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First, for anybody who’s wondering why Jazz Healy Books 1 & 2 aren’t out yet – I said April 2nd, right? – sorry for the late update. I tweeted about it and was sure I’d posted about it here but apparently not. D’oh!

Essentially, I underestimated publishing things a lil bit (I are newb, after all), and publishing both Miltan Epsilon and Chak’r’Das on April 2nd was too big an ask. I might’ve been able to get Miltan Epsilon out the door but I really want Books 1 & 2 to be released at the same time so decided to reschedule to May 4th. A Tuesday, which the internet tells me is the best day of the week for media releases, but also Star Wars Day. Probably not super ideal but imma go with it.

I do have the finished cover art for Miltan Epsilon, courtesy of the most excellent L.E. Badillo. Here it is if you haven’t seen it already:

I’ve worked with L.E. before, on covers for the Comets and Criminals zine, and I’ve always liked his style. There were several iterations of the cover before we got to this point; perhaps in a later post I’ll show the various mock-ups and previous versions and discuss how we got here. End result is awesome, in my opinion, and I’m super-excited to see the cover for Chak’r’Das come to fruition over the next few weeks.

In other publishing-related news, I’ve chosen my primary aggregator: StreetLib. For those who might be unfamiliar with what an aggregator is in self-publishing terms, they are essentially a service that distributes your book to various retail channels on your behalf. This means a self-publisher can target many different marketplaces without having to individually go through the process of publishing the book on each one. An aggregator will take a small slice of each sale you make (in addition to the slice the retail channel takes) but the amount of time and effort saved is well worth it, I think. More time for writing and editing, right?

I chose StreetLib because I like their international reach, which seems far greater than other aggregators I researched. I suppose I could use all the aggregators so as to reach all the markets but I want to keep things as simple as possible, otherwise my pea brain will explode. At this stage, I’ll probably only publish direct to Amazon and Google Play, and have StreetLib get my book into all the retailers they have agreements with.

Anyhoo, to finally get around to the main topic for this post: Editing! For the love of it, even!

If you’ve seen my Twitter account (if you haven’t, here it is: https://twitter.com/SCMae2), you’ll have noticed that a lot of my tweets are editing-related. Poor editing puns, editing-related observations, editing self-motivation. Part of that is because I really do like editing – it’s probably the aspect of the story-crafting process I find most enjoyable (more on that later) – but the biggest reason is that I’ve been doing nothing but editing for months. More than half a year, even!

I finished the first draft of Tra-Obis, Book 4 in the Jazz Healy, Reunion series, on the 26th of September 2020. And since then, I’ve been editing, editing, editing. First there was the big edits on Book 3, Garbadon Major. That took me nearly to the end of the year. During that time I also finished the outline for Book 1 of The Next Series in a Completely Different Universe and made a start on the outline for Book 2 (so I guess technically that was writing rather than editing) and suddenly it was 2021 and I was gunning for an April 2nd release date. So apart from schooling myself on the various aspects of self-publishing – like, for real schooling, not the relaxed research I had been doing – I also needed to make sure the first two books were shipshape. That took me a few weeks – there’s always stuff that can be improved – and then I went right into big edits on Tra-Obis. After I finish those (I’m nearly 50% through right now), I’ll need to do the final edits on Garbadon Major and, sometime before September, the final edits on Tra-Obis. Hopefully in between those two final edits I’ll write the first draft of Book 1 of TNSiaCDU.

These last couple weeks have been slow going. Some of that, I think, is due to Tra-Obis being the messiest draft of the four Jazz Healy books so there’s a lot that needs a-fixing, but I might also be suffering from a little bit of editing burnout. I need to write me some fresh fiction!

As far as the editing process goes, I tend to edit thusly: big edit first (usually three or more months after the draft is finished), which is a combination of a structural edit and a line edit. Both those types of editing are as they sound, looking at overall story structure and then line-by-line dissection. Some time later I’ll do what I call a final edit, which is a combination of a softer line edit plus proofreading. After that, hopefully, the book is ready to go 🙂

The editing process is fun. I always think of story-crafting in terms of sculpting (full disclosure, I have never sculpted and likely never will, so my analogy might be waaay off):

The idea is the stone.

Outlining and drafting are carving the stone. Making the general shape of the story, then further shaping it but it’s still pretty rough and sometimes I can get away with rushing through certain sections.

