For those of you watching, I’m past the 65% point on Bad Penny. I’ve set the target at 90,000 words, but, of course, I don’t know if that’s exactly how long it will be. I have two big sequences left, one of which is the climax. My stats so far:

• Pre-draft development hours: about 50
• Draft 1 hours: about 90
• Total hours: 140
• Words (draft 1): 59,009 
• Words per draft hour: about 650

I’ve spent time thinking that I haven’t recorded–time on walks or driving. And time doing research. So this is understated, but it’s probably accurate enough. The good news is that I’m writing this draft slightly faster than I did the first draft of my last novel.

Now look at those numbers again. If I was doing this full time, it would have taken a week, maybe two do finish the pre-draft development.  Then another two or three weeks to get to this point.  Dang, how nice would that be! Once I finish, I’ll let it sit for a month. Then I’ll revise.  Then I’ll give it to my expert beta readers. Then I’ll revise again and send it out for sale.

As for pen names, here’s what I selected out of a finalist list of about 200 names:

1. John Blackburn
2. John Crawford
3. John Clawson
4. John Holland
5. John Holloway
6. John Lee
7. John Nash
8. John Walker

Which will it be?

I’ve decided to tentatively call the first book in my Frank Shaw series “Bad Penny.”  This is the thriller I’ve been talking about. It’s a working title, so it may change.

As for progress, I’m close to 14,000 words. Huzzah! And I’m having a blast writing it. Every day I look forward to my writing time.

For those curious, the book takes place in Rock Springs, Wyoming. The plot will move it across eastern part of the state and then down into Colorado.

Frank Moses Shaw, ex-con . . .

Ah, folks. I’m just loving it.

I’m also generating options for a pen name.  Althought I know there’s overlap between readers of epic fantasy and thrillers (hey, look at me!), I still think the genres are too different to try to spread a brand name across both.  I read about Tess Gerritsen, who started in romance, using the same name for her thrillers, which is all I think she writes now. She reports that she had a number of the thriller readers pick up her romances and vice versa, and then get frustrated because her brand meant one thing to them, but they got another.

If I was writing thrillerish SF, like Card’s Ender’s Game, or thrillerish fantasy, like Correia’s Monster Hunter, then maybe the stretch wouldn’t be so far.  For those of you who are thriller readers, I’ll be posting some possible names in the near future. I’d like your reactions on the options, so keep a look out.

As for CURSE OF A DARK GOD, no word yet from ye Editors. I’m expecting a reply March or April. Yeah, I turned it into my agent end of November. She submitted it to Tor in December. No, I don’t like these lead times any better than you do. But it is what it is. My job is to produce. My target this year is two novels–DARK GOD’S GLORY (book 3 in the series) and BAD PENNY. My stretch goal is to finish the working outline for the second Frank Shaw book (already have the premise) and actually start on it before the end of the year. We’ll see what happens.

A Man and a Team of Girls

Back in 1964, Jim Keith took a job at an Oklahoma high school to coach boy’s basketball.  But when he arrived, the administrators changed their minds and gave his job to someone else.  Keith’s contract didn’t specify which gender he’d coach, just that he’d coach.  So they switched him to the girls.  Keith was extremely disappointed.  Who wanted to coach girls when it was the boys who played real ball?  Especially when Keith was supposed to be head coach.  Keith tried to get the promised position back, except the girls he coached had other things in store for him.  Harold Keith, Jim’s brother, wrote a novel based on what happened.  That novel was made into a movie in 2006 called Believe In Me.  

Now, we all know the plot line of sports movies: a losing underdog of a team rises up to win.  It’s predictable, right?  But we could say that of all crime shows as well—in this episode investigators discover a crime and figure out who did it!  Wow, what a shocker.  We could say it of all romantic comedies as well—in this movie a couple at odds gets together.  No way!  We could say it of lots of stories.  And yet we love these stories anyway.  Why?  

Because the characters suck us in.  Because the story tellers do such a good job with the particular details we forget we’re watching a movie or reading a book.  We forget to think about the ending.  Furthermore, the stories are often about more than just winning games.  And so we worry about these people who have become real to us and focus on their immediate situation.  At least, that’s what happens when the story tellers do a good job.

And Robert Collector, who both wrote and directed the film, did a great job with Believe In Me.  Now, I don’t know how accurate the film’s depiction of five-on-five play is; I believe the girl basketball teams of that era played six-on-six.  But that’s a niggling technical detail.  Besides, the movie isn’t about technique anyway.  It’s about a man and a group of country girls who have to face difficult obstacles, not so much on the court, but off it.  If you have girls or like sports at all, I think you’ll love this movie. 

Cyber War

I recently reviewed America The Vulnerable which explained how exposed we are as individuals, corporations, and a country to cyber crime, cyber espionage (both state and corporate), and cyber attacks.  Of all the cyber threats we face as individuals and a nation, the least likely is an all out cyber war.  But just because it’s less likely that doesn’t mean the threat isn’t real.  Especially since cyber warfare has been in use since the 1990′s.  We used cyber weapons openly in the gulf war in 2003, knocking out Iraqi air defenses.  Israel used them to own Syria’s air defenses when bombing their clandestine nuclear site in 2007.  Russia used them against Estonia in 2008 and Georgia in 2009 on a variety of targets, bringing many critical systems to a halt.  In 2010, somebody, most likely the US or Israel, developed the Stuxnet worm to sabotage the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz in Iran.  China has already conducted trial runs of cyber attacks on the US and has planted logic bombs and trap doors to activate in the future.

