Date Published: 10-08-2022
Publisher: The Chapel Perilous
Bevil Cyrex, adrift in space on a ship determined to kill him, stumbles across an ancient and abandoned space station called The Starlite.
Once on board the station he sets about repairing it, with the goal of opening up for business.
Along the way he befriends a possibly sociopathic, all powerful nanite swarm, who has decided to take on the appearance and mannerisms of his grandmother.
He must also contend with being hunted by an ex-mob enforcer looking for revenge, a handful of pirates and various threats of invasion, marriage and death.
All in all, Bevil would have to admit, things were really looking up.
So…you wanna be a writer huh?
There are three things in this world that just aren’t for the faint of heart and they are:
Getting older. It’s a contact sport and you need to be prepared.
Eating Lutefisk. Don’t. Just don’t. Don’t google it either. In fact let’s pretend I never even brought it up and move on.
Writing.
Now, I can’t help you with the getting older part and if you’re still inclined to eat lutefisk…I hope they put you on some sort of watchlist.
But writing? Yeah I can help you with that..
First let me ask, why in the world would you want to write? Money? Glory? Starting a cult and being worshipped as some sort of god or goddess?
All of these are completely reasonable motives.
But if you’re like me you write because you want to tell stories. You in fact need to tell stories. It is something deep within you. Also, you probably can’t hold down a day job and wouldn’t be welcomed into polite society anyway. So writing it is.
If you’re going to join the rest of us in this unholy pursuit, here are five things you should know about being a writer.
Discipline. You’re going to need discipline. That’s easier said than done. We all have lives, and things can easily pile up and get in the way of writing, but you really need to do something in regard to writing every day. Most writers (myself included) still have day jobs. Not to mention personal responsibilities. I work as a consultant and script doctor in the entertainment industry and that can really take up a lot of time. Not to mention my other responsibilities on the day to day. However, I always make sure to do something, even if it’s a little thing, toward the book or story I’m working on. Honestly sometimes it’s just making a little note about what I need to accomplish story wise, but usually I sit down and write a few pages at least. If I know I have limited time I’ll set the alarm on my phone and write for anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour. Or if I know I just don’t have the time, I’ll jot things down in my notepad that have to do with the story. There are those glorious days and weeks where my schedule allows me to write for eight or more hours a day, but sometimes it’s just not possible. Even if it’s just a line of dialogue for a character, write it down.
In relation to Discipline, you cannot wait until you feel inspired. Some days you’ll just be staring at your monitor, that abyssal, blank, white sheet of virtual paper staring back at you, mocking you, it wants you to give up, it wants you to walk away. Well don’t. Just start typing. Some days you’ll feel like everything flows, other days you’re going to feel like you’re pulling teeth but if you push through, and start to write I think you’ll find that inspiration will come. Sometimes it’s only a page or two of inspiration, but sometimes just girding your loins and writing, even when you’re not in the mood, is enough to jumpstart your creative engine and you’ll be zipping along before you know it. I’ve had amazingly productive writing days that started out with me typing four words in an hour. But as I kept pressing, the chapters would start to really flow.
Building off of one and two…your first draft is gonna suck. Really, it’s gonna be bad. Don’t get me wrong, there’s going to be some good stuff in there, but it’s going to be coal before pressure. I know a lot of new writers will constantly strive for perfection before moving on. Or go back and try to hone the previous day’s work and make it better. Don’t. Get it all out. Get that first draft done and worry about cutting and honing later. And don’t edit yourself while you’re writing your first draft. Let it ramble, let it take you in directions you didn’t plan, just ride that first draft wave until you’re done. You’ll find it’s far easier to whittle away the extraneous than it is to slap extra stuff on and around your story. To give an example. The first draft of my debut novel The Geek was six hundred plus pages that I whittled down to I think three hundred and sixty some odd. My latest novel Starlite was about four seventy something before I shaved it down to three sixty.
And don’t throw away your fat. There may be some good stuff in there that can
be used for another novel, just put it in a file and keep it handy.
Meal prep, hydrate and exercise. That may sound obvious or silly, but it’s really important. When you write you may experience what I experience and that is just hours falling away, the world disappears and it’s just your fingers clacking on the keyboard hour after hour when you’re really in it. Sometimes the only reason you stop writing is when your stomach begins to cramp because you haven’t eaten in ten hours. I’ll go to the market on a Sunday and then come home and prep. I’ll chop up my veg and put them in containers, maybe I’ll slice up raw chicken or other protein and have it all ready to cook so I’m eating a healthy, easy to cook, dinner at the end of the day. I usually live off of salads and fruit during the day to keep myself feeling energized, but a nice cooked meal after a long, exhaustive day of writing is incredibly therapeutic. I tend to keep a gallon of water handy and just drink constantly as well. Staying hydrated keeps you feeling focused. Monday through Friday I get up around five in the morning and I’ll do cardio and some sort of workout, be it a 6am Jiu Jitsu class or 24 hour fitness. Being physically active also helps keep you mentally alert. You don’t have to be a fanatic about it, maybe it’s just doing some jump rope in the morning, maybe you have a routine like I do. But, good food, hydration and physical exercise go a long way toward making you creatively productive.
