The starship as a character

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So I generally write space opera and space adventure. (Plus some dieselpunk that also qualifies here, as you’ll see once you read that series.)

One of the interesting things about this sub-set of genres is the importance of the vessel transporting your crew of misfits wherever they are going. Star Trek TOS had this lovely, elegant heavy cruiser of a ship, which meant they were going in harm’s way and confident that they could make it out the other side safely.

Han Solo had his hunk of junk that had it where it counted.

Etc.

Been thinking about the topic because I have a couple of new series spinning up, and in each the ship itself is a character. This is a useful way to think about it, because in Private Detective fiction (usually the hard-boiled variety), the city is also a character. Same with the old-school urban fantasy, when it was more Jim Butcher and less shifter-romance, like today.

When you read Marlowe, Los Angeles is a character. Same of Spade and San Francisco. You can’t just pick them up and put the story anywhere else and have it work.

So where my wife (the Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) ) builds new magic systems every time she starts a fantasy series, I spend my time designing starships.

It took a different form when I started the Jessica Keller Chronicles, because the original RAN Auberon was a Strike Carrier. I’ve mentioned before how I played Star Fleet Battles when I was a kid (up until my mid-20s when I lived in Los Angeles). And my homage to that universe was basically taking a number of those designs and filing off enough serial numbers to include them. I even had the SSD books open when designing new classes, and wrote down all the relevant weapon stats and firing arcs when I did, so that I could keep things consistent.

But Jessica was EPIC space opera. Original CVS got replaced by a design roughly equivalent to a Fed SCS from Commander’s SSD Book #6, or maybe a B-10V variant (I can’t remember where I saw that one and not worth digging through all my old books to find it right now.) From there, up to the Heavy Dreadnought design, which is basically just using X-Tech and Type-4 Phasers on a warship.

But now I’m writing much smaller scale stuff. The Pizzafarmer stories take place on a smaller ship (Pizzafarmer), a fast freighter that wraps like a wishbone around a single cargo pod and is designed for a crew of 2-3. Got three of those stories done so far and an cut-down version of #1 will appear in a month or so in the new Blaze Ward Presents. “Bad Habits: A Nuns With Guns Anthology” I have two more that follow Wilson’s story, and space to go a little nuts with the whole wild-west element of things.

I’m in the middle of a new epic series of novels and decided I needed to rough out a floorplan for that ship (Ark Royal for other reasons). As I hacked several thoughts together, starting with riffs on the original Constitution class, writer-brain decided that what I really needed looked an awful lot like a D-7, with the bridge shifted around a little bit, but that same gooseneck design, with the Crew Section being the aft hull, where they could shield folks against warp-spawn while leaving the woman who is the Engine forward and exposed. I went an bought a table-top D-7 that’s about 9cm long by 6cm wide. It’s sitting on my left flying around the counter as I type.

The other new new series I just started involves the rough equivalent of finding a djinn in a lamp and asking for a wish. The main character is marooned on a planet and trying to survive when she comes across an ancient computer system roughly god-like in age and tech capability. The computer is at tech level 9, while Brannon comes from a culture midway through 6. The problem there is that the planet itself was abandoned thousands of years ago and marked “Previously Inhabited” (the name of the first story).

The machine will build her a ship to escape, on the understanding that Brannon and her sidekick never tell anyone else the truth.

Brannon’s culture would come back here and bomb the shit out of such a demonic thing as an Aware computer system, but this one is already several cultures old (20,000 years+), and willing to wait for the wheel to turn some more, retaining ancient human knowledge for whoever comes along.

So the machine will design and build a small-ish ship for Brannon and Hawny to escape in as part of story #2. And she’ll need to down-tech it to a point where it doesn’t upset the galaxy’s power balance overnight. And doesn’t summon killing fleets to her home.

So I sat down last night with all my old SSD books and went through them, making notes of every type of box that could be marked off in combat. Cruisers, scouts, tugs, pirates, freighters. The works. Then I meandered through some really old (and silly) ship blueprints. Finally, I have the officially licensed Klingon D-7 Battlecruiser deck plans, and went through all of those.

