This week I've mostly been focused on typing up the mix of notes, scenes, and outline from my notebook for the now expanded, gender-flipped, sidekick-to-protagonist science fiction story (whew!).

I'm having to do a bit of expansion and interweaving as I go. I didn't write the scenes in order, to begin with, and then I've also been blending it with what I wrote in the second (typed straight to laptop) draft, so that hopefully the whole thing is coherent.

I'm nearing the ending, which I haven't written yet, but I've got such a strong image for that I think I can just type it out when I get there. Also I've got to lay the path for it, so to speak, by weaving in elements in these earlier scenes so the final one feels like a proper payoff, rather than an abrupt turn (though there is a turn, I just don't want it to jolt a reader out of the story).

One thing I want to pay particular attention to, and change if I can't get it right, is the (now) main character's ethnicity. In my mental storyboards, she's a second-generation Asian-American, and that's how I've presented her in terms of name, etc. But in reading books like Craft in the Real World and The Girl at the Baggage Claim, and novels like Earthlings and The Woman in the Purple Skirt, I'm starting to doubt whether I can properly portray such a character. I've been thinking I can use my experience as an internal (and now international) immigrant as a bridge to their worldview, but I think now that that's not enough. There's the pervasive racism experienced by minorities in the States, and on top of that the misogyny that uniquely harms Asian-American women (I say harms, not harmed, because it keeps happening: witness the one character in "The Boys" who is introduced as completely feral and whose voice is silenced is the one Asian woman in the cast). And that's before we get into differing family relationships, unique cultural touchstones, etc.

So I'm not sure if I should change the POV character's ethnicity or not. I think that during these handwritten drafts I've found an approach that can be both representative and respectful. And I don't want to be the kind of white writer that only writes white people (any more than I want to be the kind of male writer that only writes men). The world is diverse, and I want to represent that in my fiction. But I want to do it well, which means more than just changing a character's name or skin color.

We'll see how the draft comes out. And what my sensitivity readers say when they review it.

Gender-flipping one of the characters in my new short story turns out to be the best decision I could have made. Whole new story possibilities have opened up, and I'm following through on them as best I can.

Which is to say, I haven't made any progress on the horror story I started last week.

I'm basically back to draft zero on the sci-fi piece (now gender-flipped). The story's going to need to get longer, much longer, in order to capture these new ideas. Somehow I'm going to need to pull off switching POVs inside the short story form, which is usually a no-no.

And it might still be! But I won't know for sure until I try it out. Maybe switching POV between scenes will be a disaster. Maybe I'll read the new draft through and find it's a horrible mess. But then again, maybe I won't.

So I'm trying to give myself the freedom to explore. I'm still forcing myself to sit down at least 15 minutes a day and work on a story, any story. But I'm not judging the output of those fifteen minutes. If it's character sketches, great! If it's brainstorming possible plot twists, also fine. Just so long as it's effort spent on the story, in whatever form that takes.

This weekend I'm hoping to carve out some time to do some drafting based on the notes I've put together over the week. It'd be nice to have a finished draft together, however messy, that I can start editing next week.

Hope your own writing is going well, and that you're avoiding the trap of judging your work by anyone else's standards.

Started the first draft of the new horror story this week, but just barely. Managed to bang out a single scene before my brain came to a screeching halt.

At first I was scared, thinking my writer's block had come back. But after a day to calm down, I figured it out: I still needed to edit the flash pieces I banged out last month. My writing brain -- who commutes between my subconscious and Tír na nÓg, I call them Fred -- wasn't ready to move on to a new story just yet. Outline, sure, but draft? No way. Edits first.

So I've mostly been editing. Two of the flash pieces I wrote are ready to go. A third is on its second draft, but I think it needs a third major one before any fine-tuning passes. I had an idea for gender-flipping one of the characters that I think will make the dialog more interesting (because it'll bring out more of each character's personality) and easier to follow (because the dialog tags will be different).

I've also been (kind of) editing my prison break novel. As I mentioned before, I've joined a writing group, so I'm using it as my submission -- 2,500 words at a time -- for each session. We're using Google Docs for sharing, which I thought would be annoying (ok, it is annoying) but has given me a chance to edit each section before I copy/paste it into the shared doc. It's mostly cleanup edits: Fixing a typo here, reworking a bit of dialog there. But it's making the draft stronger, and they're giving me some very useful feedback on it (like catching that a character didn't bother to put on a pressure suit before heading out an airlock!).

It'll take us (as a group) a while to get through it all, but I'm hoping at the end of it I'll have a firm sense of what needs to be updated in one more editing pass before I can start sending it out to agents. Then maybe I'll start (finally) editing the novel previous to that one, and so on and so forth, till they're all edited and all out on sub. Meanwhile, I can keep churning out short stories, and work to find each of them a publishing home.

Wish me luck!

There's a moment in Jodorowsky's Dune where the titular director, discussing how Hollywood canceled his version forty years ago, pulls a fist of euros out of his pocket and shakes them at the camera. "This system makes us slaves," he cries, "With this devil in our pocket. This paper...It has nothing inside. Nothing!"

In the moment, the gesture feels melodramatic. A bitter cry from a man who was denied his chance to ascend to greatness. But after watching first Lynch's Dune, and now Dune: Part One, it seems prophetic.

Where Jodorowsky's version of Dune sought to change the consciousness of its viewers, and Lynch's Dune tried to convey the weirdness of a future as far from ours as we are from the inhabitants of ancient Sumer, Dune: Part One is seeking to...tell us the story of Dune.

Yet even with this lowered ambition, the film is a failure. Dune the book fascinates in part because of its many colorful factions, all vying for power. But Dune: Part One doesn't have enough ambition to be a Game of Thrones in space. Mentats here are just bland, faithful servants, denied even their name to let the audience know how special -- and central -- they are. There's no mention of the Space Navigators' Guild, leaving Spice's centrality to space travel just an abstract thing, a line a character says while standing in the right spot wearing the right clothes, and nothing else. The Spice itself is barely present, looking more like someone turned a glitter filter on than a thing worth killing over.

The result is a film with no depth and no stakes, the world of Dune flattened to something completely mundane. It is a clockwork universe, made with stunning special effects and actors moving in expensive costumes.

In his past films, Villeneuve's lack of interest in the human was an asset. Both Arrival and Blade Runner: 2049 benefit from a style that is distant and alien, the former because it seeks to convey an alien perspective, the latter because it centers on an unfeeling android. But Dune doesn't work unless the galactic stakes are connected to the personal, the planetary drama interlocked with the familial. Dune: Part One leaves the galactic stakes mostly untethered, and the family drama unexplored. We get an adaption that is faithful in every sense but those that matter.

If only there was something human at the heart of it all, some emotion, some sense of life and purpose. But Dune: Part One is content to just let events play out, with no rhyme or reason behind them, just toys -- beautiful toys -- going through the motions, propelled by money, and rewarded with the same.

Got another short story rejection today. This one was personal, at least; not a form letter, but a description of an historical error that threw the editor out of the story.

It hurts a little less, I guess? To know I got close enough to being accepted that the magazine's editor read the story, and rejected it themselves. But it's also frustrating, to have such high hopes for a story, only to see it constantly fail to get published.

And now, of course, I'm diving into more historical research, and thinking of ways to fix the error they called out, while keeping the heart of the story intact. Yet another revision to make before sending it back out.

Or perhaps it's time to let this one go. Sometimes I think I need to take these rejections less personally. To treat them as less of a challenge, and more like little slips of paper slipped under my door while I'm working. So long as I'm producing more stories to send out, does it matter that much if one of them doesn't work as well as I'd like? Or to flip it around: If I'm happy with a story, does it matter so much that any particular editor isn't?

Of course I'm never completely happy with a story. There's always something to change, some phrase to tweak or scene to re-think.

That's the thing: I'm always ready to revise. I crave feedback, and once I get it I honor it by making changes. But is that the best way to improve as a writer? Am I making things better, or just delaying working on something new, something to which I can apply all of my lessons learned afresh?

What about you? When you get a rejection, does it spur you to keeping editing? Or do you march on to the next project?

So the Clarion West online workshop was...interesting.

The instructor, Fabio Fernandes, seems like a fantastic person, one I could easily sit and talk to for hours. I feel this because that's basically what he did for two hours: talk to us.

Well, I exaggerate. We spent the first hour hearing having everyone in the class introduce themselves.

The second hour -- and beyond? he wasn't done when I had to hop off to get back to work -- was him telling us stories, making reading recommendations, and...that's it. No real writing advice, other than to write what we want to write, rather than what we know.

But his personal stories were fascinating and eye-opening. Like the one where he picked apart a scene in Ian McDonald's Brazil (which he translated into Portuguese) involving a group of black men and a white woman, talking us through how the race relations displayed in that scene were not Brazilian, but American. Or how he's considered to be White in Brazil, but in the US or UK he's Latino, but only to people in those countries who think of themselves as White, because to other South Americans, Brazilians are not Latino, because they don't speak Spanish!

And he did in general give me confidence (permission?) to write about cultures other than my own. He said we have to find things in our experience that can bridge the gap between the culture we grew up in and the culture we want to write about. And to remember that we are all both insiders and outsiders: insiders for our native culture, outsiders to everyone else (and vice-versa).

So I guess my experience was positive? If a bit less focused than I'd like. And less organized; they said they'd have the recording link sent to us, but it's been over a week now and so far, nothing.

So I'm not sure I'm going to sign up for any more of the Clarion West online courses. Apparently fifteen minutes is more than enough to get some excellent feedback on a story draft, but not even two hours is enough time in which to give some general writing advice and techniques.

In conclusion: I really cannot wait for the pandemic to end, so we can go back to learning and sharing in person.

Apex Magazine is back!

Apex went on what looked like permanent hiatus while editor-in-chief Jason Sizemore dealt with multiple surgeries for serious health issues (see his editorial in this month's magazine). But he's thankfully recovered, and after a successful Kickstarter, he's re-assembled the Apex editing team, and resurrected the magazine!

Issue 121, then, is their first new issue in almost two years. It's a double issue, as all of them will be from now on, released every two months. You can grab your own copy here

So let's dive in! (no spoilers, I promise).

Root Rot, by Fargo Tbakh

Jesus, this story.

