Melanie Edmonds's Blog, page 37

Drained

A few weeks ago, I was riding on a creative high. Writing short stories for anthologies, posting Starwalker, returning to the steampunk novel I put down in March, and generally working on a whole host of stuff in my spare time.

It looks like that spurt of energy has faded. For the past week or so, I’ve been struggling to write much of anything. Last week’s Starwalker post was done pretty late (though it posted on time!), and I’m okay with how it came out in the end, but it was a struggle. More than I like.

This week, it’s more of the same. I feel like I need a break, a chance to rejuvenate. I’m not feeling Starry’s story the way I usually do. I have an idea about what I want to do this week, but when I look at the page, the opening words escape me. If I started it now, it would be forced and that seldom comes out well.

It doesn’t help that I’ve just got through a major plot turning-point and the ship (and story) is heading off in a new direction. The characters are all reeling and I feel like I am, too!

Add to that the fact that the CFS is not being kind to me right now, sucking the energy out of pretty much everything I do, and you’ll get an idea of where I am right now. The last thing I want to do is turn out crap; my readers deserve better. But I hate missing posts and breaking my promise to my readers, too. These are weeks when I wish I had a buffer.

But it’s not all dire! I have another choice that I can take advantage of. For the past few weeks, I’ve been poking at some Starwalker shorts (sometimes with a stick from a distance, but there has been actual writing done, too). I’ve got a couple just about finished, and this seems like a good opportunity to release one of them into the wild. A short can take the place of my regularly scheduled update.

The moment I considered that option this morning, it felt like a weight lifted off me. That was when I knew it was the right answer. So I think I’ll take a little break. See if I can get my mental breath back. And in the meantime, I get to share a little piece of a character’s backstory with my lovely readers.

Here’s hoping they won’t mind the break. With luck, I’ll come back next week brighter and fresher than ever. I’ve got a couple of days off work coming up, too, so hopefully that will help. Wish me luck and sleep!

Swan Song: Part 2

Would hate to keep you all waiting, so here’s the second chunk of my short story for you all to enjoy! We continue to move through the aged ships that travelled to establish the colony at Yuva.

Confused about what’s going on? Start at Part 1. Trust me, it’ll all make sense in the end.

 

Swan Song (cont.)

“For a hundred years, we travelled through the darkness. We slept and dreamed of the possibilities that our new home would bring. During that time, there were trials we could not know about, dangers we were not aware of. It was the dedicated officers of these ships who carried us through them.”

****

Kashani, Captain’s Quarters

Gliese 581 -10 minutes

“Hey, Schkotty, where areya?”

The voice crackled over the intercom, scraping through what was left of the ship’s innards. Between the quality of the lines and the slurring, the words were barely comprehensible.

Malachi Scott caught hold of a grip on the edge of the lift tube door and raised his voice, almost shouting at the intercom port on the wall. “Be back in a minute. Hold your horses.” A quivering green light showed that the intercom had picked him up.

“Hurryup,” Trotter’s voice slurred. “Ain’t no holdin’ back the schun, y’know.”

Malachi shook his head and pushed himself up to the Observation Deck level, cursing silently at the stiffness of his bad knee. It protested even in zero-G these days.

There was a net of hooch bottles floating behind him, clipped to his belt, and he cracked open a bottle as he floated along. He gulped and grimaced; the liquid burned all the way down his gullet, but he kept drinking, because hell, what was there to lose? It wasn’t like he had to fear tomorrow’s hangover.

When he thumped the trigger for the Obs Deck doors, a blast of sound and light washed over him. Music thumped and Gliese speared into his eyes from the huge sweep of ferrographite glass. The sun’s orange glow momentarily blotted everything else out. Not yet, he thought as he blinked the spots out of his eyes. Not quite yet, you bastard.

A part of him was surprised that the Obs Deck hadn’t been dismantled along with the rest of the ship, but apparently there was a flaw in the curved window that might give way and kill them all. Not good enough for the colony but fine for a voyage like theirs. So of course, this was where the party was.

Things had deteriorated since he’d departed to check the autopilot settings and fetch more hooch. The centre of the Obs Deck was a mess of bodies.

Malachi stopped and stared at them as his vision cleared. Pale, sticky limbs moved in time with grunts and mumbles that punctuated the music. His brain kept ticking over the facts – that’s the cryonic specialist, and there’s the ion engineer, how the hell is her hip not dislocating in that position, and who the hell installed sex-tethers in here? – while his skin crawled with horror. Of all the things he wanted to see on this final journey, a zero-G geriatric orgy wasn’t on the list.

“-ey, Schkotty!” Trotter smacked him on the leg with a cane and the sharp pain made Malachi blink. The old fella was clipped into a reclining couch and, thankfully, not indulging in the carnal activity. “You gonna gimme a bottle or wha’?”

Malachi shrugged. He unclipped the net of hooch bottles and nudged it towards the old fella. “Here ya go. What the hell?” He tried to gesture towards the copulation without looking at it directly.

Trotter shrugged and took a gulp of hooch. “Dunno. They wasch dancin’, then th’ten-minute warnin’ came over, an’ all of a sudden they wasch tumblin’ all over each other.” He grinned sideways up at Malachi. “You wanna bet how many of ‘em pop before we hit?”

