Chaos Reigns

That may not be true all the time, but lately – I’ve leaned into the chaos. I’m not sorry.

Do you wonder where chaos comes from? I do. Often, but I’m also wondering where order erupts from and why so many people think it’s better. Maybe the reason lies with logic and that they think they can deduce what’s coming.

Maybe the cleanliness idea to find things is just too ingrained.

While I’ve been merrily turning my life upside down this year, I’ve struggled to keep up things like my blog. That’s a thing most of you have witnessed before, and thanks for sticking with me.

I’ve been listening to the audio version of the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire, performed by Mary Robinette Kowal. A great thing about October Daye is she changes through the series, she finds her limits in the books, and they change as she does.

I was also listening to some of the novellas that were nominated for the Nebulas, and I hope to get to the novels, too.

One of my great struggles in this time of chaos is the charging cord for my tablet, already replaced once. There are specific positions where it charges, partially charges, or just decides to not charge at all. Finally broke down and ordered a new one, since there’s nothing else wrong with the tablet at all. Plus- my kid keeps borrowing it when she leaves her charging cable for her school chromebook somewhere else.

I started reading Book 2 (the last novel I drafted) but I haven’t started editing it yet. It’s on my horizon, though, as well as a new short story that keeps buzzing in my head during my new job. Other changes include two lovely cats to share my space and make me laugh. Yes, their names together are Q&A and I adore them both. Pretty sure Q thought I was completely nuts when I told him I brought him a new friend home last week but he’s come around to my point of view.

For those of you who’ve known me for a while, yes – cats were exactly what’s been missing from my life. I’ve always been fond of void kitties and I’m intent to spoil these two. I should add pictures of them to my Patreon for good measure.

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New Year…

I got the notification that the books have shipped. They should be here soon. It’s so cool!

I’ve had a lot of thoughts about resolutions. I haven’t put many of them down on paper yet, and that’s because I’m just ready for chaotic changes. That sounds a little crazy, and that’s going to be just fine. It means I have ideas and it’ll take multiple steps to get there, but I need to keep my eyes forward.

Stay tuned for the ensuing chaos. It’s going to be a wild ride.

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Don’t Tell Your Mother

The sample book arrived this week from Ingram. I’ve been having a bunch of big feelings about this book finally being real and readable.

I’ve been writing a lot of words over the years. I started working on novels almost as soon as I got out of college (and of course there were pieces of novels before, but I’d never finished a longer work before The Art of Science).

One of the bad habits I got into was not finishing them at the time I wrote them. Maybe it was neurodivergence, and maybe it was just not understanding how the editing process worked.

Don’t Tell Your Mother was originally written in 2009, the year my daughter was born. I took time to edit, to send to different readers (and I also read for them), and eventually I had a book.

My step-dad told me when I was young that nobody writes anything worth reading until they’re fifty, or maybe (strongly stressed maybe) forty. I was published for the first time at thirty – and I wanted to prove him wrong. That I wrote things worth reading. At least I did prove it to myself and others along the way.

However, there are a lot of things I understand better now. So many authors can’t support themselves on their writing because the world is tough and a steady income is needed. So many authors are busy with children and writing is very time consuming and we can’t all make that time on top of a family and a full-time job. So many of us need health benefits so we can’t just quit a full-time job with insurance and hope our written words will carry us through.

While it feels like this book took me a very long time, it also sat for long periods where I didn’t touch it. Some projects are like that – and we don’t always have time to confront a project day after day when we’re so busy with the rest of our lives. Plus, I had this idea that I needed to get out – and I’m also working on it now – that had my attention from the beginning (2006). The problem was I knew I wasn’t a good enough writer to tackle it then, but I think I am now. The multitude of years behind that project shows how time changes the project, and how I look at it now isn’t how I imagined it in the beginning.

I’ve had a few of these ideas over the years that just stick with me, and I’m cleaning them up and doing my best to get them out now. Waiting isn’t making them better, but it does make me want to rewrite the entire thing again. One problem is the next few in the queue are SFF and in my own created worlds – problem only because they’re involved projects and I need to keep them all clear in my head. But also – it just means every project I am bringing out only makes me more excited to share the next one. Stay tuned.

