💌Hanlon’s Reader #3: October Newsletter

"All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet or his enemy's?" 😐🍷 🍷🤔

Oct 25, 2023

^📅Monthly Update: October 2023

We’re almost done with October already??

But the Content Calendar tells no lies. The adventure continues. I’m drawn for some reason to these end-of-part vignettes that started in Part X of Strange Harvest. Maybe I’m trying to escape a little bit from the first-person perspective Jackson’s tale is written from since I usually steer away from first-person narratives.

I’m trying something similar in the sequel to The Star Pirate’s Folly, where a parallel story takes place at the same time as the events of the main book. I like stories with long arcs that meander and take time to resolve, where readers can wonder how these extra parts tie in.

I guess it builds dramatic tension, with the reader knowing things that the characters in the book aren’t aware of. Ender’s Game did this really well with the dialogue portions between Graff and the battle school administration official, which is where I originally got the idea to try it myself.

📗 Read Larval Haze

🔃 In Progress:

It’s been really good to get back to these stories.

For a long time, I just straight up did not have the mental energy to commit to making new content. I was working a sales job that required me to be on the phone 4-6 hours a day, and it drained my batteries every day. Writing narrative fiction took time and energy I couldn’t muster.

When I make new content, sometimes it just flows, and it’s great. But most of the time I really have to think about what I want to say, how to say it, how to keep everything consistent. And then there’s the research wormholes, where I’ll want to confirm some fact and spend time just learning about whatever comes up.

But there’s a difference for me between writing new content vs writing notes and ideas. I have stacks of notebooks from the past several years I’ve jotted ideas in, plotted story arcs, and transcribed parts of books or podcasts that inspired me.

Someday I hope they’ll all be complete on here. I’m reminded of a Ray Bradbury quote where he talks about how he chooses which of his incomplete stories to finish:

“You look down at all these hungry little beaks—all these stories waiting to be finished—and you say: Which of you needs to be fed? Which of you needs to be finished today? And the story that yells the loudest, the idea that stands up and opens its mouth, is the one who gets fed.”

Ray Bradbury, The Paris Review (Lost Interview)

❗❗ Upcoming:

Behold the mighty Content Calendar!

So between now and the end of November, I’ll be finishing and posting the remaining parts of Larval Haze. Then, I’m going to launch Paid Subscriptions and start posting my book The Star Pirate’s Folly on Substack: the current plan is to have each chapter available for 10 days before it goes behind the paywall.

Strange Harvest and Larval Haze are turning into something more than a short story. I’m still planning to complete the third story with the Harvesters and Dusters, then enlisting an editor to help combine them into a novella or full book I can sell as a single piece.

🎁 Bonus Content:

I can’t resist another Bradbury quote from the same interview (it’s really good, he’s such an interesting guy). This one’s about writing stories for the joy of it instead of prestige or proving your intellect:

“I’m not interested in proving your IQ or mine. I’m interested in having fun with ideas, throwing them up in the air like confetti and then running under them.”

Ray Bradbury, The Paris Review (Lost Interview)

These Bonus Content sections feel like wild-card territory for me, so let’s throw some confetti and go on a diversion. I have this other idea for a book called Tales of Mice & Magic which is more fantasy-inspired. When I was a kid I was obsessed with the Redwall books by Brian Jacques (another gem of a human being). And a few years ago I read Watership Down which is just an incredible book.

Basically, I want to create a similar world by looking about 1,000 years back in Central and North America to create my cast of animal characters. This is one of those ideas I was talking about where I have a whole notebook dedicated to it, a whole story plotted out, and I need to write it in full.

But the science fiction I’m writing and the fantasy ideas I have about this are so different from each other, I don’t think I can do them both at the same time. And I love doing my own thing with self-publishing, but I’m also interested in pursuing a real publisher since I haven’t really gone down that path seriously.

So I’ve got a lot of choices to make!

Be well,

James Hanlon

10/25/23

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