So the names won’t mean anything to the rest of you, for now, but I’ve been listening to two of my characters argue back and forth for several weeks. (At some point, you’ll meet Angus and her grandmother and understand that previous sentence.) The topic is doing new things on a regular basis. Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) refers to something similar as her “anti-stodgy campaign.”

The logic goes like this: According to studies, most people lock down their personalities pretty hard starting in their mid-teens. By their mid-twenties, things are carved into ruts. You will eat the same food, wear the same clothes, listen to the same music (usually the same albums, and not just the same bands), etc. for the rest of your life. Let me repeat that: for the rest of your life.

That frightens me. It’s worse when I realize how many people I have encountered in my life who are still THERE. (Three decades later, for me, as a scale of comparison.) Listening to exactly the same bands now on the state fair circuit, without a new album in decades.

So the Babe works every month to do something completely new. New clothes. New food. Maybe a new toothpaste or a new way to drive home. Conscious effort to say YES to new things when given the chance.

We call it “Adventures.”

Why this matters.

I have been infected with adventure.

Last week, we were in the Half-priced Books store, looking for something. Wasn’t there, but I stopped and looked at the used music racks, just for fun. I have found that I can frequently find some greatest hit album for a band I sort of know and kind of like, for about $5. Or, cheaper than I could get the two or three songs I really like from someplace like Amazon.

There was a album that looked just weird. Odd name. Weird picture. Hand-written font for most things. $4. What the hell. Looks like fun, and I need to do something crazy this month, so I bought it.

No idea who the band is. Walk out into the parking lot, jump in Baxter, and throw it into the CD player. Windows are down. Sunroof is open. Nice day.

Turned out to be a pretty good album. First of so far three from a Scottish band. Might have to dig up the others, and wiki tells me that they are supposedly recording a fourth (I think. Not looking it up right now to confirm.).

The band caught my eye originally because of their name: We Were Promised Jetpacks. And, damn it, we were. Somebody should do something about that.

The album was These Four Walls. Pretty good stuff. Not going to move the world, but a nice listen and I ripped it to add into the mix.

Last month, someone on social media suggested a band named Tinariwen, which they described as a Tuareg Blues. Yes, seriously. Once you get past the singing in a language I don’t speak, it is absolutely Mississippi Blues. The album I picked up was their 2015 concert album: Live in Paris. And I’m not usually a blues fan. But these folks are good musicians, and were having a good time.

Which brings me back to the original point: What new thing have you done lately?

🙂

A decade ago, I lost three of the closest people in my life, over the course of about a year. One simply vanished, his inbox overflowing, fate unknown. The second was my first wife, Donna, who died of breast cancer in the summer of 2008, after a three year battle she would never win.

The third was my friend Perry Clark. He was a gamer I met when I first moved to Seattle in ’97. A chef and raconteur who was endlessly charming and lovable. Former navy man who occasionally got called up to do things that involved disappearing without a trace for a week, and then coming home, unable to discuss.

But a dear friend.

When he had to return to Georgia to deal with an ailing parent, he drove there and then got stuck. Six months turned into years, and he found a job and and a good woman. I used one of those old Southwest travel passes I had accumulated in the day job, to fly him to Seattle for a week so he could be mybest man when Donna finally let me marry her, right at the end. Mostly, though, so I could get him home, to remind him.

Then I handed him off to some other friends who hadn’t seen him in years either.

That’s how good a friend and a man he was.

In February, 2009, I got a call. His number. A woman’s voice asking “Is this Blaze?”

And I knew immediately.

He had been at church on a Wednesday night, cooking dinner for the congregants, like he always did. Wasn’t feeling well, so he sat down, suddenly unable to breathe. His lips turned blue and he died in the arms of the pastor, surrounded by his other adopted family, returning to him all the love he had always given to those around him.

His sister told us the story. She flew up to Seattle a few months later, returning a few things, like the little brass telescope I had given him as a Best Man present, something he prized enough to have told her and others about it.

I miss him.

I miss them all, but today would have been his fifty-sixth birthday, and I never got a chance to say goodbye, or how much he meant to me. I hope he knew. I can only wake up and look at my phone, when it flashes the birthday reminders each day, and think about how much he would have enjoyed where my life had gone to.

