Finding Opportunities – Shifting Gears After Setbacks

The title I just wrote for this blog sounds like a bad advertisement.  You know the ones, I see videos for them all the time on Instagram.  “Turning Setbacks Into Opportunities!” or something like that.

But, well…sometimes that’s all you can do in life.  And here I am, facing the need to do that.

I was furloughed from my day job last week.  If you’re not sure what that is, it’s basically a temporary, unpaid leave of absence, with the intent of bringing the employee back after the event causing the furlough passes.  In most cases, that ‘event’ is financial difficulties (see Federal Government’s Inability To Pass A Budget as an example).

And like most furloughs, I’m unsure how long it’ll last.  Could be weeks.  Could be months.

So I had a very important decision to make.  After spending a day and a half absorbing and processing this difficult turn of events, I decided to do what I’ve been wanting to do for a long time – do something creative full-time.

But not writing.  Because I’m not profitable on my writing, let alone making nearly enough to live off of.  I wish I were, but I’m not even close.

Instead, I’m turning to the other endeavor I started working towards last year.

Voice Acting.

Last week, starting Wednesday, I’ve begun treating voice acting as a full-time job.  For now, I’m building my vocal cords back up on my own novels, starting with Rise of the Forgotten.  Fun fact, your vocal cords are literally muscles.  If you don’t use them much, they grow weak.

After about 5 hours of audiobook recording on Wednesday, my vocal cords were tired!  So I have to build up my strength, and what better way than to do it on my own books?

So that’s what I’m doing now.  As soon as I finish this blog and post it, I’m warming up my voice and getting back to it!  And if I can maintain the rate I was going last week, I hope to be finished with Rise of the Forgotten sometime next week, at least recording.  Editing will, naturally, take longer.

I’ve also decided to try to be more active on social media.  Everything on Instagram has turned to videos these days – if you’re posting photos, no one seems to care anymore.  Which is ridiculous, it’s freaking Instagram!  If you want videos, go to TikTok!  (Which, 90% of the videos on Instagram are reposts of TikTok, so…really, it’s stupid that this has become a thing!)

In any case, you’ll find me a lot more on Instagram and Facebook in the coming weeks!  Click the links below to find your way there :)  Already, you’ll find a video on this very topic, and my first excerpt from recording an audiobook!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorjonwasik

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kataar2002/

Thanks for reading!
-Jon Wasik

The Rise of Ahsoka – The Importance of Character Development and Change

Hello, there!

First and foremost, I will not be posting spoilers for the on-going Disney+ series Ahsoka, just some minor, out-of-context references.  I will, however, be discussing the character Ahsoka throughout the previous shows, so if you’ve not watched The Clone Wars or Rebels yet, consider this your spoiler alert!

With that out of the way…

In August 2008, something new hit movie theaters – the CGI animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie, promising to kick off a new era of Star Wars TV shows and acting as a premier for the series that would start 2 months later.

Many people have…feelings about the movie.  Most of them are not positive feelings.  Ragers and haters have both united and divided over what was good and what wasn’t in this show.

But at the time, there was one thing that almost all of the ragers and haters could agree on – they hated Ahsoka Tano.  To quote Wikipedia’s account: “Ashley Eckstein, who primarily voiced Ahsoka, said she and the writers were aware that audiences initially found the character annoying, and that there was a “fine line” between Ahsoka being bratty and becoming endearing.”

On a personal note, I was among those who didn’t like her back then.  I thought her character would be nothing more than a non-cannon distraction, an attempt to appeal to kids when there was no need, and I thought her character would end up ruining the show.  Plus, what’s up with what’s essentially a teenage girl wearing next to nothing in the middle of a battlefield?

I legit thought she would ruin the Clone Wars series, which already had a dismal beginning.

I was wrong.

And I am so very glad to have been proven wrong!

Now, like so many other Star Wars fans out there, Ahsoka went from being one of the most disliked characters in the Clone Wars, to being one of their favorites in all of Star Wars.  At least, that’s how I feel about her – more than Anakin or Luke or even Leia, Ahsoka Tano is my favorite!

But…how?  How did this happen?  How did she go from being the most annoying character to the most beloved?  So-much-so that she’s now been in five shows and even had a voice cameo in the last Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker?

In my opinion, it’s the simplest, yet most complicated reason – she has legitimate character development.

Characters Should Never Be Stagnant

Stories are only interesting if something interesting happens in the story, right?  But if something interesting happens, that ‘something’ should affect the character or characters, right?  Otherwise…what’s the point?

It sounds simple enough, but sometimes writers really struggle with this concept, though I would say that it’s mostly on an unconscious level.  Add to that any sort of complication to the writing, such as studios demanding changes because they think they know what audiences want, and it’s easy to backtrack on character development, or have it completely take a back seat.

But I recall some of the earliest lessons I learned in creative writing class, and it all boiled down to one question a writer should always ask themselves when writing a story – what journey is the character going to take?  And just as important, how will the character be changed at the end?

I’m convinced that one of the reasons Star Trek has done so well since TNG is that, particularly after the first season, TNG episodes were written with either one or a couple of specific characters in mind.  There were ‘Worf’ episodes, ‘Troi’ episodes, ‘Data’ episodes, and so on, where the entire cast might be present, but mostly the episodes focused on developing one character.  And as the targeted characters changed, that change was reflected in those around them, whether that was intentional or incidental.

