[00:00:08] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to small publishing in a big universe. I am your host, Lisa Jacob. Coming from our sponsors this month, from Water Dragon Publishing, Reverend's Heart by Stephen D. Brewer, and from their Dragon Gems collection this month, consider the possibilities by Stephen James and the Paperclip War by Miko Rohala.
Introducing Dragon Gems Winter 2024, an anthology of short tales to get you through the long winter months.
From an activist releasing the so called monsters to parodies of present day life in a speculative fiction genre, this anthology will warm you with its variety and humor. It includes dragons, of course. For a limited time, get the digital editions of our other Dragon Gems anthologies for only $0.99 each. For more information, go to. For more information, go to waterdragonpublishing.com.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: Dragongemswinter.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: 2024 from Boscone, a convention in Boston, Massachusetts. So please welcome our guest host, Brian Buell.
[00:01:58] Speaker C: This is small publishing in a big universe, live from Boscone. My name is Brian Buell, and I'm your guest host today. Would you please go ahead and state your name so I don't get it wrong.
[00:02:07] Speaker D: I am William D. Richards. I'm an author of the Agadec Chronicles, book one and book two, and still writing more books on top of that.
[00:02:15] Speaker C: Go ahead and just tell us a little bit about your books. What are they about? How you're doing with them, who you publish with, that sort of thing.
[00:02:21] Speaker D: Agath Chronicles was basically a story idea that popped into my head when I was listening to a piece of music, and I just couldn't let it go. So I decided, let's start writing a few notes about it. And I ended up with about 230,000 words of notes before I figured, okay, maybe I better start actually writing this story. It was actually an expansion on a story idea I had when I was a little kid, and it just came back to me, and I just couldn't let it go and just started writing like crazy, and the story just started tumbling out of me.
[00:02:54] Speaker C: Tell us a little bit about your process. So you give us a little bit the inspiration, and you started it when you were really young. What was your process like then? What's your process like now? How does William D. Richards write a book now?
[00:03:05] Speaker D: It really hasn't changed. Most of my ideas usually hit me when I'm listening to music. Music tends to bring up a certain mood or feeling in people, and I start getting pictures in my mind, and a lot of times that may result in a particular scene or an idea, and that's when I go, I want to write something about this, I've got this image in my mind. I want to describe what it is and what it boils down to. A lot of times it'll be I'm imagining two characters who are interacting. They're having a conversation, and the question is, how did they come to this point, and where are they going from here? And that's the story.
[00:03:44] Speaker C: So the characters generate the plot for you?
[00:03:46] Speaker D: Pretty much. I wonder, what is the situation they got themselves into? And I want them to follow that journey. And really, for myself, find out what is this story and where's it going to go.
[00:03:56] Speaker C: So in the cancer versus plotter spectrum of writers, would you put yourself pulling the cancer side?
[00:04:02] Speaker D: I like to think I'm somewhere in the middle.
[00:04:04] Speaker C: Somewhere in the middle.
[00:04:05] Speaker D: I will sit there. I will do notes. I'll sit there, kind of create an outline, and then I sit down and start writing. And once the characters start talking, it goes off the rails, and that's where the story starts coming out. An outline is a skeleton of a story, but it's got to be flexible, like a scalp. It's got to be able to bend and move as the story itself changes. An idea might come to you where something works better, but I need that outline to keep me pretty much in the path of where it was. That being said, sometimes it just flows out and you just can't stop. And then you've got to kind of look and think, do I need to change the outline to fit where the story is, or do I need to bring the story back to where the outline was? Because I've gone off on a tangent that is just not usable.
[00:04:47] Speaker C: You mentioned that music is a lot of times your inspiration. Are you one of those writers that can listen to music while you write?
[00:04:54] Speaker D: Yes. Each story that I've written, I literally have a playlist that gets played because they really set what the story was built on. Agada Chronicles, I had a playlist of something over a dozen songs that each one spoke to a different part of the story at the same time. A lot of times I'll put on quiet, ambient music in the background while I'm writing because it kind of drowns out distractions that might pull me away while I'm in the zone and the words are coming out, which never works when you've got a cat in the house.
[00:05:24] Speaker C: So you mentioned the series, and you're currently working on book three.
