story – Atomic Slingshot Press

Interlude: My Day Job

My life tends to revolve around two things; my writing and my family. I tend to talk about writing as I try not to talk too much about my personal life. Today, I am going into something different, I am going to talk about what is going on with my personal life and my day job.

In short, my day job doesn’t exist. As of June of last year, I was laid off from my job as an Estimator in a restoration firm. They had eliminated my position. I then discovered that most other companies in the area had done the same thing. In short, my job was farmed out to a third-party company that operates across the country.

So where does that leave me?

Unemployed with a wife, who is going to university, and two adventurist kids, who won’t understand why piano lessons have ended. Any job that I take will be a substantial pay cut as I have no skills outside of that industry, which is not hiring. I am back to square one.

For seven years of my life, I spent working in the restoration field. I was good at it. It wasn’t a glamorous job, at first I cleaned up shit for a living. Now, I looked at the prospect of having to start in a labourer position to earn my strips in another industry, but what?

So I took a sizeable step. I went back to school.

Fifteen years ago, right after high school, I went to film school. I graduated with a certificate. However, the industry wasn’t for me. It was the only post-secondary schooling that I had, which was apart of my problems.

With me unemployed from the restoration job, no trade to fall back on, and no degree either, it left me with the choice of minimum wage or slightly above the minimum as a labourer digging ditches.

My wife, however, knew that would be losing my soul. With her encouragement, I am now a university student. I have been going since September. I am taking a Major in Creative Writing.

The question is why. Why take an art degree when there are no jobs in the field? And don’t I already have novels published, why take schooling if I already know what to do?

The answers to those questions are simple. I know that there are no jobs that use an art degree. I completely understand. I have created my own job by being an indie author. It is about what a person makes of the situation more than the situation itself.

And yes, I do know how to write a novel and to tell a story. Writing a manuscript isn’t hard for me. I have three completed manuscripts sitting in the ‘to edit’ pile right now. However, I want to become an editor and maybe someday open my own publishing house. To do that, getting a degree is necessary.

But there are other benefits. My writing has been challenged to become tighter, cleaner. I am having an easier time articulating what I want to say. This is all necessary for growth as a writer. Before I went to school, I felt that my writing had stagnated as I wasn’t getting any better. In my honest opinion, my writing was sliding back into the abbess of shite.

So that is what has been going on with one part of my personal life. I am a university student who writes novels.

If you like what you are reading and wish to support me in my endeavours, please sign up to my newsletter, visit my Amazon Author Page and purchase one of my books. Leave a review, or buy me a coffee. Your help and support are much appreciated.

The Writing Process: The Routine

I have been writing every day for over sixty days now. Currently, I’m averaging just over 1400 words a day. I’m also editing for an hour every day. This is on top of anything that I have to do in my life. Kids, wife, daily tasks, etc.

As I have said before, writing a novel is not a sprint. It is an endurance race. Writing a book is like trying to get into shape. You can’t go to the gym for one day and expect to be in shape the next day. Same thing with writing a novel. It is not something that is done in a day.

Getting into a healthy shape is not a simple task but a lifestyle to be adopted. If you see someone that is actively working on staying healthy, it is not a task that they do for a few hours. They change their sleep habits, their eating habits, they start to walk places instead of driving.

What is similar in both a novelist and a workout guru is a routine. The guru will get up at 5am every day to go for a run. She will use some sort of calendar to check off to encourage the habit. In short, a routine is essential to getting the new habit going. Without a routine to rely upon at the start, the good habits don’t form, and the bad ones stay. A routine will keep you going when you want to quit. Clicking on a video game or Netflix after all is easy.

As I have stated before, my routine is that I write up little cards of the things that I need to do the next day the night before. The next day, I cross things off as I complete them. Due to my 500,000 word goal, I also have a spreadsheet that I keep track of. I also make sure that I finish my personal tasks first in the day before I work on other things.

For you, however, you may need to come up with different methods. The key is not to be afraid to think outside of the box and to try a new approach. Then dump whatever is not working for you. Use the method that works, discard anything that doesn’t.

