working on a sci-fi series

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When I first started writing my science-fiction series Meniscus, I had no plans for a series or even a book. I wrote a chapter of Meniscus: Crossing The Churn because my writing group wanted to hold a Saturday workshop on science-fiction/fantasy and I had nothing to share. I pulled out a story I had written years before but it was unbelievably bad. All I salvaged from the older story was the name of the heroine ‘Odymn’.

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'parkour through the wood'test.jpg
Odymn, my main character, is an expert at parkour … helps her travel through the Themble Wood and get them out of sticky situations

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Months later, I have two of the series published and four more in the wings. Since the story is written in the form of an illustrated long poem, a 150 page book is about 10,000 to 15,000 words long. This is only about 1/10th the length of a normal book, so when I finish, the story will be the length of a short novel. Once you get used to the narrative poetry form, the result is a rather quick read.

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All six books tell a story: on a planet where humans are not allowed to have relationships, a small group of humans tries to build a community and recapture some of what they have lost. Within that longer story are six shorter story arcs, one per book.

 

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'transport crash'paperback
more characters are added to the story when a transport crashes in the desert in Book 3

 

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The table below shows the unfolding story in terms of theme, story length and number of characters.  Writing a series differs from writing a single book in that elements of the later story must be placed in earlier books. For example, the lost child in Book 6 is introduced in Book 2, the former girlfriend of the Slain is introduced in Book 3 but is not one of the characters until book 4, and so on. If you want to know what is in the mysterious box in Book 2, Meniscus: South from Sintha, the answer is in Book 3 (Meniscus: Winter by the Water-climb)!

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Book Pages Word count Number of main characters Theme
Meniscus: Crossing The Churn 147 9,556 3 A young woman, Odymn, thinks she has found her freedom when she is rescued from servitude by a genetically-engineered Slain whose kindness may not be consistent with his purpose.
Meniscus: South from Sintha 151 9,740 6 The Slain, for love of Odymn, tries to return his former acquisitions to their homes and finds the task more challenging than he thought possible.
Meniscus: Winter by the Water-climb (DRAFT) 244 15,310 13 Winter comes to planet Meniscus and Odymn must cope with the survivors of a transport crash without the help of the Slain.
Meniscus: The Village at Themble Hill (DRAFT) 220 15,229 16 When the Dock-winder overlords threaten their friends, Odymn and the Slain try to find a safe place to build a new community.
Meniscus: Karst Topography (DRAFT) 148 ? 9147 ? 17 The Slain and his friends travel to the city of Prell to rescue the women of the community but Odymn is not among them and the Slain fears she may be dead.
Meniscus: Encounter with the Emenpod (DRAFT) 140 ??? 10,000 ??? 16 + A mysterious alien begins to rebuild the community of Themble Hill and helps the Slain and his friends to find a lost child.

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For each of the books, I am at a different stage in the writing process: marketing for Book 1 and 2, editing for Book 3 and 4, and creation for Books 5 and 6. It means I am never bored, still embedded in the creative process and getting feedback as I go.

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If you have read one of the books in the series and want to leave a comment, I would love to hear from you.

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alien moons
‘alien moons’, acrylic, Alexandra Jane Tims, 5″ x 8″, May 2017

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Copyright Alexandra Tims 2017

Free book!

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Meniscus: South from Sintha is FREE on Amazon (worldwide) for the next five days (June 1 to June 5).

Odymn wants the Slain to return his ‘aquisitions’ (a wolf-like Kotildi, a Grell-swallow chick, a beautiful human woman, a Dock-winder child and another genetically-enhanced Slain) to their homes. The Slain wants to try, to make Odymn happy, but the task might not be so easy!

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South from Sintha

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1544103018

 

'Odymn and the Kotildi'

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Copyright Alexandra Tims 2017

world building – creating an alien language for my book

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In the back of each of my books in the Meniscus series is ‘A Condensed Guide to Gel-speak’. The Guide includes all of the alien words I have used in the books to date.

