Post #239 December 21 2020 “2020: My Writing Year in Review” This is my last post for the year 2020. What a year, huh? Most people I know can’t wait for this year to end. We’ve had a pandemic, a nasty election cycle, street protests, way too many political ads, business failures, too many deaths. Bring on 2021! In this post, I thought I would review what I have accomplished in my writing life this year. To start with, some basic statistics: I started and completed one science fiction novel…Monument. As of this writing, it’s had 141 downloads, so it’s done okay but it’s not blowing anybody’s socks off. I also started and completed a series of short novels (episodes) called Quantum Troopers Return, in which I reprised my pretty successful series Quantum Troopers from several years ago. As of today, this series has garnered 638 downloads. Respectable, I suppose. In one additional project, I started and completed a science fiction novelette called Proxima. This story has been circulating around the world of sf print magazines, so far without success. If I can’t place this story in a print market, I’ll archive it for a later collection of short works to be called Spiral Galaxies. For new titles, I have earned a total of 779 downloads. For all titles this year, my downloads have been 4953. I’m still hoping to hit 5000 by year end, but we’ll see. The new year of 2021 will see more projects completed and started. My current project is an alternate-history novel called The Eureka Gambit. The first draft is about two-thirds done and I expect to finish this draft sometime in February. I believe this work will be ready to upload this spring, perhaps as early as Easter, April 4. I am also deep into researching and planning the first of three additional titles in the Farpool series of stories. This first one will be called The Farpool: Plague. I should be able to start the first draft of this one in late spring or early summer, pending the results of cataract surgery on both eyes about the same time. With any luck, this title will be available at Smashwords.com and other fine ebook retailers before the end of 2021. Two other titles The Farpool: Diaspora and The Farpool: Destiny will follow in 2022 and 2023. So, that is what is coming up. New ideas continue to percolate in my feverish brain but I want to spend a few minutes talking about writing and the writing life during a pandemic. As I see it, there are several points that should be made. First, all writers face the problems of working in a medium in which isolation from others can be an issue. For myself, I am a member of a group of writers that meet every week (this year, mostly on Zoom) and this helps to deal with that isolation. Also, I’m happily married (30 years next April!), so that keeps me on my toes. It should go without saying that anyone who works regularly as a writer needs to attend to their social network and maintain social connections diligently. Do this if for no other reason than your friends can be a source not only of support but also good ideas. Maintaining energy and momentum are important to me as a writer. When I am working on a project, as I am now, the daily rhythm of planning and accomplishing 3-5 pages every day is important to me, and kind of comforting as well. To make this work, set yourself achievable goals and work every day to accomplish them. The daily satisfaction of achieving these goals can bring little bursts of satisfaction that help keep me motivated. That’s why I always print out what I’ve written every day. I enjoy watching the pages mount up; it’s a tangible reminder of what I’m doing. This is one way to motivate myself to keep going over the length of an entire novel, when motivation can easily flag halfway through. Along with doing whatever it takes to motivate yourself, celebrate all successes, no matter how small. It could be doing a week’s worth of writing and seeing an additional 20-25 pages added to your first draft pile. It could be completing a particularly difficult scene. It could even be something as simple as an especially well-turned phrase. Enjoy your words! Don’t be afraid to celebrate the scenes you’re creating. Just don’t get carried away with your awesome talent come editing time, when you may well have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. My point is this: celebrating yourself and what you have accomplished against the indifference of the Universe will go a long way toward keeping that motivation up. I think most athletes understand this viscerally. My final point is a physiological one: find some way to exercise regularly and stick to it. Walk the neighborhood. Swim 1500 meters every other day like I do. Do stretches and calisthenics, even do Pilates, God forbid. Do something physically active everyday to keep yourself up. Your body will thank you, and your doctor will thank you too. Moreover, your mind will have a chance to switch to a different mode while you’re working out and, in this mode, you’ll often find new ideas and ways of advancing your story bubbling up unbidden. It’s a great resource for inspiration and it’s good for you too! That’s the year 2020 in my writing life. Tell me how things went for you in this challenging time. The Word Shed will take a two-week hiatus for the upcoming holidays. The next post will come on January 11, 2021. Have a great holiday season and we’ll see you then. Phil B.

Post #238 December 14 2020 “Excerpt from “The Eureka Gambit” I started my newest novel The Eureka Gambit on 2 November this year. So far, as of this writing, I’m 105 pages into the first draft. It seems to be going well and I’m actually a little ahead of schedule. It’s possible that I may have to add some extra scenes to bulk up the first draft toward 200+ pages, as this is what readers would normally expect from a novel-length work. If you’re not familiar with the plot, here’s a brief synopsis: Major premise: Hitler approves a plot to abduct Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill as they arrive and assemble for the Teheran Conference in Nov 1943, to prevent an invasion of western Europe. The plot involves ransoming off the lives of the Big Three for a cessation of hostilities in Europe and recognition by the Allies of current borders and military gains by the Third Reich. Recognizing a new order in Europe. The operation succeeds and Roosevelt and Churchill are abducted. Stalin escapes the attempt with injuries. Roosevelt and Churchill are spirited away by low-flying aircraft to a remote site in Turkey, then taken by train through the Balkans to a mountain hideaway in the Austrian Alps. Now Hitler has a bargaining chip for dealing with the U.S. and U.K. He also knows about the proposed Operation Overlord and one of his conditions is that Overlord be scrapped. A rescue effort must be mounted. Vice President Henry A. Wallace must coordinate with King George VI of England to coordinate rescue operations. Below is an excerpt from the first draft: Surreptitiously, Otto Skorzeny checked his watch. 1450 hours. Ten minutes to H-hour. The embassy main building was in reality a large rectangle, with the conference hall along the same side as the service drive, giving onto a pleasing view of the lindens and a few decorative sculptures and flower beds. A large oval table dominated the room, topped in green baize, with miniature flag stands and water pitchers in the middle. The room was lined along three walls with folding chairs, for staff and aides to attend the meetings. At ten minutes to five in the afternoon, the sun dappled the oaken floor and the table, slanting in through tapestried windows in stark shafts of lights. The air inside was stuffy, thick with cigarette smoke and tension. Winston Churchill was talking, making a point by jabbing the air with a cigar. “General Morgan has been charged with the responsibility for carrying out preliminary planning for Overlord. His Majesty’s Government has already expressed a willingness to have the overall command of Overlord placed under a United States commander.” Stalin puffed on a pipe, but said nothing, while Churchill went on. “Also, Marshal Stalin, you should know that in the Mediterranean, the British have large air and naval forces under direct British command.” Looking over at Roosevelt, Churchill added that, “The President can name the Supreme Allied Commander for Overlord if he accepts our offer to serve under a United States commander.” Now, Stalin poked the air with the stem of his pipe. “I do not presume to take part in the selection of a commander for Overlord, but we would like to know who this man will be….” Fifty feet away, inside the kitchen stores room, Skorzeny, Eisler and the White detachment had already extracted their weapons from produce bags, checked action and crept to the door to the kitchen. On the other side of the cooking range, past several Filipino mess stewards and cooks stirring pots on a stove, Skorzeny caught the eye of Fritz Born and Jurgen Holtz, stashed away in another stores closet and a pantry. Skorzeny counted down the last minute. It seemed to last an eternity. Sechs…funf…vier…drei…zwei…eins…NOW! As one, the commandos of Operation Long Jump burst out of the stores rooms and pantries and immediately shot down two of the cooks, who slumped to the floor in awkward positions, blood pooling below their faces. A voice cried out. It was Born. “Grab those fire extinguishers! We can use them!” Inside the conference room, the debate continued, momentarily stalling at the crack of gunfire. Along a side wall, Mike Reilly came instantly alert and felt for the heft of his Colt. Churchill was droning on. “It’s essential that a commander for Overlord be appointed without delay, ideally within the next fortnight. I am concerned with the complexity of the problems before us. We must remember that the thoughts and wishes of nearly a hundred and forty million people rest with us and—” Churchill stopped in mid-sentence, for in that moment, Mike Reilly and half a dozen armed Soviet civilian aides had bounded out of the room in a dead sprint. A great commotion outside the conference hall had erupted. There were shouts, then gunfire. An explosion slammed opened the gilded doors and smoke boiled into the conference room. Chaos reigned even as the participants ducked for cover under a hail of bullets. Just emerging from the kitchen, Otto Skorzeny peered through dense white smoke. He’d just ordered one of the fire extinguishers rolled into the hall. A few well-placed rounds had burst the tank and white mist blanketed everything in sight. Skorzeny consulted a crude hand-drawn map on his wrist, scribbled by Max himself from decades-old plans from a Tehran construction firm. “This way!” he hissed. Hans Eisler and most of White detachment were right behind him. They crept low, along the walls. Shots rang out from inside the smoke and the commandos returned fire, their Sten guns and MP-40s spraying death into the mist. Heavy thuds hit the floor. They crept cautiously, made a slight dogleg left and Eisler nearly tripped over a fallen Russian body, still twitching and bleeding out from neck wounds. The conference hall was just ahead on the left. Shadows materialized deep in the mist and Eisler sprayed the figures again. His fire was immediately returned and a cry erupted from behind him; one of the commandos had been hit and gone down. “Against the wall!” Skorzeny ordered. He motioned the soldier carrying the other fire extinguisher forward. “Roll it in there and blast the thing!” The commando, a scharfuhrer named Decker, hustled up. After a few bursts from their machine guns, Decker tossed the tank inside and more rounds lit off the extinguisher, which hissed, squealed, gushed and spewed white foam and mist everywhere. “Grenades!” Skorzeny yelled. Two Blendkorper smoke grenades were tossed in after the extinguisher. Seconds later, they burst and blanketed the room with opaque gray and white smoke. “Come on!” With hand signals, he indicated Eisler should take three men and move right. Motioning behind him, he signaled Born and Holtz to follow him to the left. Cautiously, they crept inside the conference room. Shots rang out. Shouts, Russian, English and German cascaded about the room. Bodies hit the floor. Groans and shouts of pain erupted. Underneath the mahogany table, Winston Churchill found a prostrate Franklin Roosevelt, lying on his side in a fetal position, both shielded by advisors and guards. Mike Reilly’s face hovered nearby, wreathed in smoke. Churchill remarked over the shots, “By God, that’s German we’re hearing!” “Stay down, sir!” Reilly yelled. Then the lights went out and Churchill felt the body shielding him go slack. Whoever it was had been shot. Blood poured onto the marble floor and onto the Prime Minister’s hands and arms. As he started to extricate himself from the slick mess, Churchill froze. Strong hands were pulling him out from under the table. Behind him and over top of the table, thick and boiling throughout the room, smoke and flames crackled. So that’s the excerpt. What do you think? This scene dramatizes the actual kidnap attempt inside the Soviet embassy in late November 1943. I hope to provide more excerpts in the future. The next post to The Word Shed comes on December 21. After that post, The Word Shed will take a two-week hiatus for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. See you on December 21. Phil B.

