my novel's journey: Discovery: In God's Hands

As many of you know, I was in a three-year battle with a Catholic science fiction manuscript called Discovery.  The basic premise is a group of researchers and miners, plus three nuns from the Order of Our Lady of the Rescue, go to explore and alien ship.  They discover a device that lets you see into your own soul, and not everyone handles that well, putting themselves and their shipmates in danger.  How would you handle such a discovery?

This book was a long time coming because it was more than I expected it to be and I wanted to be worthy of the task.  I wanted a strong sci-fi element, strong expressions of Catholic faith, complex characters, and a plot that moved. I had to overcome some intimidation especially where my knowledge of science and my own Catholic faith weren't as sure as I needed them to be. Sometimes, the sheer complexity of handling almost a dozen important characters and 30 named characters overwhelmed me.  However, in August, I finished, and I love the result.

I knew exactly who I wanted to publish it:  Ignatius Press.  They are one of the top Catholic publishers in the United States, possibly the world, and they are just starting to break into genre fiction.  I'd been telling the publisher, Mark Brumley, about this book for years at the Catholic Marketing Network Trade Show, where the Catholic Writers' Guild holds its annual live conference.  It was kind of embarrassing to tell him, "I'll get it to you this year," only to have another year pass.  What a relief as well as a joy to print it up and send it their way.

Mid September, I got a facebook message from Mark: Can you send me an e-copy?  Fr. Fessio has the print copy and I want to read it on my Kindle.  What a way to make my day!  So I know Ignatius is looking at it, and even (dare I assume?) eager to consider it.  Now, it's up to the story to impress them.

If Ignatius decides it's not right for them, I'll of course be sad, but I'll also know that I reached for that brass ring and almost made it.  I'll try again with them with something else, I'm sure, and in the meantime find another home.  If they DO accept it, be ready to hear the squeals across the nation.

In the meantime, I'm resisting the urge to bite my nails and make deals with God.  Thy will be done, Lord.  it's in Your hands now.

Electronic Skin and Rosary Tattoos

I'm not a big tattoo fan, but I realized when Rob was a missile maintenance commander that they can be useful as well as decorative. He had some folks working in the electronics lab who tattooed their wedding rings so they didn't have to take them off to do repairs. I loved that idea for the rescue sisters, so when they take permanent vows, they get their rings tattooed.

I've always wondered about other jewelry in space, and like the idea of tattooing some things, so Sister Ann has a special tattoo on her wrist: a rosary. But hey--this is the 23rd century! I cant' have an ordinary tattoo. So this oneresponds to commands by leading her through the Mysteries but lighting up and sending a small tingle on each bead. It can also read her moods and "suggest" a rosary mystery for her.

Imagine my delight today when my friend and publisher, Kim Gilcrist posted a link about integrating electronics into your skin.



Reality moves one step closer to fiction. I don't know that I could ever brave the needle, but if I were to ever get a tatt, that's what I want--an electronic rosary.

My Novel's Journey: Discovery: When a Crit Makes You Cry

You all know the struggle I've gone through with Discovery. (If not, here's the gist: five years, four false starts, two episodes of computer eating the manuscript, three weeks of obsessive effort and 108,000 finished words.)

Now, it's with my beta readers: people whose writing I admire and who know me well enough not to pull any punches when they crit my work. They know that, despite all my word count brags and phony whining about this or that writing complication, when it comes to a critique, I don't care so much about what I've done as how do I make it even better.

I feel the same about Discovery--maybe even more so. The story started out so simple--in my discouraged moments, I called it "Love Boat in Space"--but it wanted, it demanded, to be so much more. And (aside from the computer crashes), that's part of what took such effort. I did not feel up to the task--as a writer, as a thinker, or as a Catholic. Most of you have seen my stuff; "heavy" and "deep" are not the usual modifiers.

So, I have to admit, that while I was pleased with the manuscript, I was also a little worried that I'd still missed my mark. Frankly, that would have been okay, because I have some excellent writer friends critiquing it, and I trust them to show me where I fell short.

I'm writing this on July 9. (I plan my posts.) An hour ago, I got my first critique for Fred Warren, a Christian writer who writes stories in my Rescue Sisters universe. The first three words made me cry:

Wow. Just...wow.

Those three words told me, that despite the problems with the storyline--and he pointed out some good ones!--I succeeded in my primary goal: The Story Works!

my novel's journey: Discovery: The Butterfly Effect

You know the butterfly effect, right? Some innocent butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon is responsible for a typhoon of epic proportions. Yeah, well, that happened in space--or at least in my novel, Discovery.

It's really very simple: I needed a good excuse to limit the exploration part of the novel to a few very intense days. So I decided to throw a rock at the Kuiper Belt Object that the alien ship crashed on. A big rock, like, well, another Kuiper Belt Object.


Okay, not quite a butterfly. But still.

All it had to do was narrow my timeline. Add a little urgency, but noooooo! Just because I summoned Big Rock, I had to deal with:

* Four people need brain scans three chapters earlier.
* One character discovers he has Alzheimer's early enough to be cured.
* Same said character had made a throwaway line about being worried about his mother back in chapter one--guess why he was worried?
* The Captain has a cat!
* Chris can't keep a secret two chapters. (Had to revise the whole timeline.) he also can't stop himself from kissing Andi in front of everyone.
* Sister Ann says something around Ian that makes him think she believes the alien device is an aphrodisiac.
* Chris becomes a totally different kind of hero--using his brains instead of his brawn. (Which is much more suiting to his character.)

Shall I mention that I needed to research all this, too?

Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but who knew banging two asteroids together was going to result in a dozen butterflies flapping their wings?

my novel's journey: Discovery: What brought me to this moment

As I thought back to my struggles with Discovery, I realized that part of the reason I could write this book now is because I hadn't written it yet. I think perhaps I had not developed the skills I needed.

In particular, I am struck at the huge cast of characters Discovery has--eleven important characters. When I first wrote this as a NaNo story in 2008, I had only written one-character POV stories. I didn't know how to work a large cast. In the next years, I wrote DragonEye, PI stories, which were even more singular, as everything was told first-person by Vern. Then my computer crashed just as Kim Richards was asking me to write a Neeta Lyffe story, and I got the wild idea to write a reality TV show about killing zombies. While Neeta is the main character, I couldn't do reality TV without all the fun back-stabbling, behind the scenes dirt and audience reaction. Next thing I knew I was in multiple heads, jumping from one character to the next and having the time of my life. It was play, it was practice, and it was what I needed to learn in order to write the multiple person saga of Discovery.

I'm not sure I subscribe to the idea that the first million words an author writes is practice, but I am sure that, had it not been for the words I'd written before, I would not have been able to write the words I have now.

my novel's journey: Discovery: Conclusions on the manuscript

On Saturday, June 18, I finished my analysis of Discovery. It was in all about a 20-30 hour project, depending on whether you count the first day of reading, and the imagining, or not. I thought I'd give you the summary, so you can see why this book has been evading me for the past three years:

Theme: The wounds we hold in our souls can be our making or our undoing.

Main idea: The crew of the Edwina Thomas discover an alien device that can show you the hidden parts of your soul; how each reacts to this knowledge will make their lives better--or destroy them all.

Subplots: 11 Total No spoilers, but there are two romantic situations, a couple of lost sheep, a murder in the making, attempted sabotage, daring rescue attempts and of course exploring the ship itself.

Main Characters: 12 (Yes, twelve)
1. Sister Ann: a genius nun with a penchant of speaking in quotes and technical manuals. She understands the device, but cannot make others understand
2. Sister Rita: she joined the Order of Our Lady of the Rescue to escape Earth and the temptation of a romance, but she's still haunted by doubts.
3. James Smith: left priesthood because he thought he was in love with Rita; returned to find her gone. Three years later, they meet again on the Edwina Thomas.
4. William Thoren: power-craving mission commander and head researcher. He sees the Rescue Sisters as a threat to his power base
5. Chris David: PhD candidate who discovered the alien ship by accident. Lives in Thoren's shadow, until he falls in love with Andi
6. "Andi" Andromeda deChavez: commander of the miners in charge of extracting the alien ship. Loves Chris, but his weakness and lack of confidence put her off.
7. Ian Hu: Derive systems specialist with a terrible guilt; had habit of washing hads.
8. Jason Larache: mechanical engineer with a horrifying secret; likes to say he can either laugh or cry. Ann thinks he should have cried more.
9. Merl Prithard: Evangelical type with a lot of fear and a drive to "save" everybody, whether they want to be saved his way or not.
10: Kelli Riggens: a pagan who battles with feelings of rejection
11: OvLandra: a zerog, a race genetically engineered to live in space with a strict racial purity policy
12: Cay Littlefield: a troubled miner with undiagnosed xenophobia

Other Important Characters: 31 named characters in all--here are the top five
1. Sister Thomas "Tommie": pilot of the Rescue Sisters' shuttle. Ex-military who found peace in her calling
2. Captain Jamal Addiman: Captain of the Edwina Thomas
3. Galen Keegan: pilor of the Rockhopper, the miners' ship; Chris's roomie
4. George Powers: a loud mouthed miner; good for saying what needs to be said
5. Zabrina Muha: xenobiologist (microbiology); freaks when sees a real alien

So, as you can see this is not my usual stuff--it's far more complex, and enters territory I've never uncovered, from Church policies on genetic manipulations to planetary astrophysics. Last night, I realized I'm not writing a story; I'm writing an epic science fiction that examines issues of space colonization, religion, and the resilience of our souls. No wonder I've felt intimidated.

But what have I said is the cure for intimidation? Write! So here I go!

my novel's journey: Discovery: Analyzing the manuscript that doesn't work

Last week, I talked about analyzing the story by mind mapping. This is also a terrific brainstorming tool if you want to plot your story out in general terms without a chronological outline. However, in my case, I had a full manuscript of words--just not all the right words--which was already ordered by time.

So in order to figure out what was wrong with the manuscript itself, I started outlining the text itself.

First thing I did was go back to my mind map and give each character a color. I did this so I could see at a relative glance whether the characters were getting enough facetime and if that time was evenly spread or clumped together. Ideally, we'd be learning a bit about the characters as we went along, according to their importance.

Then I started reading and outlining. Now the outline was very general--the chapter, the main ideas as they applied to the conflicts in the mind map. If a detail was important for later, I sometimes noted it as well. I'd run a colored line through a given statement for each character it affects. So, if Sister Ann says something important about Chris to Andi, that statement gets three colored lines.

While I did this, I was also making my list of major and minor characters and some brief notes on them. I had about a dozen half-lists of my characters. As I went along, I could see where I might start combining people and roles to simplify my cast, which is the biggest I've ever worked with. I also started taking notes on things I needed to insert, delete or change, sometimes by page number; sometimes by "before chapter 16, James must do X."

I also started figuring out where the plot holes were. Sometimes, I knew exactly how to plug them; and I'd write NEED THIS SCENE HERE. When I didn't know, I'd write: NEED SOMETHING TO DO X and jot some ideas down.

