IWSG: Writing Regrets

Welcome to 2022! Here's hoping it's a better year for all of us.

This isn't just the first post of the year, but also the first Insecure Writer's Support Group post for 2022. Learn more about the IWSG on their website, Facebook page, or Twitter feed. 

Our hosts for this month are Erika Beebe, Olga Godim (no link available), Sandra Cox, Sarah Foster, and Chemist Ken.

Our question for this month is on regrets, not resolutions: What's the one thing about your writing career you regret the most? Were you able to overcome it?

I would say my biggest regret is not finishing and publishing more of my work, specifically, Catalyst in the Crucible, which would be the third novel in the science fiction Catalyst Chronicles series. I got stuck on a story set between Twinned Universes and Catalyst in the Crucible, which made it difficult to move forward. (I have actually drafted part of this novel, but it's not finished yet.) Part of the problem with the novel is that although the first two books feature time travel, Catalyst in the Crucible would (a) throw some life-changing problems at my characters and (b) move into a new subgenre of science fiction. I'm not sure how fans would react to a mid-series change.

Of course, as long as I'm still able to write, there's always the possibility that I could go back and finish the story. I think about it occasionally. It's hard to accomplish when there are so many other writing projects I want to work on. (My writing goals for this year are to publish two books in my cozy mystery series and a collection of short stories in my fantasy Season Avatars series--so I can move forward and write more books in that universe.) Perhaps I should say my biggest regret is not being more productive, which would mean the best way to overcome that would be to stop blogging and return to fiction.

What are your writing regrets? Feel free to share them here--or, if you're here for the IWSG, leave a link to your blog post. I should also visit more bloggers this year!

The Catalyst Chronicles Series

 After discussing all the projects I had in various stages of writing, revising, or submitting, I couldn't help thinking of one project that's been on the back burner for a long time: the science fiction Catalyst Chronicles series. Currently published are the novella Lyon's Legacy, a short story called "The Mommy Clone," the novel Twinned Universes, and a pair of short stories published under the title "Seasonal Stories from the Sagan." 

I had planned to write another short story set after Twinned Universes. This short story is tentatively titled "The Unnumbered World" and would focus on a secondary character adapting to events. Coming after that story would be a novel I tentatively call Catalyst in the Crucible, which would be set a few years after "The Unnumbered World" and be a followup to Twinned Universes. 

Although I have partial drafts of both stories, I've been stuck on how to complete them (or how to get through the middle to reach the end). Also, although Lyon's Legacy and Twinned Universes involved time travel, Catalyst in the Crucible won't. A traditional publisher would have a fit if I switched subgenres in the middle of a series, and I'm not sure how marketing this series myself would work. I'd have to hope my readers like the characters as much as I do.

It would be a shame to abandon the Catalyst Chronicles characters completely, but it is difficult juggling multiple projects. Fortunately, I finished the rough draft of a short story last week, and I have to submit to a contest by April 12th. Once that's done, I want to focus on my Season Avatars short story collection and my new cozy mystery series for a while. However, if I get stuck on them, it might be time to revisit some older projects. Ultimately, I need to focus on spending more time on my current and past project before chasing new ones.

Do you have stories that you don't want to trunk but you don't know how to finish? Feel free to discuss them in the comments.

2019 Books and 2020 Goals

Happy New Year and new decade! (Yes, it's OK to start counting a decade from a year ending in "0.") I'm sure you're not reading this exactly at midnight, so I hope you had a chance to recover if you were out celebrating. Due to the holiday, the Insecure Writer's Support Group is posting next week, so in the meantime, let's talk books.

Every six months, I like to review my reading progress, so it's time to look back at my reading in 2019. My original goal was to read 150 books. This year, I came across a few series with fast-paced books that I devoured, so I had no problem meeting this goal. In fact, I increased my goal to 160 books and passed that. I ended up with 167 books, with a couple more in progress to kickstart my 2020 reading. Here's the genre breakdown:

Fantasy: 78
Science Fiction: 37
Other Fiction: 25
Nonfiction: 27

Here are my recommendations:

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
Storm of Locusts
Here and Now and Then
The Murderbot series
The Modern Magick series
This is How You Lose the Time War

And, of course, the collections and anthologies with my own stories: Hidden Histories, Ordinary Wonders, and Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters.

