A brand new SciFi Story bundle just went live today and I’m kinda thrilled. You should be, too.

First off, Issue 001 of Boundary Shock Quarterly is in the bundle, so you get a whole bunch of fun and interesting science fiction inspired by the phrase “Captain’s Log…”, including one of the weirdest stories I have seen yet from Robert Jeschonek: Where No Furry Has Gone Before. (Yes, you read that right. Yes, that’s what happens. Yes, it is Planet Bob, so you’ll go AWWWWWWW)

My piece in Issue 001 is an Alexandria Station story, set at the height of the Concordancy War.  Last Leaf Falling. One of the heroes is a colony ship named Lansdowne. She’t not Suvi, but maybe Suvi’s great-granddaughter. The villain of the story is none other than CW Kinnison, first introduced in Queen Of The Pirates, but you learn far more here, and in several other stories coming out in the near future, as I fill in history.

And there are other great stories to read. Michele Callahan starts us off with the first of a five-part serial story: ESS Defender. M.E. Owen gives us a Station story. The list goes on and on.

And a note on Boundary Shock Quarterly. I’m the Editor in Chief, but I’m also one of the writers. My contracts with the Syndicate give them back the rights to their stories three months after initial publication. However, I have made the deliberate choice that many of my stories that go into the magazine will not come out separately for a significant amount of time. (Think years.)

What I figure is that I have a tendency to write in series, and several of these stories exist in larger arcs. In some cases, I have written second stories as part of exploration, but probably need five or so before I publish a collection of them, so you’ll see them in Beyond The Mirror editions before you see them in the wild.

Hint: buy yours today when you can get a whole bunch of stuff with it, because once it is gone, it is gone foreverish.

🙂

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Then the fun second piece: When Allyson approached me about her bundle, she asked if I had anything that fit her project, in addition to Boundary Shock. I had been planning to save the new novel series until next spring/summer, but this was Allyson asking, so I showed her the new Star Dragon novels (2 done, 4 to go), and she loved it.

Book One: Awaken The Star Dragon sets off a new universe as different from Alexandria Station as I could get. First, I went pulp. My goal was to set myself down in 1950 and try to describe a Science Fiction future as they might have done it in one of the old Republic Serials, like King of the Rocket Men. Getting the social context was more fun than the tech, but that was a ball as well.

Next: aliens. Silly, sly, bizarre, fun.

And the Fermi Paradox: If there are aliens out there, where are they? Answer: hiding from us, because humans are the most dangerous, violent species in the galaxy.

Problem: A crime boss has captured a human to use as an assassin. But nobody counted on losing control of a killing machine, who has now taken over the gang, and plans to take over the entire Accord of Species.

So now, two criminal scientists must capture another human, and hope this one can help them save the galaxy from falling under the tyranny of the humans. To do that, they need a special kind of human.

They need a cop.

I have six novels about Gareth Dankworth (aka The Star Dragon) mapped out, plus a variety of short stories that actually pre-date Awaken The Star Dragon to help set Gareth and his old world up. I think you’d enjoy this one, and there will be a bunch more soon.

So go get your copy today.

And here’s Allyson’s pitch:

The SF Plot Twist Bundle, curated by Allyson Longueira: I’m a hard reader to surprise. That’s to be expected, really, given what I do for a living. As a writer, editor and publisher, I’m far too involved in what makes a good story to be easily taken in by one. So, when I can’t forget a story—or find myself getting sucked in to it again and again when I’m supposed to be doing something, you know, work-related—I take note.

And if a writer can surprise me, well, that’s something truly unexpected.

Every writer in this bundle did just that: gave me something unexpected. Be it a twist I didn’t see coming, a voice I didn’t expect to hear, or an expression of emotion I wasn’t prepared for, these wonderful stories gave me a great gift. And that’s why I’ve chosen to share them with you in the SF Plot Twist StoryBundle.

As an amateur student of history, I have read lots, and absorbed things from a variety of timeframes and place. A friend of mine ended up in a rough place recently and some others of us were talking about how he had gotten there and what it might take for him to come out the other side. I won’t go into PII, but he’s in a spot where those things that worked for him when he was twenty-five won’t now that he’s fifty-five, and I don’t think he understood that the world had changed when he wasn’t looking.

For example, he just recently (this year, I think) got a cellular flip-phone. Didn’t need one before because he was an artist type with a sugar momma, so he could work from home and not have to face the evil outside world. Mentally, he’s still in the early 90’s technologically and culturally speaking.

That led the conversation to inflection points that he missed. And probably won’t be able to navigate in the future, either (I give him 3 chances in 100 to manage, personally). Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) and I talked about technology changes, and I wanted to record my thoughts here and maybe invite some polite discussion on your thoughts.