Post #237 December 7, 2020 “Man, the Storyteller” Picture Og and Grog sitting around the campfire one evening after a dinner of mammoth meat and tree roots. Og is sharpening his spear points. Grog is skinning a hide. Og grunts and gestures at Grog: “If you had followed my orders, you wouldn’t have been injured by that mammoth, you stupid dolt.” After some loud arguing back and forth, and few threats, Slamdok intervenes and, using more gestures and grunts, recounts the events of the day that led to Grog’s injury and tonight’s dinner. Some modifications are made to the account and after awhile, after everyone is stuffed with enough mammoth meat and some fermented berries that Slamdok’s wife made, everybody agrees that this is what happened. The day’s hunt goes down in the annals of the tribe as “the way things happened.” It becomes a legend. Later, maybe a myth. Man is preeminently a storytelling animal. We don’t know if this is how stories began but we do know, from research, that stories have for generations served a profoundly important evolutionary purpose. I have posted about this before. Why does our brain love stories so much? In an article from the Greater Good Science Center (University of California, Berkeley) in December 2013, neurobiologist Paul Zak says this: The first part of the answer is that as social creatures who regularly affiliate with strangers, stories are an effective way to transmit important information and values from one individual or community to the next. Stories that are personal and emotionally compelling engage more of the brain, and thus are better remembered, than simply stating a set of facts. Think of this as the “car accident effect.” You don’t really want to see injured people, but you just have to sneak a peek as you drive by. Brain mechanisms engage saying there might be something valuable for you to learn, since car accidents are rarely seen by most of us but involve an activity we do daily. That is why you feel compelled to rubberneck. To understand how this works in the brain, we have intensively studied brain response that watching (compelling video) produces. We have used this to build a predictive model that explains why after watching the video, about half of viewers donate to a charity. We want to know why some people respond to a story while others do not, and how to create highly engaging stories. We discovered that there are two key aspects to an effective story. First, it must capture and hold our attention. The second thing an effective story does is “transport” us into the characters’ world.” Grabbing and maintaining attention and building empathy for your characters are thus two critically important jobs that any storyteller has to complete. There is now strong neural evidence to support this. Let’s look at how these could best be done to work with your reader’s brain. According to Zak, one good way of grabbing and maintaining the reader’s attention is to continually ratchet up the tension in the story. Use James Bond as an example. Imagine Bond fighting with a villain on top of a speeding train. We don’t know what’s going to happen…things fly past our eyes in a blur…our heart rates elevate…our palms become sweaty…will he survive that tunnel coming around the turn? Will Bond beat the bad guy? Zak’s lab has shown that such physiological responses are consistent and can be predicted depending on whether certain responses are provoked. Zak adds, “We attend to this story because we intuitively understand that we, too, may have to face difficult tasks and we need to learn how to develop our own deep resolve. In the brain, maintaining attention produces signs of arousal: the heart and breathing speed up, stress hormones are released, and our focus is high. Once a story has sustained our attention long enough, we may begin to emotionally resonate with story’s characters. Narratologists call this “transportation,” and you experience this when your palms sweat as James Bond trades blows with a villain on top of (that) speeding train. Transportation is an amazing neural feat. We watch a flickering image that we know is fictional, but evolutionarily old parts of our brain simulate the emotions we intuit James Bond must be feeling. And we begin to feel those emotions, too.” Building empathy for your characters is the second key to telling a good story that will make your readers sweat and pant. Zak describes the neural basis for building empathy… “Emotional simulation is the foundation for empathy and is particularly powerful for social creatures like humans because it allows us to rapidly forecast if people around us are angry or kind, dangerous or safe, friend or foe. Such a neural mechanism keeps us safe but also allows us to rapidly form relationships with a wider set of members of our species than any other animal does. The ability to quickly form relationships allows humans to engage in the kinds of large-scale cooperation that builds massive bridges and sends humans into space. By knowing someone’s story—where they came from, what they do, and who you might know in common—relationships with strangers are formed. We have identified oxytocin as the neurochemical responsible for empathy and narrative transportation. My lab pioneered the behavioral study of oxytocin and has proven that when the brain synthesizes oxytocin, people are more trustworthy, generous, charitable, and compassionate. I have dubbed oxytocin the “moral molecule,” and others call it the love hormone. What we know is that oxytocin makes us more sensitive to social cues around us. In many situations, social cues motivate us to engage to help others, particularly if the other person seems to need our help. When people watch (a story) in the lab—and they both maintain attention to the story and release oxytocin—nearly all of these individuals donate a portion of their earnings from the experiment. They do this even though they don’t have to. This is surprising since this payment is to compensate them for an hour of their time and two needle sticks in their arms to obtain blood from which we measure chemical changes that come from their brains.” Empathy and attention…two critical aspects that every story needs to have, even non-fictional ones. We’re neuro-biologically wired to love stories and we particularly love those stories that command our attention and involve characters we can empathize with. Not exactly news to discerning writers and readers but it’s nice to know that current research in Science can support this age-old dictum of storytelling. The next post to the Word Shed will come on December 14, 2020. And watch out for that tunnel up ahead! See you then. Phil B.

Post #236 November 23 2020 “Og, Grog and the Origins of Story” Over a number of posts in the past, I’ve had a lot of fun with our prehistoric guys Og and Grog and speculating how storytelling might have begun. Recently, I read an excerpt from a book called Ancient Bones (authors: Madaleine Bohm, Rudiger Braun and Florian Breier) that seems to shed light on this interesting subject. The gist of their analysis is that speech, and thus language, may have started with gestures, like our primate friends the chimps, bonobos and orangutans. From gestures, they theorize, speech and later language evolved. Abstractions and concepts came after that. It’s not too hard to imagine storytelling evolving from these humble beginnings. We seem to be hardwired to tell each other stories. Perhaps story evolved from Og and Grog relating to their tribemates how a recent hunt went down: We detected the game, we stalked it for days, we surrounded the game, we killed it and now we share the spoils. Look at the structure: you’ve got a hero and a problem, complications, rising action, an apotheosis or high point and a wrap up with a moral and lessons learned. Sounds like a story, right? Here’s what the authors of Ancient Bones have to say: There is some indication that the evolution of the hand had a significant influence on the development of speech. You can deduce this indirectly by observing our closest relatives, the great apes or by watching children as they acquire language, using hand gestures to indicate what they want long before they say their first words. For humans, gestures are an important component of expression. They both precede and accompany speech. Chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans are also capable of communicating with gestures. The vast majority are just simple orders, such as “Give me that!” “Come closer!” “Groom my fur!” “I want sex!” or “Stop that!” All these gestures serve to start or stop a specific behavior. Michael Tomasello from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig have been searching for the origins of language for the past two decades. It seems that it all started with gestures, centered around self-interest and then, sometime in the story of becoming human, gestures were added to share experiences, intentions, interests and rules. Communication originated when early humans started pointing to things to show them to others. For example, an early hominin may have pointed to a vulture that was circling overhead, over a recently killed animal. At first, pointing gestures would have helped coordinate communal activities such as hunting or child rearing. Later they evolved into more complex signs for concepts, such as a fluttering movement to indicate a bird or cradling the arms to indicate a baby. According to Tomasello, sounds were then added to augment and expand this language of gestures. This corresponds with American psycholinguist David McNeill’s idea that gestures are basically nothing more than thoughts or mental images translated into movement. Having the hands free was a necessary part of the evolution of speech—and integral to communication as we know it today. And I would add to the origins of story itself. Think about that next time you read a story. It all may have begun with Og and Grog gesturing and grunting at their tribemates about how the hunt went down, so many millions of years ago. The next post to The Word Shed comes on December 7. I’ll be skipping a week for the Thanksgiving holiday. Have a great Thanksgiving and I’ll see you then. Phil B.

