C. Litka's Blog, page 60

Early Works Part 2 The Hybrid-Worlder version 1

The Hybrid-Worlder
The original version is a 29,900 word long novella about a helmsman off an interstellar ship (a starfarer or “sarfeer”) on leave on the small moon/space port of Yisvaalr. He meets up with a sarfeer off a rival ship and they encounter a deadly alien – the hybrid-worlder as they make their way back to port. Don’t remember much more about this version.
As I mentioned in the intro to this series, I just found a second, later version where I trimmed 8,000 words off it, but I’m not sure I ever pitched that story to the magazines, since I only have the originally typed manuscript, not a xeroxed copy, as we called it in those days.
The story is based on the tea clippers of the 1850 & 60’s. Back in those days, level-headed Scottish businessmen – ship owners – built ships to carry the new season’s tea from China to England. A number of them tried to build the fastest sailing ships that could be designed for the trade, fitted them out like yachts, and manned them with the hardest driving captains and crews, no expense spared. They would all gather in several Chinese ports, wait for the tea to arrive, load it as fast as possible, and then race down the South China Sea, across the Indian Ocean and up the Atlantic, to London, half a world away. The tea from the first clipper that arrived first usually commanded a premium price, but that hardly justified the expense of these ships. Steamers and the Suez Canal put an end to this romantic era of sailing. In this story xanifa is tea, Kantea-on in China, and Aero Day is London, and the ships in the trade were fierce rivals, driven for all they were worth.
This story starts out in my usual leisurely style. No doubt too leisurely – which I probably realized since the second version starts out a bit different. I was, however, trying to create a mood, something I still strive to do, but perhaps more economically these days. Or not.
Style-wise, I don’t think I’ve changed much over the last 35 years plus, though hopefully I’ve gotten a little more fluid in my writing. One of the limits of my talents is evident in the narrator – who changes name and background, but little else. I can’t, nor do I try all that hard, to create a narrator who is very different from me in outlook, anyway, – just (very) greatly idealized. Rhyl Dunbar, or Rhyldunbar as he’s know in this version, could easily be Wil Litang, (or Sandy Say, Hugh Gallagher).

But enough talk. Here’s the opening scene of the Hybrid-Worlder from 1979.


