Military Science Fiction: Part 3

Welcome to part three where I talk about the other military science fiction series I think are good because I have read them more than once.  Again in no particular order of preference:

The Dorsai series by Gordon R. Dickson.
The Posleen series by John Ringo.
The Freehold series by Michael Z. Williamson.
Stark's Crusade trilogy by Jack Campbell.

I read the original Dorsai trilogy at an early age –  and later followed Dickson's expansion of the core books into the Childe Cycle.  To brutally honest the expanded universe books do not stand up to repeat readings, but Tactics of Mistake, Soldier Ask Not, and Dorsai! are favourites of mine.  There's also Lost Dorsai and The Spirit of the Dorsai, which are two collections of shorts stories and a novella, which are OK, as in worth reading once.  However, they share the problem I have with the Childe Cycle of being works where the author's ambition to write about progress versus conservatism resulted in them forgetting that stories have to be interesting beyond the message.

I have a love hate relationship with the Posleen series by John Ringo, which actually should be called the Aldenata series, but everybody I know who reads these books remembers the Posleen: ravenous aliens that call-back to the Mongol Hordes.  However, my love, hate relationship is down to the technology rather than any heavy handed message.  I just have a failure to suspend my disbelief when Ringo describes light speed velocity shots being fired inside the Earth's atmosphere.  Despite that throwing me out of the world I find myself enjoying the adventures of the various groups, and who can forget the crew of the massive tank called Bun Bun fighting the Posleen with nuclear shells.  I also like Tom Kratman's Watch on the Rhine, but it's not to everybody's taste, especially those who don't get black humour.

Freehold is the first book by Michael Z. Williamson, and while the libertarian message is front and centre I can forgive it because the story has characters that one can root for, and the rest of the series: The Weapon, Rogue, and Contact with Chaos are well worth reading; with the latter being particularly good because of its outstanding portrayal of a civilized society restricted by the limitations of resources to stone age technology.  In fact I would go so far as to say that the idea of a society restricted by its technology that is forced to work within the limitations of it means is pure SF at its best.  I can also recommend his Ripple Creek series for SF private military contractor action.

Finally, Stark's Crusade by Jack Campbell, a pseudonym of John G. Hemry, was an early trilogy of novels written before the Lost Fleet series took off and propelled him into the big league (a definition for this being sells lots of books).  Stark's Crusade is the only series of his that I've re-read, which is why it is here in my list.  What makes this series stand out for me is the matter of fact way things go wrong in the first novel that marked the stories out as trying to say something different about military operations.

The Fantasy Fiction Formula

This was one of the books I took with for my holiday in Provence, though I saved it for last, because I chose to read it as part of my interest in developing my writing, so work not fun.  However, the book was a revelation and I wish it had been published four years ago when I first started writing.  Though this assumes that I would have had the sense and wit to make the most of it back then, which is not a given.

Deborah Chester is the person who Jim Butcher learnt to write under.  For those of you reading this and thinking writing to a formula is somehow wrong, stop and put your assumptions to one side.  The formula referred to in the title is the list of things that a novel needs if it's going to work as a story.  In short, this is a book about the craft rather than the art of writing.

I'm now using it to help me work through my second novel and it has also helped me to understand the feedback I received that said my first novel was not straightforward enough.  What I can do to address this feedback is limited by my writing ability and all I can do is work at upping my game.

For anyone who is writing I can wholeheartedly recommend reading this book.

Once I Was Young and Computer Savvy

My first job with computers was circa 1974 when they were vast machines that occupied air-conditioned halls, tape decks were a thing, and programs were entered using punch cards.  Home computing was Sinclair ZX81s and I aspired to owning an Apple II, but never did.  My first computer being an Apple Macintosh, which I got in 1988.  The late eighties and early nineties I was there at the forefront of home computer use and could walk into a design studio and sort out SCSI cabling issues with aplomb.

