Leigh Saunders

There is a scene fairly early in Memoirs of a Synth: Gold Record where Brianna uses the sticky label from a beer bottle to preserve the memory molecules given to her by Y’reui, an aged Callibrini Queen. The story in those molecules is never revealed in the novel – it has no bearing on the events of Brianna and Jerrold’s first adventure – but the Alien Days anthology gave me a perfect opportunity to share the tale.

Told entirely from Y’reui’s chemical-memory point(s) of view, Where All Memories are One recalls the events of Brianna’s first encounter with the insectoid Callibrini – and the disastrous results of that meeting.

This was a difficult story to write, not only because the events themselves were so very painful, but also because of the sheer challenge of trying to present the thoughts and multiple points of view of the insectoid characters in a way that we mere humans could wrap our heads around.

I hope you enjoy it.

“…Covering vast areas of space with flashing spaceships and nifty alien races, space opera in the hands of great authors helped me time after time to get off this planet and live among the stars where life was a lot more fun than my real life. So for me, great, classic space opera is always my favorite kind of reading still to this day…”

– Dean Wesley Smith

I am delighted to announce that my novel, Memoirs of a Synth: Gold Record, is included in the 2019 Space Opera StoryBundle! It’s truly an honor to see my book on the shelf with this amazing collection.

If you don’t know how StoryBundle works, they assemble a themed collection of great novels, and then make the whole set available, DRM-free and in both .epub and .mobi formats (for your Kindle or other ereading apps/devices). Best of all, you not only get to set your own price, but you can choose to donate part of your purchase price to AbleGamers, to help them provide custom video gaming setups to people with disabilities so they can have fun with their friends and family.

UPDATE: The Space Opera Storybundle is over, but you can still find many of these great books at your favorite online retailers:

• Sticks and Stones: A Trek Novel by Robert Jeschonek
• Dreams of a Fool by Michael D. Britton
• Naero’s Run by Mason Elliott
• Gold Record – Memoirs of a Synth by Leigh Saunders
• The Runabout by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• Fiction River Presents: Among the Stars by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• Star Rain by Dean Wesley Smith
• The Drath Series: Books 1-3 by Meyari McFarland
• The Jani Kilian Chroncles: Books 1-3 by Kristine Smith
• Queen Anne’s Revenge by Blaze Ward

And thanks to all our readers for supporting us!

One of my writing mentors often says that the way to get past writer’s block, is just to  write the next line, even if you don’t know where it will take you. I often think of it as just taking the next step while staring out across the trackless desert sands from atop a camel’s back, but that’s just the image I’ve created for myself.

When I wrote Memoirs of a Synth: Gold Record, the first 20K words and basic story arc leapt onto the page in two sittings. Then I putzed and frittered my way around through the next 15K words, kicking through the rocks and weeds at the edge of the desert for a v-e-r-y long time, staring out across the empty sands and letting them intimidate me. I had no idea where the story was going, other than one or two of the scenes that ended up near the end of the book. But how to get there…???

And then I tried just writing the next line. It sucked, and I later went back and changed it, but at the moment when I took that first hesitant step into the desert of the blank page, it didn’t feel so bad. So I took another step, and then another, and the story started telling itself again.

“Writing the next line” became “writing the next scene.”
“Writing one page a day” became days where I’d look up and realize I’d written entire chapters.

Yes, there were days during that journey across the desert of the book that I hesitated, looked back at the single line of footprints stretching behind me into the distance and forward at the drifts and dunes and blowing sand ahead and wondered where the story was taking me – and I left Brianna stranded in an avalanche or floating through space in a cargo ship full of screaming herdbeasts or lounging around in her mentor’s safe-house while I wrestled my doubts back into submission – and then I took the next step, wrote the next line, the next scene, the next chapter.

And six months after I wandered into the wilderness, I found my way out of it. The book was finished – another 105K words added to the 35K I’d started with, with twists and turns and situations and characters I’d never imagined.

Because I set the goal of “write the next line.”

My goal is more lofty now – it’s “one page a day” – and some days it’s difficult to find the time to write that single page. But if I meet that goal, I’ll have a book finished in a year, which isn’t too shabby when it comes to squeezing in writing time around the demands of a job and a life – demands I’ve let get the better of me in the last year or so.

Write the next line.
Write the next scene.
Write one page a day.

Odds are, meeting easily achievable goals like these just won’t be enough, and you’ll find yourself writing two lines, or three, or finishing a chapter instead of just a scene. Because storytelling is addictive, and once you let a story take root in your mind, it will keep dragging you back to the chair until it’s finished with you.

And, odds are, by the time the book is finished, you’ll look up to discover that other stories have taken root in the fertile ground of your imagination and are just waiting for their turn to take control of your fingers at the keyboard……….

Write on!

L

p.s. In case you were wondering, this little essay is just over 600 words long, slightly over two pages in manuscript format. It took me 25 minutes to write. And there’s still 23 hours and 35 minutes left of my day, some of which is unscheduled…

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p.s. 2 The article (below) is what got me thinking about this whole idea again today. It’s from a business perspective, not writing-focused at all, but applies to pretty much any type of goal you may find yourself struggling with.

Why You Should Set Goals So Simple They’re Laughable
Laura Montini | Inc. | Apr 15, 2014
http://www.inc.com/laura-montini/why-you-should-set-goals-so-simple-that-they-re-laughable.html
   …pledging to do something manageable is counterintuitive to most high-achievers. Instead, individuals are more likely to set [less-manageable] goals. “We create a situation somehow where A) failure is likely and B) failure is terribly, terribly devastating,” Forte said. But there’s an easy solution. In fact, it’s ridiculously easy…

I’m very pleased – very, very pleased – to introduce you to my good friend, Brianna Rei, the main character of Gold Record, the first full-length novel in the Memoirs of a Synth series. If you’ve read the short story, Firstdawn, you’ve already met Brianna, and you know that she’s smart, a little sassy, takes risks for a living, and is always on the run.

What you may not know is that she’s been pestering me for ages to tell her stories – and as you might imagine, someone with Brianna’s background has lots of stories to tell! (And yes, I’m already taking notes for the next installment.)

I hope you enjoy Memoirs of a Synth: Gold Record. It was a lot of fun to write – all 149,220 words (almost 400 pages) of it! In future posts, I’ll tell you some of the stories behind the writing of some parts of the book – if you have specific passages you’re curious about, drop me a note and I’ll be sure to tell you about those scenes.

Available from your favorite online retailers –books2read.com/SynthGoldRecord – $3.99