Submissions for our Escape Velocity has increased. Not so much a deluge but a steady trickle. Eight came directly to me today, some so good I wish I’d written them! But most will need a lot of work. One wasn’t science fiction at all. I re-read it to check, but a story about a horse race set in 1938 in Dubai, with the protagonist as the horse, was not close to the submission guidelines for our hard sci fi magazine. At least I think it was the horse – the point of view of the narrator head hopped – maybe the dust storm in the cup of tea, which also had a significant role, confused me. Nothing really happened – no conflict, hardly any dialogue, and much loose writing with pleonasms, liberally splattered with arabic words. I suggested it should be submitted to Al Shindagah magazine or Hounds & Horses.

One of the pleasures of having been a teacher is in receiving letters and e-mails from former students. One of the best computer science students I had the honour of teaching is Arthur Barrett, who tells me he is looking for IT or computer work. So if you know of anyone seeking a clever chap for whom databases, program languages and web design is not a mystery let me know.  When one of my students, Arthur, wrote me into a computer game. I’d set a homework task as part of their learning the PASCAL computer language, so there I was as a character in an interactive adventure game. Hah!

My writing time is split so I spend twice as much time writing fresh words of my own as in critiquing other writers. Much of that is within organised groups such as the Orbiters in the special interest group of the BSFA (British Science Fiction Association), but I also receive fiction from writer friends and those I meet in forums. A smaller amount is from submissions to Adventure Books – mainly because the AB website directs submissions directly to my Seattle friend  and AB boss, Robert Blevins, and he acts as the #1 filter. Frankly we are puzzled why we receive so few hard science fiction short story submissions to our new magazine, Escape Velocity. It is a paying market now, so you can proudly add it to your writer’s resume if we publish it. Here is the link. Or if you want me to read it through and suggest any necessary changes send it to me. My e-mail is on my http://geoffnelder.com website.

We all need improvement – unless you’re Robert Heinlein – and I too benefited from the keen eyes and literary brain of Gladys Hobson, who edited my short story, Returning Reality, which is a sequel to my humour thriller novel, Escaping Reality, and which will appear shortly in Gladys’s new anthology, Northern Lights. She has other books available at Magpies Nest

What I find difficult to understand is when I spend a couple of hours or more reading and feeding back a detailed crit and then not hearing any more from that writer. From my 30 years as a teacher I always find some positive angles to congratulate the writer and if possible to suggest a market for the revised product. I appreciate that any criticism can smart, especially if you feel it’s come from a smart ass! But a critique of a piece of fiction is just a set of suggested improvements. No one would say that writer has to rewrite or lose their voice. I am always grateful when friends do the same for me and always say so even if it means going for a lie down in a darkened room first, and not always agreeing.

I seem to be in one of the only non-raianing spots in Britain today, so I’ve persuaded Mrs to come out into the cold sunshine. I’ve already scribbled another 500 on Exit, so the other 1500 can wait until tonight.

I subscribe to the free e-newsletter that Michael Quinion produces weekly to us wordsmiths. In today’s collection lurks a wonderful weird word in sci fi context. I quote it:
“Twitterpated
——————————————————————-

This lovely term appeared, slightly differently, in the article Sex
in Space in Wired magazine on 18 May: “How do you handle love, sex,
romance, heartbreak, jealousy, hurt, unrequited longing, crushes,
loneliness and twitterpation when you’re 18 months away from Earth
and perhaps unsure whether you’ll make it back?”

It refers to the feelings you get when you think about your current
object of desire. A contributor to the Urban Dictionary defined it
as ‘An enjoyable disorder characterized by feelings of excitement,
anticipation, high hopes, recent memories of interludes, giddiness,
and physical overstimulation which occur simultaneously when
experiencing a new love.’”

(World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2007. All rights
reserved. The Words Web site is at http://www.worldwidewords.org .)

Twitterpated might be happening to my protagonist, Kallandra, in my forever nearly-finished Exit, Pursued by a Bee sci fi novel. She had to leave her fiance behind on Earth while hurtling off in pursuit of the spheres. Claude is with her. Hitherto only a friend maybe both have realised they’re unlikely to return to their loved ones, and, like air attendants, they are at that youthful promiscuous age. (Folk at my age don’t get those feelings, do we? Hah). Suffering mutual twitterpation, after a few weeks they shamefully experience zero-gravity love-making. Tsk. Whatever next? Will their influential fiances back at Mission Control seek retribution – Claude remembered to turn off the onboard cams but not their implanted biological sensors… oh dear.

