Best Christmas Gift Ever

I read the news and watch my usual internet haunts and I keep thinking what a crummy year 2014 has been for a whole lot of people.

I could go off about Gamergate and racism and political paralysis and torture, but I sort of doubt I'm going to add anything to those subjects that hasn't been seen elsewhere. I don't think anyone would be shocked to find where I stand. Not if you've read my blog before now, at least.

So, yeah. Ugly year. There were also some good things that might easily go unnoticed, but good news doesn't often make the biggest headlines.

And yet, 2014 was a great year for me on a personal level.

I've had some wonderful developments that I'm not ready to talk about just yet. I can say that I'm hard at work on Book Three for Tanner and Co., and I have more good news to share on the horizon. But for now, I just wanted to share this, because it arrived just in time for Christmas. It's pretty much the best thing I've ever received at Christmas time.

Dear readers, I did exactly as I promised with Poor Man's Fight profits after Rich Man's War came out. Thank you so, so much for all your support. I realize it's all just fun and silliness and space pirates most of the time, and usually that's all I'm after -- but I'm so glad that we could turn some of the profits from all this popcorn into something worthwhile. The letter below is the result of a whole lot of people giving me a shot, and for that, I'm eternally grateful.

Thank you. Happy holidays, and I hope 2015 is a good year for everyone!

Casting Call, Part II -- And Info on Paperbacks!

First things first: paperbacks for Rich Man's War and Natural Consequences are now available through Amazon! I apologize for the wait on NatCon -- to be completely honest, I got very focused on putting RMW together and so that project languished despite my having a printed proof to work with for a good long while. At any rate, if anyone's looking for, oh, holiday gifts or whatnot, I've got four books to offer...  :)

On to sillier business!

I wanted to let the "casting call" question hang for a bit to see if I'd get any bites on it, and I got a few. I'll confess that I did this in part because I wanted to hear some ideas, and I found a few in the comments that I found intriguing.

This question kicked my ass for two reasons: First, I just plain don't watch all that much television or film. I'm very often That Guy Who Hasn't Seen That Thing (OMG!), and often I'm still not interested no matter how many people tell me I totally have to watch/see/read this. If the dust jacket or the preview or the Netflix descriptor doesn't interest me, I can be very hard to motivate. The second, perhaps more interesting reason that this question was tough for me is that a great many of my characters are drawn from people I know. Rachel and Wade from Good Intentions, Gunny Janeka, Cpl. Brent Collins and a great many others from Poor Man's Fight--these are all based heavily on people I know or have known in the past, and that's part of how I bring them to life.

But I'm gonna go ahead and try to come up with more recognizable options for this.

Also, for what it's worth, we have to remember that actors get older, but we don't necessarily remember that because we think of work they did ten or twenty years ago. A lot of the characters in both my series are pretty young people, making them tough to cast. Hell, it's even tougher when you consider the longevity treatments that keep people younger longer in PMF/RMW; remember, Andrea is supposed to be in her early sixties, but she only looks twenty-five or so.

So here goes:


Poor Man's Fight / Rich Man's War

Tanner Malone -- Argh. That's a problem right out of the gate for me. My gut answer is "go for an unknown, maybe Latino, maybe Caucasian." The role would require a serious tan; Tanner is literally tanner than most of the people around him. But my first choice would be a young Shane Taylor, who played Eugene "Doc" Roe in Band of Brothers. Beat up, demoralized, almost empty inside but still moving and still feeling...if I can get that performance into my books at any point, I'll have won at writing.

Someone suggested Anton Yelchin (Chekov in the new Star Trek films) for Jason from Good Intentions, and I honestly think it might be interesting to get him a good tan, buzz down that hair and see how he'd do.

He's not named for the tan, btw; that's just a happy accident. Tanner is named for a Harry Chapin song I heard years ago called Mr. Tanner. It's about a man whose talents don't match his passions. And I can more or less promise you that I'll never write anything as sad as a Harry Chapin song, but the name stuck with me!

Casey -- Wow, so the James Spader suggestions really surprised me. I haven't seen his more recent stuff, though. It's certainly an interesting thought. From the beginning, though, I always envisioned Casey as a blend of Ian McShane as Al Swearengen (NSFW!!) from Deadwood and Michael Wincott's Top Dollar in The Crow. (Also NSFW, really) Either one would make me really happy.

Lauren Williams -- Uma Thurman. Versatile actress who can convey confident experience and is clearly comfortable with a stabby role.

Also, at least one of the pirate ensemble would have to be played by Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead. Because why wouldn't he? Hell, he could just be there as himself. He's Lemmy. Needs no other explanation.

Darren Mills -- James Franco. Heh.

Gunny Janeka -- My first thought is Angela Bassett, because her performance as Tina Turner really blew me away. However, the suggestion of Jada Pinkett Smith also works pretty solidly for me.

Chief Everett -- A somewhat younger Bruce Greenwood (Capt. Pike in the new Star Trek films) would kick ass in this role, but to be honest, he's one of the best parts of those films. He may just kick ass at everything.

Admiral Yeoh -- She's straight-up named for Michelle Yeoh. That one was set in stone in my head the moment I started writing her.

Allison -- Eliza Dushku, maybe? This one's still somewhat open for me because I see someone I knew years ago.

Andrea Bennett -- Eva Green. Done.

President Aguirre -- Mark Consuelos, maybe aged up a bit. (btw, if you have Amazon Prime and you're not watching Alpha House, you're missing out. It's amazingly funny.)

Vanessa Rios -- Rosario Dawson or Michelle Rodriguez.

