Ketchup

I've been AWOL. For the past week I've been sweating through every line, nay, every *word* of PLAGUE ZONE again and again and again before it goes to the copyeditor, which is gruelling work, people. My brain is oatmeal.

In the meantime, the same friend has forwarded me another, even more excellent article on our subject of selling-yourself-versus-actually-creating-something-to-sell. It's written by veteran rocker John Mellencamp about the turmoil and misery in the music industry, but the parallels to the publishing world are intriguing indeed.

The article is here.

Labels: the musician's life, the writing life

...and because I've been a very busy duck lately, buried in final edits of PLAGUE ZONE, I thought I'd post this YouTube clip about where-did-you-get-your-ideas for the first two PLAGUE novels in case you missed it.

I am *very* excited about PLAGUE ZONE. This book is bigger, better, and even more cutthroat than the first two, lightning-paced and chock full of action, surprises, romance, and big concepts.

That's right. I'm writing my own blurbs now. ;)

Labels: Plague War, PLAGUE YEAR, the writing life, YouTube

But I look like this. Again. I’m sorry to have fallen off the map. It was Christmas. It was New Year’s. I had a 570 page manuscript that needed to become 480 or my publisher would freak. Mind Plague is at 495 right now in third draft. The fire is out. Life is good. I plan to hit it again next week and get that baby slim and mean. This is going to be the best Plague novel yet — bigger, scarier, with planes chases, gunfights, sex, betrayals, freaky new nanotech, politics, and worse — sometimes all in the same scene at once! Whoa, Nelly.

In the meantime, it’s been a good week. I wrote “The End,” which always gratifying. I also found out that Plague War has been shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award. That’s rare for a sequel and so doubly exciting. More on this soon.

In the meantime, I only had two New Year’s resolutions. One is to get more exercise. The other is semi-retire this blog. I hear thousands of people screaming “Nooooo!” Uh, do I? No. Unless a surprisingly large crowd suddenly delurks and hollers for more Deep Thoughts With Jeff, I’m not sure I see the point. I appreciate the banter with you guys who’ve been hanging around. My original intent was to put six months into Ketchup and then reassess the matter. Clearly, I just don’t have time for it.

Having said that, I’ll also post more on this subject asap. For the moment, I just wanted to establish that, yes, I still live!!!!

Labels: Philip K. Dick Award finalist, Plague War, the writing life

It's been REALLY busy. The holidays. A cold. A book that just won't STOP because the final action scene is unbelievably AWESOME.

I wasn't going to post about this, but, at the encouragement of my ever-curious buddy Lou Anders, here we go. Following is my email to Lou. I'll try to get around to posting the photos mentioned within tomorrow? Gotta work. More soon!


Hey, Lou, here's an interesting twist. You know not all of the critics and bloggers were thumbs-up about Plague Year -- in fact, there was one memorable rant declaring it a “steaming pile of liberal propaganda,” which is obvious, I guess, since one hero is Latino and another is Jewish -- but, for the most part, reaction was positive. Plague Year is in its third printing. It's sold film rights, audio rights, and major foreign deals.

(Yeah, I’m feeling defensive.)

It’s a brutal book, though, with something to offend everyone. Sex. Violence. Non-white people. You name it.

I’ve always wondered where the hate mail was. Plenty of people have written nasty or at least unenthusiastic things about the book. That's what the net is for, right? But it was never aimed directly at me. Yesterday that email finally showed up.


Dear Jeff:

Regarding your novel Plague Year I was not incredibly impressed. The concept was interesting, however, it was written in a grocery store thriller style. However, as you can see in the attached files, our canine review team thoroughly enjoyed your book. Thank your for the trial copy, and we regret that we will not be able to send it back to you.


You gotta like the informal, size-me-down greeting, the pompous howevers, and the regal use of “we.” Also the “thank your.”

There were two attachments. I didn’t open them, because that just seemed safe, but I assume they were playing fetch with the book or, you know, maybe it had been artfully arranged alongside a nice long dog turd or something.

Three things make me curious.

First, I can account for all of the review copies I mailed out, and this lady wasn’t one of the recipients. The folks at Ace were good about sending review copies to almost anyone who asked, but I can’t imagine that even a self-proclaimed, self-important “book critic” would act this petty. So I have to think this business about a trial copy (?) is pretentious, delusional, or at least oddly-worded. She means she won’t buy any more? Golly.

