The Sound of Cylons

This is too good not to post. Lovers of Simon and Garfunkel, and lovers of Battlestar Galactica unite!

The Population of Frackville, PA

Alert reader Tim Yordy sent me this hot tip on the residents of a town in Pennsylvania called Frackville. (As far as I know, it's a real place. But I haven't checked Snopes.) Here's what Tim said:

Hey Jeff, given your involvement with Battlestar Galactica, I thought you would enjoy this. Go to the Wikipedia page about Frackville, PA and scroll down to the Demographics section and read the first paragraph.

I did. And you should, too. Read carefully. (Passing familiarity with BSG is required. If you've never seen the show, move along. You're not the droids we're looking for.)

I wonder if the other residents of Frackville know about this.

Edit: I have learned from alert reader Marco that not only is Frackville real, it is right down the road from Vulcan, PA!

Odyssey Interview

Workshops R Us. A week and a half ago, the advanced novel-writing workshop that I run with Craig Gardner came to an end for this year. It was a seriously good ending, as every one of the six participants is working on material with definite publication potential—some closer to being ready than others, but all good. It was a terrifically encouraging workshop, and I'm especially cheered that the group is going off and continuing to meet and support each other on their own now.

With that done, I'm leaving shortly for a brief stint as instructor-for-a-day at the Odyssey Workshop in New Hampshire, another seriously good program, a much denser and more immersive workshop. I'm going to be working with the participants there on issues of story structure and how plot, conflict, and characterization all play into it.

Odyssey did an online interview with me a while back, and I thought it would be appropriate to reproduce it here, just before I leave. Herewith, the Odyssey interview:

Once you started writing seriously, how long did it take you to sell your first piece? What were you doing wrong in your writing in those early days?

I guess I would call my writing in college the point at which I was writing seriously—by which I mean, trying to produce real stories that someone might want to read, or even publish. I'd had encouragement at that point from family and teachers, including a college writing teacher who told me he thought my work was publishable. It wasn't. I didn't know that yet, but the encouragement helped keep me going as I ever so slowly learned the craft of storytelling. It would be another six years and a file full of rejections before I sold my first short story (to Fiction magazine, in Boston).

If I had realized sooner what I was doing wrong, I might have shortened that learning period considerably. The problem was, I wasn't telling complete stories. I was going with what people told me were my strengths—description and characterization—and missing the need to tell an interesting story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I didn't understand about story structure. I was writing mood pieces, story fragments. My teachers weren't really versed in SF, or even in anything resembling conventional storytelling standards, and they weren't able to give me the direction I needed. I had no workshop to turn to, and was really writing on my own, with occasional feedback from editors like Terry Carr and Robert Silverberg, who liked my work well enough to at least hint at what they didn't like, as they returned my stories. It wasn't until years later that I found a source of good, regular criticism, when I met Craig Gardner and he invited me to join the writing group he was a part of. He and I are still members of that group-thirty years later! And Craig and I now run our own writing workshops in the Boston area.

Why do you think your work began to sell?

I'd learned just enough about putting a story together, and the craft of writing narrative prose, to make it over the bar to become publishable. Little did I know at that point how much more I had to learn—and am still learning! But I think the turning point was realizing, somewhere deep in the subconscious, that I had to bring an interesting character through a conflict and to a resolution of that conflict. I think I had to find a balance between the ambiguity that was interesting to me and the kind of resolution that was satisfying to a reader.

As a science fiction writer, I would imagine you devote a certain amount of time to actual research in order to enhance your stories and their believability. When, in your writing process, do you start researching, and how long does it take? Do you have any tips on making the research process more simple? Any favorite websites you frequent?

The amount of research I need to do varies wildly from one story to the next. Sometimes I do none; sometimes I do a lot. When I say none, of course, I'm sort of lying; all of life is research for my writing. All my human interactions, all my experiences as a kid and as a parent, as a loner and as a husband, come to bear on my characters. All my reading, much of it in areas of science and public affairs, influences my stories. Though I didn't major in science, I've always been a science junkie, and my general knowledge of science has been important to my ability to tell stories with scientific plausibility. For particular stories, I've done targeted research: nanotechnology, cosmic strings, and supernovas for From a Changeling Star; chaos theory and the Voyager spacecraft findings about Neptune and Triton for Neptune Crossing; tachyons for The Infinity Link; stellar nurseries and stellar evolution for Sunborn. For The Infinite Sea, I drew heavily on my experience as a scuba diver and the knowledge I'd gained from that, years before.

I do the research when I realize I need to. That sometimes happens early, sometimes late in the process. My biggest "Oops!" in research was waiting to do some of the supernova research for From a Changeling Star until I was nearly finished. (Stupid, stupid.) I had consulted with an astronomer friend, but hadn't taken his advice to check with his friend, who was a supernova specialist. When I finally did, I learned that I'd gotten some important things wrong. So while my editor was tapping her foot impatiently, waiting for the manuscript, I was busily rebuilding certain key points in the book, getting it right. (I knew that not one reader in a thousand would know the difference. But now that I knew the difference, I had to fix it.) It didn't help that it was an amnesia story as well, and some of these key points were being revealed gradually through the story, so I had to change not just one place, but many places. My advice: Don't do that.

A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to attend the NASA-sponsored Launchpad Astronomy Workshop in Wyoming. This is an annual, week-long intensive astronomy course tailored for writers, and covers everything from the basics up through cutting-edge research. A great experience, and one I highly recommend for pro or near-pro writers.

