Still There

 Even though I haven't been writing full time lately, that doesn't mean my characters aren't in my head at all. Every once in a while, one of them wanders in to say hello. Here's one of them:

Reggie Hawkins decided that if he kept his head down, he didn’t have to acknowledge that he was alone. He studied the label on his beer, which hadn’t changed since the last time he studied it, and took another drink. It didn’t taste any better than the solitude.

He finally shifted his gaze down the long wooden bar to where the bartender was wiping the same glass he’d been wiping for the past half hour. It must be hard to look busy when there was no one around. Maybe he was just waiting for Hawkins to leave so he could drop the pretense.

Hawkins had thought that some of his crewmates might come down, but it was getting late and that looked unlikely. He really ought to return to his room, but it wasn’t any better than this place, although the bed was probably a little more comfortable than the bar stool.

He took another drink, unsure why he’d come down here in the first place. Maybe he’d thought there’d be people here and he could find something in their chatter that didn’t exist on the television or his phone. It was a good thing the ship was scheduled to leave the next morning or who knows what he would have tried next.

He picked at the label, which really wasn’t a label since they’d gone to etching to save on paper. The trees were probably happy, except that they were no doubt used for something worse, like toilet paper. He bet they’d rather be beer labels.

Hawkins sighed. The truth was that he missed Nick Bartucci. He had no shortage of friends—on and off the ship—but no two friends are alike and he missed the one who was Nick.

The memory made him realize there were two things he needed to do: decide if he’d have trouble being aboard Penumbra when Nick wasn’t there … and get over it.

It still took him by surprise when some random thought pierced his brain and he was brought up short, as if walking into a wall that he hadn’t seen there. It made him shake his head, wondering why the memories wouldn’t leave him alone. They could be caused by anything, really: a laugh, something irritating, a baseball cap he spotted on a passerby. It didn’t seem to matter. Each time, he felt a sharp dig in his midsection, followed by shortness of breath and sometimes a coughing fit. A few seconds later, all seemed normal.

Sometimes Hawkins recalled a memory on purpose, just to avoid the surprise, but it still affected him the same way. And this had been going on for a few months. It was time to get past the whole thing.

He just didn’t know how to do that.

Hawkins turned his head. The bartender had set down the glass and stood at attention, gazing at the front of the bar as if he’d seen a miracle. Seconds later, the sound of voices told Hawkins what had caused the reaction. Three young people, two men and a woman, sailed into the room and docked at the bar, where they placed cheerful orders and carried on a lively conversation. Drinks in hand, they barely considered their options before selecting a booth a few meters from Hawkins, apparently unaware of him or the bartender smiling at them.

Hawkins offered his own smile at the beer bottle as he listened to the animated chatter, punctuated by laughter and occasional mock outrage. His muscles relaxed and his spine straightened a bit. After a while, he was ready to go upstairs and try to sleep.

“Hey,” he said as he reached for his phone.

The bartender gave him grudging attention.

“Put their first round on mine,” Hawkins said.

The bartender nodded and poked a few buttons on his monitor.

Hawkins saw the balance change on the little screen built into the bar next to his bottle. He tapped some information into his phone to increase the balance to include a hefty tip. Then he tapped the phone against the screen and put it away, which he also did with the last of the beer.

Then he headed to get some sleep before the next day's flight.

Reconnecting

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I made my usual trek up to Nebraska to spend time with my family, which makes this one of my favorite holidays. I love my family and I'm always glad when I get to reconnect with them.

During this time, I was able to ask someone who grew up on a farm about how corn grows. At first I was afraid to look dumb, but then I asked the question anyway ... and I got a useful answer. This might not seem important to you, but it was huge for me: the reason I asked about corn is that I'm trying to write a scene involving some characters running around in a cornfield.

That's right: I'm writing a scene! After over a year, I'm starting to reconnect with my characters. There was a dog named Nick in the National Dog Show and I immediately thought of my pilot. I'm starting to think about asking Reg's advice again. I'm trying to look at problems through Lamont's eyes.

What a relief. There were times I thought this would never happen again. It doesn't mean that I'm going to sit down and write my whole fifth novel next week, but now I really am beginning to believe there's a good chance it will get finished.

