For the past few months I’ve used Duotrope to track my fiction submissions to various markets. Previously I was using Google Sheets, with different sections of one large spreadsheet to track stories and submissions, markets, and responses. The sheet worked great for a long time, but once I had over twenty stories, hundreds of responses from publishers, and dozens of markets to track, the spreadsheet solution became unwieldy. I started to miss things, and in one cases submitted a story twice to the same publisher. I also started to submit fewer stories, simply because of the difficulty in using the spreadsheet. Time for a new solution!
Category: Writing Page 5 of 18
A 1970’s artist depiction of a ringstation (from https://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/70sArt/art.html).
Becoming a published science fiction author was a jubilant moment for me, and I coasted on that high for a long time.
But of course everything that goes up must come down. I’ve found my mood and attitude regarding my nascent writing career to be significantly less jubilant now that I’ve struggled with the problem of how to sell more books.
I’m fascinated by how one aspect of an author’s writing process can influence others. Brian Pinkerton writes first drafts by hand, which is probably why he doesn’t do any revisions until his first draft is complete. He maps out his novels using note cards, which is something I’ve always wanted to do but I never seem to have enough table space.Â
Word Craft is a deep dive into writer’s methods and practices. Please welcome Brian Pinkerton, author of The Gemini Experiment!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR â BRIAN PINKERTON
Brian Pinkerton deep in plotting mode.
Tell us a little about yourself and what inspired you to become a writer.
Iâve always been fascinated by stories and storytelling. My earliest aspirations were to be a cartoonist and book writer. I wrote my first novel when I was very young. I enacted the entire plot with the Fisher Price Little People Village and then wrote it all down as quickly as I could remember it. I still have that manuscript somewhere. It was written on lined, three-hole-punch paper. The pages were tied together with string.
Yesterday I sent my editor Don D’Auria a very-close-to-final version of the manuscript of The Guardian, sequel to The Sky Woman and Book 2 of the Reclaimed Earth Series. I’ve been working on revisions for the past couple of weeks, and it’s been gratifying to re-immerse myself in the minds and lives of the characters (including Tem, the ten-year-old son of Car-En and Esper, and Umana, aka the Squid Woman, the novel’s archvillain).
Here’s the cover!
You can preorder the book here, or at your local bookstore (most Barnes and Noble locations carry the Flame Tree line). The novel (hopefully) stands on its own merits, regardless if you have read The Sky Woman, so you can jump in wherever.
Please feel free to share the word on social media!
In the year 2737, Earth is mostly depopulated in the wake of a massive supervolcano, but civilization and culture are preserved in vast orbiting ringstations.
Tem, the nine-year-old son of a ringstation anthropologist and a Happdal bow-hunter, wants nothing more than to become a blacksmith like his uncle Trond. But after a rough patch as the only brown-skinned child in the village, his mother Car-En decides that the family should spend some time on the Stanford ringstation.Â
Tem gets caught up in the battle against Umana, the tentacle-enhanced âSquid Womanâ, while protecting a secret that could change the course of humanity and civilization.
The Guardian, the sequel to the The Sky Woman, is a story of colliding worlds and the contested repopulation of a wild Earth.
Russell James has been writing daily, apparently without any extended breaks or even weekends off, since 2001 (personally I feel pretty good if I write four days out of seven). I admire that kind of consistency, even if I can’t particularly relate to it.
I can relate to having my wife as my first reader. There’s no one I trust more with that raw, flawed draft.
I enjoyed reading Russell’s responses to my Word Craft questions, and I hope you do too. Please welcome Russell James to Word Craft!
-J.D.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tell us a little about yourself and what inspired you to become a writer.
Author Russell James
Iâm currently a technical writer for a Fortune 50 company. When my wife and I used to go on long drives, Iâd say âYou know what would be a good story?â and then tell her about a plot idea I had. Eventually she said âWhy donât you write these stories down and get them published.â I said âBecause no one would ever pay to read something I wrote.â But I did end up trying what she suggested, and here we are.