Spinward Fringe Broadcast 5: Fracture Gets Another Look

With the release of Broadcast 6 on the horizon, and a few problems cropping up with the edition on Smashwords, now is the perfect time to update Broadcast 5. This time, instead of simply updating it, I started with the raw manuscript, made some needed edits, and stripped all the code.

Then I rebuilt the eBook from scratch, taking the opportunity to add a navigation menu. The new version is already available on Smashwords and will trickle out to the iBookstore as well as Barnes and Noble. You'll know you have the updated version when you see a navigation menu.

I apologize to anyone who had trouble with the older version of the book, and I'm glad you sent me Emails about it, otherwise it may have been much longer before any corrections would have been made.

Thank you again for reading, stay tuned for more good news.

RL

Spinward Fringe Broadcast 6: Fragments - What's Taking So Long?

That's what people are asking, and considering how long it's been since Broadcast 5 was released, it's the right question. Not many authors give people the the nitty gritty details on how a book is written, and in the next couple paragraphs you'll probably learn why.

Fragments has been the most challenging work I've ever engaged in. Before November, 2009 I scrapped the first half of the book, then I tried to start over during National Novel Writing Month. I did fairly well, completing more than half of the book again, but after much reworking and editing, I've scrapped that as well, keeping two concepts that are the core of what I'm doing now.

Why scrap the drafts? The first draft delivered something I feel has been seen in film, in this series already, and some of it felt like filler even though it wasn't. There wasn't a story worth telling there, it didn't have the punch and drive that I try to maintain in my work and it didn't even come close to surpassing the previous book.

The second draft has been scrapped for a broad variety of reasons, but something good happened while I was working on it, something important to the story and I'm carrying a few very important ideas forward. If I didn't do the work this book wouldn't be as well developed as it is now.

The mad thing about this is that the process I'm outlining here is something that happens all the time. Most books go through multiple drafts. Ideas get tossed aside while small details get brought to the foreground. What makes Fracture even more challenging is that it's the middle act of a trilogy and part of a major turning point in the entire series. Setting the stage for Broadcast 7 is important, but Fracture also has to have its own story, it has to be a worthwhile read on its own, and the version I'm working on now provides that, finally.

While hearing that I've scrapped two versions of this book is discouraging, I'm sure, there is a silver lining. The third version of this book, the one I'm working on now, is worth reading. It's the tense middle act of a three act play that presents drama on multiple levels, an interesting point of view, growth for more than one character, the products of over a year of geographical, government and warfare research. It's in there, and I finally feel like all these things fit together.

I'm writing the last 12 or so chapters and editing with hopes that I blow my editor's mind, then get it to all of you sometime before June. I'm not going to say for sure when this book will arrive simply because I've learned what happens when you rush a book out with the previous Broadcasts in the series. I'd rather take extra time and do it right the first time instead of being left with something I have to revise later because it needs polishing.

Thank you very much for hanging in there, if you liked what's come before, you're going to love this.

RL

Spinward Fringe: Fragments

It's been quiet on the site for a couple of weeks, but behind the scenes things have been absolutely nuts.

Before I ramble on about anything else, it's time to announce the title of the next Spinward Fringe Novel: Spinward Fringe Fragments. As the second middle book in the Rogue Element Trilogy it promises to take our characters into unfamiliar situation and to unfamiliar places.

Readers who have already finished the series and have read the Strange Horizons and Close Encounters Living Anthology will have a head start. One of the characters appearing in this book was first introduced there in the Landing In Leeds short.

When will Fragments be released? I expect to have a complete draft by the end of November. A lot of work has already gone into this book, an unbelievable amount actually. The story that flows between this and the final book of the Rogue Element Trilogy is one I've wanted to tell for years, and I'm making sure that I'm bringing everything you expect from a Space Opera and more.

