Category Archives: writing

Like A Shark

Most, but not all sharks, need to constantly move through the water to breath. This was the point of the barrels in Jaws, tire the beast out until it cannot swim and then suffocates in the water.

Like a shark most writers, but not all, need to move from project to project. Always writing always creating on some level. As I finish up my latest military SF adventure novel, not just cleaning up and the prose and getting my sweetie-wife’s assistance on my typos and fondness for run on sentences my mind turns to the next book.

Returning the dark cynical world of crime and people making bad decisions as I have with Vulcan’s Forge, my next novel is set on Mars about 2130. Thematically its draws inspiration from crime and noir movies such as The Maltese Falcon, desperate people trying to escape such as Casablanca, and social commentary such as The Jungle.

Here is a smattering of some of the notes I have written as I begin to lay out the bones of the world before I flesh it out with characters and dilemmas.

Major Economic Industries of MARS

ROCKET FUEL

From Martian water and CO2 and utilizing nuclear power (Fission) mars produces Methane CH4 and O2 for rocket fuel used throughout the Solar System. The energy coast of lifting the fuel off the Mars is less than half (about 40%) of that compared to Earth. (3.8 KM/s vs 9. Km/s) This fuel is then transported to Earth and the asteroid mining operations for use in scientific and commercial operations.

MANAGING SPACE OEPRATIONS

Given the lower energy costs to lift from the surface, Mars has also become the principal site for directing space operations. The majority of the operations are commercial but substantial scientific and research projects, crewed and uncrewed exploration, process development, and pure research, are also managed from Mars for governments, Universities, and Private concerns.

WEALTHY RETIREMENT LIVING

The lower Martian gravity, about .3G is discovered to prolong life by way of less stress on vital organs. (Lunar gravity about .16 is too low and like no gravity induces muscle and bone loss along with other health troubles.) Mars hosts a community of wealthy person who have permanently relocated to the red Planet in retirement to extend their lives. They do not live communally, they are rich after all, but have in effected formed their own colony within the Martian community. This option is very expensive with the total number of wealthy retirees less than a thousand. However, because of their desire for personal services they employee a fair number of native Martian persons.

WEALTHY TOURISM

Mars is an exotic destination that can only be afforded by the wealthy. Given the scheduling of the cyclers transferring between Earth and Mars no one visits Mars for a week or two, but tourists are usually required to stay about 2 years. This reduces the pool of potential tourists to just the wealthy who can either afford to ignore their lives and commitments for two or more years or those still wealthy but able to manage their duties remotely and with lengthy communications lags.

MARTIAN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

A small community of rotating scientists from Earth live on mars researching the planet itself. Due to bacterial contamination from the settlement of the colony the question of native Martian life has yet to be definitively answered. (all microorganisms discovered to date have similar enough genetic make-up it could either be parallel evolution or contamination.) The scientists live is spartan conditions with nearly all of the technical and lab support coming from native Martian colonists.

MARTIAN FACILITIES SUPPORT

The largest number of people are actual native Martian colonists employed supporting the other forms of economic activity on the Red Planet. Nearly all of these people dream of living on Earth under open skies and weather, but these are dreams as they are shackled to the planet by their debt. None may immigrate from Mars without first clearing their debt to the colony.

I have major questions to research and answer. What would be the schedule of a Mars cycler, a spacecraft that ferries between Earth and Mars about 2130-2140? What the right inflation factor for cost between now and the novel’s period? How does daily assessed interest make loans nearly inescapable? How does the legal regime on Mars develop? And more.

That said I am excited and looking forward to this new project.

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Accessible Science-Fiction

There are SF writers whose works is at the cutting edge, the vanguard, of the genre, pushing the artform into new and bold areas. Their work can be illuminating and challenging often difficult for readers new to the genre to grasp and fully enjoy. These works, and they can be thoroughly enjoyable, are more suited to readers already well-versed in the form and tropes of Science-Fiction from which foundation the more experimental pieces can be explored.

I think of my own SF writing as nearly the opposite of that.

I would hope, and what I strive for, is welcoming, accessible science-fiction. That is not to say the vanguard, boundary-breaking, parts of the genre are bad, not at all. We need those bold experimental pieces to take us to new lands, new ideas, to keep the whole body healthy. But we also need works that welcome new readers, that allows people to wade into the safer and calmer waters before setting sail across the genre’s ocean. That is, in part, what I want to achieve.

