Author Archives: erictaveren

Holiday Bustle

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Happy Holidays to all! If you don’t celebrate, hopefully you at least get some time off. I’m writing this during my last prep period of the year. I managed to kick out 5000 words the other day so figure I can take the time for another post.

First order of business: upcoming publications. On December 26 a short story of mine will hit the internet on Spillwords.com. I’ll probably do another post then to remind you all. :) It’s a Christmas story about a divorced dad trying to connect with his daughter during their first Christmas with just the two of them. There’s kookiness, drama, heartbreak, and that warmhearted feeling you get this time of year. And bananas. Somehow, there are bananas.

I also just signed up to be on the editorial staff of Water-Stone Review, so I’ll have a healthy bit of reading to do over the next few weeks. I’m expecting a wide gamut of genres and themes, so hopefully it’ll be a fun time.

On a non-writing note, I’ve decided to apply for the next season of LegoMasters. That translates to Fall 2025 because of filming schedules. I need to build five sets of my own design for the application, so I just finished sorting the 90000 Lego pieces I’ve accrued since childhood and am partway into the first build (and already running out of the right color of pieces).

Don’t judge yet! It’s not done! If all goes according to plan it’ll balance perfectly on the beak, like those toys from when we were younger. But instead of being three inches across and made from one piece of plastic, it’ll be over a foot wide and made from hundreds. Given my piece limitation, it might not look the prettiest, but the goal is creating that perfect balance. I can do pretty on a different build.

I have faced some other distractions these last couple of weeks, though I like to think them the good kind of distractions. I had an idea for an educational chemistry game for middle and high school and developed that a bit. I fortunately have subbed a few chem classes during that period and was able to get very positive input from chem teachers, so yay!

I’ve also been thinking a lot about AI’s role in brainstorming and story creation. I obviously don’t want it to generate anything, but I think it could be very useful in organizing thoughts and characters and stories and a whole lot more I won’t delve too far into. Based on what research I’ve done, I don’t think AI is sophisticated enough to do what I want, but in a few years…

I’ll close out with the acknowledgement that I tend to bite off more than I can chew. AWP is coming up in just over a month, and I’m a going to send the first five pages out to agents as part of their Writer to Agent program. But that means I have just over a month to get this story into ship shape. While also building Lego. And working. And designing that game. And prepping for a new baby. And running a D&D campaign.

It’s a good thing I don’t have any hair, else I’d probably be pulling it out.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year. Enjoy your time with loved ones and remember that diets don’t count on holidays.

Space Brides Release!

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Today’s the day! It’s my brother’s birthday! And, of arguably equal importance, it’s the release of Space Brides, LLC.

“Tired of those lonely dark nights? No one in your settlement suitable? We are here to help! We will help you find the bride or husband to keep you company, raise your children, and be your partner building a dream together. Contact us directly and give us your specifications. Success guaranteed.”

Space Brides, LLC is a sci-fi romance anthology where all the stories revolve around relationships created via the Space Brides program, matching individuals to find their happily ever after. In space.

My story, A Spectrum of Secrets, follows a single mom whose kid has a terminal disease as she does whatever it takes to find a cure. Opposite her is a genetic researcher on Europa, someone trying to prioritize the discovery of life with the value of life. Secrets jockey for priority, and emotions, well, who can ever really predict emotions?

There are fifteen stories in this collections, with a huge variety of location, race, species, orientation, pretty much everything you’d want in sci-fi stories. Paperback and ebook are available, and are available now!

Also, if amazon isn’t your thing and you like discounts, you can get 15% off at Smashwords with code LQ25S as well as from the publisher with code NR2023.

Pre-Thanksgiving Nano Update

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With all the Thanksgiving prep, I’ve written zero words today. Which puts me exactly today’s required words behind on my word count. For me and my Nano track record, not too shabby. The main reason for my staying on track: high school.

High school how? Well, a year and a half ago when the market dipped, I, and many other coworkers, got the axe. Some of us were in the industry more than twenty years. But I had already started my MFA, had talked about making a career of writing. So we decided to give it a shot. But I still needed supplemental income. So now I’m a part time substitute teacher.