Editing is refining the sculpture. This part of the process is generally more delicate, finicky. Sure, sometimes I’ll carve off whole chunks and totally redistribute the shape of some areas but mostly I’m carefully, slowly, refining the story into its final form. Because of this I often linger over edits. Go back over the same sections three or four days in a row, changing little bits here and there. Often I’ll have further realizations some time after I’ve completed a section and will go back to revamp, revise, refresh – which in turn can have more flow-on effects for the rest of the book. I’m happy to take my time editing but editing too slow can be just as dangerous as editing too fast.

I know many self-publishers hire editors for some or all parts of the editing process. There are various (all good) reasons for doing this, not least of which is that outside eyes are typically far more objective than those of the writer. There’s also the business aspect, too. Many self-publishers are publishing books every month or two and want to keep their output high to grow their income or to keep it steady. I haven’t hired any editors for the Reunion Series and I’m not planning on doing so for future books, either (though this is, of course, not written in stone). Why not? Editing is just too much fun. If I got others to do most of my editing I’d kinda feel like I was only having half the fun I should be. That may or may not be a sound business decision but I have to enjoy what I love doing, right?

For the love of editing? Yep, which is all part of the love of writing.

S.C. Mae

If you’d like to join the conversation, you can do so here.

Would you like a sneak peek inside Miltan Epsilon, Book 1 of the Jazz Healy, Reunion Series? Well, here you go.

I hope you enjoy…

Miltan Epsilon – Chapter 1 – Scene 1

Jazz Healy slapped the cockpit dash of her Z-Class long-hauler but the extra life-sign on the internal scan refused to go away. She scowled. “That’s the last time I let Rankovic talk me into a job.”

The tiny splice-kitten in the cot at her feet mewled.

“Don’t stress, little one.” Jazz rose, mentally cursing that she hadn’t made time to replace the broken mote cameras in the cargo hold. “I’ll feed you when I get back.”

The surplus life-sign radiated too much heat to be one of the other baby animals, escaped from its pen. That meant a person lurked below and Jazz wasn’t getting paid to transport people to Garbadon Minor.

After closing and locking the cockpit door she hesitated. Was it really safe to leave the kitten alone inside? Rankovic’s instructions had been to keep the red-and-black striped fluff-ball away from the other animals but that was out of regard for its safety – value, in all honesty – not theirs. The splice-kitten’s buyer was forking out a very large sum of money for successful delivery. So much, in fact, that Rankovic was willing to pay Jazz one hundred thousand Commonwealth dollars for nothing more than a basic intrasolar freight run.

Yes, definitely safer to keep the kitten behind a locked door.

She ran a diagnostic on the nanomachines that fortified her body – optimal; good – before rotating her cybernetic right arm and flexing its metal fingers. Finally, with her left hand, she drew her gun and set off.

Sneaking aboard should have been impossible. She had personally overseen loading, not once leaving the entrance ramp, and she’d closed that ramp as soon as the process finished. The animals had all been carried on by hand, their holding pens erected earlier from scrap pallets already in Jazz’s possession. There had been only one crate of supplies – feed, sedatives, straw, and the like – and she’d opened that in the company of the Customs officers who’d arrived with the delivery people. She’d even counted off everybody as they entered and left.

The internal scan, now hooked into her enhanced optics and displaying in the upper corner of her right retina, showed the life-sign continuing to drift aimlessly about the cargo hold.

She passed through the common room, an area filled with magnetized wooden chairs, a table grooved by a myriad cuts, cupboards, a bench, and other necessities for storing and preparing food. She barely spent any time in here nowadays, preferring to while away flights in the cockpit eating ration cubes and watching B-grade thrillers.

From there she ghosted through passenger alley, noting that each cabin remained locked and showed no signs of tampering. Her ship could berth nine but she had come to despise carrying human customers. They always wanted to socialize and took to complaining if she left them to their own devices. And the ones who didn’t want company usually planned to shoot or stab her while she slept. Nope, much easier to transport animals than people. At least, that’s what she’d thought until a few minutes ago.

Past the cabins the corridor branched, one appendage heading to engineering and the other to the cargo hold. Jazz skirted the engine housing – protected by blast-strength steel twice as thick as her – and stopped on the cargo hold balcony. Floodlights mounted in the ceiling gave scant opportunity for shadows to form on the large open area below but did highlight the many scuff and paint marks that decorated the grey walls and floor. The array of makeshift pens, open-topped and filled with straw, food and moisture-absorbent underlay, took up the center of the hold. Each hosted a young animal destined for a pet store on Garbadon Minor. Only the kitten in the cockpit had been privately bought.

