Prep Work

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(Image courtesy of Starship Operators, a fun and unique anime I recommend.)

Whenever I have a spare moment and I’m not focusing on the final preparation of Queen Ophelia’s War, I’ve been preparing for my eventual restart/rewrite of Theadia. Why am I doing this when I have most of the original version written, you ask? Good question, that.

The easy answer is that I’m doing it the same way I wrote the Bridgetown Trilogy. Whatever is about to unfold in this restart/rewrite won’t be exactly the same as that version, just as the trilogy takes what I’d started in The Phoenix Effect and pushed it in a different and much better direction.

The more convoluted answer is that I’ve chosen to expand on several plot points, characters and situations that I’d laid out in the original Theadia. I’ve been finding moments during lulls in my work shift, just like back in the day, to write down my thoughts on how to do this. Certain secondary characters will have a much deeper and richer background and even their own plot lines. While it will still focus on the two main characters — after all, they are not just the instigators of the story but what drives the rest of the main cast — I want to know more about the rest of this universe.

Thus, I’m doing what I did with the trilogy: I’m doing a world building deep dive. Something I haven’t done for quite a number of years. It makes sense for me to do this, considering this is a subgenre I don’t have nearly as much experience writing. [It’s not that I’m a ‘never say no’ writer…I’m more of the ‘I wonder if I could pull this off, let’s try it’ kind.] And if I’m going to do it justice, I want to do my homework.

The current version does work…but there are worrying moments of Handwavium and This Happens Offscreen, and I’d rather not go that route. The best way to fix this, in my experience, is to do that deep dive. I’ll do a bit of research, sure, but I also want this story as believable as possible without getting lost in super-heavy hard-sf techspeak. While it exists, that’s not what the story is about; the project’s focus has always been about the people behind the tech, both the ones who create it and the ones who use it, who may not exactly understand all of it but might at least understand how it works to some degree. [I’ve often joked that this project is my anti-Cory Doctorow story, in which I try to avoid techspeak infodumps as much as I can and still get away with it.]

Will I pull it off? Well, I won’t know until I write it, will I?

Final revision: fix-it notes

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Yep. I’m in the final revision of Queen Ophelia’s War — about halfway through the novel, in fact. This is where I’m doing one last reread at the end of the day on my ereader in bed, a pen and pad at my side. I’ve learned that this is where I find most of the small-time errors that I might miss or skip over while working on the PC: use of the wrong word, confusing dialogue tags, missing words…or my worst enemy: word repetition. [I have the occasional bad habit of using the same word or phrase multiple times within the same paragraph. Easy to fix but embarrassing to discover.]

When I’m at this level of revision, I’ll go straight through the entire work from start to finish before I make any fixes. This will allow me the ability to insert notes out of order — if there’s an important moment near the end of the book that needs to be hinted at earlier on, for instance. That will also make the final final revision session that much easier: fixing those small problems and giving it a bit of shine.

Then I’ll be able to sign off on it and prep it for self-publishing!

Artificial…?

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(Image courtesy of Ghost in the Shell)

I’ve been reading a few social media or blog posts lately opining how AI has infested many creative fields like invasive critters, taking all the fun and the jobs from those who’ve been in the field for ages doing the actual lo-fi work the hard way.

You can always tell the pro-AI people: they have this weird salesperson optimistic shine to them, telling you how awesome it is to be able to create a novel — a whole freaking novel, even if you’ve never written one before! — just by typing in a few prompts! You can even put in a few more prompts and get a cover! You put in the ideas, the computer does all the hard work! It’s awesome! You’ll have more time for raising more bitcoin!

Oddly enough, they remind me of my worst ever job as a telemarketer at a call center, trying to sell toll-free 800 numbers back in the early 90s. Trying to push something that ninety percent of your targets don’t want, hoping that ten percent will think this is the Best Idea Ever, and you’ve made your sale. [And now you just need to get ten more in the next three hours so you can keep your job.]

It also reminds me of Virtual Reality. Remember that, from the early 90s? It was supposed to be the Next Big Thing then, back with all those crisp images that made the internet under the hood look like an amazing science fictional universe, and we’d all be Johnny Mnemonic with Thompson Eyephones, flying through digital space and opening up files and hacking through firewalls with disembodied computerized hands. Never mind that the real under the hood looked…less so. More 8-bit than CGI, really.

There’s something not entirely real about it all. Not exactly Uncanny Valley unreal, but more like you can definitely tell the difference between the messy and tactile yet endlessly fascinating real world, and the AI world that’s just a tiny bit too shiny and perfect but not quite working to spec in small yet obvious ways.

