Made in the Edits: Lessons from My First Novel, part 3

Sometimes you actually have to finish something before you really understand the process. My first novel was a great example of this principle.

Some background: I wrote what I thought was a detailed outline and character description before I started on the first draft of Pursuit of the Heliotrope. I finished the first draft, and it just barely reached 50,000 words. And, to be honest, by the time I was working on the last third of the book, I was feeling pretty tired of it and definitely wasn't doing my best at that point. And I wasn't even really crunching to finish it! I just found it hard to maintain interest in writing the same thing for such a long period.

The Joy of Low-Stakes Storytelling! Lessons from my First Novel, part 2!

One of the trends I've seen in a lot of modern fiction is the tendency toward the epic. Everybody wants to create this massive, complex, world with amazing, powerful characters engaged in a climactic struggle to save the universe from an unapologetic, existential evil that holds billions of lives in the balance.

God, I'm tired of those.

Five Editing Foci

As I finished up editing my first novel, I spent some time considering the different things I was looking for each time I went through a new draft. I came up with a list of five things to focus on during a particular editing stage, and thought this might be helpful for people who spend all their time looking for typos or feel like they're just doing the same thing over and over each time they edit.

An Exercise or Method for Deeper Writing

Do you ever feel like your writing is a bit shallow in places? Whether you feel it's deficient in character, plot, worldbuilding, theme, or even for non-fiction where you feel the argument is lacking, today I'm going to talk a little bit about a technique I use sometimes to help deepen my writing.

You'll probably feel like it's pretty obvious once I say it, so here goes: Ask questions.

Fun with All Men Are Brothers!

The Water Margin Story, a famous Chinese novel that goes by several different names here in the West, is so freakin' crazy.

Tutorial: Making a Paperback on Amazon!

This might be helpful to other writers! I do a video tutorial, producing a paperback version of my first novella!

Finally Making my First Novella Presentable!

Honestly, I resisted doing this for a long time, but I figured that, as I was finishing up the first full-length novel in the series, that it made sense to finally get a real cover for my first novella, The Hyacinth Rescue.

Okay, This Time It's Actually Released! (The Chasm of Color)

Stupid me, I made a post on Monday that said (New Release!) in the title but I ended up looking over my final draft one more time on Tuesday and found a couple more tiny things to change.

Now, finally, The Chasm of Color is out in e-book form!

I'm trying to figure out Amazon's print on demand stuff, so I'll add posts for the paperback and hardcover versions when they come out.

For updates, join my mailing list! You can choose whether to get only emails for Chasm stuff or hop on the general list:

The Chasm of Color, a sample

Part of my cover photo, edited from a picture by Matt Donders, courtesy Unsplash.

My next work is another fun bit of science fiction, with another reference to the luminiferous ether, as in What the Soul Still Fears! However, instead of a story set in the modern day, The Chasm of Color takes place at around the same time as the Michelson-Morley experiment, in the late 1880s.

The protagonist, an assistant professor at the fictional Lexington University, has read the Michelson-Morley paper but is not convinced. However, he is unable to figure out a good reason for his uneasiness, until one morning over a year later...

Book Trailer: Missed Contact

I created a short, 60-second trailer for my book, Missed Contact. A little bit more involved than the short teasers I made for some of my short stories, this one uses several pictures and a little bit more thought, since it's not an excerpt from the book, but a "three act" (that's what the Internet told me I should write :/ ) script about the setting, characters, and plot.

For those of you who have been kind enough to visit my blog, I'll note that even though the video says to go check it out on Amazon, it's also available at a variety of other e-book retailers, too.

I'd love to get some more feedback about this book. I really enjoy the mixture of mystery and science fiction that I created for this one. It's a quick, fun read that should be perfect for one night of reading.

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Our Most Recent Podcast Is a Hilarious Rant!

 

I gotta say, I'm really proud of the most recent episode of the Wordy Pair Podcast. It's hilarious and it breaks down this really awful post about context cues, of all things. Somebody took a really basic, grade-school English topic and turned it into a confusing mess.

