Huzzah!

Now the less-awesome news: it’s still Seekrit. I know not why. At least, on the publisher’s end. On my end, the reason is, “because I signed an NDA, that’s why.”

Eventually – say, by the time they publish it – they’re going to have to announce the damned book. I mean it just stands to reason, right? Right?

Also, it’s … light. About 90% of contracted length. The ripe irony here, of course, is that I left some stuff out and compressed some for fear I was going to run seriously the Hell over word count.

So, the better news is, shouldn’t be that hard to, you know, put some of that stuff back in.

But not today. Sunday I did just a hair under 9,000 words. Last night I did almost 14,000. Tired now.

Also better news is that this is a preliminary draft I’m contracted to provide (and get paid for!) , with the final to follow in a couple months. So if I’m a little light … well, the editor can tell me which parts need expanded, yes?

Although the editor won’t be back in the office until June 1th, the contract calls for delivery on May 30th, for some reason. So I’ll send it Monday. Still gives me a while to tinker with it.

Then – onto other stuff!

While I have continuing contracts – yay!, by the way – as mentioned last time, I’m getting into such delightfully solid writing habits that I can do my usual allotment easily, leaving time and energy aplenty for writing on nearer, dearer projects. Plus other frivolities like, you know. Living a life.

For those personal projects, next up: a short story set in the Dinosaur Lords universe, featuring the origins of not one but two of my first readers’ fave characters; writing the next book in the Dinosaur Lords trilogy (working title: The Dinosaur Princes); and fulfilling a long-ago promise (or threat) by writing a short in one of my two Steampunk universes, long back-burnered.

(You seeing this, Saraphina dear?)

Actually I more or less have three Steamverses a-bubbling. But as of this moment I see no reason not to fold a couple together. The other – well, it is very different, both from those other lines, and other Steampunk settings I’m aware of. And that’s the one I’m up for writing after the DinoLords yarn.

(Hint: think Steampunk Western. Your typical Cowboys and Indians. Except the Cowboys are Indians. Also:  everybody else.)

And speaking of The Dinosaur Lords – if you’ve not yet done so, now might be a fine old time to check out my free online preview of the senses-shattering epic fantasy novel. And if you have done so, wouldn’t it be a swell thing to share with your friends? There’s plenty to go around, kids!

So … whoa. Enough. More soon. Thanks for bearing with me through sparse bloggage.

And as always – thanks for reading!

PS – may have Serious Good News soon. Cross fingers, please!

DINO LORDS loaded on Kindle! Now i lay me down 2 sleep..I pray the lords 4 peaceful sleep & ne’er 1 grey angel my rest 2 break if from dreams I do not wake.

Heh, heh. Lotsa luck with that!

And thanks! Made my day.

Roslee’s among my friends and fellow writers foolish kind enough to volunteer to serve as first readers on the current draft of my epic (in every sense of the word) fantasy novel, The Dinosaur Lords. This is the draft that’s gone out into the world – where, I cannot yet say. I call it my Beta version, since this is the last big draft until I get some editorial notes – as in, from somebody who’s ponying up money for it.

So what is The Dinosaur Lords, I pretend to hear you say (a literary device I stole from my good friend El Neil Smith)?

Well, it’s my cool new fantasy novel, as I reckon you worked out, that I’m all worked up about. It’s a Heroic Fantasy and a High Fantasy as well as epic. I may not use those terms with precision – at least the former; it does qualify as High Fantasy. If I offend the purists, so be it.

My first attempt at high concept (or an elevator pitch, as all the kids are calling them these days) was simple: The Renaissance. With dinosaurs.

Which is true, as far as it goes. The cultures I treated with are similar in culture and technology level to Earth’s European Renaissance – with the signal difference that there isn’t any gunpowder. However, in some minds that phrase conjured up the notion of dinosaurs as sapient (“intelligent”) beings. Which isn’t the case in my novel: they’re animals. Wild animals, monsters, beasts of burden – and war. Some are pretty smart. But animals. However delightful the image of a raptor in a ruffed collar, with a rapier at his side, that’s not my book.

