(no subject)
Sooo... Steampunk. Yup. Never written it before, but it's very shiny - must be all the brass steam-engines, or something.
Sooo... Murder-mystery. Never written it before, but it's got a lot of potential, and it will probably keep me from writing silly romance on the side (which I'm not good at, which is why I need to keep away from it).
So, what am I writing for NaNo this year?
A steampunk murder-mystery.
Yes, I have been called crazy on more than one occasion. I'm testing out not only a whole new genre, but two new genres for me, and for a book that needs to be at least halfway done in thirty days. It's a bit like standing on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing full armour, shouting "All gods are bastards!" at the top of your lungs (thank you, Terry Pratchett, for that description. It's wonderful). By November 4th, I've no doubt my head will be exploding with the sheer frustration of it all.
What follows here is part ramble, part character-sketching and part world-building, which is why it goes under the cut - I wouldn't want to clutter up your friends-lists....
The project is tentatively called The Quick And The Dead (I nicked the title from a C2-community at ff.net, which has nothing to do with the story at all, but still). At first, it was going to be timetravel and mysterious monks and the whole shebang, but then I sort of lost interest in some of the characters, so I abandoned the time-travel ambitions.
Now, I've got a pair of city-guards acting as detectives - one of them's a woman, but I suppose I can work around that. I've been thinking about having some border-disputes for the country they live in, which means press-ganging the men into military service. As a result, there's a lack of men to take the jobs normally reserved for them, and so the women have to do them instead. Yes, city-guard is a bit of a stretch, but since steampunk is normally based on Victorian England, I believe I can take the feminist actions of that era and just push them a little further; it was during the Victorian age that women finally got some legal rights as regards marriage and divorce, after all. This is fiction, after all, so I'm taking a few liberties - I suppose the genre would better be described as non-magic fantasy/steampunk than anything else.
But back on original topic - the detectives. Exhibit A; Sceizka Bole, token female city-guard. Exhibit B: Bernard [Last name pending], Sciezka's childhood friend and her ranking superior. Not outstanding stars in any shape or way, but not bad at their job. 'Capable' is possibly the best word to describe them. The only reason to why they get to investigate the murder at all is because Bernard's been on a good-behaviour streak and the murder-victim isn't considered all that politcally important.
Terrence Whitlow - the murder-victim - did have his big-name financial backers, but the loudmouth that he was went by mostly ignored by anyone with any real political power. At least, that's what the Chief-of-Guards assumes when he puts the nondescript duo on the job. That Mr Whitlow did indeed cause quite the stir among the Great Guild Council is something that has been kept under wraps by said council, if only in the interest of keeping Whitlow from causing stirs elsewhere.
The stir Whitlow caused was this; he was violently against any foreign trade beyond the strictly necessary. He believed that this would hamper the economic standing of local businessmen - which, in and of itself, is not something he should be blamed for - and that these local businessmen should instead be favoured. What really put him on the map as a troublemaker was the way he went about his rethoric, though.
Now, merely stating his beliefs outright would be too simple for a man like Terrence Whitlow. So he didn't. Instead, he started spreading rumours about the foreign traders - nasty, underhanded rumours; precisely the kind that people would believe, which were neither too unbelieveable nor too meek - and began to loudly and publicly make various outrageous claims against them. Subtle racism, xenophobic letters-to-the-editor in the city's most reputable newspapers, trying to discredit them for taking jobs from locals - the whole deal and bells and bunting too.
Only he never counted on Alhaji Jheng. As one of the bigger names involved in the recently founded Foreign Traders' Guild, Jheng is every inch the mysterious millionaire, and there is little - lately - that he has not had his hand in. Jheng has something that most politicians would kill to have; a way of making people trust him, even when he's promising them gold and green woods with his mouth and handing them coal and old bones with his hands. He could be thrown in jail in the morning, and walk out of there by noon, having convinced the jailer to unlock his shackles and with all the bail-money in his pocket.
If you threw him in a cesspool, he would come up with his pockets full of gold. It's little wonder that he is as hated as he is loved. (Jealousy is an ugly, ugly thing)
To aid his smoke-and-mirror cause - (no one's quite sure what he's after, that one, except perhaps more money and influence) - he has a tiger in a human body; Shaheendrak (last name unknown). No one is quite sure what his background is, though it is rumoured that he may, at some point, have killed and eaten his family, if only for the sheer fun of it. Where Alhaji Jheng is the perfect gentleman, exotic and civilized at the same time in his white suits and top-hats and with his canes and his mysterious-but-good manners, Shaheen is is exact opposite.
