Storming by KM Weiland is a historical/dieselpunk mash-up novel set in Nebraska in the 1920s. Barnstorming pilot Robert “Hitch” Hitchcock runs into a mysterious girl, Jael. She drops from the clouds and falls onto his biplane. Jael looks and acts like she comes from another country and another place. Who is she and what does she want? Hitch’s life becomes complicated when sky pirates come looking for her and try to take over his hometown in Nebraska.
Summary
Storming by KM Weiland begins with Hitch returning to his hometown of Scottsbluff, Nebraska on a barnstorming tour. He left his hometown many years ago searching for adventure and escaping from secrets from his past. Hitch is in Scottsbluff practicing flying an old plane wanting to impress a big shot hoping to join his flying circus. On a practice run with his biplane, he sees a woman drop from the clouds onto his plane. She falls into the lake and he tries to find her.
Along the way Hitch runs into the colorful characters found in Scottsbluff; Sherriff Campbell, Hitch’s brother sheriff’s deputy Griff, a mute boy Walter, feuding brothers J.W. and Matthew Berringer, and the Carpenter family who are farmers. Jael is from Storming. She has something that the maniacal Zlo from Storming wants from her. He comes looking for her and the citizens of Scottsbluff are in his way. Zlo will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Hitch must reevaluate his life and make a choice; help Jael with an impossible task or run away from everyone along with a fortune.
Recommendation
I read Storming by KM Weiland from February 15, 2017, to April 3, 2017. There were three books I read in 2017 for which I did not write a book review at that time. This is the first of the three retro posts that I will write. Storming was a fun and quick book to read. I enjoyed checking my notes on the book to prepare this review. I liked all the characters and the setting was interesting. By reading the complete outline transcript (as I detail in the links below), I understood how she developed the ideas to end up with this story. It would have been a different book if she had used Jael as the protagonist and set more of the story on Storming. I agree with her reasons for her choices and I’m happy with the book as written though.
Links
This is the link to the
Goodreads page of Storming by KM Weiland
In the outline, she writes her idea brainstorms, orders her ideas into scenes, and then writes summaries for each of the 50 scenes for the book. As a writer, what was most helpful to me was examining the complete outline transcript from her novel Storming which is available on her website.
The transcript uses the ideas from her book, Outlining Your
Novel, and from her other books on writing. Another resource that is available
on her website is a free template for the writing program Scrivener. The Scrivener
program is available for 30 days free on their website.
Tiamats Wrath by James SA Corey is the eighth book of The Expanse series. Winston Duarte and his band of former members of the MRCN from Laconia continue their plan to subjugate the whole human race. They plan to take over the solar system, creating an Empire with Duarte as the leader. Duarte believes he is the only person with the vision to defeat the creatures who destroyed the civilization who had built the gates to the 1300 worlds. Both sides gain victories and suffer defeats. Can James Holden and his crew defeat the Empire threatening to take over the 1300 worlds of man?
Summary
There are six viewpoint characters in Tiamats Wrath by James SA Corey.
James Holden is the viewpoint character in the prologue. The Laconians
hold him as a captive at their capital. They have kept him long enough that his
knowledge of the resistance is outdated, but they keep him around for a reason
only known by Winston Duarte.
Bobbie Draper is the captain of The Gathering Storm, the advanced Laconian
ship that the resistance captured. Her plan is to find ways that she can use
the ship to bring the resistance force to the Laconians. Her first mission is
to steal the special fuel needed to power the ship.
Alex Kamal is Bobbie’s pilot for The Gathering Storm. He gives a different perspective on Bobbie’s efforts. Alex has an old school approach to the resistance in contrast to newer members of the resistance. He remembers the actions of the OPA from thirty years ago, while a new generation has been born into the era of the Transport Union and the opening of the 1300 worlds.
Summary 2
Naomi Nagata has a different idea of resistance. She favors winning the
war from within the enemy. She thinks attacking the Laconians economically and politically
will win the war in time. Using that philosophy, she works behind the scenes
using the old OPA network.
Teresa Duarte is Winton Duarte’s daughter. He has made her his heir and
the potential ruler of a thousand-year-old empire. She is 14 years old and is
trying to come to terms with her place in society and as the heir.
