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Sortmind Blog – Michael D. Smith

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The First 1982 Sortmind Plot

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on March 25, 2019 by Michael D. SmithJune 25, 2019

Sortmind, a novel by Michael D. SmithDuring my first semester of library school I wrote out six short science fiction plots; at the time I wasn’t serious about them, though in retrospect I see I might have fused them into a semi-interesting novel. In any case, Number 6 arose from my experience in the frustrating and time-consuming introductory Reference class, in which, way pre-Internet, we hunted down hundreds of scraps of trivia from dozens of printed reference sources in different libraries–simulating a day of hectic patron interaction.

But a class near the end of the semester on the emerging reference databases gave me hope; it was obvious that no reference book, however recently published, was equal to the searchable, always current online database. From there it was a short step to the convenience of the Telepathic Database, which along with Library Director Peter became the focus of Sortmind many years later. Thus, from November 29, 1982:

Plot 6. The War Returns to Alpha Centauri

Peter gazed out the window of his library and surveyed the rolling sunny hills of the suburb of Klawza on Alpha 7. He was in a disagreeable mood. Statistics had just been compiled which indicated that the Telepathic Database was not working out, as Peter’s predecessor Holbin had hoped. Holbin had designed the Telepathic Database in an attempt to give the libraries of Klawza, the Imperial Capital of Wisp, an unlimited information resource, completely flexible and available for a small sum for any who wished to subscribe. Holbin had thus eliminated the need for a reference section in any of the Klawza libraries and in fact had gone a long way toward convincing other libraries on Alpha 7 to abandon their own reference methods and instead pool all their resources into the Holbin base.

However, as Holbin had feared on his deathbed, and as Peter had suspected himself the last few months, the results of the first Ten Year Statistical Evaluation of the Holbin Telepathic Database were far from encouraging. In fact, the Database might just have to be dismantled entirely. This left Peter with the extremely unpleasant task of having to rebuild traditional computer-based information bases in all the libraries of Klawza, of which he was now the Director.

The Telepathic Database had seemed perfect at first: instead of hunting for information in any of fifteen million databases, in addition to a few million book reference works still left from the preceding century, one simply paid 55 credits a year and entered the Holbin Base. Holbin technicians then recorded your brainwave pattern, transferred it to their main computer, into which had been loaded every conceivable scrap of information ever–ever–recorded anywhere, and set up the Telepathic Energy Field from the Computer to the subscriber’s brain. When one wished to locate information on any subject, one didn’t bother turning to a computer terminal to hunt for the answer. The answer was just automatically sent via the Telepathic Database to one’s brain–one was certain the answer was correct because of a certain sensation transmitted along with the answer. The Verifying Sensation, Holbin called it.

Unfortunately the statistics were now pointing up the unfortunate fact that not only was the Verifying Sensation addictive in itself, in that subscribers to the Database were generally asking what 2 and 2 was, just to get a dose of Verifying Sensation, but also that Verifying Sensation was, for either pleasure seekers or serious information gatherers, damaging. The bottom line was that after five years of subscribing to the Telepathic Database, one could expect to have one’s mind burned out. Brain transplants had been tried in a few cases, but they had unfortunately failed.

Peter had cancelled his own subscription to the Holbin Base yesterday.

Copyright 2019 by Michael D. Smith

Sortmind background

Posted in Novels, Science Fiction, Sortmind, Writing, Writing Process | Leave a reply

When the Shirt Hits the Fan: More Musing on Typos, and the Sortmind Editing Passes

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on March 9, 2019 by Michael D. SmithAugust 20, 2019

Sortmind Editing Passes 2 Through 6There’s not much more to say other than that we thoroughly despise typos, as they momentarily jerk us out of the reader’s trance not only necessary to a fictional story but to any writing; in order to fully sink into the manuscript, we want reassurance that the author is truly in command of every mark on the page.

To my chagrin I generate some of my worst typos when editing a final manuscript. I won’t say in which of my novels my worst typo appears, but it’s enough to mention that in desiring to make “The gravity was astounding strong” into a pithier statement, I merely lopped off the fifth word without noticing I needed to change the fourth, to come up with: “The gravity was astoundingly.” And of course a sharp-eyed reader caught that after publication.