Bill Gates did not invent the modern personal computer. But he did understand what was coming, and worked his ass off to make the software a thing separate from the hardware. I remember all the other operating systems you might have in the period 1980-1995, depending on your needs and preferences. Anybody remember their DOA dates?

Because MS-DOS won the desktop war. And then they invented this thing called Office, by giving you a word processor, a spreadsheet, and several other productivity tools that suddenly put all the power of the home office in the hands of everyone.

Similarly, Windows existed from a fairly early point, but MS came out with Windows 95, and suddenly the GUI was the wave of the future. (And yes, I remember Apple, which a few times has made it above 10% total market share, only to collapse again back down to a form of irrelevance that just proves how dominantly Microsoft took over the future. If you eliminate ipod and iphone sales, Apple ceases to exist.)

But those were both fairly casual inflection points. To look at a Kondratiev Wave, they were interesting, but not sufficient. You could miss them and catch up later. Šmihula lists another interesting concept:

• (1985–2015) The wave of the Information and telecommunications revolution (ee above)
• (2015–2035) The wave of the post-informational technological revolution (see below)

So let us look at two things that happened in 2007, and how we really might have hit a cultural inflection point comparable to Gutenberg printing bibles for anyone, if Šmihula  is right.

First, Steve Jobs made the smartphone the tool of the future. He didn’t invent them. He didn’t even improve on other work by better companies, but he changed the cultural trajectory of communications technology by getting everyone else to demand the smart phone. (I remember a conversation with a friend in about 2005, listing off all the functionality that I wanted in a personal assistant, since everybody had invented little tablets that kind of did things, but none of them did all of them, as I had a memory box, a digital camera, an mp3 player, etc. The list I worked up with him looked remarkably like the first iPhone, but Steve Jobs was a miserable excuse for a human being, and I wasn’t going to buy one until he was dead. My friend saw the news of Jobs’s death first and sent me an email entitled “Time to buy that iPhone?” but he’s like that.)

Nowadays, not having a smart phone marks you out as a technopeasant of some degree. (And yes, the iconoclast hipster/dipster with his artisanal flip-phone is still a fool. The World Has Changed.)

All of human culture is available at your fingertips, sitting in a restaurant. Do email. Look something up. Watch a video. Text with friends. Take a call. Write yourself notes. Play a game. From a device that fits in the palm of your hand. How cool is that?

But something even more interesting happened, in retrospect, in 2007. Jobs popularized the smart phone but everyone has the technology now, and many other smart phones are better than what you can get from Apple, in terms of power and capabilities. And the devices are becoming more and more commoditized every day. The coolness factor has worn off, and folks demand capability.

Jeff Bezos gave us the ability to publish our own books. To put something up without having to deal with the Manhattan gatekeepers who would decide what was allowed in print. Amazon upended the old world, and shattered the control that the big publishing companies had over the printed word. Worse, now anybody could read ebooks on their new smartphones, or tablets, or computers, and Amazon made a ton of money.

TradPub still thinks that the ebook is a fad, and that readers will eventually get over it and come back to tremendously expensive paperbacks or hard covers. The cost to print those books is nowhere near what you’re paying for them, especially in the massive runs that fill up every B&N in the country, but that’s the only way they make money, because they’re just throwing wet spaghetti at a wall and hoping something sticks.

And they don’t get it, like my friend doesn’t. My paper sales in 2017 represented 0.3% of my overall sales. Not three percent. Three-tenths of one percent. And I sold a metric shit-ton of ebooks. Enough that I retired this year to write full-time, based solely on my ebook sales, which the market keeps seeming to want more and more of.

The World Has Changed.

2007 is going to be one of those points. Like Gutenberg. Like Columbus discovering two new continents on his way to China. Like other things that you might mark as “nothing will ever be the same” moments.

To get back to my friend: he has a flip-phone now, and wants to make money in his art, but doesn’t understand that his view of that industry, as it was in the early 90’s, is not the way it is today, and will never go back to that again.

I look at him and think of that kid getting off a Greyhound bus in West Hollywood with a suitcase in one hand and a dream that he’s “going to make it.” Sure, kid.

And I don’t have the heart to explain to him that he won’t. I just smile and nod. Support him emotionally and ignore those subtle requests to borrow money he’ll never pay back. Grit my teeth and remain silent when I want to say he’s doomed and needs to go out and learn the new things, because it doesn’t work that way.

In our conversation, I compared him to a writer I know circumstantially (friend of a friend kind of thing. He couldn’t identify me in a police lineup). That man’s in his 70’s and was there five years ago.

The World Had Changed, and he had to start over. He did. Is working his ass off to try to get back onto the treadmill and learn a whole new way of thinking and working. He has to indie publish his stuff, because TradPub doesn’t want anyone that isn’t statistically likely to write a epoch-shattering best seller, like J.K. Rowling did.

