Separated At Birth

I am not actually the first person to work with TC to present stories from Terrah.    Emmit Other and Redwin Tursor both are biological twins but were raised in different pats of the country.  Emmit was raised in the north eastern part of the country around Maine and Boston.  Redwin was raised in Denver Colorado but both were born with a remarkable talent for going to other places besides their own world.

I must admit, I am not sure if they astrally project or use the darker methods that EP Blingermeyer does, but whatever method it is, it is pretty flawless.   Redwin has been effectively living in Earth ever since he found out about it,  Emmit uses it to view both Terra and Earth from a very skewed lens.  TC has hinted that they have both helped him immensely, with Redwin adding moral strength and Emmit putting things in perspective.  The thing that he hasn't been clear on is how they met or WHY they would help.  I mean, Emmit seems like a nice enough guy, but Redwin is very much a realist.

Do they really believe that they are fictional character created by TC? I mean, I use the word "Fictional" to describe myself but from my perspective I certainly feel real.  And just because someone 'creates' you doesn't inscribe loyalty by itself.  Ask Frankenstein.

[Writer Stuff] Surviving Blockage

Interesting article here on Writer's Block.  Not the "I can't think of an idea" but "I don't see a point to this anymore."  Burn Out.

It's pretty short really, but cheating on your writing project might be fun.  I've been the master of finish projects one after another and nothing has come of it.  At least with this blog I have 20-30 people (well...clicks...some or all of them might be bots) but even unfeeling subroutines are better than....a total absence.

The blog seems fun to write right now, and the writing forums are also good.  If Project Daedalus works short stories will get a lot easier, and by working on the blog I *AM* working on Heliotrope.  I might consider short stories about the characters in the other novels.  We'll see.

But really? I don't think the article really addresses the question of burn out.  I think a better solution? Write what you love? Writing is hard sometimes, and you have to make yourself get into the habit but if WHAT you are writing sucks, pick something else.

[Heliotrope] The Fuses

Everyone has heard of the Muses, minor greek Goddesses who eventually reproduced and has several offspring that dwell in Middle Fairie, but have you heard of the Fuses? No, of course not because the way you hear about Muses is through epic mythological of fictional works.  A muse has a symbiotic relationship that draws worship and inspiration from her inspired work.  A Fuse is a parasite that only exists to take ideas before they are even formed.

Have you ever heard of a library of unwritten books? Books that might have hypothetically been written if the writer hadn't died, gone mad or gone into a career of used telephone sanitation?  Well that's made up mostly of works taken by the Fuses.  Of course, there are many many works that don't happen simply because they are awful, or bad time travel wrecks a lot of possibilities, or someone really does get hit by a bus, but there have been millions of things that have never been created by fuses.

There are exceptions to this, of course.  To begin with, Fuses have a naturally antagonistic with muses.  But fuses are particularly vigilant about works written about them and snuff the idea without snuffing the person.  Sometimes they even work on the same author, inspiring or removing the idea before it even occurs.  But sometimes they go too far.  Terra is a world without stories and it is not merely because the people there live more active lives which allows them to BE in stories or be stories rather than tell them.  Terra's proximity to fae often allows access to rarer creatures of Fairy to access layers of reality inherenetly hostile to them.

But there are rare instances where a story can engender reality.  And if one were, for example, upset at a group of Fuses for interfering with a podcast who did so with a paid bounty for one EP Blingermeyer, then one could theoretically use their psychic link to a writer in a higher reality that you were astrally possessing to allow them to write.  Convulted? Here's what's not.

Astral space is harder to track than real space, so by the time they figure out that this is going on, it can give you just enough time to write "A large anvil appears over ever Fuse in Terra and smatters them in the head, cartoon style until they go limply away back to Middle Fairy"....oh.

Strangely the pounding on the door just stopped.

Go figure.

Script will resume Mar 1.

Retooling.

Feeling Like Frodo

I had the most curious feeling today.  I wasn't sure I really even wanted to finish incorporating the changes to Forever West that my brother Greg had made, even though he put so much work into it.   Hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars and time was worked to show me the flaws in my own work.  Artistically, one is wise to not seek to knit the perfect sweat but insist that one's older work is flawed and move on which leads to greater, better works.

