Category Archives: Books

Why Naming Characters in Vulcan’s Forge Proved Challenging

 

For me coming up with the names for characters in my fiction is always something to bedevils me, but with Vulcan’s Forge I faced a new wrinkle in that challenge.

The background to the novel is that in the later 21st to early 22nd century it weas discovered that a brown dwarf, the burnt-out husk of star, would pass through the inner solar system disrupting all the planets and ejecting Earth into interstellar space.

To survive humanity constructed automated Artificial Intelligence controlled Arks to established new populations on distant worlds. Taking centuries to reach their destinations and without the

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technical capability to sustain crew no persons were actually aboard these Arks. By way of sperm, eggs, and artificial wombs, the colonists of the new worlds would be born once the A.I.s had established the settlements and the required infrastructure.

These Ark were not terribly expensive to construct or launch with each costing the equivalent of about half a billion dollars today. This provided the opportunity for all sorts of smaller social units and sub-cultures to launch their own Ark, programming the Artificial Intelligences to raise the future humans in a manner to propagate their own cultural values.

Vulcan’s Forge takes place on the colony of Nocturnia, with a cultural directive that idolizes mid-twentieth century urban Americana. The people who commissioned Nocturnia’s founding Ark, as is so often the case with people viewing history through the distorting lens of nostalgia, ignored the racism of that time and the colony was founded with the ethnic/genetic heritage of the United States of the early 22nd century.

With a population whose genetic heritage reflects the vast and diverse population of the United States, and the archived records of that population, the colony’s founding A.I.s could name members of the initial generation anything at all. However, unless every egg and sperm were labeled with the ethnic/genetic background of their donors, something the commissioners of the Ark would not have done, then the link between ethnic heritage and naming conventions is shattered. Each and every person in the initial generation and the ones that followed could have a name from any of the group and cultures of the United States.

Vulcan’s Forge is a science-fiction noir and with its strong element of mystery, with the exception of the prolog, the story is presented as a first-person narrative from the protagonist, Jason Kessler’s point of view. Dissociating name from the ethnic/culture histories combined with a point-of-view nearly ignorant of that created quite a challenge. For example, Jason’s fiancé Seiko, her given name is Japanese but her ethnic heritage is Latin. Jason can’t comment on it directly in the narrative because this mismatch in his mind simply doesn’t exist. All 3 million people in Nocturnia have names that for Jason has no real sense of history. This is all well and good for Jason but what about the reader holding the book? How could I as the author makes sure that they weren’t picturing a someone of east Asian ancestry every time a scene included Seiko?

It helped that films and their use a method of culture transmission played a central element to Vulcan’s Forge. Jason’s love of cinema allowed me to refer to famous movie characters in reference to the people of his life. That’s the route I took and I hope that my readers weren’t too confused by Nocturnia’s unique naming convention.

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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Another Novel Completed

 

Yesterday marked the final corrections and updated to my latest Seth Jackson military SF novel. Seth’s an American serving in the European starforces in a future where the United States took a wrong turn in the early 21st century and became a third-rate power.

In some form or another the character of Seth Jackson and the setting has been with me for 25 years, originally taking up residence in my brain about 1988. I have written him and characters around him in short stories and in novel, none of which have yet been published, but hope springs eternal.

The previous Seth Jackson novel got very nicely complimentary rejections from publishers, with no two editors agreeing on precisely what it was about that novel that didn’t work for them. That was encouraging for me. If they all or even most agreed on the fault then it was likely an actual failing in the text but with each having their own reaction it becomes much more about personal preferences.

One editor commented that she really liked the central character and when I started this novel I had hopes of submitting it her first. Sadly, for me not for her, she has now retired from the industry enjoying a well-earned rest.

The novel clocks in at 100,000 words which was the target length I had aimed for. it also represents the first time in this setting where I have written points of view from the ship’s chiefs, which I found to be much more fun to write than the officers.

Now comes the part of the process that I, along with many other authors, despise. The shopping it around. Creating query letters, trying to change my hat from creator to hype man, a role for which I have never been well-suited. I could not sell water in the Sahara.

