Salt Lake Comic Con 2015 Day 1

It took a few texts and wandering around before all the passes were in the right hands to get in to set up the Xchyler Publishing author's table. (Not an official table for the publisher, but a bunch of their authors getting together since we're mostly locals.)

Here's Jay Barnson manning our table, photobombing himself.

We were next to the Curiosity Quills and Space Balrogs folks, so we had several book-laden tables in a row. I was able to get away from the table for a few panel discussions, which is always fun. I was rushing from one thing to another, so I didn't get as much time to talk to people as I would like.

Writing Advice: The Good, The Bad & The Very Ugly

It was fun to hear several people describe the best and worst writing advise they've received. Michaelbrent Collings is a strict and disciplined moderator, and helped things move along smoothly. One thing in particular which came out is that any time someone expresses an opinion on how to write with "always" or "never" they are most likely wrong.

Outlining Vs. Discovery Writing

Outline vs. Discovery is also known as Plotter vs. Pantser. Do you outline everything, or do you write by the seat of your pants? It turns out that it's more of a broad spectrum with those two cases being the extremes. Professional authors tend to do more plotting since they have deadlines and schedules, and need to be able to write to deadlines. Newer authors tend to do more free-form writing. Neither is an absolute though, and everyone tends to do a mix of some kind.

Creating Horror: How to Scare the Crap out of People

I'm writing a short horror story, so I figured I'd spend some time listening to successful scary story writers. Michaelbrent Collings is a complete loose cannon when not moderating, and is loads of fun to listen to. :) You tend to need to write about what scares you personally, and to broaden it out from there to take in the fears of more than just yourself. Most of these authors claim a Stephen King book as the scariest they've ever read, but I don't think they doubled up on any single book.

Writing a Book Series

Dave Farland (AKA Dave Wolverton) moderated this one. Writing and pitching books as a series can save a lot of time once you've built a reputation up to where you can approach agents and publishers that way. If you have the reputation for dependability, a series can keep you going on a project for a lot longer than single books can. It's not quite so good as a first entry out of the chute if you're a new author, just because it's hard for a publisher to trust someone that's an unknown.

Now I'm looking forward to Friday and Saturday. Today I forgot to take a notebook so I had to run from memories jogged by my pictures. Tomorrow will be better.

Realistic Physics: John's Pet Peeves Number 3

I saw an article in the newspaper this past week about a school bus which went off the edge of an overpass. It was a horrible tragedy where people died. Things like that happen in the real world. Physics is not on your side when you disagree with reality.

I'm all for the thrilling chase in fiction, don't get me wrong. I just believe there should be some justification when someone drops thirty feet onto concrete and doesn't end up in a hospital, or jumps a car over a river without busting all axles when it lands. At least in the James Bond movies, the boats they use for special effects use jets instead of props, so there's nothing to scrape off as the boat scoots along the ground.

When writing fiction with significant action scenes where physics plays a role, I'd recommend consulting an actual fan or student of physics. Consultants are great in lots of areas, and physics is one that can make or break a scene.

There's a lot of middle ground between having a car made of indestructible super-stuff that never scratches, and having it made of explodium. Mind you, parody is great. I've seen a Chevy Nova turn into a giant fireball when something touched its bumper, and it was great! But if your goal is realism and not yoinking your reader out of the story, you need to pay attention to the little things. Odds are pretty good that you'll have a reader that remembers high school physics, and will complain if you do it wrong.

You may need to know, for instance, which way precession will turn a space station if you turn on rockets to change it's spin axis before stopping the spin. If you don't know anyone to ask, get out a bicycle tire and give it a try. Interestingly enough, the rotation axis can align with the thrust vector of the rocket. If that doesn't make sense, that's why you need consultants and proof readers.

You might need to know how far a car really can drop before the engine mounts just won't take any more, or what can blow out shocks or tires. How do crumple zones work? I have no idea of the details, so I would have to ask someone who does bodywork on cars. What are the odds of needing to cut someone out of a car with the jaws of life if their car gets squished between to semis? What speed of collision would likely make the question moot? How does ablative shielding work on reentry for space vehicles, and how long does it last?