DS9 did it even better, by being a serialized story, or one long, continuous story rather than just one-offs.

If Ahsoka Tano had never changed throughout the Clone Wars, if by season 7 she was the exact same character she’d started the show as, I strongly suspect she would still be a disliked character.

But she changed.

Here’s the kicker – it wasn’t sudden.  It wasn’t jarring.  And this is where I think Filoni and those who helped him write the Clone Wars are master storytellers – Ahsoka’s character development was subtle and slow.  Sure, there were moments between seasons when her appearance drastically changed (thank goodness she actually got clothes!), and that was meant to signify a progression in the timeline, IE she’s older and the Clone Wars has been going on longer.  But even in those jumps, her development was slow and subtle.

At least for me personally, I can’t point to any one episode, any one point in the Clone Wars when Ahsoka became likeable to me, let alone when she became my favorite character.  When the Clone Wars first started, I watched it as it aired….until season 2.  I gave up on it back then.

It was only when the entire series (at that point) came to Netflix that I gave it another chance.  I’d read that the show was considered one of the best ever, and I wanted to find out why.  I also remembered Star Trek shows often suffering in early seasons but getting better later (Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis likewise suffered the same problem).

So I tried again.

I still didn’t like Ahsoka in season 1.

But…

Eventually that changed.

And when she left the Jedi Order, it yanked at my heart strings.  It was one of the most heartbreaking episodes I’d ever watched.  It also explained why she wasn’t in Revenge of the Sith, so my need for continuity was satisfied.

We got to watch her change.  We got to watch her grow up, so to speak.

And then…Star Wars Rebels came along, and that season 1 finale, I damn near cheered when I saw her in it.  It confirmed that Ahsoka had survived Order 66, and I was so incredibly happy to see more of her!

Around this time was when I met the person who would become my life partner, Beck, and when we started spending more time together and watching shows together, I showed her Rebels.

She had no context about Ahsoka.  So we went back and watched The Clone Wars on Netflix again.

Knowing the kind of person Ahsoka would become, I suddenly found her earlier seasons not so unbearable.  Because I could see it now.  I could see why she had to start the way she did, and I could watch the subtle nuances as she grew up and was forced to become an adult long before her actual age of adulthood.  War was unkind, but she found and forged kindness where no one thought it could be.  The horrors of war made her kinder…

Having all of that context, the showdown between Ahsoka and Vader in Rebels blew us both away, and I feared the worst.  Had we finally watched her perish?

When Ezra rescued her in a later season, I freaking cheered!  And the way she showed up in that final episode, ready to head out and find Ezra with Sabine?  It sent chills down my spine and brought tears forth.

But probably one of the most powerful stories we ever got to see was when we finally got our 7th and final Clone Wars season.  When we got to see how Ahsoka survived Order 66.

I was content.  I was happy.

I thought Filoni had reached peak story telling and character development with Ahsoka.

Then he said, “Hold my beer.”

Give The Ahsoka Series A Chance

I’ve read rumblings around the internet lately that Ahsoka’s appearance in the Mandalorian and Book of Boba was disappointing.  That she was emotionless and uncaring and not at all the character we all grew to love.

Come on, folks.  I think at this point, Filoni has earned the benefit of the doubt.  Don’t complain about her ‘not being the same,’ and instead ask, ‘why isn’t she the same?  What happened to her to change her character to be this way?’

And, well, we’ve found out.  No spoilers for the ongoing Ahsoka show, but if you look back at everything Ahsoka has endured in the Clone Wars and Rebels, well let me tell you…when the Universe keeps throwing hardship your way, keeps taking things away from you, keeps taking the people you love away from you, it’ll wear on you, no matter who you are.

As one person put it on Social Media, Ahsoka was depressed, and that depression is natural and understandable.

In the Ahsoka series, we get to see how Ahsoka comes out of that.  And it is one of the best episodes of Star Wars yet, with iconic visuals that will endure for decades!

So remember that, folks.  Character development, character growth, character change, it’s all a vital part of a storyteller’s arsenal.  Maybe the most important.

If there’s one part of your trade you should work on and master, that’s the one.

Filoni sure seems to have mastered it!

Thanks for reading!  And please feel free to share your thoughts and feelings below in the comments!

-Jon Wasik

Musings of the Week – New Book’s Performance, Reading Old Works

Hello, there!

Today’s post will be a bit of a different format – I didn’t have any one topic long enough to count as its own post, and no real conclusions to make, just some musings.  So without further ado…

The Awakening’s Performance

It’s been almost a week since The Awakening debuted, so how has it measured up?

Strangely enough, kinda good, but also not terribly great.

The amount of pre-orders for The Awakening was about half of the pre-orders I’d received for Legacy, but considering what happened post-release with Legacy, I wasn’t surprised, and didn’t look at that as an indicator.

Legacy kicked off a new series just like The Awakening, and I heavily marketed Legacy pre-release.  Between beta reader feedback and the pre-order numbers, I was flying high on release day!

Unfortunately, that high lasted mere days.  The very first rating that came in for it was a 2-star.  Followed  by another 2-star.  It was…a depressing time.