[00:05:29] Speaker D: That one got stuck, and this comes back to the whole panting and plotting. The series is about a young man who, in a world of magic can't really use magic all that effectively. And he does have with him a sword that apparently nullifies magic. It cuts through everything, and that's kind of a hint what his problem with magic is, and very much a swords and dragons sort of story. And he's just trying to find his place in the world as the world becomes increasingly out of control. And it finally boils down to the question, is he what is going to save the world? Or is he what is going to destroy the world? And that's where the whole story begins to flow. And during that writing, I had a very specific idea where I wanted the story to go. And as I got through the second book, as I like to joke, when the characters start talking, they take control of the story. And I had introduced a few new characters into the line, and the story began to curve away from what the original idea was, where I had in my notes. So by the time I got to the third book, I got stuck. I literally have written the third book twice, and each time I got about halfway through and felt, this does not work. And I found the best way to deal with times when you're stuck with your writing is write something else. So that's why I literally have three other books that I've got almost ready for release. But Oracle, which is the third book in the series, I definitely managed to clean up a lot of the ideas that I had, remove what I know wasn't going to work, and now I've got it back in line, and that story is pretty much back in line to hopefully be released next year.
[00:07:07] Speaker C: Do you see this being the conclusion to the series, or do you know where the conclusion is going to be for the series?
[00:07:13] Speaker D: I know what the ending is, but getting to the ending is where the problem is. And I had originally envisioned the series itself being about four or five books long, but I've come to the conclusion I think I can complete it in four books. I don't think the third book is actually going to be the finish because there's just one more step where it needs to go. And again, that was part of where I ran into this problem, where I had steered the story too far off the path where I had originally set for it and trying to drag it back to where it's supposed to be. I might be able to conclude in this third book, but I think there is going to be a fourth book behind it.
[00:07:47] Speaker C: Well, this has been great talking to you. Thank you so much for sharing your time.
[00:07:53] Speaker E: Would you go ahead and say your name?
[00:07:55] Speaker F: Stephen Wilk.
[00:07:56] Speaker E: Tell me about what you write. Tell me about what your time has been like at Boscon.
[00:08:00] Speaker F: So far, I write both fiction and nonfiction. I'm a scientist and engineer. I've been writing a regular column on unusual optics for over 20 years. I also write about history and mythology and pop culture and a variety of other topics. But I also write genre fiction, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mystery.
[00:08:21] Speaker E: How do you say that your nonfiction writing informs or doesn't inform your genre fiction writing?
[00:08:27] Speaker F: I consider myself a science fiction writer and fantasy writer. Since I mainly write about technical subjects, it works pretty well. I write about history and I've written historical mysteries, so those two fit together pretty well. Actually, my upbring has informed me a lot of this. I was raised on monster movies and the like, and I incorporate that both into my technical writing and into my genre fiction as well.
[00:08:48] Speaker E: Now, with your non fiction writing, and you said you were an editor for optics and photonics.
[00:08:54] Speaker F: News publication of Optica. Used to be the optical Society of America. I did that for about 20 years, and they decided to introduce term limits. So I don't do it anymore, but they like my articles, so I continue to churn them out.
[00:09:06] Speaker E: So how do you continue to draw inspiration for your nonfiction writing?
[00:09:11] Speaker F: It comes from reading, of course. You stumble across new ideas and you start wondering, well, gee, what if or how did this come to even be the way it is? People take this for granted. Why should story structure be the way it is? For instance, I've got a novel I've got to write for years that I would write in a different story structure, and that would be part of the point of the story.
[00:09:30] Speaker E: What are you currently working on these days?
[00:09:32] Speaker F: I've got a book called Mystery Ship about the f 49. It was the only United States submarine that was privately owned. And I've written the book and I'm trying to get it published now. The publisher is waiting to hear back from the military historian who's vetting it for me, but I'm very happy with it because it is such a completely off the wall story.
[00:09:54] Speaker E: Are there any details that you can share without spoiling it?
