I remember watching the movie Logan’s Run back in the 70s. Also read the book and saw the not so good TV series. In Logan’s Run people were only allowed to live to 30 (in the book it was even younger). Then they faced Last Day, the day they were killed in a ritual, from which the people were told their souls would ascend and then reenter the body of a newborn.
Today was my Last Day at the State of Florida, though I didn’t have to attend a ritual that killed me. No, I walked out the door with my belongings, walked to my car, and drove away from what was a very difficult period of my life. Department of Children and Families Abuse Hotline was not an easy master. We did some good, but I also believe we hassled some people who really didn’t need us in their lives. Add to that low pay, no raises for five years, and directives that seemed to have been written by a thousand monkeys on typewriters, and made as much sense, and I am very happy to have walked out of that place of employment alive. Along the way I learned a lot, about people, about bureaucracy, about the evil that people do to their own. And about the craft of writing. I left some good people there, friends that I had seen every week for the last seven plus years.
Like the people in Logan’s Run, I entered Last Day expecting a rebirth. In my case it came true, and I leave this day as my own boss. I am now a full time author, able to make use of my time as I wish. If I want to be a successful author I will use that time wisely, to produce as much as I can, while I can. This weekend I will be completing the purchase of a motorcycle, and will be back on two wheels after a two year hiatus. That is part of this lifestyle as well, to get some enjoyment from each day that is not work related. I will also be setting up a work computer at home that should keep me near the cutting edge for the next couple of years.
I see big things for this blog in the near future as well. I have let it fall off a bit as other tasks took up my time. In the future I would like to have four entries a week. One will be about movies I have seen, and not just new releases, but also old classics. Another will be a blog on books, mostly in the realm of the fantastic, though maybe also something to do with history or science. The third entry will be about tropes, or science fallacies, or anything else that strikes my fancy, enrages me, amuses me, whatever. The last will be a shameless promotion of my own writing. It really is funny how I hated that kind of promotion when I started the self publishing thing in December of 2011. Writer friends of mine think it had a huge part to play in successfully selling lots of ebooks, and I can’t say that they’re wrong. Now I enjoy promoting, to a point. As long as it doesn’t interfere with all the other tasks required to put out a good science fiction or fantasy book.
Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my writing career. Follow me on this blog and see how I do.
Archives
All posts for the month March, 2013
On Monday I put the first draft Exodus: Empires at War: Book 3 to bed. I normally put a first draft to bed for a year, but things have changed. I have been getting requests through posts to this blog, emails, and reviews on Amazon for book 3. It weighs in at 198,000 words, and will probably finish at 210,000 or more. For reference, Books 1 & 2 were both in the 110K range. I had hoped to do a much better job on book 3, and it will be as good as I can make it, but there will probably be some errors in there, even with other eyes looking at it. Probably no more than the other books though. I think the seven thousand fans who have bought both books 1 and 2 will enjoy this one, and the spinoff tale I am planning for the Fall. Also, I did some things a little different with this novel, writing each character’s story separately, then piecing them together at the end into one tale. I kind of liked that approach, and may do it in the future with other books. I am planning on pulling Exodus out again on April 1st, and will work long days on it to get it ready for publication.
In the meantime I am jumping on some other projects, including Refuge: Book 3 (Doppelganger is not really considered part of the storyline, yet. That novel was written seven years ago when I was still trying to attract a traditional publisher.) Refuge has done well, not as well as Exodus, and I think will do better with some more marketing. I love Exodus, but Refuge feels like an old friend, as I have been developing the world and the story for 15 years. What may put some people off is that it is a genre bender, combining high fantasy and military technofiction. With book 3 it will be leaning more toward fantasy, as the modern weapons are no longer of any use on Refuge. I have eight thousand words done so far on what I hope will be a 150,000 word novel. I am aiming to finish the first 50K words before the major Exodus rewrites start, and then I can take it from there when Exodus is out.
Refuge is my daytime project, and another book I finished the first draft of last year is my nighttime project. Working title is The Last Invasion of Sol, and I call it my Anti-Independence Day. Now I liked a lot of things about Independence Day, and hated just as many. In Invasion I have an alien race who has invaded another human colony and killed all the inhabitants before moving on Earth. Their ships are more advanced than humanity’s, though only capable of slower than light travel (the same tech the human race uses) and the human race knows they are coming. We can prepare for war. Still a daunting task and a close thing.
For the Summer I am planning to write the third novel of The Deep Dark Well Trilogy, titled Deeper and Darker, as well as a novel in the Exodus Universe about the criminal investigation of the deaths of members of Parliament in the Capital, as told in Exodus 1 and 2. That should keep me busy for the year I think. There are other first drafts on the hard drive. Some will come out next year as stand alones, though one, Theocracy, will be the first book of the second Deep Dark Well Trilogy. There is one whic is the first book of a fantasy trilogy that I wrote five years ago, but I don’t have time for another trilogy right now. And some people have suggested that Aura would be a good series, and I might consider it if I can get sales going for the book. Another book, Soulless (and I know there are other books with that name, so I will eventually come up with another) is a kind of Scifi/Horror mix.
I have found that having a number of books out there have made it possible for me to quit my day job next week. Exodus is making a lot of money, Refuge and Deep Dark Well not as much, but still good, and the other books just add a little bit to the pot. I am hoping to work more on publicizing the books that aren’t doing as well. I believe they are as good as the ones that are selling in gobs. But the great thing about the digital bookshelf is they can stay out there as long as I want, hopefully gathering fans.
