EternalEmperor.com

The once completed and pretty much unreadable eternal emperor novel I wrote 4 years ago is still locked safely away where no one can read it.  My writing and editing is much better these days and will presumably only get better.

Rather than go and rewrite a novel that I have written at least 4 times in the past 2 decades, I chose to do something different.  I was reading David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers collection recently and it struck me that I should just rewrite the story as a series of short stories in a style of Drake.  Why write a long novel about a 6 events and leave the reader asking why you did it, when I could write 6 short stories in the style of Hammer’s Slammers and get the back story out-of-the-way.

The choice to create the “Arrested Development Collection” seems so natural once I realized that Drake was the author that inspired these stories in the first place.  I love Military Science Fiction.  When you read this collection I think you will see the Hammer’s Slammers style in these stories, and I am happy if you find it enjoyable.

I will be posting the stories when the editing completes.  Once it is all done I will post another version with the entire collection.

After reading the most horrific science fiction story intended for young adults, which I won’t name here, I was trying to figure out what made it so bad. I wanted to blame poor writing, but that would have been wrong. The grammar was good, the syntax correct, I can’t always say that about my writing. The problem became obvious as I stepped away from the work. The author had no idea what he was writing about and did not care to learn. I have read stories and articles about deep sea fishing and trust me, I have no interest in fishing of any sort, but the look into the life of men risking their lives on the open ocean to gather food in a commercial operation was enthralling. Why? Because the author cared about the story, and they knew what they were doing.

I am by no means an expert in NASCAR and I am sure that people who work for the racing organization who read my stories could point out dozens of ways I am wrong about details, but I try to make sure that I never lose sight of what NASCAR means to the drivers, the teams and the fans. If I have taken a liberty with a detail it is to advance a story, but it is not to say that I don’t like the way they are doing it so in my fantasy world I will make it work this way. If I were going to do that I might as well just make up everything.

I hate when an author does not take the time to care about the details it shows. If I kill a character, it hurts those around them. If I introduce a technology it has an impact. Things do not happen in a vacuum. I will of course give up my high ground if someone offers a large pile of money and insists I write something a certain way, but have no fear, I would never lie about selling out. I will tell you, then I will take the money and go back to what I want to write.

Thanks to the folks who noticed for formatting errors in the previous PDF version of the Spotter. While taking the time to update the PDF, I added an HTML version in a zip file for download. Going forward, I will make both versions available with all future publications on the site. Thanks for catching the format errors.

Writers need readers. New writers need anyone to read them. If I horded my work and did not find a way to get it into peoples hands to read I would never improve.

A friend of mine could not believe that I was making available for free things that I spent months writing. I pointed out that they are still mine, and I am just letting anyone read them without cost. However if someone wanted to make money off of my publications the copyright is mine and I reserve those rights. He did not understand. He was still focused on the idea that people did not have to pay to download my work.

By now you have probably figured out that his objections have nothing to do with creative commons work at all. You can put fully any material on the we to be read and downloaded. I choose a license for my work that encourages people to share it without feeling the need to ask permission to do so.

I need readers, and CC licensing is a way to make it easier for people to read.

Where do the pictures come from for my story/book covers? They are my own photographs. I use some simple image editing to make the covers. Why do it myself? I have a rule for all of my writing projects, no cost or very little cost. If I use my own photographs I don’t have to compensate someone else or even take the time who I should credit for them.

If you want to know exactly how I have done the cover art just ask. I may even post more information about them when I have time. I think some of them are a story unto themselves.

I am currently working on the following:

The Sponsor – Editing

The Jackman – Writing

Lifter – Outline/Planning

Homecoming – Character Bios, research, outlining.

Arrested Development ( Eternal Emperor Book 1 ) – Chapter Insert writing, plot outlining.

Why post this? I want to try to post this once a month if for no other reason to make myself look at what I am doing and decided if I am moving forward of floundering.

Racing Tales

I decided to put all the NASCAR science fiction stories into a collection called racing tales. The collection is planned out to be:

The Spotter, The Sponsor, The Jackman, and Lifter. There is a possible 5th on but so far that story has not taken shape enough to name. I will put up each story on their own as they are finished in PDF, HTML and Mobi format for the kindle. When the entire collection is complete I am planning to put them in my lulu store and make them available in the Amazon kindle store. If you own a kindle and are not sure how to put a Mobi file on your kindle, drop me an email. I will help you out.

Since I moved to a new hosting service, Yahoo Small Business, I have not setup and maintained a blog. At first I thought that I might not have a blog on the new site. I wanted to concentrate on the writing itself and post stories. I kept realizing that I wanted a place to talk about writing. Things I was trying, things I wanted to try, and things I dislike.

You can expect to see more posts about writing and none about politics. If you know me personally then you know my politics. If you don’t know and want to know my politics, read my writing. I think you will figure them out. If you just have to know, send me an email. I will happily talk about issues of the day.