Second, of course, the big joke is that having my books carried by drug and grocery stores is EXACTLY my goal. “Grocery store thriller style” is high praise. I picture this person as a frustrated would-be Author Of Deep Literature, but, if so, why was she reading Plague Year to begin with? No one would mistake the burning white cover as belonging to profound fiction. For Pete’s sake, the tagline is “The next breath you take will kill you.” It’s entertainment.

Third, why go to such effort in the first place? I don’t think I know this person, so why get personal?

How about some perspective, man? ;>


...to which Lou replied "I say you post the pictures on your website. I wish my detractors were so creative. Dude, you should be proud!"

Hee hee.

Labels: fan mail, hate mail, PLAGUE YEAR, the writing life

It's crunch time. My deadline approacheth! I'm very happy with the plot, the characters, the surprises, the losses and the victories... but I've still got to write the epilogue and do a TRUCKLOAD of editing. So I've given up exercise and shaving, much less wrapping Xmas presents. Or buying them. Screw you guys! I'VE GOT TO FINISH THE BOOK!!!!

In the meanwhile, if by chance you haven't seen it, this short film pretty much summarizes where my head is at these days. ;)

Labels: book trailer, Mind Plague, the writing life

Well, sort of. Here's the first draft of the second map set to run in the front of the book. With corrections. If you click on it here at Ketchup, I believe a larger size image will pop up for close, eagle-eyed scrutiny.

What's happening here? "Motor Pool." "Fences." "Ruth's Hut." It's a mystery. A tantalizing run-to-the-store-and-right-now-and-buy-it mystery! Remembering of course that the book isn't slated for release until December 2009. Woof. Wait a wait.

That is all for now. Bwah HA ha ha ha ha! ;>

Labels: Mind Plague, the writing life

This is no surprise to anyone, ha ha, but in particular I mean that I have a problem with this giant beast of a book. As of today, I have a 500 page manuscript with still the final chapter and an epilogue to write. This is very bad. My editor and my agent will both frown in stern disapproval if I deliver such a monster.

Too much action! That's the issue at hand. I do love to blow me up some helicopters and nuclear warheads, don't I? Yes. Yes, it's true.

Now it's time to buckle down. I'm very happy with the characters and their personal growth, tensions, hopes, failures, and dreams. The plot is nicely tangled and full of high points and reversals. It's the running around shooting each other in the head that needs to be boiled down and tightened up. Still... what to do with those pages?

I was thinking about adding a short list of Deleted Scenes to the Free Fiction page on my web site. But if anyone read them now, it might ruin Mind Plague for them. No sneak peeks allowed! ;P

Labels: Mind Plague, the writing life

Here’s the cover art for Antídoto, better known to you and me as Plague War. It’s nice and freaky, and matches the first book perfectly. I like where Minotauro is going with the trilogy. La Plaga. Antídoto. Maybe the third book will be called New Outbreak, but in ultra-cool Spanish, of course.

In more somber news, my editor reports that the global crisis of the economic downturn is affecting the book world on the other side of the Atlantic, too. Minotauro looks strong, which is welcome news, but a rival publisher is laying off 500 people. Ouch. Sales numbers are tanking worldwide. This is not good for folks like myself who depend on consumers’ disposable income.

"Hmmm," you're thinking. "Should I pay the rent or buy a new book? Pay the rent or, uh..." Tough call, right?

And yet Team Minotauro has an evil plan which fills me with excitement, gratitude, and hope. They’ve put a rush on Antídoto. The book will be out in January, their intent being to capitalize on the success of La Plaga. Also, as a major coup, because of Minotauro’s support for both titles, book stores across Spain have agreed to maintain their floor displays and/or prominent shelf placement of La Plaga well after the normal promotion period would have ended, all the way through the holiday shopping season, at which time Antídoto will join La Plaga in those eye-popping front-of-store displays.

Wow. Just wow. I freaking love these guys, and I have to say that packing up the family and moving to Europe suddenly seems like a viable option again.

Habla español, dude?

Labels: Antídoto, book sales, La Plaga, Minotauro, the writing life

No email. The horror! The horror... I've been out of town, and the only ISP within reach was an excruciatingly slow dial-up. So I was off the grid. The good news is that I wrote 7500 words and got some editing done, too, so all in all it was a most productive time. How are you?

