R.E. Stearns's Blog, page 5

Spring... WE MEET AGAIN

So, I'm really bad at spring. It is the low point of every year, when I am depressed and disgusted with myself personally and humanity in general. Whatever I'm writing in the spring is awful, irredeemably bad, unreadable. I don't know if it's the sunlight, daylight savings time, or the point in the fiscal year, or what. It's sure as hell not the weather. Spring is Florida's best season.

In better news: SpaceX had a very good past couple of months, with its CRS-10 Mission off to a great start from historic Launch Complex 39A. When it's not too cloudy, I can watch launches from the backyard. I'm so happy that innovations are taking flight from the space center again, and I adore the streaming coverage. It's all well and good to see bright lights in the sky, but they put cameras on rockets.

Also, Barbary Station is officially available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other fine retailers, even though they think it's coming out in October, which is news to me. I'm still expecting December. It's a mystery!

Barbary Station Publishes in December 2017!

This is the year! Wow.

Some of you have asked "Why is it so far awaaaay?" It's a long time to anticipate a book one is super curious about. Saga Press has the cover ready early and we wanted to share it. It is that cool.

Also, Saga Press is a small, progressive, delightful tentacle of the Simon & Schuster kraken. It's the opposite of Threshold Editions, the Simon & Schuster tentacle which is publishing that racist mysogynist's book. Since Saga is small, it didn't have a 2016 spot for a sci fi novel by an author nobody's heard of.

That's fine with me, for lots of reasons! Mainly, I've been messing with this story since 2013. What's eleven more months?

While we wait, here's a monthly reading list of 2017 books that look stellar:

January: Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty (human clone murder mystery IN SPACE)February: The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley (revenge, rebels, rotting spaceships, and a war for supremacy in a dying legion of starships)March: Hunger Makes the Wolf by Alex Wells (modern desert cyberpunk)April: Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys (Cold War era Lovecraftian homecoming story)  May: Behind the Mask by many great writers (anthology of stories about superheroes' everyday lives)June: Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee (spoiler for first book? Ghost possession in space)July: Amatka by Karin Tidbeck (dystopian researcher love story)August: Iron Gold by Pierce Brown (what is Darrow up to now??)September: Autonomous by Analee Newitz ("features a rakish female pharmaceutical pirate named Jack who traverses the world in her own submarine")October: Above the Timberline by Greg Manchess (artbook/novel thing with polar bear beasts of burden)November: Valiant Dust by Richard Baker (military sci fi with a Kashmiri hero)December: Barbary Station!! (Yeah, you can pre-order on Amazon. That is a link I made.)

Barbary Station's Cover Revealed!

Barbary Station's cover is officially out on the internet, revealed over at the Barnes and Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy blog! Even the cover sketches were impressive. Martin Deschambault's art style is very cool. I've spent at least an hour browsing his ArtStation portfolio, and I had an Assassin's Creed art book with his art on my bookshelf before I even knew he was working on this cover.

The old saying is not to judge a book by its cover, but in the past few years I've rarely encountered books for which the publisher blew their budget on editing and left nothing for cover design. Publishers which reliably produce books worth reading budget for the inside and the outside.

This was not always the case, of course. There have been some really strange covers of anything currently termed a "classic book." It might be fun to search for your favorites. Mine are many of these covers of The Hobbit.

Aiming for a New Normal

The election's over. It's fun for the losers to feel like rebels fighting for a just cause. This must be what my conservative parents felt eight years ago, hoarding ammo like the gov'ment was going to forcibly remove it from their home. Now we're rushing to buy IUDs. I like that the application of both results in fewer self-righteous bigots.

However, "hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people increased 147%" after the Brexit vote. Here's another source on that which includes other national consequences. I'm expecting the same thing in America. So the fact that the losers' persecution complex feels fun is a sign of the massive level of protection (aka privilege) I have as an employed, insured, white, cis, bisexual woman who was lucky enough to fall in love with a hetero partner. When I talk about my husband, not my spouse, that's the luck/privilege I'm acknowledging.

Novel writing is the slowest possible path to large-scale change, but it's what I've got. I love and try to write stories which help to normalize varieties of skin color, varieties of love, personal autonomy as a value which cannot be superseded by religious, ignorant, and/or nationalist bullshit. Normalization is part of the culture change required to make hate socially unacceptable.

And unless our neurochemistry is working against us, we're not afraid of that which is normal. These seem like logical steps to keep oneself from becoming a burden, and then make America safer for those less white/straight/male/rich/healthy:

Don't give up your power.
Know your rights.
Take some legal suggestions from actual lawyers.
EFF tutorials to frustrate the emboldened internet assholes
Help trans folks locate gender-neutral bathrooms.
Donate to Planned Parenthood if you can, because they're going to need help.
http://www.firstaidforfree.com/ may become more useful than we'd like.
If you can do nothing else, report what you witness. Create a record so nobody can say it didn't happen.
Find people who share your values to help keep you sane, even if they are fictional people, or people who haven't been alive for a while. They help.

