Stories in Progress
"Why do writers write? Because it isn't there."--Thomas Berger
This list tends to grow outdated with frightening rapidity, and my active projects shift from week to week, day to day.
Aspect of Sword (working title)
When he woke, Kien could not remember which way was up, the number of fingers on each hand, the word for yes and the gesture for never. He could not remember whether the infinity of endless counting outweighed the infinity of distances between two points, how many heartbeats it took to dismantle a onegun even when his fingers were slippery with oil and sweat, the names of his nearsisters who had died when the battlebridge Shine journeyed into winter near foreign stars.
Sf involving social psychology and large-scale social engineering, mixed with lots of paranoia. Frighteningly, some of my speculations on context/environment and inculcation of ideas bear an uncanny resemblanc educational theories I've learned. I overhauled the setting in a failed attempt to write space opera; what came out is interesting, just not space opera. Projected dedication: Paul Huwe.
Bone and Chalice
He did not remember a time when the city had not been burning, no matter what his senses told him, or the dry pages of his history said. In his dreams the smoke made of the sky a funeral shroud. In waking, the wind smelled of ash, the buildings of angry flame. Everything was washed in orange and amber, flickering, shadows cinder-edged. And for all that, it never burned him. He wished it would.
I started this for National Novel Writing Month 2006 and circumstances intervened (I had guessed that they would), but in the meantime, it sucks to be an ex-paladin illegal surgeon wandering around with a spare soul.
Clockwise Shadows
In the darkness I heard the clocktower strike two, then five, then eleven.
I was the only one who heard the two deep tolls, the five dark tolls. For a moment, as I blinked into the streetlights slanting from the window, I thought I stood in a keep at the boundaries of dream and death, waiting for the bells to swing from light to darkness and back again.
Sf that originated as a college satire involving mecha, videogames and launching clocktowers. You'd think it'd be easy to keep lighthearted but no, it turned into a postapocalyptic secret war, on a twisted future Earth, and since STEP (which triggered my speculative educational theories) and reading Kuttner's The Dark World it's taken a darker turn. Thanks to my sister, Joe, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who made me write a proposal for the thing; to Charles M., Stacy C., M.F., Josh Rosenthal, Jeff Jones, and those who came to the reading of the first chunk.
Projected dedication: For the gamers and the RUPH crowd; for the people behind the pumpkin; and most of all, for the fellow student who told me I'd made his day when I said to him, as we walked by a scaffolded McGraw Tower, "It looks like it's gonna launch, doesn't it?"
The Game of Black
Formerly with the working title Silly Space Opera (SSO).
Each of the empire's systems in guarded by a sun-cannon; each of the flagships in the emperor's service wields a sun-cannon; and the greatest sun-cannon of all guards Chindal. Alone it bears a name: Death's Desire. No one ascribes any needless symbolism to this name.
So I thought: What if I based a space opera on Joseon Korea? And had alien bird-based stardrives? And a runaway emperor? It has a setting. It has a plot. I just need to focus myself on this one long enough to write it. Of course, it keeps wanting to turn into quasi-anthropological notes crossed with Cthulhu in space.
Ghost Banners (working title)
Five. No, four. Four had to be enough.
Anjen's hands trembled under the silken weight of the ghost-standards. She didn't even have time to choose. She wasn't supposed to be in the deeps of the old fortress anyway, where they were forbidden to go without the sword-lanterns to light their way, but the fortress was falling, and she thought she might be the only one left.
A fantasy collaboration with my sister. It's moved in some strange and wonderful directions. Needs reining in.
Iseul's Lexicon (working title)
Linguistics fantasy in development.
Ninefox and Suicide Hawk (working title)
Space opera in progress, with outline.
Paper Souls
Formerly Origami Souls, except I changed numerous names. Or should I switch it back?
His shadow was wandering again. It was a habit that irritated Kite as often as it bemused him. The shadow paced the floor restively, a lean, dark shape unfettered by Salt's own stillness or the jeweled colors of light that slanted from the stained-glass windows. Bad enough, he thought, that he was a foreigner in Harafa, the City of Tears, which he had chosen for his exile; that the Harafai looked askance at the absent adulthood tattoos beneath his eyes no matter how properly his veil was arranged; that he carried a vaesaczen as his blade of office and not a peace-knotted scimitar. But no: his shadow, severed like that of any Qenaren magistrate, unnerved his visitors. If it refrained from making sudden movements when he was obliged to meet with superstitious Harafai, it might even be an advantage.
A fantasy novel set in a world that is neither West nor East, in the midst of a burgeoning industrial revolution, amid two nations haunted by the echoes of a past battle that nobody won. Naracze, one of my conlang projects, is the language spoken by most of the characters. Nearly complete, with an outline and synopsis.
Thanks to Chymera; the Critters, especially Rupa K. Bose, Jouni Karhu, and Beth Bernobich; Jesse Stephen Bangs and many conlangers; my sister; Josh Rosenthal; Alex Kay; Carlos Castillo-Garsow; Riemannia; Lisa Mia Moore, Andrew Willett, James Macdonald, and Teresa and Patrick Nielsen Hayden at Viable Paradise VIII; Rilina; Oyceter; Sam Kabo Ashwell; Geoff Cohen; Sherwood Smith; Kate Nepveu; Peter Berman; Geoff Cohen; Ariel; Keilexandra; J.C. Runolfson; Mely; and Helen Keeble.
Warbird Rising
The first time he woke after dying, they told him his name. He believed them.
The second time, he had learned better. "I can't be Jenner Morgenthal," he said, sitting up on the cold infirmary bench, flexing his hands and wondering if the skin beneath the synthetic gloves was the same color it had been the last time. Memory suggested yes. Paranoia suggested no. "For one, he's been dead for over fifty years. Everyone knows that." But he hadn't, that first time. "For another, he died in the heart of a star."
Science fiction. A left turn: I've put the old story with this title back in the recycling heap and started a new story: a space opera about a "murderers' legion."
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