Work continues on both projects

My last crit is promised within days for Project Cold Witness, so I'm confident that I'll be able to wrap up the novel within the next month. At the moment I'm aware of two or three scenes that seem a little off (I've learned to trust my intuition), and I know that the whole thing could benefit from another on-paper read-through, to catch those pesky wording and grammar errors that go unnoticed on the computer screen. Doubtless my proofreader will find a whole slew of other things that need fixing ... but I'm not worried anymore. I know that it's nearly there. All the important problems were fixed months ago. From now on it's just the details.

Planning and prewriting for Silent Falcon is also coming along well. At the moment I'm concentrating on worldbuilding and individual ideas. The overall plot hasn't been nailed down yet, and I haven't outlined the characters, but right now I've decided to focus on the things that seem most fun when I think of them. Yesterday's work was on the two "safe rooms" that the soldiers will use to ride out psychotronic attacks. I drew up a complete floor plan, figured out how the walls were constructed (lead, then six inches of concrete, then computer-controlled APT magnetic coils ... ), and decided what each of the three equipment lockers would contain. I designed a nifty way that the soldiers could defend the safe room via a pair of gun loops and turns in the corridor. This idea may never make it into the story itself ... but it's fun to do, and it helps to build up a sense of depth.

I'm also discovering how music is affecting this project. In the past, all my novels have had a particular set of tracks associated with them: particularly Brahms clarinet pieces, various items by Bach and Mendelssohn (Fingal's Cave summed up Evil's True Form pretty well), and lots of Beethoven pieces. Classical music is best for its character. If I play a particular playlist over and over again while planning and writing a particular book, I can train my mind to recognise those tunes and put me back into that emotional mode. Making sense? When I play the ETF tracks now, months after I stopped working on the book, I can feel the same emotions and ideas I felt while writing the novel. It's a useful way to quickly "snap back" to a particular way of thinking.

With PSF, I'm using some tracks from the computer game Ghost Recon. They're not particularly good for writing, since they're highly rhythmic military-style pieces, but they're ideal for mood alteration. For example, I have given the tracks names of my own: things like "under seige", "heavy combat", "triumph/dawn breaking", and "marching". This really helps in planning. If I'm outlining CLARS or Spetznaz squads, I use the Ghost Recon theme music. If I'm drawing a map of the southern portion of Orfordness, I use the "under seige" music (which reminds me of the battle in Cold Witness). In every case, I'm able to think the problem through more easily ... simply because my brain has been forced into the right gear by the music I'm listening to.

Never tried this method of fine-tuning your thoughts? Give it a whirl. It takes time and patience, but it's given me some impressive results over the years.

Weeky pics

Some photos from the Sandlings this week.

First, a picture of the sun rising beyond Staverton Forest--a small stand of primordial woodland left over from the last Ice Age.



Secondly, some of last autumn's golden colours, in this case a shot of some maple leaves in Tunstall Forest. This autumn wasn't as vivid as 2003, but it was pretty good nonetheless.



Lastly, this is my dog, Amber--who will be eight years old next week, but rarely acts her age--playing on Dunwich Heath. This was taken on our Christmas walk from the car park at Dunwich along the Minsmere coast. At a point about three miles along, Amber rolled over in the grass and refused to go any further. This is her reproachful look when I suggested that we should go back the long way round.



Photos (C) James Roddie 2004, 2005

The clock is ticking!

I believe that the time has come to get Project Cold Witness finished once and for all. The time has come to start preparing it for submission--hopefully as quickly as possible--and to start actually submitting it to literary agents.

Something big has happened that affects this story directly. For years, the promise of a British Freedom of Information Act, similar to the one already in operation in the States, has had UFO enthusiasts arguing amongst themselves whether or not The Truth will come out regarding the various UFO sightings in this country. The big one, of course, is the Rendlesham Forest Incident, which occurred Christmas 1980. Cold Witness contains this incident in its climax, and in many ways, the Rendlesham Incident can be seen as a small slice of the essence of the story itself. I fashioned my hypothetical "answers" to the big questions around that event. It's still fiction ... but it has a core of truth.

