Still working on Fatal Invasion. It’s amazing looking back at how long I have lived with this story. No Escape, the short story that started the series, was published in 2017. Work on Fatal Shadow started later that year, so I have been working on the series for eight years. Back then, it was called The Knotted Man. Glad I changed it. Often my first draft titles change. The first draft of the Golden Rule Duology (A Bright Power Rising/The Unconquered Sun) was rather apt but very cumbersome The Two-Thumbed Hand. Fatal Shadow‘s sequel changed from Lesser Evil to Greater Evil, because I came to realise the latter had much better. Gilded Treason was Gilded Cage for a long time, but the original title, I felt at least, was a little too generic. It almost became Gilded Snare at one point. I try to pick titles that don’t bring up too many books by the same name. Obviously, if Stephen King or Brandon Sanderson picks one of my titles for their work, there’s nothing I do except chalk it up to bad luck.
Name changes can also happen to short stories. No Escape was originally called Prey. Hoard was called The Hoarder, but I changed it to move the focus on the main character rather than the villain. One Moonlit Night was called How to save the Earth? for a long time which was not really what the story is about. On the flip side, many of the other short stories had their names fixed from the first draft: The Fate Healer, Murder Seat, the Alienity stories and so on. I suppose it’s just easier to get to the heart of what a short story is about.
Girl looking at the Moon through a telescope. My astronomy work.
Jen yawned as she stood in the back garden in the dark, while her father tinkered with his telescope. Astronomy was Dad’s obsession. Most clear nights, he was out here staring into his little, fat telescope, ignoring his family, but, now and then, guilt made him try to drag Jen outside in a feeble effort to interest her in his hobby.
When the weather didn’t save her, she dissuaded him with a range of excuses. She was tired. She had homework or housework to do. She had a cold. She had a headache. She just didn’t feel like it this particular night, but maybe next time… With any luck, it would be overcast. He never seemed too bothered when she declined. Sometimes, he looked relieved. But, on a rare occasion, looking back into those eyes aglow with boyish enthusiasm, she just couldn’t bring herself to refuse.
Of course, being out here with Dad was like being away from him in the house—only colder and with less to do. She stood watching his head disappear behind his back as he bent down and stared into the eyepiece, mumbling to himself, scribbling down figures in his notebook. Jen shivered. She learned her lesson the last time she admitted her boredom.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll call it out and you jot it down,” he’d said, thrusting a notebook and pen at her. She’d tried her best, but he was so damn picky.
“No, no, no. The other column.”
“Orion doesn’t have a y, honey.”
“Is that a three or a five?”
“Do try to be neat.”
“Wrong column!”
“That’s not how you spell Betelgeuse.”
It had ended with her screaming as she fled into the house. Her cheeks warmed with embarrassment. At least some part of her was warm.
“Come look at this,” Dad said. He stood away from the telescope and pointed at the sky. “It’s that star there.”
Which one was it? It didn’t matter. “Oh, right.” Jen sighed quietly as she looked into the eyepiece. It looked like a star, only slightly bigger. It wasn’t even a binary.
“Lovely,” she said, stepping away.
Dad looked troubled. He obviously saw through her fake smile.
“How about we look at the Moon for a while,” he said. “You always like the moon.”
“Great!” Now, the Moon was interesting. It wasn’t just some blurry spot of light. It was another world, with craters and mountains and valleys and basalt seas. Another world on Earth’s doorstep.
Dad swung the telescope toward the moon, fiddled with the adjustment knobs, peered into the eyepiece, fiddled with the knobs again. He put both thumbs up. “We’re ready.” “Dan, Jenny, come quick!” Mum roared from the back door.
Just when things were getting interesting.
“What’s wrong?” Dad yelled, his head swivelling toward the house.
“You wouldn’t believe me. On the television. Come quick. Both of you now. Please.”
Dad shook his head. “We had better go in.” He stomped toward the house.
Jen sighed and followed.
“Quick! Quick!” Mum cried hysterically.
Dad broke into a run. Jen jogged after him.
“What’s happened?” Dad panted as he bent over and leaned one arm against the frame of the back door.
“Into the living room! Quick!” Mum cried, disappearing into the hall. Dad followed her. Jen hesitated. This was completely out of character for Mum, and a bit frightening.
“Jen!” Dad called. “Where are you?”
She hurried down the hall and into the sitting room. Her parents were standing in front of the television. Dad had a perplexed frown.
“Are you sure that this isn’t some sort of film or an ad maybe?” he asked.
“It’s on the news channels,” Mum said. “I’ve checked them all.”
