Blast from the past: query letter for SoS

I'd forgotten about this... A few years ago I submitted my query letter for Scarabaeus (as it was then called) to Evil Editor, who savaged it, as is his wont. Here's what he had to say.

Kristin Nelson blogs aplenty about query pitches, and you might get more mileage out of her posts on the subject. (Scroll down to Agent Kristin's Query Pitch Workshop on the right of her blog page.)

My final query letter to Kristin, the one that caught her eye--not that different from the one Evil Editor read--was as follows:

Dear Ms Knight, [Yes, I FORGOT TO CHANGE THE NAME from the previous email I'd sent. Reader, don't do that.]

I recently read Linnea Sinclair’s Gabriel’s Ghost. Your success representing women’s science fiction leads me to believe you would be an excellent agent for my work. Scarabaeus is a 110,000-word science fiction novel with a touch of romance.

Edie Shade has been trained since childhood by the oppressive Crib government to create and program advanced technology called “biocyph seeds”, which turn planets into habitable colonies. She is kidnapped for her valuable skills and coerced into working for mercenaries who steal biocyph and sell it to the outlawed Fringe worlds.

The dark and mysterious convict Finn is assigned to be her reluctant bodyguard. Their relationship is strained by the fact that he is motivated to protect her by a chip in his skull that will kill him if she dies.

With the authorities on their heels, the mercenaries take Edie back to Scarabaeus—the planet she first visited as a trainee, seven years ago. Awed by its beauty, she sabotaged that terraforming project in order to preserve the alien ecosystem.

But Scarabaeus has been evolving—under the control of mutated biocyph. As the mercenaries fall victim to the dangers of its terrifying jungles, Edie risks her life—and Finn’s—to save the world that her naïve meddling created.

Scarabaeus is the first of a series, to be followed by Children of Scarabaeus and Soul of Scarabaeus. I use futuristic concepts of genetic engineering as the backdrop for the novels.

I have a BS in Biology, and I was the associate editor of Australia’s foremost SF magazine, Aurealis, for several years, before moving to the USA in 2005. I work as a textbook editor. If you are interested in considering representation, I’d be happy to send sample chapters or the complete manuscript.

Sincerely,

Sara Creasy

Kristin ultimately rejected the full manuscript but gave tons of great feedback, so I rewrote it and resubmitted it, and now my book is on the shelves!

Conundrum

Must write. Macy's has baby clothes clearance sale. Must write. Macy's has baby clothes clearance sale. Must... must... must...?

Linky

Here's MCP's blog, which he just set up (with imported older posts from a previous blog).

Wonderful end to the week

Woohoo! An fantastic agent has offered my hubby representation for his SF novel - I'm so thrilled for him. He has amazing talent as a writer (not to mention as a plotting partner, editor, and cheerleading squad when I've needed him, which is lots) and truly deserves success.

Keep your eye out for MC Planck! More info when i's are dotted and t's crossed.

And now I must think about making him a website...

Baby pics... just because

Busy busy busy writing... Meanwhile, I miss my newborn! Fortunately I have a gorgeous, contented, very well behaved 5-week-old to make up for it.

(I don't think green is her color)

Supernatural Underground giving away my book

I was supposed to blog at Supernatural Underground today (the blog for HarperCollins paranormal authors) but simply didn't have the time or inspiration with a 3-week-old to take care of. In my absence, Tracey O'Hara very kindly wrote a post about science fiction and is giving away a copy of Song of Scarabaeus:

http://supernaturalunderground.blogspot.com/2010/06/danger-will-robinson.html

Check out the comments on Tracey's post - it's wonderful to read so many positive and enthusiastic ravings about science fiction movies and TV shows. There's also a healthy dose of commiseration regarding the cancellation of Firefly. (Is there a support group?)

My other 2010 project

My debut novel was my first baby this year. On 8th June, my other creative endeavor made her appearance: presenting Sophie Ann.

2 days old, still a bit wrinkly

Supernatural Underground launch

A bunch of us HarperCollins authors have got together with a blog and Facebook page (750 fans already!) to create Supernatural Underground. Today is launch day! Head over to the blog because during the month of June there are heaps of giveaways for lucky readers.

I'll be guest blogging on June 29th - okay, that's ages away but I picked that date because I'm crazybusy with eleven other things right now and wanted to give myself some time to think.

So do I actually write supernatural? Well, I don't write paranormal (the name usually given to this sub-genre), if that's defined as vampires and ghosts and witches. But a good deal of science fiction could be placed into the supernatural category - we SF writers take science ("nature") and twist it beyond ("super") its known limits.

Game time

I've only played two computer games obsessively, and that's enough to make me realize I shouldn't take up the hobby again because of the risk they'll become time wasters. In the 80s I played Gyruss, a shoot-em-up with a spinning space ship that I liked in large part because of the soundtrack - Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Here's a You Tube demo clip of the game. (This is the arcade version, not the Commodore Amiga version that I played. The music sounds a little different from what I remember.) There are all kinds of cool remixes of Toccata, by the way, most famously by the group Sky with John Williams on guitar. And just thinking about that has sent me to Amazon to purchase Sky's second album.

The other game was Sim City - my love of this game is probably related to my childhood obsession with Lego bricks. I love the way the game "plays itself" once you've zoned areas for construction, and you can sit back and watch the buildings pop up all over the place.

These days MCP and I are into the much more social hobby of playing strategy board games with friends. A current favorite is Ad Astra, in which you explore planets, collect resources, and build space ships and colonies. I'm a sucker for cute little game pieces - here are the ones from Ad Astra. (Of course, the cuter the pieces, the more expensive the game.)

From L to R: space ship, colony, factory, terraformer

Who's your favorite sci-fi hero or heroine?

Today I'm interviewed at Dark Faerie Tales. A copy of Song of Scarabaeus is up for grabs - to enter, go to the interview and name your favorite sci-fi hero or heroine.

As for my favorite... I'll take the easy way and pick the heroine of my favorite sci-fi movie, Aliens. Yes, Ellen Ripley is just the kind of kick-ass heroine that I didn't imitate in Song, but the movie itself is a superlative example of blending characters, action, story, special effects and worldbuilding, and even science (in terms of the aliens' life cycle).

Whenever I watch sci-fi movies from the 80s, I marvel at how amazingly realistic Aliens looks by comparison. Hard to believe it came out almost a quarter-century ago (1986).

Guest blog

Head over to Literary Escapism where I am guest blogging today. You can also win a copy of Song of Scarabaeus!

Clutter free

All's quiet on my blog but things have been hectic in the real world. I'm finding tiny pockets of time to write, with a deadline looming for my final rewrites on the manuscript for book 2.

We're preparing for a garage sale on Saturday and it's got me thinking about why people keep stuff and why they throw it out. I'm a fairly unsentimental type. I find it easy to throw away just about anything. I've moved my entire set of possessions to a new country four times in my life (first time when I was 13) and each time required severe culling. A few childhood things have survived - the more meaningful ones aren't the trinkets but the school books (okay, and the teddy bears). Stories and news reports that I wrote in grade school, and weird poems from my teenage years.

I wrote a lot of fantasy stories, but the first science fiction story I wrote was in grade 6, about a holiday my family took to the moon. It must have been a working holiday, because while on the moon we had to collect rock samples for scientific research. Someone fell into a crater. Exciting stuff. (For one of my second-grade creative writing efforts, click here.)

But back to stuff: I'm morbidly fascinated with those hoarding TV shows - and seeing how those people live only firms my resolve to continue to minimize the clutter in my life!

First or third person?

