Category: novels

Sandbox

Mine, in other words.  I shan’t apologize for the lack of posting, but I don’t mind explaining.  At the end of the last episode, I thinking I knew what I wanted to do for the next sequence of the story.  The issue was, it’s somewhat unorthodox.  So I froze over the weekend before last.  Monday and Tuesday brought busy day-job days of our bi-annual physical inventory.  Friday, we as a family were off to northern Kentucky for a swim-meet.  We’d also be meeting our good friend, and my girls’ Godfather, that we’d not seen in four years (he’d been living in East Asia; back in the ‘States now).  Between the swimming during the day and the drinking at night, there was no time to write.

I was beginning to freak out about that.

I told my wife last night:  I don’t care what you and girls are doing Monday night, unless the house, dogs, or people are on fire, I’m writing.  What with that “less of an asshole” thing that writing grants me, she was fine with that.

Below is Ep 21.  I’ve seen 22 and 23; if I can convince them to order pizza or something for the next two days, these should come out fairly quickly.

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“Defiant” update

Pretentious titles are pretentious.  I’ve seen more of Nichole’s story.  More than I’ve written here, in fact, but I need to go make dinner.  I’d like to write ep3 tomorrow, then show y’all something else that I worked on a year ago.  Up until three days ago, it had nothing to do with Machine Civilization; now, I know who one of the welders was at the demonstration reactor north of Pataskala in “Echoes of Family Lost.”  That’s for later; back to Portland….

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Shelves and Tables

This past weekend, I marathoned the series “Man in the High Castle.”  It was everything I expected from a PKD-Ridley Scott combination.  I was pleased to see Rufus Sewell again, even if he is playing a Nazi.  One of my favorite movies is “Dark City,” and he did superlative work in that.

Anyway.  At the end of Ep10, I sat and thought a bit and came to the conclusion that  – at this point of my life – I simply do not have what it takes to write political-espionage.  I am shelving “Crosses and Doublecrosses,” for now.  So… what now?  I stared at the empty formal dining table, wondering when my wife would come home from her radiation treatments and what the Hell I was to do with my life.

Dated it may be, but my all-time favorite anime is “Haibane Renmei.”  A brief review can be found here.  A huge, spoiler-laden takedown can be found here.  It’s very difficult for me to say what it’s about without ruining it; I could do it with a single word.  It’s an extremely complex moral and theological story; amazing that a non-Christian Japanese writer seems to have a better feel for my faith than many of my co-religionists.

Some years back, a chap took the character models from HR and made a 30s video, based on a trailer for “Constantine,” a good, but very erratic movie.  You can see the video here.  While there are icebergs of story just below the surface of HR proper, just to look at it, it appears to be cute-girls doing cute-things.  Guristantine is not that at all.  Just as with the two ideas that were the genesis of “The Fourth Law,” the series and the video curled up in my unconscious, and waited.

Going back to our collaboration of 3-AR Studios LLC for our visual novels, my friend and colleague, Will, and I, had long thought of a live-action Haibane Renmei.  We talked scenes, locations, actors… but nothing came of it.  A few days after deciding to abandon “C&DC,” it came to me (how?  how does this stuff just come to me??) to make a live-action series, based on HR; not just an adaptation….

One set in hard-edged Abandoned Factory, not the safety of Old home.  One with deeply flawed characters, desperate to understand themselves and where they are.  One where violence and sex are – if not out in the open – not pretended to not exist.  One where the abandonment of either wing of the human soul (faith and reason) leads quickly to madness.  One where… okay; you get it:  I saw quite a lot, quickly.

Below the fold is a pretty raw treatment of what you could call a trailer for a six-episode series of 30-minute shows.  I’m bricked in to swim meets for my girls all this weekend, and will be writing as much as I see, which, so far, is quite a bit.  If any of this tickles your forebrain, leave a comment.  I’m planning on throwing a couple of grand of my money at this, at least for the trailer.  We’ll see what happens beyond that.

Continue reading “Shelves and Tables” →

Write Right

Had a conversation with a day-job co-worker yesterday.  She’d asked if I’d finished my fourth novel, Crosses & Doublecrosses, in time for NaNoWriMo.  Nope, I replied:  that whole “wife diagnosed with cancer” thing was a bit of a spanner in my plans.