Jen pushed between them. Was that a man or woman on the screen? He (if he was male) had blue eyes, black skin, Asian eye-folds and frizzy red hair. Dad kept flicking the channels, but only the banners and tickers and logos changed. The odd-looking person was on every channel.
Who was he? What did this all mean?
Dad gave up on changing channels. Black words scrolled across a yellow background on the bottom of the screen. ALIEN SIGNAL FROM MOON. FIRST IMAGE OF NON-TERRESTRIAL LIFE FORM. NO INDICATION OF PURPOSE AS YET. Above it, in blazing white letters on a red strip, was the word EXCLUSIVE.
“There are indications that what we are seeing is not a static picture,” the newscaster squeaked excitedly. “However, the alien has yet to speak.”
The alien’s lips moved. “Hello, people of Earth.” The voice sounded human and friendly, even jovial, though it could have been male or female. “We are the Gyonmir Communion.” His faced lurched into a hideously stretched smile. “We don’t actually look like this. This construct was chosen to put you at ease. We are a Type II civilization on your Kardashev scale. As such, we feel it is our duty to help less developed worlds.”
“Wow,” Dad said. “They’re going to help us expand beyond this solar system. Who knows what technologies they might give us?”
The alien’s smile disappeared. “Earth is a beautiful world and yet so sick. It is riddled with a peculiar cancer—you. You are consuming your planet’s resources at an astounding rate, apparently oblivious to their ultimate finiteness. If your species does not expand beyond its home planet, you are ultimately doomed. And yet to allow such expansion might would turn a localised disease into a contagion.”
Dad clamped his hands to the sides of his face. “They’re going to kill us all.”
An electric shiver passed through Jen.
“Dan!” snapped Mum, flicking her head in Jen’s direction.
Dad glanced guiltily at Jen. “Oh, right. Sorry. Don’t mind me. Everything will be fine. I promise. I’m just…I can’t believe this is happening.”
Mum’s arm slipped around her. “Don’t mind your father. He’s always talking nonsense.” Jen attempted a smile. It did not feel particularly convincing.
The alien was still talking. “We put our best minds on the problem. No other sentient race displays your fecklessness. The flaw in your nature had to be down to some evolutionary quirk, but for a hundred years we have struggled to find it. And then, one day, we realised the answer had been staring us in the face all the time—the Moon.” The alien honked in some poor attempt at laughter. “That’s right—the Moon. No other life-sustaining planet has such a monstrously large satellite. The moon stabilises your planet’s tilt to an extraordinary degree. It keeps your climate relatively constant.”
He leaned in to the camera. “Other races evolved in more changeable environments. To survive, they had to learn to plan ahead with volatile seasons and prolonged extreme weather events. You, on the other hand, had relatively docile climates. You had only to plan for the expected in a given year. When the expected didn’t happen, many of you died and a few civilisations collapsed, but it was not enough for you to learn your lesson. Other sentient races had to be ready for the unexpected at any time to build a civilization in the first place. Evolution was too easy on you, and it shows.”
He shook his head sadly. “So many things about the Moon’s motion encourage mechanistic thinking. Even its size and position means that it fits almost perfectly over the sun during a full eclipse.”
His smile stretched wider. “So we have decided on a drastic solution. We are taking away your moon. Its departure will likely collapse your current global civilization, but at some time in the distant future, either your descendants or another sentient species will again reach for the stars, cured of your insanity, your lunacy, if you will.” He honked again. “Goodbye and good luck.”
The picture went blank except for the banners and channel logo. After a long pause, the news reader appeared. He looked so pale as he filled the silence with random fragments of sentences.
Dad seized Jen’s hand. He started pulling her and Mum toward the door. “Come outside with me. Now.”
What horrors might they see? “I don’t want to go!” Jen tried to tug her hand free, but Dad’s grip was too strong.
“Don’t be frightened, Jen. Your father knows what he is doing.” Mum’s soothing tone was reassuring, but the questioning glance she directed at him was not.
Jen shook her head, using her free hand to pull her other one free. “I’m not going out there.”
“But Jen…honey, this might be your last chance to see the Moon,” Dad pleaded. He stretched out an open hand. “Every moment we delay here, the Moon may be slipping away. Don’t worry. You’ll be with us. Trust us.”
Reluctantly, she laid her hand on his palm. His fingers gently closed around it and both hands slipped into a loose clasp.
“Good girl. No need to be afraid,” he said as he led them out of the room and down the hall.
“Do you really think that they can just take the Moon like that?” Mum asked as they passed through the kitchen.
