W. Keith Brenton

I just sent the ms. of my most recent draft of “The Unwept Tear,” book four in the “People of the Water” Cycle, to my gifted and dedicated book editor, Roxanne Raye.

She undertook the monumental task of proofreading, editing, critiquing and frankly, greatly improving the first three works in the Cycle and I could not have been happier to learn that she had some time available!

Book Four is longer, about 86,000 words at this point, because it has a lot of ground in spacetime to cover and I wanted to treat every character fairly — not just for my readers, but for them. They’re like my kids, and I care about them.

This is a link to her Amazon page.

And you can order my first three works at this link: The ‘People of the Water’ Cycle.

If you’ve been following the coverage of the two Starliner astronauts stuck for weeks aboard the International Space Station — and lately the weird “sonar ping” noise emitted by its speakers — you might be intrigued by the adventures of the two astronauts stranded in “The Water Cure,” the first novel of my “People of the Water” Cycle.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2024/09/04/boeing-starliner-issues-explained/75053821007/

I was honored to be asked to address the River Valley Writers in Fort Smith/Van Buren, Arkansas on Sunday, June 15 and enjoyed meeting them and chatting with them very much. When I spoke, I confessed to them that I am a “story” guy; learning (after a 30+ year gap in writing fiction) to become a “character” guy.

I can blame watching 1960s-70s episodic TV in part for that. Characters were often just names. We didn’t know why Jim Phelps wanted to work for the Impossible Missions Force or what made Lou Grant pursue journalism as a career. They just did their jobs.

But I’ve learned that characters drive your stories.

So you want your readers/listeners/viewers to care about them. Maybe love them; maybe indentify with them; maybe hate them.

I shared three things I’ve found that can bring your characters home to them (there are many, many more, but three was enough for Sunday afternoon):

You want to write your character(s) authentically, even if they are very different from you — or your audience.

You want your character(s) to make a tough choice at some point in the tale; one that costs and may have to be made among few or no good alternatives.

You want your character(s) to be changed; different at the end of the narrative in a significant way from who they were at the beginning.

What are some of the other things I didn’t share that help your audience get into your characters, and therefore your story?

On my visit Saturday, I noticed that the Baggage Room Gift Shop at the Eureka Springs & North Arkansas Railway is offering a new souvenir postcard — printed on both sides, since hardly anyone mails them these days.

And you’ll never guess which retired conductor is pictured on one side!

That’s right! Mark Mallet!

And also moi.

April 9

Chapter 9 is finally written! Progress on Book Four, “The Unwept Tear,” followed a veggie burger lunch at Mud Street Cafe, a visit to my new doctor’s office and then viewing the 98.8% totality eclipse in his parking lot with his employees.

Then I wrote at home, because the Café closes at 3:00.

This is turning out to be a longer story, much like how Book Two had to be split into Books Two and Three. But I’m going to try to keep the pace punchy and the length relatively short. That’s difficult — as it was in Book One — for such a long timespan!

April 12 – Afternoon

Happy wryter here after a little setback. I hadn’t finished the difficult chapter nine for very long before I realized that some of the events at the end of it would make the story flow better if they were at the end of chapter ten.

So, over a lunch of chicken salad salad (I always feel like I’m stuttering when I order it) at Mud Street Cafe, I started writing that chapter ten material as the end of chapter nine, and bumped up the old ending of chapter nine to chapter ten.

Of course, explaining that is more confusing than doing it, but it’s all for the best.

Trust me.

April 12 – Evening

Update on “The Unwept Tear,” 6:30 p.m.

Chapter Nine’s new ending is finished now; just as grueling and rewarding to write as the original; and now Chapter 10 is finished too, though shorter in length.

I couldn’t have finished them at Mud Street Cafe; I don’t like to weep in public.

82 pages; 38,986 words. About 2/3 finished, I hope; and 4-5 chapters to go.

When you write about time travel (as people have done since the era of H.G. Wells, and in some measure, even before), you want your readers to be able to suspend disbelief long enough to tell your story.

So it’s a good idea to stay abreast of the science of the subject. To be honest, though, it isn’t there. Yet.

The theory of relativity concludes it’s possible, though unlikely. For some versions of it, negative mass and energy are required. Or a shortcut that bypasses gravity. Or make-up-your-own, which is what theoretical physicists and science fiction writers are left to do — at least until the technology for handling the physics of the problem is available to us!

My character Stan, in the People of the Water Cycle novels, is one of those folks who goes his own way.

If the subject interests you, here’s a summary from Scientific American that I found accessible to my rather primitive and unscientific mind:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-time-travel-possible/