To those of you who write, I know you've probably gone through writer's block before. Maybe you're going through it now. Believe me, I know how scary it is when you think you're never going to write anything more than an email again ... but I'm here to tell you this: you will get past it! Just keep trying, just keep hoping, just keep writing (even if the result is awful). Remember what it is about your characters or story that excited you in the first place.

I have to laugh at the timing. I'm ready to get to work again, just as I'm getting hit with holiday decorating, gift-planning, baking, parties, etc. But I don't mind. Writing is a gift and I'm going to take some time to unwrap it again.

Have a magical holiday season.

Advancing

Will someone please tell me how it got to be October? It's been almost a month since my last post! It certainly doesn't seem that long and I apologize for it.

September was quite a challenging month at work, both in workload and issues that arose for me and my co-workers. Things are working out, for the most part, but it kept me busy and I was often so tired when I got home that I plopped in front of the TV and didn't do anything, including thinking about my blog.

Just in case work wasn't overwhelming enough, Elon Musk and another co-worker decided to jump into the mix (although not with the purpose of overwhelming me). You might have heard about Elon Musk and SpaceX's plan for Mars exploration and colonization. He's looking at the 2020s to start, which is amazingly soon if you think about it, and his plans are detailed. If you'd like to see the video (which is long and rather technical in places, but also fascinating), try this: Elon Musk Mars Plan Or here's a shorter, more visual look: SpaceX Interplanetary Travel

A co-worker had mentioned the longer video to me so I watched most it. At first I was right there with the plan, but it wasn't long before he got into the technical aspects of the propellant and engines, leaving me behind. I'm certainly not an engineer.

As I contemplated that, my co-worker mentioned the D-Wave computer, which I'd never heard of (that was embarrassing). I Googled it today and it only took a very short time before I found myself floundering. The big problem is that it's based on quantum physics, which is a subject I must admit my brain can't wrap itself around. I've tried, but the concepts are so fantastic that I'm not able to envision or make sense of them. This made the D-Wave computer almost opaque to me. I can sort of understand cooling atoms down until they're almost motionless, and I can almost envision them merging in waves, but then I get lost trying to understand how that would lead to computing anything, especially when it's not clear whether the results would be statistically reliable or whether alternate universes are possible or not.

Whew! I'm not giving up on either of these things, the Mars plan or the D-Wave computer, but I might have to let myself marvel at them without completely comprehending them. I drive a car without knowing the intricacies of its computer, so I guess this is the same thing.

The only thing that gives me pause about this is that I write science fiction. Shouldn't I understand the science? Well, I can try, but I'm not always going to succeed. What I must remember is that I can't pretend to understand something I don't. Believe it or not, there are things in my novels that I couldn't fully explain (besides what's going on in Nick's head, I mean), but I do my best not to make it look like I understand them. Does that make sense? I know nothing about machinery but one of my main characters is a mechanic. I try to say what he's working on without making it obvious I don't know how to do that. I don't make up some kind of tool or piece of equipment so mechanics everywhere can exclaim, "What?! She doesn't know what she's talking about!"

I'm also not going to throw a D-Wave computer into my next novel just because it's the latest thing. I'll leave that to writers who understand it. As for the colonization of Mars, that wasn't even a possibility when I started writing my novels, so I'll just have to live with it if I didn't foresee it. That's the risk a science fiction writer takes. (I feel like I got a few things right, though. Autoguide, anyone?)

I guess I'm trying not to get too overwhelmed. If I think I have to understand everything related to space exploration or include all of the latest technology in my novels, I'm going to write mush. I might do that anyway, but I'm trying to avoid it!

Meanwhile, I can marvel at the latest advances. I hope you will, too.

Closet Spaceship Part 16

The next time Nick saw me, he stopped walking along the main corridor, stepped back and said, “No.”

I stopped, too. “What?”

“No,” he repeated. “I’m not doing it.”

“Okay,” I said. “So don’t do it.”

Nick likes to make people think he knows what they’re talking about, so I thought I’d do the same to him.

He squinted at me. “Yeah?”

“Sure,” I said. “I forbid you to do it.”

