Running up to NaNoWriMo 2013

It’s almost here. I can’t believe it’s almost November.

As you may know, it’s National Novel Writing Month in a few days, and I’ll be trying to write 50,000 words in a month again. It’s my seventh year and I can’t break the pattern! I’m also MLing this year, which means organising loads of events, including a weekend away on a tropical island for around 30 writers.

Yes, I’m crazy. Luckily, I have help this year from a couple of fellow nutty writers, and they’re doing a wonderful job of lightening the burden of organising stuff. (No, they won’t help with the 50,000 words; they have their own novels to write and I’m not eager to share that part of NaNo!)

So, other than getting the events all lined up and good to go, what else have I been up to in preparation for my annual Month of Madness?

Let’s see:

• Getting my nails done, all themely. Because these things are important.
• Putting party bags together to give away to writers. Because we’re all secretly 5 years old. (Okay, in many cases, not so secretly. Some of us are shameless.)
• Putting hipster PDA/lanyard packs together with report cards, so that writers can collect stickers through NaNo when they achieve goals. (See point above for reasoning. Writers love stickers.)
• Getting piles of prizes ready for various competitions.
• Planning out two projects, because I’m having a decision-making disorder.
• Getting the next month’s strategy for my team at work all lined up and ready, because I’m taking a lot of November off.
• Tying up loose ends at work so I can be away for the next couple of weeks.
• Trying not to panic.
• Attempting to figure out if I’m taking a hiatus from Starwalker or going to keep writing it while I’m novelling.
• Remembering to feed the cats.

A couple of weekends ago, we had an awesome Planning Day for our NaNo peeps. I took along a pile of notecards and wrote a load of colour-coded goodness. Both of my proposed projects are now fleshed out, and planned about as much as I plan anything I write. After I got back home, I diligently stuck the notecards up onto their respective pinboards, so now I have pretty planning boards for the stories.

If only I was sure about which one to write! I think I’m leaning towards Vampire Electric at this point, though it’s entirely possible that I’ll wind up bouncing to Screw Loose if the steampunk doesn’t flow or work the way I want it to. Yes, I know it’s rebelling, but I’d rather write words I know will be useful than bang my head against a story that’s just not working.

I had semi-planned to take a break from Starwalker and go on a month-long hiatus. However, it’s not that long since I had a break (when Book 3 ended), and I don’t think it’ll be a huge drain to keep the posts going over the month. My readers have been awesomely patient with me while I’ve been sick and I’d like to reward them by maintaining their usual weekly service of posts. Also, I can count the posts I write in November towards my total.

Last Sunday, we had our Kick-off Party for NaNo; a BBQ in the park where we can get together, give away loads of stuff, get excited about NaNo, talk about our novels, and meet fellow crazy people. It was great! The weather was perfect (not too hot for a change, and it didn’t rain on us at all), and there was a good mix of familiar faces and new people to welcome into our fold.

This week, we have a drinks meetup on the 31st October. I expect there’ll be lots of ‘ahh, I can’t believe it’s the 1st tomorrow’, ‘I have no idea what to write!’, ‘I can’t wait to get writing’, and ‘is that a costume or do you always dress like that?’ It’s going to be a blast. Looking forward to it!

I’m currently reading over the first draft of Vampire Electric, to get myself in the mood for picking it up again. It’s reminding me of how much I like the milieu and the characters, and I’m already starting to pick out the bits I want to redo heavily in the rewrite. I plan to start over from scratch, and it’s good to have a clear idea of what I want it to be.

This time last week, I was drained and weary, and trying not to fret about being ready in time. This week, I’m getting enthused about the writing and more comfortable with how prepared we are for the events. There’s just the logistics for the Retreat to sort out, and then we’re good.

I’m getting there. Soon, there will be novelling. And on top of it all, I’m having fun with an awesome group of people. I love my region. Luckiest ML and writer ever.

Catching/ramping up

I can’t believe that it has been so long since I posted here. Things are busy, my health is crap, and most of the time I’m scraping through the bare minimum to keep my head above water. Plus there’s Starwalker to write and post, and all of this year’s NaNoWriMo stuff to prepare, including another ambitious Writer’s Retreat. Oh, and there was GenreCon, which was awesome and I should post about that.

So much to do, so much to report on, and so little time. With NaNoWriMo starting next week, that’s where a lot of my focus is, so let’s start with that. The ML stuff is coming along nicely (much thanks to my co-MLs and other friends who have leant a hand; I’m so grateful to have them). The Retreat is ticking along and about to start sucking up more of my time, as we approach deadlines and confirmations and the need to pay for things.

