I don't know about any other first-time authors out there . . . but this summer took a lot out of me (you'll notice I sort of let this site gather cobwebs between July and September -- oopsie). Between job hunting, packing, moving, unpacking, and essentially dismantling and re-mantling my life, I've barely had time to write the past few months, much less promote Into the Known Universe. I'm ashamed to say that I even completely forgot about my September 1st newsletter (to be fair to be . . . I was in a moving truck for most of that weekend). In any event, I apologize to anyone who came to this site hoping for regular content. I'd have done better, but you know, fatigue. Anyway, now that I'm settled in my new place and no longer living out of boxes, I'm pleased to report that the ol' creative juices are beginning to flow once more. I've been working on a few short stories that tie indirectly into the book, the first of which I released back in August, and the second I'll be sending out with my October newsletter. The first short story, in case anyone missed it, was very well received by those who read it, and the feedback was encouraging. I'm hopeful this second story, a festive little tale of espionage and counterespionage set in an Incorporated Intelligence citadel, will be equally well received. I'm hoping to maintain this blog a little better going forward, but if you're wanting more consistent writing and promotions updates, follow me on Instagram at @jamesrdhilton. And if you're intrigued by that short story, sign up for my newsletter on the way out (and don't forget to opt in!). JRDH
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It has been one month since the official release of my book, and I gotta tell ya . . . I’m beat. No sooner did I announce the release on April 1st than fatigue and apathy—the telltale signs of burnout—hit me harder than a Jägerbomb after last call. Everything I’d been working toward for the past four years sank under the murky waters of exhaustion, and all notions of actively promoting my book seemed as insurmountable as scaling Everest in Crocs. Posting on IG? Ugh. Scheduling signings? Whyyyyyyy. Hosting a launch. Kill me! I won’t lie, the past month has been rough. Between the mental fog, physical fatigue, and non-existent energy levels, I’ve barely written anything, and haven’t had the concentration to even read. Even something as light as yoga has been too much for my sapped energy reserves. I’ve been able to go to work, and that’s about it. I suppose it’s natural . . . I’ve been go-go-go on this thing for a solid year, so crashing at the finish line was probably inevitable. If there’s one thing therapy’s taught me over the years, it’s that the human body is a machine, and when your mental dashboard is erupting with warning lights, you should probably address them before you break down completely. I won’t say that I've broken down, but I have heeded those warning lights and slowed way the hell down. This isn’t anything catastrophic—in fact, I’m pleased to report that I’ve reached something of a turning point. Yesterday I hosted my friends and family launch party at the Ponoka Golf Club, and you know . . . it put a bit of fuel back in my tank. Being in the company of my most ardent supporters, sharing hot food and cold drinks and hearty laughter, well, it cleared some of that mental fog. I daresay I awoke this morning feeling peppier than I have in weeks. There’s still a ways to go before I’m back to one hundred percent, however—I’m not taking on any new writing projects, and I’m being careful not to overload myself with promotions commitments over the coming months. I’m taking some much needed time to rest and recuperate after a very long, very arduous journey. Who knows—I might even take a vacation. Rest assured, there will be more stories to come. In fact, I’m planning on distributing an old classic from my Pulp Kings days in my June newsletter . . . In my last post, I recounted my aversion to worldbuilding and the impact this had on the early development of the Known Universe, an act of creation that more or less happened by accident. My first short story, Space Toast, was written for Pulp Kings Magazine without any consideration for worldbuilding, as was the next story, and the next. After years of toiling over maps and histories for epic fantasies that never materialized, I found solace in the simplicity of writing short-form stories without any consideration for consistency or internal connectivity. If I wanted to have a girl participate in a speed dating venue on an alien world where one of her dates was a talking chimp with a cybernetic brain, that’s what I wrote (Adventures in Warp Dating, 2019). When Pulp Kings contracted me to write a four-part serial in 2020, I dove in with the same lack of consideration for all things worldbuilding, prioritizing character development, plot structure, and jokes. My rationale was that the universe is big and weird, so having the reader meet bizarre aliens and explore strange new worlds in tandem with the characters kind of worked. Unfortunately, failing to do any worldbuilding whatsoever created a big problem later on. Once I expanded the original serial in late 2022, I realized I had no idea how anything in this universe worked. This wasn’t a series of silly Douglas Adams-esque short stories anymore where anything could conceivably happen if it led to a punchline—I’d established that there’s a mega-corporation that encompasses potentially thousands of galaxies, but