He always took joy in the happiness and success of others, and I have tried to live my life the same way.

But today I miss him.

Happy birthday, dear friend. You are not forgotten.

So it’s been about six weeks of being a writer full time. Starting to establish some of the patterns of life, but got a ways to go. And new things keep happening in strange ways.

Got up Friday morning when the body said wake up. Managing to sleep until 630 or 700 many days now, up from 400 for however many years. Shower, feed the cat, clean the litter box. The usual Kabuki with Kitty.

Then I open the curtains in my bedroom and surprise an elk, grazing in the septic drain field. The house is T-shaped, with the two bedrooms on the crossbar and a bathroom between them, so I’m looking at her down the length of the bar and across the driveway. Maybe 60 feet away.

Really awesome. I have an elk in the yard. Those are infrequent. Got deer I see way more.

She looks up and locks on me as the curtains open, so I wave. (I’m like that.) She goes back to ignoring me and munching grass.

Go to fix myself coffee and breakfast, but decide to spin the computer around to face the other direction today, so I can watch her graze. Big, majestic matriarch, from the looks of her.

About the time I have hot food and hot coffee, I see more elk in the yard. They come up the hill from my neighbor on the left, running along the railroad tracks below us, and then cross my hill because I have cut all sorts of trails in the blackberry and underbrush for my wife to enjoy.

At this point, I realize the whole herd is moving through, as I have her at the far right end of the septic field, with a couple of other females with her, and then I get to see the boys. Buck with at least five points (maybe six, never got a clean view of him and the pictures are not that clear either.) Younger buck with a pair of 16 inch spikes. And a yearling with a single, eight inch spike on one side of his head.

Mob, just happily grazing. At one point, I counted fifteen butts in view, stretched across the west side of the property, right where it starts up the hill to my landlocked neighbor. (She has a driveway easement, blocked in by me, railroad tracks, cliff, and wilderness preserve. Nice lady.)

I had been planning to empty the composting bucket that morning, but as the herd moves across and down the hill, four of them ended up by the composter munching grass merrily. Since they outweigh me, I figure they get the right to stay, plus I like having big critters about. (They don’t seem to like this particular salt lick, so I need to change flavors. Usually, they vanish faster.)

So, for about an hour, I had a herd of elk in my back yard. A whole, freaking herd.

Then, Saturday. Turned around at one point and saw a yearling deer in the septic field. Wander over to the window and check. He stays put and munches. About an hour later, I now have four deer. That’s the most I’ve ever seen at one time. Usually, Momma gives birth to twins and I see them gamboling about all summer. (She’s likely to give birth in about two weeks, if she’s pregnant. Not sure with this group.) After summer, they’ll split up, except they haven’t.

The usual group all winter has been a two-year-old pair of siblings, boy and girl, plus a yearling from last year that I presume is the younger sibling. This fourth one might have been Momma. She was bigger than the others, and had a healing scar on her left shoulder that I couldn’t have covered with my whole hand. Fabulous Publisher Babe (TM) suggested that an aggressive male might have bit or scratched her.

Dunno. Just enjoy my critters. Have two water troughs out for them, and a salt lick. Having deer and elk around lets me know that I do not have any large cats in the neighborhood. That’s important, considering how far out I live in the wilderness, with a railroad right of way and a wilderness preserve less than two hundred meters from a corner of my property.

Had problems about six years ago, when someone clear cut a major chunk of land about a mile away. One neighbor thought they had a rogue male black bear (the less dangerous kind that generally just kill trash cans) in the area briefly, but I’ve had nothing for a while. Odd possum. Saw that might have been a feral cat once. Lots of hummingbirds and other winged attitude problems.

Once I got my house built in the middle of the last big open space in this neighborhood, the predators have apparently moved on. I can have fifteen elk wander through and occasionally bed down. And I find all sorts of spaces for deer to hang out. Haven’t been hunting for big game in nearly fifteen years, and don’t really miss it.

