Category Archives: Stars Trilogy

Stars Trilogy

Characters discussing morality


I’ve been playing around with a dark little idea that fills in some backstory detail for the final volume of the Stars Trilogy, which is still far short of its proposed total. The following excerpt is an attempt to throw the light of discourse onto why otherwise cultured and civilised peoples can allow, even rejoice in, terrible things done for their cause. This is a topic which has always fascinated me. See what you think.

“Why did the Gaians insist on using human grown neural cells for their Assault Cyborgs, not artificial neural nets? Why did they have to core out all those millions? Kill all those poor people?”
“Cost. Autonomous neural net manufacturing technology used to be amazingly expensive and glitchy, even as recently as ten years ago. I guess they found it cheaper to just harvest pre grown material for cores. Do the math. A thousand assault units at a hundredth of the cost of a full Biotech AI means you can afford a hundred times as many. Simple. It doesn’t matter that there’s only a twelve percent success rate. To the Gaians that was perfectly acceptable because there were plenty more dissidents where they came from.” Suresh Khan raised a philosophical jet black eyebrow at the newcomer.
“That’s sick. The mere thought makes me want to throw up.”
“Congratulations. That at least proves you’re still human.”
“Considering it was humans that thought it up, that’s not much of a compliment.”
“Not all humans, just a few.”
“That few is too many.”
“You know, it’s amazing how many think that everyone else should think as they do, and given the opportunity would murder millions to make them do so.”
“That’s just cynical rubbish!”
“Look in the mirror and ask yourself the question.”
“Crap!”
“Really? Aren’t you being a little dishonest now?”
“No.”
“The question is this. Given the opportunity to make what you think is the perfect society. Everything exactly what you want it to be, world peace, everyone living in harmony, who would you be willing to kill or have killed?”
“That’s an unfair question! People don’t have to die for a society to become perfect!”
“No it isn’t unfair. It’s actually just about the fairest question there is. There will always be those with a contrary view, and as putative leader, it is your responsibility to manage societies response. Who and how many are you willing to send to your executioners?”
“No-one!”
“Even if they pose a physical threat to your perfect society? Even if they murder and terrorise at will? I’ll ask you again. How will you kill them, and how many are you willing to kill?”
“Well there’s the people who created the Gaian murder machine. Most of them are dead anyway. There’s also the people who gave the orders for Ahmed to be blown out of the sky.”
“And?”
“The people who did the killing and everyone who approved of it.”
“Good answers. Now where would you stop?”
“I don’t know.”
“Now you know why I disapprove of killing.”
“But, but, you’ve killed more Gaian Borg and soldiers than anyone else I know.”
“Did I say I enjoyed it?”
“No, but you’re the one lecturing me on the morality of killing.”
“Have I ever even suggested killing one of our own people?”
“That’s not the same and you know it! What about him? He’s killed more people than anyone in the history of the world.” A quivering finger pointed at Richard, who briefly glanced at the accusing digit before returning to his studying.
“Now you know that this isn’t what this discussion is about. It’s about how many people are you willing to have killed to get what you want?” Suresh sighed and leaned back for a moment, arms folded. “ One death? Ten? A thousand? Ten million?”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“No. It’s a perfectly valid question. How many, and where do you stop?”

Now if only I could find a way to shoehorn it into the current story. Without sounding contrived, that is.

Stars Trilogy

A thought from the idea factory in my head


I was reviewing ‘Darkness’ this morning, and began re-editing a sequence where five of my Asteroid miner characters are getting ready for a new expedition. It got me thinking, what will be the next development in caller ID on cell phones? With software that is capable of reading emotions under development, and I’m sure some form of holographic touch screen in someone else’s ideas file, I thought to myself, what would such an ap look like?

In ‘Darkness’ an E-Avatar is a 3D animated iCell figure that reacts to the callers emotions. When in no-vid mode, the cell phones internal software generates a little figure that mimes, dances and reflects nuances from the callers voice patterns. Animated Gif are already available for cell phones as caller ID avatars, so how long before a more reactive version becomes available? Not just reading micro expressions, but also tonal nuances in a callers voice. Maybe firstly as a 2D version, but as screen technology improves, 3D.

