Books I can recommend unreservedly

Emissaries from the Dead by Adam-Troy Castro. If you want to read a mystery novel that fully utilizes the possibilities inherent in SF, then this is it. And the good thing is, it’s the start of a series (two, so far) of books featuring the thoroughly intruiging Andrea Cort.

 

Because it can’t be said often enough

I was going to post something else, but then I saw an interesting post on BSCReview: Being a Hack: Writing A Shared-World Novel by Erin M. Evans. On the off chance that there’s somebody reading this who doesn’t know already about the process involved, I recommend this as an introduction to the wonderful world of tie-in writing.

 

[Writing] Progress

There’s a short story that Steve and I are working on, on spec. Today I had one of the best writing days in weeks, with almost 1,400 words more than I started out with. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

Tomorrow, I’ll add the missing half (at least; possibly more like two-thirds) of the final section, give it a good read-through, and cut it into shape.

And now, to bed.

 

2010, eh?

I hear we’re supposed to have entered a new decade. Not that it matters much either way, but I think we have to wait another year for that.

I decided not to do any New Year’s resolutions, simply because they’re useless anyway–apart from one: self-discipline. I could do with a large dollop of that, to be honest.

I can do it, it’s just a matter of forcing myself to stick to something and not give up. Last November was a disaster with regard to writing, because I gave up on NaNoWriMo early on. I am sure I could have continued, despite the considerable translation work I had.

However, in December, I started taking brisk walks after lunch, and indeed did so almost every day, unless there wasn’t enough time or the weather was too bad. This serves a dual purpose: I get some exercise, and my lungs get some respite from the dry air inside (my nose especially benefits from that, which makes my ENT doctor happy–and myself, of course).

I hope I can apply that fledgling self-discipline to other areas as well. Tonight I’ll write some more on that short story Steve and I are doing. We’re in a bit of a hurry, so some considerable progress wouldn’t go amiss.

 

[Cooking] Jambalaya

I must warn you: this is very much my own version of it, so it’s bound to be anything but authentic. It’s cobbled together from three different recipes I found online.

Ingredients:

• 1 chicken, in 8 pieces
• 2 onions
• 2-3 garlic cloves
• 300 g cooked/smoked sausage (i.e. pepperoni, Milano salami), cut into 0.5 cm slices or cubes
• 3 bell peppers
• 1 can of peeled tomatoes
• 750 ml chicken broth
• 3-4 bay leaves
• 3 cups of long-grain rice
• chili powder
• cayenne pepper
• pepper
• thyme
• salt
• parsley (fresh or dried)
• paprika

Preparation:

Wash chicken and pat dry; rub with the paprika. Heat olive oil in a large skillet; add chicken and brown on all sides. Remove chicken from skillet and transfer to platter. Reduce heat to medium-high; add onion, bell peppers, parsley and garlic to pot. Sauté until onions are tender, about 5 minutes. Add sausage, bay leaves, chili powder, thyme, cayenne pepper and cloves; sauté until spices are fragrant and flavors blend, about 5 minutes. Add rice; stir to coat. Pour broth over rice mixture in pot. Add chicken; press to submerge in liquid. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and cook until liquid is absorbed, rice is tender and chicken is cooked through, about 35 minutes. Remove bay leaves. Season with salt, pepper and more cayenne pepper, if desired. Serve hot.

 

[Link Salad] Fun with Star Wars

I admit I’m not the world’s biggest SW fan, but I like it well enough to appreciate what other people do with it in their creative endeavours.

Such as this, for example. Dark Roasted Blend has become a must-see site recently, and I pop by there regularly. They collect the weird, the wacky, and the wonderful. Their SW collection is all that, and more. Make sure to check out all three parts.

But even better is this here (and I think Allyn will like this): LEGO Hoth – photos taken of LEGO figures in the snow. Absolute perfection, this is.

 

[Mediocre Photography] The Beginning

Let’s try something new. I have a number of pictures on my hard drive, and I keep taking them, albeit with my mobile’s mediocre camera. No guarantees are made as to the quality of the pictures, although I strive to pick only the best. We’ll see how that works out …

Anyhoo. Here’s picture #1 to start things off: a view of the United Nations’ Vienna International Centre, as seen from the Danube Tower nearby, taken  during a trip to Vienna in 2008.

 

Random Thoughts

• Writing-wise, my Secret Writing Partner and I have done some work over the past few months, but mostly we’ve been collecting rejections. I mind them much less than I thought I would.