Local Author, Critic, and Podcaster David Agranoff said of my debut novel Vulcan’s Forge:

“Speaking as someone who likes Golden Age and new wave science fiction I liked that this felt like a lost 60s or 70s novel. There is very little that feels modern about this novel, that is a compliment by the way.”

That is very much the sort of feel I wanted for my novel. The 60s and the 70s were a time of great expansion in the genre both in what was produced and in the readers coming to discover it.

Someone else who read the novel and who was not a big reader of SF books told me that they were particularly happy with how they did not feel lost as the new world with its own backstory unfolded for them. That is one of the most pleasing pieces of feedback I have ever received, and it is what I mean by ‘accessible science-fiction.’ It is the sort of thing I aim for and hopefully with hit more and more in the future.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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Streaming Review: Glorious

Streaming Review: Glorious

Released last week to the streaming services Shudder as an exclusive the cosmic horror film Glorious is a very different take on universe spanning threats.

Wes (Ryan Kwanten) is a man in the midst of an emotional crisis. Driving alone and distraught far from freeways and large cities and after a night of drunkenness at a lonely rest stop he finds himself trapped in the bathroom with an ominous voice (J.K. Simmons) speaking to him from the other side of a stall’s ‘glory hole.’ (If you do not know what a ‘glory hole’ is in reference to public spaces I strongly suggest that you do not Google the term from your work computer.) Wes endures horrors, physical and revelational, as the voice implores and compels him for a favor.

Directed by Academic, Scholar, and filmmaker Rebekah McKendry, and co-written by her spouse David Ian McKendry and Joshua Hull, Glorious is a small film that utilizes all of the potential of its limited location and cast in a spare but efficient 79 minutes. McKendry and cinematographer David Matthews continually find inventive ways to frame and shoot their film with a bare handful of locations, keeping clear of the trap of boredom within such a confined space. Like many ‘cosmic horror’ films following in the wake of Stanley’s The Color out of Space the film leans heavily into the purple and violet to convey the unworldliness of Wes’ plight and the looming threat over existence.

Even with its brief running time the script carefully doles out Wes’ backstory and the source of his emotional trauma, judiciously avoiding rushing in to explains too quickly, leaving revelations for the audience as well as the characters.

While the film is not sexually explicit, see above the term you should never Google from work, it is violent, bloody, and not lacking in gore but does not lean into those elements to achieve its effect, but rather uses them to enhance the story being told. One should not watch Glorious if the sight of on-screen blood is disturbing to you.

I very much appreciated that the film did not linger or lazily get to its point. There is nothing wrong with a massive satisfying 3 hour epic but there is also beauty in a story that flies without need for rest breaks.

The standout star of Glorious is J.K. Simmons. While audio manipulation has been employed to enrich the timber of his voice and enlarge its presence it is Simmons’s delivery that make the unseen character come alive with power and menace. Had a lesser talent been engaged here the product would have suffered terribly.

Glorious will not be to everyone’s taste. It is dark, it is disturbing, and its humor, where employed, though effective can be nausea inducing if that is your inclination. That said the 79 minutes I spent watching the film were thoroughly enjoyable and if this sounds remotely appealing to your tastes then you should surf over to Shudder and give it a go.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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The Chain that Broke My Novel

Late March 2020 saw the release of my traditionally published novel Vulcan’s Forge that played with Artificial Intelligence, the fetishization of 50’s Americana, the relationship between the

Flame Tree Publishing

individual and their larger culture, crime, Film Noir, and loads of movie references. It was a novel that I had written solely for myself and yest was purchased by the first editor I presented it to.

Late March 2020 is also the time the world shuttered, going into a prolonged lock-down as a pandemic, the likes of which had not been seen in a century, swept the globe, disrupting every aspect of life and killing far too many people. (Including a friend I had known for nearly 40 years.)

Needless to say, that was a very bad time to release a debut novel. As if a global pandemic was not enough to throw at my arrival as a novelist the fates had more hurdles to place. The publishing house was transition between physical distributors, snagging and disrupting sales to bookstores and they had just ended the contract with the studio that produced their audio versions, leaving Vulcan’s Forge without an audiobook not only as their format continued to grow but as that very format became more readily accepted during the pandemic.

