Ransom Noble's Blog

I’ve been changing a lot of things, whether it has been a new year’s resolution or not. I was asked today if I made a resolution, and this year, not so much. I had the flu for Christmas, so it’s been fun recovering from that. This week is the first I’ve really thought about it, because I’m finally feeling better and not so far behind on all the work that needs to be done.

My full-time job took a lot of adjustments, and I’m getting used to the fourth position and the fourth timespan of the past year. Luckily I like the one I’m on. I think I might have this spot for a while. It’s gotten in the way of my daily writing habit, and I’ve been giving myself grace to get used to it, and working to write some short stories and not pressure myself into novels at the moment.

I did try a novel in October/November. But it didn’t catch this time. Maybe next time. Next time might happen in the next couple months. I might also be finding a new house, so don’t hold your breath. I’m not. Taking the yoga advice- breathe.

Last fall also marked my yoga teaching for 20 years. Feels like a long time, but maybe that’s just because I have taken yoga through many changes in my life. It’s been with me through 4 houses in 4 cities/towns. So if you see me adjusting more to finding what works in life, it’s because I threw myself a huge turn-everything-upside-down party and I’m still finding which way is up.

I’m still lucky though. I’ve never felt compelled to keep doing something just because that’s the way it’s always been done. I still prefer to share joy but I’m not afraid of awkward or difficult conversations. May you be so lucky in your life, too.

I’ve been working on a novel series for a while. It took a few level-up style exercises to get here. It’s been working, and I’m currently doing the pre-writing exercises for Book 3.

It’s not really a trilogy, or I would be happy. And then my scope creep friend enters the conversation, and I’m done for. Really. Truly. Done for.

Because tonight I realized I needed an extra book. It’s not that I need another book. But I desperately want to write it. And I think I need to level up again.

I think a couple of my characters, Audrey in particular, want to be activists. Audrey wants to run around the galaxy freeing the oppressed and creating new havens for the displaced. Audrey finds more trouble to get into than I can keep her out of, and I’m worried she’s going to drag her friends into scary stuff they might not survive. Maybe I should say they won’t all survive. I already knew that, though, but this escalates it.

Isn’t it fun to write? Isn’t it fun to have bigger and better ideas as you go, and trying to keep up with all of them while also doing the other things life demands?

I also figure if Audrey’s getting into trouble, Ichek is not far behind. I’m almost positive I’m going to have an entire Zoo War book on my hands and be helplessly blocking all those movements. Must be time to ask all those veterans I work with how that might go down. Call it a group project and don’t mention aliens… I can’t see how that can go badly. (Ahahahaha they already think I’m weird.)

Sometimes I think of how some male writers in the past had wives or mothers to make them food and to take care of the chores, and I imagine what I could do with that kind of time. Pardon me, but it’s time to rescue the poor kitty from my son again, referee yet another disagreement between the kids, and somehow make sure everyone eats enough before we try to sleep. Is it time to sleep yet? If it isn’t, please lie to me.

That word – along with other qualifiers like maybe and perhaps – make it into my notes a lot. Like I can’t make it an absolute for some reason. Always and never are rarely in there. I wonder, occasionally (See?), if that is so I can maneuver in a world or a story that I haven’t gotten into very well just yet.

I’ve been noticing it, so it might also be changing. Change is like that. You see it, you decide whether or not to keep it. Self-awareness can be that trigger for a new habit, or to break an old one.

Not everyone works that way. I notice, and I watch them. I was gifted Harriet the Spy when I was about seven years old, and I loved that book. I think that might have been a reason why I couldn’t be found without a notebook for, like, well, all my life. Paper and a pen are usually at hand, even when I have moved many of my writing activities into more digital formats.

That, at least, is not a habit I’m trying to break. Paper and pen are useful, even though we have hand-held computing devices barely imaginable in my childhood. A smart phone is one thing, and paper allows imagination in an entirely different way.

I read this meme on Holly Jahangiri’s FB page, and it’s spot-on. And then I wonder, we take away the humanity of so many people through stereotypes, slurs, and villainization. Yet we give it to Alix AI as if it deserves it when other humans don’t. There’s a story in this for me somewhere, but it hasn’t come out yet.

That may not be true all the time, but lately – I’ve leaned into the chaos. I’m not sorry.

Do you wonder where chaos comes from? I do. Often, but I’m also wondering where order erupts from and why so many people think it’s better. Maybe the reason lies with logic and that they think they can deduce what’s coming.