Just a thought. The pace technology is moving, I’m sure I’m not the first to consider the idea. Wonder if the idea isn’t original, but simply a derivation of something I’ve seen before on TV or in a movie?

General musings, Stars Trilogy

Unscrambling storylines


After my recent brain fart storm, I find myself scrambling round the MSS of ‘Darkness’ tidying up loose ends. In making one story / character change, I’ve unleashed a cascade effect. While this does not alter the planned ending, it has sent the intermediate story skittering off in a new direction. Whilst this is not a completely unfortunate happenstance, it’s a lot of hard work reading and re-reading to clean up the glitches. Massively time consuming.

All this, day job, and Angie wanting me to help with her Canadian History Teachers course. Just been reading the unit on accounts of first contact in British Columbia by the Simon Fraser expedition, and to be honest it’s so dry I can hardly keep my eyes open. Great cure for insomnia. Although I’d prefer a large whiskey.

Stars Trilogy

The only problem with great ideas…..


Maybe there can be sometimes too much of a good thing. Inspiration, that is. Had a great idea the other day for a little dramatic vignette for ‘Darkness’. A sound piece for to round out the backstory. One that ties up two character threads neatly, just in case a reader asks “Hey, whatever happened to them?”.

The only problem is; sometimes an idea is too good and takes over from the main story sequence. Unfortunately, my story now contains too many conflicts with other character threads. At the same time it’s just too damn good to ditch, because what’s written tidies up a gaping hole in the narrative. On the other hand it opens several large tins of wriggling Oligochaeta.

Originally I’d planned to kill off the two characters in question to provide a focus of angry motivation for others, but I like them both so much I really can’t bring myself to do the evil deed.

This means yet another storyline restructure. Head meet desk. Hi. Ow.

Don’t know how anyone else copes with story conundrums of this nature, but it’s at times like these I’m glad that I use a laptop running word processing software, and not my old Imperial Safari typewriter. Think of the trees I’m saving.

Stars Trilogy

Darkness Between the Stars – new excerpt page

1 Comment

Have decided to put the first couple of thousand words of ‘Darkness’ on an excerpts page. Just to give a flavour of the style and tone. New story thread to add to the mix, with six particular characters.

New page is under the ‘Stars Trilogy’ tab on ‘Darkness between the Stars – Excerpts‘ tab.

At present, inbetween shifts and all the other domestic stuff, I’m flipping between stories, trying not to get them all mixed up. Oh yes, and I’m also growing my beard back.

Distribution, Stars Trilogy

Don’t forget the formatting


Just had notice from Lulu.com that ‘Falling’ has been bounced back from the distributors for a single formatting error. Easily corrected, and at least this time they didn’t just tell me the problem was in the ‘Metadata’. One word in the title should have been capitalised, and I missed it. Bummer. No matter, it’s all done and dusted and back to the Distributors again. Same price, same artwork, same everything but the one letter in the title that needed capitalising.

The word? Was ‘through’ which should have been ‘Through’. That was it. Two minutes later I’ve revised and put ‘Falling’ back into the publishing mill, which grinds exceeding small. I’m not fussed in the slightest because it was such a little thing after all the time and effort that’s been expended.

Currently chilling at the kids place in Stratford upon Avon, giving Angie the occasional shoulder massage before popping out for provisions and ensuring everyone gets fed. Have put in a little work on a couple of short stories whilst we’re here, and will be applying the latest lesson in Distribution to everything else that goes into the marketplace.

Stars Trilogy

Jet lag and the creative muse


I don’t know about anyone else, but at the moment my time sense is off by what feels like eighteen hours.  Had a long last 48 hours in airports and am began beginning this post in the deserted bar of an English hotel with my senses scrambled.  According to the local time it’s past two in the morning. According to what’s left of my sleep deprived brain I’ve lost all frame of reference.