Elvi Okoye is part of the science initiative to determine the nature of
the beings that destroyed the makers of the gates billions of years ago. The
Laconians have stationed her on a ship that explores the 1300 worlds of the
builders for clues to their demise.
Recommendation
Tiamats Wrath by James SA Corey seems like the middle novel of a trilogy. It continues the narrative from Persepolis Rising and builds up to the climax of the series in the ninth and final book. Bobbie’s story and Holden’s story paid off. Teresa’s story is just beginning. Eli’s story and Naomi’s story are setting up for a payoff in the next book. This is a great novel and I’m looking forward to reading the final book to see how the storylines are completed. So far, the ninth book is untitled, but they have it scheduled it to be published in 2020. I have put the book on my list to read this year.
Links
This is the link to the Goodreads page of Tiamats Wrath by James SA Corey.
In Babylon’s Ashes by James S.A. Corey, the Free Navy is trying to take the 1300 worlds. Can Holden and his crew defeat the Free Navy? Great conclusion to the Free Navy storyline.
In Persepolis Rising by James S.A. Corey, the Laconians plan to take the 1300 worlds. Can Holden and his crew defeat the Laconians? It starts a new trilogy. Great beginning to the Laconian storyline.
I attended the SF conference named ConFusion Detroit 2020 at 21111 Haggerty Road Novi, Michigan at the Sheraton Detroit Novi from January 16 to 19, 2020. The Ann Arbor Science Fiction Association sponsors ConFusion Detroit 2020. I attended four panels, two readings, and one interview. The theme of the conference was How to Train Your Confusion. It was a play on words promoting the movie How to Train Your Dragon. They showed the movie in the boardroom, but I did not watch it then.
The Ann Arbor Science
Fiction Association sponsors Detroit ConFusion.
Outside the Sheraton in snowy Michigan at the ConFusion Detroit 2020 Science Fiction Conference.
The 2020 Logo for ConFusion
Detroit 2020.
ConFusion Detroit 2020
Program Guide Cover
This is my badge
for ConFusion Detroit 2020.
Summary
Saturday, January
18th at 10 AM
The Future of Space
Travel panel with Jeff Beeler, Elly Bangs, Shannon Eichhorn, and Tobias Buckell:
What do the future
of space travel hold for us in the near term and the far future? They talked about
playing the game Kerbal Space Program. It is a space flight simulation game where
the player manages a space program using green-skinned Kerbals. https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/
For the current state of the space program they talked about the 2020 Mars
Lander and BFR Plus spaceship designed by SpaceX. Recommended books and
websites followed. The Case for Mars by Robert Zubin. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56713.The_Case_for_Mars
The Elon Musk Blog Series, Wait but Why by Tim Urban. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29437730-the-elon-musk-blog-series The
SpaceX feed at https://twitter.com/SpaceX They suggest following Gwynne Shotwell, who is
the President and Chief Operating Officer of SpaceX. She is the one who makes Elon
Musk’s ideas become reality.
They held the
panel in the Interlochen room with 28 attendees. There weren’t enough chairs in
the room, so six people were standing, including me.
Saturday, January 18th at 11 AM
Interstellar
Nations and Warfare: Space Opera Worldbuilding panel with Karen Burnham,
Marquel Jacob, Jenn Lyons, and Glynn Stewart:
The
first point is why write space opera if the physics tells us it is not likely
that we will communicate instantly through space and there is no faster than light
space travel? We write space opera because it is fun to extrapolate on current
technology. If the writer keeps the rules consistent internally, then it is okay
to write space opera.
If civilization is interstellar, then there should not be a scarcity of resources. So, where does the conflict come from? The conflict could come with ideas and the scarcity of specific resources. The primal motivations are land, money, and lies. Examples used with FTL travel as conflicts are an unstable FTL travel method in The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi and the scarcity of the spice used for FTL travel in Dune by Frank Hebert. The panel talked about pet peeves where authors get Worldbuilding wrong. Not following the rules of artificial gravity, there is no FTL travel in the story, but there is a fast trip to Jupiter, a one ecosystem planet, and no normal people left.
They
held the panel in the Manitou room with 22 attendees.
Saturday,
January 18th at 4 PM
Reading
by John Scalzi:
John Scalzi read from his soon to be released novel named the Last Emperox, a story from his book A Very Scalzi Christmas, a post from his blog, and he ended the hour with a question-and-answer session.
