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

The Compleat Bolo

The Compleat Bolo by Keith Laumer is one of those books that anyone who has an interest in military science fiction refers to. The eponymous Bolos are giant self aware tanks, which can also be referred to as cybertanks.

To say that these stories are seminal to military SF is understating their importance.

Regardless of what one might think about the literary merits of classic SF, and the Bolo stories are rooted in sixties science fictional sensibilities. But their impact on the genre can be summed up by the fact that both TVTropes and Wikipedia have pages on the series.

I have my treasured copy of this book from 1990. And if you know me, you will know that I had to downsize my collection in the mid-nineties. This was one of the books I kept.

Anyway, The Compleat Bolo is a compilation of two previous Bolo books, and runs to 314 pages, about 110,000 words.

The two previous books were called, Bolo: The Annals of the Dinochrome Brigade, and Rogue Bolo.

The first book is a collection of six short stories. The second book has two longer stories. The first is the novella Rogue Bolo Book One, which runs out at 100 pages, roughly 35,000 words, and the second is the novelette Rogue Bolo Book Two, which runs to 50 pages, roughly 17,500 words.

The combined edition adds an extra bonus piece called, A Short History of Bolo Fighting Machines.

If you want a critique of the Bolo stories then I'm afraid you'll have to go elsewhere. I read for enjoyment, and these stories are still bringing me enjoyment nearly thirty years on. So much so, they have inspired me to write my own take on artificial intelligent tanks, and that I think that says it all.

Writing Log 2018-01-26

Hardcover copies of Bad Dog have arrived, taking my print ambitions to the next level. More importantly, I've now sent copies out to my Beta readers.

This week I've been working on my next short story in The World of Drei series. The first, Mission One, which evolved into  novelette, when I reached 9,706 words, has come back from my first reader. She likes it. So, I've sent it to one of my Beta readers for his comments.

For those who don't know, the definition of a short story is less than 7,500 words. A novelette is more than 7,500 but less than 17,500 words. A novella is more than 17,500 and less than 40,000.

An aside on my creative process...

Originally, when I first thought of this project I called it Territory. My idea was to do a homage to Keith Laumer's Bolo stories. But with a modern take, to address developments in our understanding of what artificial intelligence is.

Then I got stuck. Like one does.

I renamed Territory, and called it Terror Tree. But I was still stuck with what to do with the project.

As a novel I was struggling how to tell a story totally from the perspective of an evolving artificial intelligence. I was setting myself up to do the definitive work. That's a burden no author needs to carry, because it just setting yourself up to be in critical mode, rather than allowing the creative part of one's mind work.

Heck, over the last couple of years I've also been stuck because my day job was a tad demanding of me. It left me emotionally drained. Which is not a good place to write from either.

So to free myself, I chose to write a short story in The World of Drei series. After all, Terror Tree is a short story. One editor very nicely rejected it on account of it only being 1,419 words, calling it flash-fiction, which wasn't what they wanted.

At a stretch Terror Tree could even be considered poetry, of sorts. Well, it has a bit of poetry within the story. That counts, right?

Anyway, I've been writing the next story, Regroup, which is currently running at 8,506 words. So yes, still not a short story. What can I say? It's all very Russian; vodka and depression, with giant cybertanks, which is fun to write.

And fun is the key to being creative.

So this weeks summary. I wrote 7,191 new words, averaging 359 words per hour. I managed to spend 20 hours actually writing, rather than doing other stuff. Part of my publishing plans is to keep track of my writing time, drilling down into how I spend my day, to try and up my word count. Identifying what I'm doing with my time.

What's happening is that I'm wasting time by becoming distracted. Though some of the wasted time is actually research.

For example, I've been immersing myself in Russian culture; the songs, myths, and orthodox Russian church practices. Most of this won't be in the stories, it just provides me hooks and character perks to generate a setting that feels Russian. So its not all vodka and depression.

But the important bit is, that I've been enjoying my writing.

Projects in Progress

The World of Drei – Full on Russian stoicism in the face of adversity
Strike Dog – Fact checking, moving forward, but still a work in progress
Ghost Dog – On hold, as Strike Dog is still a work in progress
The Bureau – Still on hold
Two Moons – Sidequel story, still noodling
Dead Dogs – First in a new trilogy, still noodling

Writing Log 2018-01-19

Well, look what we have here.

Yep, bona fide paperback copies of Bad Dog. Colour me happy.

But that was a bit of a distraction on the day. So, this weeks work wise I managed 17.25 hours writing, wrote 5141 number of words, and averaged 298 words per hour.  The hourly word rate slightly down on last week, but not by much, and the total of number of new words written up by nearly 1300 words.

I'll take that as a win, even if I failed to reach my goal I still produced new words.

My World of Drei short story came back from my Alpha reader who told me it wasn't a short story, but rather it need to be longer. This story I'm focusing on openings, cliffhangers, and characters, as part of developing my craft. She liked it, but wanted more, because what I written didn't quite deliver what it promised.

Oh boy!

So, I expanded the short story from circa 5000 words so that now runs at a tad over 9600 words. From this I have an idea for a sequel short story, which again may end up longer than 7500 words.

Also, I have revised the cover and contents of Terror Tree, and enrolled it in Amazon's Kindle Direct program, which means it's now available as part of the Kindle Unlimited subscription service. If anyone who has the first version wants the update, contact me through the site and we can sort something out.

