Orbital Plaything

The allure of space is strong with me.  When I was thinking about stories, I was playing out a scene within my alternate space history story, where a woman, whose father was involved with Soviet Space program from the mid-50′s until the early 1980′s, is recollecting watching Valentina Tereshkova and Irina Soloviyova prepare to lift-off on Vostok 6.

That time Tereshkova flew and became Seagull, but her recollections covered two more important memories.  The first was standing at a launch pad two years later and saying goodbye to Tereshkova and Soloviyova as they prepared to lift-off on Voskhod-5, and how she felt a year later after Yuri Gagarin did everything he could to keep his best friend Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov from flying Soyuz 1, where upon he suffered the same fate his friend suffered in this reality.

Where is this taking me?  Yesterday I became interested in a program I downloaded last year, a simulation program named Orbiter.  The person who created set it up so that it would be as realistic a space flight simulator as possible, and given the number of times I’ve already crashed, I’d say, yes, it very much is.

While most of the simulation is taken up by the space shuttle Atlantis, and the ISS, there are a few fictional craft that will let you experience things that you might not ever do in real life.  One craft, the Dragonfly, allows you to take off from the ground, fly into orbit, and even fly off to and land upon the Moon if you so desire.  There is another craft called the Saturn-A that is used on the Moon and Mars, but last night I managed to lift-off from Earth and fly into orbit–for a little bit, that is.  I did something bad, and I ended up putting the ship into an uncontrollable flat spin (or, in the vernacular, I entered an excessive yaw-right maneuver, and exhausted my RCS fuel trying to correct) and reentered the atmosphere somewhere beyond Africa.  One moment you’re trying to fix your situation, and the next thing you know there’s all this glowing red mist just outside your window . . .

Trying to figure out what you’re doing is half the battle.  I’ve gotten good enough that I can figure out how to get into orbit without burning too much fuel (I’ve still gotta learn those angle of attacks so I don’t rocket straight up and out), but I’m still learning the fine points of trying to go from the Earth to the Moon.  Tried that today, and ended up getting to the moon’s orbit–only the moon wouldn’t show up at that point for a couple of weeks.  Oops.  It’s that sort of “accident” that leaves you gasping for air, wondering what the hell happened.

The best part of this:  addons.  There is a very large community out there that’s constructed all sorts of simulations, from historic flights to flights that are happening today.  But if you prefer, there are modules that’ll let you fly craft that exist only in your imagination . . .

I’ve already got my eye on a few adons, but first I’m going to figure out how to fly better than I am, ’cause these ships cost a lot of money, and I don’t want to spend my time crashing them, or ending up lost in space for eternity–

Hey:  Lost in Space.  Sounds like a good title.  I wonder if I can do something with that?

Call From the Far Stars

No writing last night.  I actually ended up playing with a program that lets you build three dimensional models, since I’m thinking of trying to use stuff like this to do story illustrations.  I’m not an artist, but I could use this to model things that I’ve always wanted to model–like ships that will spend most of their time in space.

That was something I wanted to do a couple of years ago, when I was starting up a role playing game called Diaspora that tried to put a little science back into science fiction.  The game didn’t last very long–a couple of sessions, max–and the setup took longer than the number of sessions played.  There were solar systems, ships, characters . . . all of that lost to time now.  Well, not completely lost, but for the most part it’s all vanished.

The one thing I wanted to do very badly was create a model of the ship that the characters were using.  I didn’t know my modeling tools then–and I still don’t–but I was able to create a diagram of the ship, which is somewhere on my computer, I just have to find it.  Still not the same as seeing a model in three dimensions, but it was okay.

I get drawn to space all the time.  I like games that take place there, and a few of my stories end up going in that direction.  Well, not always space, but other planets and other places.  That’s where my science fiction takes me.  Even when I’m still on Earth, it’s not always the Earth we know.  I mean, you have an imagination, so why stay here when you can hop into the next dimension and have fun there?

When I wasn’t playing with software yesterday, I was thinking of a story.  Yeah, I know:  surprise!  The story is one that’s been bouncing about in my head for a while, one that takes play inside my Transporting universe, and it’s a chance to show people a little about how the government of the future use Cytheria’s and Audrey’s abilities–hey, they still have to work some times–and what they can do when they’re turned loose to go all psycho psychic on people who are trying to kill them.  It can get ugly fast.

But there’s one scene I kept paying in my head . . . they have to meet a ship which is on its way to where they are suppose to go as well, and they have to take a really small, and really fast, message sloop to catch up with the big ship.  When they finally rendezvous with their ride, they’re about 175 light years from home, and maybe 10 light years from the nearest star system.  They’re standing in the open hatch of their sloop, nothing between them and the vacuum save for their skin suits, and they are able to have a few minutes alone in the Deep Black, not losing their minds as people in another universe might, but marveling at the sight of the naked universe.

This is what I try to convey with my writing:  a sense of wonder, and how it’s viewed by my characters.  They don’t realize that their world is marvelous, because to them, it’s what they’ve always known.  But we don’t know that, and seeing the world through their eyes is, in itself, a thing of wonder to behold.

