Another Nice Review of How Dark The World Becomes

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 







Here is a link to a nice review of How Dark the World Becomes from Astro Guyz, the science (with a heavy emphasis on astronomy) and science fiction blog by David Dickinson. This review hit last year but for some reason I missed it until just now. I like the fact that he picks up on the book's unique (or at least uncommon) treatment of humans in a multi-species confederation, i.e. we're on the bottom instead of the top.

The Contest With No Prizes -- Lucky Winners Announced

Alas, there are no lucky winners. No one took me up on my generous offer of no prizes for figuring out the three word plays embedded in the short story "Murder on the Hochflieger Ost." For the curious, here are the answers.

You may recall that I said there were three embedded word plays. One involved an artifact, which I though everyone would get. One involved a location, which I thought would be harder. The last one, involving a character's name, I though would be all but impossible.

The Artifact
When explaining why the plans of the aether battleship are of no use to the French, Renfrew explains that they do not include the plans for the analytic engine which makes the ship so powerful. The analytic engine in question is the Improved Babbage, Model Three Hundred and Sixty.

IBM-360? Nobody caught that? Really?

The Location
Gabrielle's false business card lists the address of her appraisal firm as 13 Rue Madeleine, Le Havre, France. In the 1947 James Cagney World War II espionage film 13 Rue Madeleine, that is the address of Gestapo headquarters in Le Havre.  

The Name
Etienne Villon thinks of Gabrielle Courbiere as having the strength and majesty of a mountain, and when he thinks of her as Mont Courbiere he likes the sound of the name.

Francois Villon is probably the best-remembered French poet of the late middle ages, known probably as much for his remarkably adventurous life as for his writing, and his life formed the inspiration for Bertold Brecht's "Baal" and "Threepenny Opera," the Friml operetta "The Vagabond King", and the novel, play and film "If I Were King." Villon's birth name was probably Francois de Montcorbier.

He liked to sprinkle his poems with hidden jokes.

 

A Contest Without Any Prizes!

As I mentioned a while back, the short story "Murder on the Hockflieger Ost," which is a prequel to The Forever Engine, is available as a free download from the Baen Books site. Here's the link again in case you need it. It's a fun read.

But while I was writing it, I had a little fun of my own. There are three in jokes inserted in the story, all of them plays on words, titles, or character names.

In terms of difficulty, I'd rate one of them, having to do with an artifact, a very easy find. One of them, having to do with a location, somewhat harder but not impossibly so. The last one, having to do with a character's name, is so obscure I'd say it was impossible to get, unless you have a mind prone to making associations as odd as mine is.

So any and all guesses welcome. I'll post the correct answers in four weeks and discuss the various guesses, provided I receive any. No guess is stupid--it just may not have been what I had in mind.

No prizes for correct guesses, except of course the people's ovation and fame forever.

A Nice Review of "How Dark The World Becomes"

I've been pleased with the reception of How Dark The World Becomes. It's gotten a solid 4.6 stars on Amazon, with only a single three-star review and all the rest fours and fives. It hasn't gotten a lot of published reviews, however, so I was glad to see the SFcrowsnest site in the UK post a nice review last month. Here's a link.

I'm pleased by the review not only because it's positive, but particularly because the reviewer, Kelly Jensen, finds the strengths of the story to lie above all in its characters and world building, which are two of the three parts of the novel I like most and worked hardest on.

For those curious, the third part (for me) was pacing.

On January 9th I also got a short but nice review in  the Philadelphia Weekly Press from Henry Lazarus. "Very exciting," the review claims (in part--it's not that short). I guess he noticed the attention to pacing.

The Forever Engine is Live!

Today's the first official day when The Forever Engine is live. Amazon has been shipping the advanced orders and is now posting reviews.(First one's up--four stars and a very nice write-up.) It should be in the stores as well, although I haven't yet braved "The Killer Storm of the Century" to find out if it's in my local Barnes & Noble.

Although the ratings change hourly, last time I looked the book was at number 13 for both time travel science fiction and steampunk on the Amazon best-seller lists, and that's mostly based on preorders. I don't really understand how those rankings work (and they make a point of telling you they will not reveal how they come up with them, I suppose so folks can't game the system) but since the sample size is over a million total book-like products, whatever 13th means, it can't suck.

Of course the book's been trickling out for a number of weeks. The Baen Books eArc (electronic advanced reading copy) was available a while ago and I've heard from folks that Amazon went ahead and sent the Kindle versions upon ordering starting sometime  in December, and we're right at a point in the History of Book-like Things where the electronic version approaches the importance of the physical product. We've certainly passed it for some forms of Book-like Things.

