Adam Christopher | Steampunk and dark fantasy author. Now with added superheroes!
Adam Christopher is a New Zealand-born SF writer living in the sunny north of England.Seven frickin’ Wonders: Half freakin’ way
And in the nick of time too! Seven Wonders has crossed the magic 50,000 word mark (in fact it’s about 51,000-and-something even), and with a month to go, I can basically give myself a little personal NaNoWriMo challenge – 50,000 words in a month, or 1667 words a day. Right on target. And 50,000 words – half a novel – is nothing to be sneezed at. Seven Wonders is also about proving that Dark Heart wasn’t a fluke. It’s a milestone, no mistake. Sure, in ten years time I’ll look back and laugh at how wonderful I thought it was, but novels are big, long, scary, frequently heavy items. I’ve got 1.5 under my belt now. Top show.
I have to admit it’s also a relief to get Seven Wonders to this point. As I’ve alluded to in previous posts, I’ve found this novel to suffer from the “difficult second album” syndrome, but I’m starting to see this as a good thing. My next book is number two in the Dark Heart series, which is plotted, outlined, and sitting at the starting line with steam-powered engine revving. It’s going to be a good story, and I’m looking forward to writing it, and I’m glad that I hit the hump in Seven Wonders and not that one.
But that’s not to say Seven Wonders is suffering as a consequence, or is that annoying, must-get-it-done second novel that I’ll fling into a draw and forget about. Not at all. I knew from the beginning that it would be a challenge, and I deliberately made it so – the modern-day setting, the third-person narrative, these were conscious decisions made to ensure that Seven Wonders would be completely different in every way to Dark Heart - style, tone, setting, language, the works. Although I didn’t set out to construct an unclimeable mountain, or set impassable traps and roadblocks, I did begin with the intention that it was going to be a learning experience.
Like anything, writing requires practice. Having completed a novel in pseudo-Victorian first-person, I needed to write one in modern-day third-person, just to see what it was like, and whether or not this suited my personality. As it happens, I don’t think it does that much, but I’m making a damned good hash of it. Perservering out of my comfort zone is teaching me an awful lot about long-form fiction, which – given that I’m just a beginniner – is essential for me to improve my craft.
Which brings me to an important concept for all writers to remember: you are allowed to suck. The first draft is the vomit draft – it’s you typing out the story, transferring it from your head to the screen/paper before you forget it. Some bits will be great, some bits will be terrible. But the important thing is to get one word down after another until you reach the end. Then you can go back and fix it. Later. At the end. When you’re finished.
I’m trying to remind myself of this rule this week because while I’m hitting my daily target of 1667 words, for the past few days they’ve not been terribly good words. The story has reached a very crucial section where
Several Big and Important Things need to happen that change each and every one of the individual characters, effectively finishing Act II (most of which I haven’t really written yet) and leading into the final third.
It’s almost because the Several Big and Important Things are big and important that it has been very, very difficult to actually integrate them naturally into the story. First there was a big fight out on the streets of San Ventura between the superheroes and the supervillain. Then everyone went to the moon, and a couple of shocking secrets were revealed. There’s another fight (on the moon this time), and now the superheroes are retrospectively figuring out what went wrong, allowing them to return to the Earth and start Act III.
Which sounds great in the outline. And actually the outline is quite detailed at this point – this happens, that happens, X says that, Y realises this. But writing a story around it was surprisingly difficult. What has happened is that apart from the two big fights, the superheroes have basically sat around a table and discussed things very seriously for about a million pages, which is not only not particularly interesting, but at first glance seems to be the classic trap of plot exposition and info-dump. Take your protagonists, sit them down, and they’ll chinwag about the story for chapters without actually being involved in it.
Except – and here’s the problem – this is pretty much what the Seven Wonders would do anyway. They’re a committee of seven, they have big shiny conference rooms with 3D computer displays. Sitting down and talking about stuff while pretty graphics fly around is exactly their idea of fighting crime.
So what am I doing wrong? I’m worrying about the first draft, that’s what!
Yep, the last 3000 or so words will need reworking, probably significantly. But so what. All I need to do now is move everyone off the moon as quickly as possible (less chin-stroking around a conference table I think), and then on with the exciting Act III.
Panic averted. Carry on.
Superheroic writing plan and Seven Wonders progress report
Last week I did a bit of a mid-year assessment of my writing, comparing where I want to be with where I actually am, having a look at word counts and targets (daily, weekly, yearly), and sketching out not only writing work for the next six months, but looking ahead a little to see what projects I will have coming up well into 2010. It’s important for all writers – seasoned pros or enthusiastic amatuers – to set writing goals that are measurable and attainable, and it’s equally important to take stock at regular intervals to see what needs improving, and how the long-term writing plan needs adjusting. I even got a wall planner, wrote some dates and timelines on it, and stuck it to the wall next to my computer. It’s a good reference, and with a glance I can remind myself what I need to achieve this month, next month, before Christmas, etc.