Let's just say that it's thanks to Shaheendrak that the council is discussing the passing of a law that forbids men and women to carry weapons of "unreasonable size".
Alhaji Jheng is - due to Whitlow's loudly proclaimed loyalties - of course one of the prime suspects for the murder, but Sciezka and Bernard are both reluctant to approach him. Besides, all the circumstancial evidence could very well be interpreted otherwise. And so they do.
Which leads them to Jeremiah Brunel, spokesman and unproclaimed "king" of the Railway League. A loud, outspoken and quite jolly man, no one really takes him seriously. However, with the combined weight of the Railway League and the Brunel name (made famous by his brother, for various valours during a recent war) behind him, he is a formidable opponent and no mistake. It goes a long way towards explaining Whitlow's foolishness that he dared to oppose Jeremiah Brunel.
However, all evidence may well mean that Brunel either directly killed Whitlow, or arranged to have him taken care of. It's not unknown in the quickly-shifting world of guild politics to have rivalling guild-members put out of the running, though killing a loudmouthed gold-trader might well be considered a first. Especially when he hasn't done much but be loudmouthed. (For all his apparent jolliness, Jeremiah Brunel is nothing if not loyal to his guild and the people he considers friends, and so Whitlow's stunts has bothered him.) The Railway League has a lot to lose if Whitlow's loud claims are listened to, though, since most goods that aren't transported by ship go by railway to the inland markets.
On Brunel's side on the matter of Whitlow and on most guild-councils (except, of course, those meetings where they're divided by the river of interest) is Ezekiel Marley. Unlike most of his more-than-slightly-dotty colleagues (it's all that acid they're keeping around the place) the Head of the Alchemist's Guild is almost offensively normal. So normal, in fact, that most people consider him utterly boring. Since Mr Marley is begging for his own story, I'm not letting him have this one, so no details on him. (Details eat my brain until get written down, which would mean I'd have to write all of it.)
No clear ending to this plot yet, but I'm sure I'll come up with something. Not sure who killed Terrence Whitlow either - only I'm pretty sure it isn't Brunel or Alhaji Jheng, so there goes that theory. Meh.
Sheesh - that was one heck of a ramble.... Over 1200 words, according to my word-doc.... Well, see you next time!
Sooo... Murder-mystery. Never written it before, but it's got a lot of potential, and it will probably keep me from writing silly romance on the side (which I'm not good at, which is why I need to keep away from it).
So, what am I writing for NaNo this year?
A steampunk murder-mystery.
Yes, I have been called crazy on more than one occasion. I'm testing out not only a whole new genre, but two new genres for me, and for a book that needs to be at least halfway done in thirty days. It's a bit like standing on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing full armour, shouting "All gods are bastards!" at the top of your lungs (thank you, Terry Pratchett, for that description. It's wonderful). By November 4th, I've no doubt my head will be exploding with the sheer frustration of it all.
What follows here is part ramble, part character-sketching and part world-building, which is why it goes under the cut - I wouldn't want to clutter up your friends-lists....
The project is tentatively called The Quick And The Dead (I nicked the title from a C2-community at ff.net, which has nothing to do with the story at all, but still). At first, it was going to be timetravel and mysterious monks and the whole shebang, but then I sort of lost interest in some of the characters, so I abandoned the time-travel ambitions.
Now, I've got a pair of city-guards acting as detectives - one of them's a woman, but I suppose I can work around that. I've been thinking about having some border-disputes for the country they live in, which means press-ganging the men into military service. As a result, there's a lack of men to take the jobs normally reserved for them, and so the women have to do them instead. Yes, city-guard is a bit of a stretch, but since steampunk is normally based on Victorian England, I believe I can take the feminist actions of that era and just push them a little further; it was during the Victorian age that women finally got some legal rights as regards marriage and divorce, after all. This is fiction, after all, so I'm taking a few liberties - I suppose the genre would better be described as non-magic fantasy/steampunk than anything else.
But back on original topic - the detectives. Exhibit A; Sceizka Bole, token female city-guard. Exhibit B: Bernard [Last name pending], Sciezka's childhood friend and her ranking superior. Not outstanding stars in any shape or way, but not bad at their job. 'Capable' is possibly the best word to describe them. The only reason to why they get to investigate the murder at all is because Bernard's been on a good-behaviour streak and the murder-victim isn't considered all that politcally important.