After nearly twenty years of having the same internet service provider I find myself having to set-up a new email address, and as a result change my FaceBook, Amazon, eBay and other account settings.  To say that this has been frustrating is an understatement.  I've been reduced to shouting at my computer in frustration, which on a scale of one-to-ten rates about an eleven for pointlessness.

And don't get me started on spam filters that sent every confirmation email into a special place that would only appear after repeated logins to my new domain.

To add to the total joy, I also find that my blogger contact forms won't update to send emails to my new address, even though I've changed the email setting, and furthermore, to make my life especially miserable, the blog lost all the links on my blog list.  And then there's Yahoo, where I'm forced to change the address of each list I subscribe too individually.

And I used to take such things in my stride.

Then this morning Susan's car wouldn't start, because the battery had died.  My truck is currently in Aldershot being serviced and getting its MOT, so this was the icing on the cake of a very stressful week where I've not managed to do any work on my novels.

The good news is that I guess that sometime next week my friends will receive an email from me with my new address.  Ah the bliss!

En Provence

We've been to Provence, courtesy of my friend Holly's parents, who so generously invited us to come over and stay with them for a week.  They spoilt us rotten with good food, excellent wine and took us out for a dinner in Gourd.

To help us digest the feast we wandered around the fortified town.  Exploring the path attackers would have to take to force their way into the town in the Middle-ages.

We also went to Lacoste.

Lacoste is where the infamous Marquis de Sade had his castle.  We walked down from the ruins through a labyrinth of stone passageways, exploring the nooks and crannies in the hot sunshine.

The map shows the ruined castle, where we started, and we went right through the town to the bottom left and back around to visit the church too.

Then Holly bought us lunch at the Café de France, which was delightful.  Afterwards Susan was fair tuckered out by all the walking.

You can read about the Medieval Faire we went to in Venasque here.

During the rest of our holiday we managed to swim almost every day, with Susan taking delight in wearing her favourite pink bikini.

Also, while relaxing, and being away from the internet I was able to sit and read some books, which I shall review in passing in due course.  But of course all holidays have to end.  Too soon it was time to travel back on the superfast Eurostar for our return home.

Eleven Weeks

Burglary Dog from VOTOMS: the series that inspired Bad Dog.

Eleven weeks is how long it has taken me to get the end of edits my Beta reader flagged in the fourth draft of Strike Dog.  Now all I have to do is write a bunch of new scenes and fill in a lot of extra world building background details to replace the chapters removed in the edit.  I'm obviously relieved to have gotten through what became quite a slog, not only for me but also I imagine for my Beta reader who went above and beyond the call of duty.

However, I now have a much more realistic view of how long it takes to write stuff when one is working as well, and without the day job things would be a bit tight.  So it's relief not to have money worries, even if that comes at the cost of not being as productive as I would like.

As they say, life, no one gets out alive, and there are no promises.

Soon I will start on what I'm calling the fifth draft of Strike Dog, but before I do, I plan on doing some polishing on Bad Dog.  I spent a weekend away seeing friends, who both read an earlier edition of my novel, and discussing the rejection feedback, in between hanging out with my godson and his sister.  The consensus being that the feedback was sufficiently vague it was impossible to make substantive changes to the novel.

We discussed taking out some or all the third-person point of view sections, which are in the novel so that the reader always knows what's going on, even when my protagonist does not.  I had been considering removing some and restructuring the novel to have a prologue and epilogue that would have most of the third-person parts of the story to top and tail the main story, but this was shot down on the grounds that reader would lose the perspective of the villains.

I also thought about just having a first-person story, but then I'd be left with a novel that was only 57,314 words long, which means it just isn't long enough to sell: and that really would mean a re-write that would break Heinlein's third rule of writing.

So now I'm pondering the ineffable qualities of writing: the gestalt that is a novel, the synergy of plot, character and style from which a story emerges.  All of which is just a fancy way of saying novels are made of words put into the right order to tell the tale you have in mind, which is harder to do than it looks.

