WIBBOW = Would I Be Better Off Writing?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: more yes.

Been down with a nasty cold all week, sleeping, coughing, hacking, and yuck. The worst part was that I just wasn’t able to think. Sitting in the middle of a novel (okay, right at the end of Act I, but still…) and there were no words. None. Emptiness.

Ended up surfing the interwebs, walking all the way through FB, grinding pinterest, catching up on reading. The artist side of my head worked fine. I even sat down and designed a new character for some future Pathfinder campaign (hero or NPC encounter TBD), because that was about the limit of my brain.

It was late yesterday before I had words again. Today before I could commit them.

It’s a hard feeling, not being able to write. Once I made the decision to be a writer, that was what filled up all my spare time. Thinking about writing. Thinking about how to be a better storyteller. How to be a better writer (different thing). How to reach a wider fan base so that I can inch closer to my dream of being able to support myself purely on my words.

Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) has her various income streams. She has Knotted Road Press (I’m just an employee and talent). She also is a member of Book View Cafe. She does publishing work for other folks, as well as covers and interiors. She had other businesses she runs, unrelated to her writing. She has a supportive spouse.

(Don’t mind me, I’m feeling down on myself a little, but it’s nothing serious.)

I am slowly building my bakery. Publishing short stories, novellas, and novels. Participating in anthologies like the CampCon stuff. Editing anthologies. Doing bundles.

I had a story come out in an anthology this week. I’ll have a novella in the Jessica Keller stories come out as part of a bundlerabbit bundle in two weeks. I’ve got a whole new novel getting ready to come out sometime soon. I’ve just sent off a new Doyle Iwakuma novella to first readers. I’m actually getting things done.

But the brain just has not been there. And it frustrates me to not be farther along than I am. But I’m getting there. (Thank you for listening to me rant. I always wonder if anyone but my mother actually reads my blog.)

But I’m feeling better. Got 1800 words done this morning, for the first words in four days. The future looks bright again.

---

The other topic I want to talk about today is world-building.

Unlike most writers, I didn’t come at genre-fiction through any of the normal channels. I wrote poetry for a while (you can see some of it here and even buy some of it as well). I’ve been into role-playing games for how long? Wow. Yeah. Longer than some of you have been alive.  I even did plays and screenplays for a while. (You know where I can get $5M to make a movie with? Heh.)

One of the reasons I don’t do short fiction is that I tend to create whole worlds before I start writing. History, philosophy, technology, culture. Depth and detail.

That takes a while to do. And I end up with way more stuff than is appropriate for 4,000 words and then never come back again. I get invested.

As a result, I write lots of little stories in the same worlds, with the same characters, following them over time, rather than wrapping it all up in one big novel. Not that I don’t do novels, but I really do enjoy writing the novella better. I can concentrate on one event, one task, one turning point in someone’s life, rather than wander through the shire and then to Mordor and back again in order to have some meaning.

This is on my mind because soon I’ll be publishing a whole new novel, book one in a new trilogy that is straight up super-hero/spandex. I already have Two and Three plotted out, and will get around to them as time permits. More Jessica Keller first.

With superheroes on my mind, I wanted to put together a whole other superhero story, but set it in a different time and place. Different characters. Different problems.

But because I had already had all the rules and physics for “how and why superpowers?” worked out, I could just pick up Kai Di Peng’s world and create other heroes and villains, put them in a different era and on a different coast, and go forward.

(That was the pain in the ass about being sick all week. I have heroes and villains largely worked out, and wanted to start exploring story ideas. You have to be able to brain to do that.)

Kris always says to throw out the first four ideas you have when it comes time to write. Partly, your first instincts will end up being low-hanging fruit, or writing on rails, and not turn out to be memorable or distinct. There are only a few stories out there. What makes your better than everyone else’s? (Trick question, luck and voice.)

So you take the first ideas and write them down, and then let yourself edit them, adding notes, ripping chunks out, adding new ideas, ripping those out. Eventually, you (hopefully) end up with something novel and cool for folks. You have to be able to brain to do this.

So I’ve been world-building in my spare time. Superheroes. Supervillains. Super problems. Strange implications. Dirty secrets. Believable resolutions. Happily-ever-afters. (And let me tell you how much it sucks to be standing on the back porch, in the rain metaphorically, watching your ideas sit down to dinner while you can’t brain.)

Even thinking about blogging was hard. Nearly skipped the whole concept all together, except I use this time to organize my thoughts. To think about how I think about things. To make myself a better writer by working out concepts here, and getting feedback from interested folks (Thank you, those folks who respond. I read them all, delete the trolls and bots, and post them up in a day or so. And I’m happy to have offline conversations. I learn from folks when that happens. Serendipity).

So, for those of you who have made it this far without hurting yourself rolling your eyes, how do you feel about superhero stories? I don’t mean comic books, because I can’t draw better than stick figures, and you would have to deal with something like XKCD or OOTS. I mean superhero stories as (genre) fiction. Real characters, with real problems, overlain with physics-defying crap happening in the background? (J.D., I already know your answer.)

Most of you are here because I write SF. (Nobody reads the fantasy stuff, from what I can tell.) Would you read a story about a young woman whose best friend is killed, where she swears vengeance and sets out to achieve it? What if the killer was a superhero, so she had to make herself into a supervillain to do it? That is book one of Modern Gods: The White Crane. Kai Di Peng. Villainess.

Hopefully, you’ll come along for the ride. I have a LOT of world built. It would be a shame not to share.

shade and sweet water,

bd

West Of The Mountains, WA

 

Horseshoes, Hand Grenades and Magic

There is a new CampCon anthology available today!!! I have a Brak story in there (technically a Sleipnir story, but whatever).

Get yours today.

