Lucky, er... Sixteen

The original title of the blog was supposed to be commemorating my thirteenth sale – however, I managed to be rather tardy in posting this, so the title rather suffers. I sent Price of Admiralty up to Amazon last night, with the expectation that it would be available for sale sometime early this morning. My plan had been to send it off, try the best I could go have a good night's sleep, then deal with all the logistics in the morning. That was my plan, but Amazon thwarted it in a rather brilliant way by, well...making it available for sale in less than five hours. Lightning speed compared with what I had been expecting, certainly nothing to complain about, but it gave me a very exciting night.

I'll be honest, I was mentally prepared for the book not to sell at all. I've seen enough reports of people with books – good books – who don't sell a single copy, that I was prepared to be among that same throng, but selling sixteen copies in the first twenty-four hours is a pretty decent start for me. I'm certainly satisfied with it, though the trick now will be to see how it holds up over time. I'm naturally hoping that it does, obviously! Makes me feel a lot better about the second book, already written and waiting. I'm resisting the temptation to rush it out now, instead going ahead with my plan to release on the 27^th of July. I've already planned some publicity for around then.

And on the 1^st of July, of course, I start to write the third book! Assuming I can break away from checking out my sales long enough, of course. This opens up a trilogy, and really kicks the setting into overdrive – the two novels I have written really serve as an introduction to the characters and the setting, giving me things to play with in the future, and some of those elements are going to start to play out in the next three books. I have a schedule for the next six books – and only three of them are Battlecruiser Alamo, though all of them are in the same setting. The trilogy comes first, which sets up the playground for the spin-off series I've been working on – same universe, different characters and emphasis. Right now I'm planning 'Espatiers', 'Fighter Pilots' and 'Xenoarchaeologists', though I'm not going to go into many more details on them right now, as they are still rather up in the air.

My next priority is to finish work on my 'series bible'. I'll write more about that tomorrow, and probably will even post a PDF of it.

I've got to go and click on KDF Select again now to see how I'm doing. Well, I don't have to, but...

How I Write

As I write this, I have just 'pushed the button' and sent the completed file for 'Price of Admiralty' up to Amazon for publication; their site indicates that it will take between twelve and forty-eight hours before it is uploaded and available for sale. I'm hoping I'll wake up to see it on sale tomorrow morning. (Well, I'm hoping it's had a million sales during that time, but I think for the moment I'll go for being realistic – just getting the novel from first conception to uploaded to Amazon was a big enough struggle.) I'll be posting on the blog a bit more regularly than I have been up to this point, as well. For today, I thought I would outline 'how I write', a complete overview of the writing process as I have evolved it for the last two novels.