Whenever any note affected a specific character, it got a line or a star in that character's color.

In my mind-mapping, I already identified a couple of subplots I don't need, so I deleted them, but I saved the text in the comments section in case I wanted bits of it elsewhere.

I spent about seven hours doing the mind-mapping and outlining the first day, and got to page 103 of 198. I had several scenes imagined though not written down. I got through the rest on the second day--about 12 hours total.

my novel's journey: Discovery: Analyzing the story that doesn't work

Sometimes, I know intuitively where a story is failing--or I can show it to my best friend, Ann Lewis, and she can pinpoint the problem like a Great Detective she's written about. In fact, she did that once with Discovery by helping me realize that the plot was too small and--when I complained I felt like I was writing "Love Boat" in space, she made me see I had underutilized my alien ship. In 2009, that made all the difference in the world.

However, in 2011, I have a bigger plot and a great angle on the ship, but it still doesn't work. This time the mess is in the details, and, with 98,000 words written, it's not intuitively obvious. This time, I need to be the investigator.

I've never had to work this hard on a novel, and truth to tell, I've started this process and put it aside several times, trying to jump ahead to intuition. However, it's not worked, so today, I grabbed a stack of paper, colored pens and the computer.

I started just by scanning the entire manuscript. This helped me get back into the mind of the characters and get the gist of the plot. I could already see places I wanted to make changes; however, I refrained from anything but the most minor of edits. I did make some comments in the margins, though.

Now that I had the story fresh, I started mind mapping. Mind Mapping is really the new term for bubble brainstorming: put the main idea in the center bubble, put related idead in connecting bubbles around, and connect until you get the whole. It can look like this (when neatly done):


Step one is to find THE main idea. Holly Lisle says if you can't tell the theme in a single sentence (a simple one at that), then you don't understand your book. I realize now, it's taken three years for me to understand Discovery, but what a revelation now that I do!

I finally understood my main idea: An alien device enables people to see the damaged parts of their souls. Everything will relate to that. So that was my central circle. From there, it was easy--I made circles for the folks who experienced the device and what their damage was. From those circles, I drew causes, effects, others that they influence or are influenced by.

This gave me my cast of major characters and main subplots. After that, I did the same kind of mind mapping for each character and their particular weakness.

Wow, did this work! Now only was I able to clearly define my story, but I also determined who is an important character and who is secondary (which means I can kill some off), but I also discovered some of the holes in the plots I needed to fill and better yet HOW and WHY they needed filling. If I had wanted to, I could have started from scratch with those ten sheets and written the entire book.

But I had 98,000 words already written! Most of it is really good, too. So rather than start over, I now went to analyze the manuscript itself.

My Novel's Journey: Back to Discovery

Neeta Lyffe II is on hold until I can hash out some details with my subject matter expert (on oil refineries, not zombies), and since, I am tired of this monkey on my back, I am determined to finish DISCOVERY this month or early next.

For those who are not familiar, I have had a three year, tragic love affair with this book. It started as a NaNo project and after letting it rest, I found I really liked the characters and wanted to finish it. But it would not finish! I let it sit, shared it with friends, mulled and imagined. In October 2009, I knew what it needed: a bigger and more SF plot. I started again and realized one character was far more interesting than the original duo. For November, I was doing fabulous.

Then the computer died and took all my work--including backups to the external drive--with it. After that, I was writing Neeta Lyffe, and Why God Matters and doing all the marketing for them and ISIG II and... However, Discovery always stayed in my mind...taunting me.

What's worse is that the publisher I hope to sell it to has heard me talk about this book for three conventions, yet I never produce. How embarrassing!

That's it: This year, I make good on my words. I am embarking on my most extensive revision yet. Once again, I will be hacking scenes and killing characters, but this time, I am dealing with an incohesive manuscript, so there will be much to add and knit together as well. Since I plan to immerse myself and get this done quickly, I'm going to devote my blog to the process and progress. Check Thursday for my autopsy of Discovery.

My novel's Journey: Inventing a sport for Discovery

JK Rowling had quidditch. I have splat.

I needed a zero G ball game for the crew of Discovery--something that Sister Ann would be very good at, so it's something that takes a lot of maneuvering skill, but not necessarily a lot of strength--oh, and a stable middle ear and a strong stomach.

Last week, I came up with splat.

Splat is played in a dodecahedron in zero gravity. Four sides have goals—holes into which you toss the ballast. The holes are in the center of a side, which have magnets on a switch. The softball-sized ball carries a positive charge. The players wear suits and helmets that are positively charged and have a paddle that is also positively charged. They can use the paddles and their bodies to move the ball, but they can't touch it. They can also use their bodies and paddles to move other players. (Remember similar charges repel.)

The object of the game is two-fold: to get the ball into the goal and to be nowhere near the goal when that happens. That’s because when the ball goes through the hole, it activates the magnets on that side, which are negatively charged. If you’re too close to the side, you get stuck on the wall! Every team gets points when they make a goal and when someone on the other team gets stuck on the wall. People who vomit on the field are disqualified, and their team doesn’t get a replacement.

Still working out the details of how many on a team. I also need a good team name for the nuns on the St. Joseph of Cupertino convent. "Flying Nuns" would have been taken ages ago, so don't suggest it. :)

Who knows? Maybe they'll be playing splat in a hundred years. That would be cooler than quidditch!

My Novel's Journey: Change of plans

Man proposes; God disposes.

When I teach classes about the writing life, I try to emphasize two points: (1)If you want to succeed as a writer, you have to make time to write, and (2) if you're not depending on this for your income, you need to remember life comes first.

