Pacing can make or break a book and it’s something that many authors struggle with. Hosts/Authors Steve Diamond and Larry Correia return this week to discuss the different approaches to pacing and provide some helpful tips on how to pace yourself.
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This week’s episode is brought to you by Matthew Howe’s Waypoint
You’ve been abducted from your home. You wake in a strange hotel room to make a terrifying discovery—there’s a bomb strapped around your chest. You have 24 hours to travel a thousand miles and find a code that disarms the device
It’s about one question: How much do you want to live?
Also, big shout out to Nancy Frye for the awesome job on the ad- if you’re ever in need of a professional VO actress, I highly suggest you give her a shout! http://nancyfrye.mystrikingly.com/
This was a really fun project, and it came about in a weird way. Basically this novel is everything a 10 year old boy thinks would be awesome in a sci-fi story, crammed into one book.
John and I started writing about the same time, and we had gone on book tour together so we’ve talked a lot about writing. We were asked to teach a class on plotting. Now normally in those sorts of things the authors are given some story elements from the audience, and then they take those and use them to plot a book on the fly, live, to demonstrate the process. Problem is, the audience loves to give authors really goofy shit, which we inevitably make work, but that wastes a lot of time, and we only had two hours.
So John and I got together a few days before, and he suggested rather than use plot suggestions from the audience, we get some in advance from one person, so they’d be coherent. My (at the time) 10 year old son was nearby, so I shouted at him, “Hey Joe, what’s cool stuff to have in a sci-fi story?”
And he immediately came back with “space pirates, giant robots, war, and monsters.” John and I were like, okay, we can work with that! Then while we talked about a plot using those elements, Joe sat there and drew pictures of the giant robots. (One of which John kept, which we stuck in the back of the book as an illustration)
Then we did the class and plotted out a whole story live in front of an an audience of about a hundred people in two hours. At the end the two of us looked at the dry erase board that had a cast and list of scenes from beginning to end, and we both said, yeah, I could actually write this.
Fast forward a few years, and Toni Weisskopf asked me if I had any new collaborations to pitch her. I pitched this one and Servants of War with Steve Diamond (which comes out next month).
Another funny anecdote about this one, anytime I do a collaboration with another writer I like to pick out an actor or someone we know for various characters, that way we are both visualizing the same person as we work. It keeps the collaborators on the same page.
One of those was Captain Nicholas Holloway, who is basically in charge of the smuggling crew, and our main character’s boss and mentor. We decided that we would use Nick Searcy for that role. (all around good dude).
Then when we were trying to name the ship, we wanted to have it be something North Carolina based (that’s where the captain was from) so we asked NC residents on Facebook for name suggestions. We were getting bunches of them, but then Nick himself chimed in, and said he’d name it The Tar Heel… Boom. The Captain has spoken. Tar Heel it is.
Because I like this setting, I’ve actually used it for two other projects as well. Lost Planet Homicide (novella) and A Tank Named Bob (short) are both set in the same universe as Gun Runner. (totally different planets, but all the tech works by the same rules). There is also two Easter eggs in Gun Runner related to another one of my series, but I leave those to astute readers to find, enjoy, and then extrapolate out and go “Oh shit… So that’s how that works.” 🙂
Anyways, Gun Runner is in paperback now. It is also on Audible narrated by Oliver Wyman (who also does Monster Hunter and Lost Planet Homicide). I hope you like it.
I think this is going to become tradition. Every time I get off a 30 day FB ban (my next one will put me at 1 year in the gulag!) I can do one big post about all the news items I would have commented on had I been around. Like this –
This one was more of a 60 day though, since I came back from that one (where I had to work to earn it!) and almost immediately got banned for an innocuous joke (Internet Idiot Arthur Chu was praising communist China, and somebody asked but could I beat him in Jeopardy? and I said no, but I’d like to beat him with a stick, and boom, ban! Honestly, if I’d known that was gonna get me tossed for “bullying” I would’ve been way meaner).
