A cracked open door about the culture in Knoxville, some ten plus years after the Breakup. And more Faustina.
I have to be careful here, too. I’m already interested in who Faustina is and what her relationship with MC is. I’ve only known her for three days but I bet I could build a novel around her.
I just might!
Not too much… really just wrapping up Gary’s day I started awhile ago. The ‘problem’ is what I saw next: just as I feared, I’m sorely tempted to start talking about the Hartmann’s and how life has changed in Knoxville over the past ten years.
Deep breaths: let’s try to stay focused on our happy couple…
This is going to be based on an idea I had almost three weeks ago. You don’t have to go back and read it – in fact, I’d rather you didn’t, as a better, edited, version is in a blockquote below the fold.
Henge (“hen-geh”) first made an appearance toward the end of The Fourth Law. I was playing with the idea of how AIs could make children; not just copies of themselves, but children, and she showed up. In the last scene of my second novel, Echoes of Family Lost, Henge meets Gary when everyone is taking some well deserved R&R on her beach. They make some connexion I still don’t understand and announce to both Families, human and machine, that they’re getting married.
The trick for me is to not get sidetracked on what’s happened politically and/or socially in the intervening ten years. I’m going to have to say something, obviously, but I’ll try to confine myself to culture. What I want to accomplish here is a love story between two very different people, who are united by their deep orthodox Catholic faith.
Let’s go!
This is a little longer, but I wanted it shut down this weekend. That, of course, is not the same as “over.” Few stories are ever over.
The construction of this is a bit different as I’ve made a change to my storytelling.
This was fun; perhaps too much fun, though. What next?
One of the dangers of playing in someone else’s world is the sheer sense of wonder when you’re there. Think about going over to a friend’s place when you were a kid: your home is staid and boring. But their house has ALL THIS NEAT STUFF!
I’d finished about 750 words for today’s entry of Abandoned Factory, saved it, went for dinner with my wife. By the time I came back to post it… I hated it. Akaiame, Nike, and Engineer are most certainly mine, but this world into which I’ve put them is not; not remotely. Even the secondary characters are derivative.
Today’s post was going to be the first of seven, reflecting Akaiame’s climb up the inner floors of ruin in empty Building #1. But… no. I’m not going to spend another week here. I’m going to spend what little time is left tonight, tomorrow night, and Saturday using her seven floor climb in one whirlwind summation, culminating in the shock/cliff-hanger ending when she gets to the top.
And then, I’m going to write about something else.
Over 7200 total words. A writing exercise, he said. Not that long, he said. Good Lord; the plot hasn’t even shown up yet!
I laughed when they showed me the incident with Tommy!
Took a mental heath day and not because it was 70F in central Ohio. There were two times, yesterday at work, when I had to stop and sit on the floor in the pharmacy to rest; I didn’t trust myself to sit on a chair. I’d had that wonderful writing jag all weekend but as a result I was having a hard time distinguishing this world from RealLife(TM). If you think that sounds hackneyed or stupid, you’re not a writer.
So what do I do with time away from work? Go back to the ‘Factory, of course. At 51, it’s not called ‘being self-destructive,’ it’s called ‘being aware of what little time is left.’
Rounding out Akaiame’s ensemble. Although, apparently she’s going shopping tomorrow. Now that will be a challenge to write: some of my clothes are thirty years old…
I really like this story. It’s wonderfully… comfortable. That will change, of course, in time. Akaiame is on the second-tallest building for a reason…
Parts 0-2 are already at 2500 words. Let’s go ahead and call this one a light novel or novella. Anyone wanna do the b&w illustrations for me?
machciv 