Tag: creative writing

Serialize This — Side B

I started this novel in December 2022. A year later, according to MS Word, I had 943 hours in it.

Jeez. And here I’ve been telling folks I didn’t retire just to go out looking for another job.

I took inventory last year at 138,000 words, and understood that Mason Fowlkes and Marie Jourdain were principals, not supporting cast. This discovery required moving their story arc from the middle of the book to the front.

Hence, a lot of material went to the ‘excised’ document, including this scene, discarded for more demerits in the writer’s craft column, including the one that says nobody reads 800 page books anymore.

A lack of faith on my part perhaps, so here it is -- an example of exclusive content for subscribers. Step right up, folks.

Chapter 6

AMV Anuraga, The Dust Cloud

It was 8:40 AM United States Eastern time, and Mason Fowlkes did not want to be late for his big day. First on the agenda, pre-meeting, collect his sister at a music studio on RD-19.

Erin’s piano teacher had a question for him. She asked, “Why isn’t air circulating on this deck?”

Mason replied, “I don’t know, but I’ll call it in.”

“It’s been that way all morning.”

“We’re short-handed. Half a dozen shipwrights are off on a mission.”

“Doing what?”

“Retrieving AMV Bharamin from storage near Saturn.” Mason made a sheepish expression. “I’d be there myself if I didn’t have an appointment today.”

“I thought Bharamin was lost.”

He shook his head. “Nope; just hidden.”

The lady made wide eyes. “I’ll bet there’s a story behind that!”

“There is, but I’ve already said more than I should.” Mason took his younger sister’s hand. “I promise, if we had a serious ventilation fault, I’d be on the job.”

On their way out the door, Erin asked, “Do you have your phone turned off?”

He nodded. “They’ll find me anyway.”

The finding took place at the elevator bank, doors opening to reveal a male shipwright, human, and furry female apprentice, Anye Iravat.

Mason said, “You guys look tired.”

The man replied, “We’ve been at it since midnight. Why’s your phone turned off?”

“I have a meeting with my counselor.”

“Yeah, well I have Chester the maroli stuck in a dead-end crawlspace between RD-18 and Cargo-3.” He raised eyebrows at Mason’s sister. “Hey, Erin.”

Erin raised eyebrows back. “Hello Mark. Sheila.” She peeled her phone off her wrist. “How long is this going to take?”

The elevator dropped. Sheila took control, opening doors while the lift was in motion. “Depends on your brother.”

Mark pushed a grav-lift tool box to one side. “Drone inspection called out a high-pressure ventilation duct with the spigot backed way out of the downstream slip-joint. Cafeteria on 18 is straight underneath, full to capacity.”

Sheila laid her perky ears out, then back. “We didn’t turn off the gravity. Chester tried to winch it back in, and it fell. We cleared out the cafeteria and turned off the gravity, but it didn’t help.”

Mason unfolded a pair of disposable coveralls. “I’m listening.”

“The duct’s jammed, won’t budge. One end is hung up on a backup power supply cabinet. No breach, yet, but it’s possible. Chester’s fuel port snapped off. Butane bled out, so he can’t run his propulsion system. And, he’s pinned on his side, can’t get leverage with his tentacles.”

“Crap!”

“Oh, yeah. It’s bad. I’ve been in there two hours trying to pry him loose. I’m worn out, and if you can’t do it, we’ll have to use a molecular cutter on the duct.”

The coveralls were too large. Mason had to roll up the legs. “What’s Chester say about that?”

“He’s scared, and he should be. The radiation could kill his processor.”

The car crept down, slowly passing Cargo-3, where a mechanical indicator set into an access hatch warned, ‘If piston is flush, other side is vacuum.’

The car stopped short of RD-18, revealing a dark, forbidding between-decks 1.5-meter-gross-clearance crawlspace.

A trio of drones lifted out of the tool crate, lamps blazing. Mason told them, “Lead me by five meters. Keep your lights out of my eyes.”