And I’m still not sure what I’m going to write this year. I’m determined to write something new/different and not focus on Starwalker for once (my brain needs a break, and I’ve been writing Starwalker for the past three NaNos, so it’s time for a change). But in my looooong list of potential projects, which one to choose? I have two that are in a good state to start writing and I’m currently struggling to decide between them.

Here’s the blurb I put up on the Brisbane NaNo forums recently:

Vampire Electric

500 years ago, electrical creatures rose up and drove humanity out of their city. In the wilderness, a strange bargain was struck and the first vampire was made. Humans went on to build their new civilisation on steam and clockwork, while this new breed fed on the energy of humans in secret.

Now, Diza just wants to prove to the university board that a scholarship girl can earn a linguistics degree. To do that, she takes on the translation of an ancient text that tells the tale of the first vampire, the deal he struck, and a device that might create a newer, stronger combination of man and electrical entity. But she knows that this is no fable; this might be her chance to take revenge on the vampire that killed her family. As she gets drawn deeper into the politics of the vampire world, she begins to wonder if the protection of the man who hired her will be enough to keep her alive long enough to see that revenge through.

I have been writing this one on and off for a couple of years now. It’s one of those things that I poke at in the background when I have time or need to do something a little different. I’m about 70,000 words through it and haven’t reached the end (it’ll probably hit 100k before I’m done). I’ve got to the stage where I know all the things that I want to fix, do differently, and do better.

So while this one wouldn’t be a ‘fresh start’ exactly, I think I’m in a good position with it to start a new rewrite.

Tales from the Screw Loose

It’s not a good time to be an android on the colonies. After Earth was evacuated, floods of refugees needed homes and jobs. Automated solutions are being pushed out, and with it, the need for droid mechanics is on the decline. Grace is forced to leave her home outpost and seek work in the big city.

She ends up as the maintenance engineer at the Screw Loose, a robot brothel. With competition from the real-flesh whorehouse across the street, rising anti-robot sentiments, and an inconvenient corpse that could close the Screw Loose permanently, Grace’s new job quickly proves to be more fraught and dangerous than fixing farm gear.

I have talked about this one on and off for some time. It has taken a couple of years for the pieces to come together, all the elements that will take it beyond an amusing situation (robot brothel, lol) and turn it into an actual story with something to say. Not that I’m aiming for Fiction With A Message; I prefer stories to have a plot and an arc to them, and an idea that they’re ‘going somewhere’. As much as I love serial writing, soap operas and situation comedies are not my style.

Now, I finally feel like the Screw Loose‘s elements are all there, and it’s about ready to start.

The truth is, neither piece is speaking to me very loudly at the moment. It’s possible that there’s just too much going on in my head right now for them to be heard. I kind of suspect that, come 1st November when the starting pistol goes off for this year’s novel-writing challenge, I’m going to be staring at a blank yWriter project, wiggling my fingers above the keys to try to encourage a decision to come out. And then I’ll start writing.

Wish me luck!

Hiatus over

So, I took July off writing Starwalker. After the end of Book 3, I needed a bit of a break to catch my breath and prepare for the start of the next storyline.

I didn’t intend for the hiatus to be a break from writing altogether, but this is what ended up happening. I did some planning (for Tales from the Screw Loose and upcoming Starwalker), fiddled with some logistical stuff, read a few things, but otherwise… nope, no writing. No editing, no short stories, not a single thing. I didn’t even post here very much.

In truth, I needed the break. I needed to catch my breath in so many ways.

Clearly, my body thought so, too. When I decided to take a couple of days off work to have a bit of a holiday from that too, I got sick with a nasty cold/flu bug that has been doing the rounds. Isn’t that always the way? You take a little break and your body decides it’s time to indulge in that thing it has been putting off for a while: collapsing in a disgusting, dribbling heap. That was three weeks ago, and I’m still trying to shake off the last of the virus.

I had some personal-life stuff explode during the hiatus, too. Nothing bad or disastrous, but family is moving around and there has been a lot to do to help them out with that. I’m currently house-sitting (effectively) and looking after all the family pets. Juggling everything at home with work and being sick has been a challenge. It’s another level of complication that I have to deal with.

With everything that was going on, July ended with surprising alacrity; before I knew it, I was knee-deep in August. Starwalker was suddenly due and I was ill-prepared for it. I had fallen out of my usual writing routine and habits, and I was still struggling to recover enough energy to think straight after being sick.

I was stuck. I really didn’t want to extend the hiatus, because that’s a bad habit to get into and I needed to force myself back into my writing routine. At the same time, I didn’t want to put up a sub-standard Starwalker post; that wouldn’t have been fair to my readers.

In the end, I chose a compromise: a teaser post that featured a regular AI, both shorter and simpler than the usual story entry. It was easy to put together, it went up on time, and it led neatly into the next storyline.