The thing about most RPG maps is that that the kitchen (galley) for a huge starship is usually smaller than the kitchen in my house. (Usually just a replicator unit stuck in a pantry or something.) And there is NEVER anything like laundry facilities. But EVERY ship has a desperately-oversized med bay. One of them I looked at last night had four beds in the medbay, for a crew of eight people.

Never sure what the shipwright was working from when he did that, but I always start with bathrooms and laundry when laying out floor plans. (As a point of reference, when I designed my house, I worked outward from having a double-shower AND an oversized bathtub in the same room. I cut the two bedrooms smaller to fit the decadence I needed.)

Because the ship should be a character. The Millennium Falcon is fast and breaks down a lot. The Tardis can go anywhere and sticks out a little. Space 1999 has the Eagles. Jessica has her various steeds. Pizzafarmer has his courier.

Does anybody know a good place to lay hands on “real” blueprints for submarines? Both Boomers and Hunters? Those are the best bet for what a starship would really look like, when you get down to it.

I’m not sure yet what Brannon’s new ship will be like, but I get to think about how the technology will impact on her storytelling. If she just returns home, will the authorities confiscate it? She’s in their military and was escaping from a battle in a badly mangled gunship when she crashed on this planet in the first place.

I have some ideas for her that will make her not wish to go home immediately, but that makes her something of a deserter as well. So now she has to make some hard choices. And the bosses will have to also decide what they want to do about this woman.

The ship will be the third main character, after Brannon and Hawny. Similarly after Wilson and Sparrowhawk in those stories.

What can and can’t you do, as a result of the ship you put your heroes in? How does that impact on the stories? USS Enterprise NCC-1701 could take on all sorts of monsters and enemy vessels, while either Battlestar Galactica was a Space Control Ship. And an Imperial Star Destroyer (or a Super like Executor) didn’t back down from any task, but chasing a YT-1300 through an asteroid field was a bad choice.

How much time do you spend on making your starships characters? How much better/richer/deeper/funner would your stories be?

What are the limits to your imagination?

Professionally Offended

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Backstory: A friend reached out because he has a cousin who is a writer and who got offered a contract by a publisher and could I take a look at it? Sure.

I’ve been making a full-time living as a writer for several years now. Plus, I have a background in legal research, going way back. And have worked in the field in a variety of ways. Am not a lawyer, but I could lay hands on a few that owe me favors without much work if I really felt the need.

Didn’t need them here.

It was a shitshow of a contract. And had very obviously never been put in front of a competent lawyer, because of the amazing number of typos I found with just a basic read. Some of said typos even rendered the contract not only probably unenforceable, but accidentally gave the author rights the publisher intended to assign themselves. (Really bad typos, but I won’t put them out there, in case those idiots here about this and fix it.)

The payment schedule looked good on first blush, but when read closer, they copy/pasted eight lines without changing the wording, so they ended up having to pay at the much higherfourth  rate than they should start out at, because they can’t read.

But the best part was the rights grab. I read for those. These rat bastards broke it into several pieces and hid them pretty well, but as soon as I saw the first one, I started looking for the other parts. I’m a rat bastard that way.

First, the author was supposedly assigning copyright “in perpetuity.” Do I have anyone in the house that knows ANYTHING about copyright law?

Second, she assigns to them license to use the Author’s name, image, likeness, and biographical material for advertising, promotion, and other exploitation of the Work and the other rights granted under this Agreement [emph mine]

[note missing period at the end of the previous sentence also. No lawyer has read this document.]

Third, she assigns them “the sole right to develop sequels or prequels, new or additional titles in a series, or related works using any and all such elements, and [they] shall be free to commission or contract with any other person(s) for the preparation of such sequels, series, or related works.”

Read that again. They can hire someone else to write more books in her series without her permission.Or paying her. And still slap her name on the front because she licensed them all her personal information in the process.

———————

Right about now, a couple of you are screaming “They would never do that!” at the top of your shrill little lungs and probably stamping your widdle feet angrily because YOUR editor loves you.

Riddle me this, Batman: If they would never do it, why did they decide to include it in a contract they created? This wasn’t something they just downloaded off the internet, except that in this case, it looks like that was exactly what they did, because nobody involved over there understands one damned thing about how contracts work.

No, they assembled this contract paragraph by paragraph. (I can still see most of the welds.) I’m sure they promise you they would never do that, but why should they need that right?

