I started logging my daily word count this year in an effort to 1) see how much I am or am not accomplishing, and 2) push myself to do more.
Camp NaNoWriMo kicked off in April and I thought I had a good guesstimate of how many words I could knock out on my April project. And last week I logged the most words of any week this year.
7,442? That’s my best effort this year?!
I got a few word sprints in with my virtual cabin-mates. I spent a couple hours at Starbucks on Sunday, cranking out words. And Thursday I took it easy to spend some time off with my kids and to get over a headache.
Still, it feels like a weaksauce effort. I can only guess how much time I spend browsing Facebook (then closing it, then reopening it a minute later as if everyone may have just updated). I don’t know how many YouTube videos I watched of Gordon Ramsay swearing at people (it’s a terrible but addictive vice). And when I “need to veg” for a bit, I make time to level up yet another toon on World of Warcraft.
I’m sure I did better in November during the actual NaNoWriMo event, or December when I finished up my book revisions and got Diffraction onto Amazon and Kindle Unlimited (hint hint).
But I’m nowhere near the goal I set for the month on my Camp NaNo novel… not even if I count all the words written on other projects.
I know these things take time and effort. And I’m happy that I have 7400+ words more than I had the week before.
But good Lord this is not an easy discipline to master.
Maybe I should take up cooking. Gordon has some great “how to” videos…
In my experience, there are some questions a fantasy writer is told to ask themselves right from the start. And one of the most important is: What is different or unique about my setting?
What is it that sets the world I’ve created apart from any or every other fantasy work?
In other words, “Give me a reason to pick up this book.”
So much has been done before that it’s hard to come up with an idea that feels original. When you say, “elemental magic,” people say, “Like Avatar?” When you talk about rampaging hordes of savages, people say, “Like the Reavers in Serenity?” Bring up corrupted, shadowy creatures, and D&D players ask about displacer beasts or doppelgangers. And that’s without the standard sword-and-sorcery tropes that conjure images of Lord of the Rings,World of Warcraft, and countless other fantasy settings.
How does a writer set their world apart? How do you highlight what’s different?
I knew I had a few differences I really liked: a religious system of Gracemarks that bestow divine power, a system of elemental magic fused with a material or technological component, and a problem of a broken world where rifts of chaotic energy twist creatures into corrupted, destructive versions of themselves.
In the process of revising and tightening my first fantasy novel Diffraction, it hit me that what I liked most in fantasy settings wasn’t the sort of book that called all kinds of attention to “Look how strange and fantastic this is.”
Much love to Narnia, but I didn’t want a ‘magic wardrobe’ book or some “fish out of water” contrivance like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
What hooks me in worldbuilding done by authors like Sanderson is how the unique quality of the setting is adapted and utilized as a part of the world.
Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives is a great example. The world is ravaged by frequent powerful storms, and almost every living thing has adapted in some way to this rather negative quality. At the same time, gemstones gather energy from these highstorms, creating sources of magic power as well as a monetary system (the larger and better quality of gem, the more stormlight it holds, thus the more valuable it is). And this stormlight fuels both magic and the limited technology of the world.
In other words, it’s all connected. The unique “problem” in the setting also serves an important purpose and acts as a solution of sorts to other questions. It’s a testament to human determination, survival instinct, and ingenuity.
As I thought about the various unique qualities I liked for Diffraction, I realized something very similar from a worldbuilding perspective would work in this setting.
The rifts of energy that cause trouble by corrupting animals into powerful forces of destruction are also the source of magically-enhanced conductive metals necessary for the religious orders and Arcanists’ Hall to function. What’s a problem from one perspective is a solution from another. It feels more natural, since things in our day-to-day lives are rarely entirely good or bad. More often, the critical factor is how we react to the circumstances around us.
This to me feels like a natural way to look at a fantastic setting. It’s less about “what kind of quirk can I put into the world to make it special” and more about making a world that feels real… despite the quirks that set it apart from the worlds of other novels, and from our own.
Diffraction is available in Kindle Edition and as a paperback from Amazon. You can find it (and my other books) on my author page.