He couldn’t help it: Malachi smiled back. That was just like Trotter. “Nah. That means we’d have to watch ‘em to keep count.”

Trotter gurgled to himself; it was supposed to be a giggle but it sounded more like he was drowning in his own amusement. He wriggled in his couch and swiped a shirt out of his way so he could see better.

Malachi pushed himself past a listless woman on his way to the couch next to Trotter’s.

“What happened to her?” He nudged the woman, Kerise, and she smiled, blinking slowly. Not unconscious, but definitely not there with them. She floated a short way before the tether attaching her to the wall arrested the motion. She drifted back again.

Trotter belched loudly. “Dunno. Been like that since y’left.”

The world was growing fuzzy when Malachi leaned over to grab one of her slack arms. The hooch was kicking in, softening the edges of the world, and he licked his lips. There, where her sleeve was pushed up: a pinprick. She’d managed to bring narcotics with her, probably stolen from the colony’s med centre. He felt a stab of jealousy.

When he pulled himself around to kneel over her, he barely felt a twinge from his bad knee. His skin was warm all over, faintly tingling in places. Damn good hooch. He started to fumble through Kerise’s clothing, his fingers feeling oddly thick.

Trotter’s gurgling laugh surged over him. “You too, you too! Go on, boy. She ain’t gonna mind!”

Malachi frowned; that wasn’t what he was doing. But maybe it’s not such a bad idea, he thought. Then his hand closed around a syringe in her pocket.

****

“We will never know some of those who made this journey possible. They watched over us while we slept; they guided us through the darkness. They were our caretakers and trailblazers, and they gave their lives for us. Without them, we would not be here today.”

****

Avicenna, Observation Deck

Gliese 581 -5 minutes

“He’s coming around again.”

Sara wasn’t sure who had spoken but the words pulled her out of her reverie. She glanced down at her split knuckles and thought about the cleansing nature of blood. Her hands were starting to hurt, but that wasn’t going to stop her.

The pair of hands curling around her arm and belt did, though. She looked into Dominique’s face and felt something soften inside her. Resolve, maybe.

“We’re almost there,” Dom said. “It’s enough, isn’t it?”

There were four others milling around the room, but the soft voice beside her was all Sara heard. She looked forward and frowned. The huge Obs Deck window had been replaced on the Avicenna with patches of old hull plating, with only two ferrographite glass panels to show the death rushing towards them. Tethered across each was a body: spread-eagled silhouettes against the oncoming sun.

Technically, neither of these bodies was supposed to be here. The one on the right had been accused of killing four people, including two children. There hadn’t been enough evidence to convict her and official colony justice had been forced to set her free.

She’d been heard boasting in a bar afterwards, so the story went. All Sara knew was that they’d found her lashed to the Obs Deck wall a day after they’d set out for the sun. Everyone knew her face from the news transmissions, so there was little doubt that unofficial colony justice had put her there.

Sara wondered how many compartments in the three ships held people who weren’t supposed to be on board. How many of the colony’s problems was this voyage cleaning up?

The second body sprawled across the window was Terry Butcher. He was the only crew member to ever be forcibly put back into cryo-stasis. All of those present knew why.

He had been the biochemist in charge when they had been defrosted and incorporated into the crew as teenagers. He’d been responsible for training them, and for him that meant putting his hands on all the young girls. Even after they had convinced the captain about what he was doing and Butcher had been thrown back into stasis, it had been years before Sara could spend time alone in hydroponics without suffering a panic attack.

Upon arriving at Yuva, they had tried to get the colony leaders to prosecute him: the six surviving victims and the new captain. But the leaders didn’t want to start the colony with that kind of dirt raked out into the open. They wanted to cover it up, leave him frozen until no-one remembered.

The crew wanted justice.

Sara watched the blood floating in the air, globs of coagulating pain. She wanted to hurt him as much as he’d hurt her.

She shivered as she realised that it would never be enough. She couldn’t look at him without seeing how young he was: thirty-something to her ninety-two. He hadn’t changed, and that made the memories fresher for her. There was no washing them away.

“Let the sun have him,” Dominique murmured from Sara’s side. “Let it go.”

Sara tore her gaze away from the windows. Dom was the only one who hadn’t vented her rage on Butcher’s body; the only one whose hands were clean. Maybe that’s why Sara wanted to hurt him so badly: because her partner couldn’t. Or maybe she just wished for the peace that Dom had found.

She closed her eyes and rested her forehead against Dom’s. Butcher was still a young man, but she was old. She’d had a full life. She’d made improvements on his shitty hydroponics and they’d named the new system after her. She’d seen more stars pass them by than she could count, and she’d seen alien plants crawling up the walls of human settlements. She had loved and been loved.

She took a deep breath and let it out again. “Damn you, anyway,” she said, and she felt Dom laugh softly.

“I know.”

Sara’s lips quirked and then dipped to press against Dom’s. For many long heartbeats, they clung and kissed, and parted only to breathe again. Something deep inside her relaxed and, for the first time on this voyage, she could see past the bodies in the windows.

Maybe, she thought, maybe this is what peace feels like.

(Part 3 coming soon!)

Ebook pricing experiment

Something I forgot to mention in my last post is that I’m experimenting with my ebook pricing! After reading the Smashwords blog post about the optimum range for ebook prices, I’ve decided to drop the price of the Apocalypse Blog Book 1 from $4.99 to $2.99 (on Amazon and Smashwords).

