Posts Tagged ‘writing a novel’
Meniscus: Crossing The Churn …. published!
I am so proud to announce that my new science-fiction book Meniscus: Crossing The Churn is now available in paperback through Amazon. The book is written in the form of a long poem and includes my pencil drawings.
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To quote the book cover:
On the alien planet Meniscus, Humans are slaves. Every twilight, Odymn runs through the forests of Meniscus, practicing the art of parkour. Her runs give her strength, flexibility and endurance, and a way to survive a life of servitude under the oppressive Dock-winders. When the silent Slain rescues her from a brutal encounter with a gang of Gel-heads, Odymn believes she has reached the end of her search for freedom. In their travels through the Prell’nan District of Meniscus, she and the Slain encounter dangerous woodlands, dramatic water-climbs and an impassable water churn. Odymn and the Slain work together to evade the Gel-heads and overcome the dangers of the landscape. But is Odymn really free or is she caught in a cycle of trying to escape the inevitable?
In the first of the Meniscus series, Crossing the Churn tells the story of the meeting of a young woman and a genetically-engineered Slain whose kindness may not be consistent with his purpose.
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This is the first book in a series of five, all in various stages of completion. I aim to publish a new book in the series every couple of months during 2017.
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I have published this book under my first name Alexandra so be sure to look for it under Alexandra Tims. Hope you will come with me for a run through the landscapes of the planet Meniscus.
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or for Canadian customers:
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If you buy my book, please leave a short review on Amazon!!!
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True to my botany training, part of the story reveals how to stay fed on an alien planet with no grocery store nearby! If you want to stay fed on this planet, have a look at the poems in my other book within easy reach (Chapel Street Editions, 2016), also available on Amazon.
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Odymn and the Slain
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Copyright Jane Tims 2017
The “proof” arrives!
A knock on the door yesterday afternoon brought the “proof” of my new book Meniscus: Crossing The Churn”. So exciting!
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The proofing with CreateSpace takes a while if you follow their process. At the suggestion of one of my blog readers, I sent for the hard copy “proof” and I am so glad I did! I am also reviewing a virtual book and a PDF version, both provided by CreateSpace.
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I know from my read of the virtual book, there are several things I want to fix. But having the proof makes publication of the book more “real”. Also, a read of the real pages will probably point out other edits … there always seems to be a difference between my perception of paper and screen versions!
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It will take a few hours to read the “proof”, make any changes and go through the process of downloading the new version to CreateSpace. Then, a repeat of the proofing process. Nevertheless, I am that much closer to the publication of my book on Amazon!
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Copyright Jane Tims 2017
a muse takes over – character arcs
Every character in a novel needs a background and a story arc of their own, in order to make them interesting and realistic. This creates challenges as I proceed through the drafts of the five books of my sci-fi series ‘Meniscus’.
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In Book One (Crossing the Churn), I have only two main characters, Odymn and the Slain.
In Book Two (South from Sintha), they rescue three new characters from servitude under the Dock-winder aliens and a simple community begins to take shape.
In Book Three (Winter by the Water-climb), a transport crash brings six more humans to the settlement.
By Book Four (The Town at Themble Hill), the settlers are actively seeking new recruits to the community and there are sixteen characters for the writer (me) to manage.
At the end of Book Five, even I don’t know how many characters will survive/be added!
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Character arcs assist with the forward motion of the entire story. Each character’s story arc contributes to the whole and is usually connected in some way to the main story arc.
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I express my character story arcs in a three-part sentence — what the character wants, the obstacles he or she encounters, and the resolution.
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For example, one of the new recruits in Book Four (The Town at Themble Hill) is Edward, a medical doctor. Although the settlers can get the help of an alien elder, a doctor who has actually treated human illness will be a great asset to the community. When he enters the story, he has been a Dock-winder slave, used to treat the ailments of other human slaves.
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In the Dock-winder city of Prell, Edward has been able to work with complex technologies. But in the new human settlement, deep in the Themble Woods, even simple tools like stethoscopes or standard pharmaceuticals don’t exist. Edward has to reinvent his approach to medicine, developing his own methods with available tools and embracing alien natural medicines and techniques he previously belittled.