What else has been keeping me busy? The final edit of the First Light Chronicles and built up to re-release is wrapping up this week. It'll be available for free under the name: Spinward Fringe Origins on Smashwords sometime in November, but I'm not treating it like a free ebook. It's getting its own high end book trailer and a new cover. The Omnibus will be updated to match the new edit as well, so if you already purchased an eBook edition of the First Light Chronicles Omnibus, then you can update it for free wherever you purchased it.

So, there's my progress report for the time being. Keep your eyes peeled for more news, I'll keep you up to date as more projects near completion.

RL

Spinward Fringe: Change Is Coming

There are a number of people wondering where yesterday's free Spinward Fringe short was. It's running late.

I won't give you excuses, that's not how I work. Instead I'll tell you why.

Yesterday I got a call from my lead Editor and she told me Spinward Fringe Fracture is the best book in the series.

It was staggering news.

It also validated a few decisions I've made about what I'm going to do with the Spinward Fringe universe. Sadly, that also meant I needed another day or two for preparations before I released anything. That's why the first free content for the Spinward Fringe universe is delayed.

There is a lot of exciting news coming up if you're a reader, and many changes for the better are being made.

Over the next two weeks I'll be addressing a lot of topics on this blog including:

A new approach to cover art.
Treating the books like cinematic features
Spinward Fringe: Strange Horizons & Close Encounters
The Spinward Fringe: Fracture release
The Spinward Fringe Trailer
What happened with the SyFy Channel "Your Next Space Opera Is Here" campaign.
And other topics that I'm not ready to list.

Tonight Spinward Fringe: Strange Horizons & Close Encounters launches and I'll explain exactly what that is.

Thank you for coming with me on this journey. Your support is the reason why this series has come this far and I'm proud to entertain you. Now it's time to take things to the next level.

RL

Spinward Fringe: Things are happening...

Spinward Fringe: Fracture is on its way to the editors and I'll soon hear back on the worthiness of the book.

I enjoyed writing the piece and I'm looking forward to working on the next one after any required polishing or massaging on Fracture is finished.

The first part of the Dark Arts series is finished, but that doesn't mean that Tuesday won't be free content day on this site for a while. There's a scene that didn't fit into Spinward Fringe Frontline or Fracture, and it involves a character that will eventually become closely involved with big picture events. I'll be making this scene available on www.spinwardfringe.com for free on Teusday, August 25.

There are two other Spinward Fringe segments planned for release after the first. To be honest, I don't have any other free releases planned after, that, but you never know.

As for Dark Arts, so far I've recieved a little positive feedback, sold three copies of the eBook and received a donation of $5.00. Thank you very much for your support on this very little known piece. At this point I'm starting to consider expanding the piece into a full length novel but there's very little chance of continued serialization unless support picks up. It was a fantastic experiment and I've learned a lot from the feedback and other results I've seen. It seems the readers have spoken, and though a few people were well entertained, you all seem to prefer science fiction.

I'm looking forward to releasing the Spinward Fringe free content and to the release of Spinward Fringe Fracture. I'll announce the release date of Fracture as soon as I can reliably establish one. I'm enjoying the Fringe these days, and more people are joining the crew every day.

It's a good time to be a Fringer...

RL

Spinward Fringe: Fracture - Early Editing

I've begun my editorial pass / possible final draft on Spinward Fringe: Fracture and it occurs to me that there are a few very important things about this book that I didn't mention before.

It's a shorter book than Spinward Fringe Frontline. I decided that instead of taking eight or so months to release a large book, I'd split the story into three acts and write a trilogy.

The book also takes elements of the early Spinward Fringe series (Resurrection / Awakening), and fuses them with the First Light Chronicles setting and character style. Two days pass in this book, the story pace is faster than ever, I find the dialog pops more in this book than in Frontline, and I get to tell this story from many angles and explore the experiences of characters that I think more readers will be able to relate to more easily.

There's also special attention paid to how certain characters react to what they may have gained or lost over the last few months (since page 1 of Spinward Fringe Resurrection), and I've made a great effort to keep the story from getting bogged down with constant flashbacks to moments we've seen before. Instead, I try to keep building a few characters by reviewing bits of their past and emotions in the present that I haven't had a chance to examine in detail.

