I've been playing When we were at war (Когда мы были на войне) all week as I write the next story in The World of Drei series. This song has an upbeat tune, but follow the lyrics and you will see a tale of a betrayal and depression. Very Russian, and yet, strangely uplifting.
But you may be asking why the Russian thing?
Indeed, you may ask.
Let me tell you about one of my favourite books, which isn't science fiction, but really ought to be considered the template for writing about an alien culture. I speak of James Clavell's Shogun.
I hadn't really though about how much of an impact Shogun had on me until I realized that I'm using the same tricks in my stories as he did in his. Introduce the reader to a foreign culture and drop snippets of the language into the story.
So, this is me writing from my roots.
In Bad Dog I use some Chinese phrases and titles. Strike Dog has an alien language that I made up for the novel. Ghost Dog doesn't, but that's because it has a 'big idea' at the core of the story, which took me in a different direction. However, The World of Drei has me playing with Russian words to immerse the reader into a story that is set in Russia. The folk songs are helping me to get my head around cultural assumptions
Just as an aside.
Susan and I were talking about my current writing, and she came up with this pithy elevator pitch for The World of Drei: It's Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising meets The Terminator. Oh, and I got back her comments on the second installment, she was gripped by the tension.
So progress this week.
I spent 18.5 hours writing, and produced 5,021 new words, averaging 271 words per hour. Which on the face of it, isn't all that good.
But, one day was spent editing Strike Dog, which meant zero new words. I should note that I have the best Beta readers ever, who keep me on track with getting factual information right. I learnt things that even careful research doesn't always reveal, or if it does, one doesn't realize the significance of said detail.
One other day was spent setting up the next The World of Drei story, which required a fair amount of research.
Unlike some authors, I don't spend months doing research before I start a project. I do my research on the fly. It works for me, but it does mean when I'm starting a story I can get bogged down by having to go off and look things up. In this case, it was Russian names. I've got a bunch, but I needed more, and I also wanted to make sure that every character had a different starting letter of the alphabet for their name.
Why you ask? Because it makes it a little bit easier for the reader to remember which character is who if their names are different.
I didn't fully succeed in this. I have a Kozlov and a Korolov, which are very similar. But Kozlov is a private who is a singer and dancer, and Korolov is the colonel in charge of the battalion. I'm hoping that will be enough to differentiate the two. If not, I will find an alternative name for the singer.
That's it for another week.
Projects in Progress
The World of Drei – The war is the dawn of artificial intelligence
Strike Dog – Edit and layout begun
Ghost Dog – Still on hold, until I've finished Strike Dog
The Bureau – Still on hold, see above for reasons
Two Moons – Sidequel story, still noodling
Dead Dogs – First in a new trilogy, still noodling
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