Isn't Science Wonderful...

Well, you might have noticed that there has been some movement on the progress bar again, and this time in the slot below – work on 'Swords of the Damned' is now at the point where I'm 'waiting a few days to do my final check', so that's going to be up fairly soon. That means, of course, that the time has come for me to begin work on the next book in the Battlecruiser Alamo series, 'Not One Step Back'...and at long last, that's going to be the title of an Alamo book. I've had the cover for this one for a year, and it is more than time that it got used!

This one is going to be interesting, because as well as being the start of a new story arc for Alamo, it is also the first appearance of Spitfire Station, the location of the first Alamo spin-off that will see publication, currently intended for the end of March. As a result, I spent ages and ages working over the location of the station, working out details of the system, the politics, and all manner of other details. Then I threw them all out when I learned something extremely interesting...that a new brown dwarf star had been discovered...within seven light years of Sol.

Now, I've always had a soft spot for Brown Dwarves, there's so much to learn about them – and that a new star was going onto my map was going to have some potentially major implications for the astropolitical structure of the series. I added it to my charts, and found that it was in a very interesting position...and so Spitfire Station was moved about twelve light years to its new home, the star of Luhman 16. A star discovered after I had completed the earliest drafts of Battlecruiser Alamo. That we can still find such interesting things so close to our own system is astounding, and certainly makes you wonder what else might be out there, waiting to be discovered.

The system is a brown dwarf binary, so two stars for the price of one, and better yet a planet, to boot, orbiting one of them. Naturally it doesn't have a name yet, no extrasolar planet does, but I can't really refer to it as 'that rock', so for the purposes of the book, I'm going to name it 'Kumar', after Dr. Shiv Kumar, the first man to predict the appearance of brown dwarf stars back in the 1960s. I happen to think it a completely appropriate name for a planet orbiting a brown dwarf star...though no doubt at some point my book will be made out of date when it is eventually named, although as yet no extrasolar planet has been given a name.

It's just so exciting to be writing stories of this type at a time when so many amazing discoveries are being made – a look at the news will give you a new idea for a story, perhaps one that would have been impossible to write just a few years – or months – before. 

Damn, I hate redrafting!

I thought I'd put out a quick update on the status of 'Swords of the Damned'; I have now finished the first draft, and the beta readers seem happy with it – which means that the only step now is the bit I hate the most, the redrafting stage. This requires concentration and focus over an extended period to rid the text of typos, polish some of the speech, take out duplicated words, and correct any errors. (At one point I had a fighter pull a sword from his holster. Heaven knows what was running through my mind there!)

I tend to take it on a chapter-by-chapter basis, going through each one twice. Scrivener makes this a lot easier – I admit it, I'm a real Scrivener fanboy – as I can compartmentalize all the text far more easily, mark which parts I've been through, and so on. Two run-throughs, then and that usually knocks out the errors, then I let the computer take a look.

Never rely on a computer spellcheck. Never do it. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. There are two things I find it excellent for, especially with fantasy, funnily enough. The first is that it provides yet another level of checking, and one not reliant on a tired human eye; usually it still catches a couple of words. (I'm British writing in American English; often that tends to be what trips me up!) The second is consistency of character names – simply plug in the correct spelling of a name, and you'll have a much better chance of catching it out.

I've got the cover art on the way, and no-one will be surprised to know that it is being done by the splendid Keith Draws; as soon as I get it back, I'll be posting it here on the blog, naturally, and I'm really excited about this. Then...well, once the redrafting is done and the cover is in...the ebook will go live. I'm hoping somewhere around the 29^th or 30^th at this point as a target date. By then it's going to be a real relief! A lot of people find it terrifying to push that 'publish' button, and I did myself the first time, but I'm coming to a point that I find it exciting – to see what other people will think of the book, and to signal that it is, indeed, time for the next one to begin!

OK, I still find it terrifying as well! I suppose I should get back to work now...

It's Raining Diamonds!

Technically, I probably should be posting about Swords of the Damned right now, but I've just seen something really cool that I'm going to be heavily featuring in the next Alamo book, so I'm going to be talking about that instead! (Though I will say that progress is going really well now, and I'm on the home straight with – hopefully – four more days before I've got the draft completed for the beta readers. I'm at the stage now where I will be glad to put it to bed – and get some of my nerves to rest!)

