The Common Lie Writers Tell You

Caught this, (yes, I spend too much time on YouTube – it's the equivalent to a laser pointer and  kittens having fun), Y'all Stay Home 2020 Afternoon Keynote by Brandon Sanderson.

As a result of watching this I can now say that my process is bounded by three states: slow, dead slow, and stopped (distracted by a laser pointer).

Still, I'm writing, however slow, because I now have ideas. This is good.

Pivoting to Face 2022

I'm not going to provide a list of predictions for this year as I think that my 2020 list for 2021 covers what I expect for 2022. In summary, the new year will have a lot of the same stuff happening as the last two years. The cartoon sums up the world.

Sorry, not sorry.

So here I am, nearly nine years after staring this blog charting my writing progress. To that effect I'm pivoting the blog to account for my failures. Time to stop reinforcing failure and get on with getting on.

Plans for this year: finish my next two novels, write a set of rules, and make and paint some more models. Simple goals that I can hope to achieve.

There will be fewer posts too.

Why? Because the purpose of the blog is to have a presence where people can find my work, and as such this seems to be failing. My need to write a diary of my writing progress is no longer an essential need at this point, as I think I've reflected enough on my writing process.

WIBBOW is my new watchword. Would I Be Better Off Writing.  The answer to that is most certainly yes. I need to get back in the saddle, and regular posts here are a distraction.

Harlan Ellison's Watching 11

Got to love old Uncle Harlan (RIP). He was/is a divisive figure, but that is all part and parcel of the human condition. Not everyone will like you no matter how good you are/were, or hate you no matter how bad you were/are.

As a writer of little means Harlan stands as a giant. Someone I can learn from both good and bad.

Anyway, those of you who are eagle-eyed will have spotted some minor changes on the blog. Mostly down to labels and how I tag my posts.

I'm making an attempt to get back into the saddle. Regular weekly posts, but these posts may just be a record of the number of words written. Namely a writing log. Not much to see for the casual reader, just my diary, which was the original purpose of starting the blog.

Some of the pieces I post will include stuff I've found interesting. Just like I've done in the past, but I'm taking the pressure off having to do this every week. It's too distracting from my core concern to write more.

That is all. I will tag the diary posts with Writing Log, so readers can skip them. And I will only share blog posts that have something more to offer than my writing log.

Carpe diem. That's all for now.

Fell Off the Map, Again

I'm good, as in still alive and kicking. Not a certainty in these troubled time given I've just heard that a close friend's father died two weeks ago. 

I've got my first Covid jab, and no real side-effects from the vaccine apart from finding my rheumatoid arthritis flared up, which has affected the quality of my sleep. For me this isn't painful as such, it's more that I get really hot at night and that wakes me up and I throw the cover off to cool down. 

If I fall to sleep, while the cover is off, then I wake up cold and stiff as a board. It's a fine balance.

Anyway, end result is that I'm so far behind on all my projects that I've come full circle and it all feels like doing things afresh. That's a joke JIC.

Catch you all later.

Post Annus Horribilis

Life would have more clarity if you could. Shit scary, but clarity.

I see everyone posting hopeful goodbye to 2020 and to a better 2012 (sic)... 2021 (doh!). Don't get me wrong, things will improve going forward, but a fixed date on the calendar isn't in and of itself a harbinger of change.

Last year I opined on how 2019 hadn't been a great year for me, but better than 2010. A year later I find myself again saying the obvious, 2020 wasn't great either. And funnily enough, still not worse for me than 2010, because no hospital admissions for emergency surgery for one.

This may sound callous, but in the bigger scheme of things I can only control those things I can control, and when it comes to my health, that isn't a certainty either.

We lost a lot of people to the global pandemic, but it could've been a whole lot worse, still shouldn't have been this bad (this isn't rocket science, just ask veterinarians on what to do).

My predictions for 2020 were pretty much spot on. 

If only I had thought to add something about a pandemic, people would've been amazed at my powers of prestidigitation. As it is, I can rest assured my lack in predicting the future will go unremarked. Which is a good thing. There's enough crazy in the world without me adding more.