The flight over wasn’t great, as two excited Dutch seniors gabbled on all night in loud voices, despite being asked to keep it quiet.  Maybe they didn’t understand, but I’ve found that’s unusual for the Dutch.  Most are such good English second language speakers.  Perhaps it was their first time coming back from BC.  I don’t know.  Angie was her usual restive self, so I watched the in flight movies with my neurons quietly dissolving  into temporal shifted chaos.  Tried to cat nap in the airport, which took the edge off it, but that was all.  At the moment, Mr Wonderful I’m not.  As I get older I get less tolerant of these things.  Next time we will plan at least a 24 hour layover between long distance flights.

Writing as I do about interstellar travel and its various challenges, this raised the point of ‘Star lag’.  A disconnect between Earth time zones and human diurnal synchronisation.  Say you have a star traveller who has been living on time zone in one world who makes repeated trips to Earth and a specific time zone there, what does this do to their body functions?  I’ve heard some issues referred to as ‘Biorhythm upset’ (Larry Niven) and a few other references, which not unnaturally escape me right at this moment.  In the Stars series, various characters report feeling less than in tune with themselves after forty or fifty light year trips.  Coupled with the time disruption caused by a disconnect between normal space / time function and what I refer to as ‘subspace’.

Working from personal experience of long distance travel, I’ve jotted a few notes on what it might be like for people who have to live and work on Star ships, and all the mental and physical challenges raised.  If there is a secret to faster than light interstellar travel, and if humankind is not dumb enough to self destruct in the meantime, what does this do to the people who will regularly traffic between worlds?  How will they cope?  What will their needs be?

Personal space will be an issue for star ship designers, and cabins will need to be roomy, with facility for low gravity sleeping arrangements.  Digging around for anecdotal reports and more scholarly data from Astronauts on the ISS, and from the old Russian Mir programme and Skylab leaves us with plenty of clues.  Regular reports on the condition of Astronauts like Chris Hadfield, for example, the Canadian Astronaut whose YouTube videos went viral on the web also provide material.  There’s a hell of a lot of good basic primary source material available, and research is half of what writing is all about.

In ‘Darkness’ all these themes have to be addressed, and with all the necessary astronomical data to plough through, there’s a rich seam to be mined.  Especially for the critical ‘Asteroid miner’ story thread.

Amazing what inspiration can come, even from jet lag.

Truro UK today and tomorrow.  Visiting Bath and seeing Jo and Laura the day after.  Then family in Stratford.

Stars Trilogy

Up and running with the first two volumes


Right. Distribution issues notwithstanding, both ‘Sky‘ and ‘Falling‘ are now public domain at the princely sum of CAD$3.99 each. Edited, re-edited and proofed until my eyeballs feel like they’re going to seize up.

That’s it. No more. Time to move on and finish the series before going back to work on Cerberus. Will be monitoring for distribution issues while I’m in the UK and Ireland. Now it’s time for the day job.

Observations, Stars Trilogy

The importance of humour as a storytelling tool


Proof reading ‘Falling’ I’ve noticed how often I use a comic sequence to get a story point across. For example, in the second half, juxtaposed against the tragedy of involuntary slave workers, there is a thwarted DEA raid when a heavily armed task force invades foreign territory, only to find themselves out thought and out gunned. Mostly by my renegade Mayor and ex drug lord character William J Colby. Mostly it comes from the one liners Bill delivers as part of his address, and the bathos of a rural Police Sergeant arresting a bunch of enforcement agents who are clearly out of their jurisdiction with the line; “Hey. Can you hear me at the back?”. I love writing Bill, as he’s so disreputable and ruthless when faced by the evil embodied by villains such as Eldridge Farrow, another who was a lot of fun to write. In the words of George Bernard Shaw’s creation, Henry Higgins, they are both “So delightfully low.”

