More Firestar
Stories have sub-plots. In Kassandra's Song it's her flashbacks, and the same in Crosstime Cop. In Firestar it is Alan Young, an officer in the navy of the People's Star Kingdom.
Alan is there for a reason, and not just to pad the story to some wordcount. We get to see the Families through his eyes, and Corey gets to tell him things, which means the reader learns them. It adds 2.5 to 3.0 chapters to the story.
This changes the end of the story. As before, it ends with a battle in system K-303 (Families Catalogue). In this one there is no mention of Morosini's Children. Instead, Corey and Alan will work closely together, and that will be critical in winning the battle.
The battle won't be the end of the story, though. Because there will be the aftermath. After all, one of the themes is Corey trying to find a way to win the war.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Friday, February 08, 2008
Wingman on Storiesonline.net
I posted Wingman to Storiesonline yesterday morning. For those who don't know, this is a website where a lot of erotica gets posted, but so does a lot of non-erotica. I've put my share of erotica up there (Devlin's Story, Three Valleys - Sammi, and The Office stories. But I've also put the Kalliste extract stories there. You get feedback, and you get votes on the quality. It's a mixed bag at times, because it's all just impressions.
Take votes, for instance. I had someone really slam one of my stories because he didn't like the premise. He voted as many times as he could, and gave it the lowest ratings he could. Lazzo, the sitemaster, caught on, and stepped in. Your ego gets caught up in those votes, and you can get really depressed if the scores are going down. Especially because the technical ability votes remain high (that was apparently cued Lazzo in that something was going on).
You can also send e-mails to the author, and since there's a lot of erotica, the sender doesn't know the e-mail address of the recipient. When you're getting good feedback, and even praise, and scores that keep dropping, you know something's up. When Lazzo removed this troll's low scores, suddenly everything jumped up consistent with my other stories.
All that aside (you can tell it hit a nerve), Wingman has gotten a lot of responses. Apparently the story of someone recovering the body of someone he knew in 1968 resonated through a lot of the Vietnam era readers. I've gotten several very emotional responses.
Red Stevenson is a Vice Admiral in the Navy, and CNO/Aviation, which means he's the boss flier in the US Navy. A lot of what that office does is procurement, personnel moves, and so on. There's also a CNO/Surface, and a CNO/Submarine (I think there are a couple more). In 1968 he was a nugget (new aviator on his first deployment). In October of that year he was flying as wingman to Jack MacLean when the latter was hit by flak and shot down. Red ignored the FAC (forward air controller) and blew that gun away with his bombs, though it didn't do Jack any good.
Fast forward to 1997. Red Stevenson is temporarily heading a recovery team in Vietnam. He is specifically looking for Jack MacLean, whose body was never recovered. He finds him and brings him home. A year later, in a bar in Washington DC, another guy who was in the squadron in 1968, David Hughes, looks him up. The story proceeds from there.
Even though the story was posted on a site with erotica, there's no sex, or even nudity in the story. The characters do drink a good single malt, and in one scene, smoke cigarettes (which in Washington State would offend more people than the sex).
For those who haven't read Nick Scipio's Summer Camp stories, go to www.nickscipio.com and enjoy. These are erotica, but Nick has a deft hand at drawing characters. It is a 'coming of age' story that has garnered a large following and a very intense discussion group on Yahoo. David Hughes is one of the characters, as is Jack MacLean's widow, Susan. Nick very graciously let me use David, and provided some editorial feedback. He had me show the story to a public member of his Editorial Team, as well as several who aren't. And I'm sorry, my lips are sealed on who they were.
There was a personal element in working on Wingman, but I won't comment on it.
Now back to other stories.
I posted Wingman to Storiesonline yesterday morning. For those who don't know, this is a website where a lot of erotica gets posted, but so does a lot of non-erotica. I've put my share of erotica up there (Devlin's Story, Three Valleys - Sammi, and The Office stories. But I've also put the Kalliste extract stories there. You get feedback, and you get votes on the quality. It's a mixed bag at times, because it's all just impressions.
Take votes, for instance. I had someone really slam one of my stories because he didn't like the premise. He voted as many times as he could, and gave it the lowest ratings he could. Lazzo, the sitemaster, caught on, and stepped in. Your ego gets caught up in those votes, and you can get really depressed if the scores are going down. Especially because the technical ability votes remain high (that was apparently cued Lazzo in that something was going on).
