Monthly Archives: April 2025

After twenty-five or so books, you would think I’d have this whole novel-writing process down solid. Have a viable strategy, be organized, go about the development of constructing characters and plot in a somewhat coherent manner.

Ha! (she laughs bitterly)

Every book is its own process. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to have a series that uses the same methodology for each book, but that isn’t always the case.

That happened with my first two series, the Netwalk Sequence and Goddess’s Honor. Granted, they were early works, but as I progressed through both series, I ended up changing things around. What became key for both of those series was a very detailed scene matrix where I literally identified where every major character was in each scene and what their motives were within that scene. I did the basic outline by hand before writing, then went back and analyzed each scene as part of my revisions.

I had several reasons for organizing myself in that manner. First, as it turned out, I was alternating writing books in both series so that I had two books coming out a year, one book in one series, the other in the other one. Second, I had multiple character viewpoints, so I wanted to ensure that the voices in the book were balanced. Third, those characters were scattered across the continent (and across the ocean) in Goddess’s Honor, while characters were on Earth/the Moon/space stations in the Netwalk Sequence. Fourth, we were in the process of a long distance move to a second home.

Well, lessons learned.

First, I vowed that I was NOT going to have four POVs in future work because it just got too complicated and, I fear, weakened the impact of the story, though—looking back, those multiple POVs were necessary. At least for those particular story arcs.

Second, I decided that I was not going to switch between series, but would write a series all at once, then release the volumes close together. I cheated a little bit doing this with the assorted Martiniere sub-series because I also ended up writing a couple of unrelated books as well as a couple of novellas during that time. But—Kindle Vella had just started up and I had appropriate ideas that would be good for that market. An allowable reason.

Writing a series all at once helped me deal with problems in book continuity within a series, though those darn characters kept twisting things between the beginning of the first book and the last part of the last book (glaring at The Cost of Power, which really tried my patience with last-minute discoveries, such as the linkage between the Martinieres and the Carolingian Mythos. When Durendal appears in the last third of the third volume of Power, Redemption, I wanted to scream. Then I took a deep breath and revised everything).

I also came up with a new strategy involving Scrivener and Word which dealt with some of the travel issues. Years ago, I wrote in WordPerfect and took advantage of its master document formatting setup, which allowed me to draft chapters as separate files, then link them so that I could call them up in one big document. My Word drafting was all one document which…got annoying when I needed to refer back to earlier sections for continuity’s sake.

I was already starting to consolidate my research notes and my character notes in Scrivener. Then it dawned on me—why not draft a chapter in Word, then paste it into Scrivener? I already was keeping Scriv open to access my outline and character notes. Putting the book into Scriv chapter-by-chapter allowed me to a.) appropriately version the story, and b.) made drafting continuity a lot easier.

Solved that problem, but—then it became an issue of story organizing.

I am sometimes a hard-core plotter, and sometimes…not. For the last batch of books, I started writing chapter-by-chapter synopses. As continuity tweaked things, I’d edit the chapter synopses in Scriv with dates and notes in bold. Well, it worked—for those books.

Then I started drafting the current work-in-progress, Vision of Alliance, the first book of Goddess’s Vision. This series, a sequel series to Goddess’s Honor in what I’m now calling the world of the Seven Crowned Gods, has been my bane for over five years now. I started working on the Martinieres to avoid it because while I knew I wanted to write what happens next, I just couldn’t find the opening. Shades of the first series, because it took me years to find the opening for Pledges of Honor, the original first book of Goddess’s Honor (the official first book, Beyond Honor and Other Stories, is made up of stories I wrote later).

When I finished The Cost of Power trilogy, I flailed around trying to poke at other ideas. Nope. None of them wanted to do anything. It was time to start work on Goddess’s Vision. The Martinieres were done unless I wanted to write the next generation and…I couldn’t do that, either.

Very well. Goddess’s Vision it was. But I couldn’t come up with ideas for more than one book. Well, I figured it would come. Time to start writing.

I got to about the fourth chapter, then had to take time off for business stuff. When I came back to the story, I read what I had written and…dear God, it was packed full of telling. I was skipping over far too much in the story and…I made myself go back and rewrite. Drafted several chapters and—oopsie, guess what. Glossed over story stuff once again. So now I’m juggling several chapters-to-be-written as well as revising already-written chapters to reflect the breaking out of important scenes.

At least I’m at the experience level where I recognized a developing problem before I got too far along.

