A cracked open door about the culture in Knoxville, some ten plus years after the Breakup. And more Faustina.
I have to be careful here, too. I’m already interested in who Faustina is and what her relationship with MC is. I’ve only known her for three days but I bet I could build a novel around her.
I just might!
Not too much… really just wrapping up Gary’s day I started awhile ago. The ‘problem’ is what I saw next: just as I feared, I’m sorely tempted to start talking about the Hartmann’s and how life has changed in Knoxville over the past ten years.
Deep breaths: let’s try to stay focused on our happy couple…
This is going to be based on an idea I had almost three weeks ago. You don’t have to go back and read it – in fact, I’d rather you didn’t, as a better, edited, version is in a blockquote below the fold.
Henge (“hen-geh”) first made an appearance toward the end of The Fourth Law. I was playing with the idea of how AIs could make children; not just copies of themselves, but children, and she showed up. In the last scene of my second novel, Echoes of Family Lost, Henge meets Gary when everyone is taking some well deserved R&R on her beach. They make some connexion I still don’t understand and announce to both Families, human and machine, that they’re getting married.
The trick for me is to not get sidetracked on what’s happened politically and/or socially in the intervening ten years. I’m going to have to say something, obviously, but I’ll try to confine myself to culture. What I want to accomplish here is a love story between two very different people, who are united by their deep orthodox Catholic faith.
Let’s go!
This is a little longer, but I wanted it shut down this weekend. That, of course, is not the same as “over.” Few stories are ever over.
The construction of this is a bit different as I’ve made a change to my storytelling.
This was fun; perhaps too much fun, though. What next?
I really like this story. It’s wonderfully… comfortable. That will change, of course, in time. Akaiame is on the second-tallest building for a reason…
Parts 0-2 are already at 2500 words. Let’s go ahead and call this one a light novel or novella. Anyone wanna do the b&w illustrations for me?
Busy day at work; tired.
Had to forage for dinner.
Dry and itchy from the winter weather.
Wife suggested we just watch something.
…
In other words, I was given every opportunity to not write something today. As tomorrow is the beginning of Lent, color me unsurprised at the temptation to give up.
I suspected this would happen: my small writing exercise would trigger something that goes on longer. I’m hoping – hoping! – that this is only going to be 1000-1200 words, total. That’s all I’ve seen as yet.
This, originally, was a scene from my second novel, Echoes of Family Lost. However, because of my writing style (start in the middle, use flashbacks for details) this just didn’t fit. And worse, it allowed me to start writing exposition rather than dialog. It’s a failing of mine but at least I know it’s there.
The gist of this is that Lily Barrett, her friend Fausta, and their guide, Orloff, are on their way from the Republic of Texas towards East Tennessee, to find someone very important to her. The badlands of post-Breakup America are a rough place, but charitas may be found in unexpected places.
See? That’s me, talking again. I’ll shut up now.
Not knowing much, well, anything, about international copyrights, this could best be called fanfiction. The main character here, Nike, plays a not-insignificant role in my forthcoming novel, Defiant.
This story takes place in a world created by Yoshitoshi ABe nearly twenty years ago. It yielded an anime that – while dated – is one of the most powerful and compelling stories I’ve ever experienced. For a non-Christian, ABe had an amazingly Catholic vision.
And yes: I do know who’s in the cocoon.
the same way watching a Conan film counts as going to the gym. But, I wanted to talk about theology. Because Dante’s Comedy came into being – in vernacular – a generation or so before both Gutenberg and the so-called Protestant Reformation, the idea that there are three states after death became entrenched in the popular mind. To we followers of Holy Mother Church, that’s crap: there is only Heaven or Hell. Purgatory, invented by publishers to sell more books, is just Heaven’s… entryway? mudroom? foyer? It’s where you get yourself cleaned off and your shit together before coming further into the mansion for the grand party you were invited to. Walking into that covered in shit and blood would be rather rude, what?
I thank God for revealing the Tradition of Purgatory to His Church. If I really, honestly, believed that I had to be utterly perfect on this Earth to merit Heaven… suicide or Stalin seem to be the only responses to that. Given my personal unresponsiveness to the need of people about me, I pray for a long, long stay in the Foyer before I join the Party. Be rather rude if YHWH just let me in and while taking a flute of Champaign, I brushed past the Son with a muttered “…bloody wog!”
And that’s why most of my characters are finding their way there: Purgatory. Or, if you prefer, Guri (Glie). I’ve already written here, on this blog, shorts, where we see Nike, Maya, “Orloff” all having their moments. Honestly, I CANNOT wait to see the sunshine and be just a little drunk to write the book where ALL of them are there! Just tonight, I saw a little short between Emma (human) and Gordon (machine) of my most recent novel, Cursed Hearts, talking about the deaths of all their friends.
These blog posts keep me coming back to life, as it were. Hoping for greater things, very soon.
machciv 