There are numerous recommended methods for self-editing and proofing, including reading the manuscript backwards and reading it aloud.  Sometimes I’ll read sections aloud, but I’ve never tried that for an entire novel. Just now I took the manuscript of my unpublished novel Jump Grenade and sorted it in ascending order, to get an amusingly random succession of paragraphs.  That may be worth looking into as a proofing method.

Sortmind, the novel by Michael D. SmithBut the main topic of this post is the image of the Sortmind proofing hash marks before publication. I really wanted to find errors, and as you can see my beta reader and I found more than I would have assumed. Most were fairly minor, but I often made a little dot on the mark to indicate an astoundingly groaner. During the passes I variously made an eBook of the draft to experience the text in a different mode, turned grammar check pitifully high, and magnified the text to 220% to slow myself down.

But at some point you just have to let it slip into the world. I hope there are no blunders in Sortmind, and if anyone finds them in any degree, please let me know, for in having Total Artistic and Publishing Control I can always issue a second edition.

copyright 2019 by Michael D. Smith

Sortmind background
Sharp-Eyed Reader’s website – Thank you, Faith!

Posted in Editing, Literary, Novels, Publishing, Sortmind, Sortmind Press, Trust, Writing, Writing Process | Leave a reply

Free Sortmind Press Titles March 3-March 9

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on March 1, 2019 by Michael D. SmithMarch 1, 2019

The eBook versions of my literary novels Akard Drearstone, Sortmind, and The Soul Institute, as well as my science fiction novella The First Twenty Steps, can be obtained for free from Smashwords from March 3-March 9 during the 10th Annual Smashwords Read an Ebook Week Sale.

Akard Drearstone by Michael D. SmithAkard Drearstone

A cinder block falls on Akard Drearstone’s head and he trades his print shop job for lead guitar. Months later, as the four members of the Akard Drearstone Group face the onslaught of national fame at their rural Texas commune, twelve-year-old Jan Pace nurses her crush for the narcissistic, paranoid bassist Jim Piston, growing up way too fast in a surreal summer between seventh and eighth grade.

Sortmind by Michael D. SmithSortmind

A startup company’s telepathic Sortmind app Mindwipes ten thousand users in the city of Canterra, and political factions battle in the streets over whether telepathy should be free to all or outlawed.  Oliver and Sam, two high school art students whose fathers head the fascist Citizens Against Telepathy, struggle with art, friendship, love, and family–as well as urban warfare, secret societies, hysterical rumors of alien invasion, and the malfunctioning, reality-altering Sortmind.

The Soul Institute by Michael D. SmithThe Soul Institute

Himal Steina realizes his dream of a mythic return to the sanctuary of a vast foggy university of Soul when he’s appointed writer in residence at the Soul Institute and falls in love with one of its numerous faculty goddesses. But the Soul Institute is splintering under its unhinged Director Alfred Moid Burlcron and his secret society of Overcrons, and as his teenage son consolidates command of the Paint Sniffing Gang, panic and violence build in the small coastal Texas college town.

The First Twenty Steps by Michael D. SmithThe First Twenty Steps

Just released from six years in prison, unsure how to meet basic needs, Harry finds a kindred spirit in Roberta, in thrall to a depraved motorcycle gang. But the passive-aggressive leader of the Cerberean Knights leads them into a major crime this evening as he seeks to pay back favors from the corrupt city council of One-West. As the motorcycle attack on the Dataflux computer building turns terrifying and surreal, Harry and Roberta find themselves outgunned by another biker gang belonging to a mysterious billionaire who intervenes to protect his secret hyperspatial supercomputer.

 

 

Paperbacks?

If you would rather have paperback copies, which alas aren’t free, try these links:

Akard Drearstone – Amazon

Akard Drearstone – lulu.com mass market size

Sortmind – Amazon

Sortmind – lulu.com mass market size

The Soul Institute – Amazon

The First Twenty Steps – Amazon

copyright 2019 by Michael D. Smith

Posted in Akard Drearstone, Literary, Novels, Publishing, Sortmind, Sortmind Press, The First Twenty Steps, The Soul Institute, Writing | Leave a reply

Why Did I Publish Sortmind?

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on February 24, 2019 by Michael D. SmithJune 25, 2019

Sortmind trade paperback from AmazonTrantor Group CEO Peter Trantor scrambles to reassure his latest client, the lovely but unreadable bank executive Anna Winstead, that his telepathic Sortmind app really isn’t as deadly as people assume. But he has some explaining to do when a newly-hired programmer at Trantor, Mindwiped by Sortmind abuse, proclaims himself an alien from the planet Cnzaar.

