It just might be a hit!

Yes I know it’s April Fool’s Day but I don’t think these people were fooling.

I just read two-thirds of the latest Chapter 1 to the Coventry Writer’s group and two of them said it was much better than before, that it was creepy and had good imagery and other positive things. They had both heard earlier versions and had never been so positive about any of them. In fact I don’t remember ever getting such positive responses.

One member said he liked it but had to leave before giving any more feedback.

The other two were more critical. One said he thought the characters were two-dimensional and that the emotion was told not shown. The other thought the pink planets were hard to imagine.

I accept these criticisms but they do not worry me. You don’t get time to paint rounded characters in this space as well as describing the environment. The first two people disagreed too, saying they found Michael creepy, not flat.

As for the imagery, I know it can be difficult to visualise, since I’m describing a fairly un-worldly scene. I guess some readers will need to read it a couple of times to get the picture. That’s life.

In general I left the meeting fairly elated, and feeling that, after six years of effort, I’m finally heading in the right direction. If I can keep up that standard I just may have a hit!

 

Editorial almost ready

I’m waiting for John Jarrold to finish editing TC. He tells me it’ll be done next Monday.

I want to print 60 or so copies for review by the students I’m taking to Geneva in December, and others, but I doubt whether I’ll have time to incorporate his editorial and get it printed ready for them to read it before we go. That’s a pity, since it would be good for them to know some of the background to CERN. It might help them get more out of their trip.

 

All’s Well that Ends Well

I’ve now received my copy of the BBC DVD collection of the complete plays of Shakespeare. I’ve had a copy of the book on my shelves for many years and never read one play from it, but I can see myself slowly working through these videos.

Anyway I’m starting alphabetically with All’s Well that Ends Well. This has a sexual encounter at the heart of the story, although the scene itself is not shown since they didn’t do things like that on stage in 1600. This puts Flo Swann’s comment into context. If I want to retain the sex scenes I need to work out how to make them integral to the plot rather than just a spicy add-on.

That’s a worthy challenge!

 

Flo’s Review and its Consequences

Time Crystal has been read! I’ve now received a review from the first ever reader, Flo Swann. The good news is she sort-of liked it and thought it had the potential to be a plot-driven page-turner. The bad news is that she wrote a three page report of things she didn’t like.

Among the major revisions she suggested was to remove all the sex scenes. Her comments ranged from YUCK through AWFUL to DREADFUL. I have previously worried that these scenes might offend some readers. Oddly enough she had no problem with four letter swear words.

I’ve almost decided to take these scenes out and tone down the whole sexuality of the characters. Previously I’d been set on making the plot character driven, but Flo introduces the idea of a plot-driven story, which is new to me and definitely appeals because creating character has always struck me as the most difficult part of writing and the thing I’ve probably spent most time on in the past five years. If I can get away from this and concentrate more on the story that has to be a good thing.

Flo also wants to remove all references to toilets. “The whole latrine discussion is pointless. The reader doesn’t care–when you read sci fi you don’t care how the characters are going to keep hygiene! Ditto the shopping trips–we don’t really care how they’re eating.”

Now this I’m not so sure about. When characters face a disaster which takes them back to the stone age they could easily be wiped out by a spread of infection. Maybe I need to make this clearer? No, I guess I just need to bring it into the plot. I need to show why the characters, and therefore the reader, should care about hygiene.

And even with a plot-driven story still the characters need to be clearly defined and to develop during the story. As Martha Alderson says: “…no matter how exciting the action, [a story with only Dramatic Action] lacks the human element. Such an omission increases your chances of losing your audience’s interest; readers read 70% for character.” A reader wants action but also character.

So the plot must be at the forefront of everything from now on, but with characters influencing and growing with the plot. Good trick if you can pull it off!

 

Reviewer Copies Available

Since I’ll be printing reviewer’s copies of volume 1 in November it makes sense to offer them more widely. I therefore invite you to subscribe to a copy. I’ll have to charge to cover my costs.

Please note that this is not a publication of the book. No ISBN is attached to this work and the final publication might differ significantly from this version, depending on reader feedback.

How do I get my Copy?

A reviewers copy of Time Crystal Volume 1, written, printed, bound and dedicated by Wyken Seagrave, costs US$29.99 including First Class Postage in UK or air shipping to the rest of the world. These books will be available in December, just in time for Christmas. We are taking orders now so we can judge the print run.

To order your copy visit the History of the Universe Store.

 

First Volume Printed

Printed the first two copies of Volume 1 over the weekend. The first was posted to George Westbrook. She’s going on holiday and needed some reading material and she couldn’t take an A4 copy so I used Pagemaker (an ancient Adobe piece of desktop publishing software) to create signatures of sixteen pages which I then stapled and hot-glued into a cover I printed. The cover was a little thin so on the second copy I added some blank pages at the start and stuck them to the cover. This also helped to prevent them falling out. The end signatures are typically less well-glued than the centre ones.