Maybe the cleanliness idea to find things is just too ingrained.

While I’ve been merrily turning my life upside down this year, I’ve struggled to keep up things like my blog. That’s a thing most of you have witnessed before, and thanks for sticking with me.

I’ve been listening to the audio version of the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire, performed by Mary Robinette Kowal. A great thing about October Daye is she changes through the series, she finds her limits in the books, and they change as she does.

I was also listening to some of the novellas that were nominated for the Nebulas, and I hope to get to the novels, too.

One of my great struggles in this time of chaos is the charging cord for my tablet, already replaced once. There are specific positions where it charges, partially charges, or just decides to not charge at all. Finally broke down and ordered a new one, since there’s nothing else wrong with the tablet at all. Plus- my kid keeps borrowing it when she leaves her charging cable for her school chromebook somewhere else.

I started reading Book 2 (the last novel I drafted) but I haven’t started editing it yet. It’s on my horizon, though, as well as a new short story that keeps buzzing in my head during my new job. Other changes include two lovely cats to share my space and make me laugh. Yes, their names together are Q&A and I adore them both. Pretty sure Q thought I was completely nuts when I told him I brought him a new friend home last week but he’s come around to my point of view.

For those of you who’ve known me for a while, yes – cats were exactly what’s been missing from my life. I’ve always been fond of void kitties and I’m intent to spoil these two. I should add pictures of them to my Patreon for good measure.

I got the notification that the books have shipped. They should be here soon. It’s so cool!

I’ve had a lot of thoughts about resolutions. I haven’t put many of them down on paper yet, and that’s because I’m just ready for chaotic changes. That sounds a little crazy, and that’s going to be just fine. It means I have ideas and it’ll take multiple steps to get there, but I need to keep my eyes forward.

Stay tuned for the ensuing chaos. It’s going to be a wild ride.

The sample book arrived this week from Ingram. I’ve been having a bunch of big feelings about this book finally being real and readable.

I’ve been writing a lot of words over the years. I started working on novels almost as soon as I got out of college (and of course there were pieces of novels before, but I’d never finished a longer work before The Art of Science).

One of the bad habits I got into was not finishing them at the time I wrote them. Maybe it was neurodivergence, and maybe it was just not understanding how the editing process worked.

Don’t Tell Your Mother was originally written in 2009, the year my daughter was born. I took time to edit, to send to different readers (and I also read for them), and eventually I had a book.

My step-dad told me when I was young that nobody writes anything worth reading until they’re fifty, or maybe (strongly stressed maybe) forty. I was published for the first time at thirty – and I wanted to prove him wrong. That I wrote things worth reading. At least I did prove it to myself and others along the way.

However, there are a lot of things I understand better now. So many authors can’t support themselves on their writing because the world is tough and a steady income is needed. So many authors are busy with children and writing is very time consuming and we can’t all make that time on top of a family and a full-time job. So many of us need health benefits so we can’t just quit a full-time job with insurance and hope our written words will carry us through.

While it feels like this book took me a very long time, it also sat for long periods where I didn’t touch it. Some projects are like that – and we don’t always have time to confront a project day after day when we’re so busy with the rest of our lives. Plus, I had this idea that I needed to get out – and I’m also working on it now – that had my attention from the beginning (2006). The problem was I knew I wasn’t a good enough writer to tackle it then, but I think I am now. The multitude of years behind that project shows how time changes the project, and how I look at it now isn’t how I imagined it in the beginning.

I’ve had a few of these ideas over the years that just stick with me, and I’m cleaning them up and doing my best to get them out now. Waiting isn’t making them better, but it does make me want to rewrite the entire thing again. One problem is the next few in the queue are SFF and in my own created worlds – problem only because they’re involved projects and I need to keep them all clear in my head. But also – it just means every project I am bringing out only makes me more excited to share the next one. Stay tuned.

Amazon has a ‘temporarily out of print’ on the Don’t Tell Your Mother page- try Barnes and Noble or BAM. Or send me a message- I am due to buy more books and I could sign and send them direct.

I found two this week in Book 1, toward the end. I’m crushed, except really I’m just fixing it and seeing how I can smooth out those bumps.

You’re wondering how I know I made two mistakes? One’s easy, I had a character interacting with the crew and then said she didn’t come out of her quarters until the third day. OOPS! That seems easily fixed, except that I had my characters focusing on the wrong thing during the two days before that.