My short stories are a lot better than when SFWA told me to shrivel up and die and dont write more sci fi.  A few, like Mr Hamburger and Waiting for the Monsters to die are REALLY good, to the point I'm considering posting the older stories just here, for free while selling them on Amazon.  I've already done them in the podcast.  I'm starting to realize that I really just want my stories to be heard, preferably liked, but I feel I have something to say and would like someone to hear it.

But novels are acts of faith.  You start writing them, vast oceans of words, trusting your future self that they will finish and edit and polish and sell.  But...I'm kind of over it.

Writing seven novels is on my bucket list and I've done six.  Seven will be really really really hard.  Heliotrope has been sitting for months since I wrote it because....I just KNOW it isn't as good as Forever West and I just KNOW it isn't as good as many of my favorite authors.  So why even release it? I mean, I probably still will but I writer has to believe in their own writing, and I just don't.  Sophistries with Rhombus Ticks aside, I just....I KNOW I can write some great stuff and love these flash fiction pieces at places like Naked City or the 500.  Novels are titanic behemoths.

Thank god I'm waiting until visiting Scandanavia in three years or so to do a 'thriller/mystery' novel set there, because I just dont feel sequels to any of them in me; even though Heliotrope promises interesting things.  Should write Tossing Grenades at Windmills, but my flash fiction piece in the 500 got published....Grenademan isn't being bought.

So am I going to finish Forever West? Indubidably but....I keep pushing it out.

Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhatt?

The numbers don't lie but we will send another war crime or two before giving up in despair.

 

Go away.

Check out this episode!

[Writer Stuff] Clarkes World

Clarke's world is a SFWA qualifying venue that has always impressed me.  They are relatively new compared to the big three (asimov, analog and SF&F) but they have what might be considered a meteoric rise and were basically a literal up by their own bootstrap kind of organization.  Their podcast is quite impressive and this episode in particular forced me to include them here because of just how amazing "Everyone Loves Charles" really is.  It is a translated award winning piece of Chinese sci fi about the american and japanese governments (because, let's be honest....he can't freely write about his own, can he?) but still contains powerful themes of immortality, morality, celebrity and abuse of power as well as identity.  It's a Novella and it has gotten me interested once again in the venue. I'm CONSIDERING writing one in the latter three months of this year if the film comes off well.  We'll see.

There's a lot to do but mainly I need to get Forever West off my plate first.

[Script] Revolution Number Eight - Page 8

Scene: Esme Euphrasia and Agent Chwech in the room again, this time entirely from Esme's perspective looking at Chwech, faint wisps of smoke coming from her perspective, without actually showing her smoking.

Esme: Your betters are getting impatient.

Chwech: Don't you find that codename ironic?

Esme: I don't understand what you mean?

Chwech: Well they're all old aristocracy from before the war.

Esme: Every oversight committee is before the war.

Chwech: The first one.

Esme: There is a limited supply of the anti agathic

Chwech: Yes, I'm sure there is.  (beat)
Don't worry.  They're close.

Esme: They better be.

[Heliotrope] Shadows Over Rhineland

Fairy is a different realm but there were some fairies that dwealt in Terra.  Germany was at one time one of the richest places in the world for such creatures, but the Big One is the primary reason they are there no more.   Creatures of spirit and nature are disrupted by iron at the best of times, but especially the ones adapted to Terra.  Those that move back and forth fare fare better, and those that live purely in Outer Fairy almost all the time best of all.  Even a Sidhe who lives in Outer Fairy (albeit very carefully given how everyone hates them) is only minorly inconvenienced by toxins and iron whereas their distant cousins in Germany were tailored to the soil itself.

Each of these lancing spiritual wounds helped kill magic, which was exactly how it was intended.  People believe the Thule society harmless but love to make fiction about how they crafted with supernatural powers not of this world.  Those people would be mistaken, because the Thule society in Terra DID actually convene with these powers; gods, goddesses, dark angels, demons and fairies.  It is believed that Terran fairies alone were responsible for 10,000-20,000 allied deaths.  Specially constructed bombs penetrated the earth and disrupted the ley lines that allowed such creatures to exist.

While they were killed or disrupted, some have been permanently so.  Many fairies can come back in one form or another, and while Germany's forests are certainly spiritual places, gaining a natural boost for their efforts at green energy and atonement of their past crimes, the fairies themselves are simply gone.  Gods and Goddesses and a few of their servants walk the land from time to time.  Ghosts? Certainly.

