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Look what just arrived in the mail. My UK/Australia/NZ tenth anniversary edition, from Gollancz, is ready to release on September 20! I knew about the new colors and classic look, but I didn't know about the hint of map in the background, or that was it was going to be a hardcover. I'm so pleased. Happy birthday, Katsa!

Here is our trip log from Sunday, October 7:


Sunday 07.10 – Day 7

Lloyds Hotel – Lilliehöökbreen – North

-3/4°C Celsius, almost no wind in the morning, clear sky, beautiful sunrise. More wind in the evening going from WNW 2, to N 2-3 and later NW 4.

09:30 - Morning landing Lloyds hotel – Hike to Lilliehöökbreen.

11:15 – Anchor up Lloyds Hotel.

13:30 – Anchor down Lilliehöökbreen.

14:30 – Hikers back on board (Piet still smiling).

16:30 - Afternoon zodiac cruises Lilliehöökbreen.

19:00 - Going North.

Our leader, Sarah Gerats, kept this log for us throughout the trip… And October 7 was one of my favorite days. I woke that morning and, as happened most mornings, came out on deck to a view I'd never seen before.

If you take a close look at the middle of this picture — maybe click on it to make it bigger and more detailed — you might see an orange rectangle. This is a hut that's been decorated and painted orange. It's called Lloyds Hotel, and it is definitely the fanciest hut on Spitsbergen — though maybe more of a tourist destination then a destination for any anyone actually seeking shelter. You can read more about its history here.

We climbed aboard the zodiacs and crossed onto land to visit it.





I, for one, was less interested in the evidence of human activity inside the hut, and more interested in the COMPLETELY GINORMOUS polar bear prints outside the hut. They were fresh, for this was new snow.


This sight — evidence of a polar bear (or three or four) recently shuffling through — was quite common on our journey.




I think it's time to introduce you to our wonderful, kickass guides, who always knew how to read the prints in the snow. Emma, Sarah, Åshild, and Kristin were our guides and guards, our organizers, our friends, our helpers, and our protectors. Any time we went on land, they were there with rifles, ensuring our safety in the land of polar bears.They had so much to share about the landscape, the environment, the animals, the history. They were wonderful storytellers and guides! And of course, Nemo was very, um, helpful as well. :o)


After exploring Lloyd's Hotel, we split into two groups. Some stayed put, working or enjoying the scenery, then returning to the ship. The rest of us set off on an 8km (5 mi) hike across the base of the fjord where we'd landed. See the little arrow I drew on the map below? That shows where we hiked, in this northwestern section of Spitsbergen.

Click here to check this out on Google Maps and see more details about where we were.

As we moved away from shore, we saw the Antigua sail off — abandoning us! Not really. The ship was circling the fjord to pick us up on the other side. Even knowing that, though, it was strange to see her go.

We hiked through spectacular terrain. Click on any of these to make them bigger and more focused.


The snow was pretty deep, but also very, very dry. It made for easier hiking than a snow-free terrain, for we were on a rocky moraine of loose stones much of the time. The snow evened out the terrain for us.






At one point, Nemo was sorely tempted by this duck, who taunted him as he tried to walk out onto the thin ice and grab it. Sarah, Nemo's person, could not get him to desist. So we all took a little break and enjoyed resting, eating snacks, and watching the show :o). (The duck was fine. The duck was in charge the whole time really.)




I included the picture below because in the foreground, you can see what I mean about the terrain of loose stones. It's exactly the same backdrop as above, actually, but I'm standing at a higher point, so the sun is more visible.





And there below us was another fjord, a glacier, and, waiting for us, the Antigua. Such a beautiful sight on a freezing day, after a long walk. I stood and stared, breathing fresh air, for a long time. As I watched, I heard her anchor fall — a familiar metallic clicking that was SO much louder on our ridge, echoing around the fjord, than it ever was from inside the ship.


And that was our hike from Lloyds Hotel to Lilliehöökbreen! If you're curious about the place in the log where it says "Piet still smiling," well, you may remember from a previous post that Piet was our chef. And we got home very late for lunch :o). But he fed us a delicious feast anyway.

