I’d seen the middle of this scene, where Faustina and Willis are talking, over the weekend but had no idea how they came to be standing there. Even with a little trouble at my DayJob, I was able to come home and write down how this parley came to happen. I remain concerned about the forces on Willis’s left, at the north end of his line. Are his conscripts riotous or are the Chekists stirring things up? Will Fussy present a treaty in two hours or start shelling them? I have no idea and, having to go back to work 2nd shift today, won’t know until, I hope, sometime Thursday.
Category: confusion
Another Half-halt
Got the copyedit of “Princess’ Crusade” back with the typical thousand corrections. As always, a humbling experience. But this time, also a vital one.
After my little so-called vision as to where my current MS, “Empress’ Crusade” might be leading me, I was increasingly aware that I was having trouble keeping my future history dates in my head. When the PC edit came back and at three times pointed out and asked “is this date correct? is her age correct?” I realized that, even though I’ve been shown some very interesting things about Faustina and the young man who is the Mayor of Huntsville, I have to sit myself down and draw up a proper timeline of all primary and secondary characters, what has already happened, and what I think will happen. “EC” is going to unfold over two in-book years and I cannot have my readers jerked out of the story saying, “that makes no sense… the timing is all wrong!”
Below the fold is what I was able to get down following the triumph. A little politics, a little romance (maybe?), and a swim across the Tennessee River. Hope everyone who is sheltering in place has ordered copies of my books to keep them entertained!
A soft voice
Not entirely sure if I’m sneaking up on the ending of what will be at least two books about Faustina or just the end of the first part of the longest novel I’ve ever written. We shall see.
Said part or book conclusion will be Faustina’s award ceremony for her army. I have already heard a few bits of it. “Land and titles” echo around my mind. She is not just conquering land, she plans to colonize it with young men and women from Greater Knoxville. And loyal to her, personally.
But first, she needs a venue. And right after that, to overcome a language barrier, she takes Nurse Wei to her godmother’s home.
An Immodest Proposal
This came completely out of left field. So much so that for yesterday and today, having come home from DayJob, I just stared at the screen. I know a little about what happens right after this and quite a bit about Faustina’s actions once back to Savannah…
But I never saw this.
Crossing the river, 1/2
Against her centurions’ advice, Faustina crosses the bridge into a still-live battlefield, the PLA garrison surrender notwithstanding. I was curious how she would handle it. This is part one of the aftermath. Part two shortly.
“Speak the word…the word is all of us”
For those who’ve not been following along, this is a continuation of yesterday’s post and the latest story of Faustina’s recollections about building her private army. Many things going on… when this becomes a novel it will likely take two chapters to unpack.
Deus Volt
Ever since I met her in “Worlds Without End,” I knew that Faustina, Gary Hartmann’s slightly younger sister, would have her own novel.
I just didn’t expect to have her showing me things so soon.
Like all of my stories, as I learned from Jerry Pournelle, this is starting in the middle: set maybe five or eight years after WWE, Faustina has led her personal army from Knoxville over the mountains and down the river to take the important port city of Savannah. At great cost to herself.
I confess that, as always, I’ve no idea at all where this is going and am interested as you are…
Accelerationism
I have a small, local Author Fair coming up on 9 November. What if, I wondered, I not only had “Worlds Without End” finished – in less than ten day from now – but what if I also had “Crosses & Doublecrosses,” the third novel I began but set aside over three years ago as 1) I was not old enough to write it, and 2) it is a god-awful story I hated living in, complete? Is that possible?
I just completed the basic MS. Grammarly is chewing through it in the the background while I write this. I have reached out to my current cover designer to sound him on this; that will likely be the determining factor.
Still… I would be something: a novel and novella, 100k words, all commercially out in less than six weeks. Irrational deadline drive me; can I make this one?
Below the fold is the last thing I wrote for C&DC: its Prologue. There’s closure for you.
Little Details
Submitted WWE for my US Copyright this morning, making it my seventh. Also did the basics to set things up on KDP. The outstanding issue remains my copyeditor: I gave her this project in early June. She told me it would be in my hands 1 September… then nothing… I write her… snarky note back…
I’ve been very pleased to work with Monica for three years now without a single complaint. We all have RealLife issues, but after three months I get ghosted? After three years? WTF? In the meantime I re-ran WWE through Grammarly and farmed it out to a couple of proofreaders; that’s what I uploaded to KDP to order a physical proof. This time it will be a two-step process rather than one to catch most of the mistakes.
Having done all that, I am still faced with the time discrepancy of my novella, “Crosses & Doublecrosses.” As you can see, I did some basic work to find out where I stand: an error of what I am calling six months. Sylvia and Roberta Fernandez land at Dallas/Ft Worth Airport from Manila just as the Breakup is unfolding in the US. But they can’t; there is no way. For the rest of the 32k-word story to work they have to land six months later. But if they do, the opening, as written, makes no sense. Okay, I can re-write the opening. To what? If they were back in Manila watching the US tear itself to pieces, with easily over a million dead in those first six months, why in the hell would they come back? Sure, their family lives in Manhattan but just how long do you think that place will last with no food coming in and the lights going out for good after two weeks?
Why did they come back? I can swing the flight into Texas: they have two of maybe four functioning airports in the former US. Sylvia is a brilliant lawyer; does she think she’s going to drive to New York from there? Is she that stupid?
Questions, questions. I’m going to ask the wine bottle for answers.
Lead Balloon (?)
In writing, unlike retail, the reader is usually but not always correct. The fact that I was sailing serenely on with all the “likes” to the ‘Empire’s Agent’ short story, only to have NONE for the last installment, surprised me. I reread it and came up with some possibilities… there most certainly might be others (mild spoilers for Empire’s Agent – End)
- Ended too suddenly. Admittedly, many of my stories do, especially the shorter ones; I’m not Peter Jackson to write and make four endings when one will do.
- Too Catholic. Arpad and Lily are about to get it on in a pleasant forest clearing when Henge jerks them into her home to stop what she sees as a clear and present danger to her step-mom: mortal sin. Perhaps my readers are more secular than I think they are?
- Lily realizes she’s pregnant the day after her wedding. I’ve hear Millennials generally don’t like kids, so was that a turn-off?
I am seriously puzzled by this one, friends.
machciv 