Labels: the writing life

For those of you who don’t already know, November 1st marked the start of this year’s National Novel Writing Month, a fun if gimmicky event designed to motivate people to crank out an entire book in four weeks. Why? Beats the heck out of me. Most writers could make more money working at Burger King than banging away at our keyboards -- and you get free food, too! For years I considered this career change myself. It's only through insane persistence and good luck that I'm not asking you if you want a large fries with that.

The goal of National Novel Writing Month is 50K words, which is actually just half of a book unless you’re writing YA, but their catchy acronym is NaNoWriMo. If it was National Half-A-Novel Writing Month, they’d be left with NaHaNoWriMo. Or NaThirNoWriMo if you’re writing those door-stopper epic fantasy novels, in which case 50K is barely more than a third of your manuscript.

Anyway, it got me thinking, and I ran some numbers to see if I could compete -- and I can’t. Even when I have a week without interruptions, which is exceedingly rare, my personal best is 30K words in a month. Typically, I’m more like 20K, and my surprise for you today is that I actually prefer the 20K months.

One manuscript page is 250 words, btw. My daily goal is 6 pages minimum. I shoot for 8, 4 is considered mediocre, and I’m usually mad at myself if I don’t hit the 6 page mark, although if I only achieve 3 or 4 pages in a day but write a particularly evocative or technical scene, I’m glad.

Yes, it’s a fun, heady feeling to crank out 10 – 12 pages in a single day. Yeehaw! But I’ve found that what I write on those big days is often the same stuff that needs the most work later on, so it comes out the same. Either you blast it out fast and do more editing later, or you find a happy medium and get it mostly right the first time. My editor considers me a “clean” writer, which is flattering. She means that my manuscripts aren’t full of typos, unclear sentences, continuity lapses, or plot snafus. Naturally I hope to keep it that way, so my preference is a quick but steady pace, not sprinting.

20K words is a fifth of a book. After five months like that, you’ve got a complete novel, although I typically need at least another month to clean up the manuscript, add a few nuances here and there, and brightly polish the line-by-line writing.

So why aren’t I publishing two books a year? Well, this year I wrote two books, more or less -- 80K for Colony High, and 115K for Mind Plague, despite the distractions. I have family, and a house and a yard, and the business part of writing seems to be encroaching more and more on my time; contracts; interviews; research; conventions; preparing for panels and classes at conventions; fan mail; outlining future books; etc.

I know, I know -- these are EXCELLENT problems to have!!! I’m not complaining. But for me, at least, 50K a month just ain't realistic.

Labels: Mind Plague, National Novel Writing Month, the writing life

There are more important things happening in the free world on Election Day, but I was surprised and pleased this afternoon to receive a small check from Boys' Life, who ran an article of mine about a year and a half ago. They paid quite nicely for it, too. At a buck a word, I was happy to sign away a great many rights to the piece -- and now they've gone and mailed me a bonus. Bizarre! Fantastic! There was nothing in our contract that required them to do so, and believe me, this is a first in all of my short fiction and nonfiction sales. The letter was impersonal, but the check was not, ha ha. It makes me want to get them more material. Just gotta finish the book!

Labels: Boys' Life, royalty check, the writing life

I’m on fire. I’ve written 30,000 words in the past four weeks, which is awesome, except that this is the price ya pay. Here's what I look like. And, yes, those are ice packs on my smoking hot wrists. Ouch!

It’s been especially psychotic. Land Wars. Halloween. Grinding out Mind Plague. In my last Catching Up, I forgot to mention that I also had a gig last week at the library in Tracy, which is about an hour’s drive from home. The evening went well. Yes, two of the warm bodies in attendance were my parents, but there were eleven total, with lots of good energy and questions. We sold some books and I was invited back to perhaps teach a writing class this spring, so although the event was a bump in my routine, I felt it was worth it. Plus it’s always fun to get out into the real world and talk to real people.

This week I also fielded an interview request from German web site Phantastik Couch, who will soon be featuring Nano as their book of the month. I also learned that a trade journal called “Technology Review” featured a big thumbs up of the book over there. Can’t beat that! I believe the Phantastic Couch transcript will be translated into German, but, if so, maybe I’ll post the original version here, too, if anyone likes?

More soon.