 

Every year, the folks behind the Fiction River Anthologies (Kristine Katherine Rusch, Dean Wesley Smith, Kerrie L Hughes, Rebecca Moesta, Mark Leslie Lefebvre, John Helfers, and Kevin J Anderson, editing) do a workshop down on the coast to provide the guts of the thing. It goes like this:

Once a week, in the dead of Sunday night (mid-day for Dean) participants get an email with this week’s theme, editor, and rules. From that moment, the writers have until midnight the following Sunday night/Monday morning to deliver your story: on topic, in theme, within length requirements.

If you’re late, you aren’t in.

Now, repeat that for six week.

This year, the topics were: Fear, Justice, Taverns, Wishes, Aliens, and Pulse Pounders. So: horror, crime, travelers, YA, SF, and adrenaline.

Forty something authors participated. Big names, newbies doing their first Coast Workshop, everything in between, and one camp cook (me). Fabulous Publisher Babe™ does these as a participant, but I just sit in awe and watch.

Actually, that’s not true. I go down for one very specific reason over and above taking a week off to be a writer. Some of you already have heard that I’m going to be editing a pair of anthologies this year, targeted for publication in 2017. This is where I learn my own craft.

So you have 40+ writers that have done stories, and most of these people do all six. And they are all damned good. These are the kinds of people who support their families on their writing alone.

Each day of the workshop is dedicated to one anthology. All (five or seven) of the editors will be at the front of the room, a Greek Oracle of accumulated wisdom.

For each story, Dean reads the title. John reads his summary of the story (which can be quite silly), and then each of the editors takes a turn discussing the story.  For each of them, they are telling the writer if they would buy the story for that particular anthology, or not, and why. The authors each sit quietly and listen and (hopefully) learn.

For the writer, this is invaluable information about why the story worked or didn’t work, from some of the best names in the field, including the only person to ever win a Hugo award as both a writer and an editor (Kris). The others are all professional editors with decades of experience in the field and dozens of novels. Freaking amazing insight.

(One of the rules is that though all the authors have the opportunity to read all the stories, the authors are FORBIDDEN to discuss the stories with each other. The only ones allowed to express an opinion are the editors. This is not a peer workshop. This is led by seasoned pros.)

So each editor reviews the story. They have different tastes, different impressions, different back-stories. You will see a broad swath of opinions.

What’s fun is that only one person matters.

The last editor to speak is the one who is actually buying for her anthology. You might have six people who hated the story, and one who loved it and is buying it. You might have six who loved it and rated it a strong buy, and get down to the last person saying “I didn’t get it.”

Editing like this normally happens in a blank room. The author only gets an acceptance letter, or a rejection, with no exposure to the actual sausage-making.

What this workshop does, is it teaches writers how to understand the editorial process, hands on. It really drives home that given a professional level of storytelling (and these folks are pros), it all comes down to a matter of taste.

For me, I go to the evening sessions, after all of the stories have been reviewed. That’s when the fun part happens.

Having picked 4 strong buys and 20 maybes, the editor now has to “build” their anthology.

This is the secret sauce. This is the reason I take a week off work and bribe my way in the door with fresh brownies.

Last year, many of the stories were at the top end of the length category, so around 6,000 words. When it came time to buy, the editors all had around 70,000 words to work with, so roughly 10 stories, plus anchor authors (big names invited to send in a story). Several very good stories didn’t make it last year because the editor simply ran out of space.

People took that to heart. Stories came in around 3-4,000 this year, and some editors ended up with 15 stories.

Lesson: in addition to on topic and theme, shorter stories have a better chance of being bought.

Also, the editors talk to themselves out loud while working, so you see them rate every story into genre and sub-genre, and then talk about only having one of this genre and seven of that. As a result, the one gets in, and only two or three of the seven do.

Lesson: understand what other contributors are likely to do, and try to find corners where you are all alone.

If you hit everything else—theme and genre and word count—but nobody else will have done something like this, you create a slot in the editor’s mind that needs filling. And guess what? You have just written piece to fill it.

Lesson: swing for the fences when it comes to weirdness. Don’t go for low-hanging fruit or obvious stories.

This year, forty-some writers turned in 250-some stories. Roughly 1,100,000 words. One point one million.

The quality of work, after several years of these workshops, was such that last year, they did an extra, seventh anthology just from the left-overs. And it was filled with really good stuff. This year, they just said up front that there would be a seventh. And that editor had to cut their story selection for the final anthology down from the twenty-five stories he originally wanted, AFTER the other six had taken what they wanted.

I’m a pretty good writer. I don’t do short fiction, like this stuff. (Technically, what I do it serial fiction. The soon-to-be-fourth Brak story coming out this week is an example.) I could probably spend a year honing my writing chops to be able to fit into the middle of this group in terms of skill or craft, if I wanted to take the workshop next year.

But to reach that level, I would have to take an entire year of working on short fiction, and doing nothing else. Seriously, these people are that good. And worse, they’re going to spend this next year working on their own craft, so I would maybe, barely, hold my own with them, year over year.

If I was committed to short fiction, I probably would make that choice. I would have, two years ago.

Instead, Fabulous Publisher Babe™ suggested I go longer, and write more novellas and novels, so I can sell my stuff Indie. There are already bookstores and places on the West Coast where you can buy my novels off the shelf (squeeeeeeeeeeeeee). I need to keep turning out longer material to keep my fans happy, and to keep growing the pool of folks looking forward to buying my next title.

But I learned a LOT from being there. The two anthologies I’m planning to edit will be different from these, but Fabulous Publisher Babe™ and I spent the five hours driving each direction discussing editing. Every morning, a long walk on the beach and around to Taft, talking craft. How to organize, what order to put things in so as to evoke the emotional response I want from the reader. Even how to stack stories in order to have strong and weak ones complement each other as the reader encounters them.

