I sometimes have the illusion that I can write short stories, but ultimately, readers recognize that they are, could be, or should be part of a novel or a series, a larger world than a short story. The illusion, I think comes from noel scene writing. The ideal scene is a story in itself: characters, setting, emotions, a change. A short story doesn't really require any more than that, although to be a really good scene or an adequate short story, all of those have to be really well developed. Where they differ is that the scene must carry the greater story arc of the novel, take it forward a step. I suspect that where I go wrong with short stories is that I have in mind more of the world, what came before, what will come after, and it leaks into the story even when I want it as a story rather than a scene.
Similarly, where I find myself less satisfied with my science fiction scenes than my quest fantasies, is that there are always new scene settings for the quest fantasies, whereas my space SF tend to be rather contained in a ship or two, a city or two, or as one I am working on, air-base prisons that are much the same from one to the next. That means that many scenes might share the same setting, and I don't have to, shouldn't spend as much of the scene describing that setting. Even if I include a few words and phrases to remeind the reader where they are at, add a different detail as some prop becomes more pat of the scene instead of an unspecified background element, I still end up with less richly described scenes. It's appropriate, but leaves me feeling like something is missing as I work on my revisions.
What do you look for when you revise your scenes?
Monday, December 27, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
alien versions of English
Okay, right off, I know the ast scene in E-ships has problems, for one, valley hillbilly doesn't really make sense, and certainly isn't the sort of phrase these people would use. On the other hand, is it something my readers will understand? Think amusing? Hillbilly has all kinds of implicatinos, mostly what I intend here, including the mountain base (though outsiders think of them as coming from the valleys, they themsleves think of themselves as living on the mountains) but are there other words that would provide the meaning without the apparent contradiction? And is the contradiction absurd, or clever? Sometimes, I just don't know.
And then there is the "witty reparte" between the two. Does it come off right? Endeavor is probably too high end a word for the hillbilly. I enjoy writing the word play and rarely have the characters who would participate. I suspect half of it is a stretch of my imagination to see a connection between the words at all, and that the other half is too blatent to seem anything but trite, but that, too, is hard to tell from the writer side of the equation. How does it come across to the reader?
And then there is the "witty reparte" between the two. Does it come off right? Endeavor is probably too high end a word for the hillbilly. I enjoy writing the word play and rarely have the characters who would participate. I suspect half of it is a stretch of my imagination to see a connection between the words at all, and that the other half is too blatent to seem anything but trite, but that, too, is hard to tell from the writer side of the equation. How does it come across to the reader?
Friday, November 12, 2010
I think I'm Back
A computer crash turned out to be more complete than originally hoped so I now have a new computer, new versions of all my old files, and access to the internet at LOOONG last. Meanwhile, Earthlink changed some of their web software so it is no longer compatible with Firefox and I can't update my story that I was presenting there. So, that one will join E-ships on this blog (in it's own category) as soon as I figure out where I was. As I generally do when I am sans computer, I wrote a lot of stuff on paper which now has to be typed and I have to re-establish my posting schedule, so it is likely to be irratic, especially with the upcoming holidays. Please bare with me as I find the most effective new pattern for getting on line, and I hope you enjoy the side order of fantasy to accompany the science fiction.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
revising notes - the other book
I may have mentioned (or may not) that I was reviewing sequels to a book I'm trying to find a agent for and found them a bit of a mess. I did some preliminary fixes, read them aloud to my sister during a recent trip - the third book is still a sorry mess with many gaps, and noted lots of minor fixes and a couple of major ones for the second book.
Following Context, I'm going through it again, the same paper version in a binder, looking for other specifics including names and descriptions (yellow highlighter) of people, places, and things, so that I can create a listing and to ensure consistency. At the same time, I am drafting small filler bits I noted as needed and deleting lots of sentences that explain the same things repeatedly or explain things that don't need explaining. I do that a lot. Some of it I know I do, especially in early drafts, as reminders to myself, so I know why i did something and don't forget and accidentally delete something will be important to a later scene if not obviously the current one, but in the final draft, they all have to go. It must be left up to the reader to figure it out (if they even notice) as a small mystery, a hint, a forshadowing, or whatever. Otherwise too much of the pleasure of continuing to read (looking for answers) is lost.
I kind of new that and watched for it during my revision, but reading silently to ones self, the repetitive bits are EASY to miss, because they are already in the mind and the second time, its not obvious whether it was in the book already or in the mind, as before. Reading it aloud creates a new memory--the memory of saying the words rather than just the content of them--so even if my audience doesn't recognize the repetition (and usually my sister catches them right away unless they are phrased and focused VERY differently)--I recognize the repetition as I say it and make a quick squiggle in the margin for later revision/deletion (the first occurence doesn't get the squiggle but may be the version that gets deleted when i decide on the revisions). i was kind of aware of the need, but was surprised how much I had done it, and also surprised how often the unneeded explanations were one-liners that I was quite fond of at the end of paragraphs. They always say "kill your darlings" but whenever I've heard it, they were refering to whole scenes that are fun but don't add to the story. in this case, my darlings are a bunch of one liner sentences. Alas. When I put it in the computer, I'll keep it all by saving as a new version and making all the changes there, so it won't be quite as painful, but one way or the other, they have to go, and so do many paragraphs of explanatory narration. Valueable for thinking the subtlties of the story through, but not for the reader.
At Context, one of the teachers who taught the value of planning the plot up front repeated often that it helped avoid writing 150,000 words when you should be aiming for 100,000 or less. But that's definitely not my problem. I'd have to write 150,000 words in order to have a hundred thousand by the time I'm done revising. And its usually the better for being shrunk once all the additions have been made. If I have a complaint about published books, its usually that they didn't get the excess edited out, especially in the later books of any series.
Following Context, I'm going through it again, the same paper version in a binder, looking for other specifics including names and descriptions (yellow highlighter) of people, places, and things, so that I can create a listing and to ensure consistency. At the same time, I am drafting small filler bits I noted as needed and deleting lots of sentences that explain the same things repeatedly or explain things that don't need explaining. I do that a lot. Some of it I know I do, especially in early drafts, as reminders to myself, so I know why i did something and don't forget and accidentally delete something will be important to a later scene if not obviously the current one, but in the final draft, they all have to go. It must be left up to the reader to figure it out (if they even notice) as a small mystery, a hint, a forshadowing, or whatever. Otherwise too much of the pleasure of continuing to read (looking for answers) is lost.
I kind of new that and watched for it during my revision, but reading silently to ones self, the repetitive bits are EASY to miss, because they are already in the mind and the second time, its not obvious whether it was in the book already or in the mind, as before. Reading it aloud creates a new memory--the memory of saying the words rather than just the content of them--so even if my audience doesn't recognize the repetition (and usually my sister catches them right away unless they are phrased and focused VERY differently)--I recognize the repetition as I say it and make a quick squiggle in the margin for later revision/deletion (the first occurence doesn't get the squiggle but may be the version that gets deleted when i decide on the revisions). i was kind of aware of the need, but was surprised how much I had done it, and also surprised how often the unneeded explanations were one-liners that I was quite fond of at the end of paragraphs. They always say "kill your darlings" but whenever I've heard it, they were refering to whole scenes that are fun but don't add to the story. in this case, my darlings are a bunch of one liner sentences. Alas. When I put it in the computer, I'll keep it all by saving as a new version and making all the changes there, so it won't be quite as painful, but one way or the other, they have to go, and so do many paragraphs of explanatory narration. Valueable for thinking the subtlties of the story through, but not for the reader.
At Context, one of the teachers who taught the value of planning the plot up front repeated often that it helped avoid writing 150,000 words when you should be aiming for 100,000 or less. But that's definitely not my problem. I'd have to write 150,000 words in order to have a hundred thousand by the time I'm done revising. And its usually the better for being shrunk once all the additions have been made. If I have a complaint about published books, its usually that they didn't get the excess edited out, especially in the later books of any series.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Context was great
If you are a serious SF or Fantasy (or other speculative or historical fiction) writer and are going to go to one con, go to this one and pay for as many workshops as you can get into. Great material. I have all too many notes for rewriting and fixing Cerelian Gold, especially the center, and once I change the center, the end will probably change as well. Tips i found particularly applicable here were:
Give the characters hope and the illusion of nearing at least their first, lower level goal before dashing it and making them realize they have to deal with a bigger a problem than they hoped.
As you approach the climax, give the characters a big setback so the climb to success (or ultimate failure) is even bigger than it was before.
Add more problems as you go (complications) as well as solutions to the problems that were there from the start.
Lots of work to do.
Also, along the way I realized one of the reasons I was having trouble with my Something New: I have yet to create a character I actually like. I haven't had that problem when I've put the story further away from semi-contemporary life so I'm thinking of creating a character in space, maybe even an alien, or way back in the past, then turning them into a more contemporary human and plopping them back into the world of Something New, with an outsiders view even if they aren't actually an outsider: a lot of people, including but not limited to loners, geeks, and rebels have a tendency to at least feel like outsiders, and they are characters most of us can relate to, even like, so I can start there and see if that doesn't work a little better.
Give the characters hope and the illusion of nearing at least their first, lower level goal before dashing it and making them realize they have to deal with a bigger a problem than they hoped.
As you approach the climax, give the characters a big setback so the climb to success (or ultimate failure) is even bigger than it was before.
Add more problems as you go (complications) as well as solutions to the problems that were there from the start.
Lots of work to do.
Also, along the way I realized one of the reasons I was having trouble with my Something New: I have yet to create a character I actually like. I haven't had that problem when I've put the story further away from semi-contemporary life so I'm thinking of creating a character in space, maybe even an alien, or way back in the past, then turning them into a more contemporary human and plopping them back into the world of Something New, with an outsiders view even if they aren't actually an outsider: a lot of people, including but not limited to loners, geeks, and rebels have a tendency to at least feel like outsiders, and they are characters most of us can relate to, even like, so I can start there and see if that doesn't work a little better.
Friday, August 13, 2010
fixing the arc or arch or wave or something
I've been playing with the ending sections because they had a bit of mashe together feel, rather than the kind of flow I wanted. I don't think it's quite there yet, but I think it is improving overall. the tricky bit with these kinds of big changes is that I've probably left quite a few references to action in other scenes that maynot be out of alignment. If you notice something that seems out of sequence or just wrong, it probably is. Please let me know.
I still probably need to do something with the middle too, the story arc as they call it, though I think it a misnomer. An arc implies a fairly straightforward buildup to a climax, but most stories, especially novel length ones aren't that straightforward, and if they are, they shouldn't be. One description I was given was that it should be more like a W or an M, ups and downs, things seeming to go right as well as going wrong, even if they get undone in the next breath. I think my arc is too smooth an arch and needs some more ups and downs, contradictory forces, or misleads (mystery like). The trick of course it to have those ups and downs, and also changing between action, intensity, and other qualities while overall still building toward a climax. I've been working on one of my other books that does it rather better and noticed the nature of the problem, but haven't yet figured out how to fix it. How to you get a feeling of success as a prisoner on an enemy ship without it seeming a total illusion or a solace?
I still probably need to do something with the middle too, the story arc as they call it, though I think it a misnomer. An arc implies a fairly straightforward buildup to a climax, but most stories, especially novel length ones aren't that straightforward, and if they are, they shouldn't be. One description I was given was that it should be more like a W or an M, ups and downs, things seeming to go right as well as going wrong, even if they get undone in the next breath. I think my arc is too smooth an arch and needs some more ups and downs, contradictory forces, or misleads (mystery like). The trick of course it to have those ups and downs, and also changing between action, intensity, and other qualities while overall still building toward a climax. I've been working on one of my other books that does it rather better and noticed the nature of the problem, but haven't yet figured out how to fix it. How to you get a feeling of success as a prisoner on an enemy ship without it seeming a total illusion or a solace?
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Another scene, tech as an afterthought
i started this, thinking to try a short story on an apathy/stagnation theme and it took a different turn as I wrote...
She toyed with the coffee cup, gave the handle a push, and watched it spin. the highly polished alloys, designed to minimize friction and reduce spills wnt rough and round, the soft inwardly curving lip catching the liquid and cycling it back into the cup. She finally grabbed it, watched the coffee slosh itself inward, and took a sip, the cup’ lip adjusting o the light pressure of her lips to allow her to drink the tepid coffee safely. She sighed, bored and wondering what a really hot drink tasted like.
“Another conference freeby?” he asked as he set his own trey down. He grabbed the bttle as if flipped and uprighted it with a practiced flip. He’d gotten it two years ago, an easy-clean, seal-fit replacement for the recyclables -- from the consumables conference, made before they decided that a slightly easier to break version would keep them in business longer.
“just the cafeteria stuff. Thought you’d have recognized their logo by now. Don’t you eat here regularly?”
“Nothing at the salad bar has logos. Besides, that company owns plenty besides cafeterias. Just thought they might have invented it.”
“Probably did. Safety first and all that. Another year and the city will control the last free driving lanes left.”
“So you can sit back and relex, enjoy the commute. Doesn’t mean you can’t go anywhere you want.”
“No, just means I can’t take the route i want, the speed I want, the passing lanes I want... It’ll add twenty minutes to every commute, what do you bet?”
“No takers. They’ll want to make the buses look faster.”
She toyed with the coffee cup, gave the handle a push, and watched it spin. the highly polished alloys, designed to minimize friction and reduce spills wnt rough and round, the soft inwardly curving lip catching the liquid and cycling it back into the cup. She finally grabbed it, watched the coffee slosh itself inward, and took a sip, the cup’ lip adjusting o the light pressure of her lips to allow her to drink the tepid coffee safely. She sighed, bored and wondering what a really hot drink tasted like.
“Another conference freeby?” he asked as he set his own trey down. He grabbed the bttle as if flipped and uprighted it with a practiced flip. He’d gotten it two years ago, an easy-clean, seal-fit replacement for the recyclables -- from the consumables conference, made before they decided that a slightly easier to break version would keep them in business longer.
“just the cafeteria stuff. Thought you’d have recognized their logo by now. Don’t you eat here regularly?”
“Nothing at the salad bar has logos. Besides, that company owns plenty besides cafeterias. Just thought they might have invented it.”
“Probably did. Safety first and all that. Another year and the city will control the last free driving lanes left.”
“So you can sit back and relex, enjoy the commute. Doesn’t mean you can’t go anywhere you want.”
“No, just means I can’t take the route i want, the speed I want, the passing lanes I want... It’ll add twenty minutes to every commute, what do you bet?”
“No takers. They’ll want to make the buses look faster.”
Monday, August 2, 2010
Hope for the future in our fiction
Agent hunting left me depressed even without any new reject letters, not least its subtle messages about the state of Science Fiction which was not encouraging. So for my new story, something not toooo far into the future, maybe on earth, since that is what they are looking for, but it must be hopeful, even uplifting, which means at least a bit of trajedy along the way as well as cheerful. But what do we hope for?
Things I worry about but have hopes for include:
A shift toward caring about our environment as if it were the natural thing to do as well as the right thing to do. There is a tendency to think that the right thing must be the hard thing, and sometimes it is hard to start, but usually only because it is a change. Many companies going green have discovered that the results were both better and cheaper, and who can beat that? So one of our characters works at a recycled production plant (no point in recycling if no one's going to do anything with the gathered stuff). Is is possible to have a shortage of supplies from recycling, due to minimizing packaging and waste, and the regular habit of reuse as long as possible? That might be a fun problem to address :->
To take my own advice, though, it shouldn't be the main story line. I was once told that children's stories that taught values through some adventure or another, were very good at teaching children to pack their tooth brush and brush their teeth, because the characters always did so when they started their adventure or went to bed, just as a matter of course. So the recled production plant should be the setting, not the story.
Other things I have hopes for are space travel (though I have drafted a blog on that and wonder where we are going in that regard, whether it still serves the same purpose that it did before, and whether it has slid, for the next generation or two, into the impossible dream category). Still, it's there, and one or more of my characters can be aware of it, maybe with background on the state of the Mars project if the near future, or some similar project in the further future, to provide a sense of time. When is the next Haley's commet or some other space event due?
Medicine always progresses, many cancers have become avoidable or treatable, though not all, and the next bit worry seems to be new, less categorized things like autism (I still suspect it's a result of all those comms signals filling our lives from every direction, though some say not, or some other environmental effect that wasn't around in the past). Less invasive medicine would be nice, and better consideration of mixing medicines without all our medical information being stored in too many databases... How much information can be on a card and not give it to the computers using the data...
Well, that's a few pieces of the world to think about as we build some scenes and put some characters in it. More to come.
