How to Stop Worrying and Love the Algorithm - More About Search Engines.

So in last week's post I introduced that idea that the internet has completely changed the way we find information -- from a "push" system where publishers compete to get the attention of the reader, to a "pull" system, where the publisher just sits back and lets the reader pull what they want from the system.

I don't know that I was fully clear about that last part so I will repeat it:

In the new internet paradigm, the information provider (the "seller") sits still and doesn't worry about selling the product. The customer finds you.

The very idea of this brings on panic in many. BUT... BUT... BUT... HOW CAN THEY FIND ME IN THIS HUGE CROWD OF JUNK??!!?? I'm LOST! I'm buried alive! Help help help!

I will start by telling you a joke my father used to tell. I'm really not sure if it's a traditional French Canadian story or if he got it from one of the Quebecois comics he followed. (If so, my guess is Michel Tremblay -- my apologies to Mr. Tremblay if I'm stealing his work....)

There was this baby bird who fell out of his nest on a cold morning. A man walked by and saw him shivering there, literally dying of cold. There was a warm, steaming pile of horse manure nearby, so the guy picked up the bird and stuck him in the manure to keep him warm.

After a little bit, the bird revived, and stuck his head up out of the manure, and started cheeping loudly for food. A cat heard the sound, and snatched the bird up and ate it.

There are three lessons to be learned from this story:

1.) If someone dumps you into a pile of merde, it may be for your own good.
2.) If someone snatches you out of the merde it isn't always to your benefit.
3.) If you're up to your beak in merde for goodness sake, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT.

Which is my way of saying, if you find yourself swimming in the cosmic amount of doo-doo out there on the internet (or on Amazon) you don't need to panic and start screaming.

Sit back and enjoy yourself, because Google and Amazon have your back.

Yes, there are things you can do to help Google and Amazon do the job of helping customers find you. Some of those things are even promotional -- but for the most part, it's just a matter of going about your routine in ways that their algorithms can track and measure. (And also, of course, producing quality work. Just remember that to Google, every comment or forum posting is considered your "work.")

I'm going to try to give you a simplified version of what happens behind the scenes. This doesn't really talk about the user experience or anything going on at the surface, so I'm sorry if it's not clear how this benefits you. You're going to have to get your mind around how it works before you can understand the rest.

I'll talk mainly about Google here, partly because Google is a little simpler in terms of output, and partly because it's actually more important than Amazon -- and they're interactive with each other. (But that aspect is for another post.)

How does Google decide what results to give to someone doing a search? How do they filter out the junk which is screaming for attention with keywords and all those marketing tricks? How do they lead the searcher to YOU?

First, they examine everything going on out there in the web. They have computers gathering data about which pages link to which other pages, and whether users who search for a particular word respond well to those pages; whether they stay and read and click around the site, or if they hit the back button and keep looking.

But the biggest thing is the links. Google ranks each page with a kind of status or power -- which we sometimes call "Google Juice." If Google judges a site to have a high status, then not only will that site come out higher in search, but if the site links to any other page, those other pages will gain points from being associated with that powerful site.

So... here's an example I gave a while ago to Dean Wesley Smith:

1.) Dean's blog has a lot of juice for a couple of reasons all by itself. It has been around for a while, he posts regularly, and he gets a lot of traffic. Google also measures the "quality" of his content, based on measures they mostly keep secret, but we know they involve things like how long his posts are; whether they have a natural pattern of word use, or are just packed with keywords; whether the posts are consistent in terms of subject matter; whether it's all original content. It will also be judges on things like the fact that his visitors engage in long, exciting discussions in the comments. There is no spam on the site or in the comments. Nothing is forced, or machine leveraged -- the site is active in things that real live genuine readers do.

Google likes real live genuine readers.

2.) Google also measures the number of sites linking to Dean's blog, what are called "backlinks." The backlinks to his blog are also of high quality. He announces some posts on Twitter and such, but he doesn't spam or go around commenting on other people's blogs with "Nice post, visit my site." The sites linking to his may be lower status sites like mine, or high powered sites like Joe Konrath's -- but they all have good Google rankings for genuine content. That is, I may not be a high powered blogger, but I'm clearly not a link farm, I score well on the "quality" measures.

Furthermore, both Konrath and I benefit from linking to Dean, and not having links to spam sites, and also because there are legit links to our blogs from his. And as the low person on the totem pole, I benefit the most.

3.) Dean, Konrath and I -- and a bunch of other bloggers who are similarly linked -- are all writers, and write a lot about books and publishing, and genre fiction. So because we are already interconnected AND we have the same sort of readers, Google gives us all extra points in search on words related to our common topics. (And sometimes extra points for readers with a history of looking for such topics.)

4.) This is the magic part -- because of all the above associations, anything related to any of us becomes slightly related to the others. So that means anything Dean mentions on his blog gets a slight association with my blog and Konrath's blogs even if we don't talk about it -- and vice versa. And that sometimes even includes connections which don't appear on the web at all -- connections from real life.

So imagine this: Dean's wife Kris writes many books under pseudonyms, and neither she nor Dean reveal every pseudonym they write under. Say neither of them have ever mentioned a particular book on their websites, but at a Clarion reunion he happened to mention the title of one of Kris' books to me. I didn't know it was written by Kris, but I looked it up, and ended up talking about it on my blog.

Result? Without any promotional effort on the part of any of us — especially not Kris — and without my mentioning her name either, her book just got more likely to come up in searches by people who like her writing. That book benefits a little bit from any credibility Dean has, I have, and Konrath has. (And ironically, some of the credibility that I give to that book comes to me because of my indirect association with her, via Dean.)

So in the end, her book becomes associated with her, indirectly, even though nobody knows she wrote it. And from now on, anything she does will, in some miniscule way, promote that book nobody knows she wrote.

There's a reason why it's called the world wide WEB. It's all interconnected, and Google uses it all.

And that's just a really tiny part of it all.

No amount of promotion or money can fake the power in the huge amount of data points Google has on offer. It’s all just genuine, normal activity of people who are interested in the content, not the status.

That’s what’s coming to the publishing world.

So what's an unknown writer to do?

First you recognize that you aren't completely unknown. Google knows who you are. That may be a little scary, but that's the world we live in. The connections you need -- tiny ones -- are already there. You've got to build on them. While promotional activity might get some immediate attention, remember that's not where the Google juice comes from. Google won't make much use of it to help people find you. The juice will come from natural interactions, and quality content, and persistence.

And persistence may be your best leverage -- just stick around long enough.

So, remember: don't start yelling because you feel lost in a pile of crap. Google and Amazon both know where you are, and they will look after you.

Just learn to stop worrying and love the algorithm.

I hope I haven't confused anyone. I hope to clarify things in future posts -- especially to show how this works on the customer's end. Please ask questions in the comments if you need something clarified.

Next week we'll talk about how readers find books these days.

See you in the funny papers.

Clarion Dare Goals, and Thoughts On Writing Priorities

(Note: because of the big drag on my time that fell in the middle of this Write-A-Thon, I'm giving myself some extra time to meet these goals -- 50 days. I'll be calling it done at midnight on the 14th of August.)

The Clarion Write-A-Thon is 42 days long. You have to apply to participate, and of course, it's a fund raising event. More about Clarion and the great work they do next Wednesday.

I would like to set an uber-ambitious goal, but I have a lot of editing to do in this same period of time, so I need to be reasonable. Therefore I'm going for 50k words total. Not only is it a good goal, but it's the default setting on the NaNoWriMo sidebar widget I use to track progress.

GOAL: More than 50,000 words (approx 1200 words a day) on the following projects:

• Finish The Man Who Did Too Much as soon as possible and get it to alpha/beta readers.
• Write some short mystery stories to submit to Janet Hutchings at EQMM, because she said she wanted to see more of my work.
• I have a bunch of Mick and Casey Novellas and Novelettes which are more than half done... must FINISH the darned things, and publish them.
• I need microfiction and flash stories for my blog's Sunday Story feature. (Note, this one may change, I'm thinking of posting chapters of The Misplaced Hero this fall, and using the story notes to continue the "blogging my progress" series about how I create it.)
  

