Steven J. Pemberton's Blog, page 10

January's Writing Progress

We're already a twelfth of the way through the new year, which means it's time for your regular update on my progress with making stuff up :-)

The audiobook of Stone & Silence is on sale from Amazon, Audible and iTunes, which means that the entire Barefoot Healer series is now available in audio.

I wrote another science fiction short story, which I think I'll use as a bribe to convince people to join my mailing list.

I wrote 12,000 words of The Dragons of Asdanund, which is now just past 20,000 words.

I started recording an audiobook of The Reluctant Dragonrider. I'm up to chapter 10, which is about a fifth of the way through.

So 2019 is off to a good start, I think.

Goals for 2019

I'm keeping it simple this year...

- Publish another audiobook (probably The Reluctant Dragonrider ).

- Complete the first draft of The Dragons of Asdanund (the sequel to The Mirrors of Elangir ).

There are quite a few other things I might do or would like to do, but the plans for those aren't firm at the moment, so I'm leaving them off the list for now.

With my focus on audiobooks in 2018, I rather neglected new writing. But two-thirds of my books are available in audio now (or will be, once Stone & Silence goes on sale in a week or two), so I think I can afford to slow down on that front for a while. Once The Reluctant Dragonrider is available in audio, there will be only two more to do (The Mirrors of Elangir and Escape Velocity ) - though of course once The Dragons of Asdanund is written, I'll have to do that in audio too.

Watch this space for progress reports!

2018 Retrospective

This is what I said I wanted to achieve this year, in terms of writing and publishing:

Publish the audiobook of Plague & Poison (done).

Publish another audiobook (done twice and nearly three times - I published Simon and the Birthday Wish and Dust & Water, and Stone & Silence is currently undergoing quality checks at the distributor).

Publish Simon and the Birthday Wish in ebook and paperback (done).

Complete the first draft of The Dragons of Asdanund, the sequel to The Mirrors of Elangir (not done - I didn't even start it until the end of October, because of all the work on audiobooks and the illustrations for Simon and the Birthday Wish ).

And here are some noteworthy things that weren't on the list in January:

I wrote about 38,000 words of new fiction, though I haven't published any of it yet. Most of this was my "War of the Gods" story. The rest was two short stories, the start of The Dragons of Asdanund and the start of a sequel to Simon and the Birthday Wish, which has the working title of Simon and the Christmas Plot.

I was a guest on Lucas Spangler's First Chapter podcast, reading from Escape Velocity and talking about my writing and the inspiration behind it. See this post from August for details of where to listen to it.

I was a guest on two authors' blogs, Eric Klein and Lauren Alder. I also interviewed Lauren here.

I took part in a few things for The One Million Project, which aims to raise a million pounds for charity. My short story History Lesson appeared in one of three anthologies they published in February. See this post for details. I was a beta reader for another of their books, So, you Say I Can't Vote! Frances Connelly: The Working Class Woman's Route To The Vote. See this post for more about that. And I was a judge in the fantasy category for a contest they ran on Wattpad. See here for lists of the entrants and winners.

Our local writers' group has kept busy with book signings and other events around the town, raising money for various charities. We took part in the town's annual festival in the summer. We won second prize in the walking section of the parade (that's walking as opposed to being on a vehicle), and we came third (out of twelve) in the quiz.

Phew! Come back in a couple of days to see my goals for 2019!

November's Writing Progress

I finished recording the audiobook of Stone & Silence, except for pickups (re-recording bits where I made a mistake and didn't notice). I'm about four-fifths of the way through editing it. I don't know if it'll be ready in time for Christmas, but we'll see. The audiobook will include the bonus story that I wrote for the ebook omnibus, The Shortest Distance Between Two Points.

Our writers' group had a stall at the NSPCC Christmas fayre, and raised some money for the charity.

One of the writers held a launch party for her new book, What I Never Knew When I Said "I Do", which is a guide for newly-married couples and those thinking of getting married.

I wrote a bit more of The Dragons of Asdanund, which now stands at 6700 words.

