Published!

I am proud to announce Tendrils to the Moon is a finished book and is now published!

Here's the blurb on Amazon:

All retired Colonel Montgomery Ames wants is a better life for his family. His distinguished military career, much of it spent in the harsh environment of space, earns him a coveted spot as second-in-command of the spacecraft Betelgeuse, commissioned by eccentric billionaire Wayne Sheridan.

Sheridan has grown weary of life on war-torn Earth, and he'll brook no interference in fulfilling his dream of establishment a permanent Moon colony. When he makes questionable decisions that put lives in danger, Ames must find a way to protect his family and his crew while leading them into the great unknown.

Set in the near future, Tendrils to the Moon tells the story of two men who are driven to their physical and mental limits by the greatest of endeavors: off-world colonization. To achieve greatness, however, one of them wagers more than the other is willing to pay. As they battle the elements and each other, the fate of the nascent settlement and its inhabitants hangs in the balance.

If you enjoy hard science fiction and rich characters, this adventure on Earth's closest neighbor is for you!

Approximate length: 380 pages.

Rated PG-13 for violence and occasional mild language.

Get your copy now!

Proofreading update

This is what my world has looked like for the last week:

Proofreading has been a more muscular mental exercise than I anticipated. In fact most of these revisions qualify as edits. Seeing this much red ink on every other page of a 300-page manuscript is disconcerting, but I'm buoyed by the improvements I'm making.

June 30 is in play for Tendrils to the Moon’s digital release. Stay tuned!

Editing complete

I apologize for not posting in awhile. I have been editing like mad lately. Working on this book is getting irresistible the closer I get to the end!

I concluded a 54-hour editing binge tonight, shoring up chapters 3 through 7. Fifteen days from publication, Tendrils to the Moon is ready to be proofread.

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On editing, part 1

I'm neck deep in editing Tendrils to the Moon, so I thought I would write a post about editing. Of course, I have to preface it with a note about writing, because how badly (or how well) I write affects how I edit.

When I write a scene, I constantly review what I've just written. Usually I'll think of something that needs to happen two paragraphs sooner to set up something that happens later. Or I'll think of interesting dialogue to fit in the middle of existing dialogue. Or I'll realize that a character's reaction to a situation was wrong. Or I need to adjust the flow of information to accurately reflect the characters' concerns.

This could take place over a few nights. My first pass at a scene seldom stands pat. It takes time for me to really settle into my pov character's body. It's not unusual for a scene's to double or triple in length from the first time I write it until I move on to the next scene.

I don't consider any of this to be editing. This is my writing process. If I don't touch a scene for a few days, I consider all subsequent changes to be edits.

As I worked through the middle and end of Tendrils, I kept a list of things that needed to change in earlier chapters. Things like character development, because I'm a discovery writer and I didn't know when I was writing chapter 1 that the pilot would have such a big role in chapter 7. Or scenery detail. I didn't realize a certain feature of my Moon colony made no sense until five chapters after I built it.

Some changes to chapter 1 I have been looking forward to making for 4 months. As written, these scenes are like finding a piece from the wrong puzzle in the puzzle box. They need to be shaped and colored to fit with the rest of the puzzle.

This is what I call the middle level of editing. I'll get into upper-level and lower-level edits in the sequel post.

Leave a comment below and let me know what you think! I'll respond to it as soon as I can.

Shaun and Ashwin in space

The following excerpt is from chapter 4 of Tendrils to the Moon. It's told from the perspective of Shaun, who is the leading supporting character, behind the two leads, Ames and Sheridan. Shaun was a fun character to create because he's a young, jovial Australian with a very cool niche in the story. He also provides a good contrast to Ames.

In this scene, Shaun prepares another man, Ashwin, for an extravehicular activity (EVA), a fancy term for spacewalk. Ashwin is middle-aged, but less experienced in spacewalks than Shaun.

Shaun flipped and turned the lock lever below his neck, making the helmet airtight. The ambient atmosphere in the rebreather rig and pressure suit provided about 4 minutes’ worth of oxygen under optimal conditions, although he had pushed it to 6 minutes a few times as a trainee by being completely still.

“Clear to depressurize?” he asked.

