A Kinder, Gentler Apocalypse (#SFWA Pro)

I grew up in the fifties, when we learned in grade school to “duck and cover” (hide under our desks)  for protection from an atomic bomb blast. Not unsurprisingly I had frequent recurring nightmares about that very thing. In fact, I kind of expected it to happen, which may be why, once I discovered science fiction, I found myself drawn to post-apocalyptic literature. It was almost as if I were studying so I would know how to survive the collapse of civilization.

After I became a professional writer, I wrote a post-apocalyptic trilogy of my own, over a period of thirty years. (See "How I accidentally wrote a 300,000-word Trilogy".) I did a lot of thinking and a lot of research working on the main premise of the series: what would happen to our society if all modern technology suddenly and permanently disappeared? In my series, The Pandora’s Trilogy, this catastrophe is caused by a recombinant-DNA disaster that results in the disappearance of all petroleum and petroleum products. Most of us don’t think about how very dependent we are on fossil fuels for more than motivating our cars. A vast number of manufactured objects--including clothing, cosmetics, household objects, and  electronics, are made wholly or in part of oil or plastic or other petroleum derivatives.

In my trilogy many other terrible events, including widespread genetic mutations (due to the failure of containment systems on biological experiments) and mass extinctions and genetic diseases (due to the recombinant-DNA disaster) also plague the unlucky survivors of the original “Change.” It’s a kind of dark-ages life: primitive… brutish and short. The three main characters of my trilogy each work in different ways to try to make the present better and help create a future that is less desolate. Though many animals we know now are gone, evolved forms of some creatures, including camels, housecats, and elephants, are important actors in the story.

I realized after I had written the second of the three novels that my imagined apocalypse was in fact a kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy. No, I didn’t wish for the collapse of civilization, but I realized that if a disaster such as the one I created should occur, it would permanently eliminate the possibility of nuclear holocaust. The third novel in the series, written 35 years after the first two, even ends on a note of hope for the future. No, things can never be as they once were; but humanity and the remaining animals will be able to live in a recovering ecosystem with enlightened leadership, a reduced human population, and a visceral knowledge of the mistakes that had been made in the past and must never be made again.

The Pandora’s Trilogy is available on Kindle as an e-book “box set,” which offers all three novels and some bonus material. The three novels are available separately, as ebooks and paperbacks, on Amazon. All are free to read on #KU. You'll find links in the right-hand column of this blog.

I also offer links to several free excerpts from Pandora’s Promise, listed under "Pages." “Rushing River’s Story” follows the sentient elephants who inhabit the midwest of this country after the Change. For a taste of the Pandora’s world, read the prequel (“Pandora’s Prequel”). It is the length of a novella, and offers insights into two of the main characters from before the beginning of the first book.

Writing Submission Materials for Kindle Scout

This post is about writing VERY short passages, inspired by Kindle Scout, a crowd-sourced contest in which the first few pages of unpublished novels are posted online and potential readers vote on which book(s) should receive a publishing contract. I entered my recently-completed novel, Pandora’s Promise (the third book in the Pandora’s Trilogy), and it was accepted right away. But it took me several days and much feedback from friends and colleagues to complete the entry.

                        

The two hardest parts of the submission process were writing a 45-character one-liner and a 500-character description of the book. Note that it is character, not word. Characters include punctuation and the blank spaces between words. You must write these minuscule passages in a way that will both explain what the book is about and entice potential readers to nominate it. The saving grace is that the one-liner, the description, and the cover should all work together to give a true picture of what readers will find in the book.

In any writing endeavor, be it an article, an email, or a novel, your prose will read better if you focus on what is truly important. With stringent space limitations, you can’t include all the main points, or even most of them. You’ll need to decide which ones best characterize the book and are most likely to interest potential readers.

In the case of Pandora’s Promise, there are so many important elements to the story it felt impossible to choose. It is a post-apocalyptic adventure with the fate of the human race in doubt. There are three main characters, each with her or his own story line. There are several important subplots, which seemingly have nothing to do with each other until all is tied up at the end. There are a number of hard-science fictional elements as well as subplots involving the emerging telepathic abilities of mutant animals. How could I possibly convey all this in only 45 characters? And how could I summarize such a complicated story in any number of words, let alone 500 characters?