Post #235 November 16 2020 “The Eureka Gambit is Now Underway!” Starting the first draft of a new novel is always a time of great anticipation, some anxiety and, for me, a good bit of determination to just plow ahead and get the job done. Toward that end, I have started The Eureka Gambit as planned on 2 November 2020. Below is an excerpt from the opening scene: Chapter 1 Wolf’s Lair Rastenburg, Germany September 23, 1943 (from the diary of Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Reichsminister of Propaganda) “I asked the Fuehrer whether he would be ready to negotiate with Churchill…He does not believe that negotiations with Churchill would lead to any result as he is too deeply wedded to his hostile views and, besides, is guided by hatred and not by reason. The Fuehrer would prefer negotiations with Stalin, but he does not believe they would be successful…whatever may be the situation, I told the Fuehrer that we must come to an arrangement with one side or the other. The Reich has never yet won a two-front war. We must therefore see how we can somehow or other get out of a two-front war.” Dasht-i-Kavir Desert, Iran Lat. 35 North, Long 53 East November 26, 1943 0235 hours It was past midnight in the Iranian desert, some one hundred and fifty kilometers from Tehran. A convoy of trucks waited patiently alongside a cleared landing strip in the desert hardpan. There was a sound of distant aircraft. Suddenly, landing lights blazed on, outlining the crude runway. Then, one after another, three Junkers Ju-290 transports bearing no markings made bumpy landings on the strip, a location their maps called Alpen-Eins. The landing lights went out immediately and the scene was then illuminated by lights from the trucks. The aircraft taxied one after another in swirling dust and freezing cold to a stop alongside the convoy. The lead aircraft, part of the Luftwaffe Special Operations squadron, opened its forward doors and a steady stream of soldiers emerged, making their way carefully down the portable ladders to the ground. The flight of the KG200 squadron had taken nearly ten hours, from a secret airfield in the Crimean Peninsula, near Simferopol. The aircraft were loaded with squads of Einsatzgruppen soldiers from SS Battalion Friedenthal, as well as ample supplies of clothing, weapons, ammunition and rations. SS Sturmbannfuhrer Otto Skorzeny hopped down from the ladder and stood to one side, lighting up his favorite Turkish-brand Sulima cigarettes, while the men and their equipment were offloaded from the transports and placed carefully but hurriedly aboard the trucks. Skorzeny watched the operation, rehearsed scores of times before, with a critical eye. The night air was freezing cold and a stiff wind had fetched up. He fingered the fencing scar along his chin; dry air always made it itch terribly. It had been a long, cramped, bumpy trip from the KG200 airfield, but it had come off without incident. Skorzeny felt a strange mixture of pride, anxiety, and grim determination as he watched. He knew he’d received a great honor from the Fuhrer in being selected again for such a mission, a mission so the Fuhrer had said, that was critical to the Reich. Coming on the heels of his daring rescue of the Duce, Benito Mussolini, at the Gran Sasso hotel in Italy, the Fuhrer’s decision to mount Operation Long Jump, with he, Skorzeny, as commander was a singular honor and a sobering responsibility. In the privacy of his own thoughts, Skorzeny had given the mission less than a fifty percent chance of being successful. But so much was at stake and he had always been a dedicated soldat, determined to carry out his orders to the end. The operation involved nearly a hundred men in all, organized into three detachments. Their targets: Josef Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, all meeting in two days in Tehran for the Eureka Conference. Abwehr intelligence had only confirmed the details two days ago, giving Skorzeny the final green light to depart from Simferopol less than twelve hours before. A husky lieutenant came up. It was Hans Eisler, White Detachment commander. Eisler was huddling with his back to the wind to light up a cigarette of his own. He was tall, solidly built, with a blond crew cut and a deep scar along his left chin, the result of a parachuting accident only last year. The SS Obersturmfuhrer had unusually big hands and feet, which often came in handy in field operations. His men called him Der Bar…the Bear. “Herr Sturmbannfuhrer, we’re getting the uniforms out now…see, they’re in those crates.” Eisler indicated with his cigarette several wooden crates now being laboriously slid down a loading ramp. Skorzeny nodded approvingly, knowing how many operatives had died obtaining the Soviet Red Army uniforms and insignia. “Have your men get into them right away. And hurry—” Skorzeny looked around their makeshift desert landing site. “We’re exposed as hell around here. The sooner we get underway, the better.” Eisler acknowledged the orders. “At once, Sturmbannfuhrer. It’s still hard to believe, isn’t it, that we were able to obtain this gear on such short notice. Gymnastyorka, I think the Russians call them. Scratchy, ill-fitting rags, if you ask me. Most of the tunics are too tight.” “A lot of brave men died to get those, Eisler. They may look ragged and fit poorly, but with any luck, they’ll get us past the checkpoints. That’s all that matters.” Eisler said, “Yes, sir. I’ll see to it immediately.” The commander of White Detachment hustled off to hurry his men up. Skorzeny appraised the operation with an analytical eye, missing no detail. He had trained these men hard, for weeks, after the Fuhrer’s orders. First at the old hunting lodge at Friedenthal, near Oranienburg. Then later at special training camps in the occupied Crimea. Infantry and engineer training had come first, but each man had to be familiar with the handling of mortars, light field artillery and tank guns. It was essential that each man be able to ride a motorcycle and drive a car and a lorry as well as troubleshoot problems with a variety of specialized vehicles. Even these stolen American Lend-Lease ‘Deuce and a Half” Jimmy trucks, Skorzeny chuckled. Other training included days of sports like football, riding, parachutes jumps by the dozen, special courses in languages and surveying, tactics…the training had gone on for weeks, stretching into months. Skorzeny was proud of his men, volunteers all. Only a few had washed out of the training, most of them due to injuries and disease. He knew he could count on their devotion and maximum effort in Operation Long Jump…the riskiest and most complicated special mission the SS or the Wehrmacht had ever undertaken…and one vital to the war and the future of the Reich. Okay, so that’s the excerpt. Tell me what you think. I have an extensive 40-page outline that I am writing from and after six days of work, I’m at page 30 of what will probably be a 200-250- page story. So, a pretty good start. And I’ve already altered some scenes in my outline, to accommodate my storyteller’s sense that these changes are needed. I use the outline to keep me on track as far as the general flow of the story goes, but I’m okay with deviations if the story seems to need it. This story is a bit of a departure for me, as I have been working in the world of science fiction for the last few years. I have done this type of what-if? historical novel before, in fact three times, with The Eyeball Conspiracy, The Peking Incident, and Final Victory. This is not a new type of story for me, and it’s kind of refreshing to do something different. That said, I have probably another 4-5 months of writing ahead to complete the first draft. I expect this to occur in March 2021. After that, comes editing, re-writing, moving scenes around and general cleanup to complete the book. I’m tentatively targeting to have The Eureka Gambit available for upload by Memorial Day, next year, which means 31 May 2021. We’ll see. The next post to The Word Shed comes on November 23. See you then. Phil B.

Post #234 October 26 2020 “Ideation: Where Do You Get Those Crazy Ideas? Part II” In answer to the question above, I have a one-word answer: everywhere. Ideas are the lifeblood of any storyteller and memorable ideas are particularly valuable. Even a cursory look at the mechanics of storytelling should convince you that the basics haven’t changed since Og and Grog grunted at each other across a campfire in 1 million BC. Have a memorable hero, give him a problem or put him in danger, twist the screws so that the danger gets worse, then our hero either overcomes the problem with heroic efforts or fails magnificently. That hasn’t changed since humans became humans and started talking to each other. What has changed are the ideas, the subject matter and some tweaks to technique. Oh, and the media have changed as well, what with printing, radio, movies, TV, Facebook, Twitter, the coming of the ebook, etc. But the basics of good storytelling really haven’t changed. Why? ‘Cause people haven’t changed that much. Culture and technology change. People…not so much. The dictionary calls ‘ideation’ the process of forming and relating ideas. I gave the title question some thought recently and came up with these answers to where do I get my crazy ideas. 1. Ideas come from life. By this, I mean life as it is experienced or lived. Say, you develop a close relationship with the bag guy at the grocery store. You know he wants to get into the Army and you both have a great interest in military history. Pretty soon, some of his life becomes material for a story. Or he becomes a character in a story. It’s happened to me. All you need to gather ideas and material for a story from life is something that anyone has: curiosity and the ability to ask questions. More specifically, you need the ability to look at a situation or a person and see the story possibilities in it. Not every incident has story potential but many do and some can be expanded into a story. I know someone in my Sunday school class who was born in Prague at the start of WWII and whose first memory as a child was being snatched off the cobblestone streets of Prague right in front of a Nazi tank. Tell me there’s no story possibilities in that. Be alert, be curious, and ask questions. 2. Ideas come from other writers and their stories. How many stories have the Star Trek and Star Wars universes spawned? Probably beyond count. It’s okay to read another writer’s story, and see additional story possibilities in it. Most writers don’t mind that, though some may be a little protective of their fictional universes. Two years ago, I had a game designer in California contact me about collaborating on a gamified version of my series Quantum Troopers. Nothing actually came of this but it was interesting. Often, you read a story you like and it gives you inspiration to take an off-ramp from that story to a world the writer left unexplored. Other stories can often spark your imagination into flights of fancy, asking what if this happened? What if so and so did this instead of that? What if Roosevelt and Churchill had been kidnapped by aliens collaborating with Nazis…I actually considered that as a story once…fortunately, not for long. Which leads me to… 3. Ideas can come from systematic imagination…extrapolation. This is a further case of asking what if? A good example is my series The Farpool Stories. Way back in the early 1980s. I wrote a story called The Shores of Seome. It had an oceanic world with a marine civilization of intelligent fish-like beings. I was never able to place it so it was shelved for several decades. But I was always intrigued with the setting and the question: how would intelligent fish live and what would their culture and technology be like? Then I asked what if: what if far-flung descendants of humanity operating a military weapon on this ocean world created a whirlpool deep enough to be a sort of wormhole? What if the fish people could use it to travel back and forth to Earth? What if two teenagers saw this whirlpool off the coast of Florida and wound up being sucked into it and catapulted across six thousand light years to this ocean world? What would happen? How would they react? Thus: The Farpool. And it ultimately evolved into five novels set in the same universe. Three more novels in this universe are coming over the next few years. That little two-word question what if? can be a powerful motivator for your imagination, if you pursue it far enough. The next post to The Word Shed comes on November 16, 2020. The Word Shed is taking a 2-week mid-autumn break. See you then. Phil B.