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So, Edward’s story arc is expressed as follows:
Edward wants to help his patients but when technology is no longer available, he has to learn to embrace alien methods and natural herbal medicines.
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This sentence, once written, can help determine the mood of the character, his attitude towards other characters, his response in various situations and the risks he is willing to take. Now I can revise my draft to make it consistent with Edward’s story arc.
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There are often three ‘bumps’ to move the character’s story arc along. Edward’s three ‘bumps’ are consistent with his story arc:
- Edward is skeptical of the Argenop methods (the Argenops are primitive aliens, cute and furry)
- He encounters a medical challenge that, with technology, could be easily resolved
- He tries an alien, herbal treatment and learns to trust new methods
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Back to work!
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Copyright 2017 Jane Tims
a muse takes over – telling a story through the seasons
In New Brunswick, the passage of time is measured in part by the seasons. Right now we are in winter, in the midst of another snow storm and taking a lot of care when walking on all the ice. Soon it will be spring with crocuses blooming on the lawn and water in every hollow. Then summer, days on the deck and keeping cool. Finally, my favourite season, autumn, colourful leaves and starry nights.
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Since I am a writer embedded in the winter-spring-summer-fall cycle, it’s natural that changing seasons are an important part of my sci-fi novel. Although weather is often a factor in story telling, I find many books ignore the changing of the seasons.
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Seasons on planet Meniscus occur in a cycle of four, as in the northern and southern latitudes of Earth. On Meniscus the seasons are the result of a changing heat regime as once per ‘year’ one of the twinned suns slips behind the other. Whether the physics of this makes much sense, I can’t say. “I’m a biologist, Jim, not a physicist!”
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Book One, Crossing the Churn, begins in summer. Foraging for food is easy. As the days pass, leaves begin to fall and soon the characters wade rather than walk through the forest.
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Book Two, South from Sintha, finishes in autumn, as the days grow colder. New characters in Book Two are looking for a home before winter sets in.
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Book Three, Winter at the Water-climb, takes place in a world of ice. The plot focuses on the coming of cold weather and shorter days. Foraging for food is difficult since everything is hidden under snow drifts. Survival depends on what has been put into storage.
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Book Four, The Town in the Themble Wood, celebrates the coming of spring and the vibrancy of summer. The Slain and Odymn scout the Themble Wood for a town-site and help the other Humans establish a new community.
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Book Five, so new it has no name, will take the characters back into autumn. In many ways this book will be a race against time as winter approaches and the Slain must find Odymn and other characters who have been lost after a crisis.
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Including seasons in my story adds to the possibilities for describing setting. The cinnamon scent of trees in the autumn Themble Wood, tracks in the snow of the new town, and melting water-springs add to the sights, sounds, smells and tastes my writing can explore.
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The progress of getting my first book into CreateSpace has been hampered this week by the appearance of ‘The Blue Screen of Death’ on my computer. It is fixed now, but I am sure the folks on Meniscus have never faced such a challenge!!!
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Copyright 2017 Jane Tims
a muse takes over – creating alien animal species
In this post, I’ll show you some of the animals I have invented for my science fiction tale of life on the alien planet Meniscus. If you think I have gone crazy, keep reading anyway!
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Hiking through the woods on planet Meniscus is dangerous. At any moment my characters can be attacked by carnivorous club-mosses, voracious bird-like reptiles seeking hair for their nests, packs of wolf-like ‘kotildi’, or three-eyed ‘slear-snakes’. Writing the scenes with these creatures has been so much fun.
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… the wolf-like kotildi are denizens of the Meniscus woodlands – wild, they are voracious, but tame, they are endearing!
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… Odymn and the Slain spend a bit of their time fending off trolling ‘slear-snakes’ …
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Probably because I love birds, I have included lots of birds in my list of species on Meniscus. These include large flightless and burrowing ‘grell’, the wheeling ‘wind-fleers’, and woodland song-birds.