They had left the back door open in their hurry. Flies and moths covered the ceiling. How would moths steer without the Moon?
“We’ll soon know,” Dad said. They plunged into the night.
The Moon was still in the sky, full and round and reassuring. Perhaps, the transmission was some sort of prank after all. The Moon was huge. The idea of an alien force being powerful enough to just take it away was ludicrous. And yet Jen was afraid to take her eyes off it in case it disappeared.
“I keep expecting some giant hand to reach out of the sky and grab it,” Dad said.
Mum mumbled something.
“Sorry,” Dad said. “Everything will be fine.”
The Moon was getting smaller. Or was Jen imagining it?
Mum gasped. “Oh, my Lord. The Moon is shrinking.”
Dad hugged Jen to him. “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”
But Jen couldn’t speak. She couldn’t look away from the retreating moon.
The telescope! She ran to it and peered in the eyepiece. The surface of the Moon looked as it always had. No telltale glimmers gave away the aliens’ activity. But the Moon was definitely getting smaller.
Big hands pressed lightly on her shoulders. “What do you see?” Dad asked.
Her mumbled reply meant nothing to her. She was too busy to speak. She had to sear every pock and pimple on that surface into her memory before it slipped away. It was so beautiful. To think they would lose it forever. Dad would miss it the most. He had spent so many nights staring at it.
She moved away from the telescope. “Dad, you look.”
Dad refused with a wave.
“You might spot something, some clue I wouldn’t notice.”
Taking a deep breath, he bent over the eyepiece. “Hmm.” It was merely an absent-minded murmur.
Jen glanced back and forth between the dwindling satellite and her father. She had done the right thing, the kind thing, the daughterly thing. That nagging pang of regret was best ignored.
Dad shook his head as he straightened his back. “I can’t see anything unusual. Except that it’s getting smaller. Helen, do you want a look?”
“I’m fine,” Mum said. “Let Jen look.”
“Yes. Jenny, you can look now. I’ve had my whole life to look at it.” His voice thickened to a rasp.
Jen peered into the eyepiece. Even through the telescope, the moon was small. The detail on its surface melted into a blur and it became a small white disc.
“Can you still see anything?” Dad asked.
“Can you still see anything?” Dad asked.
“Just about,” Jen said. The Moon was a tiny point of white now, no different from a star.
It dimmed. “You take a look.” She stepped out of her father’s way.
He looked in the eyepiece, then shook his head. “It’s gone. The Moon is gone.”
So, we’ve been in lockdown since mid-March. My wife works from home from my old desk so I’m working on one half of the kitchen table. I get up early before my wife and daughter to fit in a few quiet hours to get some writing done and fit in what I can throughout the rest of the day.
I finished that alien short story the end of March. It came in at 45k words so I guess it’s not a short story any longer. I wrote a fourth story which I initially thought might be as an epilogue but is probably a separate story.
I then did another draft of a fantasy short story which I’ve been working on for several years. I’m still not happy with it, but the current draft is a big improvement on the last one. I’ll tinker at again at another time.
I also started editing the first book of my six book fantasy. Draft 2 took until the end of April. Draft 3 took about two weeks. I enjoyed Draft 2. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the first draft. Draft 3 was less fun. It was staring at the individual strokes of an impressionist painting. Stare close enough and the structure disappears, the dots lose their meaning. I was glad to get to the end and send it off to my beta readers.
Anyway, on to Book 2. I have a feeling that parts of this one will take a lot more work, but maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised. *crosses fingers*
It was all so simple. I had an idea for a story—an alien invasion story with a twist. It would be the first story in a second Alienity collection. But then I had an idea for a sequel, a continuation. It was easier to write than the original story, so I wrote it while the other matured.
I finished it. It was good. I wrote the second. I had an idea for a third. So, now I’m thinking instead of another Alienity, I’ll write a collection set in this particular world. I could see ideas sprouting around it. There were at least a couple of other stories that I might pursue. They weren’t outlined. I couldn’t put them neatly into sentences. They were more intriguing whispers.
The first two short stories came in at the 10k-12k range. I always write short. My stories always expand in editing. The second had the potential to expand, but that could wait. I had this third story to write. I had the exact ending already. It would probably come in around the same size as the others.
The third is now over twice that and still growing. It moves ahead like a rainbow. I go to where the finish appears to be, but it’s still teasing me in the distance. It could need another 10k words, maybe less, maybe more. I doubt it will reach novel length, but it could.
I tend to pants short stories. I instinctively know what I want. All I need to know is where I want to finish. But in this case, getting there is taking a lot longer than usual. The logistics of getting the characters where I want them conspires against brevity.