He read Chapter Two
of The Last Emperox. It is the third and final book of the Interdependency Trilogy
and will be released on April 14, 2020. The Chapter was from Kiva Lagos’s
perspective and concerns the events that occurred at the end of the previous novel
in the series.
A Very Scalzi Christmas
collects 15 short tales about the holiday season. He read one tale named
Resolutions for the New Year–A Bullet Point List. It was brief and was hilarious.
A short Q and A
followed. Scalzi had a question about using the first person in his novel named
Lock In. He remarked that seven years ago there was no narrative about binary
gender identification. Now, only seven years later, it’s not even an issue
anymore. Someone asked Scalzi about how he got the military culture correct in
the Old Man’s War series. He said his father and brother were in the service and
he did a lot of research to make the story work. Someone asked Scalzi about TV
and movie projects. He confirmed that the Redshirts project is dead… twice
dead. Scalzi confirmed that he has delivered 4 of the 13 novels contacted by
Tor. The trilogy is a trilogy and no more, though his original proposal
included a book set 5000 years in the Interdependency’s future.
The whole hour was
fun and perfect. It was my best hour of the conference.
They held the reading
in Ballroom C & D with 33 attendees.
Saturday,
January 18th at 5 PM
Science
Guest of Honor Reading of Edible Insects and Human Evolution by Dr. Julie
Lesnik:
She read from her book
Edible Insects and Human Evolution. Images projected on a screen accompanied
the reading. Most of the images were humorous.
First, we must
understand our aversion to eating insects. Humans display fear and disgust for
the concept of eating bugs. Fear goes with spiders and disgust goes with an aversion
to disease. By taste, humans associate sweet and salty to good and bitter to
bad. Uncooked insects are bitter; thus, people consider them bad to eat.
Insects in the human
diet have gone for absent to adverse through time. Romans consumed insects. Something
happened where insects have become absent in Western Civilization’s diet, and
this absence has transformed into an aversion to eating insects. In modern
times, people in Equatorial regions consume insects. Why is this behavior
observed?
Will humans
overcome the aversion to eating insects? Insects are a great source of protein.
They use Black Soldier fly larva in pet food and they use mealworms in
bioconversion. The most likely source for insect consumption is crickets. They
are not economical now, but the price point is coming closer to feasibility.
She brought edible crickets for those audience members who wanted to try them.
They held the reading
in the Keweenaw room with 31 attendees. There weren’t enough chairs in the room,
so four people stood.
Saturday,
January 18th at 6 PM
Short Fiction
Submission: Advice from the Editor panel with Jeff Chapman, Jennie Ivins, Scott
Andrews, Mur Lafferty, and Alvin Mullin:
The editors in the
panel answered about the dos and don’ts when submitting for magazines and
anthologies. The panelists have a varied background as editors.
Jeff Chapman
reaches writing and is an editor for a literary magazine.
Advice for successfully
submitting short fiction includes use no special formatting, learn about special
requirements for each market where you are submitting, and read an issue of the
magazine to understand the stories the magazine accepts. Read the submission guidelines
and know your market. Note that the submission grinder gives example turnaround
times for each magazine. https://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/
Keep your cover letters
short. Try to emotionally detach yourself from rejection. Form rejections are
part of the process. A mistake is a moment to learn. If they reject you, then
you are a working writer.
She talked about the great time she had on her Spanish tour in 2019. She talked about pushing for getting a breakout book which caused her to burnout. It took her four years to write book three of a series when she lost her agent and wondered if she could make a living as a writer. She persevered, got a new agent, and wrote three books in a year. Keep doing the work because you don’t know what book will break out. Continue your journey on how to take feedback. Turn off your critic’s brain when you are reading as an author. Create a realistic success metric for yourself. Write the book of your heart.
They held the
panel in the Charlevoix room with 12 attendees.
Sunday, January 19th at 11 AM
Plan Your Outbreak!
lecture with Keren Landsman:
Keren Landsman is an Israeli writer and doctor specializing in Epidemiology and Public Health. Her science lecture was about from influenza to the black death, discussing what made the largest biological disasters happen and how to use that knowledge in Worldbuilding an outbreak.
