Alastair Mayer’s T-Space Blog

I passed the 50,000 word point in my NaNoWriMo novel sometime today, qualifying me for the win. Yay! But the novel itself is a long way from finished, I have plot threads still dangling. Another ten thousand or so words should do it. With eight more days until the end of NaNoWriMo, that should be easy.

That’s just for the first (or even zeroth) draft. It may qualify for a NaNoWriMo win, but it’s a long way from “finished”. I have a lot of placeholders, what we’d call “stubs” in computer programming. That’s where I’ve just outlined a scene or a necessary sequence of actions that I didn’t feel up to writing at that point, and I’ll go back and expand later. That also includes a couple of characters that I introduced late and don’t have real names or backstories yet, factual details that I need to research, and so on. There are also a few chapters I want to change the sequence of. Plus line edits. But that’s all part of the process.

Congratulations to all the other NaNoWriMoers out there who have already passed (in same cases, totally blown by) 50K. For the rest, keep going! There’s still more than a week left.

Today is Veterans Day in the US, Remembrance Day in Canada and the UK. (It is also marked in other countries under different names.) To all those who served: thank you.

After a slower start than I’d hoped, I’m up to speed and the “novel” is going well. Those quotes are there because at the moment it’s more of a very detailed outline; I know I’ll make significant changes in the next draft. But I’m coming up with some cool ideas and scenes. The working title is Alpha Centauri; it’s about humanity’s first trip there, with a few surprises.

Real time NaNoWriMo progress bar, the target is 50,000 words.

MileHiCon has come and gone; it was a lot of fun. The panels I moderated (“Modified Matter” and “Weird Biology”) were well-attended, standing room only, and even my reading went well (not a huge turnout, but I wasn’t expecting one).

Now we’re heading into Hallowe’en and the beginning of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. The objective is to write at least 50,000 words (which is a short novel by today’s standards) during the month of November. Check out the NaNoWriMo web site, which keeps participants in touch with each other, tracks your progress, and provides general encouragement. If you’re into writing at all, it’s a lot of fun, and you may be surprised at just how much you can write if you try.

I haven’t made a final decision on what I’m going to work on — I have a few ideas and partial outlines to choose from — but I’m definitely participating. If you are too (or if you’re just thinking about it), why not post a comment about what you have in mind?

MileHiCon, the Rocky Mountain regional science fiction and fantasy con, is this weekend. Come have a good time.

I’ll be there, I’m on a few panels, but don’t let that stop you 😉

You may have already noticed (I hope!) that these web pages are loading faster. I moved the website to a new and much more powerful server, and took advantage of the opportunity to upgrade all the software components too. This new system should be limited only by the speed of the network, unlike the occasional periods of catatonia the old one experienced. If you notice any problems, please let me know.

My short story “Light Conversation” has been accepted by Analog Science Fiction & Fact magazine! This is my first sale to Analog (or to any of the Big Three SF magazines, the other two being Asimov’s and Fantasy & Science Fiction). I’ve been reading Analog since I was a teenager, so I’m really excited by this sale. I don’t know what issue it will appear in, but given the usual lead time it will probably be sometime next summer. Of course I’ll announce it (in big letters! 😉 ) when I find out specifics. It will likely be a “Probability Zero” story — it’s that kind of fun short — but of course that’s up to the editor.

My short story “The Gremlin Gambit” is the lead in the current issue of MindFlights webzine. It’s a light, fun piece, check it out.

I’m trying something new with the website. I found a WordPress plugin, amazon-machine-tags, which makes it very easy to pull in information about a book from Amazon’s site. I’m going to try it for a while (see my essay on Niven’s “Neutron Star” for an example), if it’s annoying just let me know via the comments.

In other news, I just returned the proofs for my short story “The Gremlin Gambit” to MindFlights, so it should be appearing there soon. It was fun to write and people tell me it’s fun to read. I’m wondering if I could sustain that to expand the story perhaps to novella or novel length; if it proves popular I may try.

Borderlands Books in San Francisco is listing Footprints as its #1 seller in trade paperback. Thanks to editor Eric Reynolds for the tip (and, with Jay Lake, for putting together such a strong anthology).

Tags: bestseller, footprints