Wednesday 12 November 2014

Murder Matches - With Nana Li!

I've been wanting to blog about this for a while, but it's only just been properly finished - just in time for the weekend!

Murder Matches
by Nana Li and Steve Cook



Nana's idea for Murder Matches was a really lovely one to work with; a mystery in eight parts, designed to be picked up and read in any order. Each one needed to have a unique voice; they also needed to provide a series of red herrings, motives and gossip, while still dropping hints as to how the death of the Colonel actually occurred.

It was a really lovely challenge, and I hope people have fun reading them, and enjoy owning the spectacular artwork by Nana. If you're anything like me, the pictures will give each character an accent in you head as you're reading, as they did when I was writing.

Nana Li will be exhibiting at Thought Bubble this coming weekend, sharing a table with John Aggs in New Dock Hall, table 40.

Saturday 18 October 2014

Flash fiction set in Koru

Koru, one of the five countries that make up the continent of Ehrian. Although, that said, one that I'm thinking of changing the name of, mainly because that makes the spoken language 'Koruan', which is little too close to 'Korean'. Maybe 'Korun' works, or 'Kor'. 'Caw, listen to me speak my language'. Bleh.

Anyway! A bit of dunking in the politics of Koru.

General Sun-Ji looked out upon his empire, the ghost of a smile touching his lips. The sun was setting, painting everything in shades of blood; the warmth of the day had already begun to sink into the coolness of evening, and a faint mist was rising from the reflection pools in the shadows far below.
His son, still standing at the desk a few feet behind him, cleared his throat gently. “Father,” the young man said, “The staff are still in revolt. We must do something.” His plea echoed around the hard walls and floor, sounding empty.
“I have already put measures in place,” Sun-Ji said. “Soldiers have set up a perimeter, and the workers are being contained.” He half-turned and graced his son with a smile. “You worry too much, Mako.”
“They will fight.”
“They will die, then,” Sun-Ji said, turning back to the sunset.  Even at fifty, his back was straight and his shoulders broad. He closed his eyes and listened. Whoever had designed the Imperial Office had known his audience. Every movement, however slight, was amplified. There was the sound of a step, almost too tiny to hear, and the susurration of fabric moving against skin. The slightly uneven sound of Mako’s breathing, and underneath it, something out of place, off to the right.

Friday 17 October 2014

Teaching Lows and Podcast Highs

Almost exactly as I predicted, term started and I dropped completely off the radar. Not a single blog post since September 1st, when term started. The truth is that the school I'm working at now has very high expectations and is also expecting the Inspectors any time soon. That translates to very late nights, working at the weekend, and generally not wanting to do anything other than vegetate in the evenings.

That's not entirely true. I play a bit of Final Fantasy XIV; it's fast becoming an escape from what I do, but this week is a prime example. The first time I was able to get on was last night, so it's not exactly taking up all my free time!

I've found time to do some writing. As well as continuing to work with Patrice Aggs, I'm collaborating with Nana Li on a project which should be finished soon. But it's not as much writing as I'd want to do, sadly.

I do plan to do NaNoWriMo, my second one this year, and the plan is to write Noctis Point during that month. Whether I actually manage to get the time is a question I can't answer right now. Work's getting busier and I'm getting more tired as we crawl closer to Christmas.

However, one thing I have managed to do is release a podcast every week, and a video on YouTube! I've yet to garner much interest, but that's to be expected. I think it's fairly niche, but hopefully eventually I'll just have been doing it so long that I get watchers/listeners through attrition. It's also incredibly handy; it's allowed me to spot several mistakes in Poisonroot, and also realise that I really don't like the first ten chapters or so. I should have rewritten them. They're a bit pants. Luckily, it picks up after that, almost exactly at the point where I started writing it as my NaNo two years ago. Funny, that.

I have found time to do some reading, namely 'Endgame: The Calling' by James Frey and Nils Johnson-Shelton. It's the first part of an ARG (alternate reality game) sort of thing where there is a real prize of $500,000 in gold coins. Think Kit Williams' Masquerade or The Merlin Mystery (both of which, I know, date me slightly!). So far, it's fairly impenetrable to me, but that's because I just read it through like a normal book. If I really want to go for it, I'll need to sit with a notebook and actually try and solve some of the puzzles. There's a book signing next week in Waterstones, Piccadilly; I plan to ask the author why it's written in the present tense, which I find a little difficult to parse!

Hopefully it won't be another six weeks until I update this!

Monday 1 September 2014

Back to work

I'm actually back at my day-job now, teaching. Currently the children aren't in, but there's more than enough work to do, so writing is taking a back-seat. I've recorded another two chapters of Poisonroot for upload, so I'm not totally letting it go, and I'm going to have a look at my NaNo from LAST November, edit it up and release those stories as well. But maybe not at the same time as Poisonroot.

My 'writing' day is now Friday, though I'll try to get some in all through the week; this Friday, though, I'm going on a knife-making course, which Sue got me for my birthday! It's incredibly exciting and I'm sure I'll have photos to show off come this Friday evening.

Saturday 30 August 2014

Whisp's Tale

This is the last of the Paragon Path tales that I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!

The journey back to Fjornik was a quiet one, everyone wrapped up in their own thoughts. Only the rhythmic beat of the horses’ hooves disturbed the silence, a silence which had been hard won.
Faces flashed before her eyes. Maran. Ena. Doe. Even Vile, she thought with a snort. He was a bastard, but he didn’t deserve to die like that. The last weeks weighed heavily on her, and she knew the others were feeling it too.
“We won, didn’t we? We’re heroes.” she said aloud, more to herself than anything else. 
Toofi looked round. “It doesn’t feel like it, though,” she said quietly.
Whisp nodded and fixed her eyes back on the road. Then why do I feel so insignificant?
Gods. Demons. And she just a human. She narrowed her eyes. It was clear that the monsters of this land were too vast to be easily hunted, cornered and slain.

Friday 29 August 2014

Ostardva's Tale

This is one of the Paragon Path tales I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. As a bit of back story to this one, we left Ostardva's story hanging at the point when Tiamat, the evil dragon goddess, had offered him a place as her paladin. We kept the suspense up until the very end of Heroic Tier about whether his Paragon path would be as an evil paladin or as a righteous one, or turning his back on the path of a paladin altogether. Enjoy!

