This makes for good reading, despite the annoying design of the website.

What if time travel is like alcoholism?

Shouldn't mermaids have blubber to stay warm in the ocean?

Short stories by my, freely available to the public!

I Am a Recovering Perfectionist

Guest post by Abby Goldsmith, in Dan Koboldt's "Science in Sci-Fi" blog series.

http://dankoboldt.com/cgi-not-made-computers/

The good news is, I finally understand why the beginning of Book 1 has been such a problem. It's not the prose. It's not the main character, per se. It's not bad luck, or a hatred of telepaths, or anything arcane. It's jaded reader expectations. Jaded readers see a child-genius-orphan-telepath-wheelchair-user, and expect a bland character who cruises through life with ease and saves the day. They're expecting him to turn into Artemis Fowl + Professor X. Or, as another writer put it: How do you imply that there's more to a character than there seems at first, without giving the whole game away?

I've written myself into a corner on this one. The character doesn't follow the tropes, but if I tell you that, it gives the whole game away. His trope attributes are all vital to the story. There's simply no way to change this character without ruining the story--and no way to introduce him without turning off jaded literary agents. He is what he is.

But knowing is half the battle.

I spent the last decade wondering why I couldn't get the beginning right, no matter what I did. Now I'm able to zero in on the root of the problem. I might never be able to fully 'fix' it, or make it palatable to a jaded reader who expects the worst ... but I can treat the symptoms. I finally have the correct diagnosis. After so many years of wondering why the first chapters never worked magic on readers while the rest of the book did, this is a huge relief.

I wanted to start querying agents in March. Now it looks like it will be September or later. I wish it hadn't taken me a decade of start+stop frustration to figure out the root of this problem. But, as the slaves in my series say, knowledge is worth a bit of pain.

My treatment plan is as follows:

1) Add a prologue from the point of view of the only person on Earth who knows that the main character is not what he appears to be. Prologues are out of vogue and this is a minor antagonist, but it seems necessary, given the problem. Her POV can explain quite a lot.

I wanted to let the reader discover the main character's true nature along with him ... but a jaded reader assumes they already know the main character's true nature. This prologue will give them a more accurate estimation.

2) Have a character comment on one of the tropes. This proves that I didn't include the trait subconsciously or out of ignorance.

3) Make everything else in the first chapters as un-trope-like as possible. I'm focusing on having other characters act in unexpected-yet-still-believable ways.

4) Re-purpose my query letter to emphasize the main character's failure to save the day. This is extremely tricky, since query letters are supposed to making the main character sound heroic. I need to make him sound heroic, yet emphasize the fact that he's not the hero they expect. Urrrrgh.

Here's my August 2014 query pitch:

Thomas never lets anyone take advantage of him. As a 12-year-old with spinal muscular atrophy, he relies on caretakers ... yet dominates adults because he knows their secrets. No one else has his powers. Or so it seems.

When other telepaths invade Thomas's mind, ripping into his embarrassing secrets and peering through his eyes, he's amazed that his powers are commonplace. Trillions of telepaths like him rule the galaxy. They transport Thomas to an alien metropolis where his most indulgent fantasies are actualized through advanced technology. Here Thomas is normal--but everyone who isn't a telepath gets brutally enslaved. Elite telepaths will kill Thomas in a nanosecond if he aids slaves such as his foster family and friends. Or if he reverts to 'savage' emotions, such as compassion. Unable to outwit or deceive his brethren, Thomas begins to suppress his emotions and give up.

His desperate friends must prove that slaves are superior to the master race of telepaths. They must convince Thomas to challenge his own conceits ... before he becomes just another brilliant, depraved slave-master. The freedom of the universe is at stake.

I like to subvert tropes. I take traits that readers have seen too many times before--a gentle giant, for instance--and turn that character into something unexpected. Readers figure that a gentle giant will be misunderstood, considered a monster when he really isn't. The reader rolls their eyes ... until the plot takes an unexpected turn, and the gentle giant gains dangerous berserker tendencies that get innocent bystanders killed. Now the reader must reexamine their assumptions and wonder if he really is a monster, despite his depiction as kind and gentle.

The main character in my novel (Book 1 of the epic series) is front-loaded with tropes. He's a child genius. In a wheelchair. With telepathy. Mistrusting readers are rolling their eyes, thinking they've seen this before, in Artemis Fowl and Ender Wiggin and Professor X. Such readers assume that he's going to save the world (or his friends, or whatever) with his genius and telepathic abilities. They'd go on assuming that ... until he doesn't. About 30% into the novel, the story takes an unexpected twist, causing the reader to reexamine their assumptions about geniuses and telepaths and disabled protagonists. His strengths are being a child and being disabled; his weaknesses are being a genius and being telepathic. It's the opposite of what audiences are trained to expect.

