
The works in progress. I will warn you now, they are updated infuriatingly infrequently and often are forgotten for months at a time. However, when they are updated, you get between four and ten A4 pages of text at a time, so that ought to occupy your fevered minds just a little.
And for the love of my cat, NO, there is NO PORN!
(You'd be amazed how often that comes up.)
This is it. THE story. The novel. The book. The one that might get published onedaymaybegodswillingpublishersdrunkslashstonedslashwillingtopublishinreturnforfavours. It may not look like much, but when I tell you that I have the dim roughs for not only this but the forthcoming FOUR sequels (Making these babies a quintet), plus hideous amounts of information on the world they live in (Mention any species, any city, any locale, any religion you find here, and I can give you a lecture), you damn well ought to be impressed. At the moment, my brain is having a bit of trouble with the character of Arya, so progress is slow, but the next character to enter the scene is already lounging around my brain, hanging her top hat on my cerebral cortex, putting up her feet and polishing her swordstick while making occasional dirty comments. She's oceans of fun.
Um... it's a working title. In other words, the title needs work. The rest of it, however, I really like... it's deep, it's mature, it's heartfelt, it's two concepts that have fluttered in my brain for years and have finally been combined... the Chinese takeaway scene actually occured in many, many earlier stories that never actually got to ordering the food (I had little persistance as a child), mainly because I have a surprising number of memories of having deep conversations with my father while waiting for the Chinese takeaway. Bit peculiar.
Again, a working title. I'm not massively impressed with this, but I enjoy it... and that's all that needs to be said, isn't it? It has a lot of girls I'd like to punch and one guy I'd very much like to talk to more (Stop looking at me like that) not to mention fun with dialects. Enjoy!
Based on the campaign setting of the same name, this sweetie is rather stunted by the fact that I don't HAVE that campaign setting... YET... but when I do, don't you worry, I have much planned. Stay tuned for action packed adventures and my usual modern dark, gritty pseudo-realism involving angels, demons, cars, computers, giant man-eating dumpsters, a whole family of madcap Irish lasses and an insane Drow elf with a machine pistol. What fun!
Okay... I have one admission to make as far as this one goes. I am deeply in favor of using foreign languages in my stories to give special words and concepts a sense of mystique, and having characters whose first language isn't English and that pepper their sentances with foreign words. There's so many beautiful words out there to take over when English is being ugly. But up until now, that's been restricted to French (Which I speak badly, and is beautiful and romantic), Italian (Which I don't speak at all, but is romantic), and the odd word of Japanese or Russian (Which I'd use more of if Babelfish did phonetic translations, and which are exotic and (Maybe) romantic/beautiful). But for the life of me... the only one I never considered using was Dutch.
Also... my mother made me watch Gone With The Wind just before I started writing the most recent section of this, so that's the explanation for the crinolines. I will also add that once Storm and Shadow start making more regular appearances, this one's gonna get dark.
Much along the same lines as Urban Arcana, this little snip is based in the world of Eberron, from the campaign setting of the same name. There is much to come, maybe even fairly soon, and a whole host of supporting characters including Scottish Halflings, Warforged religious fanatics and pretty gay boy elves.
Sometimes I have dreams where the entire plot, character cast and world base of a whole damn novel are established. They're few and far between, but when they do happen, I pounce on 'em. This was a particularly good one in that the world base would be ideal for a D&D campaign, being full of potential for change but requiring a great deal of effort to bring it about, and plus it had cool aliens and robots and a priest called 'Oozie'.
Look... well, there was this book, and although I wasn't really into it I kinda liked it, and then there was the whole Astrid Haven thing, and the next thing I knew this baby was drumming on my sleeping hindbrain. I have weird dreams. Potentially quite horrific, since it's my duty in any story that involves young children to expose them to the most terrible and bizarre mind-warping situations I can. It's an innate tendancy I have. Remind me never to have kids.
Look, I told you I had weird dreams.
The first in an intended trilogy, all of which are going to be visions of the afterlife. I like the afterlife with the mildly annoying tactlessness of someone who doesn't actually believe in it. I love the imagery in this one. Incidentally, I was most pleased with my subconcious for coming up with the concept of why most Angels (Yes, there are others, not just Gabriel - I am rather fond of Azazael, and Lucifer is bound to make an appearance, but Michael is far an away my favourite) fell - Condeming themselves in the process of protecting mortals, who have absolutely no idea that it even happened, because they are truly good. It probably says something about my attitude to true good that ultimately the Fallen Angels, along with everyone else in hell, become demons and devils and thus, eventually, will rise to be the very problem they damned themselves destroying. But hey, I'm a writer, not a theologist.
The second 'Afterlife' story. This is way meatier than I remember it being, since I normally post stories when they get longer than three pages in Word and this one hit eight before I realised and uploaded it. I suppose it would make sense if the characters were all, in some way, aspects of myself, and I guess in a way they are... but in another way, I'm very distanced from them.
This is what happens when you read Robert Rankin novels before bed.
Not that I like Robert Rankin novels. Apocalypse; the Musical was promising, but what he doesn't seem to realise is that when one of the characters says "No way are the readers swallowing a deux et machina at this point in the story!", he's right. Now, I could be all smart and say that I wanted to play with the idea of fate and certainty in a novel, but in reality, I dreamt the entire plotline and as per usual, it was left to my waking brain to fill in the gaps, buff up the grammar a little and come up with some good one liners. My dreaming subconscious, while being exceptionally good at the conceptual and plot side of things and even sometimes inserting the best speeches, or rather, the seeds of the best speeches which then need to have the bits where I stammer and repeat myself editted out and the sentance order trimmed up a little, is absolutely useless when it comes to either humor or pacing, since a whole novel or film normally flicks right past in anywhere between one and three REM cycles. Anyways, just go read the damn story.
'Nother dream based story, which basically means I don't have a friggin' CLUE where it's headed. But I like the world. I like the characters. I like the general premise of the story - it's blatantly obvious someone fancies the socks off someone else but is never going to do anything about it. Other than that... I've got to figure out the actual plot. I'm resisting the urge to go 'Aw, hell, throw a war in there' (I bet you didn't know I did that when I get stuck, did you?) but right now I can't think of anything else that'd work. Le sigh...
Because everyone loves dystopia. No, serious.