Whinging about it will not help. Time to do the work that is not fun.

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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My Novel Vulcan’s Forge

March of 2020 saw the publication of my SF/Noir novel Vulcan’s Forge by FlameTree Press. Sadly, being published the week the world goes into shutdown for a once a century pandemic did nothing for the book’s sales. Still, I believe in the book and for those who are interested here’s some things about this novel.

Deep Backstory

By the end of the 21st century advances in computer sciences produced true artificial intelligence, along with automated manufacturing, advanced 3D printing, and practical fusion power. Instead of ushering in a period of expansion these technologies became the means by which humanity survived a planetary cataclysm. A rouge brown dwarf drifting thru interstellar space was discovered with a trajectory that carried through the inner solar system, disrupting all the rocky planets and close enough to eject Earth from the solar system.

Humanity launched solar sail arks carrying sperm and egg cells, fully capable artificial intelligences, and automated manufacturing equipment to save humanity by planting it on scores and scores of target worlds throughout the local stellar neighborhood. Due to the advanced technology and manufacturing techniques the cost of an ark was low enough that private groups, religious organizations, and loose confederations could launch one to preserve their culture and people.

Vulcan’s Forge takes place on a colony, Nocturnia, whose founders were fixated on racially diverse urban Americana of the 1950s. Like all who become focused on nostalgia their view of the past was not entirely historically accurate but rather a more romanticized and idealized view of that period in American history.

The Story

Jason Kessler helps create the social and cultural norms of Nocturnia by carefully curated film and television preserved in the digital storage of the ark that founded the colony. However, Jason himself find the conformity and repressed sexual mores of his colony stifling, not wishing to marry young and produce a brood of children to re-populate the species. He would rather

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enjoy to banned films labeled ‘anti-social’ and live a life of pleasure, but the colony’s surveillance and enforcement of their morality makes this impossible.

When Pamela Guest sweeps into Jason’s life everything changes. Contemptuous of Nocturnia’s morality and seeming immune from its enforcement Pamela introduces Jason to the possibility of everything he had ever dreamed about doing and wanting. Jason also learns that there is a secret criminal underworld to the colony and soon he and Pamela are fighting to survive as darker conspiracies than mere criminality threatens Nocturnia.

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.

I am also including the YouTube video of myself reading the novel’s prolog.

Mysterious Galaxy Paperback

Mysterious Galaxy eBook

Amazon Paperback

Amazon eBook

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Thoughts on Heinlein’s Starship Troopers

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One of the most divisive science-fiction novels published is Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Written as one his juvenile novels it was rejected out of hand by the publisher and immediately upon publication by another house stirred intense political debate that carries on to the present day. My meager thoughts in no way will settle this argument and for those firmly fixed in their camps nothing will dislodge them.

Troopers posits a future where humanity has spread out to the stars following some war with itself that left in its wake a unified government ending unrest and ushering in a period of

G.P. Putnam’s & Sons

prosperity. The political system of this unified government is a democracy, but one where the right to vote and run for office, the civil franchise, is restricted solely to those who have served in the armed forces.

This ‘only veterans’ franchise is often labeled by the novel’s critics as ‘fascist’ and a system of military rule. While I think the system proposed actually would never work in practice and the author hand-waved his way past serious political and practical issues, both critiques miss the mark.

Fascism has no simple, agreed upon definition. It is often hurled as a charge towards a political system, movement, or person that someone intensely disagree with. The left hurls it at the right and right throws it back. Setting aside the definition of childish tantrums, to me Fascism is a species of the political right, obsessed with a distorted and false view of history, former ‘glory,’ centralized authoritarian government, and most importantly of all the philosophy that the individual’s only value is what the state can extract from them.

The novel gives very little to no description of the culture surrounding its political system. What little history that is presented is fed to the reader as exposition to explain the political system and how it arose with nothing that glorifies some idealized historical vision.

Equally unexplored is the actual details political system. We know that military service is required for the franchise and that active-duty personnel do not have the vote but how centralized is thew power is a question that is never addressed. The closest the reader comes to understanding the culture and the government is the barbaric punishment of flogging is a common judicially ordered punishment. This predilection for cruelty as punishment is the most fascistic aspect of the novel’s setting.

