Altitude awareness
Or, Steve discovers hard work is way easier when you subtract 4,000 feet of elevation
I had the chance to visit the Pacific Northwest a couple of weekends ago to participate in a conference as a favor to a friend. Had to get up at 5 a.m. on a Friday, fly to Seattle, and spend a couple of days at said conference and seeing the sights of Tacoma before staggering back up the 42 stairs to my third-floor apartment on Colorado at midnight.
I’ve gotten much better at traveling over the years, enough so that rapid excursion was more fun than taxing. And I got to have great food, see new sights … how fun is that?
Part of the price of getting free transportation from my friend and her husband was sticking around to unstack chairs in a church sanctuary, then line them up in specific order. An hour and a half of moving said chairs, schlepping boxes, and cleaning up whatever messes were left after the conference (or from when we dropped food items during the cleanup) went fast.
Best part? I was surprisingly not out of breath.
“Steve,” you’re probably saying, “does that mean you need to see a doctor?”
No, look. I’m an East Coast boy. Raised in South Jersey, known for many things including, but not limited to, Wawas, the Pine Barrens, and the real Jersey Shore. It’s not know for high elevation.
But I’ve also lived at elevations exceeding 4,000 feet for (checks calendar) nearly 20 years. So my body’s gotten somewhat acclimated to exerting itself at those much, much higher elevations. Emphasis on somewhat.
All I know is, I’m usually panting when I get to the top of our apartment steps, but when I was running around at that church in Everett, Washington, I felt the glorious reminder that oxygen is provided in varying amounts in different places. I returned to Colorado a little wistful for the environment of my birth - granted, on the wrong coast.
Turns out, that realization fit in well with the talk I gave on worldbuilding for your stories, which emphasized a lot of different things - gravity being one of them.
Your story’s environment serves a much greater purpose than being a backdrop for cool chase scenes or epic arguments. It influences how your characters talk, think, and yes, work.
That’s something I’ll make sure I remember the next time I’m writing - that hauling four bags of groceries up 42 steps in one place is way harder than heaving chairs in another a 1,300 miles away.
But you probably won’t hear my characters complaining about it.
The heist is almost here, for real
Just one week until The Null Razor Heist is available to the general public. I hope those of you who back the Kickstarter are enjoying the story! Don’t forget to leave a review on the good old Amazon page when the book launches Monday, June 1.
And if you haven’t given it a shot, now’s the perfect time to pre-order the ebook here. The paperback will go live that same day.
Space battles of awesomeness
My writing partner Daniel Gibbs is doing something with his book series most of us have only dreamed of: he’s making it into a video game.
Drop by the Kickstarter page for Starship Command: Orion Spur, a space combat simulator that lets you stand on the bridge of ships from his epic military-science fiction series and lead them in battle.
The rewards range from early access to the game to exclusive stories and merch to access to developer channels and a whole lot more. It’s the perfect adventure for the gamer in your family who wants the chance to step into an action-packed story!
Dan and I have collaborated on the six books of the Deception Fleet series, which is a Cold War-in-space tale, and the nine books of Galaxy Bridge, which has a Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 feel. He’s just shy of halfway through his Kickstarter effort so stop by and support it while you can!