• Due to me having less money available for my hobbies, I’ve finally begun to reduce the size of my library’s unread section. Of course, the number of the books I want to buy continues to increase unabated. On Sunday I finished Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s Arabesk trilogy and, while I have one of his other books, I want to read more of his work. The same thing is true for Lois McMaster Bujold – I’ve read her three Chalion books and have picked Barrayar as the next book I read, so the rest of the Vorkosigan series might well end up on my wish list.

• I’m not the first person to say this (Warren Ellis got there first), but it bears repeating: this show needs to get made. I love everything about it!

• I want to have BBC 6Music’s babies.

 

The Weekend That Was

I made a decent enough Sunday roast today. We don’t usually have them in my family, or at least not as people from the UK or the US would expect. For some time now I’ve wanted to try myself at this, and today was the day. A chicken was put in the oven, together with a trayful of vegetables, and all were left to their own devices for the next two hours.

It turned out nicely, if I do say so myself. One minor snag, though, was that the time given in the recipe wasn’t long enough even though I bought a smaller chicken–(not funny, Jamie Oliver!) –I had to pop it back in for another half-hour. After that, it was finally done, and everything tasted fantabulous.

In other news, I started a new short story yesterday, which Steve will be happy to hear, since this is one that we plan to submit for an anthology. The due date for subs is January 15, so we can’t afford to wait much longer if we want to give it our best shot. Anyway, what I want to record for posterity is my realisation that I need to write my way into a story. I’ve never given it much thought before, but it sort of hit me today: the first 500 or so words only serve to home in on the characters and their threads. Knowing this, cutting the beginning will be much easier, since I no longer believe everything is essential.

This story is another example of the way Steve and I work best together: taking a story that’s easily separable into two threads, so that we can write simultaneously. It’s no accident that this applies to all our published stories so far.

And now you’ll have to excuse me. I want to get back to reading the magnificent An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears.

 

NaNo on Ice

I decided to give NaNoWriMo a try this year. Last year I didn’t, because I had a paying gig to worry about (theoretically, The Tears of Eridanus should come out next summer or thereabouts). The year before I tried to follow up on my first-time success in 2006 but failed utterly (my enthusiasm left me quite early on). I don’t think it’ll work out this year, because of a combination of two factors: a) I got stuck in a scene that’s rather difficult to write and didn’t write anything for a few days, and b) I agreed to translate websites for my brother’s business, which is currently taking up my evenings.

I don’t think I’ll even hit 40K this month, especially since I have a short story to revise, another to finish, and a third to begin writing (all on spec, in case anybody wants to know). I’m not giving up on NaNo entirely, even though I’m defeating its purpose by not even trying to hit the daily 1,667 words. Those first few days, I’d start writing as soon as I got home from work and hit my goal only around midnight, which meant that I had stared at a computer screen for close to twelve hours a day, and that’s simply too much.

It’s time for a change of habits: more physical exercise, less time spent in front of a computer. I will take more walks, at least; while I had a few months in the summer I was quite enthusiastic about running two to three times per week, I’m easily discouraged by bad weather and colder tempteratures, so I’m going to wait until the spring to start again. Lunch break is just long enough to get a brisk walk in almost every day, so that’s what I’m going to try from now on.

 

A New Start (Again)

Blimey, I’m not very good at this blogging thing, am I?

Last post was in April, and not very many before that … it almost seems as if I’m not even trying.

I haven’t been, to be honest.

Which is why I’m reviving my zombie blog (not quite in time for Halloween, unfortunately), in the hope that I manage to keep it in the realm of the living.

My goal still is to keep this strongly connected to my writing, and I’ve recently acquired Jeff VanderMeer’s new book, Booklife, which has many a good tip on how to manage being a writer in the 21^st century. Consider this restart an attempt at putting the advice in the book to the test. More on that later, though.

 

Using Other People’s Language

One of the writers I find most inspiring (not just because of his works, of which I’ve read far too few) is Joseph Conrad, who was in his twenties when he learned English (and French before that), and yet his stories are counted among the finest in that language. I can only try to become as fluent and confident as he, even though it certainly isn’t easy.

Recently I discovered that there’s a LiveJournal blog about “World SF”, i.e. SF written by people from countries other than the usual suspects like the US or the UK. The latest entry contained a link to writer Aliette de Bodard’s blog, where she explains why she’s writing in English (her first language is French), and what it means to her. If you exchange “French” with “German”, most of what she says applies to me as well – thinking in English, associating English with speculative fiction, feeling freer with English than with my first language, the glamourisation of English as a poetic and musical language.

