Little moments can change a direction for a person. Something small can knock you onto a completely different course than anything you expected even an hour earlier. This is another one of those stories.
A few months ago I decided to participate in a Kickstarter campaign. Not the strangest thing to do, but the result of that one act has allowed me to interact with a bunch of writers that I might never have had the chance to do. It has garnered me a couple of interviews, an appearance on a podcast, and an appearance in an anthology released yesterday. If you haven’t checked out my post from Tuesday, you can read a sample of my story… and best of all, the anthology is free at most places (and eventually will be on Amazon as well). My blog originally talking about it is here.
That most recent interview is here.
One of the outcomes of the Kickstarter (which was watching the Self Publishing Podcast guys write a book from start to finish in 30 days) was that the world they were creating during June would be an open source world. Which meant that anyone could write in the world and not have to worry about sending money to someone else. That Kickstarter became The Dream Engine…
And with that, the anthology became this thing. Slowly, over the next month as we waited for the finished product, gears shifted into motion. Authors began to say that they’d like to join in and submit something. I mean, the chance to have your work appear in something else is never a bad thing. Maybe one person reads your short and checks out the rest of your work. You just never know.
So I signed up, not having a clue at all as to what I might be writing about. And then the book was released and I started reading The Dream Engine hoping that something would spark inside my mind. Something would direct me to explore it. I needed something to inspire me.
And the days crept by, and I kept reading, and while I was enjoying the book I still had no idea what I could write about. What might fit in the world they were weaving. I believe I was 2/3 of the way through the book when that lightning finally struck. Something finally triggered. Suddenly I had ideas.
This is what happens when I’m not near a computer and I need to get the information from my brain before I lose it. This is the part of writing that I wish I could bottle. I wish that I could figure out exactly what the switch is in my brain that allows me to – out of nowhere – come up with an idea that was almost… maybe 90% there. I knew the various beats, I knew the two main characters and what their voices were like, and I even knew why I was writing the story.
You see, in the Dream Engine, the pilots of Altera are rock stars. They get to see the world and when they return to a city they always have more than their share of tales about what they had seen. They might be complete lies or they might be the truth, but that’s why you listen… they are the original water cooler talk where you could dissect their stories and try to figure out where the lie begins and the truth ends.
And that’s a question that might be worth answering… why do these Ruddermouths tell these stories?
I think it took me about 3 days to actually write the short. Then one more day for some self-editing. However, that wasn’t the end of it. All the writers were asked to swap their stories with another writer and do an editing pass. Then take those comments, tweak, overhaul, whatever needs to be done on the stories. Again, at that point we had an editor who looked at all the stories and gave her notes. Then it would be onto our Beta Reader for the project with that last second look at things and make sure that nothing slipped through that might have been confusing on the reader’s side of things.
What was amazing about this project is how people came together to create this something out of nothing. From Eric Pierce wrangling all of us in one direction, to Amy Schubert providing the free editing, to Kayla Halleur doing that last minute reading… I was reminded how so many times as writers and artists… we’re alone, banging on the keys at 2 in the morning. And how lonely that can sometimes be. Yet this project was a true meeting of people to contribute to something that had inspired them in some way. From various countries and backgrounds, all working towards a singular goal.
And yesterday saw it finally come out. I’m happy to have been able to contribute something to it.
If you haven’t already checked it out, it is available free at all the major bookstores.
Amazon | Apple | Nook (Barnes & Noble) | Page Foundry | Kobo
To learn more about The Dream Engine and the various books being written in the world, check out Blunderbuss World.
To learn more about the writers of The Dream Engine… the guys that started it all, check out Sterling and Stone.
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John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program.
His second novel, Hollow Empire, is now complete. Each episode is only $0.99. But you can go ahead and purchase the full novel (all 6 episodes) right now for $4.99 with the above link!
This post originally appeared on tesseraguild.com.