Post # 233 October 19 2020 “The New Farpool Stories Are Coming!” Any time I write a book-length work, you can be sure months and sometimes years of planning went into it. While I pin down final details of my upcoming novel The Eureka Gambit (which I start writing on 2 November and which should be available for download in late spring 2021), I’m already into planning for what comes next. In a few words…more Farpool stories. To date, there are 6 Farpool novels, which I’ve listed below; all are available for download from Smashwords.com or other fine ebook retailers: The Farpool The Farpool: Marauders of Seome The Farpool: Exodus The Farpool: Convergence The Farpool: Union As a series, I have previously described The Farpool Stories this way: Chase Meyer and Angie Gilliam seem like normal teenagers…until a waterspout catapults them across the Galaxy to an ocean world called Seome. It’s a world with an intelligent marine civilization, but riven by conflict, host to a Uman base fighting a menace from deep space. Now Chase and Angie find themselves in the midst of an existential crisis. Chase wants to stay behind to work with his new–found Seomish friends, to help the Umans fight off their enemy before the Coethi attack again. But the challenge is this: the Umans are losing against the Coethi and the star-sun Sigma Albeth B is doomed to supernova, obliterating Seome and its ancient civilization. The only hope for the Seomish is mass emigration, through the Farpool, to the oceans of Earth. The decision Chase and Angie make may send them safely back through time and space to their home world. But that same decision may well doom their Seomish friends to complete annihilation at the hands of the Coethi. It will be the hardest decision Chase and Angie have ever made. I have in mind to continue this series with three new novels. Here’s what’s coming: The Farpool: Plague (much of Humanity lost to plague; Amphibs infect Man but survive and inherit most of human civilization, including leadership roles in many fields)(story told by Seomish/human Amphib historian Likto klu kel:Om’t) 2195 AD The Farpool: Diaspora (Amphibs and a few humans expand and settle the solar system; major base at Europa) 2200-2285 AD The Farpool: Destiny (Amphibs expand to and explore nearer star systems; encounter and battle Coethi; eventually, enter into a treaty with Coethi to stop conflict; galactic spheres of influence created; first extra-galactic expeditions planned with Coethi alliance and assistance) 2290-2345 AD To keep details straight with each new project, I always create a file called “Next Steps.” For my upcoming novel The Eureka Gambit, here’s that file: 1. Complete all Research Needs 2. Review (Read) all relevant background materials 3. Write character bios 4. Operation Titan tactical plan 5. Make a schematic of Soviet embassy layout 6. Expand outline to Chapter and Scene Details 7. Projected start date: 2 November 2020 8. Finish first draft: 9. Projected upload date: 10. Review and edit final 11. Spellcheck 12. Book descriptions 13. Tag lines 14. Word 97 version 15. Verify cover format USE JPEG! It’s sort of a checklist to make sure all bases are covered. To accomplish this with my proposed new Farpool stories, I’ve started this checklist below. I show this to give you an idea of what’s involved when I initiate and plan a book-length project. 1. Re-read all 6 original Farpool stories, to get my head back into this imaginary universe. 2. Create Chapter and Scene details (a scene and chapter outline) for each new story 3. Do my character bios for new characters. These come from what I call my List of Major Players. Will there be any holdover characters from earlier stories…I’ll have to decide that? 4. Identify and develop details of any new settings. For The Farpool: Diaspora and The Farpool: Destiny, I am proposing to send my Amphib hybrid human/Seomish people into space, a sort of alternate history of solar system exploration. I will probably need new settings and details for that. 5. One of the main reasons for item (1) above is continuity, something that writers of TV series know a lot about. What aspects of the original stories should I retain? What will be new? How should I evolve the stories from the old to the new and be logical and consistent? 6. Develop a timeline for the stories. You see some of that in the table above and I’ll have to dovetail that with the earlier stories, so that the new guys grow organically from the old. 7. Develop my own writing timeline. You see that, for me, planning and executing a novel is a somewhat lengthy and detailed process. I don’t believe I’ll be ready to begin any first drafts until next summer of 2021 at the earliest. With that kind of timeline, you should be able to look for the first of the new stories, The Farpool: Plague, toward the end of 2021. The next post to The Word Shed comes on October 26. See you then. Phil B.

Post #232 October 12 2020 “Download Numbers, Current Projects and the Future” Every so often, I like to take a moment to get a breath from my whirlwind writing career. Step back and consider where I am. First, some numbers…. As of this writing, some 47,073 downloads have been made of my online work. This has all occurred over the last six years. It’s sobering for me to realize that my work has been downloaded by somebody this many times. Somebody out there must be reading my stuff. Here’s the cumulative breakdown by category, as of 9-28-29: Tales of the Quantum Corps (seven Johnny Winger novels): 10,035 Quantum Troopers (series formerly known as Nanotroopers; 22 episodes): 21,005 The Farpool Stories (6 novels): 6531 Time Jumpers (series of 10 novellas): 2737 Quantum Troopers Return (series of 10 novellas; eight uploaded to date): 361 Three alternate-history novels: 2857 Two horror novels: 1899 Two story collections: 1477 That’s where my career stands concerning numbers of readers and downloads. As to current projects, I mentioned above that Quantum Troopers Return still has two novella-length episodes to be uploaded. The next one comes on October 9, followed by Episode 10 on November 13. I have just finished a science fiction short story entitled ‘Proxima’, which I hope to start submitting to print markets this week. I currently have one other short story circulating around, entitled ‘Halo Jumpers.’ Here’s hoping it finds a home. By November 2 (if not earlier), I will be starting first draft work on my next novel The Eureka Gambit. This is my fourth alternate-history story (all of them unrelated), a kind of what-if? story set in 1943. Here’s a brief description: Major premise: Hitler approves a plot to abduct Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill as they arrive and assemble for the Teheran Conference in Nov 1943, to prevent an invasion of western Europe. The plot involves ransoming off the lives of the Big Three for a cessation of hostilities in Europe and recognition by the Allies of current borders and military gains by the Third Reich. Recognizing a new order in Europe. The operation succeeds and Roosevelt and Churchill are abducted. Stalin escapes the attempt with injuries. Roosevelt and Churchill are spirited away by low-flying aircraft to a remote site in Turkey, then taken by train through the Balkans to a mountain hideaway in the Austrian Alps. Now Hitler has a bargaining chip for dealing with the U.S. and U.K. He also knows about the proposed Operation Overlord and one of his conditions is that Overlord be scrapped. A rescue effort must be mounted. Vice President Henry A. Wallace must coordinate with King George VI of England to coordinate rescue operations. Look for this one to be published online sometime in late spring or early summer 2021. Further in the future, I plan to re-start my series The Farpool Stories, with three more titles as indicated below: The Farpool: Plague The Farpool: Diaspora The Farpool: Destiny I’ll have to do a lot of re-reading of my original stories to maintain continuity and carry the main themes forward in a logical and believable way. I do have the basic story ideas down already. Even further down the road, I may attempt to take my two stories ‘Cloudchasers’ (published in a collection called Elliptical Galaxies) and Quantum Troopers Return: Episode 5: HAVOC and make a novel out of them. Both deal with the planet Venus, which often doesn’t find its way into much science fiction, almost as if it were a forgotten world. With the recent real-life discovery of the chemical phosphine (PH3) in the Venusian atmosphere, there is some speculation that such a discovery may in fact be a molecular indicator of some kind of odd life forms in that planet’s atmosphere. We’ll see. So, that’s where I stand as of this date. The next post to The Word Shed comes on October 19. See you then. Phil B.

Post #231 October 5 2020 “Why I Write” This post is the 231st upload to The Word Shed so I thought I would take a step back and be a little more reflective than usual. The question of the title is one I don’t normally spend a lot of time thinking about but it does go to the very heart of why I engage in this crazy business at all. So why do I write? I can think of at least 5 reasons… 1. To scratch an itch. I’m not sure how common this is but many writers (as well as artists and musicians) exercise their art because they can’t not do it. It’s like breathing, or eating. I’m this way. If I don’t write words on paper or a screen fairly often, I feel wrong. Not ill, just that something’s missing. Reading is like that for me as well. At breakfast, I’ll read the nutrition contents of the cereal box, again and again. There’s just something about processing thoughts in my mind and having them shoot out of my fingers to a keypad that is satisfying. Maybe it’s some kind of innate storytelling sense. Human beings are story beings. We have been from the beginning (that could a blog post for another time). I think we’re hardwired for stories. And some of us are hardwired to tell stories. 2. To entertain myself (and others). At some level, every writer wants to entertain. I write stories at least as much to entertain myself as to entertain others. Think of kids and how they play. They concoct scenarios and make believe things and places. They immerse themselves in their make-believe worlds. That’s exactly what I do. Somehow, as adults this faculty of making believe is beaten out of us as we grow older. But the hardwiring is still there and for some of us, it’s alive and active. When I have an idea for a story, I am literally consumed by a desire to see how it turns out. I write the story to find out what happens. If other people are also entertained, so much the better. I think many writers would admit to having a child’s curiosity about the world and what happens “if I do this.” So do scientists and engineers, anyone who tinkers, in fact. This basic curiosity about what happens next drives a lot of what we humans achieve. I just happen to put my thoughts and findings down in story form. 3. For recognition. I have to be honest about this one. We all want to be appreciated and recognized for our talents. For some, like actors, the drive for applause and recognition may well be the main drive. For musicians, it’s the sound of a pleasant sequence of notes. For writers, the well-turned phrase or a sentence that makes you think and wonder: “Hmmm, maybe it could happen that way.” Recognition is just a form of validation. It’s a way of saying you’re doing something good and we appreciate what you’re doing. It’s a pat on the head. 4. To leave something behind. My wife and I have no children, just a frighteningly smart Pekingese dog. It’s a basic human impulse to leave something behind, whether it be a brood of good kids or just some good works. In nature, we call this evolutionary impulse procreation. Since I don’t have any kids to continue my name and family line, I want to leave the world aware that I was here by writing and selling stories. Let’s face it, when death comes, it’s a bit of a downer. We wonder if we ever made a difference. I want to be remembered as a teller of good stories. 5. To make a statement. Every writer has a point of view and a peculiar and personal way of seeing the world. Some writers have a proverbial axe to grind, or an agenda. Writers have a natural stage on which to make statements about love and life, politics and sports, religion and culture or whatever tickles their fancy. Especially in fiction, just by the art of writing (choosing how to describe a character and his or her motivation), you’re making a statement. And you may find a lot of people agreeing with you and saying something like, “You know, by God, he’s right!” You can’t not write without expressing an opinion. Journalistic objectivity is as likely as finding a unicorn in your shower. Your very act of choosing one word over another is a form of opinion…an opinion that this is a better way to say something. Some of us are just a little more explicit about this than others. So there you have my explanation of why I write. There are surely more reasons than this but these are the ones I could come up with. If you write anything, even blog posts or Facebook entries, let me know what motivates you to put words down. Anger, disgust, some primal urge to beat the drums, whatever it is, I’d like to hear it. The next post to The Word Shed comes on October 12, 2020. See you October 12th. Phil B.

