Category Archives: Writing

Free Fiction From My Friend

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My friend Alethea Kontis‘s story “Blood and Water” (in issue nine of Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show) is going to be available FREE on the IGMS web site through March, in honor of receiving a number of recommendations for the Horror Writer’s Association’s Stoker Award. Congratulations, Lee!

If you haven’t checked out IGMS, now is a great time to do so. It’s only $2.50 per issue — except for when certain stories like Lee’s are made available free — and my friend Edmund Schubert works very hard to make sure it’s packed with excellent science fiction and fantasy stories.

And now, for your linking convenience: Intergalactic Medicine Show.

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Fallow Ground

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I confess to a degree of anticipation and trepidation I hadn’t thought possible, with respect to what I will find when I do my first editing pass on MARE NUBIUM. I’m letting the book lie fallow for awhile — turning my attention to some short fiction I’ve neglected over the last few months — and I find myself both anxious to get back into it and nervous that when I do, I won’t like what I find.

I told some of my fellow Literary Boot Camp alumni that I didn’t have this reaction when I wrote my first novel. This one seems more significant to me, for some reason.

I can’t put my finger on why, except at this point in my life I think I have more riding on this novel than on the first one. That one was a shot in the dark; this one was more carefully aimed and more carefully written, and how it fares when I start sending it out will pretty clearly indicate whether I’m dreaming an impossible dream, or one I might actually achieve.

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The End — of the Year, and My Novel

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I toasted the New Year early with cold medicine, and despite some occasional fuzzy thinking throughout the evening I finished writing my novel tonight at about 10:30 p.m. EST.

MARE NUBIUM — THE SEA OF CLOUDS now goes into some light editing before I release the draft to a few trusted readers. Hopefully the review and revision process will take less time than the writing did.

So, with thankfulness that I was able to meet that goal before 2008 expired, I say: Happy New Year!

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Day New Mon

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Okay, it’s really “denouement.” Apologies to everyone who took more French than I did … or, for that matter, more English.

Why is wrapping up loose ends so bloody tough?

The novel is 125,000 words long now. I think by the time it’s done — by midnight tomorrow, if I have my way — it’ll be right around 130K. I’m writing what I think will be the last chapter, in which two characters have to decide whether to stay at the lunar colony or give up and go home.

Tomorrow night could be a big celebration indeed … or it could be a frustrating evening of working while everyone else celebrates, because I’m determined to get this thing done!

So I’m going back to work on it now.

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The Year-End Deadline Loometh

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Only three days left (counting today) if I’m going to finish writing MARE NUBIUM this year. I worked on it some over Christmas weekend, but probably have one or two chapters to go before it’s done.

What I thought would be a 100K-word novel is now a hefty 120K and still growing, which means my first task for the new year will be to edit it down a bit … providing I finish it in the first place.

So, back to work!

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The Messages We Send, and Receive

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I was in Greensboro for a short time last evening, and stopped for a bite at a fast food restaurant just south of town. As I started pulling into one of several empty parking slots near the door, I noticed that it was marked “Employee Parking Only.”

Except for the two handicapped parking spaces, all the spaces near the entrance were marked, “Employee Parking Only.”

I wondered what message the management was trying to send.

Were they trying to say, “We value our employees, and want to do what we can for them even though we pay them very little and make them wear funny little cardboard headpieces?” If so, that’s very nice of them to be so considerate of their employees. But the message I got was, “Hey, customers, we like our employees more than we like you.” (Maybe they’d like to add, “Please come in and spend your money anyway.”)

I asked the young man behind the counter about it, and he just laughed. He said I was about the fiftieth customer who had asked since they repainted the parking lot — and that the employees don’t even use the spaces, so we were welcome to them.

So I still don’t know what message they were trying to send. I just hope I can communicate more clearly than that in my own writing — my speechwriting, my nonfiction writing, and my fiction.

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My Friends' Booksigning

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Last night I trekked to Greensboro, where my writing friends Edmund Schubert, James Maxey, and Scott Roberts — along with our writing teacher Orson Scott Card — were signing copies of the Intergalactic Medicine Show anthology (along with their individual books). It was a very nice event, made particularly so because my daughter agreed to come with me. The only drawback was that particular Barnes & Noble wasn’t set up for signings as nicely as the one here in Cary is.

Before the signing, we met Ed and family, James and Scott, and several member’s of Ed’s local writing group at Macaroni Grill for a relaxed, enjoyable supper (OSC, unfortunately, could not join us). Relaxed, that is, until some confusion over the checks almost made us late getting to the bookstore! But, everyone made it with at least a few seconds to spare.

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Another Honorable Mention from Writers of the Future

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Alex Wilson, one of my writing friends — and essentially a neighbor, since he lives right down I-40 a few miles — and fellow member of the Codex Writers group, called my attention to the fact that several of us once again received Honorable Mentions in the Writers of the Future contest. This is my third HM out of nine entries, which isn’t great but it’s not bad either. Again it is my great honor to be on the list with Alethea Kontis and Rick Novy, and again I grit my teeth and vow to do better next time.

And now, I need to be reading some slush.

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Made Word-Count Goal, Still Not Done (grumble)

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Thanks to my loving and understanding family, I was able to hole up and write-write-write this weekend in order to make my goal of finishing MARE NUBIUM. I had anticipated the book would be about 100K words long, and originally planned to be finished by Halloween; I pushed that deadline back a month after my lovely wife’s injury, and this weekend I did indeed cross the 100K-word mark — in fact, I’m up to about 110K after incorporating a previously-written short story that was an Honorable Mention for Writers of the Future.

Unfortunately, the overall novel still isn’t finished yet. Hopefully I can wrap it up in the next 10-20K words, and then go back and edit it back down to where it should be. Whether that will happen by the end of the year, I’m not sure … but I’m going to try.

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On the Writing Retreat, and Today's Space History Tidbit

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The writing retreat is working out well so far; in the last 24 hours, I’ve added 4000 words to the novel. MARE NUBIUM (THE SEA OF CLOUDS) is now about 95,000 words long. If I make it to 100K by the end of the weekend, I will have made my word count goal, but it looks as if the complete draft is going to be around 120K.

[break, break]

In today’s space history tidbit, 25 years ago today Space Shuttle COLUMBIA lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-9. The mission included astronauts John Young — one of the most experienced astronauts and a veteran of the Gemini and Apollo programs — Brewster Shaw, Owen Garriott, Robert Parker, Byron Lichtenberg, and Ulf Merbold, and was the first Spacelab mission.

And now you know.

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