As it turned out, having a tight space limitation was a good lesson for me in focusing on what was truly important in the novel.

Example: one of the most important subplots is the main hero’s interaction with a clan of telepathic elephants. This section, which had been read by several beta readers, was unanimously popular, so I felt it had to be included. Also, though the story is an action-packed adventure, it is also, at heart, a very intense love story, and I wanted to at least mention that. The fate of humanity, if not the world, is indeed in doubt due to a combination of genetic mutations and climate change. There are many other subplots and elements, including a section on how all these disasters came to be.

I decided right away that I wanted the one-liner to be a question: “Can X and Y save the world?” This gives a flavor of the importance of the stakes.  But what should I put in the blanks? These are some of the things I tried:

Can human love and ancient wisdom save the world? (49 characters)

Can courage and telepathy save the world? (41 characters)

Can human daring and sentient animals save the world? (53 characters)

Can love and telepathic animals save the world? (47 characters)

The only line that comes in under the cut-off is the second one, and to me it was too general: whose courage? What telepathy? Neither “human love” nor “love” conveys the idea of romance. Daring and courage give some hint of the action segments of the novel, but only a hint. I eventually realized that I was trying to put too many ideas in my one-liner, and should leave other ideas to the summary. I decided instead to focus on only two of the main ideas: the elephants, who are characters in their own right, and the love story, which, though it mostly remains in the background, is a strong motivating force for much of the action.

Thus I finally arrived at “Can true love and elephants save the world?” Which happens to be 43 characters.

The summary, in which I had the luxury of writing a 500-character passage, fills in many of the blanks. It implies that the elephants are sentient, and also offers a flavor of the action, as well as the hard-science fictional nature of the book, lest it be dismissed as fantasy. To see what I ended up with, go to my book’s page on Kindle Scout. If you do so before January 16, 2015, please also nominate my book. If I win publication, you will get a free advance copy of the e-book.

 

Technorati Tags: Kindle Scout,Pandora's Promise,Pandora's Trilogy,Simplifying writing,Writing to length

17. Creating science-fiction animals: the strange creatures in Pandora’s Genes

When I began writing Pandora’s Genes, the strange, mutated animals appeared to me fully-formed in the same way as the main characters.

At the beginning of the novel, Zach visits Evvy’s family on an “ill-tempered” mount that becomes immobile at sunset; Zach and Evvy must shelter in a cave, protected by fire, to avoid poison-bats, which cannot bear to exposure to light; and Evvy is helped to find the Garden by Baby, the inquisitive and friendly fox-cat.

Baby, the Fox-cat

Could such creatures exist in real life? Probably not, but some of their adaptations are not really so far-fetched. Take the poison-bats. Most of today’s bats avoid bright lights, preferring to operate at dusk or in the dark. And although it is rare, a number of mammals, such as some shrews and moles do produce venom.

Likewise, the stolid mounts, which in the Pandora’s world have replaced most other riding and pack animals, might have evolved from camels, which do have very thick skins and can travel long distances in unpredictable terrain. They are also known for their unpredictable, surly temperaments. In the Pandora’s world, these mutated creatures have developed the ability to remain completely immoblle after sunset, when hunting bats would be attracted to any movement.

The fox-cats are everyone’s favorite Pandora’s creatures. Although there may or may not be such a thing as an empathic sense in real life, anyone who has ever owned cats knows that they often appear to read minds. In my post-Change world, the remaining house cats developed this ability along with larger ears for more acute hearing, and the superior intelligence necessary to live in such a dangerous world. Like today’s cats and dogs, the fox-cats bond readily with humans.

My wonderful cover designer, Glenace Melton, based the fox-cat’s appearance on that of my most beloved and always-remembered Hatshe, pictured here:

Tomorrow: Plot or not? (Part I)

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