Mind you, I grew up hunting birds every fall. Pheasant, quail, occasional dove. Had pheasant the other day for dinner, and realized it was the first one I had ever eaten that hadn’t been shot by me or my dad. That was a weird thing.  Turned into a hippy in middle age. Might still go after birds one of these days, but don’t know anybody around here with the right connections. (My dad knew EVERYONE, when it came to getting permission to hunt birds on their land, but that was a thousand miles away.)

Later, I might post some of the pictures I took of my critters this week. Look on my FB wall.

And I’m writing like hell, with the new normal. Wrote two stories this week, with editing and publishing work. And more coming. My pace has more than doubled at present, and I hope to maintain that all summer, when I have a lot of carpentry work to do.

But for now, I got critters to share the yard with.

shade and sweet water,

bd

West of the Mountains, WA

Happy Dance!!!

“The Hammerfield Payoff (The Science Officer Volume 8) is now on sale at Audible, and it will be available on iTunes and Amazon within the next few days.”

For those of you keeping score at home, that means that Matt has caught up with me and completed Season One of The Science Officer. All eight books are now available in an audio format. This makes me happy.

In addition, I’m hard at work on what will become story #9, hopefully in the fall. This one will be a collection of shorts, instead of a novella, like the rest are, and will serve as a bridge between Season One (1-8) and Season Two (10-17). Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) is also currently researching how we might do the Omnibus Editions as straight audio books, by just having Matt upload his original files into the new title and running with it. Stay tuned for more details as I know them.

Things landed at a good spot at the end of The Hammerfield Payoff, and it had always been my intention to take a break so I could make some progress on Jessica. If you’ve been paying attention, you saw my note earlier this week that I had finished the first draft of Lord of Winter, with a planned publication date of December 2018 at present. The Red Admiral  (Jessica #6) comes out in a little over a month, and I’m quite thrilled with it.

Melissa is hard at work on doing audible versions of the Jessica Keller books, starting with Auberon and she is deep into Queen of the Pirates right now. Eventually, all nine of those will be available in audio versions as well, as I expect to write the last two Jessica novels (8 & 9) over the next 12 months and drop them on roughly the same schedule in 2019 (June and December).

Thank you for staying with me as I work through this mess. There are so many stories I want to tell, and so little time to tell them, but there is also good news on that front. On February 24, I walked away from the day job finally and have spent the last month organizing and speeding up my writing.

According to folks like Dean, most writers actually slow way down for at least six months to a year after they make the transition. Something about losing the focus on carving out whatever time a person has, between job, family, and life, to write. They suddenly have hours of free space that needs to be used writing.

It is a muscle. I am aware that I can’t just make a huge leap to writing 10,000 words a day. (I have done that twice, under weird and special circumstance, btw.) But this year, I want to jump from a target of 450,000 words to 650,000 words. That involves going from an average of just over 1200 word per day to just under 1800 words every day. I don’t write every single day, as things happen. (Went to a nursery in Morton, WA on Thursday and that was a day trip.) But Friday I managed about 5500 words.

The key is progress. For me, a little counter at the top of my spreadsheet that assumes 1781 words each day, offset by how many days into the year we are. Today is the 90th day of 2018. I’m a little over three days ahead of my production target, and I spent the entire morning in the garden. Planted new stuff: two FIlbert trees, another aronia, a new lingonberry, and a new kind of strawberry (flavor #15). Took a grape, a strawberry, a lavender, and an oregano out of pots and put them in the ground. Had some coffee and some gatorade, and now getting into the second half of my day. There will be words shortly, and then I’ll head into Seattle later and do a barcon. (That’s where I won’t go to Norwescon for personal reasons, but will hang out at the bar and catch up with old friends in town. If you read this in time, ping me with contact info if you wanna meet up, or come looking.)

We’re making progress. I’m speeding up in my writing, as I’ve hit 5,000 words in a day a couple of times now over the last two weeks. That means more Javier and Jessica for you.

Two tidbits, as rewards for people that made it this far: I just finished a short story that is a sequel to Fairchild. Publication date unknown, because it’s 6500 words now, and I could turn around and make that an Act One of a full novel, depending on feedback. Maybe later. Title: The Strawberry Dragon.

Second: there will be a new Alexandria Station story coming out in June. It takes place at the beginning of the Concordancy War, and is the start of a new timeline (new characters, new worlds, new everything) just before the fall of civilization. Title: Last Leaf Falling. Watch this space for more details.