The website I most frequent is Google. Okay, I guess that's not very helpful. I do check Astronomy Picture of the Day every day. And I get the New Scientist and Discover e-newsletters, which send me down some interesting paths. (I also subscribe to those magazines, as well as to Astronomy, The Atlantic, and the New Yorker.) Mostly, though, I just follow my nose when something looks interesting. I also sometimes, when I need to know something about a subject, find an expert and ask. Very helpful, that.

What's the biggest weakness in your writing these days, and how do you cope with it?

Finding time and concentration to write, the same as (I'll bet) for many of your students. It hasn't gotten any easier over the years. Being a parent and needing to earn income in other ways have, at times, had to take priority over the writing. That's just life, and I'm not as good at time-sharing my mental and creative work as some people are. How do I cope? I keep at it, and don't give up (even when I want to). In the actual creative process, I seem to keep taking on story ideas that are more and more ambitious, and more difficult to pull off. This is probably a good thing artistically, and always feels rewarding in the end. But it doesn't always feel good when I'm in the middle of it!

For me, the hardest part is getting a first draft down. Once I have the clay in my hands, so to speak, I find it much easier to work at reshaping it.

Your 2008 release, SUNBORN, is the fourth book of your CHAOS CHRONICLES series. The first book of this series, NEPTUNE CROSSING, came out in 1995 and is unfortunately out of print. Can you talk about what it's like to write a series that spans such a great length of time, in publishing terms?

In publishing and marketing terms, what I did with the Chaos books was sheer idiocy. The long gap between the first three books and Sunborn resulted from my taking time out to write Eternity's End, set in my Star Rigger universe. That book proved really hard to write and took something like six years to finish. It was well received, and got me a Nebula nomination; but the problem coming out of it was that the Chaos trail had grown cold by the time I got back to book four. My outlines no longer made much sense to me, and it took a long time to rebuild momentum. In addition, with Sunborn, I was tackling what turned out to be an extraordinarily difficult narrative challenge: telling a story of cosmic-scale events, but keeping it personal and immediate on the human level. I hope I succeeded, but not without heading down many a wrong path in the process. Still, once I had the initial draft done, I felt for the first time that I knew what I was doing, and I could tackle the rewrite with a clearer sense of the story.

By pure coincidence, the day after I finished the first draft of Sunborn, my editor called and asked me if I'd like to write a novelization of Battlestar Galactica (the miniseries). That was something I was required to do fast, but it was fun and a welcome change of pace. I was retelling someone else's story, so I was able to use other parts of my brain to focus purely on the craft. It was just what the doctor ordered.

Once Sunborn was done, another year or two down the road, the book was scheduled for publication—and then delayed yet another year for reasons internal to the publishing process. That was pretty frakking hard to take, but it did give me an opportunity to revise some sections after having some months away from the book.

So, there I was, with Book 4 of an out-of-print series scheduled for publication. Tricky, from a marketing viewpoint. (I try to avoid the word "suicidal.") I knew I needed to do something to renew audience interest in the series—and to try to bring new readers to it. Creating a national scandal might have been a good choice—but I'm not a very scandalous person. So I went with Plan B, which was to release all the earlier books in ebook format, for free download from my website. (You can download them right now, in fact, at http://www.starrigger.net/Downloads.htm.) The results were immensely gratifying. I got many emails from readers who said this was the first they'd heard of me, and now they were looking for my other books, as well. So it definitely increased interest in the series. Did it boost sales of the hardcover book? Damned it I know. (Well, I'm sure it did, but I haven't a clue as to how much.)

Do you write each installment to be read as a stand-alone, or is each book in the series interconnected, so knowledge of previous volumes is necessary to understand the current one? Do you have any advice for writers working on multiple-book series of their own, and would you handle your own series any differently now than when you first started?

The story is a continuing arc, but each volume is a self-contained story that comes to a conclusion—and sets the stage for the next. I worked hard to build enough recap into the early parts of the stories that someone could pick up any book and enjoy it. But no question, the best way to read the series is from the beginning.

Advice to others? Don't do what I did! (That's my advice for investing in the stock market, too. Watch what I do. Then do something different.) I'm only partly serious, of course, but that part is sincere. I think where I went wrong was thinking that I could write a series of short, snappy novels that cumulatively would form a long, complex story. (This, you see, is what I always seem to do—write long, complex stories. I was trying to find a way to do it in a more sustainable way.) Then each Chaos book turned out a little longer than the one before, and soon I was writing a series of long, complex stories. People seem to like them. I'm proud of having written them. But making me independently wealthy, they're not. :)

Your work is known for strong characterization and internal conflict. How do you use that internal conflict to create a character arc for the whole novel? Do you plan it out in advance, or do you discover it as you write? And how do you tie your characters' internal conflict with the external conflict of the larger story?

Well, geez, if I tell you that now, what am I going to talk about when I get to the workshop?! I'll tell you this much: I always have some vision for the overall story and character arc before I start writing. But much of it, I discover as I write. I seem to require the tension of being in the middle of the story to draw the full understanding of the character conflict out of my subconscious. I'm a very intuitive writer. Sometimes I don't know what I'm doing until I've done it. There are people who can do all of that before setting down a word of the story. I hates them! (Preciousss...)

