S. Evan Townsend's Blog, page 108

Star Wars are Unlikely

If there are ever war between planets/star systems, it will most likely be intra-species. It is very unlikly that humans would find them selves at war with an alien race, despite the fact this is a staple of science fiction (including my as-of-yet-unpublished novel Treasure of the Black Hole).

Why is this? The human race has been around about 100,000 years and have progressed to this point in that time (admittedly, a lot of the progress has been in the past 100 years). Say in 100 more years we develop faster than light technology and start exploring the galaxy. Or even in 1,000 years. Then our race would be 101,000 years old. And that is, on the cosmic time scale of a 13 billion year old universe, a blink of the eye. Humans have existed about 0.0008% of the time the universe has been around.

If we find intelligent life, chances are they will be older than us. Much older. As in millions of years older. If they have existed for, say, 0.008% of the time the universe has existed, they have been around over a million years. And their technology will be commensurately advanced. They will either wipe us out as we would a hornet's nest, or treat us like pets, or be so enlightened that they would almost be gods to us. But their technology would be so far advanced of ours that trying to fight them would be like throwing water against armor plating.

In fact, they may already know about us and have decided we're an ant hill not worthy of their bother.

So we'd better hope they have evolved enough to be benevolent and enlightened. Because I don't want to meet a Klingon with million-year-advanced technology.

Word Origins

I've always been interested in word origins. Why is something called what it is? For example, how did the miniature clock on our wrists get to be called "watches" (or, technically, wristwatches)?
So I looked it up. And as close as I can tell there used to be a "watch" (a person who watches) in towns to wake people up and when clocks became miniaturized to something you could carry in a pocket (an amazing achievement in the 16th century), people called them the "watch" that wakes you up in lieu of the person. But that's sort of conjecture on my part based on the etymology that is there.
When I was studying Korean in the military I loved when they introduced Hanja, which is the Chinese characters used in the Korean language. For example, we memorized by rote how to say "hello" ("annyeonghaseyo") in Korean. But with the Hanja, we learned that the first syllable meant "peace" and the whole greeting meant (pretty much) "Be in peace." And that was so cool, I thought.
I have a theory about words. That is, the shorter they are, the more common they are. Think about short words: fork, plate spoon, knife, cup, food are all one syllable words.  In less than 100 years the "horseless carriage" became the "automobile" and "auto" and "car" (despite governments' propensity to call them "motor vehicles"). I've already heard computers called "puters." Will that be shorten to "putes" or "comps"?  "Telephone" became "phone." "Cellular telephones" became "cell phone" or just "cell" or "phone" or (as in the UK) "mobile."
If you're making up words when you write, you need to know about word origins. For example, you don't want to mix a Latin prefix with a Greek suffix. In my work in progress (the only one I have right now) I wanted to make up a word for someone who does magic with rocks and stones. Using "necromancer" as a basis for my word, I looked it up and learned it was a Greek word (that passed through Latin on its way to English). So I didn't want to say "lapismancer" or "petramancer" because "lapis" and "petra" are Latin. Looking what is Greek for stone (and remembering that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark) I came up with "lithomancer." Then I googled it and found out it was an actual word.
(Why didn't I used "stonemancer" or "rockmancer"? because combining English and Greek is worse than Latin and Greek and sounds amateurish to me.)
Word origins can be fun and educational. So next time you look up a word in the dictionary check out its origin. You might have some fun.

Submitting

Yesterday I submitted a work to a new publishing house. Having finished this work recently (finally stuck a fork in it), I decided I had three choices:

1) Submit to the publishing house that has published all my novels so far
2) Submit to a new house to see what they can do for me
3) Self publish

While #1 would have been the safest and easiest thing to do, I was really leaning toward 2 & 3. Don't get me wrong, I love my house that published all my novels so far and eternally grateful that they took a chance on me. But, as they say in investing, diversity is the key. I think it's not a good idea to put all your eggs in one publishing basket. A friend of mine loves this certain house so I submitted to that one, once again risking the slush email inbox (I'm sure it's not a pile anymore).  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

And the reason I was thinking of self-publishing was I have learned so much about marketing since my first novel, I wanted to see if I could effectively market the book without the services of a publishing house.