However, after some reflexion, I wondered if I would have finished in time if that had not happened.  Outside of a handful of Robert Ludlum books as a late teenager, I really have no experience with espionage and political fiction.  There were many times I stared at the monitor, unable to see anything of a story to write down.  Was I losing the ability to make up stories?

A week ago, completely out of left field, came this:  a writing and drawing contest from a Japanese/American company called Voltage.  It wasn’t the US$5000 prize that caught my eye – no, really – but the facts that, one, this is for a visual novel (something I do know something about), two, they give you the characters and scenes (all I need to do is create dialog; breath life into the characters, as it were), and three, it’s a cute little story.

Cute.  I can do cute.

So, last Tuesday, while my wife was getting a port installed in her chest for her chemotherapy (which started in-patient on Thursday), in the two hours or so I was waiting, I hand-wrote about 2200 words for the three scenes.  Just like that.  So easy!  Apparently I didn’t lose the ability to see stories.

I’ve since typed it up and done some basic editing.  I was concerned that what I wrote for Scene 3 was not in-line for romance stories directed at women; I read part of the scene to my wife last night at the hospital.  “You’re suspiciously good at writing make-out scenes,” she quipped with a slight glare in her eyes.  Hey:  I grew up a geek and later became an engineer; people like me never had many girlfriends, but that didn’t mean we didn’t think about it… A LOT.

And, me being me, all of what I do hangs together in one way or another.  You might catch a glimpse of that in the teaser below the fold.

Continue reading “Write Right” →

Iter

My girls had a swim meet in Mason, Ohio, this weekend, so it was something of a working vacation for me.  Vacation in that it was the first time since January since I’d slept anywhere but in my own house.  Working in that I tried to get some more story written down.  And I do mean written:  typing is a bit problematic when sitting on bleachers at a high-school pool.  Perhaps I’ll make the NaNoWriMo cut off; perhaps not.

travel

Up this AM at 0400 to get my wife to the airport.  She’s off to Houston for tests and consults this week for her lymphoma.  It will be a busy time for me, what with day job, girls’ club activities, and whatnot, until her return.  Writing takes another hit….

October Book Tour… Clear for Takeoff….

October Book Tour… Clear for Takeoff….

Alright, so that’s a bit clichéd.  Nonetheless, well sponsored by GoddessFish Promotions, almost a year on, I’m finally getting ’round to promoting “The Fourth Law.”

This virtual book tour includes interviews with me, with some of the characters, blog entries… all sorts of neat things!  I’ve much to say not only about this story, but also about creative writing, editing, and self-publishing.  Almost each and every day I’ll be hosted by a new website,  with their own series of questions and/or comments.  I promise to do my best to attentively address whatever anyone may want to discuss about “The Fourth Law” and Machine Civilization.

I think this is going to be a tremendous amount of fun, and look forwards to it very much!

Loser. I am.

Apologies for the utter dearth of posts.  I’m a rather uxorious person, and in the last month a cousin of my wife, along with his daughter, has been out visiting from Hungary.  That means  I’ve been alone for the last month.  No, really: I don’t have any friends anymore, either.  So, in my spare time, I’ve been drinking myself to death.

On of the nice things about working third shift is that you don’t have a sleep-time, just a series of naps.  That helps with the psychosis.

4th Book-wise, I have imagined so much!  Sylvia’s recruitment, her thoughts of error, her arrest – just as she is arresting the police chief of Albuquerque – Clive on the stern of the ‘Death Ship’ just before the Chinese orbital kinetic energy weapon….  I really need to find a reason to write all of this down.

In the mean time, here’s one of the triggers for my first novel.  Really!.

“Echoes of Family Lost”

I’m very pleased to announce the release of my second novel.  “Echoes of Family Lost” is a sequel to my first book, “The Fourth Law,” and takes place in my future history of Machine Civilization.  The story of Ai’s and Lily’s families – and how they are increasingly intertwined – continues.

Hardcopies are available here and the $0.99 Kindle version is here.  Thanks to everyone for your on-going support!  I hope to have a very short story from this series posted tomorrow as a way of saying thanks.