Miscellanea

Posted on July 17, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

I have a few short items:

Last week, the debut issue of Specutopia with my story “Hoodoo” was available for Kindle and Nook.  Over the weekend, other formats became available on the Specutopia webpage.  So head over and pick up a copy, and while your there, check out the sample story, “Hollow Spaces” by Greg Mellor.

The Table of Contents for Suction Cup Dreams: An Octopus Anthology has been posted at the obsolescent.info website.  In addition to my story “The Octopus Garden,” the anthology will have stories by Camille Alexa, Claude Lalumière, and several others.  I’m not sure this one is going to make its July release date, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed it will be out soon.

Finally, my thoughts are with Neil Clarke, editor of the excellent Clarkesworld Magazine.  He recently suffered a heart attack while attending a convention.  It sounds like he’s going to be okay (he’s tweeting from the hospital) and heading home soon.  I’ve never met Neil, but I wish him a speedy recover.

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IN SITU Hits the Shelves

Posted on July 15, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

Although my story “Hoodoo” is no longer part of IN SITU, I’m pleased to announce that Dagan Books has finally released the long-overdue anthology.  IN SITU is collection of “science fiction stories featuring alien archeology, hidden mysteries, and things that are better off left buried,” and has stories from Nebula-award winner Ken Liu, Alex Shvartsman, and many others.  So head over to Dagan Books and pick up your copy of IN SITU.

And while you’re at it, don’t forget to pick up your copy of the debut issue of Specutopia containing “Hoodoo,” the story that got away from IN SITU.

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Loglining My Novel-in-Progress

Posted on July 13, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

I finished the first draft of my novel back in December and decided to shelve it for a while before revising it.  I put off the revisions for several months because I didn’t know where to start.  Then I came across a suggestion from fellow writer Marc Schuster to use an elevator pitch approach to revising.  I liked the ideas, but realized I little idea how to write a logline.  After some research, I practiced crafting loglines for several of my short stories before trying to writing one for my novel-in-progress.  I never posted the finished logline for my novel, so I thought I’d do so today:

 A starship crew must overcome their mistrust of each other and outwit their competitors to complete a mission that could either bring them personal salvation or destroy the galaxy.

I’m not overly thrilled with it—it’s a challenge to summarize a complex novel in a single sentence—but it’s a start.   In addition to the one-sentence logline, I also wrote a “jacket” summary.  I think the “jacket” summary is a little short, too, but I kind of like it because it captures more of the novel’s ensemble cast:

A man lost in time.  A survivor of a deadly plague.  A fugitive and her traumatized clonemate.  These are the people assembled by Captain Halycon Jonah to finish a mission that has already cost his previous crew their lives.  If they succeed, each may find the salvation he seeks, but if those trying to stop them are correct, their mission may end up destroy the galaxy.

There you have it.  I suspect these could use a lot more work, so if you have any comments or suggestions to improve them, I’d be interested in hearing them.

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Inspiration: “No Better Yesterday for Tomorrow”

Posted on July 11, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

I call “No Better Yesterday for Tomorrow” my story with the odd title.  Most people don’t get the title, but I if they think about some after reading the story, it should be obvious.  Then again, I came up with title, so of course it’s obvious to me.

“No Better Yesterday for Tomorrow” appeared in the May/June issue of Mystic Signals (which can be purchased from Amazon).  The inspiration for this story actually makes no sense now because the story underwent such extensive revision that it bears little resemble to the original draft—even the character names changed from first to the final draft! 

The original story was inspired by an article I read many years ago about people who were cryogenically freezing themselves with the hope that future technology would be able to bring them back to life.  After reading the article, I was immediately struck at the arrogance of this idea.  These cryonauts assumed people of the future would want to revive them, but what if the people of the future didn’t want us “Cro-magnons” in their society?

Of course if you’ve already read “No Better Yesterday for Tomorrow” you probably see little connection between the story and that inspiration.  That’s because the original story simply didn’t work, so I started tweaking things.  I changed the focal character from the “frozen” person to the person who finds a “frozen” person.  I changed the future from a utopia to a dystopia, and then began to layer on various complications: viruses, a machine-human war, the loss of a loved one, and an unhealthy dose of self-doubt.  The final change was the reason the person was “frozen,” but I won’t say more, because that’s the central mystery of the story.

