Tag: science fiction

‘Seeding’ info in stories on the go …

What I’m writing now in Lodestar contains a few events that for better a better reading experience, should’ve had their beginnings seeded into earlier chapters. For example, you will meet Moab, one of the Marl-Family. He was thought lost/dead, never mentioned because that’s the herder/hunter folk’s tradition.

The chapter being wrangled into existence is one of my so-called bridges from section to section. The timeline is complex at this point. I may later post a map.

Snippet 2

Once everybody crossed the channel there was a confab among the Kuri-Family group. Since they were last to cross, their decisions would stay private a while longer. Jenk gave Moss, Kyle and Io his instructions, to explore the road west, mark the water-crossing somehow, and rest in the new grazing grounds. Discover its seasons. He gave more than half the herd into their care, consisting of most of the brood animals, young females and a few sires. Plus they had their own riding camels and stringers, of course.

“A few herdies wouldn’t go amiss,” Kyle said.

“Suggestions?” Jenk said tersely. …

“Lewit and Jeldie? Not her fault she’s a Jovat. Not his fault he’s a Lomack. Merin and Kier? Same again,” Kyle said.

“Marl-Fa might want to come totally,” Moss said. “What’s against asking him? I’m young for chiefing, anyone wanting to grab the chance will say. And then? We have exactly three defenders?”

“The Marl-Family and all their camels?” Jenk said. “We don’t know how much grazing there will be. But I hear you.”

“Jenk,” Kuri-Chief said. “Camp with them this side of the Red Channel. The tidal flats, sea-lettuce grazing will last a day or two. One or the other of the young men and Ivy can cross the water, see the lay of the land. The grazing, campsite near any freshwater supply. Once they return, you rejoin us.” She gestured at Kes and herself. “We’ll speak with Marl, Kier and Merin, when we arrive at the Party Camp.”

Kuri-Chief at the head of the column, and Kestrel at the rear, swung into east with the remaining third of their herd. Nearly all of the remaining animals were stringers and trained riding camels, carrying the Kuri-Family’s tent, a couple of annexes and also all the numbers fostering children. With a few additional animals destined for slaughter, they were a lean and mean herd.

About Lodestar

About Lodestar Part IV
Lodestar, up to this point, was written from more or less one viewpoint per part.
This fourth installment is in effect a series of short installments (novellas, probably) where some of the main minor characters are sidelined and others drawn forward. One or two important characters are only just now being introduced.

The various people whom I asked to critique the series fifteen years ago, advised against introducing important new characters at this late stage. I thought it through at the time, but quailed at the work involved in the restructuring. Put The Lodestar series aside. Years passed while I worked on a new series. Different, I thought.

But my ‘unconscious’ a marvelous entity I am only now learning about, was well and truly in charge, and encouraged me to write multiple stories featuring a main character being invaded and controlled by a foreign influence.

I’m laughing now when I read those lines, knowing that I am absolutely ruled by my unconscious, as you are by yours whatever you may believe. Fifteen years ago, I wasn’t writing unknowingly about my own personal unconscious mind, but about an alien, about an invasive computer program, and about the implant.

Without me realizing, which is the part that still amazes me. Until I had three mostly polished novels, ready to be professionally edited. That’s when I realized. At the time I was poor and troubled, and could afford to have only one of them edited professionally. So I decided to forward the most recent work, which was ‘Mongrel’.

Five years ago my life fell apart as long-time readers will know, and after the chemo, when I set about picking up the pieces, I decided I was done with marketing. The stress of dealing with giant corporations was not doing me any good. I decided that life is too short to hanker after the pittance that I would earn for not writing in the mainstream.

That’s not to say I won’t publish them at all. They’d be a lot easier to read as novel lengths than a chapter at the time.

Fast forward to the idea of the ‘story-debt’. It really grabbed me, for after I labored over The Lodestar world for ten years, its characters and their lives stayed with me. It’s like they are real people somewhere out there. I wondered if by paying off my story-debt, by ‘publishing’ them here, on my blog, these characters would then stop haunting me?

t’s a work in progress. Below a snippet …

The Implant, 1
‘I can almost feel the textures of the nutrient jelly I rest in. I’ve imagined them so often it must be that I now feel them. The heat of my skin melts the material near me, making it silky and fluid. It’s firmer further out. A spider webbing of fibrous supports grows among and between my miniaturized cables.

Fresh nutrient mix is added to the bottom of my housing, its floor is gridded and sits on a saucer, the whole is very like the design for a bird-feeder I have somewhere in my memory banks, though the action of the nutrient mix is opposite to that in the bird-feeder.

I don’t like remembering that I don’t have a skin and that I still don’t have a body. It is not my imagination that I feel a frizzle of anger pass along my synapses. If I’d had a body to use, I would’ve been able to express myself more satisfactorily. Where is that minx Ahni? The speaker fitting is clogged and I cannot call out. I’m not happy with the level of carelessness in this place. Who is on duty? I shouldn’t have to worry about utilities. That was always the work of the host.’