Category Archives: Science fiction
If you’re a writer, nothing is ever wasted
If you’re a writer, nothing you’ve ever done, nothing you’ve ever learnt, or experienced will ever go to waste. I was thinking this profound thought the other day, when considering my latest work-in-progress. It’s a paranormal romance, set in India, Hong Kong and Melbourne and it touches on Indian and Australian history, as well as tiger poaching.
Wow. That’s quite a canvas, isn’t it? But you know the old saying – ‘write what you know’. To which I would add ‘and research the bits you don’t’. So what did I know? Well, I’ve lived in Melbourne, I’ve visited Hong Kong and I studied Indian history for three years as part of my BA(Hons) in history. I wanted to weave in a little of the history of the Afghan cameleers in Australia, so I used the internet for what I wanted to know. To learn more about tigers I watched documentaries by the master, David Attenborough, and went to the net to learn what I needed about tiger poaching.
The Indian part of the story had several layers. This wasn’t a history lesson, it was a novel about an Australian doctor confronted by a very different culture. I had to have enough of an idea of how that would work. My interest in India helped, because I had some basic understanding of how caste works and its impact on workers. But movies like ‘Ghandi’ and ‘A Passage to India’ added some color, as did traveler accounts I encountered on the net. I also had to learn enough about how a broken hip affects the patient and how it’s treated to make that thread convincing. One man who had experienced a broken hip had actually chronicled his recovery. Very useful.
This particular book (working title ‘Shadow of the Tiger’) is contemporary. Most of my other work is science fiction romance. Write what you know? How does that work?
Let’s take ‘Morgan’s Choice’. You’ll find a society which quite possibly derives from the Indian caste system. I wonder where I got that from? The main character, Morgan, is human but she has a supercomputer in her brain. This isn’t new; the concept is in other books. I’d suggest the difference with Morgan is I emphasise her humanity more than her data skills. Be that as it may, I worked for many years in the computer industry, first as a programmer and later as an analyst and team leader. So I felt I had a good chance of making Morgan’s activities in the cyber world convincing.
In my other two books, the ‘Iron Admiral’ series, I introduced an alien species called the ptorix. They’re not just a nightmare I dreamed up one night. I’ve had an abiding interest in nature and animals, as well as astronomy and cosmology, for many, many years and my alien species was well thought out, with characteristics you would expect in a technologically advanced society.
That history background has been useful many times over. Who said a BA isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on? The plot in ‘The Iron Admiral: Conspiracy’ is loosely based on a real, historical incident when Hitler’s secret police, dressed as Poles, staged an attack on a German radio station near the Polish border to give the Fuhrer an excuse to start what became World War 2.
See what I mean? Nothing is ever wasted.
Oh – one more thing; Sally Carter, MC of ‘Shadow of the Tiger’, is a very keen amateur photographer. Gosh, what a coincidence. 
Is a ‘Star Wars’ type galaxy starting to look likely?
Remember that scene in ‘Star Wars: A New Hope‘ when Luke and Obi Wan go into the Mos Eisley cantina? The place was full of aliens. Leaning on the bar, arguing, drinking various foaming substances and playing cool, swing music. If you’ve any sort of interest in science, you’d be like me and go directly into ‘go along for the ride’ mode. It just isn’t probable.
But wait a minute. Just the other day we were told that our very own Milky Way could contain up to 2 billion (yes, billion with a ‘b’) ‘earthlike planets’. Gosh. Two billion planets that could potentially support life like us. http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/12/the-milky-ways-two-billion-earthlike-planets-an-update.html
Wait a moment, though. What does ‘earthlike’ mean in this context? The report comes from Kepler’s search for planets orbiting planets like our sun and in the ‘Goldilocks’ zone. Which means the planet is ‘not too hot for liquid water and not too cold’. Kepler can’t actually see any of these planets, their presence is surmised from periodic dimming of the sun’s light as something passes in front of it and from slight perturbations in the sun’s orbit. But scientists can calculate the likely size of the body. For instance, Kepler 22-B is estimated at 2.4 times the size of Earth.
But there’s much more to life on Earth than liquid water and reasonable temperature. The article goes on to quote from “Rare Earth”, a book by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee, which discusses in detail what would be needed to define a planet as an ‘earth analog’. Some of the things they list don’t readily spring to mind, such as a giant like Jupiter acting as a mine sweeper to reduce the amount of debris penetrating to habitable zones to pose a threat to life. We also need that molten metal core inside the Earth to generate a magnetic field which protects us from harmful cosmic rays. Then we need a breathable atmosphere, a year length not too much different from our own, and gravity at least 80% of our own. (Less than that and the planet wouldn’t hold atmosphere) I don’t think I’d like to live on a planet 2.4 times the size of Earth. It would be pretty hard to move around.