Things I worry about but have hopes for include:
A shift toward caring about our environment as if it were the natural thing to do as well as the right thing to do. There is a tendency to think that the right thing must be the hard thing, and sometimes it is hard to start, but usually only because it is a change. Many companies going green have discovered that the results were both better and cheaper, and who can beat that? So one of our characters works at a recycled production plant (no point in recycling if no one's going to do anything with the gathered stuff). Is is possible to have a shortage of supplies from recycling, due to minimizing packaging and waste, and the regular habit of reuse as long as possible? That might be a fun problem to address :->
To take my own advice, though, it shouldn't be the main story line. I was once told that children's stories that taught values through some adventure or another, were very good at teaching children to pack their tooth brush and brush their teeth, because the characters always did so when they started their adventure or went to bed, just as a matter of course. So the recled production plant should be the setting, not the story.
Other things I have hopes for are space travel (though I have drafted a blog on that and wonder where we are going in that regard, whether it still serves the same purpose that it did before, and whether it has slid, for the next generation or two, into the impossible dream category). Still, it's there, and one or more of my characters can be aware of it, maybe with background on the state of the Mars project if the near future, or some similar project in the further future, to provide a sense of time. When is the next Haley's commet or some other space event due?
Medicine always progresses, many cancers have become avoidable or treatable, though not all, and the next bit worry seems to be new, less categorized things like autism (I still suspect it's a result of all those comms signals filling our lives from every direction, though some say not, or some other environmental effect that wasn't around in the past). Less invasive medicine would be nice, and better consideration of mixing medicines without all our medical information being stored in too many databases... How much information can be on a card and not give it to the computers using the data...
Well, that's a few pieces of the world to think about as we build some scenes and put some characters in it. More to come.
Where are we going?
Agent hunting, I came across one listed in the past for Science Fiction and they still are, sort of, but they provided a fairly specifica discussion of what they were looking for, and it was, in my old fashioned view, about as science fiction as Flubber, Shaggy Dog, and that movie more recently where the guy could suddenly read the minds of women--contemporary Earth, near future, with some element a little further along than now or taking a bigger place in someone’s life, all about the people.. I suppose, technically, they could be labeled SF, just like most of the James Bond movies, but such stuff has always been in the main stream, on the general fiction shelves. Do they really need to be on the Science Fiction shelves? Do they belong there? and perhaps more important, is that what science fiction genre fans really want, the future that is no further away than next week or next year? If that’s really all they want, my own science fiction is doomed, but in reality, I haven’t noticed that much of a decline in Star Trek books on the shelves, either.
According to one recent discussion, it would be a sign of a decline in curiosity about the world and science, and leave the science fiction to the Chinese consumers, where curiosity is still growing. To me, the lack of curiosity dooms us to stagnation for years to come, for it is a sign of a generation lacking hope, faith, dreams of better to come, an interest only in the struggles of the day, and in addressing those struggles only in the most short-sighted way, if they can address them at all. Today, ethics, the environment, the sense of right and good, and long term value and meaning all too often seem to lose the argument. Even the books that address them seem too often to sermonize instead of letting the reader or student learn, and that is the approach of the defense, not outreach.
If I wanted to write about the contemporary world, I wouldn’t choose to take the course of science fiction and fantasy (though a few fantasies, like Harry Potter, have done it well and left the genre not in question). Popular fiction inevitably does better than genre fiction, and anything that can take that route should probably do so.
According to one recent discussion, it would be a sign of a decline in curiosity about the world and science, and leave the science fiction to the Chinese consumers, where curiosity is still growing. To me, the lack of curiosity dooms us to stagnation for years to come, for it is a sign of a generation lacking hope, faith, dreams of better to come, an interest only in the struggles of the day, and in addressing those struggles only in the most short-sighted way, if they can address them at all. Today, ethics, the environment, the sense of right and good, and long term value and meaning all too often seem to lose the argument. Even the books that address them seem too often to sermonize instead of letting the reader or student learn, and that is the approach of the defense, not outreach.
If I wanted to write about the contemporary world, I wouldn’t choose to take the course of science fiction and fantasy (though a few fantasies, like Harry Potter, have done it well and left the genre not in question). Popular fiction inevitably does better than genre fiction, and anything that can take that route should probably do so.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Doorway to Dreams
This story was my entry for the Parsec competition for Confluence 2010, on the theme Color of Silence. I had a very hard time coming up with anything that fit the theme so didn't end up with a lot of time to polish, besides their being a word count limit shorter than I can normally manage, so this was well outside my comfort zone in writing, but it pushed me to be creative and I think I at least managed that: certainly something very different than my novels! Enjoy!
Doorway to Dreams
Valorie wandered across the cracked surface of the Unreal, crunching the world. The damage had permeated every facet of every place by the battle’s end, but the wound in the Unreal was finally closed. The Unreal beasts had returned from the real world to dreams and nightmares. Now it was time to mend her own places.
Her familiar places in the Unreal weren’t quite Valorie’s own design. The originals from which they had been modeled had been introduced to her by the masters: Xalaphon’s arsenal, Yekellan’s vast castle--though she had turned one of the rooms within it into her own under his tutelage--Confillar’s grove. Still, she had added or changed, removed or modified to make her own versions, partial copies yet separate and distinct from the originals. The masters could visit their versions, she hers, and never would they meet save by mutual consent.
None of them was free of the damage. As if the wound made by the Dark Magician was a crack in a vast crystal, it spidered out in all directions endlessly, until the crystalline structure must crumble into dust. Well, not quite. The Unreal wasn’t solid. During the battles, it had acted more like liquid, pouring itself out into the real world, the nightmares foremost to trample everything in their path. And broken or whole, it would always be there for those who could find it.
The grove had the same trampled feel as the real land. Even the bird song was off, discontinuous, its harmonies in discord with each other and with the quiet setting. The grassy knoll was cracked if still green, and her sight slid through the cracks to see the real world as if it lay beneath. Valorie’s body lay still and limp in the real. Though she knew it was always so while she Walked, she rarely saw it. The mind rebelled to see the self, but the cracked Unreal couldn’t fully hold her mind. Her watcher, Master Confillar today, stirred in reaction, perhaps at some twitch of her body, or perhaps at being watched himself. Val forced her attention back to the Unreal. The grove had mended those parts she had noted as broken: a start; but it would be awhile before she could find every cracked leaf, every misdirected breeze. Finding peaceful solitude amidst its unnatural imperfections would be many visits in coming.
Valorie shifted her attention to her room in Yekellan’s castle with a thought and found herself standing amidst rose and indigo chaos. Her bower, he had called it, but she wondered if he thought of it as something else. Yekellan had taught Val to change the world in her mind, how to change her clothes to fit the setting instead of bringing along those her body wore in the real. He had even taught her to be things she was not, including animals and trees. He had taught her many basics of the Unreal, but he had expressed a preference for teaching her more worldly things, and she had quickly found a new master.
Tiptoeing in soft slippers, Valorie made her way across the chipped tile and felted rugs.
Yekellan had as much as admitted, later, that he had brought a dream image of her to a replica of her bower. The dream image wasn’t her, but the thought of him fantasizing, magically experiencing time with her sent a shiver along her spine and broke her concentration. She left the shattered room in disarray.
As Val left, stepping through the doorway into her favorite picnic site, she shivered again. Only after she had settled into the new vision, herself a tree at the edge of the clearing, did she consider what she had experienced in that fraction of time in the doorway. It wasn’t exactly a crack, or if a crack then one patched in shimmering silk: cool, smooth, and filled with discordant tones that echoed in her bones.
The picnic scene was barely more than an echo of the original grove on which it had been modeled. A few minor flaws had crept in from the Dark Master’s interference: a discontinuity in the plaid of the blanket, some autumn leaves in the perpetual spring setting, a chill breeze that should have been warm with the promise of summer. Val set them to repairing themselves, but her thoughts returned to the doorway.
What she had sensed in the doorway wasn’t a crack, she became sure with time. Nor could it be a patch. It was her bower, her doorway. Even if Yekellan repaired the whole of the castle, it would only be a repair to his own version, not hers, which would remain a wreck until she fixed it. She pushed the disturbing questions away. Perhaps Master Confillar would have an answer.
Before leaving, Valorie plucked a blue flower that should have been yellow, and returned to her body.
"You knew the damage could take many forms," Confillar said.
"What?"
Valorie sat up and looked at the flower. No longer distinctly blue, nor yellow as she had hoped, it had wilted to gray in her hand. She shivered once more. "It should have been whole," she told him. "I thought it might fix when I brought it back, not die."
"Many forms, not for you to worry about."
She thought about the strangeness in the doorway but, certain he would say the same again, Val said nothing more.
#
"You’re afraid to tell me about your troubles? You’re so bold otherwise," Honorr complained.
Val denied the accusation. "I just don’t want to trouble you when you can’t help."
"You’re so sure I can’t help," he pouted.
They walked in silence for some minutes, ostensibly on guard duty though it had been more than a week since the last of the Unreal beasts had been sighted. All indications were that the beasts had been sent to oblivion and harmless nightmares, and the Dark Magician fled to the lifeless hills. The patrols continued only while the masters thought the Dark Magician could return.
"It’s just a thing of the Unreal. Nothing for us to worry about."
"You say that as if that’s what you’ve been told, not what you believe."
"The masters said the damage will take many forms."
"The same masters who told you the Moon Dance was a real magic spell?" Honorr grumped, but a smile escaped his lips as Valorie grinned. "Okay, so you turned it around on them and made it Unreal, after all. The point is, sometimes your understanding and instincts are better than their training."
They continued their last round in silence. To ease the tension and keep awake, Honorr swung his sword at a couple of the deeper shadows, laughed at a scurry of small feet fleeing the movement. He would be happy enough to see his recently gained weapons skills rust.
Their replacements greeted them with a wave. Honorr returned it and directed Valorie right off the path into the woods for privacy.
"So, what does your instinct tell you?" he asked before she recovered from her astonishment.
Valorie nodded. "That something is still wrong. Maybe the Magician left something behind."
"A way for the nightmares to become real again?"
"I don’t know. Maybe just something to keep us from fixing what’s left."
"Can you do something about it?"
"I don’t know, but I think I can find it, then the masters can fix it."
"So what’s stopping you?"
"I need someone to sit and Watch while I’m looking, and none of the other Walkers will do it since the masters didn’t approve."
"Does it have to be a Walker?"
"You’d have to stay all night. Everyone knows the Walkers do it, but it might ruin your rep with the ladies."
"I will know I just Watched, and you’re the only lady I care about just now."
"Then let no one disturb my body, and I will Walk. If I’m still gone with the dawn, do all that you can to wake me."
Honorr laid out his great coat and she settled onto it. Even as he sat beside her to wait, her eyes closed, her body went limp, and her search began.
#
Valorie went first to the bower. It remained in disarray, as if a sharp ax had been taken to the whole of the room. Pink bed curtains hung upside down. The headboard was out of alignment with the foot. A once beautiful silver gown lay across a chair in a patchwork of textures and clashing shades of aqua and gray. She turned quickly away, her eyes feeling twisted as if the whole world were skewed.
The doorway immediately drew her attention. It looked normal enough, with the gray stone of the castle hall visible beyond it, but even from several paces away, she sense the disturbance like quicksilver and silk against her bare skin.
Val took a step toward it and found herself instantly in the doorway, drawn there as by a spider’s thread. It was a dark thought, but she smiled. A spider’s web could also be followed. Val reached for it, seeking where it was strongest. Like working her way from the loose outer rings of a web to the more densely woven center, she sought the gray discontinuity.
As she took another step, the sensation started slipping away, but in the next moment she found it again, not just impinging on her senses, but encompassing her, smooth and cold against her skin as if she were clothed with it. She clung to that feeling and dissolved into chaos.
#
Up was echoes, down a scream. The cardinal directions swirled around her like a blizzard, brushing her with silver and gold threads of hope and despair. Valorie herself was neither plant nor animal, nor even a rock or wandering stream. Briefly she was almost one or another, but most often she seemed to be a song being sung. She flowed continually from some unseen mouth (it seemed to have violet lips) and circled around instruments that played neither melody nor harmony but emitted the stench of refuse piles or the perfume of meadow flowers as she was sent spinning into the chorus.
Valorie tried to grasp for anything familiar but her senses were detached from her missing limbs, and a song could hold onto nothing. She spotted a hand like her old one, saw it repeated like an echo in the same pose, a quill between her spread fingers composing without composer or paper. She tried to follow the echoes but was sung instead across a hill of curiosity. That, too, had something familiar to it and she managed to sustain it into an arpeggio until her eyes ached from the roller coaster ride and she had to let go once again.
She tried to remember why she was here, what she had been looking for, but a song didn’t think for itself and the effort only scattered the notes into a cacophony of colors.
#
Honorr wrapped the tails of his coat and Valorie’s over them both as the night deepened and chilled. The rising moon brought a light breeze that stole all heat from his body. It also shook the leaves and spooked the birds, whose plaintive songs suddenly seemed to fill the night.
The time of battle had made Honorr familiar with the woods and the night and the cold. He tensed at something low and hard beneath the woodland’s natural music, some heavier tread.
As quietly as he could, Honorr stood. The moon put the world into silhouette, black and gray, and Honorr knew to trust better his ears and other senses than his eyes. Yes, a metallic click, a shift of stiffened leather not his own. Making sure he remained in shadow, Honorr slowly drew his sword. Valorie’s legs were in the moonlight, her coat a smooth gray in sharp contrast to the course textures of old leaves. The forest sounds seemed to fade as the thumping of his heart boomed loud.
Movement caught his eye: Valorie, slipping into the shadows... No! Being dragged! He dashed toward her head, knowing someone must be there but seeing nothing. "Leave her be!" he shouted, thrusting his sword into the black void. The tip caught something hard and he stumbled back as a blade flashed near his head.
"You won’t touch her!" he shouted, charging forward again, his blade swinging wide. It was no proper way to fight, but it ensured a connect if the thief was close enough. The blade banged against a shape and an "Oof" said Honorr had connected. He charged again, stumbled over feet and landed hard on a body.
For a moment they struggled, swinging blindly, catching leather armor, a pieces of hand or face, and finally a solid blow. The stranger in the dark offered a weak grunt and Honorr pulled him into the moonlight to tie him up, wondering if there were more waiting and watching in the dark.
#
"Why do you limit yourself? The Unreal has no limits but those we ourselves impose."
It could not be said that she heard the words. Perhaps someone was singing them through her, trying to create her as his own song, but it was more as if she read them as notes floating by on a scroll, heavy and black as a tune of bases and barrel drums.
"Let your mind experience it. Enjoy the freedom it offers," the argument continued.
"Chaos is not freedom," she tried to send back with her own tones. "It’s insanity. It lacks meaning or purpose." Her song, though, was pale as fog over a sunset, and the mountains of logic were hiding behind clouds of fear.
It was all illusion of course. She knew that she still Walked in the Unreal and Unreal was no more than illusion until she could take some element of it back to the real as knowledge, insight, or some physical object. Fear, though, felt real enough, and she had forgotten where reality was, was losing even her melody.
"Do you give up so easily, my pupil?" she saw scribbled across some ears, perhaps her own. The new score was full of dissonant cords from burning forests.
The words had meaning of a sort and that was more than she had before so she followed along. Perhaps the Unreal offered a lesson. She tried to keep up as they jammed and this time found a chord that fit.
"You remember. If you can’t control it, move with it," a voice scrawled across a roll of flowery blue wallpaper. "Find the rhythm and the flow."
She imagined herself laying back though she had no sense of up and down, forward or back. The maelstrom continued around her but she did remember the early lesson, to move with the forces she couldn’t control until she found a place to plant her feet, until she found herself.
"Wake up, wake up," floated past, lost behind an engine blast, the upshift of a revving motor like red and gold sparks across her vision.
#
Honorr carried Valorie back to the camp swearing loudly and shouting repeatedly for help as the sun rose. Chilled despite his efforts to keep them both warm, he carried her flopping in his arms. Still she refused to wake. Neither a slap nor a kiss had done better. He was sure a fellow Walker could have done more, surely the reason Walkers were usually chosen as Watchers, but he had wanted to help and she had foolishly allowed it.
"What has she done?" the master demanded as Honorr wondered when he would reach the camp. "This way, this way, you turned off your course. What has she done?"
"She went to search. She was certain something was wrong with the Unreal."
"I feared as much. We suspected a trap, which was why I warned her away."
"You didn’t warn her," Honorr growled. "You said it was nothing to worry about!"
"Nothing for her to worry about."
"Well, you didn’t make the difference clear to her! Now you can worry about her!"
"Until she gives some sign, we, too, can only wait."