The Rendlesham Files have finally been released under the FOIA. The official verdict of the Ministry of Defence seems to be that it was a combination of the Orfordness lighthouse shining through a cloud, and a Security Policeman playing silly buggers in a squad car not far away. The Suffolk Constabulary has also released its files regarding the incident, in which they conclude that the physical evidence--ie. marks on trees and those weird holes in the ground--were all generated through natural processes, and were in no way mysterious.

Although I don't consider myself either a believer or a sceptic, these two verdicts suggest to me that neither of these organisations really know what happened. I've visited the crash site at night, and I know for a fact that the Orfordness lighthouse--which can be seen, if distantly--could not under any circumstances be confused for a moving, pulsing red light ... a light which was later seen to fly off into the air and explode. And both reports neglect to mention the radiation readings, which were ten times higher than normal background.

UFO enthusiasts are already screaming "Cover up!", and I can't really blame them. But I've accepted the fact that nobody is ever going to find out what really happened, and I've learned to be satisfied by my own answers--the answers I used to construct Cold Witness. But public interest in Rendlesham Forest and UFOs in general is peaking again in Britain. Many of the other reports do give indications that the MOD believes an extraterrestrial origin to be possible. And although that's not my own personal belief, it's good to know that the government is finally letting people know about this stuff.

So I think the time is right for Cold Witness to start making the rounds. The good news is that the book is very nearly ready. The bad news is that this will be my first foray into the unknown region of submissions and publishing, and I'm feeling nervous and afraid at what may lie ahead. But I've been preparing myself for this moment for three years now. I've researched, I've learned, I've experienced. I have developed a professional attitude towards my writing. I have, in short, grown up a hell of a lot from the amateurish dabbler who penned the first words of Life of a Falcon six years ago.

I think I'm ready. It's going to take hard work and persistence to get through this, but that's not the problem. The problem is getting lucky, finding the right agent, and striking while the iron is still hot.

Research for Silent Falcon

On Saturday, I visited a region of Rendlesham Forest known, variously, as Little Scotland or the Scotland Fens. I've decided to use the area as a setting for the opening incident in Project Silent Falcon. An unidentified radar trace over Woodbridge airfield will be fired upon by the Cold Lightning defence system, and it will crash somewhere in the Scotland Fens. It's the task of the Cold Lightning Armed Response Squad to move in and investigate.

My first task was to wander around in the fens and find a suitable glade for the craft to crash-land in. Since much of the region is dangerous quagmire, mixed in with scrubby underbrush and pine or birch woodland, this was a slow and painstaking process, conducted one careful step at a time. Eventually I found a perfect little clearing, surrounded by oak trees, on the far side of the valley: there's even a fairly distinct deer-track leading there from the public footpath. Next, I activated the movie function on my camera and approached the clearing, adding voice notes as I went regarding terrain features and possible ideas to use.

That exercise was a real help. Had I not actually visited the site, I wouldn't have known where to start with the scene. But actually going out there and seeing for yourself what your characters will be seeing allows you to make decisions about the action. For example, the presence of a handy ditch right behind the clearing answers a lot of questions. I wanted to know how the Russian pilots could keep concealed until the CLARS soldiers were almost on them--now I know: they're hiding in the ditch, aiming their weapons at the approaching Americans. I managed to sketch out exactly how the Russians' field of view is restricted by the surrounding landscape. I even came up with an idea revolving around the muddy little stream just to the south.

Before I checked out the location, the scene was just a fuzzy concept in my mind. But now I can visualise the lay of the land, and have an invaluable resource I can refer to at any time (the video I made). It's so much easier to see how events must have unfolded. In combat situations, terrain is all-important. Writing combat scenes in Cold Witness tought me the crucial lesson that, until you know the landscape in which your characters will be fighting, you can't make decisions about what they should do next. Should they retreat and wait for backup, or should they advance and make do with what they've got? I can't know that until I understand the terrain, and how they interact with the terrain. In this example, knowing that the ground is saturated with water and covered with a layer of treacherously safe-looking moss and leaves will add just that bit more detail to the scene.

Basing my settings on real places is turning out to be a pretty good idea. If you haven't tried it before with your writing, I'd recommend it--it allows you to go into so much more depth, and in my experience has a big impact on the outcome of the story as a whole.