You can also send e-mails to the author, and since there's a lot of erotica, the sender doesn't know the e-mail address of the recipient. When you're getting good feedback, and even praise, and scores that keep dropping, you know something's up. When Lazzo removed this troll's low scores, suddenly everything jumped up consistent with my other stories.
All that aside (you can tell it hit a nerve), Wingman has gotten a lot of responses. Apparently the story of someone recovering the body of someone he knew in 1968 resonated through a lot of the Vietnam era readers. I've gotten several very emotional responses.
Red Stevenson is a Vice Admiral in the Navy, and CNO/Aviation, which means he's the boss flier in the US Navy. A lot of what that office does is procurement, personnel moves, and so on. There's also a CNO/Surface, and a CNO/Submarine (I think there are a couple more). In 1968 he was a nugget (new aviator on his first deployment). In October of that year he was flying as wingman to Jack MacLean when the latter was hit by flak and shot down. Red ignored the FAC (forward air controller) and blew that gun away with his bombs, though it didn't do Jack any good.
Fast forward to 1997. Red Stevenson is temporarily heading a recovery team in Vietnam. He is specifically looking for Jack MacLean, whose body was never recovered. He finds him and brings him home. A year later, in a bar in Washington DC, another guy who was in the squadron in 1968, David Hughes, looks him up. The story proceeds from there.
Even though the story was posted on a site with erotica, there's no sex, or even nudity in the story. The characters do drink a good single malt, and in one scene, smoke cigarettes (which in Washington State would offend more people than the sex).
For those who haven't read Nick Scipio's Summer Camp stories, go to www.nickscipio.com and enjoy. These are erotica, but Nick has a deft hand at drawing characters. It is a 'coming of age' story that has garnered a large following and a very intense discussion group on Yahoo. David Hughes is one of the characters, as is Jack MacLean's widow, Susan. Nick very graciously let me use David, and provided some editorial feedback. He had me show the story to a public member of his Editorial Team, as well as several who aren't. And I'm sorry, my lips are sealed on who they were.
There was a personal element in working on Wingman, but I won't comment on it.
Now back to other stories.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Re-Thinking Firestar
It's amazing what time away from a story can accomplish. I was all set to start Firestar with Corey graduating from Command & Staff School. I wrote two chapters and part of a third. I then sort of dribbled out of energy.
I've learned that in my case, writer's block is an disinclination to work on a story. And the cause isn't energy or the lack thereof, but that I'm going down the wrong path. The usual cure is to not work on a story for a day or six, and then back up.
Now the trouble with Firestar is that I have all of this stuff written which I think makes a great story. Any substantial changes I make to it negates all of this work. And Corey's story is the story of the Families, too. But something I said to Joshua when he pinned me down on it reverberated last week.
Who is Corey Andersen? What drives her? What is her "got to fix" problem? I'd said, when questioned, Ulysses Grant. I'm not sure if I thought about it, or it was my subconscious finally getting fed up and providing me the answer.
Grant was a failure at everything he tried. Farming - failed. Clerking - failed. The only thing he was good at was the thing he hated the most: the military. And he was very good at the fighting part, though he learned (as 1861-62 shows) that he learned the logistics/admin side very well, too. And he was flexible. He didn't quite say "You look at a situation until it makes sense." He might as well have.
So why is Corey Andersen like Ulysses Grant? She looks at situations until she understands them. Sometimes she goes in with a pre-conceived plan. Sometimes she just takes advantage of what happens around her, and runs with it, just like Grant did. And she's lonely, just like Grant.
When Grant was posted to the West Coast it was no-dependents-allowed. Julia was his anchor. Without her he was alone, and he would drink. That's why he left the army in the 1850s. Corey is alone, too. There are her sib-sisters, shy Heather who opens up with colleagues, party-girl Sonia, and Corey, who is with the coyote packs, or reading, or running errands (alone). A party will find her on the sidelines, watching.
Corey most wants to be accepted. To be brought into a group. To be made to feel part of it. She gradually forms a group around her, which is the point of the story. And it's the stresses of combat that make that happen. People group around her, believing in her. She doesn't join a group, people join her. They accept her for what and who she is.
