Weirdest thing I like about writing

It's the research.
OK, anyone who's laughing ... stop it. Seriously. Research is awesome. I'm writing a sci-fi series set in a mercenary cult. This research is great.

For example - camouflage. I found, and promptly lost again, an article arguing that the best all-around low-light camo colour would be a grayish shade of pink (Mountbatten pink is another classic) ... but everyone refused to use it. You can find hundreds of resources online, talking pattern disruption, the physiology of the human eye, smart fabric, whatever rocks your boat.

Blood spatter patterns. Made for a very fun lunch break, and scared the pants off a nosy colleague who found herself in my browser history. Vital for several books.

Knife throwing techniques and blade designs. Yep, that colleague never snooped my browser again :) Surprising fact: Crocodile Dundee is a lot closer to reality than DareDevil. A lot of the mercenaries in my series carry throwing knives, not least the lead character. Almost all of them carry some kind of edged weapon. (Why do mercenaries in a technologically advanced society have any use for knives??? Well, for starters, they don't run out of power. They can't be stopped by, for example, a personal deflector shield designed to stop a beam weapon. They make people dead just as effectively, and people don't expect them. I could keep going.)


Hand to hand combat. I did a lot of that in person, and most of the hand to hand you see in the Cortii series is based (albeit sometimes very loosely) on one form or another from a martial art I've studied. Pressure points are a particularly fun thing to toss in when people don't expect it.

The urban fantasy book I wrote last year was almost as much fun. Voodoo. Legends about shifters in different areas. How the feline sense of smell differs from the canine. Structure of a feline eye.

Basically, some background research is essential if you want to have those weird and wonderful touches of verisimilitude in the story. My feeling is that most fiction writers need to be information magpies. Not only can it be a lot of fun, but the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we can imagine.

The First and Second Format Wars

Armistice was declared today, 1st April.

Accepting my print proof of Through the Hostage on April Fools' Day would be a worrying omen if I were completely sane, but completely sane people, I'm convinced of it, never become writers. They certainly never, ever, become indie authors.

Star Trek captured my feelings perfectly on the topic of my final and accepted proof.

Captain Archer: I believe someone once defined a compromise as ... a solution that neither side is happy with.
Commander Shran: In that case, these talks have been extremely successful. 

OK, that's a bit melodramatic. Very melodramatic. I've seen much, much worse in bookstores. I've seen very much worse indie pubs. Given that I'm aiming for average, I'm happy. Actually, I'm ecstatic. I've got a print copy of my very own book sitting on my desk, at which I send periodic doting looks (think ape with first banana sort of looks).

Could it be better? Yes. Of course it could. The cover, which I haven't the expertise to tweak, has the edge of one letter of the title just slightly overlapping the spine. I didn't get a professional developmental edit, because really, at $0.03 per word at over 100,000 words ... well, if I had that kind of cash spare I'd by lying on a beach somewhere drinking something that comes in half-coconut shells (and there'd be a lot of empties lying around).

Could it be worse? Hell yeah, it could be very much worse. I've bought worse many times. I'll back my general editing against the big publishing houses because I keep growling over their errors in the books I buy. The story is as good as I can make it, and I enjoyed writing it. If someone else enjoys reading it, well, that's a bonus from my point of view.

I decided on CreateSpace for my paperback version, partly because they're affiliated with Amazon, meaning that paperback (if the gods smile) will simply be added, hassle-free, as a format in which you can buy my masterpiece, right alongside the e-book.

There are other major pros with CreateSpace. For example, their customer service is awesome. Send in an email, and you get a personal response, with some actual information in it, much faster than I was expecting (24 hours or less, I think, in my case). Also, I ordered two print proofs, both on Sunday evenings (that was coincidence) and they showed up on my doorstep Tuesday evening. Given that they predict two weeks for postage, I was duly impressed.

The First and Second Format Wars occurred when I tried to format my guttering and margins (no, this isn't a problem that can be solved by removing the leaves from the drain). There's an interesting wrinkle in the CreateSpace uploader, where it will tell you ten times in a row that you need to increase your gutter (inner margin), and regardless of how much you do so in Word, it will actually move the text on the page, in the previewer, the opposite way. Luckily my hair is too short to pull successfully.

