Sortmind Blog – Michael D. Smith

On Achieving a Slice of the Dream

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Michael D. SmithJune 12, 2015

Novel publication by a royalty-paying publisher is a major milestone, and feels a hundred times better than self-publishing. It means a lot that Double Dragon Publishing has acknowledged my potential. I’ve also enjoyed learning much more about this entire process than I think I could have with just self-publishing.

However, this isn’t the old print era where you got an advance against royalties and a marketing department selling your work. A lot of your attention and writing time is immediately diverted to Internet and otherwise marketing, to tooting your own horn, to setting yourself up on website, blog, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and whatever the next big thing is, to constantly being on the prowl for new marketing venues. Now this isn’t a bad thing, as explaining what you’re about can be clarifying–and may result in sales! It’s all new experience for growth. However, the realization soon sets in that you’re quite on your own. And there are times when you must choose between working on the newest novel or spending a great deal of time and energy describing your published work to a nebulous audience which in all likelihood isn’t even aware of your presence.

The main pitfall of such marketing efforts is to lose energy and get disheartened. But there can’t be any desperation about this process. You’re just putting out some seeds here and there; some may indeed grow down the line. Keep returning to your own work and the real reasons you write.

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Jim Commer from The Martian Marauders

Posted on January 4, 2014 by Michael D. SmithJuly 11, 2020

Typhoon I Navigation Officer and the third of four Commer brothers. From The Martian Marauders:

Jack and Joe swiveled to him. “C’mon in. Shut the door behind you and take a seat,” Jack said, indicating the third seat at the rear of the Control Room.

Jim did so. “What’s up?”

“Well, we’ve got three hours before we hit Mercury, not much to do … and … well, I’m sorry, Jim, but this is really the only time we can talk. I know it’s awkward …”

Jim looked back and forth between his two older brothers. Like him, they were wearing their clean red, white, and blue ship uniforms. But they looked embarrassed. Jim tried to think what he could possibly have done to get dressed down by his brothers.

“Well … well … what’s going on?” he managed.

“Well … it’s John,” Jack said. “We have to do something about him.”

“Oh …” Jim said.

“I mean, I don’t want to be ganging up on him, but really, this just can’t go on.”

“Are … you sure we should be discussing it … now? I mean … on this mission? I mean, with everything at stake?”

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Laurie Lachrer, an Excerpt from The Wounded Frontier

Posted on December 12, 2013 by Michael D. SmithJuly 11, 2020

The Wounded Frontier has been accepted for publication by Double Dragon Publishing. In Book Five of the Jack Commer science fiction series, Supreme Commander Jack Commer pushes for exploration far beyond Sol in the untested Typhoon V when a star thirty-four light years away abruptly vanishes, leaving the infrared signature of a Dyson sphere apparently built within one week.

Laurie Lachrer, last seen in a walk-on part as a teenaged spaceport technician in Book One, The Martian Marauders, has by 2075 gone through the specialized USSF Medical and Engineering School with an eye to becoming one of the elite physician/engineers to fly on the Typhoon–class spaceships. To Jack’s astonishment the shy, petite redhead of 2034 has graduated number one in her med school class and in the top three percent of Engineering.

From The Wounded Frontier:

“The big question is,” Jack continued, looking back and forth between Laurie and Will, “can you two work on the same ship?”

Laurie sat back, avoiding Lee Borman’s eyes, which wasn’t too difficult as they seemed locked on her chest. Why was this damn little senator/turret gunner leering at her? Why was Jack haranguing Will like this?

“Well, we–we never planned to be on the same ship anyway–uh, sir … I mean, you know Will’s resigning, after all–”

Jack calmly scrutinized her. She felt Lee’s ongoing leer travelling up to her cheeks, then falling dreamily back to her breasts. She fought the urge to close her dress with her fingers. It wasn’t possible, there was so much skin and so little fabric–

Why am I in this goddamn dress? Why didn’t I insist on staying in uniform?

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The Irregular Origin of The Martian Marauders

Posted on October 19, 2013 by Michael D. SmithDecember 25, 2024

My science fiction novel The Martian Marauders was published in 2012 by Double Dragon Publishing. I really didn’t write it in the eighth grade!

Well, okay, it’s true that the somewhat dysfunctional Commer family and the history of the evacuation of Earth in 2033 have been with me since the 1960’s. I was in the eighth grade in the fall of 1965. That fall and the following spring I got through 110 handwritten pages of a novel called The Martian Marauders, basically a Hardy Boys adventure set in space. But halfway through I got bored, and though I still have some rudimentary 1966 notes about completing it, I abandoned the novel, leaving Captain Jack Commer and his brother Joe hanging in the ventilation shaft of a Venusian prison for the next twenty years.

