Pluto was never not a planet
The comment section for the ORDERS OF BATTLE giveaway is now closed. We had 133 entries before the deadline of 10AM EST this morning. I will now employ a random number genie to pull ten entries out of the hat. Look for the results tomorrow morning. And if you find yourself on the list of winners, expect an email with instructions. (If you left a valid email, that is.)
On the rare occasion of a neat and cleaned-up desk, here’s a picture. Does this ever scream “science fiction writer at work”, or what?
The eagle-eyed among you will notice that all the gear is Alienware-branded, which means you can probably guess that I occasionally use it for pursuits other than the typing of sentences and paragraphs and so on. That beast of a laptop is a 17-inch AW17R4, which I bought three years ago with all the configurable specs maxed out as far as possible. It still tears through everything I throw at it, so I am guessing it’ll probably serve me a few more years before I’ll think about upgrading. It weighs over ten pounds because it’s built like a tank, so I don’t really use it as a laptop. Instead, it’s sort of a portable desktop with a backup screen and a built-in uninterruptible power supply.
The monitor is a recent addition. It’s a 34-inch ultrawide, which is the berries for editing and revising because it lets me have two full-sized application windows open side by side. It’s also the berries for gaming because a 21:9 display at this size is ludicrously immersive. Once you are used to one, going back to a 16:9 screen feels like wearing blinders.
Peripherals are hardwired because input lag kills, and they’re Alienware as well because I like it when everything matches.
Anyway, that is where the sausage gets made these days. I have a lightweight 2-in-1 Windows laptop for writing on the go, but there isn’t much of that going on at the moment, so I only use it whenever I want to chat with friends or browse the web from the recliner. My writing software is still Scrivener, which has been my main first draft tool ever since I started writing novels. Revisions and edits are done in Microsoft Word, which is the de facto industry standard, but I don’t like doing first drafts in Word for anything longer than a chapter or a short story because Word doesn’t let me organize and reshuffle chapters like Scrivener does. (I’ve been using the Scrivener 3 beta for Windows since the very early versions, and it hasn’t crashed on me once.)
Not in the picture are my corkboard, where I pin index cards with ideas and frequently used reference data, and my whiteboard, which holds my color-coded sticky notes for the individual chapters of the current draft. While those would make interesting visuals, one has a lot of personal information on it and the other would comprehensively spoil CITADEL, the third book in the Palladium Wars.
There you have my view on most days. It’s not a cool Manhattan loft office looking out over 31st Street or anything, but it’s quiet, the coffee is much cheaper, and I have everything I need right where I want it.
I bought these Bose QuietComfort 35 headphones more than four years ago, and I’ve used them almost every day. Now the battery holds a fraction of its original charge, and the earcup cushions have started to separate. I could get new cushions, but the battery isn’t user-replaceable, so it’s probably time to retire these.
When you have a home office in a house with two kids (who have done their schooling online since well before the pandemic) and three dogs (who take special delight in “chasing off” passing trucks on our road with their mighty bark chorus), noise-cancelling headphones are a life- and sanity-saver. I usually listen to video game or movie soundtracks while I write, to get into specific moods for a scene, but sometimes I’ll just turn on the noise-cancelling feature and keep things quiet to shut out the rest of the world. These were an expensive piece of tech, and it irks me a little that I can’t just replace the battery easily, but I am not bitter. I got more than my $300 worth out of these over the last four and a half years.
I’m turning 49 years old today, which is odd because I often feel like I can’t be that old because I’m not that long out of high school. But the calendar says it’s true, so I guess I really am a year away from the half-century mark.
I ran some numbers in my head the other day and realized that today is not only my 49th birthday, but also the point where I’ve spent exactly half my life in the US. (I moved here in late May of 1996, when I was 24 1/2.)
Forty-nine years…don’t they go by in a blink? Except this year, that is. 2020 feels like it’s about six times longer than any other year I can remember in those 49 years.
I already have all the wristwatches I’ll ever need, but this one is kind of calling to me…
In a recent podcast interview, I was asked whether I still write my first drafts longhand. The answer I gave was that the last five or six novels were all written on the computer. (I use Scrivener for putting together my drafts, in case some of you are curious, although I am dabbling with a new app called Ulysses right now, which is a sort of streamlined version of Scrivener that syncs much better between Apple devices.)
