Hans Cummings's Blog, page 15

Zack Jackson & The Cytherean Academy now on Smashwords

Zack Jackson & The Cytherean Academy has finally made it on to Smashwords (and thus, will make its way into the eBook stores for Barnes & Noble, iBooks, and every where else their premium catalog delivers).

In addition, I have fixed the files for Zack Jackson & The Cult of Athos and Iron Fist of the Oroqs, so those titles are also now included in Smashwords premium catalog. There will be no such delay with my next title, Zack Jackson & The Hives of Valtra.

If you’ve been waiting to get them in ebook form, but don’t have a Kindle, now’s the time.

And while you’re at it, if you have the time, vote for me for Best Local Author in Nuvo’s 2014 Readers’ Choice Best of Indy!

Vote for Me!

Thanks to everyone who nominated me, I am on the ballot for Nuvo’s 2014 Best of Indy as Best Local Author!

Vote for Me

(You could also vote for Q Artistry as Best Local Performing Arts Group and in the other categories they’re in, I know they’d appreciate it!)

If you’re an out-of-town Gen Con attendee, this is a good time to recognize your favorite local restaurants and food trucks, as well!

Sojourn: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction – Author Interview Series

For the first Friday in May, my author interview is with Elizabeth Roper, author of “Destiny.”

Where did you get the idea for your story?

I have a weakness for thieves, cat burglars specifically. I love heist movies like To Catch a Thief and wanted to write something similar. Stealing jewels felt boring, so I went with something a little more high stakes. It fit perfectly with the political situation that is developing in the setting.

I was watching the interactions between my friends and their siblings and then later the interactions between my two boys. They can either be best friends or worst enemies, depending on the minute. I am an only child, so that is foreign to me. I started developing the idea into what it would  be like to have someone who is your biggest ally or your worst nightmare and never knowing which you’d get. Even though the centerpiece of the story is a theft, that is just the framework. It’s really about family ties and the knots they can develop into.

Do you plan to write more stories in that setting or with those characters?

The short answer is yes. The island of Barinth is the setting for a novel I’m writing and Tamsin is one of the key players. Short stories such as “Destiny” allows me to explore her background a bit before the events of the novel.

What was the appeal of Sojourn for you?

Being able to contribute something to the community that has become such a large part of our lives. It was really great to be a part of the effort and watch the anthology grow and succeed.

What was your favorite part about writing for the Sojourn anthology?

Being introduced to so many different worlds and characters through helping other members of the community with their stories.

Did you learn anything while writing your story, if so, what?

That I talk too much. In all seriousness, the plot I had set out was ambitious for the word limit, almost too ambitious. I had to really strip the narrative down. It is still more verbose in places, but it is better than it was.

Is there any trivia or behind-the-scenes information about your story you would like to share?

Another name for the Lia Fail is the Stone of Scone. It a large red sandstone block that has been used in Scottish coronations for centuries and English coronations since the uniting of the crowns. I know this doesn’t take place in Scotland, but with a name like the Stone of Destiny how could I pass it up?

What was the biggest influence on your story?

I am a student of history and am firmly convinced it is taught wrong. The behind the scenes stories of historical events are much more interesting than the dates and dry facts. I tried to tell the story I had with that view in mind.

Is there anything else you would like to talk about?

Thank you to everyone involved for the support and allowing me to be a part of the effort. A special thank-you to Branden Leavens. He really helped me step up my game and bring a lot of ideas into focus.

eBooks vs. Print

One thing that really bothers me about American society today is how there are a lot of very vocal people who insist that a thing be one way or another. There can be no compromises. There can be none of this having both, one must choose.

I think it’s crap.

In particular, I’m talking about these debates between printed book and eBooks. I’ve heard multiple people insist that one format is superior to the other, always has been, ever shall be, and anyone who thinks differently is stupid, foolish, or just a bad person.

Screw that.

I like books. I love flipping through a book with gorgeous art. I love the smell of old books (as long as they’re not moldy). When I want to show off a book or display them on shelves, nothing beats a printed tome. But when I want to read a book, particularly one that does not rely on picture or graphics to make its point? I find eBooks to be more convenient and easier to read.

I want both.

I love my red-leather bound, gilded page edition of The Lord of the Rings. It looks great on my shelf, it feels great, but the next time I read it I am going to turn on my e-reader and read the eBook version I bought last year. It’s lighter, it doesn’t require me to set it on a table to read for an extended session, and I take carry it with me wherever I go without back strain because Amazon’s WhisperSync allows me to keep my place between my Kindle app and my e-reader.