I've also returned to a kind of story telling that had the tendency to evoke a lot more emotion from me. I wrote a new prologue for this book that nearly had me in tears. Normally I'd be patting myself on the back and hoping that all that emotion survives my edit, but in this case I was left wondering if I made everyone around me uncomfortable at the writing jam I was attending. [A writing jam is when a group of writers get together in a cafe or someone's home and spend time working together or on their own projects.]

There's one more thing I'd like to mention before I get back to work. Editing this book is fun. Editing Frontline was a bit of a chore at times because of its sheer size and the characters spent a lot of time in a setting I no longer enjoyed imagining because it was an awful place, I wouldn't want to find myself in the same situation that the characters are in for most of that book. Don't get me wrong, the setting was great for the story, I had just spent days imagining it already at that point.

So far, editing Spinward Fringe Fracture has been very rewarding. I'm finding a lot of places where I'm smoothing out some rough edges, which is normal, and a few places were I get sucked in by the scenes and the story so well that I forget to edit. It happened with Frontline as well, but only after the first edit was completed and I had to go back to the beginning for another pass.

If my editor and beta readers approve this edit when I'm finished, you can look forward to Spinward Fringe: Fracture at the end of August.

Gotta love being independent, this stuff happens fast!

RL

[Do you prefer shorter books and a release every 2-3 months or longer books and releases every 9 months? Please comment below!]

Announcing Spinward Fringe: Fracture

That's right. Spinward Fringe Rogue Element has become the Rogue Element Trilogy. The first book is called Response. In online stores the name will read: Spinward Fringe: Response.

Why, you ask? The answer is simple. The story quickly outgrew the confines of one book. I had to cut Rogue Element into three parts, otherwise I'd have a five hundred page novel that would take me nine months to write. Okay, maybe six, but I went through that with Frontline, and I'd rather deliver a two hundred page novel in three months instead of a four hundred page novel in six. There are a lot of readers who agree, and it fits the nature of Space Opera.

What's the book about? Well, without giving anything serious away, it's time for a distress call. It's a common story seed in Space Opera stories, and it's time for me to to it differently, to twist the whole concept of responding to a distress call into a nice big plot pretzel gone wrong.

I've taken a completely different approach to this book and I'm happy with how it's turned out so far. I wanted to write Rogue Element like a film, like I was the director looking to milk every moment for as much drama and action as possible while tossing some intrigue and character development in for good measure. I also wanted to recapture some of the excitement that made the First Light Chronicles worth reading.

What's the end result? The first part is in draft, and it feels like I've crammed a screenplay into a prose novel. It's exciting, the science is something I'm proud of, it's emotional, and I poured so much into this book that I had nothing left by the end. I feel like taking a decade off, like I don't know exactly what I have here, but I like it too much to judge and need a professional opinion.

I'm a very fortunate man. I have not one, but two qualified people ready to look this over for me. They'll tell me if there is something missing, or if it's too fast paced, or if I've given birth to a great big, creative turkey. As with anything I enjoy writing, I've lost all objectivity, and they'll tell me what I've done here.

All I know is that the first draft is complete, it was more fun to write than Spinward Fringe Frontline, that I'll be back at work on this draft starting my personal edit tomorrow, and that this book is called Spinward Fringe: Response, it's part one of the Rogue Element Trilogy.

There's something else. There are perfectly good chapters from past books (such as the completed, edited prologue from Spinward Fringe Frontline), that will never be used. Some of them read like shorts, so I'll be releasing one free after the last part of Dark Arts: Rising hits the web next week. There will also be preview chapters for Spinward Fringe: Response that, when put together, read like their own short story. They'll be released here on a weekly basis until the book is released.

I'm excited, my editor is excited, and my new proof reader is well chuffed as well. I'll tell you what their verdict is and how long you'll have to wait until the release as soon as I know.

RL

One more thing: The book is written so new inductees to the Spinward Fringe universe can start reading here. The preceding books will always be there for them, but they can start at this point if they like.