Month: March 2015

Outlining

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I don’t know about any of you, but one of the things that I’m most terrible at is organization. I can’t organize things in my head to save my life, and I have to write it down somewhere to get it all in order. Some of my more complicated plots require a very dedicated and colour-coded outline so that I can keep track of what’s supposed to be happening. I tend to accidentally forget subplot points and leave them out.

One thing that sometimes helps with that is Trello, which I made a post about here.

I need an outline. Some lucky people don’t need one, because they’re just that clever. I am not one of those people, so that’s why I’m talking about it in this post.

I tend to colour code things like plot, sub-plots, and character arcs. There’s always an over-arching plot of things that are happening, some of which the characters might not even be aware of. Then I tie in sub-plots to the main plot, because sub-plots that don’t support your main theme aren’t very strong sub-plots. Then I add in character arcs, so that I can tell when a character needs to do something in order for the story to progress.

For me, plot is usually the hardest thing to actually do, because it needs to incorporate everything you want to include in the story. This is more from an organization point of view, because I usually know what needs to happen, it’s just a question of when.

Once the plot is laid down, then I can overlay it with the sub-plot and character arcs.

I find it a very tiring process, to be honest, and it’s usually what takes me the most time. Even research doesn’t take as long as that. Also, I tend to enjoy researching, which makes it less tedious than forcing myself to sit down and make charts and such.

Some people can just sit down and write. One of my teachers calls it the “gardening vs architecture” style of writing. “Gardening” is supposed to be just letting things grow in your head, whereas “architecture” is my style, in which the writer makes a plan. My professor also told us that there was no set way of writing, and that either style could work just fine, depending on the writer.

I suppose, for those of us that have a very chaotic way of organizing things, an outline works best.

Happy writing!

Sky Knights Release!

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Sky Knights - cover-01

Hello everyone!

Today my Second World War novel Sky Knights is being released with Less Than Three Press.

Sky Knights is about two Soviet aviators during the Second World War who have to face all sorts of trials as they fight the Germans as night bombers in the all-female regiment known to the Germans as the Night Witches.

Sky Knights is a historical fantasy, so there is some magic thrown in there, making some of the Night Witches actual witches.

The official summary:

Dounia and Ira are part of the Nightwitches, an elite squad of night bombers determined to help bring down Axis forces. They are proud and fearless—until tragedy strikes and their plane is shot down behind enemy lines, and their determination may not be enough to get them home safe.

Genre: Lesbian romance, historical fantasy, World War II historical fiction

25 000 words, some explicit content

Sky Knights can be purchased as an Ebook HERE

Sky Knights is also part of the Damsels in Distress collection Bundle 2

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The Nightwitches

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I’m still talking about some of the research I did for writing Sky Knights, which is being released on March 25th.

My last post didn’t really touch on the actions of the Night Witches, because I wanted to save it all for this one.

nightwitches

Let me tell you about the Night Witches, or the Nachthexen, as they were known in German. The Germans named them such, because their planes coming in for a bombing run sounded like the whooshing of a broomstick. The Germans were terrified by these nightly assaults, as well they should be.

Marina Raskova

Marina Raskova

The 588th Night Bomber Regiment was one of three all-female air regiments in the Soviet Union’s 4th Air Army. All three regiments were created because of Marina Raskova, who used her influence with Stalin to convince him to allow their creation. The formation commander was Major Yevdokia Bershanskaya, an experienced pilot.

In October of 1943, the 588th was renamed the 46th Taman Guard Night Bombers Aviation Regiment, in recognition of their victories over the Taman peninsula.

Pilots in front of the Polikarpov PO2 biplane

Pilots in front of the Polikarpov PO2 biplane

The Nightwitches flew tiny little wooden biplanes that were meant to be used as crop-dusters or for training. They were very slow, but had a few very notable advantages. One of which was that the highest speed of the Polikarpov PO-2 was still slower than the stalling speed of both the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, the two German planes in most use. Another was that they could absorb quite a large amount of damage before going down.

There were a couple downsides. One, the plane could only carry two people, and the cockpit was open. Another was that the Polikarpov PO-2 didn’t have any navigation equipment, radar, radio, or even parachutes. It could only hold six bombs at a time.

Nadezhda Popova

Nadezhda Popova

The Nightwitches used a certain tactic against the Germans that was not only very effective in hitting bombing targets, but also in terrifying their enemies. This tactic was to cut or idle the engines of their plane, swoop in without the sound of their engine to give them away, drop their bombs, and then restart their engines in mid-flight. So the only warning that the Germans would get of their enemy’s incoming bombs was a swooshing noise before incendiary death came down upon them.

One of the most highly decorated members of the Nightwitches was Nadezhda Popova, the leader of the 2nd Women’s Regiment, who was given the distinction of the Hero of the Soviet Union, the Gold Star medal, the Order of Lenin, and three Orders of the Red Star. She made a total of 852 sorties over the course of the war. She was shot down three times, but was never badly wounded. Once, she made a supply run to drop food, water, and medical supplies to trapped forces and nearly didn’t make it back. On her return, she found her plane riddled with bullets, including her helmet, and her map! She survived the war, and lived to the ripe old age of 91.