I’ll get less revenue per book, but the increase in sales should more than balance that out, if the stats are anything to go by. I’m keeping an eye on the sales (just a little compulsively), and will post again in a month or so to see how it’s going.

So if you haven’t picked it up yet, grab it now while it’s cheap! And cross your fingers that it takes off some more. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Indie vs traditional publishing – ebooks

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve come across a few blog posts about how indie publishing is better for writers than traditional publishing. These naturally piqued my interest, as I’m currently thinking about how I want to publish Starwalker (beyond the web serial). Do I ebook it myself or see if I can chase down the elusive dream of being traditionally published?

The Smashwords blog recently released a set of interesting statistics about ebook pricing and sales. Hop on over to the post if you want to read the detail, but the upshot is: cheaper-priced books earn authors more revenue than higher-priced books, and reach significantly more readers. The optimum price seems to be around $2.99.

Also worth noting: traditional publishers usually price their ebook on the high end of the scale ($6.99 and above), and authors who publish through a traditional publisher earn less royalties per unit than indie authors.

So, indie authors are not only earning more money per unit, they also reach more readers and can earn more than traditionally-published authors!

A surprising and rather interesting turn of events. Traditional publishers are not keeping up with the market and could be said to be doing their authors a disservice with their model and pricing.

I was also at a writing and publishing talk last week (at the lovely Avid Reader bookstore), and the published authors on the panel all agreed that if you self-publish an ebook, selling it to a traditional publisher is hard, because they want the e-rights as well. As noted in a post in October last year, traditional publisher profits are still going up despite paper books sales declining, and this is largely because of the rise of ebooks filling the gap for them. So I can completely understand that they’d want to have the e-rights to your book; it’s helping to prop up their core business!

On top of this, self-published ebooks are rising to the top of bestseller charts. They’re making their way into yardsticks like the New York Times bestseller list, as well as bookstore lists like Barnes & Noble and Apple iBookstore. Even my little Apocalypse Blog Book 0 is in Amazon’s Top 100 for scifi adventure, and I’ve done little marketing myself!

When you sell your book to a traditional publisher, what are the advantages you’re really getting? Marketing power is a big one, but for ebooks, this doesn’t seem to matter. Authors are doing it for themselves, and they’re succeeding at it.

But what do you gain if you don’t go the traditional route and self-publish your ebooks? Brett Battles, author of books like Sick and The Destroyed, recently did a post on Murderati about this. He lists advantages like complete creative control, no waiting to publish, and the freedom to set your own schedule.

With the tools and services available to authors these days, it’s easy to self-publish. So why would an author go to a traditional publisher for ebooks? Is the lure of paper books and the legitimacy still attached to them really enough to sacrifice so much freedom?

I’m not sure I know the answer. But in the long journey of being a published author, I’m still hitching my wagon to the self-publishing ebook carthorse. Because that sucker is off and running, and I want to go along for the ride.

Swan Song: Part 1

For the last few weeks, I’ve been involved in writing for an anthology that’s being built through a writer’s group on Goodreads. The anthology is charting the genesis of colony on an alien planet, Yuva, from the huge ships leaving Earth, through adapting the planet to human needs, and beyond.

My story comes after the colonisation effort has been started, roughly in the middle of the anthology, and deals with what happens to all those who worked so hard to get them there. It’s now pretty much done! Here’s the first section of the story:

 

Swan Song

They say there is a swan that is silent for its whole life. It grows and loves and does all the swan-like things, but it does not utter a sound. Then, the moment before it dies, it opens its throat, and not even the vacuum of space can swallow the beauty of its song.

****

[The image broadcast across the Yuva network is dominated by the great globe of her sun, Gliese 581. Nearing the glow, three shapes track slowly and majestically. Their silhouettes are familiar to every person looking up at them, for they are the great colony ships that carried them from distant Earth to this new colony.]

[Transmission Voiceover]

“It has been ten years since we arrived here. Ten years since we slowed our ships and woke our children. Ten years since we put a stake in this planet and said, ‘this is our new home’. This is Yuva.”

****

Avicenna, Bridge

Gliese 581 -20 minutes

“Final corrections made. We’re on approach vector.” Pilot Gnana Tanaq slid her hands off the controls. This is the last time I’ll do this, she thought. “Inertia will carry us in, now.”

The first time she touched this console, her hands were smooth and soft, barely out of puberty. Now, sixty-four years later, they were wrinkled and worn, though they still curled around the grips easily. Just as she had worn shiny spots into the plastic, so the grips had worn her hands into control-friendly curves. Pilots’ claws, some people called them. She bore hers proudly.

Behind her, she felt Jackson sigh and tighten his grip on his console. “So, that’s it, then.”

“Yup.”

“How long?”

Gnana glanced down at the readouts scrolling before her. “Not long. Twenty minutes, maybe, depending on how quickly the gravity pulls us in.” She turned her chair so she could see him. “You’re the navigator, though.”

Jackson didn’t even bother to check his readings. He shrugged. “Sounds right.”

She smiled at him, dark skin crinkling around her eyes. “I know, I know: it goes against everything you believe in to navigate purposefully into something.”