Within eight weeks bookstore had worked out virtual launch events and people had begun to adjust to a new way of living during shut down, but the damage had been done and Vulcan’s Forgenever recovered from its debut.

Such is life. There are always factors in life far beyond your control or even influence. I don’t waste time crying over what has happened and cannot be changed. Life moves in one direction, forward, and that is the focus of your attention with the past providing lessons to improve your choice of paths into that future.

Now, I have not mentioned the most important link in the calamitous chain that broke my novel and the lesson I and others can learn from it.

Vulcan’s Forge sat on my agent’s desk for a year, unread and unrepresented.

When I discovered that my agent had lied to me and withheld critical information about his position at the agency, I contacted his boss and that is when he dropped me as a client. But for months I had been harboring doubts and considering dropping him. And that is the lesson, not all agents are good for you. In fact, they can hurt you in ways you cannot foresee. That is not to say you should never have an agent, but you must always remember that they work for you. If they are a poor employee, fire them and find another.

It can feel scary, nay terrifying, most of us search for years, enduring rejection after rejection searching for that representation but do not let that blind you to the truth. If they are not helping you then they are hurting you. There is no neutral position.

Vulcan’s Forge is history, though you can still order copies, but my future novels are not. I have a murder mystery/sf Novel under serious consideration at a major SF publisher, I am finishing up a military SF novel now and will then move onto crime and corruption on Mars. There is only one direction to life. Forward.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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My Writing Method

Some general nattering about how I approach writing.

As I have said in other posts, I am a plotter. I cannot start writing a story until I know how it ends. To me ending are where it all comes together and produces the satisfaction for the journey. For short stories I can begin just knowing where I start and where I end the few thousand word between the two I can discover. However, for novels I have to outline, sometimes just six or seven thousand words and sometimes nearly twenty-thousand words laying out character, world, story, and plot.

When I write I must write from start to finish. I cannot, as some other writers do, leap ahead, and write scenes near the end before I have gotten there in the manuscript. This may seem strange since as I have planned out the story and plot, I already know what the scenes do and why, but the truth of the matter is I can’t feel the scenes ahead of time.

Those hours and hours writing the sequences before a scene are an emotional journey not only for the fictional characters but for me as a writer. (And hopefully, for the readers as well.) I must experience the emotional journey to understand and feel the emotions in a scene I am writing. I may know that this is the scene where the scales fall from the hero’s eyes and they see the betrayal, but I can’t feel the devastation, the despair unless I have walked in their shoes and lived their trust. Other writers can leap into those souls more easily than I can. That is neither good nor bad. It is their process, and this is mine.

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A Writer’s Most Important Skill

Recently on Twitter someone asked what is the most important skill a writer needs to possess?

Now, in one respect that is a difficult question. Crafting compelling characters, devising interesting and engaging plots, mastering transporting dialog are all vital skills and having any one of these missing will seriously damage any book.

That said we all know published, both traditionally and independently, novels that not only had some of these flaws but still managed to find success and readers.

There is one skill that all writers need to master if their work is going to find readers and any measure of success.

You must finish the project.

The worst book you ever read, the one you hurled across the room in frustration at its lack quality was completed. That writer kept at it, worked through the hard parts, wrote when everything looks dark, and they could not see the way forward. they, persisted and reached the end.

A completed but bad manuscript can be fixed. Words can he cut out, can be added, can be rearranged. New chapters added or deleted, sequences can be reordered, new character created to fill out those thin sections.

None of that will save an unfinished story.

Worse yet abandoning a story when it’s not working, or when the plot has slipped through your fingers can become a habit. The stumbling block in the next story makes it easier to give up on that one too.

That is not to say you never abandon a project. I certainly have, but it is a fate that needs to be avoided whenever possible. Just as abandonment can be a habit so can complete and when finished it can be saved, it can be fixed. Steven King tried to abandon Carrie, but his wife refused to let him. Where would he or we be if he had?

Finish that book, that script, that short story. It may still stink but you will be better for reaching the end.

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What I Hate Most About Trad Publishing

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like traditional publishing, I have no real skills in marketing, layout, or cover design so it is a good thing to have paid professionals preforming those vital functions. My goal is and remains for the traditional publishing route. (And that’s no slight on those who take the hybrid or solely independent paths. In fact, it’s mad respect for managing all those skills.)

