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E_______ second draft, 97.0% complete.

Thanks to my fabulous colleague, Denitsa R., I was able for the first time in years to take a weeklong break from my day job totally uninterrupted by work. Pure bliss!

And how did I spend all this free time? Well, working of course.

I’m joking. Sort of. I attended a writing retreat at Moniack Mhor, “Scotland’s National Writing Centre.” Situated in the Scottish Highlands (not high by Denver standards but high enough), it’s a large farmhouse, adjacent cottage, and study/studio where writers of all levels and persuasions can get together to do nothing but eat, drink, write, and chat. Not necessarily in that order. They have an incredible staff whose job is to make sure nothing gets between you and whatever you want to do (literarily speaking) while you’re there. Your only obligation is to help prepare one of the communal evening meals. Even though I can burn water when left to my own devices, the kitchen turned out to be an absolute blast.

With thick walls and warm fireplaces to keep us snug against the winds howling through the mountains, I had an opportunity to mix with memoirists, PhD. candidates, poets, graphic novelists, writers of non-fiction and more. It was the best time I’ve had in ages. And did I say that the staff were amazing? (No, I didn’t. I said they were incredible. They were also amazing.) On the last night we had a super-Scottish evening with a piped-in and traditionally addressed haggis followed by people reading extracts from things they’d been working on. It was brilliant and funny and moving and harrowing by turns: not something I’m likely to forget anytime soon.

For me, it was also an opportunity to get a sense of what it might be like to be a full-time writer. It appears that, if given the opportunity, “full-time” writing would consist of getting to my desk around 10 a.m., working for a couple of hours, having a nap, followed by lunch, followed by another couple of hours of work, followed by another nap, followed by more food and/or the pub. Nice work if you can get it, right? Though, to be fair, four hours of writing a day is at least twice what I manage at the moment! We shall see. I am a very long way from being able to give up my day job. And that’s assuming I would even want to do such a thing.

Despite the frequent napping, my week at Moniack Mhor was incredibly productive. Thanks to the stuff I was able to get done up there, I’m only a day or two from finishing my second draft. After that, all that remains is to give it a final read through, make a few last-minute tweaks, and pack it off to the estimable Brady.

And then I can knuckle down to writing the sequel to A Quiet Teacher. I have the beginnings of an outline and synopsis: I just need to knit a bunch of interesting but random thoughts into something a little more coherent, after which: away we go!

You know, if I wasn’t having so much fun, this would feel like a job . . .

E________, second draft: 54.5% complete.

Human beings, I sometimes think, are time machines, programmed to travel into the future. And one of the joys about traveling into the future is that you get to see how things turn out. Things that used to be science fiction (cellphones, orbiting space stations, flying cars (nearly there!)) become a part of everyday life. And if, like me, you write hard(ish) science fiction, you like to think that some of what you put down on the page will come true one day. Excepting, of course, the galaxy-spanning wars, pogroms and massacres. I’m talking about the cool stuff.

Which is why, one day, I would like to be able to write a story about a coal mine.

Wait. What?

Coal mines, despite being pressed into service by Suzanne Collins in her Hunger Games trilogy, are very much associated with the past. No one, not even those in countries like China or Poland that still rely on coal for their energy, see much of a future for them. I, on the other hand, am beginning to think they could have a really important – and really green – part to play in a grid powered by renewables.

I’m thinking wheels.

With the exception of solar panels, electricity is basically generated by spinning wheels. Admittedly, the wheels are hooked up with magnets and conductors, but if the wheels don’t spin the magnets and conductors don’t work and you don’t get electricity. Coal, and gas, and nuclear powerplants all generate heat that turns water into steam that is then used to turn turbines (a fancy word for wheels) and generate electricity. They’re essentially steam engines. Dams and wind turbines (there’s that word again) do it more directly, using water and air to set the relevant wheels (okay, turbines) to spinning. The bigger and the heavier the wh . . . sorry, turbine, the more electricity you can generate.

