Blog – Kit Campbell Books

Card Story Interlude

August Books: 6/6 (The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society and Murder at Teal’s Pond)

Success on the reading front! I won’t update my book list for the month ’til Thursday but maybe I’m caught back up to where I need to be.

As I mentioned last week, I’ve reached a point in the card story where I need to plan out until the end. So I’ve put all the cards in order, and have gone back through them and made myself notes of what’s happened/important plot points, and now the plan is to plot out the story to the end.

A picture of a stack of note cards about 1.5 inches tall — The current stack of story cards, plus Taig lurking in the background in angry mode.

Bullet points of the story thus far and some plot notes — A portion of the outlining document.

I have a couple of different ideas for the rest of the story, but I need to write them down and see which is going to make the most sense (i.e., not be obvious and also be doable in the card format). Shouldn’t take too long, but I do need to sit down and see it through.

In other writing news, I finished another of my short stories for my project. Two more to go! Taking me much longer than expected, but such is life, I suppose. Not sure this most recent one is working as planned, but that’s what revision is for. I took my longest one to my critique group this past Sunday and they had mostly positive things to say about it, which makes me happy because I feel like that one really came together the way I wanted it to.

In other other writing news, I joined a new Discord writing community a few months back as all my other writing communities (ones focused on the actual writing–I do have a publishing community that is active) have more or less died, and while writing is a solo activity, having a community really helps for motivation and so forth. This community writes in cycles (plotting-writing-revising-break) and I came in at the end of the revising cycle. But September starts the next cycle and so I should get on it and make use of the community. I picked a bingo sheet and printed it off, and it makes sense to work on the generation ship story as that is my next planned novel project. HOWEVER I am a little concerned about getting into a ton of prep on that while still working on the shorts and outlining the card story. I may leave off on everything til halfway through the month and get everything else (hopefully) done first.

How are you doing, squider? I love autumn and am glad we’re getting closer, but it’s still in the high 80s/low 90s here which is RIDICULOUS.

Card Story Part 17 (except I noticed there’s two Parts 7, ahahaha) and Random Time Travel Thoughts

August books: 4/6 (The Other Valley)

I think the time has come to actually outline the card story to completion.

~*~*~*~*~

A note reading: It seemed like wishful thinking, but if you could kind of see us...

A note reading: Would you really want to? Maybe what's past the forest isn't that bad. And what about your family?

A note reading: I don't know. The things they teach us... I don't think a lot of people make it out the other side.

A note reading: But your teachers must have, right?

A note reading: Maybe. Or maybe they were kept back for some reason. Sometimes it feels like it's all theoretical

A note reading: Could you ask straight out what happens after school?

~*~*~*~*~

I finished reading a book the other day (The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard) and got me thinking about genre tropes again. (A million years ago, in the early days of the blog, I did a Subgenre Series, where I looked at what made a subgenre that particular subgenre–focusing on speculative fiction subgenres, of course. Feel free to go look at those.)

I did one on time travel, which is a subgenre of the science fiction genre, but looking back at that particular entry now, fifteen years on, I can see that even back then it was irking me. When I was doing the Subgenre Series I kept finding that there weren’t really hard and fast rules on what made something a particular subgenre–tweak things a bit and you could argue for a different subgenre, or you’d find that one person would shelve a book one way and another would shelve it differently. (Take Science Fiction Western and Space Western, which are two different subgenres that look near identical on first glance.) Genre in general is very fluid and enough to make an analytical person want to tear their hair out.

But while genre tends to be fluid, there are some things that are Genre Root Beer. (Oh goodness I’m going to have to find the Root Beer Analogy. Nah, I’ll just write it out again.) When I was a kid, on the rare occasions I was at a restaurant with a self-serve soda machine, I would often mix different types of soda together, which generally created a weird, sweet but not unpleasant conglomeration of flavors. But the moment you added root beer into the mix, the whole thing tasted like root beer. Even if you only put in the tiniest amount.

Time travel is a genre root beer. You put time travel in a story, and it is science fiction. Which is kind of funny if you think about it, because time travel is not (currently) scientifically possible and is theorized to never be scientifically possible (aside from maybe things like wormholes or black holes or just good ol’ time dilation and…never mind, not important). But often time travel is just a plot device, and it feels like its inclusion should be more…up to interpretation.

(Hold on, I have to check what genre something is shelved as.)

(My point stands.)

Take The Other Valley for example. The premise of the book is that the world is set up in a series of identical valleys. The valley to the west is 20 years in the past, and the valley to the east is 20 years in the future (and the valley beyond that is 40 years, etc.). Each valley is the center of their own world, and travel is strictly regulated between the valleys, with precautions taken so travelers can’t interact with the citizens of the other valleys.