As a guest lecturer at this summer's Odyssey Workshop, you'll be lecturing, workshopping, and meeting individually with students. What do you think is the most important advice you can give to developing writers?

To quote the captain in the movie Galaxy Quest: "Never surrender! Never give up!" Or was it the other way around? Anyway, that's the approach you have to take in writing. It can be terribly frustrating and discouraging when you can't seem to get it right, or you think you've gotten it right and then a reader tells you, no, it's actually still just warmed over beetle-dung, and you want to throw it all in the river. That's when you have to remember those words. Not to shout in defense of what you've written, but to take a deep breath and keep at it until you do, finally, get it right.

Oh, and try to write something you would want to read yourself.

What's next on the writing-related horizon? Are you starting any new projects?

I am currently doing battle with the first draft of the fifth book of The Chaos Chronicles, tentatively titled, The Reefs of Time. Damn if I didn't once more set myself some challenges that I don't yet know the solution to. Why do I keep doing this?

I'm also working on getting all of my backlist into "print" as ebooks.

And I'm just finishing a short video piece for an arts festival sponsored by a local church: an audio visualization—for lack of a better term—of the fairly cosmic prologue to Sunborn. I hope to have that up for online viewing in a few weeks. I'll put a link on my downloads page once it's available. It's 3 minutes long, and I think it's pretty cool. Stop by and check it out! [Update: I'm still waiting for a few final changes by the guy who did much of the video editing. Soon.]

"If you wish to be a writer, write." —Epictetus

What Do West Wing and BSG Have in Common?

I wrote this days ago, and then forgot to post it! Ah, me. I got busy picking up my daughter from college, and one thing led to another, and here we are. In the U.S., it's Memorial Day, a time to remember with gratitude those who have fallen in defense of our nation. Maybe that's not such a bad occasion to offer some reflections on Battlestar Galactica, whose fictional crew sacrificed much in the defense of humanity.

As we all know, BSG ended recently, and my comments on that (which I posted earlier on another website) will follow in a moment. But lately my family and I have been watching another favorite show, The West Wing, from the beginning. (I picked up the complete DVD set for a relative song on ebay.) I've been vividly struck by two things these shows have in common:

1. Edward James Olmos! I had seen him before, as Judge Mendoza, but had not recognized the actor. Prior to BSG, I wasn't all that aware of Olmos, although I realize now that he's been in a lot of great stuff, including the movie Blade Runner (where, as in BSG, they talked about "skin jobs").

2. Brilliant writing of human drama and engaging dialogue, coupled with a thundering inability to write anything about science. In West Wing, if I feel any reference to science coming on, I steel myself to groan. I know I will. Perfect example: In one episode, Sam is concerned about a UFO that's been tracked for several hours from Hawaii to the American coast. It turns out to be harmless—a Russian rocket booster that (paraphrased from memory) "failed to achieve a high enough velocity to escape Earth's gravity." That's just stupid on so many levels. But let's start with the fact that a reentering booster would burn up in a matter of minutes, not hours, and that the tracking people would know exactly what it was the whole time. In the commentary below, I mention a similar lapse in credibility from BSG. The thing is, the writing on both shows was so terrific otherwise that I was completely willing to forgive these lapses. It's funny, because I would never overlook that kind of dunderheadedness if I were reading a work of hard science fiction. That must say something about the importance of expectations as a viewer or reader.

Here's my BSG commentary, reprinted from SF Signal's Mind Meld:

Much has been written about the end of our beloved Battlestar Galactica. I avoided reading most of it until recently, because I hadn't seen the ending and didn't want any spoilers. (Yes, I wrote the miniseries novelization, and at the time was given access to a limited amount of insider background information—though not enough to keep me from writing a few things that shortly became "noncanonical." But I had no more idea than you did where the story was going in the end.) A couple of weeks ago, I finally watched the last few episodes in one long burst.

Whoa. Not altogether what I'd hoped for—but powerful stuff nonetheless.

My reactions were intense and complex. On the one hand, it was a stunningly choreographed conclusion, breathlessly paced, and to me at least satisfying in the sense that we finally found resolution, and our characters, battered and bruised, finally found a measure of peace. Even Kara. Yes, even Kara Thrace, Starbuck. The change of tone at the very end was perhaps a bit overdone. But I felt our people had earned it.

That they found and settled the world known to us as "Earth" came, of course, as no surprise. Most of us, I think, had been expecting an Adam and Eve story (or should I say, Adama and Eve) all along. How could it have been different? It seemed built into the very fiber of the series, from the start. And while the "Adam and Eve" story is perhaps one of the most clichéd ideas in all of science fiction, there is no reason that even a clichéd story cannot be retold in a fresh and engaging way. So I had long ago decided to forgive that point, granting that if the BSG people could tell it in a sufficiently original way, I wouldn't quibble.

So, did they or didn't they? Well...yes and no.

Plausibility-wise, the notion that the fleet would agree to transport all of the people down to a wilderness planet, equipped only with what they could carry, give or take a few Raptors, and send the rest of their considerable technology into the sun, was absurd. Suspension of disbelief—come back! What else can I say about that? Except it was probably considered necessary to the plot not to have too much star technology lying around to be unearthed by latter-day Indiana Joneses.