Which brings us to coal mines. More precisely, the shafts of coal mines. Some of these are very deep. The deepest in Europe, possibly the world, is in the war-torn Donbas region of Ukraine. Shakhterskaya mine is 1,546 meters (5,072 feet) deep. Think about that. You could drop the Empire State building (1,454 feet) down there plus another two of them and still need to take a serious elevator ride down to the topmost spire of the third one.

And it’s elevators, actually, that are the key to this. An elevator (or lift as I should say now that I’m back in Scotland) is something raised up and down a shaft on a pulley mechanism. And a pulley is basically a wheel. When it turns it can generate electricity.

So, here’s the deal. When the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, use any excess electricity you produce to lift heavy weights (I’m thinking elevators full of sand and rejected manuscripts) from the bottom of a mine shaft, the deeper the better. Then, when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing, let the weights drop. They would drop slowly because they’d be turning a gigantic pulley that we’d be using to generate electricity on the way down. And it’s a long way down! Scientists estimate that building “gravity batteries” like this has an energy storage potential of up to 70 Terawatt hours. That’s a lot of watts, by the way – about as much as the entire world consumes in a day – completely rechargeable and with no meaningful emissions or dangerous chemicals. Plus, think of all the old mining communities that could be reinvigorated by the investment and jobs. It’s a win win win win win!

Of course, in my novel, the gravity battery will be the site of a grisly crushing death, or maybe the target of terrorists trying to blow up the grid. Not cool! Let’s try and keep those bits confined to the page.

E________, second draft: 33.9% complete

Off-the-wall things start happening once you get published (as if getting published wasn’t off the wall enough). Not so long ago, the folks at booksite sheperd.com stumbled across yours truly wearing his crime writer hat. For reasons best known to themselves, they asked me to share with them my five favorite fair-play murder mysteries. And, with their permission, I can now share them with you. Enjoy!

And Then There Were None

By Agatha Christie

And Then There Were None is arguably (!) the best of Christie’s mysteries and the best introduction to her work anyone could hope for. Ten strangers, all with a wide variety of occupations and backgrounds, accept invitations from a mysterious host to spend a weekend on an isolated island. The strangers, though, have one thing in common: they have escaped justice for dark deeds done in the past. As the weekend progresses to its seemingly inevitable conclusion, the weekend visitors begin to die one by one. Whatever the sins of the past, one of them is a killer.  The ever-dwindling band of survivors have no choice but to solve the mystery or die trying.

Moonflower Murders

By Anthony Horowitz

Moonflower Murders shows what can be done at the boundary between genre and literary fiction. This is a writer at the top of his form with twisty plotting, mellifluous prose, and the sheer joy of storytelling. Realistic? No. But that’s not the point. This is an insane murder mystery within a murder mystery. A sequel to Magpie Murders, it features retired publisher Susan Ryeland, who now runs a small hotel on a Greek island. But running a small hotel on a Greek island isn’t for everyone, and Susan is beginning to miss her old life in London.

She is pushed into returning when two of her guests inform her that their newlywed daughter had been in dangerous proximity to a murder back home and had now gone missing – hours after reading a murder mystery Susan herself had edited in her old life. The book holds the key to both the murder and the daughter’s disappearance. Susan is determined to get to the bottom of them. Even if it kills her.

The Cuckoo’s Calling

By Robert Galbraith

A reworking of the hard-boiled crime novel, updated with a modern-day female partner and a not-quite romance, there is a lot to like in the first and, I think, shortest of Robert Galbraith’s/J.K. Rowling’s mystery series. Private investigator Cormoran Strike is down on his luck. He is deep in debt, sleeping in his office, and utterly unable to pay for Robin Ellacott, the agency temp he forgot to cancel. Things take a turn for the better, though, when a high-strung model falls to her death from an upscale London balcony. Everyone says it’s suicide, except her brother, who turns to Cormoran for help. Reluctantly taking Robin in tow, Cormoran finds there’s far more to the apparent suicide than meets the eye. But while delving ever deeper is good for Cormoran’s bank balance, it is decidedly the reverse when it comes to his odds of survival.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