Last year, I made it my goal to get my forever-in-progress fantasy novel out the door as a finished book. Diffraction is the result of all that effort (most of it at the beginning of the year, when I set out to finish it, and at the end when I felt under the crunch to make good on the promise).
A while back, I spent just over two hours walking on the treadmill and digging through alpha reader feedback to figure out how to approach what seemed like a daunting task: Revision and Editing.
The good news? It wasn’t as daunting as I expected.
Even more fun, I engaged in further world-building to sort out some of the relationships and conflicts going on in the story.
To my critical eye, it felt like too much jammed into one setting–too many separate and unrelated elements all vying for a reader’s attention.
Like many fantasy worlds, Diffraction is set in the ruins of a once-great Empire, whose scientists incorporated elemental magic with a form of technology in order to reach its heights. It’s also a world that experiences limited yet direct interaction with the Divine, whose seven Aspects bestow symbols of power upon their most worthy adherents.
As I sat back to imagine a world where gods prove their existence to men and where magic-users apply some level of scientific thought and experimentation into the use of their powers, I realized these can be complimentary elements of the setting rather than competitors.
My religious orders gain divine power through Gracemarks: a radiant, metallic symbol on an individual’s right hand that represents which ideal or Aspect they identify with. Gracemarks often appear spontaneously, bestowed by the Divine. But the orders can also apply a Gracemark made of a blessed metal, which confers similar powers upon the marked person.
A double Gracemark of Light (the horizontal line and above) and Strength (the horizontal line and below–a rudimentary figure lifting a burden overhead)
A world with obvious divine interaction would reflect that in the culture. If many people wear a symbol that implies something significant about their individual values, then displaying the back of the right hand like a wave would reasonably become a common form of greeting.
If you show me a symbol of Justice and Order, I expect you to treat people fairly and uphold the law. Showing me a blank hand might not give me a stereotypical box to fit you in, but neither does it mean I assume you’re untrustworthy. Showing a hand with a scar in the shape of a Gracemark — that tells me to be on guard, because here’s an individual who once had a specific, public moral allegiance and forsook it.
On the other hand, I always meant for magic to have a technological component. Humans need a special lens to see the arcane energies they use for any magical ability. But that only allows one to see and draw on magic. So (based on some thoughtful alpha reader feedback) I added an output device to match the input of the lens – a metal etching that guides or focuses the energy the magic user sends forth.
Given human propensity to take what exists and use it in new ways, it hit me that these Arcanists would study Gracemarks used by the religious orders, then create a similar method or means to use their own abilities. Using conductive metals, touched and transformed by the magical nature of the world, Arcanists would have etchings that grant them fine control of magic power.
Like any good reverse-engineered technology, improvements can adapt the tech to the new user’s needs. Picture a golden tattoo, placed anywhere on the body. Unlike a Gracemark that is always on the right hand, always exposed, the Arcanist’s etching can be hidden if desired. This fits their character more as well. If you want to be brazen and show off your etching, you certainly can. But if you’d rather keep your abilities hidden, a simple pair of spectacles and a covered etching prevents anyone from guessing you’re about to tap into elemental energies and unleash devastating magic.
Thus the effort to clarify how divine power and magic work in this setting becomes a means of character development and description.
I picture a rough-and-tumble tough guy whose Ocular is a monocle secured by a leather band around his shaved head. His riftgold etching is affixed to his face in a sunburst around his eyepiece. He’s an Arcanist thug, and he doesn’t care if you know it. That’s a very different character from the rich noble who wears the Ocular equivalent of a contact lens, practically invisible, and whose etching is hidden from view on his right shoulderblade.
The best part is that this system of Gracemarks and Arcanist etchings is something a reader can see themselves in, much like “which house would I join in Hogwarts?” or “which faction would I belong to in Divergent?” One of my co-workers who is also a fan gave me some feedback, and one of the first things she said was she enjoyed trying to decide which Gracemark she’d choose.
I’m chalking it up as a successful concept.
Diffraction is available in Kindle Edition and as a paperback on Amazon. You can find it (and all my books) at my author page.
