Category: new book

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.

Continue reading “Accelerationism” →

“We call it DeeKay, for short”

Finally!  After banging my head against the six-month rock that was the discrepancy at the beginning of “Crosses & Doublecrosses” I had an idea as I stumbled, drunk, to bed last night.  Deciphering my scrawl of a note this morning, I got it:  Dunning-Kruger.

Dunning-Kruger is a two-sided coin of fail:  on the obverse is the stupid thinking they are not:  “anybody can do that!” said the idiot about to shoot an apple off of his son’s head.  The converse is just as deadly:  “since I’m a smart [profession], I’m smart at everything!”  You’ve read before about my comments when Doctors of Pharmacy try to hang a picture.  It’s a mess.

So in this case, two things happened:  the DK is that Sylvia, having been the best and brightest in the room her whole life, figured that that what she had heard about the Breakup of the US just couldn’t be that bad for someone like her.  The other, much more subtle thing – right at the end of this rewritten opening – is an allusion to one of the Machines we have never met, Ninon.

With this in mind I can FIX THE NOVELLA!  With the help of a miracle I might have it done by Thanksgiving.  If you like these updates and stories, please keep praying for my liver.

Continue reading ““We call it DeeKay, for short”” →

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.

Continue reading “Little Details” →

Getting Graphic

With my copyeditor seeming to have some issues right now, I’m falling back on Grammarly and some proofreaders for the first edit of “Worlds Without End.”  We’ll see how that pans out once I’ve a physical proof copy in my hands.  Shame, really; Monica has been a source of strength to my works for four years now.

In the mean time, here’s the penultimate cover, from Jacoby Alley Designs.  Professional, nimble, responsive.  If any of my readers are self-publishing, please reach out to them for a talk and/or a quote.  I’ve much to do:  my deadline of 30 September is upon me.

 

WWE FOR REVIEW - STANDARD 8 SEPT VERS 3

Old Friends

I’m aware the raw manuscript of C&DC needs attention.  Screw that.  I know I need a few more shorts for my short story collexion that will be three books hence.  As a result, I saw something from having re-read a line from “Foes and Rivals,” where sergeant John Brunelli makes a promise to Nichole 5.

How long would that take?  What sort or world would these people be living in by then?  I made some notes (mostly questions to myself), sat down, and got this.  About 1700 word; and this story is just beginning.  I wonder where it will go?

Continue reading “Old Friends” →

Bad End, 1/2

The rough of Part Two of “Crosses & Doublecrosses” is complete.  I’ve worked ahead to fix some contextual errors in the relatively small Part Three.  Much like Jackson’s “Return of the King,” part 3 consists of a series of endings:  lives, a person, a life.

Besides that, I’m aware that waaay back in the start of Part One my timing/dating is completely off:  Sylvia and her sister Roberta arrive in Dallas as the Breakup is unfolding in the US just then.  They shortly get summoned to ExComm HQ in Austin.  From what already exists in my novels of Machine Civilization, that doesn’t work:  it was at least three months before Clive Barrett left Japan for the US to find his eldest daughter in Ohio.  That, also, would be at least three more months.  Then his travel to Texas and the formation of ExComm.  Minimum eight months; maximum twelve, total.  Let’s split the difference and call it ten.  So:  why, ten months into the collapse of the US, did Sylvia and Roberta fly from the relative safety of their extended family in upper-class Manila into an effective warzone in Dallas, Texas?

No clue.  Hope they show me.

Continue reading “Bad End, 1/2” →

El Paso del Norte

After what I last wrote, I was stuck for once.  I thought about Sylvia’s long drive across west Texas (I’ve done it a few times; it takes longer than you think) and how it looks like that odd place where she met the Ninon person.  Still, I have already written “road sequences” for this story before… boring!  Done and done!

Saturday late morning, just before noon in fact, in the IV Room, having just finished the Batch, it hit me:  this is one of Director Barrett’s three chief underlings.  She would fly to El Paso to meet with the Mexican diplomats about the coming partition of New Mexico!  And the moment I saw her in a small jet, I knew what Ninon’s True Form was…

Into the night, out of the dark, take to the sky chasing the stars

All that we said, all that we are, waiting to fly, this is the start!

That then gave me the “machine dream” sequence I needed.  A quick stop at a bridge over the dry Rio Grande and an encounter with a Special Guest from “Cursed Hearts,” and our Deputy Director is off to the National Labs in Los Alamos to continue laying plots for the eventual termination of ExComm.

And, I just broke the 30k word barrier!  Woot.

Continue reading “El Paso del Norte” →