And he won’t do that. Will never write a mega-level USA Today best seller. But he isn’t trying. He is publishing new novels in his old series, where he gets to keep most of the money, and the House that has the early books keeps selling enough that they won’t revert the rights to him.

He’s kinda screwed, but I would have lost money, betting against his ability to make it this far, so I keep my mouth shut and offer any useful information I might be able to give him, because he wants to learn.

That’s how badly the world has changed. You are going to be learning new ways of doing things for the rest of your life (assuming that the interwebs as we have come to understand them are not destroyed by giving them to the same companies that destroyed cable and network television).

Monopolies in any industry are bad, and lead desperate and creative people to invent new futures. Most of the time, they are good. But they have a downside, and not everyone gets it.

You must keep learning, because the pace of change does not waver. What you knew yesterday might not work tomorrow. Indie Publishing is in the middle of the seventh revolution since Bezos unleashed us.

Let me repeat that: SEVENTH. And I’m working with a group of tea-leaf-readers to try to understand what the EIGHTH is likely to bring us over the next 12-18 months, and what we might want to ask for, in order to kick off the NINTH in around 2020.

“Plus Ça Change, Plus C’est La Même Chose”

“The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.”

The details will change. The UI will be different. Somebody will invent a better widget, and you’ll have to learn how to use it and master it, or become its servant.

And you must start moving now and never stop, because you will lose ground.

The World Has Changed…

So it has been one hell of a roller-coaster over the last year. We started out, on the drive down to visit Joshua for the eclipse, talking about how would could possibly start a new speculative fiction magazine: how we might do it, what tools were available, how to handle money, who we could recruit, etc.

On Tuesday (July 10), Issue 003, Grand Theft Starship, goes live everywhere.

One of the key elements of this project was to drop three issues in short order, so people understood that I was serious that this was going to be an ongoing thing. I have been putting Issue 004 (Robots, Androids, Cyborgs, Oh My) together this week, but the drop date for that one moves now to the quarterly schedule the name promises, October 10, 2018.

My plan is four issues per year: January, April, July, October. We’ve got themes through Year Four already on paper, and I’ll start talking to the crew soon about future themes they want to explore.

Better news: of the fourteen authors I recruited, only one has apparently bailed on me, so we’ll continue to have quality craziness for everyone to consume. And I’ll start the process soon of recruiting a permanent replacement for my open slot.

To date, the first three issues were all just over 70,000 words of fiction and essays. Issue 004 is over 90,000, because almost everyone wrote into that one, and I was even able to blackmail Joel Ewy into doing both a story and an essay. (I’m also starting the blackmail train for him to just write me a bunch of essays on technology and ethics, because he has some fantastic depth on the topic and I enjoy reading them. And one of my undergraduate degrees is in Philosophy.)

In Year Two, I have reached out to folks to see if they want to do the Special Guest Appearance thing, possibly as a recruiting tool, and possibly because they think it might be fun. Through Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) I know some seriously interesting writers, plus I have begun to actively expand my network into new places currently underserved by the speculative fiction marketplace.

Also, I have written it all down. The Release Pitch I used to recruit folks. The contract they signed with me to join the Syndicate (separate from the publishing contract for every issue). The organizational process. The method I use to build a magazine out of stories. Everything.

There will be a new Business For Breakfast book in September (I think) that details how I did it. The only secret sauce right now is desire. You have to walk to think and work like a publisher, rather than just an author, something I can do. (Not everyone wants to wear that hat, and that’s okay.)

But I was having lunch with a friend yesterday, talking about the marketplace for pro rates these days. One Romance. Two Mystery. Half a dozen or so Horror. Somewhere around a score Fantasy/Science Fiction. Not much else.

In my wildest dreams, one of YOU reaches out and we talk, and you buy the B4B, so you can go start your own magazine. It won’t compete with me. Hell, I’ll help publicize you. Your success does not hurt me. It helps, in fact, because the most likely outcome is more readers looking for more stuff to consume.

Wanna start an Urban Fantasy Quarterly? (Or Monthly. Whatever.) You can. I figured out how, and there will be a blueprint shortly you can follow and adapt to your vision of awesomeness.

The sky is the limit. And that’s the best part.

The mission of Boundary Shock Quarterly is twofold.

First: “On Theme. With Weird.” Envelope-pushing stories that make the reader think. (Pretty damned successful on that score, to date.)

Second: Diversity of voices. Speculative fiction, right now, is largely dominated by Middle-class, middle-aged, white males (Guilty on all counts). I want to recruit non-white, non-male, non-CIS writers going forward, and give them a platform to be discovered. And a place they can work out weird stuff, without having to worry too much about editorial interference.

Your support as a reader is crucial, because my writers will only keep doing this as long as they’re having fun and making money. Please spread the word. This is mostly a marketing project for me, because getting rich off of it directly is right up there with getting struck by lightning. But all my fans will hear about it and some of you will buy. Same for their fans. The hope is that you cross over and start reading the other authors and telling folks about them.