Kristin Nelson blogged this week about an author's choice of first or third person, and I am stealing her topic today. The conventional wisdom is to use third person if you have two or more points of view, and first person for a single point of view where you want to bring the reader into the protagonist's head.

I don't know if I'm alone here, but I disagree with the generally accepted idea that first person is more intimate. First person is someone else telling you (the reader) the story. The reader doesn't become the protagonist, he becomes the listener. When I read first person, I feel a sense of distance - especially if the protagonist has a distinctive voice that's vastly different from my own.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing - only that it's the opposite of what the writer may be trying to achieve. And maybe it's just me. Maybe most readers do find it easier to immerse themselves in a first-person novel.

A third-person novel can still be entirely from a single POV, of course, and the trend these days is for close third person rather than the more distant narrator-style POV. This makes it essentially the same as first person, but without the "Buy me a drink and I'll tell you a tale..." distancing effect.

Art for Song of Scarabaeus

Over the past few weeks, I ran a contest at my favorite 3D art site, DAZ3D. The contest required forum members to create images relating to Song of Scarabaeus (the first three chapters, anyway, which were available at the time). Here are the winners! They received signed copies of the book and gift certificates.

FIRST PLACE: Wayii

Edie and Finn from chapter 1 - I loved this image because it matches almost exactly the one in my head when I wrote that scene!

SECOND PLACE: LynZem

An imaginative, otherworldly image showing a terraforming team at work.

THIRD PLACE: scorpio64dragon

This one appealed to the romantic in me.

If you're interested in making 3D art (great for fantasy and sci-fi images), click the icon below:

Review from BookPage

A really nice review from BookPage today, by Tom Warin. It has the best plot summary I've read so far. Here's what else he says:

"Song of Scarabaeus is an enjoyable, fast-paced slice of adventure science fiction, infused with a measured dose of romance. The technological and political background is revealed with a deft hand, never getting in the way of the action."

Song on the stand

It's me! In Barnes & Noble! With Song of Scarabaeus! I was thrilled to see it out there on the new releases stand. My husband forced me to ask the clerk if I could sign them (I was going to call first and arrange it) and she was happy to pull out her "Autographed Copy" stickers and let me do it. (Photo was taken before the stickers went on.)

So if you're out and about in Tucson, head to the B&N on Broadway & Rosemont and grab a signed copy.

Next we tried Borders at Park Place, but there were none to be found. The clerk checked the computer and told us they have a shipment on the way. I'll go back next week to see about signing those.

Where I am today

Busy day online for me:

I'm guest blogging at Dawn Chartier's blog, where I talk about the infernal internal editor.

Over The Edge Book Reviews has an interview with me as well as a Song of Scarabaeus giveaway if you hurry!

On the Babel Clash blog, I've asked Robin Hobb a few questions about writing, dragons and microwave ovens.

Here and there

Lots of stuff going on this week and next.

Agent Kristin Nelson features Song of Scarabaeus in "The Story Behind the Sale" section of her April newsletter (you have to be signed up to receive it). When Kristin offered me representation, I felt I was 99% of the way there toward seeing my name in print. I never had a doubt she'd sell the book eventually, but it did take a few months. In the end we had two similar offers on the table and could take our pick.

This weekend, you can read a short interview with me at Over The Edge book reviews. I'll be dropping by to answer any questions that crop up.

I have several other online interviews and guest blogs lined up, so I'll post about them as they happen.

And a reminder that for the next few days I'm blogging with Robin Hobb at Babel Clash and it looks like we'll be covering a wide range of topics.

Oh, and yesterday I achieved my dream of joining the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) - yay me!!

Release day!

Today Song of Scarabaeus hits the bookstores - and my big box of author copies just arrived (yay!):

I'll be heading out to bookstores here in Tucson later this week just to see those books on the shelves for myself.

You can also buy the Kindle version from Amazon and various other e-book versions too. I confess I still haven't joined the e-book revolution myself...

Starting today and for the next couple of weeks, mega-bestselling author Robin Hobb and I (who may have sold two or three copies by now, maybe not - I know I sold one because I got my first fan mail [thanks, Maria]) are co-hosting Borders' blog, Babel Clash. We have a few topics of discussion to throw around, so drop by to join the fun.

Also, I've joined the SFR Brigade and have posted an introduction to celebrate my release day.

Fresh Fiction review

A review of Song of Scarabaeus on Fresh Fiction:

http://freshfiction.com/review.php?id=25679

The reviewer makes some good observations about the social themes in the book - I like to put the characters and action first, but that doesn't mean I don't sometimes have "something to say" about the complexities of humans and the societies they form (or may form in the future). And it's nice to know readers who may not normally read "hard" sci-fi are enjoying the book.

My first interview

The Tucson Examiner just put up my (first ever!) interview:

Interview with me!

Song of Scarabaeus - in Australia

Looks like Emporium Books (an Australian online bookstore) will be carrying Song of Scarabaeus, for Aussies who want a copy.

EDIT: The book is also available at the Fishpond online Aussie store.

Review of Song

Woohoo! A nice review from SciFiChick.com today: "...a highly impressive science fiction novel from a promising new author." I particularly liked that she mentioned the ethics of the story, because I tried hard not to be black and white - whether the topic is bureaucracy, native culture, citizens' rights and responsibilities, piracy, or ecological conservation, it's never the case that everyone on one side is evil and everyone on the other is virtuous.

Eos giveaway

Eos Books is giving away three copies of my May release, Song of Scarabaeus. Head over to their blog, Eos Books - The Next Chapter, for details.

Review time!

This morning my editor sent along my Publishers Weekly review for Song of Scarabaeus - that's the one Amazon uses in its product descriptions, so naturally I hoped for a good one.

Well, to my great surprise I not only got a good review, but a starred review! Here are the first and last sentences (the middle being the plot summary):

"This brilliantly conceived debut heralds a significant new talent... Creasy's convincing scientific speculation, appealing characterizations, and eerie alien landscapes make this science fiction romance deeply satisfying."

The entire review is here (near the bottom of the page): Publishers Weekly review

The second good thing to happen this morning was that the hummingbird feeder I set out yesterday, right outside my office window, attracted its first tiny visitor! I bought the feeder for $4.99 from PetSmart because I'd seen a hummingbird hovering around our flowers. I expected it would take longer for the birds to find it, but they're smarter - or hungrier - than I thought.

Get out and about in Tucson

I visited the Tucson Festival of Books this morning, hubby and dog in tow. Half an hour after it opened, throngs were already buzzing around the 200 exhibitor booths. The Saguaro Romance Writers booth #116, on University Blvd near the Student Union, is manned (womaned) by different members every hour so if you drop by you'll get to meet a bunch of us.

On Sunday, three published authors from the chapter, including yours truly, will make appearances at various times with free books and stuff:

Judy Duarte - 10 to 12 (Silhouette author of contemporary romance)

Sherrill Quinn - 12 to 2 (Kensington author of spicy paranormal romance)

Sara Creasy - 2 to 4 (Eos author of science fiction/romance)

Like today, the weather will be gorgeous for an outside event - high 60s and sunny. What else would you expect from Tucson? Well, I didn't expect a free McDonald's mini frappe with caramel drizzle. It was pretty good.

There are also indoor panels and workshops to attend (450 presenters and authors!), including a fellow client of Kristin Nelson and author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Jamie Ford. He's on a Sunday panel called "Bending the Truth: Using Real Events in Fictional Stories" at 2pm.

Visit the Tucson Festival of Books website for more info. Admission and parking are free.

