James L Gillaspy

Arwin Spicer, a member of my critique group, has her new novel, “Perdita” available for free 2/11/2013 and 2/12/2013.  It is science fiction and an excellent read.  You should give it a try.

One of my readers said recently that I should surround myself with better writers and recommended that I contact (as in send samples to) established writers.  Ah, I wish that I could.  I have enough trouble surrounding myself with a stable (as in long-lived)  group of writers of any kind.  If you were an established writer, would you want to receive unsolicited chapters from an unknown author?  The advice seemed especially far fetched.  Anyway, my actual, real, writers group is on the verge of breaking up.  Writing is a lot of work, especially for someone trying to make a living.  I admire anyone who can work at a regular job and still find time to write.

I’m typing this on a new computer. My old computer died over a week ago. After a week of bad service from a local computer store, I got my money back and bought from a big box store. A day of installing software and I am finally able to work again.

I would be the first to admit that I write “adventure” science fiction. I try to make it fun and entertaining. If you prefer your science fiction to be more cerebral, which I sometimes do as a reader, I recommend “The Hour before Morning” by Arwen Spicer (http://www.amazon.com/The-Hour-before-Morning-ebook/dp/B0080Q9LFQ). She joined my writer’s group this week so, of course, I had to look her up and read some of her work. The theme is unconventional, dark, and thought provoking.

The first is a reader review (and thank you for the review) that called “A Larger Universe” a “novella.” Just for the record, Wikipedia defines a novella (according to the SFWA) as between 17,500 and 40,000 words. “A Larger Universe” is 123,000 words (and 245 pages when printed.) Actually, I take the comment as something of a compliment – it must have seemed like a quick read, which means the prose flowed smoothly. Science Fiction novels used to be about that length. Now they are often much longer. Word processors are much less effort than typewriters.

Which brings me to the second thing: I recently discovered a tool called Scrivener that was expressly created for writers. I learned to type in high school, but I was never comfortable with the typed page. I typed slowly and with a lot of mental effort as I tried to not make any mistakes. The process became more important than creativity. My first real word processing program was liberating. Mistakes didn’t matter because they could be easily corrected. Scrivener is another multiplier. To make an analogy, I learned computer programming when the process was mostly “start at the beginning and proceed to the end.” Yes, there were subroutines, but they were written with the main program. Then I discovered object-oriented programming in which the program is a collection of interacting objects. Each object, which can be very small, but is self-contained, is written separately and then assembled with all the others into the complete program. Making changes and moving “stuff” around is relatively easy compared to the old way I did things. Scrivener is like that. Each scene stands on its own and can be modified and moved as required with a drag-and-drop. At any time, Scrivener can “compile” part of or the entire novel (short story, screen play, school paper, scientific article, whatever) to Word© (other outputs also available) to see how it reads at that moment. It has a lot of other features and is wonderfully cheap. It was originally written for the Mac, but I use it on a PC. If you’re trying to write, take a look.

My novel has been drifting downward in the Amazon bestseller list.  I had hoped for a longer run.

If you like fantasy, I recommend the $.99 short story “The Wasp” by Elizabyth Burtis.  You only get twelve pages for your ninety-nine cents, but it is a very entertaining read, well written, and an eerie new twist on the vampire trope.
You can find it at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008PF5R46

Amazon had a system failure last night and a large number of rankings disappeared for the Kindle, including mine and “Hunger Games.” When the rankings reappeared, about noon, this is where I was in the Teen Science Fiction.  The story is about a teenager, but not meant to be only for teenagers.  Thank you all for reading my novel…and a special thanks to everyone who has written a review on Amazon.