RECIPE FOR SUCCESS...OR, DISASTER

Sometimes, one simply has to eat the right thing. Yes, eat it.

In my case, the right thing to eat might be sardines. My gynecologist tells me that I am the only patient she knows who eats --or claims to eat-- sardines, which is a pity for everyone else, because sardines are exceptionally good for a body.

https://www.lifehack.org/291464/20-surprising-health-benefits-sardines

I created my own, unique recipe for kedgeree using sardines instead of haddock or kippers, and I wrote it into a scene in my first book, "Forced Mate".

Here is someone else's kedgeree recipe. To wit, John Torode's.

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/kedgeree

And another, by Cara Cormack.

https://www.thespruceeats.com/super-easy-kedgeree-recipe-435296

For my kedgeree, I variously (depending what I have to hand) add oysters and mushrooms for the complimentary benefits of zinc and magnesium, also onions, garlic, parsley, clams to the sardines and brown rice. I also add extra turmeric with the curry, and black pepper for obvious reasons...(because the piperine in black pepper boosts the bioavailability of the curcumin in turmeric.)

Then, as covert blatant self-promotion, I gave some copies of my Forced-Mate-related kedgeree recipe to my doctor and gave her permission to copy and distribute. I got a lot of traffic

Recipes can be a great promotional medium for authors, but are there legal implications for using a recipe in your book, and sharing that recipe?  Maybe it depends whether the recipe is entirely your own creation, or comes from someone else.

As a basic rule of thumb, ideas and facts cannot be copyrighted, so if all you lift from someone else is a list of ingredients, and a "to-do" list of what to do with the ingredients, and in what order, you are probably not on a sticky wicket if you transcript something off the internet. Transcribe. Don't cut and paste, because you might trawl up some unique and creative expressions, and while ideas cannot be copyrighted, the expression of them can be.

Legal blogger Brian Murphy of the lawfirm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz PC shares a perfect example of an original recipe and a non-infringing copy of it. 

https://advertisinglaw.fkks.com/post/102hert/vegan-dog-treats-and-copyright

No author can claim ownership, under copyright law, of facts or ideas; copyright law protection extends only to the original way an author expresses facts or ideas. This “idea/expression dichotomy,” derives from Article I, section 8, clause 8 of the Constitution and is codified in Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act: “[i]n no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.”

It helped the defendants' case that their illustrations, layout, color schemes were different from the plaintiff's, and of course they omitted the original's creative suggestions for wine pairings, personal reminiscences, poetic turns of phrase, and idiosyncratic expressions.

The topic of the copyrightability of cook books was discussed in a paid course a while ago, entitled, "Whose Dish Is It Anyway." Some insights are available on the events page.

https://www.csusa.org/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1612989&group=

Meanwhile, for a more global perspective, the IP law firm covering Africa and the USA, Vazi Legal, blogged recently on Lexology about recipes, copyright disputes and choices such as trademarking, trade secrets protections, or patenting recipes if they are worth trying to monetize and protect.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=a74fa87f-f4aa-4112-9497-263ab9e247df

Their article answers the question, "Can I protect my recipe and tasty creations?" and the tiny excerpts copied here are no substitute for reading the entire piece.

Vazi Legal shares that:

"Copyrights give the authors or creators an exclusive right of original works of authorship fixed in a tangible form of expression. Typically these works include literary, artistic (dramatic), and musical works. Copyright protection will only cover creations that are not intangible. Thus, copyrighting a recipe is only possible when expressed literally."

And also that:

A recipe classified as a literary work for legal purposes does not prevent another party from applying it to make a dish. Hence, copyright protection can only protect the written recipe from being republished and not the recipes themselves. Same with a cookbook. Even a slight change in the order of the ingredients to reproduce a cookbook will devoid the initial recipe from enjoying copyright protection since food ingredients are not exactly creative works. However, a chef may add creativity to the cookbook and strengthen copyright protection by including an original literary commentary.

Protection depends on whether or not your recipe has a distinctive name that can be trademarked. Perhaps, a science fiction or fantasy author might create the otherworldly equivalent of "Pringles" as a low volume, low weight, insanely nutritious snack that would work in all gravities. The name might be trademarked. The formula might be patented.

