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on August 12
John Sundman
commented on a project updateGreg, Thanks. I appreciate your patience and confidence. And your kind words. jrs
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on August 11
John Sundman
Posted project update #20Update long overdue
Hello friends,
Here's a long-overdue update on where things stand on my novel-in-progress Creation Science. I'm making progress on it, but obviously not as rapidly as I had envisioned or hoped. Here's some context.
Last autumn I sold the rights to my first novel, Acts of the Apostles, to Underland Press, a new, small, high-quality printing house. As part of the deal, I agreed to revise the book under the direction of Underland's editor-in-chief. Well, that turned out to be a pretty major undertaking. Said editor wanted me to eliminate some characters & related sub-plots, beef up some other characters and make some new connections between them, change some venues. . . in short, write a new novel based on my original book. Which I now have done. Yesterday I sent the editor what I *hope* is my final version of the book. She will make some edits, I'm sure, but I feel confident that my part of the work is essentially done. I think it will be a great book, and who knows, with a "real" publisher behind it, maybe it will get some traction. I think it's a great thriller, even if it has less of the quirkiness of the original Acts of the Apostles. But man, what a lot of work.
That's great, you say. But what does that have to do with me? I gave you money to work on Creation Science, not Acts of the Apostles.
The problem has been twofold: between working on the rewrite of "Acts" and whatever "day job" work I've been able to find in these hard times, I've found it difficult to find time and energy for Creation Science. I have been working on it, but not, I confess, "flat out." And the second reason is that the stories kept bleeding into each other, or rather, the two versions of Acts of the Apostles kept bleeding into Creation Science, with the result that Creation Science kept trying to be nothing more than yet *another* version of Acts of the Apostles--with a diabolical villain, bioterrorism, an unlikely band of Scooby-Doo misfits who must overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles in order to save the day, etc. But I don't want to write that book again -- I've rewritten Acts about a million times since 1995, and I can't bear to do it again -- and moreover I don't think you signed up to support me in order to get a warmed-over Acts of the Apostles. You want something new, and great, and that's what I'm trying to write for you.
I do apologize for the delay. But I'm just trying to put food on my family, as the saying goes, so I've tried to make the best of the opportunities presented to me even as I am trying to honor my commitment to you.
So let me tell you where I am on Creation Science.
The book does deal with my same old preoccupations. On the literal level the plot involves the convergence of biological and digital technologies, corporatism, religious fundamentalism, nasty bad guys, complicated good guys, betrayals, misunderstandings, and all that good stuff. Hackers too. And scientists and Russian mafiosi. So the title "Creation Science" refers to both the ab-initio creation of new life forms, and to the religious fundamentalist belief in the literal truth of the biblical creation myth. Also, as with my "Mind over Matter" trilogy (Acts, Cheap Complex Devices, & The Pains, considered as one work), there is a metafictiony aspect to Creation Science, where I kind of investigate the whole idea of where stories come from, and whether we can create a science of (artistic) creation. So the title Creation Science has at least three meanings. The book takes place mostly in Boston and on Martha's Vineyard, with a decades-old backstory, Cryptonomicon style, set in central Africa. So that's all well and good, but I had a lot of that in place when I came to you via kickstarter asking for your financial help to finish the book almost two years ago. What have I been up to since then?
What's new, what I've been working on, is the storyteller's voice, the point of view. I've wrestled with this a lot, and I've found an approach that's got me pretty jazzed. I hope you like it too.
Creation Science is now a first-person story, told from the point of view of one Albert Joseph Compton, jr., a mixed race (mostly native American (Cherokee & Wampanoag) with some admixtures of African & European) young man, originally from Tribal lands in Oklahoma, who winds up on Martha's Vineyard due to an unlikely, but not totally implausible, set of circumstances. He is a smart, friendly, funny fellow, but his outsider status makes him detached and skeptical about just about everything. His interest in science and the (Greek/Latin) classics set him apart from his childhood friends on the reservation, his ancestry and personal history set him apart from the "mainstream" & wealthy society he finds himself thrust into in Massachusetts, and his skepticism sets him apart from his extended family -- what little family he has -- who are all fervent creationists.
Albert, by the way, is named in honor of a dear childhood friend of mine who had a personality much like his namesake's. My friend Albert, a graduate of an Ivy League university, was murdered in a holdup in Atlantic City twenty years ago while working in a liquor store in a bad neighborhood there. (How the hell did a smart guy with an Ivy League degree wind up working in an Atlantic City liquor store? Life's funny twists and turns, improbable, but not totally implausible. . .) Because Albert's family moved away from my home town when he was in 7th grade, he and I wrote letters to each other. For years. A *lot* of letters. I still have his, and am using them as source material for the book.