If you haven’t read “No Better Yesterday for Tomorrow,” then head over the Amazon and buy a copy of Mystic Signals.  I hope you enjoy the story.

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“Hoodoo” Ready for Reading

Posted on July 8, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

The long journey for my story “Hoodoo” is finally over.  It took nearly a year-and-half to go from acceptance to print (you can read some of that story here), but it’s finally available for reading in the debut issue of Specutopia (ebook versions can be bought at Amazon and Barnes & Noble).  I couldn’t be happier to see it in print.

While a year-and-half may not seem long by some publishing standards (e.g., novels), it is fairly long these days for a short story, at least based on my experience.  The longest I’ve waited for a story to go from acceptance to print was about 10 months, and that was for “Observations on a Clock” in Asimov’s Science Fiction, which is one of the “Big Three” print-only publications.

But enough of my griping.  This is supposed be a happy announcement, so I’ll end with a little “Hoodoo” teaser:

          Sam Gondo had never thought Luke Estes was a bright man, and this confirmed it.  Only an idiot would gawk at a Bindi weapon.  Not that the other xeno-geologists, statisticians and data techs were much better.  They lingered in a small knot at what they must have thought was a safe distance, obviously unaware that a Bindi anti-personnel device had a kill radius of half a kilometer. 
          No accounting for advanced degrees.

So pick up your debut issue of Specutopia to find out what happens to Sam Gondo and what a hoodoo is.  When you’re done reading my story, make sure you check out the other stories.

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Does It Have to Be All About Conflict?

Posted on July 7, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

I have a confession: I’m a writer who doesn’t consider himself well-read.  Sure, I’ve read a lot of speculative fiction, but outside the genre, I haven’t read much.  I’ve read some of the English language classics and a smattering of world fiction, but overall, I haven’t read a great deal of non-speculative fiction.  So why do I admit this?

I’m intrigued by story structure.  Yet nearly everything I read has a conventional structure, namely the dramatic arc, in which the action rises to a climax before falling to a denouement.  The story is inherently built around conflict and its satisfactory resolution.  This is the typical structure for most modern “western” literature.  It’s what I studied in English class in school, and what most writers learn.  It’s what I write and preach to fellow writers when I critique their fiction.

While “western” literature maybe dominated by the dramatic arc, “eastern” literature often follows a different structure, called Kishōtenketsu.  Instead of the rising action, climax, and falling action structure, Kishōtenketsu follows a four-stage pattern: (1) Introduction, (2) Development, (3) Twist, and (4) Conclusion.  In the introduction, the characters and setting are introduced, and then further developed in the second stage.  In the twist, a seemingly unrelated element is introduced.  The twist appears disconnected from the introduction and development of the story until the conclusion, which connects the events and often results in a reframing of the earlier events to change the reader’s perception.  Conflict, while often present in the story, is not the central core. 

I find this story structure intriguing, and I wonder if I could actually write a short story using it (let’s not think about selling it yet).  With the exception of the “The Story of an Hour” (which seems to be the most cited English example of this structure), I don’t think I’ve read a story with a Kishōtenketsu structure.  I would like to because I’d like to see how it’s done.  If you have any reading recommendations, please feel free to leave them in a comment.

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The Gravedigger’s Psyche

Posted on July 5, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

This post has a bit of a grey tone to it.  Maybe the rain has caused it.  Maybe it’s simply me.  Anyways consider yourself warned.

I ride the bus to my day job, and the stop where I get on is across the street from a veteran’s cemetery.  It’s a pretty place: rolling green fields spotted with the dabs of color from bouquets and backed by mountains.  The graves come right up to the main road, but those along the highway don’t have upright tombstones, so someone driving past might not even recognize the cemetery for what it is.

As I stood waiting for my bus this morning, I watched two men dig a grave with a backhoe.  I don’t know why I got thinking about it, but I wondered what those gravediggers—I was going to say workers, but they are gravediggers—thought about their job.  Each hole they dig represents a life lost, and people left behind.  Do those men look at each hole they dig in such a way, or is it just another hole them?  I would like to think it is more than a hole, but if it is, how does a gravedigger reconcile the accompanying emotions?