Editing - the final checks

Every writer has quirks, and some quirks - such as overusing a word or using a repetitive sentence structure - aren't good. You can creatively use Word's search tool to pick up certain quirks that may otherwise distract a reader. A few tips:

1. Uncommon words: Is there a particular unusual word that you worry about overusing? Count how many times it appears by going to Find and Replace - type the word in both boxes and hit Replace All. This gives you a count for that word. (Here's an example from MCP: don't use cornucopia twice in the same novel unless you're talking about a cone stuffed with food.)

2. Common words: Do you overuse common words like actually, really, quite, very? I have a problem with just. This word doesn't harm an individual sentence, but use it too often and it starts to stand out. During my final edit, I search for every occurrence and fix as many as I can. In the case of just, this usually means (just) deleting it from the sentence.

3. Sentence structure: Another quirk of mine is the "comma but" sentence structure. There's nothing wrong with it, but I tend to overuse it. Count the occurrences as above (find and replace
", but") and if you use more than one per two pages, fix as many as you can to add variation. For example: While there's nothing wrong with it, I tend to overuse it.

In many cases, the best solution is to split the sentence into two. I think this results in stronger writing. The "but" preempts your second point. Without it, the second sentence comes as a surprise.

Her eyes shone when she mentioned the children, but it didn't fool him.

Her eyes shone when she mentioned the children. It didn't fool him.

4. -ing verbs: The -ing form of a verb, combined with was or were, forms the past progressive tense: He was singing. This structure can make your action drag and feel less immediate. Use the simple past tense instead:

The rain was drumming on the roof. She was feeling cooped-up and restless.

The rain drummed on the roof. She felt cooped-up and restless.

Searching for -ing verbs and fixing where you can may take several hours for a full-length manuscript. ( , but) I think it's worth the effort.

Tucson Festival of Books

Last year the inaugural Tucson Festival of Books had almost 50,000 attendees. This annual event showcases local authors, libraries, bookstores and other literary-related organizations, and benefits local community literacy providers. In addition to almost 200 exhibitors, this event is also a huge writers' convention with lots of talks, panels and workshops from national authors etc.

And it's free!! It's on next weekend, March 13-14th, at the University of Arizona between 9.30 and 5.30 both days.

I'll be manning the Tucson Romance Writers of America booth (#116 along University Blvd, subject to change) on Sunday 2-4 pm and giving away ARCs (uncorrected bound galleys with full color cover - almost the real thing!) of Song of Scarabaeus to interested readers.

French eye candy for real

Searching Netflix for good science fiction isn't as easy as I thought it would be. One movie we accidentally came across recently was Suspension, which has a sci-fi "widget" but is otherwise pretty much a character study. It was very watchable. And then... did we really sit through that godawful thing from the 80s with Dennis Quaid about dream research the other week?

Last night we ended up choosing the French near-future action movie District B13 (Banlieue 13). Made in 2004, it's set in 2010 as an excuse to change (or perhaps simply exaggerate) the social structure of a major metropolis--Paris. Beyond that, there's nothing science fiction about it. It's a pure action story.

Loved it! It features several amazing parkour (urban mountaineering) sequences that pretty much make the film. The simple storyline probably wouldn't stand without those visuals. In fact, there's not much else to say about the movie except that it's hugely enjoyable and just the right length at 85 minutes.

Actor David Belle is one half of the protagonist duo, and is credited with coining the term parkour, a style based on the "obstacle course method of [French] military training," itself based on African tribal agility skills. Watching the "stunts" in this movie made me realize how much fun it is to see people throwing their bodies around for real instead of relying on CGI. It has about as much character development and moral preaching as Avatar (that is, not much and quite a bit, respectively) but for me it works much better as an action flick, and just as well as a visual feast. Not to mention it's over one hour of two pieces of perfectly cast muscular eye candy.

As a side note, I studied French for 7 years and could barely understand a word they were saying.

Decompression

Not much time or inclination to blog as I frantically finish up book 2. Today it was handed over to MCP, who has spent half the evening with it on Track Changes and only made it to the end of Chapter 2. His most excellent contribution: writing in an airlock that I forgot about. (Decompression and all that.)

Now he pauses to consider walking the dog, and I think I'll go with him.

Rain...

It rains twice a year in Tucson - the monsoons in July/August, and a cold bout of winter rain round about now. It's been raining for a week and the streets are flooded. As when it snows, Tucson always seems to get caught unawares by these incidences of "weather." We have "washes" here and there - deep trenches built into the sides of the roads to redirect the water - but that doesn't help on those streets with no washes. I ventured out this morning to buy curtains, hoping my station wagon would make it through long stretches of foot-deep water, and wasn't surprised to see the aftermath of a car accident at the lights nearest my home.

Can't complain - I love the rain (dog, however, is not impressed) - but I think Tucson needs to invest in storm water drains.

Bound galleys have arrived

This is my book! Well, sort of. These are the bound galleys, which are uncorrected proofs used for marketing. The back cover blurb is different from the final book and all my corrections aren't taken in yet, but it's my book that I can hold in my hands and flip the pages!

Song of Scarabaeus - book cover

The cover for Song of Scarabaeus, out May 2010, ISBN 978-0-061-934-735.



Click to enlarge.

The artist is Christian McGrath and he captured Edie and the relationship perfectly.

The HarperCollins catalog website includes the following quote from Vonda N. McIntyre (a shorter quote of hers is on the back cover) - I was honored that she agreed to read my book and thrilled that she liked it.

“Sara Creasy is a new writer to watch, and Song of Scarabaeus is a novel to read and enjoy. . . . The biological speculation rings with truth and possibility, the terraforming-gone-wrong creates an environment of delicious creepiness, and Creasy’s imaginatively-constructed universe draws the reader in, to follow Edie and Finn’s quest for freedom.”

I must also thank Linnea Sinclair for the wonderful quote on the front.

I'll be revamping my website over the holiday season and also finishing off my book trailer using the book cover. Stand by!

My first fan

Linnea Sinclair, who writes sexy science fiction romance/adventure novels (Gabriel's Ghost is my favorite), has added Song of Scarabaeus to her goodreads page with a five-star review! She also provided some lovely quotes to my editor that I think will end up on the cover of my book.

I haven't done much reading in the last 12 months and I really regret that - time to add Linnea's latest couple of books to my Christmas list.

Page proofs

Today the UPS guy delivered my page proofs for Song of Scarabaeus - exciting stuff! As a project editor I was on the other end of this process hundreds of times, but this is the first time I've played the author's role.

Page proofs are the typeset manuscript showing the layout exactly as it will appear in the finished book, but the pages aren't bound. These days, page proofs are created directly from the author's electronic file, so there's little actual typing involved.

The page proofs show the inside design of the book. For novels, design is a fairly simple matter (compared with text books, which is what I'm used to). My design uses a scarab icon on each chapter opening page, and a futuristic font for the chapter numbers and header (my name on the left - yay! - and the book title on the right). The relevance of the scarab is that my heroine Edie has an implanted scarab shell between her collarbones, and it has great significance for her.

So far, I've gone through the proofs checking that both the copyeditor's and my corrections from the copyedited manuscript were taken in. Next I have to read the whole thing for a final check - my last chance to make any changes (and at this stage, the author pays for changes other than typesetter errors). The publisher hires a proofreader to do the same thing - checking corrections were taken in, and giving the book a final read for other errors. As an editor, I am of course paranoid about any errors slipping through!

Perfecting the pitch

This weekend I had the opportunity to meet my agent Kristin Nelson, something that probably wouldn't have happened for a while except that my local RWA chapter invited her to be the guest speaker at our special end-of-year pitching workshop. Tucson's weather put on a good show, of course, but as there is nothing to actually do in Tucson we stuck to good food and good conversation, even bringing along the husbands for Friday night Thai. Overall I think we talked more mattresses than manuscripts - not at all a bad thing for someone (me) who craves a good night's sleep. Also, it was a pleasure to meet the bounding and occasionally squeaking Chutney!