So next I was inspired with: Dinosaurs – and the knights who ride them.

Which gives a more accurate picture withal, I think.

But it still doesn’t give you an idea of my story. So here’s a capsule description I cooked up:

Passions, dynasties, and armies of dinosaur-mounted knights collide in the glittering, feather-decked Empire of Nuevaropa.  When a Grey Angel, servant of the Eight Creators of the world called Paradise, launches a genocidal Crusade of a hundred thousand soulless zealots, can a fallen hero, a scoundrel, a philosopher-warrior, and an outlawed princess possibly stop them?

Want more? Naturally, you would. And I’m here to accommodate your desires!

So I’m putting up the beta version of the book – at least the beginning – right here on my Sense of Adventure blog for your perusal and enjoyment. You get a bonus extra installment today, since the first page is only the novel’s title page. Don’t omit to click on it, though – it contains useful information beyond just the, you know, title.

Then to get into the real novel, click on the Prologue.

Please feel free to let me know what you think. And please – this is important – feel free to spread the word!

What are you waiting for? Get some!

And don’t let the Grey Angels bite…

(As if you could stop them.)

And by “modest,” I of course mean, “oh, holy crap, it’s a boat anchor!”

Now, while printed out to its full 1000-page (plus) glory, it’d be real Eryops choker …

Because, see, Eryops supposedly had the biggest maw (relatively) of any prehistoric critter. No, really.

… I don’t believe it’s otherwise anchorlike at all. Indeed, I believe it’s a ripping good read.

That’s what I wrote it to be, kids.

And now my burly baby’s gone – *gasp!* – into the world.

What that means (no, really this time) is I’ve sent the full manuscript, plus an (abbreviated) cast list and a (brief) synopsis to a literary agent. (And if you want to give your brain a good steamrolling sometime, try squishing a quarter-million words plus of story into under 4000 words.)

And I’m scared poopless.

Please don’t misunderstand: I’m not daunted. However this plays out, I will make this work.  This is a big book in more than mere avoirdupois. And I will do whatever it takes to make it go over big.

But still … this is a huge thing. A huge opportunity.

I don’t feel right about divulging too many details just yet – yeah, sorry; playing cagey again; deal. There are numerous reasons for that reticence, not that I’m going to tell you them, either.

I can say that the already colossal debt I owe certain dear writer friends has just increased substantially.

So … please keep your fingers crossed, as well as whatever other body parts you suspect might prove helpful. If this does pan out it will take a huge load off. And you will probably get to hold the finished novel up to your wondering eyes a great deal sooner.

And believe me – you do want to get your eyes on this.

In fact, you can. Some, anyway. Very soon.

Not to give anything away (yet) or anything but … tune in tomorrow, kiddies. Same station; who knows what time?

This was the big rewrite of my epic (in every sense) fantasy novel, The Dinosaur Lords.

It’s … long. Whoa, is it long.

I tried to shorten it. Instead I added 10 pages. Although I did shave about seven thousand words.

Of course that means it’s now a nice, compact 269,000 words.  1001 pages, in manuscript.

(Of course, last weekend at the wonderful party he threw at Melinda’s wonderful house, George RR Martin laughed derisively at a manuscript of a mere thousand pages. When you’re That American Tolkien Guy, you can get away with that sort of thing. Plus, I owe him. Lots.)

I did tighten it considerably, I believe. Though I trimmed a bunch off the first half, I added almost as much back to the second. While I cut a lot of fat there too, I added sense, color, and characterization. So: mildly important!

It would’ve been nice to shorten that more than somewhat stupefying length. Yet – there’s a lot of story here. A big world, with big characters in it.

I made it better. That’s what counts. It’s what I really set out to do.

I feel … numb.

That’s okay. It’s not surprising. After all, as of Thursday, February 3rd, 2011, I’d been working on the book for exactly eight and one-half years.

Would’ve loved to have finished it then. Of course. And – that’s okay too.

What counts is, it’s done.

And maybe I shouldn’t say this, but – it’s fucking awesome. You have not seen something like this before. And not just because it’s about dinosaurs and the knights who ride them (the Renaissance, with dinosaurs!) It’s not your usual fantasy novel.