But I do hate the gnawing in the pit of my stomach worrying about rejection. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Writing Process Blog Tour Tag

Frances Pauli is a wonderful writer and a great lady and I feel privileged to call her my friend. She's the one who got my into this "Writing Process" blog tour tag thing.  The author of the Princes of the Shroud series, her blog is at http://francespauli.com.

So the first step in this blog tour tag is for me to answer the following questions:

What am I working on?

I am finishing up a novel entitled Treasure of the Black Hole.  It is a science fiction novel where I have taken the hard-boiled, film-noir detective movies of the 1940s and ‘50s and updated that theme to about 4,000 years in the future. When private detective Rick Bailey is hired by the exotically beautiful and outrageously wealthy Princess Nora, he thinks it'll be easy money.  But when the case turns deadly, Bailey realizes the roots of evil run deep.  What is in the Treasure of the Black Hole and why is it worth killing for?

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

In most of my work I try to take conventional notions of science fiction or fantasy and twist them just a bit.  My fantasy novels are not set in some feudal made up world, but in the 20th Century with characters interacting with real-world events and historical figures.  In Treasure of the Black Hole I have a science fiction novel with spaceships and aliens and high technology, but told in the style of a Dashiell Hammett novel.

Why do I write what I do?

At first I thought I wrote what I do because I'm lazy and like to make up my own rules.  But with my fantasy novels set in recent history I have to do a lot of research to get the history correct (and the technology, fashions, language, thought processes).  But I do love playing with worlds, even if I don't "build" them. I love taking an idea, twisting it a bit, and running with it.  The notion of magical people in the real world is what my four fantasy novels of the "Adept Series" is all about.  In my most conventional novel, Rock Killer, which is science fiction about mining asteroids, I take future trends and extend them out to what I see as their logical (and frightening) conclusions.

How does your writing process work?

Of course first comes the idea.  Then I spend some time just thinking, fleshing it out, maybe doing some research or calculations to see if the idea is viable.  I might write a scene or two. But then at some point I decide to write the novel.  I don't outline or plot out every scene first.  I liken it to a road trip: I know where to start, I know where I want to go and I have some way points along the route planned out. But if I come to an interesting detour or another destination looks more interesting, I'm not locked into my original plan.  I can't tell you the number of times I've thought "this will be how this novel ends" and it never came close to that ending.  Then I just sit down and type.  I don't listen to music because it interferes with hearing my characters.  I'll try to hammer out the entire first draft, realizing it will be far from perfect and need a lot of work.  Then I'll let it sit for a while (at least a week) in a process I call "festering."  Then I'll read/edit it.  Then let it sit.  Then read/edit. Repeat.  Then I have someone read it to me.  I find this lets me hear things, such as word repetitions, that I didn't catch reading it.  Then I'll have friends proofread and beta it.  This takes a while.  For instance, I'm just finishing up Treasure of the Black Hole which was a NaNoWriMo 2014 project.  So I've been working on it six months since finishing the first draft.

Now, here are the three writers I am tagging and will be posting their writing process next Monday:

Lori Schafer: http://lorilschafer.com

Lori Schafer is a writer of serious prose and humorous erotica and romance. More than thirty of her short stories, flash fiction, and essays have appeared in a variety of print and online publications, and her first novel, a work of women's fiction entitled My Life with Michael: A Story of Sex and Beer for the Middle-Aged, will be released in 2015. Also forthcoming in 2015 is her second novel Just the Three of Us: An Erotic Romantic Comedy for the Commitment-Challenged. On the more serious side, her memoir, On Hearing of My Mother's Death Six Years After It Happened: A Daughter's Memoir of Mental Illness, will be published in October 2014. When she isn't writing (which isn't often), Lori enjoys playing hockey, attending beer festivals, and spending long afternoons at the beach reading. 


Robin Jeffrey: http://writingwithrobin.com/
Robin Jeffrey was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming to a psychologist and a librarian, giving her a love of literature and a consuming interest in the inner workings of people’s minds. Several of her creative pieces have been featured in college publications from the University of Washington, where she graduated with a BA in English. Robin has since earned a MS in Library and Information Science, giving her the authority to shush whomever she likes, whenever she likes. Currently living in Seattle, she enjoys the offerings of the vibrant literary community, as well as the technology culture for which the city is so famous. A passionate fan of science fiction and fantasy, she will watch or read pretty much anything.