Reading it is disorienting at first. There's a good reason for that, for why the narrator's voice seems jumbled and confused. But as I read, more and more pieces fell into place, until the very last scene broke my heart.

I wish I could write something this powerful. This moving. An inspiration, and a bar to shoot for.

Your Own Undoing, by P H Lee

Second person, represent!

I usually hate stories told in the second person. All those "You"s feel like commands, and I instinctually kick back against those, and out of the story.

Not so in this case. Lee's story wove a meta fairy tale around me, a story that was itself an illustration of the conflict at its heart.

If it sounds too clever for its own good, don't be put off. It's not. It's a fantastic story, first and foremost. It's only afterward, when thinking about it, that its clever structure reveals its shape. Just amazing.

Love, That Hungry Thing, by Cassandra Khaw

This one....this one did feel too clever for its own good, for me.

Not in structure, but in the way it leans so far into the modern (well, post-2004) tendency to leave readers out on a limb. Being confused can work -- see the first story, above -- for a while, but I (being very careful here, as I know not everyone shares my tastes) tend to get very frustrated if there's no payoff at the end.

And there's no payoff in this story, for me. In fact, there's very little action at all, or even dialog.

A lot of beautiful description, though. Evocative words and phrases that promise glittering insight into this future, but then never cohere into a stable image. Nothing falls into place. It's an exquisitely described place, though.

Mr Death, by Alix E Harrow

My favorite of the bunch.

I don't want to say too much, lest I give anything away. Let me just say that this is what I wish the movie Soul had been. Read it. You won't regret it.

The Niddah, by Elana Gomel

A short story about a global pandemic. Yes, really.

Grey Skies, Red Wings, Blue Lips, Black Hearts, by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

Had an allergic reaction to this one. Something about another story that drops the reader into a confused space, with no explanation, and calls its main environment "The City."

All I Want for Christmas, by Charles Payseur

Short, powerful flash piece. Made me shudder.

It’s done! The edits are done!

Well, this round of edits, anyway...There’ll be more, down the line.

But the third draft of the novel is finished!

This is the first draft that I feel can be seen, so I’m sending it out to beta readers, hoping to get some good (meaning: useful and thorough, not merely positive) feedback.

I’ll also need to send it to sensitivity readers, because some of the characters are from ethnic groups outside my own. I think I’ve done them justice, but I know I’m not the best judge of that. So I’ll ask some friends of mine to be additional readers, letting me know if I’ve messed anything up.

While I wait (and lean into my reading, to unwind a bit), I'm going to work on a short story or three.

Or five.

I found a horror anthology that’s accepting flash fiction on five different subjects through December. The topics are broad enough that I’ve brainstormed a few different story ideas for each.

Since they’re flash pieces, I thought I’d write one up for each topic, and submit them all (which they allow). Five little stories for my brain to chew on while I take a break between editing passes.

What about you? What do you do, between revisions of a longer work? Or do you take any sort of breathing room between them, at all?

I turned the corner, and my soul left my body.

My wife says I walked around slack-jawed, not speaking, not noticing anyone or anything else.

It was our first trip to Galaxy's Edge, at Disneyland.

We'd been walking around the other areas of the park all day, in the lingering heat of early October, 2019. I'd wanted to go to Galaxy's Edge straight away, but our friend had insisted we wait till the sun went down. When the crowds would thin, and the lights and special effects on the buildings would come out.

She was right.

Because when we finally made it there, the park was perfect. Not empty, but not crowded. Cool enough to walk around, but not yet cold.

And everything was lit up.

I've been ambiguous about a lot of things Disney has done with the Star Wars franchise. But that day, in that park, I forgave them everything.

Because they nailed it.

The streets, the buildings, the design of the doors, the mother-fucking Milennium Falcon sitting right there, looking every inch a hunk of junk that's ready to race around the galaxy. They even got the sound of the floors in the Falcon right, our shoes click-clacking on the floor panels exactly as if we were being followed around by a foley artist from Lucasfilm.

It was...uncanny.

And I wanted to go back the very next day.

As you can imagine, though, we haven't been. We told ourselves we could return in the spring of 2020, just in time for my birthday.

What naïve summer children we were.

Thanks to the pandemic, there's no return trip in my near future. No immersion in the world of Black Spire Outpost.

Except through fiction.

So I picked up Dawson's book set on the world the park is meant to represent. I wanted to go back there, even for a moment, to let her words guide my imagination in invoking the spirit of the place.

Too much to ask, perhaps. But I had high hopes after reading Dawson's Phasma, where she introduced two new characters -- Vi Moradi and Cardinal -- while building out Phasma's backstory. That turned out to be a Mad-Max-via Star Wars tale wrapped inside a spy story; an incredible balancing act.

And once again, Dawson pulls it off, weaving a high-stakes story with a small-scale focus. She brings back both Vi and Cardinal, filling out more of their arcs and letting both of them shine.

But.

Something bothered me all throughout the book. I didn't know what it was at first, just a vague unease in my mind as I read along.

It wasn't until halfway through the novel that I realized what it was: the colonial attitude of Vi and the Resistance towards Batuu (the planet on which Black Spire Outpost is located).

Let me explain. No spoilers, I promise.

When the story begins, Batuu is not involved in the conflict between the Resistance the First Order. It's too small, too unimportant. The war has passed it by.

Which is one reason Vi is selected to go there, as some place the First Order won't be paying attention to.

Logical on the face of it. But it's the start of my problems with the story.

Because no one on Batuu invites the Resistance there. No one on Batuu wants to be involved in the conflict, at all.

The Resistance just assumes they have the right to build an outpost there, regardless of what the local population wants.

Which means they assume they have the right to bring the war there. To bring violence and death with them. Because they know the First Order is going to eventually discover said base, and when they do, they will respond with oppressive force.

And throughout her stay there, Vi repeatedly acts like a colonial officer sent to a "backwards" place:

• She quickly makes a deal to steal an ancient artifact and use it to bargain for supplies (instead of leaving it alone, as she has no rights to it)
• She assumes the right to squat in ancestral ruins that the people on Batuu consider sacred
• She receives medical care from a local elderly woman, which saves her life, and her thanks is to rip the woman's only help -- her grandson -- away from her. She thinks she's right to do so, as it's "for the greater good"
• She's constantly saying things like "Don't they realize I'm doing this for their own good?" every time she can't bend someone to her will
• When she finds herself using local expressions and greetings, she doesn't think of it as being respectful, but as "going native"

I could go on.

It's a frustrating flaw in an otherwise fantastic book. I like Vi, I like the other characters, I like the story, I even like the ending.

But the constant attitude of Vi and the Resistance that "we know better than you, so we're going to make these choices for you" is so...belittling, so arrogant. It feels out of character for a movement that says it's all about free will. And yet totally in line with the way we Westerners usually interact with other countries.

I still recommend the book. It's the next best thing to being there, in the park. Which is an incredible achievement, despite the problematic nature of some of its plot points.

I'm turning the editing corner, into the final third of the book.

I'm a little nervous about this section. The middle edits were smooth sailing, but the closer I get to the end, the more things need to line up perfectly. I need to make sure threads are getting wrapped up, that I haven't skipped any scenes, that everything makes sense.

I need to keep the whole novel in my head at this point, basically, in order to keep it all consistent through the end.

And the end, of course, is the most complicated part of the book. It's where the main conflict gets resolved, via multiple timelines and a perspective shift.

I hope it works. I hope I can hold it all together.

Because if I can, if I do, then this round of edits will be finished. And I can start sending it out to beta readers, to finally get feedback from another pair of eyeballs than mine.

And maybe, just maybe, have their reviews back in time to make final adjustments, and have it ready to send to agents by the end of the year.

It is...a tight deadline. But we live in hope, don't we?

The streak's alive! I've managed at least 30 minutes of writing for 57 days straight now.

Alternating the days I work on the novel with the days I work on the short story seems to help, too.

I've even started tracking my daily word count again, when working on the novel. I don't let myself stop writing until I hit 250 words.

As a result, I've made notable progress on it. Finished three new chapters, and I'm ready to start editing down the next few.

And for the short story, I'm gathering notes on my research and getting plot points nailed down. This weekend (or early next week) I think I'll be ready to start writing some dialog, and then gradually fill in the rest.

Oh, and I have three other pieces submitted to paying markets. Keeping in the habit of sending them right back out a few days after a rejection comes in.

So this week has been good, relatively speaking. Still not operating at 100%, creatively, but I'm finding a new normal, a new pace of working to make a habit.

What about you?

It's here! The new issue of Galaxy's Edge is out, and along with stories by Joe Halderman and Robert J Sawyer, it has my very first short story sale: "Wishr"!

It's been a long road for this story. I wrote the first draft in September of 2016 (!). Since then it's been through five major revisions, and multiple edits on top of that.

Several of those were prompted by early rejections. I'd submit it, get a rejection, revise the story, get beta reader feedback, and send it back out. Over and over and over again.

A slow process, but a necessary one. I'm proud of the story that's resulted, and very proud to be a part of Galaxy's Edge magazine, which was edited by Mike Resnick until his passing early this year.

Many thanks and congratulations to both the editor, Lezli Robyn, and the publisher, Shahid Mahmud, for keeping the magazine going, and his legacy alive.

So check out the new issue, and let me know what you think of the story!

I won't be shy about admitting this: Dianne's one of my personal heroes.

A trained scientist, turned science writer, and now indie publisher, Dianne's one of those people that makes me wonder how they find the time for it all.

Did I mention she also has two kids, did a cross-country tour to promote her books, and was on a panel with Cory Doctorow at Wondercon last year?

Dianne was kind enough to take some time -- over Skype, given current circumstances -- to talk with me about her writing process, going indie, and what's it like to work on one long story for thirty years.

The first two books -- Heliopause and Ephemeris -- in her Questrison Saga are out now, and the third's on its way soon.

Writing Process

Let's start with your writing process. Are you a pantser or a plotter?

I would say that everything is in my head. I already know what's happening. I basically just sit down and write it out. I don't really follow an incredibly structured situation, I just write it. Things can come up as I write that influence where I think things might go and the characters have minds of their own. They might do things I didn't expect.

But I don't do outlines.

What about editing? Do you do multiple editing passes or do you do everything in one big push?

