Getting the Word Out

Chapter 9: Lame Duck, of Barghest Part II has posted. Although I realize not all of my readers like the chapters that aren’t action packed, I enjoy writing them just as much. They can be harder to block out and rough edit – it is difficult to know sometimes (especially for me) when I have said too much, over-explained, or dragged out a description. I do love a good description. However, these chapters are where I lay the foundations for future reveals. Writing a chapter like Lame Duck, or previous chapters like Unexpected Results or Smoke Filled Room, are challenging because they are based on dialogue rather than action. But when I get them right I can’t help but rub my hands together like a Bond villain and laugh manically. I can hardly contain myself as I wait for readers to realize that they knew, all along, what was going to happen. They had the clues. The antagonist told them – right there – what was going to happen.  I love that moment when I am reading books by other authors, and to create that for someone else is an amazing rush.

As I continue to work on Barghest, I am always trying to find new ways to let potential readers know about it. I like this story, I love some of the characters, and I want to share it with as many people as I can. I want their feedback, and yours, so that this story, this universe, can be the best possible version of itself. To that end, I ask that if you enjoy Barghest, share it with your friends. Follow me on Twitter @susanamund , subscribe to my blog and leave comments. And if you have a moment, visit Top Web Fiction and vote for Barghest. Every time someone has the opportunity to see my work is fantastic.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy Lame Duck!

That Nagging Feeling

Last week’s post was late. Really late. Like Sunday-which-is-actually-the-start-of-a-new-week late. Sorry.

The problem was that I wasn’t happy with Chapter 7, which made me hold onto Chapter 8.  I was thinking that I needed to change something, and worried that it would impact future chapters going forward. I sat on the latest installment all day Tuesday, hoping that what was actually wrong with the previous chapter would come to me. It didn’t. The week went on by and I still wasn’t satisfied with what I had posted, but I could not figure out why.  I had a couple of readers let me know what they liked about Chapter 7, which gave me the incentive to go ahead with Chapter 8: Shoot and Scoot.

I like Chapter 8; I’m glad I am back on schedule, but I still have that nagging feeling that something is wrong. If you felt there was a missing component, or there was something that just didn’t sound right in the last chapter, please let me know. I want to correct it. I want to give you the best possible version of Barghest. And for the love of Pete, I want to stop worrying about what I did wrong. I’m probably asking for trouble putting this out there, but please: tell me what I screwed up.

Self-employed

Being self-employed is great – the dream, right? You work on what you want to, when you want to. When your assignment is done, you can play. No need to waste time on busy work waiting for the clock to hit five. You can wear what you want and no one complains if you have raw onions in your salad at lunch. You are accountable to no one but yourself.

Then again, you’re accountable to no one but yourself. Missed that deadline? Well, you set it, so either you are lazy or unrealistic. Either way it’s your fault. The project not working for you? Well, you assigned it, so again, still your fault. Unable to focus on anything but the raw onions you had for lunch – maybe you need to set some guidelines for the break room (i.e. your kitchen).  I was late posting Barghest, Part II, Chapter 6 this week. It is a day late, but I have no one to blame but myself. I didn’t get to it as soon as I should have, and when something else came up that I couldn’t avoid there was no one to bail me out. Hopeful you will enjoy it nonetheless, and hopefully I’ll be more on the ball next week.

Thanks for reading, and please let me know what you think.

High School: Spoiler Alert

I like to think that there are certain constants in every world. Because writers are people too, and we all have to draw from our own experiences at some point in order to make what we write believable. That is not to say that my personal experience includes hand-to-hand combat with alien soldiers. Or aliens in any situation, combative or otherwise. It does mean, however, that there are certain truths that I think transcend genre. A good mystery novel may set the detective in a scene with the worlds slowest moving government paper pusher – maybe even the DMV – and that puts the reader firmly in the correct mindset. Because we have all been there, right? A romance novel might have that awkward moment where one person announces their feelings only to be met with strained silence, or that horribly apologetic, “Thank you?”. Ugh, a reader can’t help but feel for that character. And a sci-fi political action, or whatever the appropriate genre is for Barghest, has high school.

