Ready to get some good news shoved in your face first thing in the morning?
I finished drafting Stasis on Monday! It’s intended to be the opener in a sci-fi horror novella collection (other inclusions will hopefully be my projects Dig Down, Stand, and Space Cowboy). It felt fantastic to write “the end” at the bottom of that project in particular, because Stasis presented me with several challenges.
Here’s the thing about sci-fi: while it is science fiction, i.e. you can make shit up, it still (usually) has to at least seem like the science could be real. And when you’re the least scientifically-inclined person you know (my worst grades in school were always science classes), this can be a unique challenge.
Most of the “science” in Stasis revolved around zero-gravity physics, something that’s quite set in stone. Believe me when I tell you my Google searches were quite colorful whenever I worked on this thing. The most frustrating: Do objects keep bouncing forever if thrown in zero-g? The silliest: what kind of fire extinguishers do they have at the ISS?
Not only did I have to get a lot of weird things right here to be believable, but I also had to constantly remind myself that the story takes place in zero-g. Like, the entire story. So, nobody can sit down, stand up, stand anywhere really. Any sort of liquid released into the air (urine, blood, vomit-you know me and my pleasant, relaxing stories) will take on a different shape and float. If you want to lay down to sleep, the bed’s gotta have straps that hold you to it.
Even keeping all this in mind, I caught myself making goof-ups every time I read something back. Somebody was described as standing. Somebody dropped something. You get the idea.
The science was by far the biggest struggle, but there were other things that caused me to struggle.
Since the plot was heavily reliant on the objects at my MC’s disposal and the information known, I found myself having a humorous problem that I realized all writers face. The story took a while to write with lots of long breaks between, so even with reading back over what I’d written, I kept forgetting things. Information that my character actually already knew, my character knowing information that he definitely shouldn’t, and the grabby part of this article’s title: nakedness.
I started a re-read of Stephen King’s Four Past Midnight the other week, and there was a fun little fact in the foreword for The Langoliers that I found delightful. Apparently, in Robinson Crusoe, a character strips naked, then a short time later, fills his pockets. A fun and classic example of writers simply missing something they’d previously stated. And you know what’s a little creepy?
A week after reading that foreword, I realized I had done almost the exact same thing. I established that my character was naked around the 20% mark, and I never mentioned him putting clothes back on. Which is fine, of course, since he’s the only person awake on a spaceship full of cryo-sleeping crew. But the goof-up came when I needed him to find a crucial object in his pocket. So, I had to insert a brief mention of him putting clothes on so he could find the object in his pocket.
See what I mean? How creepy of a coincidence is that?
Another issue I ran into was one of confidence in length.
As described in probably a few of my rants here, I felt insecure about my word count for Stasis. For a long time, I put off projects that I felt didn’t have much chance of making it to novel length. I’ve gotten past that now, thankfully. Not every story has to be novel length. Some of the best stories ever written are small (The Lottery, almost all of Edgar Allan Poe’s works, The Life of Chuck). I would much rather present something short to a reader than something bloated and obviously drawn-out for the sake of padding word count.
I did get over that mental hurdle a few months ago, though, when I realized I had multiple sci-fi horror projects that didn’t feel like they could be 60k words or more. When I came up with the concept of the novella collection a la Stephen King (see Different Seasons, If It Bleeds, Hearts in Atlantis), I felt ten times better about the project’s small size. Now, I’m more excited than ever to keep putting words into that project. The only uncertainty is choosing which one to work on next!
Now that we’re through with the self back-patting, I’ve got some fun news! I’ll be doing another author signing event at my favorite local haunt, Adventures Underground! Remember this from April?
Yeah, that’s happening again! But this time for Cobwebs (although I will have copies of Losing Air available as well).
We don’t have a date yet, but it will definitely be on a Saturday in October!
And a quick note: the audiobook for Cobwebs will be available a few days after release day (9/22). I’m not even gonna make excuses; I just don’t have it ready yet. I’ve had an extremely busy month and I’ve been struggling to fit in the editing I need to get done.
But I’ll definitely be posting on Instagram once it’s available. Shouldn’t be more than a week after release day (I hope).
Also, if you missed it, the audiobook for Losing Air is available to purchase! Sorry about the price- Audible sets those, not me. But if you’ve been wanting to check out the book but usually only have time for audiobooks (trust me, I’m there with you), now’s your chance to snag it! It’s not a masterwork by any means, but it’s fun. Mostly. You can find the link to it on our “Read Our Stuff” page!
Monthly Writing Goals Update
13,068 / 30,000 words
All of the words written this week went into finishing Stasis! I’m just a tiny bit behind where I should be to reach 30k by October, but I believe in me. I know I’ve got a sprint somewhere inside me.
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