The writers' group recently had their last meeting before Christmas, and in view of this, Lorraine, our unofficial leader, suggested that we bring along a piece of Christmas-themed writing. I pointed out that most of my stories are set in worlds where Christmas doesn't even exist, and then I remembered that I'd sketched out some ideas for a sequel to my children's book, Simon and the Birthday Wish. The book would be set around Christmas time, and I'd even thought of a working title, Simon and the Christmas Plot. Against my better judgement, two days before the meeting, I dashed off the first scene, and the writers seemed to like it. So I might see if I can write some more of it while I'm off work over the holidays.

October's Writing Progress

(Happy Halloween to those who care about such things...)

I recorded a bit more of the Stone & Silence audiobook, and have almost caught up with editing it. Depending on how much Breda grumbles about having to be quiet ;-) it might be on sale by the end of November, or failing that, before Christmas.

I finished the first draft of the sci-fi short story that I mentioned in August's entry. I've decided to put it aside for a while to consider the comments I got from my critique group.

Science fiction writer Eric Klein interviewed me about the Dragonrider series, concentrating on the worldbuilding and some of the weird things I researched but then had to cut because they didn't fit the story. The interview is here.

The One Million Project released a new book with the rather wordy title of So, You Say I Can’t Vote!: Frances Connelly: The working-class woman’s route to the vote. (Full disclosure: I was a beta reader for this.) It ties in with 2018 being the centenary of (some) women gaining the right to vote in the UK. Most of the prominent figures who campaigned for this were from the middle and upper class. The contribution of working-class women has been largely forgotten nowadays, and this book attempts to redress that balance. Frances Connelly was a glove-maker from Yeovil in Somerset, and is thought to be the first woman to cast a vote in a UK election. She did this in 1911, seven years before it was legal. In typical British fashion, the law didn't actually say that women couldn't vote; it said they couldn't be on the register of people who could vote. If a woman did manage to get onto the register, whether through deception or clerical error, and she was issued a polling card (an invitation to cast a vote), then there was no legal way to prevent her from voting. Frances, like many other women, appeared on the register because her name was similar to a masculine name (Francis). The book covers what's known of Frances's life and sets it and her vote in a broader context. It also looks at other working-class women who campaigned to be allowed the vote, and some other women who voted or tried to vote before 1918.

Our local writers' group took part in a diversity festival, where different ethnic and religious groups in the town came together to share their cultures in the form of music, art, history, writing, food, fashion, and just to talk to one another. The highlight for me was the African drumming workshop, where everyone got a chance to play along with the band. I was reluctant to join in at first, but soon discovered I had more rhythm than I thought. Overall the festival was a great success, and the organisers hope to make it an annual event.

I've been saving what I hope is the best news for last - on Monday, only ten months later than planned, I finally started writing the sequel to The Mirrors of Elangir. So far I have 680 words of it. Not much, I admit, but I'm a bit out of practice. With a bit of luck (and a lot of self-discipline) it'll be on sale by the end of next year. The book will be called The Dragons of Asdanund unless I think of a title I like better. Those of you who've read the first book will guess that this is a fairly big spoiler about what's waiting for Raltarn and Tomaz when they get back home, but I figured I'd have to mention it in the blurb anyway to convey the story's excitement and high stakes. Watch this space!

September's Writing Progress

I haven't done any actual writing this month, but I've had plenty of other things to occupy me.

The audiobook of Dust & Water went on sale (see previous post for details).

I started editing the audiobook of Stone & Silence and am about a fifth of the way through. I wrote a couple more "simple" computer programs to help speed up the editing process. There might actually come a day when they save me more time than I spent writing them...

I interviewed and was interviewed by a fellow author, Lauren Alder. She interviewed me here about The Reluctant Dragonrider. I interviewed her here about her début novel, The Codex of Desire.

Our local writers' group took part in an event at the central library in Redbridge, Essex. This is quite a way from us - the connection is that the father of the organiser of our group is also a writer and lives in Redbridge. He runs a writers' group in his area, and some of them came to the event too. We donated copies of some of our books to the library, and a few weeks before the event, they went on display in the foyer. The staff told us that if we didn't see our book on the stand in the foyer, someone had borrowed it. I donated three books (Simon and the Birthday Wish, The Accidental Dragonrider and Death & Magic ). When I checked the stand, none of them were there, which was most gratifying.

