they’re not sci-fi.
But space opera, to me, will always represent the beating heart of the genre. Starships, and planets, and wars and exploration and all the wonderful and horrible and fantastical wrapped up with a Faster-than-Light bow. They’re human stories, even the ones about aliens (especially the ones about aliens!), but… better.
I hope mine will be, at least! It has a strong start at least!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Removing Goals from Patreon
So Patreon announced today (or at least I saw it today) that they are dropping the “Goals” feature from the Patreon pages.
Now, I don’t think this will have a meaningful impact on my Patreon page (current or future). But it’s weird to me that removing the goal of my patrons… like… doesn’t matter? Weird.
But I suppose my goals haven’t really changed. I had milestones for my Patreon (which aren’t anywhere near reached), but my overall “goal” has always been the same: become a full-time writer. Patreon is just a step in that direction.
So I don’t suppose this will actually change much. Still writing, still working on the next novel while gazing wistfully at the eventual destination of being able to write when I want, the books I want (and hopefully other people want!), at the pace I want. That would be great.
One day.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
All Normal Again
Well, without any actual effort on my part the back-end of Squarespace looks appropriate again.
That sentence sounds particularly dirty for some reason. Ah well, you all know what I mean.
On top of that I’ve finished up the background/universe building for the next novel, and I’m going to spend a few hours today outlining the major plot points. If I’m really ambitious I might even get a start on the work! For now I’m call it the Trojan Stars due to the major plot of the arc, but as always the name is mostly a placeholder until I get around to writing another.
Still, it’s nice to have things going more-or-less as expected. It’s hard to focus on the good sometimes, and there is good.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Universe Building For Beginners
I mean, I’m not really an expert in universe building. I’ve done it… 5 times so far? Each universe has elements in common with the others, but I try to make them distinct (otherwise I wouldn’t be able to keep them straight!).
In this case I started with very broad brushstrokes: how big is the “galaxy”? In this case, the galaxy just includes the subset of stars of interest (the good guy government has about a dozen stars, the bad guys about three times that number, and the “Old Roman-esque Empire” that came before had about fifty times that number.
Yes, I’m doing the fallen empire thing. I’m considering how to give it a post-colonial spin… something that differentiates it from your stock-standard Everything Was Better Before Empire that so often is the staple of sci-fi. Although I might not? I don’t know at this point. Like I said, big brushstrokes.
I’ve also named the captain of the starship that will be the focus of the adventure, and the starship itself. Tentatively in both cases… I’m not married to the names at this point, but I think it does give me an interesting starting point.
And I’ve started naming the significant crew on the ship. It’s an exploration vessel in a post-scarcity government (although their enemies are not post-scarcity), but it is attempting to explore, forge new diplomatic ties, and layout the groundwork for new trade as well… so it needs a crew of significant scientists, diplomats, traders, and military staff, plus enough conflict to keep things interesting while also having them work together.
I’ve done a half-dozen already. I think I’ll name a few other “secondary” characters just to make sure everything feels fleshed out, and then I’ll start mapping out the novel itself. Might even get to starting that tonight! Dare I dream!?
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!