Category: Writing

So, yesterday’s Big News was the assignment of a narrator to Fair Trade.  Following up on that — Eileen Stevens will narrate, brave woman, and we have a firm date and time to chat with her, next Friday.

The Redlands Novel, still nameless, resides at +/-16,000 words as of close of writing last night, so that’s exciting, for values of &c.

We have a title for the story about Lomar Fasholt destined for inclusion in Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 35.  The title for the Lomar story is!

“Songs of the Fathers”

So that’s also exciting.  As soon as we Genius Writers come up with a title for the whole chapbook, I can start hunting and hopefully gathering cover art, and start in with compiling and getting preorders set up at the Usual Suspects.

I’m thinking that the order of stories will be:  “Standing Orders,” “Songs of the Fathers,” “From Every Storm a Rainbow,” and the obligatory Authors’ Afterword.

And, yanno, so it goes.  Writers livin’ the life.

Today’s blog title brought to you by REM, “Losing my Religion.”  Here’s a link.

 

Yesterday afternoon, Steve gave me his go-through of my draft of “The Last Train to Clarkesville.”  I read it, made some minor corrections, gave it back to him to read, and he pronounced it Good.

We submitted the story last night around 8 pm.  This morning, we have an ack from the editor — story received.

GHOD, I love electronic submissions.

No word limits were broken in the submission of this story, which came in at right around 7,955 words.

“Last Train to Clarkesville” is the 101st Lee-and-Miller collaboration; it is a Liaden Universe® western.

As soon as we have an acceptance, we will talk about this story again, Reveal the name of the anthology, and when it will be available.

Next up — a Liaden story to partner with “From Every Storm a Rainbow,” in the next Pinbeam Books chapbook.  I’ve put out a casting call, so we’ll see who shows up with a problem.

Of course, the last time I did that, I got Jen Sin yos’Phelium.

For now, I have a slew of paper on my desk, only some of which is Story Detritus, so I guess I’d better dig in and see what all’s here.

 

 

 

Still working on “The Last Train to Clarkesville.”  Was hoping to finish today, which — eh.  Maybe?  But probably not.

Firefly has been very busy with the cat toys.  While Sprite and Belle are content to sit among the toys (and Trooper mostly ignores them, unless they are actively in play), Firefly carries them around, and makes little groupings.  Just inside the tech room door, there’s a deliberate cluster of two chipmunks, one fish, one rat, and, at a little distance, a fluffy ball.  It looks like a team meeting, or maybe a tea party.  Maybe I should get her a tea service?

She also very busily carries toys downstairs, and then brings them back up.  Possibly, she’s showing them where the litter boxes are, so that there are no Accidents.  Nobody want any Accidents, amirite?

For those keeping track of Salvage Right’s progress through the Maze of Publishing, Madame the Editor reports that she has read the manuscript, and that it was “great fun.”  Next up is cover art, and copy editing, and galleys, all in their own good time.

We are apparently still looking at a June 2023 publication date.

For those who have been Patiently Waiting for the Fair Trade audiobook — I must continue to disappoint you with news of no news.

Steve is now in the Authorial Hot Seat, and working away on Trade Lanes, due for a September 2022 turn-in.

And that?  Is the Tuesday report.

So, yesterday we turned SALVAGE RIGHT, the 25th novel set in the Liaden Universe®.  For those coming in late, or who are Just Wandering By “we” in the case is Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.

Since there are a lot of books, and several threads, and Someone will ask What Is This Book About, and no one is ever satisfied with “about 130,000 words,” below is the authors’ working synopsis:

Clan Korval has for two hundred Standards believed Jen Sin yos’Phelium dead. In Neogenesis, the delm of Korval was apprised of this error. Salvage Right is the story of what happens next.

Everybody up to speed, now?  Good.

I started working on Salvage Right (I say “I” because I am lead writer on this title; Steve is lead writer on Trade Lanes, the next title, due in September) on November 15, 2021.  My brain immediately took the idea and ran with it, and I do mean “ran.”

“Big party at Tinsori Light!” was basically the theme of the next six months, when, in May, I declared tools down on a Good Enough Draft, sent the 106,000 words then more or less in place to beta readers, and took two weeks off, one of them to clean the house; the other to sit on the porch of an oceanfront apartment and stare at the waves, and the sky.

It was a much-needed break, and I came back to the manuscript with vision and energy renewed.

Which was a Good Thing.

We’re going to talk a little bit about Process, now.

The last novel I was lead on was Trader’s Leap, delivered in October 2019.  2020 was more-or-less taken up with breast cancer surgery, radiation and recovery.  And recovery.  Oh, and more recovery.  During which time, I repeatedly tried to write — something.  Anything.  Only to find that I seemed to have forgotten how.

I therefore sat myself down in an effort to relearn my craft, producing as my first post-cancer It Actually Makes Sense story, “Ambient Conditions,” in October 2020.  Five more short stories later, and coauthor for Fair Trade, and I felt pretty confident of my ability to take lead on another novel.

My Previous Method for writing novels was to Think Hard about the characters and what kind of trouble they were likely to get into, identify a few key scenes, and then, when I felt Ready, start writing the first scene, and proceed, in a more-or-less linear direction until “The End.”

The above method has its flaws.  It is sometimes necessary for me to stop for days while planning out the next scenes/interactions chronologically.  The benefit is that, once a “good enough” draft is achieved, it really is Good Enough.

As mentioned above, Salvage Right was written in the heat of “Big party at Tinsori Light!” where the backbrain threw up this scene, that scene, this other scene, and so on.  My job was to type as fast as I could, and when the occasional breathing space arrived, to chain the scenes in an order that made sense, given What I Knew.  Problem being that I didn’t know Everything.

Which meant that when I called tools down and took my two-week break, the book was Not As Finished as I believed it was, and that there was still a Large Chunk of Story still in my head that had not made it to the page.

So, long story short, I wrote +/-30,000 words in a little less than a month, rearranged the manuscript once more, and, finally, only four days late, turned it in.

Will I use the Write What You Know until you Don’t Know Anything Else Method again?  Probably.  I really like the sense of movement and engagement with the characters.  I did have Moments of Panic in the last stage, but I did not have a spell of ennui such as sometimes overtakes me when I’m writing straight-through-come-hell-or-high-water.

So!  My 34th novel and I’m still learning Stuff.

I did have a blast with these characters — as shifty a bunch as have congregated in one place in the Liaden Universe® — and I think y’all are going to like the book.

At this point in time, recalling that These Things Can Change — Baen plans to publish Salvage Right in Summer 2023.

My next project, after a few days of Light Duty, straightening out drawers and vacuuming and such like, is revising what I’ve been calling, to Steve’s not-so-secret amusement, “the Hat story” (actually, “The Last Train to Clarkesville”), then start getting Duainfey and Longeye into shape for indie reissue under the proper author name.  After that?  Welp, I’m lead on the book due next June, so I guess I better start Thinking About That.

Here ends today’s discourse.