Linda Maye Adams's Blog, page 42

What I learned About Writing from Space 1999

Comet TV has been running the 1970s science fiction show, Space 1999.  They had a New Year’s Eve marathon, so I tuned in on and off during the day.

The History of the Show

It ran two seasons and starred Martin Landau and Barbara Bain.  They manned a base on the moon that was used to store nuclear waste.  The nuclear waste then exploded with enough force that it knocked the moon out of orbit.

According to my Google Fu, the producers were puzzled at the negative comments they got at the time.  They didn’t understand why viewers didn’t give the show the suspension of disbelief that Star Trek got (yup, there’s a reason).  The show was cancelled after the first season, but the producers were able to negotiate to bring it back.  Fred Freilberger was at the helm (Star Trek), and he made it more action-focused.  But it didn’t fix the overall issue, and it was cancelled a second time.

Writer’s Hat On

The suspension of disbelief issues started with the a message in the story.  The producers wanted to show that nuclear waste was bad.  They got on a soapbox and wrapped the whole series around the moon being blown out of orbit.

And then?

The characters simply react to the next thing the moon drifts near, and then the moon drifts away.  The entire setup of the show kept them from having any kind of control over their own fate.  In one episode, they drifted near an alien planet.  Aliens did not want them on the planet, but inexplicably send rockets to the moon to give it atmosphere for a little while, then pulled back the rockets.  The moon drifted away.  And?

The characters couldn’t get rescued.

They couldn’t settle on a planet.

Above all, they couldn’t even protag.

 

Roundup of 2018 Goals and What’s New For 2019

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with goals.  My tendency is to set them too aggressively, and then a little voice steps in and informs me that I’m not getting any of them.  I remember setting a goal of 10 books in a year in one of Dean Wesley’s Smith’s workshops.  How many did I get that year?  None.

Big change this year was one of the issues with my day job cleared up.  I was the only one doing a job for at least two people.  When I took leave, the work stopped and nothing got done, so I was perpetually behind and stressed out.  Imagine having hard stop deadlines that must be completed and then having a crisis that sucks up an entire week.  That was a normal for me.  It made it hard to come home and do actual writing.  A lot of times, I’d hit the weekend, when I should have lots of time for writing, and all I could do was … nothing.  I’d tried Writing in Public until suddenly everything collided at once, and it was just too much for me.

[image error] Cursed Planet

This was a novel that was the result of Writing in Public.  I did a redraft of the story because I knew I had structural issues.  This was an area I had a lot of trouble with for years, and the only solution craft books provided was to outline.  Somehow, I was supposed to get structure from outlining, and instead, it broke my stories.

The Novel Structure workshop had been available for several months from Dean Wesley Smith, but my creative brain went for the Research for Fiction Writers first.  Then it wanted the Novel Structure, and then Secondary Plots, and then Teams.  One right after another.  It was an interesting few months!

This book also marked my first professionally designed cover.  I realized that I was never going to get into paper books if I didn’t have someone else design the cover.  I have a PC and not a Mac, where the software is readily available and easy to use, and I haven’t had the energy to spend trying to figure out what to do to create it.

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Crying Planet

This was my first book in the GALCOM series, inspired partially by the Ghost on Drugs anthology call–it was a short story that turned into a novella. Kevin J. Anderson did a call for military science fiction for a story bundle.  My head went, “It’s not military science fiction.”  It has military in it, but the main character is a civilian.  But I pasted in the information and the links, and next thing I know, I’m in a StoryBundle.  Holy cow!  Someone even wrote me and said it sounded like something Baen would publish!

 

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This is the second book in the series. It’s up with the cover designer now for a face-lift and a print cover.  I’m also thinking of doing a large print version.

And it’s getting a name change to Ghost Ship.

I love the original title.  It fits the book.

And it’s the same name as a travel book series.  No one’s ever going to be able to find it.  So title change it is!  The new cover and title should be out sometime in March, or possibly late February.  Depends on when I get the cover.

