The first Dominions Box-Set is now available from all the usual e-stores. It contains the first three novels (Dark Glass, Dead Flesh and Deep Water) along with the prologue story Gatekeeper and a number of bonus short stories.
And I’m keeping it at the ridiculously low price of 99p/99c, but only for this weekend—at some time on Monday it will rise to a higher price, so why not grab a copy now?
Click here for a list of stores where the Dominions Box-Set can be found.
Developments in technology offer new ways of working, new ways of doing things. But often, these developments take time to become mainstream. Think of electric cars—Clive Sinclair’s C5 was widely derided, and failed commercially, but it arguably paved the way for the electric and hybrid vehicles that are becoming increasingly common now.
Digital books, too, didn’t become mainstream instantly. Back before smart phones and laptops, ebooks were pdf files, and many people simply didn’t want to read whole books on a bulky computer screen. But new formats were developed, chiefly epub and mobi, and new devices appeared. When Amazon released Kindle, e-reading really took off. Now, with so many people owning smart-phones, ebooks can be downloaded and read through apps, and reading large amounts of text on screens has become relatively normal. And with the rise in popularity of audiobooks, another shift is occurring in the way people read (consume) books.
With the changes in technology, and the altering marketplace for ebooks, now companies are constantly appearing. Some of them carve out their own space (either geographically, like Kobo in Canada and Tolino in Germany, or through niche markets, like Overdrive with libraries), while others are either bought out (like Createspace) or simply disappear (and there have long been predictions that this will be the fate of Nook/Barnes & Noble).
One new name I’ve recently become aware of is Bubblin, and they’re aiming to provide a different reading experience. Describing themselves as both ‘an online cafe for books’ and ‘Bandcamp of books, comics and magazines’, Bubblin is entirely web-based. Instead of downloading books and using an app or dedicated e-reader, readers using Bubblin simply click on a book and it appears in their web browser.
Bubblin doesn’t use epub or mobi, but has its own formatting system—and this is fixed-layout. This means that, rather than allowing the reader to adjust the text (size, colour, font and so on), what appears on the screen is very much like a physical book, with the text and images fixed in place (in many ways this is similar to pdf files).
Initially, I thought this was a mistake. Isn’t one of the major benefits of e-books the ability to control the appearance of text to suit individual preferences and needs? Why would a company return to fixed-layout formatting?
Then I remembered the ‘Bandcamp of books, comics and magazines’ line, and I understood.
There are many examples of written material that requires pages to look a certain way. Think of the layout of magazine pages, or the way frames in comics can be of different sizes, often with images and text breaking out of the boxes. Then there are text books that rely on images and charts to convey information.
And even with standard text books, there are times when fixed-layout formatting is important. Having pages that look like fascimiles of newspapers can add to the reading experience (as in John Fowles’ The Magus). Irvine Welsh’s Filth has some of the text obliterating other parts as a way of conveying how the main character is being ‘taken over’ by something inside. Poetry, too, often conveys information in the placing of words on the page (such as Lewis Carroll’s The Mouse’s Tale from Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland.) While words convey a lot of information, text positioning can add another subtle layer, and this can easily be lost in the usual flexible ebook formatting.
The web-based nature of Bubblin gives another advantage—as their formatting system is based around CSS and Java (I think), it is possible to include other media within books. Images can be animated, and videos can play on pages. I believe the books can incorporate audio too—which immediately makes me consider the possibility of read-along audiobooks.
However, using a totally web-based system brought a question to my mind—are people willing to read full books in web browsers? Personally, I’m fine with my Kindle.
But over the last year I’ve started using e-reader apps on my mobile more often. And a decade or so ago I wouldn’t have imagined reading a whole novel on any kind of screen. Even when I first got an e-reader (an old Sony thing), I thought I’d use it only for freely downloadable classics while still reading physical copies of more recent books. But now, I’ve gone fully electric in my reading.
People’s preferences and habits change over time. TV shows and films are commonly streamed now, as is music, so why not books? As mobiles increasingly become the go-to devices for digital media, web-based reading starts to make a lot of sense sense.
And I’ve decided that when I finish the book I’m reading at the moment, I’m going to try a whole novel through Bubblin.
I’m also giving Bubblin a try as a writer. The process of formatting books for them is (for someone with limited coding knowledge) fairly complex, but there’s a good chance this will become easier over time. After all, formatting epubs continues to grow easier, with tools like Vellum and Draft-2-Digital’s conversion service.
I managed to format my Dominions prologue, Gatekeeper, though—and you can have a look at it by clicking here. Creating this book involved a fair amount of back-and-forth with Bubblin, and I have to say that they’re very receptive to feedback, and are constantly tweaking things to improve the whole user experience.