never bothered to explain how intergalactic travel was even possible. Besides establishing things like a Chief Executive Overlord and Supreme Head Office Command, I had no clue how GaliCor’s command hierarchy functioned. As for communication systems, currency, technological limitations, languages, culture, religion . . . fuhgettaboutit. Being vague is all well and good when you’re writing a 5000-word short story that aims for laughs above all else, but that lack of detail doesn’t really fly in a novel (for supposedly being fantasy’s answer to Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is remarkably consistent and well ordered). Realizing my novel had some pretty big deficiencies, I had to work overtime to patch all the holes in the universe, an undertaking that lasted throughout the editing process. Fortunately, this was still a sci-fi comedy, so I wasn’t really bound by any constraints closely resembling those of reality. This isn’t The Expanse, for crying out loud, so I just had to come up with something that sounded kind of funny that also sort of made sense. Intergalactic travel? Let’s say a dude invented a drive that could traverse the “quantum fabric” connecting every galaxy in the universe. Perfect—now my story makes sense! Truth be told, implementing worldbuilding retroactively wasn’t all that hard. Most of the fixes took the form of footnotes, and everything that needed fleshing out got fleshed out in a way that seemed natural. The hardest part was realizing I actually wanted to develop the Known Universe more, but was limited in what I could do on account of the book already being written and on its way to the printers. Still, I was and still am interested in exploring more of GaliCor’s various divisions, its hierarchy, its interpersonal politics, the lives of those at various points along the corporate ladder . . . fun worldbuilding stuff I hadn’t dabbled in for years. As such, this year I’ll be releasing several new short stories/novelettes that explore new corners of Corporate Space, delving into things I wasn’t able to include in the book. You can sign up for my newsletter to be first in line! And of course, there are the sequels . . . Worldbuilding. Ah, worldbuilding! The building blocks of a compelling story. Is there an element of the creative process more alluring, more tantalizing, more exciting than worldbuilding? Besides character creation? It’s arguably the most immersive aspect of the process, allowing creators to harness the powers of history, geography, culture, and ecology to craft a rich world for legions of readers to fall in love with. It’s so immersive, in fact, that many would-be writers never make it past the worldbuilding stage of story development. The actual writing of the bestselling novel never comes. This is particularly true for fantasy enthusiasts (though sci-fi writers aren’t immune). An idea graces their imaginations, and out comes the map materials. Lands are charted, cultures are formed, races are designed, and lore is made gospel. I’ve known writers who have created worlds with complex mythologies that rival that of Tolkien, yet have never got around to figuring out what sort of stories their lands are hosting. These people aren’t posers—they’re merely stuck in a creative mire. To be fair, it’s a fun mire to be stuck in. Creating kingdoms and historical records is damn fun—crafting a coherent narrative that won’t bore your readers to tears is challenging. That’s why many novice storytellers never progress further than the worldbuilding stage. I know, because for years I was one of them. Back in my early-mid twenties—before I devoted myself exclusively to sci-fi—I wanted to be a fantasy author. I yearned to craft adventures as epic as Lord of the Rings, worlds as detailed as Westerose, and civilizations as colourful as . . . okay, so I was only really familiar with LOTR and Game of Thrones back then (my pitiful attempts to contribute something original to the fantasy genre could satisfy dozens of blog posts). The point is, I devoted years of time and effort to worldbuilding. Actual writing though? I wrote maybe eight chapters of my ten-book fantasy epic before my energy fizzled. I currently have in storage whole file boxes of notes, maps, binders, histories, folders, and lore for worlds without coherent stories. By the time I finally did come to grasp the elements of Story, I was so burned out on worldbuilding that I vowed to keep the next writing project I undertook simple. So simple, in fact, that it wouldn’t have any worldbuilding at all. When the opportunity arose to have a short story published in Pulp Kings in 2018, I’d finally abandoned fantasy as a fool’s endeavour and embraced sci-fi. Reasoning that if Douglas Adams could make things up as he went along then so could I, I threw together a 5000-word short story about a deep space freighter space pilot who’s just trying to make a delivery so he can go sit on a beach. I’d outlined the plot in rough detail, pinpointed my story beats, and determined that all the required world elements should satisfy the needs of the story (it also helped being on a deadline). The creative process went something like this: Hmm . . . the start of my story calls for pirates. What kind of pirates are they? Lessee, what hasn’t been done before? Ghost pirates? That’s cliché . . . ghostly space pirates? Good enough. Now I should establish who this pilot’s delivering cargo for. I’ve always wanted to do something with an evil corporation, because that isn’t cliché at all . . . what will I call it? Well, this is set in a galaxy and it’s a corporation . . . how about GaliCor? Eh, it works. What does GaliCor do? Manufacture space toasters? Sure. Now I need a race of aliens to show up at the end . . . alien slugs with cloaking technology? Hey, this is really easy! This was the same process I employed for the subsequent Pulp Kings stories (all four of them). Liberated from the shackles of having to come up with anything for my new universe (which wasn’t even called the Known Universe at that point) I enjoyed the ability to be random—it cultivated my creative inventiveness and made writing a stress-free enterprise. This universe was a sandbox, and I could do whatever the hell I wanted from story to story. It helped that for the first time in my life I was getting paid to write, so I didn’t see the need to ever return to time-consuming worldbuilding, not even when I started writing the serial that would become Into the Known Universe. It was a decision that would later come to bite me in the ass… Tune in next week for Part II, where I learn that writing a book requires at least some worldbuilding . . . Characters have always been my primary interest as a writer. Though I’m incredibly meticulous when it comes to story structure, and I’ve read Save the Cat enough times to have a pretty firm grasp of plot sequencing, character creation is what gets me up in the morning. The two characters central to Into the Known Universe: A Cosmic Love Story, Kinda are among my favourite in the known universe. Once I hit on the novel’s premise of a guy who gets offered a promotion in exchange for retrieving a stolen cargo freighter only to discover that it was stolen by his boss’ wife, my first task was figuring out just who the hell this guy was. I envisioned him as something like Bilbo Baggins in space—a man so comfortable in his little sandbox of a world that being dragged through the cosmos by some stranger would seem like a living hell. Welcome to the universe, Stuart Bode. I also took inspiration from Terry Gilliam's glorious dystopian satire Brazil (one of my favourite films), in which Jonathan Pryce plays Sam Lowry, a low-level bureaucratic drone who dreams of flying to the rescue of a beautiful damsel in distress and escaping the drudgery of his existence. Whereas Lowry rejects a promising promotion and is willing to throw away his career for Kim Greist’s Jill Layton, Stuart covets a promotion above all else, is perfectly content with marching to the tune of a totalitarian regime, and resents the supposed “woman of his dreams” for obstructing his professional development. With Stuart fully formed from the creative dust of my imagination, I turned to his counterpart—the runaway bride. If Stuart was orderly, predictable, uncomfortable, naïve, hygienic, judgmental, and borderline repressed, she would have to be the total opposite—chaotic, spontaneous, carefree, street smart, slovenly, easygoing, and absolutely unhinged. I saw her as something like Kim Greist from Brazil meets Catherine Keener from Being John Malkovich meets Harley Quinn meets Bugs Bunny—a sexy, tenacious, self-assured, bona fide shit-disturber with a near-supernatural knack for worming her way out of impossible situations with all the grace and poise of a cartoon rabbit. I set out to create a subversion of the blonde bombshell archetype—a woman who outwardly embodies attributes that men would find desirable, but with a personality they’d want to switch off. As she developed, she became a little more complex—to my surprise, my initial commentary on certain men trying to bend the women of their desires to fit a certain idealized mold ended up becoming central to her character. I named her after the brilliant Dutch astronomer Janna Oort, who furthered our understanding of the galaxy we call home. This seemed like a fitting nod considering my Janna’s discovery-based character arc (though in light of how crass she turned out to be, I sometimes wonder if the real Janna Oort would have appreciated the homage). Thus it was that Stuart Bode and Janna Oort were born. Theirs would be a true odd-couple dynamic, a pairing of unlikely allies who through trial and adversity would slowly come to appreciate each other, possibly even like each other (or, would they??). The adventures would practically write themselves. By the time I finished the final part of the original Pulp Kings serial in 2020, I felt like I could write them in any situation. When I returned to the serial in late 2022 for a heavy expansion and revision, I was delighted at how easy it was to slip back into writing them. Some of my favourite scenes, particularly the impromptu games night on the Havan ark, were added during the overhaul. Writing Stuart and Janna was some of the most fun I’ve ever had at the ol’ keyboard. I grew to love them, and I hope you to do—in spite of their numerous and glaring character flaws. Into the Known Universe: A Cosmic Love Story, Kinda is my debut novel, but like many books, it didn’t start out as one. Its evolution is mildly interesting, so I thought I’d dedicate my first official space post to taking you on a brief journey back through space and time . . . to the year 2018! That October, I sold my first short story, “Space Toast,” to Pulp Kings, an Indie zine based out of Calgary. It was a zany sci-fi adventure involving a luckless deep space freighter pilot, his chipper robot assistant, a crew of ghostly pirates, grotesque alien slugs, a lot of trademarked appliances, and—most importantly—an