He wrinkled his nose and his moustache twitched. “I keep wanting to tell you to alter course. Can’t help it.”

Gnana laughed softly, but there was no real humour in it. The forward viewports were unshuttered and Gliese filled the entire view. Its orange glow lit the Bridge as if it was already on fire.

With a sigh, she unclipped the tether that held her to the chair and pushed over to where Jackson floated. She covered his hand with hers and his head dipped slightly in acknowledgement. The sunlight was turning his hair red, like it had been years ago. Gnana used to joke that he was the whitest man she’d ever met, so pale he wasn’t even freckled. Like her, he’d spent his whole life in space behind radiation shielding; his skin had never felt the real touch of a sun. Another twenty minutes would change that.

She turned her attention forward. It was hard to look at the Bridge now; it wasn’t the home she had known anymore. She had expected memories to crowd in here, but instead, gaps were all she could see. The holes where missing stations had been: communications, cryonics, long-range sensors. The stripped-down environmental console and the bare patches of decking where chairs used to be; the only one remaining was hers, because the pilot still needed it for this final journey. Even navigation was stripped to the minimum.

This room used to be busy with bodies, full of shifting console displays and the shadows of the crew. Now, it was just her and Jackson.

Gnana glanced sideways and saw Jackson frowning. “Still angry that he chose not to come?” She didn’t have to say who she meant; he knew.

Jackson’s expression scrunched down. “His place is here.”

“It was his choice.” Gnana’s tone was non-committal; in truth, she wasn’t sure what she thought about the captain’s decision.

Three days ago, she had agreed with Jackson: the captain was a coward who refused the honourable path. They had all known this was a likely end to this journey when they signed on, but he had chosen to stay on the orbital platforms, training the colonists in… she wasn’t even sure what.

Then, the night before they departed on their final voyage, she had seen the captain at a bar. It was the only time in her life she had ever seen him drunk, and it wasn’t pretty. He had slurred goodbye to her and hugged her – hugged her – and she had seen it in his eyes. It tore him up to deny his duty but he wasn’t ready to stand on his ship for the last time; there was still living left for him to do.

She couldn’t begrudge him that. He was younger than the other captains, though his time commanding the Avicenna meant he would never step foot on the planet below. The toll of space on bones and organs meant the gravity would kill him, slowly and painfully. But he could have a life on the orbital platforms, maybe even lead the colonial effort the way he had led the ship.

She had considered staying too, but the only position applicable to her was shuttle pilot. It wasn’t anything like flying the Avicenna, though, and even a short atmospheric stay caused her pain. The last time, it had given her a bone-deep ache for two weeks, making her hands shake so badly that she couldn’t fly at all.

Besides, she was tired. This was her last flight, and it seemed fitting to her that it was with her baby, her ship, the machine that spoke to her through her hands on its controls.

With a sigh, she lifted her gaze to Gliese burning before them.

“Look on the bright side,” she said without looking at Jackson. “Maybe you’ll finally get a tan.”

****

“The last ten years have not been easy. We are building a new home here, and overcoming the challenges set before us. But today is not about those challenges or the heroes who deal with them every day. Today is about giving thanks for everything that helped us to meet these challenges. Today, we celebrate everyone who brought us here and everything that allowed us to make this new start.”

****

Taftazani, Spine

Gliese 581 -15 minutes

“Fifteen minutes, Dave,” the calm voice said through the comlink.

“It’s David, you idiot machine.” Navigator Midori had said the same thing seven times in the last hour alone and he was getting testy.

Synthetics were supposed to learn but Calvin rebelled against that idea. It’s why they’d been stuck with him on this last voyage. Just in case human instincts and weaknesses got in the way of the mission, he was there to take over and make sure their course stayed true. Of course, the buggy synthetic that no-one could fix was the perfect solution; God forbid they should sacrifice something that might be of use to the colony.

The threshold rapidly rushing up on them wasn’t helping his mood, either. “And I’m on my way. Be there in three minutes.”

Three minutes was a long time in the Spine of the ship. The comlink switched off, leaving the crushing silence of space to press in on him, and he couldn’t stop himself from looking out of the viewports as he floated along the tube.

There wasn’t much to see. The Spine used to run through the heart of the ship, but that heart didn’t beat any more. The ship had been gutted, all her useful parts carved away, reformed, and stapled onto a new body. Even many of her bones had been taken, leaving great, gaping holes in her structure. She was a partial skeleton now, bared and broken.

The only things left were the parts that no-one could use. Interstellar engines and maps weren’t necessary if no-one was travelling between systems, and the colony leaders were determined to cut off any chance of people deciding to go back to Earth. It was Yuva or nothing. David didn’t blame them for that. Yuva was not what most had expected, and a lack of options was just as good as commitment, right?

A patch of hull blotted out his view of the starscape and threw a shadow across the Spine. Most of the plating had been peeled off and applied to the orbital platforms, but a hundred years was a long time. Meteor showers, blow-outs, pressure fluctuations, radiation, flaws in the metal; all of these things took their toll on a ship’s skin. Parts of it had been patched over so many times that it was too much work to scrape off the ship’s bones. So they’d taken the cleaner skin and left the Taftazani her scars.

