One of the most creative people I know in the local area, a gentleman who goes by the name “Spud”, recently posted on his (far more popular, and deservedly so) blog that he laments that we got “such a boring apocalypse.”
What a lovely phrase, and how elegant a way to put it. I don’t agree with the sadness to a large degree (a less boring apocalypse would be terrifying), but I get what he means. It’s so hard to push yourself to do creative work in this environment. It’s hard to push yourself to do anything, really, but creative projects seem to be particularly bad.
I’m sure I’m not the only one noting this. But I have struggled this last month with Novel 8. And it’s not a question of enjoying it: I’m having enormous fun writing the book every moment I have the energy to do so. But those moments are hard to come by, and everything seems just… harder, really.
But, again, I suppose I shouldn’t complain. I have a roof over my head, food on my plate, three lovely cats, and a partner who supports me and my insane dream. Things could absolutely be much, much worse.
Anyway. I’m going back to writing my novel in the hopes that I can make other people’s apocalypses a little brighter and more fun.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Allergies
I have a few allergies. Most of them developed later in my life… the only really dangerous one is penicillin, which is a very common antibiotic and could theoretically be administered to me if I were unconscious or something.
I really need to get one of those bracelet things. Anyway.
But i also have other, more minor but still super annoying allergies. Pollen seems to be one that comes and goes, and today, by golly, it has come. My eyes feel like they’re swimming in pools of sandpaper and lemon. So much fun (/sarcasm).
As a result, I’m going to stay in the basement where the air is a little cooler, the lights are a little dimmer… and write!
Big thank you to everyone who has picked up my newest book over the last month! The number of units sold is really encouraging! I’m going to have to throttle down on the ads in a few weeks, though, because although it is super nice to see the book in more hands, each sale is costing me about $4 in ads (and since each sale only makes me about $1… you can see the problem!). I’m hoping that if I can get the book out to enough people, the residual sales (people who bought The Hunt for the Wind’s Howling Rage go on to buy Caitlyn Morcos and The Queen of the A.I.s, for example) will eventually compensate for most of those losses, but I can’t count on it. But, for now, I will enjoy my improved visibility for another month, and then throttle things down until I release my next novel and then hopefully throttle everything back up!
Ah, the “joys” of writing-as-a-business. Oh well.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Silas Marner by "George Eliot"
So part of my Brit Lit course involved reading the classic (1890s) English novel Silas Marner. It was… fine. I would describe it as “highly crushable”, in the sense that it’s relatively short and easy read. Not a lot happens… you might argue nothing happens, really… but it was okay.
I wouldn’t compare it favourably to the other novels of that time (Dumas and his Three Muskateers and The Count of Monte Cristo), but those were much harder reads but with more plot propelling them forwards, whereas everything in Marner just kind of happens.
Still, glad I read it. An interesting break from my usual laser-swords-and-explosions style reading and writing. Not one I would recommend unless you want a glimpse into historic English writing or you like a slower pace, meandering story.
Oh, I should mention that the “George Eliot” quotation marks are because the author was actually Mary Anne Evans, who wrote under a pseudonym because women weren’t allowed to write, of course. Pity, too. Mary Shelley, founder of science fiction, was writing around the same time, and I have very fond memories of Frankenstein, but it has been a long time since I read it. Maybe it wouldn’t hold up either? Who knows.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Truth
The focus of my current English course, British Literature II, is the concept of “Truth”, and how various English writers and poets framed that through history. Romance-era poets were seemingly obsessed with the concept, seeing Truth as something that required a human mind, and specifically imagination, to be able to piece together from what was available.
Of course, most Romance-era writers were independently wealthy and were writing more as a hobby and as an investigation than out of any sense of appealing to the masses. If others found their work worthy was something of an unintended side-effect, it would seem.
That stated, it has made me think a little about Truth, and what it means to me and my writing. I’m not particularly concerned with “deep meaning” with my writing, since I’m aiming for light, fun, adventure-style books. I don’t want or need to win any Giller prizes for my science fiction, I just want to tell neat stories that make people smile and maybe forget about all the crappy stuff that’s going on in the world for a while.
But I still try to weave a bit of optimism in my works. There is still violence, and sexism, and fear, and lots of other negative aspects to my worlds, but I can do a lot to frame the negatives as less ambiguous, and to show that there is a lot of potential for good in the world. Quiet moments of peace, tenderness, love… all the things that make life worth living.
