Paul SB

I assume you're not getting paid for this, so no biggie.

Hello once again, Our first entry has A meeting a data nexus who is to work with her on adapting the colony. In the process she learns some important things about both the alien’s mentality and how different their technology is from anyone else’s. Unfortunately this is another chapter that is pretty much all talk, so I’m concerned that the pacing is too slow. In the next entry ME has been waiting around with the Terrible Trio trying to get passage to Dirt when M finds the band he used to play with and hitches a ride. ME meets the band members and is happier with them than with the three thieves they have been working with. Nothing momentous happens, and the band members are not hugely important to the plot, so this might be another chapter that could be cut. Thanks again, and I hope all y’all are enjoying the ride.

Here comes another Monday!

Chapter 12 Up to this point the story has been moving pretty slowly. I’m pretty sure neither of my kids would have stuck with it this far (though I did keep my oldest going on “Some Desperate Glory” to the very end, in spite of him not liking the protagonist). In this chapter it feels like the temperature is rising and the stakes are beginning to feel more salient. We’ve known what the stakes are from the very beginning, but here it’s starting to feel more real. No doubt that’s because the conflict has gone from a war of words to actual violence. Maybe if there was a hint of this at the beginning it would help keep the tension up. A big part of the art of storytelling is figuring out when to reveal information. The writer knows everything but can’t give everything to the reader right away. There are some elements of this story that still feel a little sketchy, like what, exactly, is psyglass and why, or why the Calamity Ocean hasn’t swallowed up the entire planet. Is there something holding it back? It may be that you are holding information about it for a big reveal later, which is understandable. It does seem a little too mysterious at this point. With the little first year students they could easily bring up question for the older students to answer. Everyone has their own level of tolerance for unanswered questions, so it’s always a balancing act. This makes me think about foreshadowing. Good foreshadowing is only clearly foreshadowing in retrospect. If a writer uses a phrase like “… little did he know …” it’s a dead giveaway and feels kind of patronizing. Since I haven’t seen anything like that, I can’t tell if you are doing it well or not doing it at all. I’m partly thinking about this because it’s something I usually forget to do, but it’s good because when big things happen later on they don’t just fall out of the sky on the reader. ““It’s not me you’ll judge.” He sighs. “It’s not me everyone else will judge.” I pause. However betrayed I feel at his secrets, I can’t deny the risk of speaking them into existence with Poppy watching us ready to relay every word to Sage. If she blames Aster’s death on us and our classmates agree, then our prospects of surviving with the group are dead in the air.” — This sounds like a repeat of the first suicide, and that looks a bit suspicious. It makes sense that A would think about the reason getting out, but it seems like the similarity should make an impact, too. “Thank you,” he says, before turning forward and walking on. — This is a point where it would be really helpful to describe the tone of voice. When he opens his eyes for the final time and tells Poppy that he has no more questions, I can tell he doesn’t know the answer himself. — This is a solid observation. It would help, though, if you wrote at least something about his face, posture, proxemics … otherwise it’s a tell where it could be a show. That soft voice that he uses for when he’s in pain, for when he’s talking to someone who’s in pain. Which one does he think it is this time? — Great observation Nice cliff-hanger ending

Thanks for taking a look, and I'm looking forward to your next installment. Whenever someone describes my writing as space opera I'm not sure if I should be thrilled or cringe. Space opera is popular (like Star Wars) but it tends to be kind of vacuous. There's nothing I write that doesn't have solid science running through it, but my science isn't chemistry or physics or biology. The kind of subjects that the human sciences tackle are often the same kinds of issues that have found their way into literature from shortly after the invention of written language. The difference being that most writers have personal observations and opinions, while the human sciences at least try to look at the facts as best they can. I hope I can get this stuff across without having some character somewhere come out and say it, though. On a superficial level it looks like any other soap opera, and I still haven't written the last book (I'm having a bit of acute narrative obstruction, though on the plus side that means I have more time to read and critique other people). I'm okay with chopping some of this stuff out. The current version is at about 113 kilowords, and I get the impression that anything much over 90 Kw is unlikely to even be glanced at by publishers these days. That said, there are other places where I wish I could add more. I cut out a contest of spears later on and I kind of wish I hadn't, but the manuscript was getting too fat.

Hello once again, In the first entry we get a little Anthropology 101, which is important thematically for the story but plot-wise it’s only a transition, so it might be a good chapter to cut. The problem is finding a way to show what they talk about (you can probably tell this was a chapter I wrote way back in 2001). The next chapter is also all conversation; a discussion of the situation at the colony. I’m not sure if there is a way to get this information across otherwise. It makes sense that this is something that would be discussed directly, like the topic of a meeting, but meetings are still pretty boring. Thanks for taking a look. I would love to hear what people think.

