the September series

The continuing edit and holiday

So the second edit is going well so far. I’ve edited a few chapters and sent them to the editor to make sure I am going in the right direction. He says it is exactly the sort of thing he was looking for so that’s pretty cool.

What is fascinating, as I work through the book again, is how true the comments my editor made were. For example:

  • My characters very rarely use contractions. This was weird one because I use them all the time in texts or when chatting online, but still they did not. Really makes the dialog sound unnatural but luckily an easy fix.
  • Repetition of information all the freaking time. One of my characters will mention something and then they, or someone else, will repeat that worded ever so slightly different a little while later. Again not too much work to address this issue.

These are mistakes I probably shouldn’t be making, but then this is the point of editors, to help get a story into shape. It is also a very useful learning experience and will make my writing better when I start work on the next book.

I’m also enjoying being deep in the story again, and I’m seeing plenty of places to improve and add more depth to the book. The hope is now get to this second round of edits by the end of the month and then back to the editor. It’s a big ask, what with the book being 112,000+ words long, but I think it will be possible thanks to a long holiday that is coming up.

Bright and early on Tuesday morning me and Clare will be flying over to America for my best friends wedding and for a holiday of our own. It’s an 8 hour flight and I can get plenty of work done in that time, as well as quite a few internal flights in the US which are a couple of hours long each.

So feeling very confident with how things are going and a lot of work for me to do to get this book done. Early in the year I was hoping to get it out before Christmas but that is unlikely now. I’ll post an update on when I will be aiming to get it out once this second round of edits is done. There won’t be any posts whilst I’m in the US so should be an update when I’m back.

Let’s talk about setting: 1000 years in the future

A while since the last post so going to be a few more posts on setting over the next few weeks. Last time round I did an overview of some of my aims with the setting for the September series and this time I will focus on one aspect of that, why I’ve set it so far in the future.

I need to point out here that the September series is not meant to be hard sci-fi (it’s got FTL travel and terraforming as part of the setting!) but I don’t want it to feel too divorced from reality. So wanting a galaxy full of populated planets the immediate future, the next few centuries, was ruled out.

Even five hundred years felt too short. I know in other settings like Star Trek there are huge nations spanning massive chunks of the galaxy in that kind of time frame, but those are based on very different assumptions and with very different technology in them. No, five hundred years just does not seem feasible for that kind of expansion for our species.

But a thousand years in the future? Now that seems more likely. That feels like a period of time where we would stretch our legs on a galactic scale.

That period of time in the future also appealed for a few other reasons. It is not too far off in the grand scheme of things, we have been around for a couple hundred thousand years now, so there would still be strong links to the present day. But it is still distant enough to have diverged a lot from how things are now, to allow for different societies and for a setting that can feel unique on it’s own.

It also allows for a lot of history to happen, events and ideas that will shape the story to come.

Let’s talk about set(ting) baby!

Yes that title is there entirely for the pun.

With editing work on Oranje about to start I thought I would talk about the setting for the story and some of the themes that will be part of it. This post will summarise them and then I’ll elaborate on each one in its own entry but I hope these will help communicate a lot of the ideas behind the setting.

  • The when – The September series and subsequent stories set in the same universe will take place over a thousand years in the future where humanity has spread across the galaxy and there are hundreds of colonised worlds.
  • A decelarando universe – Best summed up by this article from Rocketpunk Manifesto, technological progress in the setting has slowed down so tech wise it is not too far from what might be seen over the next few centuries (or at least as much as we can predict).
  • Balkanised humanity – Once united humanity is now divided into nations that do not tend to go beyond the region of space they are in. September is one of those regions.
  • ‘Realistic’ technologies – Spacecraft are powered by nuclear reactors and use chemical engines to get around. Radiators are a necessity to get rid of heat, 3d printing is used in construction and also in medical areas as well. It’s aiming to be based about what we can predict now
  • Well, mostly realistic technologies – This is not aiming to be hard sci-fi, there are a few additional techs added for story reasons. Those being faster-than-light travel and communications and artificial gravity. These technologies are going to have sensible limitations on them, no appearing in high orbit to drop hugely accelerated bombs on a planet then disappearing in the blink of an eye.
  • Diverse humanity – We’re a diverse species and I intend to get some of that across in the setting for the book. Much of the population of worlds in September are from Africa and India originally and I’m trying to avoid mono-culture planets as much as possible as a) they’re not very realistic b) they’re not very interesting either.

So those are the goals I am aiming for with the setting and the background to the story. I want it to feel like it is part of an on-going history and world that exists and not just a background that has been created just for this story to exist in. It should be complex, diverse, difficult and layered.

It should be a setting based on humans for a story about people.

Next time, I talk more about why I’m setting it so far in the future.

Re-reading and editing the Second Draft

Been meaning to put up this post for a while but life has been very busy recently so not really had much time for writing. Luckily that is changing and I’m about to dive back in to start making changes to the second draft and I thought I’d share my feelings after re-reading it.

There were two outcomes I feared when I was reading it. The first was that I would lose all hope and despair and that I’d have to re-write the whole thing. The second was that I would think it was absolutely fine when I know it is not as I made a note of some of the issues when I was writing it. That outcome would mean I hadn’t given myself enough time before taking another look at it, I would have been too close to it.

Thankfully neither happened. I thought it was good, not perfect there are plenty of things to be changed before it is finished, but there is a good story there and some interesting characters. I can make it better, which is the next big step.

As I read through I made notes of what I wanted to change, story lines that needed to be resolved better or added in earlier in the plot. That file now sits at 6 or so bullet points for each chapter and are my guide for my next round of revisions. I don’t expect it to be perfect after this, and I’m going to be ignoring some of the issues as story and character are my priorities before it goes to the editor I’ve hired.

Oh, pro-tip for first time self-publishing authors like me, book an editor well in advance. I’d originally aimed for an editor to get it at the beginning of September but the one I wanted to work with were only free from the end of the month instead. That has worked out quite well with how busy I’ve been but lesson learned for the future.

So onwards I go, closer and closer to really finishing my first book. There is a good story in what I have, now I need to make it great, time to make it mine.

Oranje Cover Reveal

I am pleased to reveal the awesome cover for book one in the September Series, Oranje.

Ebook (click to enlarge images)

Lusted_ORANJE_EbookEdition_Final

Paperback

Lusted_ORANJE_PrintEdition_Final

The synopsis on the back cover is liable to change before the book is released.

This was done by the awesome Jason Gurley (website, twitter, tumblr) who has recently done some amazing covers for Hugh Howey like this awesome one for Half Way Home.

He has been a joy to work with and I couldn’t have wished for a better cover.

The Second Draft is Done!

Phew. 113,782 words done from 21st April until 9th of July. Very happy with the pace I maintained.

It’s interesting comparing how I feel now compared to when I finished the first draft. That was elation and joy, I’d got to the end of a book. I knew it was rough and needed a lot of work but I’d made it and I already had a good idea of what I needed to change for the second draft.

This time round it was more a pause than a celebration. The second draft is a lot better than the first, the story works from start to finish and I’m a lot happier with it. But I know it needs a lot of editing and fine tuning. Coming to the end of it is more of a half way point in the process of finishing this book instead of an end itself.

Next I’m looking to find some proofreaders and an editor to go over the story to make sure it makes sense and works. Then I’ll get into the proper editing of it. I’ve got an almost 114,000 word book now I want to make it good.

Onwards I go.