I should have expected that this would be a hard sell. Holy cow. I'm running into a roadblock where industry professionals see the trope, assume that's all it is, and stop reading before the trope gets subverted.*

One beta reader suggested that I plant hints of trope subversion in the first chapter or two. I'm not sure that's feasible, since the beauty of trope subversion is setting up reader expectations before blowing them to smithereens.

Has anyone else run into this problem when subverting tropes? Have you found a way around it?

* The first chapter has other red flags for industry readers, but the trope assumption seems to be one of two 'kill switch' factors. The other major red flag is the protagonist's young age, which industry professionals consider wrong for YA crossover or adult markets, A Game of Thrones and Ender's Game notwithstanding.

In a discussion on Goodreads, author Susan Shell Winston asked if I'd started writing my epic science fiction series before attending the Odyssey Writing Workshop, and if the workshop changed my ideas about it.

Great question! Yes. I wrote the original drafts of Book 1 and Book 2 before I'd ever heard of Odyssey, and before I learned proper grammar. I just wanted to tell a good story. Despite excited beta reader reactions, my amateur manuscript gathered a solid wall of rejections from agents and publishers. So I went to Odyssey in hopes of networking enough to get my manuscript read. Plus, I was a fan of that year's writer in residence, George R.R. Martin.

During Odyssey, I learned so much, I added two new goals. I would: a) scrap those novel drafts and do a complete rewrite from scratch, and b) hone my short story craft and aim for at least one pro sale, since that credit might catch a literary agent's attention.

It took a few years, but I've accomplished both those goals. Sadly, I'm still working towards my original goal of getting a literary agent or major publisher to read the manuscript of Book 1--the rewritten 2x version. This ongoing quest has led me to co-found novelist groups, complete additional novels in my series, and gain a lot more practice at storytelling and writing. At this point in my life, I feel capable of either accomplishing what I set out to do, or indie publishing a complete six-book series that will appeal to a broad range of readers.

As I head towards completion on the penultimate book in my Torth series, I'm wondering what note to end it on. Crowd-sourcing the ending of a novel is a bad idea--especially since most of the crowd hasn't read my novels--but I figured I'd ask your opinion, just to entertain myself.

How should this book end? Please note, the real question is where should I split the story between Books 5 and 6, since this series is actually one gigantic, epic story.

SPOILER ALERT. Don't continue if you don't want spoilers.

1) The protagonist goes against his own ethical code to create a brainwashed army of living zombies. This is a big step towards the 'dark side' for him, but a big step towards victory for the heroes. I guess this ending could be called bittersweet. I'm worried it might lose some fans, if they're rooting for that protagonist, since the resolution to this story-line would be in the next book.

2) The protagonist sees friend #3 (whom he owes his life and much else to) purposefully do something evil/manipulative to friends #1 and #2. The protagonist intervenes, and friend #3 gets furious and threatens to quit the war, which will leave all the heroes in a very bad position. This would be an ending where the readers are rooting for the protagonist, and worried for the heroes ... ideal, perhaps. But after all the battles and conquests in the rest of this book, it might seem a little anticlimactic.

3) The protagonist invents something that renders the heroes all but invincible, putting them in a very strong position at the end of the book. It might be too strong; readers might (wrongly) assume that the heroes have nothing left to worry about, and feel nonchalant about picking up the final book in the series.

4) The protagonist gets kidnapped by one of the major antagonists and put in a torture chamber. Then he's rescued with help from an unexpected friend; someone he wouldn't have relied on. He has a death match duel with the major antagonist, and wins/escapes. This is a classic heroic ending, but in my series it has some problems. There are three major antagonists in the series, and if I choose this ending, only one major antagonist will be left for Book 6. I'd rather not end with making the enemies seem too weak.

5) This is my favorite ending, but it will take a lot more wordage than the other endings--which might leave Book 6 short. This ending involves a super trap the enemies set up for the heroes, which they'll fall for. In this case, Book 5 would end on a very dark note, with the heroes in a horrible position. Readers will wonder how they're going to survive/escape. The problem with doing this one, besides word count, is that it is the 'darkest hour' moment of the epic, which should structurally come before the big climax. In other words, it should probably be reserved for Book 6. Otherwise Book 6 won't have a super low point in it.

Whew! Just writing those out helped me. Now I'm leaning towards option 2). If you actually read this, and if you have an opinion, let me know.

Thanks! And if you want to see how complicated the ending of this story is, I've diagrammed it on Padlet.

TV shows such as Firefly, Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, etc. have massive, loyal fan followings. Where are their equivalents in the book industry? I hardly see any. Epic space opera is very much in a low ebb right now. It seems that no one has had a space opera hit since Frank Herbert's Dune was published in 1965.