Those of you in the Midwest and east coast: stay warm. Maybe curl up with a good book.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year one and all! 2013 was a busy year for me, and a very good one. I have a number of resolutions for the new year, one of which concerns this blog. I'll leave what that resolution might be to your collective imaginations.


The immediate news is that The Forever Engine will be on the shelves in bookstores within the next week, and also available in all e-formats from Baen Books (here's a link to their site) and also available online in paper and Kindle versions from Amazon. I received a very nice advanced review in Publishers Weekly back in the November 4th issue. Here's what it said, in part, with potential spoilers left out:

"Legendary game designer Chadwick taps into his popular Space: 1889 steampunk setting with this exciting prequel novel, which sees soldier-turned-historian Jack Fargo catapulted from 2018 to an alternate 1888 by a mysterious explosive event. Although alternately amazed and baffled by a world that features airships, interplanetary travel, America split into the Confederate States and the United States, and Europe laid out along different political lines, Fargo just wants to go home. . . .(T)he world building is rock solid, the plot fast paced, the action visceral, and the stakes high. Chadwick balances scientific theory, steampunk imagery, and memorable characters with flair. . . "

I blush.

Relating to the novel, Baen Books (my publisher) and I also have a New Year's present for you. They contracted a short story from me as a prequel to the novel and as a way of giving a little more background on one of the characters. The story is called, "Murder on the Hochflieger Ost," and takes place a year before the events of the novel on an enormous luxury zeppelin plying the Berlin-to-Istanbul route--the Space: 1889 equivalent of the Orient Express. It's a free download at the Baen Books site. Just click on this link.

Tony Daniels, my editor at Baen Books and a fine writer in his own right, had some great ideas for the rewrite and nudged me toward a far better final resolution, in my opinion. A book ends up being a collaborative effort and much of the success stems from the help the author receives from others. It still ultimately comes down to the author, but I think the current trend toward self-publishing risks losing some of the collaborative effect of going through a publishing house. Yes, you can hire editors and proofreaders, but I'm not sure it's quite the same thing. Nevertheless, it's certainly here to stay, and will certainly become an increasing part of the literary scene. The economics of publishing almost dictates it for most writers. Who knows what the future will bring, but I'm happy to be with a publishing house like Baen, one that's still intimately connected to their authors and to their customers.  

Space 1889 Game Hits a Homer on Kickstarter!

For those of you who haven't been following it, the Space 1889 roleplaying game on Kickstarter finished its funding window two days ago. It had made its original funding goal within a week or the launch and then made steady progress toward the stretch goals after that. But there was a big surge at the end and it ended up hitting 483% of its original funding goal, with over $100,000 raised. There will be LOTS of supplements and adventures coming, as well as some very handsome 28mm miniatures based on the artwork for the characters.

I am delighted and a little stunned. I expected it to do well, to hits its original funding target easily, and probably double or treble that. But a nearly five-fold increase is amazing, and wonderful. With this game coming out later this year from Clockwork Productions, and the supplements coming out next year, with The Forever Engine shipping from Baen Books in January of next year, with more e-books coming in Space 1889 and Beyond from Untreed Reads, the next twelve months should be about everything Space 1889 fans could want--aside from a working aether flyer, of course.

Final Edits In on The Forever Engine

I received the final marked up copy edits of The Forever Engine a little over a week ago and just express mailed them back to the folks at Baen Books with all of my final changes. Paul Witcover at Baen did a very thorough and professional job on the copy edit and caught a  couple places where I had unintentionally mangled Gabrielle Courbiere's (the heroine's) French. That would have violated one of my cardinal rules: never make a determined woman with a lever-action shotgun look bad. Thanks for the catches, Paul.

In order to check all the edits I had to read the novel again, I had a good time doing it even though there obviously wasn't a lot of suspense for me. I couldn't tell you how many times I've read this, between the rewrites and the chapters I've read out loud at my three writing workshop groups. A lot. But I'm not sick of it, and that's a good thing. I hope you all enjoy it when it comes out in January. Baen will have an electronic advanced reading copy (eARC) out before then. I'll let you know more  when I know more. I'll also be posting at least one sample chapter here, and maybe more, when we get a little closer to publication.

Meantime the Space: 1889 Kickstarter just keeps chugging along. It's at over 250% funding now and has unlocked the Venus Sourcebook as well as a bunch of other goodies. They've added a umber of add-ons as well, including a Space: 1889 soundtrack CD--background music for playing the roleplaying game with friends or even, it occurs to me, while quietly reading The Forever Engine.

It's been a busy summer but a good one.

Two New Interviews With Your Favorite Author

Okay, I suppose it's a bit presumptuous to think I am your favorite author, but hope springs eternal.