That was enough over the top that he caught on and rolled his eyes.

“Nick, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

“No s**t,” he said.

Reggie came around the corner from the dock area and scoffed when he saw us.

“What?” we both said. Nick scowled at me for that.

“Could you two be any more different?” Reggie asked. “I don’t think so.”

I crossed my arms. “You better not be referring to age.”

“Or height,” Nick said.

Reggie looked uncomfortable.

“Or gender,” I said.

“Or …” Nick was stuck until he touched the bill of his cap. “Or hats.”

Reggie and I both laughed.

“Shut up,” Nick said, which made us laugh harder.

“Or hats,” I said before I completely lost it. I was unable to say anything else for a few minutes. Every time I tried, I started laughing again.

Reggie laughed so hard he had to lean against the wall.

Finally Mark had to come find out what was going on, since I’m sure we were audible throughout most of the ship. He stood there shaking his head at the two of us.

“This is all your fault,” Nick said to him.

“Right,” Mark said. “My fault.”

Reggie was the first to try to compose himself. He took a couple of deep breaths and stood up straight, biting his lower lip. By that time, I could hardly breathe, so I did the same. We looked at each other out the corners of our eyes and almost lost it again, but managed to keep control.

“Sorry,” I gasped. “Not your fault.”

Nick said, “She probably wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t said we’re supposed to tell all our secrets.”

“What?” Mark said. “I never said that!”

“Nick, you’re such a trog sometimes,” Reggie said. “All he said was, we can tell why we did stuff, if we want.”

“Yeah, like why did I ever join this crew?” Nick grumbled.

“So why did you?” Reggie asked.

“Like I’d tell you,” Nick said. He looked at me. “Or you.”

“Okay,” I said. “You won’t be telling me anything. Got it.”

I didn’t think he’d want me to explain to him that he didn’t have to tell me anything because eventually he’ll show me.

And that may not be easy for either of us.

      For now, I can be grateful that he made me laugh.

Closet Spaceship Part 14

[NOTE: This installment contains a spoiler. If you haven’t read In the Shadows yet, I suggest you read it before this blog.]

It’s easy to find Tim Caswell: if he isn’t fixing the electronics somewhere, he’ll be in the radio studio. I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner.

I was on the radio sometimes, in college, but the studio didn’t look anything like the one where I found Tim. For one thing, I was using turntables. That’s right: LPs and 45s. I know I’m showing my age, but there it is. I think there was some finesse involved, knowing exactly how far to rotate that disk so the song would start just as I finished introducing it. No countdown timers or anything like that, just a working knowledge of the song.

But Tim knows a lot about music, so I can’t criticize him. It’s kind of strange to think that what’s new to me is old to him, especially since he’s younger than I am. That makes my brain shiver a little bit.

When he saw me, he seemed more curious than anything.

“Are you looking for somebody?” he asked.

“No, why?” I said.

He shrugged. “I didn’t think I’d ever get a visit.”

I sat down. “So I’m kind of like a ghost, then? You never know when—or if—I’ll appear.”

“Kind of like that, yeah.”

“It’s funny,” I said. “That’s how I think of all of you sometimes. There are times when I don’t think you’re ever going to show up again.”

He scowled. “But we’re right here all the time.”

“I know, but I can’t always see or hear you,” I said. “Writer’s block.”

“Oh,” he said. “I understand that. Sometimes I sit here and I can’t think of anything to say.”

“It’s rough, isn’t it?” I said.

He nodded.

I smiled. It’s always nice when I discover something I have in common with one of my characters, at least when it’s something good.

“That was pretty amazing what you did with Devereaux,” I said.

I really know how to kill the moment. Tim immediately frowned and crossed his arms.

“You mean, when I made friends with him and thought he was legit?” he asked.

“No, that is not what I—”

“I know,” he said, “but that’s what I did. I even vouched for him.”

“You know what?” I said. “I did that once, too.”

Tim rolled his eyes. “You vouched for a mass murderer?”

“No, I didn’t, but look, I don’t have the type of job where I run into those. I just run into weasels, crooks and the occasional back-stabber, that’s all. I work in a cubicle.”

