Tag Archives: Netwalk Sequence

November 26, 2014 · 10:03 pm

Of Writing, and Thanksgiving, and Horses

I swear I will not let the holiday season catch me unprepared again.

I swear I will not let the holiday season catch me unprepared again.

I swear I will not let the holiday season catch me unprepared again.

You’d think I would have remembered all the hard-earned lessons from selling jewelry online in the 90s and applied them to the hybrid writing life. Plan for the Christmas season. Have Christmas promotions and product ready by September. Do not be scrambling to produce work in the middle of the season. But I was locked into teacher brain, not retail artisan brain, and so instead of scrambling throughout the summer to make sure I had my seasonal book production lined up, I was decompressing. It’s really only been the past few weeks, since just before Orycon, that I’ve been scrambling to get the writing finished and either published or submitted, much less run through beta editors.

Well. This is the last year that’s gonna happen. Next year I will know what my holiday season books will be and have them ready in plenty of time, instead of just in time. I’d also been counting on a small press publication which appears to be going nowhere. Sigh.

Meanwhile, I’m getting the last piece of the book I hope to have out by mid-December wrapped up now. It was supposed to be a short story. Now it’s careening recklessly toward novelette territory, and could spin off into its own novel. Maybe I’ll premier it as a serial story, and publish subsequent installments over the course of this next year. Hmm. Could publish it separately for free as well…Hmm.

Thanksgiving is going to be low key. I get up in the morning, go ride horse, come home, get cleaned up, cook gluten-free dressing (already made blueberry crisp and spelt biscuits), then go to a friend’s house for restrained debauchery. If I’m lucky I’ll get time to wrap up the story tomorrow.

Horse is definitely in rehab mode. While most of our work is still in walk and mostly in straight lines, I’ve thrown her a sop in the form of four laps of working trot (about a half mile, two laps per direction) and four long side of the arena canters (again, two per direction). We’re also doing haunches and forehand turns, as well as backing in circles. That’s enough to keep her happy, as she does seem to get tired of doing nothing but walking. She perks right up when she gets to think about using herself, and I’m up in two-point while doing it.

But at least the writing is moving along, the horse seems to be improving, and perhaps we’re getting more movement on other things going on in the life.

Onward.

 

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October 21, 2014 · 6:59 pm

And….it’s a book.

cover4b

I liked this cover better than the one I previewed a few weeks ago. The e-versions just need a couple of polishing runs on them, tweaks here and there, but they’re pretty much complied and ready to post, possibly as soon as Thursday or early next week. I also plan to put out Winter Shadows in hard copy at the same time that I issue Shadow Harvest in hard copy. That….could take longer. Or I could end up releasing Winter Shadows first. We shall see. I need to learn how to design hard copy covers instead of handing them off.

And what’s this one about? Here’s an early version of the pitch.

When Diana Landreth returns for a quick visit home from a long-term bioremediation project in the Amazon, she encounters a witch’s brew of personal, professional, and political problems. Her dying father’s ranch has been poisoned by an unknown radiological and/or biological agent . The Third Force’s Relocation Affairs office has made him a low buyout offer that will not support her stepmother and young half-sister. Her husband Will still struggles with PTSD from his imprisonment in the Petroleum Autonomous Zone. Her mother, Sarah Stephens, and Will’s father, Parker Landreth, engage in a shadow war where Will and Diana may be no more than proxies in larger battles for corporate dominance. Can Diana find the truth about what’s been done not just to her father’s ranch but to their neighbors? Can she and Will use rehabilitating the ranch to establish their own bioremediation company’s reputation while protecting her stepmother and half-sister? And can they finally overcome the shadows of the past to become free from their family histories?

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September 19, 2014 · 12:02 pm

Writerly musings

It’s been a productive writer and editor week. I finished the first round of edits on a freelance job and sent them back to the author, then got my second round of edits on Seeking Shelter at the End of the World (projected to come out from eTreasures Publishing in October), went through that, and sent it back. Ironically, finishing the first round on someone else’s book and having to go through my own second round happened within 24 hours of each other. Not that this is an issue. I found that I learned a lot from doing that edit on someone else (which is one of my patterns) and working on the other MS made it easier to edit my own. FYI, I’m not banging the drum pretty hard (yet), but I am available for editing services. I find that I like editing. Not surprising, since one of my favorite teacher times was working one-on-one with kids and their writing.

