Category: Empire’s Agent

Empire’s Agent – End

Finally!  And what a way to end!  This 21k “short story” will be the anchor of my collection of similar for my book in the early months of 2020.  Right now I think the shorts will be arranged chronologically, so this will be pretty much in the middle.  To-date this gives me ~31k words for that book; I’ll try to flesh one of them out a little more and am sure I’ll have one or two come to my mind in the next few months.

This was a lot of fun!  Unfortunately what comes next, besides the final edit of “Worlds Without End” is the last tweaks to the awful “Crosses & Doublecrosses.”  Yuck.

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Satur-Date!

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.

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Meet & Greet

Finally getting back into the hang of things.  Arpad meets Ai and Fausta FTF and then is about to have dinner – unwittingly – with a cousin of Lily’s.  I’ll try to get their little conversation out tonight or early tomorrow (I’m off DayJob tomorrow) as I really want to get to what will be one of the hearts of this short story:  their date in the park.  In don’t know exactly was happens but I have been offered a glimpse into the following Sunday morning…  so much to learn!

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Half-halt

It’s what you do in English Saddle riding to collect your horse.  That is what the last few days for me have been.  In the last ten days we took more supplies to Daughter #1 at college followed by my DayJob becoming evening job for the last week.  That means I wrote nothing for ten days.  In that time my copyeditor informed me she will have the MS for “Worlds Without End” back into my possession by 31 August.  I used that to goad my cover designer to get a-move on and wrap things up.

I was off yesterday, Friday, as well as this weekend.  I made some minor changes to WWE and wrote the back-cover blurb as well.  The stemma I revised and enlarged.  Finally to DO SOMETHING I returned to the Arpad/Lily love story.  It’s coming in fits and starts.  Or complete stops.  That’s where this installment ends:  at the start of a fight.  I know I don’t write those well and will need all my wits about me to flesh it out tomorrow.

It has been a long while since I touched on this short story.  The thread of it is here (https://machciv.com/category/empires-agent/).  The next installment is below the fold.

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Empire’s Agent, baker’s dozen

I’ve uploaded the final re-edit for T4L.  The preliminary re-edit of Echoes of Family Lost is due in next week.  After I give my poor copy-editor a week off she’ll be back into “The Saga of Nichole5: Part 1 – ‘Friend & Ally.'”  That will have me essentially re-publishing and publishing three novels in three months.

To quote the smartest person on my planet, Dorina, “That’s SOOOO cool!”

On the first hand, I am not thrilled where this has ended.  On the second hand, this is just a temporary pause!  At 11k words, it would be a real pleasure to turn this into a canonical MC novel where, as a romance, no one dies.

[sit down, Will!]

On the gripping hand, I’ve much work to be done with the re-edit of EoFL and SN5-1 right on its heels.  As I’ve pointed out, I can no longer not write, so I wonder… what’s next? Continue reading “Empire’s Agent, baker’s dozen” →

Empire’s Agent, pt.12

Busy morning about the house; was in the process of installing a new fluorescent ballast in the garage when there was a spark – oh, yeah:  should probably turn the breaker off.  Obviously Someone wants me to write more stories or I’d have been struck dead just then.  All together now:

“there are no such things as coincidences!”

Below the fold the story did not, honestly, go where I thought it would.  I was very surprised that they made such an emotional connexion when I’d been expecting a physical one.  That’s, obviously, still a very real possibility in their next few hours, but… I wonder…

The devil on my left shoulder whispers “kill him!  horribly!  tragically!” Not today, Will D.!

In other RealWorld(TM) news, the final version of the Second Edition of The Fourth Law is being reviewed for release into the wild without a radiocollar.  I hope to post an Amazon link no later than Wednesday.  If you want to save 30% and get a personalized, signed copy, let me know in the comments or via writer [at] 3-arstudios DOT com.

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Empire’s Agent, pt.11

Second, awful, miserable Dayjob(TM) weekend prep.  Nine to four with no breaks, no lunch.  At four (1600), I curled up around some boxes of liter normal saline and fell asleep for maybe fifteen minutes.  Saw this and what I’ll write and post tomorrow.  Worked for another 90 minutes.

I tend to forget about the weather; I shouldn’t:  it can be a fantastic tool for advancing a story.  Especially a story where two people might just be falling for one another.

Since, for the vast majority of time we’ve been genetically ‘human,’ getting sick = dying, I think that caring for the sick is a special form of love we show one another.  I’d call it a subset of agape, but I drink more than I Greek.

My other task is to make two, minor, editorial changes to the 2nd edition of The Fourth Law.  After Createspace does their third and final review, it’ll be commercially available.  It will likely not be until the following weekend that I’ve everything fixed and uploaded onto Smashwords.  Following that, the 2nd edition of Echoes of Family Lost.  In May, “The Saga of Nichole5 – Part 1:  ‘Friend & Ally'”

It’s as if I’m an author…

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Empire’s Agent, pt.9

“Hasten slowly.”  Twenty quatloos – and a free, signed copy of the second edition of “The Fourth Law” to the first person who identifies who is best known for that quote:  hasten slowly.

It begins to come out that while they are total strangers, Arpad and Lily do know quite a bit about one another.  And it seems they both like what they’ve discovered.  Lily’s past is still a splinter in her mind; I know that there are things as bad in his.  He’s old enough that his father could have been in the AVO, and so despised.  Hell, maybe he’s Orban’s love child?… we’ll see!

It’s lunch time and the sun’s warm!

PS  And yes, that’s Lily’s silhouette in the center in black.  Cute girl.

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