Jul 6, 2015

Hello sentients!

Let me start with the standard expression of gratitude for supporting The Life Engineered. Whether you supported the book from the start or are still pondering if you want to pre-order it or not, I'm glad you're along for the ride.

Three things I want to hit on today to keep you up to date:

1. With July I have begun writing the second half of the sequel to The Life Engineered. It's a bit strange writing a book and putting in many long hours into a draft that I already know I'll be tearing apart and rebuilding from it's ruins the moment I'm done. As I'm laying the story down, I'm discovering things I want to do differently and making copious amounts of notes of things I'll want to go back and adjust. It's a fun process and part of what makes writing so interesting to me; that feeling that I'm being told the story as well.
2. Speaking of process, let me give you a glimpse at the behind-the-scenes situations I'm faced with as an aspiring Science Fiction writer. You see, there are two things that have been frustratingly in conflict while I write both The Life Engineered and it's sequel. The first is my desire to create an emotionally satisfying tale that allows for fantastic set pieces, thrilling plot points and imagery that fires up the imagination. The second is remaining true to the 'science' portion of Science Fiction. More often than not, the science has to bend into uncomfortable positions to allow the story to be interesting for the kind of tales I want to spin. However, with how scathing critics and celebrity scientists such as Neil Degrasse Tyson can be when liberties are taken with science, it can be intimidating to toss a story that is less than scientifically accurate into the world of literature. (Note: the day Neil Degrasse Tyson says anything about my book, no matter how scathing and derisive, I'll know I've made it.) These two elements have long been something I've hated having to balance but I think in the past week, as I delve back into the world of The Life Engineered, I've decided to accept that this battle, this clash of accuracy against narrative, is good. It's what keeps me from making the story less believable or the science push the story into the back seat. While it's frustrating having to sometimes disrespect science in favour of writing a compelling story or adding some exposition to justify events that might be too fantastic for the setting, the conflict is what allows me to keep a good balance and I think I've come to terms with that.
3. I've had a stressful weekend working on the prop I want to raffle off. One of the two large molds I need to cast the pieces has been completed and I've cast my first half of the model. I say the weekend was stressful because the birth of this mold and the piece it spawned was not as smooth a labor as I would have preferred. That being said, you can see below that progress is being made. I will have one model done and ready for a convention I'm going to at the end of the month and then a second one ready to raffle off by the end of August. After that there will be six more copies made before I destroy the molds and the masters.

Thanks again for your support. Feel free to follow me on Twitter (@jfdubeau) where you can ask me questions and maybe even get answers!

JF

This is the nightmare mold. It's a nightmare mold because the release agent that was supposed to allow the two halves to separate smoothly didn't work and I had to cut the mold apart. Thankfully, it still works fine.

Here you can see the piece I cast out of solid resin (alongside the masters for the two body pieces and EL wire because EL wire looks cool). It has some cleanup to go through but will work out well in the end I believe.

Finally, a close-up of the piece so you can see imperfections. Imperfections that will either be part of the character of the model or be removed before the painting stage.