But what about The Awakening?  Well I’m happy to say that on Amazon, there’s a 4-star and a 5-star rating, with a glowing 5-star review!  On Goodreads, it’s also received a 4-star rating and review!  So that’s a good start!  Better still, for a short time, The Awakening jumped up to be in the top 100,000 kindle books in the entire Kindle store!  That might not sound good, but considering it had already backpedaled to 3,000,000 pre-release (Only one person pre-ordered the Kindle edition, compared to the numerous print pre-orders), that jump from 3,000,000 to under 100,000 was significant!  It also hit under the top 100 for Teen and Young Adult LGBTQ+ Fiction for a short time!

All in all, compared to anything I’ve written and published before, a very strong start!

Unfortunately, I had hoped for more reviews.  That was explicitly why I’d sent out Advanced Reader Copies, to have numerous reviews up-front and get the ball rolling on positive marketing.  Unfortunately, one of two things is happening – either almost none of those readers are leaving reviews, or Amazon is blocking them.  So far, only two Advanced Readers actually have reviews posted.

But that is apparently one of the greatest struggles for independently published authors.

And let me tell you, I have noticed a definite difference.  When Rise of the Forgotten hit 30 ratings, mostly 5-star, suddenly more readers were coming to the table, and within a month, it went from 30 to 33 ratings, after years and years of barely getting any.

So yes, dear readers, ratings, and especially reviews, make a huge difference.  If you want to support your favorite author beyond just buying their books, the easiest and best thing you can do is write a review :)

The Pain Of Reading Old Works

I think I’ve already mentioned it, but whenever I get ready to write another book in a series, I go back and re-read all of the previous books.  That way I’m in the right mindset, and I’m more familiar with what came before.

Artwork by Vuk Kostic

The time has come to write the next Sword of Dragons novel!  That means going back and re-reading Rise of the Forgotten.

Except something has changed, in me….

The last time I read Rise, I still liked it.  I still felt like it was a strong story, fairly well-written, if a little rough around the edges.  And given the ongoing positive ratings it receives, there’s definitely other readers out there who feel the same way.

But this time…I’m struggling with it.  I feel like there’s way too much exposition, and sometimes that exposition is a little repetitive.  I have to force myself to read thoroughly, to not skip parts.

What’s changed?

For starters, this happens to every writer.  I read or heard once about someone meeting Jim Butcher and telling him they’d just read his first Dresden Files novel, and he lamented them having to read his early works, and encouraged that reader to get to more recent Dresden Files novels.  (I still very much enjoy Storm Front, but Butcher’s writing definitely gets better with each novel!)

Seriously, it happens to us all.  Or at least…it should.  Because like all art, hell, like all careers, you can always get better.  The moment you stop believing that, the moment you stop trying to learn more, or grow, or ‘get better,’ is the moment you doom yourself.

With all of that in mind, I’m actually encouraged by this feeling of distaste towards my first published novel.  It means I’ve grown as a writer, and am still growing.  I haven’t become stagnant.

There’s another bonus to this effort: I can see what I did wrong, and ensure I don’t repeat those mistakes in my next novel.

In any case, that’s all I have for you today, dear readers!

Wait, you’re eager for updates on my next novel?

Let’s just say I’m in the process of getting Project Sirius book 2 out to first-round beta readers ;)

Thanks for reading!
-Jon Wasik

Book Release Day – The Awakening Now Available!

Hello, there!

Today’s the day – I’m so excited to announce that The Awakening, Project Sirius book 1 is available for purchase!  Head on over to your favorite online bookstore and purchase your copy today!

Better still, if you’re an Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscriber, you can read it today for absolutely no charge!

Click the link of your choice below to find your copy today!

• Amazon
• Barnes & Noble
• Powell’s
• Bookshop.org (formerly IndieBound)

As an independently-published author, I humbly ask for your help – once you’ve read The Awakening: please leave a rating and a review!  Your review doesn’t need to be long or complex, a simple “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it” or “It was okay” is more than enough!  Ratings and especially reviews helps increase a book’s visibility, something all independently-published authors struggle with, so every review counts and is a huge boon to us!

The first review has already hit Goodreads, and exactly as I hoped, the book is very much written for a YA audience in mind, so spread the word to all the other YA Sci-Fi fans out there, especially in the LGBTQ+ crowd, and we can bring this new series to its audience!

Thank you for reading, and, well…I have a secret to tell you.

Promise not to tell anyone?

….

Project Sirius book 2 has already been written ;)

So this is just the beginning :D

-Jon Wasik

The Freedom in Sequels

Hello, there!

As of yesterday, August 25th, 2023, the first draft of Project Sirius Book 2 has been completed!!!

This is despite (or even in spite of ;) ) the writer’s block I dealt with about mid-way through!  I started writing book 2 on June 8th, 2023, with an average of 1 to 2 chapters per day (on the days I wrote, which was not every day), leaving me with the following numbers!

Chapters: 53
Pages (editing format): 464
Words: 138,016

To give you an idea of how much bigger than book 1, here were the numbers for book 1’s first draft!

Chapters: 36
Pages: 297
Words: 86,672

So quite the jump!  Plus, I fully expect the word count on book 2 to go up (just like it did for book 1), because I already know there’s a few sections that are lacking some basic descriptions for the characters.

But what I’m really here to talk about today is the freedom that comes with a sequel, and how much I thoroughly enjoyed writing book 2 :)

Knowing The Characters

I’ve talked before (a long time ago) about how there’s two different kinds of ongoing series.  The example I gave back then was the difference between Star Trek The Next Generation and Star Trek Deep Space Nine.