Turning to the UK, because we do have some UK readers...

The UK law firm Killburn and Strode has a superb article by Rowena Tolley (partner) and Kathryn Sayer about, amongst other things, recipes that are not trade secrets, and that may be in the public domain, as are, presumably, any blog that I shared about my own kedgeree recipe.

https://www.kilburnstrode.com/knowledge/technology/ip-for-the-recipe-revolution

"Specific literary expressions of recipes and accompanying photographs can be protected by copyright, as for other written works and photographs. However, copyright in a recipe as a literary work would allow you to stop people only from replicating the recipe in that particular form – i.e. it would only protect against republication of the written recipe itself, but not against copying of the actual edible output thereof..."

This article may be inspiring to science fiction/fantasy authors because of the potential protections in Britain for meat substitute compositions... for instance, the potential of mushrooms grown on interstellar craft might be fertile ground. (Groan.)

OK, perhaps not mushrooms, because Quorn has been there, done that.

https://www.quorn.us/products/quorn-meatless-grounds

But what if you called it, "Celia"? This is not legal advice. I am just a blogger.

As the Kilburn and Strode lawyers say:

 "... it’s not impossible – patents have been granted at the EPO for meat replica compositions amongst other foodstuffs, though such subject-matter typically relates to the composition of ingredients used in food manufacturing, rather than to recipes for cooking at home or in restaurants per se. In the UK, a patent was also granted for a fish and chip batter which was found to be inventive because it reduces oil uptake during the frying process."

Legal blogger Dallin Wilson for the lawfirm Seyfarth Shaw LLP's  Trading Secrets blog has an absolute tale of woe about a waffle recipe. It is fun to read, a big name is dropped, but more recipe-related scuttlebutt than good advice for authors.  Nevertheless, her is the link.

https://www.tradesecretslaw.com/2022/04/articles/trade-secrets/one-of-our-favorite-things-are-lawsuits-about-stolen-secret-recipes/#page=1

One never knows what allegedly true anecdote might make a fortune for an author or screenwriter....

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

http://www.spacesnark.com/   

http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday

 

Karen S. Wiesner: SURPRISES IN THE COURSE OF LEARNING TO WRITE A SCIENCE FICTION SERIES (11 of 15)

Of Arcs and Standalones, Part 5: Surprise #5--Mission Impossible: Standalone Series Stories 

This is the eleventh of fifteen posts dealing with surprising things I learned in the course of writing a science fiction series.

We've covered series and story arcs and how to establish them early in the writing process. Now let's talk about the fifth surprise I had about writing this genre after more than 20 years as a published author: That stories with Overarching Series that are so dependent on series arcs running throughout each book in the series just might break an author's ability to provide standalone series stories.

In the literary world, "standalone" has two meanings:

1) A standalone story can refer to a work of fiction that has no relationship with any other piece of fiction and doesn’t fit into a series. In other words, a standalone story stands alone without ties to other books. A standalone story resolves all the plots and subplots specific to that work within that work. The story is encapsulated within a single volume.

2) A standalone story can also mean that readers don't have to read the other books in the series in order to understand it. That's the definition we're focusing on here. Based on that definition, a standalone is a book that has all the story threads tied up logically at the end and the reader isn’t left hanging on any story or series arc points.

What makes standalone stories nearly impossible to have within an Overarching Series is, as the name implies, the overarching series arc or arcs. In previous chapters, we discussed how story arcs are short-term while series arcs are long-term. The series arc is introduced (but not tied up) in the first book in a series. That arc is continued in all the middle books, each one adding something new and critical to that overarching conflict so the stakes are undeniably raised with every subsequent installment. That series arc is only resolved in the final book that completes the series. That's what keeps readers following along from one book to the next. This is acceptable because the story arc in the individual books has been resolved, and the reader can leave the story with a sense of closure, satisfaction, and certainly anticipation for the next book in the series because you’ve given them something (in the form of series arc plots) to look forward to for the future.

Mystery writer Luisa Buehler so eloquently says that a story arc resides within each book, and each book resides within a series arc. “Think of an umbrella covering characters who are each holding their own umbrella. For me, it’s important that each book’s story can stand alone because that’s how the story from the first book can still live in the last book.”