Yevgeniya Rudneva

Yevgeniya Rudneva

Another of the Nightwitches was a navigator named Yevgeniya Rudneva, who was also decorated with the Hero of the Soviet Union. She was a third year university student studying mechanics and mathematics at Moscow State University when the war broke out. She was also a member of the Astronomical-Geodesical Society and Head of the Solar Department. She wrote to the head of the Astronomy department to tell him she was defending the honour of the university, as the Germans had dropped bombs on the university faculty building. She and her pilot were taken down by flak on her 645th combat mission.

These are just two examples of members of the Nightwitches, one pilot and one navigator, just like my characters Dounia and Ira.

I found out while researching that in 2001, there were plans to make a movie about the Nightwitches that fell through because American studios didn’t think it was feasible to market a movie in which the Nazi advance was halted by a bunch of teenage girls. It’s no wonder that women’s history is mostly forgotten if their stories aren’t told alongside men’s.

But I’m here to tell you that it did happen, and those ladies were pretty heroic.

My upcoming release of Sky Knights, starring my lesbian aviators Ira and Dounia, is to be released in just a few days. You can still preorder and save 15%.

Russian Women in the Military

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If someone asked you whether or not women were allowed in combat roles during the Second World War, what would you say?

Most people would answer no.

But actually, the answer is yes. During the Second World War, Russian women played a huge part in fighting against the Germans, in both non-combat and combat roles.

"Fighting Girlfriend" the T-34 driven by Mariya Vasilyevna Oktyabrskaya

“Fighting Girlfriend” the T-34 driven by Mariya Vasilyevna Oktyabrskaya

I have a huge problem with the history of women being erased, and I would like to share with you some of the research I did while working on my upcoming release Sky Knights.

At the start of the Second World War, the Soviet Union didn’t want to allow women in the military. Never mind that many women of Russia had fought in previous conflicts such as the February Revolution, in which fifteen formations were created – including the 1st Russian Women’s Battalion of Death. Women had to petition for their right to fight alongside their male counterparts.

Thousands of women volunteered to fight and were rejected, when the Germans started Operation Barbarossa in 1941. However, numerous losses in the early days of the war made the top brass change their mind.

Soviet women snipers

Soviet women snipers

Women filled all types of different positions, from non-combatant roles to combatant.

I wanted to tell a story about some of these women, who were every bit as heroic in real life as one would expect them to be in a fictional novel.

Women were nurses. They had to carry weapons with them to protect their wounded charges as they rescued them from the front lines. Natalia Peshkova was one of these nurses, who was not only wounded three times in the line of duty, but was once separated from her unit and had to disguise herself in order to make it back safely. She was awarded an Order of the Red Star for bravery.

Women were tank drivers. Mariya Vasilyevna Oktyabrskaya is one example, the first female tank operator to win the Hero of the Soviet Union medal. She was the wife of a military officer who was killed in combat. She sold every last one of her possessions in order to donate a tank to the military – under one condition: she got to drive it. She named her T-34 “Fighting Girlfriend” and fought in many battles that established her as a skilled and fearless driver. She would jump out of her tank during battle and repair it if necessary, in spite of danger to herself and orders not to. She was hit in the head with shell fragments in battle, and died after two months of being in a coma.

sovietpartisansWomen were snipers. An example is Lyudmila Mykhailivna Pavlichenko. She was born in the Ukraine, and studied history at Kiev University. She became a sniper, and her number of confirmed kills was 309 by the end of the war, 36 of which were enemy snipers. She became an instructor, and trained Soviet snipers until the end of the war. She fought even more fiercely after her friend and fellow sniper Leonid Kutsenko was badly injured in battle and later succumbed to his injuries.

Women were partisans – those who fought guerilla-style warfare in order to disrupt supply and communication lines. One of the most famous partisans was a woman named Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanskaya who carried out dangerous missions behind enemy lines. During one of these missions, she is said to have been captured by Germans and tortured for information. She didn’t give the Germans any information, including her name. She was executed, and is said to have said to the Germans before she was hanged: “You’ll hang me now, but I am not alone. There are two hundred million of us. You can’t hang us all.”

sovietaviatorsAnd yes, women were aviators. Some of the real life female pilots during the Second World War enacted feats of daring just like Ira and Dounia do in my story. Lydia Vladimirovna Litvyak was the first woman to hold the title “fighter ace.” She was awarded the Order of the Red Star for her valour in battle. One of the pilots of a German plane she shot down wanted to meet the pilot that had outflown him, and refused to believe it was her until she described their dogfight in detail. Her aircraft was shot down, and her fate remained unknown for a long time. She was posthumously awarded Hero of the Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990. She was known as the White Lily of Stalingrad.

I’ve told you the very brief accounts of several of these heroines of Russia during the Great Patriotic War to show readers that my account of the bravery of Russian women is not exaggerated in the least. Nor is their number. 8% of Soviet forces were women by the end of the war.