I still write longhand all the time—I take pages and pages of notes for the draft in progress, I plot out storylines and chapters, and I put together a bible of sorts for every series that gets more material added to it with every book. Longhand writing is an essential part of my creative process because I think better with a pen in my hand, and I enjoy the act of putting ink to paper. But with two novels per year, I can’t afford to have the indulgence slow me down, and the fact is that it would take me twice as long to write a draft if I did it longhand first because it would have to be transcribed into the computer.
There’s always the option of hiring someone to do the transcription part for me, but that would remove a valuable part from the act, which is the on-the-fly revision I do when I do the transcription myself. What ends up on the PC is a second draft already because I edit the material as I type it up. It makes for better, more streamlined writing in the end. One day, when I don’t have to get out two books a year, I’ll go back to hand-writing my first drafts again. But for now, it’s a choice of a more enjoyable process that yields one novel a year, or a slightly less fun one that gets out two novels a year, and I think most readers would prefer that I stick with Option B for now.
AFTERSHOCKS made the Dragon Awards shortlist in the Military SF category this year. Thanks to whoever voted to get it onto the shortlist! I’ve been nominated before, but I’ve never taken one of those cool trophies home. DragonCon and the awards are virtual this year just like every other con, so I won’t be going to Atlanta in person. But it’s lovely to be making the list, particularly because the Dragon Awards are 100% fan-voted.
On that note, the final vote is open to the public (no DragonCon membership necessary), so anyone can register and cast a ballot. If you have a mind to look at the entries on the shortlist and decide you want to put in a vote for your favorite, here’s the link.
I have decided to become one of those eccentric writers and start handing in all my manuscripts to my editor hand-written in one of these:
I really hope those are the Infinity Stones, and that’s the Time Stone in the center because that’s the one I’d use all the time to extend deadlines.
(That item is available here if you want to be Just Like Me.)
It seems that it’s July already, which means that 2020 is officially halfway over. Let’s hope that the first half of the year wasn’t just a warm-up.
Things are going pretty okay here at the Castle Frostbite Magic Novel Factory. We are still doing the social distancing thing and have been keeping to ourselves since March, and from the encouraging COVID-19 numbers for NH, the vast majority of New Hampshirites (yes, that’s the official term) have done the same. I go out once a week for groceries, we wear masks in public, and playdates/hang-outs with friends are still a no-go. International travel will not be a thing for us in the foreseeable future, which means I won’t be able to see my German family and friends in person this year. But that’s why we have Zoom and Skype and WhatsApp, and those are cheaper than airplane tickets anyway.
I do find it a little harder to concentrate on the work due to all the background anxiety from COVID-19 and the general political situation, but like a smart person once said–the difference between an amateur and a professional is that the pro shows up for work every day regardless of mood. I am on schedule to turn in CITADEL, the third novel in the Palladium Wars series, by the end of July. Then I have a Wild Cards and a Frontlines novelette on my calendar for August and September, and the last three months of this year are blocked off for writing Frontlines #8, to be delivered at the end of December. (I can’t give you a release date for that because I haven’t even started it yet, but if I turn it in on time, I am guessing it will be an end-of-year release for 2021.)
Last month marked the one-year anniversary of my ditching of social media, and I can honestly say that it has been a massive improvement for my productivity and my overall mental state. I can’t even imagine the anxiety levels I’d feel if I still spent a good part of my day cycling through the noise on Twitter and Facebook.
That’s what’s going on here at the Castle—work, work, work, and keeping my head above water in this dumpster fire of a year. Hope you’re all staying safe and sane out there. Wear your masks, keep your distance, and be kind to each other, because there’s more than enough angry noise out there already.
Most of the winners of the give-away have sent me their info to receive the books. I still need Ghost Rider 6, Bobby Williams, and Johanna to check their email and reply to the message they received.
(I sent it to the email you used to register your comments, so if that one isn’t set up to get actual mail, leave me a comment here.)