#FridayFlash: UW-401

Dr. Milano stood waiting outside the glass doors as the limo pulled up. The chauffeur opened the rear door, brought out two bags from the trunk, then drove away. The newcomer watched his transportation disappear into the high grass, growing right up to the edge of the roadway, then shrugged and wheeled his bags to the door.

"Dr. London, I presume," said Milano, offering a hand.

"Yes. And you're Dr. Milano?" They shook. "Where the hell are we?"

"Somewhere in North Dakota, I think. It doesn't matter. This is your home, laboratory, office, and lecture hall from now on."

"At least it isn't a missile silo."

"Actually, it was. Only the offices are upstairs. Your office is next to mine. You can drop off your laptop and any papers you brought there first, then I'll show you the rest of the place."


"Look," said London, on the elevator ride down, "I'm having second thoughts about this. Who are we working for here? The government? The military?"

Milano sighed. "Those are just subsidiaries. We're a third subsidiary."

"What?"

"We're working for… the rulers. The one percenters, some call 'em. To say this is top secret is… well, top secrets are secret from citizens, but governments share them around as needed. This place, not even the governments know about."

"Whoa. I was promised top-notch research facilities, opportunities to publish papers, the works. Not some crazy billionaire's private spook factory."

"Actually, you'll have all that. Your papers won't appear in Nature or the New England Journal of Medicine, but we have our own network of journals and lecture circuits. And the facilities are beyond anything you've ever dreamed of. Trust me." London stopped before a steel door and again took out a packed key ring. "This is where we'll be working. Your keys are in your desk upstairs, by the way."

"What's with the keys? Why not magcards?"

"It's too easy to hack. This place was fitted with mechanical locks back when, and they'll work even if the power goes out. Come on in."

"Nice." London tried to take it all in at once.

"Only the best for the pet researchers. Let me give you an overview on what you'll be doing. It was your immunology research that called attention to you, by the way. Level 3 biosafety training didn't hurt." Milano pulled on a pair of latex gloves from a wall-mounted dispenser then lifted a vial from a rack. "This is UW-401, the virus we're studying now. It's classified Biosafety Level 2, as it's similar to HIV in its transmission vectors. Our job is to devise a vaccine for it."

"What's it do?"

Milano sighed. "The sooner you see this, the better." He led London to another steel door at one end of the laboratory, marked "OBSERVATION." He swiped a finger across a tiny scanner, and it clicked. "I'll add your fingerprints when we're done there," he said. "We got cleared to use biometric locks for interior doors. Keeps things interesting."

They looked down at the figure on the gurney. "What — ungh!" London held his nose. "Is he dead, or did he start rotting before he died —" He gasped and grasped the railing, forgetting to hold his nose and breathe. Below them, the figure moaned and writhed, pulling at the straps securing it to the gurney.

"That is a victim of UW-401," said Milano. "One of the superpower militaries developed it, looking for a way to create the ultimate soldier."

"Looks like they created a zombie instead."

"That's pretty much what it is," Milano admitted. "They thought it rather promising at first. I can show you some video from the biowar group that developed it."


"That's impossible," London breathed. "His heart's gone — you can see daylight right through that hole!"

"You can see why they thought they had a winner, huh? The virus rewires the central nervous system and shuts down all autonomous systems but locomotion and digestion. They eat, they kill. You have to decapitate it, or blow it to bits, to stop it."

"You said 'at first.' What changed their minds?"

"A minor detail with soldiers: they have to be able to follow orders. UW-401 victims don't. They just keep going, killing and eating. And transmitting the virus to those they only wound."

"What's the symptoms?"

"Numbness within a few hours of infection. Loss of appetite. Vomiting, if the victim eats anything but fresh, raw meat. The numbness progresses to loss of higher mental functions and a dampening of senses… except sense of smell, which gets keener. After eighteen hours, the cardiopulmonary functions cease and you have a zombie."

"How does it live without a heart or lungs?"

"Badly. Digestion continues to provide enough energy to keep it going, but it's continuously necrotizing. After about six months, it quits. But that's plenty of time to infect other victims."

"Do they think this is gonna get out of the labs?"

"They know it will. As soon as they have a vaccine, they're going to release it."

"What?"

"Yeah. They're freaked out about that Occupy thing. They're afraid it's going to go viral, so they're going to immunize themselves and let something else go viral."

"When?"

"End of November. They'll push down fuel prices so people will be in a spending and traveling mood for the holidays. Computer models suggest it'll be worldwide in a week."

"Why bring me in on this? Immunization isn't rocket science. Dead virus, weakened virus… they've been tried already for sure."

"Of course. The problem is, the immune system doesn't recognize UW-401 as an invader. There's no immune reaction to stimulate."

"So we have like six months to invent an entirely new immunology, so we can destroy the human race?"

"That's the gist of it."

"Fuck that. I'm outta here."

"You think they'll just let you walk out? You have a family, right? Why do you think they talked you into coming out now and letting your wife and baby 'catch up' in a couple weeks?"

London reeled, caught a chair, sprawled into it. "My God."

"Play nice, report some results, and they tell me they'll bring our families out here come fall. I want to show you one more thing, then we'll head back to the offices." Milano gestured toward another door; behind it was a room lined with foam spikes. "An anechoic chamber," he explained, closing the door. "It was part of the original facility." His voice sounded flat.

"Damn. It's so quiet in here it's hurting my ears."

"Yeah. I've checked this room as best I can, and they can't monitor us in here." He sighed again. "I apologize, Dr. London. It was me who recommended you for the position. That was before I realized they don't intend to hold up their end of the deal."

"What do you mean?"

"When they're safely vaccinated? If they're merciful, we'll get a bullet in the head. If not, they'll feed us to the zombies. They've set up another silo for themselves. They'll hole up, release the virus, and come out in a couple years when all the zombies are dead."

London paled. "Shit."

"Yeah. I've got family out there too. I think they're toast, when it comes right down to it. So this is the plan: we continue to research, and come July we announce a breakthrough. We inject the entire one percent with live virus, grab our families, and make a break back for here with as many others as we can round up. If we're lucky, we'll be able to take advantage of the chaos. If not…well, we're no worse off."

"I… that makes sense. I'm in."

Writing Wibbles

Last week’s big news was that the Department of Justice went ahead with an expected suit against Apple and five of the “Big 6” publishers, alleging collusion and price-fixing of eBooks (aka the “Agency Model”). I held off writing about it until this week, mainly because I already had a post queued but also because I wanted to see if any more information came out. Oh well.

As expected, the publishing industry and their media outlets are crying Doom and Disaster. A website called Shelf Awareness, staffed by industry insiders, had this to say:

In a clash of concepts about what best serves the reader — the lowest possible prices or a healthy, diverse book industry — the federal government … came down on the side of the book as a commodity.

In other words, high eBook prices are a requirement for “a healthy, diverse book industry.” I understand the desire of a long-established oligopoly to preserve the status quo, but it’s a pity they can’t be more upfront about their motivations.

The problem is, there are laws against collusion and the DoJ provides prima facie evidence of how publisher executives “jointly acknowledged to each other the threat posed by Amazon’s pricing strategy and the need to work collectively to end that strategy.” If you can’t survive under laws that have been on the books for over 120 years, and aren’t enforced too well anyway, you’re not trying hard enough. In the end, it’s ridiculous to demand that eBooks be priced higher than hardcovers (especially when you’re explicitly forbidden to pass that eBook around the way you can a hardcover). I’ve opined before that the Agency Model was an attempt to kill eBooks; now it’s a failed attempt.

The idea that the producer dictates retail prices flies in the face of the capitalist system (that publishing executives undoubtedly support as long as it benefits them). The “S” in “MSRP” means “Suggested,” after all. Everyone in the chain, from the raw materials producers to the booksellers, tries to cover their costs plus some margin — or voluntarily takes a hit on margins (or even a loss) to gain some longer-term advantage. I doubt that even Stephen King would, for example, tell publishers that his books must sell for a certain price — so why should publishers tell Amazon what they can do?

[I should point out that, long-term, I’m not convinced that Amazon’s intentions are all wonderful for authors or readers. On the other hand, given what Barnes&Noble and Borders did to indie booksellers, I don’t weep much for their predicament now either.]