It doesn’t matter if it is a century and a half into the future and humanity has figured out faster-than-light travel, achieved world peace through interspecies war and oppressive government oversight, and figured out a way to make tofu into something that tastes like food instead of mushy cardboard. High school is a constant. It is a weird, uncomfortable, and at least 60% of the time is trying to figure out who you are and how to move your body without looking like a muppet that lost out on a Dark Crystal casting call. Even genetically superior beautiful people of the future still have bullies, nerds, and regrets. At that age, events that will be looked back on as insignificant, or the starting point of something great, seem to be the END OF ALL THINGS. Clara Maker wasn’t always Sargent Maker of the Sol Coalition: saver of allies, infiltrator of enemy lines, and terrible poker player. She went to high school too. Some of those experiences shaped her future. Some of it made for funny stories that she could laugh about when she got older and wiser and gained a little perspective. Some of it just sucked.

That sounds familiar.

Read Barghest, Part II, Chapter 4: Unexpected Results and let me know what you think, I’d love to hear from you. Also, if high school was awkward for you too, imagine me giving you a fist bump. If not, then me neither. I was totally cool. Really.

Busy Bee

Last week was a very long week, followed by a long weekend. Three day holiday should translate to plenty of time to write and relax, but alas, that was not the case. I was down to the wire to get my #tuesdayserial post for Barghest out, but I did it. Part II, Chapter 3: Fish in a Barrel is up. I hope you enjoy it. If you do, please let me know. If not, I would love to know what you would have liked to see different.

I also had another two non-fiction articles published this week, one about home construction the other my hobby for ballroom dancing. (FYI – I do not practice both at the same time.) I had hoped that articles would help bridge that financial gap between a day job and writing full-time, but although I feel proud of the little snippets I have written, I don’t think they are going to me any more monetizable than my fiction. At least not in the near future. Perhaps even less so. And I didn’t like writing them so much that I want to take time away from Barghest or Nordic Diner to work on them.

It was a nice experiment, however, and I should make the effort to try at least a few other publications and mediums before I give up on that as a revenue stream. Still, fiction is my passion, so I don’t think I’ll be giving it up any time soon. Thank you for reading!

World Building and the Info-dump

Readers love a rich universe that feels expansive. Creators that have been successful with that task have a nearly endless supply of material available to them to craft more stories. There is always something new to explore in a world that is as complex and interesting as our own. This is why fan fiction, movies, and other creations are so rampant – particularly for excellent fictional worlds; the backdrop of the story is deep enough that it always feels that there is another tale just around the corner, waiting to be told.

There is a fine edge to walk when developing such extensive frameworks, particularly in the sci-fi and fantasy genres. Balancing enough information for the reader to understand and be interested in a new world – with different social customs, cultures, technology, even physics – against overloading them with facts is tricky. Too much and the reader is left lost and confused, having to reread paragraphs or whole pages, constantly refer to tables, charts, or maps, or *gasp* put down a book all together. Too little and the world doesn’t feel real enough. Belief can be suspended for almost anything. A ring that gives ultimate power, and invisibility? I’m with you. Swords made out of light? No problem. A planet supported on the back of a huge space turtle? I’d buy that. However, every reader needs a reason that these things should make sense. Rules for why and how magic works. Probability for the unknown in the vast reaches of space (and a bit of humor). Without framework and a semi-logical constraint system, even the most interesting world can fall apart. Poorly executed world-building ruins the most important task of a fantasy or sci-fi work: transporting the reader to another place.

Barghest is set in our world, in the future. There is no magic, but there is a significant amount of technology that does not exist today. Some of that, like the  armor suits Maker and her fellow soldiers use and gene therapy, is based on actual research being done today. Other things are a bit more far-fetched, like faster than light travel. Those concepts are based loosely on some theories about how physics might work beyond our understanding of it, and the vast amount of unknowns in the universe. I also rely heavily on fifty years of of sci-fi readers that have suspended disbelief for “warp speed”. Beyond the technology of Barghest are the cultural and social constructs, the politics of humanity more than a century in the future. I have attempted to insert that information gently into the story, using conversations between characters and inner monologues that are hopefully not too distracting. Even with those info-dumps, I still felt like I needed to give the reader a better sense of the world. I added in the headers for each chapter, either a “this day in history” or a dictionary entry that are designed to set the stage for Barghest.

The latest chapter for Barghest, Part II: Depredation has posted, and it features a flash back for Maker which I used to describe the social structure that I imagined evolved along with alien incursions and designer genes. Please read Chapter 2: Character Building and let me know what you think. Too much? Too little? Or just enough?