And now, I’m almost done with the Year One craziness. Year Two will add stuff, so what would you (as a reader) like to see us add to the project? What themes would make you squeee? What columns or features could we add to make it even better?

I’m hoping for some art in Issue 005 and going forward. Three artists have expressed an interest, so there’s hope. I’ve talked to a song-writer about doing a rock space opera (or something).

I want everyone else to have as much fun as I am, if that’s a possibility.

You make my life possible. Thank you.

Heya, folks.

Issue 002 of Boundary Shock Quarterly is now live and for sale most places.

Unlike Issue 001, I wanted to go someplace smaller with 002. The result was an old, inside joke among a group of my friends from table-top RPGs: Tuesday After Next.

It is not the present, and not some incredibly bizarre and different past, but today with some dark and interesting things added in to push the boundaries. Here is the spec I sent out:

Not all science fiction is about galactic exploration. Right now, the future is being born as computers grow ever-more-powerful, and technology wrests control of the industrial heights from the traditional powers. After Dieselpunk and before Cyberpunk, you have the Makers and the Hackers, modern rebels hiding and striking from the shadows. Welcome to the Tuesday After Next.

Dieselpunk, by the way, comes after steampunk (circa 1860-1910) and Raypunk (1910-1930), so it represents that period that roughly straddles the Great Patriotic War (1930-1950). Later, you have a movement called Atompunk (1950-1970), followed by Cassette Futurism (1970-1990). No, I don’t know who came up with these terms, or the time frames, but they’re close enough for my needs.

Cyberpunk is a Gibson and friends thing. (He’s the best known.) It involved cyberware, obviously, of a much more sophisticated bent than we have today with internal insulin pumps and hearing aids embedded in the skull. We’re not there yet.

But we have punk.

The modern aesthetic lends itself well to the dark and gritty. But I wanted that darkness to shadow our world, and not the future. Some of the best speculative fiction starts off with the present tense and then asks: “Yeah, but what it…?” And it was always political. Anyone who thinks otherwise must really have his head up his ass to think that Star Trek was ever an a-political or a-social thing, to say nothing of Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, for example) or the recently departed Harlan Ellison (Have you READ Repent, Harlequin, Said The Tick-tock Man), or Michael Moorcock (Behold the Man).

But I wanted a dark present. Makers, before they turn into Hackers in another generation or three. “Where are we, and what does it mean?”

The result was a lovely, broad mix of stuff. Joel Ewy wrote me a FANTASTIC essay on the state of the art, and its implications. (I’ve told him since that anytime he wants to write me an essay on the topic, instead of a story, I’d be happy as a clam. Once you read it, you’ll understand. He’s a so-called Digital Philosopher, so he’s focused on the ethics of technology. And I’ve known the man for forty years, as of this fall. Wow, I’m getting old.)

Leah R. Cutter gave me a fantastic piece about a man who can see the very heart of the city with his powers, blending the very best elements of urban fantasy with speculative fiction in a way that never quite gets around to explaining itself and leaves you wanting more.

Michele Callahan continues her (five-part?) story ESS Defender in Issue 002. Like you, I’m already hooked and just waiting for her to turn in her last section so I can see how the story turns out. It keeps getting weirder and more fun with every turn and every roll of the dice, but you’ll have to buy all five issues tor read it all, or beg for her to eventually turn it into a novel. (Hopefully, book One in a whole new series.)

I’m even in there with the first of a new series of stories about a couple of punks named Carl and Deke, who are practical jokers with a social commentary. There are more stories in the series, but they’ll get published sometime later, as I’m just catching up on things. (But when they get there, I want Bradley Cooper to play Carl.)

Have you signed up for our newsletter yet?

My plan, once things get into full swing, it to do a cover reveal first. That should occur in August. In September, I’ll follow that up with a reveal on the Table of Contents, so you can see what awesomeness is coming. (Then finally a reminders that “Hey, you missed it!” heh)

I have the stories to Issue 004 in hand and am working on them as we speak. Robots, Androids, Cyborgs, Oh My! and it comes out October 10, 2018. It will also be the biggest book, I think, with stories from fourteen of us.

In between, we have one more fast launch to pay attention to. Issue 003 is now out there for preorder (or paper, if you want your hard copy before anybody else can read the ebook.)

Grand Theft Starship.

What would you steal, with the whole galaxy to pick from?

It comes out July 10, and that finalizes our early drop cycle and puts up onto the quarterly piece (Jan, Apr, Jul, Oct) going forward. Which is why you need to be signed up for the newsletter, because nobody has really solved the whole subscription model in such a way that it would just magically appear on your device to read.

I am really excited about this new project. It has been a labor of love for me, but my writers are enjoying themselves (I hope) and turning in quality work. Readers have been buying it. (Couple of reviews would be nice, ya know?) And I want this to run as long and as hard as it can.