Here's an example from my short story Revolutionary. I needed to know how long it would take to reach the ground skydiving from 30,000 feet, so I looked up the terminal velocity of a human body and did the math. If math isn't your friend, find a consultant (preferably a good friend) who likes math. You can thank them in your dedication. Knowing terminal velocity gave me hard limits on the length of a fight scene where there were three people and two parachutes. At two thousand feet, how much longer did they have? What does it take to steer, and to change your rate of descent? If I'd got any of that wrong, anyone who knows skydiving would likely launch the book through the air rather than finish the story.

In summary, do what you can to write a fun story, then for all those details that you might not know off the top of your head, verify them. Your readers will thank you.

Not-So-Hard Science Fiction: John's Pet Peeves Number 2

I've seen some pretty odd things praised for their realism in science fiction, and I'm sure you have, too. There are a lot of goofy details that just get ignored as well.

Hard SF by its nature takes our current universe, moves it to a futuristic setting, and will generally grab one or two fantastic elements and declare them to be science for purposes of the story. This could be faster than light travel, time machines, wormholes you can travel through, or other story elements that don't work like they do in the real world.

My pet peeve is when it's done inconsistently. I'm going to pick on a movie this time instead of picking just on writing. I haven't read the novelization of Interstellar, so I will stick with what I know.

Take relativity and time dialation for instance. If you're going close enough to an event horizon to get a 1000:1 or greater time dialation ratio by going from orbit to a planet, no planet is going to survive the shear effects and no ship is going to hang in the same spot "in orbit" and never get closer to the event horizon.

Also, if you need a full Saturn-V-sized rocket to get off the earth's surface the first time, I would not believe a ship the size of a Star Trek shuttle can just hop between surface and orbit multiple times.

Consistency will buy you a lot of "suspension of disbelief." Rewriting a rule is normal, Just make everything follow that new rule. Consider the consequences and ramifications of having changed a rule. Is space travel simple and fast? It had better be the same every time it's used.Are you using relativistic slower-than-light travel? You'd better bone up on time dialation and use it consistently everywhere. Don't forge orbital mechanics, either. As a different sort of example (and one that doesn't poke fun at Interstellar), do you want to arm your soldiers with swords? You'd better have a consistent reason why long range guns won't get the job done, because they replaced older tools for a reason.

Sorry if I've ruined the movie Interstellar for you now by raising an eyebrow at everyone who praised its accuracy. But just so you know, I've watched it twice. On purpose. Just don't expect me to praise it for its science, or for its consistency.

A Shape Shifter Gaffe: John’s Pet Peeves Number 1

Not that this is my biggest pet peeve, it’s just the first one I decided to write about. J

Have you ever read an urban fantasy story or some other sort of fiction where people shape shift into animals? Have you ever read about knees reversing direction as the person became an animal? Have you been tempted to write that into one of your stories?

For the love of biology, do not do this! It makes me want to throw the book, and if you read a little farther, it might get the same reaction from you in the future. This is because I like to share.

Do a couple of web searches. First, find an animal skeleton with the bones labelled. It can be a dog, cat, horse, wolf, whatever. Now do a search for a human skeleton, also with the bones labelled. Now, note that many of the same bones show up in both places. Do you see that bendy part that looks like a backwards knee on the rear leg of a dog or cat? That would be a heel.

If you look at the knee on the rear legs, you can see that most animals have a patella, or knee cap. The knees face forward. FORWARD!

Now that you’ve looked up and seen the differences, don’t assume four legged animals are all the same. It gets even more interesting if you look at the front leg of a horse. The equivalent of the elbow is actually up quite high where the humerus ends, and the entire lower half of the leg, what you would think of as everything below the forward-facing knee, is made up of metacarpals, or what for you and me are wrist and hand bones. It makes a little more sense if you think of the hoof as a fingernail.

Granted, a writer who is making up fantasy for entertainment purposes should not be forcibly held to rigorous scientific standards. Hard science fiction is a category of story that tries to get the fiddly scientific bits right as much as the story allows. Hard fantasy isn’t a category at all. I suspect there is a reason for this. I’ve enjoyed some stories that got their biology so horribly wrong that I suspect they never took a class, never cracked a book, never did a web search on the subject, and probably had no pets.

Still, I can’t help but think how much better a story would be if the paws were not so faux, since illogical biology can rip a reader right out of the story just as much as any other writing blunder if the reader has a little knowledge in the area where an author has skimped.

I feel better for having shared. How about you? Do you have a pet peeve that you want to share?

