Category: science fiction

Civil Wars 2, 12

Much shorter entry today. I realized yesterday I had screwed up and forgotten something: this book is supposed to be, in large not all, a war diary of Graf’s back to Alix and, for the future, their kids. So, I had to backtrack from what came after the end of this segment and am working it into a letter he writes two days later. Since it starts with, “Pai will have to check this, what with the painkillers I’m on,” we can guess this jaunt to just east of Pataskala, Ohio Province, didn’t go all that smoothly.

In RealLife news, today is election day in most of FUSA. As there was no candidates above the county level, I could consider them all. Anyone running unopposed, I skipped. All attempts to steal more of my money, voted NO. Doesn’t matter, they always pass. There are more people who like their gibs allied to guilty old White people that crap like that passes every time.

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Civil Wars 2, 10

The thing about tampered genes is you never know when they might show up. A majority of Faustina’s descendents are human. A majority of Gary & Henge’s are Demis; the difference is that Fussy’s two husbands were human, and there was no way to create a breeding program without first cousins marrying. Very bad form. In G & H’s case, not only is Gary a Demi, his wife is a former Machine with a manifested physical body. That makes for some very interesting genetic permutations over the generations.

Saying all that, Pai sits their hosts down and tells them about their son’s gift. She graciously mentions her old self, version 1 (and I bet Suza and Tér will go nuts to see her again; the twins had not been born when Pai went to version 2.) as a temporary bridge until the rest of the Hartmann clan is informed and some kind of tutor system set up; given the wars – which will be back on in the next segment – this temporary bridge might be at least a year.

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Civil Wars 2, 2

A quiet, transitional moment. I work PRN in a hospital and know how important it is to get patients out of their damn beds. With the shock of the moon attack in the past and his new throat installed, Graf also is ready to get out of his room and out of the hospital. I understand completely.

The next few segments will ease a reader back into their odd three-way relationship, with, of course, Robert Hartmann on the way; that’s likely in the segment after next. I do think Pai feels guilt for letting her husband get shot, but she’s not only hiding that from him, she’s hiding it from me. I’ll see what I can find out.

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Civil Wars 2, 1

Another small delay as I tried to die again. Was at hospital Emergency; apparently the overpriced bellhops who call themselves “MDs” never got round to mentioning that taking lisinopril, an ACE inhibitor, should be stopped after 5-8 years. When the ER doc found out I’d been on it for 11, I thought he would take a swing at me. Anyway, another angioedema attack and some IV meds followed by four days of prednisone. Slowly recovering. Again.

Recovering enough to get back to writing. As the Prologue started “in the middle,” as all good stories should, what will be the start of chapter one, below, backtracks to catch readers up on politics of the imperium and the Polar Alliance. There is an interesting backhanded mention of the main character.

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Nazca, 2

A bit of a “first contact” part of the story. I can just imagine what Salvy thought of an alien lizard next to him. Aleja is a clever girl and gets her visitor back to the shed where she was told to live. We do get a little foreshadowing when she sees an Anglo woman in this tiny, out of the way village.

Her uncle and aunt sound like real winners.

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Nazca, 1

Another short story project. This will be a submission for an anthology likely due out in the spring of next year. It is fairly contemporanious with my last short; both of these are, of course, a part of my future history, and, more specifically, the coming of the Civil Wars.

In the story, there is a reference to the goings-on on Mars. Also, later, we meet a minor character first introduced in my most recent novel.

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Civil War, 7, end

While I have killed main characters before, this is not one of those times. Graf, unconscious and very shocky, and his team make it back to a medical facility just in time. I think the doc liked Pai’s unconventional idea: “You tied a tournequet around his neck?”

These seven parts will form the prologue of my second book of the Civil Wars. I expect it to be unpleasant and yes, there will be deaths of people some of y’all may have been reading about for years. A real civil war – think Whites and Reds; Serbs and Croats; for example – is a house to house, mind by mind affair. Nothing at all like the US War of Northern Aggression.

Thanks for reading. My next installment shall also be a short story, roughly contemporanious with this one, but set in Nazca, Peru.

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