Post #230 September 28 2020 “Researching a Story: How Much is Enough? Part II” Why do writers need to do research? After, it was Ernest Hemingway who said “Write what you know.” If you do that, you shouldn’t have to do research. Right? Wrong. Writers do research for a number of reasons, which I’ll detail below. Maybe the bigger question, which dovetails with the question of the title, is how much research to actually do? Writers should do their research homework for at least the following reasons: 1. Any story, fiction or nonfiction, is improved with at least some background detail. However, there’s a caveat. A little goes a long way. At this time, I’m doing background research for an alternate history novel called The Eureka Gambit. One of the key characters is a Nazi special forces commander. Call him Otto. In my research, I learned (from his own biography; he was a real person) what kind of cigarettes he preferred. I could put that little detail in the story. But should I? Does it advance the story? Does is illuminate character? I haven’t decided yet. But those are the questions you should ask before info-dumping all your research on the poor reader. Again, a little goes a long way. 2. Another reason to do your research is that it helps put you, the author, into the story mentally. For my series The Farpool Stories, I had to do a lot of research and background for an alien species that was marine in nature, basically intelligent fish. I read everything I could about fish biology, whales, dolphins, etc and even decided to put much of that info in an appendix at the end of the story, as in Dune. Steeping myself in all this marine and ocean stuff put me in the best frame of mind to carry a story about these people, who were so very different from human beings. 3. Doing your research helps you understand and portray your characters better. This is especially true in that characters always have some interaction with the physical settings of the story. When you know these details, and know that little Willie grew up with a deathly fear of caves and dark places, it becomes easier to explain why older Willie always left all the lights on in his house all night long. Details matter. Details add realism to a story. Details enhance verisimilitude…the resemblance to the truth that every storyteller relies on to capture his audience. 4. Properly using all that research in your story helps pace your plot. You can intersperse action scenes with narrative descriptions of setting, like James Michener, whose novels often read like encyclopedias or textbooks, at least in their beginnings. Using details from your research can help build tension, perhaps by delaying critical details to bring the reader along, or dropping a few details in at just the right moment, to reveal something essential to the story. I’ve been reading stories from Nigel Hamilton’s FDR at War series, about President Roosevelt as commander-in-chief during WWII. At one point in the middle volume of this trilogy, Hamilton tells the reader that FDR’s presidential train (known as the Ferdinand Magellan) was heavily armored and he provides the exact number of millimeters of armor used. Did I need to know that to enjoy the story? Probably not. But I found it fascinating and made me want to know even more details. Details like that capture my attention, if not overdone, and I suspect it does so for many readers. 5. Accuracy. This is especially important in nonfiction or biographies, histories, etc. But even in fiction, accurate details from diligent research are important. Let’s face it, readers love to find and point out discrepancies and factual errors. Egregious factual errors make a story less believable. They destroy verisimilitude. They loosen the implied ‘contract’ between the storyteller and his audience. What if Og is telling his cave-dweller friends about how he bagged the big woolly mammoth all by himself but his comrade Grog knows it didn’t happen that way and is around to provide counter-points to Og’s self-serving history of yesterday’s hunt? Do you think the cave-dweller audience from 1 million B.C. is likely to believe anything Og says from then on? Do your research thoroughly and carefully. Then ladle in the details as and when they help the story or capture your audience. Stir vigorously. Let simmer for awhile. Your audience will appreciate details that your research has uncovered more if you whet their appetites with a little dollop at a time, and allow them to use their own imaginations. The next post to The Word Shed comes on October 5. See you then. Phil B.

Post #229 September 21 2020 “Researching a Novel…or Just the Facts, Ma’am” Nobody writes a novel without doing some kind of research. It can be detailed and extensive or barebones, but if you want to be taken seriously, you’d better get your facts straight. Several years ago, I spent some months researching, planning and outlining for my sf novel The Farpool: Marauders of Seome. I had electronic and real folders for character bios and backgrounds, book covers, Earth circa 22nd century, Uman-Coethi conflict and U-boat details, plus a variety of additional files and notes. The great question for any storyteller or novelist is how much research is enough? How much detail is enough? There is a term—verisimilitude—that writers sometimes use. It means ‘resemblance to the truth.’ No storyteller tells a story with all possible details. He’d be writing or reciting an encyclopedia instead of a story. The storyteller chooses details selectively to enhance the story and give it a flavor of being real. You should include just enough detail to transport your reader into your imaginary world and ground him there, believing that all this could in fact have happened. Which means that you do enough research to provide enough detail to achieve verisimilitude. In practical terms, that means you have to do a bit more research than you ultimately might use. As an author, writing about how a character feels or might react to a situation, I want to be able to pick and choose details to explain, illustrate or dramatize the situation in such a way as to put the reader right there in the character’s shoes. Little details can matter, especially if a reader has some experience with the subject matter. When I wrote The Farpool, I used the term valsalva maneuver to describe something that scuba divers do to clear their ears and sinuses when experiencing pressure changes. The concept was relevant to the story and I had to use it accurately to maintain verisimilitude. I had to research it to know what I was talking about. And I’m sure some of my readers are well familiar with this technique and would have bitten their lips in anguish or firebombed my house if I had used the term incorrectly. I should add that I’ve never scuba dived a day in my life. Ernest Hemingway once said all writers should have a built-in bullshit detector. Why? Because all readers have a built-in bullshit detector. What about science fiction stories, where the writer is taking us to worlds and times and alien cultures that have never existed anywhere outside the writer’s imagination? Here again, the details have to read true, sound true and feel true. And they have to be internally consistent. Often, the littlest detail—what someone ate for dinner last night, how they dressed for descending into that cave, what it felt like when they landed on the icy surface of Europa—if done right, can connect with the reader in just the right way and they’ll find themselves saying: “Yeah…I can believe it would happen like that!” Author Tom Young, writer of many well-regarded military thrillers, writes in Writer’s Digest some tips to follow when researching a story: 1. Write what you know (personal experience has a value all its own) 2. You can do research on the cheap (that’s why we have Wikipedia and Google and libraries) 3. You can find anything on YouTube 4. You can find things anywhere. Keep pen and notepad nearby during all walking hours. 5. Use all your senses 6. You can leave things out. I particularly like Young’s advice about number 6 above. To quote: “If you do thorough research, you’ll find more material than you need, and no reader likes a data dump. In my own writing, I could bore you to death with the details of aircraft and weapons. But a very good creative writing professor once advised me to let the reader “overhear” the tech talk. Say, if my character punches off a HARM missile that might sound authentic and pretty scary. But scary would turn to dull if I stopped the action to tell you that HARM stands for High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile, which homes in on anti-aircraft missile radars. Who cares? The damn thing goes boom.” In other words, a little bit of detail can go a long way if it’s chosen properly and used correctly. But it’s still necessary. You still have to do the research to dig out that little nugget and save it for the right moment in the story. Researching is ultimately about being prepared, ready to write the story with the flair and power that will grab the reader and pull them into your imaginary world and strand them there for the duration. The best stories, the most memorable stories, have memorable characters and memorable settings and details. Anyone remember the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey? The next post to The Word Shed will come on September 28, 2020. See you then. Phil B.