Next year, I’m planning even bigger things. I have invited a few people to write Special Guest Appearance By stories. A couple of graphic artists have expressed interest in joining in, as well as a song-writer (Rock Opera Space Opera?) I’m working on his scholarly stuff.

Thank you for your support. I could not do this without a lot of fans willing to send me their coffee money on a regular basis. It makes my life possible. You make my life possible, and I’m trying to pay your support back with good stories and wildly entertaining, time-killing pursuits.

The best compliment anyone can ever give me is to say that they had to stay up all night reading because they couldn’t put the book down. I’m working on giving you more of it.

Right now, that’s Boundary Shock Quarterly. Issue 002. Tuesday After Next.

I hope you enjoy.

So I’ve been a little secretive about this project I have been working on for the last nine months. Lots of work to get here. Lots more to go. But today is finally here and I’d like to make a little noise on the topic.

The first issue of Boundary Shock Quarterly is now available at Amazon, Kobo, and other places (itunes refuses to let me find a link to it. WTF?). This is a quarterly speculative fiction magazine that I am launching, with a small syndicate of authors, artists, creatives, and other weirdos. To make a splash, the first three issues are dropping June 10, June 26 (Amazon, Kobo), and July 10 (Coming Soon), and then we’re going quarterly, so 004 will come out on October 10, 2018 and Issue 005 on January 10, 2019.

• 001 – Captain’s Log
• 002 – Tuesday After Next
• 003 – Grand Theft Starship
• 004 – Robots, Androids, Cyborgs, Oh My

Who are we? Writers and artists from a wide variety of backgrounds. Some fantasy writers, some mystery, some romance, but all of us with a deep background and interest in speculative fiction. I have challenged each of them with a theme, and asked them to write me a story, or draw me one, or even compose me one on that theme. And we’re going to keep doing this for as long as I can interest people in buying it and we’re having a good time.

So where does it begin? Here’s the theme I sent to my current, unindicted co-conspirators for the first issue: Captain’s Log

For many of us, those opening words “Captain’s Log…” were our introduction to our science fiction dreams. Voyages to explore strange, new worlds, seek out new life, and boldly go. What will we find out there, when we go? What dangers will we confront? Who will survive?

I got back an amazing range of crazy fun stuff. Michele Callahan is going to serialize her story, ESS Defender, across the first five issues, because she can, and she’s got a great story to tell. Robert Jeschonek sent me a story that’s completely nuts, and still makes you go “awwwww.”

My own story is Last Leaf Falling. It is an Alexandria Station story, but this one takes places in a new spot, during the Concordancy War itself. 2800 years after Javier Aritza and 3100 years before Jessica Keller will be born. The main character is another Sentient starship, the Citymaster Boston, a colony ship. Her personal name is Lansdowne, after the street outside of Fenway Park, and she must face her worst nightmare, a galactic civil war that is about to rise to the levels of Götterdämmerung itself.

She must learn how to be a warrior, but on her own terms. And she finds her teacher in the most unbelievable spot.

So come, join us on our adventure and explore all the strange and wonderful things there are out there.

Boundary Shock Quarterly, Issue 001: Captain’s Log, now available.

And Issue 002 is coming very shortly.

Sign up for our newsletter and never miss an issue.

And thanks for all the support and the love.

-b-

I don’t normally do food reviews, but today we’re making an exception.

Backstory: Dropped in on a new writing group up in the Roosevelt neighbor of north Seattle this week to see some friends and write with them. It’s a long drive from the farm, and they wanted to meet at 6pm, so Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) and I headed out mid-day. Got north and hit the Starbucks nearby for a while to do some of the heavy interwebs things I don’t want to do on my limited bandwidth out at the farm.

From there, we had some time to kill, and a whole bunch of new restaurants to try out. Normally, I would have walked three blocks over to Pies and Pints, but they’re gone now. Which sucks, but I have a different dealer for my fix. (Email me if you want her contact info. Got seven pies left in the freezer after seeing her this week. They’ll last me a month or two at most.)

So I had checked out all the places in the neighborhood. Sushi, burgers, vegan, whatever. One place jumped out at me, and she decided it would be a nice place to eat, so we went.

The joint is called Toronado and includes heaven.

She and I are carnivores who graze. Dead critter. Fresh veggies. No bread. Plus with our mix of food allergies, I’m always hesitant to try places at random.

But I cracked open their menu to see what we had. Page One includes a Plate Of Bacon. Beef, Pork, Lamb. Yes, you read that correctly. Beef Bacon. Lamb Bacon. Homemade on site, as I understand it. (The publican was also the owner. Really nice guy happy to nerd out about food on a quiet Tuesday afternoon.)

I have never had beef bacon. Or lamb. I had no idea what I was missing. You have no idea what you’re missing, either.