I think there’s still a role for Big Publishing, but they’ll have to update the way they do business. In my opinion, they could start by treating authors as partners rather than chattel. The average advance is the same as it was 30 years ago — i.e., much less when factoring in inflation — while book prices (and executive compensation) have increased accordingly. The games publishers play with sales figures are well-documented, and it’s funny how those “mistakes” never benefit the authors. Those kind of issues need to be addressed, instead of clinging to a business model that’s incompatible with new technology. In the Depression years and afterwards, it was possible for many authors to make a living from writing, even by writing short stories for the pulps. Top-shelf novelists were the rock stars of their day. By shooting for the lowest common denominator, the publishers have brought this new world of Amazon on themselves. IMO.

Under the current circumstances, going indie seems to be the smart move. A friend of mine cleared twice her dayjob pay in March, and circumstances are now pushing her into writing full-time. She’s a talented cover designer, and her books aren’t full of typos, so that helps. Not everyone gets that kind of success, but I think people who put a lot of effort into their work have a better chance of success by bypassing the publishers. When publishers acknowledge that they’re no longer the 800-pound gorilla, and start acting like they know it, the pendulum will begin swinging their way again.

#FridayFlash: Words of Wisdom

And thus concludes the first part…

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Words of Wisdom

Again, the beast drew near, and again it was time to run. Mary paused a lot more often than she needed, just to let Eric catch up. On several occasions, she had to stop to help him up or free his foot from a snag. The second time, the beast nearly caught up to them; it wasn’t close enough to see but its mindless advance rained debris on them. They got away, and finally managed to put some distance between it and themselves.

Mary cut down a side street, then turned to look. “Eric! Hurry!” she yelled.

“I wasn’t on the cross-country team!” he puffed; she took off again as soon as he caught up.

“Neither was I, but you either run or die!”

“Why did it get so close? Is it after you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe.” She dodged through a gaping hole into what was once a fancy restaurant. “I think we can rest in here.” They caught their breath for a moment.

“That’s comforting,” he said, looking at the overturned tables and other wreckage. “Can I look at your drawings again? They’re good.”

Mary huffed, but handed over the sketchpad.

“The one of the beast. How long did you work on it?”

“Three weeks. The others I just did off the cuff.”

“That’s even more amazing, when you think about it. They’re simple, but there’s still a lot of detail. I can draw some, but not that good. Especially the part where stuff comes to life.”

“Yeah.” Eric was kind of a pain — he slowed her down and talked too much — but he didn’t patronize her or try to hit on her. And he seemed to mean what he said about her work. That was nice. She tried to imagine this place the way it was, maybe sitting with Eric at one of the tables. Maybe on prom night.

“—it?”

“Huh?”

“If you made it, couldn’t you get rid of it?”

“What?”

“Yeah.” He held up the drawing of the beast. “I mean, you got the idea for this thing before you knew you could bring it to life, right?” He frowned. “Maybe it gave you that power, and it’s after you because it knows you could undo it somehow.”

“No way.” But his words — his idea — found a way through her armor, reaching the core where all that anger lay waiting, another beast looking for a way into the light. The anger and the idea roiled together inside her.

“Yeah. It let you use the power to get rid of people — the creepy dude and Megan Garner — and they both deserved it, probably. Once it knew you could do it, it just had to wait for you to get mad enough to bring it to life too. So maybe you can draw something to kill it. Superman, maybe.”

“That’s so whack.”

“No more whack than that thing out there. Or any of the other stuff. It’s worth a try, isn’t it? I don’t guess we can outrun that thing forever. If you can kill it, you really ought to. Even if you don’t care about yourself, my Mom always said if you can do the right thing, you should do it.”

She shook her head, but could not deny the logic. “Where is she now?”

Eric looked out the hole in the wall. “We tried to drive out, the first day. She was going too fast and wrecked, about a mile from the apartment. I was okay, but she didn’t make it.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah. Sometimes I wish I’d died too.”

She sighed. “Listen, I need to think about this. How to do it.” She started pacing, and Eric retreated into the kitchen to forage. The restaurant shook to the rhythmic pounding of the beast’s feet, but it felt far enough away to be safe a while longer. She righted a table and chair where the light was good. “But maybe the world deserved this,” she muttered, tapping the sketchpad with her pencil. A world full of psycho parents, creepers, and evil students — and the occasional nice guy like Eric, sure. She nodded her head to the vibration.

“I think it’s getting closer,” said Eric, looking over her shoulder. “How — you’re almost done?”

“Huh?” Mary looked down. She didn’t remember starting, but there it was: a shaft of light thrust the clouds aside and shone upon the prone beast. It writhed, not under Superman, but the sword of an avenging angel. The rubble of the city lay all around them. Should I do this? She reached down into that core, found the anger there and strong as ever, but now it spoke different words: It used us! Kill it!

“Almost. Give me a little space. I think we have time.” She bent to her drawing, as Eric retreated. It was almost done, but something was missing. Something for her.

With great power comes great responsibility. At this moment, Eric’s words seemed more true than anything. But she deserved something… something nice. Somebody who cared about her for a change. Making that happen wouldn’t hurt anything, right? And maybe she wouldn’t want to destroy the world again. She sketched in a low hill, with her and Eric standing on it… holding hands. She’d saved his life at least twice, after all.

“We’ve gotta go! Now!” Eric looked wild-eyed at the hole in the wall.

“Okay. Just a few more seconds.” She spoke the words as she wrote: “Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.”

“Speaking words of wisdom, yeah. Hurry!”

She stuffed her sketchpad into her backpack, and they ran.

They reached a low hilltop as a shaft of light split the churning overcast sky.

continued…

Writing Wibbles

Let’s start by welcoming a new follower to the free-range insane asylum: Caine Dorr, author of the Masked Marauder Matinee serial and the Paladin Brigade webcomic! Your badge is on the table. (Did you bring comics? The inmates like comics…)

Cranking in beta feedback on White Pickups is going about as expected: slower than desired, faster than I should have expected. There’s several scene rewrites, mostly in the early going, that are taking the most time. I was hoping to drop the whole shebang on my editor come Sunday, but that’s not going to happen.

I’m waffling on some of the scene additions: should I add a brief scene where Cody’s parents drive off? What about the initial clash between Charles’s group and the bashers in Midtown? The latter especially gets retold by Charles and Cleve later on, at separate moments, so I’m not sure it would add anything to the story. When it doubt, leave it out is probably the best policy.


What makes a story a story?

On Monday, Sonia Lal tweeted a link to a Guardian article that asks Why are English and American Novels Today so Gutless? The author laments the lack of political novels.

The question I have is: is a political story that’s ONLY about politics worth reading? Even 1984 was more about two people rebelling against the oppressive regime than the politics itself. Many people who don’t read science fiction like to say it’s all about… well, “rockets in space” was the catchphrase a generation ago. But very few people, even those who enjoy sci-fi, would enjoy a story only about rockets in space. The rest of us would (if the story is written well) care more about the people on board that rocket. The only exception I can think of is a short story by Vernor Vinge, called Long Shot; I read it back in high school, and that was about the AI onboard rather than the ship itself.

A month before I was born, in 1958, Isaac Asimov had published an essay called The Thunder-Thieves. Sputnik and Vanguard were in orbit; digital computers and other technical advances were either on the way or already on the scene. So many things were happening, that were once thought the realm of fiction, people had begun openly questioning what was left to sci-fi. Asimov’s reply was, “The answer: Everything!” Because sci-fi (and by extension, all genre fiction) is about people. The genre simply defines the background, against which the characters interact.

So while White Pickups (and moreso FAR Future) have their moments of politics — and they both come down solidly on one side of the fence — I wouldn’t characterize either one as a political novel. Nor would I call them “gutless.” But I suppose that’s in the eye of the reader.

#FridayFlash: Times of Trouble

Several readers thought last week’s story, Let It Be, needed a little room to grow. It agreed, naturally.

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Times of Trouble

Running, hiding, resting… then far too soon, doing it all over again under the angry sky. So Mary ran, dodging through the debris of what was a generic suburb only a few days before. Before she’d made her beast real, and set it loose to rampage across the world. Now Mom was dead from alcohol poisoning, and who knew where Dad ran off too?

Holding a rag to her mouth, she ran through smoke and dust —

“Hey! Is someone there? Help!”

Mary skidded to a stop, looking around.

“Over here!” A boy’s voice. He coughed, and Mary saw him wave. She reached behind her back, making sure the butcher knife was still in its sheath. She’d only had to draw it once in the last few days, and that was enough to make the asshole back off. Maybe she was just an emo art chick on Monday, but now it was Thursday. Or maybe Friday. Now she was someone who could bring utter destruction with a few strokes of a pencil.

“Can you get this off me?” He looked soft, like a gamer or geek, seated with his back to the building wall. A utility pole lay over his legs; it wasn’t crushing him but it had him trapped. “Do you have any water? I’m thirsty.”

