stevenpiziks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stevenpiziks) wrote2013-02-20 09:43 pm
stevenpiziks) wrote2013-02-20 09:43 pm
Entry tags:
Audible and Corporate Mentality
Continuing our trip back in time to look at my books that have just become available at Audible.com :
My second novel was Corporate Mentality:
Microscopic "nanobots" kept the wheels of civilization turning but sometimes went rogue, with disastrous consequences. Lance Michaels had grown up with a body filled with nanobots, which he could send out in invisible swarms, still under his control, and reprogram a rogue "hive" out of existence. But his latest job may be his last. Sent to defuse a hive that has taken
over an entire planet, he finds that a psychotic child with control over nanobots like his own, but more powerful, is directing the hive and preparing to send nanobots out from the planet to control the entire human-occupied galaxy.
Jim Baen liked In the Company of Mind quite a lot, and he asked for a sequel. This came as a surprise--Lance's story had come to a solid conclusion and I'd given no thought to writing more about him. But I wasn't going to say no to a book offer!
To solve the problem, I went out for many walks.
I can't plot while I'm sitting still. Something about the chair kills my ability to come up with characters and story lines. When I'm walking or riding my bike, however, my mental processes jog forward with me, sometimes unbidden, and the ideas flow. This need to walk gets uncomfortable in winter, but it does keep me fit and it makes the dog happy.
Anyway, after a number of plot walks, I came up with Lance 2.0. I was intrigued with the idea of the impact that gender has on a
person's though patterns. How much difference is there between male and female viewpoints? How much of a role does biology play and how much does sociology? Lance's children--male/female twins who have been able to swap bodies since birth--gave me a venue to explore these questions.
As I thought it over, I found myself exploring other questions. How much does a physical body play in the way we see the world? Ourselves? Robin from The Company was a being with no physical body. Delia had lost a leg. Lance's body had been heavily modified by his father. What would happen if you lost your body but your mind remained intact? Would it be freeing or frightening? There was much to explore here.
I wrote up a synopsis--60 pages! And I sent it to poor Jim Baen, who actually read it. No one told me in those days that a synopsis should be 20 pages or fewer. (Now they should be about five.) Ah well--we laughed about it later.
When Lucienne told me Jim had made a formal contract offer, however, I was in a scary position: this was the first time I'd sold something without actually writing it first. And it was due in a year. Deadline!
I had a serious case of writer nerves. What if my first book had been a fluke? What if I stalled out and couldn't finish this one? What if I ran out of time? Okay, yeah, I'd worked as a reporter and written a number of stories with the clock ticking and an editor literally standing behind me, waiting for me to hit SAVE so the piece could get into the next issue. But this . . . this was a whole novel!
It was during this book that I developed a trick that's served me well over the years. Whenever I get stuck, I say, "What happens next?" and I write the answer down. Doesn't matter if it's crappy. That's what rewrites are for. And I always know what's going to happen next because of those long plot walks. (A detailed, sixty-page synopsis doesn't hurt, either.)
I wrote Corporate Mentality in the basement of a small row house I was renting. My son Aran was a newborn at that time. My wife had gone back to work, but I was still on summer break from teaching and was stay-at-home-dad. I didn't understand the difficulties of people who said babies ate up their writing time. Sure, Aran needed feeding and changing and holding, but he slept a lot, too. I put him on a bed near my computer and wrote. When he fussed, I put him in my lap and kept typing. The biggest problem with him was that every single morning at precisely 5:10 a.m., he woke up and cried. He didn't want to be fed, held, or changed. He just cried. After twenty minutes of crying, he'd fall back asleep. He kept this up until he was nearly a year old. It meant neither my wife
nor I got a night's uninterrupted sleep for a year. But that was the only unusually hard part with him.
Later, this thought would come back to haunt us.
I finished the book with a month to spare. Go me! Then it was the editorial rewrite letter and copy edits and page proofs.
One day, the mail arrived with a manilla envelope. From it I pulled two cover flats. I blinked at them. Whose book was this? A woman in a sexy ball gown and her hair on fire made a come-hither face at the viewer while three heavily-muscled bald guys stood guard around her.
It took me several moments to understand that this was my book. The woman on the cover was Aditi, the antagonist. Oh dear!
Well, it was eye-catching, I gave it that much.
Corporate Mentality was the first novel I wrote under deadline, and it was a hell of a ride. I learned a lot from that book, and the story still amazes me. Now it's on audio, voices and all!