At Saturday's meeting Kristin talked about perfecting the pitch (specifically in query letters). There's plenty about this on her blog, but to summarize:

Determine your plot catalyst (called the inciting incident in screenplay parlance). This is the event that sets the story in motion and should happen in the first 30 pages.

Shape the paragraph by adding the following:

a) Backstory elements

b) Other relevant plot elements

c) Character elements

d) A combination of the above

Aim for around 6-10 sentences. It should read like a back cover blurb.

Sharing the love: homemade salsa

As I sit here eating corn chips and homemade salsa, my mouth burning with chili goodness, it occurs to me that I must share the love.

A few weeks ago, a friend was having a dinner party and asked everyone to bring something to put in a salsa. (As I didn't know what went in a salsa, I brought corn chips.) After watching her make the salsa, I went home and tried it myself. I didn't remember the recipe exactly, and it's not important. Just put all of the following in a blender in whatever quantities you like - mostly tomatoes, of course:

tomatoes (I use fresh, but canned will do)

chilies (I put three different kinds in mine, whatever the supermarket has)

onion (just a tiny bit)

garlic cloves

cilantro (a.k.a. coriander for Australian readers) (use lots!)

pepper

salt

lime juice (I prefer more rather than less, because I love citrus)

Pulse until it becomes a mulchy mess and EAT.

Time to lop

Mailed back my copyedits today - extraordinarily expensive but it's tax deductible. Also, extraordinarily slow. It will arrive on the date of my deadline, assuming it's not delayed.

Now I'm nervous about all the things I forgot to change, because I won't get another chance.

But overall, it feels good to be DONE with book 1.

Book 2 is not behaving at the moment. I can see I'm going to have to write about 25,000 words extra on the back end and lop the same amount off the front end to fix the pacing. For this reason I've spent the last couple of days outlining instead of writing. I do love outlining and plotting (I even love writing synopses - yes, it's true) but it doesn't make the manuscript grow longer.

Working on the copyedited manuscript

I received my copyedits yesterday--a printout of the Word file with Track Changes showing. HarperCollins uses the Word document itself for typesetting (rather than re-keying... does anyone still re-key these days?) so someone in-house will "accept" or "reject" the copyeditor's corrections and take in any additional changes that I make.

For anyone wondering what this stage entails, here's how I approached it.

Firstly, I read through the covering note, house style, and all the CE's comments and corrections to check the extent of the job. The manuscript has been coded, which means codes are added to things like line spaces and chapter numbers to instruct the typesetter.

There were a few typos (let's blame Word, which stopped displaying errors after my document reached a couple of hundred pages), a few queries for "sense" (where something wasn't clear to the CE) and lots of house style things like hyphenation. Overall, the CE did a thorough job and, fortunately, there wasn't a lot for me to think about.

Then I went to Office Max and bought a pack of erasable Crayola colored pencils (because the instructions from HC told me to use a colored pencil) and a sharpener and some sticky notes. I never use pencils if I can help it because I don't like how they drag on the paper. As an editor I tried a mechanical pencil but kept breaking the point, so I was stuck with a grey-lead and frequent use of a pencil sharpener. I much prefer using ballpoints.

Note to self: Don't buy erasable colored pencils again! Although being able to erase is useful, the lead itself is chalky and crumbles as soon as you sharpen it.

Anyway, the next thing I did was curl up on the coach with my red Crayola and deal with the CE's comments and changes, adding sticky notes to anything that needed further attention. I gritted my teeth at the addition of serial commas, which as a reader I find distracting (especially in fiction), but the Chicago Manual of Style likes it so HC likes it.

Then I went to the computer and opened up my manuscript file. In the weeks since it's been out of my hands, I've made additional changes to that file (using Track Changes), so I copied all those changes into the hardcopy set.

Last of all, I went through the sticky notes and sorted those out. In four places I added a couple of sentences either for clarity or to make changes necessitated by the sequel, so I typed those in a new document and printed out each addition on a separate page, marked, for example, 77A for the insert on page 77. On page 77 itself I wrote "Insert 77A" in the appropriate place and slotted in the insert page behind it. This is all per HC's instructions but in any case it's the standard way to do things.

Oh, and I also worked on the dedication and acknowledgements. I'll go through everything one last time before sending it back--my deadline is October 6th but I think I'll be done before then.

The next time I see Song of Scarabaeus it will be as page proofs. At that stage it's too late to make changes (other than actual errors) because it's expensive to reset lines, paragraphs and sometimes entire pages when the text flow is altered. After 11 years as an editor, I can testify that this doesn't actually stop authors from fiddling with their pages...

One more thing: I went back to my electronic file and copied over all the changes, so I have a complete updated version. Next it's off to Kinko's to photocopy the hardcopy before returning it.

Rumors

Today is Samuel Johnson's birthday. He was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, in 1709, and is famous for writing the seminal Dictionary of the English Language in 1755, 150 years before the Oxford English Dictionary came into existence. Literary critic, poet, essayist, editor and more, he was cynical, often depressed, and frequently amusing, and is allegedly the second most quoted person in the English language (after Shakespeare).

There is a family legend that we are descended from Johnson's family (not from the man himself--he had no offspring--but from an uncle or brother or something). My maternal grandmother's name is Johnson, and that is the sole support for this rumor, but who knows... it might be true.

Coincidentally, I was born in Lichfield and lived there until the age of four. I revisited this gorgeous town a few years ago, with its three-spire cathedral and tudor buildings, and the house--now a museum--where Johnson was born.

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." - Samuel Johnson

Words and blurbs

I found out I'm getting my copyedited manuscript back on 22 September. So my goal is to finish book 2 first draft by 21st, spend a few days cleaning up book 1 (whatever they allow me), which means a few days' rest from book 2, and then spend October revising book 2.

I've set myself the goal of 3000 words a day, which gives me a lot of leeway, but leeway is good. Today I'm at 1471 words so far. Made dinner for MCP and now we're both settled in to spend the evening writing.

Meanwhile, I'm excited about two authors who have agreed to read my book and - if they like it - blurb it. Meaning that they provide one of those quotes you see on the cover. I'm heading into the business end of publishing, the end you never see or really think about when you're writing the book. I have worked in publishing since the mid-90s so I know what goes on, but not specifically for fiction... and never as the author.

Having said that, tonight all that matters is words on the page. Time to get back to it.

Writing is its own reward...

...it must be, because I just went to the grocery store with a long list and yet left without a Toblerone.

Toblerone time

I wrote almost 9000 words on Saturday, which I think is my second-highest record. The morning session was punctuated by a tangello and some cookies. In the afternoon I worked non-stop.

Got home on Sunday morning after successfully evading Border Patrol (last year I wasn't so lucky) and did a million other things, like making my poor depressed husband lunch (nice to know I was missed). Determined to cross the Toblerone threshold, I buckled down this evening and wrote a couple more thousand words, bringing my total for the weekend to 10,994. That's good stuff, at least in terms of sheer wordage. The words themselves are going to need a lot of work, of course.

Must sleep.

And there are no Toblerones in the house, which isn't an unusual state of affairs, but it's a bit of an anti-climax.

Setting a target

So today I wrote 2000 words, which, okay, isn't great, but it's on target. Then I went through the rest of my scrappy manuscript (that I wrote ages ago) slotting various bits and pieces into place and deleting the repeated or no-longer-relevant stuff... and my final word count now is less than it was two days ago! That's disheartening.