It’s not quite the quality I wanted, but I had to fly yesterday and I’m flying again today. So I’ll be content with getting another Grant and Teagan submission in. Hope you enjoy this newest installment.
—
From the Continuing Adventures of Grant McSwain, Champion of the Daring, and Foiler of Dastardly Deeds
Accompanied as always by Teagan O’Daire, the Ginger of Galway
Teagan rammed her shoulder into the side of a large wooden crate of electronic parts and pushed it into place against the iron door of the radio room, sending a cloud of dust into the air. A thick beam of wood held the entrance closed. It shook as the German guards battered against the metal from the other side.
Then the whole cliffside base rumbled like an earthquake.
Teagan watched the ceiling, fearing a collapse. Then she turned to her partner, hands in tight fists on her hips. “Grant, what have you done?”
Grant McSwain sat in front of the large microphone, his hands fumbling across banks of controls for shortwave radio communications and the personnel address system within the base. His unapologetic eyes met Teagan’s and he laughed.
She took a deep breath that did nothing to calm her wild anger. “You said you were going to call for assistance!”
“I did.”
“I thought you meant the local authorities,” Teagan said, “or some government agency.” She checked the weight of another box and decided it would do nothing to barricade the door.
“That was the original plan, sure. I improvised.”
The base shuddered again, as if God punched the surface of the earth with His fist. Muffled shrieks and frantic voices filled the hallway outside the radio room.
Teagan considered throwing the box at Grant. “You summoned the Leviathan.”
Grant shook his head. “No, no, you’re not blaming this on me,” he said, and thrust a thick finger her way. “You’re the one who wrote out the incantation phonetically. You know I can’t understand that Ixthacan gibberish.”
“Then why did you read it over the base address system?”
“First, if Vilhelm wanted it,” Grant said, “I didn’t want him to have it. Second, it seemed like a good distraction when we had nowhere else to run.”
In the nearby cavern that housed the massive German submarine, stone crumbled in a combination of bass like thunder and metal twisting with an ear-piercing shriek.
Teagan winced and gave Grant a withering glare.
Grant met her stare while tuning the radio. “Did you honestly believe there was a creature to summon?”
“Did you have reason to think there might not be?”
Grant tweaked some knobs. The radio hissed to life with soft static. “Any sheriff, any station,” Grant called, “anybody hearing this: is there anyone in a position to provide aid?”
A heavy battering ram thudded against the iron door in a steady pace, the rhythm broken by another tremor that rattled the walls of the mountainside base. Otherwise, the room fell silent save the crackling quiet of the radio.
The voices outside screamed and cut off abruptly when something crashed into the door, shearing the steel framework supporting the radio room. The thick beam holding the door shut snapped with the impact. Teagan’s makeshift barricade tipped to the left and dumped parts across the floor. Then everything lurched forward, and Teagan propped herself up against the wall.
Once the beam broke, gravity swung the battered door open. A scaly tentacle, thick as a full-grown oak, slid through the twisted wreckage of the metal stairs, withdrawing toward the water. In the tangle of steel supports, bloody limbs stretched into the air seeking aid that would never come.
Face white, Grant watched the tentacle slither away. He and Teagan both sat frozen, awaiting a devastating blow to the radio room, afraid any motion might draw the attention and wrath of the leviathan.
The mountainside shook again, but this time the impact seemed far away.
Grant sighed with relief then switched on the base address system. “Achtung! Gehen sie in die U-Boot,” he repeated in rough German.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s panic out there,” Grant said. “No one’s going to know what to do, so they’ll listen to the first order they hear.”
“And meanwhile, what will we be doing?”
Grant gestured toward the elevator to the small, nondescript outpost far above on the surface. “We’re getting out of here.”
He lowered Teagan through the slanted doorway and she hopped to the floor, landing in a crouch on an unstable metal platform. Across a gap of a few feet, another walkway stretched toward the waiting elevator.
Grant dropped through the door of the radio room and hit with a thud that shook the damaged structure. It wobbled but held together. He checked the distance, then made a running jump over the jagged wreckage. “Come on, Teag,” he called.