Take time for yourself. After one through four this may shock you, but it’s important. Writing is a seven day a week job. If you’re not writing you’re working on marketing, or fleshing out your next idea, or one of a million other things to move your writing career forward. But, burnout is real and that doesn’t help anyone. Going off of my routine, I can give an example. As I mentioned, Monday through Friday I start my day at five in the morning and I usually go until about six thirty or seven. Saturday and Sunday are different. I’ll sleep in, I’ll have some coffee and maybe go to a movie or out with friends. Sometimes I’ll just shut out the world and binge a series and eat pizza. Sometimes a massage or hit the sauna. Just something I do for me to recharge. On the weekends I’ll maybe work two hours or so on the business side of writing but if it can wait until Monday morning I let it wait. I will say though, if you feel those creative juices flowing then definitely sit down and write. There really are very few things that feel as good as writing when it all comes together. However, if Friday night rolls around and you’re absolutely exhausted from a week of writing, do not force yourself, take the time and enjoy yourself a little. The work will always be there.
Honestly I could probably keep going with this list for a very long time, but for me those five points are a good place to start.
I want to thank Buffy for letting me stop by and rant, it’s greatly appreciated. If she’s open to it and you all are curious I’d love to come back for another article. I’m pretty big on the whole self publishing versus traditional publishing and why I truly believe that most of us are better off not going the traditional publishing route, from both a creative and financial reward perspective. So if there’s interest in that let me know and I’ll blather on and on for a while about that one.
In the meantime, I do hope you have found this helpful, and that if you want to write, then maybe this will help you start. There’s always room at the writer’s table for more folks.
Excerpt
Chapter 13
Bevil woke up screaming. Then he realized he wasn’t in pain and so stopped screaming. He was back in the manager’s quarters, his quarters, on his bed, in the dark. Again he felt like someone was watching him and turned on the lights. No one was there.
“Holy Celestial Mother was that whole thing a dream?!” Bevil whispered to himself while feeling around his arms and body for scars. Don’t start talking to yourself, that’s definitely a sign of madness.
Bevil got up, put his clothes on and this time strapped his gun to his side. He looked at the clock on the nightstand and blinked. Then he sat down on the bed. It read Oh Six Hundred Hours and the local date was April ninth. Even though Terran English was a dead language which had not been spoken in centuries, everyone on the Cyrex learned it. It was part of their cultural heritage. So while Bevil could read everything on the station, he had no real idea what “April ninth” meant, since no one had used the old Sol calendar system for centuries either. But, the string of letters next to the time was the same as it had been yesterday. Meaning it was a dream. A very weird, very long, very scary dream. Maybe I am going a bit off?
Bevil exited the sleeping quarters and entered the oper-
ations center. He walked straight to the main console and
called up the nanite system. It was indeed off. The only way to know if the nanites were in their container was to turn it on. Bevil’s finger hovered over the button but he didn’t push it. He was angry at himself for being so freaked out, but he couldn’t get the image of the giant swarm out of his head. He cursed himself for acting so childish and decided he would turn it on when everything else was up and running. He just needed to shower and eat some real food, which he should be able to do in his ship now that it would have more than enough power.
No, it won’t. Yesterday didn’t happen, it was a dream.
Remember? Bevil sighed in both relief and frustration.
He was halfway to the door when he stopped in his tracks and quickly dug into the breast pocket of his jump suit, retrieving a veggie cake wrapper that he was sure he had eaten yesterday. He stared at it, now totally confused. Okay, take a deep breath, Bevil. This is obviously from one you ate during the Tantalus and you incorporated it into your dream. Bevil tossed the wrapper into a bin and headed to his ship.
Bevil spent the walk trying to push the memory of being sliced into by a maniac swarm of nanites out of his mind. By the time he got to the airlock he convinced himself thoroughly that everything was fine. Except the airlock door was closed and he was positive he’d left it open.
He ran to it and peered through the small window in
its center. He was staring into space. His ship was gone.
Bevil dashed back to the operations center and called up the station logs. He read the activity log with some confusion. It showed that a ship had been taken from the airlock, and a ship was now sitting in the maintenance bay closest to that airlock. If it wasn’t his ship, it was at least a ship.
