Category Archives: Writing

Motivations: Princess of Amathar

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I began writing Princess of Amathar so long ago, it’s really difficult to remember what I was thinking at the time.  It was about 1980 and I was just about two years out of high school.  I began writing several stories in short chapters, rotating between them.  One was a fantasy story about an alternate world, one was a fantasy story set in a dream world (which I later used as the white opthalium drug-induced world for Senta and the Steel Dragon), but most of them were fan fiction sequels to Edgar Rice Burroughs Books.  Finally there was Amathar.

My idea behind Amathar was to write a book that ERB might write if he was still around at the time.  In that way, Princess of Amathar more than any of my other books, was written as a book I would really want to read.  As the years passed and the story was revised, it became more of a love-letter to the fond memories I had reading John Carter of Mars, Pellucidar, and Carson of Venus as a kid.

I still have the original first chapter draft and the story is quite different than the final version.  Our earth hero arrives mysteriously in Ecos, though he doesn’t have the same name and he doesn’t meet Malagor.  Instead he immediately finds a family of neo-luddite Amatharians whose daughter has been captured by Zoasians.  The book changed again and again over the years.  Alexander got his first name after I wrote a college paper on Alexander the Great, and his last name from a girl I worked with at Kmart.

By 1992, when I started teaching, the book was only half done.  I worked really hard to finish it and did so about 1997.  Many of the characters and alien races were named after kids in school, though in revision they were usually changed.  It went through many revisions after that and it got many rejection letters from publishers, before I finally published it in 2007.  The ebook came out in 2009.

This month, Princess of Amathar should pass the 800 copies sold mark.  That means I’ve made about  $240.00 in royalties.  Considering I suspect I worked on it about 3,269 man-hours, that’s 7.34 cents per hour.  Of course thats assuming all the publishing and promotion as free,  Still, I cannot regret my time spent on this book.  It was a real endeavor of love and I still enjoy reading it.

Motivations

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I thought over the next few weeks I would write a little series about my motivations for each of my books– what I was thinking about and what I was trying to do when I was writing them.

On a side note, somebody I was talking to referred to my writing as “your other job”.  I actually thought that was kind of cool.  It is my other job now.  That doesn’t mean that I love writing any less than I did when it was just my hobby though.

And don’t forget to stop by Smashwords and check out the Summer/Winter sale.  Here is a link.

82 Eridani: Journey

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Time to reveal the secret project I’m working on: Coming in 2013.

82 Eridani is a seven book science fiction series, the first volume of which is entitled Journey.  The other volumes will be: Arrival, War, Conquest, Siege, Duel, and Destiny.

82 Eridani: Journey

The three mile-long interstellar spacecraft Constellation was designed to explore and colonized the Sirius Star System.  The problem is, that it isn’t going to Sirius.  The $14 Trillion spaceship has been hijacked by its commander and is flying toward the 82 Eridani star system, and none of the 7,000 crew and colonists know why.  Officer Freya Johannson, despite being the commander’s lover, has no more idea than anyone else, but she is determined to find out.  Officer James Moore might be curious, but he has more pressing concerns of his own.  His wife may be having an affair, so he turns to a group of others to find out for sure, including robotics expert Robert Stivers.  Stivers builds robots of all types, include ant-sized surveillance robots which he uses primarily to stalk hard-bodied security officer January Sarbanes.  What the tiny robitic eyes have yet to notice is that a serial killer stalks the corridors of the ship.  None of these crew members, nor any of the others including the commander, are ready for the shock of what they will find when they finally reach 82 Eridani.

Warning: Adult Content

Update: Astrid Maxxim and her Undersea Dome

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I was really cruising through Astrid Maxxim and her Undersea Dome earlier this year and fully expected to have the first draft done before summer, but as so often is the case, my day job (school teacher) sort of squashed the enthusiasm I was experiencing.  Those of you who haven’t been in a classroom in 15+ years might not understand, but the job is extremely stressful.  My cardiologist once asked me if I was under a lot of stress and I said, “You have no idea.  You’re only a heart surgeon.”

I’m going to try and concentrate on Kanana the Jungle Girl for a while, with a goal of finishing the first draft, but then I plan on getting right back on Astrid.  I really feel like I can get both of these books done by the summer.  Then it’s back to Eaglethorpe Buxton and then my big secret project.

Update: Eaglethorpe Buxton

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The third Eaglethore Buxton story, Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Queen of Aerithraine, is complete and I’m playing around with the next one.  I find myself thinking about Eaglethorpe going a lot of possible directions.  I’ve already shelved one possible story– Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Unicorn Hunters, though I might play with that as a story within a story.

There will be five stories in the Eaglethorpe Buxton book and right now they look like these are going to be the five: Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess, Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress, Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Queen of Aerithraine, Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Amazons, and Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Day of the Night of the Werewolf.

Stay tuned for more info.  I definitely plan to have this book done before the end of the year.

Update: Kanana the Jungle Girl

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I was cruising right along with Kanana the Jungle Girl.  It was originally very Burroughsian with a little modern sci-fi interpretation ala Amathar.

As the story continued though, it became darker and the first person style I was using seemed less and less as though it fit what the story was becomming.  So I decided to rewrite it in third person form.  This resulted in me having to set it aside before my head exploded.

But just as soon as I finish the chapter I’m writing right now, which should be tomorrow, I’m jumping back on this project.  I should have about five weeks of work to finish the first draft.

