Tag: Theadia

Binding off…?

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I’m willing to admit I kinda sorta know how Theadia is going to end? Maybe? It’s very much like how I finally finished The Balance of Light a few years after stalling: I have a handful of chapters to go with an extremely vague idea of how it will all wrap up, but it’s the getting there that’s eluding me at the moment. And thankfully unlike that novel, it won’t take me another four years to finish.

If anything, my use of knitting references all over the novel kind of comes into play in a stereotypical way: everything that’s gone on is a part of something bigger. I’ve woven all these other patterns (read: character arcs) together and now I need to ensure that they all fit together in a coherent fashion. That’s one of the big themes of this novel: we’re all in it together. As long as I keep that in mind, I should be alright.

Anyway, I’m being hard on myself right now because I’m worried that I’m going to get to the end and have loose and miscounted stitches everywhere and it’ll be a big knotted mess that I’ll have to rip apart and start over. That may or may not happen, but we’ll see.

I guess I just need to have a bit more confidence in myself and in this novel. It’ll get there eventually.

Meanwhile, in Bridgetown…

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I’ve got two projects in my head related to the Mendaihu Universe that I’d like to work on once I finish up Theadia. The first one, of course, is MU4. The second one is a ‘remaster’ of the trilogy. I’ve been itching to work on them for a long time now, so as you can well imagine, it’s affecting my focus on Theadia just that little bit. Heh.

A remaster, you say? Well, Next September will be the tenth anniversary of the release of A Division of Souls, the first in the trilogy as well as my first self-published book. And while I think it still holds up really well, I feel like I could revisit it again as an author with a few years and many more books under my belt and make it even better. I don’t plan on any major changes or revisions, mind you. Perhaps a bit of tightening and cleaning up, a few rough patches that I could fix. And maybe some fun extras to add in at the end, like the official soundtracks, some annotations and explanations, that sort of stuff.

And then there’s MU4. That one is just as old, now that I think about it: I started writing some of it longhand while working on prepping ADoS for self-release. It has multiple outtakes and versions that are interesting yet remain unfinished due to focusing on other projects. The story itself is a continuation of the theme of spirituality found in the original trilogy, though this time it focuses on a slightly different angle: what happens when that spirituality is tainted or mishandled.

And that’s a story I think will need a lot more focus and dedication than I can give it while working on other lighter projects. Which means that I’d better get cracking on finishing and releasing Theadia, yeah?

It’s going to be quite the epic project, but I am definitely looking forward to it.

Reading at night

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I was doing pretty good there for a while. I was going through a number of books on my TBR pile (or alternately catching up on my shopping list by reading library copies on Hoopla), but that seems to have fallen by the wayside again. I’m back to rereading my WIP again, and I think that’s doing more harm than good right now. I did this before with Queen Ophelia’s War…I was revision-reading so often that I kind of burnt myself out with the story for a little bit and had to distance myself for a while before picking it up again.

Mind you, I find revision-reading one of the best tools I have when it comes to writing novels and prepping them for self-publication, but I sometimes need to learn that overdoing it leads to hyperfocusing on the problems and rarely getting any further. There has to be a balance.

Not that I’m burnt out on Theadia yet, thankfully. Just that I need to put it aside for a time at night. I need to read things that aren’t my own work. How else would I happen to discover new things that might inspire newer ideas? And not even that, sometimes it’s fun just to sit down and do a bit of enjoyable reading at the end of a long day! It’s a perfect wind-down activity!

So maybe what I need to do is dust off those books in the TBR pile and start cracking them open!

Too Darn Hot

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It’s been uncomfortably hot here in San Francisco the last couple of weeks, seeing record temperatures and ridiculously clear skies. Thankfully I work in a place where temperature regulation is kind of important, so I’m spending most of the day inside where it hovers somewhere at a comfortable sixty degrees or so.

Unfortunately, Spare Oom has been a bit of a sauna at times, meaning I can’t always get a lot of work done until it cools off in the evening. Which means revision work on Theadia is falling a bit behind, but I’m not too worried about it. It’ll get there when it gets there.