Labels: Mind Plague, NANO, the writing life

So I stumbled upon this today, which should be of great interest to any writer or editor or bookworm types.

I guess there has been much hue and cry and flamewars and hollering on the blogosphere, but I’m oblivious until weeks later. Typical. But I thought this analysis of the book chains was veeeery interesting in a grim, cold-eyed, nuts-and-bolts kind of way.

Labels: book ordering, Borders Books, Publishing, the writing life

This week I was hoping to bang out my world-changing blog about juggling multiple projects versus focusing only on one, but, well, I've been so focused on one project, there wasn't time for anything else!

I've been away. Imagine a business trip to a parallel future. Mind Plague. It's rather dark there and the body count is steep, but the people are interesting as hell, wounded and tough and smart and active. I am really having a good time with these characters and in a lot of ways I'll be sorry to move on when the book is a wrap and it's time to start and/or resume other projects.

More on that soon. I promise. How was the rest of your week?

Labels: Mind Plague, the writing life

It’s a mixed bag this week. I had an email from my editor to say that Plague Year has gone to its third printing, which is excellent! The book has legs. Obviously we’re all very excited. In fact, with the new run, I’m now very close to having 100K books in print.

That’s not a huge number, and it includes the Spanish and German editions overseas. I know plenty of writers whose print runs for a single novel just here in North America are two or three times that much, so my head still fits easily through the door... but, hey, I’m just starting out. My second novel is only two months old, and the six figure mark will be a nice milestone.

Our quest to close the last small gap to 100K may have taken a brief detour, however. It looks like it'll be another foreign edition that takes me to that mark. My editor here in the U.S. also said that, due to some “scheduling Sudoko,” Mind Plague is now slated for a December release. In 2009. No, that’s not a typo. We’re not talking about this December. We’re talking about next December.

That sounds scary, but it's only a jump of two months. Originally, they were talking about October 2009. Publishing books is akin to landing planes at LAX. You’ve got a lot of traffic and only so many runaways. Sometimes the books, er, planes stack up.

I have a killer blog to write about the turning of the wheels in publishing and why I'm off the summer schedule that saw both Year and War out in August. I’ll try to get to that next?

In the meantime, I see this as good-news-bad-news. We’re excited to have the book out during that time of year when people need to grab a lot of Christmas stocking stuffers for family and friends... Ooh! How about some nice paperbacks? On the other hand, I also worry that everyone will have completely forgotten about me by then. That's a long wait!

Maybe next fall just before the book is out, if I light myself on fire, naked, with Paris Hilton, also naked, on Wall Street, while throwing out free $10 bills stuffed inside fire-seared blueberry muffins... we’ll scrawl the title of the book on the money... well, you can’t beat publicity like that, right? With puppies. And music by Van Halen. Stand back!

Labels: Mind Plague, Publishing, the writing life

…or, Jeff Bares All Without Losing His Pants!

For you cultureless heathens who don’t already know, Towelie is the intelligent super towel developed by the military in South Park. He’s also fond of bong hits. Hence the dull, bloodshot eyes and one of his catch phrases: “I’ve got no idea what’s going on.”

My buddy Joe Jordan, a fellow writer and Writers of the Future winner who is currently far away in the paradise known as Afghanistan, was among several folks who’ve asked about the foreign deals for the Plague novels, how it all works, what’s the money like, and whether or not Diana’s quitting her job and we’re buying a pair of Porsches.

Well, no. Even worse, sometimes I feel like Towelie. I have no idea what’s going on.

For one thing, remember, I’m still very new at this. For another, keep in mind that publishing is insane. I’m not going to get into specific numbers because I’m long way from being enough of big shot that I can wow y’all with lots of zeros, but here’s what I do know so far:

My advance from Ace was modest to say the least, but it earned out immediately. We saw a decent royalty check after the first accounting period, which wasn’t even a full six months, and we’ll be seeing another royalty check again shortly. Why? They got behind the book in a good way: embossing on the cover, some ads, and, most importantly, Plague Year really was a “mass market” mass market paperback. The initial print-run was solid and, for the first month, they had me on front-of-store display towers and tables in the major chains. Possibly even better, I was in airports and bus stations. The book went to a second print run to meet demand and by now, I’m pleased to report, we’re into a third edition.

