Flying Sucks and Missed Connections

Oh man. So tired.

Was the bachelorette/hen party/mostly-drunken cavorting fun? You bet, I had a great time with my sister and her friends in Chicago. That part was smooth sailing. It was when we got back to Bloomington that things got rough.

I've been sleeping on couches for the past four nights, usually not a problem for me, but my sister and her fiance are doctors on opposite schedules this month. He's working 1 pm to 1 am, whereas she gets up at 5 am to get to work at 7 and comes home around 6. Crazy, crazy schedules, they only see each other between 1 am and whenever she falls back asleep. Sleeping on the couch means I hear him arrive at 1, hear her alarm at 5, and then sleep until whenever he gets up so I can be sociable. How do doctors in training do this? How? How do you do it? My mind is blown, I don't know how my sister stays sane.

My flights on Monday were cancelled in favor of very early Tuesday am flights, and now I am home and it's snowing and so cold. Bitch bitch, moan moan moan, wah, woe is me, I know. I spent all weekend partying, I'm going to be karma's bitch for a while.

In the spirit of being karma's bitch and having flight difficulties, I have a new release coming out tomorrow! Less Than Three Press is publishing the anthology Missed Connections, which features my story Evergreen. It's about two soldier-scientists who fall in love while preparing for a one-way mission to Mars, and what happens after one of them has an accident that ends his chances to go along.

It sounds kind of sad, I know, but I swear it has a happy ending! God, you know me, what else could I do? Plus, the anthology was reviewed at Joyfully Jay and my story got some lovely remarks. I could give you the link, but I'd rather just post it right here:

Cyril and Scottie fell in love while preparing for a risky mission to Mars, but when a horrific accident incapacitates Cyril and lands him in a coma for six months, it appears that all is lost. Once awake, and disqualified from the program, Cyril takes over the family business from his estranged father in an attempt to get over the loss of Scottie who is still bound for Mars.

This was truly a great story set in the not too distant future and was long enough to allow significant character growth and a complex plot.  The heartbreak experienced by Cyril and Scottie was palpable and it was a good idea to not set the story too far in the future, which kept the need for technological detail to a minimum, keeping the story clean and focussed on these two incredible guys.

So, if you're into anthologies or at least into my science fiction, you might give this one a try. I'll give you a nice, juicy excerpt and basically make this the longest post ever that doesn't include a new blog story post (which I will either do Thursday, or make extra, extra long for Tuesday. I'm sorry! It just wasn't going to happen today!).

***

Before initiating your High Altitude Low Opening jump, check to make sure all HALO suit systems are greenlit and fully operational. Some problems don't manifest unless you've already begun your descent, so it's important to have a good working knowledge of your emergency options should a problem occur. Always jump with a buddy, so that in case of personal incapacitation he or she can assist you with your descent. Remember, you aren't allowed to jump without signing the most recent version of the liability waiver: see Section 7.e. –ISA Project Evergreen Handbook

It took an hour long flight to get a hundred thousand feet into the stratosphere, even though they didn't have to do it with balloons anymore. Cyril and Scottie sat across from each other in the belly of the plane, trying not to grin. Every jolt knocked their feet together, and every touch just made Cyril smile harder until Rodriguez finally grunted, "Y'all need to stop playing footsie, I think I'm gonna be sick."

"You're just jealous that no one wants anything to do with your hideous size fourteens, mate," Scottie said loftily. Rodriguez wasn't a particular friend of anyone in the squad's. He was a brilliant mathematician, a by-the-books soldier and a champion of regulations, but he wasn't about to rat them out. Everyone knew that the two of them were, for all intents and purposes, together, but like with Mona and Leon, they covered for them.

"If you two make me puke before my last jump, we'll be having words down below."

"Words." Xiao snorted. "Do you remember the old game Words With Friends? Rodriguez plays Words With Fists."

"If you think there's any chance I wouldn't run the moment you got within arm's length of me, Roddie, you just don't know me at all," Scottie said lightly. "I've seen you fight, Lieutenant Golden Gloves. Lucky for me you can't sprint for shit."

"Lucky for me, actually," Cyril said. "I'm the best runner here, I think I'd be safest."