I was so relieved when my readers reacted positively to it (they’re lovely but I still hate to risk disappointing them). And since then, I’ve managed to get a full, Starry-narrated post up that started the fourth book off properly, thanks to a handily-placed public holiday.

I’m still struggling to get back into the rhythm of writing on my daily commute. It has been hard for a while now and it’s only getting harder. But I’m determined not to miss any more deadlines. This week, I got the first draft of the next Starwalker post written at my monthly write-in. I’m going to push myself to keep working away at it, gather some momentum, and push back into the routine I once had.

I’m also going to tackle my health issues and see if I can manage them better, too. Something has to give and I’m sick of the fatigue getting in the way of what I love.

I have so much I want to do. So many projects. I just need to figure out how to make it all work.

Stepping stones to awesome

This weekend, I spent some time planning out two different projects: the next stage of Starwalker, and Tales from the Screw Loose, which I haven’t started writing yet.

I don’t plan my writing very often. Those who know how I plan, know that I don’t plan very deeply, either. I’m not truly a planner or a pantser; I’m an ad-hoc adventurer with a barely-legible roadmap.

A guest at one of my writing group meetings back in the UK described her planning/writing process as ‘stepping stones’. As it turns out, this is the process that works best for me. There are probably other names for this type of system. Skeleton. Outline. But I enjoy the stepping stones analogy, so I’m sticking with it.

Imagine that your story charts the path from one riverbank to the other. You could describe each and every inch of the path before you take it, and know exactly where you’re going before you leave the riverbank. You could wade in and see what happens. Or, you can identify some stepping stones to aim for, and find your way between them.

That’s how I plan. I have stepping stones that I know I want my story to land on, and my characters determine the path between those points. I discover the story as I go, but I always know where it’s headed, even if it’s just the next stepping stone.

Those stones vary widely in size. Sometimes, I’ll have a specific scene mapped out in my head, in incredible detail. Sometimes, it’s just an idea of an event, or a particular psychological corner that a character has to turn. Or sometimes it’s a single image, a snapshot or a concept, or even just a parting glance of the end of something. The lead-up to these stones is always something I discover on the way, as I balance the characters and their choices, the roadblocks in their way, and the goal that is rolling around in the back of my brain. Sometimes it takes some wrangling to get the outcome that I’m after – all the way to that next stone – and sometimes I end up taking a path I never anticipated, but it usually works out.

The characters are always my greatest guide through the stories. I write heavily from a character’s perspective (even when I write in third person, which I do outside of the web serials), and staying true to what those characters would say or do is important to me. Their path has to make sense, and they soon let me know if they’re going to take the easy path to that next stone, or if they’re going to make me work for it. Whether it’s throwing a help or a hindrance their way, I seldom find that there’s no way to get to where I want the story to be.

As for how this stepping stone method of planning takes shape in a practical, physical sense, I love using pinboards and notecards. My original plan for Starwalker was a series of 12 notecards, and they carried me through all 3 books so far (three and a half years’ worth of writing!). Just 12 notecards; that was all I needed!

Over the weekend, I got my stock of blank notecards and glittery-inked pens out, and freed my pinboards from their exile against the wall. And then I went a bit nuts. I colour-coded stuff. I grouped the cards into sections: characters, chapters, different sections of characters, milieu notes, etc. Only the notecards under ‘chapters’ actually made up the stepping stone plan for the story, but the rest is useful for reference.

It helps me to make it all visible. For Starwalker, I filed my original 12 chapter notecards under ‘done’ and reorganised the character lists so that I know who’s currently part of the crew and who’s ‘dead’ or ‘captured/missing’. Then I started adding more cards: 3 more chapter notecards and a chunk of new characters that my intrepid crew will meet in the course of their next adventure.

I’m not quite done there yet, but the ball is rolling. Ideas trickle against each other. The notecards have gaps; for example, none of the new characters have names yet, but the important characteristics are down. The space station still needs a name.

Likewise with Screw Loose: I have a pinboard with the bones pinned to it, but there are lots of gaps I need to fill. Characters I know I need to define before I start. The chapter list needs more stepping stones in it, and doesn’t have a particular order or flow yet. I can see the size of the work I have to do before I can truly start writing it, though, and that’s powerful. It’s more than I knew yesterday. I’m starting to see the shape of the story and pick out the important highlights.

I mean, a story about a robot brothel is all well and (raunchy-)good, but I’d like there to be a plot, too. Now, I know what I need to do to be ready.

Stepping stones are a great way to allow yourself freedom and exploration in your story. Visualising it is a good way to look at the shape of your story and see what gaps you might have, and what you might need to do before you start.

