Engineering a Book - Maximal Reserve

Well, the first draft of Maximal Reserve is done. This means the general story, characters, chapters, length (and depth of the book) and basic tone of the book are complete. This doesn't mean that the book is finished, but it does mean that how the book starts, runs and ends is essentially done.

Unlike Wayback--where, to be honest with you--I had little to no idea what I was doing until the edit stage, Maximal Reserve started with the foundations that I learned along the way with my first book. I tried to take the criticisms of Wayback and my strengths from Wayback and combine them. People generally liked the story of my first book and the scene descriptions were called out as strengths with character development and dialog being areas that some felt could use work.

I agree. So, on Maximal Reserve I focused on Characters--characters that I now love. In Wayback, the science team was the protagonist (or perhaps Jim Spruce was depending on who you ask) - in Maximal Reserve you get to know the protagonist, warts and all, from the very beginning. It has the same twists and turns that my first book was known for and additional dimension -- better relationships, better romance, better emotion--better everything.

People ask me what it's like to write a book and I suspect each one is a bit different, but now I focus my answer on what I relied on for the last seven months--structure and engineering.

How can art be engineered? It has to be to work. Fiction has structure - whether it's conventional, contemporary fiction or literary fiction - there is a formula that must be considered. It's not enough to have a good start or prologue--is there enough "ummph" to make it 80,000-100,000 words?

For me the challenge is around 30,000 words where the transitions occur and the middle of the book feels like it's sagging. It takes focus and rewriting to tame a manuscript and get to the resolution in a meaningful way.

Here are some things that I kept asking myself all through the writing of Maximal Reserve:

• Is there tension - everywhere?
• How are the transitions handled between Act I and Act III?
• How does the protagonist grow during the book?
• What is the relationship between the antagonist and the protagonist?
• Do the subplots slow down the story, or support it?
• In my case, does the science overwhelm the story, or support it?

So, with 90,000 words in the bank, I can now share the synopsis of Maximal Reserve...more news will be coming...What's next? Well, I have a whole raft of early readers and critics lined up to shred the manuscript (from a critical perspective).

Will the story change as a result? Undoubtedly. This is an early look at how the book will be perceived by the rest of the world. I can't wait to hear what they think...good or bad.

Phillip Channing was just an ambitious college graduate who wanted to make his mark on the world. He didn’t know that mark would be the greatest oil discovery of all time–in the wrong place. Phillip finds the largest oil reserve in history, dwarfing the lucrative reserves in Saudi Arabia, and threatening to change the balance of power and wealth in the favor of the most unlikely country of all.

New Interview on CWW

A new interview is up on Christian Writer's World -- Characters who grip your heart. This site is run by Lena Nelson Dooley, who has dozens of books to her name. It's a great site and I'm happy and humbled to be a part of a group with such great authors.

As to Wayback news, I will be doing a book signing at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina on December 4 from 7-9P at the campus bookstore. That evening they have a special event called "Light the Night" where they turn on the Christmas lights for the season -- there are typically over 10,000 people in attendance at these events.

My second novel, tenatively called Maximal Reserve, is now hovering around 80,000 words. The first draft is done and I'm having some close friends take a reading of it and shred it. Another couple of drafts will likely insue as I get it to the best place as I can. Keep coming back to find out publishing news and date of release.

Blessings,
Sam

CHRI Ottawa Family Radio Interview

My interview with Ali Misener on Sept 9, 2009 is up.

Download it for your MP3, iPod or Zune Player here: MP3

Internet Audio Interview on BooksALatte.com

The Internet Audio Interview I did last week with Takiela Bynum is up check it out:

http://booksalatte.com/2009/09/10/wayback/

You can click on the Audio File here and play it on your Media Player or download it for your iPod or Zune:

New Reviews and More News

Greetings,

I hope you're enjoying the fall weather that is sweeping over the landscape. The weather here in Pennsylvania has been absolutely beautiful. I love the crisp, clear mornings of September.

The bookstore of my Alma Mater, Bob Jones University has Wayback prominently displayed. It's great to have their support. Here's a pic that my Computer Science professor snapped and sent me:

A great review came in from Jill Williamson, the author of the new fantasy novel By Darkness Hid, and editor of Novel Teen Reviews. Jill is an amazing author and her first book is doing quite well in the marketplace.

Here's the review, but make sure you visit her site - she has an excellent collection of literature that's suitable for the Youth and Young Adult Literature set in your life.

Review by Jill Williamson

Two Roads Corporation has been busy. They’ve discovered a way to transport people back in time. But an expedition to 100,000 BC ended in disaster as if such a time never existed.