For the moment, I have three main things on my mind. So for today, first on the list, is my superhero novel Seven Wonders.
Seven Wonders has a target of 100,000 words. I’ve just today hit 46,454. My own, self-imposed deadline for this is Friday 31st July, so I need to crank out about 2,000 words a day to get this first draft done.
Seven Wonders has been an interesting learning experience. I chose this as my second novel quite deliberately, as the modern-day third person style is very different to the pseudo-Victorian first person of my steampunk series. Writing is a continuous learning process, and having completed my first 100,000-word novel in one style and genre (Dark Heart), I needed to tackle a different genre and style to learn about that.
And it was hard work. I didn’t do a comprehensive outline either. Instead I wrote a list of 45 key events or plot points that I wanted to occur – most of them flow from one to the other, so arranging these ideas into a story order is relatively straight forward. I have a beginning, a middle, and an end, so really it’s just filling in the gaps and cementing the plot threads together.
What I soon discovered was that without a proper outline, I initially floundered a little. I found myself picking and choosing exciting moments from that list of 45, and writing those almost as self-contained vignettes. While each was satisfying in its own right, because I was skipping story chronology, I couldn’t quite visualise a cohesive narrative for the novel as a whole. Cue hair-tearing and table-thumping and declarations that writing is not for me and I should really be doing something else with my time.
Which, of course, is what every single writer thinks at some point or another. Looking back at Dark Heart, I had exactly the same feeling at almost exactly the same wordcount – that this was too hard, too big, too stupid, and 25,000 words really was enough of this nonsensical slog.
And again, as with Dark Heart, a few thousand words later it all seemed to snap into place. With Seven Wonders, it was when I picked a pivotal scene from that master list and wrote it, then an idea came to me and I wrote the next scene. Then the next, and the next. From here onwards I seem to be moving linearlly through the story, and I expect to continue to do so until I reach the end. This means that I’ll have the second quarter of the book to go back and write, but knowing how the land lies from words 50,000 to 100,000, it should be quite satifying to tie it up with some backstory and earlier events.
What I have I learnt so far from Seven Wonders? That writing is hard work, but it I can do it, and that throwing the computer out of the window after a few weeks of work is just a natural instinct best ignored.
According to my schedule, Seven Wonders will take me to the end of July. Following this, I have all of August pencilled in to edit and revise Dark Heart before I send it to my beta readers. If I can time it right, I should be in a good position to start querying agents with this – steampunk seems to be gaining (quite coincidentally) in popularity. Just this weekend, the latest issue of SFX magazine arrived with a big feature article on the genre, and there seemed to be a lot of interest generated by my guest posts at Babbling About Books.
But first things first. I have superheroes to torment and Californian cities to destroy. Someone has just betrayed the Seven Wonders, and the villain has met an untimely early death!
Tall, handsome and Canadian. And tall.
Two weeks ago I was trapped in a football stadium in Milton Keynes with the cast of Torchwood. I know, it sounds bad. But two of my personal heroes were there too, Leonard Nimoy and Nathan Fillion, so I was safe enough.
Anyway, to complete the portrait gallery, my picture with Nathan arrived the other day. Now, I knew Nathan Fillion was a handsome chap, but seeing him in person was still quite a surprise. He’s tall, and broad, and has great hair, great skin, and a great smile. And he’s tall. Have I mentioned tall? I’m just under 6 feet, more or less, so I’ll leave you to do the maths.
Tall, handsome and Canadian actor meets not-so- tall, not-so-handsome, not-so-Canadian SF writer. Hilarity ensues!
So there we go. I met Spock. I met Captain Malcolm Reynolds AND bestselling mystery writer Rick Castle (and I have the autograph to prove it). Life, I think, is complete.
Superhero and steampunk round-up
I know I promised some info on Crescent Rising this week, but we’re actually busy rebuilding things as our secret planning site for that collaborative fiction universe got hacked and/or taken offline. Hopefully the database will be retrieveable, but in the meantime it’s about time I updated a couple of links.
Superheroes!
Last month I attended the Bristol Comic Expo, which featured DC Comics Senior Executive Editor Dan DiDio as guest of honour. They’ve dropped off the main site now, but I wrote three reports for major US comic site Comic Book Resources. Snag them here:
The DC Universe – Story plans and upcoming titles and events for 2009-2010.
DC Nation – The first and only time a DC Nation has been hosted outside the US. Great discussion and feedback session.
Gibbins & Higgins Talk Watchmen – including CG genitalia.
Steampunk!
A couple of weeks ago I was invited to write an essay on steampunk, and why I chose to write in this slightly unusual genre, for Babbling About Books, the website of New York-based blogger Kate Garrabrant. Kate split my rather long essay into three chunks (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), but I’m going to reproduce it here in full. I’ve also added in some extra detail about the various subdivisions of steampunk, which I had glossed over in the main piece and then went into when prompted by some reader comments on Kate’s blog.