By Stuart Turton

Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day meets Rashomon in this country house murder mystery where the narrator is as much a puzzle as the murder itself. The narrator lurches into the novel as a witness to a killing so dreadful they’ve lost their memory. Then awakes the next morning to live the same day again as a different character with a different viewpoint: a bizarre twist that repeats itself until we have, as the title suggests, seven different versions of what happened, and enough information, finally, to get to the “truth.” Come for the strange, mind-bending trip, leave with a beautifully constructed conclusion.

The Trespasser

By Tana French

Cynical, elegantly plotted, and beautifully written, in this, the sixth of French’s Dublin Murder Squad mysteries, a young woman is found dead in her home and the initial conclusion is that she’s a victim of domestic violence. Her boyfriend is hauled in and questioned and the Squad is convinced it’s an open and shut case. All except the deeply unpopular Antoinette Conway, who spots a number of inconsistencies that give her pause. Pushed to the limit by the hostility and harassment of her so-called colleagues, Conway probes deeper into the case—at the risk of sinking her precarious career for good. 

E________, second draft, 9.8% complete.

Delighted to share more news on the awards front: Braking Day has been longlisted for the British Science Fiction Association’s Novel of the Year Award! Not only that but Kekai Kotaki‘s excellent cover has been nominated for the artwork. Kekai lives in Seattle, so it’s possible he doesn’t even know yet! Regarding the cover, some credit must also be given to my agent, the estimable Brady, whose concept of Michaelangelo’s Creation of Adam in space was the starting point for Kekai’s (inter) stellar treatment.

Admittedly, the BSFA long list is long and includes entries from Gareth L. Powell, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Emily St. John Mandel, so this is probably the last we’ll hear of it, but it’s the company you keep, right? Super excited!

I have started working on the second draft of E_________. It’s an interesting experience to return to the opening chapters of a novel because, in this case, you’re reading words you put on the page a whole year before you typed the last ones. A lot has changed in the interval, not least your understanding of the characters and the journey you sent them on, so there’s a fair bit of work to be done to make sure everything is internally coherent. But it’s fun work. An opportunity to layer and foreshadow and polish. I find it soothing, actually, a bit like sanding down an almost finished bit of woodwork (not that I’d be caught dead doing that: I’d undoubtedly find some way to stuff it up) in preparation for putting on the varnish and stepping out with the finished product. The stress of creating something has gone and the stress of worrying that the finished product is no good has yet to arrive. This is the comfortable middle, where you can just lose yourself in words, and story, and structure.

Very Zen.

As we aim to close the books on 2022, I’m not going to lie: it’s been a rough year. Putin’s (re)invasion of Ukraine had a brutal effect on my day job, making the time for writing even shorter than usual – and frequently wiping it out altogether. But despite that a surprising amount got done on the writing front. Braking Day came out in April; A Quiet Teacher hit the shelves in November; Worlds Long Lost, the anthology to which I contributed the story, The Wrong Shape to Fly, was published in December; and I finally (finally!) finished my first draft of E________, to which I plan to return in the New Year, once the froth of it has settled out of my head.

Nor is that all. I HAVE BEEN NOMINATED FOR A LITERARY PRIZE! Which, let me tell you, never ever happens to me. Not even in school.

I am one of the finalists for the 100 Year Starship (100YSS) 2022 Canopus Awards for Excellence in Interstellar Writing in the published long form fiction category (novels and longish novellas). Canopus recognizes “the finest fiction and non-fiction works that expand our understanding of the challenges, opportunities, pitfalls, and rewards of interstellar space exploration.” Cool, right?