This month, I've been challenged to learn my own lessons.

2010 was an amazing year for writing. The kids were in school, and I had a great schedule that worked. I wrote two books, and will have three published. I also wrote two school planners and three new workshops, as well as a couple of short stories. I was averaging over a thousand words a day just in new writing on a novel or story, and up to 10,000 in other venues. In addition, I got my housekeeping down to a habit, which has done wonders for our home and I'd figured I was finally on my way to a nice, regular, long-term schedule.

Then Liam started having problems at home and school, and moving to Utah has not made it easier as we'd hoped. We're in for a long haul of getting him the help he needs. The schools here have been wonderful--much better than in California--and they're working with us, but right now, he's studying at home and will be for awhile. Even when he returns, there will be a lot we need to work on. Rob has been wonderful in taking time off, coming home early and doing what he can, but he con only do so much before his work suffers--and when you work with nukes, that's a Bad Thing.

I want to write. I need to write. But it doesn't put the food in our mouths. My first job is to nurture my marriage and raise my children to be intelligent, compassionate good citizens.

So, time for a new proposal...

DISCOVERY isn't going as smoothly as I'd hoped. It's serious sci-fi, and with all that's happening, I don't have the leftover mental or spiritual energy to tackle it by year's end as I'd hoped. However, I have a dear friend who has agreed to look over my mess of a manuscript, kick the tires, poke the holes, and give me some suggestions. It's off to him. I'm not giving up, but it's back in the percolating stage to be dinked with as I get inspired.

In the meantime, I will concentrate first on marketing the books I have coming out, and selling my short stories, which I concentrated on this week. Then, I'm going to write something else that I've been wanting to do, but which is light, easy and makes me laugh--maybe Gapman or Redcap. I'm not sure yet which. I'll only work on them in spare time, however; this is now at a thousand words a week kind of goal, and a loose one at that. I may even cut down to "one sentence before bed" if necessary. The key, as I've told my workshop students, is to have a consistent writing practice, even if it's a tiny goal.

My Novel's Journey: Rediscovering Discovery

Last week, I attended the MuseOnline Writers Conference.

This is a totally free, totally online and totally awesome conference, and my favorite thing to do there is take Devon Ellington's classes. Her exercises are basically the same each year: specific writing challenges that push some writing skill. They're the same each year, but I always go in with a plan to use them on a specific project and always come out with something great. This year, I used her storybuilding class to write a story about Grace and Coyote that I'd been meaning to do for awhile. (Love Coyote--he's so fun to write!) I used her dialog workshop to build on Discovery.

As you know, I've been having a lot of trouble writing this book. It's "done" as far as word count, but there are holes and logical inconsistencies and not enough character development. One thing in the back half that I've struggled with is the finding reasons why certain people can't be at x or y at a critical time.

One exercise that really challenged me this year was the "multi-task" exercise. The protagonist has to do something while talking, it has to be important, and things have to keep getting in her way. Of course, I'm trying to build up the front half of Discovery, but I didn't have anything to for my characters to do that hadn't already been done. So I decided to let Rita check the rover they needed for the mission.

By the time I was done, she discovered the rover had been sabotaged! It was wonderful! It gave me the perfect reason to leave people safely on ET while a small team (including, unbeknownst to them, the saboteur) goes to the Discovery on an urgent mission and gets in serious trouble.

So today's lesson: take advantage of workshops or writing exercises, and when you have a problem in your story, sometimes it helps to attack it obliquely.

My Novel's Journey: Rediscovering Discovery

I'm asking Santa for one month of NO DRAMA in my life.

As I said Monday, this was a hellish week on big and small levels, but I still got some writing done--not a lot, but still a few thousand words, which, given the amount of time taken away from my writing to handle problems, is about as good as I was going to get. This also doesn't count the two writing workshops, the newsletter and the blogs I wrote, which I consider part of the "business" of writing and not the creative art of writing.

But you can imagine, this week was tough for writing, and I was not only fighting a lot of distractions, but also a lot of self-doubt and the "why should I bother?" attitude. There's only one way for me to handle this, and that's slog through, giving myself permission to write stupid drafts if needed and trusting that my characters will talk to me.

I also had the challenge this week of killing a scene I really liked in favor of one that moved more slowly, because the old scene no longer fits the logic of the story. This was tough to do! And, unlike the first chapter, which I scrapped, I cannot remake this into a short story. So it took a lot to just make myself junk a great group dialog-and-action scene for a couple of small scenes of one-on-one conversations. However, it did give Sister Ann another chance to shine in her own many-faceted way.

The next scene, the fire rescue, was pretty easy to mesh back in, but here I re-experienced grief over the manuscript I lost in December 2009 when the computer died, taking the backup with it. I'd melded two characters into one, which gave a lot of energy to the story, but I could not remember much about the new character but general details. In the fire scene, Sister Ann meets OvLandra for the first time. I only needed two lines of description, but I was stymied because I could not remember what I'd written and loved.

Finally, I whined over IM to my best friend, who gave me a virtual pat on the back. Then I told myself that whatever was good before can be better now, but not unless I write it. I'm not sure it's better, but it is written. I can move on and I can make it better in the edits.

Rather than post a before-and-after snippet, I'm going to post a scene I added a few sentences to, with the new sentences in bold. Ann is going to be having a lot of visions of saints and angels during this trip (more than she ever has in her life), and I wanted to start introducing them slowly.

She peered in, saw the flames arching and dancing on the bed and broken table, climbing across the walls, arching along the ceiling. She reached into a belt pouch, pulled out a grenade and pulled the pin.