I’ll put this on its own page, but in the meantime, sit back with your favourite brand of absinthe and afix your Gentlemen Reading Goggles at setting four!
Top Hats and Hellfire – The mystique of Steampunk
1. “So, what are you writing about?”
Cue the big grin, the far-away look, the deep breath the preceeds five minutes of non-stop exposition. Hand-waving optional but recommended. Because you’ve just asked a writer their favourite question.
Well, most writers, anyway. For Those Guys it’s easy. “Oh yeah, Jack is a cop, and he’s about to retire when his young niece goes missing…”, or “Well, it’s about a princess called Missy who lives in magic castle…”. Those Guys, they have it so easy. Ten minutes later, your eager audience is delighted and expresses good luck and best wishes for the project. If they’re related to you in some way, most likely an elderly aunt that you don’t really know that well, then expect excited promises to buy the book when (if!) it comes out.
But then there’s us. We’re not anything special, we’re just average Joe writers working hard at our craft, just like Those Guys. Thing is, to answer the question “So, what are you writing about?”, we need more than five minutes and a wistful gaze. This expedition needs provisions. Tea, coffee, cake. Anything with sugar or stimulants. Then that deep breath (we have the same requirement for oxygen as Those Guys), and we’re off.
“So, when Babbage designed his difference engine… you know Babbage? And the difference engine? Like a big clockwork computer. No, not 1972, 1822. No, I don’t know how it works either. Okay, so let’s skip that… so then Byron, riding a steam-powered brass horse, becomes Prime Minister… the poet, Byron? Yes, steam-powered. Like a robot. Star Wars? Erm, not quite. Steam-powered, yes. Okay, so going back a bit, you know the industrial revolution…?”
This goes on for some time. Eventually you’ve laid the foundation, explained the world, and you’re fairly sure Great Aunt Nelly has remembered that Faraday is a time-travelling action hero, even if she doesn’t quite know that he really discovered electromagnetism in the mid-19th century. And then you get the seal of approval: “Well, good luck with the writing! I can’t wait to buy it in a bookstore!”. My advice at this point is to just smile and drink your tea. It doesn’t matter that you haven’t actually got to the story yet, the bit you’re actually writing. Get used it. As a writer of steampunk, incomprehension and potted histories of Victorian railway engineering go with the territory like gaslight and brass goggles.
2. What is steampunk?
I should preface this by saying I’m not an expert on steampunk. Steampunk is a vast, complex subcultural phenomenon that spans literature, fashion, philosophy, comic books. And while I go misty eyed over the thought of top-hatted Victorian explorers travelling to the moon in coal-fired brass rocket, or Sherlock Holmes packing a clockwork raygun as he battles the Giant Rat of Sumatra, I’m not particularly interested in wearing Edwardian frockcoats over brass breastplates decorated with clock gears. True enough, I’m probably slightly too interested in the facial hair of King George V as is normally considered healthy, but I’m not a “steampunk”, if such a thing even exists or is an appropriate label. See, I really don’t know. Steampunk as a fashion statement and as a way of life is, I think, a related but somewhat distinct movement from steampunk as a science fiction/fantasy subgenre.
Responsibilty disclaimed. So, what is steampunk?
Steampunk itself can be broaded divided into two different sorts – ‘period’ steampunk, and ‘modern’ steampunk.
Period steampunk is set, usually, during the height of the Victorian era. Top hats and canes, gaslight and London fog, moustachioed adventurers unwrapping mummies in the British museum. Every kind of Victorian pulp cliché and imagery, with added supertechnology. And by supertechnology, I mean technology which more or less resembles the correct period, but is floating away into the realms of fantasy. Steam-powered robots, clockwork rayguns, giant calculating machines that think. All related to the fundamentals of the late Industrial Revolution – namely steam power. Period steampunk is a vision of that period of industrial revolution accelerated, advancing science and technology to fantastical reaches, allowing the Victorians to colonise Mars in coal-fired rockets, or the monarchy overthrown by a clockwork computer. These are just examples. It could also be something much better. /futurama
‘Modern’ steampunk, by contrast, is set in the present day or the future, and postulates that the steam tech of the 19th century never went away, that the 20th century developments of electricity and electronics never happened. Instead, we get a charactiture of Victorian life in the present day – people still wear top hats, gentlemen discuss matters of great import in their exclusive clubs, and detectives chase cut-throats through the gaslit streets. But computers are clockwork, intercontinental travel is via supersonic steam-powered zeppilin, and a night at the movies is brought to you by Mebberson’s Magic Lantern, That Wondrous and Fully Patented All-Purpose Aetheric Transference Visiscope to Delight and Thrill All-Ages.
Both are alternative versions of our Earth. One is about a superadvanced Victorian age, exploring how the wonderfully inventive and eclectic society of the 19th century would use such fantasic technology. The other is about modern or future age which, despite disappearing into a steam-powered technological dead end, has flourished, using steam and coal for outrageous and decidedly modern achievements.