I think a large part of the lack of best-selling epic science fiction is its association with military fiction (a niche genre). These two don't need to go hand-in-hand, yet they often do. Many of the published Baen Books titles are military space opera. Ender's Game, Old Man's War, and the Vorkosigan saga are all arguably military space opera/epic SF. However, one could argue that George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time are military fantasy. Why is epic science fiction consigned to the small niche of 'readers who like hard science fiction plus military stuff' while epic fantasy gets a broad audience? No one really thinks of those best-selling epic fantasy series as military fiction. They're associated with fascinating worlds, high adventure, epic battles and epic romances, colorful characters, and high stakes plots. Why can't epic science fiction have all this as well?

It can, and it should.

There's a war going on in my epic science fiction series. So yes, there are battles ... but it's not military fiction, any more than A Game of Thrones is military fiction. There's no chain of command until they create one. There are no uniforms. The story is not about learning who is in charge and who is subordinate. It's not about adjusting to military life. There are no barracks. The main characters are not soldiers.

In fact, one of my main characters is a handicapped boy who's too weak to walk. Another main character is a female elderly alien slave. Only one of my characters is a muscle-bound warrior type. That should make it clear: This Is Not Military Fiction!

One more thing, and then I'll get off my soap box. I want to read some new epic science fiction that has the same sense of grand adventure that we see in epic fantasy. It seems that book publishers have developed a bias against epic SF due to the boatloads of military epic SF already published. But there is more to epic SF than military fiction.

I'm a major Scott Sigler fan because he writes epic SF that isn't military. I love his books. But I want to see more along these lines. I've been told that literary agents shy away from space opera because they claim that it's 'hard to pull off well.' I think they mean to say that 'space opera is always military fiction, which doesn't sell well, and therefore we don't want to see it.'

I wish they'd give my saga a read. One more time: It isn't military!!!

It's been a busy 2012 so far, and we're only halfway through January. First, I was interviewed on an art & architecture podcast for Austin, Texas. You can stream/download the interview HERE, or from iTUNES.

I'm collaborating with a programmer and some other friends to create iPhone games and apps of my own design. This is super exciting for me, since it's the first time I'm getting to work on my own games. I'd like to pump out a lot of material and see if anything takes off. The advantages we have: A talented team with lots of excitement and passion, and (if I say so myself) good ideas. The disadvantages: Lack of budget, and my own inexperience in marketing. The more I learn about marketing, the more scary it seems. Anyway, I will do my best. I'll let everyone know when our first game comes out. If you haven't subscribed to my blog, please do so!

I'm recording tutorial videos for 3D Modeling in 3dsmax. They're available in HD on my YouTube channel, and on the new tutorial page of my website. I plan to add more tutorials for animation, Flash, and other art software. This is partially just because it's fun to make videos, and relatively easy nowadays. It's also to prepare for my first job as a teacher. I will be teaching a 3D Animation class once per week at the local community college.

Games, contract art, teaching. What else am I doing? Still writing novels, of course. Actually ... no ... I'm editing and marketing novels now. I would like to get back to writing original material, but sadly, I've learned beyond any shadow of doubt that marketing is important if one wants to sell one's work. I'm 3/4 through an edit of Book 2, and in the process of querying agents and publishers about Book 1. Still getting top tier rejections for my short stories, but I haven't written any new short stories in a few years. Participating in (and enjoying) my local novel critique group. It's a talented bunch of writers.

I wish I could report more on my personal life, but there's not much to say. My adorable dog says "hello." She apparently sees the HOA (home owner's association) lady as a threat, which could be why the HOA lady got on my case a few months ago. My dog normally loves people, but every once in a while, she goes into attack mode ... this was the first time I saw her growl at a woman, though. Strange. Usually she has a problem with men in uniforms wearing hats. (I will add that I don't encourage aggression in my dog; she just has guard dog tendencies. She might be part pitbull or akita, and I suspect she might have been abused before I got her.)

Movie Reviews:
I enjoyed HUGO, both visually wonderful and good storytelling. I saw TINTIN in 3D, and although it was visually stunning, I thought the story was weak; predictable and beating the same joke to death. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (American version) was really great. I was pleasantly surprised that it followed the book closely, and managed to do it well. There's an example of a well written screenplay adaptation.

Book Reviews:
I read the first ten books in the ANITA BLAKE, vampire hunter series. What can I say? GUILTY PLEASURES is aptly named. I'm not sure I can recommend this series for everyone, but the first four or five books entertained me. After that, there's some fall-off. Many fans say that it devolves into weirdo erotica after the tenth book, and I can see that happening. Dating a vampire and then dating a werewolf is fine. Menage-a-trois sex with a werewolf and a vampire, plus bondage rape with a wereleopard, and turning into a succubus ... um, starting to cross a line there.