That being said, if you want an amazing selection of writers to read and discover, I highly recommend that you go wander through the back catalog of Fiction River and get yourself some issues. All around a theme, so you will be exposed to a variety of genre exploring such a thing, from Romance to Science Fiction, Mystery to Fantasy. (And these authors are being nominated for major awards, sometimes for stories in the Fiction River anthology. Let that sink in for a moment.)

And you will help support these authors. For many of them, short stories in an anthology like this are advertising for their novels. They are a way for you, the reader, to be exposed to a new voice that you might like, in the hopes that you will go walk their catalog and be excited enough to tell other people about it.

Because that is a significant view of the future of Indie publishing, right there.

 

shade and sweet water

bd

West of the Mountains, WA

Recently, Fabulous Publisher Babe™ had her annual Chocolate and Wine Party, where we invite her friends (mostly writers), my friends (mostly rednecks) and other folks we like. I got into a discussion with several other folks, some of whom were familiar with the various pieces that make up the Alexandria Station universe.

One of them was honestly confused (as opposed to playing devil’s advocate or just being an asshole, like other folks might have) about why Kiswahili would be one of the languages spoken in a distant, science fiction future. (Bulgarian also confuses people, but that’s a different story and a personal preference unrelated to broader sociological explorations.)

As we got to talking, I realized that for her, white privilege was something so ingrained as to be invisible. Her science fiction is always white, possibly with a few “ethnic” characters thrown in to be “progressive” but dominated by a White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant culture (what we call WASP in the states). And usually male.

HISTORY LESSON

Until the last quarter of the 20^th Century, all prominent American culture tended towards the WASP. Catholics were given some shrift, but they were still strange, loud creatures from the southern frontier of the general European ancestry that make up middle-class culture here. Put simply, they were generally poorer and less well educated, and relegated to ethnic ghettos in large cities, from which their children or grandchildren might escape and normalize into the broader American (read: WASP but not losing their Catholicism) culture.

Similarly, Asian immigrants were third class citizens for the first two-thirds of the 1900’s, with strict regulations on Chinese and Japanese immigration and legal rights.

Part of the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s was to give blacks in this country the right to vote (1964 & 65), to move wherever they wanted (red-line laws and housing covenants), and to marry whoever they wanted (Loving v. Virginia, 1967).

But the movement also had much broader repercussions.

What this meant before that was that most of the prominent science fiction was written by white, male authors. It wasn’t that women and minorities of various flavors didn’t write really good science fiction, but there was a hard, glass ceiling above them keeping them from getting the sorts of accolades and recognition that white men could expect. (As someone explained to me recently, they published, and then they were disappeared.)

I might be a little bit of a Social Justice Warrior, but that’s mostly because I really don’t give a shit about someone’s color, or religion, or sexuality when I’m reading their work.

I care that they’ve written me an engaging, entertaining story, preferably either keeping the axes they want to grind to a minimum, or using the best parts of science fiction philosophy to explore the “What If?” aspect that makes me and others think about how we might perceive the world differently than it is today. To say: “here is a different way of seeing and thinking about the world than what you know.”

So (shaggy dog story cut short): Why Zanzibar (the planet in the Alexandria Station universe)?

It goes back to the fact that Zanzibar is an island off the south east coast of Africa, a little north of Madagascar. In the old days, the natives had a reputation as merchants, explorers, and traders, ranging all up and down the coast of Africa and all around the Indian Ocean. The Portuguese weren’t the first explorers to reach India and China by sea, just the first Europeans to do it.

Big difference.

In many ways, I see them culturally similar to the inhabitants of the British Isles, explorers happy to jump in a boat and go looking past horizons. What I’ve seen of history tends to bear this out.

Give the people of Zanzibar access to a star-drive, and I see the same damned thing happening.

They went out, found a world to terraform, warm with lots of water, so that it kind of reminded them of home, and set down such roots as these sorts of folks might.

Today, the United States has a population of around 325 million. The EU is similar, if a touch larger. India is a billion. China a bit larger, although both are facing serious collapse risks in the next three generations, due to demographic and cultural pressures too large to go into here.

But Africa is huge, both as a place and as a population. They would go to space just as readily and happily as all the white people that make up the science fiction television and books you normally encounter. (Seriously, who can’t envision Idris Elba commanding the bridge? He and Robbie Aeliaes do look remarkably alike, you know.)

In my expected vision of the distant future, the universe is more than just white people.

Some planets will be “ethnically homogenous” in the sense that the vast majority of the population will be of a single type (Finnish, Vietnamese, Nigerian, something) by nation of origin. But many worlds will be an interesting cross-section of humanity, like you tend to find in major urban centers on the West Coast (think LA, the Bay Area, or Seattle). Those folks are culturally all American after a generation or two, regardless of their ethnicity or the place where their great-grandparents might have been born.

So let’s talk about Zanzibar the planet, since I’ve only ever written a couple of stories around the time period of Doyle Iwakuma.

Zanzibar and Ballard are relative neighbors in space. They make up two of the four gems on The Story Road. Both places had never really fallen below steam technology when the AIs wiped out Earth and other planets and caused the Concord to collapse.

When the factories that make the parts are all wiped out simultaneously, you have to invent the machines to make the parts to make the machines to make the parts. Given years of lead time, you can do it. Given weeks, the factories grind to a halt. Throw in fleets of AI starships intent on killing anything they think of as the enemy, which is pretty much everything, and you have space dragons. Or sea monsters.

Zanzibar is a blue world. 85% ocean, with a number of large and small continents. When they lost star travel, space became less interesting, but they retained enough technology to handle steam and internal combustion. As a result, they did not fall into the sorts of barbarism that beset other planets when the regular shipments and freighters stopped bringing in crucial supplies.

Ballard was the same way.

At some point, Zanzibar reached a tech level that allowed them to repair/rebuild one of the ancient star-drives, in a rough and dangerous way.

