The Speedwell War - Draft 2 - Status Update 7

One more scene done, one more to go.

The last scene is The Battle of Dhanapal Dome and takes place on Mars.  This means I need to sit down and sketch out a map of the dome and the junction stations that connect it to the other portions of the Hellas Planitia Colony.  That's a long way of saying that the last scene is going to take longer to write because I need to make up what the place looks like to a reasonable degree.  Most of the other battles scenes in the novel were on Earth and there Google Maps is your friend.

Current Word Count: 71,473 words


With the novel almost done, I've started allowing myself to think about running a campaign next year.  It's been just over a year since I closed down the campaigns I'd been running and I'm really ready to start running a game again.  I'm playing three games right now, a weekly Mouse Guard game, a bi-weekly Artesia game, and a monthly Champions game (using 5th edition).  This has kept my gamer ADD in check (mostly) while I've been concentrating on the novel.

This past week I put up a poll for my gaming group, asking what game they would be most interested in seeing me run once my novel is complete.  I have three ideas and really only enough time to properly put together and run one campaign at a time, so I wanted to see what my player base was interested.  Here is what I listed:

The Bold and The DeterminedThis is a revival of my Champions game where players have two characters - one in a privately funded Avengers-like super team and one in the street-level group banding together to for help grinding their personal axes.  Both groups operate in the fictional Capital City, Maryland.  The Bold group is more standard superhero fare in a world where superheroes are a very new thing.  The Determined are desperate people with a beef against an enemy too big for the individual to face, but as a group can team up against each foe one at a time.  Needless to say, the Determined actively try to avoid any official or press attention.

Lustria Sandbox
This is a new Fantasy Hero campaign similar to my Southern Reaches campaign [a Western Reaches-style game], but lizardmen and jungles full of ruins will feature heavily instead of gnolls and plains.  They players can be colonial agents hired to keep the new colony safe or entrepreneurial explorers looking for "interesting things".  The setting will likely borrow a lot of setting dressing from Warhammer Fantasy RPG.  I have not decided about firearms yet.

Battletech Mercenaries
I've had a long hankering for trying out a campaign where the PCs are a mercenary company of mechwarriors out to make their fortune and honor.  Some may just want to fight in giant robots, others seek for enough legitimacy to become part of the nobility.  The RP aspect would be handled with the Hero System, mech combat with the War of the Mecha system, which has the flavor of Battletech but not the complexity.  The basic rules are one page long.  That's it.

 After a week, the Lustria Sandbox campaign had the most votes (although it was close).  Answering questions from the players expanded the base concept a bit and provided me with several ideas.  I'll start writing on it in earnest once I finish my novel and take a couple months to properly build enough into it that I don't run out of things for the players to do or investigate for a while.  This will be a bit more ambitious than my last Western Reaches campaign as there will be a major port and several minor ports already established rather than a single town for the PCs to fall back to each session.

That's it for this week.  Later!

The Speedwell War - Draft 2 - Status Update 6

Last update I was down to eight scenes to write and one to re-write.  This week I'm down to TWO scenes to write and one to re-write.  Boo-yah!

Writing through the story threads has both sped things up and helped stay focused on what I'm writing.  It also changed the way I was going on the scenes as the story evolved organically while I was writing it.  I'm writing this Monday night and once I'm done I'm going to do the scene re-write to get that out of the way now.  The last two scenes I need to write are split between Chapter 5 and Chapter 7.  The Chapter 7 scene will be large as it involves a battle in a dome on Mars and I still need to sketch out the area the action will happen in so what I write will be coherent.  The Chapter 5 scene I think I'm going to change.  It will still contain the same subset of characters, but a little further along on their timeline as what I was going to write is starting to seem a bit boring and superfluous.

I feel confident now that I will finish writing this by December 31, in fact, I'll probably finish before mid-month in December, but I don't want to go counting my chickens just yet.

Current Word Count: 70,032 words

The scarey/weird part is I'm at the point where I need to start seriously thinking about publication routes.  I want to publish and I want a physical book - these are things I firm on.  After that...things get a bit fuzzy.  I have a friend in L.A. I'll send a copy of the completed draft to along with the question "Is this worth getting an agent for?"  He has experience in that arena and I trust his opinion.  I think I'm in good shape, but I need an outside voice of experience to confirm or deny that.

