Category Archives: Books

November is National Novel Writing Month

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National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo, has started and loads of people have enlisted in their attempts to write 50,000 words on their project by November 30th.

50 thousand words is not an obscene goal. It’s 1667 words per day, every day. It’s tough but certainly doable. I am not participating in this grand global goal not because I do not believe in it but because I am already eyeball-deep in my current project. I did once attempt to do a NaNoWriMo. It would have been a science-fiction novel about the survivors of a crashed passenger liner. It also would have been written without an outline. That novel crash and burned as completely as the doomed starship after less than 10 thousand words.

Still, NaNoWriMo is a good thing. For many writers the temptation do anything but write is quite strong. There is always something else that needs to the researched, there are tone boards to construct, characters to devise, locals to investigated online, so much that prepares you for the writing that is not writing. Making a public commitment to NaNoWriMo help some over that hump between planning and plotting and what is the hardest part of writing, butt to chair, fingers to keyboard. (Or pen to paper, or voice to tape. There is no one correct way to wright.)

So if you have committed yourself to this endeavor, may your words flow like wine, may your plot not clot, and remember even if you don’t hit the goal, writing itself is the victory.

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The Thematic Failure of ‘The Savage Curtain’

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If you know anything of the original Star Trek series episode The Savage Curtain, it’s that it is the one with Abraham Lincoln sitting in space.

Of course, it’s not the real Lincoln but one created by aliens from Kirk vision of Lincoln. Soon Kirk, Spock, and a couple of ‘good’ historical characters are engaged fighting with ‘evil’ historical characters, some from real history as with Lincoln and some from Star Trek’s future history. The aliens are curious about ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and has created this contest to learn about these concepts. (Really, a forced pit fight is a terrible experiment, but we’ll let that slide for the moment.) After some loses Kirk and Spock win the fight and the baddies run for the hills with the aliens drawing the conclusion that ‘evil’ when forcefully confronted runs away.

Really Star Trek? That’s you conception of evil, that it is something that is cowardly at heart? Was that the result when the fascists were fought tooth and nail over every damn kilometer of Europe? That when ‘forcefully confronted’ that fled?

This is back in my head because as I am writing a novel populated with evil werewolves instead of the more popular sexy ones it has gotten me thinking about the nature of evil.

It is not that evil is more cowardly. I think one of the defining aspects of evil is that it is inherently selfish. It considers its own wants and desire above all else. it considers others as resources to be used, exploited, and discarded not as people in their own right.

In my novel this has raised its head among the pack of werewolves and it’s something to consider when viewing tragic, evil events in our all too real world.

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Three Weeks

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Next month in National Novel Writing Month when many people set out on the ambitious trail to write 50,000 words on a novel between November 1st and the 30th. I once tried this and failed miserably. Nor will I be going at it this month, but I fully support and encourage anyone who does.

What I will be doing is completing the first draft of The Wolves of Wallace Point, my The Wolf-Man subtext inspired werewolf novel. While I have written horror in short form before, quite a few short stories, and I even wrote an entire 90-page screenplay for a horror movie, this is the first crack at doing it in novel form.

As I have posted before this is also an experiment in writing without an outline. I started this project with only a single scene and very strong sense of the theme I wanted to explore. Characters appeared when they walked onto the stage revealing their nature to me. I had considered that if I reached 10 or 20 thousand words then there was a pretty decent chance the project would not sputter out and die but reach an ending.

Yesterday I crossed 70,000 words and fully expect the project to come in at around 80 to 85 thousand. That’s three more weeks at the leisurely pace I am currently doing. So, if I don’t crash on some unseen rocks, I’ll have the first draft completed in 3 weeks, just before I go north for LosCon, a Los Angeles Area SF conventions.

I know the draft requires revisions. Another crack as the battle between the werewolves and the bikers, a better detailing of the pack and who is in it. (Now that I know precisely who that is.) And a little more establishment of some characters and their inner turmoil but frankly it is not a lot of revision. There is very little in the first 30,000 words that is in conflict with the following 40 thousand. The act structure is in place and functional. It is almost as clean as if I had been working from an outline.

What a surprise.

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Past Me is an Ass

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Because the current novel in progress is also my first experimentation in writing a novel without an outline, I have now discovered what other writers already knew, that past me is an ass.

AS my main character has interacted more and more with the local crime family that are also werewolves past me saw quite clearly that there were division and factions with that pack of wolves. Both Darryl and his sister Diana were up to something, and events that transpired were part of a scheme with a goal in mind.

What is the scheme? What is the goal? Well, that’s a problem for future me to work out.

I am now future me.

There remains about 15 thousand words, give or take a couple of thousand, left to compose before I hit the end. It is really crunch time for the main characters and the author. Darryl’s plot and Diana plan, which may be the same thing or may not, is about to come to fruition. Provided I can figure out what it is these two evil asses are up to.