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… Odymn sees a bird that looks like a ‘scarlet minivet’ on one of her adventures … not afraid of her at all …
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Here is a list of some of the animals on planet Meniscus.
| animal | description |
| elginard | wingless insect; moves by floating on air currents |
| evernell | feral cat-like scavenger, with whiskers; slinks, sprays saliva |
| grell-swallows | large burrowing birds; used for a food and fat source |
| kemet | striped horse-like animal with hooves and a long tail |
| kotildi | woodland carnivore, like a large wolf with a hump and mane; source of meat |
| midlar | territorial, tree-living rodent; hoots |
| nelip | small external parasite, infesting fur and hair |
| slear-snake | snake-like reptile with poison teeth, claws, and pincers |
| warbel | song bird living in the woodland |
| windfleer | heron-like bird; moves in flocks |
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My favorite species on Meniscus is a small insect, the ‘elginard’. Wingless and fluffy, it follows currents of air, at the whim of the universe. Dandelion fluff and wooly aphids were my inspiration for the ‘elginard’.
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Copyright 2017 Jane Tims
a muse takes over – creating alien plant species
When I was in university, we spent lots of time in botany courses discovering the concept of ‘form follows function’. This means that plants have adapted to their surroundings so almost every physical feature reflects the requirements of landscape and habitat. Good examples:
- thorns discourage predators
- tubular flowers to enable pollination by insects with long mouth parts
- hairs on leaves help conserve moisture by blocking air flow
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This concept is foremost in my mind as I try to populate my fictional planet Meniscus with plants. Plants are important to my story because my characters have to forage for their food (the main character, Odymn, is particularly good at finding food in the forest). My alien plants have to serve the purposes of the story. They also have to be credible and follow biological logic. Form must follow function.
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This drawing of Odymn practicing her parkour in the woods shows two plant species on Meniscus — a banyan-like tree and ‘slag-fern’. This banyan is great for climbing and jumping!!!
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Some sci-fi readers prefer authors not to invent new species, but to use our familiar species. I decided to create new species because my story is about what humans have lost when they were brought to an alien planet. I plan to help my readers by including a glossary of alien plants in the back of each book.
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Although they are alien, most of my plants are reminiscent of our species here on Earth. A good example would be ‘arbel’ a small woodland plant used to treat ailments on planet Meniscus. One of the chemical components of ‘arbel’ is ASA (acetylsalicylic acid or aspirin), making it similar to tea berry (Gaultheria procumbens), a plant common in our woods. I imagine ‘arbel’ to look like our woodland species trout lily (Erythronium americanum). Like trout lily, ‘arbel’ has edible corms. Also like trout lily, ‘arbel’ has thick leaves to conserve water on a planet where surface water is rare.
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Another of my alien plant species is a carnivorous club-moss, a dangerous inhabitant of the Themble Woods. Sheets of this moss crawl across the woodland floor, engulfing their prey. I want to include carnivorous plants on Meniscus because our own carnivorous plants, such as the sundew (Drosera sp.), are so intriguing. My carnivorous ‘club-moss’ has glands to absorb nutrients from its prey and touch-responsive tendrils to help it crawl through the forest. For a while I thought I would use carnivorous vines but I have seen too many movies where vines take over the earth!
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Odymn falls asleep in the woods and is overtaken by a carpet of carnivorous club-mosses.
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An earlier drawing showing vines attacking Odymn.
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Following is a list of the plants I have planted on Meniscus. Beverages to keep the folks on Meniscus awake are brewed from the leaves and berries of ‘thief-bush’!
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| plant | description |
| arbel | nodding woodland flower; corms edible |
| glasswort | transparent, low-growing plant, adapted to the edges of the Churn |
| grammid | tree with orange leaves and edible seed pods; smells like cinnamon |
| ransindyne | plant grown for its edible root |
| slag-fern | fern-like plant with leathery leaves |
| spenel | small plant with edible berries |
| thief-bush | bush with thick leaves and blue berries; used to make beverages |
| tussilago | plant similar to colts-foot, used to sooth a cough |
| walking-vine | vigorous vine native to the edges of the Darn’el desert |
| yarnel | tree with edible fruit like pomegranate |
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This writing has given me new appreciation for the interesting and complex plants we have on our own planet!