Plus laser swords and exploding starships, because, d’uh. What’s the point of writing science fiction if you can’t work in laser swords and awesome starship battles? Might as well write fantasy!
Anyway, this is one of the reasons I love studying English. It’s neat to think about, even if I think the considerations are a bit ivory-tower for my tastes.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Weird Metrics
I’ve mentioned before that I have a weird fascination with metrics. Tracking the numbers of my writing career has been interesting in many ways I wouldn’t have predicted when I first started this journey back in 2016.
For example, I have sold more books in the last 4 week period than I have at any time before. There is still a blip of my first novel having more free copies given away than I have sold at any point (technically, only the first 20% of the novel, since I broke that one up into 5 parts in a kind of serialization… boy, was THAT ever a bad decision… one novel, five times the work! I won’t be repeating that mistake without justification at any point ever again). But I think the release of The Hunt for the Wind’s Howling Rage has seen more copies move than ever before, which is nice! If I can keep up this as a more-or-less consistent number, and then the next one releases with about the same numbers… that might be enough to push me into full-time writing.
It’ll be close. It might take a 3rd novel at-these-numbers, which, again, I don’t know if that’s reasonable. But gosh it would be nice.
Anyway! Yes. Numbers. Speaking of which, I have an essay I have to write (500 word essays!? Who does that!?) for Monday, and class notes I have to record for today, and another novel to finish a few chapters on (I’m sticking with numbered chapters titles this time, just to make my life a little easier, but then I’m doing that Dune thing of putting a little quote or news report at the start of every chapter, just to make my life even harder…). So I’m going to get on that!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Finishing a Good Book
In addition to my course work (mostly poetry at this point, but a few essays and soon a few actual novels!), I’m currently working my way through two trilogies. I’m just about done book 1 of the Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski, and I just finished book 1 of the Battletech, Warrior trilogy by Michael A. Stackpole.
I’m enjoying both trilogies a lot, although they are pretty old and some of the writing doesn’t quite hold up to modern offerings. But that’s okay! They’re still fun, and I’m enjoying reading them to pick up on little cues and differences between these writers and how I write. Which, after all, is a very important part of being a writer. Roughly, to be a writer, you need to do two things:
1. Read a lot
2. Write a lot
I do lots of the second point, but it’s nice to make sure I’m keeping up on that first one there as well.
It’s also interesting to see the way female characters are portrayed by both authors. You could argue, for example, that Melissa Steiner, a 17-year-old woman who is poised to become the ruler of (arguably) the largest section of human space, is a very powerful female lead who has the same sorts of doubts and uncertainties as the male protagonists seem to. And there are certainly lots of female mechwarriors in the series.
Likewise, the women characters in The Witcher are usually portrayed as powerful magicians (Yennifer, Triss) or rulers (the queen of Cintra)… but by the same token, I wouldn’t say most of them are presented in a balanced way. I think the tv show, for the record, does a much, much better job, but the book is old and the show is new, so I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
Anyway, I could talk about that for hours on its own, and I really just wanted to say that I’ve been enjoying my reading this last week or so. And I am looking forward to book 2 in both series, since book 2s tend to be very difficult to land… but we will see!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Daily Grind
I love to write. I really do. I love sitting down at my computer with an idea and watching it slowly form into something with shape, meaning, and nuance. I love being a passenger in the lives of my characters, trying to figure out what they see, do, and think as I throw events at them.
But all that can be true, and it is still work. Work I love, granted, but work. And since I also work a full-time job to support this job, it can be really draining at times. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing… anything worthwhile is probably difficult and all that, but there are definitely days where I sit down to write and it’s a struggle.
I don’t think today will be one of those days, but it is still early in the day. But there are definitely days like that, usually around the 120K words or-so. Close enough to the end that it’s in sight, but not so close to the end that you can sprint for it and still end up with a satisfying conclusion. At this point I’m still sub-10K words for the new novel and there are definitely more words coming out of me than will be used (I’ve already cut the entire first chapter once, and I may do it again!). It’s nice when the flow is like this, when I can get a lot of work done and it doesn’t feel like work.
Anyway, I should get back to it! Thank you to everyone who reads this silly little corner of the internet!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Starting the Next Novel!
Well, that’s everything for The Hunt for the Wind’s Howling Rage for the near future. Paperback and ebook are available, advertising campaign is in place, and it’s time to start working on the next novel.