Of course, I will continue to do my artwork -- but I can confine most of that to the work I'm doing for the Day Job, with some set aside time for the "Creating a Cover" series in my off-hours.

For the duration of the Dare (mid-August) I'll be reporting on progress of these dares on Saturdays and Wednesdays.

Some thoughts on long term goals:

I also want to mention my latest thinking in terms of my longer term goals. You could call these the goals behind the goals.

At the moment I have two conflicting priorities:

*Body of Work. I need to have multiple books in each of my genres and series. That's the foundation of a writing career. If someone discovers a book of mine, there should be other books for them to go to right away -- and in the same series or genre.

*Income streams. Aside from a Day Job, income can trickle in from interest on savings, dividends, odd jobs, and of course, you get income from books -- except for one thing. The books have to be published to become an income stream.

That's where the conflict comes in.

Priority One is all about larger projects which take a long time. It's also about quality and branding, and doign things right. These projects include things like planning out sequels several books in advance and getting them out there, and filling out the selection of each genre.

Priority Two, on the other hand, favors smaller projects which can get out there quickly. While overall success may depend on branding and consistency, the emphasis in any passive income plan is on diversity and volume, and doing things now.

These projects could involve things not related to fiction writing at all. It used to involve my SEO articles (may eHow rest in peace), and t-shirts at Printfection, and script analysis. Currently it involves short fiction and novellas -- and submitting them to commercial magazines, as well as self-publishing. It also includes some ideas I have for non-fiction. For instance, I used to run a blog called Reading Chinese Menus, and I am thinking of collecting the existing posts and offering them as a cheap little e-booklet. Maybe adding a little more material to flesh it out, but mostly just seeing if it flies. And if it does fly, I would have to consider reviving the blog. I could also do a collection of some of Daring Novelist posts.

Although there is a lot more on my plate than that, I really have to make major progress on these two goals in the next two years. So how do you balance the conflict?

I think you have to look at it like you're badly in debt. You have fifty credit cards, student loans, an underwater mortgage, and two sets of car payments, and you have to save for your kid's college, and your retirement and also get some serious dental work done. What do you do?

Now, the usual, logical way of doing this is to do the math and try to pay off the biggest debt with the highest interest first. However, Dave Ramsey, the personal finance guru, has a concept called the "Debt Snowball."

One of the big problems people have with debt is being overwhelmed. No matter how much they do, nothing ever seems to get better. They receive bill after bill. (Doesn't that sound like how it feels to have too much work on your plate as well?) His advice is to stop worrying about what is smartest in terms of the math. You've got to make progress. So the first thing you do is to go after the things you can get done quickly. If you only owe a small amount on your student loans, then it doesn't matter if that's your lowest interest loan. If you were to just pay the minimum on everything else, you could pay the sucker off now.

One down. Out of your hair. Put all that energy into paying off the next easiest one. Bam. Gone. Fewer bills to worry about. A sense of accomplishment. With each bill out of your hair, you have more money -- and more energy -- to deal with the bigger problems.

So for a writer with a lot of projects and ideas and work, the first thing is to create a kind of "writing snowball" to create your own momentum. Prioritize first on what you can get off your plate.

Sure, some of my smaller income stream projects fit that bill, but so do several of my partially done novels. The Man Who Did Too Much is probably three-quarters done if I go by word count. I have a fantasy novel, Moon Child: Ready Or Not, which just needs some editing. That one will take less time than the Chinese Menus booklet will.

So for summer, the goals of the Clarion Dare (plus the editing of Moon Child) are the first leg of this Snowball Plan. That's two novels off my plate, and a bunch of short fiction to submit to various magazines, or publish.

I may not get back on my goal to publish 12 works this year until fall (no, I haven't forgotten that goal) but I hope to make up the difference once summer is over.

The next set of low-hanging fruit may be some non-fiction. I'll probably be struggling to keep up with the blog again by the end of the dare, so I will probabably take a little time to write up a bunch of posts for fall. And I'll probably do the Chinese Menus thing, and maybe some collections from this blog.

I hope that by October, though, I'll be able to get back onto major projects.

Tomorrow, a little more about how search engines work, and Why You Should Stop Worrying and Love the Algorithm.

See you in the funny papers.

Creating a Cover: Gesture Drawings

I love working with art on the computer. The things you can do with color and transformations and editing and polishing and just plain playing around is magnificent. And the tools you can combine! You can use chalk and watercolor at the same time.

However, I can't sketch on a computer. Even with a Wacom tablet, I have proportion problems. For most people that issue goes away as they get used to the tablet, but I honestly think I have an image processing issue in my brain. Or it could just be a visual tracking problem. (I can't tell right from left to save my life, AND I can't watch 3-D movies for more than about a half hour at a time, because my right eye is not used to doing equal work with the left.) When you work with a digital tablet, you draw in one place while looking in another. The proportions change as you zoom in and out, and if you shift the tablet to tilt a tiny bit in one direction or other, your brain has to reprocess and readjust the direction you imagine the lines are going.

So while I can edit and polish and do all sorts of spiffy things on the computer, I can't sketch. There are too many constant adjustments for my poor silly brain to deal with. Sure I always improve with practice, which is one reason I will be spending the summer learning more about Corel Painter. (This is one thing I never mastered on paper anyway -- painting. I do pencil. I love pencil. But for painting, I'd rather use a computer because of that cool factor of being able to paint in all sorts of media at once.)

When it comes to drawing people, especially people for exciting adventure covers, there is one kind of sketching which is critical to getting started. And I finally realized that was the step which was missing when I was trying to work on the computer: it's called the gesture drawing. You do quick shape sketches which get the proportions right, and also give you that lively feel of movement.

You can't get that in tracing or replicating a photograph. A photograph is about the surface detail. A gesture drawing is about the bones and muscle.

Further below, you'll see the gesture drawings I did on the day I was driving past Staples and realized I needed something to sketch on -- and I stopped in and bought a bunch of 8 x 5 cards. That allowed me to sketch up elements to fill that square in the middle of my design. If you remember from last week's post, I decided on a design with a frame around and illustration -- here are the period covers I am using as inspiration for layout with my new cover sketch in the middle.


I had a lot of ideas that day, but knew the foundation of the image would be the figure of the lonely college student. It isn't a detailed image (and probably won't be) but it evokes a modern sense of alienation. Like a problem novel of the sixties.

From there, I had several ideas about what surrounds him. I could just have that figure on a gradation background like the Sandeman ad, but I also want to evoke the heroic aspect -- so should have shadowy adventures going on in the background? Alex standing in water, and before him a fortress, and a figure climbing the walls or fighting bad guys or...?

Once I started sketching the action poses, I realized that a ghostly image of a larger swashbuckling hero which stands around and above Alex just might be the right image.


Things which you sketch don't always translate well into a finished work. Details you imagine will stand out, end up disappearing when you polish it, etc. But I think I have a concept to work with.

This is a LOT of work for a 99 cent novelette. That's why I'm thinking of designing this as the "anthology" version. I will probably use it for each of the novelettes which make up the collection, but I might shrink the image and add a large "BOOK 1" to the cover or do something to differentiate each part. The other thing I could do is to get the human figures right, and then just change the setting in each one.

Update: since I first wrote this post, I have had the chance to do more sketching, and I also have acquired my own copy of Corel Painter. I have gotten a lot better at sketching on computer, and I'll talk more about this later when we get into the illustration phase. (See the samples at the bottom of the post.)

However, next week we're going to talk about Photoshop and one of the more technical aspects of breaking down my preliminary sketch so I can plan out how I want to create the various parts and put them together. It's kind of like outlining, only I use Photoshop "layers" to sort out the pieces. (But first a side note about Photoshop Layers for those who might want a little more orientation.)



See you in the funny papers.

Fun Web Tools for Writers

I nearly forgot I was going to post these links tonight -- I've been having fun writing my story for a flash fiction anthology based on the phrase "Pink Snowbunnies will Ski in Hell!" I decided to use George and Karla. (And I'm thinking this could be the opening for a future adventure for them....)