I’m in the homestretch for getting Shadow Harvest ready for October publication, and clearing the decks to start writing Netwalk’s Children (at long last). Whew. It’s been a long, hard struggle with both these works. Shadow Harvest started out as Andrews Ranch, but that title really didn’t work. I’m still not happy with my latest cover design, but that’s a skill set I also plan to keep working on. This one is really hard to put together because I have to figure out how to combine both SF and Western elements, and, well, that’s tough.

However, since the ebook of Shadow Harvest is going to have illustrations, I’m having fun planning the photos I’ll use. While I took some useable pix last weekend in the County, there are still a bunch more I need if I’m going to insert 2-4 illustrations per chapter. At ten chapters, that’s a lot of pix. As I go through my edits in Scrivener, I’m either scrounging through my collection of digital photos or listing the new photos I have to take–and that’s fun to contemplate as well.

Once I finish this pass of Harvest, and get to work on the pix, then it’s time to tackle the outline and writing of Netwalk’s Children. This is a tough book to plan and write, but it’s one that I absolutely have to structure before writing. It’s the middle book of the series; it’s a transitional book between generations; and there’s big stuff that happens. I’ve been advancing and retreating from it for a couple of years now, but it’s going to happen this fall.

I’m also planning on expanding and releasing another illustrated short novella in November, called Alien Savvy. It has some connections to the Netwalk Sequence universe but it’s a prequel to everything. Then in December, I’ll release an omnibus of Dahlia, Winter Shadows, and Shadow Harvest. Title yet to be determined.

Then I got a pleasant little egoboost when I searched my name during a break. Outside of the unpleasant reality of having to issue a takedown notice to a pirate site, I also discovered that a couple of my professional articles have been copied as references. The one which really tickles me is one that was included in the National Association of Special Education Teacher Special Issue on Learning Disabilities–link is here. I didn’t know about this but it makes me feel good. Alas, unless you have a membership, you can’t see it. Sigh. But it’s about the Patterns of Strength and Weakness identification model for learning disabilities, which is something I strongly believe in.

A good day in the writer life. And now for lunch, then barn.

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September 2, 2014 · 8:43 am

A ranty morning

What is it about today? Already I’ve gone off on someone about Patrick McLaw (the Maryland African-American teacher detained allegedly because of the themes in his self-published sf books), and now I’m all ranty from a pompous interview in the Guardian with Ian McEwan. Since I’ve exhausted myself with McLaw (let’s just say I’m pissed, pissed, pissed), I’ll just rant a little bit about the McEwan.

Keep in mind that he’s a mainstream writer considered to be writing about family and drama. I think it was the subplot of his newest work that set me off originally, with the 60-year-old husband wanting “one last go” at a grand affair. Grrr. I’m afraid that these days, I wouldn’t make it past the first few pages of a work with that subplot element. I’m sick and tired of the glorification of the male sexual fantasy, especially in a work where the author is allegedly trying to think like a professional woman with homelife drama who encounters a big ethical challenge. Dear God, take me now. Ugh. Can we just say cliched, overdone, trite? Quite frankly, I think “spouse fed up with his work and wanting to retire” or “spouse dealing with onset of illness” is probably more realistic as homelife drama, unless one happens to be part of a particular rich and privileged class. Affairs? Jesus, John Updike did that to death. I don’t care what genre it is, if there’s an affair involved, I’m probably going to throw the damn book against the wall. It’s why I don’t spend much time on the literary genre. Male infidelity is just so done in fiction, in my opinion.

Maybe I’ve just had too many other family dramas in my life to be able to engage with the egotism involved in a man’s desire for an affair. I don’t know. The concept of “one last go” is somewhat offensive to me. Either you’re monogamous and you both agree, or else you’re poly and the rules and structures exist for how you engage with others and it’s No. Big. Deal. To be monogamous, and then have this one last desire for a fling with someone else is profoundly so much a violation of the original relationship (in my opinion) that the other person is justified in chucking the whole relationship and ripping the man to shreds in the court system.

Yeah. So please slap me if I ever decide to write such a thing.