The complete long-form list is as follows:

• Sweep of Stars, Maurice Broaddus (Tor)
• Escaping Exodus, Nicky Drayden (HarperVoyager)
• Light Chaser, Peter F. Hamilton and Gareth L. Powell (Tor)
• Sentient, Jeff Lemire and Gabriel Hernandez Walta (TKO)
• Braking Day, Adam Oyebanji (DAW)
• Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir (Ballantine)

What I’m really excited about is not just the nomination but the company I get to keep. These are real serious SF writers! And now I’m one of them!

Wow. Who’d ‘a thunk it?

Wait. There’s more! I made a few year’s-best-SF lists as well! I was particularly pleased to make the Library Journal’s “Best SF/Fantasy of 2022” (apologies in advance: the link is hiding behind the LJ paywall) and also the Track of Words website’s “Best SFF Books of 2022.” Track of Words always provide really thoughtful reviews, so it was really touching to read their year-end summary:

“A brilliant tale of deep-space travel upon the generation ship Archimedes, I’m actually tempted to say that this is the best book I’ve read all year (despite reading it way back in March). The premise is fantastic – a generation ship making preparations for finally slowing down as it approaches its destination, tensions rising within the stratified crew, and one young officer worrying that he’s going mad as he starts seeing impossible things. It’s a fascinating story full of wonderful characters exploring what life might be like for those who have only ever known the constraints of a starship. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a dichotomy of beauty and terror as I did reading Oyebanji’s portrayal of space and the fragility of life on board the Archimedes, but the world building is so clever and so vibrant that I still sort of wish I could experience it for myself! It’s also just a really smart plot, and if you have any interest in space-set sci-fi then I really can’t recommend this enough.“

It’s just so gratifying when something lands with someone the way you intended. I enjoy writing. But writing that brings enjoyment to others is a whole other level.

So, not such a bad year after all, maybe. And here’s wishing you all the best for 2023.

E________, first draft: 96,300 words (complete).

I am finally done! The first draft of E________ is finished! It’s taken a whole year – six months more than I thought it would. Of course, that was in the heady days before the invasion of Ukraine became all-consuming, combined with a move from Pittsburgh to Edinburgh, so I suppose I should be gratified that I finished at all. I was typing away in an early-morning coffee shop on the Lothian Road, realized that the last sentence I had written was, in fact, the last sentence, paused for a moment, and banged out the two words writers fantasize about from time to time: “THE END.”

In movies, when a writer types “The End,” he or she really means it. The actor’s face registers a sense of achievement (broad grin, wry smile, whatever), they lean back, reach for a stiff drink, loved one, or both, and wait for the end credits to show up.

Of course, as I now know, typing “The End” like this simply means that I am done with the first draft. I will walk away from the MS for several weeks, until it’s half-forgotten, and then return for a second draft, and then a third. After which it will go to my agent, the estimable Brady, who will make a number of excellent suggestions requiring more drafting, after which (fingers crossed) it will go out to the publishers, whose editors will have further suggestions of their own. I did play around once with not typing “The End” until everything was finished, but the actual end (sometime after the copy editors have had their say) occurs after the text is set in stone, so it’s simply not practical – unless, I suppose, you want to add “The End” as an eleventh-hour correction accompanied by profuse apologies.

Er . . . no.

But even though I knew that typing “The End” was not a statement of truth, I still leaned back with a smile of triumph and reached out for a slug of coffee (which always tastes better if you don’t have to make it yourself). Because if typing “The End” isn’t strictly true, it’s not quite a lie, either. It is a stage in the process, and a really important one. You have written a novel, after all. Everything else is, in a sense, just tidying up. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, a first draft is not the end of the story, it’s not even the beginning of the end. But it is, most definitely, the end of the beginning.

E________, first draft: 91,500 words

The last few days I’ve been in an Artemis frame of mind, devouring every molecule of news about NASA’s much delayed test run to translunar space and back again.  Another step in our slow, halting return journey to the moon.

