All posts tagged: Writing

Splash page for the scifi crowd-funded novel FULL NEGATIVE.

Last Chance to Pledge for Full Negative Book

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Friends. Readers. Fellow nerds with impeccable taste. We are officially in the home stretch. The final 24 hours. The last lap. The dramatic climax of the movie where everything explodes in slow motion and the music swells and someone says something heroic right before punching a fascist in the face. (Okay, that last bit’s just wishful thinking, but after the week we’ve all had, I think we deserve it as a treat.) My point is: we’re down to the last days to pledge for FULL NEGATIVE, my big, bonkers scifi space opera that asks the question: what are you willing to give up for freedom? And also, what happens when the trolley problem is measured on a macro sale. (Spoiler: it gets messy.) Why does it matter? Because, for me right now, and hopefully for you, later, this isn’t about publishing a book. It’s about launching a world—telepaths, shapeshifters, space empires, doomed romance, glorious betrayals—and all the weird, wild joy that comes with that. It’s also about proving that stories like this—genre-rich, character-driven, unapologetically extra—have …

Your Book/Game/Project Needs Better Promotion (and so does mine)

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Hello, dear friends! So, a funny thing happened last night. Some context: every other week, I play in a Fading Suns TTRPG campaign with Bill Bridges. Yes, that Bill Bridges, the one who co-created Fading Suns and worked on little-known titles like Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. (Fortunately, he’s also an incredibly gracious human being and has never once pulled the dreaded “Well, actually…” on the GM.) Anyway, last night, our GM casually mentioned that a revamped, enhanced edition of Emperor of the Fading Suns—the 4X video game that Bill and Holistic Design, Inc. originally created—is launching this Friday, April 4. Better graphics! Better sound! More empire-building goodness! It’s hitting Steam, and if you want to check it out, here’s the link. Naturally, I turned to Bill and said, “Why didn’t you mention this?” To which he replied, “I didn’t think I needed to. It’s been all over social media for weeks.” I, of course, informed him that my social media feed had not breathed a word of it. Cue much cursing of …

The cover for the first part of the Full Negative Settings Guide: The Past, copyright 2025, Jenn Lyons

Part I: The Past – Our Launch Story and Goals

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Well, dear friends, we are now officially launched and funded. It’s just a matter of how high we’ll go. Hopefully high enough to unlock all of the setting guide, but for now, I’ll happily deal with what we have, namely Part I: The Past. For anyone who’s curious as to why I spread out the setting guide over multiple update goals, I can explain it pretty easily: Because I’m doing all the art. Time spent doing the art is not time spent writing or being paid for that, so…if I let it be tied to a single stretch goal, then I might easily find myself committing to months of work for far less than a livable wage when all was said and done. So much as I want to do the whole thing, prudence prevailed. Basically: tell your friends so they can pledge, too, and we can afford to create the whole guide. (We get the whole thing funded and I might start looking at making physical print copies available, too, and not to just …

The Complicated Nature of Simple Systems

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Keep it simple. We grow up being told that, don’t we? Or rather, Keep It Simple, Stupid, so it has a funny and memorable acronym, KISS. And as a society, we certainly do seem to prefer that, don’t we? Keep the solutions simple. Make it easy to understand. Tiktok and sound bites and break your ideas into bullet points so you can thread them together on X. To be fair, I’m not on X anymore. What does this have to do with writing? Nothing. Everything. When I was first learning how to be a project manager, I was introduced to two individuals who would change my life. (Not personally introduced, you understand, but introduced to their work.) One was a statistician, mathematician, and engineer and the other one was a banker. I speak of W. Edwards Deming, whose management and quality control techniques helped shape the Japanese automotive boom, and Dee Hock, the founder of VISA. I don’t know if they ever met each other. I rather suspect they wouldn’t have gotten along. While both …

Wrap-around art for the Full Negative cover with the title of the book centered.

Join the Adventure: Crowdfunding for ‘Full Negative’ Launch

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I have a story to tell you. One that’s been waiting for its moment in the spotlight for a long time. It’s called Full Negative, and if you love explosive space opera with a touch of noir, betrayal, and all the high-stakes action you can handle, this is one you don’t want to miss. But first, I need your help. On March 18, I’m launching a crowdfunding campaign to bring Full Negative to life, and I want you to be part of it. What Is Full Negative? The best way I can describe it? Think X-Men meets Star Wars by way of Jason Bourne. It’s got everything you’d expect from one of my novels: This is space opera at its best—fast-paced, full of heart, and built on a universe I’ve been developing off and on for almost forty years. Why Crowdfunding? Since you’re here on my web site, you probably know me as the author of the A Chorus of Dragons series and The Sky on Fire–all best-selling epic fantasy books available from Tor. But …

Baby Steps

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(Or, creating a book using Agile, part 2) So I meant to get this out at the beginning of the sprint… Instead, I’m coming in at the end. That’s fine. Mostly. Wait, do you know what I mean by sprint? Some of you will, but for the others… In Agile, work is typically grouped into what’s called a ‘sprint.’ Now you may be familiar with the term ‘sprint’ as a short Pomodoro-esque writing session, but this is one case where the same term wears many hats. Here? It’s a nebulous but previously determined block of time. The vast majority of sprints are two weeks long, but I’ve seen sprints that are one week and sprints that are a month. Once you decide on a sprint length, you shouldn’t change it unless there’s a very good reason (it messes with the metrics). I closed out the first sprint by checking on what I’d accomplished and what I hadn’t. I did not finish all my research (some of it required reaching people I just couldn’t locate) and …

The Importance of Checking Boxes

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(Or: How I start a novel, Agile-style.) So as I am hitting the ‘send’ button on sending two manuscripts off to my agent, I am naturally planning my next book. As one does. And I thought it might be interesting, if not helpful, to go over what I do and why. Because at heart, I will always be a project manager. I have to do this because I have ADHD. However, long before I was diagnosed with such, I’d learned coping mechanisms that allow me to function to varying degrees of success. (My closets are still filled with craft projects I have thrown myself into with obsessive gusto and then abandoned several weeks later, but at least I know why that happens now.) One of the best methods (for me) is the satisfying feeling of accomplishment that comes from checking a box as ‘done.’ (Similarly, moving a task from column A to column B.) If I can break it down into a small task and put it on a list, there is a much, much …

Wandering in with a Starbuck’s Cup

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Hey, what’s up? So…it’s been uh *checks the calendar* three years. Wow, it really has been three years. Okay…so I guess I haven’t been updating, have I? All right, let’s do this. What’s been going on in my life? The obvious answer, as it has been the obvious answer for everything, is “living in the age of active pandemic.” Which has been heartbreaking on many levels, not least of which because it turns out that ‘I told you so’ stops being a lot of fun when millions of people have died. On a personal level? I finished a five-book epic fantasy series for Tor Books. Yeah, that’s right. That baby is DONE. The last book in the series, The Discord of Gods, comes out on April 26th (which means you have not missed your chance to pre-order!) It’s a tremendous accomplishment and a strange feeling of loss all the same time. Because it’s not just that I’ve written four books in the last three years (each over 200,000 words), but I have been involved with …