The intruder stood out like a wheel-fruit in a field of crawling grass. A man, thickset, wearing a poor imitation of a Customs Officer’s uniform, the jumpsuit’s blue pants tucked into faded and fraying boots. He leaned over one of the pens, his back to her.

The scan showed no other unexpected life-signs. Jazz brought her gun to bear, braced herself, and said in her roughest voice, “Stop right where you are, put your hands on your head and turn around slowly.”

The man squealed and whirled about, both arms flying upwards. The words ‘Port Authority’ were plastered across the torso of his jumpsuit in thick white script. Brown hair in that awful yet timeless bowl-cut style and a bunch of multi-colored bracelets on his right wrist completed whatever look he was going for. He dropped into a half-crouch, hands pointing at the ceiling, sweat patches under his arms.

“Who the hell are you?” Jazz said.

“Um,” the man stammered, then sucked in a deep breath and stood upright. “My name is Darren Tollett, Port Authority, Exotic Animals Division, and I demand you turn your ship around this instant.”

Jazz let out a gravelly chuckle. “Never heard of it.”

“It’s a very important division, I can assure you. You are carrying prohibited fauna, therefore you must immediately regress to Halinder Intergalactic on Garbadon Major. Upon arriving you will be charged with unlawful export as well as aiding and abetting illegal genetic exploitation. Depending on the state of the animal in question, you may be charged with animal cruelty as well.”

“I see. Well, I’m not turning around.”

“If you do not I will have no choice once we reach port but to press additional charges for kidnapping.”

Jazz started down the stairs, her gun never wavering from the intruder below. “How did you get onboard my ship?”

Tollett, or whoever he was, lowered his hands to rest on his head. “I came aboard with the other Customs’ officials, of course.”

“No, you didn’t.”

He bobbed his head emphatically. “Yes, I did.”

Jazz reached the cargo hold floor but moved no further forward. Best to stay well out of arms’ reach. Wisdom borne of experience. “Then you should have left with them.”

“I would have but I was busy looking for an animal listed on the manifest but not present here.”

Jazz cocked an eyebrow. “Oh really?”

“Yes.” Tollett dropped his hands to his sides before vigorously rubbing them on his pants. “There is a kitten listed on the manifest that is not in any of these pens. I want to know where it is.”

“There must be a mistake on the manifest then.” Garbadon Major didn’t do manifests for living organisms. They did scans and bio-prints. Time to reverse the heat. “And, speaking of charges, I’m sure as hell gonna do you for trespassing. I don’t know who you are, but I know you didn’t come aboard with the official Customs’ crew. They arrived in a group of three and they left in a group of three, happy as pigs riding choppers.”

Tollett furrowed his brow. “Cool, I guess. Weird but cool. Cooler if they’re wearing leather helmets and have nose rings.”

Before Jazz could figure out a response to the sudden change in persona, her peripherals – silver teardrops at the forehead corner of each eye – picked up a blur of movement and something pressed into her side. The following pulsating jolts told her she’d been bushwhacked by a high-grade incapacitator. Typical Commonwealth police issue. She snarled and turned towards the new threat, fighting to keep her gun arm raised. Her assailant swore and jammed the incapacitator into her again.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” she ground out, coming face-to-face with a skinny teenage girl wearing a deactivated stealth suit. The kid’s eyes widened, the freckles on her face wobbling in surprise. No, the freckles weren’t wobbling. Jazz’s vision was. If she didn’t act fast her nanos would overload and the kid wouldn’t need to do any better than she was already.

Footsteps sounded behind her and then another incapacitator – where had this Tollett guy stashed that? – entered the fray.

“Dammit!” Jazz managed before her nanos rebooted and excruciating, pulsating pain racked her entire body.

The last thing she heard before losing consciousness was the girl’s squeaky yet triumphant voice: “Score one for the animals, you jacked-up scum-su—”

***

Thanks for reading! Book 1 and 2 of the Jazz Healy, Reunion Series have a planned release date of May 4th, 2021. So if you’d like to read on, please make a note of that date. You could also bookmark my release timeline, which will give you the most up-to-date information.

Too, if you’ve enjoyed this preview and would like to support my ongoing fiction endeavors, you could consider buying me a coffee. Writers do be needing their coffee! 🙂 You can do so either by going to the site linked just before or by clicking on the coffee cup to your right. Buying me a coffee gives you access to an exclusive short story, Orion’s Belt. There is also a monthly or yearly membership option, which opens up more exclusive content, including Jazz Healy’s origin short story.

