Post #212 May 4 2020

“Update on Monument, Other Projects and the Process”

I’m using this post to provide an update on my work-in-progress science fiction novel Monument.  I have as of this writing (4-27-20) completed 184 pages, some 100,000 words.  I’m at Chapter 15 of a planned 17 chapters.  I hope to be able to finish the first draft in mid-May, at which point I’ll resume writing episodes of Quantum Troopers Return.

But, as to Monument, after the first draft, what next?

My normal practice is to do a complete re-read of the entire story, to clean things up, fix obvious mistakes and gaffes and grammatical problems.  I’ll be looking to see how the story would read to an uninterested reader.  Are there gaping holes in the plot?  Do the setting descriptions ring true?  Are the characters believable, in motivations, in their dialogue, in their actions?  Do the main characters grow or change in the story?  Is the main storyline strong enough to keep readers turning the page?

I’ve had to ask myself several times in telling this story just whose story it is?  The story, as written, is a bit episodic and may need some tightening up, focusing on the main character and what he’s dealing with.  The re-reads will tell and they will likely lead to some re-writes of key sections.  That’s normal editing.

Then, it’s finalizing. I have to write short and long story descriptions for Smashwords.com, my distributor.  I have to make the sure the cover works.  I have to spellcheck, one of the last steps.  Then I have to make a file format conversion into the format Smashwords needs.  After that, I’ll do a quick page-through one last time and then archive it for a few weeks, so see if anything else comes to mind.  After that comes the first upload.

I anticipate being very close to the end of the first draft, if not finished, by about May 19, which I have designated as my return to Quantum Troopers Return.  If all goes well, readers should have a first chance to download the story sometime toward the end of the summer.

I’m still doing background for my alternate-history novel The Eureka Gambit but the outline is done and I’m hoping to begin the first draft of this project in the fall, say by November 1.  That is just an aspiration, at this point.

Year to date, I’ve had 2611 downloads of all my titles, including about 15 of the Quantum Troopers Return series, the first three episodes of which are priced at $0.99.  All other titles are free, for the time being. 

It’s a busy life and thankfully one not greatly affected by the coronavirus pandemic.  This onset of this virus has made me more cognizant of what writers and storytellers have done in the past when plagues occurred.  Some great literature has come out of desperate times, and I’m not just talking about apocalyptic stories, of which there are plenty.  I did a post about this a month ago, so check that out. 

My feeling, supported by other authors and sales figures, is that in difficult times like these, people really want and need to be able to escape from their normal lives for a few hours.  I think this is behind the great popularity of fantasy stories today, and of course science fiction, even romance stories, speak to this same need.   Two of the most popular stories and story series of this generation are Harry Potter and Game of Thrones, both straight fantasy series. 

People want to escape.

That puts the onus on us storytellers to imagine and create both entertaining and uplifting stories that provide an alternate universe into which readers and TV and film goers can enter and live vicariously as other people.  All good fiction and storytelling does this.  I hope in future posts to go back to one of my favorite subjects…just how do you go about creating and sustaining this kind of imaginary world?  In approaching this subject, I’ll use one of my own imaginary creations…the Farpool Stories…as an example.

Look for it.

The next post comes on May 11, 2020.

See you then.

Phil B.