intergalactic quasi-fascist retail emporium called GaliCor (space turtles also briefly factor, which tells you just how seriously I take my work). They paid me a kingly $300, which I subsequently blew on having my first rejection letter—which I received from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction for the same story back in 2015—professionally framed. It hangs above my desk to this day. After the first wave of Pulp Kings wrapped, Ian (the CEO of Stray Books, Pulp Kings’ publishing company, and a pretty swell guy) offered me a five-part serial that would run through wave two. I knew I wanted to do something more with GaliCor, but I wasn’t entirely sure what GaliCor looked like yet. We toyed with several ideas, including having the main character be a corporate insurance adjuster investigating the suspicious wreck of a freighter in uncharted space, but nothing really popped. Eventually, I hit on something with narrative potential—what if a guy, some low-level cog in the corporate machine, got offered a promotion in exchange for retrieving something from a missing freighter, only for that something to turn out to be his boss’ runaway wife? They’d get swept off into the wider universe on a world-hopping adventure, be forced to rely on one another for survival, learn to work together, etc., etc. It had all the trappings of a traditional love story, and because traditional love stories annoy me, I saw it as a prime opportunity to subvert all the usual conventions and tropes and do something different. Ian thought it was a damn great hook and commissioned me to get cracking. Six months later, I submitted Love and Reclamation, a space adventure in four parts (a fifth would have been purely filler). Alas, it was not to be. Stray Books sadly closed its doors in 2022 due to financial strains from a certain pandemic, and Love and Reclamation’s run ended after only two issues (disheartened as I was, I found it somewhat poetic that my adventure serial ended on a literal cliff-hanger). Left with a half-published manuscript and a dream of seeing it in Chapters, I devoted the next few months to expanding it, editing it, revising it, proofreading it, tinkering with it, fine-tuning it, obsessing over it, and occasionally completely rewriting it. When I signed on with FriesenPress in January 2023, it kick-started another solid year of expanding, editing, revising, proofreading, tinkering, fine-tuning, obsessing, and rewriting. This book represents a nearly four-year-long labour of love, the final version of which is quite different from the one originally written for Pulp Kings. For starters, it’s about fifty thousand words longer. Second, you may have noticed it’s no longer called Love and Reclamation, as my editor thought that title sounded like a self-help book for couples (fair point). Overall, It’s a semi-episodic space adventure, a subversion of romance tropes, a journey of discovery, an occasional horror show, and a love story . . . kinda. I wrote it for you, and I hope you enjoy it. Check back next Monday for a brief insight into my favourite aspect of writing – character creation! Ah, well met! Welcome to my space blog, delivered to you from the cosmic depths. First, I want to thank you for taking an interest in my book! The fact that you’re on this website at all and taking the time to read this space post informs me that you’re a reader, a supporter of self-published authors, and a science fiction enthusiast—all hallmarks of a person of substance. Or you know me and you’re giving me a pity read. Either way, I won’t waste your time with a lengthy introduction. If you want to know more about me and the book, you can check out my bio and the synopsis on their respective pages. They’re back down the hall and to the left. However, if you’re interested in something a little extra, you’re in the right place. On the first of every month, I’ll be sending a newsletter to my loyal subscribers. Subscribers will be first in line for exclusive short stories, behind the scenes content, giveaways (as soon as I figure out how that works, exactly), and more. I’m in the process of writing not one, not two, but three tie-in short stores, which I’ll be distributing for free throughout the year! You can find the sign-up down by the footer of every page (except this one). As an incentive, if you sign up now you’ll get a free sample chapter from Into the Known Universe: A Cosmic Love Story, Kinda—my gift to you. Every Monday (barring sickness, death, amnesia, or alien invasion), I’ll be making a new Space Blog post. You can expect insights into my writing process, news and updates on future projects, information about the book, musings on whatever films and books I happen to find interesting that week, and more. This upcoming Monday I’ll be writing briefly about how Into the Known Universe: A Cosmic Love Story, Kinda came to be. Don’t miss it! …but of course if you do, you can always scroll down. This isn’t live TV or anything. Otherwise, you can check me out on Instagram for more regular posts about books, movies, writing, and promotions. Spread the word. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Subscribe. Read on. And most important of all, enjoy yourselves. This is all very fun for me, and I hope it proves just as fun for you! JRDH |
AuthorJames R.D. Hilton is the author of Into the Known Universe: A Cosmic Love Story, Kinda, as well as other stories in the known universe. Archives
September 2024
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