We just don’t know enough about any of these planets to know if they’re really ‘earthlike’. The point is made that both Venus and Earth are in the habitable zone around our sun and they are much the same size. But we won’t be setting up a colony on Venus any time soon.
Yes, but that’s humans. Getting back to the cantina scene, we are presented with a number of alien species, all presumably capable of space flight. So what about other life forms on these earthlike planets? Sure, that’s possible – but then we come up against the famous Drake equation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation), which considers variables such as technology and the life of civilisations.
Mind you, Kepler’s discoveries are a breakthrough from the time not too many decades ago (maybe only two) when scientists could do no better than to say that our sun was nothing special so other stars would quite probably have planets. The Drake equation dates back to those times. This is such an exciting time to be interested in the universe. I keep getting this feeling that space travel as written in science fiction might not be all that far away. Soon, it seems, we’ll have places to visit, too.
I’m not too sure I’ll be running auditions for a new cantina scene, though.
A sneak peek at ‘Starheart’
We interrupt our photography showcase to return to writing, which is what I do most of. You HAVE been checking my book pages, haven’t you?
I’ve returned to a book I ‘finished’ a good six months ago, a science fiction romance set in the same galaxy as ‘The Iron Admiral’. The characters are different, but we have encounters with the Galactic People’s Republic and with the ptorix, my blue-skinned, tentacled aliens. My biggest concern with this book was always that it is a mystery as well as everything else. So I have to set up clues which the protagonists must solve with all the back story that goes with a convincing plot. Most of it’s there – well – now it is.
It’s lots of fun, with the same action-packed adventure as readers will find in the Iron Admiral series and in ‘Morgan’s Choice‘. Here’s a little snippet from the first chapter. Jess Sondijk, slightly shady (but beautiful) captain of the freighter Saintly Maid has been taken over to Confederacy Battlecruiser Defender for interrogation. This is her first encounter with the ship’s admiral.
******************
Jess stared around her at clean, grey walls and floors and a row of no less than ten lifts. A group of people appeared from a doorway, also heading for the transit foyer. Three officers, all senior. She fixed her ‘not sure why this is happening but I’m being co-operative’ expression on her face as they approached.
Well, well, well. The captain, a senior commander and a rather dishy admiral. Tall, thick brown hair, heavy eyebrows over blue eyes that just right now were shifting his gaze all over her body and most especially down that carefully-judged split at the front of her shirt. She smiled at him, taking care to adjust her hair while she did so. Now what would a Star Fleet admiral be doing at Nordheim?
Beside her, Lieutenant Douglas and the two escorts stiffened to parade ground attention.
“What have we here, Lieutenant?” the admiral said, still staring at her.
The look in his eye sent a sexy shimmy down her spine. No prizes for guessing what was on his mind right now. And under different circumstances, she wouldn’t mind. No, not at all.
“Captain and First Officer of a suspicious ship, Sir. The Saintly Maid. They’re here for interrogation.”
Jess widened her eyes. “Suspicious ship? Oh, really, Lieutenant, you must have mistaken the Maid for some other ship.”
The admiral was grinning. The transit car the senior commander had summoned arrived with a gentle ping. The captain and the senior commander both had their bodies pointed towards the open door but the admiral lingered, gazing down at her.
“Delightful to meet you, Captain…?”
“Sondijk .And equally delightful to meet you, Admiral…?”
“Hudson. Ullric Hudson.”
She gave him a long, hard, lingering once-over, her gaze traveling slowly up his body to his eyes. “Welcome to Nordheim, Admiral Hudson.”
He chuckled, jerked his head down in a brief nod and followed the two officers into the transit.
************************
It’ll be published some time next year.
Star Wars Obsession
Reading somebody’s blog recently I was reminded about my own obsession with the Star Wars universe early in the life of the series. SW and The Empire Strikes Back didn’t have the benefit of digital enhancement. The special effects guys made their props in the old fashioned way – with models and blue-screen photography. The scenes with the running Taun-tauns on Hoth were painstakingly filmed, screen by laborious screen, using stop-motion animation. (Think Wallace and Gromit), while all that amazing hardware – Luke’s landspeeder, the sandcrawler, the magnificent fleet of Star Destroyers and the wonderful ‘Executor’ were all just little models hanging in a studio, to be brought to life by these wonderful craftsmen.