Einstein -- Um. Honestly, I'm at a loss on this one. Damn.

Alicia Wong -- I wince while I write this, but I really think of Rinko Kikuchi. That bothers me a little bit because Rinko is Japanese, while "Wong" is a pretty clearly Chinese name, and I don't want to sound like I don't know the difference...but if you saw Pacific Rim and didn't absolutely fall in love with Rinko, I feel you may need to take your soul in for a diagnostic. Hell, maybe Alicia has some blended Chinese & Japanese ancestry. Who knows? It's never been spelled out...  :)

Sanjay -- Inspired by Sanjay Seran, vocalist for Delhi 2 Dublin -- an amazing band to see live. I kinda doubt the guy does any acting, but that's who I see in my head.

Booker -- Oh, man, can we get Anthony Mackie? I thought everyone in Captain America 2 was amazeballs, but Mackie just stole scene after scene that I thought had already been stolen by somebody else.

Lt. Kelly -- Here's where my West Wing fanboy comes out (you'll see plenty of it). I'd want Allison Smith in her earliest days as Mallory (Leo McGarry's daughter). I haven't seen any of True Blood, but I liked the suggestion of Deborah Ann Woll, too. She's definitely got the look.

Harris -- Brian Bloom (Pike from the ridiculously fun A-Team film)

Jesse (Jessica) Baldwin -- I like the Ellen Page suggestion, but I also think of Kat Dennings.


Good Intentions / Natural Consequences

Again, we run into the youth thing here. Also, this is a much racier story. I have no clue if any of these actors & actresses would want in on such roles. But, to my thinking, It's Not Porn. It's HBO. (NSFW language and goddamn hilarious.)

Alex Carlisle -- As with Tanner, I'd be happy to go with a young unknown. Otherwise...if we could get a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt, I think we'd be set.

Lorelei -- Changed in my head so many times while writing those books I can't even articulate it. One minute she was Sophia Loren, the next minute she was Morena Baccarin. But in the end, the voice that came through strongest for me and kept selling it over and over again was Claudia Black. I also think that Polly Walker (Atia from HBO's Rome) would knock this out of the park.

Rachel -- Another one that is basically someone I know. However...Emily Procter, who played Ainsley Hayes on the West Wing could totally have fit this role. My other thought would be: get Taylor Swift and have her do her Kesha impression. Done.

Drew Jones -- Dulé Hill. Done. (My West Wing fanboyness coming out again.)

Wade Reinhardt -- Again, I already know him, but you don't. My girlfriend recently got watching Supernatural, which I'd (amazingly) never watched despite the things I write. Having seen some of that over her shoulder, I think Jensen Ackles (Dean Winchester) would be great in that role if we could, y'know, roll back the clock about fifteen years on him.

Jason Cohen -- I'm kinda back to the Anton Yelchin suggestion here.

Taylor -- Summer Glau.

Onyx -- Kat Dennings.

Molly -- Natalie Dormer (as suggested). I don't watch GoT, but I've seen the pics, and I remember her brief moment in Captain America. She'd be great.

Vincent -- Kevin McKidd (If I'm not mistaken, he's already played one angel...)


I think that's all I can handle of this for now. At any rate, Book Three for Tanner's story is in the works! I'm only recently through with the prologue & pushing on through Chapter One, but I wanted people to know that I'm not wasting a whole lot of time there.

Talk to you again soon!

Casting Call?

In a comment on my last post, Sean asked,

Kind of off topic for this post, but if you could cast both of your series as movies, who would you choose for the main characters? (no budgetary constraints, it's perfectly okay to choose all A-listers) 


...and I'm absolutely interested in hearing what anyone else would have to say!I'll come up with my own answers here tomorrow-ish. But feel free to throw out ideas!

Inclusion By the Numbers

As I noted in a previous post about "Milestones and Principles," my third rule for Tanner's world is that it is not all that white. I never set down a ratio formula or anything like that, nor did I go through the text and start changing names or inserting descriptors for the sake of diversity. I just tried to keep diversity in mind as I wrote, but I also knew that on some level I'd be doing this out of habit. There are three reasons for this. One is that I grew up in Phoenix and Los Angeles, so I'm used to diversity to begin with. Second is that I can't look at things like global population growth and think that the future will look anything like it does on American television. The third factor, though, is that I genuinely believe inclusion matters. It matters a lot. And it doesn't come without a healthy, sometimes jarring bit of introspection.

So, yeah. No statistical formulas or anything. Just a general principle that I wanted to include as I wrote. I don't plan on establishing any sort of ratios in the future, either, but lately I've done some small bit of unscientific analysis of my work and seen room for improvement on this score.

It's worth noting that a great many readers (certainly American readers, at least) will presume that characters are white unless shown otherwise through descriptors or names with obvious ethnic origins. It's easy to assume that Joe Smith is a white guy, when of course he could be anything (or maybe even a she), but it's also pretty reasonable to assume that Takashi is probably Japanese. Yet sometimes readers will even assume whiteness when told otherwise, as was the case with Rue from The Hunger Games. (I still haven't read the books or seen the movies. Yes, I know that's a crime. I'll get to 'em. I hear nothing but good things.)

It's also worth noting that a lot of writers have unfortunate habits in describing people of color. I don't claim to be free of this myself. I know I've used "mocha" to describe skin at least once, probably more.

Recently, I've completed a project of going through Poor Man's Fight and Rich Man's War to draw up a continuity database (technically a spreadsheet, but whatever). The primary purpose of this was, as noted, continuity: I didn't want to lose track of who had red hair or a scar on their cheek or who hadn't survived from one book to the next. It might be a bit embarrassing for someone who died in Rich Man's War to show up alive and well in my next novel. I also needed to make sure I was keeping track of names, lest I use one repeatedly for different characters (and I've caught myself doing it once already).