So far it has been beneficial that this novel is being written from a single first-person point of view. The main character hasn’t been let in on the conspiracy so I haven’t had to detail it out but I am laying track before a rushing locomotive and I need to work out the curve before it takes me over the cliff.

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Irrational Authorial Annoyances

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Sometimes, because I spend a lot of time bending words and phrases to my will, things annoy me that I suspect flow past others unnoticed.

Last night I was reading a non-fiction book on WWII’s aerial bombing campaign when such an event occurred.

The author has just explained to the reader that when a bombing crew were briefed on what appeared to be an easy assignment with minimal chances for danger this sort of the mission was called a ‘milk run.’ That is all well and good. In the computer game 50 Mission Crush I had already encountered the phrase and always welcomed a ‘milk run’ as I tried to complete the requisite 50 mission tour of duty.

After educating the reader on what a ‘milk run’ was the author, going on about a particular mission, then wrote ‘The milk run curdled.’

I was so annoyed that my sweetie-wife in the kitchen heard me and asked what was wrong.

A ‘milk run’ is a thing, it is the noun of the sentence and ‘milk runs’ do not curdle. Milk curdles, but milk runs do not. I get what the author was going for and with a minor bit of reworking they could have achieved the effect that they wanted. Something along the lines of ‘On this run, the milk curdled.’ See? In that phrasing the curdling is applied to milk which does curdle not to a bombing mission which does not.

I am shocked that this clumsy and terrible applied metaphor not only survived the author’s first and following drafts but the editors through it also passed.

It is the following morning and this freaking sentence is still annoying me.

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Of Parallel And Duplicate Earths

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For its season Finale Star Trek: Strange New Worlds revisited one of classic Trek’s most used budget cutting tropes, a world that looks exactly like out real world. This time instead of a parallel Earth that somehow evolved the exact same continents the justification was a settler colony obsessed with 20th century Earth cultures. (hmm, sound like my book. Same idea deployed for different reasons.) As ‘parallel’ Earths go this was a pretty decent justification and really just there to allow for backlot and location shooting instead of expansive and expensive set construction.

It did get me thinking about those old episodes where the Enterprise discovered a planet exactly like Earth but lightyears distant. It was while watching an old episode of classic Trek that I had one had the idea of writing my own parallel Earth short story.

The possibility of a star system evolving in a doppelganger version of out own is absurdly improbable and the answer to that ‘why is it there?’ question formed the central conceit of the story A Canvas Dark and Deep. Which sold to the fine internet magazine NewMyths.com. You can read it here in their archives.

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

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The Deep Background of Vulcan’s Forge

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My SF/Noir novel Vulcan’s Forge, published March 2020 by Flametree Press, is set on the distant

Flame Tree Publishing

and isolated human colony of Nocturnia, but the events of the story takes place centuries and centuries after the destruction of the Earth.

In the early 22nd century, after fusion power plants had become common, Artificial intelligences practical, and humanity has settlements, some quite large, throughout the inner solar system, a rouge brown dwarf is discovered with an orbit that will take through the solar system, disrupting and destroying the rocky inner planets.

Face with extinction humanity designs, constructs, and launches hundreds of automated solar sail arks. These arks do not carry crew or people but rather the egg and sperm of animals and people along with sophisticated A.I.s and the equipment to construct human colonies. Once an ark has reached its target system, should it have survived the centuries long voyage still functional, and provided there is a planet suitable for terrestrial life, the A.I. build the colony and its required infrastructure, and then utilizing artificial wombs, birth the first generation of human born on alien worlds, preserving humanity and numerous other Earth species.

Surprisingly cheap, due to plentiful fusion power, the resources of the solar system, and artificial intelligence each ark cost in today’s dollars about half a billion to build, equip, and launch. With the arks so affordable they are not the sole domain of governments and numerous cultures, religions, sub-cultures, and even a few individuals commission arks in a bid to save and ensure to continuity of their ways of life. There is even a couple of arks dedicated to making sure that out there among the star Texas continues to survive and thrive.

The colony of Nocturnia was settled by an ark commission by a group who fetishized Urban Americana of the 1950s. Believing that mid-twentieth century America represented some sort of ideal culture they programed the A.I.s of the ark to disseminate this as the colony’s sole culture. Naturally their ideas of what comprised an ‘ideal’ culture from one which more than a century and a half separated them were based more of myth and misunderstanding.

The novel picks up on Nocturnia as the third generation has come into its own and Jason Kessler, a man ill-suited to the social conformity of the 50s discovers that the colony harbors a deep and deadly secret.

As a traditionally published novel Vulcan’s Forge can be ordered from wherever books are sold. I am including links to San Diego premier specialty bookstore Mysterious Galaxy along with links to Amazon.

