Monday 26 December 2016

Highlights of 2016

First seen on the Space Trash Blog.

2016 round-up

I thought that rather than making  a list of things to do next year that I know I'm not going to get to,
I'd make a list, instead, of the things I actually did in 2016.

(Da-da-da-done, rather than too-wet-to-do.)

One of the big things was the migration of my author website from my old Wix site to this one - a brand-spanking-new WordPress website. This took me about three months and involved me learning how to manage WordPress, a learning curve that nearly had me throwing my computer through a window (because, really, why the hell is building a website not plug-and-play in 2016??). My lack of patience aside, it now does look almost how I want it to look, and it seems to be reasonably discoverable. I'm told Wix's habit of including hashtags in their website addresses plays hob with SEO, which is one of the reasons I moved.

Unfortunately, something else I did, much less successful, in 2016, was hire a publicist. Technically, I hired her in 2015, but as the majority of the 6-month term for which we contracted was the first half of 2016, I'm calling it a 2016 item. Sadly, aside from costing me a great deal of money, all the lady in question did was connect me with a lot of people on Twitter before vanishing without having actually accomplished a single other of the items that the contract was for. Strangely, all websites and social media for said lady have also vanished in the time since, thus providing me the with valuable lesson of don't gamble anything more than pocket money on hiring marketers.

I also, courtesy of my office, took ten weeks of speech and voice projection training. (Why am I mentioning this here? Well, fair question. Keep reading!) It's something I'd been wanting to do for a number of years, as I'm generally either being told I don't speak loudly enough, or, conversely, that I'm speaking much too loudly and disturbing everyone around me. I figured some formal voice training would provide some much-needed context on which side of the argument were right, and which were simply assholes. It turned out to be a very interesting few weeks, in which I learnt that free diving isn't the absolute worst past hobby to have had when it comes to learning to manage and project your voice, and that sinus surgery makes me trying to engage my frontal resonators sound remarkably like Daffy Duck. (Quack.)

Unlike 2015, my book publishing for 2016 only amounted to one book, Elemental Affinity, the third in the Cortii series. I was (and am) however, as proud of it as a chicken with one egg; it took a lot of editing to make it semi-presentable, and gave me my first opportunity working with a formal set of beta readers, who provided some invaluable feedback. Said feedback resulted in me cutting about a third of the book and re-writing, but it is, I feel, a lot better than it was.

2016 was, finally, one of the rare years in which I actually went somewhere on holiday. In this case, it was Iceland, and it was awesome. I've already run off at the mouth sufficiently about that elsewhere, but suffice it to say I'm already looking forwards to a return trip.

So, overall, I checked some things off my bucket list. Plans (not to-dos, but plans) for 2017 include publishing the next in the Cortii series...and possibly, depending on how it cleans up, a novel of vampire hunters, yachts, and the Caribbean...that one's officially a maybe.

Happy new year!

Saturday 26 November 2016

Can the Cortii be called 'mercenaries'?

Define 'mercenary'.

Well, I had an interesting contention a couple of weeks back that no, they couldn't, because they undergo intensive training and have a command structure, so I thought I would look up the question and see if I'd been basing my plot on a misunderstanding of the concept of a mercenary force.

Being British, when I'm looking for the absolute last word on the meaning of a word, I tend to head straight for the Oxford English Dictionary (this despite the fact that my father was a Cambridge man).

It turns out that the OED thinks that 'mercenary' means 'a professional soldier hired to serve in a foreign army'.

Well, the Cortii are certainly professional; one of the things my friend mentioned in their argument that the Cortii weren't mercenaries was the length of their initial training. They can certainly be hired, at least provided someone has the cash to meet the Cortiian Councils' expectations of payment, which, admittedly, aren't minor. The Cortii are not always, let it be noted, hired to serve in someone else's army, although that does happen not infrequently.

For a bit more clarification, I went and checked out a few more definitions. Cambridge Dictionary defines a 'mercenary' as 'a soldier who fights for any country or group that pays them'. See, I should have listened to my father and gone straight to Cambridge. That's the Cortii concept in a nutshell.

Of course, you many note that none of these definitions have touched on whether or not mercenary forces should, or should not, have a command structure, or how formal it can be before the force is automatically defined as non-mercenary. They all seem focussed on the concept of a professional in the trade of violence, available for hire.

Here's another thought to add. Current jargon is tending to prefer the term 'private military company' over 'mercenary'. Blackwater is one of the outfits commonly mentioned in this context. Private Military Companies are defined by Wikipedia as 'legally established enterprises that make a profit, by either providing services involving the potential exercise of [armed] force in a systematic way and by military means, and/or by the transfer of that potential to clients through training and other practices, such as logistics support, equipment procurement, and intelligence gathering'. Funnily enough, that seems to share a lot of criteria with 'mercenary', so I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that manually-operated excavation equipment is probably still a shovel.

So, let's go digging into the history. There's a lot of interesting stories about mercenaries across multiple continents through the ages. Admittedly the general verdict is that they're bastards, but since I can't think of an instance where mercenaries went into a fight for themselves and won, it's probably also fair to say they may not have had much of a hand in writing the histories.

