Sidelined

At long, long last, I’ve my three main characters (Chris, Cat, Maya) in proximity, at UC San Diego.  I also came face-to-face with a problem I’d known, but chose to ignore:  they are almost exactly one week out of synch.

For Chris & Cat, just two weeks have passed; an eventful two weeks!  However, for Maya, it’s closer to three – if not a day or two more.  Once I start editing, I’ll have all my notes and glosses to tally everything up.  But:  a week apart.

Last night, came home from day-job, made coffee (1/2 and 1/2 reg and decaf so I don’t kill myself), added some brandy, and was able to finish C&C’s trip home from the Newman Center and their dinner (just what was Cat alluding to when she whispered her embarrassing desire to Chris?).  After that, I got Maya from the SD airport to the NE side of campus, where the Supercomputing Center (and thus, Gordon) is; what an UGLY building!  Maya uses a bit of future-tech to talk to Gordon – with a cameo by Dorina – and she leaves, hunting for her brother and his intended.

A week out of synch.

I stared and the screen all the way through the second coffee/brandy.  Nothing.  Metaphorically tossed everything into my unconscious mind and descended to the basement to watch some animes with my wife.

Woke up.  Nothing.

Just before lunch, I saw something:  while Maya was in the machine’s home – ‘cyberspace’ if you will – who’s so say the passage of time was 1:1 with ours… especially with that very odd incident with the male figure, whom she couldn’t see, at the end, who called her ‘my daughter’?  What if Gordon had kept the room with the sensorium locked for – oh, I don’t know, let’s say, a week?  That gives me two things:

A solution to my temporal decoherence and a very, very hungry Maya.

Back in the game!

Baton

Over 50k words, he said!  Just another 8-10k to finish the book, he said!

Annnnd then, Dorina showed up.  To quote from Band of Brothers:  “…well, hello 2nd Armored!”

Look, it’s NOT exposition and I AM NOT LECTURING!  I can prove it, below the fold!  These people just keep showing up… this just keeps happening…!

Seriously:  I need to start killing everyone.  No!  I mean it!  Don’t you dare click on Continue reading “Baton”

Xenophon’s brother

Just over another 10k words this weekend!  As I said to a friend of mine, I feel like a wrung-out dish rag.  But, once I’d the key – the sight – from late Friday, it was so easy!  Part of my last post was just that:  Chris and Cat closing the gap between them.  What I wrote since then was the 3+1 times they made love (slightly different than having sex), although I only covered #1 and #+1 in detail.  That, plus another one of Chris’ recall-dreams of his time at Neuroi Corporation, this time, talking with his kid sister, Maya, made for a fantastic weekend!

Anton is sleeping with Chris & Cat’s next door neighbor; that’s complicated!  And he’ll be giving them a tour of the northern ‘no-go’ zones around Camp Pendleton.  The civilians of San Diego think the Mexican Army killed about 100k coming south from the 19MM in the LA Basin.  Truth is hard, sometimes.

After what he sees, it finally occurs to Chris to reach out to experts beyond him:  even machines suffer from the “if I’m good at this, I’m good at everything!” mental illness.  The moment he does, he’s going to realize just what he’s overlooked, and how close he and his beloved are to an horrible, violent death.

This is SO COOL!

PS It was pointed out to me by someone in RealLife that my ‘below the folds’ are all banal (my word, not theirs), not ‘the good stuff!’  Well, duh!  I welcome everyone into the world I’m making, but this is work, and I want to be paid for it.  ‘Defiant’ was, and is, for free.  Intellectual property is worth at least, if not more, than physical property.  Example:  a water pump is worth money; learning how to make a water pump, one or two orders of magnitude more.   To continue the analogy, my snippets, in and of themselves, are slightly entertaining.  I hope, once complete and edited, y’all think that they plus the other 45k words are worth US$7.

Thank you so much for reading!

Continue reading “Xenophon’s brother”

“I ship it!”*

Chris’ transfiguration scene done (backhanded compliment from a valued friend over that one), Maya busted out of the hospital – and boy, does that scene need editing! – to a character focus on her as she passes nine days at sea on the way to North America.  Did you know that travel by freighter is about US$100/day?  Pricy, but better than an entertainment-cruise line.  I’d love something like that:  nothing to do but write, drink, and – if she came with me – be with my wife.  Who, as we’ve been married for so long, would not even entertain the idea of what’s below the fold.  *sigh*

As they say at Instapundit, classic reference* in the headline.

I’ve already written the scene after this:  Maya talking to the two Americans on the way back to Portland, Oregon, Former US.  The world of ‘Machine Civilization’ is increasingly complete.  Still, this needs editing with a jackhammer.

Without being too much of voyeur, I need to see the next Act where Chris and Cat stop acting stupid around one another.  I think Anton might take them up to the killing fields of Camp Pendleton, where the Mexican Army killed 100,000+ starving Los Angeles refugees… why take them there?  Exposition, duh.  After that, Maya shows up in town and BANG.

And by BANG, I mean I start on the sequel.  You really think that the powers that be could stop a horror/romance of mine by death?  Will Deonne taught me.  Bring it.

Continue reading ““I ship it!”*”

Dinner.

I’d announced to my family yesterday that there were leftovers in the fridge.  I told my wife I’d not be watching anything in the basement, thus not turning on the pellet stove.  To all and sundry:  leave daddy the eff alone:  he’s writing.

