Category Archives: Excerpts From Work In Progress

Excerpt from a work in progress: “Gimmie that Old Swamp Music”

Opening to that space gator story I started a few months ago …

The recruiters say you can’t know everything you’ll ever need to know when you’re settling a new planet. You get the basic training but once they ship you off-world you’re expected to figure out for yourself what skills you need, and then load them. The rock you land on should have breathable air and at least a little water and a little landmass, because that’s in your contract, though the best planets have perfect air and a 60/40 balance of water to earth. I’ve never worked one of those but I hear they’re out there. We come from a place with deep oceans and tall mountains and every kind of biome you could imagine, or so I’m told. That’s why we grow up with this idea that we can land anywhere and make a home of it. I thought that too, before I found myself on a tiny swamp planet 6 months out from the Central Ring.

I’d never been so far from home before. This was my third landfall, the first two being closer and easier to handle. The Sheffield-Bailey Corporation does that on purpose. They don’t want you to die the first time because financially you’d be a loss. Well, not you, because there are always more people, that’s the problem forcing us to keep finding new planets in the first place. But the training is an investment in you, and then there’s the ship and the supplies and your datajack surgery, which if you don’t have already have one you have to get. That’s in your contract too. I signed up the first time just to get that jack put in, but it ended up being kind of an adventure to set down on that ice moon and build a base. I enjoyed it. When the paycheck ran out I called up my recruiter and signed on for another tour. That one was a little harder because the ship set us down on what turned out to be a fault line, and the first two months we had to endure about a hundred tiny earthquakes, trembling at random intervals all throughout the day and night. But when the data packets finally came in and we got them loaded into our heads, we were able to find a more stable area of land. I picked up metal forging on that trip too, and Barney got mining and ore processing, so we could make stabilizing rods to run deep into the earth. Those kept the buildings from getting shook apart, and I think that’s why they asked me to take another contract right away.

“We’re coming in for a landing, friends,” Mary’s voice purred over the intercom. I’d already felt the thrusters kicking on to slow our descent but it’s always nice to know when the landing capsule’s functioning correctly. “We’re getting new data in from the sensors now so if you’d like to join me in the command center, you can take a look at our new home.” That got me out of bed in a hurry.

What do you think?

I Make Note (of things)

This is my first attempt to use the WordPress iPhone app to write an entry, so if there are terrible errors, I apologize. I’ll get them repaired when I get home. I am, at the moment, sitting outside of a Staples, using their free wifi, while I wait for my car to be done a the dealer (regular maintenance). I am sitting here making notes about writing thoughts I’ve had over the last few days when it occurred to me that I do that. I make notes. It’s part of how I get a handle on all the ideas which flow through my head on their way to being stories, or lost memories.

One of the best habits I ever got into was writing things down. It is, after all, the “writing” that makes us writers. I used to carry around a notebook and a pen wherever I went – the advent of technology means I carry paper less and have started to rely on my phone/laptop more, but the idea’s the same. Have a thought, write it down.

For example, yesterday I was driving in my car, listening to music. Some of my best work comes out of driving and thinking; my latest story sale was roughed out in my head on the long drive back from Readercon in September. Yesterday I was listening to Mumford & Sons sing about being on your knees and how the water’s rising and you need to hold on and it occurred to me: that’s a great moment to begin a story. But what story? Who’d be trapped somewhere with rising water, waiting to be saved? I was driving past a coal refinery and I saw a huge pile of black rock and thought, oh, a miner. Not a group of them, just one. Waiting. Holding on. Alone.

This miner would have to have a way to communicate with the outside world or we’d never know his story, so he has a two-way radio, which makes him modern. He’s scared, and shouldn’t have been there in the first place, so he must be a young guy, probably ran from another part of the mine when the walls caved in, and his older co-worker must not have made it. We’ll call him Charlie, the old guy, and the young guy is Jim. Jim got a girl pregnant just after high school, which is how he ended up taking such a dangerous job when he’s so young. 19 sounds like a good age for Jim, which means his young wife already had the baby. We’ll call the child Ruth, or Ruthie, after Jim’s wife’s grandmother. The wife needs a name too, so we’ll call her Tammy, because that sounds like the sort of name that goes with an 18-year old mother in Pennsylvania, waiting long hours in her sparsely furnished apt for her husband to come home. The kind of girl who is exhausted after a day of crying baby and no help and who won’t get any when Jim’s home because he has to drive more than hour to get to the mine, each way, and since he works a long shift on top of the commute (because they need the overtime pay), when he gets home he just wants a hot shower and his share of the hot dog casserole and to be left alone so he can sleep.