Image Source – memory-alpha.wikia.com

In TNG, you could more-or-less start watching at any point in the series and, as long as you already understood the basics of Sci-Fi and Trek, you wouldn’t be lost.  Each story was a standalone in and of itself.  To be sure, the characters grew with each passing season, but mostly, no one episode was dependent upon a previous one (with some famous examples being Borg-related episodes, or Worf’s discommendation).

In DS9, particularly after the first few seasons, it was highly serialized.  It wasn’t one-off stories each episodes, it was a continuation of a long story.  There were still one-off filler episodes, sure, but for the most part, DS9 was one big, 7-season story.

Despite TNG being my favorite Trek series, I actually prefer the serialized stories.  The long ones where things build upon one another.  Especially if the stories and characters are interesting!  (Dresden Files is definitely one of my favorite, longest-running series out there!)

This is the approach I’m taking with Project Sirius, and in doing so, it means that the character introductions (for the main characters, any way) were taken care of in book 1.  I get to dive right into the story of book 2, and instead of spending time developing who they are from the outset, I get to spend more time exploring who they have become, and who they are becoming!

And let me tell you, if you thought Mika’s journey in book 1 (I know, I know, it’s not out yet!) was intense and drastic, wait until you see what she goes through in book 2!

On top of that, because I no longer felt constrained by the ‘normal’ genre limitations (YA Sci-Fi generally doesn’t go beyond 90k words per book), I felt like I could spend more time with Mika and the other characters, getting to know who and what they are, getting to know the world they live in.  This is one of the big reasons book 2 is so much longer, but the story itself just plain demanded it.  I actually didn’t originally intend book 2 to be so long, but I’m really happy with where it is!

What’s Next for Project Sirius?

First, starting tonight, I’ll begin the first round of proofreading and editing on book 2!  I anticipate it’ll take a little longer than most 1st rounds, because I feel like there’s actually some details missing from book 2 that I want to add in as I go through it, but all in all, it still shouldn’t take too long.

Book 1, The Awakening, is only a couple weeks away from release!  That’ll be the next big milestone!  I was already excited with book 1’s story and getting it out to the world to read, but now that I know where things go after book 1, I’m even more excited!  This is a story that will just get better and better, I think :)

Round 1 of beta reading will begin around that same time – my typical round 1 beta readers have already read The Awakening, so no spoilers for them ;)

And then, well, we’ll go from there!

In the mean time, I may try to refocus again on The Sword of Dragons book 5 – it’s had a lot of time to percolate in my imagination, I want to see if I can get it nailed down.  I may possibly be able to start writing it for NaNoWriMo 2023, but I’m not sure yet on that.

So when will Project Sirius book 2 release?  I’m not sure yet, but definitely sometime in 2024!  Whether early, mid, or late will depend on a lot of factors over the coming months!

Until then, if you haven’t already, pre-order your copy of The Awakening today!

Amazon (Print & Kindle)
Barnes & Noble (Print)

Thanks for reading!
-Jon Wasik

The Creative Urge To Be And Do More

Hello, there!

I honestly am not sure how to start this post…it’s just something that’s been on my mind a lot lately, and I felt the need to write about it.  As you might imagine from that opening, this is going to be a little bit more personal than my usual blog posts ;)

I find myself perpetually frustrated with life, and that frustration grows day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year, and it feels like it’s reaching a crescendo.

You see…I want to do more.  More creative work.

But the most frustrating aspect isn’t that I want to do more of one thing – I mean, I DO want to write, more than anything else – but I want to do more of so many different creative things!

I’ve started and then had to stop so many creative endeavors outside of writing, not because I’ve lost interest, but because I’ve had to prioritize my endeavors.  I hate that I have to prioritize them.  I loath that I can’t be creative all the time.

Those are some strong words.  I don’t use them lightly.  Like I said, I feel like the frustration is reaching a crescendo right now.

What I’d Do With $10 Million Dollars

Most everyone dreams of winning the lottery jackpot, and in this day and age, with skyrocketing inflation, that desire is probably stronger than ever for everyone.

There’s a part of me that wishes we lived in an era of patrons again.  I don’t know if I could actually merit a patron or not, but I’d like to think my creative endeavors have attracted some fans (there’s at least a handful of you who regularly like my blog posts here, and I am ever so grateful for that!)  I wish an interested (and, obviously, rich) patron would just be like, “I like all the things you do, so here, live off of my dime and do what you do best!”  But I’m not sure what’s more wishful thinking, that desire or the desire to win the jackpot ;)

And I know that Patreon would net me very little – I don’t know how to market myself, so getting enough people to subscribe when I’m not actually constantly delivering stuff on a month-to-month basis?  Not at all likely to ever happen.

But what would I do if money were no object, or less of an issue?  What have I done in the past, what have I been forced to give up just to make ends meet?

You all know the first answer to that question – I’d write, more.  I’d write more stories more often, much faster.  Instead of having one or two novels in the pipeline at any given time, I’d have many.  I’d finish the Sword of Dragons saga in a matter of maybe two years.  I’d write more Project Sirius.  I’d write that Cyberpunk/Dystopian series I’ve been building in my head.  I’d even go back and try to salvage Chronicles of the Sentinels with new novels!

But what about endeavors outside of writing?

Let’s start with the most recent, the thing that has disheartened me the most to give up (for now).  Voice acting.

I had a plan to transition from my I.T. career to that, slowly, carefully.  I’m not one to dive into new things and hope I land on my feet, I don’t have the courage and I couldn’t forgive myself if I failed and sent my wife and I into destitution.

