Andrew Sweet's Blog: Reality Gradient, page 9

Pleasure in the writing

The word pantser is a term that some folks struggle with. It's casually thrown around so much in podcasts about writing that we can sometimes get a little confused about what the word actually means. Though it might mean something different, in writing, it means to "write by the seat of one's pants", or to write without outlining or idea of where the story goes.

The appeal for this as a writer is that we find it fun to follow characters around and experience the world through them. This offers a completely different writing experience than having everything outlined to the nth degree. However, without a nudge here or there, characters rarely do what they're told, including coming to a reasonable place to stop a novel.

Sometimes the characters stubbornly refuse to evolve at all, which may make for an interesting plot-driven experience, but even the plottiest of plot-driven novels becomes disappointing if the character doesn't at least come to some sort of realization, whether it fundamentally alters their core or otherwise.

Models and Citizens began life as a pantser experience. Many an evening in the pub was spent following the over-anxious Harper and her co-pilot, stoic and dependable Ordell, through their harrowing lives. Then, the novel had to be rewritten and substantively changed and squeezed into a story arc with a defined beginning and end.

As such, Models and Citizens is a strong character-driven experience that follows a plot undertow which carries throughout the book. Like one reviewer suggested, if you like "character-driven scifi" and "realistic futuristic worlds", then you will love Models and Citizens as much as I do.

By the end, you come to understand how good people make bad choices, yet you really can't help loving the main characters despite their many, many flaws.

If you're looking for a 'person vs. society', where the person emerges victorious and society is pushed to improve, this isn't the book for you. If you want to root for an underdog and hope against hope that there's some light at the end of three-hundred pages of trying really hard to do the right thing (and sometimes failing miserably), then you absolutely must pick up this book.

Meet the Author by Greater Seattle Area Writers

If you're an author, and you're interested in joining future Meet The Author events, you can join by signing up at Meet the Authors - Sign-Up Form.

Many of you may not be aware, but I also work in my local community with a group that I co-founded called Greater Seattle Area Writers. This group brings in writers from all over to meet authors I've met during my self-publishing journey.

Just after book launch, Greater Seattle Area Writers co-founder Justin Wagner and I met with:

Helen Claire Gould to discuss her work Floodtide

Guy Morris to discuss his novel SWARM: When Artificial Intelligence Decodes End Time Prophecies

Special guest:
Jolene Loraine, author of the
Night Hawk series.

Readers:
Among things we discuss include how we got started, some of the difficulties of the journey, and some things that worked and didn't work so far. It's a great way to get to know authors you love a little bit better!

Models and Citizens - Live Now!

Models and Citizens is live now!

So you don't have to look for the link (read on), here's how you can sign up for my newsletter:
http://www.andrewsweetbooks.com/newsl...

A huge weight has been lifted for me - I didn't realize how much stress I've been carrying. I hear it gets easier - definitely looking forward to it. I've been trying out ads trial-and-error in Amazon and Facebook, as seems to be the norm. So far, I've had pretty good success in driving traffic to my page and even have a handful of pre-orders out.

If you buy a copy - please don't forget to leave a review, in particular on Amazon. But mainly, I just hope you enjoy the story.

Fun little fact:
The last book in this series has been bouncing around in my brain for over ten years. It started out as a book about a woman in a coma (which works its way into the storyline in book 2), a fallen angel, and a radicalized religious group heralding the apocalypse. I think the only thing I kept was the woman in a coma, and she really only got a casual mention in the last novel. She plays a pretty prominent role in the second book as kind of a weird antagonist/protagonist (you'll see what that means). Whereas the original story all took place in her head, this storyline does not (let me dispel that theory right away :) ).

I think I'll drop some of Bodhi Rising in my newsletter if you want to pick it up there and have a look. You can sign up at http://www.andrewsweetbooks.com/newsl.... If you don't want to sign up and have bought a copy of the epub-version of Models and Citizens, the first chapter is there, but you won't get to the woman (now a girl in Bodhi Rising) who I'm talking about.

Models and Citizens - the Universe

I thought I should take a moment to frame the Models and Citizens universe. It's not the Star Trek or even the Star Wars universe you may think of when you think of futuristic science fiction. The Models and Citizens universe, like the rest of the Reality Gradient novels, is what I would call realistic science fiction. Some things have advanced to the point where they become staples, such as food replicators. Other advances are distributed on the income curve. So lower-income homes and people have older equipment, even some that equate roughly to what we have today (like cars with actual wheels).

In fact, cars are a big distinction between the haves and the have-nots. The flying cars, or volantrae in the book, are in a separate category and are much, much more expensive. In the next tier down, we find self-driving cars. These cars are in a similar class as non-self-driving cars. Some (very few) people drive them because they prefer to be in control. Others drive them because they can't find anything better which they can afford.

A lot of other technologies may seem very similar to what we have today. Ansible Protocl addresses (a.p. addresses) are point-to-point communication between individual communicators. Phone lines are obsolete at this time in the future.

Communicators and pinamu are other areas where technology is somewhat similar or may seem so. Communicators have a projection mode in which the person speaking is projected onto a wall nearby or in an expensive one, which may even be a projected hologram. Pinamu are essentially tablet computers and are still useful because otherwise, one would have to navigate the Labyrinth (virtual reality web ecosystem) with a full-emersion haptic suit.

I would consider Reality Gradient to be more like Bladerunner future than Star Trek future. It's a bit dirty and priorities have been accounted for. Some tech has moved farther than others. This gives the series a(n almost) steampunk feel, although Libera, Goddess of Worlds is perhaps more closely aligned with cyberpunk.