In the past 25 years, I've written 16 series with only a small handful of stories with no affiliation to any of my other books. During all that time, my goal as a writer who mainly writes series verses single titles had always been to offer standalone stories with each and every installment of a series. That readers didn't need to read the others in the series to make sense of each installment--and could even read them out of order!--was a point of pride for me. Imagine my stunned face when I finished writing the first book of the Arrow of Time Chronicles and realized that, while most of the story arcs came to a natural resolution, the series arcs were still hanging out there unresolved. With a series arc so sprawling and complicated, installment standalones quickly became a mission impossible. The nature of the major and minor series arcs I'd devised dictated that those long-term plot threads became the backbone of every single story in that series. There was no way those could be resolved in the first, second, or even the third book in the series (hence the requirement for a fourth and final volume). At the end of Book 1, the series arcs left behind fiery trails of suspense and dread for what might happen in the future. That meant I was forced to end the first three books in the series with something I had avoided almost entirely in the 20 years I'd been writing at that point: Dirty, rotten, unforgiveable cliffhanger endings! Well, actually not quite that horrifying. At the very least, they included series arc sequel hooks at the end of all the books in the series other than the last. But let's talk about cliffhanger endings in general before we establish that the Overarching Series will almost always include a milder version of them in the installments.

In case you've been living in a pocket dimension unconnected to the real world all your life, a cliffhanger is basically a method in which the main character(s) are left in precarious situations at the end of a story and the outcome of that situation will continue to be in doubt until and unless there's another installment. In most situations, the purpose of this method, naturally, is to leave the reader dying to know what happens next. In fact, it's thought that the term originated with Thomas Hardy’s serialized novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, in which Hardy left one of the main characters literally hanging off the edge of a cliff. This led to the archetypal cliffhanger in Victorian prose and all serial writers began to use it--in many cases, even if they didn’t quite agree with the theory. One such writer in that time period rightly disapproved since the use of this suspense violated “all proper confidence between the author and his reader".

To this day, cliffhangers are hotly debated subjects. Yes, a cliffhanger is like the epitome of a page-turner...only it comes at the end of a book, thereby denying the reader resolution and, as a consequence, mitigating satisfaction with loose ends tying up. Instead, cliffhangers build stressful anticipation and the opposite of relief--dread. Most readers and writers cast a disapproving eye on stories with these endings because it violates the unspoken promise of a proper conclusion for each story, leaving behind the bitter aftertaste of being cheated.

As an author of Standalone Series throughout most of my career, all I could see were the disadvantages to cliffhangers, largely because as a reader myself I wasn't fond of them. It's frustrating and unfair to force a reader to wait--possibly indefinitely--for all threads in the story to effectively reach resolution in the next dubious installment. The publisher might close up shop, postpone the release of a book in a series, or grow bored or disillusioned with continuing the series, the author, and/or the genre. The author might become sick or keel over, or get excited about some other series or story they're working on and never come back. An example that comes instantly to my mind--that's how memorable the first two offerings were--is Dean Koontz, who has to this day never finished his Moonlight Bay Trilogy (Book 1 was published in 1998, Book 2 in 1999). And I'll never forgive him until he does because those first two books were mind-blowing…even as I grudgingly understand as an author how hard it is to get back into a story you haven't visited for countless years. In his case, close to 25.

Few readers want to wait a year or more to find out the conclusion of a story, if it even is in the next book in that series since most series are at least three books long and frequently many more. Let's face it, most readers will probably have forgotten what happened in the original story and, if the time lag is a long one, they may no longer even have that book to refer back to. Also consider that a cliffhanger might, and frequently does, present a situation in which the reader is so desperately anticipating the sequel, the delivery may be a disappointment and can’t possibly live up to what it was building toward. 

Long story short, cliffhangers suck. A lot of people believe they can never be justified because they come instilled with disrespect and unfairness--and authors lead the pack of in terms of feeling swindled. Speculative fiction writer Margaret L. Carter says, “I feel upset, sometimes to the point of outrage, when a novel in a series ends on a cliffhanger. With the long time span that usually intervenes between the publications of successive books, that trick doesn’t seem fair to the reader. Sometimes, of course, this happens because of the publisher’s choice, and the author has no control. I think it’s important that each book come to some sort of satisfactory conclusion, a logical resting place for characters and readers, even if the overall arc continues with unresolved problems and mysteries.”