The Commers had been around long before they blundered into this predicament. In September 1962 I wrote a story, “Voyage to Venus,” for a fifth grade assignment, introducing my hero Jack Commer, who appeared in several other stories that year. As outlined in a previous blog post, I recall reading these science fiction stories in class to the wide-eyed attention of my classmates.

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Harri McNarri from The Martian Marauders

Posted on October 11, 2013 by Michael D. SmithJuly 11, 2020

Brilliant, argumentative Typhoon I Physician/Engineer who set the standard for all subsequent United System Space Force engineers. From The Martian Marauders:

Harri was aware of the other Typhoon crewmen coming up to view the body. A hundred yards past them, at the edge of the parking lot, a bright blue police force field had been set up. Dozens of Marsport citizens behind it strained to see what was going on. Harri turned back to the body of General John J. Douglas with professional interest. The blood had dried to a crimson crust in the virtually nonexistent Martian atmosphere, but Harri could tell that a lot of it had come out of the general before decompression had blasted his features into spoiled meat. Further down, on the naked torso, were numerous stab wounds.

“Under this second sheet,” Yao went on, “is the body of one of the things the general killed.” He whipped back the sheet.

The men gaped. Before them lay a small pinkish creature, its head curved back into a long fin running down its translucent white back. The entire body was no more than four feet in length. Not that the resemblance was exact, but Harri was reminded of human fetuses in the early stages of development. He mutely pointed to what appeared to be a missing eyeball in one of the two eye sockets.

Yao nodded. “Douglas apparently gouged one of the eyes out. We haven’t found it yet.”

“Sheesh,” Ken Garrison put in for all of them from behind Harri.

There was no apparent sign of clothing on the alien. The body was humanoid, but Harri had a hard time deciding if there were genitalia between the legs, and if so, whether it was male or female.

“What–is this thing?” Joe said, staring.

Yao shrugged. “Some of the civilians over there who first saw it in the parking lot have been calling it a Martian.”

Harri scanned the growing crowd behind the force field. “So they’ve seen it …” he said, letting the implications sink in for all the men. The noises in the night, the unease throughout the city …

The Martian Marauders is available as eBook and paperback from Double Dragon Publishing, amazon.com, and barnesandnoble.com.

Samuel Jay Hergs, an Excerpt from The Martian Marauders

Posted on September 17, 2013 by Michael D. SmithJuly 11, 2020

“Well, all this brings us back to Hergs,” Jack said, “which was the main reason I called this meeting. We received the CogniSort summary on him and I’ve printed it out.” Jack held up what looked like fifty pages of paper. “Thought I’d familiarize you all with some of it before we get to Mercury.”

“Fantastic!” Jim laughed. “This is just like story time around the campfire!”

“A full dose of SynMorph might … not’ve been necessary,” Harri observed.

“Okay …” Jack said, scanning the first page of the document. “Full name, Samuel Jay Hergs. Born April 19, 1999, in Maine–specific town not known. Had a police record from fourteen: drug use, drug dealing, gang activity. Never made it through high school, and nothing more in the database on him after 2017 until 2024, when he was arrested for helping turn an anti-space protest in New York into a riot.”

“Oh, so he was one of those,” Joe observed. Jim remembered the massive protests when the United States Space Force was organized in 2024, with over half the federal budget being pumped into the agency. In the wake of the Neptune explosion and the Uranus flyby there was no way the USSF was going to be stopped. Nevertheless, there were significant numbers of people who thought that exploring space was foolish and that the money should go to repairing the gravitational disasters caused by the Uranus flyby.

“In 2032 Hergs published Towards a Socialist Solar System, which advocated the violent overthrow of the United Nations, the deaths of everyone currently in power, and the rise of a ‘solar proletariat’ to govern the system,” Jack went on. “He wanted any existing spacecraft to be used, and I’m quoting, ‘for the people, not for the exploitation of space and whatever indigenous peoples we may find there.’”

“I somehow missed that book,” Harri said.

“Cripes, what a loser,” Joe said.

“But the records show he did evacuate Earth on November 14, 2033. But then he disappears once he gets to Mars. He never registered a Mars address. His cohort Al Carson did the same thing.”

“So what’s he been doing all this time–recruiting disaffected Martians for the Cause?” Mickey Michaels put in. “And disaffected humans, too, I guess–but how did he find Martians when nobody else has since 2021?”

“If … if he, or anyone who was even slightly … psychic, I guess, just–tuned in to whatever thoughts were coming out of Martian minds …” Ken Garrison mused.

“Yeah! Maybe they could track the Martians down!” Joe said.