Given that I think this novel is so good, why did I publish it myself and not consider submitting it to royalty publishers?

  1. Sortmind is the last of my older novels that needed reboot and psychic repair; many of these stretched back decades to my first powerful but unformed urges for fiction, and this completion/destiny/fate mood runs through all the other reasons below. As I indicated in Sortmind’s first blog post, this final version has definitely answered some karma, and made the older effort current and central to my writing. Its publication marks the end of a cycle beginning in November 2006, not a little marked by anxiety, of reassessing the entirety of my writing career, my methods, and my goals.
  2. So it was time to put the novel out there, and I wasn’t going to wait for years of submissions and publishers’ schedules. Call that impatience, but it just had to happen this way. Somehow February 2019 was the perfect time to release the book.
  3. There is also the idea that anything related to tech should come out fast, or else it will be out of date by the time a normal publication schedule can process it. The tech in Sortmind isn’t highly detailed, nor is it anything approaching hard science fiction, but still I wouldn’t want to end up putting the novel back on the operating table and addressing technical issues in say, 2024.
  4. During the 1990’s I’d sent dozens of query letters to publishers for Sortmind’s original version; I was just not going to fool with it again. There remains the concept of submitting this novel or any self-published work to publishers someday, but right now, I have no interest.
  5. The urge for “total artistic control” has asserted itself throughout the entire reboot of Sortmind–the new plot, the redeveloped characters, the final manuscript, the cover.
  6. Now there’s a new relation of Sortmind the novel to the Sortmind the website, Sortmind the blog, and Sortmind Press. When the idea came to me in July 1999 to register the sortmind.com domain, I hadn’t exactly abandoned the novel, but it was on indefinite hold; I just liked the syllables so much that I wanted them for the website. When I began building the site I had no thought of doing much more than having a page for the novel and some character images. Despite an earnest but cosmetic 2010 revamp, the novel soon sank deeper into the ice of neglect even as I began a Sortmind blog and Sortmind Press.
  7. I can agree that it looks a little silly to have Sortmind the novel published by Sortmind Press and hawked on sortmind.com, blog.sortmind.com, and press.sortmind.com, but this too feels like destiny/karma. Sure, Sortmind Press is a bit problematic; while I’m not sure I’ll ever expand it into a real publishing house, I now have four novels and a picture book for sale there.
  8. To add to the confusion we have the 1988 painting Sortmind, executed while I was running hot on the first draft, confidently churning through its ever-expansive 1,075 pages.

 

Sortmind, the painting copyright 1988 by Michael D. Smith

Sortmind, the painting

copyright 2019 by Michael D. Smith

Sortmind the Novel – More Information

Sortmind Press

Mass market paperback from lulu.com

 

Posted in Character Images, Literary, Novels, Painting, Publishing, Query Letters, Science Fiction, Self-Publishing, Sortmind, Sortmind Press, Writing, Writing Process | Leave a reply

A Terrible New Enemy – Review of The Wounded Frontier

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on February 17, 2019 by Michael D. SmithJuly 11, 2020

The Wounded Frontier by Michael D. SmithAfter the collapse of the Grid, the vast collective mind of the Alpha Centaurians, humans and Martians in the United System Space Force now find themselves included in a new Grid, one they are told is completely voluntary, but who believes that? This book begins with Jack Commer and his crew embroiled in the nasty climate of resistance and hostility that accompanies widespread change. Called out for their dark histories, vilified and threatened by haters and the establishment, the crew escapes with their lives as they attempt to embark on an important mission to investigate an anomaly in a distant but familiar star system.

Following is the sort of mayhem at which this author excels: bickering, confusion, shock as everything that can go wrong, does, complete with crashing, exploding and vanishing ships, domestic disputes, and questionable solutions, all hanging under the shadow of a vast, unassailable sphere that no one understands. Add in a couple of ancient but expertly retrofitted human robots in the form of Draka Sortie, the suspiciously appointed President of the United System Council; and Jack’s most talented engineer, Laurie Lachrer, and things get even worse, bringing to bear the author’s penchant for smug, obnoxious villains you love to hate.

