S.K. Dunstall's Blog, page 29

Wishing you the best of the season

We went for a walk around our neighbourhood last night to see the Christmas lights.

If anything epitomises change, this is it.  The students are moving out, families are moving in. And with the families come the family-like things that we hadn’t even realised people around here didn’t do much—until they started doing them.

Young children in the street. People walking their dogs. Decorating the house at Christmas time.

Change has crept up on us.

So has Christmas, and the end of another year.

We’ve been busy, both at work and with writing. Some specific highlights for us were the release of Alliance and Confluence, selling our first foreign rights (Japanese), and the new book.

We’ve both got the week off, and we’re looking forward to relaxing. Reading a book or two, writing some more, seeing some movies.

Here’s wishing all of you a happy holiday and best wishes for the festive season.

So much to write, so little time

A lot of people have asked when the next Linesman book is coming, and what it will be about.

Here are our writing plans at present. Everything is subject to change, and, also, to contracts, because if we don’t get contracts for the books then we can’t sell them.

We’ll definitely write them, though.

 

More Ean Lambert

We have another trilogy planned with Ean Lambert as the main character.  These books follow on from Confluence.

I don’t want to give away spoilers, but … The New Alliance is settling into the changes that resulted from the end of that book.  Captain Terrigal is ship captain, trying to believe that his mentor, Admiral Katida, hasn’t betrayed him, while struggling with the knowledge that his ship doesn’t automatically do what he says first.

The lines ships are starting to get personalities.

There’s a new ship being integrated into the Eleven fleet, because Abram wants the new ship, and the Wendell, to go alien hunting.

But before they can do that, the aliens bring their war to human territory.  Along with their ideas on how the lines should be treated.

And those ideas don’t necessarily match with those of Ean’s; or of the ships under his line twelve custodianship.

We haven’t started writing this series at all.

This is about as much of we know of any story plot before we start writing. More than most, because we have backstory we don’t normally have.  What we need now is a better idea of the aliens.  They’re still unformed.

 

Stars Uncharted

This is the book we are contracted* to write next.

It is not a Linesman book.

It’s actually the book we started writing while Linesman was doing the rounds. Back when we thought Linesman wasn’t going to sell and we’d have to start something completely fresh.  We stopped about a quarter of the way in, to rewrite Linesman.  But it was the first story we went back to when we were done with Confluence.

We love it. We’re enjoying it.  It’s a space opera adventure with a bit of fun, characters we both love, and lots of things happening.  (Less politics, for those of you who found there was too much politics in the Linesman books.)

It’s set in a totally different universe.

*Normally we wouldn’t even say we have the contract yet, but it has been announced in Publisher’s Lunch and in Locus, and we’ve been told we can mention it.  Even so, we feel a bit superstitious about even saying this until we get the paper in our hand.  Contracts take a long time, and can fall through.  We’ll give you more details once we have that paper.

Fact, for all the writers out there. We got our contract to sign for the Linesman books around the same time we submitted the finished Linesman to our editor.

 

Other books in the Linesman universe

While our agent was first trying to sell Linesman, and before we began Stars Uncharted, we wrote two other stories in the Linesman series. Back then, we weren’t planning to write three books about Ean Lambert.  We planned books set in the same universe, but with different protagonists. The first of these was Acquard’s War.  (Readers of this blog who remember us talking about Acquard, we’ve recently added the ‘War’, because we now we want to do a second book, Acquard’s Revenge as well.)

This is the story of a retired Balian covert ops team who get tangled up with space pirates, which drags them into the war between the New Alliance and Gate Union/Redmond.  It’s set at the end of Linesman, just after the New Alliance is created, but before they more to permanent headquarters on Haladea III.

We don’t know if there’s a market for non-Ean Lambert stories.  It’s one of three ideas we offered to Caitlin, our agent, when she asked what we were writing next.  She liked Stars Uncharted better, so that’s the one we worked on.

We love the ideas in this story.  We adore the characters.  And therein lies the problem.

People soup.

Both our agent and our editor (and also some of our readers) think we include too many characters in our stories.  (And they’re right.) .  The first thing both of them ask us to do in any edit is to reduce the number of characters.

Most times we can.  But we’re struggling with Acquard’s crew. She has a crew of seven, and there’s a lot happening in the rest of the book as well.  If we don’t fix it, this story has to become a trunk novel.

We’re going to fix it.

When we get the time.

Renovating a kitchen is a lot like writing a novel

Our kitchen will not be like this. Our kitchen is tiny. We don’t have the room to to put anything in the middle of the kitchen.

As you can see from the title, we’re in the middle of renovating our kitchen.  We’re also in the middle of writing a novel.  The process has similarities.