THE HYBRID-WORLDERBeing an Account of One Downside Watch on Yisvaalr
(1)At last I was clear of the hectic press of my shipboard duties. Not that it mattered. Barely a tri- watch remained of our stay in Aero Day orbit and dream of a down—side watch fit for a prominent place in memoirs seemed dead beyond recall.Fifteen tri-watches ago when the Aero Day system—pilot stepped aboard the SHADOW OF DREAMS, saluted the Skipper, and officially welcomed us to Great Aero Day our prospects for an extended feu de joie amongst the dives of Yisvaalr’s Starfarers’ Quarter were, as yet, undimmed. A tri- watch later, they'd been cruelly dashed.And we had sorely needed a taste of dirt.In the 844 tri-watches since leaving Sansifa orbit – almost three Aero Dayian years ago – we had sailed over 19, 000 light – years, calling on only five worlds long enough to hand1e our cargoes and, perhaps, fit in a tri-watch downside. We were, thus, weary of the shipboard routine, tired of the long passages betwix distant worlds, and cold in spirit from living too long in the wane light of stars. We needed ground beneath our feet, the warmth of a sun on our face. And the many distractions of a roaring sarfeer’s town.Aero Day to be all this. Aero to be the long lay-over while SHADOW the received a thorough refit. And we. Her gallant company, with a dangerously large amount of back wages in our inner pockets were prepared to face the task ahead of us unflinchingly, determined to roll back to the ship, when the time came, without a credit to our name.For me, I couldn't have chosen a finer world than Aero Day for in the days of youth – more ago than I care to number – I'd shipped out of Yisvaalr, the portal moon of Aero Day world, as an apprentice aboard the Kantea-on clipper TARKIA. I knew Yisvaalr from pole to pole, her sarfeers’ quarter alley by alley, and despite long my absence, I was certain to turn up rnany an ol’shipmate of mine from those brave old days. This vision of a down-side leave fit for heroes substained me when all else failed.But it proved – shortly after reaching Aero Day – to have been a mirage.We had barely settled into our berthing orbit in the bustling anchorage around Aero Day world, when the Skipper received a signal from a certain Captain Arinroon of the Kantea—on clipper MINERY VAR. It seems that the Skipper and this Captain Arinroon had, in their youths shipped out as apprentices together – and before I had even broken out my down-side kit – they’d arranged for our two ships to leave Aero Day orbit in company and race out to Kantea—on.To be set to sail with the MINERY VAR, we had to clear Aero Day in a rush. Down—side watches were at a premium, as all hands labored watch on watch to clear the SHADOW’s container-holds of her Aero Day cargo, conduct a hasty refit, and scare up any stray cargo for Kantea-on.To add to our worries, it soon became evident that there was a lot more riding on this race than we had bargained for. For we had – or more correctly; the Skipper had – challenged the current holder of the 'Gilded Comet', which is to say; we had arranged to race the fastest clipper in the whole of the Kantea-on fleet.The carriage of dried leaf of the xanifa tree from Kantea-on to Aero Day is one of those rare celestial trades in which merchant ships are actually raced Against each other. Each Kantea-on season the best picking of xanifa is lightered up to the fastest celestial clippers a’waiting in orbit and once loaded, they're driven for all they are worth to Aero Day, where the xanifa—drinking populace impatiently a'waits the new season’s crop. Waiting for them also, is the vast sporting. population of Aero Day who take a great interest (financial and otherwise) in the fortunes of their favorite Kantea-on clipper. Thus. a vast amount of Aero Dayian credits change hands on the day the first xanifa clipper arrives from Kantea-on vith the new crop of xanifa, and again, when the of the new crop arrives and the ship making the fastest passage of the season is awarded the Gilded Comet.Outbound passages. on the other hand, are taken a bit more easy – though scratch races between two or more ships are not uncommon. Normally, however, they don’t stir the widespread interest the homebound race does unless it happens to be between the current holder of the Gilded Comet and legendary champion. say, for instance, between the MINERY VAR and the SHADOW OF DREAMS.Aye some 300 Aero Dayian years ago, the SHADOW was, indeed, the premiere celestial clipper in the Kantea—on trade. She carried the Gilded Comet for thirty—nine of her fifty—two passages in the trade. It was only after the death of her famous designer-skipper, Inzar-Rode, that the SHADOW – captained by a less enterprising skipper – slipped back into the ranks and finally drifted from the Kantea—on Orbit altogether.This pairing of the current and legendary champions quickly attracted a much wider circle of punters than the original wager between the crews of our two ships. It's become the sporting event of the outbound passages – sparking interest not only amongst the other sarfeers of the Kantea-on fleet, but even spreading to the sporting population of Aero Day. I understand that, for an outbound race, unprecedented sum of Aero Dayian currency is riding on the result of our race.That, added to the fact our reputation, our ability to attract an early xanifa cargo on Kantea-on, and that SHADOW’s legend was on the line, and it is easy to understand why I was held a virtual prisoner in the SHADOW's chartroom commanded to plot the astest orbit to Kantea-on ever.It took me almost all of our stay in Aero Day orbit to do so.The stars and stellar debris presented no concern in plotting a course, for they'd hardly changed their relative positions since last entered in the log-memory some 300 years ago. I was quickly able to up-date them by getting hold of a recent Aero Day Survey chart. No, it was not the hazards of this universe that kept me poring over the charts for so much of our brief stay in Aero Day orbit.It was the charts of the ultra spectra universe that I worried over for almost a fortnight. The energy of the ultraspectra universe, whose spectrum is defined to begin at a point where its energy and matter have absolutely no natural relationship between ‘our’ energy and matter, is much less concentrated than our own energy; being spread, at varying intensities, across the whole expanse that corresponds to our universe (it is said). By using hybrid-energy fields, celestial ships tap this ultraspectra energy to drive them at may times the speed of light. The intensity of the ultraspectra energy determines the speed of any given celestial ship and this intensity can, and does, change quite significantly in far less than 300 years.The region of the ultraspectra universe corresponding to the 2, 000 light-years betwixt Aero Day and Kantea-on is notorious for its ‘unevenness’ of intensity, its slow fluctuations over the years, and its to make abrupt, unpredictable changes in ‘local’ energy levels of such magnitude and of such swiftness that they have been known to wreck celestial clippers caught unprepared.The Aero Day Survey also charts the ultraspectra energy contour but given the constant changes, they can never be relied on absolutely. They are of some use, however, in divining just are the highest intensities are likely to be found for any given passage.The best charts are those of the fastest clippers fact, the best charts make the fastest clippers. They are the ones built up over seasons of tacking back and forth to Kantea-on and Aero Day. They are most likely charts of the ultraspectra contour beyond the star lanes surveyed by tho Survey and they are fiercely secrets.The MINERY VAR, with her proven charts, had a great advantage over us.Still, we had Captain Inzar-Rode's old charts, the ones he won thirty—nine 'Comets' with. And though the ultraspectra contour has been 300 years a’changing, a close study of these long secret charts with their proven orbit-tracks was not without interest. These, coupled with own, rather more recent experience in the Kantea-on Orbit aboard the Gilded Comet winning TARKYA, and the fragments of information gathered by my ship mates from sarfeers of other ships who had money riding on us, gave me something to work on. I vas able to plot, what I feel to be, a very promising orbit to Kantea-on. Nothing certain, mind you, for the orbit is based on guesses as to the ultraspectra contour we’11 find, but certain enough to inspire confidence that rnake it an embarrassingly close race for the MINERY VAR.I finished plotting this hot orbit late in the second-to-the-last tri-watch of our stay in Aero Day orbit. Though worn and weary, I stumbled out of the chartroom in search of the Skipper.I found him in the ship's office. where he met request for a two—watch down—side leave with a brisk "No.""We’re too close to sailing to let you loose. Your place is here, aboard ship, not drunk in some dive," was his specious defense of his denial of my request.Perhaps a lesser sort of sarfeer might have contented himself with a few choice curses, a sullen glower, and then, with a resigned shrug, shuffled off to his cabin for a well earned and much needed two-watch nap. But not I.With 844 tri-watches of shipboard routine, starship-moss meals, and the last fortnight of slaving over the glowing 3-D charts behind me, I as in a dangerous mood. Even so, it only after I had darkly hinted that if I was not allowed leave off-ship, I – if I were the Skipper – would be rather nervous when walking the dark companionways about ship alone, that he relented allowed me and a score of shipmates down-side to Yisvaalr for a “watch-and-no-more.”Within a quarter-watch I had gathered the select few and was hurling the Skipper's 30-meter gig through the teeming roadstead and down through the thin shell of Yisvaalr atmosphere with – perhaps – even more than my customary recklessness.

