This post was originally published in my November 19th newsletter. It’s re-posted here with minor changes. If you haven’t yet signed up for my newsletter, you really, really should. It’s fun, it’s once every four weeks (with an occasional special issue), and it’s the best way to stay in touch. Sign up here.

Several readers have asked if I intend to write a sequel to Pacific Storm. More have asked if I mean to write a third book in the Inverted Frontier series. So how does a writer decide what to work on next?

For myself, it’s a balance of obligation, interest, and income. I feel obliged to finish an unfinished story. Edges ended on a cliff hanger, so a sequel was required, and I’d planned to write one anyway. There was never any question about it. But should I write more? That’s where income comes in. There’s not much point in extending a series that isn’t selling. But Inverted Frontier is selling just well enough to justify another novel. (Thank you again to everyone who’s bought the books!)

I’ve actually started to sketch out three more novels to complete the series, though only time, chance, and the marketplace will determine if they’re ever written.

Pacific Storm is different. I meant it to be a stand-alone when I started. It certainly could become a series, though right now sales don’t justify it. I’ll keep the idea on a back burner.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for more near-future fiction beyond Pacific Storm, I’ve got three more novels you might want to try:

The Last Good Man — Robotics, big data, and artificial intelligence fuel the quest of an army veteran as she risks all to learn the truth behind her son’s last mission.

Limit of Vision — Ethics and evolution collide in this tale of runaway biotechnology set in the steamy Mekong Delta.

Tech-Heaven — A political thriller that imagines the rise of nanotechnology as seen through the eyes of a young woman whose life takes an extraordinary turn when she’s widowed and her husband’s body is cryonically frozen against a time when advancing technology will allow his resurrection.

After 17 novels, I ought to have a stable and successful method for the whole novel-writing process. Alas, not true! Every novel is different, and more and more, I’m interested in trying new approaches to planning, plotting, and writing more efficiently.

For Pacific Storm, I decided to experiment with the method John Truby discusses in his book The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller. For details on that, check out this post, written last March after the first draft was done.

Short version of that post: After doing a month of prep work, it took me just over two months to complete a first draft, which is remarkably fast for me.

Ironically, it then took me another 2+ months to finish a second, solid draft that I could show to beta readers and to my freelance editor. After that, I spent another 5+ weeks addressing editorial comments and suggestions. So roughly a month of prep time, and six months of writing and revision — which still isn’t bad, for me.

Will I follow the method again? I think so. I’ve also got a new app called Plottr, that I’m eager to try. It looks like it could be quite helpful in organizing ideas, and creating an outline.

Don’t forget — Pacific Storm is out next week, on October 8. The ebook is available for preorder now.

READ THE OPENING CHAPTERS HERE

I haven’t been posting much here or on Twitter, in part because things at our home are much the same from day to day, so there’s not a lot to report.

After finishing the first draft of the current novel, I took a little over a week off. Before I went back to work on it, I set up a new daily schedule. I still get up around 5:30 or 6am, as I’ve done for many years. After giving the dog a couple of minutes outside, I get to work on the novel, and continue working on it — in several sessions with breaks between — until the early afternoon. This is where my schedule has changed.

Instead of going back to the novel, I try to shift to a publishing chore — contracting for a new book cover, setting up promotion for a sale, prepping my newsletter, writing a blog post(!), or reading an advance copy of someone’s new novel…

(Wait! Reading is not a chore.)

(Oh — and a belated THANK YOU to everyone who helped spread the word about the recent ebook sale. It’s truly appreciated.)

But back to the schedule…

In the late afternoon, I try to exercise or do yard work. Years ago my daughter bought me the soundtrack from the Broadway play Hamilton — which I never listened to…until now! It’s perfect for jogging on the treadmill† because I focus on understanding the lyrics instead of on how much farther I still have to run. It has also inspired me to start listening to the audiobook edition of Ron Chernow’s biography, Alexander Hamilton, which was supposedly an inspiration for the play.

