Category: writing

“Foes and Rivals” A look back

I’m still trying to think my way out of the box I’ve written myself into here with “Tillamook.” To tide things over, here’s a tactical glimpse of the backstory of how Gil Haven and Mackenzie d’Arcy ended up where they they are. From the last chapter of “Foes and Rivals.”

…

“Come on,” Nichole announced, turning west.  “We need to be out of the city and through the tunnels before complete darkness.”

Without further word, her friends followed.  Out of campus and along Montgomery Street, Gil only spoke when, just at the highway that plunged under the West Hills, Nichole abruptly turned left onto a residential street winding sharply up.

“There’s something I want to see.  You two can wait here if you don’t want to climb with me.”

Gil heard Mac’s little sigh and held out his hand to help her.  She took it.

Just above the tunnel’s mouth, Nichole stopped and looked north and east.  Besides the continuing small-arms fire, she heard the occasional crump of mortars.  Many buildings along the city’s northern edge were on fire.

“I am so sorry…” Gil just caught from her.

Leaping from rock to rock and bracing herself against trees when she had to, Nichole made the descent down the hillside to the road and tunnel look easier than it was.  Both Gil and Mac had several slips and scrapes before standing next to her.  There was still electric power, but only one light every hundred feet or so in the tunnel was on.

“S… spooky!” Mackenzie shuddered, still next to Gil after her last near-fall.

“You will be fine, dear friend!” Nichole could tell her eyes were back to normal, as there was no moisture on her face to match the raging sorrow in her processors.  “After all, you have him, now!  No!  Do not speak!”

She took two steps and touched their chests.  With her right hand she fingered the memory crystal in Gil’s pocket.

“I love you.  I might even be a soul.  But, I am not human.  You must find a mate of your own kind.”

She pressed a little more into Mackenzie, who could properly cry.

“Please take care of each other!”

“Ni…” Gil began.

“…chole!” Mac sputtered.

Her shadow vanished into the blackness as Nichole ran away west.

“A Texas Naval Affair,” final cover

Barring one of you sharp-eyed readers finding something my drunk eyes through bifocals did not, this shall be the cover for my next novel (at 47,200 words, I’d call it a novella, but that’s me).

Yes, I am fully aware the back blurb is long. Per something I discussed in someone else’s podcast (which shows how lazy I am to not ferret out the link) is that a writer has about 0.25 seconds to catch and hold a potential reader’s attention as they scroll down on their phone. That is what the front is for. The back is me pulling up on the line once the hook is in their mouth. Given that this is a romance, girls and women will be expecting to know more about the cute couple on the front (not kidding: I’ve had two women say that to me already). If this were another military story, I’d write, “the character does cool stuff and shit blows up” and there’s my male reader base.

[Still working on “Tillamook” with Gil, Nichole, and Teresa. I bet Mackenzie is a little less than pleased that her husband’s former lover, who has not aged a day in twenty years, just showed up as she’s entering menopause.]

Tillamook, part 19

One thing about Machines is, whether android or AI, they think faster than humans do. There have been many occasions in my writing when the “normies,” including me, are trying to understand just what someone like Nichole or even a gentle soul like Ai is getting at. So here, having appeared from nowhere, Clarke immediately upends the plans of Teresa.

Teresa is a little harder than I remember her from “Foes and Rivals,” and she was pretty damn hard there. That sudden term of affection, below, was another surprise.

The next few sections will be tricky for me: while Teresa just now knows what Nichole is, I don’t want to cover all that exposition, as I AM SURE everyone has already read her two books and even some of her appearances in my short story collection, so her backstory, nature, and now serving in the Japanese Space Navy is familiar to all you, right? RIGHT?

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Tillamook, part 18

What? You really thought having King Rhun show up was a key plot point? My future history is called Machine Civilization for a reason.

Off to co-celebrate my daughters’ 19th and 21st birthdays in a bit. I’m hoping to get one more scene typed today then see what they can show me before Mass tomorrow.

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Tillamook, part 17

Remember yesterday when I wrote I have more to write? In the IV Room at DayJob today I realized those 1100 words are shit and won’t work in the story flow. I’ll try again this weekend.

That means I’m going to dump what I have on you and hope I can lay down another 2000+ words this weekend. Not likely as I’ve got to pdf format “A Texas Naval Affair” for Createspace. So much to do; so little time. There may be another bunny with a pancake on its head.

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Tillamook, part 16

Surviving his first talk with the king, Gil finds himself back on a slide under a microscope. Makes sense, really: Teresa’s father was into politics before she was born and that is the environment in which she grew up. Deceit and deals are the water in which she swims.

Y’all enjoy the update I’ve much to write.

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Tillamook, part 15

One of y’all raised the salient point of “why is the king so interested all this?” That gets addressed here. Historically, Russia is either contracting or expanding. Their stasis from 1991-2020 was an aberration. With Thinking Machine Reina calling the shots, they are back in expansion mode; they have to be. With the Maunder Minimum bringing the ice and snow south just as they have turned around their demographic implosion, they need somewhere for their people to live. So, Alaska and now British Columbia are now passing to their hegemony. Rhun is not an idiot and can read a map: his kingdom will be next.

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Tillamook, part 14

Not so much for you sophisticates who follow my blog, but I imagine most would have difficulty imagining post-Breakup monarchy. It would be very personal, a throw-back to the Early Middle Ages. No “constitutional” form and even more direct that the Absolutism of the 18th century. Empress Faustina shot a man through his head, a man who was legally a POW. Rhun has killed with his own hands, as you will read in an installment or two. That makes Gil’s “back talk” surprising to the point of foolhardiness.

Teresa’s candor makes more sense: if caught in a lie her head would be on a pike, too. Thankfully, she comes from a political family.

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Tillamook, part 13

As y’all read when Gil was a guest on the Russian destroyer, the local politics are a little complicated. The city of Portland survived the Breakup (along with San Diego, although they are occupied by Mexico) and kept trade down the Columbia River open, the hydroelectric dams up the river running, and the farmers and ranchers south in the Willamette Valley supplied with POL and fertilizer. Yet, even by the time of “Friend & Ally,” said farmers and ranchers had begun to set up something of a local governor in the old State capitol of Salem, as a counter-balance to Portland.

Then, as you read in “Foes & Rivals,” Mayor Johnson of Portland first makes a deal with the horsemen of the eastern steppe to crush the cannibals in former Washington State’s central valley. But second goes back on that deal and tries to betray his new allies. It didn’t work and many heads ended up on pikes. It was at that time when Nichole took Gil and Mackenzie and fled. Once order was reestablished, the commander of the horsemen, Rhun, set himself up as king – Nichole’s idea – with limited autonomy for Portland and the Willamette Valley. Honestly, it’s an ad hoc muddle, as Gil told one of his Russian hosts.

We’ll learn more over the course of this week.

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