All of this is new ground for me, because the only other time I had to tear apart a draft like this was with the first Netwalk book. And that came about because an editor saw problems in a second draft. Again, darn good thing I saw the problem developing before I got too much further along.

At this point, though, I’m definitely not worried about having enough material for a trilogy. I even know what the resolution is going to look like. It’s just…getting there.

Each book has its own process, and am I ever being reminded of that.

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Hey, everyone! Just a reminder that your humble writer here appreciates comments, book purchases (one of these days I’ll figure out Linktree and have a single place you can go to find all of my work besides Amazon and Smashwords), or Ko-fi donations.

Welcome! This year I’m creating a set of posts/blogs/whatever you want to call them about the “story-behind-the story” for my backlist. This month, Bearing Witness, a neoWestern multiverse novella, is one of my featured backlist books.

Stories start in weird ways, and Bearing Witness happens to be one of those. We were driving through the Willamette Valley near Eugene when I got the image of several Native people striding into a field to confront a settler using a sickle bar mower that was, somehow, forbidden technology. When the settler refused, they turned into wooden statues.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how this story could work. It’s one of those settings I wrestle with, because much as I would like to combine historical Pacific Northwest events and settings with science fiction and fantasy, there are a lot of pitfalls. A LOT.

Some of this wrestling comes from my own background. I come from early Pacific Northwest settlers on my mother’s side. They came to Oregon in 1846, and let me tell you, trying to find out more about them is a real challenge. I’ve joked before that my ancestors specialized in obscurity because the most prominent stories I can find about them is one being a founding member of a Presbyterian splinter church in Ashland, and another dying due to being crushed in a barn collapse after a heavy snowfall. Other than that, despite family members marrying into the prominent Applegate family?

Not much. Granted, my ancestors didn’t go into politics. They farmed, and lost farms. I don’t think any land remained in the hands of the next generation for very long, if at all. Basically, poor dirt farmers, until my mother’s generation.

The other piece is that there’s the entire mythos around Oregon and Pacific Northwest white settlement. I was an adult when the Oregon Trail game came out (although I vaguely remember my son playing it), but I grew up on kid books about early white settlement (including the Little House books but, oh dear God, NOT the TV series. I ended up really disliking that TV series).

Actually, I grew up when the vibes started to shift from unquestioned support of Manifest Destiny to “you know, there were problems and Native peoples weren’t treated fairly.”

I really can’t glorify the settlement process, even though I descend from it.

So, the image simmered in my thoughts while I considered how to approach it. I came up with several different versions but nothing really came together until I thought of Adam Thornton. Then I thought about universes where magic could happen…and the idea of these events happening in a refuge within multiple universes started coming together.

Therefore, Kalosin. A world dominated by Native peoples on its analog of North America (and, presumably, elsewhere), except where the Russian Tsar rules. And a few other nasties.

But the biggest threat to Kalosin comes from outside. Malign entities called Soulers seek to consume every universe they encounter. Life under the Soulers is…not particularly good. Until a mysterious time traveler named Jedidiah Pruitt appears in the world that Abigail Nelson lives, in roughly 1850s Kansas, there’s no escape. Jedidiah has magical abilities, even if he can’t travel back to his original world, and is pursued by the Soulers across the multiverse. He marries Abigail and yanks her across multiverses using the Vortex. They have children and gather allies, known as Wild Colonists.

The Soulers eventually destroy Jedidiah. But his oldest son Jesse has all of the magical powers that Jedidiah possesses—and more. When Jesse guides the Wild Colonists to the world known as Kalosin, they work together with the natives of Kalosin to create a magical shield. For a time they’re safe, until dangerous technology intervenes from other worlds and leaves people vulnerable to Souler attack. Jesse works with the Kalosin to cut off all Vortex access. Presumably, that should leave Kalosin as a safe refuge.

Presumably.

Then Adam Thornton gets his hands on technology that proves to be dangerous…and that’s where the story begins.

This universe is one that I keep contemplating and poking at. I know there will be more stories involving the Vortex Worlds. I just don’t know when, where, or how just yet.

But they will happen.

Meanwhile, enjoy a visit to the Vortex Worlds. Bearing Witness is an attempt at mixing up some Western elements with fantasy. I think there’s more possibilities there, and someday I’ll tell the story of Jedidiah and Abigail.

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Bearing Witness is available at all major ebook retailers for $2.99. Link here.

And if you just want to toss a couple of coins to your writer, here’s the link to my Ko-fi here.