But there it was. She couldn’t look away.
Tentacles flailed dozens of feet above the water’s surface, crashing into the walkways and structures surrounding the submarine’s berth. A huge pointed head rose from the waves with giant black eyes on either side and a maw lined with rows of sharp teeth. One of the creature’s manifold limbs batted aside a trio of German sailors running for the supposed safety of the submarine, and another tentacle lifted a screaming man high into the air before dropping him into the leviathan’s mouth.
The horror shook Teagan’s heart… but the mystery and majesty of the creature filled her with awe and wonder.
The submarine inched forward, moving toward the underwater tunnel leading to the ocean. Then a pair of tentacles wrapped around the vessel, lifting it out of the churning waters. Metal groaned and squealed. The vessel broke in half with a resounding snap.
“Teag!” Grant cupped his hands over his lips and screamed. “The elevator, before that thing takes it out of commission!”
Teagan leapt across the bloodied steel of the ruined walkway and chased Grant with all due haste.
The automated pulleys of the elevator strained and groaned, but raised the pair from the devastation of the underground base like souls set free from the pit of Hades.
Since the start of this year, in an effort to spur myself toward action, I’ve been updating a word count tracking all my writing.
A bunch of coworkers and friends bought my fantasy novel and gave me generally positive feedback in person (as polite people are likely to do), and several asked, “When is the next book going to be out?”
I set a goal of Christmas–a lofty goal that I don’t think I can make.
March didn’t help. I didn’t even hit 10K, and far too many days (or streaks of days) had the total of 0.
Sure, I had a heap of work and flying, followed by a bout of flu that lasted over a week and had me pretty wiped out. I slept about 16 hours on the worst day, and then the next day, the military docs ordered me to 48 hours of bed rest.
It worked as a nice, short-term diet at least. I lost 7 pounds in 3 days, and had to tighten my belt another notch–a good problem for a pudgy guy like me.
Excuses, excuses. I managed to watch Daredevil season 2 during bed rest, so I could have managed to fit in more words.
So what does April hold in store?
Well, it’s Camp NaNoWriMo time, and I set a reasonable (I think) goal of 30K words.
I aim to finish the draft of PERDITION, my NaNo project from the 50K novel challenge in November. It needs several scenes, followed by extensive review and revision.
(For example, EMPs don’t work the way I originally thought they did. Oops. Yay for research and science! Boo for not doing it before creating several plot problems.)
I also have my WattPad project Echoes going, or more accurately, being frequently ignored by me. I plotted out how many scenes or chapters I need to close it out, and it’s in the single digits. I’d like to mark that one completed.
And there’s always the weekly Blog Battle, submissions for which comprise the majority of my recent posts. I really enjoy writing silly with Grant and Teagan, and my oldest son is a huge fan of those two. So I expect I’ll fit that in.
So where does that leave the sequel to Diffraction? On the back burner for this month. And that’s okay, because honestly I haven’t been connecting with it when I tried the last few times. There are some character and plot questions I need to get clear in my head before I can write what I hope is something compelling and entertaining with Lyllithe, Josephine, and the rest.
I plan to hit it hard when Camp NaNo is done, but I think April is a great month to re-focus and get a fresh perspective.
Onward and upward, in any event. Thanks for joining me on the journey.
After a week under the weather, and in an effort to get past the bit of flu / cold / plague still lingering in my gut, I went for a brisk walk today.
It’s 72 degrees and sunny. I have sunglasses, music, and a mug of coffee… plus I need some exercise anyway.
I walked past the house we lived in for eight years last time we came to Okinawa. It was alright when we moved in with a 4 year old daughter and almost 3 year old son. By the time we moved out, with four kids and two of them in double digit ages, it wasn’t quite so suitable.
But it had a grand tree my oldest kids loved to climb. Perhaps somewhere on a hard drive, but definitely stored in my memory, is the image of my son’s grinning head popping out of the top boughs of the tree (a good twenty feet up).