Explorers took this fragile vessel and leapt into the darkness. Ballard was among the closest planets. So the Zanzibari went there first.

Because Zanzibar is a mostly aquatic world, they built their first ship like any other ship, landing it on water rather than land.

The first explorers to Ballard landed their ship in the bay at Ithome, the brightest set of lights visible on the dark side of the planet from orbit: proof of technological civilization.

Ballard is also a land of explorers, settled by a strange combination of Finnish and Japanese folks.

When the Zanzibari came, both sides found much in common, beyond their shared humanity. What they all have in common is a love of the sea.

But Zanzibar isn’t white. Ballard is kinda, but that was intentional on my part in order to have a strange and interesting crew.

The first Zanzibari Ambassador to Ballard was Vanick Nkya. He brought his thirteen-year-old daughter Vanessa with him. She met and later married Thorson Iwakuma, son of Artur (known a Papa Artur in the clan). Vanessa’s children are daughter Ajali, the oldest, and three sons: Jakaya, Thorson, and Doyle.

Sixty years ago, I couldn’t publish a story where a main character like Doyle Iwakuma was half-black African and half-white Finnish. Especially not as dark as his skin is and him being The Captain. Traditional publishing wouldn’t dare touch such a story, especially since race wasn’t that big a thing to this crew, to say nothing of Doyle’s niece Piper, oldest daughter of Ajali, being married do a big Finnish white guy named Bjorn.

Remember, it was illegal for blacks and whites to legally marry in many states (mostly the old traitors of the Confederacy), until the Supreme Court handed down Loving v. Virginia in 1967.

Let me repeat that, in case you missed it: IT WAS ILLEGAL.

Kirk kissing Uhura on national television, a white man and a black woman, was a scandal. A SCANDAL. Seriously, people.

Let that be your history lesson, next time you open a book written today. Shoulders of giants, and all that.

When I write science fiction, not only do I not presume that WASP males will be in control, but I actively look at my characters and ask if there is anything about them that requires them to be of a particular ethnicity, gender, or sexuality. If not, I won’t automatically make them white. I’ll go play.

Fabulous Publisher Babe™ tells me I have a tendency to write stories where someone is sticking it to the man. Sue me.

It isn’t necessary in this day and age to toe a line drawn by those in Traditional Publishing who don’t believe that women or minorities can write good science fiction. I’m not saying that all of Traditional Publishing felt that way, or that all readers did. But some did, possibly still do.

And if you don’t believe me, let me feed you to several of my female and minority science fiction writer friends and see how well your arguments hold up. M’kay?

Instead, I believe that the future will be a lovely rainbow of folks. All ethnicities. All religions. All colors. All sexualities. Everyone.

They will be human.

Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) and I have this game we play called “The White Picket Fence.” Last week, she I and were talking to a new life insurance agent (I’ve been with the agency forever, but many of the people I’ve never met in the flesh before.)

Young man was extremely bright, very earnest, massively competent at the task of making dry, dull numbers mean something. (If you need life insurance, and you probably do, let me know and I’ll connect you. Wonderful people.)

However, he was hopelessly lost and confused as he tried to wrap his head about our lifestyle and estate arrangements. Because, let’s face it: She’s got the house in the city, in a lovely, walkable neighborhood with grocery stores, restaurants, and entertainment close by. I live in what we affectionately refer to as “banjo country.” To whit: most days, 2-3 bars of 3G coverage, no interwebs, and you can’t see most of my neighbors for the trees, even in winter. (Starbucks is still only 6 minutes away, outside the pocket.)

And we like it like that. There are weekends in the city, and weekends at the farm. There are nights I spend here with her, and nights I’m out there alone. We’re both adults. I’m far less of an introvert than she is, which is not the same thing as not an introvert. I’m just far more gregarious. I still need quiet time without vampires around.

So I’m trying to explain to this young man that we have just finished wills and post-nuptial documents about how the literary estates will work, because those have to remain separate. (Hers goes to six nieces and nephews, plus their families. Mine goes to the five step-daughters. But we needed life insurance, because you always need to be prepared.)

And we’re not going to consolidate into a single place. (Well, if I won the lottery, there is a plot of land not far from here where I would tear down the three houses on it and build a Roman-style place with an inward-facing arcade and a garden, but I’d probably still keep the farm, or sell it to some friends for $1 and build a tower keep on a headland overlooking the Sound. You would, too.)

And my friends aren’t artists, for the most part, so they don’t grok our lifestyle either. We don’t want the white picket fence thing. We’re too busy having adventures, like taking the train to Portland a few weeks ago to have lunch with some friends, and then coming right back two hours later.

I look at some of people and wonder at how miserable they are. I used to be like that, before I decided one day I didn’t want to be angry any more. Completely re-invented myself from scratch, to the point that even the before and after pictures surprise people. (Seriously, my employment badge is somebody else.)

And I continue to reinvent myself. Because I wanna be happy. Most of the people I know who are miserable either don’t know how to be happy, or can’t bring themselves to leap off that cliff. They’re afraid that the world might look at them like it looks at me.

And I feel sorry for those folks, because I have honestly not been this happy in something like 30 years. It’s a sad thing to say, but I was just too angry for too long, even when good things happened to me.

But I learned how to get over myself. And how to get out of my own way when it came to being happy. I never really gave a shit what other people thought about me (ask my Mom about when I was a kid. She’s got great stories. Some of them are even kinda true.)

But now, I aggressively don’t care. I’m having fun.

I also happen to be coloring outside the lines, but they aren’t my lines.

I live in a world where I can write something the way I like it, fix the things my first readers scratched their heads at (and there are usually lots of those), and then publish the damned thing. No editor. No editorial re-focusing this year. No wronged, damned length (I write in the 15-25k range naturally. No literary publication publishes those.) No wrong, damned topic. Nothing.