(2)Within the Knyme-sooh. the air heavy and aromatic with the flavors of Chantson Yea. I sat alone in a booth deep within the indigo shadows of the non—-Chantsom Yeaian level. Overhead. three tiers of balconies circled the dining hall of the Krvme-sooh. From lighting panels set four stories the brilliant sapphire-colored Chantson Yeaian sunlight dimly reached me, filtered through the foliage of the Jungle-garden that rose up through the core of the hall like a frozen fountain. Seated around the glittering boughs of the square or Chnntsom jungle, at low tables along the three levels of were the tough survivors, the courtiers and cavaliers, of the exiled court of the old regime of Chantsom Yea. In the make-believe sunlight of home they dined talked, reminisced arn, I imagine, still plotted their return to Chantsom Yea.Less than a quarter-watch before, I had thumped down the 30—meter gig on the tarmac of our mooring bay – to the exaggerated sigh of relief from my passengers. Cracking the hatch; I led the shaken of shipmates out of the still glowing gig onto the vast, gently curving expanse Of the Smallcraft Field of the Commercial Port of Aero Day that encompasses the Northern pole of Yisvaalr. Foresaking the moving walkways under the field as being too slow, I struck out at a fast trot for the distant ring of administrative buildings that lay beyond the orderly rows of ships’ boats and launches. I plunged through Customs – deaf to the terse comments of port officials regarding the finer points of handling a gig in a crowded roadstead – and charted a waiting air-cab for the Knyme-sooh.The Knyme-so lies beyond the usual orbit of grounded sarfeers; almost half the moonlet from the riotous environs of Starfarers' Quarter. I had, however. come to frequent this Chantsom Yea World restaurant, and court-in-exile, in m early yearrs of starfaring the Kantea—on Orbit. Long cherished memories of its rare cuisine, its calm, aquatic gloom, and its almost legendary association with the brave ol 'days of my youth combined to draw me past the roaring Starfeers’ Quarter’s taverns, past its delightfully wicked pleasures, games, and boisterous camaraderie. I had determined to spend 'watch-and-no-more with a Chantsom Yeaian feast and the ghosts of youth.Though it was midday in our sector of the Smallcraft field, the aurora-tinted night of Yisvaalr was just stealing over the Jaqut Inn Quarter when I alighted from the air-cab in front of the Knyme-sooh.I stood back and stared. After all the years, after all the passages; it the same old Knyme-sooh. Bounding down the few steps from street level, I pushed through the heavy doors waded into the murky depths of Chantsom Yea-in-exile. I was greeted by its once-royal proprietor, Cybai Ky, himself – who, like his establishment, seemed unchanged. With surprisingly little prompting. he was able to recall me; one of those serious young apprentices that his old shiprnate, Hook, would sometimes bring in tow. Over a fine and rare feast we talked of old times. until, at last. Other duties claimed Cybai Ky’s attention.I was alone, now, in the booth at the base of the jungle—garden. Well, not quite alone, for a winged-creature clung to the boughs of the jungle across the narrow aisle. Beguiling me with her many faceted eyes a’sparkling coyly, she, in return for the crumbs of meal, made clear, not unpleasant tones.I took a sip from a steaming cup of fine. Isle of Adancy xanifa and set it back on the table before me. A brass—bound lantern stood at tho center of the table; its four thick lenses casting dim spears of amber light over the table-top, like a lighthouse on a dark reef in a sea of blue shadows – a reef still strewn with the hulks derelict vessels of the Chantsom feast.I was at ease. Thoroughly content, filled to the load-line with a meal of ‘ta’zim-acue’ that tasted even better than vintage memories had promised, and topped off with a steaming pot of the finest xanifa. Finally I knew rest, and surruounded by old memories, I drifted into a deep reverie.Tho place was made for dreaming – the azure light that managed to make its way down through the levels of jeweled foliage could barely tint blue the entwining tendrils of steam that twisted up from cup, and in fact, seemed to embrace, rather than chase away the gloom of my booth. Sitting back, absently watching the weaving threads of steam curl around and upwards into the blackness under the lowest of the Chentsom Yeaian-dining balconies, I became lost in twisting, overgrown lanes of memories. I sat while faces and scenes came back to me – all my old shipmates, the places, the dramas, the tastes, and emotions of those by-gone days of Yisvaalr and Kantea-on. They were distilled, somehow, with the passage of time and the layers of other memories into that smooth, melancholy flavor of romance, the spicy tang of adventure, and the haunting bouquet of remembered youth...