Is this where I’m going?

Maybe it is, because I need to stand and spend some time with the stars as well.

All the Tools of the Trade

Here it is, Thursday, and by this time next week people around the world will be writing their little fingers off–though I’m certain a few will be screaming at their computers, or on Facebook, yelling, “Why am I doing this?  Why?  WHY??”  Don’t worry if you fall into that later group; it’s really easy to play Throw Writer From the Train.  Let me look for some tall grass to cushion your fall . . .

Last night I was updating my NaNo Novel information on the NaNoWriMo site, and saw the information about uploading a cover for you novel.  I’ve done a cover before, and I thought, “Hey, why not do another cover?”  I mean, it’s not one I’d use if I sell the novel, or even if I self publish, it’s only going to be there for the duration of NaNo.  So I was on the Creative Commons Flickr, looking for something I could use.  I may look through for a few more things, but there are thousands of pictures out there, and that becomes something of a huge endeavor when you’re searching for the right image.

It’s the era of digital publishing, of self-publishing.  It’s not just enough to know how to write these days:  you are require to be able to edit and come up with ideas for promotion, and even do a cover or two when the need arises.  It’s not easy; even though I know a little about photo manipulation, creating a cover that makes your happy is hard as hell.

But it’s something that you have to know these days.  You have to.

I do my own editing.  I’ve had people ask me why, and it’s an easy answer:  I can’t afford to pay someone to edit my manuscripts.  I write novels, and we’re talking about two hundred, three hundred–or, for one of my series, around nine hundred pages.  Even at the cheep price of $2/page, you can see how I’m going to find myself deep in the checkbook if I pay to have someone go over my work.  It’s not that I wouldn’t like that, but . . . I’m just a poor, starving artist, and until I’m rolling about cash, I’ll have to be self sufficient.

Same with book covers.  It’s time consuming to find a picture you can use, and using software to create or manipulate an image, to get it formatted correctly . . . and then remember that the size of a cover for use on Smashwords is different that the size you’ll use for Amazon Kindle, and can become a bit of a headache.

Gone are the days when all a writer need worry about were their trusty typewriter, ribbons  pens or pencils  paper, and a fifth of Bushmills.  You gotta know how to use software, how to format an ebook, how to use social media for more than poking people, how to make covers, how to edit the hell out of your work . . . you gotta do it all.

You gotta be all the people in the band.  This is your Who Came First, and if you can’t step up and do the work, someone’s gonna beat you to the sales counter.  ”I can’t do that” isn’t a valid argument these days, not when there’s so much open source software out there, and online tutorials showing you how to do things like re-size an image.

Yeah, it’s a tough old world, but writers are a tenacious bunch, and if anyone is going to figure out the whole mess, it’s us. Or you could sit around and make bunny dresses, then tell the world how things are so hard.  It’s your choice–

I mean, it’s not like anyone made you put words on a page, right?

Building the Soft Way

Years ago, I bought a program that would allow me to design houses and landscape around them.  It was like $50 at the time, which was probably 2002, and it was one of those things that, when I picked it up, I got looks like, “Why do you need something like that?”  My answer was, “You never know when I might need it.”

I’ve used that program a number of times.  The best time I had with it was last year, when someone was describing a house they’d imagined, but when it came to drawing out a floor plan, they couldn’t get it down.  So, taking their notes, I fired up the program and started building a three story house, as this person had described it to me.  When I showed the plans to this person, they said, “That’s exactly what I was seeing!”

And another satisfied customer goes away happy.

It’s no secret I use a lot of software for writing.  I use Scrivener to write; I’ve a program that helps me create solar systems.  I use FreeMind to brainstorm when I feel the need to get down and work things out before putting fingers to keys.  I’ve one program that helps me create maps . . . and I have this old program I just mentioned to let me build houses.

My Muse once told me, “I’m very visual.  I need to see something to know how it should look.”  My Muse also threatened to take a leather belt to my behind, but that’s another story . . . What Musey was getting at is sometimes you need to see thing before you describe them.  When you’re taking about the layout of a building, it doesn’t hurt to have a floor plan handy.  When you’re looking at laying out some property, having an idea of what your version of Hundred Acre Woods looks like is a good idea.  Maybe showing people what the layout of a space ship is a great idea, least they get lost wandering from one cabin to another.

I’m a great one for pointing out that software can make a writer’s life much easier.  I’ve been in computers for over thirty years–as in that’s my job, not that I’m Flynn–so software comes easy to me.  I don’t mind picking something up and playing with it, then figuring out how it will help.  Right now I’d love to get my hands on something that would allow me to design character’s features–so I could actually make my characters become more real to me–but I’m not about to drop $800 on facial composition software.  Just have to keep looking.

For my writer friends who are, shall we say, less than computer literate–use a notebook.  Draw stuff out by hand.  Doodle; scribble; make little comments.  It doesn’t all have to be 1′s and 0′s on your hard drive, it can just as easily be something you did on the back of a grocery list, and later tacked up on the cork board next to your writing space.

Expand that mind:  Lay things out so you can see even more.  Remember . . . if you can see, you can do.

And we do like to do, don’t we?