Gavin E. Parker's Blog

Western Stars is an intimate, measured work, far removed from the bombast of a thunderous stadium gig, and a no lesser thing for it. 4/5

Time for an update, I guess.  I’m working on Ephialtes Part II, and making good progress.  I’ve been trying to beat the manuscript into something readable for the last few months and it’s finally beginning to take shape.  Early drafts are so full of typos, structural problems and placeholders that it’s difficult to appreciate what might be lurking beneath it all.  There is no flow whatsoever when you read through them as you’re constantly stopping to make minor (sometimes major) corrections, jot down notes, search your internal consistency checker and do a thousand and one other necessary things. There’s still a way to go yet but it feels like I can see an end in sight.  It’s been bent into shape enough and polished to a degree that I can now appreciate what it is that I have written, and I think it’s not too bad.  There’s a few more things left to straighten out and some more very fine polishing to do but, essentially, I think we’re at the home straight.  I should have something for the beta readers within a couple of months. Downloads for Ephialtes remain good.  Since it went permafree in the spring we’ve had over ten thousand downloads, hopefully clocking over to eleven thousand early in the New Year.  Sales of the Ephialtes Shorts haven’t been as robust, but they will be anthologised next year and as such should be easier to promote. Ephialtes Short IV: Be All You Can Be (one of my personal favourites) will be released on 21 February 2017.   The longest of the shorts (I’m pretty sure that, technically, it’s a novella), I hope it manages to find an audience.  I came to like the main character so much she got to have a significant role in Part II and will, in all likelihood, be a major player in Part III. The other thing I’m kicking around just now is the story for Part III.  I have two or three pages of notes and I know what the story is in broad terms but I’ll need to work on it and refine the structure in the coming months, especially since it looks like I’ll be in a position to begin writing the first draft by springtime. That’s where I’m at, then.  There should be a couple of big releases in 2017 (The Ephialtes Shorts Collection and Ephialtes Part II) and I hope to have at least a draft of Part III in the can before the year is out. Best wishes to all of you. Gavin E Parker, 31 December 2016.

I finished the first draft of ****** ****** Ephialtes Part II, yesterday.  There’s a huge amount of work left to do.  Aside from all the editing and proofing there are two sequences missing.  One, because I wasn’t sure how to do it, and the other because I’m not sure where it fits in.  I may end up cutting the first one, but the second concludes a subplot carried over from the first book, so it has to go in somewhere. I experienced some ground-rush as I got toward the end.  As I got closer to the finish it seemed to be getting closer to me.  I was expecting it to top out at somewhere around the two hundred and fifty thousand word mark, but it’s actually just a little over two hundred thousand (Ephialtes was a hundred and sixty thousand).  It might get bigger or smaller in the editing process. So that’s that for now.  For the next month I’ll try to forget it exists.  It’ll be nice getting away from those people for a bit.  I mean, they’re nice enough (for the most part) but, oy, always with the drama.

As of this morning I’m halfway through writing the first draft of ****** ****** Ephialtes Part II, in terms of chapters, at least.  As you can see, I’m being coy about the title.  Not for any well thought out reason, it just feels like I should be.  The above picture is what it currently looks like; a typo-filled incoherent mess. Sorting the mess out is the fun part for me.  At the moment it’s a bit of a slog, so I’m glad to be heading down the other side of the mountain now.  I hope to have a completed first draft by the end of the year (secretly hoping well before the end of the year) with a release date some time in autumn 2017. This book is about twice the length of Ephialtes, so I have my work cut out. Right then, Chapter 26 . . . #EphialtesPartII

The shorts won’t be out in this format for another year or so yet, but here are some early proofs. Ephialtes Short II: A Cold Wind Blows will be available for download from 21 June at your favourite digital outlets: Amazon, Smashwords, iBooks, Nook, Kobo and others.

This where we be at. I did a five day free KDP Select promotion of Ephialtes last week with some additional paid promotion of the promotion over two of the days. Happily, that lead to 1,818 downloads and a good few hours at the number one spot on Amazon’s Free Space Opera Science Fiction and Free Military Science Fiction charts. Up to last week total downloads for the first six months of release were less than 250, so I’m very pleased with how that all worked out. Today I’ve let Ephialtes’  KDP Select membership lapse. That means no more free days and no more Kindle Unlimited availability, though the book is still available for purchase through Amazon. The upside is that now I’m free of the KDP Select exclusivity agreement I’m able to publish with Smashwords and their distribution partners. Ephialtes is now available through Smashwords for free. In the next few days it should start popping up on other outlets – Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Overdrive and others. It will be free through these channels, too. Exciting, huh?