However, to build up a more accurate picture of the possibilities of steampunk, I need to expand on this rather cut and dried definition, because, obviously, you can have steampunk elements in a book which isn’t steampunk, and likewise you can have a steampunk book that is nothing to do with Victorians and the Industrial Revolution.
For the first example, I’m currently reading Lamentation, by Ken Scholes, which is a rather good high fantasy novel. Except it includes steam-powered robots called mechanoservitors, which are programmed by engraved metal scrolls.
Does this make Lamentation a steampunk novel? No, I’d certainly be happy calling it high fantasy. But it’s a steampunk element – ie, a steam-powered, out-of-place piece of supertechnology.
The second example is something like Stephen Hunt’s Jackelian series, starting with The Court of the Air and following with The Kingdom Beyond The Waves and most recently The Rise of the Iron Moon. The world of his novels is Victorian-esque, and mixes magic and steampunk (complete with airships!) very effectively, but it’s not set in England, or even on the Earth, unless it is in parallel universe several times removed. Later books do hint at it being modern steampunk, but set in the far, far future after some calamity, but I don’t want to give anything away!
Interestingly, Stephen’s first novel, For the Crown and the Dragon, is actually a very good example of real period steampunk, where the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century are fought with wizardry and steam-powered supertechnology.
So, back to that that difficult question “So, what are you writing?”. While steampunk is growing in popularity, it’s still a fairly specialised subgenre, and unlike mainstream fiction or even science ficton and fantasy, it relies heavily on context and historical knowledge. Sure, it’s pulpy, that’s part of the charm, but it’s also literate and intelligent to a degree that perhaps other genres aren’t. For example, in my own steampunk novel, Dark Heart (modern steampunk, I should add), you really need to know that in our universe, Prince Albert died in 1861, not Queen Victoria. Once you realise that he’s still around in 2009 while Queen Victoria succumbed to typhoid in his place 148 years ago, you can start to see how real history can be adapted, twisted, and rewritten to present a new, alternate reality of brass and leather and steam.
3. What’s the appeal?
Ah, to ask the unanswerable. Why do some people like olives, and why do some people like Westerns. I suspect most fans of steampunk, the literary genre at least, feel nostalgic for an imaginary Golden Age that waxed and waned 150 years before their birth. An age where everything had it’s place, where formal headwear was required when out of doors, where men could smoke cigars and stroke their waxed moustaches (their own, I imagine, although I’m sure mutual beard-stroking is a niche market) and women could be frightfully brave and adventurous and yet still look hot in a bustle.
But clearly to be a fan of such a bizarre genre isn’t as strange as all that. Alan Moore, the greatest comic writer there has ever been, has gathered a huge following with the decidedly steampunk League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and super-gravitational science hero Tom Strong. Northern Lights – aka The Golden Compass – features airships and clockwork magic. Steampunk is in now like it never has been before. Of course, steampunk existed even in the Victorian age itself – Jules Verne and HG Wells, with their Captain Nemos and First Men in the Moon, were not only the first writers of science fiction, they were also the finest proponents of genuinely period steampunk.
And let’s face it, a man really should never be without a hat while outdoors. It’s just not seemly.
4. Writing steampunk
And here, dear reader, I must admit to a frank truth that may, if administered without due preparation and preface, be prone to cause such surprise and shock that certain jointed extremeities may with sudden impulse become quite weak, necessitating an immediate adoption of the reclined position and the furious fanning of whatever Popular Magazines may lie close to hand, preferably with the able skill of a personal friend.
Because, friend, writing steampunk is a damn good lark.
It’s not easy. If you want to sink right into the world, you pretty much need to hunker down in front of your keyboard and pretend you’re Sir Aurther Conan Doyle. You need to get the style, the wordage, of an era and style long since passed. If you can crack it without throwing your computer off the nearest convenient balcony, it’s a hoot.
Fun it may be, exhausting it most certainly is. My first official foray into steampunk was a novella, something like 26,000 words, called The Devil in Chains. I wrote it for the web zine Pantechnicon, and it was split into two parts and published in 2008-2009, and it’s also available as an eBook for the iPhone/iPod touch.
To give a practical demonstration of the difficulty in describing steampunk to an unknowing audience, here’s the blurb I finally came up with. This is approximately the 34th draft, give or take.
December 14th, 1861. Queen Victoria dies from typhoid fever. A distraught Prince Albert instigates a coup and takes direct control of the Empire. A patron of science, he steers the path of progress down a dark and dangerous road, antagonizing the forces of magic and the occult as he strives to bring his queen back from the other side. As the 21st century dawns, the world is trapped in a Victorian caricature, industry powered by sun and steam. And nearly 150 years since the death of his wife, Albert still fights to bring her back, his lifespan unnaturally extended with steam power and black arts.
When journalist Jackson Clarke is sent to the Isle of Man to investigate the tale of a talking animal, he unwittingly steps into a battle between mankind and an ancient evil imprisoned beneath the peaceful island. Charged with treason and cut off from the mainland, can Clarke defeat the Devil in Chains?