The Dust & Water audiobook is on sale

The audiobook of Dust & Water is now on sale. It's narrated by me and runs for just under 12 hours. You can buy it from the following retailers:

Amazon USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C44CHMO

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00C44CHMO

Audible USA: https://www.audible.com/pd/B07HFL5Z3L...

Audible UK: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/B07HFJCK...

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/audiobook...

(Full disclosure: the Audible links use their bounty programme, which pays me a bonus if you become an Audible subscriber after clicking a link. There's no difference to the price you pay for the book or your subscription.)

You can listen to a sample of the audiobook (5 minutes from an "interlude" between chapter 33 and 34, mostly spoiler-free).

I suppose I now have to explain why it's an interlude instead of a numbered chapter. One of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time... There's a prologue, which is from the point of view of Galdrakh, the main antagonist, and an epilogue, also from his point of view. I found that I needed a scene from his point of view in the middle of the book, and since the other two aren't numbered, it seemed natural not to number this one either.

I had to trim the scene to use it as the sample, firstly to get it under the five minutes that Audible allows for the sample, and secondly to remove a major spoiler. It's now a slightly surreal conversation about how Galdrakh and his cronies are going to get a horse into the Governor-General's palace on the night of a big party...

Interview with Lauren Alder

Today's post is something new for me: an interview with a fellow writer. I don't know yet if it's a one-off or the start of something regular. We'll see how it goes.

My guest today is Lauren Alder, author of The Codex of Desire, a "tragic tale of prehistoric love" amongst intelligent feathered dinosaurs.



1. Tell us a bit about yourself. What made you want to be a writer?

I am a 53-year-old freelance commercial artist, happily married for 23 years to a fellow artist. We live in Winnipeg, Canada, in a third-floor walk-up apartment (which bit us HARD when my husband recently broke his ankle, but on the whole it suits us down to the ground). I’m a Wiccan, a science fiction and fantasy fan, and a person with an abiding love for cats, dinosaurs, and the movie “A.I.: Artifical Intelligence”. I deal with treatment-resistant depression and anxiety, which made finishing a novel quite the challenge.

As far as what made me want to be a writer… what makes me want to breathe? It feels like the answer to both those questions is: fundamental instinct. If I don’t write, I feel much worse emotionally and mentally. I won’t say that writing is therapy for me, but it certainly makes life more beautiful and more bearable.

2. Tell us about your book. What makes it stand out from the crowd?

Well, it’s a time-travelling adult science fiction novel about tragic dinosaur love triangles, which certainly aren’t a dime a dozen.

This is my three-sentence pitch: “Love and violence, war and lust, lies and betrayal — even intelligent feathered dinosaurs fell prey to such destructive impulses, more than 67 million years ago. Girn'ash, a cunning female slave, falls in love with a dashing military prisoner and will do anything in her power to win his freedom. But Girn'ash's queen is determined to coerce the handsome warrior into her harem, and when so many savage desires collide it might doom an entire civilization to nuclear extinction.”

So: intelligent feathered theropod dinosaurs, a human paleontologist who is mentally drawn back in time (via an alien memory storage device) to witness the catastrophic intersection of their lives, and the barbaric splendor of a long-lost primordial world. That’s a lot of interesting content (and all my beta readers LOVED it).

3. What was the inspiration for the book?

The inspiration for “Codex” came through a non-fiction book called “Ninja: 1000 Years of the Shadow Warrior” by John Man. As I was reading about the samurai and ninja cultures (both in real life and in myth), the idea struck me: “Romeo and Juliet”, with those two cultures as the warring factions! However, I was reluctant to set the novel in the actual cultures, since I felt I wasn’t capable of properly sympathizing with them. Then the second element came to me: “Set it in the distant past, with intelligent dinosaurs as the main characters!” And thus the seed for “Codex” was born (although it ended up being a very different story once it was done).