There are aspects of McEwan’s interview that I like. He’s unapologetically placing himself in “what he calls the ‘family division’ of English prose.” I like his advocacy for bringing work back into contemporary writing. I just–I don’t know. Something about the tone of the description of the latest work set me off. Probably it’s more an argument with the character in the latest book who feels himself entitled to ask for permission to have an affair. It’s the male gaze issue

And probably a huge chunk of it is that the sort of sf and fantasy I want to write is more of that sort of family interactions and dynamics stuff. The as-yet undisclosed heart of the Netwalk Sequence involves some very dark and horrible stuff that happened within the Stephens family. It was kept successfully hushed up for over a hundred years. It explains a lot of Sarah’s dynamics, and her star-crossed relationship with Francis Stewart. Only I also bring in gadgets and tech and other stuff because, well…I like boom today. Boom tomorrow as well, but boom today is good. Anthony Trollope in space is fun. So is Jane Austen, the Brontes, and etc.

But it’s not taken as serious writing within the genre, unless you get very, very lucky and you write about the male protagonists. Me, I like playing with multi-generational female protagonists, including the additional drama of reproductive realities. So yeah. Probable obscurity.

However, I intend to have fun doing it. And now my ranty mcrantypants rantage is done. Whew. That’s enough for one day.

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August 28, 2014 · 9:05 am

And the title decision is….Shadow Harvest

Shadow Harvest. I’ve been agonizing over what to call Andrews Ranch for real, because otherwise it sounds too much like a Western instead of science fiction. While there are Western elements (a showdown at the OK Corral-type scene with a war machine in a barnyard), and a quasi-Westernish-theme (saving a ranch from corporate interests), at best it could be titled a Science Fiction Western. Yeah.

I kept thinking about its predecessor and twin story that I’m going to include to make up the omnibus I plan to publish in December, Winter Shadows. My original plans for that omnibus were to include Dahlia, Winter Shadows, and Andrews Ranch. But while Dahlia is part of the whole Will and Diana sequence, it really doesn’t fit except as a precursor to the other two stories. What happens in Winter Shadows comes to fruition seven years later in Shadow Harvest. So I’ve decided that the omnibus will be those two stories instead. That’ll be plenty, and there’s a title and thematic connection (the omnibus will also come out in a CreateSpace version).

And I do have a cover pic. Just haven’t made the cover yet.

IMG_0313

Now it’s time to go back and discreetly insert some connections to Winter Shadows. Then off to the barn, meet up with a friend, then come home and work on an editorial project.

The days are just packed around here.

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May 10, 2014 · 7:22 pm

Noodling on writing plans–writing process post

I am using the period where I’m letting Andrews Ranch rest before the rewrite to take care of some writing organizational work. No, not the bookkeeping and organizational paperwork. Rather, I’m fiddling around with outline notes, organizing research, making research plans, and reviewing short stories.

I don’t know how many other writers review what they have currently in circulation on a periodic basis. It’s something I like to do every couple of years, when I have most of my stories in hand and I’m not working on a bigger project.

Like now. At this point in time, I have eleven short stories that are making the rounds, aged anywhere from eight years to one year old. Ten of them have come back since I last sat down and sent out stories, about three months ago. These stories were out this last go-round anywhere from two days to a year, so it was a matter of timing rather than any big flurry of submission and rejection. A perfect time to review stories.

Age of the story isn’t particularly relevant to whether I circulate the piece or not; I’ve sold some work that I wrote a few years back and I think it’s an issue of either anticipating a market or else the type of story I wrote has come back in favor. Most of these stories are good in and of themselves and just haven’t found their home market yet. If they aren’t very good, they get trunked during these review periods. Some stories get put aside to be expanded into larger works. Now that I’m self-publishing some work, taking the time to expand some stories into novelette or novella form is a viable alternative. Generally, I let my mental notes about rejection feedback guide whether I do that rewrite or not. I’ve only done it with a couple of stories. Most of the time, I shorten a story. Sometimes I cut a secondary plot line. Rarely do I need to do huge edits–mostly, it’s just looking at the story and refreshing it for the current marketplace.

I also use this process time to clean up the circulating MS and do quick and dirty continuing copyedits (even when other eyes have gone over a MS I can still find a blooper or two!). But there are other, closer copyedits to do. For example, an older MS might have gone through a couple of word processor iterations and have some right margin issues. I still have some MSs with two spaces between sentences instead of one. I’m cleaning out tabs in favor of auto-indents. Occasionally there’s a space between the period and the hard return. All nit-picky little stuff, but they’re all things that can hang up the readability of a MS across different platforms.