Also wrote another mini-microfiction story today for a contest on Janet Reid's blog. It's a quickie, 24-hour 100 word story contest, based on a list of words. Lots of fun. Go read the entries in the comments.

The web tools I'm going to tell you about are great for generating your own story contests like Janet's. Restrictions like a list of random words are great creativity stimulators. So check out these links to help you find some ideas:

The Random Word Generator and Random Phrase Generator give you a set of words to generate ideas from. This site has a couple of different versions of the word generator, one completely random, and the other lets you set some criteria -- like whether you're looking for a noun, or whether you want unusual words or very common ones. (Hint, the common ones give you the most creative bang for your buck.) This site also has a name generator, based on census data.

The Random Logline Generator is mostly silly, but I think it also gives good prompts for writing simple scenes and exercises. Maybe great for microfiction too.

For something a little more complicated, why not go for an I Ching reading for your characters? What should they do? Ask a question, have the I Ching Online toss the coins and give you a reading.

Finally here are a couple of widgets I use in my own sidebar:

Random.org has a number of widgets and generators for random numbers and choices. I have their basic randomizer in my sidebar. I find it useful for things like if I have five options, or a dozen ideas, and I assign each option a number and have the randomizer choose.

The NaNoWriMo Progress Bar is useful for showing your progress when you're in a dare. You plug in what your goal is (it defaults to 50,000 words) and how much you've written and it creates a little progress bar which shows the percent of progress toward your goal. Unfortunately, you have to go to the site every time you update, because the site just generates some html that draws the image. The widget doesn't include the capability of just plugging in the data on your website.

Tomorrow, I'll post more in the "Creating a Cover" series, and then for Wednesday, I'll post about the Clarion Write-A-Thon and my goals for it.

Update and Posting Schedule for the Week

I currently have way too much on my plate. But it's summer, and my Day Job hours are shorter, and better yet, my main project for the semester on the Day Job is to learn Corel Painter, which fits nicely with my illustration goals.

I threw the coins on this nifty I Ching site, and asked it what I should work on next. It came back to me with Wei Chi: Tasks Yet To Be Completed! Whoa! It told me that I should cross the river like a man, and not like a young fox which gets its tail wet - which the site interpreted to mean that I should finsh what I've started and take my time and not rush to do too much.

The problem is that I've already started too much. But it still gives me an idea of what to put aside. For instance, I just got a nice rejection from Janet Hutchings at Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, telling me that she likes my writing and wants to see more. At the moment, I don't have anything in the pipeline for her, so a part of me wants to drop everything and write a bunch of short mysteries.

Can't do that.

As a matter of fact, I have decided to skip the Story Sundays for the rest of June to help myself catch up. Then I'll probably do some excerpts from whatever I'm working on in the Dare for all of July, because....

From June 26 through August 6, the Dare Gets Serious!

This is the period of the Clarion fund-raising Write-A-Thon. I encourage you all to join in, as a sponsor or a writer (or both!) The money goes to pay scholarships for the Clarion participants. I'll talk more about this on Wednesday, when I go into my goals more fully.

Up until Wednesday, my goal is to get organized and set priorities.

This Week's Posting Schedule:

• Sunday and Monday: skipping the story and notes. Instead I'll post some links to interesting stories or news from this week. Also some sites with intersting idea generation capabilities. And maybe pictures and some haiku. (Did I mention I used to write a lot of haiku?)
• Tuesday: Creating a Cover: Gesture Drawings (Sketches)
• Wednesday: The Clarion Write-A-Thon and my goals for summer.
• Thursday: Another SEO article about how Google and Amazon do the heavy lifting for us on marketing.
• Friday: Another interview about a secondary character. I need to contact the authors to figure out who.

By that time I should have things more under control. (One thing I'm going to do for the duration of the Clarion Dare, though, is reserve Wednesdays for a second weekly update so I can keep focused on the dare.)

See you in the funny papers.

Character Friday: Chris Truscott

This week, Chris Truscott is going to tell us about Holly, a one-night stand to took a larger role than expected.

Camille: First, tell us a little about Holly.

Chris: In Stumbling Forward, Holly's a 23-year-old recent graduate of the University of Minnesota who's trying to break into liberal-progressive campaign politics. This is much to the chagrin of her wealthy and conservative parents in the suburbs, who would prefer to see her get married and start raising a family--like her two older sisters. A bit of a party girl, certainly, Holly's also intensely loyal to those around her and very good at the jobs she manages to land.

Camille: What made you create her?

Chris: Holly was created as barely a step above an "extra." She made what was supposed to be her first and only appearance in the very first scene of the first chapter in Stumbling Forward. She was simply a one-night stand the main character was trying to get rid of one morning. She didn’t even have a last name until I decided to bring her back toward the middle of the book—crossing paths again with the male lead.

Camille: What makes Holly special to you?

Chris: I like this character a lot because she was an accident—a complete and total fluke. (My female lead was also an accident, meant only to be a secondary character before she stole the show in the first few chapters.) Holly is a free-spirit in a political world that produces a lot of people who stick to convention. She's not afraid to be who she is, to have fun and to say what she thinks.

Camille: Do you have more planned for her?

Chris: Yes. Holly evolved from an “extra” at the beginning of Stumbling Forward to a minor character in the middle and a solid supporting character at the end. In the final four books of the series—including the recently published A Referendum on Conscience—Holly returns as a main character. (And she’s a devoted friend to the man from her initial scene and to his new love interest. She’s a supportive and grounding force in both of their lives.)

You can find Holly in two of Chris Truscott's books:

Stumbling Forward: As Election Day nears, Clarissa Rogers, a young idealist, is hit with the reality that winning may not be the best thing. Along the way, she captivates a womanizing political consultant, draws the attention of people who could change the world, and emerges as the one person who might actually be able to send an egotistical, opportunistic and unqualified candidate to Congress.

A Referendum on Conscience: A terrorist attack. A vote against a popular war. A re-election campaign. Rebecca McElroy is looking forward to retiring as she nears the end of her second term in the U.S. Senate. Then terrorists launch a devastating attack on Washington that drives the country into a bloody war and changes everything for the pacifist senator from Minnesota.

Tales of My Travels

I had a great trip Down East. (Well, technically we didn't get far enough North to be 'down' -- which is the north eastern coast Maine. "Down" referring to down wind. Maine is a maritime sorta place.) Took over a thousand pictures, mostly of rocks and water, but also of people walking (you know, for drawing models).

Detroit Metro - The Journey of a Million Steps

If you're traveling with someone in a wheelchair with at stop over at Detroit Metro, always ask for help even if you have your own chair and a native bearer (me). It's one very long schlep from incoming to outgoing gates, involving multiple levels and hidden elevators and lots and lots of distance. Also, if you are doing it on your own, and you use the "people mover" - a wheelchair will usually roll right off just fine, but if it doesn't, the person behind the chair has to have hands free and be ready to push. Just sayin'.

Flying in To La Guardia

You can see the Statue of Liberty (a little green/blue dot on top of a pedestal), as you fly over Canarsie. Also the Brooklyn Bridge, and those other bridges which look familiar but you don't know what they're called. And the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building. And also a funny-looking gothic black building that's a little bit up town from them. (Probably the Radiator Building.)

New Jersey - Fresh Mozz and Some Good Tacos Too.

Great informal Italian food in Joisy, both coming and going. I still think the best meal of the trip was the stuff we grabbed at the deli - incredibly fresh mozzarella (made hourly), sopressatta and bread. Also had some rather good tacos in Hoboken at a little restaurant called The Taco Truck. Almost the real thing like you'd get in L.A., except that they didn't get the concept of salsa on the side.

Manhattan - Hear the Beat of Dancing Feet

Forty-second street isn't as naughty and bawdy as it once was, but it is certainly sporty and gaudy. Theaters sparkling everywhere. And cops everywhere hanging out playing with their iPhones. Had really great Venetian food just around the corner from the theater. (Went to see The Importance of Being Earnest, and will talk a little about it later, since the character of Lady Bracknell is relevant to a post I want to make about bossy characters.)