But that plan was thwarted, by a major shakeup at work that has left me burned out and with no visible way forward with the voice acting, not yet anyway.  I’ve had to postpone it, and I’ve no idea for how long.  There’s too much uncertainty now, too much chaos.

I want to narrate my books.  I want to narrate other books.  I love doing voices, and the more classes I took, the more I fell in love with voice acting!  So I’ll come back to this someday.  Once I reconfigure my plans again and figure out a path forward.  As soon as I can find a path forward.

Yes, I made this, using Unreal Engine 5!

But that’s not all I want to do more of.  Last year, I became obsessed with Unreal Engine 5, as a way to fulfill so many aspects of my creativeness!  It helped fulfill my itch to make art, for one, while engaging my technical and engineering side.  I’d spent years learning 3D Graphic Design and Animation as a hobby during my college days, but hadn’t exercised that muscle much until UE5.  I loved it, I obsessed over it, and followed so many tutorials to create an incredible scene!

On top of that, my desire to build a shareable environment of my own creation grew, and I had dreams to use UE5 to build out the world of the Sword of Dragons, for starters.  Something I’d once done before using Minecraft, but the limitations of which frustrated me and, for now, I have paused.  UE5 could have and still could be a way to build that world out.  I even had the idea of using UE5 to make new covers for the Sword of Dragons novels.

Except…when my frustrations with my career and inability to work on creative stuff more frequently reached a certain level, I had to find a way out, a way forward.  That’s when I decided to pursue voice acting, and that meant setting UE5 aside for a time.  I’ve forgotten so much about how to use UE5 that I’d have to go through all of the tutorials all over again (though probably a lot faster, as muscle memory kicked in).

Another creative endeavor?  Once upon a time, I started learning how to do leather working.  I even made a belt and a few rudimentary bracers.  But a combination of time, money, medical issues, and living situation made it impossible to follow that dream.  And my leather tools sit mostly unused for now (Beck has used them more than I have!)

I Love To Build.  I Need To Build.

It all boils down to a need in my soul to build worlds.  Fictional worlds.  I write them.  I design them before I write them.  I draw them on paper.  I build them in video games.  I build them in 3D art.  And even my interest in leather working came from a desire to cosplay as my own characters.

I need to see my worlds built, and I need to share them with others!  It isn’t a want, it is an absolute need.

So every setback, every instance of being held back and being denied the time, money, and energy to create drives me nuts!

And today, more than any other day so far, I feel like I’m being held down and forced to endure torture, leaving all of my needs unfulfilled, juuuust out of reach.  If only there was more time.  More money.  More freedom.

I am a creative who isn’t allowed to create.

The Bigger, The Better? Increasing Book Length In A YA Series

Hello, there!

Progress continues on Project Sirius book 2, and as of this week, I have written chapter 36!

Additionally, chapter 36 marks the conclusion of part 2 of 3!

Chapter 36 also brings the overall manuscript word count to 94,600!

Why am I throwing all of these numbers at you?

Well for starters, The Awakening is 36 chapters in its entirety, and sits at juuuust under 90,000 words.

By this measurement, it’s likely that book 2 will be one and a half times longer than The Awakening.  That’s quite a jump!  But is it too big?

I’ve talked before about when to stick to genre norms and when to break them, and why I chose to adhere to them for The Awakening.  I’ve also noted that it’s okay to break from genre norms, especially in a series of escalating complexity.

But how big is too big?  And does it being a YA series make a difference?

Escalating Size – The Harry Potter Saga

Alright, before I get into this, if seeing the name “Harry Potter” has triggered a visceral reaction, I want to be absolutely clear about something – I do NOT support Rowling’s anti-trans rhetoric.  I stand with the LGBTQ+ community.

But Harry Potter as a series, as a story, holds a special place in a lot of hearts, including amongst the LGBTQ+ community.  And after decades of becoming such a moving and visceral work of art in our hearts and minds, it’s impossible to discount it as something worth analyzing, and its success speaks for itself.  Additionally, we live in an era where it is entirely possible to be a Harry Potter fan without being a fan of or supporting JK Rowling.  Used book stores, for instance (trust me, as a published author, I can tell you that we get zero royalties from used book sales), or purchasing themed merchandise from conventions (which also results in zero royalties going to the author, unless it is an officially licensed vendor).

You also can’t deny that the Harry Potter series is surprisingly well-written, and is a good example of stories written for younger audiences that don’t talk down to them or treat them in a patronizing manner.  This, in turn, has made the series accessible to readers of all ages.

And that part about not ‘talking down’ to your audience?  That’s the big deal.  That’s huge.  I myself have a lot of fond memories of reading books (and watching shows and movies) that were definitely geared towards adults that I absolutely loved as a child (immediate examples I can think of: Alien and Predator movies).

It’s also why I think breaking age-range genre tropes is okay.

So, back to Harry Potter.  Recently (as in this past weekend), while my wife and I discussed the likelihood of Sirius 2 being 1.5 times the length of The Awakening, we thought to look at Harry Potter and how well known it is for having longer and longer books as the series progressed.

For one of my birthdays, many years ago, I was gifted a box set of books 1 through 6 as hardbacks, and then later bought book 7 in the same format, so they are all printed with the same paper thickness, same font, etc.  This allowed for a far more accurate accounting of page count changes from book to book (since Amazon’s page counts of each book seems to make zero sense).