For the most part, I will go through the book and I will do my first pass, and then I'll go back and do it again.

Then I hand it off to beta readers.

Then the beta reader feedback, I get back. If there need to be edits or anything expanded upon, then I incorporate that. I read through it again.

Then at that point, I need to hand it off to the editor.

Do you mind going into a little more detail about your editing passes? I know some writers will break it up, so first they do a dialogue pass, then a consistency pass, etc

No, I just go through it all. It's just in literal order, line by line, chapter by chapter to the end, and I fix things as I go.

Do you take any time between writing a draft and then doing the edit?

I don't like to, because I feel the fire. I feel like I want to get this done. That's very much a "me" thing. I'm very much like that. Once I finish something, I want to make sure it's really, really done. I can't stand waiting on stuff like that. I tend to just jump right in.

Do you give any guidance to your beta readers?

Well, I don't like to frame things for them in advance. I do it more after they read. I do ask them, I say, "Hey, if you see anything blatant, let me know. If you have any questions, let me know." I keep it simple.

After they're done, that's when I really ask them the questions, because then they read it. That's what I want to know about, as a reader, what worked for you, what didn't work? I'll ask things like, "Who is your favorite character? What made you laugh? What made you cry?" Different things like that. "Do you think that this particular passage worked?"

Do you do an editing pass per beta reader?

No, because they're finishing at varying times. I thought, well, I want to ask my questions now that it's fresh on their mind, they just read it. Then because of that, then I'll go ahead and incorporate right after that, their feedback, if I felt that it merited changing.

Not everything does. In some cases, I've had to say, no, this is the way it is supposed to be.

You have a lot of really strong characters in your books. Are those based on real people?

Some of them are.

Sumond, the alien chef in Ephemeris, I based on this chef that I knew from San Francisco from when my brother lived there in the early '90s. This guy, this chef was hilarious. He had been an opera singer. That's where Sumond comes from.

Or take Troy in Heliopause. We all know Troy. He's a lounge lizard kind of a guy. He's loosely based off some people I know and he's named after my dad's cousin, Troy, who was more like an uncle to me than a cousin. It's a little bit of family nod there.

Then who else? Let's see. Even Veronica is influenced a little bit by people I know. I won't say who.

Everybody's got a little bit of influence from here and there, but nobody's an outright translation now.

Aeriod, though, is full-clothed from a dream that I had as a young teen.

Wait, what?

I dreamed that this alien Brit rocker had taken me up in basically a boat with some friends of mine up to this island in the sky, this land that he had with palaces. He showed me around and he talked to me.

There are some direct lines in Ephemeris from that dream, when Galla is dreaming about Aeriod showing her around. That dream was my dream.

Aeriod was just straight out of my head like somebody I knew. He seems very real to me. That's one reason I guess people say he's complex. It's because he's been in my head this whole time.

Does that happen often? You dream of characters for your stories?

I have very vivid dreams, and sometimes they do lend themselves to stories.

In fact, the first little scenes of Forster in Heliopause, where he's walking along the soft floors with the dim lights, that's from a dream.

I had already made his descendant, Kein, but Forster himself I dreamed separately later. It's funny.

Indie Publishing

You're publishing the Questrison Saga yourself, rather than go through a traditional publisher. Why go indie?

When I had worked on this for so long and then didn't really know what to do after that, I knew I should submit to a publisher. I realized that, oh, you can't really do that anymore, that there's a gateway to publication and it's called a literary agent.

That was about 2017, around the time that I started going regularly to the Writers Coffeehouse at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore. I was going to get an idea of what I needed to do.

I started there and I queried quite a few agents. I got some bites.

At the end of it, there were four that I came very close to using.

One of them turned out to be a shyster.

The other one was just really sitting on it, and sitting on it, and not getting back to me.

The third one had a very strange reaction to it. She's like, "I think it has too many characters," but then she kept going back to read it. I'm like, "Just make a decision." What's the decision? She couldn't make one.

Then the fourth one, I really hit it off with, and she had loved the samples that I had sent her. She read the whole book. But she actually wanted me to kill more people than I was ready to kill at that time.

That was when I decided: I don't want to do this anymore. It's my story. I'm going to tell it the way I want it. I've had it in my head for years.

I can write other stories and submit to this process all over again, they won't matter as much to me. This particular one, I'm doing myself.

Plus, I was uniquely positioned in a time in which you could make a really good quality independently published book by having professionals do the covers and having professionals edit it.

When you set it side by side with a traditionally published book you can't tell, that was the goal. That was accomplished.

Would you do it again?

I will not do this again, because it is a lot of work. It is expensive. You are the publisher, the agent, the promoter, and all these other things when you're still a writer.

If you're taking a lot of time to promote this book yourself, that's time taken away from your writing. Even though I'm a very fast writer, it can be exhausting to keep on top of it.

I still feel that it was the right decision for this series.

But for everything else I'm doing, I will submit to traditional publishing.

How much did it cost you to produce Book One? Was it any cheaper to finish Book Two?

About the same. It is actually a little bit more expensive for Book Two because the editing, it was bigger book.

Do you mind talking about those costs?

I don't remember exactly all the costs. For the first editor of Book One I think was $1,200 and then the copy, the final proof was mostly $600, the art was $600, and then I actually had to buy the books myself from IngramSpark to be able to supply to bookstores and to conventions. That's a significant expense.

Advertising, promotional materials, posters, everything ranging from postcards to business cards to just all kinds of stuff, it was a few thousand at the end of the day.

Have you made that back?

I have made it back for Book One.

I have not made it back for Book Two, I don't think. Not yet.

I think what was interesting was that the minute Book Two came out, more people bought Book One. I think people just like a series.

How did you find all the people that you've ended up working with: the editors, the artists, the graphics people, and the web designers?

Well, everything about this process has been throw something at the wall and see if it sticks, literally. Because I didn't know what the heck I was getting myself into, piecemealing it, but I figured it out.

I got the website going first. For that, I had gone through a couple of web design people and logo designers.

I ended up asking a food and lifestyle blogger, Michael Wurm Jr., who runs "Inspired By Charm", because he had a really sleek website. He gave me the contact information for Dash Creative. That's who I've used the last couple of years.

In terms of the editing, I had gone to San Diego Writers Ink. They had a class on book publishing.

The woman who hosted the class, Laurie Gibson, said she was also an editor and so I contacted her after I'd finished the draft of Heliopause. That's how I met my main editor.

Then through her, I met Lisa Wolf who did the proof edit who is actually the editor for Book Three.

It's a chain of contacts, basically. My cover designer was a parent at my kids' school and he knew the artist, Leon Tukker. That's how that happened.

Can you talk about distribution? I think you mentioned you use IngramSpark?

IngramSpark prints and distributes most of the books that you see.

When I upload a book and it's ready to go and I purchase the option for both paperback and eBook, they upload it to everywhere: Kobo, Amazon, Google Books.

They do all that and they also put the links up all across the world on various international bookseller websites.

I chose Ingram because of its reputation, it's worldwide distribution, and the fact that it would not be limited to Amazon. I wanted independent bookstores to have my books and not feel competition from an Amazon published book.

Did you have to form your own publishing company to own the copyrights or deal with IngramSpark?

I filed copyright. I immediately copyrighted it through the U.S. government.

If you're an indie author, I highly recommend that you get an entertainment lawyer to help you with policies because we don't have big publishing companies behind us.

We need legal help. We need contract help. That's what an entertainment lawyer is for. I secured one of those.

He recommended that given the uniqueness of the name Questrison, that I trademark the Saga. I did that. That was extremely expensive, but I feel good about it.

Because now I can put the circle R, it's a registered trademark. The Questrison Saga. You can't use it. It's my baby.

Questrison Saga

You've mentioned before that you've been working on these books for thirty years. Can you talk about why you decided to finish these books when you did?

All through college, even though I was overwhelmed with schoolwork, the stories were always in the back of my head. I had also drawn a lot of the characters in them. I sometimes would still sketch those while I also learned how to do actual watercolor art from classes.

After I had graduated college, it was a nightmare just entering the workforce. I ended up moving to the West Coast from Tennessee in 2000, and did work for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle for a number of years.

Then after that, I briefly lived in San Francisco. That's when I thought "I have to get back to these stories." They're been in my head all this time.

That's when I started working on what is now Ephemeris. I even made a brief little comic of it with my own sketches, outlining the story a little bit. That was the closest thing I've ever come to an outline, was this storyboard.

After that, I had children. And I was very busy with them. laughs I worked as a science writer for four years. I felt that I was preoccupied by writing nonfiction.

After the recession, I was laid off. I decided to apply to graduate school and I chose epidemiology, which is very topical at the moment.

I came to San Diego to start a Master's Degree in epidemiology. I would have finished it, but I never saw my family and my younger child, who at the time was two, did not cope well. I chose to withdraw from the program. I have no regrets about doing that, because it was the right thing for the family.

Then I meet another parent at my kid's school, who was an editor. He edited scientific papers, not fiction. I mentioned I had these stories, and I showed him the first few chapters of what become Heliopause.

Not being a fiction editor, it wasn't really something he could work on, but he did encourage me to finish the story. I hadn't had that kind of encouragement. It was a kick in the pants. For that, I'll always be grateful to him.

I call him the man that saved Heliopause.

It's funny how encouragement or discouragement at just the right times can make a huge difference.

Yes, and I definitely had been discouraged a few times.

Some people would say, "Maybe it's time you just let that story go and work on something else."

I hated hearing that. I thought, no, I want to finish the story. It's been in my head for most of my life.

Positive encouragement is more powerful than discouragement. Because when somebody believes in you at the right time, and I hope that everyone has that person, it makes all the difference.

Having worked on these for so long, how many drafts do you think you've been through for Ephemeris in particular?

Well, it's funny because what is now Book Four was actually the first book.

I started with what is Book Four now and then morphed it around, and what is now Ephemeris then came after that.

Ephemeris is an interesting book because it takes place before, during, and after Heliopause. It's giving you a preview of things to come as well as things that happened in the past, and tying everything together later in the book with people from Heliopause.

I've had so many drafts of these stories over the years. In my closet here in the office, there are binders full of handwritten drafts from over 30 years ago, including maps that I made, travel guides, glossaries, everything.

My handwriting is just garbage, and that never got better.