The books Audible.com has recorded include two novels I wrote as Steven Piziks (my real name) and the four Silent Empire novels I wrote as Steven Harper. The books are:
In the Company of Mind (by Steven Piziks)
Corporate Mentality (by Steven Piziks)
Dreamer (by Steven Harper)
Nightmare (by Steven Harper)
Trickster (by Steven Harper)
Offspring (by Steven Harper)
My second novel was Corporate Mentality:
Microscopic "nanobots" kept the wheels of civilization turning but sometimes went rogue, with disastrous consequences. Lance Michaels had grown up with a body filled with nanobots, which he could send out in invisible swarms, still under his control, and reprogram a rogue "hive" out of existence. But his latest job may be his last. Sent to defuse a hive that has taken
over an entire planet, he finds that a psychotic child with control over nanobots like his own, but more powerful, is directing the hive and preparing to send nanobots out from the planet to control the entire human-occupied galaxy.
Jim Baen liked In the Company of Mind quite a lot, and he asked for a sequel. This came as a surprise--Lance's story had come to a solid conclusion and I'd given no thought to writing more about him. But I wasn't going to say no to a book offer!
To solve the problem, I went out for many walks.
I can't plot while I'm sitting still. Something about the chair kills my ability to come up with characters and story lines. When I'm walking or riding my bike, however, my mental processes jog forward with me, sometimes unbidden, and the ideas flow. This need to walk gets uncomfortable in winter, but it does keep me fit and it makes the dog happy.
Anyway, after a number of plot walks, I came up with Lance 2.0. I was intrigued with the idea of the impact that gender has on a
person's though patterns. How much difference is there between male and female viewpoints? How much of a role does biology play and how much does sociology? Lance's children--male/female twins who have been able to swap bodies since birth--gave me a venue to explore these questions.
As I thought it over, I found myself exploring other questions. How much does a physical body play in the way we see the world? Ourselves? Robin from The Company was a being with no physical body. Delia had lost a leg. Lance's body had been heavily modified by his father. What would happen if you lost your body but your mind remained intact? Would it be freeing or frightening? There was much to explore here.I wrote up a synopsis--60 pages! And I sent it to poor Jim Baen, who actually read it. No one told me in those days that a synopsis should be 20 pages or fewer. (Now they should be about five.) Ah well--we laughed about it later.
When Lucienne told me Jim had made a formal contract offer, however, I was in a scary position: this was the first time I'd sold something without actually writing it first. And it was due in a year. Deadline!
I had a serious case of writer nerves. What if my first book had been a fluke? What if I stalled out and couldn't finish this one? What if I ran out of time? Okay, yeah, I'd worked as a reporter and written a number of stories with the clock ticking and an editor literally standing behind me, waiting for me to hit SAVE so the piece could get into the next issue. But this . . . this was a whole novel!
It was during this book that I developed a trick that's served me well over the years. Whenever I get stuck, I say, "What happens next?" and I write the answer down. Doesn't matter if it's crappy. That's what rewrites are for. And I always know what's going to happen next because of those long plot walks. (A detailed, sixty-page synopsis doesn't hurt, either.)
I wrote Corporate Mentality in the basement of a small row house I was renting. My son Aran was a newborn at that time. My wife had gone back to work, but I was still on summer break from teaching and was stay-at-home-dad. I didn't understand the difficulties of people who said babies ate up their writing time. Sure, Aran needed feeding and changing and holding, but he slept a lot, too. I put him on a bed near my computer and wrote. When he fussed, I put him in my lap and kept typing. The biggest problem with him was that every single morning at precisely 5:10 a.m., he woke up and cried. He didn't want to be fed, held, or changed. He just cried. After twenty minutes of crying, he'd fall back asleep. He kept this up until he was nearly a year old. It meant neither my wife
nor I got a night's uninterrupted sleep for a year. But that was the only unusually hard part with him.
Later, this thought would come back to haunt us.
I finished the book with a month to spare. Go me! Then it was the editorial rewrite letter and copy edits and page proofs.
One day, the mail arrived with a manilla envelope. From it I pulled two cover flats. I blinked at them. Whose book was this? A woman in a sexy ball gown and her hair on fire made a come-hither face at the viewer while three heavily-muscled bald guys stood guard around her.
It took me several moments to understand that this was my book. The woman on the cover was Aditi, the antagonist. Oh dear!
Well, it was eye-catching, I gave it that much.
Corporate Mentality was the first novel I wrote under deadline, and it was a hell of a ride. I learned a lot from that book, and the story still amazes me. Now it's on audio, voices and all!
The books Audible.com has recorded include two novels I wrote as Steven Piziks (my real name) and the four Silent Empire novels I wrote as Steven Harper. The books are:
In the Company of Mind (by Steven Piziks)
Corporate Mentality (by Steven Piziks)
Dreamer (by Steven Harper)
Nightmare (by Steven Harper)
Trickster (by Steven Harper)
Offspring (by Steven Harper)