As for 2020 goals, I plan to set the same reading goal of 150 books. My writing plans include finishing up my urban fantasy trilogy and hopefully returning to the Season Avatars and Catalyst Chronicles worlds. Best of luck to you with your goals too!

IWSG: Writing Surprises

It's hard to believe we're in the last full month of summer, isn't it? Welcome to the sweltering month of August. Rather than think about the heat, let's talk about writing and the Insecure Writer's Support Group. You can learn more about them on their website and Facebook page.
This month, our hosts are Renee Scattergood, Sadira Stone, Jacqui Murray, Tamara Narayan, and LG Keltner.

Here's our question for this month: Has your writing ever taken you by surprise? For example, a positive and belated response to a submission you'd forgotten about or an ending you never saw coming?

My characters tend to take me by surprise by going off in directions I hadn't foreseen. For example, in both my Catalyst Chronicles and Season Avatars series, I have secondary characters that I paired up with someone else but then fall in love with the main character. That gets very awkward, especially when the main character doesn't reciprocate. I know how to work it out in both series. In the case of the Catalyst Chronicles series, I've been blocked on a story that comes between Twinned Universes and the next book in the series, which I plan to call Catalyst in the Crucible. At least Catalyst in the Crucible will resolve the romance aspect for some of the characters. (Still not sure if some of the characters will get a match--or if they need one.) You'll have to read the entire Season Avatars series to find out what happens to my characters, but I have further adventures planned for them in the spinoff series.

Have your characters surprised you? Feel free to reply in the comments.

Book and Stocking Stuffer Sale!

Just a reminder that books make great gifts! I have copies of all the books shown here. I'll be happy to autograph them and send them either to you or directly to a recipient. Lyon's Legacy is $5.00; all other novels are $10. If you want to purchase an entire series, it's $12 for the Catalyst Chronicles (Lyon's Legacy and Twinned Universes) or $40 for the Season Avatars (Seasons' Beginnings,Scattered Seasons, Chaos Season, Fifth Season, and Summon the Seasons.)

I also have some pictures of my crocheted characters and lanyards. The characters are unique, but I do have more stock of the lanyards. The pterodactyl is $20, the other crocheted characters are $8, and the lanyards are $5. Cost doesn't include shipping.

If you're interested in any of these items, please e-mail me at
ulbrichalmazanATsbcglobalDOTnet. (Replace the "at" and "dot" with the appropriate symbols.)


 

Hope Never Dies and Real Person Fan Fiction

First of all, I'd like to wish my husband, Eugene, a very happy birthday today! You'll always be my knight in shining armor.

If you loved all the Obama-Biden memes (particularly the ones after the 2016 election such as this one), then you might like Hope Never Dies: An Obama-Biden Mystery, by Andrew Shaffer. I read about this book a few weeks ago and immediately put it on hold at my library. I finally had a chance to read it last week. Basically, after an Amtrak conductor dies in what everyone else assumes to be a suicide or accident, Obama and Biden team up to discover the truth. Biden is the first-person narrator. I've never gotten closer to either man than through the voting machines, so I don't know how accurately they're portrayed. Certainly some of their escapades seem a bit unreal, and other reviews I've read say Obama comes across as more remote than he actually is. Still, the pair do make a fun Holmes-Watson couple.

Since I used to write Beatles fan fiction, I was interested in the real-person fan fiction aspect of this book. In the New York Times article I read about Hope Never Dies, the author relates how he met Biden but didn't tell him about this project. The standard disclaimer at the beginning of the book says that "All characters--including those based on real people, living or dead...are used fictitiously." Celebrities do give up some of their rights to privacy, and we live in an age where YouTube can make someone a celebrity (notorious or not) overnight. I still don't think I'd be too comfortable using a living person as a character. Even if I was inspired by a certain aspect of their personality, I'd rather remix with other traits and disguise them. While I may have been able to get away with using John Lennon as a character in Lyon's Legacy and Twinned Universes, he might have drawn attention from the main characters. If I ever get past the block I have with the next installments of the Catalyst Chronicles, then the story will go in a different direction anyway.

How do you feel about using real people in fiction? Does it matter if they're contemporary or historical? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

IWSG: Names and Titles

Welcome to the June 2018 post for the Insecure Writer's Support Group, a group to support fellow writers. Learn more about the IWSG on their website, Facebook page, and Twitter feed. Our hosts this month are Beverly Stowe McClure, Tyrean Martinson, and Ellen Jacobson.

