When the television show The Expanse first came out I was hooked! Impressed by the imagery, the gritty realism of the worlds presented, the intricate and complex storyline I devoured the books the show is based on. They are big, thick books too!

I realized in reading these books and in watching the show that I like Science Fiction with some significant science. I do appreciate science fantasy as well, but after seeing some “science fiction” where people have lived their whole lives in a space station drop to Earth and jump out of the landing craft and stare at the sky then wander off,

(REALLY?????) Science fiction was a gloss applied to this story, it was not a science fiction work at all.  I felt offended after being used to The Expanse which seems to take the Science aspect seriously.

Characters are great and an important piece of the storytelling game, but that scientific realism, plausible situations, make all the difference.  In The Expanse, the one factor with a strong “what if”, the fantastic, is the existence of the proto-molecule. Everything else needs to make sense and generally does.

Just saw Arrival!  (Finally!)

It came out in 2016, starring Amy Addams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker.

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Arrival was nominated for eight Academy Awards in case you haven’t heard much about it.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, apparently, I have managed to avoid spoilers and so could appreciate the movie as it is, without reacting to the hype.

(Did you notice a lot of hype? I didn’t.)

So, twelve alien ships show up on Earth and …..then what. What do we mere humans do about that?

How do we communicate with whoever is in these ships?

When the movie ended I immediately compared it to Interstellar and 2001. I have not yet read the book/short story it is based on, but it is now added to my reading list.

It is based on the 1998 short story “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang.

I think it will be an interesting movie to watch again. Sometimes, once you know the arc, re-watching takes on a whole new dimension.

I still need to see the movies Dr. Strange and Hidden Figures. I did read the book Hidden Figures and look forward to comparing the book to the movie. I have heard such good things about the movie.

As to Arrival specifically, I do love this theme in science fiction. Alien ships show up and wait. Human race freaks out and then….

The story is up to you.

It has been age since I have posted, sorry about that. Life stuff got in the way and I am still trying to recover and catch up. Now things are quieter and I am hoping everything will stay inside the lines for a week or two at least!

So now, I have a little downtime and I am looking for a sci-fi escape from the real world for a few hours. I have been looking for a few new science fiction shows to watch while waiting for Outlander and The Expanse (and the Magicians AND Face Off!) to return with new seasons. I found a few interesting options and received some recommendations. Please share ideas if you have suggestions. I will try anything at least once.

I am also up for indulging on reruns of favorite shows like Firefly and of course old classics like Twilight Zone. I would like to watch some original Dr. Who shows – the ones from A LONG TIME AGO. I do not mind the new reboot version of Dr. Who – I like it fine. However, sometimes you just want the classics. Red Dwarf and Blake 7 are other blasts from the past I need to watch again! There are so many good ones from awhile back, I enjoy the oldies but goodies I guess. Battlestar Galactica is another classic I need to reacquaint myself in the classic science fiction category. I guess it isn’t really a rerun if it is on Netflix, right?

I used to have Netflix ages ago and loved it. Then life got in the way and I could never remember to return those DVD’s, and one too many disks showed up at my door too scratched to make it through a single viewing without skipping. It has been years since I watched anything on Netflix, but I thought why not, I would try it. Now I have Netflix and Amazon Prime. There must be shows out there that I need to see!

Does anyone remember Space: Above and Beyond? –A show that provides proof that you need to manage your expectations. Not too terrible can be a ringing endorsement!

I could not make it through The 100; I am hoping the books are better. If you loved The 100 please let me know why and at what point you decided the show was for you. I was expecting at least a little more science in my science fiction; instead, it seemed to be a flimsy premise for a Lord of the Flies with teens.

Perhaps I just did not hold out long enough. I wanted to like it! (Maybe I should read the books first.)

I read the book The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, but I have not yet seen the show. Another one to add to my list!

What are you watching? Anything you love? I have not yet seen Orphan Black or Dark Matter but they are on my list! Feel free to share any suggestions.

Shows I can’t wait to watch: (Yes, I have read all the Outlander Books published so far and all the Expanse ones too!)

Waiting with baited breath!

The Expanse Season II on Syfy

Outlander Season III on Starz

To Watch:

• Orphan Black – This comes highly recommended.
• Dark Matter
• Man in the High Castle
• Jessica Jones
• Torchwood
• Black Mirror – still learning more
• 3% – Brazilian Science Fiction. This looks interesting! Just watched the pilot episode and will attempt to watch more. The first episode hooked me in minutes.

So I may be a little crazy but I signed up for NaNoWriMo again this year. I have a few ideas on what I might write about but in general I have no clue where I will start or how I will finish. I just know I need to keep writing and taking a few months off has been good, but I can’t let it continue. It is time to get back in the game and start churning out words.

Not to say that these past few months haven’t been productive, they have. I have learned a great deal, written some, worked on the business side of things, trying to figure out this Indie Author business is tough! Also I worked on images for cover art for Book I and my novella prequel.So much to do, plus the pesky day job, family, life stuff trifecta. Overall life is good but I know it is balanced on a knife’s edge and one small thing can send my lovely world into a tailspin, so signing up for NaNoWriMo is also an act of faith.

For those not familiar with NaNoWriMo, it stands for “National Novel Writing Month”, and the basic premise is that you write every day for the month of November, preferably 1,667 words a day, and by the end of the month, you have a 50,000 word (or so) novel. I have “won” the last few years and recommend it to those looking for a way into the writing world. It’s not easy, but it is doable.

Try it, you’ll like it…..or maybe you will hate it, but you will learn WHY you like it or hate it and that has enormous value. I have learned so much in the past 18 months and though I still have a lot to learn I feel like I have made amazing progress in this whole writing career thing that sounded so fun at first and sounds even better now!

