I think today I may actually get the chance to dive into the editing for the new novel… of course, I have said that before, but I really mean it this time! I have a little class work to finish up, a meeting with the prof to discuss my test results (I did okay, but not great, and I really thought I did great… but I don’t argue for grades, I just want to know how to do better next time!), and other than that just editing to do! I may actually get the novel finished this week and out before November! That would be keen.
Speaking of which: how is it almost November already! Where did October go!? Man, this year has completely messed with all sense of time for me.
Anyway. Nice to have a chance to get more writing work done, even if it’s not “writing” but just the work involved with writing. But that’s okay! All part of the process!
Hope everyone out there is safe and healthy!
Back to the Grindstone
So last week was a busy week. This week is going to be a busy week… next week? Busy week.
I am sensing a pattern here… and, tragically, I think it’s going to get much, much worse before it gets better. Working at a game store is kinda nice most of the time (current pandemic notwithstanding), but the holiday season is full on bonkers at the best of times.
Still! I have a little time to get the novel polished up and published, and that will be nice, and then time to dive into my studies, essays, and exams before the worst of it hits, so all in all I can’t really complain aside from a general lack of time. But that’s been true now for years.
Just finishing up reading Henry IV Part 1 for class today, and then I have guitar practice in about 2 hours… which leaves me about 2 hours to get some editing done! I’d better get to that!
Hope everyone out there is staying healthy and safe!
Short Week!
Hey folks! Meant to write over the weekend but it was Canadian Thanksgiving, and so that slipped away in a blur of food, chores, and writing, and then I almost didn’t write today because editing!
So, it’s been busy! I suppose that’s a good thing? A good problem to have, one might say.
Anyway, stuff is moving along at a healthy clip, and we’re approaching the holiday season with the velocity and impulse of a freight train… going to be running out of days off real, real quick very soon. And nobody knows what the holidays are going to look like this year, so even that’s up in the air.
Anyway! Just wanted to stick my head in, wave at everyone, and then get back to work. More updates very soon! Hope to have the novel out… oh, end of next week? Before November, at the very least!
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Edits Returned!
My lovely editor has sent back my novel with some lovely words of encouragement and a whole slew of recommendations. I’ll be diving into those this weekend (a holiday weekend for us in Canada, although it doesn’t actually result in me having additional days off this year). So with any luck you should be able to find the novel available on Amazon in the next two weeks or so!
Other than that, not a lot to share. Week off of school next week (although I have to read the next play we’ll be studying in that time… shouldn’t be too hard, since I managed Richard III in about two days. Lots of reading aloud. For whatever reason, speaking Shakespeare has been the only way I’ve ever successfully been able to absorb it.
Oh! And Scalzi’s new book, The Last Emperox! I’ve been waiting for that one for a few weeks, but I’m going to try and hold off until after the edits are done. And then probably jump straight into it and be reminded about how fantastic a writer he is (and how good I hope to be someday!).
So! Exciting times! Until the weekend, going to try and finish my short story for White Noise (and do another interview for them tonight! That’ll be fun!). Busy busy busy!
Hope everyone out there is staying healthy and safe!
Slowing Down
Well, it’s nice to see that I’m not the only creative getting my butt kicked by this pandemic (and the soon-to-hit second wave that’s already upon us). My editor is still working on the novel, hence why it didn’t release in September (not her fault at all, by the by, since it did take me an extra two months more than I expected to finish writing it!).
Still, this leaves me with some extra time, which is good because I have a test coming up this week (Richard III), and my secondary job is maintaining its breakneck pace. And, of course, probably no time off between now and the end of the holiday season unless we hit lockdown again.
I’m already dreaming up the next novel, which is dangerous (since I’m technically not done the novel I’m working at until I get it back and it goes live), but it’s still nice to think about.
Oh! And new weird business news: I’ve been occasionally hitting my daily dollar limit for advertising through Amazon. That’s unusual (for me). Now, I have a pretty low daily limit due to the strict financial constraints I have (which is a fancy way of saying “I have no money”), but up until a few months ago my ads were never shown, period. Now they’re showing up often enough that Amazon gets to charge me for them occasionally, and that feels kinda like a success. Hopefully it leads to a few more book sales, and I can funnel that back into more ads!
Anyhoo, hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Where Did September Go?