Seems like you have been pretty busy lately. That's okay, since it's not like we're getting paid for this. I trimmed a bit of the first entry to get to the more interesting bits a little quicker, and dropped some hints about why the T couldn't understand the way humans reacted to them. It's been a while since the first book was posted. By the end all six of the crew had their brains modified, but they were too busy to really explore their new clusters. Over this and the next couple books they are going to find out that they can do a lot more than just talk without moving their mouths. No one in the Underground knows any of this, though, so they really had no idea what to tell the refugees.

Here comes another Monday ...

Back for more! The first entry has the mentor character (JRR) call in RM (the siekick/romantic interest) to give her a special assignment, one that is much more personal, that she has to keep a secret from AH (the official protagonist). I hope it doesn’t come across like a big coincidence. The second entry is told from the POV of the character that has gone cataleptic. In the middle is a flashback to just before the events of the first book. The whole flashback is in italics, and it’s clear to me what’s happening, but I’m not sure other readers might get confused. If that’s the case for you, pleas let me know and any suggestions that could make it more clear. Thanks again! The Backbone of Night In last week’s episode … Sub 01 Entry 02.01 — After the events of Volume 1, Amal and her hex have been taking it easy in Twilight’s Rift with Valirand and it’s mate and new baby. After Valirand invites Rey to be the first human to go inside the baby, Toona freaks out and attacks Rey using a telekinetic ability no one knew she had, then goes back into the cataleptic state she had spent most of her life in. Supplemental Entry 024BFZ7//-008 — Archbishop Cyril IX, the nominal head of the Church of the Holy Flame, the only religious organization that openly exists in the Meritocracy, meets with his underlings to discuss two projects that the Church is implementing now that the Meritocracy is in a labor crisis. One involves a planet that they have set up as a pilgrim site, the other a program of assassinations. Cyril decides to send an agent of the morality police to the pilgrimage site under the pretense of concern over entertainments. Entry 02.02 — The Hex transfer from V to M so V can stay home with the baby while M flies them back to Tel. space in the hopes that the aliens can figure out what’s wrong with Too. Supplemental Entry 024BFF1//-006 — While President M is away on some mission, Mor. is in charge, and she decides to visit a cafeteria and pretend to be an ordinary employee to get an idea of what the unwashed masses are talking about (the old Henry V trick). Entry 02.03 — The hex meet up with some familiar Tel. and find out that the human colony is not faring well. Entry 02.04 — A & R meet the command nexus in charge of the colony and find that the situation is worse than they had guessed, and the leader is arrogant and hostile to them. Supplemental Entry 166JAR\\-017 — The patron of our protagonists meets them and gives them assignments to help expose the Church’s fraudulent pilgrimage planet. This will involve splitting the group up. Supplemental Entry 126TVU//-011— We meet a few operatives for the Underground who have to deal with the chaos that human space has been thrown into because of the labor crisis they caused in the previous book. Bon Apetít!

Hey, the dwarf is back! It’s been too quiet around here. I’m up for tomorrow, of course

Okay, I'll send this one to you directly. You seem to have evaporated there for a while.

Hello everybody, It’s been two weeks and not a peep. Not encouraging, but I do want to keep this going. This time we have two supplemental entries, meaning that they center around other characters than our hex of protagonists. The first is the mentor character, who parcels out assignments to our protagonists. It runs a bit long, so I would appreciate any suggestions for places it can be trimmed without denuding the chapter of its life and purpose. The second introduces new characters for the purpose of showing the reader some of the chaos happening in the Meritocracy that our protagonists haven’t encountered personally, as they have been on vacation in the middle of nowhere. Now that I think of it, that could be accomplished with epigrams like newscasts, maybe even something like journal entries. These characters reappear in Book 4 and have more of a role, interacting directly with one of our protagonists. So their presence in this book isn’t strictly necessary, though it might feel like a bit of a treat to a reader who meets them in Book 4 and remembers their brief appearance in Book 2. If nothing else, it gives the (mistaken) impression that the author knew what he was doing. The Backbone of Night In last week’s episode … Sub 01 Entry 02.01 — After the events of Volume 1, Amal and her hex have been taking it easy in Twilight’s Rift with Valirand and it’s mate and new baby. After Valirand invites Rey to be the first human to go inside the baby, Toona freaks out and attacks Rey using a telekinetic ability no one knew she had, then goes back into the cataleptic state she had spent most of her life in. Supplemental Entry 024BFZ7//-008 — Archbishop Cyril IX, the nominal head of the Church of the Holy Flame, the only religious organization that openly exists in the Meritocracy, meets with his underlings to discuss two projects that the Church is implementing now that the Meritocracy is in a labor crisis. One involves a planet that they have set up as a pilgrim site, the other a program of assassinations. Cyril decides to send an agent of the morality police to the pilgrimage site under the pretense of concern over entertainments. Entry 02.02 — The Hex transfer from V to M so V can stay home with the baby while M flies them back to Tel. space in the hopes that the aliens can figure out what’s wrong with Too. Supplemental Entry 024BFF1//-006 — While President M is away on some mission, Mor. is in charge, and she decides to visit a cafeteria and pretend to be an ordinary employee to get an idea of what the unwashed masses are talking about (the old Henry V trick). Entry 02.03 — The hex meet up with some familiar Tel. and find out that the human colony is not faring well. Entry 02.04 — A & R meet the command nexus in charge of the colony and find that the situation is worse than they had guessed, and the leader is arrogant and hostile to them. Bon Apetít!