1. The first conception of the series. This happened around two years ago...well, in a sense it happened around twenty years ago, but my first thoughts relating to something called 'Battlecruiser Alamo' date back to around 2011, though my desire to write military science fiction is of course a lot older than that. At this stage, about the only thing I had in mind was to try and keep it 'hard', and to set it in systems close to Sol. This process lasted close to eighteen months, and included three early drafts of the book...which I sincerely hope will never see the light of day, but which at least did get me set-up for what was to come.
2. I commissioned the first five covers in the series back in December from the artist Keith Draws. This seems an odd way around to do it, I know, but it actually made sense at the time. Partly I was taking advantage of a special offer, but as well it made it seem more real in my own mind. Having the covers ready to go kept me moving forward when otherwise I might have abandoned the project; I wanted those covers to have books worthy of them, as strange as that might have sounded.
3. Onto the merry-go-around next, writing the first book! Note the lack of any sort of detailed notes or structure. I learned during a series of false starts that I am not the sort of writer who is able to work to an outline. Nothing more than a bare couple of paragraphs, in any case. I appear to be what is known as a 'discovery writer', one who simply sits down and starts. The only thing I had in front of me in the way of notes was a list of character names, simply to keep them consistent. Even then, I changed them quite a few times over the course of the book. I set myself a target of 6,000 words a day for the first book, and ended up averaging 4,500, which I thought quite respectable; for the second book I set a target of 4,500 and ended up nearer 5,500 – so I'm getting to where I want to be.
4. The half-way point, and a pause. I'd got to around 30,000 words in, and had managed to introduce the characters and the plot, then I realised I probably needed to work out where the plot was going to actually go! This basically amounted to spending a day sitting at my desk thinking about the outlines, thinking about what I was doing, and putting down some notes on paper...almost an outline, really, but by this point the plot was forming itself up in my head.
5. Then write the rest of it. I think the hardest part of any book isn't the beginning or end, but the middle. Aside from some nerves, the beginning and end are the most exciting times, bringing a new project to life or bringing it to a close, critical moments. In the middle you are stuck, working in the plot and character beats you need, trying to make sure the pace is strong, working in hints of background and world-building. All difficult stuff, because you have to make sure at all costs that it remains interesting to the reader. Finally, at last, the finish comes.
6. The beta readers. Every book I write gets read by at least four, usually more people to check it for story, plot, errors, all manner of stuff. I try to keep a good big mix – and indeed, I will be asking for more beta readers as time goes by to keep the pool fresh. Both times, they've managed a pretty fast turnaround, which has been a pleasant experience. For the second book, two of them finished their first read the day I sent it to them. Good times. All their comments get compiled into a single file so I can go through it later.
7. Then...I write the next book. Because I like to leave a book to simmer for a bit before going back to it, I don't even touch it for another month. Oh, I might make a few tweaks if they occur to me during the writing of the following book. That happened a few times – either because I simply had an idea, or because I decided to foreshadow something, a name, a ship, or something along those lines.
8. Then, the revision. First of all, I incorporate the changes from the beta readers that I agree with, which is usually almost all of them. I'd say about 75% of changes went right in, and another 20% made it into the book in a modified form. Occasionally something I just think needs a different tweak, or – after discussing it around – I decide to leave alone. Then I go through the whole book again myself, twice, working on story, word choices, typos, and so on – the proof read. Because it's just how I roll, I'll do the formatting stuff at the same time. Then, last – a computer spellcheck. They cannot be relied on, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth trying. Mine actually caught a couple of things I and my readers had missed.
9. Upload. And the nerves begin.

Playing with Maps

Late last night, I received something phenomenal – a starmap. Not just any starmap, though, but a map that shows every star within forty light years of Sol, all connected according to the FTL rules of the setting, specifically that the maximum travel range is 8.7 light years. (Where did I get that, you ask? Out of thin air, I say! I needed a limit, and that gave a reasonable number of stars within a single jump of Sol.) The map was provided by the amazing Winchell Chung, of Atomic Rockets fame, and he's given me a tool that is going to mean that a top priority of mine is going to be attained – accuracy. I want this to feel right, and getting the mapping spot on is a big part of that.

Playing around with the map today has been enormous fun; I now know what it would be like to be operating the big holo star-charts at Triplanetary Fleet Headquarters. I could almost see the fleets moving from star to star, could work out routes for expeditions, raids, key strategic points. Giving rules to this setting makes all that possible – if it was just 'go to wherever', then a big part of the reality of the universe is lost. As it is, I have 462 stars to play with. That should be enough for a good few books, I would have thought! This becomes a priority as I begin to work on the third book, which deals with a mission of exploration, which means I have another element to consider, what I believe to be the last big hurdle I have to jump over. Aliens.

The setting has had aliens in it since the first conception; in my personal opinion, they are synonymous with a science-fiction setting (there are exceptions, and good ones, but I like 'em). This does not mean pointed ears or strange facial appliances, it means actual aliens. From worlds not like ours, that have developed in a different way – but that still are understandable for the reader, that are still 'human' enough that their motivations and intent can be appreciated. If they are simply part of the scenery, then having them as 'unexplainable forces' is fine, actually rather interesting. If they are part of the story, then I feel that more is needed. Here comes the hard part, and here is where I hit the books, because right now I have a lot of ideas, but need to polish them into a usable form. The hard part.