Which, as I think I mention every few months, is all I really want to do. I just want to write and receiving edits from an editor to make my novels better. I love crafting worlds and stories and narratives, but all the self-promotion and marketing stuff surrounding being a self-published author is just not really my bag.
I’ve changed the working title of my new novel to “Starocean’s Eleven”, but it is definitely not being called that when it’s finished! But I think it does a good job of encapsulating the kind of tension and comedy I want the novel to embrace… it’s going to be noveau-cyberpunk, less grim-dark-bleh and more bright-shiny-scary. Bladerunner meets Ocean’s Eleven.
Ooh. I might keep that as a tagline. Technically, more like Ocean’s Eight. But that’s an aside… I do like writing female protagonists.
Anyway! I hope everyone out there is enjoying THftWHR, and thanks as always for your continued support! You’re all amazing!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
New Release! The Wind's Howling Rage!
Well, it’s about 2 months later than I wanted, but it’s done and out in the world, and I’m pretty darn proud of it.
I speak, of course, of my newest novel, The Hunt for the Wind’s Howling Rage. Chances are pretty good you’ve already seen the cover on the landing page to this ol’ website, but if you haven’t, you can click on “Books” in the menu above, and the first one, right there, is THftWHR.
Hmm. I actually kinda like that acronym now that I’ve written it for the first time. THftWHR. Anyway! Onwards!
In equally exciting news, it is available in both ebook AND paperback formats! Right now! I did both of them simultaneously, and while it wasn’t an ideal situation, it was easier than doing it the other way around (writing the ebook first and then later trying to convert that into a paperback format). Which is great news, because it means that ALL of my novels from now on should release in both formats basically simultaneously! Woo!
So, thank you so much for all your support, and as soon as I write my test today for my Brit Lit II course, I’m going to dive into Novel 8, which for now I’m giving the working title “Starocean’s Eleven”… bit of a hint there as to the kind of story I’m going to write…
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Exciting News! Soon!
No real post today in preparation for a big, important post on Wednesday (yee!), but just wanted to stop by and say “Hey, thanks for stopping by!”.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Editing Done!
Woo! That’s a huge chunk of work finally finished!
Now just two things left:
1. Get an ISBN from the Library of Canada website, and
2. Convert the document into an ebook and upload it to Amazon.
Neither trivial, but neither very long things.
But for now, I’m going to go drink some coffee, and then crack my neck a few times, and then get right back to it… this is the second best part of writing a book! It’s going to be available to everyone* on earth very shortly!
*Everyone who uses Amazon or has access to Amazon in some way.
Keep your eyes here for the book going live very soon!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Worn Out
I think this is a familiar refrain for most people in North America, but this pandemic is really wearing me out. I’m just tired, exhausted really, so much of the time that it makes it hard to get anything accomplished.
I will say that I’ve done a pretty good job stocking my pantry and freezer so I don’t have to order in dinner as often, and that’s good. Ordering in food is really expensive, and while it is convenient and easy, I just can’t afford it most days. And having a small stockpile of “throw these ingredients approximately at the stove and have a meal come back” is a very useful sort of thing to have. Not perfect, of course, and there are days that I just don’t want to eat anything. But yeah, tired.
Anyway, I think I’m going to finish up the editing today (ah, that familiar refrain), and then hopefully get it off to Amazon tomorrow night after one final read. Fingers crossed! And then I have some course texts to read, and then… finally… I can start the next novel!
I should get back to it… hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Patreon Pondering
As I imagine most (if not all) of you know, I have a Patreon account. And like many creatives on Patreon… it doesn’t really pay the bills. That’s okay, of course, I’m still a pretty-much unknown author at this point (three paid short stories does not a professional writer make). But it is extremely nice to have a little pool of support, to know that every month I have a little money coming in to help with costs. At this point, I think it’s fair to say that my Patrons over on Patreon pay for the cover art for each novel I publish, and that’s really quite nice.
It’s also a weird thing, because I know that if i had about a thousand people, which sounds like a lot but really isn’t, who supported me on Patreon, I could absolutely do this full-time. And then produce way more novels, which would help me get more supporters, etc… etc…
A lovely little positive feedback loop, if you will.
But of course, that’s not my reality right now. I keep hoping the next novel will be “the one” which helps me reach that, because writing novels is an amazing job but it’s also expensive and time consuming and I wish I had more time to devote to, but the only way to do that is to be successful enough that I can. It’s a weird feeling.