Weekly pics

This week, I'm showing you some examples of the worldbuilding I've done on The Riven Path to date. TRP is traditional fantasy, and although I'm concentrating on my two Cold Witness projects at the moment, worldbuilding is too much fun to leave alone for long. At the moment, I'm still in the mapping stage--but I'm taking it very seriously. I already have five or six small-scale maps finished, plus a whole slew of 1:25,000 (2.5 inches per mile) versions on the drawing board. I use the 25K maps to zoom down on areas of particular interest and develop them in intricate detail. It's a slow process, but highly rewarding.

These pictures may be a little dark on your screen. I don't have access to a scanner, so they've been photographed and enhanced as best as I can. Try reducing the contrast on your display if they're too dark.

First, a section of the Deswin Point 2.5 inch map. This is the westernmost section of the country of Eska, and shows the city of Eshesk itself, plus the Esley Fells (the ones in view are Gosfarhal Mountain, Scarth Fell and Middle Fell). This map is still unfinished.



Secondly, the southern portion of the Risgarth and Sword Lake 2.5 inch map. This is an especially interesting area to develop, as it's part of a largely uninhabited tract of land poisoned by Rivium "fallout" from a war 20,000 years in the past. This land--Lu A Kuoryn, or Koiran's Belt--is peppered with gigantic circular lakes (impact craters) surrounded by heavily glaciated mountains. Risgarth, the tiny village in the bottom portion of the map, is the first human settlement to be built in Koiran's Belt since the end of the war.



Maps (C) Alex Roddie 2005

Preparations for the Trek begin!

I can't believe it's only just over three months until May. I've been looking forward to this expedition for nearly two years. Ever since I first found out I actually liked walking, the promise of a "terminal trek"--the ultimate long-distance hike--has pulled me onwards.

It's almost here. This year, my "gap year" before university in September, has been my first real chance for ages to do anything like this. We visited Yorkshire and the Lakes in 2003, and James and I did a spot of backpacking in Snowdonia last year, but neither of those holidays were as grand in scale as the one I'm planning now.

Basically, the expedition will take eighteen days, traverse over thirty summits (a good many of the Southern Fells of the Lake District, plus some of the Central and Western ones as well), and cover well over a hundred miles. I'll be backpacking, so that makes me totally self-sufficient and reliant only on the whims of the weather. I'll be camping in a variety of locations, including Sty Head, the place which gets more rainfall than anywhere else in England. Although I'm no rock climber, and draw the line at crags, many of the tracks and passes I'll be following cross some of the roughest terrain in the land. I'll camp in the highest plateau in England and climb the highest mountains. For me, this will be the most demanding--but hopefully the most rewarding--thing I've ever done.

Current preparations are mostly in terms of getting myself physically ready. Although I'm used to walking long distances, I've gotten rather slack over Christmas and haven't been walking as much as I'd have liked to. My previous best for a single day is 21.7 miles. I want to beat that. In addition, I'm going to be implementing a progressive plan of weekly hikes, starting out at 15 miles and progressing up to one 20 mile hike per week, plus any smaller ones I can cram in on days off.

Another big consideration is uphill climbing. Coastal Suffolk is utterly flat and there is absolutely no scope for practising climbing slopes. The best I can hope to do is some serious heather-slogging on Blaxhall Heath, which is nearly as tiring, or forcing myself to walk three or four miles through heavy shingle (which is a damn sight more tiring, let me tell you). Those calf muscles need building up again, or I'll be in for cramps and agony when I try my first ascent.

My gear also needs an overhaul. The tent was damaged in Wales last August and needs a new pole. I need rock pegs, a new backpack, new boots (my current ones leak and have worn-out soles), a new First Aid kit, and a new pair of trekking poles. Then I need to organise a couple of trial camps, once the weather improves, to break in my new gear.

Three months may sound a long time, but there's a lot to organise before May. How I'll find time for writing amidst all this is anyone's guess.

(And, to honour the occasion, I've created a new titlebar graphic for the website. The original image was a photo taken from the Blea Tarn Depression looking down Little Langdale towards Windermere.)