I think they fight a lot, don’t you?

So Jim’s alone in the rising water and the mine controller, the guy in the nice dry office on the other end of the radio, is telling him to hold on. Hold on, Jim, help is coming. But of course there wasn’t supposed to be any water there, and the diggers will never reach Jim in time, and he’s a young guy but he isn’t stupid so… he knows. The controller, let’s call him Rick, is college educated, wears a tie, and has never had a mine accident before. He doesn’t want the press, or the inevitable inquiry, or the insurance payout to the families of he dead. He wanted efficiency and progress and a nice bonus at Christmas. But he’s stuck in this situation now and he’s trying his best to keep Jim alive. So he’s not a bad guy. Not really.

But the water’s rising.

Tammy has been told about the accident and she’s scrambled to get their things together and get Ruthie into the car but she won’t make it in time. She knows. They all know, the ones who grow up in this part of PA. Miners die. Her daddy wasn’t a miner but her grandfather was and she heard stories when she was a kid but she never thought (was always worried) that it would happen to Jim. The baby was supposed to be her salvation, a guaranteed marriage and a man to take care of her, not so much work and now the death of her husband. She’s had to get a neighbor to drive her because she can’t drive while she’s so busy thinking about how she’s a widow at 18.

Rick’s saying all he right things and the diggers know where Jim is but the ground’s unstable and the water’s up to his neck and all Jim can think now is that he doesn’t want to die alone. Even dying with old Charlie would have been OK, he tells Rick, but Charlie’s dead, under the water. Charlie tripped and got his legs trapped under falling rock and drowned while Jim watched helplessly. Rick tells him he’s not alone, he’s never alone.

Maybe he isn’t.

We can’t let Jim die alone. He will die, we’ve seen to that, we can’t write a way out of this for him without the story getting implausible and that’s the death of stories. No way out, Jim’s a goner. But who can be with him? Who can hold his hand? I think it’s Charlie. And Henry and Billy and Robert James (the third) – all the others who died in this mine, died knowing it was coming, that this mine would open its maw for only so long and in exchange for the coal it needed sacrifices. Little morsels to gobble up. Charlie will explain this to Jim, and Henry will comfort him, and Robert will call him a “brother” and so as the water covers his mouth and his nose Jim will feel their hands on him and their arms around him and he will not die alone.

And Rick will hear it all, because someone has to.

And I know the story now too, because yesterday I heard a song, thought my thoughts, and made a note of it.

Excerpt – Something Weirder Than Usual

Presented without explanation. Comments welcome.

Up late on Friday night, empty plate on my desk just a memory of dinner, I feel a little pain across my temples, starting a migraine that is what I get for quitting caffeine today. I know that the pain will be worse later, will sneak back into my head over the next few days until I can get adjusted to not having the drug in my system. It’s an addiction, all us Americans know it, the withdrawal isn’t pretty. I know because I’ve tried before, and never beaten it. The need for it sits on top of my sinuses and pushes down on my brain until I give in. I suppose I could just take aspirin but (honestly) I got out of the habit of taking painkillers years ago, so much so that now I don’t think of it. Not even when it hurts so bad I’m asking someone to bring me hot cloths for my head. I’d rather sit through the pain than take a pill to cure it. Which says something about me that I’m not sure I’m ready to interpret yet.

Remind me to write an angry letter to the surgeon general later. Something about the danger of caffeine addiction, blah, blah, blah, and how he owes me for a bottle of Advil.

I’m waiting up for something to distract me from my thoughts. I’d take the headache with a smile, if it would drive away nasty images. Dreams that start before I’m even asleep. I’d take being forced into dark sunglasses and heavy curtains to keep out the light, no loud noises and popping aspirin with my daily vitamins.

No such trade, though.

Hummingbirds will come into my room tonight to drink the juice from my eyes. One hummingbird, maybe, with shimmery green wings, touch of pink across its belly. It will flitter up to me in my sleep (twitter, twitter, twittering it’s wings). It will mistake my eyes behind their lids for a flower full of nectar, and in it’s confusion it will thrust its beak into my eye.

I see it in my head already. When I go into my bedroom and lie under the covers I will close my eyes in the dark and then I will see the hummingbird. If I see it too clearly it will get me for sure.