The interviews were occasioned by the publication of How Dark The World Becomes earlier this year. They were conducted by email a couple weeks ago by Keith Brooke, well-known British science fiction author, editor, and web publisher.  The first interview (link) is in SF Signal online, which I'm sure many of you know of. The second (link) is a follow-up interview which appears in Keith's own Infinity Plus e-zine. I like the result because Keith got me to talk about some things I've never said much about publically, including the "type" of books I like to write. Take a look.

Forever Engine - A Map of Europe

Baen Books commissioned this map of western Europe in 1888 as a two-page spread in The Forever Engine, due out next January. I like what they did with it, particularly the gears for cities and towns. It covers the area where the action of the novel takes place and from some of the unlikely smaller locations included, you can probably figure out that some of the important action takes place in out-of-the-way places like Kokin Brod. You get a nice look at London and Munich as well, however.

They've also commissioned cover art well in advance and may end up with some interior art as well, so I'm very pleased with the care they're taking with the project. It's not too soon to start some buzz about this book. If it sells well, I can pretty much guarrantee sequels. When we get a little closer to publication, I'll post some sample passages here. As soon as I get the go-ahead from Baen (which I think will mean as soon as they are happy with it) I'll post the cover. Cool cover.

How Dark The World Becomes -- now street-legal

Well, How Dark The World Becomes shipped in early February and is in Barnes & Nobles around the country as well as available through Amazon and directly from Baen Books, my publisher. I'm pretty excited. I already had a reading in Champaign, IL at the Iron Post (a great local jazz bar) and I have another one coming up on April 13 at the Jane Addams Book Store in Champaign, IL at 1:00 PM, as part of the Boneyard Arts Festival. Stop by if you're in the neighborhood. For than matter, I'm doing a book signing at the Champaign Barnes & Noble on Saturday, March 23rd at 1:00 PM as well. No reading, but stop by and say high if you happen to be in east-central Illinois around then. And as a writer friend of mine has said, "I wouldn't be offended if you bought a copy."

Here is the book back-copy:

An Addictive Taste of Freedom

Sasha Naradnyo is a gangster. He's a gangster with heart, sure, but Sasha sticks his neck out for no man. That's how you stay alive in Crack City, a colony stuffed deep into the crust of the otherwise unlivable planet Peezgtaan. Alive only -- because if you're human, you don't prosper, at least not for long. Sasha is a second generation City native. His parents came to this rock figuring to make it big, only to find that they'd been recruited as an indentured labor force for alien overlords known as the Varoki.

Now a pair of rich young Varoki under the care of a beautiful human nanny are fleeing Peezgtaan, and Sasha is recruited to help. He'd prefer to leave the little alien lordlings to their fate, but certain considerations -- such as Sasha's own imminent demise if he remains -- make it beneficial for him to take on the job.

Sasha discovers his simple choice has thrust him in the midst of a political battle that could remake the galactic balance of power and save humanity from slow death by servitude. Now all he has to do is survive and keep his charges alive on a hostile planet undergoing its own revolution.

But it's the galaxy that had better watch out. For now the toughest thug in Crack City has gotten his first taste of read freedom. He likes it, and he wants more.

***

If you've read it, please go on Amazon or Good Reads and review it. Good or bad, call it like you see it.

Here are some handy links.

Baen link to both the physical and e-book.

Amazon link to the physical book.

Amazon link to the Kindle e-book.

Ode To A Dead Hard Drive

Back in September I flew out to Celesticon in San Francisco – a wonderful game convention, by the way. I ran a fun Mars Needs Steam game and generally had a great time. Because I had a lot of work to do I took along my computer. This was very nearly my undoing. In the course of travel my computer got bumped and started acting strangely afterwards, becoming more and more “difficult” until at least it packed it in completely. The problem ended up being a bad hard drive, perhaps damaged by the bump suffered while travelling. Fortunately almost everything was on my most recent backup and in any case everything was recoverable from the disc itself. Nevertheless, I was out of action for the better part of two weeks and the following two months were a cascading story of backed-up projects and piled-up deadlines. I am at last seeing daylight – just in time for the holidays and more travel. We’ll see what that brings me, but for now I’m caught up on the fiction front. The game rules front is an entirely different story.

Here are the major writing projects I’ve packed away in that time – just so you know there’s no moss growing on me. I did a science edit of the next Space 1889 and Beyond novel, originally titled To Ceres By Steam but now renamed Mundus Cerialis and now co-authored by Sharon Bidwell and Andy Frankham-Allen. More on that later. I finished the big rewrite on The Forever Engine for Baen Books and sent that off end of October. In November I got the typesetting markups of How Dark The World Becomes from Baen and turned those around, then got the final typeset manuscript last weekend and sent my corrections back for that this morning. How Dark The World Becomes is now out of my hands and cruising toward its February release.  I know it’s not Space: 1889, but it’s a Pretty Big Deal for me, so please bear with me.