My "lost projects"

Every writer, no matter how successful he or she may be, will have novels that never worked out. Some will have many--possibly a whole slew of books that just didn't work, before that writer finally hooked onto the theme or genre which worked. I think I'm one of the latter. Of the nine novels I have worked on so far, here is what has become of them:

The Falcon's Flight (Life of a Falcon, part 1): Dead and buried;
The Dark Behind the Moon (LOAF part 2): Dead and buried, and good riddance, too;
Darkness in the Forest: Finished, but amateurish and far from publishable;
The Twilight Trilogy, Part 1: Finished, but the story won't stand by itself and I never worked on the other two parts of the trilogy;
Project Cold Witness: Approaching completion and submission (yay!);
Project White Light: I wrote two thirds of nine months ago, but the story and characters just don't work;
The Riven Path: Worldbuilding completed--project on hold until I feel like writing fantasy again;
Evil's True Form: 14K of decent material completed last summer, but I hit a major stumbling block--I'm keeping this project closed until I can give it the attention it deserves;
Project Silent Falcon: Research and prewriting in progress (I have high hopes for this one).

Phew. When they're all lined up there, it seems that I haven't achieved much of value. I've been writing for six years, ever since I was just over twelve years old. I guess I was right in starting early, but it just seems so ... wasteful, beginning all those grand projects only to be thwarted by my own lack of experience.

But maybe that's wrong. The experience I have now--experience gained the hard way, from far more failure than success--is serving me well in planning future projects, and completing the two or three old ones I'm keeping open. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Forward Motion, and to Holly's excellent and inspirational articles ... articles which singlehandedly kicked me out of the Life of a Falcon rut and into new areas. Maybe I was right to tackle ambitious projects from the beginning. Many of those novels will never now see the light of day, but the time and effort I spent on them is not wasted: it's provided the framework for the person I am today, and fuels both my hunger for writing and the inspiration that drives my new projects onward. Thanks to a combination of my own experience, Forward Motion's friendly support, and the hope and comfort gained from reading the accounts of other authors, I finally feel sufficiently equipped to write the stories I've always dreamed to write.

Project Cold Witness, although well over a year old, remains my finest achievement because I put my heart and soul into it. It wasn't an excercise or experiment, like many of the others. I wrote that book because I saw a fascinating story in a set of real-life events, and simply had to write it ... and even though I've always believed in careful planning, that book was very spontaneous. How ironic, for me, that my best novel to date took less than three days to plan and was finished in just 48 days.

Of course, it's taken nearly a year of polishing to get it remotely presentable, but that's what being a writer is all about.

Weekly pics

To start off the weekly photos for the year, here are four pictures from Orford and Orfordness. These locations feature prominently in both of my current novels, Project Cold Witness and Project Silent falcon.

Firstly, this is one of the warning signs that are liberally distributed along the Island's riverbanks. Although no experiments have been conducted there for twenty years, much of the land is still off-limits due to the huge amounts of unexploded ordnance hidden in the shifting sand and shingle: relics from the World Wars, when the Island was used as a combined bombing range, fighter pilot school and ammunition testing facility.



Second, the blockhouse itself, home to Project Cobra Mist, and later (if you believe the rumours) Project Cold Witness. The design and form of this building was a strong source of inspiration whilst I was writing the book--it established grey as the primary colour, and conveyed a real sense of the "mystique of secrecy" which still surrounds Orfordness. The blockhouse is now used as a broadcasting station for the BBC World Service. The transmitting masts stand on the site of the old radar complex, and give a good sense of how big the array must once have been.



And this is the closest you can get to the old Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, which tested nuclear devices during the 1950s (Yellow Sun and Blue Danube bombs) right through to the late '60s (Polaris and WE177). Those strange, alien-looking labs were used to subject dummy warheads to extremes of temperature and pressure, so that the scientists could figure out if the missiles could withstand re-entry into the earth's atmosphere. The "Pagodas" were also used by the Orfordness Bomb Disposal Unit, which was based on the site from 1967, and is still occasionally called out to deal with stray mines and bombs. The Orfordness lighthouse can also be seen in the background of the picture.



Finally: sunset over Orford Castle, seen from the river. This castle, a prominent local landmark, was the most advanced and expensive fortification ever built when it was opened in the 12th century. Now only the angular keep remains, the outer curtain wall having been quarried away to supply building stone for the village.