The Drache Girl: Eamon Shrubb

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Of all the major supporting characters of Senta and the Steel Dragon, I really think I like Eamon Shrubb the best.  He’s just a big lovable guy, with a strong moral compass and a stiff upper lip.  I just came up with him, because I needed another constable to work with Saba and his personality just appeared.

At that moment, Eamon opened the office door.  He paused about halfway inside, looking at his wife the way a munitions expert looks at a bomb that didn’t go off as intended.  She looked at the floor.  After a moment, the constable stepped inside.

“You nesh berk,” said Saba.  Eamon looked at him in surprise.  “You take your wife home and see to her.  I may not have two and a half months experience being married, but even I know you don’t fight with a woman who’s expecting.”

“She wanted to name the baby Yadira.”

“What’s wrong with that?” demanded Saba.

“Come on!  That’s the worst name in the world.”

“My mother’s name,” said Dot.

“That happens to be my mother’s name, too,” said Saba.

“Oh, yeah.  I forgot about that,” said Eamon.

“It’s not like Eamon’s a brilliant name.”

“I don’t want to name it Eamon either.  If it’s a boy I want to name it Darsham, and if it’s a girl I want to name it Daria.”

“Darsham Shrubb?  Why don’t you just name it ‘kick my ass on the way to school’ and have done with it.”

Eamon ballooned his cheeks out and rolled his eyes back to think for a moment.  “It doesn’t sound that good when you put it all together, does it?”

“Here’s my advice, Mr. I’ve-been-married-two-and-a-half-months.  Take the rest of the day off and take your wife home.  Make her a cup of tea and rub her feet.  Then let her decide what to name the baby.  You can go get a kitten from Mrs. Gyffington, and name it Darsham, or Daria, or whatever the bloody hell you want to name it.”

“That’s right,” said Dot, taking Eamon by the arm.  Then she said, “Rub my feet,” leading Saba to believe that she had missed most of what he had said.

“You don’t mind if I take the afternoon?” asked Eamon.  He turned his head slightly, so that his lips were not visible to his wife.  “If I rub her feet, she’ll be all rumpy-pumpy.”

“Go!”

The two left the office, arm in arm.  As soon as they were gone, Saba stepped back through the supply room and into cell number one.  Setting his helmet beside the cot, he lay down and took a nap.

The New York Review of Science Fiction

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I just received my copy of The New York Review of Science Fiction for May 2012 and found a lovely article on me– “Wesley Allison– A New Kind of SF Writer” by Patrick L. McGuire.  I actually knew this article was coming, as Patrick had let me know he was working on it and had run a fact check copy by me.

I am very honored to be featured in the NYRSF, and am even more honored by Patrick’s article.  I find it very humbling when someone cares enough about my work to shine a light on it, and this is quite the spotlight.  This is especially true when that someone is such a connoisseur of science fiction.  Thank you Patrick.

Update: Eaglethorpe Buxton

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Eaglethorpe Buxton story number 3, Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Queen of Aerithraine is done.  I finished it this past Monday and as I type, I’m giving it a quick edit.  Then I’ll set it aside with the two previous EB stories and get back to Kanana: The Jungle Girl.

Taking time for EB, gave me a chance to reflect on how Kanana was going.  I was already on chapter ten, but I didn’t like the tone.  It’s too easy to go too light when the story is in first person (like Eaglethorpe Buxton or Alexander Ashton from Amathar) and I wanted this story to be a bit more hefty.  Therefore I decided to rewrite it.  I’m changing it to third person viewpoint, and I’m expanding what had previously been flashbacks into full chapters that interspace with chapters about the present.  All in all, I think this will read much better, but it’s going to be a longer book and so will take longer to write.

I also sat down and tapped out the first few pages of my newly planned star-voyaging epic, just to get a feel of the characters and the space.  I will probably have to completely rewrite it when I get around to writing it for real.  It was really just an experiment at this point.

The Dark and Forbidding Land – Final Characters

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As I have mentioned before, I wrote Book 2, The Dark and Forbidding Land after I wrote Books 3 and 5.  Therefore I had a couple of unusual problems.  On the one hand I had several characters who I wanted to use, but I couldn’t let anything (death) happen to them, because I had already used them in the later books.  I needed to kill somebody though, so I had to come up with some new characters as fodder.

Karl Harhoff is a professional hunter who comes to Birmisia.  This seems natural enough, since Birmisia is crawling with dinosaurs.  I surprised there aren’t more of them.

Courtney Jex is an artist, and as an artist type, he is just the kind of fellow that Zurfina would prefer for a companion, at least a temporary one.

Woodrow Manring is a militia officer who plays an important part in book 5.  This gave me a chance to introduce him and give him a little background.

Amoz Croffut, like Manring appears in book 5.  Having him show up here let me distinguish him a bit from Lawrence Bratihn, who is a similar though more important character.

Bainbridge Clark is a character that appears in book 1 and then gets referenced again and again in the others.  This gave me another chance to play with him.

Willy Cornish is a militiaman friend of Saba Colbshallow and Eamon Shrubb.  I liked him so much that I almost didn’t do what I was planning with him, but I did.

Shoss, Clegg, and Tassy are more lizzies.  By this time, thinking up new lizzie names started to get a little difficult, particularly since they have to have a “real” lizzie name and a diminutive version that the humans assign to them– kind of like what happened to the immigrants at Ellis Island.

Kendric (Kendrikhastu) and Kendra.  I liked the idea of the old hunter and his devoted youngsters.  I’m sorry I didn’t use them more.  The name Kendric came from a student I once had.  I had a Kendra too, but that name just came as a female version of Kendric.