High school has been great because for the most part the kids sit on their computers and do their work and I can type away. Middle school… not so much. They’re more fun, but are more hands-on. So, Champlin High… thank you.

As far as content goes, this story has made me smile from inspiration more than anything else I’ve written. Part of that is due to the lack of planning. In general, I’m a planner. My novel I’m taking a break from before editing was meticulously mapped out with bullet points and sub points and color coded post it notes with corresponding sharpies. That was great for always knowing what to write, and I could argue a lot that the during-writing inspiration was instead planning inspiration. But the during-writing inspiration has a different feel to it. An in the moment “god damn I’m brilliant” feel.

For my Nano project, I went into it with four characters, only one of which had any amount of thought into their personality. I had a problem, an antagonist, a few settings, and a couple of moments I knew should happen. That was it.

The result so far is a crazy amount of Wayne Brady caliber setups and payoffs that my subconscious plans without me even knowing it. I’m making character choices that are great in the moment and give me solid foundations for growth and/or defeat. I’ve created a magic system that is both highly theoretical yet completely accessible. I don’t know that I could have done that with my normal planning method.

I’ve mentioned before that I have aphantasia, or a lack of a mind’s eye. This past summer I started playing around with MidJourney to create imagery to reference (examples shown throughout the post), since my brain’s not wired that way. I think I can attribute part of my current success to that as well.

Going into a scene, or thinking about a character, I know what I want to happen, what themes or motifs should exist. By inputting those into MidJourney, I’m provided with images that while they don’t always turn out how I expected, they often provide enough of my expectations that I can use it for repeated reference, but they also serve as spring boards for other tangential thoughts.

With a word count in the low thirty thousands, I’m just over halfway through the story. Of course there are areas that will need some work, but there have been surprisingly few writing sessions where I knew I needed to revisit down the road. I’ve come out of many feeling very good about the results and I’m just hoping that when I re-read it, that feeling won’t change.

That’s all for now. Need to allocate writing time appropriately. I wish my fellow writers good luck in their Nano/WIP, and happy reading to non-writers (I just started The Olympian Affair and am super excited). And of course Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you all can spend quality time with friends/family/loved ones.

Nanowrimo 2023!

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It’s that time of year again. Time for writing too late into the night and ignoring family and friends. Time for lofty goals and (too often) broken promises. Time for Nano.

November is National Novel Writing Month, an annual masochistic tradition of churning out words at a breakneck pace (unless your name is Brandon Sanderson in which case one man’s masochism is another man’s steak dinner). There’s a youth program and an everyone else program. If you’ve exceeded your teen years, that means 50000 words in one month.

Yes, I said 50000.

That’s 1666 a day. Seems reasonable. Until you do it 31 days in a row. You get behind early, then tell yourself that you’ll catch up on the long Thanksgiving weekend. Then family comes and you don’t write anything. Then it’s Nov. 30 and you have 10000 words to write.

I may sound overly pessimistic about it. And I might be. I always start the month positive, and in fact I’m positive now about this year’s project. I’m currently 1000 or so words ahead of schedule. But I’ve done this many years now and between family and work and life in general, I’ve only ever finished it once.

Some might consider that failure, and by a strict definition, it is. But even if I only reach 40000 words during a given Nanowrimo, that’s still 40000 words! That’s a lot. It’s not 40000 more than I would have written, but it’s very likely more regardless.

So if you’re a writer, join up. Even if you don’t hit the 50000, you’ll likely make a very nice dent in your work in progress project. And if you do make it, as I’ve done just the one time, man, does that feel good.

That’s all for now. Need to ration word generating time and allocate it appropriately. I’ve got a 50000 word goal to hit.

Year of Sanderson Review

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Back in early spring 2022 Brandon Sanderson started a Kickstarter for what he’s dubbed The Year of Sanderson. Apparently during Covid he had a ton of extra time and so decided to write extra books on top of his scheduled writing. Jealous much? I know I am. The Kickstarter went on to become the most successful Kickstarter ever, bringing in just shy of $42 million. Dang.