Terrence Whitlow - the murder-victim - did have his big-name financial backers, but the loudmouth that he was went by mostly ignored by anyone with any real political power. At least, that's what the Chief-of-Guards assumes when he puts the nondescript duo on the job. That Mr Whitlow did indeed cause quite the stir among the Great Guild Council is something that has been kept under wraps by said council, if only in the interest of keeping Whitlow from causing stirs elsewhere.
The stir Whitlow caused was this; he was violently against any foreign trade beyond the strictly necessary. He believed that this would hamper the economic standing of local businessmen - which, in and of itself, is not something he should be blamed for - and that these local businessmen should instead be favoured. What really put him on the map as a troublemaker was the way he went about his rethoric, though.
Now, merely stating his beliefs outright would be too simple for a man like Terrence Whitlow. So he didn't. Instead, he started spreading rumours about the foreign traders - nasty, underhanded rumours; precisely the kind that people would believe, which were neither too unbelieveable nor too meek - and began to loudly and publicly make various outrageous claims against them. Subtle racism, xenophobic letters-to-the-editor in the city's most reputable newspapers, trying to discredit them for taking jobs from locals - the whole deal and bells and bunting too.
Only he never counted on Alhaji Jheng. As one of the bigger names involved in the recently founded Foreign Traders' Guild, Jheng is every inch the mysterious millionaire, and there is little - lately - that he has not had his hand in. Jheng has something that most politicians would kill to have; a way of making people trust him, even when he's promising them gold and green woods with his mouth and handing them coal and old bones with his hands. He could be thrown in jail in the morning, and walk out of there by noon, having convinced the jailer to unlock his shackles and with all the bail-money in his pocket.
If you threw him in a cesspool, he would come up with his pockets full of gold. It's little wonder that he is as hated as he is loved. (Jealousy is an ugly, ugly thing)
To aid his smoke-and-mirror cause - (no one's quite sure what he's after, that one, except perhaps more money and influence) - he has a tiger in a human body; Shaheendrak (last name unknown). No one is quite sure what his background is, though it is rumoured that he may, at some point, have killed and eaten his family, if only for the sheer fun of it. Where Alhaji Jheng is the perfect gentleman, exotic and civilized at the same time in his white suits and top-hats and with his canes and his mysterious-but-good manners, Shaheen is is exact opposite.
Let's just say that it's thanks to Shaheendrak that the council is discussing the passing of a law that forbids men and women to carry weapons of "unreasonable size".
Alhaji Jheng is - due to Whitlow's loudly proclaimed loyalties - of course one of the prime suspects for the murder, but Sciezka and Bernard are both reluctant to approach him. Besides, all the circumstancial evidence could very well be interpreted otherwise. And so they do.
Which leads them to Jeremiah Brunel, spokesman and unproclaimed "king" of the Railway League. A loud, outspoken and quite jolly man, no one really takes him seriously. However, with the combined weight of the Railway League and the Brunel name (made famous by his brother, for various valours during a recent war) behind him, he is a formidable opponent and no mistake. It goes a long way towards explaining Whitlow's foolishness that he dared to oppose Jeremiah Brunel.
However, all evidence may well mean that Brunel either directly killed Whitlow, or arranged to have him taken care of. It's not unknown in the quickly-shifting world of guild politics to have rivalling guild-members put out of the running, though killing a loudmouthed gold-trader might well be considered a first. Especially when he hasn't done much but be loudmouthed. (For all his apparent jolliness, Jeremiah Brunel is nothing if not loyal to his guild and the people he considers friends, and so Whitlow's stunts has bothered him.) The Railway League has a lot to lose if Whitlow's loud claims are listened to, though, since most goods that aren't transported by ship go by railway to the inland markets.
On Brunel's side on the matter of Whitlow and on most guild-councils (except, of course, those meetings where they're divided by the river of interest) is Ezekiel Marley. Unlike most of his more-than-slightly-dotty colleagues (it's all that acid they're keeping around the place) the Head of the Alchemist's Guild is almost offensively normal. So normal, in fact, that most people consider him utterly boring. Since Mr Marley is begging for his own story, I'm not letting him have this one, so no details on him. (Details eat my brain until get written down, which would mean I'd have to write all of it.)
No clear ending to this plot yet, but I'm sure I'll come up with something. Not sure who killed Terrence Whitlow either - only I'm pretty sure it isn't Brunel or Alhaji Jheng, so there goes that theory. Meh.
Sheesh - that was one heck of a ramble.... Over 1200 words, according to my word-doc.... Well, see you next time!