Introducing "The Jade Maiden"

The next story to come out of the catalogue of the Herridge Lake Public Library is the result of an experiment I ran a few years ago. I wanted to see if I could write the first draft of an entire novel during a single fortnight.

Success, of a sort, crowned my effort: I did indeed write the whole first draft inside the space of two weeks. (And that was when I was still gainfully employed, I might add: the two weeks in question were my summer vacation, not that writing five thousand words a day* was all that relaxing.)

The inspiration for the book was Barry Hughart's incomparable (so I didn't even try) Bridge of Birds, "A novel of an ancient China that never was." In the background was my own love of alternate history: the story takes place in a fantasy version of a California (that never was) settled by Chinese sent abroad by the Ming. (I highly recommend When China Ruled the Seas, by Louise Levathes if you didn't already know about the enormous ocean-going ships of Zheng He.) I suppose this could be called an orientalist or chinoiserie novel (see also Ernest Bramagh) but for me it was just a story I wanted to tell, about a clever thief-turned pirate who goes to hell. All of them.

The story starts on Monday, 27 July 2020.

*The first draft, then, worked out to roughly 60,000 words, which is definitely on the short side for a novel. I rather liked that effect, though, and wish I could do it again. The final draft of The Jade Maiden wound up being just under 75,000 words long. Still a short novel when compared with some of the doorstops in our library, but longer than I'd wanted.

Introducing "Sowing Ghosts"

Yoshino Hiroki doesn’t want to be in Japan’s capital, he wants to be home and killing someone. Anyone. Hiroki has spent nearly two decades running from his aristocratic past, becoming samurai. But “samurai” means “to serve,” so when ordered to investigate a murder he knows he must obey.

Instead of returning to his predictable ― if not safe ― provincial life, Hiroki is drawn deep into the treacherous world of the burned and barricaded capital. He is guided by Katsumi, a tea-shop girl with poetic ambitions, and threatened by enemies and friends, all of them dangerous. Worse, his investigation threatens to revive his dead past, and brings him face-to-face again with the woman who destroyed his old life: His mother.

Could she be the killer? Or is it the adolescent, descendant of a powerful family and seeking his own power? The secretary who wants to wield a sword, not a brush? Hiroki must learn more than spy-craft to deal with what could be domestic violence ― or a political conspiracy that will engulf him and the empire.

Sowing Ghosts is a murder mystery set during the Sengoku Jidai, the age of the country at war. It's not fantasy, nor is it alternate-history.

And before I start serializing the book itself, I'm going to post a few items that I trust will help readers understand the period, and possibly help in keeping track of the characters. The novel itself begins on this site on Monday 2 March.

Sneaking In Under the Wire

I had promised the free epub version of  the Hollywood murder mystery High Risk would be available in October. Well, we are rapidly running out of October and I've been, what? Lazy? Dilatory? Busy trying to ensure my eyes continue to work? Okay, all of the above.

As a result I am not completely certain the file I've posted to my Novels page is as clean and pristine as it ought to be. Still, a promise is a promise, so the novel is now up and ready for download as a compressed file.

Those of you wanting instant gratification don't have to go to the Novels page: you can get the book here.

Introducing The Bonny Blue Flag

The Republic of Texas is broke. Two very different men, however, still believe in the future of the republic and the gold-starred blue flag that is its symbol. One of these men is William Barret Travis, the republic's secretary of state.

The other is William Walker, a mercenary colonel at the centre of a conspiracy to make Texas a part of the Confederate States of America, currently fighting for their freedom from the United States. Walker, while being paid by a shadowy group in and around the Confederate government, has plans of his own, plans he hasn't yet shared with his employers.

Or with George S. Patton, the young Confederate officer from Virginia who, at the end of Dixie's Land, gave up his CSA commission to join Walker's invasion of Texas. Patton wants to become a hero and a leader of men, and he thinks service with Walker is the way to do this. And he's prepared to ignore any evidence that might prevent him from wholehearted support of the filibuster.