Here’s where things stand right now on How Dark The World Becomes. The novel will appear in trade paperback format in February of 2013, just a couple months from now. It is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.com and they have it at a reduced price, under $10.00. (Its cover price is $14.00.) Here’s the link for that:

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-World-Becomes-Frank-Chadwick/dp/1451638701/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353427642&sr=1-1&keywords=how+dark+the+world+becomes

If you absolutely cannot wait that long (and how could you?) it’s now available as an electronic advanced reading copy (eARC) directly from Baen Books. Here’s the link to their main site and you’ll see How Dark features as one of the new e-releases this month.

http://www.baen.com/

You should check out the Baen site even if you don’t intend to buy the eARC, as  the site has the first seven chapters up as a free reading sample. That should help you decide whether the book is to your taste (although really, how could it not be?)

On Villains

It has been a while since I've done a craft-of-writing piece and since I'm struggling with the rewrite of The Forever Engine it seemed an appropriate time to share my thoughts on an issue which confronts (or ought to) all novelists -- their villain. There will be no spoilers in this piece, so no need to worry about that, but that also means it will address the broader issue of villains rather than the specific villain in The Forever Engine -- although the challenges are the same.

For starters, let me say that as a reader I have no patience with cardboard cutout villains, who are evil for evil's sake and whose principal motivation (that I can see) is to give the protagonist an excuse to whup up on the villain's legions of loyal minions. Why they are so loyal to this psycho is often a mystery worth considering, but that's usually the smallest problem I have with that sort of story.

For me, stories really work well when the villain is as  interesting as the protagonist -- maybe even more so. Think of how many really great stories were made great by the stature of their villains: Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs, Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, Iago in Othello, Dracula in Dracula, and for that matter Media in Media. So I see a four-fold challenge facing authors when it comes to their villains.


Challenge One: What do They Want?
Protagonists have over-arching goals. Villains do as well. What is their life goal? What end-state do they seek? Most importantly, why do they seek it? For their goal and motivation to be engaging it seems to me they have to see themselves as the heroes, the good guys. From their point of view, this is their story. I think the film Open Range is one of the five or ten best westerns of all time, and part of that is due to the villain (Denton Baxter) played by Michael Gambon. In a different story, perhaps one set a decade or two earlier and dealing with "taming the savage west," he'd be the hero. The fact that he's lived past his usefulness and has been unable or unwilling to adapt to changing times makes him definitely a bad guy, but one with some tragic aspects as well. How different is he from the protagonists of The Wild Bunch, or even Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?


Challenge Two: What Do They Have To Do To Get What They Want?
This is a bit more mechanical than the above but still involves some artistry, as well as the need to tie the villain's actions into the genre. Ideally the villain's necessary actions should  be the window to the genre. In Open Range the villain's goals -- protect what's his -- manifest themselves in the struggle between fenced in pasturage and free-range cattle drives, and so show us an issue at the center of a turning point in the history of the west. In a science fiction story the villain's methods should be at the heart of the scientific curiosity of the story.


Challenge Three: Why Are The Villain's Actions So Potentially Catastrophic The Hero Must Stop Them At All Costs?
This is a tough one, but it becomes the heart of the story. It is the essence of the story's conflict and ultimately separates the hero from the villain. Since it's the heart of the novel, how big the conflict is determines the scope of the novel itself. If what's at stake is the hero's life, okay. We understand a person wants to survive in the face of a deadly threat, but that doesn't make them a hero, does it? That's not that big a story. Does the villain threaten other folks we care about? Bigger story. Does the villain threaten a way of life? Bigger story still. Is justice on the line? Is truth on the line? Will something of value to mankind be lost forever? These are bigger issues, and make the story itself bigger.

James Scott Bell defines a novel as "the story of how a character deals with the threat of death." The issue may be physical death but, as I noted above, that's often the least involving motivation for readers. But there are many forms of death. Professional death from failure in the character's chosen career. Emotional death from the loss of loved ones. Moral death from the betrayal of the character's core values. Spiritual death from the loss or abandonment of the character's defining principle or faith. Psychological death from the loss of sanity (see H. P. Lovecraft). Death of pride. Death of happiness. Death of hope. All are more involving than the simple issue of physical survival. What the villain threatens constitutes the stakes of the novel, and the bigger the stakes, the more engrossing the story.