I’m reasonably sure that this too shall pass, just like VR did, just like those smart glasses and other fiddly bits of hardware that get a huge sales push and vanish a year or so later. They won’t go away, I think…they’ll still have their uses here and there. They just won’t be sold as The Latest Tech Toy You Must Own. The overwhelming reaction of AI art has been a resounding ‘meh’ from most non-tech people anyway, and most artists are pissed off about it for obvious reasons. And as a writer myself? I’m secretly laughing that most AI-created stories are easily spotted, absolutely terrible and lacking any kind of humanity within its pages. We’ll still have a few people trying to make a fast buck by generating a handful of these, but they’re few and far between and they’re not doing as well as they think they are.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve used a few low scale AI art generator websites now and again, just for the fun of it, just to see what it does and what level it’s at. If it wants to stay, I think it still has a long way to go. It might create an eye-catching picture…but with colors slightly too pastel, the smile a bit too Aphex Twin, minor but crucial details completely missing, or perhaps an extra limb or finger bending in strange ways. Plus, it currently takes up a huge fuckton of processing power that’s not healthy for the environment.

We’re still better off going old-school and doing the hard work, even if it does take a bit longer and sometimes costs money, to be honest. The end results are still much more pleasing and long-lasting.

It’s Read an EBook Week!

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Time to drop a shameless plug again — I’ve got all six of my ebooks available for FREE over at Smashwords (and Draft2Digital, of course) this entire week, so if you want some fun reading, have at it!

There’s a little bit of everything in there for you:

Feel like an epic trilogy full of supernatural action, magic and intrigue? Then try The Bridgetown Trilogy: A Division of Souls, The Persistence of Memories, and The Balance of Light!

Feel like a fun riff on music biographies that focuses on the ups and downs of a musical family? Then Meet the Lidwells! is for you!

Want an otherworldly tale of parallel Earths, magical girls and true love? Then In My Blue World is right in your wheelhouse!

And if you’re just looking for a bit of light hopepunk enjoyment about two best friends following their dreams? Then Diwa & Kaffi will make you smile!

Have at it and enjoy! (And please leave a review there and/or on GoodReads if you can!)

She stepped through, back into her own world.

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*exhales* WHOOF. I have finally completed Queen Ophelia’s War! I knew I’d be finishing it in the next day or so, but I hadn’t expected the ending to come so quickly! Come to find out, I’d already written the ending I thought I’d need to write, just that I had it in the wrong place, heh! [The above title is the last sentence of the novel, of course.]

Anyway…this was an interesting and extremely personal novel to write. To start with, I’d come up with the idea inspired by a waking dream in May of 2021, and sketched out the entire synopsis in one three thousand word go that morning. Surprisingly, the end result follows it almost to the letter, with just a few minor changes here and there and the addition of a few characters I hadn’t come up with initially.

But the real reason I say it’s personal is that this one mirrors my own life during and post-pandemic. It’s a story about reconnecting with people and things you’d been disconnected from for ages. It’s a story about unexpected life changes and choosing to embrace them instead of fearing them. It’s a story about being honest with yourself. And it’s a story about trusting yourself. Things I felt it was far past time to embrace in real life.

I already have a few book cover ideas in mind, so once I give this current draft a quick once-over, this will be my next self-published novel.

And then I can finally start on Theadia! Woohoo!

Coming close to the end

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As of this week I am revising the most climactic scene in Act III of Queen Ophelia’s War, which means that one, I am coming close to the end of the book, and two, that I am on schedule to get this thing out into the world by late spring! Woohoo!

Finishing this one does feel a bit like how I felt when I finished Diwa & Kaffi…a sense of satisfied completion mixed with an eagerness to move ahead with the next project. In a way, QOW is a very personal book in that I’d written it during the pandemic and post-leaving the Former Day Job, but there’s also the fact that one of its themes is about the willingness to completely change one’s life, and how far one might go to achieve it. I kind of feel like this is my way of signing off many parts of my old life and embracing where I am now. I’m ready to move on to the next chapter now.

This is also one of the last standalones I’ll be working on for a while, and that’s something new to deal with as well. I’m eager, almost impatiently so, to jump back into an extensive created world again, this time with Theadia. I’m ready to move on to that style once again, to the point that I’ve been preparing myself for it over the last month or so.

We’ll see where this new universe takes me…!

Days away from social media

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(Art source unknown, but borrowed from this Medium article)

It’s been a little less than two months since I closed down my Twitter feed, and I can’t say I’ve missed it all that much. Sure, I still pop in from time to time for a minute or so, just to ensure I don’t lose access and to check in on those I follow who aren’t online elsewhere, but other than that, I stay well away.

