The Cold Equations

In the movie and book The Killer Angels there is a scene where Confederate Lt. General James Longstreet is mentally running through what is going to happen to Pickett's men as they advance on the Union lines on July 3rd, 1863. When they come into view they will be hit with long-range artillery fire. Casualties will drop out and organizations will be stressed. At 200 yards they will begin taking rifle fire and formations will begin to come apart. At 100 yards it will be cannister howling through the air and cutting down men in groups. It will be up to leadership, then, because formations will be lost. In the end, 6500 men (more or less) fell, and every regimental and brigade commander was hit. The attack failed.

Longstreet's thoughts were the same numbers that guide everyone who writes a set of wargames rules for the black powder era. They are the presumed effectiveness of cannon and musket fire on advancing troops.

In the 1780's and 90's a series of experiments were conducted by the Prussian Army and the East India Company seeking those hard numbers. They fired at a canvas strip the height of a soldier and counted the hits scored at a variety of ranges.

Now a body of troops are not a solid wall. As troops advance gaps will appear between the men. There will be more gaps down lo around the legs. Further, the men doing the firing were not themselves under fire, nor was their command structure disrupted by hostile bullets. Despite all of that, these were numbers people could use.

There have been other attempts to codify the effects of fire. A number of years ago, in a book entitled Firepower, Brigadier B.P. Hughes studied the casualties in the Second Peninsular War (1808-14). One of the numbers that sticks in the mind is that every cannon shot (ball shot) will inflict 1 KIA and 3-5 wounded, at a minimum. This information was drawn from battlefield performance, and was seized upon by rules writers everywhere.

On the face of it the numbers Hughes derived appeared to be valid, but a careful reading of his work invites some skepticism and suggestions that these numbers are still a bit high. For example, the French fired at least 36,000 cannonballs fired at Wagram in 1809, but 36,000 dead and 180,000 wounded on the Austrian side. As they had some 150,000 men, this would have represented a 133% casualty rate.

A brief digression: the morale effects of fire is a lot harder to calculate, and falls into the sphere of anecdotes and memories. A Prussian general, speaking in 1870, opined that a unit could lose 2 min in 5 and still function adequately. In the American Civil War (a treasure trove of information like this) the numbers are, perhaps, higher. Dr. Christopher Duffy, in The Military Experience in the Age of Reason concluded that a regiment had one "good" fight in it (read "big" fight with high casualties), but a unit could go through a whole series of battles where they lost 4-10% casualties with little ill effect. S.L.A. Marshal investigated this very subject in his seminal work Men Against Fire about combat experiences in the South Pacific in WW2. Training, discipline, leadership, prior experience, and, yes, morale, all factor into this. Unit A might grind to a halt and return a desultory fire, while Unit B will continue to advance (albeit slowly). Look at what happened with the 26th North Carolina on the first day of Gettysburg when they ran into the 19th Indiana of the Iron Brigade.

Note, I listed morale and discipline as separate categories. A unit can be disciplined to the point of being brittle. Discipline might hold a unit in the firing line; morale will impel them forward or get them to maneuver while under fire. Not for nothing did the French inscribe "Valor and Discipline" on their colors during the French Revolution and Republic.

So what are we to do with the numbers so carefully collected in Prussia, Bombay and Spain? Is it too much to suggest we discount them by a healthy amount, say 75-90%?
Let us perform a thought experiment. A 600 man battalion of infantry drawn up in 3 ranks is going to attack a 6-gun battery 1000 yards away. The foot will advance at 75 yards a minute and halt when they come within 100 yards of their target to open fire. It will take them 12 minutes to cover those 900 yards. The 6-gun battery, all smoothbores, can fire as fast as 2 rounds/minute, but regulations specified otherwise. General Henry J. Hunt, the Commander of the Artillery of the Army of the Potomac, and therefore a subject matter expert, recommended a battery that is not in danger of being overrun, fire at one round per gun every two minutes. This would balance ammunition supply and usage, smoke, barrel temperatures (barrels that were too hot would "cook off" the ammunition, with unfortunate results for the crew), and the necessity to run the guns back into position in an era without recoil mechanisms on the gun.

Now 6 guns will, in 12 minutes, produce 36 shots. By the numbers derived in Hughes' book, this will generate 36 dead and up to 180 wounded, or 216 casualties (over 33%) just from this battery. Note that there isn't much cannister fire, no supporting musketry, and no fire from other batteries.

So how was it that batteries in the black powder era were captured? How was it that the battlefields of the black powder era weren't charnel houses that would rival WW1? There are several reasons: the effects of ground (these were direct fire weapons); the size of a battalion (don't think width, think depth - it takes very little to make the 4" cannonball miss); noise; distractions such as casualties; the effects (at least when facing the French) of sustained skirmish fire (by the way - you can shoot through skirmishers); and the difficulty of judging the effects of fire on a battlefield shrouded in smoke.

A brief anecdote here. A Union officer operating in the Peach Orchard at Gettysburg on July 2nd, 1863, was more concerned by the skirmish fire than the 44 guns aimed at his position from 400 yards away.

Unfortunately, without doing such things as walking the battlefields we've read about, rules writers have accepted a lot of the above numbers with little question. For example, a decade or so ago I played a dozen games of Battles for Empire, which was a slicked up rewrite of Garde du Corps, which was an attempt to rewrite/improve Scotty Bowden's Empire 2. I watched a single battery catch a column in the flank at 800 scale yards and blow away 10 of the 12 castings with one shot. This was not a fluke. I asked a rookie gamer about the rules afterwards. He offered the opinion that the guns were the killers, and everything else was just decoration.

As an experiment, when we did a large battle with 5,000 castings on a side, I tracked what happened to my lead infantry corps of 400+ castings (25,000 men in scale). Just over 60% of their 5,000 casualties came from 6# roundshot (almost all of it from two Royal Horse Artillery batteries; 30% came from one battalion of British Rifles that could move full and shoot at a full rate every turn; 10% came from smoothbore muskets and melee. The Young Guard at Aspern Essling in 1809 lost 10% due to artillery fire, 5% due to bayonet/sword, and 85% due to smoothbore muskets.

We stopped playing those rules just after that.

Some rules writers get it right by concentrating, not on the numbers, but on the effects of combat. Shako gives a quick game that more or less feels like some of the combat of the 1813-15 period. Be warned, things can go bad for you in a hurry, which is why I say a quick game. House Rules Napoleonic, 2nd ed. seems even closer, and can even be done without dice! I have been told my own Little Big Battles does much the same, though dice are a tad more important. Empire 2, preferably modified slightly, does much the same. Or you can write your own.

If you do (write your own), be prepared for someone to fire a 6# battery at a battalion in column 1200 yards away, and be vocally disappointed because that battalion wasn't vaporized (I saw it happen in a refight of Albuera). That is the residue of the use of the numbers I mentioned above.

Updates to Setosha

The trick in working on updates to these books is in focusing on what the story is. When I picked my way through the chapter summary of Setosha, removing those things that didn't contribute to Corey liberating Setosha, I found a consistent pattern in my trimming: I was removing sub-plots that were involved with the wider war. This meant I had to take out the interaction between the Idenux Ship Lords and Families Intelligence. And Liz Elia just before her breakdown. And the Families Marines on New Republic. And the counterinsurgency actions by the Imperials on the planet. I kept in Tatiana Silversmith's attack on Medina and the aftermath of that; her actions were what gave Corey the idea she used in the skies over Setosha. I also kept in Arthene Devries; Greek Tragedy can be interesting to write, and it fit with one of the themes of what one person can do.

The result "officially" trimmed 14,000 words from the story, but it came to closer to 28,000 words.

The trick is to stay focused. Stay on those things that tell Corey's Story. If this was a book about the Liberation of Setosha it would be different. And who knows, maybe I'll lump all of those things I took out into another story. It worked for Tolkien.

Other Rules

A few posts ago I said things about the rule system Piquet that were not filled with glowing praise. Apparently I'm supposed to consider this rule system to be the be-all and end-all of gaming, and to say otherwise constitutes heresy.

Sorry, no.

Piquet is one of those rules that you either like or dislike. There is no middle ground. I, based upon my experiences, have joined the 'dislike' side. Actually, I take that back. The rules writer has done some very clever things, and it gives a good game. I just won't play it again.

Several years ago I went to Tacoma to play Cartouche, the module for the Horse & Musket period. Most of the time my boys and I stood around watching while my opponent won dice throw after dice throw giving him the initiative. After several turns in which my troops got to move just a little, I opened a book I'd bought before the game and spent most of the rest of the game reading. Once in a while I got to do something, but I've had a more active time watching paint dry on a figure.

The problem I have is that I and the dice have this agreement. They will attempt to screw me over at every opportunity, and I will do my best to make the numbers they produce irrelevant. It's bad enough dicing for how many stands movement in HoTTs or DBA (but you can group the stands so when you throw a 1 you can move more than 1 stand), and dice are used quite a lot in King's War for resolving morale and combat, but dicing for initiative is asking for trouble. A table might say I might have a 95% chance of getting the initiative; the reality is that in that case, 8 or 9 times out of 10 my opponent will get it.

There is phrase I hear a lot in the local wargaming group: "Jeeze, I can't believe how bad your dice throws are!"

Now I've been wrong on rules before. Several years ago Jeff and I took part in a game of Volley & Bayonet, a set of rules that is simple in writing, but conceptually quite elegant. The battle was Quatre Bras, and the gamesmaster putting it on is a nice guy. He shouldn't be running a game, especially if he doesn't know the rules very well. Jeff and I ran all over him. We turned it into what Quatre Bras was shaping up into before a good chunk of Wellington's Army showed up. I had such a time that I vowed not to play VnB again. In my view I should not have been able to get away with what I did. Jeff's opinion was even lower.