By comparison, my German advance was hefty indeed. Partly that was because it was for three books, rather than one-by-one as Ace is doing, and you get half of the money for each title up front. Partly that was also because they’re paying in Euros, and some of the checks converted at upwards of 1.6 dollars per Euro. Shazam. The weird part to me is that the print run there was non-hefty. Of course, Germany and Austria are a much smaller market than North America, and my editor at Piper Verlag tells me that our run was quite good for a first novel by a foreign author… but I can’t see how they’re going to earn their money back. Not immediately. Possibly their business model isn’t so tightly screwed down as the American one, which seems to be make-or-break right out of the gates. The Europeans are wiser and calmer, and I have to assume they know what they’re doing. I write. They publish. That’s how it works. But I worry a bit.

Here’s where it gets extra strange.

The advance from my Spanish publisher was minimal. Neither I nor my agents expected anything more than a nice trade paperback release from Minotauro, just one book among several. We never even heard anything about when it would be published. What happened, of course, in the industry terminology, is that they went completely ape shit. The print run was fantastic for a first-time foreign author, in that gorgeous hard cover, with a promotion campaign that beats anything I’ve ever heard of. If my American publishers were duplicating that effort, we’d be millionaires.

So I have no idea what’s going on.

The only people who have shown any sense to date are the Romanians, bless ‘em. Small country… small advance… a small print run is planned… but with HUGE enthusiasm. My editor there loves what he’s doing and he’s going to play the books to the hilt, and I admire that in a big way.

Does that answer any questions or just open us up to more???

Labels: La Plaga, NANO, PLAGUE YEAR, the writing life

It's been nuts. I was gone over the weekend for the 24th annual Central Coast Writers' Conference, which takes place in San Luis Obispo, about three and a half hours south of the SF Bay Area. It was cool. I've never taught classes before, although I've done a bunch of book events and I figured the two things were rather similar. You want to be entertaining and knowledgeable, probably in that order for a book signing but in the reverse for a class, right? I was well-prepared with hardcore single-spaced ultra-dense double-sided handouts, which also functioned as speaking notes for myself, and none of my three classes had less than 30 attendees. In fact, the Friday night class was held in a big auditorium with 50+. Wow. Fortunately, I caffeinate well, and blabber on without much encouragement, and I got several good laughs and felt like I imparted what wisdom I have on the subjects of breaking into publishing, writing short fiction, and crafting suspense. Oh, and I got to sleep in both Saturday and Sunday mornings, which was gorgeous, especially because I've been nursing a head cold. Yummy.

I was out of it yesterday. Got some good editing done on Mind Plague, then turned my attention back to furthering the manuscript this morning and had a solid 2000 word day. More tomorrow. I'd like to get back into a groove and stay there until I have a complete first draft. No doubt there will be other interruptions.

Ketchup.

Labels: Catching up, Central Coast Writers' Conference, Ketchup, Mind Plague, the writing life

So I've been eyebrow deep in Mind Plague again, which is a good thing, but today is an off day for me so I'm catching up on correspondence and errands. In the meantime, here’s something I’ve been meaning to get off my chest. That’s right! Because you demanded it. Sordid hot personal rants for the Internet!

Well, not really. But here is a Deep Thought With Jeff.

I’ve taken a bit of heat from some reviewers and fans for the Plague novels being “short” books. Generally this person will come on fairly strong about how they enjoyed the novel and say that it was a quick enjoyable read, but, well, maybe it was short...

To which I say bullshit. There’s no question that I’m not writing the gigantic 200K word door stoppers you find in epic fantasy, for example, but I take exception with the idea that my books are short.

Oo! A nerve! We’ve touched a nerve! :)

Plague Year is 100K words, which is slightly on the long side of average. It’s just that it was published in paperback and in the tiniest legible font known to mankind. The book clocks in at 304 pages total, including maps and blurbs and one ad in the back... but those are densely packed pages, folks, full of flavor and satisfaction. Mmm.

My contract for Plague War mandated an identical count of 100K words — yes, this stuff is in the legalese — but my editor and I fought for more after I found myself halfway through that word count but not halfway through the story. The scope of the sequel is even bigger than in the first book, with more POV characters and a larger background.

War clocked in at 115K words even after a brutal tightening-and-polish of the final manuscript. I figured the finished book would run at least 330 pages and show those short people a thing or two. But an interesting thing happened. When I received advance copies, I was flabbergasted to discover that War was exactly 304 pages, too!