What a great idea

You go in with nothing but your imagination.  You have this great idea, and because nothing is real yet, you know this is going to be the best book/kitchen ever.

The reality of the synopsis

Because we’re writing to contract now, the synopsis comes before the book.  It sells the book.

Likewise, the design sells the kitchen.

Even so, what’s on the page is only an outline of what’s to come.

Signing the contract

We’ve agreed to this. It’s real. Have we done the right thing?

Day one

The first chapter.  It’s basic. It’s rough, but it’s done.  The novel shows promise.

Day one of a kitchen renovation is demolition. The bones of the kitchen look old and grotty, but it’s going to look better.  You know it will.

The first draft

The cabinets go in. It looks … ordinary. Not much different from what you had before. You wonder if you did the right thing.

The first draft of your novel is rough. It’s the bare outline.  It’s a mess in places. You wonder how you’ll be able to pull it together.

Subsequent drafts

In the kitchen the doors of the cabinets go on. The stove goes in. The sink.  A plumber arrives and you have a sink and a working dishwasher. An electrician arrives and you have lights that work. A plasterer comes and adds architraves. A painter comes

It’s starting to show promise.

Each draft of the novel improves it. You submit your novel.  Your editor and agent get help you to improve it.

The wow factor

The novel is edited. It gets a cover. It turns into a book.  Wow.

Our kitchen hasn’t got its wow factor yet, but we already know it will be the splashback.  (Either that or it will be an epic fail.)

It’s like a book. We won’t know the end product until we get there.

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Exhausted

We are exhausted. Can’t stop yawning. It’s been a weird week, with so much non-book stuff happening. It was surreal to launch the book in the same week.

Confluence has been out nearly a week now.

Thank you, all of you, you said some great things about the book.

Lots of you have asked about the next book. We will blog about this later, but we do touch on it in an interview with DJ on MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape which does touch briefly on what we’re doing next.

Again, thank you, for your response to the book.

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Confluence is now available

Today has been crazy with non-book related issues. So much so that I nearly didn’t write this blog.

Confluence, book three in the Linesman series was released yesterday for us, today for some of you in later time zones.

So far, people have said nice things about it.  Which is a relief, because no matter how much you, the author(s), might like a book, the real test is in what other people think of it.

We’ve tweeted a lot.  (Authors tend to do that around publication day. Surprise.)

We’ve also been featured on some blogs.

To date:

SFF World, asking how you know if your side is the right side in a war. Which, let’s face it, most of us don’t. In the Linesman books, we naturally side with the New Alliance, because Ean does. But how do we know it’s the side that should win.
Plus we’re over on Unbound Worlds talking about why we like space opera.

We’ve another post and an interview to come. We’ll let you know about these as they come up.

A number of people have asked when the audio version will be available.  Recorded Books plans to record it some time this week.  We don’t know when it will become available on Audible.  (Funnily enough, we do know when the CDs come out, but they always come months later.)

Meantime, if you’re reading Conflunce, we hope you enjoy it.

The Sounds of Confluence

David, from Recorded Books, rang the other day.

He had a list of words he wanted to run through, to hear how we wanted them pronounced.

Recorded Books have done this for every book so far.  It’s mostly names. People’s names and place names.

Believe you me, some of these words, when spoken with an Australian accent, come out very flat.

Some of the words we were asked to pronounce.

Tse
Henri
Merchett
Ghyslain
Aeolus
Hebe
Hella

How would you pronounce them?

Tse. Tss – ee, but short, not long. Emphasis on first syllable

Henri. On-ray. Emphasis on second syllable

Merchett. Mer-chett. Emphasis on second syllable

Ghyslain. Giz-lane. Emphasis almost even here, but a little heavier on the second syllable.

Aeolus.  A (as in hay)-ole-uss. Emphasis on the second syllable.  (Most people, we think, do it on the third).

Hebe.  Hee-bee.  Emphasis on the first syllable.

Hella.  Hell-ah.  Emphasis on the first syllable. The ‘ah’ is very short.

Engen.  Enn-gen.  The g here is a hard g, not a soft g.  (That is, not the g in engine, more like the g in gas.)  Emphasis on the first syllable.

 

How’d you go?

 

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Confluence books arrive

Author copies

We received our author copies of Confluence today, which was lovely to come home to.

Most of them are already accounted for, so we’re close to having to order some more.

That’s probably a good thing. We’re also running out of copies of Linesman.

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What we’re reading this week

This week went so fast I forgot to write a blog.

So this blog is a teeny bit late, but it’s not even a full day. Let’s call it fashionably late.