It’s liberating, not fitting in.

I don’t even submit things for TradPub publication (Caveat: Hive stories automatically get submitted to the New Yorker, because they have the BEST DAMNED REJECTION POLICY AROUND. I might also throw things at Playboy for rejection now, since they are trying to get back to being the kind of high-end literary magazine that once published Ray Bradbury.)

Past that? More Jessica. More Javier. More Hive. More Kai Di. More Henri. More Brak. More Kaleph. More Suren. More Doyle. More whatever.

Because I can.

Because I am free.

I am Spartacus.

This year, as part of my job of being Fabulous Publisher Babe™’s Marketing Troll, Ollie, I’m branching out into a few new realms, in that eternal quest to make enough writing money that I don’t have to get up and put on pants in the morning. (Venn Diagram. Two circles that do not touch. “Days I am happy.” “Days I am wearing pants.” Snerk.)

One of the tasks is a new semi-picture book for the Jessica Keller Books tentatively entitled “Uniforms of the Fleet” that will show what (in my mind) a Republic of Aquitaine (Senior/Command) Centurion wears, and how I think it differs from what you see on television or in the movies. (Eventually, we’ll do a full technical manual, but not today.)

Andy Weir has taught us to use science in our science fiction. In his case, a truly impressive array of “how would you do this, trapped on a hostile planet?” (Which is kind of awesome, when you realize he just updated Robinson Crusoe and made it brand new to an entire generation. That takes skill.)

So we’re going to explore Aquitaine uniforms. One of the things that strikes me is that you’re in space. Deep. Cold. Hostile. If something goes wrong, you are in a vacuum quickly.

With that in mind, you have to be able to get into an emergency suit quickly.

Jessica’s technology is advanced, but not out in the realm of magic. (I remember a story where their tech was so high that they wore a small belt that produced a full life support force field around the wearer. At one point in one of my favorite stories, the main character snuck into a space base by wearing something so startlingly primitive (to her and her culture) as to be merely cloth wrapped around someone and sealed, instead of a full field.)

Worry number two, you don’t have time to strip out of your existing gear before you put on the emergency suit. That’s 10-15 seconds, in the dark, in a rush of escaping atmosphere, with the gravplates turned off. Things will go wrong. Things will blow away if you aren’t holding on tight.

So, you have to be wearing something that your suit will go over, and do it quickly, blindly, and while rotating in three dimensions in motion.

Next, you live your life in a fully controlled-climate environment. Temperature, pressure, humidity are standard across the fleet, unless you have a small ship, with a tight crew, and a command centurion who talks them all into raising or lowering the temp. Normally, this would be a long-serving crew who all originated on a single planet. And even then, the Navy frowns on that sort of thing.

Standards exist for a reason.

So, here we are. You need to design a uniform that can be worn under the emergency suit. All environments are close enough to identical to not count.

Let’s play.

Shoes. Everyone will wear ship-slippers most of the time, with the exception of engineers and security marines. And even then, the difference is slightly more tread and steel toes and steel underplates to protect the foot in hostile environments. So weight, rather than bulk. Easily slipped on and off, and not required to do much except keep the arches intact and keep a grip while running or exercising.

Pants. Everyone will wear black, semi-stretchy pants. Not quite spandex. A heavier material than yoga pants, but serving the same purpose. Pockets on the front for your hands. Pockets on the outside of the butt (think jeans) for stuff. Maybe pouches on the thigh, but more frequently a belt attachment that can be jettisoned in a hurry. Again, nothing to get in the way of keeping you alive.

Tunic. Jacket. Whatever. The pants will come up over the hip bone. The tunic will come down and rest on the hip bones themselves. Open at the bottom, instead of having elastic. (Anyone else remember Patrick Stewart standing up and immediately pulling down his jacket? My friend always called THAT the Pickard Maneuver.) Cut close to the body. Again, a little stretchy (think a heavy jersey material). Zippered, or velcroed, or somethinged up the front. Whatever we manage to invent in the next twelve millennia. No collar, so think of the t-shirt you are wearing with the collar cut out. Plus take a small vee (maybe 2 inches) out of the center top.

The tunic is dark green. There will be a pattern under the arms in black (TBD). The upper arms are black, the lower arms are the same green as the body. Cuffs that cut back at a 45-degree angle to expose the outer wrist bone when you are typing. There is a black line across the pectoral muscles. On wearer’s left side, medals when in dress uniform. On the right, badges for schools and certifications.

Undershirt. I don’t have a good way to describe the color. I saw it once in a store. Mix neon green with gray in a chaos pattern. Since everyone wears a tunic over it on duty, and the tunics are the same weight, this is how we account for different body temperatures. The only uniform requirements are that the undershirt run an inch above the top of the collar as a low mock-turtleneck, and that they not appear at the wrists, and that they tuck in to the pants. Beyond that, there will be different weights of fabric, different sleeve lengths, etc. for people who run hot or run cold. (Men and women will absolutely have different weights, will be my expectation.) Folks might print something on the front, as long as a superior officer who sees it isn’t going to be offended enough to do something about it. Women will generally wear a bra or sports bra underneath that, as necessary. (Moirrey doesn’t have enough chest that she had to wear one, so she might not, half the time. YMMV)

Hair is expected to be kept neat, but does not have to be kept short. An emergency suit has a hood that is attached and flips up and over and seals, so presumably your hair will be inside, or might be stuck on the outside and cause a slow leak, but not bad enough to kill you in the short term. (If you’re going to be floating for several hours in a vacuum, you might have a problem. Maybe. Again, if all else fails, cut off the part that sticks out and pull the rest in.)