On Friday I'm off on a writing retreat with my RWA buddies - this is the third time we've done this. The point is to brainstorm each other's plots, but I do not need any new ideas for this book and I don't want to put my mind on anything else right now, either. A few others are in the same boat - we just want to get lots of writing done - so I'm going to lock myself in a room on Saturday with like-minded individuals and buckle down to write.

Another Aussie Eos author

Tracey O'Hara is a fellow Aussie author (okay, I'm a fake Aussie, but still) (and also, she's not a fellow and neither am I) with fellow publisher Eos Books. Tomorrow she chats live on Romance Radio at 5PM, which is 2PM for me and... something like 7AM for her. I don't often read paranormal but my critique partner Sherrill Quinn writes paranormal romance for Kensington and her stuff is sexy and action-packed, so I'm getting the hang of this genre!

Tracey's debut novel is Night's Cold Kiss.

Canada ahead of the game

Look what I found on Amazon Canada...



I'm going to have to create a new label for this. In honor of Rove McManus, What the? But still, it's very nice. :)

They also have a listing for the sequel, along with release dates (which don't match what I was told, but I'm not complaining).

Uh-oh

I just spent $59.98 at Amazon. All books, all new. I removed Guitar Hero Aerosmith from my cart.

A recipe

Had a power outage for 3 hours this morning while some very agile men climbed the huge tree out the back of our street and lopped off half its branches to keep them off the power lines. I was worried something would go wrong and I'd be unable to use the oven this evening, because Friday night is... pizza night!

I never ate a pizza in America that I liked, at least compared with the Mexicana from Gabriella Pizza (Carnegie) so I started making my own. I used to buy the base and do the toppings myself, but I now make them from scratch and they are delicious. Here's how you do it.

Turn on the oven to 450F and leave to heat up while making the dough.

Make the dough using quick-rise yeast and bread flour and leave to rise for 30 minutes.

While dough is rising, spray pizza tray with oil and prepare the toppings. This takes exactly 30 minutes.

Sharpen a knife and cut cherry tomatoes into slices. Place in bowl with extra virgin olive oil and crushed garlic.

Open can of pineapple tidbits and put in a sieve to drain. Drink some of the juice because it's good.

Chop red bell pepper. Scoop a few pitted kalamata olives out of the jar and chop. Scoop a few julienned sun-dried tomatoes out of their jar and leave to melt (because they've been in the fridge and have congealed into a godawful mess).

Take a serrano chilli pepper out of the tub in the freezer, run under hot water for a bit, and chop.

Divide the dough into four, freeze three lumps in sandwich bags, and roll out the fourth. Cut in half. Note, MCP gets the "bigger half". Stretch dough into two thin rectangularish shapes and place on pizza tray.

Assemble da pizza! Oh, first get together all the things you forgot, like the pepperoni from the tub in the fridge. Give one slice to dog, who is telepathically aware of the moment you removed said tub from fridge and shows up with puppy-dog eyes. Check the fridge for basil. If you have some, it's probably last week's and black. Throw it out. Check the basil plant on the kitchen window sill. It's probably looking pathetic but may yield a leaf or two. If not, grab the dried basil or oregano from the spice rack, or both if you're feeling... I don't know. Italian. Don't forget the black pepper.

Give dog another pepperoni because she's not going anywhere.

Okay, now assemble da pizza. First the tomato+oil+garlic. Try to avoid too much of the juice that leached out of the tomatoes because it'll make the dough soggy. Then the bell pepper. Then it gets complicated...

Put the pineapple and pepperoni on MCP's pizza. Put the olives, sun-dried tomatoes and chilli on yours. Add herbs and black pepper to both.

Now for the cheese. "Cheese is not a garnish, it's an ingredient!" Heed these words of wisdom courtesy of MCP. Grab the shredded mozzarella from the freezer - you carefully divided it up into pizza-size portions last week because a packet in the fridge goes moldy in four days. Bash the frozen bag on the counter top until it breaks apart, and sprinkle on pizzas. Extra for MCP. Get the cheese box from the fridge and grate a little cheddar (the orange American stuff) on MCP's pizza. Remember at the last minute that you have a tub of feta in the fridge and you like it, and add that to your pizza. (Warning: It will roll off because you should have put it under the mozzarella.)

Place in oven and bake for 10 minutes.

Suddenly remember that you probably have anchovies in the cupboard... yes, you do, and you forgot to use them yet again. No delicious bursts of salty goodness for you.

While pizzas are cooking, clean up that mess you made, pour iced tea for MCP, and take out napkins, pizza wheel, forks and plates. This takes exactly 10 minutes.

Remove crispy golden pizzas from oven, put on plates and call MCP to dinner. Hide the bandaid on your finger because at some point in the last 40 minutes, you cut yourself.

While dog watches with puppy-dog eyes, eat!

D&A time

D&A means delivery and acceptance in publishing parlance. I D'ed my revised manuscript last Friday, and today it has been A'ed. No more edits! Well, there's the copy edit, and who knows what may crop up there, but the book is DONE. I'm so relieved.

Today I also saw the back cover copy, which needed some tweaking, and Diana, Kristin and I talked about cover quotes (that means sending out the manuscript to other authors in the hope that someone will like it and provide a nice quote for the cover) and I sent Diana my bio. Now I have to get a head shot. I know I was talking about this months ago, but I haven't been to a professional photographer since my grade ten school photo, and it's terrifying.

To congratulate myself for being D&A'ed, I am eating Haagen-Dazs's Five/Ginger ice cream straight out of the tub. (Dis iz permitted because I skipped lunch.) It's almost as good as my favorite ice cream in the world: gingerbread flavor from Jock's, Albert Park, Melbourne.

Fuzzy no more

This evening, my editor Diana Gill emailed the cover for Song of Scarabaeus. When I saw it in my inbox, I confess I had to get MCP (that's hubby, for those just joining us) to look at it first while I hid my face in his shoulder... I was so nervous. I knew I would love it, because the artist is Christian McGrath and every one of his covers is fantastic. (See his website and be amazed.) But still, I knew that in the split second it took to look at the screen, Edie and Finn would suddenly become photoreal people after hiding fuzzily in my head for so long. I've known who they are for years, and now I know what they look like, too.

The great thing is, Christian sells prints of his covers from his site so I can order mine when it's up (and so can you). I'm waiting for permission to post it here, but I can tell you it has a lovely gritty spaceship interior as the backdrop, and then there's Finn looking all protective and hot, and Edie looking all sullen and cute.

I never describe these two in great detail because I prefer the reader to imagine what they look like. However, now that I see them staring me in the face, they're perfect. It's so good to meet them!

Inspiration

Friday's theatrical outing was sort of a celebration - I sent my revised manuscript off to my editor. Now I just have to hope the celebration wasn't premature. Next step is the line edit. Meanwhile, today it's back to work on book 2 and this afternoon I have my critique group meeting.

Exploding heads

I'm not one for exploding heads, but District 9 is a good movie and I can forgive.

Wikus is a hapless bureaucrat at a military contracting firm, sent into District 9 to serve eviction notices to one million aliens ("prawns") who've been living in squalor for 20 years ever since their mothership broke over Johannesburg. His opinion of the aliens varies from annoying pets to dangerous pests, depending on how they're behaving themselves. In his enthusiasm for routing out illegal activities in the slums, he exposes himself to some alien gunk and begins an icky transformation, and suddenly everyone's after him - to cut him up, to kill him, even to eat him.

That's when heads start exploding. Alien weapons will do that. But the more interesting story is Wickus' journey from a bumbling, casually racist desk jockey to a desperate hunted man forced to depend on the aliens, one in particular, for help.