Work has been busy.  Writing has been busy.  And right in the middle of it one of our readers posted a reply to an earlier blog and mentioned the Elantra series by Michelle Sagara. (Thank you, Paula. Appreciate the recommendation.)

There are twelve books in the series.  I binge read the first three.

There’s a saying, often seen on t-shirts at science fiction conventions, that reads, “Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.”

(Marlene, from the Bookpushers, in E and Marlene’s review of Cast in Flight, book 12 of Michelle Sagara’s Chronicles of Elantra)

There’s something about binge reading.  Me, I can only do it so long before I get tired of the story. I read the first three books and started on the fourth. And for some reason the protagonist, Kaylin, was really annoying me. I have no idea why. I think it was just the long read, because I certainly liked the books enough to buy them.

I only bought book four because I adore Severn and I wanted to know what happens to him.

I took a few days’ break, and only went back to the books because the tram I was waiting for took forever to come. I’m reading them much more slowly now, but I’m enjoying them again.  I’ve just purchased book six.

Binge reading indeed.

Incidentally, Severn—one of the secondary characters—is a book maker for me.  I have no idea why characters appeal to readers like that, but he’s one of mine. It doesn’t matter what Sagara does to Kaylin; it’s what she does with Severn that will determine whether I continue to read the series.

It’s magic when you get characters like that.

Sherylyn is currently reading Becky Chambers’ The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet (now there’s a title to love).

I read this months ago.  We discuss it occasionally. It’s funny, but the things I remember about the book aren’t the things I liked best about it when reading it.

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Movie time

Our local shopping centre is in a permanent state of expansion.  They finish one extension, and then start on the next. Or that’s what it feels like, anyway.

They recently opened a new section and hooray,  our movie theatre is back.

Naturally, we tried it out.

Nice theatre. Reclining seats and all.  Everything’s classy and new and beautiful right now.

Expensive too.  They charge more for the nice seats.

Going to the movies used to be something you could afford. Not any more. Or not often.  Luckily for us, our phone company gives us discount tickets, so it could be worse.

What did we see?

Inferno

The movie complex had just opened.  There were five of us in the theatre.

Sherylyn has read the Dan Brown books, I haven’t, but I have seen the movies. And enjoyed every single one of them.

I enjoyed Inferno, too.  It had some interesting plot twists, some I didn’t see coming.

Adrenaline packed fun.

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

Tom Cruise has been in a lot of interesting movies over the last few years.  I loved both Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow.

Tom Cruise often plays ‘out of character’.  I don’t know how many of you remember the fuss when he signed on to play Vampire Lestat, because Lestat is blonde.

Jack Reacher is blonde too. And he’s 6’ 5” (looks a lot like Lee Child, in fact). He’s nothing like Tom Cruise (a foot shorter, brown hair).  But I think Cruise does a good job of Reacher, even without matching physically.

This was another movie I enjoyed. Again, lots of action, although the story was pretty straightforward.

High fantasy I’d like to read

A huge proportion of high fantasy stories written by western writers are set in worlds based on a medieval European setting.  Or not so much real medieval Europe, but the fantasy world the medievalist Tolkien designed.

Tolkien’s world was a made up one.

Many writers base their worlds on his. They don’t change much.  Except for the magic, and ‘their’ story, most of them remain true to Tolkien’s setting.  Including his now almost-a-hundred-year-old views of a woman’s place in society, and how sex, politics and gender should be treated.

We don’t need that to make a good high fantasy.

What do we need?

A world which has little or no technology, and the subsequent lifestyle requirements from that, like transport, and how people fight
Clothing from another era
The magic, or McGuffin, demons or dragons or whatever makes your story special.

What else do you need to make high fantasy work?  Other than a good story and characters to love?

Politics?

Democracies, republics, monarchies, aristocracies, theocracies, dictatorships have been around for millennia. I can’t say I’ve come across many governments in fantasy that you can’t break back to one of the known types of governing bodies.

Gender inequality, skewed toward a patriarchal system, where the girl never inherits, and her husband or her father protects her?

Of course not, but that’s often part of a high-fantasy novel.

Sexual ‘standards’ where there are two genders and men get together with women and and anything else is a deviation?

Again, you don’t need this for a fantasy, but likewise it’s also often standard.

What about treatment of other races, where people of other cultures or color were treated as sub-human, or property? Do you need this for your fantasy to be successful? Most likely not.

Writers might put a bit of a modern-day slant on these things, in the same way Regency romance writers put a modern-day slant on how their women behave.  Because for most of us, the way other races, genders, and women, were treated in older times is not okay.  But they still write basically the same world Tolkien did.

I, for one, love books that take the gender/sex/race components and mix them around a bit.

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