Photos (C) James Roddie 2004

How I've changed: perspectives from my private journal

There's something special about a weblog, both due to its interactive nature and due to the chronicle it creates as time goes by. However, the very fact that other people can read what you post alters things. It's the old "observation affecting the subject" thing. Some items of news are too personal to post in a weblog, or perhaps not relevant. I know it's up to the author to decide what is and what isn't relevant, but after a while you tend to write for your audience instead of for yourself. If there's an element of feedback, you respond to it. In that aspect, I totally understand Holly Lisle's decision not to include comments in her current blog.

I have a private journal. It's been on the go since July 2002, on and off: sporadic entries, sometimes only one in a few months, covering nearly two and a half years of my life. Although it doesn't have much merit for reminding me when important events happened (it isn't that kind of diary), I think of it as a slice of me. It's concise but honest enough to supply a vivid picture of how I have changed in that period.

Reading it through, I'm astonished at how little similarity there is between who I am now and the person who stares back at me from those earliest pages of the journal. In July 2002, I was a rather odd sixteen-year-old working on the frayed remains of my first novel. I'd just left Cambridgeshire and was settling into my new abode in Suffolk. My GCSE results were still unknown. My knowledge of writing was hopelessly retarded (struggle through Life of a Falcon, and you'll understand). Inexplicably, I was obsessed with cold and overcast weather, with lots of winter trees in silhouette against the sky. I was pining after a girl who had forgotten all about me back in the winter of 2001 (even though, um, I still think about her occasionally). I used lots of multiple exclaimation marks (like this!!!!!). In short, I was a bit on the strange side. An improvement on the fourteen-year-old living in Caxton four years ago, but still strange.

How can I describe myself now? Well, I have a hell of a lot more experience with writing. I've lost my damn naive views on a lot of things (especially writing). My period of compulsory education has been and gone. I like to think that I'm more mature, have a broader view of the world in general, and have developed a firm set of beliefs, principles, and opinions. I know where I'm going with my future (the immediate future, anyway). Whatever traces of my childhood shyness that remained in 2002 have gone completely. And I've moved on in the love life department, too--none of your business, but I daresay you can speculate ;-).

But there are still traces of that person within me, and it is fascinating to read how last year--2003, the Year Of The Breakthough on all fronts--formed the transitionary phase between the two. You can read some of it in the early archives of this weblog. Actually, I think I can summarise the huge change quite easily: I grew up.

Do you have a "personal" journal of your own? What does it say about you?

Project Silent Falcon moves forward

I like what I'm getting with the prewriting. As always, this stage of writing is my favourite: the sense of promise, of possibility, often surpasses the experience of writing the book itself.

For PSF, I want to draw parallels with Project Cold Witness and yet create something new. I want to develop the themes begun in PCW and send them into new areas. I also know how to profit from the successes of the first book. By concentrating on ideas and themes which really worked in Cold Witness, I hope to be able to make a better sequel.

An important thing I have to address is character growth. Many of PCW's characters will make an appearance in the new story, and some--ie. Christina, Johnny, Coulson--will form the main cast. I need to show how these people have altered. Most of all, I need to stress that the events of the first book have changed these people completely.

One part I'm really looking forward to is new settings. PCW was characterised by the fact that every setting used in the book was, as far as I could make it, completely accurate--I've visited all of them, and several I know well (I do live within fifteen minutes' walk of Orfordness, after all). In the sequel, I will introduce some new locations: Little Scotland, the closest we have here to high ground; Aldeburgh, the town at the northernmost end of the Island; and Iken Straits, a vast expanse of tidal flats northwest of the Island. It will be great fun visiting these places again and collecting research and inspiration material for scenes.

For the time being, I'm concentrating on piecing together the rough timeline for what happened after the collapse of Cold Witness. I need to understand the circumstances of the time in order to explain the motives behind the USAF creating Project Cold Lightning, their new aerial defence platform. Since Cold Lightning will feature prominently in the first part of the book, and will later be merged with Project Silent Falcon itself, this plays a crucial part. It's also important because of its significance for the characters. In the eyes of some, it is an icon of the Cold War. For others, such as Johnny Campbell, it is a great comfort. He becomes part of the Cold Lightning team with few ethical or personal problems ... simply because it offers security against what he fears most: psychotronic UFOs.