Then I read the Stieg Larsson series, which starts with THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. Interesting stuff. People may scoff, but I find the books to be very feminist, despite being written by a man! The main characters get a little ridiculous and unbelievable, especially in the second and third book, but I don't mind ridiculousness with a good story, which this had. Salander is a cool character. No one knows if she has Asperger's Syndrome or what, but she's a criminal mastermind who looks like a sullen Goth teenager, so who cares?

And I just finished listening to Scott Sigler's THE STARTER, a sequel to THE ROOKIE. Yes, that's right, I don't have a clue about sports or football, yet I read two books about football. I'm just a hopeless Sigler fan. I guess it's weird that I like his alien voice acting and his super-weird alien universe, where humans play pro sports alongside drooling alien teammates. What a cool idea, though.

If you want to receive my infrequent updates, please subscribe to my blog!

Time for a bit of an update! I got my first two (form) rejection letters from this year's round of novel querying. Rejection is never pleasant, but it's especially hard when you spend years rewriting the 1-page query letter. Literary agents usually never get past this simple-yet-vitally-important letter. They get flooded with hundreds of query letters per week, and that's on top of the daily work they need to do for their existing clients. I'm going to try and keep my complaining online to a minimum. I'll let you and the rest of the world know if ... ahem, *WHEN*, I land an agent.

Tomorrow, I'm going through a corn maze. I have also begun to substitute teach a 3D Animation class at the nearby community college. It's my first time teaching, and I'm pretty stoked about it!

One of the games I've worked on this year is coming to the App store. If you or your child want a simple and fun way to learn how to hear/play music, check out Tune Hopper.

I just got my shipment of Book 6 in the SmartBoys Club book series, which I've been illustrating. These are great books for middle grade readers, girls or boys.

Work life: I continue to freelance from home, using 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and a variety of other art programs. What's next? Should I start a business in e-learning apps? Should I make a series of short animated films? Should I write some silly e-books and sell them? Should I just concentrate on expanding my current self-employed contract business?

What do you think? I have exciting ideas for all of the above, but only enough time to focus on one.

Torth series update: I'm still editing Book 2. Just one major edit, and it should be done by the end of this year.

Writing topic food for thought: We no longer have much folklore, but instead have fantasy books. As a genre writer, are you willing to break with tradition and make a new kind of vampire, elf, zombie, dragon, or whatever? This is about originality, a topic I feel strongly about. Many writers seem uncomfortable about inventing their own worlds and aliens. Even when they do it, they often follow traditions that were laid out by previous writers. I like to break with tradition.

When it comes to mind readers, they're often treated a certain way in fiction. Either they are benevolent and kind (Professor X, Deanna Troi), or they are befuddled by their power (Jean Gray, the cop in "Heroes," and many more). In order to justify this befuddlement, mind readers in fiction often gain their powers late in life, or have very little control over their power, tuning in and out of thoughts at random as the story requires.

I say that's all bull****. First of all, a lifelong mind reader would damn well know how to use that power effectively. Whenever I read or watch someone else's telepathic character get befuddled, I feel a strong sense of author manipulation. It wasn't thought through all the way. The writer was lazy; rather than actually think about the full spectrum of implications of mind reading--its limitations and possibilities--they try to make it work without a set of rules, forcing it to fill a plot need and glossing over the plot holes it creates.

Second of all, if you are privy to the darkest secrets of your fellow humans, you're not going to be a benevolent sweetheart. More like cynical and misanthropic.

And if you have the ability to control other people's minds, that is the trump card of all super-powers. It trumps *EVERYTHING* else. Any character who can use a Jedi mind trick is likely to become super-corrupt. I use it sparingly in my fiction ... because much like time travel, it can easily mess up a story unless it's thoroughly thought out.

And that concludes my thoughts on mind readers for the afternoon.

Every week, one of the writing mailing lists I belong to has a discussion topic. I often respond to the list, so I figured, why not post about it to my blog? Today's topic is about inventing words. Most fiction writers invent names for people or places, and most SF/F (science fiction/fantasy) writers also invent jargon or slang for their world. Famous examples include Quidditch, Jedi knights, Unobtainium, grok, Cthulhu, and elves.

It seems to me that a lot of contemporary writers, particularly in SF, overdo the futuristic jargon and slang, which makes it hard for a new reader to get through. The universe in which my novels take place is ruled by mind readers, who have no use for slang. Their jargon is utilitarian rather than slang-like.