David sighed and pulled himself along by the handrail. He was passing what used to be the arboretum, where they’d grown food and recycled the air. Once upon a time, it had been his favourite part of the ship. He’d seduced Jaspiri behind a clump of orange trees. She’d said that she could drink him all up and, for once, that line had made him laugh. Later, he’d married her on a lawn of lemongrass.

Now, there was a gap where it had been, an open mouth screaming blackly in the middle of the ship. The arboretum had been made part of a biodome somewhere, full of Yuva’s soil and strange plants that hadn’t been named yet.

The smell of oranges still reminded him of sex.

Past the space where the arboretum had been, the ribs that once held thousands of cryo-tubes scraped at the open starscape. Severed tubes dangled in places, tangling with neighbours in an achingly slow, weightless dance, as if time travelled differently for them. David had no time for existential observations, though; he yanked himself onwards, wishing that they’d left the speed-tugs in the Spine to make this transit faster.

He passed into the aft section of the ship with a shiver of relief. The doors to Engineering swished open and three people turned to see him. All of them glanced past him and he shook his head slowly.

“Captain’s not coming. He’s seeing her in, he said.” David’s regret was reflected in the faces before him.

“Thank you for trying, Dave,” Calvin’s disembodied voice said. “Did you offer him candy?”

David frowned and opened his mouth, but an arm sliding around his waist distracted him.

“Don’t listen to him,” Jaspiri said, her warm body floating up against him with the ease of long practice. “He’s just teasing you.”

“Synthetics aren’t supposed to tease.” His voice was testy but he wrapped an arm around her all the same, pulling her close. His other hand steadied them against a bulkhead, automatically correcting their float.

“I know. I’m sorry it didn’t work.”

She was talking about Captain Bellaqua now. He’d been like a father to David, the only male authority figure he’d ever been able to respect. And, though he’d never admit it aloud, love.

“It’s his last duty as captain, and you know what he’s like about that.” David frowned, trying not to miss the old man already.

“Yes.” Jaspiri sighed. “He’s in full uniform, isn’t he?”

“Yeah. No idea where he found it.” He couldn’t help it: a smile snuck up on him. The old man knew how to do things properly.

“Come on, you two,” Parker grumbled from across the room. “We got work to do. Clock’s ticking.”

David nodded and ducked his head to kiss his wife’s neck. Her hair was still perfectly black, even after forty years together, and he would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little jealous. But he smiled and wished there was more time, because she smelled of oranges.

(Part 2 coming soon!)

CAC: Characters Avoiding Conversation

This is one of my bugbears when it comes to fiction (of any kind: TV show; movie; comic; book). I’m sure you’ve all come across what I’m referring to: knowing that if Character A just talked to Character B, they would sort out Major Issue X. But they don’t, because they’re CAC (characters avoiding conversation – pronounced ‘kack’).

For example, if only Gandalf had said, “Elrond! I know these big eagles that can fly us to Mordor; none of that walking crap is necessary.” But no, we had to have two and a half books more to go the long way.

For another example, how many times have you said to a character, “Why didn’t you say that four chapters/episodes/hours ago?”

 There are lots of ways to create challenges, control plot, and create suspense in a story. Surprise events, hidden motives, personality quirks, character history, conspiracy: these are just a few of the options available. All of them help to pick a story up by its skirts and run it along to the end.

Another way is to have characters not share information. Of all of the available options, this simple mechanism is one of the weakest and can be the most aggravating for a reader, partly because it’s so easy to do it badly. When the characters blunder around in ignorance because they won’t/can’t talk to each other, it is frustrating to watch.

There are two ways in which this occurs and annoys the reader:

When the audience is aware of the information not being shared and there’s no good reason for that not to happen. They spend time waiting for the characters to share their pieces, and the longer the delay, the more frustrating it becomes. It’s nice when the characters catch up and everyone can move on with the story together.
When the information is revealed to characters and the audience at the same time, and the immediate reaction is, “You couldn’t have said that earlier?!” Continuity can fall down here, which also damages the story.

Both of these can come off as contrived and manipulative. The author’s hand can be obvious (good fiction strives to make the writer as invisible as possible) and intelligent audiences will resent it. I know it annoys me intensely.

There are several reasons why characters might avoid conversations:

Events conspire keep them apart, making it impossible to exchange information. This is possibly the most forgivable reason for CAC, depending on how contrived the events are and how often it happens. Once or twice might be good to raise tension; more than that, and the reader will start tapping their fingers, waiting for the writer to stop messing around and get on with it.
The characters decide not to mention it. They speak but fail to share the information that would drive the story forward. It can be a valid part of characterisation: perhaps one character is trying to hurt the other, or is competing. This can work. 

However, if not handled carefully, it’s often implausible: characters need a good reason not to mention the Major Issue in their lives. If it is in-character for someone to mention something, then they should.
Everyone is asking the wrong questions. Sometimes this is good and right. However, it’s similar to the point above: there must be a damned good reason for it or it quickly becomes lame and fake, as if there’s a pink elephant farting in the middle of the room and everyone is ignoring it.
They are interrupted before they can get to it. This is a specific application of events keeping characters apart, and not something to do more than once as it can easily slide into contrivance.

 Let me be clear: these can be valid tactics to use in a story. They can be used well and to good effect. But when they are used too often, it gives the impression that the writer is trying to string the story out. It’s a sign of not enough plot in a story and smacks of desperation. It’s often laziness and a lack of creativity on the writer’s part.