This leads Two Roads to believe that everything modern-day science believes about how old the earth is could be mistaken. The company plans to send another team to a time period that might answer some of their questions. The team is recruited and sent to 2300 BC, the time of Noah’s Ark and the great flood. What they discover will change science forever.

I adore books that present theories of Intelligent Design and Creationism. Men and women willing to stand up against the “proof” that Evolutionists claim is so absolute are brave. I think the public should view science like a jury views a man on trial. Unless it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, it is not fact. And as of right now, no scientist can prove how the world came to be beyond a reasonable doubt.

This book was a joy to read. It starts out with the gripping premise of time travel and takes us to earth, 2300 BC, before the flood. I enjoyed reading what earth might have been like and experiencing how things might have happened. This is a book I will keep around for my kids to read as they get older, to keep their minds open. This book has some great characters from all spectrums of scientific beliefs, which brought great conflict to the story. I liked the antediluvian city and people. I liked that they were advanced and that the Garden of Eden was still there. There were so many interesting ideas presented here. It was so interesting.

The book shifted characters a lot. I prefer a few main characters to follow that I can really grow to care about. Also, the first few chapters simply explained how everything worked. I supposed that was necessary, but it slowed down the story in the same way Michael Crichton’s scientific descriptions tend to go on and on. So if you loved that about Crichton, you’ll love that about Batterman. Once the team went back in time, I was hooked. I recommend this book for anyone looking to open their mind to a Biblical view of creation and the flood. It was well-written, well-researched educational entertainment. Very fun.

Age Range: 16 and up
Genre: Science Fiction
Part of a Series: No
Pages: 315
Publisher: VMI
Released: 2009

I also had an Interview with Takiela Bynum of BooksALatte.com - it's an audio interview and it should be up very soon.

Next week I have an interview with CHRI - Family Radio of Ottawa, Canada on September 9 from 4:40-4:45pm.

From a sales perspective, Wayback has climbed (crawled?) to 2nd place in the Futuristic Fiction category on the STL-Distribution site. This is across all publishers in the Faith Community that STL services, so I'm pretty happy about that.

I am continuing to work on MidCycle, the sequel to Wayback. The word count is around 80,000 words and I'm still going. MidCycle will be a longer book than Wayback.

The book will explore the following areas that I just barely touched on in Wayback:

• Who were the men with sloped foreheads – why were they in positions of authority?
• What happened to Cameron and Alicia and why couldn't they come back to the present for 30 years?
• Why the USS Liberty was spared – and the implications of that action.
• The map that was found in the Ark library, what were the other cities like?

I'I' I'm also working on a book called Maximal Reserve (tentative working title). This is not related to Wayback and it's a pure techno-thriller. That book is hauling along nicely and I'll share more details about it as the fall comes into focus.

BleBlessings!

A Nice Review from Beth Murschell on Facebook

I just finished Sam Batterman's debut novel, *Wayback*, a futuristic Christian novel published by VMI which hits the finish line at 315 pages.

The plot: Indiana Jones meets Stargate Atlantis meets Jurassic Park meets Noah's Ark meets the Time Machine. Seriously. An evolution/intelligent design/creation debate is framed by a plot-driven time travel device.

The gist: A team of specialists travels back in time to witness key moments in the earth's history. What they find changes everything.

What I liked: unique plot, memorable moments/visuals, and concrete detail (seemingly authentic--either an impressive amount of research or a fertile mind, probably both).

The early chapters were a bit text-heavy in part because of the debate material, but by the last several chapters, the pace had quickened.

Characterization was a bit sketchy in favor of plot. Understandable, as there's a LOT of plot. :-)

In the main, he resists the impulse to over-spiritualize the way many Christian authors do. I may quibble with the occasional premise, but there's a lot of food for thought here. John Morris of the Creation Research Institute gives him props for authenticity.

On the whole, I'd say Sam has a good first outing, and I look forward to reading his next book, whatever it may be. Go get a copy of Wayback and see what you think.

http://www.amazon.com/Wayback-Sam-Batterman/dp/1933204877

Reposted with permission from http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=123838111458&ref=mf

Happenings in August - Reviews (Good and Bad)

Well, this summer has flown by. Wayback seems to be doing pretty well. It's bouncing around on Amazon like a ping pong ball, but when I look at the other titles that are adjacent to it, I feel like something is going right.

I'm also starting to get emails from people finding the book on chain bookstore shelves like B&N, Borders and others. That's a good thing.

Three more reviews came in recently. Dave Mincy wrote a nice review here.

Sam’s excellent background research, plausible plot, and well-developed characters make for a time-travel adventure I found to be both exciting and thought-provoking. While entertaining, this book also strongly confirms the biblical record and magnifies God’s Plan for the universe. The idea of being able to go back in time and see Noah building the ark, real dinosaurs, and the wickedness of an unexpectedly advanced civilization…what an amazing journey that would be! If you’d like to know more, I highly recommend reading Wayback.