My partner has been home for most of December, which has been lovely. It has helped me immensely too. The only intractable problem I appear to have at the moment is staying focused. I find myself distracted by things far too easily, and not in a good way.

You know? Oh look, something new and exciting... I must have the shiny thing kinda way.

Plans for this year: finish my next two novels, write a set of rules, and make and paint some more models. Simple goals that I can hope to achieve.

Catch you all on the bounce.

On Lemons, Lemonade and Robot Tales

Life is still serving us lemons, and I'm overwhelmed with trying to turn them all into lemonade. but I found this article through my feeds on Defence News.

I also have a friend who is working on 5G connectivity for the Army, link in the picture below. 

 

So, as you can imagine from reading my books, these are both very interesting projects as they show I wasn't too far off extrapolating the tech needed for my near future Mil-SF stories.

Currently I'm wrestling with a short story, project title: Omake – Japanese for Extra –The story of what happens to the lost robot explorer team seen briefly in my second novel.

I had planned to include this as an epilogue in Strike Dog, but readers thought it left too many questions hanging like a loose thread, and so I cut it out. Since then I've gone and expanded what was a couple of short paragraphs into several thousand words of odd snippets.

My plan is to turn these into a bunch of short stories about an android and robot dog.

But first I have to knock all the fragments I've written into a coherent narrative, rather than the number of short 'cool' scenes I have compiled.  So, I intend to use the Omake name for a collection of these shorts, as and when I can get my ass into gear.

And, I haven't thought of a good title for the first of the tales of  the android and his robodog, and what happened to them, their discoveries, and the consequences for them and mankind.

Keep well, stay safe, and catch you all on the bounce.

October, September Flew By

I could ask myself where did September go, but what's the point? No posts here, but I did put one on my Facebook page.

I usually post here and there, but what can I say?

In a world where brain eating amoebas were found in water supplies in the United States, as just one example, it seems the best thing to do is batten down the hatches and ride out the oncoming storm.

So I just didn't bother.

However, I thought for those of you who don't follow me on Facebook, I'd post a link to my author page, which can be accessed by clicking the picture above.

In other news, I've been working on my models, which you can see on my other blog.

Meanwhile, I'm using the model making time to meditate on issues that perplex me, as one does; or at least I do.

I'm boggled when friends say they think I'm trying to change their minds with my pieces because I thought I made it clear that they were my attempt to argue through and understand the baying mobs on social media.

As I said to friends, fact don't change opinions, and if I wanted to try and change a persons opinion I wouldn't start with facts. For a start one has to know if the other person wants to change their opinions or needs to for practical reasons.

Even when those criteria are met, it's hard to change people's opinions/beliefs. It just is. Otherwise how does one understand therapeutic outcomes being so low, or relapses after a successful course of treatment?

Emotions are the key to our beliefs.

These start when one is born, and the environment you're brought up in feeds your experiential growth. Leaven with classical and operant conditioning, and by around the age of four or so you have the foundations laid for who you grow to become.

As time goes by, more core beliefs are laid down, and we build our assumptions on them.

By your teenage years your thoughts are driven by hormones, genetics, and experience. This is why it's difficult to change beliefs and or habits. Not impossible, just hard.

Harder than you think unless one has an epiphany from a traumatic event.

Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. I must get my act together and write more, but one step at a time, because change is hard.

Looking Back in the Mirror of Life

 

I've had a lovely Xmas break with my partner, and while it was quiet with only one trip out for lunch with friends on New Years day, we've both been enjoying the chance to chillax.

Mostly we've been catching up with TV shows: watched the Good Place Season one, which was so good we had to immediately get Season two, an excellent show that tickled my interest in philosophy (the discipline I love and hate in equal measure); followed by Season two of The Orville, which was excellent; then Season two of Discovery, which was also very good, but I could have done with a little less emoting in some of the scenes that interrupted the pace.

We've both been reading, and I managed to finished a lot of good books.