No devices. Nothing the characters are doing. This is just how the world is. Where is the science fiction in that?

(Now, if we want to be very pedantic–my favorite–we can talk about how science fiction doesn’t just focus on science but also on social projections, and arguably this world could have been built on the premise of “what if you could travel to the past/future just by walking to the next town over, and how would that society look.)

The book I went to check on was Outlander, which, if you are somehow not familiar through the general cultural zeitgeist, is the story of a WWII-era nurse who goes through a stone circle in the woods and finds herself in the…1700s(?) in the Scottish Highlands. (I made it through a third of the first book and have not seen the show, but my Scottish clan ancestry is Fraser of Lovat and so it is everywhere.) From my understanding, it is mostly historical romance, but when I checked it is still listed under science fiction even though the time travel is arguably magic and should be fantasy, and also is not important aside from the initial inciting incident.

Genre Root Beer is fascinating to me. But I guess this is just one of those things we shouldn’t think too hard about.

Time travel thoughts, squiders?

Card Story Part…16? (And Why Don’t Routines Ever Happen?)

August Books: 3/6 (Giant Sequoias and Floating Hotel)

Sigh.

~*~*~*~*~

A note reading: It was more hope than anything--like, if the notes were crossing over, maybe I could too

A note reading: But do you know anything about my timeline? We have problems too--lots of war, and the planet is getting too hot

A note reading: But you know your dangers -- I don't know what we're working towards

A note reading: Is there really no way to know? No "whispers" about what comes after school?

A note reading: There's speculation but I don't know if there's any truth in any of it

A note reading: Do you think you could? Cross over here, I mean

~*~*~*~*~

Someone at work used one of my purple cards for something else, which is tragic. Also starting to run into the limitations of the medium, which was always going to be an issue.

I finished all possible research for the generation ship story, took lots of notes, and now I’m leaving it to percolate for a bit and have back to my Trilogy-related short stories, which are also going fairly well, despite my vague routine plan I talked about last week not working as well as one would hope.

The problem is not the routine itself, but that the routine is not happening due to non-routine things gumming up the works. We’ve had a full week of school, and in theory each day had three potential blocks of productivity.

Monday went fine. Proof of concept. I did have a meeting I forgot about in the middle of one session, but it wasn’t too disruptive. I still got everything planned done.

Tuesday I had to take the dog to the vet (just her semi-annual checkup) and had a meeting at the younger child’s school. Stuff got done, but it was a little fiddly.

Wednesday I took my mother to an appointment, the older child missed the bus home after school, and the spouse and I had a five-hour EDM concert.

They should not put EDM concerts on Wednesdays. We got home at 1:30am because we were not in a state to drive for a while.

Thursday was a mess because we’d partied too hard Wednesday night. I think I did my morning workout about 5:30pm.

Also at the Tuesday meeting I’d volunteered to help with my younger child’s cross country meet on Thursday. Thursday I was less happy with past!Kit but I went and volunteered. It was 95 degrees out and the kids had to run two miles.

Yesterday I in theory had my sessions but I was still a little tired from Wednesday, so I’d say…75% of things got done. There was a nap in there somewhere.

Now, of course, nothing is ever perfect. Your mother calls right as you hit a flow state and talks to you for 45 minutes. Your car needs new tires. You slept like crap the night before and need a nap.

All we can do is do our best and not beat ourselves up about it.

I will say that with the three days I worked on my story last week, it bumped August up to the third highest word count of the year. So it’s not all bad.

See you next week, squiders! Be kind to yourself!

Card Story Part 15 and We are Definitely Procrastinating Now

August Books: 1/6 (Page One to Done)

I did not, in fact, finish any more books in July, so now I’m behind schedule for the year. Yay.

Oh, squiders. I did these cards last week. I even did the pictures last week. Yet the jump from doing the cards to posting the blog continues to be a huge hurdle. Got to consider how we want to move forward. Move the card story to every other week? Shall have to ponder.

~*~*~*~*~

A note reading: There are pockets that are still connected.

A note reading: And they teach you this in school? "Hey, there's this other timeline we touch where there's not a creepy forest outside"?

A note reading: Well, no, I found your drawing before I really knew

A note reading: There were rumors
Whispers, really

A note reading: You seemed so sure, in our first notes

~*~*~*~*~

I think we are definitely reaching the “we are procrastinating by researching” phase of the generation ship planning. I watched a two hour YouTube video. I read what a whipple shield is. These things are not important from a plot standpoint.