Also, because I tend to use short stories as a means of exploring other secondary worlds, this review gives me a fresh chance to look at the world that a particular story is set in. Do I want to do other stories in that universe? A novel? If I do have ongoing worldbuilding in that universe, what insight does this particular story provide for character motivation? A lot of the work which has gone into writing the Will and Diana relationship for Andrews Ranch has illuminated the factors that come into play later on in the Netwalk Sequence with their granddaughter Bess. Understandable because I’m explicitly writing a generational saga in that universe. But they are revelations that might not have come to me if I hadn’t written Andrews Ranch.

I’m also laying out the research plans for the rest of this year. I have some big non-Netwalk Sequence projects that I want to get going, including a Weird West novella/novel (Bearing Witness) and a contemporary alternate world fantasy (Becoming Solo) centered around my experiences in 4-H as member, parent, and leader (think of 4-H competition as magical competition. Whole new perspective on Style Revue, Showmanship, and cooking contests). I want to write five new short stories to add to the circulation list, with a goal of getting the circulation list back up to twenty stories. I have two nonfiction self-published books planned. I have an urban fantasy novel that needs to have significant worldbuilding done. I’ve taken a run at it in four different stories and it’s still not quite right.

I also want to start using Scrivener for features other than layout and Compile for ebook publishing. It’s a matter of taking the time to learn the features and play with them, but that means being able to take an hour or so out of multiple days to do that, rather than begrudge the learning curve time because learning the skill takes away from valuable writing time. I need to start thinking about a post-day job writing schedule, where I have a regular pattern set up for household, horse, writing, and research time.

So there’s a number of things to do in this time that I’m letting Andrews Ranch simmer (including thinking about a new title, how to market the dang novella, and just what the cover is going to be). But this down time isn’t just me getting ready to collapse at the end of the school year only to recharge for yet another year; it’s a time for me to prepare for a new way of doing things.

Quite the challenge.

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May 4, 2014 · 8:12 pm

Andrews Ranch is done

I swear, this story has been one of the hardest damn things I’ve ever written.

It doesn’t help that it started changing character from being a bog-standard futuristic SF tale to a futuristic SF western. The ending is a very traditional Western ending, in its way.

44k for the words, and the back half of it is completely rewritten and totally different. But a lot of that rewrite needs to be embellished and rewritten and made to coincide with Dahlia and Winter Shadows. It’s not going to be a May release; more likely a September release with the combined volume to include all three stories and an appropriate omnibus title.

And now for something completely different. Methinks I have a novelette that could be dusted off, rewritten, and published. I think that’s what will happen in May.

Netwalk’s Children also needs to be written but, damn it, given the depths of this series, I think it’s time I got away from the Netwalk Sequence writing for a while. Well, there’s the nonfiction project. I think it’s time to work on that. And perhaps there’s some anthology short story stuff in the works I need to think about….

Onward.

But damn am I glad that’s done.

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April 29, 2014 · 10:07 pm

Plot noodling on Andrews Ranch

So I seem to be heading up to a climatic scene where Dan drags himself from his deathbed to see what all the commotion is about (this is the scene after the scene I posted today, with Diana and Will going for a little jaunt on the 9572). He knows his ex-wife Sarah, Diana’s mother, is already out there and loaded for bear. He’s dying of cancer. He figures out pretty dang fast that Parker Landreth landing armed, shooting at Diana and Will, means trouble. And we’re talking about someone who is a cattleman–progressive cattleman, okay, but still, a cattleman. A rancher, albeit, in the future. A former military man (Afghanistan). He knows his daughter’s father-in-law (Parker Landreth) means trouble, and….well, if you’ve been following my occasional Netwalk Sequence natterings, you know that Sarah doesn’t walk away from a fight. And she’s come to much the same conclusions about her daughter’s father-in-law. Diana’s parents don’t agree on much, any more, but a threat to their daughter and her husband…they understand that one very well. Keep in mind that Sarah comes from a timber production background, she’s a lumberman’s daughter with the lumber version of Dan’s cattle background.

Dear God, what I’m visualizing is more a cyber-Wild West Shootout at the OK Corral. Only Sarah and Dan both take out Parker and the other threat to Diana and Will’s continued happiness. Dan takes the fall this time.

Is this a cliche or what? Nonetheless, it resonates nicely with me.

Then again, that could be the absinthe talking–except that this was the thought process that kept tugging at me during the quiet times while proctoring tests this afternoon.

Needs careful scripting to stay away from cliches.