[00:09:56] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:09:57] Speaker F: The ship had three separate lives. It was one of the last four built by the Simon Lake torpedo boat Company before they went out of business. It was huge. It was almost 250ft long and very expensive. Several million dollars. And it served the United States government for a number of tests, even though there was no war going on in its active years, from 1921 to 1927, to tested a bunch of things it was the very first us ships outfitted with true sonar, for instance. But then they were forced junket because of the London naval treaty. That required an awful lot of nations to get rid of a lot of their ships, and it was going to be dismantled by US Navy personnel. But one of these two politicians from Revere, who knew the secretary of the Navy, persuaded him to let them buy it, the only time that had happened. So they bought the submarine 1931, and they rescued it, actually, from a scrap yard that had outbid them. They went back to them and paid them some more, had it towed up to Massachusetts, got it fixed up and put it on display in revere. And they started losing money on that. But one of the Fields family from Marshall Fields of Chicago came by and said, hey, we're having a world's fair next year. Maybe you could bring the sub over there. So they raised the money and had it towed all the way to Chicago from Revere. And it was a huge hit at the century of Progress exhibition. They just kept exhibiting around the Great Lakes. They managed to finagle their way out of the requirement that they junk it by 1936, had it fixed up more, put a new engine into it so they didn't need a tugboat to carry them around anymore, and took it on exhibition up and down the east coast until World War II happened, at which point it became very unhealthy to be sailing a sub. They were fired on. So they tried to give it back to the navy. Navy didn't want it too heavily altered. And as it was on its way to the same scrap yard, somebody in the naval office suddenly said, wait a minute, we can use that. Diverted it to Philadelphia, and they fixed it up so it could dive again. And the Navy used it for testing the peduncit river down in Maryland, until one day it didn't come back up again. Don't worry, there was nobody on board at the time, and that's where it still is. It's down 132ft at the bottom of the Bedungstit river.
[00:12:02] Speaker E: That's quite a journey for one boat. I want to shift gears a little bit. I know that one of the things that I really enjoy about coming to these conferences is talking to young writers and talking to people that are coming up, learning the craft. What is some of your best advice that you have received? And what's some of the best advice you would give to young writers that maybe that want to do what you do?
[00:12:23] Speaker F: Write a lot, try and write. I don't know if you can write every day. That's asking an awful lot. But try and write at least several times a week. It improves your skill and your manipulation words. Join a writing group so that you can get feedback about what you're doing and send things out. There are a lot of resources on the Internet that will give you places that are actively looking for work. So you can send it out not only to magazines, you can send it to anthologies, you can send it to webzines, you can send it to podcasts. And there are an awful lot of places out there that would be interested. So just keep continually working, keep continually trying things, get feedback on it, and try and publish and read. Of course, you've got to read an awful lot. You have to write something that's interesting to people. You have to write something that they will want to read, something that's new and unusual or presented in a particularly attractive way to try to work on all of that.
[00:13:14] Speaker E: So we're getting to here to the end. Thank you very much, Stephen.
[00:13:18] Speaker G: With me, we have Colin Alexander.
[00:13:20] Speaker C: So, Colin, tell me, how has your Boscon been so far?
[00:13:23] Speaker G: It's been great. Boscon is actually my favorite convention. I've enjoyed it every time. I've been on a number of panels. In fact, yesterday was absolutely nonstop, ten in the morning to 930 at night, and then just collapsed.
[00:13:37] Speaker C: So you write a lot of science fiction?
[00:13:39] Speaker G: I consider myself primarily a writer of relatively hard science fiction. I mean, not all. I've got a couple of fantasy books and a blend of fantasy and science fiction, Princess of Shadows. But most of my books are science fiction and relatively hard science fiction. So, for example, the series lafe the lucky is quite hard science fiction. We start with Starman Saga, which is the first of the Leif the lucky books. And this is really a story of humanity's first interstellar trip. And Leif winds up on this trip because he enters a lottery, and the prize in the lottery is a berth on the first Starflight, which is how he winds up there. But I tried to build this star flight according to principles that could possibly work. So we don't have faster than light travel. What we've got is a version of an interstellar ramjet. And all of it, really is just to allow me to have fun with Leif and send him out on an expedition. And the first journey is to a tidal locked planet around a red dwarf. I happen to like tidal locked worlds because fun to speculate about how a climate could be on a world like that, and you can actually build them the old image of it's boiling hot on one side and frozen solid on the other. Doesn't have to be like that. So I sent him out there for an adventure, and, of course, then he comes back to Earth 28 years later. He doesn't fit in, and the crew doesn't fit in, which allowed me to invent a syndrome of temporal alienation. They're traveling at relativistic speed, and I invented a hibernation principle, because you're traveling at relativistic speed, but you don't go from, like, zero to light