Our question for this month is What's harder for you to come up with, book titles or character names?

I would say book titles are more difficult for me because I change them more often than I do character names. For example, Twinned Universes was originally called To Thine Own Self Be True, then Across Two Universes (which I decided was too similar to Across the Universe, which was used for a YA SF title before I published my book) before I settled on the final title. Lyon's Legacy was originally titled Move Over Ms. L.,which was the title of a John Lennon song I quoted in an early draft. I ended up writing my own song lyrics instead to avoid legal issues. Short stories can go through several name changes as my understanding of the story evolves during writing and revising.

I generally don't change character names so often because they are core to the character. It does happen, however. In the Catalyst Chronicles series, Paul's full name was originally Paul Richard Lennon Harrison, a reference to the four Beatles. Currently it's just Paul Lyon Harrison. Sometimes I change character names if I decide to change their background. Julia is a secondary character in the Catalyst Chronicles series. I don't remember what her original surname was, but when I realized she was half-Navajo, her last name became Kee. Finally, in my current work in progress, I changed the name of a dryad prince when I realized I'd been naming the other dryads with adjective-noun combinations (Redbark, Longleaf) instead of more traditional human names. Now I just realized another character doesn't follow this naming convention. Back to brainstorming!

How often do you change names or titles? Feel free to share examples in the comments.

Short Story Markets

One of my goals for 2018 was to submit at least three short stories to anthologies, magazines, or e-zines. I'm happy to report I've already reached this goal, though I don't want to say too much about the stories or submissions out of the (admittedly irrational) fear that I'll jinx them. Of course, any stories that do get rejected can be sent to other markets or indie-published. (I will say that two of the stories are set in my Season Avatars and Catalyst Chronicles worlds, so it might make sense to indie-publish them if they get rejected.) In the meantime, I thought I'd discuss briefly how I've been learning about and selecting markets.

I'm a member of the Facebook group Open Call: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Pulp Markets. As the name suggests, it's a place for publishers, editors, and writers to share open calls for the specified markets. Many of the listings that I see are for themed markets that pay subpro rates. If the theme inspires me or aligns with a story world I've already developed, then I'll look at the pay and rights requested. If they seem reasonable, and if there's still enough time before the deadline, then I'll write the story and send it out.

I've been writing and submitting short stories for several reasons, but the two most important ones are to develop my writing craft and to potentially find new readers for my novels. (Working on short stories also allows me to work on other projects besides Dryads to Discover, which has been slow going. I'm not sure if working on other projects is helpful or harmful with this novel.) I would say more, but as I took a break from writing this blog to take care of a few things in the kitchen, I got another idea for a short story. This one's geared toward a professional market that closes March 15th. There are only a couple of openings, so this is very much a long shot. When you're not typing, please keep your fingers crossed for me!

Seasonal Stories from the Sagan

I don't have any new holiday stories this year, so I thought I post about the ones I have set in the Catalyst Chronicles universe. There are two of them published together under the name "Seasonal Stories from the Sagan." They're set during Twinned Universes, so it's best to be familiar with that book before reading them. Here's the universal link, a direct link to Amazon, and blurb if you're interested.

Two short stories set in the science fiction Catalyst Chronicles universe during the time of Twinned Universes. (Warning: contains spoilers for Twinned Universes.) Both storie

"A Solstice in Space"--Cass wants to celebrate the winter solstice with her friends and family, but they don't share her pagan beliefs. Can they create a ceremony that respects everyone's beliefs, or will she have to observe the solstice by herself? And how can you celebrate a solstice when you're not even on a planet?

"Snowballs in Space"--Paul's plans to have a snowball fight with his friends may land him in hot water with the Sagan's officers when he "borrows" a lot of materials to make fake snow.
s take place on the starship Sagan.

Ghost Projects

Recently, my blogger friend Terri Bruce posted on Facebook on how 2017 has been a year for her to complete what she called “ghost projects,” crafts and other things she started a long time ago but was unable to finish until now. It's been a very freeing experience for her to get them done. It got me thinking about the various ghost projects I have in my life.