Comments? And if none of this makes sense, that’s okay, too. I’m putting this down as much for my thought process as much as anything else.

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· 10:51 am

Today’s Andrews Ranch

I swear I didn’t know that the 9572 could do this until today’s writing session….

******************************

“Warning,” a mechanical voice that sounded vaguely like Will’s droned, 9572-MAIN flashing to identify it as the speaker. “Incoming skimmer arming up.”

“We’ve got to get shielded!” Will snapped. “Dad’s coming in shooting. Di, we’ve got to get out of this skimmer, now! Francis, Sarah, get shields up fast!”

The 9572 glided forward, Will resting his hand on it as it flew through the cabin. Diana scurried to catch up.

“My hand too?” she asked Will as the skimmer door opened.

“Yes!”

The skin erupted and a claw closed around her wrist as she slammed her hand down on the 9572’s skin. She didn’t have time to yell before the 9572 shot forward, yanking her off of her feet.

“Grab it!” Will bellowed at her. “Clamps!”

She struggled to wrap herself around the 9572 like she saw Will doing, gasping as it sped out of the skimmer. Clamps cranked down around her arms and the one leg she’d managed to snake around the 9572 but her other leg whipped free as the war machine dodged a shot from Anne’s Third Force team. Diana managed to wrestle her leg awkwardly onto the 9572. As it made contact, more clamps wrapped around the leg. She was grateful for the support as the war machine shot straight up, wobbling as her body strained against the fastenings.

“Flatten yourself!” Will yelled. “You’re throwing the balance off!”

“I’m trying!” she yelled back.

Diana managed to brush her midriff against the 9572. Yet another clamp wrapped around her torso and snugged it close to the war machine. The irregular flight steadied, and the machine arched into a tight parabola. Diana struggled for breath against the gravitational pull as a blast whipped past them. From the skimmer. From Parker Landreth’s skimmer.

Will growled something she couldn’t hear. The 9572 trembled under them.

Something detonated over Parker Landreth’s skimmer.

“Will! You didn’t!” she screamed.

“Disable only!”

She lost sight of Parker’s skimmer as the 9572 snaked around.

Breathe in. Breathe out. She fought to keep her breathing steady against the pull of gravity, and wondered just how often Will had done something like this in the PAZ. I’m glad I didn’t know about this capacity.

And then their flight slowed.

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April 28, 2014 · 8:33 pm

And Andrews Ranch continues….

I’ve been trying to be diligent and mindful and eke out at least a few hundred words on Andrews Ranch every day. The climax in rewrite is so completely different from the original story that I have to feel my way through the story, almost on a frame-by-frame basis in the scene sequences. Diana does this, Will does that, and the conspiracies are mounting.

So yeah. Some of today’s words put down.

**********************

“Red?” she said.

Red steered Lakely past them to the door. “Yes.”

“You need to talk to my mother, Francis, and Anne. Promptly. You need to tell them to hold the military back. We’re activating the 9572 because Parker Landreth is coming in fast. We need to talk. Safely. We need the military to stand down and leave Will alone. We believe Parker Landreth wants to take me, Will, and the 9572. We need to activate it for our own safety.”

Red nodded. “It may take a moment.”

“You don’t dare waste time. Tell them I’m Landreth bloodbonded. They’ll have to take me with Will, as will Parker, and–I won’t let anyone take Will without me. You make sure my mother hears that.”

“Got it.”

The skimmer door opened and Red left, pushing Lakely ahead of him. Will stared directly at Diana, though she could see the bleak emptiness lurking behind his focus on her.

“It’s not too late for you to split off from me and avoid this,” he said. His voice wobbled as he continued. “I–I wouldn’t blame you if you did. You’ve still got a future. Your mother would protect you.”

Diana deliberately took his bandaged hand in her matching bandaged hand. “It was too late five years ago, when we made our wedding vows. God damn it, Will, we’ve got a future. We’ve got Do It Right. Maybe kids someday. I’m not leaving you alone to face–whatever. We’re in the right here. Either your father or Lakely put that war machine here. We didn’t have a god damned choice but to use your skills to defuse it. If that’s a violation of your interdiction, then those motherfuckers need to not be planning on using you for their purposes.”

A faint smile crossed Will’s lips as his hand tightened on hers. “Damn it, Diana, I love you. I don’t want to see you go through this, but damn it, I’m glad you’re staying.”

“I love you too. And we’re going to face this–together.”

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