The inner hopes and fears of these characters are what makes them tick. Before I can start work on a plot structure, I need to understand the people--and I can't understand the people until I understand the overall context. That's my task for the next couple of weeks: freewriting, brainstorming, and jotting notes down on spare sheets of paper whenever new ideas pop into my head. It's the most creative and spontaneous stage of the writing process, and I love it. This is what writing should always be like.

My hours have been changed!

Now that the Christmas rush is over at the garden centre (it's now so quiet as to be stupifyingly boring), all Casuals have been limited to six hours of work per weekend, plus their normal hours during the week. Since I was the first to be told of this, I got to choose which day I worked: I chose Sunday, which is six hours long anyway. Most of the others were simply told which day they'll be working.

This means that I won't be seeing some of my colleagues for quite a while (Chloe and Jenni are both back to Saturdays only--I'll miss you!). I did think that my wages would be cut accordingly, but apparently the management is keen for me to keep working at 30 hours per week, so now I'm doing Wednesdays as well. No extra days off, I'm afraid!

BTW, has anyone else noticed an annoying problem when attempting to sign in at Blogger? You type in your username and password--cookies don't seem to be working for me either--but instead of signing you in, it just loops you back to the "sign in" page. I've tried emptying my cache and everything, but to no avail. Lately I seem to be getting to the "dashboard" page through random clicks and sheer stubbornness.

More progress

The prewriting for Project Silent Falcon is moving forward. Yesterday, I concentrated on Project Cold Lightning and its technical specifications, basing it strongly on the blueprints for Cold Witness (which were in turn based on my research into the Cobra Mist radar set). Cold Lightning will also have an attendant team of elite soldiers, trained in Ghost Warfare, known as the Cold Lightning Armed Response Team (CLART). CLART is largely composed of veterans from the 1st Cold Witness Security Police (the ones involved with Operation Ghost Warfare and the Cold Witness disaster) and the 81st Security Police (mostly the ones who were at "ground zero" during the Rendlesham Forest UFO encounter). Their job is to secure any wreckage produced by a successful Cold Lightning discharge against a hostile aircraft.

This is useful stuff to work out because it's making me question the wisdom of starting the book off in 1983 with Major Pike, Johnny and Christina. It would be far better to start it off in late 1981 with the CLART team picking up a wrecked Russian UFO from Rendlesham Forest: the event which led directly to Project Silent Falcon being established. This would also link the story in with the characters who are in on the project.

I can then cut to 1983, when Silent Falcon is beginning to yield results. Problem is, I need a way to make Christina Elmwood the main character. Why is she involved with this at all? This angle of the story needs developing fairly soon, before the other side (Cold Lightning, and CLART) becomes too prominent. I don't want the POV focus to be on the USAF soldiers who are conducting the experiments. I want it to be on the "outside characters" who are trying to stop the experiments harming yet more people in the local area.

The opening will be tricky, too. How can I introduce Christina as the main character while focusing on a CLART operation? Still, I've made a solid start, and I'm pleased with what I've come up with so far.

Where did the weekly pics go?

The online photo library needs spring-cleaning and generally sorting out. My brother wants me to post some of his newest photos (the sunsets, in particular, are spectacular), so it'll take me a few days to get them sorted. Expect the first batch next week!

Yesterday was definitely a success

Although I still don't have a clear idea of a plot for Project Silent Falcon, I do have a well-developed source of external conflict (the USAF 81st Tactical Fighter Wing developing the Silent Falcon aircraft in response to Russian technological advances), and I have a fairly good idea of where the characters fit in with all this. Not bad for one day's work.

Perhaps the most intriguing idea I've come up with so far is the concept of Project Cold Lightning, the daughter project of Cold Witness. For those of you who don't know, Project Cold Witness was, in the novel with the same title, a weapons array designed to shoot down Russian and Chinese missiles from beyond the curve of the earth's surface. In the first book, the project was compromised by a double agent who had developed a "psychotronic bomb" in an underground laboratory, and used the near-magical properties of this device to take over the facility. I have decided to develop both ideas further in Silent Falcon. Following the destruction of Cold Witness, the United States Air Force take over the site and begin to build a new weapon from scratch. They call it Cold Lightning (I'm rather proud of that name, btw), and although its range is limited to about five miles, instead of the intercontinental range of the original, it is a great deal smaller and far easier to keep secret. The idea here is that the USAF can use Cold Lightning to keep the airspace over their facility clear of "UFOs"--that is, the small green and red lights that buzz over and around Orfordness regularly.