#
Valorie felt the instructor approaching, almost familiar, a solid presence that had Walked with her in the Unreal before.
"Move with me. Wrap yourself around me. I will guide you." They weren't quite spoken and she heard no voice, but they reached her as clear words, almost real.
Val imagined reaching a hand out, certain he would know the way out of the chaos, certain it was his own creation.
"That’s right, closer, closer. You were always a quick student. Better than the others at noticing the details. Your castle varies very little from my own."
It had to have a pattern, a meaning, some purpose, Val told herself when the familiar presence had allowed her to regain a measure of calm. He remained an unseen figure, no more than a style at the base of the kaleidoscope, a pattern in the random notes of a calliope, yet even a madman had some direction, some perception of the world that drove him.
"You insisted, a perfect copy, save the one room."
"I could hardly design a woman’s bower. It needed... What are you doing?"
Madness night be creative, but it could not change the very fabric of the Unreal. Those with the training and talent could control their own places. Valorie could make even this into her own place if she could find the way and hold her mind together long enough.
"I’m floating in your dream, your nightmare, relaxing, as you said, finding the flow."
Chaos shifted around her but Walking required concentration and just as she could block out forest sounds or a distant party, she could ignore the madness, ignore even her own lack of shape or form. If she had nothing, she could start anew, build her Unreal body anew. In that moment of understanding, Valorie envisioned a clean, empty room, peaceful and silent, waiting to be filled with her own dreams.
"We’re nearly there," she heard distinctly, the message filling her mind, trying to push out all coherent thought, trying to fill even her empty room with his presence. "Nearly together, where we can find freedom."
"Freedom, yes," she said, working again toward the empty, silent room, certain she could find herself there, build her own place.
"Wait! You must experience the ultimate merge of sound and color, darkness and light. We will merge so completely in all our senses that we will be a single entity, Walk in each others places as our own."
"Trade places even?"
"You understand, my perfect pupil."
"But darkness cannot replace light, nor sound silence. I have no desire to smell with my eyes nor see with my ears. Insanity can't find peace in the sanity of another, only bring them both madness."
"In the Unreal, anything is possible, if you will only allow it!" the muddy colors of an old palate exploded around her. A battle of bands tried to wrap her mind in its chaos once more.
"I prefer that up be up," she conveyed as music swirled on a paint brush and bright colors drifting on an ill-defined melody.
He grabbed for her one last time, a screech of anger, a last attempt to sing her as his own song, mold himself permanently into her mind.
Gripping the new doorway with one of the hands she'd seen earlier, she paused, wondering if any part of her old teacher’s mind was still sane. "I finished the lesson you refused to teach, that all the masters refused to teach. They each taught me their song. Now I have learned to paint my own."
#
"A flower wilting and a doorway changed by other than the Walker aren’t the same thing," Confillar pointed out. "Only the Magician has ever been able to affect the places of others."
"How else to make a flower wilt that was fresh in my vision? I saw them as the same."
"Bright insight on your part, not an obvious relationship to the rest of us, even the masters. You should learn to speak up."
"What will happen to Master Yekellan?"
"Likely the madness you encountered was the result of his body failing, the ultimate risk of Walking untended. Even the one who attacked Honorr apparently didn’t know where his master’s body lay."
"Didn’t trust his own people?"
"Or the Watcher fled and couldn’t get back before some wildcat pulled it away and mauled it. That’s why he wanted your body, knew his master would need one, to claim as his own."
Doorway to Dreams
Valorie wandered across the cracked surface of the Unreal, crunching the world. The damage had permeated every facet of every place by the battle’s end, but the wound in the Unreal was finally closed. The Unreal beasts had returned from the real world to dreams and nightmares. Now it was time to mend her own places.
Her familiar places in the Unreal weren’t quite Valorie’s own design. The originals from which they had been modeled had been introduced to her by the masters: Xalaphon’s arsenal, Yekellan’s vast castle--though she had turned one of the rooms within it into her own under his tutelage--Confillar’s grove. Still, she had added or changed, removed or modified to make her own versions, partial copies yet separate and distinct from the originals. The masters could visit their versions, she hers, and never would they meet save by mutual consent.
None of them was free of the damage. As if the wound made by the Dark Magician was a crack in a vast crystal, it spidered out in all directions endlessly, until the crystalline structure must crumble into dust. Well, not quite. The Unreal wasn’t solid. During the battles, it had acted more like liquid, pouring itself out into the real world, the nightmares foremost to trample everything in their path. And broken or whole, it would always be there for those who could find it.
The grove had the same trampled feel as the real land. Even the bird song was off, discontinuous, its harmonies in discord with each other and with the quiet setting. The grassy knoll was cracked if still green, and her sight slid through the cracks to see the real world as if it lay beneath. Valorie’s body lay still and limp in the real. Though she knew it was always so while she Walked, she rarely saw it. The mind rebelled to see the self, but the cracked Unreal couldn’t fully hold her mind. Her watcher, Master Confillar today, stirred in reaction, perhaps at some twitch of her body, or perhaps at being watched himself. Val forced her attention back to the Unreal. The grove had mended those parts she had noted as broken: a start; but it would be awhile before she could find every cracked leaf, every misdirected breeze. Finding peaceful solitude amidst its unnatural imperfections would be many visits in coming.
Valorie shifted her attention to her room in Yekellan’s castle with a thought and found herself standing amidst rose and indigo chaos. Her bower, he had called it, but she wondered if he thought of it as something else. Yekellan had taught Val to change the world in her mind, how to change her clothes to fit the setting instead of bringing along those her body wore in the real. He had even taught her to be things she was not, including animals and trees. He had taught her many basics of the Unreal, but he had expressed a preference for teaching her more worldly things, and she had quickly found a new master.
Tiptoeing in soft slippers, Valorie made her way across the chipped tile and felted rugs.
Yekellan had as much as admitted, later, that he had brought a dream image of her to a replica of her bower. The dream image wasn’t her, but the thought of him fantasizing, magically experiencing time with her sent a shiver along her spine and broke her concentration. She left the shattered room in disarray.
As Val left, stepping through the doorway into her favorite picnic site, she shivered again. Only after she had settled into the new vision, herself a tree at the edge of the clearing, did she consider what she had experienced in that fraction of time in the doorway. It wasn’t exactly a crack, or if a crack then one patched in shimmering silk: cool, smooth, and filled with discordant tones that echoed in her bones.
The picnic scene was barely more than an echo of the original grove on which it had been modeled. A few minor flaws had crept in from the Dark Master’s interference: a discontinuity in the plaid of the blanket, some autumn leaves in the perpetual spring setting, a chill breeze that should have been warm with the promise of summer. Val set them to repairing themselves, but her thoughts returned to the doorway.
What she had sensed in the doorway wasn’t a crack, she became sure with time. Nor could it be a patch. It was her bower, her doorway. Even if Yekellan repaired the whole of the castle, it would only be a repair to his own version, not hers, which would remain a wreck until she fixed it. She pushed the disturbing questions away. Perhaps Master Confillar would have an answer.
Before leaving, Valorie plucked a blue flower that should have been yellow, and returned to her body.
"You knew the damage could take many forms," Confillar said.
"What?"
Valorie sat up and looked at the flower. No longer distinctly blue, nor yellow as she had hoped, it had wilted to gray in her hand. She shivered once more. "It should have been whole," she told him. "I thought it might fix when I brought it back, not die."
"Many forms, not for you to worry about."
She thought about the strangeness in the doorway but, certain he would say the same again, Val said nothing more.
#
"You’re afraid to tell me about your troubles? You’re so bold otherwise," Honorr complained.
Val denied the accusation. "I just don’t want to trouble you when you can’t help."
"You’re so sure I can’t help," he pouted.
They walked in silence for some minutes, ostensibly on guard duty though it had been more than a week since the last of the Unreal beasts had been sighted. All indications were that the beasts had been sent to oblivion and harmless nightmares, and the Dark Magician fled to the lifeless hills. The patrols continued only while the masters thought the Dark Magician could return.
"It’s just a thing of the Unreal. Nothing for us to worry about."
"You say that as if that’s what you’ve been told, not what you believe."
"The masters said the damage will take many forms."
"The same masters who told you the Moon Dance was a real magic spell?" Honorr grumped, but a smile escaped his lips as Valorie grinned. "Okay, so you turned it around on them and made it Unreal, after all. The point is, sometimes your understanding and instincts are better than their training."
They continued their last round in silence. To ease the tension and keep awake, Honorr swung his sword at a couple of the deeper shadows, laughed at a scurry of small feet fleeing the movement. He would be happy enough to see his recently gained weapons skills rust.
Their replacements greeted them with a wave. Honorr returned it and directed Valorie right off the path into the woods for privacy.
"So, what does your instinct tell you?" he asked before she recovered from her astonishment.
Valorie nodded. "That something is still wrong. Maybe the Magician left something behind."
"A way for the nightmares to become real again?"
"I don’t know. Maybe just something to keep us from fixing what’s left."
"Can you do something about it?"
"I don’t know, but I think I can find it, then the masters can fix it."
"So what’s stopping you?"
"I need someone to sit and Watch while I’m looking, and none of the other Walkers will do it since the masters didn’t approve."
"Does it have to be a Walker?"
"You’d have to stay all night. Everyone knows the Walkers do it, but it might ruin your rep with the ladies."
"I will know I just Watched, and you’re the only lady I care about just now."
"Then let no one disturb my body, and I will Walk. If I’m still gone with the dawn, do all that you can to wake me."
Honorr laid out his great coat and she settled onto it. Even as he sat beside her to wait, her eyes closed, her body went limp, and her search began.
#
Valorie went first to the bower. It remained in disarray, as if a sharp ax had been taken to the whole of the room. Pink bed curtains hung upside down. The headboard was out of alignment with the foot. A once beautiful silver gown lay across a chair in a patchwork of textures and clashing shades of aqua and gray. She turned quickly away, her eyes feeling twisted as if the whole world were skewed.
The doorway immediately drew her attention. It looked normal enough, with the gray stone of the castle hall visible beyond it, but even from several paces away, she sense the disturbance like quicksilver and silk against her bare skin.
Val took a step toward it and found herself instantly in the doorway, drawn there as by a spider’s thread. It was a dark thought, but she smiled. A spider’s web could also be followed. Val reached for it, seeking where it was strongest. Like working her way from the loose outer rings of a web to the more densely woven center, she sought the gray discontinuity.
As she took another step, the sensation started slipping away, but in the next moment she found it again, not just impinging on her senses, but encompassing her, smooth and cold against her skin as if she were clothed with it. She clung to that feeling and dissolved into chaos.
#
Up was echoes, down a scream. The cardinal directions swirled around her like a blizzard, brushing her with silver and gold threads of hope and despair. Valorie herself was neither plant nor animal, nor even a rock or wandering stream. Briefly she was almost one or another, but most often she seemed to be a song being sung. She flowed continually from some unseen mouth (it seemed to have violet lips) and circled around instruments that played neither melody nor harmony but emitted the stench of refuse piles or the perfume of meadow flowers as she was sent spinning into the chorus.
Valorie tried to grasp for anything familiar but her senses were detached from her missing limbs, and a song could hold onto nothing. She spotted a hand like her old one, saw it repeated like an echo in the same pose, a quill between her spread fingers composing without composer or paper. She tried to follow the echoes but was sung instead across a hill of curiosity. That, too, had something familiar to it and she managed to sustain it into an arpeggio until her eyes ached from the roller coaster ride and she had to let go once again.
She tried to remember why she was here, what she had been looking for, but a song didn’t think for itself and the effort only scattered the notes into a cacophony of colors.
#
Honorr wrapped the tails of his coat and Valorie’s over them both as the night deepened and chilled. The rising moon brought a light breeze that stole all heat from his body. It also shook the leaves and spooked the birds, whose plaintive songs suddenly seemed to fill the night.
The time of battle had made Honorr familiar with the woods and the night and the cold. He tensed at something low and hard beneath the woodland’s natural music, some heavier tread.
As quietly as he could, Honorr stood. The moon put the world into silhouette, black and gray, and Honorr knew to trust better his ears and other senses than his eyes. Yes, a metallic click, a shift of stiffened leather not his own. Making sure he remained in shadow, Honorr slowly drew his sword. Valorie’s legs were in the moonlight, her coat a smooth gray in sharp contrast to the course textures of old leaves. The forest sounds seemed to fade as the thumping of his heart boomed loud.
Movement caught his eye: Valorie, slipping into the shadows... No! Being dragged! He dashed toward her head, knowing someone must be there but seeing nothing. "Leave her be!" he shouted, thrusting his sword into the black void. The tip caught something hard and he stumbled back as a blade flashed near his head.
"You won’t touch her!" he shouted, charging forward again, his blade swinging wide. It was no proper way to fight, but it ensured a connect if the thief was close enough. The blade banged against a shape and an "Oof" said Honorr had connected. He charged again, stumbled over feet and landed hard on a body.
For a moment they struggled, swinging blindly, catching leather armor, a pieces of hand or face, and finally a solid blow. The stranger in the dark offered a weak grunt and Honorr pulled him into the moonlight to tie him up, wondering if there were more waiting and watching in the dark.
#
"Why do you limit yourself? The Unreal has no limits but those we ourselves impose."
It could not be said that she heard the words. Perhaps someone was singing them through her, trying to create her as his own song, but it was more as if she read them as notes floating by on a scroll, heavy and black as a tune of bases and barrel drums.
"Let your mind experience it. Enjoy the freedom it offers," the argument continued.
"Chaos is not freedom," she tried to send back with her own tones. "It’s insanity. It lacks meaning or purpose." Her song, though, was pale as fog over a sunset, and the mountains of logic were hiding behind clouds of fear.
It was all illusion of course. She knew that she still Walked in the Unreal and Unreal was no more than illusion until she could take some element of it back to the real as knowledge, insight, or some physical object. Fear, though, felt real enough, and she had forgotten where reality was, was losing even her melody.
"Do you give up so easily, my pupil?" she saw scribbled across some ears, perhaps her own. The new score was full of dissonant cords from burning forests.
The words had meaning of a sort and that was more than she had before so she followed along. Perhaps the Unreal offered a lesson. She tried to keep up as they jammed and this time found a chord that fit.
"You remember. If you can’t control it, move with it," a voice scrawled across a roll of flowery blue wallpaper. "Find the rhythm and the flow."
She imagined herself laying back though she had no sense of up and down, forward or back. The maelstrom continued around her but she did remember the early lesson, to move with the forces she couldn’t control until she found a place to plant her feet, until she found herself.
"Wake up, wake up," floated past, lost behind an engine blast, the upshift of a revving motor like red and gold sparks across her vision.
#
Honorr carried Valorie back to the camp swearing loudly and shouting repeatedly for help as the sun rose. Chilled despite his efforts to keep them both warm, he carried her flopping in his arms. Still she refused to wake. Neither a slap nor a kiss had done better. He was sure a fellow Walker could have done more, surely the reason Walkers were usually chosen as Watchers, but he had wanted to help and she had foolishly allowed it.
"What has she done?" the master demanded as Honorr wondered when he would reach the camp. "This way, this way, you turned off your course. What has she done?"
"She went to search. She was certain something was wrong with the Unreal."
"I feared as much. We suspected a trap, which was why I warned her away."
"You didn’t warn her," Honorr growled. "You said it was nothing to worry about!"
"Nothing for her to worry about."
"Well, you didn’t make the difference clear to her! Now you can worry about her!"
"Until she gives some sign, we, too, can only wait."
#
Valorie felt the instructor approaching, almost familiar, a solid presence that had Walked with her in the Unreal before.
"Move with me. Wrap yourself around me. I will guide you." They weren't quite spoken and she heard no voice, but they reached her as clear words, almost real.
Val imagined reaching a hand out, certain he would know the way out of the chaos, certain it was his own creation.
"That’s right, closer, closer. You were always a quick student. Better than the others at noticing the details. Your castle varies very little from my own."
It had to have a pattern, a meaning, some purpose, Val told herself when the familiar presence had allowed her to regain a measure of calm. He remained an unseen figure, no more than a style at the base of the kaleidoscope, a pattern in the random notes of a calliope, yet even a madman had some direction, some perception of the world that drove him.
"You insisted, a perfect copy, save the one room."
"I could hardly design a woman’s bower. It needed... What are you doing?"
Madness night be creative, but it could not change the very fabric of the Unreal. Those with the training and talent could control their own places. Valorie could make even this into her own place if she could find the way and hold her mind together long enough.
"I’m floating in your dream, your nightmare, relaxing, as you said, finding the flow."