Then, I spotted something on Page Two to review. Macaroni and Modern Cheese.

WTF is Modern Cheese?

Turns out to be a different way to make the roux, with sodium citrate warmed as a binder.

This being Seattle, I had to ask. Every fool wanna-be chef in this town makes his roux with onion powder. Same with his gravy. To me, that’s the sign that there’s no more cheese involved than you need to give it color. Same with the gravy, they made it without tailings from frying sausage.

(I have gotten into arguments with professional chefs that you don’t include onion powder in roux and gravy. Where I come from, that’s possibly a tar-and-feather offense. And the farther I get from downtown Seattle, the more cooks agree with me, and the safer I am with chicken fried steak, eggs over easy, and biscuits.)

But there’s no onions in the modern cheese. He went back and asked the cook, just to be sure. And they do a three bacon version.

I’m sold.

She got a pulled pork sandwich.

About two bites into the bacon appetizer, she immediately texts a friend of hers. They frequently do Girl’s Night without me on Thursdays, where they try out new restaurants to see what’s good. They’ll be going back there. And I have already ordered a to-go box of the mac and cheese for her to bring home.

When I write Jessica Keller, it is almost always fashion porn to some extent. With coffee thrown in as well. I have been writing new Javier Aritza (Science Officer) stories lately, and those have tended towards  food porn. Hell, I just wrote a scene in the new Gareth novel (book 2 when it comes out) that takes place exactly in Toronado, just because I wanted to nerd out on the food for my readers.

And oh, by the way, beer bar with a massive, rotating selection of stuff, and an owner/publican who was nerding out with two businessmen at the next table over about a variety of beers he kept delivering in basically shot glasses for them to sample. Smart guy, knows his stuff.

You will thank me. Go up to the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle. Corner of 12th Ave NE and 65th St. Right next to the Whole Foods.

Come hungry.

We now return you to your regular tv dinners.

🙂

In a previous post, I mentioned that I had hit Pulp Speed One in May, with month left over. That’s the measure when you are on pace to write one million words in a year. It breaks down to an average of 83,334 words per month, sustained over twelve. In April, I started tracking my speed, because I had been at about 40-45,000 words per month while holding down full-time employment, and now I was working for Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) as an IP generator.

So, April ended at just over 75,000 words, and I hadn’t even been pushing that hard. Writing is a muscle. You don’t start out with a marathon. You start with a walk around the block. Then two blocks. Then a job. Etc.

I’ve been writing for a little over four years now, in the sense of fiction for publication. (I’ve been writing forever, but that’s a different story). I have some of the muscles, but not enough. Learning to write for many hours, instead of one or two, here or there, was a new thing. Something to work up to.

So I worked in April. And almost doubled my normal speed. Woo-hoo.

But then I hit the end of the month and realized that I was close to Pulp Speed One. Dean recognizes up to Pulp Speed Six in his blog, jumping by 200,000 word increments. At Six, you are writing 2 million words per year, which sounds like an astronomical number.

For context, a novel is defined by many of the award categories as being 40,000 words or more. One million words, therefore, would be the equivalent of writing twenty-five of those novels, or roughly one every two weeks, with some time off for vacation. Fifty working weeks per year, twenty thousand words per week. Four thousand words per day, five days per week, with weekends off.

Boom. Pulp Speed One.

But something interesting happened in May. we went down to a writing retreat in Lincoln City, OR. A group of us rented a house on the beach (off-season), packed it with food and coffee, and wrote all day. It goes like this. Write for an hour or so, then walk around the block. Rinse. Repeat. All day.

Fabulous Publisher Babe’s goal when she does these is 10,000 words, and 10,000 steps each day. No television. Limited internet. Prepared food at hand, so no need to go anywhere and just through lunch together and eat it.

Sit down, shut up, and write.

Let me repeat that, for the folks in the back: Sit down, shut up, and write.

Someone asked me my secret to productivity. Can you guess it? Sit down, shut up, and write.

When a normal writer is on, they can type 1,000 words in an hour. What FPB has taught me recently is that when we hit a thing called “Flow State” that can jump to 2,000 words in an hour.

For me, the early part of a novel requires lots of thought, because I write into dimly-lit hallways. I have several ideas, and a direction, but nothing so formal as an outline. And I occasionally just write into the darkness and let writer-brain take over.

At the retreat, I wrote the following daily word counts:

• Tuesday: 8200
• Wednesday 7500
• Thursday 9000
• Friday 12,006
• Saturday 7500

This was writing all day, with time off for lunches with local pros a couple of days and a few dinners with friends. Note that Friday I went off the rails as the story hit stride. Saturday afternoon, I finished the novel I had started the previous Sunday, just before driving down Monday morning. Just over 48,000 words written.

When I hit Flow State, the craziness mounts.

