Tag: books

The Day @ChuckWendig Kicked My Arse

~ petefordwriter ~ Leave a comment

Last Tuesday evening I drove on down to Tattered Cover books in Denver to see Chuck Wendig on the last stop of the Wanderers tour. (“What’s Wanderers, precious?” I hear you say. It’s a bloody good book, I answer. Lookie here.) I walked into the store, then I walked into the man (really – he happened to be near the door and was right in front of me as I entered. I shook his hand. I haven’t washed that hand since.)

And I bought a hardback copy of the book (even though I already had the book on Kindle, because if I’m gonna get a book signed, I want the book signed), and I sat and listened as he described how the book came to be (on which I will say more) and then took questions including one from me even though he couldn’t hear me properly because I’m still getting over this damned throat bug and I’ve been speaking in a hoarse whisper for a month or more.

At the end he signed the book and I got a selfie with him (which is pretty awful – I should have asked someone else to take the pic, but it didn’t occur to me at the time). And sometime during the proceedings, yea verily, he kicked my arse.

(checks video)

Ok, he didn’t literally kick my arse.

Let me go back to the bit where he talked about the genesis of Wanderers. He mentioned that the story just started off as a very simple idea: a little girl starts sleepwalking – and doesn’t stop. She walks out of the house and into the world and other sleepwalkers join in. (Not a spoiler – that all happens on the first page or two of the book, and sets the stage for everything that happens after.) That’s it. From that simple seed he built the rest of the story.

I’ve mentioned my own story-developing process several times (I even wrote a little book about it). It involves spreadsheets and timelines and peril/tension scales and so on. And if you take a look back at earlier posts here you’ll see that I was working on timelining a story a few months ago.

That sort of died; as I’ve also mentioned, stuff has been happening since December that’s made finding time and staying focused on writing really hard for me, and thanks to that the timeline work ended up fizzling out. (It’s not 100% dead. It just dried out like a mummified corpse. Add the right kind of juice and it might come back. I haven’t decided yet whether to resurrect it; I’ll figure that out when things get back to something more like normal.)

Back to Tuesday. Wanderers starts off as a one-sentence seed of an idea.

Wednesday, I think about that. I also think about a one-sentence idea that had been niggling away at the mid-brain for a couple of weeks. And I start writing it down. Started with that scene, then what happened next and then what happened after that.

Yesterday (Sunday) evening, I wrote the ending (although I’d had the bones of the ending in mind since Wednesday or maybe Thursday). But the whole thing was down on paper (well, actually I used my reMarkable, which made it go waaaay faster. But still, handwriting.)

No timeline, no spreadsheet, no scene cards. No tech. No process-with-rules-I-feel-I-should-stick-to. I just started with this opening scene that I hadn’t been able to get out of my head, and five days later I had a story.

I started off thinking it would be a short story, but it grew like kudzu. At this point it’s just a story, not a book, but it is going to make a book. Not immediately, of course – I’ve put it to one side for a couple of days and then I’ll review what I have and look for inconsistencies, and even though I already have my characters (they became people as I was writing the story) I want to write down some back stories to help me keep their little details straight in my head. And then I’ll start banging actual keys and writing actual words that will become an actual first draft.

For the first time in months, I’m excited and ready to write this thing. The dry spell is over – for good, I hope – and it’s all because Chuck Wendig (figuratively) kicked my arse.

Until next time . . .

Gunn & Bohemia: The Sequel

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If all goes to plan I’ll have three – count’em, three – books coming out in 2018. Exciting times!

The Artemis Device* is under contract and currently undergoing copy editing. That’s been slow going, but I’m hoping that the pace will pick up now that the holidays are behind us.

Phantasms & Magicks* has been submitted to my publisher and I’m waiting to hear if they want to take it on. Fingers crossed, but if they decide they’re not interested I’ll almost certainly self-pub. Either way there’s no reason it can’t be out there this year.