There’s also a lot of what I like to call ‘Blue collar banter’ between minor characters which moves the story along and wraps up a section on an uptick, or to soften the edge of an anticlimax. Adding bulk to otherwise two dimensional characters. Such as a line from a ground crew member known simply as ‘Chesney’ arguing with his friend Leroy Colby, which begins with an exasperated Leroy urging his friend and colleague to stop wisecracking and simply get on with it. “You know Chesney, sometimes with you.” To which Chesney responds; “I know, I know. Sometimes the fun never starts.” Well I liked it.

A gag is a great way of highlighting a point, or rounding out a character in a crisis situation. The kind of everyday crosstalk everyone engages in to make a dull, involved, or emotionally intense job a little bit less of a struggle. To go even further; laughter is one of life’s essentials. A day without a genuine shared smile is a day wasted. The life autistic.

All right. I’m biased. I’ll put my hands up to this one, having done a few stand up gigs and finding I didn’t have the nerve or comic talent to succeed, I still strongly believe in the power of humour. Especially as a contrast to tragedy, a tool of protest or getting a complex argument across in a sound bite. This has been an understood dramatic principle since before the days of Plautus.

Some of my favourite TV shows have strong tragi-comedic elements with a great deal of comic interplay between characters. Take ‘House MD’ as a classic example. As a character, House is a high functioning drug addict who tortures his staff, routinely manipulates and insults friends and colleagues, who without his humour would be an opinionated ass whose work is highly suspect. He is the loosest of cannons. Yet his primary redeeming qualities are his wit, directness, and incorrigible humour when dealing with difficult or emotionally charged situations. Without these qualities, the show would consist of dull geeky medico-speak punctuated by melodrama. Gold without the glitter. Add appropriate (And even some ‘inappropriate) humour, and the show sparkles.

Well, that’s my take on it. For the few (One? None? Who cares?) who will bother to read this far. From the black comedy of Hansel and Gretel’s attempt at Haute Cuisine, through Shakespeare’s comedies (And tragedies, there are even a few chuckles in Henry V, Richard III and Romeo and Juliet) and Aesop’s Fables to modern day comic geniuses like Terry Pratchett and P J O’Rourke. Humour is the essential counterpoint to all the scary stories others love to tell. Sometimes I think as a tool of domination. Maybe one of the “Hah! You’re scared-I’m not, so I’m better than you.” mind games some like to play.

Appropriately targeted humour by contrast provides an alleviation against the force of crushing conformity. Providing joyous relief from feeling “So it’s not just me, then.” A shared vindication. A tool for conflict resolution. In fact next to air, food and shelter, I would argue that it is the fourth most critical requirement of survival and being human, and a good story should always contain at least a little.

Update: An ability to laugh at your own shortcomings is also very useful when dealing with frustrating glitches in eBook distribution. ‘Sky’ needs one tiny update before they will accept for wider distribution. Header 1 on first line.

Pray for me. I need all the help I can get.

Stars Trilogy

Final checks and formatting


Have got to the point with ‘Falling’ where I’m happy to release the rewritten content into the wild as an eBook. I’ve been holding back in case I get one of those ‘Distribution rejection’ e-mails from the previous volume. Reformatting is time consuming, and trying to weasel out the reason for the rejection equally so. They just send you stock e-mails about your works ‘metadata’, and never respond when you ask for details on which specific field doesn’t match the content. Although a better help section has been in evidence over the past year or so. This time, I think, I’ve got the formula right. I think. Touch wood, all that shizzle. Fingers, toes, nostrils and eyes crossed. (Don’t go there.) Hoping for the best.

Final spell check is due this evening after work. Which will take two hours, even with semi automated shortcuts. Final proofing will take another two days and eat up all the spare time I don’t have. Primary release via Lulu.com will happen probably Saturday afternoon before we finish packing and cleaning for our UK trip. Dog will be well cared for while we’re away. He’s on a vet mandated diet at the moment to see if we can shrink a fatty lump he’s developed. Special food has been purchased with strict instructions of no treats.