Some people have a better reading experience with printed books, irregardless of size, format, or weight. That’s great. Good for them. We can both enjoy the reading experience we prefer and it does not affect anyone else’s reading experience. The words are the same, the method by which the light and patterns which form those words and enter our brains does not matter.

The divisiveness rampant in today’s society sickens me. “X is better than Y. Y is bad and if you like Y you are bad.” The only reason I can think for it is there are a lot of people to whom the Internet has given voice who have a pathological need to not only be right, but to make sure everyone with whom they come into contact knows they’re right and agrees with them.

Revisiting an Old Story

Back in 2008, I was proud of my successful completion of NaNoWriMo 2007. I wrote a ninety-five thousand-ish-word superhero story in thirty days, so I was confident and ready to write again. On Nov. 1, 2008, I started Clockwork Cowboy, a western fantasy, which I describe as a Steampunk-Horror-Western. It features London lawman John Slade and his succubus partner Serafina as they track down one of the most notorious and elusive killers of that era: Jack the Ripper. I did a lot of Ripper research in preparation and pulled together resources to help me make the time period feel authentic. In just ten days, I was already twenty-two thousand words into the story and feeling good about it.

Then, on Nov. 11, I awoke to find my wife had died in the night. I spent the next week dealing with the immediate fallout from that life-changing event, and I never recovered my desire to sit down and work on the story. I think I wrote an additional five hundred words on it all month.

Life moved on. I still had the Clockwork Cowboy files, of course, and the story sat there in the back of my mind, percolating. Since shelving Clockwork Cowboy, I finished five other novels, two short stories, started three additional novels, and jotted down notes for a handful more. I would open the files every once in a while, tweak a few lines here and there but never really did anything with it. Last week, though, something changed. I never forgot where I wanted the story to go, and I opened the file again. I started tinkering with it as I read through from the beginning. My writing style has changed a bit since 2008, so I fixed those twenty-two thousand words to bring them up to my current style. I found while reading the story that I still really liked it. Some of the imagery was better than that which I’d written and published since then. When I finished updating the old stuff, I continued writing. In one day, I wrote more new material for Clockwork Cowboy than I had in the previous five to six years combined. After just a few days, I’m up to nearly thirty thousand words and am still inspired to keep going.

I always thought it would be difficult to get back into a story I had more or less abandoned, especially one I hadn’t worked on in over five years. I guess it just goes to show that sometimes stepping away from story with which you’re having trouble can be the best thing for that story. It gives me hope for my other “abandoned” stories, particularly Scars of the Sundering. Maybe the problem isn’t that the story won’t work, it’s just that I need to spend more time thinking about it. Several hundred years ago, I guess we would have said that I’m still trying to find my muse.

Sojourn: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction – Author Interview Series

This week’s interview is with Peter Martin, author of “Crossing the River.”

Where did you get the idea for your story?

The original story idea came from musing about where a paladin’s fear immunity comes from, but along the way, it transformed a bit. The setting is actually one I came up with to run my Saving The Game co-hosts through, but I think it’s just a writing setting now.

Do you plan to write more stories in that setting or with those characters?

Yes, to both parts of that question. I’d really like to do more with my Lantern Knights and show what they do when they aren’t battling their own internal demons.

What was the appeal of Sojourn for you?

A chance to get published and a reason to force myself to write.

What was your favorite part about writing for the Sojourn anthology?

Working with the editors. Both were great, but Laura in particular really went above and beyond. I think I went through at least a half-dozen revisions with her before I even submitted my final draft.

That I enjoyed working with them so much surprised me a bit, because I figured it would be like getting a paper graded over and over again. I was very pleased to discover that was not at all the case. I’m incredibly grateful for their input; the story, short though it is, is MUCH better for their oversight.

There’s a whole sequence at the beginning I added after talking with Laura, and some of the messages of internal struggle got a lot more frank and direct when Ryan mentioned that he didn’t think the river was an imposing enough hazard. That was incredibly valuable,because I didn’t want the river to be much more than a convenient symbolic device.

Did you learn anything while writing your story, if so, what?

Yes. That I tend to do my best work when I’m writing material that touches on themes I need to remind myself of. The internal struggles of my protagonist are very similar to my own; writing the story was almost therapeutic.

Is there any trivia or behind-the-scenes information about your story you would like to share?

This particular drum has probably been beaten so much that it’s just a loose collection of drum parts by now, but I continue to be impressed by what a joy everyone associated with Fear the Boot is to work with. The contract we signed was incredibly favorable, and Laura and Ryan were great to work with. If you’re looking at submitting something to Sojourn 2, don’t worry about the human side!