First up were the six books in the space opera/Mil-SF Frontlines series by Mark Kloos, highly recommended. Read books nine through to thirteen of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, which are compulsively readable; and after that it was Diane Rowland's White Trash Zombie series books five and six.

And as a result I've been a feeling a lot brighter.

In other news about the state of the author, on New Years eve I had a steroid injection into my right thumb. Hopefully this means in a week or so I will be able to use both hands at the same time, which will be a relief (given that not being able to use both hands made the last year suck big time).

Just one of the many fall-outs of my rheumatoid arthritis returning in 2018. An unwelcome relapse caused by the stress from my old job with the NHS. But 2019 was made worse when the side-effects of my anti-rheumatoid medication sent me down into the depths of despair, which knocked me for six.

Though, as I sit here thinking back over the last ten years, I really need to remember how bad things were back in 2010 for a sense of perspective.

Back then I was taking methotrexate to treat my rheumatoid arthritis. Unfortunately, the medication suppresses the immune system, which meant the cysts in my breasts, became inflamed and went septic. That landed me in hospital and having emergency surgery.

So 2019 wasn't as bad as 2010.

However, the realization that no matter how much I enjoy being a therapist, the stress of dealing with patient's emotional upsets is not doing my health any good, and that career is over.

But, I must be grateful for the chance this has afforded me to start writing. Bringing my stories to market has been a challenge, but I've learnt so much that I see the past experiences as a silver lining of the cloud that has blighted my career.

Anyway, enough maudlin reflection.

I've been happily working on collecting the first three novelettes of my World of Drei stories. This will be the first volume of an open ended series about the emergence of an AI during a Russian civil war. It has been fun to do, and an interesting direction has emerged from it, but more news about that in another post.

In the meantime I'm waiting for the book to come back from copy editing, so while I'm waiting I've put the cover up as a tease for everyone to enjoy. You may also have noticed I re-did the covers of the first three stories too.

OK, that covers everything I want to say, so I will end now by wishing all my readers a happy and prosperous New Year. Catch you all on the bounce.

September Already

 

I could say where has the year gone, but I already know the answer to that.

The Bank holiday and this weekend were spent shooting my new longbow. The one I made back in January that was too strong for me to pull. Now home after Master Bowyer Pip Bickerstaffe fettled the tillering to bring the poundage down to my level.

So all is good with my bow. The fact that my shooting fell off a cliff is down to me. Good news I have an appointment in early October for a scan and injection to fix my left wrist. Fingers crossed it does the job.

I'm currently researching archaeology, getting the lowdown on how it is done from a friend who is an archaeologist. So the next block to moving forward with the novel is about to be breached.

Other than that, I've been reading a lot. I will at some point put a list I recommend checking out. Until then, see you all on the bounce.

Grim Dark Kittens

We've been watching season two of Westworld, which was intense and compelling. So much so that we've gone back to rewatch season one. As a result we've been talking about the complexity of the narrative in Westworld.

What has this to do with Grim Dark Kittens?

I'll get there, just hang onto to your horses.

I've always agreed with the notion that there's SF and then there's other genres. SF to be truly science fictional mustn't just be westerns in space, because it's not exploring the effects of science on society.

And yet, here we are watching an SF western. And boy does it meet the criteria of science affecting society. So I've come to the conclusion that the paradigm of space westerns are not science fiction is not true for all cases.

But still what has this to do with kittens?

Imagine if kittens wrote stories. Given the memes on the internet I imagine it would do with being ignored and not being fed. A grim dark tale for kittens would have an empty food bowl and a starving kitten mewling. Or a kitten sitting before a door that has is barrier to freedom and choice, and the wail of the cosmic horror of kitten existence. Or the above.

OK. It amused me.

State of the Writer

 

I've been very quiet of late.

Lots of good reasons, which are in fact not so good. Health issues have been a bit of a strain. However, I have been working on parts of my craft doing online courses with Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathyrn Rusch here.

I recommend all my writing friends to check them out.