Cultural Appropriation

 
Another week of churn on the internet over cultural appropriation, which just beggars belief.  It makes me want to say to all parties on both sides of the debate, tone it down, because what's happening is not discussion but flame-wars across the social media.  Wars where no one takes prisoners and you eat your wounded.

I get we should not use other peoples culture to mock, shame, or abuse people.

However, I can't help think that the worst case of cultural appropriation is the use of political correctness, the roots of which lie in Soviet era censorship, and during the 1970s was a term that was used ironically against orthodox thinking.  Now we live in a world Orwell's Big Brother would be proud of, where we don't learn from history, because we've forgotten history.

I'm all for politeness and civility, and to those that think there comes a time when one has to get angry or get their inner Hulk on, I say far better the injustices of living in a land under the rule of law than one without.  Why, because a smack in the mouth often offends.

Besides, what is culture, how do you measure how much you own, and who actually controls it?

I would argue cultural appropriation is neither good nor bad, but rather what happens when we live in an inter-connected multicultural world.  In short, don't treat people as things and enjoy eating curry's, tacos and wearing sombreros, which is just the Mexican word for hat that again can be traced back through history: the Spanish introduced them to Mexico and the wide-brimmed hat can be traced back to Mongolian horsemen.

And given this is a writing blog about fiction, remember that there are no new ideas isn't just about story tropes.  It also describes societies throughout recorded history, which is the equivalent of the metaphor that writers stand on shoulders of the giants who came before them.  We are not single points in the space-time continuum, but the product of something that can be traced back to beginning of the universe.  We are all, as Carl Sagan said, made of starstuff.

TL;DR: cultural appropriation is, to paraphrase the social anthropologist Piers Vitebsky, part of the human condition.

Breaking Rules

Last weekend was a busy one, starting with a birthday party on the Friday night, followed by archery practice first thing on Saturday morning with a BBQ in the afternoon at a friend's place, with Sunday seeing us at the last short metric club county competition.

So we were both grateful that Monday was a Bank Holiday. Hence no post last week.

See excuse above.

However, I've been busy writing too and I've just broken one of Heinlein's rules:

Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order

Well, sort of – I've been gnawing away at the feedback I received from my novel's rejection:

... it aroused some interest, unfortunately it lacked the straightforward narrative...

Though if I'm cutting myself some slack, then this could be interpreted as editorial input to re-write my work.

At one level I'm struggling to interpret what this meant and even emailed asking for a clarification, but I don't expect an answer any time soon.  But I really want to sell my novel. So something must be done however, however given the parlous state of publishing my options are limited.

I tried one editor from the big five who requested the chance to read my work, but I heard nothing back.  

Also, many of the big publishing house will only take submissions through an agent, and I've not had much luck there either.  Though after reading Kristine Katheryn Rusch's blog I think it would be wiser to use a solicitor to negotiate a contract rather than relying on a literary agent.

My other option is to self-publish, which I'm considering, but from what I've read I would need to up my output to generate interest and a sales stream.  Given it has taken me three and a half years to write three novels, two of which are still being edited, I'm not sure how realistic this path is for me.

So, over the last week I've restructured Bad Dog to try and make the story more straightforward, helped in part by reading Jim Butcher's Live Journal blog.

I now have a novel with a Prologue and Epilogue, which I understand is not at all fashionable today.  I've also added a short story as an addendum to the main story, telling the reader what happens to my hero afterwards when she goes for officer training, which I cut from my sequel for pacing reasons.

The plan is to add a new chapter to what Jim Butcher calls the 'Swampy Middle' of the novel, and revise another chapter by re-writing a third person POV from my heroes first person POV instead.

Just getting to this point was a serious chunk of work.

In the meantime I'm progressing on the edits on Strike Dog and considering my options on what I want to do to make it a better novel.

What's frustrating is the amount of time this is taking, but unless I can make more money writing than doing the day job, then I guess it just sucks to be me.