Category: writing

Soup and Juice

Faustina has a short meeting with her legates but makes time to be informal with her cousin, Ryland.  For a kid genius, who usually are monomaniacs and burn out early, Ryland is surprisingly perceptive.  I wonder if being a mutt is a factor?  Or her mother’s close relationship with the machines of tribe Tohsaka?  We’ll likely find out later or sooner.

I have written a little past this but have to go make an early dinner for my family.  If not too drunk to write more, maybe I can get another update ready to later.

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Flashback

In the published novel, this will be the start of chapter two of Part III.  It hearkens back to what happened at the very end of Part II, where, as Arpad and Ryland were about to return to the Texas-controlled side of the Mississippi, he received a note of some kind.  We know is was significant, otherwise, why is Faustina’s young cousin travelling with them into another battle zone?

I’ve seen what happens right after this memory and am writing it now.  This is a very productive weekend!

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Iter

This little addition will conclude what will be part two of “Empress’ Crusade.”  As I mentioned last time, I need to collate and overhaul my notes before I write one more word.  That is going to take a few days.  Sorry.

In an interesting tangent to my works, yet another person today told me that “I like you ideas but have no time to read.  Do you have audiobooks?”  Once I finish “EC” I shall take a break from writing and bring myself fully up to speed on creating said audiobooks.  It seems I’m missing out on more than have of my market.  Time to fix that.

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Upgrades: fort

In the five days that Faustina ran around former northern State of Mississippi with two legions, her boys from Fourth have not been idle.

I’ve DayJob this weekend and Monday so am not sure about another update.  I’ve seen how she gets her army back to Vicksburg and did a little research about what comes next.  But that “what comes next” will be another 15k word arc.  Before I do that, I must sit down and make a complete re-assessment of the staff of the 4+1 legions she has at her disposal.  My clutch of hand-written notes scattered over five pages just is not holding up anymore.

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“Peace is just the temporary absence of war”

When I stumbled into DayJob at 1300 yesterday, half in Faustina’s world and half in this (notice how carefully I don’t define what’s real?), a young colleague asked what was wrong.  Startling him, I described Fussy’s concern as to whether Gen’l Willis can keep control of his own left brigade.  After a minute of pharmacists and techs looking at one another with uncomfortable looks that said, “this is Clayton we’re dealing with,” the young colleague said, “I think he can’t.”

He was wrong.  Who knew?

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More Jaw-Jaw

I’d seen the middle of this scene, where Faustina and Willis are talking, over the weekend but had no idea how they came to be standing there.  Even with a little trouble at my DayJob, I was able to come home and write down how this parley came to happen.  I remain concerned about the forces on Willis’s left, at the north end of his line.  Are his conscripts riotous or are the Chekists stirring things up?  Will Fussy present a treaty in two hours or start shelling them?  I have no idea and, having to go back to work 2nd shift today, won’t know until, I hope, sometime Thursday.

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Letters and a bath

About a generation ago, when I was a regular reader of James Lilek’s The Bleat, something he said stuck with me (and I paraphrase from memory):  “do you mind if I smoke? No one ever said no in the pre-WWII years, simply because daily baths were such a rarity.  It was closer to the truth to reply ‘I’d rather smell tobacco than you.'”

Something lost in our ultra-hygienic world is what the past smelled like, especially each other.  Beyond exposure to those curry-radiating Pajeets who make deliveries, the idea of smelling other people is a lost concept to modern, Western whites.

I honestly don’t know what prompted Faustina to realize that she stunk as much as the men about her, but I had to smile at her feminine, human, reaction.  I think if someone had pointed out to her she was acting like a ‘normie,’ she would have bit their head off.  Perhaps this is the story telling me that she might not ultimately be lost to us, after all?

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“No” or “hell, no!”

Had a co-worker over for cocktails yesterday afternoon.  Ohio allows personal interaction and we’re both “vital medical personnel” *snort* so we do what we want in the Dark Age of BatAIDS.  He’s one of the folks who encouraged me to think seriously about making audiobooks.  We covered that subject and several others.  While mildly lef of center, we discovered that we’re shoulder-to-shoulder on issues such as private property and firearms.  He’s not particularly religious and was surprised to find out I’m Catholic.  I stared at him over the rim of my Martini and asked, “You’ve read three of my books.  Did you think those elements fell in there by accident?”  All in all, an excellent Saturday afternoon.

Below the fold, anxious for her men and wanting to reunite her army, Faustina thinks of ways to bluff her next opponent rather than fighting a battle.  Which is a polite way of saying I don’t want to throw away another week thinking about it.

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