Printing these signatures was a nightmare when a blank page went through and I couldn’t work out where to restart printing. Worked it out eventually but not something I want to do very often. I figure the copies cost me about $10 in materials, which compares well with the $40 most printers would want to print that volume of books.

I was quite happy with the result. It’s important because

a) the printed article has a different look and feel than when seen on screen.

b) I’m probably going to offer 50 copies to a sample of seventeen-year-olds for their comments.

Then I started proofing one of these copies and then had the problem of how to update the copy with the new pages and I got in a terrible mess trying to stick the revised pages back in and ruined my beautiful book. I then printed the whole thing again on A4, much easier and quicker, and began proofing that. Came up with some good ideas, such as putting a separator between changes of Point of View.

I also started thinking about fonts and decided the book should be printed in Agency FB and Perpetua. Agency has a nice angular shape which suggests the angularity of Crystal. Perpetua is similar to Times New Roman but much more condensed, so cheaper to print. This will be useful to print samples and if (heaven forbid) I can’t find a publisher for this masterpiece.

 

Readers’ Comments

Please click on Comments below and add your thoughts about this whole project. I take all readers’ comments very seriously and frequently make changes in response to them.

So if the book’s no good it’s obviously not my fault!

But seriously I know that readers can often identify faults which he, being so close to the story, fails to notice. So please don’t hesitate to tell me exactly what you think! And if I act on your comment then your name will be added to the Acknowledgements page, giving you eternal fame.

 

John Jarrold

After a week or more of depression about not getting any feedback on TC I finally take the plunge and sent a copy to script doctor John Jarrold yesterday. He’s a highly experienced editor of many works of SF/Fantasy to judge from his web site and the help he gives free to people on the Chronicles Network so if he shows me where TC is wrong it’ll be worth the money. And there MUST be plenty wrong with it.
I have very little experience selling into the vicious and merciless battlefield they call book publishing. I published my first book Hyperdictionary through a commercial publisher but that was a factual book and was snapped up by the first publisher I wrote to. I couldn’t find a publisher for Global Vision and had to publish it myself. Fiction is a different ball game. Even worse I know nothing about the Young Adult market, which is the target audience (since this is the group that drop science). I have no idea whether the work will appeal to this group (except for feedback from Tehun, but he might not be at all typical).
Got up this morning feeling much better. At last I have a hope of getting some constructive feedback from somebody who understands the craft and the market. I begin to do my paid work (British Association) with a light heart. Even begin to tidy the clutter off my desks which have been threatening to overwhelm the keyboard and even look at the piles of books scattered around my office and wonder if they might get shelved sometime soon.
Of course it may not last but it’s wonderful to have the clouds of anxiety lift for even a few hours. When you invest your life in a project it’s a great help if you share the burden with somebody who can advise you where you’re going wrong. Especially at this early stage. Even after five years hard work I am still really only at the beginning and I could still turn the whole thing round. For example JJ might say that Alex should be much closer in age to Catriona (as he originally was) or that chapters 4 to 7 should be compressed into a single chapter (as I suspect) or that the Prologue doesn’t work for the target audience (which I also suspect).
Still I’ll try to put all this aside for a few days and get on with my other life until I hear from the dear old doctor.

 

Free Cockroach Pet

When this post was created, Wyken Seagrave was giving away a free magnetic fridge cockroach each month to the person who submits the most interesting comments on one of the three sample Time Crystal chapters.

This vividly life-like toy is guaranteed to scare the pants off mothers, sisters and girl-friends and will prove a life-long pet to anyone brave enough to handle it.

Simply follow the links on the right to the sample chapters, click on Comment, write your comment and add your email address.

It’s as wickedly simple as that!

Comments don’t have to be positive. In fact Wyken wants to know what you DON’T like about the story as well as what you do!

This offer has now lapsed (unless somebody really wants one!)

 

Dragonmuse

A very kind reader called Dragonmuse has left the following comment on Chapter 1 on the Sky-Tribe web site:

This is so like Star Trek, with all the terminology that makes great sci fi and no sense at all! I chuckled and hoped it was meant to be humourous! The level of anticipation and threat are great, considering how little understanding came from the actual words! I think this is very clever! “The way he spoke, as if he weighed and measured every word before he permitted himself to utter it, was just one of the odd things about Michael Riley. The strange smell that hung about him was another.” LOL.
Keep writing!

Now actually it wasn’t meant to be humourous and although it might not make any sense to Dragonmuse this stuff is pretty close to what the operators will actually say when ATLAS actually starts working. (By the way it was announced yesterday that the LHC first run has been postphoned until May 2008, a five month delay!)

Still I don’t mind at all if readers find my stuff amusing. Better that than not to read it at all! The worst thing that can happen to a writer is to be totally ignored.