Category: Blog

So there I was, two thousand zero zero, OUT OF TIME.  I jumped off the Twistin’ Matilda train and hopped onto the next car, Black Matilda.

I had the points I wanted to hit, the directions I thought the characters would take and where the story would end up.  Besides feeling a little rushed, I felt prepared.

But I wasn’t.  I had no idea how unprepared I was.

It was a battle to get every single word down on the page.  The characters didn’t want to do what I needed them to do but they didn’t offer any suggestions in return.  Days spread into weeks and weeks into months.

The first novel took a little over five months to write.  The second book only took twenty days.  This one took two and half months for the first draft.  I hated almost every minute of it.  I had to go back to my original plan and reverted to using an outline to finish it. It turned out to be the longest story I had written yet.

After it was done, I had to keep in mind the words of Terry Pratchett, “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”  It wasn’t a wasted effort.

So, all in all, I had written the longest story I had ever done.  I also knew somewhere inside of me that there was plenty to work with on the written pages.  And best of all?  I had persevered.  So a big one for me.

There I sat feeling so accomplished.  I took a break before I jumped on that rewrite.  I deserved it right?  That and I felt that the closer I did the rewrite to the time I started the third one, the easier it would be.

I did my steps and handed it out to some of my testers (be they forever willing to read my words).  Many things were pointed out that needed to be fixed and I fixed the ones I saw the need to.

And then I took an even longer break.  I had life things to take care of.  Never mind that that feeling of accomplishment filled me every time I thought about revising this one.  As the time drew near for working on the next one, I sat down and went through Twistin’ Matilda.  And there was more work to it than I remembered.

And then I ran out of time.  My deadline to start on the third one crashed into me and sent me spinning.  I did what I could and then set it aside.

I had to jump on Black Matilda because otherwise what was the point?

Time equals money.

Time is a concept that was created by humans.  We have broken it down into a series of symbols all in the desire to place our need for order on top of it.  Yet, there are those among us who believe that everything throughout our concept of time is happening at the same moment.  This could mean that time itself would be a bit of a misnomer.

Money is also a concept created by humans.  This one we have broken down into a system of symbols to equate work done with some value outside of our everyday needs.  In today’s world we have a gone step further and replaced the symbol for value of time (gold, silver, etc) with valueless symbols (bills, bonds, stocks, etc) that represents a promise of the actually valuable symbol.

Both Time and Money were created to provide order to our daily lives and to provide value to the time used in our daily lives. But in the end they are just symbols and actually have no intrinsic value in and of themselves.

So Time may equal Money but a concept equaling a concept built into that concept still comes out to actually equalling nothing.

But it sure is nice to have a pocketful of symbols that you can hold onto for a future concept.

I want to take a moment and talk about the people who are willing to sift through the rubble of your cobbled together ideas and offer feedback, assistance, what have you.

These people are absolutely amazing.

First off, they want to read it.  And after plowing through your first draft, that little boost to the ego feels great.  It empowers you to jump into the 2^nd and 3^rd draft because you want them to enjoy it.  That’s pretty powerful right there but wait there’s more!

They are also willing to offer constructive criticism.  Nothing makes you look at your works differently like another set of eyes.  Sometimes it’s humbling, other times its uplifting but it is always useful.

Now here is where it gets crazy.  They are willing to read it again after you’ve made changes in the later drafts.

I didn’t really understand how much I needed them and I don’t know if I can ever really explain it.  All I really know is that my journey in this adventure wouldn’t be complete without them.

So I was left with the question, should I do this whole thing again?  I mean I was asked to, but should I?

I learned quite a bit writing my first one.  I had made revisions to it and brought my vocabulary back to a much more useful level.  Why not do it again.  The second time should be easier.  Besides that, I had fun right?

So I hunkered down with my ‘bible’ and added all the new stuff from the first book, The Matilda.  I wrote all the points I wanted to hit and I left it loosey goosey.  I wasn’t going to struggle with an outline this time.  I waited until I had everything as ready as I thought it could be.

I grabbed my keyboard, flipped the screen on started to write.  The first few days were a struggle.  By the middle of the second week, I wasn’t sure where the story was going and it was frustrating.  But I knew I could it this time, no matter what.

Then my invisible muse came to me and the rest of the second book wrote itself.  I almost couldn’t keep up with the words as they flowed from my fingers to the screen.  I had my first draft done in about twenty days.

That’s one of hell of an improvement from the first one.  It was crazy.  It was exhilarating.  All in all, it was a blast.

That was the most fun I have ever had writing.  I couldn’t wait to work on a third one now.  Of course, I still had to revise that first draft.

So, besides being a science fiction tale, what is The Matilda about?

Well, to put it in a nutshell, the book follows the crew of the Matilda as they fight their way through shadowy government agencies, crime lords, their pasts, and monstrosities from an unknown layer of the universe.

It all takes place in this section of controlled space known as The Consortium.  This section of space is made up of multiple worlds and systems that are interconnected by wormhole gates, which are in turn, controlled by the bureaucracy known as The Consortium.  The systems themselves are left to their own devices but interplanetary trade is controlled by the military.

