Post #154 January 28, 2019

“Updates and What’s Coming in 2019 and Beyond”

The year 2018 was a pretty successful year for me as a writer and author.  Below are some download statistics for last year (as of 1-14-19).

Total downloads for 2018 (all titles) = 5629

Total downloads since I went online in 2014 (all titles) = 18,828

Total downloads since online for Tales of the Quantum Corps = 5777

Total downloads since online for The Farpool Stories = 2718

Total downloads since online for Quantum Troopers = 8354

Total downloads since online for all other titles = 2035

 

The year 2019 will see the upload and publication of my new series Time Jumpers.  I’ve mentioned this series before. 

1. Time Jumpers is a series of 20,000-30,000-word episodes detailing the adventures of Ultrarch-Jump Captain Monthan Dringoth and his crew and their experiences as time jumpers with the Time Guard.
2. Each episode will be about 40-60 pages, approximately 25,000 words in length.
3. A new episode will be available and uploaded every 4 weeks.
4. There will be 12 episodes.  The story will be completely serialized in about 12 months.
5. Each episode is a stand-alone story but will advance the greater theme and plot of the story arc. 
6. The main plotline: Time Guard must defeat the enemy Coethi and stop their efforts to disrupt or eliminate Uman settlements in the Galactic Inner Spiral and Lower Halo sectors of Uman space.  
7. Uploads will be made to www.smashwords.com on approximately the schedule below:
    
   Episode #        Title                                                                 Approximate Upload Date

1.             ‘Marooned in Voidtime’                                 February 1, 2019        
2.             ‘Keaton’s World’                                            March 1, 2019
3.             ‘A Small Navigation Error’                             April 15, 2019
4.             ‘Cygnus Rift’                                                  May 3, 2019
5.             ‘The Time Guard’                                           May 31, 2019
6.             ‘First Light Corridor                                       June 28, 2019
7.             ‘Hapsh’m and the First Coethi Encounter’     August 2, 2019
8.             ‘Operation Galactic Hammer’                        August 30, 2019
9.             ‘Byrd’s Draconis’                                           September 27, 2019               
10.             ‘First Jump Squadron’                                    November 1, 2019
11.             ‘Planck Time’                                                  November 29, 2019
12.             ‘The Time Twister’                                          January 3, 2020

I’ve actually written and archived the first 3 episodes of the series, so I’m ahead of schedule by several months.  Look for the first episode February 1 at Smashwords and other fine ebook retailers.  Here’s a description of that first episode…

First Time Displacement Battery is a new outfit in Time Guard, with a critical mission: deploy a new weapon called a Time Twister on a hellhole backwater world called Storm.  The Twister is needed to block the advance of the Coethi from intruding on Uman space, threatening Uman settlements, using their own temporal weapons to change time streams and prevent Umans from ever settling worlds in the Lower Halo of the Galaxy.

Two obstacles are working against 1^st TD and its commander, Jump Captain Monthan Dringoth:  the Coethi continue to prowl around the frontiers of the Alliance and could pop out of voidtime at any moment, preventing the Twister from being deployed. But the greater complication is local; Storm is not uninhabited.   And one crewmember becomes quite smitten with the indigenous life, threatening both the mission and the very lives of the crew.

In the end, Dringoth is faced with a stark dilemma: Coethi assaults have irretrievably damaged the sun Sigma Albeth B and she’s going supernova in days.  The Battery has been ordered to breakdown their new weapon and re-locate to another world.  But the locals have different ideas and Dringoth finds he can’t even control his own crew.

First episode in the Time Jumpers serial. 

Longer term, look for a major science fiction novel from me in 2020, entitled Monument.  Here’s a description of the first chapter from this work:

Helios Station

In Parker Orbit around the Sun

June 1, 3155 CE

Onboard a research and monitoring station called Helios (orbiting the Sun in ‘Parker’ orbit), two astronomers Aditi Surat (female) and Carlos Tromelin (male) are manning the late shift when they notice strange effects occurring in the Sun’s photosphere. The Sun’s measured total output has dropped below baseline values, triggering warning flags and alarms aboard the station.

After some discussion with UNISPACE centers on Mercury and Earth, Helios is commanded to send several unmanned probes into the Sun, through its outer atmosphere and into its convective zone, to take measurements and determine the cause.  The Sundiver probes are launched and the data they send back indicates that, for reasons not fully understood, the Sun’s fusion process has become less efficient and the Sun’s energy output is dropping—fast.  Previous attempts to increase solar output through the ill-advised use of nanobot ‘doping’ of the Sun may be causing this.  Years before, in an effort to increase solar output to provide greater energy for human settlements around Mars and Jupiter, swarms of nanobots were dropped into the sun, to assist in the fusion process.  UNISPACE now believes this process has gone haywire and the bots are having the opposite effect: destroying hydrogen nuclei that the Sun needs to continue fusion.