Connecticut -- Where the Burgers Wear TuTus

Paused briefly in Connecticutt where we had old-fashioned diner food around the corner from where travelling companion grew up. The place was famous for the crisped cheese which skirts the burger. Also hand dipped ice cream. And I wish I had known that they mixed their own pop by hand from syrup and soda at the fountain. If I had known, I wouldn't have ordered a diet cola. (Missed opportunites!)

Boston -- The Land of the Bean and the Cod

...where the Lowells speak only to Cabots and the Cabots speak only to God! (Which little poem brought to me the only bit of work I did on the trip: I have been looking for a properly patrician last name for a character, and realized that there could be no more patrician Amerian name than Cabot. Especially if you need a name which isn't Dutch.)

There are no lines painted on roads in Boston, you make up your own lanes. The highways wind around in tunnels under the city. The curbs are made out of granite. We went shopping at Fanieul Hall, took pictures of the Old State House where the Boston Massacre took place. Ate seafood at the longest continuously running restaurant in America. We also had great dim sum for breakfast, and went to the art museum -- which may deserve it's own post sometime.

We May Ride Forever On The Streets of Boston

The concierge gave us bad directions, and we ended up driving in circles for a bit before we just took fate into our own hands and headed for the road we thought we needed to be on. (In the meantime, I found myself singing the MTA song for much of the next leg of the trip.)

Maine -- and Lobstah Rolls at Last!

After setting foot briefly in New Hampshire at a rest stop, we finally got to Maine and stopped at Bob's Clam Hut where I at last got my first bite of a Lobster Roll. Oy it was good. (And I'm told it was unusually good -- as it was all Lobster. No celery filler, and only enough mayo to moisten.)

From there we proceded to bump around the city of Portland (which is almost handicapper accessable -- though all uphill streets are still very old granite cobblestone.) And we also proceeded to take pictures of rocks and water and more rocks and more water. And food and rocks and water. Also, breakfast and more seafood. Forgot to take pictures of the seafood, but this breakfast was, uh, well let's just say the scale doesn't do it justice. That pancake was larger than most dinner plates. (And here I thought one pancake would not be enough.)

Then we took more pictures of rocks and water, and drove back to Jersey for more great Italian food.

LaGuardia -- The Miracle of the Sausages

Under normal circumstances, frozen raw Italian sausage will make it from New Jersey to Lansing, Michigan still mostly frozen if properly packed in a carry on bag.

Under miraculous conditions, it will make it to the tarmac at LaGuardia where the pilot announces engine trouble and goes back to the gate, and everybody waits on the plane while the engineers do some troubleshooting and then finally give up and have everybody deplane, except if you're the one with the wheelchair, you're last off and can't get a good seat on a remaining flight... but at LaGuardia the employees fight to push wheelchairs, and so we got lots of service and finally got booked on flights the next day, and given a hotel room and inadequate meal vouchers, and a ride to the hotel, where there's a refrigerator with a FREEZER in the room.

Yes, the real Italian sausages made it back to Lansing still semi-frozen even after a particularly long layover the next day.

So now I'm home but still discombobulated. Tomorrow I'll post another Interview about secondary characters -- but I haven't even got the edits to the author yet.

See you in the funny papers.

Search Engines, eHow, and Fiction Writing

A month or so ago Demand Media -- a publisher of internet articles -- decided to close down one of their major libraries, eHow, for good.

I used to write for eHow, and it has been a nice, steady source of income for me. I am very sorry to see that income go. They have offered me slightly more than a half-year's take to buy my articles outright. I accepted. Unlike so many others, I never used these articles any place else, and I don't really see reusing them myself for that kind of income.

The interesting thing, for me, was that over the past few months I have been making a LOT more money. In the meantime, Demand Media just announced that they had a big drop in traffic/income over that same period, because of Google's new search algorithm which punishes poor content and rewards quality content. Hmmm. eHow was losing money for poor content on most of their articles, but I was making more....I guess I had quality content.

This is important and relevant to fiction, folks. Writers, readers, indie, traditional. It's more important to ebooks than to physical books, but even physical books are affected.

So listen up:

Google's goal has always been to reward quality content, and they were constantly improving their algorithms long before the upgrade which killed eHow.

When I was writing for eHow, I met many writers who worked hard to game the system. They tended to make more money at first, and then the Google would upgrade and the money would stop. And those writers would get really mad and they'd blame everyone in the universe. And they'd get especially mad at those who had been telling them all along to stop playing games and just write good articles.

Meanwhile, those who stuck with writing quality material, didn't market, and didn't play games, continued with their slow growth whenever Google upgraded the system.

Here's the thing: it's extremely important to Google to serve the user, they do everything in their power to cut the influence of any marketing efforts or attempts to game the system. The algorithm is designed to filter out hype, and give the user exactly the genuine results he or she is looking for.

This is sometimes called a "pull" system, where the system isn't trying to 'sell' anything, but rather just help the user pull what he or she needs from the system. It's designed for situations like the web, where there is an almost infinite amount of content.

Just a few years ago, this had little relevance to fiction publishing. A novel found its way into a reader's hands by a whole different paradigm -- "push" marketing.

With push marketing, the system decides what it wants to sell. For instance, because publishing paper books is so complicated and expensive, publishers and booksellers made an effort to decide which titles to invest in. They had to take a gamble on this well ahead of demand. Then they would push those titles out to the shelves where the readers would find them.

Brick and mortar bookstores have to work this way, because leaving things to chance is just too expensive. They choose, and the readers pick among the bookseller's choices. The user finds books by going to a certain place and accepting or rejecting what is there.

You didn't have to worry about quality in this old system. There are lots of people making judgment calls along along the way. Some crap might get through, but only if there was some other reason the customer might want the product. (Like being on a controversial topic, or it was written by a celebrity.) But for the most part, sheer garbage did not make it through the first step.

This is not true of SEO articles, or websites or blogs. Out on the internet there are companies with servers programmed to produce nonsense pages by the thousands. So when I say there is sheer garbage, I don't just mean stupid or ignorant -- I mean very literally the equivalent of a million monkeys with typewriters, and none of them are typing up Hamlet. Pure random, computer-generated junk.

On top of that there's spam, and there are idiots and nutcases, and there are slanderous sites, and criminal sites.

And most of the internet -- that is most of the websites out there -- is made up of this crap. I mean, you may think you've come across too many of them, but trust me, Google has kept all but a tiny trickle of them away from most users. They're out there, but nobody can find them.

So you could say Google and its algorithms work as a gatekeeper just like the old publishing system did... except that it does it in a completely different way. The difference is: Google does not reject sites. (Except for the criminal and pure spam ones, which they blacklist.) Google makes everything available -- everything -- and lets the user "pull" what he or she wants out of the collection.

It's hard for old-school people to get their heads around this. Both Google and Amazon are focused on helping the user find what they want. I'll repeat that: They are not focused on giving the reader the best, they're focused on giving the reader what they want. That means they even want that low-ranked one-in-a-bazillion book, website or article to be found. No one is lost in the storm, even though it's a really big storm.

However, even though everything is available, not everything is going to be "pulled" out of the crowd.

And this is where fiction writers should take a lesson from those eHow writers. See, right now, indie writers in particular (though I also see traditional writers jumping on the bandwagon) are all hyped up about gaming the system. You hear them talking about raising their rank. You see them talk about clicking on each other's "like" buttons and tags and how to get more reviews.

And you even hear the respected and successful gurus talking about it and encouraging some of it. This is EXACTLY like what happens in SEO writing circles. "You can game the system by playing this numbers game," says the guru. "That's how it is supposed to work so don't worry, it's not unethical." And, they're right that it's not necessarily unethical. It does work for a while...until too many people are doing it, and then Google (or Amazon) changes the algorithm. Or changes the rules.

And then people yell and cry and wonder what is wrong because their sales aren't doing what they used to.

It's not evil to use the system to your advantage. If that's how the system is set up, it's only fair. But you have to recognize that by doing it, you create a situation where they have to change the system. I guarantee it, in this new paradigm, if you find something to promote your book which has nothing to do with how good the book itself is, that method will stop working after a while.