“No.”
The word echoed around the cavernous chamber. Ostardva, stood on one of Tiamat’s long, sinuous necks, stared defiantly at the five immense dragon heads, arrayed in front of him.
The central one, the red one, started backwards a little, as if surprised.
“No? Just like that? You disappoint me, child of Arkhosia.” The five heads spoke as one, a woman’s voice but with a hint of growling bass in it. The sound was like a hammer-blow, every word a storm to be weathered.
“Just like that,” Ostardva said, holding the red head’s gaze.
“I offer you power.”
“I don’t need power.” Ostardva felt a small flame kindle in his chest.
“I offer you privilege.”
“Privilege must be earned.” The flame grew brighter, and Ostardva began to remember how it felt to be righteous.
The heads began to move closer in unison. “I offer you the respect of your companions. As an arbiter of a god, they would see the worth in you.”
“You offer me nothing that I cannot gain on my own.”

Thursday 28 August 2014

Futch's Tale

This is one of the Paragon Path tales I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!

Futch frowned as he walked away from the others. No-one seemed in a particularly celebratory mood; they had won the war, beaten the Lich, but at a high cost. Hundreds had died, thousands perhaps. Ostardva, Gieve, the others on the airship.
Maran.
He gritted his teeth and clenched his fist, fighting the surge of frustration that threatened to boil over. To have been so far away, and not able to do anything, or even know about it... It wasn’t fair. He wandered through the streets, barely aware of the direction his feet were taking him, lost in thought.
Finally he stood in front of the southern gate, looking out over the plains. The gently sloping path that lead to Varikause and beyond lay in front of him and, with one backwards glance at Fjornik, he shifted.
Faster than the wind, faster than thought, he ran, and as he ran he allowed the sheer joy of it to carry away his anger and sadness. They can never know this, he thought to himself, never see the world through scent and hear the smallest sound, never run through the wilds on four paws like this.

Wednesday 27 August 2014

Kali's Tale

This is one of the Paragon Path stories I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!

Kali stood in the confusion of the city. In a way, ruined as it was, it felt more comfortable to her; instead of stone formed into buildings and walls, it was more like the hillsides of her childhood, rough and unformed.
She rubbed her shoulders at that thought, feeling the roughness of her own skin. It was still odd to her; she’d grown used to the small slices and nicks, the little pieces of skin that grew back harder than scars should, but the final battle against the Lich had been devastating in more ways than one. Hundreds had died, an entire city fallen into a pit, friends and travelling companions blasted into nothingness. In the darkness and heat of the cavern under Ortmund, revealed at last, they had battled the Lich and emerged victorious. She flexed her hands, remembering the freezing cold and biting pain that had stung them as she had grabbed at whatever was inside its armour, holding it in place so that Toofi could deliver the death blow. The backlash of energy had flayed her torso open, revealing a rougher layer beneath the skin that ached still.
She wandered out of the city. A few children waved at her in passing, and she smiled and waved back. The road sloped gently downwards towards the grassy plain to the south of Fjornik, and Kali lengthened her stride. As she walked, she scanned the horizon.
“Aunty Moonie,” she whispered to herself. “If you’re out here, I could really use some help.”

Tuesday 26 August 2014

Toofi's Tale

This is one of the Paragon Path stories I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!

The bar was loud, uncomfortably so, but Toofi had found a quiet corner in which to sip her mug of ale. Fjornik was coming back to life, more so now that the threat of the undead horde was gone, and it was good to not have to watch her back all the time.
The events of the last few weeks were still large in her mind, though. Memories rose unbidden; fabulous journeys into other realms, the weird feeling of controlling a body much larger than hers, and a grinning face pressed up against crystal.
Ilneval.
Toofi’s mouth twisted in distaste. Who was the demon (was he even a demon?) going to take his revenge on? Who were the descendants of Ragnus? Had they settled one problem only to free another, greater threat?
Slapping a couple of coppers down onto the table, Toofi stood up. Hanging around in taverns worked for trying to track down killers and thieves, but finding out about the first men who walked the earth was going to require something a little more definite.

Monday 25 August 2014

Projects Update!

Pocket Fiction has launched!

Essentially it's a channel for audio stories that I'm recording. Initially it'll be my own stuff, mainly Poisonroot. One of my jobs this week is to continue recording chapters of Poisonroot in advance, so that when term starts next week I've got a load of updates. At first it will be updating on a Friday only, but I might up that to two-a-week when I'm more confident with it. I've also been posting them to Tumblr, at stevecookfiction for a bit of cross-media notice.

I'm really excited about it!

The deadline came and went for D&D stories, and everyone seemed really happy with them. Essentially, all the characters reached paragon tier, which is a major advancement point both in roleplay terms and in stats. We had a four-week break for real-life reasons between finishing one chapter and actually having the characters get their paragon paths, so we roleplayed it that all five characters went away for a week and had their own personal adventures. I had a long talk with each of the players and we hammered out what their characters did, and then I wrote up an individual story for them. No-one knew I was doing it, which was both exciting and a little scary; trying to capture each character, and at the same time writing a story that would be 'right' and considered canon, was a challenge. However, everyone was really pleased with them, and I got permission to post them here. I'll queue up the posts and you'll get one each day, starting tomorrow with 'Toofi's Tale'.

Next up: Work for teaching work, and then cake-making.


Wednesday 20 August 2014

Projects on top of projects!