Let’s recap. Sometime around April last year I began setting down ideas on paper for a novel. At the time it was nameless, unless you count ‘Mars Shit’ as a name. I’d been kicking some concepts around for a while, and they began to coalesce that April. With a little bit of corralling I shaped them into the outline for a novel length story.

At the end of that month I started writing. There were so many reasons not to write it (I wouldn’t see it through; it would be rubbish; I had no experience, etc) that I bloody-mindedly thought I had to give it a shot. Yes, it might be rubbish, but at least I would have done it. And if I could do it, there were all kinds of super-modern channels by which I might be able to get it out into the world.

So I set off down that road, knocking out between one and three thousand words a day until I’d finished the first draft. I was driven on by the fear that if I stopped I would never start again. Some days words flowed and I was pleased, occasionally impressed, with what I had written. Other times it was a labour and I turned out garbage. But I pressed on.

When I finished in midsummer I put the draught away and was relieved to be shot of it. The last couple of weeks had been particularly trying. If I couldn’t have seen the finish line in the distance I might have fallen. I staggered to the end then put it out of my mind.

Around mid-November I had recuperated enough to dig it out again. I read it and began revising, rewriting and editing it into something readable. I moved house in late January, so there was another hiatus there, but from March on I worked on the manuscript until its release in September.

As the release date appeared over the horizon I stared to think about publicity. After poking around the internet for some guidance I discovered that I should have been working on building some form of public profile years before I even though about setting pen to paper. Ho hum. I had three months to build something, so I set up this site and one for the book. The point of this site was to generate a following who would then be curious about the book.

Well. Nice plan, in principle, but what would I blog about? I tried a few wibblings about my experiences writing the book but no one was biting. Why should they? It also came to my attention around this time that there are thousands upon thousands of wannabe writers hawking their dubious wares around the interwebs. There I was, trying to make my voice heard above a massive discordant chorus of dreck.

The book was released on 22 September. It got a couple of good reviews (see here and here) and I’m happy with the way it turned out. I think it’s a good book, and I stand by it. I’m currently working on some shorts set in the same fictional universe, then I’m going to be writing book two of the trilogy.

I gave up blogging for a while because no one was in the least bit interested. I’d get maybe five views for a post, and I’d suspect four of them were bots. But now I’m back. The book is out and I’m once again seeking the world’s attention. I’ve got some schemes in the pipeline and I’m planning to build on the tiny bit of interest I have manage to garner so far.

So this is a sort-of new beginning. The book, now called Ephialtes (a huge improvement on the working title, if still unbeloved by some) is taking its baby steps in the world and I’m back here to support it. Stick around, it might get interesting. #ephialtes

Between writing books one and two of the Ephialtes Trilogy I wrote a series of shorter pieces (most of them quite a bit longer than a standard short story) and have been gradually putting them out over the last eighteen months or so. They’re set in the same fictional universe and sit somewhere between the two books. They feature characters and incidents from both books and expand on them or come at them from new angles. I’ve compiled them into book called The Ephialtes Shorts Collection which will be released on 16 May. It will be available from Amazon in both paperback and eBook formats. The eBook is available to pre-order now – just click on the link above. The first book of the trilogy, Ephialtes, remains permanently free so if you haven’t got round to checking it out yet there’s nothing to stop you getting up to speed before The Ephialtes Shorts Collection comes out! #SciFi #selfpublishing #shortstory