Welcome! This year I’m creating a set of posts/blogs/whatever you want to call them about the “story-behind-the story” for my backlist. This month, my “cozy apocalypse” book, Beating the Apocalypse, is one of my featured backlist books.

Sometimes it really takes a while for a story idea to develop into book form. I have several of those notions rattling around in my backbrain right now, little nuggets that might come together to make up a story one of these days…or not. Not everything falls together as quickly as the original Martiniere Legacy books did, or as slowly as the Goddess’s Honor (and now the Goddess’s Vision) books have.

Beating the Apocalypse falls in between the Martiniere books and the Goddess books when it comes to the time it took to become a viable story. It’s one of the books that has quite the tale behind it.

The original concept of Canaries, genetically manipulated human weather trackers, happened back in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. Back then, there was a fellow in the Portland area who was pushing the concept of cheap, palm-sized, novelette books and looking for writers. I knew Steve Perry (the writer, not the musician) through some other writer friends and he was on board with the concept, and had sold one or two things to this fella. Perry—or the other writer friend, I forget now which one it was, or perhaps it was both—strongly suggested that if I had something that might work, to send it off to this guy and run with it early on.

(I never forgot their overall advice to take advantage of opportunities like this early on, when the money’s still flowing. At the minimum you get paid and if it takes off—then you have the advantage of being the early bird and could end up being catapulted into greater visibility. This advice paid off big time for me when Kindle Vella came around because I was in the position to take advantage of it and, well, those lovely Vella bonuses put me over the top for qualifying for SWFA membership.)

I wrestled with the Canary concept but couldn’t quite make it work. The publisher flamed out and I put the idea aside. Ten years or so later, I fleshed it out into a short story which ended up as a Writers of the Future Honorable Mention. Can’t remember what year or quarter that was, but…that made me feel good. Even though I couldn’t find a market for the darn story.

That was one piece. Then there was a novella call and I ended up grabbing the characters from “Canaries” to write a novella about a Canary’s encounter with a dangerous, all-woman gang called the Pink Cats. The novella didn’t get accepted but…as the result of ending up in an anthology that was a contest finalist, I ended up with a potential book contract for the Pink Cats novella—it just had to be made longer. So…I put the Canary short story together with the Pink Cats story, and added to it.

Well, that whole publication story is a tale to be told elsewhere, as while it led to the first variant of Beating the Apocalypse, it was also a rude awakening to how sometimes small presses can be really problematic. I eventually got my rights back but even with the contract on my side it took time and threatening to go to SFWA’s Griefcom to force compliance, first to get royalty reports and payments, then to get my rights back even though I had a solid reversion clause.

(The original version is called Seeking Shelter at the End of the World and it should not be available ANYWHERE. Considering the publisher only put out a PDF version, I’m surprised I earned what royalties I did in the late ‘10s. And that particular story is very different from Beating the Apocalypse, including the fate of one main character.)

When I got the rights back, I kept poking at the story because I wasn’t satisfied with the darn thing. I didn’t like the original ending, the original relationships, and the original bad guy. Plus sticking those two stories together didn’t work in the original version.

I tore the story apart. Mark LeBrand ended up not being the villain but a well-meaning scientist haunted by the death of his little sister, and being manipulated by those in charge. Rianna only thinks her love Bobby is dead, but Bobby is saved by his brothers. Rianna, Bobby, and the other characters actually manage a happy ending. And…I start the story a lot sooner than in the original version.

The other piece is that I’m still handwaving the technology. Essentially, North America is left to stew in its own polluted mess (and there may be other tech involved as well) by means of some sort of barrier that keeps pollution in. As a result, toxic killer Clouds periodically form, and satellite/drone technology is such that there’s no access to accurate forecasting. The best means for predicting Cloud formation is data gathered by hypersensitive people who react before the rest of the population to those substances.

But the Portland setting is somewhat realistic, and Camp 84 is definitely a dystopian projection of what could happen with homelessness. Add in some vicious gangs, as well as political scheming….

On the other hand, Rianna and Bobby have the power of love (okay, is that a cliché? Probably. But it’s my story and I’m gonna have them in love). LeBrand has love as well, even though he’d deny it to his dying day.

I might write a sequel to this story. Someday. Maybe. But for now, I’ll leave these characters where they end up—still coping with an apocalypse, but they aren’t alone, and they might have actually ended up solving a few problems along the way.

Beating the Apocalypse is on sale for $2.99 at all major ebook vendors throughout April. Link below.

Buy Beating the Apocalypse now.

And if you’ve already bought the book, but want to tip me…feel free to donate to my Ko-fi here.