But BSG has never been about plausibility in the scientific or technological sense. Do we all remember back in—Season 3, was it?—when the fleet had to fly through an exploding star, instead of...um, going around it? And does anyone believe that after all this time, they would have left the fleet dependent on just one Tylium ship to supply the needs of everyone? Okay, forget scientific plausibility. It was never there to be an issue. When I wrote the miniseries novelization, this was something I encountered in a multitude of small ways, and I did my best to strengthen plausibility where it felt thin. But this BSG has always been about other things, anyway—humanity at war with its own worst elements, and the dark places of the soul where people find the strength to endure, and to fight back. For all of its edges, it was never hard SF; it was pure human-drama SF, and every time it careened near the edge of a cliff even in those terms, it always somehow staggered back.

So forget the scientific plausibility part. What about the angels? Starbuck—an angel? That seemed to stick in a lot of craws, including my wife's and daughter's, mainly because it seemed from out of left field, and not terribly...well, plausible. For one thing, how come Starbuck was a solid, hard-drinkin', kick-your-ass physical kind of angel, while the Six and Baltar angels were purely will o' the wisps, here this minute, gone the next, visible to no one else? And why did Starbuck have to go through such torment, trying to discover who she was? Is she the only angel who doesn't know she's an angel? I grant all of those quarrels. And yet—despite my qualms, I kind of liked it. For one thing, how many real SF shows have ever been willing even to entertain the notion of there actually being a God (even if he doesn't like to be called that, says Baltar), or heavenly or spiritual beings? BSG had the nerve to do that, and do it baldly, in midst of a gritty human drama. Did they do it successfully? Certainly not all the time, and probably not at the very end. But my hat's off to them for trying.

Having written a BSG book in which I was invited to make up answers to some questions that the producers couldn't, at that point, answer for me, I was perhaps a little oversensitive to certain small points in the conclusion. One that comes to mind is Caprica Six, who had no name in the miniseries. I called her Natasi in my novel (and no, I didn't notice that Natasi was "I Satan" backwards until a reader pointed it out). That seemed fine with the BSG staff at the time. Later, David Eick was quoted as saying that he'd imagined that Baltar never knew Six's name, even as he carried on a torrid affair with her. Truthfully, I never found that believable. Then we saw it happening, in the final chapter, and I went, "Gah!" You win some and you lose some.

I will defend the writers against charges of racism stemming from the interpretation that the fleet personnel obviously subjugated and lorded it over the indigenous population, right up through the present day. What (goes the argument) about the African origins of humanity, which present-day evidence strongly supports? Well, as I read the ending, fleet personnel gradually intermingled with the native population, as their remaining technology wore out or failed, and thus 21st Century humanity is very much a blend of the native and immigrant forms of human. So Lucy and Eve and all of our other forebears are still very much a part of the picture. As for the Cylon blood—well, I guess there's a little bit of that in our DNA now. Somewhere along the way, we lost the glowing spines, though. Tough break, that.

But now we know: "All Along the Watchtower" is in our racial memory. It just took Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix to give it back to us.

(Check out other authors' comments on the earlier Mind Meld page.)

Thoughts on the Conclusion of BSG

A couple of months ago, SFSignal invited me to contribute my views on the finale of Battlestar Galactica to a special they were running in their Mind Meld section. I couldn't at the time, because I hadn't seen the ending. But a few weeks ago, I finally got a chance to watch the last three or four episodes, all in one go. And yesterday, I grabbed a little time to put together my thoughts. They're online now at sfsignal.com. Let me know what you think!

"Fear not the future, weep not for the past." —Percy Bysshe Shelley

What's Hard About Being a Writer?

SFSignal, from time to time, asks the same question of a bunch of writers and puts their answers together in an interesting post called MindMeld. They've done it again this week, and the question—posed to me, among others—was What's the most difficult part of being a writer? (That link will take you to all the answers.)

Here's what I said (but do go look at the others, because they're interesting):

What's the hardest thing about being a writer? That's easy: Writing. Doing it, not talking about it. Not thinking about it or procrastinating to avoid doing it. Not checking the email for writing-related messages (hah). Just doing it. Putting. The words. On. The page. Damn, it's hard sometimes. A lot of the time. Most of the time. Okay, nearly all the time. Microsoft's patented Blue Screen of Death can't hold a candle to the dread induced by the White Screen of No Words on the Page.

I'm not talking about writing in general, but writing a work of fiction. Creating a story out of whole cloth and telling it in words that make the reader want to come back for more. Okay, I'm not even talking about that last part—that comes more in the rewriting phase, which for me is easier. I'm talking about, Who is this character, really, and why is she angry, or scared, or passionate? I'm talking about, What comes next—and why is it interesting or unexpected or inevitable? Why should anyone care?

I got some interesting insight into the different creative tensions in writing a couple of years ago, when I was asked to write a novelization of Battlestar Galactica: the Miniseries. I had just finished a first draft of my novel Sunborn, which for a variety of reasons had been a years-long struggle. The novelization had to be done quickly. But I had a DVD of the miniseries (it had already aired), and I had a shooting script (different in many respects from the final edit). The story was there. The characters were there. I couldn't change them, and didn't want to change them. But I had to bring them to life. I had to add dimension and depth where I could, and I had to make scenes make sense that were fine on-screen, whizzing by at the speed of TV, but that on closer examination had issues. It was a writing challenge of a particular kind, and I enjoyed it immensely. But it was a very different experience from writing my own books.