A couple of years later I got the chance to play VnB under the guidance of someone who was very familiar with all of the ins and outs of the rules. We did Napoleonics again, and I had a blast. Tactics worked. Grand tactics worked(!). Combined arms worked very well, thank you. I was hot-diced, but my Prussians managed to (barely) hold on to the main objective long enough for a Russian Corps to arrive and relieve us.

I liked my experience so much I cut out a whole mess of 3" x 1.5" stands and took them to the game store for a Marlburian bash with my figures (normal VnB stands are brigades on 3" x 3" stands; the half-sized stands are regimental stands). It was stiff, formal, and maneuvering the foot was difficult at best. I had a terrific time. I completely revised my opinion of VnB (and though it doesn't matter, I lost the battle). I permanently based half my Napoleonic figures for VnB, and based all of my Marlburians for those rules, and I persuaded the guys in my wargaming group to give them a try.

I tried Piquet twice more, once Napoleonic and once American Civil War. I did not enjoy myself. Quite frankly I was bored stiff. I thought longingly of other things I could be doing.

I don't dislike Piquet, I just won't play it again. Three times is enough.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now for something completely different.

I've now added links to my website. You can now read the first chapter of several different stories. I added a page on ideas, and another to several stories that I have in the queue. There's more coming.

The Inevitable Points Rant

Warning up front, this may get into a bit of a rant.

If you stick around the wargaming hobby long enough, you will encounter point systems. These are put together so you can have "equal point battles". They are the rules writer's judgment about the worth of various troops, and how they compare to each other.

I first encountered this in the old Avalon Hill boardgame D-Day. Average German divisions were 3-4-3, which translated as 3 attack, 4 defense, 3 movement. The average Allied division was a 4-4-4. Allied Armored divisions were 5-5-4, while German panzer divisions were 6-5-4. As you could stack up to three divisions in a hex, you could (conceivably) get 12-4 attacks, or 3:1. This was the minimum necessary to hope for a successful attack. A lot of the time it would be 2 infantry divisions and an armored division vs. 2 German infantry divisions, 13-8, which didn't do you any better than a 12-8, but you didn't realize this at first. You could make a series of 13-8 attacks, and you would discover that they effectively were 1:1 attacks as Avalon Hill didn't have a 3:2 column on the Combat Results Table. The best you could do, by the way, was 15-8.

Clever tacticians would do 'soak off' attacks at bad odds to improve their odds elsewhere, and attack from 2 different hexes. Thus you would generate a few 1:2 attacks so the main attack could go in at 27 or 28 to 4, or 7:1, which was an automatic victory.

As games got bigger, and the mechanics improved, these kinds of attacks got more and more important. But the key thing was the comparison of one side's individual units to another. And it was only inevitable that this would carry over into miniatures gaming.

I was slogging through a WRG 4th Edition Ancients game, and losing badly, when a third party looked at the composition of the two sides and informed us that it was no wonder the Romans were winning, they had 1570 points, and I only had 1210. My army was historical in size, as was that of my opponent, but in the way WRG worked things, his was worth 29% more. And this was telling on the battlefield.

After the battle we delved into the mysteries of the point system. Individual soldiers were worth a variety of different points depending upon their armor, weapons, and whether they were 'regular' (i.e. from a civilized country with a regularly constituted army), or 'irregular' (being from barbarians or a country without a regularly constituted army). You paid so much for a unit (usually 10 for regular, 25 for irregular), added a general, and totted up the points. You wanted to stay under 1,000 or 1,500.

The reason for a point system was to avoid uneven battles. This was supposed to be a test of tactical skill, and (theoretically) the best general would win. This led, as was inevitable, to tournament play.

In tournament play you were given a point limit. You chose an army from the Army List, and fiddled with the units until you got one you liked. In most tournaments that I saw the owner could fiddle with his army between rounds. You would see players adding skirmishers and subtracting heavy cavalry, or other bits of juggling to get the best match-up against their next opponent. And if there were options in an army (4 Heavy Cavalry Class C Regular at 12 points each, armed with spear, sword and shield, or 10 Light Class C Regular Heavy Infantry with spear and shield at 5 points each), you could see some frantic swapping as they read their opponent's published army list.

I took part in a tournament using the Shock of Impact rules. I field an Mauryan Indian Army (one that gave Alexander the Great fits), with elephants, medium cavalry, 4-horse chariots and lots of archers (2/3rds of the foot were archers). I recall three battles. The first, against a Roman force, was punctuated by my coming down with food poisoning. The second, against a Parthian Army, featured my getting hosed on the terrain (flat, open terrain with no trees or hills); I formed a rearguard and marched my army off the table despite being opposed by an army of nothing but cavalry -- for some reason this impressed the guy in the group who was an officer in the Army. The third was against a Seleucid army and my archers devastated the opposing pikes; they lost a third of their strength and failed to close.

It is small comfort that one of the people, curious about why someone with my reputation in the gaming community there should suffer like that. He eventually chalked it up to me being the 'new guy', and thus fair game for all of the rules lawyering and playing fast and loose with the rules. They continued this in a Napoleonic Campaign using the Vive L'Empereur rules. I left the campaign halfway through it when I observed that the Prussian 1806 army (with bad leadership) was a much better army under those rules than a French 1806 army (with good leadership).

But the "equal points battles" were pursued vigorously for the next two years (I fielded a Han Chinese Army, and later a Theban Greek Army) the next two times. The former tied one game, lost six. The latter won 1 game, and lost six. My opinion of my opponents was not high, especially when I tried them in games that did not have the faults of Shock of Impact. The most egregious rules lawyer in the group didn't fare very well when he took his Swedish 1757 Army up against my 1757 Hanoverian Army in Age of Reason. Tod wrote some tight rules, and there was very little room for fudging.

The worst rules lawyer in the group treated each game as a test of his manhood. He was obsessed with winning, to the point where objectivity and history went out the window. I have a feeling no successor to Alexander the Great could have afforded to field his particular army.

I took part in an ancients tournament in Columbus, OH, and found the place full of rules lawyers, each trying to wring every little advantage out of the rules (for the record, 6th Edition WRG). They weren't interested in the history of their army, they weren't interested in details of training, campaigns or uniforms; did it win? Was it a Killer Army? That was all. And that's where I saw the aforementioned fiddling with the army lists.

I also got acquainted with DBA there, but that's another story.

Somehow I refuse to believe that a Roman Legionnaire with heavy armor, pilum, shield, and sword is worth as many points as a dismounted French knight of 1345. I saw a cartoon where somebody equated a Zulu Impi (Zulu regiment) to a Tiger tank, and mentioned that the points were equal. Admittedly some people insist that the armies in a tournament be roughly contemporary (the local DBA crowd does this). But this is an exception. Too many tournaments are dominated by the 'competition gamer'.

Now within limits a point system can be a good idea. For example in Hordes of the Things, a DBA style fantasy miniatures game, you build a maximum of 24 points. Spears and other assorted troops are worth 2 points each. Magicians are 4, as are other fantasy elements. You play until you've lost 12 points. Thus you have to balance off risk to high value elements with the bulk to cover your front. Here a point system makes sense as you are merely paying for the type, not the quality of troops. DBA goes further; you have 12 stands, period; this gives a battle that lasts about 1 hour.

A point system induces ahistorical behavior, ahistorical battles, and should be relegated to pure fantasy gaming.

End of Rant.

Getting on the Web

Two years ago I utilized the free space offered by MSN to create a Link Site where friends could go to get rules, story snippets and the like. After some thought, I've decided to go in a different direction. The Link Site is being Designated for Assignment. That means I have 10 days to either outright release it, trade it, or send it to the minors. As of yesterday I gave it its unconditional release.

I'm bringing in a new site (also on MSN). This will showcase bits and pieces of my writing. I have the bare bones up at the moment, at http://groups.msm.com/BruceBWrites. I will put up those things I published that are not for remuneration (mostly wargaming stuff), and snippets of other stories. At the moment I am planning on a lead chapter, probably in PDF or HTML. If the book is bought by a publisher, then I will include a link to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell's City of Books.

This is a deliberate act to get parts of my writing in front of more people. To that end I have opened it up to everyone. I may regret that, but as a precaution I'm going to see about making an archive.

I will also see about making the design more than just the bare bones MSN groups page. To that end I'm going to fiddle with creating my own web page.

Will my gaming rules be there? King's War will be referenced and linked to a place where you can get them. If people want a copy of Little Big Battles they can e-mail me and I can send them a copy. When I finish the Gasbags Aloft! rules, I'll link those, too.

Will this take time from my writing? Not as much as you might think. I know something about web page design, and I'm making this so I can update it.

Will I eventually migrate somewhere else? Probably. First you get something out there, and then you adjust it as needed.

What about putting a whole book up there? No, not if I intend to sell it. At this time I will probably put Kalliste's Storytime up in its entirety. If I put a complete copy of anything else, then I can't offer a vast number of rights to the work.

Will I link to other sites? So far I've added a link to PNWA (www.pnwa.org) and this blog. I will probably add a few more.

What, exactly, will be there? So far the plans are to put the first chapter and a brief teaser for each completed story. I do not intend to put short stories there.

So more, later, I'm going to fiddle with the web page.