It can also be a sign of a lack of internal continuity. The example with Gandalf above could have been avoided by simply not having the eagles in Middle Earth (and making the Hobbits walk out of Mordor). It looks like the writer has made something up later in the story and forgotten that it might break the continuity or logic of earlier events.

As a rule of thumb, if you’re forcing delays into the story, you run the risk of making the plot and characters look contrived. The readers will most likely notice and be thrown out of the story.

Be smart about it. Be creative. Be plausible. Most of all, don’t make me want to bang your/your character’s heads together. No-one wants that.

Mythical timing

Or, don’t wait, write now

It’s so easy to find reasons not to write. I’m not talking about excuses: I’m talking about solid, unswerving reasons. The kids need to be picked up/put down. Dinner has to be cooked (and eaten). I have to do the day job. Need to clean the bathroom (because ew). Showering regularly is important (also for ew). Sleep is essential, because staying up all night makes me crazy crazy rocking loon.

They’re all valid parts of life. And in between all of those, where does writing fit? Where can it fit?

The truth is that it’s easy to never find the time. For most of us, writing is something we do in between all the other important stuff in our lives. But if you think that way, you’ll never write!

I used to think it was too hard. I thought, ‘I’ll never be able to do it, I’m too busy’. Then I did my first NaNoWriMo and wrote over 60,000 words in a month. A single month. NaNoWriMo is all about finding the time that usually escapes you and making it happen. It’s short-term and therefore (theoretically) easier.

It works. But you know what? So does making it happen in the longer term.

It is possible to make time. If writing is in your blood, if it itches at the front of your brain, if ideas crop up at the most inopportune moments, then write. Work a wedge in between doing the dishes and going to bed, or that quiet time when the kids are asleep. Use your lunch break. Hell, some people drop the day job altogether! For me, it’s my commute to and from work when I make the magic happen, wedged into a tiny train seat with a netbook.

Clear some space – in your day, in your house, in your brain – and devote it to writing. If you look hard enough, you’ll surprise yourself with what you can do. I know I did!

Don’t let yourself procrastinate. That’s a ride that never ends! If you’ve made some time to write, stick to it. The more you let yourself slide, the easier it is to just keep going and going and never stop long enough to put words to page.

Tell everyone what you’re doing. Let them know that you’re busy, that you’re unavailable, that whatever crisis is happening will have to wait. (Unless the crisis is really a crisis, but really, how often is that true?)

Give yourself deadlines. This doesn’t work for everyone, but it does wonders for me. It’s one of the reasons that web serials work so well for me.

There’s this illusion where peace reigns all around a writer, and there is nought but the tapping of keys or the scratch of a nib. That’s bollocks. Real writers living real lives squeeze it in between the sweaty guy who talks too loud and the kid with the thump-thump music beating out of his headphones. There is no magical time: we make it work because we love it.

No more excuses. No more reasons. The right time is now, so write now.

Review: Sucker Punch

I’ve toyed with writing a review for this movie since the first time I saw it. A lot has been said about it before, and while I don’t read reviews as a rule, I’ve heard many conflicting things from friends, the internet, and random other media. Most of those things were negative. I can’t help but wonder what movie they were watching.

I bought Sucker Punch out of idle curiosity and because it was cheap. The movie is so unlike what I had heard that I feel like I’ve got a review worth writing. And, hopefully, reading.

There will be lots of spoilers. Be warned!

Let’s start with the criticism I had heard of it, if only because it made Sucker Punch such a pleasant surprise for me. In a nutshell, the objections I had heard said that it was gratuitous and cheap, and it was little more than an excuse to dress pretty girls up in sexy clothing and run around trying to be kick-ass.

My response to that is that those critics didn’t understand what the movie was about. Yes, there are pretty girls in it, and they do kick ass in many awesome ways, but it is far from gratuitous or cheap. I’ll come back to the sexy clothing later.

This movie is smart. The smallest thing can have meaning. You have to pay attention if you want to pick up all the clues, and some of them will only make sense in hindsight. This isn’t some gaudy, smack-em-up movie you can watch with your brain switched off; it’s a lot more than that.

The Story

The movie starts with a sequence reminiscent of the beginning of Pixar’s Up. No dialogue, just action telling us the protagonist’s backstory leading up to her incarceration in a mental institution, overlaid by a beautiful rendition of the Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams. (The music is important in the movie, and beautifully done. I love soundtracks and this one is rapidly becoming one of my favourites.) It works wonderfully; I approve of sequences that work without dialogue, where skilful acting and cinematography can carry the story without words.

Then we are in the bleak world off the insane asylum. The setting is 1950s, when these establishments were still a viable place to dump troublesome young girls. Babydoll, our protagonist, has just accidentally killed her sister while trying to protect her from a lecherous step-father. He has bribed an orderly to get a rush lobotomy done on her, so that she can’t tell anyone what really happened.

Babydoll has one week before the doctor arrives at the asylum to perform the procedure. One week to escape. This story is about her fight for freedom, and though it doesn’t end as she had hoped, she is satisfied with how it all turns out. She achieves her own kind of freedom – one of spirit rather than body. She grows beyond herself and achieves a kind of redemption for the mistake that put her there.