Patton's friend, Captain Charles Stewart, has seen the evidence too and cannot ignore it. He is racing from Virginia to Texas, hoping to reach the capital, Washington-on-the-Brazos, before it's too late to stop the invasion and conquest. Before it's too late to prevent an entire continent, if not the world, from going to war.

The Bonny Blue Flag is the sequel to Dixie's Land, and is set in the alternate-history Firebird Timeline. The novel is serialized on this blog beginning in the first week of September. Start reading it here.

Coming Up Next

With the serialization of High Risk complete, you have now had the opportunity to read two complete novels. But we're not finished yet, not by a long shot.

I have obtained an ISBN for High Risk and have begun formatting the ePub version of the novel; my plan is to have it published and available for (free) download from this site in early October. I'll make the usual announcement when the book goes up.

In the meantime, the serialization project picks up again next week, when I begin pubbing The Bonny Blue Flag, the sequel to Dixie's Land. I have a party to host Sunday 1 September, and will be taking Labour Day off (at my age this is pretty much a necessity). So expect the introduction (and jacket-copy blurb) for BBF to appear Tuesday or Wednesday. Chapter one will begin the next day.

Introducing HIGH RISK

The U. S. economy is booming. So is Hollywood, as studios at last come to grips with the technological revolution that is synchronized sound. From the perspective of early October 1929, the future is as bright as a switched-on Klieg light.

Not everybody is singing in the rain, though. Casey, an ex-fighter pilot and Great War veteran, is still living with the repercussions of a very hostile encounter with a very powerful—and short-tempered—young man: the 23-year-old Howard Hughes. When your only marketable skill is flying, you can't afford to piss off the millionaire who is making the most expensive aviation movie ever.

But the mercurial Mr. Hughes turns out to be the least of Casey's problems. When flying for a low-budget Poverty Row studio is the only work he can get, Casey soon finds more than his career is at stake. A duplicitous director, scheming or desperate stars, a crooked criminal justice system, and good old-fashioned murder threaten to bring Casey down in a crash he won't be able to walk away from.

High Risk is a murder mystery that, like its hero, explores the low-level fringes and the elevated heights of Hollywood at the beginning of its golden age. Chapter One appears on this website on Monday, 6 May 2019.

Movie Stunt Pilots of the 1920s and 1930s

Image from Wikimedia Commons

These days, flying sequences in movies are mostly done with computers, though there may be some actual flying involved before the CGI takes over. (For a solid example of how not to do this, see the execrable 2006 Flyboys.) During Hollywood's golden age, however, what you saw on the screen was real airplanes being flown (and often crashed) by real pilots.

It's the world of these pilots that forms the backdrop of the next novel serialized from the Herridge Lake Public Library: High Risk. The serialization begins tomorrow (all things being equal) but I wanted to post a little something about stunt flying in order to provide some information to readers who might not be as obsessed as yours truly with, say, the differences between the two different versions of The Dawn Patrol. (You did know there were two different movies, didn't you?)

Motion picture stunt flying in some senses predates Hollywood itself: dummy aircraft on prop stands, or real aircraft suspended from wires over moving scenery, were used to simulate flying scenes as early as 1912; the earliest films of flying known date from 1905, when the movie capital of the U.S. was Long Island.

Dixie's Land: Endgame

With the conclusion of chapter fifteen of this novel, my first venture into serialization approaches its end. So I thought I would write a bit about what happens next.

Obviously, the immediate future brings chapter sixteen, next week. That's the final chapter of the novel and so I suppose it's appropriate it appear in the last full week of April. The serialization process has taken just under four months.

The following week (28 April - 4 May) I am going to post some Dixie's Land extras*. First I'll post the prologue I wrote, at one editor's suggestion, but which is not going to appear in the epub version of the book. The Wednesday of that week (assuming I get the work done on time) I will post "Near Enough to Home," the short story that got this whole thing going in the first place. And finally, on the Friday, I'll post the epilogue that matches the excised prologue.