What’s happening here? My editor tells me that books are printed in 16 page increments. More, they love ‘em thin. You get more books in a box that way, saving on warehousing and shipping costs, not to mention paper and binding costs. You also get more books on the shelves in less space. Welcome to the future!!!

I asked her, But what happened to the extra 15K words? Did you guy chop out a bunch of stuff without telling me?

Nope. If you examine War, you’ll find that its pages are even more densely packed than those of Year. They used the same tiny font, but with even narrower white margins on either side and several more lines from top to bottom. Shazam! Magic!

Here's more evidence that my books aren’t short. The gorgeous hard cover from Minotauro runs 320 pages, a nice, standard thickness for a book... and hard covers always have a lesser page count than paperbacks because, well, the pages are bigger! Even with a normal-sized font and normal spacing between the lines, those lovely big pages hold more text than a paperback page.

Also, the German paperback is 400 pages. Why? They’re not using the smallest typeface ever discovered by scientists. So in your face, short people!

(Have I unintentionally begun a flame war with individuals who are vertically challenged? Tune in next week...)

Labels: Deep Thoughts With Jeff, German edition PLAGUE YEAR, Plague War, Publishing, the writing life

I think my body's finally had enough. I didn't set my alarm today and slept 13 hours. Would've slept longer, except, you know, eventually you have to pee, and when I saw that the clock said 1:04pm, I decided I'd better get up. Jesus.

Won't get any writing done today, but I am feeling better, so I plan to get at it again tomorrow. In the meantime, a little blogging! Hooray!

One of the things that I haven't even touched on was that I had four book events sandwiched around WorldCon, and of course WorldCon proved to be one giant five-day book selling orgy in and of itself. This on top of the usual chaos in our household. I am *beat*. And I know guys who run on twenty-city tours every year, plus a convention or three. Most of them don't have kids, or don't have small kids, at least, but I honestly don't know how they do it, especially because they're moving on a much higher plane than yours truly. I figure I spoke to 100 people in those four events, chatting up store managers and personnel as well. Plus a few radio interviews, blog interviews, and the thing for San Francisco Chronicle. That's a lot of *on*, if you know what I mean. But I've seen NYT bestsellers draw more than 100 people to a single event, and you want to be interesting and fun and unique to every single person. It just takes a lot of energy.

Don't get me wrong. These are GREAT problems to have. I'm very, very excited to be involved with talking up my novels, whether I'm on the phone, this keyboard, or driving or flying hither and yon... it's just that these events take away from my writing.

It's past time to get back to Mind Plague.

Labels: the writing life, WorldCon again

Running late as usual. It was one extra crazy week. There were a bazillion distractions with the release of the book trailer, plus we’re gearing up for a book release party at my local Borders. If you live in the east Bay Area, come and stop by! It’s Tuesday night, 7/29, starting at 7pm at the Pleasant Hill store

One of those distractions was an email from a producer of a radio station who’d seen the trailer and wanted a live interview on their morning show… on Kiwi FM in New Zealand. That was a first! Naturally I said yes, and I think it went well, except that I forgot until afterwards that it would have been polie to translate my measurements into metric. 10,000 feet is 3,024 meters, I believe.

The DJ had an outrageous accent, which was hilarious, and he’d watched the trailer, too. He thought it was obvious that the Plague books would make an excellent movie and an excellent video game, and I can’t argue with enthusiasm like that.

In the meantime, I did manage to have a solid if not spectacular week writing. That’s proving to be the biggest challenge for me – getting enough sleep, keeping my head straight, and minimizing distractions. It’s a lot of fun to hype your work and get hundreds of excited, exciting emails and exotic interview requests, but the main thing is to keep producing. I’m on a deadline! And I have a lot of other projects I’d like to get to next.

That’s sort of an interesting feeling. I’m very much enjoying Ruth and Cam’s next adventure (man, do those guys get into a lot of trouble!), and yet at the same time, there are other people and scenarios waiting to come to life in my brain.

I didn’t quite finish the chapter I was working on, which was frustrating. Those damn New Zealanders! Interrupting my Thursday! But (again) it turned out that this particular chapter is running over thirty-five pages, so I found a nice high point in the middle of it and lopped that baby into two. Shazam. So this week, suddenly, it turns out that I finished an entire chapter and nearly completed a second besides.