The exercise gave me a chance to tally up some numbers on that concern for inclusion, just to see how I'm doing for myself. I shared this with friends. I figured I'd share it here, too. These numbers, by the way, come mainly from me staring at my database and counting out loud. I don't have fields for gender or ethnicity. I just try to keep track of that through names and by writing down physical descriptions when they appear (again, I wanted to keep things like hair color consistent).

To offer a quick but very important caveat: MANY names in these two books are only names thrown out a couple times over the course of the book. Things like ethnicity and gender are never really specified, and left open to interpretation. In my head, a lot of characters are of mixed-race backgrounds -- it's a couple hundred years in the future, after all -- but if it's not specified, I believe the default assumption many readers will make is that these are all white males, which I think is worth remembering when looking at the numbers.

Poor Man's Fight has 138 named characters.
44 of those named characters are explicitly killed by book's end.
7 more (named character) deaths are strongly implied, but not explicit.

18 named characters are (explicitly) women. Almost all of them speak and most play significant or major roles. PMF passes the Bechdel Test, though it could've done better there.

The cast includes only one named character whose homosexuality is explicitly referenced. The character is of great significance, while his sexuality is pretty much irrelevant to the story. This is by design -- I wanted to establish that these things are not such huge issues in Tanner's day as they are in current society, but it is also how I originally imagined that character. Nobody is a "token" representative of anything. 1 other major character (female) is hinted to be either bisexual or homosexual.

Only 2 characters (Gunny Janeka and Ravenell) are specified as black. Several others were black in my head but it's not explicit in the text.
19 names are Hispanic (including Gomez and Other Gomez). Obviously there's some potential crossover there between Latino and European Spanish, but in my head they're overwhelmingly Latino.
18 names are East Asian.
5 names are South Asian (Indian, etc).
11 names are Arabic/Middle Eastern.
3 characters are known by nicknames without ethnic details, though easily inferred to be white males. (1 is Latino, actually, but I never made that explicit.)
...aaaand 74 names are presumptive white Europeans.

6 characters are straight-up Tuckers (people I actually know inserted into the book).
16 other characters are strongly based on people from my past, including the entire crew of St. Jude (minus the protagonist).

Rich Man's War adds 111 named characters, bringing the total to 249.

30 characters who appeared in RMW are explicitly dead by book’s end, along with 6 deaths of characters who first appeared in PMF.

RMW has a far bigger body count in unnamed “on-screen” deaths, and then there are a couple little matters of planetary bombardments/invasions, but do those really count?  J

Additions by gender and ethnicity:

RMW adds 15 women, along with giving a female face/identity to a character mentioned only by name in PMF.  RMW passes Bechdel repeatedly.

Still only 1 (explicitly-noted) homosexual character, but he appears again in this book, along with the 1 strongly-hinted bisexual character from PMF. RMW also features a prominent bisexual male character, which becomes a point of conversation and an opportunity for the protagonist to stick his foot way, way down his own throat. Of all the books I’ve written, RMW places the least attention/relevance on sex and sexuality. No time for love, Dr. Jones!

Black characters: Both from PMF return in RMW to greater prominence. RMW introduces at least three characters whom I imagine as black but whom I left un-specified (Lt. Booker being the biggest example), but only one new character (not of those three) is specifically described as black (Capt. Bernard).

16 new names are Hispanic/Latino.

5 names are East Asian.

5 new names are South Asian.

1 name is Arabic/Middle Eastern.

9 characters are Tuckers (people I actually know whom I made into characters), though two are just name call-outs. There are 2 other semi-Tuckers, in that I cast them in my head as people I know, but changed either the first or last name because reasons.

So as for inclusion: There’s a definite downturn in overall numbers in RMW compared to PMF, but it’s masked in part by how many of the women, people of color and gay/bi characters return from PMF. This also doesn't reflect the attention placed on those characters over the course of the narrative, which goes well beyond what those numbers show. Still, I definitely feel like I could do better.

Also, for what it's worth, Tanner Malone himself isn't entirely white European by descent, either. That's something I've known from the beginning, but it hasn't worked its way into the narrative yet. 

Numbers!

This post has been a long time coming. Sorry for anyone who was waiting to hear these details. Partly, I’ve been easily distracted lately, and in part I also just haven’t been quite sure how to compose it.

As noted earlier, I’m donating everything I made off of Poor Man’s Fight from 7/22/14 – 8/31/14 to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. Again, that’s not an endorsement from them or anything; it’s just something I’ve decided to do to support their cause.

Sales of PMF for that time period juuuust cracked over 4,900 copies. After the vendors’ cut of the royalties and after withholding for Federal taxes (I’m just gonna go ahead and eat the state taxes), this comes to $6667.57 – which I’m gonna go ahead and round up to a full $7,000!

I’m not giving them the money just yet, ‘cause in the immortal words of Han Solo, “I don’t have the money WITH me…” Those payments should roll in at the end of October, though, and at that point I’ll happily post a picture of the check (or a screenshot or whatever) of the donation, along with a follow-up of whatever documentation I get from the IAVA.

As an aside, if anyone really wants the boring nuts and bolts accounting of these numbers, just let me know and I’ll be happy to provide it. I’ll admit that the data I see from my vendors like Amazon can be a little difficult to follow, which is why I’m rounding up on my donation rather than sticking to the specific numbers that arrived. I’d rather overshoot than get all miserly over a good cause.