That's it for now.  Later!

The Speedwell War - Draft 2 - Status Update 5

Sorry for the radio silence - I've been busy and sick, in that order.  Now I'm on vacation.  I wanted this to be a reading vacation, but I also want to finish writing my novel by the end of the year, so I'm doing some writing instead or reading.

I'm down to eight scenes to write and one scene to re-write to match the current draft better.  That number may shrink due to combining scenes as I write - in fact I know for a fact it will happen at least once.  I'll mention that when the appropriate scenes get written.

Current Word Count: 67,146 words


Now, what I really want to talk about is a small observation that I've heard before but saw in action recently. The observation is this:

If you want to write, read a lot of material that is the type of writing you want to do. 

So, for instance, if you want to write science fiction, READ a lot of science fiction.  It gives you a grounding in what you are trying to write and provides the mental equipment to write.  It should also give you a clue is the brilliant story twist is actually a trope that everyone knows about already and will spot early on or even what tropes are appropriate.  It also gives you better mental space to work in.

I saw this in action on Face Off, the movie make-up/special effects show on 'The Channel Previously Known as The Sci-Fi Channel".  My wife and I were watching Season 3, where one of the contestants had a strict Mennonite upbringing.  She had strong skills in make-up and prosthetics, but limited experience with pop culture.  She had no idea what sort of mind space 'zombies' might or might not inhabit, and the only cyborg experience she had was with Terminator and Terminator 2, which she saw ~20 years earlier, which knocked her out of the running when a cyborg challenge happened.  This lack of cultural experience left her at a severe disadvantage in a special effects competition where design was just as important as technical competency.  In real life it would (and probably does) inhibit her job opportunities.

Writing is the same way.  If you do not have experience at what you want to write about, then your ability to envision (design) what you are writing about is hampered and it will show.  The ability to string words together is limited by your ability to imagine what you are writing about.  If you want to write scripts for TV shows, read scripts and watch the shows to see how things are done.  Expand your mental drafting table/sandbox and your writing will be able to go farther and present more interesting things.

And that's all I have for today.  Later!

The Speedwell War - Draft 2 - Status Update 4

I've had to do some more research, mostly for ship naming consistency, but have added a new scene for the White Rabbit story thread this week.  (No, I probably won't be explaining that here.)  This establishes several things that I needed emphasised, notably that there is a warp point out of the Sol System and people can actually use it, but don't just yet.  The warp point gets mentioned in passing in Chapter 1 and again in Chapter 8, but I needed it to be represented more.

(I realize that that entire paragraph is pretty opaque if you haven't read any of the draft material. Sorry about that.)

I'll update this post tonight with the actual word count.  I'm at the Day Job and don't have the file in an accessible place.  (Love those corporate firewalls.)

In summation: work progresses, but a bit slower than I expected.  I still plan on having a complete manuscript by December 31 and still feel I will make that (self-imposed) deadline.

That's all for now.  Later!

UPDATE: As it turns out, the draft achieved an even number.  First time for everything.
Word Count: 65,500 words

The Speedwell War - Draft 2 - Status Update 3-ish

OK, so the worst part about finishing a draft, but not having a complete draft (because, say, you've discovered you need to add scenes to make things flow better) is that you start getting hit really hard with Gamer ADD.

Getting back into the groove of regular writing when you are no longer telling the story but doing the work of writing to make it good can be difficult and distractions abound.  I'm having ideas about what campaign I want to run next year after I'm done writing this novel - except if I think on THAT, I'll never get the novel done.  NaNoWriMo is almost here and I'm thinking about writing the next novel as part of that.  I have an OK outline for the next book and most of the characters are ready to port over (those that live, that is).  How hard could it be?  (A death knell if there ever was one.)

So, I'm working on getting back in the groove.  The thing that's working for me is tackling one storyline at a time and follow them through to conclusion.  It also helps me remember where I was in the story and keep things consistent along each storyline.  It also helps me spot timeline discrepancies and fix them so each story works with the backdrop of everything else going on.  (Did I mention it's a complex story, made of multiple threads interwoven into one whole?  No?  I should have.)