These books have a great, campy 70s scifi vibe — but without the cheesy special effects: the high tech is well done, sophisticated and interesting. The robots do an alarming amount of damage before the crew figures out what’s going on, and by then it’s too late. Now under the control of an alien race called the Wounded that devours star systems for the energy rush, our heroes must find a way to outsmart the Wounded’s robotic henchmen before the demise of both the Sol and Alpha Centaurian star systems. The conclusion, characteristically wild and unexpected, involves some fallen companions and a mythical dimension where space warriors go after death, no less, making for yet another fun read.

by F. T. McKinstry, author of the Chronicles of Ealiron series

The Wounded Frontier, Book Five of the Jack Commer Series – Background

Posted in Character Images, Double Dragon Publishing, Jack Commer, Novels, Reviews, Science Fiction, Writing | Leave a reply

Sortmind Publication – What You Need to Know

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on February 16, 2019 by Michael D. SmithJune 25, 2019

Sortmind. a novel by Michael D. SmithSortmind, the Novel

published February 2016 by Sortmind Press

eBook:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Smashwords

paperback:
Amazon (trade)
lulu.com (mass market)

The Overview

Trantor Group CEO Peter Trantor scrambles to reassure his latest client, the lovely but unreadable bank executive Anna Winstead, that his telepathic Sortmind app really isn’t as deadly as people assume. But he has some explaining to do when a newly-hired programmer at Trantor, Mindwiped by Sortmind abuse, proclaims himself an alien from the planet Cnzaar.

High school art students Oliver Perrine, a survivor of the terrorist bombing of the downtown library, and Sam Emersonn, coolly pragmatic and politically aware, struggle to define themselves against their fascist fathers, the founders of the reviled Citizens Against Telepathy, as its soldiers engage in street battles with its rival, the fanatic Open Telepathy Foundation.

OIiver Perrine copyright 1988 by Michael D. Smith

Oliver Perrine

Architect and reluctant CAT political activist Mitchell Emersonn telepathically reviews his girlfriend Shelley’s files after she too declares she’s an alien from Cnzaar. A library clerk invents hallucinogenic Concentrated Telepathic Tablets and spreads them to the Canterra Art Institute, where Sam and Oliver consume the drug and find themselves confronting Sortmind’s unnerving redefinition of reality.

Sam’s fifteen-year-old sister Teresa discovers she’s a secret link between generations of mystical artists, and that she and Oliver belong to a clandestine society of Tree Leopards. But two opposing sets of aliens alternately kidnap Oliver, each pleading for the impenetrable Tree Leopard Society to assist in their war against each other. Frenzied militias attack the Trantor Building’s Sortmind servers and the app begins evaporating, leaving Oliver to sort out his adolescent fantasies and discover what’s real. Continue reading →

Posted in Akard Drearstone, Character Images, Literary, Marketing, Novels, Publishing, Science Fiction, Sortmind, Sortmind Press, The Soul Institute, Writing, Writing Process | Leave a reply

Harray Andreall’s Wedding Night, July 1975

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on January 6, 2019 by Michael D. SmithJune 25, 2019
Harray Andreall copyright 2017 by Michael D. Smith

A cinder block falls on Akard Drearstone’s head and he trades his print shop job for lead guitar. Months later, as the four members of the Akard Drearstone Group face the onslaught of national fame, Akard decides to throw a demented wedding reception at his rural Texas commune to honor manager Harray Andreall. But on the way to the commune Harray fights with his bride, the Exponentialist philosopher Michelle Morgan, in front of two hundred guests at the Austin airport.

“Dammit, keep quiet, bitch! Everyone’s gonna think we’re assholes!”

“Ah, fuck you, jerk!” Michelle wrenched open a glass door and stomped away.

“You can’t call yourself mindful!” Harray screamed after her. “You’ll never be able to call yourself mindful!”

She was gone, mixing into a group of well-wishers. Harray went to a public phone and opened the Yellow Pages to Electrical Contractors. Damn, it was bad again tonight. But maybe he should try to keep up with the feeling this time. Retain his calmness, his complete lack of mood.

Like, the Buddhists said that the true disciple attended to the path without getting hung up on being the disciple. In a way that described Harray perfectly. He’d never made the mistake of taking this mindfulness meditation seriously. He just used it where necessary. And that made him a true disciple, a monk of the path, didn’t it?