In addition, there’s also another thing to consider in my case: I am conscious of the market for the stories that I want to write, and the simple truth is that the biggest market is the English language one. I might just be able to write a SFF story in German, but getting it to sell would be tough. Also, from what I can tell from my infrequent perusals of German bookshelves, the jacket design of  SFF novels often leaves a considerable lot to be desired. But I’m biased, and I admit that.

I’m doing the best I can to imitate Joseph Conrad with his mad language acquisition skillz. However, I believe that I may have to move to another country to do that, which is why I’ve given serious thought to doing just that eventually (i.e. in about twenty or so years).

 

I’m A Lazy Bum

Despite my resolution to post more often, I still haven’t changed my blogging habits much since January. It looks like it’ll require a bit more effort than I previously thought.

So, what’s happened recently in my life? Not much, other than me buying an appartment that I’ll be moving into by the beginning of June (I hope), so there’s lots of planning involved right now. This week I’ll finalise the design of the kitchen that will be put in in the coming weeks. Not only will I get a (hopefully) supremely comfortable living room, but also an office for writing and research. There’s a spare room that will become the library until it needs to be something else (a child’s bedroom, say, but that’s a long way off). All in all I’m very excited about this, and there is a lot to do before I can move in: colours to choose for the walls, a bed to buy, various chests of drawers, carpets, kitchen items, etc.  I’m enjoying this very much, even though it requires many decisions from somebody who isn’t used to make such important decisions (at least not so many in so short a time). Just these past two weeks I picked tiles for various rooms (kitchen, bathroom, toilet, hallway), floors (living room, bedroom, office, library), and am this close to picking my kitchen.

Surely that means I won’t have to decide anything else for the rest of the year. I’d like that.

What else is there to report? I’m trying to do a bit of writing-related work every day, whether it’s actual production of text or “mere” research. For that purpose I got myself a Moleskine notebook which lets me write anywhere without the need for a power outlet (yes, children, such a thing is possible in today’s world!). Sure, any other notebook would’ve done the same job, I’m sure, but I fell in love with Moleskine the moment I found out about them (which wasn’t so long ago, actually) while reading Tobias Buckell’s blog. Writing on paper lets me focus on the writing itself, and I don’t distract myself by hopping away to read something else that has absolutely no connection to what I should be doing. I hope that I can make this a permanent change, since it allows me to change creative tracks pretty easily and move from text to picture, from description to depiction, which can only be an advantage when I’m building a new world out of nothing.

Another advantage occurs to me: by writing on paper, I insert another stage in the creative process that may soon become indispensable if I do it right. Anybody who knows me knows that English is my second language, and while I’m more proficient in it than most people I know around here, I’m still learning a lot every day, and the more time I have to think about what I write, the better it usually gets. By forcing myself to convert the analog into digital, I give myself a chance to rethink word choices and entire passages, and perhaps spot something that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.

Sure, this makes everything slower and more work-intensive, but I believe it’ll pay off in the end. Keep your fingers crossed, though, just in case.

 

It’s 100K words to a finished novel, I got a full cup of tea, one third of an outline, it’s dark, and I’m not wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

(with apologies to Jake and Elwood Blues)

My Secret Writing Partner and I seem to have a habit of coming up with ideas that at first look like short story material, but the more we think about it, the longer they get. At least, that’s the trend with our original fiction, which we’ve been trying to pursue steadily over the past year or so. Steve starts writing a short story that then turns into a novella as soon as I get my hands on it, and then gets longer and longer until it has to be a novel (not finished yet, in case you were wondering).

And now it was my turn, plotting out another short story that went the same route. I don’t mind; it’s just that we need to figure a lot out before we get to write this thing. At least now I know better and won’t start with this unless I have a finished outline in hand.

That’s what I’m working on tonight. The third of an outline mentioned in the title will get a thorough make-over, and then it’s off to SWP, who’ll let me know if he approves of it or not.

 

Post-Submission Ennui

Well, not really. It just sounds good. :D

The novel’s been submitted, that much is true. Now we eagerly await our editor’s reaction to it. In the meantime, I have enough to keep me busy. Most important for this blog are of course my writing endeavours, whose targets are the SF and fantasy stories my Secret Writing Partner and I are trying to get going.

I find that I need some visual aspect to help me along, whether it’s a map or a drawing or, as has become possibly by my somewhat recent decision to learn how to use Google’s SketchUp, 3D models of spaceships and buildings. For a collaboration such as ours, having something to actually look at instead of having it described can only be an advantage, especially since I’d much rather show than tell.

