Category: novels

And… that’s a MRAP!

Sorry:  bad pun about how Chris, Cat, and Anton make their final stage north into the ‘no-go’ zone between San Diego and the LA basin.

From having nothing just over a week ago, I’m pleased with the 14k raw material words for how Chris and Cat fell in love with one another.  I was also able to get a couple of more plates up and spinning for Maya to cast down in the next act.  There was even a little Easter Egg from an unexpected guest appearance!

Below the fold is a some verbal sparring with Chris and Anton; Cat makes a brief appearance in a towel.  After posting this, I’m making coffee – yes, with some bourbon – and will get Maya on her way out of the Vancouver BC Airport.  She’s been cooped up there for three days (I think), waiting for one of the rare flights south.  Not sure if she killed anyone… maybe.  Through her eyes we might see the burnt-out, dead city of Seattle as they fly over.  A few hours after that, Maya will be standing outside the San Diego Airport, just miles from her brother.

I cannot wait to see this!

Continue reading “And… that’s a MRAP!” →

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” →

“December”

Wow.  Never killed a guy during a blowjob.  The guy, not me.  Well, I was doing the killing… it was Maya….  Never mind; just never mind.  Obviously I shan’t be having my teenage daughters proofing that part.

Maya’s at Vancouver International Airport, waiting for one of the rare flights to San Diego.  Time to flick back to Chris and Cat (and Anton, too, I guess).  Need a double-helping of Relationship Development before a certain someone’s plane touches down.  As I learned from “Defiant,” every time I start writing romance, a battle breaks out; so, I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but I know it will.

Below the fold is Maya taking leave of the acquaintances she made on the freighter, Jodhpur, as it crossed the Pacific.  Machine Civilization:  it’s one, big, dysfunctional family!

Continue reading ““December”” →

“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.

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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” →

Xenophon

Or, rather, I made it past 10,000 word count.  I’m not going to make it to 50k by the end of the month, though.  My wife was kind enough to point out that, two years ago when I wrote “The Fourth Law” in 23 days, I was also working part-time.  I’d forgotten that part.  The whole husband/father plus day-job thing (putting aside my dog getting his sinuses trenched out) is a little nerve wracking..

It’s not all bad news:  no matter when I finish (mid-December, hopefully) I do plan to finish; I’m finding the dynamic between Chris and Cat very engaging.  I’ve laid down some plot markers that won’t be picked up for some time… one, not till the last scene.  After some great advice from Friend Will about horror scenes, I’m looking forwards to Maya’s next victim.  Of course, that won’t be for awhile:  I needed (and found) a way to put her in a box, so to speak.  Otherwise, she takes the next flight from Japan to San Diego and kills my other characters.  Over at 13k words.  Fortunately for my story, she’s a typical Oriental woman when behind the wheel.  Bye, bye for a bit, Maya!

I’ve a little time before making dinner, so I’ll see if I can get Chris enrolled in his classes.  That should generate some secondary and tertiary characters, which is good.  I’d like a scene at La Jolla beach, but I’ve already called out Chris’ scars from his modifications….  That’s it!  I’ll do it at night!  Everyone goes to see some bioluminescent algae bloom; perfect!  When he steps into the water, the light moves away from him (metaphors up to ’11!’).

And right there is how this happens.

NNWM – Jumpstarting

I say jumpstarting as I’m taking a still-born idea from over a year ago and using those characters and location as a rough framework for this novel.  Re-writing and re-editing (yes, I know:  editing is for December; but if I didn’t do it now, I couldn’t have used any of that material) gave me about 1,000 words, gratis. There was a NNWM Write-In here at the Licking County Public Library – although I’m the only one here – and in the past 90 min, I was able to add another 1,000.  Good first day.  It’s my typical “start the story in the middle” approach, and even then, I’m jumping about with flashbacks.  Still not quite got the hang of horror writing, but I’m sure I’ll work something out.  The closing of what I did today is below the fold.

Continue reading “NNWM – Jumpstarting” →