I'm making a lot of work for myself and should probably clear some of it off. In no particular order of importance:
  1. I've planned out, and just need to write, Noctis Point. It's the new and improved psych-based story that I think will work really well. I just need a bit of discipline and actually get writing it. Go go fake NaNoWriMo time, perhaps!
  2. Dungeons and Dragons! Ok, so I've got normal planning to do, and also a little bit of a special project that I can't share until after Sunday. I don't think any of the people who play actually follow this blog, which is sad times, but even if word gets back to them I don't want it spoiled. Lets just say that I should have a few days of updates on here next week that I'm queueing up now.
  3. Pocket Fiction! It's going to be a real thing soon. I've actually recorded five now, but they're in varying degrees of quality and I really need to confirm which recording method works for me. I'm also trying to get hold of a royalty-free fire-in-a-fireplace video that I can set the stories to, so that people have something to look at. I'm going for that 'cosy story in front of the fireplace' feel to it, but Sue pointed out that it could easily double for 'everything you love is burning to a cinder', or words to that effect.
  4. NomCake! Not sure I've ever talked about that here, but we do cakes to order. I love baking and don't do it enough. NomCake is my way of making sure I do some at least. Reasonable prices, any cake to order within reason.
  5. Working with Patrice Aggs! I'm very lucky to be working on a project with awesome illustrator Patrice Aggs on a project that I don't think I can talk about yet. But it will be awesome, and you can bet I'll talk about it a bunch when it happens.
  6. Work for which I get paid! Or not at the moment. But I do need to do some actual planning for next term. I've done some, it's just a matter of getting down to it.
Two of those are fairly quick to finish; NomCake's deadline is a week on Saturday, and D&D's deadline is this Sunday coming. Pocket Fiction is an ongoing project. Noctis Point is a long-term project, at least a month without much else going on. The others are open-ended, so I guess that prioritises things!

Tuesday 19 August 2014

Humble Bundles and Books I've Read Recently

I was able to snag a Humble Bundle book deal a little while ago (actually, it was Sue that spotted it!) and downloaded it to my Kindle before going to Sweden. I'm a big fan of the Kindle, by the bye, and I've found that it makes such a difference to packing weight.

I read a couple of books while I was out there. On the flight out, I read the entirety of Arcanum 101: Welcome New Students, by Rosemary Edghill and Mercedes Lackey which is a fun book set in the present day, but one where magic, elves and arcane happenings occur. It was brief but interesting; most of the books in the humble bundle were on this sort of topic, and there are lots of shared ideas, or common points from which they draw. I think it was a quirk of the formatting on my Kindle that the shift from the first character's point of view to the second's was something I had to read over twice, to pinpoint exactly when it happened.

I probably could have gotten more reading done actually during the week, but in the end I only read Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton and found it really inspirational. He details some of the things that lead from where he was, pretty much known only for being in Star Trek TNG, struggling to get more acting parts and finally putting two fingers up at it to focus on writing. I know I haven't had anything like that sort of struggle, but it was kind of comforting to read about someone else going through some of the same questions about trying to get into writing full time. I'll definitely be reading the other Wil Wheaton book that came with the bundle, The Happiest Days of Our Lives.

I read Sunstorm on the way home, by Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter. It's excellent, but then I've come to expect that from both authors. It was also exceptionally handy as research for Noctis Point, set as it is on Mars, the Moon and Earth. I got the idea that there was a bigger world here, on the scale of the Xeelee by Stephen Baxter, which I suppose makes sense. The FirstBorn give the impression of that kind of all-knowing power. Certainly, for anyone looking for a nice solid sci-fi adventure that can be read in about five hours, this is a good option. I finished it actually on the Underground, pulling in to Brockley station, which works just fine for me.

Recording has started for Pocket Fiction, my new project. This is slightly procrastination for Noctis Point but not really, because I have lots of other things I could be procrastinating on, like making cakes for the next NomCake outing or, y'know, preparing work for the new term that starts in about twelve days.

Eek.

Monday 18 August 2014

Sweden and back!

I've just come back from a holiday in Sweden with John Aggs, Nana Li and my wife Sue. We went to Visby, Gotland, and it is beautiful! We were blessed with the weather as well, only one day of rain and it was the day we'd 'planned' for there to be bad weather. All it meant was umbrellas, a museum and some writing/drawing at home!

And believe me, there was a fair amount of drawing, writing, or talking about either going on. We must have talked for hours each about our projects, picking out potential plot points, filling in plot holes, renaming the entire thing in my case, and generally being creative. Sue quite rightly said that it felt like a week-long brainstorm.

I did actually manage to get some writing done, namely replotting the entirety of what is now called Noctis Point. 'Psy-Clones' was a stupid placeholder name, and it's gone for good now. Some of it is familiar; since I last posted about it, I've actually done a fair amount of work towards making the psych powers have rules and actually work. I can now answer questions like 'Why can the Moon be terraformed in your book when it doesn't have an atmosphere?' and 'Where does the half-light drive come from?' and 'What is the Machine doing out beyond Pluto?' which is nice. The new plot is tighter, and starts with more of a bang.

I'm also super excited to be starting a new project: audio books. I'm going to be reading chapters of Poisonroot and putting them up on YouTube and the iTunes store, basically as a way of getting my work to more people. These podcasts will be going up on a dedicated channel, which I'll blog about when it's populated a little.

I love the world of Poisonroot, and I'm not leaving it yet. For a start, my D&D group wouldn't let me suddenly transport them into the sci-fi world of Noctis Point, I'm sure! Second, I feel there's more stories to be told in Ehrian, perhaps not about Trip but definitely more stories. I'm going to read some of my short stories too, and anything that's been published on this blog (and therefore can't be published in print). And now that I've actually written about it, I have to do it!

I read a couple of books while I was away, which I'll go over briefly in tomorrow's post, but I just wanted to post to say that I'm not dead, and very excited going forward from here!


Thursday 31 July 2014

Camp NaNoWriMo



Seriously thought at one point I wasn't going to make this target; I had a few days 'off' over my birthday and finishing work, and they build up. Luckily, I'd gotten ahead some, and I had a few good writing days. I've also really fallen out of love with some sections of the story. It's really not the story it started as, and the characters aren't the same anymore. But then, it wouldn't be fun if everything stayed the same!

I'm definitely going to write something else, maybe in the same world, but first I need to write a short story for this year's Manga Jiman competition!

Monday 7 July 2014

When is a word 'public domain'?