Umm ...

You seem to have disappeared for a while. I said I would give you an example from someone who writes way better than I do to show you what I mean in terms of giving the reader some of the feel of the scene, I've been pretty worn out lately. Here's a little excerpt I got by transcribing an audiobook, after the author gave me permission, of course. From The Rigel Redemption by Robin Duncan YL shifted in the darkness, moving against Quirk with the with the train’s tilt toward the inside of a bend in order to maintain its ludicrously high speed. Massive machines did no more than hum softly to them. Super dense wheels, agile bogeys, silky hydraulics cushioning her dreams, lulling him toward familiar nightmares. This isn't very long, but it brings in sound and the sensation of movement, which helps pull the reader into the scene. I had an old gaming buddy ages ago who decided that he was going to write a novel after I drafted my first. He wrote a long, rambling historical drama in the time of Pharaoh Thutmose II. There were places where he went on for literally four pages just describing the room the protagonist entered. Don't do that. But little additions like the excerpt above could do wonders for both your prose and your narrative voice. Of course I need to practice what I'm preaching here, too. Every time I read a better author I learn a little, at least if my hippocampus is willing to cooperate with me. Hope to see you again soon.

Hello again, In our next exciting episode, our heroes arrive in the territory of their friendly aliens, who immediately take the cataleptic communication nexus under observation. At the same time, A & R ask about the new colony and get disappointing news. It's my hope that the current situation, much of which is hindered by cross-species communication failures, feels both believable and sufficiently alien to make sense. They have a very frustrating conversation with the command nexus in charge who threatens to shut the colony down if there isn't sufficient progress, so the stakes are high both for them and the future for a splinter of humanity. I hope you all enjoy the show.

I guess ... If I don't maybe no one will, and Reading Excuses will be effectively kaput.

Another Monday cometh. No one seems to be home, though.

Back for more. This submission has two entries. The first is just a connecting flight -- the protagonists move from one ship to another so they can go back to the galaxy while V can stay home with the baby. I'm not certain this scene is even needed, especially given the high word count (currently 113 Kilowords). It also reintroduces a minor character from the first book who will have a role to play later in this one. The second entry follows a character that was pretty background in the first volume. Here Morgan's assistant pulls a Henry V, pretending to be a common employee and goes to the cafeteria to get an idea of what the plebes are thinking. This scene might also not be strictly necessary, but this character will have an increasing role to play over this and the next book, so I wanted to do something to make her more than a cardboard cutout. Thanks for taking a peek.

I have checked my spam folder and that doesn't seem to be the issue. Connor has said the same thing to me, and he has had to ask me to resend much more often than I have asked him. That might be a platform issue, assuming he uses a PC, since I use Mac. I hope this clue helps. Happy bug hunting!

… I hear them saying (tomorrow's just another day) I hear them saying (and it gets better every day) I hear them saying (tomorrow's just another day) Tomorrow's just another day A little Madness for you. Tomorrow's another Monday, and another submission, I presume?