Bevil checked the security system, but it was offline. All he knew was there was a ship in bay one and it most likely was his. The battery wouldn’t be nearly charged enough for flight, so perhaps the thieves were charging it with one of
the larger units too heavy to move by hand.
In the end, the details didn’t matter. They’re not taking my ship! And they’re not taking my Starlite! Bevil pulled his pistol, and went to confront these thieves.
He took the stairs instead of the elevator. The stairs would let him out down the corridor from the bay as opposed to the center of the deck. He slowly opened the door, checked to make sure no one was observing and as quietly as he could he walked forward.
He could see the door to the bay was open. He slowly crept up and peeked in. There, in the middle of it was his ship. A large piece of hull had been removed, exposing the wires and workings of the navigational system. In front of this exposed part of the ship was a rather large woman, holding a wrench and whistling. Her long gray hair was braided and when she came to a particular part of the mysterious song that she seemed to like she would shake her hips a little while she worked.
Bevil leveled his gun at her.
“Oh, put that thing away, Bevil dear,” came the all too familiar voice from the mystery woman. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. Besides, I literally have eyes in the back of my head.” The old woman continued to work, and suddenly two very large, but very human eyes blinked instantly through the braids at him. It made Bevil both nauseous and terrified.
He stood frozen, his gun slowly lowering to his side.
“Thank you dear.” The eyes disappeared, the woman turned around and Bevil came face to face with his grandmother.
“What the Fu-”
“Bevil Cyrex! Language!” said his grandmother. “Sorry,” said Bevil out of instinct, before recovering and
raising his pistol again. “Who are you? What are you? And why do you look like my Nan?”
“Put that away, young man, if you shoot me I’ll just get angry.” His fake grandmother put the wrench down and sat on a nearby stool. “As for me, you know exactly what I am.”
“The nanite swarm?” Bevil asked. He heard himself say the words, but he still felt like an idiot for even asking the question. This was simply impossible.
“That’s right! Yes!” replied the nanite swarm excitedly. It changed tone and continued, sounding more caring, “I am sorry about causing you pain. I’ve been alone for a very long time and I didn’t know who you were.” The nanite swarm stood up and took a step toward Bevil. “For the last time, put that silly thing away. You’re perfectly safe.”
Bevil knew the swarm was telling the truth, a gun would not hurt it and if it wanted him dead, he would be dead. He holstered his weapon. Bevil couldn’t get past the fact that this thing looked like his Nan. And sounded almost exactly like her, except for a slight metallic echo in her voice.
“Now, I have cleared the system of the last remains of the Tantalus and have finished recharging your batteries. Why don’t we go have some breakfast and we can talk. I’ve never had any of the food on this station, and I’d like to try tacos. Have you ever had tacos?”
Bevil, dumbfounded, shook his head no. “Good, we can try them together.”
“Just hold on! Why do you look like my Nan?!”
“Because I thought it would make you feel comfortable. I can be anything you’d like dear.” Bevil watched his fake Nan turn into a beautiful young woman, followed by a handsome older man and then she transformed into a large, scary man in Simrun gear that Bevil instantly recognized as Max. The man he’d killed. Max quickly transformed back into his Nan.
“So that wasn’t a dream? There are dead men a few bays down?” asked Bevil.
“Yes dear,” replied imposter Nan. “They were not nice people. And again I am sorry about last week, I didn’t know who you were and I couldn’t take any chances.” Bevil’s fake Nan walked past him quickly. “Now, let’s go have tacos, I turned everything on in the promenade while we’ve been talking.”
“How? You’re here.”
“Bevil dear, I’m everywhere.” said the swarm.
“What do I call you?” asked Bevil catching up to the
nanites.
“I like Nan. It works on a couple of levels. So call me Nan.” she said, stepping into the elevator.
Bevil followed her into the elevator, a second later remembering something she’d said. “Wait. What the hell do you mean by last week?!”
“Language!” “Sorry.”
About the Author
I truly enjoy writing and it really never feels like work. Okay, mostly never feels like work.
Folks who have read my books have said they are definitely filled with words. These words are used in a very clever way to form sentences, which then form paragraphs until a page is just jammed packed with them. I do this repeatedly throughout my novels.
I am a lifelong lover of comic books, video games, science fiction and fantasy. My favorite authors include Robert Heinlein, William Gibson and Mark Twain.
Once the technology is perfected, I hope to own a robotic chimpanzee that will accompany me on many adventures. We will travel the globe solving crime, eating pie and saving the day.
I think it’s safe to assume that we’re gonna look pretty cool doing that.
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