As y’all have heard me say, part three is a bit harder for me. That being so, I’m planning on every-other-day updates rather than daily. I’m having to pay a lot of attention to details I’d otherwise gloss over, and it takes time.
What a lovely family. I’m trying my best to not ruin it.
Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!
Continue reading ““The Fallen” 3/2″Pleased to announce the release of both the paperback and Kindle versions of my latest book. Number seventeen of the future history that is Machine Civilization.
As with many of my other books, I am hoping to have it ported to Smashwords in a week or two, depending on how many times I bang my head against a brick wall for their kludgy interface,
***
Canada is dying. In a new ice age, one by one, their cities are falling. They occupied the empty US Midwest but Quebec wants out and the Russian Army is coming into their central provinces from the west. Leading a scout unit to divine the Russians’ intentions, Lt. Eloise Patel is captured and tortured, then rescued by the love of her life, Centurion Bob Hardt. The politics point to a three-way war.
Mars is being reborn. Terraformed by the Polar Alliance, the northern hemisphere is an ocean. But the Second Inundation has many worried. There to keep an eye on things, Empress Faustina and one of her sons stumble across an ancient alien artifact – and vanish.
While the politicians bluster and threat, Hardt, Patel, and Sgt. Sergei Konev of the Russian Army try to keep a peace on the ground and between one another and their three nations.
***
As I mentioned in the last installment, this one is a bit harder as there is no main character, per se. That means I cannot use first-person thought without headhopping, a bad early habit of mine from some years ago.
I’m realizing now that what that does do is make me describe things more. That’s a net positive as this is a new world in the process of terraforming. So I suppose part three was meant to be this way.
We step ahead about ten years here. Saras is married, one son, a daughter pending. Back on Mars, which we saw she considers her home, she and her little boy anxiously wait for his father, her husband, to get back from Earth.
Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!
Continue reading ““The Fallen” 3/1″And this is the end of part two. It would made for a fantastic scene in a movie, which was how it was shown to me.
Saras’ conflicted feelings to Les are obvious, as a girl, and complex, as they are both demis. Her question and his answer toward the conclusion put an end to whatever emotions she might have been feeling about him, besides love and respect for a senior member of the family. And, this is two Tolkien references in two segments, for those of you keeping track.
I’m getting into part three…and it’s a tangle. Unlike part one which had Eloise with “first-person thoughts,” and part two with Saras doing the same, there is no single of the three I’ve met so far who will have that. So, instead of people thinking and talking to move the story along, it’s third-person me typing all this out. It is NOT my style and I find it limiting and clunky. I’ve only about 1000 words of it so far, and one of those three characters hasn’t even wandered onstage yet, so I’m a little unclear as to how long part three will be. I do, at least, see how it keeps the overall arc toward that feral demi-girl whose image started all this foolishness.
Have a good weekend. New material on Monday. Deus vult.
Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!
Continue reading ““The Fallen” 2/10″This is pushing PG-13, but I think it works. It does come back to what I mentioned about Les and Min being used to being alone.
Saw the beginning of Part 3 early this morning. Going to work on that now.
Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!
Continue reading ““The Fallen” 2/8″A bit of a longer segment, going into the weekend. Minerva, as I mentioned in the last segment, started off as a sliver of Reina. Left to her own computational devices, a new personality formed. That personality, like how a baby bird imprints onto its parents, is completely fixated by Laszlo Hartmann. Back when the Minerva-consciousness was still barely formed and she was still Reina, she watched Les and his boyfriend, Nikita, behave in a sexually deviant fashion. As a very young new soul, she made several mistakes based upon that observation when it came to expressing her deep feelings for her captain.
Now, five years later, she seems much more comfortable in her role as helpmate and second-in-command of INS Lionheart as it gads about the outer solar system. As I do not think she has ever been around human children before, her quick response, below, was a surprise to me.
I wonder what Saras and Min will talk about? In wifi, androids can speak mind-to-mind just as demis do, but I don’t think Min would without “copying” everything to Les. We shall see.
Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!
Continue reading ““The Fallen” 2/5″As this is still primarily a writing experiment, I am playing fast and lose with time; thus the “Two weeks later…” That’s sloppy writing but rough drafts are about ideas, not grammar.
From Part Three of “Obligations of Rank” and the short story “Ceres” in “Imperial Entanglements,” we meet Laszlo Hartmann once again. This is about five years after “Ceres,” I think, so there are changes and adjustments to his life. We’ll get to know Minerva a bit more, tomorrow.
Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!
Continue reading ““The Fallen” 2/4″Talking to one of her own kind, Saras almost comes across as normal. Almost. Recall that her father is human but carried the gene for demi-human. Two generations on, Saras is something of a mystery to me.
And she meets someone who makes her inexperience patent.
Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!
Continue reading ““The Fallen” 2/2″“It is a harsh place. We are becoming a harsh people.” I knew and know that this story will likely be my darkest since “Crosses and Doublecrosses.” I just didn’t think I would get there so soon. Saras takes after her grandmother in several ways. I am older in what I’ve written that family loyalty does not map to liking someone or a caring relationship.
I wonder what we’ll learn in this Part 2?
Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!
Continue reading ““The Fallen” 2/1″This is the conclusion of Part 1. Fussy has just laid it out to Eloise in sort of a “this is your duty” approach, which they knew would be the best route to take, rather than, “that other woman wants you out of the way.”
We meet Saras, not quite eight years old. Demi-human. She is the main character for Part 2, which I’m working on but once again stuck. I’ll figure something out, I’m sure.
Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!
Continue reading ““The Fallen” 1/5″
machciv 