As always, thank you for reading.

Projects in Progress

Strike Dog – Fact checking still a work in progress
Ghost Dog – Editing continues, mostly because I didn't do any
World of Drei – See above
The Bureau – Still on hold
Two Moons – Sidequel story, still noodling
Dead Dogs – First in a new trilogy, still noodling

Writing Log 2018-01-12

The cover for Strike Dog is in, and as you can see it is epic in its awesomeness. The book is currently being factually proofed by a Marine and a Corpsman, and all I can say is thank you.

Work wise, I spent 13 hours writing out of 51 hours.

A lot of time went on sorting out the print editions for Bad Dog. Oh boy, was that Sisyphean task. So while I may think I'm a bit of a slacker without a work ethic, the evidence seems to contradict that belief. With the caveat that I have identified some bad habits which distract me from getting down to actually writing words.

Anyway, by the end of last week I had written 3965 new words, averaging 305 words per hour. My targets are 1500 new words each day, to produce 7500 new words per week.

Zen Moment

I failed to meet this goal, but success can only be achieved through failure, because success comes from trying to attain goals.

I completed a short story, set in The World of Drei universe. I'm running with the idea of writing this series as a serialization, and when I have enough words put a book out.

The World of Drei story also marks a change in my approach to how I write.

When I look back, I did eight major revisions of my first novel. My second went through six, and my third is on its fifth.

I need to find a better way to write a draft. This is part driven by the need to make the process easier, because at times over the last five years, writing has not been exactly what I call fun. Writing and re-writing, revising and rewriting again is soul sucking drudgery. And the key to being good at anything is to have fun while doing it.

And while I can accept that all this work was required to learn how to write a novel, I need to move forward.

So, that's it for another week, see you all on the bounce. 

Projects in Progress

Strike Dog – See comments above
Ghost Dog – Editing continues
World of Drei – Short story with my Alpha reader, and second story started
The Bureau – Got pushed down the list by World of Drei
Two Moons – A sidequel story planning and research in progress
Dead Dogs – First in a new trilogy still in research

Bad Dog Combat Armour Size

This amateur CGI animation from YouTube gives you an idea of the size of the combat armour suits I imagined for my Bad Dog novel. The Japanese work that inspired the above was an anime show I have mentioned several times over the years called, Armored Troopers VOTOMS. Being a Japanese show VOTOMS stands for:

Vertical One-man Tank for Offense & ManeuverS

And yes, they must have had to work hard to make the acronym fit the name.

Arguably it doesn't make much sense to build walking tanks, because they stand taller than tracked tanks and small wheeled armoured cars that already provide infantry with armoured support.  But in the world of Bad Dog warfare has changed from the introduction of killer robots, which dominate the battlefield.

However, the infantry will still have to go in to secure an area, which means infantry are put in power armour so that they can survive against the machines.

And then there is the problem of urban areas, where tanks and other conventional vehicles are at a disadvantage also remains.

I imagined a world where the infantry started riding the robots that accompanied them into battle and saw an opportunity to make something that a person rode in that walked to accompany power armoured infantry.  I call this the combat armour suit.  Something one drives rather than wears, fulfilling a very similar function, but providing a platform that can carry greater fire-power, and be more manoeuvrable than a conventional tank or armoured car.

However, combat armour suits raise questions around doctrine, which is all about defining how the stuff the military has, is used; and of course, new equipment drive changes.

For more about doctrine go to my other blog, here.

Writing Log 2018-01-05

Another awesome sketch by Elartwyne Estole for Strike Dog

At the end of week one I've managed to write 727 words.

This was down to me not being able to protect my writing time. I'm trying to be mindful of the WIBBOW: Would I Be Better Off Writing?

My attempt at getting Bad Dog into print was also a complete and utter shambles. To say, I made every newbie mistake I could, is to say that this was a rich learning outcome. Printed On Demand may look easy, but there's an awful lot that can go wrong.

The good news is that everything is now sorted or in the process of being sorted, and I won't be making those mistakes again.

I hope.

I've also spent a big chunk of my week reviewing the copy edits for Strike Dog, and commissioning the art for the cover. So it's all coming together.

As part of my schedule self discipline I logged my time last week. Over the four days I worked 44 hours, which is not a complaint, it's just the time it took me to do all the tasks I set myself; and when I say do all the tasks, I mean do some of them–others still remain to be done.

Mostly I enjoyed myself.

Mostly.

There were a lost of frustrating things that were a result of me not knowing what I was doing. And, I didn't sleep all that well, due to anxiety over what I had to do and, had I done it right? Still, Strike Dog cover commission done, and as you can see, it's going to be another awesome cover. So, I'm now laying out the text in Vellum and everything is good, so far.

But, I need to write more new words.

New stories don't write themselves, and I have some great stories I want to tell.

Projects in Progress

Strike Dog – Being readied for publication
Ghost Dog – Third book of the Gate Walker Trilogy, out later this year
The Bureau – Lovecraftian Urban Fantasy novel
New short story, sequel to Terror Tree, set in the World of Drei universe
Two Moons – A sidequel story about Mr Anderson from Bad Dog
Dead Dogs – First in a new trilogy