"Father, Son, Holy Spirit!" She tossed the grenade into the room.

A pause, then a THWOOM! that she felt more than heard.

She peeked back in.

Droplets of fire-suppressant foam dotted the room, expanding quickly, snuffing the fire as they grew. Still, there were pockets of flames merrily fighting for dominance. She'd bought herself some time, that's all.

The door was scalding hot. She grit her teeth and set a gloved hand on its edge and one on the threshold and pushed it apart. Even through the gloves, she felt the heat on her skin. She pulled away with a frustrated hiss.

St. Florian, patron of fire brigades, help me! She pushed her hands against the reluctant door again. Again the heat seared through her gloves, but this time as she was about to pull away, she felt a pressure on the backs of her hands. She knew St. Florian was helping. She leaned in with her legs, and the door at last gave way.

She ran across the room to the bathroom door and pounded on it.

PS. I'll be at the MuseOnline Conference next week, so I'm posting some reviews of terrific books I got to read over the summer. Please check in and if you're going to MuseCon, I'll see you there!

my Novel's Journey: Mind Over Mind Edits

Once again, Discovery takes a back seat to a more pressing writing need; this time, the first round edits to Mind Over Mind.

This is the revision of the first novel I'd ever written, the story of a young man who develops psychic powers, and has aliens communicate with him. The experiences drive him insane, and at the start of the book, he's been in an asylum for five years when a young intern decides to help him by pretending to believe him and teaching him to control his powers. In the meantime, the aliens--representatives of warring factions--each think he's their savior and try to get him to fight on their side.

I've loved this story for a long time, but knew the manuscript needed some work, so I'm very pleased to have Gabrielle Harbowy, editor of DragonMoon give it a very critical eye. It's the most invasive editing I've ever had, with scenes that need re-written and some changes in the placement and flow of the text. Overall, however, I've loved her suggestions. Revising has been an exciting experience.

It's been a couple of years since I've seen this manuscript, so my first run of edits is really more of a read-through. I'm approving all the changes I agree with and writing new scenes as they come to mind. Where a change is needed that doesn't immediately hit me, I make a note and move on. Most of the scene changes so far have been to alter point of view switches within scenes. This has been fun because I get to live the book with my characters all over again.

I've gotten through 214 pages in three days, and figure I'll finish it this weekend. Then, I'll go through it looking for the bigger issues: Is my character flawed enough? Are the chapter sizes more even? Did I chop up flashback, or change some to flow in real time?

In the meantime, I am still working on Discovery. I'm trying to write 500 words a day. So far, Sister Ann is taking center stage. A couple of days ago, she came up with a very interesting quote about pain and fear, faith and knowledge and how sometimes you need all four for an epiphany. The next day, I wrote a scene where she declared someone a genius because he just skipped straight to the epiphany. The fun thing about Ann is going to be that none of the characters are going to understand her, but the reader is going to be able to see all the connections.

My Novel's Journey: Rediscovering Discovery

One difference, I think, between a professional writer and a hobbiest is that the professional writer writes whether she's "in the mood"or not. I try to keep this in mind when I have bad days or feel uninspired, like I felt last week.

It's been a tough week for me and my family. My husband didn't make the commander's list--he's in the Air Force, and after some discussion, we've decided the best thing for our family is to get back to Colorado Springs where he can finish his career doing what he loves in Space Command. That may mean a move in the middle of the school year; it might mean another summer move; it might not happen if they can't find a replacement for him here. (If they don't, we're staying three years so the older kids can finish high school then probably retiring.)

Getting a crown on my cracked tooth was not stopping the pain, so after two weeks on pain killers, I finally got a root canal. It went well, and as I write this (Friday the 10th), I'm a little achy but not so bad I need ibuprophin.

So, between that, the 3-day weekend (during which I was sick) and some discipline issues with my youngest, I've been pretty tapped emotionally and physically. Probably not the best time to try to rewrite a novel that's been evading me for three years.

Funny thing is, there never seems to be a good time for this novel. The more suspicious part of me wonders if someone has it in for this book. ("Could it be…Satan?")

The more logical part of me says, "Give me a break! This is not that important a book." However, it is important to my heart and stuck in my mind, and I swore to myself that this year, it gets done for better or for worse.

Plus, this is my job. Do carpenters take a week off working someone's house just because they're "not in the mood"?

So, even aching and distracted, I write.

I'm up to chapter six now. I've killed off some subplots because they weren't working and frankly, had nothing to do with the second half of the book which really works. I'm a little afraid of it turning back into "Love Boat in Space," but I'm going to trust my characters to be more diverse than that. Sister Ann is starting to show some spunk, and even better, I've found a lovely site that not only posts the daily Gospels, but also snippets from books and sermons by saints. I'm gathering materials for her encyclopedic mind. It also looks like some of Sister Thomas' past will show up, too, which I like because she was such a side character before.

I got only a few thousand words done, maybe an average of 500 a day, and I also hacked a lot of stuff that's no longer relevant. It's not my best work, quantity-wise, but reading it over again, I'm actually pretty satisfied with the prose.

An author I'd read (Dean Wesley Smith, perhaps) said you can't judge the quality of a book by the mood of the author when she was writing it. I think he's right.