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blog scan of dictionary

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I am not a linguist. I speak English and French and I have some idea of how words are derived and the relationships between them. Who knows if our Human ideas of language and syntax would apply to an alien race!!??

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The Gel-heads in my alien world are barely sentient, driven by greed and the search for gratification. And yet, through some twist of Meniscus history, their language is the one used by most sentients on the planet. In one of the books, they will be seen in a village, teaching the children of another alien race.

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'captive of the Gel-head'
Gel-heads are covered with green gelatinous skin: their muscles, bones and internal organs can be seen through the integument!
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The Gel-head language includes clicks for word separation and emphasis, indicated by an inverted comma   ‘   .  The words are spoken with a hiss, and include many ‘th’ sounds.

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I have tried to construct words as logical associations of other words. So, for example, a building is marneth far’natha, built from the words for ‘to build’ and ‘a thing of value’ :

marneth far’natha      a building

marneth        to build

far’natha       thing of value

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Another example:

grill’             to remove

grill’en           small (something has been removed)

cardoth          moon

cardoth grill’en    the smaller of two moons

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In the top row of my bookshelf is a copy of The Klingon Dictionary (Marc Okrand, Star Trek Pocket Books, 1985). Originally meant as an assist to actors, it has become very popular among science-fiction enthusiasts. My copy has not been dusted off for many years, but I am proud to own one. The book has been issued in two editions and is translated into five languages. The Klingon Dictionary has sold 500,000 copies. So is a guide to Gel-speak silly? Who can tell?

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blog books1
a few of my collection of Star Trek paperbacks … I can’t even reach that shelf, let alone find the dictionary, but it is up there somewhere!!!
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Copyright Alexandra Tims 2017

New book in the series!

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The second book in the meniscus series is now available on Amazon, in Kindle and paperback formats! Meniscus: South from Sintha tells the continuing story of Odymn and the Slain.

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On a planet where Humans are slaves, Odymn is free. Her companion, the Slain, was once a trader in sentient beings. Now, for love of Odymn, he has agreed to change his ways and to return his former captives to their homes. Together, he and Odymn travel the urban alleyways and wilderness woodlands of the Southern District of Prell-nan, risking everything. They must battle wild life, outsmart power-hungry Dock-winders and dodge the grasp of ruthless Gel-heads. But in spite of good intentions, will the Slain be able to right the wrongs of the past? Or will the consequences of his actions outweigh the good he and Odymn want to do?

In the second of the Meniscus series, South from Sintha tells the continuing story of Odymn and the Slain. Odymn loves her silent companion, but trying to help his former captives may be a challenge she did not anticipate.

You can try to mend the broken, to right the wrongs of the past, but sometimes you can`t go back.

I hope you enjoy this new book!

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Copyright 2017 Alexandra Tims

planets in the Meniscus system 2

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Writing science-fiction involves ‘world-building’, the process of creating an imaginary world. This fictional world can be represented with maps, illustrations and descriptions of setting. The constructed world should be coherent, and can have a history, geography, ecology,  demographics, and so on.

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For my series about planet Meniscus, most of the world-building has been on-planet, inventing deserts and forests and the ecosystems found there.

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'sandstorm in The Darn-el'test
in Meniscus: Crossing The Churn, my main characters have to cross a desert, find shelter from a sandstorm and cope with scarce water

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However, just as with ‘character-building’, a writer is wise to develop as much information about the setting as possible, even if that information does not get included in the story. This information will inform the story and provide context.

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For that reason, I have developed a setting beyond planet Meniscus itself. I have given Meniscus a ‘solar system’ and invented some basic information on the planets there. After all, my characters spend a lot of time looking at the sky and who knows what they may see!

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'naming the stars'paperback

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In Book Five of the series, ‘Meniscus: Karst Topography’, one of the displays in a museum will be a holographic presentation of the solar system and the larger galaxy. When one of the characters ‘explores’ the holographic system, she will be able to experience returning to her home on Earth and to express her ideas about living so far from home.