A Different Direction

Yesterday over to the Peninsula to visit with my brother and his wife. Back late (do not take the Port Townsend-Winslow Ferry, we had a 2.5 hour wait in Pt. Townsend. We would have gotten home sooner by going back to Kingston). But the time wasn't totally wasted. As we sat I got a chance to really think about Firestar.

I was faced with a dilemma. Was there anything that was the central problem of the story? Was there a must that only Corey could do. There were a couple of valid suggestions, genomes, scouting, and so on. Most of those involved extensive rewriting, not only with Firestar, but then with Setosha and Lexeon. It might even have serious repercussions with Boabdil and Engage the Enemy More Closely. I'm viewing these as one large story with multiple segments. Thus a different must than I had intended for Corey Andersen ripples through the rest of the stories.

While waiting in Edmonds for the ferry I reviewed my themes. This is something I picked up at PNWA from Ed Penz. And one of the themes is that tactical and strategic skill are discrete things. Actually there are three, operational being the third. A person can be skilled at one and not the other. Look at the campaign (1653-54) between Turenne and the Great Conde. Conde won battle after battle; he was clearly the superior tactician. But Turenne set up the strategic and operational situation so Conde's victories did not matter. Now that does not mean that strategic skill trumps operational, which trumps tactical. They do, but only to a point. A good tactician can turn a strategic situation completely on its head. That happened in the Napoleonic wars from time to time.

Corey is a tactical genius, but she is untutored. In the words used in the book she is a natural tactician. She doesn't know why she does certain things, she just knows they will work. There is a scene in Firestar where Corey turns the carrier de Ruyter into an attack while positioning two ships to the rear with orders to fire up de Ruyter's stern. This results in mauling two Idenux cruisers. She knew it would work; it was only much later did she learn why. And for those who read this and wonder what she saw, it has to do with target overshoot and target fixation, getting into the psychology of the opponent; a good tactician gets inside his opponent's head.

So what did I do with this? In a battle Corey accidentally discovers how to defeat the Idenux. It is not a clever maneuver, I won't have any of that. In a war lasting 30 years you can bet that somebody has tried out virtually every maneuver possible. Instead she develops a combined arms approach using fighters and ships working together.

At one time the US Navy was a surface war navy. Even submarines were really torpedo boats that could go underwater for brief times, and they hunted the vessels on the surface, not other submarines. But after Pearl Harbor, and the events of 1942, that changed. Air began to dominate, and there were fewer and fewer surface battles. Soon the air arm in the Navy began to dominate the higher ranks. The submarine force didn't suffer from this, going their own route. But the surface warfare specialists basically were shut out of the career paths.

Something similar happened in the Families Navy. They went with carriers because of the flexibility of fighters. But ships have their own power, and their own career paths. In the Families Navy fighter crew have their own ranks and promotion path, but they eventually have to go to Command & Staff School and get a regular rank. The whole system would be set up to give rank to those with ship experience because there would be this belief that fighter pilots would not have the requisite ship maneuvering experience. Those that tried to get this experience would run into a lot of resistance.

Corey discovers a middle way, combining the flexibility of fighters with the power of the ships. She proves this in combat, which means it can't be explained away or shuffled out of sight. Combat has a way of doing that. She knows that the Families are outnumbered and are losing the numbers war against the Idenux (though she doesn't know why). The Families are at full stretch, and every year finds them facing more Idenux. They've already lost one colony, and are shutting another one down. And then she sees a way to turn this around.

So who are her opponents? The 'establishment' of the Families Navy. There are bureaucracies that would accept defeat rather than admit that they were wrong. So she has to prove this. She has help (she is sent to Command & Staff so she can learn how to use big ships), but she is shuffled off to a post where she can be 'lost'. She comes out of that with honors, so she is finally put in a position to use her skill, knowledge, and teach it to others. But her opponents, relying upon an alliance with the People's Star Kingdom to go the 'big ship' route for an upcoming critical battle, try to have her Family recall her. This forces Corey to face a question: which has primacy, her Family, or the Navy?

On the face of it this is an easy decision. But in the context of the Families it is not. She might be an officer in the Navy, but she is known as Family Red Ridges, and heretofore the Family has come first, at least for most people. So she has this dilemma, which she must face down as a second threat. She makes some choices that close out the story. Oh, and there's a big fight.

That's different than what I originally wrote, and yet a uses a lot of what I already had. Her must is to change and entire establishment, through word and deed. It's a daunting task, and will take everything she has to do it, and make her a different person at the end than she was at the beginning. And that is the story.

That just leaves reworking what I have.

When Rules and Stories Meet

Years ago I read Ben Bova's Star Conquerors, and H. Beam Piper's Space Viking, as well as E.E. Smith's Lensman saga, and I got the hankering for space combat games on the tabletop.

In the pursuit of this I tried a number of space combat rules. Star Fleet Battles was a lot of fun, until it got so complicated I felt I needed an advanced degree to play it. Full Thrust was great fun, though in large actions there was a lot of sitting around waiting for the other side's ships to finish firing. I had some issues with the handling of fighters, but ignored them as I was interested in the ship-to-ship action, and within the premises of Full Thrust, they worked. Besides, I had discovered a Ship Design spreadsheet for Full Thrust, and I could try my own ship designs.

By the way, I also played Red Chicken Rising, the only space combat rules that opens with a shower scene! Actually, in a lot of ways Red Chicken Rising is what you want in a space combat game. Nobody cares if you hit an unimportant part of a ship. You concentrate on the important parts . And you have either the boring and realistic movement rules, or the cinematic rules (come to think of it, you can have that in Full Thrust, too).

Then I read an account of a carrier action online. This was about the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, and dealt with sortie rates and deck handling in the US carriers (though not in the Japanese carriers). It made me revisit Full Thrust's fighter rules and the idea of having dedicated escorts. I also began to consider something I'd learned while reading about the Red Army of WW2: "Quantity has a Quality all its own".

Now the latter isn't quite true as it assumes a rough parity in quality. A Soviet WW2 Tank Army that went up against, say, a company of M1A2 Abrams would have some severe problems. But when you add the other cliche, "Mass, not Driblets", you begin to see some possibilities.

What this meant in Full Thrust terms was that I decided I could trade off individual toughness of ships if I got more firing platforms. I tested this theory in large actions (not small). Here the N-Square Law began to take effect. 20 cruisers vs. 12 cruisers, with the latter 20% stronger, still resulted in the destruction of the 12 cruisers. The marginal increases in quality meant higher losses for the larger side, but that was all. The real determining factor turned out to be the skill of both commanders. When the skill levels were roughly comparable then quantity won. For those who wonder, all 12 cruisers were destroyed for a loss of 10 of the lower strength cruisers.

Then I put together a balanced force where I added an escorting class of ships that were mostly Point Defense clusters with only a modest offensive threat. I tried this because we all had gone heavily into missiles, and I had decided to go with dedicated fighter carriers as well. The escorts reduced my opponent's options to beam weapons. Unfortunately it took a few games to evolve a doctrine for this force, but here the book on the Eastern Solomons proved invaluable. I just lifted parts of the USN's doctrine: hit early, hit hard, and then pull back to recover and rearm. Soften at a distance before closing for the second attack with fighters and ships together. And concentrate on reducing/degrading weapons platforms.

I didn't know it at the time, but I was evolving the tactical doctrine of the Families Navy. So when I started writing Firestar it was only logical that I use that Full Thrust spreadsheet to develop the various ships in that games' terms. I won't include that here, but suffice to say that a Families cruiser has higher acceleration but not quite the structural toughness of a PSK or Imperial ship. And the Idenux ships were designed for raiding, not slug-it-out-bulkhead-to-bulkhead-at-5,000 kilometers style warfare (though the Idenux battlecruisers were).

With the aptly named Escorts and Cruisers I had a logical progression of ships. I thought of capitol ships, but decided that the Families would not go down that path. Instead they went for more weapons platforms and sought incremental improvements (sort of like the Soviets up-gunning from 76mm to 85mm. This fit with the 'modular' approach the Families took to ship design, where improvements could be mass-produced, then simply plugged in. There are limitations to this approach, but not as many as people think when you mass-produce the way they do.

The Families did go for larger and more capable carriers. That produced some interesting changes in the games, too.

By the way, space combat games, just like wet navy games, or air games, get real interesting when you put 40-80 ships out there, not 6-10. It's like what I found with Little Big Battles, or Scotty Bowden's Empire 1 and Empire 2. Tactics are different in that size of battle. If it is a multi-player game you have to delegate and explain your general idea (sort of like in multi-player games of King's War). And concentration turns out to be a real key, not dispersal as everyone follows their own ideas.

I saw that years and years ago in a sailing ship action. The top commander of the French side was a very naval tactician, much better than anyone else in the game. So those of us on the British side decided to stay welded together in a line-ahead. We would do everything together, and trust the various subordinates on the other side to act independently as soon as they could. It worked. Five British 3rd rates fought off six French 2nd and 3rd rates (their largest ship was a 98, ours an 84) and came away with a prize for no loss of our own. On a ship-for-ship basis we were arguably out-matched; but we would roll 5 ships past 1-2 of theirs, and that made a huge difference.

I applied something like this in a Full Thrust game with multiple carriers and 36 cruisers (and 12 escorts). It was a madhouse, but the other side wasn't prepared for a fighter strike that was that big, especially when it arrived at the same time as a missile barrage. This busted their formation open, and after that it was a one-sided cruiser battle. Those who have read the Families War trilogy will recognize that as one of the battles Adana Korina fought.