Chaos shifted around her but Walking required concentration and just as she could block out forest sounds or a distant party, she could ignore the madness, ignore even her own lack of shape or form. If she had nothing, she could start anew, build her Unreal body anew. In that moment of understanding, Valorie envisioned a clean, empty room, peaceful and silent, waiting to be filled with her own dreams.
"We’re nearly there," she heard distinctly, the message filling her mind, trying to push out all coherent thought, trying to fill even her empty room with his presence. "Nearly together, where we can find freedom."
"Freedom, yes," she said, working again toward the empty, silent room, certain she could find herself there, build her own place.
"Wait! You must experience the ultimate merge of sound and color, darkness and light. We will merge so completely in all our senses that we will be a single entity, Walk in each others places as our own."
"Trade places even?"
"You understand, my perfect pupil."
"But darkness cannot replace light, nor sound silence. I have no desire to smell with my eyes nor see with my ears. Insanity can't find peace in the sanity of another, only bring them both madness."
"In the Unreal, anything is possible, if you will only allow it!" the muddy colors of an old palate exploded around her. A battle of bands tried to wrap her mind in its chaos once more.
"I prefer that up be up," she conveyed as music swirled on a paint brush and bright colors drifting on an ill-defined melody.
He grabbed for her one last time, a screech of anger, a last attempt to sing her as his own song, mold himself permanently into her mind.
Gripping the new doorway with one of the hands she'd seen earlier, she paused, wondering if any part of her old teacher’s mind was still sane. "I finished the lesson you refused to teach, that all the masters refused to teach. They each taught me their song. Now I have learned to paint my own."
#
"A flower wilting and a doorway changed by other than the Walker aren’t the same thing," Confillar pointed out. "Only the Magician has ever been able to affect the places of others."
"How else to make a flower wilt that was fresh in my vision? I saw them as the same."
"Bright insight on your part, not an obvious relationship to the rest of us, even the masters. You should learn to speak up."
"What will happen to Master Yekellan?"
"Likely the madness you encountered was the result of his body failing, the ultimate risk of Walking untended. Even the one who attacked Honorr apparently didn’t know where his master’s body lay."
"Didn’t trust his own people?"
"Or the Watcher fled and couldn’t get back before some wildcat pulled it away and mauled it. That’s why he wanted your body, knew his master would need one, to claim as his own."
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Scratches and other verbal doodles
“What is ‘scratch’ anyway?”
“Nothing. Or at least, only what you can get from fround so hard you can barely scratch the surface. I suppose it means starting fra farm on land that hasn’t the first seed planted, the first row hoed,”
“Hard row to hoe?”
“Exactly. so starting from scratch is starting literally from the ground up, though these days i suppose it’s from the ground down, since everything allowed up is already up as high as it can go.”
“Hardly that. just where it’s easy, where all the infrastructure, people, equipment are all in easy reach. The places not claimed for nature and ecosystem preservation but not city, no one bothers. Requires thought and planning.”
“Can’t have that can we?”
They both laughed.
#
What about us though? City life is okay. All the conveniences if also all the noise and chaos. Half the people aren’t outside long enough to notice if it’s smoggy sky overhead or sun replacement tunnel lighting. Still have to push the sun baths on some people, for the vitamins, but I like it out here, and so do the dogs.”
---------
This scene started as just speculation about the phrase used in the previous one, but as they tend to do, took on a life of its own, prodding character attitudes and potential settings and plot bits as well as reflecting my view of some related topics.
“Nothing. Or at least, only what you can get from fround so hard you can barely scratch the surface. I suppose it means starting fra farm on land that hasn’t the first seed planted, the first row hoed,”
“Hard row to hoe?”
“Exactly. so starting from scratch is starting literally from the ground up, though these days i suppose it’s from the ground down, since everything allowed up is already up as high as it can go.”
“Hardly that. just where it’s easy, where all the infrastructure, people, equipment are all in easy reach. The places not claimed for nature and ecosystem preservation but not city, no one bothers. Requires thought and planning.”
“Can’t have that can we?”
They both laughed.
#
What about us though? City life is okay. All the conveniences if also all the noise and chaos. Half the people aren’t outside long enough to notice if it’s smoggy sky overhead or sun replacement tunnel lighting. Still have to push the sun baths on some people, for the vitamins, but I like it out here, and so do the dogs.”
---------
This scene started as just speculation about the phrase used in the previous one, but as they tend to do, took on a life of its own, prodding character attitudes and potential settings and plot bits as well as reflecting my view of some related topics.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Comments on Chapter 21 part 1
I had a lot of trouble with this section (Chapter 21 part 1 of Cerelian Gold) and have fiddled with it many times. Part of it is the seduction attempt. How would Dilven try to seduce her in a way that would be in his character (mostly badly); how would Candice react to his efforts, especially in a state of exhaustion aggravated by drugs and stress; and how do I get the right combination to get to the next piece of the story? And wrapped up in that is how far to take it for the audience? I try to recall how much is implied, how much described, how much done with and without description in books I like, movies I like, how much I could stand family members and friends reading of my imagination... (I've read books that go lots further than I opted for, providing much fuel for my already vivid imagination). In this case, I couldn't take it too far because I've set Candice up to not handle it well, and her role isn't done yet. I've also played with the idea of making Dilven better at it, but that would require I know how it could be done... and come up with the right lines for an alien on top of that!
Friday, July 16, 2010
thoughts on a scene
i finally came up with a true scene for the tale. I have no idea where it will take me but I think it offers several directions and hints at some past events that I havne't yet thought through. My first reactions (I wrote it in pen) when i took it as far as i could at the time that it was very contemporary and could easily be a scene in a contemporary book, but if I recall, that's fairly common for my SF drafts, and it helps ensure real characters that readers can relate to, even if the story goes elsewhere before it's really written.
I have no idea where the names came from. Probably something I've heard on t.v. lately, which adds to the contemporary feel.
"Sary, where are ou going?"
"For a walk, do you mind?"
"It wasn't an accusation."
"Wasn't it? Just becasue you've exprssed affection doesn't mean i't your concern how I epend my time."
"i just woory when I don't know where you are."
"Worry implies a right to know. You don't have that right unless I choose to give it to you. Worry about keeping me happy when we're together. The rest of my time is my buinesss. Unless you don't trust me?"
His eyes went down' and he bit his lip, knowing enough not to admit that, at least. Nor, however, did he deny it an she was in no mood to be tolerant.
"Is that it, jealous already?"
"No. Of course not. I don't worry about you having an affair. i know-"
"You obviously know nothing, Jack," she said, knowing he hated to be called that. "An affair? An affair is what established couples do outside the lines. You and me don't have any lines to be outside."
"But you said-"
"I said I appreciated your interest and would be willing to date. That's all I said and that's all I meant. That was concession enough when we work together on some project at least once a week and often more besides seeing each other outside of work. if you can't deal with-"
"I'mnot a child, Sary. I just care about you. Our date-"
"Will be the last if you push me again, Jack. I'm not so old-fashioned I intend to let even a husband run my life, much less a boy friend." She turned away from him before he could object and the dogs growled at him when he moved as if he might block her path. In her mind, she'd made a great concession to refer to him, still, as a boyfriend. She wasn't going to waste the pleasant weather arguing with him when he should instead simply have apologised for going too far/presuming too much, and let it drop.
--notes--
Why is she so testy or is he being possessive/stalker-like? What other trust issues might be going on here? Is good weather rare where they are at? Why? What kind of work do they do together? Setting? visual elements of the characters? Sensory input?
Title idea: Start from Scratch
What would be starting? What might Scratch represent?
I have no idea where the names came from. Probably something I've heard on t.v. lately, which adds to the contemporary feel.
"Sary, where are ou going?"
"For a walk, do you mind?"
"It wasn't an accusation."
"Wasn't it? Just becasue you've exprssed affection doesn't mean i't your concern how I epend my time."
"i just woory when I don't know where you are."
"Worry implies a right to know. You don't have that right unless I choose to give it to you. Worry about keeping me happy when we're together. The rest of my time is my buinesss. Unless you don't trust me?"
His eyes went down' and he bit his lip, knowing enough not to admit that, at least. Nor, however, did he deny it an she was in no mood to be tolerant.
"Is that it, jealous already?"
"No. Of course not. I don't worry about you having an affair. i know-"
"You obviously know nothing, Jack," she said, knowing he hated to be called that. "An affair? An affair is what established couples do outside the lines. You and me don't have any lines to be outside."
"But you said-"
"I said I appreciated your interest and would be willing to date. That's all I said and that's all I meant. That was concession enough when we work together on some project at least once a week and often more besides seeing each other outside of work. if you can't deal with-"
"I'mnot a child, Sary. I just care about you. Our date-"
"Will be the last if you push me again, Jack. I'm not so old-fashioned I intend to let even a husband run my life, much less a boy friend." She turned away from him before he could object and the dogs growled at him when he moved as if he might block her path. In her mind, she'd made a great concession to refer to him, still, as a boyfriend. She wasn't going to waste the pleasant weather arguing with him when he should instead simply have apologised for going too far/presuming too much, and let it drop.
--notes--
Why is she so testy or is he being possessive/stalker-like? What other trust issues might be going on here? Is good weather rare where they are at? Why? What kind of work do they do together? Setting? visual elements of the characters? Sensory input?
Title idea: Start from Scratch
What would be starting? What might Scratch represent?
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Intellectual vs technical in science fiction
I guess he didn’t want any advertising for his book because the paragraphs about them wouldn’t copy, but you can read those bits at http://www.concatenation.org/articles/hocking~science~sf.html. They weren’t the bits that interested me, anyway, as much as his clear misunderstanding of the quotes he included in his write up.
“Science fiction comes in so many flavours that defining 'science fiction' is problematic. One aspect of our understanding of SF is that it should be technically accurate.
But is this more important than the story? Should it be compromised to tell a story? asks author and psychologist Ian Hocking” is the blurb at the start of the story.
Ian Hocking makes some good points about the value of some degree of accuracy, and the often misleading results when journalists misrepresent medical findings and translate it into incorrect or misleading advice to their readers (A relationship may not be cause and effect). (Scientists would like to see some of the same correctness in science fiction, knowing that science fiction readers often become science students and ultimately scientists, and benefit from realistic portrayals of current science knowledge.)
“But should science fiction be held to such standards?” he counters, “I would argue not. Because, first and foremost, the responsibility of a storyteller is to tell a story. If the storyteller is primarily concerned with edification -- rather than letting this grow organically from the story -- then an alternative form of dissemination, such as the essay or the documentary, might be more appropriate.”
Hocking further explains: “Perhaps SF is seen as too challenging. My own view, however, is that science fiction is commonly conceived as tedious unless one is interested in gadgets, time paradoxes, poor characterization and the willfully obscure. As an SF writer, I would not agree that this conception is an accurate one, but it does appear to describe the common reaction.”
His further arguments, however, take on a rather sideways perspective. Hocking uses a quote by Ben Bova from an essay on the Cassandra Effect in SF, where Bova assesses that few people read SF because “Perhaps the problem lies with the visual entertainment media: movies and TV. Let's face it, most of Hollywood's "sci-fi" has its origins in comic strips, not actual published science fiction. Many people don't realize that the "sci-fi flicks" on both big and small screens are a far cry from the intellectual and emotional depth of real science fiction.”
Hocking says of this: “I find this problematic in the context of creating fiction. A story is a series of moments that, through the interactions of their meaning, create emotions in the reader. Intellectual depth, it would appear, works at a level incommensurate with the story. Sure, we can be entertained by a bit of techno-jargon, we can go 'Ahhh,' when the author explains how a nifty camouflage suit can lower the wearer's refractive index to zero, rendering them invisible. But this not the story. It is, yes, part of the support structure of the story, but it represents a reduction of forward motion while what the reader should really care about - the characters and what happens to them - is put on hold.”
In my view, Ian Hocking has missed Bova’s point entirely. Hocking equates “intellectual” with technobabble, just because sometimes the technobabble is technically correct and well-researched. I accept that technostuff, accurate or totally made-up, can be problematic, that the story should take priority, and that technobabble) can just slow the story down and discourages readers who have no interest in gadgetry. it’s a problem not exclusive to science fiction, either: look at the spy tales of Clancy). He argues reasonably that “You shouldn't have to be interested in the space stuff to an enjoy an SF story any more than you need to have an intrinsic interest in African territorial jurisdiction to enjoy Casablanca.”
But Hocking misses the point that intellectual and technobabble have nothing to do with each other and may even be contradictory, if the technology stuff is handled badly. A little bit of technology and a lot of ethics, social, or emotional questions surrounding the use of the specified technology and its impact on individual lives--all the makings of “intellectual depth”-- can be the meat of a genuinely good story. No technobabble is needed beyond character’s understandable and realistic dialog. Tolkien put a lot of work into researching the Lord of the Rings and the story is enriched by the language and legends portrayed, truly an intellectual work in many respects, but LoR isn’t an academic study in the those languages and legends, the inclusion as part of the lives of the characters doesn’t make the tale harder to read, and yet the reader still wants “Frodo to reach Mount Doom and you worry for the tragic figure of Gollum.”
Hocking does offer some good advice, even if he got there through a sideways logic: “I guess I've come to this conclusion through the editing process. I've learned that what makes a scene good isn't the tech; it's the meaning conjured by the characters, their struggles, the conflict, and the wider narrative. When working to improve a piece of fiction, you can fiddle with the meaning (I'm using this word in a broad sense that encompasses 'emotion', 'affect', 'interest' and so on) or you can fiddle with the technical stuff. At the end of the day, it's the sharpening of meaning that improves the work by any real margin.”
“Science fiction comes in so many flavours that defining 'science fiction' is problematic. One aspect of our understanding of SF is that it should be technically accurate.
But is this more important than the story? Should it be compromised to tell a story? asks author and psychologist Ian Hocking” is the blurb at the start of the story.
Ian Hocking makes some good points about the value of some degree of accuracy, and the often misleading results when journalists misrepresent medical findings and translate it into incorrect or misleading advice to their readers (A relationship may not be cause and effect). (Scientists would like to see some of the same correctness in science fiction, knowing that science fiction readers often become science students and ultimately scientists, and benefit from realistic portrayals of current science knowledge.)
“But should science fiction be held to such standards?” he counters, “I would argue not. Because, first and foremost, the responsibility of a storyteller is to tell a story. If the storyteller is primarily concerned with edification -- rather than letting this grow organically from the story -- then an alternative form of dissemination, such as the essay or the documentary, might be more appropriate.”
Hocking further explains: “Perhaps SF is seen as too challenging. My own view, however, is that science fiction is commonly conceived as tedious unless one is interested in gadgets, time paradoxes, poor characterization and the willfully obscure. As an SF writer, I would not agree that this conception is an accurate one, but it does appear to describe the common reaction.”
His further arguments, however, take on a rather sideways perspective. Hocking uses a quote by Ben Bova from an essay on the Cassandra Effect in SF, where Bova assesses that few people read SF because “Perhaps the problem lies with the visual entertainment media: movies and TV. Let's face it, most of Hollywood's "sci-fi" has its origins in comic strips, not actual published science fiction. Many people don't realize that the "sci-fi flicks" on both big and small screens are a far cry from the intellectual and emotional depth of real science fiction.”
Hocking says of this: “I find this problematic in the context of creating fiction. A story is a series of moments that, through the interactions of their meaning, create emotions in the reader. Intellectual depth, it would appear, works at a level incommensurate with the story. Sure, we can be entertained by a bit of techno-jargon, we can go 'Ahhh,' when the author explains how a nifty camouflage suit can lower the wearer's refractive index to zero, rendering them invisible. But this not the story. It is, yes, part of the support structure of the story, but it represents a reduction of forward motion while what the reader should really care about - the characters and what happens to them - is put on hold.”
In my view, Ian Hocking has missed Bova’s point entirely. Hocking equates “intellectual” with technobabble, just because sometimes the technobabble is technically correct and well-researched. I accept that technostuff, accurate or totally made-up, can be problematic, that the story should take priority, and that technobabble) can just slow the story down and discourages readers who have no interest in gadgetry. it’s a problem not exclusive to science fiction, either: look at the spy tales of Clancy). He argues reasonably that “You shouldn't have to be interested in the space stuff to an enjoy an SF story any more than you need to have an intrinsic interest in African territorial jurisdiction to enjoy Casablanca.”
