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Thirst - a short story

"He says he was there for five hundred days."   "Five hundred days. Impossible. How?"   "No idea. He said he learned to breathe air."   "That's..."   "Crazy. I know. But you've seen the changes, you saw how his skin was all red and rough when we brought him back."   "The crew did say his chest was heaving, when they saw him. Thought it was some kind of spasm. Some kind of sickness."   Kam can hear the voices outside the ward. Doc Forvin, and the skeptic, another man he doesn't rec

Nephil Thief

Nephil Thief

Lessons learned

My writing project is still slowly going along. It will eventually end up as at least one finished novel. I don't really have a lot of time to work on it, but I hack away when I can. Sometimes I plunge ahead writing; sometimes I step back, frown, and gun down darlings. Up to a point I have high standards, but I'm not trying to write a Great Novel; just write something I like. If you want to make money from writing, I am no-one to advise you, but I can recommend writing a novel as a hobby. It's f

Student of Trinity

Student of Trinity

When the going gets tough, step back further

So I wrote a 130K-word first draft in a year, and I thought I'd try to finish the second draft in a second year, but that deadline passed four days ago, and I wasn't even close to making it, despite a lot of steady work over all that time. I did manage to hammer out an improved version of the most difficult part. The revised version held together and I thought I was over the hump. But then I asked myself, Why did this take so long?   It took so long because it was hard. I thought that was okay

Student of Trinity

Student of Trinity

Scrivener

I worked on my novel for about a year and half using Apple's Pages app. It gave me no problems even as the story stretched well past 100,000 words. Pages is a general-purpose word processor and doesn't claim to be optimized for writing novels in particular, but it's robust and easy to use.   I liked that it wasn't anything more than that. I knew about fancy-pants apps like Ulysses or Scrivener, that offered all kinds of corkboard views and index cards and stuff. I was afraid of them. I thought

Student of Trinity

Student of Trinity

What little protagonists are made of

After writing quite a lot more of this story than I had at the point of my November 2012 post "Cordite and steel and everything nice", it seems that Anastasia works quite well as a character. The people who have read my drafts so far are all family members, so they're an easy crowd, but everyone seems to really like Anastasia.   Liking the protagonist is really important, especially when she's also the narrator. An unlikable narrator-protagonist makes the whole book painful, but with a likable

Student of Trinity

Student of Trinity

Fionn's Story - Ch. 1

It was morning in the Contested Lands. The young blademaster stretched, yawned, rolled stiffly off the pile of dried grass and blankets that had served him as a bed, and fumbled into his clothes. A quick meal of last night's leftovers washed down with a mug of herbal tea, and he began to feel almost human again.   He stepped outside the abandoned barracks where he and his scouting partner had bivouacked the previous night, blinking and squinting as he strode purposefully towards the outhouse

springacres

springacres

The Ermarian Network is getting 20% cooler

As of September 22nd, the Ermarian Network is being prepared for a gradual move to a new home. After more than seven years of being served by DreamHost (who I've been very happy with, but whose shared hosting plan isn't sufficient anymore), I'm going to be renting a virtual server from CloudSoarer.   I'll be posting the status of the move periodically on here.   For a start, the Encyclopedia Ermariana is the first site to be hosted on the new server, eris.   (Edit: Better title - "Putting

Aran

Aran

True Magic: 3

He can almost use his eyes, this starving writer. Perhaps I must tell my invisible angels to draw up their hoods. But of course I have none. I do have servants, many servants, and some of these might be called invisible. Few of my agents are aware that they serve me, and none needs frequent direction. But my affairs are involved, and directing them requires ample time. My young author has seen this much truly, that I have needed more time than is normally given to mortals, and have secured it de

Student of Trinity

Student of Trinity

True Magic: 2

The old man is no merely ancient mariner, but a sailor who has sailed away from time. How old can he be? Surely he has seen kingdoms rise and fail; has he also watched their ruins sink in sand and sea, till new kingdoms rise in turn?   He has, and it must be many times, for the question is not how old he is, but whether he is really a man. He is a magician, a true magician, and true magicians must be older than men dream, because true magic takes half eternity to learn. It is foolish and igno

Student of Trinity

Student of Trinity

True Magic: 1

No-one in the inn even saw the old man before he appeared in the doorway, but the eyes that flicked to him there are staying to stare. He is so far beyond old, it takes very good clothes just to keep him from falling apart. His small grey coat is fine and new. His shirt is clean, his trousers are white, his shoes are black. His shriveled head sits in his stiff collar like the head of a doll. An ivory cane hangs down from within each sleeve, as if his arms are just long white sticks; but inside h

Student of Trinity

Student of Trinity

Drafting

Okay, it turns out that there's a big difference between having a first draft of a novel, and having a novel. In principle I knew this, but I didn't appreciate what the difference was. I had the idea that if all had gone well it would mainly be fine-tuning prose; and that otherwise I might have to make major changes, like adding or removing characters, or radically revising the plot. It turns out that there's a whole lot of stuff that I now have to do, in between those extremes.   Having a fir

Student of Trinity

Student of Trinity

Second draft stuff

There's more to do for the second draft than I thought.   For example, for a long time I had imagined my first chapter as this perfect thing, because it came to me kind of out of nowhere and wrote itself quickly and launched the whole story with a bang. Once it actually occurred to me to think about whether it needed revision, though, I found that it needed quite a lot.   Some things had changed since I wrote it. Anastasia had gotten quite a bit more backstory and it had become clear that sh