Last but far from least, Britannia One* – the sequel to Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia – is at the writing phase; I expect to have a first draft completed around the end of April, which could put publication somewhere around October**.

There’s a little bit of a story behind Britannia One. I actually started work on a sequel in 2014, not long after G&B was published. Then, life happened. We moved house, which threw writing work into a tailspin for a while. On top of that, while I thought the story I’d developed was pretty good, I wasn’t happy with the timeline. So for various reasons I put it to one side.

I decided a couple of weeks ago that I was ready to pick up from where I’d left off. For some reason I was under the impression that I’d stopped somewhere in the middle of developing the timeline.

So I was pretty surprised when, just the other day, I went back and reviewed what I had. The timeline was done; not quite correct – it needs a couple of changes – but complete. I had a line drawing of a map showing the area where most of the story takes place. Not only that, but there were two first-draft chapters already written. What was most surprising was that, until I looked at it, I’d completely forgotten that I’d got that far.

That’s why work on it is already at the writing phase, when I hadn’t mentioned anything about the prep work here; all the groundwork is already done. I just need to tweak the timeline a little bit, and I want to make a couple of changes to the supporting characters. That’ll take a day or so, then I can start pounding keys.

I’m planning to post regular updates here as the work goes along. Watch this space.

* working titles

** total guesswork

More Books Are Good For Your Brain

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In the previous post I promoted my own books a bit. And since I mentioned it, here they are again: https://petefordwriter.com/books

And I promised in that post that I’d promote a handful of other authors. No big names here; you guys don’t need my help to get your books out there. The intention here is to try to give a leg up to a few people with some excellent books that you might not know about.

So let’s start off with Craig Hallam, a fellow Brit. I read Greaveburn a while back and it’s one of those books I can’t help but pick up and read again every so often. (I think I’ve read it four times now.) He also has the Alan Shaw stories, and more. Check his work out here: https://craighallam.wordpress.com/books/

Now I must mention the great authors at my own publisher. While I don’t claim to have read everyone I have read Aly Grauer, Ben Ireland, Russell Smith, and several others. Don’t miss out on some outstanding stories: http://www.xchylerpublishing.com/our-books/

That’s all I have time for today; I’m eager to get on with timelining my own next book. So until next time . . .

Books Are Good For Your Brain

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Something I’ve been told I don’t do often enough (tooting your own horn feels wrong, somehow): promoting my books. You can find all the links here:

https://petefordwriter.com/books

That’s it for now (the day-job is keeping me too busy to do more at the moment). In a future post (soon . . . very soon) the plan is to promote some books by other lesser-known authors. Watch this space.

Contingency Plan

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I have this book written; it’s a full-length SF/Steampunk story, around 90,000 words long. At the moment it has a working title of Smoke & Mirrors, but I can’t really use that (Neil Gaiman has a short story collection out with that name). I do have a better title but I’m keeping it under my hat for now. I might not be able to use that one, either—it turns out that it’s very similar to the name of another short story collection, this one from the 1970s. No matter; if I find a publisher they can make that call.

But that’s a big If. Right now I have the typescript out with some agents, and the indications are that all I’m going to see is rejection letters. It’s par for the course, really; only a small fraction of books get picked up by agents because they have to be picky about what they take on. After all, they have to bear costs until the book hits shelves and starts making cash, and even then their slice isn’t going to pay the rent if the book doesn’t sell. Fifteen percent of zero doesn’t go very far.

My problem here is that it could easily be December or even later before all the agents get back to me (and I don’t expect them all to reply, either—some agents only seem to reply to the few percent of queries that they want to pursue, leaving the rest to hang; one that I’ve queried this time round has a response rate of 4.4%, so I really don’t expect to hear a peep from that direction).

So here’s the quandary: If all the responses are going to be rejections, then I’m wondering: why should I wait for the bad news before moving? Why not just self-pub the book anyway? Then, in the event that one of the agents does actually show an interest, I can always un-publish.