So there you have it. A uniform design that is based on my interpretation of how human need and technology will interact. They don’t have technology that mimics magic. And they aren’t gods. They have risen, fallen, and risen again on a number of occasions. Some of the falls were nearly terminal. None of the rises has been godhead.

So what the hell is all that about?

Simple. I’m doing Uniforms of the Fleet as an exercise in technology for me the writer, but also for me the marketing troll.

I’m meeting today with an artist I want to hire to do all the pictures, starting with Jessica as a command centurion. I’ve structured the contract to both our benefits.

She gets to draw pictures in the Auberon universe for a number of years, and sell them at cons and on her website. Hopefully, she will make good money from it.

At the same time, her name will be on the cover of the picture book when it comes out. (I’ve always dreamed of running into someone cosplaying a Command Centurion at a con. And now they’ll have images to work from.) Plus I’ll get access to all her fans.

Every time someone looks at her pictures, I have a chance to sell the books. Every time someone reads the series, they might go out and buy this art book, and then go look at all the other art she’s done and buy prints and stuff.

Everyone, hopefully, makes money. And has fun, which is the more important part.

This is the year where we use art as a marketing tool. Partly because it might make me more nickels.

But partly, because I can.

shade and sweet water

bd

west of the mountains, WA

I got to talking with a friend the other day about moving around.  Hint: I know very few people up here who are actually from Seattle. More likely is that the person ended up here at the tail end of something else, or running away from something, or running to something. Whatever.

I grew up mostly in Wichita, KS. Spent a lot of time in other places along the way. in 1990 I left for SoCal. Did five years there before I left. The leaving part wasn’t exactly planned. I had been talking to Bishop about how much I hated LA and he said, “So what are you going to do about it?”

<light bulb going off/>

Picked up the phone, called my mom, and told her I was leaving LA. Didn’t know where I was going. When would be as soon as I could get everything packed up and find a place. Options were NorCal (Coop and Dusty had ended up north), Houston (open invitation to stay at a Buddhist monastery. Long story.) Somewhere totally at random pulled out of a hat or pulled from a dartboard.

Ended up back in Wichita, mostly because I had too much stuff to just pile it in the parking lot and burn it. (Did that later. Another long story.) Was there for about eighteen months before a woman I knew in LA convinced me to move up to Seattle, where she was living.

The moving to Seattle part was a good idea. The living with her was less than good. (More long story. You’re gonna need a lot of beer to pry that one out of me.) Ended up moving out very quickly.

Had my own place, in a town I barely knew, 1500 miles from anything. Flat broke.

Fell in love with the Pacific Northwest flying over it, the first time, before I had even landed for my first visit, before I moved up here. So I made do. Met the first wife. Fell madly in love. It was good. She and I bought a house in 2001. Lost her in the summer of 2008. Sold the house in the fall of 2014.

Between 1990 and buying the house in 2001, I had moved 17 times. Wanderlust. Horizons.

These days, I live over the pass. Sitting on six and a half acres with water, trees, fruit, and elk. And very, very little interwebs coverage. Some days, 2 bars of 1x cell coverage. Have to go into town to get access to the rest of the universe.

Paradise.

Interestingly, most of the writers and creative folks I know have similar stories. Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) left the country with a one-way ticket in the early 90’s and was gone for several years, doing more countries than I had states, but she was looking for something different than I was. Don’t think she ever found it, but haven’t really asked.

We all have many ghosts.

Seattle is a place for creatives to pool themselves, not so isolated as they were when they lived in the land of traditionally stupid and boring lives. I have friends who went white picket fence along the way. Occasionally they find me on social media and wonder at the “what changed from thirty years ago”. (I’m told I still look the same, just with more gray in the beard, but anyone from that, they would know me as soon as I walked into the joint. At least, that’s what Dusty said when I saw him for the first time in twenty years.)

They stayed home. Got out of school and got a tie-wearing job. Went into business, or law, or banking. Happily-ever-after. -Ish. Close enough. We don’t speak the same language these days, so it is hard to judge.

But I wonder what life will be like for this new generation. I could disappear off the face of the planet more than twenty-five years ago. Disconnect the land-line. Forward my mail. There was no email, or social media, where everybody was just across town and could stay in touch, regardless of how far they might travel. Just a gap where something had been once, and was gone.

I did just that. Disappeared for a while. (Another very long story.)

I leave public trails these days, for people who are looking and know how to look, to find me. And I’m far more gregarious than I used to be. (Being happy helps.)

Every once in a long while, someone pops up from my distant past. Friends I went to school with. Girls I dated. Old enemies.

And a million miles have passed.

We’re not the same people any more. I don’t hold grudges. Not worth the effort. Bygones have forgotten how to even be bygones.

We’ll get together, over a beer or a chat window, and talk about the old days, but there’s nothing really there.

I was always over the next horizon. They knew that then. They know it now.

I had a dream I was pursuing. Haven’t caught it, but I’m catching up. Dunno how to even talk to folks that never had a dream worth pursuing at these sorts of costs. Most people, I guess, never want something this bad.

Most people don’t have adventures.

Yesterday, Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) and I caught a train to Portland to meet some friends for lunch, and then took the train home. Nothing more, nothing less, than a new adventure. Could have driven. Have done that several times. Wanted to see the world through different eyes.

Still do, but I’m not sure how many people have that dream, that itch.

What do you want that bad?

So to celebrate the latest birthday of Jeff Bezos, we’re publishing the third in the Business 4 Breakfast series. And I wrote this one. It is The Beginning Professional Storyteller.

I wanted to write this one (more than a year ago. Long story) to lay out for myself an understanding of the 7-Point Plot Structure that is the basis for all good genre fiction. (Literary does weird things. YMMV) Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) suggested I turn it into a B4B book, and that sounded like a good idea.