                                  

http://nanowrimo.org/

This image is from the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis when they had their space exhibit. Gotta love this chunk of rock!

 

Covers can make or break a book. At least that is what I keep hearing. People apparently DO very much judge a book by its cover before they read it. Now to decide how these books should be judged. I am looking at space images, including space ships, space stations and a lot of abstract art. How to convey expectations and a hint of what the book is about. So much pressure!

I want to convey Science Fiction with these covers, but there are many different types of science fiction, all with their own signals and signs. I am not going for Dystopian, Cyberpunk or Thriller and there are no threatening Aliens in the books either so that rules out quite a bit of imagery.

So many options!

From Amazon.com

 

Perhaps Space Opera, Colonization and….. I don’t know yet.  SO much to think about and so much to discover!  Covers coming soon, hoping to release in 2017!

 

It has been 18 days since my last blog post and September is flying by. I have been working on a short story and “Book I” for my series and the short story is finally coming along. Book I is mostly written, just needs editing and I think I have mangled it a bit with editing at this point. Taking a break from it to work on a few other things at the moment.

Sometimes taking a break, a few minutes, hours, days or weeks can provide much needed perspective and I am hoping for a solution to my editing doldrums. Sometimes it is best to push on through, other times walk away and often, just pause for a bit. The trick is knowing the difference. (I am hoping taking a break now is the right choice!)

I have been participating in the #SeptWritingChallenge on twitter to some extent, though I am not very good at documenting my writing (word count) and editing (how many hours) as I do much of it very late at night. It has been very helpful to see people committing to writing 500 words a day and sticking to that commitment. I have been trying to do one thing a day, either editing, writing, working on cover design and learning the ins and outs of this crazy self publishing business. The folks at the monthly writing challenges on twitter have been helpful in the extreme and have pointed me to many blogs, books and other valuable resources.

The information is out there!

Some of the Blogs I follow:
http://writersinthestormblog.com/

http://www.thecreativepenn.com/blog/

http://writeonsisters.com/

http://authors.susankayequinn.com/

Please share your own recommendations – the more the merrier!

Indiana’s Bicentennial

By now, if you live in Indiana, you have heard that 2016 is our state’s bicentennial. Indiana became a state in December 1816 and (Yay!) we should celebrate it 200 years later.
This sort of celebration makes me think about the rest of the world, where cities, states, and countries are significantly older than a mere 200 years.

A saying I have heard previously, but read recently in one of the Outlander books– an Englishman thinks 100 miles is a long way and an American thinks 100 years is a long time.

What about older countries, such as China or India?

Do they celebrate such anniversaries by the 100’s or by the 1000’s?

Will the USA one day celebrate a 1000-year anniversary?

What will we be like in 2776?

760 years from now, will things be radically different? I hope that some things will be different.

Seven hundred and sixty years ago (or thereabouts) major event of the time include the signing of the Magna Carta (1215), Genghis Kahn invading China (1211) and the Inquisition begins (1231). Marco Polo and Thomas Aquinas are also famous people from that time.
Education, transportation and communication have changed radically, but have we as a people changed that much? We have better nutrition and hygiene, lower infant mortality, but we could (in theory of course) take someone from that time period and bring them to today, or the reverse, send someone from today back to that time and see if they could blend in.

Are the people so radically different?
How different was 1215 from 1815?

I write stories where the future 100+ years from now shows us a changed world, but it is not radically different from our own. We still recognize most things and people are still people. I once joked that in my future world the BBC still exists!

Over time, even long spans of time, somethings change and some stay constant. How people receive news, sports and weather change a great deal over time but humanity’s interest in news, sports and weather has not. We are also interested in politics and gossip but what that means exactly varies with the times and governmental structure.

What do you think humans will look like in another hundred years? Will we change much? How about 500 years?

Will we experience a “dark ages” where we need to regain lost knowledge or will we continue to accrue our education in a linear fashion?

Not that long ago, I had an idea to take out some of my old writings from storage, clean them up and put them up on Amazon, to be ready possibly by actual people. Sounded cool, might technically make me “published” and would begin the fear-loosening journey of getting stuff out there. THEN I found out that was a great deal more to this whole publishing thing, even for indie authors.

Cover design, formatting, all the places to possibly put an ebook, the possibility of paper copies, newsletters, reviews and the weight people and companies place on them. All things I could just ignore and just upload my little book.

I could do that…. OR I could do it right.

Do it as if I actually meant it and give it my all.

Now, admittedly my “ALL” is bits and pieces of time and dedication over many months. I have not quit my day job. I haven’t taken off work for a week so that I could just knock this out. However, I am making progress. I have a short story in the works now, while still in draft form, makes sense and can be read by a person not myself. My full-length work in progress has been edited to death and I am starting over to fix it but not kill it. I have stuff in progress….. and as of right now it is not static, I work on it. I am feeling very differently about it all now than when I first learned about self-publishing on Amazon. I don’t know about many things, but now there are things about publishing that I DO know.

Slow but steady wins the race and for the first time I feel like might have a shot at this!

I finally read the highly recommended book by Ernest Cline Ready Player One. To a child of the 1980s it is a fun romp through nostalgic pop culture and a delightfully well-written science fiction piece as well.

The story begins in 2044 with the main character Wade Watts negotiating his way through life. His resources are meager in reality, but once he is online, the world drops away, he networks with his friends, his teachers, and the unlimited possibilities the worlds online provide.

A massive online quest style adventure, I will not spoil it for you, but if you have any nostalgia for the 1980s or just enjoy video games get this book.

If you recommended this book to me thank you. If you have not read it yet do so before the movie version comes out in March of 2018.  Enjoy!