Halfway through, we started thinking it might be an AI article, and by the end, we decided AI would probably be clearer and make fewer mistakes!

If you want something fun and funny about writing to listen to, check it out!

You can find the whole series here. Whether you're a reader or a writer or even a movie watcher, you'll find something fun!

What the Heck Is a Crookes Tube? (Lovecraft story talk)

Image of Crookes tube in operation, from D-Kuru, CC BY-SA 2.0 AT, via Wikimedia Commons

I didn't know until yesterday that August 20th was H. P. Lovecraft's birthday! It seemed like a worthy time to go through a couple of his stories, so I read two of them last night: Under the Pyramids (written with Harry Houdini, of all people), and The Shunned House.

Book Review of "The Object: Hard Science Fiction"

 I recently went through and put a few of the best selling books in "Hard Science Fiction" on my list of books to read, partly for market research and partly just to read some new books.

The first one I chose to read is The Object: Hard Science Fiction by Joshua T. Calvert.

Unfortunately, I didn't find it too engaging, but it did have a few good points.

I tried out making a video review on YouTube:

I'll also put up a text version of my notes here, in case you want to read them.

I realize it's a very mixed review, but if you still want to check out the book, you can find it here.

And if you instead get an urge to read or re-read Rendezvous with Rama, you can find that here.

Thanks for watching!

All the Old Novels Are Shorter (A Rant)

Photo courtesy Patrick Tomasso, via Unsplash

I just finished reading a relatively new science fiction story and I'm working on a review. The story I read is supposedly a very highly rated, very strong-selling example of "hard science fiction," and, spoiler alert, I was pretty disappointed by it. More on that later.

However, for the time being...

Breakthrough!

Daft Punk Harder GIFfrom Daft Punk GIFs

Yesterday, I finally thought up an answer to a question I've been asking myself about my novel-in-progress for a while!

I finished my fourth draft a couple of weeks ago and wanted to give myself a little time and separation to give the book a fresher look next time I go back to it. (Plus, I was traveling last week and didn't get to do much thinking about writing)

Audio/Video Story Teasers #3: Outopos

Here's the third video in my series of short audio/visual teasers! This one is for the short science-fiction story that I wrote about artificial intelligence, called Outopos. I wanted to provide a different perspective on the long-term impact of real artificial intelligence, so I had to think a little bit about how to present the idea.

Thoughts About Messaging in Fiction

Morse Code GIFfrom Morse GIFs

Writing about the origins of The Derelict Project last week got me thinking about preachy fiction, and how messages work and don't work when laid out in fiction.

Fourth draft done!

 Just finished the fourth draft of my first novel! At 77k, it's still a fairly short novel, but way better than the ~50k of draft 1.

Also, I'm really starting to like the book.

Audio/Video Story Teasers #2: The PAEAN Project

 

Here's the second video in my series of short audio/video teasers, this one for my historical fiction journal story, The Paean Project. I really liked the slow escalation of tension and worsening conditions that go through this story.

This excerpt is from the middle of the story and happens after one of the astronauts has some kind of heart attack. The mission is still slated to slingshot around the moon, but right before they lose radio contact...

Check it out on YouTube!

What is The Derelict Project?

Image by Karsten Winegeart, via Unsplash

As my first novel nears completion, I thought it would be fun to talk a little about what I call "The Derelict Project" and what I like about it.

Back when I was in the darkest days of grad school, I was spending 8-10 hours a day flailing hopelessly at a broken experiment and wasn't sure whether I was going to end up with anything after seven years in grad school.

In those dark days, I wanted something positive, maybe even hopeful, to spend a little of my time on. Something that I had always wanted to try, but never really put any time into: writing fiction. Specifically, science fiction, and, even more specifically, science fiction about people in a future, when spaceflight becomes common, dealing with search, rescue, and exploration of craft that had lost their way for one reason or another.