But Hocking misses the point that intellectual and technobabble have nothing to do with each other and may even be contradictory, if the technology stuff is handled badly. A little bit of technology and a lot of ethics, social, or emotional questions surrounding the use of the specified technology and its impact on individual lives--all the makings of “intellectual depth”-- can be the meat of a genuinely good story. No technobabble is needed beyond character’s understandable and realistic dialog. Tolkien put a lot of work into researching the Lord of the Rings and the story is enriched by the language and legends portrayed, truly an intellectual work in many respects, but LoR isn’t an academic study in the those languages and legends, the inclusion as part of the lives of the characters doesn’t make the tale harder to read, and yet the reader still wants “Frodo to reach Mount Doom and you worry for the tragic figure of Gollum.”
Hocking does offer some good advice, even if he got there through a sideways logic: “I guess I've come to this conclusion through the editing process. I've learned that what makes a scene good isn't the tech; it's the meaning conjured by the characters, their struggles, the conflict, and the wider narrative. When working to improve a piece of fiction, you can fiddle with the meaning (I'm using this word in a broad sense that encompasses 'emotion', 'affect', 'interest' and so on) or you can fiddle with the technical stuff. At the end of the day, it's the sharpening of meaning that improves the work by any real margin.”
Friday, July 9, 2010
traitors and other subplots
A few too many distractions to have made much progress on the new tale, but here's a few more thoughts in that direction. The mind thing is more of SF than Fantasy, but we can still use some of the examples from fantasy of what makes a great, popular, saleable story. Really, it's not just limited to fantasy either:
Interesting side characters as well as protagonist
A classic story line often helps: girl meets boy, one saves the other, not necessarily appreciated, understanding develops, romance develops, then other stuff. Well, as a side story anyway. How about the core story though: good versus evil. Evil should have representative bodies doing dastardly deeds, preferably at least representatives on site, face-to-face, which is why traitors in the midst is a common sub=plot, to give a visible baddie. I didn't do that in Cerel Gold, but maybe I could try that here. Note to self: need scenes with the traitor playing good guy, and others hinting that he (or she) may be something other than it appears. It will be more subtle and mysterious if there are other side characters hiding things (ala mystery suspects).
The traitor needs to be working for someone, something related to the mind control ability or telepathy or related skills.
I'll see if I can keep it on Earth. otherwise I'll get tempted to place it on one of my already existing planets, and that has too many in-built rules already established. the goal here is to start from scratch. The future, but not so far in the future as space travel, then? (At our current rate, that could still be a long long long way in the future, alas, but I won't go that far. Some of the world should be identifiable unless I go for post apocalypse or some such other theme, and those are a breed unto themselves. But far enough in the future that country boundaries don't mean the same thing, that technology has changed again and impacted the biology/ecology, like some suspect of autism's increasing occurances.
Well, that's enough for tonight. If any of my fellow writers are insprited to write a scene, please share. What I've provided so far is still fuel for a million different books and stories and comparability encourages readers.
Interesting side characters as well as protagonist
A classic story line often helps: girl meets boy, one saves the other, not necessarily appreciated, understanding develops, romance develops, then other stuff. Well, as a side story anyway. How about the core story though: good versus evil. Evil should have representative bodies doing dastardly deeds, preferably at least representatives on site, face-to-face, which is why traitors in the midst is a common sub=plot, to give a visible baddie. I didn't do that in Cerel Gold, but maybe I could try that here. Note to self: need scenes with the traitor playing good guy, and others hinting that he (or she) may be something other than it appears. It will be more subtle and mysterious if there are other side characters hiding things (ala mystery suspects).
The traitor needs to be working for someone, something related to the mind control ability or telepathy or related skills.
I'll see if I can keep it on Earth. otherwise I'll get tempted to place it on one of my already existing planets, and that has too many in-built rules already established. the goal here is to start from scratch. The future, but not so far in the future as space travel, then? (At our current rate, that could still be a long long long way in the future, alas, but I won't go that far. Some of the world should be identifiable unless I go for post apocalypse or some such other theme, and those are a breed unto themselves. But far enough in the future that country boundaries don't mean the same thing, that technology has changed again and impacted the biology/ecology, like some suspect of autism's increasing occurances.
Well, that's enough for tonight. If any of my fellow writers are insprited to write a scene, please share. What I've provided so far is still fuel for a million different books and stories and comparability encourages readers.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Tip: Technology will always be ahead
Don't try to keep up with technology. These days, only the rich and those who have to keep up in one field for their career can hope to stay up-to-date on technical things. So long as the version you have does what you need it to, hand onto it. I upgraded my computer only when it got to the point that the most advanced software it could handle was still too old to go to a lot of the web sites I needed for e-mail, agent hunting and other important online activities. I saw it comeing, was able to save for it, and could afford a good, up-to-date replacement. I've had to replace the hard drive on this, my second computer, once, and plan on holding onto it awhile longer, though i can see the signs of needing a new one and have started to save accordingly.
Besides the obvious of not spending money that you don't have to, waiting has several advantages, especially though not only with technical things.
: With technical things, prices are prone to come down.
: time to save up for big expenses means the opportunity to buy the best, longest-lasting and most up-to-date version so that it is longer before another is needed.
: time to consider what is really needed and buy the right thing.
: the longer it lasts, the more value it has, cost per day as you might say.
Besides the obvious of not spending money that you don't have to, waiting has several advantages, especially though not only with technical things.
: With technical things, prices are prone to come down.
: time to save up for big expenses means the opportunity to buy the best, longest-lasting and most up-to-date version so that it is longer before another is needed.
: time to consider what is really needed and buy the right thing.
: the longer it lasts, the more value it has, cost per day as you might say.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
More notes on editing and revising
In trimming the section I've just posted for Cerelian Gold, and for editing and revising in general, I often look for series of prepositional phrases that I've added to clarify a sentence. Prepositional phrases (on the planet, in the hatchway, etc.) can be very useful constructs, but they are easy to overuse and having even two in a row can be a problem. sometimes they can be replaces with a difference sentence construction, a description in another form, but often I simply delete them as not really necessary. They serve primarily to help the reader see the scene as I, the writer do, but unless it impacts the plot, some later action, it's usually alright if the reader visualizes some details in their own way. The more they can imagine it for themselves, and the less the author contradicts a vision of the scene that the reader has already created in their own imagination, the easier the reader can get into the scene.
I think that is one of the reasons that science fiction can be particularly challenging for some readers to get into, and why it remains less popular than fantasy as a general rule: the writer has to describe scenes that the reader cannot readily fill in from their own experience and including concepts that the reader may be hard-pressed to visualize even when thoroughly described. It's probably also why many SF fans are either scientists or young or both: the scientists can get the concepts from knowledge of current science, and the young always have more vivid imaginations. A specific detail or two can be enough to give such readers a picture, without it being the exact same image the writer had in mind, and that's often enough.
I think that is one of the reasons that science fiction can be particularly challenging for some readers to get into, and why it remains less popular than fantasy as a general rule: the writer has to describe scenes that the reader cannot readily fill in from their own experience and including concepts that the reader may be hard-pressed to visualize even when thoroughly described. It's probably also why many SF fans are either scientists or young or both: the scientists can get the concepts from knowledge of current science, and the young always have more vivid imaginations. A specific detail or two can be enough to give such readers a picture, without it being the exact same image the writer had in mind, and that's often enough.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Lets Try Something New
It's been awhile since I did something really new, rather than working on the progress of something I started a long while back, or a modification on the theme. So i thought I would try to come up with a new thing and let the readers follow along.
Often I just think of a scene and go from there. No good scene has come to mind, though, off hand, so I'll play with another approach like I have done for short story competitions and classes: a bit of a plan to get the mind going.
Some framework:
--SF
--mature
--how about an evolved human,,, (or genetically distorted, maybe by environmental conditions, something ala autism? a very different look at the world?)
--a woman with a pair of dogs or doggettes, maybe well-trained, mind-based obedience, part of the other worldly view?. A look made them lay down, another and they went to their sides, one half on the other to that one's annoyance. "Oh, alfight, shift." and that one moved our from under the bitch.
Often I just think of a scene and go from there. No good scene has come to mind, though, off hand, so I'll play with another approach like I have done for short story competitions and classes: a bit of a plan to get the mind going.
Some framework:
--SF
--mature
--how about an evolved human,,, (or genetically distorted, maybe by environmental conditions, something ala autism? a very different look at the world?)
--a woman with a pair of dogs or doggettes, maybe well-trained, mind-based obedience, part of the other worldly view?. A look made them lay down, another and they went to their sides, one half on the other to that one's annoyance. "Oh, alfight, shift." and that one moved our from under the bitch.
Tip: clip coupons for what you buy, not what you don't
We don't spend lots of time clipping coupons but we do watch for coupons for the kinds of things we always need: toilet paper and tissues, canned vegis and other nonperishable foods, and certain restaurants that we like to go to as the occasional treat. What we don't do is buy just because we have a coupon. Let coupons expire if you don't need them and wouldn't have bought it anyway.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
what next and more on definitions in novels
Cerelian Gold is heading toward climax and ending rapidly but I haven't yet decided what tale to post next, whether science fiction or fantasy and whether to try to keep to the more adult themes rather than the young adult that I post to my other blog. Part of the hesitation is that I might not actually have a choice on the latter as I don't know that I have another grown-up science fiction or fantasy ready for public viewing. I tend toward young adult quite unintentionally and didn't even know that that was what I was writing for many years, many novels. I suppose because the bulk of the science fiction and fantasy novels I was finding and reading when i got started were billed as just that, not specifically as young adult at all, but in retrospect, that's what they really were. Adding substantial romance and the psycho-drama are what really made them different in my view. I wonder what other themes make a book general or adult instead of young adult? Perhaps I will let the readers see how I explore a new idea, long before it becomes a novel... I'll take suggestions for themes.
Tip on grocery shopping
The big size isn't necessarily the best buy anymore. Stores or producers seem to have decided to take advantage of the long-established practice of selling the bigger size cheaper-per-ounce, by upping the price randomly. For those who use a lot of some item (so that the large size might be worth the buying, if the cost is better), it's well worth checking the per-ounce cost before you buy. There is little use in buying lots that won't be used, though, as getting too much just spends money earlier than needed and often results in significant waste, as well as leaving less to earn interest in the savings account.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
categories
I've posted another scene for Cerelian Gold, just below this on the main view. it occurred to me as I set the categories that readers might be curious about the particular categories I've set up, especially as multiple ones are about Cerelian Gold. Those, save the main one with the book scenes, are mostly a subset of scenes duplicated and are mostly for my purposes, though others might find them interesting too, in their sets. I separated out groups that I want to do something more with. One is the food references. I like to play with cooking, including subtleties, and thought I would make a little cookbook to go with the book, reflective of the food that appears in the story (including the horrible pink meat, and the pie with Jerdy's eyes, which I have designed recipis for (without real eyeballs, though I gather there might be recipies out there for that, too, somewhere...). Another is the Nish doctor. It is kind of a subplot of its own but I wasn't sure I had his name even spelled the same everywhere, so it was hard to scan through and make sure that story progressed properly, so I duplicated those scenes to it's own category for purposes of revision later, and I thought some readers might find it interesting to look at it separated from its context in the main book as it unfolds. Bikjni is to remind me what I've said about the game and to help me make sure the rules are consistant. I've never invented a game before and it's a complicated process. However did they come up with chess?!
The non-Cerel categories: whims. I enjoy writing lots of things, including advice, but I have few people around who need any of the advice I'd offer, even if I weren't an amateur at most of them. But queries being what they are, maybe someone looking for advice or just views on some topic will find mine and find it useful, the better if they can sort the ones they want from the other topics here. Besides, I plan to keep going (I'm still considering what story to work on after Cerelian Gold comes to its conclusion) and all these accumulated posts need some mechanism to keep them in a bit of order. Suggestions on the organization and content are as welcome as feedback on the story.
The non-Cerel categories: whims. I enjoy writing lots of things, including advice, but I have few people around who need any of the advice I'd offer, even if I weren't an amateur at most of them. But queries being what they are, maybe someone looking for advice or just views on some topic will find mine and find it useful, the better if they can sort the ones they want from the other topics here. Besides, I plan to keep going (I'm still considering what story to work on after Cerelian Gold comes to its conclusion) and all these accumulated posts need some mechanism to keep them in a bit of order. Suggestions on the organization and content are as welcome as feedback on the story.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Tip:Don't grocery shop on an empty stomach
Hunger encourages whim buying and discourages taking time to compare prices (and ingredients). Big sizes used to be cheaper, a good buy if you normally go through a lot, but that's often no longer the case as producers or stores take advantage of the common assumption. Check also real contents, not box size: they don't shrink the can or box just because they are selling you less than they used to, or you may be buying more filler and less of what you want.
As an example, check out the juice aisle: 100% juice isn't the same as 100% of the juice on the label. Apple juice and white grape juice are common substitutes: cheap, sweet, and less nutritious than many of the other juices. "Juice drinks" are even worse, barely more than koolaid. Go for the koolaid mix if you're aiming for flavored sugar water and buy some reusable water bottles for taking it along. It's vastly cheaper for the same thing. Shop wise, not just cheap.
As an example, check out the juice aisle: 100% juice isn't the same as 100% of the juice on the label. Apple juice and white grape juice are common substitutes: cheap, sweet, and less nutritious than many of the other juices. "Juice drinks" are even worse, barely more than koolaid. Go for the koolaid mix if you're aiming for flavored sugar water and buy some reusable water bottles for taking it along. It's vastly cheaper for the same thing. Shop wise, not just cheap.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
What Defines the Science Fiction Classic?
Came across a blog awhile back about whether there were any modern science fiction classics, that is, science fiction books (rather than movies) that if you mentioned it to an SF reader, they would be almost guaranteed to know the book and probably to have read it. Lots of old ones, but what about in the last half of the 20th C or since? if I say "Pip and Flinx", how many SF readers would recognize the characters and the books they are from? What about Helva, the Ship Who Sang, or the Dragonriders of Pern (though they slide toward fantasy most of the time), but there are plenty of memorable Fantasies.
The question came up again in a discussion at home, and it came up that we'd have a hard time testing even if we thought of a few candidates: how would you know, unless you were involved in discussion outside your local reading group or book club? classices are not always 'favorites" either, as the NY Times best seller lists show. Classics, in the sense I refer to here is more about recognizable quality and long-term memorability and value, that ensures the next generation reads it, too.
With no answers, my thoughts turned to what exactly would define a classic in a genre fiction? What kind of features would make it modestly popular, over more than a single generation, memorable and recognizeably good quality such that a teacher would bring it to the attention of their students? Here are some of my thoughts:
* Well written with a distinctive style, voice
* Helps define the genre or a subgenre, perhaps the first to effectively capture a subgenre and leads the way to many of the same sort, poor imitations of the first.
* A story that a wide audience can relate to (typically relatively basic, even obvious in essence with classic themes of life, family, friends, good and evil, challenges to basic values, but portrayed in such an interesting manner that adults and teens can read and re-read it and find something new to learn and understand, complex enough in content along the course to retain interest.
* Strong emotional content (fear and hate, love and hate, obsession, jealousy, and fierce loyalty
* A new twist, setting, or focus
* Larger than life characters that none the less represent the human condition, with flaws and weaknesses in the same proportion as strength and nobility and purpose.
* In particular for a given genre, it should be an archtype of the genre. For science fiction, a fictitious, pseudo, or future predictive science that is not just present but a key story element.
The last may be an answer to why no science fictions obviously fall into this category: So many kinds of science and science fiction are available for exploration, that finding a representative one may be hard for subgenre's whose true models were written more that a century before: time travel, vampires, monsters, space fiction, and others. A book that tries to address several of the options at once becomes unbelievalbe, a farce or parody, although that can be a kind of classic of its own. Who hadn't heard of the Hitchhikers Guide, even before the movie?
Even if no book achieves it all, I figure any book that aims in the right direction will at least have a great chance at publication success.
The question came up again in a discussion at home, and it came up that we'd have a hard time testing even if we thought of a few candidates: how would you know, unless you were involved in discussion outside your local reading group or book club? classices are not always 'favorites" either, as the NY Times best seller lists show. Classics, in the sense I refer to here is more about recognizable quality and long-term memorability and value, that ensures the next generation reads it, too.
With no answers, my thoughts turned to what exactly would define a classic in a genre fiction? What kind of features would make it modestly popular, over more than a single generation, memorable and recognizeably good quality such that a teacher would bring it to the attention of their students? Here are some of my thoughts:
* Well written with a distinctive style, voice
* Helps define the genre or a subgenre, perhaps the first to effectively capture a subgenre and leads the way to many of the same sort, poor imitations of the first.
* A story that a wide audience can relate to (typically relatively basic, even obvious in essence with classic themes of life, family, friends, good and evil, challenges to basic values, but portrayed in such an interesting manner that adults and teens can read and re-read it and find something new to learn and understand, complex enough in content along the course to retain interest.
