It’s a lousy pun, but it’s mine. So there.
It looks as if were going to be learning about Ai’s first interactions with her father. That also means her interactions with humans in general. Honestly, I’m a bit curious, myself. Must be why I decided to come back to it.
I had to go ask my older teenaged daughter what you call those long strands of hair in front of your ears. It’s good to have experts to draw upon when writing!
Writing this, I thought at the time is was the last installment. Late last night, more drunk than normal, I saw a little more about Faustina. Looking at what my then-self wrote, I’m not entirely thrilled with it. After I post this, I’m going to see if they allow me to ‘soften’ what I wrote.
She’s still going to be fundamentally good, but what eight year-old, who can move effortlessly between the machine’s home and ours wouldn’t end up a little disturbed or drunk on power? Anyway: plan on the curtain coming down on WWE on or about installment #10.
Let’s wrap up the Pope’s visit!
Gary may think that Henge has learned a little subtlety from her father, but when it comes to getting what she wants… maybe not. In the fallout of the wedding of their friend Susie, Henge unearths a problem and wants it fixed. Now. By an expert. So here’s installment seven that, along with eight, has a special guest!
I guess I could subtitle this one, On the Beach. Henge and Gary get a visit from a friend they’ve not seen in almost a year. And she’s bringing big news; news that’s fraught with emotion for our couple.
I see at least two more entries for this storyline. Will I see more? Should I move on? The world wonders.
Mmmm… stir-fried southwest chicken for burritos! Spanish rice… refried beans! Things I don’t eat on my low-carb lifestyle. If I drank less, I could eat worse…
Not happening.
Besides what’s on the table, Gary recalls the taste of his Intended and what is perhaps a bitter taste of his future…?
A smaller installment; first of two, actually. ~550 words is too small but ~1200 was too long… broke it in half, anyway. A look into the Hartmann’s home: the Domestic Church. If I get it edited before bed, I’ll post part 5.
They seem like really nice people!
This is going to be based on an idea I had almost three weeks ago. You don’t have to go back and read it – in fact, I’d rather you didn’t, as a better, edited, version is in a blockquote below the fold.
Henge (“hen-geh”) first made an appearance toward the end of The Fourth Law. I was playing with the idea of how AIs could make children; not just copies of themselves, but children, and she showed up. In the last scene of my second novel, Echoes of Family Lost, Henge meets Gary when everyone is taking some well deserved R&R on her beach. They make some connexion I still don’t understand and announce to both Families, human and machine, that they’re getting married.
The trick for me is to not get sidetracked on what’s happened politically and/or socially in the intervening ten years. I’m going to have to say something, obviously, but I’ll try to confine myself to culture. What I want to accomplish here is a love story between two very different people, who are united by their deep orthodox Catholic faith.
Let’s go!
Going back to leap forward: from the end of “Echoes of Family Lost”, when a certain character declares his love for another (are there not Spoiler Tags in WordPress?), we find ourselves ten years in the future, on the beach, but around the dinner table just a few minutes before.
To cite Arkada of Glass Reflections: ladies, gentlemen, and others, I present to you the final installment of Act 2.5 of “Defiant.” Yes, you read that right: the writing component is complete. Editing and ret-conning the four parts of this 18-month, 85.5k writing exercise into a proper novel will begin.
And therein lies your chance, you followers of this blog and those that have wandered in via my sole social media presence on Gab.ai: if you so desire, you can d/l and read the entire story between now and Saturday, for free. It’s very, very rough, but you’ll get what you pay for. Come Saturday, whenever I wake up, I’ll be pulling the entire ‘free webnovel’ down as I begin to turn it into a commercial novel. As always, I’ll do the first-pass editing myself. Second and copyediting – and a cover – are as yet an unknown; after the layabout wife and the Dog With the Golden Nose, it’s all ramen and Taco Bell salsa packets here. My sole, possible, hard-deadline, is January 26th, when I might have another Creative Writing panel at Ohayocon. If I do, I’d like to say, “since my last panel, I’ve published two books… what did you do?” Keeps the snarkers from snarking.
Anyway, there’s just over thirty five hundred fricking words below the fold! Open a bottle of wine or make a pot of coffee, the one right next to that bottle of bourbon, sit back, and, please, see what I’ve seen… and have fun!
“Meet me at eight!”
Who hasn’t been there at some moment of their life? In this case, Nichole and Joe go back to Portland, a diversion to Zom’s, some other characters show up… for dinner…
Oh my God, they leave the battlezone at dawn! That has them back into the City around 0800! What the hell am I supposed to do for the next nine to ten hours?!
machciv 