So, on one hand, I’m really intrigued by this story and at the same time I’m annoyed with it for being so long.
The big crunch is coming though. I am closing in on what I had intended to be the end. Do I finish there and continue the arc in another story, or do I keep this one going? My original ending was ideal for a short story, but as this story moves towards a long novella will it will it be sufficient? Does what would have been the next story become the next section of this one?
I guess I must write it to find out.
My fantasy novel series isn’t forgotten. I’m just leaving it alone for now so I can get some distance from them. In April I’ll start the second draft of the first one. Waiting until then is a chore, but it’s the right thing to do. I need to come back to them as a stranger, seeing them with fresh eyes.
I’ve come to the realisation that the best way to write a first draft is to assume everything written is either brilliant or can be fixed later, and not worry too much about the relative percentages of either. Cold, hard reality can wait for the second draft.
I finished Book 6 which is now *cough* Book 5. I’m very happy with the ending of the book, but after already experiencing the high of writing the series finale, it felt a little anticlimactic. Nonetheless, the first draft of the full series (6 books) is in now complete. It’s kind of luxurious to see the story from start to finish. I plan to start work on the 2nd Drafts early this year.
I was kind of at a loss what to do immediately after I finished so I toyed about with a short story about alien invasion. This has turned into three stories and more will possibly be added. I have no outline for them. I find that if I know the ending it’s relatively easy to put the rest together. But sometimes, I don’t know the ending or rather I have two diametrically opposite endings that both will fit the story. I don’t know which one until I finish. This sort of story is the most exciting for me to write. It’s like I am reading the story for the first time as I write it.
Overall, in 2019, I wrote 209k words, comprising mostly of the first drafts of three novels. That beats the previous year by about 25k words. I missed writing only ten days in the year. My philosophy is to be honest with myself and not to overly worry about streaks and so on. I write whenever I can but sometimes life intrudes and I have to accept I can’t. On the other hand, there are days when I have the time but not the inclination. On those days, I grit my teeth and write; I write my quota clinging onto every squeezed out word for dear life. It’s amazing what can be achieved in little steps. I have to say having Scrivener on my phone made a huge difference to my productivity.
I plan to achieve the same rough word count this year (ca 183k words or roughly 500 words per day for the entire year). I also plan to start overhauling those first drafts. I am approaching the first book of the series with excitement. I’ll probably end up changing every word I wrote, but, as I remember it, the backbone of the story should hold up pretty well.
I also published Alienity this year, finishing out four short stories. I plan to publish more as I finish them.
Here’s the blurb of my new collection of short stories.
H.G. Wells faces judgment by one of his creations. The Earth’s first tour guide for aliens encounters the planet’s worst ever tourist. The fate of Humanity lies in the hands of the most isolated man in its history. The Kefloins, having secured membership to the Galactic Congress for the Earth, now turn to the planet’s ambassador with their most terrible secret in the hope she can find a solution.
Four short stories about aliens ranging from humorous to deadly somber.
If you squint really hard you can possibly see me tottering at the top of that tower of books. I had a very busy first four months of the year. I finished the first draft of the Book 4 in the series about a week ahead of schedule. It came in about 62k words and was the probably the easiest to write since Book 1. I’m confident of finishing Book 5 by the scheduled date. I’m really looking forward to revealing the main villain. It is my concept of him that really transformed a standalone short story into the prequel of a five book series.
However, perhaps of more immediate interest, I am going publish a bundle of four short SF stories that I recently finished. It’s been a while since I published anything so I am really looking forward to releasing them. They range from humorous to quite dark, but they all center around aliens in some way. More detail to follow on the very near future.
The Gadium Emergence Committee ‘manages’ the transformation of other planets to a higher evolutionary state. When a group inspired by a survivor of a car crash threatens to discover this process too early, the team assigned to manage the Earth’s ‘emergence’ has to try to stop them. To further complicate things, another faction on Gadium is bent on perverting the process.
It took a few chapters to grip me, but once it did, I couldn’t put it down.
The book is reminiscent of the Culture Novels in that it involves a clash between the Earth and a far more advanced Alien society. At the start, some of the early conversations on Gadium were a bit opaque, but as the story unfurls, its society and its political shenanigans flesh out in a satisfying way. In the meantime the antics of Louise, Jeff and Mike kept my interest. They were engaging, believable characters.
The names of the some of the aliens were peculiarly human. Some terms like beta, alpha and triple alpha were never explained fully though their general meaning are relatively easy to infer. However, these minor quibbles didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the book.
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