Jay Lake: Writer

[books|writing] Calamity of So Long a Life is out to my last-first readers

Late yesterday afternoon I put the finishing touches on revisions to Calamity of So Long a Life, Sunspin volume one, and sent it out to my last-first readers. Specifically, several generous individuals who hadn’t read the previous draft or otherwise been enmeshed in the project, so I could get a reader reaction. I am hoping to get some feedback by late next week so I can make final revisions and send this out to la agente before the end of the month, per my planned production calendar.

I must confess to being a bit daunted about jumping into the next book, which I won’t do until April. It’s already half-written, I only owe myself another 100,000 words of first draft to nail down volume two, but the overall project is so filling my head right now that I feel as if it will leak out my ears.

Meanwhile, I have two short fiction rewrite requests on my desk to fulfill, a book review to write, and ambitions to make more progress on the synopsis of Little Dog. Given that I have the rest of the month in which to do these things, I am feeling pretty good about my goals.

Tags: Books, Calamity, Little Dog, Process, stories, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 6:27 am Wed February 08 2012 | Comments(0) |

[awards|repost] Obligatory story pimpage

I didn’t publish much short fiction last year, due to the effects of my cancer journey on both my productivity at the keyboard and on my focus on marketing. Such writing time as I’ve had has remained focused on my novels. Nonetheless, a few things have squeaked out into the marketplace.

For my own part, I think the best of these is my Sunspin novelette, “A Long Walk Home”, which has been selected for Year’s Best Science Fiction volume 29. If you’re a Hugo or Nebula voter, I hope you’ll give it consideration.

Anyway, here’s the list.

Novels
Endurance (Green, volume 2), Tor Books

Novelettes
“A Long Walk Home“, Subterranean Online
“The Decaying Mansions of Memory”, Untold Adventures

Short Fiction

“The Blade of His Plow”, Human for a Day, ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Jennifer Brozek
“A Critical Examination of Stigmata’s Print Taking the Rats to Riga” The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities: Exhibits, Oddities, Images, and Stories from Top Authors and Artists, ed. Jeff and Anne VanderMeer
“‘Hello,’ Said the Gun“, Daily Science Fiction
“A Place to Come Home To” (with Shannon Page), When the Hero Comes Home, ed. Gabrielle Harbowy and Ed Greenwood
“They Are Forgotten Until They Come Again”, River, ed. Alma Alexander
“Unchambered Heart”, ChiZine
“You Know What Hunts You“, The Edge of Propinquity

Tags: Awards, Books, Endurance, Repost, stories, Sunspin

Posted: 6:38 am Mon February 06 2012 | Comments(0) |

[writing] Sunspin revision update

Well, I’ve processed my way through a couple of more passes of the manuscript of Calamity of So Long a Life. I’m now looking at one more close read for deep issues based on several salient critiques from my agent and first readers to date.

I can tell I’m nearly done with this revision because I’m starting to get sick of looking at this book. That’s my subconscious’ way of telling me to lay off it before I file off all the interesting bits and polish it into terminal blandness. I do need to do this last pass read-through, however. With luck I can manage it over the weekend, or no later than early next week.

I’m feeling good about it. Hopefully the world will, too. And I’m very pleased with being on target in terms of my production schedule for this project.

Tags: Books, Calamity, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 6:36 am Fri February 03 2012 | Comments(0) |

[writing] More killing of the darlings

Sigh. An excerpt from a now-deleted scene in Calamity of So Long a Life…

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Calamity, Fiction, Process, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 6:36 am Thu February 02 2012 | Comments(0) |

[conventions|personal] The SFWA Portland Reading Series, other miscellany

the_child and I attended the SFWA Portland Reading Series last night. Mary Robinette Kowal introduced, John Pitts hosted and read, while Ken Scholes and David D. Levine rounded out the bill. It was a lot of fun, and we heard some great fiction.

I also had a lot of fun watching the_child work the room, both at the pre-dinner and during the pre-show and intermission breaks at the reading. She was cruising around being friendly and articulate both to old friends and to new folks she’d never met before. Whatever life has in store for her, this girl’s ease with people will be a big part of it.

Due to the various time commitments yesterday, I barely squeaked in an hour of Sunspin revision. Still, I am drawing close to being done with these — perhaps another week of effort, I’m not certain. I’m beating the bushes for another few first readers, because I’d like one more reality check before submitting this to la agente for send-out.

Today I’ll be fairly busy, and most of the weekend will be taken up with supervising the_child‘s labors on her eighth grade project, about which more anon when the time is right.