Historical mercenary groups: 
  • Varangian Guard: As early as 911, Varangians are mentioned as fighting as mercenaries for the Byzantines, as personal bodyguards to the Byzantine Emperors. The Varangians relied on a long axe as their main weapon, although they were often also skilled swordsmen or archers.The Varangian Guard is mentioned also in Njal's Saga: "The last that was heard of him was, that he had wedded a wife there, and was captain over the Varangians, and stayed there till his death day." From Wikipedia.
  • Swiss Guard: The Pontifical Swiss Guard has its origins in the 15th century. Pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484) had already made an alliance with the Swiss Confederacy and built barracks in Via Pellegrino after foreseeing the possibility of recruiting Swiss mercenaries. From 1506 until 2016 there have been 35 commanders of the Swiss Guard serving 51 popes, with interruptions during 1527–1548. From Wikipedia.
  • Ninja: A ninja, or shinobi, was was a covert agent or mercenary in feudal Japan.The functions of the ninja included espionage, sabotage, infiltration, assassination and guerrilla warfare. Antecedents of the ninja may have existed as early as the 14th century, and possibly in the 12th century (Heian or early Kamakura era). The first specialized training began in the mid-15th century, when certain samurai families started to focus on covert warfare, including espionage and assassination. From Wikipedia.
So, finally, I can't say that I feel the Cortii fail to meet any of the vital criteria for being defined as mercenaries. Mercenary groups throughout history have submitted to an internal command structure, whether clan-based, like the ninja, or a recognizably military-style structure such as the Swiss Guard. The Cortii are professional, by most definitions of the term, and they are available, singly or in units, for hire. They do not fight on their own behalf (well, unless attacked - oddly, there's a significant record gap on the topic of pacifist mercenary groups getting wiped out by attackers).

Ergo, having cut my teeth (exaggeration, I got my first book on historical mercenary cults in my tweens) on mercenary histories, and done some more research today on current definitions, I'm going to have to conclude that I am in fact on pretty solid ground calling the Cortii mercenaries.

(And now I'm going to go and read some of the source material from all those luvverly articles, both because it's a best practice, and because research as a sci-fi writer is just so much damn fun...)

Thursday 13 October 2016

Iceland vacation - this rolling stone gathers moss


First seen on the Space Trash Blog.

Iceland, 2016

For anyone who's been wondering why my social media feeds went unfed and my websites were
empty to the whistling winds of time recently ...well, I was in Iceland, caving in lava tubes, watching the Northern Lights, and riding Icelandic horses. and then falling face down into bed each evening, because like many authors, I'm a generally sedentary specimen.

If you haven't been to Iceland yet, go. It's unique, the scenery is stark and breath-taking, and Icelanders have mastered the art of enjoying the outdoors. Might help that their outdoors is awesome.

How is Iceland unique? Well, I could be a smartarse and ask if you wanted that list alphabetically or chronologically, but I won't. After all, I have neglected everyone for a week.

First, it's a great place for authors. It's estimated that about 10% of the population has written a book. (Well, it impressed me...)

Unique fact #2: Iceland has no military. None, zero, nil. There's a US Airforce base near Reykjavik that they've been trying to politely boot off the island since about 1950, with very little luck, but Iceland itself has no military.

Unique fact #3: Iceland's prison population is somewhere around 200. There is exactly one secure prison. We were told that the last time a prisoner broke out, he got so cold and bored after a couple of days that he knocked on someone's door and they gave him some coffee while he waited for the police to pick him up.

Unique fact #4: the Icelanders found out when the Panama Papers came out that their last prime minister had been caching money overseas, so they came out and demonstrated against him in hordes - and he stepped down within the week.

I spent a week in the capital (in and around, OK), and a few things stuck out for me. There were no homeless or mentally disabled begging on the streets. None. After that, I got impressed all over again because all the Icelanders I met spoke at least one other language fluently, usually English, and quite often a third and fourth language as well. Up until then, I thought my two and a half languages were a good record. Best of all, there is basically zero sexism. Iceland is pretty much the leading country in the world when it comes to gender equality.


After a while, I started to wonder what the secret is. How come democracy seems to actually work in Iceland, whereas it's coming off the rails in the rest of the world? How come there is almost no violent crime (the Icelandic police force's Instagram restored some of my seriously jaded faith in humanity)? How come Iceland has laws concerning paying both genders alike for 'men's work' that can in some cases be traced back to the 1700s (or at least, that's on record in the Maritime Museum) - and other countries today have legislatures united against equal pay, or still believe that a faceful of acid is a merited response if a woman refuses to date someone, or that it's somehow demeaning for a man to be competent at mending his own shirts?

Seriously, is it something they put in the water, and can we set up an export agreement?

Anyway, Iceland, fellow humans. By sheer dumb luck or intelligent design, they're definitely doing it right, and even if you don't happen to suffer from my incurable need to try and figure out the why and wherefore of everything, it still makes a great vacation spot. Just stay away from the hákarl - every Icelander I spoke to for more than five minutes apologised for it. They're not sure why it's still a thing, but apparently they feel bad about it.

