Knoxville Shopping Trip, 1/x

After all the drama around Bright Eyes, I honestly wanted something banal if not boring. So, turning back about twenty years, we have Henge Hartmann going to the market. She’s already had her two children and is a housewife who wants nothing more than to be a good wife and mother. Given what she is, her immediate family, and married into the imperial family, it is a bit more complicated that it first seems. I am looking forward to seeing where she takes me with this story.

The idea behind this is very, very loosely based upon Yokohama Shopping Trip. The lead there is also not human and their world is also changed. It is a brilliant but sometimes confusing manga and a warm, soothing anime. Five stars.

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Bright Eyes, 7/end

Found my way to the end. About 4400 words, so not a bad short story. What next?

Faustina, like Reina, is the type of person who you just have to shove the facts under their noses and they come ’round fairly quickly. Guess I need to update my family tree at the top of my blog again? I’ll wait until I’ve some idea how many kids they have.

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Bright Eyes, 6/?

I’ve mentally finished the story. Parts 7 and 8 next week. I’m very pleased with it and expect Stephen to cut it to shreds come copyedit time.

In book 19 we will meet Stephen Johnston a few stories before this one. Quiet but very clever; I think that’s why Fussy’s eyes landed on him for her second husband. We get a glimpse of that here, just before the empress shows up to be an asshole.

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Bright Eyes, 5/?

A tiny bit of backstory on Josh’s part. No doubt Liz knows most of it, but I’m old enough to know sometimes internal family lore has things which written records do not. Witness my father-in-law making me swear to never tell his daughter, my wife, what happened to him on the Eastern Front and in the AVO gulag.

On a personal note, it seems I may soon have a great deal more time to write.

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Bright Eyes, 4/?

They are so darling together, aren’t they? Let’s hope this bottle of gin doesn’t have a Tragic End at the bottom of it. I usually don’t. Usually. The end of one of my books is absolutely horrible. The end of Foes & Rivals is tragic as regards what Nichole 5’s mission was, but not horrid, as we get to see many of the players in later short stories and with walk-ons in a few novels. I don’t think that is where this going.

Even in A Texas Naval Affair, Fussy was faced with her cousin wanted to wed a former thug. Not exactly an adornment to the imperial family, but that mostly turned out well. Mostly.

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Bright Eyes, 3/?

One of the things I am just now realizing it that by being away from these people for just over four months, details that I knew better than my meatspace relatives become clouded or lost. In this case, while I knew Liz’s bio-dad dies in an accident (and her mom later remarries), I screwed up the dating. So, Liz cannot be 25; hell, she can barely be 18, and that still might be wrong. So, Josh is now just turned 23, while they were working on the moon.

So, when I’m starting to edit all of this into my third short story collection, I’d have to be very careful. I’ve made myself some notes in the Word file, so I don’t forget. Again.

Below the fold, Josh learns a little more about what is pending-wife is. And there’s a little romance for these kids who are now both years younger.

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Bright Eyes, 2/?

So, from Fussy’s first word, I guess this story is over? I kid; all the Harmanns are rather hardheaded and used to having their way. Think of it more as a negotiation point.

Looking back at part one, Liz almost seems a little “aspie.” Makes sense as being a demi of a technical bent, she’s used to focusing completely on something before moving on. Thus, that’s why Josh had no idea that she was interested in him until the radar array project was complete.

Below, I love the little bit where Josh is busted for looking at Faustina’s ass. We men really are pigs.

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Bright Eyes, 1/?

A short story about the first child of Empress Faustina. Demi-human, she considers herself a scientist and engineer, most recently working for the Thinking Machine, Ninon, of tribe Tohsaka, on a radar search array on the other side of the moon. While there, a human man, a few years older, catches her eyes, her bright yellow eyes. They have much work to do, so she says nothing. Until it is time to go back to Earth.

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Coming Back to Life

It has been a tough five months. My wife’s mother was dying…and dying…and wouldn’t die. So, my wife was gone much of these months. As an uxorious person, I missed her, and it short-circuited my writing schedule. My 19th book, another short story collexion, was derailed after 24k words. I had no new ideas; none of my characters wanted to talk to me.

As of three weeks ago, that is over. There are still estate issues, but my wife is home again. This morning, at Mass, for the first time in over sixteen weeks, someone said “hi.” I’ve only had Crown Princess Elizabeth, the first child of the Empress, speak two lines in Ice Inundation Intelligence. For my next post, here in just a few hours, we all get to meet her.

Again, apologies for the prolonged absence. I’ll try to do better. Deus vult.

Annexation (5/4 End)

Strange week; much RealLife drama I do not need. Picking at another short story, but nothing really clicking yet. I shall be patient.

Most autocrats enjoy it when people stand up to them, just because it doesn’t happen very often. The imperium’s bureaucracy is very small, as Fussy can do the work of many humans and do it faster, but I’m sure they are rather obsequious. I doubt her legates are. Forewarned by Old Dysart, Stephen does not put up with her shit, either.

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