Yesterday (Friday, June 1) is a REALLY good example. I was getting to the end of the latest novel (Packmule, out in early 2019). Wrote about 2500 words in the morning block, before we had to head off and do errands. Stopped at a Starbucks at the corner on the way home so she could spend 45 minutes doing some internet heavy publishing work (easier there that out at the farm with iffy coverage). In those 45 minutes, 2000 words came out.

Then we went home, fed the kitty, and headed out again, for a meeting she was attending. I waited in the front room, plugged into the wall and standing up, and banged out another 2000 words in 55 minutes. From there, straight into town to a friend’s retirement from day-job party. Hung out in Seattle with some former coworkers all slowly escaping the hell that was the previous job. Got home around 730 pm, fired up the machine, and banged out about another 1800 words in 90 minutes.

And I stopped there because the novel was done, save for the denouement I wrote this morning (the last 1500 words in a much different tone from last night). Yesterday’s word count: 8200 words, in one day.

Won’t hit that today. Don’t need to. But I could.

I ended May 2018 with 120,000 words written. That’s Pulp Speed Three with a little room to spare. (116,667).

Dean talks about writing like it was a job. Sit down and write for eight hours, as if you’re on the clock. I’m getting myself to the point that I can do that. And I try to write every day, missing maybe one day every two or three weeks when things are crazy, or long drive somewhere, or just not feeling the words. I don’t beat myself up over not writing, because I’m racing Death, not anything so short-term as this week’s writing target.

So let’s math (deal with it, I never told you there would be no math here). Let’s pretend like I can sustain 8,000 words, five days a week, with two weeks off. Possible, because I just did that during the retreat.

That’s 40,000 words in a week. That’s a novel, if you will. Multiply that by 50 weeks.

You are looking at 2,000,000 words. Pulp Speed Six.

Now that’s a crazy goal. Might be impossible, because I have to edit, and publish, and stuff. And have a life.

But let’s also pretend like I could hit flow state on demand, which is getting easier and easier as I practice. Let’s drop that to six hours of work, or a block in the morning and a block in the afternoon, with time off for all the other crazy shit I need to do to make life happen.

Pulp Speed Nine is 60,000 words per week. Or twelve thousand words per day, five days a week. Or six hours in Flow State.

I have four novels in the can right now, and am about to move on to the next project.

Let’s go get crazy.

Okay, a bit of a background on the term. Pulp Speed refers to the Pulp era authors like Lester Dent and others, who frequently wrote a short story in a day and mailed it off to a magazine the same day. They didn’t rewrite. They didn’t agonize over every word and sentence. They just wrote. And published several stories every month, across the then-humongous universe of SF magazines.

The modern consensus of Pulp Speeds goes something like this: Pulp Speed One is measured as a pace of writing ONE MILLION WORDS in a year. Which sounds insane, but breaks down like this. 1,000,000/12 = 83,334 words per month. In a thirty-day month, that breaks down to 2,778 words per day average.

Given that a writer who is on point and not fucking around on the internet can usually hit a pace of 1,000 words/hour, that’s roughly three hours writing, every single day.

Obviously, if you have a day job, or a young family, the chances of you being able to carve out that many hours to dedicate to writing each day are low. However, on the other hand, if you have quit the day job to write full-time, you need to treat that like the job you left behind.

Divide your day into two parts. Pick the half of your workday that will be dedicated to writing, and write.  (“Sit down, shut up, and write” is the best advice I can offer you.) The other half of your day is going to have to be dedicated to “work.” Editing, Covers, Email, Social Media and Advertising, etc. If you have reached a level where you can also bring your spouse on full-time as your assistant, then they can take as much of the non-writing tasks as possible, freeing you up to dedicate to your craft.

For those of us with a bit of the hunger, the workday is frequently twelve hours. Six to write. Six to publish.

So now, back to math.

Pulp Speed One = 84,000 words per month, sustained.

To increase to Pulp Speed Two, you will need to sustain 100,000 words per month, which comes in at 1.2 million words per year. (We’ll leave off Three+ speeds for now, because the lower numbers already frighten some folks.)

I left the dayjob at the end of February this year, so I’ve been on my own for three months now. In March, there was a lot of transition and learning, plus Fabulous Publisher Babe ™ was in the process of selling her house in the city and moving out to the farm with me.

In April, I hit a stride. The normal pace of around 38,000 words I had been sustaining for the last few years suddenly jumped up to 75,000. I hadn’t previously been tracking word counts on any scale less than a year, but I wanted to know where I was at.

Hell, that’s almost Pulp Speed One, and I wasn’t even trying that hard.

Writing is a muscle, just like any other. You work your way up to a marathon. You add another disk to the weights. One more push-up today than yesterday. That sort of thing.