Post #228 September 14, 2020 “He Said What? Effective Dialogue for a Good Story” Every writer of fiction, every story-teller, must deal with fictional dialogue. Writing dialogue is a true art. That’s because dialogue has to serve many masters in any story. Here’s snatch of dialogue that opens my sf novel The Farpool, from the very first page… Angie Gilliam squirmed a bit more but it was no use. Something sharp was pinching her butt. The weight of Chase Meyer on top of her made it hurt like crazy. “Ouch…that hurts like hell…what the hell are you doing?” “Sorry…just trying to…it’s the Cove. Water’s choppy today—“ Angie twisted and contorted herself to ease the pressure. That was better. “Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea, huh?” They had packed a meal and grabbed a boat from Turtle Key Surf and Board—that was Mack Meyer’s shop, Chase’s Dad. They had puttered along the coast off Shelley Beach until they came to Half Moon Cove—they always did it in Half Moon Cove—and found a secluded spot a few dozen meters off shore…right under some cypress trees. Always smelled great there. Then Chase and Angie wolfed down their sandwiches, dialed up the right music on Chase’s wristpad so they could slam some jam properly and settled down to business. That’s when the wind fetched up and the Cove got way choppier than it usually did. Most of the time, you could lay a place setting on top of the water and have dinner like home, it was so placid. But not today. “Ouch…look…let’s give it a rest, okay…something’s not quite right…” Chase groaned and pulled out of her, cinching up his shorts as he did so. He lay back against the side of the boat, and turned the volume down on his pad…whoever it was screeching on that go-tone needed a few more lessons. He checked the growing waves beyond the Cove and that’s when he spied the waterspout. “Jeez…look at that!” Angie pulled up her own shorts, ran fingers through her dark brown page-boy hair and sucked in a breath. “Wow---that’s so wicked--“ There was a strange, wave-like agitation on the horizon just beyond the Cove, maybe a few kilometers out to sea, past Shell Key, easily. For a few moments, a slender multi-hued waterspout danced just above the waves, like a gray-green rope writhing and hissing on the horizon. It only lasted a few moments, then it collapsed. There was a calm period, then the ocean began seething again and became more agitated than before. Waves piled into the Cove, nearly upending the little boat. Before long, another spout had formed, all in an odd sort of rhythm. In the dialogue above, notice that I’ve thrown in some colloquial sounding words, some slang, chopped it up a bit, yet you can tell what’s going on and how the characters feel about what’s going on. Okay, so what’s going on here? Dialogue serves many purposes… 1. Dialogue has to sound real, without being real. Think about the speech you hear around you all the time. It’s filled with ums, uhs, fits and starts and circuitous, poorly constructed, often grammatically incorrect sentences. That’s the way real people talk…in any language. Dialogue has to sound like that, without actually being like that. That’s why it’s an art. A few selected ums and ahs goes a long way in fictional dialogue. It leads the reader’s inner ear to hear something that sounds real but it also performs other fictional duties as well. 2. Dialogue has to advance the story. Look again at the passage above. What do you know about the story: two lovers are getting it on in a canoe in some kind of cove. Their little tryst isn’t turning out so well, so they stop. They see a water spout. The ocean starts heaving. Strange things are happening. All this on one page. All dialogue has to do something to move the story along and it has to do this through the words of the characters. They see and experience things. They report and comment on what they see or hear or experience. They respond verbally to what’s happening: “…ouch, that hurts, stop doing that….” The reader lives vicariously through the characters so dialogue is really important….it has to sound real. You want the reader to empathize with your characters. Dialogue helps make the connection. 3. Dialogue has to reveal character and convey feelings and emotions. There are ways other than dialogue to do this, narrative ways. The writer could just say: “Jane felt sad and wished the pain would stop.” But in general, it’s always better to show rather than tell. Show Jane reacting in a way that conveys sadness. “Tears flowed down Jane’s cheeks and she sighed, ‘I wish I was dead…I can’t take this anymore.’” This reads a lot more powerfully and dramatic. The dialogue, when done well, puts the reader in the character’s shoes and practically compels sympathy, empathy, all those things a writer or story-teller wants. Now we want to know more about why Jane wishes she were dead, what’s driven her to this point. Hopefully, the writer and the story will reveal that. Done well, dialogue can really establish a strong emotional bond between fictional characters and the reader. Fictional dialogue carries a lot of weight. It’s not easy to do well. You don’t normally talk in stilted, formal phrases (unless the story requires it) so your characters shouldn’t either. Write dialogue like you talk and like you hear other people talking. Then clean it up a little and bend it to the story’s needs. As for me, whenever I hear a particularly colorful word or phrase, I write it down. Usually it’ll turn up somewhere later in a story. The next post to The Word Shed comes on September 21. See you then. Phil B.

Post #227 August 31 2020 “Alien Languages or What’s Not to Tell?” Any time a science fiction writer creates an alien world, he has to deal with the idea of an alien language. Wikipedia calls this ‘xenolinguistics,” truly a field of study without a field. The Wikipedia article goes on to say: “A formal description of an alien language in science fiction may have been pioneered by Percy Greg's Martian language (he called it "Martial") in his 1880 novel Across the Zodiac,[1] although already the 17th century book The Man in the Moone describes the language of the Lunars, consisting "not so much of words and letters as tunes and strange sounds", which is in turn predated by other invented languages in fictional societies, e.g., in Thomas More's Utopia.” In my own recent works such as The Farpool, I have created a language called Seomish (the planet is called Seome). Here’s what I said about the language in the Appendix to this story: “Seomish is designed phonetically to carry well in a water medium. Hard, clicking consonants are common. The ‘p’ or ‘puh’ sound, made by violent expulsion of air is also common. Modulation of the voice stream, particularly at high frequencies (sounding much like a human whistle) produces the characteristic “wheeee” sound, which is a root of many words. Translation from Seomish to human languages like English requires some inspired speculation, since so many Seomish phrases seem to be little more than grunts or groans, modulated in frequency and duration. “Most Seomish words are grouped according to several characteristics: (1) Who is speaking (the personal); (2) who is being spoken to (the indicative); (3) state of mind of the speaker (the conditional); (4) the kel-standing of the conversants (the intimant). “Each classification has a set of characteristic pre-consonants, to indicate the nature of the coming words, etc. Thus: 1. k’, kee, t’ 2. tch, g, j, oot 3. m’, p’, puh’ (both anger, dislike, distaste, etc), sh, sz (both joyful) 4. each kel identifies itself with a unique set of capitalized consonants, like a vocal coat of arms. Example: t’milee, or CHE’oray…Seomish versus Timily or Chory…English.” Indeed, I’ve even got a small vocabulary of Seomish words. One entry is below: VISHTU: One of the oldest customs of the Seomish, the vishtu or companionship roam, is very much in the traditions of Ke’shoo and typically involves two people although there is no set number. Roams can last anywhere from a few minutes to a few days, even longer, with the average being a few hours. Debate and talk is usually discouraged during the roam in order to let the physical beauty of the landscape work its magic. Often a prelude to some intense, emotionally draining activity, such as sexual intercourse, the fine points and protocol of a roam are learned by Seomish at an early age. A writer who deals in alien languages has several things to watch out for. Here are five: 1. The alien language, whether Seomish, Klingon or Tralfamodorean, has to sound alien without being alien. That is, a truly alien language might be something so bizarre as to defy comprehension. Think of how bees communicate in the hive, using wiggles and scents. A truly alien tongue could be so alien no Earthly reader could ever understand it. So the writer must walk a fine line, between alien ‘sounding’ and actually being truly alien. Of course, there are a variety of ways to do this 2. One of my favorite techniques is to use the alien word or phrase in a context where its meaning is clear. Or even better, tell the reader what the word means. “This device is called the ot’lum, or lifeship.” Alternatively, use an index somewhere in your book. In The Farpool, I did both of these. 3. A little goes a long way. Use alien words sparingly. Use them enough to give the reader a sense that this truly is an alien world. Overuse makes it hard for the reader to understand what’s going on or follow the narrative line. Most of your sentences should be readily understandable English. Insert an alien word every few sentences or every few paragraphs. Your reader’s imagination, along with your descriptions, will do the rest. Sometimes, I have intentionally used awkward sentence constructions to convey alienness as well. Again, don’t overdo it. 4. Don’t write a treatise on linguistics, unless that’s part of the story. I developed some guidelines for language and vocabulary for myself, so I would be consistent in how I portrayed the language. My Seomish characters are intelligent marine creatures; they communicate through grunts, clicks, whistles, squeaks and honks. I even developed a device called an echopod to have a ready-made translation device available for my human characters. I evolved the concept into a translator and encyclopedia, so that my human visitors could receive translated words and also more detailed explanations of things if they desired. The concept worked out pretty well. 5. Don’t be afraid to let the reader do a little work. In other words, you really don’t have to translate everything. Leave a little to the reader’s imagination. Intentionally leave some words or phrases untranslated or explained. Isn’t that real life? There are phrases in German and Spanish and many languages that don’t translate well or even at all into English…and vice versa. I’m pretty sure alien languages will be the same. As long as you don’t do this a lot, your reader will get the gist of the idea and still be able to follow the story, especially if you set the context and the dialogue the right way…the narrative thread will still be there for the reader to hold on to. Remember, truly alien languages will likely be so different from our languages that we may never fully understand what they’re saying. The aliens may not even vocalize their language. It could be based on scent, touch, dance or some weird combination. Look around you at our own natural world and see how other creatures communicate. I can’t imagine alien languages would ever be any less bizarre to us. Next week, The Word Shed will take a one-week hiatus for the Labor Day holiday. The next post to The Word Shed comes on September 14, 2020. See you then and have a great holiday. Phil B.