It did remind me of my Boston days, especially when I lived in the Shoebox, which could get unbearably hot and stuffy during the summer even when the window wide open. The Allston apartment was a bit better, given that it was a north-facing apartment and thus never got direct sunlight, but without any AC it could still get uncomfortable. Those days I’d usually hang out elsewhere, like at a library or a record store until sunset, then stay up far too late enjoying the cool of the evening. And of course there were the summers in the Belfry…I’d often start my writing sessions after dinner when it was already cooling off.

Mind you, this is not normal weather for San Francisco. We’re more known for being firmly stuck in the upper fifties and low sixties on the good days, with the addition of consistent fog cover out here in the Richmond District. From what I hear, the weather will be dropping back down soon enough, then I’ll feel comfortable back here again.

Knowing enough to fake it

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Working on this go-round of Theadia, I still feel the occasional worry that readers are going to see certain scenes and think oh dear lord, he has no idea what he’s going on about, does he? In particular, it comes up whenever I have a scene with our two goofballs Althea and Claudia doing their magic as programmers.

I mean, I’ll totally cop to the fact that I know enough about certain kinds of programming. I get what coding is supposed to do. And because of my years working e-payables at the bank, I definitely know enough about what happens if that coding is screwed up, and how a code that runs perfectly fine in test mode can just as easily fail spectacularly in live mode. [Oh, BOY do I know how that is. Reading about BofA’s recent systems kerflooey a few days ago gave me some not so fun flashbacks.]

And that’s what I lean on in this story. I have no reason to get into the nitty-gritty and explain in Doctorow-level detail what the characters are trying to do, because that’s not an important part of the story. What is important is why they’re doing what they’re doing, and knowing full well how it’ll end up because of that. There are a few moments of handwavium, sure, but it’s never a plot point that will disintegrate because of that.

What’s important here is not showing off the two women’s mad skillz, but that they know how to navigate the grey area between compliance and hacking. What these moments do hinge on is them not bringing attention to themselves while tweaking a few things here and there while everyone’s distracted.

As long as I make it believable enough, that’s good enough for me.

Going deep again…?

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Whenever I think about the Bridgetown Trilogy and the Mendaihu Universe, I almost always wonder if I’ll ever get around to writing something with that level of worldbuilding. Theadia certainly comes close, but that project’s a different beast altogether. While it certainly has an ensemble cast and multiple worlds, it doesn’t have its own conlang or its own highly detailed mythos. It’s a big story, but it’s not a part of a bigger universe like the MU is.

The MU is still alive and kicking somewhere in the back of my thoughts, and I still want to write more stories in that universe, but I’ve come to the realization that if I’m going to do it right, I’m going to have to go in deep once more. And I’m perfectly willing to do that once I allow myself to take that dive again. [And I will not complain one bit if that includes the music side of things, mixtapes and all. That was one of the best parts of the project!]

As you may remember, I deliberately chose to bounce away from that kind of thing because, up to 2015, that’s pretty much all I knew in terms of novel writing projects. Everything had to be a full-immersion, years-long intensity, and I needed not to do that for a while. I needed to know how to write something standalone and concise. Partly to prove to myself that I could do it, and partly because I knew that not all of my newer story ideas would translate well into that long of a format.

I knew I’d come back to the longer form sooner or later. I’ve often said it’s a format I truly enjoy writing. But in the several attempts in writing the temporarily-titled-MU4 novel, each time felt like I wasn’t doing it justice. The deep immersion wasn’t there, only a reflection of the past style. I wasn’t allowing myself that level of focus and, let’s face it, obsession. So it kept getting pushed to the back burner.

This will all eventually change, I hope. I’m not sure when, and I’m not sure how. Perhaps it’ll be a change in my writing schedule, better and more creative use of my break times at work, or perhaps it’ll be something else altogether. Who knows? I may even start a new extended universe instead…?

Not lazy, just languid

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I’ve gotten so used to my slightly unconventional two-days-on/one-day-off/three-days-on variations of my work schedule that working five days in a row at the Day Job over the last couple of weeks has thrown me for a loop a bit. [There’s also the fact that last Sunday we did some major gardening, after which I did three loads of laundry, which didn’t give me much of a day off.] I’m trying not to overdo it, so I’m allowing myself the occasional day where I do nothing much of importance.

