Paul Grover's Blog: The State of The Know Universe & Other Random Stuff

This is a really common question. I get asked it a lot.

Book 3 is at an advanced stage, I aim to commence work on book 4 in late December.

I have a roadmap of where we're heading and I know where we'll end up. I know the fate of all our main characters.

I look at the first three books as the stories that build our everyday characters into heroes, anti-heroes and villains.

Subsequent series entries will deal with the great war and its aftermath.

At this time I think it will be nine books in total.

What happens after that?

I enjoy writing in this universe. It's big enough to have taken on a life of its own. I have plans for several other tales of the Frontier. Some will feature familiar characters, others new ones.

Not only is the Frontier a great sandbox, I can also move back and forward in the fictional history. This initially gives the option of mining characters backstories and exploring the origins of the places we visit.

So I guess I'm going to be busy!

Book 2 of the Vale Series - Ghosts of the Vale is due out on Friday 25th October.

Here's the blurb:

The Terran Federation stands on the brink of collapse.
After decades of exploitation
the outland colonies of the Frontier
are poised to join the Alliance of Free Worlds.

Fires of revolution re-ignite on Mars and from the ashes a new galactic order is born.

Deep in the Cygnus Vale a lone survey vessel discovers an artefact of incalculable power; an artefact that hides a dark secret.

Ghosts of the past awaken, and Mira Thorn is drawn back to the Vale.

An entity known only as Legion forces Mira
into a brutal choice.

She can prevent a war that threatens the existence of humanity, but only if she is prepared to pay a painful price

It's been a while folks.

Where have I been? What have I been doing?

It's been a really busy period and it's going to get busier in the next two months.

So the main bullet points

Book 2 - Ghosts of the Vale has been written, completed and edited

Book 1 Ark of Souls has been revamped and edited. It's now at second edition status.

Both books will be getting new covers - I'm working with Eight Little Pages on design and layout. Right now I'm preparing material for them to work from. Cover work is scheduled for June.

That means a release over the summer - hopefully July, maybe August. I will post a firm date when I have one. I think It's more than just a release and re-release. Re-launch is far better!

I'll also be moving paperback production to Ingram Spark. This is little leap as I have been exclusively on Amazon from the start. I want everything to be in place so the paperback and the e-book launch together.

And now the future!

Book 3 is complete to first draft. I hope to have that ready for editing by the end of the year. I'm considering a summer 2020 release date, but don't want to commit too early to that.

Things I want to do:

I want to Ark of Souls return to YouTube and put a few more blog posts out there. It think the second half of the year will find me in a position to do more of both.

Once Book 3 is in edit, I'll start on 4.

And do it all again!

I looked at my last post...

It was a long time ago.

I should and will make more use of Goodreads as a platform for connecting with readers and writers.

My last post was on World Building and I plan to follow this up. Building better worlds was a subject I discussed on Indie Beginning early this year and It focused my thoughts. I'll pull these together later. You could of course listen to the podcast too.

As a side note Indie Beginning is a great podcast - a great way to discover new authors. Check it out on your preferred platform.

So why such a big gap in posting?

Well I realised I had to make some sacrifices to get Book 2 - Ghosts of the Vale finished. There are only so many hours in a day and I found if I cut my writing time in half it massively extends my turnaround time for a book

So over new year I decided I had to prioritise Ghosts.

So I did.

Ghosts in now a complete manuscript, it will be going for editing soon with a release date in early 2019.

I have plans for a project - still in the Thorniverse for later this year and I'll also recommence posting here and elsewhere

Watch this space...

In this post I thought I would cover one my favourite aspects of the writing process, building worlds.

World building is something every writer does, it is not a science fiction specific task. It involves imagining the space your characters inhabit and giving it enough detail so it feels real in the readers mind.

Our imagined worlds can be as big or as small as the story requires.

Space Opera usually requires whole galaxies, while some genre novels require much smaller settings.

Even historical pieces require an element of world building as we need think about our protagonists immediate surroundings.

A well constructed world will live and breathe like our own. Worlds like the The Westeros in a Song of Ice and Fire amd Arakis in Dune has a potential to be as much a character as the imaginary flesh and blood ones who inhabit it.

So what does a good world need?

Well it needs believable locations, locations need to be in keeping with the feel of the story. It also needs to meet the requirements of the story, characters need places to go and interact.

If you need an economy and political system then you'll need to think about how it works. The level of detail will be dictated by requirements of your story. In some cases it can be broad brush background colour, in others you'll need to cover the smallest of details. A good political system can be a very useful tool in weaving a complex plot and avoiding black hat/white hat characters.