Hero of the Soviet Union medal for bravery

Hero of the Soviet Union medal for bravery

And for all their bravery, many of them have been forgotten, as their part in the war was deliberately overlooked by those in political power. Many women who received medals during the war couldn’t wear them after the war for fear of being stigmitized rather than lauded as heroes.

For my part, my novel Sky Knights is an attempt to bring attention to women in history, because so often, their stories aren’t told.

World-building on my Current Project

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I’m at that stage of my current project when I’ve just finished with my preliminary world-building and starting to write. World-building is important for the writing that I like to do, which is fantasy and science fiction, because neither of these genres come with a built-in framework like contemporary work does.

There are so many things that one has to consider for world-building, and these details might not even make it into the story.

The story I’m working on right now has dragons that interact with humans. They are on a somewhat equal political and social standing, which affects how this world developed, and how it develops in the future.

Questions I have to ask myself:

How does having aerial power affect their world?

Why are dragons and humans on equal political and social standing?

What kind of social structure does this world have?

Is that social structure different in other parts of the world?

Industrial_revolutionThere are many, many more questions to ask than just that, but those are an example of the types of in-depth questions a writer must ask themself. This world isn’t just a facade, it must still be able to function if you go rooting around behind the scenes if you want it to feel real to the reader.

My setting is an important thing to consider: where is this story taking place?

I’ve decided on a late 18th century to early 19th century European-esque country. What does that mean? This is the Industrial age – think trains, factories, advances in science and medicine, fancy balls. It is also the age of revolution – The Revolutionary War took place in 1776 and the French Revolution in 1792-1802. This is Romantic era literature – Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft. This is the age of Mozart and Beethoven.

pride-and-prejudiceNow imagine that, except dragons.

Think of steam power created by dragonfire. Think of the fact that the easiest way to travel, move goods, or explore is to hire a dragon. Think of the type of building that would need to exist in order to house dragons.

I wanted to explore the idea that dragons can have a social hierarchy similar to humans, and that there are dragons that have privilege and dragons that are working class. After all, this is also heading into the age of worker’s rights.

It’s a lot of work to put together a world like this, and it should be mentioned that not everything a writer thinks up will end up in the novel. I am in the middle of inking a map for this world, and most of the story takes place in the northern half of the continent. However, I know where all the cities of this world are located, what those cities do for revenue, and what path a dragon would take to get there. But no one really needs to know about exports out of a southern port town, do they?

I also may have accidentally created a family lineage that is far too complicated that won’t really be explored in the story that much. That was probably a mistake I will have to fix later.

If a story is supposed to seem as authentic as possible, a lot of world-building needs to go into it.

That’s it for now. I hope a lot of you are out there writing about fantasy worlds!

Character Creation Overview

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Creating characters usually works differently for different writers, and as far as I can tell, there’s no one right way to go about this – but there are plenty of wrong!

My characters from Across Borders

My characters from Across Borders

Sometimes, a character will just spring up, fully formed, without the writer ever having any say in the matter. One day, that writer will be doing something normal, and the next thing they know, they have someone in their head demanding to be written about. How this occurs, no one has any clear evidence, though there are many theories. Mine is that a writer’s subconscious is a scary place, and sometimes it breeds monsters.

Now, if only all characters saved a writer the trouble of having to make them.

Most of the time, a writer has to do it the hard way – by going out and figuring out everything about the protagonist they can. This is literally creating a person. It’s a great responsibility. Some people start with the story – what kind of protagonist do they need to move the story forward? That can be tricky, because you need to be able to predict human behaviour based on their character traits.

Other times, they start with the character, and then drop them in the middle of whatever conflict is going on in the book. I usually do my characters this way, although that often means that my novel will randomly change direction based on a decision my character made because that’s how I made them. It’s something a writer has to deal with.

(Note: for any RPG players that have GM experience – you know exactly what I mean. The other players never do what you want them to. Treat characters the same way – characters are people, with their own thoughts, feelings, and motivations separate from your own)

I like to start off with that character’s name, because names are fun. I used to make names up a lot, but lately I’ve discovered that the real world has some pretty interesting names as well. My real problem is that because I keep looking up baby names, Google thinks I’m pregnant. Get with the program Google!

Then I come up with character traits – some good, some bad, some neutral. Often lots of traits will overlap or complement each other, so that makes it easier. Let’s go back to impulsiveness, because it’s fun – a character might get into a lot of trouble because of their impulsiveness, but it also might make them friends and allies.

I think physical character traits are the easiest thing, and the thing you can change the most. Honestly, their appearance is just a flesh suit to put all the hard work I’ve already done inside. Mostly, I use physical character traits as a tool, to put more into my work. We’ll have the Diversity in Writing talk later, because while it’s important for the overall character of your writing, for your character, it’s slightly less important – it doesn’t make them who they are. I’ll explain more about that later, because that’s a whole different ocean of thought.

I could write a book on character creation, so we’ll leave it here. 500 words is not enough for this topic!