Update

Here we are in the final stages of the new book. The "pounding the keyboard" part is almost done. I talked to my illustrator and he assures me the rushes on the cover will be done sometime next week.

Writing speculative fiction and science fiction is not an easy thing to do. The idea behind The Belt Loop was born many, many years ago and was put in a drawer along with a lot of other writing projects. Trying to get a good balance between characters, story line, plot twists, and a redemptive conclusion can take the life out of a project that was not well thought out in the first place.

How do the characters interact? What is the emphasis of the story? Is it just a lot of words to describe the action or do the words really have meaning and carry the tale to a logical conclusion? Will there be a sequel to feature the main characters again? Is the story believable, assuming the reader can suspend his or her disbelief to take into account all of the "science" in the fiction?

These are all questions I ask myself as I'm creating. If I can't answer "yes" to all of them, I do a little tampering with the tale until I can.

Next week begins the real drudgery: The Edit. I tend to edit as I go when I write and use my spellcheck and other tools but my eye tends to insert things that are not really there and my head seems to read what I meant to say instead of what I actually wrote. Generally, I will proofread a fresh manuscript about ten times and once satisfied I print out a hard copy and read it again. Lots of time involved but I'm compulsive like that and committed to putting out the best product I'm capable of. Hope it works.

---------
Fabric Of Space © 1999 R. Jones

In the story I wanted to "invent" a new kind of space travel that used a high-energy field to "push" space into folds as if it were a carpet being bunched against a wall. This folded space can be navigated from fold to fold thus greatly reducing transit times from planet to planet without going through the hackneyed "hyperspace" that most of the future starships seem to be able to access at will in a lot of stories. This folding technology as employed in my new novel produces a very realistic approach to interstellar travel and creates realistic timelines for unfolding events in the process. (I think I just made a pun.)

Next post: The New Cover (I hope).