The Sun now seems to be on an accelerated aging track.  Something must done and UNISPACE declares a Class 1 Emergency. 

Over the next year, an emergency contingency plan is worked out through the Concordance (an alliance of most human worlds and settlements across the solar system): the plan is to use either Saturn or Neptune to siphon off material and stream the material across space to Jupiter.  If enough material can be deposited onto Jupiter, the Concordance believes Jupiter can be ‘ignited’ to begin fusion and become a second sun.  It’s a controversial plan with unknown and perhaps unknowable effects and controversial as thousands of settlements in and around Jupiter space will have to relocate.

Heading up the project will be architect Pieter Delano, a famous and visionary developer of worlds across the solar system.  Delano views the Salvation Project as his grandest effort to date, a legacy project that will leave a lasting name for future generations to revere and admire.  Delano admires architects of the past, from the pyramid builders of ancient Egypt to his own illustrious ancestor Philippe Dugay, creator of the terreta concept, which enabled widespread settlement of the solar system in the 23^rd century. 

But as plans are being developed and scoopships assembled around Saturn to begin the Project (known as Salvation), Delano receives disconcerting news from a Concordance station in high Jupiter orbit, in fact on Europa.  The news: Jupiter is in trouble too.  It’s shrinking, losing mass somehow.

Astronomical observations and atmospheric probes confirm a suspicion: there is a sink or a wormhole at the core of the planet.  Somehow, it’s losing mass into this sink.  How did this sink develop?  Historical research on Jupiter’s past details multiple episodes of this cyclic loss of mass occurring in recent centuries.  It seemed to start around the year 2249 CE. 

This makes Delano highly suspicious.  The year 2249 CE is burned into his memory.  It was the year that his ancestor Philippe Dugay began a project to unravel Jupiter completely and use the material to build a new Ring for the Concordance, a new band of terretas and settlements between Jupiter and Saturn.  Delano is suspicious that his ancestor Dugay is fiddling with Jupiter even as he is trying to ‘bulk’ the planet up to ignite it as a second sun.

The problem is clearly in the past.  Delano seeks approval from the Concordance’s Time Guard to travel back to that time (year 2249), confront his ancestor and make them stop fiddling with Jupiter.  Time Guard ultimately agrees, with the proviso that another time jumper accompany Dugay, an experienced chrononaut named Evelyn Kasongo.  Delano and the Time Guard agree on details and parameters of the mission.  They must succeed or else the world of 3155 CE will die, when the Sun goes dark, which may come in a generation or less. 

Determined to succeed and both annoyed and angry at his rambunctious ancestor Philippe Dugay, Delano and Kasongo board the jumpship Gemini and travel the local time stream back to 2249 CE.

I hope 2019 will be a successful and prosperous year for all.  The next post to The Word Shed comes on February 4, 2019.  See you then.

Phil B.

 

 

Post #153 January 21, 2018

“Not Too Long and Not Too Short: Novelettes and Novellas”

Novelettes and novellas have long had an unsavory reputation.  Traditionally, novelettes are stories of about 8000 to 20,000 words, novellas are stories of 20,000 to 40,000 words.  Stephen King even once called novellas a form of literary banana republic.  Yet some of our most famous stories are really novellas, including Orwell’s Animal Farm, HG Wells’ War of the Worlds, and Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. 

Why the bad rap?

To be sure, novellas are not novels and they aren’t short stories. Short stories deal with a single incident, a single problem and one main character.  There isn’t room to do to much and every word counts.  Novels are, of course, the big mansions of the literary world.  Though novels usually have one main plot line, they often have multiple subplots and plot twists, and sometimes a cast of dozens, maybe hundreds, all hopefully contributing to the main plot line.  Short stories have one plot complication.  Novels have many.

Novellas have some.

My upcoming series Time Jumpers and my already-published series Quantum Troopers consist of episodes which are novellas, about 25,000 to 40,000 words in length.  I chose this length for certain reasons.  I wanted to do a serialized story in multiple episodes and I wanted to upload episodes frequently.  You can’t really do that with a full-length novel and a short story sometimes leaves readers feeling shortchanged, wanting more.  A novella-length story seems to fit the need nicely, having as mine do, three chapters per episode.  And the basics of storytelling still apply in a novella.  Three chapters gives me a nice structure on which to hang a problem, a crisis and a resolution. 

Novellas give you more room than a short story but they’re more compact than a novel.  This means it’s more complicated than a short story, with a few more plot twists and surprises, a few more characters and enough room to digress a little to explore the characters and entangle the reader in some complications, maybe even explain some details of setting (especially important in science fiction and fantasy).  But the novella still requires the writer to stay on point and not wander off too far.