Remember, a routine is your friend, but only when it works. When it fails to work, you need to drop it like fifth period french. I will go into more detail on that next week.

End of February 2019 Report

As like the post for the end of January, this is the post of the end of February. I am still putting my money where my mouth is.

Recap of 2019 Goals

Write 500,000 words in personal, non-school related projects.
Complete and publish Felix #2, Felix #3, Des O’Neal #1, Des O’Neal #2, Des O’Neal #3, Jovian Marines #1, Jovian Marines #2, Jovian Marines #3, Mech Warrior #1, Mech Warrior #2, Mech Warrior #3.
Correct cover for Felix #1.
Write four blog posts per month
Give Felix #1 and Tokyo Tempest #1 a proofread.
Complete and submit to market Terran Marine Raider short #1, Terran Marine Raider short #2, and RPG Death short.
Earn $1000.00 a month from novels.
Relaunch publishing company with a new, stronger name.
Get 1 client for editing services.

February Accomplishments

I wrote 41,013 words.
I finished the first draft of Mech Warrior #1.
Re-finished editing Des O’Neal #1
Waiting on a cover for Des O’Neal #1
Worked on editing Jovian Marines #1
Wrote 4 blog posts during February

Examination of Accomplishments

I wrote just over 41k words in February. It is not large enough for the 42,000 words that I set for myself, but that is okay. The base goal for February is 38,360 words. My month was far from perfect. I had many days where I didn’t make the 1500 words. I missed the goal ten times this month. However, I did manage to write over 2k words for nine days with my highest word day at 2558. This is a better month than January in terms of words.
The novel with the working title of Mech Warrior #1 was started back in 2018. It is the second book of those that I had only partially completed. I had left the book 41k words, but now it has finished at 87k words. That makes three novels to be edited. I may have to figure out better editing habits as the pile is growing.
At the start of the January, I had finished the edits to the first Des O’Neal book called The O’Neal Saboteur. However, after reexamining the book and learning some better editing “hacks,” I discovered that I missed some big errors. They are fixed now. I expect to publish it in the next few days. Stay tuned for that announcement in the coming days.
I have been working with my wife, the artist, on a cover for the Des O’Neal book. It is coming along, and it will be a post once I can show something about it.
The edits of Jovian Marines #1 are ongoing. The title of which will be The Missed Drop Zone. It will be in the Odinite Campaign Saga.
As you can see from my previous posts, I have written four blog posts with them going live on Sundays. This month I wrote about story ideas and how to find them and nurture them.

Plan for the Future

Despite not hitting the publish button in the month of January or February, I consider the month of February to be successful. I start my day by editing for an hour before doing anything else. I will need to perhaps add more time to that. Maybe working on more time to write it. I need to get not only Missed Drop Zone published, but I need to get a large part of the way done editing Felix #2. I still write my next day’s tasks at the end of each night.

I am currently working on a Military Sci-Fi for an anthology. It is still in the same story verse as Des O’Neal and the Odinite Campaign but is about someone on the side of Terra.

So far, it is working, but I have had to make some changes. I will go into details this Sunday when I drop my weekly post. Maybe I will also talk about some of the current projects that I am working on.

If you like what you are reading and wish to support me in my endeavours, please sign up to my newsletter, visit my Amazon Author Page and purchase one of my books. Or buy me a coffee. Your help and support are much appreciated.

Story Ideas: When to Abandon?

At some point in the process of melding a story into gold, you may have to abandon the story. The gold, turns into a mirage, fools good, banga dung. There are two main reason’s why authors abandon a story.

Wait… I Saw This Movie Before

During the process of asking questions and figuring out how the story, you may run into the situation that you have realized that you have “seen this movie before.” When it happened to me the first time, I had to sit back and stare in disbelief. I wondered if I was really suited for the writing life. This is the mirage, the fools gold.

Intentional

However, it is not a bad thing if you took the movie as an inspiration. When you were coming up with the base few ideas to develop the story idea from, and one of them was a character, place, scene or thing-a-whatsit, then having that show through the developed idea is not a bad thing as it was intentional.