Together, they arm me for my adventures. I know all the tools I have in my backpack and I have a vague map to point me in the right direction. I set off surrounded by characters whose voices I know well enough to let them guide me, and a compass to keep us all true as we explore the story.

I’m standing at the edge of the river, toeing the water and eyeing that distant bank. Soon, I’ll be donning my hiking boots and striding out into it all. I can’t wait.

Starwalker Book 3: Complete!

After three and a half years, the first trilogy of Starwalker is complete. The last post of Book 3 went up last week, and I can’t be more proud of how the story has come out.

It has been a long journey. From the moment the Starwalker‘s AI was initialised, through her discoveries of who and what she was, to the relationships she built with her crew. And onwards, to the realisation of what the experiment she was built for really meant, the hard decisions about what they should do about it, and what that would mean for the little ship and her people. Through their choices and sacrifices, through chases and battles and long days in the dark, to a smoking, stumbling end where they might look at themselves and all that they’ve done. And maybe start to heal.

It’s a relief to get to this point, and a little sad. This is the original story arc I plotted out when I first began considering the story of the Starwalker. Twelve notecards on a pinboard with the section names in coloured, glittery ink. Beside it, a column of shifting crew member cards. Below, random other cards, mostly to serve as reminders of facts I needed to know, like colony details, ship names, and characters outside of the ship’s crew.

It feels like I’ve reached the end of that pinboard, the end of the story, but that’s not true. There’s one card left, a note I added about halfway through the first book when I knew there was something else I could pull into Starwalker‘s world. It’s an old idea of mine, reworked to fit into this world I’m in right now. It’s a link to the next phase, the next tale to open up before the ship. And beside it, there’s a second, imaginary card, the one I’ve had buzzing around in the back of my mind for a while. I think it counts, even though I didn’t get around to writing it out yet. Those two cards might be a link to a whole new pinboard; I’m not sure. Is there enough for another trilogy? It’s too soon to say. I’m not even sure there’s enough for another full novel at this stage.

I am sure that Book 3 is not the end of the story. I’m not ready to leave the huggable Starry behind, still a fledgling ship despite all her adventures so far. She has so much to figure out and her crew still have journeys to take.

But this tired writer needs a break. There won’t be a headlong rush into the next story (as tempting as it is); I would really like to do some prep on it before it’s ready to write, anyway. And a chance to catch my breath would be nice. To look back over the past three and a half years and remind myself: I just wrote three whole novels, and that’s pretty awesome. On the web serial, the wordcounts come out as follows:

• Book 1: 99,734 words
• Book 2: 119.213 words
• Book 3: 127,014 words

(I like stats. Stats make me happy. Also, they show that I apparently can’t help but get more spammy as I go along. Oops?)

Over on the Starwalker site, I just announced that I’m taking a hiatus, and that’s what I mean to do. I’m going to reflect a little bit and feel proud of myself. I’m going to rest and catch up on a few things that have fallen by the wayside. I’m going to make plans and maybe start on a few things that have been on my list for a while. And I’m going to prepare for the next run of Starry’s story.

More on this soon, once I figure out exactly what I’m going to do with my time off!

Picking up and moving on

So, I’ve been sick a lot lately. I’m sure you’re all tired of hearing of it, and honestly, I’m tired of saying it.

I’m not well. I’m never well. Stupid chronic conditions. It has been worse over the past couple of months, and complicated by a nasty virus over the past couple of weeks, and it makes me want to whine and kick things (inanimate things, not living things – at least, that’s true when my frustration levels are low).

I’ve been putting things off. I’ve compromised just about everything in my life, taking time to try to get well. I’ve delayed Starwalker posts, taken time off my day job, postponed plans for other projects. Now, don’t get me wrong: I think this was the right thing to do, because health is important and without it I can’t do any of those things anyway. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not sick of it (ha ha, see what I did there?).

It’s time to get back into the swing of things. I’m only willing to put my life on hold for so long. I’m not fully over this virus yet, but if my work colleagues are anything to go by, the dregs of it are going to hang around for a couple of weeks yet. However, I’m well enough to start to do stuff again.

I’m back at work again, full time. I’m pushing myself to write the way I should be: every day on my morning and evening commutes. I managed to write this morning on the way to work, so I feel like I’m getting back on the horse.

Over the weekend, I cleaned my house. Tidied stuff up, got the bleach and the cleaning appliances out, and went nuts. It’s a testament to how off-the-ball I am that I had to split it over two days just to get it all done. (And this wasn’t doing everything on my own, either; I had family helping.) But it’s done. House is clean.

I also spent a few hours amid all that editing a 60-page business document, full of torturous legal-speak and obfuscating language that only marketing and business people with an incestuous relationship with a thesaurus can achieve. It also involved wrestling with Word’s styles, which is always an onerous task but one that I’m getting to be a dab hand at.