And after a couple of battles like that the story began to evolve in its own way, though you can still model the ships in that conflict with Full Thrust.

p.s. - I strongly recommend buying copies of Full Thrust, as well as downloading Red Chicken Rising. The latter has some interesting ideas about the way ships take damage (catastrophic, not attritional), and besides, gives an "interesting" game. And who knows, I might make a story out of an incident from a game of Red Chicken Rising.

p.p.s - the book on Japanese Carrier Doctrine is out. Find, purchase and read Shattered Sword, the Japanese side of Midway from primary Japanese sources. It's not what you saw in the movie; the Japanese weren't just moments from launching a crushing blow against the US carrierswhen the dive bombers hit them, and the slow launch of one scout plane from a cruiser didn't compromise the entire Japanese battle plan. Nuts, read the book, you'll see. The best history books come from primary sources, and that's what this book does.

There is also a book now on the shelves about on the destruction of the US torpedo squadrons at Midway that is worth reading, too. It even goes into US torpedo problems, and why and how they occurred. Good stuff.

The Turn Sequence

Two postings today, one that I'd intended, one that just happened.

About the time I wrote Alte Fritz I began to look at Turn Sequence. I looked at it from a programming point of view, as a set of instructions necessary to carry out the turn. Some I examined were rigid. Over the next few years I divided them into a number of categories, roughly:rigid; flexible; and chaotic (there are more, but these will do for now). Here are examples of each of these three.

Rigid - this tells you who does what, and when. You have very few choices about it. Typically it goes something like: Move units in descending order of commander's initiative, and in accordance with their orders. After all Side A's movement is done, conduct that of Side B. Conduct Combat in the same order involving both sides, applying the results as they happen. You almost don't need a player for this one after you draw up the orders. Most computer games use this for the AI.

Flexible - this lets you do things in the order you choose, within certain contraints. But again, Side A moves, Side B moves, then you have combat, then you do morale. WRG reversed that with fire before movement, and while that was really nifty, it never caught on. Most rules use something like this.

Chaotic - an action card comes up and you determine who it applies to. Piquet uses something like this (I will now hear from the Piquet true believers). Personally I preferred a little more structure in my games. And I hated sitting around waiting with nothing to do. It got so bad in one Piquet game I was in that I went out to my car and brought back a book to read. I was told that was atypical, but it happend in three of the four games of Piquet that I played. Most role-playing games use the chaotic model.

Very common in all of this is to separate movement from combat, and have both sides move. This is because there is no true simultaneous movement. In Alte Fritz I used a move-countermove system. Side A moved up to 1/2; Side B moved full; Side A moved their remaining. You had combat and morale, and then Side A and Side B switched. The net result was to break up movement so players conld react to each other. This was within the time scale, and is an important point.

How long should a turn be? One is the critical decision loop length in the game? In a variable length bound game it can be any length. Thus Pickett and Pettigrew's divisions appear, creating a Change of Situation; Union does nothing new, and opens fire, generating a Confederate Change of Situation. Confederates choose to do nothing but follow their orders. They advance to small arms range, which takes them 15 minutes. Fire commences, a Change of Situation for the Confederates, who press on. They are moved into Close Combat Range. Change of Situation for both sides, starting with the Defender. He does not recoil. Confederates fail morale, causing them to stop. Combat ensues and Confederate forces recoil as part of combat. Confederates attempt to rally, but have no reserves, and choose to fall back to Seminary Ridge. Total time is 45 minutes. Total number of turns is 4. Longest being 15 minutes, shortest 10 minutes.

One Civil War set of rules I tried had 30 minute turns, with 28 minutes of standing around doing nothing, and combat and movement apportioned out as 2 minutes (the length of time to load and fire a musket 3-4 times). Thus an attack such as Pickett and Pettigrew's would be "2-4 hours" in game terms, because the movement rate was pegged to 2 minutes.

The turn sequence I adopted for King's War is more rigid than it looks as a card is for a specific brigade. But combat can occur during the turn, and there exist "ways around" the rigidity. I viewed battle in the late 17th Century as chaotic, "a brawl spiced with gunpowder" as someone once put it. I didn't read of any "holding their lines" or some such. Units fought more or less on their own, each trying to help out with the master plan. In smaller games (2-3 brigades/side) the CiC very much drives the battle. In larger games (6-10 brigades/side) he intervenes much as Tolstoy hinted, and tries to dominate a part of the battlefield. This also colored my thinking of how the turn sequence should go.

In my view, up until the widespread use of the rifle and caplock (the latter increasing the number of bullets going downrange) combat was more shock than attritional. After the Franco-Prussian War armies would engage in prolonged exchanges until one side or the other got an advantage. Armies were controlled by voice, and generals were where they could see and decide (making WW1 unique in that this command feature was not present). Thus I think different mechanics should be used for these two eras.

In the former (where my interests are), generals lose control of units, at least to some extent, when the units get close to the enemy. Then it is training, drill, discipline and leadership at the lowest levels that are important. Volley fire has a shock value, and the British utilized that in the Peninsular War, and their charge after a couple of volleys provided a psychological shock (a Change of Situation). Frederick the Great and Der Alte Dessauer recognized this and wanted Prussian infantry to crank off more volleys, generating more shock (sound as well as casualties) than his opponents. The French during the Revolution and early part of the Empire used superior drill and low level leadership to overcome the shock of combat.

Does the King's War turn sequence work for other periods, therefore? I think so, with some assumptions. I may try that after I finish the rewrite of Firestar.

What about making the turn sequence more interactive? I think so. I hate sitting around with nothing to do in a game, which is why I liked the card system of Age of Reason. You could move at any moment. There was a set of rules, I think they were Corps d'Armee, where one player kept moving until his opponent "stole the initiative" from him via a die throw. This, I think, has possibilities. Especially if a unit can move and conduct all combat except melee during the turn. There would have to be a limit on how far you could go and who could take part. This may be worth pursuing, in my "spare time" while rewriting Firestar and brushing up Setosha, Lexeon, and Boabdil. Have to think about that (and suggestions always welcome).

...and on the other hand

Successive days, successive responses to Firestar. This one came by e-mail, and had a number of positive comments along with several suggestions about directions for the story. Much thinking will follow, but a couple of ideas are in the first four chapters, and at least one of them, I think, will bear fruit.

Corey Andersen is going to go scouting, probably with the PSK Scout Destroyer Spatha, and the Families Cruiser Voss. They will be after critical information, presenting Corey with a "must do".

Rejections

I was going to write about Turn Sequences, today, and how that shapes an entire set of gaming rules. Instead I'm going to discuss/vent a little about rejections.

Rejections are a fact of the writing life. Experienced and oft-published authors can get them, though most of them land with the unpublished authors. They come in many flavors and types. In ascending order they would be:

1. a pre-printed letter without signature that says: "this is not right for us"
2. a pre-printed letter with signature that says: "this is not right for us"
3. a note that basically says "not interested" generally paperclipped to the manuscript
4. a single-page letter that basically says "not interested, thank you for showing this to me"
5. a single-page letter that says "no thank you", and gives suggestions for improvement of the story
6. a multi-page letter that says "no thank you in this incarnation" and gives suggestions for improvement, hinting that they'll reconsider after these changes have been made. This can be an e-mail as well as or in place of a letter with your manuscript.

See what's in there? Some of them offer suggestions for improvement. The least helpful don't give you any idea of what you can do to improve. It really helps if the agent tells you why they rejected the story. Saying it didn't excite them is a non-starter; it helps if you have an idea of what would excite them.

Reality check time. An agent goes to a Conference. They see 5-6 writers/hour for five hours/day, for at least two days. That's a minimum of 50 writers, and a maximum of 60. Assuming they requested a three chapter minimum from half of them would result in 25-30 manuscripts to read. And to represent it professionally it helps if they feel really excited about the story. They want to see it published, and they want to be able to infect an editor with that enthusiasm. Agents want to see a good story. They don't get paid if they don't sell stories to publishers.

So today Firestar came back from an agent I had pitched at PNWA in mid-July, and it had letter #4 enclosed. Not terribly helpful. Was there something missing in the synopsis/pitch that kept you from being interested? Was the concept wrong? Is there something I could have done that would have piqued your interest? What type of story are you looking for? Is there somebody you know who is looking for something like this?

None of the angst/hair-pulling of the first few rejections. Just a nagging series of questions without answers.

Background to my stories

I was asked about the background to my stories. This is another way of asking, "Where do you get your ideas?" The two most popular answers are that, 1) there is a PO Box in New Jersey; send them $5 and they'll send you an idea (Harlan Ellison and Larry Niven used this answer extensively). Of course you have to be a published author before you're told the PO Box. And 2) you take your secret password to www.ideas.com and get an unused idea from there. You have to be a published author, of course, before you get the password.

Actually, the proper answer is neither place. Ideas come. A lot of times they come from outside sources. Kassandra's Song came from my practice novel Kalliste. And that came from the TV show Highlander. I wanted to write my own story about somebody who was effectively immortal. But I wanted to include my interests in Bronze Age Greek history and computer operations/security.

Kalliste is the principle human servant of Potnia or P'dania, the Earth Mother Goddess. In Greek Myth she is the mother of the Titans. Her name name translates as 'Most Holy', by the way. I wrote a vignette about dancing and Crete without knowing any more about the character. Then I ran across a report of an unofficial project where people entering the country were photographed as far back as the 1880s. That brought the story together. The main character is researching a problem. Somebody found 12 photos dating back to the 1880s. They are all of the same woman, and all have roughly the same biography: birthplace, Crete/Greece; parents deceased. He suspects this is a hoax and investigates it from the computer security aspect. He finds her, too, and discovers there's more to this than he thought.