• Hoverchair = a floating chair.
• Transport = a flying car.
• Adaptive skin = photo-sensor cells that can be programmed to imitate a realistic view, or approximate invisibility.
• Plasmic polymer = a super strong and flexible building material.

They use holograms, antimatter, nuclear weapons, FTL engines, and so forth, but I saw no need to invent new words for things we already have words for. Other than the aforementioned tech gadgets, and aside from names for people or places (Torth are mind readers), I've only invented two words for use in my Torth series. A Yeresunsa is someone with powers that go beyond mind reading. I didn't want to use Jedi, wizard, warlock, sorcerer, etc, which come with preconceived notions. The etymology of this word has a history in my series. And Guaht is someone who only judges him/herself and never judges anyone else. In my Torth series, this can be the equivalent of being a saint, although only some people follow the Code of Guaht (which is akin to a philosophic religion, a la Buddhism).

Dear [insert ideal literary agent],

Thomas has always felt like an alien, too brilliant for his youthful age. When alien mind readers snatch Thomas and four of his acquaintances from their mundane lives on Earth, he learns of his otherworldly heritage, and seizes a chance to join the mighty Torth Empire. The only catch is that Thomas must abandon his human friends to brutal slavery.

While Thomas navigates a world full of technological marvels, the four humans survive in an alien slave ghetto. They can't escape from a city thick with mind readers. When one of the humans is marked for execution, they realize that time is short. Unless Thomas can remember his human loyalties, they must escape on their own . . . which means they must rescue Thomas from the monster he is becoming.

CITY OF SLAVES is complete at 105,000 words ... blah, blah, blah. How does it sound?

Dear [insert an ideal LITERARY AGENT],

Thomas has always felt like an outsider, too brilliant for his youthful age, victimized by adults and unable to relate to other kids. His handful of friends are all older than himself, teenagers and adults who also suffer as social outcasts. But Thomas has a brighter future. If he agrees to join the Torth Empire, he will win acceptance among the powerful mind readers who rule the known universe. The only catch is that Thomas must abandon his human friends to slavery and death.

While Thomas navigates a world full of technological marvels, his friends survive in a brutal alien slave ghetto. Their only hope for long-term survival is escape . . . but in city full of emotionless mind readers, secret plans are impossible. Their slim hope hinges on Thomas. If Thomas can't remember his human ethics in time, then his friends must rescue him from the monster he is becoming.

CITY OF SLAVES is complete at 105,000 words, the first in a dark science fiction novel series that explores what it means to be human. I've completed three sequels, following Thomas and his friends as they lead a slave rebellion against the Torth Empire. My writing credentials include stories and articles in Fantasy Magazine, Escape Pod, The Internet Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. I'm a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and a member of Codex.

So that's my latest query letter. I know I can tear it apart endlessly and always find flaws, but do you see anything that really turns you off?

I'll start contacting literary agents and editors this coming week. Possibly as soon as Tuesday. Yikes! This is a special kind of scary.

I'm finished ... again! And I dared to enter the Suvudu Writing Contest.

What do you think of this blurb? Please comment or email.

CITY OF SLAVES: Torth Book 1

Thomas is a mind reader whose friends rely on his advice, unaware that Thomas belongs to an alien race of emotionally stunted slave masters with advanced technology. Thomas himself remains unaware of his heritage--until the Torth abduct him along with four of his friends, subjecting them to brutal slavery. Thomas accepts his birthright of power and privilege, hoping to rescue his human friends. But Thomas can't allow his old loyalties to surface in a society full of mind readers, and while he flounders through repressive laws and unimaginable luxuries, his friends must rely on alien slaves in their daily struggle to survive. They soon realize that they will die as slaves unless they can figure out a way to escape on their own ... and rescue Thomas from the monster he is becoming.

Would you like to test read? This novel is 105,000 words, or approximately 420 paperback pages with relatively large print.

Full disclosure: I'm still not happy with it. I may never be happy with this book. Parts of it look really lame to me now, from my perspective as a more experienced writer versus the person I was ten years ago. I'm convinced the beginning is still a problem, but I did my best. The story remains awesome to me, and I've grown a lot as a writer during this series.

In other news, it's SxSW here in Austin. I made the mistake of walking downtown on St. Patrick's Day during a Strokes concert. Wow. I've never seen so many crazy drunk people wearing green.

Sometimes personal rejection letters can be amusing. Here are a few excerpts:

"To be perfectly frank, the only reason for our rejection of the story is that real estate is terribly, terribly boring. It's difficult to get into a story with such a boring premise, and impossible when that premise is not even played down or dressed up with other, sexier topics. ... We paged through and found that the later descriptions of the deformed woman were indeed disturbing."

And another for the same short horror story:

"To be perfectly honest, fat murderous retards are played out."