In reality, these UFOs are Russian stealth helicopters equipped with a simple psychotronic emitter. This device fools the human brain into seeing the craft as a blurry flashing light, and it scrambles all radar sets pointed in that direction. The fact that the Soviet Union has access to this technology is a serious threat to NATO, so the Americans decide to "adopt" Major Wheatley's psychotronic weapon. They picked up the Ethereal Sword from the ruins of Cold Witness following the disaster there at the end of book one. It's been in storage, under a security level of Top Secret, ever since.

Project Silent Falcon grows out of the need to lessen this new Soviet threat. It's a new arms race--a race to build small, silent aircraft which can flit into enemy airspace and deliver devastating but nonlethal blasts of energy to personnel and equipment.

The more I look into the possibilites surrounding Silent Falcon, the more I remember the excitement I felt when I started writing Project Cold Witness, over a year ago. I knew I was onto something good, even then: it remains, after all, my only novel I'm planning to submit for publication. I'm hopeful that Project Silent Falcon will turn out the same way.

1:00 PM

Work completed so far:

+ Notes on the purpose and structure of the Project Silent Falcon organisation itself

+ Setting and timescale established: Suffolk, October 1983

+ Details of the Silent Falcon aircraft outlined, including the mission brief that the scientists were given, and roughly how the product achieves these objectives

+ Main characters given names and brief descriptions

So far, so good!

Work begins for the day!

Woke up this morning with a great sense of hopefulness. Today, come hell or high water, I shall write!

But what shall I write? I have three projects. Two of them, the fantasy pieces, are almost completely worldbuilt, and have a fair amount of prewriting done to date on them, too. They require very little work before I can start writing the first draft. Project Hooded Falcon, however ... that's much more intriguing. As an idea, it only popped into the stream of my thoughts a few weeks ago. I wrote some notes, doodled a few diagrams, consulted some maps ... then forgot about it.

But it's based on the characters, settings and themes of Cold Witness, and I'm really pleased with how that book turned out. So maybe this new idea is worth looking at too.

My first action for the day is to change the working title from Project Hooded Falcon to Project Silent Falcon, which just sounds and looks better, IMO. It is also more descriptive. The story is loosely centred on a stealth aircraft with a built-in psychotronic field (the technology is terribly complicated, but it basically scrambles the minds of onlookers and generates computer-created hallucinations). The whole idea of combining psychotronic science with stealth avionics is to create the daddy of all stealth helicopters: an aircraft which can disguise itself as an indistinct blur of light, make itself totally invisible, or absorb radar beams at will. "Silent" has a more Cold-Witnessy ring about it, too.

So, Project Silent Falcon it is. I have a few characters to start working on, I have an initial setting and a long-term setting, and I have some of the themes in place. I have the overall source of conflict loosely pinned down. What do I need to do next?

1. Choose a colour. The primary colour of Cold Witness was grey ... what colour do I want to associate with PSF?

2. Develop the different levels of conflict which will feature in the story, both on an overall level (ie. the secret experiments vs. the protagonists) and on a personal level for each character.

3. Sketch out which characters will appear in the story, what their roles are, how they could develop, and ways in which they could impact the outcome of the story.

4. Figure out possible motives for a civilian organisation to be building this Silent Falcon aircraft. Why and how are they a source of conflict and/or threat to the protagonists? What do they want to gain from their experiments? Why do the protagonists want to stop them, and do they have any legal or moral grounds to do so? Are the experiments illegal in some way? There are a thousand questions I could ask here, and it's going to take me a while to sift through them all.

Anyway, must get cracking. I'll add a progress report later in the day if I can.

Comments are back up

Since a comment was successfully posted yesterday via Haloscan, I am leaving both systems in place--if Haloscan doesn't work, just use the Blogger comment link, and vice versa. Hopefully at least one will work at any given time.

