L. Fergus

Li’ve Progress 28 December 2017

Even with the holidays, I was able to finish chapter nineteen this week, so I’m ahead of schedule. I know I’m a day late getting this out, sorry. For those counting, I’m 500 words short of 70,000 and Kita and crew just left for Earth, so it looks like we’ll have a full-length book.

Chapter nineteen closes several chapters about inner Angel relationships. There’s been some major tension between some of the Valkyrie Angels and Kita about who’s in charge of who and Kita’s methods for handling situations. It’s even enough to put Kita and Pather at odds. Baby Doll does her best to mediate between the two groups, but she’s under suspicion as she is resumed her mantle of being Kita’s left hand. The situation hasn’t been resolved yet, but they’ve hit a low point after someone leaves. Unfortunately, Kita hasn’t been able to give the situation her full attention as she’s trying to plan on how to get to Earth. So, more to follow on that.

Kita and Defiance, Casey Bush, Princess of the UEE in case you forgot, grow closer and profess their love for each other. This relationship isn’t as pretentious as Kita’s previous relationship with Cotton. Defiance is much more down to Earth and willing to let Kita be Kita.

Kita also helps out Snowy and Sahara. Not sure I’ve mentioned Sahara, but she is a female Djinn. If you’re trying to remember if you’ve ever seen a female Djinn, you haven’t. They do appear earlier in Li’ve when the Angels crash a party. Normally the female Djinn are kept in harems and aren’t allowed out in public. When they are, they’re clad head to toe. Sahara has a father in a strong position and she never goes home to Djinn, so her father is able to protect her. She’s been a strong arm in projecting her father’s will until she ran into Baby Doll and was put in the medical ward.

The chapter closes with another space battle as Kita’s fleet must fight their way through a Diamock blockade of the Alicorn wormhole. The Diamock’s don’t have a lot of ships in the area, but a dreadnaught appears and hits Enterprise twice, causing some damage. To make her plan work, Kita must give up command to Sheppard so she can program the FTL computer, which upsets Kita. She want’s to stay and fight the battle. They do make a successful FTL jump.

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Li’ve Progress 20 December 2017

Today over lunch I caught the last few minutes of the movie The Golden Compass. So what does a noncompleted trilogy have to do with the Angels? Frostbane was inspired by the panserbjørn, armored bear, Iorek Byrnison. I’ve always liked watching bears, especially black bears, they’re just so funny and they seemed like a natural ally for the war cats. I am still unapologetic that there are no wolves in my story. I get a little embarrassed when I say I have vampires in my story. But mine do create zombies, so redemption.

I finished another chapter, yeah! And it’s extra long for all those who like longer chapters. This chapter mostly has to do with the fallout between Kita and Phoenix. People take sides, and Valentine is naturally upset. This split mostly just effects the Valkyrie Angels and not the Li’ve Angels, (Stormy, Sheppard, Valor, Defiance, Blitz, and Starlight) though they do get caught up in it. And I have to remember I need to include Blitz. The Valkyrie Angels have been without Kita’s influence for a long time and some find it hard to live with her. Tenshi, Panther, and Raptor are the biggest detractors, countered by Baby Doll and Aspen. Kamikaze lurks in the background, only letting her side be known when forced. Not that she would ever go against her mother, but she does have some wisdom to impart to the detractors. And someone does leave, deciding they prefer solitude to living under Kita. How this will effect Kita and Panther’s relationship has yet to be seen. At the moment, Kita is off brooding, letting those loyal to her clean up the mess.

The relationship between Stormy and Toxic got off to a good start, as soon as Toxic got out of her own way.

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Li’ve Progress 13 December 2017

I’ve reached 61k words and chapter eighteen. For those people, like me, who aren’t mathematically inclined that means the chapters are longer than normal. I’ve spent the last two to three chapters reestablishing the Angels, or the Valkyries, coming from the Irruption series.

For some Angels this is really easy. They slide back into the roles they had before. Valentine and Phoenix are always good for some relationship drama, and Valentine takes up position as Kita’s aide again. Her role is expanding some as she helps out with Enterprise’s Political Bureau office in developing hacking tools. Aspen is very easy, she’s an assassin to the core and helps out early in the book breaking into a mansion. Anthrax goes back to the medical ward where she’s found the different aliens interesting to study. Also since Sarin is gone, she’s the resident fashion expert and she helps out poor Toxic prepare for a date. Baby Doll is usually with Kita, when Kita’s not in the bedroom, saying what Kita doesn’t want to hear and getting away with it. Panther has also been hanging around with Kita in and out of the bedroom.

Other Angels are trickier. Raptor has had several instances to imbue her wisdom and help the others. She did get a chance to tell how she felt about losing Frostbane. Kamikaze and Tenshi are the hardest. Their isolationistic behavior means its hard to get them involved into anything. I did get a scene in where Valentine wants her sisters, so Tenshi and Panther come to her aid. How are they sisters? It’s not specifically spelled out in the Irruption series, but Re’drum, Ecit’suj, and Ra’w are all children of Ht’aed.