It also had a small hill down which the kids would ride their Tonka truck. They even tried “Okinawan sledding” by sliding down on flat cardboard. (I may also have tried these activities, but I can assure you they are not meant for grown-ups.)
The house is right across the street from a school with a huge playground. And as I crossed the street, three young children dashed across the open grass toward the swing sets and slides, laughing just like my littles used to.
The place most of my kids will remember as “the park” when they were little.
I remember making that trip with the kids, to chase them around the park in games of “Monster” –which was basically ‘tag’ with a lot of roaring and other noise, and it usually ended with me laying vanquished on the ground, a victorious child trampling on my back.
Kadena is a large base, with many different housing areas. When I was first stationed here, after my wife and I married, we moved into a house just on the other side of the same park. I walked past that house today too.
The whole base is full of memories. There’s hardly a road I can drive–or in this case, walk–down without thinking, “That’s where so-and-so lived.” I walked past the house where my oldest son’s best friend lived… past the house that once belonged to the alcoholic mom with the adorable but crazy toddlers… past a home where my wife (then just a friend) house-sat for an older couple while they were on vacation… and several homes of church friends or former co-workers… places where we’ve enjoyed Sunday afternoons of food and fellowship, or Thanksgiving dinners, or Christmas season get-togethers.
19 years ago today, I went for a walk with my then-girlfriend. We were both stationed here on Kadena, living in dorms by the gym. We would walk for hours, chatting, saving geckos in the streets during the day and star-gazing at night.
On that day, on a small concrete bridge where we liked to sit and talk, I paused to tie my shoe.
Then I produced the ring I had worn on my pinky and popped the question. “Will you marry me?”
I waited until April 2nd so she wouldn’t think it was a gag.
That was half my lifetime ago. Half my life, more or less, on this island and stationed at this base. Half my life spent with the lovely woman who said yes… and I’m glad I can look back with fondness, not regret.
Thanks, Jami, and my awesome kids, who have all put up with so much over the years.
The Adventures of Grant McSwain, Explorer of Exotic Locales, Finder of Forgotten Treasures, and Charmer of Classy Dames
Accompanied as always by his hapless assistant, Teagan O’Daire, the Ginger of Galway and occasional fire demon
“Grant,” Teagan called from above, “Are you certain you’re fit for this?”
He hung on the side of a tall cliff, suspended from a rope wrapped around his leg and pinched between his feet. Waves crashed against the rock face far below, spraying white foam. Gulls called and circled in the blue sky.
With each arm-over-arm motion lowering him down the cliff face, Grant felt the sharp pain in his gut—his gunshot wound was recovering but not fully healed.
“Never better.”
A guard stood sentry duty on a metal observation deck twenty feet above the waterline. The man smoked a cigarette and leaned out over the railing, listening to the ocean. Grant counted on the calming noise to cover his approach.
Below the deck, the low tide revealed a small arch in the stone, the top of a much larger mouth to a submerged cavern.
This must be where the Twins stashed their submarine, a vessel mentioned in documents Teagan recovered from the plane wreck. The classified papers were marked “Betrieb: Leviathan” and pointed the pair to this secret Brazilian base.
He realized Teagan was right, and it struck him how frequently that was the case.
Grant hissed through gritted teeth to ignore his pain, and continued his descent toward the guard. He reached the end of the rope ten feet above the deck, then sprang toward the guard. Though the sudden impact shook his wound, his powerful elbow struck the man in the back of the head and knocked him to the ground, unconscious.
Grant changed into the guard’s uniform—just a little snug, he told himself—while Teagan shimmied down the rope.
She dropped to the ledge and laughed when she saw him. “That coat is stretching like pulled taffy. I feel sorry for those buttons.“
Grant folded his arms across his chest and heard a seam pop. “So let’s not get caught. If we do, the guards won’t be looking at me. You’re the prisoner the Twins want.”
“Vilhelm,” Teagan said coldly. “The other one—the one with the wandering hands—is dead.”
Grant picked up the fallen guard’s rifle and slung it over his shoulder. Then he pulled open the heavy steel door, revealing a hall cut into the mountainside. “Shall we?”