[Steven: This wouldn't be the first time a story has taken a long and winding road from inspiration to publication :-) ]

4. Describe your writing process. Do you have a daily writing routine? If so, what is it?

I don’t edit while writing the first draft: I believe that only slows me down and causes me to second-guess myself. Instead I concentrate on writing down everything and anything that comes to mind, even if it’s out of sequence. To me, the first draft is a process of telling the story to myself. I worry about perfection in the editing phases.

Because I’m both a visual and a written word artist, I tend to alternate between the two. When I’m in a writing phase, I start writing each morning after I’ve had an hour or so of Internet time plus at least a half a cup of coffee, and I write for 1-2 hours with the goal of producing 1000-2500 words. Rinse and repeat until I feel the need to switch to visual arts, or a visual arts project hits my studio and I need to change tracks.

Once I’m in a writing phase, I generally don’t take days off because I find that disrupts the creative flow.

5. Which character was the most enjoyable to write, and why?

Although I took great pleasure in writing all the “Codex” characters, I have to admit that the ones who were the most fun to write were Fir’ala~Enk, the indomitable leader of the Furies and Tir’at’s implacable enemy, and U'nur~Mik'Ur, the Chief Cook of the Tribal settlement of Permanence where Tir’at is imprisoned for most of the novel. Fir’ala is shrewd, sly, bloodthirsty, possessed of a wicked sense of humour, and admirable (to a certain degree) in her relentless ruthlessness and her devotion to her Most Potent Chieftess. U'nur… well, I don’t want to say too much and give away part of the plot, but his genuine tenderness of heart is highly endearing to me and I admire his devotion to his family.



6. Are there any plans for a sequel?

Yes, but it won’t see the light of day unless “Codex” achieves a degree of commercial success. I always craft my final works with an audience in mind, and if nobody reads “Codex” then nobody is likely to read the sequel either.

7. What things did you have to research for this book? What was the strangest or most unlikely thing you had to research?

Dinosaur and bird physiology. (Did you know that birds have a circular respiratory system, instead of the “lung” system that mammals rely on? I didn’t, until I started writing “Codex”.) The making of ale and beer. What plants and flowers were in existence during the Late Cretaceous Period. And the one that caused me the most headaches -- how long WAS the lunar month, 67 million years ago? (Answer: less than an hour shorter than it is in modern times.) Finding the lunar month length required a good 2 or 3 hours of Googling, and then the in-depth reading of an academic astronomy paper until I found the tidbit of information I needed.

[Steven: I was vaguely aware that birds had a different respiratory system from mammals, but didn't know any of the details. You've now got me curious as to how astronomers figured out the length of the lunar month 67 million years ago. Did they just extrapolate backwards (the Moon is gradually receding from Earth), or is there some evidence in ancient rocks?]

8. How similar to a real dinosaur species are the intelligent dinosaurs? Are they based on a single species, or a composite of several species? How much is real (or at least based on what scientists have figured out) and how much is made up?

It’s hard to say how similar to a real dinosaur species the “Codex” theropods are, because we honestly have no idea of what that type of dinosaur really looked like and acted like. I based a lot of their behavior on the behavior of highly intelligent modern birds (like ravens and parrots), as well as their physiology. In terms of dinosaur types, physically they’re very roughly based on Velociraptor (the actual type, not the “Jurassic Park” version), and I made them feathered because (1) that gave them many more modes for self-expression, and (2) recent research indicates that most dinosaurs of that type were probably feathered.

The biggest deviation from real life comes from where the fossils in “Codex” were found: no theropods of that type and size have been found in Alberta so far. But new and surprising dinosaur discoveries happen on almost a weekly basis, so I felt safe enough placing those fossils in the Badlands.

9. What do you get from the frame story? The story starts in the present day, when a human palaeontologist finds an artefact left behind by the dinosaurs. He touches it and starts to experience the memories of the dinosaur who wore it. The artefact seems to be "just" a recording device, so the palaeontologist is passively experiencing the dinosaur's story – he can’t influence it in any way. On the face of it, this complicates the story and distances the reader from the dinosaurs (who appear to be the real stars of the show). Why did you choose to do it that way, rather than tell the dinosaur's story directly?