Amazon has a ‘temporarily out of print’ on the Don’t Tell Your Mother page- try Barnes and Noble or BAM. Or send me a message- I am due to buy more books and I could sign and send them direct.

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Little Mistakes

I found two this week in Book 1, toward the end. I’m crushed, except really I’m just fixing it and seeing how I can smooth out those bumps.

You’re wondering how I know I made two mistakes? One’s easy, I had a character interacting with the crew and then said she didn’t come out of her quarters until the third day. OOPS! That seems easily fixed, except that I had my characters focusing on the wrong thing during the two days before that.

Also, I had carefully mapped out my stars and the time it would take to visit each destination in this book, and I flipped the two at the end, which gave them a lot longer to focus on the wrong thing- and not enough time to struggle home by the deadline.

It’s funnier because I had a friend read (listen in her car) an earlier version and she didn’t catch it, either, which just goes to remind me why we need more sets of eyes (and often a cooling-off period) to create an amazing book.

As I’m changing these bits, I’m thinking a lot about what I know will happen as well as what the characters are experiencing at the time. I’m reminded of all the role-playing games where players don’t get to see what the DM has going on behind the screen – surprises happen despite our best efforts. I’m hoping that final piece comes together this week. I know I’m close but it’s not close enough!

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No Blank Pages

At least, not for a moment. I printed everything I wrote in this series in the last couple months and I’m reading it, making notes, getting ready for that next draft. When I started, I found a few little things. I’m more than halfway through book 1 now, and I’m getting the reminder I needed to bring that forward in the other books. I have figured out I love the word ‘still’, among other things, and my notes are including things that didn’t happen as well as things that still need to happen. (Yeah, there it is again.)

I’m glad I tailored this first book the way I did, and took away a bit of the complexity. Sadly I love big complex story lines. I love the struggle of getting the pieces together in an outline and then on the draft pages. I do not love how long it takes me to get a finished project. What I tell myself is that if I keep working on it, I’ll find the process – and I know it is getting better.

In the first book, the mechanic (Uehe) keeps upgrading the ship and causing delays. Lorelei (captain) asks. “Uehe, how much time do you need by for the life support? Best and worst case?”

Uehe smoothed his fur. “Best case, end of the day. Worst case never.”

“Never?” Lorelei sat down on the bench behind her.

While she takes this pretty well, the mechanic gets everyone off the ship until he fixes it. It gives them time to see this planet (or at least the city they landed in) before they’re back to their breakneck pace. There’s nothing quite like a deadline that you’re not sure you can make but you need to or everything gets much worse.

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The End of NaNo

At least for this year. I didn’t expect to write this many words. I didn’t expect to have my project split into two pieces. I definitely didn’t expect my characters to take a vote to not follow my outline anymore. However, I’m pretty excited with how these things did turn out. I’m really excited that I’m going to hit the end of the novel tonight.

Even the NaNoWriMo site has a link that says, “Now What?”

For me, I know what I’m going to be doing. I’m translating this into a workable schedule. I spent an amount of time that I felt I could continue into December. I’ve been working to update my media presence and I have one more book in the queue to be available in December. I averaged about 4000 words per day during NaNo, plus I was working to preplan the next stage.

As for the series I’m working on, I have Book One, Novella, Book Two, and where it ends I have to think. I had Book Two taking on several things that didn’t actually happen as I thought it would, and so Book Three may be on the horizon, and it might have a few other things happening in the middle. I need to add at least one more novella to the saga because the villains of Book One changed, and they give another layer to where the book actually ended up. I also have several other pieces I could write, and from here I’d need to take a few minutes and write out the parts I want to write at the moment. Book Two was supposed to have a brilliant mad scientist involved, and so far he’s been absent. The other thing I need to remember is that a bunch of relationships changed during this project and that will shape how the next piece falls out. Mr. Mad Scientist Dude might just get his own novella/novel alongside his hero, who came up more often because of his own great and terrible creations.

This is the joy of writing, editing, and discovering. This is also one reason I’m so happy running around the galaxy with these not-so-intrepid adventurers. There’s simply no end. Maybe because I don’t want it to end. I just can’t wait to share all of this with you!