Challenge Four: It All Has To Make Sense
This one, ironically, is the toughest of them all. A villain who has a giant organization working with him and whose goal is to destroy the world makes no sense. He's actually in the world. What does he get out of this deal? And yet you see this over and over. A human who betrays his race to alien exterminating conquerors "for power" makes no sense. Power over what? Power over whom? But you see this as well.


More subtly, the way the villain goes about achieving his goal has to be the most logical and sensible approach (at least for him). If he's going to set off an atomic bomb in New York City when he could as easily achieve his goal by robbing a convenient store, that's a problem.


There's a pretty good Denzel Washington film about a runaway train, called "Unstoppable." The villain is a senior executive at the railroad who will not listen to the voices of reason and experience and mishandles the attempts to solve the runaway train problem. But he isn't stupid; he's an experienced railroad man who's simply so used to being the smartest guy in the room he can't credit anyone's ideas but his own. So far so good.


So at one point he gets another engine in front of the runaway train to slow the train to the point that a replacement engineer can be lowered onto it from a helicopter. The train can't be slowed quite enough, the replacement engineer on the cable gets smashed through a window and seriously injured, and other bad things happen. It's a very dramatic and exciting sequence, but ruined (for me) by one nagging question: why not put the replacement engineer in the engine in front of the runaway train, so when they matched speeds and effectively coupled to it, he could just step from one engine walkway to the other? Remember, the villain isn't stupid, but in this case he is required to act as if he is simply so the story can go on. Not very satisfactory writing, in my opinion.


There are few things more annoying to me than a plot propelled forward primarily by the stupidity of the villain, unless (as in the film Fargo) that's kind of the point of the story. So the hardest part of all this, in my opinion, is making all these moving parts fit together as if this is the only way in the world they possibly could. If you can pull that off, that is good writing.

Space 1889 Novel to be Published by Baen Books

Yesterday I promised you some big news and here it is.

I told you several months ago that Baen Books was publishing my novel How Dark The World Becomes. When they contracted for that book they asked if I had anything else for them to look at. I did: The Forever Engine, a Space: 1889 novel. I sent it off, we've talked several times since then, and Friday I signed the contracts and dropped them in the mail. A Space: 1889 novel will see print in the near future from one of the top science fiction publishers.

I don't have a release date yet. I'm working on some rewrites and once those are locked down to everyone's satisfaction Baen will come up with a date. But in the mean time this is very exciting stuff for me.

The novel actually takes place in 1888 and some of the events and characters from The Forever Engine appear as background incidents and minor characters in one (so far) of the Space: 1889 and Beyond stories. But it's not a prequill or a lead-in to other stories. It's a great big story which stands all on its own, and deals with nothing less than the fundamental fabric of the universe.

I can't tell you much more about it now. As we get closer I'll lay some groundwork, but right now publication is well over a year away, so everyne gets to work on refining the virtue of patience.

Back From The Road

I'm back at the keyboard after a long absence. I attended the Cold Wars game show in Lancaster PA on the 9th through the 11th and then stayed over and attended The Write Stuff writers' conference in Allentown PA on the 16th and 17th.

I got to hang out with my goddaughter Diana for a few days in between -- she's 13 months now and a real pistol. She's got about a dozen words and came up with a new phrase while I was there. She waved and said "night-night!" to me one night, the first time she's ever said that. She has one other phrase she's fond of as well: "oh-shit!"

Just look at those eyes, would ya? Those of you who have picked up A Prince of Mars may have noticed it's dedicated to her, "when she's old enough to read it." Maybe not as long as I thought.

The Write Stuff is sponsored by my old writers' group, the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers' Group (GLVWG, pronounced Gliv-Wig), and it's probably the best small writer's conference out there. They cap the attendance at 150 (because of the venue) but always manage to get great presenters. James Scott Bell was the featured guest this year, did a two-day workshop before the show, several presentations during it, and the keynote address. Bell's been a hero of mine for a long time. He's not just a fine writer, he's written probably the most practical and useful book on writing I've ever read: Plot and Structure, published by Writer's Digest Books. If you are interested in writing, buy this book. Buy it now.

His workshop was loaded with terrific material as well, and I'll share just one bit which was actually almost an aside, and wasn't part of his main syllabus, but is worth repeating. It has to do with elevator pitches. For those of you who aren't professional writers, or aspiring professional writers, the "elevator pitch" is designed for those moments at a writer's conference (and they are way more common than you would think) when you get in an elevator, the doors slide shut, the person standing next to you notices your badge and says, "I'm a literary agent (or acquisitions editor). I see you're attending the conference too. What are you working on?" You now have less than a minute to "pitch" your book. Tou have to say everything necessary not only to explain what the book is about, but also hook the interest of someone who has already heard probably twenty pitches so far that day. If you start with, "Well, it's complicated. . ." hang it up. Either you know exactly what's coming out of your mouth or you don't.