Listen to the rustling, twittering wings

I know it is my imagination. Sounds rational, that. There is a good chance that if I can find a way to keep myself busy the image will fade away before I am so tired that I must sleep. If that happens I’ll be safe. If not, I will dream of the bird with the needle sharp beak.

I wonder if there is a sleeping hummingbird out there somewhere, dreaming of me?

Lurking on the Internet, I came across an ad for “Turkish Angora Kittens”. The ad claims to have both sexes and many colors/patterns available. I don’t need another kitten but briefly consider the possibilities of angora cats – could they be shaved like bunnies to knit from their hair? Not that I would take the time to spin their hair, my spinning wheel (a steal at less than forty dollars) sits in the corner and I’ve never learned to use it. I do knit though. I’ve finished three hats so far, for children, gifts for different nephews in the family.

I think it’s less than a month since I learned to knit. It matters only to me as a comparison to other knitters I know. Competitive, me? Sitting on the couch I feel at least I should be productive, doing something instead of watching TV like a drone. Surfing the net is neither “something” nor “productive”. Knitting is both, an end result of handmade gifts for loved ones. Knitting justifies sitting on the couch. Makes it OK that I ask for cold soda over ice, or ask others to put in a DVD since I am in the middle of a line and don’t want to put it down. Seems like a trick sometimes but no one else has noticed it. I’d feel bad about it if I weren’t planning to knit for them as well.

I notice the clock is telling some lie about it being almost dawn. Instead of arguing I pretend I believe the clock, log off computer and stumble off to bed (remembering to grab the quilt from couch as I walk past). Falling into bed is only the first step, the next and best part is crawling under warm covers.

I am almost asleep before I realize that I no longer hear bird wings fluttering. Smiling, I drift into darkness.

Excerpt from a #WIP, “Monsters, Monsters, Everywhere”

I am trying to be braver about my writing. I am trying to put it out into the world more, let more people see it, encourage feedback, and in a way, be held accountable for actually finishing it. This bit is from one of the stories I’m currently writing on:

A waiter brought out another pitcher of fruit-filled water with real ice cubes, not the synth cubes that glowed faintly blue while staying permanently cold. They always tasted of plastic to me. I didn’t argue at the extravagance; getting fed properly was one of the few perks of this job.

“Between towns I live on protein bars and what I find on the road,” I said, smiling. “Thank you for this meal.” Paco grinned, suddenly looking younger than I’d assumed.

“I was not sure you would eat this meat,” he said. “The animals, they have changed so much since I was a child.” He glanced down at the mostly-cleared plate of scorpion gigantesco cooked in goat’s butter and cilantro. It tasted a bit like shellfish if you could forget the sound of their feet chittering across rocks or the wet ripping noise of their massive claws tearing through a cow. I’d eaten mine with warm tortilla.

“Delicious, all of it. I am too full.” Laughter from the street, and we all turned to look at a group of small children running past. A bright pink dress caught my eye.

“They can only play together now,” Paco said with a sigh as we turned back to face each other. “Never alone, and even when they stay together, at night we count and some are missing. When will you hunt the beast?”

Thoughts?

Six Sunday – A bit of the Work in Progress

Once a week, Six Sunday gathers up the links that its participating writers submit and at 9 am EST each Sunday, will put them all together in one place. To be involved, all you have to do is post six sentences from a piece of your writing, and then add the link their site during the weekly post they set up for you to do so. In exchange, you get to read the bits and pieces of other people’s writing, and you get a reminder to show off a little portion of your writing too. Letting other people read your work is a great way to get over being afraid of letting other people read your work.

This bit is from the novel that I am currently writing. It hasn’t been read by anyone else, hasn’t been edited, and may not be in its final form, but it’s a good bit, and I like it:

The other men in the department were polite enough not to make fun of the situation and Joe was polite enough not to complain about it, so after a few months the officers of the 32nd Precinct had come to an unspoken agreement about Officer Joe. He wasn’t sure, yet, what they had decided about him, but in the meantime they seemed content to let him do his job, and he tried not to worry too much about the future.

Now the cruiser sped toward the Memorial Hospital, the dome light on the roof spinning furiously as rays of blue light danced over the buildings they passed. This time of night, there were few cars on the road, so his Sergeant was making good time, speeding through the streets toward a Crime.

“When we get there,” Hannegan yelled over the whining siren, “I want you to stay behind me and keep your hand on your gun, but don’t unbuckle your holster. I don’t want anyone mistaking you for a Bad Guy in the dark.”