“That’s it! That’s it!” Garrison said. “He’s messed on something like AlphaFlare, lying around, totally screwed up, but open to the alien minds, and then–”

Is that why I felt I bonded with M’rrpla? Jim wondered. Because I’m higher than the Andromeda galaxy on Alpha SynMorph? But what burst out of him was: “Wow, this really is just like a ghost story! We’re all around the campfire, telling stories about scary things! That we know nothing about!”

More Jack Commer series images | The Martian Marauders

A Trailer for Nonprofit Chronowar

Posted on August 25, 2013 by Michael D. SmithJune 27, 2019

When I got a starter camcorder last year I found myself inexplicably unwilling to use it much, despite a long standing desire to make videos and some previous tentative experiments with the video function of my digital camera. I think this was due to being so used to framing and capturing still images that it was disconcerting to watch the world in my viewfinder moving and being recorded. Then the concept of merging numerous rough cuts into one video was new, as was getting used to the Windows movie making software, with all its foreign video concepts, that came with my computer. About all I could think to do was handheld pans which are unstable even with the image stabilization feature. Or walking around the garden or making movies of cats yawning.

Making the Nonprofit Chronowar video sparked a minor epiphany which I realized must also have occurred to the most dense of filmmakers a century ago. One of my outtakes was a close-up on the wind-up watch, and I found this a satisfying image except that, handheld, the object of course was shaking. When I used a tripod, the image with its moving second hand was remarkable. This odd little discovery, self-evident upon reflection, pushes me towards some further experimentation now.

The First Childhood Appearance of Jack Commer, September 19, 1962

Posted on June 30, 2013 by Michael D. SmithSeptember 24, 2014

Although I began writing at age seven in July 1960, I stopped after the demise of The Gore Book in the spring or summer of 1961. (More musing is forthcoming on the unholy Götterdämmerung of The Gore Book collaboration with my friend Sabin.) But in Fall 1962, in the fifth grade, my class was assigned to write stories into which students were to work the week’s new spelling words. My first spelling story was a dull Hardy Boys rip-off which I threw away in disgust soon after. I do recall hating the thing even as I wrote it.

But the second assignment was a breakthrough and it sparked a writing renaissance. I can still recall my elation at creating Jack Commer and realizing I was somehow home, that I’d found my path. Other science fiction stories followed both for class (like this story, many of these were originally titled “Spelling”), and on my own. The resulting thirty-four stories, arranged in a blue notebook in order of their chronology from 1860 to 6000, were my own “future history” long before I knew Robert Heinlein had beaten me to that concept.

Even though I was well-bullied in that fifth grade era in Maryland, during the moments I read my stories from the front of the classroom, I had everyone in thrall, bullies included. In a way that answered everything.

Weirdly, as Mrs. Grammar must have intuited (that really was the name of my fifth grade teacher!), stretching to include ten new words each week helped fuel my imagination. I can almost know which of the words in the following story were on that week’s spelling assignment.

Of course at the time I had no idea that decades later I’d write five novels about Jack Commer. In any case here’s how he first leapt from the forehead of Zeus, or Athena, or whoever he leapt from, on September 19, 1962:

“Voyage to Venus” (2033)

Nine astronauts were walking to a USSF meeting. I, Jack Commer, was one of them. When we got in the building, we heard a man talking. He said the next space flight would be to Venus. Then he said that four brave men would go. After electing I found myself one of those four.

Among me were Jim Coner, Pat Walker, and Henry James.

It was Oct 19, 2033 and flight day. Inside an X-45 mounted on top of a Titan V booster, was my follow astronauts and me.

Then…. 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-l-….. “Lift off!” We were on our way.

It took us 3 days to get to Venus. When we got there, we cracked up the rocket. We knew that we would not get back to Earth but still we could report our finds. So we got to work. Suddenly there was a rubbling sound. We turned, saw smoke, and there before us, stood a huge Tyrannosaurus Rex! Jim, Pat and I ran. But James stood there paralyzed. I rushed to his aid, but failed. With a cry of horror, James was lifted in the air by the sharp teeth of the monster. After he went away, I noticed that he came from a large cave. We decided to have breakfast and then explore the cave. For breakfast we had toast. Afterwards I noticed that the heat from our stove was low. Later we decided to report our finds to central control. They said they would send another rocket to get us.

Three days later the rocket came, and we boarded for home.

The End

The closest contemporary Jack Commer illustration I can find is from 1964’s Trip to Mars, at a point where a stowaway has foolishly leapt outside the Typhoon I without properly securing his helmet. Ship’s engineer Harri McNarri has “rushed to his aid, but failed,” one of my favorite lines from the above story.