(3)Out of my dreams – a great noise. a deafening crack which jerked me to consciousness and confusion.The dishes danced. The lantern flickered. The very fabric of the building seemed to shiver with the concussion.I spilled half a cup of hot xanifa on my lap and exploded in a chanty of Embarian curses.Like litter before the landing blast of an Atmospheric-freighter, the scenes and figures of my reverie were scattered by the sudden, explosion-like crack.As the echoes receded from the Knyme-sooh, they left the jungle garden hall in eerie silence. I held breath and cast a quick look at my jewel-eyed companion in the boughs. Her eyes held glints of shock and fright as she clutched her branch statue like. Apparently she understood the Embarian tongue.As the silence I began to wonder if I, indeed, had heard the noise at all, or if perhaps, it was an ordinary sound magnified by dozing condition. Still, listening I no longer heard the subdued murmerings of the exiled Chantsom Yeaians seated aroundt he balconies above me. Silent was their chirping laughter, the rustling of their elegant home-world gowns the busy chatter of their dinner utensils. Nor did the strangely sung ballad of the Chatsom Yeaian singer steal out to me from the cabaret beyönd the curtained doorway behind me. And even the vague rumblings of the gaa jinga-gamblers from even deeper within the of backrooms, failed to reach me. through the oppressive silence.It as if time, itself, was holding its breath. It held potent; like the frightenly expectant silence of your death but a moment old.And before I could throw down a steadying slug of xanifa – what was left of it – it struck again – pushing against my chest like an invisible hand.Small debris sprayed across the outer of table larger pieces went skidding and spinning by me down the narrow aisle.The thunder clap was followed on its heels by a mighty, howling roar – made more frightening by the fact that my translator terminal, sensing it to be the utterance of some being, but finding no recognized word-pattern in the roaring howl; merely re—echoed it as a fierce, wordless challenge in head.It struck, however. an icy reserve. Consciously, I drew a long breath and carefully put hard on the porcelain xanifa pot to stop its rattling dance to the table's edge. I slid along the bench to the jungle-bordered aisle as an unconscious twist of right my right wrist brought the cool slap of the needle-beam knife to my palm. My thumb found its control key even as I peered around the booth divider and caught sight of what stood looking into the Knyme-sooh through a gaping breach in its front wall where once a muunciin crystal window was.It was huge.

Mystery Solved

A few months ago I wrote in a blog post about a spike in the Amazon "sales" of my books on the 22nd of the month two months running -- for no apparent reason. I noticed another spike in September, this time for A Summer in Amber. Last night, I noticed another small spike of 16 copies sold for A Summer in Amber, on the Amazon UK store and decided to look into it. 

Now a Summer in Amber is usually on the "Best selling Free 100 Steampunk Books" UK's list, so that couldn't explain it. I tried a few searches in steampunk for price and ratings, but they turned up nothing. It was only when I selected the steampunk option under Fantasy and Science Fiction, to get all the books, and then clicked on the "Featured" selection it offered that I discovered A Summer in Amber on page six of this listing. It included both paid and free books and no doubt reaches a much wider audience than the Best Selling 100 Book lists do. 

I have no idea how Amazon selects the books to "feature", but I appreciate that they have occasionally include my books in their featured listings, especially given that none of us make any money from any sale it generates. It certainly makes a big difference in my "sales."  And I would imagine that finding a book "On Sale" for "free" increases the customer's perception that Amazon offers some very good deals, so it is a win-win for both of us.

