“The Future of The Farpool”

This post will cover some details about where my newest science fiction novel The Farpool is in its short life as an ebook published through Smashwords and where I want to take this story in the coming months and years. 

1.     Current downloads for The Farpool as of 7-25-16 are now at 350.  Interestingly, the change from the previous week is an increase of 23…in other words, 23 additional downloads in the last week.

2.     As I have described previously, The Farpool is about an adventure experienced by Chase Meyer and Angie Gilliam, in which the two teenagers travel through a wormhole to another world (Seome), a world of marine creatures who face an existential threat that only Chase and Angie can stop. Below is the long description which you will see at the Smashwords ebook store…

a.     Teen-agers Chase and Angie witness a waterspout off Scotland Beach, Florida.  After it’s gone, they investigate a whirlpool nearby.  They spot two marine animals, clad in suits.  The creatures blind them with some kind of device, then disappear into the whirlpool.  The teen-agers are trapped in the vortex and wind up catapulted six thousand light years, to an ocean world called Seome.  The Seomish call it the Farpool.  It’s a wormhole.  Chase and Angie arrive in this world, riven by conflict, wracked by sound and vibration from a base on a small island, a base set up by Umans, star-faring descendants of the teenagers’ own human race.  The Umans operate a Time Twister.  The Umans are fighting off a malevolent enemy called the Coethi; one of the side effects of the Twister is the Farpool.

Now Chase and Angie find themselves in the midst of an existential crisis, a race against time and destiny.  Chase wants to stay behind, to learn more about this amazing world and to help his new–found Seomish friends defend themselves. Angie wants to go home.  But the challenge is this: Farpool depends on the Twister working.  If it’s shut down, the wormhole will be gone.  Chase and Angie now must decide: stay with their new found Seomish family, or attempt to go back through the Farpool before it’s closed forever.

The decision may send them back through time and space to their home world. But the 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.

 

3.      I am about to embark (late summer or early fall) on the final story (book #7) in my series Tales of the Quantum Corps.  So this series will be coming to an end next spring.  But The Farpool is intended as a series too and it’s just getting started.  The Farpool is title number one.  In follow-on titles, we’ll encounter Chase and Angie again.  The main story arc of this series revolves around using the Farpool itself, a wormhole in space and time, to travel back and forth from the doomed world of Seome and Earth (or other places).  Because their world is doomed, the Seomish have concocted a plan to emigrate en mass to Earth and take up residence in Earth’s oceans (they are marine creatures).  This of course will lead to being discovered and also will lead to considerable conflict, as another intelligence equal to human now is emigrating to our world.  The two races will somehow have to learn to live with each other and this will become increasingly urgent as the same enemy (the Coethi) that the Seomish faced which doomed their own world is soon coming to Earth as well. 

This is the overall story arc of my Farpool series.  Here’s how I hope to carry the story forward….

4.     Planned upcoming titles

a.     The Farpool: Marauders of Seome

b.     The Farpool: Exodus from Seome

5.     Additional titles and story ideas (there may be a total of 7 titles including the original The Farpool)

a.     Human and Seomish deal with conflict and learn how to live together on one planet (Seome is destroyed when their sun Sigma Albeth B supernova’es) (The Farpool: Terran Union)

b.     Human (22^nd century) and Seomish work together to deal with approach of the Coethi (more battles and wars in voidtime and alternate time streams using the Time Corps) (The Farpool: Coethi Diaspora)

c.     Possible genetic/technological blending of human and Seomish physiology.  Hybrids develop, able to live on land and in the ocean. (The Farpool: Convergence)

d.     Coethi infiltrators threaten historical Earth time streams.  Human-Seomish  hybrids must combat changes to Earth’s past by combating infiltrators in periods and locales of ancient Earth history where amphibious hybrid troopers could make a difference. (The Farpool: Sabotage)

 

6.     This is my current plan and I don’t intend to carry the story any further than indicated here.  These titles will take 3-5 years to write, so don’t expect the series to be over any time soon.  But the story and setting details are rich enough with possibilities that I believe this series is worth doing.  And, as with anything fictional, changes are likely.

 

The next post to the Word Shed will come on August 1, 2016.  This post will cover plans for my upcoming final installment of Tales of the Quantum Corps.  It’s entitled Johnny Winger and the Battle at Caloris Basin.