To be fair, part of the focus on the research aspect is because I haven’t had a lot of time to do much else. I can read an article here, watch 15 minutes there. But the kids started school today and so my hopes are that I will have more time to focus and can get back into more of a routine.

I have, in theory, three periods of time throughout the day in which to work. My plan is to use two of them for writing and the third for working out or for playing video games. Because, if you recall, I am trying to work through my backlog of Steam games. Did I buy more? Possibly.

And, assuming I can properly use my periods to get things done, I think I can add my art goal back in in the evenings.

That would be something.

But yes, we must move on from the ship. I need to consolidate my thoughts into a single place, outline, and then we can get going on that, though I do hope to finish my short stories before I get too far on that.

Are you guys enjoying the card story?

Enjoy your weekend, squiders!

Card Story Part 14 and Engineering is Hard

July books: Still 3/5 (but I foresee finishing a few here shortly)

Why is it so hot? auuuuugh

~*~*~*~*~

A note reading: What does that even mean?

A note reading: Do you ever watch ghost videos on the Internet?

A note reading: Okay, we're going to have to unpack that later. It was like you guys were half there--blurry & indistinct & kind of see through

A note reading: See? I told you, alternate dimensions or something

A note reading: Then how do the notes work? They seem to get through when nothing else does

~*~*~*~*~

I told you last week a little about my generation ship idea. Well, I have been doing my researches, and, well, wow. People get really into this. Or, alternatively, you can find 50 million YouTube videos about how generation ships are a terrible idea and we should never ever do them.

(I have, actually, about twenty minutes ago, thought of a good reason to use a generation ship versus other methods, so that’s at least partially sorted.)

When worldbuilding, you can always run the chance of not worldbuilding enough, so your world feels flat and unrealistic, or you can worldbuild too much, spending months or even years building every minutiae, things that would never in a million years show up in an actual story.

I do think I need to err on the side of more, here, though, and even do some math (speed calculations, distance calculations, how fast the ship has to rotate to get the right amount of gravity vs. how big is the ship, as a bigger ship would rotate slower) but some other things I think can probably be a bit fudgier, such as how recycling and repair systems function.

(People have made three hour long YouTube videos about generation ships. I started one but got, like, ten minutes into it before I got bored.)

As I said last week, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve had to build a world from scratch, and my normal method has traditionally been to get a bunch of books related to my subjects and read through them. This is generally slow, as you can imagine, but often results in interesting facts that I wouldn’t have otherwise come across or thought of, which then make it into the worldbuilding. I have been unable to find any relevant books thus far, as my searches are mostly giving me fiction or vaguely related engineering books that are far enough off that they’re not going to be helpful. Normally said books are about mythology or folklore or forest biomes or 15th century sailing ships, all of which already exist, and not theoretical spaceships.

So, hence, the YouTube videos, though they’ve not been very useful thus far, and also tend to all involve the same sort of ship design. I’m having more luck with websites and blogs, including some generation ship contests where people actually go through the whole engineering process (though this is, I believe, getting a little too in the weeds).

I do feel like I’m nearing the end of the information gathering phase, though, and then can move into the actual designing soon.

Anyway, hope things are going well for you, squider, and I’ll see you next week!

Card Story Part 13 and I Don’t Mean to Be Ignoring You

July Books: 3/5 (Save the Cat Writes a Young Adult Novel, The Astral Library, and The Dictionary People)

On one hand, the summer is going REALLY fast. On the other, it’s been so goshdarn hot that I’m not sad to see it go. But, you know, climate change isn’t real and those shenanigans.

I wrote these cards last week, even photographed them last week, and then got bulldozed over by some of the most convoluted scheduling you have ever seen. (This weekend may be a close second. We must coordinate things better.)

~*~*~*~*~

A note reading: Well? I didn't notice anything last night

A note reading: I'll have to take the camera home & access the images

A drawing from above of a school surrounded on all sides by a squiggle labeled as forest. There are question marks on the outside of the squiggle, signifying that the creator doesn't know what's beyond. It says FYI in the corner.

A note reading: Kind of? I definitely saw something

~*~*~*~*~

Should probably brainstorm an actual plot at some point. OR NOT.

In other news, I’ve starting working on the new novel idea I was, in theory, supposed to do during my alone time in June. Part of this was to test out a couple of new writing processes, and part of it was because, uh, I like the idea and would like to work on it. Querying continues to just be the most soul-crushing thing and I think it would be good to work on something new.

Have I told you guys about this idea at all? It has to do with a generation ship, which is a fairly common scifi idea. Basically instead of making up a faster-than-light mode of transportation, you put enough people on a ship designed for long term use to maintain genetic diversity and then set them off, with the idea that your current generation of people shall not live to see your destination, but some generation down the line will get there.