Another interesting wrinkle I discovered: we all know that each section of your book should start on a right-hand page. The title page should always be a right-hand page, chapter 1 should  begin on a right-hand page, and so on. Easiest way to achieve this? Page break / page break, inserting a blank to make sure your content starts in the correct place. Easy, right? Wrong! Inserting a single blank in Word turns into two blanks in the CreateSpace previewer, meaning you have a weird double blank ... and your content is still on the wrong page.

Next time, I will probably simply download one of their Word templates and paste my content in, to see if the template has the same issue. At least then I'll have the immature satisfaction of pointing, mocking and making rude noises before embarking on the marathon.

CreateSpace does provide very handy guides, which, while they don't actually prevent the previewer from telling you that your margins are wrong, do explain in useful detail the steps that should avoid having the previewer send you annoying messages. They also host some helpful forums, where you can usually find someone else who has had this problem before you. There may not be a solution, but you can at least watch someone else getting to the multiple-exclamation-marks stage online.

Hence ... Armistice. I'm a perfectionist, and I'd like to have the cover absolutely perfect, and I'd like to have the pagination absolutely perfect, and like every other author who's ever set pen to paper, I'd like an international bestseller. As with books as with life, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. I compromised, and I have a paperback copy of my very own book sitting on my desk. Sometimes sucking it up has its perks.

Writing - with a soundtrack

I write in a lot of weird places.

Think on the bus, in the lunchroom, in cafés. My study at home is the most 'normal' spot I write in, and even there my big sound-cancelling headphones are my best friend.

Why? Like a lot of writers, I'm a pretty anti-social creature. (I think the new and more PC term for it is introverted.) Music and headphones excuses me from people trying to ascertain if I'm really writing something on that laptop on the bus (yes, really), and from twitching at every unexpected noise elsewhere. Getting startled out of an interesting train of thought is highly inconvenient, and sometimes it never quite comes back.

I've therefore been asked: what do I listen to when I write?

So, here it is: the 2015 shortlisted J C Steel Writing Soundtrack.

1. Feuer Frei - Rammstein
2. Sweet Dreams (are made of these) - Eurhythmics
3. Türk Kahvesi - Tambura Rasa
4. Black Horse and the Cherry Tree - KT Tunstall
5. Zombie - The Cranberries
6. Spybreak - Propellorheads
7. Skirvin Fla - Clickhaze
8. I Don't Speak Human - Omnia
9. Tango del Pecado - Calle 13
10. Iron Hand - Dire Straits

Indie publishing, Russian roulette, and one night stands ... One blog post to link them all

Ready for the ride?

I've been writing, on and off, and through a lot of different novels, since I was fourteen, when I found that writing about extra-planetary battlefields was much more rewarding than paying attention in class.

Up until last week, I wrote mostly for myself, and for friends incautious enough to volunteer to read whatever was fizzing out of my brain and onto the keyboard. I occasionally sent bits of it to publishers and agents. This last pastime, however, pretty much went by the board once I started working full-time.

Here's why.

It's like looking for a job. Employers (read: publishers) aren't interested in taking a risk on you when you haven't demonstrated any ability to sell books in large numbers. If you want to sell books in large numbers, you need a publisher. Once you've looked at this Catch 22 a few times, turned it upside-down, and looked at it a bit more, you can look at the alternatives. One of them is an agent.

Let's examine agents for a moment. Like publishers, they make their money when you sell books. A lot of books. Like publishers, they want a solid gold prospect. See the preceding paragraph. Also, agent desires vary. You can spend a lot of time putting together a 500 (or 300, or 1,000) word synopsis of your work, in 11.5 pt Times New font, 1.15 spaced, single-sided, or in Garamond 10 pt, double-spaced with a 2.5 cm margin, and then adding the first five, or three, or first, second and tenth chapters, to be submitted by email only, or mail only on letter paper, or only PDF files to a maximum size of 2MB considered.

Basically, 99.999% manuscripts will be rejected in the order in which they are received. Even J K Rowlings had to go through this process about 50 times. If you have the time, patience, and stamina for it, you may manage to land an agent, who then has to try and push your MS to a publisher for you.


Not being a patient person, and having a series of jobs that entail leaving my house before 0700 and often getting back about 1800, my efforts at getting my books into the traditional publishing system came to a crashing halt.