DragonComet short story contest

I'm sure anyone with a significant number of stories sold will likely read this and think, "noob." :) Veterans probably don't go "squee" when they receive a little bit of recognition. I just found that a story of mine has been selected as a finalist for the DragonComet short story contest, with final winners announced at next year's LTUE conference.

I doubt you've heard about this contest unless you're a regular attendee at LTUE, a writer-centric conference held each February in Provo, Utah. It's not a big name contest. My world won't likely change much based on being a finalist. The upside is that becoming a finalist (and possible winner) puts a new paving stone in the path.

I've read quite a bit recently about how short stories are a good way to break into writing. They give you contacts, references, and in general ease your way along in the market. Not to say it's ever easy; just that it can be less difficult.

This has proven true with me. In the past year and a bit I've attended a steampunk convention (twice), Salt Lake Comic Con, CONDuit, and LTUE, have had my short story "Revolutionary" published in the anthology Steel & Bone based on another writing contest, and have made a lot of new friends. Some of those friends and acquaintances are writers, editors, agents, small press publishers, or (like myself) have recently started to take writing more seriously.

So if you're wondering whether to jump in and start writing, or if you're wondering what to do with your writing, or better yet if you MUST write and you figure you might as well make something of it, there are lots of contests out there to get you started, and many are free to enter. Good luck to you as you plow through the learning curve, no matter where on that curve you are right now.

Salt City Steamfest 2015

Last year, I attended only Saturday at the Salt City Steamfest. This year my wife and I were able to be there for both days.

We had Victor Chopine take some pictures, which was lots of fun. He has a great eye for poses.

I helped out a bit at a booth full of authors associated with Xchyler Publishing. That's Candace Thomas, Sarah E. Seeley, and Jay Barnson pictured, and we had Scott Taylor and Scott Tarbet there as well.

We even had this cool online poster put together.

I also attended quite a few panels, mostly on writing, pitching your writing (to editors and agents, not into the trash), and storytelling in general. Our friend Julie Barnson told ghost stories, which are her specialty.

One of the panels consisted of these three ladies ( Terra Luft, Christauna Rose Asay and Callie Tolman Stoker), which was great fun.

Scott Tarbet played moderator for their panel.

There was a writing contest hosted by Curiosity Quills Press, where James Wymore was supposed to announce the winner at the conference. Unfortunately, James had a schedule conflict and had Jason King fill in for him. Due to unforeseen complications, the announcement was moved around and rescheduled, so a troop of us were constantly asking Jason if he knew when we would hear about the contest. He was constantly apologizing for delays that were not his fault, and bore up well under our constant barrage. Finally, the announcement was made!

I didn't win.

But the best part of the contest was yet to come. The gal who won had just been in a round table discussion with me and a few other people a few minutes before. Several of us held our own impromptu session talking about how to approach publishers. The speaker had been a no-show, so everyone just shared what they knew about both short story and novel submissions and publishing methods. When I saw her next she was sort of bouncing and floating down the hall, bordering on giddy because she had just received the good news.

That's when Terra, Christauna and Callie started to talk to her. (You know, I should find out her name,but haven't yet.) They invited her to dinner. I'm not sure how many of the three had been beaten by her in this contest, but I heard one of them had been in 2nd place. They were all nearly as excited for her as she was for herself.

The contest winner is second from the right. This picture is from Terra Luft's Facebook page. The struggling new author was taken under the wing of this fine group of writers. It was great to see her adopted into the community, where even those whom she beat out in the contest were not just happy for her, but went out of their way to be inclusive.

I've felt this same thing in how I have been adopted into the Utah writer's scene. I know several local authors now because of conferences and events over the past year, especially after being included in a Xchyler anthology. Some of them even remember my name. :) I really appreciate my new friends, and their willingness to share, support, and help others.

Servant of the Crown give-away

My friend Melissa is giving away a copy of Servant of the Crown on Goodreads from July 6 to July 13, 2015. (Yeah, I like to specify the full date like that in case someone finds this post in the 23rd century, and is bummed out that it happened back in the dark ages.) You can reach the give-away from her web page.

You can also find her Amazon author page here.

I've read several of her books now (including some still in the pipeline), and like both her writing style and her storytelling ability. She also writes fast, so expect lots of cool stuff from her in the future.