Early Works Part 1 Introduction

I had to post this picture in black and white because writing on a typewriter seems that far away in time -- from an age when the world was in black and white, before they invented color.I guess I’ve been writing stories off and on most of my life. Why, just this summer, while getting rid of some boxes of junk I’d saved for 40 some years, I discovered a bunch of handwritten story books that I’d written sometime after fifth grade when I started to read for fun. I’d forgotten all about those little books. They were mostly science fiction stories, from my Tom Swift and Tom Corbet, Space Cadet era, and perhaps some spy stories from that Man from U.N.C.L.E era as well. I still have my U.N.C.L.E card.
The curious thing about my memory is that I remember very little of my life. I can remember facts, but looking back at my life, it is mostly those facts, giving it a sort of skimpy third person narrative feel to it. Just today while collecting some material for this Early Works blog project, I discovered a manuscript that I have no recollection of – a second complete version of the science fiction novella I wrote entitled “The Hybrid-Worlder.”
Now, I’ve always known that I wrote that story – I’ve had its manuscript on a shelf for 30 some years – but apparently the ms I knew I had was only the first version. It’s 29,900 words long and dated June 1979. The typed ms I discovered today is some 21,900 words and dated October 1979, and has a completely different opening than the June version. Truth is, I really don’t remember much of the story at all, so I have no idea what else changed from one version to the other beyond the opening scene, though it got 8000 words shorter. I also discovered the opening chapter of a third version that I also have no recollection of either. This version I started in 1989, and includes a long outline of the principles of starship propulsion as well as detailed plans of the starship, The Shadow of Dreams, or the Cir Ay Cey as it became known in that version. I also have a completed short story with the same narrator, Rhyl Dunbar.
I’m planning on posting the first couple of pages of all three versions, just to illustrate how they changed over the years, plus some pages from a comic book version I did as well. I do know that I changed the story for the later comic book version and have a much clearer idea of that version then the others.
In addition to that novella, I’ll post the first chapter of my 85,000 word fantasy novel, "The Brigand Sea-Prince."  It is a story about an envoy sent to the court of some far-ranging sea raiders. I remember that much, and one dungeon scene, but otherwise the story is pretty much a complete blank. Couldn’t have been very good, eh?
This summer I also found my collection of rejection slips for those two completed manuscripts that I had collected back in 1979. I was surprised to find that I’d actually sent them out to so many magazines of the times. I didn’t remember being that preserving. 
I also will share the opening pages of several other stories I started and never finished, one, at least that I’ve no recollection of. I did have one other novel in the works – a box full of 3x5 cards, outlines, character studies, and such, for a cold-war era sci-fi story that I was planning to write, but never did. It dealt with the Reagan era “star-wars” type of anti-ballistic missile system of that era and the implications of what a unilateral ending of “assured mutual destruction” might mean. Most of this was all handwritten, and I believe I got rid of all of it this summer.
The last treasure is the first draft of a completed manuscript – a young adult environmental mystery/adventure novel written on a Z88 computer and printed on a dot matrix printer that date from sometime in the late 1980’s. I never got around to submitting this piece. I think I lost the second draft when I had to reset the computer, or some such thing. I can’t think for the life of me why I decided to write a YA novel.
After that I gave up on writing and turned to painting for my creative outlet. I'd been painting off and on all my life, and paintings offered two great advantages over writing. The first that a painting, at least the way I paint them doesn't take a year or more to complete. The results are far more immediate with far less work than a book. (I've never been a fan of short stories, as a rule.) The second great advantage of painting is that once done, is complete in itself. You can hang it on the wall, display it in galleries, or on line, you can sell it or sell prints of it. A completed manuscript is not complete until it is published, and with one chance in a hundred of it being published commercially, well, you're unlikely to ever see it complete -- a book strangers can read.
However, that changed sometime around 2007-8 with ebooks and the kindle.  After that, you could take a manuscript from start to finish yourself. And so, when the writing bug bit me again around that time, I took up writing again – The Kiss of the White Witch, being the first result of this new burst of creativity, which over the last decade lead to the four books I have taken from manuscript to their completed form as books myself. 
My plan is to post the opening chapters  -- a few pages -- of these works, just for shits and giggles. They are all "analog", i.e. typewritten copies, and though I tried to digitize them using an OCR app, with all the necessary corrections, just retyping them seems just about as fast, which is not fast at all, hence just a sample of a few pages of each of them 
I think that it may prove interesting as to how my writing has changed – and has not. I’ll also post some comments about them as well. Some of them are pretty bad, but I must say that I was surprised just how many of the ideas I used in these early works made it into my Bright Black Sea – even though I’d completely forgotten the original stories.

So, in the next post, we’ll start this walk down memory lane with the sci-fi novella, “The Hybrid-Worlder” version 1. Stay tuned.