Hopefully Fun Draft Book Covers

Posted on June 25, 2013 by Michael D. SmithJuly 22, 2023

I’ve been making my own EPUB versions of various working novels (using the Calibre program, which has gotten good reviews and which I recommend highly) to see how a novel comes across in that format, and to do yet another proofing for typos and errors. It’s amazing what errors jump out at you once your published book comes out in e-format, and to minimize this trauma you can make an experimental EPUB and catch a lot of errors on smartphone or tablet that you missed in a hundred rereadings of your Word document. Reading the EPUB takes you away from the computer and puts you in the reader’s frame of reference.

These EPUB versions cried out for covers, which I’m only too happy to supply. However, as the first case demonstrates, I’d never allow these draft covers to become a final published version. They’re more or less off the cuff, fun placeholders.

Nonprofit Chronowar and its Real Cover

The first image above shows my cover for a late stage Nonprofit Chronowar EPUB I made to proof for errors. Although this crude image describes Joe Commer’s Chapter One confusion upon time traveling from 2036 to confront the nonprofit ladies of the 2020 Committee to End Suffering on Planet Earth, there’s no way it gets the feel of the novel as does the published cover by Double Dragon publisher Deron Douglas (right).

Nonprofit Ladies Draft 1

I made an EPUB of the first (2002) draft of Nonprofit Ladies, the original version of the final May 2013 Nonprofit Chronowar, just to reread it and celebrate the long history of this book following its publication.

The first and last chapters of the rough draft share similarities with the final version, but the middle meanders into unholy, confusing, and unpublishable directions. In fact I was struck by huge sections that I barely recall writing, passages that seem written by someone else.

It was an interesting exercise to create Nonprofit Ladies Draft 1 as one Word file; this involved pulling together its nine separate chapter files (I kept using separate chapter files until I finally realized in 2009 that a single file manuscript is the norm) and reformatting the entire thing as a newly-defined Normal style, which caused some loss of bold, italics, and centering. But since this project was only for my own rereading, I didn’t correct these problems or the numerous typos I encountered. A rough rendering of a rough draft.

I then cropped a March 2003 watercolor to make this cover. It conjures up a zany mood I’d like to remember the book’s first vision by.

Collapse and Delusion

Another image created for an error-catching EPUB reading file. It has little to do with the overall thrust of the novel. I made this picture of Martian Star General Greeney Gooney (real name G’rea’nyaigu’nye, which humans have naturally come to mispronounce) as the fourth novel of the Jack Commer series, Collapse and Delusion, was gestating. Greeney was cleverly mentioned in passing in the third novel, Nonprofit Chronowar, as running for mayor of Marsport, setting the stage for him to become a major figure in this fourth book, due to be published by Double Dragon Publishing.

I would definitely wince to see this cartoon become any sort of basis for the published cover!

The Wounded Frontier

This image was thrown together from one of my Trip to Mars images for the fifth Jack Commer novel I’m currently writing. I don’t have a real visual conception for this novel yet, so this image is again just a placeholder. I won’t create an EPUB copy of the ongoing drafts of this novel until I get to the manuscript stage and have something to proof. I don’t even have a handy little web page for it yet. This black and white image is bare bones and somehow reminds me of a textbook cover.

The First Twenty Steps

As an example of a cover I did produce for a finished publication (on Smashwords, Barnes and Nobles’ Nook Press, and amazon.com’s Kindle Direct Publishing), here is The First Twenty Steps cover. I put a lot of work into this one, though I know it’s not perfect. My main issue with covers seems to be finding a good lettering for title and author, distinctive letters that set themselves apart from the background. So far I’m dissatisfied with what I find in Word, Publisher, PowerPoint, Paint, etc. Another factor is making sure your image still conveys something (probably “Buy me!”) when shrunk to thumbnail size.

In any case, all these images are better than the generic “No image available” book covers you occasionally run across.

Jack Commer Series Images

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Michael D. SmithJune 27, 2019

I finally pulled together various Jack Commer images I’ve done over the past couple decades onto one web page. The impetus came from finding what I’d remembered as a mediocre, crudely done black and white sketch for the original Nonprofit Ladies manuscript of 2003. But it turns out that this March 2003 drawing was really ink and watercolor and (okay, so it IS a bit crude) and has a certain zing to it. It struck me as what a movie poster for the original version of Nonprofit Chronowar might have been. The main characters are all there, even the Martian Dar who had no direct role in Draft 1.

I seem to be developing a new style working on the various Trip to Mars, the Picture Book illustrations (blog post on THAT someday), so I’m looking forward to doing some new ones of the main characters of all the Jack Commer novels. As I add more, I’ll probably switch out some of the ones on the images page, some of which are as rough draft as the original Nonprofit Ladies. For example, we don’t really need three different copies of the various Tarot cards (from a separate project of seventy-eight absurd Tarot cards I made from 2001-2004), although I had fun editing these, sometimes pixel by pixel, and colorizing them in Paint, of all things. But, as a starting point, I wanted to see all the existing Jack Commer images in one place.