Tag: science fiction

Nichole5: Part 2 Prologue

I love prologues that are also spoilers.  It then is incumbent upon the writer to make the reader forget it until the last few pages.  Every new novel of mine must have a personal challenge I’ve never tried before, and this is it.

I’m continuing to get good prototypes in via 99designs.com for the cover of ‘Friend and Ally,’ the first book about Nichole.  Entries will be open until Friday.  I’ll also have to think of a sub-title for this second book.  Reflecting the first, it’ll be “something and something,” but I’ve no idea.  I’ve time enough; and worlds.

Below the fold is how the story ends.  As David Byrne once asked, “Well?  How did I get here?!”

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Athens or Abattoir?

I’ve three pages of  notes; no, that’s not correct.  I’ve three pages of handwritten questions about where my next novel is to go.  I’ve named Nichole’s story “Part One,” so there’d better be a Part Two and it had best be along presently!  My aggressive date is Labor Day; my passive-aggressive date is Halloween.

After writing my first novel, T4L, I’ve always tried to do something different.  ‘Echoes’ was a ‘road story’ and Cursed Hearts a horror-romance.  The never-completed Crosses & Doublecrosses was a political-espionage thriller.  “The Saga of Nichole5: Part One, Friend & Ally” is… well… I don’t really know what to call it… it’s her voyage of self-discovery, but the three Acts of the book each revolve around a different battle, so it’s also a war story.

Anyway.  At one point Nichole is speaking to the Mayor – read: dictator – of what’s left of Portland, Oregon, offering her and the help of the resurgent Empire of Japan to make his remnant city-state into something like the Athenian Hegemony, but on the West Coast of the former US.  That’s in one hemisphere of my mind.

In the other… when I first saw the café/pub that is Zom’s, just at the northern fringe of Portland State U, I’d the Tubeway Army lyric in mind:

Down to Zom Zom’s a place like it was built in one day:

You can watch the humans try to run

Oh, look, there’s a Rape Machine I’d go outside if it’d look the other way;

You wouldn’t believe the things they do.

From it’s inception, I’d imagined a Bad End.  For the café?  The City?  All my characters?  Honestly, I didn’t know and I still don’t, but the pull in that direxion is overwhelming.  Playing with ideas, I’ve seen Nichole at the crest of the West Hills, looking down and east into Portland… the city an inferno.  Maybe if the camera pulls back a little…?

Gil rested his hand onto her shoulder.

“You did your best.”

“I still failed,” she replied.

There was a gurgle and cry from Mackenzie: sedated after Gil dragged the barbarian raider off of her in mid-rape.

“What now?” he asked.

“I must report my failure to the Throne,” was her casual reply.  “Perhaps I shall be deactivated for my incompetence?”

Yeah.  Lots to think about.  I’ve never been one to plan a story, but I do like to have a feel of where the path is trending, and the footing on this one is rocky.

The Second Bridge, Coda, pt5 (end)

Short?  Sure it is.  Abrupt?  I don’t think so.  Lampshade hung?  I thought I did, both in the main story and this coda.

Consider:  the “short” story of ‘The Second Bridge’ came in at 11.4k words.  This “little” bonus ending is 4900 words.  Sometimes, no matter how interesting these people are, I need to walk away for other projects.

To wit:  my copyeditor has returned the 2nd edition of ‘Echoes of Family Lost.’  This weekend shall be spent implementing those changes.  I tell you:  no matter how you might prize your storytelling, when an editor hands back a manuscript – that you thought was fine – essentially bleeding red ink… it’s an incredibly humbling experience.

Thanks, everyone, for reading about Henge and her families.  I hope you love them all as much as I do.  After this weekend’s editing, we’ll be off again!

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The Second Bridge, Coda, pt4

Question:  is there anyone, besides me, stupid enough to think that I would wrap things up tonight?  I really planned and wanted to.  It’s all in my head!  But it’s already 1.5L bottle of wine o’clock and tomorrow’s DayJob promises to be awful.

Part Five is it!  I swear!  Even if I have to wait three days and make it 10k words long!

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Life Imitates My Art; again

From chapter six (beginning page 90) of Cursed Hearts.  Christopher, Cat, and Anton are finishing dinner at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego:

“Brother,” Chris ventured, liking the sound of it, “does not the sea look odd to you, this night?”

In Anton’s exhale before turning left to look, Chris guestimated their host’s level of drunkenness.

“Hmmm!” Anton narrowed his eyes. “For the security of the state, I shall investigate this!”

He stood, not at all unsteady, and began walking purposefully toward the beach. With a glance at one another, Chris and Cat did, too. They wound their way through the few outbuildings of the hotel, catching up with him just at the sand. Leaning on a lamp post, Anton shucked his shoes and peeled off his socks.

“Follow me!” He called.

They did similarly. Not knowing if Cat saw, Chris did note the driver about eight paces behind them. They trotted to catch up with Anton. The tide was in, so he was only a dozen yards ahead.

“What… what’s with the surf?” Cat asked.

Each small breaker that came in was foaming in an odd, almost electric blue. Lines of the same blue were flashing up and down the strand, as if parts of the sea were sending messages to itself.

“Amazing!” Cat breathed. “What’s going on? Anton! Wait!”

He was rolling up his slacks to his knees. Was he thinking of going out in that?!

“Bioluminescence,” Chris said.

“What?”

“This is a rare event: a type of algae-bloom that emits light.” He pointed right to where a wave seemed to crackle in with blue fire. “Wait for that to withdraw, then run and jump hard on that spot!”

“Jump…?”

“Now, Cat!”

With enough wine in her to follow anyone’s orders, she sprinted the fifteen feet then jumped into the air. Her feet came down hard onto the wet, compacted sand.

A bright pulse of light blue light surged up and down the beach.

“Oh my God!” Cat cried. “That was sooo cool!”

Bioluminescence in the sea off San Diego.  Who would write about such a thing?

The Second Bridge, Coda, pt3

Ate dinner.  Put down 800 words.  No one else here.  Why the heck not keep going? So:  1200.

I’ll be wrapping all this up – well, sorta – in part 4.  Gary figures out what he wants to do with his life and we flick back to ‘present time’ with Lauren and Henge riding home after fishing.  I learned something very surprising about present-time Henge today!

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The Second Bridge, Coda, pt2

This is taking on a life of its own.  Just as most of my stories do.  I’m not letting myself get dragged into a discussion of biomechanics for pt3, so I’ll deal with that as quickly as I can.  Especially as I’ve heard Gary’s last words in the last scene.  I must return to the 2nd edition of Echoes of Family Lost and the copy-edit of The Saga of Nichole5.

I also must keep writing each day.  Tricky, that.

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The Second Bridge, Coda, pt1

I was just tooling around the keyboard, kinda thinking I’d write a story about Faustina.  I wrote two paragraphs.  Two days went by.  Nothing.  I looked at the third paragraph.

“I can turn this into a glimpse both into what happened after Henge was made, as well as a tinier glimpse eighteen months into her future.”

And…

“Who’s Lauren?”

I deleted the first two paragraphs and tried again.

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