In other news, paperback copies of Rich Man’s War should be available really soon. I already have a physical proof on the way. I’m thrilled with the reception that book has enjoyed. Thank you again to everyone who left a review or who recommended the book to friends. All of things matter a great deal and help keep me going!

Currently, I’m working up a character continuity database for PMF & RMW, just to make sure I don’t have any awkward moments of “Wait, isn’t he dead?” in the next novel. I just finished the PMF portion of that, with RMW left to go.

From there, my *plan* is to continue on to the next book for Tanner. I say that because there’s always a chance I’ll get something else done first – I’m toying with the idea of a collection of short stories for the Good Intentions crowd, but many of those are already written or partially-finished. Tanner holds top priority, but I haven’t forgotten about Alex & Co. They’ll get another book some day!

Happy News!

Hey all,

So it turns out that Rich Man's War is doing awesome -- been at #1 in Kindle Military Sci-Fi repeatedly, with generally awesome reviews and a nice buzz. Thank you so much to everyone who picked up the book, and doubly so to anyone who left a review! They truly do make a difference, and I'm really grateful.

But in slightly awesomer news (yes, I called it that), my decision to put all of my profits from Poor Man's Fight (from RMW's release date of 8/22 through the end of August) to the Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America has already shown me a tally of over $5,000! That's far more money than I realistically expected. I can't tell you how good that feels...although I imagine I'll feel better once I've actually gotten that money from Amazon, Smashwords, etc. and I can write the check to the IAVA.

That's just about all for now--but once again, I found someone on DeviantArt whose style I love and who was open for commissions, and I thought, "You know who needs some attention? Alicia and Janeka." Here's the results. I think they look pretty good!

That artist, by the way, is Lelia on Deviant Art.

Milestones and Principles

Hi all,

I figured that today would be a good day for a slight progress report given that it's the end of the month, and maybe a little insight into the rules I've set for myself regarding my sci-fi.

Rich Man's War is #1 in military sci-fi and #5 in sci-fi adventure on Amazon as of this writing, which is super exciting and very gratifying to me. Those stats may well change quickly--they can rise and fall on an hourly basis sometimes--but it hit those numbers yesterday, and that made me feel good.

Per my announcement when RMW was released, anything I make off of Poor Man's Fight from 7/22 through the end of August will be donated to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. Again, that's not an endorsement from them (we've had no contact) and that's after Amazon gets its share of royalties & after taxes...but I'm pleased to say that as of this writing, I am now on the hook for about $528 there (assuming I can do math), and I sincerely hope it keeps growing!

So I figured, for anyone who might be interested in things like "world-building," that I might share something I wrote up for the PMF setting a few weeks ago. As some people may have noticed, I try to avoid lengthy third-person info-dumping in my stories. Sometimes a little of that is necessary, but I find that it's best to keep it to a bare minimum. But in getting into the climactic battle at the end, I decided it might be time to maybe write these things down in a single list just to help me keep them straight. Obviously not all this is technical or historical; some of it is the make-believe space opera physics of the setting, but some of it is thematic. I thought, just for the hell of it, that I would share it for the sake of anyone who might be interested.

Also, please note: very little of this is truly set in stone. One of the guiding philosophies in my books is, as a college professor once told me, "Change is the only constant." Tech moves on. Cultures change. People really do change, though not as deliberately as they would like. But here, as the world of Tanner and Janeka and Alicia and Casey stands, are The Rules:

The Rules

1.        Everyone thinks they’re the good guys. Every crime, every lie, every act of oppression comes with a justification or at least an excuse.
2.    People can always be lazy, careless, irritable, backstabby, selfish and well-meaning but ignorant, even in space.
3.    The future is not all that white. Unless a character appears in my head fully formed including an ethnicity, the character will likely have a name that is Chinese, Indian, Latino or from sub-Saharan Africa. In any case, many people are of mixed heritage regardless.
4.    The Union of Humanity binds humans to a common defense and diplomacy vis-à-vis alien powers. It maintains a Union fleet with funding quotas for member worlds, standardizes weights and measures and basic regulations for interstellar travel… and that’s IT. There is NO universal standard for human rights, no supreme court, no common process for extraditions, no common currency and no prohibition against member states going to war against one another. It’s the best anyone could manage. The Union is a confederacy. Hah.
5.    Aliens are really, really alien. You don’t hang out with them in bars. The most powerful aliens think “economics” is a stupid concept. The two known alien civilizations keep their distance and don’t trust humanity because they aren’t stupid.
6.    Combining #4 and #5: neither alien civilization enters many binding agreements with humanity, because experience has shown that the right hand of humanity has no real control over the left.
7.    Faster Than Light travel requires an FTL engine. You cannot “see” or “hear” faster than light. If you want to contact someone on another planet, you either suffer from transmission lag (Earth to Mars is two minutes at their closest points), or you put your message on an FTL-capable ship or drone and they get it when it gets there.
8.    Because of FTL lag, electronic cash has returned to prominence. Electronic bank transfers (a la ATM purchases) are only practical on a planet’s surface or in large-scale matters of corporations or government entities. Individual travelers rely mostly on some form of secured electronic (or even physical) cash.
9.    FTL travel within a star system is exceedingly dangerous, and therefore typically illegal. Travel too close to a gravity well in FTL, or come out of FTL too close, and your ship is torn apart.
10.   An object in FTL undergoes funky changes in mass; a dime fired at a planet at or near FTL speeds will not cause catastrophic damage. However, it will suck for the dime and possibly the immediate vicinity of its impact. This is narrative space magic counter to real-world physics, and thus will not likely come up in the books.
11.   A pretty hot-shit FTL starship can cover one light year in two hours. (Sun to Alpha Centauri = nine-ish hours)
12.   Maximum starship weapons range is 120,000 km. Anything that moves fast enough to make space travel practical is an inherently difficult target, even with computer assistance.
13.  There are no energy shields. Spaceships and some other objects can undergo electrostatic reinforcement—the molecules hold together with greater strength, but that doesn’t make anything invulnerable.
14.   Interstellar economics is mostly about finished goods and specialized services. There is some trade in rare raw materials, but this is a minor factor in the overall scheme of things.
15.   Most current human art forms are alive and well, including specifically rock’n’roll music and cinema.
16.  To quote my real-life Chaplain in basic training, “Nobody listens to the fucking Pope,” but there is still a Catholic church, and it doesn’t give a damn about anyone’s sexuality. Islam is alive and well, though life in the stars makes practices like the hajj and prayer toward Mecca into complex issues, leading to new sectarian divisions.
17. [Redacted--Tanner's love life] If I ever sell off film rights, this will be in the contract.
18. Tanner will always be a shitty pilot.

