Tag: machine civilization

Tamera (pt6)

This is about halfway through. I think I just got to an ending which shall be along in a few days. That makes these 4300 words about 15 pages in a 6″ x 9″ book. I’ll have to start pulling these shorts together to see how much material I have right now. I need at least one more story – most likely young Aurie in her Sisterhood, the first time she went into Berserker Mode, and probably nearly killed a human – or perhaps two.

I’m beginning to think that Four Roses bourbon presupposes me to cliffhanger endings.

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Tamera (pt5)

Broke 2000 words. This is supposed to be a short story, right?

Per my usual, got stuck at the end of this. Had a head-slap moment at Mass when (…a short story, right?) I realized I don’t need the granular details. These collections assume the reader has at least a passing familiarity with Machine Civilization so I can turn the exposition waaaay down. Thus, we’ll be back to Tamera with Lem in the next scene.

I think Fussy’s 180, below, was hilarious.

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Tamera (pt4)

“Jaw-jaw is better than war-war,” as they saying goes. I’d modify that to “in most cases.” As seizing the EAST reactor by force would be a huge logistical undertaking – not that the Hartmann family could not pull it off – it appears that diplomacy would be the first step.

This is the first time any of us, including me, has met Ildi. She is mentioned in passing in “Obligations of Rank” as a carefree young girl who regards the world as her personal play-toy. Sent as an exchange student to Japan by her mother, Empress Faustina, it appears she has matured a bit. Curious to see where this is going to go.

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Tamera (short story, pt3)

Working title will be the MC’s name. No guarantees when I finally add it to a collection. This at least gives me a Category and Tag.

I’ve mentioned in my published works that China is in a bad way right now. Their neo-colonial experiment in Africa was bleeding them and when the US and EU disintegrated, there went their customer base. They are in the modern version of the Era of Warring States, regional powers of all-against-all. That has allowed both the Russians and Japanese to continued their build up of power on earth and above it with little to no interference. Thus, my thought is, rather than an air assault legionary battle group dropping into Hefei, it might instead by one of the imperial family with a boat-load of money. “Nice fusion reactor you have there; shame if something happened to it.”

“It’s sometimes easier to bribe armies rather than fight them.” Sidney Reilly to Boris Savinkov.

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Still no Title

There are going to be A LOT of people packed into this story. I’m off DayJob tomorrow but my priority shall be getting the “Regent” MS to my copyeditor and a series of descriptions of what I think might work on a cover to my designer. Once all that is finished, I’ll turn back to what’s happening with this poor kid.

The sequences are shorter as this is supposed to be a short story, right?

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New Short Story in the works

With “Regent” shortly off to my copyeditor and cover designer, I have two more projects. First, the completion of “New Russia,” what I abandoned about 13k words in back in spring. Second it to put together at least two more short stories for a second collection. To the latter end… Monday at 0630, letting the dogs out, I saw about the first half of what’s below. The second half came after six hours of nothing in my head. And, per usual, I’m about 500 words ahead as I don’t know how the politics of this will shake out.

So here we have a sick little boy. The trick for me, the writer, is that there are three people in this story, the Doctors Hartmann, and Dorina of tribe Tohsaka, who are vastly smarter than I am. It is tricky to write when you have people like that looking over your shoulder. And I don’t even have a working title yet.

And with open tabs about Batten Disease and the EAST reactor in China, my Feeb file likely was just reactivated

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Colour | Epilogue

And that’s a wrap. 67,800 words of “Regent.” For those of you reading along from the beginning, congratulations. Anyone who has commented here or sent me a note, I appreciate your input and it all goes to make the story better.

I’ll be doing some editing and formatting for a day or two before dropping this load onto my copyeditor. At the same time, I’ll see if my cover designer has not frozen to death in central Germany to prod her into action. With chance and luck, I can have this commercially available by the end of January.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

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Colour Strange Charm

Merry Christmas Eve. Level 3 storm warning here. My pharmacist at DayJob is literally dialing it in: logging onto EPIC from home. It’s too cold for the salt to work so the roads are a mess. Told me to stay home.

I think I can finish this MS today. That would have symmetry for me. It was Xmas Eve, eight years ago, just before midnight when I clicked “Publish” and changed my world.

And no, I don’t know what she is, either. Kalí first makes her appearance in “A Texas Naval Affair,” where another young man was trying to woo someone from the imperial family. Love will make a man do strange things.

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Colour’s Reprimand

Another semi-anticipated break. Even with Thanksgiving here in FUSA, I was still six half-days straight at DayJob. At least for Turkey Day, Daughter #1 was home for two days from college. She’s stressing about the last classes in her senior year. Then, Saturday afternoon, I had a slice of apple pie. Since no one had got sick over the last 48 hours, I had some odd reaction to it which presented just like food poisoning, so found myself wrapped around the toilet all night. Some pharmacists I work with suggested it might be “sucrase-isomaltase deficiency”; normally congenital, people who have been on a low carb diet for a long time – such as me – can develop a very bad reaction to refined sugar. If that means no more sweets, I’m fine with that. We’ll see what happens.

Speaking of happening, this picks up right where the last installment left off, with Ed on his way and Colour trying to come up to speed to the new situation. Aurie tries to get all “humans are beneath my concern now” and Colour calls her on it. It made me think of the old Windows XP meme: “Task Failed Successfully.”

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