The movie is filmed in gritty documentary style, for the most part, using news footage and interviews to effectively convey a sense of realism. Oh, and did I mention that it's gritty? I love gritty.

Like Moon, District 9 is a low-budget movie that relies more on story and character than special effects. I live in hope that the upcoming James Cameron movie Avatar, which cost many times more, strikes the same balance.

An awesomely brilliant thing

Hubby, who calls himself MCP, and so shall I, read 11,000 words of my manuscript this evening while I watched House Hunters and Propery Virgins and The Unsellables and various other real estate shows on HGTV (to which I am addicted, ever since we moved).

The first thing we did when we met was exchange manuscripts. (Actually the second thing. The first thing was his correctly using a semi-colon and my being impressed by it.) He is a better writer than I am and will some day achieve huge success, and meanwhile he is a very useful person to have around when I've just written two new chapters that stink and Need Everything Fixed And A Pep Talk Too. He comes up with exactly the right word (slammed not pounded, that's perfect) and exactly the right twist to a mundane sentence.

In return, I edit his work by inserting too many em-dashes--because even though his semi-colon use impresses me, no one else needs to see those nasty things all over the place.

So now I have my 11,000 words back with Track Changes all over them and tomorrow there'll be no time for time for Real Estate Intervention or Curb Appeal because I have 11,000 words to polish.

It's awesomely brilliant to be married to another writer.

Writing and rain

I'm buried deep in rewrites at the moment. It's added 5000 words and I'm not sure that's a good thing. I have a few smaller changes to make by 14th August and then I can get back to the sequel, which is actually the book that's on my mind right now.

The monsoons are well and truly here. Me happy, dog unhappy. It makes little difference in Tucson, actually - humid heat replaces dry heat. It's still over 100 degrees, and no one leaves the safety of their airconditioned cars, houses and buildings. Walk around Tucson any time of the day, any day of the year, and you'd think it was a ghost town.

A foreign country

I saw Harry Potter and the Whatever this weekend and was thinking about writing a review but... eh. I guess I had my fill of boarding school stories when I was young (thanks, Enid Blyton) and I didn't get past the third HP book. I also skipped a couple of the movies.

Looking back now, I think I know how my love of boarding school stories (The Naughtiest Girl and Malory Towers series) morphed into a love of science fiction. I enjoy imagining new worlds, alternative societies and strange cultures - preferably in plausible settings. Boarding school was a big romantic mystery to me. My only source of information about the concept came from Ms Blyton, and those books were written in the 40s. ("The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."*) (I also like history books but my brain is like a sieve when it comes to remembering anything about history.) I guess I could've got hooked on travelogues to get my culture-shock fix, but my left-dominant brain also likes science. Mix the two together and you get speculative fiction.

Back to reality: The monsoons are here. It's hot and humid and our air con is broken.

*One first line I've never forgotten - from L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between, which we studied in Year 11 English lit.

Forty years on

(I wanted to post yesterday but Cox Communications is crap. It dies at the first clap of thunder.)

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The USA landed 6 missions and 12 men on the moon over a period of 3 years, and since 1972 no one has been back.

As a science fiction writer, I imagine a future where space travel is commonplace. Today, that future seems a very long way off.

When are we going back to the moon? When will we visit the next pretty bauble in the sky - Mars? In the 60s it wasn't too unbelievable to imagine that by the twenty-first century we'd have lunar shopping malls and a Martian Disneyland. Compare the state of technology then and now, and marvel at our lack of ambition and adventure.

Here are two ideas in the works about how to get to Mars and establish a base (after all, it takes 9 months to get there, so we'll be staying a while).

The first stems from Bush's 2004 Vision for Space Exploration initiative: we first build an outpost on the moon, both as a trial run for living on Mars and as a launchpad to the red planet. NASA estimates we may get to Mars by the 2030s.

The second is a quicker, cheaper method because it skips the moon altogether. Developed by the Mars Society, Mars Direct involves launching an unmanned Earth Return Vehicle ten months ahead of the manned craft, the Mars Habitat Unit. The ERV mines methane and oxygen from Mars, which provides the fuel for the return flight.

Either way - or some other way altogether - I hope we get there.

Man on the moon

Yesterday I saw Moon at The Loft, our local movie theater. We were in the upstairs screening room, which is even more loft-like than the lower. Small with fraying decor, and if you don't mind sitting up front you can lounge on bright red sofas.

I'd seen a couple of scenes from the movie online, before the musical score was added, so I already knew Moon was going to have a bit of a 2001: A Space Odyssey feeling about it. It certainly does feel retro. Director Duncan Jones also claims Alien, Silent Runing and Bladerunner as influences. The movie cost $5 million and is all the better for havng a low budget. The interior sets are wonderful, gritty and lived-in, just the way I like them. There are no expensive firefights or chase scenes - and really, who cares about those when the story stands on its own? Well, movie distributors care, so the movie will have no commercial success.

Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), sole caretaker of Lunar Industries' mining operation on the far side of the moon that provides helium-3 for most of Earth's power needs, has two weeks left on his three-year contract. He's lonely and bored and can't wait to get back home to his wife. Gerty, a HAL-like robot that uses smiley faces to express emotion, is his only companion. Gerty is at first as sinister as you'd expect a robot voiced by Kevin Spacey to be, but admirably feigns compassion and other suitable emotions.

After an accident on the lunar surface, Sam wakes up in the infirmary with no memory of the incident. A few days later he recovers an injured man from a crashed rover - a duplicate Sam Bell in rapidly failing health. Sick Sam and Healthy Sam have to figure out what's going on - what the company is up to, whether there are any more Sam Bells, and what they're going to do about the situation.

There are no huge surprises, no twist ending, but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. In some respects Moon reminds me of a watered down The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (Ursula Le Guin's short story), although by "watered down" I just mean that the main theme is played out on a smaller stage. I hope Duncan Jones remains on the path of making thoughtful science fiction movies, because hardly anyone else is walking it.

Edit letter

Today my editor Diana Gill sent the "edit letter" for Song of Scarabaeus. The hardcopy with line-edits will follow in the mail.

The reassuring part of this process is that Diana says it does not need a lot of work. Of course, once my manuscript has been written, revised and done with, to my mind, any further changes feel like a lot of work to me. Most of the work will be on characterization, and for the umpteenth time I need to rewrite the ending a little.

I have a month to get this done, and then about 3 months to finish the sequel. And I have a date for publication: May 2010!

You say tomato...

When I first moved to the US from Australia and noticed the scarcity of 2-ply toilet paper, I intended to start a blog where I could log the everyday differences I came across as I settled in. (I never did get around to it.) I did not suffer a huge culture shock - it's the little differences that jump out at me. The following list is based on my personal experiences with living in the state of Arizona. Note: this is not a list of complaints, just differences. Other than the Vegemite issue, I love living here.