I'll post another adventure soon! Maybe those zodiac cruises mentioned in the log, or maybe an explanation of some of our exciting activities on deck.

Today Kevin’s game, Starcom: Nexus, releases in Early Access on Steam. It’s a thing of beauty, and also a lot of fun. If you like games that take you into outer space where you get to explore mysterious worlds, build a powerful ship, and explode bad guys, you should buy it, and play it, and let your gamer friends know about it. Yes, I’m biased, but reviewers and streamers  - who are not his spouse  - also love it :o). (FYI those last two links go to youtube streaming vids.)

***

Conversation at the dinner table:

Kevin: How was your day?

Me: Okay, I guess. I still can’t figure out how to get this girl to accidentally set her house on fire, then cause an explosion and get stuck in a window grille.

Kevin: I believe in you.

Me: Thank you. How was your day?

Kevin: Okay. When my enemy ships get within a certain distance of each other, they spontaneously explode.

Me: Oh!

Kevin: It’s not supposed to happen. It’s a bug.

Me: Oh.

Kevin: I can’t figure it out.

Me: I believe in you!

***


There are a lot of similarities between the work Kevin and I do. We both create complicated worlds with characters and plots. We’re both entertainers.

Meet your commander.

We have some processes in common: for example, we both study the books/games we love, then try to learn from them. We both think about the things we don’t like in other books/games, then try to come up with alternatives we prefer. We both know how to wear the creator hat; then switch to the reader/gamer hat, reading/playing our own project with a critical eye; then go back to the creator hat to fix what isn’t working. We’re both extremely familiar with the phenomenon wherein you change one little thing, then a ripple effect passes through the entire work, complicating/breaking things in ways you didn’t anticipate.

Meet the Ulooquo, an underwater alien race.

We can also get similarly overwhelmed by our own projects. I’ve talked a lot on the blog about how a book has many parts, and writing a book involves many jobs. Well, a game has SO many parts. It has music and art, visual effects, numerous interfaces, plot and character, mysteries and rewards. It must be able to support and absorb the choices of individual gamers, over which the creator has no control. It has SO many (literally) moving parts!



We also both work by ourselves for years on self-directed projects… then put our creations out into the world, hoping they’ll find the people who will love them.

These similarities are deep. They help us to understand each other’s frustrations and joys, and support each other meaningfully. This is awesome. However, I want to talk a little bit about the differences, which are many.

For example, in my writing career, I have an agent. She connects me to an editor who helps me craft the right words. Then, my editor works with my publisher to create a beautiful physical book, publicize and market that book, and sell that book for me.

An indie game developer, on the other hand, does everything himself, in an extremely saturated market with a lot of roadblocks. He can hire other people to help. Kevin hired a composer and an artist, to help him with his music and his characters (like the Commander and the Ulooquo above). He hired a marketing consultant to do a few things too. But he worked closely with those people, because he knew exactly what he wanted. And everything else has been the work of his own hands. He’s done SO much marketing and publicity work on his own that’s made me appreciate my own marketing and publicity departments even more than I did before. Self-promotion in a saturated market is really, really hard. It’s also stressful for a guy who happens to be humble and was raised with the good-old New England ethos of not bragging about himself :o).

Here’s another big difference: Kevin can release his game while it’s still in production, then use the feedback from early players to shape it and make it better. He can write code into the game that allows him to see how long players play; where they decide to drop out of the game; which options are being chosen more often than others. (He receives this information anonymously, in case you’re starting to worry that he can actually tell what you’re doing inside his game!) As a writer, I definitely don’t know where someone decides to abandon my book. Nor do I want to know, because once people are reading my book, it’s final! If everyone is bailing at a certain point, there’s nothing I can do about it. The words in my book are not going to change. Kevin’s game is more of a living, growing creature, even after it releases, and based on player reactions.