Next post I will show you some of the animals on Meniscus!
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Copyright 2017 Jane Tims
a muse takes over – structuring a project
When I wrote the first ‘book’ for my sci-fi series about enslaved humans on the planet Meniscus, I really didn’t know where the series was headed. The characters were clear to me and my focus was the building of a relationship between the main two characters, Odymn and the Slain. However, as I neared completion of the first story, I discovered: the first book needs the guidance of the second to set the stage for a book series.
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By the time I completed the draft of my second ‘book’, I knew where the series was headed. This is a story of how a small group of human beings overcome all odds and challenging enemies to rebuild a social structure stolen from them.
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Vicki, Odymn’s friend in Prell-nan, plays a very minor role in the first two ‘books’ and a major role as the story progresses.
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In the end, the project will be five books, telling the story in sequence. I thought I would begin this series of posts near the middle of the creative process, when I am deciding how to frame and present my five books and the one over-arching story.
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Each book in the series will tell one part of the over-arching story, in the form of a long poem. This will be accessible poetry, written in short lines and stanzas. The less-accessible part of the story will be the vocabulary and strangeness of the planet and the characters.
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Each book will have its own story arc and these stories will build on one another. Each story will feature recurring characters and a few new characters. All of the stories occur in a particular area of the planet Meniscus, known as the Prell-nan South District (Prell-nan is the main urban area in the story). This allows me to expand on the original five books, if the muse continues to inspire me, into the North District!
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a map to go with the story
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Presently, the five stories are in different stages of completion. Book 1 (Crossing The Churn) is in final draft and with my editor for comment. Book II (South from Sintha) is in final draft. The story arcs and drafting of Book III (Winter by the Water-climb) are mostly complete. Book Four (The Town at Themble Hill) is experiencing the agony of story arc resolution. Book Five ( ?????) is in early, early draft.
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At this point, I am trying to make sure the five stories are balanced in their presentation. To do this, I keep in mind the length of each story, measured in terms of the number of words, ‘chapters’, pages and characters.
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To present this in a table:
| number in series | book title | number of words | number of pages | number of chapters | number of main characters |
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Crossing The Churn | 9,821 | 147 | 33 |
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South to Sintha | 8,648 | 104 | 31 | 7 |
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Winter by the Water-climb | 12,877 | 147 | 53 | 13 |
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The Town at Themble Hill | 11,389 | 108 | 47 | 16 |
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???? | 761+ | 10+ | 11 so far | ?? |
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As you can see, these will be short ‘books’, probably readable in about 2-3 hours, allowing for the poetry and a bit of challenging alien vocabulary.
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This post’s bit of advice:
if you are writing a series, knowing the content and story arcs of the subsequent book(s) will help inform the story and content of the previous book(s).
This worked well for me in writing the “Saving the Landing Church” series (see https://janetims.com/2015/07/03/writing-a-novel-draft-by-draft/ ).
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Copyright 2017 Jane Tims
a muse takes over – introduction
I have been missing from regular posting for a while. The reason is — I have been totally overtaken by a project I am working on.
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Something I have wanted to do for a while is independent publication. Although I am dedicated to the publication of my poetry books through traditional publishing, I am interested in alternative means of putting words and stories out to readers. So I have been looking for a project outside the interests of local publishers.
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Originally I intended to self-publish a book of poems about the use of stone in cultural expression – poems about Mayan stelae, Viking runestones and North American petroglyphs. I may still do this, but as I thought about publishing this book, another muse took up space in my brain. Space, literally. In November I began writing a science-fiction romance and by December I knew I had found my independent publishing project.
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a scan of the painting I will use for my book cover
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I have already said a little about the project on this blog. The story is about a dystopian society on a distant planet. It follows the love story of two strangers who meet and encounter all kinds of adventures. The plot involves the difficult search for freedom and community by a group of people who have been enslaved and denied association with other humans.
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My main character, Odymn, has lived in the alleyways of an alien city, using her dedication to the practice of ‘parkour’ as a way of keeping her body and mind fit.
