So, if you’ve ever wondered how to support a writer not yet published? After all, there are tons of ways to support a published author, even beyond buying his or her books.
But for us struggling, not-yet-published writers, what can you do? Turns out, there’s much you can easily do online.
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Here’s an excerpt from my writing journal, about space exploration:
“T minus 3 minutes”
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It’s been a rough week for writing. For one reason or another (spring break among them), I’ve not had my block of morning writing time. I did manage to squeeze in some revising, more revising, and one new scene in my Sifa and Peter novel.
The draft of the first of three parts of the novel is almost finished. I’m now thinking about some of the scenes, reworking them to build more on one another, tying them together better — hopefully.
Next week I’ll be back on schedule. Early morning bleary eyes, here I come!
Each of us has such unique taste in reading. I have no idea if you’re a fan of literary works like Moby Dick or Hamlet, nonfiction memoirs, romance novels, science fiction, or even comic books, er, graphic novels. Or even if you just skim Facebook and linked articles.
Anyway, here are a few of my favorite fiction authors you may not know.
I’ve been taking baby steps in this writing business for the past few months. Now that the following are accomplished, I finally feel like I’m stretching out from baby steps and am now, well, toddling along.
Thanks for your support, and I’d love to hear feedback from you.
If you want to know what have I achieved in terms of baby steps:
I’ve mentioned that many of my ideas come from dreams. Earlier this year I woke up after dreaming up a setting. No full story, mind you, but just a very specific location. Here’s what I wrote up in my writing journal:
They had found a new location for their little church.
A road dead-ended into a yellow stone plaza. Around was an entire complex of made of yellow stone mortared into place hundreds of years ago.
To the west were the doors to an old little church, built into the larger complex. It was also made of yellow stone, but the thick, tall doors were made of solid dark wood smooth from the ages.The doors were about six feet tall, but over the doors was a built-in pediment of sorts, made of the same wood, curving up and over the doors in a half-moon arching over the door. Inside the half-moon were two quarters of stained glass, small but blending in nicely over the doors. The whole entrance was about nine feet tall.
Across the courtyard to east was a tall wall, about fourteen feet tall, also mortared with yellow brick. It ran from the courtyard northwards, pacing the edge of the street for at least a block until the street cornered to the left. Southwards, the wall ended in a large archway, opening onto some greenery. A path on the other side of the walls lead north through the trees along the hilly banks of the river. The path soon curves and slopes downwards, meeting the river’s edge, water lapping peacefully.
If you continue south from the courtyard, passing the archway and enticing path by, You pass by some small rooms of the complex built into the south side of the courtyard. This part of the complex rises at least two floors above the courtyard and attaches to the southeast edge of the church, continuing along the south side of the church.
Past this narrow wing, you face directly to the south, where another, slightly wider wing of the complex has windows out onto the park on the east side, and windows out on to a small lane running north-south on the west side. The small lane is bordered on the other side by a canal.
Another courtyard of sorts faces you as you turn west. On this little section of land are several small outbuildings. The one on the right, closest to the narrow wing, is for the church building.Behind the sheds the water of the canal laps peacefully.
Here are more notes from my novel in work, this time in connection with Sifa’s mother, Laura Havenaugh. Want to know more? Have a suggestion? Feel free to comment below.
A somewhat short, somewhat thin, not-fat woman with long dark hair, slightly curly. Light olive skin. Suffers from inherited genetic problems including excessive blood clotting that caused her miscarriages. The genetic problems were probably due from ancestral inbreeding in a small rural community in the hills.
Parking a spacecraft in orbit around another planet is a very cool experience.
I had the honor of working with some very fine people at Lockheed Martin in the early 2000’s. One of our projects was the 2001 Mars Odyssey, a spacecraft designed to orbit Mars and collect evidence of past or present water and ice. The spacecraft has also been used to relay signals from spacecraft and rovers from the surface of Mars back to Earth.
According Wikipedia’s entry, the Mars Odyssey now holds the record for the longest-serving spacecraft at Mars: 14 years, 4 months, and 3 days from the launch on April 7th, 2001.
Go Odyssey!
My upcoming novel has a full cast of characters. The Havenaugh family includes our protagonist, Sifa: her mother, Laura, and her father, Mac.
Sifa is blonde, twenty-three, thin, of medium height. She is a little shallow in terms of her relationships and is too easy to please. She rationalizes these faults in terms of her faith, but it really is due to selfishness and fear.
Circumstances force her to mature.
Submitting a science fiction short story made me think of some my favorite authors, then and now, in the genre: Heinlein, Norton, H. Beam Piper, David Weber, Ernest Cline, Bujold, John Scalzi, and many more.
With Heinlein, I really like the first half of his work, the young adult adventures. Norton was a genius in conveying ideas with brevity yet telling a great action story. H. Beam Piper? What can I say — I’m a sucker for Fuzzies.
David Weber’s Honor Harrington is one of strongest female protagonists I’ve read in science fiction. It’s a fantastic universe he’s created, even if my eyes glaze over a little at the longer descriptions of the ships of battle.
Ernest Cline tied into almost every memory I have of the early years of computing and my own gaming experiences, not to mention tons of other pop cultural references of my childhood, all the while tying it to an exciting action story with a future not too far from the realm of possible.
Miles Vorkosigan is one the most flawed protagonists you’ll want to cheer on and on. Bujold really crafted a solid series.