Looking at those, the page count came out as the following:

Book 1 – 309
Book 2 – 341
Book 3 – 435
Book 4 – 734
Book 5 – 870
Book 6 – 652
Book 7 – 759

You can see a relatively slow progression at first, and then sudden leaps with books 4 and 5 (and then a decrease for 6 and 7).

One of the reasons Rowling has cited for this increase is a desire for the stories to grow up with the kids, but even if you remove that motivation, you can see that the stories become more and more complex, nuanced, and frankly, interesting with each volume.

This also isn’t the only series out there with increasing page counts, but it’s the best and most well-known example.  (Another that comes to mind – the Ender’s Game series.)

And even my own Sword of Dragons saga saw books 2 and 3 coming out longer and longer, with book 4 tapering back just a bit from 3.

It seems as though longer books as a series goes on is, well, normal.  Even expected, and that’s including among YA or, in the case of Harry Potter’s initial books, Middle Grade stories.

Where does Project Sirius fall in this progression?  Book 1, in its print format, comes to 272 pages in length.  If you multiply that by the expected 1.5x, I expect book 2 to come out to just over 400 pages.

That’s a bigger jump than HP did from books 1 to 2, and even from 2 to 3, but it definitely falls short of the jump from 3 to 4.

As you can probably tell, this jump in size has been on my mind a lot lately, and I have worried about it.  But I’m telling the story that needs to be told, in all of its nuances and with all of its peaks and valleys.  Plus, looking at how much books have grown in other series, I feel a lot better about it.

It’s too early to tell right now, but so far, I think I like book 2 better than The Awakening.  Of course, what I like and what readers like isn’t always the same, but for now, I’m confident that if you fall in love with The Awakening, what you’ll get from book 2 will be even more to love :)

Anywho, thanks for reading my ramblings on the topic!  I hope you enjoyed reading, and if you have any thoughts or comments about all of this, I’d love to hear them!  Just drop a note in the comments section below :D

Thanks!
-Jon Wasik

The Hidden Setback of Writing Part-Time

Hello, there!

It’s no secret that I love writing and that I wish, day after day, that I could write full-time.  I never feel so alive as I do when I’m writing, and time periods where I go months without writing are ultra depressing for me.

I want this to be my life.  I want this to be the thing I do daily.  But let’s face reality, most writers never live off of writing, and those who do often barely scrape by.  Chances are high that if you personally know a writer, you know they have a ‘day job’ of some sort, whether it’s a full-time job or a part-time job.

It’s part of the gig.  It’s ‘what we signed up for,’ whether knowingly or unknowingly.  The goal for most, if not all of us is to one day ‘make it,’ to be able to quit our day jobs and spend 8 hours a day (or more) working on writerly things (including but not limited to marketing, social media presence, proofreading, editing, etc).  But it isn’t a goal that many of us will reach, sadly.

However, as I was gearing up to write the next two chapters of Project Sirius book 2, something else occurred to me, a reason why becoming a full-time writer is so coveted – there’s a hidden setback to being a part-time writer.

Extra Effort, Extra Time

It should come as no surprise that part-time writers take longer to get new books written.  We’re literally spending less time on our products per-week than full-time writers (of course, that’s subjective – some part-time writers do a lot more work per-week than some full-time writers, but that’s another topic altogether).

It’s also safe to say that every writer writes at their own pace, and every novel will always require different amounts of time to write them.  If I were to write two 90,000 word novels, one might take me 90 hours to write, the other might take me 120 hours to write.  Same amount of words, but different amounts of hours spent writing.  Why?

Well, some novels are harder to write than others.  Take the Sword of Dragons, for instance.  I haven’t even started writing book 5, because there’s a lot of plotting and planning to account for, more characters and previous plot points I might have to go back and reference.  More complexity overall.

That’s the nature of the game for any writer, full- or part-time.  But for part-time writers, there’s an additional hangup.

And I’m going to use this past week as an example.  Last Friday, I wrote chapters 31 and 32.  I love when I can write chapters back-to-back on the same day, because I can flow right into the next one without pause.

When I start writing the first chapter of the day, I generally have to open up the previous chapter and look over the last couple paragraphs to remind myself where I was in the story and where I was going next.

But after I wrote chapter 32, life happened, and I didn’t start writing chapter 33 until today.  That’s a four day gap.  I had to go back, and re-read large chunks of the previous chapter to remind myself of the tone, where I was in the story, where I’m going next, and to get myself ‘into the story mindset.’

Those minutes spent re-reading already-written content eat up time.  Over time, those minutes add up.

Now consider writers (like me) who often sometimes have to take months-long breaks because of, well, life, and our day jobs eating up our lives and our creativity and energy.

It’s happened to me frequently.  Almost every single Sword of Dragons novel was written during two very separate time periods.  And every time I go months without writing a story, when I’m ready to pick it back up, I have to go back and re-read everything I’ve written.

For Advent Darkness, I’d written over 100,000 words when I had to put it down for a few months, so that was a lot of material to re-read, taking me days to get through, days that could have been spent writing new chapters instead.

Now to be honest, sometimes that’s been a blessing.  Re-reading earlier chapters has let me see a direction the story was going in that I wasn’t previously consciously aware of, and I was able to write a better, more fitting ending for the novel.  But for the most part, it’s a setback.

Stealing terms from voice acting and modifying them to apply to writing, per-finished-chapter time and effort is, more often than not, greater for part-time writers than it is for full-time writers.