Chapter 11 Overall it’s going well, but you are still not providing the reader with anything like a richness of descriptive detail, and both your protagonist and S have a tendency to be too tight-lipped for their own good. Especially after succeeding with the first years, A should be gaining some confidence in terms of using his words. I kind of suspect that might be an element of the upcoming midpoint. I would like to post a couple passages from a book I just finished a couple days ago that incorporated description into the narrative very well. It’s Robin Duncan’s “The Mandroid Murders.” Since he’s one of the elder statesmen here I want to ask permission first. However, he noted that he would be gone for a couple weeks. “And then it succeeded in what it was always going to, what an institution built only to destroy knows how to do best.” — I’m not sure if these tidbits are titillating or traumatizing. Not everyone is going to have the patience to read this and wonder if they are only going to understand it when they get to the end. Some readers like it, others are repelled by it. Have you ever read Anne Leckie’s “Ancillary Justice?” It isn’t until the climax that you understand why the protagonist is doing any of the things it’s doing. Not too many books win the Hugo, Nebula, and the Arthur C. Clarke awards, so it’s not schlock fiction, but a lot of people give up long before the end. “This isn’t fair to Shrike. I should be heaping praise and thanks onto them for their support back in the game council. Because they deserve it, and because I need them loyal to me. But I live in a world where the only face that shows no fear around me is the reflection in psyglass. Sparrow being scared of hurting me is at times worse than the way everyone else dreads what I can do to them. So here and now, the emptiness is safer.” — This is gold. Keep it going. “I mean, what you did sounds about right for your level of maturity. …” — Perhaps if A said “…our level of maturity” it would have come off as, well, more mature. ““It’s okay. Nobody should want this.” — I feel like this is such an important part of A that he should elaborate on this a little. After all, if they are all Touched, they can all touch each other and no one has to be afraid. Then, of course, there’s the fear of the unknown, which A might alleviate a little by explaining it better. “That makes them tense.” — At this moment I would expect A to think for a second about why, and which is the bigger factor between the fear of A and the fear for A. “ … the most enchanting boy I’ve seen.” — If this is being caused by some sort of augmentation, you would think a lot more people would have it, and there would be one for the opposite sex as well. “Then it won’t ever be fair to ask you to change for me.” — This points to one edge of the sword. S might have no problem getting people into bed with him, but he will never know if any of them love him or are just attracted to his augmentation like the rats of Hamelin. All the silence is very typically male, but wouldn’t A take a moment to think of what it means for him and say something? “Recovered what? Before I can linger on that, Sparrow closes his eyes and they glow purple. Even before the effect walks (wears?) off, he’s already running towards the door. No hesitation, yet another confirmation that whatever unfortunate reality he saw is not a surprise. I barely manage to keep up as he bolts out of the building and heads across the school grounds. Not enough breath to ask questions.” — If his eyes were glowing purple but they were closed, how would anyone know? Also, it seems like you could add another sentence after the second to spice up the tension. It could be an observation, a WTF string of expletives, a look on S’s face, anything that would enhance the sense of urgency. “Sparrow is off after her while I stand paralyzed wondering what I should have told her instead.” — Now that is one self-absorbed adolescent! Not, hoping he’ll stop her from throwing her life away. At this suicide rate there won’t be anyone left for A to save before too long. S has got to be feeling pretty guilty now that two are directly related to him.

Are these better? “Newman, I want you to return to Dirt forthwith, and continue your observations. An ershad will accompany you and make a separate report.” “Y-yes, Your Grace. And thank you! You have made my task much easier. I only hope that I have not missed anything of importance in my time there. I understand how critical this mission is to our future. Indeed, the future of the whole Human flock!” His head bobbled. I dismissed the fool with a wave. Sending one of the morality police with him might be enough to overcome his natural frivolity, I hoped. Why Beatty chose Newman as his assistant was positively unfathomable. Hopefully Beatty won’t shice a cinder block, since it will be clear enough the ershad is there to watch him. “Yes, yes, of course.” I cleared my throat and turned my attentions back to the dozen other gentlemen of the Abbreviated Council. “It is not that I doubt the worthiness of Archbishop Beatty. He is as capable as my predecessor supposed. I have been pleased with reports thus far.” ... Condon grumbled, “And why is it we have to do these things if God is Almighty? Would an almighty deity need help from us?” That blasphemy brought a stunned silence to the meeting hall. My eyes narrowed on him. Either his mind was sinking under a century of luxurious sloth, or he was playing some sort of game. Perhaps he wanted to question my effectiveness, or else his laggard existence has led him into despair. The Lord knows he drinks enough. “We serve the Lord, Condon,” I replied in my most menacing from-the-crypt tone. “It is my hope that your faith is not wavering.” The hour-long meeting continued for two more hours, on details of various operations. The double operations Eden and Constantine were of utmost, sacred gravity. I told myself I had faith in the Lord that I would be able to trust in my men to see the job through. I certainly hoped I could trust in my men. The fate of all Humanity rode on our success, and I sure as hell did not want to go down in history as the man who failed the Lord on so grand a scale.