And, of course, you can’t read about Artemis without reliving the Apollo program of the sixties and early seventies.  The one that actually put human beings on another world. The one where, in 1969, the part of the planet with access to television watched a lunar module descend into a puffing of dust and announce, “The Eagle has landed.”  The one that suckered a generation of children into thinking that they’d grow up to live offworld, one day.  Aging Brits may remember the TV series UFO (which featured Benedict Cumberbatch’s mom, by the way), in which there was a regular shuttle service to the moon running in — wait for it — 1980.

*Sigh*

I’ve been on a couple of journeys of my own, both literary and literal, since I last posted.  On the literary front, my murder mystery, A Quiet Teacher, has now been published by Severn House.  We were lucky enough to garner a starred review in Booklist, which opened thus:

“Imagine John le Carré attempting an Agatha Christie mystery. Or the other way around. In any case, that mix is at the heart of this stunning novel.”

I’ll take it!

As for the literal journey, we are in the process of settling into our new life in Edinburgh, Scotland.  We have rented an apartment in the Old Town, the medieval neighborhood that huddles around the Castle.  In addition to being almost indescribably steep (medieval castles were seldom sited on flat, easily accessible terrain, apparently) Old Town is full of nooks and crannies and cobbled streets.  Oddly, though, living here has an almost Manhattan-like vibe.  It’s extremely crowded, driving is more trouble than it’s worth, and everything you could possibly need or want is within walking distance.  And, also like New York, the city is at the edge of the sea.  We can see it from the apartment, and we’re so high up, the gulls glide by our window, big and weathered and very much in their element.

I wonder, when they open their wide beaks, if they keen with a Scottish accent.

I am sitting at my local coffee shop (Coffee Tree Roasters on Walnut) and mostly looking out the window as the sun comes up. I’d come down here early in the morning intent on adding a page or two to E________ when it occurred to me that, in all likelihood, I will never write here again – certainly not regularly. My day job’s much- threatened transfer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Edinburgh, Scotland is finally happening. Tomorrow, I drive the cats to Washington, D.C. to meet the people who will acclimate them to their cargo crates but fail to explain important concepts like aircraft, jet lag, or mice with Scottish accents. That job done, I will board a flight at Dulles and return to the land of my birth.

I’ve been away for 23 years and although I’ve visited regularly, living there again is going to be a completely different experience. I have so much to learn. What the heck is Sky Atlantic when it’s at home? Why is the paper money made of plastic? Where is the sun? It’s going to be an adjustment.

Like my mother, sisters and child, I was born on a Thursday. According to the old rhyme, Thursday’s child has far to go, and our family’s Thursday-born have certainly lived up to the prophecy. I am not a hundred percent certain I could recite all the places I have lived at this point. Leaving somewhere is miserable. You make friends, you get to know your way around, you feel . . . settled.

But arriving somewhere is exciting. A new adventure awaits. There will be new people to meet, new sights to see, new stories to hear and, of course, new stories to tell. I will need to find a new coffee shop, though.

When I got here this morning, I gave the barista my usual order. I didn’t tell her it was to go because that would have made no sense: I was staying to write, after all. Nor did I tell her that this would be my last time here: like all my family’s Thursday-born, I hate goodbyes.

I did, however, leave a ridiculous tip. I hope it’s enough.

E________, first draft, 78,800 words

We are a little shy of a year since I started work on E________. Armed with my trusty chart (outline), I set sail for an unseen destination full of hope and anticipation for the voyage ahead.

It’s been a far stormier journey than I could ever have anticipated. In my own mind I expected to drop anchor in a sheltered cove labeled “The End” maybe six months after I set out. Yet here I am, five months past that, still sailing the ocean blue, thanks mainly to the hurricane unleashed by the ill-advised Russian invasion (re-invasion, really) of Ukraine. Given that my day job (financial counterterrorism) requires an intimate knowledge of, and involvement with, sanctions, the West’s unprecedented economic response led to several months of 16-hour days turning political pronouncements into financial reality. It was important work but utterly miserable, the only consolation being (as I’ve said before) that no one was trying to drop artillery shells onto the roof of my house.

