Come on Dude! Your Facing the Wrong Way Again.

Well wonderful followers, it has been a long and eventful day.  I decided to treat myself by saying heck to anything else and getting a little writing in.  It isn’t much but I started the next section with Jack walking down the ring of Gamma station looking for the Strange Inquisitors berth.

I am taking a different approach to the station design by having the outer surface of the ring being oriented as the floor to people inside.  Thus, instead of connecting by the nose of the space ship, they connect by a airlock on the top side of the ship.  This way everything is raised and lowered through lift locks that attach to the craft for unloading.  One benefit is that the occupants of the station and the connected ships share the same artificial gravity orientation.

The docking maneuvers are probably not practical but its my world you know.  It at least makes my station different then a lot of the other science fiction out there.  Anyway, he is not traveling light since he has gone ahead and purchased a full body atmosphere suit designed for harsh environments, which robotically follows him around the station along with his other suit cases.  Very shortly he shall meet his first member of the crew, whom is smart, experienced, and a wiseass.  The best kind.

Move Along … Move Along

Well wonderful followers, it is official, part one of Mist and Memories is in the can.  After searching back through this blog for the name I gave the ship Jack would go to Erindi II on, I used it for the title of the next section.  Thus, Strange Inquisitor leads off the next exciting part of Mist and Memories.  Hey, a ship full of geeky eggheads and their minders, what could go wrong?

Foggy Planet Breakdown

Hello wonderful followers, cue the blue grass music.  I have been driving an awful lot so my drive, ha, ha …, has been very low but today was a pretty good, if not early, day.  On the way home I was thinking about sharing things I like with others that may like them too, which got me to thinking of great movies, anime series, and failed productions.

Follow me on this because my mind has been wandering a lot lately.  First off, I wanted to share a clip with friends from the movie Final Fantasy:  The Spirits Within.  This is amazing movie that got panned by fans and critics alike.  I know the fans hated it because it had, as far as I know, no connection to the video game series.  Not sure what the critics expected but they are so wrong.  This is a favorite movie of mine because the story is sad and happy and amazing.  The aliens were compelling and the story tight with a lot of great reveals.  Watch it.

The anime series is Wolf and Spice, which is a great one for couples to watch because of the playful interaction between the leads, a traveling trader and a wolf goddess.  I shit you not.  She turns up as a young naked female with a bushy tail.  The best parts are when she is pretending not to hear what the trader says as she hides under the covers but her bushy tail sticks out and is wagging away.  Oh, did I mention she gets drunk a lot.

Finally, I wanted to share the failed Star Trek Fan Film Axanar because it would have been great from all the clips I have seen on youtube.  It really was better than any of the Next Generation films and is why I think they axed it.  The smarter thing, in my opinion, would have been to embrace it and back it.  Seriously, go right now and check it out.

So, all of this leads me to what I am doing.  Above is all the things that feed into my soul to become the output you see here and can buy in the form of Mystics and Misfits on Amazon.  Movies, books, videogames, and music all build stories and scenes that get deconstructed and rebuilt in my mind constantly.  So today’s build is thoughts on the title for my sci/fi horror story.  As I said before, I had started with Lost Contact as more of a place holder; it really didn’t do anything for me.  Then I thought of calling it Mist and Memories but the “and” seems clunky to me and the potential for mayhem feels week.  On the drive home I hit upon a few more and wanted to see what you think.  They are:

Mist Memory

Mist Memories

and, Memories in the Mist.

The last is a play on Gorillas in the Mist, which is a movie based, I think, off a book of the same name.  Please let me know what you think and explain what each title evokes for you.  Remember, the mist will be tiny nano-cyborgs that will get inside you and tear you apart from the inside.  Pleasant dreams.

Anyway, I am going to end here so that I can finally finish the first section of whatever we call this story,

Rrrrr … She be a Mighty Fine Ship When She Done.

Hello wonderful followers, today I laid down the keel of my next short story collection called “Vapor Visions”.  The first story in was “A Word in the Hand” which is about some interesting aspects of some of our up and coming technologies.  The title is a play on the old saying “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” and has double meaning within the context of the story.

The second story involves the betrayal of a demon slayer, possibly the last man standing between the world and death.  It is titled “A darkness in Modena”.  Finally, I wanted to share with you the font I chose for the title page.  I was very happy with this choice because it reminds me of some of the classic titles I have read.  Hope you enjoy it too.

 

Black Ocean of Infinite Night

The blackness is complete and the water so very cold.  You are disoriented, having no sense of which way to swim for the surface, to air and life.  Your lungs are just starting to burn with the instinctual need to replenish the air you need to survive.  Fear worms its way into the back of your brain, sending adrenaline coursing through your blood stream which forces a quick decision to swim in a direction.  You force all your doubts down to the pit of your stomach and swim frantically in the direction you have chosen.

Time passes quickly and slowly for you.  Quickly because the pressure to take a renewing breath mounts rapidly.  Slowly because the frantic thrusts of your arms and legs make little progress to the surface, to life.  Your lungs are now screaming, your heart pounding, and your brain fogging.  Real fear slams like a wrecking ball through your thoughts as the need to breathe becomes unbearable followed by despair as no part of you breaks the surface.  Finally nature forces you to open your mouth forcing water in where air should only go.  You spasm, choke as terror unlike nothing you have encountered before overwhelms your every thought.  No hope. No salvation.  No second chance.