David J. Rodger: http://www.davidjrodger.com/
David J. Rodger is a British author of science fiction dark fantasy with eight novels under his belt. Themes include thrillers, horror and action adventure. He is also the creator of Yellow Dawn - The Age of Hastur, an RPG that blends Cthulhu Mythos and Cyberpunk themes into a post-apocalyptic setting. His books cross many boundaries to deliver a new and exciting fusion of ideas and genres. All his books have received critical acclaim. He is known for crafting tightly-wound plots and deep characters that draw you in. All the books are stand-alone and can be read in any order, but occupy a shared universe allowing you to build a deeper knowledge with every story. Supported by Bristol Fantasy & Science Fiction Society. Represented by Floyd Hayes.
Currently working on three novels - with Oakfield due for release autumn this year - launch party to be announced.  <> Oakfield <> Broken Fury <> Sunder Gloom
I've also been commissioned to write a piece of original fiction for Achtung! Cthulhu, so World War II horror with an H.P.Lovecraft vibe. Editor chased me for a pitch last week, which was accepted this weekend - aiming to nail it end of the month.  Quick turnaround.
I've been told my work is different because I write hard-boiled thrillers wrapped in the gloss and grit of science-fiction cyberpunk, with dark fantasy horror injected into the meat as way of bringing new flavours to the reader's pallet.
I write to satisfy the need to do so - a way of exorcising the characters and plots in my head. I also do it for the money.
My process of writing tends to be fairly logical after an initial stage of creative conjuring.  Come up with an idea (character name, type, scene, anything really) and allow that to form some further tendrils. Leave it, come back to it, wait for the moment when it has some weight and grows into a thread of a plot line. Once I have that, I tend to flesh out the story in bullet points - makes it easy to edit and make changes without moving massive blocks of narrative about.  Then I do the first proper draft, converting the bullet points into way points and really working the story up.  I'm known for a pretty gruelling work ethic, which can include 4 A.M. starts and using polyphasic sleep to stay sharp. 

Flash Fiction Friday: Mushrooms

Today's Flash Fiction Friday is Mushrooms:

Mushrooms.

Why did it have to be mushrooms?

I trudged over the bridge toward the forest.  Mushrooms grew under trees, in the shade where it's wet and dark.

Wet and dark.  Like my soul.  Yes, my soul is wet.  It's inside me, with all the blood and lymphatic fluid and oozing things.  And dark because of the awful things I've had to do.

Did I mention the aliens?

For years anyone with an IQ over room temperature knew that UFOs were not alien visitors but weather balloons, stars, Venus, drunken redneck imagination.  After all, if they expended all the energy and resources to travel interstellar distances, they weren't going to anally probe a few farmers.  They couldn't be that hard up for dates.

But we were wrong, all us smart people.  They were scouts of the invasion, probing our weaknesses along  with those anuses.  Until they day this landed in Gary Indiana and said, "All your bases are belonging to us."  They'd seen that so often on the internet they thought it was how you declared ultimate victory.

And the short but decisive battle lasted almost a day, killed about a million humans, and established the aliens as overlords.

And me as their prefect.  I don't know if they chose me randomly out of the phone book or read my blog and liked my rants about the evil one percent criminal corporations. But they made me viceroy of the overlords.  My job was to see that their human slaves provided them with everything they desired and needed.  They really like anal probing.

And mushrooms.  Why they sent me, personally, to get them, I din't know.  It was the red ones with white pokadots, like danced in that Disney cartoon.  They grew in Europe, not America.  I flew over, my helicopter dropped me off at the edge of the woods, and I walked in to get mushrooms.

The alien was standing there.  What did he look like.  He looked like every picture you've seen of an alien: small hairless body, big head, big black eyes, slit mouth.

"Hello," it said.

I was surprised.  This didn't  seem their style.  "Hello, oh masterful overlord," I replied.

"We sent you on this quest so we could talk to you alone," it said.

"Yes, your most majestic highness."  I was confused but I'd learned not to question their orders.

"It's over," it said.