So Harray had a responsibility to himself and to the universe to make sure Michelle’s petty anger didn’t prevail. He might be damn depressed, but he could still observe, still let karma work itself out.

But he regarded the dull people moving through the terminal and sighed. It was hopeless. Two hundred losers heading off to one more party to distract themselves, to act out their same asshole karma over and over again … and he knew this was what Buddhism was all about. All is suffering.

But the Buddhists saw the suffering and got some sort of cosmic perspective out of it, whereas Harray’s stupid depressions led nowhere. He shuddered to think of all the trivial crap he performed like a machine every day, never grasping any of it. No matter how much he watched his damn breathing, did he ever get any cosmic perspective? Shit, no! Maybe it was time to blow off a little steam. Maybe there wouldn’t be any cosmic perspective, but Harray could still work himself into a damn good snit. He could overwhelm a roomful of plastic partygoers with one of his foul moods, and it would serve them right.  His despair would show them just how miserable their own lives truly were.

Akard Drearstone by Michael D. Smith

Deeper into that same night, contemplating the dissolution of his hours-long marriage, Harray finds a dead body packed in ice on the second floor of the commune barn. Though he tries to convince the sullen members of the group that their musical experiment is worth continuing, Harray’s boss gets arrested on murder charges, the record company veers towards collapse, and Harray is dumbfounded to discover a second killing perpetuated by another band he manages.

copyright 2019 by Michael D. Smith

Akard Drearstone – more info

Posted in Akard Drearstone, Character Images, Excerpts, Novels, Sortmind Press, Writing | Leave a reply

Free Akard Drearstone, Soul Institute, First Twenty Steps

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on December 24, 2018 by Michael D. SmithApril 30, 2020

The Smashwords End of Year Sale starts December 25 and runs through January 1. During this time my three titles from Sortmind Press will be free from the Smashwords site (links below). You can download Akard Drearstone, The Soul Institute, and The First Twenty Steps in numerous eBook formats including EPUB, mobi (Kindle), PDF, and more.

The Soul Institute by Michael D. Smith

The Soul Institute

Computer technician Himal Steina realizes his dream of a mythic return to the sanctuary of a vast foggy university of Soul when he’s appointed writer in residence at the Soul Institute and falls in love with one of its numerous faculty goddesses.

Akard Drearstone by Michael D. Smith

Akard Drearstone

At their Texas commune in May 1975, the four members of the Akard Drearstone Group begin to feel the onslaught of national fame as twelve-year-old Jan Pace, daughter of a commune couple, falls in love with the narcissistic, paranoid bassist Jim Piston.

The First Twenty Steps by Michael D. Smith

The First Twenty Steps

The motorcycle attack on the Dataflux computer building turns terrifying and surreal as ex-con Harry finds himself outgunned by a rival biker gang. Can his enemies really be protecting spaceship navigational equipment?

Copyright 2018 by Michael D. Smith

 

 

The Soul Institute by Michael D. Smith
Akard Drearstone by Michael D. Smith
The First Twenty Steps by Michael D. Smith
Posted in Akard Drearstone, Literary, Novels, Science Fiction, Sortmind Press, The First Twenty Steps, The Soul Institute, Writing | Leave a reply

Ronan of Space (The Falkrow Narratives Book 3), by Kara D. Wilson – Review

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on December 1, 2018 by Michael D. SmithDecember 1, 2018

Ronan of Space by Kara D. WilsonThough Rhys Falkrow, now grown to full adulthood, still figures prominently in this final book of the Falkrow Narratives and links the three novels together, his seventeen-year-old son Ronan now takes center stage and matures through a series of fast-paced adventures.

The setting is a future Earth, unrecognizable to us, which long ago devolved into pre-industrial cultures alien to, and warring with, each other.  Books 1 and 2 describe how a young Rhys was flung here years ago as a refugee from the disintegrating spaceship of the advanced Caelestis race, and how he learned to survive on this primitive Earth, make contact with its different cultures, and eventually assume a leadership role.  But in seeking to shield his son Ronan from the high tech, collective mindset of Caelestis, Rhys has kept Ronan in ignorance of his heritage and has more or less abandoned him and Ronan’s mother Kallen.  As Book 3 opens Ronan is little more than an angry juvenile delinquent.  If Rhys was always set outside both the future primitive Earth as well as the world of Caelestis, which disowned him years ago, Ronan is even further outside both, never really belonging to Earth culture nor ever aware of his Caelestis heritage.  Though Rhys’ goal was to let his son know what it was to be fully human, he’s set up conditions that have blocked Ronan from truly understanding himself.

