Tag: machine civilization

Transitioning

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?

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“That’s how deals are made”

Again, I’m no longer posting everything, but I do want to show that I am returning to the human-Machine interchange. Their interests and goals are very, very different and – I think – it will all segue into part two of “Goddess’ Crusade” with what might be happening to Faustina. Don’t know; not even after three Manhattans.

There was military planning before this excerpt and after it. I think chapter 8 will be the big battle. I’ve been known to suddenly be distracted by something before and I refuse to rule it out this time. All in all, I’d like to see it over and what comes next.

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Crystalline

Something I am choosing to do in “Goddess Crusade” is play up the soft-SF tech associated with the Machines. There was very little of that in the second of the trilogy and, given where this might be headed, I need to get readers reacquainted with those ideas. The ‘final boss,’ as it were, of this trilogy is Alexandra Hood, some years Faustina’s senior and also demi-human… but in a manner I do not yet grasp.

Below the fold is their first face-to-face meeting. Sorta. Faustina is disappointed.

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Filling In

God was kind enough to give me two pieces of the puzzle to part 1 of my next book.  Just now I saw the third piece*… right when I have to make dinner** for the family… arrgh!

*Nichole, as hybrid student/teacher in V. Bishop’s coding class, has a discussion after class with Vicki about improvements to the gain of the remote sensors used by the agriculturalists up the Columbia.  If Nichole backtracks on Mackenzie, that yields her:

1. A personal agent in the dictator’s household;

2. An agent with access to financial records;

3. A means of audio eavesdropping.

YES!

**Pork medallions in mustard-cream sauce, flambed with apple brandy.

“HBD!” Adding text

Last night was crashing and burning:  came home hopped up on coffee (recall:  I’ve high blood pressure) to get things done on HBD!, only to be confronted with hysterical wife:  “my J-drama torrents won’t work!!”  An hour lost there, then another making dinner, I finally sit down to format some jpg’s to pdf’s . . . forgetting that twice 2700 pixels is not 1350, but, in fact, 5400.  Re-re-formatting everything, I do a trial upload at 2215.  All clear.  Time for bed.

Tonight, adding text.  As this is a book aimed at 2nd graders, I think there’s about 120 words, total.  This issue – ONCE AGAIN – is formatting:  my pages are set to ‘bleed-out’ on the edges, so when making text boxes, I have to guess where my perimeter is.  That’s been three tries so far.  I’d also some issues about ISBN’s, but would rather toss my desktop out my window than even think about discussing it.

Below the fold, a snapshot of page 17.  God bless Claudia Gadotti, my illustrator.  How she could reach into my mind from my poor, bare-bones description of my characters to make what she did . . . well, just wait until I’ve wrapped this all up in a couple of weeks.

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HBD! Update

With only seventeen days left to go in my self-imposed deadline, I just now figured out how to format the pages from jpeg to pdf and upload them properly to CreateSpace.  I’ve been spoiled:  for my traditional novels, I’ve used “Bookwrite” by Blurbb; a fantastic program, so long as you stay within its boundaries.  As this is an illustrated children’s book, I needed those boundaries to be elastic, so after a few days, out that went.

Then it was a matter of re-scaling Claudia’s wonderful drawings.  That took a couple of days to figure out… glad my wife told me to drink less:  I was about ready to throw my computer out the window.  I finally got a test of the cropped, resized, and split, pages successfully uploaded to CreateSpace.  I’ll – hopefully – reformat the remaining images tomorrow, then add the little bit of text (this is a kids book, after all) the day after.  Looks like the wife and daughters will be foraging for dinner the rest of this week!

Provisional cover is below the fold.

In other news, I’ve seen some huge character changes for my NaNoWriMo project this year; I’m quite pleased!  Set in a part of MachCiv I’ve not really been to, yet, and something of a horror novel, this should be fun!

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A Look Back

For the first time in just over two years, I’m on vacation.  Even that’s qualified, as we’re in Houston/Galveston, but the reason we’re here is my wife’s 6 month post cancer-treatment checkup.  Still, better than central Ohio.

Had I been home, I’d be working on “Henge’s Big Day;” I’m not, so I’m not.  I did, however, see a vignette that I alluded to while writing “Defiant.”  Some skinny-dipping at the PSU pool with my main characters.  Was finally able to type it out, today.

This takes place halfway between Act II and Act III.

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‘Defiant’ – End; One.

An experiment, just to keep me writing.  People I’ve never met, places I’ve not seen – and that I don’t recall – for over thirty years.  And here I am, about 60k words later.

Creativity is occasionally creepy:  where does all this come from?

Anyhoo.  There are still flaws in what’s below.  Someday, after I’ve written Part 2, I’ll get this all cleaned up and ‘novel-ized.’

Played with different ‘voices’ in this one; too much gin to get it all right.  Actually excised a couple of paragraphs:  I was lecturing again.  Thanks, Will!

Let’s do this again.  Soon!

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