In case you're curious, this is what I did in place of the cardboard cutout: That blasphemy brought a stunned silence to the meeting hall. My eyes narrowed on him. Either his mind was sinking under a century of luxurious sloth, or he was playing some sort of game. “We serve the Lord, Condon,” I replied in my most menacing from-the-crypt tone. “It is my hope that your faith is not wavering.”

Per request from one of the elder statesmen of this site, I'm going to paste the plot synopsis I wrote for the first book so people who want to read this one but didn't read the first one will have some background to work from. I wrote this synopsis a couple years ago when I foolishly thought that a mere mortal such as myself could get it published. I'm sure it was deleted, unread, by at least sixty publishing agents, only about a third of whom even bothered to send a form rejection. Not encouraging. I think this second book is the biggest mess of them all. I drafted the first book during my Christmas break at the end of 1999 when I was a semester from graduating. The second book started life the following summer when I had my master's in my hot little hands and a boring entry-level job that normally goes to undergrads (the economy wasn't exactly fantastic back then). The draft was half way done when the file got corrupted and I had to start over, then after 9/11 everyone got laid off, right when my wife was demanding baby #2. I had to change careers, and ended up in a field that demands 27 hours a day, nine days a week time commitment and both reading and writing went out the window for the next 14 years. Now i have a disability that ended that career, so i don't have a penny to my name but I have time to get back to my old pursuits. That makes The Backbone of Night a weird hybrid of who I was 25 years ago and who I became about two years ago when i got back to it. The next three books in the trilogy are recent, so they are much more consistent and compact. Okay, enough babble, here's the synopsis: Plot Synopsis for Twilight’s Rift Born a free Citizen, Amal Hardesty is now a slave working on an interstellar cruise ship. She shares a sleeping cubby with five other women, one of whom has a strange catalepsy that renders her unable to talk and emotionally dead. One night, instead of going silently to bed, the cataleptic walks down into the deepest bowels of the liner. Amal and the others follow, and she leads them to a mysterious alien vessel that has secretly docked with their ship. That vessel brought a mercenary troop to steal an alien artifact from a passenger, but the mercenaries never come back. Amal and her assigned family sneak aboard the ship, and the ship’s computer accepts their commands. Naturally, they command the ship to fly away, escaping their servitude contracts. After a celebratory shore leave that goes horribly wrong, Amal discovers that her best friend of the past fifteen years, who suffers from clinical depression, is in love with her, but kept it secret because homosexuality is punishable by death in the Meritocracy. This revelation causes some serious friction among them. Amal also finds the journal of the ship’s previous owner, and decides to try to steal the same artifact he was after. She intends to sell it and use the money to hire mercenaries for a daring attack on the Meritocracy’s biggest labor production facility, with the intention of freeing as many products (slaves) as possible. She fails to get the artifact on their first attempt, and seeks out a friend of the ship’s former owner who is sympathetic to their cause. He sets them up with a group of professional thieves, and on the third try they succeed. However, Amal is nearly killed by the telepath who was protecting the alien artifact. They discover that it is actually an alien, not an artifact. It uses its psionic abilities to heal Amal. At the same time, her friend and now lover finds out that the ship itself is a living thing. Both are items of living technology created by a long-extinct species that once roamed the galaxy. Amal and her friends return the “artifact” to the crystalline Telmari, who did not expect Humans to return their citizen to them freely, and are grateful. They return their living ship to Twilight’s Rift, the place its race hides, expecting to live out their lives in hiding themselves. But once the living ships regain what they had lost centuries before, internal companions, they agree to take Amal up on the raid she had planned. They meet up with the Telmari again. Amal convinces them to allow colonies of escaped slaves to take up residence in their territory. The Telmari are only willing to do this, however, if the Humans allow them to modify their brains. Amal and her friends undergo this conversion themselves, which helps them understand the Telmari and imparts psionic abilities to them. Amal takes a large school of ships to attack the labor production facility, stealing thousands of young people from the Meritocracy. As they escape, though, an accident rips away much of the planet’s ozonesphere, dooming the world to slow death by radiation. Amal and the school of ships return to Twilight’s Rift with thousands of freed slaves. Twilight’s Rift and its sequels explore cultural evolution as a primary theme, which is why it is framed as a historical document in some future galactic civilization. Sub-themes include the ill effects of too much emphasis on competition in a society, the importance of diversity for long-term survival, and the randomness of reality.