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.

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.

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.

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?”

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.

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.