Category: Doomster

Projects Update

Quick projects update, to solidify the exciting months to come:

I have shelved the Doomster novel, regrettably. It won’t disappear or go forgotten, it’s just not my priority anymore. I want to tackle an SF novel or two before I go poking into weird, experimental territory. Plus, I don’t yet feel fully comfortable writing about a culture I’ve only just begun to understand.

So, first on the agenda are two books, one self-published nonfiction and one novel: Keep Dreaming: A Beginner’s Guide to Writing Science Fiction, which will be written in somewhat sporadic, serialized form here at www.alexjkane.com and then later revised and expanded into an ebook; and an as-yet-untitled Near-Earth, Post-Cyberpunk Space Opera Novel. Any short stories I write fresh from here on out will be either companion pieces to the SF novel and its universe, or chapters pulled directly from the novel’s outline (the former being more likely than the latter, as I don’t like double-dipping too much — although it worked out just fine for Orson Scott Card and countless others).

My other project in line, to be drafted either before or after I finish Doomster, will be a YA science fiction novel adapted from my still-unpublished short story, “Prospect of a World I Dream.” For now, I’m calling the novel version A World I Dream. Taste all right to you?

Anyway, the short story version is a piece I’ve gotten almost universally positive reactions to, but which keeps getting almost-but-not-quite rejections. It deals with one specific adolescent theme, but during the brainstorming process last summer, the thing in my head was much, much larger — a kind of homage to John Brown’s slave uprising at Harper’s Ferry (with hints of other slave narratives, like “Pearl Diving,” serving to inform the premise as well) set aboard a colony ship full of adolescents under the care of computerized human consciousnesses who have been in spaceflight for millennia in search of a new homeworld.

So that brings my “Current Projects” widget up to date for y’all. I haven’t decided how much I’m ready to disclose about the new SF novel I’m brainstorming yet, but suffice it to say that it will be a lot of fun, and will take place in the same universe as some of my previous SF stories, but on a much larger scale. Also: I will endeavor to stay within the confines of “mundane science fiction” while staying true to both the space opera spirit and post-cyberpunk aesthetic, if you can imagine that. So space travel/colonization will likely encompass only a small in-system portion of the cosmos, but not to the detriment of eventual technologies that will accommodate the militarization and exploitation of the rest of Earth’s solar system.

In preparation for this new (first) book, I’ve been reading Dick’s The Simulacra, Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep, and Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War. My hope is to craft a story that can stand alongside the some of the most mind-expanding SF works, like 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Fire Upon the Deep, while simultaneously keeping within the limits of probable scientific progress and what I personally believe makes for a compelling, believable story. Are there aliens in this story? I suppose I could tell you that . . . except I haven’t yet made up my mind. I don’t think so, but there’s always room for a surprise or two, right? One huge component to my research process is going to be digging into my trunk, and my published stories, and rereading them with fresh, critical eyes to determine the details of my new world. I’m excited as hell to get started, so May can’t come soon enough!

Writing Goals 2012

Okay, so 2011 was a year spent largely riding on the fumes of 2010′s few modest successes. Why lie? But, on a positive note, I must say that the quality of my fiction, while perhaps yet inconsistent, continues to increase, both in my own eyes and those of readers. I sold a short story from 2010 that I loved (“In the Arms of Lachiga”) to Digital Science Fiction at SFWA-standard professional rates (i.e. hundreds of dollars, praise the cosmos — and many thanks to Michael Wills, Christine Clukey, et al.!), and in doing so got my name on the cover of a pro publication next to none other than Nebula Award-winner Eric James Stone. I wrote fiction I’m proud of — “El Mirador,” which sold to Tom Carpenter’s Mirror Shards anthology springs to mind; as does the story “Prospect of a World I Dream,” which has yet to find a home. And, perhaps most importantly, I read some really great fiction: Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, Choke and Damned by Chuck Palahniuk, Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi (and a zillion other books and short stories I can’t remember at the moment).

I can hardly call 2011 a failure…but it was a disappointment. I saw all the hard work I did in 2010, with the exception of a small press collapsing under its own weight and canning three of the books I was supposed to appear in, finally come to fruition in the form of books. These things were great. But I didn’t do the writing I’d hoped to do; what I did, I’m proud of, sure, but I could have accomplished so much more… Instead, I chose to bask in the glory of yesterdays, to dream and ponder instead of getting my hands dirty. For the most part.

So here it is, folks. My official declaration of intent for 2012. It’s modest, and extremely doable, but that’s the point. In the course of the next year, I will:

  • Apply to Clarion, Clarion West, and Odyssey
  • Complete and submit my current novel project, Doomster
  • Write, revise, and submit 12 new finished short stories
  • Continue to enter Writers of the Future every contest quarter
  • Follow Heinlein’s Rules henceforth without exception
  • Begin making lists of nouns, titles, concepts, and story ideas a la Bradbury’s essay “Run Fast, Stand Still, or, The Thing at the Top of the Stairs, or, New Ghosts from Old Minds,” from Zen in the Art of Writing
  • Graduate college with a B.A. in English
My “dreams,” then — and these can happen anytime before I die, not necessarily in 2012:
  • Sell a novel to a major SF/F/H publisher (i.e. Tor, Daw, Ace, Nightshade, etc.)
  • Sell a short story collection to a similar publisher
  • Get nominated for a prestigious award in the SF, F, or H field (i.e. Stoker, Nebula, Hugo, etc.)
  • Attend a workshop like Clarion, Clarion West, or Odyssey
  • Sell a story to one or several of my dream markets: Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, F&SF, Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Cemetery Dance, etc.

