With the release of Tethered Worlds book two, Blue Star Setting, we have commissioned new covers for a new look to the series. We went classic for the introductory phase. Now that two books are out and the series is advancing in earnest, we decided on a more “techy” look. First, the redesigned Unwelcome Star cover:
Here is my rough layout for the new cover using the original classic font.
You can see all the similar elements from the first edition cover, just rearranged. Again I called upon the fine artistic services of Lorenz Hideyoshi Ruwwe, who has painted all the Tethered Worlds covers up to now. I originally planned to have the spaceship coming through the hexagon on the first edition version, but could not get it to work well enough. This time we pulled it off.
Notice our new, fine-looking “techy” font. We retained the signature hexagonal egress replacing the “O” in “Worlds.”
For the Blue Star Setting cover, I wanted to convey an epic space battle, and of course the blue star. Two massive fleets exchanging fire in a largely blue system, and with the hexagonal egress still nearby.
I thought the egress placement was best highlighted on the sun’s edge. The white star is the second in this binary system. For the final, you will see it on the back cover.
We moved some of the elements around for the final, including the title and author text. Flexibility is a must when everything is jockeying for position on a book cover. Lorenz did a fine job making the egress angle dramatic.
One ship needed to be more massive than all the rest. (Those who have read the book know to whom it belongs.)
We want the Tethered Worlds experience to be a quality one both inside and on the cover. Now that you have enjoyed the covers and the story behind them, consider reading the series and find out what this hexagonal thing in space is all about.
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Gregory Faccone is author of the Tethered Worlds series, available at Amazon. He wants you to go on an adventure into space with his series. And honestly, it is a lot cheaper than trying to get to the international space station.
I recently read an interesting post by Joe Wikert where he talked about book length and sales in a digital world. As an author, it got me thinking about the nature of novel writing and how we deliver content to our readers.
One of Joe’s points was that every written work does not need to be a couple hundred pages long. On the surface, and perhaps in general, this makes sense. The physical bookshelf, while quaint, is becoming less of a commercial factor every day as more and more content is purchased online and/or consumed digitally. But “books” means a lot of things. Certainly, nonfiction books of every sort should not be a page longer than they need to be. Bloating a book so it takes up more shelf space has to be a thing of the past. And, in my opinion, the price should be adjusted accordingly.
Novels, on the other hand, need to be a certain length to be considered novels. While there may be no official word count for full-length, it is hard to consider anything below 50,000 words more than a novella. I would not want to see consumers charged full novel price for a novella. Disappointment in such a purchase can undermine the whole business model. However, with so many self published books out there of various lengths, some offered for $.99 or even free, it is not possible to strictly associate price and length.
People have no length expectations for a self-help guide beyond a length long enough to give them the help they desire. However novels are an experience. While movies have averaged shorter over the decades, they are still a certain length to satisfy the purchase price. There would be no commercial success for a theater release movie of thirty minutes, likely even if price reduced. A patron making an effort to go to a theater and buy a ticket wants to enjoy the fullness of their fantasy respite. As entertaining as thirty minutes can be made to be, it probably wouldn’t justify an evening out at the movies. (That’s what TV is for.)
Joe and I agree that selling books by the chapter is a dubious option. It may work for songs, which historically have been written and enjoyed individually. Albums are a relatively recent invention after all (outside of opera), and the success of iTunes shows that their basis was not necessary.
The fundamentals of storytelling; exposition, climax and denouement have centuries of tradition.
But Joe had high hopes for tailoring works to shorter length. An okay concept for information, but storytelling follows a less flexible path. If a person is into short stories, and that number may be increasing, short is fine. But the experience of getting to know a novel’s universe, and following along on an adventure of some length is as old as Shakespeare, and may be as old as some of the earliest hero’s journey epics. Every reader has an invisible ratio graph in their head of time invested versus literary payback. It has been culturally set by hundreds of years of tradition, and it’s not going to be upended because E-readers have become popular in the last five.
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Tethered Worlds: Unwelcome Star is a full length adventure, one that will give you hours of fantastical enjoyment and respite beyond the distant colony world of Adams Rush. Go with Jordahk and experiences his challenges, victories, and penchant for getting into jams that may just save his planet.
If you can spell, put two sentences together, and have enough patience, you too could write a book! But the real question is, “Is it anything anybody would want to read?” The road to that crucial answer may lead to the brave, the trusted, the select few you will choose to be test readers. Pick well, and with care, for the fate of your work may depend not on the feedback they give you, but on your interpretation of it.
This guy loves space. Now find two more test readers who don’t.
First, branch out and pick a reasonably diverse group. Diversity of opinion may not be found with three hard-core fans of the genre. Know their personalities, so that you can better expect and receive their feedback. Is one of them a nitpicker? Then don’t be surprised that they wanted a little more description of the space taxi on page 247. Is one of them very analytical? Be grateful that they brought to your attention that your space six-shooter shot seven times. Is one of them not even a fan of the genre? (Try to find one of those. They are a great asset.) Their feedback, properly enacted, may bust your book from niche to mainstream.
Say what? Yes, this paragraph is about pronunciations. Do your characters or places have any unique names? Perhaps you crafted unique spellings for conventional names. I have a whole section dedicated to this topic in my test reader feedback notes files. (You did write down and organize their feedback didn’t you?) You might be amazed how many different ways people who speak the same language pronounce a spelling you thought clear. I suggest engaging your test readers one at a time so that you can incorporate a new spelling if necessary and run it past them in succession. Some names I used took multiple passes to get just right.
