Categories
Writing process

Win a copy of the Linesman trilogy

As mentioned in last week’s post, to celebrate we’re giving away a set of all three books.  Linesman, published 30 June 2015. Alliance, published 23 February 2016. And Confluence, published 29 November 2016.

It’s a Goodreads giveaway, so enter over on the Goodreads site.

Entry is open worldwide.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Linesman by S.K. Dunstall

Linesman

by S.K. Dunstall

Giveaway ends July 31, 2017.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Categories
Book news Progress report

Two years since Linesman was published

30 June is the end of the financial year in Australia.  Tax time.  (It’s not the day we need to have our taxes in, it’s the date the last financial year ends, so we can start getting our taxes together.)

Both Sherylyn and I work in industries where end-of-financial-year has a big impact.  It’s a busy time of year for us.

30 June 2015 was also the day Linesman came out.

30 June is also Sherylyn’s birthday.  Best birthday present ever.  Your own book.

Two years already, and it’s gone so fast.  Another two books, and two more on the way.

We’ve decided to celebrate by doing a Goodreads giveaway.

Starting on the 30 June, running till the end of July, you have a chance win all three books.  If you’ve already got them, try a second copy. Or maybe give them away to someone you know who likes science fiction.

Pop over to the Goodreads site in July and enter.

Categories
Progress report

Biting my nails waiting for deletes

Crying over our edits. Most times I agree with the changes Sherylyn wants to make. She’s good at cutting out the unnecessary stuff. There’s only one edit I really cried about. It was in Linesman, it was around 20,000 words and it was a Jordan Rossi section. Sherylyn didn’t think it was necessary, and said so. I refused to cut it. One day, about six months into the editing process, I had a lightbulb moment and realised it had to go. That was so hard.

 

Stars Uncharted was due at the editor’s on 1 June.  We sent it in, early actually, and settled back to concentrate on the next story.

Anne, our editor, got the book back to us on the 10th.  She said some nice things, and then talked about the changes she wanted. The biggest one, the book is too long. At least 20,000 words too long.

We have to say, it wasn’t unexpected.  After all, the contract calls for a novel of around 100,000 words.  We delivered a little more than that.  Like, closer to 130,000.  Sometimes, when you’ve worked on a book for a long time, you think there is nothing you can possibly cut.  A few months away from the book—or another eye, like the editor’s—will show that you can, but at the time, we couldn’t see it.

Anne suggested some areas we might cut.

“Let me at it,” Sherylyn said.  “Don’t look.  For a week.”

So I’m sitting at the computer, trying to continue with the next book, while she gives me a running countdown of how many words she’s cut each day.

“I’m down to 117,916 today.”

Arrgh.

Sherylyn is the editor in our writing team of two. She does most of the cuts. I do many of the adds.  She can be ruthless.  And sadly, she and Anne often agree on things.  Sherylyn will argue for something to be cut, I’ll make a stand and we leave it in, then Anne comes back and says, “Perhaps this isn’t necessary.”

I’m coming round, gradually, but … in the meantime.  Sherylyn’s cutting words, and I can’t argue about what’s she cut until tomorrow.  I’m chewing my nails, literally.

Tomorrow, I finally get to see what she’s done.

You know what, I probably won’t even notice what’s gone.

Categories
Writing process

Answering a reader’s questions

This is the Queen’s Birthday holiday long weekend here in Melbourne, the second official week of winter and it’s cold. It’s also the start of the snow season. Lots of people head to the mountains. Brrr.

Some snippets first.

Coming soon—a Goodreads giveaway

30 June 2015 was the release date for Linesman. It’s hard to believe the first book came out two years ago already. We’re planning a Goodreads giveaway for the anniversary.

We’ll announce it on the blog closer to the date.

Book news

Our editor came back with feedback and requested changes on the new novel yesterday. Changes required by the end of July.

We have work to do.

Some questions from one of our readers that we would like to discuss.

Bruce, one of our readers, asked some questions about Linesman. We liked the questions, thought they would make a good blog.  So, here are Bruce’s questions and our answers.

***Spoiler alert***

There is may be spoilers if you haven’t read the books, so you might want to stop reading now.

Bruce asks:

  1. Who taught Lambert his strong sense of right and wrong?  The alcoholic beggar at the store only said he’d get caught.  Rigel cheats.
  2. Cann kid gang:  Will Wen Cann, the kid who was kind to Ean, resurface?  They’re beating the bushes for Linesman.
  3. Will Rossi or Hernandez ever headline a story, solve a crisis, or make a discovery?  What are Rossi’s experiments?
  4. Tinatin and the shuttles?

 

Who taught Lambert his strong sense of right and wrong?

Firstly, Ean has always had a strong sense of what’s right and what’s wrong when dealing with the lines.

He has always known—and been confident of—his own ability to work with the lines. Any inferiority he has comes from working with other people, not with the lines.

From an early age, he was focussed on becoming a linesman.