One offshoot of all this model making was, of course, the licensing of plastic model kit manufacturers such as Mattel to produce models for us afficionados to build. And build them I did, enhancing the stock models all the way. I built everything. Star destroyer, AT-AT (with tiny Luke running along beside with his grenade), X-wing, Y-wing, A-wing, B-wing, TIE fighter, Slave 1, the Imperial speeder bike…
As I built more and more, lovingly detailed to match what I saw in the movies, I started to want to build dioramas – small scenes from the movie, frozen in the act. Hence the AT-AT with Luke.
The picture up there is my piece de resistance and (apart from a model of DV himself) the only one I still have in my possession.
This is the crashed snowspeeder scene from TESB, the unseen AT-AT approaching from off stage. But this is no out-of-the-box snowspeeder. Well – it is. But I ditched the crummy pilot figures and substituted figures from a kit for a WW2 German troop carrier, suitably modified with helmets, webbing over their orange jumpsuits and even a little light sabre. The speeder’s cockpit was taken from a 33: kit for a Phantom jet fighter, which I could modify so the pilots were back to back. I also detailed the visible parts of the machine’s engine.
I think the snowspeeder kit cost $15. As I built it? Including the cost of the troop carrier and Phantom kits, more like $100.
Do you have any obessions you’d like to share?
Who is your audience?
Just about every book I’ve ever seen on marketing tells the reader to target his/her campaign. Who are you selling to? It’s no different for us authors. Who is your audience?
You could say ‘anybody that reads’ or even narrow it down to kids, teens, adults, women… But that’s still too broad for a campaign. You might have guessed that I’ve been considering who is in my target audience. John Locke in his book ‘How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!‘ suggests you write books to suit your target audience. That makes sense if selling books is your purpose in writing, but it isn’t mine and I expect it’s not for many of us. That said, I still want people to read what I’ve written.
So who?
I write science fiction with a dollop of romance (we’ll ignore my hist fic for this post).
Romance suggests women. I’ve proved the ‘women’ bit by displaying hunky male bodies on my covers and seeing at first hand the difference it makes. I discuss that here, where I talk about covers.
Science fiction suggests educated women, or at least, women interested in science or space opera. This is what one reviewer had to say about ‘The Iron Admiral: Conspiracy’.
‘If you’re a Star Wars/Star Trek/Battlestar Gallactica/science-fiction fan in general, this book is for you. If you’ve ever read a sci-fi book and thought, “Man, I really wish the Hero and the Heroine would get it on,” this book is for you. If you like really good stories with lots of danger, twists, action, and politics, this book is for you..’ more…
I don’t deny that the popular space opera shows are what I enjoy (despite the occasionally shoddy science) so that’s a fair cop. I love the spaceships, the different planets, the action and adventure you’ll find in Star Wars and its spin-offs.
I guess that’s me done, then. If you’re a Star Wars or Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica fan and you’d like a bit more sex on the plate – come and look at the Iron Admiral series, or ‘Morgan’s Choice’. They’re right up your alley. Here’s a link.
Spaceships are sexy!
Just lately I’ve been asked questions along the lines of ‘what first attracted you to science fiction?’ I could always come out with sober answers about science and the future, Asimov, Arthur C Clarke yadayadayada. But the moment I fell in love with science fiction? That moment at the movies when the Imperial Star Destroyer (ISD) is chasing the Rebel blockade runner – Princess Leia’s ship. Remember? In Star Wars: A New Hope? This ship scuds across the screen, the planet below. You’re above it, as it hurtles past from top right. It’s past. You see the ship’s drives and the blasts as it fires at – something. And then – Holy Shit! What in hell is that? I ducked. And that ISD just kept on coming and coming and coming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9CcNrQChzA
It’s true. Spaceships are sexy.
As far as I can recall this was the first time a spaceship wasn’t depicted as streamlined (as in Buck Rogers etc). OK, that’s not true. The ship in 2001: A Space Odyssey wasn’t streamlined, or ‘Enterprise’. But these ships were angular, with bits and turrets sticking out, which was fine in vacuum, of course. The ISD was depicted as an assault ship – an aircraft carrier and a troop ship combined, a huge, movable assault platform. With guys in sexy uniforms. Mmm. I loved it.