The 11th thing. If you had 10 test readers, they would all give you different feedback. But your job is to figure out what they’re all trying to tell you in their own way. One may want to know the background of a certain character, another may want more information about that same character’s associations. Sure, address those details, but what are they both really trying to say? Is more clarity needed on that character’s whole side plot? What about that passage you were never able to get just right? Is the answer to fixing it eluding you? Surreptitiously solicit advice about it. Don’t let the cat out of the bag that you think it needs help. You want fresh, unbiased insights. Put together the puzzle pieces offered to you. Your test readers may have the missing key, with no idea of its value to your work.
“Houston, I’ve found a key.”
Finally, remember, putting your work out there for others to to critique can be hard. Take heart, there is the positive side. Chances are there was a scene you were a little unsure about. “Will my readers get it?” Perhaps there was a scene you never thought exceptional. Your test readers may surprise you with their praise. They may even put the pieces together in ways you never expected. That scene you labored upon, that you rewrote multiple times in a vacuum, may get unexpected, but thoroughly delightful validation. I know that was the case for me, and I hope it is for you too.
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Tethered Worlds: Unwelcome Star is a fun adventure, and one upon which you do not have to provide me with any feedback (but if you want to it would be nice). Go on your own test journey with these characters and experience with them challenges, victories, and an occasional dose of wisecracking humor. Read it for yourself and see which characters resonate with you.
William Shakespeare is firmly ensconced in literary history, but his style of writing, while eloquent, is no longer common parlance. This is nothing against the master. But I think if Shakespeare returned to write tomorrow, he would have to adopt modern styles to be mass-market popular. In the same way we need to scrutinize our own writing.
It is very easy to get caught up in grandiloquent, overly ornamental descriptions. Ones which rely on the thesaurus (see previous sentence). Just because someone is bleeding, does not give us license to portray “the crimson flow…” While description is necessary, overly florid prose can call attention to itself and pluck a reader right out of the narrative. Just because you can write something classically pretty, does not mean you should. It can be hard at times to delete grand turns of phrase, but think of your novel’s greater good (and write poetry in your spare time).
What about use of punctuation? No, I’m not talking about how to use it (there are some online who feel quite strongly about that). Rather I am talking about the amount of punctuation. My research showed that punctuation is often overused by less polished writers. I edited on the fly Tethered Worlds to minimize extraneous ellipses, exclamation points, commas, hyphens, and dashes. The result was delicious soup– that needed a trifle more spice. I had over-done it. I spent another editing pass putting justified commas back in. It was amazing how the structure of many sentences became more clear just by knowing where to pause.
Ellipses, dashes, all the rest. There is a place for them. Though unseasoned authors can err with too much, freedom acted upon to use too little punctuation is also a mistake. It is said that popular authors can write any way they want. Certainly they have more leeway, but they also set the reading-culture tone with their lack of, or common use… of… ellipses. I put some of those back in as well, just because nothing else worked the same way.
The bottom line is that you must police yourself as an author. Take a good look at your prose, and if sonnets come to mind, consider taking it back a casual notch. Try to be objective when reading your paragraphs. If sentences mush together so that your mind cannot even take a breath, consider some punctuation. After all, as strong as bricks are, they find their strength and shared shape through the little bits of connecting concrete. Follow enough convention for clarity, and do not be afraid to find your own style with prose and punctuation.
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Tethered Worlds: Unwelcome Star depicts a universe where real people, contending with their own flaws, do not speak in sonnets. I assure you that you have much more in common with them than that. Read it for yourself and see which characters resonate with you.
Stop Trying to Predict Tomorrow and Write Your Novel.
You’re sitting at your keyboard, staring at a blank document file. Time ticks by, and the keys remain unpressed. Writer’s block? No. Rather you are too focused on precisely determining the events of tomorrow, and every day something else happens that changes that outlook. The future cannot be pinned down, it is a free-wheeling mistress that cannot be tamed. Tomorrow, something completely unexpected may be invented that changes everything.
Undoubtedly you have seen “futuristic” movies from the past. Their retro-futures can be outrageously off. I am fond of an episode of The Flash TV series from the 1990s called, “Ghost in the Machine.” In it, a TV and technology obsessed 1955 villain freezes himself into the year 1990. Needless to say, when he saw TV progressed little farther than arcade machines, and everything else less advanced than expected, he was disappointed.
“I expected more… The monorails, undersea cities, the moon colony. Where’s my future!”
But I take heart in stepping back and realizing that my job is not to unerringly predict the future, but rather to write an interesting and fun novel that takes place in it. If you are a writer, do not be paralyzed, you must step out. A good story can transcend setting, and memorable characters will stand the test of time. Do your research and take your best shot at a period. Form it in a way that enhances YOUR characters and plot.
I have heard it said that fiction written about the past or the future is still about “today.” The human condition; pride and love, freedom and oppression, good and evil are timeless. Those real situations will communicate in any era to any era. Yoda was right. None of us knows what tomorrow holds. Fortunately, we do not have to.
Tethered Worlds: Unwelcome Star is a novel set in the future, but populated by real people who struggle with flaws, yet strive for nobility. In it, I hope you will find characters that resonate with your life.
Gregory Faccone 