Kalliste was born on Crete a few years before the eruption of Thera (Santorini) in 1628 BC, and is 3,600+ years old. She was the spy chief for Augusta and Livia, was the midwife at Christ's birth, was present at Buddha's enlightenment, prevented the assassination of Lenin in 1916, was raped by Hercules (Herakles), and showed up at other critical points in history. She acts under P'dania's orders; she seldom acts on her own initiative, but has been known to from time to time (the incident with the Buddha was one). She is currently working as an archaeologist, though she owns several shipping lines and is thought to be a spy for some unnamed group (suspected to be either British Intelligence, the Greek government, or the Greek Orthodox Church - hint, she isn't).

The story meandered through some 500,000 words before ending on Delos. Along the way various characters showed up that I enjoyed learning about: Kassandra of Troy; Carlos Maria Martinez, the personal servant of Baron Samedi (homework assignment for extra credit - find out who Baron Samedi is); Britomartis (extra credit - find out who Britomartis was), and two others mentioned only by their first names, the personal servants of Vishnu and Amaterasu. It was a fun ride, but its most important purpose was to convince me that I could complete a novel that was interesting to read.

I've been urged to rewrite Kalliste and seek publication. I'm ambivalent. I can see their arguments (why let all of that work go to waste), but I do have other stories I want to tell. I did extract 12 of the vignettes and e-published them on Stories Online. This came from an article in Writer's Digest about mining practice/failed novels for shorter material. There may be another Kassandra story lurking among my untold novels. We'll see.

The Families stories came about because I'd read a lot of military science fiction, and except for the Honor Harrington stories, they didn't deal with the naval aspects. I wanted to write a story about somebody who is a brilliant strategist and tactician. She doesn't rely upon super secret technology or some secret weapon, which is a staple explanation for military success in SF. I hit upon the idea of a culture of all women from a chance remark somebody made about how a ratio of 1 man to 100 women was an erotic fantasy. I got to wondering how such a society would come about, and how it would organize itself. I didn't want to get into fantasy power trips or erotic fantasies; I wanted to be hard-headed and create something that could appear on the shelves of a bookstore. I also didn't want to do another take on Bikini Planet.

Of course how such a culture could come about had to be answered. Why didn't they just go out and get more men? The answer to that was the 'lost colony' gimmick. But why was the colony lost? And how did they get to where they are? Ans: very few of the original party survived, and when survival is at stake you need wombs and multiple births; but you also need to very thoroughly understand how to make the most of your limited genetic base.

The war was the easy part. I had run RPGs (a notorious traveler game) and piracy was part of Science Fiction. But piracy, especially on an interstellar scale, doesn't pay. It does, but only if piracy isn't the goal. Everything else followed logically from that (including the question of what do the Families do when they encounter men).

The Cross-Time stories had a different set of parents. I've always been interested in history. When I was in college I took 300 level History classes for fun and distribution. I have an extensive library on military and political history. I've read the alternate history stories where Lee's Lost Order isn't lost, the Confederacy wins at Gettysburg (not as likely as some think after Day 2), and so on. I decided to put all of these to use.

Stories about people traveling between alternate times was probably started by Murray Leinster's Sideways in Time, and given its most famous going over by H. Beam Piper in the 1960s. These were his Paratime stories. The most famous of them is probably Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, but there were a couple of short stories and at least one novella in the collection. He also pioneered the idea of a cross-time police agency.

In 2004 Conquistador appeared by S. M. Stirling. It was about a group of people who discovered travel to an alternate timeline, and what happened next. I read it, and got intrigued by the premise.

I initially started a story about a novice detective who is investigating a 'locked room' mystery. Somebody had stumbled on a way of going 'around' walls by using a form of quantum tunneling, and used it to commit murder and drum up business for an alarm company. I got up to 6 chapters and ran out of steam. Right about then it was learned that a Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Washington was an advisor to a factory in the People's Republic of China that manufactured antiques. By then I was also interested in mysteries, and things began to click.

Counterfeit Line was originally written about an all-purpose criminal who runs a counterfeiting operation on an alternate timeline (hence the name). He also grew pot on another timeline. This is what I took to the Maui Writer's Conference and Cruise. And this is what I greatly simplified after my experiences there. In the current version he steals pottery from XIIth Dynasty Egypt. He thinks he has a time machine, and that these are real.

The question, of course, was how did this machine do these things? I decided to use some research I read about that the Nazis were conducting in 1943-45 that was detailed in The Hunt for Zero Point. Their scientists had some odd results, and I decided that made a perfect explanation. A GI 'liberated' a box of tubes with some blueprints and brought them both home. Fifty-five years later the box is sold at an estate sale to an antiquities dealer who thinks he has an old radio, and discovers otherwise. Throw in a murder and a scene from 1759, some speculation, and we were off to the races (hint: Lord George Germaine of the American Revolution was also Lord George Sackville of the Battle of Minden fame). It still needs a better title.

Cross Time Cop came about from the first attempt at a sequel to Counterfeit Line. There is a police agency that monitors cross-time travel, and they detected the use of the device in the first book and sent somebody to check it out. That grew into Body of Evidence, a story about cross-time travel, anarchism, and basic police work. I was 8 chapters into it when I got more interested in telling the story that became Cross Time Cop. Somewhere in there I also started Different World, which is the real sequel to Counterfeit Line. This one features a murder that may have been committed by someone else with access to a box that can take them between alternate timelines.

Story ideas can come from the strangest places, and often come from several places working together. The real trick, though, is asking basic questions and following through logically. You never know where it's going to lead you. Who knows, it might lead you to: "Once upon a time...."

Critique Groups

Writing Groups have been around for a long time. Writers share their work, offer criticism, and (hopefully) improve. Eventually their writing is good enough to be accepted for publication.

What Happens at a Critique Group?
A typical critique group involves up to a dozen people and meets monthly (or more often). You bring part of a chapter (10 pages is common), a short story, a query letter, an essay, or some other piece of writing you've completed. The piece is read aloud, either by the author, or by somebody else. After that comments are offered, both good and bad. This can range from a line-crit where punctuation and spelling is examined, to an overview where the critiquer focuses on general things such as a flashback or a particular character. All criticism is supposed to be helpful.

Being part of a critique group can be hard. People are going to say things about your writing, some of which might not be pleasant. People are going to make judgments (something not always welcome when people are taught to be non-judgmental). But it is one of the few ways around to hone your craft and technique. Besides, and here is an important lesson: they are only criticizing words on a page (or at least that's what they should be doing). But if you're going to try to succeed in the storytelling world, a thick skin is a necessity.

My Experiences with Critique Groups
My first critique group was in Indianapolis. We had an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) who was the editor of the Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI or "oowee-poo-wee") Literary Magazine as our moderator/host. We met every week, though you were only on the hook for work every third week. You sent him your manuscript, he would make copies of it, and at the meeting pass it out. You would mark it up, and then the next week offer your criticism. Nothing was read aloud.

This was for the people at the most basic level. You had had English Composition, and maybe even Creative Writing in High School or College, and had progressed beyond there. You had subscribed to writing magazines, bought several books on writing, at least two different style guides, and consumed books by people writing in your genre. You were prepared.

My second critique group was also in Indiana. This was the Story a Month Club. You had a piece for every month, though we met weekly. The critiques weren't as detailed as in the first group, but the level of writing was a lot more advanced (there were several published authors in this group). In this group you read your story/chapter out loud. This was, as one of the members put it, because language was oral and meant to be heard. Part of what we were doing was training the ear to 'hear' the problems, and then find how to fix those problems.

I ended up in two critique groups in the Puget Sound area, joining both in 2004 as a result of the Maui Writer's Conference Panama Canal Cruise. They meet on different nights about two weeks apart. One gets into a line crit (going over every line); the other steps back slightly and looks at structure and flow. Both are very valuable.

The 'Dark Side' of Critique Groups
A while back I joined an online fantasy writing critique group, and submitted a couple of short stories. My work was savaged. It was like a feeding frenzy during Shark Week on television. Only a stubborn belief that I knew something about how to write kept me going. I soon realized that these people viewed other writers as competition. They treated everybody that way. The only criticism they'd accept were accolades and praise about how good they were. The only criticism they'd offer was of the harshest kind where you could do nothing right. Unfortunately there are a number of people like that. This is why an online critique group can be a real problem (no moderator to hold people like this back). I haven't really been back to that group, though I monitor it as they get into discussions about technique and copyright.

What's Supposed to Happen
The group I meet with on Tuesday nights is typical of my other experiences. I'll bring in 10-11 pages of my current WIP (work in progress). I'll have copies for everyone in the group. When my story comes up somebody else will read it aloud. It's amazing how many problems you hear when somebody else is reading. Afterwards we discuss the story, taking it in turn. Everything is fair game: spelling, punctuation, verb tense, sentence structure, scene structure, even plot details. When you do something right, they say it; when you goof up, they point it out, and offer solutions. This latter is a very important point, because that's when you can learn something. When someone who has written over 100 television or movie scripts wants to teach you about how to do dialogue, you listen.

By the way, the proper response to feedback in a critique group is to nod your head, and say thank you, even when a voice inside you is screaming that they didn't get the point of what you had written.