Digital Minimalism: Reduce the Clutter on Your Computer Now

This is a non-fiction book that was the result of attending the BookBaby conference and hearing Joanna Penn speak.  The title is an Amazon search keyword, and when I searched on it, I found a New York release for February 4 on that topic.  So it became my first attempt at meeting a deadline, which was December 31 to allow me another three weeks to get copy edits, a cover, and a print/ebook build.  I finished the book two weeks early, and it’s in with a friend for copy editing.  Cover will be premade.

The book will be released on January 29.  I’m hoping that when people go in to buy the other book, they’ll see mine below and buy it, too.

Short Stories

This year, I decided I’m done with short stories for now,  and this time I’m going to stick with it.  I’ve always thought if I could nail a pro published story–and I was getting personal rejects from pro editors–it would help my sales.  However, the market contracted for me this year.  Too many of the pro markets have been focusing on political topics.  As reader, if I ran across an anthology with an obvious political subject, I’d pass it on it.  While it’s impossible to avoid politics (especially in science fiction), I don’t want someone to get on a soap box and lecture me on it.  Not fun for this reader.  I doubt if it would even be worth the time to write the story, especially since it would likely never fit into the calls.

Besides, I need to focus on longer fiction, and my series fiction, particularly.

Mailing List

I stepped off the deep and started a mailing list this year.  If you’re interested in signing up, you’ll get five very short emails a week.  Includes writing tips, some videos/podcast, and whatever else I find that is interesting.

New for 2019

Last Stand

This if the fourth book in the series and my commitment to simply hit a deadline I set.  So January 31.  This one takes what I learned in all four of those workshops from a year ago and is doing something I always wanted to do: More action. I get to blow up a space station!

I’m also going to plan to get some reviews for this one.

Golden Lies

A new historical mystery series with Al Travers, private investigator.  It’s set in 1947, Los Angeles, California, and the character is connected with Hollywood.  It’s an interesting time in history because World War II has just ended, and the studio system is about to end.  This one is a product of the Research for Fiction Writers workshop.  I read books on this era when I was growing up.  And I grow up in Los Angeles in the 1970s–it wouldn’t have been that different from the 1940s.

I haven’t decided on a deadline for this yet.  I’m going to Superstars in early February, so I’m not sure how that’s going to impact my time.  I may alternate with this and the GALCOM titles because this will have a different cover artist (the one who did Cursed Planet only does SF and Fantasy).  Gives me a chance to be more flexible on schedules and still get books out.

I also have titles for additional GALCOM books, though I haven’t decided on what’s next.  But they are:

Giant Robots (from my writing group.  Brought back memories of Johnny Socco and his Giant Flying Robot.)
Space Murder (inspired by a premade cover that said Deep Space Murder.  Ghosts and murder..yeah, I could deal.)
Zombie Planet (no clue other than the title…but zombies and ghosts…mmmm.).
Space Pirates (ghosts and pirates)
Space Ghost (it’s an Amazon search term)
Shuttle Crash (really, how can I not do  a story like this?)
Most Dangerous Planet (probably not the final title, but it’s a version of Most Dangerous Game)
Ship Graveyard (inspired by an episode of Space 1999, but really, a staple of all action-adventure).

Any title anyone wants to see?

Travel Tips for Writers (tentative title)

A non-fiction book on some aspects of travel no one talks about.  Everyone else talks about how to get the best deals.  Mine’s on the parts that get people into trouble if they don’t pay attention.  My day job is travel administrator, so this is a topic that will play to an expertise.  I’ll use a premade cover.

Writer’s Toolkit: Time Saving Strategies

This is a book that was the result of my day job.  I was so overwhelmed at one point that I was reading all kinds of time management books.  One was on systems and talked about going through processes to identify unnecessary steps.  So I went on a hunt to do that for my work-related tasks. But there are a lot of places where writers add unnecessary steps.

I’m also pondering doing a book on Scrivener for Windows and one on picking writing workshops without getting burned or scammed.

That’s going to be the start of my year.

What did you accomplish in 2018?  What do you want to accomplish in 2019?

