Up There, Somewhere

Posted on by Bill Jones, Jr. Posted in science fiction, writingTagged , ,

So, I’m reworking my science fiction novel, which I will try to get published (one day) via the traditional publishing model (assuming I can find one open to some LGBT lead characters). I’ve started at the beginning, and am re-imagining my book as the movie it needs to be. As such, the opening needs to be my lead characters sailing through the predawn darkness of the desert on their bikes, not her response to it.

I’ve said it, but now I’ll be showing it. More importantly, I’ve learned–from my other, better books–I must make you feel it. She’s headed “up there, somewhere,” and that’s the adventure in the book. Like so much in life, one launches oneself clothed in little more than hope–a wish, two parts luck and fifty parts work–and try to make life do what it do. She’s like that, opening her story wistfully and misty eyed because it’s dark, no one’s awake but her, and there’s no one to see. She’s strong, and true strength isn’t granite. It bends, it bows, but it never breaks.

My girl is there, with her daughters, and life is about to get real. All she can count on is her training, and her hope that “she and this bloke, god, can be mates.”

This way go I, with her, and for real this time. One thousand, nine hundred, and fifty-nine words. That’s the opening sequence. If I haven’t made you love her a little by then, if you don’t want to sit in her jump seat and take the ride with her 1959 words in I’ve lost you. If this isn’t the best thing I’ve done, the best thing I’ll ever do, then I’ll have done the world a disservice. It’s time to turn the world on its ear, Roxx and me.

Wish us luck.

4 thoughts on “Up There, Somewhere”

  1. Arkenaten says:

    An agent ( of non fiction) in London I once accidentally submitted to and subscribed to his company newsletter wrote that every author he knew got better the more books they wrote.
    I might agree with this in the main, especially with the authors in the genre I read, yet even here some people consider the earlier work of authors like Pratchett etc are better the the later stuff.
    I have often torn my hair out over stuff I’ve written then shelved only to have someone say they enjoyed a first draft better than the rewrite!
    Can’t please ’em all!
    But I reckon the first person you have to please is yourself. When you can put your head down at night and there is a smile on your face and no frakking nagging doubts about what you’ve written then you know, in your heart the book is done!
    I think if I had to endure like Joyce I’d go irreversibly insane, as opposed to being plain bonkers, as I so often feel I am.

    I have no courage left to submit via agents any more and stuck out her in South Africa where genuine literary agents are as rare as the West African Rhino I will, stick with the indie publisher I have for now and maybe look at self pub for some stuff.

    I hope it comes right for you, Bill.

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