Clearly, story arc satisfaction is critical in each and every story, even if the series arc resolutions are forthcoming (or never see the light of day, as we've seen happens). For the most part, a milder form of a cliffhanger ending--series arc sequel hooks--are part and parcel to most Overarching Series.

For most of my writing career, the cons of employing anything even vaguely resembling cliffhangers provided all the viable reasons I needed to avoid them completely. Ending three of the four installments in my Arrow of Time Chronicles on series arc sequel hooks was the only way the story could be told. I now understand J.R.R. Tolkien's quandary with The Lord of the Rings. He intended it to be a single volume of over a thousand pages, but that would have been too expensive and readership would have been limited (considering the war taking place at that time). The publisher split the tome into three volumes against the author's wishes. Tolkien called the whole thing a "fudge thought necessary for publication". Do you know he intended The Silmarillion to also be part of The Lord of the Rings? Can you imagine if both stories had been published as a whole instead of divided into two separate works? You want to talk about massive! Would it have been as popular if it'd been offered to readers the way the author wanted? I'm not so sure for a variety of reasons best left to another debate.

In many ways, times have changed from when Tolkien faced this dilemma. These days readers love and even expect to have future follow-ups to an epic story. That's common. It's actually ideal. But times haven't changed so much that publishing houses are willing to publish books that are so big, they're no longer affordable or even interesting to most readers (unless your last name is Martin or Gabaldon, that is). Massive 400-500 page volumes are intimidating to the majority of readers, especially in the last few years when attention spans have shrunk so much that it seems many can't handle even a 200-word back cover blurb in one sitting anymore.

We've covered the very compelling disadvantages to cliffhanger endings, but there are advantages--at the very least--to the less offensive series arc sequel hooks. Paranormal author Dyanne Davis said that she does end each of her books with a version of a cliffhanger, which she knows a lot of readers hate. She never viewed it as unfair. "Considering that I’m also a reader, I don’t mind. I will scream, curse the author…and wait hungrily for the next book." Obviously, the writer who leaves his story on a cliffhanger ending hopes readers will eagerly come back for the next installment, which promises to solve the dire situation the previous story was left in.

Author Joanne Hall added, “In terms of reader fairness, it’s perfectly fair to string them along until they’re tearing their hair out and begging on their knees to know what happens at the end of the last book. It’s not fair to let them down with a feeble ending, or leave important issues completely unresolved. It is okay to leave them a little sad, and to leave a few things hanging, especially if you’re planning future books.” I believe this is the core reason why most authors are fine with leaving installments with series arc sequel hooks and avoiding cliffhanger endings altogether.

I can't even deny that I just finished reading an Overarching Series with a hybrids of cliffhanger endings in all but the last installment. Each of the first four volumes was more exciting than the last. I finished one and immediately started the next because I absolutely could not put it down. When I got to the final in the series, the resolutions matched what they'd been building toward with just enough of a twist to make my joy complete. Right after I finished, I went looking for other offerings from the same author and found not only was there another 5-book spin-off and a prequel, but that the author had two other series not connected to these two. I bought all of them in one fell swoop. You can't deny that is exactly what you want a series to do to readers. For that reason, I have to say that this "pro" of writing and reading an Overarching Series is so monumentally compelling, it may drown out the very many cons.

Next week, we'll talk about ways readers combat the disadvantages of cliffhanger or series arc sequel hook endings, make the most of their advantages, along with discussing the role publication dates of installments play in selling series books.

Happy writing!