“Wow,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too, sometimes.”

Before Tim could ask me for details, I said, “I mean, when you tricked him into talking.”

“Yeah.” Tim inspected his headphones. “Nick was gonna shoot him.”

“Oh, that would have been helpful,” I said. “It’s a good thing Nick wasn’t serious.”

“He wasn’t? But he had the gun and everything.”

I glanced around to be sure we were alone. “He thought he wanted to do it, but Nick isn’t a cold-blooded killer any more than anybody on this crew. Why do you think he made sure the captain saw him? He could easily have shot Devereaux before the captain knew he was there.”

Tim considered that. “I guess you’re right.”

“Nick did it for Reg,” I said, “and you did it for Captain Lamont.”

Tim nodded. “I heard him talking to Martinez. He’s had to do a lot of things, but that would have been too much, beating the truth out of Devereaux. I couldn’t let him do it.”

“You saved a lot of people, Tim,” I said. “Don’t ever forget that.”

“That’s what the captain said.”

“He knows he’s one of them.” I stood up. “I was here to see you, Tim. Maybe I’ll see you again.”

“Okay,” Tim said. “But next time we’re talking about your cubicle.”

Cue the ominous music.

      A good DJ doesn’t talk over the music, so I made a hasty retreat.

Placement of "He/She Said"

Most of us have characters who speak. Each character should have his/her own pattern of speech, vocabulary and accent. Much of the time, your reader should be able to tell who’s speaking by how it’s said, but the rest of the time, you’ll need to identify the speaker.

So how do you do this? You use “said.” But how do you do that?

I have four main methods:

1. “Then,” Smith said, “we saw it.”

I like this one because it lets you include a dramatic pause without having to worry about using a dash, ellipsis or other punctuation mark. Strategic placement of “he/she said” can change the whole effect of the sentence. “If you get out of here,” Smith said, “come back for me.” The pause makes me think Smith isn’t very hopeful.

Use this sparingly, though, so you won’t annoy your readers with needless interruptions … and make sure it actually fits. This is just stupid: “Then we,” Smith said, “saw it.”

2. “Then we saw it,” Smith said.

The second method is more common and I use it most of the time. You don’t want to use this for every sentence in a conversation or it will be overwhelming. However, you do want to sprinkle a few of these in there so your reader isn’t forced to count lines to determine who said what.

3. Smith said, “Then we saw it.”

I rarely use this one, but I do find it useful when I write an entire paragraph about one character and then I have a completely different character say something.

For example, in the fourth novel, I have a paragraph that shows Hawkins jogging in the dock area when he gets an unexpected call over the radio.

I followed it up with this:

Bartucci said, "Reg, you need to come up here and tell somebody I'm not your personal secretary."

Otherwise, the reader would have to get to the very end of the sentence to know who's saying this and it might be confusing.

(I hope you're excited to read a snippet of the next novel before anyone else!)

4. None of the above.

Of course, sometimes you can avoid "said" altogether if you use an action to identify the speaker.

Hawkins laughed. "I don't think anybody's got him completely figured out. I think he likes it that way."

That's from Outsider. (You get extra credit if you know who Reg is talking about.)

One more thing: beware of using too many synonyms for “said” or it can get ridiculous. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got when I started my first novel was to take out every “mumbled, stated, declared, proclaimed, grumbled, or asserted” and replace them with “said.” It made the story much smoother and better. I throw in the occasional “shouted” or “demanded,” but I use them sparingly.

I hope this is helpful. You want to identify who’s speaking so the reader can follow along, but you don’t want the reader to stumble over it.

Play around with these and see which works best the next time one of your characters has something to say.

Closet Spaceship Part 13

[NOTE: This installment contains a spoiler. If you haven’t read Another Shot yet, I suggest you read it before this blog.]

I’m sure Captain Lamont knew when I was aboard, and he didn’t go out of his way to avoid me, but he didn’t exactly seek me out either … until one day he did.

I was leaning toward a porthole in the dock area, trying to cup my hands tightly around my face so I could see the stars outside instead of reflections from the dock lights.

“You could turn off the lights,” said a voice behind me.

I have to admit that I jumped. I hadn’t heard anyone in the corridor.