Gripping stuff, I hope you’ll agree. I actually wrote it almost as a trial run for my first steampunk novel, Dark Heart, which features the two main characters introduced in The Devil in Chains, now in partnership many years later as part of an occult-detective agency. In Dark Heart, the agency is sent by the British government to investigate a poltergeist outbreak in the West African jungle, where they uncover a buried voodoo god and a zombie army. Meanwhile, an explosion rips through the heart of London and a steam-powered serial killer stalks the streets.
Oh yeah, and an airship crashes into the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral.
See? Steampunk is fun! The pulpiness of it is part of the appeal, letting you play with clichés and familiar tropes, welding them together to form something quite, quite wonderful. Despite what appears to be a fairly rigid form, in many ways steampunk actually allows far more creative freedom that regular space-faring science fiction or even fantasy – the more outrageous the steampunk scenario, the more fun it is hammering in to the pseudo-Victorian framework. One of my current projects is a collaborative fictional universe, Cresent Rising, set in a single location, the mythical city of Fell Hold, and as part of that I’m writing a steampunk story set in an early period of the city’s history. The title started as a joke – Captain Carson and the Case of the Robot Zombie – but then I realised it was actually perfect. Fitting a plot around it was hard work, but immensely satisfying once all the pieces had been slotted together. And this is an example of that other-worldly steampunk – it’s not Victorian England, although it might be a parallel universe several times removed.
5. The future of steampunk
What’s next? Well, for me, getting that draft of Dark Heart ready to pitch to an agent, while plotting Captain Carson’s adventures in Fell Hold City. In the meantime, I’m writing a superhero novel called Seven Wonders – more as a break from the rigours of first-person Victoriana – but when that’s done, it’s on to Dark Heart II. And then III, and then IV. And then… well, you get the picture.
The popularity of steampunk and it’s various subcategories – Deiselpunk, Oilpunk, NeoEdwardian – is likely to come and go, just as with any genre. You must never write just to fit a trend, because by the time your book is out the trend will be long dead. But for fans and enthusiasts of brass and leather and steam and robots and airships and rockets and, well, anything that the extraordinary and unique Victorians could never had built in their wildest imaginings, there are fog-shrouded cities to explore, robotic murders to solve, and Venusian landscapes to visit with hot-air balloons. All with tophat and cane and a stiff upper lip.
And brass goggles. Don’t forget the goggles.
Writing inventory, June 2009
This blog is about writing. In fact, my life is about writing. So I’m going to talk more about it, in more detail. Sounds good. But first it’s about time to take a quick stock check to see what I’ve done so far, what I’m doing now, and what’s up next.
Current projects
Projects underway and being typed, if I manage to actually sit in front of my computer for long enough. Note to self: sit down and write.
Seven Wonders (superhero novel, 36,569/100,000 words (36.5%) - the main project is my second novel, Seven Wonders. It’s proving to be fairly difficult to concentrate on, but looking back at the writing process on my first novel, Dark Heart, I actually think I’m at about the same stage. It’s the one that all writers will be intimately familar with, where everything you write is the most godawful trash ever created, and that every single keystroke is the most appalling agony. You sit at the computer and sweat blood trying to work out what to say, and then when you’re done for the day you’ve convinced yourself that you really need to give this up and go work in a fast food chain. So just business as usual then.
Crescent Rising (collaborative fiction project, world building/plotting stage) - I haven’t talked about this yet, and it will be the subject of its own blog post this week. But to give you the brief, Crescent Rising is a collaborative universe set in and around Fell Hold City, split across different timezones. There’s six of us working on it, and it’s still in the early stages, but I’m co-coordinator for two of the four main time zones. This means developing a world bible for the zones, as well as plotting stories within the zone.
Completed projects
Written. Done. Dusted. Published or awaiting the second draft.
Dark Heart (steampunk novel, 118,750 words) - my magnus opus! Well, possibly not, but my first completed novel anyway. If nothing else it showed I could write at length and to style (and believe me, first-person pseudo-Victoriana from about six different PoVs was no walk in the park!). The final length needs to be 100,000 words, so it is currently sitting in draw maturing, and once I’m done with the first draft of Seven Wonders I’ll start the edit on it. Getting it to length should be pretty straightforward, I hope. Once the draft is polished, I’ll be sending it around a group of private readers for their critiques, and then once ship-shape and Bristol fashion it’ll be time to query agents!
The Devil in Chains (novella, 24,160 words) - Originally written for the eZine Pantechnicon, and now available as an eBook for the iPod touch/iPhone (and also a PDF), this steampunk tale started as a short story and grew, and grew, and grew. It’s a prequel to Dark Heart, although entirely self-contained, and features a Turk-head meerschaum pipe (among other things).
The Unpopular Opinion of Reverend Tobias Thackery (short story, 7143 words) - Again, something I haven’t mentioned much of. This is a weird tale written specifically for a magazine. I submitted it, and now I have to wait at least 12 weeks for a yes or no. More on this if and when I get a response!