What was the biggest influence on your story?

My own religious faith and studies. I’m a moderate/progressive Christian, and the image of God as a loving, kind figure who desperately wants His wayward children to come home is a theme I’ve been contemplating a lot in the last few years. Passages like Psalm 103:12 and Isaiah 1:18 were very influential in how I portrayed God in the story.

Is there anything else you would like to talk about?

Thanks to Dan, Laura, and Ryan for making the anthology possible, and thanks to you for doing these author pieces!

Nominate Me for Best Local Author – Indianapolis

Nominate me for Best Local Author – Indianapolis

Sojourn: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction – Author Interview Series

This week’s interview is with Dan Repperger, author of “Surviving Sunset” and host of the Fear the Boot podcast.

Where did you get the idea for your story?

When people talk about history, we seem to focus on what happened but not always why.  As an armchair historian, I’ve always been fascinated by deconstructing the people who created history’s major turning points.  What kind of person did these great or horrible things?  What were their motivations and fears?  Strengths and weaknesses?  Life story before and after the events?

How did Hitler become so evil?  What kind of music did George Washington like?  What made Clifton Sprague crazy enough to fight the Battle off Samar and resourceful enough to win?

That’s really what inspired “Surviving Sunset.”  The story is about a major event (i.e. the fall and occupation of an entire planet), but that’s used as a mechanism to test the characters and draw out who they are when social facades are literally and figuratively burned away.

Do you plan to write more stories in that setting or with those characters?

Yes.  In fact, I already have.  I first started developing the setting in 1997.  It went without a name for many years before I settled on Epoch of Rysos.  In the early 2000s, I was contracted to publish serial fiction about another corner of the setting.  That series ran for several years before the publisher shut down; however, I continued developing the idea.

I’ve been asked to do something quite specific for the next volume of Sojourn, but I have every intention of revisiting Epoch of Rysos in volume three, as well as trying my hand at a solo project somewhere along the way.

What was the appeal of Sojourn for you?

First and most importantly, it was a collaborative project with people I knew and respected.  Having that sense of community kept me focused, motivated, and pushing myself harder than I would have if I’d been doing it on my own.  I think it also made the whole thing feel less intimidating, since I wasn’t doing it alone.

Second, I’m humble enough to admit I’ve not spent nearly as much time perfecting my writing as I have my speaking (mostly through eight years of podcasting).  I didn’t feel quite ready to tackle a novel.  But a short story done with the support of friends and oversight of professional editors?  That felt like a very reasonable goal.

What was your favorite part about writing for the Sojourn anthology?

Having it done!  Not because it was a dreadful process—farthest thing from it—but because of the awesome feeling of holding the book in my hands, seeing it on the shelves of bookstores, and hearing how much readers have enjoyed it cover-to-cover.  It’s that indescribable joy of saying, “Hey, we did this.”

Did you learn anything while writing your story, if so, what?

A piece of fiction is only yours when you’re creating it.  The moment you put it in front of other people, it becomes a shared idea.  A reader’s own life experiences will influence how they interpret your story, and they just might understand parts of what you wrote better than you do.

When I was first drafting the story, there was a central character by the name of Hollenbach who was trying to win for the sake of “king and country” without any real regard for the people caught in the middle.  That clashed with the more humanitarian views of his second-in-command, Mercer, until various characters were able to out some of Hollenbach’s secrets and get him deposed as unfit for command.  However, if you’ve read the story, you never encountered that character.

When the editors first looked at my story, they felt he was almost a distraction, taking up space that would have been better spent developing the other characters.  And they were right.

I’m a firm believer in respecting authorial intent, but I think authors that stick to their guns too firmly can miss out on the chance to explore some of their best ideas, simply because they’re so focused on one aspect of the narrative that they don’t realize the even bigger potential sitting untouched elsewhere.

Is there any trivia or behind-the-scenes information about your story you would like to share?

Back in the early-to-mid 1990s, my brother and I co-wrote material for Battletech.  We started writing through AWOL Productions (publisher of the official fan magazine at the time) and then later doing small projects for FASA itself.  We were given a shot at some bigger projects, but unfortunately FASA went under before any of them saw the light of day.