Many critics point to required military service as a fascistic aspect, but I think it doesn’t meet that criterion. Fascist regimes such a Fascist Italy or NAZI Germany treat the people as something that had an obligation to the state. An obligation that could not be refused. Their service to the state was something required not chosen. The system in Starship Trooper is an inverse of that philosophy. Service is given, always at the choice of the person, and in fact the novel gives the impression that people are dissuaded from choosing to serve as more than one character attempts to talk to the protagonist out of volunteering. This plays into the novel’s philosophy of graded level of morality and I’ll speak to that and its error later in the piece. The core central issue here is that in a fascist setting the power is with the state, a state that compels service and here the power is with the individual choosing to serve.

One of the novel’s many exposition heavy scenes also display the frantic handwaving to make this political system work. An instructor asks the class why does the system work and after the students offer possible answers based on the limitation on the franchise, better people, chosen people, and so on, the teacher simply answer it works because it does. Utterly circular logic. It works because the author wants it to work.

Elsewhere in the work it is put forward that there are levels of morality with morality defined as the willingness to put oneself in danger for a goal or purpose. The lowest and most base level is self-interest. ‘I look out for number one and no one else.’ The system then progresses through family, friends, and loved one with the ‘highest’ level of morality being expressed when someone serves and risks all for their community.

Heroic self-sacrifice is a common trope in adventure fiction and something that is nearly universally admired. We need to look no further in the genre than Spock’s solution to Kobayashi Maru test in The Wrath of Khan to see this presented as noble. That said it, in my opinion, is a lousy system to base your politics upon.

The logic in Starship Troopers is that those who volunteer to place their lives on the line by serving in the military are exhibiting a ‘higher’ level or morality and thus are ‘worthy’ of the franchise and political power. This is flawed for several of reasons.

First, while the novel goes out of its way to make clear that no one can ever be denied the chance to serve it is also clear that military discipline is in effect and people are ‘mustered out’ of the service and thus forever lose the chance to exercise the franchise. That means on a practical level the military while forced to accept every as a recruit can still eliminate anyone it does not want to have the franchise. It is far too easy for a military to expel members to use service as a qualification for the franchise.

Second, it presumes the motive for joining the military is a desire to serve. This ignores the possibility of enlisted to learn a trade, experience adventure, escape an unpleasant home, or even to live the thrill of combat and killing.

Another reason this is a terrible idea is that it sees the only meaningful way to serve your community is by way of the military. Teaching, local services, research, and healthcare, the last having its own unique dangers all too well know with the current COVID pandemic, are all ways to place your own needs second to your fellow citizens’.

While I cannot agree with those who hurl ‘fascist’ at the novel’s philosophy, nor can I endorse it. Between handwaving and some very broad and simplistic assumptions it simply ignores the world as the way I have experienced it working.

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A Bittersweet Time

For me, coming to the end of an artistic project always carries waves of mixed emotions. There’s the high of actually reaching the end, sharing the exctement and thrill of the conclusion with the characters I have spent so much time with. Throughout the writing of a story, short or long, I churn up in myself the same emotional states of the characters I am recounting and creating. The sweeping climax as everything comes to head at the end is often the most emotionally engaging period for me.

There is also a sadness as the journey ends. Writing a long form piece like a novel swells this emotion. The characters, the settings, the very nature and tone of the work become a part of daily life. Even when I am not actively at the keyboard putting words in a line my mind is fluttering about their scenes to come and how they might be crafted and feel. All of that comfortable familiarity vanishes with the end of the project. What had been a stable, predictable schedule of life is no more and as a creature of established routine and habit that is always unsettling.

Finally, there is fear.

Of course, some of that fear is directed at the completed project. It’s about to be sent into the wider world, a cruel cold world of querying agents, submitting to editors, with the near certainty of impersonal rejection or outright dismissal without reply.

But some of the fear is directed at the nascent project already forming. The new work with vague characters and setting, where the tone is already known but achieving that is only a possibility. One that might not be reached. Will the project work, will it come together, or might it like others, fail to take flight and crash like an overladen bomber from the Second World War?