A critique group is fun for another reason. For a couple of hours you are together with people who are interested in the same thing you are interested in (writing). You end up in discussions that range all over the place, from how other people did things, to markets, agents, elements of the craft, and so on. It's fun. Usually I'm so pumped when I get home that I'd rather sit down and write than have dinner. I certainly don't have any interest in adding to a blog (which was why there was no post yesterday). Hmm, this is the same reason a Writer's Conference is fun.

What about if you write in a specific genre? You might be the only person in the area writing vampire western romances, and everybody else writes cozy detective mysteries. I hate to say that writing is writing, but in this case it is, and you can learn a lot about the craft by attending. My Tuesday night group has a mystery writer, a fantasy writer, a literary fiction writer, and an SF writer. And yet we're brought together by the writing. We have difficulties, some of the concepts the SF writer embeds in a story goes right past those people without a background Science Fiction. But that's one of the hazards of a critique group (you should hear what another SF writer says if you happen to skewer one of his pet ideas/authors, so having a diversity can be a good thing).

Where can you find Writer's Groups? Here in the Pacific Northwest you have at least three alternatives. First, Pacific Northwest Writer's Association can try to hook you up. Go to www.pnwa.org and take a look. Second, Writer's Digest does much the same thing. And third, some bookstores have Writer's Groups. Barnes & Noble is one that I personally know of. You can go to a writer's conference and hook up with people there. If you live near a college or university with a writing program, make inquiries there. The chances are there's a writing group affiliated with the college/university.

I'm not saying a person can't get better on their own, but there is a lot of bad writing out there, and a critique group can help eliminate that million or so words of bad writing every author has inside them instead of letting it get repeated over and over.

More on Cutting Lexeon

Somebody sent me an e-mail asking if I had a spreadsheet in the story. No, it's a way of organizing the story. I made five columns. Chapter, Scene within the chapter, Location, Main Character involved, description. I read through each chapter rather quickly, and filled out the spreadsheet. I printed it off and highlighted things on it that caught my eye. Then I pulled the story up in Word.

You never modify source. I promptly saved the new version before removing things. Now I didn't do it with the individual chapters I created when I wrote the story. I had the whole story in front of me, allowing group searches after I was done. I would highlight a section and cut/paste it to a new file. Save, and repeat. This method can save you rereading the entire story (which would take time). And it'll help you if you don't have an outline to send to the agent.

Now what is ironic is that I used a similar process when I was writing the story. I created a table in Word, filled in plot/story elements under the appropriate heading, and crossed them off as I wrote. Only the last chapter (set several years later) did not use this. Now if I can just find that table....

Lexeon is really the first story I outlined. I hadn't before because I relied upon my subconscious to plot things out. But Lexeon was too complex a book for that. And I discovered that when I got stuck on Lexeon I had something upon which to fall back. That wasn't the case with the other stories.

Note to self: outline.

I already have for the next Gina Stone story. I know "who done it", I know the concrete steps to get there, and I know and have outlined most of the plot thread. I just don't know the details; though I know that the plot thread might/will change as I write the story. And that is an important point. Your outline is a guideline. It is mutable. It can and must change as the story dictates. The broad outlines won't, but down on the lower levels it will.

Do I grow a story in my head before outlining? Do I know most of the details? No. I know roughly who did it, and what modern technique Gina is going to use (and teach) to solve the case. I don't know how the inter-time portal will work as a plot element (in Different World they visit a Bavarian town besieged by the French and defended by the Bavarians and the angle-Dutch army during the War of the Spanish Succession -- roughly August of 1704). That remains to be seen. But it has to be important, otherwise why have it?

I've already revised the outline of Different World twice, and I expect I'll do it again. It has to do with the nature of the portal, of which more anon at a later date.

Writer's Group tomorrow night! Yippee!

Revising Lexeon

Steve Mancino, an agent who works at Jabberwocky Literary Agency, recommended the book Writing to Sell by Scott Meredith (of the Scott Meredith Agency). The author discusses constructing a story in today's literary environment. One of the key components is The Question.

The Question is the central problem the character has to resolve. Will Scarlett O'Hare find love? Will Mike Hammer catch the bad guys? Will Frodo throw the Ring into Mount Doom? This is what the story is about. If it isn't, you have a problem that needs to be fixed.

Now one of the things any author will experience is that you will put far more in a story than belongs there. This isn't that much of a problem in a short story, but there's plenty of room in a novel. And if you read Russian 19th Century literature when you were at an impressionable stage in your development of a writer, you won't think anything of it.

When I first wrote Counterfeit Line the main problem that prevented the character from resolving the murder mystery didn't happen until the end of the fourth chapter. This was far too late. I described the scene before the crime (chapter 1). I described the crime scene (chapter 2). I described the evidence and the preliminary investigation (chapter 3). I described the investigation as it began to focus on the suspect (chapter 4). And at the end of chapter 4 the detective was thrown through a mysterious gateway into an alternate history.

Way too slow. Way too much that didn't get into the meat and bones of the story. I took it to the Maui Writer's Conference Panama Canal Cruise (a 10-day floating writer's conference). The editor liked the beginning as it set the stage. She was a 'literary fiction' editor who liked style over plot. The author I showed it to shredded my first four chapters. He has published 15 novels of science fiction. I decided he had a point, and began cutting.

Counterfeit Line eventually went from 21 chapters to 16. The first four chapters dropped to two. I rewrote the beginning several times. And I accomplished a lot of the other shrinkage by focusing on what was important to the story. Thus a very nice scene aboard the Royal Yacht went away, as did the essentials of the garment industry in the 1890s.

Now I didn't just up and delete those scenes. I copied them out and rewrote the sections. Don't ever throw things out. First, it helps establish your original version (which may be important in copyright cases). Second, you might need it elsewhere (which is how the third Gina Stone story Body of Evidence led to Cross Time Cop (by the way, I hate that title and would welcome a new one). The scenes deleted from Counterfeit Line (which title could be improved as well) probably will appear in bits and pieces of other Gina Stone stories.

I submitted Counterfeit Line to Steve Mancino, and after some rewriting and tightening, he passed on it. I queried him about Firestar, and he now is looking at that. But he was the one who suggested Scott Meredith's book. I got it, I read it, and it helped open my eyes and change my stories.

Lexeon is the third of the Families War series. The others are Firestar and Setosha, which detail the Families War with the Colandran Empire, and a parallel story Boabdil. The latter was extracted from Lexeon.

Of the three principle books, Lexeon was the most complex with no less than six sub-plots and a main plot. It came in at well over 500,000 words in 38 chapters. Firestar is around 120,000 and Setosha is a bit higher. I was told by a couple of readers that it was like there was a whole second book in there (and maybe even a third). I kept chewing it over, and as Firestar is out to two different agents, I thought it a good idea to see if they were right.

Lexeon starts off with a naval battle in space, but then immediately switches to the planet Boabdil, and an attack on horseback against some people tilling a field. It goes back and forth like this for a while. Eventually it resolves all of the sub-plots, including the one on Boabdil. 500,000 words later.

I asked myself how much of that mass of verbiage was actually connected to the main character, Corey Andersen, and her attempt to defeat the Empire and get the Families kin back. Quite a bit, actually, but some parts were a completely different story (thanks, Colin, Jeff and Mitch). So out came the spreadsheet, out came the whole book, and out came the scissors (the latter being merely a metaphor).

I removed the parts with Boabdil in it, and that amounted to 120,000 words! I have now have the rough draft of a 12-chapter novel named Boabdil. And the story seemed to read without much disjointing. So far, so good.

Then I went through it again, and removed about half of the efforts of a Families secret agent (she'll probably disappear from Setosha, too, and a new book will be born). Right now I am of two minds about whether to remove Edita Macquarrie's attack on an Idenux transfer station and the last fight of Liz Ellia. I probably will, but if anyone had some advice about that to offer I would certainly listen.

Of course I'll have to reorganize Lexeon somewhat, and I have a couple of scenes in mind where Corey gets tempted to 'set things right', the same problems the Romans faced after Sulla, an arc that led to the Principate.

I'm not trying to get the story under 250,000 words just for the fun of it. It's easier to sell slightly shorter stories. We can't all be Tolstoy or Robert Jordan, and have an unlimited word count. To be fair to Tolstoy, one of his characters was Russia, and that country is a big place. Lexeon, being the third of three, might sell just for being a conclusion. I kind of hope so.

So how do I go about cutting from a story? It's a three-step process. First I identify the places. I did this by producing a scene chart. This is a listing of the scenes in each chapter. It contains the chapter number, the scene number within the chapter, where the scene takes place, the principle character in the scene, and a brief description of what happened. Here is an example:
Chapter 5, Scene 1, Boabdil, Corinn & others, Start of The Endless Ride
Step two follows where I find those scenes I want to excise in the main body of the novel and do a cut and paste to a separate file. And step three is where I rewrite the transitions between scenes and look for any odd details I need to clean up.

The latter is more critical than people think. There will be things you left in the main body of the text, information that the characters will have learned that you now have to delete. And then it all has to be smoothed over with a rewrite. And then it has to be run past those people in your writing group, who can bring a fresh eye to things and maybe find where you missed something.

The latter does bring up a question. Is a story ever really finished, at least in the author's eyes? The answer is, no, not really. The author of First Blood commented recently how he saw it on a shelf at the bookstore, opened it at random, and felt the urge to make changes. But you have to learn when to say "Enough!" and decide a story is finished. That's when you've revised it half to death. That's when you send it to an agent in hopes that they'll agree to represent it.

And that's when you move on to the next story, just as I will move on to another subject...tomorrow.

