Read My 'First Contact' Short Story Series
We Have a Winner
A pair of aliens has been given the task of making first contact with the inhabitants of Earth, but the junior partner on the mission is increasingly doubtful of the method their experts have chosen, and is not afraid to say so.
First Impressions
An alien father and son first contact team struggle to understand why their mission to Earth has gone so badly wrong.
Reg
Reg was an unexceptional man in every possible way, and even the arrival of his stunningly beautiful wife had almost no impact on his mundane existence. Then, one day, circumstances conspired to throw Reg headlong into a situation that he was uniquely ill-equipped to handle, or so everyone--including Reg--would have thought.
I can hear the people now…
“Did he make it? Did he get to 50,000 words?”
(Actually, the silence is deafening, but, no matter…)
Short answer: Yes!
Slightly longer answer: Yes, but it was touch and go for a while.
And the gratuitously long-winded answer:
Things were going along quite nicely during the first half of week three. Progress was slow, but at least progress was being made. The action in the story kicked into higher gear, which always helps–I tend to find it easier to turn action sequences into words than I do scenic settings–but there was one fly in the ointment looming ever larger. The emotional side of the story–of how Izzy and her father cope with the death of her mother–was becoming hopelessly derailed. I didn’t like the direction it was taking, and I didn’t have a clue how to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.
Well, week two of NaNoWriMo has come and gone, and my word count is currently sitting at 23,714. So, yes, I’m still going strong, but while week one was driven by enthusiasm, week two became more about dogged determination.
The first part of the second week went fine. I was still tackling Izzy’s first major incursion into her parallel world, and I had most of it mapped out in my mind already, though most of the descriptive passages about the underground world she had wandered into will probably have to be rewritten at some point. But in the lull in the story that followed, I began to have some doubts about the whole thing.
Now, I assumed that I would happen at some point. Writing a novel is not a small undertaking, and having gone through it all once before (over a much longer period of time) I kind of knew what to expect. First, I noticed that the number of inconsistencies and missing details about the protagonist’s personality and life were mounting up. Where were her friends? What hobbies and pastimes did she have? Do kids text, IM, Twitter, or Facebook? Then I began to realize that one particular plot point that I had threaded into the storyline was becoming more and more of a hindrance, and it wasn’t something I could easily rip out.
In case you didn’t know, November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. I didn’t, not until a few months ago, even though I’ve been writing seriously for several years now. But this year I decided to take up the NaNoWriMo challenge of writing 50,000 words of a novel in one calendar month. That’s one thousand, six hundred and sixty six and two thirds words a day (though I believe you are allowed to round that two-thirds up, if you like).
I already have one novel under my belt, but as my friends and family know all too well, it took me a long time to write it. You know you’ve been working on something for too long when people start being afraid to ask you how it’s going. I’ve recently been working on some short stories, but I decided that the challenge of NaNoWriMo was too good an opportunity to pass up on.
50,000 words in a month is a daunting target, but the thought of having 50,000 words of a novel under my belt after the month is over is quite compelling. I already had a novel that I wanted to write (the first part of a trilogy, in fact), with all the major plot points of the storyline mapped out, so there was nothing to stop me from getting cracking on the book, except the usual procrastination and inertia, and overcoming these things is precisely what NaNoWriMo is all about.
I am pleased to announce the publication of We Have a Winner, the first story in my First Contact series of short stories on the Amazon Kindle. It’s a fun little tale featuring a pair of aliens who have been given the thankless task of executing an ill-conceived plan for making first contact with the people of Earth.
The premise of the story might seem a little preposterous, but one should remember that if we ever have the good fortune to encounter another intelligent alien civilization, there’s no knowing how bizarre and incomprehensible our Earthly customs might seem to them, and that might easily become a source of great confusion.
An interesting aspect of the piece is that it’s entirely written in dialog. There aren’t even any “he said” or “she said” tags, so I had to be extra careful to ensure that the reader can follow the conversation without getting the two unnamed characters mixed up. I also had to make sure that I conveyed their actions as they went about their mission.
If you decide to purchase this story, please come back and tell me what you think of it.
I don’t think there is a better way to sum up my experience at the Writers’ League of Texas Agents Conference other than to say that I’m really glad I went.
Could I have gotten more out of the weekend? Certainly. If I had applied sooner (or arrived sooner) I could have signed up for an agent consultation or an editor consultation, and if I had been better prepared, I would have been in a much better position to pitch my book to the agents who were there.
But, all things considered–especially my late decision to attend–I still got a lot out of the experience. The sessions were informative and entertaining. I met a lot of cool and interesting people, and it was fun to rub shoulders and exchange stories with all kinds of creative people who share my desire to write.
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The third, and final day of the 2011 Writers’ League of Texas Agents Conference commenced with a general panel session, The Birth of a Book.
This was billed as being “a glimpse into how a book comes into being then gets published,” and while it was certainly informative in that regard, it soon became clear that this was the session where the agents (and editors) turned the tables and made their best pitch to us writers as to why we need their services. They talked about how important it was to find an agent who connected with you and your work, and who could both sell your book and protect your financial interests. To press the point home, they told us about all the complex issues with subsidiary rights and the difficulties in getting your work sold in the many foreign markets around the globe. (We should be so lucky to have those problems!)
Day two of the Writers’ League of Texas Agents Conference dawned early and got underway in earnest with a warm welcome from the WLT Executive Director Cyndi Hughes, and then the first panel session of the day, the Taco Tweetup Q&A.
I must say at this point that the breakfast tacos were excellent, and made me regret not having much of an appetite for cooked food at 8:30am in the morning. Ah well.
The Tweetup portion of the Taco Tweetup involved attendees tweeting their questions tagged with the #WLTcon hash tag, and having a selection of them read out to be answered by an illustrious panel of agents. While much of the Q&A was very interesting, I did feel that they spent a little too much time discussing social networking–extolling the virtues of Facebook and Twitter as the means to forming relationships within the publishing industry and publicizing your own work. I have absolutely no doubt as to the importance of these things, and perhaps it’s because my background is in the computer industry, but I just felt that they devoted more than its fair share of the session to the nuts and bolts of social networking.
A bevy of writers descended upon to the Hyatt Regency Hotel in the center of Austin this past weekend to attend the 2011 Writers’ League of Texas Agents Conference, and I was one of them.
Only just, mind. A good friend and fellow writer had been badgering me to go for months, pushing me to do something about the fantasy novel of mine that has been languishing in a Heisenbergesque “almost done” state for longer than I care to admit. I managed to studiously ignore his entreaties until the weekend before the conference, when the wily folks at the Writers’ League ensnared me by appealing to the inner Yorkshireman in me (see Wikipedia for the reason why Yorkshire Pudding was invented), by offering up a 20% discount.
Thus it was I found myself walking into the Hyatt Regency Hotel a little before 4pm on Friday afternoon, bringing with me a memorized two sentence pitch and a 250 word written synopsis for my first novel.
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Welcome to the website of writer Michael J. Walker… but you can just call me Mike. 
I have just thrown this little site together in preparation for the big day when I start publishing some of my writing, and as you can see, it’s pretty bare bones at the moment (just be thankful you weren’t here to witness my brief venture into a lime green color scheme). But never mind, you didn’t come here to be dazzled by stunning web design (well, if you did, you’re sorely off track), and I will no doubt be tinkering with the site in the weeks ahead to make the design somewhat less objectionable to the reader.