Based on Writing the Overarching Series (or How I Sent a Clumsy Girl into Outer Space): 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection by Karen S. Wiesner (release date TBA)

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series, including the romantic science fiction series, ARROW OF TIME CHRONICLES

https://www.writers-exchange.com/arrow-of-time-chronicles/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/arrow-of-time-chronicles.html

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Urban Wildlife

The July 2022 issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC includes an article titled "Why Cities Are Going Wild." It's about wild animals who've adjusted to living in urban areas, often by feeding on the stuff human residents discard. For instance, numerous black bears hang around in Asheville, NC, with a human population of about 95,000. I was surprised to read that coyotes have established themselves in most major cities and in all states except Hawaii. Chicago, for instance, hosts about 4,000 coyotes. Many omnivorous mammals are "changing their behaviors as they learn urban survival skills." Bears learn when it's trash pickup day. Coyotes look before crossing the street. Nobody who lives in a neighborhood with raccoons would be surprised at their talent for breaking into closed containers. Skunks also display cleverness in adapting to urban environments.

Studies have found that not only do city-dwelling wild animals behave differently from their rural and wilderness cousins, such as becoming more nocturnal to avoid people, often they also prosper in terms of gaining weight and producing more offspring. The latter phenomenon doesn't always grant long-term advantages, though; in some populations of urban bears, fewer cubs survive to maturity than in the wild.

Animals can hardly be blamed for "invading" our spaces. In many areas they were there first, and our cities and suburbs have spread to encroach on their territories. Here's an article focusing particularly on big felines in two "megacities," Los Angeles and Mumbai, where mountain lions and leopards (respectively) have learned to coexist with people:

Big Cats, Big Cities

Authorities in those cities have experimented with ways to share space with the big cats, such as building bridges for them to overcome the problem of habitat fragmentation. (I can't help visualizing a leopard reading a "Leopard Crossing" sign at the end of a bridge, even though that's obviously not how the system works.) Public education reduces human-animal clashes and promotes a live-and-let-live policy. "Both cities have learned that trying to capture, kill or relocate the cats isn’t the answer." Moving the creatures away from the urban centers doesn't help prevent conflicts, because they or others like them just move back in. One California wildlife expert points out, “It’s better to have a stable population, than one where hierarchies and territories are disrupted.”

For me, the most intriguing information in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC article is that raccoons seem to be evolving greater intelligence as they're challenged by increasingly complex human efforts to deter them. People's attempts to thwart trespassing raccoons have led to an "innovation arms race." If we're "actually creating smarter animals" by giving them "increasingly difficult problems to solve," could raccoons be poised to take over the "intelligence" niche if we ever go extinct? Or maybe to share that role with us in some future post-apocalyptic reversion to a preindustrial world? After all, they already have a head start with hand-like paws. In the novel WICKED and its sequels, sapient animals live alongside the human residents of Oz (although as second-class citizens). Imagine a sapient raccoon delegation calling on a city or state government to demand equal rights.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Breaches, Breaches, Breaches

To protect the innocent, let us assume that my email address is Booyahhh@gmail.com. It isn't, so please don't search it. Yesterday, "Booyahhh" received an email from PeopleWhizz, claiming that someone had tried to verify my identify... or creditworthiness... or reputation, or some such thing.

I deleted the email. But then, I became incensed, so I looked up PeopleWhizz and discovered that the Better Business Bureau gives them an A. Perhaps, then, although they do not know my name, and want me to visit their site to see who is looking up "Booyahhh", they might be ok. I read the complaints.

As I understand it, and I might be wildly mistaken, PeopleWhizz charges visitors $27 or thereabouts in order to find out who is looking up their derogatory information. In order to remove the derogatory, and even libellous misinformation, a visitor (such as "Booyahhh") must provide a photograph and a copy of a driver's license.

Apparently, the Better Business Bureau finds it entirely satisfactory if PeopleWhizz returns Booyahhh's $27, if "Booyahhh" is unhappy with whatever information is on the site (or is not on the site at all). My objection is, PeopleWhizz still has the photograph and all the information that was on the driver's license, and the information from the credit card.

Other leaks of data in recent days include OpenSea, Flagstar Bank, MGM Resorts, and more.

What Happened?

OpenSea, an NFT marketplace, has reported a data breach exposing 1.8 million email addresses. With this information, cybercriminals could target users with spam or phishing attempts to access additional personal information which could lead to identity theft.

What should I do about it?
If you are a user of OpenSea, be cautious of any email you receive with an address similar to ‘OpenSea.io’:

• Only engage with emails from the exact domain ‘opensea.io’
• Never download anything from an OpenSea email
• Carefully check the spelling of any URL links in an OpenSea email

Whether you have been affected by this specific breach or not, it is always important to update any software you use and change your passwords often. You can read more about the breach from OpenSea here. 