And that will take care of Dixie's Land. The first full week in May will see the first posts in the serialization of a mystery novel. More details to come...

*I would have liked to be able to post a map of the bits of North America in which this novel is set. Unfortunately, my skills aren't sufficiently developed yet to allow me to make such a thing quickly, while still trying to write 3-4 hours a day.

Introducing "Dixie's Land"

It is 1851. The United States have been at war with one another for nearly a year, with nine states* fighting to sustain their right to secede from the Union. Watching nervously from the sidelines and dominating the northern and western portions of the continent is the Kingdom of Canada. It is to Canada's winter capital, New Orleans, that the Confederate Captain Charles Stewart is sent by his government to assist in the negotiating of a treaty of recognition between Canada and the CSA. More than negotiation is going to happen, though...

Beginning this week I will start serializing novels to this blog. The plan is to post roughly a chapter a week, which for most of the books in the queue means a complete novel will be up every six months or so†.

The first item up is Dixie's Land, an alternate-history novel set in the timeline-world I created for my short story "Near Enough to Home": it features a very alternate U.S. Civil War. This novel is the first I completed, and came very close to selling (twice). Not near enough, though‡.

The timeline I created for this novel was interesting enough to me that I wrote a second book, The Bonnie Blue Flag, which completes the story begun in Dixie's Land. And a third novel, An End of All Things, is in an advanced state of first-draftitude. So in time there will be more alt-history appearing here. (Next up is a mystery, though. Look for it in late summer or early autumn 2019.)

Stand by for chapter one, starting Tuesday 8 January 2019.

Chapter 1

*From north to south and east to west: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, with Kentucky's secession disputed within the state.

†Actual mileage may vary. Items are not necessarily as shown. Contents may settle in shipment. Void where prohibited by family rules or the dictates of the cat(s).

‡The first near-sale was a sad and frustrating experience. No details, because I don't think the experience reflects well on me or on any of the other people involved. So the less said the better.

Introducing the Herridge Lake Public Library

Image of Nick and Nora in
the logo (see note) courtesy
 of Chris Smith

Friday (4 January 2019) I wrote that I was tired of the process of selling fiction* and that I had decided to just give away my writing. This post explains what, precisely, this decision entails. Please feel free to pass on this information to anyone who might be interested.

There is form for this giveaway decision: Cory Doctorow has from the beginning of his career made it a policy to provide free downloads of his novels for all who want them. If it's good enough for Cory...

So with a new year just under way, I am introducing a new e-book imprint, managed by yours truly for the sole purpose of giving away free e-books of my writing, and free fiction posts for those as have browsers but no e-readers. This is the birth announcement of the Herridge Lake Public Library†.

How This Is Going To Work

I currently have a half-dozen novels (not counting the two published by or contracted to Five Rivers) edited and ready for publication, or very nearly so, and two more in the early stages of drafting. They fall into a range of sub-genres—alternate history, fantasy, mystery, science fiction, dark fantasy—and so I persuade myself there's enough material available that would interest a range of readers.

Beginning the second week of January 2019, I will begin serializing these novels, one book at a time, in this blog. The plan is to serialize a complete novel every six months or so. Once the serialization is complete, I will compile the novel into an e-book and make it available for free download. No hidden fees, no complicated documentation, just a basic Creative Commons license. At some point in the near future I will probably put together a collection of my short fiction as well.

I hope everyone in Quipu-land will enjoy reading this stuff as much as I enjoyed writing it.

*Beyond, of course, the basic transaction involved in arranging and signing a contract, with either an agent or an editor/publisher. I'm disillusioned (a little) but I'm not demented.

†Herridge Lake is a glacial (I assume) lake in the Temagami forest of Ontario. From time to time I do some writing up there; about half of my completed novels were in whole or in part written at Lake Herridge Lodge. The trees in the logo are Nick and Nora, a pair of pines visible from the lodge, and named by a group of us who are sometime visitors.