If that wasn’t enough, think of the scene in ‘The Empire Strikes Back‘ when Darth Vader stands at the picture window on the bridge of his ship. The opening part of that sequence shows an ISD moving beneath the shadow of a monstrous ship. Ahhhhh. My fate was sealed.
Executor.
I purloined the picture (top left) from http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Executor where you can find a few more facts about this seriously sexy ship.
Rest assured, these big capital ships aren’t the only ones that make my heart throb, but they’re a start. Come on, share. What’s your favourite space ship?
Who Wants to Live Forever?
Hi fellow science fiction romance fans. The ‘Out of this World’ blog tour rolls on. Amber Norris is my guest and she’s going to tell you all about her soon to be released book. Over to you, Amber…
There is something alluring about the idea of eternity. Never having to die. No end, just experience after experience…after experience after experience…
Huh, second thought that might not be so fun. I mean, how much of yourself and the world can you really explore before it all becomes monotonous?
Remember when you were young and time seemed to fly by? It zipped by because everything around you and your responses were new, so your mind kept busy recording the moment. How about that really great day — say the first date with the man you’d eventually fall in love with and marry. Remember how that day just went by too fast. Time was at its most optimum and there were tons of new senses and objects and moment to register. As you age the new moments are less, so time slows down because your mind doesn’t have to record as much.
Imagine hundreds of years without new experiences to keep your mind healthy and active. That is what my newest character, Captain Noah Bonney, faces. In my upcoming October 15th SFR release, Telomere Trilogy Book One: Revelations of Tomorrow, Noah’s race was genetically engineered to live forever, with the assistant of modified telomerase enzymes. This enzyme keeps the matured chromosones regenerating forever. However, every “gift” has its consequence. For Noah’s people it is Soul Death. After a couple hundred years the humanity within them dies, replaced by a viciousness.
All except Noah has been hit with Soul Death, and she doesn’t know why. Revelations of Tomorrow kicks off her journey to find out why her humanity has lasted so long. Please enjoy this excerpt. If you like it, make sure to post a comment because someone will win a free Advanced Reader Copy of Revelations of Tomorrow.
Excerpt:
Several loud shrills broke the silence. Smaller forest creatures rustled the canopy and cleared out. Blasts replied to those shrills and Matthew’s body went cold. A scream of both fear and pain shattered the quiet.
Then nothing for what seemed like eternity.
Scouts broke through, the fear, so evident on their faces, overwhelmed them into a deathly silent run for life. Still, Matthew willed her to appear. She’d be one of the last, to ensure as many as possible returned.
Another shrill and two dark forms, similar to the images on the virtual screen rose above the canopy, arched, then dove back in. Several of Makai’s men aimed and shot. Three more popped out and zoned in on their direction.
“They’re coming!” Makai stated the obvious.
Noah broke through at a full run. Her clothes were bloodied. Several slashes left the protective jacket hanging from one shoulder. She screamed in defiance and turned, her large blast barrel pointed, aimed. A large creature broke free low to the ground. She shot and a smoke trail followed it to the creature’s chest.
The shrill pitched higher, in pain right before its chest exploded. The impact blew Noah back several feet. She scrambled up, turned, and ran again, this time with a limp. Several more creatures broke free from the tree line. Matthew didn’t think. He ran for her, aimed his gun and shot as he went. He reached her, where she crouched to shoot again and grabbed her. Yanking her up, he dragged her until she turned and joined him in the retreat.
Only fifty or so yards. We can make it.
Twenty-five yards.
Claws clamped on his shoulders, with the opposing claw piercing into his back. He screamed. Noah screamed with him in shocked surprise. He was lifted and then the beast slammed him into the ground and clamped its teeth into his upper arm, shoulder, and neck in one bite. His second scream ended muffled in the dirt.
Loud blasts erupted. The animal’s claws released. It tumbled off and took a large chuck of his shoulder with it. The wound sizzled in his ear, his body started to convulse uncontrollably. The world tipped and rolled. His hearing echoed, and then all that remained was a loud constant roar.
*****
I hope you all enjoyed the excerpt. Revelations of Tomorrow, the First Book in the Telomere Trilogy, will be released October 15th by Desert Breeze Publishing. If you’d like to be added to the release notification, please email me at ambernorris2000@yahoo.com. If you’d like to know more about me and/or my writing, please stop by my blog, http://sci-fiadventures.blogspot.com/.
Oh! And don’t forget to continued with the blog tour. Tomorrow Lilly Cain visits Anne Kane’s blog, http://www.annekane.wordpress.com/.