And sometimes the change will hurt more than people deserve. Google changed its algorithm because of all the manipulations, and that didn't just hurt those who had bad articles. It also hurt those with good articles, who used manipulative techniques to promote them. And that brought down eHow for everyone, including those who didn't game the system at all. I'm really sorry to see that monthly income go.

Now, let's be clear: Amazon is not eHow. The world's largest bookseller doesn't just benefit from an algorithm; Amazon IS the algorithm. Amazon's in control, so when people game the system, they can just change the system. Which will hurt those play games, but not those who don't. At least not so much.

Amazon's system -- the system that allows users to find exactly what they want, including your book among the millions -- is dependent on GOOD GENUINE USER DATA. Any time you game the system -- via tagging or "liking" books you haven't even read -- you weaken that data, and make the algorithm less effective.

Remember, this isn't a push system, it's a pull system.

A pull system gives an advantage to the smaller and midlist book by matching them with the niche groups that love them. It can't make that match if the data is cloudy.

All of publishing is now moving into a search engine world -- the pull world. The way to survive in that world is to stop playing games and serve the reader. That's what those algorithms are looking for. That's what every single tweak is designed to do better. The reader finds you, not the other way around.

Next week I'll try to give you the big picture on how these algorithms work, how they actually do help the reader find you, and do the heavy lifting for both reader and writer... and how they define "quality."

Creating a Cover: Finding Models

This is the first of a series of posts covering my process in creating a new cover -- ranging from thoughts about brand and inventing a look, to some notes and tips on the practical process. (See the intro to the series here.)

I may be out to build my own brand and style, but I'm not about to reinvent the wheel. I need to use motifs and a general look which tell the reader a little about my story.

The Misplaced Hero is a pastiche of 1910s through 1930s adventure fiction. I want to call it "Jazzpunk" but it isn't technology driven the way the various kinds of "punk" genres are -- i.e. cyberpunk, steampunk, dieselpunk. (Which I suppose makes "Jazz" a good term for it -- not driven by cyber-tech, steam OR diesel, but by style.) So I already decided up front that I needed a "Art Deco meets Pulp" look.

Some of the very coolest work of the period, though, are things I could never imitate, so I needed to find something other than the quality of the light in a Samuel Nelson Abbot illustration to hang my look on. This is important -- whether you're doing it yourself, or hiring a designer, you have to work with the skills and "look" the artist can achieve.

The other consideration is consistency. Imagine you find a really great stock photo that fits the first book in your series, and that photo is completely unique... what are you going to do for the second book? You want the second book to fit with the first -- so you have to be able to replicate the "look" of that first cover.

Luckily two things really make a design stand up and scream Art Deco: font and lines. There is a sleekness to Art Deco which I can use in a cover template in particular. Think of the marquee of great movie palaces of the time - all lines and curves and very sleek.

So I browsed for models that gave me design, rather than just cool art, and I settled on these two as the right general look for the cover of my Serial. They aren't exciting in the way a real pulp story is exciting, but they are something I can do consistently:



The Nature Magazine layout is exactly what I need. The framing box is so simple and easy to replicate -- you basically have a "look" as soon as you've put in a font and rule. It's easy to create artwork for the box inside the frame. And it is a very common look for the period. Of course a part of that look has to do with the illustration inside. Stylized, bright colors.

Nature images were a common motif in the period, and when I concentrate, I can certainly handle something like that. But the eye is forgiving of trees and water and birds which aren't quite real. We're less forgiving of human figures. The range with which you can fudge people is much narrower.

I'm good with silhouettes, though, and the Porto Sandeman ad is really slick, ain't it? It evokes Zorro and The Shadow and all sorts of adventure stories. You really get the feel right away of the kind of shadowy hero my Misplaced Hero should be.

The only problem is that he isn't that hero yet. The Sandeman ad evokes Zorro, but not Don Diego (i.e. Superman, not Clark Kent.) The Misplaced Hero is about the transformation a modern college student into a shadowy hero in another world. I need to suggest both.

This is where sketching comes in. And where doing it on PAPER comes in. Which is what I'll talk about next Tuesday, when we'll see my rough sketches for the design, and we'll also talk about the value of gesture drawings. Part 3 - Gesture Drawings.

Story Notes - Why I Don't Write SF

These are notes on yesterdays story, "The Captain's Solution." If you're worried about spoilers you should go back and read it.

Why I Don't Write More Science Fiction, or "This is not the Zamboni we're looking for."

I happen to love this story, but I'll be the first to say that it's hardly science fiction.

The truth is, it's hardly even space opera, which should include scary aliens and zap guns and teleportation and stuff like that. Space battles, and cliff hangers. It's kind of the sitcom version of space opera. What they call in the TV world a "three-camera sitcom." That's the kind of show which is filmed on a set in front of a live audience. Actors posturing on a stage. (A "single-camera" show is filmed like a movie - all TV dramas are filmed that way these days.)

I have never submitted this story to any magazines. I can't imagine a magazine which suits it. But I will undoubtedly write more stories like it.

This story takes place in a world I made up when I was younger. That universe did have space battles and zap guns and though the aliens were not scary, the robots were. (Imagine being chased down a narrow corridor by a zamboni with horns.) But that was the novel that Kate and Damon shredded (rightfully) and got abandoned back in 1982.

Every now and then, though, a story from that universe will push its way out. It doesn't always involve zap guns or vicious Zambonis. As a matter of fact it usually doesn't. The stories just involve people caught up in some element of that world.

Looking back, I think the reason I only come up with ideas like that is because sf readers (imho) take their zap guns and Zambonis way too seriously. SF readers, even when reading comedy, actually care about the oxygen content of a planet, even when that info doesn't drive the plot. In a proper SF story, a zap gun isn't just driven by friblitz power; it's a plasma beam or laser. A Zamboni doesn't corner very well.

And space ships shouldn't jostle one another in space they way they might on the water.

That kind of jostling can do deadly damage. I know this. I am perfectly aware of this. I didn't write it that way because I don't now better. I write it that way because, to me, other planets are all just a variation of Oz or fairyland... or Ruritania.

Ruritania, for the uninitiated, is a small imaginary country in Eastern Europe, ruled over by the Elfbergs, and the setting for The Prisoner of Zenda. Although Zenda wasn't the first book to create such an imaginary place for exiting romantic swashbuckling stories, it did end up lending it's name to a whole genre: The Ruritanian Romance. It's a place where the costumes and politics and customs are different, and the props are really cool toys. (Swords and draw bridges and pistols and horses, and even a throne and a crown! Sometimes historically accurate, but often running on the equivalent of friblitz power.)

(In case I'm leaving any non-sf people behind -- "friblitz power" is something I made up. It's nonsense.)

It's true, I never got into the kind of sf they used to make into movies and TV -- the really old stuff with the tin-foil suits and zap guns and giant robots, all running on friblitz generators. But the only reason for that was because, frankly, the drama sucked. Shallow characters, posturing. I only got interested when I saw Star Wars for the first time. I know that parsecs are not a unit of time, and I don't care that they used that wrong, and imho, The Force is just another name for friblitz power. But Tattooine? THAT'S a Ruritania. They had me from "a long time ago in a galaxy far far away..."

I'm not saying this to criticize modern SF. These days modern SF is all about drama. It has been for decades.
But it's also about the world-building, and parsecs and the effect of the smaller gravitational field on a small planet. Which is worth writing, and I even read some of that stuff. Even some of the stuff which is all world-building and no drama. But for the most part, world-building doesn't it interest me all that much, and I'm not interested in writing it.

I write Ruritanian Romances, even when I'm writing about the real world. So sue me.

"The Captain's Solution" a space opera, sort of

For Story Sunday, I give you a mild-mannered space opera/space fantasy, about a space ship captain who takes his duty seriously. (Science fiction fans be warned, we don't need no stinkin' science in this story....)