Darn this map is good. Ultimately, battles are going to be fought on it, which means that the priority is working out where the strategic chokepoints are. I need to 'survey' them – look at the key systems where battles and wars might be fought in greater detail, start working out what – or who – might be there. It will save me a lot of time, but more than that – I need to make sure I get into the heads of the characters. If I, a 21^st century author, can work out that star system 'X' is critical to the defence of the Triplanetary Confederation, then certainly they will know that as well! Which means that they will be priorities for exploration, colonisation, settlement – all of these are key. Of course, complicating it is that I know where the 'bad guys' are, but they don't have the benefit of that foreknowledge; they have to protect themselves from all manner of potential threats, from worlds as yet unreached by humanity. Certainly enough to make one think!

More than this – I can see the stars where worlds may exist suitable for human settlement. By this time, it's a safe bet that at least all the planets in nearby systems will have been charted, though moons and asteroids will be interesting surprises; but all the details on their content will be very difficult to detect at long range. Spot an Earth-like planet with the right sort of temperature and decent spectroscopy? Fine, we can do that. Spot the weird alien monsters that would eat the inhabitants of the colony ship we're sending off? Nope, that's more of a problem. In all seriousness, even by this time there is nothing that will beat putting ships into orbit, and ultimately boots on the ground – even if they are robotic boots being tele-operated. (Though realistically, a lot more would be automated...the human drama comes from those boots on the ground. A compromise is needed here, but humans are still extremely flexible, even if backed up by robotic support. Drones and rovers, really, are the key here.)

Got some reading to do, I think. If I'm going to be using drones a bit for the next few books, I should re-read 'Wired for War' and get around to reading 'Martian Summer'. Not to mention the books on aliens to read, though I at least have the planets for the systems I am visiting in book 3 pretty much worked out...and no, I'm not giving any spoilers! I don't know all the details myself yet – discovery writing is great that way!

Six o'clock on BBC2...

When I was in my formative years, I most looked forward to a specific time of day – six o'clock in the evening, because it was then that BBC2 had its science-fiction slot. Naturally I didn't know this at the time, but obviously this was an attempt to imitate the success that shows such as Star Trek had achieved in syndication in the States being run opposite news shows, and whoever was the controller of BBC2 at the time had evidently opted to try the same tactic. Although I will not swear to it, the first time I was consciously aware of this slot opening up for science-fiction was when they began to air Star Trek: The Next Generation – and yes, I can just about remember watching it for the first time as it aired. It must have filled up pretty quickly, because by the time I was in secondary school, around 1993, there was an SF show on every night at that time on that station.

This was at a time when television science fiction in Britain was at its nadir. Doctor Who had been the last remnant of a once-proud tradition, and it had finally petered out in 1989 with Sylvester McCoy walking off into the sunset. There had been a few abortive attempts at shows in the 1980s, and there would be the occasional resurgence in the 1990s, but British TV SF was pretty much dead at that time. Red Dwarf was the sole exception – but that existed largely in a vacuum (no pun intended) and even that series was struggling on life support. There was a general perception that the BBC didn't have the means to compete with the Americans, and the commercial stations just didn't seem to have the interest. Whether this was true or not was unclear; certainly the BBC managed lavish historical dramas in this period, I suspect requiring some sort of a budget for them – a general view is that the British television establishment of the day didn't 'get' science fiction. (One of the best books to highlight this is Script Doctor, an account of the McCoy era from the point of view of the last script editor of 'classic' Who, Andrew Cartmel; I can recommend it highly.)

So, there were the American efforts; and it was those I grew up watching. I would not 'discover' Doctor Who, still less (IMHO) greater works such as Blake's 7 and Quatermass until they became available on VHS or DVD – so my primary visual influences are certainly American in origin. And quite a lot they were too! Oddly, TOS didn't appear for ages on British TV during this period; I strain to remember it at all, but TNG was prevalent, run alongside shows from the late 70s and early 80s. I discovered Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers, those gloriously mad and entertaining Glen A. Larson shows this way, as well as Space: 1999 and UFO from the Gerry Anderson stable (both ironically originally produced for ITV, run against Star Trek...how times changed...) I have some vague memory of Thunderbirds turning up for a while – but that got things kicked off.