Anyway, not really apropos of anything today, except to say how much I do appreciate everyone who is still supporting me 5 years into this insane dream of mine. You’re all rockstars, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
And now back to editing so I can release a new novel for everyone! Yay!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Love of Reading
I’m about half done the edits at this point (should be done Wednesday, fingers crossed), but I’m also back in school and that means… readings. So many readings.
The first week involves reading Paradise Lost by Milton (thankfully, not the whole thing, but books 1, 7, and 8… or was that 8 and 9? Three of the books, at least), and that’s like wading through waist-deep literary mud. I’m not a big fan of Milton… I might go so far to say I dislike his work a great deal. But whether I like it or not, I gotta read it. And then next week’s readings are a bunch of short stories that I’ve never heard of by authors I’ve never heard of, so that’ll be fun… but I do love to read.
Seriously, I love reading. I don’t think you can be a good writer if you don’t really love to read. It would be like being a hockey player and hating skating, or being a chef who hates eating. It can be done, I’m sure, but the results will never be as good. In my case, I have a stack of sci-fi on its way to my house (hopefully next week), plus all the Brit Lit I need to read for my course (some of which is contemporary, and I’m looking forward to that).
But that’s for the future. Today I wrestle with Milton again, and then work on the novel. Could be worse.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Unleash the Edits!
The editing process has begun. And, as always, it is a humbling process.
I appreciate having somebody who can point out my errors, since i usually make a fair number of them. And Christine tends to focus more on plot continuity and higher-level considerations, which I also appreciate.
But man, there is so much that I have to change every time… Which, I get it, part of the process, but yeah. Humbling.
I’m about 20% done at this point (I was going to write 1/5th, but for some reason “20%” sounds more positive to me…), so it should be done by next week and off to Amazon shortly after that. With any luck, the novel should be out by mid-week next week.
And with that, I’m going to get back at it!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Popularity Contests
Most of the time, I try not to think about how my career is, to a large extent, a popularity contest.
It shouldn’t be, really, since there market for stories is enormous, and it’s not a zero-sum market (ie: you buying a book from John Scalzi doesn’t mean that you won’t buy a book from me, or vice-versa). Books are inexpensive relative to most media, and I think that people who love them are always looking for more.
Also looking for more time, granted, but that’s true of most things these days.
But the fact is that many people only read a few stories a year, if that. So it is possible that by buying an Ann Leckie or a Robyn Bennis you no longer have the desire to own the newest MH Questus. Such is life, but it’s not an aspect of my work that I like.
Especially if it ever involves bad-mouthing other authors in order to draw attention to my own work. There are a lot of authors I don’t particularly care for, most for political or social reasons rather than for reasons of craft. But other than refusing to read their work and certainly never advocating for others to read their work, that’s about as far as I will go… and I will happily mention authors I like (let’s add Becky Chambers to that list currently, since I just ordered 3 or 4 of her novels, hopefully to arrive in the next week or two). But since this here website only gets about, oh, 50-60 visitors a month, it’s not like I’m exactly dragging in views from anyone else. But that’s okay! Again, I’m not trying to dislodge anyone’s favourite author out there… just trying to have enough of an audience that I can live a humble, simple life.
Not there yet. At current projections I’m probably about 10 novels away (or about 2.5 years, at the rate I’m going). But anyway.
On that note, I’m going to go back and start editing “The Hunt for the Wind’s Howling Rage”! Whee!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Planning the Heist
So I want to finish up my planning stages for Novel 8 before I jump back into the edits for Novel 7. Couple reasons for this, but the main one is that I usually deal better with following one thread to its end rather than trying to keep four or five things going simultaneously.
I am many things, but a good multitasker is not one of them.
Problem is I was having difficulty planning the heist itself. I want it to be epic and exciting, but it needs moments of release as well, and all this requires a degree of planning I don’t usually engage in. But that’s okay! I realized that I was doing myself a disservice by planning the heist in the same way that the characters would (step 1, then step 2, then step 3, etc…) whereas I have the advantage of being able to plan the heist backwards (ie: I know where I want the story to be on Step 4, so that means I need to start the heist at step 1, but then Step 3 will be this thing going wrong, which means I need to set that up in Step 2, etc…). Basically, not having to stick to a linear progression in my plan’s plan (if that makes sense) makes my life a lot easier.
So I’m going to crank that out in the next few hours, and then dive into Novel 7 edits because yay! Novel 7 is almost done!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
New Novel Soon!