My fourth Torth novel, the aptly named "World of Wreckage," is complete!

It weighs in at a healthy 104,000 words, and took me one year to complete, or six months if you factor out real life delays.

Writing this book was one heck of a wild ride, and required me to stretch my writing skills in new and strange ways. I wrote a blog post about the chemistry of hate (see May 2010), inspired by a rocky relationship between two characters in this book. I developed some new insights about the Torth Empire, and opened up the plot gateway for the wrap-up of the series, which will probably require three more novels.

Working on this series has given me a lot more respect and appreciation for writers such as Robert Jordan, J.K. Rowling, and George R.R. Martin, who've juggled long character arcs that must stay fresh and fun over multiple novels. It's really not as easy as it looks.

And now . . . here are a few random, completely out-of-context, and spoiler-free quotes from the book!

# # # # # # # # # #

Here's a solution, she told the Commander of All Living Things. Drop a series of thermonuclear bombs on them.

"He's a lying sleaze-ball who'll lick anyone's boots if he thinks it will save his life."

"You've doomed the universe. Way to go, genius."

"I have to warn you," he said in a quiet voice, "the Great Prison is a hard place to visit, even if you're not being tortured there." He seemed intent on ignoring Thomas. "The sights we'll see . . . it will be unpleasant. We have to remember not to intervene. We can't help the prisoners, no matter how much we'd like to."

"I should have let you die." He raised his voice to a squeaky pitch, doing an imperious imitation of Thomas. "I bet I can outsmart them!"

"The little girl who keeps coming up with doomsday devices? Ugh. She gives me the willies."

"This place has been untouched for who-knows-how-many-thousands of years, and he's going to break it?"

"You're obliterating countless centuries of ancient artifacts!" His voice cracked, anguished. "The things we could have learned!"

"We've met before. You saved my life. Would you be so kind as to allow me to save yours?"

"C o m m m m m m m m m m e," the Torth whispered through smiles.

Cherise raised her hand--and stopped herself just before she could slap Flen across the face. "I don't love Thomas." The very idea stung her, a deep wound that she wasn't sure she could forgive Flen for speaking. "I hate him. But he's trying to save the Alashani, so get off his back."

"Oh, hell. I could explain it perfectly if you were a mind reader. But since you're not getting it, I think you're going to have to perform an astonishing feat of heavy lifting, instead."

The Indigo Governess sat in her massage pool in her suite on Umdalkdul, so weakened that she required medical devices to aid her lungs and heart. Derision leaked from her. This 'frippery' is an ingenious new weapon that will change the course of history. Her communication came with an attached mental image of the Betrayer as a bloodied corpse. Once it's ready, it will destroy him. My creativity will save the Empire.

"Alex is done for today. The next time he reappears, grab him. Jump on him. Tell him to get some sleep. If he tries to ignore you and do anything at all, kick him in the balls."

Get rid of all mentally defective infants, no matter how trivial the defect seems. No emotional babies, no handicapped telepaths, and especially no Yeresunsa. We (Torth) have been too lax.

Of course, the Death Architect replied. It could destroy a star. It might be able to destroy the galaxy. It might unravel the space-time continuum and collapse the universe as We know it. I don't really know. Pride and eager curiosity shone in her thoughts. I'll need to run some experiments.

Inwardly, the Commander wondered what signs of treachery she'd missed twelve years ago. Why did you throw away your life (just) to copulate with a human beast, and then carry a hybrid fetus to term inside your womb?

# # # # # # # # # #

Ah, those Torth ... never up to any good.

Now I would love to write Book 5, but I'm going to resist the temptation and (sighhhhh) take another peep at Book 1. I want to market this series, and, like, sell it, someday.

I’m pondering the nature of hatred as I write the fourth novel in my Torth series. The interaction between two characters (one of them a new introduction) who grow to absolutely hate each other on a personal level is a challenge for me, and my particular set-up feels like unexplored territory in fiction. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any comparable examples.

The closest might be Harry Potter and Professor Snape. Harry Potter and Snape are both on the same team, forced to interact for the larger good, yet they can hardly tolerate being in the same room together. This is similar to my character situation, except that the Potter and Snape relationship is skewed in favor of one character over the other. Harry Potter has valid reasons to hate Snape, but Snape simply equates Harry with the school bully who tormented him. In my opinion, this makes it harder to identify with Snape. If you had to side with one or the other, most people would side with Harry. Snape is just a little too greasy, a little too mindlessly supportive of Draco Malfoy.

My characters locked in mutual hatred are meant to balance each other. They’re both good guys. They’re both on the same team, which holds them in check. They both have equally valid reasons for wanting to strangle the other to death. (To readers: I can’t say names or details without giving major spoilers.)