Another big difference is that while I am a wordsmith, Kevin is a programmer. A lot of the time, when I step into his office, he’s working with programming language on his many screens, and I don’t understand the smallest bit of it. My readers read my actual words. His gamers play a game built on a framework of programming that looks and feels very different from the actual game. He also works with a lot of complicated software (like, for 3D modeling) and does a lot of math. He uses trigonometry to [I just asked him to explain it and he said something about spaceships shooting at each other, vectors, and cosines. ???]. I can come home and tell him practically everything I struggled with at work that day. A lot of what he does is too technical for me to understand—though he is really good at creating analogies and explaining things to me when I ask (and when I'm not rushing to finish a blog post!).

Another difference is that he is a visual artist. For example, he created Entarq's Citadel below, which is one of the worlds his gamers get to explore.


Here's another.


Another difference:  I can do my work anywhere. All I need is my notebook and a pen. Kevin needs his fancy computer and his big monitors. So he works from home. Home office and self-employed means he’s working most of the time. Most mornings, he’s working by the time I get out of bed. By the time I leave for my office, he’s put hours in. I come home and he’s making me dinner; after dinner, he works for a few more hours. I go away on trips without him; he works while I’m gone! I always thought I worked really hard. I have a new standard now.

And now his work has created this beautiful, fun game that’s getting really positive attention from gamers and streamers :o). Today, you can buy it in Early Access, and become one of the players who contributes to what it will ultimately become.

And that's my little explanation of what it's like to live with an indie game developer. Check out the links if you’re interested! The trailer is below.

My title is disingenuous, because I didn't do any novel-writing in the Arctic. However, I thought and plotted and observed and learned with intensity, such that in the two months since my return, I've written an entire third of the new novel that was my primary Arctic project. This writing pace is unheard of for me. It's partly because I've had some clearheadedness lately, unrelated to the Arctic. But it's also largely because I got so much hands-on experience on the ship!

Since most of my work in the Arctic was happening in my head and my heart, it's not going to be possible to show the entire process in pictures. But I can share some of the experiences that helped me make progress.

My novel takes place partly on a tall ship, where my main character is learning a lot about the work the sailors are doing.

Therefore, it helped me to learn to haul lines, and to watch others do so. (On a ship, ropes are called lines. It takes 60-ish lines to operate the rigging on the Antigua!)

(The Antigua is a barquentine. That's a tall ship with three or more masts that has square sails on its foremast and fore-and-aft rigged sails [sails that stretch from front to back] on its other masts. This sail configuration gives it power and maneuverability, but also makes it possible to be operated by a small crew.)

On the occasions when we could turn the engine off and just sail... I was SO HAPPY. These were my favorite moments of the entire trip, which is saying an awful lot. It was silent, and graceful, and our movement felt so good in the water. It taught me a lot about my character and how she feels, too. 


The main character in my novel spends time lying inside a rowboat on deck, watching the sailors raise and lower the sails. So I did the same, curling up in one of the Zodiacs :o).

Photo by Dawn Jackson.

I did a lot of thinking and observing from that position. The masts swung back and forth above me as we moved through the waves and I got a lot of ideas! I also had the best views.




My main character also climbs the mast. So... in the picture below, our captain, Mario, gives me help and support as I make my first attempt.

John Hirsch took this picture, and the further-back one below, because I shoved my iPhone at him before I started :o)

Barbara Liles took this picture. As I climbed, the ship was moving through ice.

I'm on the right in this photo.

 Climbing was a thrill. Each time I tried it, I got up further. I knew it was safe, because I always wore a halter, but the ship was moving a lot and it was very, very cold up there, and sometimes slippery... and the places where your hands and feet went were not always intuitive... I learned a lot about my character's experience from that experience.

By the way, it's probably time for me to introduce our sailing crew -- our captain, Mario; first mate, Marijn, and second mate, Annet! I'll have more to say about them in future blog posts. They kept us safe, taught us so much, and were so patient whenever we "helped"!


That's it for today's Arctic chapter, but there's more to come. Hope you're all having a cozy December. :o)

Years ago I saw this thing – I think it was a dogs alleged diary contrasted with a cats. The dog is all “8:45, eating breakfast, my favourite thing! 9:15, going in the backyard, my favourite thing! 9:30, I see … Continue reading →