Then, oh, then came 1994. Glorious time – because Deep Space Nine turned up in Britain, taking another of the 6pm slots, and with it a run of other shows as well. Babylon 5 was snapped up by Channel 4, a rival station, giving me a difficult decision on occasion, but given that I remember following them both, I don't think they clashed. In between Star Trek seasons – and by now, TNG was being re-run as well – there were shows such as Sliders, another one I have surprisingly fond memories of, but that's probably because I still have never watched beyond the end of Season 3. My DVD collection stops abruptly there, and it's going to stay that way. Still the older classics filtered in and out of the schedule, and I have the feeling that whoever was running that slot in those years was a real fan of the sort of science fiction I liked to watch.

Then came Voyager, and things began to peter out a bit here; probably they felt they were running out of material. Stargate never made it into the slot, though it would have been perfect in it; I think Channel 4 bought it, but pretty much buried it in a dead slot. I think the X-Files didn't help. That show, in a sense, would have been great for the 6pm time slot, but back then putting it on before the watershed would have been out of the question – so things began to twist around, and science-fiction's little place in the schedule started to look less exclusive. I changed as well; as secondary school evolved to college, I had less time, and was less likely to be home at the right time to watch it, and finally when I went to university...well, I didn't even have a TV for a year. Didn't actually miss it that much, oddly enough. By the time I became aware of it, the slot had faded into history, I suspect killed as much by DVD boxed sets as anything else. I know I have essentially reconstructed those days in a series of shelves on my wall; I think I might actually get around to sorting the shelves based on what would have been on in that slot. Unless I've missed something, I've got pretty much everything they aired in it...which shows what sort of an impression it made.

I'm a huge fan of the idea of 'build your own programming schedule', either with DVDs or internet streaming; I don't even have my television connected to an aerial. Still, it is a little sad that a moment like this has passed into history. I wonder how many of the teenagers who watched those shows back then have grown up influenced by them today; this is unlikely to ever happen again. Oddly sad.

The Price Of Admiralty

HEAR now the Song of the Dead—in the North by the torn berg-edges—
They that look still to the Pole, asleep by their hide-stripped sledges.
Song of the Dead in the South—in the sun by their skeleton horses,
Where the warrigal whimpers and bays through the dust of the sear
river-courses.

Song of the Dead in the East—in the heat-rotted jungle hollows,
Where the dog-ape barks in the kloof—in the brake of the buffalo-wallows.
Song of the Dead in the West—in the Barrens, the waste that betrayed them,
Where the wolverine tumbles their packs from the camp and the
grave-mound they made them;
 Hear now the Song of the Dead!


I

We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town;
We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down.
Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with the Need,
Till the Soul that is not man’s soul was lent us to lead.
As the deer breaks—as the steer breaks—from the herd where they graze,
In the faith of little children we went on our ways.
Then the wood failed—then the food failed—then the last water dried—
In the faith of little children we lay down and died.
On the sand-drift—on the veldt-side—in the fern-scrub we lay,
That our sons might follow after by the bones on the way.
Follow after—follow after! We have watered the root,
And the bud has come to blossom that ripens for fruit!
Follow after—we are waiting, by the trails that we lost,
For the sounds of many footsteps, for the tread of a host.
Follow after—follow after—for the harvest is sown:
By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own!

When Drake went down to the Horn
And England was crowned thereby,
’Twixt seas unsailed and shores unhailed
Our Lodge—our Lodge was born
 (And England was crowned thereby!)

Which never shall close again
By day nor yet by night,
While man shall take his life to stake
At risk of shoal or main
 (By day nor yet by night).

But standeth even so
As now we witness here,
While men depart, of joyful heart,
Adventure for to know
(As now bear witness here!)


II

We have fed our sea for a thousand years
And she calls us, still unfed,
Though there’s never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead:
  To the shark and the sheering gull.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
 Lord God, we ha’ paid in full!
There’s never a flood goes shoreward now
But lifts a keel we manned;
There’s never an ebb goes seaward now
But drops our dead on the sand—
But slinks our dead on the sands forlore,
From the Ducies to the Swin.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha’ paid it in!

We must feed our sea for a thousand years,
For that is our doom and pride,
As it was when they sailed with the Golden Hind,
Or the wreck that struck last tide—
Or the wreck that lies on the spouting reef
Where the ghastly blue-lights flare.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha’ bought it fair!

Rudyard Kipling

Talking to myself in the bathroom...