I know it’s been said by many people (myself included) before, but man does this pandemic mess with the sense of time passing. Part of me still thinks it’s April or May, aside from the fact that I am no longer in self-isolation (tragically).
But another part of me is stunned that September just disappeared. Where did the month go!? I suppose I can’t complain… I sent off my next novel for editing, I had an ad air on a podcast I really like and that’s caused a spike in book sales, and I have a short story that’s already been purchased that I just have to finish writing!
Which is what I am going to get back to as soon as I finish this.
Other than that, not a lot happening, other than the slow decay of the Western World. I’m worried about the election to the south, as any sane Canadian would be. But there’s nothing I can do about it, so it’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Still, it causes me a great deal of stress and anxiety, but I don’t think I’m unique in any way there.
Lastly, my Shakespeare course has well and truly begun. We’re on Week 3, our last week studying Richard III before moving on to the next play (I want to say one of the Henry IVs?), and it’s been relatively interesting. I still don’t really understand the universal fascination with Shakespeare’s work… but that’s okay. I respect it, I suppose, and I hope to one day get a little bit of the longevity his work seems to hold onto.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Good Work Takes Time
My (incredible, talented, fantastic) editor still has my most recent novel. This is definitely okay… it certainly took me longer to get to her than I expected, and the pandemic has had impacts on all creative work in myriad and frustrating ways.
Still, that means the novel may not actually drop by the end of this month. I remain optimistic, but a big piece of that is going to be how much I have to change, and how far-reaching those edits may, or may not, be. Let us say I remain cautiously optimistic.
In other news, I have started my next course for my English degree: Shakespeare Tragedies and Histories (or vice versa… same course whichever order you put them in), and we have started with the play Richard III. It’s an interesting one, and the opening soliloquy is certainly captivating. The big thing for me is that there’s no real “hero”. The protagonist is a horrible, selfish, evil man, and continues on his course without remorse or second-thought the entire play. And yet this is considered one of the most compelling characters in all of Shakespeare’s work… Richard has more lines than any other character Shakespeare wrote save one (Hamlet).
We’ve only just begun to really dig into the story, but I am looking forward to getting to grips with this kind of narrative. I usually struggle with stories that don’t have a happy end (this one does, arguably) or moral, “good” characters to follow (this one most certainly does not). We’ll see how it goes!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Short Stories Are Hard!
I am constantly surprised by how difficult I find short fiction. Longer fiction has its own challenges, no question, but those are challenges that, for whatever reason, I seem better able to handle.
Short fiction is all about conservation and efficiency. That’s not to say you can’t (or shouldn’t) use more descriptive language, of course, but everything has to serve a specific purpose… every word has to be properly accounted for. Longer fiction can be more forgiving here, and I tend to gravitate towards the ability to use extra words for extra precision: saying “a dirty hut” is fine for a short story, but in longer fiction I can really nail down what I mean by both “dirty” and “hut”.
Anyway. This is one of those writer-things that I suspect nobody really cares about aside from other writers. People don’t really want to know how you make the sausage, and all that. That’s fine!
Today I’m going to watch the lectures I was supposed to have last week, but were both cancelled due to external circumstances. I have never liked online learning… I tried to take an editing course through a Toronto college, and I did okay for the first semester but completely crumpled at the second semester. There’s two reasons for that:
1. I’m not a great editor. Great editors require very, very patient attention to extreme detail, and I am the opposite to that statement in almost every respect when it comes to writing, and
2. I don’t learn very well without feedback. I need to ask questions, even stupid ones, so that my brain can sort through the information into a system that makes sense to me. Online learning is about providing alternatives, not about providing instantaneous feedback, but I’m hopeful that Laurier, the university I am attending currently, will have the resources to have actual human feedback to my writing.
Besides, I’m studying Shakespeare for the first time in… gosh… 22 years. I’m going to need all the help I can get.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
My Ad Aired!
I think I mentioned a few months ago that I paid for a commercial ad with a podcast I really like (“The Greatest Generation”, a podcast originally about Star Trek The Next Generation, but has now moved on to DS9… and will probably soon be making the jump to Voyager).
This Monday it finally aired! It was fantastic to hear the hosts read my copy out, and they seemed to appreciate my sense of humour and one of the hosts (Ben) even talked about how he loved the cover of “Caitlyn Morcos, Interplanetary Marshal Service”! I got happy shivers at that. The other host (Adam) slightly mispronounced the book title (“Marcos” instead of “Morcos”), but who cares!? They did a great job, and it was fantastic to hear.