I’ve cycled in excess of 120 miles since yesterday morning so excuse any wobbles in my fingers.  I haven’t cycled more than 35 miles in a day since October! I like to have a good reason for cycling long distances – eg fetching a newspaper from a little Welsh corner shop on a sunday morning. The news always seems better when you work hard for it…

Anyway the good reason this time was the opportunity to meet up with playwright, actor, poet and writer, Donna Gagnon, who’d nipped over from Canada to Shrewsbury to grab her man, Doug, and take him back with her. Donna I’d known for a couple of years through the writers’ community at BeWrite and she with Doug have helped me research the Magic Realism story I’m about to write, Xaghra’s Revenge. It may seem daft to cycle so far (50 miles from here to meet them in Shrewsbury, but I got overconfident with my memorised mapreading en route home – hence the extra miles!) but cycling energises my imagination and gives me time to think through plot issues and characters.

Donna took a snapshot just before I set off home.

I’m having trouble concentrating at the moment. I usually write in my lounge. A big comfy armchair envelopes me while on my lap is a normal-size keyboard wired to the PC, and the screen is 80 cm away. Maybe a mistake but next to the monitor is a TV – only a small one – 21 inch. We’ve promised ourselves a large flatscreen but hate throwing things away that work, so we’re waiting for this 15-years-old tube to crack first. You’re thinking you know why I can’t concentrate on writing, aren’t you? The TV is on. Not so, yes the TV is on but I’ve always had the need for background. Often the TV is tuned to a music DVD – the latest (thanks to our wedding anniversary) being Richard Strauss Ariadne auf Naxos; The Metropolitan Opera with Kathleen Battle and Jessye Norman belting it out. Excellent. I might equally be listening to Pink Floyd or Scriabin.

The issue with concentrating is more with inside me. I get restless after 30 minutes and have to walk about. Maybe I should get voice activation and dictate the next scene to my PC. Luckily there’s lots of activity I need to do. Besides mowing the lawn and cleaning windows, there’s reading and editing the work of friend’s and clients. I usually print those and throw myself into a chair in the conservatory or take myself off to town and hide in a café to read. Somehow the different environment allows me to consider my own chapters in a different light that way.

I’ve considered Stephen King’s implore, which is to set up a writing room. We have a small box room and could easily do that – sans TV, sans easy-to-look-out-window, and a milieu that says, “Work you idiot!” Maybe I’ll try that next week.

I finished reading a film script last night. Brian Withecombe writes great naval historical adventures and at my request sent me his Seagull screenplay. Real swashbuckling action and authentic feel to places, people, and ships. With its surprise ending it deserves to be made into a movie. Good luck, Brian. He sent it to me so I could see the format used currently. All preparation leading up to my future transcribing Left Luggage into a screenplay. Maybe.

I received a message from my friend Al Guthrie. Remember he wrote that superb page of writerly  hints and tips here. He says:  Just a quick message to let you know that somehow my debut novel, Two-Way Split, was just long-listed for the Theakston’s Crime Novel Of The Year award. The short-list is determined by public vote, and if you’d care to vote (for Two-Way Split or any one of 19 superior efforts), then you can do so online in just a couple of clicks at:

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/navigate.do?pPageID=1319

Cheers,  Al

PS: In all fairness, in order for you to make a considered decision, I should let you know that if I don’t make the shortlist, THE PUPPY DIES.Fair enough. I’ve voted for you, Al, and you know I’ve read yours – superb and worthy of winning even though I confess I haven’t read all the others.

Not all my writing news is bad. In fact none of it really is. Just because some agents felt Left Luggage wasn’t for them, there is that lucky agent out there just waiting for it to plop onto his desk and for him to realise its maginificent global potential. Brad Linaweaver in Hollywood said it should be larger that LOST. So come on agents…

I did have an acceptance yesterday of a short humour story, Camera Shy, to the paper magazine, Delivered. Camera Shy is set in Paris, where I wrote it while sat in (on) a pavement cafe. A thief on a bike steals a video camera from English tourists. The tourist grabs the bike and uses it to chase the chief through crowded streets and down into the subway, and … You’ll have to buy the magazine later this year!

35 years ago on the 20th May, I married Gaynor in a small Methodist chapel tucked in between t’Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal. In our full regalia we had to cross a road via a pedestrian crossing (reflections of the Beatles’ Abbey Road cover illustration) to have our photos taken. 35 years and she hasn’t kicked me out yet…

More agent blues – or blues from an agent.