Anyway, I have been doing a little thinking about the next book, and I already knew that it took place in a system with a cold gas giant, something like Neptune, and that I wanted reasons for people to go diving into the atmosphere after resources. As you all know, I like to keep the science as accurate as I possibly can – with the exception of my faster-than-light drive, of course – so I wanted some reason why such prospecting could take case. I knew that I was taking Neptune as my model, and intially figured 'some sort of gas', so started to hit the journals to find something that they could be exploiting.

By god, I hit paydirt.

Apparently, researchers at Berkeley determined that when the conditions were right in the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune, diamonds would form. Form in the sky and rain down towards the planet's core. The link to the article is here, but you can instantly see how that's going to work, and just what is going to sustain a low-orbital station. Now, I would bet good money that artificial diamonds are going to be commonplace by the time of the Alamo books, but that isn't necessarily the point. They'll still have a value all of their own as jewellery, and besides...how often do we see portrayals in fiction of space industry whose time has come...and gone. At some point fifty or a hundred years ago diamonds formed in this way might have had great industrial value, but now, that has ended. Except that there are still a few prospectors around, dipping into the diamond rains, scooping up their precious stones to sell as trinkets back home.

This is exactly the sort of thing I love – finding something a little obscure like this that becomes child's play to form a story around...

A Brief Update...

First of all, I need to apologize for the paucity of blog posts in the recent past, ever since the announcement – I will point to the growing progress bar on the right of the screen as my excuse, but given that I have now passed the half-way mark, and got through the nightmarish 'second quarter' which is the most difficult part of any book. The first blush of enthusiasm is gone, and the second wave of excitement towards the finish is yet to arrive, and all you have left is hard work and nervous tension, always a heady mix. Today was extremely difficult, a critical chapter – first encounter with the villain, hence not much progress today...but it should get a lot easier.

Writing a tie-in novel has been an extremely interesting process; it reminds me a little of when I was writing non-fiction, as I am constantly referring to the books to look at scenes and ideas. Spells are one example. I'm sure we've all read, in the past, books where it has been obvious that someone has cast spells out of the old Player's Handbook – well, in this book, I wanted to get it right, so that the character could be created – but not make it obvious. Which has meant going with some of the more unusual spells, and I will be very interested to see if people get them all! I read a scene over with one of my beta readers the day before yesterday, and even telling him that it was a spell from the book being cast, he had no idea which one.

The trick – as I said before – is to write something that follows the outlines and the precepts without being obvious about it. I've found myself pulling in bits and pieces from games that I've run over the years, some of the more cinematic moments. Heck, I actually put something in that a player pulled in my game on Sunday, simply because it struck me as an excellent idea and would solve a little problem I had been facing in a chapter!

The best thing about writing this tie-in so far? The Bestiary. That has to be absolute; its the resource I am using most regularly, and it is a fantastic source of inspiration, both for this and for future novels in this setting – I'm already looking forward to the next one, and I haven't even finished this one yet! This is my second fantasy novel (the first is currently unavailable, something I intend to sort out at some point in the not-to-distant-future) and it feels a lot more comfortable to work in. I've been running games for...a very long time, twenty years, on and off (great, now I feel old) and it has given me a base familiarity, a resource to draw upon. I have to face it – when it comes to fantasy, no matter what else I have read, watched or listened to, D&D is where I am coming from.

As usual, 'discovery writing' is throwing me some interesting surprises along the way! I started off with a great, solid concept for an ending, which I have now totally discarded as something I preferred occurred to me about a week ago! What's more, the new ending sets up the sequel, pushing the one I had intended to write out to the third, or even the fourth book. (Which is nothing unusual. I've about decided that my original second 'Battlecruiser Alamo' book plot is not going to happen until 2017 or so. At this rate I'll have beta readers on Mars before I get to it!) 

Plans for 2014: Adventures Dark and Deep

For a long time, I've wanted to write a fantasy series – an epic sword and sorcery in the style of Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith; that style of fantasy has always compelled and attracted me. It's probably been obvious through some of my recent posts that I've been working along these lines, and there is something that has been in the works for a while that I think it is now time to announce – I've been bursting to say something for weeks, but now that I actually have some progress on the first book, I think it is the time.