So what Bell gave us was his take on the classic elevator pitch. He argues the pitch consists of three sentences. The first one gives the character's name, occupation, and everything you need to know about their background. "Dorothy is a young girl in rural Kansas, unsatisfied with the dull world in which she lives." The second sentence begins with the word "When," and establishes the inciting event which catapults the character into the main part of the story. "When a tornado picks her up and lands her in Oz, she finds herself the target of a Wicked Witch." The third sentence starts with the word "Now" and explains the main object and conflict in the novel. "Now, with the help of three unlikely companions, she must make her way to the Emerald City so the Wizard can show her the way home."

Why, aside from helping you sell your book, is this so important? Because it also helps you understand your story. One of the guys at the conference later told me he couldn't really fit his story into these three sentences, and that told him he had a story problem. He did not have a clear enough inciting event and he really didn't know what the main objective of his protagonist was. He'd had the feeling something was wrong with the story for some time; now he knew what it was and how to fix it.

Also later in the conference I had a meeting with an agent interested in steampunk fiction. My own The Forever Engine is currently in at Baen Books under option, although I havn't heard yet whether they are going to pick it up. I told her that and that it might not be available but she wanted to hear about it anyway. (Already having another book under contract doesn't hurt.) So here's what I told her:

"Nick Fargo is an historian at the University of Chicago and an Army veteran of Afghanistan, When he is called to England to help investigate an odd cultural resource find at a high energy particle accelerator facility, a catastrophic accident hurls him back in time and into a parallel Victorian world, where there are flying ironclads and interplanetary travel is a reality. Now, joining forces with the British military and a beautiful French spy, he must track down a murderous rogue scientist who may hold the key to his return to his own time and place."

We had more than a minute to talk, but this got her interested. She asked about the protagonist and liked what I told her, because it was different than what she expected. She asked about the heroine and was even more interested, again because what I said wasn't what she expected. She asked about the outcome of the story and liked that as well, because, again, it surprised her. So she asked to see the book, even knowing it might not be available, and I sent it off today.

There are two lessons in this.

First, you have to have a clear and very simple understanding of your protagonist and his or her story in order to engage the interest of readers. (In this case, the agent represents all readers, because she is looking for things which her experience tells her will interest a large number of readers.)

Second, at every step of her follow-on questions, she liked what she heard because it was not what she expected. There are tens of thousands of stories appearing in print and as ebooks each year. The object for a writer is not to fit in, it is to stand out. Readers are not interested in reading the same things they have already read, but rather something different, surprising, even shocking. If you want to tell stories,
those are the stories worth telling.

For those of you interested (and strategically located) Bell is doing a number of multi-day workshops across the country this year. Check him out at this link and then click on the "The Seminar" button.

Interview at the Traveler Steampunk Blog

As A Prince of Mars will be released any day now, the Traveller Steampunk Blog just released an interview I did a little while ago. It touches on a lot of stuff, but almost all of it is related to Space: 1889. Here's the link.

Space: 1889 And Beyond News

Just recovering from Winter War down in Champaign, IL (almost next door) which was this past weekend. Tom Harris and I ran a very big Mars Needs Steam game -- a little too big, actually. It was exhausting to run, but looked very cool. Tom's camera broke over the weekend but a couple attendees took some pictures and I'll post them along with a report, as soon as I get them.

In the mean time, here are three news items on Space: 1889 and Beyond.

Item One: Big Sale at BooksOnBoard
All of the Untreed Reads titles -- including Space: 1889 & Beyond --are currently on sale at the BooksOnBoard site. Prices are 1/3 off list if you enter the coupon code EZMATH at checkout. The good thing about this sale is the authors still get full royalties, so it's a good way to support their work. If you haven't picked up the line yet, or you've got a friend considering it, here's a good opportunity. This link will take you directly to the Untreed Reads section.

Item Two: A Prince of Mars Coming Soon
A Prince of Mars, the fifth installment in Series One of Space: 1889 & Beyond and the first book in the series authored by Yours Truley, is in final proofreading, so should release soon -- sometime in February. I am very excited.

Item Three: Co-Authorship of The Dark Side of Luna
As you may remember, I'm co-authoring the first book in Series Two of Space: 1889 & Beyond, Conspiracy of Silence. I did some rewriting on J. T. Wilson's draft of Dark Side of Luna, the sixth and final book in Series One.  The rewrite ended up so extensive J.T. suggested I should be brought on board as a co-author, and so that's where we are. Why the extensive rewrite? Two reasons. First, Since I wrote book five and will write book one of Series Two, I probably have the best handle on where the characters are coming from and going to in this volume. Second, there is a lot of military action in this book and I have, it seems, a knack for writing about the military. Who knew?