The picture is for those readers who want to know what the Conex boxes of Alpha Base look like. This is the kitchen unit.

NB: a couple of links:

3-IN-1 Foldable Shelter Deployment

3-IN-1 Expandable Shelter

Twitter and Writing

This picture of Ultima Thule excites me. My SF dream of living in a future of robots, rockets, and rayguns. This comes under rockets.

Over on Twitter there's a thread going around about how writers write. Since my goal is to write more, such conversations are of interest, because you never know if you'll learn something new.

1. Write at the same time each day, not when you feel like it.
2. Finish the project before starting a new one.
3. Reward yourself, otherwise you’ll slowly grind down and be unable to write.

I've broken these rules time-and-again, but you just have to pick yourself up and get back in the saddle. So last week, still not finished The Bureau, but I'm confident that I've started the actual last chapter that needs writing. Though with the added caveat, I'll probably end up cycling back to add bits to foreshadow the ending.

Words, all new, 1,772 for the week (I reset my daily goal to 250, but still reached it).

In other news, for definitions of news that's a bit vague, treated myself to a couple of Star Wars X-Wing models when buying my godson a Y-wing. Been reading the Heavy Gear Blitz rules as there's an interesting thread on the Dream Pod 9 forum about rules updates. Both of those were treats, as was a lovely meal out with friends at Wagamama in High Street, Kensington on Friday night.

And watched Hugo in 3D. Susan bought it as a bargain price 3D film. It's slow to start, rambles on a bit, but is absolutely charming, and a must watch for all fans of the history of movies.

So that's it for another week.

Breaking News:

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190211.html

The Stars are Not Quite Right

The London night sky, and no you can't see that many stars with the naked eye.

My first version of The Bureau was written as a graphic novel, planned to be a six-issue series, I wrote three 28 page episodes. When I word processed the script this became 15,214 words, but only 7,905 words of that were prose. The reduction came from the removal of frame descriptions (size and placement instructions etc.).

My first draft grew to 12,285 words when I created the first Scrivener document, and I expanded it to 46,803 words, and before I went back to a day job it had grown to 51,008 and 37 chapters. My goal for January has been to finish the project.

I've failed. Hence the the title of this piece. But, even in failure there is progress.

I now have 39 chapters and 62,053 words down. I'm so close to finishing the story, but the ending is proving elusive.

Every time I think I have it, I remember I must go back and add an element to foreshadow what I want to describe. In the process of doing so I keep finding errors, typos and missing words, which of course throws me out of my creative writing.

This means I need to push a bit harder and get the job done. Wish me luck.

New Year, New Goals

Wow, what a year. My life has been a bit rough, what with one thing and another. It has been one of those years that when you look back you can see loads of good intentions that were not met. I've been keeping up with archery as it's an enjoyable way to exercise, but as I said when reflecting on my writing, I haven't been writing enough.

So I made a decision.

Since it has been six months since I lost my writing mojo, I've decide to set an easily reached goal and I plan to write 200 hundred words per day. This is to set myself up for success with baby steps, but I will review my goal again in three months to check whether I've set the bar too low.

I hope that by doing so I can finish writing The Bureau, my Cthulhu mythos story, and make inroads on my next SF novel, Two Moons. And if luck should favour me, and I find I get my writing streak back, then another couple of episodes in The World of Drei series too.

Reflecting on 2018

I went out last night to celebrate the new year with my friends Pum & Jay, and got to see some other long time friends of mine: Glenn, Robin, Ian & Jane. As a result we didn't get home until the early hours of the morning, and as a result I've been struggling today from not having slept at all well, which is why this post is going up so late in the day.

Looking back on the year let's see how I did. Words wise, I failed to meet my goal of writing three new novels.

I only managed 77,079 words of new fiction, which is pretty miserable, and a reflection on how miserable I've been feeling. I also wrote 18,799 words for this blog, and 8,287 words for my wargaming blog. In addition, I wrote eight articles for Galactic Journey, which came to 8,650 words.

That comes to a grand total of 112,815 words. The majority of which I did in the first six-months of last year.