Most of the people I know who are writers were friends of hers originally, and have been doing this for a very long time. They don’t need the review. For others, especially some of my newer writer friends, they might be making the jump from journalism (a whole other skillset that does not lend itself well to good fiction frequently), or trying to undo some of the damage done by a BFA/MFA program that looks down its nose at successful commercial writers.

We are the enemy, as far as those people are concerned. And I’m okay with that. My goal is not literary awards. Nor is it groupies, although Fabulous Publisher Babe insists that I would have to share anyway.

It is all about money. And as crass as that sounds, that is why you got out of bed this morning, to make enough money that you can go do something silly on your time off: buy a book, go to a show, walk in the woods.

For me, enough money is quitting the day job and writing full time.

To do that, I need to look and sound like a professional writer (B4B:Book 1). But I also need to tell good stories that have all the right elements of 7-Points contained therein. If you are a writer, you need to do the same.

It works for short fiction, medium stuff, and grand/epic/mega-fantasy series that get turned eventually into television shows.

And I firmly believe that everyone has at least one book in them. Each of us has a story, told in our own voice, that is compelling enough that other people will want to read it.

You should go write yours.

 

 

It has been a very strange twelve months. Some of you know this story. For you, my apologies for repeating. For some of you, this will be new.

I have been a storyteller for as long as I have had words. I published some of my short fiction and poetry, once upon a time, in various very exotic and small-scale magazines. I even paid to print a dozen copies of volume one of my poetry, The Anthem, back in the early ‘90’s. Lord only knows where those copies are today. I have two of them. I think the last thing I had published would be in my grad school newsletter, where they used my poetry to fill in empty columns rather than have white space. Call it twenty years ago.

So when Fabulous Publisher Babe™ finally convinced me that I could go the indie press route two years ago, I started with what I knew, and wrote some interesting fantasy serial pieces. My plan with the Beyond The Mirror series had always been to put in a variety of on-going tales of such folks as Suren, Kaleph, Brak, and whoever else came up, like Alicia or Horatio.

And that worked for the first two books, both sub-titled Fantastic Worlds. The third Mirror was Alternative Worlds, because I wanted to have some fun with dieselpunk and science fiction, as one does. None of them were selling more than a handful of copies each month. I think I made $250 bucks that year, hustling everyone I knew to buy a physical copy.

At some point, late in 2014, I was having a conversation with my sweetie about what I should write next. What would sell? How could I fill out the bakery in such a way that I could do what she had done and walk away from the day job.

I had just finished writing The Science Officer, based on some story ideas that had been rolling around in my head for the better part of five years. (Auberon, by the way, was based on ideas going back ten years or more, specifically the scene over Sarmarsh IV.)

Additionally, I had spent a couple of hours in a book store while she was doing a book signing, and I had walked through the entire set of stacks (and this was a big place) and found perhaps a half dozen books that maybe looked interesting enough to buy, but not one of them ended up getting my money.

So as we had this conversation one day, about what to write next, the Publisher said that novels were where I would achieve success, long term. Nobody really wants to buy collections of short-stories, except when it is an anthology with one of your favorite authors in it, and the story isn’t available anywhere else. I can say this with authority, because all my short stories are up individually, and people buy them that way, even when I tell them that they could save significant cash by purchasing the Mirror that contains it. (No, I don’t get it either. Speaking purely from experience.)

So, first lesson: put up every individual short story, novella, etc. that you have. Price them appropriately (for me, I have a matrix cross-indexing length to price).

I will still publish more volumes of Beyond The Mirror, as I have pieces, based on the logic that I don’t do Print On Demand for anything less than ten thousand words. (Just not worth the effort.)

And then, in early January, The Science Officer exploded. I went from selling a couple of copies on a good day, to 60+ copies a day for more than three weeks. (My best single day was 92, I think.)

I have no idea why.

The best theory I have was from Anthea, who suggested that Amazon has a 30-day machine (or 90) that occasionally randomly selects some book, based on magical incantations in South Lake Union, and puts that book on the “You Might Also Like…” bar, where everyone will see it.

I have good covers, thanks to Fabulous Publisher Babe. I have learned to do pretty good blurbs. When you sample the book, the interior is clean and sharp. The story is entertaining. (Hey, I’m pretty good at this, you know.) And the sample literally ends on a cliffhanger. Could not have timed it better if I tried, but the last words on the sample are something like “And then she shot him.”

So. Sudden “success” in the sense of selling.

Many of the writers I have known are dilettantes, rather than professionals. (I know way more professionals these days, and try to be like them.) The amateur writers would have panicked. I certainly had three days of complete and utter incomprehension.

But I also had plans.

My motto: Assume success, plan for victory.

So, book is selling, what do you do? Write the next one as fast as you can.

In between the time I had finished Science Officer and early January, I had written Imposters (43k. Accidentally a NaNoWriMo), and just completed the first draft of Auberon. (Fabulous Publisher Babe wanted novels. Auberon is the first of the nine titles I have for Jessica.)

I already had the story for The Mind Field in my head. It was actually the other part of Javier, that I would have put into a first novel if I was going to do Javier novels instead of novellas.

And I can write fast with quality, when I set my mind to it. Don’t tell anyone, but I started Mind Field after work that Friday night. Worked my ass off all weekend. Finished it Monday morning at work in the kitchen (I get there at 6am and write until 8). Did an editing pass Monday night. Emailed it to her. She did a first read pass Tuesday. I fixed everything Wednesday. She turned it into POD and ebook Thursday. Took it live on Amazon’s website Friday night.

It stayed up there with Science Officer and I got about four months of traction on it.

So now what?

I had Imposters on track to be published first, but it was totally unrelated to Science Officer. Auberon was related, but I had already sent Imposters to first readers I was bribing. So I turned around and asked them to toss Imposters out the window and get Auberon back to me as fast as possible with their comments, so I could publish.

Again, not panicking. Much.