I got around to putting together the exercise bike I bought a couple of weeks ago while I was sicky, too. This is going to be my next attempt at putting some physical activity into my regular life, to try to drive the CFS back and generate some energy (I know, it sounds counter-intuitive, but it can work!).

I feel like I’m shaking off this fugue I’ve been in lately. Things are moving again.

I have been talking with my artist friend who did the Starwalker graphics for me about the Apocalypse Blog ebook covers, and I’m really enthused about the ideas she came back with. Can’t wait to get that going. The ebooks are currently being edited, and hopefully I’ll be able to release new and improved editions of the content over the next few weeks. Add the covers, and then all I need to do is revamp the blurbs, and see if that helps the books sales at all.

I got started with planning for this year’s NaNoWriMo, and the amount of stuff waiting for us to do there means that my mental list is filling up. But unlike those times lately when it’s all been too much, the long to-do list is making me feel enthused about getting stuff done.

It’s a lot of little things, all swirling around at once. But that’s okay: I tend to operate better when I’m multi-tasking, and having many balls to juggle in the air at once never daunts me.

I can do this. I’m still snuffling and coughing, still trying to shake off this virus, and still struggling for energy. It’s going to be a slow ramp-up to my usual levels of operation. But it has started now. This is me, determined to stop whining and get on with things.

There might be some stumbles along the way, however, I think I’m heading in the right direction. Wish me luck!

Fighting the spiral

For the second time in a month, I’ve had to delay Starwalker posts. Not by one week, but by two.

I hate it. I hate missing deadlines, I hate letting my readers down, and I hate the way I’m sliding into being one of those unreliable writers who can’t keep to her own schedule. I don’t want to be That Writer.

It’s not because I’m worried about losing audience or what people might think of me. My readers are wonderful, and their messages of patience and understanding lighten the load from me. I am more grateful for them than I can say. The hardest person on me is me, and I know that.

It’s because I’m better than that. Being reliable is a part of who I am. Being a writer who puts her work out there is a big part of my life. I can do better than that.

Except lately, I haven’t. I have stared at the Starwalker post that’s two weeks overdue now, over and over, and it’s still not done. There are several reasons:

1. It’s an action scene, which is hard, and I’m still working out the logistics of what exactly needs to happen.
2. Things at home went sideways last week when my brother got some bad news (nothing dire, but not ‘good’ either), and now my mother is flying over to the UK to help him and his little ones out.
3. My health has been getting worse over the past few weeks.

I could probably deal with any one of those on its own. Number 1 is something that I can usually handle without too much problem; I work my way through it, rewrite it two or three times (sometimes from scratch), and generally beat it with a stick until it looks like something I like. However, it requires some focus and attention to achieve, and that has been lacking lately.

Number 2 came out of left field for us, and has meant a lot of stuff to organise and think about around my home life. My mum flies out tomorrow, and it’s going to take the weekend (and possibly some of next week) to iron out the pattern of my life while she’s away. She’s probably going to be with my brother and his family for the next year (a few months at minimum), so my dad and I need to work out a sustainable schedule.

This was complicated recently by the cam belt in my dad’s car going ‘spang’ and taking the entire engine out, which means we’re currently sharing a (my) car. It’s not a problem we can’t work around, but it means that I’m less flexible and mobile than I used to be. It’s another mental overhead to add to the pile.

Problem number 3 is the thing that makes all this worse. I’ve had some tests done into the digestive issues I have, and I have a list of conditions (which I won’t go into) and medications to take. So far, I’m seeing varying success, but it’s going to be a few weeks before I see any real improvements. So plugging on there.

On top of that (and possibly related), the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is getting worse. I can usually push past it and do what I need to do, but not in the last few weeks. It is a weight that is pressing on me more and more, chipping away at the edges of what I can do in any one day. I am struggling more and more to write during my daily commute to work; in the mornings, I tend to doze and try to charge up before I get to the office. It has been getting steadily harder to summon up the mental energy to be creative. Over the past couple of weeks, I have been too drained to even write on the way home (and I am usually my most alert towards the end of the day).

I haven’t really talked a lot about what the fatigue is like. I’ve talked about the impact that it has, but that’s not quite the same. Maybe I’m more aware of it now, because the physical symptoms are cropping up again (I was mostly free of them for the past couple of years or so). It makes my whole body heavy and hard work to move, as if the world is treacle that I have to push myself through. It gives me exhaustion headaches that work their way down my neck to my shoulders and back, and knot up all the muscles. They can last for a day or more, through the night, even waking me up in the middle of it (there’s nothing more annoying than being woken out of a deep sleep by an exhaustion headache). I ache randomly, or tingle all over. Sometimes I feel dizzy and weak, or tremble. Sometimes, my heart will beat weirdly, or I’ll get random chest pains (it hasn’t got that bad lately, thank goodness).