Book sales have picked up immediately as a result, and I’m hoping that this will continue to result in a few more sales over time as people listen to the episode on their own time. It wasn’t a financial success by any means (yet), but that’s okay… I was mostly doing it to support a podcast I love, and to hopefully let more people know about my work that will eventually see more of my books in people’s hands (or e-readers, I suppose).
Ooh, speaking of which, after I get “Tintian and the Chimera’s Secret” out into the world, the next task is to make a dead-tree format of Caitlyn Morcos. Ah, always more plans, never enough time.
Right! That’s some fantastic news from me that made me happy… now back to work! Stories to write and all that!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Cover Art Selected!
Took a while, but I managed to settle on a cover. I selected seven potential covers, and sent them to a handful of friends to get feedback.
The decision was pretty split, with one cover in particular people either loved or hated, but there was one that everyone liked, so that’s the one I settled on. It’s a classic sci-fi design, and it has a pretty badass spacesuit. So we’re calling it a win!
Now with that settled, the novel is “finished” until the edits are complete. Which is great! Gives me time to focus on the White Noise short story (which is both enjoyable, and paying!). So that’s good news. I have a rough idea of what I want, but it’s about time to refine it into a full story, rather than just an outline.
Anyway! Good news for me and people who like reading my work (hopefully all of you!).
With that stated, I should get back to it!
Hoping that everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Looking for Cover Art
Well, the novel is off with the editor, so from that perspective I just have to wait for a while. Nothing I can do to speed up that process (I mean, other than throw buckets of money at it, and I certainly don’t have the dosh for that).
But in the meantime that means I can look for covers! I found a half dozen I like, and I’ve sent those off to a handful of people to solicit opinions. When that gets done the only thing that will be required is to wait for the edits… and then publish the book!
Of course it’s not quite that easy, but still, lion’s share of the work is done.
I’ve started working on the next Black Cacophony, and this one is going to be a doozy. Basically the entire crew will finally be assembled, and the original proposal calls for two big reveals:
1. The big bad for the entire story arc, and
2. The stakes to be raised in an interesting, possibly permanent way.
We’ll see where the story takes us, but for now I have an idea about a gang, a planetary system on the fringe of human space, and alien infiltration… I think I can make it work. Writing good audio stories is an interesting challenge, but I think I’ve done pretty well in the past.
Getting my voice actors together might be a challenge, but who knows, maybe by the time the story is done it can happen!
Anyway, hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
I Really Like Ellipses...
One of the many things about editing your own work is the realization of bad writing habits you have. For me, I use a lot of ellipses… those three little dots right there meant to indicate a pause in conversation.
I’ve deleted a LOT of ellipses so far today. A lot. But that’s okay! This is what editing is for!
I’m on Chapter 7 (out of 40) in the editing process, and fully plan to be finished today to send the second draft to my editor tonight so that she can work on it after the long weekend, and I can theoretically have one day off (tomorrow) before I throw myself into the next story I’m going to be working on (I suspect the White Noise short story I’ve mentioned a few times).
And, as much as I don’t really love the editing process, it is useful to remember that I have some specific writing flaws, and to be more conscious of them going forward. I miss having other people to put their eyes on my work, but that’s okay.
Oh! I also get to go cover shopping again today… I’ve done that a few times in the last few weeks, but nothing has really jumped out at me yet. But that’s okay! Maybe today will be the day. Anyway, back to editing!
Hope everyone out there is staying healthy and safe!
Finished the Novel! Woo!
It is officially done! I have put the two most beautiful words in the English language in my most recent novel… “The End”.
Which, of course, doesn’t actually mean the end. It means the start of all the editing I need to do before this hits digital-shelves, but still! This is a very important stage, and I’m happy to have reached it.
I am going to relax for, oh… two, maybe three minutes, and then get started on the second draft, cleaning up the worst of the mistakes I made in the first draft, before sending it off to my editor, who will weave her amazing magic and make it infinitely better before I move on to the fourth, and likely final, draft. So I expect this will see the light of day in three weeks or so… means I have to start cover-shopping, but that’s okay too! I don’t like the publishing process, as it is, but it is nice to be able to pay a little forward to other artists and creators, like the artists for the cover and my editor. That’s a nice feeling.