This has largely been down to how ill I've been since July. However, I do note that saying this I have managed to write more than the 57,407 words than I wrote in 2017, which I'm going to take as another win, even though back then I had the excuse of having a day job.

However, while I may have spectacularly failed to meet my writing goals I did get my three novels out the door. So I'm counting that as a win. Also, I wrote three novelettes, which are also out of the door. Another win.

So my plan is simple, take the time to get better and then start writing new words.

To finish, as dinner is about to served, I wish all my readers a happy new year.

On Franchises & Reboots

I've been struggling with writing words for a while. However, this week my consultant reduced one of my medications, which seems to have helped. It may be too early too really tell, but I'm sleeping better, and my head is starting to have thoughts again.

Anyway, my blog is a place where I can write about what I write, acting both as a diary and a place to work out ideas. And I have had some ideas about the propensity for Hollywood to reboot popular franchises, and by extension retell the same stories.

My friends on Facebook often ask the question why-oh-why can't Hollywood do new stories, instead of rebooting "old" stories?

Having just finished watching Star Wars Rebels season four I can think of several good reasons for why reboots are so common. The first is simply, money.

Or the cost versus benefits relating to loss.

It's certainly the answer that most people I talk to roll out as an explanation. It makes sense. Risk aversion is part of the human condition and it drives/hinders taking action, which leads to prevarication.

However, if one studies stories, taking time to examine the structure of stories, then it soon becomes apparent that there are a number of forms or plots. Plots have themes, and stories are driven by conflict or opposition.

A long while back I wrote about reading Booker's The Seven Basic Plots. A book that should be titled seven traditional plots and the two or three new ones. OK, I'll admit that's not a snappy title, but then again The Seven Basic Plots is not a snappy book.

There are of course other opinions.

Writers have been writing about writing stories for a very long time. But if I boil the essence of what has been said, it comes down to this. The more you look at stories throughout the ages the more you realise that there are no new plots, only new treatments.

So, from this perspective reboots are more of a feature of story telling, rather than a bug. The big problem of this process is that reboots often fail to provide a fresh treatment, and I would argue that this is what drives peoples dissatisfaction with reboots.

Returning to Star Wars Rebels, and arguably the other animated series in the franchise, what they have managed to do is to bring a fresh treatment of the basic story to viewers. The big failing of The Last Jedi can be reframed as stemming from a failure to make the story feel fresh.

I've been a fan of Star Wars and take an interest in the buzz that surrounds the films. In my opinion, the problems of the prequels and the latest sequel arise from the fear of failure. Lucas and those who follow him are caught by the burden of expectations, which causes them to doubt themselves and lose their trust in the story-telling process.

Stories have structure that readers come to expect. I wrote about this  when I read John Yorke's Into the Woods. That and having quotable dialogue. OK, that's enough for now as we have to go shopping to get some food for tonight's meal.

On that note, let me finish by wishing all my American readers a happy Thanksgiving.

A Year On, A Reflection on Six Months

Walking the walk.

Last year I did a six-month reflection of my writing progress. You can compare and contrast what I said then to now by going here.

Like last year I've written a bunch of pieces for the Galactic Journey blog, which is in the running for Hugo this year.

The Big Freeze (news from a UK fan)
Still Snowing (an update on UK fandom)
March of Progress (the movie, Come Fly With Me)
Bully for Conventions (BullCon: The 1963 EasterCon)
More wooden acting (The British show, Space Patrol)
Damned if they do (the movie, The Damned)

This year I've been back writing full-time, though with caveats, as the writing also covers being my own publisher, which is something new I had to learn. Learning new stuff takes time, and I fear that I'm not as quick a learner as I imagine myself to be.

And I've got to admit, my energy levels aren't what they once were.

Anyway, I tallied my weekly running totals and double checked my figures against my two works in progress numbers. There was a slight mismatch, it seems I wrote a couple of thousand words more than I recorded.

Ooops.