“How long have you been here?” She slid her pack off her shoulders, keeping her knife hand free, and fished past her sketchpad for a water bottle.

“Since this morning. One of those earthquakes hit, I ran outside, fell down, and this happened before I could think. Thanks.” He drained the bottle. “Hey — don’t you go to Four Oaks?”

Mary squinted, trying to put a name to the face. “Yeah. Or I did.” She looked at the end of the pole. “I dunno if I can move this or not.”

“I’m Eric Perch.”

“Yeah, that’s right. You were in my U.S. History class. I’m Mary Smith.”

He sang, not too badly: “When I find myself in times of trouble, something Mary comes to me —”

“Haha.” She straddled the pole and heaved at it, then put her back to the wall and tried pushing with her feet. “Crap. Sorry.”

“Maybe you can lever it off?”

“With what?” She looked around, but didn’t see anything.

“Well, you can’t just leave me here!”

“Wait. Wait a minute. Let me think.” Mary stepped back and stared, composing the scene. I can’t, she thought. But if she did those other things, why not this? Why not something useful? She sat down, some distance away, and took out her sketchpad.

“What are you doing?”

“Shut up. I need to think.” Mary sketched the side of the building, then Eric standing, looking down at the pole. After a minute, she lost herself in the drawing. It might work, she thought, looking it over. Under the pole, and snaking around his feet, she added LET IT BE, several times. “Pull your feet in, if you can,” she said.

“Why?”

“Just do it!”

“Fine!” A minute later, she heard then felt the ground shake. She put her hands out, looking around her to make sure nothing was about to crush her. The pole lurched forward and rolled away.

“Yes!” She looked, and Eric pushed himself upright, staring at the pole. “I’m free! Hey… how did you know the earthquake was about to happen? What were you drawing?”

Mary sighed and showed him the sketch. “I made it happen.”

“No way.” But Eric’s voice held no conviction.

“Yeah, way. Why do you think the tornado hit the school last Tuesday?” She flipped to the drawing of Amber’s dead hand. “Or that… thing out there?” She showed him the beast.

“Wow. How did you get close enough to draw it?” he breathed.

“I drew it before. What’s the same in all of those?” She handed him the sketchpad and glared, arms crossed.

Eric flipped back and forth. “They’re all pencil or colored pencil, but that’s not what you’re asking, is it? Who’s this guy?”

“Some creep who tried to get too close two weeks ago.”

“Oh. Hey, is it the ‘let it be’ thing?”

“Yeah. If I write it on something I draw, it happens.”

Eric gave her a strange look — not total disbelief, but not belief either. “They say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof,” he said.

“Well, you’re standing up.”

“It could’ve been a coincidence.”

She glowered. “You want me to put you back under it?”

“No! No… wait.” His stomach growled, or maybe it was hers. “Food. Can you make food?”

“I never tried. And there’s gotta be food around here anyway.”

“Uh-uh. There were six of us until yesterday, we were staying in my apartment. We picked this area clean. They ditched me when we ran out.”

“Where’s your parents?”

He looked away and shrugged. “So can you do it?”

“I guess I’ll try. I’m hungry too.” She thought a minute, then sat down on the utility pole and started drawing: herself and Eric, sitting on the pole and sharing lunch. A plastic grocery bag sat at their feet. Not her best work, but… whatever. She added the magic words.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Stuff doesn’t happen right away. It usually takes a minute. Just —” Again, the ground shook. The trunk of a car across the way rose on its own, and Mary got up to check it out.

“Forget it,” said Eric. “We checked that car out three days ago.”

“Good.” Mary turned, holding a plastic grocery bag. “You can’t say it was there, then. Bread, peanut butter, jelly, and some plastic knives. All that, and a bag of chips!” She grinned. “Let’s eat. I hope you’re not allergic.”

Eric gaped. “Wow. That’s some trick. I’m glad you’re using your power for good now.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. With great power comes great responsibility.”

Mary shook her head. “I never asked for this. All I wanted was to be left alone.”

continued…

Writing Wibbles

Hey look, a new follower slipped in at the last minute: Sonya Clark. A couple weeks ago, I got a peek at the first part of her novel in progress, Freak Town. It’s going to be a winner.

Early this week, Tony Noland blogged about his fond memories of OS/2, a highly advanced operating system for its time to be sure. It got me thinking about my own fond memories, of Amiga and the old Tandy laptops, and some of the writing I did on those older systems… much of it now forever lost.

My first instinct was to lament the obsolence of file formats, but that’s not really the problem — most of the files from those days were plain text with a minimum of formatting. Even with a binary file format, it’s not that difficult to recover the text out of a file if it’s not compressed. On OSX, you could drop into the Terminal and use the strings command to clean out the crud; then fix the rest in your favorite editor.

No, the real problem is media. CP/M had a format, Commodore, Tandy, Atari, and some I’ve forgotten each had their own format, incompatible with the others (but in all cases, susceptible to bit-rot). Even in the case of the Tandy 600 laptop, whose 3-1/2" floppies can be read in MS-DOS, who has a floppy drive these days? CD-ROM isn’t exactly permanent either, even assuming the physical format hangs around. With the proliferation of tablets, and pocket computers that happen to make phone calls (I’m typing this on my iPhone), that’s not a given. In a lot of ways, it’s more likely that stories typewritten 30 years ago are more likely to survive than something typed into a personal computer 20 years ago.

So, as writers, what can we do to make our deathless prose really deathless?

The technical answer: nothing, really. The farther back you go in time, the fewer works survive. The vast majority of books in a bookstore are no more than a few years old, with some very popular exceptions. Project Gutenberg has done a wonderful job of locating and digitizing works that have passed into the public domain, but the vast majority of their titles are from the 19th and 20th centuries. Go farther back, and you’re in the realm of the “classics” — exemplary works that survive on merit — but the oldest complete works are around 2500 years old. At around 3800 years of age, the Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest known written works of all, and is only fragmentary.

Perhaps the best we can do is plan for decades, maybe a century or two, and hope that our descendants find our work worth distributing forward from there. We have the Internet for decades, and paper (preferably acid-free) for centuries. As long as eBook stores carry our work, we’re good for the short-term. I don’t worry too much about a new eBook format superseding the current ones — both MOBI and ePub are ZIP archives containing HTML files (with some control files that determine the order, among other things). HTML has been around since 1991, and any browser can display an HTML file written even 20 years ago. Even if HTML is superseded later on, the files are plain text with well-defined markup elements.

While copyright laws allow for longer and longer periods before a work finally passes into the public domain, there’s nothing stopping a copyright owner from abandoning copyright earlier — or releasing the work under a Creative Commons license — and then placing the work on Gutenberg or archive.org, which are intended for the long-haul. If longevity is the goal, copyright may be the enemy.

That’s decades…what about centuries? Our civilization could crash, or our grandkids could just decide the Internet uses too much electricity to maintain and pull the plug. Say what you might about buggy whips, paper and similar media has survived civilization reboots. Keep it away from fire, use acid-free paper so it won’t eat itself, and maybe that story will catch on with future generations. Maybe not likely, but certainly possible.

Which brings me to my own deathless prose. :-P I’m still editing White Pickups, and I’m about halfway through. Not as far as I liked, but at least as good as I hoped. I’m afraid this bad boy is going to break 100,000 words by the time I crack open the Crown Royal (which is waiting for Launch Day) though.

Changing It Around

I didn't set out to do this, but various failures over the weekend kicked off several minor technology changes today. It's like my gadgetry forgot to stop pranking me once April Fools' Day ended…

The old iPhone earbuds I've had since the 3G days are officially worn out: the left earbud has very little audio coming through. I don't know why I put up with that as long as I have, especially since I have a working pair of iPod earbuds (no clicker) and some higher-end things. I'd love to use my Bluetooth stereo headset, but it's good for about six hours and I need at least eight to get me through the workday. Right now, I'm using a pair of Future Sonics in-ear 'phones that I won some years back. I miss the clicker to start/stop my music (or answer the phone), but better that than no left channel.

The iOS Twitter client has become increasingly annoying, especially since IT has made Twitter's webapp unuseable. I need the ability to manage my lists from my phone if I can't use the webapp (or the official OSX Twitter client, for that matter). The last straw was yesterday, when the app decided to not update my Mentions anymore. I downloaded the free (ad-supported) version of Echofon this morning and like it better already. I can manage my lists, and the ads only appear in the primary timeline. The only two drawbacks so far: you have to switch out of Lists to tweet (unless replying/RTing) and I don't think new followers appear in the Mentions column like they do on the webapp.