Of course, there’s a danger that an agent might be interested, at which point I then have to tell them that I already self-pubbed—but hey, don’t worry, I can un-publish in thirty seconds with a couple of mouse clicks. But the fact that the book’s already out there and maybe sold a few copies might be enough for the agent to get cold feet. I don’t know what agents do in that situation, to be honest. I don’t know any agents to ask.

What to do, what to do . . .

So here’s the contingency plan: I’m going to start merging the chapter files into a single master document, ready for self-publishing. I’m also going to see about how much it’d cost to have a professional editor look at it, and get some idea of how much a cover artist might charge for an eye-catching cover. That’ll take a couple of weeks, at least, during which time it’s always possible I’ll get a good word from an agent. If not, then I can make the decision on whether to go forward the self-pub way, or continue to wait.

The plan is planned. Tomorrow, I’ll begin merging files, and researching editors and artists. I’ll post progress here. Watch this space.

Finish Your Book now in print

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FinishYourBookKindle

AFTER a certain amount of messing about, Finish Your Book is now available on paper here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1522043837 — cheaper than a $6 cheeseburger, and better for you, too. (Disclaimer: please don’t eat the book; I suspect the inks and stuff are not exactly FDA approved.)

And of course the non-dead-tree version is available from all good eBook vendors. See https://petefordwriter.com/books/finish-your-book for details.

Dear Diary . . .

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MY regular readers (Sid and Doris Bonkers of Epping) might have noticed that every now and then I post something here that’s more like a rambling journal entry than an article about something specific.

This is one of those. Day job and household chores took over things for the last couple of days; I did find time to get a few things done, though, and now I feel like rambling a bit. Let the rambling begin . . .

On books and writing:

As I mentioned in the last post, I uploaded a correctly-formatted version of Finish Your Book, and now that should be what gets downloaded by readers. I tested it and it looks the way I intended the first time round.

I also re-published Pavonis, which was the first full-length story I ever published. It was originally self-published in 2012, but I took it down after Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia was published professionally, the reason being that after going through the whole pro publishing process with G&B, I realised that my self-editing left a lot to be desired and I was no longer happy to have a flawed work out there. So I had sort-of planned to rework much of Pavonis with the help of a professional editor (and cover artist—the cover pretty much stinks), and come up with a better title (because Pavonis doesn’t tell you anything about what the book’s about). But after much consideration, I decided I’d rather focus on new works than try to fix old ones. And anyway, quite a few people liked the book despite its shortcomings. In the end I decided to just put it back out there. I might at some point upload a new version that fixes the known spelling errors and some formatting problems (a few passages display underlines and italics that weren’t in my source text), and I’m considering paying an artist to come up with better cover art. Maybe.

Meanwhile on the writing front, I’m building up the story line for the currently-untitled SF book I’ve been thinking about for the last couple of months. I’ll probably be getting back on that this afternoon.

Also, I did some tweaking of the web site to rearrange a few things and update a couple of pages. I think it’s looking pretty good.

On TV:

We’re saving Game of Thrones on DVR, with the intention of binge-watching when we have four or five episodes recorded. Reason: last year we watched the first episode of season six the night it showed—and at the end we were like a couple of addicts, craving more and cursing HBO for forcing us to wait a whole week for our next fix. So, not this time.

Meanwhile I’ve been re-watching season two of Dark Matter, and when I reach the end of that I’m planning on watching the available episodes of season three on on-demand.

On games:

I was given a new video card—a GTX950 to replace my older GTX560. I installed it yesterday afternoon, but wasn’t able to do anything with until the evening. I played some Serious Sam – The First Encounter and it did seem to be smoother. I’ll try it with something a bit more demanding on the video later; maybe No Man’s Sky. (I noticed NMS has had several patches since I played it last; if they fixed some of  the shortcomings that bugged me most, I might start playing it a bit more often.)