This is the time I am in now. My military SF novel is complete. 100,000 words following an American serving in the European Union’s star forces. It held suspense, fear, and surprises for me but now its time at the front of my mind has come to close. Now it is time to fully commit to the new story, the new characters, and to set fear aside and march into the new battle.

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The Chain that Broke My Novel

Late March 2020 saw the release of my traditionally published novel Vulcan’s Forge that played with Artificial Intelligence, the fetishization of 50’s Americana, the relationship between the

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individual and their larger culture, crime, Film Noir, and loads of movie references. It was a novel that I had written solely for myself and yest was purchased by the first editor I presented it to.

Late March 2020 is also the time the world shuttered, going into a prolonged lock-down as a pandemic, the likes of which had not been seen in a century, swept the globe, disrupting every aspect of life and killing far too many people. (Including a friend I had known for nearly 40 years.)

Needless to say, that was a very bad time to release a debut novel. As if a global pandemic was not enough to throw at my arrival as a novelist the fates had more hurdles to place. The publishing house was transition between physical distributors, snagging and disrupting sales to bookstores and they had just ended the contract with the studio that produced their audio versions, leaving Vulcan’s Forge without an audiobook not only as their format continued to grow but as that very format became more readily accepted during the pandemic.

Within eight weeks bookstore had worked out virtual launch events and people had begun to adjust to a new way of living during shut down, but the damage had been done and Vulcan’s Forgenever recovered from its debut.

Such is life. There are always factors in life far beyond your control or even influence. I don’t waste time crying over what has happened and cannot be changed. Life moves in one direction, forward, and that is the focus of your attention with the past providing lessons to improve your choice of paths into that future.

Now, I have not mentioned the most important link in the calamitous chain that broke my novel and the lesson I and others can learn from it.

Vulcan’s Forge sat on my agent’s desk for a year, unread and unrepresented.

When I discovered that my agent had lied to me and withheld critical information about his position at the agency, I contacted his boss and that is when he dropped me as a client. But for months I had been harboring doubts and considering dropping him. And that is the lesson, not all agents are good for you. In fact, they can hurt you in ways you cannot foresee. That is not to say you should never have an agent, but you must always remember that they work for you. If they are a poor employee, fire them and find another.

It can feel scary, nay terrifying, most of us search for years, enduring rejection after rejection searching for that representation but do not let that blind you to the truth. If they are not helping you then they are hurting you. There is no neutral position.

Vulcan’s Forge is history, though you can still order copies, but my future novels are not. I have a murder mystery/sf Novel under serious consideration at a major SF publisher, I am finishing up a military SF novel now and will then move onto crime and corruption on Mars. There is only one direction to life. Forward.

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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My Writing Method

Some general nattering about how I approach writing.

As I have said in other posts, I am a plotter. I cannot start writing a story until I know how it ends. To me ending are where it all comes together and produces the satisfaction for the journey. For short stories I can begin just knowing where I start and where I end the few thousand word between the two I can discover. However, for novels I have to outline, sometimes just six or seven thousand words and sometimes nearly twenty-thousand words laying out character, world, story, and plot.

When I write I must write from start to finish. I cannot, as some other writers do, leap ahead, and write scenes near the end before I have gotten there in the manuscript. This may seem strange since as I have planned out the story and plot, I already know what the scenes do and why, but the truth of the matter is I can’t feel the scenes ahead of time.

Those hours and hours writing the sequences before a scene are an emotional journey not only for the fictional characters but for me as a writer. (And hopefully, for the readers as well.) I must experience the emotional journey to understand and feel the emotions in a scene I am writing. I may know that this is the scene where the scales fall from the hero’s eyes and they see the betrayal, but I can’t feel the devastation, the despair unless I have walked in their shoes and lived their trust. Other writers can leap into those souls more easily than I can. That is neither good nor bad. It is their process, and this is mine.

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Final Thoughts: Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes

My sweetie-Wife and I have finished watching the Netflix Norwegian series Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes, which presented a fresh and novel take on the Vampire story.