"What is that, your most excellent excellency?"  Hey, you try making up honorifics so you're not the next anal probing subject.

"The joke."

"What joke?"

"The invasion," it said.  "All a joke you guys really didn't get."

"You killed a million of us," I spat.  I was angry.  Hell, let them probe me.

"Yeah, true, but you got 7 billion left and at the rate you people reproduce you'll soon have that million back.  So no big deal.  We're leaving now."

"Now?"

"Yeah, so you can go back to working at McDonalds."

"They're gonna kill me," I said.  "They already burn me in effigy."  The things I did at the orders of the alien overlords.

"Meh, yeah, sorry, not our problem."

He beamed up. Yeah, just like on Star Trek

There were mushrooms on the ground behind where he stood.  I hear they are quite psychedelic.  I ate every one of them.

The Twitter Trick You Need to Know

Here is one Twitter trick you need to know and it seems few do.  For example, last Monday night as I was watching 24: Live Another Day, I had this Twitter conversation:


Okay, that's pretty cool that the Fox 24 Twitter account responded to me.  They have over 100,000 followers.  But the bad news is, because they started the tweet with my user handle (@SEvanTownsend) only I saw it.  This is something a lot of people on Twitter don't seem to understand.
Start a tweet with a user handle and only that person and people who follow both of you will see:
@DaleJr Great race! #Daytona500
will only be seen by @DaleJr.  So put something in front of the user handle:
Hey, @DaleJr Great race! #Daytona500
Or if your tweet is long and bumping up against 140 characters, just put a period (dot):
.@DaleJr that was a great race the way you came from behind. #Daytona500
(Yes, I know that's no where near 140 characters.) 
So I wasn't sure if the @24Fox account intern who does their social media doesn't know this, or they did it on purpose.  Because sometimes you only want the person you're addressing to see it, not all your followers.  However, this isn't as private as a Direct Message (DM) so don't use this for anything you don't want others to see.  If someone looks at your tweets, they'll see this message.
I am constantly amazed at how many people on Twitter don't seem to know this trick.

Flash Fiction Friday: DNA

Today's Flash Fiction Friday: DNA

Diane closed the locker using a handhold for leverage as she floated in free fall.  The door clanged and the sound echoed down the long, empty corridor.

"That's the last of them," she said more with sadness than relief.

"That's a billion," Mark growled.  "More than enough."  He was hovering nearby.  He didn't need to be here but it was the last locker.

"Yes, but what about those left behind?"  Diane turned to him, eyes bright with tears.  "Why are we, why are they-" she flung and arm down the corridor "-the lucky ones.

Mark shook his head.  "Over our pay grade, Diane.  Don't worry about it."

"There's six billion who are very worried."

Mark frowned.  "We have to stay focused and we have to stay on mission.  We have a long trip ahead of us.  We have a long trip to Kepler-186f."

"Five hundred light years," Diane grumbled.

"Come on," Mark said, "we need to prepare to leave orbit.  Then we need to get ready for our 13-year journey. Just you and me, kid."

Diane smiled.  They were chosen for this mission because they were compatible, personable, and, according to Earth's top psychological minds, destined to fall in love.  It happened in training.

Then Diane's visage hardened.  "Thirteen years for us travelling at nearly the speed of light, over 500 for Earth .  By the time we get to 186f, it'll be over."

Mark frowned.  "It's best not to dwell on that."

"How can I not, Mark?  They will slaughter every man, woman, and child on the planet and make it their colony."

"They gave us the technology to do this.  They gave us the technology to build this ship.  To clone humans from DNA."

"At what price?  Our planet?"

"Considering we lost the war, I think they were being generous."

Diane snorted.

Mark hoped she wouldn't be like this the entire trip.  "Come on, let's get ready to leave orbit."  Even he didn't dare say "Leave Earth behind."

Diane smiled slightly and using handholds they pulled themselves up the corridor toward the bridge.  It would be nice when they were accelerating at one gee, no more free fall, Diane had to admit.

The corridor was long.  It had to be, to hold one billion humans' DNA.

On the Radio

Today at approximately 4:00 P.M. EDT (1:00 P.M. PDT), I will be on Red River Radio talking about writing, my latest book Gods of Strife , and reading a short excerpt from the novel.  It's going to be fun and informative and I might even sing (okay, probably not.)  "Tune in" at this link: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/rrradio/2014/05/28/rrw-whats-write-for-me

Don't miss it.

