Month: June 2024

Knoxville Shopping Trip, 5/x

Had to take a day off. In RealLife, was getting progressively more sick Tuesday morning. After four hours at DayJob, my hands shook too much to enter inventory data. I drank some water and was still for about twenty minutes before I was confident I would not drive off the road. Got home and got progressively worse; a 24-hour GI bug of some sort. Lots of bad news from both ends. Horribly dehydrated and the problems which come with that. Anyway, better now.

With dinner in the over, Henge sees to the rest of her townhome. I had to draw upon 40-50 year old memories of how my mother kept house, as my wife, charitably, doesn’t pick up or clean up anything.

This is also one of the first time we, sorta, get to “see” how the Machines “see” one another in the Void. When I write the conclusion of this in the next installment, I’d imagine about 1-2 seconds have taken place before little Aurie comes bursting through the front door. You can go all the way back to my first book, The Fourth Law, where, nearly ten years ago, I had already come up with the idea of constructs and True Forms.

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Knoxville Shopping Trip, 4/x

Keeping house, seeing to your children and man, feeding them and keeping them healthy and happy, there is no better job in the world. I know many will find this idea outdated if not hateful. That does not mean it is not true.

A Machine-turned-human, made of “diamond dust and star-stuff,” Henge could be any thing she want to be. And, so, she did. A quiet little transition; I bet Aurie will be bursting through their front door like a bomb in the next segment.

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Knoxville Shopping Trip, 3/x

Henge gets a little testy and reminds the visitors that “good manners don’t cost nuthin’.” In her appearances in my books, she is unfailingly polite but a ferocious defender of her family. I was curious to see if she would “act up” just for herself. And she answered me.

The story looks to broaden a bit this weekend, what with their fam together. I’ll have to sit on Aurie to make sure she does not hijack the story. Something which will be interesting is all four of them are demis; over dinner, they can cover more material in fifteen minutes than humans could in hours. That, also, will be very tricky for me to write. But, that’s why I do this: to let them push me.

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Knoxville Shopping Trip, 2/x

“Out of the mouths of babes,” and all that gives a little exposition into Henge’s substance. I think, but do not know, that she was so focused on her love of Gary that she never fully considered the extent of what someone such as her would do to a recovering community. She’s obviously welcome, but I suspect there is still an undercurrent of “what is that?”

Which is precisely the last line of this installment. Next one will be tricky, so likely out late tomorrow. Cheers, all.

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Knoxville Shopping Trip, 1/x

After all the drama around Bright Eyes, I honestly wanted something banal if not boring. So, turning back about twenty years, we have Henge Hartmann going to the market. She’s already had her two children and is a housewife who wants nothing more than to be a good wife and mother. Given what she is, her immediate family, and married into the imperial family, it is a bit more complicated that it first seems. I am looking forward to seeing where she takes me with this story.

The idea behind this is very, very loosely based upon Yokohama Shopping Trip. The lead there is also not human and their world is also changed. It is a brilliant but sometimes confusing manga and a warm, soothing anime. Five stars.

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Bright Eyes, 7/end

Found my way to the end. About 4400 words, so not a bad short story. What next?

Faustina, like Reina, is the type of person who you just have to shove the facts under their noses and they come ’round fairly quickly. Guess I need to update my family tree at the top of my blog again? I’ll wait until I’ve some idea how many kids they have.

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Bright Eyes, 6/?

I’ve mentally finished the story. Parts 7 and 8 next week. I’m very pleased with it and expect Stephen to cut it to shreds come copyedit time.

In book 19 we will meet Stephen Johnston a few stories before this one. Quiet but very clever; I think that’s why Fussy’s eyes landed on him for her second husband. We get a glimpse of that here, just before the empress shows up to be an asshole.

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Bright Eyes, 5/?

A tiny bit of backstory on Josh’s part. No doubt Liz knows most of it, but I’m old enough to know sometimes internal family lore has things which written records do not. Witness my father-in-law making me swear to never tell his daughter, my wife, what happened to him on the Eastern Front and in the AVO gulag.

On a personal note, it seems I may soon have a great deal more time to write.

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Bright Eyes, 4/?

They are so darling together, aren’t they? Let’s hope this bottle of gin doesn’t have a Tragic End at the bottom of it. I usually don’t. Usually. The end of one of my books is absolutely horrible. The end of Foes & Rivals is tragic as regards what Nichole 5’s mission was, but not horrid, as we get to see many of the players in later short stories and with walk-ons in a few novels. I don’t think that is where this going.

Even in A Texas Naval Affair, Fussy was faced with her cousin wanted to wed a former thug. Not exactly an adornment to the imperial family, but that mostly turned out well. Mostly.

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Bright Eyes, 3/?

One of the things I am just now realizing it that by being away from these people for just over four months, details that I knew better than my meatspace relatives become clouded or lost. In this case, while I knew Liz’s bio-dad dies in an accident (and her mom later remarries), I screwed up the dating. So, Liz cannot be 25; hell, she can barely be 18, and that still might be wrong. So, Josh is now just turned 23, while they were working on the moon.

So, when I’m starting to edit all of this into my third short story collection, I’d have to be very careful. I’ve made myself some notes in the Word file, so I don’t forget. Again.

Below the fold, Josh learns a little more about what is pending-wife is. And there’s a little romance for these kids who are now both years younger.

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