There were some typed versions too. I had a terrible typewriter, but a lot of it was handwritten.

There's so many drafts. It's ridiculous. I kept a lot of them. I threw out a lot of them too. I don't even know how many there were to be honest with you.

Basically, we have to talk in terms of the Questrison Saga instead of just one of the books, the whole saga. I knew the endgame from the beginning when I was a young teen. Just the journey to get there changed along with me as a writer in developing the craft as well as maturing as a person in experiencing life.

When reading Ephemeris, it felt like I could point to certain locations and go, I think this is such and such a place that I know Dianne has lived. Like reading about Perpetua, is that Seattle?

Heliopause, I've often said, is a love story to Oregon. Because Forster keeps remembering Oregon, and the time he was with Auna in Oregon.

That's why when Aeriod presents him with the possibility of such a place as a planet [Perpetua], basically an untouched Oregon, he's delighted.

Aeriod sets him up that way. He's thought it out. He knows what Forster cannot say "no" to. He's already thought through all the scenarios. "How can I get Forster to do what I need him to do? Let's throw out everything that he could just never say no to." And that's what he did.

When I write about Galla on Perpetua, that's her first experience on a forested planet, near an ocean or anything like that. It's very instantly different than anything else she's experienced. That is similar to when I moved to Pacific Northwest in 2000.

Not Seattle per se, which I don't have a lot of love for, but Oregon I absolutely adored.

Are there other planets in the books that are also drawn from places that you've lived before?

Well, I've driven a lot of roads.

There's definitely some influence from my road trips because I have gone across the country several times in the past several years by car.

Now there's a world in Book Four that is heavily influenced by my time in both Tennessee and San Francisco. Because I know that planet the longest, it feels very real. I feel like I'm there when I'm reading it.

You'll see connections to a lot of the places I've lived in that book. It will seem very intimate. It will seem very real, I think.

Books One and Two are already out. When is Book Three due?

Early April for pre-order, with an intended release the end of May.

3,026 words written this week.

Most of those are on the novel, but about a third are edits on the short story I wrote back at the SoCal Writers Conference in September.

Reading the story now, I think I like it more than I did before. Not necessarily the language the story's told in; I can see plot holes and awkward phrasing. But the story itself: The characters and the setting, how the protagonist's heart gets broken, and how she pieces herself back together. That's what I'm in love with.

A good sign, maybe? Certainly it motivates me to finish, to edit and polish the story until it's the best version I can produce.

But it also means I might miss flaws in the telling. I have to beware of liking my own voice too much, instead of the voices of the characters.

How do you balance being critical of the work versus liking it enough to keep going? Do you tend to err on the side of hatred, or do you fall too much in love with your work?

I’d heard that the bubble of elation you feel when you first have something accepted for publication doesn’t last long.

I only half-believed it, of course. Surely I would be different, my expectations set better, my heart both more and less trusting.

Because if one acceptance happened, couldn’t another? And another? And even if rejection came, wouldn’t that one acceptance be enough to keep me going?

Turns out the answer is no, no, and nope.

I’d had a story out to one magazine for a good while – close to three months – and as the time stretched out without getting a rejection notice, I began to hope. The acceptance of another story just made that hope bigger, and my dreams with it: What if all the stories I had out currently got accepted? What if I was able to join SFWA this year, all in a rush, with three stories that I’ve spent years working on all getting accepted in a short window of time?

But the rejection came yesterday, and my little bubble of hope popped with it.

Now I feel like half a success, half a failure. It doesn’t help that I’ve heard nothing from the magazine that’s accepted a story since that acceptance; no signed contract, no payment, nothing. So even that success feels ghostly, as if one strong wind could blow it away, and I’d be back where I started. Unpublished. Always-rejected.

I’m telling myself to be patient. That the only thing I can control is the writing, so I’d better damn well do that part.

And it does comfort me, a little, that I wrote 2,223 words this week. I’m back to making good progress on the novel, and I’ve got two stories to edit into shape before sending them out into the world.

Chances are they’ll probably be rejected, too. But I can’t control that. What I can do is write another story, then another, and keep writing. Keep improving. And keep submitting.

One story got through. I can keep writing until another one does, too.

Finally getting back to the good part: the writing.

Or rather, the re-writing.

Finished off the sequential outline earlier this week, after going back through the workbook outline and my manuscript to slot in missing scenes.

Then I took all the scenes from the first draft and shoved them into a single folder, marked “Original.” That way I can keep them around for reference, and pull what I need from them, without them being in the way of the scenes I need to completely rewrite.

Starting with the opening sequence.

Early feedback on those scenes said they lacked tension, and they were right. Thankfully, after going through the workbook, I’ve got much better ideas for them. I’m going to introduce some antagonists earlier than before, and tie the bigger conflict arc to their early conflicts with the protagonist.

I will, most likely, eff up these scene drafts, too. But they’ll be better than before. And hopefully, if I get the story beats at least down correctly, I can work more on language and dialog later.

Intense.

The prose is stripped clean of excess, going down so smooth it injects the story right into your bloodstream. And hot damn, it’s a good one.

I haven’t read a lot of YA, but this is the first one I enjoyed, start to finish.

Three things I learned about writing:

• First-person, step-by-step, can be brutal: by sitting right inside the character’s head, it’s easy to get sucked in, and then when the shit goes down, you feel every victory and defeat like they’re happening to you.
• Every group has a jerk. Every group in fiction needs a jerk.
• One way to handle writing a large group, where each person needs their own personality, is to write scenes in which the group rotates through different configurations. The numbers stay manageable, but the composition of the group in the scene changes, giving each member a chance to shine.

Generally excellent. Where the first book was broad, with multiple locations and times, the second one goes deep, diving into the political minutiae of a single system. And it works, drawing us further into the world of the Radch.

Three things I learned about writing:

• Be careful of "I knew that she suspected I thought I knew about this lie that she told me three days ago" plots. Unless your narrator is very explicit about their thoughts, you can lose the reader in too many significant looks that aren't explained.
• If a cool gimmick from the first book isn't available (lost because of story), instead of bringing it back (and reaching for a retcon), try to find a different way to achieve the same thing. Here, the data relayed to the narrator by Ship gives us the ability to view scenes we wouldn't otherwise, preserving the narrative trick of the first book by a different means.
• For a sequel, you might be tempted to go broader than the first book (especially if the story of the first book was epic in scope already). But you don't have to. A smaller scope can work just as well to let you show who your characters are, and deepen their relationships.

Another strong portrayal of a villain from Grossman.

Avoids the trap of completely rehabilitating Nixon. He’s sympathetic without being likable, and interesting to follow without the reader always cheering them on.

Loses steam in the second half. There’s plot lines that go nowhere, scenes that could have been cut without changing anything, and the climax happens completely off-screen, with no buildup or release of tension.

Still, I learned a few things about writing:

• Delivering most of your plot via dialog -- so long as you're not data dumping -- can be a great way to keep the story moving.
• The best villains think they're the hero.
• Restricting your book to one POV can be too confining. Multiple POV can let you explore other aspects of your world, which you might need if your story takes place somewhere very different.

Frustrating and disappointing. Adams' writing is stuffed with metaphors, giving everything a dreamy quality that makes it hard to take anything seriously.

Didn’t help that I just came off reading Octavia Butler’s Earthseed books, which do a much better job of narrating a woman’s journey through a post-apocalyptic world.

Three things it taught me about writing:

• If readers already know the narrator survives a scene in a flashback, don't try to wring tension out of their survival.
• Readers need to know not only what your characters are doing, but why, if they're going to care.
• When writing a character from a different country, do several editing passes to be certain their dialog, analogies, and expressions all match where they're supposed to be from.

Non-anglophone authors you should know

• dr schaff-stump: japan and russia
• kastersmidt: born in texas, living in brazil
• dr lyau: specialty is french sci-fi
• takacs: hungarian, lots of hungarian sf has not been translated yet
• schwartzmann: reads russian, ukrainian and polish; has done translation work
• schwartzmann: russian writers: bulgakhov (magical realism, 1920s and 1930s)
• takacs: strugatsky brothers; stanislaw lem, especially the cyberiad; rana ras;
• lyau: france produced second-most varied scifi tradition; planet of the apes; their golden age was the thirty years following jules verne's heyday; maurice renard; french new wave post-1968; robita; de nizorres
• kastersmidt: hector hermann oesterheld (argentinian, was killed by junta for publishing comic)
• schaff-stump: has handout with japanese names; since japanese novels are often turned into manga and anime, can often find those in translation even if the book hasn't been
• schwartzmann: for chinese scifi, start with three-body problem, first volume had to adhere to communist standards, second was a little looser, third volume he completely jumps out of the box; tor is releasing "invisible planets" collection of chinese short stories translated by ken liu
• takacs: yerg dragoman (the white king; bone fire); adam bodor (the sinister district)
• fantastic planet: was based on french novel called "humans by the dozen"
• lyau: start with the pulp novels to brush up on your french
• kastersmidt: if you haven't read borges, do so; camilla fernandes (brazilian); also check out the apex book of world science fiction, runs to four volumes, collects stories from new authors from around the world
• schaff-stump: hex (from dutch author) was rewritten for us edition, not available in strict translation
• tiptree award is going out of its way to bring non-english scifi to anglophone attention (check past award winners)
• takasc: african sf: afro-sf anthology series; african speculative fiction society website will soon go live
• first emeriati science fiction publishing house is opening its doors
• omenana: african sf in english (online)
• german scifi: andres eschbach, the carpet makers (?)
• ukrainian literature: vita nostra, available in english, by sergey and marina ____, basically the magicians