Student of Trinity

Student of Trinity

Starting a second draft

After tinkering and polishing a bit on my first draft of A Lady of Morandau, which was completed in exactly a year, I began work on the sequel. I didn't consider the first book finished, but I had some ideas for what came next, and I wanted to write them down. Now, after some time away from the first book, I'm coming back to it and seeing what it still needs. I post this because I've found it interesting to discover just what kind of thing you do in a novel's second draft. In my case, at least,

Student of Trinity

Student of Trinity

A finished draft

Somewhat to my surprise, I have finished a complete draft of A Lady of Morandau. It's just shy of 125,000 words, so it's long enough. It's well short of the ending that I originally conceived. I have enough material left over for half of a sequel, and I think I may have a couple of good new ideas that will fill that out to full novel length. If the sequel starts looking skimpy or padded, I might still fold it back into the first volume, making a big, fat book. But at the moment I'm optimistic th

Student of Trinity

Student of Trinity

A really confusing part of the story

Without mentioning any details of the actual story, I have something to say about the latest episode in writing my novel. It's really confusing.   Total length is just over 110,000 words, now. The current section is about 40,000 words of confusing stuff. Without my quite realizing it, the plot in this section has somehow turned into a dense composite of deceptions. It's bad enough that there are three different characters within the story who are currently all trying to deceive each other. Wha

Student of Trinity

Student of Trinity

Wallace-Bechdel Test

The Bechdel test is named after Alison Bechdel, who introduced it in a comic strip in 1985, but Bechdel herself attributes the idea to her friend Liz Wallace. A work of fiction passes the test if it contains two female characters who have a conversation about something other than a man. It sounds like a pretty low bar to jump over, but apparently it's alarming how few books or movies pass this minimal test. (I'm reluctant to start checking through my favorite sci-fi and fantasy books — and the m

Student of Trinity

Student of Trinity

January 7 (Happiness is a Warm Gun)

Elliot and James arrive at Waste Management's headquarters north of town to "collect Hank's belongings" and do a little snooping. Meanwhile, Linda does the same at the Town Hall.   Their visits follow an almost identical trajectory. The secretary offers polite regrets for their loss, then escorts them to the employee lounge, where personal affects are kept. They stay as long as they dare, searching the room for something awry, and reading coworkers for signs of deception. As she is leaving, Li

Actaeon

Actaeon

Tentative farewell to arms

My story is roaring along. Somewhere around 40,000 words so far, I think. I'm working on chapter 10, now, and I have already done several pages of what is supposed to be the next section of the book.   After Chapter 12 there'll be a different narrator, for what is supposed to be about a third of the book, before coming back to Anastasia in the end. The middle chunk is the diary of this native princeling, Thomas MacLayne, which Anastasia acquires and pastes into her memoir. A lot of it is about

Student of Trinity

Student of Trinity

January 6 (Down By the River)

As he steps over the police tape, he see her standing on the bank with her feet almost in the water. She does not look around at his approach, though his boots make a great deal of noise on the lose round rocks.   "What brings you out to the field, Liz?"   "The same thing that brought, I imagine, Jack. Doubt."   "I didn't know you shared my feelings on this matter. Your report was pretty conclusive."   "I established that cause of death was drowning, yes. He was alive when he went into

Actaeon

Actaeon

January 5 (The Maker)

Our dramatis personae can be encapsulated in a single photograph.   James Dalton, brother of the deceased, stands next to the gravestone with his hat against his heart. He cuts the figure of a movie star cowboy: a care worn face with a masculine jawline, eyes the same color as his faded blue jeans, a well starched white button up, and a turquoise-and-amber bolo tie. His eyes are upturned, his mouth set in a thoughtful grimace as he plots the next line of his ovation.   Linda has her back to

Actaeon

Actaeon

January 4 (The Dangling Conversation)

"You crazy son-of-a"   Elliot wakes to find a short, auburn young woman standing over him, fists on her hips.   "Morning Linda."   A frock coat makes a remarkably warm blanket, but as he pulls himself clumsily to his feet, his limbs cry out in numb protest. The woman offers no assistance, and continues to fix him with a steady glare.   "I don't suppose you have someplace I could thaw out?"   She rolls her eyes and wordlessly escorts him down the hill.   ***   A light breeze rustles

Actaeon

Actaeon

January 3 (Somewhere Down the Crazy River)

Observe Mr. Elliot Holt.   He is disembarking the California Zephyr on a brilliant but chilly January afternoon. As he steps down onto the platform, he pulls a pocket watch from the breast of his frock coat and checks the time- an action which draws several sidelong glances from his fellow travelers. A somewhat surly porter wrestles his baggage- a rough leather case containing a "portable" typewriter- from under a sea of rolling suitcases and duffles. Mr. Holt accepts it with a bow and tips th

Actaeon

Actaeon

January 2 (Turn the Page)

The I80 between Omaha and Des Moines is one of the more godforsaken stretches of road in the country, and most people would agree that anyone who would ride a motorcycle through such a scene on a bitter January evening would have to be at least a little crazy.   This man, clad all in black, expression blank despite the cold and the speed, is more than a little crazy. Even as he takes a curve at just over ninety, he's busy reflecting on the deeds of the previous night.   Lights from the polic

Actaeon

Actaeon

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