This past week has brought us a number of interesting science news: from “weird life” (I just love that phrase – it’s so refreshingly non-scientific) to the revelation that there could be “billions of Earths” out there, to the joint NASA/ESA project to explore Jovian moons. I linked to these sites not only for their (disputed) factual content, but for the ideas they give me (well, except for the “billion Earths” one, since that is pretty much the basis for every SF story ever told). At least now I don’t have to put them off, since the novel’s submitted and I can concentrate on other things for a while.

 

Closure

It’s a good thing to have, but not always a fun thing to acquire.

 

More wordage

Today’s status update (with a new word meter since Zokutou’s doesn’t seem to work well with WordPress):

The weekend’s approaching, and I expect to do some major work on the final two chapters then. I hope to have my part finished by my self-imposed deadline of January 15th.

In other news, I’ve stumbled upon a Japanese Watchmen trailer that makes the film even cooler than it promises to be. I just hope the legal battles will be over in time for the release.

Also, I have something for Allyn and Messrs. Wardilmore that they might not have seen yet: a review of Constellations that singles out their respective stories.

 

A new start

Something’s happening at LiveJournal (what exactly, nobody seems to know), and so I decided it was time for a change, and since Allyn Gibson recommended WordPress, I tried that out. Easy to set up, it was, and I even got to import my old posts from LJ. In doing that, I realised that I’d only posted five times during the past year! This won’t do. I hereby resolve to post more often.

It’s a good thing that my current writing project has been announced: a Myriad Universes novel for the upcoming Vol. 3, out in August 2010. My part’s current total is this:

24,700 / 30,000 (82.3%)

The 30K number is more or less arbitrary, since I have no idea how long my part will be. It should be 25K, but currently there’s no hope for that to work. There will have to be a lot of editing – something to worry about later.

It’s funny: so far, all the stories we’ve written were easily separable into two parts to let us write simultaneously without much sending stuff back and forth. Once we get to write a novel with more than two major plot threads, we’ll have to figure out a new way to do this.

 

Weep for the future, Na’Toth. Weep for us all.

Today was Election Day. See for yourself.

 

A belated Shore Leave report

I know, I know. I’m much too late, and nobody’s interested. Tough.

My entire stay in the US was great, but if there’s one thing I have to single out, it is of coure SL, although the book-buying marathon the day before comes VERY close.

Anyway. We (, his friends Chris and Jon, and I) arrived at the Marriott just after four and checked in immediately. Then we stood in line to get our badges (on the third attempt, we picked the right queue – people standing in front of the signs made it somewhat difficult). As Steve has already mentioned, we went to see the “Blood and Fire” premiere, which was a great way to start the convention, being so full of (unintentional) humour that things were off to a great start. I mean, you can’t beat Denise Crosby changing into a space butterfly, can you?

Then we got something to eat before we went to the Pocket presentation, the first part of which we missed, but it turned out we didn’t actually miss anything, since there were slight issues with technology. Of the covers presented, I got to see only a few, and then only in thumbnail size.

After that, we had the main event (in my opinion, anyway): Meet the Pros. My second, and the first on the other side of the signing table. A weird feeling, and yet such a great one. “Are you in this book?”, indeed.

See the gallery for three selected images from that evening. Be prepared to be shocked.

And then, the bar. I had a great time there, both on Friday and on Saturday, even though I never got to talk to most of the people I knew. Another time (2010?) …

Saturday started with Bob Greenberger’s movie presentation, which sadly also encountered technical difficulties, and then the Boogie Nights, and although that’s a great way to start the day, Steve’s right in saying that the evening concert suited them better. Still, I’m glad I went, because I had a great time. After that, there was the The Sky’s the Limit panel, which went well. I managed to say most of what I wanted to say, actually.

I went to most of the actors’ Q&As, and I have to say that they were all very enjoyable. My favourite probably was Malcolm McDowell, mostly because he was so bloody honest about absolutely everything. (“I don’t remember anything!” “I did it for the money!” “I hated every single second of it!” “What a load of crap!” etc.) Then, the Quality of Leadership panel, and then the masquerade, which was fun, although I sometimes had a hard time understanding the reason behind some costumes (i.e. Mirror Scotty).

Sunday: the Doctor Who panel by , , and , amongst others, followed by lunch, the obligatory S.C.E. panel, another Doctor Who panel, and then three actors’ Q&As, before we got to Mystery Trekkie Theatre 3000.

All in all, I had a great time there and want to be back when I get the chance.