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NaNo Progress

Oh, NaNo, this concentrated writing time is supposed to follow my outline. And it mostly does. I’m just not sure what to do with it when I wrote a novella that was supposed to be part of book 2, and then started book 2 and I’m not sure how long this thing is going to take. How could 30,000 words go so quickly? Well, other than it being November- I found an accidental romantic interest for my villain, the passengers are just super annoying even in how they approach this trip, and my MC just found her eye twitching just dealing with the first few hours after the passengers boarded the ship.

It’s weird to have an outline that I’m following and still discover so much in my draft. Isn’t it? The passengers have a party of ten and outnumber the crew. It’s gonna be a long ride, folks. Here’s hoping we come out the other side without my MC ordering all the passengers murdered. That would definitely put a kink in her plans to get paid.

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Creator of Worlds

Recently I remarked to one of my writer friends that I wish I could write funny.

She replied immediately that she wished she could create worlds.

That left me thoughtful. I’ve created many worlds. Some overlap part of this world, but many are second-world type settings that have little in common with our ‘real’ world. I’ve gone on stellar and planetary math quests, researched deep rabbit holes about life and items like it, and often find myself having to make up entire swaths of items to answer a question or to allow a character to do what I know they require for that story.

My first second-world fantasy idea came in high school. I never did write that series, but I had ideas about it. Eventually I abandoned it because high school is full of people who will listen about your ideas even if you overtalk it and then don’t spend that time writing it, and I did high school and college for a semester – and in the margins you could find my notes for this novel that hasn’t ever become more than ruminations in my head.

I’d say maybe one day, but I’ve created so many others that I may never get back to it.

I looked at a list today, of created projects that are in limbo for the moment since I’ve been working so hard on this Space Western that I am determined to get out and publish. That list doesn’t include the novel I thought I was going to write in high school/college, and it already had 9 projects listed. I didn’t even look that hard, just to projects that had been drafted or mostly fleshed out and ready to draft.

Ransom, Creator of Worlds But They Might Not Be Funny Ones.

What’s your writer tag? What’s the tag you wish you could write? I do believe that most of these great things are like muscles that can be strengthened or atrophied over time whether we use them or not, but there are many pieces that come naturally or they don’t.

The good news for novels is that the one I’ve been struggling with my antagonists is maybe, finally, coming into line with what I want and need it to be. Then it’ll be on to the next one. The really good news is that I feel after all of these acts of creation- the characters, the plots, the settings, and the themes- that I am getting much better at this than I used to be. It’s a tough road, but I still enjoy it.

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Busy-ness

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-art-of-science-ransom-noble/1016212218?ean=9798218292898

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/paradise-icon-anthology-2023-ransom-noble/1144201572?ean=9781088258385

Big Sigh. I managed. I’ll have another one out next month, I think. After that, time to wait and see. I’ve said before that the Art of Science had a big learning curve for me. It was the first novel, so that was bound to happen. However, the Paradise Icon Anthology has just as much to teach me because I keep trying to do different things in the formatting. It feels great to have accomplished this much, though.

Can’t wait to see what else is in store. You remember how I repeat that phrase sometimes, “All knowledge is worth having”? (Jacqueline Carey) It’s true, and I appreciate the times when a project culminates into something tangible. I feel like that’s difficult for a lot of writing projects.

ICON was last weekend, and it was fun. Never turn down an opportunity to hang with your writing people, and it’s definitely a bonus when they feel the same about me. If only the novel I’m working on would come together as well as the con did. Just keep writing…

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Back Cover Blurbs

Oh, they’re fun, right? How do you choose the text that goes on the back of the book, and how do you make sure it reflects the tone and feeling of the whole thing?

It’s a beautiful bit of text, and I’m going to hope I get it right enough. It’s tough to think that I am going to be needing one of these for every book. Marketing and sales are not my strong suit, so this is all a learning experience.

I remembered my synopsis that I crafted so carefully when I thought I would send this book to publishers, and the key to that back text is in there. I took the previously published one in a new direction because I think it’ll be a better representation of what’s inside.

Will it work for me? Fingers crossed. Some of these front and back matter parts of a book aren’t the most fun to assemble, but it gives me the feeling that I am accomplishing good things and when I look at it now I’m better able to craft them into what I think they should be.

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