First of all, I'll open with my decision to take a bit more time off – partly because I had a lot of stuff stockpiled to do, but more because I was still heavily pondering 'Step'. I've been trying to work out some more details of the plot – basically, not giving any spoilers, I'd written myself into a massive gaping plot hole. I knew the beats of the story that I wanted to put out, but was running into serious problems connecting the dots; the final straw came when I realised that I was taking too much inspiration from 'Price of Admiralty', not a good thing – this needs to be a book in its own right, and I was running serious risk of taking elements from the plot of the first book. So – I decided to stop for a couple of days and seriously rethink the next two-thirds of the book. I'm actually pretty happy with the first third of the book, already completed, but needed to tie up the plot threads I had come up with in a different way than I had originally thought...given that now, it just didn't work. Me getting some time on the new version of Kerbal Space Program (see above) had nothing to do with it – it was just a convenient distraction.

Plots are always ninety percent perspiration, ten percent inspiration – mind you, most of life's tasks can be described in that way. In this case, the key inspiration came at about half past one in the morning, one glorious moment that tied in the plot threads I had already considered, heightened the 'moment of decision' for Marshall considerably, and allowed me to work in all the character beats I had been planning to incorporate into this book. One of the big elements of this book – and hopefully, this series – is that the characters are meant to evolve as time goes by. Not that each book shouldn't be a stand-alone, that is a very different thing, but there doesn't seem much point having a series if the characters don't evolve over time. I have some fairly set ideas about how all the major characters will evolve, and there are a few others I am beginning to give increased consideration to – of course, some of them will not make it all the way through the series, for one reason or another – and making sure that such moves are handled correctly is also extremely critical.

Frustratingly, I can't discuss the flash of insight – it is now the key twist in the final quarter of the story – but I can tell you how it came about. I started talking to myself. Now the picture of me talking to myself in a mirror in the bathroom in the middle of the night is a rather worrying one, but I find it essential. Talking through dialogue is the only way to make sure it sounds credible, the best way to put yourself into the mind of your characters – and it was in the middle of doing this with one of the conversations near the end of the book that I had the moment that probably saved the book. I was actually seriously considering starting over – which would have been a pity, because I might have come up with some elements for a spin-off, and I really don't want to sacrifice them. Not saying that it will happen, but it's on my 'to ponder' list.

So, another day to mull over the ramifications, and then full speed ahead again.

The Voyage Homer...

OK, I'm going to launch into this one...Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Now, part of my review – I'm going to be honest – is affected by the movie I think we should have had. The movie that people would have been expecting when they turned up to watch the fourth Star Trek movie on opening night. Not to be controversial, but I have a sneaky suspicion that the answer wasn't an 80s fish-out-of-water comedy. Now this movie had a pretty rough pedigree, with the initial casting for Kirk's love interest being Eddie Murphy. Yeah. There were an awful lot of threads left dangling – hell, the Enterprise crew were outlaws! Their ship was destroyed, and they were stuck with only a cloaked enemy ship on Vulcan. They could have gone anywhere with that one...

But, instead, they set course for home, only to find that a super-galactic space probe with amazing terraforming powers...has turned up and thrown Earth's circuit breaker, turning electricity off. The only thing that can save them is the power of whale song! Mankind having exterminated the whales centuries ago, all that can save them is Kirk and his crew returning in a Klingon Bird-of-Prey going back in time, hijacking a pair of whales, dumping them in the oceans and hoping that they tell the probe something other than, “Help, save us from these evil bastards who just tried to kill us!”

As an 80s comedy, it works reasonably well. Kirk and Spock do a nice double-act and get some one-liners, McCoy and Scotty get the same, Sulu's big scene gets axed (so, nothing out of the ordinary there – George Takei really drew a short straw time and again in these films), Chekov gets to scare everyone with his Russian accent. The problem is that it all seems very obvious, and a series that is supposed to be science-fiction thinking action-adventure is relying on comedy to make it work, and it doesn't hold together the plot. They're treating Earth as if it was another 'planet of the week', but act less credibly in blending in than they ever did before. They even managed better on Planet of The Space Nazis...and a lot better in Planet of the Space Gangsters.