Promoting Yourself as an Introvert

• tamara jones: writing since seven yrs old
• doesn't leave the house much
• lives in small town iowa
• has four novels, first won compton cook award
• had to suddenly start speaking to a lot of strangers and big crowds
• hard to relax
• introverts are like onions, have awesome core, but many many layers of protection on top of it that prevent people from getting to know your core
• on panels, need to let hair down, but you can hide behind the table for safety
• editor liked just first 66 pages of first book she bought, had to rewrite everything else, which completely changed her plans for the second book; so: don't write the next books in a series until you sell and finish the first one
• some people don't want to let you talk on a panel, but don't get aggressive, that doesn't come off well
• readings are the worst
• but: get your ass out of the chair, gives you better diction, more control; move around, even though there's no where to hide; it's performance art: talk about self, talk about book, read short pages (two pages), then talk about it, then two more pages, then talk about it (make it different works or passages for variety)
• find whatever it is that gives you feeling of safety (small sweater, lucky socks, etc) and wear that to the reading to help you feel safe and able to be yourself
• has had three stalkers already, so no one knows where she lives (deliberately)
• tries to avoid the parties; but when you're starting out you have to go because editors and agents will be there; grab a drink, wander around and listen, take a drink if you get nervous
• what do you do when drained? Find a capsule of solitude somewhere: a quiet corner, maybe even the restroom stall, close your eyes and be alone for 15 min
• editors love to talk about their work; her typical question is "what's the best thing about your job?"
• need one sentence description of each of your books
• also need one sentence description of yourself "i slaughter people on paper for money"
• thinks introverts should not moderate, have to insert self and take control, which introverts are not good at
• don't overprepare for panels; whatever you prep for will probably be thrown out the window as soon as the panel starts
• at end of the day, selling self, if you do that people will want to buy your books

Flash Fiction: Short but not easy

• betsy dornbusch: writes mostly epic fantasy, used to buy flash
• anna yeatts: flash fiction online owner/publisher, also writes flash
• caroline m yoachim: just launched collection with fairwood press
• flash: definition varies greatly; over 1,500 wordsis definitely not flash; something you could read in five minutes
• yeatts: want a full complete story in a coffee break; still want a complete story arc, pared down to the essence
• vonallmen: looking for the pop of "oh, wow" in just a five minute read
• wowell: couldn't write GoT in flash
• yoachim: now i want to write that
• wowell: customer service call for death ray works really well in flash format; sci-fi comments thread works really well as flash
• dornbusch: don't do vignettes about the sun, they don't get bought
• yoachim: great focusing on small piece; focused emotion, etc; great for putting hints of the larger world in the story, rest up to reader's imagination
• favorite stories?
  • yeatts: grobnak ama
  • running of the robots
  • first story from daily science fiction: story with three substories, and the meta-story, all in 1,000 words
  • strain of sentient corn writing to monsanto
  • if you were a dinosaur, my love
  • six names for the end
• what skills are important?
  • dornbusch: editing; revision; the shorter the length, the more powerful
  • dornbusch: likes humor in flash, but not the punchline
  • wowell: need to recognize how many plots and subplots you can fit into each story length
  • vonallmen: ability to focus on tone
• send mothership zeta your cat stories (joke)
• yoachim: so much needs to happen in the first paragraph: need to tell reader what they're in for, little about their world, the action, tone, everything
• dornbusch: try telling story where reader knows the secret, usually it's better than hiding the secret from the reader
• wowell: if you like twists, do it at the beginning, not the end; starting with the twist will get me reading
• yoachim: remember can play with your title, do a lot of setup there
• current markets?
  • flash fiction online; daily science fiction
  • unsung stories (uk)
  • fantasy and science fiction takes some flash
  • mothership zeta
  • vestal review
• lots of calls for flash, but don't give it for free
• yoachim: targets markets that specialize in flash fiction
• uncanny magazine does flash
• fireside fiction does flash and shorts
• nature runs flash fiction
• flash one of the few markets where second person won't overstay its welcome

The Art of Worldbuilding

• amanda downum: necromancer chronicles
• luc peterson: runs civic innovation office
• peter tieryas: fiction where japanese won world war ii?
• downum: need fresh ideas, sense of wonder, in showing this new world
• bear: burroughs first to do world-building in science fiction
• downum: likes to start with character and scene, let world unfold from there; likes characters to pick up and interact with objects in the world, rather than just moving on a sound stage
• patel: starts with what a society values most, and what they fear most; what do they invest in, what do they build walls and defenses against
• bear: receives a vision; might take years to stitch visions together into a story
• what do you need to know? How many doctorates?
  • bear: english major, don't know anything
  • downum: ditto
  • patel: need to know what touches your characters; need to have lots of prior work done to know what this is before writing
• downum: has someone ask her questions, to reveal those things she hasn't thought of, those pieces she hasn't built out herself; really good if someone that doesn't read genre, they come at it from a completely different angle
• tieryas: even things (research) that don't show up in the book can be valuable
• bear: history of asia a target-rich environment for mining world-building ideas
• how do you put limits on the research?
  • downum: hard, but do a little at first to get started; when come across detail to fix later, mark in brackets and keep going; do more research afterward to fill in details, etc
  • patel: timebox your research time so you push yourself back into writing; can be iterative, don't have to answer all questions at beginning, questions that come up during writing can give you chance to do focused dive into research again
• patel: shorter work is, less research you'll have to do, but you may have to do very detailed research into a single focused topic
• downum: likes first person for short form, but at novel length it's like being stuck in an elevator for a very long time, so prefers third person multiple perspective
• patel: look for opportunities for drama and conflict in all worldbuilding; how would your characters tell their history? How would their enemies tell it?

How to Handle Rejection

• gail carringer
• wallace: stopped counting at 1,000
• worst rejections: ones that are really really close to acceptance
• wallace: never count on money until the check clears
• carringer: rejection is evidence that you're trying, that you're sending stuff out
• best rejection?
  • carringer: rejection was so nice, went back with later work, has been her agent for ten years
• carringer: don't fall in love too much with a particular book, be willing go move on and write more and try something else
• reader reviews are not for you, they're for other readers
• carringer: would tell younger self to try different genres and styles earlier
• carringer: never ever ever respond to a rejection
• wallace: btw, anything you post online, anywhere, is a response, and is a bad idea
• carringer: some agents/editors will be full up with authors in your genre, and so will reject you because they don't want to take on any more
• remember that they're rejecting the product, not you

Enjoying urban fantasy

• diana rowland: white trash zombie
• melissa f olson: tor.com novellas
• what do you like about uf?
  • city as character
  • looking at things just a little differently
  • what if your gross terrible neighbor was a real monster?
  • a way to crack open the puzzle of the weird world we're in and understand it better
  • it's a way to be sneaky: can talk about deep things in a fun way, with people that don't notice
  • perception: history has been edited down from multiple conflicting perspectives; urban fantasy lets you deal with these different perspectives for more immediate events
  • no real bad guy: bad guy is someone pursuing their goals in a fanatical sense, still think they're the good guys
  • people are always writing urban fantasy from their primary experience; in feudal days it was fears from lord of the manor, today it's shopping malls and steelworks (instead of fairy rings)
  • changeling stories are ufo kidnapping stories, just told in a different time
  • uf is the intersection of contemporary fiction and fantasy fiction
  • danger: to cover over real experience with a fantasy gloss; example: the magical homeless people of the 80s)
  • can use unreliable narrators to try to avoid the problems with covering over messy experience
• why first person?
  • immediacy
  • tight perspective
  • noir influence: almost all first person, huge influence on urban fantasy and its style
• adrian mcinty: leicht's favorite irish noir writer
• rowland: j d robb's books

Finance for writers

• put 40% away for federal govt, 10% for state, pay quarterly income taxes estimate, will usually get something back at the end of the year
• most first books don't make back their $5,000 advance
• don't quit your day job, even after signing tge first contract
• some contracts don't last past 2 or 3 books
• not a steady income
• be careful with your money; lots of authors aren't good with their money
• get good agent: writers tend to not read contracts, approach it very emotionally; good agent will catch things and get you the best deal possible
• okay to lose money on your craft at first, but have a budget and be aware of it
• spend money on your craft (take classes, do workshops) and your network (attending cons, etc)
• but: if you're at cons, write down what you want to accomplish before you go
• if you self-publish, spend money on quality: an editor and a cover designer; everything else you can half-ass, but not those
• keep all receipts for your craft in a shoebox, use them (plus your spreadsheet) to fill out your schedule c for your taxes
• if you don't make a profit every seven years, the irs considers it a hobby, not a business
• average income for writers is $5,000
• don't quit your day job until you have 2 years' worth of living expenses saved up
• rule one: write, finish, send it out
• one benefit of incorporating is the ability to defer income from one year to the next (should you score the $70,000 advance)
• 78% success rate for publishing projects on kickstarter if they get 25 backers; difference between people that are prepared and know what they're doing and those who don't
• bud: turns profit every 5 years; how? Doesn't report all his expenses that year
• lots of ways to use kickstarter: events, book tours, playgrounds inspired by literature, self-pubbing books, magazines; can get really creative
• margot: think of marketing as sharing these stories you're passionate about with others and inviting them in, not "selling yourself"

Idiot's Guide to Publishing

• all scifi community on genie network at the time
• doctorow hadn't written a novel yet, so got karl involved
• patrick: liked it because it was very practical
• rejectomancy: shouldn't read too much into rejections; form rejection could be from someone that loved it but didn't have time, personal could be from someone that doesn't like the story but likes you personally
• schroeder: never sold any short stories to the magazines, has only ever sold stories to anthologies
• at the time, discussion over ebooks concerned fact that they never go out of print, so publishers argue that they don't have to revert the rights to the author
• would not try to write today, because has no idea how to get into the field now