Dice, Love 'Em or Hate 'Em

Wargamers have a love/hate relation with dice. I know gamers who are incredibly lucky, and others who are the opposite. I usually fall in the latter category. And this has been reflected in the rules I write. I know better than to have cascading die throws (Shock of Impact ancients rules), or believing that if you just make enough throws everything will average out (I suspect I used up a lot of 'good' die throws 30 years ago). Dice don't have memories, but they have a perverse sense of humor, and at times I swear they can sense what you need and don't need. When you write rules you try to overcome this.

In the beginning were six-sided dice, also known as D6. These could be thrown straight with a 16.67% chance of any number coming up. They could also be combined in a number of interesting ways. The simplest, of course, would be to read them as in the dice game Craps: 2-12, with the highest probability being a 7. They could be different color, with one being a "10's" die, with the dice being thus 16 through 66. They could have a self-limitation feature; you always take the lowest number of the two; this skews the probabilities toward 1-3, with 6 having only a 3.6% chance of appearing.

A variation soon appeared, the Average die, with the numbers 2,3,3,4,4,5. Again, they could be thrown singly, in pairs, or an average die could be thrown with a six-sided die. This gave probabilities closer to the middle. You could also combine them in a different way as Wargames Research Group did; you use an average die for Regular troops, and a D6 for Irregular troops to show how they have a slightly less chance of doing the same thing as Regulars (how slight? Um, about 7.2%, hardly worth using the extra die).

Then came the 'funny' dice. These were 4-sided, 8-sided, 10-sided, 12-sided, 20-sided, and 100-sided. These were developed for role-playing games as it was easier to through an 8-sided die than to say "You have a 12.5% chance, throw 2d10 and...." The most popular were 10-sided because you could use them for 100% probabilities. This allowed finer gradations of results, and led gamers to overlook one of the fun things about probability.

Most rules writers, when looking at the advantages granted by D10 (decimal dice) expanded the list of things on their tables. As an example: I once wrote a set of WW2 air combat rules. I had the flying part down pat (my aeronautical engineer training showed up here); I even had the grosser aspects of damage down. But I liked the idea of specific damage to a plane. Thus on my list of things that could happen with a cockpit hit was "77 - CO2 hose hit, filling the cockpit with CO2 and blinding the pilots for one turn - may not climb, dive or turn".

It happened three times in the first gametest.

Okay, so what? That was just chance, wasn't it? And if you're allowing chance like that, you're going to get that from time to time. Ah, but in wargames, dice have a mind of their own, and like to torment people.

Players tried a variation of that. You rolled once to determine what happened, and again to determine the overall result. So a unit might win the melee, having charged downhill into the rear of an unformed enemy unit, and then roll result, and get a 'engaged".

In some rules you can look up how many men are hit in each turn. A unit takes 4 hits, and this translates into 10 men, of whom 1 was killed outright, 2 were mortally wounded, and 4 were wounded severely enough to never return (averages from the American Civil War period). In my research into combat effectiveness I ran across numbers that made me pause: the Prussian general who thought a unit needed some blooding to be effective, say 5-15% casualties; the American Civil War general who thought the men needed to be held into the cauldron of combat to shake out their being 'combat shy'. He didn't put a number to those casualties, but from his actions the losses had to be substantial. The French general who looked at the percentage of overall losses, and if it was less than 50% quipped that the unit was "barely engaged".

I also read of units that wavered and broke when they took a handful of losses, and others that lost 1 in 3 and still held. It had a lot to do with their officers ("there are no bad units, only bad officers"), and sometimes the situation they found themselves in. Clearly the immediate moral effect of combat was not solely dependent upon the number of casualties a unit took.

Most wargames rules writers noted that, and stuck in modifiers; you got moral support for having friends who were standing firm, for a general present, for behind uphill, for being in cover, and so on. I even saw one rule where a unit got a plus for having had a warm breakfast. Of course every gamer said they had, which kind of negated the point. But modifiers are, in part, a 'fix' by the rules writer to make certain results more likely. Modifiers also encourage proper tactics on the part of players, but this isn't always done.

One way of modeling that on the tabletop came from Phil Barker in Great Britain. For his De Bellis Antiquitatis rules (DBA), he introduced competitive die rolls with modifiers. For example, a Knight, against foot, gets a 5 modifier. They are fighting a spear, which is a +4. But the spear has a second rank, has a friend on each flank, and the general himself is present. The spear is thus a +4, +1 (general), +1 (second rank) = +6. The knight, with two exposed flanks, is 5, -2 (each out-flanking is -1). Thus they net out to a +3. Players each throw a 1D6 and add their modifier. If the foot scores higher than the Knights, the Knights retreat. If the Knights win, the foot is destroyed. This varying results table is what set Phil Barker's concepts ahead of everyone else. And he did it all with a pair of D6. DBA is one of those simple systems that is a lot more subtle than people realize.

"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,"
"And I left them sweating and stealing a year and a half behind." -- Kipling

DBA and its cousins have been a big success, in part because of the use of the dice. This is another concept that people don't often realize. Dice can seduce you into needless complications, and those complications can slow down your game. I remember a set of Quick Play rules that was supposed to allow big battles. The authors even set out Wagram, one of the three largest Napoleonic battles ever fought. It took them 6 hours to set up, 6 hours to tear down, leaving them with a theoretical 24 hours to play (less, actually as they could not play all night). They got 3 turns done!

Phil realized that big battles require mechanics that take less time. This is part of what he learned as an engineer. Simple=Good, or KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Getting fancy slows things down.

Jeff and I set up a Little Big Battles game with 7-9 battalions on a side, and fought out a small "action" that was part of a campaign. LBB started life as Napoleonic DBA, and has morphed and grown sense then. But the combat system has stayed the same. It took us an hour to fight what amounted to a 2-hour fight. And we had a result. And it was fun. At Enfilade '06 I hosted a LBB game that lasted 14 turns (just under 5 hours of game time), and produced an unexpected tactical result (both sides crushed the other's left flank). It took us 3.5 hours to play out, and this included teaching people the system. There was a corps on each side.

I had modeled that game on one I had done with 1:20 Napoleonics. That one took the better part of two days to game out to the same conclusion. I had also done a similar scenario in 1:60 Empire 2. We managed to get through it in 5 hours, but everybody present knew the system, and helped in the deployment and tear down. What was the difference? The game system, which revolved around the dice choices made at the very beginning.

As a side note, years ago a large group of gamers did Borodino. With all of the different Napoleonics systems out there they chose Empire 2 with a page of modifications. They had a result in near real time. But here everyone who has gamed Napoleonics has had some exposure to Empire 2, even if only in a copycat set of rules.

Now just because somebody uses D6 instead of D10 doesn't mean that their rules are simpler. After all, players love chrome, those 'extra' features that make a set of rules specific to one period. There's a lot more than just the dice that can influence the way a game is played...

Which I'll talk about some other time.

The Variable Length Bound

The variable length bound (VLB) was originated by George Jeffries. The general lays a plan. The officers follow it until the situation changes, at which time they react. As Jeffries first put it, the general had to perceive the situation change. After some gaming, it was anyone in the chain of command perceived a local threat and reacted. The game was in 10 minute bounds (or turns).

This concept originated in a study of how command works. It was supposed to put a crimp in the 200' tall general so common on the wargames table. And it gave a premium on keeping reserves (though Jeffries never said such) so you would have troops who could react. It was also supposed to give some irregularity on how the game would flow.

The game needed a local "clock" to show "what time" it was. Players would issue orders, and troops would march at pre-determined rates until the situation changed. Players would determine how much "time" had passed, update the clock, resolve the change, and then let things go again until there was another "situation change". Combat was deterministic (i.e. no dice); troops in small arms range did damage at a fixed rate, as did artillery.

We had a few questions.

1. What triggered a change in situation?
2. How much initiative did you want non-player subordinates to have?
3. What were the reactions allowed to a unit?

Under Jeffries definition, any change in a situation was enough to make bring things to a halt. Turns/bounds were 10 minutes each, and as the battle progressed you stopped every 10 minutes to check on things. This slowed things down considerably.

As written subordinates were dependent upon their orders and what they could react to. They did no thinking for themselves. In one playtest troops were not allowed to stop because they didn't have orders to do so. We substituted a reaction table that showed what a subordinate could do; as we added situations, we added to the table until it became too bulky.

The only things we could find that we all agreed on was that a unit could stop and "put itself in a defensive posture". Everything else was subject to endless argument.

We scrapped it. Nice idea. The execution lacked.

I got to thinking about this. I liked the idea, and I didn't want things to be so deterministic. My view of a battlefield was one of chaos. Generals existed to bring order out of the mess. Then I read about Wally Simon's 'Whoopy Chart'. This was nothing more than a reaction table, but it was triggered by casualties.

I wrote Wars of the Sun King, and used a form of this. Players put chits with orders out next to units. They rolled dice and activated units, who then had to follow their orders. Generals ran around trying to change old orders and rally troops. The longer the turn went on, the more out-of-date the orders issued at the beginning were. And the turn could end unexpectedly, and the only orders you could change were the chits that had been "used". This focused your attention on the combat area, but left the reserve troops, and those not in the immediate danger area, with out of date orders.

This worked better than I thought. You ended up with a lot of leadership near the point of contact, and losing a general could throw the whole attack into chaos.

I ended up putting them out on the Web for anyone to use. Then one night I got a phone call from Italy. There were some gamers who had found the rules at a wargaming con in England and were using them (they'd been using them for more than a year). They had a question or two, found me on the web, and phoned me. I e-mailed them the answers (they were in the middle of a game) that night.