RICH MAN'S WAR IS OUT!

IT'S OUT!

“They will never let you go…because there’s no money in it.”

No one walks away from business with the three biggest corporations in the Union of Humanity. Cutthroat trade deals, relentless propaganda and bloody covert operations drive that point home as the star system of Archangel slips further away from corporate dominance. Yet despite all their power, the Big Three are more vulnerable than anyone knows—leaving them desperate to make an example of Archangel.

Tanner Malone would gladly avoid such struggles. He’d rather just run out the clock on his enlistment in the Archangel Navy. Instead, he’s been ordered back into the front lines of a cold war that quickly grows hot. He doesn’t know about his government’s shady deals, or about the old enemies lurking in the shadows. All he knows is that the sky is falling—and he’ll have to fight like hell if he doesn’t want to be crushed beneath it.

Rich Man's War on Amazon

Rich Man's War on Smashwords

And yes, the paperback version is in the works!

AND IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS: All author profits from Poor Man's Fight for sales from today (7/22/14) through the end of August 2014 will be donated to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA). This is, just to be clear, the author's portion only; Amazon and the other vendors still get their regular cut, and unfortunately I can't really afford to eat the taxes levied on my sales. However, experience has shown that I tend to see a sales bump in all my titles when a new book comes out, and I'd like to do something good with at least some of that money. Please note: this is NOT an endorsement from the IAVA. I have had no contact with them. Their website says that anyone doing a fundraiser for them can use their name, and so I have. But I don't want to go putting on any pretenses of affiliation or anything like that.

Once I've received royalty payments from the vendors for sales covering the time period listed above, I will make the donation and post pictures or other proof of said donation here on my blog (sans personal info--yes, I write under a pen name).

As always, thank you so much for your interest and support! Remember, nothing helps me out like reader reviews--so when you're finished, a few words wherever you picked up this e-book would be much appreciated!

Release Date...ish!

It's looking like sometime next week. Maybe Monday, in order to hopefully make someone's Monday less like a... well... like a Monday.  :)

I'm in the process of squeezing out unnecessary words. I am hoping to hear from a few more of my beta readers because I value their opinions, but I really want to get this book out soon.

Here's hoping I didn't just jinx myself by making a prediction!

Progress Report: Getting Closer!

So as of this evening (Monday the 7th), the current draft of Rich Man's War is now in the hands of my trusty beta readers. I have seen a very recent version of the cover art, and I'm thrilled with the progress and excited to see the final product.

At this point, I know I'll need to do one last round of edits to squeeze out every last unnecessary word and to make sure I have all my punctuation straight, but it's looking like it won't be long now. That is, unless my beta readers all come back to me and tell me that these words I've been seeing on my computer screen are all just a giant incoherent illusion and really I've spent all this time mashing keys on my keyboard and telling myself it's a story.

This is always a weird feeling.

But on the bright side, the still-undetermined release date is now closer than it has ever been!!

Rich Man's War: Prologue

I feel like I have money burning a hole in my pocket.

I've wanted to share this for a while. I have often thought that having this piece available would propel me into getting the rest of the book done faster. But I wanted to make sure the biggest hurdle was cleared first, and that's the rough draft. That part is done now. I'm on to revisions. I do not know how long it will be before Rich Man's War is released, but I know that the hardest part is done and that I'm more excited about getting it out than anyone else could be about reading it.

For the record, the piece below may still be subject to slight changes and edits for the novel. Regardless, here it is: the prologue for Rich Man's War.

Almost There (kinda)!

An Update:

This is all rough draft stuff, so please don't take this the wrong way.

But.

I got to the end of the last full chapter on Rich Man's War last night. That brings me to 140,021 words and only the epilogue left to go.

Again. Rough draft. I still have to start from the beginning with revisions, and then when I'm done with that hand it to people and see what needs to be fixed before it's ready for prime time.

If I haven't mentioned this before, Rich Man's War holds much more action than Poor Man's Fight. It's a bigger story on a bigger scale, and while Tanner is a very consequential figure in the scheme of it all, he's also just one more grunt in the middle of big events.

When I have the epilogue finished, I will post the prologue here on my blog. I hope to have that done this week, mostly because I have family coming in to visit next weekend and that will surely derail me for a couple of days. So if you're really looking forward to Rich Man's War, watch this space!

Loaded Terms

Once upon a time, when I was younger and I had trouble finding a romantic relationship, I used to say that I was often "friendzoned."