Once a week, Ron and I will go to the post office to check the mail. Every two weeks, we go all the way into town for a supply run. Masks are now mandatory. Each time we’ve gone to town, I’ve been surprised at how many people are out and about, given the lockdown. The parking lots at Lowes and Home Depot are packed! I guess people have decided they might as well do home improvement projects while they’re at home. It’s also true that landscape and construction companies are considered “essential businesses” here and are still allowed to work.

Hawaii still has a comparatively low rate of COVID-19 infection. The governor essentially closed the border by mandating a 14-day quarantine for anyone arriving in the state, so the visitor industry is on hold. Unfortunately, here on Maui we had a large cluster of infections among hospital staff, which is very troubling.

Ron and I are incredibly lucky because we can stay home, and we’re comfortable here, with room to wander, the means to exercise, and a quiet neighborhood around us. I know almost everyone else out there is facing far greater challenges — and knowing that, it’s tempting to rage on politics — the incompetence, bullying, and malice of the current administration, their don’t-give-a-shit behavior, their determination to roll back environmental regulations, and to siphon off taxpayer money for their own benefit and that of their wealthy friends, and all the rest of it. But you hear about that all the time, don’t you? I know my Twitter feed has become a very dark place.

Here’s hoping we throw out the whole cohort of GOP bums in November.

In the meantime, I find myself a bit worried over all those dogs in America who are going to have separation anxiety when their beloved humans finally go back to work…

Please take care of yourself and take care of each other.

† I suspect this treadmill won’t last much longer, as the electronic dashboard has become intermittently non-responsive. Sigh.

Hey, amid these crazy days, I forgot to mention here that I finished a rough first draft of the new novel. I actually finished on March 14, and mentioned it on Twitter, but I wanted to talk a little bit about what was different this time.

First, the draft took me just over two months from start to finish, which is remarkably fast for me. Granted, this is a much shorter novel than my usual. It’s about 63,000 words right now and I expect it to be under 80,000 when I’m done. This is good, because I wanted to try to write a shorter novel. (For comparison, The Red was around 118,000 words.) Also, the story is near future and set on Earth, so I didn’t have to do as much world building as in the Inverted Frontier novels. That let me write faster.

But the main factor that kept me writing at a steady pace was all the prep work I did in December and early January. I wanted to try an entirely new writing method this time around, so I picked up a copy of John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller and worked through all the exercises up to, but not including, the “scene weave.”

By this point, I knew a lot about the story. So instead of the “scene weave,” I put together an event outline, laying things out in rough chapters that included everything I could think of that might happen, including bits of dialog.

I write in Nisus Writer Pro, which lets me maintain a table of contents in the sidebar. Each section was titled with a super-short description of events which then appeared in the sidebar. This let me view the outline in summary form, while also being able to easily move from section to section.

Right now, this novel is written from a single point of view, but I found it helpful to also outline what was happening offscreen, especially with the antagonist, just to keep things clear in my head. I ended up numbering the sections I intended to write, using automatic numbers, while indicating the offscreen sections with an arrow, just to avoid confusion.

When I started writing the actual chapters, I devoted a week just to the opening, wanting to get that right because it sets the mood for the rest of the novel. After that, my goal was to write at least a thousand words a day — and because of the detailed outline, I mostly succeeded. I had a couple of days in the middle when I didn’t make my goal, and near the end things slowed down for a bit. But I re-outlined the final confrontation, and after that, I made swift progress.

There is a lot of revision to do. I intended to take a couple days off to catch up on other obligations before starting the next draft, but two days has turned into five and I still haven’t gone back to it. But I will soon. If not today, then tomorrow.

Okay…it’s been a while since I’ve posted here — but that’s because I’ve been busy writing.

In December and early January I focused on developing a detailed outline for my next novel — a near-future thriller. I started writing it on January 8, and spent the next week working on the opening chapter. Openings are always such a challenge, because so much needs to be accomplished and it all needs to be done in an interesting way.