But Fairies? Not so much.  There are rumors that a few members of Outer Fairy have attempted to colonize the area but even should they do so, their powers at magic and connection to the land would take centuries if not millenia to be the same.

Sometimes Humpty Dumpty really can't be put back into the bottle.  Or Egg Shell.  Or whatever.

[Script] Revolution Number Eight - Page 7

John: Stop.  Just stop George.  I am not breaking up with her.

George: I don't care what you bloody do with her, just stop bring her into the recording booth.

Ringo: You'd bring her here if the 8's didn't stop you.

Paul: Look, just-

Intern Adams: (coughs)

They all stop and look at him.

Intern Adams: So...how can I help?

There is a pause.

Paul (smiling): Well I think you just did.  I think the reason Chwex sent you to us is that we need someone to help us get out of our headspace.

Intern Adams: Wait, so he knows you're not doing what they want?

John: Oh yeah, he figured it out in about five minutes.  Smart guy.

George: I'd just assume get it over with.

Paul: We're close.  Very close.

Random Small Stuff

Sometimes being the sole representative from another world (technically third since Emmit and Redwin have been beaming poetry to you for a decade, but no one reads there or realizes they're from Terra) can be tiring.  I mean, sure there i a lot I can write about.  Sponge Werewolves, or Mayan Mummies vs Egyptian Mummies, but it is a lot of work to notice things.

And honestly?

I think the smaller things are more interesting.

Like the fact that we have beer vending machines just like in your Japan.  When we gave up Prohibition, we gave it ALL up and didn't find another victim to blame it on.  You know, like making hemp...I'm sorry "Marijuana" illegal.  Being more laid back probably means why we haven't elected some of the idiots you have on Earth.  I mean, we're not perfect.  We still had a Hitler.  Hell, we even have a Soup Nazi, but Jesus Christ....there are some uptight people over there.

We almost switched to driving on the other side of the road back in the early twenthieth century as solidarity with Britain, but the Rockefellers had just bought cars and learned to drive so they crushed that right off the bat.  But some of the same people you have who are anti vaccine or flat earthers believe that there is a legal right to drive on the other side of the road.  Its called the Wrong Way movement and they're responsible for 200-300 deaths a year.

Elvis really never died in our timeline and became head of the CIA under Reagan. In 1988, he stepped down and did a live tour with the Beatles.

The Berlin wall didn't fall in Terra until 2005.

China is split between North China and South China and Taiwan is actually a protectorate of Japan.

Bears are known to use tools to get into campers; including crow bars, explosives left at mine sites and occasionally acid.  No picnic basket is safe.

There is no Key Lime Pie in Terra.  It is horrible.

How the Hell Are You Still Listening to This

Seriously.  This is crap.  This is not a podcast. 

 

Why are you still here?

Check out this episode!

[Writer Stuff[ Interesting Article from Ma

Writing tips for non editors here

Super highlighted version:

Use spell check
Don't say weird stuff
;;;;;;;;
'''''''''
,,,,,,
youreyalltheretheirthey're
antidestablishmentarianismsupercalifragilisticexpelialadocious.

And now.

Hamster Olympics.

[Heliotrope] Madam Glitterbell's

When one considers that fairy tales are not only spread among the human population, but others as well, then there can be unforeseen consequences.   For example, the tale of the little mermaid was a cautionary tale for mermaids in Outer Fairy until about twenty years ago when some disney dvd's began to leak through Terra.  Not every Earth story leaks over, but the ones that do cause...interesting effects.

It should be noted that Madam Glitterbell's has existed for over twenty centuries, serving Roman Legionaires at the time of Ceasar.  Madam Glitterball is not just a brothel.  Madam Glitterbell is an institution.  Rumor has it that she is half fairy, but no one dares ask what the other half is.  She certainly LOOKS human but seems to be effectively immortal.  The resort exists in the legendary city of Stays In, by the Desert by the Sea.  It has ...well, according to rumor, if you have a Slot A, they have a Tab B.

When Blixie the Mermaid, daughter of the Duke of Baja, saw the DVD of the little mermaid, she was determined to get a prince.  She was convinced that her natural magic would let her get legs, and while this was technically true, it also did not get rid of the pervasive smell of fish.  Fish breath. Fish hair.  And it only got worse as she stayed on land.  Attempting to douse herself in sea water would not help and perfumes were few and far between.

