An excerpt from an upcoming ebook with Jay Lake, and progress on this and that
Since last week, most of my progress has been on the translation. I have no new words to report, but I did get "An Airship for Elise" finished in time to submit to "Women Destroy Science Fiction" and I'm very happy about that. I also had the girls a couple of times in the last few days, and that eats into writing time a lot. But it's too fun to miss. Lately, Mira has been getting into learning how to write letters. Here's a work we produced together yesterday:
I wrote the "Oma" on the top line in the middle, and the "Mama" on the bottom line, the rest is our newly minted four-year-old. (Don't ask me what the third letter on the middle line is -- sometimes she just makes them up.)
Anyway, on to my own progress rather than that of my granddaughter. After "An Airship for Elise" was finished and sent off, I returned to the project I mentioned a while back with my writing buddy Jay Lake, who has terminal cancer. No one knows how much more time there will be to finish it so that he'll get a chance to see it published. So I hope my readers who want more of A Wasted Land will forgive me for not returning to that project just yet.
The book I'm putting together now consists of a short story and a novella that Jay and I wrote several years ago, both about first contact gone horrendously wrong. Together, they come to about 30,000 words, a good length for an ebook, I think. Several generations have passed between the two, but thematically they are both concerned with almost the same thing, first contact and second contact on one planet, and what it did to that planet's culture, so I think it will work. I'm considering calling the whole "Recontact" but I'm open to suggestions.
No intricate math today; I'm just giving you 19 sentences for the 19th of the month from the beginning of the story:
Sharan plunged through the woods with the blind panic of the murderously pursued. The trees on this world were both more brittle and spongier than she was used to, and she left a clear trail of bent branches and shattered twigs.
If Arnoldson took up the hunt, it wouldn't matter. He could track her with everything from sniffers to orbital reconnaissance. The bastard had all the power of the starship Hesperides and her bird-mad AI at his disposal.
Right now it was the locals here on the planet of Bonificium with their bronze-bladed spears and square shields who wanted her blood. She'd be just as dead from their sticks and stones as she would be from an orbital burn, but at least she had a better chance of escaping them.
She crested a low rise at a dead run only to lose her footing. The ground slipped away from her like a steep bank on a winter lake back home, and she was down. Mud? It was the dry season. Sharan grabbed for traction only to have a sandaled foot slam down painfully on her fingers.
A woman with deep brown eyes and miserably ragged hair stood over her, wielding a long crude knife. Sharan's captor laid a finger across her lips and faded backward into the leaves and shadows at the side of the trail.
The others were too damned close behind. She could hear the men shouting as they ran. Sharan scrabbled again for purchase in the muddy trough where she'd fallen, only to smack herself hard behind the ear on a rock.
There was nothing for it but to lay tight and cover her head with her hands.
WIPpet Wednesday is the brain child of K. L. Schwengel. If you’d like to participate, post an excerpt from your WIP on your blog, something that relates to the date in some way. Then add your link here -- where you can also read the other excerpts. :)
Reblogged from here.
I wrote the "Oma" on the top line in the middle, and the "Mama" on the bottom line, the rest is our newly minted four-year-old. (Don't ask me what the third letter on the middle line is -- sometimes she just makes them up.)
Anyway, on to my own progress rather than that of my granddaughter. After "An Airship for Elise" was finished and sent off, I returned to the project I mentioned a while back with my writing buddy Jay Lake, who has terminal cancer. No one knows how much more time there will be to finish it so that he'll get a chance to see it published. So I hope my readers who want more of A Wasted Land will forgive me for not returning to that project just yet.
The book I'm putting together now consists of a short story and a novella that Jay and I wrote several years ago, both about first contact gone horrendously wrong. Together, they come to about 30,000 words, a good length for an ebook, I think. Several generations have passed between the two, but thematically they are both concerned with almost the same thing, first contact and second contact on one planet, and what it did to that planet's culture, so I think it will work. I'm considering calling the whole "Recontact" but I'm open to suggestions.
No intricate math today; I'm just giving you 19 sentences for the 19th of the month from the beginning of the story:
Sharan plunged through the woods with the blind panic of the murderously pursued. The trees on this world were both more brittle and spongier than she was used to, and she left a clear trail of bent branches and shattered twigs.
If Arnoldson took up the hunt, it wouldn't matter. He could track her with everything from sniffers to orbital reconnaissance. The bastard had all the power of the starship Hesperides and her bird-mad AI at his disposal.
Right now it was the locals here on the planet of Bonificium with their bronze-bladed spears and square shields who wanted her blood. She'd be just as dead from their sticks and stones as she would be from an orbital burn, but at least she had a better chance of escaping them.
She crested a low rise at a dead run only to lose her footing. The ground slipped away from her like a steep bank on a winter lake back home, and she was down. Mud? It was the dry season. Sharan grabbed for traction only to have a sandaled foot slam down painfully on her fingers.
A woman with deep brown eyes and miserably ragged hair stood over her, wielding a long crude knife. Sharan's captor laid a finger across her lips and faded backward into the leaves and shadows at the side of the trail.
The others were too damned close behind. She could hear the men shouting as they ran. Sharan scrabbled again for purchase in the muddy trough where she'd fallen, only to smack herself hard behind the ear on a rock.
There was nothing for it but to lay tight and cover her head with her hands.
WIPpet Wednesday is the brain child of K. L. Schwengel. If you’d like to participate, post an excerpt from your WIP on your blog, something that relates to the date in some way. Then add your link here -- where you can also read the other excerpts. :)
Reblogged from here.