Post #226 August 24 2020 “Aliens on Earth: Re-starting an Existing Series” In about a year or so, I will be restarting my series The Farpool Stories, with a new title… The Farpool: Plague. I’m planning on doing at least 3 more stories, including this one. Here’s the basic plot: Much of Humanity has been lost to a plague; Amphibs have deliberately infected Man (ostensible motive: to stop Man’s destruction of their ocean habitat) but Amphibs survive and inherit most of human civilization, including leadership roles in many fields. Story largely told by Seomish/human Amphib historian Likto klu kel:Om’t. Plague made by Ponkti biowar scientists in effort to make Amphibs and Seomish (Ponkti) masters of Urku (Earth) and to stop destruction of Earth’s oceans by over-development. Plague obtained by Komik ka kel: Ponk’et by traveling through Farpool back to time before Seome was destroyed and obtaining mah’jeet toxin, which he later modifies and injects into a virus genome he has cultured. Komik wants to get rid of Notwater people and make Urku and its oceans safe for Amphibs and unmodified Seomish (especially Ponkti). Komik will work with renegade Chinese biowar scientists. Komik is himself Amphib, descended from Lektereenah For those of you who have read some of the later titles in The Farpool Stories, the reappearance on Earth of creatures called Amphibs should come as no surprise. They are the descendants of the original Seomish who emigrated to Earth’s oceans through the Farpool when their home world of Seome was threatened by a supernova of their sun. The Amphibs are hybrids, modified to survive both in Earth’s oceans and on land. As such, they are shunned by both the original emigrants and by land-dwellers like you and me. Their motive (at least the motive of renegade scientist Komik ka (see above) is to carve out a survivable niche on Earth for Amphibs to make their own way. You can see the possibilities for conflict here. Here are a few notes I made on Amphibs: 1. Appearance and physiology Amphib stands for amphibious. The conicthyosis procedure creates an amphibious, bipedal terrestrial vertebrate form, with two legs, two arms, etc. However, the amphib retains some characteristics of an amphibious creature. An amphib has gill sacs in slightly protruding pouches under its arms. It has skin that supports cutaneous respiration and must be kept moist at all times. There is some residual webbing between fingers and toes. There are some additional skin folds around the eyes and an extra protective layer of tissue inside the eye socket, to help the Amphib protect its eyes when submerged. Amphib eyes are notable for long periods of staring and fixation, as amphibians do not exhibit saccadic eye movements, but must ‘fix’ an object in their visual field to activate cognitive circuits to analyze and respond properly to the stimulus. Amphibs also have electroreceptors in their skin, which allows them to sense and locate objects nearby when they are submerged, by alteration of existent electrical fields. 2. Social organization (families and other hierarchies) Amphibs converted through conicthyosis generally retain the social structures of their previous form. Converted from land-dwellers, like humans, amphibs typically associate in small groups, like tribes or clans, not necessarily biologically related. Some critics refer to these social groups as ‘gangs.’ Converted from more fish-like or icthyotic forms, amphibs retain social organization common to fish, i.e. schools, pods and similar familial groupings. Often these social structures are matrilineal in nature. Amphibs with a Seomish heritage cluster in groups reminiscent of small kels. In general, amphibs are socially gregarious people. They collaborate and live together in small groups, previously known formally among anthropologists as clutches, troops, or bands. One term coming into common use among anthropologists now is a social grouping called a clik. 3. Beliefs and values Amphibs are strongly family or clan oriented. Human hybrid Amphibs retain many of the beliefs of their formerly human past. Marine (Seomish) hybrid Amphibs retain beliefs from their icthyotic past. That said, there are some beliefs and values unique to Amphibs. Amphibs are by nature environmentally conscious and acutely aware of the connectedness of all life, land and sea. They are also aware that they are a created people (they revere Dr. Josey Holland as a sort of ‘goddess’) and they believe that their creation and the coming of their Seomish cousins through the Farpool in 2115 was divinely inspired. As such, they take part of their creation story from the Seomish and part from Human myths. In general, Amphibs have a ‘network’ view of life. Their belief in a central creator is disappearing and they view the web of life as their main metaphor, with each Amphib morally and ethically responsible for doing their part to maintain the web and do nothing to damage it. When Amphibs refer to The Web, this is what they are referring to. Sometimes, they adapt the Seomish word for God (Shooki) as a stand-in for the Web. Many Amphib beliefs resemble Buddhist beliefs, especially their beliefs in First Things (Buddhist ‘Noble Truths’) and their belief in a cycle of life. Their beliefs center around a feeling of ‘Oneness’ or unity with the Web of Life. There are also elements of Gaian belief in how Amphibs think about their world. Amphib followers of Gaianism state that the term is based both on the felt connection and scientific understanding of the biosphere, which is given the name Gaia. The namesake primordial deity from Greek mythology is the mother of all beings, both god and animal, born from her union with the sky (Uranus) and the sea (Pontus). Gaians believe that naming the biosphere Gaia helps encourage practitioners and others to see the living planet as an organism with an intrinsic personality that expresses itself through evolution. Gaianism's philosophy stems from James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, which proposes that organisms interact with their surroundings on earth to form a more complex and self-regulating system that contributes to maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.[3] Gaia can be understood as a super-organism made of organisms, as multi-cellular life can be understood as a super-organism at a smaller scale. With a strong connection between Gaia beliefs and their own beliefs, Amphibs promote similar ethical practices. To wit: Amphibs typically approach their philosophy with the perspective that you should honor the earth, reduce or soften the their impact on the earth, and to be respectful of all life on earth. The latter perspective is extended to all forms of life such as plant, animal, or human, and followers will often try to maintain a close relationship with the planet in order to strive toward world peace, maintain global homeostasis and find inner fulfillment. There is an offshoot belief among some Seomish Amphibs that the sea people should work toward developing and perfecting the Farpool so as to return to Seome in a time earlier (before the ak’loosh) and work to prevent their sun from detonating in supernova. This belief would require them have the technology and the will to ally themselves with the Umans of the 32nd century to defeat the Coethi who so damaged Sigma Albeth B with starballs that it went supernova. This is the most desirable end state for all Seomish amphibs (called Kel’vik’t, meaning to ‘go against the current’) but Human amphibs don’t share this longing and so conflict arises among Amphibs over this matter. There is also a variant of Amphib belief that wishes to encourage other suitable marine life forms (like cetaceans) to undergo conicthyosis and become amphibs as well. Were this belief to become common and the technology to accomplish it perfected, there could be people walking the Earth who had once been dolphins, whales, etc. Not many Amphibs really want this to happen though. 4. What they like They like the feeling of going from the world of land and air to the world of the sea, and cruising just below the water’s surface. The Amphib saying for this is ‘sliding.’ Often, Amphib children and even adults can be found in the open ocean, simply breaching the surface like whales and ‘sliding’ back into the water. These groups are called by Human anthropologists and biologists ‘sliders.’ This is a well-loved and popular social activity for many Amphib cliks. Other terms related to Amphib breaching behaviors are porpoising, wave-riding, spotting. 5. What they don’t like Noisy surface craft or aircraft nearby their cliks. Any kind of human-created underwater disturbance. Amphibs think of the oceans as their territory, even though they can operate on land as well. They uniformly don’t like submersibles of any type and have sometimes taken to attacking submarines in groups. Amphibs from a Seomish background are especially sensitive to certain noises, owing to their racial memory of the Uman wavemaker on Seome (the Time Twister). In re-starting this series, I find myself deep in the world of creating believable aliens. This is something all sf writers face at some point. There are as many ideas on how to do this as there are practitioners, but the following are some of my ideas…things a would-be sf alien-creator should consider…. 1. Develop a background…a history of the aliens. You’ve seen some of my work above. Believe me, there is a whole appendix (at the end of many of The Farpool Stories) that details Seomish history and how they came to be. As the author, ask yourself this: how did your aliens get to this point (at which the story begins)? When you can answer this, you’re ready to create and portray realistic aliens in a real story. 2. What is the basic conflict? In my abbreviated plot summary above, the basic conflict is between Amphibs and everybody else. They are hybrids of two worlds—human and Seomish—and are shunned by both. One renegade Amphib scientist thinks he has a way of resolving this conflict…by killing off the humans. You can imagine that his intended targets would likely object. Here’s the basic conflict of the story. 3. How do (or would) the aliens resolve this conflict? Whatever you decide, make sure it’s consistent with the nature of your aliens…which means you need to understand their basic nature well. One additional point: choose a specific person (in my case, a specific Amphib) to carry and personalize the story. This makes it easier to use all your bag of storytelling tricks. 4. How do your aliens interact with humans? Again, pick a specific person to bring this interaction right down to the personal, emotional level. Your readers will find it easier to identify with actual individuals who embody the conflicts and tensions inherent in your story. 5. Pay attention to the basic science (or biology) of your aliens. The Seomish people are marine, water-breathing people. Think dolphin-like people. As the name suggests, Amphibs can live on land or in the water. Because of these basic facts, I’ve had to make numerous allowances to be able to advance the story. For example, how would intelligent, fish-like people move about on land, when the story requires it? I solved this problem by having the Seomish develop something I call a mobilitor, a sort of enclosed exoskeleton that encapsulates a Seomish water-breather and gives them decent mobility on the land. When I found it necessary in the story for the Seomish to be able to move about on land, I couldn’t just ignore their marine origins. I had to give them a technological solution. Creating believable aliens can be demanding and rewarding, because it gives you as the author a way to comment on humans and the human condition in a unique way. I hope this rather long blog post will help you in any similar future endeavors. The next post to The Word Shed comes on August 31. See you then. Phil B.