He paired his neural implant with the drones’ cameras, inviting an Ultra-Vision 3-D render into his brain’s optical center. Mason’s sight picture ballooned. He swayed, off-balance.

Sheila held on to his shoulders. “Whoa, tiger. Give it a second.”

He stuck out his tongue. “Uck.”

She staged a self-propelled tool tray on the crawlspace deck. “I wish I had spherical vision.”

“I wish I’d skipped breakfast.” Mason leaned into the crawlspace, allowing null-gravity to take weight off his torso so Sheila could push him in.

After that, it was a free-fall swim through a low-ceiling, claustrophobia-inducing obstacle course, terminated by a full-height section beam, making the compartment one-way-in, same-way-out.

Chester was quiet, incommunicative, tentacles limp. Mason patted him on the capsule. “Hey buddy. Wake up.”

A ready light winked on. Tentacles stirred. Chester spoke softly, as if telling a secret. “This one had a terrible dream.”

“I can imagine.” Mason tugged on a jackpost. It was cranked up tight enough to lift the duct, had one end not been hung on a waste pipe, and the other wedged against an emergency power cabinet, containing a toxin-laden petrogas-converting fuel cell.

Chester touched Mason’s hand with a lesser ungula. “Mason Fowlkes. This is a dangerous place for you to be.”

Mason eyeballed the power cabinet. The service panel was half-open, bent beyond any hope of closing it. Light bounced off the fuel cell within, a sturdy device, but it could be breached and that would be a non-trivial event.

He said, “Yep. It’s scary, all right.”

Chester replied, “You must bring waldoes, seal the compartment, cut the duct. There is no other way.”

“Nah. I’m not giving up on you; not yet.” Mason grasped a virtual joystick in augmented reality, guiding a drone toward the power cabinet.

He said, “Sixteen, calculate how many cans of shock foam it would take to fill up the empty volume in that cabinet.”

Mark the shipwright spoke in his ear. “This is why we like having smart guys in the department.”

While waiting for supplies, Mason coated Chester’s capsule with spray lube. A strap, fastened to a lift ring on the ceiling, gave the maroli something to pull on, making it possible for him to expose his filler port.

The port was easily replaced. Mason recharged Chester’s fuel cell with a Dollar Store butane cylinder, restoring propulsion.

Sheila filled the offending power supply cabinet with shock foam. The material turned into a stiff jelly within minutes.

Anuraga called General Quarters. Everyone on board went to emergency stations.

A strap was fastened around Chester’s capsule. Mason, Mark, and Sheila waited in the elevator, clad in spacesuits. A power winch wound up slack and pulled.

Chester came out of between-decks like his tentacles were on fire. He told Mason, “This one will always be grateful.”

He told Mark, “This one resigns from the maintenance department.”

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Serialize This – Chapter 3

I recently discovered that publishers of serial novels like to get their victims on mailing lists before explaining the proposition. I’m on too many mailing lists. It’s ‘unsubscribe’ here, ‘Stop’ there, ‘Block’ over yonder.

But, I did allow myself to get suckered enough times to assemble a custom plan, just for my Internet friends, but I’ll need your email address before I can tell you about it.

Nah. I'm kidding. There's no plan. Tell me what you want, and I'll see what I can do.

Chapter 3

The White House, Washington DC

It was another sunny day at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue where, at 8:00 AM sharp, Colonel Theodore Clarke, USAF retired, appeared on the President’s Patio outside the Oval Office.

She let him in through a side door. “You could come in the front, you know. Maybe check in with Captain Price.”

“Tune into the Anuraga Channel.” Clarke gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Bharamin’s in orbit.”

Continue reading “Serialize This – Chapter 3” →
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Serialize This – Chapter 1

Claude AI says Maroli Tango is ready for publication — good news for all of us, I hope.

