Last night I returned to the Superversive live stream to discuss my current crowdfunding campaign for Combat Frame XSeed: Coalition Year 40. Host Benjamin Wheeler and I talked Combat Frame XSeed, I gave some tantalizing details about the forthcoming sequel, and offered new writers some action and pacing writing tips.
Here are some select previews:
- I confirmed that CFXS; CY40 will be a revenge story partly influenced by The Count of Monte Cristo wherein militant grounders finally take up arms against the Coalition.
- In response to multiple questions about the new book’s major characters, I intimated that my goal in writing Arthur is to make the reader feel at least fleeting pity for the Socs.
- I broke the big news that Combat Frame XSeed will not be a four-book series as initially planned, but will instead consist of five books. As I wrote CY 40, it became clear that depicting all the events of that pivotal year in the manner they deserve would result in a Nethereal-sized tome and a delayed release. Happily, there was already a perfect dividing line between the story’s two main acts, which gives the first part a natural Empire Strikes Back style ending. Combat Frame XSeed: Coalition Year 40 will launch on time next month. Stay tuned for further announcements on that arc’s concluding volume, Combat Frame XSeed: CY 40 Second Coming.
And here’s some sample writing advice:
- Don’t write a book as if you’re dictating the action of a movie playing in your head. The supplemental visual cues and effects that make movies work aren’t available to books. However, novelists can pull tricks that make screenwriters jealous. Play to the strengths of the print medium like deep POV
- Being too repetitive and too confusing are the two author mistakes most likely to make readers put a book down and never pick it back up.
- Fast pacing has little to do with sentence and paragraph length. Pacing depends on building and maintaining tension and making sure characters stay properly motivated.
Hear all this and more in this episode of the Superversive SF live stream!
P.S. Thanks to our amazing backers, the Combat Frame XSeed: Coalition Year 40 crowdfunding campaign is still going strong! We’re 182% funded at last count. If just one more backer signs up to be killed in a book–and trust me, I’ll make it interesting!–the second series of trading cards will be funded.
There are plenty of other great perks too, with more being added all the time. Have a book dedicated to you, create your own canonical character, or commission your very own short story from a Dragon Award-winning author! Plus every backer gets a digital copy of the book, and all perk tiers except for the CY40 only eBook perk receive the original Combat Frame XSeed eBook as well.
P.P.S. It’s been brought to my attention that some CFXS crowdfunding transactions haven’t gone through because Indiegogo’s confirmation emails are getting lost in backers’ spam folders. At least one backer reported getting a confirmation email only to receive a second one that went to spam and prevented his perk claim from processing. If you’ve already backed the campaign, I strongly suggest checking your inbox and your spam folder to make sure that no messages from Indiegogo have fallen by the wayside. If you haven’t received confirmation from IGG, your contribution may not have gone through. Please double check to ensure perk fulfillment. If you’ll be backing the campaign for the first time now or in the near future, please be sure to check your email, including the spam folder, to make sure you don’t miss your confirmation message. Thank you!
"In response to multiple questions about the new book's major characters, I intimated that my goal in writing Arthur is to make the reader feel at least fleeting pity for the Socs."
I regret to say that you have failed in this goal, at least for this reader. Pity for Arthur, yes. Not for the Socs.
Give it time.