Thank you for helping make my dreams come true.

Shade and sweet water,

bd

West of the Mountains, WA

yes, you read that right. Suvi’s birthday is March 19th. I have it programmed into my phone for birthday reminders, so I woke up this morning and got the note. What’s more fun is that the machine is smart enough to do the math, but slightly confused, because it shows her age as -5408.

That’s correct, by the way. She will be born on a rainy Sunday in March, according to the old notes. And the year will be 7426 CE. She will be decanted into a small probe-cutter, late in the war, and then go on to serve The Concord and humanity for far longer than any of her cohorts ever dreamed. (As a hint, I have my notes for Jean-Pierre, who will be born about 1600 years after Jessica Keller dies. He and Suvi will have more adventures.)

I never expected her to be the narrator to history, but I also never expected to write so many stories set into the Alexandria Station universe. And there will be more. Gonna write more Javier this year. Gonna add her to a couple of other timelines for y’all to enjoy, sometime soon.

So I realize it’s a Monday, but y’all should do something special to celebrate your favorite AI. I’m going to raise a glass later, and I hope you will join me.

Happy birthday, Suvi

Just because the audio version is totally awesome, and some of you are starting to realize it. (And because it’s Melissa’s birthday today…)

Go get your audio version of Auberon. 5 stars in all categories from one of my fans. Have you heard Melissa? She’s doing Queen now, and eventually all of them. Tell her how awesome she is, so she has an even better birthday!!

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Haven’t announced it all that broadly before now, but I have news. Weird news. Exciting and terrifying news.

As of late February, I am no longer employed by someone else. As in, I have gone full-time writer gig. It’s been about three weeks now, but the first one was at the Anthology Workshop, the next was helping Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) get her house ready for sale, and only this week have I gotten steady enough to go do stuff.

Since 2/24, I have written just about 60,000 words, which is a nice upgrade from what I was maintaining before, when I also had full-time employment. Also taking on marketing and administrative tasks for the Babe, so she has more space to out-write me this year.

The next Jessica Keller book (#7, Lord of Winter) is coming along faster than planned, as a result. Just about 70,000 words right now, but my days are mixed for writing. Add a chapter or a section, then go work on short fiction or the role-playing game I am creating.

I am also spending a lot of time right now on the secret project y’all will hear about in June, when it goes live and I hope everyone likes it.

It’s just weird, for me.

I’ve been a responsible, corporate drone for more than twenty years now. (Before that, a college adjunct, political junkie, student, or bouncer in a cowboy bar outside a marine base, depending on when you want to look.) Not getting up (and at 4am for the last couple of years) and having to put on nice clothes is not something I remember how to do.

And the cat’s really freaked out to have me underfoot all day. To me, it’s kinda forever Saturday, but she keeps waiting for me to go back to work.

Good Lord willing, never, and that I will make enough money this year, and in subsequent years, that I can be forever Saturday. You guys will be happier, because I’ll be writing and publishing more. I’ll be able to go after some of the other projects that always had to take back seat, like my sewing. The farm will be in better shape (got paper to burn and a couple of downed trees/windsails to deal with over the next few weeks). Plant more.

Do more.

So that’s my news. My exciting weirdness that I hope means better things. We’ll see.

shade and sweet water

bd

West of the Mountains, WA

The sequel to Kid Lexington is finally coming out individually.  Expectations picks up the story twenty-two years later, in 1974. A 1974 with Nixon and Watergate. the Symbionese Liberation Army shootout with the LAPD. Bad ju-ju. Kid Lexington has two wives, sort of. And a pair of (semi-fraternal), super-powered, twin daughters who are eighteen, full of themselves, and ready to strike out on their own.

Everyone expected Elise to put on a mask and fight crime, or commit it, not Petra. She was the stronger daughter, the one with more power. But Petra is the one that wants to save the world.

But her family has some very dark and surprising secrets, carefully hidden behind a suburban facade.

I first wrote Kid Lexington as an exploration of what the world would be like for an All-American Kid who just happened to be Japanese-American. Nisei. Hiding himself but still fighting.