The main draw was the four new novels, but you could spend more and get shirts and tickets and whatnot. I’m not big on acquiring random clutter (though my wife will say otherwise. Depends on your definition of random I guess), so the books themselves are what drew my interest.

The books themselves released once per quarter this year, with the final novel reaching backers this past month. I finished this final novel last week and after several conversations about the books with other Sanderson lovers, I’ve collected my spoiler-free thoughts.

The four books, in order of release, are Tress of the Emerald Sea, The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, and The Sunlit Man.

We’ve all been told not to judge a book by its cover, but it seems that is one of the goals of these books. As you can see, each of them has a stunning cover just begging you to open it. It seems silly to rank the books by the covers, but if I had to, it’d be Tress, Yumi, Sunlit Man, then Frugal Wizard.

But that’s not where the amazing art ends. Each book contains a ton of unique illustrations, which for copyright reasons I won’t share here, stylistically appropriate for the story. Because of the intentional style differences it’s hard to compare them, but I enjoyed the Yumi illustrations the most, likely due to my interest in Japanese culture.

Book titles also have work to do, drawing in readers and creating the first promise between author and reader. The blandest title here, though very fitting for the story, is The Sunlit Man. Looking simply at the titles, that’d be the last one I’d grab. The other three are a toss up, each presenting us with information about the protagonist(s) and the world. Great titles.

Now time to get down to the brass tacks. The pictures are great, and can go a long way to enhancing a story (I’m looking at you Axel Scheffler), but ultimately our enjoyment comes down to the story, the writing, and the multitude of feels the words trick our brains into feeling. I probably could break down each one for various reasons, and I suppose if anyone asks I would, but based on my conversations, the ranking is rather obvious.

I’ll start on the bottom. The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England brings up the rear in this four book collection. I wouldn’t say it’s significantly outpaced by the next two, but it’s also not super close. It was an entertaining enough story, but I feel it lacked the character connection you’d expect in a Sanderson book. I suspect the reason for this is what I also view as the strongest aspect of the story: the character’s memory loss. I don’t want to do any spoilers, but amnesia can reveal interesting twists (which this does), but can also make the character harder to identify with (which this does).

Number three and number two were a bit closer, and I think they’ll flip flop depending on who you ask and their style preference. My number three is The Sunlit Man. It has strong characters, central and supporting, a unique world and culture, and is set apart from the others by its breakneck pacing. It also fits snugly into the Cosmere and brings back a fun character (not counting Wit. That dude is everywhere). For those who enjoy action and plot advancement, this is the book for you.

Number two is Tress. Tress definitely reads more YA, which isn’t a bad thing of course, but if you just finished a Stormlight book, prepare for a tone change. In Tress, Sanderson is able to embrace the joy of a sailing adventure, while at the same time working in all the magic, world building, and characterization we’ve come to expect. The plotting and rationing of information is near perfect and, like Sunlit Man, ties into the Cosmere organically, especially following the last Mistborn book. My only critique, and I say this knowing Sanderson considered these books POV experiments, was the POV. The narrator was as entertaining as always, there were just a few logical fallacies that stood out. Maybe I noticed because I was taking a POV grad school class while I read it. Others I’ve talked to haven’t noticed or cared.

That leaves number one: Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. Yumi is leaps and bounds above the other three in every possible way. The characters are crisper. The world is more engaging and integral to the function of the story. The integration with the Cosmere is broader. It was balanced and fun and magical. Each of the other books excelled in a particular area, but Yumi pulled everything together into one fantastic story.

At the end of the day, they’re all fun reads. If you miss out on Frugal Wizard, don’t feel bad. If for whatever reason you’ve only got time for one, read Yumi. If you plan to read them all or have already done so, it won’t be wasted time. Sanderson has always excelled in characterization, magic, world-building, and intricate plotting, and these stories are no exception. If you didn’t back the Kickstarter, find a friend who did. Otherwise, all but Sunlit Man have hit bookstores, and you can preorder Sunlit Man right now.

Happy reading to all you old and new Sanderson fans. Now we just have to wait until November for the next Stormlight book.