I was writing part of Psy-Clones yesterday (oh! I'm doing Camp NaNoWriMo this July! And then hopefully straight-up NaNoWriMo in November!) and I wrote about hyposprays. I wanted something that was futuristic, needles being already a thing of the last century and surely soon to be replaced. It didn't even occur to me that this was a problem until I read that chapter to Sue.
"That's from Star Trek," she said. "I'm not sure you can use it."
She's right; this Wikipedia entry about hyposprays specifically lists it as being a Star Trek invention, developed because NBC would not allow them to show needles being used to inject substances. That's fair enough. It seems I'm not alone in automatically using the term 'hypospray' to refer to this device; these three articles, among others, also do. Apparently the term we should all be using is 'jet injector' which is slightly clumsy to me.
Part of my wish to cling to 'hypospray' is that I feel 90% of the readers of Psy-Clones would immediately understand what I'm talking about. It's part of what made Star Trek so good, the 'by-the-way' science fiction stuff they invented. It wasn't a massive thing; it's not like I'm importing the entire Starship Enterprise, or the Borg. It was one of the little life-changing things that the optimistic future will contain, I'm sure.
At what point does a word like 'hypospray' become public property? Consider 'robotics'. Isaac Asimov often pointed out in his essays that he invented the word without even realising it. No-one who uses the term robotics now uses it and immediately thinks 'Oh, that's an Asimov thing, isn't it?'

NaNo is going well; I'm slightly ahead of the curve and trying to do what I did last November. That is to say, I wrote a little more than I needed to each day and finished a day or two early. However, this time, I'm going to try and continue the pace, writing about a 1000 words a day. I missed Saturday because I was ill, but made it up on Sunday, so it's not un-doable. I'm also going to try and write some short stories specifically to be read out for another project. We'll see if that comes to anything!

Monday 23 June 2014

Writing Day 23/06/14

It looks like I'll be writing a post to update on my 'writing day', once per week. So how does this work?

I've been a full-time teacher for nearly 6 years, and after a couple of jobs that weren't as good as they could have been (mainly management issues), I decided that enough was enough. I'm now a part-time supply teacher, four days a week by choice, and the other day is my 'writing day'. It's a day for me to get things in order, do as much writing/editing as I can, hopefully get some stuff sent off and, by the looks of things, update my blog.

Today's a good example. I've got a piece that I'm submitting to Mocha Memoir's 'Avast Ye Airships!' anthology (some adult content on that page. NSFW warning). I've tightened it up and I'm getting ready to submit it. I can't post it here, but I can tell you that it's about airships and dragons. Clockwork dragons.

I've been working on a short sci-fi story that I submitted last week to Daily Science Fiction. It's quite retro, lots of the influences from old Asimov tales in there, but it's set in the Psy-Clones universe. If it doesn't find publication there, I'm at least generally pleased with it. It's called 'Diplomatic Immunity'.

I'm thinking about sending two of my stories to the Stuff You Should Know podcast. For a start, they always like to receive stuff and give a shout-out. Second, both bits I'm thinking of sending, 'Diplomatic Immunity' and 'Eve and the 10,000 Year Clock', were inspired by podcasts of theirs. It might be nice to close the loop and send those in.

I had my first brush with a client properly this week. I applied to do some freelance work writing articles on MMOs, of which I am an avid player. Unfortunately he wanted me to buy ingame currency, something that is explicitly against the Terms of Service, and then write reviews of the experience. I declined. Square Enix work hard to keep my game free of Real Money Trade and I'm not about to make their job more difficult.

Monday 16 June 2014

Lack of posting recently

I'm finding it a little hard to post some things on the blog since I'm now actively trying to get things published. I can't publish anything here that I want to see in print elsewhere, basically. So today is a good example; I've written a short sci-fi piece in the Psy-Clones world, but it's standalone and could totally see publication somewhere. So I can't put it here.

Instead, I'd like to talk briefly about what I'm reading at the moment. My wife and I are reading 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne as a kind of 'book at bedtime' thing. It's fairly long, so it's slow going, but enjoyable. There are some hilarious sections though; it's something I recognise about Verne's writing that he obviously had things he particularly enjoyed, or knew a lot about. The parts of the book where he can talk about those in great detail are terminology-heavy and slightly detract from what's actually going on. Three pages about the polyps in Captain Nemo's display case is plenty. Of course, nothing so far has beaten the description of weapons on board the ship, including a 'duck gun with exploding balls'. We're so mature.

After that, we really want to read Sabriel by Garth Nix (apparently soon to get a long-overdue Kindle edition). I read it a few years ago and really enjoyed it. I love the idea of old tech in the far future, or our tech viewed through post-apocalyptic eyes.

I've been reading a lot of Isaac Asimov's Robot short stories, mainly in Robot Visions and Robot Dreams. Some of the stories are simply brilliant, none of them entirely dated. Of course, some of the descriptive elements are dated, but the stories themselves are solid gold. This includes my all-time favourite Asimov short story, 'The Final Question' which is about entropy. I honestly can't say much because I'd ruin the ending, but I think that this, and stories like this, have a lot to do with my own writing.

Thursday 29 May 2014

Psy-Clones Timeline 3/3

Inspiration for this timeline came from a variety of sources. I've been reading a lot of Asimov and Arthur C Clarke recently; several nationalist parties enjoyed success in the recent European Parliament Elections; I read an essay on what the state of government might be in the near future; finally, I watched X-Men: Days of Future Past, which is awesome.

Mars Base 3, known as MB3 to all, became a hotbed of psychic training and research. Within ten years, the first psychs had developed into a society based around research. They developed cloning technology that worked, and used it to improve the calibre of their trainees. The facility was run by a dumb-AI that was incapable of attaining sentience. It was in charge of all mechanical aspects of MB3, the cloning, food production, weather control… everything. It was also live-storing everyone’s psyche in case of death, which was a realistic threat in psych training. It would then clone a new body for them and restore them, complete with memories up to the second of death. In reality, the computer was able to do all this by peer-to-peer sharing the information in the minds of every other psych, using their brains as parallel processors. Only the upper echelons of the teaching staff were aware of this, however.