Finally, I've started using Evernote instead of PlainText to write draft blog posts and story scenes while mobile. The Evernote app doesn't have ads and pulling a draft out of Evernote into Scrivener is about the same amount of effort as pulling it out of Dropbox (where PlainText saves stuff).

Technology can be such a PITA. I'm editing White Pickups on paper, and the only thing I have to worry about there is Mason snatching the pen out of the stack and thereby losing my place.

#FridayFlash: Let It Be

I was at the park with Mason yesterday, and saw a girl sitting on a bench with a sketch box. She looked like she wanted the entire world to keep its distance… and then she became the centerpiece of a story…

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Let It Be

“You drawing?”

Mary pulled her pad to her chest and glared at the intrusion. An older guy, leaning over the fence behind her, smile a little too wide. “Yeah.” Eff off, creeper. She pulled one leg up.

“Okay. I just like art. Can’t draw for crap myself.” He shrugged and walked away, stealing one last glance over his shoulder.

She looked up — her nephew Adam was on the highest level of the jungle gym, tearing around with the other first graders. He saw her and waved; she waved back and he dived head-first into the tube slide. He’d burn off a bunch of energy, while she made ten easy bucks and had some time to work on her drawing, and her sister Kim would have a peaceful evening for a change. Everybody wins. She was working on the beast’s outstretched claw… she knew it was holding something, but what? There will be an answer, she thought, and stared across the playground to the pond beyond the fence. She pushed her hair back and thought some more.

The image of the creepy dude wormed back into her mind, and she nearly flung her pencil. “Asshole,” she growled, and flipped to a blank sheet. Without thinking much about it, she sketched the creeper on his back; the front end of an SUV loomed over him. A few more details suggested themselves, and she added them: the jogging track crossing, backstop fence in the background, planter with flowers. She looked it over and did a double-take: under the creeper, the words LET IT BE were repeated several times. She had no memory of writing that.

“Huh,” she grunted — but suddenly she realized the beast was holding an orb. No, a huge eyeball, big as the soccer ball rolling across the playground, with a slit pupil like a cat’s. She checked the time on her phone, and made sure the alarm was set for 6:30, then dived into her drawing.


After strapping Adam into his booster seat, he gave up whining about having to leave the park and picked up his toy F-16. He made whooshing noises as she got in a long line for the exit. The best thing about being sixteen was being able to drive. It got her a long way from her crazy-bitch Mom and the fights she picked with her and Dad. She sort of hoped Dad would divorce the hag so she could move in with him.

“Sh— oh no!” she gasped. Someone was flat on the crosswalk; the cop assigned to the park had his patrol car off to the side, lights flashing like a rave with extra weird drugs. As she drew closer, she realized the guy on the pavement was the creeper. A big white Expedition stood with a crushed grille, and the driver — a woman whose hairdo was wound way too tight — was arguing with the cop: “I was supposed to get my daughter from soccer practice ten minutes ago! Am I liable for every jogger who comes popping out of nowhere?”

Mary gave the scene a goggle-eyed stare — all the details in her sketch were there. “Too weird,” she breathed, and scooted away for her sister’s house.


The slap of thunder, shaking the classroom floor, matched Mary’s mood. That bitch Amber seemed to go out of her way to make life miserable for Mary. Always talking smack, “accidentally” knocking stuff out Mary’s arms, you name it. Thank God it was study hall — maybe she could get her act together before next period. Her U.S. History assignment was done, so she opened her sketchpad. The beast was almost finished, but again she flipped to a blank page and started drawing: the school, torn open by a force unmeasurable. Debris everywhere, cars overturned. A funnel cloud dwindled in the distance. From under one car, a girl’s hand, wearing a big class ring. And that repeated LET IT BE, snaking under the arm and around the hand.

Her stomach turned a flip, and she hustled to Ms. Larson’s desk. “Need a bathroom break,” she whispered.

Ms. Larson nodded. “Hurry, okay?”

Mary returned the nod and ran to the girls’ room. She closed the stall door behind her and stared at the toilet, taking deep breaths —

The alarm went off, three short barks, over and over, nearly drowned out by a constant rumble. Tornado warning, she remembered, and crouched in the corner between the toilet and the wall.

They found Amber under a car in the parking lot. Her friend Heather said she’d cut Sociology to take a smoke break outside.


Mom was on a drunken rampage. Dad hadn’t come home from work, and wasn’t answering his cellphone. Mary had slipped her sketchpad under the dresser, maybe the one safe place for it. Mom would fling her drawers everywhere, but she was too lazy to move something that heavy.

From the sound of it, she was now tearing the kitchen apart. Mary pocketed a flashlight, grabbed her sketchpad, and opened the bedroom window. The roof of the screened-in porch was just below, fortunately; from there she could drop to the deck and get away. She’d done it before.

Dad left her. And me too. What a shit! she thought. Was this the way things would always be? Disappointment punctuated by hours of Hell on Earth? Mom would be so apologetic in the morning, and maybe she’d even mean it, but it would happen again.

The house next door was foreclosed, its empty patio a welcome retreat. Mary opened the sketchpad and shone her flashlight over the beast. It was tearing itself out of the ground, ready to render its sentence on the world. The drawing was almost done. Almost. She picked up her pencil:

LET IT BE, LET IT BE, LET IT BE, LET IT BE. There will be an answer.

continued…

Writing Wibbles

In the words of the immortal Thing, it’s wibblin’ time!

Like most writers, I tend to run hot and cold on my own work. On one hand, perhaps more often than warranted, I think I’ve got a set of pretty good stories in the pipeline. People who read them have positive things to say about them; all they need is some cleanup and I’ll be smokin’ up the charts on Amazon.

Then there’s the other hand — what I call writer angst, for lack of a better term. “My writing’s crap, my stories are crap, my ideas (writing and otherwise) are crap. Why am I even bothering with this?” I was going to say I’m particularly susceptible to this phase, but (judging from what I hear from others) I’m neither unique nor particularly notable in that regard. (See, even in self-deprecation I’m only mediocre!)

I have two equal and opposite theories about writer angst:

• One, it’s a necessary prod to improve, whether that means a particular story or writing in general. Once through the woe, I can pick up the work and set about making it better.
• Two, it’s an excuse to be lazy. If I can convince myself that the work is crap, beyond redemption, then I have an excuse to avoid the hard work of making it better. If I can convince myself that I’m wasting my time writing, I could move on to non-writing projects (that I will also shelve as crap later on).

Often, perhaps more often than not, the angst turns out to be unwarranted. Last year, I submitted Assignation to the Best of FridayFlash (Vol. 2) anthology. I edited it, had Brooke Johnson critique it, edited it a little more, then sent it off. And started second-guessing myself immediately. When months went by with no word, and about a dozen stories (not mine) were listed in a “Reader’s Choice” poll, I assumed the worst. But Monday morning, I got an email to let me know it had been accepted! Emergent Publishing is handling publishing and distribution; I’ll let you know more when I know more.

The boost couldn’t have come at a better time, in my opinion. I’ve been doing a ton and a half of second-guessing about White Pickups lately: should I cut it (and the sequel) down to one novel? should I just dump it entirely and focus on the current shiny writing thing? or just give up altogether? And what about… Mary Lou?

The boost from one little email has reinforced a couple of blog comments I’ve received lately… in short, White Pickups is in no danger of finding a permanent home in the drawer. I’m drafting an action plan to get it out of the garage (so to speak) and then finish Pickups and Pestilence. In short:

1. Print out the whole book, giving my old laser printer a thorough workout. (done, and I finally figured out what to do with that ream of pre-punched paper)
2. Edit with an eye to fixing (if nothing else) one major issue I’ve heard from two beta readers. If that leads to combining the two books into one, so be it (but I don’t think that’s going to happen at this point).
3. See if the other tenor at church, who has some editing chops, wants to make a pass through it.
4. Format it and get it uploaded before I have a chance to change my mind!
5. After a few months, have a “typo hunt” contest, then roll out a second eBook edition and a paperback.

As for finishing Pickups and Pestilence, I should do what I did with both White Pickups and FAR Future: write past the place I’m having trouble with and fill in the in-between when I figure it out. Fortunately, I don’t think I’ll have the same problem with Book 2 that I have with Book 1.

By the time I get all that done, I might know how Accidental Sorcerers continues… and maybe I can get the Wings trilogy started too.

#FridayFlash: Asmus and the Dragon

“The land is at peace,” said the brave knight Asmus, looking sadly into his empty mug. “And I am bored, to the point of death.”