 See you August 1.

 Phil B.

“Wrapping up Tales of the Quantum Corps”

In May 2014, I embarked on a new venture for me in the world of publishing.  I uploaded the first episode in Tales of the Quantum Corps to Smashwords.  This title, Johnny Winger and the Serengeti Factor, began a series of books that has spanned six titles and will be drawing to a close in the next year with episode number 7.

As of July 11, 2016, total downloads for the entire series have reached 2870. 

This series has explored the life and adventures of one Johnny Winger, a cadet and later a nanotrooper with United Nation Quantum Corps.  As originally conceived, the series was to cover the exploits of UNQC, Winger and a tiny nanoscale robot called ANAD, a molecular assembler who could build large swarms of copies of itself or anything else it had configuration templates for in short times.  I intended and I think I have achieved a series of stories in which action is king.  I actually had in mind the old Tom Swift Jr. series of scientist-explorers when I originally drew up plans for Tales.  However, Johnny Winger and the Quantum Corps are by design a supra-national military-law enforcement organization.  I hoped to put Winger and ANAD and his fellow nanotroopers into all kinds of adventures, missions, and predicaments with every book.  And pervading the entire series of Tales is the presence of an extraterrestrial race of bots called The Old Ones, who finally reach the Solar System in the last story and we’ll see what happens. 

Now it’s time to bring this series to a close.  In order to do that, I have to allow the Old Ones to come fully into the forefront of the story, which means I have to pin down and define what they really are.  I’ve used them as a sort of myth in previous stories, as well as a religious icon, even a sort of God-image. People have projected their best and worst fantasies on the Old Ones.  But the time has come to be specific about what they are and what they mean to do.

Wrapping up a series means tying up loose ends.  I have a number in Tales of the Quantum Corps.  I have to pin down the exact nature of Johnny Winger himself, who has allowed himself to go through the assimilation process (being deconstructed into a swarm being) so as to fight the Old Ones from within.  I have to elaborate Winger’s relationship, not only with the Old Ones and with Dana Tallant and his fellow nanotroopers, but also with the Doc III bot who now maintains his original identity in a small non-descript file inside the Mother Swarm.  And I have to pin down and explain Johnny Winger’s relationship with himself.  Is he going to stay a swarm being?  Is it even possible for him to come back and become a single-configuration entity again…there are many who doubt this is possible. 

One of the problems of writing a series is that you are increasingly constrained the further you get into the series by what you’ve already written.  You have to keep good notes (I do, generally) and constantly check back on facts and names and dates and stuff.  This is all part of being consistent.  To this continuing effort, you have to add the effort it takes to advance the story, to tell an entertaining story, develop engaging characters and put them in peril. 

So far, about 2800 downloaders feel that I’ve done that. 

I recently found a Writer’s Digest piece by Rachel Scheller that deals with the need for consistency and continuity in writing a series.  Specially, Scheller describes 5 bad habits that writers of series fiction should not fall into:

1.     Oversights - catchall category for anything in a plotline, character, or setting that concerns illogical, unexplainable, or unrealistic courses of action and plot holes, including coincidence contrivance (writer needs it to work and so creates the groundwork on the spot to patch up a means to force it to work) and convenience justifications (it was the only way to make A fit with B, so I had to do it, didn’t I?).

 

2.     Changed Premise - This category includes information given in one episode that directly contradicts information in another. In a series this can be fatal. If your book series has a Changed Premise from one book to the next, readers will lose respect.

 

3.     Technical Problems - If your character always speaks in a certain dialect and suddenly stops in a subsequent book, that’s a technical problem. Names and jobs can also accidentally change through the course of a series. If your character’s hair color or eye color changes, or if he was 6’5″ in the first two books in the series but drops an inch in later stories, you have what may be considered technical problems.

 

4.     Continuity - In a classic Star Trek episode, the creators decided to establish that the Romulans had stolen the design of Klingon ships—so they could use a Klingon ship they’d already created. Not only that, but the Romulans also used Klingon weapons. Cheaper for the creators, yes, but viewers can’t help but groan at these production issues. If you’re doing anything “halfway” with your series simply because it would be a hassle to find a better, more creative way of handling it, you’re making your own production problems. Readers will feel your impatience and probably wonder why you skimped.