I’m not sure why this intrigued me so much.  Perhaps it’s an innate fascination with death (something that I think many people have), and a desire to ascribe more to the end of life than the simple fact that it’s a biological process, and really a single, important step in the cycle of nature.  More likely, a gravedigger’s job—and the people who would choose to do it—is something I simply don’t wholly understand, and my natural curiosity has gotten the better of me.    Whatever the reason, it’s captured my thoughts today with enough strength that I’m thinking about exploring it for a story.  It’ll be interesting to see where this one leads.

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“No Better Yesterday…” Now Available

Posted on July 2, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

My short story “No Better Yesterday for Tomorrow” appears in issue #14 of Mystic Signals.  The issue came out a few weeks ago, but I was holding off on announcing it until I had the purchasing information (this one is a print only publication).  You can buy a copy of Mystic Signals containing my story here.  If you’re not yet convinced to rush out and buy a copy of “No Better Yesterday for Tomorrow,” maybe a little teaser will help:

          Anna could barely see the rest of the reclamation crew through the fogged faceplate of her haz-suit.  Twenty minutes of hustling through the maze of crumbled buildings and rusted machinery had left her gasping for air.  Bent over, hands on knees, Anna fought the urge to increase her airflow and concentrated instead on controlling her breathing.
          “Air’s wasting.”  Rodrik’s chiding burst through Anna’s helmet speaker.
          Rodrik, Marc, and Naila waited ahead, outside a windowless building, the eastern quarter of which lay in a pile of twisted metal and pulverized concrete.  Even in their bulky haz-suits they looked small against the skeletal remains of the multi-story buildings.

 To find out what happens to Anna, you’ll have get a copy of Mystic Signals.  I hope you enjoy.

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Halfway There

Posted on July 1, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

We’ve reached the halfway point of 2012, so it’s time to check in on my annual goals.  I had a very successful first quarter, and while it may not have always felt as successful, my second quarter also shaped up to be a pretty good one.  With only half the year gone, I’ve actually met one of my annual goals (yeah!), and I’m on pace to reach the others.   Here’s how I’ve done on my five goals for 2012: 

  1. Write and/or edit at least 700 words per day:  I wrote or edited 72,052 words this quarter, which averages to 792 words per day.  For the years I have now written or edited 144,295 words which puts me on pace for 317,112 words (including NaNoWriMo), which is well above my end-of-the-year target.
  2. Complete NaNoWriMo (50,000 words in November):  This goal can’t be completed until November.
  3. Finish at least twelve short stories:  I completed three short stories in Q2, which puts me at seven completed stories for 2012.  That’s just over half of my end-of-the-year target.  While I’m on still pace, I’m disappointed I didn’t get more stories completed and out the door this quarter.  I have numerous drafts that have lingered for several months on my desk, which is unacceptable.
  4. Make at least 60 story submissions or five sales:  I made only 14 story submissions this quarter.  My pace has slowed considerably, but I’m still on pace to make 70 submissions this year.  My slower pace of submissions is directly related to fact that I’ve sold so many stories in the first half of 2012 (yeah!).  This quarter, I sold five more stories, with one of those, “Dreams in Dust,” to a SFWA-qualifying market (Lightspeed Magazine).  I’ve made nine sales in the first half of 2012, almost doubling my annual target.
  5. Revise and submit my draft novel:  While I have not started revising my novel, I did begin to summarize and write a logline for it.  I see this as the first step to my revision, but I’m a little disappointed I haven’t started the actual “hard” work yet.

Compared to the first quarter, I found the second quarter more of a struggle.  It was a challenge to complete stories, and many of the first drafts I did complete, were not particularly polished and still need a lot of work before they will be ready for submission.  That said, I still managed to stay on pace to reach my goals for 2012 and actually already met the most significant one: sales.  If I can re-find that Q1 groove while keeping my Q2 success rate, then Q3 could also be a good one.

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“Hoodoo” Set to Launch

Posted on June 27, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

I returned page proofs of “Hoodoo” yesterday—it looks like this long-delayed story is getting closer to publication.  The editor at Specutopia has been an pleasure to work with, and his editing suggestions were spot on.  I really like it when an editor gets my story and can make solid suggestions that result in an improved final product (as opposed to an editor like this).

The table of contents has also been released for Specutopia‘s inaugural issue, and I recognize several of the writers (no other Hopeful Monsters, but a couple of writers I know from Codex).  It looks like a good line-up, so make sure to check out this new speculative fiction publication when its debut issue hits the stands in July.

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