There’s a major surprise in these chapters revolving around Phoenix. Some might say its a long time coming. I’ll let you be the judge.

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Li’ve Progress

This week has been a short one for me. I’ve only written 4k words, so a little over a chapter. I’ve moved on to Kita and Kylee. I did some serious planning with my brother, Alex, who I turn to when I need help developing plots and other ideas. Kylee is going to play a big part at the end of Li’ve. That’s all I’ll say about that. A few older Angels are getting worked into the book: Baby Doll, one of my favorites, Aspen, Valentine Raptor, and Panther is back as a love interest for Kita. There are a few more running around: Anthrax, Tina, Kamikaze, and Tenshi. If you’re interested in seeing a certain Angel let me know in the comments.

In other news, I won a few more awards. Birthright took home a 3rd place in the Blue Rose Awards and a 2nd place in the Rebel Awards. Rebirth is a finalist in the Paper Plane Awards. No first places…yet, but I’ll live. If you’re counting that’s nine awards for Birthright and five for Rebirth. I’m planning on submitting both Birthright and Rebirth to Angry Robot Publishing, so keep your fingers crossed.

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Li’ve Progress

I broke 51,000 words yesterday. I wrote a very long chapter about Kita interacting with the Djinn. They’re always a lot of fun, kind of the antithesis of Kita, and now she’s working with them.

I didn’t do much today other than think of ideas. I have several I’m thinking about. One is a romance between Stormy and Toxic. It seems like an odd couple, but I think it’ll work. Actually, I know it’ll work I wrote a short story that takes place after Li’ve where they work together to defeat an old enemy. So, look for that to come out soon. I also have the storyline of a transgender pilot that has come into Kita’s orbit. I’m not sure where I’m going with her. An idea was she might be a good match for Sheppard. If Sheppard could hold still long enough and not be in command of something. Kita and Kylee butted heads and Kita punished her. That storyline hasn’t gone anywhere other than Kylee sulking about. Kita’s just been too busy to deal with her.

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Li’ve progress

So, I got this idea to post progress updates on Li’ve after watching a Netflix show iZombie where a character talks about live-tweeting his screenplay. I’m not quite sure I know what that means, but I liked the idea of giving you, the fans, a glimpse of the creative process and get some behinds the scenes looks at what will happen in the upcoming book. I’d also love to hear your feedback as I go along.

Currently, I am forty-six thousand words into Li’ve. I was writing earlier this year and stopped because…call it writer’s block. Mostly I just wasn’t feeling it, so I went to work on other stories in the series, namely Sarin’s War, but I was also sending out Birthright and Rebirth to potential publishers. Nothing yet, if you’re wondering, but Birthright is out at two as of right now.

I just started writing Li’ve a few days ago after some ideas came to me. I no longer write like I use to. Sitting in front of the computer and hammering out the story by the hour. It was a time of constant free flow of ideas and dialog. That all came to a halt about halfway through Clouds. I got to a point, hit a wall, and hated what I wrote, so I threw it out and rewrote the entire book. Since then, I have to spend time thinking about the story and then writing it, bit by bit. It now comes out in 1000 word chunks or around that. Good days I might do 2500. Today I knocked out 1660.

I have no idea how long Li’ve will be. I thought it might be sixty thousand words, but with what I have to cover that seems too short. I’m thinking it’ll be closer to eighty thousand. If I really get some ideas it might hit a hundred thousand, but that seems on the outside. The story hasn’t even gotten to Earth yet or linked up with Sarin and the events of Sarin’s War. So there’s a lot left to write.

Today was an interesting problem. Everyone knows Kita likes to torture people. The problem for me is keeping it fresh and inventive. She’s done a lot of slicing, dicing, and burning. Today she needed to get information from a new character Sahara. The trick today wasn’t about causing pain, but playing on fear and not of fear of pain. Something just as primal. Confined spaces. Most spacefaring races are used to cramped conditions. Some even have fear of being outdoors under a sky. But, I took it to an extreme, a coffin. Barely enough room to move your hands and not enough room to turn over. Now, shoot the coffin into space and I think you have a truly terrifying experience. Do you run out of air first or freeze to death? Kita gives Sahara a radio and tells her she has ten minutes before she’ll be out of range.

I’m writing this next part as kind of a note to myself, but someone might ask it. This method doesn’t produce blood or anything else Kita likes. She could have easily used the truth serum to get what she wants. Tina most likely will bring this up. And the ready answer is Sahara is a Djinn, so the serum doesn’t work on her. It’s another interesting wrinkle of adding the alien races, old tricks don’t always work. It’s taken Kita a while to figure out how to give wings to the other races.