But 16-hour days are not conducive to creative endeavor. If I have any talent at all it is not for writing so much as time management: 16 hours of work plus two hours of family time, face stuffing and chores leaves six hours for . . . sleep and nightmares. There is literally no time to write. I don’t care how motivated or organized you are, time is a zero-sum proposition. If you can’t kick something else out of your schedule, you can’t write, end of story. Or, rather, no story at all. I went weeks and months without writing much of anything. E________ languished. Ideas festered in my head, trying and failing to find a way out.

Fortunately, it is not just good things that come to an end. The pressure eased off at work and I was able to return to the keyboard. First in fits and starts and now more regularly. Then, yesterday, I realized something about E________, something shocking.

I can see the end. I’m the sailor at the top of a tall, swaying mast crying “Land ho!”

There’s still a ways to go, admittedly. I’m ten, maybe twenty thousand words out but I can see the destination on the horizon, all green trees and waterfalls. Knotted plotlines form a jagged reef between ship and shore, but I can see a way through. I am definitely going to get there.

The timing, though, is ironic. I am coming to the end of a metaphorical journey just as I’m about to start a real one. At the behest of the megacorp for which I work, I will be transferring from the States to Edinburgh, Scotland, thirty-odd miles from where I was born. I’ve lived in America for 23 years. Going home feels . . . odd. A stranger in a once-known land.

There’s got to be a book in that. Somewhere.

E________, first draft: 72,300 words

Like many dinosaurs (see previous post) I am not a multitasker, one of the myriad ways that I am unfit for the modern world. On the other hand, like most creatures of a reptilian bent (are dinosaurs reptiles?), I am seldom plagued by guilt. I try and do the right thing and/or my best, and if it doesn’t work out, too bad: time to move on.

A strategy that is presently failing me. My inability to multitask is drowning me in shame and remorse.

I love to write. Paradoxically perhaps, it helps me get out of my own head and relax, the perfect antidote to a stressful day job. For me, getting published was a fun daydream that might or might not come true, like winning the lottery, but the joy is in the writing. If I got rejected, my reptile brain wasn’t capable of mulling that over for very long. Time for another project, usually one that I’d already started before the rejections started to roll in. Back to the laptop.

And then I won the lottery. Braking Day got picked up and published. A Quiet Teacher is coming out on November 1. It is literally (and literarily) a dream come true.

But it also requires me to multitask.

Ideally, what I would like to be doing is writing. By which I mean, writing my next novel, E________ (as regular readers of this blog will know, I am . . . not good with titles, so I’m not going to embarrass myself further by spelling it out. It’ll only get changed, anyway). My time for writing is short: I can usually carve out an hour or two from the day (goodbye TV, it was fun knowing you; goodbye chores, until my other half gives me the evil eye). With an outline to point me in the right direction and a following wind, I can usually bang out about 600 words at a sitting. Not a blistering pace, obviously, but day after day it adds up.

But once you get published, cool things happen. Other people take an interest in your work. Like publishers. And readers. Who, not unreasonably, require other things of you. Which requires multitasking.

Recently, I have been preoccupied with: (1) crawling out of the hole I dug for myself by littering the audiobook of A Quiet Teacher with Russian words and phrases I had no clue how to pronounce. Thank you, Irina, for bailing me out!! (2) drafting back cover copy for the paperback version of Braking Day, which is due out in April; (3) reviewing the proof of The Wrong Shape to Fly, my contribution to the awesome Baen anthology Worlds Long Lost, which comes out on December 6; and (4) debugging this website, which crashed a few days ago and delayed my posting of this extended whine. I now know far more about plugins than I ever imagined possible.

All of which I approached, dinosaur fashion, one after the other, to the exclusion of anything else. All of which came out of my daily hour or two of writing time. And none of which involved writing E________. Had I been more evolved, maybe I could have done these other tasks and written a few paragraphs of story, just to keep things ticking along.

But I can’t. I’m a dinosaur.

A guilty one.

Sorry, E________. I will come back soon. I promise.

Please don’t look at me like that.