Coming Soon -- The Early Works

My first project for this blog going forward is to look backwards. I have a number of early works written on my old manual typewriter that I  thought I might post samples of, just to see how bad they are -- and how much my style has, and has not, changed in the last 40 some years. At one time I was also playing around drawing comics, and the piece above is a panel from one of them The fellow in the background is Rhyledunbar -- as star-farer, or "sarfeer" -- the narrator/main character of a 30K word novella, a short story and a partially completed comic book.  But I'm jumping ahead of the story, so stay tuned for more about Rhyldunbar, and the early works of C. Litka.

Plan B

My Plan A of writing – writing two or three stories concurrently, skipping between them when I ran out of ideas for the one I was working on, has run off the rails. The reason being that even with three stories in the works, I can not seem to find any enthusiasm for any of them – much less a complete and/or compelling plot. I simply don’t feel like writing them. (Ah, ma, let me sleep. I’ll find a job tomorrow.) So it’s on to Plan B (“Screw it”).
I think there are two types of work; work-work and play-work. Work-work is the thing you have to be paid to do and the thing you have to do to pay the bills. Play-work is the stuff you enjoy doing, even if it involves hard work, say, like gardening or building furniture – things that some people have to get paid to do. Now, if I was a traditionally published author contracted to deliver a new book next year, or a “indie publisher” who, having been dropped on his head as a child, was actually trying to make a career as an indie-publisher and needed to get another book out to pay the bills, I believe I could do get that book out. I have story ideas – though no detailed plots – for three books that, with work (work-work), I could probably eek out 100,000 words with a plot of sorts out by next summer. But I’m neither a traditionally published author or a starry-eyed indie-publisher, I’m proudly an amateur writer who writes and publishes simply for the joy of it. Of course, this also involves work, but it is of the play-work variety. I’m not prepared to make writing a work-work type of work. I had a taste of that writing The Lost Star’s Sea. Getting the story to its end, came pretty darn close to being work-work, but having started it, I needed to push on and finish it. Having had this taste of work-work writing, I’ve no desire to force myself to start off writing a story, that doesn’t engage me, and so will be work-work to get through just to meet … well what really? My expectations? I’ve written and published nearly 800,000 words – the equivalent of eight full novels, or 16 of the common indie-published “novels,” so I I feel that I’ve to prove to myself. I dreamed of writing science-fiction stories and now I have. Do I need to do more? No. Would I like to do more? Yes, but only if it was fun to do. As for reader expectations, well, I’m always happy when readers are entertained by the stories I’ve dreamed up, and would certainly like to keep entertaining readers with more stories – but only with stories that entertain me as well, stories that I enjoy dreaming up and writing – play-work. It’s always been about me. I write stories that please me, everyone else is just along for the ride, so that stories that do not excite me, stories that seem to be just work-work are simply not going to be written. And with no contract to fill or dollars to make, I can maintain this standard. I’m not going to work just produce a so-so, or so-familiar story. It may be that I’ve told all the stories I have to tell. There are limits to both my talents and creativity, and a 67+ years old I may well be bouncing up against them. At this particular time point in my life, I seem to up against them in both my writing and painting. We’ll see if we can push beyond them. Or not.

So, long story short, I’m just going to take some time off from writing stories until – out of the blue – I feel like I have a really fun one to tell again. Can’t say when that will be. However, since I still like playing with words, and have a two hour slot in the morning to fill, I’m planning on spending it writing blog posts like this one. I can think of all sorts of things to write about my writing, including my early unpublished stories and comics, and indie-publishing in general, so I expect I’ll not run out of things to write about any time too soon. So that’s Plan B – blog posts & essays while I wait for creative lightning to strike.

