Your present is one of my rare battle scenes. Although, given my notes, I think we’re going to see several more of them unfold in the near future. As confusing as a battle is by itself, I have made a concerted effort to not “head-hop,” that is, change who’s story this is. Used to be a very bad habit of mine when young as a writer and I am much better at catching it when it crops up. If I missed any, please let me know.
Below the fold, things go *pew*pew* and *boom*boom*.
Sorry for the pause right before Faustina finally swings three legions into battle; kinda hard to get enthused about writing war when I’ve death pattering outside my home. And no, nothing to do with BatAIDS hysteria.
I’ll try more later in the week. Again, apologies.
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!
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.
After not formally writing for a week and half, I feel as if I should be entering rehab; I have (looks about) five pages of notes from downtime at DayJob and quiet times about my house but when I just didn’t the time to sit down in front of the laptop.
That came to an end today. Daughter #2 off on a cancer fun-raiser, wife doing something about the house somewhere… I’d no more excuses. I fired up the pellet stove in the basement and came down thirty minutes later to write. So far, it’s working. 3k words of Faustina’s recover in the Knoxville hospital flowed right out. There’s much there: her physical condition, the reaction of her family to her injuries, and her fervent desire to return to “her boys” as soon as she is able. It will be a balancing act for her, in, I think, three parts. Here’s part one.
Needs work. Couldn’t quite get into the proper groove of things this weekend: post Christmas and Daughter #1 back to college. It was nice to have her home for three weeks; of course she’ll be back in five days as she wanted to come with us to Ohayocon on the 10th-12th. That’s my weeb girl!
This is enough that when I rewrite it and edit it into a novel that it will work. As any regular reader knows, I keep things sparse and terse. It might be a little too terse here.
Faustina is not one to avoid an issue or responsibility, to the point of taking on too much blame. Even with the minor casualties of Augusta their campaign must move on to their next and final stop. As such, her little army has much to do. Sleep, for her, will be a luxury over the next six days.
Aaaannnd: things went to crap. A salutary lesson as to why you should listen to your underofficers. Demi-humans make mistakes, too. It shall be interesting to see how this plays out in her mind and in her army.
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.
Finally! Saturday and it’s time for Arpad and Lily’s date! Here’s the lead in and parts one and two. I’m hoping to see part three (when they talk together in the park) later today and tomorrow. My goal is have their last scene – which is going round and round in my head – no later than Tuesday. After that I will turn my attention to my “Worlds Without End” edit to get it released by 30 September.
machciv 