New stories posted, but no new ones written recently.

[elfs]

Three new stories: Mice and Malice, The Most Basic Human Need, and Vacuum Dancing. Enjoy!

But... Confession time. I haven't written anything fictional since last Thursday. I'm not sure why. I think it's because I decided to tackle Fragility again and that feels like a brick wall to me. I've never really been able to get into the head of a rich, spoiled, elderly woman (since I'm none of those things) and that's exactly what my protagonist happens to be. By making Fragility a side-line to Honesty, I was hoping that I could take some of the really good energy I generated and re-invigorate it. Maybe not. It's sad, too, because I had some interesting conflicts built up in later stories that require that I get the character of Isabelle Mannheim rolling.

Okay, here's what's up. I feel compelled to finish The Ritacha War, at least, because I've already posted more than half of it and it is, really, well, done. A little spit and polish and the last couple of episodes are ready. After that, The llerkin Revolution will come through. It's short-- only six episodes or so, none of this thirty-something episodes that were RWar.

After that, I wanted to expand out into other parts of the Pendorverse. (Ick. Did I just use that word? I guess I did.) It's not as neat as Ken's little view of it pretends to be. There are still places out there that deliberately have scarcity to appease the egos of individuals (yeah, writers go after Clinton or Bush, but nobody really wants to make a point of Robert Mugabe; we know he's evil. If that's true, why the fuck is he still in power and being feted by The Axis of Weasel?) There are other political factions that have their own agendas. There are evil folks out there; not merely the blindly xenophobic Sinox, but both those who honestly think they're doing the right thing for themselves and their people, and those who are simply vengeful on a universe that has taken away their capacity to be "great" as they see themselves. So I have The Taking of Gabrielle and The Kemper Assignment.

I wanted to write steampunk and mess with the llerkin past some more. So I have The Lost Crew Of the Palantir, which takes some non- heroes and crash-lands them on a distant world where they have to make deals with the locals to assemble enough of their crashed starship to make a gradio and call home.

The more I think about it, one of the subplots of A Century of Solitude is just going to have to go away. A pity: it means I'll have to toss one story written entirely in iambic pentameter rhyming couplets (aren't you grateful?) and my second ghost story.

But it does mean that I'll be able to post Dreamteam Calamities without a qualm. And there's much more to that series than there is to Century.

A lot of my stories are riffs. There's a riff on the old Space:1999 "robots who don't know evil" episode. In my case, it's not "don't," it's "can't," and the tragedy that comes with that particular problem.

Then the next two stories set in the Honesty series, then Fragility 1, then Honesty 4.

After that, the series jumps a thirty millenia into the future for a pair of series: Embrace, Empire, Extinguish and Petri Dish. The first is about half-done; it's about a character who, according to his (Pendor's) culture's beliefs, cannot be killed; for very specific reasons, he realizes that sometimes this belief is not sustaining. The second is a bit of a riff on, well, if you know who, you'll know who fast enough. Here's a hint:

"I know now. I understand why, in your language, the most common profanity you have is 'grief'. When you live like this, with everything material thing available to you, the only thing you have to fear, the only thing you can really suffer from, is a tragedy of the heart." I gave her a smile I didn't feel. "Grief is the only emotion worth hating."

The problem is that I like to bounce around as I come up toward the end of a story. I like to look at different things, come back to it with a fresh feel. Eventually they do get done-- it's just a lot slower than I care to think.

Comments

[dougs.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that insight into the process.

> ... The Most Basic Human Need ...
For me, your best stories have always been the ones where someone does something for the first time.

Awwww no entire stories composed of iambic pentameter rhyming couplets???

[kyriani.livejournal.com]

Hehe. ^_^ Actually kinda curious on that one. ^_~
I envy you, William, and Matt your ease of writing. :) I look forward to getting home and reading the new stories, you put out an amazing amount of quality content. :) Thanks for sharing. :)

[mouser.livejournal.com]

There are evil folks out there; ... those who honestly think they're doing the right thing for themselves and their people.
There is a comment for Kennet (I have to find it) about the Ritans, where he decides to just make a species that LOOKS like them. Rather chilling to me.


As always, excellent writing, good fiction (consistant, what a concept!), and thank you for writing it.

Now, however something I have to get off my chest, editor notes:
Mice and Malice:
Missing word in sentence: "I knew one hundred and twelve years ago was meant to last forever."

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I disagree with the edit. The sentence reads:

"And I definitely didn't come here to break up a relationship I knew one hundred and twelve years ago was meant to last forever."