Congratulations, Sam! I’ll be waiting for the next one.

Dave is a muscian (and married to an artist - so imagine the art program in that household!). Here's a link to his newest CD. We have his first work and can't wait to hear this new one.

Another review came in over at the Near-sighted Bookworm:

This new author contacted me to see if I would be interested in reading and reviewing his first release. It was not a disappointment. From first page to last page, I was kept wondering about what was going to happen next. The research that went into this book is amazing, which makes me excited to see what he writes next! If you are looking for a book that will make you think and keep your attention, this is it!

Those are the easy ones to share. Sharing bad reviews...not so much. I struggled about whether I should share this. In the end I decided that baring my soul would be a bit cathartic.

One of the things about being an author that's most difficult is taking criticism. When you first start writing (or painting or driving or anything), you get feedback. This feedback can be jolting and even just plain rude, but your attitude is the all important player here when you get that kind of feedback. No one has arrived. There is not a single person doing any kind of activity, be it business, school, athletics, or otherwise that can't attempt to do these tasks better with more refinement and better skill. If you look at the sports world (an area I'm not an expert in) people like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and others all talk about pursuing excellence-getting to the next level. It takes hard work.

The hard part of the journey is that some people, even with all the hard work you put in, won't like your stuff. Early on I wanted people - all people - to enjoy my storytelling. I wanted everyone to be excited about Wayback, the way I was. In the end I learned you can't please everyone and in the end you have to write to the population you hope will enjoy your story and wait for your next work with baited breath.

So that brings me to the review at ChristianFictionReview.com. This was an important place for me as an new author to get a review. I was confident in my product; having had hundreds of readers to this point and good reviews to this point.

I wasn't prepared for the review and it blew me back quite a bit.

In the end, I'm convinced God allowed this happen to keep my pride in check - to make me small again and to allow me to receive criticism in a way that I can apply it to my craft and get better where I can and not worry about a group of people that may disagree with the messages of the books I write.

The message underlying the book is important, in my opinion. I know there's a debate in the Christian writer's community as to how overt to make faith and the message of the gospel in the books we write. We don't want to come across as "bible-thumbers" or lunatics or crazy people, but in the end, in a Christian fiction novel, the reader needs to have something to connect to the words of hope we find in the Bible, otherwise you should publish the book to the secular market and widen your reading audience.

I believe that your worldviewpoint will be imprinted on your work whether that work is a "normal" 9-5 (does anyone just work from 9A to 5P any more?) job and doing that job excellently as to the Lord, or writing a novel or even a facebook status. What we are and who we are comes through.

Let's change subjects. I'll be at a booksigning at the Gifts from Above Bookstore in Scranton, PA on September 17th from 6-8PM with 16 other authors. I don't know who the other authors are yet, but when I know, you'll know.

A read a book while on a business trip the other day and literally raced through it in about 24 hours. The book is Havah, the story of Eve by Tosca Lee. I had to read this book. It deals with the story of the first woman in a first person form - through her eyes. Since Wayback has some dealings with the Garden of Eden 1600 years later I was interested in what she would explore in this novel. I was not disappointed. As a male reader I was not expecting to get drawn into the emotional side of the book like I did. I never really thought about what enmity (Gen. 3:14-15) really meant in Genesis until I read this book. Again, going back up this blog post. A good Christian fiction book makes you think and review and go back to the Bible to think about the subject being written about.

Havah does that.

For the record, Tosca does take some "artistic license" that may be controversial to some. For example, she uses a storm in the Garden and rain to create a very dramatic flight out of the Garden. The Bible is rather clear that the water cycle was quite different before the Flood. The storm does heighten the the situation in a very dramatic way, it was a calculated risk to do it (and I'm sure she knew that going in). Based on my experience above, I suspect she'll get some mail about that choice. It's still a great book.

This book is not for the younger set (17 and younger in my opinion). It contains sexuality in terms of a husband and wife - nothing graphic mind you - but you do have a naked man and naked woman in a pefect garden setting. Hello! Things will happen in that situation. If you read this book, I'd be interested in your feedback...

MidCycle, the tentative title for the sequel to Wayback, continues to plod along. The first draft is almost complete - around 75,000 words right now (Wayback was 94,000) and I still have a ways to go. It will definately be bigger (word count wise) than Wayback. After that, the rewrite begins to get everything accurate and tied together and then an initial edit. So, there's still a ways to go. I'm also working on another novel that's unrelated. I'll talk a bit about that in a few weeks.

Thanks for your time.

Blessings,

Sam