On the payment side, the reversions clauses were pretty good. Good enough that I’d say okay if not for the rights grab side. Author can revoke if the company goes into bankruptcy or if monthly sales fall below a pretty high threshold for a first book by an unknown author.

Standard language in place for an audit at the author’s expense, once per year, except that I’m willing to bet good money that the first hint of an audit request would trigger the contract termination clauses by the publisher, just so they didn’t have to open their books to scrutiny by an accountant legally required to report fraud to the authorities of the scale I’m pretty sure they’ll engage in at some point when the money sags. (Have known more than one author who threatened an audit and got everything back in days. Along with an NDA.)

Professionally offended, but I understand that a lot of old school writer organizations think that is how it is done. And how it should be done. Newbies are thrown to the wolves, because being a “published author” is the be-all, end-all dream of so many people. Reminds me of kids getting off the bus in West Hollywood with a suitcase and a dream, at the moment when the pimp walks up.

I’d publish her under better conditions and a cleaner contract, and I have never met the woman, nor read her book.

Can some of you people at least read the contracts these shitty, junior varsity houses offer you before you sign them? There are a lot of them out there, so it’s not like you couldn’t find a better deal if you walked, but too many kids will accept a shit deal, get utterly screwed, and then give up on their dreams, never to write another book again.

You can help prevent this. In writing, there is a whisper network of “bad agents/bad publishers” but nobody wants to talk about it out loud. If you take some of the old farts aside and buy them a beer or wine, they’ll tell you things, but nobody will own it in the light of day.

Whisper network.

You know who these people that put out that contract really remind me of at the end of the day?

Harvey Weinstein.

What have you done to make the publishing world a better place?

My friend Perry

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at 8 am every morning, I have a little doohickey on my phone that chirps to tell me if there is a birthday today or tomorrow. That’s my alert to get my ass to writing if I got up at the usual time, but today I slept in a little. First Monday back to normal in a bit, as Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) is well enough to go back to her house and kidnap a happy kitty.

It just chirped. Looked down to see who’s day it was, because the coffee has not kicked in yet.

Perry Clark. 4/13

Very few of you will have known the man, but he was one of my best friends in the world 15 years ago. Even after he had moved to Atlanta pursuing a job and a woman. At one point, I bought him an airplane ticket to fly back to Seattle for a week and handed him the keys to my truck. Saw him twice, but he and I talked regularly and he was catching up with all the friends he hadn’t seen or emailed in a couple of years.  But that’s another story.

I don’t talk much about 2008. In roughly March, Sean disappeared off the face of the earth. Just gone. Emails returned “box full.” Phone calls went unanswered. As far as I know, he either died, cut everyone off, or went into witness relocation. Gone.

That hurt, but it wasn’t as bad as what was coming. In July, my first wife Donna died of breast cancer. That’s also a story for another day.

Late February of 2009, just under a year after my horrible year started, I got a phone call.

Had left Perry a couple of voice mails, but he’d not returned them. With him, it could have been anything, because he had a weird life from time to time.

But the phone rang. Had it programmed on my phone, so saw his name pop up.

“Where the hell have you been this time?” I asked.

Long pause.

“Is this Blaze?”

Oh, shit. (sorry, long break for a good cry)

It was his sister on the phone, but I already knew, just from the tone of her voice.

He had been at Church on a Wednesday afternoon, cooking for the congregation down in Atlanta. The man had had many jobs, just cooking was the thing he loved more than all of them.

So he’d been there in the kitchen, generating love for everyone and talking to the pastor when he’d told her that he wasn’t feeling well, so she had him sit down.

His lips turned blue all of a sudden and he died right there in her arms before anyone could do anything.

Phones didn’t have lockscreens in those days, but they hadn’t been able to find his charger by the time they got over the emergency. It was dead and it took his sister going through his apartment to find the cord so she could power it up and call me (among several others.)

To this day, I keep his last picture on the refrigerator, where I can look up as I type this and smile at him smiling back at me.

It’s been eleven years, and I miss him, because today would have been his 58th birthday.