It finally dawned on me over the past few years that my fun really comes in writing the books. Ergo, anything else could (and should) be viewed as a bonus. Also, that while I still find there's no substitute for a real, paper book, I now have a sizeable e-library.

I started talking to friends and colleagues, and a few people who are both, and reading a lot of the invaluable material that people put up on Twitter about their experiences as editors, authors, and publishers of every variety on Twitter, and I realised that for a bit of work and an affordable amount of money, I could publish my own book.

Now, when I started writing, in 1995, when the World Wide Web was still a distant curiosity with a load time of five minutes per page, self-publishing was pretty much exactly the equivalent of spinning the cylinder, pointing the barrel at your temple and pulling the trigger. You might survive as a serious author, but your chances weren't worth betting on. Also, because books were printed (see above, re early Stone Age), it cost several grand up front to have a press 'self-publish' you.

Now it's as easy as assembling 75,000 plus words, a good-looking cover, and signing up on Amazon, or Kobo (or Smashwords, or Google Play, or any other platform that you like the look of). Of course, as far as traditional publishing goes, if you go indie and your book fails to sell n copies in its first 72 hours, you've probably still pulled the trigger on a loaded chamber. But it's affordable, it makes your work available to that minority that seriously wants to read it, and it's fun.

Think of it as a one-night stand rather than a marriage. It's fun, you can do whatever the hell you want, and there's no one telling you afterwards that you can't dance naked in your living room if you want to.

Not to mention, writing plus publishing equals author. Everyone knows that. Sometimes, around 50 Shades of Grey movie release season, you might wish you didn't, but see above. Going indie seems to me to be pretty much the epitomy of Voltaire's summary: "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

So, if you feel like a one-night stand (or a longer relationship, depending on your reading speed), come and check me out at jcsteelauthor.com, or on Goodreads.

The evolutionary link between cats and salamanders

... because, seriously, there must be one. It's ridiculously hot, and my (long-haired) cats keep dozing off blissfully in the full sunshine. The other species are reaching for a cold one and hugging the shade, and my cats are trying to suntan like it's 1979.

Let me colour this picture in. We live in a townhouse that could frankly use another metre foot or two of insulation under the roof (we're getting to it). My (Manitoban-born) felines are long-haired Siamese (Balinese if you're a purist, and don't mind having this conversation EVERY time you mention the breed name).

By mid-morning, the temperature on the top floor the past few days has been high twenties / low thirties ... and I notice my cat is significantly warmer on one side. Careful observation of this dominant male once he's successfully awoken the food-providing units revealed that left to his own devices, he will wander off, find an East-facing window, try to spread himself across as much of this sunbeam as he possibly can (do you remember the bit about high twenties on this floor?) and lie there looking as if finally, FINALLY, the world got his memo.

God knows what they would have done had we not adopted them from Manitoba - I'm suspecting serious hibernatory tendencies, probably on top of a furnace somewhere, probably September to August.

So. I'm posing a serious question to all cat slaves and veterinary experts out there ... has anyone found the missing link between felis silvestris pestilentialis catus and the mythical salamander?

Comes in handy

About three-quarters of humans are right-handed. About one-third can't roll their tongues. Some other number can't twitch their ears, and it's nearly impossible for a female to be colour-blind.

This is the kind of pop-quiz crap you memorise in early science classes, and is, not coincidentally, why I severely disappointed one of my parental units by dropping science and math like a hot potato as soon as I could at the tender age of 16.

But I digress. Basically, the past few weeks have been a reminder to me that being ambidextrous would be pretty bloody useful. Not just so's I could fight just as well southpaws (although that would be AWESOME). No, this one is the sort of once-a-decade "be careful what you wish for" event. I've been heard to say I needed to learn to use my left hand better.

So ... I got into a losing grappling match over a practice knife, went down face first, jammed my right (of course) thumb in between the knife and the mat, and then landed on the back of my wrist. Shortly thereafter, I received a black belt, knee-first, between the shoulder blades. Being busy, and flying on adrenaline, I used a word or two and finished up the round.

About fifteen minutes later and getting into someone's body armour, I noticed, presto, that there was an ugly-ass swelling up the back of the bone in the back of my hand that runs wrist to forefinger knuckle. I duly wiggled it, and since everything still responded all right, I finished up the class.