While many elements of “Surviving Sunset” are original to this project—and almost all of them are original to Epoch of Rysos—some of the specifics about the resistance and its leadership were resurrected from those unpublished Battletech projects. For example, John Mercer was originally written as the second-in-command of a mercenary corps that had been defeated by the Clans and lost its original leader in the process.  He inherited the unenviable task of trying to inspire a shattered organization he wasn’t qualified to lead and then pit it against a vastly superior enemy.  All of the specifics changed when I ported him to Surviving Sunset, but the character is still there and has an arc drawn from what I developed years ago.

There’s a lot more ahead for him, and it’s been fun trying to figure out how to adapt a Battletech-inspired story into a very different setting.

What was the biggest influence on your story?

I already mentioned an interest in the human dimension of history, which heavily influenced the framework of the story.  However, since the story focuses on two sisters, I had to draw from the most reliable source I had: growing up with two younger sisters.  I vividly remember how I interacted with them and how they interacted with each other—the love, unintended cruelty, misunderstandings, difference even just a few years of age made in how we viewed the world, and inexplicable bond that just keeps drawing us back together.

Is there anything else you would like to talk about?

I’d like to thank the authors and editors who believed in the project enough to make the book a reality, putting in the work needed to make it something we can all be proud of.  I also want to thank the readers who believed in us enough to take a chance on the book.

Volume Two is already shaping up to be an even larger and better collection—featuring many of the authors from Volume One—so stay tuned for more!  I’m excited and already partway through writing a fantasy-themed comedy about a gnoll that wants to save Christmas.

 

Sojourn: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction – Author Interview Series

This week’s interview is with Robert Freund, author of “Keepers of the Flame.”

Where did you get the idea for your story?
I must have watched a documentary at some point about Neanderthals that sparked my interest in human prehistory.  I did a little bit of research on my own about the subject and found that period of time to be fascinating.  In particular, it was the theory that Neanderthals went extinct likely through a combination of warfare and crossbreeding with humans that sparked my imagination.  My mind naturally went to a colorful place in making up a reason behind the slow dying-off of Neanderthals.

Do you plan to write more stories in that setting or with those characters?
I don’t have any plans to do so as of now.  I think I told the story that needed to be told, and I’m satisfied with that.

What was the appeal of Sojourn for you?
Sojourn provided me with two opportunities that I couldn’t pass up.  Firstly, as an aspiring writer, the chance of exposing my work to an audience wider than my friends and family was uplifting and inspiring.  Even before I knew the fullness of Ryan, Laura, and Dan’s dedication to the project, I was more than happy to add my voice to the project.  Secondly, the anthology was planned from the start as a community effort, and I’ve never been part of an online community as inclusive and good-natured as the one that has formed around Fear the Boot.  Not only were we displaying the talent of the Writer’s Guild sub-group, but that of the hosts, fans, and friends of the podcast.

What was your favorite part about writing for the Sojourn anthology?
Knowing that I was a part of something that was bigger than any one of us (by which I mean the contributors, the editors, Dan, etc.).  There was an entire community behind it, even if most of that community was unaware of the anthology’s existence for most of that time.  The result is more than I could have imagined, and truly something that we can all take pride in.

Did you learn anything while writing your story, if so, what?
I learned a lot, and I think I’ve grown significantly as a writer during the whole process.  After numerous false starts (there were eight attempts at writing this story, one breaking the 2000-word mark, before my wife finally helped me find the right voice and tone), I ultimately chose a tense which I have never used before—present tense—and paid very close attention to the language and terminology that I put into the story.  And I think those little touches, like the boy thinking of hyenas as laughing hounds or sabertooth cats as longtooth cats, really helped set the atmosphere and bring the reader into the boy’s world.  It really helps a piece of writing to think long and hard about the sort of language the characters would use, the way they would see things, in the context of their own environment.

It being my first time working with editors, I learned a lot about that part of the process as well.  My dealings with Laura and Ryan were always polite, professional, and constructive, leaving me to hope that any editors I might work with in the future are of similar demeanor.  This side of it is all about telling your story in the best way for your audience.  There are always going to be disagreements, but the biggest lesson I’ve taken away is this: as long as both the writer and the editor maintain their professionalism and an open mind, the process can be relatively painless.  Dare I say, it can be downright pleasant.

Is there any trivia or behind-the-scenes information about your story you would like to share?
I know what the Keepers of the Flame are in this made-up version of human history, but I like to leave most of it to the readers for speculation.  All I really want to say is that they are NOT aliens.  There is every other imaginable way to interpret the evidence, so long as you don’t think they are aliens.