Drive Time: Write What you Love

Lamborghini Countach(This is my 300th post on this blog)

Today is, in the US, Memorial Day.  Yesterday the Indianapolis 500 race was ran (as was the Coca-Cola 600 but that's NASCAR so who cares?).  As is my tradition, going back to 1969, I watched the Indy 500.  And in 1969, I decided Mario Andretti was my hero/favorite driver (and I didn't like the Unser brothers).  Now Mario's grandson, Marco, came in third yesterday and his son, Micheal, is a team owner who owned the winning car.

I'm not a big fan of watching racing on television.  I find it boring.  That is especially true NASCAR which I call "rednecks turning left" and is like your interstate line up going 150 mph.  Yes, the crashes are spectacular but I worry more that someone might get hurt.  I tried hard to like watching Formula 1 (when they show it on US television) but while the precision driving is interesting, there seems to be missing the wheel-to-wheel competition to keep it interesting.  It's sort of like baseball: moments of action separated by hours of tedium.

I've always like cars.  I can't remember a time I didn't like cars.  I didn't want to work on them and I didn't want to modify them, I just wanted to drive them . . . fast.  And I still do, occasionally hitting felonious velocities on back country roads or watching the speedometer brush against 155 at the end of the straightaway on the race track.  I once described driving on the racetrack the most fun I've had with my clothes on.  Talking about driving on the track I wrote a blog post called "Zen and the Art of Driving Fast."  Since driving on a racetrack I have tremendous respect for professional race car drivers, even NASCAR.

In my writing I've not spent a lot of time dwelling on my love of cars.  In my Adept Series novels, the heroes generally disdain cars, don't drive, and have someone drive them if they need them.  They use taxis a lot.

That changed a bit in Gods of Strife, my latest Adept Series novel that is set in 1976.  I indulged myself a bit by including a Lamborghini Countach and a Ferrari GT4 BB (both 1970s "supercars") in the plot.  There's even a car chase of sorts with the good guys in the Lamborghini and the bad guy on a flying carpet (well, it is an urban fantasy).

What is it you love?  Do you include that love in your writing?  You should.  You want your writing to be passionate and if you write about your passions, it will be.  I was frustrated writing some of the Adept Series books because I had to shuttle my love of cars (and other things such as airplanes) to other characters.

They say "write what you know."  But I would add "write what you love."

Flash Fiction Friday: The Mask

Today's Flash Fiction Friday: The Mask

Mike sat in his car, watching the bank through the rear view mirror.  He's staked it out and around 2:00 P.M. was when the bank's traffic was slowest.  There was only one car in the parking lot now.

On the passenger seat were the two things he brought for this job: the mask and the gun.  The gun was an old revolver, snub-nosed, that he'd inherited from his father.  He didn't know if it would even fire; the bullets in it were at least a generation old.

"I guess it's time," he said to himself.  He didn't turn off the car but stepped out into the summer heat with the gun and the mask.  This wasn't what he wanted to do.  But with the economy still in the toilet, job prospects scant, he had to feed his family.  He pulled the hot mask over his head and strode toward the entrance to the bank.  That's when he heard the screams.  They were coming from an alley between two tall buildings to his right.

"No, no, no!" a woman screamed.

Mike turned, hesitated, than ran for the alley.  He saw two big men menacingly approaching a petite young woman.  Already her pantyhose were ripped and there was dirt on her skirt, indicating to Mike the men had already knocked her down once.

"Stop!" Mike yelled, pointing the revolver at the men.

The men turned and looked at him with questioning eyes.  He realized he was still wearing the mask.

"Leave her alone," Mike growled, trying to sound threatening.

The men exchanged a glance, then turn and ran out the alley, past the woman.

The woman gawked at Mike.  "Th-th-thank you," she said in a shuddering voice.  "You saved me.  I don't know who you are but you're a good person."

Mike looked at her.  He smiled.  She smiled back.

"You're welcome," was all he said.

He turned, walked back to his car, took off the mask, and drove away.  He'd start looking for a job again tomorrow.