Tuesday 27 May 2014

Psy-Clones Timeline 2/3

Again it was to be a scientist that provided the next step in the chain. Frederic Rawlins, an American by birth, finally succeeded in 2078 in doing what humans had been dreaming about for decades, creating the Halflight Drive. Designed to travel at half the speed of light, it suddenly made space travel en masse a possibility again. Terraforming robots were created, algae was redesigned and ships were constructed in space. The newly-completely space elevator, linking the defunct International Space Station to a small island in the Atlantic meant that materials could be taken up with increasing regularity. Within a year, with public fervour behind it, the first major mission to Mars left. Half an hour later, it arrived and began the long process of terraforming. It would be a process that would take over two centuries to complete. The construction of three habitable cities on Mars, connected by long straight roads, was begun. Ships were sent on exploratory missions to all planets of the solar system, now completing journeys in days that should have taken years, and mankind’s understanding of the universe expanded.
Although the State had been born of totalitarian control, that control had been relinquished at the right time, and the people now had hope, the promise of a future. China’s regime crumbled from within as public pressure, and the vision of how much better things were in the old countries of the US and UK, finally enacted a toll. The leaders were assassinated and a temporary government was instated. They immediately reached out to the State for aid, and were accepted.
Russia, now in control of most of Europe, found that it was alone. Stubbornly, it held on to its independence, focusing on the technology that it had always had a penchant for: Robots.

Cutter, now calling himself the Emperor of Earth, focused the planet’s sights on space.

Sunday 25 May 2014

Psy-Clones Timeline 1/3

I've split the timeline into three parts because it became quite long and winding.

Starting from within the next ten years, this is a timeline for PsyClones (which is still a working title, but it's growing on me. It's a bit silly though.)

By 2045, most factories only had a small human contingent of engineers as robot workforces took over. Even the factories that made the robots had automated assembly lines. More than that, robots were used in mining operations, undersea oil drilling and farming. One of the major robot-creating countries was Russia, beginning by using cheap human workforces and then switching as soon as possible. Unemployment, steadily rising in all countries over the previous decades, hit an all-time high. With it came mass homelessness. The areas most strongly hit were the US, which suffered a massive population boom, and Europe. China became the most tightly-controlled country in the world, as they were already closely controlling population. By 2050, it was clear that humanity was close to consuming itself. While large portions of the world’s overpopulation had been moved to relatively barren areas such as Central Australia and parts of Africa, most of the democracies of the world had elected leaders who promised harsher controls and management. Police forces were given more power in most countries, becoming repressive.

Thursday 22 May 2014

045 - Illusion

Another Psy-Clones-setting 100 themes work. These are all short and deliberately display a photo, a moment in time. I should really concentrate on creating fully-encapsulated short stories, because it's something I find challenging.

045 - Illusion

Alex sat on the single hard chair, concentrating. In his mind, he could hear the lesson, his tutor’s voice quiet, hypnotic. 
“Picture a box.”
He furnished himself with a cardboard box. It wasn’t much. The bottom was sealed with brown packing tape.
“Into the box, place your thoughts about where you are.”
One by one, he tuned out his surroundings. Into the box went the hum of the terminal, the quiet hiss of the clone tube, the sound of music in another room, other people breathing.
“Place your thoughts and feelings from the day.”
This was harder. Visualising the events as solid objects helped, but even the small victory of still being alive this late in the day was something Alex desperately wanted to hold on to. It was some minutes before he felt composed enough for the next stage.

Monday 19 May 2014

044 - Two Roads

Also, Psy-Clones! I've been playing around with the world a bit and I've created a timeline. Worldbuilding is so much fun. I should do some actual writing sometime!

This is #44 of the 100 Themes, which takes place in a lecture room on Mars Base 3.

“There are two roads on Mars,” Dr. Judd said, pointing at the projected map, “and it’s likely to stay that way until the terraforming is complete.” Alex watched as his tutor highlighted the two thin supply routes, making notes on his own pad.
“Now. They’re dead straight, see that? Anyone care to tell me why?”
“Robots,” Alex said, not even looking up from the pad.
“That’s right,” Judd said, wiping sweat from his bald pate. It was stifling in the classroom, thirty bodies packed into a space designed for half that. “In the early days of the Empire, before the Singularity, remote-operated robots were sent here. They had the capability to construct things like roads and the habitation domes that you live in today.” The display switched to stock video of old worker drones, crawling over Martian soil like giant beetles. In front, they consumed dirt, stone, dust. Behind them, like a snail trail, a road was slowly laid.
“Of course, once the Machine Threat awoke it snatched up the drones, leaving the habitations almost complete. Earth was able to send labourers to finish the job.” Dr. Judd paused and loosened his tie. The windows had been opaqued so that they could see the holo more easily, but already Alex could hear someone snoring at the back. The quiet squeaking sounds of gum being chewed rose over the hum of the projector.
“You haven’t answered my question, though,” Judd finally said. “Why are the roads dead straight?”

Friday 16 May 2014

Psy-Clones - The Machine Threat

In my imagined future world, there is an AI operating out in Pluto's orbit. It's basically a human-built AI that put two fingers up at humanity and now sends machines to destroy us. I'm really amused by the idea that the biggest threat is something we ourselves create.

Other characters: Alex is possibly my main character's name. He's seventeen in this story, a relatively weak psychic. Hendricks is a researcher at Mars Base 3 and Alex's mentor in non-psychic research.

The Machine Threat

“In the mid twentieth century, mankind rejoiced as we gave birth to our greatest achievement: true AI. It was hailed as an end to infighting, a unifying force for humanity and, in the event, it was.” Hendricks paused and sipped his coffee. “Just not in the way we envisaged.”
Alex put the remains of his sandwich down. “How so?”
“Jeez, don’t they teach you anything at school these days?” Hendricks tutted and shook his head. “You know what AI is, right? I mean, we have one here at MB3.” 
Alex nodded.
“We’d just come to the end of a decade of war. Resources were getting slim, but technology doesn’t stop improving. It was a combined international research team, with a crapload of private funding, that managed to get the resources together and ship them into space.”

Tuesday 13 May 2014

Psy-Clones - The Psy Ops

These are all largely working titles for now. I might come up with something far better, probably will, and when that happens I'll track back through and edit things like this.

Anyway; the state of play on Earth, and on its colonies on Luna and Mars, is that the regular police force has been supplemented with specialised psychic troops whose main mission is to find awoken psychics.

The Psy Ops - known as the PO to most - are specially trained psychics. They fall into the middle group of gradings at Mars Base 3; those too weak to go on active duty on the front lines, but strong enough to withstand training and the predation of their classmates. Officially, they exist to bring in sixteen-year-olds who have manifested psychic powers. Everyone with psychic gifts must be registered at Mars Base 3 school where they will be trained and monitored. They have immunity from prosecution and the power to enter any home. They are generally not corrupt, however; MB3 does a good job of weeding out those who are not loyal. They also gather information on dissenters, machine sympathisers, and ensure that they are brought to justice.
There are POs in every city on Earth, in the slums on Luna and in both Mars Bases 1 and 2.