What it was, I think, was that my story-imagining lobes were given a break, while my story-crafting and writing-craft lobes did the heavy lifting for a while. I worked hard, while at the same time, part of my brain was vacationing! And afterward, I came back to the rewrite on Sunborn with better clarity and more energy. Based on feedback from readers so far, I think I did good.

Guess what I'm doing now. That's right, I'm first-drafting a new novel. Blank White Screen of No Words on the Page. Damn, that's hard.

By the way, for those of you who might not be regular readers of Pushing a Snake, the book I'm working on now is the fifth volume of The Chaos Chronicles: The Reefs of Time. (Will John Bandicut and Julie Stone find each other again on Shipworld?... and other questions, to be answered.)

Do Free Downloads Sell Books?

This, of course, is the question that many authors want the answer to (and also blog-reader Tim, in a comment to my last post). If you believe the Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi school, the answer is clearly yes; others remain skeptical. Publishers range from scared to enthusiastic.

For me, this is an ongoing experiment. The first part was a no-brainer: the first three Chaos Chronicles books were out of print, so it was unquestionably better to get them in front of readers and get them interested in the series. For that part of the experiment, the results are an unqualified—but also unquantified—success. There have been about 15,000 downloads of those books from my own site, with more from feedbooks, manybooks, mobileread, and now the Baen Free Library. Many people have written me, saying they tried my work for the first time with those freebies and liked what they found. Some of them said it prompted them to go out and buy a copy of Sunborn in hardcover. Hurray!

But wait just a minute. How many extra copies of Sunborn did it sell? Three? Three hundred? How many sales did I lose because I put it up for free in PDF? Truth: I don't know. In the first place, it's not like I actually get detailed information about sales; this remains one of the dark sides of publishing, the dearth of actual data coming back to the writer. (Sure, eventually I'll see totals on a royalty sheet. But that can take years.) Just as important, though, is a question that no one can answer: how many would I have sold without the free downloads. The series was out of the public eye for years. I was out of the public eye for years. I have no doubt the sales picture could have been grim. As it is, from what I'm told, Sunborn is selling at least as well as its predecessor in the stores, Eternity's End. (BSG is a side trip, and doesn't really count.)

So what do the publishers make of all this? Well, Tor and Baen both seem to embrace the notion of giving books away as a means to selling more. Tor has had free download promotions from time to time, and Baen has their ongoing free library. On the other hand, I recently had an email exchange with a fellow writer whose new book is on the Nebula preliminary ballot. His publisher was reluctant to let him send out an electronic reading copy or to put a PDF up even on the members only SFWA site, for fear I guess of piracy. This, to me, makes no sense. If a book is published, chances are it'll be up on the darknet regardless. Better to get people reading it and talking about it.

Tim mentioned the music and film industries as examples of reluctance. The thing is, they're coming around. Amazon offers free MP3 music downloads. Itunes has a free song of the week. The networks put their TV shows up on the web for free. (That's how I'm catching up on Chuck, which I missed in favor of Sarah Connor Chronicles, back when they were on at the same time. And that's even how I'm seeing Battlestar Galactica—on Free On Demand!) And web comics—free. What that may imply for a business model for earning an income from writing is a much bigger question—a topic for another post, maybe.

Bottom line for me: I can't guarantee that my books will sell better because I'm offering them for free download. The truth is, I may never know. But I don't think I'm hurting sales, and right now, the enemy with the name Obscurity written on its back is a far bigger threat to me than the chance that some people are reading my books for free.

And wasn't the hope that people would read my books the reason I wrote them in the first place?

"You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success—but only if you persist." —Isaac Asimov

Free BSG Download and Other News

With Battlestar Galactica now in the final stretch of its glorious and slightly insane odyssey, I asked for and received permission to put my novelization of the miniseries, titled—wouldn't you know it—Battlestar Galactica, up for free download on my web site. And so I have, and there you can get it for your reading pleasure. I've got it in PDF and EPUB formats. The Mobipocket version is on sale in the Kindle store. Naturally, I hope a few of you might be inspired to buy the paper book, still available here and there. But mostly I just wanted to share the fun.

In other download news, the first three books of The Chaos Chronicles have just gone up for download in the Baen Free Library. (If you already have the Chaos books from my web site, there's no reason to redownload; they're the same book files, copied over with my permission.) If you don't know the Baen Free Library, it's a wonderful resource to help people get a taste of work by authors they might not know, in ebook form—and it's got a lot of great classic SF by people like Andre Norton and James Schmitz. Check it out.

Meanwhile, I'm now proofing the text for the ebook version of Seas of Ernathe, my very first novel. There's a trip down (fading) memory lane! That writer kid, he has promise, I think.

BSG Meets The Atlantic Monthly (!)

The Atlantic is a terrific magazine, but possibly the last place I would have looked for an article on Battlestar Galactica, the edgy TV series that's probably done more to shake up science fiction on television since the original Star Trek. Nevertheless, in the new (Jan/Feb 2009) issue, James Parker writes in The Atlantic about BSG, just as the show locks and loads for its final stretch (hitting the cablewaves next Friday night!). In Lost in Space, Parker gives a reasonable account of the origin of the reimagined show, except that he brings L. Ron Hubbard into the account—Hubbard having said that space opera was really "the stuff of deepest prehistory, somber emanations from the memory of the species." That dovetails, admittedly, with BSG's premise that Earth is not the cradle of humankind, but rather the latest stop on a long journey.