I can now officially announce that I am writing a series of tie-in novels for the 'Adventures Dark and Deep' roleplaying game, published by Joseph Bloch. This is something that I am extremely excited about; this is my favourite of the OSR role-playing games, and those of you who remember my OD&DITIES days will understand why this is of great interest to me. One of the first fantasy novels I can remember reading was the first of the Dragonlance novels, and I spent many lunchtimes reading that trilogy in my school library. To be following in those footsteps is extraordinary.

To provide a little background, Adventures Dark and Deep is a D&D 'retro-clone', though one with a key difference; while games like Labyrinth Lord and OSRIC mirror games that actually existed, Adventures Dark and Deep is a clone of a game that was never given a chance to exist – the 2^nd Edition of the AD&D rules that Gary Gygax would have published had he retained control of TSR. It keeps the core ideas of First Edition, and then follows it up with all of the planned changes and additions that were to have been added – the amount of research into old articles, interviews, even forum posts is absolutely astonishing. Even that aside – it's an excellent game bursting with flavour and inspiration, and I think one of the two games that showcases for me everything that the OSR is all about. (For the curious, the other is 'Stars Without Number'.)

There are a lot more details available at the BRW Games website and the Greyhawk Grognard blog, and I encourage those reading this to click on the links and take a look for themselves; there is an extensive publishing schedule planned for this game that I am looking forward to, including – coming pretty soon – the Castle of the Mad Archmage, which is the closest we are ever likely to get to seeing the original Castle Greyhawk, the mother of all megadungeons, actually in print. This one is destined for my shelf as soon as it comes out. (And feel free to pick up the Adventures Dark and Deep books; they come highly recommended!

As for my novels, the current intention is a four-book series for 2014, with others to follow in subsequent years if the interest is there. I don't want to give any spoilers of plot or characters for the present, but I will say that it does not start in a tavern! The task I have set myself is to evoke the spirit of the game without making it feel like I am simply re-telling the story of a campaign. (Having said that, there are a few moments that I probably owe a few of my players for...) I think the feel is the most important element here – Adventures Dark and Deep gives me an awful lot of material with which I can work, and I want to use it to its fullest advantage. It deserves nothing less.

What I have in mind at the moment to launch this tie-in series is a four-book run. The structure I have formed is a single book followed by a trilogy, all including the same characters, though I think there is a good chance that it will evolve into a more conventional four-book run as I write it. The adventure will not start in a tavern, I assure you...my goal here is to evoke the spirit of the game without resorting to the clichés that are too often seen in adventures. While I don't want to write a 'after-action report of a campaign', I do want to get the feel absolutely right, and to that end I have ritually burned a copy of the Dungeons and Dragons movie. (God, I looked forward to that when it was released.)

The setting for the novels is a world of my own creation, the northern reaches of a fading empire that for many generations has been beset by wars on all sides, with dark forces massing for a final killer blow. There will be dungeons, and dragons as well – it would seem very strange not to have such things! Halflings, Orcs, Elves and Dwarves will be present, but I intend to write the book in a sword-and-sorcery style. I'm not going to hide that I'm a little nervous about this one – I really want to get this right.

This is the first series on the queue for the year, so over the course of the next month the blog will have a lot more details on this, discussing my inspirations and thoughts. The first book will be on sale by January 31^st at the latest, I might do a little better than that. (This is the 'Project B1' and 'Project B2' that have been on my side-bar. Bonus points if you can work out where I got the names from!) As with the other two series, the intention is to release one book each quarter. The first is to be titled 'Swords of the Damned', which might give you some clue...

Plans for 2014: Spitfire Station

Right from the first, I have had it in mind that the Triplanetary universe is large enough for multiple series, for more than a single cast of characters to explore. As I said yesterday, I actually have vague thoughts of another starship at some point engaged on a specific mission – that's something I might well end up doing next year. For this year, however, I knew that as the plotline developed, there were other areas that I wanted to look at, areas that would not make sense for Alamo to cover. The Battlecruiser Alamo is, after all, a starship – so it should be on the move, exploring new space.