Tags: Books, Child, Conventions, friends, Personal, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 6:31 am Wed February 01 2012 | Comments(1) |

[personal] Dreaming of Japan, and other updates

Sometime in the last few days, in conversation with someone (I cannot recall who now) I made the observation that I am very rarely lost. I don’t always know where I am when walking or driving in a strange-to-me place, but I always know how I got there and how to get back to wherever I started from. I really do have a very good sense of direction.

So naturally last night my subconscious decided to serve me up some humble pie. I dreamt that Mother of the Child and I were in Japan, walking through a Tokyo neighborhood that looked suspiciously like Portland’s West Hills, admiring the classical architecture. We wound up being invited into one of the houses, which was the home of an absent yakuza crime lord. For some reason, I borrowed one of the yak’s cars — a tiny, ancient Subaru — to head back to our hotel to pick something up, leaving Mother of the Child behind. I got to the hotel, a Best Western in a location that looked suspiciously like Nebraska, and realized I had no idea how to get back to the yakuza mansion. Not only had I lost the_child‘s mother, but I had in effect stolen a car from the Japanese mafia. I had a rented Japanese cellphone, but no matter what I did with it, I couldn’t seem to make an outgoing call. Panic ensued.

Anxiety much? I don’t find that dream so hard to interpret.

In other news, the_child‘s basketball team lost last night 43-28. It was only their second loss of the season, and they fought hard, but the other squad were demon shooters, not to mention quite a bit taller.

Also, I’m making a lot of progress on Sunspin. I expect to have Calamity of So Long a Life out to my last few first readers in another week or so, well ahead of schedule. This will give me time to work on Little Dog, I think, given my production scheduling.

This evening, the_child and I are going to the SFWA Northwest Reading Series. David Levine, J.A. Pitts and Ken Scholes are reading:

Tuesday, January 31
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
McMenamins Kennedy School, 5736 N.E. 33rd Ave. Portland, OR 97211

Note they’re also reprising, with a slightly different cast, in Seattle tomorrow night.

Wednesday, February 1
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Wild Rover Restaurant and Pub, 111 Central Way, Kirkland, WA 98033

If you’re in the area, turn out and support live, local literature!

Tags: Books, Calamity, Child, Conventions, dreams, family, friends, Japan, Personal, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 6:27 am Tue January 31 2012 | Comments(1) |

[cancer] Updating the ink, general progress

This morning I am off to have the tattoos on my wrist updated. (See here [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ] for the original discussion of the tattoo process, along with photos.) mlerules is coming with for moral support and documentation purposes.

In general, at the moment I feel pretty healthy. I’m not quite back to baseline, but I’m very close. That’s with me only about five and half weeks out of the FOLFIRI chemo series. This is a sharp contrast to the months of recovery time from the 2010 FOLFOX chemo series. I still struggle a little bit with fatigue and sleep issues, and my lower GI is even more eccentric than usual, but that’s about it. Given that my next CT scan is in two and half weeks, I’m just enjoying what I have right now, and hoping not to be plunged back into the medical mixmaster right away.

After the ink, and probably lunch out, I’ll be hanging with the_child this afternoon. Late in the day, I may go visit a friend who just got sprung from the hospital, if they’re up to company. And there will be some Sunspin revisions at some point. That’s what’s going on.

Tags: Art, Books, Cancer, Child, friends, health, Personal, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 7:45 am Sat January 28 2012 | Comments(2) |

[writing] Sunspin progris riport

Yesterday I finished the first revision pass on Sunspin, specifically Calamity of So Long a Life, the first of the three four volumes that make up the arc. This pass consisted of embedding all my various first reader comments, doing a close line read for typos and textual infelicities, and processing those comments that don’t require Deep Thought to address. I wound up deleting about a dozen scenes, and making notes for a number of additional significant revisions.

In today’s work session, I’ll make a new version of the file and accept all my changes. (I work in Microsoft Word with the ‘track changes’ feature turned on, specifically so I can backtrack as needed.) I’ll also combine the two separate .docx files that are part I and part II of the book into a single .docx, this to facilitate search-and-replace operations as well as moving back and forth around the body of the book. These are purely technical issues that I need to address before getting serious about the second revision pass.

One of the purposes of that close line read is to load the book back into my head. This way, when I have a note on page 532 that says something like, “Did Mist know this earlier?”, I have a pretty good notion of where the earlier scenes are that Mist might (or might not) have been in on that particular revelation. This sense of having the shape and details of the book in my head, within my span of control, is critical to the second and later passes. (For more on “span of control”, see here and here.)

The second revision pass will be to address scene level and structural issues, which is what the majority of the embedded comments are concerned with. My agent made a suggestion that will greatly improve the dramatic tension of the book, but requires serious adjustment to a major plot thread and a fair number of minor clean-ups elsewhere. This will probably not take me too many elapsed work days, as in revisions I am a very conservative tweaker rather than a tear-down-and-rebuild kind of writer. I trust Fred, my writing mind, and I strive not to damage or blunt the voice that is always strongest in my first drafts and only ever minimized by too much revision or polishing.

After that, I’ll go back through again, most likely focusing on character issues in the third revision pass. I’ll also somewhere in here decide if a fourth revision pass is necessary or not.

Note that none of these revision passes are surgically clean. Even though the second pass is about scene and structure, I’ll be noodling character issues while I’m in there. And vice-versa for the third pass. The process is rather more organic than I’m making it sound here. But in a high level sense, this description is accurate.

I am also pleased to report that I seem to be somewhat ahead of my own production schedule. This monster, which will ring in at about 135,000 to 140,000 words for Calamity of So Long a Life, may be in to my agent a week or two early. I’ll spend March working on short fiction and letting my brain settle, then in April it’s on to volume two, Their Currents Turn Awry, of which the first 70,000 words already exist in draft.

I love this stuff.

Tags: Books, Calamity, Currents, Process, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 6:28 am Fri January 27 2012 | Comments(0) |

[conventions] I will be reading at SF in SF, February 11th, 2012

Ok, not really a convention, but I don’t have a tag for ‘events’ or ‘readings’. I probably should, huh?

At any rate, I’ll be reading at SF in SF on Saturday, February 11th, 2012, along with K.W. Jeter, hosted by Terry Bisson — two of the more interesting people I know. My appearance there is being sponsored by my publisher, Tor Books, as part of a tour for the recent release of my second Green novel, Endurance [ Powells | BN ].

We’ll be appearing at The Variety Preview Room at 582 Market St. @ Montgomery, 1st floor of The Hobart Bldg. [ Google Maps ] Doors open at 6:00 pm and the event starts at 7:00 pm. I believe I’ll be reading something connected to Sunspin. If you’re in the Bay Area, come on down for an evening of live science fiction reading and discussion.

Hope to see you there!

Tags: Books, California, Conventions, Endurance, Green, Sunspin

Posted: 6:44 am Wed January 25 2012 | Comments(1) |

[conventions|travel] Epic ConFusion Day Three, going home

Day three of Epic Confusion was very abbreviated for me, as I had to leave the hotel at 10:30 am in order to make my flight home. Still, I managed to attend a very nice breakfast, courtesy of cathshaffer and various concom folks, and say good-bye to a bunch of people by virtue of loitering in the lobby while my airport transportation ran 40 minutes late.

Which, yes, gave me a bad case of the “oh crap”s.

Nonetheless, I made it into DTW in a timely fashion. The flight down to DFW was uneventful, and I got the first part of what would eventually be 2.75 hours of editing on Sunspin done. I spent the rest of my time divided between Charlie Stross’ Laundry books and Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon, both of which I’m enjoying immensely. I don’t normally split my attention between two books, but I have Stross in eBook and Ahmed in dead tree, and the exigencies of air travel caused me to have to switch modes periodically.

In Dallas, we took a long time landing due to the 50 mph cross-winds on the runway slowing air traffic down severely. That also slowed down the arriving flight that would become the equipment for my Portland connection, to the degree of being almost two hours late. So much for my plan of flying through Dallas to avoid winter weather delays in Chicago or Denver. So much for a good night’s sleep, as well.

Anent Sunspin, I got through the first revision pass of the first half of Calamity of So Long a Life, and began embedding the comments for an initial pass through the second half. Right now, I’m actually a bit ahead of schedule for what I expected on this book. I think that’s a good thing, but it might also mean I have been skimming work when I should be digging deeper. We shall see…

Also, I forgot to mention that at Epic Confusion adelheid-p gave me a very nice gift. I need to thank her, and will post photos and a description some time in the net few days as time permits.

This afternoon is another girls’ basketball game, though the_child has been down with a respiratory infection the last few days, so it’s not clear if she’ll be able to play. She gets sick so rarely, this is unusual.

And of course, now that I’m home, Day Jobbery.

Tags: Books, Calamity, Child, Conventions, Sunspin, Travel, work, Writing

Posted: 6:42 am Mon January 23 2012 | Comments(0) |