Went to Oregon with my sweetie when she was at the Coast Anthology Workshop for Fiction River. She was attending. I stayed at the hotel and cooked and wrote all day. (We as a group had rented the whole hotel, so the owner gave me the keys and told me where to find everything in the kitchen. Kinda awesome.)

Spent that whole week working on Queen of the Pirates. You’ll understand where I was in the draft when I say that I had to stop and write The Story Road based on that damned dinner conversation that came up at Callumnia, and asked Anthea for the right song to listen to while I wrote it. In this case, Johnny’s Gone To War.

So then I had two novels in the series done. And cliff-hangered the hell out of the second one, so I took a deep breath, and dove headlong into Last of the Immortals.

At this point, I published Auberon, in May.

I freaked out that I got more than twenty pre-orders. (I don’t have that many relatives.) But it hit, and it sold. Again, good covers, good blurbs, solid teaser, good opening. It got good reviews.

Queen hit in August, with Imposters tucked in between, but not really pushed. The Story Road came out with Queen, because you really needed to understand Henri Baudin and the Founding in order to make some sense of the conversation. (And I have at least two more Henri Stories planned in my copious spare time.)

Better traction, because now the Alexandria Station universe has depth, and interlocking histories, and readers can see that I have a novel series coming.

Next lesson: when readers find a character they like, they really want to travel with that character. I can tell Jessica stories, and people are interested in what happens to her, because she is a powerful and interesting character, but she’s also human (unlike some of the folks she gets compared to in SF literature.)

So don’t just write novels. Write a trilogy. Auberon, Queen of the Pirates, Last of the Immortals. In my case, I’m just about to start Jessica’s next trilogy: Goddess of War, Flight of the Blackbird, The Red Admiral. And they are not what you will be expecting. (And oh, by the way, I also have titles for the third trilogy, but I’m not going to tell you today.)

In between, I just sent a new novel #1 to first readers last week, in an entirely new universe. It’s going the formal path, Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs), a commissioned cover, etc. so it won’t probably come out until this fall. I think you’ll like it. I’ll get books 2 and 3 done as fast as I can, but Jessica is demanding more of my time right now.

Another interesting thing I learned recently. I can’t write short stories. At least, not well.

I grew up on comic books. (LOTS and LOTS of comic books.) I tell stories in serial. I have also been a gamemaster for thirty years. I author campaigns. The fantasy characters are former PC’s I want to immortalize.

But I can’t write what you call a self-contained short story. And I don’t want to take the time to develop those skills. I’ll tell short pieces of larger arcs. For Brak: Meat Shield, The Popcorn Kitten, and Destiny. I also have a fourth story, Feet of Clay, coming out in an anthology later this year. All one long campaign, broken up.

Eventually, Brak will get his own collection, in another year or two, when I have enough stories to make it worth. It still won’t sell, except to completists and Otaku.

But it doesn’t matter. People will read the individual stories and enjoy them. Hopefully, they will clamor for more.

I want to do a Kaleph novel one of these days. (Copious spare time.) He has such a fun voice and story. Maybe after Jessica takes a break. Maybe not until I have enough sales on any given week that I can consider walking away from the day job and writing full time, instead of the 1-2 hours per early morning I get right now, plus weekends I can carve out.

Next lesson: know how much money will make you happy.

I am a well-paid database nerd these days. I am also the primary breadwinner in the family, so I can’t rely on her to support me. I support her. In order for me to quit the day job, I have to be making enough money to support myself, and provide her a safety net. I might get a smaller job one of these days, shifting to a more part-time function, but I have to be making enough to cover the mortgage and still survive.

How much money do you need to be bringing in each month? You need that roof. After that, food, transportation, and sundries. There is a very specific amount you need to be making. Period. If you aren’t there yet, and I mean every month for maybe a year, you should not be preparing to leap off a cliff. Too much risk, unless you have very deep reserves that can hold you above water.

And what is your fear point? What is that thing you cannot live without? For me, the farm. I bought the land six years ago. Cleared it, cleaned it up. Just put a house on it last summer. Mine. I’ll eat ramen if I have to. But I will not give up the farm. For others, they might be happy couch surfing for years on end, as long as they have their daily jolt of caffeine from the Mermaid. Or they have to have their car, and might be willing to sleep in it.

What is your fear point?

---

I’m nowhere close to retiring from the day job. I do have a plan. I might even have a horizon, but it is a ways off, right now.

How will I get there? More novels. More Jessica. More Javier. More Kai Di. More other projects that might yield me nickels and dime here and there. I’m investigating costs and quality around getting some things translated into other languages. More fans that can’t find me in English. More money.

So what does it all mean?

It means I have a plan. Several. It means I’m flexible about what I do next, based on evolving needs. It means I don’t bother trying to write to market, because you never succeed. Kris has already covered this in greater detail and clarity than I could. Go read her.

I write what I love, which right now includes popcorn space opera with no greater, overarching socio-political axe to grind. Fribourg isn’t evil. Karl isn’t evil. Emmerich isn’t evil. They’re just on the other side of a war, but they still operate within their bounds of civility.

Write what you love. But understand that this is a business if you want it to support you, one of these days. Act like a professional. Make your deadlines and stay on target for the theme and wordcount your editor/publisher requires. Be friendly to other storytellers, because their success isn’t going to come at your expense. In fact, if they get successful, the market and the pie get that much bigger for everyone.

See what you can do to help people. Trade first reads. Introduce your fans to their work. Blast them all over the interwebs. Not because they’ll do something good for you, but because it is the right thing to do.

And have fun. If you aren’t giggling as you write it, if you are bored, you’ve gone mundane and won’t entertain people. You need to take some risks and get silly from time to time. Your fans will go with you down those weird byways, as long as you are entertaining.

 

shade and sweet water,

bd

west of the mountains, WA