More later. I need to … process.

Thanks for reading. And, well, everything.

And just wait.

Left: Corythosaurus + dude. Right: Allosaurus. Implicit: Awesome!

None. None at all.

I told you what I’d do when I got my hands on modeling clay. After Steve Kubica kindly emailed me to tell me the clay I had failed to survive the Great Purge, I went and scored some.

Then the above ensued. On – yes, that is my dining room floor.

This really is something I do to justify spending money on toy dinosaurs help me write. Yes, this really is a scene, although I rewrote it a few days ago, before I got the modeling clay, and hence had to make do with just the dino models. Which really was what I needed.

The beast on the left is, as stated, a Corythosaurus. It’s a kind of hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur. In the book it’s usually referred as a Morion, after the style of helmet. If you hit the handy link you’ll see why. (Hint: it’s the crest. “Corythosaurus” means, “helmet lizard.” Seriously.)

On your right is a big meat-eater called an Allosaurus. In my fantasy it’s more commonly called a Matador, which means Slayer (and has nothing in reality to do with bullfighting; that’s a toreador.) Or as he might say, You Can Call Me Al.

The dude is Jaume, Comte dels Flors. The title means Count of the Flowers in Catalan. He’s a Hero. Capital H. Which you might gather from the fact he’s, you know, stabbing an Allosaurus in the chest with a freaking spear.

And yes, in the book he has an actual head. We’re dealing with Plasticine and very small scale, here.

Another reason I took and posted the picture is that Steve “S. M.” Stirling, in our last writers group meet, asked if humans weren’t like pimples on dinosaurs. And the answer of course, is, some of them, sure. But not these dinosaurs. Nobody’s riding into battle on a 130-foot Amphicoelias.

Currently I’m rewriting a scene that really has me stoked: the book’s first inside view of a big Dinosaur Knight vs. Dinosaur Knight battle. After a brief, supernatural prologue the book opens with a battle, in fact a larger one. But it’s all viewed from the perspective of a bystander. This is getting down and dirty and participating.

I’m stoked because I feel as if it’s shaping up to be the bangingest battle scene I’ve ever written. Though I’m confident that once I throw a rewrite through the final battle, it will surpass this one. Still, I really am having fun with this. Walking Emma Dog along the ditch this afternoon I was declaiming a particular passage that had just come to me over and over out loud. Emphasis on loud. Fortunately there was no one else on the ditch to have me committed.

(Emma is smart: she manifestly understands a fair amount of spoken English, and also manifestly understands that most of what Daddy says is not worth paying attention to. So she was, y’know, cool. Also, she already knows I’m nuts.)

The toys will come in very handy rewriting this battle. Of course I’m not reproducing it on any complete scale, even though Dinosaur Knight contingents tend to be small, for various reasons (most of which are, “expense.”) Which is largely why I’m not doing it: these “museum replica” grade dinos cost money. Also I don’t have the time, or inclination, to make a bunch of other inch-and-a-half tall clay dudes to ride on them.

Fortunately, most of the action I’m describing is one on one. Equally fortunately, I have another hadrosaur toy,  which by remarkable coincidence is the other common war-duckbill, a Parasaurolophus. Which is also called a Sackbut. No, that’s not an insult. It’s Renaissance for trombone. If I need a third combatant, I can fake it with Al. He won’t mind.

By the way, getting the shot wasn’t as easy as it might seem, given that the subjects aren’t actually alive, and can’t escape or bite me (if you don’t think a twelve-inch Allosaurus could give you a nasty bite, go back and look closer at the little fucker.) The biggest difficulty was the tendency of the spear to droop. Yes, insert dick joke here; I’ll wait. I even tried taping it in place, which probably would’ve been a good idea if only the tape had stuck to the damn dinosaur. Eventually I cheated and propped the tip of the spear – which is actually some kind of dried weed stalk from right next to my front porch – on the Allosaurus’s far shoulder where you can’t see it.

Oh, dear, I’ve gone and given the secret away. The illusion of reality is shattered!