Parker turns a tad snarky about the direction of the show, saying that "Battlestar Galactica is presenting all the symptoms of a an extended-run high-concept TV series in its decadent phase." Now, he may be right—certainly I've wondered more than once whether the show's writers actually know themselves where they're going with the story. I've wondered that ever since I wrote the official novelization of the miniseries, and had the feeling that there was a lot they weren't telling me about the direction of the show because they weren't sure themselves. Fair enough. Half the time I don't know where I'm going when I'm writing a novel. Why should it be any different for the creators of a years-long TV series?

On the other hand, maybe those writers know exactly what they're doing, and we're just entering the twistiest part of the world's most gut-wrenching aerobatics show. That's my vote, an expression of white-knuckled faith. They better know what they're doing—it's coming back on, and looks like it could be augering in, and I, for one, want to know how they're going to land that baby!

"You write about the thing that sank its teeth into you and wouldn't let go." —Paul West

BSG Novel—Free at Tor.com!

The e-book version, that is. This week only, you can download my novelization of Battlestar Galactica (the miniseries that began the new BSG) for free from Tor Books. And by the way, if you like e-books, Tor offers a weekly free book. If you sign up for their email newsletter, you'll get a reminder notice each week when a new title becomes available. You have to act fast, though, because when a new one comes, the old one goes away. (Sort of like woot.com, but without the price and the funny descriptions.)

Speaking of e-books, here's a reminder that many of my novels are available as e-books in various formats. Go to e-reads.com for a complete listing. And, of course, you can also order new, bound-paper codices (books) directly from me.

"The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business." —John Steinbeck

Spring Is Here!

Spring has sprung here in Massachusetts! And most welcome it is! I don't know why, but this last winter felt like the longest I've ever known. I've been counting the interesting species of wildlife I've been seeing right around our house here in the Boston 'burbs: cardinals, bluejays, black-capped chickadee (I think), mockingbirds, crows (making a comeback after nearly being decimated by the Nile virus), a cute little rabbit, a toad, and—just a few days ago—a wild turkey. (It practically cut me off as I was coming up on my moped; it was flying up the street at an altitude of about six feet, then landed in a neighbor's driveway.) Oh and, yeah—termites.

Blasted termites ate a piece of wood paneling in our downstairs rental apartment. So now I've got to hire a Terminator. Jeez, that's an expensive proposition! And it's not just a matter of getting estimates and picking a terminator; I have to decide which approach I want to take—pesticide injection into the ground (the tried and true method), or bait trapping (much less pesticide, but newer, less tested, and more expensive).

Which reminds me that my wife and I have become big fans of the new show, Sarah Connor Chronicles. I just read that it's been renewed for next season. Yesss! And BSG has started up again. We've only watched one episode so far, but clearly they're going to be messing with our minds for the rest of the series. And I mean that in a good way, of course.

I haven't had as much time to pursue my Roomba hobby as I'd hoped, but I did bring an ailing Scooba back to life! Turned out have some defective soldering inside. I never would have found it if someone on Roombareview.com hadn't suggested that I solder a couple of leads for a voltmeter in there, so that I could see what was happening. Lo and behold, the act of doing that solved the problem. And I just got a very nice note from someone in Italy, telling me that my method worked for him, too! (No, he didn't put leads in, but he did remelt the solder on the crucial connection—and that fixed his Scooba, too.)

In keeping with the theme of BSG and Roombas, I present here a couple of funny videos I stumbled across on youtube. The links will open new windows in your browser.

Cylon Roombas!

And I, Roomba, a Roomba love story, of sorts (a little long, but cute):

I, Roomba

(I tried embedding the videos, but they played erratically for some reason.)

"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book." —Cicero

Where Does the Time Go?

The last two weeks sure went fast (at least in blog years). The nasty head cold that I'd been dodging all winter while people fell to my left and to my right finally caught me (and most of my family). With perfect timing, it came just before we were to receive a Japanese student to stay with us for five days. We took a lot of vitamins and Echinacea and green tea, and prayed. She arrived today, and is a total sweetheart. I know we're going to want to adopt her.

A week ago, the high school wrestling team had its annual end-of-season banquet. To my immense relief, someone else produced a video of season highlights, so I didn't have to. To my immense pride, my daughter Lexi (a graduating senior) received the Coach's Award for outstanding contribution to the team. She was taken completely by surprise, because she hadn't had a winning season. But the coach gave a very moving tribute to her hard work and discipline, and her willingness to compete head-on in a sport completely dominated by boys. It was a great moment.

I wrote a while back about the impressive work that Star Trek fans were doing in creating all-new Star Trek episodes. It seems that the producers of Battlestar Galactica have noticed all the fan activity, also, and have decided to facilitate it. They've created a video toolkit of special effects, sounds, etc., that anyone can use to produce their own four-minute BSG spinoffs. They've even got a couple of samples up. They're running a competition, and the winning piece will be shown along with an actual BSG episode. (Speaking of which, I'm a few weeks behind in watching, so don't anyone post any spoilers about what happened to Starbuck in the next-to-last episode!)

Finally, here's another interesting link, courtesy of my wife:

How about a dance club that's built their dance floor on top of piezoelectric elements, so that the bouncing of the dance steps provides the electricity to power the club? Go to http://www.inhabitat.com/, and scroll down a little ways to Sustainable Dance Club for a short video. Gotta dance!

Wikis and Pedias and Obsessions, Oh My!