What would you pay, if anything, to read a 4th-edit WIP, 3,000 words per week? Would you value access to material excised for technical, rather than artistic reasons? How about exclusive desktop wallpaper? There could even be tee-shirts, although perhaps in the same sense of ‘There could be unicorns’.

Wait! You don’t have to tell me right now. I’m posting 7 chapters. Just, whenever you get around to it.

Chapter 1

Previously

When Carmen Luisa Colletti was a 12-year-old nosepicker in convent school, a Benedictine nun told her, “Boys have a tendency to be shallow, young men not much better. Wait it out, and use your brain to make a sensible choice.”

Continue reading “Serialize This – Chapter 1” →
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Bad Robot!

Now comes Pro Writing Aid with a free-trial offer, to which I submitted the first 9100 words of the Maroli Tango manuscript.

And, after a half-day of exploration, I’m giving it up.

Plot Outline 1.
Aliens reveal their existence, causing global disruption and political upheaval, leading to Carmen's presidency.

Wherein, right out of the gate, PWA demonstrates poor reading comprehension. Carmen is elected President. Six months into her first term, aliens reveal their existence. I can prove it.

Yeah, I still like Claude AI the best. Find it here.

Are you using AI to critique your writing? How's it working out?

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Blurb 2.4

Let's see if we can make it fit on the back cover. 254 words.

In Old Testament times, co-occupancy with migrants from another planet was, for humans, like having a rich uncle who stopped answering the door. And then, in 48 BCE, the Alexandrian Library burned down. Evidence destroyed. The Anye faded into the shadows and we forgot about them; until recently, when a 1×2 kilometer starship showed up at the Dust Cloud, there to rescue Earth from cosmic disaster.

“Not so fast”, said the global elite. “What’s in it for us?”

United States President Carmen Benequista is dealing with a mutinous Congress, in no mood to entertain a dream séance, during which her deceased husband says, “Find someone to share your life.”

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Blurb 2.3

The Kata AjJivadi, codified 48 BCE, commands that the planet Jivada’s influence on Earth shall be hidden from view — impractical unless someone destroys evidence at, for instance, the Shrine of the Muses in Egypt, next door to the Alexandrian Library.

It was arson. Nobody denies it. Consequently, in a single stroke, barring the occasional Sasquatch sighting, the Anye Migration and its many aspects were relegated to mythology.

Continue reading “Blurb 2.3” →
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Prologued!

In some circles, the prologue is apostasy. However, in the case of Maroli Tango, this might be essential. Comments welcome.

Previously …

The effective date of the Anye Disclosure was arguable, conceivably pointing back to 1928, when the executive host of an off-world-patronized South Dakota tourist destination revealed herself to Doctor Elbert Holland Harrison, a rural physician of the human persuasion who, up until then, had not been in on ‘the big secret’.

“Good evening”, she had said, lemur fangs concealed behind a demure smile. “We’re from the Sasquatch chamber of commerce.”

The proposition was not as risky as one might think. Doc Harrison, an 83-year-old veteran of the American Civil War, was a person made stoic by a lifetime of experience with suffering.

Confronted by a furry foxlike princess wearing a tailored western-cut maternity blouse, culotte skirt and cowboy boots, he thought to himself, ‘Aren’t you the prettiest little thing?’

Earth’s secret history was explained — 25,000 years as a backwater campground, and yet for all the opportunity presented, humans had not become the unwitting subjects of a celestial master race.

The lady told him, “It’s like having a rich uncle who stopped returning your phone calls.”

Jivada, an Anye colony world, was one-hour-forty-five-minutes away via Saraf Drive. A third of Jivada’s citizens (AjJivadi) were human, welcomed into Anye clans since the Migration.

The AjJivadi possessed homestead claims on Earth, anchored by business enterprise, dual citizenships, voluntary submission to taxation, and so forth.

Their engagement from the shadows, a practice formalized around the time of Jesus, was not a sign of consent to be marginalized.