If I could just write four-page chapters, I would have written five of ‘em just this week! Ha ha.

Labels: book signing, Mind Plague, radio, the writing life

I’ve had several emails lately encouraging me to talk about what I’m working on now, my writing process, and so forth, so here it goes. I’ll try to make this a regular feature of the blog.

Colony High is mostly done. David’s even busier than I am, though, which is frightening, but our agreement was always that CH took second place to our solo work. We’re currently in editing mode. The manuscript is out to our pre-readers for comments and feedback. It still needs the final chapter, too, which I can safely say without ruining the story is full of gigantic scary curl-your-nose-hair action. Yes, it’s that good. In fact, you may actually need to shave your entire body after reading it, just to avoid becoming ensnarled with your clothes. Nice! Also, I don’t anticipate any trouble whatsoever in banging through the final scenes, because that’s the best fun of the book. I’m very excited about seeing Colony High breathed into life, but I can’t say yet when it will be available. Ideally in 2009.

I have a detailed outline for my fourth novel that I’m continuing to expand and polish. Alas, this project is top-secret project. I won't even tell you the working title! All I’m willing to say publicly at this point is that the concept is bigger and more Earth-shaking than the idea that the only safe places on the planet are above 10,000 feet. That’s right. Be afraid.

As for Mind Plague, I’m currently a third of the way through the first draft, which by my reckoning is at least a fourth of the way home. What? Well, it’s the third book in a trilogy that’s seen five billion people dead, thousands of animals species extinct, adventure, betrayals, romance, nanotech weapons and… oh, wait… you haven’t read Plague War yet, have you?

(Being a writer constantly involves time travel. In the next few weeks, I'll begin a series of summer book signings to promote Plague War, talking about a book that, for me, was finished nearly a year ago, which is especially mind-croggling when you're currently writing another book set in the same world with the same people. Me and them have already gone places that no one else knows about, but I can only talk about where we've been.)

Anyway. Plague War. It's safe to say there’s going to be a war in that book, right? So now that I'm writing Mind Plague, which follows Year and War, there’s a lot of back story to cover and characters to reintroduce, all without bogging down, and yet at the same time Mind Plague needs to work as a stand-alone novel for those readers who (foolishly!) haven’t read Year and War. It can be a real juggling act to get the book like that off the ground, especially when you want it to be a blood-pumping non-stop thriller...

What all of this means is that, for me, the opening is the toughest part.

Fortunately, by this time I’m very comfortable with the setting, the pacing, and the characters of the Plague books -- the characters who are still alive, you know. ;)

I really hit this book running. In seven weeks, I wrote seven chapters. Shazam. The mayhem continues for our poor survivors. Unfortunately, two weeks ago, I hit a speed bump. It’s been nine weeks now and I only have seven and a half chapters. Why? Well, I have a life, for one thing. And then last week was the Fourth of July. Sleep deprivation robbed me of Tuesday, because my brain moves no faster than a sea slug pickled in maple syrup when I don’t get enough rest, and then Friday the schools were closed, grumble, grumble, and I ended up spending Wednesday and Thursday talking or corresponding at length with a mechanical engineer, a real-life nanotech researcher, and a Special Forces major.

Yes, research. It’s got to be done if you’re not writing about boy wizards and ring-hunting elves. Hairy-toed dwarves. Whatever.

Life intervened again this week, robbing me of one working day, and I typically only have four days a week to write. Yep. That’s why I was so damn smug with myself for seven chapters in seven weeks. They’re short weeks!

Anyway, I had to go back and fix a couple scenes for authenticity. This did not involve ripping them out completely, which might have been easier, because, alas, I’d gotten most of it right. But I had to work my way through again correcting some technical details, which in one instance had a cascade effect on the rest of that chapter. Mind Plague will be the “fastest” of the three Plague novels. Plague Year covered a time span of thirteen months and change. Plague War, as you’ll see, happens in about eight weeks… and Mind Plague will take place in a few days. A compressed time-line like that is another juggling act right there when you’re balancing multiple points of view in different locations. Everything needs to match up. It’s all about the details. Fortunately, I’m a detail freak. I like focusing on every little part of the puzzle and trying to hold it all in my brain at the same time.

Jedi Master, that’s me. More soon.

Labels: Mind Plague, the writing life