 

5.     Unanswered questions - If the author is never going to answer a nagging question, why invest anything, especially time and passion, in the series? Leaving a series arc dangling isn’t something an author can do in a book series unless she sets up the series from the first as an open-ended one that probably won’t have definitive closure. While each book in the series must have satisfactory individual story arc resolutions, all series-arc questions must be answered in the final book of the series or readers will be furious, perhaps enough to ban you as an author for life.

 

I’ll have to deal with each of these matters in wrapping up Tales of the Quantum Corps.  I have my work cut out for me.  Look for Episode 7 in Tales of the Quantum Corps, entitled “Johnny Winger and the Battle at Caloris Basin,” sometime in the spring of 2017.

 

My next post to the Word Shed will come on July 25.  In this post, we’ll go back and look at what’s coming up for my new SF series The Farpool, which continues to be off to a pretty good start in downloads.

 

See you July 25.

 

Phil B.

“Early Returns are In…The Farpool lifts off!”

My new science fiction novel The Farpool was uploaded with no previous marketing or fanfare on June 24.  It’s gotten off to a rousing success. 

The ebook, now available at Smashwords, Apple ibooks, Barnes and Noble and other retailers, went straight into Smashwords’ Main Catalog and after a week and a half, has been downloaded 267 times.  In fact, in the early days, it was being downloaded at a rate of 5-10 downloads an hour.  This is very gratifying for me, as an author.

Smashwords has helped by launching their own mid-summer discount with most retailers.  In this promotion, they’re recommending all interested authors discount their priced books as much as 30-50%.  In my case, many of my works are already free (I am a relative unknown, so I’m trying to build an audience), so I just set everything I have uploaded to Smashwords to free.  We’ll see what happens.

My latest weekly downloads analysis shows that downloads across all my titles from the week from 6-27-16 to 7-5-16 increased by 319.  Significantly, exactly 100% of that increase was in science fiction titles.  My other titles are, at the moment, flat in downloads.  I think this says something about the types of readers who browse, download or buy ebooks.  More on that another time.

I have also uploaded in the last few days the latest episode of my serial Nanotroopers, done on July 1.  Episode 9 is at 59 downloads, after 4 days.  It’s been a steady mover, this series, but it has been slowing down lately.  I have planned some 22 episodes in total, so there may be work to do in juicing up downloads in the future.  Total downloads for the whole series are now at 2038, presumably many of these are the same downloaders from one episode to the next.  As mentioned in this blog before, Nanotroopers is a new departure for me, as I have included the upload schedule in the front matter of every episode, with title and date, etc.  I’m attempting to generate reader interest and downloads this way.  It seems to be working fairly well, but there’s a long way to go.

Upcoming work: 

I will continue to upload Nanotroopers episodes on the published schedule.  Episode 10 goes up to Smashwords on July 22…I’ll be done with it in a few days.   Writing a serial seems to be a good discipline for me, with the schedule, the need to move the story along smartly and keep it interesting and on track.  Mostly I already have this outlined ahead of time, but I’ve not hesitated to veer off course if I think the story needs it.

My next major work will be the final installment, the final story in Tales of the Quantum Corps.  The title is “Johnny Winger and the Battle at Caloris Basin”.  It brings this series to a close after seven books.  This is the same character who stars in Nanotroopers but later in life and painted on a much broader canvas.  In essence, Nanotroopers is a slice of Johnny Winger’s life just as he joins Quantum Corps and becomes a nanotrooper.   Tales of the Quantum Corps is his entire story, from beginning to the end…?

The next post to Word Shed will be on July 18.  In this post, I’ll be talking about Tales of the Quantum Corps and what it will take to wrap this series up in story #7.  By the way, I expect to begin the first draft on or about August 11.  With any luck, I can finish the first draft next spring.

See you on July 18.

Phil B.

“Naming Names…Terminology, Place Names and People Names”

Every author of fiction deals with the issue of names.  Names of people.  Names of places.  Science Fiction writers have additional challenges, when writing about future events or technologies, alien cultures, distant places and worlds.  Sometimes it’s a strain on the old imagination.  And you need to be consistent too.

In my sf novel, The Farpool, I was faced with the need to develop a language and some terminology for a race of intelligent marine creatures.  The planet is called Seome.  The inhabitants are the Seomish.  Below is what I said in my Notes about their language…

‘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.’
    