"You wouldn't throw yourself in his path to save me from his vile deprecations?" Scottie asked in mock offense. "I'm hurt, luv."

"But I wouldn't be," Cyril pointed out, and Xiao laughed.

"Jesus Christ. You two aren't worth the aggravation," Rodriguez said. Their altimeters beeped simultaneously to let them know they were at height. "Finally. I'm jumping first, before I contract diabetes."

"Jealousy is an ugly emotion, mate," Scottie advised as he closed his facemask and activated his oxygen tank. They breathed pure oxygen in the plane on the way up, to purge the nitrogen from their blood and keep them from getting decompression sickness during the fall, but it was just as important to keep their air pure during the fall itself so they didn't go hypoxic. The rest of them followed suit, then unstrapped themselves from the wall and heaved themselves to their feet.

The pilot checked to make sure they were all ready, then opened the fallout door. Rodriguez jumped without a word, falling into the glowing blue tableau that was their horizon from a hundred thousand feet above the ground. Xiao followed with a quick, "See you at the bottom."

Scottie reached out and tapped a gloved hand against Cyril's facemask. "Shall we, Cy?"

"Less talking, more doing," Cyril said, and he let himself fall out of the plane.

This was Cyril's favorite part, being so high up that he could see the horizon between the blackness of space and the blue of the earth's atmosphere. It almost wasn't like falling, since there was no perspective to judge distance with, just an altimeter that beeped a quiet, steady pace in his ear as he dropped. It was calming, relaxing … almost too relaxing. Cyril felt a bit strange, almost groggy. By the time he realized that something was wrong, it was already too late to do anything about it other than relay the information.

"I'm seeing spots," Cyril said grimly. The dive should take around eleven minutes total, but Cyril could already tell he wasn't going to last that long.

"Deep breaths," Scottie said instantly. "Take deep breaths, you can recover from this."

"Not so sure about that," Cyril replied. Points of black and bright white swam in front of his vision. 

"The air … I think my mix must be … "

"The mix is checked before getting loaded into the suit's tanks."  Scottie paused for a moment. "Your tank must be compromised."

"I have to deploy."

"You can't deploy this high up, Cy."  Scottie's voice was serious. "The winds are too strong, your chute won't last. I'm coming to you, okay? I'll help you deploy when we're closer to the ground."

"No, I … "  Why was it so hard to breathe? "I have to do it now."  He needed his chute, he needed to pop it before he blacked out. Cyril's hand hovered over the cord.

"Don't you fucking pull that line, Konstantin!" Scottie shouted. "I'm coming your way, I'm close, and I will take care of this. Don't you dare pop your chute right now."

"I'm slowing myself down," Rodriguez—was that Rodriguez? Cyril couldn't really tell anymore—said over the comms. "I'll stabilize him, you can help him deploy when we're low enough."

"I have to do't now," Cyril slurred, but he couldn't seem to coordinate his hands. It looked like nightdown on the earth, his vision was so black. A curtain closed over his eyes, and the last thing Cyril knew was his body starting a fast, violent spin, and Scottie yelling, "Shit!"

Bad Scheduling News

Hi guys,

So, the flight that I was supposed to be on today was cancelled this morning. I'm going to be flying back at 6 am tomorrow and won't be getting into Denver until 11, at which point I'm going to go straight to work. Yay. That means I'm not going to be able to write my regular Soothsayer post tomorrow.

Normally that means I'd be writing today, but I'm at my sister's place and she's sick (she was sick all through her bachelorette party, poor baby) so I'm going to be playing nursemaid. I may have time to write and pre-post this afternoon, I may not. I'm sorry! Blame Delta!

It's nice to spend extra time with my sister, it's not so nice to have to get up at 3 am tomorrow to go to the local airport. Ugh.

Recurring Themes, or: Am I Being Redundant?

This is one of those, "I'm not even sure if anyone else would notice this, but I noticed it and it might be a problem, so I'm just getting it out there," things.