Worldbuilding is a
character on its own. It needs a significant role in the story’s plot. A
pathogen causes disease. She talked about various diseases including Tuberculosis,
syphilis, the black plague, rabies, cholera, and Ebola. An example was the Broad
Street Pump. Dr. John Snow figures out the cause for a cholera outbreak by
interviewing patients to determine they all used a single contaminated water pump.
One thing to remember
is that doctors and nurses always get the disease they are treating. The family
members are the next to get the disease. Rabies is not a good disease to build
an outbreak story from since it is only transmitted from animal to human by
biting. Traveling Italian merchants brought The Black Death to Europe. It is
normal to have quarantine for 40 days.
They held the
panel in the Leelanaw room with 10 attendees.
Recommendation
– Conclusion
As I drove up I-75 into Michigan, I drove into a snowstorm. I drove slowly and got there safely. The ConFusion Detroit 2020 conference was held in this location previously. In 2019, I attended the con in another location, so it took me a while to figure out how to get to the conference center from inside the hotel. Once I got to the conference center, the locations were easy to navigate. There was more room at this location and it had more activities than in 2019. I enjoyed the variety. My star of the con was John Scalzi. He gave an excellent reading of Chapter Two of his upcoming book named The Last Emperox. My other highlights were Kameron Hurley’s interview and the lecture on Edible Insects and Human Evolution. I’m planning to return next year.
Links
I attended the SF conference ConFusion in Detroit, Michigan from January 18 to 20, 2019. The theme of the con was Storming the ConFusion, so they designated the areas with names related to the movie, The Princess Bride. I had a great drive to Detroit just before the snowstorm came. My star of the con was John Scalzi. He gave an excellent reading and was engaging in the panel I attended. My other highlights were Ada Palmer’s interview and watching The Princess Bride at the con. I’ll be back next year.
In July 2018, I completed the first draft of Assassin
in New Marl City totaling 99,981 words and 36 chapters. Completed pre-draft two
(30 chapters long) in December 2018 at 89,072 words. Finished draft two edits
for Chapters 26 and 27 in August, chapters 28, 29, and 30 in September, and chapters
19 and 20 in October. I reviewed chapter 21 in November and chapter 25 in December
to complete the draft two edit. I will start the third draft edits in March
2020.
In January, I submitted chapters 25 and 26 of Assassin
in New Marl City to the Novel Writing
Workshop at Parma, Ohio library.
In January, I submitted the story “Hannibal
Washington’s Fall” to the Introductory Writing
Workshop at Parma, Ohio library.
I made five posts on my Goodreads account in January.
In the past, I submitted the stories The Four Humors, Space Station Sunyata, Grognard, Get to
the Point, LARP Film noir, and Sleeping Sickness to magazines.
I submitted “Popular Mechanics Re-brewed” to Daily
Science Fiction online magazine in January.
Magazine submissions for 2020 are; 1 different story submitted 1 time with 0 accepted, 1 pending, and 0 rejection.
Events
from January 2020
I attended the ConFusion Conference in Novi, Michigan from January 16 to
19, 2020. The Ann Arbor Science Fiction Association Sponsors ConFusion.
I plan to write five blog posts for garydavidgillen.com
including my Writing Progress Report for February 2020.
I plan to work
on third draft edits for Assassin in New Marl City using comments from the Novel
Writing Workshop at Parma, Ohio. In July 2019, I started the third draft edit
for Chapter One and used it at the first pages workshop at Confluence 2019. I
plan to complete third draft edits for chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4 in March 2020.
Polish and submit the stories Caliburnus, Space-Dog
Confession, White Bracer, Mage Squad, I Shall Not Return, Prisoner of Tarnal, and Kay-Eye for submission to short fiction
magazines.
Submit the Four Humors,
Space Station Sunyata, Grognard, LARP Film noir, Sleeping Sickness, and Popular
Mechanics Re-brewed to other short fiction magazines.
Put the novel, Assassin in New Marl City, into the writing
program, Scrivener.
Buy an e-book cover for Assassin in New Marl City from
Fiveer.
Write a story for the Introductory
Writing Workshop at Parma, Ohio library.
I plan to make five posts on my Goodreads account;
update the information on my Facebook and Twitter accounts and update all the
pages of my website in February 2020.
Planned
Events for February 2020
The next conference I plan to attend is Cleveland ConCoction on March 20
to 22, 2020.
This is a link to the Cleveland ConCoction website.