After several months of this, her gold ran out and she desperately returned home, only to find that her father had disowned her.  There are few options for a royal mermaid tainted with the scent of human; and without the magic to remove the smell, there were few that would have her.  Madam Glitterbell was one who would.

Blixie was reluctant to provide these exotic services at first, but when combined with her services as a night singer, she continued to say long after she had successfully paid for the Periapt Against Omega 3.

[Script] Revolution Number Eight - Page 6

Scene: The four musicians and the intern sit in the room talking.

Paul
No manual for this I'm afraid.   We're just making it up as we go along.

John
Yup.  Day by day.  It's seriously not good.

Intern Adams
What are you doing?

Ringo
Keepin Mr. Tax Man from gettin us down.

Intern Adams

What?

John

They're going to use the signal to take over the world.  We're not letting them so we're making a signal of our own....but...

George
Band aint what it was.  At all.  So its takin time.

Both Sides are the Same

A universe where a third of the population have the intelligence of infants.

Check out this episode!

[Writer Stuff] When the Mentor of one of your Mentors says something

Jim Butcher is pretty much a template of how I've figured out a novel should work.  Short chapters.  Lots of actions.  End every chapter you can on a cliff hanger.  Dynamic but sympathetic characters.  Interesting and intracate settings.

So when the woman that taught him to write a book writes something, he is naturally going to publish it on his blog.

I definitely think it is worth checking out.

[Script] Revolution Number Eight - Page 5

Scene: The four musicians and the intern sit in the room talking.

Intern Adams
What words were you using earlier? I didn't understand them.

John
You mean the counterpoint of the surrealism of the underlying metaphor?

Intern Adams
The...what?

George
Stop it.  Just tell im.

Intern Adams
Tell me....what?

Paul
Look, there was this alien signal and it like told a lot of things but they only got radio signals a hundred years ago.

John
So they think that the British Empire is still the most powerful government on Earth

Ringo
It's Hilarious.

John
I just imaging if we had no

Ringo
Yeah yeah.  We all know. We've heard it before.

Intern Adams
Is there some kind of...manual for this? Like where its written down?

[Heliotrope] It the Blue Fairy Time to Get it Right

Everyone has heard of the little wooden boy who became real and lived with his lovely father Gepetto.  Jape....I am too lazy to google the name of the Itallian Puppeteer who got eaten by a whale.  And while we're at it, remind me to tell you the real story of what he did to piss off the whale enough to eat him.  No, not literally right now, I mean another time.  Whales generally don't just go eating people you know, especially big ones, and last time I checked aint' no bible chapter about the great prophet Gillato.  Gape...gil....

So anyway the Blue Fairy.  There once lived an old man who was a maker of butter churns.  He was the finest maker of butter churns in the land.  Now, understand that this is a colloquialism becuase land is relative when there are a thousand little kingdoms, so he was in fact the only butter churn maker in the land, but was actually a remarkably good butter churn maker and did it better than anyone else in a two hundred mile radius but the finest butter churn maker in a two hundred mile radius doesn't sound very fairy tale like, does it? You see? It takes time to get these things right.

Anyway, the butter churn maker had a passion for sculpting.  He started with soft butter, and eventually moved to wood.  The forest near him was infested with noxious butter eating termites though so these proved poor materials with which to learn to sculpt.  Thus, he eventually turned to stone.  He started making faces, and then worked with other materials.   He eventually began making artistic stone butter churns, and was known throughout the land (200 mile radius).  He grew quite rich but as time is want to do, he grew old.  Granted, immortal creatures don't...but humans still do.  Stop distracting me.

He grew lonely in his old age, and sought to have a child with a local maid.  Alas, he smelled for bathing was something he considered a somewhat optional activity.  So the rich but lonely butter churn maker looked for a shallow bimbo throughout the land who would sell herself for coin and he found one but alas, though he loved her, she was not capable of having a child.  This, and the fact that...let's just say that the butter churn maker was somewhat ignorant of what it actually took to make a child and the shallow bimbo was willing to let it stay that way soooo..

Eventually, she grew bored and left.  This made the butter churn maker very sad. So he began to make a super super realistic butter churn, pouring his whole life into the butter churn that was shaped like a boy, wishing on the great northern star that his little stone butter churn boy would come to life.

And then he died.

