Book 4, the beginning ;-)
September 15th, 2022I’ve made a start on book 4 of my Inverted Frontier series, but right now I find I’m spending a lot of “writing” time doing calculations, like “How far apart are these starships?” and “How long does it take to get a message from one end of the fleet to the other?” It’s frustrating, but I need to block out events on the stage before I get down to the actual writing. In large part, this is because I have no innate sense of the vast distances I’m dealing with. So I force myself to gauge things comparatively — i.e. radius of Earth’s orbit and Saturn’s orbit — and in multiple units: kilometers, astronomical units, light minutes. That helps me to work with the immense scale of space…and then I try to leave most of those numbers out of the actual story. 🙂
On a tangentially related topic…
I have no regrets about being an independent writer/publisher. Seriously, none. But of course there are drawbacks. For example, very few outlets of scale are willing to consider indie titles for review — a problem compounded when the title is third in an ongoing and little known series. So I am deeply grateful to reviewers who do take the time. The latest is booktuber Michael Everts, who has included my latest, NEEDLE in his top 3 books of the year so far! Thank you, Michael!
Click here to see his review (and subscribe to his channel).
Posted on: Thursday, September 15th, 2022 at 10:29 am
Categories: Writing.
Tags: booktuber, Needle
September 21st, 2022 at 12:37 pm
Just want to thank you for the great time and effort put into Inverted Frontiers. I only discovered it recently, to my absolute delight, and I re-read Deception Well and Vast before reading Edges, then re-read Memory as well in expectation of starting Silver, which was a highly enjoyable experience. Memory was my favourite Linda Nagata book until recently, with Edges now having taken that place. I’ll be leaving reviews anywhere I can – already left one on Goodreads, and hopefully can leave one on the Australian version of Amazon once my accumulated purchases amounts to the minimum $50 they require. Will be looking out for other places to review as well.
I appreciate the work of the calculations, because I’m a highly “visual” reader, and like to have an idea of distances to create a setup in my mind for the story to happen in. Even though it’s really hard to grasp the scale of the the distances involved, I like to try. (I think of the outriders in the Dragon fleet as being separated from each other as on the scale of Earth’s solar system, rather than on an interstellar scale). To me this just adds a dimension of realism that makes the story all the more compelling, and again, the work is very much appreciated.
I’m trying to avoid knowing anything about the rest of the story, to avoid spoilers, but I’m really happy there will be a 4th – I was just thinking the other night, “I don’t think 3 will be enough!” Thanks again for all the hard work!