If that is the case, it is not the time to panic. The solution, -simply stated, but not simply to implement- is to think of some twists and differences that were nowhere near the movie that you took the inspiration from. The idea is that finding something that is the opposite of what you wanted to do. It is adding another base idea. If it is done well, it’ll give the story the uniqueness that you are looking for.

Unintentional

If the story resembles a movie where you didn’t intend to have any type of resemblance, then you may have a more significant problem. Your subconscious has been writing the story. This may or may not be a big deal. The first course of action is not to do anything drastic. Put the lights ad hammers down. No need to burn the notebooks. It will be fine. The next thing to do is to put your story idea away and ignore it for a few months. Work on something else.

After the while has passed, go back to it and read your notes and the idea. Does it still resemble the movie that you have seen? How bad of a resemblance? As per the first part of the blog series, all stories are built out of other stories. The similarity may be to a level that it may be okay to leave. In which case, keep going.

If it is at a moderate level, then you may be able to add an opposite idea to diversify the story idea. However, if it is at a major scale, the level where it is evident that anyone may see the resemblance, then this is a major problem. At this case, it may be time to pull out the lighter and to kill it with fire.

Well not that far, but it is time to put the notes away into a dead story file and to move on. Use some individual components of the story idea and use them, but on the whole, the story isn’t worth pursuing.

SQUIRREL

The other reason why a story gets abandoned is not the fault of the story, but the creator. This is what I call a squirrelled story. This is when the author finds a new story to work on before he is done with the first story. This happens to many authors in the course of there writing careers.

They are working diligently on a story when they get a brainwave on another story. They then up there current work on hold to chase after the squirrel. This is not good productivity wise as there will always be another squirrel.

I know, as I have seven unfinished novels that I have been working on throughout a few years that I need to finish. That is a major part of my goals for this year. I need to finish those stories.

The best way to deal with these squirrels is to not ignore the ideas, however, don’t chase them either. Write down the idea into a notepad and file it away. Go back to them once the current novel is complete. Finding story ideas is a learned skill that needs the practice necessary to keep at a functioning level. If you ignore the ideas, you risk losing that skill. If you chase ever story idea that you come across, then nothing will ever get finished.

That’s it for this series, next month will be a whole new series. Stay tuned for more next Sunday.

Story Ideas: How to Achieve Gold

You have the basis of a story idea, and now you’re wondering what to do next. Having a thousand good ideas are great and all, but unless you can figure out how to flesh them out into a story, then they are the equivalent to mental masturbation. Luckily you, dear reader, you have come to the right place. Not for the masturbation part, but the ‘flesh out my ideas part.’

In this week’s blog post, I will go over some strategies on what you can do to turn your basic story idea into something that can form a novel or three. To start off the post, I will discuss some different types of ideas that you may have and questions to ask. Please note that these are generalizations and it is okay to deviate as you see fit.

The Basic Idea

Each basic idea, or melding of ideas as I discussed in last weeks post, starts off a different set of questions. The ideas come in all shapes and sizes, from small cute things to massive gargantuan, all-encompassing-ideas. This is an essential point to understand as no two ideas are the same and can’t be looked at the same way.

Genre

No matter the story idea, the first I do after the basic idea is selected is assign it a genre. Genres are unimportant, yet one of the most critical aspects to any story. I will go over this later in more detail, but for now, genres allow for the easy conveying of information in a story without having to write a college thesis on it.

Basic Idea Type: Character

I have written a few books based on a cool character that I could not get out of my mind. With characters, I start my questions with them. They will be things like age, hair colour, weight and then moving onto more important aspects. Upbringing, past experiences, political leanings, etc. In short, I will create the character– when creating story ideas based on a single person, it is easier if you have a full character in mind. But honestly, those items have little importance to a story idea.

Once that is done, I will start to piece together small parts of the world. Please note: this is not world building. Not yet. Story idea creation will often meld into world-building, but at this stage, it is not essential to go into those details. Right now, it is important to flesh out what the story will be. If it is a military sci-fi and the character is a Captain of the Royal Guards, then who is he the guard of? What nation? What war? Has the war started? Who are they fighting?