We follow a group of survivors who live on the fringes of society.  Unfortunately, the fringes are controlled by criminal elements.  Trapped between these two forces, the crew works their way toward another meal, sometimes legally other times not so much.

But someone is after them.  But who are they really after and why?  What could one of the crew know that could be potentially dangerous for the powers that be?

It’s moments like this when it’s good to have an ace up your sleeve.  Even if that ace can bypass the entire wormhole gate system by going where no one should or no one would want to go.

The plan is for everyone to join Jacquotte Delahaye and her crew of misfits in the first book of the series, The Matilda.

And remember how I wondered if I wanted to do this again?  Well, the journey will continue in the follow-up sequel, Twistin’ Matilda!

Time jumps are a pain.

It’s amazing how the shifting of one hour can completely screw up just about everything.  There I was moving along pretty well with all of my thoughts in place.  I was hitting all my deadlines, my personal calendar goals and all that fun stuff.

One governmentally required time shift later and I am still a recovering zombie.  I miss three deadlines of my own personal making, fall behind a couple weeks on my editing and end up jumping a story because I can’t remember what I wrote last.

Oy to the vey.

I may have to pull back for a while to get back on track.

You know that feeling you get when you hand over a piece of your art and hope people like it, but you expect them to tell you the exact opposite?  It makes reviews much easier to deal with.  Also knowing what my cup of tea is might not be someone else’s makes listening to what other have to say much easier.

On top of that, since I had a more of a script writing background, I’d done edits on the fly (aka, rewritten dialogue so it wasn’t a tongue twister for the actors or just dropped entire sections of well-crafted dialogue to make everything flow better).  I was willing to make changes or start from scratch if it seemed necessary.

I had chosen people close to me as well others who I knew and respected their reviews.  I also tried to choose people who weren’t necessarily into the genre that this story fits into.  As an added bonus, I also got reviews from people that I didn’t know.

So it was with quite a bit of surprise that I got mostly favorable responses.

I listened to what they each had to tell me and made revisions where I saw fit.  I gave it out to other people and let them have a go at it and I made a few more.  Every single person involved in this step helped me become a better writer.  It made me wonder if I should try this whole thing again.

Funnily enough, the biggest response I got was, “When can I read the next one?”

Aah, the joys of rewriting my story.  Can I count the ways?  Should I count the ways?  Or how many times I had to count the ways?

I actually enjoyed the rewriting / editing phase(s).  This is when I had the chance to make my first novel something worth reading.  My first draft was awful… to me anyway.  I’m sure others would have found it awful too but I’m not a sadist.

So I’ve given the story a read through.  What happens next?

For me, the first round is simply cleaning up the tense, spelling and grammar. I also tried to get rid of duplications (be they words, names and so forth).  The next round was fixing the story so it outshone the plot.  This included moving chapters or paragraphs around in the story or cutting them out entirely.  Finally, the third round was fleshing out the bits that needed it and getting rid of the repeating parts that weren’t necessary.

So the benefits were pretty cool right off the bat.  My story got better as I plowed through it.  Each time was a little (or a lot in some spots) better than the last.  Sometimes I’d read parts out loud to work on the flow as well.

After these three revisions, I was pretty happy with what I had created. In fact, I was so pleased with it, I decided to let other people give it a go over and tell me where I went horribly wrong.

Who are my writing influences, you ask?  Well, there are quite a few.  I have listed some in previous posts and I hope to find more as my journeys continue.

I have been on a bit of an older genre of authors kick as of late. I just finished all but a couple series of Edgar Rice Burroughs and I am currently going through H.P. Lovecraft’s work.

But if we jump in the way back machine, there’ll be some staples, J.R.R. Tolkien, Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Heinlein, Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey and Frank Herbert.

In the middle, some of my favorites were Daniel Keys Moran, John Steakley, Christopher Hinz, William Gibson, Joan D. Vinge and David Gerrold.

And currently, I have a tendency to read:

Steven Brust (http://dreamcafe.com/)

P.C. Hodgell (https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/p-c-hodgell/)

Joe Abercrombie (https://www.joeabercrombie.com/)

Jim Butcher (http://www.jim-butcher.com/)

I am also looking forward to read Carrie Vaughn’s (http://www.carrievaughn.com/) Martian’s Abroad.

One of the biggest influences on me writing wise has been and probably always will be is Roger Zelazny (https://www.fantasticfiction.com/z/roger-zelazny/). The flow of his stories always grabbed me and shoved me through the pages.  He covered Sci-Fi and Fantasy. He also blended them together in a way that I haven’t come across anyone else having done.

Another of the biggest influences on me would be C.J. Cherryh (http://www.cherryh.com/WaveWithoutAShore/). The biggest universe I have ever come across in story is her space series. It spanned hundreds of years and multiple planets/systems.  And the stories wouldn’t necessarily connect. I have yet to come across a ‘world’ as large as hers.

So if those weren’t a clue, (or possibly confusing) my first book will be in the Sci-Fi genre. It’s pretty much heaped up with a lot of the things that I like and some of the things that I think are missing from Sci-Fi.

So, yay for influenza! Or influences I mean. Yeah not the other thing…