Also, I had carefully mapped out my stars and the time it would take to visit each destination in this book, and I flipped the two at the end, which gave them a lot longer to focus on the wrong thing- and not enough time to struggle home by the deadline.

It’s funnier because I had a friend read (listen in her car) an earlier version and she didn’t catch it, either, which just goes to remind me why we need more sets of eyes (and often a cooling-off period) to create an amazing book.

As I’m changing these bits, I’m thinking a lot about what I know will happen as well as what the characters are experiencing at the time. I’m reminded of all the role-playing games where players don’t get to see what the DM has going on behind the screen – surprises happen despite our best efforts. I’m hoping that final piece comes together this week. I know I’m close but it’s not close enough!

At least, not for a moment. I printed everything I wrote in this series in the last couple months and I’m reading it, making notes, getting ready for that next draft. When I started, I found a few little things. I’m more than halfway through book 1 now, and I’m getting the reminder I needed to bring that forward in the other books. I have figured out I love the word ‘still’, among other things, and my notes are including things that didn’t happen as well as things that still need to happen. (Yeah, there it is again.)

I’m glad I tailored this first book the way I did, and took away a bit of the complexity. Sadly I love big complex story lines. I love the struggle of getting the pieces together in an outline and then on the draft pages. I do not love how long it takes me to get a finished project. What I tell myself is that if I keep working on it, I’ll find the process – and I know it is getting better.

In the first book, the mechanic (Uehe) keeps upgrading the ship and causing delays. Lorelei (captain) asks. “Uehe, how much time do you need by for the life support? Best and worst case?”

Uehe smoothed his fur. “Best case, end of the day. Worst case never.”

“Never?” Lorelei sat down on the bench behind her.

While she takes this pretty well, the mechanic gets everyone off the ship until he fixes it. It gives them time to see this planet (or at least the city they landed in) before they’re back to their breakneck pace. There’s nothing quite like a deadline that you’re not sure you can make but you need to or everything gets much worse.

At least for this year. I didn’t expect to write this many words. I didn’t expect to have my project split into two pieces. I definitely didn’t expect my characters to take a vote to not follow my outline anymore. However, I’m pretty excited with how these things did turn out. I’m really excited that I’m going to hit the end of the novel tonight.

Even the NaNoWriMo site has a link that says, “Now What?”

For me, I know what I’m going to be doing. I’m translating this into a workable schedule. I spent an amount of time that I felt I could continue into December. I’ve been working to update my media presence and I have one more book in the queue to be available in December. I averaged about 4000 words per day during NaNo, plus I was working to preplan the next stage.

As for the series I’m working on, I have Book One, Novella, Book Two, and where it ends I have to think. I had Book Two taking on several things that didn’t actually happen as I thought it would, and so Book Three may be on the horizon, and it might have a few other things happening in the middle. I need to add at least one more novella to the saga because the villains of Book One changed, and they give another layer to where the book actually ended up. I also have several other pieces I could write, and from here I’d need to take a few minutes and write out the parts I want to write at the moment. Book Two was supposed to have a brilliant mad scientist involved, and so far he’s been absent. The other thing I need to remember is that a bunch of relationships changed during this project and that will shape how the next piece falls out. Mr. Mad Scientist Dude might just get his own novella/novel alongside his hero, who came up more often because of his own great and terrible creations.

This is the joy of writing, editing, and discovering. This is also one reason I’m so happy running around the galaxy with these not-so-intrepid adventurers. There’s simply no end. Maybe because I don’t want it to end. I just can’t wait to share all of this with you!

Oh, NaNo, this concentrated writing time is supposed to follow my outline. And it mostly does. I’m just not sure what to do with it when I wrote a novella that was supposed to be part of book 2, and then started book 2 and I’m not sure how long this thing is going to take. How could 30,000 words go so quickly? Well, other than it being November- I found an accidental romantic interest for my villain, the passengers are just super annoying even in how they approach this trip, and my MC just found her eye twitching just dealing with the first few hours after the passengers boarded the ship.

It’s weird to have an outline that I’m following and still discover so much in my draft. Isn’t it? The passengers have a party of ten and outnumber the crew. It’s gonna be a long ride, folks. Here’s hoping we come out the other side without my MC ordering all the passengers murdered. That would definitely put a kink in her plans to get paid.