Sunday is a travelling day, arriving Bristol Airport in the UK on Monday. When travelling to the UK I like to arrive at provincial airports simply because Heathrow is my least favourite air terminal in the entire world. Dirty, crowded, high flight taxes and fees. Flights often late and everyone seems so bad tempered. So I try to avoid using it. Far better, and cheaper to take a flight into Schipol, hang around in relative comfort for four hours, then take a short hop to Bristol. Truro for three nights to visit Angie’s family, then up to my old home of Stratford upon Avon for a week. After that a hike over to Ireland to see the sights of Waterford and environs, thence back to Bristol and a two night layover in Amsterdam before home for tea, cookies and sleep.

Will try to write when I can find the odd quiet corner to hunker down in. If not, I’m in Bristol, Truro, Stratford, Ireland, Amsterdam etc.

Cerberus, Stars Trilogy

Ready to release the latest versions


Of late I’ve been in obsessive compulsive mode; ironing out errors, formatting and editing, proofing and polishing my prose. Apart from being bloody hard work, it has also been exhausting to the point where my brain doesn’t know where my body is going. I can function; but like with the sleep deprivation I suffered last year, the signs of strain are unmistakeable.

Notwithstanding the above, what I call ‘Sky’ the first of the Stars Trilogy is now re released as an eBook. Checked, edited, proofed, re edited, spell checked and reformatted. The basic story structure remains the same, but all those irritating clunky sentences have been hammered into something a little more elegant. A much better product. First reports back from my test readers are encouraging. It’s been submitted to the iBookstore and Barnes & Noble Databases. A Kobo version will follow in a week or two when I’m rested. Not sure about Amazon. I’ll wait a while and see how the distribution works out.

Price is CAD$4.99. UK GBP 3.80. That’s fair. Considering Traditional publishers are charging Ten or more bucks per eBook, I think it’s bloody good value for all the work I’ve put in. Links will go into the ‘published works’ page by tonight, Pacific Standard time.

The second volume, ‘Falling’ although three thousand words shorter, was never as rough cut as the first. Ergo, there is less work involved in bringing it up to scratch. The release of the updated and improved ‘Falling’ will follow shortly as an eBook. All the old print to order versions, with all their myriad faults have been ‘retired’. Better, cleaner, more well formatted versions will shortly be available. The same will happen with all my other Novellas, short stories and Paul Calvin novels. Over the next year I intend to throw a lot of mud at the wall. See what sticks.

Self publishing is truly a steep learning curve, and we all leave skid marks on those unexpected corners. Projects end up nose down in the ditch, and require more than a metaphorical winch and Turtle wax to put back in good working order. Doesn’t mean they’re no good, it just means a little more work is needed. Fortunately there’s scope and opportunity to do that.

‘Darkness’, the third volume of the Stars trilogy remains a troublesome work in progress. It is hard to keep the main story on track. There are so many probability chains to follow I’m currently finding it too easy to run up any one of the many blind narrative alleys. Like a Minoan Labyrinth, I know where the end should be and am equipped to slay the Minotaur, but I’m still not quite sure how to get to my desired conclusion.

The UK trip looms ever closer, and I’m viewing it with mixed feelings. I’ll be passing through Truro, Bristol, Stratford, Claverdon, and a few other of my old stamping grounds. As well as popping over to Ireland and the Hague. Catch up on news of the old places. Peoplewatch. See family. Openly wonder at how crowded and congested it is. Take my own cream into coffee shops because ‘Head office’ has decreed their outlets will not serve cream in case they get sued for clogging the nations already stress-hardened arteries.

I’ve amused myself in the Stars and Cerberus series poking a little fun at all these demands for bans and regulation on everything remotely pleasurable. One of the questions I repeatedly pose is; what would it be like to live in a world where wine and beer are strictly rationed, and spirits, tobacco, chocolate and meat are completely banned? Where the only permitted protein in the public diet is derived from blocks of ‘Go-Quarn’, a Tofu like substance, promoted as part of a ‘healthy vegetarian diet’. Which is derived from leftover humans – look up ‘Soylent Green’. Did I say I’ve got a dark sense of humour?

That’s all for now. Off to the day job.