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The story is written as a series of five long-poems. This is partly because, as a poet, I am drawn to the conciseness and brevity of poetry as a means of telling stories. The use of poetry to tell the tale of Odymn and the Slain is also perfect as a way to convey the oddity of life on a planet where the geography is strange, plants and animals are unfamiliar and all the rules have been broken. Even the water doesn’t behave on the planet Meniscus. It tends to flow upward rather than down!
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My main characters are running from the Gel-heads, a nasty alien species. Part of their journey means ascending the En’ast Water-climb where the water flows up instead of down.
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This post is an introduction to the project. I hope you enjoy the drawings and hints of story they contain. In subsequent posts I will share the process steps I have used to create plot, characters and story-line. I hope you enjoy these posts and find some ideas for writing your own stories.
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My main characters, Odymn and a genetically-modified human known as the Slain, have all sorts of adventures as they get to know and trust one another.
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I also hope you will look forward to the launch of the first book in the series and to finding out what happens when people try to build a community from almost nothing.
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Copyright 2017 Jane Tims
cover art for book
In the past two months I have been working regularly on a science-fiction romance for eventual publication with Amazon. I have now completed the cover art for the book, based on my earlier black-and-white drawing. Below are the drawing, the possible layout for the book cover, and the painting. My photograph is terrible but this will give you an idea of the eventual look of the book.
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December 13, 2016 ‘parting the ferns’ Jane Tims (acrylic) 18″ x 24″
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Copyright Jane Tims 2016
the joy of writing
I have been absent from my blog for a week. Tied up in the sheer enjoyment of writing my fantasy tale.
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an illustration of the interaction between the main character of my story and a Dock-winder alien
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I have discovered that there are two main parts to writing: the writing itself and the ‘administration’. The administration includes the editing, the creation of other materials associated with the writing (for me, drawings, maps and covers), the search for publication, the preparatory work toward publication, and the marketing (readings, selling books, making sure the cat doesn’t destroy your boxes of books).
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Although some of the administration is fun, it is the writing I love to do. This includes the research and the joy of creating the characters, the story, the plot, the various drafts.
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This project has been particularly involving. Perhaps it is the creation of an entirely new world. Perhaps the freedom of building characters I have not known before. Perhaps the thrill of writing in a genre I have always enjoyed reading but felt hesitant to write.
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the main character in the book – a practitioner of parkour and a woman who has hung on to hope in spite of adversity
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My story is simple. It is about a young woman who wants freedom and sets out on a search for that freedom. The plot is a little more complicated. In her search she encounters a man who seems to share her purpose. Adventures and romance ensue.
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So far I have
- the first in what I hope will be a series of three stories
- most of the first draft of the second story because it informs the first … in the writing of the second story I discover needed elements of the world I’ve created
- a cover design … one of the tasks ahead is to create a painting from my design
- a description of the planet Meniscus
- a map of the part of Meniscus in my story
- a glossary since some of the words in the story are unique to the created world – units of measurement, plants and animals, and so on
- a condensed guide to the main language used on the planet (everything in the text is translated but having a dictionary is just fun)
- drawings to illustrate some of the action in the story
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a map to go with the story
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My plans are to pull this all together and venture into the world of self-publishing. I have a friend who has lots of experience with Amazon publishing and is willing to share his ability.
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I have also hired an editor to work with me on the project so my book will be the best it can be.
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I will be looking for some beta-readers, so if you are a regular reader, like sci-fi, fantasy, romance, and adventure, and enjoy reading accessible poetry, let me know by leaving a request in the comments, including a little about your reading life and genre preferences, and whether you have been a beta-reader before.
From this I will choose a few beta-readers and I will exchange what I hope is a great read for some feedback.
A beta-reader provides general comments on readability, identifies parts of the story not easily understood, points out any ‘bugs’, and lets me know what they enjoyed/disliked about the book.
The book will be short (9,500 words) and about 100 pages (stretched out since it is written in poetic lines and includes illustrations and a map). There is some violent content, sexual content and alien profanity, so beware.
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Back to writing. And ‘administrative’ duties!
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Copyright 2016 Jane Tims
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