I have gotten all manner of rejections going to trad route, form cars, form emails, personalized rejections, and feedback on why didn’t work for the editors reviewing the manuscript. All of these I can take. Strangely I am rarely devastated by a rejection but move on to the next market. So, rejections cold and impersonal or detailed and inviting of further submissions I do not hate.

It is the lengthy time it takes that drives me bananas.

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary for my submission to a major SF publisher of my SF murder mystery novel. Six months since I was contacted by the acquisitions editor that it has been pulled for closer consideration. It’s waiting more than year that I find so hard to endure. (But I do for I have no real other options.)

My previous traditionally published novel, Vulcan’s Forge (A SF novel that evokes film noir) sat on my former agents desk a year unread but gloriously but sold to the first editor I sent it to. Had I not lost that year the novel would not have released the week the world went into lock down at the start of the pandemic.

Like Inigo ‘I hate waiting.’

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It’s Not ‘Mary Sue’ It’s J.J. Abrams

I was recently wandering through some YouTube comments on a reaction video to someone wh0 had just watched for the first time the original trilogy. Naturally there were comments from those who dislike the sequel trilogy complete with ‘woke’ as a pejorative and declarations of ‘Mary Sue.’

Now, I am not going to wade into the Rey debates, people can make up their own minds on the character and frankly heated debates over imaginary characters are dull and boring.

What I think is worthy of observation is the idea that it’s not a ‘Mary Sue’ problem but rather a J.J. Abrams has no concept how the world works problem. Abrams seems to think that skill acquisition and mastery is something that ‘heroes’ do quickly, easily, and magically. It is what happens with Rey in The Force Awakes progressing from utterly obliviousness of the Force to influencing weak minds with ease but it’s not Abrams first display of this sort of ‘easy to be the best’ mentality.

in the 2009 reboot Star Trek James Kirk enters Starfleet Academy as a cadet proclaiming he will be a captain in four years. And then doing so by the end of the movie. Ensign, Lieutenant Junior Grade, Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander, Commander, these are just words to Abrams and not the ladder of ranks once must climb to reach Captain. All that doesn’t matter because Kirk is the hero and an Abram’s story that cloak of heroism confers all abilities required of the plot regardless of training, work, and history.

Abrams is a competent filmmaker and director, albeit with a habit of copying others’ styles, but he is a terrible crafter of story and character.

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Writers Going to Write

One of the unfortunate side effects of being a writer, at least for me, is that it’s quite difficult to switch off the part of my brain that writes and re-writes while I am enjoying someone else’s artistic work. I remember attending a best-selling authors book tour at our local bookstore and after he read from a piece having the urge to provide feedback and notes. This applies to movies I watch as well.

On its release I thought Doctor Strange in The Multiverse of Madness was okay but rewatching it on Disney Plus has raised my appreciation of it. That said I have found one line of dialogue I really really want to re-write. Just add three words to line. That’s all.

Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) when lectured about sacrifice by Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) answers “Don’t talk to me of sacrifice Stephen Strange. I blew a hole through the head of the man I loved, and it meant nothing.”

That’s a good line, gives real weight to Wanda emotional pain and it works but I think it could be better.

“Don’t talk to me of sacrifice Stephen Strange. I blew a hole through the head of the man I loved, and, because of you, it meant nothing.”

Strange gave Thanos the Time Stone which allowed Thanos to reverse Wanda’s act of killing her love in an attempt to save half the universe. Putting in those three words helps move her motivation from Strange simply being opposed to her to something much more personal.

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Birthday Beg

Saturday is my birthday, and I will be spending it with friends playing the tabletop RPG Space Opera.

While others are quite charitable on Facebook using their birthdays to raise funds for causes this year, I am going to be self-centered and greedy and tell you what I want more than anything for my birthday.

Reviews

My novel, Vulcan’s Forge, has gathered a mere 11 reviews over two years and I desperately need more to appease the god algorithm.

If you have read the book, which can kind of be described as WandaVision meets Raised by Wolves (Humans raised by A.I.s obsessed with mid-twentieth century Americana) w a heavy dash of film noir, then please go to Amazon and leave a review. Even if you hated it, be honest, I am not asking nor wanting anyone to leave false flattering reviews, just reviews.

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