So if you are anxious to see my fiction (and why wouldn't you be?) you now have three books coming in a row with my hand heavy on the oars.

Item Four: Baen Update
I know I said three items, but this one does not relate to the Untreed Reads series. Baen Books has accepted all my rewrites on How Dark The World Becomes and we're now forging forward at the somewhat more deliberate pace characterized by the traditional publishing world. Probably release date will be spring of 2013. It seems very odd that Conspiracy of Silence, which I haven't yet finished my half of, will be out before How Dark The World Becomes. Odd but understandable. I used to be in the publishing business and I know from first-hand experience how substantial an investment there is behind a new print product launch. If you just crank it out and throw it out the door, you don't stay around very long. Baen actually sent me a nice Powerpoint presentation tracking everything that will go on over the next twelve months with the book. It's different than the game industry, but only in detail, not essence.

So lots of stuff happening. Stay tuned.

From Whence Inspiration?

I am asked sometimes where my ideas come from. I imagine at one time or another every author is asked that. I cannot answer for anyone else, but for me, ideas are like snowflakes in their uniqueness and delicacy. I am afraid sometimes if I try too hard to understand, and thus explain, where they come from, they will stop. Ideas seem to present themselves in massed ranks to some authors, to throw themselves in inexhaustible numbers at them like human wave attacks -- lucky bastards -- but for me ideas are more bashful and so their mating grounds are best left undisturbed, lest they stop coming around altogether.

But I will tell you where I got the idea for How Dark The World Becomes, my upcoming novel from Baen Books. I got it from a song.

I am a Tom Waits fan from way back. I followed his musical career from the mid-70s on. His early music has a strong jazz and blues influence and his lyrics are not simply incredible poetry and story-telling, his melodies can be hauntingly beautiful. Then along came Swordfish Trombones and he frankly lost me. His muse took him off in the direction of what, to me, sounded like discordant and atonal noise, not music. I never begrudged him that, by the way. Artists have to keep growing and changing, have to keep finding something new to say, or they end up just a Las Vegas stage routine, doing the same act over and over forever, because "that's what sells" -- until it doesn't any more. Even back then, I think I understood what I years later read Lois McMaster Bujold put so succinctly and so well: "The author reserves the right to have a better idea." Or in this case, the musician does. If I can't see his vision as clearly as he can, it's not his fault.

So for a number of years I did not follow Waits's newer music, although I remained a dedicated fan of his early work. Then a few years ago a friend and fellow-Waits fan, and one who had stuck with him, played a Waits album called Blood Money in his car CD player. I didn't care for it, for the same reasons I'd drifted away in the first place: harsh, jarring music and a bleak, angry world view. But over the next few days I couldn't get the first song on the album -- Misery Is The River of the World -- out of my head.

It's not that I liked it; it's that it just kept rattling around up there and would not go away. I ended up driving out and finding a copy of the CD, buying it just to listen to that song and so exorcise it. It was as bleak as I remembered, even more so once I listened carefully to it.

Misery's the river of the world.
Misery's the river of the world.
Misery's the river of the world; Everybody row!
Everybody row!

Waits's command of the language is still as powerful as ever, if harnessed to a black dystopian view of a corrupted world.  He may be, as another friend described him, America's greatest living poet. He's a guy who manages to sum up, and then dismiss, the entire ascent of man in two lines:

The higher up the monkey can climb,
The more he shows his tail.

So here's what I started thinking as I listened to this song again and again: if some guy from a hundred years from now heard this song and it resonated with him, with his life experiences, what sort of world would he come from?

The other thing I realized as I listened is that, no matter how bleak and hopeless Waits's music may sound, it is not without hope. If there is no hope, then there is no point to rage -- and there's plenty of rage here. Out of that first question came the idea for this novel, or rather for its protagonist, and out of that second understanding came the theme. Here's the brief setup:

About thirty years in our future, we are contacted by a star-faring civilization, a mostly-peaceful "Star Collective" encompassing all the settled worlds of five intelligent races -- all they have ever encountered. We are invited to join and we do so, becoming the sixth race of the Collective. Fast forward seventy more years and, due to the intellectual property laws of the Collective, we are locked into all the low-tech, low-wage, dead-end grunt jobs. There are a couple areas at which we excel. We have a creative streak unmatched by the other races, and so Human musicians, composers, visual artists, architects, even interior designers are in demand throughout the Collective. For those without a creative streak, or the ability to fake it, Human mercenaries are widely used as well. Finally, we are very, very good at crime.