I'm in a massive writing phase right now, and as I was reading and plotting and planning and going over things, I noticed something about my work. A pretty big percentage of it, particularly my urban fantasy stuff, involved one character falling in love/being in love with another character who is, for lack of a better word, possessed. Or not alone in his body. Or at least has the potential to be something or someone completely different. I did this with Cambion, I've got a story coming out in an anthology next month where I did it again (set in the Cambion universe), it's maybe possibly happening in Soothsayer...maybe...and the cyberpunk I'm in the throes of right now does the same sort of thing. Which makes me wonder: am I being repetitive? Unimaginative? Possibly even boring?

I like genres that let me twist people up into knots, and those tend to be speculative. Included in that is making my characters into something other than what's immediately obvious, which, okay, fine plot device. But I think I need to be careful about overusing it. Hell, my epic fantasy clusterfuck that I'm trying to get through involves the same sort of thing, although the situation is resolved very differently.

The people who read this blog are probably the people who know my work the best. Thoughts? I'm not fishing for compliments, I'm just wondering if this is something you yourselves have noticed. Do you see this a lot with authors? Should I branch out a bit, maybe? I'm trying to. I'm writing (ha, I'm writing so much freaking stuff I have a spreadsheet, guys, I have officially become my worst nightmare) a contemporary romance that goes about things differently, which will hopefully not suck. Because the last contemporary story I wrote? It was You Get Full Credit For Being Alive, and my main character was in one disguise or another for pretty much the whole book. This says something psychologically about me, I'm sure.

Well, anyway. Off to Chicago tomorrow. I get back to Boulder on Monday. There will be wine, women and song! Should be major fun.

Happy weekend, guys :)

Soothsayer Ch. 6, Pt. 1

Notes: Oh my gosh, this one was so much fun to write! We're getting in deep now. I also have pictured for you, this time of Roger and Phin. I love Tumblr, I find the best artists there. Next week, Tuesday comes right after I get back from a trip to Chicago celebrating my sister's bachelorette party, so while I think I'll have something for you, I can't absolutely guarantee it yet. Anyway. On with the show!

Title: Soothsayer, Chapter 6, Part 1.

***



“Death is the only thing that could have ever kept him from you.” – Ally Carter, Out of Sight, Out of Time

                There was a body on the bed. It didn’t move, not even the barest rise and fall to indicate breathing. The head was turned to look my way, eyes open and sightless, pupils tiny and fixed. There was a dead body on the bed, and I recognized it. It took me a few seconds of deep breathing and biting my lip so hard that I drew blood before I could acknowledge that yes, the body was Sören’s. I forced myself to step closer and take another look.

Yeah, it was Sören…but dead might have been an overstatement.

Villains excerpt

Whoa, hey, so. Villains is complete in rough draft form. Beta readers, I'll be getting it to you sometime after next weekend, once it's had a chance to percolate and for me to fix the most egregious errors. In the meantime though, how about an excerpt?

***

At four o’ clock, the daily news program that played on the televisions we kept in the corners of the lobby suddenly switched from a prerecorded bit about the local farmer’s market to Mindy Parks, one of their evening anchors. “Breaking news!” she declared, her usually-perfect hair a little rough around the edges, like she’d tucked it back too fast. “Police reports are coming in about an attack on an armored car in the financial district! We are working to get a reporter on scene, but amateur videos are already being uploaded to the CrimeWatch website. We’ve pieced something together for you here. Please be aware, this is graphic footage that could be disturbing to some viewers.”

The picture cut to a video of a woman’s face, suddenly going shaky as an explosion sounded behind her. My breath caught in my throat as the camera phone turned to the scene, where an black armored van—one of the deposit vans, some of our bigger clients used them to get cash to the bank—had been rolled onto it’s back, the undercarriage still smoking. People ran away from it as a man in black emerged from the fray to touch the locked back doors of the van. A moment later the lock was slagged to nothing, and he pulled the doors open, then darted to the side as gunfire emerged from the interior.

“It looks like the Mad Bombardier is on scene,” Mindy said, her face appearing split-screen with the video footage as she confirmed my worst fear. “He’s taking fire—wait, where did he go? No, wait, he’s just cleared the way for Pinball!”