Set in the isolated rural community of Skarnes Norway the series follows the troubles of a family-owned funeral parlor facing bankruptcy due to the lack of business. The daughter Live is found dead in a field but reawakens on the autopsy table kicking off the supernatural/vampire plot, along with the mystery of who attacked and killed her.

Post Mortem avoids overt displays of the supernatural stripping vampirism of many of its flashier powers and abilities revealing a much more humanistic story that serves as an analog for addiction. The vampires of this setting do not required blood for sustenance and as such can endure avoiding the harsh consequences of not obtaining any with far less than would be needed as ‘food.’

Begin Rant

I’m going to digress for a moment and state I have never liked supernatural vampires that burn in sunlight and flee from crosses substituting cow’s blood for human as an alternate food. These revenants are not consuming blood for the fats, carbs, and proteins floating in the flow, it is a magical fluid that sustains them and plasma from bovines does not fit that bill.

Rant Over

The characters inhabiting Skarnes, the local police chief Judith, the annoying yuppie-like businessman, the eccentric attendants at the forensic morgue, and more are all entreatingly sketched and performed giving the series a vitality. As with all successful stories it is the characters, their problems, and their humanity, even as vampires, that pulls you in and keeps you watching.

The series answered all the major questions it posed, completed the plots it started, and left enough open that a second season would fit nicely, or it can be considered resolved and complete with just these six installments. I approve; I detest cliff-hangers.

Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes is worth your time.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel, Vulcan’s Forge, 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 is the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and his desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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A Writer’s Most Important Skill

Recently on Twitter someone asked what is the most important skill a writer needs to possess?

Now, in one respect that is a difficult question. Crafting compelling characters, devising interesting and engaging plots, mastering transporting dialog are all vital skills and having any one of these missing will seriously damage any book.

That said we all know published, both traditionally and independently, novels that not only had some of these flaws but still managed to find success and readers.

There is one skill that all writers need to master if their work is going to find readers and any measure of success.

You must finish the project.

The worst book you ever read, the one you hurled across the room in frustration at its lack quality was completed. That writer kept at it, worked through the hard parts, wrote when everything looks dark, and they could not see the way forward. they, persisted and reached the end.

A completed but bad manuscript can be fixed. Words can he cut out, can be added, can be rearranged. New chapters added or deleted, sequences can be reordered, new character created to fill out those thin sections.

None of that will save an unfinished story.

Worse yet abandoning a story when it’s not working, or when the plot has slipped through your fingers can become a habit. The stumbling block in the next story makes it easier to give up on that one too.

That is not to say you never abandon a project. I certainly have, but it is a fate that needs to be avoided whenever possible. Just as abandonment can be a habit so can complete and when finished it can be saved, it can be fixed. Steven King tried to abandon Carrie, but his wife refused to let him. Where would he or we be if he had?

Finish that book, that script, that short story. It may still stink but you will be better for reaching the end.

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What I Hate Most About Trad Publishing

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like traditional publishing, I have no real skills in marketing, layout, or cover design so it is a good thing to have paid professionals preforming those vital functions. My goal is and remains for the traditional publishing route. (And that’s no slight on those who take the hybrid or solely independent paths. In fact, it’s mad respect for managing all those skills.)

I have gotten all manner of rejections going to trad route, form cars, form emails, personalized rejections, and feedback on why didn’t work for the editors reviewing the manuscript. All of these I can take. Strangely I am rarely devastated by a rejection but move on to the next market. So, rejections cold and impersonal or detailed and inviting of further submissions I do not hate.

It is the lengthy time it takes that drives me bananas.

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary for my submission to a major SF publisher of my SF murder mystery novel. Six months since I was contacted by the acquisitions editor that it has been pulled for closer consideration. It’s waiting more than year that I find so hard to endure. (But I do for I have no real other options.)

My previous traditionally published novel, Vulcan’s Forge (A SF novel that evokes film noir) sat on my former agents desk a year unread but gloriously but sold to the first editor I sent it to. Had I not lost that year the novel would not have released the week the world went into lock down at the start of the pandemic.

Like Inigo ‘I hate waiting.’

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