It’s also that the weather’s been its usual weird westside SF self lately: overcast, foggy, extremely humid, and stuck somewhere in the mid-50s…plus it’s allergy season, occasionally leaving me sniffly and migrainey. On those days I’ve learned it’s best to just slow down a little bit and let nature take its course.

I am working on Theadia, just not on a daily basis and not at intense levels, so at least that’s still moving forward!

Hopefully things will be a bit less languid in the coming days….thanks for your patience!

Theadia (an excerpt)

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NOTE: This is a key scene in my current novel I’m working on, and I think encapsulates the theme of the entire project. I also think it’s something that’s become a bit of a personal motto of mine over the last couple of years. It’s a scene that immediately came to mind when I read yesterday’s news announcement. I try my best to be optimistic, but I refuse to be a pessimist if things go south.

*

Stars, wasn’t sure if it was the grav meds being slow to kick in or that she really was that exhausted. They’d landed at Faroe Base over an hour ago and the upper brass had already departed the stash to have their meeting in one of the inner four ships here on the tarmac, but they’d neglected to give Maris – or any other captain, for that matter – any further tasks other than to split their assignments between standing guard outside or manning the comms inside. It was exactly the kind of quickly tossed-off micromanagement that drove her crazy, but she had too little brain space to bother with it right now.

She stepped out the side entryway to the Ravel Blue stash and took in several deep breaths, reacclimating herself to the air. It wouldn’t help her disorientation, but it would at least calm her down. What she really wanted was to head back to her bunk, lock the door, and sleep for the next two days, but there was still far too much to do. And she’d already chosen to ignore any potential hails from Colonel Jaffrey during that stretch of time regardless, because she was plainly out of fucks at this point.

Her comm buzzed twice. A double-tap silent hail. She unclipped it from the side pocket of her uniform and glanced at it, and knew who exactly who’d sent it: Dani Gataki. He was on flight tower monitor duty with Lee Cheng right now and most likely saw them pulling in. She was tempted to respond in kind, but now wasn’t the time. He’d understand.

“You’re looking like shit,” Captain Beecham said, stepping out of the stash and sidling up next to her. She didn’t look nearly as exhausted, but the constant grav change was starting to get to her.

“I’m feeling like it,” Maris muttered, rubbing at her sore eyes with the palms of her hands.

“You want to sit?”

Maris snorted. “If I sit, I will not be getting back up,” she said. “Thanks anyway. Just…waiting for all this shit to end so I can bind off and pass out.” She pulled the water bottle from her side pouch and took an extended gulps, hoping the liquid would help. She was very tempted to take a seat on the fold-out bench someone had taken from inside the stash, but instead propped a leg on it and leaned forward against her knee. “I am so thankful upper brass is heading eastside when all this is done instead of heading stationside again.”

“Hmm. The trips are taking a toll on them as well, I’ve noticed,” Beecham said.

“You know what they’re up to?” It was a blatant attempt to get her to spill information, sure. But she had to try anyway. “Aside from having all these hushed-up meetings, that is.”

Thankfully, Beecham was the kind of captain who would gladly share the information with someone who deserved it and sat close to her on the bench. “Word is that Nima Federation is causing trouble again. Yes, yes…they love to make a noise every couple of years or so. They miss us, I guess? Anyway, what I’ve gathered from other ravels is that Nima is planning something big this time. My assumption is that they might want to reannex us back into the Federation whether we agree to it or not.”

Maris exhaled slowly. She’d heard the same rumors several times over the years, countless versions of them, but they all had the same theme: Nima Federation had been hit hard financially and politically when Galactic House had granted FairIsle its full freedom fifty years ago and had never fully recovered. FairIsle was not just a waystation with a planet but a major transportation hub, a military power, and a leading partner in their sector’s economy. And every few years, almost like clockwork, Nima would get restless and start some stupid shit, like a needle skirmish or a hostile takeover of a minor station, and FairIsle would have to come in and clean up their mess.

“So what’s different this time?” she said.