Nifty Narrative Tricks

• bear: what character is like matters less than how you handle the character
• kowal: people want the familiar in the strange; familiar makes you feel smart, the strange is compelling; when have character engaged in activity or emotion that readers find familiar, then when i engage them in something weird they already have a hook
• kelly: characterize people by what they own. before walking them on stage, go into their room, or their car: what's there? is it messy? neat? what's hanging on the walls? bonus: gives you things to use later in the plot
• walton: writers get some things for free, and some things they have to learn; easy to teach the things you learned, but almost impossible to teach the things you got for free; she got interesting characters for free, so...story is contract with reader, try to get what story is right up front so reader doesn't feel betrayed
• bear: beginning writers make mistake of writing passive characters
• bear: give the character something to love; instantly makes them more engaging
• gould: best way to intro tech is to show it when it breaks down; very engaging to intro character when frustrated
• kowal: frustration will show what character wants, what they love, and give you a measure of their competence
• kowal: figure out what character wants, and smartest way for them to get it, and then you block off that way (and keep blocking off ways)
• walton: __ starts with character really having to go to the bathroom while giving speech on history; is pure exposition but you don't care because you sympathize with having to use the restroom
• walton: farmer in the sky (heinlein) has similar trick, with tons of worldbuilding done in describing a father and son making dinner
• term: incluing
• kelly: how can you tell beginning from middle from end? beginning -> middle: character goes through one way door, and can't get back to the start; middle -> end: character goes through another one-way door, and story has to end one way or another
• kowal: stakes are something particular to the character; we're all going to die, so death is not great stakes; "you're going to lose your right foot" is more personal
• kowal: focus indicates thought; what you're looking at is what you're thinking about; rhythm and breath: same action at different speed gives you different emotion; how long you linger on something shows how important it is to the character
• walton: pacing very different between genres; same story told at different pacing can change the genre of the book
• kelly: look at the story; if you see a section of solid text or solid dialog, that's probably a pacing problem
• common mistakes?
  • bear: starting with bloodbath, before you care about the characters
  • kelly: end of story is not the climax, you need a moment for the character to come to grips with what the climax means for them
  • gould: leave some things for the reader to figure out from context
  • kowal: starting with way too much backstory; solve by getting deeper into point of view
  • walton: too fuzzy, character not in focus; can fix by switching to first person, forces you to focus on personal experience
• walton: often rushes endings, has to go back in and fix pacing after draft finished
• kowal: best trick: dumping exposition into a sex scene
• kelly: world-building will happen almost without trying; less you can do of it, the better

Evolution of Epic Fantasy

• tessa grafton: the united states of asgard
• sarah beth durst: queen of blood
• epic fantasy: need close in shots, and medium shots, and landscape shots, all mixed in
• leicht: research into irish time of troubles taught her everything involved in world-building: how economics is tied to politics is tied to religion is tied to class is tied to language
• kate elliott: crown of stars
• leicht: viking skeletons found in bogs: no one checked if they were male or female; many of them (warriors) are female
• elliott: archeologists finding statues mostly female, labeled one male statue as priest-king and all female as just "fertility", then were mystified as to why they kept finding female statues

Moving. Robinson conveys both the triumphs and the horrors of interstellar colonization, covering hundreds of years in a single book. Almost cried at the end of the penultimate chapter.

Three things I learned about writing:

• The experience of agoraphobia (possibly all phobias) is something the written word is much more suited to portray than film, allowing us to think what the sufferer thinks, feel what they feel, better than other media.
• In a longer work, you can structure chapters as stories of their own, with a cold open, development, slow crisis, resolution, and a reveal
• When narrating long periods of time, zoom out to establish rhythms or patterns, zoom in on unusual or unique happenings (or things that have an impact on the larger patterns)

Fantastic. It’s Robinson Crusoe in space, executed so well that what should have been boring and cliche is instead full of tension and humor. I sped through this book, consuming the whole thing in two days.

Looking forward to watching the movie. Oddly enough, since I know Matt Damon plays the title role, I heard his voice for all of Mark’s journal entries. Felt like a good fit.

Three things I learned about writing:

• You can mix regular narrative with journal entries, but it's best to introduce it gradually, and only once the main storytelling mode has been established.
• Relative dates will do just fine. Most of the time, they don't really matter.
• Humor (in the characters or the narration) makes a bleak or depressing situation much more palatable.

New novel’s done!

Topped out at 111,733 words yesterday morning.

I feel proud, relieved, and confused all at the same time. Proud for getting it done, relieved that I can move on to the next project, confused that I might actually be done with the first draft. There’s a part of my brain that’s circling the last few chapters, going “are you sure we’re finished?”

But I am, thank goodness.

Next it’ll be on to editing the draft of my previous novel, whipping that into a shape I can send out to agents.

But that’s later. For now, the order of the day (of the week?) is to relax, recharge, and regroup.

Novel’s at 103,532 words…and it’s still not finished.

Wrote about 10,000 words in the last five days, pushing to uncover the ending. But there’s more story left to tell than I thought. Blew right past 90,000 words, then 100,000, and it’s not done.

My revised outline – yes, I’m still revising it, thank you – points to five more chapters, and then I’ll be finished. That means somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000 words to go.

So I’m pushing my deadline to July 1st, and setting a target of 1,000 words per day until it’s done.

One way or another, I will finish this draft.

No real blog post today (or likely on Friday or Monday), as I’m focused on wrapping up the novel before June 1st.

Wish me luck!

Novel’s at 88,796 words.

I’m pushing myself to write at least 400 words a day, stretching to 500, instead of my usual 250. I’m writing every day now, instead of taking weekends off. I’ve even shifted my work schedule – heck, shifted the dog’s feed schedule – so I can put in more writing time in the morning.

All so I can hit my deadline.

Don’t know if I’ll hit it. It’s looking like the book will blow past the 90K word target I’d set for myself, back in the heady days when I thought 50,000 words was more than halfway through.

But how far past 90,000 words? 2,000? 5,000? 20,000? No idea. (Note to self: please try to get it done before 120,000 words).

So: 12 days left. All I can do is keep pushing, and see where it ends up.

Managed to quiet my inner editor long enough to push the novel to 86,126 words this week.

The puzzle pieces are starting to come together for my protagonist, which is making things a little easier. Each part of the solution they come across leads them on to additional questions, which reveals more of the solution.

All I have to do – I tell myself – is write down what they’re doing, what they’re thinking, and let the events I set in motion earlier play out.

It’s not that easy – it’s never that easy – but the lie helps, somehow.

I also keep reminding myself that: a) if it turns out that what I’m writing is crap, I can fix it in the next draft, and b) the only way to get better for the next novel is to finish this one.

Novel’s at 83,370 words.

So I turned out to be wrong about sustaining the faster pace. Only managed 700 words this week.

I could say it’s because I’m doing more planning and outlining, and less writing. I could say it’s because I’ve started jogging in the mornings again, so I have less time to write.

But in truth I’m distracted, conflicted, and afraid.

I’m afraid I won’t have the book done by the end of the month. I’m afraid I won’t be able to edit it into something worth reading later this year. I’m afraid I’m wasting my time, that I should be spending more of what free time I have working on side programming projects, investing in my skills there instead of here.

In short, I’m afraid I’m making a mistake.

And of course, the lack of writing progress only makes the fear worse. It’s evidence, you see, that I’m not up to snuff, that I need to just move on to something that will pay more, something that’s more in line with my day job, anything other than this.

Right now, I’m just hoping the fear will pass. Till then, all I can do is force myself to sit down, stare at the screen, and push the words out. Even if they’re terrible.

We’ll see who quits first.

Novel’s at 82,649 words.

Deadline seems to be working. I’ve been writing about 400 words a day since setting it, pushing myself to write more than just my 250-word minimum so I can hit the goal.

It also helps that I seem to have turned a corner in the narrative. My protagonist has gotten past the major stumbling block in her path, and is starting down the trail of the villain.

The book itself is picking up pace as she goes, heading toward the climax, and my writing is as well.

Let’s hope I can sustain it through the month.

Fantastic.

Keyes juggles plot threads involving first contact, corporate espionage, traditionalists versus progressive technologists, power struggles, abusive families and grieving for recently-passed relatives, all without dropping a single one. Grounds everything, even the novel’s villains, in sympathetic characters that you may not agree with, but still don’t want to see harmed.

It’s an incredible feat. I’m awestruck by it, and more than a little jealous.

Three things it taught me about writing:

• Sometimes just listening to a character's thoughts as they worry about their present and plan for their future is enough to tell us what we need to know about the world the story's taking place in.
• Spending time with villains, and sympathizing with them, raises the stakes of the climax for everyone.
• Always handy to have a newcomer to the world as an audience surrogate. As they learn and explore the world, so does the reader, without any info-dumping being necessary.

Novel’s at 80,577 words.

I’m closing in on my original 90,000 word target. I have a feeling the final draft will end up longer than that, possibly close to 100,000 words, given the ground I have left to cover.

I’ve set a deadline for myself, though. I want to have this draft done by June 1st.

It’s just a little over a month away, but I think I can make it. Partially because I’m in the final scenes of the book, and partially because I want to. I started the book last July, so wrapping up the draft in June would mean I’ve spent just shy of a year writing it.

I think having a target to hit will push me to write more each day, and finish it out. With this draft done in June, I can take some time off before diving into the editing of my first novel. And I want to get that done before the year is out so I can start submitting it to agents.

Novel’s at 78,941 words. Which is an odd time to have finally figured out its theme.

Or rather, one of its themes. You’d think I’d have known this going in, the kind of weighty things I would be trying to deal with in the story.

Nope. I had a hook, a starting scene, and an idea of how I wanted to portray the characters. That was it.

Actually stumbled across the theme this week, while reading a different book. Something in what the author was talking about meshed with the upcoming events of the story my subconscious was chewing on, and that was it: I knew my theme.

It’s a little late to alter the draft much to accommodate it, but I’ll be writing the last third with the theme in mind. It’ll really come into play when I go back through for the second draft, and start making edits to bring it out more or eliminate passages that conflict with it.

Novel’s at 73,653 words.

Still pushing forward, thought the last few scenes have been hard for me to write. Usually that’s because I don’t know enough about something in the scene – how a bail hearing would be conducted, or the cooking techniques of feudal Japan – to feel comfortable writing it. This time, it’s because I know too much about what’s happening in the scene.

Specifically, I know things that, if my characters knew them, would make accomplishing their goals much easier. But they don’t work in the field, like I do, and so their knowledge is limited.

But how limited? How much should they know, and how much are they ignorant of? How much would just be common sense?

And even for the things they do know, or that they stumble on that work, how much detail should I go into as to what’s happening? How much info do I dare dump on the poor reader?

It’s striking that balance – between showing too much detail and not enough, between thinking the characters know more than they should versus not giving them enough credit – that’s been difficult for me.

Novel’s at 72,337 words.

I’ve managed to fix last week’s mistake, and gotten back to making forward progress through the novel. There’s some small dangly bits of plot that are poking out around my patch, but I’ve decided to note them for now, so I can come back to fix them in the second draft.

Instead, I’m plowing forward.

Novel’s at 70,855 words.

Didn’t do any writing over the week of the cruise. With no internet, and no laptop, I decided to take the week off. I feel like I’m on the final third of the book, and I hoped taking a break would give me the energy for that final push.