Still, whether it's 68,000 words or 70,000 words, it really doesn't make a big difference in the greater scheme of things, as I've failed to meet my daily target that would've reached my target of 195,000 words.

However, I note that this is still more new words in six months than I wrote for last year. So a win for me since I have another six months to write more words.

My excuses.

Lost three weeks just down to life factors that were outside of my control. Far too many hospital visits both for myself and my partner who I accompanied for her tests, and results.

Editing Strike Dog and doing a structural edit on Ghost Dog. The former to Americanize the spelling, the latter to address pacing issues (stodgy middle). Both of these books took far more time and effort than I would have thought. Worse still, doing this put me into the wrong head-space to write creatively. They just did.

Strike Dog was 101,491 words, and Ghost Dog is 91,657. All the time I spent editing those words was time I lost writing new words. A lot of new words.

So, now I shall take my excuses outside and put them out of their misery.

Positive Takeaways.

Despite all of the above I did write some new words. I've started Two Moons, which means I'm 10,728 words into my next Gate Walker novel; a sidequel to the main Tachikoma narrative.

I've effectively written a short novel in The World of Drei series, which currently runs to 59,661 words: broken down into three novelettes and a novella. My plan is to keep writing standalone stories in The World of Drei series, and at some point I will make a print omnibus edition for those who don't like eBooks.

My ability to write a story in less drafts has improved. I think it would be fair to say that both my Alpha reader and my primary Beta reader have noticed a marked change in my writing.

I still intend to have completed three novel equivalents this year. I'm half way through the year and I've done one, and I've started on the second. Getting the third requires a Plan B, which mostly boils down to getting my fingers out and write more.

But if I fail to meet my target, at least I will have written a bunch of new words.

Practice

I took up archery a couple of years ago. I've always had the thought in the back of my head that I would do Japanese archery, but as I've got older I've become less inclined to put up with the Zen mysticism of Japanese martial arts as practiced in Britain.

Don't get me wrong. I have a lot of respect for those that do Japanese martial arts, and I practiced Aikido for 16 years, and Iaido for three, so this is just me saying as I've got older I've become a bit more cussed in outlook.

Anyway, that's not the point of this post.

I was talking to my partner about having changed from shooting my bow from right-hand to left-hand, and the difficulty I had shooting the Hereford at this year's Whiteleaf competition, which the above picture was taken at.

Last year I scored 482 points, this year 336. That looks, because it is, a drastic difference. But, when I checked my score sheets the real difference lay in the scores at 80 yards. My results for the 60 and 50 yard distances were almost identical: three points in it (175 last year versus 172 this).

Then Susan said, short-term pain for long-term gain.

And that is true of writing stories too. Transitioning from a writer with their first novel to one who has a second out, and soon a third novel is a learning process. And part of that learning process is practice. And as one practices one learns new ways of doing things.

So, while I'm not meeting my word targets, what I am managing is a reduction in the number of drafts and revisions I need to make to get a piece of writing finished. I'll take that as a win.

Lost in Writing

I was shooting at the Pagoda shoot run by the Royal Richmond Archery Club.

I'm having one of those days when my doubts are at the forefront of my mind. Which considering my new word count last week met my targets seems a little bit odd to me. Clearly my emotions are rumbling in the background, and doubt seems to be my special friend.

Also, self-deprecation is a peculiarly British trait.

Now I sit here typing thinking what makes me write? I keep being told it should be fun; happy, happy words flow. But while I find myself typing I can't always say it feels like fun. Doesn't feel like work either. I just feel lost.

This is probably because I'm writing into the dark, which is a new thing for me. I no longer know what is going to happen. Well, more correctly speaking, how "what" is going to happen.

Targets out at 80 yards.

In the meantime I've been shooting. First competition of the year, where I placed last in my category having completely failed to sort out a sight picture at 80 yards. Sucks to be me.

Summary

Last week I wrote 8,190 words, which took 27.5 hours, averaging 297 words per hour.

It was cold and then it began to rain. With Chris and Richard from my club.

Writing Log 2018-02-02

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