From the moment Albert starts to tell his story, the first sentence on page 1, you will know that you are listening to a yarn, or, if you will, a saga. Albert references the Greek and Latin myths; he uses fancy, literary language, he exaggerates, he contradicts himself. And although he skips forward and back in time, the story he tells is a conventional one, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, with good guys and bad guys, a protagonist with a challenge, and so forth. Thus there is a meta-fictiony aspect to the story, but it's not as in-your-face metafictiony as, for example, my book Cheap Complex Devices. The metafiction comes mostly in the form of the literary allusions, which remind you that you're reading a story. If I do my job well, you can either ignore or pay attention to this aspect of Creation Science, depending on whether you go in for that kind of thing. Anyway, to set your expectations, on the literary fancy-pants scale, I expect Creation Science to come in somewhere between Cryptonomicon and Gravity's Rainbow, but much closer to Cryptonomicon.
Now that, I do so dearly hope, my novelist work on the new Acts of the Apostles is done, I'll be concentrating all my novelist efforts on Creation Science. I'm going to try to stay out of the "when will it be done?" business, since I have such a terrible track record. But I do promise that I'm working hard, and I'll try to be much better about the updates.
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on November 30, 2010
John Sundman
Posted project update #19One year on
Friends, backers, generous souls:
I am going to finish writing this book. It's going to be good.
But I feel bad that it's taking me so long to do it: if you're getting this note, it's because you put cash up front. You're entitled to a accounting as to why you don't have your copy of Creation Science yet.
I really had hoped and expected that you would have had the book in your hands (or on your electronic reader) long before now. Alas, I haven't finished writing it yet. I still have a pretty long ways to go; a few months at least.
Three things have slowed me down:
1) the usual wrestling with the story that most novelists experience. Every time I think I know where the book is going it seems to go, or to want to go, someplace else. I do feel conflicted about this, when the book goes off in some new direction, usually an unsatisfactory one. Part of me says "just keep writing, don't worry about it." And part of me says "Well, this is crap. You're going to have to do better. This simply isn't good enough. Go back and start again."
I don't want to be prissy, precious or perfectionist and neither do I want to keep rewriting the book forever. But I don't want to give you a lousy book, a mere rehash of Acts of the Apostles. I'm trying to write my best book yet. It's hard. It's always harder than I think it's going to be. I do console myself with the knowledge that my experience is not atypical for novelists, and that taking two years to write a thick, good, book is not unreasonable. But I feel a bit stupid that I thought I had it figured out, that I thought it would be easy to take the basic chapters & outline I had a year ago and turn it into a good book quickly. I should have known it would be a bitch kitty.
2) Technology is changing too fast, and I cannot slow it down! I went to the IGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machines) Jamboree at MIT a few weeks ago, and it was both inspirational/exhilarating and scary/depressing to see how fast the field of synthetic biology is changing. I went to a bunch of presentations on work that would have merited Nobel prizes twenty years ago, but which merely get a nod today. And this is work being done by undergrads, on four-month projects. It really is mind-blowing. Every time I think I've invented something scary and just-over-the-horizon, it turns out that some smart bunch of kids somewhere has already done it. Being topical and "cutting edge" is harder than it used to be. Or so it seems to me.
3) The Real World has raised its ugly head. In all candor, my financial situation is not great; in fact it's horrible and scary. My last full-time paycheck was in November, 2007. So, unavoidably, I've spent much of the last year looking for work and doing the work whenever I found it. This circumstance has sapped both time and energy from Creation Science.
It's been one hell of a recession, let me tell you. Work has been really hard to come by -- or at least it has been for me. But there are signs that things are opening up (I won't say more so as not to jinx anything.) But the point is, Creation Science has had to take a back seat. I do think that's changing now; I hope so. (I'll give details as soon as I can).
Anyway, I do assure you that I'm working on this novel. that I am doing my best to make it my best book ever, and that I hope to have more news to report to you soon.
Until then, happy Fall/Winter holidays to you, and I hope you'll be happy with the end result.
Regards,
jrs
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on June 30, 2010
John Sundman
Posted project update #18Verisimilitue & A Meeting with an Expert
For backers only
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Howard Stearns on June 30, 2010
The most outrageous, unreasonable event in Acts of the Apostles was something that, in fact, had already occurred in the wacky life of pop star Michael Jackson. Sometimes truth is harder to read than truthiness.