Merry Christmas!

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Christmas in Washington DC

This is a beautiful song that gets played every year in Washington, DC.

Marketing and Fiction Writers

This was sparked by a comment on one of Dean Wesley Smith’s posts (the one from Jay on December 10).

It was along the lines of “Do I really have to put myself out in social media to sell books?  I’m not comfortable putting out information about myself.”

The comment could have been written by me.

I started out doing actor David Hedison’s website.  We wanted to keep a barrier between his personal life and the fans.  The fans?  They would have asked for his underwear size and what type if they could.

And I was seeing people put everything out.  One writer started listing the medication she was on in her blog, and it wasn’t cold medicine.  Way too much information!

Having been in the military, this level of information flow bothered me.  We’re trained over and over “Loose lips sink ships.”

But I kept seeing that Twitter was the big thing.  Everything I saw said to post 10 times a day to get any kind of visibility—when the heck did anyone write anyway?

So I tried Twitter.

Then, it was about the numbers.  You had so many followers, or got a certain score.  Services allowed you to follow people and hopefully they followed you back.  And it was all shiny and new.

There was one writer I ran across who had 8,000 followers.  I was astounded.  How had he managed that?  His books must be selling up a storm!

Well…no.

His books were riddled with typos and poorly written.  Everyone liked him on Twitter.  Couldn’t give him the time of day with his books.  He eventually tried short stories because they took less time to produce and disappeared eventually.

I tolerated Twitter for a while.  I quickly found that if you’re a writer, you get followed by other writers who spam you about their books.  Or if you’re on a hashtag associated with writing, you’ll get spammed.  I did a social media class on blogging and Twitter and we had a nice discussion on the hashtag.  Then a writer started sending autotweets promoting herself to the group.  The members tried tweeting her.  Then they tried email.  Then they reported her as spam to Twitter and got her suspended.  She got back on and started right up with more spam.  One of the members finally joined her Facebook group and openly posted to her board where everyone else could see and asked why she was spamming us.  She denied it, but the tweets stopped.

By then, I’d had my fill of Twitter.  Way too hard to keep up.  Definitely not fun, and I’m sure it showed.  I’m an introvert, and Twitter made me feel like I was dragged to a party for mandatory fun (it’s an Army thing).

During this I took a writer’s social media course.  I’d been blogging for several years at that point but I wasn’t getting much traffic.  The course was kind of a cheerleading session more than anything.  We all came up with log lines to fit our blog.  I had a lot of trouble with mine…I suppose because it felt too personal.

Then it was blog three times a week, and all the other writers would visit and comment.  Cheerleaders.

Yeah, well.

I was the first blog everyone dropped off from.  It was humiliating.  Was I really that bad?

(In hindsight, it was likely because I was trying not to post writing how-tos.)

But within about two months, all of them started dropping off their blogs.  They said blogging was interfering with their writing.  They were writing 2,000 word blog posts, revising them extensively….well, you can see how it self-destructed.  A lot of them have disappeared.  A few are still writing.

Since then, I’ve seen writers saying that writing a book is 90% market and 10% writing.  There ain’t a lot of writing going on with those numbers.

I like Joanna Penn’s idea of marketing much better—marketing should be such that you only have to do minimal work.  More time for writing.

Let it Snow Star Trek Style

Robin Bangerter from my Fort Lewis days sent along this fun video.  Thanks, Robin!

 

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Dean Wesley Smith on writing without an outline

This is a video of Dean Wesley Smith talking about writing without outlining or “writing into the dark.”  He details the process of cycling, which allows for clean copy and cuts revision.

My cycling process is  little different. I can bounce around in the story like a ping ball.  It’s sometimes the previous scene, and sometimes I might jump back to a connecting scene earlier in the book.  I’m somewhat messy when I write.  My creative likes to take all the toys out of the toy chest and toss them on the floor (sometimes in no particular order), then it wanders off and plays with a few and forgets about the others.  So stubs of things get into the story, and never get used.