Still Alive

Okay, okay: Quick update.

School is coming to a close. Not winding down, as the expression goes, not yet — but it’s getting close to being over. I have a ten- to twelve-page research paper I’m working on, I have two or three major essay-based tests to study for, a ten-minute presentation to do, but then I’m fucking done.

At least until next semester. (The last one, finally.)

After that? Well, okay. Here’s the official announcement: I’m writing my first novel. I’ve got a couple of short story ideas brewing in the back of my mind, science fiction stories, but I’m saving those for afterward. I don’t want to get in the way of what has the potential to become a really, really interesting dark fantasy novel. Or horror novel. Or weird transgressive satire. I don’t give a shit what people end up calling it, because chances are that no one will want to read it. It’s a first novel — maybe you didn’t catch that part.

I’m calling it DOOMSTER, but you can call it whatever you want. Don’t call it crap, ’cause that’s rude as hell. Just ignore it, if you think it’s crap. Please.

I’ve got a lot of brainstorming notes and a very broad outline written, with some truly inspiring characters and ideas, but I honestly have no idea what it will end up being. It may prove to be a trunk novel. It may end up self-published. It may sell to a small press publisher like Raw Dog Screaming Press, who I think are doing some fantastic work in the field of horror and the weird right now, or somebody bigger. I dunno.

I just want to write a novel, and have some fun with it.

To write the book — here comes that advice bubbling up again — that I would want to read.

(Meanwhile, I’ll also be filling out applications to Clarion, Clarion West, and Odyssey. Fingers crossed.)

So what have I been reading? That’s relevant.

First: Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk’s earth-shattering debut novel from 1996. My favorite book, well, ever. Must’ve read it a hundred times. It’s been instrumental in motivating my lazy, stressed-out ass to hunker down and get a novel done. Finally. Before that: things like Horns by Joe Hill, and Palahniuk’s Damned. More recently, Jeremy C. Shipp’s Cursed, George Carlin’s posthumous memoir, Last Words, and The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons: Buddhist Themes in Modern Fantasy. I’ve been watching my favorite childhood anime series, Robotech.

This is where my head has been, when it’s not at school. Doing schoolwork.

By the time I get around to diving headlong into the novel draft next week, my head is still going to be here. I think that’s okay, even a great thing. These are books I love. The myths I’ve built my life around, to put it boldly.

They’re the reason I’m managing to make my homework fun in this last, final stretch.

Here’s the block quote that opens my final Buddhism term paper, for fun:

I would put forward that the next thing is going to be a story, because right now, people really don’t have a big story, a big software… They don’t have a big meta-narrative story; they don’t have a big story like Christianity was a big story. So right now, we need a really big story… And that story doesn’t have to be in conflict or in reaction to the current story, because I would say, right now, you don’t change anything by protesting anything… You give people a more effective way of living their lives, they won’t give a shit about foreign oil, you know? You give them the right story, and you make their cars obsolete, it’s gonna be like, “We are just swimming in oil. What are we going to do with all this oil?” And you can do that within the culture without reacting to the government, the war, whatever. Because in a way, by reacting to it, you’re wasting energy…you are making it stronger by giving it this token little resistance, keeping it in place. So your job, I would say, is to come up with a story like that, that makes all of the things we worry about so much right now completely beside the point… We won’t even think about them, because your story will be so incredible. I don’t know what that story is, but that’s why…if I can make my case, somebody’s gonna come up with that story.

–Chuck Palahniuk (Postcards from the Future)

The paper is called Karmic Demons and the Power of Compassion: Buddhist Philosophy as a Basis for Modern Myth, and I’m hoping to craft it into a kind of short fiction-writer’s manifesto. A foundation for the rest of my literary career, at the risk of sounding presumptuous, or even pretentious.

Because I’ve come to love the ideas that lie at the heart of Buddhist thought (even though I’m not, nor will I ever be, a Buddhist), I seek to imbue my stories with them — but only if I can achieve that without growing deliberately didactic. In this essay, I’m going to explore Buddhist ideas in existing stories and the larger philosophical truths they represent, and then explain the utility of such ideas from a contemporary storyteller’s perspective.

To give you an idea of the paper’s meat-and-potatoes content, the preexisting basis for my argument, here’s my works cited bibliography:

  • Bacigalupi, Paolo. “Pocketful of Dharma.” Pump Six and Other Stories. San Francisco: Night Shade, 2010. 1-24. Print.
  • Dick, Philip K. “Beyond Lies the Wub.” Paycheck and Other Classic Stories. New York: Citadel, 1990. 27-33. Print.
  • Hill, Joe. Heart-Shaped Box. New York: Harper, 2010. Print.
  • Hill, Joe. Horns. New York: William Morrow, 2010. Print.
  • Loy, David, and Linda Goodhew. The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons: Buddhist Themes in Modern Fantasy. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2004. Print.
  • Mitchell, Donald W. Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.
  • Okorafor, Nnedi. Who Fears Death. New York: Daw, 2010. Print.
  • Palahniuk, Chuck. Damned. New York: Doubleday, 2011. Print.
  • Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club: A Novel. New York: Henry Holt, 2004. Print.
  • Postcards from the Future: The Chuck Palahniuk Documentary. Dir. Dennis Widmyer, Kevin Kölsch, and Josh Chaplinsky. Perf. Chuck Palahniuk. Kinky Mule Films, 2003. DVD.