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on May 22, 2010
John Sundman
commented on a project updateJason, Wait, wait -- I'm supposed to be the guy handing out rewards!
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on May 20, 2010
John Sundman
Posted project update #17Micro-update
Hello Friends,
I still have not posted my draft documents to a common locker as I've been promising to do. This post from Jeff Vandermeer helps me explain why: http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2008/05/07/the-anatomy-of-a-novel-finch/
It seems that like me, Vandermeer -- a writer I greatly admire, by the way -- works on novels by writing longhand in various notebooks, sheets of paper, index cards, etc, and by typing things up on his computer. Eventually, of course, he types everything up in convenient novel format. It looks chaotic -- and in my case, anyway, it is chaotic -- but at the end of the process, one does (I hope) end up with a book.
In writing Creation Science I've tried to be more orderly and deliberate. But like Vandermeer, I keep falling into my habitual mode of writing & making notes longhand on whatever surface is handy or seems appropriate at the time. I've done it this way for Acts of the Apostles, Cheap Complex Devices and The Pains -- and also for just about everything else I've ever written, from Salon essay to technical manual.
And of course, I'm continuing to revise the story (outline) -- hopefully making it better at each pass. I always think that I've got it nailed down, but then when I go back and look at it later I find things that need fixing. I'm not an OCD perfectionist (as evidenced by the fact that I've published three works of fiction); I do feel like I am converging and that the chapter outlines are good, and certainly much more detailed than any outlines I've worked from before.
But I'm still in notebook/note card/napkin mode, so I don't have much to share with you yet. Stay tuned. . . and I do promise to be more regular with these updates from now on. . .
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Jason Proctor on May 20, 2010
I have a reward waiting to send to you when the draft is posted.Picked it up for $10 at a local alternative craft fair. :)
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on April 8, 2010
John Sundman
commented on a project update1) From Helen et al on that other site where we hang out. 2) Default Apple blue. 3) Fiction. I like Canada but do not find it "exciting". 4)you will have a dress of white you will have a ring of gold you will have a paper snow we'll fall see the wall the wall is black we will have a heart attack we will be alone and we'll fall we'll fall we'll fall 5) Aeaster Eggs.
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on April 7, 2010
John Sundman
Posted project update #16A voice! A voice!
Post CommentHello Friends,
Just a brief update on Creation Science.
In my last project update, I told you that I was wrestling with the whole problem of narrative voice and "point of view". I said that I was considering omniscient narration & the alternative, more conventional approach of having a limited number of points of view.
Well, I've surprised myself by going with first person narration.
The story of Creation Science is told from the point of view of Albert Joseph Compton, Jr, a somewhat morose disaffected outsider of mixed race -- part Cherokee, part Wampanoag, part European & African -- who winds up on Martha's Vineyard kind of laying low after finding out scary things about the bioterrorism lab in Boston.
For backup & accessibility, I'm keeping the draft chapters & notes on dropbox. You won't be surprised to learn that they're in a kind of chaotic state.
After I've put them in some kind of order and finished revising the first chapters I'll send out a link to my editorial committee -- promise. Soon. No later than a week from Friday, that is, no later than April 16.
You'll need to get an account on dropbox.com to read them, so if you're on the editorial team & are interested, please get yourself an account with dropbox.com.
In haste, with appreciation as always,
jrs
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on March 29, 2010
John Sundman
backed a project
Comix Journalism: Send Ted Rall Back to Afghanistan to Get the Real Story by Ted Rall
Cover travel costs for independent cartoonist/war correspondent to travel and live with Afghans. He report from Afghanistan and write a book.
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103% funded $25,999 pledged
- 211 backers
- Funded Apr 05, 2010
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on March 24, 2010
John Sundman
commented on a project updateRock Star!! Please, please, please meet your kickstarter goal and please please please please launch this mag, proceed to kick a home run through the net with it, and kick serious SF b*tt. Then, and only then, please consider mentioning that that requested kickstarter invite came from you-know-who. A great story, well told. But of course it was.
John Sundman
Vineyard Haven, MA
I'm the author of the novels Acts of the Apostles, Cheap Complex Devices, and The Pains, all of which can be downloaded for free from wetmachine.com. I've also written a bunch of award-winning essays for Salon. I've done famine relief & agri... view more
Hey John, I'm happy to hear that I now have two books to look forward to -- Creation Science *and* a new version of Acts of the Apostles! From my point of view, anyway, no worries on the delays. Quality takes time, and life in progress changes things. Carry on. :-)
Greg, Thanks. I appreciate your patience and confidence. And your kind words. jrs