I try to listen in and add to the chatroom of the weekly Star Chamber podcast when I can on Wednesday nights. Every now and then the host, Stephen Zimmer, forgets himself and invites me to call in. As their primary guest had to bail after an hour last night, Mr Zimmer made his mistake again and asked me to call.
I come in around the 1:03:35 mark. However, the main guest, John Pyka, I found to be an interesting man and the entire show is worth a listen. Cheers!
Of the two most famous Inklings, it was said that Lewis would sketch a scene by saying “The children stood in the forest. A chill wind blew.” Tolkien, on the other hand, would spend the next twenty pages not only telling you the history of the forest, but then go on to describe each and every leaf.
An exaggeration, but to make a point. My writing style can, charitably, be called more Lewisian; not so charitably, “the son-of-bitch-writer never explains anything!” Guilty as charged. I have a story to tell and my characters would be rather miffed at me if I take time to describe the leaves on the trees.
A positive of that, though, is in the million of tiny cracks and folds of my novels, there lurk hundreds of more stories. Back in January, I realized that over the course of five years being in Machine Civilization, I was able to pull together a short story collection. Below the fold is another example. Based upon “real life” – whatever that means – events, I was able to peek in on an interaction between Faustina and a civilian in a far flung corner of her imperium. This takes place about halfway through “Empress Crusade;” it is not in the book, but it is canon. Fodder for my next collection!
Continue reading “A Haunting Past”The very raw manuscript of “Goddess’ Crusade” is complete. I need to make at least two passes through it to check coherency, then pass it onto my copyeditor. I admit, this a one of the oddest stories I’ve been told to write down. At two points I tossed my hands in the air and walked away from the laptop.
As this is toward the end of the book, I don’t want to post spoilers, so I’ll post sex, instead.
Continue reading “A preliminary fork”Very pleased to announce the release of the paperback and ebook version of the first of the American Imperium trilogy, Princess’ Crusade! Book two is already copyedited and only needs a front cover – under development – before it is released, as well. For those of you who have been following along, the third manuscript is nearly complete and hopefully no more than six weeks out. Cheers!
Didn’t mean to go dark again. “Princess’ Crusade” is, God willing, about 48 hours from release. The front cover of “Empress’ Crusade” is being hammered out. I am 9000 words further on in the MS of “Goddess’ Crusade” from my last post. One major change: Holo just never sounded right; Faustina’s copy – her very active, independent copy – is renamed Helena.
And the repercussions of that new version of herself begin to manifest in Faustina Hartmann almost immediately. I am getting a little concerned about what comes next.
Continue reading “Making an end”An old friend suggested that this morning. I’d been going on about Faustina’s doings as I am trying to complete the MS for “Goddess’ Crusade,” and, confused, he said: why not make a wiki for your entire future history?
As he has a history of most always being correct, I pushed that to the back of my mind and kept on writing. About two hours ago I hit another stopping point (General Hartmann threatened the remaining population of Atlanta with death or evacuation; ethnic cleansing, either way) and I was not sure what comes next.
Pulling out a copy of the partial stemma of my works, see below, I guess it could serve as a basis of a wiki, for many of the major players. I will also have to describe the three tribes of AIs as well as the three (now two) corporations in Japan who took differing approaches to machine thought (Tohsaka, Somi, Neuroi). Then there are all the places where the stories take place, up to and including Mars. Dang: that means I’ll have to describe the constructs of tribes Tohsaka (the Path and platform, rotating difference engines, archery range, airstrip, Henge’s beach…) and Mendrovovitch (the ruined city, snowy steppe, Kuban’s restaurant…).
This is going to be quite an undertaking but I see now that it will allow me to keep a hand in writing during winter 2021 when I am focused on recording and editing audiobooks of my works. Yet another genius idea from the creative mind of Will Deonne!
Trying to play around with some of WordPress’s new features for the cover of “Princess’ Crusade.” Ideally, y’all will be able to vote on which one of the two front covers you like more. Let me see if this works… Please recall these are still in development but I hope release PC no later than Thanksgiving in the US. Better than just voting, if you’ve any suggestions, please do so in the comments. Cheers!
In which I sneak in two references to Herbert’s Dune in less than 2k words. After showing up at Owens CP, there’s a chapter where Gen’l Hartmann makes her way – with the proper escort – onto Fort Benning to seize her so-called sister, demi-human Alexandra Hood. It’s technical and time consuming and was a pain to write, literally, with my diseased eyelids. Below the fold is an interesting exchange as all of us, including me, are older as to the copy Reina made of Faustina.
PS Hands and eyes are slowly less bad. Had an IM shot of Kenalog-60 into my butt and am applying hydrocortisone cream to all my leprose bits.
PPS Not politics but common sense: for any of my readers in the US, make sure you have full fuel tanks in your vehicles and seven days of food in your home in case of “supply chain disruptions” following the election. This is not the 21st century I was expecting.
Continue reading “Two-in-one”Finally got off my ass (arse for those of you in the Commonwealth) and signed a contract with Labelschmeide for all three cover of the American Imperium trilogy. She has done fantastic work for me before and I highly recommend her.
The mixed news is that the first, “Princess’ Crusade,” will not be out on Halloween. Sometimes, irrational deadlines are just that: irrational. I’ve the copyedited version of it and book two (with thanks to SZ Services), but as I just said, the cover is still under development. And, I’ll need to add an extended stemma of Faustina’s family as well as non-copyrighted maps to aid in understanding her campaign against Savannah. A delay, but not a long delay.
I also had an idea last week, after being at a standstill for five days, as I mentioned. That idea blossomed into the two chapters I wrote over the weekend; having two main characters now is a great amount of work for me to keep track of things. Nonetheless, the Battle of Opelika is nearly over. With a chapter to mop up, it will take 1-2 chapters to evacuate the feral population of Atlanta. Or kill them.
Below the fold is General Hartmann getting back into the fight after nearly dying from the 105mm artillery.
Continue reading “Progress on two fronts”No, no, not like one of those emotionally disturbed who should be looked after and prayed for rather than being pumped full of chemicals and abused by surgeons who were the second-to-last in medical school (last being abortionists, of course).
This transition is having had my moment of clarity mentioned in the last post and moving from the second day of the Battle of Opelika to its immediate aftermath. Rather than recapitulate the entire chapter, below the fold is the last third of it, featuring acting legate Chesney – Faustina’s ‘court jester’ – seguing into… a dream? A vision? Or is it real?
Continue reading “Transitioning”
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