Many writers have what they refer to as “trunk” stories, stories that never quite came together or were sent out and never found a home. There aren’t any projects from my beginning days as a writer that I want to pull out, but I would like to return to the world of Lyon’s Legacy and Twinned Universes. I’ve started a story currently titled “The Unnumbered World,” about a minor character (Julia) from Twinned Universes and her experiences after the book ends. I’m having trouble defining the conflicts involved, plus she’s half Dine (Navajo), so I’ll have to revisit my research on her culture before I finish her story. I’ve also started a sequel to Twinned Universes, but it’s not a time travel story and would take the series in a completely different direction.

In addition to the Catalyst Chronicles stories, I have a couple of stand-alone short stories that need to be finished. One of them actually did get completed, but after receiving a developmental edit on it, I abandoned it. Maybe it’s time to dig it out and see if I want to revise it or stick with my original plan for that story.

There are several craft projects I need to finish. The highest priority projects are sewing my Jedi robes and finishing a train I started to crochet for Alex when he was a toddler. I also want to make him a Star Wars blanket, and I know that’s going to be a big time commitment. One reason I like crocheting Star Wars amigurumi characters is because they only take a few days to complete. (I also make these for other people, so sometimes there's a deadline to get them done before I see the recipient.) Of course, when you want to do several of them, the time goes up.

I'll mention that I have various projects that need to be done around the house, but I don't want to list them all.

In order to manage my projects, I write out lists of them and assign them priorities. I think to make progress on some of the bigger projects (like the Jedi costume), I need to break them down into smaller, more manageable tasks. Of course, finding time for these projects is also a challenge. I can get an hour or so of crocheting done while my son is doing his homework, but for sewing, I want to set aside a larger chunk of time, and that's harder to do.

How many ghost projects do you have floating around? Do you plan to work on them at some point, or have you given up on them? Feel free to share in the comments.

A Writer's Retreat--From Home

Normally when I take a day off from work to write, I spend the day at home. Last Friday, however, I took the opposite approach and hung out elsewhere. I had to run a couple of errands first, so I didn't get to start as early as I planned. (It didn't help that I had to drive to the other side of town on a wild goose chase, though I picked up something I needed on the way back.) Still, by 10:00 or so I was at my first planned stop of the day: a coffee shop.

I'm currently juggling four different stories, and my goal for Friday was to get past the 10,000 word count for two of them, Fifth Season and "The Unnumbered World." I not only broke that word count for Fifth Season at the coffee shop but went nearly another thousand words past that. I had lunch, did a little window-shopping, and headed to my next destination--the library. It wasn't that close to the coffee shop, but I had a couple of books to return, I wanted to admire the scenery, and it was closer to my son's daycare.

The afternoon session was more difficult than the morning one. Part of the problem was a lack of working power outlets--I had to switch seats three times before I could charge my netbook, which was running low by that point. Although I had some ideas thought out for "The Unnumbered World", the story wound up heading in a different direction and didn't come easily to me. Eventually I did make my goal for that story and switched to the "Young Seasons" short story collection. I was able to make some progress on an untitled short story that I'd been stuck on for a while.

Altogether, my writing total for the day was about 3,600 hundred words, with an additional hundred words or so added before bedtime. Some weekdays I can't even make it to a thousand words, so I was pleased with my productivity. I'll have to try going out again the next time I take a writing day, but hopefully I won't have to move around so much.

Do you prefer writing at home or finding another place to write? What do you look for in a writing spot?

Popcorn Ideas

While I give the first draft of Chaos Season a chance to breathe (or my brain a break from it), I'm working on two shorter works. Or at least I'm trying to. I have been working on "The Unnumbered World," the next story in the Catalyst Chronicles universe, but I haven't done much with Young Seasons, a short story collection featuring the heroines of the Season Avatars series. However, I have already drafted the first chapter of Fifth Season, the next Season Avatars book. But I'm also getting ideas for a holiday Season Avatars story (I'm still not sure where it would fall in the series), an old short story I never finished, and new short stories. (Don't ask me where all these ideas are coming from. Maybe it has to do with my chronic sleep deficit, or maybe my mind is secretly trying to distract me so I don't finish a single story.) All this, especially combined with the rest of my Real Life To-Do List, makes my brain feel like this:



(Thanks to Kristine Katherine Rusch for introducing me to popcorn kittens on her blog.)

I guess I need to jot these ideas down, review my project list and decide what priority they should be. I also need to learn to write faster so I can complete more stories and get them out of my head.

What makes your brain feel like popcorn kittens are bouncing around your skull?