New Books Splurge

 

Have recently blitzed through Kristine Kathryn Rusch's The Diving Universe, after being compelled to buy all the books in this series, which should tell you everything you need to know about how much we enjoyed reading them.

An author who I highly recommended, so much so that we've started on her Retrieval Artist series, and today the next two books came in our Amazon delivery.

Along with more books to go on my to be read pile, including Myke Cole's latest. So this should keep us busy during the lockdown.

On Writing

 

To say things are a bit distracting is like saying water is wet, the sky is blue, and grass is green. Obvious and yet an understatement that belies the difficulty in understanding how things work now that Corvid19 is sweeping the world.

But enough of that. It is far too easy to be sucked into the distracting distress going on around us. So here's a list for those of my readers who might like to write during this time they are locked in their homes.

Story

A story is a character in a setting with a problem who has opinions.

The protagonist's story is driven by Things. Getting. Worse! Successes always leads to another problem, when things no longer get worse, the story is over.

The antagonist's story is driven by plans coming together until defeated. 

Plots

There is a Problem; Complications ensue, the character's life changes.

Scenes: Advance the plot; Explain the background or backstory; Deepen the characterization.

Basic Themes of Plots

Overcome the Monster

Voyage & Return

The Quest

Mystery

Rebirth

Rags to Riches

Comedy/Burlesque

Tragedy

Rebellion

Story Conflicts

1. Man vs. Man: The problem is another character (Bob needs to defeat Alice to become Class President).

2. Man vs. Self: The problem lies inside the protagonist (Bob doesn't know how to express his emotions to Alice).

3. Man vs. Nature: The problem comes from natural sources (Bob's town is destroyed by a volcano, or Alice is sick).

4. Man vs. Society: The problem is the social environment (Bob struggles to maintain his dignity in an ignorant community after receiving an Abomination Accusation Attack).

5. Man vs. God/Fate: The problem is destiny, eventuality, fate, or divine will (Bob does not want to fulfill a prophecy that he will lose his family).

6. Man Caught in the Middle: Of other characters or conflicts.

7. Male versus Female: Battle of the sexes.

8. Man vs. Machine, as in machinery. Most commonly told from the perspective of a worker being replaced by a machine.

Novels Structure

Novels have different structures for example:

1. Action structure: A leader of a team work to overcome the problems they face.

2. Puzzle structure: A person solves a puzzle, with people helping them.

3. Romance structure: two people meet, problems ensue.

Opening Chapters of a Novel

Prologue (optional)

Introduce the hero

Introduce the villain

Introduce the friends/mentor

Other POV to shock

Interesting Speculation on the Fermi Paradox

I have two major interest; The first is the hard question of what is consciousness; and the second is where are all the aliens?

This Galactic Colonization video I found that discusses a recent paper: The Fermi Paradox and the Aurora Effect: Exo-civilization Settlement, Expansion and Steady States.

What I found useful is the analysis of the confounding variables and the possible solutions to explain what they call, "Fact A:" why we haven't met aliens or found signs of them visiting Earth.

Tagging Dr. Brin who may have an opinion on this?

Ferretti's Buster

When I wrote Bad Dog I had a vision of what the lead character's combat armor suit looked like. I have over the last seven years built models to acts as a guides for the cover art of my novels, which you've seen here.

But I'm not only a fan of science fiction, for as long as I can remember, I have enjoyed playing futuristic table top wargames like: BattleTech, Ogre/GEV, and Star Wars X-Wing.

So I dearly want to be able to play games in my own universe, and as my long term wargaming friends know I have a lot of 1/300th - 6mm armies. However, my stories feature small infantry unit tactics with support elements, and my go to scale is small, which makes the models hard to see.

So my original plan had been to go with Dream Pod 9s 1/144th - 10mm Heavy Gear range, because they're a nice size.

But, I've been frustrated trying to find the right models for power armor and combat androids. Lots of choice in 1/100th - 15mm, but nothing that quite tickles my fancy in the smaller scale, hence I've decided to go up a scale, using original large RAFM Heavy Gears.

Readers saw my take on Captain Tachikoma's Dog here.

This new larger model represents Ferretti's Air Force Security Force Buster: CAS-C4P: Combat Armor System Dash C4 (Command, Control, Communication & Computer), Model P, which makes its first appearance in Ghost Dog.

These models have wet my appetite for making more 1/100th - 15mm scale mecha.

Cool Mech Pilot Control

YouBionic forearm I found on YouTube, as one does, which is just cool.

I deliberately left how the mecha in my novels are driven to avoid Zeerust (yesterday's vision of tomorrow), warning the link will take you to TVTropes, and you're at risk of losing hours of time browsing.

I know I just did.

Catch you all on the bounce.

A Reminder of What is Good

 
Found this Patrick Rothfuss piece talking about Terry Pratchett with a transcript of an interview. Here's a clip:

O: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?

Pratchett: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question.

The full post can be found here. It's well worth reading as a reminder that the root of all stories lies in the imagination.

PicoCon 37

Left to right: Juliet Kemp, Roz Kaveney, and Tamsyn Muir.

This is probably the only SF convention we will go to this year. The promo material played up the the celebration of LGBTQ+, which is a thing, but for me to quote Marx, "I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member." Call me conflicted.

But for some people, fandom is a way of life. I tend to fall into the camp that sees fandom is/as just another goddam hobby.

The first talk was by Roz Kaveney, a well known big name British fan. She gave a laid back talk about her early life, her interests, and things that she's passionate about. Roz writes both fiction and non-fiction, and for the Times literary Supplement.

Next up was Tamsyn Muir, who I'd never heard of, but she was charming and witty, which goes a long way in my book.

Tamsyn's writing sounds interesting. After all, who couldn't fail to be interested in Lesbian necromancers in space! Colour me interested. Besides, I exchanged a few words with her, and her positive response to hearing that I write Mil-SF made me like her.

Call me biased.

Finally, Juliet Kemp did her talk, which was slightly marred by having lost her voice. She persevered and she's on the Locus 2018 recommended reading list.

After the individual talks there was the tradition panel discussion, which was driven by questions from the audience that went well. So, by the end of the day I had thoroughly enjoyed the convention.