Evidence two artifacts of Jivada’s agency on Earth:

The ancient and noble order of Zirna Zapha, a custodian of Anye civilization, formed on pre-industrial Vidura (the home planet) by militant SagGha priests. Sanskrit – The Broken Claw. Colloquial – Zeze; The Space Mafia.

CH Banks International, a private security firm and, some would say, a Zirna Zapha storefront. Incorporated 1929, Black Rock, South Dakota.

In 2025, nearly a hundred years after Doc Harrison received a lesson in clandestine symbiotic co-occupancy, an approaching cyclical catastrophe shifted the Disclosure into high gear.

Jivada dispatched an emissary to offer intervention, the very same Doc Harrison, now 180 years old, although he didn’t look it.

The mission culminated in a shootout at a taco joint near Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, an exploit by the U.S. military to hijack a space yacht, ransom the owner, and ship the proceeds to defense contractors in exchange for lucrative kickbacks.

The USAF suffered grave casualties. Doc Harrison departed the scene on a Triumph Speed Triple motorcycle in the company of a shapely 26-year-old social media skydiving celebrity, to rendezvous with the space yacht Skeezix in the parking lot of a local Wal-Mart.

A filmic spectacle, captured in Super 3D UltraVision by a covey of Anye-tech fighting drones, even and especially while engaged in shooting the enemy.

Both Wal-Mart and the Triumph Motorcycle Company were grateful for the publicity, but it was a crushing defeat for the military-industrial complex, an object lesson, an opportunity to change course.

Which they ignored in favor of a mutiny against the President of the United States, a guerrilla war against Jivada, and a worldwide pogrom against AjJivadi constituents on Earth.

None of it worked to their advantage. The Anye Disclosure and its benign intentions gained more than enough traction to persuade the general public, despite opposition.

On a side note: the nomenclature ‘First Contact’ was preposterously out of date. The Disclosure was a ‘Gazillionth Contact’ event; except this time, it was meant to stick.

And regrettably, Earth’s global elite were nowhere near being ready to go along.

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Mining for inspiration

I’ve recently given myself the objective of crafting an opening to the current work-in-progress so compelling that every reader will be enthralled, no matter what kind of book they’re in the mood for.

Exhibit 1: An early-draft description for Maroli Tango:

Sometimes, no matter what’s going on, you have to make it about you.

Visited in a dream by her deceased husband, United States President Carmen Luisa Benequista gets a wake-up call. Anton Benequista, gone these past 13 years, tells her, “Find someone to share your life.”

It’s not a rocket science proposition. Carmen’s steady companion, Space Mafia kingpin Brandon Lopez, 15 years her junior, is waiting for a signal. Done deal, if she wants.

First-contact survivor Mason Fowlkes, soon to be 16, is growing up fast as an apprentice Ship’s Mechanic aboard the Anye migration vessel Anuraga. The work life is great; the home life not so much.

French Air Force lieutenant Marie Jourdaine is on the rebound after a brief stint as the world’s youngest female fighter pilot. Things are kind of working out, and kind of not.

Caught in the middle is Chester, an elevated maroli labor appliance, a product of ancient Anye technology, monstrous in appearance, sweet of disposition, intent on discovering his place in the universe.

It’s been a bumpy ride, fraught with challenges. Maybe it’s time for our heroes to take care of themselves.

Continue reading “Mining for inspiration” →
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Critiqued!

A missive to another author, from a discussion thread this morning.

(Regarding) the review at https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R33UADCP4H6VCK) — over which I debated the wisdom of ‘(implying) things in the prose’ and leaving the reader to figure it out.

‘Trust the reader’ is a bit of advice I took to heart at the beginning of my author’s journey, on the topic of balancing exposition against pacing, and the value of a fly-on-the-wall third-person-limited narrative form, a staple in the writing of Hemingway and others. It suits me. It’s what I do now. I’m not about to change, although the critique gives me pause.

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