1. Let's start with the obvious: Americans drive on the other side of the road. This isn't has hard to get used to as it sounds. What's hard is remembering to approach my car from the other side every time I get in it. 
2. Americans have a quarter instead of a 20-cent coin, one-dollar notes (bills) not coins, and no two-dollar denomination. After 4 years, I still dread having to count change in public. For someone who didn't grow up with the coins, in addition to the 20/25-cent difference, it's somehow a much bigger problem than it should be to deal with the US dime (10c) being smaller than the nickel (5c), which is almost identical in size to the quarter. 
3. The US mail comes on Saturday. This is a good thing. A fantastic thing is that you can leave outgoing mail in your mailbox, and like magic it gets picked up! But it's illegal to put mail into, or even touch, someone else's mailbox. I think they are booby-trapped. 
4. US fruit yogurt is much too sweet. US cream is white instead of cream-colored. There are no brown eggs at my store. There is no custard powder anywhere. (This was the tragedy of two Christmasses ago, when I had to serve 16 people peach cobbler [crumble] with no hot custard.) 
5. Milk and gas (petrol) come in gallons; fruit, veg and sugar come in pounds; make-up comes in ounces; maps come in miles. 
6. Restaurant servings are huge, often coming with free biscuits, breadsticks or corn chips, and usually you don't have to ask to get water on the table. On the other hand, I once asked for water at Red Lobster and got a tiny, expensive bottle of Perrier (which I sent back). 
7. Could these be the only three American things that are smaller than their Australian counterparts?—"large" eggs (which are tiny), dress sizes (yay!) and the chocolate biscuit section of the supermarket (criminal!). 
8. US tampon technology sucks (sorry, it had to be said), while toilet-flushing technology rocks. (I'm referring to the noisy suck that completely clears out the bowl with 100% effectiveness, as compared to the random swishy business that goes on in an Australian toilet. However, half-flushes here are rare, which is a pity considering I live in a desert.) 
9. You have to carry your registration and proof of insurance (two old-fashioned bits of paper) in the car with you, and when you buy a second-hand car you have to wait all morning at the DMV to register it and get a new licence (license) plate. Speaking of which, most cars don't even have licence plates on the front. 
10. If you donate to charity or buy something online, you'll thereafter be inundated with free mailing labels, credit card offers, magazines (at least six a week) and even a free blankie for your dog. 
11. You have to allow for sales tax at the register when purchasing from a store, as it isn't included in the listed price. In Tucson, state plus city sales tax is 8.1%. 
12. Aussie cutlery is US flatware, manchester is linen, petrol is gas, jam is jelly, jelly is jell-o, mousse is pudding, biscuits are cookies, scones are biscuits, cheese biscuits are crackers, the main course is the entree, the entree is the appetizer, gravy is often white, and there is no Vegemite.

Crop circle mystery solved!

I don't write about aliens, although one day I may give it a try, but I love a good story about the supposed actions and motivations of planet Earth's alien visitors. They reguarly kidnap us ("us" being almost exclusively North Americans) and exhibit an extraordinary fascination with our rectums; they fly physics-defying craft over our planet for no apparent reason; and they use our paddocks as canvases for their art.

Or do they?

The BBC is now blaming stoned wallabies for crop circles in Aussie poppy fields. Outrageous! (The comments section of this article is as hilarious as the article itself.)

Recommended reading list:

Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens by Susan A. Clancy

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan

Grimspace

Patricia Altner interviews Ann Aguirre on her blog today.

I read Grimspace, the first book in Ann's science fiction series about a "jumper", Jax, who navigates ships through grimspace (aka subspace, or what I call nodespace in my book), last year. It's a futuristic adventure romance novel that I was really excited to find, because at that time Kristin was shopping my book to publishers and Grimspace was one of the best examples of a book that was a similar genre to mine (meaning, "if you liked that, you'll love this!"). Plus it had a cool cover.

It's published by Penguin Ace, so we had high hopes for that editor. She said of Song of Scarabaeus: "It's solid and the author has talent... I enjoyed the writing," but rejected the book as being "too technical, with more science than I was looking for in an SF novel with romantic elements."

Definitely one of my nicer rejections, especially because I was aiming for a book that includes plausible science as an integral part of the story and the worldbuilding. I majored in cell biology and zoology (eons ago) and read Scientific American and Stephen Jay Gould for pleasure. Science, particularly biology and physics, fascinates me. I had great fun inventing a new science for Song, extrapolating from what I know about ecology, genetic engineering and retroviruses.

Having said that, my focus is always on the characters and the story - which is what I enjoyed about Grimspace, with its fast pace and lively dialogue. It's written in first-person present tense, which takes some getting used to but works really well. There will be four books in the series (book 2, Wanderlust, is already on the shelves) so check it out.

Priority!

I love Priority Mail envelopes, with their desperate little stripe that screams, Open me! Now! I got here in a hurry and I'm exciting! I received an exciting-looking Priority Mail envelope today and I opened it in a hurry. It was from my agent. It had a check inside.

My advance has arrived! (Well, half of it.) Actually, it may have come yesterday but did not scream loud enough, and I forgot to look in the mailbox because I was preoccupied with a million things to do around the new house, like shuffling furniture and unpacking boxes and putting this thing here and that stuff there so I can tame the obstacle course that aspires to be my living room.

So now I have an advance and a signed contract. The IRS is involved. I feel like a "real" writer... and I haven't had time to write a word all week.

Starry starry night

Here in Tucson, the night sky is an awesome sight. Thanks to the presence of the Kitt Peak Observatory just outside town, many suburban streets do not have street lighting - which means we see a lot of stars. When I moved here a few years ago from the other side of the globe, the first thing I noticed (after the absence of the Southern Cross) was that you can always see the entire moon here, even when it's a crescent. Its full shape is always visible as a circular shadow.

I'm terrible with constellations, but Orion is hard to miss - and it's visible in both hemispheres. I've learned to pick out a few more constellations now, as well as super-bright Venus and red Mars.

Living near both an airport and an Airforce base, we do of course see a lot of UFOs at night. It's fascinating how viewing an aircraft from different angles and altitudes, under different conditions such as cloud cover and other obstacles, can have such a major impact on your perception.

Tonight while walking the dog, we saw the most amazing shooting star. A green fireball exploded across the sky, trailing flames, then turned white and continued on like a flare. It covered a much larger arc than a typical shooting star and lasted about four seconds. It lit up the neighborhood. Incredible!

Bring on the scientists: The American Meteor Society website says that a green fireball means the meteor contained nickel.

Stories of yore

Today while packing I came across my old school exercise books from infant school (grades K-2). These attractive grey books were issued by the City of Birmingham Education Committee and came in various sizes, lined and unlined. We wrote in them our news and our creative writing efforts.

What I have learned from a quick browse... When I was five-and-a-half in Middles (first grade), I was obsessed with my baby teeth falling out, which they did with great regularity. My parents paid us a penny for each one (no tooth fairy in our house). I gave my "fat and natghty" brother for his 4th birthday all the letters of the alphabet (which I drew and cut into squares myself), in a homemade case wrapped in pink crepe paper. Someone gave him wood and glue and he made "a thing that he called a flying boat." As for my dad - "his name was Dennis when he was a little boy" and "he tells mummy off when she cuts her finger." (Now my husband does the same thing to me.)

In second grade I wrote in my News book, "When I grow up I am going to marry Andrew Cull he is my boyfriend." I don't think Andrew Cull knew about this plan. I wanted to be a teacher and teach "good children" who "are never going to the head teacher for a smake." Those were the days when smacks, wallops and canings from the head teacher weren't illegal. I wrote, "I wonder if I will like it when I grow up."

My second grade Creative Writing book includes stories with titles such as "The Ghost Ship," "The Magic Garden," "The Magic Shoes," "The Island of Magic," "The Island of Tiny People," "The Land of the Funny Faces," "The Day I Was Lost" (told from the point of view of a penny) and "The Invisible Pond," in which a fairy makes a pond invisible and the royal coach drives into it, angering the Queen. The fairy's mother admonishes the fairy with: If you don't make that pond back to normal I shall put you to death. The fairy complies.

If I ever run out of ideas, I could go back to my six-year-old self and see what she comes up with.