So I decided that in May, I would push a little harder for words than I previously had. My mornings start around 6 with a shower (I am managing to sleep that late, most days, from 4 for the last several years). Maybe I feed the kitty if she’s in the main house instead of the girlcave. (We call that the “morning Kabuki” because she is a very communicative kitty, once you understand interpretive dance.)

Then I feed myself, check the mail, check the news, and read my web comics. At that point, it is usually 730-800, and I crack open the current project and begin to cycle to hit stride and voice.

And I try to write until 1100. Sometimes I fall off sooner when I run out of words. Some days I go clear until noon. But that’s 3-4 hours dedicated to words. All that adds up.

I just got back, just now, from a trip to Lincoln City, Oregon, where four of us had rented a beach house all week, to do a writing marathon (“Sit down, shut up, and write”). Came down on Monday, which was a five hour drive from the farm so didn’t get a lot of work done.

• Tuesday: 8200 words
• Wednesday: 7500
• Thursday: 9000
• Friday: 12,006 !?!
• Saturday: 6500

Felt like a slacker Saturday, but the novel was done. I had started it last Sunday, so a week ago, and wrote the damned thing in a week. Current draft is 48,000 words. It will need more editing than usual, but that’s because I’ve never sustained this speed this long, and I was creating a whole new universe, as the first novel in a series I plan to write.

———-

And it’s pulp. Which I found appropriate, considering. I tried to write the whole thing as if it was the late 40’s, and this was one of those radio/cinema serials. My main character could easily fit in with Steve Rogers, Clark Kent, or Kim Kinnison, having that earnest Boy Scout thing going.

At the same time, I wanted to write it like they envisioned technology was going to be, from the vision of 1948, so there are some lovely anachronisms baked in that are already present tense today, in a story that starts on Earth in 2387, before falling through a wormhole and escaping the Einstinian trap that is the Terran Solar System.

My hero has to encounter aliens for the first time in his life. And overcome his own sexism (remember: pulp SF from the 40’s, so dames in heels and skirts, and never capable of self-actualization, ya know) to discover that alien women don’t need to be protected from bad things, thank you very much. Eye-opening for the boy.

But at the end of the day, they are all just people, and Gareth always wanted to be nothing more than a hero. He can never go home, but he can take it upon himself to protect this new, galactic civilization as the only human these people have ever known.

In a way, I also tried to write this as a reversal on the Superman origin story, with a human suddenly cast into a weirder universe as the first and only of his kind (actually not, but that the genesis of the whole story, and you can read about it later). He has hopes and expectations that he will have to carry on his shoulders.

And yes, he gets to be a hero.

But it’s pulp. Hand-waving space fantasy of the juiciest kind. And it was a lot of fun to write, so there will be more, but I will have to tuck them into writing gaps going forward, because I have two other series I want to finish off (three, actually, which is another long story for later).

But back to Pulp Speed One. As of right now, I’m at 88,000 words for the month of May, with eleven more days to go. I’m pretty sure I can hit 100,000 words, writing 12,000 words in 11 days.

I am not going to try to sustain Pulp Speed Two. At least, not yet. These are muscles, and I want to work slowly up to that speed. And to have fun.

But we’re still talking 85,000 words, every month, going forward.

Or, in happier terms, how about two 40,000 novels, every month? It won’t work that way, but that’s because I am committed to writing two shorter pieces every month, while working on whatever novel I’m in the middle of. You will see an Imperial Shit-ton of new stuff soon. I have 24 things in the can right now. Six of them are for the first six issues of the new SF magazine that I am launching in two weeks. Six more are stories in those same universes, to extend the stories you’ll read. That leaves twelve more you’ve never seen before. And counting.

And speeding up.

Y’all ready for a firehose?

shade and sweet water

bd

West of the Mountains, WA

Just four days from now, it will be gone forever. You should make sure you have your copy today, or tell your artist friends about it, because there’s way more here than just things for writers.

The Write Stuff Bundle

• Creating Your Author Brand
• Completing Your To-Do List
• Writing a Novel in 5 Days While Traveling (or how to keep going while going)
• How To Get Your Book Into Schools (or your art)
• Estate Planning for Authors (or any creative whose stuff will remain 70 years after they do)
• Secrets to Effective Author Marketing
• an On-line Lecture on Heinlein’s Rules (and why you need to know them)
• The Ancient Child Thirty Day Program from Steve Barnes
• Business Planning for Professional Publishers (and anybody who hates spreadshits, not a typo)
• The Three Act Dramatic Structure for Writers

All of these are way bigger than just writers. Any creative type (yes, YOU) can learn a lot from some seriously professional, extremely successful artists sharing their experience, and doing it at a pretty good rate, since you get all ten for a good price, rather than the normal amount.

And the clock is running. Four days and change are I write these words, and then gone forever.

You need to rush out and do this. Or get this for the artist in your life as a Mother’s Day gift (today), a Graduation present, birthday, or a very early Christmas.

They will thank you.

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