Anyway, now I need to design a spaceship. You’d think having a degree in and having worked in the aerospace engineering industry would help with this, but it doesn’t especially.

That said, I do feel like the structure and plot are coming along nicely. The last few books I’ve written (aside from the Trilogy and its sundry, and those were worldbuilt forever ago) have been modern world-based so it’s nice to do some hardcore worldbuilding again.

Anyway, I promise I’m not ignoring you! I’m trying to post once a week right now, but I may miss another week or so inadvertently until school starts up again.

See you soon(?), squider!

Card Story Part 12 and What the Heck Happened to June

July books: 0/5 (I am reading, I swear, I’m just not getting anywhere very fast apparently.)

I apologize for missing last week, squiders! I wish I had a good excuse but I don’t especially.

~*~*~*~*~

A note reading: I don't think you're allowed to stay in the school at night

A note reading: Who's going to stop me? The janitors? Judging by how gross it is under the bleachers they never go in there

A note reading: I just want you to be safe.

A note reading: FINE (underlined)
I'll use a trail cam.

A note with "It's a little" crossed out, and then reading: You know what, don't worry about it. "See" you soon.

~*~*~*~*~

A lot of last week was spent hunting down and backing up my SkillShare classes, which are being deleted…Thursday, I think. Not sure where to put them now, but at least I have them all in their entirety. I had a really hard time finding the original videos for the classes. I think I only found two classes in their entirety, and then another three in parts, and three I couldn’t find the videos for at all. I did find a lot of the raw, unedited videos, so I think I must have saved the finished videos somewhere that didn’t get backed up when my last computer died.

I was planning on putting them up on Udemy, but I see now that Coursera has bought Udemy, so its future is uncertain, plus in the instructor spaces there are a lot of complaints that are very similar to the complaints I have with SkillShare. And other places require teachers to pay a monthly fee to list classes, or don’t have discoverability. So not sure what to do with the classes, but I’m going to sit on them for a bit until I figure something out. No hurry, amirite?

But yeah, June felt really fast. Such grand plans that did not get done. But I have been mostly writing, so perhaps my expectations were too ambitious. I mean, I did add other goals too that I am also mostly keeping up with, but it does mean that instead of six hours of writing time, I only have two or so.

But consistency is key, as they always say. A little bit every day, and things will eventually get done.

Also how are we already a week into July? I need time to calm its roll, holy moly.

Anyway, my plan for the month is to continue on (and hopefully finish) my short stories, continue with querying and all that insanity, and perhaps start outlining a generational ship novel I’d like to write. But summer is summering (much too hot) and there are family obligations and festivals and so on and so forth. But we’ll get as far as we can.

How are you doing?

Card Story Part 11 and My Family Has (Partially) Returned

June books: Still 1/4

~*~*~*~*~

A note reading: Not sure--some sort of experiment gone wrong or something

A note reading: Have you considered the possibility that you're not actually in a different world at all and they're just lying to you?

A note reading: Why would they do that? Besides we're surrounded by forest & you're not

A note reading: Have you seen the forest, or do they just tell you it's there? Come on, what's more likely?

A note reading: Look, there's an easy way to check. If you come out that door at night & I can see you, that's that.

~*~*~*~*~

Two-thirds of my family came home yesterday, which on one hand is great, I was very happy to see them and they were very happy to see me, but it does mean that it’s been much harder to maintain the schedule I set for myself. Of the five main things on my schedule each day, I’ve only done three yesterday and today. Alas.

Now that my alone time is over, how was it? Well, it certainly was nice to have full control of my own schedule. I suspect I gained back several hours on not having to transport anyone anywhere alone. Plus I only had to cook every other day instead of every day, which also was a big time saver.

But I also, at times, felt purposeless. That bodes ill for later on in life when the kids have hopefully moved out. I had hoped that being able to focus on my own interests 100% would, if anything, be more fulfilling, and I did enjoy working on each item, but overall it felt like…like it was too late, almost. Like I should have done this stuff fifteen years ago, and now I’m too old to get any real benefit out of it.

Also concerning. I talked to my spouse a bit about this last night, this feeling of being too late on some of these things, but it basically boiled down to you can’t do everything in life, and choices were made, and regretting things you didn’t do earlier isn’t going to help anything now or in the future.

(And, if we want to be trite, the best time to start something is twenty years. The second best time is now. Or plant trees, or some such.)

So I wish I could come out of this saying that I feel amazing! But I mostly just feel a little sad about everything. And really it’s too bad that you can’t completely retool your life in two weeks because that would be great.