I wish I had a good answer for that -- or at least an intellectual one. All I can really say is that when I wrote out the first draft, I felt like a major element was missing -- an element of perspective, a human connection to the events of the narrative. Raoul Deguchi came to me very clearly and powerfully as a character who needed to be included in the story. (Plus in the planned sequel, he’s the main character and his connection to the dinosaurs in “Codex” becomes a vital plot point.)

I’m a great believer in telling the story that demands to be told, not necessarily the story that rationality tells us SHOULD be told. Time will either prove me right or wrong. I sincerely hope it proves me right.

10. Lastly, where can readers buy the book or find out more?

You can buy The Codex of Desire from Amazon and Smashwords.

I'm on Facebook and Twitter. My blog is at https://laurenalder.home.blog. There's also a trailer for the book on YouTube.

August's writing progress

I completed the "proof listen" of the audiobook of Dust & Water, which mainly involved fixing the pacing - too long or too short a gap between sentences and paragraphs. I fixed a few mistakes in the editing where I omitted a sentence or included two takes of it. I still need to record some pickups (to fix mistakes that I didn't notice when I was recording). Then I'll do the mastering and submit it to the distributor.

All this work on Dust & Water means I'm no further along with the Stone & Silence audiobook, but I should be returning to that in the next week or two.

I started another science fiction short story that might end up as a bonus for subscribers to my mailing list. Go here if you want to be one of the first to read it when I finish it: http://eepurl.com/_5EDX

I'm this week's guest on Lucas Spangler's First Chapter podcast. As the title suggests, an author reads the first chapter of their book. Lucas then interviews them about the book and whatever other topics come to mind. I read from Escape Velocity, and Lucas and I then talk about the inspiration behind my writing, the relationship between writing and software, and my traumatic first encounter with a computer. (Parental advisory: there is a bit of swearing in the book.)

You can find the podcast on iTunes here - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/f... (my episode is number 13) or you can find the episode on Libsyn here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/firstchapte... It's about 45 minutes - half reading, half interview. Enjoy!

July's writing progress

It turns out I was lying about having the audiobook of Dust & Water on sale by the end of this month. But I was lying for the right reasons. Breda was in Ireland for most of this month, so I decided to take advantage of the quiet evenings to start recording an audiobook of Stone & Silence. (Breda's fond of her TV programmes, and doesn't like having to switch off while I'm recording.) I did finish editing Dust & Water, so now that she's back, the next job will be to listen to it and fix any mistakes, and then it can go on sale. With a bit of luck, Stone & Silence won't be far behind, as I'm two-thirds of the way through recording it.

Our local writers' group was invited to do some readings in the intervals of some outdoor concerts. I did a couple, and had them videoed for posterity. One is from my children's book Simon and the Birthday Wish, which you can watch here. The other is The Last Story, a "tribute" to the golden era of the film noir detective story, which is here. The sound quality isn't great, as the mic picked up a fair bit of wind noise, and there were usually some... lovely people talking near the camera. Unfortunately I'm not (yet) famous enough to get away with telling them to shut up while I'm talking.

I started a Facebook author page, which you can find at https://www.facebook.com/StevenJPembertonAuthor/. It goes by the rather confusing name of "Fantasy and Science Fiction Author". I was trying to get that title to appear when you hover your mouse over my profile picture, and entered it as my place of employment. (Which is kind-of, sort-of true if you squint at it in the right way with a following wind.) A few days later, Facebook asked if I wanted to have that as the name of a page. Apparently, of the thousands of people on Facebook who write fantasy or science fiction or both, none had thought to put "Fantasy and Science Fiction Author" as their profession or employer. So I grabbed it before I (or Facebook) could change our minds. I haven't quite decided what to do with the page in the longer term. So far I've been reposting the book-related videos that I've got on YouTube.

With all that excitement, I also managed to write a 2000-word short story, but I'm going to hold onto it for a while until I have a better idea about what to do with it.