Starting January 17, I resolved to try to add at least 1,000 words to the manuscript every day — and thanks to the outline, I’ve been able to meet that goal for all but one or two days along the way.

Usually I write in the morning, but today my schedule is reversed and I still owe my thousand words. So it’s back to work for me…

Best wishes for 2020. May it be the year we elect a new president, one who respects the Constitution, civil rights, science, and intellect. And may it be the year in which the world comes together to begin the long offense against global warming.

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Every year I make it a habit to post, on January 1, my writing goals for the coming year. The list keeps me on track throughout the year, and at year’s end, I get to look back and assess what I did with my time. I was far more ambitious when I first started listing my goals. In recent years, I’ve learned to keep the list short, and do-able.

Here goes:

1. WRITE AND FINISH A NEW NOVEL
I’m already outlining this one. It’s a near-future thriller. If it turns out the way I hope, I’ll send it to my agent and see what he thinks. If it doesn’t look like it’ll work for traditional publishing, I’ll publish it myself.

2. WRITE, FINISH, AND PUBLISH A NOVELLA
I’m nervous about this one. I’ve talked for years about writing a novella, but I’ve never done it. I’m going to try again though, because I want to publish something every year — and since I’m going to send the novel in #1 to my agent, that project likely won’t see publication until 2021 or beyond. So I need this novella. It will almost certainly take place in one of my existing story worlds.

And that’s it for my writing goals!

No. Hold on…

I should add one more, to keep the momentum going.

3. START OUTLINING A NEW NOVEL

Okay, that’s it. Those are my plans. What do you have in mind?

Every January I put up a blog post listing my writing goals for the coming year. At the end of the year, I check back to see how I did. That assessment is the subject of this post. Since 2018 turned out to be a disastrous year for meeting deadlines, I decided to go easy on myself in 2019, and as a result I met all my goals!

Here are the specifics, with the goals I set for myself in January in all-caps:

1. PUBLISH THE NEWLY FINISHED NOVEL
This, of course, was Edges, and it was published as planned, on April 2.

2. FINISH THE SEQUEL to the novel in #1
I had only 70,000 words of Silver at this time last year. I put the final polish on this 125,000-word novel in early November.

3. PUBLISH THE SEQUEL
Silver was rushed to publication on November 19, a day I saw as the last viable date to publish before the holidays took over the attention of potential readers. On the downside, it had almost no advance publicity. On the upside, a lot of you have already read it. 😉

4. START A NEW NOVEL
I’m working on a detailed outline of a near-future thriller. For me, that definitely counts as a solid start.

I also had a few goals for the publishing side of the business. I wanted to get a nice book cover done for a two-novel omnibus edition of the Puzzle Land books. I really like those crazy stories and would love to see them get more attention — but I’m still looking for the right artist for the project. My other fantasy novel, The Wild, is presently unpublished. I had hoped to complete a read-through & polish, and then re-publish it, but it was never a priority in a busy year, so maybe in 2020.

I’ll be posting my 2020 goals on January 1. Talk to you then!

We all have different definitions of what science fiction is and what we expect from the genre. Reading is a very personal pastime. Tastes vary widely, and as a writer, I recognize that not everyone is going to like my work.

For me, science fiction is about exploring new ideas and trying to take them in new directions, with adventures along the way. Writers in this genre have always been influenced by the work of others, and have built off that work. But exploring new paths is part of the genre too.

This idea of newness, of novelty, of exploring fresh settings and situations is to me, what science fiction is about. Of course, not all readers feel that way. They have expectations. Over the last six months since Edges was published, it’s garnered a few scathing reviews when it didn’t meet those expectations. Specifically, it didn’t include most of the expected tropes of space opera. Fair enough!

Edges is not about galactic empires, trade networks, fast-paced interstellar wars, planetary rebellions, or humanlike aliens. And it definitely does not include faster-than-light travel. That last idea — no FTL — is kind of the point of the series. The galaxy is big. Really, really big. That’s why the last Nanotech Succession novel is titled Vast.