PROGRESS REPORT:

I'm into Chapter Six. I had to rethink several threads in the book based on the new occupations of the characters. The videographer threw in a whole new wrinkle to a subplot, which helps me tie the two halves of the book together. Ann and Capt Addiman's relationship is going to be stronger, too, and I have an idea for a new wrinkle there, plus the chief engineer turned out the be the son of some friends from Tommie's past. So more interweaving of characters, which always strengthens a book. Here's a snippet from right after they have a service to bring the Host to the chapel in the Edwina Thomas:

"Doesn't Captain Addiman have the most beautiful chapel?" Ann exclaimed as people exited behind her.

The ship's captain stopped and laughed a deep, booming melody. "Not mine, dear sister."

"You're right. God's house is for everyone. Catholic, small c, from the Greek words kata and holos--according to the whole . Universal. Still, the Catholic--big C--chapel is so pretty!"

Addiman laughed again as he took her arm and led them out. "I thank you. This particular program was designed after the chapel set in Lola Quintain VI: Quest for the Papal Crown--"

He stopped mid-sentence and tapped at the communicator on his ear. "Addiman. Yes? I see. Yes, that is fine. We will be there shortly."

"Is it time to talk about the alien ship?" Ann asked eagerly.

Addiman smiled at her, bemused. With his height, he looked like a father beaming at a precocious child. "Past time, I think Dr. Thoren would say. They await us in the small auditorium."

"Then we should go!" She started down the hallway toward the auditorium as if she'd traipsed the halls hundreds of times already. The rest trailed behind, Tommie deliberately slow, with a hand on Andi to slow her as well. Rita stayed with them.

"The ship is of the universe," Ann pondered aloud to the captain. "But it's not of the whole, so it isn't really catholic."

"In either sense of the word," Addiman suggested. "I think Dr. Thoren will find that comforting."

"Caesar, too. Control is comforting. When we control, we find comfort; when God controls, grace…"**

Their voices became a murmur as the two rounded the corner.

**This is a quote from St. Gillian of L5, a saint in my universe. Ann often communicates in quotes.

My Novel's Journey: Rediscovering Discovery: Assigning Jobs

This week has been a series of starts and stops in rewriting Discovery. I'm not just killing off entire chapters and watching new ones rise from the ashes, but I'm having to rethink events and even characters.

This week's challenge came with Chapter Three: I'd decided that Thoren trying to keep the mission secret even from the participants until they were all on the ship was just silly and pointless. So James gets to meet the rest of the research team on the moon. I hadn't really introduced them formally in the previous versions, and thus didn't really mention all their jobs or special skills. Now I needed to.

I'd thought before about what kind of people would be on the team, but lost the notes and had to think about it all over again. This time, I made a comment online and before anyone saw my answer, they chimed in their own ideas. I won't go over them all, except to say that, while some didn't work for the situation in my novel, they did make me think. As a result I changed several positions. Here, then, is the research crew:

Dr William Thoren--Mission Leader

Chris David--astronomer who discovered the ship

Casey Ostrand--vidoegrapher--injured shoulder using exoskeleton

Merl Pritchard—environmental engineer

Keli Riggens—zoologist

Jason Larache--systems engineer.

Ian Hu--drive systems specialist, warp drive theorist

Gordon Radell-cryptography

Zabrina Muha--microbiologist

Mikah Kowalski—linguist

Unfortunately, changing Merl's job also changed his ability to be the inadvertent bad guy. However, that worked in my favor. You know the saying that if you're going to use a gun in Chapter 15, put it in Chapter Two? The corollary is don't make a point of the gun in Chapter Two unless you're going to use it in Chapter 15. Well, in both versions of Discovery, I had a "gun," a character named Cay who panics and accidentally hurts Ann. He's never seen or heard from again. Now, he's going to be part of the recovery crew, trying to prove himself, and as such will get involved in a series of events that will lead to his trying to destroy the alien ship. And Merl will still have a hand in that, but as the inadvertent influence that pushed Cay off the edge.

To get to this point, Merl gets to do some ol'-fashioned-down-home-come-to-Jesus preachin'! I had some fun with this, because Sister Ann goes to sit in, and in typical Ann fashion, seems to get the point while appearing completely flighty. (Merl says in his sermon that God's love is sufficient.)

Ann: I enjoyed listening to you. It made me think Plato.
Merl: my sermon made you think of a pagan philosopher?
Ann: necessary and sufficient conditions. Is God's love sufficient or merely necessary?
Merl: Merely?
Ann: As opposed to necessary and sufficient. Certainly accepting His love is merely necessary. It's in Corinthians… ( Get the quote about faith and deeds)
Merl: But He who liveth and believeth in me shall have everlasting life
Ann: Yes, exactly! Necessary and sufficient! So would you like to join me in Adoration?
Merl blanches: I think not.
Ann: Oh. Well, it's neither necessary nor sufficient, but it is loving!

My Novel's Journey: Rediscovering Discovery

Did I ever mention that this is the first time I've done reconstructive surgery on a manuscript?

With Mind Over Mind (coming September 2011 from Dragon Moon), I had started with a college manuscript that was, well, lame, and changed it so radically that I really just tossed it, kept a few characters and general plot progression and made it into a trilogy. It is simply NOT the same book except in the most superficial ways. In fact, Romeo and Juliet and Unseen Academicals (Discworld) have more in common. (Loved Pratchett's book!)

Discovery, however, has a lot to salvage--and a lot to chuck without a second thought. The more I dig, however, the more I need to chuck.

Take Chapter One. Please. But seriously, I loved Chapter One. It has action, drama and a lot of good introduction to the world. It's as close to hard SF as I've ever come. It had a lot of nice details that come back again in the book.

It was 6000 words long.
It was hard SF, while the rest is soft SF.
It takes place on an asteroid we never see or hear from again except in passing.
But the worst thing yet…

The emergency I postulated could not happen in space!