What was the biggest influence on your story?
Apart from my interest in Neanderthals and prehistory (fleeting as it was, looking back), I would imagine the biggest influence was Robert E. Howard.  I’m not as widely read as I would like, but he is the only writer I can recall who has a number of short stories that are set in the mists of prehistory, even if you don’t count his Kull and Conan tales.  The one I recall in particular was called “The Valley of the Worm,” which was about a prehistoric hunter and featured, among other beasts, terrifying sabertooths.

Sojourn: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction – Author Interview Series

Tom McNeil is the author of “Top of the Heap,” and the next victim author in my interview series.

Where did you get the idea for your story?

I started writing “Top of the Heap” around 2002.  At the time, I had read several articles on the Internet by futurists claiming that, because of the rate of advancement of medical technology, immortality might be just around the corner. I wanted to write a story based around an idea, in the classic Sci-Fi sense, and I latched onto the idea of immortality. Similarly, articles about climate change were also hard to avoid. It seemed natural to set a story about an immortal at some time in the future, and a future in which some type of climate change even had happened only seemed logical.

Thinking more about immortality, I asked myself what an immortal life might be like. What would a person do once they had earned enough money to never have to work again?  Wouldn’t they get bored?  Not to give too much of the story away, but thinking of answers to that question was the spark that led me to write the story. During the writing process, I fleshed out more of the characters, gave them a history and incorporated that into the “Top of the Heap” giving the main character, Dale Medici, more of a motivation than just boredom.

Do you plan to write more stories in that setting or with those characters?

I am toying with the idea of writing a novel about Dale Medici.  There were a few ideas that I had for “Top of the Heap” that I liked but just couldn’t fit in.  After I finished it, I realized that a third idea that had been bouncing around in my head (a civilization with no fossil fuels) would fit perfectly in the future world described in the short story, and once I made that connection, I was flooded with new themes, ideas, bits, scenes, characters, and an overall conflict.  I even came up with a title – “The Lost Art of Making Fire.” I’ve never even attempted to write anything that long, but I feel motivated to at least give it a try.

What was the appeal of Sojourn for you?

The Fear The Boot Community. Dan, Ryan, and Laura were all incredibly supportive and helpful. For me, they took a lot of the fear and guess work out of the process. I think all writers fear rejection, but the way this project came about lessened that fear quite a bit for me.  Also, being a collection by lots of different writers with varying styles and subjects reduced the pressure quite a bit.  I realized that if I made “Top of the Heap” the best story I could, some readers would like it and others would not —and that’s fine.  In fact, that’s a good thing.  Fiction should be written with an intended audience in mind.

What was your favorite part about writing for the Sojourn anthology?

The editing and, in my case, re-writing process was fun, once I got to it.  It was great to get honest feedback from someone that was not a best friend or family member.  Honest feedback is essential.  Laura was especially helpful in getting my story finished.

Did you learn anything while writing your story, if so, what?

The story is more important than your ego.  I’m 49.  So, sometimes I have to fight off the feeling that I am older and wiser than everyone else—because it usually isn’t true. When I first brought “Top of the Heap” to a writer’s group meeting/online review session and read it out loud (and I’m sorry, I do not remember who was there), the almost universal feedback I got was, to paraphrase, “we love the idea, but the way you told the story stinks.” Faced with that, I felt my ego well up, and I almost withdrew thinking that maybe I was not a good fit for this.  But, in a rare moment of maturity, I decided to take a step back and try it “their” way—which basically meant re-writing the whole thing.  I had a lot of roadblocks and false starts, but once I got the first re-write done, I realized they were right.  It not only became a much better story, but it allowed me to add more material than the original version had.

Is there any trivia or behind-the-scenes information about your story you would like to share?

It takes place on an island in the Saint Lawrence river.  I used to go to that area on vacation with my family as a kid, so I described it as a combination of how I remember it and how it might be different in the future. Also, there is a pun, sort of, in the narrative pretty early on, but no one has ever pointed it out to me.  It might be too subtle.  I keep waiting for someone to send me a “I saw what you did there” comment, but so far—nothing.

What was the biggest influence on your story?

I am a fan of classic science fiction, particularly Isaac Asimov and Fred Pohl.  Their stories were always based around a fantastic idea or concept and how people would react to it.  They wrote stories that challenged you to think, and I wanted that feeling in “Top of the Heap.”  Hopefully, that came through to at least some of the readers. I think my dream job as a writer would be to write episodes for an anthology series like “The Twilight Zone” or “The Outer Limits.”

Is there anything else you would like to talk about?

I just want to thank Dan, Ryan, and Laura for everything they did on this project.It was great working with them, and I look forward to working with them again on Sojourn Volume 2.