In a way, it’s almost akin to the ‘hidden cost of being poor’ (that is, the fact that being poor means that, long-term, life costs more.  Don’t believe me?  Think about things like overdraft fees or ‘we charge you money if you don’t have a minimum balance!’ fees.  Let alone an inability to afford regular maintenance on a car, resulting in more frequent breakdowns that cost even more to repair, ensuring you really can’t afford regular maintenance and resulting in even more frequent and costly breakdowns…  But I digress.)

We can’t afford to write full-time, so writing full novels takes more time and effort for the reasons I’ve outlined above.  It kinda sucks :-(

Still, ask any passionate writer, we’ll tell you every time that we’d rather go through that than not write at all.  It’s worth it to us.  All of it.

I mean…either we’re passionate or we’re crazy.

Or both.  ;-)

Thanks for reading!
-Jon Wasik

Facing Down Writer’s Block

Hello, there!

What is “Writer’s Block”?  Is it the inability to write a single word?  Is it that everything you write feels like trash, and you feel more and more disheartened?  Is it when you stare at your screen, blankly, writing a sentence, deleting it, writing another, staring at it, revising it, deleting it again?

The answer is “Yes.”  It’s all of those things.

It’s also one of the most disheartening things any writer will ever face.  Worse than a rejection letter from an agent or editor.  Perhaps the only thing worse is dismal ratings and reviews on a new publication.

I wish that I could say I’d never endured it, but the fact is, I’m no stranger to Writer’s Block.  There was a time after college where I went 4 years in which I wrote only two chapters, and nothing more.

And last week, it struck me again, but this time it was a different kind from the previous blocks.  It wasn’t the ‘can’t write anything, stare at the screen blankly’ kind, it was the ‘what I’ve written doesn’t work at all, doesn’t feel right, and I have to fix this before I can move on’ type.

What does that mean?  It means I’m stuck with the story for Project Sirius 2.

Even The Best Laid Plans…

I wrote recently how I’m no longer a plotter, but I’m more of a hybrid plotter/pantser.  In other words, I plan the basics of the story, but otherwise I write the overall manuscript ‘by the seat of my pants.’  For four novels, that worked out really, really well.

But similar to what happened when I wrote Secrets of the Cronal, I hit a plot wall when I wrote chapters 30 and 31 last week.  Neither of those chapters felt right.  Neither of them seemed to match the feel or the theme of the novel I’d written so far, even though what happens in them was more or less part of the plan.

Writing chapter 30 went okay, but I knew then that something was off.  When I wrote chapter 31, I was unenthusiastic about it.  It felt…well, lame.  Yeah, I know, I’m aging myself by using that word :p  But really, it felt like the characters were just going through the motions, and there was a lot more exposition than I wanted in that part of the story.

I mean, sometimes exposition is unavoidable, but it’s important to minimize it, because readers (or at least, when I’m reading) don’t really like info dumps.  Readers usually want a story.  Readers want movement, motion, action, progression.  In chapter 31, I had Mika and some others literally sitting down in a school-like setting listening to someone explain the situation to her.

And I realized my plan for the third act of the novel just…didn’t work at all.

The problem?  I don’t quite know how to correct it yet.  All I know is I need to scrap chapters 30 and 31, and rewrite part of chapter 29 once I figure out where to take the story.

So, this is my block.  My original plan for the third act was flawed.  I don’t know how to move the story forward.

What do I do?

I go back to the basics, that’s what.

I need to remind myself what the overall story in book 2 is supposed to be about, what the themes are.  Granted, my original plan for book 2’s third act was all about the theme I intended for the novel.  But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years of writing, it’s that the story often takes on a life of its own, and the writer’s original intent could change as writing progresses.

So my plan, starting this week, is to read what I’ve written.

I know, this almost flies in the face of everything I’ve ever said about how to write a novel.  I always say, “Keep writing the next chapter!  Don’t go back until you’ve finished the manuscript, so that you don’t lose your momentum!”  But I’ve already lost my momentum.  I need to reset.

There’s always exceptions to the rules, and those exceptions always have good reasons.  (Or at least, they should.  “Just because” is never a good enough reason for either a rule or an exception to a rule.)

Dealing With The Emotional Fallout of Writer’s Block

Writer’s Block is hard.  It’s depressing.  Sometimes it’s the cause of depression, sometimes it’s caused by depression.  Often it’s a vicious cycle feeding one on the other.

I don’t know about other writers, but it’s easy for me to think I’m a worthless writer if I can’t even figure out the basics of my own plot.  I feel like a failure when I can’t write even a single good word.

But here’s the thing – it happens to all of us.  I promise you, there isn’t a writer out there who hasn’t run into Writer’s Block, and if any of them ever tell you they haven’t, then they’re either still inexperienced or they’re lying.  Writer’s Block happens.  It’s part of writing.  It’s why this job isn’t easy and why it can’t  be done by just anyone.

Okay, it’s one of the reasons, but you get my point :p

So, what to do?  First, forgive yourself.  Hell, not even that, there’s nothing to forgive – allow yourself to be imperfect.  Allow yourself to acknowledge the problem, to accept it as part of writing, and then you can move on.

Moving on will look different for every writer, and for every Writer’s Block.  Moving on from my 4-year block meant literally moving to another city and starting my life over.  Moving along this time will be far less drastic, I hope!