Stars Trilogy

Indexing and formatting for eBook


Getting an eBook right is a massive effort. Over the past two weeks I’ve done little but revise, spellcheck and index two pieces of work for release as eBooks while the muse for writing new works is passing me by. Headings need to be properly organised. Titles in Heading 1, Part section titles in Heading 2, and sub section titles in Heading 3. No stray code fragments to mar the text and all the major spelling and grammatical mistakes are being ironed out. It’s hard work and takes up every single free minute. Angie has been loudly wondering where her husband has gotten to.

Not far now. Another two days concerted effort I think. The Metadata is fixed. Cover artwork is fixed. Title, copyright page and forewords have matching Author names and title headers. Nothing for the automated format programs to reject. Along with a part time job that is more like full time plus overtime, I don’t get time to get out and sniff the air. Not that I’m a big socialiser anyway. I never was.

The trip to England, Ireland and the Hague is just over two weeks away and there’s a lot to pack in. Family, friends etc. I’ll take the slaptop and if I get a chance to write will pick a quiet spot and juggle concepts while the girls are off shopping and whatever else they do.

Stars Trilogy

Formatting and metadata


Getting an eBook ready, especially sorting out the ‘metadata’ isn’t easy if you don’t want to end up tearing your hair out. I’ve just spent all my ‘free’ or writing time for the last two weeks proofing, editing and ensuring the chapter headers and all that shizzle are in apple pie order. Reminder to self; buy more Tylenol. I’ve mercilessly hunted down the last errant apostrophe, ruthlessly swatted the last inadvertent spelling error, jumped up and down on the non-deliberate grammatical errors, and corrected the chapter headings. When you’ve been working on a hundred and fifty six thousand words, it’s easy to make mistakes. Three times this morning I’ve gone back over a hundred and forty heading entries to find stupid dingbatted errors, and I’m allowing myself two days pause before I run the spell checker twice more, and re-read the MSS specifically looking for those dumb ‘a, the’ errors I’m prone to after cut ‘n paste rewording of a passage that feels clumsy and clunky.

Target price is CAD$4.99. Which is pretty cheap, considering all the time and effort that’s gone into it. I think there’s an option for serious discounts for the first two weeks as well, which will be nice for some. Depending on their taste in Sci-fi.

The metadata is fine. The author and title names all match throughout the manuscript, and I’m sticking with some old cover art that I really don’t want to change. Especially as I’ve moved computers twice and lost track of the specific cover art font. There is a follow on already written (155,000 words at last edit), and I just need to get that ready before skipping over to see friends and family back in England, Ireland and the Netherlands. I’ll have my laptop with me, so will be logging onto the nearest free WiFi point every so often to check on the distribution. Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the iBookstore shouldn’t be an issue, and I’ll be confirming availability via the Kobo marketplace. which should be relatively easy now that we have a little Kobo Glo.

End result is a tale in a style of Robert Heinlein meets Tom Clancy (I think). The characters love, hate, laugh and cry, get alienated, reconciled, killed and wounded and all that jazz. What’s truly amazing is the fact that I still actually like the story, even after all the prolonged birthing pains of repeated rewrite, edit and format.

Stars Trilogy

Picking up the baton #WritersBlock


Three major projects on the go at present. Have picked up the MSS of ‘Darkness between the stars’ yet again. Just over 52,000 words when I last ground to a halt. There’s a missing coupling in the narrative train and up until yesterday I didn’t seem to be able to hitch it up properly without the connection looking overly contrived, or asking any reader to make massive intuitive leaps.

The problem is, in order to fit my self imposed timeline, a civilisation has to stop interstellar travel within a very short period, and I’m having trouble logically mapping this process out. The dots have to join up or the narrative doesn’t work. Four storylines have to run and converge to a single precise point fror the story to make sense. There’s something missing. A metaphorical link in my coupling, a critical pin in the linkage. Like any technician, I work on the premise that if I can work out what it does, and how it does it, I can create it. Simple.

In the meantime, pass the Tylenol.