Quarantined: Week One

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So many of you know that Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) came down with symptoms last Saturday. Not bad. The week turned into a very mild case of the yucks as I made her stay over here in the main house with me (kitty was a little disgruntled) and stay on the couch all day, frequently napping (kitty liked that part).

She’s already over it and generally on the mend at this point, such that she was able to go on short walks the last few days, when her fitbit told her to get up and move. Each day, she’s a little better, but I remind her not to push.

So that’s the lovely news.

I’m still asymptomatic, but assuming that I’m a carrier of some sort, so I’m generally confined to the farm. Have made masks for both of us, but safer not going anywhere.

And lemme tell you, not being able to go down to my favorite restaurant for Sunday breakfast sucks. The ladies even offered to just put a box out for me and not charge me anything, because I’ve been so effective at advertising for them as they run Fri-Sun take out only.

But I don’t want anyone else getting sick. Bad juju.

So now it is Saturday night. Had a nice week, banging away at the new novel. It will be MUCH longer than any of the rest, at least as far as I can tell right now, with a general target length of about 150-175k words. And this is a book one, but I have no idea how long the series goes. My notes only have three titles, but the end of three is not necessarily an ending, and this universe is my largest and most complicated yet. (And yes, if you tack a zero onto the end of all of Alexandria Station, you might see what I see. Not for word count, but for scale of the things I have had to invent, the cultures I’ve had to understand, and the technology that drives things so far beyond previous projects.)

Having fun, and it will keep me busy all of April and part of May.

But I’m also extremely lucky, in that I work from home already, for her. I can’t get laid off. I can’t lose health insurance suddenly. My days don’t really change, except that I tend to sleep later when she’s over here. (Body wakes me at 630 sharp when I’m sleeping alone.)

I’d like to say quarantine isn’t much of a change in my lifestyle, but I can’t just pop into town for groceries. Can’t just run down to Krain Corner for breakfast (grumble). Make my own coffee.

Still get up every morning, take a shower, and fix breakfast. Kitty has been over here, so I feed her while Babe does yoga, then fix myself breakfast. Check the news and the social.

Then write.

At one point, I wondered if I could/should push my daily speed up another notch. The general rule for 2019 was 100,000 words per day. Have been on that pace since June 2018 and held it. For the last several months, I’ve pushed just a little.

Now the goal is to maintain 4,000 words/day over the course of a full month. Managed it in Feb and March. On pace to do it in April. Wonder if I can sustain that newer level for a year. That would be the difference between Pulp Speed 2 and Pulp 3, which is kinda awesome to contemplate, as I’d be running 120,000/month as a rule. I can do that when I write longer projects. Longer short stories, because I don’t have to hit a particular word count by cutting key bits out. Novels as long as I can keep me and reader both entertained, which is usually the challenge.

Mixing up short fiction and long every month, because the goal is 40 shorts and 14 novels this year.

Having fun and making a living at it.

It hurts, watching my various friends have to deal with the day job coming unhinged on them. Or just ending suddenly. The stress is killing the art for a lot of them, and that’s usually the thing that brings them joy, so now it is a double load.

Been trying to do my part by reaching out to folks I know but maybe don’t talk to all that often, and just checking in. Saying hi and seeing if they need a friend. I’d recommend all of you give it a try, as it really does help provide that personal touch.

Plus, there are ways you can help, if your finances are stable. I belong to a facebook group centered on Enumclaw/Buckley, WA that collects cash donations from the group and then each day selects some local small business and buys gift cards in the amount. Good, old fashioned socialism keeping folks afloat, and keeping communities together. It does my pinko heart good to see people helping each other.

So help if you can, but don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it.

You’ve got a lot of friends, some of them people you didn’t even realize.

🙂

Advanced Reader Copies: An Experiment

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So I have started putting up short fiction at the Store on my website. Most of it it $0.99, which makes me a few more pennies than selling them elsewhere.

However, I’ve gotten a few requests for some of the longer stuff that’s in the can right now without publication dates. I wrote 20 novels in 2019. Not all of them are out. Or even on a schedule. What they represent is a bunch of new series/universes that are not connected with anything else. Or weird stuff, like some sword and sorcery fantasy that is the first novel of a trilogy to follow Rebels. Or an Urban Fantasy Book 1 that kind of snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking. (I’ll blame Caroline for reading the original short story and asking when I was writing the novel.)

