The story so far

I don’t have a lot of time this week to write as I actually have to get some work done, so I’m just going to do a short post to quickly go over the different writing projects I am working on or envisioning, both fiction and nonfiction.

The Space Greenhorn

As I mentioned in some of my previous posts I am working on a novel. It is a little bit hard to classify. Its setting is space opera around 4000 AD give or take. I have not decided on the exact time that the novel takes place. The main thing will be that it takes place sufficiently in the future that the colonization and diaspora of humanity among the stars has already taken place. Also it has to allow for the technology being used to have developed. I suppose it also could be considered a young adult novel in the sense that the main character is about 18 (though I might make the protagonist older depending on feedback from the alpha readers). It would definitely be rated R if it was a movie.

I don’t want to give too much of the plot away so I can’t say that much about what it is actually about though I will eventually be posting little tidbits about it, maybe character sheets or blurbs once the first draft is completed. I am currently on chapter eight of what will be about thirteen or fourteen chapters. My original scene list called for about twenty-nine chapters but I cut a lot out as it just didn’t fit with the story. Most of what I cut out was more background and side plots which seemed to take the focus away from the main story. The novel is tentatively called “The Space Greenhorn” and as you can see from the title the main plot is about someone taking their first steps into space.

My goal for the story, other than making it fun, interesting and exciting for the reader, is also to make it accessible to a larger public that might not be that interested in hardcore sci-fi such as can be found in some of the more hardcore science fiction novels. This may put off some hardcore sci-fi readers but I think there will be enough science in it to keep them happy. I will not be having three page explanations of the higgs-boson theory or two page diatribes on why one faction’s missiles have a longer flight time than the other (yes I have read novels that had both). I enjoy science a lot and a lot of my time planning the novel has been spent, in the words of Tom Watney “sciencing the shit out of this,” but that has been mostly for me to figure out how something is meant to work in the world I’ve built before I put the bare minimum of explanation in to keep the story moving along.

License to the stars

Once I get the first draft of my novel finished and sent out to alpha readers, I will write a short story called “License to the stars.” I may or may not keep the title since while it describes the story quite well, it is in fact very close to John Scalzi’s title “Agent to the stars” (which is also a very fun book if you haven’t read it). The two stories have nothing in common so I may keep it but who knows, I might come up with a better title by the time I write it. I already have the scene list for it. It is very loosely based on my experiences getting a driver’s license in China. I was going to just make a post about how to get a driver’s license in China (the whole thing not just getting a Chinese version of an international driver’s license) but then I thought why write a boring article about something when you can use it as inspiration for a story. This short story will be more comic and fun hopefully more along the lines of Terry Pratchett style but I won’t know for sure until I write it.

Other projects

With my Jiashan article being well received by the Jiashan community and the article with the most hits on my blog so far, I will be looking other ideas for freelance articles. One possible idea will be the upcoming vegan festival in November but it is still too early to tell. If anyone has something they would like to see me write a freelance article about, feel free to contact. I may do my next freelance articles on some of Shanghai’s landmarks but it’s nice if an article has a built in readership already.

Once I get done with the first draft of my novel and the short story, I will see what my next writing project will be. I am thinking of also writing various epubs for sale but will see where my muse leads me next.