The blue fairy, arriving five minutes too late, felt sad and wept tears of bitter procrastination.  They fell onto the little stone butter churn boy, granting him life.  She swore that the next time she would get it right, and left.  The poor stone butter churn boy was left alone and confused in the world, entirely unknowning of the great sacrifice that his father had made to bring him to life.  But the Blue Fairy is a bit...confused.  I mean, let's face it, her hobby is granting inanimate objects life and it only occurred to her later to give the things she animated some kind of a purpose.

But that is another story.

[Script] Revolution Number Eight - Page 4

Agent Chwech
Well, I'll leave you lot to it then.

He leaves.

Scene
Agent Chwech walks down a long white hall.  There is a white table.  The decorations are white or at least light in color.  The door is black with a black doornob.

He reaches for the doornob.

Closeup of the doornob as his hand turns it.

Scene
Esme Euphrasia sits behind a classic desk, with a literal 'in' box full of paper work on one side, and an 'out' box on the other side.  Both are filled with papers.  Every few seconds, she picks up a piece of paper and stamps it with one of five or six stamps and an inkwell. She never looks at the papers, but the motion is deliberate.  As the camera angle moves about the room, from time to time, a pair of hands in black sleeves put a new pile of paper in the in box and take some of the papers in the old box. The hands are the only thing that is seen, never the body and at most a black sleeved or clad arm.  Faint smoke wafts in the room though Esme is never seen smoking.

Agent Chwech
They're doing quite well.

Director Euphrasia
Bollocks.  They doing nothing of the sort.

Agent Chwech
Do you think they're stalling?

Director Euphrasia
I think so.  Can't prove it, and them being them we can't just make em disappear.  They keep doing well enough that I can't just sack them and find another more plaint group.

Agent Chwech
And pliance is important is it?

Director Euphrasia
Watch your tone with me.  I don't care how bright a star you think you are.   This is the most important thing we've done in twenty years.

Agent Chwech
It's alien contact.  More like the history of the species.

Director Euphrasia
There is a war on.  There is more at stake here than just a bunch of nonsense from flying saucers.

[Naked City] The following piece is written for Naked City with the theme of "Oblivion"

Hello there from another world.  I'm Rhombus Ticks.  The voice you hear is not my own, but it wasn't when I read to you before.  TC, my regular host, is located in Miami, while Len has agreed to read this piece to you.  I shall endevor to be a gentleman while here.

Oblivion.

[Pause]

Alright, now pretend I just filled five minutes with awkward silence.  That was my first idea.  And as much as it appealed to me, the recent podcast I did not do that involved nothing but numbers pushed the envelope enough for my tastes for a while, so I thought I'd speak about something else.  The space between worlds.  I write a lot about Fairy or Terra or Wonderbreadland but one doesn't simply wander to the nearest bus and order a ticket back and forth.  

The moon is so far away it takes a second for light to travel there.  That means that if you look at a piano falling on some jerk blocking you in traffic, an astronaut on the moon with a really powerful telescope wouldn't see it fall on the guy until a second later.  It takes fourteen minutes to see it with a magic telescope (because let's be honest that would have to be one damn big telescope, or maybe a telescope linked to an ipad or something) anyway, that guy on mars wouldn't see the piano fall for fourteen minutes.  That takes a full year for it to reach Alpha Centauri.

The gaps between atoms and sub atomic particles are even more staggering in their own way.  So much space between everything but it doesn't even hold a candle to the space between what you consider real and what you consider merely fictional.  I mean, metaphorically it is right next door, a heart beat away but all interesting uses of chemistry aside, Sauron isn't going to be playing golf on the course tomorrow morning with....well, you know.  People.  On your world.  Who are the kind of people who would likely hang out with Sauron.

You know.

Anyway, where was I? Time breaks down here.  The very concept of space, the thing that you share in common with a sun or a black hole or the farthest bit of light in the sky, so far that it goes to the edge of your ever expanding universe.  Your dreams are with you every day but they are also farther than the beginning of time itself.  No wonder so many obsess about death.  When entropy claims us, there is only the memory and the dream of what was.  Is there an afterlife? There is here, but there? Its a grayer area.  And whether or not you believe it real, for practical purposes its as far away as I am.

Oblivion.  It's a hell of a thing to overcome, but there are tricks.  Journals.  Stone monuments, astral projection.  You know.  Find creative ways to work around it.  Because despite the distance between you and the impossible, I speak from experience when I say that exploration of it is worth it.

That's all.  Good night.