Returned to writing yesterday, and I’m glad I stepped away from the book for a bit. Re-reading the scene I was in the middle of revealed a glaring hole in its logic.

I found a fix, but it means shifting the course of things going back a few chapters. So these past few days have been ones of revision, of snipping out the parts that don’t make sense and replacing them with explanations that do.

I’m hoping by next week I’ll be back to making forward progress. But for now, it’s patch, patch, patch, till the plot holds water again.

Novel’s at 70,684 words.

Final third of the novel is starting to take shape.

The plot’s taken two sharp left turns in as many weeks, but it’s ended up on a path where I can actually see where things are going now, and how they’ll wrap up.

It’s an odd feeling. Here I was trudging along with no end in sight, just a vague idea of how I wanted things to turn out. The plot – and my original outline – suffer two sharp shocks, and now I know where I’m going.

Let’s hope it lasts for the next 20,000 words.

Novel’s at 66,694 words.

This week’s events have thrown more light onto the villain of the novel: what he wants, how far he’s willing to go to get it, and just how long he’s been planning to take it.

One of my protagonists is gone. The other has to carry on mostly alone now, and I don’t know if she can survive. She’s out of her depth, and she’ll need all the allies she can find – or cajole – to win this one.

Here’s hoping.

Novel’s at 64,623 words.

My entire plot’s taken a huge left turn.

I’ve been off outline for a while, but not in a scary way. Most of what’s happening has followed on from what’s happened before, a nice logical progression of “this has happened, so the character would do that” kind of writing.

It let me forget that this novel has a villain. And they’re not sitting idle.

On Wednesday morning, they insisted on doing something so terrible, it’s thrown all my plans out the door. One of the characters might be dead. Another might be about to turn criminal.

And the villain? Well, they’ve taken a huge leap forward towards winning.

There’s no telling where the story’s going. It’s terrifying, but thrilling as well. I have to write it, now, if only to find out what happens next.

Surprising, strange, and very well done. Manages to weave alien contact, game development, and anarchist politics into a story so good and smoothly written that I finished all 300+ pages in just two days.

Can’t believe I didn’t hear about this one until just a few months ago.

Learned several things about writing from this book, including:

• Little touches can go a long way to building both humor and character. For example, the narrator of the book is Jewish, so whenever a character says 'God', it's written out as "G-d"
• Using blog posts as the main form of narrative lets you cut out a lot of scene-setting description, get to the meat of each scene faster.
• Be careful mixing blog posts, real life narrative, and other written forms in one novel. If they all adopt the same casual, conversational tone (as this book does), they start to bleed together, and you lose the advantage of keeping them separate.

I’ve had to compromise on my daily word count multiple times. First I slipped from 500 words a day to 500 words per weekday, taking weekends off. Then it was 500 words three days a week. Then 250 words.

Now if I get any words down at all during a day, I have to pat myself on the back.

Somehow I’ve managed to push the novel to 50,898 words.

Meanwhile, the house we bought is being completely rewired, most of the walls have had to come down and be replaced, the living room’s missing a ceiling, and I haven’t had a fully functioning bathroom for five days (we discovered a leak in the walls of the shower that meant we had to replace the whole thing: tub, surround and all).

Oh, and one of my root canals decided to fail after humming along quietly for ten years.

I’ve tried to tell myself that this’ll all pass soon, and I can tread water until things get back to normal.

But what if they don’t? What if this cascading series of crises is the normal? What if it lasts 3 months? 6? A year? Am I going to wait to finish till then? Am I going to hold back and make do when I don’t know what will happen next?

I don’t want to tread water. I want to take what I’m going through and pour it into the book, to turn these failures into something successful.

I don’t have any control of what part of the house – or me – falls apart next. I can’t even control my schedule enough to have a regular writing time anymore. But I can push myself to write every chance I get, to use marlapaige’s suggestion and write on my phone, write in my notebook, write anywhere and everywhere. I can finish what I’ve started, and I don’t have to wait.

Novel’s at 49,793 words.

I’m having to steal writing time from other things. Not set aside time, but literally steal, like jotting down a few dozen words while waiting for my wife to pick me up from work, or hovering outside the bedroom/office in the morning with my laptop so I don’t wake her.

It’s frustrating. I feel like I’m not making any progress, that I can’t build up any momentum. It helps that I’m trying to pants things a little more – easier to snatch time from other things for writing that way – but it also hurts, since without a larger plan of where I’m going I don’t have a way to track how far I’ve come.

I’m trying to be patient, to eek out what words I can until the house is in better shape. But we keep coming across problems in the house that need to be fixed – like the bathtub leak we found two days ago – that keep sucking up all my time.

I’m afraid; afraid that if I don’t get some sort of rhythm going again that I won’t finish the book. And I don’t want that kind of failure hanging around my neck.

Came out of this one with mixed feelings. Really enjoyed the first third or so of the book, but it turned into a slog about halfway through, when the focus shifted away from the monasteries. Almost broke off reading a couple times after that.

I did learn a few things about writing, though:

• In a work this long, with this many locations, maps become critical. I got lost in the monastery, I got lost during the overland journey, I got lost in every location despite -- or because of? -- the descriptions. Even a rudimentary map would have helped anchor me in the world.
• When introducing a new vocabulary, you need to be doubly-sure the reader understands those terms before they become critical to the plot. There was an entire section (the first voco incident) that had no emotional impact for me because I didn't know what voco was.
• Showing a different side of a cliché plot can be enough to make it interesting again. In the regular telling of this story, the avout would be on the sidelines, popping up only when things needed explaining to the other characters. But here they're the focus, so we see the entire incident from their point of view, making an old plot feel fresh.

Greetings from Arkansas!

No writing post last week, because on Thursday I finished packing up the house, got on a plane, and flew into Fort Smith.

Got a lot of work done on the flight, but since then writing time has been hard to come by. The house we bought turns out to have bad wiring, bad plumbing, mice, and walls so shot through with mold we’re having to strip them down to the studs.

Oh, and our stuff hasn’t arrived, so I’m still living out of a suitcase.

Thankfully there’s a coffee shop nearby (ok, it’s ten minutes away by car, which is really damn close by Arkansas standards) with comfy chairs and semi-reliable wifi. It’s been my office all week, for both the day job and the writing job.

I’ve managed to push the novel’s word count to 46,417 words, though it feels like I’m writing while on some sort of weird business trip. One where I don’t go anywhere, but I also don’t know where anything is or have any space to call my own.

Thank goodness the same techniques that work on planes have been working here: put the headphones on, re-read the last day’s work, and write what comes next.

Novel’s made it to 43,593 words.

Starting to worry that pantsing it means I’m dropping plot threads. I’ve already noticed a major one that just completely fell of my radar, and two more that are smaller but also haven’t been addressed in a while.

Not sure if I should slow down and try to fill them in, work the missing threads back into the book, or keep moving forward, and worry about fixing it later.

This might even be a good thing, a sign that these plot elements don’t belong, and should be cut, not reinforced.

It’s hard to tell which is right. I think it’s too late for the major plot point, that’ll have to wait for the second draft. The minor ones, though, I think I can fill in as I go, and take care not to leave them behind. I guess if I get stuck somewhere further in to the book, and it’s because of these missing threads, I’ll know to be more careful in the future.

Novel’s grown to 41,169 words.

This week’s writing has been done not in spite of stress, or without it, but because of it.

A lot of things I thought were settled suddenly popped back up again: my mother-in-law has been in and out of the hospital, the buyers for our house seem to be having second thoughts, and my day job turned into slamming my head into a brick wall over and over again, for eight hours.

On top of that, the time for me to pack up the house and move is getting closer, so I’ve got that prep to deal with: going through years of accumulated memories in an empty house and sorting through which ones get to come with us and which ones get left behind.

I thought it would prove too much, and that I’d have to stop writing again. I did take off an extra day this week, spent it watching movies instead of working on the book.

But the next day I got back into it, and was surprised to find that writing the novel – at this point, at least – is the easiest way to take my mind off of all the stress. It’s hard to feel lonely when I’m writing dialog, or worry about my house selling when I’m trying to work through a character’s alibi.

I’m not sure why it’s so different now than back in July. Perhaps it’s because I’ve loosened my grip on my outline, so I don’t have to think so far ahead?

Whatever the cause, I’m grateful for it.

Novel’s reached 37,510 words.

My semi-pantsing of the thing is still working. The characters are starting to do and say things on their own now, which I’m taking as a good sign. It means I can relax my grip a little more, give them leeway to go through the story in their own way.

I still get a sense of physical terror when I sit down at the keyboard, though. It’s been getting stronger every day the past week, as if each day’s success means I’m that much more likely to fail the next day. I know it’s not true, that the words will come if I just sit down and push them out.

But fear isn’t rational. Sure, I’m not as worried anymore about making the first draft as perfect as it can be. Now I’m just worried about being able to write each day’s part of the draft at all.

Only way I’ve found so far to defeat the anxiety is, of course, to write. Writing the day’s words pushes the fear back a little, proves once again that I can do this, that I can create something on the page.

Novel’s at 32,277 words.

Most days I’ve managed to write more than my 250 word goal, hitting somewhere north of 500 words before stopping for the day. Those words are flowing more easily now, the scene building itself out as I keep asking myself “what the characters would do?” without regard for the rest of the plot I’ve outlined.

I even found a way to make my inconsistencies consistent within the scope of the story, which was not only a pleasant surprise, but has helped me loosen the grip of my inner editor and just set words down on the page.

We’ll see how long it lasts, but for now I’m going to ride the wave this technique is giving me.

Novel’s at 29,068 words: I’m back to working on it, and it feels great.

The week off really helped me relax, as did spending time with my friends, getting out of the house and forgetting about the stress of moving for a while. I was only able to write a few hundred words on Saturday, but it felt like a victory.

I’ve kept up a moderate pace since then, carving out enough time to write at least 250 words each day. I’m keeping the word goal low for now, letting myself go over it but also giving myself permission to stop when I hit 250. It’s a small number, but it’s more than zero, and a target I can hit.

I haven’t written anything for the novel in a week.

More importantly, I haven’t let myself work on the novel in a week. I’ve been following Vivien Reis' advice, giving myself time to step away from writing and focus on what’s happening right now with my family.