Somehow or other, I stumbled across the existence of Scifipedia, an SF-oriented wiki developed by SciFi.com. Of course, I looked to see if they had a good section about authors, and specifically about me. The answer: authors, yes; me, no. So I set about to remedy the situation. You wouldn't believe how long it can take to compose a simple encyclopedia article about yourself, especially when most of the information already exists in various documents readily at hand. Nevertheless, I got it done, and you can read all about me and my stuff at Scifipedia | Literature | Authors.

Well, one thing leads to another, and soon I was checking to make sure that various articles about Battlestar Galactica included information about the novels. (They didn't; I fixed that.) And that led to the discovery of Battlestarwiki, and a search to see if the books were properly referenced there. At first, the answer seemed to be no. A search for novels didn't lead to much, but eventually I found an article titled "List of Books," which probably isn't the best title for search purposes, but never mind. That led to the discovery of a detailed page about my BSG novel, which is truly mind-boggling in its excruciating attention to detail. Some of their speculations are interesting and fun, and some lead me to scratch my head. I'm torn between awe at the energy and intelligence devoted to this, and wanting to say, "Get a—!" But no, no, that's the last thing I would say to fans! Amazing, truly amazing what these people have pulled together.

BSG—It's Everywhere

I finally decided to take a few minutes to switch my Blogger account over to the "new" Blogger, whatever that means. I was amused by their informational page, which explained the upgrade by comparing it to the difference between the old Battlestar Galactica, with Lorne Greene, and the new Battlestar Galactica, with Edward James Olmos. (Their link to the Wikipedia article on BSG then led me to squander an hour figuring out how to add information about the book series to the BSG article. So much for just taking a few minutes.)

I'm amazed at how thoroughly Galactica has permeated popular culture. I mean, it doesn't even play on a broadcast network. If it weren't for the recent move to free On Demand rebroadcasts, I wouldn't be seeing it on my own cable box. And yet, I frequently see references to it in print, it turns up in comic strips like Sheldon, and here it is, being used as a point of reference on Blogger. It's fun to be associated with it, even if the association is small. Last night we watched episodes 8 and 9 of the current season (boxing episode and food-crisis episode), which weren't at all bad, if not up to the level of the preceding 7. I've been asked not to give spoilers, and I won't, but I'll say that while there was great backstory in #8, I was less drawn in by the front story; and #9, about the food crisis, showed once again that they're better at writing stories about human drama (or melodrama) than they are at anything involving science. (Even so, it had a powerful ending.)

Speaking of Wikipedia, check out the new article on star rigging created by blog reader Kitty. (Kitty is a relative of mine, but I'll be danged if I can explain how we're related. Can you, Kitty?)

Holiday Greetings, Everyone!

I hope all of you out there are enjoying your holidays. Hope you had a great Christmas, or Solstice, or Hanukah, or Kwanzaa, or whatever you celebrate. We had a wonderful Christmas here, with family and friends visiting. Which is just one reason I am, typically, offering Christmas greetings a few days after the fact. (I've hardly been online at all in the last few days, much less writing blog entries.)

One of my favorite comic strip discoveries of last year was Sheldon, which I started reading on comics.com, then subscribed to after it moved to its own web site. The last couple of days, Sheldon has been doing a riff on Battlestar Galactica, which has been very funny—and accurate. If you'd like to read it, start here and move forward. (Sheldon is the kid; the talking duck is Arthur.)

We're actually a few episodes behind in watching Galactica, so I don't know yet exactly what's happened in the mid-season cliffhanger (though I glimpsed a bit of it while recording from free On Demand on our Comcast cable). But in general the writing on the show this season has been superb—the best yet. I wish I could say that sales of the book have been equally superb, but it would be a lie. There have been various screwups in distribution, including a long delay in getting the mass market paperback listed on Amazon.com and into bookstores. (Borders still doesn't seem to be carrying it in most stores.) If you don't see it, by all means ask for it.

I feel a cold coming on (people around me have been dropping left and right with colds and flu), so this might be my last entry before the new year. If I don't see you before then, have a great one!

Jeff

Writing Media and Other Tie-In Novels

Lately I've been getting a spate of emails from people asking questions such as, "How can I write a Battlestar Galactica / Aliens vs. Predator / Universe-of-Your-Choice novel? Do I just write it, or how do I get the rights, or what do I do?" It's a perfectly natural question, and a natural desire. The answer, though, is one that most people won't want to hear.

First I should specify that it depends whether you're talking about writing "fanfic" just for fun, for your own amusement—in which case, the answer is, have at it! (Just don't try to publish it.)

But I suspect that's not what most people mean. Most correspondents, I think, hope to write and publish a tie-in novel. I suspect the motivation stems partly from a love of a particular show or universe, and partly from a belief that this may be an easier way to get published. It's not. What you have to understand is that these projects come about through complex rights arrangements which publishers make with the studios, before so much as a word is set to paper. Once the publisher has an arrangement, then the editor in charge of the line goes looking for writers to write the books (whether novelizations of film/TV productions, like my Battlestar Galactica book, or original spin-off novels, like Craig Shaw Gardner's Galactica book).

In other words, tie-in projects are generated by the studio and publisher, who then look for writers they think are best for the job. And editors for these books tend to turn to writers whose work they're already familiar with, maybe even writers they're already working with. Other writers may apply, but there's little chance of getting a nod without a publishing track record. They want to know you can do the job. And they usually want the book written yesterday.