It might have been helped with the addition of a "that", but people don't necessarily speak that way.

Otherwise, thank you much for the compliments. I learned consistency from the heroic, but ultimately doomed, efforts of Marvel Comics in the 1980s to have a consistent timeline.

As for Ken's comment about deciding to revive the Ritans, or just something that looks like them, remember that he doesn't feel any obligations towards the dead. They don't get a vote. His decision is completely amoral from their perspective: his only responsibility is to the living, and whether or not his actions make their lives more interesting without making it more tragic. It's a fine line; he works hard to walk it.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Ok, you're right. I read it four times (at least) trying to make sense of it. I (for some reason) was reading that as the ENTIRE sentence, with everything before it as it's own sentence. Odd...

As for the rest, there still are (were) two of them alive at that point. (And it's not Kennet driving it, it's Tylia. My bad memory.) It just strikes me as odd that Alpha, the premier in the field, gave up in short order with a "Let's just make the outsides look the same, because doing it right is too hard." Considering the isolated nature of the species, and the experiences of the (now sole) survivor, I can imagine some pretty severe reaction possibley ranging right from "You don't really give a damn." up to "Genodical bastards!"

On the heels of Paul and Carroll (relatively) that might be a bit much.

My opinion. Take it or, more likely, leave it.

[eidheann.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to say thank you for Mice and Malice. I've been eagerly (anxiously even?) awaiting some sort of continuation of Kolya and Furry's story.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Well, they are a favored couple for a lot of readers. I've never been sure why-- Nickolai was essentially added to be a stereotype fish-out-of-water character, a chance to let people get to know the Pendor universe from the point of view of a relative stranger. It was a pretty good job, I think. For this series they were a convenient couple to throw into the series. And illustrating Morrail and Helena's relationship in similar terms, showing how they're comfortable with their sexuality while Nickolai and Jofuran are still stepping around theirs was part of the goal. Because even though they've been together a long time, Nickolai still hasn't figured out how to be a husband. He's learning, though.

There are two more Nickolai and Furry stories, 'Tis Better and Sitting Help, both of which are about adjusting to being in a conscious relationship, not just assuming that everything's okay. I don't have anything planned beyond that, but y'never know what my fevered (today, this is more true than usual... bleah) brain will come up with.

There's still a whole Dyson sphere for those two to take apart, after all.

Re:

[eidheann.livejournal.com]

*grin*
I think a lot of the reason Kolya works so well is the reader (here I am making sweeping generalizations... should add "for me, at least") identifies with him. We get to rediscover Pendor along with his discovery. And he sees things we've never experienced there before. And who hasn't been young, in love, and in a nifty new place?

Besides, you are VERY good at making your characters believable. And not since Kennet and Aaden have we really EXPERIENCED two characters falling in love with as much detail as these two.

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

Yay, new stories! ::bounces::

I'm always glad to see you've posted new stuff, because it so often is wonderful.

::toddles off to read::

[(Anonymous)]

BTW, I'm still waiting for the chance to buy one of those "Life Under Tension" t-shirts :).

[(Anonymous)]

"Murphy's Law of Cat Gravity"
Oh how true.

"[...] that sucked energy from our star and fed it out in ways that, no doubt, were less entropic than merely blasting it into interstellar space."
Now that's a cool way of defining life.

---

Now the part I really am not sure about. To make suggestions or not. Ah, why not with this magic cloak of anonymity and all.

Mice and Malice:

She handed back the ring.
      Nickolai was pacing when they arrived.

Maybe put a section divider between those? I missed the time/location gap on the first pass and got quite confused :).

[...] her training had been at the hands of military and it showed. Although now a civilian the discipline and steel of her martial life shone through.

This seems little redundant (showed/shone through)? Also the later part of this paragraph seems like unnecessary, distracting, and out-of-place exposition for the story.

Vacuum Dancing:

I hate to point out a "plot hole", but... How are Kennet and Tylia speaking to each other when there is vacuum between them? How do they hear the boiling/freezing dripage?

---

While I'm being so critical about these excellent additions to the masterpiece...

There's one thing that's annoyed me about the Journal Entries since shortly after I started reading them: certain words and phrases are repeated just a bit too much. My top three currently would be:

1. manhood
2. wetness (when used as an object rather than a condition)
3. "it wasn't a question."

Just been meaning to get that off my chest for a long time, and now thanks to this anonymous forum my inner wimp is letting me do it :).

