Of Starships and Intergalactic Wars

Probably ten years ago, when the Internet was a younger space and podcasting and the concepts of web fiction and indie e-publishing were young, I ended up guesting on a podcast dedicated to web fiction, talking about Awakenings initially. The conversation with the host eventually drifted to my recently released book, Broken Stars, about which the host was duly enthused.

The universe of Broken Stars is in some ways more optimistic than the world of Awakenings—sure, the human race still has problems but the actual apocalypse hasn’t happened and hey, we’re in space. Sure, Earth is held by a galactic state that stands in opposition to our heroes in Broken Stars and there’s definitely a simmering conflict there, but we’ve managed to survive two wars of annihilation and enslavement by an alien race to get there.

More on that in a second.

The question—in the midst of this long-ago interview—that came up from the host, something that is probably the only thing that I remember from the whole interview, was the question whether or not Broken Stars would ever be released as web fiction, if anything in that universe would be released online as web fiction. I remember laughing and saying that I wasn’t sure it quite felt right to do it that way, that the format might not be right.

Fast forward to a pandemic, to another bachelor’s degree, to a much different point in my life than where I was in the days of that interview.

There has been an idea rolling around in my head for a little while now, suggesting that in addition to getting back to both Awakenings and at least the world of the Legacies of Lost Earth, perhaps there was hope for a web-facing taste of the Epsilon universe—of which Broken Stars is a major part.

The Preytax Wars are a historical event that takes place in the Epsilon universe, an event that planted the seeds for the status quo that exists in Broken Stars. Taking place in the 22nd century, several decades after humanity has made its way deeper and deeper into the stars (thanks to a bit of help from a few friendly alien races that made first contact in the later 21st century), the Preytax Wars represent humanity’s first encounter with a hostile alien race and two major conflicts with that race—both of which are generally characterized as life or death for humanity and human society on the whole.

Humanity won, but not without cost and not necessarily as decisively as anyone characterizing it as an existential conflict might have hoped—but no one actually thinks they’ll come back, right?

More on that to come in the future.

I have never been sure if I would actually write a full-blown book in the era of the Preytax Wars—I would have to write several, in fact, due to knowing who some of the important macro and micro stories live with. Something that I have been playing with is putting together a site that gathers fictional news reports, journal entries, sequences, etc. that would tell at least part of the story of the Preytax Wars. It’s been an idea that’s simmered for a little while now.

I suppose we’ll see what happens next.

Processing

Sometimes inspiration comes from dark places.

As I imagine many writers–especially writers of speculative fiction–do, often I use my writing as a tool to process and cope with things in the world beyond my control. As a trained social scientist with degrees in history, anthropology, and political science, I view the world through a unique lens, one even further shaped and refracted by my identity as a writer, by my gender and my sexuality, by my sociopolitical and spiritual beliefs, by my morality and my upbringing. Each of us carry these things as we approach the world.

I’m going to talk about Skypoint here, but there are themes woven into most of what I’ve written that draw from my perception of and reaction to the world around me. In a lot of scenarios, some of those themes are not terribly hard to find and in others they’re more subtle.

Skypoint, as I am currently envisioning it as I work through the writing of the first draft, is one of those works that draws on a lot of darker inspirations. Spoiler warning, if you don’t want to know what I’m planning for the book in either vague or precise terminology, stop now and move on.

Still here? Okay.

Skypoint delves into themes around bodily autonomy, secrets, conspiracy, and war–it addresses the lengths governments will go to to protect secrets and to gain the upper hand in conflict, the lies that are sometimes told to justify actions, and who has the right to do certain things. In the book as I’m writing it now, and the wider world surrounding it (currently planned to adjust some of the history of Legacies of the Lost Earth while telling at least part of the story of how Earth was lost in the first place), there’s a question of who has the right to make decisions for another individual about their mind and health, about their very bodily autonomy and agency. This is mostly depicted through the handling of people with psychic gifts (a theme that I obviously play with fairly often), but anyone who’s read the Legacies so far knows that it goes further and deeper than that–Alana Chase of the Legacies being a prime example. David Lésarte and Hunter Drake are further examples in Skypoint, as both were offered very limited options when it came to their futures–at varying points in their lives, both before and after we meet them in the story.

So, too, does the question of justification for war and how they happen come up in the world. Sometimes there are secrets that are kept so conflict can continue to be justified–and sometimes, as a pretext for conflict in the first place. Admittedly, when I began working on Skypoint, there 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia hadn’t started, though there was still the memory of 2014 and Crimea. Neither of these were on my mind at the time, though, but simmering geopolitical tensions certainly were, as was my own memory of the events that led up to the US-led invasion of Iraq two decades ago. These are the things that inspire and the things that you wrestle with and sometimes, they become useful inspiration and the act of writing becomes cathartic and a mechanism of processing all of the craziness of the world.