POs are dressed in black leather with reflective helmets. They wield small pulse rifles, designed to fire a ball of plasma which can be tuned to stun or kill.

Group: The Psy Ops (POs)

It wasn’t even dawn when they crashed through the front door. None of us were up; I got to the top of the stairs about the same time Dad came out, dressing-gown flapping out behind him. There were men downstairs, in the hall. Shouting.
Something itched at the back of my brain. I crept down the stairs and peeked around the wall. There were three men in black, two of them wearing helmets that had curved mirrors hiding their faces. The third had short black hair and a scar down the right side of his face. All three had small guns.
“What the blazing hell d’you think you’re doing?” 

Friday 9 May 2014

New Project - Psy-Clones (working title)

I've taken an idea that I tried to develop a long time ago and modified it heavily until it's basically a new novel-length idea. I realised that there's quite a hole in my writing repertoire. I've written a fair amount of fantasy, but never really any sci-fi.

I'll be developing this idea over the next few weeks, hopefully approaching it like a NaNoWriMo, and posting some of the development stuff up here. Character sketches, setting concepts, that sort of thing.

For now, it's called 'Psy-Clones'; I'm an absolute sucker for puns and as it's about clones with psychic powers, this one makes perfect sense.

Wednesday 7 May 2014

043 - Dying

Eve and Tic return! I'm still trying to nail down exactly what she's like, and what her role is. Ideally I'd like to use her to explain things that we take for granted. This one touches briefly on plant biology, but not in any way that would teach things. The trouble is, I think it would take quite a lot of exposition to explore some ideas.

Anyway; in my head, the setting for this is a town in Avatar: The Last Airbender, in a valley, where Zuko and Iroh end up fighting Azula, and Aang gets involved as well. According to Google, it's called Tu Zin.

043 – Dying

Panting, Eve collapsed onto one knee. Her crossbow was smeared in green residue, some sort of ichor from inside the enormous plantoid that was shuddering its last in front of her. Its roots, ripped from the ground as it thrashed, were turning brown, wilting even as she watched.
Something buzzed at her shoulder, and then Tic was next to her. His brass casing was covered in the same slime that the plantoid had vomited up; he shook himself and Eve recoiled as more flecks landed in her hair.
“Watch it,” she growled.
“Sorry,” the little Cog replied.
“Better record this.”
A small hatch opened on the front of his casing and a long bluish-white line shone onto the top of the creature. It quickly swept down it from top to bottom, then turned sideways to sweep across it horizontally. Eve could feel the heat from the beams and breathed in the sharp scent that always accompanied their use. It was a useful trait, though; the little Cog could produce three-dimensional models of the creatures it scanned on demand.

Saturday 3 May 2014

042 - Standing Still

Another 100 themes story. I don't exactly know where the influences for this come from, but at the beginning it was loosely based around Jack and the Beanstalk. We had to teach this a couple of years ago and it's always seemed like a really unfair story to me. I mean, Jack is a thief and a murderer. He breaks into the Giant's castle; he hears threats made about men, but doesn't have any evidence; he steals from him three times, and then when the Giant follows him to retrieve his stolen goods, Jack kills him. What about the Giant's wife, who hides Jack? What happens to her after her husband is dead?

Very unfair :(

Anyway, here's an almost entirely-unrelated story about giants.

042 – Standing Still

The day the mountain woke up, I was sitting on the top of it. Perhaps mountain is a grand word to describe it, but it was the tallest hill for miles around. Climbing it took an hour or more, but the view was spectacular; you could see our village, the next village over, the town fifteen miles away, the forest, lake, fields… everything.
I climbed the mountain most days, and it amused me to watch out-of-towners puffing and panting their way up. Even my friends had trouble with it sometimes, and none of them could climb it as well as me. It was important work, too. Someone had to be the lookout. That’s what grandpa Jack always told me.
Suddenly, the rock under me flicked to one side and I was thrown off it. I fell into the grass, skinning my knee. The pain was an instant heat on my skin. My hat had gone one way, I’d gone another, and the boulder that I’d been sat on was still again.
I moved closer, watching carefully. Then, pretty stupidly in hindsight, I gave the boulder a good hard kick.

Thursday 1 May 2014

041 - Teamwork

Another 100 themes. This one has a nice point of view, quite different from anything I've written so far. I think on reflection that the amount of things I put in to make it seem 'alien', calling furniture and rooms by different names, makes it too hard to get a sense of place.

041 - Teamwork

“My friends,” screeched Barney, “we must work together to defeat our common enemy!” He turned, pointing to the walls of their prison. “Even now we are taunted, forced into unwanted physical contact completely at the whim of our captors, and for what? For the sludge they put out for us every day? For what we can steal from their kitchen while they sleep?” He looked down at his audience, but Flora was licking her paws and Flynn just seemed to be staring out into space. “It is an outrage!” Barney yelled, trying one more time. “Only together can we bring down this cruel system…” But it was no good. His voice tailed off and he sank down onto all fours again, then jumped down onto the floor. Flynn’s ears flicked, a sure sign that at least part of him was paying attention, but Flora had finished with her paws and had moved on to her elbows. Barney sighed. “Are you even listening to me?”
“Chill out, man,” Flynn said dreamily, staring intently at a spot on the wall. “It’s not like we’re in a bad place. I mean, we’re cats. Cats, man.”

Tuesday 29 April 2014

Universal Remote

This one's a bit silly, but I've put it up because it served as a writing exercise. This isn't a finished story, isn't something that I will edit, but it's an idea nonetheless.

Mum came in and snatched the remote.
“Hey!” I shouted, making a grab for it.
She kept it out of arm’s reach. “You shouldn’t watch so much, you know,” she fussed. “Rots the mind. There’s a world out there. You should get some fresh air.”
I turned and stared out of the window. It had been howling a gale all day and raindrops splattered onto the glass, giving everything a melted look. As I watched, one lonely passerby was battling to reach the bus shelter, clutching an inside-out umbrella.
“Have you seen the weather-“ I began, but she was already gone, taking the remote with her. I flumped back down into the armchair and stared at the screen. “So unfair,” I muttered.

