May 2014 Writing Contest Results

Here're the results of my writing bet with my friend Robert for May 2014:

*For The Atlanta Incursion, the sequel to The Thing in the Woods, 3,740 words. I imagine I wrote somewhat more, since I'd thought the bet had lapsed and wasn't careful during the first week. I ended up accounting for this by putting 2,500 words under "various." I took the prologue to my writing group that meets in Lawrenceville and got some good feedback there, including advice on how to expand the section to make it more action-packed. The expanded prologue gave me some direction on the military technology of the antagonists, so that was very helpful. I'm bringing the first chapter before the Lawrenceville group today

*For The Thing in the Woods, 3,357 words at least. The goal is to get it as close to 60,000 words as possible, since many publishers will only put out a print edition if it's that long at minimum. My friend Nick suggested that if Thing and The Atlanta Incursion were both short, they could be combined into a single print edition. There's precedent for this--the Warhammer 40,000 Space Wolf and Chaos Marine omnibuses consist of several short novels glued together into one larger one, and of course there's The Lord of the Rings. Still, if each can be a standalone print novel (albeit a shorter one), that'd be even better than two short e-books and one long print book. My plan is to have it ready for sending to agents before I start taking summer classes at Georgia State and since these classes don't start until the second week of June, that's still doable. The plan is to write three new scenes--all of which have useful character-development purposes--early this week and then send it to the first four prospective agents I've picked out.

*Nick also put together a summer writing bet with the goal of writing a short story per week. Between work on my novels and graduate school participating every single week is going to be tricky, but I used the bet to light a fire under myself to write the first new short story in months if not over a year. I was inspired by this anthology call to write a dieselpunk story, in particular one set outside the Western world. And so in around five days I wrote a 3,230-word story entitled "Man of Iron, Rising Sun" set in the aftermath of the Battle of Nanking involving diesel-fueled powered armor. Nick might want to do something with the different stories at the end of the summer and the anthology won't send out acceptances and rejections until after the August deadline. In the meantime I'll cycle the story through my writing groups and send it to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (noted for its weeklong response time).

*For The War of 2512, 1,372 words. In an earlier blog post I referenced consolidating a short story into the novel and ending up with a new POV character, so now I've got more things for him to do. I have long-run plans for the character (a very long-lived genetically-engineered starship pilot), so I've gotten him involved in a bit of political intrigue.

*The rest of the word count comprises various other projects, including one I'm rewriting from the ground up. Life lesson: Don't delete an entire project unless you're absolutely certain you won't go back to it--and then think carefully, because even if you're absolutely certain, you can change your mind. The current version has a somewhat different emphasis that makes for a better work, but I had to rewrite many scenes I'd have been better off keeping in the first place. I also made a bunch of edits to Battle for the Wastelands before sending it out to several agents over the last month, which accounted for just under 500 words.

Writing Update (Some Very Good News)

Here's an update on my writing:

*I submitted an anthology of ten stories to my friend James R. Tuck, who is going to help me make it into a Kindle (and CreateSpace, for print) collection. In particular he's going to do the cover art and given his day job as a tattoo artist (and the good art he did for the cover of his Special Features collection), it's going to be good. Not sure when it's going to be available, but when it is, believe me you'll hear about it. Most of the stories in it have been previously published in print or online, but there are three all-new stories for your enjoyment. The title is Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire: Ten Tales of Valor and Imagination and I could easily imagine a future collection with a title like Flashing Steel 2 if this does well. :)

*An agent who rejected Battle for the Wastelands said she'd take another look at if I "tightened" it. At the time I thought she meant it had to be shorter, but a mutual friend clarified that there were characters that were interchangeable and scenes that were "dead." I didn't know how to handle the latter, but I knew from experience revising and finally selling "Nicor" how to differentiate secondary characters. I did this with some characters in the first three chapters and I'll go over the rest of the manuscript with an eye for this soon. I sent the updated submission package last night. Fingers crossed.