At the point when I’m doing the climax, I can usually tell because my creative brain gets the sudden urge to cycle through the entire story from the beginning.  Then it’s pulling together everything…taking out those stubs that I completely forgot about and never used anywhere.  The stubs are kind of like flash in the pan ideas.  You know, things that sound exciting when I put them and then later, it has me scratching my head wondering what I expected to do with it.

In a way, cycling is a lot of fun because it keeps me reconnecting with the story!

 

 

What’s Your Christmas Naughty?

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This week, someone put up a Christmas display where you could write on butcher paper your “nice” or your “naughty.”  Everyone’s had fun writing up silly entries like “I was naughty all year so Santa doesn’t have to visit” (on the nice side).  Someone had posted dog misbehavior on the naughty side, so I made sure cats were represented with “I knock stuff off.” (Cats are really good for naughty, since they don’t care.)

What’s your Christmas naughty?  Have fun making stuff up!

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Guest Panelist at ChessieCon

Over Thanksgiving, I was a guest panelist at ChessieCon–first time as a panelist for me.

This is a picture from my first panel.  I’m in the teal on the end.  My book Cursed Planet is standing up by my name plate.

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The con hotel had changed hands again.  The hotel is located near the Maryland State Fair site, so it gets a lot of interest from the bigger brands.  But the hotel is old and the cost to bring it up to brand standards is expensive, so it changes hands about once a year.

So the result was that when I checked in, the hotel was being remodeled.  The heat was completely out in the part of the building where the panels were.

It was thirty outside.

My panels included Military Life Vs. Real Life; What not to do when trying to get published; book covers; and time management for writers.  I had eight panels altogether.

I was thinking that I would be able to attend some other panels, but I was surprised at how draining it was.  I only managed two.  I’m an introvert, and I had to be on for the duration of the panel.  So I vanished up to the hotel room between panels to recharge (staying in the hotel when you’re a panelist is a must).  I did a little writing towards the tail end, but I was pretty fried.

Highlights:

Know your genre – from the What Not to Do panel.  In the Gold Rush days of indie publishing, I ran across a writer who had 8,000 Twitter followers. I was jealous!  I naively thought that translated into a lot of sales of books.  How could I get in on that?  One day, he asked me to review is book, calling it an action-adventure thriller.  I looked at the book.  It was a fantasy detective book, and definitely nothing thrillery like I would see in a James Rollins book.  He got upset when I turned down the review and said it had lots of action, because there was a big action scene at the end.  Sorry, that’s not a thriller.

Time Management: Hands down, health.  Do too much sitting and not enough exercising, or eating right, and the writing itself will suffer.  In terms of my priorities, it’s above writing.

Distance in stories:  Not one of I was on, but Jo Walton made an comment about the culture of distance.  We think nothing of driving somewhere if it’s about a day away.  In fact, commuting in the Washington DC area is at least a two hour drive for many people because we have such a housing shortage.  But in Great Britain, which is only about 600 miles long, twenty miles is considered a long ways to go.  They think of the distance as this giant chasm to get across.

Military Life: Know the difference between the officers and enlisted, and what the ranks are.  You’ll go along ways to “feeling right” with those two items.  Yet, I’ve seen a Lieutenant Colonel in a book who was 25 years old (in a modern setting), and in movies, they’ve mixed up officer and enlisted.  Mike McPhail was on this panel with me.

Covers: Blue and gold is trending for science fiction now.  And, of course, I told the story about an indie writer who posted up her cover for a thriller and it was clip art photo of a peaceful snowy scene.  Readers get their first impression from the cover.  Mike was also on this panel with me.

Aside from the bone-chilling cold, the con was a lot of fun!

 

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Me and Dogs

These are photos of my brother’s dogs at Thanksgiving.  This is me with Eggplant (the black dog) and Lily (the brown dog.

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Eggplant is giving me serious attitude: Why are taking pictures?  You should be petting me!

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Lily with the propeller tail.

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And Nugget, the butterfly dog, who was surprisingly hard to photograph.

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