What's missing from this equation is more depth on what takes place closer to home; I've had some requests for more of a focus on the intrigue taking place closer to the heart of the Triplanetary Confederation, and I'd be lying if I said that wasn't of a lot of interest to me as well. The idea of the 'cavalry fort on the frontier' is one that springs to mind for me, and it's something that has been on my mind for a while...so the concept of 'Spitfire Station' was born. (There is already an 'Espatier' spin-off in the works...this is something new.)

Spitfire Station was – once – a critical strategic point at the height of the Interplanetary War, but has long since become a backwater. Positioned at a precarious hendecaspace egress point between the two stars of Sirius, it sits on what could be a vital trade route, between Sol and the Republic colony of Procyon III and the United Nations settlements of Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti – but as the Sirius system contains little of use, and the three interstellar powers are constantly feuding, the potential remains unrealized. The station was given to the Triplanetary Confederation as a bargaining chip in the negotiations – during the war, it was a haven for smugglers and blockade runners – but has been unclaimed since then.

That is now changing. 'Not One Step Back' begins with Alamo essentially being sent to Spitfire Station on the first leg of its mission to 'clean up the town', knocking out a particularly bad nest of raiders...and things evolve from there. Think Firefly meets Deep Space Nine in Babylon 5's back room to get an idea of how this is going to look in practice. Being a lot closer to home – a single jump from Sol System – the station is going to get a lot more involved in the political intrigues and machinations, as well as rivalries between the three powers. Heck, it's Casablanca in space.

As with Alamo, the intention is for four novels in this series this year, one per quarter, each in the month following an Alamo release. The first novel will follow on from the fifth Alamo book – though will be designed to be stand-alone, as well – and after that the series will follow its own independent course, though still a part of the ongoing whole in terms of the wider plot. While Alamo is out exploring unknown space, Spitfire Station is keeping the wolves away back home.

The titles for this series are even more provisional than the ones I announced for Alamo, I fear! I really am terrible with covers – 'Price of Admiralty' changed titles about half a dozen times before I finally fixed upon one I liked, and I've had similar problems since then. I think the only one that got through unchanged was 'Fermi's War', and that was originally slated for the third book before I realized that it was a much better fit for the plot of the second! (Even got to the 'cover created' stage...)

Book 1: Anything Goes (March)

Book 2: Kill or Cure (June)

Book 3: Operation Backstab (September)

Book 4: Failed Mandate (December)

I know, not great! Fingers crossed I think of better ones before launch day...but all of these are completely provisional at the moment. My next post will reveal details on the mysterious 'Project X'...

Plans for 2014: Battlecruiser Alamo

Battlecruiser Alamo has been and continues to be tremendous joy to write. As I've said before, this universe is one that has been in my mind for the last twenty years, more than that, and it's amazing to finally get to explore it. A lot of the pieces are now in play for what – I will now reveal – is intended as a twelve-book run. In my mind at least, the four books that I released in 2013 were 'season one', with 'season two' and 'season three' planned for 2014 and 2015.

This series had a rather amusing start – three false start drafts, all of which were completely different. None of them were actually finished; in each case I realized it just wasn't working before I finished the draft, and moved onto the next one. Took about two years to get that first book written! Now that I have a firmer idea of the direction, things move onto a new level – I know where this series is going, and in 2014 a lot more of the ongoing plot is going to become apparent.

What can be expected? Well, as I intimated in the 'Poor Ensign Chekov' post, there will be a few changes to the 'cast' as a few people get moved out; there are some crew members that I want to focus on more, and a few new characters I want to introduce, and a I need to move a few people into positions that will set them up for the ongoing saga. Things are changing in the Triplanetary Confederation, and not all of them for the better. Trouble is brewing...

As for the Battlecruiser Alamo? Well – she's going out again on another mission of exploration, once again with Lieutenant-Captain Marshall in the captain's chair, this time a longer one. The intention is that this will last for the four books of 2014, as the ship heads back out into unknown territory in a bid to learn more about the mysterious Cabal and the threat it potentially holds for the Confederation, as well as continuing the search for the long-lost Hercules.