I look forward to the day that I can actually afford to do that, rather than going into debt to pay for them, but that’s a future goal! For now, I am going to pour myself something with maple whiskey in it, relax for a little bit, maybe even watch an episode of Clone Wars (gasp!), and then get back to work.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Finishing the Novel
I think today I’m going to actually finish the first draft of the novel. I have a feeling.
It’s a nice feeling, having this feeling. It’s like… energy coupled to satisfaction and drive. I know I can do it, I want to do it, and I have the opportunity to do it. The day is half-over and I haven’t made quite as much headway as I wanted, but I can feel it in the air.
It’s going to happen. Today.
Tomorrow I’m going to tackle editing the whole thing and sending it off to my editor (maybe, MAYBE on Wednesday, but I think I can get it done tomorrow). That’s going to be a lot of reading out loud, which I find is a pretty solid way of getting editing done, but that’s okay!
I picked up a copy of The Last Emperox by John Scalzi, and when I finish this novel I’m going to read his as a reward. I love the series, and I love Scalzi’s work… I often say he’s my writing patronus, because he writes the same kind of stories I write, but better. And one day he’ll just write the same kind of stories that I write. I look forward to that day!
But for now… back to writing the best stories I can at this time, so that I can write better stories tomorrow!
Stay safe and healthy out there, everyone!
Good Chats
So the interview with the writer (Victor Santos) and artist (Agustin Graham Nakamura) went pretty well. Not my best work, but they’re interesting guys and I think we had a pretty engaging discussion about their new graphic novel.
Victor started out as a self-published comic book artist and writer, and that was a bit encouraging (although he’s been doing this gig now for decades) because maybe there’s hope for me yet… Agustin works corporate primarily and then transitioned into a full-time artist. Either way, it was a nice chat. I think it goes live next week, so I’ll see about linking it here if anyone is curious.
I also sat down with a local reporter to chat on his podcast (putting me on the other side of the mics as the guest rather than the host), and that was neat. We were talking board games, mostly as a result of my paying job as a game store specialist. It was a fun, engaging little talk, and Marshall (the reporter) and Sarah (his co-host) were a lot of fun to talk to. They invited me back to chat sci-fi writing at some future date, and that’ll be fun as well. I doubt I’m going to see much in the way of sales from it, but it was nice to be an expert in something.
Anyway, I have a lot of writing to get done before the week is finished (still have to edit and send off this novel! Gah!), so I should get back to that. Hope everyone is doing exceptionally well, as well as staying safe and healthy!
Talking with Professionals
So I am a contributing member of an Infinity-the-game themed podcast called “White Noise”. I write short stories for them (both free ones and paid), and I occasionally get behind the mic to talk with notable Infinity personalities… great gamers, or sharp strategists, or interesting people.
Tomorrow, I’m going to have the chance to talk to the author and artist team behind the newest Infinity graphic novel, “Betrayal”. Not a direct sequel to the earlier graphic novel/manga (let’s not get into the discussion about if/why those two things are different), the previews of Betrayal look great and the writer is the same from the previous comic (Victor Santos). The artist, Agustin Graham Nakamura, is different from last time but seems to have adopted the same artistic style as the previous edition very well… although sadly I didn’t manage to get my own copy secured before the interview, so a bit of the interview will be baseless speculation.
As a scientist, I’m okay with a bit of baseless speculation, as long as it eventually is replaced by factual extrapolation, of course.
Anyway! I’m excited because I get to talk to two industry professionals who are about the same age as me (a year or two older, I believe) who have been working in the industry their entire lives rather than code-switching twelves years after they entered the workforce. The language barrier is hopefully going to be small… they’re both Spanish-speaking primarily, as far as I know (Nakamura in particular is fascinating to me since he’s Argentina-Japanese living in Brazil… fascinating!), and my Spanish is awful. I’m usually okay with Spanglish, and we’ll see how it goes!
Either way, it should be an interesting talk! I sent my questions along to them already, so hopefully they have a chance to prepare some interesting answers!
I’ll report back on Wednesday about how it goes… fingers crossed!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Snoring Cats
I am blessed to live with three cats these days. Donut is the oldest, Bean in the middle, and Koko is the youngest. All of them are Tortoise-shell cats (dark brown, orange, and light brown in swirls and stripes), which makes them a little hard to tell apart in the dark, but they all have their own distinct personalities.