In Cyber War, Richard Clarke shares his insights into what cyber war is, how cyber weapons work, and how vulnerable we are as a nation.  He discusses the cyber warriors (hackers) we now employ in the US military, and how a cyber war is like and unlike other wars.  In the second half of the book, he discusses the factors that have created our current vulnerability, how to set up a defense, and what we need to think about when conducting a cyber war. 

And Clarke knows his stuff.  He worked for the State Department during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.  In 1992, President George H.W. Bush appointed him to chair the Counter-terrorism Security Group and to a seat on the United States National Security Council.  President Bill Clinton retained Clarke and in 1998 promoted him to be the national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection, and counterterrorism, the chief counterterrorism adviser on the National Security Council.  President George W. Bush kept him in the same position and later made him special adviser to the president on cyber security.    

The thing I liked most about the book is that in addition to describing cool cyber war weapons, threats, and incidents, Clarke examines answers to many critical questions.  For example, how can we set up a defense without the government becoming a 1984 nightmare?  Would arms agreements work in cyber space?  (No.)  How do you prevent a cyber war from turning into a kinetic (guns and troops) war?  How do you attack your enemy when it’s sometimes hard to know who launched the attack in the first place?  He discusses these and many more questions.

The book does have one fault.  Clarke has an obvious axe to grind with the Bush administration, and can’t help but make snide and irritating comments whenever he brings them up.  The good news is that those spots are few and far between.  If you want an excellent introduction into how cyber weapons are used and will likely be used in the future, you’ll want to read this book.

Those who check the progress bars, will notice that I’ve started the first draft of the thriller, which remains nameless.  Poor thing. You’ll also notice I haven’t finished the working outline. That’s because sometimes–well, often–I need to do some drafting to get the feel of the story and characters before I finish that working document. And also because story development has never been a linear thing for me. 

I did a lot of work on the premise (the story setup) these last few weeks. Ran into a lot of dead ends.  However, it was all good. I got snippets of scenes throughout the process. Did a lot of useful research. Developed characters. I wrote a few drafts of another beginning that I realized didn’t feel right. It was telling the wrong story, had the wrong angle. A few days later, I figured out the right angle on the premise.  And it is so delicious to me.  Then during another work session–letting my mind run while I showered–I got the outline of the first chapter. I give you the first 300 words below. I’m sure they’ll change, but it’s a taste of what’s to come.

CHAPTER 1: Cowboy Donut 

Trying to get a straight job as an ex-con was a lovely experience.  Kind of like being dragged behind a bus.

No matter how tidy you looked or how sharp your resume was, it all came down to one question: “And what were you in for?”  Frank knew it would be stupid to lie about that.  First of all, he was trying to go straight.  Second, any employer who didn’t have a carrot for a brain was going to run a background check.  So there was no use trying to hide. 

Frank was now sitting in the back office of Cowboy Donut in Rock Springs, Wyoming across from Mary Rogers, the sun-wrinkled owner.  She was probably in her fifties and had two-tone hair that seemed to take its inspiration from a skunk or badger: all bleached up on top and dark underneath.

Ms. Mary had just asked the question.  Frank had just dropped his bomb—voluntary manslaughter, a security job gone bad.  He’d been protecting the wrong kind of noun for the wrong kind of people.

Ms. Mary narrowed her eyes.  “What else am I going to find on your RAP sheet?”

“That’s it,” Frank said.  “Just the one unfortunate incident.”

“Murder is a pretty big incident.”

“Manslaughter,” he corrected.  “Not murder.”

She made a noncommittal sound and looked down to study his resume a bit more.  Like maybe something new would pop up there. 

This was always the fun part, waiting for the reply.  First interviews were like first dates.  And Frank had basically told his date he had an Ebola monkey virus that would make her eyes bleed, and would she now like to kiss?  He’d done this now a couple dozen times and knew the best thing was just to be quiet. 

Poor Frank. And in just a few pages things are going to get so much worse when he finds two old associates waiting for him at his house.

As I was walking past the circulation desk of the Logan library last week, a woman, who had been tracking my movements, turned, pointed at me, and made a loud complimentary exclamation. I know you’re thinking she said something about my fabulous looks or the animal magnetism that pours off me sometimes in uncontrollable waves. But no, she was not talking about that. She explained she had been in one of my presentations at LTUE last year and found it very helpful and was going to be at this year’s event. She asked if I was going again. 

Up until a few days ago I was planning on it and had two new presentations prepared that I think are killer. But that was before I saw my daughter’s school basketball schedule. Life is short, and my time with my kids is even shorter, and so I will not be there to exude my extraordinary fantasy-boy kavorka upon the teeming masses. Alas.

(What did you say? That wasn’t a kavorka I exuded?)

Exclaiming Libaray Patron, who made my day, if you’re reading this, please accept my apologies.

In the meantime, I’m hard at work on the thriller. I’ve finally nailed down the full premise and am moving into sketching out my scenes.

I finished the 10% edit, going from 205,000 words to 185,000, this morning and emailed the finished manuscript to Super Agent Caitlin who will perform various incantations before sending it off to ye Editors for review. 

While that’s happening, I will be switching gears and starting the thriller. I’m looking forward to this.  Not only am I having fun developing the ideas, but unlike these epic fantasies I’m writing with a gajillion story lines, this is going to have one story line (okay, with maybe, maybe two subplots), one point of view (instead of three or four), and a limited cast of characters like six (as opposed to close to twenty). I’m preparing to reach  escape velocity. I’ll tell you what jupiter looks like when I get back.