That may not be the best angle from which to have photographed the little tableau. But I simply could not resist capturing the way Al seems to be smiling and waving jauntily at the camera. To get the full manic effect, click on the pic or, indeed, right here.

As mentioned yesterday, I needed to figure out how to rearrange some scenes in the sequence I’m rewriting as I close in on the midway point (yes!) And I’ve made progress on that, although the solution seems only short-term.

Short-term solutions are not to be despised, however. That’s one of my most cogent bits of Advice to Writers: Use whatever works.

Also, if you don’t successfully negotiate the short-term, what good is thinking of the middle and long terms?

What I did today was: get up, feed the critters, check the blood sugar and weight (not bad), do some joint mobilizations, and settle in with a cup of cocoa-and-vanilla laced coffee to read and critique the first of several massive submissions to the July authors group. Polished it off, too. Good stuff.

Too bad you have to wait to read it. Heh, heh. (Mine’ll be massive, too. Sorry, crit-group kiddies!)

Then I hopped on another read-through of the summaries of the next chapters I need to rewrite.

The problem I referred to in yesterday’s post nvolved how I play around with the scenes until I get them in effective order. The overall issue of which this dilemma plays a part is that in my last draft, which turned into my first complete draft of the fantasy (after various fits and/or starts) I split the two main narrative lines and dropped them in one after the other. As soon as I started sending in chunks of the Big Rewrite to the crit group it became apparent that was not the way to go. For all kinds of reasons I needed to blend the lines back together. Which overall I think goes very nicely, thank you very much.

The problem I just hit is a very nuts-and-bolts kind of thing:  how to reshuffle the scenes for maximum effect?

The classic way to do it is the famous 3 by 5 cards, a technique I first encountered, if I recall correctly, in David Gerrold’s The Trouble with Tribbles – not the Star Trek episode, but the book about how he wrote and sold it.  In it you write down the significant interactions and events that have to happen on 3 x 5 cards, then basically play solitaire until you figure out an order you like. On a recent visit to Ian Tregillis’ digs I saw he was currently making use of them.

(Stop. Time out. If you have not yet read Ian’s debut novel Bitter Seeds, the mind-fryingly awesome opening shot in his splendidly-named Milkweed Triptych, you owe it to yourself to go check it out now. And hopefully buy it {thank you for using the helpful Amazon Associates link above, and supporting this site, and also me!} You will be seeing more about this book here anon. Hint: it’s made of win.)

The cards were an option for me, but not one I favor. First, I’m a digital kind of guy. Second, I have abysmal handwriting, which even I have trouble reading. A fact not unconnected to #1, above.  I like doing stuff in easily saveable, cut-and-pastable form. (And third, I seem to be obsessed with numbered lists. Ah, well.)

Reading through the summaries again today, I hit on another way to go about it: copied the necessary scenes into a new file all their own, so I can munch ‘em up more readily.  Looking through that, it quickly became clear to me what I need to do.

First: reread the chapters involved. Figure out, foremost, what I can cut. (I’m doing Big Cutting on this pass-through – as is needful, given the first complete draft weighed in at a bookshelf-busting 275,000+ words. That’s working out quite well: I’m trimming much gristle whilst adding necessary vitamins and spices!)

Second: after cutting with a broad blade, I can see the exact order the scenes need to fall into. Or close enough to be getting along with.

Read that last sentence otra vez: close enough to be getting along with. For me, at least, that’s key. It’s a concept I need to pound into my brain, my soul, my very DNA again and again to fight the all-consuming menace of perfectionism.

(Quick real-life snapshot: Emma’s barking just announced the FedEx Guy bringing me a prezzy! Thank you, Mr. FedEx Guy: I love getting prezzies on my porch – except for ones like this. This prezzy isn’t for me. That’s fine: I love giving prezzies!)

Anyway … if you’re prone to the evils of perfectionism, you might try that on for a mantra too:  close enough to be getting along with.

And – that’s enough. Didn’t intend this to run on so long. But I needed a break before diving into rereading the material. So I thought I’d give you one of those promised peeks behind the scenes.

Thanks for reading! And stay tuned. Big things coming soon!