Ashwin’s hands fumbled around his collar, searching for the lock lever that wasn’t quite visible through the bottom of his helmet. Shaun gently nudged Ashwin’s hands away and sealed it for him.

“Clear to depressurize,” Ashwin said.

“Four minutes of suit oxygen starts now.”

Shaun hit the vacuum switch. The compressor whirred, and air buffeted his body as it sucked into the overhead vents. As the ambient pressure dropped, Shaun felt the elastic suit loosen around his chest, back, and thighs—the atmosphere within trying to push out into the developing vacuum. He monitored the pressure gauge on his right forearm. If there was a loose fitting anywhere in the suit, the gauge would indicate it.

“A couple more things before we go outside, mate,” Shaun said, as the sound of rushing air around them died, and the only sounds they could hear—aside from their own voices via radio—were sub-audible vibrations. “The key to success in any zero-gee activity is to never lose your bearings. Be deliberate in your movements. Nothing justifies being in a hurry.”

He touched Ashwin’s oxygen feed, which extended downward from the top of the breathing bag. “Don’t monkey with this line until you’re ready to attach. You could trick the nozzle into thinking it’s attached to an air supply and it’ll pop open, evacuating your suit.”

“Lovely,” Ashwin said.

“I’ll go into the cargo bay first. Follow me. Use your hands. Don’t use your feet unless you’re comfortable. They’ll just get in the way.”

“Okay.”

He slapped the side of Ashwin’s helmet and turned to face the outer door. The vacuum light above the outer door lit up. Shaun braced his feet against the outer door, turned the crank counterclockwise, and pushed it open. The door pivoted slowly on its hinge, revealing the airless cargo bay. The airlock’s harsh light cast yellow on a stack of rectangular foam cases held down by a cord net.

If you enjoyed reading that, then you might like to read the whole book. Sign up for the mailing list on the right side of the blog page. Or, if you're viewing this on the mobile site, click here. Members of the mailing list will receive a free digital copy of Tendrils to the Moon when it becomes available.

Leave a comment below and let me know what you think! I'll respond to it as soon as I can.

Newton's first law of motion

When you set out to write a novel in a short amount of time, it's hard to commit part of every day to a writing routine. I work full-time and I have a toddler. I'm also active in my church. Let's just say I didn't start writing Tendrils to the Moon because I have a glut of free time on my hands. I don't.

I faced a few challenges with Tendrils, particularly pacing, secondary characters, and staging certain sequences. None of these challenges discouraged me or threatened to stall my productivity, however. I savored those challenges because they gave me energy.

What really threatened my productivity on any given day was mustering the mental energy to sit down and open that Microsoft Word file. There is a tension to a story from beginning to end. I feel a similar tension during the writing process. Once I start writing, the unfinished work weighs on my mind. The bigger part of me inclines to avoiding that pressure, to taking an off day. An off day turns into an off week, until the internalized pressure to finish is gone. Overcoming that part of me is the hardest part of being a writer.

Even if I wasn't feeling it, it was better to look over what I had written so far and ponder where the story was going for 2 hours than to dittle on my phone for the same amount of time. Sometimes, I start creating without even realizing it.

Steeping narration in point of view

This comment was left by Anonymous on the First walk on the Moon post:

Hello! I really enjoyed this excerpt and am excited to read more. As I was reading I wanted to feel Ames' emotion sooner. That's what I kept thinking about as I read through the first three paragraphs. I know this is only a small portion of the scene but I thought I'd get your feedback on how you balanced explaining description of the new scenery and describing the emotional side of the characters.

First of all, thanks for your feedback.

The short answer is, you're right, this is just a snippet of a much longer scene, and you're getting a strong dose of scenery up front. I would argue though that the first and third paragraph do contain character thoughts/emotions, as Ames is running like a boy in the first paragraph, and in the third paragraph Ames begins to consider his new world as one that has yet to be discovered, giving him something in common with pre-modern man. In the latter case, those are his thoughts directing the narrative. The main thrust of this scene opening is that you're experiencing walking on the Moon for the first time from Ames's perspective.

