Category: confusion

Shift of Colour

As promised, the camera is now back on Jimmy Burns. This picks up exactly where we last saw him: right after Aurie drops him off in his tiny backyard right after taking him to the edge of space. Given this will be a hundred pages on in the book, once finished, a short summary of events, masquerading as a police report, will get readers up to speed.

After that, we get to listen in to him as he tries to understand what happened to his life over the last 48 hours. Things will pick up fast after this as what is one thing in a tiny hamlet like Canso is a huge political crisis in Ottawa.

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A Colour to Trust

Largely back up and running. Not writing for nearly a week was horrible. There are still a few s/w sets I need to reload onto Rory (the new machine’s name) but I can at least type.

Getting back to the story, things, as you will read, and changing rapidly. Aurie is about to get a baptism of fire in international power politics, where who you think is a friend or rival could surprise you. Faustina had the advantage of putting together the imperium in something of a power vacuum. Aurelia is in it now, up to her neck.

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The Colour of Politics

A few days ago had my laptop not working. Not quite a “Blue Screen of Death,” but more a Blue Screen of Imminent Doom. I was able to boot to a flash drive and verify my data was intact, but that was all. Not wanting to make matters worse, I passed it on to an IT guy I know. He was able to reload Windows past the \BCD error but pointed out that at seven years old, I’d best start planning a new machine.

All data is now re-backed up on a remote HDD and I’ve ordered another laptop. I do not want to reload everything on this one just to do it all again on my new one in a week, so these updates will fall away for the next ten days or so. I’m still writing – can’t stop, or I’ll die, but I’m using Word 0.1: pen and paper; I’ll have to retype everything! First World Problems! It’s also so much slower… I’m making more notes than dialog as I cannot scribble fast enough: Reina’s demands about Mars, the Empress’ change of plans with Edward, Aurie now on her own, and – as I suspected – the Minor Powers, Canada, Mexico, Texas, smell blood in the water. All when we now know that Aurelia has a dangerous, violent streak. Not sure what Colour’s “come from behind home run” might be, but I’m counting on her.

As you can see from the story text, below, this is from WordPad. So, the formatting is completely different. I’ll do better when I get my new machine. And give her a name. What? Of course I name my machines… don’t you?

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Colour’s Dinner

I think Aurie is much more tired, and possibly traumatized physically and mentally, than she’s letting on. She doesn’t want Jimmy to cluck over her or the doc to try to restrain her (now that would be a disaster…) so she’d not telling the whole truth. I bet the conversation with her army’s chief medical officer will be quite revealing. We shall see.

After being gently reprimanded by Colour, Burns finally starts pushing back to this crazy girl’s suggestions. Recall he met her just shy of a day ago? It’s been a long 24 hours.

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Traitor’s Colours?

Similar to the short battle through Burns’ eyes, here two we simply hear his internal reflection on what Aurelia and the doctor are saying to one another. That prevents the “wall of text” of exposition which I hate so much.

Missed an update yesterday as I had guest over after work. Given the four Manhattans I had, anything coherent like posting was out of the question. After today, tomorrow, and Wednesday, I’ll be at the end of the Nova Scotia arc. I’m going to pause as I’ve written 38,000 words with no plot. That needs fixing.

In the meantime, I’ll be working on a plastic model of U-292. If anything interesting happens, I’ll toss it onto the blog.

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One Mask of Colour Drops

No WP likes for the combat sequence. Interesting passive feedback. Anyway, today’s and tomorrow’s long-ish segments will take care of some of the post-pirate action. At some point, soon, I will be returning to Aurie’s POV, likely for the rest of this work. Not that Jimmy is getting tossed but that I need the lens to focus so maybe a plot will show up. I think I’ll wait until she leaves the tiny hospital before I do; so, Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, maybe?

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Pirate Colours

This is the last of the lead-up to the short battle sequence. Short, you ask? On the first hand, I’m not very good at them. On the second hand, this is a raw MS so there is plenty of time to make changes before I put this under the nose of my copyeditor. On the gripping hand, recall that this part is through Jimmy Burns’ eyes. So, a human with little or no tactical experience is about to observe a genetically modified woman stab some stimulant into herself and move faster than his eyes can track. Thus, I can only write the parts where Aurie pauses for a split second to kill someone close up.

What does she inject into herself? Next time, friends, next time.

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Breakfast Colours

Because it was my day off, I thought yesterday was Friday. Lucky for y’all: here’s one more installment. Everyone wakes up and gets ready for their field trip to the base.

I did begin making some notes for the next big scene. Something has me puzzled: where will the pirates be from? I find the shores of Western Europe impossible to the stone-age barbarians who were invited in. Greenland or Iceland? Civilized but much reduced. My only guess right now is either some group of peoples from Labrador whose homes are now under the ice or perhaps raiders who have a secret base around Long Island? I guess we’ll let Sgt. Alvis explain it next week.

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Different Coloured Hats

This brings up to about 4000 words. I an realize that I said yesterday is correct: I do not know the government nor politics of the Northern Federation. It’s core is Maine and New Hampshire, with affiliated territories from Vermont and central and western Massachusetts, making it about the smallest of the entities to survive the Change (which, I saw, is still called the Breakup by them). Until I understand their situation this far along, I cannot see Aurelia’s reaxion.

Saying all that to say this: unless I have a sudden revelation, which has happened, I’m taking the weekend off to study the problem. Aside: I do think, because of the time and the meeting, that Aurie will spend the night in their territory. Possibly at the house of one of Colour’s brothers.

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