That last question is important, once you get to the subject of the antagonist, unless it is man vs nature, there should be a bad guy. Who is the nemesis causing the Captain all the sleepless nights? He or she should be well thought out following one of my rules that the antagonist should be as well thought out as the protagonist and he should be the hero in his own story. That will be a subject of a future blog post, but it is an important post. Unless you want a bond villain, from the enemies POV, he should have some type of justification for his actions.

Once the villain is selected, then the conflict can come out. Conflict equals story. If you need to fill three books of ninety thousand words, then it should be complicated and well thought out, yet easy to summarize down to a single sentence to answer the annoying question of what the story is about.

Basic Idea Type: Thing-a-whatsit

Sometimes, you may have an idea of a cool thing. A beater sword. A mech warrior. A magic system. Whatever. Like any story idea it will start first with setting the genre, but this type has a different importance to selecting a genre. If you have an idea about a really cool laser rifle and you want to write based around that, then knowing the genre changes things. If it is a sci-fi, there is little that you need to explain for the essential functions. There are enough tropes in the sci-fi genre that will make it easy to tell.

However, what if the laser rifle was in a fantasy setting? How would it work? Magic? Some type of crystals? Imagine the possibilities.

Taking the idea of the laser rifle in a fantasy setting, the next step is to flesh things out and expand. I recommend selecting a cool main character to use the rifle. However, you can go to the world and start to piece it together. Who is fighting who? Are they fighting? Who is the enemy? What type of conflict is it? It can be a man vs man, but it doesn’t have to be. You could use the fantasy laser rifle idea and write a man vs animals and monsters just as easy.

Basic Idea Type: Scenes

I have written a story where the first idea that I had was a single cool scene. To start, after I selected a genre, I fleshed things out. I did some world building and created the conflict. Then I picked the character and kept building.

In Short

Did you notice the similarities between creating stories using a basic story idea method? They all are based around creating a character to write about in a specific genre with a conflict to propel the story.

Once you have the basic building block, build it up piece by piece making sure to keep the idea that the protagonist and antagonist need to be fleshed out and worth reading about.

Update July 3, 2018

So I know that I haven’t been posting in a while. I am sorry for that. I published my first book, then my posting fell off. So far this year, I have written 200k words. I have two full novels published and two smaller kids books that I did with my kids.

Plus being a dad has taken up much of my time. My son is in piano, and my daughter is a ballerina.

I know. I am creating excuses for why I haven’t been posting. The suns in my eyes… the curling game is on…

No more lame excuses.

I will be moving to post once a week for now, and maybe posting more later.

In other news, my day job was going fine. Until they laid me off. It sucks, but I have written 25k words in the last 2 weeks, and I have published one book. I have another in the editing process and a short story in editing as well. I am not letting the depressiveness get to me. I am getting things done.

I also have an outstanding cover artist. His work is fantastic and has upped the game to my novels. His cover is the image for this post.

His site can be found here: Josh Thornbrugh

So now that you know that I am unemployed and working on my novels full-time cause that is the cards that have been dealt, what’s my future?

Well, the plan is to go back to school. Learn more about the writing and publishing process. It is a scary prospect, but I will make a go of it.

I will close off here, but if you all want to support my family and me, the easiest way will be to buy a book or three. Right not they are only available on Amazon and as e-books. They will be released sometime in the near future.

The full list of my published book can be found here.

My published work.

Until next time.

Stay Shiny.

Creating a Military Sci-Fi Novel

So I have decided to change my writing schedule a bit. Nothing official yet. Once I finalize things, I will post them here.

The reason for it, I have wanted to write a military sci-fi novel for a while. I have decided that I am going to write one.

I have also decided to talk about my methods for creating my world as I build it. Cause why not.

I create a story world there are two basic methodologies. Big to small or small to big. Some people world build in a more discovering writing style and fly at it. They do very little world building before writing ‘Once upon a time.’ It isn’t necessarily bad, it just has a tendency to run into plot holes and re-writes. This is the small to big method.

I prefer the big to small. I will use a smaller and smaller brush to design the world that I am writing in. Most of which will not go into the story, but will help with making the little parts of the story make sense in a macro way.

