A Good Writing Day: Gramlich Style

Wednesday, May 15, 2013 was the best pure writing day I’ve had since the late summer of 2011 when I was working on Under the Ember Star. Word count was about 1500 polished words and another 5 to 6 hundred rough draft. Most of the polished stuff came on Wraith of Talera, and I was able to fix a plot hole that had been troubling me and push forward to the end of a very tough chapter. That ending also gave me a jump start in ideas for where I’ll begin today’s writing.

I also did some polishing on a new Ginn Hollis story that I’ve started. It’s going to be a short story instead of a novella, and the working title is “Once Upon a Time Beneath the Ember Star.” It will be a prequel to Under the Ember Star. This is where I also did most of the rough draft stuff. After finishing up four straight days of final work for school last week, and taking a day to rest, I had a hard time getting started back on “Wraith” but this idea excited me and I let myself roll with it. I’m going to try and keep my writing time at about 85% “Wraith” and 15% “Ginn.” Unfortunately, this weekend is going to be full of a different kind of commitment, so after today I won’t be able to work on either story much until next week.

Speaking of this weekend, I’ll be off the internet most of that time so I won’t be visiting blogs or commenting. I’ll probably be checking email on occasion. I know everyone will survive without my input for a few days!

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a little snippet of the new Ginn Hollis tale. This is the first paragraph.

1: Burning Sky

Across the wasteland of sand came a hum, rising rapidly in pitch, building toward a whine. Then a hoverbike burst into view over a dune, fine grit scattering behind it from its fans. Ginn Hollis crouched low over the cycle’s power pack, her head down between the handlebars as she tried to will every last erg of energy from her engines.

----

----

Hello, “Under the Ember Star”

I was setting up an Amazon Author Page for Amazon.France today when a book cover popped up that I hadn’t seen before. I looked a little more closely, and it was the cover for Under the Ember Star, which is finally in print through both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The publication date says March 29, 2012, but I checked as recently as last week and it wasn’t yet up. I think March is when it was submitted.

This one comes from Wildside Press, through Borgo Press as the purchasing imprint, and it’s listed as Wildside Double #25. Yes, you heard right. It’s a double book, in the tradition of the old Ace doubles so many of us remember fondly. There are two books printed back to back, each with its own cover. My cover is below, and I think it’s one of the best I’ve had yet. 

The second book is by Mark E. Burgess and is called The Battle for Eden: The Human/Knacker War, Book 3. Military SF probably best describes it. The three books of the Human/Knacker war are only loosely tied together by the concept of the Knacker invasion of Earth’s space territories. I’ve read all three and each stands alone just fine without the reader needing to know anything about the other two. I read “Battle for Eden” when it was first suggested as the flip side for my work, and it’s full of action and adventure, and quite a lot of intelligent thought.

Under the Ember Star is the book I wrote last summer, and I’m very proud of it. I’d call it a mixture of Space Opera and Sword & Planet adventure.  If you want to look for literary forebears, well, I gave special acknowledgments to Leigh Brackett and C. L. Moore in the book.  If you think of Sword of Rhiannon and the Northwest Smith stories, you’d be hitting close to the feel I was going for in the story.

I’d say “Ember Star” is the same kind of action-oriented adventure story I’ve tried to tell most of my life, but in one way I really tried to stretch myself with this book. For the first time in any of my longer works, the main character is female. She’s also carrying a little more baggage than my typical hero, but that doesn’t stop her from kicking ass. I’m happy with how she turned out.

Here’s the Blurb for Under the Ember Star:  “Ginn Hollis was fourteen when her father's mysterious death left her alone on the planet Kelmer. She's grown up since then. Kelmer is a harsh world, an old world: its people are ancient, its civilization long fallen and dimly dreaming under a brown dwarf sun the natives call the Ember Star. But now, long dormant forces are beginning to stir on Kelmer, forces that could destroy the planet forever...or bring it back to life. One being stands at the center of the turmoil. His origins are veiled, his destiny is unclear. Everyone wants a piece of him. Only Ginn Hollis can protect him from both sides--if she can save herself first.... Another grand science-fantasy adventure by a riveting storyteller.”

You know, I like the sound of that. I hope you do to.

---

---

---