The worst part for me are the mental impacts (I tend to be able to push through the physical stuff, at least as far as being productive and writing goes). My short-term memory is the first to suffer (I wind up writing a lot of notes to myself). My mood can be affected: when I’m around people, I can get silly and irreverent (I’m hilarious when I’m exhausted), and I’m generally more emotionally reactive to things when I’m tired. My attention span suffers, thoughts bouncing from subject to subject. It’s probably related to the memory issue, as I attempt to check that I haven’t forgotten anything important. Usually, I am most productive when I multi-task and bouncing between things works well for me, but when I’m exhausted, my work becomes fragmented and I struggle to focus well on anything. It’s an effort to finish things (I’ll probably save the draft of this post and wander off several times before getting close to finishing it).

It also becomes hard to be creative. I’ll want to, but getting into that zone is much harder. Right now, summoning up the energy to create the right mood and produce good words is just beyond me. I could force it if I had to, but that never goes well. Some days, it’s borderline and if I push myself, I can do it and it’s fine. Lately, most days, it’s just not going to happen. It’s hard to explain it. Sometimes it’s just the wrong mood for me (trying to do a high-energy scene like the current space battles is particularly challenging), and other times I just don’t have the mental space. It gets hard to step away from the distractions of my life; my brain bounces too often back to real-world stuff and I lose the train of what I was writing.

I’ve heard writing fiction as renting space in your readers’ brains. Well, first you need to create that space in your own brain, build it up and live it in, before you can push it out to the world. With CFS playing up, it’s lucky if I have a shoebox in there to spare, and having a cluttered life brings it down to a coffee tin.

Life with CFS is a game of weathering the ups and downs of your energy. It’s about balancing what I want to do today with how much it will cost me over the next several days. For those who’ve heard of it, the spoons metaphor is an apt one. Lately, there have been more downs than ups, and my general energy level has been low. I’ve had less spoons to play with.

I’ve had chronic conditions my whole life, and I hate when they restrict what I can do so much that they rule my life. We all have things that we have to deal with and work around every day, to do what we want and need to do. That’s fine. But I despise when the condition tries to take over and takes away my ability to live my life.

Let me be clear about one thing: I’m not depressed about it. I have never been depressed about it, even when I can barely get off the couch or stand up without going dizzy. Even when I’m so tired that I can barely think straight and it’s all I can do to put one foot in front of the other to get to the nearest bed/couch/chair. Even when I hurt so much I want to cry but don’t because my headache is bad enough, thanks very much.

I’m annoyed and frustrated. I work hard to support my family and make myself a comfortable place to lay my bones down at the end of the day. I’ve got dreams that I fight to work towards. I don’t need this shit making it all harder, and yet here it is. I take a break to try to catch my breath, but it’s not enough any more. I never truly get back up on my feet before I slide down again.

This is where the spiral comes in, and this is the part that frustrates me the most. I do less to try to rest up, but can never reach that previous level of energy, so try doing less again, and then less some more, until I wind up scraping by, sacrificing everything but the bare minimum of what I need to do to earn a living and eat. I’m not there yet, but I have been down that slope before and I don’t want to be there again.

It’s true that I’m doing more these days. I’m pushing myself harder and reaching for more things. I have a lot of balls in the air, juggling like crazy. Maybe I have finally reached that level of ‘too much’ and I need to cut back – okay, I’ll do that. Maybe it is time for something to give. But lately, I have cut back on everything, even wound up taking sick days off work to rest up because I simply couldn’t function well enough to be at work, and it’s still not enough.

Truth is, maybe I’m a little scared, too. I don’t want to lose everything I’ve worked so hard for over the past five years, building the life I have here in Australia. The friends I spend time with, the writing I do, the communities I’m involved with, the events I organise… I love it all, but all of it together is too much right now.

I think it’s time for a change. Nothing major – certainly not as drastic as shifting country – but it’s time to look hard at the factors in my life and see what I can change to make it work. It’s probably time to go back to the CFS specialist I was seeing for a while (though I’m not sure I can afford that at the moment). I need to re-evaluate the priorities of the things around me, and figure out how to do what I want to do in my heart. It’s hard, because I want to do everything, but sometimes reality just gets in the way.

I’m still slipping down this spiral and I don’t know the answer yet. But I’m damned if I’m going to let it swallow up all the good things in my life. Time to change the tempo and see if I can’t hammer my life into the shape I want it to be, one way or another.

Wish me luck. It’s probably going to get harder before it gets better.