* Strong emotional content (fear and hate, love and hate, obsession, jealousy, and fierce loyalty
* A new twist, setting, or focus
* Larger than life characters that none the less represent the human condition, with flaws and weaknesses in the same proportion as strength and nobility and purpose.
* In particular for a given genre, it should be an archtype of the genre. For science fiction, a fictitious, pseudo, or future predictive science that is not just present but a key story element.
The last may be an answer to why no science fictions obviously fall into this category: So many kinds of science and science fiction are available for exploration, that finding a representative one may be hard for subgenre's whose true models were written more that a century before: time travel, vampires, monsters, space fiction, and others. A book that tries to address several of the options at once becomes unbelievalbe, a farce or parody, although that can be a kind of classic of its own. Who hadn't heard of the Hitchhikers Guide, even before the movie?
Even if no book achieves it all, I figure any book that aims in the right direction will at least have a great chance at publication success.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Tip: Avoid sale shopping
It may be counter-intuitive, and there are exceptions, but sales tempt us to buy things we don't need in greater quantity than we need them. A sale is still a purchase, and the best sale price is still more costly than buying nothing at all.
Tip: Learn to Cook
Home cooked foods are always cheaper than restaurant fare. With a little care, they are usually cheaper and healthier than fast food, too, and being healthier is cheeper than being sick. Basics like rice, simple roasts, potatoes, vegetables and fruit are all easy to prepare with a minimum of guidance. For the bolder cook, sugar and flour and small amounts of ingredients are far cheaper and usually better than store-vought treats (desserts at the store are especially expensive because you are paying for a lot of preparation effort and packaging besides the food itself). If you are interested in recipis, let me know what you are looking for. I have a wide array and am happy to add more detailed instructions for the beginner.
Friday, June 11, 2010
science fiction cultural elements
I've gotten some fairly good feedback on my current free novel, but I'm not sure if the source is a big science fiction fan. I don't want to undo the mood with lots of technical stuff, but I suspect I need to put in just a little more science fiction, if only a little more alien descriptions of the characters, long faces, one less finger, but more importantly, a little more alien thought pattern and cultural elements: what makes the military officers military? How to they express authority? Not just the shape of a salute but a reflection of some other aspects of their culture that i have barely begun to explore here. I need to spin off some independent short stories to experiment with some ideas. That has always helped on the stories that I have been developing longer.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Tip: Figure out what you want
Set financial goals and wishes: what do you want that takes some money to achieve or to achieve well. Choose realistic short term and medium term goals but shoot for the moon for the long term future. Find out how much they cost. DON'T try to figure out how much you need to set aside each month to get to the long term goals unless you're really good with compound interest and inflation rates, besides, calculating how much to set aside isn't the point. Setting a goal, and keeping it in mind is an achievement of its own. And keep in mind for that long term dream, the sooner you start saving, the less you'll need to put in the bank.
Tip: keep a spending log
Keep a spending log, and an income log if your paycheck varies from week to week. Like dieters who record their food intake, the mere act of writing it down regularly can help get it under control by building awareness. Small purchases, especially, can go by unnoticed, but they add up fast and suddenly the wallet is a hundred dollars lighter, much of it spent on things we didn't need. Keeping track for several months also provides enough information to start thinking about making a budget. Too many people try to start with a budget before they know what they regularly spend, get frustrated when it doesn't come out, and quit, and that never helps. Just find a notebook of a comfortable size (not something I would recommend for the computer! even a handheld that you can take with), a comfortable pen, and write down everything you spend when you spend it.
A new category--Finance Lessons from Dad
The new category isn't just about things Dad said, but things I learned indirectly from those early lessons, and through experience, mostly modestly successful since then. the new category will mostly be little tips and descriptions of my own experience working at being financially "independent" (in my definition, having more than I owe) and maintaining good security ratings and all.
I don't offer advice on achieving real wealth. I haven't figured that one out beyond finding a better paying job than I have, nor how to make money from nothing. I've managed steady if not always great paying work and that's the only starting point I know. Steady income isn't always enough, though. Plenty of people who make more than I do, however, still find themselves floundering in financial confusion and problems, and others just don't seem to make as much progress as they want, so I thought a few practical if inexpert tips might be useful.
Tip #1 -- this one is from Dad -- Keep your credit card balance at 0 and if it isn't, get it there as fast as you can.
He's gotten past not wanting to use them at all, but he, and I, still pay them down every month with very very rare exception. If I can't afford to pay the card off when the bill comes in, then I can't afford it all, that's the concept, because paying interest--and even the better credit cards have a lot-- just means you are spending more money in the long run, and buying less of what you want and need. Once in a grat while I've paid a large bill off in two installments, but I didn't use a credit card again until it was paid off.
I don't offer advice on achieving real wealth. I haven't figured that one out beyond finding a better paying job than I have, nor how to make money from nothing. I've managed steady if not always great paying work and that's the only starting point I know. Steady income isn't always enough, though. Plenty of people who make more than I do, however, still find themselves floundering in financial confusion and problems, and others just don't seem to make as much progress as they want, so I thought a few practical if inexpert tips might be useful.
Tip #1 -- this one is from Dad -- Keep your credit card balance at 0 and if it isn't, get it there as fast as you can.
He's gotten past not wanting to use them at all, but he, and I, still pay them down every month with very very rare exception. If I can't afford to pay the card off when the bill comes in, then I can't afford it all, that's the concept, because paying interest--and even the better credit cards have a lot-- just means you are spending more money in the long run, and buying less of what you want and need. Once in a grat while I've paid a large bill off in two installments, but I didn't use a credit card again until it was paid off.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
repeats
I haven't been posting as many non-Cerel posts as I have intended. I haven't edited much on the last several scenes, so I didn't have that immediate topic ready to hand. I have several blog topics from notes on my recent trip but havne't typed them up yet, still, I have a few things to say.
I've sent out copies of the whole Cerel novel to a couple of people and started to get feedback. Most of it hasn't been a surprise: there are certain elements of the story that have a certain repetitive flavor. Even if the events need to occur, they should always be different enough not to be mistaken for another similar scene elsewhere or when in the story. Even the possibility of repetition means that some aspect of the story, the characters, the plot, the emotional tension has not progressed as much as it should have. Some repetition has value, but not whole scenes, only themes, phrases. Or if scenes, then a distinct difference that changes the whole flavor and gives a special meaning to the repetition. Mine wasn't that, or at least not enough that and I'll have to work on it.
I think I may have a similar problem with the story on my other blog. I have two visitors to the pirate ship and the course of the visits if not the characters goes very similarly. No point in that as it doesn't expand the reader's understanding of anything and doesn't sufficiently make progress on the story.
I've sent out copies of the whole Cerel novel to a couple of people and started to get feedback. Most of it hasn't been a surprise: there are certain elements of the story that have a certain repetitive flavor. Even if the events need to occur, they should always be different enough not to be mistaken for another similar scene elsewhere or when in the story. Even the possibility of repetition means that some aspect of the story, the characters, the plot, the emotional tension has not progressed as much as it should have. Some repetition has value, but not whole scenes, only themes, phrases. Or if scenes, then a distinct difference that changes the whole flavor and gives a special meaning to the repetition. Mine wasn't that, or at least not enough that and I'll have to work on it.
I think I may have a similar problem with the story on my other blog. I have two visitors to the pirate ship and the course of the visits if not the characters goes very similarly. No point in that as it doesn't expand the reader's understanding of anything and doesn't sufficiently make progress on the story.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
I'm back
I wasn't able to post while I was traveling but i did take lots of notes and have several topics I plan to blog about in the coming days or weeks. For now, I'll post the next scene for Candice and company.
Friday, May 7, 2010
I'll be traveling again
So my posts will be rather irratic and will vary with access to internet. Probably no Cerel posts since I don't expect to be able to upload files but maybe a few notes on my travels and stories that I work at along the way. Then I'll be back with lots to share so come back soon!
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Dialog and narrative
I've been participating in a blog tour for Raven's Ladder by Jeffrey Overstreet on my other blog and one of the things that I noticed was the dialog. The section I just posted for Cerel Gold has a better balance of dialog and narrative than i ususally manage, I think, neither minimalist nor slowed by narrative expect where slow is appropriate. I think Overstreet goes a bit overboard with the narrative. He crafts beautiful narrative, but I'm more of the minimalist view on dialog: let the speaker's words tell the speaker's story to the degree it can.
I suspect its because of my heavy tv life, which isn't a good thing, but is useful for translation into a script, if any of my stories were movie/tv worthy (Cerelian Gold is probably too much drama, too lttle adventure for an SF movie, but there you are). If I think about it, I like to think narrative should serve a very particulat purpose if it is going to interrupt a discussion: slow the pace for a slow, thoughtufl dialog; convey not just expressions but hidden messages that can't be said aloud for whatever reason, or to hint at lies and such: the reader tends to have to believe what is said unless the author has made clear that a character is a liar. Otherwise, the narrative can go elsewhere.
I've seen it used to explain why characters are saying something, or the reason for reactions to another character's words; but if the writer has done the job, no explanation should be necessary at the time, because the character's and their goals have already been made clear (except in the opening scenes) or it can be explained a little later.
I suspect its because of my heavy tv life, which isn't a good thing, but is useful for translation into a script, if any of my stories were movie/tv worthy (Cerelian Gold is probably too much drama, too lttle adventure for an SF movie, but there you are). If I think about it, I like to think narrative should serve a very particulat purpose if it is going to interrupt a discussion: slow the pace for a slow, thoughtufl dialog; convey not just expressions but hidden messages that can't be said aloud for whatever reason, or to hint at lies and such: the reader tends to have to believe what is said unless the author has made clear that a character is a liar. Otherwise, the narrative can go elsewhere.
I've seen it used to explain why characters are saying something, or the reason for reactions to another character's words; but if the writer has done the job, no explanation should be necessary at the time, because the character's and their goals have already been made clear (except in the opening scenes) or it can be explained a little later.
Mussings on stats and stuff
I can track the statistics on my other blog a bit, to see how many visitors I have. It's leveled out a bit, higher on weekdays than weekends, with a lot of people looking at only one of the pages, though I don't know whether they are following the story or the blog. This one I can only tell if people sign up as followers, but I think that requires at least a minimal Google registration and being myself not one to put much info on line, I sympathise if people are disinclined to register. The lack of comments I have come to expect. Even my fellow writers don't typically write much, statistically speaking, especially if they are just following a story. And on this one, for good or ill, they can go back to previous posts to read the whole story later, albeit with the sections stacked in reverse order. Who knows, my fan base might discover me many years from now. I have no idea if it is even posible to make a blog go away once it is on the net. Ah to dream of future success...
Saturday, April 17, 2010
wishy washy characters and revision
another of my "global" changes was the word perhaps, which I almost inariably type as perhpas. When i saw how many ‘perhpas’ needed changing, i realized I needed more than a spelling correction. I needed at least to vary it with might, maybe, could, and alternative constructions. As I went through, I realized many should simply be eliminated. A strong character cannot come across as strong if everything is caveated with perhaps and maybe. They must be confident even when they shouldn’t be in order for the reader to see the strength, the confidence. So I simply deleted many and in several cases made the sentences stonger still by rephrasing the statement with even greater certainty. If it wasn’t part of the dialog, I almost always eliminated or at least replaced it with a less wishy-washy phrase. This book isn’t one where I follow one character for long scenes, except Candice. The rest of the time it’s intended to be more omniscient, so conveying a character’s uncertainty into the narrative is rarely appropriate. The author must know the truth even if the characters don’t, unless a thought is clearly and specifically credited to a particular character. Then we're back to conveying the strength, or not, of the character.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Revising notes
I looked ahead and notice that I have much work to do on the ending of Cerel Gold but after doing a rough first draft, I decided to do some mass revisions and fixes, like global replaces on words I always type wrong like "perhpas". Over time I've also noticed a few constructions I overuse and use wrong so i start doing find with variable replacements:
I’ve mostly cured myself of “there are” constructions, but I still over use “that had”, partly as a defense against the tendency to try to eliminate “that” from the English language. It can be over used, and I understand the wish to remove doubles, even though we say such phrases as 'that that' and 'had had' frequently in normal speech. Still, to eliminate 'that' entirely is usually to make sentences grammatically wrong as well as unclear. Ny find function showed that I had used “that had” way too many times even if grammatically correct. So I rephrased maybe half or two thirds to make better, and often shorter sentences, always good when the work is already well over 100000 words.
For the benefit of others who may have similar problems, I provide here some of the kinds of fixes I applied:
Replacing "that had' with "who had" when it refered back to a person rather than a thing. it at least adds variety and maybe clarity.
Condencing with a better word/phrase: replace "displacing all that had come between" with "displacing everything between"
replace "drinks that had been sent" with "drinks sent"
reversing the primary and description and turning the description into something of an adjective: "bedding that had gone unused" becomes "unused bedding"
Any revision and editing tips you would care to share?
I’ve mostly cured myself of “there are” constructions, but I still over use “that had”, partly as a defense against the tendency to try to eliminate “that” from the English language. It can be over used, and I understand the wish to remove doubles, even though we say such phrases as 'that that' and 'had had' frequently in normal speech. Still, to eliminate 'that' entirely is usually to make sentences grammatically wrong as well as unclear. Ny find function showed that I had used “that had” way too many times even if grammatically correct. So I rephrased maybe half or two thirds to make better, and often shorter sentences, always good when the work is already well over 100000 words.
For the benefit of others who may have similar problems, I provide here some of the kinds of fixes I applied:
Replacing "that had' with "who had" when it refered back to a person rather than a thing. it at least adds variety and maybe clarity.
Condencing with a better word/phrase: replace "displacing all that had come between" with "displacing everything between"
replace "drinks that had been sent" with "drinks sent"
reversing the primary and description and turning the description into something of an adjective: "bedding that had gone unused" becomes "unused bedding"
Any revision and editing tips you would care to share?
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
comment on the Chap 13 sect 2
My latest Cerel post is a good example of my typical second drafts: way too long and way too much talking heads with hrdly even a reference to who is speaking, who is listening. I thought I had gone through this section to correct that but I see there are long sections of pure dialog. I like a rich dialog, but it needs trimming, maybe a summary of two, and needs to be interspersed with at least minimal action and references to the people involved. I can tell who is speaking, but I make the reader work too hard to figure it out, I'm sure, without even a hi-said, she-said along the way for pages at a time.
Fortunately, if I improve it by taking out some of the overdone mush and summarizing, it will also shorten the tale a bit, and this one needs shortening. It is well over 120,ooo words currently, and it really needs to be under 100,000 to have a chance of selling. Even that is probably longer than is wise, but my books usually are. One of the reasons i want to get one of them considered for publication is that I would then get an editor. A little guidance would take me a long way toward figuring out what kinds of things can be cut. Whole and half scenes at a time, I'm sure, though I usually trim by phrase and sentence. It's hard to decide what's not needed when in our minds its part of the story we envisioned. We have to ask ourselves, are the ideas covered elsewhere? What would happen to the tale, overall, if a scene or part of a scene was missing? Often enough, the reader wouldn't even encounter a question that the rest of the story couldn't answer. It can be there in our minds, behind the scenes, a moment in time real to us and our characters, a bedroom in the house that we all know is there but that a visitor might never be shown.
Fortunately, if I improve it by taking out some of the overdone mush and summarizing, it will also shorten the tale a bit, and this one needs shortening. It is well over 120,ooo words currently, and it really needs to be under 100,000 to have a chance of selling. Even that is probably longer than is wise, but my books usually are. One of the reasons i want to get one of them considered for publication is that I would then get an editor. A little guidance would take me a long way toward figuring out what kinds of things can be cut. Whole and half scenes at a time, I'm sure, though I usually trim by phrase and sentence. It's hard to decide what's not needed when in our minds its part of the story we envisioned. We have to ask ourselves, are the ideas covered elsewhere? What would happen to the tale, overall, if a scene or part of a scene was missing? Often enough, the reader wouldn't even encounter a question that the rest of the story couldn't answer. It can be there in our minds, behind the scenes, a moment in time real to us and our characters, a bedroom in the house that we all know is there but that a visitor might never be shown.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Tremors in the Rough
VAl quickly discarded several idea for a framework for their Walk. Stalking hunters would too easily lead to situations where her companions must guess her vision else pull them all off course. A race course was too likely to wrap back to its beginning instead of continuing to their goal. Then she had it.
TADPOLE became a golf cart, the world a brightly lit green. Their first ball had carried them to the third hole but a little into the rough.
“The monitor is the ball?” Honorr asked, tipping back his cap.