   I was faced with creating a language from scratch and creating words to describe things and concepts, and doing so in a way consistent in itself and consistent with the nature of a marine world where sight was less important and sound and scent were more important.  You’ll have to read the book to see how successful I have been.
    
   Even when writing stories set on Earth in this current time, you have to give people names.  Sometimes, you have to give places names too.
    
   I have found that a map or an atlas is a great place to look for both.  Think about it: many towns and cities, in countries all over the world are named for people.  Pick a country.  Say, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in central Africa.  Suppose you have a story or a scene set there.  You have characters from there.  A cursory examination of a map turns up names like Kisangani.  Or Kananga.  Mbandaka,  Or Lualaba.  The first three are towns.  The last is a river.  All could serve admirably as names of people.  Or you could concoct your own, by mixing and matching syllables…Kan-daka, Luangani, Mbananga, etc.  You get the picture.
    
   It can be fun to do this.  For some of my stories in Tales of the Quantum Corps that are set in Kenya, I used a combination of Google Translate (Swahili) and my own made-up words to give some of the locals phrases to say, to lend some authenticity and color to the story.  In doing this, beware.  A little goes a long way.  And indeed, in The Farpool, I had to dial the language and the jargon back a few notches in the interest of advancing the story in ways that could be understood by human readers.
    
   Which brings me to people names.  Most authors could expound for days on this subject.  There are writers who chose people names with excruciating care, in ways that resonate with their imagined personality or character.  An optimistic person, persevering in the face of incredible odds, with a name like Hope.   Or Franz Kafka’s story The Castle, where the protagonist is named simply ‘K,’  or The Metamorphosis by the same author, where the main character Gregor Samsa is transformed into a large bug. 
    
   In my serialized story Nanotroopers (and in Tales of the Quantum Corps), the main character is named Johnny Winger.  Does that mean he wants to fly or fly off?  No, I just like the sound of it. 
    
   When a writer chooses a name for a character, it should never be something which detracts from the intent of the writer in telling the story.  It should support the writer’s concept of the character or at least be neutral.  And the main character might not even be human, to wit, ‘HAL’ in Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
    
   Some pundits say use a phone book for people names.  Does anybody still use phone books?  Or a map or an atlas.  I say use common sense.  My next door neighbor is named Jim Morris.  His wife is Maureen Corley.  I’ve used names of people I know for years in bit parts of my stories.  And I didn’t ask permission. 
    
   Like anything else involved in writing stories, naming names should be done with some thought and care.  That doesn’t mean you spend weeks and months agonizing over it.  Before I ever write one word of a story, I have a Chapter and Scene Details outline and a List of Major Characters.  That’s where I settle on names and jobs and functions and basic personality.  In fact, here’s the list of characters for an upcoming novel in my Tales of the Quantum Corps series:
    

Major Characters:   This occurs in 2155 AD.

1. Johnny Winger   A nanobotic angel swarm entity with Doc III maintaining original identity
2. Doc III   Evolved variant of Doc II swarm entity that works as a valet and butler to Winger.
3. Liam Winger  Nanobotic angel, deconstructed from and patterned after the only son of Johnny Winger and Dana Tallant; once a physicist at Cambridge University UK
4. Dana Tallant  A nanobotic angel swarm entity, de-constructed from and patterned after the original Dana Tallant
5. Dr. Vijay Vishnapuram  Secretary General of the United Nations
6.  Moki Matsumora   Solnet reporter
7.  General Lamar Quint   CINCQUANT (UN)
8.  Angelika Komar   UN Security Affairs Commissioner (UNSAC)
9.  General Mahmood Salaam CINCSPACE (UN)
10.  General Nat Coker   CINCCYBER (US)
11.  President of the United States (POTUS)  Julio Echeverria Fernando
12.  Dana Polansky  Reporter for Solnet/WorldNet and a contributor to Special Report series
     
    Naming names and developing terminology and language is a key part of the writer’s craft.  Every writer is different but there are some good practices to follow to make it work.  Just remember this: when you choose a name for a person or a place, make sure it doesn’t (unintentionally) detract from the story. 
     
    Next Monday is July 4 and Word Shed will take this day off, returning to posting on this blog on July 11.  Have a great holiday.
     
    Phil B.