Dog Days of the Blog

For the last several years I've written this blog primarily to provide supplementary and background information on the books I write and publish. I also use it to update the status of upcoming books, and occasionally post entry about the business of self publishing. However, The Lost Star's Sea, was the only book I was writing for the last two years, and with its publication, I now have nothing to post about.
Though I had, for the last year or so, been trying to come up with a new story to follow The Lost Star's Sea, I hadn't come up with any story I could get excited about.  And so, for the last half of the summer, I didn't anything to write. I found, however, that, after five or six years of spending the first two hours of my day, everyday, writing, the absence of writing left a rather large hole in my day. I missed writing. Writing for me is like playing with words, and the end result is less important than the process of writing. I missed playing. So several weeks ago I started writing two different stories on the flimsiest ghosts of a plots. I figure that with two stories in hand, I can bounce back and forth between them whenever I run out of ideas for the story I was working on and slowly push both ahead by keeping them fresh. And if that doesn't work, I'll start another one.
Now, at this point in time, I have no expectation of publishing either of these stories. I have only the nose of a story. To get a complete story you have to write it back to the tip of its wagging tail, and that is far from certain at this point in their development. For that reason, I'm going to keep these stories under wraps for now. If and when I have a first draft of one or both, I'll be back with concrete information on when they would see the light of publication.
This, however, leaves me little – well nothing – write about. I could write about self publishing, but that's old hat these days. The gold rush days of indie publishing are behind it. All the readers and genre open to reading and being read on ebooks are now found on ebooks. Any growth will incremental and with tens of thousands of new books being released each month on Amazon, it is a golden era for readers, and a brutally competitive marketplace writers in it for the money. A best of times, the worst of times thing. But I'm not in this for the money, and I expect to be writing everyday, and while I don't expect to have much to post, don't take the absence of posts as evidence that I've abandoned writing. There's no reason why I can't get a story from its nose to its tail in time for summer 2018, though, at this point it's not a given. Hopefully in a few months, I will be able to tell you for certain that there will be a new novel in 2018.

And as a down-payment on that promise, below is a sketch map of one of the stories I've started. Make what you will of it.

Some Day Days Version 3

I have finished rereading and slightly revising Act One of the Hugh Gallagher memoir/romance/saga, Some Day Days. The revised version, number 3, is now available wherever fine ebooks are sold.
It seems that I've been writing stories off and on almost all my life. Recently, going through some old boxes in the attic, I was surprised to discover a whole stash of handwritten stories I'd written during my 6ththru 8th grade years. I'd forgotten all about them – I have a very poor memory of my life. I also have several typewritten manuscripts on a shelf from my 20's – a fantasy novel, a science fiction novella, and at least one short story – and their rejections slips. From my 30's I also discovered extensive notes from a planned novel about a weapon that could destroy IBMs in space – a cold war s-f novel. From my 40's I have the manuscript of a young adult adventure story set in Scotland. I had written it on a X88 computer – a little laptop device from England – and printed it out on a dot matrix printer, a step up from a typewriter. In my mid-50's I took up writing again as a challenge. This time a full fledged computer made things a lot easier, and I wrote the long short story, Kiss of the White Witch. This turned out to be piece one of the continuing Gallagher stories that evolved into Some Day Days (A Romance in an Undetermined Number of Pieces). I ended up writing 12 pieces, a mere a quarter of the pieces I'd imagined while daydreaming up the complete story of Gallagher's wooing of Selina Beri in my head.
The pieces of Some Day Days were the first efforts of my late life writing, and it probably shows. Still, I took an idea, made it into a story, and then put it into words, the hard part. Irregardless of the quality, this is an accomplishment not to be sniffed at. And it opened the door to writing more stories, allowing me to fulfill a long held ambition to be a science fiction writer. And as such, it plays an important part in my development as a writer. I'd like to think I gotten better at writing as I've gone along, but even so, I feel that Some Day Days while, far from perfect, is good enough to see the light of publication. And while it is the least downloaded and likely least liked of my books, and probably not unfairly, I am, nevertheless, quite fond of it.
Once again, I made only minor changes to make it read a little more smoothly, and fixed some misspellings. One thing I couldn't find a way to fix was the curious case of two different types of apostrophes, a curly one, and a straight one. I don't know where the curly ones came from, but even switching fonts back and forth failed to eliminate them. No doubt an artifact of a long obsolete version of OpenOffice on a Mac. I also updated its blub, which was long overdue. It seems that I'd not touched it since I first put it up in 2015, since it was still advertising the fall 2015 release of Planets of Call, my original title for The Bright Black Sea.
Other than rereading my old stories, I'm still struggling to find a story to write for 2018. I've ideas, but no stories that I can get enthusiastic about. And without a publishing contract to flog me to work, I need to be enthusiastic about a story to sit down and get to work on it.

