{"id":264,"date":"2013-11-22T21:24:09","date_gmt":"2013-11-23T02:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/?p=264"},"modified":"2013-11-27T22:23:57","modified_gmt":"2013-11-28T03:23:57","slug":"caller-107","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/2013\/11\/22\/caller-107\/","title":{"rendered":"Caller 107"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m thrilled to announce that Curiosity Quills has signed a publishing contract with me for Caller 107<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>No release date has been determined at this time, though it will probably be in the first half of 2014. (I know that’s a wide window but at this point it’s a best guess situation.)<\/p>\n

———————<\/p>\n

Anyway… sometime around 2006 or so (i’m guessing) I had a very bizarre dream. I’m still to this day not sure what triggered or if it means anything. When I awoke from it, it had the unusual quality of being still in my head as if I had just watched a movie. For reasons I do not entirely understand (for I wasn’t too serious about the writing thing back then) decided that since I remembered it, I should write it down.<\/p>\n

So, as soon as I was up I started typing and didn’t stop until I had as best a scene-for-scene transcription of the dream, weirdness and all. This produced a story that was about 22,000 words in length. I thought it was a bit quirky and was not sure what to do with it, so it sat.<\/p>\n

It sat on my computer until, quite by chance – and the miracle of surviving two new PC’s – I found it and started reading it again. Since the time I initially wrote it and when I found it a few months ago, my writing had (at least I like to think so) improved quite a bit. I sat down and went through it with my newly honed attempt at editing abilities and lo and behold got it down to a nice trim 20k even.<\/p>\n

With Division Zero signed and on the way, I decided to send this one over (at the time I called it “Natalie”) and ask if they might have any interest in this old short story I found and touched up. Well, as it turns out, 20k is too fat to be a short story. Alas, its also too anemic for a Novella. So, the nugget that would become Caller 107 wound up in this limbo of being too big and too small at the same time. Fortunately, James at CQ gave me a lot of positive feedback about the story, and Lisa must have seen something as well as she asked if I would consider bringing it up to novel length.<\/p>\n

Well, “Novel Length” I said to myself… How hard could that be?<\/p>\n

The first manuscript I wrote, Virtual Immortality, came out 255k at the first draft (since down to 206). \u00a0Division Zero hit 98 without breaking a sweat.\u00a0No Problem<\/em>\u00a0I can do this. Well, VI and Division Zero had the fortunate circumstance of both being\u00a0in<\/em> the genre of my comfort zone as well as outlined in detail. I wrote Natalie<\/em> (the short story that would become Caller 107<\/em>)\u00a0based on a strange dream as quickly as I could type without losing any of it. No outline, just a stumbling walk from bed to desk and a blur of flying words.<\/p>\n

No outline, no plan, just a quirky little story about some kid having a really<\/em> bad night. I did the only logical thing I could think of. I had to think outside the dream box, as it were, and create a bit before it, a bit after it, and stuff a little in the middle. I must say, being an outliner by nature,\u00a0working without a net<\/em> was definitely an experience.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, I think it worked. So much for nets – though I do think I will continue to be more of an outliner.<\/p>\n

Oh, and Happy T-Day.<\/p>\n

-m<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m thrilled to announce that Curiosity Quills has signed a publishing contract with me for Caller 107.\u00a0No release date has been determined at this time, though it will probably be in the first half of 2014. (I know that’s a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[18,9],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-caller-107","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions\/271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewcoxbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}