One down, many to go
So I finished my first novel last week. Which is to say, I finished the first draft of my first novel, and therefore I am not truly finished. I’ve decided to take a break from it for a few weeks and work on some short stories that I hope will turn into my second novel if I like them well enough. Of course maybe this is all just procrastination, since I am dreading plunging into the revision – partly because there is currently a major plothole in the backstory for one of my main characters. No matter how I fill in that hole I’m going to lose a detail about her history that I like.
Also, I have yet to come up with a snazzy way to sum up the novel. Currently I tell people this:
It’s your basic ninja vs. pirate story, set 150 years in the future. Also, there is a lot of robot sex.
This is not untrue, though it does gloss over pretty much all of the science and politics in the novel. But those are so hard to describe in an elevator pitch!
I am optimistic that somewhere in between drafts two and three, I will hone the perfect, sexy/accurate pitch for my novel. In the meantime, I need to get cracking on those short stories.
In other news, I posted a deceptively light rant about male nudity in science fiction on io9 – there is actually some crunchy thought in there, below the flexed abs. And I posted a deceptively heavy contemplation of the Darko Mythos, since Richard “Donnie Darko” Kelly’s latest film, The Box, opened last weekend. And I reported on a new genomics discovery that could potentially lead to talking chimps.
I’m also preparing to head down to Irvine, the city where I grew up, for a futurism conference in December called The Bio-Politics of Popular Culture. I’ll be giving a talk there called “Will Mind-Controlled, Genetically-Engineered Sexbots Want to Play Videogames?” Which is just a fancy way of asking how biotechnologies will transform the way we consume pop culture devoted to sex and violence (my two favorite flavors). More on that conference as things develop.
