Category: christianity

Colour of Salvation

As you might expect, parts of this were shown to me at church back on December 11th. Always should check in with the Lord whenever you can. He’s still arrogant but I think Robert a bit more humble than his gifted brothers and sisters. It was and is Aurie is fond of Jimmy but that does not means she’s not an egotistical jerk.

That’s something surprising: how comfortable demi-humans seem to be in their own skin. Putting aside Empress’ Fussy’s occasional “normies” comment, none of them appear to look down on humans or act like narcissists. I wonder if it has something to do with how they think, faster and a bit different from us? I’m sure I’ll find out some day.

As an illustration of how all these stories touch, Panck Hill, below, was Robert’s CO in part 2 of “Obligations of Rank,” and after one too many coincidence, twigged as to who Bob Hardt really was. And was both wise and kind enough to ignore it.

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A Bathtub Full of Colour

Got so into doing political research as to where I think this story is going that is was suddenly dark outside and I had done nothing for dinner (we finished the turkey leftovers the day before). Off today, thanks be to God, so here’s some of what I’ve got down so far.

I’m leaning away from writing all of Aurie’s first speech as Regent. It will look like a Wall of Text and sound like exposition. Thing is, I do not want to “head-hop” to Colour’s perspective for just one section. I’m still thinking of a way around this

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Cadets, 2/4

We learn the nature of who the imperium is fighting and why. And, I just learned that little Aurie has some ability to see the future. I wonder why God gave her such a terrible gift?

With today off from DayJob, a friend asked me to write a personal primer for one or many – I don’t know – who are about to embark on NaNoWriMo. I sent it to him just before posting this. If he likes it, I’ll add it here, too. If you’ve been following me for any time, it’s mostly old material about the creative writing process.

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Cadets, 1/4

Yes, I went dark again. I re-listened to the six chapters of “Foes and Rivals” I recorded to try to get their voices back into my head. Then another movie started playing in my head. That what this is.

Set ten years before the action in my forthcoming novel, “Obligations of Rank,” we have two youngsters in Empress Faustina’s army, on the outskirts of St. Louis. For those who have been following along in the raws I posted of my next novel, this campaign does not end well.

I have DayJob this weekend but am off Monday. Unfortunately a friend asked me to put together a little precis of “creative writing” for, I think, upcoming NaNoWriMo season. So little time…

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Podcast 11: Religion in Machine Civilization

Having covered politics and sex it was time to turn my attention to the last of the “not to be discussed” triumvirate of religion. More specifically Christianity and ever more so, Roman Catholicism. Only two of the machines are believers and I’d guess about half, barely, of the human characters who get a speaking role in my twelve books are. I and my characters are never preachy but it is a very important matter for many of them.

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Podcast 10: Sex in Machine Civilization

Nearly twenty minutes of a middle-aged ex-engineer talking about sex. Perhaps your time would be better watching your grass grow? In modern times, this very important subject is treated so lightly and so callously that our society finds itself confusing “gender” with sex and thinking there are scores of them. That’s not how I roll.

Even in one of my earliest books one of the machines says, “Sex differences go all the way down in a way even we do not comprehend. The coders did not know that and many early models went insane.” Never once does any character speak of gender. Even the co-creation byproduct of humans carries elements of their sexuality, leading to Thaad’s most interesting development.

NOTE: more than any other podcast to-date, this one is packed full of spoilers. FYI.

As you hopefully can see, I have made several structural changes to this site. The RSS’s for the podcasts are now at the top of the sidebar. Instead of listing all links to my books – after all, they are on display right there – I have an overall link to Amazon and Smashwords. Yes, yes: baby steps. But steps nonetheless.

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Podcast 3: The Machines – everyone else

My shortest installment to date as I didn’t want to wander into the weeds again over what I know about the other two tribes, the androids, and synths. Details such as that, I believe, will be dealt with when I turn my attention to talking about the books and stories themselves.

Even so, I cover a lot of ground in little time. Next week will see us turn to the human sides of Machine Civilization, specifically the human families of the Barretts and the Hartmanns. See everyone then!

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“No better friend; no worse enemy”

This is a freebee to all my readers. It is from my short story collection entitled “Empire’s Agent.” The reason I’m tossing it out there is that a fellow Gabber, and a good man, is dying and expressed concern what to tell his grandkids. Thought I could lend a hand.

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Tough Times Demand Tough Talk

A bit of a long-ish addition.  I wanted to wrap up Part One of Empress’ Crusade, at about 18k words, and get on to the campaign itself.  For the historically minded, it will be loosely based on Caesar’s Gallic Wars, always a good read.  In the meantime, I have some research to do about the populations of former Alabama and Mississippi and how that extrapolates one generation on into the Breakup.

Below the fold is a family who loves one another but find it increasingly hard to like one another.  That is probably an odd concept for my younger readers but is something we in our dotage just nod at.  Thanks for everyone’s support!

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Check. Up.

Looked over my notes for a-while this morning (another day off; work the next three) and saw PART 1:  KEEP HUMAN circled.  My handwriting so I guess I was drunk.  Imagine.  Still, per my Lenten oath to not only complete the MS for “Empress’ Crusade” but also to make it more Christian than its predecessor, I’m trying to keep the opening parts of this story in that vein.

My other, more coherent notes, speak to Faustina chatting with MacRae, (check) and Reina.  As she’s the machine who will end up as Acting Prime Minister of the Russian Empire (should I have said *spoiler warning*?  oops) that is not “keeping it human.”  So, instead, I saw Fussy’s nurse drop in at the legionary fort to check up on her.

One of my other scrawled notes was “eugenics.”  That plus Faustina is not something I want to think about right now.

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