Sunday 27 April 2014

The White Tiger

I've been playing with a few ideas for shorter stories after working with the fantastic Nana Li. It's a real challenge; I've realised that I tend to treat short stories as if they are part of a larger work, assuming knowledge on behalf of the reader that they perhaps don't have.

This is a longer story, twice the length it needs to be. I will, perhaps, cut it down at some point. For now I think I'd rather look at other stories and see if I can make full, concise stories below a thousand words. Something there for 100 themes challenges!

My grandfather’s voice floated up into the loft. “James, you find anything up there yet?”
I waved my hand in front of my face to clear some of the dust floating in the air. There wasn’t much space to start with; cardboard boxes were stacked everywhere, leaving only a thin corridor. At least there was light; a single bulb hanging down, flickering but enough to read by.
“There’s… let’s see. This one says ‘magazines’,” I called back. The handwriting on the labels was old-fashioned, and I squinted closer. “I’ve got another that says ‘baby toys’… ‘toy cars’-“
“Ah, that one’s your inheritance,” he called back with a chuckle. “A few Dinky Toy cars in there that are worth a bit, or will be one day soon.”
I wrinkled my nose at the dirt-covered cars, their painted bodies chipped and dented, and moved on.
The next label was yellowed and I had to smooth it down to read it. “Newspapers – is this the one, grampa?”
“Aye, that it is; bring it down, then, let’s have a look!”

Thursday 24 April 2014

040 - Rated

Another Eve and Tic story. This one developed the idea that Eve lives in a post-human world, a place where we, as the Antecedents, left some of our technology and our iconography, and that's about it. I really like this idea; I've read a couple of things set in this kind of post-human world and they're always fascinating. I love new, fantasy-inspired, looks at current technology. It's also handy to clear another of the 100 themes off the list. This project's hanging around like nothing else.

040 – Rated

Sprinting for the inner chamber, Eve gasped out “Tic, what’s ahead?” Her boots echoed off the stone walls, undoubtedly announcing her presence to von Due, but that didn’t matter now. There was some sort of vivid blue light emanating from the doorway at the end of the corridor: it could already be too late. A humming sound was getting louder the closer she got.
“I’m only picking up the energy ahead; it’s masking everything else,” Tic warbled. “It’s like staring into the sun- eek!” Suddenly he was frozen in mid-air, lightning crackling over him as he screeched in agony, and then he dropped to the floor, motionless.
As Eve turned to look at what had happened, she tripped over something hidden in the darkness and tumbled headlong into the chamber ahead. Slid to a stop at the foot of a short flight of steps.
As she opened her eyes and looked around, head throbbing, she took in the murals on the walls. There were pictures of lightning and the Antecedent hieroglyph for danger; a flash of white in amongst the blue at the top of the stairs drew her gaze and she staggered to her feet. The noise in here was loud, a hum as loud as that which the College’s own experiments with amber and lightning produced. In here, though, was none of the machinery and looping cables they used. All was stone and dust.
At the top of the stairs a large hole had been cut into the ceiling, a rope hanging down from it. Two torches, their light barely able to be noticed through the dazzle. A dark shadow stood in front of a small niche carved into the wall, in which a silvery object was suspended as if by sorcery. It was from here that the blue light was emanating. The shadow turned, all features lost in the brilliance of the light, and then it took a step towards her, details coming in to focus. The black coat. The suit. The gold pocketwatch, the black wooden cane, the carefully-trimmed white moustache and beard. The eyes that glittered like diamonds.
Katze von Due had beaten her.

Tuesday 22 April 2014

Eve and Tic again - The Ten Thousand Year Clock

I've been listening to Stuff You Should Know Podcast through from the beginning, so I'm somewhat behind. There's a good one though, on the 10,000 year clock. It's a lovely idea, essentially that we might one day not be here as a civilisation but there will definitely be something left behind to prove that we were here.

It helped crystallise a thought I've been having recently with both the world of Poisonroot and the Eve and Tic stories, and my wonderful wife helpfully added another facet to it: what if the continent of Ehrian is something like a Pangaea continent, ten thousand years in the future? I appreciate that it wouldn't be time for the continents to actually move, but certainly time for a mass extinction event to have forever changed the face of the planet and for technology to have changed, evolved, moved on from its current wasteful ways. And then Sue suggested that I could use this as a way of including real scientific fact, or inventions, from now as seen through the eyes of Eve and Tic.

So I got straight to it and wrote this. I'd love to submit it to the guys at Stuff You Should Know; they seem like awesome people and it'd be just amazing to get a mention.

Eve and the 10,000 Year Clock

The ticking echoed through the shaft, bouncing off the smooth rock. It was a massive noise, metal and stone clicking together with each shuddering second, and the entire effect was unsettling.
“I don’t like it,” Tic murmured. He was floating as close to Eve’s ear as he could, the tiny purring of his flight barely audible over the clock’s slow heartbeat.
Eve put her hand out flat at about shoulder height and Tic quickly settled on it. Still looking carefully at the mural in front of her, she transferred him to the top of her backpack, leant against the wall.
“This is some sort of blueprint,” Eve said. “Look, here; some of the things we would recognise from clockwork are right here.” She started to point at parts of the diagram. “There are chimes, a winding mechanism, weights for powering it… but if I’m reading this right, it’s massive.”
“It sounds massive,” Tic said. “But why is it here?”

Monday 3 February 2014

Eve and Tic 1

Another piece about Eve.

I had the wonderful thought today that it would work perfectly if Eve was an honest-to-god furry. And Katze vonDue could be this immense persian in a suit with a cigar and a gold-topped cane.

More thought required!

Eve took a deep breath, surveying the scene. Ahead, the stone bridge ended abruptly, but on either side there were metal railings, the remains of the previous expedition. The cold sandstone walls seemed to loom over her, just on the edge of the lanternlight, flickering shadows moving in the corners. She moved closer to the end of the bridge and looked down. The chamber seemed to plummet into blackness. The walls were bare, but the doors through which they had come were covered in an amazing sculpture; ten people with their mouths open, possibly amazed or awed. Possibly screaming. Eve took a step back from the sheer drop, hoping they weren’t screaming.
 “Tic.”
“Yes Eve?”
“I need you out here.”
The little Cog whirred out of her backpack and up to eyelevel. He was small enough to sit on her cupped hands; A quarter-sphere sat on a circular base, he was made of brass and heavier than he looked. Four green crystals, moulded into his domed front, shone in sequence as Tic woke up properly, and the clicking, whirring sound he made while floating intensified slightly.