Mysterious Galaxy Paperback

Mysterious Galaxy eBook

Amazon Paperback

Amazon eBook

 

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The Experiment So Far

 

Just over two weeks ago, May 3rd, I posted about an experiment in my writing as I began a novel without a written outline. My normal process for writing a novel involves extensive notes, outlining, and breaking out all the acts, before I tackle the actual drafting of the book. With this book, working title which is very likely to change The Colors of Their Trade, I have no notes save the once I make as I write, no outline, and a bullet point of six or seven elements to break down the 5-act structure.

As of yesterday, May 18th, I had nearly 10,000 words written for Trade, major characters and relations defined in the text, and narrative momentum that so far has not abandoned me. I believe, perhaps in error, that if I can get the entire 1st act drafted, about 15,000 to 16,000 words then the project will have survived its most critical phase.

Mind you, I am not flying completely by the seat of my pants with this. I have a clear understanding of the five-act structure, 1) establishment, 2) disruption, 3) point of no return, 4) chaos and collapse, and resolution, and what elements are critical this this story’s various acts, that for each act I have a clear destination and goal. That said, while the goal is visible for each act the path to it is not.

This is an experiment in another matter as well. It is a horror novel and I have never written long form prose horror. All of my horror to date has been short fiction and one feature film screenplay that is utter garbage.

I am considering but not yet committed to the idea that when I get act 1 completed that I might show it to a few people and see if it is working as well as it appears to me.

Still, the process continues and only the future knows what it will hold.

 

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

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A New Experiment In Writing

 

For a week or so a very vague idea has been knocking around my cranium. Mostly themes and conceptual elements with very little in the plot of character save for what arises naturally from theme and conceit.

Normally, this is the part where I just let the ideas free form in the back of my thoughts, make occasional notes here and there, until a character a resolution present an ending to me that is strong enough to build an outline on.

However, by Monday one scene, not particularly dramatic, had floated to the front of my thoughts and with a writer’s group meeting on that night I decided the go ahead and compose this disconnected scene.

By the end of lunch, I had 1400 words about a character visiting an isolated bar in the mountains of Idaho, returning to the tiny town from which he had escape decades earlier. It was an experiment in tone and setting with perhaps just 300 words devoted to any real conflict when a Nazi biker attempted to drink at this local watering hole. Surprisingly it was well received by my writer’s group with some member expressing interest in where the tale was going.

As I said earlier, this point in my process is normally one of thinking and outlining. Plotting the critical elements, reveals, and reversals that will drive the story, not actual writing of scenes and characters.

But that is what I am doing. Yesterday at lunch I continued the scene and will do so again today. Flying by the seat of my pants I am going to drive for what would be the end of act one for the story that doesn’t have an ending, yet.

In all likelihood this will crash and burn shortly after takeoff, but for now it’s intriguing me enough that I simply cannot walk away.

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

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Those Organians Doors

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Errand of Mercy is the 26th episode of season one of the original series Star Trek, notable for the debut of the Klingon Empire and god-like Organians that prevented a disastrous galactic war.

In the episode Spock and Kirk end up trapped on the seemingly technologically stunted Organia, a critical star system on the Klingon Empire’s expected invasion route. The Klingons arrive and what follows is a series of captures, escape, and acts of sabotage as Kirk and Spock

CBS Home Video

do their duty while the Klingons as brutal occupiers seeming slaughter Organians by scores. At every turn the Organians are pacifistic and welcoming, seemingly untroubled but disgusted by the overt acts of violence. Everything resolves when the Organians, revealing themselves to be beings of ‘pure energy’ and unlimited powers, stop the war and force a peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire.

There is a subtly to this episode that I have admired for some time, and I can’t recall someone drawing attention to it.

Kirk and, along presumably the Klingon characters, have for all their lives known doors that operated automatically at their approach. It is a classic bit of blooper footage watching the actors of Star Trek slam into the set door when a stagehand missed the cue and they remained closed. The faux setting created by the Organians was one of a society which technologically had not yet advance beyond animal power with massive wooden doors bound with iron like some absurd D&D setting. It is revealed that the god-like aliens crafted all this to make it easier for the humans, Vulcans, and Klingons to interact with the Organians, presumably drawing inspiration from their own biases and preconceptions. Including the bias that doors open themselves.

Throughout the episode every ‘primitive’ wooden door swing open or closed without anyone touching it. Kirk, Spock, Kor, and everyone else simply walks towards the doors and they sweep aside for the characters without a single character every commenting or noting the anachronism.

Of course, for the production of the episode there are stagehands watching intently and pulling on ropes operating the set. Everyone is keenly aware of what is happening in these scenes but the characters, in a beautiful and subtle obliviousness, fail to notice because it is how door always work. The strange working of Organian doors is never brought directly to the viewer’s attention. Not cut away shot focusing on the effect is revealed. The magical doors are simply part of the environment left to be noticed if one is not fully engaged with the story as it unfolds.

When you do notice it, and think about it, its beauty is apparent. A tiny little story element without any direct effect on the plot but establishing the ‘reality’ of the characters and their preconceptions of their world.

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

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