I’m still on Bluesky and Threads, but even then I don’t stay for too long. Again, maybe for a minute or so. I spend more time with my east coast friends on our shared Discord, to be honest. My Instagram these days are mostly pictures of our cats Jules and Cali. Weirdly enough, the most time I’ll spend on social media is to watch some lawn care reels on Facebook, because they’re a lot of fun and surprisingly calming to watch.

That was the whole point of this detox, really…it wasn’t to take a vacation away from social media but to recalibrate my brain so I’m no longer beholden to it. I still feel like I could better use my time during breaks at work, but I’m not really beating myself up over it. I feel less stressed out, for starters. I feel less inclined to give into a daily rage about whatever nonsense is going on in the world. I’ve found a healthier social balance and I’ve decided I’m going to stay there for a while.

Does this give me more time for writing? Sure! I’ve been doing a lot of world building work for Theadia during breaks and slow times at work. I can get through a good chunk of revision work on Queen Ophelia’s War on a daily basis. I can zip through my daily 750Words. All this, and still have a bit of time left over to relax with non-creative fun things! Time management for the win!

two hours of peaceful zen moments

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If anything, that’s how I would describe Wim Wenders’ new movie Perfect Days. I’ve always been a fan of his work, and in a way he’s been a influence on my own work: from his movie Until the End of the World I learned how to take my time telling a story, allowing it as much time as it wants or needs, and using those quiet moments as part of the story itself.

This new film simply follows one man throughout his days, working for the city of Tokyo as a public toilet cleaner. He takes pride in his work, says little, and captures quiet moments of his day with an old film camera, mostly of the sun filtering through the tree canopy above (komorebi is the theme of the entire film, and is mentioned in a post-credit shot at the end of the film). Is there even any conflict in this? Yes, there is! But the brilliant thing is how he handles each moment that pulls him out of his daily habits: he observes, he contemplates, and he adjusts. Even when the experience deeply upsets him, he eventually learns from it. His life may have been slightly changed forever in those moments, but he never refuses to embrace them.

And Koji Yakusho, who plays the old man, deserves all the awards and nominations he’s been getting. He rarely reacts with any kind of emotion at first, only opening up near the end, but throughout the entire film he lets out tiny moments of extreme joy: a slight smile, the shine of his eyes, a hum of acceptance. Just those simple and understated moments have the ability to carry the entire scene to show that within, his emotions are nearly always full to bursting.

I can’t say enough about how brilliant, lovely and peaceful this movie was, and I highly recommend it. It’s a masterpiece and a perfect film for studying how to take your time telling your story.

Getting there

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Unfortunately I’m at the ‘Oh god this sucks why did I even write this drivel’ point in Queen Ophelia’s War, and I’m doing my best to ignore those lingering doubts. I know the reasons why I’m feeling that way, and it’s not because it is drivel…it’s because I’m twitching to get that rewrite of Theadia started. I just want to quit this project and jump into the next one.

So basically I’m tempering myself with a bit of patience and stubborn will to get this novel done first before I dedicate the bulk of my time to that one. [There’s also the fact that I really want to write the romcom as well, but I’ll get to that one soon enough. There’s less impatience felt in getting that one started.] Besides, I’m into Act III now, which means that I’m right on schedule and should hopefully be done by the end of the month.

I always seem to hit this point when I reach the final third of my projects, to be honest. I just want it done! And I’m quite sure there are other writers who feel the same way. All I need to do is see it through to the end and release it out into the world when I’m done.

I’m getting there…I just need to be patient.

here we go again

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So the other day while I was at work, I’d started playing around with ideas for Theadia, and I started thinking: well, as much as I love it, I still feel I’ve left a lot out. Too many moments where important things happen but only seen from one person’s oblique points of view. Conflict with muted payoff. Too many actions that lack the backstory other than “…then this happens but no one yet knows why” that deserve a much deeper examination. In other words, it’s great, but it certainly could be a whole lot better. And I want to put in that extra work to make it the best.

In other words, this is exactly what I’d done when I’d rewritten The Phoenix Effect as the Bridgetown Trilogy. It went from something that was good and I’d turned it into something great that I’m proud of.

In other words, Theadia may end up another large-scale, extended-cast trilogy if I play my cards right.

Sure, I still need to finish off Queen Ophelia’s War first — I think I’m about two thirds of the way there, so I’m on schedule for that one — but I’m already starting to do the pre-writing paperwork for Theadia now. Extended storylines and subplots for certain characters. I may not know how to successfully write a space opera, let alone write characters that serve part of a military role, but I already know that this one isn’t going to be a dense war-in-space story, and nor is it going to be a uber-savvy tech-nerd story either. It’s its own thing in its own reality, just like the Mendaihu Universe. And I think I’ve gotten pretty good at creating that kind of thing. And those are the things I love writing.

Will this end in tears? Who knows. But I’m willing to put in the work.