“Well then, have another,” said his serving-woman, Tisa, exchanging the empty vessel for a full one. It was like a ritual: he would eat, drink, complain. Tisa would help him to bed. Some nights, he needed some special comfort, and Tisa would provide. It was almost like being married, except Asmus treated her better than did her late husband.

But to her surprise, Asmus rested his chin on his arms and only stared at the mug. “I need purpose. Direction.”

“M’lord: you tamed the realm, routed the bandits, and the last wolf anyone’s seen in years is hanging on yonder wall. The people are content. You’ve done well by them. Any would say you have earned your rest and ease.”

“I’m done with rest and ease!” he yelled, slamming one fist onto the oaken table. The mug (and Tisa) jumped, ale sloshed. “I need a quest — for I fear I will not live until I stare down Death anew.”

Tisa sighed. The realm featured few fair maidens, and none of them had needed rescuing of late. “Perhaps you could visit that fortune teller in the village,” she said at last, putting a warm hand on his shoulder. “Let me help you to bed now.”


The fortune teller was a kindly grey-haired lady whose name was Helena. “Would you like your palm red?” she asked, producing a jar of cherry juice.

“Um, thank you, but no,” said Asmus. “I need a quest, for I am bored with rest and ease. I come to you for purpose and direction.”

Helena smiled and poured herself a cup of juice, then peered into her orb and was surprised at what she saw within.

“Go to the land of Aht-Lann-Tah,” she said, “and there will you find a dragon, a mighty terror to the people who live there.”

Now you might think Asmus went straightaway to this distant land, but a knight going into battle never travels alone. He has an armor bearer, weapons bearer, a squire, a page, and a minstrel. The page, Bert, was a clever and quiet fellow. Asmus had learned to listen when Bert spoke, for his counsel was always wise. Indeed, it was Bert who freed him from the clutches of a yellow giant, stepping between those huge fingers to free his knight and the fair maiden. (Thus the people say, “let your pages do the walking through the yellow fingers.”)

The journey to Aht-Lann-Tah was not without incident, but the armor bearer has paid well for my silence in this matter. And so, when the people learned that a brave knight had come to deliver them from the dragon, they rejoiced and put on a great feast. There was music, and dancing, and food, and drink, and many fair maidens draped garlands of spring flowers around the neck of Asmus. A few, who had partaken more than their fair share of drink, garlanded the squire and Bert as well. The merrymaking went on to dawn, when only Asmus and Bert remained standing.

“What shall we do with these, Bert?” asked Asmus from behind his blanket of flowers.

“Take them along,” said Bert from behind his own blanket. “Perhaps the dragon will be too curious about what approaches, and you may spit him unaware. Besides, if the garlands bring you luck this morning, they may bring more luck tonight.”

“Excellent counsel, as always!” Asmus chortled. “Now let us gather up the others and find glory!” Sleep-deprived and tipsy as he was, Asmus was anxious for action. The bearers could not be roused, though; fortunately, they slept with what was entrusted to them. The squire was nowhere to be found. So with some help from Bert, Asmus donned his armor and they marched to the lair of the dragon. It was a fearsome-looking cave, bones strewn for a long way outside.

Bert, footpad-quiet and unencumbered by armor, took a peek inside. “He’s asleep!” he whispered, gesturing to Asmus to approach. “Glory is yours!”

“Seems unsporting to spit even a dragon in his sleep,” said Asmus, but entered as quietly as he could anyway.

Alerted by the clanking of armor, the dragon opened one eye and sniffed. “What — what —” It sniffed again, then reared back. Before Asmus could charge, the dragon sneezed. He expected to be bathed in fire, but found himself drenched in dragon-snot.

“You are disgusting!” Asmus shouted, raising his sword.

“I’m allergic!” the dragon bellowed. The great worm sneezed again, but Asmus ducked and the huge wet wad hurtled outside. “Flowers! Ah!” It fell to the floor of the cave, exposing its soft belly. “Kill me now — better that than this!”

“Sir! Wait!” Bert shouted, running inside. “I have a better idea!”

After securing certain unbreakable promises from the dragon, Asmus and Bert shed their flowers outside and brought great news to the people of Aht-Lann-Tah. The feast began anew, and the fair maidens made good on their implied promises until Asmus fell from exhaustion. Then they wore out Bert, which took a little longer.

Later that day, Asmus and Bert left the bearers and squire behind and flew home on the back of the dragon. Asmus and the dragon sparred daily, drawing crowds from far and wide, until Asmus finally named Bert Knight of the Realm and settled into a quiet retirement with Tisa. Flowers were not allowed in the palace, and they all (including the dragon) lived happily ever after.

Here Comes the Sun

The guts of the system (plus some load)

Solar panels, I’ve been told, now cost about half of what they did a year ago. And it’s true — for less than $200, you can build a charging station for your mobile gadgets from off the shelf parts. Just add one sunny window, or take it with you on camping trips to run lights and a radio.

I bought most of the pieces for my system at Amazon and a local auto parts store. Here’s a list of similar items (links go through my affiliate account, so I’ll get a few cents if you buy them through the links). Prices shown were current at the time I typed this in. More about these items below.


Stuff you need:

• Instapark® 30W Mono-crystalline Solar Panel With a 12V solar charge controller ($125)
• Sealed Lead-Acid battery for APC SLA17-BTI 12V, 9Ah ($47)
• RoadPro RPPS-16ES 12-volt Auxiliary Power Port or Outlet ($7)
• BESTEK cigarette lighter socket USB car charger ($9)

Left to right: solar panel +/-, battery +/-, load +/-

The heart of the system, obviously, is the charge controller. The controller that comes with the solar panel is a dirt-cheap single-chip design, and is good for 3A at 12V — sized perfectly for one 30W panel. I was expecting the controller to simply provide regulated voltage, and was planning to hack a UPS I had laying around. But when I looked at the instructions, I found that it has a built-in charger circuit, and you just have to attach a 12V battery using the furnished alligator clip leads. Sweet!

The solar panel itself is pretty basic. It has an aluminum frame and a power cable coming out the back. You should cover the leads and the panel itself until you have things hooked up — bare wires touching metal on a bright day can make an impressive spark! (How do I know this?) There are optimum positions for solar panels, but hanging it in a south-facing window (preferably not shaded) is sufficient. It will produce power from dawn to dusk.

Speaking of the battery, you want an appropriate size. Too big, and you spend a lot of money for no gain. Too small, and you’ll be out of juice too soon at night. Since the USB charger I have is rated for 1A, and most gadgets only take a couple hours to fully charge, anything between 8Ah and 12Ah should work very well. Unless you’re only using the system outdoors (like on a camping trip), or installing the battery in a ventilated basement, always use a sealed lead-acid (SLA) battery for this system. Car batteries vent hydrogen gas, which could cause havoc inside your house.

If you’re willing to hack your car charger, you can skip the auxiliary power outlet (also called a cigarette lighter socket). On the other hand, it does provide a clean way to disconnect the car charger if you need to break the system down (like if you’re moving it around). Car chargers are also fused, which provides some protection if you overload it or short it out.

Finally, the power delivery. I personally wouldn’t fool with a USB car charger that isn’t capable of delivering 1A or more — large tablets (like an iPad) won’t charge with anything less, and you want to have some juice left over for your other gadgets. A charger that provides one or two USB jacks and two or three cigarette lighter sockets is a good way to go: the lighter sockets provide a convenient way to plug in your cellphone car charger, and you could run a fan during the day while the solar panel is holding up the battery.

The nice thing about this setup is, the only tool you need is a small Phillips screwdriver. Attach the battery (using the clip leads, don’t forget that red is positive!), then the solar panel, then the auxiliary socket. Plug in the car charger, then plug in your gadgets.

Now this, of course, is just the gateway drug. Eventually, I hope to upsize the system to provide enough power to run the laptop and the network (DSL/router) gadgetry, along with a few emergency lights. I think 100W should be sufficient, but prices continue to come down… and the wife would be thrilled if it could run the TV and DVD player…

Writing Wibbles

Dogs got their kibble, I got my wibble…

But first, let’s welcome the new followers here at the free-range insane asylum:

• Taryn Raye — a romance writer hailing from southern Kentucky
• Jennifer Shirk — another romance writer, and a Red Sox fan (and I’m a Tigers fan… hm, I’ll bet Jennifer could write a baseball romance based on that!)
• Maureen Hovermale — writer and reviewer

All three are fellow members of the Writers Worth group on Goodreads. Badges are on the desk. Watch out for the little short inmate; he likes to sucker you in with his cuteness then steal your pens…

Craig Smith has been especially encouraging me to continue with my Termag stories. Most of my fantasy writing has been in that world, in two different ages: the Age of Heroes is where Chelinn and Lodrán hail from; and the Accidental Sorcerers live in what I call Middle Termag (they just call it home), nearly a thousand years after. There’s also an early age, called Camac That Was, but it’s more a fount of legends than the setting for stories.