As such, I first start with the base writing universe.

I have a dislike of creating a new writing world for a new story. Don’t get me wrong, I love world building. If I could get a job where I create worlds for people all day, I would be in heaven. It is just that I have many already and I don’t need more. So I am going to put it in my Shattered Worlds Writing Universe. It will take place after my ‘Inescapable Game Novels.’

That means that anything that I create to this writing universe is more flavor for my current world. Even though my Shattered Worlds Writing Universe only exists in the Sol System. But that shall change.

Using the nations and peoples that I have in my Shattered Worlds, and a time frame of when this story is going to happen, I can brainstorm how it is going to happen. A war still needs to make sense.

I am not going to go into detail on who is fighting who in this story. Not yet. I will. Cause why not. That’ll be in a later blog post.

For now, onto the fun part.

I need to create a military force.

That is the hard part.

For research, one of my main sources of information was this book. It was well written and had lots of information on how military forces work in the current model. It also has some ideas on what future wars may or may not look like. I recommend anyone interested in writing Military Sci-Fi to grab this book.

For the uninitiated, most people think that a military is a bunch of men with no-senses of humor, a drinking habit, and some guns. But a military is much more than that. Don’t get me wrong, it includes all of that, but it is so much more.

A military is a very set, organized organization that is capable of moving thousands of men and material over long distances through hostile, rough terrain. Men and women who are willing to fight to the death for there cause.

On paper, there is a couple way of creating a military organization. Top down, or bottom up.

I am very strategic minded, so I am going to do the top down.

That means that I am going to create the larger structure before I get to the individuals. But take note. A story is about the individuals. Not about the organization or unit.

Now. My story takes place 600 years in the future. Humans have spread across the stars and will be at war. I am thinking other humans, but that is for ease of storytelling and not anything to do with the aliens. I will write other stories where the fighting will be against aliens, but that is not this one.

In order to create the structure for my soldiers to fight in, I need to make some assumptions. The first one is that there will only be two branches of the military. In most current armed forces, there are three.

Airforce, army, and navy.

In the future, there will only be the army and the navy. Sorry Airforce, you go the way of the Doto.

In this story universe, the army has been re-named the Ground Defense Force. The GDF. It is tasked with defending the specific world from threats. The Airforce has been merged with it.

To make the GDF fight harder, a unit based on a planet has there personnel families relocated to the planet. Someone that is defending there home and the family will fight that much harder for it.

The Navy, now named Fleet, is everything outside of the atmosphere. The structure of it stays pretty much the same. Ship personnel, the ‘air power,’ and the marines. It stays the same.

With those assumptions made, I can create a rank structure. For the GDF, I only go up to a Brigadier-General, while the Fleet, I go all the way up. I figure a defensive force will only have so many men in it. I have also decided to use modern ranks instead of creating new ones. The less I have to explain the better. More pages for more explosions and gunfire.

I then created unit structure. This part I was inspired by a video game. Hearts of Iron 4. In it, you create divisions by putting pieces of different companies together. I used that idea and created some base unit types. How many men in squads, platoons, etc. That way if I talk about a full strength platoon of Infantry having 40 men on page one, on page 300 it should have the same.

Also, the specific structure of the platoon? Do they use squads? Do they use fireteams? Are they like the USSR or the US? For clarification, communists use masses of men to win fights. The US use LMG’s and accurate firepower to defeat the enemies.

Do they have some type of fire support? Do they have artillery at the battalion level or the division? Does each company have a mortar unit? Or maybe it is a heavy weapons company that gets split up per platoon as needed.

These are all important pieces of information.

The reasons why comes to one of the basic tenants of storytelling that I follow.

It is more interesting to read about a character overcoming the disadvantages that he has with any specific skill, force, power or technology. In a military sci-fi setting, I can throw them into power armor and with flechet rifles and send them into battle. And that is all fun, but the good war stories, the ones that resonate with the reader/viewer are the ones that even though they are skilled and equipped for war, they still have an enemy to overcome and figure out how to defeat.

It is more interesting to have your men get pinned down by enemy sniper fire and force them to think outside of the box to get the enemy defeated. Or I can make them unstoppable killing machines, but who wants to read a story about that.