“Don’t try to understand it. just play along and watch for NDMs.”
“Fore!” Fisian called and without leaving the cart or even stopping its easy motion, swung at the ball left-handed with her club. The ball flew out across the fairway and continued rolling until it was precariously close to the bunker.
“Your turn,” Fisian said to Honorr.
He stepped out of the cart as it slowed , positioned his feet carefully, and swung. The ball didn’t go far, but it was back to the center of the fairway and Val was certain he was starting to pick up readings from the sensors..
Honorr was just getting back into the cart when a hand grabbed his elbow. Two more golfers were ont he course, tall and stiff with cream pants and matching green golf shirts but Val couldn’t quite focus on their faces.
“Our turn,” one of them said, smiling. He yanked Honorr away from the cart and both swung their clubs.
“That’s now how the game goes!” Val shouted, ducking a swing toward her head. Fisian blocked the other with her club and reved the cart straight at the nearest, who seemed to step boredly out of its way. Fisian circeld around, putting the cart between Honorr and the green shirts. Val grabbed onto him as he grabbed onto the cart and Fisian charged down the fairway. Despite Fisians wild manueverings, the green shirts were repeatedly able to step diretly in front of the cart, forcing Fisian to swerve until she was almost tipping the cart.
For a moment they continued unimpeded, but there ahead appeared a second golf ball, this one acid orange.
“Get their ball!” Val shouted though she didn’t know how it could help.
Honorr and Val swung bent and dented clubs as the green shirts came at them again, never running but somehow moving faster than the cart.. This time Fizian aimed the cart between them and the garish ball, appeared likely to hit one of them, and he was gone. Non longer fitting quite into the scene, the NDM golfers began to appear and disappear randomly, in front of them, on the side, near the ball and not, but more often a little off, tempting them away from the ball.
“Five iron!” Fizain called, and Honorr handed her another club. For a moment the cart charged toward another green shirt, then With a deft turn, she headed for the ball, scooped it with the iron, and sent it flying away from the hole it had nearly reached. it bounced toward the lake.
The cart and the NDM golfers charged after it. Val scooped up the orange ball as Frisian drove past, and two of the green shirts jumped toward her, nearly knocked her from the cart, and the ball from from her hands, landed near the edge and continued rolling. The green shirted NDMs dove after it. Ball and N-Dimensional Monoliths landed in the water.
As if a meteor had crashed, the water of the lake, its lilies and cat tails and frogs all surged upward and crashed over the cart and its occupants.
#
Val, cold and wet, looked out over a vast gray sea. Honorr walked a little distance from her, studying sea shells while Fisian worked on the TADPOLE.
“I take it you know we won,” Horr said, looking up at her.
“What?”
“You’re grinning.”
“A tsunami isn’t what I, at least, envisioned as a success story.”
“Japan can handle another one. The NDM will just be more rocks on their shore. Better than the world blowing up.”
“They could just try again. Im sure those were just the guard force,” Val said, her smile softening.
“If they understand why the test failed,” Fisian said, joining them almost as mysteriously as the NDMs had. “Three test: one premature, the third a failure. They’ll be back to the drawing board and try again... in another eon or two.”
END
For the curious, TADPOLE is Temporal Anomoly Displacement Projected Onto Limited Exterior
TADPOLE became a golf cart, the world a brightly lit green. Their first ball had carried them to the third hole but a little into the rough.
“The monitor is the ball?” Honorr asked, tipping back his cap.
“Don’t try to understand it. just play along and watch for NDMs.”
“Fore!” Fisian called and without leaving the cart or even stopping its easy motion, swung at the ball left-handed with her club. The ball flew out across the fairway and continued rolling until it was precariously close to the bunker.
“Your turn,” Fisian said to Honorr.
He stepped out of the cart as it slowed , positioned his feet carefully, and swung. The ball didn’t go far, but it was back to the center of the fairway and Val was certain he was starting to pick up readings from the sensors..
Honorr was just getting back into the cart when a hand grabbed his elbow. Two more golfers were ont he course, tall and stiff with cream pants and matching green golf shirts but Val couldn’t quite focus on their faces.
“Our turn,” one of them said, smiling. He yanked Honorr away from the cart and both swung their clubs.
“That’s now how the game goes!” Val shouted, ducking a swing toward her head. Fisian blocked the other with her club and reved the cart straight at the nearest, who seemed to step boredly out of its way. Fisian circeld around, putting the cart between Honorr and the green shirts. Val grabbed onto him as he grabbed onto the cart and Fisian charged down the fairway. Despite Fisians wild manueverings, the green shirts were repeatedly able to step diretly in front of the cart, forcing Fisian to swerve until she was almost tipping the cart.
For a moment they continued unimpeded, but there ahead appeared a second golf ball, this one acid orange.
“Get their ball!” Val shouted though she didn’t know how it could help.
Honorr and Val swung bent and dented clubs as the green shirts came at them again, never running but somehow moving faster than the cart.. This time Fizian aimed the cart between them and the garish ball, appeared likely to hit one of them, and he was gone. Non longer fitting quite into the scene, the NDM golfers began to appear and disappear randomly, in front of them, on the side, near the ball and not, but more often a little off, tempting them away from the ball.
“Five iron!” Fizain called, and Honorr handed her another club. For a moment the cart charged toward another green shirt, then With a deft turn, she headed for the ball, scooped it with the iron, and sent it flying away from the hole it had nearly reached. it bounced toward the lake.
The cart and the NDM golfers charged after it. Val scooped up the orange ball as Frisian drove past, and two of the green shirts jumped toward her, nearly knocked her from the cart, and the ball from from her hands, landed near the edge and continued rolling. The green shirted NDMs dove after it. Ball and N-Dimensional Monoliths landed in the water.
As if a meteor had crashed, the water of the lake, its lilies and cat tails and frogs all surged upward and crashed over the cart and its occupants.
#
Val, cold and wet, looked out over a vast gray sea. Honorr walked a little distance from her, studying sea shells while Fisian worked on the TADPOLE.
“I take it you know we won,” Horr said, looking up at her.
“What?”
“You’re grinning.”
“A tsunami isn’t what I, at least, envisioned as a success story.”
“Japan can handle another one. The NDM will just be more rocks on their shore. Better than the world blowing up.”
“They could just try again. Im sure those were just the guard force,” Val said, her smile softening.
“If they understand why the test failed,” Fisian said, joining them almost as mysteriously as the NDMs had. “Three test: one premature, the third a failure. They’ll be back to the drawing board and try again... in another eon or two.”
END
For the curious, TADPOLE is Temporal Anomoly Displacement Projected Onto Limited Exterior
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Bake and Shake
Valorie found the kitchen largely from memory and from memories of her early days as a Walker, when she had to rely on imagination as much as the Unreal to guide her. in the watercolor dreamscape through which she floated, she could no more than imagine walking, assume she was succefully moving her feet in some reality that related to the TADPOLE if to nothing she could sense. In as much as it was possible to feel color or sound, she felt her way around surfaces that she hoped were bulkheads and hatches, ducked the more solid shadows of what she suspected were projections of NDMs onto dimensional space, and finally sensed some quality she was certain related to metal and sharpness though her seeming-eyes detected only chimes and the fingers she couldn’t find curled around-
#
“Val, Val!” Honorr’s face leaned close. “What’d you do, attack them single-handed?”
“That would be you,” Fisian pointed out, apparently floating above him until the world began to right itself into something almost real.
“She said to follw the bits. i could do that much. i attacked to distract them when i saw a bit of Val close to a bit of one of them.”
“She meant follow with the whole TADPOLE.”
“Did she? How do you know? She probably didn’t herself.”
“What append?” Val asked as she sat up, breaking into the impending arguement.
“Their second test. it looks like it was premature so there wasn’t as much damage as their could have been, but it was deep, deep and powerful enough to shake the planet to its core. I’m trying to calculate where the third test is likely to be but so far way north and some distance west is all I’ve got.”
“California?” Honorr asked.
“No, maybe aftershocks from the tremor but the terra firma fissures don’t hold a candle to the Sol Cascade for power effects.”
“Japan, then.”
“Very likely. Or something in the Pacific basin. We;ll head that way and continue monitoring for further signs.”
“Why are you monitoring in here instead of outside?”
“our trip through N-Dimensional space carried us a bit under the surface and the earthquake knocked us deeper.”
“A bit?” Honorr objected with a raised eyebrow.
“Twenty miles is not far. We traveled thousands to get here.”
“up is not over, especially through planetary crust.”
“TADPOLE won’s care, nor Val.”
Val rose and her head, until then sagging wearily, lifted. “We’re sitting here because i was fool enough to get knocked unconscious?”
“We’d have prodded you if it had take more than the time we needed to get the necessary readings. Are you feeling well enough for some local Unreal time? With the whole ship?”
“Size doesn’t matter. But you’ll have to turn off the safeties. TADPOLE’s brain has enough imagination to pull us of course if it gets alarmed.”
“What will it be?” Honorr asked with a grin.
Val stood and patted his bottom. “Nothing that exciting or the ship won’t be the only one alarmed and distracted. Just stand at the consoles and watch for Japan surface. Don’t try to predict the course. let me choose it r the tug of war will knock us out of the Unreal before we can get there.”
#
“Val, Val!” Honorr’s face leaned close. “What’d you do, attack them single-handed?”
“That would be you,” Fisian pointed out, apparently floating above him until the world began to right itself into something almost real.
“She said to follw the bits. i could do that much. i attacked to distract them when i saw a bit of Val close to a bit of one of them.”
“She meant follow with the whole TADPOLE.”
“Did she? How do you know? She probably didn’t herself.”
“What append?” Val asked as she sat up, breaking into the impending arguement.
“Their second test. it looks like it was premature so there wasn’t as much damage as their could have been, but it was deep, deep and powerful enough to shake the planet to its core. I’m trying to calculate where the third test is likely to be but so far way north and some distance west is all I’ve got.”
“California?” Honorr asked.
“No, maybe aftershocks from the tremor but the terra firma fissures don’t hold a candle to the Sol Cascade for power effects.”
“Japan, then.”
“Very likely. Or something in the Pacific basin. We;ll head that way and continue monitoring for further signs.”
“Why are you monitoring in here instead of outside?”
“our trip through N-Dimensional space carried us a bit under the surface and the earthquake knocked us deeper.”
“A bit?” Honorr objected with a raised eyebrow.
“Twenty miles is not far. We traveled thousands to get here.”
“up is not over, especially through planetary crust.”
“TADPOLE won’s care, nor Val.”
Val rose and her head, until then sagging wearily, lifted. “We’re sitting here because i was fool enough to get knocked unconscious?”
“We’d have prodded you if it had take more than the time we needed to get the necessary readings. Are you feeling well enough for some local Unreal time? With the whole ship?”
“Size doesn’t matter. But you’ll have to turn off the safeties. TADPOLE’s brain has enough imagination to pull us of course if it gets alarmed.”
“What will it be?” Honorr asked with a grin.
Val stood and patted his bottom. “Nothing that exciting or the ship won’t be the only one alarmed and distracted. Just stand at the consoles and watch for Japan surface. Don’t try to predict the course. let me choose it r the tug of war will knock us out of the Unreal before we can get there.”
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Dive N Duck
The TADPOLE control room was quiet as they attempted to follow the power readings they'd picked up on Haiti. Their progress was slow for the TADPOLE, going no more than continental distances southbound.
“Watch out!” Val shouted though she didn’t know why.
Honorr slammed into the console and fell, gasping for air. Fisian flew into the wall behind her, her quick grip on the console insufficient. Only Val was saved from impact with the TADPOLE’s suddenly stopped surfaces by finding neutral space in midair. She grabbed the console and yanked herself toward Honorr as the wall previously beside her seemed to buckle inward, to change shape, to divide.
“NDM!” she shouted unnecessarily, covered her mouth to keep from shouting again in panic, and reached into the Unreal. It was an insanely dangerous thing to do, leaving her body vulnerable; but being weaponless with NDM aboard was insane, too, and she had no intention of allowing either condition to last. Valorie had also practiced this shift for just such circumstances.
Hands and head were enough. Val was looking around even as the arsenal vision formed around her. With both hands, she grabbed at the most powerful weapons she saw. At first there was nothing actually available to grab but with practiced care she cupped her hands around the image of the weapons with her equally imaginary hands, as if both were real. Then she demanded that they be more real: shape, texture, form, weight. she held the vision firm. Material, substance, hardness, power, she insisted of the Unreal, then grabbed a blade in her teeth and yanked out.
The weapons in her hands flew toward her companions, her aim slightly off from her turn in the Unreal, unmatched by her resting body. Honorr caugh his with a finger tip, then with both hands as it tumbled, fired even as Fisian reached hers. Light and sound spattered again and again against the bulk of the monoliths. Unslowed, they swung their arms in a slow-looking arc that could kill. Several more shots from the powerful weapons and finally one paled, weakened.
Val ducked the swing of another and thrust with the sword. A shock of impact stabbed up her own arm, the wepon barely scratching the thing’s surface as Honorr fired again. His energy shot hit the sword, sent its power down the blade and into the NDM. It sparked, paled, paled further still to an ash gray, and cracked with a sound like granite scraping pebbles. It froze, a featureless figure of stone.
The remaining unharmed one reached out to the damaged but still mobile partner. They blended, merged into the wall, and disappeared, leaving the dead rock behind.
Fisian did something to the console, “We’re following,” she warned.
“What?” Honorr bellowed in disbelief. “You think this is a tournament and we need a round two, in hell?”
#
“It’s just a version of the Unreal,” Val said as the universe rotated into chaos. “You’ve been there before.” She reached out a tentative hand as the world kaliedescoped around them in a visitor of pastel walls, sparkles, and shadow figurines not quite detailed enough to have shape or form.
“This isn’t!” Honorr complained. “The Unreal you’ve shown me has up, down, continuity. Things keep coming in and out of nowhere.”
“Things?”
“Can’t you see them? An elbow, an ear, big.”
“They’re NDMs, shifting between dimensions. We can only see the pieces in our dimensions,” Val said.
“Think of it them as being woven through space when you are looking at a woven basket, you see only the sections of each strand that come out, the alternating sections are hidden behind other strands. Just close your eyes and relax,” Fisian suggested, “as if you were laying down after drinking too much. The world swims around you, spins on its axis, flying through space a million miles a second, but you remain safe and quiet on your couch.”
“The TADPOLE console is still in front of you where it was a moment ago. You’re still holding on,” Valorie added. “The universe moves, we wove within it, but the TADPOLE moves with us.”
“Is your weapon stil in your hand?” Val asked.
“I don’t even have a hand! Nor body!”
“You have sight and a voice, therefore you have a body, even if you can’t find it. It’s all right where it was before.,” Val tried to reassure him. she herself was trying to use other senses than her eyes to find her companions among the shadowy shapes and colors.
“Are we in space?” Honorr asked.
“We are in N-Dimension non-space. Space doesn’t relate. -- I think your weapon is still in your right hand.”
Fisian offered something of an answer, “with respect to Earth it locks like we’ve gone down and down. They’re cooking up something under the Americas. Haiti was just the first test.”
“Are you thinking the usual three?”
“Three is the universal truth. The second will be bigger, the third devastating. Since they are testing so close to what has to be the fault in their effort. The third may turn out to be the real event. It will at least destroy the planet. - Val, can you get us hand weapons? Even if we could figure out how to shoot, we can’t aim them like this.”
“Just keep following whatever pieces you see and I’ll see what I can do. Knives from the kitchen if nothing else."
“If you can find the kitchen.”
“Watch out!” Val shouted though she didn’t know why.
Honorr slammed into the console and fell, gasping for air. Fisian flew into the wall behind her, her quick grip on the console insufficient. Only Val was saved from impact with the TADPOLE’s suddenly stopped surfaces by finding neutral space in midair. She grabbed the console and yanked herself toward Honorr as the wall previously beside her seemed to buckle inward, to change shape, to divide.
“NDM!” she shouted unnecessarily, covered her mouth to keep from shouting again in panic, and reached into the Unreal. It was an insanely dangerous thing to do, leaving her body vulnerable; but being weaponless with NDM aboard was insane, too, and she had no intention of allowing either condition to last. Valorie had also practiced this shift for just such circumstances.
Hands and head were enough. Val was looking around even as the arsenal vision formed around her. With both hands, she grabbed at the most powerful weapons she saw. At first there was nothing actually available to grab but with practiced care she cupped her hands around the image of the weapons with her equally imaginary hands, as if both were real. Then she demanded that they be more real: shape, texture, form, weight. she held the vision firm. Material, substance, hardness, power, she insisted of the Unreal, then grabbed a blade in her teeth and yanked out.