==============

The Captain's Solution
by Camille LaGuire

THE, UH, INCIDENT occurred when I was mate on the North Current. And, of course, there was more to it than ever came out at the competency hearing. Even the court knew that. It really started when we were rotated from our usual patrol to temporary escort duty. It was a reward. We had a good record of dealing with the Galactic Commerce Authority with neutrality and diplomacy.

We ended up on Iria, a little backwater planet that held the distinction of being home to the only humanoid non-humans anybody'd ever heard of. I mean, the Irians seemed human to me, but they claimed not. They evolved on that planet, they said, from some goddess and a tree, I think. Or maybe a grape vine. They insisted they couldn't be related to us, and they were stubborn about it, even though it would have been more convenient for them if they gave up on it. If they were human, they'd have some rights.

We were in a bar on Iria, drinking Irian wine, which is so much tastier than our Peschian seaweed beer. Captain Arkeesh had been gazing into his glass for nearly an hour. He was always a quiet one. Always watching, always listening, always thinking. People like that usually make me uneasy, but not him. I think it's his sad eyes and droopy mustache. Whatever it is he sees and hears and thinks seems to weigh heavily on him. It gives him an air of responsibility. He was gloomy just now because we had been approached by an illegal wine merchant who had two cases to sell. They were not supposed to approach officers. Officers are under strict orders to turn them in, and the captain takes his duty seriously.

"I'm not going to report him," he said suddenly. No need to explain who he meant. "We are, after all, representatives of a neutral planet. We shouldn't enforce Commerce Authority rules. Nor should we consider ourselves subject to them." That meant we should buy the wine. I nodded in agreement. A quiet voice came from behind us.

"You don't fight them either."

A woman was standing at the captain's elbow. Whether she'd been listening or just walking by, I don't know. The captain turned to her, looking even sadder than usual.

"No," he said. "We don't fight at all. We don't think killing is a good thing."

"So you accept the killing that goes on around you."

"Killing on both sides."

The woman slipped in between us, and shoved me off my stool. She was a small, wiry woman in mechanic's overalls, who was attractive enough that I let her have my seat, and I bumped Kallos off his. Kallos grumbled and bumped a drunk Tertian pilot off his seat. The Tertian dropped to the floor and stayed there.

"You are a Planetary Guardsman." She pointed to the insignia on the captain's sleeve. "Wouldn't you kill to defend your planet? Self-defense?"

The captain sat back and studied her a second. He gave her a slow, cautious nod. She sat back, mimicking him.

"You have such high ideals," she said flatly. The captain simply shrugged, took a drink and waited for her to go on. "You say you're against war," she continued. "Yet you allow CommAt slave ships through your space every day."

"We allow no aggressive actions, no weapons shipments, or prisoners-of-war...."

"Slaves are prisoners of war."

The captain paused, looked into his drink, and then looked up again squinting a little.

"You cannot make war on animals."

He watched the woman closely, and just as she gathered herself for a reply, he raised one finger for emphasis.

"And as long as the Irians insist that they evolved here, then they can't be Human and they are legally accepted as animals. If we Peschians claim otherwise, we damage our neutrality."

"Your precious neutrality."

"It is our self-defense."

"You are using their twisted logic."

"No. We are used by their twisted logic. We don't like it, but we don't have much choice. The Authority nations are strong, and they surround us. The only reason they haven't swallowed us up yet, is that it isn't popular, and it isn't popular because their people see us as neutral."

"I know." The woman leaned on the bar and kept looking at him.

"We can't take chances."

"But you do take chances. Not as a nation, but as individuals. Underground."

"Not underground," said the captain, shaking his head. "We're Fisherfolk. We go underwater."

"All right. Underwater, then. Everyone knows that a slave is safe on Pescha. And that you planetary guardsmen are the chief smugglers of Irian wine. And you can do anything you want on your planet if you bribe the right official."

"An outsider can't fish. No bribe will get you that."

"But it will get people to look the other way from political activity. The official stance is neutrality, but individuals can and do take sides."

"We don't...."

"Don't say 'we," say 'I.' What do you think about Irian slavery?"

"I'm against any slavery. Including the conscription of soldiers into your army."

"It's not necessarily my army."

"Still, you call them allies."

"Some do, but I don't," she said crossly. "I don't think the people fighting my enemy are necessarily friends. Sometimes we are closer to those who aren't fighting our enemies."

"Maybe so. Maybe not." He turned to face his drink. He was still looking at her sidelong, however.

"A friend of mine was at last year's Captain's conference on Pescha," she said conversationally. "She pointed you out to me. You spoke up in support of the bill to redefine 'humanity.'"

"What do you want?" He was still looking at his drink, but now he spoke very quietly. She lowered her voice too.

"We think we can get a few dozen of the Irians out of the enclosure, but we need a way to get them safely out of the area."

The captain let out a moan of pain and shook his head.

"An ordinary ship would be shot out of the air immediately," she went on quickly. "They've got the sky too well covered. But a Peschian ship is submersible."

"No."

"We'd slip right into the ocean, and they'd never be able to track us, because nobody uses submersibles here."

"We would be spotted."

"It will be at night, and we will be making a very quick get away."

"Then you might get the Irians into the ship, and you might make it to the water. But we're bound to be recognized as a Peshian Guard ship. You are not asking us to help you. You're asking us to join you. You haven't thought this out yet, have you?"

"No," she admitted. "The idea occurred to me when I saw you come in."

"I have had escort duty to this port many times. I can tell you, mass escapes from those enclosures are always bloody and pointless. Your submersible idea might work, but you don't have a ship. And you can't have mine." He paused to tug at his mustache. "On the other hand, small escapes happen all the time. If you can bring me one, at the most two, adults. I'll put them in uniform and try to pass them off as crew members."

"We don't want to get them to Pescha; we want to get them home. And we want to get more than one or two out."

"They'd be safer on Pescha, and it doesn't seem to me you have a choice."

"And why adults, anyway? If we had to choose, I'd rather get out children."

"I can't pass a child off as a crew member."

The woman chewed her lip and looked at the captain for a moment. The captain gave her a helpless shrug. I was still leaning over her shoulder to listen, and she shoved me away.

"Thank you anyway," she mumbled, and barged off.

#

We waited for the woman to show up again, a pair of confused Irians in tow. We were sure she wouldn't bring one if she could bring two, and they'd probably be straight out of the Irian forest, not knowing the first thing about a ship. We hoped she would think to bring men, since Fisherfolk do not have women in the guard. Our women do just about everything, whether we want them to or not, but they do not fight.

The captain scanned local news constantly. He was probably looking for news of an escape, or a failed one. The woman never came, however. We lifted off with our assigned freighter, two crates of wine and a feeling of relief. We thought we'd never see her again.

We were wrong.

About three months later we were back at our usual patrol duty. We came across a small ship, drifting at our perimeter. Its identification markings were smaller than standard, and partly obscured by what looked like rust. When we hailed them, they moved off quickly, but before the captain could give orders to pursue them, they slowed, and answered us.

The woman met us at the docking bay.

"When I saw the North Current, I hoped it was you," she said quickly. Behind her stood the crew, three men and four women, heavily armed, but not threatening. Their expressions were uneasy, but determined.

"Put away those weapons."

"Listen to me. A slave ship will be coming out of lightspeed to go through Peschian space at any time now. We're going to stop it."

"No you're not. Put the weapons away."

The woman started to argue, but their captain, a large woman with gray hair and yellow eyes, put the butt of her rifle on the deck, and the others holstered and otherwise put aside what they carried.

"This is Peschian space. Any aggressive action is a violation of our neutrality."

"Not if you consider it a theft of cargo."

"Then it's a criminal action. We have strict piracy laws here."

"But it isn't really a criminal action, is it? Slaves are not really cargo. They're people. You just call it piracy so no one will accuse you of taking sides."

The captain took a breath and studied her for a minute. He shook his head.

"You like to argue, don't you?"

"I like people to recognize when I'm right." The captain wiped his hand over his face and looked at the deck, shaking his head again. The woman went on, ducking to get into his line of view. "Captain Arkeesh, the slaves aboard that ship are all children." When the captain didn't answer, she added hopefully. "They are headed for Tertia."

