Have a Great Thanksgiving Week (if you celebrate)

From Spacefreighters Lounge

HAPPY TURKEY DAY!

From our gang to yours--Happy Thanksgiving!

CHASING THAT DREAM JOB

In many ways, you could say I have My Dream Job right now. As a self-published author of science fiction romance, I do something I love as a vocation. My work has produced four mainstream novels (and one short story) of which I am proud, all of which have won recognition from my peers in some way. I have a voice, a platform, and a (very) modest following on social media. I set my own schedule and make my own creative and marketing decisions (for better or worse!). I’m not bad to work for, either, compared to some other bosses I’ve had.

Although I’ve been writing stories since I could hold the big pencil, I haven’t always wanted to be a writer for a living. As a kid, when I wasn’t dreaming of running like Jim Thorpe or using sign language like Helen Keller (two of my childhood heroes), I was telling everyone I wanted to grow up to be an Egyptologist. Not just an archaeologist, mind you, but one that specializes in the ancient treasures of Egypt. I was a weird kid.

By middle school, my teachers were pushing me in the direction of using what was clearly a talent for writing. But no one was starry-eyed enough to think fiction should be my weapon of choice, least of all me. I saved the Beatles (and, later, STAR TREK) fan fiction for my spare time and focused on essays for school contests and journalism as a career goal. My Dream Job by the time I graduated from high school was Foreign Correspondent, or maybe Ace Cub Reporter for a decent-sized urban newspaper.

As I planned for the right college course to land that Dream Job, I got a great piece of advice from a reporter at the Nashville Tennessean, my hometown daily newspaper, then edited by the legendary John Siegenthaler. That reporter (whose name I don’t remember) told me no one could teach me how to write—I either had it or I didn’t. But I needed to know all the other stuff about how the world works—history, government, philosophy, science. He advised me to get a broad liberal arts degree and soak up all the job experience I could in journalism. So I went for an International Relations degree, worked for my school newspaper and radio, and interned at a major religious publishing house in Nashville.

By the time I graduated in 1975, though, everyone wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein. Jobs in media were hard to get, and, in fact, I never did succeed at snagging one. I’ve often thought that was a blessing in disguise, in this time that has seen the greatest disruption of the news media since the years preceding World War II. At least I’m not scrambling to keep my newspaper job now!

Instead my “Dream Job” just kept getting redefined over the years. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer, then Peace Corps staff. A freelance editor and writer. An organic farmer. A stay-at-home mom. A community activist. A karate instructor. A taiji instructor. A wannabe romance writer. And, finally, an honest-to-God published author. At times, I’ve been all these things at once. I’ve been thankful, very often, for that reporter’s advice. My liberal arts education gave me flexibility!

I love my regular (author) job, though I could wish for the cursed Amazon Algorithm to stop throwing up outdated editions of my books when I search for my titles. And it would be great to actually get paid. Still, I have another Dream Job that hangs just out of reach. If someone would pay me to review movies for a living, now, that would be the Dream Job of all Dream Jobs. I get to do some of that here on Spacefreighters, but I’d love to have a blog dedicated just to film reviews. Or a podcast!  What about a podcast? 

Well, a girl can dream.

Cheers, Donna

NOTE: I'll be taking a break with family for the Thanksgiving holiday next week. See you all in two weeks!

Even in space you can write what you know

I guess you guys all know I write mainly space opera. So you might be forgiven for raising an incredulous eyebrow (maybe even two) when I talk about writing what I know. And sure, I take out the space opera tool kit for the space bits. FTL travel, artificial gravity, shields to divert radiation (and attacks) etc etc. But not everything happens out there in the wide black. I usually have some goings-on planetside. And the WIP is no exception.

Senior Commander Thad Butcher was Grand Admiral Saahren's adjutant in the Iron Admiral series, but this time, he's getting his own story. Newly promoted to captain after the events chronicled in the Iron Admiral, he's gone home to Validor for a brief holiday before he takes up his new command - a battle cruiser. It's a boyhood dream come true. But he arrives on planet just in time to become embroiled in an attack on the Ruling family, where he's reunited with Tarlyn, who had been the unattainable love of his life before he left Validor, aged seventeen, to attend the Fleet Academy.

I've had a vague plot floating in my head for several years now, but distilling that ephemeral essence into a working story takes time. Although we'll get back up into space later down the track, at the moment Thad and Tarlyn are on a boat, heading for a meeting with the Ptorix - and some other amazing, intelligent creatures.

And this gave me the opportunity to write what I know.

A few years ago ago I was privileged to go on a three-day sail in the Whitsunday Islands off Queensland. It was a memorable experience, and one of those appears in the WIP. Thad and Tarlyn take a boat out of a bay between two headlands. That's based on my experience when we sailed through the Solway Passage, with its churning waters and whirlpools, all overlooked by a stormy sky and the towering red cliffs of a distant island. My scene isn't exactly the same, but I've drawn on that journey to lend some colour.

But that's not the end of the sea adventure, and here I dragged out another recent experience, when I went to Horizontal Falls, in Western Australia's far north, six years ago (gosh, was that really so long ago)? I wrote about it here. I used that image, of a tide roaring through a narrow gap, in another exciting scene.

Crisis at Validor is a fun read, my usual combination of action, intrigue, and politics, all served with a large helping of romance.

Newly-promoted Captain Brett Butcher is about to achieve his life-long ambition to command a battle cruiser. But before he takes up his new posting, he goes home on leave, hoping to perhaps catch a glimpse of his first love, the unattainable Lady Tarlyn.

When the queen is assassinated in a terrorist attack, Tarlyn’s life is thrown into turmoil when she, too, becomes a target. The last person she expects to rescue her is her childhood sweetheart, Brett Butcher.

As Validor’s Ptorix and human populations face off over a group of islands neither owns, the calls for war grow louder. Torn between duty and ambition, Butcher and Tarlyn struggle to prevent an inter-species conflict, while the ember of love that has smouldered for so long bursts into flame. But with planetary peace at stake, both will be forced to choose; love or duty.

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