Next Big Thing Blog Hop

What is a blog hop? Basically, it’s a way for readers to discover authors new to them. I hope you’ll find new-to-you authors whose works you enjoy. On this stop on the blog hop, you’ll find a bit of information on me and one of my works, and links to three other authors you can explore!

My gratitude to fellow author Kimberley Linstruth-Beckom a.k.a Amanda Kimberley for inviting me to participate in this event. You can click the following link to learn more about her work: http://www.fibroandfabulous.com

In this blog hop, I and my fellow authors, in their respective blogs, have answered ten questions about our book or work-in–progress (giving you a sneak peek). We’ve also included some behind-the-scenes information about how and why we write what we write–the characters, inspirations, plotting and other choices we make. I hope you enjoy it!

Please feel free to comment and share your thoughts and questions. Here is my Next Big Thing!

 

1: What is the working title of your book?

The series I’m working on right now is Starwalker. It’s currently a web serial, but this year I’m aiming to release it in ebook form. I’m still working out the names of the books, but I’m pretty sure the first one will be Star Made. On the web serial site, the first book is called Identity.

2: Where did the idea come from for the book?

While I was writing The Apocalypse Blog, I got to thinking about what I could do next with a blogfic. I had done the ‘voice from the end of the world’, and I wanted a new challenge. What popped into my head was initially a captain’s log, harking back to Star Trek: The Next Generation, which I watched a lot as a teenager. That led me to ship’s logs, and the way they used to be (and still are, in many cases) kept for nautical ships. Smoosh the two together with a bit of a twist on top, and you get Starwalker: the ship’s log as told by the ship.

3. What genre does your book come under?

Science fiction. I’ve heard it referred to as space opera, but it’s also heavily dosed with adventure and mystery. Maybe even a trace of romance in the later books. But it’s definitely science fiction. The main character is a starship, after all.

4: Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I very rarely peg my character so solidly. I prefer to let the readers draw their own images. The closest I’ve got with this is when I was having the graphics done of the ship’s avatar, and I described Danika/Starry as being based on Alecia Moore/Pink.

5: What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A ship’s log, as told by the ship.

6: Is your book self-published, published by an independent publisher, or represented by an agency?

I’m currently planning on self-publishing Starwalker as ebooks. I may shop it around to publishers or agents at some point, but for now, I’m focussing on finishing up the first main story arc (which ends with Book 3), and pulling it together as ebooks.

7: How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Well, it’s an ongoing serial, and I’m averaging about a book a year. So it took me about a year to write the first book, and it’s looking like it will take me three and a half years to finish up the first trilogy. It has been a long and fun journey!

8: What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

The closest that I can think of would be Anne McCaffery’s brain-ship series, for the ship side of things. Similarly, the Andromeda TV show is one of the inspirations, though I sought to do something different to both of those stories. It’s not as heavy as Peter Hamilton’s work; it’s closer to Asimov’s, though with more of a focus on people rather than technology.

If you like character-centric stories, this one is for you; you don’t need to read science fiction or space-based stories to enjoy it. I’ve had many readers tell me this explicitly!

9: Who or what inspired you to write this book?

It’s hard to point to a specific inspiration. Question 2 lays out where the idea originally came from, and the stories mentioned in Question 8 are some of the inspirations for the characters and situations. I like gnarly moral situations and gritty settings, like Farscape. I wanted to explore the melding of human and machine, both in mind and body, and that led to elements like the ship’s personality and some of her crew (like Rosie, who is mildly obsessed with augmenting her strength, and the pirate Lieutenant, who was less willing about his prosthetics and cybernetics).

There’s also a world around these characters that I wanted to explore for a while, based on the rise of corporate power. It’s not there to make any kind of statement; it is a situation that I find interesting to put people into and see what happens. I’m as interested in the implications of societal forces as I am in technological ones. Personal freedom, morality, and ownership are other elements and themes that interest me, as well. Together, these mix up to make the world the Starwalker flies through. Already, I have a lot more stories in mind to tell, more facets to uncover. But this is my first foray and, I hope, a good start.

10: What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

The Starwalker Saga is an adventure that starts on the decks of a single ship and ends up spanning a galactic network of colonies and deciding the fates of the stars themselves.

There are space pirates, battles, and chases through asteroid belts. There are love stories and broken hearts. There are robots on board the ship who are wilful, part of her subconscious, and occasionally hilarious. There’s loss and hard-won success.

You don’t need to know science to read the story. On the other hand, I’ve had scientists tell me that they weren’t thrown out of the story by the science that’s in there. It’s a story about people in an extraordinary situation, which I hope everyone can enjoy.

There also might be plushies one day, because everyone wants to hug a starship. Read the story and you’ll see what I mean!

 

Who’s next on the NEXT BIG THING BLOG HOP?