Pinball was a Villain who had once interned for a scientist who wanted to test a new rubberization process. He’d prepared a vat of the liquid to dip objects into and, sure enough, his intern had fallen into the vat and emerged coated with a super dense, super elastic material that gave him the ability to bounce around like a, you guessed it, pinball without getting hurt. He used his body as a wrecking ball and could leap for enormous distances on his super bouncy feet, and my jaw dropped along with everyone else’s as Pinball bounded into the van. Huge dents appeared in the sides, pressed out from the inside, and I heard the woman holding the camera phone scream.

“It’s hard to know just what’s going on in there, we’ve got to view of the interior of the van, but it appears that Pinball is—oh God, is that blood? That’s a spray of blood, right out the back of the van, some sort of arterial—God.” Mindy covered her mouth for a moment. “I think we may have to assume the worst is happening in there, I’m afraid the guards are either dead or dying, we need-”

“Freight Train!” the woman filming things shrieked. “It’s Freight Train, he’s here!”

Sure enough, the Hero had arrived on the scene, moving at his own inexorable pace. He wasn’t as fast as Pinball but he couldn’t be moved by him either, and once he had a Villain cornered there was nowhere to go. He moved into the van and a moment later, it began to vibrate. The van’s metal panels shook until they began to crack, and I could see armed police officers closing in on the van and getting ready to fire. After all, their bullets wouldn’t hurt Freight Train, and the guards inside had to be dead by now.

Suddenly the view was completely obscured by a rising, uniform curtain of thick grey smoke.

“This is one of the Mad Bombardier’s favorite tactics,” Mindy said, avidly watching the scene. “He uses a literal smokescreen to shield his movements from the police, and the smoke itself is toxic to inhale and can cause instant nausea and vomiting, which naturally dissuades any pursuit. I assume this means that—yes, yes, the smoke is clearing now and it looks like the entire front end of the van has been blown away! Sources on location tell us that neither the Mad Bombardier nor Pinball are at the scene any longer. It looks like two of Panopolis’ most notorious Villains have, once again, escaped capture.” 

Post-Halloween NaNo Party November Malaise

Hi guys!

So...last night was Halloween. Here in America that generally means kids and candy, although since I have no kids and live in a place where we don't get trick or treaters, it meant going to a posh Halloween party instead. I wanted to look my best, so I went with the ever-classy Zipperface look.

That's three hours and four layers of liquid latex right there. The party was kind of "meh" but my costume was killer, so at least I got a chance to show it off.

Today my neighbors are celebrating the one-year anniversary of their brewery opening. If we go, we get free beer (incredible free beer, their porter is the best thing), free barbecue and probably a hangover tomorrow, but hey--they're my neighbors. This is in the interest of solidarity.

Today NaNoWriMo starts. That's National Novel Writing Month for the uninitiated, and I'm shooting for 50k words on a cyberpunk crime thriller sci-fi. Yeah...it's fucked up, but it could be really good. I've got plenty of other stuff to work on this month as well, and next weekend is my sister's bachelorette party in Chicago, and there's the holidays later this month...the season has barely begun and I'm already done with partying. I'd rather hole up in my room and write Soothsayer, Academy and new stuff until the end of the year, but that's not gonna happen. Gotta shake it off and keep going.

Is anyone else doing NaNoWriMo this month? Are you looking for a writing buddy? Let me know, I need all the external pressure I can get to keep on target.

Soothsayer Ch. 5, Pt. 2

Notes: We're almost there! We've got breaking and entering, people, so get ready for the next post, because things are going to start to happen fast. In the meantime, enjoy Cillian in another suit.

**Bonus points if you recognize who Cillian is referring to down below :)


Title: Soothsayer, Chapter 5, Part 2.

***

“Since knowledge is but sorrow’s spy, It is not safe to know.” – William Davenant

Far be it from me to confess to a fault, but if I had to name one off the top of my head, it would be vanity. Used to be pride, or maybe arrogance, but you get kidnapped and tied up and threatened with death enough times and the arrogance bleeds out of your system. Literally, in some cases. So, while I might be confident in my abilities, I wasn’t arrogant.

Vanity, though…well, fuck it, I looked good. I had my mother’s eyes and nose, and her rail-thin build, but my naturally dark hair, the shape of my jaw and my decent height all came from my unnamed sperm donor. I might look like a tattooed punk, but I had put a lot of thought into my tattoos. Every one had a meaning, every one was a little slice of purpose inked into my skin.