A big challenge in creating a "voice" in any story is first answering to what degree the narration is steeped in character point of view. "Tom walked through the door holding a gun" is fine for a detached narrator. But if the scene is from, say, Jim's point of view, you would say: "The door creaked. Jim looked up, and there in the open doorway stood Tom with a scary-looking gun." Some scenes by necessity are more detached from the characters than others. If there's a scale with totally detached on one end, and totally immersed on the other end, I would put this excerpt near the middle.

There are some scenes in Tendrils to the Moon that are very emotionally immersed, usually from Sheridan's point of view. I call these my Stephen King scenes because the character's guts are spilled all over the page. There's more to say about that, but I think I'll leave it for another blog post.

Finally, this excerpt was taken from the very beginning of chapter 6. At this point, the reader has slogged through about 45,000 words of a book with the word "Moon" in the title and hasn't gotten to the Moon yet! If there's a big scene transition, I like to set up the setting first, then the characters, then the plot. Part of the reason I chose this as an excerpt is it gives away none of the plot. You don't have to focus on one at the exclusion of the other, though. This excerpt combines character and description. It literally describes from Ames's perspective how much bigger his hand seems than a 400-tonne spaceship.

Originally I had another paragraph of description, but cut it out because it felt clunky to me.

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Leave a comment below and let me know what you think! I'll respond to it as soon as I can.

Tendrils to the Moon cover

I finished the first draft for Tendrils to the Moon on Saturday. After a celebratory trip to the dollar theater to see Black Panther (it was good), I went immediately into designing the cover. This was always going to be a simple cover, but I played around quite a bit with the open-source software I used, Inkscape, to familiarize myself with the tools. It's my first cover, and I'm pleased with how it turned out.

 

Leave a comment below and let me know what you think! I'll respond to it as soon as I can.

This is the day...

...that I finish the first draft for Tendrils to the Moon. Last night I wrote 2,700 words. I should be able to at least match that today--unless I finish first.

I should have finished the first draft 2 weeks ago, but I've been putting it off so I could revise the middle third of the book. My lack of an outline really hurt the writing process in the second and third acts. I don't think I'll write the end of a book before the middle again. It wastes too much time.

Originally Tendrils was supposed to be 80,000 words and published on June 1. Right now it looks like it will end up around 114,000 words. The extra month for writing and editing I'll count as fortunate, as well as necessary. This book would have been much less fulfilling if I had cut all this story had to say down to 80,000 words.

What I've been reading while I've been writing

Naturally, when I set out to write Tendrils to the Moon, I surveyed the current market of Moon-focused science fiction. Some of the novels I found looked good and I added them to my reading list. I dared not read them, however. In fact, I've been staying away from science fiction altogether since I started writing Tendrils in January.

I made this decision for two reasons:

1. If I had read something that I liked or admired for its execution, I would have been tempted to either emulate it or do it in a different way, limiting my creativity.
2. If I had read something that I loved, I might have lost confidence that I could ever write anything as good, become discouraged, and given up.

Instead, I've been reading fantasy novels. So far I've read The Shining, Needle Ash, and The Water of Awakening. I started The Way of Kings, but I'm not close to finishing it yet. So far it has the most comprehensive worldbuilding outside of Tolkien's Legendarium.

I prefer reading fantasy over sci-fi because the prose style is closer to my own writing style, and I think overall it's a better genre. Fantasy has more relatable characters and more relatable stories. Most sci-fi is hit or miss. Too often sci-fi uses weird storytelling mechanics that alienate me as a reader. Harvest of Stars is a good example of this: The last hundred pages summarizss the next thousand years in the story, killing any momentum for an enjoyable climax. Take note: Grounded plots with relatable characters make the best stories.

Fantasy as a genre is not without flaws, however. It is notorious for bloat and sequel-itis. Tendrils to the Moon has bloated more than 30,000 words over its target word count, and there could be a sequel in the offing. I think I'd like to try my hand at fantasy first, though. I've already begun working on an outline. Maybe when I start that project, I'll read the sci-fi that's been waiting in my reading queue.

Leave a comment below and let me know what you think! Which genre do you prefer, fantasy or sci-fi? I'll respond to your comment as soon as I can. Also, don't forget to sign up for the mailing list. Members of the mailing list will receive a free digital copy of Tendrils to the Moon when it becomes available on or before July. I'm putting together the last few scenes to bridge the middle of the book and the climax.