Future projects
I’m a writer, I’m full of ideas. Which is lucky I guess – writer’s block has never affected me, and I have more ideas, notes, plots, concepts, etc, that I can record. So for future projects, I don’t mean a list of everything I can think of to write in the future, I mean projects that I have properly mapped out to at least some degree, ones that I can (and intend to) start writing immediately, when the current project I’m on finishes.
The Eleventh Hour (steampunk novel, part of the Dark Heart series) - This was actually plotted as something else, long ago, but I since realised it would fit the world of Clarke and Bellamy rather well. The plot needs some further adjustment to complete the transition, but other than that this is novel #3 for me.
The Dead Sands (YA novel, standalone) – I am actually in danger of forgetting what this is about. Each time I bring it to mind I find a bit of the plot has vanished, so I should really start taking some serious notes on it ASAP. It’s a modern day YA adventure, with a target wordcount of 80k. Think Children of the Stones meets Quatermass and the Pit. With added sand.
Captain Carson and the Case of the Robot Zombie (Crescent Rising Golden Age novella) - novella or long short story, I’m not sure. What I do know is that anything I write comes out way longer than expected! This is part of the collaborative city project I’ve mentioned above, and will be the first story set in Fell Hold’s ‘Golden Age’ period, which roughly corresponds to late Victorian England. It is – obviously – a magical steampunk fantasy, featuring a retired polar explorer, a steam-powered superhero, and a ship full of… well, I don’t want to give it away. More on this on Thursday. Work on this will actually start fairly soon, before Seven Wonders is finished, so time management will become crucial I suspect or neither will get finished.
And that’s it for now. I appear to have written 186,622 words in total so far. My target for this year was an ambitious 486,400 words, which I doubt I will hit. However, you never know! The aim for 2010 is 1 million words, or 2,739 words each and every single day.
Well, it’s good to have a dream, isn’t it!
Mild/infrequent tobacco use, sadistic realistic violence
With the release of the next major update to the iPhone/iPod touch operating system, iPhone OS 3.0, just under two weeks away, everyone who has content available via the iTunes app store needs to provide a ratings summary for Apple, as OS 3.0 allows parental control of audio, video and application content using a ratings system.
Which means for me, and other authors with fiction available for sale as an eBook app, we have to complete a ratings sheet for each story.
Which is, I have to say, far more fun than it really should be. Okay, at the moment I only have one eBook available – my steampunk novella, The Devil in Chains - and I’m sure the novelty wears off after you’ve rated your seventh title, but just for today I can scratch my head and try to figure out which of Apple’s rating categories applies to my story, and which don’t.
For the official record, here’s the checklist:
Cartoon or fantasy violence – infrequent/mild. I suppose getting shot in the back with a rifle that fires solar plasma is classed as fantasy violence. Likewise the airship attack on the voodoo dopplegangers, and later the zombie siege on the farmhouse, are inherently unrealistic events. But they’re not the crux of the story and they’re not particularly graphic or described in visceral detail.
Realistic violence – none. See above. Nobody is shot with a normal gun, and the story is decidedly lacking in swift uppercuts. Note to self: add more punching in the next story.
Sexual content or nudity – none. Dang, I think I’ve missed a trick. Jackson Clarke never unbuttons his top collar, and Bellamy’s hot sister Zoe (me-ow!) doesn’t make her first appearance until the novel-length sequel, Dark Heart.
Profanity or Crude Humor – none. I don’t think Clarke’s favourite expression, “Good lord”, counts for much in these cynical times. Alas!
Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References – infrequent/mild. Cigars and cigarillos ahoy! Steampunk wouldn’t be the same without someone sucking on an exotic blend, if you’ll pardon the expression. The Devil in Chains even stars a meerschaum pipe. I’m quite pleased with that.
Mature/Suggestive Themes – none. I’m assuming this is related to sexual content, as the body horror and possession elements of the story are certainly mature but covered by the category after next.
Simulated Gambling – none. I must remember to add a rollercoaster game of contract bridge to the next eBook, and develop and accompanying steampunk cardgame app to go with it, just so I can check something in this category.
Horror/fear Themes – frequent/intense. Here we go! The Devil in Chains is fantasy steampunk horror, dealing as it does with an ancient god and bodily possession, shadowy dopplegangers and buried evil. If it’s not frequent/intense horror/fear, it’s not The Devil in Chains! Hmm, I sense a catchphrase coming on…
Prolonged graphic or sadistic realistic violence – none. Oh my. Even the category title raises an eyebrow. When you add this to the next category…
Graphic sexual content and nudity – none. … you get the feeling this is like those custom’s forms which ask “Have you ever been a member of the Nazi government of Germany?” or “Do you plan to orchestrate and carry out terrorist acts while in the United States?” that are designed, presumably, to catch exceedingly dim villains when they fly in from their underground lairs. Given that Apple’s terms and conditions forbid the pornographic, obscene and offensive, I suspect that if you tick anything in these categories your iTunes content will be subjected to the digital equivalent of an airport cavity search.