Secrets have been kept from Ronan, and he resents it.  Yet the truth cannot long be denied when Rhys, now commander of Caelestis military operations in Earth orbit, announces emergency evacuations in the face of invasion by the Alphas, a race of evolved humanoids who are eighty percent artificial, function as a computerized hive mind, and wield technology far beyond anything Caelestis has seen.  The Alphas are here to exploit Earth resources, but the descriptions of their schemes are no science fiction cliché: the author posits methods of harvesting our planet which are an unforgettable nightmare.

As Ronan begins to numbly absorb the new developments and his connection to Caelestis, astounding native talents start welling within him, and he’s propelled into the heart of a danger he was never prepared for.  He shares impulsive qualities and leadership skills with his father but, perhaps because of his isolation, before long he begins to transcend his father’s somewhat narrow views of the possibilities the crisis offers.  His eventual contact with a rebellious Alpha, Cassius, completely redefines the nature of the human/Alpha conflict; the ways Ronan and Cassius establish a basis for communication and learn to respect each other set a fascinating cornerstone of this book.

As with Ms. Wilson’s previous two books in the series, Rhys of Earth and Rhys of Quadrant Six, the author’s storytelling skills make a long narrative unfold effortlessly, as imaginative scenes and fresh plot easily pull the reader through an intriguing story.  Nothing is extraneous; there are no unnecessary detours.  The ending is psychologically satisfying and concludes the series well, but we are free to picture Ronan expanding ever further in the future.

review by Michael D. Smith

Ronan of Space at Amazon

Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction, Writing | Leave a reply

Balloon Ship Armageddon, Part 3 – Jack Commer’s Arc

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on October 18, 2018 by Michael D. SmithJuly 12, 2020

Spacemen, Novel, Earth copyright 2018 by Michael D. SmithIt’s not time for a final assessment of the Jack Commer, Supreme Commander series, but after completing the first draft of the seventh and (probably) last book, I’m beginning to reflect on the long journey from The Martian Marauders to Balloon Ship Armageddon. Space captain Jack Commer has been with me since September 1962, first appearing in four of the thirty-four science fiction stories in my fifth grade Blue Notebook. He and his three brothers then starred in my first attempt at a novel, Spring 1964’s Trip to Mars, and then the unfinished eighth grade draft of The Martian Marauders, a book which I happily rediscovered, completed and rewrote as a modern novel decades later.

I refrained from sprinkling self-serving promotional links into the above paragraph, but we need to get them out of the way or else I’ll have to repeat all that content here.

A Writing Biography, Part II: The Blue Notebook
Trip to Mars in Paperback
The Irregular Origin of the Martian Marauders

The idea for a seventh book to conclude the series originated with Jack’s wife Amav’s declaration at the end of Book Six, The SolGrid Rebellion, that she and Jack ought to mount a search for their traitorous son Jonathan James, who’s just been rendered into a million pieces of jagged glass by a Martian shattergun but, still alive, has been reconstituted as one-third of a solid chromium pyramid. Apparently Jonathan James is heading to a star thirty-four light years away to seek assistance from the deadly Wounded race of artistic exterminators Jack has been battling for the last two books. But there was no plot beyond that, which Jack and Amav both lamented in their blog interviews with me this spring.

I’m not killing off main characters in Seven, or otherwise making an Eight impossible, as, who knows, I may want to compose Eight a few decades from now. I think I’ll relax more working on this novel if I leave this option open. The thought of permanently abandoning some characters like Dar or Kner or Suzette Borman is hard. Worse is the idea of merely tossing them into the seventh book to “resolve them all” as Heinlein did to his galaxy of characters at the end of The Number of the Beast–very tired writing there.

It may be that you’re doing yourself a favor by not writing sequels and returning to the same characters. The often-delivered line from authors, “And then the characters spoke to me and told me their story wasn’t over,” etc. etc., could also be a way of staying comfortable with an arts-and-crafts level of consciousness. Consider Dostoyevsky exploring many of the same themes in new books but always extending them with fresh characters and plot; dynamic beings like Raskolnikov, Rogozhin, or Dmitri Karamazov may share similar forces, but they have wholly unique life stories behind them.

