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!
A cracked open door about the culture in Knoxville, some ten plus years after the Breakup. And more Faustina.
I have to be careful here, too. I’m already interested in who Faustina is and what her relationship with MC is. I’ve only known her for three days but I bet I could build a novel around her.
I just might!
Not too much… really just wrapping up Gary’s day I started awhile ago. The ‘problem’ is what I saw next: just as I feared, I’m sorely tempted to start talking about the Hartmann’s and how life has changed in Knoxville over the past ten years.
Deep breaths: let’s try to stay focused on our happy couple…
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!
I realized that in serializing this story, I have begun to leave each post on a cliff-hanger. Very bad form: if that becomes a habit, my novels will suffer to the point of death.
So, this time, in our flashback, we flashback further, then flash-forward. Hey: it’s Valentine’s Day: I should be flashing somebody!
Aside: this ‘little’ sub writing exercise is already north of 2300 words… what did I say about 1500…? I so need to get these folks out of town! I wonder if the cocoon in Abandoned Factory has hatched…
Busy day at work; tired.
Had to forage for dinner.
Dry and itchy from the winter weather.
Wife suggested we just watch something.
…
In other words, I was given every opportunity to not write something today. As tomorrow is the beginning of Lent, color me unsurprised at the temptation to give up.
I suspected this would happen: my small writing exercise would trigger something that goes on longer. I’m hoping – hoping! – that this is only going to be 1000-1200 words, total. That’s all I’ve seen as yet.
This, originally, was a scene from my second novel, Echoes of Family Lost. However, because of my writing style (start in the middle, use flashbacks for details) this just didn’t fit. And worse, it allowed me to start writing exposition rather than dialog. It’s a failing of mine but at least I know it’s there.
The gist of this is that Lily Barrett, her friend Fausta, and their guide, Orloff, are on their way from the Republic of Texas towards East Tennessee, to find someone very important to her. The badlands of post-Breakup America are a rough place, but charitas may be found in unexpected places.
See? That’s me, talking again. I’ll shut up now.
Looked over some notes from a project that never worked out: “Crosses & Doublecrosses.” It was to be a political-espionage thriller. I stopped writing the story after about a page and switched to notes. After ten pages of notes, I realized that 1) this was work, not fun, and 2) I’m not cut out for this sort of story – at least, not right now.
It was to be the back-story of what happened in Texas during the Breakup. The main character was Sylvia Fernandez, a lawyer who comes to work for Clive Barrett and his state terror organization I modeled on the Checka. Clive Barrett is the father of the heroine of my first two novels, T4L and EFL.
Below the fold is one of the introductory scenes. Looking at my notes, I’d forgotten that I’d cross-populated this part of the story with a character from my visual novel, OTChi Kocchi (reviewed here). I was younger then.
Yeah, it’s not the best title, but it captures what these are: micro (micro, tanjit! no 18k light novels!) stories from my world of Machine Civilization. It keep me writing and sane, at least one of which is a good thing.
Below the fold is after “Cursed Hearts.” A friend of Cat’s begins to get her life back together, just to see that interrupted. Spoilers.
machciv 