Will Bubblin prove popular enough with readers? I hope so, because any competition to the big players in the ebook market has to be good, and Bubblin are offering something different.
Have a look for yourself—pop over to bubblin.io and browse a few books (there’s no sign-up or registration, and at the moment the vast majority of books are free). If you want to take a look at my Gatekeeper, click here. And if you have any thoughts on Bubblin, I’m pretty sure they’d love to hear your feedback.
The first Dominions box-set, containing Dark Glass, Dead Flesh, Deep Water and the prologue short story Gatekeeper (plus a few extra bonuses) is coming out on 5th April, but it’s available for pre-order right now at the ridiculously low price of 99p/99c (or your local equivalent). Click here to check out what stores you can pre-order from.
Another short for you. This one’s called Opportunity, and it’s not so much dark as depressing (thought I should warn you of that straight off). You can read it here.
And if this is too much of a downer, there are always the other short stories (see the full list here).
I read China Mieville’s The City And The City recently (I’m slowly chipping away at my ‘to-read’ list). I enjoy his writing style, and I think his world-building is fantastic (in many meanings of that word). But something strange happened as I read the book.
It’s written in first person, and I automatically pictured the narrator as female. I’ve no idea why, but even when it became clear that the character was male, I still saw him as female. I don’t think there was anything specific Mieville wrote that would make me picture his protagonist as anything but male, so I can only think this is down to how I approached the book.
And this got me thinking. When I read, I picture things in a certain way, but this isn’t necessarily how others picture the book, or even how the writer saw the story in his or her own head. Every reader is different, and we each bring our own unique perspectives to anything we read.
Stories (in books) pass from writers to readers through the medium of words, but there is always going to be interpretation involved in this. Writers aim to give as much action/emotion/description in as few words as possible. If everything was described in enough detail to convey every single aspect of the story, the action would move at a glacial pace, and all sense of forward momentum would be lost. Stories that describe too much are (for most readers) tiring to read—hence the search for conciseness. Gustave Flaubert talked about finding ‘le mot juste’, the right word.
But even that causes problems. Words mean different things to different people. I’ve heard the word ‘solid’ used to mean both good (as in ‘rock-solid’, firm and unmoving—a solid fellow) and difficult (as in ‘hard’—“that game’s well solid!”).
Think of that classic story opening; ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’ That might conjure up thoughts of uncertainty, maybe even fear. But to some, storms can be exciting. Or maybe darkness helps others escape from their day-to-day troubles, and the addition of poor weather brings up thoughts of being beside a fire, enclosed in the safety and warmth of their very own home.
There is no perfect word. There is no ideal way to describe something.
Is this a problem? Not necessarily. One often-repeated piece of writing advice is to picture your ideal reader, and write to them. I believe Stephen King’s ‘ideal reader’ is his wife, and others might use real people too, but many create their own ideal reader (maybe a female forty-something divorced librarian living in Pittsburg, or a heavy metal fan working an office job but dreaming of becoming a professional musician). This might seem strange, but it is impossible to write a book that pleases everyone, and trying to make a story too universal usually means creating something bland, something that many find ‘okay’ but that nobody gets excited about. Anything designed to appeal to a wide range of people will fell watered-down.
Attitudes to books will naturally differ. Even if two readers enjoy the same book, it could well be for different reasons—some King fans might get a kick from the build-up of tension, and others might love the way he pulls them into the minds of his characters. Some people read Iain Banks’ sci-fi books for the vast ideas, others enjoy his way of telling a story.
There’s no right or wrong here. Every book is written by an individual (or a few individual in the case of co-written works), and the words are formed through the filter of their own lives. These books then get consumed by individual readers, who digest these words through the filter of their own experiences and ideas.
And this means that books are never static.
There’s this idea that, when something is created, it’s completed. In some ways, this is true—when a writer puts a book out, it stays the same unless they bring out a revised version. It’s the same with any art form—music, paintings, sculpture, films. But this ‘completed’ work can be digested by different people at different times. It can bring forth different emotions or lead to different thoughts. Every person who reads a book experiences something unique. And even re-reading a book can be a new experience.
As we grow, we develop, learning and understanding more, and our appreciation for things changes. The books we read ten, fifteen, thirty years ago might contain the same words in the same order that they did when we first picked them up, but if we re-read these words today we experience something totally different. Our interpretation is not only tinged with nostalgia, but also with our different perspective on life, our different personality. It’s part of the reason why books we loved as children can sometimes seem flat when we read them as adults, and why books we struggled to get into a few years ago can later become favourite reads full of meaning and excitement.
We never simply read words. We absorb them, run them through our experiences, our own unique thoughts. We take those marks on page or screen, and we breathe life into them.
The writer takes a story, moulds it, and lays its foundations on the page. But the reader brings it to life.