Am I writing fan fiction of my own work? Easy to grab onto Kirk and Spock and run with them, eh?

So the seventh Jack Commer warily sidled up to this concept of continuing characters. But somehow an unusual warm-up for the novel, involving twelve major characters confronting the end of the series, resolved the issue. I decided to interview them in depth, and their responses poured out effortlessly, at a final 22,956 words just the right length. These interviews, with a mix of new characters and old, all understanding this was most likely their final night on stage, infused the coming novel with energy and insight.

I published the interviews on the blog earlier this year, before I began writing Draft 1, and will tastefully not link back to them, unwilling to overdose the reader with even more marketing hooks to my glorious writing skills. But I spoke with:

  1. Rick Ballard, bombastic, ego-saturated seducer, 4/26/18
  2. T’ohj’puv, ancient tetrahedral robot for creating Martian Empress gowns, 4/30/18
  3. Jonathan James Commer, Jack’s troubled, insecure son, 5/1/18
  4. Amy Nortel, Wounded doctor and Jack’s old high school English teacher, 5/2/18
  5. Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, United System Space Force, 5/7/18
  6. Amav Frankston-Commer, Jack’s wife and planetary engineer, 5/9/18
  7. Waterfall Sequence, cloudlike entity of the Ywritt race at the star Iota Persei, 5/11/18
  8. Ranna Kikken Commer, Joe’s Commer’s wife and negotiator with the Ywritt, 5/13/18
  9. Joe Commer, Jack’s brother, Deputy Supreme Commander, and perennial sidekick, 5/15/18
  10. Jackie Vespertine, Ranna’s sister, Joe’s former femme fatale, and influential exobiologist, 5/17/18
  11. Laurie Lachrer 283, insolent robot seeking to supplant the human she’s modeled after, 5/19/18
  12. Laurie Lachrer, the human version, Jack’s new genius physician/engineer, 5/21/18

 

Spacemen, Novel, Earth, Ywritt copyright 2018 by Michael D. SmithOne purpose in declaring this the last Jack Commer novel was to open psychic space for completely new writing after Book Seven. While the daily self may quail at not being up to such a task, deeper levels know there’s a vast unknown novel waiting, a blank at this moment despite recent unproductive idea strip mining experiments. But in any case I’m certain “space opera” isn’t my fate.

But at the end of Draft 1 I found myself semi-consciously loading in teasers to a future Jack Commer novel: four deadly Wounded Class A human robots are still at large, and Jack and six series comrades have just embarked on a dangerous mission to the multidimensional Uninhabitable Sphere of leftover karmic crap from the beginning of the universe. Those unresolved plot bits can both end the series and invite speculation for a sequel that nevertheless doesn’t demand to be written. A good place to be.

Though I’ve been reluctant to do so, I decided it was time to reread the entire Jack Commer series. I think I was mainly worried about the quality of the first book, since I hadn’t reread it in years, and I wasn’t eager to discover typos in Four through Six, which I haven’t reread since publication, And there are always typos. An obvious reason for rereading is to make sure the final book doesn’t contradict the others–though, armed with insanely long facts, character, and chronology files, I’m not expecting much in the way of that. But I also hope to find some new insight for Balloon Ship Armageddon.

Then a couple nights ago came the happy rediscovery of the excellent first paragraph of The Martian Marauders, and I’m finding Book One to be a solid and enjoyable story, one which retains the free-flowing kid logic of its abandoned eighth grade draft. Sure, there are some stylistic changes I’d make, as I’ve honed my writing skills on subsequent novels, and there’s really nothing like publication to force you out of the rut of old styles you’ve been attached to. There’s definitely been a lot of growth through these seven books.

As this decades-long series begins, with Typhoon I orbiting dead planet Earth:

The five hundred-mile-wide crater had been thoroughly radar-mapped, though nobody had ever seen it. They all knew the ground was still burning eight months later. Copilot Joe Commer looked away. Imagine the red-orange lava beneath all that soot.

copyright 2018 by Michael D. Smith

Book 1.  The Martian Marauders
Book 2.  Jack Commer, Supreme Commander
Book 3.  Nonprofit Chronowar
Book 4.  Collapse and Delusion
Book 5.  The Wounded Frontier
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