Blazing

Busy with sorting cover designs for Friend & Ally.  Of course, that’s no excuse for not writing.  What is was my neck:  in trying to stop a piece of paper from falling off a desk at work, I’ve done something horrible to my neck.  I wake up feeling fine, but if I tilt my head forward – as in, reading a screen, repackaging meds, snapping together IVs, prepping things in the isolation hood – for more than twenty minutes, it’s as if there’s an ice pick in the upper left of my neck.  I come home tanjed near shaking and in tears from the pain.  It laughs at ibuprofen.  Friday night I took a Flexeril and a bottle of wine and this AM was less bad, at least to the point I was able to start laying down the story of Nichole5 Part 2.

I’ll admit that it started where I expected but ended up where I did not.  I’d seen the ‘catching fish’ part.  Everything after that… news to me!  But great exposition and exploration of Nichole’s character.  I wonder what they’ll say to each other in the morning?

Continue reading “Blazing”

Watts up with The Fourth Law?

Having revised, re-edited, and re-covered my first novel – Amazon has me in the Science Fiction ghetto country club, but all my stories are really about relationships, in this case, between friends – I’ve been serializing it on Wattpad.

I’ve gotten very little traction to-date.  The site is mostly populated by Gen Zyklon; my eldest daughter says she reads it for the ecchi fan-fiction, but I’m open to trying new markets.  Still and all, if there’s no pickup in readership, I’ll be closing that tent in a week.

Until then, if you care to read about cute machines and humans doing cute things, please drop by!

https://www.wattpad.com/story/148803084-the-fourth-law

 

The Second Bridge, Coda, pt5 (end)

Short?  Sure it is.  Abrupt?  I don’t think so.  Lampshade hung?  I thought I did, both in the main story and this coda.

Consider:  the “short” story of ‘The Second Bridge’ came in at 11.4k words.  This “little” bonus ending is 4900 words.  Sometimes, no matter how interesting these people are, I need to walk away for other projects.

To wit:  my copyeditor has returned the 2nd edition of ‘Echoes of Family Lost.’  This weekend shall be spent implementing those changes.  I tell you:  no matter how you might prize your storytelling, when an editor hands back a manuscript – that you thought was fine – essentially bleeding red ink… it’s an incredibly humbling experience.

Thanks, everyone, for reading about Henge and her families.  I hope you love them all as much as I do.  After this weekend’s editing, we’ll be off again!

Continue reading “The Second Bridge, Coda, pt5 (end)”

The Second Bridge, Coda, pt4

Question:  is there anyone, besides me, stupid enough to think that I would wrap things up tonight?  I really planned and wanted to.  It’s all in my head!  But it’s already 1.5L bottle of wine o’clock and tomorrow’s DayJob promises to be awful.

Part Five is it!  I swear!  Even if I have to wait three days and make it 10k words long!

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Life Imitates My Art; again

From chapter six (beginning page 90) of Cursed Hearts.  Christopher, Cat, and Anton are finishing dinner at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego:

“Brother,” Chris ventured, liking the sound of it, “does not the sea look odd to you, this night?”

In Anton’s exhale before turning left to look, Chris guestimated their host’s level of drunkenness.

“Hmmm!” Anton narrowed his eyes. “For the security of the state, I shall investigate this!”

He stood, not at all unsteady, and began walking purposefully toward the beach. With a glance at one another, Chris and Cat did, too. They wound their way through the few outbuildings of the hotel, catching up with him just at the sand. Leaning on a lamp post, Anton shucked his shoes and peeled off his socks.

“Follow me!” He called.

They did similarly. Not knowing if Cat saw, Chris did note the driver about eight paces behind them. They trotted to catch up with Anton. The tide was in, so he was only a dozen yards ahead.

“What… what’s with the surf?” Cat asked.

Each small breaker that came in was foaming in an odd, almost electric blue. Lines of the same blue were flashing up and down the strand, as if parts of the sea were sending messages to itself.

“Amazing!” Cat breathed. “What’s going on? Anton! Wait!”

He was rolling up his slacks to his knees. Was he thinking of going out in that?!

“Bioluminescence,” Chris said.

“What?”

“This is a rare event: a type of algae-bloom that emits light.” He pointed right to where a wave seemed to crackle in with blue fire. “Wait for that to withdraw, then run and jump hard on that spot!”

“Jump…?”

“Now, Cat!”

With enough wine in her to follow anyone’s orders, she sprinted the fifteen feet then jumped into the air. Her feet came down hard onto the wet, compacted sand.

A bright pulse of light blue light surged up and down the beach.

“Oh my God!” Cat cried. “That was sooo cool!”

Bioluminescence in the sea off San Diego.  Who would write about such a thing?

The Second Bridge, Coda, pt3

Ate dinner.  Put down 800 words.  No one else here.  Why the heck not keep going? So:  1200.

I’ll be wrapping all this up – well, sorta – in part 4.  Gary figures out what he wants to do with his life and we flick back to ‘present time’ with Lauren and Henge riding home after fishing.  I learned something very surprising about present-time Henge today!

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The Second Bridge, Coda, pt2

This is taking on a life of its own.  Just as most of my stories do.  I’m not letting myself get dragged into a discussion of biomechanics for pt3, so I’ll deal with that as quickly as I can.  Especially as I’ve heard Gary’s last words in the last scene.  I must return to the 2nd edition of Echoes of Family Lost and the copy-edit of The Saga of Nichole5.

I also must keep writing each day.  Tricky, that.

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Empire’s Agent, baker’s dozen

I’ve uploaded the final re-edit for T4L.  The preliminary re-edit of Echoes of Family Lost is due in next week.  After I give my poor copy-editor a week off she’ll be back into “The Saga of Nichole5: Part 1 – ‘Friend & Ally.'”  That will have me essentially re-publishing and publishing three novels in three months.

To quote the smartest person on my planet, Dorina, “That’s SOOOO cool!”

On the first hand, I am not thrilled where this has ended.  On the second hand, this is just a temporary pause!  At 11k words, it would be a real pleasure to turn this into a canonical MC novel where, as a romance, no one dies.

[sit down, Will!]

On the gripping hand, I’ve much work to be done with the re-edit of EoFL and SN5-1 right on its heels.  As I’ve pointed out, I can no longer not write, so I wonder… what’s next? Continue reading “Empire’s Agent, baker’s dozen”

Empire’s Agent, pt.12

Busy morning about the house; was in the process of installing a new fluorescent ballast in the garage when there was a spark – oh, yeah:  should probably turn the breaker off.  Obviously Someone wants me to write more stories or I’d have been struck dead just then.  All together now:

“there are no such things as coincidences!”

Below the fold the story did not, honestly, go where I thought it would.  I was very surprised that they made such an emotional connexion when I’d been expecting a physical one.  That’s, obviously, still a very real possibility in their next few hours, but… I wonder…

The devil on my left shoulder whispers “kill him!  horribly!  tragically!” Not today, Will D.!

In other RealWorld(TM) news, the final version of the Second Edition of The Fourth Law is being reviewed for release into the wild without a radiocollar.  I hope to post an Amazon link no later than Wednesday.  If you want to save 30% and get a personalized, signed copy, let me know in the comments or via writer [at] 3-arstudios DOT com.

Continue reading “Empire’s Agent, pt.12”