speed. Snap. You can't do that. And so there's time involved, really. You're going to spend three, four, or five years on the trip just to get up to speed, and then you've got to decelerate. And so I said, well, I got to come up with a hibernation scheme and some drugs that will let you not age. So he's aging about a month for every year of time in the ship, and even that's, of course, shrunk by relativity. And that you can calculate the time slowing equations for special relativity. That's high school algebra. It's not hard. So you can figure that. So he comes back, he's about the same age. He's in his early thirty s, but everything else has moved 28 years. He doesn't fit, and neither do the rest of them. And so his solution at the end is, I'm going out again. I found somebody I want to go with, and he's going. And so his second trip is supposed to be as routine as they get. You're taking supplies and some more settlers to a planet that a ship has just dropped off, a small colony. Starflight's not routine. He gets out there and finds himself in the middle of a murder investigation. Or actually, he's got to solve a murder, because you've only got 200 people on this planet. One of them is a killer. It's hard to sign off that everything's okay. So he's got to work that out. And Blake's not a detective. You're on a colony with 200 people around another star. The last thing you've got is a forensic lab. He kind of muddles his way through it. Literally, he muddles his way through it. I got to play with the biology on the planet and just how the murder was accomplished, and he does eventually work it out with a little help from his friends, and then he's off back to Earth. But this was a longer trip, and so now, by the time he gets back to Earth, it's another 152 years. And when he gets back, this is where the third book, the lucky star man, takes place. And when you read the book, you'll see that the lucky star man is about as much of a misnomer as you could get because Earth has now finally gone and done the cyber war, nuclear war thing. They're coming into the system and there's no response, and they find a mess. And now the problem is, okay, space is full of booby traps left over from the war. How do you survive that? How do you get down?
How do you get down? There's nobody there to take you down. There's no ship to take you down. You don't land a starship. So he's got to figure that out. He winds up landing in the middle of a found family, and Leif's not a family man, but he maybe it's time to settle down. Except the people are still fighting over what's left, and he gets pulled into that. By the end of that book, he's finally got it settled, he's found a place, he's found people. And a messenger shows up from Earthbase, which was the headquarters for humanity's interstellar program back when, and they've received a message. Message came from a star we never sent a ship to. We need your help. And that's where my new book.
[00:18:53] Speaker C: That's where the next off.
[00:18:54] Speaker G: Yeah. And this is a planet of wrath and tears, where life has got to figure this out. And this is a first contact story. And I'll tell you it's first contact the way first contact should never happen.
[00:19:08] Speaker C: What is your favorite advice you've received as a writer? And what's your favorite advice that you.
[00:19:13] Speaker G: Like to give to up and coming writers? Best advice I ever got was to write that shitty first draft. Do not worry about what you're putting down in that first draft. Tell the story. And let me tell you, when you go back and work on it, it's going to change because you're going to discover some things don't work. That's probably the most important piece.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: Do you think ghosts haunt only houses? As a repo man, Mel just pulled off the smoothest take of his life. Kate, a college student, was undecided on which major to pursue. All of their plans went out the window the night Mel found Kate in.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: The back of a 74 Nova.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: When Mel becomes a suspect in Kate's murder, he must leave his life behind and make a new start in Sacramento, California, where he and Kate meet other people with supernatural gifts. But not everything is sunshine and roses in California. Awakening to power comes at a cost, and all ghosts eventually become monsters. Can Mel trust these new friends in Sacramento? Can he help Kate find some peace without landing himself in jail? The fateful night Mel slipped behind the wheel of an old Chevy, it wasn't just the car that became repossessed. The repossessed ghost by Brian C. E. Bull is available from Amazon, Barnes Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, and other online booksellers. Or support your local independent bookstore by ordering it through bookshop.org. For more information, visit their
[email protected].
[00:21:05] Speaker A: Thanks again to our guest. We plan on publishing new episodes every second Wednesday of the month. Watch for new episodes around that time. To find out more about our featured products and books mentioned by our guest, please take a look at the SPBU marketplace at SPBu marketplace.com. Theme and ad music is provided by Melodyloops. If you want to know more about small publishing in a big universe, visit our website at spbu podcast.com. Send us your feedback by using the contact us link, tweet or X Us at SPBU Podcast and like us on Facebook at SPBU Podcast. This podcast was recorded and edited by yours truly La Jacob executive producer is Stephen Redecki. Transcription Services provided by yours Truly, Lisa Jacob this month's episode was sponsored by paper Angel Press and its imprint Water Dragon Publishing and unruly voices. You can hear our podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon music, and most of your favorite podcast services. Thank you very much for listening and talk to you sooner.