To me, that meant that this woman I liked -- usually already a friend at some level to begin with -- wasn't interested in being anything "more" than friends. It never, ever meant that I should resent her, or that she was a bitch or a whore, or that I should stop being her friend. Never once did that happen. Was I frustrated and disappointed? Sure. Finding a relationship can be hard. Dating can be hard. Sure was for me.

Years later, I discovered that for most people, "friendzone" not only implied that the lady in question wasn't interested in a romantic or sexual relationship, but also that the guy in question turned into a raging, resentful douche about the whole thing. On a personal level, it bothered me a bit that this term, which I thought was a witty and chagrinned but otherwise good-natured note -- 'cause it means we're actually still friends, right? -- didn't mean for much of the world what it meant to me, and that if I kept using it I would effectively be saying something I didn't mean to say. On a broader level, though, was the far more unsettling fact that this was just one more note of all the utterly inexcusable bullshit that women have to deal with on a daily basis.

Just one more drop of juvenile hassling in a sea of unfairness.

So I dropped the use of that term. I didn't have much use for it, anyway, once I wound up on a path of serial long-term monogamy (and, for a significant stretch, polyamory). But I've found in recent years that "nice guy," which I'd always taken literally, also means "total creeper who claims to be a nice guy" for all too many other people. And that bothered me, because I'd gotten that label (with benevolent, literal intent) many times, and it was something that I more or less aspired to. But it has become something else. And thank god I was never big on wearing fedoras, because that's turned into something unpleasant, too.

I write this in part because some readers have taken my urban fantasy books as a "sex fantasy for men" or what have you. Yeah, it's partially erotica, and yeah, I'm a guy and I'm writing from that perspective, but I never set out to write the Men's Sex Fantasy. I certainly hope men like my stories, and I obviously think that sexy stories are for men as much as for women. I also love it when I hear from women who read my stories, too. I want people to like my stories.

I wrote a story that involved a lot of sex, and a lot of sexy women, but I wanted all those women to have agency, equality and independence. It bothered me that when the sequel came out and that degree of agency, equality and independence was even more evident than in the first book, a number of readers were turned off by it. I knew that would happen. I totally expected it. I wrote the story that I wanted to write anyway. There will be more of that, later down the line whenever I get back to Alex & Co., because in my mind the story was always going in that direction. I wasn't bothered that people didn't like that direction; you simply can't please everyone. But I was bothered by the notion that I might have set out to write a Men's Sex Fantasy, 'cause while I understood that some readers might view it that way, I'd never once set out with that as my goal.

As much as I don't want to get super political on my blog here, I felt like talking about this in the wake of the #YesAllWomen hashtag and the responses it has gotten. A lot of the reactions have been angry or super defensive remarks from men. A lot of it has been a matter of trolling, and guys who think they're being funny by making domestic violence jokes or rape threats because, "Meh! It's the Internet!" but this is exactly what people talk about when they refer to "rape culture." It's not a culture that encourages all men to be rapists, or to be otherwise violent towards women -- it's a culture that minimizes the seriousness of that through a lot of "harmless" humor and apathy and bullshit, which in turn minimizes the actual seriousness of actual rape (as opposed to, say, that harmless internet comment).

It's okay to know that #YesAllWomen isn't directed specifically at you if you, as a guy, aren't someone who harasses or degrades women. The point isn't AllMenDoThis. The point is that more than ENOUGH men do this stuff that Yes, All Women have to deal with it regularly.

And it's bullshit. And it should stop. Turns out that whole culture hurts everyone -- men and yes, all women, too.

Progress Report

The rough draft for Rich Man's War just broke 110,000 words tonight. Thought some folks might want to know.

It's a very rough draft. I'm gonna have to go through it again even before I put it in the hands of my trusty beta readers, so I'm not saying it'll be out next week or anything. (And yes, I have trusty beta readers... I hate to disappoint anyone who has or would have volunteered, but I'm much more comfortable with test readers when I can nag them for their opinions and input in person.)

This is the first large-scale space battle sequence that I've ever written, making all the other battles in Poor Man's Fight small by comparison. I realized, when I started out, that I'd better just figure out names for all the ships involved ahead of time even though not even half will be named in the final product, because having to stop and make up a new name whenever I needed one would be aggravating as all hell. And that meant coming up with a naming scheme for each individual type of ship.

I decided that all the corvettes on one side of this fight should be named after dog breeds. But even that isn't a random choice. Bulldog? Foxhound? Harrier? Excellent names for warships. Polish Lowland Sheepdog? Maybe not so much.  :)

Process Stories

Writing productivity comes and goes. By and large, I try to hold myself to at least 1000 words a day. If I can make it to that benchmark, I feel like I've been productive. Some days, I can even break 3000... though if one were to pay close attention to my word counts, it's obvious that I don't write every day. Life just doesn't allow for that, even if I'm not at a point where I need to step back and chew on the next step in the story. I also write much better if I have a nice long stretch of time ahead of me; knowing I'll be interrupted in two hours tends to put a damper on productivity.

I'm currently at about 95,000 words on Rich Man's War. By comparison, Poor Man's Fight is at 141k-ish (I don't have it in front of me just now). The "middle" for this book turned out to be a little tougher for me than the middle sections of my previous works, but I'm finally happy with the rough draft and I can move on.

I don't think I'm spoiling anything if I say that Rich Man's War ends with a whole lot of violence and screaming and probably someone's gonna get their feelings hurt. If anything, it will be a much bigger deal than the end of Poor Man's Fight. I'm on the cusp of writing that final arc... like the battle commences on my computer as soon as I have a good long stretch of writing time. (I'm actually away from my home computer as I write this, otherwise I'd be hard at work on it already.)