"Slave barges are very well armed."

"What if they sell them to perverts?"

"You'll just get them killed. And yourselves, and the crew of the barge, and probably us too."

"We don't need you to help us. All you have to do is go away. Pretend you never saw us."

He shook his head slowly and pulled at his mustache, so she continued, leaning in closer.

"You don't have to worry about it being an armed slave barge. It's an ordinary freighter carrying wine and lumber. They just happen to have twenty-five children aboard."

"All Commat ships are armed. You'll never even get aboard," the captain said absently. "No. We'll meet the ship when it comes out of lightspeed. Just as usual. You'll come later."

"You'll help?"

"No. We're just going to do our job." The captain's mustache twitched, which was as close to a smile as he ever got. Then he immediately sighed and looked as if another planet-size weight was put on his back. "I don't like this."

#

When the freighter came out of lightspeed, we called it to stand to and boarded for a quick inspection, which is not all that uncommon. Usually, when a ship is not destined to land on Pescha, the captain just glances over the manifest, asks a few questions and gives a few warnings.

As we boarded the ship, Captain Arkeesh straightened and frowned. Instead of his usual politeness, he growled his demand to see the manifest. When they showed him to the screen, he squinted at it and examined it as if it were a contract he was supposed to sign. He questioned the volume of the wine, the weight of the lumber, where they had come from, where they were going, whether the proper papers had been filed. When he came to the slaves, he grunted.

"Irians."

"That's right," said their captain impatiently. "We have twenty-five Irians."

"What does it mean by 'immature?'"

"They are all under sixteen standard years."

"How much under? Are they old enough to be away from their mothers?"

"It isn't really your business, is it? We have a treaty. You can't interfere with our trade."

"I want to take...."

At this point their communications officer interrupted. Our ship was calling Captain Arkeesh.

"Sir," came Kallos' voice. "We have a small private craft approaching. They have a serious medical emergency aboard."

"Have them dock at the port bay, and send the medic aboard," snapped Captain Arkeesh, as if he were annoyed at the interruption.

"You've seen our manifest," said the captain of the CommAt ship. "Perhaps you had better shove off and see to the emergency."

"My medical officer will see to that. I want to inspect your Irians."

"We have a right to carry our cargo through your space."

"It is my duty to see that they really are Irians. They could be prisoners of war."

"That's ridiculous."

"Is it?"

"It's harassment!"

They went on arguing for a few minutes, our captain saying whatever officious thing would most irritate their captain. The argument had the attention of everyone present. Then several armed, masked figures entered carrying laser rifles, it took everyone by surprise.

Their captain started to call for an alert, but one of the masked figures shoved a rifle in his chest, while another threatened the communications officer.

"You won't get away with this," declared Captain Arkeesh. "This is a violation of our neutrality!"

"Shut up," said the bandit leader. She addressed their captain. "You have wine aboard? And prime Irians?" Their captain didn't answer. "Don't worry. We'll find them."

She left one man to watch us. Captain Arkeesh grumbled about neutrality, and gave the evil eye to the man guarding us. The freighter's captain was giving the evil eye to Arkeesh.

"They came through your ship."

"They won't get away with an act of war in our space."

"They're pirates, you idiot!"

"Then we'll drown them."

When the "pirates" were through, they called their man from guarding us, and slipped off through our ship to their own. We started to move after them.

"Hurry up and shove off so we can give chase," snapped their captain.

"No!" said Captain Arkeesh, stopping to lecture him. "You stand to. We give chase."

"You've messed this up enough. I'm not leaving it to you."

"This is neutral space...."

"Your neutrality be damned!"

"...we will not let a Commerce Authority ship go armed after an enemy."

"Then shove the hell off and chase 'em yourself!"

Their captain had recognized that the argument was giving the pirates time to escape. Arkeesh couldn't justify staying any longer. We hurried without hurrying back to our ship and uncoupled from their hull. We sped ahead, as if in chase. The CommAt freighter, as we all expected, did not stay put.

"Down and to starboard," said the captain, as we came up to the bow of the now moving freighter.

"What?" said Kallos.

"Down and to starboard. Now."

Kallos took a deep breath and down we went, right across the freighter's bow. We could argue later that it was, at least, the right direction to chase the bandits. The freighter kept coming, and we slid along their hull with a jar and a screech.

"Get the hell out of our way," called their captain.

"Stay the hell put," our captain replied. Then he added to Kallos, "Stay in their way." We stayed in their way. Kallos did a masterful job of stupid piloting, while Captain Arkeesh argued with their captain. He aggravated the man enough that they stayed pretty much in our way too. Over all, I thought it was a convincing display of incompetence. The bandits made lightspeed, and the chase was over.

"They'll have us back on the water for this," said Kallos.

"I like the water," said the captain. "It's where a man belongs."

"They left us the wine, you know."

"What?"

"Twenty cases. They only took it so they'd look like pirates."

"That's all we need," said the captain, shaking his head. "If we are caught with that wine...."

"They'll think it's a bribe."

"They'll have us back in the water."

"Don't worry, captain," said Kallos. "We'll sneak it off before anybody knows anything."

"Well, it'll be good to be home with the women," I said. Everyone seemed to be in general agreement with that.

"We should have women in our guard," said Kallos. "Their captain seemed competent."

The captain was gazing at the spot on the viewscreen where the bandit ship was last seen.

"I hope so," he said. "Or that other one will get them killed."

I could see he was going to worry about that. He'd worry until he'd figured out a solution, which wasn't going to be likely, down on the water. On the other hand, with our Captain, you never know. That worries me a little.

======

In tomorrow's story notes, I'll talk about how I don't write science fiction. I write something else.

Update and Weekly Preview

I am currently out of town, visiting the east coast. This post was prepared earlier, but I'm sure my arm is feeling MUCH better and I am enjoying a nice lobstah roll, lots of wonderful Italian food and some Boston dim sum while you read this. And taking lots of pictures of rocks. And water. I'm sure it will all come in handy for a Misplaced Hero story.

I'll report on the trip on Thursday. In the meantime, here are the posts for this week....

• Sunday: "The Captain's Solution" a space opera, sort of
• Monday: Notes on "The Captain's Solution" - and why I don't write science fiction. (aka "This is not the Zamboni you're looking for.)
  
• Tuesday: Creating a Cover, pt 2 - Finding Inspiration
• Wednesday: Search Engines, eHow, and Why They Matter to Fiction Writers
• Thursday: Tales of my Travels
• Friday: Interview with Chris Truscott
• Saturday: Update and posting of SUMMER GOALS!
  

For a preview of my Summer goals: I'll be rewriting two novels for publication in fall, and I also hope to make a run at the Clarion Write-A-Thon from late June through mid-August. I'll tell you more about what I hope to accomplish on that Jun 11 update post.

See you in the funny papers.

Character Friday: Julia March

Julia March is going to tell us about Amber, a secondary character in "The Net of the Magician."

Camille: What made you create Amber?

Julia: Originally, Amber was meant to be a sort of tertiary villain--someone who was on the side of the bad guys, and a sort of mole within the good guys' territory. But I was having more and more fun with her, making her someone too self-centered to be flat-out on anybody's side but her own.
Camille: What makes her special to you?

Julia: She was fun to write about. Also I got to use her to show qualities of my protagonist. In particular, as Margaret's personality changes in response to her discoveries about magic, she starts to respect (grudgingly, maybe) Amber's strengths.

Camille: Do you have more planned for this character?

Julia: No. No sequels planned for this one. Although if you want to know what she's up to... I think that Amber is probably working in the fashion industry now.


The Net of the Magician is a contemporary fantasy about Margaret, an archivist in a university library who finds she must battle an evil magician to keep her job. Read more about it on Julia March's Blog.

Emotional State is Trajectory - Why You Might Un-Revise

To me, a story is a puzzle to be fit together carefully. This is especially true of a mystery, where you have a lot to weave in about what the audience doesn't know, and what's going to happen, and what's a lie and what's the truth -- but it's also true of other kinds of stories.