Until next time.

And p.s. Sorry for the space of time between posts.

Cheers.

Title changes

Just a short note today.

The Space Courier is no more. So in the light that I have made no sales from the Space Courier Book, I have replaced the name of it.

It is now, “An O’Neal Spy Adventure.”

That is the new cover. I also tweaked the marketing copy, so maybe people will be more interested in it. We shall see.

Now I have to get back to the land of Agersolum. I am working on Felix Book 2.

Cheers.

I’ve been Tardy…

It’s now the eighth of March and this blog post is later than it should have been. I apologize for the lack of blog posts. I have been busy.

Tonight, I should have been in bed hours ago…such, I shall ‘try’ to keep this post short, but knowing me, no promises.

This post is intended to act as an update on my writing process and some of the issues and errors that I have made. Some that I have corrected, some that I have not.

So far I have published two books and a third will be launching next week sometime. My cover artist is busy and it is likely it will be a bit before she gets to it. It’s all good. As of the end of February, I have made a total of fifty bucks from my books and I have realized I have made some mistakes.

My marketing needs work and I have no sense of cover design. The two book covers that have been posted, I love. I think that they are lovely designs, the issue I have with them is that they’re not drawing people’s attention. No one wants to click on my books. No clicks mean they won’t buy my book.

After that, my marketing copy is bad. Bad marketing copy means that they will not be wanting to buy the book.

I have no data on how many people clicked the covers, or getting to the sale page, or putting it in their shopping carts.

The books are included in the KDP Select program. So people can read the books for free. KDP select is the only place that people will read my Phantom Sorcerer’ books. Most of the revenue made is from having ‘Phantom Sorcerer’ in KDP Select. So far no one has read a page of the ‘Missile Attack’ book.

I think the problem with the ‘Missile Attack’ book, is that it’s a hard market to get into. And it makes sense. The kids that would enjoy the books don’t read KDP Select and don’t have credit cards to buy it.

That means that I need a new marketing strategy for my middle-grade book before I launch it on Amazon. But what to do? More research time I guess.

But from what I see in the reports that I get from KDP select, people read it. Not a lot, but when they do, its a cluster of times that they read the books. Meaning that I think that people are finishing the books. But I have no sign-ups for my newsletters or reviews on the books.

And that is that. I am currently 90% done on my June release, while I’m working on my July launch. But I haven’t gotten much down.

I have been hit by a wave of stress and a defeatist feeling. The peanut gallery is back. My inner Statler and Waldorf have made their untimely resurrection. Their presence has halted my production down to a crawl. They are an unwanted tumor in my life, and I must again figure out how to get rid of them. They’re halting my writing process and it’s not very good.

Advice would be greatly appreciated for any of the above statements and concerns. Feel free to email me at NAPedde@peddehouse.com, leave a comment, or a Twitter message.

Until next time.

Cheers.

Plot Holes

I read a lot of books. Well, listen to audio tapes is a better description, but it is the same. I don’t have a lot of funds to spend on books though. So I listen to free audio dramas online.

Which is hard to find good audio dramas. I keep on getting a couple episodes in, and then I can’t listen to them anymore.

And it’s for silly things. I was listening to this one about an economic post-apocalypse. The concept was sound. I listened to it. At the three-quarter mark of the episode, they are in the middle of a gunfight, and one soldier yells to the other, “Throw me a clip.”

What they hell. A clip. They were modern soldiers. Modern soldiers don’t use clips. Clips are used inside rifles. Like they used for the M1 Garand or the Soviet SKS. Modern military rifles don’t use clips.

They use magazines. Magazines are a clip, but it is encased in metal or plastic, and it is attached to the outside of the firearm. Some are attached to the side, while most are attached underneath.

Another one had a lady running down the street with a shirt covered in blood. Not a single person asked her if she was alright. And they didn’t run from her either. Then there were the obvious historical problems when they went to an origin point of a long-lived character. They described the British Empire as it was during the 18th century. There was no British Empire in 1000’s AD.

But that is enough of me whinning.

Until next time.