Oh, headdesk, headdesk, headdesk.

You see, when I wrote this in the heady month of NaNoWriMo, I was thinking that spacesuit air was like scuba air--an oxygen/nitrogen mix. So Sister Ann's suit malfunctions and she gets nitrogen narcosis, which allows her to talk pretty freely about stuff Sister Rita would just as soon not hear! Only problem: spacesuit air is pure pressurized oxygen. And oxygen deprivation or oxygen narcosis won't cause the same euphoria and delirium that nitrogen will.

I don't remember why exactly I wanted to revisit the first chapter--I think the length and explanations bothered me--but as I delved more into suits and air, I realized my fatal error. After I'd rewritten the entire chapter.

But you know me! I'm always glad to torture my characters for fun and plot-fit. So poor Sister Ann has basically the same situation but instead of whacking her pack against something and causing it to malfunction, she gets slammed into a broken piece of the station, a rebar that stabs her through the suit into the side. Sister Hard Core saves her own life by spraying around her suit and the bar with a plasticine glue I'd invented for the story, thus sealing the leak, then stays very still until someone can cut her free. The chapter actually starts as Basilica lands at St. Joseph de Cupertino Station, where she can get medical help.

Here's a before-and-after shot of the key lines I wanted:

BEFORE:

Instead of answering, Ann said, "Faith, hope and love; and the greatest of these is love. Did you know Brother Jubal didn't like people very much? He had hoped to spend his life in solitude at the Oceanus hermitage. Know what else he wrote?

I came as a wanderer,
found You, Beloved, here
in a dead world poised
on the edge of eternity.

"Yet God called him to go minister to the Drake Lunar station. He left the life he loved and as a result, came to love life more. But could he have done it if he hadn't had that revelation of God's love? Then, there's St. Gillian: Nowhere do I feel closer to God than watching the sunrise across the mountains. God made this world to suit us; and us, uniquely suited for it. She rode animals."

"Horses. Lots of people ride horses."

"And shrews ride people."

"What?"

Ann's voice deepened into a snarl. "'Research! Work! Give your pain to God!' Vaccing shrew rides me like one of her horses. R. Charles Hawkins was very cranky after his accident. He wanted to give up work on the gravity generator and die, and Gillian left earth to be with him full time at L5. I guess it's easier to ride someone in zero g."

Rita had long broken the habit of smacking her own forehead, but times like these brought back the urge. "I think he's speaking figuratively."

"I see. I think he was literal when he wrote There would be no gravity here were it not for my wife, my dear shrew. The first successful test of the Hawkins gravity generator. Gravity. A force of attraction. Love is a force of attraction. Gillian stayed with R. Charles on L5, even though the earth pulled at her heart. Human love is strong."

Suddenly Rita's heart thundered in her chest and her mouth went dry. "It wasn't human love that kept St. Gillian in space after her husband died. It was her love for God that called her to start our order," she snapped.

"That's true. Faith, hope and love." Ann mused, as if she hadn't noticed the anger in Rita's voice.


AFTER:

"Ann, are you okay?" It was a stupid question. The broken piece of strut protruded from her side like a Roman lance. A messy glob of plasticine glue pasted it to her spacesuit, holding it in place and sealing the tear that would have bled air from her suit. Ann was still in her suit, gloves and helmet off, snoopy cap still on at her insistence so she could hear the progress of the other sisters on the rescue.

"The St. Gillian caught Dome Six," she reported and smiled. "Claire is scolding it for wandering!"

Rita gave a distracted chuckle as she checked readings from Ann's skinsuit. Tommie reported the airlock mated and pressurizing. Hurry up!

"I came as a wanderer,/found You, Beloved, here/in a dead world poised/on the edge of eternity," Ann murmured. "Clair can scold you."

Rita glanced from the readouts to see Ann staring at her. "What?"

"You wandered so far, but he was always right there," she muttered. Then her eyes clouded and she turned to where eleven miners sat in jump seats along the wall of the shuttle's bay or in the microgravity rover now secured to the deck.

PROGRESS REPORT: About 5000 words cut. Finished rewrite of Chapter One, which is now Chapter Two. Made some slight changes to Chapter Two, which is now Chapter One. Trying to decide what to do for Chapters Three and Four. Overall goal: TIGHTEN THE FRONT HALF.

My Novel's Journey: Rediscovering Discovery

Well, I finally did it today. I finished reading the 80,000 words I have written on my Catholic sci-fi novel, DISCOVERY. I know what works and what doesn't and it really comes down to fixing the first half so that it dances with the second half. That means character development, minor conflicts during the trip out to the Kuiper Belt that foreshadow the crises when they explore the ship, and researching some great quotes for Sister Ann to lob off that are perfect for the situation as she understands it--and does she ever understand!--but that confuse everyone else. It also means some re-constructive surgery, then a really good polish.

Now, I have to decide how to best go about this. Should I outline? Cut the manuscript into pieces and play with them like a puzzle? Scrap the whole thing and start over armed with the knowledge of what I've written?

I'm not sure, and tomorrow, Steven gets his wisdom teeth pulled, and Rob took the day off. Not going to be doing a lot of writing this weekend. However, Monday, the kids go to school, and thanks to a different schedule and the fact that they have buses, I will have an extra couple of hours to work during the school day. I'll work a plan this weekend, and Monday start. I'll let you know how it's going!

Incidentally, I'm miffed at StarGate: Universe (aka StarGate: Whinyverse) for naming their ship Discovery. I'm wondering if I really have to change mine. For the record, I came up with it long before the show.