So, writing achieved for this week.  Due to the switch in programs (from Word to Scrivener) the word count has gotten wonky, but I worked out a way to stay consistent going forward, so I'm good there.  Speaking of which:

Word Count: 64,357 words

So that's it for this week.  Thank you for keeping up so far.  Once I have a complete draft I'll be willing to let folks in general start reading the story.  I may even post it serially here, but I haven't decided yet.  I'm still working on getting a copy of the draft to my Mom - she read a version that was two-thirds done and told me to hurry up and finish so she could read the rest of the story.  Can't argue with that.

Quickie Novel Update

Short version: my writing time has needed to go elsewhere for the last week and a half.  This week I'll be able to get some good time in on Thursday, but I didn't want to leave you hanging, something I'm getting bad about doing.

So, Thursday writing and Friday an update.  My goal is to have a complete draft by the end of the year, so I can send it to reviewers for feedback.

That's it for now.

Later!

Review: The Case of the Syphilitic Sister by James Hutchings

This is one of my infrequent book reviews.  In fact, the other one I did was for The New Death and other stories, also by James Hutchings.  James ask me to take a look at his newest project, a piece of serial fiction he is releasing through Jukepop Serials, a literary website providing serialized fiction in a variety of genres.  James described it as 1930's era pulp superhero action and then some other words, but, really, he had me at "1930's pulp superhero action".  Plus, I REALLY liked The New Death and other stories, so I wanted to read more of his work.  (I'd link to New Death, but I'm not certain which link he'd prefer.  I'll add it later when I get confirmation.) (See Update at the bottom of this post.)

The Case of the Syphilitic Sister
First, let me fess up: I want you to go read this and up-vote it so James will publish the next chapter sooner.  I WANT to know what happens next and I'm terribly impatient.

Chapter 1 starts with a trope and subverts it immediately.  The classy dame meets the detective in his office.  Except the office is neat and orderly and has clean and polite man at the desk fronting for the actual "detectives".  I put detectives in quotes as they are actually the superheros.  It being the 1930's, these are the people in costumes using their brains, brawn, and gadgets kind of heros.  To make their organization seem larger and more powerful, they take turns acting as each others followers, which is a pretty neat trick.

I won't get too deep into the plot as A) I want you to go and read it, and B) it's only one chapter long so far and just gets the ball rolling, not deep into plot.  Suffice to say, there is a mystery and the heros are on the case.

Heros shown so far are Green Dragon, who is the client contact, wearing a dark green suit with pistols that can act as flamethrowers.  He is also good with people, which is why he talks with the clients.  Next introduced is Princess Iron Fan.  I'm guessing she's a martial artist, but that's a guess as she her abilities are not discussed.  Once on the job, The Kabbalist is at work, with the other heros dressed as his sidekicks, The Golems.  I'd like to say I really like this method of force multiplication.

While on the job, the heros run across thugs after the same thing they are.  This interaction is very entertaining in how the thugs react.  One pees himself when the Kabalist and the Golems "appear", one throws a punch into some body armor (hurting his hand), and one decides to go for a switch-blade.  The one with the wounded hand quietly tells the third thug to put away the knife and then has a whispered negotiation with the Kabalist to avoid the fight.  Both agree and the Kabalist loudly orders the thugs to begone and, on cue, the thugs run away screaming and everyone saves face.

I really like this part.  Being a 1930's superhero is dangerous to both sides and the fact that both sides are willing to publicly play their parts while quietly negotiating what those parts are going to be is believable.  Neither side wants to push things too far, but neither side can afford to lose face and the cops give both a sideways look when they get involved.

The only downside I'm seeing is one of some anachronistic language.  The most noticeable (for me) is a reference to "suicide by cop", a term that was not coined until the 1990's.  I am a stickler for things like this, so it was jarring.

As I said at the top, I really want to see where this story goes and I'm eagerly awaiting the next chapter, which I hear will be released on the 22nd of this month.  He has material for several chapters, so perhaps you could go, give it a read, and up-vote to get him to publish a little more often that monthly.  It's worth the time to read and I think you too will want to find out what happens next.


UPDATE:The New Death and other stories can be found here: 
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
DriveThruFiction

UPDATE 2: Chapter 2 is now published.  Go read it! (You'll need to log in to read it.  It's worth it.)