Today’s post is a first for me; today I’m taking part in a Blog Tour.

I was invited onto the Tour by Scott Moon, who is not only a superb science fiction writer but also I good friend. His Kin Roland Chronicles are great fun to read and he has been phenomenal help to me with my own writing.

Scott Baughman started this blog chain off, so make sure to check out his webpage Write Great, Scott.

1) What am I working on?

Right now I am currently finishing up re-writes and edits for my first novella “Second Star to the Right”, which will be the first in a series of five. It is a science fiction re-imagining of classic children’s tale. I played around with the idea for well over a year before I actually decided to start working on it. I contacted the Rights holder and after they gave me the “go-ahead” it was off to the races. My plan is to get it out to beta readers in August, then to an editor in September with I loose publication date for the middle of October.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

With Second Star, I would say that it falls into the adventure subclass of sci-fi, but I don’t like to confine my writing to one specific genre. If something works for the story, I will use it, no matter what genre it typically fits into.

I try to focus on what moves the story forward. Books that go on for pages with descriptions of the landscape and what people are wearing are fine and have their place (I even like reading some of them) but that type of writing isn’t for me. I don’t have the patients for that; I like to get to the point.

Realism is something else I strive for, which is almost a contradiction in terms when talking about science fiction. (Like military intelligence.) What I mean is; I need to believe what is happening, even if it a sword-wielding monk charging head-first into a wall of evil robot hamsters, I want to believe that he’d actually do it. As a person, not just a pawn of the writer. This is something I have been working hard to get right in my own work after reading so many other books where I’m like, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t do that.

3) Why do I write what I do?

I write because I love to write, it’s something that I’ve done off and on for almost 20 years. It has always been a hobby, but this year I decided to take it seriously and over the last few months, I have been amazed at how my dream is slowly becoming reality. I can’t wait to see what next year brings.

4) How does your writing process work?

Most of my projects begin, as notes jotted down on my phone, then eventually become an expanded Scrivener file. For my Second Star series, I spent 3-4 days brainstorming and outlining in Scapple before I even started to write.

I have found over the course of Second Star that I am going to have to do a lot better job at outlining in the future and that the outline I have at the start of the book might not necessarily look the same when I finish. It’s a fluid process, but I think I have it figured out now and I should be able to punch out my second book much faster than the first.

After a few rounds of edits in Scrivener I compile the manuscript into Word document for another round of edits, then it’s off to beta readers. I still am working out how many beta readers I want to use, right now I’m thinking five, but we’ll see. After I get feedback from them and make corrects and changes as needed, I will send it off to an editor.


I’ve invited Samantha LaFantasie to join in the tour and definitely encourage readers to check her out.

Samantha is the author of the Nepherium Novella Series, Made to Forget, and its sequel Echoes of Memories. Her debut novel Heart Song continues to do well and she is hard at work on the third Nepherium book as well as several other projects. Be sure to check out her website: www.samanthalafantasie.com and her Facebook page: Samantha LaFantasie Fantasy Writer. She is also on Twitter and Goodreads.

The other day I received my first “How do you write?” email ever. My first thought was, um…you do know I’m just a rookie right? But my second thought was…how DO I write?

I emailed him back and gave him the best answer I could: I write. 

What a completely crap answer, and somewhat of a dodge. That’s the answer every writer always gives…and it’s really not very helpful. Of course, write…duh…but sometimes the actual writing is daunting.  You’re excited when you type that first word, but then you think of the 79,999 words you still have left to right and you think, how can I possibly write all those words?

Until recently, a lot of my time spent as a writer was looking at a blank screen thinking I’m never going to write anything as beautiful as Peter F. Hamilton or as fun as Ernie Lindsay. 

One of the biggest issues I had with my writing is that I lacked detail and my characters and scenes were very black and white. Example: Jack jumped over the candle stick. You understand what is going on, but that doesn’t make for a very interesting scene. I would write a scene like this and think, everything about this sucks and no one is going to like it…trash!

What I didn’t understand then, was that these first words are just my first draft and it’s allowed to be shitty. The second draft is where you flesh out the story, and so is the third, then you start cleaning it up in the fourth and fifth drafts.

I was reading a post by science fiction writer Jamie Todd Rubin the other day and read something that made everything I’ve ever read about writing make sense. I’ll paraphrase: “The 1st draft is for you (the writer); the second draft is for the reader.”

Mind. Blown.

I’ve read many books on writing since deciding to take my writing seriously, and all of these books have good material on structure, plotting, character development and so on…but not a whole lot give advice on the actual writing part.  

The all say the same thing: just write.

So after I gave the exact same answer, I decided to sit down and actually think about what I am doing to write my stories.

It came to me, as most of my great ideas do, in the shower. But I’ll skim over those details…

Earlier that day, I saw a video on YouTube of an interview with Peter F. Hamliton and twice it shows him typing on his computer. I assume these shots are of him doing some actual work on his projects, but who knows.  Anyway, I re-watched these parts several times and paused it to see what he was doing. 

It appears that he is writing a bunch of fragments, clumping them all together and then going back to flesh them out later. If you’ve ever read any of his books then you know when I say, “flesh out” I mean he fleshes them out. His writing is always extremely descriptive, to the point of being beautiful. He has a real talent for painting memorable vistas and vivid landscapes with his words. I just assumed that all that description and detail flowed out of him in some endless stream of words, never once did I imagine his work being crappy and bland.

This is where the light bulb came on.

Yes the first draft is trash, it sucks and no one should ever read it…ever. It also doesn’t have to be “complete.” Get the basics of the story down: who, what, where, when, why and how, then go back and fill in the details. 

The details are what always killed my writing. I could see the scene in my head, but after I’d get it down on paper, it wouldn’t look correct. I would work endlessly on that scene for days and never get it right, become frustrated and shit-can the entire project instead pushing through and going back later to fix it.
So…back to the shower (and not like that either…sickos)  

There I was, pondering the method and it came to me: My style of writing was like that of a painter creating a piece of art. He doesn’t start with the color, he starts with a sketch and then progresses through several stages, until eventually, at the end he paints a masterpiece. I decided to apply this idea to my writing:

The Sketch Method

First stage: “The Idea” For me this is where I sit down, brainstorm, and jot everything down. I use Scapple for this and during this stage I am outlining, plotting, and creating my characters.

Second Stage: “Penciling” Turning those ideas into words (really crappy words) but by the end you know where the story is going end and how the characters are going to get there. (You are just telling yourself the story)

Third stage: “Shading” This is where you add detail to your scenes, expand on the dialogue between the characters, you are creating scenes that when your audience reads them they will see what you see. (This is telling the story to your readers)

Fourth stage: “Color” This stage is adding the touches that will make your work shine: more detail (but not too much!), putting everything together so that instead of several different beautifully written scenes, now you have a beautifully written story.

Fifth stage: “Clean up” This stage actually happens simultaneously with the Third and Fourth stages. This is where the “Red Pen o’ Death” appears and ravages your manuscript. You’ll be hitting the delete key a lot, trying to figure out how you could possibly write such crap, but that’s okay, everyone does this. By the time you get to the Fourth stage, you should be fairly proud of your work.

It’s extremely simple but it works for me. And when it really boils down to it, that’s all that matters: what works for you.

Bam! That’s ten minutes of your life you’re never going to get back! You’re welcome. And now that you’re done reading my ramblings, go and find out what works for you. There is no one “absolute” method to write a book. You might like some parts of mine and parts of someone else’s, take the parts you like, smash them together and make them work for you.

Once you figure out what works for you there is only one thing left for you to do: WRITE.