It’s 2245 now, past an old man’s bed time, but I’ve 3.2k words for today.  MUCH more importantly are the milestones:  I’ve radically changed Chris & Cat’s relationship with a pivotal secondary character, and got Chris baptized.  Hey, when you consider yourself a writer of nominally Catholic stories, things like that matter.

So:  I got the cousins from UCSD to the Hotel del Coronado.  Pre-dinner politics.  It wasn’t until Cat excused herself to the bathroom that I saw that Anton has lost his mother when he was a boy; that allowed me to radically change the dynamic between these three.  This is going to echo through the rest of the novel; probably upping the death-toll, too.

Below the fold is another example of why creative writing sometimes scares me:  as recently as two hours ago, not a single idea of any of this existed anywhere inside my head.  Sometimes it seems for me that prayer is an ‘SDI’ project.

Continue reading “Dinner.”

Back on Rails

Still been too tired at the end of the work-weekdays to write; I’m hoping when it’s not dark by 1830 that might change in my favor.  Even so, between last weekend and this one, I’ve over 6k words, so far.  I really want to get through the dinner scene at the Hotel del Coronado with Chris, Cat, and Cat’s ex, Anton.  As Anton is the son of the General in command of the Mexican Army ‘Stabilization Force’ in San Diego, Cat realizes it’s tricky to tell a guy like that to piss off.

Prior to that, I’d written a segment featuring Yamada Hanako (Japanese slang for ‘Jane Doe’); she’s Maya’s post-car-accident amnesia personality.  A pleasant young woman worried about her future.  A future cut short when one of her doctors pushes her past under her nose just a little too hard.  Attempted murder ensues.

Below the fold, a snapshot of when Cat decides to start working out in the mornings.  Chris uses the Five Tibetan Rites.  #1 is spinning in place.  I almost yakked when I tried it, too.

Continue reading “Back on Rails”

Train. Wreck.

After a busy fifteen days of Ohayocon prep, staunching the constant bloody nose of Dog #1, and writing a script for a 24-minute animated short, I’m finally back to Cursed Hearts.

[re-reads the last couple of paragraphs; scratches head]

[re-reads the last few pages; wonders who are these people?]

Oh…kay.  Looks as if I’m going to need to ‘re-familiarize’ myself with just what the Hell is going on in my own story.  Wonderful.

Not dead; but dreaming

Haven’t posted as, honestly, there was nothing to say.

Work continues on Cursed Hearts, slowly (it would be oh-so simple to turn it into a novella of 30k words; I’m resisting that impulse.  For now).

I’ve the outline of what looks to be a 11-slide Powerpoint presentation for my Creating Writing/Self-publishing panel at Ohayocon in mid-January.  After a year of watching Milo speeches, I find myself using his voice in my head as I write.

This morning made a re-revision to the images I’m thinking of using in a fan-video; a joint venture of 3-AR Studios LLC and Star Art Works LLC.  I need that in the hands of my collaborators no later than a week from today so they can add/delete/change it.

It’s fascinating to me that the world of Machine Civilization I’ve created is open and flexible enough to swallow all of my other works.  As a former Systems Engineer, I’m absurdly pleased about that.

Christmas break for my girls, so no shuttling them about pools.  I’m hoping for productive evenings this next two weeks.

Ii don’t care that CH is a commercial product (well, yes, I do; that’s not my point) so I’m going to continue sharing snippets here. Continue reading “Not dead; but dreaming”

Curtain falls; curtain rises

NaNoWriMo passed yesterday.  As I expected, I was no-where near finished, much less to 50k words.  Which is fine:  I’ve many other things pressing for my time, and I’m finding the characters engaging and the genre a good challenge, so I don’t want to rush.  Still:  deadlines.  So, I think I’ll set Christmas as my writing stop-date.  As I’m guesstimating that this one will be a little longer than my first two – maybe 65k words – that’ll give me January to… hang on, something just came in on my ‘writer’ email….

Oh.  It appears my one-hour panel, ‘Creative Writing and Self-Publishing’ for Ohayocon 2017, in Columbus, Ohio, has been approved.  Sure be nice if I could give a more current example than 10-month old Echoes of Family Lost.  Hmmm.  January 15th….

‘Scuse me:  I need to go make some coffee for tonight.  I’d best see how Maya gets her memory back so she can start killing people again.  Cheerio!

Dogging My Steps

Good news:  second biopsy on dog came back as a polyp.  No cancer.  Bad news:  second biopsy on dog came back as a polyp; so it might regrow like some tanjed weed if the surgeon didn’t get it all, branch-and-root.  *sigh* Time will tell.  Otherwise, Lucky Star is doing fine.

Accepting the fail of another NNWM is relaxing:  my pacing of writing is much more like what I was doing over the summer with Defiant… about 500 words a night with the occasional ~1200 word burst.  The story is much less forced and much more like my usual pedestrian* style.  I’m happier about that.  Not that I don’t have an hard deadline:  I finally got round to seeing the longer trailer for Ghost in the Shell.  Never read the manga, never saw any of the animated movies.  So, a show about machines and what it means to be a person.  Nope, I got nothing on that.  Better have Cursed Hearts published before that comes out!

*No, really.  I actually have Chris and Cat wandering around UCSD campus… Continue reading “Dogging My Steps”