I just passed the 20,000-word mark on Unforgettable. A bit over 17,000 of those words were written in the past 18 days, which is a little slower than the pace I’d like to maintain. But considering that word total almost certainly exceeds my word total for the previous four or five months put together, I’m counting this as my warming up period.
If you’ve been to my website today, you may have noticed a new "Novel Progress" word count meter. It currently reads 11,267/100,000. That number is significant, because it means this novel, Unforgettable, is now the second-longest work of fiction I’ve written, after Heir of the Line. (It will never become the longest, because there is no way it will reach 150,000 words.)
I actually started this novel accidentally on January 1, just doing some free writing. Until last week, though, I had only written less than 3000 words. Over the last week, I’ve averaged better than 1000 words a day. My goal is to finish the first draft by August 7.
Here’s the first line of the novel:
I straightened the tie I’d stolen from Macy’s that morning and stepped into the interviewer’s office.
Over the past few years, I’ve used Google and Wikipedia for a lot of research for my stories. Over the past couple of days, while doing research for my latest novel, I’ve come to appreciate YouTube as a research tool.
For example, here’s how to use a bobby pin to get out of handcuffs:
And here’s how to disarm someone who has a gun:
Apparently, old gas pumps with mechanical meters can’t display prices above $3.99 per gallon. One of the solutions being used is "half-pricing"–displaying the price per half-gallon, but that’s a bit confusing to consumers. Meanwhile, there are delays in getting the mechanical upgrade that will allow displaying $4+ prices, and some stations can’t afford the hundreds of dollars per pump it costs to upgrade.
Here’s a simple solution, which would require nothing more than some white-out and a permanent marker (or possibly some paint, depending on the colors used by the gas pump):
Voilà! You now have a pump capable of displaying prices up to $39.90 per gallon. If your total price meter only went to $99.99, it now goes up to $999.90.
The only downside is you’re now rounding to the nearest dime instead of the nearest penny on price (or nearest penny instead of 1/10 of a cent, if your pricing went that far.) But most of that difference probably cancels itself out on average.
It’s a little-known fact that I can sing in Russian. I rarely do it–I believe the last time I did so in front of other people was at the Writers of the Future banquet last year, where I sang a verse or two of "Katyusha" for the benefit of the Ukrainian and Russian artists at my table.
I can only speak and understand a few phrases in Russian, so I generally don’t understand what I’m singing. You see, I took Russian 101-102 at BYU, but when I hit Russian 201 I decided the workload was too much. But I sang in BYU’s Russian choir for two years, and it’s easier to remember things you sing, even years later.
Anyway, the real point of this post is that I got an email on Monday from the editor of ESLI, a Russian science fiction magazine, asking to buy the rights to translate and publish my story "The Ashes of His Fathers." That’s the first time someone has contacted me out of the blue wanting to reprint one of my stories. It’s enough to make me want to burst into song in Russian.
In honor of that, here’s me and the rest of the BYU Russian Choir circa 1990 singing "Katyusha":
No, it wasn’t to the Mutara Nebula.
A few weeks ago, I got an email from Trevor Quachri, managing editor of Analog, asking if I would be interested in attending the Nebula Awards Weekend as a guest of Analog. (The Nebulas are like the Oscars for science fiction writing.) I jumped at the chance.