Deep in the winding maze of tunnels, they found a massive cavern housing a berth for the largest submarine Grant had ever seen. Dark hallways stretched into the mountainside where two armed men stood guard. The skin of the submarine glistened under banks of lights. Fuel trucks pumped diesel into the sub’s refueling ports.
“There’s your Leviathan,” Grant said.
“My God,” Teagan said, “that’s big. It’s like a couple U-boats smashed together.”
“Maybe you can call it a W-boat,” Grant said with a chuckle.
Teagan glared at him, oddly reminiscent of her time as a fire demon in the camp of the Atuachans.
Grant felt no regrets, and grinned broad at her ire.
A network of scaffolding and walkways hung suspended from the cavern ceiling. Grant and Teagan crept toward the submarine, careful to avoid the light.
But the underground base seemed practically deserted, and they reached the submarine with ease.
Grant opened the main hatch and clambered down a ladder, then helped Teagan down. “Operation: Leviathan,” Grant whispered as they moved through the cramped spaces of the sub. “What’s that even mean?”
“It comes from the Old Testament of the Bible,” Teagan said, “especially Job, chapter forty-one. ‘Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear. He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.’”
Grant stared at Teagan, and she blushed. He shook his head and asked, “Why would you have that verse memorized?”
“I grew up in a devout Catholic family,” she said. “They viewed reading the Scriptures like eating a meal. In fact, some days we went hungry, but we never skipped our daily reading.”
They reached a pair of chambers with ornate décor, incongruent with the spartan atmosphere of a military submarine.
Teagan paused at the door. “So I always picked the interesting chapters, the ones that talked about powerful creatures and the end of days in strange, fantastic terms. The mystery and thrill of discovery attracted me even then. This looks like the Twins’ rooms. Shall we?”
Grant stepped inside and looked around. Exotic skins covered the bed and floors. Oxidized metal artifacts of ancient cultures lined the shelves. Tapestries with occult symbols hung on the walls.
Teagan gasped. “This is a treasure trove, a private collection with more than most museums. Is that the banner of Vlad Tepes? And what sort of creature has fur like a beast but a shape like a man?”
Grant began rummaging through the desk drawers, and directed Teagan toward stacks of papers and tied-off notebooks.
“What exactly are we looking for, Grant?”
“Operation Leviathan implies they’re going to do something with this sub. Uncle Sam will pay a pretty penny to find out what.”
Teagan held a notebook marked with Ixthacan symbols and flipped through its pages. Then she froze and stared, her face pale. “No, this can’t be right.”
Grant rushed to her side, even though he couldn’t make sense of any of that Ixthacan scratch. “What is it?”
“It’s a legend,” she said. “A tale of a ritual for summoning a destructive force from the ocean depths. I think they mean to—“
“I shoot you,” an angry German voice said, “you don’t die. You crash my plane, unt still you do not die.”
Vilhelm stood in the doorway, his scarred face flaring red, his Luger pointed at Grant.
“But as you Amerikans say, perhaps third time ist ze charm, ya?”
This went over on word count and I don’t have time to edit it down to fit the Blog Battle standards. But I had fun with it, and it made me do some writing. So here’s another installment of Grant and Teagan:
The Adventures of Grant McSwain, Man of Intrigue, Daring Do-Gooder and Fearless Explorer
accompanied as always by his hapless assistant, Teagan O’Daire, the Ginger of Galway and occasional fire demon
—
This is the Caproni Ca.90, from Wikipedia Creative Commons license
A high-pitched whine pierced Grant’s ears and a constant thunderous rumble shook him awake. Strong winds battered his face, bearing a strange scent of lilac. He cautiously opened his bleary eyes, and found them safe behind a pair of pilot goggles. A leather cap with ear muffs strapped under his chin offered minimal hearing protection.
Far below him, snow-capped mountains formed a jagged horizon. Oh my God, I’m flying in an aeroplane.