But try to find a way to move forward.  Even if moving forward means resetting.  Reset the story.  Reset your frame of mind.  Go on a vacation.  Go on a walk.  Take a hot bath.  Re-read what you’ve written so far.  Find another novel that inspires you and read it.  Read new stories.

Beating down Writer’s Block doesn’t always involve more writing.

But eventually, you’ve gotta get back to it.  Let yourself reset, and then, the instant inspiration strikes, pounce and go with it!  It’ll happen, sooner or later, as long as you’re dedicated to writing.

I may not always believe in myself, but I believe in you.

-Jon Wasik

Crafting the Future History of Humanity

“The future is not set.  There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.”

That’s one of my favorite lines from the Terminator franchise, and for any sci fi writer, it’s a worthwhile line to remember.

For those of us who craft stories of the future, it means that anything is possible.  It means that we have free reign to imagine any future.  In fact, it means we must imagine it.

For me, this year, that means imagining the future in which Project Sirius takes place!

Forget World Building, This Is Universe Building!

One of my favorite parts of writing a new series is world-building!  Until now, most of that has been centered on the Sword of Dragons saga, a completely original Universe, with no Earth to speak of.  Everything is crafted from the ground up.  The worlds, the cities, the cultures, the countries, and the magic system.

So not just a world, a whole Universe!

But for Project Sirius, things are a bit different.  I’m not building out a wholly original Universe.  I’m not inventing a brand new magic system.  Instead, I’m plotting out a possible future for humanity, a realistic look at the tomorrow that could come from the real today, and the course of technological advancement that leads us there.

See, this is what I love about writing – every time I start a project, I get to explore new topics, and seek out new knowledge and new….err, wait, that’s Star Trek ;)

Seriously, though, building up the Universe for Sirius definitely leveraged my experience building up the Sword of Dragons Universe, but I’ve had to learn about a whole slew of new topics, and it’s been an absolute blast!

Image Source – gagrid.deviantart.com

For the first novel, a lot of my research focused on the design and size of the ship itself – how big did a population have to be in order to maintain genetic diversity over the course of generations?  Under controlled conditions, 5,000 seemed an appropriate number, especially when throwing in some Sci Fi “magic” (IE tech) to help.  How big of a land area is needed to properly house and feed 5,000 people?  Well…again with some Sci Fi “magic” thrown in, I was about to put it in a dome at about 5 kilometers in diameter.  And that’s pushing it.

Learning this information helped inform what kind of culture would exist in the ship’s medieval-style town.  A tightly controlled society.  This, in turn, helped me develop themes and the characters.

In fact, it’s impossible for me to say what was developed first: the characters, the plots, the themes, or the Universe?  A sort of ‘chicken or the egg’ paradox, except it really is easy to resolve in this case – they were all developed concurrently.

But that was book 1, The Awakening.  Book 2 is something else entirely.  Because the focus will expand well beyond the confines of the town and the ship, and while I had some idea of what things would be like in the rest of the Universe, I hadn’t fully developed it yet.  I wanted to do that only once I needed to, so that I could help develop it along side the story.

So, what comes with book 2?  The actual future history of humanity.

And as much as I love Star Trek…it isn’t all sunshine and roses.

The Bleak and the Bold

One of the cool parts about writing fantasy and sci fi is exploring current day topics and issues in a fantastical or future setting.  And let’s face it…things are kinda looking bleak in the world these days.

Front and center in that picture is greed, and the 1% influencing, directing, or flat-out controlling the direction of society.  Sometimes without us realizing it, sometimes with us fully knowing it but unable to do a thing to stop it.

So as I started to craft the future history, I looked to where we are now, and where we might go if things don’t change.  Where the corporations might take us if they are left unchecked by unions, unchecked by society.

But I also looked to the past.  To what incentivized the Westward Expansion, for instance, and other colonization, because that’s a big part of the future history I’ve been crafting in Sirius – colonizing other worlds.

Technological limitations aside, what would make humanity and, more to the point, corporations fund colonization ventures into space?  Well, what else?  Wealth.  The promise of wealth.

Which means exploitable resources, lots of them.  Think Avatar and that movie’s “Unobtanium.”  But instead of some McGuffin, I thought about what else it could be.  What real-world resources were needed, and no, it isn’t oil that’ll take us to the stars, not now that everyone is finally accepting our role in climate change.

To put it simply, metals, valuable minerals, and in the case of power generation, deuterium and tritium.

Fusion power.

There’s still some sci fi stuff involved, too, including the eventual ‘inexpensive’ creation of antimatter.

Right now, any and all faster-than-light theoretical propulsion methods require exotic matter that we haven’t even proven exists (either that or it requires more power than our sun generates).  But it started with “what would get us into space faster right now?” and I took it from there.

I’m still working on it, but as of today, I have plotted out the ‘future history’ of the Terran system (IE solar system) and the Alpha Centauri colony.  There’s a lot more colonies out there, but for now, those two are my focus for the events that take place in Project Sirius 2.

I think I’ll stop here, though, because I almost wrote a paragraph with considerable spoilers in it ;)  I hope you’ve enjoyed this insight into the Universe of Project Sirius!  I mean…I know it sounds bleak, but remember, there’s always hope.  Or as they say in Star Trek, “There are always…possibilities.”

And Mika will never be the kind of person to just lie down and let the world steamroll over her ;)

Thanks for reading!
-Jon Wasik