November is Coming

Yeah, October's first. I cannot help you with your Halloween costume or candy distribution.

In the United States, November means NaNoWriMo and voting in a new president. Some Americans are about to lose their chance to vote because they haven't registered yet.

Are you eligible to vote in the U.S.? Yes, your vote matters. If you're not registered to vote, you can fix that. This site can tell you where to vote. VoteSmart.org and OpenSecrets.org may help you decide who to choose. If you're not planning to vote, take three minutes to make sure your reason isn't irrational and/or making you sound ignorant. 

In other news, there will be a site redesign around here. The purple background is going away because it doesn't match a New Thing which will appear here soon.

Pulse

49 people died in my city last month, all at once and all in the same place (as compared to the 50 people killed by American police so far this month, or any other measure of death you care to use). I'm over the shock, I've mourned the loss, and I'm now disgusted at the hypocrisy of it all. If I were writing a description of America for a story, hypocrisy would be the defining aspect of our culture at this point.

As a group, Americans feel that we should be allowed to kill anybody who scares us. I don't know why we're surprised when our fellow Americans act on that "right." It's naïve realism writ large. Homophobia, transphobia, racism, and xenophobia continue to exist, and as long as our culture condones it, the violence will continue.

People tell you that "__ matters" because you are behaving as if __ is unimportant and/or __ is not under threat. Please draw some conclusions.

Here's how we could act rationally about all of this violence: Admit that everybody wants to kill somebody sometime. Acknowledge that killing is so easy a toddler can do it. Recognize that at least a few hundred people would like to murder us right now for some peaceful, harmless thing we are doing (such as existing while QUILTBAG).

Then decide in what situations we'd be okay with somebody murdering us. Apply that standard while we work toward a national compromise.

And quit waiting for your imaginary friend and some old dead white slave owners to tell you what to do in a way that's universally interpreted. We're all responsible for making up our own damned minds and explaining our conclusions clearly, in our own words.

This seems like a basic part of creating and maintaining a civilization.

Fun with Math and Physics

You and I can estimate where objects in space are going to be at a given date. We can do it with pencil and paper and this math! Alternatively, we could spend 25 US dollars on a simulator with beautiful music, and have somebody do it for us with visuals and facts and numbers (and coordinates! How fun is that?).

Other possible uses for Universe Sandbox^2:

Simulate Velikovsky’s Venus catastrophePlace the obelisk from 2001 anywhere in the solar systemSmash planets into each otherFind out what would happen if Earth had way too many moonsExplore the Game of Thrones solar systemFreak yourself out with how huge the Sun is (optional They Might Be Giants musical accompaniment, because the sandbox comes with pleasant music)Play creation deity and make your own universe

Also, you can no longer conclude that I am Not Writing when my Steam account is active. Muahahaha.

 

Barbary Station Pronunciation Guide

I'm not sure any of this should be treated as canon, because I was saying Adda's name like a ridiculous midwestern American until my agent pronounced it a way I like better. That said, the accented/stressed syllable I say louder than the other parts is in CAPS below:

Barbary Station = BAR-bah-ree STAY-shunAdda Karpe = AH-duh CarpIridian Nassir = er-ID-ee-an Na-SEERPel Karpe = Pehl CarpSloane = SLOW (like the speed) + nTritheist = TRY-th-ee-istAegiSKADA = EE-ji-skay-duh

If you have questions about pronunciation of other names or words, please leave them in the comments and I'll tell you how I say them.

Welcome to the New Site!

Finally moved this blog off of Wordpress! It took me about a week to set this site up, with the help of SquareSpace and the first 57 pages of Head First Web Design. I still need help making it look like, well, anything in particular, so if you know somebody who designs for SquareSpace sites, please point them toward my contact page. Which I have now. So professional.

Now that that's done, I can start revising the sequel to Barbary Station!

I Wrote a Sequel.

I finished the first draft of the sequel to the manuscript currently titled Barbary Station. Obviously it did not get finished at the end of November, but I did skip my usual January/February depressive episode because I was writing, so that was nice. I spent five months on about 103k words (384 pages).

That was way too long. October was fun. November was less fun. December was stressful, and January and February were "Is it done yet is it done yet what in heaven and hell is wrong with me is it done yet?" So, three months would have been all right. Five months was too much of a good thing.

Now I'm enjoying a short break in which I can worldbuild (combining radio and quantum entanglement for comms, at the moment), read more (currently reading Morningstar by Pierce Brown), game more (Shadowrun: Hong Kong extended edition!), and spend more time on the treadmill without "Why aren't you writing?" on repeat in my brain.

No, I cannot write and simultaneously walk or run. I either get nauseous or think in circles.

And I changed my picture on the about/home page, so that one of you might recognize me if you encounter me in person. You may now see what manner of person generators this blogging/storytelling endeavor, as well.