This does simplify a few things for me behind the scenes — I only have to keep track of one magic system, and stories in one age provide backstory for another. I’ve been amazed at how much of a writing world I can keep in my head — and my dear wife would, if she knew, chalk it up as proof that my memory is selective — but it’s probably time to start writing things down. I started a wiki on my laptop; that makes it difficult to just send out to the world but that’s probably all to the better since I can keep track of things that would be spoilers to you.

I’m starting with the magic system. As you may remember (Sura explained it as part of her own backstory), magic on Termag is governed by the Three Principles — Necessity, Power (Intent), and Closure — but that’s how it regulates itself. The power is based mostly on the classic four elements, with a little extra wrinkle:

Purely elemental magic is not as common as that based on how two elements combine. The “bowtie” shows that any two elements may combine — except for Fire and Water (it’s said that the two were joined in the time of Camac That Was, which may have opened the door to destruction). Different combinations produce different results: for example, Earth and Water is how Sura flooded Bailar’s basement; Water and Air govern concealment; Fire and Air makes what John Xero called “big flashy battle magic.”

Off to the side are Chaos and Making, two opposites. Chaos is thought to have rules, but too many for a mere human to comprehend. However, that doesn’t stop some sorcerers from thinking they can do an end-run around that… usually, with messy results. Weather magic is chaotic in nature, as are emotions (i.e. love and hate spells).

The opposite of Chaos is Making — the physical creation of something imagined. As Ethtar explained in the latest #FridayFlash, Makers no longer walk Termag… well, maybe…

Not shown is the astrological system, which governs Fate. The Moon powers curses.


And all this is well and good, but sometimes I think it’s an excuse to procrastinate a little more on White Pickups. I have some general comments from my last beta (thanks, Icy!) and now the hard work begins. I keep wondering if I should try to tame this 180,000 word beast into something that will fit into a single novel. But whatever I do, I need to get doing it — especially if I want to get it out next month.

Junk in My Trunk

It’s been a long overdue chore to clean out the trunk of my car, and I finally tackled it this weekend. Here's what I found:

• Trash. Enough to half-fill a big trash bag. Actually, there was already a trash bag a quarter full.
• Lots of hardware. I knew The Boy had a screw loose, but not that he had a couple dozen of them in my trunk.
• Scat-loads of his and Snippet’s clothes, and a few of Mason’s.
• A couple of Mason’s toys (he was happy to have another ball).
• $1.14 in loose change.
• Three UPS batteries. Oh yeah, that's where I put them — thinking I’d soon find a place where I could replace them — two years ago.
• A skateboard. I texted The Boy about it, and he thought he might have put it in there to keep stuff from slipping past the gap at the front of the plywood platform.
• Daughter Dearest’s kite (in a vinyl bag, so it survived).
• A shade for the back window, that I bought last summer to keep it from getting too hot on Mason when I took him somewhere.
• Two binders that belong to the choir.
• A bunch of CDs (all The Boy’s, I presume).
• Three pens. Two of them still write.
• Two screwdrivers and a wrench.
• Two jacks, various extensions and the like — but no spare tire (I knew that) or lug wrench (oops).

I think I excised a good 20 pounds from the trunk, when all was said and done. The thin plywood that serves as a floor over the spare tire well is seriously warped and coming apart, so I’ll need to replace that soon. I’ll reinforce the replacement so it doesn’t sag so badly over time. I just wish I knew where the water was coming in back there; it’s keeping me from stuffing some camping gear in there for an impromptu getaway.

#FridayFlash: World With End

I must admit, I read Lord Dunsany’s Book of Wonders this week and it went straight to my head. And yet, there were a couple niggling things I’d written about in my world that needed some tying-in, and this is a good vehicle for it.

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World With End

Source: WikiMedia Commons

Protector Ethtar shook his head at the large man leaning out the window. “Wet enough?” he asked.

A rumble of thunder answered him, then Chelinn withdrew from the window and closed it. A flicker of lightning lit the rippled glass, clear enough in the light of their oil lamps. “I’ve always enjoyed storms,” he said, wiping his face and hair on his cloak before sitting. “Air and Water forget their alliance, and go to war.”

The third occupant of the room was Chelinn’s adopted daughter Sarna, herself a noted warrior-mage; she gave a hearty laugh. “When I was a child, Mother said this was the kind of night that wants a story.” She sighed. “Showing fear was not allowed, in our House.”

“A story…” Ethtar scratched his thin beard. “Ah. I know just the one. This is a story that has only been shared among Protectors. And yet, if we are going to break Termag’s habit of hoarding knowledge, we must start with our own, eh?” He stood; his tall, rail-thin figure threw strange shadows as he strode to the window.

“Once, in the time of Camac That Was —” Chelinn snorted and Sarna laughed, as this is how many children’s stories begin — “there was a legendary Protector, Thurun.

“Now it was a common conceit among folk in those days, that the world was flat. To them, the world consisted of these lands in the center, the ocean around it, then a ring of land that was the Edge of the World. The learned knew better, of course, and Thurun was one of the most learned who ever walked Termag. And so, he dwelt in Camac itself, in a high tower, and thus had no end of dealings with folk.”

“Perhaps he would have preferred your relative isolation!” Chelinn laughed.

“Perhaps. But we all have something that nettles us, and idle fancies about an Edge of the World was Thurun’s. He would try to correct folk — sometimes gently, sometimes not — and yet they persisted in their error. And at last, Thurun decided if folk wanted an Edge, they would have one. Because Thurun was also a Maker.”

Chelinn and Sarna both sat up straight at that. There were ancient legends of Makers, those whose magic was the opposite of Chaos, men and women who could create anything they could imagine. But if Chaos was beyond the ability of even a Protector like Ethtar, how much more so Making?

Ethtar smiled at their reaction. “Yes. Now some say the many worlds were Made by those such as Thurun, whether for fancy or some purpose? That is no longer known. But Thurun Made a world with an edge.” A wooden orb, the kind apprentices use for practice, floated to Ethtar’s hand. “A world is usually round, like this ball. Thurun Made half a world — as if you were to slice this ball in half — and set it ‘round its sun, the round half always in daylight, the flat hinder part always in night. The marge between them — that was the Edge.”

“Fascinating,” said Chelinn. “I must admit… it has been long since I have been awed by mere words.” He wore a wide-eyed look that neither of the others had ever seen on him. “What was the flat part like?”

“It was a vast plain of obsidian, flatter than a puddle on a calm day. To cross the Edge of the World was to find oneself in eternal Night. The stars above were reflected in the blackness below, and it was said that folk who came there would lose their way, and then their mind. And although the plain was flat, it drew them away from the Edge and into the Great Nothing, which is what those who dwelt on that world called it.

“But in the very center of that plain was said to be a great valley. And in that valley, shining by its own light, lay a city whose buildings were shaped from the obsidian that surrounded it. Thurun created this city as a refuge for the Makers; for throughout the time of Camac That Was, Makers were hunted. The wealthy enchained them to create more of what they had; the poor hounded them for the stuff of life. Others simply considered Making an abomination and sought to exterminate them.”

“If this were a children’s bedtime story,” said Sarna, “there would be a moral. So is this but a story, or is there such a world? Father has seen other worlds, some even stranger than Thurun’s. He took me there once.” She laughed.

“It may exist,” said Ethtar, returning to his seat. “Or it may be only a tale. And yet, for sorcerers, it does explain a few things — especially why there are no Makers among us now.”

Chelinn nodded. “Those who did not find their way to Thurun’s refuge were slaughtered by the ignorant and fearful. As before, as now, as then — world without end. Except, of course, the world that has an end.”

---

As it turns out, there’s more to this story…

Just Shoot Me

Big V came up here Wednesday and spent the night. “It’s for this week,” says the wife, “until she gets her glucose under control.” Like The Boy, Big V has diabetes — and like The Boy, she does absolutely nothing to keep it where it needs to be. So her levels have been running anywhere from 220 to 490 (100 is ideal), and “until she gets it under control” could be a long, long time. She had the audacity to ask me for ice cream over the weekend, then I had to chase her away from grabbing a box of Teddy Grahams in the kitchen. Maybe I should just give her the gun; it would be a lot quicker and there’d be more of her left in the casket. Yes, I’m being morbid, but that’s pretty much the situation.