 

What Happened?

A data breach affecting 1.5 million customers of Flagstar Bank includes full names and Social Security numbers. If exploited by cybercriminals, they could use this stolen information to commit identity theft.

What Happened?

Personal information from a 2019 MGM Resort data breach of at least 30 million customers has recently been dumped onto an online messaging app – free for the taking. If exploited by cybercriminals, they could use this stolen information to commit identity theft by targeting victims with spam or phishing attempts.

 

The legal bloggers of Shamis & Gentile would like Samsung phone users to be aware of an issue concerning Illinois residents' faces.

If you own a Samsung Galaxy phone or tablet and you store photos in the Gallery app, you may be entitled to compensation. Shamis & Gentile, P.A. is helping owners of certain Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets take action after allegations surfaced that Samsung is unlawfully collecting and storing facial scans of Illinois residents. If you own a Samsung Galaxy phone or tablet, submit your claim today!

One might extrapolate that the faces of other States' residents might also have been scraped, but only Illinois has made a class action suit worthwhile, cynic that one is.

On the plus side, the Copyrightalliance has negotiated a deal for copyrightalliance members (membership is free) to subscribe for $5.95 pcm to "rightsclick", which seems to be a very helpful service to keep creators on track with organizing and protecting their intellectual property.

RightsClick is currently offering our creator members a very special subscription rate of $5.95/month through the rest of 2022 by using code MYWORKCA22. This is a limited offer that could fill up fast. So learn more today at rightsclick.com and then click the button below to sign up for this special offer!

Sign up here

EFF offers some helpful advice for privacy enthusiasts --which would not help much if one has to produce an image of a driver's license, but which is otherwise food for thought.  Here is a small excerpt:

 

Use different browsers for different use cases. More private browsers like DuckDuckGo, Brave, and Firefox are better for more sensitive activities. Keeping separate browsers can protect against accidental data spillover from one aspect of your life into another.

Use a secondary email address and/or phone number to register sensitive accounts or give to contacts with whom you don’t want to associate too closely. Google Voice is a free secondary phone number. Protonmail and Tutanota are free email services that offer many privacy protections that more common providers like Gmail do not, such as end-to-end encryption when emailing others also on Protonmail and Tutanota, and fewer embedded tracking mechanisms on the service itself.

Use a VPN when you need to dissociate your internet connection from what you’re doing online. Be wary of VPN products that sell themselves as cure-all solutions.

In case I did not mention this in a previous post, if you receive unwanted texts from strangers, as long as they are not charities or politicians, you can text back STOP, and if they do not stop, you can sue them. 

Happy Fourth!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™  

http://www.spacesnark.com/   

http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday

 

Karen S. Wiesner: SURPRISES IN THE COURSE OF LEARNING TO WRITE A SCIENCE FICTION SERIES (10 of 15)

Of Arcs and Standalones, Part 4:

Establishing Story Arcs Early in the Writing Process

This is the tenth of fifteen posts dealing with surprising things I learned in the course of writing a science fiction series.

Last week, we started laying the groundwork for the series arc with a technique and examples. This is something that it's always preferable to start as early in the writing process as you can--ideally, long before you actually begin writing the first draft. This week, we'll talk about establishing individual story arcs early.

Just prior to the summer of 2018, when I started advance research on my sci-fi series, I'd already written copious notes about the individual stories that were far from organized. So I had no trouble at that point identifying the individual story arcs I needed to focus on throughout each book (with the series arc connecting to and ungirding all the story subplots). This can be done as simply as bullet points on a sheet of paper, as I've done below.

Immutable, Book 1:

·                     Introduce the main Human protagonists onboard the ambassadorial Aero spaceship, establishing mankind's pertinent (to this series) history, present situations, and conflicts or potential conflicts.

·                     Introduce the alien race (which I called "cultures") and the conflict with the Sinshe-Shojani antagonists (settled in a secret location with habitations and massive starships as well as utilizing the planet Neth-beo).