It’s turned out to be exactly what I needed. I’ve been able to focus better at work, I’ve been more relaxed about all the house showings and paperwork and myriad other little things I’ve had to deal with as we prepare to up sticks and move.

I still feel guilty, though. Like I’m shirking my homework, which is fine for a little while, but eventually you sit down for the final exam and you haven’t a clue what’s going on.

So I’m going to try writing again this weekend. Not much, just an hour or two at most, and with no word count in mind.

Perhaps this way I can use the novel to keep me busy, to keep my mind off things, on days when I’m not at work. And assuage some of the guilt I’m feeling.

Novel’s currently at 7,787 words.

I’ve only written the first couple of scenes, and I’m already at a point where I’m a little undecided about which way to go.

I have the words ready to go to start toward the next scene, but I’m not sure what to do once I get there.

So do I pause here and outline out what happens next? Wait to write more till I know what’s going to happen? Or just let the words flow, and find out what happens as I write it?

The latter instinct terrifies me. The former path makes me worry I’ll spend too much time plotting, and not enough time writing.

I guess I can always go forward now, and fix any mistakes later. It just feels like a wrong turn this early could force a lot of extra rewriting later.

Not much progress this week: only at 4,180 words.

I’d like to say that I didn’t get to write much this week, as if writing time were something that were doled out to me by a woman with a hairnet and an ice-cream scoop.

But that’s not the case. The truth is I didn’t take as much time to write this week as I needed to. I chose other things – morning exercise, staying a little longer at work, going out with my family – and that’s ok, but I need to remember that it’s a choice.

That means I’m on the hook for not getting as far as I should have this week. It also means it’s in my control to change that, to make different choices and get more writing done.

So my writing slowed this week, but I haven’t stopped, and I’m not blocked altogether, thank goodness. It’s just a reminder that I have to carve out the time I know I need to make the progress I want.

Started writing the new novel July 1st, as scheduled. Already 1,600 words in.

It was an incredible relief to write those first 250 words. I had such a hard time outlining the book that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to put anything down, that the magic would fail me this time.

But it hasn’t yet. I’m already adding things to the world, color and details I didn’t think of before, just by writing about it.

I forgot how much fun this can be, making things up and seeing where they lead. It’s addictive.

I don’t want it to end.

A quick, enjoyable read. Indiana Jones crossed with John Le Carré sprinkled with some Inception-like plotting.

Presents itself as a regular sci-fi novel, but the first half is almost completely filled with flashbacks, a series of nested stories, one inside the other, each level going one step further back into the past. Macleod pulls it off by having the same narrator tell most of it, then uses interrogation transcripts and letters to fill out the rest.

It’s nested all the way down, with the novel’s big ideas woven into the structure of the narrative itself. Ultimately works it way back to the very beginning, the first story, closing the loop in a very tidy (but not too tidy) way.

It’s the best method of infodumping I’ve seen in a long time.

Macleod may have carried the nesting too far. By the time I reached the end of the book (and back to the first level of nested story) I had to re-read the beginning to remind myself of what was going on there, and I’m not sure the details between the two endpoints match up.

Still, it’s a lesson in how to present a lot of backstory (~100 pages worth!) to the reader without it feeling shoved down their throat.

Genre fiction has always been aimed at the Outsider, at the person with enough distance from the dominant culture to think critically about it.

It’s just that our definition of Outsider has expanded.

When I was a kid, I felt like an Outsider because I was clumsy and nerdy and socially awkward. The school’s hierarchy enforced that status: football players were in, science geeks were out. Genre fiction was pitched directly at me, giving me an escape from social rejection and poverty and feeding into the sense of wonder I held about the world around me.

I never thought about the fact that, as a white male, the ladder I felt myself to be on the low rungs of was already placed far over the heads of other groups.

As an adult, I no longer feel like an Outsider. Though I undoubtedly am an Outsider when in certain company — I’m an atheist, which puts me out from most of the American populace, and a programmer, which makes my work boring to most people — I don’t feel like one day in and day out.

I’ve come to realize that there are other people who feel much more like Outsiders than I ever did, and that while my Outsider-status has diminished with adulthood, theirs has likely only been enhanced, as their life experiences diverge from what’s considered acceptable in wider society.

These people — women*, people of color, the LBGT community — deserve genre fiction that speaks to them, that talks about their experiences as Outsiders (and Insiders**), that addresses their issues and their needs. I’m glad to see my favorite section of the bookstore embracing them, proud to see us growing up as a subculture.

I still enjoy this fiction, even though I’m straight, and white, and male. Because I remember being the kid that didn’t fit in, that no one wanted to play with, that adults felt uncomfortable around and kids didn’t want to talk to. Sci-fi and fantasy was there for me, and it can and should be there for others, as long as there are outsiders that need it.

The Imagination is a big place. there’s room for all of us.

* Which, holy shit, that half of the population should be sidelined in pop culture for so long is mind-boggling ** Everyone that belongs to a subculture outside the norm is automatically an Insider for that subculture

I was happy to find that the first movie still holds up. I think part of why it works is because it is largely set in a 1999 that is frozen in time. It also helps that the basic structure of the movie is classic: naive youngster is shown a wider world, told of a prophecy where they will save the world, then begins to fulfill that prophecy.

The relative roles of the other main characters in the story bothered me this time, though, where they didn’t before. Morpheus is still amazing, but step back a bit and he’s one more wise black man guiding a white kid to a greatness that he can’t achieve. Trinity kicks ass, but squint and she’s a kung-fu wielding female who’s only there to fall in love with and support the male hero. For a film set in the future with a nominal theme of breaking down mental boundaries, these elements feel distinctly old and out of place.

The second and third movies are still complete failures, though. I enjoyed the second movie at the time, and remember hating the third one along with everyone else. But rewatching them showed me how much the two final films are really one film, and it’s not a good one.

I think a large part of the problem with the last two movies is that they violate the narrative expectations set by the first movie. The trilogy sequence setup in The Matrix was: a nobody becomes special (first film), then learns more about their specialness (second film), then pursues and achieves the mission for which they became special (third film).

But they skipped the second step, and padded the third step out over two movies. Mistake.

There’s a whole chunk of story missing, where we’d normally see Neo rescuing people from the Matrix – maybe getting frustrated that he can’t convince more people it’s fake? – and learning about what he can and can’t do. For example, he can’t do the Keymaker’s trick with doors: if we saw other people do it for an entire movie, but didn’t know how they were doing it, the Keymaker reveal would have a lot more punch.

Skipping that piece of the story prevents us from watching Neo learn and grow, and drops an opportunity to deepen the characterization of the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar along the way.

Given the current structure – and the large narrative hole in it – the last 2 movies should have been compressed into one. Cut out Zion, the attack on Zion subplot, the scenes with the last stand on the docks, etc. Stick to the thread of Neo and his crew chasing down the Keymaker and getting to the Source, then Neo taking a ship to the Machine City and ending the war.

Everything else – the machines attacking the docks, the sabotage of the ships by the Smith-infested human – can come to us as reports that Morpheus relays to the crew. This lets us keep the focus on Neo’s story, since we don’t have time to give the other plots and characters their due. Trying to squeeze them in – like the second and third films do – weakens Neo’s plot and doesn’t deliver any emotional heft. There’s simply not enough screen time.

The best course would have been to make the second bridging movie that’s missing, and then made the trimmed down third movie to wrap it up. Instead, we get one and a half good movies: the original Matrix, and the half a movie buried inside the latter two.

Congratulations on the purchase of your new Samsung by GE™ Instant-Cook Oven™! We hope you’ll agree it’s the best way to prepare hot, healthy meals for you and your family! Please remember us when replacing your unit after its beta-decay period of 6 months is up!

Remember, the most up-to-date version of this manual is available as a video at: youllneverreadthis.com. We’ve included this printed copy for those of you who have slow internet connections, live in the Continental US, or were raised in a text-based household.

WARNING: Do not stick your head in the Instant-Cook Oven™ during the winter to keep warm. It won’t lower your energy bills, but it WILL give you a terminal headache!

Your Instant-Cook Oven™ comes with a plethora of features designed to make cooking easier than ever!

For example, to cook a perfect turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, simply:

• Press POWER to turn the Instant-Cook Oven™ on
• Press DOWNLOAD to start the recipe selection process
• Use the Ultra-Sensitive Keypad™ arrows to navigate through the recipes and choose the one you like best
• When you've found a recipe, press SELECT to select it
• Hit YES to confirm the download
• Scroll through the Terms of Service and Licensing info for the recipe you've selected (read carefully! some recipes have unverified nutritional information) and hit YES to accept
• Wait for the download to complete, then hit INSTALL to save it to the Instant-Cook Oven™'s recipe book (myRecipes™)
• Hit MENU to go back to the main menu, then hit RECIPES to find the new recipe in myRecipes™
• Use the Ultra-Sensitive Keypad™ arrows to select the recipe you downloaded, then hit SELECT
• Hit YES to confirm your selection
• Press COOK. Use the Ultra-Sensitive Keypad™ to enter the number of guests, their religio-ethnic background, current Vegan status, and country of citizenship. You may use the GuestBook™ (see page 1,337) to select from previous guests, so you don't have to enter their information again.
• Have each guest complete a retinal scan to confirm identity, and verbally accept the recipe's Terms of Service and Licensing Agreement. If your guests have not yet arrived, you may send a TastyInvite™ (see page 442) to them so they can confirm and accept at their convenience.
• Once all your guests have confirmed, you're ready to COOK!
• Open the Raw hatch (see page 921) on your Instant Cook Oven™ and check your Corn Pellet level. It should be above the Minimum Level Bar (see page 145) to continue. WARNING: cooking a recipe without adequate Corn Pellets can result in fire.
• Close the Raw hatch, and press COOK
• Press YES to confirm cooking
• Wait for the ChowAlarm™ to sound, letting you know your food is ready!

Inspired by one of Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenges, I’m posting three flash fiction stories today, each three sentences long, and each in a different genre.

Horror

Fantasy

Science-Fiction

Part One: Angela

Part Two: Jack

Part Three: Jack

Part Four: Jack

Part Five: Angela

Part Six: Jack

Part Seven: Jack

Part Eight: Angela

Part Nine: Jack

Part Ten: Angela

Part Eleven: Jack

Part Twelve: Jack