So let’s see what’s in the news, and what I would’ve said about it at the time-
A. Canadian truckers are awesome.
B. It is amazing how shamelessly disgusting the news reporting on that has been (and every step of the way the useful idiots repeat this crap). First the news lied about why they were protesting, saying they were upset about “road conditions”. Then when it grew they flipped and tried to say it was small, and the length of the convoy was exaggerated because it was just a handful of trucks real spread out. The next day, okay, there’s a lot of them, but they’re all fascists. Today they’re an invasion of violent white supremacists (lots of Sikhs in there for some reason) who are causing irreparable trauma to twitter leftists with all their honking.
C. Justin Fidelito Trudeau “got covid’ and had to isolate at a super convenient time. Oh wait, narrative update, he didn’t, he’s had to go into hiding because of the giant mob of racist white supremacist death truckers. HONK. (in ye olde times fleeing like that is how kings got overthrown)
D. The media really hates Joe Rogan, because he’s taking CNN’s lunch money. They despise the guy because he doesn’t tell people what to think, he just brings on people from all sides of the spectrum and asks them questions so they can talk in depth for hours at a time. Which is the total opposite of what media is supposed to do, where they bring on approved “experts” in 10 minute segments to provide official narrative talking points which are easily regurgitated by useful idiots, so that anyone who disagrees can get beaten into submission. That’s real news!
E. What’s stopping Saint Fauci from going on Joe Rogan? It’s not like that malignant little tyrant doesn’t love going on “proper” TV.
F. When a petition of 300 fake ass doctors didn’t work, out comes Neil Young. Neil Young is a dipshit, who thought his foot stomping tantrum demanding government censorship would work. He’s now being joined by a bunch of increasingly less famous musicians like some dumbfuck virtue signaling drum circle. It’s funny how lefties are all “Fight The Man” until they are the man, then they obediently lick the boot.
G. It turns out Neil Young’s music is actually owned by a giant mega corporation, which also owns major news corps, led by a drug company CEO who directly profits off of all this censorious bullshit. So now I’m sure the CorpoUniParty will force the independent guy to cave. Way to fight the power and rage against the machine and all that, you fucking hippies.
H. In some ironic timing, because our news totally isn’t a crafted propaganda tool used to manipulate people, while the left was demanding censorship on Spotify, a small town in Tennessee nobody has ever heard of removed a book from one grade’s required reading list, so we could have hundreds of angry articles and millions of posts about how book banning is bad, and BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME.
I. Moral Equivalence Police aside, as a writer I am super sensitive to book banning (the left has tried with me, but thankfully they are super inept). But as soon as you look at what actually happened there you discover that pretty much everything on the news about it is hyperbolic horseshit. And I think Maus is an important work, and should be used in schools, but since I’m not a leftist I don’t claim to know what’s best for everybody else’s kids.
J. Breyer is retiring. Meh. We’ll trade a reliable leftist for another reliable leftist. The real story here is that this is confirmation the democrats know they are about to get fucking steamrolled at the midterms, because they have totally sucked and even the world’s most advanced propaganda engine can’t hide how shitty democrats are at governing.
K. In a related note, we’re now up to like 30 democrat congressmen retiring rather than running for re-election. Even the news that primarly exists to prop up democrats keeps using the words “red wave”. Reap your whirlwind.
L. Joe Biden talked for 2 hours, and did such an awful job that he made a war more likely, and tanked the stock market. Just stop. Give that creepy old man a pudding cup and stick him in a closet. If he talked for 3 hours the country would disintegrate and he talked for 4 a giant meteor would hit the earth.
M. True story, I checked my RobinHood account after Biden’s speech. And in that moment for over a hundred stocks every single one was in the red except for Lockheed Martin. Oh shit, that’s funny.
M1. Heh, a couple related things. Lots of morons were trying to say that Spotify’s stock had tanked because of them choosing Joe Rogan over Neil Young, except I own Spotify. It tanked like everything else did after Biden’s talk (down 18% for the month) and it’s up 3% this week. Holy shit the left can’t meme.