Now, a generation has passed. His daughters face an even weirder future: blue-eyed blonds with Japanese features in LA in the early 70’s, a time when people thought the world was about to come apart. (Sound familiar?)

Get your copy now and explore some of the history of the Modern Gods universe today.

A few of you appear to have noticed already, so I’ll let the rest of you in on the secret. The Red Admiral is now available for pre-order on all the usual suspects.

“Jessica Keller replaces Emmerich Wachturm as The Red Admiral. Her first task: returning home and not only convincing Aquitaine to build her a new fleet, but then to allow her to use it to help the Fribourg Empire.

Their common enemy?  An A.I. in control of an entire star empire.

Politics of Republic and Empire must be overcome. Secret missions get plotted. Careers are made.

And lives are lost.

The Red Admiral—the sixth novel of the Chronicles of Jessica Keller—Jessica must confront both politicians and her most alien enemy. Be sure to enjoy the rest of the series, starting with Auberon.”

This is book six in the series. And, Good Lord willing, it will only be nine long. It was hard, however, because there is so much story involved. Like, HUGE! For comparison sake, Auberon came in at about 60,000 words. Queen and Immortals were both around 85,000 and Goddess was around 110,000. The Red Admiral is just about 140,000 words. Two Auberons and change. Y’all will enjoy it.

Part of the length was the need to cover so much ground. It could have ended up as two novels, if I was off the mood to make this a twenty-book set. (Gack, shoot me now). We left book five (Flight of the Blackbird) in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt, where the entire galaxy has changed. And a new war is about to begin.

But first, politics, both Imperial and Republic. Old enemies must find a way to become allies. And then we must find a way to pursue our dreams.

Recently, someone paid me the highest compliment on Blackbird. I’m paraphrasing, but something along the lines of “rarely do you see so much character development so deep in a series.” That is why I write. In the old days, you had characters who never changed over long stretches of issues. Think about the comic books published before 1990, give or take. The same in every issue. And never aging.

It isn’t that I take offense at the topic, but I’m turning into an old fart these days. I remember when 40 was old, and I’ll be fifty in a few years. One of the things that always irritated me about old book series was that the characters always seemed to be twenty-four forever. It was a lovely age, don’t get me wrong, and I’d love to have that body back, if I could keep the accumulated wisdom. You saw it less on television, because the actors weren’t immune to time, so writers could take into account children turning into teenagers, and newlyweds moving forward. Because we do.

People grow up. And change. In The Red Admiral, there will be a number of new character arcs you weren’t expecting. Partly, that’s because this has always been an ensemble cast kind of series. Jessica is in her early 40’s now. Vo and Moirrey are in their mid-thirties. Other characters will come along and get their time in the sun. I think most of you will be overjoyed at some of what’s coming in book six.

The hardest part for me right now is that I’m approaching 60,000 words on book seven, Lord Of Winter. I’m at the length where Auberon completed. However, Lord of Winter is just about halfway or so done, from the feel. That’s partly due to my craft improving, and me being able to tell a bigger, better story, but it is also because we’re ramping up the risks and rewards. Things are getting dangerous and galaxy-shaking, and I have to wrap it all up in less than a quarter-million words (assuming eight and nine come in around 100,000 each).

Worlds will collide. And yes, lives will be lost. Not the ones you expect, either.  But that’s okay as well. Wars are messy, ugly things. And Lord of Winter will be even bloodier (ye haff been warned.)

But mostly, I just wanted to let everyone know that May 10 is solid. The Red Admiral is available for pre-order. And you people rock.

So once a month, a group of us writers get together up in Lynnwood to talk, not about the craft of writing, but about the business of indie publishing. Most of the writers I know in the indie field do publish their own work, but would not call themselves publishers. It is a different mindset.

My wife and I do think of ourselves as publishers, because we go beyond just doing our own books. I have done a couple of anthology projects so far, and am going to be doing a major event this summer. She has a half dozen other authors she handles. And all of those efforts involve coordinating a number of different writers, ranging the entire spectrum from stone-pros to delicate snowflakes.