So glad you asked! Below you will find authors who will be joining me by blog, next Wednesday. Do be sure to bookmark and add them to your calendars for updates on works in progress and new releases! Happy writing and reading!

• Khaalidah Mohammed-Ali’s blog: Khaalidah
• Matthew Williams’s blog: Stories by Williams
• Raymond Gates’s blog: Dreaming
• Daniel Ferguson’s blog: The Dark Word

Crowdfunding Starwalker

When I set out my goals for this year, I put down that I wanted to crowdfund the release of the Starwalker ebooks. It was one of those ‘if I can figure out how to make it work’ kind of goals.

Why crowdfunding? Because I can’t afford to do everything I need to do to make Starwalker into ebooks on my own. For example, covers are the biggest cost for me. I was lucky enough to get free covers for The Apocalypse Blog, but I can’t see that happening again, Also, I have a pretty clear idea about what I want for Starwalker‘s covers.

This is going to be a big project. It’s not just about the main Starwalker series: I want to release the short stories I’ve been doing on the crew as well, and collected editions of the main trilogy and the shorts. I counted them up: 18 ebooks. That’s 18 covers, 18 lots of editing, 18 of everything.

I want to do Starwalker justice and make a good, professional set of ebooks. I’ve read around a lot of advice about how to make a successful ebook, and they all say the same things:

• Write a good story
• Have a professional-looking cover
• Have it professionally edited and formatted.

I’m hoping that I can cover the first one all by myself, but the rest takes money. At this particular point in my life, I just don’t have that kind of capital to spend up-front.

So, the crowdfunding idea has been niggling at the back of my brain, like a seed that is determined to make roots and then sprout a tree out of the top of my head. For the past month or so, I’ve been doing research to see if I can figure out how to make it work.

Ultimately, it doesn’t seem to be too hard. I’ve looked around for advice from other writers and at examples of other writing/publishing campaigns (particularly, the successful ones!). I know what would make me inclined to give a project money, too.

The key things that a project seems to need are:

• Organisation. A well-organised campaign gives supporters faith that the project will be well-organised and successful.
• Clear goals. It’s shocking how many campaigns don’t make this information easy to find.
• Clear rewards, preferably with some creativity or something that can’t be obtained any other way.
• What the money will be used for. This information can be hard to find in many campaigns, and considering how much money some artists ask for, as a potential supporter, I’d really like to know what they plan to do with it all.
• A video. These drastically increase the likelihood of being successfully funded.

All seems pretty simple and straightforward. I’m naturally a pretty organised person, especially with something like this. I take pledges and goals pretty seriously, so I know how to make a set of promises that I am confident I can achieve. As a technical writer, I know how to lay information out in a user-friendly way.

The video is the main sticking point. Like graphics, it’s just not an area that I have any skills in. Luckily, I know at least one person who knows how to work this particular kind of magic. It’s going to take me some money to get it put together (and I’m going to have to film myself, ugh), but I think it’s achievable.

Work is underway. It’s all coming together. I’m excited to get the campaign kicked off. Soon, I’ll be begging you all for the spare change in your couch, to make this thing happen. Watch this space!

That reliable spark

After babbling about how my health was making my writing efforts suck lately, my energy crashed and I wound up heading home early from work last week, on my usual Starwalker posting day. There was no way that I was going to finish the post in any competent way, so I shelved it for the night.

After some rest, I was feeling better the next morning, as well as pretty determined to Get Stuff Done. The Starwalker post was finished up on the way to work, including sorting out a couple of gnarly issues that had been bothering me (and were also why I didn’t want to put the post up without working on it more). In the process, a couple of ideas about the next post appeared, and the whole next week of writing opened up for me.

This is part of why I push myself to be creative, even when I’m not really feeling it. Sometimes the piece will turn out crap and I’ll have to leave it until I’m feeling more on top of these things, at which point I can fix it up. Sometimes it’ll surprise me and I’ll wind up writing something I hadn’t intended but love all the same.

And doing something creative is the best thing to spark other creative stuff. My mind will roam randomly over possibilities and repercussions, and suddenly that grey area that was next week’s post suddenly has a shape and some shiny bits. Sometimes the whole next sequence will fall into place.

That’s what I love about writing the serial the way I do. I’ve been struggling with conceptualising this last section for a while, and a lot of it is still pretty murky, but the fog is lifting. Little by little, I can feel it taking shape. All those disparate ideas I’ve held onto for ages are coming into focus and sidling into place. It’s the best fun. It’s also a great relief; I can cling to the hope that I’m going to do my story and my readers justice.

After much toil (and fighting with work and getting home), last night’s Starwalker post went up on time. Here’s hoping that it works the way I planned it to. Time to start thinking about next week’s!