N. Unlike everybody else on the internet I’m not going to pretend to be some military/political geostrategy expert on the Ukraine. All I know is that I wouldn’t trust the Biden Administration to not fuck up opening a can of cat food, let alone running a war with another nuclear power. This is the same cadre of geniuses who screwed the pooch in leaving Afghanistan.
O. If a CDC truck full of lab monkeys crashes, DO NOT PET THE MONKEYS.
P. Even as countries all over the world finally throw in the towel on pointless, do nothing, Covid theater, my local con (LTUE) decided to double down on vax passes, tests, masks, and social distance. So I told them I was out. I’m tired of humoring hypochondriac shitlibs (Judging by K, I’m not alone).
Q. A poll came out showing that some truly alarming percentages of democrats were totally cool with concentration camps, or taking away the children of non-believers. I say alarming, but considering the democrat party’s history, not surprising. These people also act baffled at the idea of why the rest of us want to own guns to protect us from them.
R. Patton Oswalt was forced to apologize for saying he was friends with Dave Chappelle. Come on. Nobody believes Patton Oswalt has “friends”.
S. Jussie Smollet is found guilty of what is possibly the dumbest fake hate crime ever. I can now go out and edit out the multitude of “allegedly” the lawyers forced me to put into the last Tom Stranger!
T. Since the only border our administration cares about are the ones next to Russia, there is a really interesting video going around of Border Patrol agents arguing with the BP chief. I would encourage everybody to watch it. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing. The cracks are showing.
U. The Olympics are here! I’m sure this will be a fine celebration of mandatory anal swabbing. I look forward to events like the concentration camp fence pole vault, the thousand meter monk toss, and the cross protestor tank slalom. If our social credit scores are high enough we might get a medal!
V. Related, I don’t know anything at all about basketball, but this Enes Kanter Freedom guy seems like a badass.
W. M&Ms are now more diverse and inclusive. FINALLY. This was keeping me up at nights.
X. The FBI wouldn’t come out and admit under oath how many agitators on January 6th actually work for them or are CIs. And how dare you insinuate that feds would ever do crime, you crazy conspiracy theorist! Seriously, I am super offended, and HOW DARE YOU ask about UCs or CIs, even though the FBI just got caught doing that a few months before in Michigan, and that’s pretty much the entire modern history of law enforcement, and they’ve even made movies about all the most interesting cases.
Meanwhile, at every single gun show in America – “Hey buddy, could you help me cut this shotgun barrel down to 17.9 inches?”
Y. Speaking of my gun store owner PTSD, I bought a Springfield Hellion/Croatian VHS-2 rifle, but that’ll get its own review post.
Z. Even though the world seems to be falling apart, I’m actually really optimistic about the future. I think we’ve hit Peak Woke. I believe we are seeing a critical mass of people finally getting fed up with the lies, bullshit and fuckery. For the longest time too many regular folks have kept quiet because of social pressure, but once the dam bursts, and a sufficient mass of people realize they’re not alone, it’s over.
Full disclosure, I’ve not read it yet. I just really like Peter’s writing, and he did this one for Nick Cole and Jason Anspach, who are two other guys I really like. Check the link and see if it looks interesting to you.
Dead Acre is a bad ass supernatural western. It’s like the Witcher goes to Tombstone. When an outlaw gunslinger gets murdered because he tried to do something honorable, God gives him a second chance. Only this second chance involves killing monsters and hell spawn across the wild west. Bruno and Castle nailed the tough guy western vibe with a protagonist who would have fit in a Louis L’amour novel, except for the part where he’s dead and still killing werewolves.
Even better it’s narrated by the actor who played Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption. He kills it with that familiar voice that’s perfect for an undying gunslinger.
I met one of the authors at 20Books in Vegas, and he wanted to hear what I thought about this because I had written MHI and the Bubba Shackleford old west monster hunting stories. I liked Dead Acre enough that since the first full length novel in this same series is coming out in May, called Cold As Hell, I’m going to go ahead and plug it with a preorder link.
