Category: writing

MachCiv Dreams – Empire’s Agent (pt5)

There was no way to end this today.  Maybe, just maybe, tomorrow.  Is this turning into another book?

Easter draws near and thus the end of these Lenten writing exercises.  I’ll continue them in some form, but even this evening – on a Friday, for eff’s sake! – my wife launches into a Spring honeydew list of this, that, and ten other tanjed things!  If the yard needs that much work then I’ll just sow it with salt!

Anyway.  Who wouldn’t mind a walk in the twilight with an engaging, attractive stranger?  Yes:  the both of them.

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MachCiv Dreams – Empire’s Agent (pt4)

Saw this part and most of tomorrow’s at lunch today.  As tomorrow is Good Friday, I’ll fast through lunch and try to get out of DayJob 30 minutes early.

I’m giving very serious thought to, next week, telling this story through Lily’s eyes.  I wonder, my few regular readers, if you see what I see with Lily today?

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MachCiv Dreams – Empire’s Agent (pt3)

I wrote the first two lines.  I walked away and sulked for over an hour.  My wife had to tend to her mother’s illness so I chatted with Daughter #2 about being stuck and feeling sick for it.

“Tell me the characters.”  I described Arpad and Rauch; on the way to find Lily.  A character based on Daughter #2.

“Where are they?”  I guess Arpad is at a hotel.  Rauch leaves as this is not a novel.

“When is it?” I thought she meant in the future.  She meant during the day.  “So the guy goes to dinner or something.”

Brilliant!  This is brought to you by her.

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MachCiv Dreams – Empire’s Agent

Last night was family movie night:  the Charlton Heston version of “Ben Hur.”  I was pleased that my teen girls sat still and seemed to take all three hours of it in.  Gen Zyklon indeed!  However, as a opportune result of that I was unable to scare up time to write.  Priorities:  God, family, friends.

Late this afternoon at DayJob, I mentioned to Friend Tracy that I not only didn’t know what to write, I had not idea what I wasn’t going to write.

“You’ll be fine.”  She tossed back.  There’s a reason I love (storge) her.

Looking at dinner, leftover Hungarian chicken paprikash, I thought about that.  Hungarians.  The Viszegrad Group… the survival of central and eastern Europe.  What would that look like in my world…?

Let’s find out.

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MachCiv Dreams – Death Ship (end)

And now, having been given a glimpse of the beginning of ‘Crosses & Doublecrosses,’ and now the end of it, you might understand why I really never wanted to write the 60k words in between.  Awful people.

Easter Egg in the Open:  give me five LIKES and I’ll post the coda.

One week of Lent left!  What to write about now?

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MachCiv Dreams – Death Ship (pt.4)

Things coming together nicely.  DayJob is better for the next week as my boss is on vacation.  With that mental pressure off I thought about writing through the weekend, but recalled I must get my submission for a new cover up on 99designs; that’s a week overdue.

I realize I’m lecturing a little bit but at this point in his life, Barrett has no one else to talk to.  His daughter, Lily, mentions that in passing in ‘The Fourth Law’:  “Had her father lost all of his friends?”

A pyramid of human skulls is little comfort in your old age.

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MachCiv Dreams – Death Ship

If this short from my never-completed ‘Crosses & Doublecrosses’ represents part of Chapter One, what I’m doing here is from the last chapter.  Don’t worry about ‘spoilers!’ or anything like that:  the events of ‘Death Ship’ are broadly telegraphed in my first novel, ‘The Fourth Law.’  Don’t even fret over knowing Sylvia’s dead; I actually shoot her in the prologue.  How’s that for “starting your story in the middle”?

One of the reasons – and there were several – that I abandoned C&DC was the sheer awfulness of it all:  the characters, the situations, the settings.  Writing about misery made me miserable.  Getting ready for Holy Week next week, how about a story rich in death, betrayal, and crucifixions…?

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