A wide wing above and behind Grant shaded him from sunlight. On either side of Grant, four large piston engines hammered away, spinning propellers in front and behind their shaking frames. Centered above the cockpit, another pair of engines strained with effort. Several bullet holes riddled the engine on the left, and it sputtered smoke. The glass around the cockpit had broken in places, with spider-web cracks across what remained.
The plane lurched to the left, and Grant felt sudden discomfort in his stomach like a punch to the gut. Then a sharper pain struck, and he sucked in air between gritted teeth. Breathing brought agony. Something was wrong.
Teagan’s rough-chopped, wispy hair fluttered in the wind, the source of the lilac fragrance. Grant would never admit it, but the hasty haircut of the Atuachan savages gave Teagan a rather fetching new look. How she managed to cling to feminine refinements on their forays into uncivilized lands was beyond his comprehension. Why she bothered also fell in that category. Who wasted valuable space in a rucksack on perfumes and shampoo where a bottle of fine whiskey could fit?
The stabbing in his gut throbbed. He gripped his side and the pain intensified.
Teagan turned her head back and yelled, “Don’t touch it! You’ve been shot.”
A foggy memory filled his mind—the German twins laughing over him, the one with the scarred face holding a smoking revolver, the other clutching a satchel full of Ixthacan artifacts and Vallarte’s gold.
“He shot me?” Grant winced and shifted to a position he told himself felt slightly more comfortable. “That damn Kraut actually shot me?”
“My skill with medicine is minimal,” Teagan shouted. “But I believe you’re bleeding inside… and your intestines may have been perforated.”
“That sounds like a foul way to go.”
“It is. And excruciating as well.”
Grant squeezed his eyes shut against the pain, and felt tears well up. “Thanks for the ray of hope.”
“We can make it back to Caracas,” Teagan said. “Master Roquefort might be waiting for us. Otherwise, we’ll have to steal another plane.”
Grant opened his eyes. “…Another plane?”
“Look at the markings on the fuselage, you overgrown baboon.”
Grant craned his head to see the side of the plane. The black and white cross of the German luftwaffe shone proudly from the gleaming metal.
He settled back into his seat, surprised at a crippling wave of exhaustion from such a small effort. “The twins?”
Teagan struggled with some controls out of Grant’s view, then turned to answer. “It’s an Italian prototype, actually. Caproni C-A-90. Only one ever built. The twins’ exploits on behalf of the Kaiser earned them enough money to get their hands on it, and they’ve added the latest technology from various aeronautical manufacturers. Synchronized machine guns, variable pitch propellers…”
She said some other terms Grant couldn’t make out, and he stared at her through the blurry goggles. “When did you become an aviatrix?”
The plane shuddered and Teagan adjusted some levers. “I went with an RAF ace from the Great War for a couple years. Didn’t work out, but I picked up some things.”
Grant sat back with bemused chagrin and watched the thin clouds like stretched cotton floating past. “It’s strange, Teag, but I never considered that you had a life of adventures all your own before becoming my assistant.”
“Well that sword cuts both ways,” Teagan said. “You were delirious when I helped you hobble onto the aeroplane. You thought I was some exotic dancer from Batavia. Kept talking to me about a night of cavorting and revelry in the East Indies…”
Grant opened his mouth to speak, then thought the better of it. The plane shuddered again, and he checked the engines, unsure of what to look for.
“Teagan, is something wrong?”
With the rush of wind, he couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like she laughed. Then an engine sputtered and belched out black smoke.
Grant realized how much open sky sat between himself and the mountain peaks. At the same time, it hit him how little he knew about aeroplanes. “Should it sound like that?” He tried to keep his voice calm, but his white knuckles gripped the edge of his seat. “What’s the problem?”
“Several problems, in fact,” Teagan called back. “The cargo hold is too full, the radiotelephone is inoperative, and three of the six engines are damaged from gunfire. But really the issue is we don’t have sufficient fuel.”
“What?!”
“The crew was distracted with fueling operations,” Teagan said. “It seemed the perfect time to sneak you onboard and steal the aeroplane. I’m doing what I can to glide us to Caracas.”