She also pulls four other girls into her escape attempt and infects them with a desire for freedom. Babydoll is joined by the defensive Sweetpea, her little sister Rocket, the mis-named Blondie, and resourceful pilot Amber.

Alternate Realities

There are three different levels of reality in the movie, each more fantasized and abstract than the last. They are full of representation and meaning; they are metaphors and allegories. They build out the story in pieces, layer upon layer. In that way, it is like Inception, but without the plotholes (I may expand on that in a review of Inception one of these days, if I ever take the time to see it again).

The first level is reality: Babydoll’s grief, her mistake, and her incarceration in the asylum. The impending lobotomy. It is bleak and hard and painful.

The second layer is a brothel, where the girls dance for and ‘entertain’ the customers. It is colourful and glitzy in places, and in others the veil between it and the asylum is very thin.

In the brothel, the girls are objectified and abused. The escape plan is formulated and enacted at this level, rebelling against this world (as well as the asylum reality beneath it). It is a dressed-up prison from which the girls have to gain their freedom.

I find it interesting that Babydoll chooses a brothel as an abstract for the asylum. The sexual aspect of this world may not be entirely metaphorical (towards the end, the asylum orderlies say that they won’t ‘hurt these girls any more’, suggesting that they have been abusing them in some way, most likely sexually). What is clear is that the brothel world is better than reality, and that speaks volumes about just how awful the asylum was for these girls.

One of the main plot points is that the girls have to dance seductively for the clients. Surprisingly, we don’t ever see any of these dances; the closest we get is a glimpse of Sweetpea rehearsing, and her dance is graceful rather than provocative. In fact, she tells Babydoll off for writhing and moaning (in a dance that is not shown), because Sweetpea doesn’t like that kind of thing. A gratuitous movie would have shown us any or all of these things.

Babydoll’s dances are where the third level of reality/fantasy comes in. When she dances, she goes to a place in her head where nothing else can touch her. She steps into another world and experiences a story. I suspect that professional dancers will be familiar with this concept!

The movie takes us into those internal worlds with her and we never actually see her dance. That is one of the best choices the movie makes, in my opinion. We don’t need to see the dance (the reactions of other characters tell us all we need to know about it, and seeing them would have been gratuitous and unnecessary), and I love that the moviemakers made the choice not to show them. What we do see is much more important.

Each dance takes us into a different world, depending on what Babydoll needs to do most at the time. The first one is about summoning her courage and weapons to start to fight back against where she is; it’s the start of her journey to freedom. She has to learn how to fight and realise that she is capable of it. At the end, she is equipped with resolve: her most important weapon of all.

In the second world, we see all five girls working together for the first time. Here, they have to learn to act as a team and trust each other to retrieve an item they need in order to escape. The third and fourth dances enact further parts of the plan, each one different, each one changing the girls as they work towards their goal.

The Fantasies

Let me say up front that the four fantasy worlds are beautifully put together. They are creative and convincing, and worked seamlessly into the narrative so that they don’t jar at all, despite being wildly unlike the brothel that we have just stepped out of. The soundtrack shines through and around these scenes, smoothing off the edges and helping to stitch the movie together.

These worlds are, I think, the parts of the movie that have seen the most criticism. This is where the girls kick ass; this is where they take hold of their courage and their power; and this is where they are their most impressive. They set out on a mission and they take on anything in their way without hesitation (even when that ‘thing’ is a huge, fire-breathing dragon).

In their minds, they can have swords and guns, and they can hack down their enemies. All of their enemies are carefully and pointedly not humans: they are demons, or clockwork zombies, or orcs, or robots. Therefore, the girls never turn to actual killing, not even in their fantasies; this is about will and courage, not brutality. In reality, these girls are powerless and trapped, but this is a journey and standing up to enemies on the inside is the first step. Each piece builds towards a greater whole.

And do they dress sexy to do it? Mostly, yes, though not overly so. They’re not gratuitously running around in skimpy outfits – they are, for the most part, sensibly dressed and modestly covered up. Babydoll is the exception, with her fondness for the schoolgirl outfit, but the others are more practical.

Let’s not forget that this is a fantasy world, and, more importantly, this is the girls’ fantasy. What girl would dress herself up in ugly clothing and ratty hair in her own fantasy? Girls like to feel pretty and sexy, so it’s no surprise that they’re dressed up, with make up on and their hair done. They don’t look like whores; they look like girls who know how to look after themselves. (Even in the brothel, they’re dressed like dancers rather than hookers or strippers.)

The costumes reflect their personalities as well. It’s no accident that Sweetpea’s outfits get more armoured as the story progresses: she is the protective older sister, always defending Rocket when the younger girl gets herself in trouble. Babydoll’s schoolgirl outfit is an expression of her personality, too, rather than something imposed upon her.

The Heroines

The movie opens with a voice-over (before the silent sequence) that talks about angels. There is, at that point, no clue about who that voice-over might be from, or who the angels she’s talking about are.

The voice-over doesn’t return until the end of the movie, and it’s not until then that we find out who the movie was really about. Only one of the five girls completes the journey to freedom and makes it out of the asylum, and it’s not the one the viewer might expect.