So that means I back up again. I go back to earlier in Firestar, back to Corey being a Squadron Lead. She is successful in combat. She goes to C&S. She goes on her Graduation Cruise (where she loses a hand) and is very successful there. She recuperates, and powers that be try to force her out of the Navy because people are looking to her, and they don't like the symbol she has become. When that doesn't work, she is posted to the de Ruyter so Edith Matsuoko can force her out of the Navy. Then comes The Raid. Does that end the story? Perhaps. I'm projecting 16-20 chapters out of this. I've got 6+ chapters done.
Other things now -
Two more short stories are in the bag. One I won't comment on for reasons that I'll reveal much later. The other is another dryad story, Heart of the Woods. Jen the dryad is married now (to her sweetie Andy), and while on their honeymoon to the Redwoods National Park, discover a body with a hand buried in a tree as only a dryad could do it. It's a sad story, and one of the people who read it called it lyrical. We'll see.
Don't worry, there's at least one more story about Jen before she marries, and I think Chloe the Hamadryad wants some attention.
I've got another porn/erotica story going, this time with an SF twist. It came from my brief introduction to online games where you inhabit and interact in a computer generated world. I want to finish it before posting it to SOL, so we'll see.
So, now it's back to the grindstone. Progress in some places is better/faster than I'd hoped for.
It's amazing what time away from a story can accomplish. I was all set to start Firestar with Corey graduating from Command & Staff School. I wrote two chapters and part of a third. I then sort of dribbled out of energy.
I've learned that in my case, writer's block is an disinclination to work on a story. And the cause isn't energy or the lack thereof, but that I'm going down the wrong path. The usual cure is to not work on a story for a day or six, and then back up.
Now the trouble with Firestar is that I have all of this stuff written which I think makes a great story. Any substantial changes I make to it negates all of this work. And Corey's story is the story of the Families, too. But something I said to Joshua when he pinned me down on it reverberated last week.
Who is Corey Andersen? What drives her? What is her "got to fix" problem? I'd said, when questioned, Ulysses Grant. I'm not sure if I thought about it, or it was my subconscious finally getting fed up and providing me the answer.
Grant was a failure at everything he tried. Farming - failed. Clerking - failed. The only thing he was good at was the thing he hated the most: the military. And he was very good at the fighting part, though he learned (as 1861-62 shows) that he learned the logistics/admin side very well, too. And he was flexible. He didn't quite say "You look at a situation until it makes sense." He might as well have.
So why is Corey Andersen like Ulysses Grant? She looks at situations until she understands them. Sometimes she goes in with a pre-conceived plan. Sometimes she just takes advantage of what happens around her, and runs with it, just like Grant did. And she's lonely, just like Grant.
When Grant was posted to the West Coast it was no-dependents-allowed. Julia was his anchor. Without her he was alone, and he would drink. That's why he left the army in the 1850s. Corey is alone, too. There are her sib-sisters, shy Heather who opens up with colleagues, party-girl Sonia, and Corey, who is with the coyote packs, or reading, or running errands (alone). A party will find her on the sidelines, watching.
Corey most wants to be accepted. To be brought into a group. To be made to feel part of it. She gradually forms a group around her, which is the point of the story. And it's the stresses of combat that make that happen. People group around her, believing in her. She doesn't join a group, people join her. They accept her for what and who she is.
So that means I back up again. I go back to earlier in Firestar, back to Corey being a Squadron Lead. She is successful in combat. She goes to C&S. She goes on her Graduation Cruise (where she loses a hand) and is very successful there. She recuperates, and powers that be try to force her out of the Navy because people are looking to her, and they don't like the symbol she has become. When that doesn't work, she is posted to the de Ruyter so Edith Matsuoko can force her out of the Navy. Then comes The Raid. Does that end the story? Perhaps. I'm projecting 16-20 chapters out of this. I've got 6+ chapters done.
Other things now -
Two more short stories are in the bag. One I won't comment on for reasons that I'll reveal much later. The other is another dryad story, Heart of the Woods. Jen the dryad is married now (to her sweetie Andy), and while on their honeymoon to the Redwoods National Park, discover a body with a hand buried in a tree as only a dryad could do it. It's a sad story, and one of the people who read it called it lyrical. We'll see.
Don't worry, there's at least one more story about Jen before she marries, and I think Chloe the Hamadryad wants some attention.
I've got another porn/erotica story going, this time with an SF twist. It came from my brief introduction to online games where you inhabit and interact in a computer generated world. I want to finish it before posting it to SOL, so we'll see.
So, now it's back to the grindstone. Progress in some places is better/faster than I'd hoped for.
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