“I’m supposed to be an observer,” I said, although I’d just proved how unobservant I can be.

“Is that all?” he asked.

“A recorder,” I said. “And a listener, I guess.”

I could tell he had something on his mind, but I didn’t want to scare him off so I pretended not to notice.

Lamont approached me. “Listening can be useful.”

“So can talking,” I said.

“Sometimes that’s true,” the captain said. “I want to thank you for not letting your visits become too disruptive. I think if you can keep that up, the crew might be a little less skittish.”

“I hope so.” I decided not to tell him about Sean. No need to advertise my spectacular failure there.

Lamont smiled. “Someday you might tell me how you won Nick over.”

“I don’t know that I really—wait a minute,” I said. I didn’t remember seeing the captain anywhere when I talked to Nick.

“I tend to pay attention when there’s shouting in the corridor,” Lamont said.

“Oh,” I said. So much for not being disruptive. “Sorry.”

The captain took a few steps and turned off the lights. “Have a look.”

I turned to stare at the porthole and I think I just sighed. No matter how many times I see it, that view will never get old. I wish I could describe how many stars there were or how beautiful it was with all of the glittering dots of colored light against a black that wanted to swallow them but couldn’t.

“Some people never look at that,” Lamont said. “I try to do it at least once a day.”

I nodded, although he probably couldn’t see me.

“May I ask you something?” he said in a quiet voice.

“Of course,” I said, mostly because it’s what he would have said, but also because I sensed that this was important.

“Some of the crew members have asked me,” he said. “They want to know if you can do anything … I mean, change anything that’s happened.”

Now I could understand why Lamont turned off the lights: I couldn’t see his face. Reggie would want to make Sean part of the crew, Mark would want me to give him more confidence, Nick would like me to fill up his bank account … but they weren’t the ones who were really asking.

“Oh,” I said. It was a tough question. I mean, I could change what I’ve written, but it wouldn’t be true to my characters or the story. So, in a way, I really couldn’t change it.

But how do you explain that? Especially when the captain is asking you to bring his close friend back to life, no matter how indirectly he’s asking. How do you tell him you won’t do it?

I lied: “No, I’m sorry. I can’t change what’s already happened. I only observe.”

After a moment, he said, “I’ll pass that along.”

I heard his footsteps walking toward the corridor and I didn’t have the heart to say any more. I turned to look at the view again, thinking that somehow I didn’t deserve it.

But then I thought about it some more. We’ve all known writers who’ve brought seemingly-dead characters back to life, whether it was for a book, a TV show or a movie, with varied success. Sometimes it seems forced, the writer bowing to the wishes of the readers/viewers.

Now I wonder how many writers have bowed to the wishes of another character.

The footsteps stopped.

“I’m sorry,” the captain said. “I shouldn’t have asked you that.”

“I understand why you did,” I said, “but please don’t do it again.”

He turned on the lights so I could see his face. “I promise.”

Then he was gone.

Closet Spaceship Part 10

Gwen was one of the more elusive crew members. I tried to catch her several times, but she has good peripheral vision and saw me coming. By the time I got there, she was nowhere to be seen.

I could respect that, so I tried not to let it bother me. After a while, I gave up ... so that’s when I stumbled upon her, of course.

She was in the rec room reading a book, tucked into a corner of the couch there. The book must have been good because I was able to get within a few meters of her before she looked up with an expression of dismay. Maybe fear. Or maybe dislike.

I suppose I should have built up some thick skin by now, given how some of the other crew members had reacted to me, but it stings a bit to be on the receiving end of a look like that.

“Okay, okay,” I said, raising both hands. “I’ll leave you alone. I don’t want to interrupt someone who’s reading a book anyway.”

Okay, I’ll admit it: I did check to see if it was my novel. It wasn’t.

She scowled at me for a few seconds, so I took a few steps back.

“As long as you don’t ask me that damned question,” she said.

I stopped backing up. “What question?”

She rolled her eyes. “The one about what’s it like to be a woman in a man’s world.”

I laughed. “Man’s world? What does that even mean?”

She actually smiled. “They don’t ask you that?”