---

Oh, and I have to agree with the other anonymous coward: a Life Under Tension shirt would be quite cool. I tracked it down for anyone who was curious. It's from Travellogue, Day 5 (http://www.drizzle.com/~elf/journals/0916_187_000_Travellogue,_Day_5.html):

She retrieved a T-shirt with the words "Life Under Tension" on the front and a pair of complex diagrams on the back.
      "What does that mean?" he asked.
      "The pictures? The top one is the vector explanation for perceived centripetal acceleration, and the bottom one is the header of a Markal DNA chain."

Or even better, continue the first diagram to work out the longitudinal tension on the ring structure. I remember seeing something along these lines on a Ringworld fan site a while back. After determining the tension they even went on to prove that a ring world is impossible with currently known materials, because at no thickness is it strong enough to withstand the sum of the centripetal force of typical surface material AND of the ring structure itself. Was a cool page, too bad I can't find it now.

---

By the way, Has anyone approached you to option Planetfall yet? With a little reworking to eliminate (most of) the sexual subplots and move the moment of maximum tension (which right now I'd say is when the planet connects to Kennet) to coincide with the denouement a bit more, it could make a good sci-fi flick.

Travellogue could also make a classic boy-meets-girl, boy-and-girl's-cultures-clash, boy-runs-away-with-girl romantic comedy, but would require greater deviation from the original material to make a decent mainstream movie.

My my, I've gotten a bit far afield and my film minor is showing. I think I'll shut up now :).

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Well, y'know, the first two, "manhood" and "wetness," are just conventions. One does run out of ways to describe the male and female condition after a while. I shall endeavor to be more thesauric in the future.

As for the "plot hole" in Vacuum Dancing, remember that right now Ken and Tylia are officially cyborgs. The AIs can communicate with them, and assist communication between them, in any number of ways. And the sounds of juices in a vacuum-- realize that when they hit vacuum they will produce kinetic energy in a number of ways, some of which will strike the force fields Ken and Tylia are wearing. That's what they were hearing.

The Pendorverse is full of AIs doing silly things to make the world seem "real" to the people living in it, according to their individual expectations.

[creepingcrud.livejournal.com]

[shame one apparently can't use lj-cut in comments; spoilers here]

Hmm. Although I like most of the Kolya & Furry stories, I didn't like "Mice and Malice". It feels a little too pat, with some implications I don't care for. Everything seems to move a little too quickly - Furry's mad, Liz is fed up, Kolya is unnaturally oblivious, there's some brief conversation, and suddenly everythings on track and there's a (rather nice) anal scene. The problem is that it doesn't seem consistent with Kolya's character through the rest of the stories. It feels almost like he knew perfectly well what was going on and was waiting to get caught. It's possible, I suppose, that this is the case, it doesn't feel right to me. Beyond that, it bothers me that Furry never talked to him about this for months. Obviously, as far as the blame on Kolya goes, it's not as though he has to be psychic to figure out that Furry's hurting, unless she's an exceptionally good actress, but you'd think after a century they'd feel safe enough together that she could tell him that she had a problem with what was going on instead of waiting until things got to the breaking point. They've demonstrated enough basic conflict resolution skills in the past to make this feel wrong to me.

It's possible, I guess, that this will get followed up on and developed more, but as it stands, it's unsatisfying. That said, "The Most Basic Human Need" was nice, and "Vacuum Dancing" was absolutely lovely.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

In my defense, I must say that Mice and Malice was written sort-of as a coda to my own self-destructive relationships, and much of what's going on in it is based on real life. Maybe the latter two are "lovely" because they're completely fantasy, unlike the first one, and so don't need to be constrained by trying to make reality fit into fiction.

Kolya's not "unnaturally oblivious"; he's simply so comfortable with his relationship with Furry that when it starts to unravel he doesn't even notice; he's long past the point where the habit of "checking in" with his partner has dissipated into mutual assent. This is more or less what wrecked my life six years ago, and I was trying to depict it in a character I thought would accurately do so.

[creepingcrud.livejournal.com]

Being young and not exceptionally experienced (one relationship of three years which, when it was unravelling, was fairly clear about why it was doing so), I can accept that stuff happens in relationships which I don't yet understand. I guess basically what you're saying is that by virtue of how long things had lasted without any major screwups, Kolya was taking it on faith that if there was a problem, Furry would bring it up, and thus he didn't need to pay as much attention himself. Given that, it makes a bit more sense.

Beyond that, reality is often lovely, and so are many of your stories, regardless of how farfetched (or not) they happen to be. I've enjoyed reading them. Thanks.