Works like Skypoint and the Legacies and all of my other projects have a hint of this to it, except for maybe Magic Crystal Justice Squad which is definitely half tumblr-born dare and maybe half escapism born of a global pandemic.

So I guess, in a way, even that’s a coping mechanism.

Inspiration can come from dark places and dark things, but harnessing that inspiration can help a writer–or any artist–produce something beautiful and lasting, in spite of or perhaps because of its roots. Every work is the product of the time, circumstances, and influences of its creation.

Especially mine.

Schedule updates – scrapping the schedule

I’m scrapping the schedule–again.  We’ve been without a full time manager at the store, which meant that the other part time and I have been picking up a lot of slack (it’s a lot of store to run on three managers, let me tell you that much).  Instead of a full-on schedule, I have some deadlines roughed out, which now include some print versions of some already-released work.

Currently on tap:

  • Print version of What Angels Fear (including a brief essay on writing the work) – hopefully by the end of March.
  • Finishing up Epsilon: Redeemer, Girl from a Brigadoon, and When All’s Said and Done.
    • Tentative release time frames (all of these are subject to change and are for the ebook release; trade paper/print versions are a little later than the ebook release):
      • April – Girl from a Brigadoon
      • May – Epsilon: Redeemer
      • June – The Last Colony

I’ve got a couple of projects kicking around that will be released under a psuedonym that (for the moment) shall remain unrevealed.

[progpress title=”Epsilon: Redeemer” goal=”80000″ current=”65201″ label=”words”]

[progpress title=”When All’s Said and Done (a Lost Angel Chronicle)” goal=”85000″ current=”20018″ label=”words”]

[progpress title=”UNSETIC Files: Girl from a Brigadoon” goal=”45000″ current=”23642″ lable=”words”]

For anyone following the word count meters, they’ve probably noticed that I’ve been making good progress largely on Girl from a Brigadoon, though this past week I’ve put in some work on When All’s Said and Done and Epsilon: Redeemer.  The latter is probably going to significantly eclipse its word count goal and be longer than Epsilon: Broken Stars.

Speaking of Broken Stars, stay tuned later this week for a post revealing what my sales have looked like the past few months since I started releasing ebooks.  I’m still waiting on some numbers (Kobo, etc.) from some of the Smashwords distribution channels, but I can show off some preliminaries.  They’re not that impressive, but they’re “whole dollars!” as my brother puts it.


You can find Erin on GoodReads these days @ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5211226.Erin_Klitzke And on Smashwords @ http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EMBKlitzke

And Amazon @ http://www.amazon.com/author/erin-klitzke

She offers two free fiction serials @ http://www.embklitzke.com/e557 and http://awakenings.embklitzke.com.  Stop on by and check it out.

 

It’s good to have goals…

 

[progpress title=”The Last Colony” goal=”80000″ current=”57678″]
[progpress title=”Epsilon” goal=”90000″ current=”39567″]
[progpress title=”Ashes to Ashes” goal=”80000″ current=”14094″]

 

I’ve already posted it on Facebook and I might as well make it official by posting it here, too. I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit the past month or two, and I’ve decided.

Goal-setting is good. Hopefully, I’ll manage to meet this goal (and if I don’t, it’s mostly me that gets hurt, which kind of means it’s the best kind of goal).

A while back, I was posting a lot about The Last Colony and the E-557 universe, which comprised my 2009 and 2010 Nanowrimo projects. The Last Colony is actually fairly close to being done, I just have to finish up another few chapters and polish it up (I probably underestimate how much work I’ve got to do) and then it’s done, I’m going to hand it over to some volunteer editors (probably two, one for spelling proofs and such, the other for continuity errors–I have two people in mind already, it’s mostly a matter of talking them into it). The reason for that is because I’m planning to release it as an ebook at some point in the near future.

Of course, this also means I’ll have to finish the second E-557 book, Ashes to Ashes (tentative title, honestly), and plot the third.

Plus finish at least the first book of the Epsilon saga, since I think that’s going to be more than one book (otherwise, it’d be one really, really long book that I’m not sure anyone would take the time to read), and manage three updates for Awakenings a week.

But it’s a goal, and it’s good to have goals. In reading about the future of publishing, it seems like Smashwords and e-publishing just might be a good direction to go in.

 

Wish me luck.