By the time I got home, my husband was threatening me with the ER and I couldn't hold the hand out straight without the thing flopping around as if it had a severe case of very localised palsy. Happily, the shakes went away as the swelling and pretty purple colours blossomed. (I greatly regret not having taken time-lapse pictures of that hand for posterity - I think it went full-spectrum, not to mention the boa-constrictor-just-swallowed-a-cow look.)

It's still got the well-fed constrictor look going three weeks later, although the rainbow's died down. It's also in a splint, so I'm learning the joys of buttoning my pants one-handed. Let's not even mention bra hooks between the shoulder blades. It's going to stay in a splint for at least another month, there may be another round of x-rays next week, and I think I have a singed spot on the top of my head where my physio glared at me when I asked if that meant no training either.

So ... another freaking injury. After I wiped out my right knee in 2008, I finally got it back to about 90% of its original functionality (read: good enough for slightly less than full-contact martial arts) in 2011 and promptly got happily back into martial arts. Now I'm feeling mildly depressed about another injury that spells long-term training break. Not to mention a very, very obvious wing in a sling - it's hard to hide a thumb splint when you can't write or shake hands.

The cat is also still very much in the box as to whether the problem is cracked bones, sprained joints, or (joy) both. The first set of x-rays, encouragingly, said no breaks. However, the x-ray machine looked like a relic of WWII, and it's still nice and swollen, so another round with the cancer rays are in my future if it hasn't quit and desisted by next week.

In other news this week ... our car went in for a service, and the tech crashed it into oncoming. The garage is paying for the repairs, but it's been in the shop for a week. My husband's bank account and credit card got frozen. It's been bringing the drama. And there's only one logical response to drama, which is PITY PARTY.  :)

Meditative cogitation

Yup, meditation. I figured I already had a passing grade in sitting on my ass staring into space (so do you, it's called TV-watching), so I might as well have a look at formalising it.

I've been interested in meditation for a while. It showed up in the sci-fi books I write just under two decades ago. Like most of the **** I write about and actually know eff-all about, I glossed airily over the detail and concentrated on the plot line.

In Spring 2013, I finally decided it was time to learn something about this. I picked up Meditation for Dummies, read it, and tried it.

Why here? Why now? Not sure. Maybe it's an early-warning sign of an incipient mid-life crisis. However, if you want mind-altering and you aren't interested in death by slow poison, meditation is the way to go.

It's also, by and large, a solitary pursuit, which rocks my boat. I'm not a people person. Because I am obviously a masochist, I've been mostly ignoring all the professional advice about quiet space, setting time aside, etc.

I've been meditating on the bus. This is awesome for the following reasons:

1. It neatly avoids having to notice my fellow commuters (because)
2. It's a great excuse for sitting with my eyes closed and my headphones in.
2a. This conveniently gets me out of enlightening exchanges with Mrs. "Let me tell you about my grand-daughter", Mr. "Are you reading that book?" and Mr. Do you know where this bus is going?"
3. At least partly due to 1, 2 and 2a, it gets me to work in a reasonably de-stressed and entertained state.

It's less awesome because there's motion, you can't sit in a proper posture in a Translink seat (I'm certain they've been bribed by chiros and physios city-wide to design those chairs for hunch-backed gnomes), and Mrs. "You don't mind my (enormous) bag on your feet, do you?" and Mr. "My balls are SOOOO big, I have to try and spread my knees across 3 seats" are still an aspect of daily public transit.

Meditation for Dummies describes the environment I've chosen to meditate in as 'challenging'. I still think it's awesome. This is why. If I can manage to meditate for 20 minutes of my 45 minute bus-ride (the remainder is spent reading and rubbernecking at the awesome views along my commute route), on a Loser Cruiser, surrounded, tripped over, sneezed on, yawned at, sat on, slept on and used as a bag / folder / leg / elbow rest by fellow Loser Cruiser Users ... I CAN MEDITATE FREAKING ANYWHERE.

Am I interested in greater spiritual consciousness, enlightenment and the cosmos? Not really. Despite the latter half of Meditation for Dummies ... I'm just not into Higher Powers, or anyone else who figures I should run my life somehow different (it's called a problem with authority). I'm meditating because I'm curious. I want to see if my health, longevity (there's a tough one to prove), concentration and happiness index improve.

Apparently you can enrich your life. I'm taking that one metaphorically. And one day at a time.