It was two years ago while puffing, cycling up a long steep hill I had one of those epiphany thingies: an original thought. I assumed all that exercise energised my brain cell. I nearly fell off my bike, but managed to stop and jot down my sciemce fiction premise that was unique. That night the first thousand words of Left Luggage was writ, and having writ moved on (a la Omar Khayyam) to the rest of the novel taking six months to do the first draft. I was so sure of publication I shot it off to a few agents.

One rejection from a NYC agent today completely floored me.

“I’m afraid we’re going to pass. It is indeed an original premise but I’ve personally been moving away from this kind of book, the so-called “high concept” book with a clever premise. Just doesn’t appeal to me these days. “

Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghh!

A NYC literary agent kindly gave me an insight yesterday. Actually I was astonished to receive the response to my submission so quickly. I’d printed the sample chapters, synopsis and marketability page for Left Luggage in a brown envelope and cycled madly to the post office. That was Saturday afternoon. I received an e-mail response on Tuesday, which means my submission was collected in these suburbs of Chester, UK taken to Crewe for sorting, put on a van to Manchester Airport, resorted for the most appropriate flight to New York, flown across the Atlantic. Resorted in America and delivered to the correct office, where the agent read my work and bashed out the responding e-mail. All within 60 hours!

Anyway, she said she didn’t feel strong enough about Left Luggage to take it on. Waaaaa! And I’d had a good feeling about this one (not withstanding the good feelings I have for others still considering it), so those good feelings wafted out of that envelope and now inhabits a vase of flowers in that agent’s office. I replied with thanks for considering it and asked if she could give one reason for her response. She was good enough to respond by saying that it read rather like a screenplay than a novel. Ouch that hurt! But maybe there’s a reason. I was part of a team, leading it for a while, of aspiring writers belonging to Lush, a brainchild of Michael Starr, the brilliant am dram actor and dramatist in London. His website here. This was at my formative years as a  post-teaching career writer, and ever since I’ve written stories with that camera on my right shoulder!

So I wondered what gives it away. Have I too much dialogue in the first few pages? We have tips on writing telling us to have conflict and some action on the first page, other advice tell us to set the scene. I chose the former, and the best way for me to have conflict and action is for it to be shown through characters in trouble. So I reached for some contemporary sci fi novels on my shelf and did a little crude analysis. Of these fine writers: Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Richard Morgan, Alastair Reynolds, M. John Harrison and Liz Williams four start with a prologue! Ummm and interesting considering some pundits at writing conferences tell us prologues get in the reader’s way of getting their teeth into a book. In the first 5 pages they all have dialogue from up to 90 plus lines – Alastair Reynold’s Pushing Ice, which carries a looooooong info dump speech, down to 20+ lines.

My Left Luggage has around 90 lines too. This is because, after a one short paragraph prologue, it starts in the space shuttle and so I have the atronauts discuss a problem when they find the ISS rotating in space when it shouldn’t be. So now I’m re-reading Noah Lukeman’s The First Five Pages to remind me what he says about maybe me rushing into dialogue too early, and how much scene setting is OK to do with introspection from the lead character. Ho hum.  I’ve asked experienced writer friends for their advice too. The problem with redrafting is: what do you do with submissions already out there?

As for that NYC agent, she has yet to get back to me now I’ve asked her whether she works with sci fi screen plays! I have such a nerve…

A note about Left Luggage and other gems here

If you went to AltFiction in Derby in April you might have seen me furtively littering the place with leaflets calling for short story submissions to a new sci fi magazine, Escape Velocity. I thought I’d have to pay a ton of money to distribute them officially. A charming lady on the desk spotted me and said: Hey, we’ll do that for you! Hah! They inserted one of my leaflets in each of the goody bags from then on – sadly most attendees had already arrived. Next time I’ll do it properly.

So what was the leaflet about? Something along these lines:

There is a puzzle.

In my modest way I work for Adventure Books of Seattle. It’s only a
small press POD publisher but with a fanatical boss in Robert Blevins
with links to many real life 3D bookstores arguably in the heart of
the science fiction reading centre of the world.

Frustrated by having our own stories rejected by Asimov and F&FS, and
even though we’ve had dribbles of success in other mags, we decided
there was room for a new SF magazine. We’ve called it Escape Velocity
and it will be a print magazine.

The puzzle is that in spite of the wails from short story writers, at
Speculations and elswhere, who submit to non-paying non-print
magazines and never hear from them again, there are the tiniest
trickles of submissions to our Escape Velocity. Even though there
would be no payment you do receive a free copy of the mag and another
line in your CV. If you have a spare sci fi short story or an article
that fits or nearly so, our guidelines at Adventure Books

submit online there or through me if you prefer.

It would seem a shame for a fledging magazine to flounder for lack of
publishable submissions.

Keep science fiction alive!