Some years ago, I spent a few months working at a holiday centre on the Isle of Wight (a small island by the south coast of England, for those of you unfamiliar with it). I enjoyed my time there, but the place was very dated. I could easily picture pre-war holiday-makers resting in deckchairs, or taking part in organised activities. In fact, much of the island felt like that, as if the ferry across took passengers not only a couple of miles in distance but also back thirty years as well.
This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. Yes, it provided its own source of amusement, but there was also something relaxing about it. The pace of life felt slower. Yes, the island has many beaches, and is in the warmer part of England, but I think it’s a popular holiday destination in part because of the feel of the place.
I was thinking of that time of my life recently (no idea why), and I started getting ideas for a story. I worked on this, and Time Away developed.
You can read Time Away here. If you’ve got a moment, I’d love to hear what you thought of it—simply comment under the story, or on this post.
I read genre books. Yes, I read literary fiction too (whatever that actually means), but because I enjoy science fiction, fantasy, horror, the occasional thriller and so on, I’m predominantly a genre reader.
As I both read and write more, I’m becoming increasingly conscious of tropes in different genres. These are those scenes or events that are expected, those parts of the story that almost define it as a certain genre. Thrillers have the ‘hero at the mercy of the villain’ scene, the ‘speech in praise of the villain’. There’s often a false ending, too—and this crops up in horror as well. In romance there’s the first kiss, the misunderstanding that appears to ruin everything, but there’s always a happily-ever-after (miss this and endure the wrath of countless romance fans). Then there are all the internal genres, those that follow a characters development (either positive or negative)—the moment when they have to make a choice from which there is no going back. In a maturation story, there is that moment when it becomes clear to the main character that the world they believed to be true is based on a lie of some kind.
So different genres have different tropes. But what about science-fiction stories? What defines a sci-fi story?
It has to be set in the future—unless it’s set in the past (like Star Wars), or an alternative present.
There has to be some kind of cool technology—unless there isn’t (think Planet Of The Apes.) And the technology doesn’t have to play a major role in the story either—it can be simply setting.
What about action? Well, there’s action in a lot of sci-fi—but not all. There might be battles in space, or there might be duelling in dialogue between two characters. Some sci-fi is fast-paced, but other stories in this area are slower and more reflective.
And are there any set scenes in sci-fi? Erm…no.
The more I think about this, the more I realise that science fiction is not a genre, at least in the same way that horror or thriller or crime or romance are genres. Science fiction refers more to the setting than the type of story being told.
Maybe a few examples will help:
The Martian is definitely sci-fi, but it is also a survival story; one man against the elements. It’s just like Robinson Crusoe, or any other survival story. It just happens to be set on Mars.
BladeRunner (Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep) is a philosophical detective story, with musings on what it means to be human, and also has many noir tropes—downtrodden detective, questions over who are in fact the good guys. Oh, and there’s a love story underneath all this. But it has replicants, and it’s set on an Earth that many people have abandoned to travel to the stars.
Ender’s Game is almost a sports story, with Ender starting off in the little leagues and working his way up to the big time. Ender takes his team and uses their weaknesses as strengths, overcoming all the obstacles in his path. It could almost be viewed as a coming-of-age story, too. The fact that the games involve space battles is secondary.
Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is comedy, full of bizarre happenings and loads of satire. The plot is secondary to the humour, and the science fiction setting simply gives Adams more scope for letting his ideas run riot, and allows him to satirise many things in our current world/time.
Asimov’s Foundation books (at least in the original trilogy) tell the story of a civilization over time, with much of the action involving political shenanigans and business dealings. The technology is used in trade, rather than in space battles, and the most important science is social science. And then, in the third book, there is the Mule, the lone individual who throws a spanner in the works, and proves that even the greatest minds are not infallible. Science-fiction is simply the setting in which Asimov tells his generation-spanning saga.
Dune is another saga, with all the political and familial intrigue of a historical novel. Like the best sagas, it draws the reader into a rich world populated by diverse characters, each with their own motives and desires. It just happens to be set on a desert planet.
Six science-fiction books, and all so different. Many sci-fi readers will enjoy them all, but there will be those who love getting embedded in the world of Dune but can’t stand the apparent frivolity of Hitch-Hikers. Those who become engrossed in Watney’s constant struggles in The Martian might be turned off by the socio-political dialogue in the Foundation books. These books area all undoubtedly science fiction, but they are very different story-types.
Have a look at the science-fiction sub-genres on Amazon—alternative history, first contact, metaphysical & visionary, military, time travel, space exploration to name a few. There is a science-fiction subgenre in romance, another in action & adventure. There’s science-fiction erotica, and there are technothrillers (where science-fiction and thriller meet). And that’s just the official categories. The film Alien uses the sci-fi setting to tell a classic horror story. Another film, Gattaca, is basically a society story (different classes of citizens and so on), but told in a future world.
