Category: death

Succession (4/5)

“When stuck or in doubt, blow shit up; kill people,” said an old friend of mine, Columbus’ best graphic artist. And that is where we are. 

It’s interesting that whereas Ivan said there were two more, there are, as you’ll see, more than that. That’s how cells work: cut off from one another with only the bare information to get done whatever a central committee wants done.

Hindsight being 20/20, I think there will be six parts. The next deals with immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack – Aurie’s mom, Henge, gets a chance to literally shine. Part 6/5 will be several hours, perhaps a day, later, when the Hartmanns try to piece together what happen, and more importantly, why.

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“The Fallen” 4/13

May or may not be an update tomorrow, Friday. This was a little hard to get down. Unfortunately for Alicia, it’s about to get harder. I see another Interlude after that, but I don’t think, per my first, they’ll be all the funny anymore.

Burial customs are a cornerstone of all civilizations.

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“The Fallen” 4/12

So much for Zhukov’s walk-on. We’re finding out that it seems Allen has been very lucky for the three years he’s been stuck in this cavern. “There are fouler things than Crabbies in the deep places of the world.”

For a kid, Alicia keeps her wits about her. But then, she’s from a hard family on a hard world.

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Book 17. Part Four. 9 End

The last part of Part Four. And, yes, it’s a little weird. These are raws and I’ll clean it up in one of my editing passes before I give it to my copyeditor; otherwise, he’d likely delete it and email “what the f*ck was that!?”

It’s a matter of Chekov’s Gun: you mention the rifle over the mantlepiece in Act One, it damn well better go off later. Konev and his team came across Joseph, so here he is again.

I’m half done with the Epilogue. That half is about Bob, El, others, and yes, “Joseph” gets an explanation. The second half, hopefully later today – BTW, it’s 0500 right now – will be about Konev. Then, for all contented porpoises, I’ll be finished and able to begin my three editing passes.

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Prophet (pt.6)

Snowing out there like dogs and cats in a come-from-behind home run. In my unfortunately increasingly normal “wake up at 0500” moment, I recalled something about “New Russia” I tried to forget: mysticism. I do not play that game well. I’ll try to get past that scene and have Russians start shooting Canucks.

Musician Pedro (modeled on Rudy Sarzo, if you can believe that), from “The Fourth Law,” finally owns up what little he knows but what a lot he suspects about Kalí. From “Crosses & Doublecroasses,” the surname Barrett leaves most Texans speechless as they do not want to talk about it. She comes back from… hell, I’ve no idea, for some pillow talk with her husband. And yes, for you pedants, they get married before God tomorrow.

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Still no Title

There are going to be A LOT of people packed into this story. I’m off DayJob tomorrow but my priority shall be getting the “Regent” MS to my copyeditor and a series of descriptions of what I think might work on a cover to my designer. Once all that is finished, I’ll turn back to what’s happening with this poor kid.

The sequences are shorter as this is supposed to be a short story, right?

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New Short Story in the works

With “Regent” shortly off to my copyeditor and cover designer, I have two more projects. First, the completion of “New Russia,” what I abandoned about 13k words in back in spring. Second it to put together at least two more short stories for a second collection. To the latter end… Monday at 0630, letting the dogs out, I saw about the first half of what’s below. The second half came after six hours of nothing in my head. And, per usual, I’m about 500 words ahead as I don’t know how the politics of this will shake out.

So here we have a sick little boy. The trick for me, the writer, is that there are three people in this story, the Doctors Hartmann, and Dorina of tribe Tohsaka, who are vastly smarter than I am. It is tricky to write when you have people like that looking over your shoulder. And I don’t even have a working title yet.

And with open tabs about Batten Disease and the EAST reactor in China, my Feeb file likely was just reactivated

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Colour Me Surpised

Even though presented through dialog, this is still something of a cheap way of data-dumping onto the reader what’s probably ahead for what will be part three of the novel. All we know is the meeting in Tokyo and Aurie’s summon south. Her army? Colour? Jimmy? (remember him?) Long Island pirates? There are many things in flux here.

I suspect the next couple of installments will be General Hartmann dealing with them quickly. I know she’ll want her friend to go home and tell the Governing Council all she’s seen, to sway them more to the imperium’s side. One of the four legates will have be acting general but I still bet the army pulls way back to not look threatening in this new political situation. Much to think about.

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Cadets, 4/4

A Bolshevik I work with at DayJob – so long as we stay off politics we get along fine – is cruising along through “Crosses & Doublecrosses,” calling it “a page-turner.” We had a few minutes before the IV batch ran and I sat down and told him that from my, author’s standpoint, C&DC was harder to write than my romance/horror, “Cursed Hearts.” As I put it, sure: a psychic vampire sucking the life out of some guy until there’s nothing left but flakes of skin and bone powder is awful. But the worse depravities humans accomplish are done in meeting rooms. As said commie, he got that.

In that vein, we have Empress Faustina calming telling two young members of her family about her plan for the next twelve hours. A plan with a six-figure death toll at the end of it.

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