All photos taken by the author. There's a reason I'm an author, not a photographer.

Saturday 17 September 2016

Self-publishing 101 - eBook publishing part 1: Amazon KDP

First seen on the Space Trash Blog.
 
So, how do I do it?? 

Hello authors.

(I don't call 'em 'aspiring authors', because as far as I'm concerned if you write and you're researching self-publishing, you already are the real Slim Shady ...)

So you've got a book, a novella, an anthology or some other wonderful and unique permutation of the written word, and you've decided to go indie. Good for you. This means you skidded exuberantly through a first draft, survived the long dark tea time of the soul known as editing, discovered just how bad MS Word spellcheck can be, found beta readers, revised their feedback into your Meisterwerk, edited some more, and you're getting to the point of wondering WTF comes next.

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, or KDP for those of us in the biz, is the one that comes immediately to mind. After all, Amazon is well-known, they're everywhere, and best of all, they make it really easy for novice authors. I'm going to talk about this one first, because it kind of is the shit.


However, don't forget that there are other options (yes, free to use). I'm also going to talk about Smashwords, Kobo, and Google Play in the subsequent posts. These also all let you get your stuff out there, and take a very small percentage of your book price for it - no up front costs.

Disclaimer - I publish with KDP, among others.

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)

Bare essentials:
  1. Working Internet browser.
  2. Word processing software, ditto functional.
  3. Your Amazon user name and password, if you have them (no worries if not, you can set this up as you go).
  4. Manuscript, ideally in Word .doc / .docx. Make sure it meets the KDP formatting standards. (No, I don't think you're an idiot. This is a 101 guide.)
  5. Your teaser / blurb / back cover text.
  6. Book cover - for the love of all and any deities, if there's one thing you're going to splurge on, splurge on a professional cover. Seriously. Really. Don't photograph your four-year-old niece's really cute finger painting and then use MS Paint to stick a title on it. Go and find a good cover artist and get a cover that you can be proud of. Read the KDP cover guidelines.
    • I use Joshua Jadon design, because I happen to think the guy's a genius, but there are much more affordable options out there. Do your research.
  7. Your bank account details, including the international codes. Probably your bank's online help will give you this, but if not, give them a call and hold out for a human with a clue.
  8. Your tax details (Amazon won't pay you unless they know that you're either paying tax in the States, or where you are paying it. Go figure). If you aren't American, or lucky enough to live in a country with a tax relationship with the USA, this bit will get tedious. Fair warning.
  9. A LOT of patience. Don't rush this. Don't hit 'go' before your book is set to be the best it can be.
Go and find the KDP site. Your first step will be to create your KDP account. They'll tell you how to do that in their Help section, so I won't go into it again here. You'll need that user name and password, your bank account details, and the tax details for this bit. (Oh, yeah - good luck. This is the most tedious, frustrating bit of the process.)

Once you've got your account set up with KDP, you need to click through to your Bookshelf. You'll be faced with that 'Create new title' option. (Also, seriously, go and look at their 'Getting started' tips.)
Enter your book details. Hopefully by this point, you know your title, your own name (please don't tell me if not), and you have some back blurb.

Don't automatically go with 'Enroll in Kindle Select'. The pros are that you get some promotional options, and people with Kindle Unlimited can read your stuff for free (yes, you still get paid), and this may make them more likely to take a flyer on you. The big con is...you can't publish on any other platform while you're in Kindle Select. Choose wisely.
Work your way through the options - they'll be different for each book and author.

Pick your two categories. I'd recommend one fairly generic catchall, and one category that's a little smaller, so you aren't #3,895,923 in both categories.

Spend a bit of thought on your keywords. These are the opportunity to grab the attention of a wider audience, beyond your categories. Is your work 'character driven'? Is is a genre crossover with anything? What would you type into the search bar to find your book? Also, clearly, use all seven. It's free publicity.

Now - upload your cover. Because you weren't an idiot (right?), you read the cover guidelines and/or used a professional cover designer, and it meets the file type and formatting standards. Now you get to look at it, looking all official in your set up page.
I would stop right here and spend a moment gloating. Think of it as a reward for slogging through the mire of bank account and tax set up.
Next is the big bit. Now you upload your beautiful, formatted manuscript, complete with table of contents, copyright wording, the flowery dedication to the corner pub for the inspiration, your local café for letting you write all afternoon for one cup of coffee, your Great Aunt Mae for being your beta reader, etc., etc. If you did your homework, and read the formatting instructions, and did a reasonable job on the editing (don't skip editing. First, it makes you look like a cretin, and second, Amazon is bringing in the option for people to flag your book if it reads as if you just graduated elementary school), then it should upload nicely.

Now - preview your book. Yeah, we know, you spent all that time formatting it, and getting the table of contents just right was murder. Suck it up, princess. This is actually another gloatable moment, because...there's your book, right there, looking like a real ebook. Flick through and make sure everything looks the way you thought it was going to look.

Now you get to click 'Save and continue'.

Next page sets up your royalties and pricing.

Basically, Amazon lets you set up shop on their site for free. They make their money (as do you) when you sell a book. They charge you an amount from your book price based on some alchemy around storing and transferring your book file to the reader. All the rest is yours. Not a bad deal, compared to the pittance a traditional publisher will give you when they sell a copy of your book.

Pick your book price. Oddly enough, cheaper isn't always better. (Yes, I am going to stand this up with some sources - patience, grasshopper.) For an average novel length (75K - 150k words, let's say), the recommended price point for sales versus being taken seriously tends to be about $2.99 - $3.99 USD for most genres.

Who died and made me God? Here's some articles on book pricing you can check out.
Then set up your royalties. I go for 70%, because eh, why not, but where you live, whether or not you enrolled in Kindle Select, etc., will all impact your options here. You can also decide if you'll give people who buy your print book a free ebook version (assuming you do decide to go with a print copy).

Now...hit 'Save and Publish'.


Congratulations, you're a published author!

You can add it to your resumé. Actually, I recommend adding it to your resumé. And your LinkedIn. And tell your friends. Not to mention, Tweet all about it, and make a snazzy Instagram image or Pin it on Pinterest (I like Pablo by Buffer for creating nice images for Tweeting, Pinning, etc.), or whatever your social media vices of choice are. After all, no one will know about your book unless you tell them about it.

Sunday 11 September 2016

Elemental Affinity Launch

First seen on the Space Trash Blog.

3, 2, 1 ... Yes, Elemental Affinity, the third in the Cortii series, has finally launched!!! 

For  a while there I thought I was going to be another month late, and then it all suddenly came together and stopped torturing me. Among other unexpected rescues, several secondary characters stepped up heroically, and filled in some background that added a lot to the story. (Well, don't take my word for it - go and get a copy.)

The teaser: 


The Cortii are mercenaries, for hire to anyone who can afford their services. Every government uses them; no single government can destroy them.

A newly discovered world. An opportunity for the Cortiian rebels. And a mission for Wildcat Cortia...

The Federated Planets Alliance scouts have discovered a new human civilisation; a civilisation not suited to their usual contact protocol. They want a Cortiian to test the waters, and the rebel faction has a very specific commander in mind for the mission – Ilan of Wildcat.

To Ilan, the orders are a convenient pretext. To an ancient feudal culture about to join an intergalactic civilisation, the leaping wildcat and a rider all in black are symbols long foretold - heralding cataclysmic change.

This book was interesting to write because it involved a complete contrast of cultures; on the one hand, the pre-spaceflight culture of a newly-discovered planet, complete with feudal cities, untouched wilderness, and a mystifying lack of extra-sensory abilities in the general population, (drum roll, please) and on the other Wildcat Cortia, immured in their commander's absence on Corina space station, honing their piloting and space combat abilities and indulging in typical Cortiian politics to fend off the boredom of said intensive training.

Yes, Cortiians as a species have a low boredom threshold. It makes them fun to hang out with.

Due to some very helpful feedback from my beta team, it also gave me the chance to colour in more of both sides of the story. This really was the book where, in my anxiety not to send the readership to sleep, my original draft had left out some details that were actually necessary to the story - and this was where some of those secondary characters really got to shine.

I hope you enjoy it; I'm about to disappear back into my author cave and start work on the next in series ... Elemental Conflict.

Knives, spaceships and dirty fighting - who says a mercenary cult can't be fun?

Friday 26 August 2016

Women's Equality Day / Toilet Paper Day

So I've been grinning on and off as I alternately see posts celebrating 26th August as Toilet Paper Day and Women's Equality Day - appropriately, in that order of volume.

I'm grinning because I'm a sick person and that level of (possibly) unintentional satire appeals to my equally sick and twisted sense of humour.

I've sounded off before in my blog about having 'days' for social causes. Why? Well, because frankly it feels like a cop-out to me. Set up a 'day' for saving the turtles or whatever, and we can retweet a save the turtles post, congratulate ourselves on raising awareness, and go our merry ways without actually having to do anything material about saving a damn turtle.

26th August is Women's Equality Day and Toilet Paper Day, with toilet paper so far sweeping the stakes in 'awareness raising', at least in my feeds. On the whole, I think toilet paper is doing a whole lot better in terms of global acceptance than women's equality.

Possibly, some of the reasons for that can be explained by the etymology of the word 'woman'. It seems to have evolved from Old English, (see the Online Etymology Dictionary), sometime around the time of the Norman Conquest, c. 1066.
"adult female human," late Old English wimman, wiman (plural wimmen), literally "woman-man," alteration of wifman (plural wifmen) "woman, female servant" (8c.), a compound of wif "woman" (see wife) + man "human being" (in Old English used in reference to both sexes; see man (n.)). Compare Dutch vrouwmens "wife," literally "woman-man."
It appears to be fair to say that the evidence indicates that the view of 'woman' as a sub-species of  'man' isn't a new thing for humanity. Toilet paper, however, only has sub-species in certain public toilets; the kind that crinkles like grease-paper and tears like wrapping tissue.

So what material difference am I making to social and hygenic paper inequality? Well, I ensure I only buy the softest and most absorbent toilet paper. It adds to my personal comfort and doesn't add all that much to my budgetary discomfort.

It occurs to me that until it becomes more uncomfortable for society as a whole, not just the female parts of it, to ignore social inequality than to do something about it, social inequality will hang on. Not least because gender programming starts in the cradle, with little cutesy-poo pink or blue onesies, and carries on into adulthood with 'real gentlemen' opening doors for women who are clearly too weak to open their own doors, things that 'aren't ladylike', which include everything from covering too much skin (see the burkini debate') to not covering enough skin (see the multiple stories in rape investigations  of 'she was asking for it'), and muscles and belligerence being about the only universally-accepted 'male' attributes - which I see as damned offensive to either half of the species.

It also occurs to me that right now, a lot of women's rights movements are raising awareness - which, while it is a good thing, much better than nothing at all - still indicates that there are a lot of women waiting for men to change laws and society to women's advantage. Call me a cynic, but that just sounds a lot like wondering why the fox you left to guard the henhouse has feathers in his whiskers.

Sunday 14 August 2016

Etymology Excavation: "at full tilt"

First seen on the Space Trash Blog.

 What is etymology, and why are you excavating it?

Etymology is like the archeology of a language (definition: the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history).

In this series of posts, we're going to look at some of the English phrases, like 'at full tilt', 'toe the line', 'when push comes to shove' that are commonly used, and have an interesting history - and that people often get wrong.

"At full tilt" means flat out, at top speed, as fast as possible. Its origins don't have anything to do with being unsteady, at an angle, or, indeed poker.

The term derives from the sport of jousting, or tilting (ever heard of 'tilting at windmills'?), and 'at full tilt' is believed to have first come into use as an expression in the mid-1600s.

Common theories (check out http://www.etymonline.com for even more good stuff) are that it comes from either the practice of leaning in to meet the attack when jousting, or, conversely, from tilt or tent, referring to the flimsy barrier that separates the two riders when they joust.

Examples of 'at full tilt':
  • I ran down the hill at full tilt.
  • We're going to need to work at full tilt to get this done in time.
Is it still in common use? Depends who you ask. I'm a Millennial, and I use it; my parents' generation certainly did. On the whole, it's probably more likely to be used in British English than American English.

It's one of those phrases you can use to hint at a character's background in contemporary work such as a thriller - maybe your anti-hero is British and gives himself away with it, for example.

If you're writing fantasy or sci-fi, you can also adapt it this type of expression. If (random example, honest) your invented culture includes people swinging on big metal balls hung from cranes, you'd use 'at full swing'. (Oddly enough, 'in full swing' is another weird English idiom that I probably will be covering on another day.)

Thursday 11 August 2016

Deadlines, whistling in the wind


First seen on the Space Trash Blog.

Apparently the legendary Douglas Adams enjoyed the sound of deadlines whizzing by, so I figure I'm in good company.

I proudly published a Launch date of 6th August for Elemental Affinity, and hey, lookit that, it's the 11th and no sign of Elemental Affinity.

Why? You may well ask.

Well, it goes something like this: there was once a struggling young author, who worked all day and wrote all night, and this young yet talented artist once published a Launch date in June that turned out to be totally unrealistic in August.

Or, if you prefer the haiku form:

Time flying by me

Endless edits in my sights

Sleep, that little death.

Basically, I had some very good feedback from my beta read team, and in trying to implement it, I realised a bit belatedly that I was re-writing about a third of the book. This seemed perfectly feasible in June, when I got the feedback, but less so after ten hours of editing at 8pm local on 6th August, with 20K words still to go - many of which actually still needed to be written.

I am still shooting to have Elemental Affinity out, finished, edited and beautiful before the end of August. Really, this time? Well, yeah, I hope so. Partly because I think the book is a lot better, even right now in its partially finished state, with metaphorical dustsheets everywhere, and I'm looking forwards to seeing if my readers agree, but also because I'm really, really, really looking forwards to the next in the series ... Elemental Conflict.

Is there a link? Why, yes, perhaps .... and now you're all going to have to be nice and let me get Elemental Affinity into the best shape I possibly can for you. I hope you'll think it's worth the wait once it's in your hands.

Sunday 8 May 2016

The Author's Desk

First seen on the Space Trash Blog.

The centre of the madness, the eye of the storm ... where the Cortii series is written, edited, and not infrequently sworn about.

Almost out of shot to the right, there is a cat shelf. It's a cat shelf because we are what we most frequently do (~Aristotle), and what that shelf most frequently does is serve as a depository for furry, mobile writer's blocks. While their preferred spot is, of course, front and centre between me and the screen (and preferably on the keyboard), the shelf is an acceptable staging point for a rather miffed wash before staging another assault on the walls of my concentration.

Other important aspects are the skull, used for conjuring lost files (yes, it's a USB hub), the speakers, and not least, the remote-controlled flying fuck helicopter (because I can give one occasionally, but frequently need to provide photographic evidence).

Along the top shelf are the ring binders holding old manuscripts (otherwise known as editing inspiration - I look at these relics and immediately feel better about my current writing), and my rear-view mirror, currently completely useless because no one can sneak up behind me unless they can walk through walls. However, it's a great idea and I like it, which is why it's there.

Aside from the computer itself, the huge, sound-deadening headphones are a vital component of writing or editing. With those on and the metal playing, the only things that can distract me is a strategically-applied claw to my rear or the inevitable passage of tea through my system.

Because 3-D cameras are a cool idea but I don't have one, I've included the view facing in exactly the opposite direction. This is the display of other assorted detritus that I like to play with and think about when I'm procrastinating, which includes a wakizashi, shells from the Caribbean, a Japanese teapot (when not in use), proof copies of Through the Hostage and Fighting Shadows, a lot of sealing wax, and my Australian hat. Oh, and a bunch of assorted books on writing, WordPress, meditation, etc. that I like to have handy but that don't really fit in the library downstairs (because we've got somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 books down there already and we need to buy a new shelf. Or three.)

I'm considering adding a warning sign on the door for when I'm working. Feel free to send suggestions.

Wednesday 13 April 2016

World-building in the Cortii series

First seen on the Space Trash Blog.

OK, so here’s the big, dirty secret when it comes to world-building in the Cortii series: I didn’t ‘plan’ the Cortii.

The society evolved naturally as I went through the drafts of the first few books in the series, and if I’m being honest, the characters and the situations they find themselves in have really guided all of the world-building I’ve done since on the Cortii. Essentially, I discovered Cortiian society almost exactly as a reader would; by interacting with my characters.
Case study: Khyria Ilan
Khyria was the character who initially lodged herself in my head and demanded to have her story told. From memory, I started telling myself ‘Khyria’ stories at about the age of six, maybe seven. While it took another seven years for me to actually take the step of writing any of these stories down, the core of the character had existed in my head for a long time.

When I was a child, the main facet of the character was that she rode a huge black horse. (I was six. Anything over St. Bernard size qualified as huge.) Growing up on a boat meant that I’d never been anywhere near a horse. This made the Khyria character exotic from the start, where I was concerned.

When I ended up in boarding school, the stories became my talisman against boredom in class, isolation, forcibly staying in one place, and insomnia. Because I was spending so much more time day-dreaming, the Khyria character evolved rapidly, as did her surroundings. This was probably when most of the ‘world-building’ for the Cortii really occurred.

I discovered in short order that Khyria was a fighter. That fell into place from a number of sources; the character had never been passive. She had always been competent and self-assured in my head; in my first year in formal schooling I found out why. Being able to kill someone with your bare hands in the time it takes most people to blink tends to allow a character to broadcast confidence and assurance. For the record, the school I was in at that point was a Quaker school. It wasn’t until I went to university that I was able to take up martial arts or study any kind of combative skill, so the character remained pretty damn exotic to me.

That Khyria was a mercenary followed fairly naturally from that discovery. Her setting wasn’t regulated in the way that standard armed forces usually are. The stories she ended up in reflected an inherently violent environment, and a lot of the brutality stemmed from the authority figures, which showed in Khyria’s distrust of and wariness for the Councils.

Developing the Councils led to other things. Clearly Khyria wasn’t still alive because of her good looks, so she required people who provided unofficial equipment, people who provided information, and at least a few people able and willing to provide physical back-up on occasion. In an environment where the commanders were that corrupt, there would also be people willing to profit from the chaos and use blackmail as leverage. Over the next couple of years, writing Through the Hostage and Fighting Shadows, I met more of Khyria’s inner circle, both allies and enemies.

As far as world-building goes, the technique has proven to be remarkably effective. I rarely write myself into a plothole. Not never, but rarely. Most of the basics where Khyria are concerned are things I’ve been playing with the concepts for for so long that if I find myself with a question, my memory usually coughs up a flash card pretty fast. It wasn’t until I’d published my first book that I actually started keeping written notes on details to do with my world and my characters that went beyond a basic vocabulary.

The other payoff, which I didn’t actually realise was a payoff until I did a lot more formal research on writing as an art form, came when I realised that a lot of authors start with world-building, and then end up having to figure out things such as there’s no possible reason for their hero’s major city (for example) to be a major city aside from the fact that their hero starts his life there (no trade, no travel, no supplies, or some similar list of grievances) – and they discover this after they’ve started writing. Since I started with a character, and her surroundings grew organically from interacting with her (as you can see at the end of my case study), I didn’t have those types of problems.

There were mutations. When I first came across the akrushkari in a story, I came across them in the context of torture and a secure cell. It took a bit more of the story to find out that they were actually under command of the Councils, and a bit more again to find out what else they did, what their origins were, etc. However, because of my bass-ackwards world-building, I didn’t have to invent them in isolation. As soon as I came across the Councils in a story, it was immediately obvious to me that if the leadership of a mercenary culture that proficient was that autocratic and that sociopathic, there had to be some very tangible reasons why they were still alive and in power.

In case it hasn’t become apparent from all this: as writers go, I’m not a plotter.

Sunday 10 April 2016

Author website transition

First seen on the Space Trash Blog.

… boldly going where no reader has gone before.

Today officially marks the day when I change over all my various links and redirects to the cool, new, jcsteelauthor.com author website. Well, that’s the plan. In real life, it’s going to take a few days of thinking I’m done, remembering I forget such-and-such a site, and going into a flurry of profile editing.

WordPress was a new learning opportunity for me, and a new learning opportunity for my neighbours as I explored my vocabulary of profanities through WordPress’s purportedly user-friendly, simple, and intuitive user interface.

However, after a four-week learning curve, welcome to my new author website. I hope you like it, and I hope you find out new and fascinating things about the Cortii and Wildcat Cortia in particular.
There will be more links coming over the next few weeks, most especially a contact form. There is also an e-store in the works to supplement the links to all the third-party retailers where you can pick up a copy of the Cortii novels – and of course, MOAR blog posts.

In the meantime, enjoy the site, and if you want to chat, come and find me on any of my social media networks!

Monday 8 February 2016

Don't annoy your readers - self-editing for dummies

Readers are picky beasts, and just because they couldn't necessarily correct your writing, it doesn't mean that they can't recognise and be annoyed by constant technical issues. Leave enough editorial screw-ups in your manuscript, and not only will you lose readers, but arsehole book reviewers, like me, will call you on it in public. Actually, so will Amazon.






Yes, editing is expensive - or time-consuming. And boring, for the most part. But no, people won't cut you slack just because you're indie - and nor should they have to.

When you publish a book, you're producing something you've spent months or years on. You owe it to yourself, not to mention your readers, the respect of doing it properly.


You may not be able to afford to have your 350-page manuscript professionally edited at $45/hour.

However, there are a number of things you can do yourself.

Will this self-editing be as good as having it done professionally? No, probably not. But at least you can minimise the chance that someone's going to use your precious manuscript for toilet paper because the typos, homophones, and other easily-avoidable technical eff-ups are making their brains hurt.

Step 1: Eliminate the obvious


I use MS Word, but whatever word-processing tool you use, either find the native spellcheck option or mug someone for their computer and load your MS up into software that has one.
  1.  Highlight your entire MS. (In Word, Ctrl+A.)
  2. Select the dialect of English (or whatever language you're in) that you want your MS to use. I use UK English.
  3. Go through your entire MS and check out all the errors. 
    • If a word, phrase or sentence has a coloured line under it, that means you either have a spelling error or a grammar error - or the spellcheck thinks that you do.
    • If you write fantasy / sci-fi, or some other genre that you've made up words for, I recommend adding them to your dictionary. It saves you having to 'ignore' them several times a page.
    • Spellchecks can be wrong. If you aren't certain that your red, blue or green wavy underline is actually right, go online and do your research.
    • Spellcheck, for the most part, will not catch homophones (words that sound identical but mean different things). You're going to need to figure out that a horse doesn't have reigns yourself.

Step 2:  Use your brain


Go back up to the very first sentence in your MS. You know, the one you hoped never to see again, because you agonised over it for weeks.
  1. Re-read your entire MS. Don't skim. Read it as a reader.
    • If a sentence makes you pause, highlight it. 
    • If you see an error you missed and the spellcheck missed, either fix it or highlight it. 
    • If something doesn't seem logical, highlight it (possible plothole).
    • If you find yourself starting to skim, ask yourself if it's because you've inserted four words, four paragraphs, or four pages of unnecessary yak. Highlight it.
    • Does your scene suddenly change view-points? Highlight it. 
    • Got sections where the hero's rugged face took on a look of surprised dismay before he began to reach out to gently touch the heroine's velvety, petal-like cheek? Highlight 'em.
    • Be consistent. If you hyphenated 'cloud-filled' in chapter 1, hyphenate it in chapter 20. If you spelt it 'adrenalin' in chapter 3, don't use 'adrenaline' in chapter 4. 
      • If you find yourself wondering about a word or words each time, make a list of the things you keep having to back-check on and use the list to stay consistent.
  2. Go back over all the sections you higlighted.  
    • Could you rephrase the sentence / paragraph / section to get rid of whatever made you uneasy when you read it? For example, have you used the same sentence structure multiple times in a row? Is there a pet word that you've just used too often? Is the sentence structure just clunky?
    • Get all the weird and wonderful things that spellcheck missed and you highlighted. Spellchecks are tools, not a substitute for your brain.
    • Check the places where something struck you as not logical or missing something. Maybe you need to add an explanation or tie up a loose thread
    • Check the spots were your eyes started to unfocus. Do you really need them in the book? Or are they pacing disasters that are going to put your reader to sleep?
    • Check your point of view. If you needed and planned to head hop, fine. If you're just slipping from one character to another at random, or sliding into the omniscient view-point, re-write.
    • If you think that a lot of adjectives and adverbs enrich your writing, please think again. They're like spice. Add none, and you're bland. Add a bit, and you're great. Add too much and you need to start freezing toilet rolls.