So...the short answer is, if you want to write a book in someone else's universe, get busy and write some stories in your own universe first. (Quit wasting time reading blogs!) Get published, get noticed. Then maybe one day you, too, will get the call.

Oh—and you can learn a lot more about this business than I can tell you at http://www.iamtw.org/articles.html.

Galactica Website

It seems I'm getting a lot of visits here from people who found a mention of my Battlestar Galactica: the Miniseries novel on http://www.gateworld.net/galactica/. Hi everyone! Yes, it's true that you can read here a lot of my thoughts on writing BSG. But you'll have to scroll down a ways. There are probably half a dozen entries, if you look far enough. (Or do a search.) Anyway, welcome and feel free to look around the place. It's small, but we're all friends here.

Hi Again!

Well, it has been a long gap in my postings. I wish I could say it's because I've had my head deep in the world of Sunborn, but the truth is, it's because tax return time is upon us and I'd fallen a year behind in my bookkeeping. So I've been living in receipts and Quicken, and am about to dive into Turbotax. (For those of you not from the U.S., we have this national ritual in the weeks and months leading up to April 15 every year, when everyone has to file their income tax return with the national government. It's no fun for anyone, but for self-employed people like writers, artists, and small business owners, it's an exercise in accounting torture.) However, I'm starting to glimpse a few stray photons, which I hope are the first promises of the light at the end of the tunnel. And praying it's not a freight train coming the other way.

I-Con was great fun, by the way—for me, but maybe even moreso for my family. We saw a number of friends, made a couple of new ones, and indeed got to say hello to George Takei (Star Trek's Sulu) and Ron Glass (Firefly). I had a brief but pleasant chat with Richard Hatch (Battlestar Galactica). The con was far more media-oriented than most I go to, and it seemed as if there were hardly any actual books being sold in the dealer's room—and yet I sold more copies of my own books at the autograph table than I have in most recent cons that were more book oriented. And, I got my first look at the middle and outer end of Long Island, very pretty.

I have a whole bunch of links to quirky things stored up to mention here, but that'll have to be for next time. Right now, I really do need to get to work on the book!

Back Home, BSG Off to Tor Again, and...

What? Galactica—again? Yes, this time I had the page proofs for the mass market paperback edition to correct. (We won't mention that the proofs were mailed by mistake to Craig Gardner, who wrote the second book, and who fortunately lives just a few blocks away.) This meant reading through the book again—actually, for the first time since I corrected the proofs for the trade edition. Why should I have to do this? you might ask. Well, partly because the typesetting has been adjusted for the smaller page size, and sometimes errors are introduced when that's done. But mainly it's to catch all the stupid mistakes we missed the first time around. Yes, it's true.

I know this makes it sound like we're careless when the first edition goes out, but that's not true. It's amazing how many errors can sneak by multiple proofreaders (including yours truly), who are all doing their best to catch the little buggers. And then there are the occasional infelicitous phrasings or word choices that any one of said proofreaders (including yours truly) should have caught—but didn't. Things like the phrase "for a moment" appearing three times in a paragraph. Yeesh.

So it's done. And you know what? I really liked reading the book. I consider this a positive sign.

Oh—the wrestling. Alexandra placed third in the Ohio state girls tournament in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. It wasn't a huge field. But lemme tell you, some of those girls who are wrestling in Ohio are tough hombres! (You should forgive the expression.) I'll try to snag a few stills off the video we shot and get them up soon.

With my sister Nancy as tour guide, we also visited the campus of Kenyon College, which is right down the road from where the tourney was held. We admired their fantastic new athletic Taj Mahal, and sought out advice and info from fellow SF author/biology professor Joan Slonczewski.

We arrived home, well after midnight on Sunday night, exhausted but happy—greeted by wife and other daughter, and dinner laid out on the table! Who could ask for more?

Boskone, and News about Galactica

Well, I had a thoroughly pleasant time at Boskone. This took me a little by surprise, only because I was feeling all grumpy and not really in the mood to go out. I had to, though, because I was scheduled to be on panels. And once I got there and started seeing old friends, and making some new ones, I got into the spirit of it. I also thought this was the liveliest and most interesting Boskone I have seen in a number of years.

One pleasant result was encountering some fans who had already read Battlestar Galactica: the Miniseries. The feedback was all good. Perhaps the nicest was from a young woman who happens to be a Commander in the US Navy, and who is about to become captain of a guided missile destroyer. She said she thought I'd captured the feel of the story very well—and I took that as significant praise, coming from someone who actually knows what it's like to run a military vessel. (The only ones I have ever been aboard have been museums, rather like what Galactica was scheduled to become before the pesky Cylons interfered.)

An encouraging sidelight was hearing from one of my writing buddies that he'd met with his editor and confirmed the sale of a new trilogy. Earning a living as a writer is not easy for any of us, and he's no exception. I don't know if I should mention his name here, so I'll just say that it rhymes with Craig Shaw Gardner, and his writing style is very similar. I'll let him announce the details once everything's been inked.

And finally, I came home to see an email from my editor, telling me that Galactica has sold to a British publisher and has had a book club sale. Given that my biggest rationale for writing the book was to get my name back in front of the public (I didn't know then that I was going to enjoy Galactica so much), this is very good news indeed. More readers, and—who knows—maybe even a little more money, in the long run.

(Which reminds me of something I want to write about—readers versus money. But later. Remind me if I forget.)