I don’t know what the ratings system on the store looks like once Apple flicks the switch, but I can now rest happily that the voodoo steampunk adventures of Dr Clarke and Alexander Bellamy are now officially certified as being rather scary.
Captain Tightpants and the green-blooded hobgoblin
Whoever said you should never meet your heroes was clearly an idiot. I spent six hours yesterday driving to and from Collectormania at Milton Keynes to spent about thirty seconds with two of my own heroes, Nathan Fillion and Leonard Nimoy, and it was worth every mile. Even the permanent roadworks at Birmingham (a ruse to get people on to the M6 Toll, I’m certain) and torrential downpour that only a British summer can give couldn’t remove the smile from my face.
I suppose there’s nothing much to say. Nathan is tall, broad, handsome, has great hair, perfect skin, walks with a film star swagger and was utterly charming and delightful. Seeing my autograph request, he asked where my wife was (she couldn’t make it down), laughed when I asked him to sign a Castle picture as Richard Castle, and even wrote a neat tagline above the name (”Murder, he wrote!”). It was especially cool to meet him now, having just finished watching the completely superb first season of Castle a few weeks ago. I meant to ask when shooting starts on season two, but quite frankly I was far too star struck to manage much conversation.
I did actually get a pic with him personally, which is coming by post, but in the meantime I snuck in this snap while standing in the autograph queue.
Rick Castle himself signs his latest bestseller!
Leonard Nimoy, on the other hand, was an entirely different prospect. I’m not sure I’ve ever met quite such a legend as he, and certainly his autograph queue was the longest of the day. But he was also charming, a real gent, signing a picture of Spock for me (no dedication), saying it was a pleasure with a smile. And then later on I got a little closer and exchange a handshake and some polite chit chat.
Famous actor Leonard Nimoy and not quite so famous SF author Adam Christopher, Sunday 7th June, 2009. That's Nimoy on the right.
And that was it. A entire day and probably a minute of rubbing shoulders with two personal heroes. I also got fairly close to Philip Glenister and the Ashes to Ashes Audi, but possibly the biggest surprise of the day was that people actually seem to have watched Torchwood, going by the crowds of adoring fans the cast appeared to attract.
Funny old world, innit?
The best beard in fantasy
Let me tell you about all the ways that Patrick Rothfuss is a god among men.
Firstly, he’s a nice guy. Really nice. Secondly, he has an awesome beard. Really awesome. It’s long and full and has two grey streaks in it. Thirdly, he fences, like me, and fences epee, like me.
Fourthly, he wrote the best book I’ve ever read, The Name of the Wind. It’s his first novel. It’s something like 250,000 words of heaven. And for all that length, not a single word is wasted, every one is essential. It’s brilliant.
Fifthly, Patrick Rothfuss signed a copy of this book for me last night when he gave a talk at the Deansgate Waterstones in Manchester. He laughed at my quote request (despite someone ahead of me in the line stealing it) and chatted to my wife.
All of these things make Pat awesome. Awesome to the max.
I first got wind of The Name of the Wind around April 2007, when Pat was interviewed on my favourite book-related podcast, DragonPage Cover to Cover. That interview more than two years ago was fascinating, as he described all the things he did wrong when it comes to writing a fantasy novel, and how, despite breaking every publishing rule in the book (a 250,000-word first novel with no bad guy?), he produced one of the greatest fantasy novels ever written. Well, that’s not quite how he described his own book, that’s how I’m describing it.
I picked it up in December 2007, having been given a bookstore gift card. I read the book in December 2008, mostly in my car in a parking lot near my old workplace each freezing winter morning. When I was done, I wondered why on Earth it had taken me more than a year and half to read this work of art.
I forgot my camera last night, but it was a terrific couple of hours. He read from book two in the Kingkiller Chronicles, and talked about how the version of The Name of the Wind that was published was actually the 400th draft. This was particularly interesting, because, as he pointed out, that meant there were 399 versions of the novel before the published version that were not as good. It was all, he said, down to perseverance. Although I didn’t get a chance to ask him about his writing habits, he hit the money with that point. Perserverence.
As a writer, you have to keep going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going. Write one book, then a second, then a third, then a fourth, then a fifth, then a sixth. Even though The Name of the Wind is Pat’s first book, he actually wrote it 400 times, so he had a lot of practice and a lot of sticking power.
So, any lessons learnt from last night? Yep. Write and keep writing, and then when you’re done, write some more.
On the way out, my wife said I could grow a beard like Pat’s when I get my book deal. I think I can probably beat Pat in that department, as I’ve got goddamn white in my beard (none of this half-assed grey business). So I’m really looking forward to the day when we meet up as fellow authors at a con somewhere, and can argue about fantasy and beards and the best episode of Firefly long into the night.
The difficult second album
This is weird.
Back when I was writing my first novel, Dark Heart, I got about a third of the way through and started to panic. I was finding it hard to write in the pseudo-Victorian style, and as I’d decided to make it first person from about six different points of view it seemed like I was deliberately making it as difficult as possible. I considered stopping, and switching to my superhero story (now called Seven Wonders), which I thought would be much easier as it’s a modern-day, third-person book. Standard fare, easy to write.
Fortunately I saw good sense and kept on with Dark Heart, and shortly after my angst I found the natural pace of it and the whole thing took off. I was done in a couple of months, with 120,000-ish words done. That book was put in the draw to be worried about later this year.
Seven Wonders has reached about 20,000 words, and is completely horrible to write. This is my first full-length third-person novel, and I’m finding the style very, very dull. Sure, I’ve read plenty of great third-person books, and most people prefer it to first (and nobody uses second, unless the book is deliberately strange). But it’s boring to write, and boring to read back. Maybe I’m destined to write steampunk and alternate Victorian histories. Maybe superheroes, as much as I love them, are not for me, at least in prose form.
So now it occurs to me I’ve hit exactly the same point as I did in Dark Heart, where I have convinced myself it’s all worthless and that I’m better off switching to something else.
It feels worse this time, but then I’m probably just saying that. I’m sure the Dark Heart roadblock was just as bad. And the thing is I need to get my writing habits down pat, which means finishing this 100,000 word novel so I can get on to the next one. If I allow myself to stop a book mid-flow once, I’ll let myself do it twice, three times, etc. By the year’s end I’ll have written half a million words and have four abandoned novels.
The problem, I suppose, is that I’m worrying about what I write. There are two things I need to remind myself of.
One, the first draft is going to be cack. This is the vomit draft, the type anything draft, the get the story down on paper so you don’t forget the plot draft. This is about typing 100,000 words, one after another, until I reach the end. Nobody will ever read this draft. Which brings me to:
Two, any and all problems in the first draft will be fixed in the rewrite. So I write a page of the worst prose ever produced by a human being. So what? When it comes to draft two, I’ll spot it a mile off and will rewrite it until it’s good. Easy.
At least that’s how it’s supposed to work. If I can fool my conscious mind into believing those two facts, perhaps my subconscious will do the work for me and will get the remaining 80,000 words down. And the quicker I get those words down, the quicker I can file this away as novel number 2, and get on with the third. Novel 1 was an achievement; novel 2 will show me that it wasn’t a fluke.
Ok, problem solved. Thanks for listening!
The One Rule, and how I broke it
No sooner had I posted my little lecture on making writing the ONLY thing you do, I went and got a gig reporting on the Bristol Comic Expo last weekend. I knew as soon as it was arranged that this was going to put a serious dent in my writing schedule, and I was dead right. Quite apart from the 6-hour round trip to Bristol and back, and two nights away from home, taking notes from three 1-hour audio recordings, then turning them into three 3000-word articles, is one metric buttload of work – this, and the fact that I bizzarely decided to write a short story at the same time (more on that later). But as a DC fan through-and-through, the chance to hear Dan DiDio in person was just too good an opportunity to miss, and despite it taking a big bite out of my novel time, it was a fantastic weekend. My first report is up on CBR, and you can enjoy it here. My hat is off to CBR editor Jonah Weiland for making my articles look so good with lots of tasty comic art to accompany them!
However, although my wordcount suffered, it was a very worthwhile experience for one important reason. Getting a peek into the inner workings of a comics company as large as DC was an incredible inspiration – there are dozens of creators, writers and artists working very hard to keep an entire universe of characters and storylines going. The planning and management of such a vast mythos as the DCU requires, according to Dan, rooms full of whiteboards and blackboards and story charts, all kept under tight security.
And then it occurred to me. It was all about the story. Hearing it from Dan himself, and the host of DC creators who were at the expo, it was patently clear that the number one priority was telling good stories.
That, to me, is a wonderful inspiration, that people are striving so hard to entertain others with works of fiction. And really, fiction, the written word – be it book, novel, short story, comic, screenplay, theatre script, even the scripting in a computer game – is what most of us spend most of our leisure time seeking. Human culture derives most of its entertainment – and let’s face it, the persuit of happiness is mainly what life is about – from storytelling.
This is perhaps not news to a lot of people. But sometimes you come to these kind of realisations, even though it was staring you right in the face. This is a good thing.
So after a weekend and a week buried deep in the DC universe, I’ve emerged recharged and re-inspired. And of course, I happen to actually be writing a superhero novel anyway, caught somewhere between the brightly coloured spandex of the Justice League of America and the muted adult tones of Watchmen.
Seven Wonders then has hit 14,377 words, which leaves 85,663 to go. I’ll need to rejig my timetable as I’m about two weeks off schedule, but with a bit of luck this new-found creative energy will let me build up a bit of momentum, and I’ll be able to get some extra words down to catch up. And in fact the 6,800 word short story I wrote in the three days immediately following from Bristol was a really good exercise in getting the imagination back in gear.
But more on that later!