Out of this World!
The second annual Out of This World Blog Tour is just about to start in a Galaxy far, far away – that probably looks a lot like this one.
A bunch of SF writers are having a knees-up get together – and you’re invited. Come and join the party, discuss space and stuff, find out what’s out there, what’s coming next and maybe win a book or two.
Here’s the line-up. Wear a costume if it makes you happy. Oh… and it’s BYO. Sorry.
September 17 Diane Dooley at Amber Norris’ blog
http://sci-fiadventures.blogspot.com/
September 18 Gary Starta at Melisse Aires’ blog
http://melisseaires.blogspot.com
September 19 Frances Pauli at Diane Dooley’s blog
http://dianedooley.wordpress.com/
September 20 Amber Norris at Greta van der Rol’s blog
September 21 Lilly Cain at Anne Kane’s blog
http://www.annekane.wordpress.com/
September 22 Greta van der Rol at Frances Pauli’s blog
http://francespauli.blogspot.com/
September 23 Lisa Lane at Gary Starta’s blog
http://praisegods.blogspot.com/
September 24 Melisse Aires at Lilly Cain’s blog
http://contactinfinitefutures.wordpress.com/
September 25 Anne Kane at Lisa Lane’s blog
What is it with prologues?
Should you write a prologue? I don’t know – it’s your story. I can tell you what I think and if that helps, hey – I’m chuffed. But I’ll tell you two things up front – one, I don’t usually like prologues and two, I’ve written one myself.
I don’t usually like prologues because so very often they are used as an opportunity to dump a whole heap of background information on the reader. Or sometimes a prologue is written because the story in chapter one isn’t interesting enough to grab the reader, so the author writes the gory bit first, hoping you’ll read the rest to see how we get there. I think that’s why agents tend to rail against them and I tend to agree. I often don’t read prologues. I just move on to chapter one.
However, as with all the Rules of Writing, this one has been successfully broken. Jack McDevitt, award winning, best selling science fiction author, ALWAYS has a prologue. The structure of his books tends to be to introduce a mysterious event in the past, which the MC works to understand many years later. So his prologues are usually what happened in the past, which constitutes at least a whole chapter, followed by the real story, where the Mcs try to unravel the mystery. This works well in “Slow Lightning” (“Infinity Beach” in the US) but (for me, anyway) the prologue was just plain irritating in “A Talent for War”. I went back to read the prologue again after I’d finished “A Talent for War”, where it made a bit of sense but it certainly didn’t lead me into reading the book. To be honest, I would not have read past the first page of the prologue if the book hadn’t been recommended by a writing tutor. By the way, after I’d forced myself to read the prologue, I LOVED “Slow Lightning“. It’s a great read.
Given all that, I wrote a prologue myself. It’s in “To Die a Dry Death” and it’s about one page, so at least I kept it short. But why did I feel I needed one at all?
In my case, as a book-end. You will find the answer to the prologue at the end of the novel. I wanted some way of adding a ray of light to what was overall a dark and depressing tale. Feedback indicates it was a good move. Yes, all right, I admit that since I had a prologue I included a few facts that might help the reader understand the background to the story a little better. The test, though, is do you HAVE to read the prologue? Not to read the book, no. But when you get to the final pages you might well flip back to the start to see what you missed.
That said, I avoid writing prologues. Start at chapter one and write your story is my take on it.
What about you? Do you hate prologues or love them? Have you written one yourself? Why?
Do you judge a book by its cover?
I think everybody agrees that a book’s cover is one of the more important selling points. Sure, the blurb has to be interesting and the first few pages, too, but if that cover doesn’t grab a potential buyer then it’s all for nought.
Two of my SF novels have now been published – ‘The Iron Admiral: Conspiracy’ and ‘Morgan’s Choice’. Both books are action adventure space opera with a romance arc. ‘Morgan’s Choice’ became a best-seller in Omnilit’s science fiction genre. ‘Iron Admiral’ didn’t do much at all, despite getting good reviews on Amazon, Smashwords and Goodreads. I can only imagine the reason is the covers.
So for the second ‘Iron Admiral’ book (out around October) I’m thinking about a change of cover from this… 
to something more like this.
All these books are fast-paced action-adventure set in the future, rather like Star Wars but with (I hope) some more up to date and believable science. Romance is an important element to the story but by no means the only theme.
I’m looking for some help, here. What do you think? Which would you prefer?