Since these don’t have dates, and might not come out until 2021 at the earliest, I want to run an experiment. I’m going to put them up in the store, but for only $2.99, with the hope that fans who do buy them as Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs) will help make them better. Nobody has read most of these except me. And maybe Dorn, because he travels so much.

My hope is that folks will buy them at the cheaper price (most of these would be $4.99 or higher when I finally finish off the series or the arc) and send me emails with corrections, questions, or typos. These books are not necessarily rough, because I’ve gone through them several times, but neither the Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) or the Canadian Copyeditor Babe(tm) have worked their magic on them yet.

If folks like this, I’ll make a little money on the side, at a time when book sales are a little weird (everyone is bingeing Netflix, Hulu, or Disney+ right now instead of reading), and let folks have early access to some of the novels in the can.

  • Air Pirates of Cyrenaica (1937 Dieselpunk/Pulp SF): 2
  • Taft Station (Fall of Space Rome Space Opera): 1
  • Science Officer Season Two: 2
  • Scour (Post-Apoc with a steampunk flavor): 1
  • The Hunter Bureau (Aliens have landed and the cops have to handle crime): 2
  • The Maat Project (Seventies Thriller but not SF): 1
  • Shrike the Orque (High Fantasy): 1
  • Labyrinth (Classical Urban Fantasy without romance or shifters): 1

So you can see I’ve got over 10 things here (10 and a novella, anyway), not counting Handsome Rob Book 4 or the four Lazarus novels I have done to date.

Thoughts from the peanut gallery? Flight of Cerberus (first Air Pirates of Cyrenaica is up now as a test and to see what my fans think. Have folks done or seen something like this before?

I got awesome fans

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Name: Unknown

Whoever you are: thanks.

So I got a note on Amazon a couple days ago of “errors” in Flight of the Blackbird. 14 of them (I think).

Well, shit.

Went and looked them up. Some awesome person who has the right kind of brain had nailed 14 typos or related mistakes in the manuscript. Every single one of the suggestions they pointed out were square on the head. Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) went through the manuscript and fixed them and uploaded a new version Thursday.

If you have a copy, now is a good time to trigger a fresh download. 14 fewer errors on my part.

I know some writers who get personally offended when someone points out a mistake they’ve allowed to get into print, usually after two editors and half a dozen passed. Shit happens.

But we live in the modern age. Someone was able to flag them into the Zon, who let us know. We were able to fix them. If you have an old ebook, you can get get a better version. If you have old print, you’ve got a collector’s item now.

🙂

So whoever you are: Thank you for making my book better.

Kinda totally awesome.

Pacing

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I’m working on a new novel. I know, shocked, SHOCKED to hear there is gambling going on in this establishment. (#48, for those of you keeping score at home.)

The definition of a novel is fluid, and depends on who you ask. Some consider it as low as 30,000 words. Others range up to 60,000. I use the Hugo Awards definition, because I primarily write science fiction. (Not that I can ever see myself getting nominated for a Hugo, unless someone pulls a Chuck Tingle on me. I’m old, white, nominally-cis, and Euro. But weirder shit has happened.)

So, forty thousand words. The first novel I ever wrote was Imposters, and it was a novella where I added enough bits of story to push it above 40. I’d written a lot of novellas and shorter before that, so I just really had to add a single extra story arc to the thread and I was good. The second novel was Auberon, although it came out first for technical reasons. I’m way better at my craft today than I was then. Just reading from Auberon to Petron will show you that, but there are several million words written between those two books.

So my novels fall into a handful of categories.

Forty-five thousand words is enough to tell a full story, but you have to keep it tight, fast, and action-packed, or you start meandering into slush and dullness. I have a number of those because it forces you to up your craft and focus on just the parts of the story that matter, leaving out all the sidequests that do not advance story.

For me, the next cluster runs around sixty-five thousand, plus or minus. Same action-packed, but now I can add a second main character and give them a full story line to themselves. WinterStar is like that, with both Daniel and Kathra having equal parts of the story. Kathra fades some as the main second character later in the series, but that’s because other characters rise and each get their time in the sun. Ndidi, Ife, and A’Alhakoth all factor largely in later novels, plus the two villains get to chew scenery.