Post #225 August 17 2020 “Writing the What-if? Historical Novel” Alternate history novels, sometimes called what-if historical novels, are always great fun. My next novel, The Eureka Gambit, will be this type of story. I’ve written three already: The Eyeball Conspiracy, The Peking Incident and Final Victory. In fact, the book description for Final Victory reads like this: In August 1945, the U.S. used two atomic bombs against Japan. But a third bomb was also built. What if a special ops team from Japan and the Soviet Union had managed to steal the third bomb? Japanese leaders wanted to end the war, but not on America’s terms. To get better terms, a plan is developed to seize the third bomb and threaten San Francisco with it. The story of the Imperial Japanese plan for Final Victory ranges from Tokyo to Tinian Island, Moscow to Alaska, from Los Alamos to a stolen B-29 winging its way toward the City by the Bay. Only Army counter-intelligence agent Colonel Wade Brogan can stop the plan. The top practitioners of this form of storytelling—writers like Harry Turtledove (How Few Remain and many others), Philip K. Dick (The Man in the High Castle), Robert Harris (Fatherland)—are some of our best-loved storytellers. So, what makes for a good alternate history novel? Below, I detail four observations about this genre that writers thinking of wading in should consider. 1. Do your homework. Do the basic research. Don’t write about a certain time or certain events and try to change them for the story, or try to introduce a new factor, without knowing pretty solidly what actually happened. This should go without saying. Nothing destroys an alt-history story faster than obvious factual errors. 2. Select a good pivot point. By pivot point, I mean a place in time where your story diverges from the historical record. Think of it as a sort of hinge. In my three published alt-history novels mentioned above, all three deal with some type of atomic bomb terror that could have happened if events had transpired just a slightly different way. The book description above for Final Victory explains just what had to happen to make my revised story work. 3. Ensure that your alteration could lead to something dramatic or even catastrophic if it had actually happened. This is just good storytelling. Don’t introduce changes only to have Aunt Martha’s pet Pekingese die a few days earlier as a result. Only Aunt Martha would care. Your proposed alterations to history have to lead to something bad, or momentous or earth-shaking. 4. Plot plausibility. Could what you’re changing have actually happened? Don’t forget to connect the factual, historical dots. Think of my above premise for Final Victory. What if I had introduced Martians landing on Earth at the same time? In and of itself, that’s an okay factor, but it completely changes the story. It also makes the story harder to take seriously. The author Charlie Jane Enders has provided us with a nice list that should be considered by anyone trying to work in this vein: The 10 worst mistakes that writers of alt-history often make. This comes from the website gizmodo.com. 10. Failing to bring it up to the present. 9. Not recognizing that some historical developments were probably inevitable. 8. Ignoring historical factors that were important at the time, even if they aren't important to your story. 7. Not accounting for even the most obvious ripples from one big change 6. Concentrating too much on the one changed event, instead of all the events that led up to it. 5. Mixing up urban legends with actual history 4. Assuming that nothing will change besides your one big alteration — or that everything will 3. Making the story go where you want it to go, instead of where your altered history will support 2. Explaining too much 1. Forgetting to tell a good story Developing and bringing off a good alt-history tale takes work. A lot of work. For an author, who loves history, the preparation can be its own intrinsic reward. And if the story comes out well, it can be thought-provoking and memorable as well as entertaining, which should be the goal of every practitioner. Study the masters—there are many—to learn how they go about their craft. Alt-history is a rich literary vein. Properly mined and executed, you may just come up with a few gold nuggets nobody’s ever thought of before…a tale that has readers scratching their heads and saying, “Wow! I never thought about that before.” The next post to The Word Shed comes on August 24, 2020. See you then. Phil B.

Post #224 August 10 2020 “Johnny Winger and the End of a Series” Early this year, I began a new series called Quantum Troopers Return, starring an old character of mine named Johnny Winger. I described the series this way: Colonel Johnny Winger, now a Para-Human Swarm Entity or angel, returns with UN Quantum Corps, a quirky nanobot named ANAD and the quantum troopers of 1st Nanospace Battalion to fight the criminal cartel Red Harmony and try to defeat their nefarious, illegal and highly profitable efforts to spread unlicensed fabs, rogue DNA and bad nano both around the world and off Earth. As of this writing, the end of this series is near. I have completed 8 of the planned 10 episodes and have uploaded 6 of them online. The last of the series will be uploaded this November. I intend for this to be Johnny Winger’s swan song. Winger (let’s call him JW, though I don’t think he would appreciate that) appears in 6 novels (Tales of the Quantum Corps), some 22 episodes of Quantum Troopers and now 10 episodes of Quantum Troopers Return. I have mixed feelings about saying goodbye though I think it is the right thing to do. Any creator of series characters and stories faces the same dilemma. I always conceived of JW as a sort of latter-day Tom Swift Jr, without the blond crewcut and the white bread aphorisms. Tom Swift Jr was a creature of American literature from the 50s and 60s. JW was a creature of the 90s and early 21st century. I always envisioned him as a man of action, perhaps more action that thought. I imagined him as a dedicated quantum trooper, possessed of a keen sense of mission, though not quite a Boy Scout. I dropped bits and pieces of his background into the stories: born on a ranch in Colorado, mom dying in a car crash at a young age, his Dad a sort of frustrated tinkerer-inventor, suffering post-accident depression. To get away from ranch and small-town life, he signed up with United Nations Quantum Corps and the rest of history. It turned out that JW was a natural atomgrabber, highly skilled by nature at maneuvering around in the world of atoms and molecules. Later in the series Quantum Troopers, I have JW suffering disassembly by rogue enemy nanobot swarms and being reconstructed as an angel, a para-human swarm entity, a role he plays in my last series. But now I feel it’s time to have JW drift off into the sunset. One decision that every series writer faces is whether to have his main character grow and/or change during the series, and by how much. There are good points on either side of this argument. If he does evolve and grow or change, that may well keep readers more interested in how he turns out. What challenges will he face and how will he meet them? On the other hand, keeping the main character more or less static (like Tom Swift) means his personality and behaviors are more predictable, and that can be comforting to many readers as well. It’s a judgment call. Continuity in a series is important, if the characters are continuing as they are in my stories. This means the writer needs to keep a ‘bible’ of notes about the characters. More than once, I’ve written about a character only to discover that I actually killed him off several episodes earlier (or even in a previous series). That’s embarrassing. I also faced the obvious problem of having to continue to create ever-more complicated plots, settings and challenges for JW and his troopers, a difficulty which has made ending my twenty-year love affair with JW a little easier. Continuity is important, even critical (ask television series writers about that) and attending to it helps keep things straight and more important, believable, for the reader. Is there any future for Johnny Winger? Not in any way that I can foresee, and certainly in any way as a main character. My next effort is an alternate-history novel to be called The Eureka Gambit. After that, I hope to return to the world of The Farpool Stories. JW doesn’t appear in any of these. Therefore, I must say adieu to JW. Johnny Winger…R.I.P. The next post to The Word Shed comes on August 17. See you then. Phil B.

Post #223 August 3 2020 “Titles and Toilet Paper” Since the coronavirus pandemic began this spring, toilet paper has been on the minds of many of us. Think of the product titles—Charmin, Cottonelle, Angel Soft—and what the titles convey to a buyer. Softness, tenderness, ease of use, warmth. Book titles have some of the same attributes…not that books should be confused with toilet paper. Titling a book is an art but it’s something that can be learned. For my money, any book title should be able to achieve three primary ends (pun intended): 1. Capture the essence of the story 2. Intrigue the buyer 3. Appeal to some unspoken or interior need of the buyer Let’s use titles of three of my books published online to see how well I met these needs. The books in question are Final Victory, The Farpool and Monument. Let’s examine each one in turn Final Victory. Well, this has a martial tone to it, implying military things and battles and soldiers. That does capture the essence of this story, which is about a Japanese attempt to steal an atom bomb and threaten San Francisco toward the end of World War II, to get better terms for ending the war. Would this intrigue you as a buyer? Possibly. I like titles that are short, pithy and a bit unexpected, even a play on words. The word ‘victory’ implies a successful conclusion to a military campaign and the word ‘final’ is self-explanatory, implying an ending to such a campaign. The title gives the sense of some kind of ultimate resolution to a conflict. What might this title appeal to in a buyer? Perhaps a need for a satisfactory resolution to some problem or conflict. Perhaps a need to confront someone or some thing that prevents you from achieving a goal. In fact, in historical terms, the term ‘final victory’ was a part of the Japanese military calculations to draw the U.S. and allies into some kind of endgame battle that would result in a Japanese victory. The Farpool. This title does a better job, I feel, of intriguing a buyer. Just what is a farpool? It’s a play on words, for in this science fiction story, the farpool is a whirlpool in the ocean that is linked to a wormhole, enabling travel across vast interstellar distances. Think of a whirlpool that sends you far away. I always liked this play on words. The title directly captures the story for this device is central to the plot. As for buyer appeal, I hope that a prospective book buyer would find this title appealing to some desire to see exotic new places, distant places, different places. The word ‘far’ certainly implies distance, great lengths of time and space, things a long way from us. Monument. This is my latest sf novel about a future architect who can build and alter entire worlds, but whose own ego causes problems that threaten the future of mankind. In and of itself, it seems a fairly innocuous title. Think of what the word means: a structure erected as a memorial or as something of significance and special interest. The word (to me) captures the story since it deals with an ego-driven architect whose greatest desire is some kind of legacy project that will proclaim his genius down through the ages. Think of the pharaohs and the pyramids. I think this title captures the essence of the story well. Does it intrigue a buyer? Perhaps the title could be faulted on this attribute for the word itself seems fairly bland and innocuous. Maybe I could have played with the title a bit, using something Monument of Dreams or Fallen Monument or Broken Monument or something like that. But I like the direct power of a single-word title, if the word is well chosen. What would this title appeal to? Perhaps it might appeal to a buyer’s unstated need to make a difference in life. A need to do something or create something lasting…that’s a very deeply-seated human need. A need to let the world know I was here and I counted for something. Or not. I think you can get carried away with pseudo pop marketing psychology in all this. Choosing a good book title is important, for it and the cover are usually what attracts a reader in the first place. Give it some thought. Try out different words and combinations. Somewhere out there is the right title for your book. You’ll know it when it comes rolling off your lips. The next post to The Word Shed comes on August 10. See you then. Phil B.

Post #222 July 27 2020

“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:

1. 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 more comfortable in them as a storyteller.  Like many writers, I sometimes archive short stories and novelettes into story collections, if I can’t publish them in print.  I’ve done that with my online collections Colliding Galaxies and Elliptical Galaxies, both available at Smashwords.com. 
    
   But I still like the novel form better.
    
   The next post to The Word Shed comes on August 3.
    
   See you then
   Phil B.