I like that Babydoll doesn’t get to walk off into the sunset. She gets a brighter, sadder end to her story, but it’s one she’s content with. It’s the price she’s willing to pay. In a single week, she has not forgiven herself for killing her sister, but she has gained a kind of redemption by helping someone more worthy to become free. She’s a heroine, even though the story isn’t entirely about her.

When I picked up Sucker Punch, I wasn’t expecting an intelligent movie. I wasn’t even expecting a good movie. What I found was a smart, slick, beautiful tale with stunning visuals and an outstanding soundtrack. I thoroughly enjoyed watching (and re-watching) it. I recommend that you give it a try; maybe you’ll be surprised, too.

Starwalker shorts

In the hiatus between the first and second books of Starwalker, I released a couple of villain shorts I’d done. They were about characters in the Starwalker universe (but not part of the web serial story), and I had all kinds of plans about doing a whole series of the shorts. I even planned out a list of things I wanted to do and started follow-up stories to those two pieces.

Then, as often happens, various life factors got in the way and distractions appeared, and I put them aside for a while. ‘A while’ turned into a year and then some. I’ve thought about them occasionally in the meantime but I haven’t done much more with them.

Lately, I’ve had more mental space to deal with side projects. I got to thinking that maybe some kind of prequel or ‘specials’ book around Starwalker’s characters would be a good freebie to put on offer to draw people into the series (when I finally get around to editing and releasing the series as ebooks, that is).

One thing led to another, and now I’ve got ideas clamouring for little short stories about the Starwalker’s crew. Fragments of their lives before they came aboard the ship. I’ve written one about Rosie already, and I’m hoping to get one or two more done soon.

Rosie’s one surprised me. I had planned it to involve something of a mentor figure, but the story had an idea of its own. It wound up involving Henry from the previous shorts instead, in a collision of characters and ideas that worked so well I wish I’d meant to do it from the start! I love it when that happens.

Now I’m wondering what to do with it. I could just post it up on the web serial site, or save them for the ebook, but those seem like the easy, lazy options. There are so many more things I could do with them.

I could do monthly specials, featuring a different character every month. That would mean having enough done and releasable to make it a decent run! I don’t know if I could commit to that. I hate making promises I can’t keep, and a ‘series’ of two shorts would be disappointing for everyone.

I could offer incentives. I could release one every time donations reach a certain level. Or whenever I get so many reviews (though I’m not a fan of ‘buying’ reviews, so probably not this one). Or when so many merchandise items are sold. Or every time I get a new (non-spam) commenter on the site.

So many options! I’d kinda like it to be a thing, though, and not just something I throw up on the website. My readers are fantastic and I’d like to get them involved, too.

So what do you all think? Tell me! In the meantime, I’m going to ponder whose story to do next and maybe even write something.

Publishing on Kindle: thoughts and experiences

I published the first two Apocalypse Blog books (Book 1 and the prequel, Book 0) through Kindle Direct Publishing back in September last year. In March and April this year, I managed to get Books 2 and 3 out (respectively).

My sales weren’t great at first. I sold a few handful books every month and the Amazon ranking was around 500,000 (out of more than a million books). It was slow and I figured it would take me forever to earn enough royalties for a payout. I don’t have the time or money for a lot of marketing, so my chances of climbing the ranks were down to luck.

Then something unexpected happened. In March, my sales spiked significantly – I noticed that the rankings were at 200,000 and rising. At first, I thought it was the release of Book 2, even though I had done little promotion to warrant such a change. Also, all of the books were selling well, not just the new one. Bewildered, I looked into it further, curious about what might have caused it.

What I found was that Book 0 was now available for free. Amazon doesn’t allow authors to offer books for free (outside of the KDP Select program, which I haven’t tried yet); the only way for it to happen is through price-matching. It seems that they had noticed that I have Book 0 available for free through other stores such as Smashwords, Apple, and Barnes & Noble, and matched the Amazon price to it.

Mystery solved! As hundreds of copies were downloaded, I bewilderedly watched the Book 0 rankings soar, dropping digits off until it was hovering between 1,500 and 4,000. It even made it into triple digits a few times.

Not only that: Book 0 made it into Amazon’s top 100! In the Science Fiction chart, it has been as high as the top 30, and usually appears in the top 100 listing somewhere.

Better yet, books 1 and 2 also started doing well as a result (the ones that are not free!). I believe it was a mixture of knock-on sales from Book 0 and the increased visibility of the series as a whole. When Book 3 was released, it galloped up the charts to sit with the rest of the (paid-for books in) the series.

The paid-for books have had pretty steady sales over the months since Book 0 went free. It wasn’t a temporary bump of sales; if it was, it hasn’t ended yet! The paid-for books are all currently sitting around 50,000 in the rankings (there’s some variation, but that’s where I usually see them). That’s in the top 5% of all the books on Amazon!

I’m so proud. Self-publishing feels like a shot in the dark to me, putting my work out there because I want it, with little idea about how worthy it really is of taking up space on people’s shelves (virtual or otherwise). But it’s selling and people like it. I can’t say how happy that makes me!

I can see why the publishing houses are leaning towards preferring series rather than standalone books these days. The knock-on sales are fantastic.

Now I’m looking forward to the next ebooks I might release – Starwalker – and I’m wondering how I can make this work again. I need a free first book to pull people into the main series. I don’t have a prequel for that series! Not yet, anyway. It something to think about!