I’ve always liked stationery, but I much prefer convenience.  The modern age affords us the ability to tinker away on our texts with next to no cost, until we’ve chiselled our lunk-headed thoughts into beautifully constructed prose.  All the extraneous words, punctuation and formatting lie around the base of the finished work, chipped away as we sculpted – well, maybe not David, but at least a very nice email to HR. So why pens?  All those years ago at grammar school it was dictated that we should only use fountain pens.  This led to a few years of blue fingers and exercise books which appeared to be sponsored by Ralph Steadman or Jackson Pollock, until, around the third or fourth year, enough confidence had been gained to do the right thing rather than the mandated thing: buy a biro, and cast the fountain pen, half-filled bottle of ‘Quink’ and far-bluer-than-it-used-to-be pen case into the nearest bin. Despite all that, and filled with a spirit of contrarianism, a few years back I bought, for no good reason, a Lamy fountain pen.  It’s a lovely thing, much better than the trashy numbers that blighted my childhood, and it writes beautifully.  It was a great pleasure, until I realised that the only things I ever write long-hand these days are shopping lists or telephone messages.  “Bob called, he’s on his mobile,” on the back of an envelope doesn’t really warrant the dignity a fountain pen might try to bring to it. But still – once an idea gets in your head it’s hard to shift.  If you have to write out long-hand in the twenty-first century the obvious choice is the gel-pen, but that didn’t stop me last week when I was grabbed by the thought that a moderately upmarket ball-point might be just what I needed to make my life complete.  To that end, I got myself a Parker IM ball-point pen, which I can only describe as disappointing.  Hey!  Why not get a Parker gel refill!  That should do it!  A further six quid into the hole, and no more satisfied. So what is the allure of pens?  Messy, awkward, disappointing and, unless you’re caught in a pinch, not really up to the job of getting words on the page.  Well, not in the right order, anyway.  I guess it’s nostalgia mixed with that weird physical pleasure that comes from gliding the nib across the paper.  Not the best way of doing it, but somehow comforting.  Like vinyl, or chemical photography. Anyway, in an attempt to alleviate the disappointment of the Parker ball-point fiasco I’ve ordered a Parker fountain pen with a set of pink cartridges.  You know, for corrections.  Because that’s something I need, right?  For corrections, yeah?  And if you’ve got to use a pen, why not use a fountain pen, amiright?  The feel of that glide across the paper, the look of that slightly uneven distribution of ink.  I can’t wait ’til it gets here.  Because that pen is really going to rock.  I just know it. #fountainpens #parkerpens #writing

We caught up with Gavin E Parker on 27 August, 2018, almost eighteen months after we last got together. Here’s how it went down. INTERVIEWER:

It’s been about eighteen months since we last spoke. What have you been up to since then? GAVIN E PARKER:

Oh, this and that. I published The Ephialtes Shorts Collection and Phobos Rising, the second novel of the Ephialtes trilogy. INTERVIEWER:

How did that all go? GAVIN E PARKER:

Pretty good. No amazing sales figures – I have to be honest here, I sell about three to five books a month. But it could be worse. And I’ve had some more good reviews, which are always welcome. I’ve been building a mailing list, too, which is something I realise now I should have done from the very beginning. I’m still learning a lot, feeling my way into this. INTERVIEWER:

What are you working on at the moment? GAVIN E PARKER:

I’m hammering away at the last book of the trilogy. INTERVIEWER:

And how are you finding it? GAVIN E PARKER:

I have to be honest again, it’s been a slog. This one has taken me the longest to write and has been, I think, the most difficult. INTERVIEWER:

Difficult how? GAVIN E PARKER:

There are various reasons it’s been harder than the others. For one, I know it’s something I can do now so I’m not so driven to push on with it. On the first book I had a morbid fear that if I stopped writing for even just a day I would never start again, so I forced myself to write at least some stuff every single day, even if I wasn’t feeling it, even if it was total garbage, which it often was. On the second book I took a few break periods, which really helped. With this one I’ve been quite ill-disciplined in the way I’ve devoted time to it. INTERVIEWER:

How so? GAVIN E PARKER:

Partly through necessity. I wrote the first quarter of the first draft in a very focused fashion, and I felt on top of it and very much up to speed, but I had to take a break to finish the final polishing and proofing on Phobos Rising. And when all that was out of the way I’d totally lost my rhythm with it. I’d work on it for couple of a weeks and then stop, then do the odd day and just come at it piecemeal. That’s how it’s been for the last twelve months, really. A kind of stop-start netherworld of writing but also not writing. INTERVIEWER:

Is there any particular element you’ve had trouble with? GAVIN E PARKER:

No, not really. I plan meticulously before embarking on a first draft, so I know what the story is, how it plays out, where everything needs to go and all of that. Once I have a first draft down I’ll review it and decide what does and doesn’t work, what needs to be fixed, what needs to be cut, what needs to be added, and that usually means quite a bit more writing in order to pull the whole thing into a cohesive shape. But my work circumstances are changing, and that’s affecting how much time I get to write each day. INTERVIEWER:

So it’s your circumstances that have made the difference? GAVIN E PARKER:

Well, yes and no. They have impacted on the writing a bit, and will more so in future, but they’ve also been a handy excuse for my hesitation in putting this project to bed. And to be frank about it, I’ve found this book a bit intimidating. I mentioned that I plan carefully, but to bring the plan to life, to put meat on the bones, can be a lot more of a challenge than you might think. Some days I’ve looked at the précis of a scene or a chapter and found myself thinking, ‘How the hell am I going to do that?’ This book is a continuation of the story, but it’s not a direct continuation. I think (though of course I might be wrong) that it’s more ambitious, more complex, and more nuanced than the others, and it’s taking a while to nail it all down. INTERVIEWER:

So how far along are you? GAVIN E PARKER:

I would say that completing the first draft of a novel is to be about half-way through writing it, and certainly for me getting that first draft completed is the toughest part. Right now, I’m on the forty-fourth chapter out of fifty-one. INTERVIEWER:

The first draft is nearly done, then. GAVIN E PARKER:

Close to the line, but not over it yet. The nearer I get to the end the further away it seems. I will get there, and I’m confident that things will speed up after that. There’ll still be a lot of work to do, but I’ll be able to plough into it. INTERVIEWER:

You said that this final book isn’t a direct continuation of the story from the first two books. What do you mean by that? GAVIN E PARKER:

The three books together are a trilogy. They link together, even though each book is its own enclosed story. Books one and two are closer together in time and narrative than the third book. The final book is a hundred percent part of that universe, but it’s a different, albeit linked, story. INTERVIEWER:

So it’s an all-new storyline? GAVIN E PARKER:

Yes and no. It’s more like an unexpected turn. It has many of the characters from the first two books, but it’s set thirty years after the first book. So although they’re the same people they’re different to who they used to be. They’ve grown older and changed, or their circumstances have changed. And of course there’s a raft of new, younger characters. INTERVIEWER:

So it’s familiar but unfamiliar? GAVIN E PARKER:

Exactly. I don’t see the point in thrashing out the same book over and over again, and I don’t see any value in stretching one story over three volumes that don’t satisfy as individual tomes. So this last volume isn’t a remix or a punchline. It’s the third part of a trilogy of standalone novels; a new flavour, or maybe like an album by one of those bands who never repeat themselves. It’s unmistakably that band, but it’s not like any of the previous albums. INTERVIEWER:

And it’s a book that you were intimidated by. GAVIN E PARKER:

A little. I wanted to go somewhere else with this one. All the best books, TV, films, and whatever are about more than what they’re about. The Sopranos isn’t about gangsters, Friday Night Lights isn’t about high school football. Thematically this third book is about ageing, death, and absence, and it’s also about dealing with insurmountable odds – fate, if you will. We’re all familiar with stories about plucky heroes who beat the numbers and come out on top, but I’m interested here in the idea of how people approach a situation where they know they can’t win. INTERVIEWER:

Is that a spoiler? GAVIN E PARKER:

It might be, but it’s a fairly oblique one. And of course, it’s not that simple. It’s never that simple. INTERVIEWER:

So when will this book be released? GAVIN E PARKER:

I’m hoping for late 2019, but that could well slip. If things hadn’t changed regarding how much time I get to devote to writing I’d be confident about late 2019, but as things stand I can’t be sure. There’s also a sixth Ephialtes Short that sits between books two and three, but I might not get enough time to do that. INTERVIEWER:

Another short? GAVIN E PARKER:

Yes, but a long one – another novella, like Be All You Can Be. It’s all prepped and ready to go (mostly) but I think I probably won’t get it written. It’s set seven years after Phobos Rising and it’s about Kristen Stahl and Ephialtes going to investigate a missing mining ship in the asteroid belt. It foreshadows some significant events in book three and it once again gives centre stage to Kristen Stahl. If I get the chance to write it I will, but if I don’t the outline might end up as a special feature in some future release. Ultimately I’d like to release a compilation of the entire trilogy and shorts, so maybe it will find its way in there in some form or other. INTERVIEWER:

Great. So, maybe another short and probably a Complete Ephialtes at some point in the future. What else can we expect once you’re done with the Ephialtes universe? GAVIN E PARKER:

I really don’t know. I’m not sure if I’ll continue writing. Christopher Hitchens said something along the lines of, ‘Everyone has a book in them, and in most cases that’s where it should stay.’ Maybe I had one multi-volume space opera in me, and for good or ill I’ve brought it forth into the world and that’s it for me. We’ll see. INTERVIEWER:

Okay, thanks for talking to us today. GAVIN E PARKER: No problem. INTERVIEWER:

Crack on and finish that book. GAVIN E PARKER:

I’ll see what I can do. #writing #selfpublishing #GavinEParker #books #SciFi #editing