The title comes from a quotation from Leo Tolstoy, as I believe I mentioned in a previous posting, but it is worth repeating as it captures the theme of the novel completely:

There is something in the human spirit which will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light in the heart of a man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.

That is to say, the novel is hopeful in tone, a celebration of our better angels which remain with us-- if we let them -- regardless of how black things appear.


By the way, Blood Money is a remarkable album, one which gets in your head and grows on you over time. The music was written for the 2000 musical stage production of Woyzeck, co-produced by Waits and Robert Wilson and based on the famous incomplete stage play of the same name. written by George Buechner and published posthumously in 1879. Strange to contemplate the play's origin in the middle of the Victorian era, but there you are. The song God's Away on Business from the album appears in the 2005 film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

I highly recommend the album -- but not for the faint of heart.

Writing and Rewriting

I have been remiss. This has been a long dry spell for the blog and I can only plead that I have been writing every day -- just not this.

I've been doing a lot of preliminary plot work for Conspiracy of Silence, the lead book for season two of Space 1889 and Beyond. I have been nearly consumed by a major rewite project I'll tell you about some day, but suffice it to say it is steampunk. Now I am getting started on my rewrite of the novel Baen Books has picked up (not steampunk). Since all the contracts are signed and exchanged, and the advance is deposited, I suppose it's okay to talk about it without tempting fate. I am not a superstitious guy, but even I hesitate to tempt fate. If harm seldoms come from it, good certainly never does.

The novel was originally titled Bird Song's End. I thought it was an okay title, but nothing special. Baen liked it even less than that and wanted a new one. After floundering around for a week or so, I came up with the title we both like:

How Dark The World Becomes

It is based on a quotation from Leo Tolstoy:

There is something in the human spirit which will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light in the heart of a man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.

So now I am rewriting. Rewriting is something just about every writer does differently, and it has a lot to do with approach. I like to get the first draft as close to what I'm aiming for as possible, but I know a lot of very good writers who just concentrate on getting something -- anything -- down on paper for a first draft and then do the bulk of their work in the rewrite. I'm more inclined to rewrite as I go, to double back and fix earlier passages to fit what I've written later, and so I do lots of small rewrites along the way. I've read authors advise against that, but it seems to work for me. If something different works better for them, that's fine.

I think the reason rewiting is so important is that it mirrors the way we learn the craft of writing. We write poorly, then we write better. I've read of people who sit down and write a brilliant novel their first time out of the starting gate, and do so in a matter of weeks. Are these folks the norm? I don't think so. In fact, my immediate reaction is more along the lines of, "Burn the witch!"

I believe that, for the vast majority of us, writing poorly is the essential first step toward writing well. If you are afraid to write because you fear your prose may not be that good, you will never get good. A Russian author (I forget who) once said the first million words we write are garbage, and it's a formula repeated often in the writing biz: be prepared to throw away your first million words. But first you need to write them. If you don't write those first million words of unremarkable prose, you will never get to the point where your prose makes people take notice.

So write. Then rewrite. Then rewrite again. Write poorly, and then make it better, but write.

A Thanksgiving Greeting and Some News

Thanksgiving is upon us (as you can see from the steampunk turkey to the left), and it is my favorite holiday. I love it so much because of its simplicity. It is nothing more than a feast day spent with friends and family, with no pressure to buy and wrap gifts or send cards, and so sense of guilt at having failed to get just the right gift for someone or, in my case, failing to send out cards at all. Don't get me wrong; I love Christmas. But it's no Thanksgiving, that's for sure.

This year I have special reason for celebrating my gratitude at the passage of another good year. My first published work of fiction, A Prince of Mars, will be out next month from Untreed Reads, and my first full-length novel, Conspiracy of Silence, will follow mid-year next. But something I didn't know until the last couple weeks, and wasn't official until I signed and returned the contract this week, is that I am also now a Baen author. Baen Books will publish my debut print novel, and I'd gladly tell you the title but we haven't agreed on one yet. (I had one, of course, but neither of us liked it very much. We're still trading ideas for a better one.)

Well, plenty of time to fill you in on that later. I will tell you that it is science fiction but not steampunk. I hope you'll forgive me for letting a non-steampunk subject intrude on this blog. :^)

So I intend to have a wonderful holiday! I sincerely hope all of you have a very joyous Thanksgiving as well -- including those of you overseas who do not normally celebrate this holiday. Have a big roasted fowl for dinner Thursday, and a nice nap afterwards. Do you a world of good.