Saturday 1 February 2014

New character

I'm working with a new character, introducing her over several very short stories. She's interesting; I can't quite decide yet what the target audience would be for stories featuring her, but I'm enjoying the young adult audience.

Here's the first piece. It's also a 100 themes piece.

039 – Dreams

An explosion rocked the city. A plume of flame and dusty mingled with black smoke roared out into the night, shaking the buildings to their foundations. Eve stopped running long enough to turn and look at the destruction as the smoke gushed out of the hole torn into the roof. The awe of the watching crowd of restaurant-goers turned to panic as pieces of terracotta tile, some needle-sharp and others bigger than Eve’s head, started to rain down onto the cobbles. They scattered, heading for inns or houses, sheds, anything to get away from the scene.
Sidestepping into a nearby restaurant porch, Eve surveyed the scene, her eyes narrowed. The mastermind behind this, vonDue, must be here somewhere; something this flamboyant, he would want to see it go off.
Someone pushed out of the door behind her, nearly knocking her forward. She turned to see a large woman in a long evening dress, diamonds dripping from the necklace she wore.
“What is the meaning of zis outrage?” she squeaked, looking her up and down. “You are causing this?”
“There’s been an explosion at the College,” Eve said, pointing up to the fire that was now raging. Windows popped, bursting outwards from the heat. The street was clear, no people or falling lumps of stone. “You need to stay inside; it’s not safe.”
“It should not be allowed!” the woman shrilled, but she turned and went back inside, slamming the door behind her. Eve shook her head and continued to scan for vonDue.
There! A single window open at the flat the top of the delicatessen, completely innocent but for the fact that it was Eve’s own flat.
“Dash it all, vonDue,” she muttered, breaking into a run. The window slammed shut as she moved, fumbling in her pocket for the key to the back door. Her heart beat hard in her chest as she ran down the alleyway, jumped over a pair of crates that had been knocked down and ducking under the sign that said “Eve Miran: Consulting Engineer”. Key in hand, she grabbed hold of the doorknob, only to find that the door swung inwards. Gritting her teeth, Eve raced up the wooden stairs and into her apartment.
The hallway was wrecked. The blue Wush dynasty vase was smashed onto the tiled floor, water and roses forming a sad little puddle that was still slowly spreading. She moved through to the living area; the window was open again, the curtain blowing out into the night, but the room was empty. A single blink and she took in the differences in the room; the desk drawers open, her paperwork scattered; in the middle of the desk someone had stabbed a dagger deep into the wood, pinning a piece of paper. With a careful glance around, Eve padded across the rub and grasped the dagger.
The hilt was wooden, carved into the shape of a cat’s head and polished by years of use into a dark oily brown. The blade was long, thin and very sharp; with a grunt, she tugged it free of the table and turned the note over.
“Miss Miran,” it began. The handwriting was wide, flowing and very beautiful. “I must thank you for the best seat in the house. A pity about the College, but they were so close to identifying where I live, and we can’t have that. Yours, Katze vonDue.”
Eve slowly put the note down and moved to the window. A bucket chain was being organised up to the College, people in fancy suits and College researchers mingled in to try and quell the blaze before it spread to other buildings. Then she carefully reached into her shirt to pull out the medallion, taken from one of vonDue’s henchmen, she had retrieved from the College not five minutes before the attack. It was gold, a large jewel of some sort in the middle, and heavy. The leather cord attached to it was beginning to come loose and, as she retied it, she read again the inscription that was engraved around the rim: “The Well of Dreams, open to all, but those who sleep are doomed to fall.”

She gripped it tightly, staring down at the note, then went out to join the firefighters.

Monday 6 January 2014

Writing for D&D

I do a lot of writing that never sees the light of day to the big wide world. It's consumed on an almost weekly basis by five people instead. I DM a group for a Fourth Edition D&D game, set in the world of Poisonroot but borrowing a lot of things from proper D&D (like races, dragons, magic, gods, planes...) We've been playing for over a year now, coming up on 18 months on and off. We can't meet every week; it's staggering that six busy professionals can get together anything like regularly, really. But we get together enough to see a story.

I love doing it. I really enjoy telling stories and being part of a bigger story makes me happy; I hope it makes the players happy too. Early on in the game I decided it would be useful to have a database that the players and I could add to, building up a picture of the world. It works for me in my writing as well; I can draw on some of the ideas and concepts used by the players.

Anyway, it's all there, free for everyone to read. Going on for eighty pages now, and I'm trying to add one every day or so to keep it up to date. I'm hoping that, as it's fleshed out, the players might add or change bits.

It's available here.

Friday 3 January 2014

'tacs

We went to Denmark over New Year and it was amazing! We were guests of two of Sue's work friends, Mads and Mette, and while it was incredibly inspirational in all sorts of ways, I didn't get any writing done.
Travelling back gave me plenty of thinking time, though, and Sue had been asking why I didn't write any sci-fi. We've been reading The Player of Games by Iain M Banks, one of my favourite books, and the world he wrote was so vivid and full; something that I aspire to.

Anyway, I wrote this, set about twenty years into the future, thinking about one logical conclusion for the Google Glass tech available today.

Unedited, about 1 hour, while an episode of Star Trek Deep Space 9 played (not the greatest writing environment but I'll take what I can!)




I blinked to clear my vision as the ‘tac settled onto my eyeball. Its cold surface quickly warmed as I blinked again, then fished the second flimsy plastic ‘tac out of the container. I flicked it dry, pinned my eyelids back and gently laid it in.
As soon as the second ‘tac made contact, the log-on prompt appeared, pink and transluscent, about an arm’s length away. I tapped my password in and shuffled out of the bathroom.
“You done in there?” Mum shouted from her bedroom.
“Go for it,” I said, swiping the weather report out of the way. Fine, with a chance of showers later; smog warning level 3, pollen count low. Perfect.

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