“No,” I said, “but I’m not exactly famous, so they don’t really ask me anything.”

“So I’ll ask you,” she said, putting down her book.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about myself.”

That’s right: I did it. I walked right into her trap. Not a clue.

“Exactly!” she said. “Now you know how we feel!”

Ouch. How do you respond to something like that?

First you say, “Okay, you got me.”

Then you let her smile triumphantly at you.

Then you say, “Excuse me while I go fly the ship.”

She laughed. “Good luck!”

“Well, someone has to do it while you’re asking me all these questions and writing up the results,” I said.

“Don’t oversimplify,” Gwen said. “I’ll fly the ship, you’ll write about somebody else.”

“Who?” I asked. “You think what your captain and crew do should go unnoticed?”

“Well, no, but … you don’t have to include me, though.”

“Okay,” I said. “When you come down to pick up the crew from the middle of a firefight, I’ll just say some pilot did it. Or maybe I’ll say it was Nick.”

“Don’t you dare! Nick? I’d never hear the end of it!”

“Okay, it’s settled, then,” I said.

She shook her head. “Just remember that I have a minor role, okay?”

“Try to be as boring as you can.”

She nodded as she picked up her book. “Done.”

We’ll see how long she can live up to that.

Closet Spaceship Part 9

   I walked down the corridor in search of Nick, who was hiding out in the dining hall.  When I peeked through the doorway, I saw him slouched in a chair, holding a cup of coffee as if it were a pistol pointing in my direction.

   I raised both hands.  “May I come in?”

   He shrugged.

   I walked in and sat across the table from him.

   “You could just shoot me,” I said. “Although not with that.”

   The coffee cup clanked onto the table.

   “What do you want?” he asked.

   “I don’t know,” I said. “To talk to you, I guess.”

   “So talk.”

   “That’s not what I meant. You want me to go on for a few minutes about writing or something like that? No, you don’t.”

   “No, I don’t,” he said. “What do you think I did?”

   I smiled. “I mostly said that to get you to stop. But there is something: you—”

   “Listen,” he interrupted, “I did exactly what I told the captain. It’s not my fault I got so far away from the landing site. S**t, they act like I really was sightseeing. Reg won’t shut up about it.”

   He was referring to an incident in the first novel, when the captain and Hawkins arrived at the ship’s landing site with some angry colonists in pursuit and didn’t find Outsider there as they expected because Nick was busy trying to evade some colony ships that wanted to shoot him down. (If you want more details, read the novel. What else do you expect me to say?)

   “I know what you did there, Nick,” I said. “You had two ships on your tail, so you did what you had to do. Nobody faults you for that.”

   “So what, then?” he asked.

   I chuckled. “Sean told everybody he gave you the slip.”

   “So what? He did.”

   “Not exactly, did he? I believe your exact words were, ‘Get the hell away from me before I put a few holes in you,’ weren’t they? Oh, and something about a dumb kid.”

   Nick looked uncomfortable. “He tell you that?”

   “No, dummy,” I said, “I was there, remember? You can deny it all you want, but I heard what you said. He didn’t give you the slip; you sent him away. Not that he minded. He would have gone anyway, so maybe you should have been a little more patient.”

   Nick scoffed.

   “I know,” I said. “Patient isn’t exactly in your character profile.”

   “S**t,” he said.

   “Listen, Nick,” I said. “I’m not going to tell anybody. I’m not here to get you or anyone in trouble. I’m not going to run to the captain every time somebody ignores an alarm or does something stupid. He probably already knows anyway.  That’s not why I’m here.”

   “So why are you here?” he demanded. “Why don’t you just leave us alone?”

   “Because I’m a writer,” I said, “and because you won’t leave me alone.”

   He looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

   “You don’t get it,” I said. “If you want me to stop coming, get a boring job and be boring yourself. Then we can leave each other alone. Until then, we’re stuck with each other.”

   It’s true: I’ve tried a few times to leave the crew behind, but it didn’t work. Someday I might stop writing about them, but they’ll never leave me completely.

   “Go on,” I said. “I know there’s a poker game upstairs.”

   When Nick left, he was walking, not running, so I suppose that’s progress.  We’ll see.