I think this is a great strength of science-fiction, and it is something that sci-fi writers have utilised for years. In the late 1930s, L Ron Hubbard, already a successful writer of adventure stories, was approached by Astounding Science Fiction magazine to write for them. He was initially reluctant, saying that he didn’t write about ‘machines and machinery’, but about people. The publishers of the magazine told him that this was precisely what they wanted. His first story for the magazine was a success, and led to more and more people-based sci-fi stories, by writers such as Isaac Asimov.
There are some sci-fi stories that are primarily concerned with the science aspects (hard sci-fi, such as Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves or Arthur C Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama), but the majority use the setting to tell other stories, and may use this further to reflect on our present-day world. Science-fiction gives a writer great scope for asking ‘what if…?’ and then crafting a suitable story around wherever that question takes them. Or it gives them a vast canvas on which to tell a myriad of stories, drawing on whatever influences and preferences they have.
And this is one of the reasons I love reading science-fiction—the whole ‘genre’ gives me such a huge array of different stories. When I read sci-fi, I can explore types of stories I wouldn’t normally consider, but without stepping too far out of my comfort zone. I can escape to new worlds while still, for example, being presented with an intricate puzzle in the form of a crime/detective story. I can be entertained while being challenged, made both fearful and hopeful.
Much of this relates to fantasy, too—unsurprising, as the two ‘genres’ share many similarities. There are fantasy action stories, fantasy romances, fantasy thrillers, fantasy sagas—the list goes on.
Of course, in the end, the setting is only secondary to the story. A cool world is fun to visit, but without interesting characters being thrust into intriguing situations there’s little to hold us beyond a brief visit.
This is why, as a writer, it’s important that I understand tropes, and that I understand different kinds of stories. My own stuff fits in science-fiction, but to make the stories work, I first need to know what kinds of stories I’m telling.
Another short story for you. Can’t recall where the initial idea came from, but I think it was another of those free-writing ones. I started with the image of an attack on a house, but seen through cameras from a distance, and I wrote whatever came to mind. Of course, it needed a lot of editing, but I hope the final version works.
You can read the story, called Shell, here. And if you want more coffee-break fiction, the full list of my free shorts can be found here.
Last time I posted about re-writing the first Dominions book was some time ago, when I was approaching the final edits. I’ve now done all this work—polishing the text, removing any typos I found, and so on. Then I sent it off for an edit/proofread, formatted it and uploaded the finished file. Book done.
It’s available now, for free, from all the usual stores.
Reading that back, it sounds pretty run-of-the-mill, nothing exciting. In some ways, this is true, for me at least. I prefer the creative parts of writing—figuring out the story, working on the characters, writing and moulding the first draft. That’s the stuff that gets me fired up. All the polishing and prettifying is a kind of relaxing come-down, a lull before I dive into the next story.
And that’s where I am now—struggling with a plot that doesn’t quite work and characters with dubious motivations, and I’m enjoying the challenge of writing Dominions V.
But I’m pleased with the rewrite of Dark Glass. The main problems with the original version were poor writing that slowed the overall story down and a protagonist who, for the most part, allowed himself to be carried by events. The new edition has tackled both of these. Even with scenes added and a more involved story, the new version clocks in at around 10,000 words less than the original. And Rodin, the protagonist, is far more active, working on killing his target from the moment he sets foot in the Dome. So this re-write has been a creative success.
The other reason for doing this re-write was to make the first book in the series stronger in order to encourage more readers to buy subsequent books. It’s too early to tell if this is coming to fruition, but I’m quietly optimistic.
Is this something I’d do again? I’m not ruling that out, but for the moment my energy and time are better served by working on new books. But I’m pleased I’ve done this re-write. The Dominions series now has the opening book it deserves, and I’m going to feel more comfortable marketing this book now.
And if you want to check it out, it’s free from all major e-book retailers (and quite a few smaller ones). For a complete list of stores, click here (or on the cover).
And if you read this new edition, I’d love to know what you think. You can do that personally (twiain@twiain.com, or add a comment to this post), or publicly, in the form of a review.
Previous ‘Reworking a novel’ posts:
A successful first draft (part 5)
Editing or rewriting? (part 4)
My 63rd short story is now up, and you can read it here.
Fascination was another of those stories that started with the notion that we can never know everything about those around us – the many shoppers we pass in the streets, the occupants of all those cars that flash by, all those people struggling away on equipment at the gym. And, as in the case of this story, other passengers on a plane. We can’t know what’s going on in their heads, what they’ve just been doing, or what they’re going to do. And maybe they’re not even human.
I hope you enjoy Fascination, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it (feel free to leave a comment).
TW Iain 