Hard Sci-Fi

Hard sci-fi is hit or miss for me. I tend to enjoy stories set in the near future where the universe still at least resembles the one I currently inhabit - find it much easier to relate to the characters. Perhaps that's a failure of imagination on my part but hey, there's only so many hours in the day and so many other things I want to read also, so I try to stick to something I know I'll enjoy when it comes to a genre that's otherwise spotty for me.

The one I'm reading now is going to be a hit for me. The Martian by Andy Weir is about a NASA mission to Mars that goes horribly wrong, stranding our hero on the surface with limited food, water, and air, and no hope of a rescue. The next manned mission to Mars won't reach the red planet for another four years and our hero's resources are going to run out long before that.

I'm not that deep into the story but the "realism" and science impresses and sucks you into the plot immediately. After surviving a disastrous storm, our wise-cracking hero then moves on to solve both long-term and short-term problems as they arise, using his considerable resourcefulness and knowledge of engineering and botany. It's basically Robinson Crusoe on Mars (which they did about fifty years ago - very weird movie).

Great book so far and can't wait to see what Ridley Scott does with the movie.

***

This book is another example of the strange, new world of publishing. Weir initially put this story on his website for free. The readers lined up and word of mouth went to work, and next thing he knew, he was working out the details of a publishing deal. Very cool and makes me think anything is possible in today's publishing environment.

2015 Production Schedule

They say it's good to have goals. So here are mine. I hope to release these books in 2015:

Solo Projects:

• OtherWorld
• MG Fantasy (have an idea but no title)
• The Skim (noir)
• The Dream Machine (Unearthed #6)
• The Missing (Unearthed #7)
• The 8th Man (new sci-fi, mystery series)

Tomahawk & Saber series with Nate Green:

• Language of the Bear
• Through the Narrows
• #3

Looking this over, I realize this production schedule is totally unrealistic. But I'd rather try to do too much instead of not enough. Better to always be pushing.

It's going to be an interesting 2015...

My "latest" short story

Hey folks. Just re-released a short sci-fi story set on Mars in the near future, Frontier Justice. I wrote this a few years back and tidied it up recently. It's a fun, fast read in a universe I might expand at some point in a larger work.

I've always been fascinated with the notion of terraforming and it was actually the subject of my sixth-grade science project/presentation. Philosophically (I won't go too deep, I promise), I strongly believe the human race needs to expand and colonize other worlds for a number of reasons. I hope that I live long enough to see man set foot on Mars, it would be an amazing achievement.

Here's the blurb on Frontier Justice--

Smith races against time to get the murderer, Ganston, to Oz, the Joint Penal Colony whose location on the Martian frontier is a well-guarded secret. But there are men intent on rescuing Ganston and killing Smith.

Visit Evan Ronan at his website: www.ronaniswriting.blogspot.com.

And they’re closing in.

But little do they know Smith has other plans for them, and for Ganston too…

Frontier Justice is a ~5,000 short story set on Mars in the near future.

My Continuing Adventures in YA Fiction

I love reading all kinds of books, and my most recent new genre is YA. A story well-told is a story well-done, no matter the kind of book. That being said, the peculiar rules of YA fiction impose some constraints on the author, including:

-Word choice. No cursing! Teenagers and high schoolers don't curse! (rolls eyes)
-No sex. Because teenagers don't have sex! (rolls eyes again)
-Violence. Violence is actually okay. (Just not sex, heaven forbid)
-Plotting. For a story to be a story, the characters must face an interesting, oft-dangerous, life-changing series of events. But, under no circumstances can they turn to adults for help.

This is not a bitch session about YA books. In fact, constraints often force the writer to think outside the box and generate creative solutions.

In the YA book I'm working on now, I've broken the No Cursing! rule in a few ways. For example:

-Instead of spelling out the word, just saying that somebody curses. This way, the reader fills in the details and the character still seems real. "She had posted the embarrassing picture of him running naked through the woods on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Harry stared, in shock, for a moment and then said a really bad word."
-Have the characters use code words to signify a curse ... "Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot are you doing?"

I hope to have my YA sci-fi novel, Undo, out next year. Here's the blurb:

UNDO, Evan Ronan's light sci-fi YA novel explores how quantum mechanics complicates one of the most fundamental questions of humanity: identity.

At junior prom, Harry Quinn receives a posthumous text from his best friend with instructions that lead him to a mysterious iPad like device that has two buttons: Control and Z. Harry soon discovers that he can regress to his last significant quantum state and possibly work his way back to the day his best friend died and change history.

But doing so comes at the highest of costs as Harry must undo the past--and himself--one step at a time.