I began to think I could do better. I liked the chits, but I like a cleaner tabletop without a lot of markers. It detracts from the spectacle.

Now I've long been a huge fan of Tod Kershner and Dale Woods' Warfare in the Age of Reason, It's a great set of rules, simple and yet gives results that seem compatible with what we read in history. It uses a card activation system. Each brigade has a card, and when the card comes up the unit moves. When all the cards have been played, you have combat (artillery, then small arms), with morale checks as necessary. Then you do melee. There are a maximum of 12 turns in a game, though most don't get past 9 (I had one go 12 turns, and it still wasn't decided).

A card system is basically chaotic. You don't know who is going to move next. This makes a great convention game as everyone has to pay attention, you don't know who is going to be moving next. This is best done with 3 players a side, each with multiple commands.

After one game I got to thinking. I had run into a situation where a player committed to an attack because he knew it was the last turn and nothing bad would happen if the attack was repulsed. I didn't like that. I also wanted to see players more involved (it's hard to be more involved than in an Age of Reason game, but I found a way).

One day I simply tried putting an "End of Turn" card in the deck. That slowed the game down tremendously because you didn't get a result, critical attacks didn't move forward, and combat was too sporadic. So I added a second card per brigade. Then, to give more choice, a card that didn't have to be used that said 'Move any one friendly brigade". Better. Things began to move. Then, after a late night gaming session, I let the CiC (who had his own pair of cards) activate units, whether brigades or regiments. And I kept the "End of Turn" card in there.

Nobody knew if the turn was over or not. Chaos! But after watching a playtest where the lead units were pulverized by shooting, I added one more twist: when a brigade's card came up they moved and they had combat (except melee). Suddenly there was shooting all over the table. It only needed one more twist.

A British officer in the Peninsula in 1812 said the object wasn't too kill the enemy, but to break up their formations and order. Killing was a means to an end. A different author, writing on the effects of volley fire, wrote about the severe psychological stress of volleys going out and coming in. He advocated what I called the 'shock' theory of combat. You punched the enemy with shock (volley/bullets). The result was disorder in the ranks. If it grew too severe the unit fell into disorder. Local leadership would restore it (I read of a successful British attack in Korea where the unit seized the objective, but was so disorganized they were pushed back. Later that same unit made another attack, and the battalion commander got to the objective and rallied and reorganized the men, allowing them to repulse a counterattack).

This is the basis behind King's War. These are pike & shot rules for the period 1635 to about 1695. Players don't know how long the turn will last or who will move next. There is a lot of shooting and a lot of disorder. Generals run around clearing disorder (rallying the troops) and dominating the situation. Players don't even know how long the game will last! They have a general idea, but there is no 'last turn' because that is dependent upon the number of cards played.

Now given all of the chaos built into the system, do tactics actually work? In a word, yes. Deploy the troops 2 up and 1 back. Cover your flanks with obstacles. Concentrate your effort. Maximize your advantages when you can.

The theory is that players/local commanders get caught up in the in-fighting and rely upon somebody else to look out for the whole thing. Success comes from better deployments and a reserve (something most players don't keep).

Does this give a good game? Yes, players are enthusiastic about it. Is it historical? I dunno. What is 'historical' for this period? My answer is that a battle in this period was a giant brawl spiced with gunpowder. People who think you can plan things out and have things go like clockwork only show their ignorance. It didn't happen that way. That comes out in the accounts of the period. Battle was considered too chancy. An accident, a turn of ground, a momentary inspiration on the part of an officer could change everything. Only sieges were considered predictable (being seen as an exercise in logistics and digging).

Is this system applicable to other periods? I think so, and somewhere in my gaming material are the notes to do this with the Napoleonic and ACW period. Of course there were talking battles that aren't localized affairs that can be 'run' by one man. That's been the sticking point. But I think I have that figured out. Playtesting later this year. We'll see how it goes.

ARRGGGHHHH!!!!!

I just got an e-mail from the agent I'd sent Firestar to last April: he couldn't find the envelope and the chapters contained therein. Could I please send it to him again!

Okay, deep breath, and then spend a few minutes copying files to my jump drive. Off to Office Depot (they'll print from your jump drive stick). Into the main envelope go the required pages: 3 chapters, 12 point, Courier, single-sided, 20# paper with 1" margins; synopsis of the novel; outline of the novel; cover letter; and stamped, self-addressed envelope. Then try to teach the USPS Postal Clerk what this is all about. "But nobody puts postage on an envelope and then seals it up inside another envelope!" Fortunately a more experienced clerk was there to practice good customer service ("It's called a Stamped, Self-Addressed Envelope."). "But this looks like a book, shouldn't it go Book Rate?" (Book rate is less expensive, but takes forever to get to New York). "No, books are bound. This is a manuscript to a Literary Agent. Handle it as he requests." "But...." "May I help you, sir?" he says, gently ushering her to one side.

Partial manuscripts should go standard rate (a.k.a. First Class - the USPS changed terminology a couple of years back). You'll pay $2 more for Priority Delivery. That's your call. If I did send it Priority Delivery I would not have the SASE as Priority Delivery. While I want to know the outcome, I'm not going to fork over for it if it is bad. But seriously, $2 gets it there two days earlier, which is a pretty good deal.

Let's look at the components of this envelope.

The synopsis is just that, tell your story in one page and use active voice. It is okay to fudge (use 11 point font and Times New Roman) a little. Use a serif font (like this blog is written in); san serif fonts do not have the little footers at the top and bottom of characters. A typical san serif font is Arial, which for some totally obscure reason lost in depths of Microsoft, is the default font for Word. Personally, when I was in the business world, I would use 12 point Bookman or 12 point New Century Schoolbook. Big and easy to read. Note also that the default font size is 10 point. I have no idea why. I would prefer not to have to squint to read documents.

The outline is a chapter by chapter breakdown of what happens. Agents want to see this to see if the ending matches the set-up. You can either adapt your working outline, or make a new one when you're done. One writer I know writes a one line description in Excel for each scene in a chapter giving who does what. I belong to a writer's group that meets once a month, and I found it necessary to do a "what has happened" to hand out at the beginning of the session. This morphed into the outline I submit. Why not use your working outline? Some writers do not outline (Anne McCaffrey); others write 70+ page outlines (John Saul). Do not do one like you learned in school; you remember, with I.a.1 and so on.

A cover letter. This is usually 3-4 short paragraphs on one page. The first paragraph is a personal one to remind the agent who you are and where you met "We met at the Pacific Northwest Writer's Association Summer Conference in Seattle in July where we discussed my novel Firestar." If this is the first time you have contacted the agent, include why you are sending it to this agent in particular; recommendations are very good here (one I heard: "John Saul, whom I have known for years, suggested you might be looking for a novel like this." That will get opened quickly. The second paragraph is what makes your novel unique and why you might be qualified to write it. This is where you brag a little and show your familiarity with the genre. Don't tell the agent that all of your friends loved it. Do tell the agent if you attended Clarion or Clarion West, that it won a prize in a literary contest, and things like that. The third is the pitch. This is your story in 1-2 sentences, active voice. Generally try to keep it to 25 words or less (see below).

The fourth is the business part where you tell the agent how many chapters/pages you are including, the presence of the synopsis, outline, and SASE. Be brief, be courteous, and be professional. This is a business, after all, and this is a business letter. By the way, do make sure you spell the name of the agent and agency correctly. And know if the recipient is a man or woman.

The manuscript. Traditionally agents will want 3 chapters or about 50 pages. This is more than enough for them to decide if they like your style and story. This means you can't start slow. Get the problem the character faces in the first few pages, also known as "shoot the sheriff in the first paragraph". There are arguments about whether to start 'en media res' (in the middle of the action) or by setting the scene. My personal preference is to have something going on so I can hook the reader into the story. Pick up books at random at the bookstore and read the first 5 pages and you'll see what I mean. By the way, the manuscript format is written in stone: 12 point Courier, single-sided, 1" margins all around, no-hole 20# paper. I know Courier is ugly, but deal. If you spent your entire day (and evening) reading, you would want something that's easy to read. Courier is also a fixed-pitch font, and that helps when estimating word count and line count.

Now back to the pitch. I think some examples are in order. Here are a couple that should help. "A CIA analyst helps a Soviet naval officer commanding a guided missile sub defect, with his submarine." (Hunt for Red October). "Roots, the Next Generation meets Enron" (not published yet). "A black militant discovers the white supremacist she has decided to kill is her father" (not published yet, but I understand it has been bought). "A young girl lands in a surreal world, kills the first person she meets, and then unites with three others to kill again" (The Wizard of Oz).

In each case part of the conflict shows through, the problem in the story is laid out, and there's a hint of the character. All in 25 words or less. It's harder than it looks. By the way, those who've gone to the Maui Writer's Retreat and Conference will recognize this as being "Sack and Sauled" for Mike Sack and John Saul, who run a very agonizing session doing this very thing.

Now you can decide not to do any of these things. But if you pick up any book on submitting to an Agent (or publisher) you'll see them suggest exactly the same thing. And at writer's conferences there will be at least one session somewhere about how to submit. There may even be "Pitch Practice" sessions where you can hone your precious 10-15 minutes with an agent, which can be time well spent.

So, hopefully it'll show up in New York in a couple of days. And hopefully he'll want to see more and request it. That will require printing the whole thing out (4-600 pages of manuscript). But that's a hoped for trouble/expense.

Maybe next time I'll talk about that all-important interview with an agent/editor. It's 10 minutes that just might change your life...nothing to get scared about.

Right.