For many indie folks, the work isn’t worth the reward. (And I have to ask myself on a regular basis why the hell I’m doing this.) But I also see the benefits of doing some of those project. It exposes me to the fans of folks I pull into anthologies. Hopefully, if you, the reader, buy this for the person you like, you’ll read the rest and find my stuff acceptably entertaining. I figure if you like the kind of stuff I write, I can hook you. I’m a good enough writer, but I have to attract your eyeballs first.

At lunch, the topic of branding came up. Two of the folks I was talking to were in the process of redoing all of their existing covers with new art. There is an ugly secret in the publishing world related to covers. Every three to five years it is necessary to redo your covers to something else.

In Traditional Publishing, senior and managing editors come and go. When they do, the new person taking over will have different tastes, and so will push for covers to look a different way. Think back to the Sci-fi covers on paperbacks from the sixties, which tended towards the minimalist in many ways. Now compare that to the seventies, where big paintings with a scene from the book were suddenly everywhere. That also was every fantasy cover in the eighties.

But it changes. If you walk into the bookstore today, take a look at the covers on your preferred genre, and compare the picture to what you have on your shelf already from five, ten, or twenty years ago.

So for indie writers, we have to fight an ongoing-battle to keep refreshing covers. (I can cheat, because I write frequently write epic space opera. Throw a space ship or a space battle on it, and I’m pretty much good.) They were in the process of updating. I suggested that instead of taking two months off from the writing, it might be better to spend one or two days writing new cover blurbs for all the backs, and then dedicate a day or two each week to updating the covers.

I cannot imagine taking two months off and doing nothing but covers. But Fabulous Publisher Babe™ also does most of those. My job is to write new blurbs whenever she tells me that its time, as well as much of the marketing. But we do it ongoing. Constantly going back and looking at old stuff and seeing if it has become “dated,” and fixing it while maintaining the brand.

I have been thinking about this a bunch lately because the sixth Beyond The Mirror has just come out, and at some point soon I will drop number seven. Each of them has a sub-title, so that the reader knows what they are picking up.

1) Fantastic Worlds

2) Fantastic Worlds

3) Alternate Worlds

4) Dramatic Worlds

5) Dramatic Worlds

6) Alternate Worlds

7) Heroic Worlds

Two collections of early fantasy stuff (that I need to get back to extending one of these days). Two collections of science fiction. Two collections of stage plays. One superhero collection.

But they all have to be branded. Epic space opera is branded by having a big space battle on the cover. Hard-boiled detective often has a gun and a fedora. Fantasy will involve swords (and frequently bimbos with large chests in a state of barely-covered disarray, but I digress).

When I set out to do collections, I had no idea where my career would go. And I can prove it with the list of other prospective sub-titles I dreamed up for the Mirror books, including Mysterious Worlds, Pulp Worlds, Wild Steam Worlds, and Romantic Worlds. Might yet still use some of those. Dunno.

But each of them starts with the same cheval mirror in a wood-framed bedroom. It is what you find in the mirror (beyond the mirror, as it were), that tells you what you’ll get. Fantasy bridges, space ships, empty stages. When I get famous, a reader would be able to see one of those on a bookshelf and immediately know it to be a Blaze Ward short fiction collection.

If I have to go back and redo covers on them, the question will be if we use a different mirror in a different bedroom as the frame, plus new art in each of the mirrors that open your world to adventure.

That is the brand. Today. Tomorrow might be entirely different. I have no idea. Nor does anybody else. Harry Potter and Hunger Games both drove fantastically new forces into the world of branding when they came out. Now go compare your issue #1 covers you got way back when to what they are today.

Wow, huh? Same for us, with the extra bonus that we don’t have an art department we can just instruct to redo all the covers. That costs money. Or it costs a lot of time and not as much money. The choice is spending all of your time today, or a little every day until hell freezes over, or we get so fabulously wealthy that we can just pay someone else to do it while we spend all day making shit up.

Most indie writers don’t want to do that work. As a publisher, I understand that it is a necessity. Part of the job itself.

Plus, some of you will own collector’s items, one of these days, because you have the original cover, before it changed. There are Science Officer paperbacks that don’t say Volume One. Same with Auberon. And as I look at the shelf in my office, I have half a dozen volumes of “Beyond the Mirror: Fantastic Worlds.”

Kinda weird, ya know?