For this reason, I do most of my revision as I write. By the time it's complete, the pieces really do lock into place, and they cannot be easily moved. So rewriting pretty much involves fine tuning -- polishing up, expanding a little here, and editing there.

Alas, I have discovered that even my way of working doesn't prevent me from revising myself into trouble. I just do it earlier in the process. Sometimes you just have to trust that Heinlein knew what he's talking about. Sometimes you should not second-guess your instincts. Even when it's a different set of instincts that starts you rewriting.

I've been working on the middle sequence of The Man Who Did Too Much lately. It is a relatively simple development of a subplot, with a comic turn. That turn is important to the overall story of the characters, but as I originally blocked it in, the sequence didn't really advance the mystery plot much. It had to do with the interpersonal drama which was tangled up with the mystery -- a place where we learn some deep background and are introduced to hidden clues -- but it was mostly character development.

At one point I looked at it and thought: "Gee, this is an awful long sequence which doesn't exactly move the story forward in any obvious way. I need to pull it apart and shake it up. Introduce a "man with a gun" or something."

This is a very good instinct -- that a story has to move forward overtly. It's critical. I wasn't wrong to be concerned about this.

So I pulled the sequence apart. I unraveled it and started playing with ways to bring this back to the main story -- to weave in new threads. I moved everything. But then I realized that if I put that incident here, this other one wouldn't work, so I had to move that around. Drop this major thing , and play up that minor thing here instead. Piddle, twiddle and resolve.

It really required re-envisioning the whole sequence, but by golly it was new and exciting and it really worked! And I let it ripen a bit and worked on other things, but it kept getting better and better!

Sort of.

What actually happened was that I kept running across problems with finely tuned things I'd done in the original. If a certain incident happened later, it took all the punch out of a certain joke, and that joke was the energy that drove this other thing. So I kept coming up with those, and finding other ways to handle it. Taking extensive notes and scribbling out bits of new material. (Note: this was all happening in my head or in outline -- I had not actually accomplished pulling it all back together.)

I kept fixing things until it was way way way better than before, and then I got too busy and set it aside completely. And while I was away from it, everything quietly moved back into place.

Where it belonged.

My original instincts were absolutely right. I should have paid attention to the rest of that quote from 1776: Piddle, twiddle and resolve... not a damn thing do we solve.

That joke was critical to the movement of the story. That other incident had to happen when and where it did, and HOW it did. Moving it to later, and making it the "climax" of the sequence just made it the whole darn sequence feel contrived. Even though it seemed to support what happened next better, that wasn't the natural place for it to happen, so it didn't help the next bit. It just made it feel contrived too.

Heinlein was right. Sometimes we're just too smart for our own good.

On the other hand, Heinlein was wrong in this: In my efforts to stretch this rubber sequence around to fit a different mold, I created a lot of new pieces, and explored a few more things. I also figured out that I didn't need to change the flow of the action, or even the timing, but I did have to move around bits. Jokes, information, turns of conversation, even clues -- a dozen little things which support the action. This joke is not needed here, but if I put it there, it actually becomes a really good reason for the change in mood which happens there.

Without getting into any spoilers, here is one detail that may illustrate why revision was a problem:

George is drunk. Not plastered, but buzzed. And one of the things that happened with the misbegotten revision was that he sobered up to deal with some things in the middle. And that means the emotional trajectory of the sequence changes. Once he sobers up, he's done being drunk, and done with everything associated with it. It doesn't matter if it's logical for him to continue to drink and get drunk again later -- that's DONE dramatically speaking. Even if he doesn't actually sober up -- if he just acts more sober -- getting him drunk again means starting a new sequence. And a repetitive one at that.

It wasn't obvious, though, because the drunkenness was just a background bit. It wasn't overtly important to what was going on. It's like any character mood. Like being depressed or euphoric. Or afraid. Or brave.

Emotional state is trajectory.

A character's emotional state is everything. It affects not only how the character behaves, but how others behave toward that character. And when it changes, it changes everything -- you can't just go back and forth.

So if George being drunk is the trajectory of the scene, it's actually the front story. I don't need to interject more front story. I need him to get more drunk. Suddenly everything works when I do that. Even the new material -- it all gets woven neatly into the sequence where the headline is that George is drunk. (Furthermore I don't lose anything by it, because, contrary to appearances, George is NOT the brains of the outfit. Karla is.)

And, just as a general rule, letting the characters spin more out of control is a good thing, dramatically speaking. It pushes the envelope, and takes you places you might not have thought of.

True, it is also risky to go with instincts all the time. You can ramble off into nowhere, fly off into space. But that's why you do it early in the process. What I'm learning with this sequence is that the key is to respect the trajectory, and if it doesn't take you where you want, maybe you should take it further. Fiddle with it, but the key word there is with.

Otherwise you're fighting with the forces of nature.

Drawer Time - Change Yourself, Not The Story

It sometimes surprises me how many people don't know how to use drawer time effectively. I was going to say "how many writers" but I think this is a concept everyone could use, but few really understand how it works.

So first a definition:

"Drawer Time" or "Shelf Time" is when you set some work aside for a while, to "get away from it" before coming back with fresh eyes. Most people seem familiar with the concept, but they treat it more like a procrastination tool. Which it is not.

Furthermore, I've heard some people say, "Drawer time doesn't do me any good. It looks just the same when I pull it out as when I put it in."

Well, yeah. That's because nothing has changed since you put it in. My little fable about Alphabet Soup notwithstanding, let's be honest, the words are not going to get up and rearrange themselves while it's in the drawer.

What has to change is you.

On the simplest level, you may not have to change much. Get the story out of your short term memory, and you can look at it with a new perspective. Or if you are just worn out, you may just need a rest, and then you'll have the energy to look at the story with a more critical eye.

Many writers, though, have schooled themselves to hold onto words, and may not be able to come at the story fresh, even with a little drawer time. The story just stays in their heads. Maybe those authors are just unlucky, but I also wonder, sometimes, whether they made an effort to shake those words loose from their heads.

Sometimes you have to make a conscious effort to change yourself while the story is in the drawer.

You may have to DO something while that story is in the drawer. The question is, do what?

For a beginner, it's easy: write more stories, and keep writing more stories. Let them pile up for a while and don't look at any of them. It's a pretty basic principle: learn to write complete stories before you try to learn to rewrite. So write lots of them, good ones, bad ones, crazy ones. Get good at writing the way you get good at walking, jumping or running. Leave the finer dancing until you have control of your legs.

Every single story will change you, when you're a beginner. Put your first couple of stories in a drawer, write ten more, and your whole understanding of the universe will have changed.

The advanced writer will have a harder time making that kind of shift. It's still a part of your natural day-to-day activities to learn and change, but your understanding of the universe does not shift so quickly. Odds are, when you leave a story in a drawer for a week or so, you haven't changed much when you come back to it.

So, if you find simply leaving it doesn't do it for you, how do you get that really fresh perspective?

One solution is to make an effort flush your memory of it. Learn something new. Do something very challenging. Don't just write something else, write something very different. And if you find yourself still thinking about the drawer story, break the thought chain more forceably: write poetry, or a play, or advertising copy. Play music. Learn to tap dance.

If you're desperate, force yourself believe that it's not a drawer story. Make it a trunk story -- a story you've given up on. Put it in deep storage, assume it's lost to time, and get on with your life. If you get truly wrapped up in the next story, to the point where that drawer story doesn't seem so important, you just might trick your mind into letting go and giving you more perspective.

At that point. When you really have almost forgotten it, pull it out and look at it.

Does every story have to go through that kind of extreme drawer time? No, of course not. And in these modern times, you may not be able to afford to leave stories in a drawer for as long as you'd like anyway. Let's face it, publishing fast and sure is going to be a ticket to success.

But if you find a story needs perspective, and regular drawer time isn't doing it for you, you may need to push the issue once in a while. It helps you grow.

In that sense, drawer time doesn't just help the story, it helps the writer.

Besides, while it's in the drawer, you'll write more stuff, so it's all good. You'll just have that many more stories under your belt.