Another writing crisis

With the advent of the new year comes a new urge to start writing again. Although I've been slowly working on a number of projects for several months now, most notably the aborted attempt on Evil's True Form, I have made no real progress on anything. The last time I did anything really worth doing was back in October, when I put the finishing touches on the penultimate draft of Project Cold Witness. Granted, I can finish PCW once and for all as soon as my last crit comes in, so I have something of an excuse for waiting on that particular project, but it feels so ... hollow, just sitting around going nowhere.

For a writer, it is dangerous to pause for too long. You get slack. You start to lose the will to move forward. Worse, you start to wonder whether you in fact need to write any more. Eventually, you'll get up in the morning, sit down in front of your computer, poise your fingers at the keys ... and just think, "Why bother?" For someone who's always wanted to write, this is a nightmare.

The truth is that, no matter what your excuse, you simply can't afford to sit back and wait for things to happen. I can't afford to fool myself that, as soon as this last crit comes back, everything will start moving smoothly again. No doubt something else will crop up (such as these Real Life things that seem to be flooding in thick and fast these days), and it will be postponed by another few months. Before I know it I'll be at university in Norwich and my chance will be gone--perhaps for several years.

I have to get off my backside and start working on something new. And I have to do it now.

Tomorrow and Thursday are free, so I'm going to get up nice and early, and brush the dust off the project folders for Project Hooded Falcon, The Riven Path and Brynach of Gwynedd. Each story is completely different and offers a unique challenge: Falcon is modern technothriller, Riven is traditional fantasy, and Brynach is historical fantasy. Which should I work on? I don't know yet. Which do I want to work on? Only time will tell--but I do know that, right now, that's more important than future plans or publishing intentions.

Oh. My. God.

Possibly the most embarrassing moment in my life so far occurred yesterday evening, at work, just a few minutes before closing time. Customers were still coming in, so in a flash of initiative I decided to go and turn off the automatic doors. Unfortunately I didn't know which button to press. There were quite a few on a likely-looking control panel, and I pressed the one saying "100% off", thinking it sounded sufficiently door-orientated (it was next to the door, after all).

The result wasn't quite what I had planned. An instant after I pressed the switch, all the lights in the store failed, plunging the place into darkness lit only by the blue glow of the checkout terminals. I could hear distant, thin screams from the Christmas section (where strange and terrible things may be lurking in the darkness, such as gigantic blow-up Santas), and peels of laughter from the tills. I jumped about two feet from the ground in surprise.

Next step: press the switch again. Logic would suggest that this action would turn the lights on, but logic didn't seem to be having much to do with me yesterday: the lights stayed off. I sheepishly crawled back to the tills, explained to Fran and Chloe what had happened (they were laughing so much I doubt they heard me), and phoned up a supervisor to ask for some help.

He suggested, rather tiredly I thought, that I wait a few minutes and try again, as a circuit breaker had been tripped. I waited at the till, laughing at myself with the others, but very very glad that they couldn't see my blushing face. The lights stayed off; some customers came through the checkout, looking haggard and terrified, demanding if there had been a terrorist attack / natural disaster / gigantic cock-up. Others more shrewdly guessed that this was some kind of hint that the store was closing.

In any case, it had the desired effect: by closing time, there was no-one left in the garden centre except the staff. The lights took about five minutes to gradually come back on. One of the other supervisors gave me a funny look and said, "Surely it wasn't 4:30 when the lights went off?", but I decided to be honest and told them that I'd been trying to switch off the door. Perhaps honesty can outweigh towering stupidity?

It was actually quite funny, once I'd got over the initial "OhmygodwhatthehellhaveIdone?!" phase. But I have emerged from this incident with a profound sense that, to avoid embarrassment, one should always learn what buttons do before one pushes them.

(Endnote: Due to a lack of comments recently, something prompted me to try posting a comment to this entry. Result: no comment appeared. I've activated Blogger's own comments instead. They appear in the date and time field at the bottom of each post. Watch out: they're less conspicuous than the old Comment link.)

(Another endnote: I've noticed that Holly Lisle has added my site to her "Writer's Blogs" sidebar area in her weblog, Silent Bounce, and that referring visitors are flooding in. Thanks, Holly, and hello to any new visitors out there!)