“The difference is that they’re meaning business now. They’ve already taken over Pioneer and Leicester in the last year, and those are close to Anais Gate exitways. Like, extremely close. And they’ve been hinting that Atelier might be next.”

Atelier. That would be extremely dangerous indeed. That was a ship dry dock station…one that FairIsle used from time to time.

No fucking wonder Force and High Command were losing their shit.

Maris exhaled and pushed herself up again, the muscles in her lower back howling in protest. “And that’s why they’re sending us pilots from Selvedge,” she said.

“That’s the reason gate travel has been heavily monitored this past year,” Beecham said, purposely avoiding answering her comment. “They believe Nima’s going to make good on their threat this time.”

Maris let the wave of anger wash over her in silence. She wanted to scream, wanted to hunt down Jaffrey and demand why he and upper brass were being so damned tight-lipped about it. They were putting several ravels in danger with this passive-aggressive scheme.

“If you could…” Maris started, her voice low and quiet. Reached up to her comm again and turned it off this time. Scanned the immediate area, looked around the sides of the nearby stashes for anyone listening in. Turned back to Beecham, who was watching her with interest and concern. She finally allowed herself to sit down next to her.

“If you could…” she started again, her voice a whisper. “Would you do the right thing?”

“Without fucking question,” Beecham responded.

“As would I,” she said, and gave her the slightest of nods. “Let’s keep in touch.”

Making it believable

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

So one of the things about Theadia is that the Day Job for the two main characters is that of coding. Althea works on system translators and special projects, and Claudia works on transportation and communication hardware. So suffice it to say, they know a bit about how things work under the hood, and that becomes their superpower as the story progresses. I based my approach towards their Day Jobs on my own position at my Former Day Job, in which I’d learned what’s under the hood in e-commerce banking. In effect, their story isn’t just about the technology but also compliance, safety and just plain making sure it doesn’t explode in your face.

Thing is, I’d decided early on that what I didn’t want was for the novel to be one large technology infodump. Some people like that kind of thing — and Cory Doctorow does it really well, perhaps overly so — but I knew I wouldn’t. That wasn’t the kind of story I wanted to write. I’d decided that I’d infodump only when absolutely necessary, and so far that’s only been in a few very important scenes. I wanted to make it digestible to the normal reader who might not want that tech deep dive. That also came from the Former Day Job: having to explain tech to someone who doesn’t have the mind for it.

There’s also the fact that not everyone is a technological genius in their field. Sure, there are those out there who are absolutely brilliant at what they do, but there are also those out there whose approach is more of a ‘crossing-fingers-and-hoping-it-works’. And if I’ve learned anything from the Former Day Job, that’s not from a lack of knowledge but more from the reality that, as I’ve said numerous times over the years, systems are only as smart as those who program them. It’s often a LOT uglier under the hood than you’d imagine. Legacy systems that won’t talk to each other unless they’re linked by translators, coding languages that are so old they probably predate some employees, intellectual properties that refuse to work in tandem, platforms whose navigation feels counterintuitive, and so on. But hey, if they still work, why change ’em, right?

That’s how I make the tech world of Theadia believable. It’s not about the fancy and nerdy hacking but knowing and understanding what’s under that hood…and how to manipulate it when necessary.

Okay, moving on…

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I’ve spent way too long trying to make that chapter work and I’ve been getting nowhere. I know something needs to go there but it’s just not coming to me, so I’ve called it, placed a WRITE THIS LATER on the page, and moved on. Maybe I’ll come back to it, or maybe I’ll come up with something altogether different. Or maybe I won’t need it after all? Who knows?

Either way, I’m now working on another revision chapter — one I’ve already written and want to polish up — and I probably won’t return to this problem scene for quite some time. I’ll have it playing in the back of my head, sure, but I most likely won’t actually do any writing for it until I get the rest of the novel done. I actually did this with Diwa & Kaffi — chapter eleven, where Diwa is making rolls with his mother and talking about his dad, was the last thing I wrote for that novel before prepping it for publication. By the time I wrote it, I had a much better idea of what was needed and it came to me much quicker and easier.

It’s not a process I do all that often, but sometimes it’s necessary to move on instead of wasting so much time focusing on something that refuses to budge.