Above sixty-five, right now, you have Jessica. Auberon is the shortest at 78,000 words and they creep up from there as my craft got better. The last four all clock in around 135,000 words.

The Jessica Keller Chronicles are all generally fast-paced action space opera, with enormous casts of characters so big I had to include a list at the front of every one, with clues you could discern before reading, if you were sharp.

Those long novels pace just like the shorter ones though. They just happen to tell 2-3 times as much story. Epic Space Opera requires that.

But this week, I started a new project. I first had the idea in about 2016 or so but I wasn’t good enough at my craft to even consider writing it, because the scope of world-building was enormous. Each of them felt to be 175,000 words in my head then. Still do. Large enough casts, but big personalities. Big problems. Epic, cataclysmic clashes even greater than Winterhome, Petron, or the Star Tribes books. And even the Star Dragon introduces actual gods at the end.

I’m going beyond that here. Not in scope, because how do you top a story about conquering the entire galaxy and everyone in it?

No, here, I’m taking a different approach to the storytelling itself.

I have a Triumvir of heroes, each of them flawed in their own way but striving. I have a megalomaniac who doesn’t see himself as the villain at this point, fighting his own war against the galactic overlords. I have an alien species of conquerors who take me back to the old D&D days.

In the way back, Half-Ogres were drawn as huge, disgusting slobs of fat and anger. Which was how they were described.

However, when they published stats for them, one set listed them as a playable race at 7’6 and 350 pounds. Shaquile O’Neil, in his playing days, was 7’2 and about 300. That sort of description is just Shaq’s bigger brother. And he was a world class athlete, as long as he wasn’t shooting free throws.

So my uber villains run from 8-10 feet tall. 400-600 pounds. Short, broad versions of Nordic giants, if you will, because given the physical stats, half-ogre just implied to me quarter-stone-giant.

Blue, with red to white hair, because I could. Muscular, because I wanted them to be physically imposing. Mean SOBs.

But pacing is the key. I’m 13,500 words in right now. Nine chapters, which have introduced each of the four main players, and each of the problems those four will have to overcome by the end. Characters, in a setting, with problems.

I haven’t even really gotten to the try/fail loops. Just world-building on paper, trying to micro-setting a sentence at a time as part of opinion and observation. Problems, conflicts, and the beginnings of a whole raft of triple-crosses, because all of the heroes are flawed in their own way, and malice and misunderstanding is everywhere.

Writer-brain keeps going back to a pace Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) suggested we call Epic. Not exactly slow, but I’m also not starting with a bang like a pulse pounder here. I have a HUGE sandbox into which to cast story, rather than trying to keep it fast and tight. I can wander, but at the same time, writer-brain wants tightness, because I have a lot of story to tell.

Right now, it might just be a trilogy. Dunno. Three big stories to tell. which will combine over 400,00 words, and I might have something even bigger, because of the way the universe open-ends at key places. There are other stories that could be told, if I want to pursue them. Other lost races and forgotten technology to consider.

Dunno.

But for me, this project is all about practicing pacing. With each novel or story, I am trying to practice some aspect of craft. Depth. Voice. Visualization. Emotional manipulation. Something.

Pacing right now.

And I’m having a ball. How about you?

Well, so much for that idea…

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As many of you know, I’m an Indie Writer making a living from my fiction. (This year’s going to suck for everyone, but the last several years have been good and I’ll get through all this as well and keep writing.)

Just got the official word from a publisher I have been working with that they have had to pull the plug on the one anthology project that might have been the first ever to pay me pro rates. I’ve done a few others over the years, generally on invitation from a publisher or editor I know to write a specific story for them. All of those were royalty share and unlikely to make me much money.

This one was a project where the editor had closed the submissions window and not been all that pleased with the product she finally ended up with, mostly because a lot of people didn’t read her spec all that closely and gave her what we like to call “low hanging fruit.” After listening to her bitch, I went home and had a moment of inspiration, based on her topic and the kvetching I listened to. It was absolutely hilarious to me, and I think the rest of you will like it.

Ended up sending it to her with the subject line “This is all your fault” and explained that she’d inspired this long piece, that was originally intended as part one of the follow up novel to Fairchild. Figured she’d appreciate knowing that I’d had fun with her topic, even though I hadn’t been part of the group that submitted during the window.