I went to see this movie last weekend, and was looking forward to it after seeing the previews before some other movies. You know how that goes; sometimes they live up to expectations, other times they don’t. Now I grew up on the original The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland. It was a big TV event every year, and every year it was a family event to watch it. It was amazing that a movie made in the early days of color was so good. Of course the new movie is a prequel, I guess you would say, to a movie that was made seventy four years ago. Of course the effects and the backgrounds were better, but just because a movie has better special effects does not make it as good. However, Oz did not disappoint this movie goer. From the opening in black and white Kansas, to the land of Oz in full glorious color, to the climax of the film, is was wonderful.
Not to spoil the movie, but Oz is about an illusionist, womanizer and con man working a traveling circus who, running from a jealous boyfriend, jumps on a hot air balloon. He is sucked into a tornado and ends up in Oz, where he is seen as the fulfillment to a prophecy. Of course the con man takes advantage of the situation, and his self serving behavior actually makes things worse. But his very behavior as a con man and illusionist allows him to combat the wicked witches at the end. To this movie goer the coolest thing about the film was how it could seamlessly lead into the original. A lot of origins were explained, and everything was kept true enough to the Wizard of Oz that you could watch them back to back and come away with the feeling that they were made that way. Highly recommended, and I give it five stars.
My friend and fellow writer Matthew Mather has just released a new book called CyberStorm. For those who don’t know Matthew, he is the author of the very successful Atopia Chronicles, which can also be found on Amazon. Atopia has been highly ranked in both the Technothriller and High Tech Scifi categories for over a year in its several incarnations and has numerous five and four star reviews. If you haven’t read it, I suggest you lick it up. Matthew is a very talented writer, and his concepts of future cybertech stretch the imagination. I picked up CyberStorm today and will review it as soon as I read it, which may be in about a month because of my own projects. For those of my readers who don’t have other projects, go ahead and start. CyberStorm also has a number of good reviews already, with twenty listed on Amazon for a 4.9 star average. Enjoy.
I received this in an email a few days ago with a request that I post it on this site or put it in a blog. I have decided to do the latter. I love these kind of charts. There was one about which political party one should belong to, what religion one should adhere to, and so on. This is a flow chart about what kind of protection one might need depending on where you are and what kind of threat you’re facing.
Created by http://www.HomeSecuritySystems.com
Of course I think the Iron-man armor, or even the powered armor from Heinlein’s Starship Troopers would be the best choice for protection. Zombie Apocalypse? No problem. Just mash them to goo and hose the suit off afterwards. Baring that my favorite protection against unarmed creatures would be full plate armor and a broadsword. But enjoy this flow chart as it is.
Working under a deadline is a new thing for this author, even when it’s one that’s self imposed. I really didn’t expect the Exodus series to take off like it has. Oh, I expected it to be successful, after some advertising and promotion. Instead, it just took off on its own, and now is being advertised on websites all over the net. It came at just the right time, as the day job was literally killing me. Its success allows this author to turn to full time writing. In the past there was no deadline for my writing. I wrote when I felt like it. Some years I was very productive. 2010 is an example, when I wrote Aura, Daemon and Afterlife, as well as the manuscripts for Refuge and Exodus that later became the first two novel in each series. 2011 I started seven books and never completed a one. 2012 I finished three of those 2011 books and also wrote To Well and Back. But again, I wrote when I felt like it. Now I have an obligation to get third books out on three different series. I hope to do that and more this year, possibly three books on Exodus (2 in the main series line and one spin off). Exodus is doing the best of all my books, Book 1 outselling The Deep Dark Well by a three to one margin, despite being out for a shorter time. It is outselling Refuge 5:1. The smart business decision would be to hitch my wagon to Exodus and just let the others sit, for the moment. I actually did jump Exodus up in the writing queue, before the planned third book of Refuge. However, I feel obligated to continue those other series as well. People are sending emails wanting to know when those books will be finished (or leaving hints in reviews). So they will be finished this year. I will also be putting out a book called The Last Invasion of Sol that was written last year and just needs some polishing. People may howl, wondering why I am putting out a stand alone when the series they love still needs continuation. The thing is Sol is ready for a couple of rewrites, and as I will explain below, it fits into the process of how I write, or how I have always written, something I don’t see changing in the near future.
Exodus, and Refuge as well, are very hard novels to write. A story with a main storyline and only enough branches to encompass some of the other action and background to complete the tale; well that is easy. A story with multiple characters in parallel storylines; that’s quite a bit more difficult. I always loved the Harry Turtledove books that used that technique, and first started doing it as a challenge. But it is a challenge to remember everything that’s going on. I normally work on a couple of books at the same time, but an Exodus or Refuge style of book takes too much concentration. With two books I can write up to six thousand words a day. With one book I might hit five thousand some days, but on most three thousand is the limit, or things start getting really sloppy. I also like to put a book away for a year before working on the second and subsequent drafts, and I won’t be able to do that and still deliver a book this year in each of the series. Rest assured that Exodus III, which is a much longer book than its predecessors, also by request, will be out before summer. I hope to get it out by the end of April. Hope being the word here. I have decided to keep writing along in the story for another month, past what I need for book 3, so that a good bit of book 4 will be ready so I can complete it by fall. So from my readers I ask for a little patience. Hopefully, with going full time as a writer, I can get the production line cranked up and get the books out that everyone seems to want.
Doug BrotherofCats Dandridge 