He had a name for the music now. Linesman. And once he asked, it wasn’t hard to find out more about lines and linesmen. He was determined to become one.  (Linesman, p153)

Old Kairo tells Ean being a linesman wasn’t for the likes of them. The guilds didn’t take criminals, and they didn’t take slum kids. In Linesman, we mention that Kairo was a Lancastrian soldier once, dismissed from the military for being overweight. There is an implied history behind Kairo that we don’t go into in this story. Kairo may steal, but it is possible, probable even, that he helped Ean, that he taught Ean other traits, like the value of a human life.

Ean is, also, basically a decent person.

 

Cann kid gang: Will Wen Cann, the kid who was kind to Ean, resurface? They’re beating the bushes for linesmen?

This was the question we really wanted to answer, because it shows how much a story changes from what you plan to what is actually written.

When we start writing a story we have the beginning, and we know, roughly, how it ends.  Occasionally we have one or two plot other things that we know will happen.

Wen Cann was one of these plot points.

He was to be one of the new trainee linesmen.  He had a different name, different background and, of course, no prison sentence.  Ean recognises his music, knows it’s Wen, and struggles with the knowledge.  When they realise there might be a traitor amongst the trainees, he confronts Wen, who gives a plausible story as to why he’s there. Ean doesn’t report him.  Normally, he’d talk it over with Radko, but she’s not there, and the traitor keeps betraying them.

If you’ve read Confluence you know how that turned out.

Of course this didn’t happen.  As you know, he wasn’t in the book and instead we had Han.

Maybe he’ll turn up in another book, maybe not.  But if he does, he’s unlikely to have a major part like the one he was going to play in Confluence. Or, he may have a totally different storyline altogether.

 

Will Rossi or Hernandez ever headline a story, solve a crisis, or make a discovery?  What are Rossi’s experiments?

Ah, Rossi.  He’s not the most pleasant of characters.  Probably not pleasant enough to headline a story, but he’s certainly a great second point-of-view.

If Acquard’s War ever sees publication, Rossi is a secondary character there, and (we think) you get to feel more sympathetic toward him.  You certainly understand him more.  Hopefully without him changing his character.

Rossi’s line experiments?  We can only point to Acquard again.  Yes, you find out a bit more about what he’s doing with the lines there. But only a little, for it is Acquard’s story, not Jordan Rossi’s.

What about Hernandez?

At the moment we don’t have a story planned for her. If we did write one, it would likely be a novella, rather than a full-blown novel.  But, never say never.  (Hernandez gets a small part in Acquard’s War, too.  :-))

 

Tinatin and the shuttles?

All we know about Tinatin and the shuttles at the moment is that eventually the whole ship will become involved.  People and lines.

It’s in the back of our minds, something we think will happen in the books where we meet the aliens.  But, it might be a single mention, and you find they’re already using the shuttles, or it might be subplot, or something else entirely (like Tinatin getting one of the aliens to show her how they work).

 


 

We hope you enjoyed the answers. If anyone else has questions or something they would like us to discuss on our blog, please let us know. If it doesn’t give out too many spoilers, and is not something we have answered before, we would be happy to consider it.

Categories
Writing tools

Triggering the memories

Sherylyn and I sat down the other night and planned six months’ worth of blogs we could write. Some of the ideas were truly interesting.  We know they were. Except …

We didn’t write them down, and six days later the memories are gone.

Some of them will come back over time, but right now neither of us can remember even one of them.

Many writers keep notebooks.  A scribbled note jotted down can trigger a memory months later that might turn into a book. Or talking through a problem piece—a week later when you need to use the solution you came up with, you need those notes.

Likewise, story ideas. Stars Uncharted, which is the story we just handed in to our editor, was an idea we had back around the time Linesman came out.   We had a contract to write two more books, but we quickly wrote down the first three chapters of this new story, then went back Linesman.

Thus when we were ready to start the new story, we had something to work with.  Because for us, stories take a long time to come together with other ideas, so that we have something to work with.

I was reminded of this the other day when Sherylyn was looking for her ‘ideas’ file.

Now, we’ve been burned with computers going awry in the past. Hard drives dying, computers eating our work, and so on.  We’ve learned.  We do daily backups of our novels now. If we ever become rich and famous someone could do a thesis on how we edit, for believe me, we have all the daily changes.

There are still ‘accidents’, but we’ve got the big stuff sorted.

The small stuff, not so much.  We often do take notes when we’re discussing story plot points or new ideas. Unfortunately, those notes are often on the paper napkins that come with a meal.  We put them into our bag and months later, throw them out. Or maybe use them when we need to wipe our hands.

We’re not super organised.

Likewise, Sherylyn knows her ideas folder is somewhere, she just doesn’t know where.

Every once in a while I do break out and buy a notebook. They’re useful, for a while, until I misplace them.  But I think that if I tried harder, and pulled the notebook out over our dinner talks, how much easier it would be later when I want to refer to what we talked about.

Especially if I was super-organised and transposed the ideas to my PC the following day.  And if I reorganised our files on the PC into something a tad more logical.  So the ideas were in a folder marked, say, ‘Ideas’.

Maybe I’ll give it a try.

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