I like to think that novellas are more intense, even more emotionally powerful, than short stories and novels.  Their very compactness promotes a more concentrated response in the reader.  Novellas also require the writer to have some discipline in laying out the story, so as not to bury the reader in minutiae, as some novels do.

According to Wikipedia: The novella as a literary genre began developing in the early Renaissance by the Italian and French literatura, principally Giovanni Boccaccio, author of The Decameron (1353).^[2] The Decameron featured 100 tales (novellas) told by 10 people (seven women and three men) fleeing the Black Death, by escaping from Florence to the Fiesole hills in 1348.

Renowned science fiction author Robert Silverberg says, “The novella is one of the richest and most rewarding of literary forms...it allows for more extended development of theme and character than does the short story, without making the elaborate structural demands of the full-length book. Thus, it provides an intense, detailed exploration of its subject, providing to some degree both the concentrated focus of the short story and the broad scope of the novel.”

And not to be ignored, novellas take less time to read.  In today’s world with so many distractions and so many demands on our attention, that is an important distinction. 

Just to be accurate, the last time I specifically checked the downloads of my series Quantum Troopers (10-15-18), downloads had exceeded 7500 copies.  That over means 7500 times, a novella-length episode was downloaded by an interested reader.  The numbers speak for themselves.

The next post to The Word Shed will come on January 28, 2019.  In this post, I will provide an update for download statistics for 2018 and a peek at what’s coming in 2019, and beyond.

See you then.

Phil B.

 

 

 

 

Post # 152 January 14, 2019

“Once Upon a Time: The Beginnings of Story”

Picture this: Og and Grog are sitting around the campfire one night, munching on mammoth sandwiches (hold the mayo!), when all of a sudden, Og gets up and starts dancing around the fire, gesturing, grunting and shrieking at the others.  He makes marks on a nearby stone, crude pictures of animals, with spears flying through the air.  He grunts some more, then repeats the whole litany again.

What’s going on?  Is it something Og ate?

No.  Og is engaged in telling a story.  I don’t know if this is how stories began but some experts think it may have.  In fact, storytelling predates even writing.  It’s even possible that Og and Grog were telling stories to their tribe mates before there was much of a language.

The first storytellers were oral artists, using whatever language they could cobble up, to explain just how the Big Hunt went down and how brave Og and Grog really were in chasing down that big woolly mammoth.  Perhaps their exploits got re-told often enough to get passed down through the generations, eventually evolving into a sort of fable or myth, lost in the mists of time. 

What good does this do the tribe?  What good do stories do for any of us, outside of entertainment (which is something not to be belittled)?  Stories help us make sense of natural phenomena.  Why does it always rain the day before the Big Hunt?  Why does the mammoth always run that way, and not this way?  What’s the best way, the way proven by experience and results, to corner a wounded animal, so it can’t get away?  Stories help us explain our experiences as humans and make sense of our times.  Man is pre-eminently a storytelling animal.  It seems to be hardwired into our brains and nervous systems.  I’m not sure if animals do this, but I do know that my 10-year old Pekingese dog can also tell a story, just with her big, sad, brown eyes.

According to Wikipedia, storytelling evolved to make use of certain common themes, conventions and practices.  These would make telling the story easier for the teller and make understanding and engaging with the story easier for the listener.    For instance, the Wikipedia article on storytelling talks about how common is the Rule of Three: ”Three brothers set out on a journey…three attempts are made…three riddles are asked.”

Themes help amplify a story, giving it substance and weight.  They may be a small part of the story or they may permeate the whole story, even be the story.  A hero journeys to a dangerous place.  He meets a great challenge.  He either defeats the challenge or fails magnificently, and is transformed in the process.  The Rule of Three again.  Setup, confrontation and resolution.  All good stories observe this convention, so it must be part of us.

These practices are true even in indigenous cultures.  For example, according to Wikipedia:

For indigenous cultures of the Americas, storytelling is used as an oral form of language associated with practices and values essential to developing one's identity. This is because everyone in the community can add their own touch and perspective to the narrative collaboratively – both individual and culturally shared perspectives have a place in the co-creation of the story. Oral storytelling in indigenous communities differs from other forms of stories because they are told not only for entertainment, but for teaching values.^[29] For example, the Sto:lo community in Canada focuses on reinforcing children's identity by telling stories about the land to explain their roles.^[29]

Furthermore, Storytelling is a way to teach younger members of indigenous communities about their culture and their identities. In one study, Navajos were interviewed about storytelling practices that they have had in the past and what changes they want to see in the future. They notice that storytelling makes an impact on the lives of the children of the Navajos. According to some of the Navajos that were interviewed, storytelling is one of many main practices that teaches children the important principles to live a good life.^[30] In indigenous communities, stories are a way to pass knowledge on from generation to generation.