My Editing Journey: Dialogue in Discovery

I'd said one of the things I needed to do was change Ann's way of speaking. Let's explore that today.

Dialogue is a great way to show your character: their education, their interests, their thought processes. Sometimes, as the character develops in your mind, her way of speaking changes. That happened to Sister Ann. An orphan rescued and raised by the Sisters, she has an unusual background and a mind like a sponge. She can absorb and process technical manuals like a child's game. She does the same for other writings, but philosophy and psychology are harder for her to understand. Her experience with the outside world is limited to living at the convent and rescuing spacers. Her faith is strong and at times, visionary, but she's never thought much about it being unique.

As the ship and its crew get into deeper danger, she is receiving Divine Guidance through the help of prophets and saints. This was such fun to play with, but since I didn’t set her up as a mystic and a little odd, it looks like she's gone mad. Also, I needed her to be more odd to begin with to justify the crew's reaction to her, particularly Dr. Thoren's, who considers her a threat to their mission.

The best way to show this is in her speech (and later in her interior monologues). Here's one of the first conversations she has. She's just quoted Brother Jubal about his life as a hermit on the moon.

Original:

"Yet God called him to go minister to the Drake Lunar station. He left the life he loved and as a result, came to love life more. But could he have done it if he hadn't had that revelation of God's love? Then, there's St. Gillian: she loved the grandeur and beauty of Earth. She grew up on a ranch and used to go riding in the mountains--on an animal!"

"A horse. Lots of people ride horses on earth."

"A horse! Yes! But her husband got injured when the gravity generator he was developing blew up, and could never return to a heavy gravity world, and she came out into space to minister to him. For love, she could do it, but it was love for her husband."

Rita wondered if the change of subject was to ease her own fears; if so, she welcomed it. "But her faith in God and her hope that He would bring something good from her sacrifice gave her the strength to live on L5. And of course, with her help, R Charles perfected his gravity generator."

"Her nagging, you mean!" Ann laughed. "Have you ever read his dairies? They're very funny." Her voice deepened as she quoted, "'I finally just went to work so she wouldn't keep telling me about the martyrs. Martyrs! Torture! A shrew for a wife--that's torture!' She knew he needed to work to take his mind off his pain, and she loved him enough to risk his wrath and make him do what he wouldn't do for himself. Despite his grumbling, he understood that, and he loved her all the more. Human love is a powerful force, too, isn't it?"


See how she's very straightforward in her expression? It also feels too much like telling. I have to admit, the conversation bothered me from the beginning, but only until I knew Ann better did I understand why. Here's the second draft:


"Yet God called him to go minister to the Drake Lunar station. He left the life he loved and as a result, came to love life more. But could he have done it if he hadn't had that revelation of God's love? Then, there's St. Gillian: Nowhere do I feel closer to God than watching the sunrise across the mountains. God made this world to suit us; and us, uniquely suited for it. She rode animals."

"Horses. Lots of people ride horses."

"And shrews ride people."

"What?"

Ann's voice deepened as she mimicked a man's snarl. "'Research! Work! Give your pain to God!' Vaccing shrew rides me like one of her horses. R. Charles Hawkins was very cranky after his accident. He wanted to give up work on the gravity generator and die, and Gillian left earth to be with him full time at L5. I guess it's easier to ride someone in zero g."

Rita had long broken the habit of smacking her own forehead, but times like these brought back the urge. "I think he's speaking figuratively."

This is more "Ann": making some leaps of logic that no one else understands (R. Charles called his wife "shrew" + she rides him = shrews ride people), shows her literal thinking, and isn't as straightforward as the first conversation. It's also 100 words shorter, an advantage.

My Editing Journey: Things to do to Discovery

Lots of slicing and dicing to do, some re-arranging, and a whole lot of re-write!

1. Cut down the first chapter. There's too much talk and it moves too slowly compared to the rest. I spend a lot of time explaining things I can show later, and have details that turned out to be unimportant when looking at the entire thing.

2. Cut out some characters. GenSup Hayden didn't prove to be important to the plot. I'll cut him and spread his tasks among other characters. Similarly, a new character showed up that I adored, but he could not accomplish his goals. Meanwhile, the ship's doctor was perfectly suited to accomplish his mission, but had no use until near the end. I can combine them into one character.

3. Make Sr. Ann speak in snatches of quotes, technical specs and insights. She started out as a sweet, straightforward girl, but in the last half started having visions and speaking in gibberish that makes a lot of sense to herself and to the readers (for the most part), but not to everyone else. I came to realize that she was always like this to some degree, but stress will make it more pronounced. So I need to re-write. Besides, she's much more fun when she's talking like River from Firefly!

4. Foreshadow events by developing other characters earlier on. Several characters end up playing a bigger role and having some major issues toward the end. I need to go back and give hints. Ian needs compulsive handwashing, for instance.

5. Cut the talk. I'm a dialogue person, so there is a lot of talk in the NaNo part of the book. I need to be brutal in chopping out the unneeded stuff, putting in some action or a couple of one-sentence summaries.

6. Give characters their names. Too many times, I wrote GUYNAME when I couldn't decide who would do what? Or I'd forget someone's last name or title.

7. Detail check. My rescue bags had air for 12 hours, then 30 minutes, then 2 hours. You'd think I'd remember how much air was in this piece of equipment.

8. When do I write tech that would have solved a problem? If so, I need to write it out or change the problem. Done that once already, and it made for a better ending.

9. Make sure characters are consistent. I'm pretty certain a few changed personalities mid-book.

10. Polish the timeline.

So, you know, not much to do...