Again, thanks for reading!

S.C. Mae

If you’d like to join the conversation, you can do so here.

Without further ado (I had a whole few intro paragraphs typed up but who needs those, right?), I present an Interview with Jazz Healy, the protagonist of the upcoming Reunion Series.

I hope you enjoy…

(Actually, because I can’t help myself: I wrote this interview after deciding that Jazz, who I’d created for a short story – available to my Buy Me A Coffee Members! – was going to feature in a novel or four. Interviewing primary characters during the character creation process helps me get to know them better and to find their voice. I’ve recently edited it a wee bit to better reflect the Jazz in Book 1 of the Reunion Series but most of the original interview remains)

Again, I hope you enjoy…

An Interview with Jazz Healy

 

Jazz Healy, isn’t it? 

Yep.

So, what’s, like, your deal?

You mean, my job?

Hey, I’m asking the questions. But yes, your job?

I’m a contractor.

I see. Well, so am I, but I’m not off every week collecting bounties or exploring ancient ruins or delivering medical supplies to quarantined planets. And I definitely don’t have Federation warrants out on me. Or Commonwealth ones. Or any warrants anywhere. Mostly, I do data entry.

We must subscribe to different job feeds. And to be fair, I’m not off every week doing those things. Fortnightly, maybe.

Not that I think I’d want to do your kind of contracting. You look like you’ve been through the wars.

Thanks. You sure know how to compliment a person.

I just mean, well, where’d you get the black eyes from? And what’s with the metal arm?

The black eyes? Nothing, really. My nose got a good whack in a recent fight with a Novus Replicate, is all.

But you should see him, right?

Yeah, sure.

What were you doing scuffling with a Novus Replicate, anyway?

Can’t help crossing paths with them occasionally when you do what I do. This time I just walked around a corner and there he was, guarding a door I needed to go through.

Well, I hope the nose heals up soon. Must be hell if you want to sneeze.

It’s basically healed up already. What you’re seeing is just peripheral bruising. My nanos have taken care of all the internal stuff.

Your nanos?

Yeah. The nanite machines in my bloodstream. They’re good for a whole lot of things. Apart from repairing injuries they can filter out poisons, regulate blood pressure, reduce pain. Mine are a pretty basic model, really. There are nanos out there that can do a whole lot more.

There are risks though, right?

Sure. But isn’t there risk associated with everything worth having?

If you say so. And the arm?

It’s a cybernetic arm. Surely you’ve seen one before.

Not up close. Can I touch it?

No.

Fair enough. Anyway, why did you get into this line of work?

Why does anybody? Money, of course. Well, that and I like being able to roam the galaxy. Imagine living fulltime on a world, working the same job every day. Ugh.

Yeah, stability is just awful. What did you do before this? 

Data entry, mostly.

Really?

No. I’ve done this since I was a kid.

Wow. You were raised as a mercenary?

Contractor. And the answer is sort of. My Mother’s a gangster way up the tree. So high up everybody just calls her Mother.

(gulps) Mother is your mother?

Yeah. But I do my best not to travel in her boost-lanes. My Dad used to be a lawman before he fell in… something with Mother.

Sounds like an unusual match.

The Milky Way is full of unusual matches.

Are they still together?

Well, that’s basically the answer to your question about whether I was raised a contractor.

Then don’t let me interrupt you again.

I won’t. So right after I became a teenager Dad finally climbed onto his moral high horse. Sort of. We lit out when Mother was off somewhere else and put a whole lot of space between us and her. And we started working jobs together.

Gotta pay the bills.

Yeah.

Are you and your Dad still working together?

Last I saw him, he was on a cruiser venting atmosphere, exchanging gunfire with some pirates who’d double-crossed us, and I was in an escape pod, heading towards the planet below.

Oh.

(shrugs) That was twelve years ago.

Still, that sucks.

I’ve come to terms with it. Life goes on and all that. Though he should never have pushed me into that pod unless he was coming too. We were a team. Supposed to stick together through everything.

Seems pretty heroic on his part, from where I’m sitting.

Whatever. You weren’t there.

Anyhoo… Your Dad died—

His body was never recovered.

Okay. Your Dad probably died twelve years ago. You would’ve still been a kid.

Sixteen.

But you never went back to Mother.

