Next Steps

Here's what's next for Life Artificial.

I've signed an agreement with Paul Witcover, a successful author and editor, among other things. Check out his book Tumbling After on Amazon. We are set to begin the editing and revising process within a couple of months, after Paul wraps up some current projects. In the meantime, he sent me a preliminary edit of the introductory section in Part One, where Sevens walks brazenly out the city gates into the Outs. Paul's comments and insights led me to a significantly better (in my opinion) re-write of that section. I'm about half-way going through Part One, fixing errors of all types, and trying to improve clarity. When that's finished I will post it on the site with a new edition number (the little e2.0 just under the cover graphic).

We plan to proceed through each part in turn. I welcome any suggestions for improvement from anyone reading this. For more perspective on how books get made, you might be interested to read Charles Stross's essay "How Books are Made," found on his blog. Stross is the author of some serious sci-fi, like Halting State as well as wickedly clever lighter fare like The Atrocity Archives. Anyone who's ever worked in a corporate environment will appreciate his portrayal of the HR department as an antagonist.  You may have noticed my coda on that theme in Part Two, when Calli describes the Deyati experiments.

Anyway, if you read the Stross essay, you'll see that  Life Artificial is currently a manuscript. Once it's been professionally edited and fixed up, we can call it a finished work. My current plans are to offer it as an ebook on Amazon for $.99US or $1.99US (thoughts?). I plan to keep the licensing the same, so no one is actually obligated to buy the book.

If I went through a traditional publishing house, a hardcover might sell for $20 a copy, of which I'd make maybe $2. In return I'd get the marketing and distribution power of the publisher, but lose certain rights too. But beyond the economic factors, self-publishing and retaining control is very attractive to me. The reality of the Internet is that anything that can be reproduced digitally can be gotten for free if you're willing to work hard enough to find it. It seems smart to me to be the single best provider of that (free) content, with pointers to the (cheap) ebook version at Amazon. Being able to download in ebook format and read on a Kindle is a somewhat better experience than reading off a computer, and I hope that a large fraction of readers are willing to spring for buck or two to upgrade. If I can at least pay for the editing cost, I'll be happy. This is not a money-making enterprise for me.

Some of the changes betwixt manuscript and finished work will probably include tweaking some character names. One particular name that I got stuck with is "Lisa/86," whose character grew into something different from my original conception. Given her cultural heritage, the name doesn't make much sense. If you have suggestions on this or any other matters like plot continuity, questions about the world that might help flesh it out, character development, or anything else, please email me or leave a comment. I've thought about the idea of including some artwork. Thoughts on that? If there's an artificial intelligence out there reading this, I'd particularly like to hear from you. :-)

As to the future of the Life Artificial world, I have several projects in mind. There is a work called Canman referenced in Nova's Continuation that actually exists. I wrote it years ago, and it has some back story clues, like where 'vorking' came from, and who the Preacher is. I would have to work hard to get this particular (novella-length) manuscript in shape. What I'd rather do is write a shortish piece to fill in the story of Jumbo and Nova. One of the restrictions of the "log file" medium I've chosen is that I can't randomly pop into other points of view if Calli couldn't reasonably be ghosting that person. So a novella that fills in what happened after Nova's Continuation seems logical, and would be fun to write. I won't speculate about other possibilities that would be spoilers for the plot, but they exist too. I'm not sure if anyone will want to read it, but I intend to keep writing about this whirl for a while.

I really appreciate the readers who've made it this far with me. Your occasional notes and comments (positive or negative) keep me going. That and the characters themselves, who sometimes keep me awake at night with their conversations in my head...

Best wishes to all,

dave

Part Four is downloadable from the site

If' you're looking for a soundtrack, the music I most listened to while writing it is the soundtrack from The Fountain.

I will post tomorrow on what's next.

The draft of Part Four is finished.

This is the largest of the installments so far. The version I have is in pretty good shape, mainly because I didn't write much of it on the iPad (and have to go back and fix lots of typos). An ever bigger factor is that I was able to rapidly write the last two thirds of it, so it already flows nicely. I've noticed a funny thing about motivation. During the writing of the previous part, I set myself a goal of 800 words a day. And if you look at the log, it's very close to 800 words a day. This time, I just wrote because it was fun to write. As a result, I wrote much more each day. My best day was 4500 words, I think. On Wednesday of this week I couldn't sleep because of the damned plot line spooking around in my head, and the characters chattering back and forth, so I just got up and wrote until 3:30am. The moral is that intrinsic motivation beats extrinsic motivation. I'd read about that idea here, and it was interesting to experience it first hand.

I want to get the editing done soon so I can post it. I hope it will be up within a week. Thanks for hanging on!

Character Names

A while back I asked for name submissions from readers to be incorporated into the text. I am at that point now, and went back through my emails to check for your submissions. I found two, but thought there were more. If you read this and don't see your name on the list, or would like to add one, now's your chance.

I have two names to use for mechs, with the format shown:

r3137, aka "Reviser"
abf0400, aka "Flanker"

I could use a couple more in that format, as well as one or two names for humans. Note that the letters above aren't restricted to hex A-F.

Holiday Progress

The holiday break has given me some much-appreciated breathing space to get some thoughts on paper (well, virtual paper). The rest of part four has been framed up, and I'm working through the remaining scenes. I also have quite a bit of editing to do for the existing material. Writing on the iPad is very convenient, but not conducive to good drafts. They require as much work to fix as it is to write in the first place. The complete-o-meter is being updated as I work, and here's a longitudinal look--mostly to motivate me to finish.

The Zero Wave?

It's hard for a sci-fi writer to stay ahead of real life: "Engineered Avian Flu Could Kill Half the World’s Humans."

Delays and Damned Delays

I'd hoped to wrap up Part IV this summer, but obviously that didn't happen. I did get a new university website launched, but my writing hit a wall about 1/3 of the way through. I continue to make notes and write, mostly using Evernote on my iPad. I have a few thousand words that aren't showing up on the complete-o-meter (sheer laziness there), and a lot of notes. So my apologies to anyone waiting--it will get done, I just can't rush it. I have several big work-related projects this fall that will eat up my time through the beginning of November. In the meantime, the various plot threads are marinating in their own juices.