The biggest difference between writing urban fantasy and sci-fi, at least for me, is the level of detail that needs to be invested in world-building. Good Intentions basically just takes place in modern-day Seattle. The only serious benchmarks that could "date" the story are the references to Facebook (already fading in popularity with younger people) and Wade's service in Afghanistan. Once the US makes a serious pullout from Afghanistan, there's a solid timeframe in which the story must take place, but until then it could be September of any year from 2008 - 2014 (and on). But I don't really have to describe cell phones, or streets, or clothes.

Rich Man's War brings the setting into greater detail, and keeping that consistent is... well, more than a little work. I've tried to nail down a solid timeline, including establishing the year in which the story takes place, but that involved a lot of me wrestling with my own futuristic sensibilities. The biggest issue is the limits to Faster Than Light travel and communications, because that puts time delays on everything. This is all implied in Poor Man's Fight, of course, but in Rich Man's War it's much more of a factor. In Tanner's world, you can't put out a transmission that runs faster than the speed of light. This means that transmissions from one planet to the next within the same star system can have delays of several minutes or even much longer. The only way to speed it up is to put that message on something with an FTL engine and cover that distance... which happens regularly, and is the main method of interstellar communication. Yet even FTL-capable drones and starships have their limitations. For one thing, FTL travel through a significant gravity well like a moon or a planet is a serious risk; you won't really hurt the planet if you hit it (which, to be honest, goes against current scientific expectations), but you'll certainly shred your ship if you come too close.

This means it's about a three-week lag in communications between Archangel and Earth, and communications between other locations naturally run on different timetables. I don't have an Excel sheet with planets and their relative distances or anything, as I don't have all that many locations set up yet. I will likely get to that point after three or four books in this setting, of course... but regardless, keeping things straight once you've set up this sort of condition can slow down the writing.

The setting brings up other questions that I've only touched upon so far: people can live and retain their physical youth considerably longer in Tanner's world, so what effect does that have on a person's relationships? How about their career--when you workers are still young & spry even 30 years into a career, what effect does that have on advancement? This doesn't get a whole lot of attention in the current draft, and I don't believe it will be a center-stage issue even upon revision, but it's a genuine concern.

There's also a certain amount of research to be done. As I've said elsewhere, I'm not writing hard sci-fi, and my urban fantasy stuff is also intentionally comedic, but I like to know how the real world works so that I go off the rails intentionally rather than doing it out of ignorance. Natural Consequences opens with some legal drama, and obviously the interaction between a supernatural world and a legal system is something an author has to make up through imagination, but even then I spoke with four lawyers and a judge. In Rich Man's War, the big corporations are not the same animal as one might find here in the real world, but I try to keep the conditions and decisions to a human level. Several things done by the corps in RMW are straight out of the financial collapse of 2008.

I say none of this to make excuses, of course; the book will be ready when it's ready. But I know a few people were concerned when they saw Days of High Adventure come out and worried that I'm drifting away from Tanner, and that's just not the case. Days was written two years ago. I'm still crackin' on RMW.

As for other future projects: I have a feeling that when RMW is done, I'm gonna have to go straight into the next installment, putting the Good Intentions crowd on hold for a while. Honestly, I first imagined that RMW would complete this story arc for Archangel, Tanner, Casey & all, but now that I'm here I've realized the only elegant way to handle it is to do it in three books rather than two. (That kinda screws up my play on the Civil War-era protest cry of "Rich man's war, poor man's fight!" because now I have to come up with a third title, but alas...) There absolutely will be more of the Good Intentions crew, because I love them dearly, but I've had this story arc in my head for about 15 years or so. It's time to get it nailed down and out there where people can read it all.

I plan to post the prologue to Rich Man's War here on my blog as soon as I've got the rough done and I have my trusty beta readers going over it. I'm greatly looking forward to that... hell, I've wanted to do it for weeks, but I figure it's best to make sure the book really is "coming soon" rather than just being a horrible tease.

Hope it's soon!

Notifications?

Hi all,

I made a horrible discovery today while straightening out passwords. It turns out some requests sent to my email address to be added to my notifications list have gone into my spam folder... and that means I have no idea how many I might have lost over the last year.

If you ever sent me a notification request and I didn't respond, you might want to send me a new one at bashfullyshameless@gmail.com. Of course, if you're reading my blog, that's probably not such a problem... but I figure I should let folks know.

Not a lot to tell about Norwescon this year, though I met with Lee Moyer about the cover for Rich Man's War. He drew up a very, very rough concept sketch while we sat in the hotel restaurant talking, and so for the third time I now have to change something in the story because what he dreamed up for the cover is too cool NOT to do. It's funny how that can happen.

That's all for the moment. Back to writing!

Cliffhangers & Real-Life Plans

I will be at NorWesCon this weekend! It's a great sci-fi/fantasy convention here in Seattle that I've been attending for years. I'm not doing any panels or anything... so basically I'll just be there as an ordinary attendee, but that has been fun enough for a while now.

Days of High Adventure is doing quite nicely so far. It could use reviews if you are so inclined! Especially happy reviews, though I'm not one to tell people what to write!

As for Rich Man's War: I recently passed the 90,000 word mark. It's currently at 91k. The "middle" of the book was a bit of a challenge for me, because I'm trying to keep the inherent time-lag of an interstellar society straight. Having established that it's more or less three weeks between Earth and Archangel, even by the standards of the fastest ship, makes for a couple of challenges in maintaining a narrative flow. Add in a couple more interstellar locations and it gets trickier.