Less Feels, More Punchy-Punchy

Barghest, Part II has begun. There has been some re-organization on the site to make room for it, but you can find Chapter 1: Portent here. It made me think about how I started writing longer, novel-esque works.

My first beta reader was my husband. The man is a good friend, an intelligent person, and an avid reader. He has suffered through more more opening chapters and half-finished novels than any one person should have to – mostly without complaint. After I had finished my first book, North Sea Dawn, I asked him what he thought of it and his response was that overall it was good, but he would have liked less internal emotional examinations and more fight scenes. I’m paraphrasing here, but apparently historical romance is not his thing.

As I started working on a new project, something that I felt excited and passionate about, I did consider my audience. All of the self-help for writers articles say you should consider your audience. (I think they meant people that buy the books, but I work with what I have.) Barghest definitely has more fight scenes. Fight scenes with aliens. Fight scenes versus nature. Fight scenes in zero gravity. Fight scenes with genetically modified child soldiers. And now, fight scenes with space ships.

You are welcome.

Non-fiction vs. Fiction

My first non-fiction article was published this month at Her View From Home. The entire thing was less than 900 words – a page and a half in total – and it only took an hour to write and rough edit. When it was done, even when I sent it in to the editor, I was still half-certain I hated it. Not because it was poorly written or full of grammatical flaws (although I am sure there were elements of that as well), but because it was real.  I have never before shared a real experience of my own, and it left me feeling exposed. Not only is the article about my own life, but it has my name on it. No pseudonym, no persona of ‘author of books’. Just me. That is truly frightening.

After my June started out with the terror of reality, it was a bit of a relief to return to the terror of genetically engineered super soldiers and the sudden, lung-squeezing fear of a wet beak grinding in anticipation. Let’s all look forward to ending the month with Maker and Malak getting back to what they do best – making greasy smears out of space lobsters.

Until next week.

 

Epiphany

I posted Chapter 6 of Nordic Diner today, and while I was formatting it, the idea truck hit me on its way to rewrite town.

I need to scrap the next twelve chapters that I have already written. They are crap. Well, not actually. I like a lot of the stuff that happens in those chapters. There are some pretty funny one liners, a great character named Minotaur (who is neither horned nor lives in a maze), and Kurt being stealthy, cryptic, and deadly. It all flowed easily while I was writing it; it moved the story along. There was action, exposition, and character development. It all needs to go.

This is, perhaps, the worst part of writing. Here I have something that I liked writing, I enjoy reading, and it has all sorts of little tidbits of information that I can’t wait for the reader to know. Unfortunately, what I need is to cut the fat off this story. More action, fewer character introductions. More emotional connection with the main characters, less world building. Sometimes less is more, and that is true here. I have time later, in some other short story(ies), to show you all the fabulous world I have imagined down to the tiniest detail. This is not the time or place.

Usually, when I edit, it is with a scalpel. I carefully remove this, replace with that. This section is severed here and reattached there. Most of what goes onto a page in the first mad sprint of writing stays in one way or another. It has been the case, at least for me and maybe for other authors as well, that every story has one moment where precision editing isn’t enough. Removing a wart isn’t enough. I have to amputate to save the body. It is for the best, and it will make the end product better. I am sure of that.

It still sucks.

Part I Complete

Today I posted the last chapter of Barghest, Part I. This story is designed in a serial format, so although Chapter 20: Choice does leave some questions unanswered, it also brings to a close this portion of the story. Part I was centered around a four month period in Sergeant Clara Maker’s life. Other chapters were focused on Malak and what transpired to bring him into the same battle Maker is fighting. I also interspersed a few, brief, interludes that were intended to give you a glimpse into the universe outside of those two characters. I wanted to at least indicate that there is a much larger political and cultural background to this story than just what Maker and Malak experience first hand. Hopefully, these chapters that are written at various points in the timeline came together in a way that pulls this story to a close and still leaves you wanting more.

I have already started writing Part II, and I am excited to share it with you. There will be a brief wait of a week or two before the next chapter goes up, and I hope you take the opportunity to leave comments on how you felt about Part I – the good, the bad, and the confusing. Let me know what you want to see in Part II, and what you think might happen. I have loved writing Barghest, and I want to continue on this journey with you. Read Chapter 20, and don’t forget to comment!

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