Sigh. I think it really comes down for me to disappointment in what we should have had. This should have tied up the Genesis Trilogy, working out the return of Spock and the aftermath of that in a really meaningful way, instead of an excuse for some more jokes, the redemption of Kirk and his crew (demotion to Captain is actually a reasonable get-out here), and Kirk's recovery from the death of his son. (Which really goes unmentioned.) Crazy idea – do the plot of Star Trek VI for this movie. Peace with the Klingons, perhaps based on some sort of Genesis SALT disarmament treaty, and it is being sabotaged – with Kirk and co the only ones who can stop it, because they are now rogue agents – the only ones that can be trusted not to be a part of the conspiracy. That would have worked very well at this point in the franchise.

Heck, do something. If you must use time travel – which is a bit of a cop-out...why isn't Kirk travelling back in time to save his son? Why time travel back to the 20^th century at all, why not go back to the 20^th century BC? Lots more whales then, and no natives to interfere. With Search For Spock, I forgave the chained-together plot because the performances were good. It felt believable and true to character. This doesn't; and with the best will in the world...it just doesn't work for me. Having said that, it is a believed part of the franchise, so what do I know?

And there are worse ones to come.

So...

1: Star Trek III: The Search For Spock

2: Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan

3: Star Trek I: The Motion Picture

4: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home 

Long-Term Planning

This morning I woke up with slightly sore hands, and the realisation that it is just possible that I have been pushing myself a little too hard; I was going to take tomorrow off in any case, so I decided that henceforth I need to adopt a five days on, two days off working policy. Not that I haven't done a lot of thinking about 'Step' today, of course, but I think I needed a bit of a break. Sitting back and pondering the plot for a couple of days is probably going to make it a better book in the long run – I suspect there is merit in taking a couple of breaks while writing to ponder where I am going next, especially as I am writing without a real outline.

Now, I'm going to make an admission – at some point in the future, I would like to write a few historical novels. Probably more in the Howardian tradition than anything else – I was always an admirer of his historical works, though I still consider Conan to be his best canon of work. (Conan/Canon...yes, I went there. Unintentionally, I swear – at least, that's my story, and I intend to stick to it.) Naturally, this means research – which is not really a problem to me – but it also means that I need to consider what era to write in. Though the bulk of my historical work in the past has been 20^th century, somehow I immediately – pretty much – ruled that out. With one exception – and that being the Russian Civil War, and I think I've discussed that before.

Even then, when I think historical fiction, somehow my thoughts go to the ancient or medieval period. Ever since I listened to the 'History of Rome' podcast, I've been fascinated by that period, and collected a nice little library with a mind towards potentially working in that time, though I don't actually have any set story ideas. In fact – aside from wanting to work in this medium, I have to admit that I don't at the moment have any burning stories to tell – just a desire to tell some. My plan is reasonably simple, to do a bucket-load of research into a period – or probably more than one – and keep some notes, see what appeals, then focus my research again.

The other period I am increasingly edging towards is that time around the Norman Conquest, which was of course a massive turning point in the history of England, and has an awful lot of extremely entertaining events going on – both of these are periods that I have an interest in, both of them would be reasonably straightforward to research, in that a combination of Amazon, local museums and local historical sites (heck, Battle's only a fairly short train ride away) should allow me to get to a reasonable level of competence...as long, of course, as I put in the groundwork.

So – that's what I'm going to start doing. I'm still reading the War of 1812 books, but that's really research for my Alamo books, but as well I will be going through my Ancient Rome and Norman Conquest shelves, as well as picking up a few books that supplement those where I see points of interest. I'm not focusing on the nitty-gritty of the setting at the moment, that would come later – the idea is instead to focus on points of interest. Oh, another thing – I need to read more historical novels than I have lately, and I have a bit of a backlog there. I probably need to go through my blog list more thoroughly, so any recommendations in this area would be welcome.

As to why? Well, typically I'm a discovery writer, but this would require me to adopt a different skill. My research generally much more consists of 'read what interests me and then move from there'. This would require a rather more structured approach than I typically adopt. Probably it would take longer per book – but I don't mind at some point taking a little time off for research. At the moment, this is a long-term plan – I have four and a half books at least to write before this – but it's something that's going to need a lot of lead time, so I should get started on this...