(It’s also ungodly hot so that’s probably not helping my mood at all.)

Do you ever feel a bit sad about roads not taken, squiders? The ironic thing here is that, with a lot of the things I was trying out these past few weeks, they weren’t on my radar twenty years ago anyway. Goals and interests change and cycle and all that jazz. So it’s all well and good to be like “I wish I had taken this up twenty years ago” but if 20yearspast!Kit didn’t care about them then who even knows.

See you next week, squiders!

Card Story Part 10, and How Goes the Alone Time?

June books: 1/4 (Siege and Storm)

I did the cards two days ago, took pictures yesterday, and am just now getting to the posting. There has to be a way to make this more efficient while keeping the physical cards.

~*~*~*~*~

A note reading: I'm not really sure, we're not supposed to talk about it

A note reading: We're not supposed to know about you either

A note reading: I have a hard time believing you're really in another dimension or whatever

A note reading: From what I understand it's a time shift

A note reading: Something happened that pulled us apart--but it still connects in some places

~*~*~*~*~*~

This story needs more drawings. Something to ponder.

Well, squiders, we’re five days into my 12-day alone time. So how’s it going?

Well. Let’s discuss.

Over the past month or so I put together a schedule for myself. It includes a bedtime/wake up time, workouts, music theory and singing (for my own edification), and writing. I actually planned hour by hour for each thing to make sure I had time, and built in some catch up time because I know myself.

Am I sticking to this hour by hour time frame? Not at all. Most of the time I am mostly getting back on track by dinner (6pm) but not always. I am consistently waking up early and going to bed late, so that’s not great.

Content wise, the workouts, music theory, and singing? Going great.

The writing? Decent. Not great. I planned myself two distinct writing time periods, one right after work and one right after dinner. I do not know why I planned anything for the hour right after work, which historically is lost time because I don’t always leave work on time, I apparently did not plan in travel time, and sometimes I just want to sit/nap when I get home before I get into things. So the first writing period has been late every day, which then delays everything else.

The second writing period is happening haphazardly and sometimes much too late, when my brain is not really braining anymore. The dinner back into productivity transition is not smooth.

The writing is suffering from some unfocusedness as well. (I know that’s not a word.) I’m not done with my short stories from earlier, so I’m still working on those. I made a checklist of single-time things that should be done, like sending out short stories, queries, and dealing with SkillShare’s BS. And I did plan out a new novel idea to start. So, in theory, I should just be writing the shorts til they’re done and then moving on, but my brain has decided that one writing session can be working on the stories, and the other can be working on everything else.

This is not efficient, but things are getting done. So trade offs.

Overall, my executives are mostly functioning and I think things are going well! We’ll see how I feel next week as we get closer to my family returning.

Have a good weekend, squiders! Do something fun for yourself!

Card Story Part 9(?) and SkillShare is Up to Shenanigans Again

June books: 0/4 still (but I have played some video games)

The one things about the card story is that it takes a bit to do the pictures, which makes the blogging overall take just a little bit longer. Also, I’ve noticed that the my ratio of purple cards to yellow cards is not great, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do at that point.

Still just going wherever we feel like on any particular day.

~*~*~*~*~*~

A note that reads: I don't understand why you can't be out during the day. We're here all day every day and nothing happens. Or why you can't go home.

A note that reads: This is our home--well, it's where we live, at least

A note that reads: But your family? You never get to see them?

A note that reads: I haven't seen my family since I started school

A note that reads: As you get older, they move you farther out

A note that reads: Farther out towards what?

~*~*~*~*~

In frustrating but not unsurprising news, I got an email from SkillShare yesterday saying they were stopping and reducing content in a few categories, including Writing & Publishing, and that they’d be removing 7 of my 8 classes as part of this. (The last class, my oldest, has always had 10x the students of any of my other classes, which I suspect is mostly driven by when it was put on the platform, before they started messing with discoverability and other logistics.)

SkillShare has been actively working toward removing all but the most successful teachers over the past few years, so, as I say, this is not a surprise, though my newest class is all of a month and a half old and hence hasn’t had time to really gain a lot of traction. I guess they got sick of driving people off by making it harder and harder to get paid and are just doing it straight out now.

So that’s yet another thing to have to deal with. Yay.

My two weeks of alone time starts Sunday afternoon, so I do need to spend some time over the next few days making sure I’m ready to go. I am not quite done with my short story project, so I’m not sure if I should finish them first, or just switch over to the new project I brainstormed at the writing retreat. Something to decided, oh, tomorrow.

Wish me luck, squiders. See you next week!

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Books by Kit Campbell