You die miserably and alone all because you could not understand one simple concept that the earth has known forever.  There is no other source of open oxygen known within the solar system for man to breathe.  There is not even the guarantee of another planet with a breathable atmosphere around the nearest star that, given our current technology, would take us centuries to reach.  I could hold my breath for a minute at best, how about you, can you hold out for centuries.

This is why the earth recycles everything.  There is absolutely no guarantee of ever getting replacements.  We are essentially living on a pebble in an air bubble drifting in an ocean trillions upon trillions of miles deep.  The next closest place to hopefully find another bubble shrouded pebble is centuries away for a minute fraction of our population, if we could ever stop fighting long enough to actually make the attempt, let alone saving all human, plant, and animal life.  So you go ahead and vote for your hate, greed, and waste.  Vote to continue destroying what is, to our current knowledge, the only planet to harbor a breathable atmosphere in the depths of the deepest ocean God has ever created.  After you have taken in the last lungful of air, just remember, you did this to yourself.  Short sighted thinking has its place but it cannot be the only way of thinking for someone that wants to live a long life.

Red Flags Going off in My Mind

Well wonderful followers, I have had a pretty lousy weekend.  I got pretty much nothing I needed or wanted to do done.  So as a last resort, I decided to at push a little ahead with “Mist and Memories” and at least post something here.  I am almost done with the first third of the story that introduces Jack Carson and the situation he finds himself in.  What I added today was an important piece of information about the planet Erindi II that he will soon be visiting.  It goes as follows:

Fifteen minutes of searching brought Jack to an appendix marked Concerns to be Addressed on site with a list of five anomalies discovered in the probe data.  They were listed numerically.

1. Unnatural shallowness of desirable metals and minerals comprising the focus of claim.
2. Unnatural distribution of desirable metals and minerals comprising the focus of the claim.
3. Unusual black mist or fog in atmosphere of Erindi II that shows life readings but seem to consist of a high ratio of metal to biological components.
4. Unusual infrared emissions from black mist.
5. Strange dislocation of planetary rock samples age to the expected age calculated from plant life samples.

Jack did not know what to make of this information.  It bothered him that there were unknown factors with respect to his task but it took some comfort that the issues did not seem to hinder Agron in moving forward with their claim.  Apparently the scientists were interested in this issues more on an academic level than a threat basis.

I hope you are much more concerned about these issues than our buddy Jack is because, as I foreshadowed at the beginning of the story, things do not turn out very well for him.

 

 

Medic, Medic, Hands Down with Severe Cramps!

Well, they are off.  I sent ten clones of my adorable baby book off to the lucky winners of the Librarything.com member giveaway I had.  Hopefully I taught them well and that they all find themselves in loving homes.  Damn kids are a lot of work.  If anyone saw me hunt and pecking at the keyboard of my computer, they would wonder at how I was ever able to type in a sentence, let alone, an entire collection of stories.  Patience, lots and lots of patience.  Anyway, the little darlings are off into the wild.  Hopefully, they will grow roots and create a trees to help me reach my dreams.  Thank you wonderful followers for being here on this journey.

Step Right up, $1 Gives you Three Chances to Win!

Hello wonderful followers. Well, my first member giveaway is officially over at Librarything.com. Eventually I had a total of 15 applications for 10 copies which made me happy for the interest. There was a definite increase in interest when I was able to straighten out the cover issue. I am hoping to have copies into the winners hands by tonight.

Looking ahead, although work has been taking up a lot of my time, I am of a mind to work on making use of KDP’s print on demand program to give customers the option of getting a physical copy. It would be nice to have one for my library. Mostly the task is to refomat the files with margins setup to accommodate the pront process. Finally, I am still working on preparing the new collection “Vapor Visions”.

Is that Appendage Your Latest Upgrade Dude?

Hello wonderful followers.  Yes, I have been thinking I don’t appreciate you guys and gals enough on this journey.  I apologize for that, but I fight against discouragement so hard that I tend to forget that we all do.  Anyway, enough of that.  This is an update on doings in Vapor Visions and Mystics and Misfits.

First off, I am still having trouble getting my cover to work on Amazon but rest assured I am working on the issue.  I am now realizing why the preview app was showing things off kilter.  It is because the cover size was too big.  So this will be worked out soon I hope, especially since I need to have it ready for the Librarything give away which, by the way, ends 9/8/20.  So submit your request soon.  Also, I believe I have a link to the left that will take you to my library to see the books that influenced my tastes.

Now onto Vapor Visions.  Still letting the cover ideas sift through my mind but some exciting things have occurred on the story front.   I know the first story to be added will be “A Word in the Hand” and it deals with the dangers of some of our near future technologies.  On the anchor story front, I plan to add the science fiction horror story I mentioned some time ago.  I had loosely titled it “Lost Contact” but have settled on a better title “Mist and Memories”.  The story will mix together a Sentient Planet with a grudge, an ancient civilization, and nano-cyborgs.  A good time will be had by all.  Another story may be a romance that actually combines two ideas into one by taking the idea that came from a dream and using it as the chapter leads to the second story that deals with lost love and copied personalities.  Let me know what you think.