One of them, Bean, really likes disturbing me while I work. Normally she sits on my keyboard or between my arms in such a way as to make it very difficult to write (sometimes even nibbling on my hands to let me know I should be petting her and not writing). It’s adorable, but distracting. But I can’t say I really mind… she’s very warm and compassionate most of the time and likes spending time wherever I am.
At this moment, she is sitting next to me on a pile of blankets on a chair next to me, placed there specifically to draw her away from my keyboard and let me write. She’s snoring, in a way that is both adorable and very hard to describe. A wheezing, purring sort of sound. Like distant thunder mixed with squeaky wheels.
Like I said, difficult to describe.
But it’s funny. If I were to write this into a story, I would probably just write “gently snoring cat” and leave the reader to fill in the specifics of the sound itself. No need to Stephen King the situation and spend a full page on a small detail that everyone either knows what it sounds like (even if it sound different from my Bean) or don’t care what it sounds like unless it’s critical to the story.
Maybe one day I will write a story that hinges on the specific frequency of cat snores… until then…
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Other People's Arms
There is a quotation somebody sent me once that I really like:
Writing is really difficult, like forcing your arm through a meat grinder. But some days it’s easier, like forcing somebody else’s arm through a meat grinder.
Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of meat grindering (it’s a word shut up) of my own arms, today included. I’ve only written about 500 words today, which would be fine for a usual week day, but since this is one of my dedicated writing days is at least 1,500 words too short. Thankfully, the day isn’t over yet.
Unfortunately, I still have half a lawn to mow (our front lawn has been replaced with a no-mow lawn, which is great… lots of local plants and flowers, very green and pretty), and so the time I theoretically have is a bit more fluid than just another 5 hours or whatever. But that’s okay! Difficult days are okay. Just have to not give up.
Speaking of which, I enrolled for more courses for September. Not a fan of the distance learning thing, but no choice at this time, so it is what it is. Shakespeare Histories and Tragedies… not sure if that will ever really be useful to a sci-fi writer like me, but hey, won’t know until I try. And maybe I will find a new appreciation for The Bard after this… My Love is a Fever longing for that which longer nurses the disease, and all that.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Vacation!... For Other People!
My editor and my partner are both on vacation this week (not together… although that would be cool). My editor is taking a few weeks to relax in PEI, where she lives (I believe), and my partner is doing a relaxing staycation, watching “Elementary” and “Scandal”.
This gives me some breathing room, and some time to finish the novel I’ve been trying to finish for a month now (has it been that long, I wonder aloud? Yes. Yes it has).
I’m stuck around 45k words, in a scene that has Tintian in the medbay of her ship, the Prosperous. She’s reeling from the realization that she may have just gotten her closest friend killed through what she considers negligence and by her drive to uncover a decades-old mystery. Something she feels personally responsible for, even if it may, or may not, be her fault.
I want to have one of the other characters come in as a sympathetic ear, to listen to how Tintian feels about the situation, but I don’t know if it actually serves the story. Still, it’s been tying me up in knots for the last few weeks, and it really isn’t that important a scene… so much so that I may actually end up cutting the entire scene and just have it discussed in a line or two. But by the same token, it feels important to me, as the author, to listen to what Tintian is going to say, to get a glimpse into the character I’m not so much writing as I am following around. She has a life of her own, and it’s my job to chronicle it more than it is to shape it.
Anyway. I should get back to it. Nice to have some breathing room, and nice that those around me can have a few days of relaxation in this difficult days.
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Family Support
In the grand scheme of things, I have been extremely fortunate. That’s not to say I haven’t encountered difficulties, of course, but it is to say that things could’ve been much, much worse. I have a good support network, and my family is pretty supportive of the whole “writing” thing that I’m doing.
Well, mostly supportive. My father doesn’t really understand what I’m doing, but he’s a scientist and respects science more than any form of fiction. That’s fine. My mom is more artistic, and she’s been better about being helpful, and my partner is extremely supportive. All in all, it more-or-less balances out to a generally positive environment. So I really can’t complain. Sure, there are artists that had much, much more support, and money is always going to be an issue until (hopefully!) one day it isn’t, but that’s okay.
Anyway. Progress on the novel continues. Editor took a few weeks of vacation (richly deserved!), so that gives me a bit more time to work on this, and I intend to use it. Speaking of which, I should get back to it!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!