*Speaking of Battle for the Wastelands, I had the idea for some major changes for the storyline of Catalina Merrill, the major female POV character. The changes that had to be made for Battle weren't significant, but the events of Battle for the Wastelands: Escape (the second book) through the fourth book are going to look rather different.

*I started a short story entitled "Packmaster" set in the space-opera universe of The War of 2512, which will be the first in a multi-generational saga I've called "James Michener IN SPAACE." I wrote 3,000-odd words of it before it suddenly mutated into the second, fourth, and possibly fifth chapters of War. Originally protagonist Captain Aldo Singh was the sole POV character, but now Arban Andreas Macrynikola, pilot of a frigate and commander of a squadron of ten armed drones in service of the warlike Khaganate, gets to tell his side of the story. And I have plans for Mr. Macrynikola, believe me...

*I'd planned to submit "Packmaster" to my writing group this Sunday for critique next Sunday, but that's obviously not going to happen now. It looks like I'll be submitting the prologue of The Atlanta Incursion, the sequel to The Thing in the Woods, since it's the only thing I've got that's ready.

*Speaking of The Thing in the Woods, now I need to revise it based on the suggestions of my writing group. One group member seemed to like it pretty much as it was, but another had major issues with it. Some of his critiques had merit and so I anticipate some major work. The good news is that implementing some of them (he had some "show don't tell" issues) might get it to 60,000 words, the minimum length for some publishers to do a print book.

I don't have class until the first week of June. Let the games begin. :)

March Writing Contest Results

My monthly writing contest with some of my writer friends (with lunch out as the prize) continues apace. I've managed to produce 7,225 words on my various personal writing projects.

Here's the breakdown:

Leading the pack is a new space-opera entitled The War of 2512 that I've written 2,504 words for. My friend Chris Nuttall is one of the top military SF sellers with his independently-published Empire's Corps space operas, ahead of professionally-published authors like John Scalzi in terms of Amazon rankings at the moment. And the fact Scalzi's Old Man's War series is doing so well right now means there's a good market for space opera among presses big and small. Not going to go into a lot of detail at the moment, but I'd describe the milieu as a cross between Star Trek and Warhammer 40,000. And it could possibly turn into a generational saga in the vein of James Michener.

Next is The Atlanta Incursion, the sequel to The Thing in the Woods, with 2,352 words. A lot of it was spent developing two particular characters, one of whom will have surprisingly political views for one of the Men in Black. I've already got one spinoff story planned for that character and since he was in the know far longer than the protagonist, he could be main character for any prequels.

For the collection I'm working on with my friend James R. Tuck, 1,201 words. These are all preexisting stories, so the actual content written consists mostly of introductions to each tale. I might have to edit the actual stories--I realized one of the original stories (and it was professionally published no less!) contains very little physical description of the cast--but that won't be too terribly much in terms of numbers. The collection is tentatively titled Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire and my plan is to have ten stories. It'll be through Kindle (e-book) and CreateSpace (print books). I imagine I'll bust out the latter primarily for book signings for future "real" books.

I've been editing Battle for the Wastelands, trying to cut it down as much as possible based on the recommendation of an agent who said she'd take a second look if I "tightened it some." It turns out she wasn't talking about straight-up word count, but about some "interchangeable" characters and "dead" scenes. I'll need to work on that too, but I did find a lot of fat in the manuscript that needed to be cut. In the process of cutting, I've added 1,087 words even though I've cut a net 2,500 thus far. I got a bit hyper about editing a couple times so this number might be a bit off. To err on the side of not potentially cheating anybody I'd gladly lop a few words off this one. About 1/3 of the manuscript left to edit. The plan is to send this one off to the agent again and then focus on the final graduate school paper for the rest of the semester.

I'm going to be busy with my final paper for the next month, but it looks like I got a good bit accomplished this one.