That’s enough for now. I need coffee and maybe I’ll watch a little TV before I get back to that SF story I mentioned.

Until next time . . .

Get Terra Mechanica for 99¢ thru 12/24

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YEP, blatant self-promotion time: Terra Mechanica is a Steampunk anthology which has a story by yours truly in it. Here’s the pic and the blurb from the publisher’s Facebook page:

15676031_1302400976500386_3669864771142518938_o

From: TERRA MECHANICA: THE VOYAGE OF VALERIE MCGRATH by Peter J Ford: Sent on a desperate mission only she can fulfill, a dedicated researcher discovers the war her government wages against its own people, and the planet they rely upon for survival. Ebook available for $0.99 on Kindle, Nook, Kobo and Smashwords through 12.24.16. http://amzn.to/2i0cfeH

Review: The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter – @RodDuncan

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IMG_20151227_122635

THE short: A damned good book. Most definitely five stars, and a must-read for fans of steampunk and alternate history.

THE long: I was in the bookshop looking for gifts. I happened along the SF/F aisle, where I saw Unseemly Science by Rod Duncan. It caught my eye because it was face-out on the shelf rather than edge-out and so I saw the cover, and was intrigued.

They say not to judge a book by its cover. What a crock that is. You can’t HELP but be fascinated by a good cover. I’ve lost count of the number of books I’ve bought for no other reason than they had bloody good cover art. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, for example, and John Varley’s Titan, Wizard, and Demon (aka The Gaian Trilogy).

But I digress. I saw this book. I was interested—but I didn’t buy it, because I was looking for gifts for other people, not for me.

Then my wife said I should have picked out something nice for myself, too. So I went back and grabbed it and gave it to her. And then, Christmas evening, I unwrapped this package, and there was Unseemly Science.

I opened it eagerly . . . and found that it was the second book in a series. Shit. I really wanted to read it. But I didn’t want to read it until I’d read the first book.

Long story shortened: Next day, went back the bookshop. Bought The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter (the first book in the series). Went home. Started reading. Today (that is, the day after starting it), finished it.

And DAMN it’s a good read. The only reason I didn’t read it in a single day was that I was busy the first evening and had to put it down.

So, the gist. Elizabeth Barnabus lives a double life—her alternate persona being that of her fictional brother, a private investigator. Why the double identity? I think I can say without it being a spoiler, because it’s revealed in the first couple of pages anyway. You see, Elizabeth lives in an alternate Britain in which women aren’t permitted to own property or manage businesses, so to be able to work as an investigator she needs to be able to disguise herself as a man. (That’s a simplification; Duncan has built an intricate world in which Britain is cut in two, the north and the south being very different places. But I can’t say much more on that without introducing spoilers, so I’ll leave it there.)

As to the story itself . . . Elizabeth is commissioned to find the missing brother of a duchess. Along his trail she finds murder and betrayal, is chased by the dreaded Patent Office, and even joins a circus. No-one is who they seem. The story twists and turns like a maze of alleys on a foggy London night. And the atmosphere of the story is to match—the settings are dark, dank, almost Victorian. (Is it Victorian? There are a good number of clues that say not—but I don’t want to give anything away.) It would make an excellent movie, I might add. I couldn’t put it down; I’ve been stretched out on the sofa most of the day, reading. A very satisfying read, indeed.

Is it steampunk? I’d say so. There are purists out there who might disagree—but at the end of the day, purist definitions are meaningless. If the readers say it’s steampunk, then it’s steampunk. (I mention this because I’ve read comments from some people saying that Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker and its sequels aren’t steampunk because they’re set in America and not England. I say they’re wrong. Purists can go way too far sometimes.)

So now I’ve finished The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter, I’ll be starting into Unseemly Science just as soon as I can (i.e. later this evening). Note that the third book in the series, The Custodian of Marvels, will be on bookshelves on February 2. I for one am going to be having a hard time waiting for it.

Until next time . . .