A New Idea/Story -

I tried to restart Firestar, I tried 8 times. My hard drive is littered with the attempts. None of them worked.

I came to three possible conclusions about this:

1) my subconscious says I've told that story, and doesn't want to work on it any more.

2) I like the story as it is, and tweaking will or won't help it at all.

3) I started it in the wrong place, and my subsconsious knew it.

Let's look at them in turn.

#1 - it's possible this is true. I rely upon my subconscious a great deal for my writing, and in many cases my "plot outline" consists of some scribbled notes, and I compose as I go, trusting my subconscious to get me where I'm supposed to be. The danger of this is that I'll repeat my self a great deal, and I can wander down long sideroads without getting to the point. This started to happen in Devlin's Story, and a reader brought me up short. I admit working on another story has been refreshing.

#2 - this, also is very likely. I want to cut a bunch out of the story, but I like it too much. Tough love, though. The trouble is, I recognized taht one of the characters in the story is the war itself. And I want to show all of the neat, intricate things that went on. I think I'm a prisoner of everything I've already written. I know I've been corrupted by the Clancy style, multiple stories weaving back and forth like a tapestry to tell a much bigger story.

#3 - this, too, is possible. I started the rewrite with Corey already on the de Ruyter, and went forward from there. Maybe if I started somewhere else... But I want to show how Corey got there, what's made her the person she is at the Battle off Lexeon. I want to show her growth as a commander, and use that to demonstrate how military ability is an innate talent.

So what have I done in the meantime?

I started Engage the Enemy More Closely, aka, Josie Davenport's story. The first chapter is to give a flavor of the Families, and to have a brief fight in which Josie wins a battle.

The second chapter she gets chewed out for not doing more (she achieved her objective). Life sucks sometimes, and for Josie, for underappreciated Josie, it certainly does.

So Chapter 3 she meets Edita Macquarrie, who recalls certain incidents in their past relations. But it ends on an upbeat note as she is put in command of a squadron (the 7th); Part of this is a rehabilitation of Edita Macquarrie, but that's another story.

The rest of the story is already plotted. Josie is present during the Raid on Home, and gets promoted in the general shuffling after that. She has some difficult times (not with Edita) as she is detached and used in an independent manner. But her successes are always cast as somebody else's. This twists her guts until K-303 where there is no doubt how good she is.

And this is downplayed, lost in the "everyone did their part" view. Have to rethink the conclusion I already have.

So that's it at the moment. We'll see where this takes us. I'm going to meet with Ted and talk it over, see what ideas he has. But I'm excited about this one.

He came, he read, he gave a 30-minute critique. He then gave 15 minutes of building the author back up by showing what he did right.

Joshua Bilmes of JABberwocky Literary Agency stopped by on his way home from Bouchercon in Anchorage. He had earlier asked to see the entire m/s of Firestar. Somehow he found the time to read it all (and I thought I read fast!).

We had lunch, and he went through the problems he found in Firestar. There were a number of things:
1) What was the central problem Corey has to solve? That should be evident by the end of the first chapter (if not much earlier in the chapter).

2) There were too many viewpoint characters. He counted 5 in the first six chapters (I counted 8 overall). The story (see #1 above) can get lost with all of those viewpoints.

3) Corey was passive at the wrong points, being acted upon rather than acting. Some of this will happen in a military organization, but the leader and/or main character will attempt to dominate the situation. Those places where she was the active, dominating character were well-written and showed what I should be doing.

4) There was a lack of visuals (you mentioned the same thing). The reader should take a mental picture away when they put the book down for any reason. This was made worse because I had a marvelous opportunity to describe the Firestar Nebula on more than one occasion, and didn't do it.

5) I set up several conflicts: men vs. women; connected Family vs. small one; junior officer vs. superior officer just to name three, but I didn't follow through on any of them.

6) I had a number of annoyances for Corey, but either she bypassed them, they didn't pan out as anything other than minor, or somebody else solved them. From time to time Corey would solve one, and those were well done.

7) I made some use of the conflict between Family obligation and Navy obligation, but that didn't square with what I was setting up earlier. I sort of popped it up, and then resolved it. Corey didn't struggle against it, getting deeper and deeper into trouble until she changed the parameters.

8) The whole bit about their missing kin seemed mythic rather than a driving element.

There were a number of things I did right.
a) Overall the writing was clean and crisp. It wasn't outstanding except in a few places when Corey was being clever.

b) The dialogues were all well-done. I managed to convey a lot of information in those dialogues without being preachy or doing an info-dump.

c) I got the story going quickly and established some of Corey's character very early in the story.

d) the best scenes had a combination of rising tension, good conversation, and a punch at the end that advanced the plot and showed off character. Examples were the massive debrief and the court-martial investigation.

e) I put in enough techno-babble to show off the rules of this story without being too over the top.

Bottom Line: Firestar is in the shop for a major rewrite.