She wrote back that she loved the story and wanted to include it in her anthology project, paying pro rates.

Uhm, huh?

Okay, wow?

That would have been my first ever pro sale. Past tense.

The publishing company took a look around at how far behind they had fallen on so many things, and what was happening in the world right now, and jettisoned an entire line of upcoming anthologies, so instead of it now coming out in Summer of 2021, it was reverting.

Well, shit.

I mean, I’ve been wanting to write more of that story, but I needed her to do her edits so I knew if she had any significant changes to the story or the ending, because as I said, that was Act One of a new novel I was going to write.

On the brighter side of things, what they are doing is sending it to a new publisher, but one that does royalty-share (of which I’m quite familiar, don’t you know) instead of pro rates. I’ve already been contacted by the new publisher to inquire about participating in the whole project, but I won’t know for a month or so if the project will even happen, or if everyone else will back out and submit their stories back to the major periodicals.

</Shrug>

So there you have it, no first pro sale for me. Using the old rules, I still haven’t started earning my SFFWA bones, although I could apply for a variation to their rules as an Indie Writer and join. (I’ve suffered too much abuse over the years from the old guard of rude f@#% dinosaurs who called what I do “vanity press” to join until enough of them are dead, which might be never. You should never hit an old woman with a chair at a public reception. Even as much as the bitch deserved it.)

Was joking with the wife earlier today that I might never actually have a pro sale at this rate, and just end up making a living instead.

Tempted to submit something unagented one of these days to one of the big houses, just to see if they’d actually bite. I’m about halfway through my 47th novel this week, so I’d have one hell of a catalog if they wanted to pull in all my fans and expose me to a bunch of new writers. What’s the worst they could do? Offer me a contract to redline? Because I know way too much about contract law, so the one they’d get back would be marked all to hell, and if they signed that, I wouldn’t be nearly as screwed as some of the kids out there continue to be because nobody teaches them any better. (Another one of my beefs with some of the “Pro” organizations, if you catch my drift.)

So any of you who have ever had a professional sale paying good rates, know that you’re ahead of me on that particular track.

Maybe forever.

🙂

 

I have silly deer

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So Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) and I just went for a walk. She has a fitbit and is subject the the “tyranny of movement” because it reminds her at 10 minutes til the hour if she hasn’t walked at least 250 steps.

There are two driveways from the bottom of the hill where the road ends. One goes up to my landlocked neighbor above me on the back hill, and the other curls around to my house. Mine is much less steep, so we tend to walk down hers and then circle back up ours when we want a medium walk. (Long is all the way to the main road and saying hi to the neighbors.)

As we’re headed down the driveway, the Babe sees something and points, but I missed it. She described it as a dog or something. I did see a resident coyote earlier in the week, but it’s a nice day and there are two of us. We keep walking.

About ten seconds later, a second deer walks off the road and onto my driveway, visible for a bit as she stops to look up at us saying “HALLO” at her. Then she scampers off out of sight.

We get to the bottom of the driveway and look up my side. Mama deer is at the first curve, about 75 yards up the hill, paused and looking back over her shoulder at us as we start up the hill again.

The other deer is visible as we get to the first curve. Yearling. Mama is presumably pregnant and due to give birth in the middle of May, because that’s when they do around here. Usually twins. Generally only one of them survive a year, because of dogs, cars, and coyotes.

Baby takes the turn down the path as we’re coming up behind them, but Mama keeps going up the driveway and obviously whistles or something, because kiddo immediately reappears and scampers after her.

We get to the second curve. Mama and kiddo are at the top, where the hill flattens out for the clearing, and they turn up the path to the barn.

They are not moving quickly, as Babe and I are now about 20 yards behind them. They get into the side meadow in front of the barn and sit and watch as we keep going up to the driveway and into the house.

You can tell they are utterly terrified by the way they’re sitting in front of the barn grazing right now. Utterly terrified, I tell you.

Just looked up and they’ve finally wandered off. I’m guessing over the top of the hill and back down the front slope. Mama is a year-round resident. I have no idea how long deer live in the wild, but I’ve had at least one deer give birth around here for the ten years I’ve owned the property. (Ten years? Really? Wow. The house was done in 2015, so I’ve been living here for five already. Time flies.)