But it's coming along. I have pretty clear ideas for the rest of it. Although, I gotta say, now that the big climactic action-packed final arc is within sight and the book is already at 90k, I was just thinking... I could just finish it off at any point here with, "Dunh dunh DUUUNNNHHH!!!" and call it good, right?

I mean, granted, I'd piss off pretty much every single reader and never sell a book again, but still...   :)

A New Novella -- Days of High Adventure!

So I've told people, perhaps inconsistently, that I may well have a bit of a surprise to release before I'm finished with Rich Man's War. Here it is!

Days of High Adventure!

Gaming with friends offered what Amanda missed in her dreary college life: friendship and excitement, the thrill of combat for a good cause and the chance to be a hero. Neither Amanda nor her friend, Eric ever expected to face the suddenly real world of their fantasy adventures, but when a careless joke draws the ire of a dark wizard, both must rise to the challenge. 

Leveling up has never been so hard... or felt so good. 

WARNING: Days of High Adventure contains graphic violence, graphic pre-marital sex, graphic violation of college housing regulations, rampant geekery, multiple dismemberments, impalings, bad language, nudity, drug references, consumption of alcohol, destruction of private property, paganism, theft, arson, slavery, reptile-on-human violence, improper placement of hazardous materials, money laundering, illegal immigration, tax evasion, poor workplace standards, unwed cohabitating couples, kidnapping, assault under color of authority, bearers of false witness, human sacrifice, desecration of religious sites, unsafe work standards, uncredited film quotes, and references to games falsely accused of Satanic influences. There may be dungeons and/or dragons herein.

Rich Man's War Updates and Post-ComiCon Fun

So this past weekend was Emerald City ComiCon, and just like last year, I had a blast. The crowds were well-managed, a lot of great artists and writers came out, I finally got to shake Peter David's hand after reading his stuff for nigh on twenty years (I'd even used one of his Star Trek novels for my obligatory "outside reading" book reports in high school American Lit), and the Carol Corps were out in full force.

I went to a great panel by Talaria Press on self-publishing and the opportunities available now to new writers, and had a chance to talk to several of their writers at their table afterward. They are some very cool people, and I encourage anyone with an interest in supporting independent authors to take a look. They aren't a big imprint with lawyers and agents and publicists; they're a handful of writers who banded together to create a nice, professional line of books.

Cons like this are also highly motivating for me as an author. It came at a great time, too. The rough draft for Rich Man's War is well more than halfway finished now, with the climax in sight. I'll admit I've wrestled with the middle of this book for a few reasons, not the least of which being that I wanted to make sure my timelines make sense. Rich Man's War reaches further away from Tanner's home than just Archangel and Hashem--though you'll see plenty of both--and I've paid close attention to the delays created by such distances.

The Union hasn't developed real-time communication between star systems yet like you see in many other sci-fi settings, and I have no plans for that to occur. If you want to send a message from Earth to Archangel, you'll need to put it on a ship with a Faster-Than-Light capability, and even so it'll take a couple weeks to get there. When you put a detail like that in place, it plays all sorts of merry hell with things like diplomacy and stock exchanges.

At any rate: as usual, my attendance at ECCC led to me commissioning a couple of art pieces (and not nearly as many as I'd like to have done... stupid finite resources!). When you're talking to an artist at a table in a crowded hall, and said artist only has a day or two to do his or her work, it's much easier to describe urban fantasy ideas than sci-fi concepts, so I don't have anything to show of Tanner or his associates just yet. But I'm always happy to see more of Alex, Lorelei, Rachel & Co.

And, well... there was a pro from a particular comics line right there in Artist's Alley. While I never set out to write Good Intentions with them in mind, I'd be a damn liar if I said I never once thought of Betty and Veronica while writing those stories.

Hope to have more to announce soon!

--Elliott Kay

Poor Man's Fight -- Now Available in Paperback!

So I've proofed it, I've priced it as low as I could, and I'm quite happy with the results!

Poor Man's Fight is now available in paperback! You can get it either through Amazon or direct through CreateSpace. The Amazon version is slightly cheaper (though I don't know how or why). If you want me to get slightly more of your cash, CreateSpace is the way to go... but I couldn't for the life of me give you a reason why you'd want to do that.  :)

And oh, man, have you seen the new cover by Lee Moyer?

Work continues on the sequel! I wish I could give you a release date, but I'm a ways off from that yet. Thanks again for your interest!

Brief Updates

This is brief because I really want to focus on productive story-writing. However, I know there are folks out there interested in how things are going.

Writing for Rich Man's War has suffered recently from the natural interruptions of the holidays and the wholly unnatural interruption of the worst flu I've ever had in my life. Feverish for days, couldn't concentrate on anything, all that. It took me a good three weeks to shake that stuff off enough that I could actually get any writing work done. My girlfriend is fairly sure that I caught swine flu, as she caught that during the big scare in '08 or '09 or whenever and yet didn't get sick at all despite living with me through this whole deal, plus H1N1 is apparently one of the big strains this year... and whatever I had was awful. Presumably, those three details totally add up to irrefutable scientific evidence, right?

At any rate, Rich Man's War is over 60k words, and I'm taking a short moment to do some constructive editing before pushing further. The paperback versions of both Poor Man's Fight and Natural Consequences are still in the works, but they are both in stages that required me to hand them off to other people. I have also managed to get some short-story work done that may come out in the next few months depending on when cover art can happen (and I'm more than content to wait for the artist's schedule).

So that's where I'm at. I hope everyone is having a good new year so far, 'cause mine got off with a roar followed by a sudden stumble and fall into a virus-infested mud puddle. But I'm out of that puddle now and back to productivity again, so here's to February!