I try and write every day, though on my wife’s days off I usually don’t get to and I’m discovering kids take up a lot of time and space. But, check back often and click the subscribe button to get notified when I do post an update.

How to Write an Action Scene: Part 1

I decided to write this post for four reasons. The first was a friend of mine, Mark Gardner, asked me to write an action scene for his upcoming book, War of the Worlds: Firestorm. This was a completely different kind of action scene than I’ve ever written. A Martian, Think the aliens in the Simpsons, must escape a burning laboratory while out running a deadly gas. His shape, size, and lack of abilities made him a unique challenge.

As for the second reason, I’ve been shopping my own book Birthright around and I’ve found I’m a thousand words short of publisher’s requirement of eighty thousand words. I didn’t want to go back and add fluff, because I’ve worked so hard to take it out. Instead, I looked at my plot and realized there was no action scene at the end of the book to showcase my main character Kita’s new augmentations and abilities.

Thirdly, I love action scenes. Anytime someone asks me how to improve their books I tell them to put a dragon in it or at least the equivalent. I did it in Birthright. Dinosaurs count as dragons, right? I subscribe to the J.J. Abrams school of thought, go big or go home. Unlike Abrams, I do have my action sequences make sense and be believable to the reader.

Lastly, I did a little research on this subject and found that all the blog posts about writing action scenes are nothing but silly rules that don’t tell you anything about writing an action scene. I’ve come up with a list of things that will help you write a killer action scene: environment, characters, drama, and the goal. Today I’m going to talk environment and characters.

The environment. This is where your action scene takes place. An action scene can take place anywhere. What you have to do as an author is to arrange and populate the space with things that can be used to maximize the scene. For example, in WotW: Firestorm the main scene took place in a laboratory. I populated it with glassware, lab equipment, and workbenches—what you’d expect to find in a lab, but all these things are used to create the action scene. Here’s an example:

Climbing onto the nearest workbench, it was covered in something wet. Let’s hope it’s not toxic, he thought with a shuddering of his tentacles. Steve climbed across the workbench to the edge. It was over a meter and half. Below him on the floor was a pile of burning lab equipment that had caught the workbench and floor on fire.

Steve stood up on the tips of his tentacles, and rocked back and forth. When he was moving forward he jumped, landing in the middle of the next workbench. He signed in relief, but he couldn’t relax. The end of the next workbench was engulfed in flame. The open end had a set of glassware taking up most of the space.

Around Steve the roar of the fire continued, urging him onward. The sarin gas could arrive at any moment. He set himself up for his next jump, hoping to land in front of the glassware set.

Steve jumped, but overshot his target. He crashed into the glassware, crushing some underneath him and sending the rest to the floor. He snarled over the pain of several shards of glass penetrating his tentacles. I cannot worry about superficial injuries, he thought, I must get out of here.

You can see the environment at work here and how it’s shaping the action sequence. The more you give yourself to work with, the more imaginative you can be. But, don’t put something in the scene that doesn’t belong, unless you have a good explanation how it got there and have established it beforehand. Ex Machina is something the movies love, but as an author, you want to avoid it at all cost. For everything, there is a reason.

So now that we have a place for our action scene, let’s talk about characters. In WotW: Firestorm Martians aren’t the most agile, but does have long tentacles that give them reach. Steve the Martian is in stark contrast to my character, Kita. She is an Olympic gold medal caliber gymnast and a master with the sword. Their action sequences are going to be very different. If I put Kita in the lab from WOTW: Firestorm, she would have had no problem making it from one side to the other. There wouldn’t be much drama there. Look at your character’s skills and abilities and plan your action scenes to challenge these. If you make it too difficult the character is going to die, too easy and your reader will lose interest. The reader is going to know what your character is capable of. If your character has never handled a gun before, nothing ruins the action scene more than your character picking up a gun and being a crack shot with it. It just doesn’t happen in real life. Now, if they picked it and failed to hit anything, not only is that believable but helps elevate the drama which I’ll cover next time.

That’s it for today. Next time we’ll cover drama and goals.

Where do the gods come from?

Today I was digging around and found an old computer game called Black and White. The premise of the game is you’re a fledgling god and you must grow your following. The game allows you to be good or evil and recruit follows via intimidation or benevolence. The gameplay is fun, but that’s not what struck me. The intro video for the game, above, really shaped how I see Kita’s world and our own. The idea of countless universes floating around in a multiverse is an interesting idea. Out of this came the Infinity multiverse room where countless universes are lined up like computers in a server farm all computing away.

The gods themselves are a combination of Jack L. Chalker’s Markovians from his Well World series and the Greek Olympians. In the beginning, the gods are more stoic researchers and engineers running their equations and studying the outcomes. It’s not until Kita joins with Re’drum that the gods begin to take on personalities. The personalities tend to go along with the god’s area of study and they often seek out to join with an equation that personifies them.