She pointed at the smoking left engines. The four blades in back and two in front were turned parallel to the aeroplane’s course of flight, cutting through wind resistance like knives. “The Germans installed the newest in variable pitch propellers, so I’ve feathered the props to reduce drag.”
“Oh man,” Grant said, racked with another throbbing pain. “The twins are going to be peeved you stole their toy.”
“Scarface’s brother didn’t seem too happy about it after I got airborne.”
Grant spun—and suffered another stab of anguish for it—then checked the cargo hold. There was no sign of any other passengers. “Where is he now?”
“The cargo hold was rather over the weight allowance…”
Grant checked the rack of tightly-packed parachutes. None were missing. “You jettisoned one of the twins?”
Teagan gave a sheepish shrug. “My mate from the RAF was an amateur pugilist. It seemed like a useful skill to pick up.”
Grant shook his head in wonder. A few silent moments passed as he considered everything his assistant had done for him over their time together. “Teagan,” he finally said, “I’m impressed. I realize I’ve often overlooked your contributions to—is that flame supposed to be there?”
Teagan’s head whipped toward the left engine, with its plume of oily smoke.
“No, the other one,” Grant shouted.
Tongues of fire flashed out of the right engine, and a thick white smoke billowed behind the wobbling aeroplane.
“I have to cut that engine too!” She pulled a lever, and the high pitched whine and rumbling ground to a halt with a sound of metal shearing on metal. The aeroplane dipped toward the ground and twisted into a spiral, pointed at the snowy slopes of the mountains.
Old habits returned, and Grant shouted, “I thought you were an aviatrix!”
Teagan shot him a glare through her goggles. “I never said I was a good one!”
I had a great chat about my fantasy novel Diffraction with a co-worker today. A few days ago she joked about how she neared the end of the book and thought, “Holy cow, he has a lot of plot threads left to deal with if they all get resolved in this book.” Then of course she realized this is meant to be part of a larger series.
But that simple off-hand comment gave me a valuable reminder. I’ve written about seven chapters of the first draft of Diffusion, the next book set in the Bordermarches. But I hadn’t given enough thought to what questions a returning reader might have. This helped me go back and tweak the first couple chapters to not only provide a refresher on how various systems and mechanics work (like elemental magic, and the Gracemarks that give divine power), but it also highlighted moments where I could sum up what happened in the previous book to let readers know I’m aware some of their questions are as yet unanswered.
The other fun part of the conversation today was that I got yet another opinion on the setting, the magic system, the tweaks to old fantasy tropes, and the characters. One of my fears is that the female characters might come off as “ugh, this was so obviously written by a guy.” And thankfully, some key moments of interaction between two female characters were described as spot on.
All that to say, I’ll ask the same of readers that I asked of my co-worker. If you read Diffraction, would you be so kind as to post a review or at least a rating on Amazon or Goodreads? I don’t need flowery praise (but of course I welcome it). I’d love some honest ratings or reviews for no other reason than to show that people actually looked at this thing and came to some conclusion about the quality of the writing. If you feel it merits one star, have at it, and if you want to lay out all the things I did wrong, I’ll take the critique. If you’re willing to give it some stars, and maybe say what you did or did not like, all the better. I’d rather a customer see several honest assessments than only two or three. Anything is better than zero or only a few reviews.
If you know someone who self-published, I guarantee they’re interested in getting such feedback posted to primary sites like Amazon and Goodreads. Other than purchasing their book, nothing shows support and encouragement more than taking the time to post a rating or review.
If you’re willing to do so, I deeply appreciate your time. Thanks!
This comes from the quite-talented Blondeusk of http://blondwritemore.com
And it hits a little too close to home, as I wander between her version of the Bloggers Market, Social Media Square, and Procrastination Boulevard (which I’m pretty sure connects the two on any map).
Enjoy and give her a follow if you like what you read, because she’s always posting humorous and creative things like this.
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For today’s post I have imagined that there is a place called Writing Town. It is where we all hang out on a daily basis. For noting – this week I have had a stinking cold (bedridden) and this post was written whilst I had a temperature / on heavy duty cold medication – […]