No way in hell! Our paths cross sometimes – it’s a small galaxy, once you’ve been around it a few times – but I keep my distance and she mostly respects that.

Really?

Well, every so often she tries something on. Though not so much for the last few years. I’m sure she’s got some master plan – she’s always got a master plan – but I’m not going to waste time trying to figure it out. Got far more interesting things to occupy my time.

Such as?

I’d prefer not to disclose my current objectives. Past experiences and all that.

Care to elaborate?

Not really. Let’s just say that I’ve learned that sharing usually leads to losing.

Okay. It most get lonely, though, doing all this by yourself.

I’d take a little bit of loneliness over getting backstabbed or double-crossed or letdown, any day of the week.

Because those are the only outcomes.

They’re the most common outcomes.

Moving on. What are your hopes and dreams, Healy?

That’s a stupid question.

Well, you don’t want to answer my interesting questions so I’ve got to fall back on something.

I guess I’d quite like to have something named after me.

Heh. You’re a funny lady.

I’m serious. It’s about the only way I see that a person can become immortal.

Anything in particular?

Not really. I’d even be happy if I got a beetle named after me. Jazz-bug has a certain ring to it, right? Or if I spawned a popular term. Like if people started calling getting the job done in the nick of time: ‘jazzing it.’

I can see that catching on. Let’s see what else I have on my question list. Ah, what’s your favorite place in the galaxy?

The cockpit of my ship.

That’s not really what I meant.

I know. But my ship is what gets me to all the fun places, and the cockpit’s where I like to be when I’m on it.

That ship, just outside?

That’s the one.

It’s not much to look at.

There you go again, with the whole looks thing. That ship was my Dad’s ship. Now it’s mine. I’ve spent more than half my life on that ship. It’s my home.

Okay, okay, I get it.

And it suits my purposes for it to look like a typical old freighter. Sure, I’ve fallen a bit behind on maintenance and I really need to replace the broken mote cameras in the hold and the common room but it’s a good ship. A really good ship.

I’m sure it is.

Anyway, there are so many beautiful places in the galaxy it would be disrespectful to have just one favorite. For example, there’s this moon in the Fyar Pen System. Half-terraformed, site of a massive intrasystem war a few centuries ago. The air is saturated with dust and rock particles that get blown about by random gusts of wind. Though they’re probably not random if you’ve got the time to analyze them. Anyway, you really can’t walk the surface unless you’re wearing armor, but even top of the line armor suits get shredded if you’re too long outside the ship. I only went there because it was a rendezvous point for a delivery. Stayed inside with the shields running, though that didn’t stop the hull getting all scratched up. While I was waiting for my contact to show, the sun rose. And it was just amazing. Light glinting off all these particles. Every color you can imagine. And then the wind blew and, well, it was indescribably beautiful.

Sounds awesome. How long did you have to wait?

Huh? Oh, for my contact? He never showed. His debts caught up with him before he could make the exchange. Which left me with a ship that needed half the hull plates replaced and a hold full of black-market rip-off Sauchi V-Goggles that nobody would touch with a hundred-foot grappling line.

Ouch.

I ended up dumping them in a cave on another moon within that system. Win some, lose a lot, as they say.

They do?

They do.

Well, it’s probably time to wrap this up. Before we go, though, tell us what’s next for Jazz Healy.

(shrugs) Who knows? I’m about to start on a delivery run. Baby animals, of all things.

That sounds a bit boring, to be honest.

(laughs) Hopefully. The plan is: collect paycheck, go back to the treasure hunt I was on.

Ooh, a treasure hunt. Tell me more.

No.

Aw, c’mon.

Fine. One detail only. The money from this delivery run will go towards a map.

A treasure map? Really, in this day and age?

You’re the one who’s calling it a treasure map. I’m just calling it a map to help me on my treasure hunt.

Yeah, well color me skeptical.

What do they say? The devil’s in the details?

I’m not sure that saying works here.

Perhaps I haven’t told you the full story.

Nobody ever does. 

silence

Uh, well, I guess I should let you get back to delivering animals and buying treasure maps.

Yes you should. Time is of the essence. The map goes up for auction in less than two standard day cycles.

Then you best get moving. Thank you, Jazz Healy, for consenting to this interview. I hope you get that beetle names after you soon.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe a beetle isn’t such a good idea. Nobody likes beetles. A plant sounds much more my style. Something like ‘Healy’s Carnivorous Fighting Vine.’

Whatever flies your freighter, I guess. Thanks again, Jazz, and safe travels.

***

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