Just some things I thought you should know, since release is 1-29-2021! I hope you like the book :).

Models and Citizens

Cover for Models and Citizens - Redone

Since the release is closing in (1/30), I've been obsessing over the details. The latest is that I have redone the cover for Models and Citizens. I've gotten good feedback on the new one!

Here it is in all of its glory! Please lmk what you think of it.

Cover for Libera, Goddess of Worlds!

So I *think* I finished my cover for Libera, Goddess of Worlds (the final book after Models and Citizens and Bodhi Rising (which I realize I haven't added here yet, but I can since I started presale - I'll have to do that).

I use istockphoto (by Getty Images) to get the pictures I use for my covers. I also have a bit of graphic design background (though I couldn't do it for hire), so that helps. This picture was perfect, though, so I didn't modify it at all and only put the title and author name on the front.

My hangup is the title font - I changed it from the utilitarian looking font I was using for Models and Citizens and Bodhi Rising.

Bodhi Rising - Done!

Well, it's not done-done. But I did finish writing the sequel to Models and Citizens and typed the words 'THE END'. Now it's got to go into review. I've got three months until I publish this one so there's some time still! I'll be setting up the pre-order after Models and Citizens releases on 1/29.

Reader's Favorite Award

So far, I've had positive feedback on the book Models and Citizens from beta-readers. My first book review came in a few days ago from Reader's Favorite (also positive). I'm feeling pretty good about this book so far, and just "finished" the sequel Bodhi Rising.

“Models and Citizens is an action-packed rollercoaster of a novel that moves at a breakneck speed and leaves you asking for more. Author Andrew Sweet has created a fully-realized world in which sci-fi and reality blend together to form a dystopian masterpiece. The characters feel relatable, and you can't help but care for Harper's and Ordell's fates with each page turned. There are some striking similarities between the Human Pride Movement and supremacist organizations existing globally in our own world. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the novel and couldn't put it down until I finished reading. I would highly recommend it to fans of dystopian novels as I found Models and Citizens to be unlike anything I've ever read before.”

— Reader’s Favorite

Wining about Writing

Forty plums, a massive bucket, yeast, and three pounds of sugar can produce four bottles of sweet, delicious plum wine. I’ve done this from using plums from my plum tree in my yard. It doesn’t really take much by way of ingredients. But how many people would know how to combine these to create a drinkable wine?

Novel writing is like that. You take a stack of paper, a pen, and that’s basically all you need to write a novel. But if you hand all of that to the first person you meet at happy hour or in your economics class, you’re probably not going to get that novel you’re looking for: not even if they actually do try to write one. Why not?

The secret is in the must. No, not the “you must do this or that.” The must is the mixture of wine, sugar, yeast that you pour into that bucket, and what you watch diligently for two months or longer. For a novel, the ingredients are the characters, the story, the setting, the tension, and the writing style of the author. The author takes all of these elements, pours them into a page, revising, self-editing, and sometimes screaming and crying (that may just be me), creating the must of a novel.

Afterward, the diligent author will let the work sit for a bit after the hard work of preparing the must is done. Just like wine-making, the “mostly finished” work still isn’t ready, even if all of the major pieces are there. How do I explain this next part?

Wine still works, actually. In wine, there are two fermentation phases. The first does the majority of the production of the alcohol, changing what began as syrupy fruit juice into something that can give you a buzz. The second fermentation is when the winemaker samples the wine, tests the alcohol content, and makes changes to the sugar level to get to the right desired content and flavor. Sometimes this means adding water, sometimes it means adding sugar, sometimes adding yeast is necessary.

Similarly, after a period of time, the author comes back to the story, a second writing if you will: removing words, adding words, sometimes removing entire characters and story arcs like I had to do in Human Pride, the second novel of my in-progress Virtual Wars series.

Unlike wine, the novel isn’t finished after round 2. There’s a third phase in novel writing: the editing. This is perhaps the most feared phase of the process. If wine had a third phase like this, it would be getting a sommelier to taste your wine and tell you everything they hate about it, and expect you to fix it immediately.

…when you purchase a novel from an author, independent or otherwise, what you’re actually buying is…months of a person’s life…

So when you purchase a novel from an author, independent or otherwise, what you’re actually buying isn’t a three-hundred to five-hundred page story with an appealing cover. What you’re actually purchasing is months and months of a person’s life, packed in between a front cover image and back cover blurb that will hopefully get enough attention so that someone will crack them apart, sample the contents, and decide: this one is mine.

I love a good red wine. In part, it’s the complexity that sells me, from the smooth start to the almost-dirty middle, through to a crisp tannin after the finish. And, of course, I love the flavor. Knowing how wine is made, and how easily it can go badly, I’ve learned to appreciate a well-brewed bottle all the more. And now you know what it takes to go from a paper and pen to a novel, so I hope that this knowledge enhances your appreciation of the contents therein.

Just like you can’t really tell a good wine from the image on the bottle or the description on the back, remember: the same goes for the finished novel. The only way to appreciate a good novel, or even know if it is a good novel, is to pull the cork and pour a glass…or something like that.

So when you’re scrolling through the pages and pages of authors’ lives on Amazon or Kobo, or even while browsing through your local bookstore, know that there’s sacrifice in each one of those works. And maybe, take the time to go for an ugly cover, or something with a weak blurb. You might just find the perfect novel that you never knew existed.

And I may have taken that analogy about as far as it will go. Happy reading!