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The fictional solar system where Meniscus is a planet is small — only four planets and their moons.

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xolar system

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‘Sel’ is the fourth planet in the system, a huge water planet. The white areas on Sel are frozen water; the blue areas are upwellings of liquid water, located in surface ‘hot-spots’.  The life-forms on Sel are microbial, evolved to live in a watery world. Most of their lives are spent in a dormant state, waiting for intermittent thaw, or in the small air pockets in solid ice.

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sel
The planet ‘Sel’

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Copyright 2017 Alexandra Tims

Meniscus: the series

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I hope you will enjoy visiting the planet Meniscus, the setting for my six part science fiction adventure/romance series. The first book in the series is Meniscus: Crossing The Churn (March 2017).

 … After an encounter with a wandering trader, a young woman escapes squalor and servitude with his help. As he helps her elude her former masters, she feels she has a hope for a new life. Her skills at parkour and foraging fit her well for a dangerous subsistence-based life and, in spite of his refusal to speak, she feels she has met her soul-mate. Follow Odymn and the Slain in their travels through the desert and wooded landscapes of Meniscus and discover their destination!

Meniscus: Crossing the Churn is available at Amazon.ca in paperback and Kindle formats here.

what are elginards?

jane tims2 Comments

elginard

wingless insect, native to Meniscus; moves by floating on air currents

Have you wondered about those two black eyes tucked on the right side of my header image? They belong to an elginard, a woodland insect common in my stories about Meniscus.

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'floating elginards'lightpaperback

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The elginard is recurring symbol in my Meniscus books. It stands for those who do not feel in control of their lives, who have no idea where tomorrow will take them. The consideration of fate versus determinism is an underlying theme in the books. The elginards are inspired by the wooly aphids that drift on the wind in autumn in New Brunswick.

Some poetic excerpts about the elginard, from the Meniscus books:

From effervescence, droplets coalesce,

drift like wingless elginards, 

purposeless, ephemeral.

………………(Book 1: Crossing The Churn)

 

Air still.

Elginards hover.

Each with a flourish

of feathery hairs

to keep them aloft.

………………(Book 2: South from Sintha)

 

Now she watches drifting elginards.

Like woolly-aphids on Earth,

facsimiles of snowflake,

predicting winter.

………………(Book 3: Winter by the Water-Climb)

 

Wounded yarnel

drips sap to elginards.

Waits for breezes to launch them 

to purposeless lives.

……………….(Book 3: Winter by the Water-Climb)

Sparks from the fire

lift, mingle with wingless

elginards, float

on wisps of midnight.

……………….(Book 4: The Village at Themble Hill)

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Scan_20170520 (2)

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Copyright 2017 Alexandra Tims

Planet Meniscus

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Welcome to planet Meniscus.

A planet with:

  • two phased moons
  • two suns
  • seasons
  • dynamic landscapes (desert, forest)

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Water on Meniscus moves upward, not down, effervescing and foaming like soda in a shaken bottle.

The odd behavior of water on the planet results in dramatic water features:

  • water churns – lake-like but filled with frothing writhing water
  •  water-climbs – like waterfalls but the water movement is upward

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'parting the ferns'.jpg

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Copyright 2017 Alexandra Tims

Welcome to ‘off planet’!

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Welcome to the worlds I love to write about. And to the worlds I love to paint and draw.

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I am a writer, primarily a poet.  I am also an artist who illustrates my work.

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Scan_20170508
‘alien moons’, acrylic, Alexandra Jane Tims, 5″ x 8″, May 2017

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I am author of a science-fiction adventure series. The first in the series Meniscus: Crossing The Churn is available in paperback and Kindle additions on Amazon here.

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As I have published my work, I have realised – some of my writing and illustrations do not belong on earth. They should be out there, available to those of you who share my love of space travel and encounters with new worlds. This blog will help me reach out to you and share my ‘off planet’ work!

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Copyright 2017 Alexandra Tims