On the front page of my website I have a quote from long-time reader Larry Clough. It’s a flattering quote, but honestly, I posted it there as a warning, so potential new readers know what they’re getting into.

“Linda Nagata presents a unique world-view. Every one of her books that I have read has been alien and disturbing. I love and identify with the characters, but the situations they inhabit stretch the mind. This is as true of Linda Nagata’s fantasy as her science fiction. Her work is really, really different. And that’s a good thing.”

I am so grateful for readers who can enjoy my weird end of the field, along with all their other favorite forms of science fiction! And thank you for taking the time to recommend my books to others, and for posting your positive reader reviews. Together, you keep me going, and you give me a reason to write the next book. Cheers! 🍻🚀

With some tips on revising a novel
September was an incredibly busy month, entirely focused on finishing the revisions to Silver. I addressed almost all of the comments made by my freelance editor, Judith Tarr, which I think has helped significantly to clarify the story. I rejected a few suggestions for various reasons.

For those of you who are writers, you don’t have to follow every bit of advice your editor gives you. It’s your story. You know what you’re trying to achieve, and it’s your name that goes on the work. So weigh the advice, but if it doesn’t feel right to you, move on. (And don’t argue with your editor about it. 🙂 )

Silver is a fairly complex story. There’s a lot of world-building, along with unusual concepts. It’s not a book you can pick up and understand, without having read Edges first. That said, “complex” should not also mean “confusing” or “redundant.” Part of the revision process involves working toward that goal.

So after finishing the suggested revisions, I began a “read through” aimed at looking at the story as a whole. Starting from page one, I read the entire novel out loud to myself, going through it as quickly as I could while still making corrections. The idea behind a quick read is that I’m more likely to perceive the inconsistencies, while reading aloud lets me hear awkward wording and repeated words. And yes, I found a number of inconsistencies and awkward passages, so that exercise was definitely worth it. I’ll read it at least one more time before calling it “final.”

Several times, when pondering how to deal with an awkward passage, I found the best solution was to shorten it — simply cut back on the explanation. Sometimes, less is more — or anyway, it’s less confusing. 😉

Other than my freelance editor, no one has read Silver. Judy described the novel as “an immersive and absorbing read,” which was wonderful to hear, but doubt is always near the surface for most writers. I needed more feedback. So I recruited three “proofreaders” and sent the manuscript off to them on October 2. I’m anxiously awaiting their thoughts. I don’t see myself doing major revisions at this point — the story is what it is — but if there are tweaks that will further improve the storytelling, I’d like to undertake them. Presuming the feedback is mostly positive, I want to try to publish Silver before the end of November. Wish me luck!

Oh, and sign up for my newsletter if you haven’t already. The signup form is over there in the right-hand column. You’ll receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription. (You won’t be subscribed until you confirm.) If you don’t receive that email, check your spam/promotion folder — and whitelist me!

Whoops. I see it’s been nearly a month since I posted here, but that’s because I’ve been working hard…

Here’s a quick update on Silver:
I received the editorial letter on it at the start of the month, and I just finished my first pass through the edits. Only the hard stuff is left! 🙂 🤔🚀

September 5 Newsletter
My latest newsletter went out last Thursday. If you haven’t subscribed to it yet, please do! Use that form over there in the righthand column of this blog.

Here’s one of the items included in the newsletter:

A Ring-Shaped World

I’ll speak cautiously to avoid any significant spoiler, but towards the end of Edges there is mention of a ring-shaped world, planetary in scale. A few of my longtime readers have already made the connection. This world is the same world featured in my novel Memory.

When I wrote Memory, I thought of it as being apart from the Nanotech books – a separate story world. But as I worked on the new Inverted Frontier series, I realized these two story worlds could overlap in a very interesting way.

Silver is a direct sequel to Edges, but it also works as a sequel to Memory. You don’t need to read Memory to enjoy Silver, but if you like the idea of exploring in this evolving story world, you can drop by my website to learn more about this earlier novel.