Storytelling is an ancient and honorable tradition, although stories can be created for good or ill.  Recall the words of the Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”  Stories can be used to entertain, to enlighten…and also to obfuscate.  Like any tool Man uses, language and stories can be bent to many uses.

The next time you sit down at your computer to bang out a story, remember you’re part of an ancient tradition that dates back thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years.  Stories are powerful juju, so take care and take it seriously. 

The best stories, the ones we remember and tell our kids about, do a lot of things: they teach us, they entertain us, they enlighten us and they bring us together as a tribe against the forces of chaos and entropy.  That’s a lot of weight to carry for something that seems so ephemeral.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on January 21, 2019.

See you then.

Phil B.

 

  

 

Post #151 January 7, 2019

“Novels and Short Stories”

I’ve been writing novels and short stories since the late 1970s.  I’m more comfortable with the longer form.  I’ve often asked myself why this is. 

Short stories can range in length from a few thousand words to maybe 15,000 words.  Anything longer tends to be called a novelette or a novella by industry.  For round figures, let’s say a short story should be less than 10,000 words.  That’s about 30 plus pages using average type and font.  So the whole story has to be set up and delivered in that length.

For comparison’s sake, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) calls a short story something no longer than 7500 words.

Whether a novel or a short story, any story has to have some kind of plot, with one or more characters, some kind of problem to solve and some obstacles to solving it.  A novel is more expansive in laying this out.  Here’s one of the main differences between the two forms:

A short story sets the character right in the middle of the problem immediately. 

A novel has some luxury in the way it opens, setting the character in his setting and presenting him with a problem.  In fact, there may be a rising crescendo of problems in the longer form.  You can’t do that in a short story. 

Short story writers have to be sparse with words, extremely selective and make every word count and carry the story.  No long soliloquys, no luxuriating in philosophical discourses about the meaning of life and “what I did when I was four years old to make me the murderous sociopath I am today.”

1. In a short story, the character usually faces one problem.  It could be a big one or a small one, but there isn’t room or time to build a number of problems up to some cataclysmic ending.
    
   Short story characters run headlong into their predicament pretty quick, ideally on page one.  Fiction editors say (and most readers would agree, I believe) that they want to be grabbed from the very opening sentence.  There’s truth in that for novelists too, but with short stories, lay out the problem early and plunge the main character in it like he’s taking an ice bath in Sweden in January. 
    
   Novels can have subplots, all of which hopefully contribute to and lead to the main character encountering and resolving (or not) the big problem.  Short stories have one plot line and one or a few problems.  There isn’t time or space for more.
    
   Literary historians say that short stories evolved from our oral storytelling traditions, that is, from parables, fables, even anecdotes.  They’re compressed and concentrated, though they should have the same elements as any good story: exposition, complication, crisis, climax, resolution.  Sometimes the resolution part is pretty abrupt, unlike a novel.
    
    Short stories are not little novels. 
    
   The third main difference between the two forms is this:
    
2. Short stories get written, published, critiqued and turned around faster in the marketplace.  Writers get faster feedback from short stories.
    
   In my own case, I have found that my particular talent, such as it is, needs a longer form to stretch out and become manifest.  A short story is a closet, a novel is a veranda or a screened porch (if you grew up in the American South as I did).  You can’t relax with a short story.  You have to squeeze every bit of story you can out of every single word.  Thus, writing short form fiction is a great discipline for any writer, however successful they may be at it. 
    
   Now to answer my original question: why do I personally prefer novels to short stories?
    
   I like being able to explore a fictional world (especially important in science fiction) in detail and I like being able to explore more than one character and from more than one direction.  I particularly like developing parallel plot tracks that intertwine and support each other and come together in the end to slam the reader with one big aha!  It’s like juggling a lot of story “balls” at the same time but when it works, it’s a sight to behold.  It resonates.  Hell, it virtually twangs with meaning, like a guitar string vibrating with harmonic frequencies.  I know that sounds corny but the great novelists can do that.  As for me, I’m still learning. 
    
   I write novels more than short stories and enjoy them more because I feel comfortable in them as a storyteller.  One day, I’ll put more of my short stories up on Smashwords.com as a collected work and you can judge for yourself.  Some of them still read pretty well.  For now, check out Colliding Galaxies at Smashwords.com.
    
   But I still like the novel form better.
    
   Next week, we’ll look at how storytelling began, as an oral tradition around the campfire hundreds of thousands of years ago.  Before there was Man, did animals tell stories?   We recently adopted a female Pekingese rescue, so I’ll ask her.
    
   See you on January 14.
   Phil B.