Author: Clayton Barnett

Former engineer, current husband and father, layabout Pharmacy Technician, aspiring writer.

Procrastination

Wife and family are off ten days on a vacation:  the perfect time to write!  I got up at 0800 Saturday…

Breakfast.  Pay some bills.  Sort some investment reports.  Start first laundry.  Put dishes in dishwasher; clear around sink.  Go for walk.  Drive to mother-in-law’s house to feed/water her parakeet.  Come home to start loads of towels.  Write a blog post about not writing.

And it’s not at if I’ve nothing to write about:  last night I jotted down several ideas for Part Two of “Crosses and Doublecrosses”.  More importantly, my copyeditor gave me the suggestion that, as my soon to be released “Worlds Without End” is a ten-year-on sequel of “Echoes of Family Lost,” for anyone who hasn’t read the first I should include a preface and cast of characters.  That seemed pretentious to me so instead I saw a Prologue where, just about to turn 13, Gary is assigned an essay by his Brotherhood:  to reflect upon his family.  In that reflection I will be able to re-introduce the characters from EoFL.

Dammit.  Except for another load of towels, I have no more excuses.  Guess I’ll do that now…

Grasping the Nettle of Power

Fam was at the zoo today with the relatives from Hungary.  I’m off DayJob so started writing on the deck around 1100.  At 1330 had to come in as it was just too hot outside.  Still too cheap to turn the AC on, though!

Productive noontime:  about 2k words the close of Part One.  Tempted then tortured (so to speak), Sylvia makes her choice.  I wonder where it will lead?  I may write a bit more this evening but right now I need to review some materials for the book cover of “Worlds Without End.”  For Part Two I really need to get into the letter-writing/journal-entry thing to cover ground fast… it’s just not something I’ve done so I keep falling back into these dialogs that have driven all of my stories.  Dang.

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Resurrecting the Past

I am all in:  I am going to complete the idea I had years ago called “Crosses and Doublecrosses.”  The original would have been an espionage/police procedural of over 500 pages.  I cannot stay there so long nor write it down.  This will be a novella in three acts about the temptation of the hotshot NYC lawyer Sylvia Fernandez.

I’m planning on much exposition about the background of Machine Civilization and what happens to her via the “letter” trope that authors such as C. McCullough used to such effectiveness in her early ‘Masters of Rome’ series.

I always wanted to do something different for each of my books.  This is.  Here we go.

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Life Imitates My (upcoming) Works, Part Etc.

A planned real-world test of a reactionless thruster.  These loomed large in Larry Niven’s Known Space series.  If this technology proves true we’ll have the solar system at our feet.

Below the fold an excerpt from my forthcoming novel “Worlds Without End”…

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Passing Away

Completed my first editing pass of “Worlds Without End”:  formatting into 6″ x 9″, block-justified text (which boofed up all of my block-quoted text…), catching any gross rhetorical errors and plot holes… that sort of thing.  In this raw form it is 263 pages; that will grow a little as I add the chapter breaks and make some plot clarifications for Part 2; right now I’ve just highlighted a couple of sentences to alert me on the next pass to ‘clean this stuff up!’

Speaking of the two parts, part one is called CODE:ASCENSION and part two CODE:DESCENSION, alluding to something that happens to two of the characters.

I hope to have my second pass complete by mid-week at which point I’ll run it through Grammerly then hand it off to my copyeditor.  Things are proceeding quite nicely, for once!

Is the Order a Fork?

70.6k words, three days before my self-imposed deadline of 31 May, the raw manuscript of Worlds Without End is complete.  I shall make one to two editing passes at it before handing it to my very talented editor/copyeditor Monica San Nicholas.  In parallel I’ve the staff at Jacoby Alley working on the cover.  With the luck of a stainless steel rat and the grace of God, I might have this released to the wild by 4 July.

My liver is looking forward to its vacation.

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Sacraments

This bridges to the last installment of Part 2.  All that’s left is Gary’s visit with Robert, escalating to a meeting of some/several of the Council, and whatever political fallout there is of that.

Then they all go to Mass on Sunday.  Henge has a seizure and Part 2 ends.  After the resolution of the seizure; I’m an ass but not that big of one.

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