Of course, with Big V up here at the manor, Skylar is here too. Of the two, he’s less hassle. Usually. There’s always the screaming matches with Mason over some toy that one didn’t care about until the other one picked it up.

Monday nights are extra-special. The Voice is on, and SWMBO insists in devoting her full attention to it, and woe to anyone who makes undue noise while it’s on. That wouldn’t be so bad, but Mason sleeps in the living room for now. I need to show her Hulu, so she can watch her shows on the iPad once Mason’s asleep. Of course, if you try using the iPad in Mason’s presence, he’s all over you wanting to play Otto Matic or something. I think once things warm up more reliably, and Big V is no longer here, we’ll move Mason into the guest room until he’s old enough to want The Boy’s old room upstairs.

I give this situation another week. By then, Big V and SWMBO will get into their own screaming match over something and Big V will drive home in her powerchair with Skylar in her lap.

But to end this on a more pleasant note, Mason got his first ice cream cone this weekend. He also got his first taste of kiwi, and I’m not sure which he liked better — his eyes lit UP over the kiwi, and he gave me the Happiest Kid in the World grin when he saw me bringing his cone. Of course I got a pic!

That’s pretty much the way things are at FAR Manor for now. As always, I’ll have to wrest an afternoon from the clutches of everyone else so I can get a few things of my own done.

#FridayFlash: Rescue (Accidental Sorcerers, Season 2 pt 5)

The final installment. Hope you enjoyed it!

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Accidental Sorcerers, Season 2
Part 5: Rescue (Conclusion)

Season 1

Season 2: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4

Image source: Webweavers

“Your master had my dragon all along,” said Ahm Kereb, pointing his dagger at Mik’s heart. “I may not be able to make him pay for his theft, but I will teach him that stealing from Ahm Kereb has a high price regardless.”

Mik tried to push Sura behind him. “I took the dragon. Leave her alone.” His voice shook only a little. Reason over emotion, he thought.

“We both took him!” Sura pushed Mik’s arm up and stood with him. She was already thinking, just a little time. Focus.

“Oh, you will die for that, boy. But not right away. Soul for soul. You shall come with me, and stand in for the dragon as the sacrifice.” He nodded at Sura. “And she will come too. Her safety will guarantee your cooperation —”

Something darted through the trees and struck Ahm Kereb’s ear, hissing and biting. Kereb yowled, dropping his dagger and slapping at his head.

Sura clutched Mik’s hand. “Don’t let go!” she rasped, and everything took on a second edge as she pulled him into the shade of a large tree. By the strangeness of his sight, Mik knew she had concealed them. They would be nearly invisible unless they strayed into the patchy sunlight, or if he let go. “Do something!” she hissed. “I can only hold one spell!”

“Where are you?” Kereb hissed, snapping his head back and forth, flinging blood from his torn ear. “Your simple spells… I will find you!” He took up his dagger and swung it around him in wide arcs, moving ever closer.

Something I won’t have to hold, Mik thought. He closed his eyes and reached out, finding Ahm Kereb’s mind. A simple adjustment.

Kereb stopped and gave a mighty yawn. “No,” he said, swinging his dagger in a slow loop. “No. I cannot…” he stumbled on the uneven ground and went to one knee. “Ah. No.” He yawned again, tried to stand, then fell snoring to the cold leaves.

“What did you do?” Sura whispered.

“I adjusted his clock. His body suddenly thought he’d had no sleep for a week.” Mik glared at their sleeping assailant. “The mentor taught me the spell he used to put the dragon to sleep —”

“Mik! The dragon! It attacked him! Where did it go?”

“See if you can find him.” Mik picked up the rope. “I’ll see to Kereb. Look,” he said, showing Sura the broken rope. “He cut it partway, next to a knot, so we wouldn’t see it.” He took Kereb’s dagger, cut off a length, and got to work.

As Mik finished tying Ahm Kereb — elbows, wrists, ankles, then all three together — Sura shrieked. “Mik! He — he —” Mik rushed to her side, finding what he feared: the crumpled and twisted body of their dragon. “Oh, Mik.” Sura buried her head in his shoulder, as he lifted the lifeless heap. “He gave himself to save us.” She wept, and Mik wept with her.


Reeve Tanber and five guardsmen answered Bailar’s distress signal, rowing a skiff straight across the river as if the current were nothing. They debarked to find the sorcerer with his two apprentices, standing over a canoe containing a bound and sleeping man.

Bailar looked as angry as any of them had ever seen. “An attempt on my own life, I could forgive,” he growled. “But this coward wished to avenge himself on two children instead. I will tell you what I know, but you will want Aborsa to confirm.” Aborsa was the town soothsayer, an honest man who had the power to discern truth. “I charge him with plotting to murder my apprentices, and with rogue enchantments.” Bailar told their story as Tanber took down the particulars.

“And theft,” said the reeve. “We had a complaint this morning about a stolen skiff. We’ll likely find it upriver. Rogue magic is your purview, sorcerer, but he’ll hang for the rest.”

“Eh, he tangled wit’ the wrong sprouts, he did,” said one of the guardsmen in a Low Speech accent, and laughed. “Well, he won’t be a bother, snoozin’ the day away, he is.”

“Oh,” said Mik. “I need to close the spell.” He waved his hands, as Bailar had taught him to do in front of folk, as he reversed his adjustment. Ahm Kereb’s eyes snapped open; he cursed and strained against his bonds.

The guardsman put his short spear to Kereb’s chest. “‘Ere now, they’s no sort of words to use in front of sprouts,” he growled. Kereb stared at the spear point and hissed something in his own language.

To their surprise, the guardsman reversed his spear and jabbed Ahm Kereb in the belly with the butt end, making him gasp and wheeze. “Yar. An ill-mannered brute are ya, sayin’ such things about a girl-sprout. Now you stay quiet. Curse the hangman all ya like, ya can.” Two other guardsmen lifted Kereb from the canoe and deposited him in the skiff.

“You know the Eastern tongue?” Bailar asked.

The guardsman grinned and tapped his ear. “Have an ear for languages, I do,” he said. “A fine skill for when foreigners grace our jail!”

“The three of you must tell your side to Aborsa,” said Tanber. “The prisoner will tell his side, and the magistrate will do the rest. We’ll be off now, no need to keep you from your work.” Tanber waved the guardsmen to the skiff, and they rowed away.


“Here,” said Sura, pointing at a patch of ground in front of their home. “The sun always shines here. It’ll be warm for him.”

“As good a choice as any,” said Bailar. Mik nodded, and began digging. They buried their little friend with tears and gratitude.

And Heaven welcomed home a long-lost soul: a warrior, fallen in battle at last.

THE END (but wait, there’s more… Season 3!)

The Winter That Wasn’t

To misquote Monty Python: “And fall gave winter a miss and went straight on to spring.” If you don’t count what was essentially two days of winter, we didn’t have one. By the numbers:

Number of nights with lows below 20°F: 3

Number of days with highs below freezing: 0

Number of days with snow accumulation: 1

Accumulations over 1 inch: 0

The last three Thursdays have been sunny and over 70°F, which has driven me out to the patio with my work laptop. I’m very glad that I can get a decent wifi signal out there — it means I can get away with doing that. Mason likes to join me, of course, and tries to punch keys on the work laptop (not a good idea) or steal my phone if I’m not watching. Little twerp. This has been the pattern for about a month now: warming through the week, gorgeous Thursday, then storms come in and leave weekends windy and cool with occasional residual storms.

I’ve been saying this winter was more like one long November — it ate December, January, February, and March and now we’re having an early April. Any week with two tornado watches is not so wonderful. Usually, when we have significant thunderstorms in January, that has signaled a mild April peak for storm season. But with winter getting skipped over the way it was, all bets are off.

The Friday storm-blast almost completely passed us by. We had a severe storm go about eight miles south of us that might have started to spin up into a tornado. Other than that, we watched the game from the stands (so to speak). Boom, wind, rain, and then more wind. Lots more wind and low 50s for the highs all weekend.

Thursday’s forecast looks like the forecast for the last three: sunny, 70s, me working shirtless for an hour or so.

#FridayFlash: Healing (Accidental Sorcerers, Season 2 pt 4)

It occurred to me that some of you never read the first part… click the “Season 1” link below if you want to read what went before this.

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Accidental Sorcerers, Season 2
Part 4: Healing

Season 1

Season 2: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3

Image source: Webweavers

The next several days were tense. Bailar delayed as best he could, but knew Ahm Kereb was growing suspicious. Mik and Sura rarely squabbled, but stress over the fate of the dragon now set them at odds about things that seemed trivial afterward, and the fights left them confused and heartsore.