History is important, just how did your world come into being. This is less important for contemporary or historical fiction (our world is your characters world). For fantasy and sci-fi you absolutely need to consider past events as characters will be been involved in them - again in GOT Robert's Rebellion is an event that continues affect many characters.

Finally the devil is in the detail. It's small passing touches that give world real lived in feel. It can be slang words, currency, common proverbs, specific foods, drinks and even fashion items that shape the feel of the world.

A well built world is the anchor point for your story and it often help make unbelievable events believable.

In my next post I'll describe a little of the world of the Cygnus Vale and how I constructed Mira's world.

Have I missed anything? Feel free to comment below.

I'm a fan of boredom, not being bored, but using the feeling of listlessness as a motivator to do something interesting. But more of that later.

I dabbled in creative writing from the late 80s. It started when I bought a word processor called Protext, from a company called Arnor.

Protext was a high speed text editor and I figured having spent close to £100 on it I may as well use it a bit more.

So I started trying to write, with no plan, no idea and no clue. As you would expect it went nowhere and I lost interest.

In the early 2000s I had another go, with better results, I took an evening class at my local adult ed centre and it was the first time I ever allowed anyone to see my writing. I learned some useful skills and started to feel more confident; however as the decade wore on interest lapsed due to competing interests.

As we got to the 2010 a chain of events started with the purchase of a Kindle. I downloaded some books and found one so disappointing I had one of those "I could do better moments". Even then I did not act on it that thought, instead it rattled around in my mind for a long time.

In 2014 I revamped my computer equipment and ended up with a proper work area. One night I found myself bored, it was after TV and finished and still too early for bed. I needed to find something occupy myself!

My thoughts turned to my "I can do better moment".
So I sat myself in front of my computer with a caffienated beverage and the cat for company and started to write.

I'd love to say it was easy progress, but it wasn't. The next few months were spent buying text books, studying books I liked and watching a lot of YouTube.

After a while things started coming together. I set myself goals of coming up with characters and ideas for locations and stories.

I had no intention of publishing, it was all about the process and the challenge.

It pretty much still is!

So here is an introduction to..um....me.

I have lived my whole life on the Isle of Sheppey. It's an unusual place located in the Garden of England's Rust Belt.

As a kid I never really picked up a book for fun, reading was something you did at school, because you had to.

Then when I was 10 or 11 I read a book for pleasure, for the first time.

That book was the novelization of the TV series "Blake's 7". I had always been a sci-fi fan and the book when I read that book my universe got a lot bigger. Reading a book with characters I was familiar with was damn cool, not only was I able to follow their story I could hear what they were thinking, how they felt about things.

That book was my entry drug to the world of reading it was soon followed up by movie spin offs - notably Star Wars novelisations, Alien and the Target Series of Doctor Who adventures.

As I moved into my mid teens I discovered the wonderful world of eighties horror fiction, which coincided with the discovery of metal music. I started to work my way through the back catalogue of James Herbert and Stephen King. Horror was an excellent companion to the music of Iron Maiden and Metallica.

As I recall there was a stall in Sheerness market selling second hand books, it was run by a guy with giant lazy rotwieller who would doze beneath the Mills and Boons. Every tuesday I would stock up on yelllowed paperbacks for a few pence each.

My favourites from this time included The Rats, The Dark, Lair, Christine, The Shining, The Dead Zone and The Stand.

I think the Dead Zone represented a huge awaking in my love of books - the world it presented felt real and lived in, I cared about the characters and I loved the way it was spread out over years rather than days, It was a long book, yet I think I read it in three days.

I returned more to science fiction when I bought Dune in my local bookshop. I remember that day really well - it was Live Aid and it was incredibly hot. I alternated between the concert and the book.

To be honest I found Dune hard work, it eventually gripped me. I have always found hard sci-fi tricky, but ultimately rewarding. The coolest thing about Dune was the maps and appendices. I am sure Frank Herbert must have spent 1000s of hours world building.

Through the nineties I read a lot of Tom Clancy, I sort of loved and hated these books in equal measure; the action and technological elements were fun, I was less keen on the political overtones.

Family and fixing up a house meant I read a lot less in the 2000s. Although this is the period when I started to take writing seriously for the first time, more of that later.

I guess around 2007 I discovered Peter F Hamilton and his blend of proper science with good fiction. The first of his books I read was Fallen Dragon, it's still one of my favourites.

Then of course Kindle happened. Much as I love paper books, I really value the convenience Kindle offers. Being able to grab any book you want to read anywhere is hugely convenient. I have discovered new authors, new books and revisited some old ones.

Kindle and Amazon changed how I viewed books and encouraged me to start writing properly.

That's a whole other story!