Naturally, not all the mysteries are going to be solved this year – I need to leave something for the following years – but a few of them will certainly become clearer, and more pieces of the puzzle will slot into place. I'll be honest here – even I didn't know all the details of this when I wrote the first book in the series! The Cabal has evolved as new ideas have suggested themselves from the plot, and some stories have moved back and forth in the line. I may end up writing an entire spin-off series in 2015 to accommodate a story idea that currently doesn't fit Alamo, but one that I like and want to write.

Oh – and aliens. I'll say that much – Alamo makes contact with living aliens in 2014. They've already been established as a part of the setting way back in Price of Admiralty, but I actually intend to introduce some into the series in the books planned for this year. Again, this is something I've been looking forward to, and even planned on introducing some last year, but they just didn't fit into the evolving arc at this point.

Provisionally, the titles for the books to be released in the Battlecruiser Alamo series in 2014 are as follows. Naturally, all of these are subject to change, to some more so than others; as you will see in this blog post, the fantastic Keith Draws has already prepared two of the covers for me! (Not One Step Back was originally the first book in the series, and Battle of Hercules originally the next...I must admit to being terrible with covers!)

Book 5: Not One Step Back (February)

Book 6: Shattered Visage (May)

Book 7: Doomsday's Dawn (August)

Book 8: Battle of Hercules (November)

Tomorrow, details on an Alamo spin-off..

Plans for 2014: Goals...

Something very strange, pretty much unprecedented, took place in 2013. I was absolutely shocked. I kept a New Year's Resolution. Yes, I'm as surprised as you are; I've been making the darn things since...a long time ago, and never actually managed to keep them. This time, I did; I wanted to write and publish four novels this year, and I did it, with a month to spare! This has encouraged me to set a few more goals for next year – let's see if I am able to keep these ones like I did the last ones! So, here they are!

• Write twelve novels. This year I managed to write four, and each one took about a month – the other periods were filled with other things, but those decks are cleared now. Typically when the 'spirit is with me' I write about six thousand words a day, I've always been a lot more comfortable when I write at that speed. Something about engaging the creative part of the brain. This is my job, and I should be writing. To coin a phrase. So the goal is...a novel a month, in three different series.
• Read more fiction! I've noticed of late that more and more, I've been reading non-fiction rather than fiction. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but I need to keep myself fresh with the field. So – I'm going to try and read at least one novel for every non-fiction book this year, and try and review them on the blog. I'm behind on the Lost Fleet series, I have a few others I haven't read yet, and there is a lot of historical fiction I'm longing to get at, so those are all on the schedule for the year.
• Back to writing again – I'd like to do at least a couple of short stories as well. That's an area I would like to do better at; my one attempt at a 10k this year started to evolve into a novel...one that I intend to write at some point after it evolves more. (Watch this space soon...) What I do with them I don't yet know; I may post them on the blog, put them into a collection, both? At least I want to have a serious try at this.
• That brings me to another point...blog more often! I want to try and do a post at least every two or three days over the coming year – far too often I've gone more than a week without a post, and I need to get that up a bit. Not that I don't have things to talk about, but I need to make the time to write the posts.
• Don't buy anything! Seriously, this is something I am terrible at. So I am resolved – no new books or DVDs this year. I have a few pre-orders in – pretty much all of them 'next books' in series that I am already following, and there is no harm in that, but other than the pre-orders I already have in, that's enough for now. I have a massive backlog of books I haven't read, and I want to get that down a bit before I get anything new.
• Catalogue the library. Twice now I've managed to buy books I already own; this is a bit embarrassing, really, and I could do with a better idea of what I've got – so sometime in the next few months I want to take a few days and put it into some form of database. Work out what I have in different categories. That should be useful as well.
• Go to more museums! I live in London, darn it, and it's full of places I should visit. There are places I really need to go and see – so that's going to be a priority this year, to go to at least one or two every month or so. For research purposes if for no other reason; I always find the British Museum to be extremely inspiring in any case.

I think that covers everything! It's a bit of an exhaustive list, but I think it's quite attainable. Frankly I'm more concerned about going cold-turkey on Amazon than I am with writing the novels! As I said, I intend to be running three series over the course of the coming year, and I'll be wriing about each of them in the next few days. First of all – what is the fate of the Battlecruiser Alamo in 2014?