It may be hard to miss (but absolutely possible, of course), but I put up the cover and new page for the new novel!
Well, most of the cover. The way this website clips images means you only get to see about 2/3rd of the cover, but the rest of it is a generic ice planet and my name, so you don’t really need to see that part until you buy the book… which should be available in the next week or two! Woo!
I got my edits back from my editor, and I’m going to dive into those shortly (after I finish the layout for Novel 8, which I am this close to finishing). And, good news, this time I finished the physical version of the book at the same time as the digital version… I hope.
Haven’t actually tried it out yet. It should be pretty straight forward, I hope, but won’t know until I submit it to ye olde Amazon, so fingers crossed and all that.
Anyway! Very exciting news. My first (of hopefully 4) novels for 2021. As a reward, I bought a bunch of sci-fi novels that I’m excited to dive into (a John Scalzi crime sci-fi called “Head On”, a few giant robot stories, and a steampunk novel I’m really excited about called “By Fire Above” by Robyn Bennis… the original, called “The Guns Above” was the best steampunk I’ve ever read… oh, and the sequels to “The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet”, which I am so excited to read!). It’ll be a few weeks before they show up, though, so lots of time to write before I dive into the other half of my job… reading all the things!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
When is Enough Worldbuilding Enough?
Ah, the lead-up to writing a new novel. Something that is, if you will excuse the obvious pun, quite novel for me. Normally I’m 90% pantser, 10% planner, but this time I am aiming for closer to a 60/40 split. I think it’s important for a heist that the plot and all the beats hit exactly at the right time and point towards the “surprising yet inevitable” ending that I already have somewhat fleshed out in my mind.
But for this particular story, I’ve already roughed out a bunch of tech for warships and starfighters and stuff like that which will, in all probability, have nothing to do with the novel. I don’t think any of it (except for maybe the ending) will actually take place in space. It’s going to take place in the city at the base of a space elevator (ooh, I should name it… I think “Beanstalk” is probably my favourite name for a space elevator ever, but it is firmly taken by the good folks responsible for the “Netrunner” IP) and in the city hall of that city. Or possibly one of the big, fancy hotels… a nod towards the occupation of Paris, when the government was housed in hotels around the city. Anyway, I can figure that out later.
But at some point you (or in this case, I) have to stop crafting a world and just start writing. And normally for me that’s shortly after naming the protagonists and giving them basic physical traits (which I normally don’t mention in the book itself), and getting some concept of what the antagonists are, and then, bam, fingers on keyboard. This time it’s a bit more… but that’s okay! My novel notes are always living documents that are updated as they go along… in fact, it was one of my favourite things about Scrivener, when I used it to write stories, that you could easily track plot, character points, and all that independently within the document.
Unfortunately, actually using Scrivener was a bit of a nightmare for producing books… for me. I’m sure others out there use it very effectively! But not I.
Anyway, I just figured out what the heroes are going to steal, and I am super proud of myself because it is really clever. Yay! Okay, back to work for me!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Figuring Out the MacGuffin
For those of you unfamiliar with the term a “MacGuffin” (sometimes McGuffin) is a thing that you are attempting to acquire or achieve. In “Into the Spiderverse” (possibly the greatest superhero film ever made), the MacGuffin is called a “Goober”, in “Pulp Fiction” (a film that exists) it’s a glowing suitcase, in the MCU it’s normally one of the Infinity Stones, and so on and so forth.
My next novel is going to be a cyberpunk-inspired heist, a halfway point between Oceans Eleven and Rogue One, but I haven’t figured out what the MacGuffin is going to be. And in this case it definitely matters since a lot of the story is going to hinge on my band of merry misfits fighting against an already victorious empire (think “Mistborn”, sorta… the bad guys have definitely won already, and the heroes aren’t trying to defeat them so much as rob them afterwards because if big evil empires have anything, it’s more loot than they know what to do with).
Anyway, that’s where I’m at with the story. I might just leave it nebulous for now and then figure it out when it comes up in the novel (or worse, just do that thing where I flag that I haven’t figured it out yet, write the whole novel, and then go back and edit in a MacGuffin which is surprising-yet-inevitable).
Also: how is it almost the end of April already!? That’s crazy, man. Where did the month go? I’m going to pull my bike out of storage tomorrow, get it ready to ride to work again this week, and hope that the temperatures stay above freezing. We will see!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!