Artfully

Today I learned who my cover artist will be (I don't actually know if I'm allowed to say, so I'll hold it in for now). I checked out his website and... I'm floored. His work - mostly urban fantasy and science fiction - is absolutely amazing. His style is gritty and moody, his characters are gorgeous. I'm so excited to see what he comes up with for Song of Scarabaeus.

Musical plots

Remember Jump? Not Van Halen, but the Pointer Sisters. It was playing in the car this afternoon and while it's a corny song, it's also a nostalgic one for me. Made me think about how music, good and bad, anchors certain moments in life - at least in retrospect.

I don't usually listen to music (or anything) while writing, but I've done a good deal of plotting while listening to one CD in particular: Jean-Michel Jarre's Rendez Vous. I don't listen to any other electronic music, but for some reason I ended up with Rendez Vous in my collection. 

I found the length (about an hour) ideal for running an entire "movie" of the plot through my head, even if I had no plot when I started. Plot arcs, scenes, emotions and other details emerge out of nowhere with little effort - no matter what the premise - because the musical pieces themselves form the overall structure of a story.

I've tried listening to instrumental movie soundtracks, as they usually include the same broad range of music styles, but unfortunately if I'm familiar with the movie, all my imagination comes up with is that movie. And I can't write at all to music with vocals, as my mind wanders to listen to the lyrics.

One of the pieces in Rendez Vous has an interesting history: it features a soulful sax, and was written for astronaut Ron McNair to be played and recorded in space. This never happened - McNair died in the 1986 Challenger disaster.

Vatta's War

I've been reading Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War series. Currently finishing up book 3, Engaging the Enemy. The series revolves around Ky Vatta, daughter of an interstellar trading family, whose father gives her a ship after she's thrown out of Fleet Academy. The ship, though, is bound for the junk yard - not much of a first mission. Everything goes horribly wrong, of course, and by book 3 Ky is not so much trading as assembling a fleet of privateers to take on a bunch of pirates who are menacing the trade routes.

The books have a quasi-military feel but are mostly what I label "procedural" - very detailed descriptions of ship life (from the captain's perspective, anyway) including finances, trading deals and other interactions. The first third of the first book, for example, is simply a series of shopping trips to prepare for the voyage. The action amounts to only a handful of incidents in each book.

If I've made it sound kind of boring... well, this is not the usual guns-blazing all-out action you might expect from "sci-fi adventure", especially that with a military flavor, but I'm finding the series compelling for a whole other reason. The worlds are incredibly well realized, and it's easy and exciting to imagine what it might be like to live in them.

One gripe: no romance for poor Ky! She's too busy saving the galaxy...

Cover story

"The Publisher shall consult the Author regarding the cover design..." Thus stateth my contract, and last week my editor asked me for cover ideas, so today I emailed her my "consultation." Basically, that means I scoured Amazon for sci-fi book covers and explained what I liked and didn't like about them.

In general I prefer a more stylized cover rather than a "scene from the book". The latter runs the risk of looking out of context and just plain bizarre, or alternatively too generic. I love hardware and hi-tech sci-fi stuff, but that typical "spaceship and planet" concept is wrong for my book. My idea is for something organic (since the story concerns alien ecosystems) merged with technology. If the title sticks, I guess there should also be a beetle on there somewhere.

In case the stylized thing doesn't fly, I listed scenes that could be illustrated. This most likely would include the main characters. In the book, I deliberately don't describe them in detail because I prefer books where the reader can imagine someone of their choosing in the main roles. But for the sake of the cover, I did provide descriptions, with photos of two people (a not-so-well-known singer and an even-less-well-known actor) who could (physically) fill the roles of Edie and Finn.

Now, of course, I can't wait to see what HarperCollins comes up with!

The most outrageous cover I ever owned was for an edition of John Wyndham's The Chrysalids. I haven't read the book in decades but have never forgotten the story. It concerns a post-apocalyptic society in which genetic imperfections are not tolerated. A group of children have to keep their telepathic skills secret in order not to face banishment or execution for this abnormality. The cover depicted... a green ant-lizard-monster.

In googling for this cover, I've discovered the book was titled Re-Birth in the USA. I also discovered very different covers from several other editions, so here they are...

Almost a real author

Kristin emailed my HarperCollins (Eos) contract today. After printing off 4 copies, signing, returning, and receiving an HC-signed copy back - can I at last call myself a "real author"? In any case, that's what my tax return will say next year and the IRS is The Authority on these matters.

The contract is for "two fast-paced, action-packed books of science fiction with a strong romance thread." The "tentative" title is Song of Scarabaeus, but considering how hard it is to spell and pronounce, I'm wondering if it'll stick...

We're heading off to Florida tomorrow for a few days - ahh, the humidity. Can't wait. I will pack my Alphasmart and try to survive.

Domestic rearrangements

My big non-writing-related news is that we have bought a new house! Exposed beams in the ceilings! Brand new kitchen and bathrooms! Swimming pool! Tomorrow and Saturday are the termite and house inspections, respectively, and assuming everything goes well we'll be moving in about a month. My husband Micheal wants to get a flat-screen TV, and I get to choose a new washer and dryer. I've already picked them out - they're sitting in my cart on the Home Depot website.

Micheal and I are not hoarders, so I feel like we shouldn't have much to pack. However, I know all kinds of junk will materialize once we get started, and that I'll be assigned sorting duties. 

And in writing-related news, I will have an office at last. Right now our computers and desks and paper-junk are side-by-side in the living room, visible in all their messiness to any guest who walks in the front door. I hate this set-up. Our new house has a third bedroom that we could use as an office, or we could screen off the large alcove off the dining area.

Most importantly, our new house has a linen closet and a cloakroom (well, the latter is also a closet).

One more nice thing: it's raining today, which is always a weird thing in Tucson.

No contract? No peace!

I'm still waiting for my contract from HarperCollins. The hold-up revolves around the Google Partners Program that has been making publishing news lately, and so there needs to be something about it in the contract (as Agent Kristin tells me).  I admit this is all a bit over my head, which of course makes me all the more grateful to have an agent looking out for me.

But until I have that contract in my hot little hands, signed by both parties, I won't be able to convince myself it's all real.

Meanwhile, the sequel is plodding along. I keep putting off sharing it with my critique group (because my first drafts are so awful) but I've done that for long enough. Next time we meet they'll get a couple of new chapters. That is, a couple of fifth-draft chapters.

Living long and prospering

Saw the new Star Trek movie today. Lots of fun, especially the first half as the characters were introduced. Halfway through I suddenly realized - no Scotty! (Yet.)

They have messed with Trek canon just a bit, but this is explained by [minor spoiler alert] a time-traveling accident that means all of the movie's events happen in an alternate timeline. Very convenient when it comes to future movies, because they can basically do what they like.

There was a fair attempt to establish relationships and personalities, but I don't think it went far enough (particularly between the Big Three - Kirk, Spock & McCoy). Still, as an introduction it was fine.

But the funny-faced ewok? BAD.

True crime

I always thought we lived in a nice neighborhood, but tonight just as we left the house to walk the dog, two police cars with lights spinning drew up and parked at each end of our quiet little street, and the police helicopter made a low pass overhead, spotlight blaring.

An ominous voice over the police car's loudspeaker ordered, "Return to your house!"

We did, locked the door, and waited a couple of hours before venturing out again.

I like writing about scary, dangerous situations, especially in the context of a sci-fi neverland, and who doesn't like to read that stuff? Living it - not so much.

Auction time

Go to Brenda Novak's site, where she's holding her annual On-line Auction for Diabetes Research.

I just headed over there to register and browse through the immense collection of offerings. Found some autographed books from one of my husband's favorite authors (which makes it sound like I have more than one husband... I really don't) so I bid on those.