·                     Introduce the friendly culture allies including the Vreah (from the planet Vree), the Strigoni (from the planet Strigon), and the Quing (from the planet Qu) with pertinent history, present situations, and conflicts or potential conflicts.

·                     Make minor allusions to the forthcoming potential allies or antagonists including the Gurgh (from the planet Gurgh), the Hiiwa-Shojani (trapped in a nuclear winter on their home planet of Shojan by the warring Sinshe-Shojani), the Osing of the planet Sing, the Usragos of Usrag, and the Drario of Drar.

·                     Establish the major series arc conflict of having "squatted" in Human habitations above the planet Shojan, along with the minor series arc conflicts with the organic lifeform "eating" planets and all the cultures sharing similar DNA.

·                     POV characters in this book are Halon of the Sinshe-Shojani in the prologue, Raze and Tori, Humans aboard the Aero, Vespera of the Vreah, Arie of the Hiiwa-Shojani, and Makaira of the Gurgh in the epilogue who would become major players in the next book.

With this information, I could create individual story blurbs for each of the books in the series.

Remember that, in order to prevent huge paragraphs that wouldn't fit onto even the largest back cover, these blurbs have to focus exclusively on the main POV characters and conflicts. You may need to leave some of the less important (or less intriguing ones) out of your blurbs. You may also need to generalize situations if the books are extremely complicated.

From the story arc breakdowns for each book in my series above, you could see that in all four stories there were a lot of characters, conflicts and situations which all have their own plots and subplots. Say I wrote a single sentence for each story thread in the first book for the story blurb. The blurb would have been overwhelmingly complicated and long. Blurbs have to be intriguing and focused. Very few readers will give you the time of day if you're not concise and punchy. Additionally, story blurbs have two purposes:

1) As back cover teasers, which can be longer as long as they fit on the actual back cover of a paperback.

2) As promotional blurbs which have to be very short and very compelling.

If you want to learn more about writing blurbs, pick up my manual Writing Blurbs That Sizzle--And Sell!.

Blurbing the story arcs of the individual installments of the series can be done using the same method we did for the series arc, filling in the blanks of this worksheet and then fleshing out the results until the story emerges in a way that's both concise and compelling:

Who _____________________________ (Series Main Character{s})

What _____________________________ (Conflict or Crisis)

Why _____________________________ (Worst Case Resolution Scenario)

In the case of the first book in my sci-fi series, this is what I started with:

Who The crew of the Aero (with Astoria Bertoletti and Raze Salen being the major players) (Series Main Character{s})

What Receive a distress call from one of their oldest space habitations which has been brutally attacked, inhabitants kidnapped or outright killed. (Conflict or Crisis)

Why In searching for clues to what brought about this tragedy, they discover that mankind's desperation when first seeking out alternate spaces in the galaxy led to them invading a hostile alien race's territory. (Worst Case Resolution Scenario)

The back cover blurb I came up with after having the basics established on the worksheet:

Immutable, Book 1

Spacefaring liveship, the Aero, is on a routine mission to the far-flung regions of the galaxy when they receive a distress call from one of their oldest space habitations. The structure has been brutally attacked, inhabitants kidnapped or outright killed. The crew aboard the Aero including Astoria Bertoletti, librarian and planet cataloger, and Raze Salen, mankind's emissary, search for clues to explain the unprecedented tragedy. After several more, similar distress calls, the savage pieces of the mystery begin to emerge--and point to the culpability of humanity's short-sightedness and desperation when they first began seeking out alternate spaces in the galaxy to call home. In the midst of the imminent threat of war Raze and Tori present the immutable evidence of wrongdoing both intentional and inadvertent to mankind's Parliament as well as to their strongest and weakest allies who may have no choice but to desert them in yet another hour of dire need.

Next week, we'll talk about why science fiction stories just might (surprise, surprise!) break an author's ability to provide standalone series stories.

Happy writing!

Based on Writing the Overarching Series (or How I Sent a Clumsy Girl into Outer Space): 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection by Karen S. Wiesner (release date TBA)

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series, including the romantic science fiction series, ARROW OF TIME CHRONICLES

https://www.writers-exchange.com/arrow-of-time-chronicles/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/arrow-of-time-chronicles.html

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor