Still essentially on a writing vacation (five days so far!). No presssing deadlines to attack, no novel to finish. It actaully feels good to relax a little, so good I might take another week...

So, in lieu of wordcounts, I leave you with the wisdom of the undead regarding the holiday season.

As a treat to my readers, the ever-entertaining Jon Gibbs (jongibbs) has agreed to do a guest blog here on this Thanksgiving. I really think he asks a very relevant question, and I hope you enjoy it:



Before we start, I’d like to thank Gustavo for allowing me to guest post on his blog.

This is a typical big-hearted gesture from a well-respected and thoroughly decent chap. Despite rumors to the contrary, I can confirm his generosity has absolutely nothing to do with certain, shall we say ‘incriminating,’ photographs, which I definitely do not have in my possession (at least, not now I’ve mailed him the negatives).

Right. Now that’s cleared up, let’s get down to business.

Why do you write the length you do?

This year, I tried my hand at flash (up to 1,000 words) and micro fiction (100 words or less). I even wrote my first ever short story. I had a lot of fun, and even a little success with some of them, but when it comes down to it, I prefer writing novels.

I love the freedom you get from having 90K words to play with. Sure, I have to develop characters, pile on the conflict and keep the story moving throughout, just like in a short story, but there are so many minor plotlines to explore, so many lesser characters to intertwine with the main hero, I find it a much more satisfying experience.

That’s not to say it’s all wine and roses, heck no. I’ve fallen down more plot holes and spent more time searching for a way back to the main story from one of those ‘Ooh, wouldn’t it be great if I had him do this!’ detours than I care to remember. One look at my icon will tell you how often I’ve pulled my hair out because I couldn’t get two plot threads to weave into the overall story, no matter how much I yelled at my computer screen.

Having said that, from my (albeit limited) experience in the field, I don’t think you short story writers have it any easier. It’s hard to fit interesting characters, snappy dialogue and a start, middle & end into just a few pages, all in a way that makes the reader sit up and take notice.

I’m currently looking at ideas for my next novel, which I’ll start in January, but I plan to write more shorts, or at least flash pieces, next year. I think it’s good to mix it up a little, not just in length but in genre too. It’s fun to see how the other half lives. Even so, however much I enjoy writing those shorter stories, I know I’ll always come back to novels.

How about you?

What’s your preferred word count?

Why do you write the length you do?


About Jon Gibbs:
Some of you already know Jon from his Live Journal blog, An Englishman in New Jersey . Anyone who’s met him in person can confirm that the claim he makes in his LJ profile is 100% true – He doesn’t look at all like Brad Pitt. On the other hand if Elmer Fudd had an older cousin…

Apparently, he left school at the age of sixteen after spending much of his time standing in the corner being told, “No, no, Gibbs. Face the class. We must all learn to suffer.”

He says he writes books (none of which have been published yet, so we’ll just have to take his word for that), and some short stories (mostly flash fiction), of which he has sold only one. Oh, and he also founded that New Jersey Authors’ Network thing.

Continuing to catch up on the reviews of things I've read recently, I wanted to mention Isaac Asimov's Mothers Day, edited by Gardner Dozois and Sheila Williams. As you might imagine, this is a collection of stories lifted from the pages of Asimov's magazine which have a mother of some shape or description playing a major role - and since they come from Asimov's, there are some big names in this one.

The interesting thing about this one is that, unlike other books I've read in this collection (this one was published in 2000), this one mixes fantasy and science fiction with no qualms whatsoever. So you have a wide range of stories, from distant worlds to urban fantastic. There was one story that, in my mind REALLY stood out from the rest: "Bibi", by Mike Resnick and Susan Schwartz, which was a fifty page novella worth the cover price by itself. The rest were well-crafted, pleasant and competent, but a bit grey, both things I've noticed in stories published by Asimov's. Even the multi-award winning "Even the Queen", which, admittedly, I'd read before, seemed dull (and left me feeling that 1992 must have been a VERY bad year for short stories for that one to garner so many prizes, even though it wasn't bad. Or maybe it was just at the height of the PC craze in the US, and we missed the point everywhere else).

So, not perfect, but a good read with one truly memorable story.

Also a reminder: tomorrow is guest blog day, with jongibbs making an appearance!

I finished reading The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling last night (catching up on my classics reading), and was simply blown away by the sheer beauty of the prose. When reading, it's hard to believe that such well-written books were written for children. The descriptions are stunning, making you feel, by turns, the lush humidity of the teeming jungle and the stark emptiness of the arctic. It's simply amazing, and if you haven't done so, I strongly recommend you read this one (although I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to epople who are sensitive regarding race issues, as some of the assumptions are... a hundred years old).

It also got me to comparing this to newer books for children (or the ever misnamed YA category). It's easy to see why criitics consider Stephanie Meyer (to take a well-known example - I have nothing against her) to be a producer of indigestible trash. When you compare her writing with Kipling's, it is abysmal.

The saddest part, however, is that it isn't the modern writers' fault. Today's youth would never digest anything with the kind of description Kipling uses, but it's sad to see just how far the intellectual level of the average young reader has fallen in just over a century,


Also finished reading the Wiinter 2008 edition of Ad Astra (slowly but surely getting up-to-date on my magazine reading as well). I won this one as part of the prize for being one of the winners in the Return to Luna contest, and found it extremely interesting. It pushes the pro-space agenda hard (something I happen to agree with), but in my opinion, its most valuable characteristic is that it highlights the long-term nature of space exploration, and the kind of planning it requires. Interesting.

I got 250 words into the first chapter of a new novel (and will be off writing, probably for the next couple of weeks). This one is a mainstream-thriller type thing. Let's see how it evolves, as I'm currently planning no speculative elements.

Really. I mean it.

Did no writing over the weekend (did get one rejection, though, just to remind me that I'm a writer). Did manage to backup my files after another "HP sucks" hard-drive failure (I have GOT to buy myself a decent laptop from a manufacturer with actual quality control).

The nice thing is that next weekend and the subsequent ones should be MUCH better. Maybe not on the writing side, but definitely on the real life side of things.

Yet another review of The World is Dead has come online (thanks to jennifer_brozek for the tip!). The reviewer here seems quite impressed with both the premise and the execution, which seems to be a common thread running through all these reviews. This seems to be a book that I'm eventually going to be extremely proud to have been a part of! No mention of specific stories, but the overall tone makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I also plugged about 1400 words into a story, finished it and sent it out, prior to a computer hard disk crash. I need to check my records, but I believe my hard disk died on November 20th for the second year in a row, which would make a pure hardware problem (despite the obvious lack of quality in this Compaq / HP product) hard to believe. Will check the records.

The ever-entertaining jongibbs has agreed to do a guest blog here. So mark your calendars for Thursday, November 26th! I know you'll enjoy the topic he's chosen... but I'm not going to tell you what it is, you'll have to come and see! He is a writer and an Englishman, and his thoughts on how to use one's blog are always spot-on (if I took his advice more often, I would have a million readers).

Siege has gone out to beta-readers (thank you Fred and Chris for signing on at the last minute), and writing has resumed on other projects: 330 words into a story about Etruscan zombies and 1160 into The Malakiad, a humorous fantasy novel about ancient Greeks which is now on the front burner since The Curse of el Bastardo has sold, and this one is very similar in style, if not plot.

Thursdays have, for various reasons, been my favorite days of 2009. So even though this particular Thursday won't include some of the things that I love about the day, I still think it deserves a mention...

In my neverending quest to read everything ever published, I finished reading The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 11. This is a book published by DAW in 1985, and collects the stories published in the previous year that its editor, Arthur W. Saha, felt were the best of the bunch. I can't honestly say that I agree with his choices in this particular case. Not much ground-breaking work here in my opinion, just a bunch of stories that left me thinking: so what? At least the book did contain a few second-world S&S tales that gve us some action to break up the monotony of the urban fantasy therein. S&S is nearly always entertaining, and these werre well-written, to boot. The urban fantasy was also well-written, but felt a little bleak.

Best of the bunch by a long margin was a posthumous story by Clark Ashton Smith called "Strange Shadows", in which a man sees forms in other people's shadows - and only later comes to realize their significance. It was a bit predictable, but the prose overcame the shortcomings of the plot.

There was one story I absolutely hated, and it was the one I'd read before. Gene Wolfe's "A Cabin on the Coast" is a story I dislike a lot (which is strange because I believe Wolfe is one of the greatest writers of our time). But there must be something about this story that got it included both in this book and in Dozois' Best of the Best, which is a science fiction antho for the best stories from his Year's Best series. Seriously? Best of the best? I must be missing something...


Other news: 1150 words into a fantasy story last night.

I finished a story last night. I don't feel it quite clicks, but that's OK. It was an ambitious piece, and I was expecting to have to do a little rewriting when it was done. So now I'll do that.

There was also a good review of The World is Dead (which contains my story "Bridge Over the Cunene") on the Horror Fiction Review. The reviewer enjoyed both the antho itself and my story in particular, so I'm happy with it. She also enjoyed jennifer_brozek 's story.

A good review almost makes up for the lack of sales over the past few weeks! (I told you guys these things go in cycles!!).

The ToC for M-Brane 11 has been announced, and you cansee it here. I've seen a couple of issues of this mag, and I can say I'm really happy to be back in there. Great look and feel, and some familiar names iin the mix as well!

In other news, I did a tiny bit of writing last night. Life is beginning to get in the way in a big way - I think you can expect to see the productivity take a hit over the next couple of weeks (nothing life threatening or even very serious, but distracting)... Still, I've written a lot this year, I can survive a bit of a dip.

Strange that I've gotten to the age of 33 before I ever picked up an Agatha Christie book, but it happened. This one was Poirot's Early Cases, a collection of short stories which were about what I expected. They turn death and passionate murder into cozy little stories with no risk or tension to the main characters. The style and feel reminded me of Wodehouse, but without the comedy. Good, light reading.

In other news, my review of Rage of the Behemoth is up at SF Reader.

No new writing since finishing Siege, but that's all right. I needed a little break, anyway.

For those who haven't read it already, or who prefer your fiction in audio form, Starship Sofa's Aural Delights #108 contains my flash story "Virtuoso", as well as poetry by Samantha Henderson and a short story by Michael Bishop.

The entire podcast is fun and upbeat, and I loved the narration for my story!

In other news there's lots of water on the moon. This links neatly back to my post about the future of space exploration... No longer any need to transport tons of water from earth!

I plugged the final 4000 words into Siege last night.  And now, the novel is done, coming in at 98.4 K words!

I will take a few days to feel very pleased with myself, dance a little jig and howl at the moon for a bit before the polishing and rewriting begins.

So, anyone want to beta-read an uncorrected first draft?  I generally try to get all comments in before I begin the process of polishing the novel.  Drop me a line here or at gbondoni (at) hotmail (dot) com.

One of the main reasons (other than the talent of the writers here and the interesting posts) I like my flist is that we can have discussions of things in which we disagree, sometimes strongly and keep them civilized.  Thanks to everyone who chimed in on yesterday's post.  Had a great time exchanging opinions with everyone - I kne when I wrote it that not everyone would be happy with it, and I'm glad you came forth in the comments!  We can all learn from each other.

On the writing side, I got 2400 words done last night.  This got me to the end of chapter 24 of Siege and a third of the way through chapter 25.  The novel should be done in 6K words or less!  So close!

A conversation I had over the weekend got me thinking about the future of humanity, the present of humanity, what this has to do with the genre and why there's lots and lots of hope in some ways, and things are worrying in another.

I have always believed - quite firmly - that humanity has only one future if it is to remain relevant, and that is the conquest of space.  Humans have always been an exploring species, and this must continue.  I have a hard time understanding people who believe that money spent on space exploration would be better employed elsewhere.  No matter what example, humanitarian, infrastructure or whatever, they cite, I always end up thinking that the thinking behind it is completely limited, and shows a huge lack of big picture thinking.  I have been told in no uncertain terms that I am completely wrong, but I still don't see it.

We live in a world in which the scientific achievements are such that much of our currrent tech wasn't even imagined by science fiction writers as late as the sixties, and yet, the things they saw as important have not come to pass.  We still haven't even reached Mars...  It's terrible to think that mankind's greatest achievement, the Apollo XI moon landing, ocurred before I was born.  Nothing since has come anywhere near that.  So much for progress.

Of course, there are reasons for this, and most of them have to do with tendencies in the western world.  Consumers have come to expect comfort and entertainment, and the west's best minds have moved away from real engineering challenges to the safe confines of computer science.  They don't care that another doubling of processor speed really doesn't matter - they just know that the sheeple buy into it and that they, the designers, get paid.  Meanwhile, humanity has better video games and larger and more unwieldy operrating systems.

Another social tendency that is keeping the west back is the slashing of funding to go to social plans, wars or whatever other politically expedient issue comes along.  This is the very definition of short-sighted.  They go after immediate goals while forgetting the really important things.  Particularly unsettling is the situation in the US, the traditional leader in space, where science has been under siege for years, and where any sense of adventure seems to have been crushed under the weight of the PC nightmare (TM).  I don't think this will be reverted any time soon - most people just aren't interested.

This lack of interest is also affecting the genre. As people move away from an interest in science and progress, fantasy becomes more popular than science fiction (sound familiar?), and the genre suffers for it.  You see, fantasy is fine (I personally love fantasy), but it isn't, in my opinion, as significant as SF, which requires knowledge and the capacity to work within a scientific restrictions to make it work.  It's the difference between what might be, and what never will.

So, is the trend irreversible?  Is there no hope?

Well...  I would actually say that not only is the trend reverisble, there are people already working on it.  Except that most of us won't be comfortable with the way it's being done.

You see, most of the world's people live in Asia.  They do not speak English.  They are not Europeans.  And they are not constrained by western thinking on political issues.  They are well on their way to leading the world economically, and after that they will do so politically. 

The Western world will become irrelevant on a changed world slate (except as a problem, something akin to today's middle east).  If China, for example wants to go to Mars as a question of national pride, they will (they have already sent men into orbit with no help from the west).  If India wants to establish, in response, a base on the moon, they will as well.  Eventually, someone will go beyond that.

The west and its limited imagination will be confined to Earth, and that is a good thing.  The limited thinking that is leading to the decline is not something we want to take with us.  I really hope that it isn't too late to revert it, but I see nothing coming out of the US or out of inward-looking Europe, spending more and more on social plans, to give me hope.  All I can do right now is to root for the Taikonauts.



In spite of all this, I still wrote 600 words into Siege last night.  A science fiction novel!  So I guess I should be looking for a good Chinese translator!

A socially supercharged weekend meant that my writing binge was limited to 1900 words (still great for fri-sat-sun) onto Siege.  I'm not really sure what I'll be writing this week.  On one hand, I'd love to finish the first draft of the novel and get it out to beta readers, but on the other, there are a couple of anthos that I'd love to write something for, and they are the "until filled" kind, so I need to get moving!

I also need to research a good potential home for a Sci-Fi reprint collection that (because of rights reversions) could be released in October 2010.  There are two important things to consider here.  The first is that books take quite a while to get done if they are done right, so a year's lead time seems about right for a pitch to a small press (a year at the very least).  The second thing is that not every publisher wants to look at collections, so it will take a while to narrow it down to 2 / 3 to send the pitch to (suggestions, of course, are always welcome).

Despite concentrating on the golden age of science fiction, I'd never read Bradbyury's The Illustrated Man.  Why?  Well, there are a couple of reasons.  The first is that Bradbury always seemed to be a little off, a bit of a lyricist, more concerned with beautiful language than beautiful concepts (there's no need to tell me I'm wrong.  I know I'm wrong, that's why it's a prejudice!).  The second reason has to do with the book itself - I'd always thought it was urban fantasy.

Both preconceptions were proven wrong when I read the book.  The Illustrated Man is a collection of science fiction stories, extremely pulp-era in feel (as they should be - they're from 1948-1950). There are some fantastic elements, and some magical ones, but even they are set in SF settings.  There was one story I'd read before (a good one): "The Fire Balloons".  

As for the reading experience, the most jarring element is the fact that both Venus and Mars are generally considered to be habitable, with breathable air.  You have to be able to ignore this in order to enjoy the book.  On the other hand, these stories are not about the science, but about people in extreme situation, and most of them hit you right between the eyes (Bradbury isn't allergic to the occasional low blow or cliché, but always elegantly written).  All in all, an effective and enjoyable voyage back into the pulp era, with one in particular, "The Concrete Mixer", being absolutely, gloriously funny and brilliant!

As for the framework offered by the Illustrated Man himself, I felt it added little to the book.  I might have enjoyed it more, and read it earlier, if it had been presented as a collection of SF shorts.


With regards to my own writing, 300 words into Siege means I no longer stare at a blank page when I look at chapter 24.

I'm nearing the end of Siege.  Last night's 1200 words got me to the end of the 23rd chapter, and to nearly 90K overall.  This makes me a happy camper (although the wisdom of finishing a novel in November, when everyone else in the world is also writing novels is questionable).  Just about 10K left - that's a longish short story!

In other news, for those curious to see the complete list of Anthology Builder competition finalists, here's the list!  Congrats to all, and I'm looking forward to crossing swords with you in the definitive round.  May the best story win!

Finished rereading The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman last night.  I had read and reviewed this one fairly recently, so I won't do so again here.  But I will say that this is a book that improves with a second reading, as it's much deeper in symbolism than it appears at first sight (and it appears very symbolic at first sight).  There are wheels within wheels and criticisms of modern western society that are still valid (possibly moreso) thirty years after the fact.  If you haven't read this one, you need to.

I'm glad I went through it again.  The Easton Press edition that prompted the reread was a beautiful book that gives the novel a certain gravitas - which is well suited to it.  I just wish that Easton would get its act together on the shipping side of things.  They seem to have enormous trouble getting my books to me while people like Amazon have never missed a shipment.  This is getting serious enough that I may have to cancel my subscription.

In other news, Siege advances with another 1300 words last night, while a short fantasy piece got about 150.

I received word this morning that I am a finalist in the Match That Artwork Contest over at Anthology Builder.  For obvious reasons (in case the judging is anonymous), I won't mention the name of my story or say what it was about, but I'm very happy to be there, and the list of judges is simply amazing.

The reason I entered this one is that I believe that the business model in which you create your own anthologies with only the stories you select and they send you a printed copy of the book is a brilliant combination of what consumers want: flexibility and printed books.  For the first time since Henry Ford's production lines, technology is making it possible to get customized products at a comparable cost to mass-produced items, and the companies that take advantage of this in an intelligent way are likely to become the standard bearers in the 21st century.

The publishing world is in the middle of a great change.  Identifying which technologies are worth attacking and which aren't is going to be very important in the next few years.  Writers actually ahve it easy.  The oonly thing that keeps us from exploring new media is the quantity (and quality, of course) of our output - we don't have to take financial risks.

So what do you think the publishing world will look like in five - ten year's time?




Wordcount check:  450 into Sioege, 240 into a new fantasy story, and I also worte a review for SF Reader.