Step 3: Use someone else's brain

 

Yep. Really. Even if you can't afford a full edit (we get it: they're expensive), there are a number of options that won't cost you $3,000-plus.
  1. Beta readers. Get some. Beta readers are free, if occasionally difficult to come by. Ideally they should be people who read your genre, but who don't know you, don't care about you, have never seen your manuscript before, and will tell you the absolute truth. Try Goodreads as well as the options in the other links.
    • Give them some guidance (The Killzone Blog questionnaire is a good start)
    • Give them a timeline
    • Give them a free copy of your spell-checked, re-read, re-edited manuscript
  2. Get a manuscript critique, or partial manuscript critique. This may probably will cost money, but it'll be double digits to low hundreds money, not thousands. 
  3. Friends / family. Not ideal because they will for the most part want avoid hurting your feelings, but they're usually easy to come by. Again, if you choose to go this route, give them some guidance (like the Killzone Blog questionnaire). Tell them when you need the feedback by. 
  4. Join a writers' group. Again, the standard on these varies wildly, but they're another free option to get some feedback.
  5. Read some bloggers who publish editorial hints and tips. Here are a few to get you started:
Most important: while the manuscript is out with your critiquers / beta readers / Aunty Mae ... don't open it, don't edit it, don't read it, don't think about it. 

Step 4: Use your brain some more

 

First off: Thank your betas / friends / family. You're not obliged to agree with what they had to say, but all these people did donate their time to try and help you.

And now ... oh yes. Now that you've got your beta read feedback, your manuscript critique, your Aunty Mae's 4,000 word essay on why she never reads science-fiction except when it's yours ... grab a beer / cup of tea / relaxing beverage of choice and open up all the emails / documents / spreadsheets where people have taken their best shots.

Throw a pity-party, get over it, and spend a few profitable and possibly pleasurable minutes duct-taping your ego to the bedframe. I'm not judging.

Then, go through all the feedback. I recommend sorting it into at least two categories (1) things everyone, or more than one, of your sources is saying; and (2) the things only one person has noted.

If more than one person has highlighted something, put a big red circle around it for serious consideration. If only one person has it as a pain-point, well, it's worth considering, but not agonising over.

Now ... 

Yup! You're going to read your manuscript again!

The good news is, the time while your readers were doing their thing means you haven't seen it in a while. That means you will have got a bit of distance from it and you'll probably be much more efficient (and ruthless) with the remaining errors.

Re-read it with the feedback, especially with the feedback where multiple people had the same thing to say. Implement what you feel needs implementing.

Keep in mind, however, the beauty of being indie: if you truly feel, after reviewing a bit of feedback and your book that you prefer your original set-up ... well, you're indie. Your call.

Now that you've added, deleted, struck scenes out altogether, spell-check it again. (You remember how that works, we did this already.)

Then, if you're using Track Changes, get the final view, or print out a clean copy, or copy the whole thing into a 5x8 print template - make it look totally new and different - and repeat Step 2.

Step 5: Publish your masterpiece


This is the easy bit, right? You've got your cover, you've decided if you're going Kindle Select, or Kindle and everywhere else you can get your book formatted for, you know if you want to do print-on-demand or not ...

Good luck and thank you from all your prospective, un-pissed-off readers.

Saturday 16 January 2016

What makes a good book?

Don't look at me, I don't have the definitive answer. I like sci-fi anti-heroes that swear like sailors and definitely will stab you in the back, so my taste in literature is idiosyncratic to say the least.

But I do know what a lot of people think we, indie authors, don't have - a properly finished product. We get bashed (a lot) for stick-figure covers, editing where it looks as if we've treated punctuation like a game of 'pin the comma on the sentence', formats that make your eyes cross ... you name it, we've probably been bashed for it. Sometimes, because professional editing / critiques are just so damn' expensive, we don't even know what needs fixing because we've never been told it's an issue. I've had a lot of people respond to a review with something along the lines of: "Thanks, man, I didn't even know about that one."

So I was excited, relieved, and enthusiastic when I came across the blokes over at Indie Book Screener (http://www.bookscreener.com/).

Why all the noise, you ask? Fair enough. I got all excited because they're a one-stop-shop for a response to indie-bashing (at least on the technical side of things).

Indie Book Screener evaluates the sample of your book on Amazon (no cost, at least right now) and gives a rating for the cover, the formatting, and the quality of the editing, which they then publish on their website with the cover and a buy link (yup, free publicity, ain't life grand?).

Here's what they had to say about Through the Hostage as a sample. Given that I do everything except my covers myself, I was a very happy author that morning. If you ask nicely, they'll even give you a few extra details on what they based your rating on, which is really, really valuable.

I'm hoping they stay around. Let's help them help us.