Woohoo! At last, at last. Go listen to “Chasers” on Escape Pod. The recording is fantastic!
Month: August 2012
Time is running out
Do you have a Smashwords coupon for Baker’s Dozen? You know, the ones that were in the eggs at LibertyCon? Well, you better use it soon; coupon expires this Wednesday.
Don’t have a coupon? Or maybe you’re not confident it? Here’s the how-to. (You will need to set up an account if you don’t have one.)
- Go to the Baker’s Dozen listing on Smashwords.
- Add the book to your cart.
- Type the coupon code AB49T in the coupon code box.
- Pay a buck.
- Download the book in your choice of formats. File is easily transferable from your computer to any electronic device through your USB connection, or by any more clever method you might know.
- Enjoy 13 great stories. Live a more fulfilled life.
As an added bonus (in no way related to the coupon’s expiration other than by cosmic coincidence), an audio presentation of “Chasers”, will reportedly be released on Escape Pod on Thursday.
Good news for “Leech Run” fans
I think my space pirate story, “Leech Run” may be my most widely appreciated story to date. It was originally published in Pill Hill Press’s Zero Gravity anthology, then ran in Escape Pod episode 303. I have received numerous comments requesting a sequel. It’s been something I was interested in but some other project always got in the way. Recently, though, I’ve had a fair amount of project-stall and I really needed something short to sink my teeth into.
So, I just finished outlining the sequel to “Leech Run”. The story is as yet untitled, but those tend to come last anyway. This new story will pick up right where LR left off, with Titan’s wounded ship approaching the nearest planet with a load full of energy-draining leeches including one bound class-four leech. Let’s say that things don’t go smoothly. What happens? Well, I’ll let you know where to find the story once I get the thing written. I’m hoping to power through a draft by he end of the month. Yes, even with school in session. I’m hoping the outline, which I seldom use for a short story, will help me power through. Fingers crossed.
“Forthcoming” has almost arrived
I confess, impatience got the better of me. So I queried the asst. editor at Escape Pod to find out whether the “forthcoming” on my bibliography was a perpetual status. It seems not. He confirmed that “Chasers” is slated for air later this month.
It was February when I found out EP was going to give my 2004 story “Chasers” the audio treatment. (That’s a story from 2004, not about 2004.) This space operatic story has long been a favorite of at least one of my beta readers. It’s a colonization story. It’s a mining story. It’s a space ship story. But more than anything, it’s a story about Darwinian competition in interplanetary economics. No, it’s mostly about guys in space ships going really fast.
And yes, “Chasers” is in Baker’s Dozen.
I’ll be sure to plug the heck out of the Escape Pod issue when the time draws closer. I can’t wait to hear it! If you can’t wait, you can listen to the EP recording of “Leech Run” right now.
The Good, the Bad, and the Update
Stuff going on all over the place here in Chaos land. Some are good, some are bad, some are just continuations of stuff I’ve mentioned before. I will refrain from classifying in order to protect the innocent and the guilty.
First, summer ends and school starts tomorrow. Well, inservice anyway. I got about 10% of the writing I wanted done over the summer, so I’ll go ahead and classify that part as bad. I can say I’m eager to see this particular summer end, so I guess that hits good. So maybe it’s a wash. Either way, I’m up early and back at it tomorrow.
In other news, I’m starting to get adjusted to my bi-pap machine. I’ve mentioned it before; it keeps pressure on my airway to combat apnea and snoring. The foundation of the house appreciates the snore reduction. It’s still an odd sensation and I occasionally feel like the thing is suffocating me, but less and less. I’ve started spending time reading before bed with the mask on to get used to it before trying to sleep in it. I will be bringing the machine with me to cons in the future which should make roommates a more realistic possibility.
Speaking of reading, I’ve started reading Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy which I picked up at LibertyCon. It’s interesting. So far, it’s pretty much a caper story set in a fantasy world. A lot of the powers in the story remind me of the movie Push (Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning), which was a better film than its box office suggests. The two don’t seem to be related, though. Anyway, I’m really enjoying the first book. I’m tempted to bring it to the inservice tomorrow, but no. I’m too straight-laced to do that, alas.
What else? The same middle scene of my steampunk fairytale continues to defy me. I think I need to completely reimagine the scene. That may well mean rereading the story up to that point. I bet there’s a flaw before that scene that can be tweaked to lend to the proper flow. I wanted to have a funcional draft before I went back to school. I don’t. Oh well.
And finally, I am toying with the idea of creating a podcast. I’m not 100% what format I’m after. I think I’ll do a reading as a dry run with the tech available to me to see how practical this idea is. If it sounds like garbage, I’ll have to abandon the idea until I can afford decent equipment. This is likely a reaction to listening to a lot of Writing Excuses of late. I’m probably leaning toward an informal interview style, mostly via skype. Anyway, it’s still an idea at stage two out of fifty, but I think it would be fun.
So, That’s the updates on me. And I made it all the way through without telling you to go to Smashwords or the Kindle Store to buy Baker’s Dozen. Okay, almost all the way through. If you have a Smashwords coupon, it expires on the 22nd, so go get it. And I am looking for reviewers still. If you’ve ever reviewed stuff before and/or have significant web traffic, send me an email so we can work out a free ebook arrangement.
Until next time, stay chaotic. (Trying out a new catchphrase. Maybe?)
Fixing the end broke the middle
Today I finally stuck a fork in the first draft of my Steampunk fairytale story. It had taken a long time to tinker with the next to last scene to make the action build correctly. I wasn’t thrilled with what I had, but I had something workable and moved on to the scene with the final confrontation. (Maybe it was more than one final scene, but that’s beside the point.) The ending from the previous draft worked okay, so I tweaked it a bit and put it in…and realized my new middle scene had made the ending impossible.
Boo.
The easiest thing to do is probably to change the ending. Heck, it’s the last four paragraphs that need to be changed. That’s it. But changing the ending to fit the middle (that I wasn’t thrilled with) takes away the cruel poetry imparted on the bad guy. So instead I really need to change that &@#$ middle scene.
So what’s up with the middle scene? Well, it’s a heist subplot (or event) in the middle of a story. The heist will end up successful, that much is certain (to make the story work). That doesn’t mean it has to go smoothly. In fact it should not go smoothly. When I ask myself, as the writer, “does their plan work?” the answer needs to be either “yes, but…” or “not quite, yet…” I have kind of pinched myself into a corner with it. Based on the surrounding material, the answer pretty much just needs to be “yes, it works.” Not acceptable in this story. (That’s only entertaining if George Clooney and Brad Pitt do it…and not in a sequel.) Too cut-and-dry. Too tidy. The story doesn’t need tidy there; it needs to be messy. It needs to dial up the tension.
I think the solution is going to force changes on the end, unfortunately. I mean, there needs to be a cost to the heist. It could cost a character’s life, but I’m not prepared to go there. So the cost needs to be in terms of assets. The main asset the “good guys” have is…that would be spoiling, but it was needed for the ending. Alas, I see no way around that. I think I can make the heist more successful than planned in order to trick the ending into working again. Basically, plan to use asset X to procure target Y; X is destroyed in the process of obtaining Y, but they also get bonus Z.
Hmm…did blogging just solve my dilemma? That would be pretty sweet. I’m sure this story has other issues. Perhaps some more vague rambling will help me devise fixes for those too.
Scott W. Baker .net 