The Bright Black Sea Revised Version 5

I've reread, revised, and released version 5 of The Bright Black Sea. I make no claims to being a proofreader, especially of my own work. I tend to read what I expect to read, and when it comes to my own work, I pretty much know what I'll find, (whether it's there or not) so I don't look all that closely. That said, I did add a lot of Oxford commas, broke up some run-on sentences, added a few words here and there to make it read smoother. I also eliminated a few words and some lines that even I couldn't make head or tails out of. Along the way I corrected a the few misspellings (i.e. Strata is the plural of stratum, not “stratums” – go figure) and generally conformed to what my spell checker wanted. (For example, it doesn't like “onboard,” which is a perfectly good word. I changed it to “on board” just to make it happy.)
In addition to his housekeeping, I did some minor revisions. I made the opening a little sharper. I always felt that it was rather awkwardly written. I rewrote the scene where I introduced Botts. I had written it before I had any idea what I was going to do with Botts, so with the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, I wrote what I think is a much smoother scene. I papered over several minor plot holes – not because they were all that important, but because I hate plot holes, especially my own. And I added a little bit of explanations here and there. Again, nothing to write home about. I hate reading blurbs that give half the story away, so I avoid outlining my plots in the blurbs, and since I don't know if you've read the story or not, I'm going into the details of the plot holes or revisions. If you're curious, drop me a line.
All in all, I was happy with what I found when I read through the story again. I believe it has been a year since I last read it – but this time was a bit different – I've written a lot more words since then, and I've gotten Litang's story to its ending, so I was able to look on it as the final product. Of course, it is what it is, and nothing I did changed that. But when you go back and read something that you started writing four or five years ago, it can be rather iffy. You could well discover something that you'd not want to be found dead in a ditch with.The Bright Black Sea has its flaws, but I think it is a story I can be proud of. So, if you haven't gotten around to reading the story yet, or if you ever want to reread it again, make sure you have version 5. It's free, as always.

A Hole in the Day

For the better part of the last four or more years, I've spent some two hours a day writing, revising, or working on covers, blurbs, etc. Some days I reached a good breaking point 1 ½ hour in. On others, when things are going well, I might work 2 ½ hours. I do most of my writing the first thing in the morning, getting my work done by 10 o'clock for a cup of tea and some sweets. Some days, when in the heat of creation, I'd put an hour or two work in the evening as well. It is amazing how fast time flies by when you're writing. Now, this is not a whole lot of time in a day, but I find that with no story in hand to work on, there is a noticeable hollow in my day that I need to fill. Since I can't conjure up a story with a snap of my fingers – I've had to find other projects to work on to fill that hollow.
The first project has been rereading, and slightly revising A Summer in Amber. Mostly it involved filing off a few rough edges, and touching up a few clunky lines – adding or subtracting a few words, adding commas, breaking up long, rambling sentences, and correcting a few mistakes that I found. I did however, rewrite one scene, the scene on the hill after the Gate opens. I was never happy with it, but in the end, I rather gave up on it. I've now taken the opportunity to streamlined it, making it read clearer and more logically. I also slightly touched up the opening and ending.
Version 5 (12 August 2017) is now the newest, best, and, hopefully, the last version. It is now available from all the usual suspects. If you have downloaded earlier versions are are now just thinking of reading it, I would urge you to download this version. The changes are relatively minor, but it is a better, and likely the definitive version of the story.
With A Summer in Amber done, I've now started rereading The Bright Black Sea. Again, my object is to make it read just a little better. Besides more commas, and shorter, clearer sentences, I find that I'm adding words here and there – I guess I was writing rather telegraphically back then. In any event, the changes will be minor. My attitude is that it is what it is and my goal is to make it read a little smoother. Sometimes you wonder just what you wrote, and rather fear finding out. The Bright Black Sea goes back far enough that I wasn't so sure what I'd find. In rereading it, I find that it isn't all that bad. I know it begins slow, and has a fair amount of not strictly necessary details, but I'm comfortable with that. Still, having spent so much time going over and over it when I wrote it, it is hard to tell how it reads to someone for the first time. But when all is said and done, it is what it is, and I can't change it beyond soothing it out a bit. Look for this slightly improved Version 5 of The Bright Black Sea in the coming weeks.

No doubt Some Day Days will get its read through as well. Hopefully after that, I'll have a story (or two) in mind to fill my days.

A Summer in Amber Version 5

I have released a slightly revised version (#5) of A Summer in Amber -- some corrections made, thanks to notes from Carlos, a slightly revised opening paragraph, along with a slightly revised cover. My current windows computer does not have the same LibreOffice fonts my old mac mini had, so that my recent titles used a different title font. I decided to make all the books uniform, so I reworked the covers, and while I was at it, I took the opportunity to add Nesta and Sandy on their bikes to the A Summer in Amber cover as well.

While I was making the corrections to A Summer in Amber, I was sort of dismayed by some of the passages I read. I think I could now do better. I'm tempted to read through the story again and smooth out some of the most awkward passages. The only problem is that I don't trust myself not to add about a 100 typos to the book in the process, no matter how careful I am. I seem to be blind to typos. We'll see how bold and ambitious I am in the coming months.

Which brings us to the next book. So far I've not stumbled on any new story to tell, so it's hanging fire. I've had several ideas for characters, locale and such, but no story to tell. I'd like to do something different if only to see if I can attract a different set of readers. A fantasy is possible, but I'm not really fond of fantasies -- at least those with magic and some vast, frightening evil that must be defeated, sometime within the first dozen or so books -- which is to say, most fantasies. I'm thinking of something set in a bit more modern world, likely without magic, which may not make it a fantasy at all. We'll see.