This got me thinking about the nature of hatred. It seems to me that fictional hate relationships tend to be impersonal and sketchy. The grand scale of hero vs. villain hatred is alien to the average person. A serial killer or a tyrannical dictator is almost like a force of nature. Even if the villain orders the hero's family to be murdered and gets the hero framed for the crime, readers have to acknowledge that the villain is just acting in his or her best interest. Fictional villains usually target the hero because he or she has the wrong genes, or happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The villain simply acts; all the hatred comes from the hero, who reacts. This is not the simmering, mutual hatred that leads siblings to tattle on each other, or divorced couples to use their children as pawns against each other. Most people can’t identify with grand-scale hatred, but everyone has some personal experience with mutual or personal hatred. Personal hatred seems to come from a betrayal of trust. It’s the flip side of respect or love.

Is there anyone whom you once admired? Someone whom you used to protect out of love? Someone you once held in great esteem? Someone who used to be your role model? Is this person now the one you speak of with venom, and can’t say two kind words about?

Yeah. That’s the chemistry between my two hate-filled characters. In a different story, they might admire each other. They are naturally inclined to respect each other. But each character feels as if the other did him a grave injustice, or has grossly misjudged him.

Both of these characters consider themselves to be very wise, but their world views are polar opposites. One character wears his emotions on his sleeve, while the other hides everything he feels. One character tells the truth no matter who it hurts, while the other sees no problem with lying. One character is deeply spiritual, the other is abhors religion. One is an adventurer, while the other would rather stay home and hide. One is a gambler, the other takes no risks. One advocates peace, the other is a war-monger. One sees the universe going to hell in a hand-basket, the other is wildly optimistic. One curses like a sailor, the other uses scientific jargon. They are hot and cold. They are night and day. All their personal differences add to the friction.

Real life abounds with this spectrum of friction. It’s as much a part of life as love. In America, we see outspoken atheists sharing a family with the devoutly religious. We see liberal Greenpeace advocates living and working with conservative Republicans. This is our world. I don’t know what side of the fence you fall on in those examples, but if you’re anywhere close to the middle, you probably agree that both sides have some merit and certainly have a right to exist. But people on the extreme fringes would disagree. They scream with fury if forced to spend significant amounts of time with their polar opposite.

That’s the kind of hatred I’m talking about. Personal hatred seems to parallel the love formula. Two characters meet, they get to know each other, they exchange scathing verbal attacks (as opposed to flirting), they are thrown into a situation where they have to rely on each other (as opposed to torn apart and having to rely on themselves), they start making death threats towards each other (instead of long for each other) and tearing the other down at every opportunity (as opposed to reuniting in romantic bliss).

I’m learning as I write that hate is just as complex as love, and takes just as long to build. I’m eager to see reader reactions on this one. Torth Book 4, World of Wreckage, will be finished sometime this year. As always, please let me know if you’d be willing to test read my Torth series. Unfortunately, the fourth book in the series only makes sense if you’ve read the first three.

I began writing the third novel in my Torth Empire series in January 2009. I completed it on June 1st. This first draft weighs in at 128,000 words (roughly 500 pages), and I hope to shave off a few thousand words on the second pass. But it was an absolute joy to write. I would have completed it much faster, if real life didn't keep me so busy. I poured in a few hours here, a few hours there, usually late at night. The characters showed up vibrant in my mind, ready to continue their story. It all came together nicely.

I'm still high from the experience of writing it, so don't trust my judgment ... but I think this is the best novel I've ever written.

Of course, that's not saying much, since this is the first NEW novel I've written in over seven years. I've improved as a writer and as a person since the early 2000s. But the experience has taught me that I am a writer at heart. It is in my blood. I enjoy it too much to deny it. I will write many more new novels in the coming years.

Book 3: City of the Dead picks up where Book 2: Caves and Canyons left off. The characters think they're escaping to safety, and then ... well, I can't dilvulge the details. You'll have to read to find out. And by the way, I am always interested in test readers. I welcome feedback, even criticism, and I will never pressure you to finish reading, so there is no obligation involved. Let me know if you'd like to test read!

Just for fun, here are a few out-of-context quotes from my new novel:

"My calculations would take an average genius weeks to work through. I did it in half an hour."
"You have free will. Now turn around once in a complete circle."
"I recommend that we fly into the sun and kill ourselves."
"They have a system called justice. I very much like the idea."

If you know my characters, you can probably guess who said each of those quotes.