“The Farpool  is coming…get ready!”

1.     I have just recently finished the first draft of my new sf novel The Farpool.  With this post, I hope to give you a peek behind the curtains at what comes next.  See, the writing part is the fun part.  Now, comes the hard part.  It’s like eating cake versus flossing your teeth.

2.     Currently I’m giving the story a good first read, editing as I go.  So far, I’ve dropped the Prologue completely and will probably drop an entire chapter.  The story as finished at first draft, and with an appendix, is about 310 pages, formatted for Smashwords.  When I’m done, I expect it to come in at about 280 pages.  It should be a tighter story.  That’s what editing is about.

3.     When a writer puts on his editor hat, it’s important that he isn’t in love with his own words. Does the story move and keep you interested…or do your eyes glaze over?  Sometimes, the writing was such an effort that it’s like tearing out fingernails to give up any of those hard-won words.  My advice: tear out your fingernails.  Especially in certain types of science fiction, where alien worlds have to be designed and developed, there is a tendency to include all your research, to make it worthwhile.   This temptation should be avoided.  Include what’s necessary to move the story and convey the atmosphere, no more.  And remember, the reader’s own imagination is your best tool.  A few well-chosen evocative words can go a long way.

4.     After editing, comes marketing.   There are a number of possibilities for a relatively unknown writer such as me.  This blog is one of them.  I do have another blog as well, but that one is more devoted to my series Tales of the Quantum Corps.  I’d like to keep the two separate.   I can and have done chapter excerpts.  I could even set up a whole new blog for what I hope will be at least three Farpool Stories.  The only thing that keeps me from doing that is I’d be writing three blogs at once and that’s more than I want to undertake at this time.

5.     Another good marketing tool I will be working on is making sure I have a good cover.  I have a working cover and it conveys the general idea but you can tell it wasn’t done by a professional.  Let’s face it: we all judge books by their cover.  Mine is supposed to convey the idea of whirlpool, beginning in the oceans of earth (like a waterspout) and blending into some kind of interstellar wormhole/black hole whirlpool in an outer space setting.  Thus, the Farpool…get it? 

6.     I keep all the things I need to do in this post-first draft phase by maintaining a file called NEXT STEPS.  Below is my file for this project, updated to be current….

NEXT STEPS:

7.     Complete any needed expansion of General Story Outline, especially Research Needs. DONE

8.     Write up details on Coethi-Uman conflict, circa early 2300s. Explanation of starball weapon.  DONE

9.     Research details on sequence of events in a star collapse, or supernova.  Is Sigma Albeth B big enough to go supernova?  DONE

10.  Time Twister design and operational details DONE

11.  Create a map and details of Scotland Beach, FL. DONE

12.  Background and personality sketches on major characters DONE

13.  Some detail on the nature of the adaptive modifications that Chase and Angie go through to enable them to survive on Seome.  DONE

14.  Finish Table of Plot Lines DONE

15.  Group table entries into chapters  DONE

16.  Write Chapter and Scene Details  DONE

17.  Start a List of Major Players DONE

18.  Create details of Uman Time Displacement Battery stationed on Seome’s Kinlok Island.  DONE

19.  Re-read The Shores of Seome before starting  DONE

20.  Started first draft: 13 October 2015.  Finished first draft: 8 June 2016.

21.  Review and edit final 

22.  Spellcheck 

23.  Book descriptions 

24.  Tag lines

25.  Word 97 version

26.  Verify cover format USE JPEG! 

27.  Print final

 

This is just a big To Do list, with some things done and some still to be done.  This is how I make sure I do all the things necessary to make a story into a finished book product.

 

28.  I would also like to include a map of Seome if I can find out whether Smashwords formatting will support it.  A map would help clarify things in the story.  The problem with this is that Smashwords’ Style Guide says their formatting requirements strongly advise against using an image with text embedded in it.  Well, a map is pretty useless without some embedded text.  So this may have to wait for later.

29.  This post is an update on how The Farpool is coming along.  With any luck, you’ll see it uploaded to Smashwords (Fiction/General Science Fiction…) sometime in the next month.  Then I’ll clue everyone in as to my next project.

30.  Next week’s blog post…Naming Names.  Terminology, place names and people names.  It’s a little discussed piece of the writerly arts.

31.  See you on Monday June 27.