On the morning of the fourth day after Ahm Kereb met Mik and Sura, the apprentices prepared breakfast in the kitchen while the little dragon watched from the warmth of the stove hearth. Most mornings, they would be chatting, laughing, touching as they worked, but now the only sounds were the clatter of cookware and what few words were necessary to do their work.

The little dragon watched them for a while, then wandered to the edge of the hearth. He stretched his neck toward the two and chittered.

“He wants sunlight.” Sura’s voice was toneless. She let the dragon hop into her hand.

Mik hesitated, but finally spoke. “Did — did you dream about the hawk last night?”

For the first time that morning, Sura looked at him. Her eyes grew wide, then she nodded and turned away. Mik thought about his dream:

Worry, worry at the wire along the bottom of the cage — snap! Crawl through. So cold here. But free now!

Fly! Welcome sunshine! So cold! So cold! Which way home? Sun so bright, so welcome, why does it not warm? Fly!

The cry of a familiar enemy — dive! turn! The hawk strikes, tears a wing but does not catch. Pain! Fall! Fluttering through scrub, so much higher than familiar, to grass whose color may provide a hiding place.

So cold. So cold. Will die here.

Creatures, rarely seen. Found. Warmth. Healing.

Mik joined Sura at the sunlit window as she let the dragon hop onto the sill. It stood facing the window, and stretched its good wing. Suddenly, it turned and began snapping at the cloth strip binding and protecting its injured wing.

“Maybe the wing’s healed,” said Mik. “I think we should take the bandage off and see.”

“Are you sure?” They both winced at the sharpness in Sura’s tone.

“Yes,” said Mik, eyes moist. “But I don’t want to fight about it.” He turned away.

“Mik, stop…” Sura caught his arm before he could take more than a step. “I don’t — I don’t want —” she pulled him to her, and they held each other for a long minute, the only sound an occasional sob. The dragon stopped worrying at the bandage to chirp at his humans.

At last, Mik sniffed. “The bread!” he gasped.

They rushed to the oven; Sura grabbed the thick pad and Mik jerked the door open. Sura snatched out the bread pan, turned it onto the cooling rack, and sighed. “Just a little brown. Not burnt.”

They looked at each other, then their laughter seemed to brighten the whole kitchen. The dragon chirped from the window as they embraced anew.

“I’ve been so worried about what’s going to happen to him,” she said, leading Mik back to the window. “But you’re right. Let’s see if it’s healed.”

Mik nodded and took out the pin holding the bandage. It slipped free, and the dragon slowly lifted the wing. Sunshine through the window made both wings translucent. There was a jagged scar, but the skin looked healed. The dragon spread both wings wide, less than the span of Sura’s hand; it seemed as if he were stretching.

“I don’t think I told you,” said Sura, “that was a marvelous idea you had with the splint.” She nodded at the splint: a sliver of wood on either side of the bone, with three tiny bronze clips keeping them in place.

“I’m just glad it worked,” said Mik, but he was grinning. The dragon turned and sniffed at the splint. “But I’m more glad we’re talking again.” He slipped an arm around her; she turned to him…

The dragon stared at the shiny clips, then nibbled at them. One by one, the clips dropped to the sill. With the third clip, the rest of the splint fell away as well. It stretched its wings again, then flapped up to the latch. A few quiet moments of tugging and pushing, and the window swung open. It slipped through.

A draft brought them back to the present. “The window!” They looked at each other wide-eyed, then flung it wide and caught a glimpse of the dragon disappearing into the trees, above their path to the river.

“Fly! Fly free!” Mik whispered.

“Do you think he’ll be all right?”

“I hope so.”

“It’s a long way home for him. Maybe we should go look. If he stays with us, we can take him when we go downriver and set him free at Queensport.”

Mik thought a moment, then nodded. “All right. We’ll go look. If we don’t find him, we’ll tell the mentor. I hope Kereb chases him all the way back East.”


Watching the trees above and around them, Mik and Sura made their way down the steep path as Mik paid out the knotted rope.

“It’s still too cold for him out here,” said Sura. “I hope we find him.”

“I just hope he’s all right,” said Mik. “If we could keep him warm away from —”

The rope went slack. Sura gasped and stumbled into Mik, whose footing was already slipping. They fell, sliding and rolling down the steep hill. Finally, scratched and sore, they came to a stop not far above the river.

“Are you all right?” Sura asked.

Mik nodded. “You?”

“Yes. What happened?”

“The rope broke.” Mik held up one end. “How did I hold on to this all that way?” He gave the rope a disgusted look and dropped it. “We’ll have to go to the landing to get back up —”

“You two are going nowhere.” Ahm Kereb slipped out from behind a tree, dagger in hand.

continued…

Writing Wibbles (Conversation with Mik sim Mikhail)

It’s wibbling tiiiime!

Before White Pickups had ambitions of being a “real” novel, I posted episodes on Monday — and on occasion, side-episodes called “Conversations” on Tuesdays. They were, as you might expect by the title, conversations with various characters in the story. They provided a little backstory for the spotlighted characters, and helped me figure out their motivations.

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been caught up in the world of Accidental Sorcerers lately. As I’ve been writing, Mik has told me a little more of his own backstory. I was planning to just do a data-dump, but that’s no fun to read. So… I have a little bonus treat for those of you who read these little status updates about my writing. I speak in italics in these things, for some reason.

Conversations: “Accidental Sorcerer” Mik sim Mikhail

Um… how do you greet each other here?

“Is this thing on?” is a popular greeting.

What does that mean?

Never mind. I was joking. Just talk about yourself.

Well, I’m Mik sim Mikhail. I come from Lacota, a little farming and ranching town near the Laughing River. We’re part of Stolevan, or the Stolevan Matriarchy if you want to be formal about it. I guess everyone knows about what happened with the ice dragon, right?

Right. Why not talk about your life before that?

Is there really that much to tell? My mother’s a baker, and my father’s a roustabout. That’s someone who does anything that’s needed on any of the local farms or ranches. I had a pretty normal life for a kid in Lacota. I went to school through the winter, and worked on my aunt's ranch during the summer.

What was school like?

They teach you to read and write, work numbers, some of our history. There’s lessons about gardening, cooking, and mending for people who don’t learn it at home. It was my last year of school, so I would have been apprenticed — well, I guess I was apprenticed. Just not where I expected.

Where did you expect to end up?

I was hoping to get apprenticed to Mattu, the local merchant. I would have had a chance to travel, maybe see Queensport some day. The kids all get to write down three choices, and the mentor — master — talks to the kids to see if they’re suited for the work. If I got passed by, I suppose I’d have ended up working for my aunt.

You worked a ranch. What was that like?

I spent five summers there. My aunt is… unique. Some of the folk who don’t like her say she’s part-goblin, but nobody dares say it where she can hear! She won’t read this, right?

She won’t.

Well, I can see where folk might get that idea about her being part-goblin. She’s almost as wide as she is tall, and she can out-wrestle and out-curse a blacksmith. I saw her do both, but she’d cuff me if she knew. I saw her take on an angry bull once, and that bull learned who was boss around the ranch right quick!

She sounds like a hard woman.

Only if you made her mad, and that took more than you might think. I mean, if she told you to do some chore, you’d be all right if you at least tried. She’d make you do it again, but she’d show you how to do it right. But if she thought you just walked off it, though, watch out!

One thing about the ranch: there wasn’t any “men’s work” or “women’s work.” There was just work, and whoever was around did it. I’d be peeling potatoes in the kitchen before breakfast, then pitch hay in the morning and herd cattle in the afternoon. Come evening, everyone was expected to mend and stitch. She said I wasn’t any good at sewing, but I could put a keen edge on a knife. So I’d sharpen the cutlery or fix broken handles, and she and the others would do the sewing. And she’d drink beer and tell dirty jokes too. I didn’t understand those for a long time. Now that I do, I can’t tell them to anyone.

Did you get any kind of special treatment, being her nephew?

No privileges, if that’s what you mean. She wouldn’t let me back down from anyone though, be it a ranch hand who thought he could boss a kid around or a cow who thought she could do the same. I got banged up some at first, but I learned how to get the better of them. Maybe that helped with the ice dragon.

Now that you’re an apprentice sorcerer, what’s next?

Well, I hope Sura and I stay together. I know being a sorcerer is dangerous, but so is being a rancher. Or a merchant, or a soldier. But it’s not so bad when you have someone to watch your back, eh?