And now I will begin to climb the mountain of marketing. I have plans to make an official author site for myself, which will include a high quality, interactive TORTH section. What do you think? The TORTH net will include an alien encyclopedia (with information about culture, physiology, and native habitat for each intelligent species), a guide to choosing your own spacecraft, a photo guide to Torth and their ranks, and either a web comic based on the Torth universe, or an interactive "Thomas Guide," where the user can view Thomas's childhood on Earth in a series of animated vignettes which Thomas comments upon. If you can suggest other ideas, please do so.

My time for marketing is now. I've come to the stunning realization that I can market my work before I get published. The science fiction book genre industry is a fickle business, and some of my newly discovered heroes among authors include Scott Sigler and Mark Jeffrey, who put a lot of effort into networking with fans and marketing their books, as well as honing their writing skills by welcoming feedback. I admire how they built their careers from the ground up, circumventing the traditional route of agent-editor-publisher. Like every other unpublished novelist, I want to go the traditional route, but in this economy and with the changing climate of publishing, there are no guarantees. so we'll see what happens. But I have confidence that someday, my Torth series will see the light of publication--and I hope that my readers, new and returning, will help me get there.

A couple of weeks ago, I finished the rough cut of my novel rewrite.

I'll assume that most readers of my blog haven't followed along with the trials and tribulations I've experienced with this project, so let me give you a quick recap. I wrote the original first draft in the year 2000. It was 519,100 words (roughly the size of Stephen King's unabridged The Stand). When I look back at that original, I judge the story to be good, but the writing to be amateur and bloated. I went through a long learning process. I split the book into three books to make it more palatable to editors. I reduced the total word count to 475,600 words. I let strangers read it and give me their honest reactions. I edited and polished it frequently. I submitted it to literary agents and publishers, and got one excited manuscript request (without a follow up) from a well-known agent, and one rewrite request from Baen Books.

As I became a better writer and learned the ways of the genre book industry, I realized (around 2004-2005) that my masterpiece needed a complete overhaul. So I set out to restructure it, to tighten the pacing and get rid of the bloat.

In order to focus on this huge task, I shoved aside my other writing goals and projects, many of them ideas which I was (and still am) excited about. I immersed myself in Thomas's and Alex's journey until I got sick of it. I reread my original epic in bits and pieces, then sliced it up and pasted the paragraphs into new places, and reread them, and slimmed them down, and changed details, and reread them again. I took notes on my own writing so I wouldn't forgot what I'd put where. I applied techniques I'd learned at the Odyssey Writing Workshop and since to my reborn novel. I gained more of a social life while I procrastinated facing this huge project every night. I gained a sense of the work involved in being a professional writer.

After all that, I won't know if my hard work paid off until years from now. I have a feeling that it will, but I've never trusted hunches or feelings. I only know that this confidence is highly unusual for me. Even though I'm sick of the project, I still look back and think it's good. I still get excited about it. I hear opinions from people who've read the first three chapters or more, and I hear good news. I don't think this is wishful thinking, since I've heard and given my share of harsh critiques. I can tell when readers genuinely like something.

But there's no immediate payoff. By now, everyone around me must think I'm a jack-off, just someone who creates endless busywork for herself and talks big. I know I'm not this person. When I started this rewrite, I knew I'd be in for a difficult journey, with a gamble for a payoff. I took the journey, gamble and all, because I believe in the power of my words. I'll market this book any way I can, because I see a fan following in its future. I'm fully aware that I may be self-deluded here, but I can't ignore the possibility that I'm right. Had I decided not to do the rewrite, I'd be second-guessing myself for the rest of my life, always wondering if it could have been the next major best-seller. What's the point of living if you don't take risks like this?

I combined the first two sections of my original and reduced the word count from 278,300 to 127,400 words. That's amazing. That means my total word count (including the original, unrewritten third section) is down to 324,700 ... and I'm positive that I can cut out another 100,000 words from that third section (it will be book 2 instead of book 3, now). The story didn't change. The characters are the same. Most of what I removed was excess description and wordage.

Is this new version much stronger than the original? I'm not sure. I wish I was. Parts of it are definitely improved. The whole is lighter and faster, with tons of excess wordage deleted, but I'm afraid I may have accidentally deleted crucial bits of character development and story pacing. I might have taken out the spice that gave it its bite. If it turns out that test readers respond with less enthusiasm than they did for the original, I'll try to fit the missing character development back in there without overinflating the word count.

But these are worries for later. Right now, I'm working on new material for the first time in two years. It's a short story!

Yay!!!!!

I absolutely needed the break. I needed to write something fresh before I forgot how a first draft feels. It's pure joy. And I also need a couple of months when I'm not thinking about slavery, snobby mind readers, and berserk giants who kill people.

In July, I'll return to the Yeresunsa universe and polish my rewrite. My goal is to have it readable by September 1st. Would you care to be a test reader this winter? Here's the synopsis!

Thanks for reading my blog.