The weapons in her hands flew toward her companions, her aim slightly off from her turn in the Unreal, unmatched by her resting body. Honorr caugh his with a finger tip, then with both hands as it tumbled, fired even as Fisian reached hers. Light and sound spattered again and again against the bulk of the monoliths. Unslowed, they swung their arms in a slow-looking arc that could kill. Several more shots from the powerful weapons and finally one paled, weakened.
Val ducked the swing of another and thrust with the sword. A shock of impact stabbed up her own arm, the wepon barely scratching the thing’s surface as Honorr fired again. His energy shot hit the sword, sent its power down the blade and into the NDM. It sparked, paled, paled further still to an ash gray, and cracked with a sound like granite scraping pebbles. It froze, a featureless figure of stone.
The remaining unharmed one reached out to the damaged but still mobile partner. They blended, merged into the wall, and disappeared, leaving the dead rock behind.
Fisian did something to the console, “We’re following,” she warned.
“What?” Honorr bellowed in disbelief. “You think this is a tournament and we need a round two, in hell?”
#
“It’s just a version of the Unreal,” Val said as the universe rotated into chaos. “You’ve been there before.” She reached out a tentative hand as the world kaliedescoped around them in a visitor of pastel walls, sparkles, and shadow figurines not quite detailed enough to have shape or form.
“This isn’t!” Honorr complained. “The Unreal you’ve shown me has up, down, continuity. Things keep coming in and out of nowhere.”
“Things?”
“Can’t you see them? An elbow, an ear, big.”
“They’re NDMs, shifting between dimensions. We can only see the pieces in our dimensions,” Val said.
“Think of it them as being woven through space when you are looking at a woven basket, you see only the sections of each strand that come out, the alternating sections are hidden behind other strands. Just close your eyes and relax,” Fisian suggested, “as if you were laying down after drinking too much. The world swims around you, spins on its axis, flying through space a million miles a second, but you remain safe and quiet on your couch.”
“The TADPOLE console is still in front of you where it was a moment ago. You’re still holding on,” Valorie added. “The universe moves, we wove within it, but the TADPOLE moves with us.”
“Is your weapon stil in your hand?” Val asked.
“I don’t even have a hand! Nor body!”
“You have sight and a voice, therefore you have a body, even if you can’t find it. It’s all right where it was before.,” Val tried to reassure him. she herself was trying to use other senses than her eyes to find her companions among the shadowy shapes and colors.
“Are we in space?” Honorr asked.
“We are in N-Dimension non-space. Space doesn’t relate. -- I think your weapon is still in your right hand.”
Fisian offered something of an answer, “with respect to Earth it locks like we’ve gone down and down. They’re cooking up something under the Americas. Haiti was just the first test.”
“Are you thinking the usual three?”
“Three is the universal truth. The second will be bigger, the third devastating. Since they are testing so close to what has to be the fault in their effort. The third may turn out to be the real event. It will at least destroy the planet. - Val, can you get us hand weapons? Even if we could figure out how to shoot, we can’t aim them like this.”
“Just keep following whatever pieces you see and I’ll see what I can do. Knives from the kitchen if nothing else."
“If you can find the kitchen.”
comments about the Earthquake story
When the Earthquake story is done it will be like many of my novels started: a story of sorts in itself, with several characters introduced but not followed very far, explanations proposed but not well fleshed out. I’d like to have a different human involved at each location, with more of a scene to show something of the characters and their nature, have more indicators of the motivation of the N-Dimensional Monolith’s goals. For a short story, I should cut out anything extraneous, but I am always more likely to expand than shrink. More action at the aftershock site, some research into seismology to make the explanations more plausible and teach a little about real quakes and weather change and all in the process, provide more history for the central characters... In this case, Val and Honorr both have an extensive history on several worlds (not planets, but whole fiction worlds) as I play with them, their interactions, side characters, plots, and the rules of their magic. I haven’t found a good fit. Not this one in the end, I’m sure: TADPOLE and Fisian have a history in my never-posted attempts at fanfic and a tv world that some readers may guess despite the name and sex changes. But Val and Honorr make a good pair, so I keep playing. Until I find a good fit, they make a good starting place for challenges and story lines I'm starting to play with.
comments about the
When the Earthquake story is done it will be like many of my novels started: a story of sorts in itself, with several characters introduced but not followed very far, explanations proposed but not well fleshed out: I’dlike to have a different human involved at each location, with more of a scene to show something of their character, have more indicators of the motivation of the N-Dimensional Monolith’s goals. For a short story, I should cut out anything extraneaous, but i am always more likely to expand than shrink. More action at the aftershock site, some research into seismology to make the explanations more plausible and teach a little about real quakes and weather change and all in the process, provide more history for the central characters... In this case, Val and Honorr both have an extensive history on several worlds (not planets, but whole fiction worlds) as i play with them, their interactions, side characters, plots, and the rules of their magic. I haven’t found a good fit. Not this one in the end, I’m sure: TADPOLE and Fisian have a history in my never posted attempts at fanfic and a tv world that some readers may guess despite the name and sex changes. But Val and Honorr make a good pair so I keep playing and until i find a good fit, they make a good starting place for some kinds of challenges.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Give 'em Another Shake
“Nice weather so far.”
“The bad weather’s the other side of the ocean. Besides, it’s too hot.”
“Hot is nice,” Fisian said, scanning the area with an HD.
Honorr uprighted the bigger instrument, hit the top pad, and watched as it set itself up, extending three legs and lifting the big box smoothly while maintaining its balance, then extending a whole range of antennae.
“Red lines everywhere,” he reported.
“Let me see,” Val said, poking her head in front of him. “That’s even worse than it felt. We’re getting more.”
“What is that?” a smooth, deep voice said and all three looked up as one of the Haitians strode down from around a hill saddle. “I’ve seen plenty of seismic snesors but nothing like that.”
“It isn’t a seismic sensor,” Valorie explained with a grin at the young, stately man, slightly overdressed for the uncomfortable heat. “It finds universal interstitial anomolies and teporal displacements. How many aftershocks have there been?”
“Sixty thrree. It’s tapering off.”
“Tapering or shifting location,” Fisian asked, her electric blue eyes directing the question at Honorr instead of the local.
“Both,” Honorr said after studying the rig’s displays.
“The energy shifted to the Eurpean stormfront - some of it anyway,” Valorie said, correcting herself thoush she didn’t know why.
Fisian studied the Walker a moment and nodded. “A split would be reasonable. Honorr, aim that thing west.”
Honrr turned the dial in the center and quickly pulled his hand back as the bristling antannae swung, reaching for him, he was certain. He was sure the big rig didnt like operating for anyone but Fisian, but the TADPOLE’s pilot prefered to walk around with the HandHeld sensor.
“Energy radiates outward in all directions from a quake,” the Earther said, not quite laughing at the answers and behavior of the threesome “And it doesn’t change the weather. This is the tropics. The weather is a force of its own.”
Without looking up from her HD, Fisian explained, “Usually, but the weather no less than the rest of the world will feel the impact of these quakes.”
Val sidled toward their visitor, smiling broadly. “Don’t mind them, stranger. Tell me, what brought you here? This place doesn’t look seismiclly significant to me.”
Dr. Celnlebo introduced himself and Valorie offered introductions without titles to him in turn. He flashed a smile of white teeth at her and said. “I assumed for the same thing that brought you, One of the largest aftershocks was centered near here, very close to the surface.”
“No, just lucky I guess,” Val responded softly, sidling closer as if she needed comfort and running a finger down his arm. “Do we have anything to worry about?”
“No more than anyone on this island.”
Val brushed her leg against his. “It’s so hot here.”
“It’s cooler than it often is in February,” he said, his own tone deepening. “Maybe a little warmer with the sun up.”
“Stop that, Val,” Honorr said coolly. “This isn’t the Unreal.”
“Unreal?”
“A halfway region between here and N-Dimensional space where we can sometimes tap into energies that aren’t usually available for direct use. It often takes the form of illusion and touches dreams.”
“Magic. Witchcraft? Miracles?”
“If you wish to put it into religious terms, i suppose. Mostly it takes the form of living visions that, while not real, have a bearing on reality. A strong link can achieve more.”
“And you have that.”
“I have the right training and a certain natural proclivity.”
“You have a prolivity for other things, too,” Honorr murmurred, barely glancing toward them as Val curled one foot around the scientist’s ankle.
Ceinlebo cleared his throat, “And N-dimensional space?”
“You’ve heard of parallel universes?”
“I know of the concept.”
“N-Dimensional space is where they meet. Normally, it takes vast quantities of energy, like the center of a black hone to cross the interface, but the universes aren’t perfect. Cracks and fissures create weak points where it becomes easier. Still really hard, powerful thrusts are required, but only that of say, a geological event.”
“I was following along with the shamanism, but magically induced earthquakes?”
“You were the one called in magic, not me,” Val said with a pout.
“Fisian! Val!” Honorr shouted.
“Another after shock?” Without waiting for an answer, the seismologist fled back over the hill to check on his own instruments. When he returned fifteen minutes later, there was no sign of the trio, no sign that they had ever been there, nor any tracks to suggest how they might have come and gone.
“The bad weather’s the other side of the ocean. Besides, it’s too hot.”
“Hot is nice,” Fisian said, scanning the area with an HD.
Honorr uprighted the bigger instrument, hit the top pad, and watched as it set itself up, extending three legs and lifting the big box smoothly while maintaining its balance, then extending a whole range of antennae.
“Red lines everywhere,” he reported.
“Let me see,” Val said, poking her head in front of him. “That’s even worse than it felt. We’re getting more.”
“What is that?” a smooth, deep voice said and all three looked up as one of the Haitians strode down from around a hill saddle. “I’ve seen plenty of seismic snesors but nothing like that.”
“It isn’t a seismic sensor,” Valorie explained with a grin at the young, stately man, slightly overdressed for the uncomfortable heat. “It finds universal interstitial anomolies and teporal displacements. How many aftershocks have there been?”
“Sixty thrree. It’s tapering off.”
“Tapering or shifting location,” Fisian asked, her electric blue eyes directing the question at Honorr instead of the local.
“Both,” Honorr said after studying the rig’s displays.
“The energy shifted to the Eurpean stormfront - some of it anyway,” Valorie said, correcting herself thoush she didn’t know why.
Fisian studied the Walker a moment and nodded. “A split would be reasonable. Honorr, aim that thing west.”
Honrr turned the dial in the center and quickly pulled his hand back as the bristling antannae swung, reaching for him, he was certain. He was sure the big rig didnt like operating for anyone but Fisian, but the TADPOLE’s pilot prefered to walk around with the HandHeld sensor.
“Energy radiates outward in all directions from a quake,” the Earther said, not quite laughing at the answers and behavior of the threesome “And it doesn’t change the weather. This is the tropics. The weather is a force of its own.”
Without looking up from her HD, Fisian explained, “Usually, but the weather no less than the rest of the world will feel the impact of these quakes.”
Val sidled toward their visitor, smiling broadly. “Don’t mind them, stranger. Tell me, what brought you here? This place doesn’t look seismiclly significant to me.”
Dr. Celnlebo introduced himself and Valorie offered introductions without titles to him in turn. He flashed a smile of white teeth at her and said. “I assumed for the same thing that brought you, One of the largest aftershocks was centered near here, very close to the surface.”
“No, just lucky I guess,” Val responded softly, sidling closer as if she needed comfort and running a finger down his arm. “Do we have anything to worry about?”
“No more than anyone on this island.”
Val brushed her leg against his. “It’s so hot here.”
“It’s cooler than it often is in February,” he said, his own tone deepening. “Maybe a little warmer with the sun up.”
“Stop that, Val,” Honorr said coolly. “This isn’t the Unreal.”
“Unreal?”
“A halfway region between here and N-Dimensional space where we can sometimes tap into energies that aren’t usually available for direct use. It often takes the form of illusion and touches dreams.”
“Magic. Witchcraft? Miracles?”
“If you wish to put it into religious terms, i suppose. Mostly it takes the form of living visions that, while not real, have a bearing on reality. A strong link can achieve more.”
“And you have that.”
“I have the right training and a certain natural proclivity.”
“You have a prolivity for other things, too,” Honorr murmurred, barely glancing toward them as Val curled one foot around the scientist’s ankle.
Ceinlebo cleared his throat, “And N-dimensional space?”
“You’ve heard of parallel universes?”
“I know of the concept.”
“N-Dimensional space is where they meet. Normally, it takes vast quantities of energy, like the center of a black hone to cross the interface, but the universes aren’t perfect. Cracks and fissures create weak points where it becomes easier. Still really hard, powerful thrusts are required, but only that of say, a geological event.”
“I was following along with the shamanism, but magically induced earthquakes?”
“You were the one called in magic, not me,” Val said with a pout.
“Fisian! Val!” Honorr shouted.
“Another after shock?” Without waiting for an answer, the seismologist fled back over the hill to check on his own instruments. When he returned fifteen minutes later, there was no sign of the trio, no sign that they had ever been there, nor any tracks to suggest how they might have come and gone.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Shake, Rattle, and Roll
On my other blog, I posted a challenge: write a story to explain the recent spate of earthquakes. I answered my own challenge during my recent travels and will be posting it in a series of posts. Here is the first section:
"What is it, Fisian?" Honorr asked, holding on the console as the whole TADPOLE continued to shake.
"These readings are jibberish. Do you sense anything, Val?"
Valorie hadn't bothere to grab onto anything, merely lifted her feer from the floor in a partial trance. She had already been seeking, knowing what Fisian would ask. she had considered inviting the others to hold onto her, but didn't bother. Fisian was fully occupied at the controls and Honorr could never get past what his eyes told him, would never believe a floating figure more stable than one locked to the shaking deck and bulkheads.
"Earth, of course," Val said. "something in the space-time fault line has shifted," she said, though until she spoke, she had not known the answer. At times, Honorr accused her of making things true with her words, but Valorie left such things to God and the universe. she was merely a reported, using the Unreal to guide her. "Honorr, chek the broadcasts. I'm sure there'll be earthquakes, floods, some disaster and the TAD shock wave won't be much ahead of the EM braodcasts."
Fisian sighed in relief as the sensor displays settled back to normal but shook her head. "What are they playing at this time? Humans are a short-sighted careless lot at the best of times, but I didn't think they were-"
"Their technology is more like a candle to a torch, nowhere near that powerful and they haven't organized the information explosion well enough, yet, for the next leap. Someone else has been playing in their backyard. NDM probably"
"A few Monolith corpses from eons ago is hardly an indicator that they'll return," Honorr chimed in.
"I just said maybe."
"Anyone from this universe would have been noticed," Fisian acknowledged. "You can't just take a hand drill and shift a planet, even one on gaping faultline like the Sol Cascade. It may not be Monoliths, but it's sometthing from the N-Dimensional counter universe poking around."
"As if they needed any help messing up that poor planet," Val grumped.
"What is it, Fisian?" Honorr asked, holding on the console as the whole TADPOLE continued to shake.
"These readings are jibberish. Do you sense anything, Val?"
Valorie hadn't bothere to grab onto anything, merely lifted her feer from the floor in a partial trance. She had already been seeking, knowing what Fisian would ask. she had considered inviting the others to hold onto her, but didn't bother. Fisian was fully occupied at the controls and Honorr could never get past what his eyes told him, would never believe a floating figure more stable than one locked to the shaking deck and bulkheads.
"Earth, of course," Val said. "something in the space-time fault line has shifted," she said, though until she spoke, she had not known the answer. At times, Honorr accused her of making things true with her words, but Valorie left such things to God and the universe. she was merely a reported, using the Unreal to guide her. "Honorr, chek the broadcasts. I'm sure there'll be earthquakes, floods, some disaster and the TAD shock wave won't be much ahead of the EM braodcasts."
Fisian sighed in relief as the sensor displays settled back to normal but shook her head. "What are they playing at this time? Humans are a short-sighted careless lot at the best of times, but I didn't think they were-"
"Their technology is more like a candle to a torch, nowhere near that powerful and they haven't organized the information explosion well enough, yet, for the next leap. Someone else has been playing in their backyard. NDM probably"
"A few Monolith corpses from eons ago is hardly an indicator that they'll return," Honorr chimed in.
"I just said maybe."
"Anyone from this universe would have been noticed," Fisian acknowledged. "You can't just take a hand drill and shift a planet, even one on gaping faultline like the Sol Cascade. It may not be Monoliths, but it's sometthing from the N-Dimensional counter universe poking around."
"As if they needed any help messing up that poor planet," Val grumped.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