At least the deer as way less assholes than the elk.

Usually.

Today, they were just being goofs.

Writing in the time of apocalyse

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Statement 1) I am an introvert.

Statement 2) I “retired” from the dayjob in Feb 2018, so I’m 25 months into writing full time from home.

I stand at the counter in the kitchen, at the bar that sticks out like a peninsula and cuts the greatroom into kitchen over there and living room over here. I also raised the bar six inches from normal countertop height so I can write all day. Normally, I work from about 8am until noonish, seven days a week, with a late start on Sundays because I go down to my favorite restaurant and they open at 8.

My goal is always 4,000 words per day. Over the entirety of 2019, I hit that as a monthly average only a few times, but last year my target was 100,000 words per month, and I did hit that. Even in months where I had to grind hard to get there.

Then the world went pear-shaped.

My sales are generally down roughly 25-40% right now from what they normally are. I’m hoping that this is just a quick trough due to everyone spending so much time on netflix or the news, and not having a chance to sit and quietly read. We were expecting this sort of thing to happen come Labor Day, because it always does in presidential election years, through about Dec 1.

This year, it kinda started early.

In fact, when the impeachment got going, I watched book sales fall. And it wasn’t just me, because my author ranking and book rankings on Amazon haven’t really changed. People just aren’t reading anyone right now. Or maybe they are falling back on old books as comfort food and not buying new ones. That’s a behavior I understand.

Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) was going to go see her sister in Vegas in April. That got cancelled. She was going back to a the Licensing Expo in May. That got moved out. Hopefully not cancelled.

We were going to do a lot of things, but most of them are on the chopping block right now. NINC’s annual conference in September was iffy at best. Not happening at all. OryCon in November is hopefully happening. Westercon in July might be, but I haven’t heard anything from the concom about attending and they are too busy right now for me to bother them.

Hunkering down. It sucks, because there are folks out there who were counting on us spending money this year. Audio books. Translations. Even cons.

Not happening, as we dial things down to hoard our cash and figure out what the new normal will be.

The United States will not be the same place next year that it was last year, but nobody knows what that future looks like. Maybe this country gets serious about health care for all. Maybe the progressive agenda that would have blunted a lot of the effects of the virus will have been enacted by this time next year.

And maybe the world will have burned.

Social distancing means that the library where I normally go into town for internet heavy lifting is closed, as are all the coffee shops I might hit. Managed to expand my internet service yesterday, so that helps. When we first got it (cellular through a cradlepoint), it was 5gb/month. Later, that got bumped to 22Gb. Now it is 40GB/month, and can apparently go as high as 100Gb if I want.

The march of technology, mixed with everyone working from home. All your internet tools will have to adapt. Your world will change.

Nothing will be as it was, so start thinking right now about how you can make it better. You’ll need a better hobby than rotting your brain in front of a television, because you’ll never leave the house if you don’t.

Take the time to become a better person.

I’m writing. Getting caught up on a bunch of backlog of editing that got pushed to one side when we were both sick in January. But I’m also speeding myself up a little. Not much. Planning longer novels and longer short projects, so if I get it up to 4500 words/day or even 5000, it won’t be too bad to try to read.

I’m going to keep publishing. Keep writing. Keep editing. Will be working on some sewing projects when I get the urge and the time. Won’t be going into town nearly as much, nor as long. Bought gift certificates to my favorite restaurant, to give them cash now. They’ll make it up to me in the summer.

If you’re trying to write from home, ask the introvert/extrovert question and make sure you communicate with whoever else is around what your needs are. Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) and I don’t even live in the same house half the week, so we’re good at social distancing. But our daily life didn’t really get derailed.

You need to plan. Communicate. Adapt. Things are different and won’t go back.

I would suggest cutting expenses any way and everywhere you can, at least for now. Nobody knows how long this will last, and those of us without day jobs as steady income are going to be looking to scramble. Artists who don’t have cons and musicians who don’t have gigs are going to be hammered, so maybe adopt one and commission some work. Or invite them over to dinner and send leftovers home.

Something to help them survive when their world completely imploded.

The greatest gift you can give right now is human empathy. Use it.