Personal Note: I am SO behind on EVERYTHING!

 Dear Reader,

I made the mistake of looking at the writing calendar I set up way back in January of this year. It is a brutal reminder of just how much my writing schedule got destroyed by the effects of Covid-19 on my community. Distance learning was a big thing for the first half of the year. Theoretically, that meant that the kids were working on their laptops and I could be working on mine. In actual practice, that meant that I had to sit and active monitor their work so that they weren't spending school time looking at cat videos and listening to fart sound effects. (It was a daily battle with one child because he finds these things hilarious and will sneak around to watch/listen to them.)

I have a list of projects that are all stuck in a holding pattern because I just haven't had the time or the energy to work on them. Camp NaNoWriMo was supposed to be my "finish last year's NaNoWriMo project" and it was spent focusing on distance learning with the kids. It was frustrating but we got through it. I thought that maybe the summer session of Camp NaNoWriMo would go better, it didn't because then the kids had distance learning summer school.

My editing time has been eaten up by household chores and depression. I'm still to some extent reeling from spending half a year acting as a teaching assistant for both of my boys who are learning disabled. The rapid switching between grade level work and different needs was exhausting. I used to be able to do this fairly well but ever since I became disabled, it's gotten a lot harder. Thus, when the time came to consider if we were going to risk sending them into school or continue distance learning, we chose to send the boys into school.

The school has been taking safety precautions very seriously and making sure that everyone follows them. The boys are in a classroom with the academic support that they need. And their grades are doing well. My youngest boy has taken to trying to write his own books in his free time. I am entirely unsurprised by this as he's become hyperfocused on the Captain Underpants books. We might be writing the author a letter and sending him some fan art in the near future. In the meantime, I have been attempting to provide gentle guidance in the art of writing a manuscript. While this has been taking time away from my working on my manuscripts, he is getting better at organizing his writing which is helping his grades go up.

With the kids going to school, we have settled into a routine that is allowing me to get some writing done. Currently, I am trying to finish my third NaNoWriMo project from this year. The projects for NaNoWriMo are focused on a casual book offer that came from an associate of mine. I originally wrote about two novels worth of fan fiction for his Live Action Role Play game system. I sent it to him with a note to use it as he wished. Next thing I know, I'm being asked to create some fiction that is set in that universe to help give some flavor to the game system. This turned NaNoWriMo into my writing like I was on fire. (I think this was assisted by a hypomanic episode, because I turned out two books in two weeks, one 50k and one 60k words.)

Now it is December and I'm trying to do multiple things at the same time. I have the crafting of yule presents (I'm almost a third of the way through my list. I started late this year.), cleaning up the apartment so we can decorate for the kids, the act of decorating, and my holiday baking. In the midst of all this, I'm still trying to do my daily writing in my journals and my creative writing (like finishing the 3rd NaNoWriMo project in short order). Blogging keeps falling a bit low on my list of things to do because I'm a bit disorganized right now.

December has always been a chaotic month for me in the form of getting things done. It always arrives with a hefty dose of Seasonal Affective Disorder, Bipolar II related depression, and a laundry list of trauma anniversaries. As such, it's really hard to get into the holiday spirit because almost everything about "holiday cheer" triggers revulsion and a powerful aversion to it all. So, I have to push through that to get the holiday stuff for the kids done. Because we're a heathen oriented household, yule isn't just one day like christmas. We observe it for thirteen days, starting around christmas for the convenience of the rest of the extended family. During yule, I take my time off from 'work' which means my blogs tend to go quiet and my manuscripts languish as I focus on relaxing and spending time with my family.

I confess, I am tempted to spend yule working on back work. I'm not going to do it because it will shoot my stress levels up through the roof, but I am tempted.

Anachronism: the Good, the Bad, and the WTF

 Dear Reader,

Anachronism is a tricky thing to work with. Some authors wield it like a surgeon's scalpel and others are more ham fisted about it. If it is done well, anachronism can enhance your story and add some interesting nuances that one doesn't typically encounter in the genre. If it is done poorly, it breaks the suspension of disbelief and can devastate your story's continuity. (Perhaps some day, I will share the tale of the romance novel with modern clocks in a medieval setting. It was bad. At least the cover art was ok.)

Anachronism is placing things or concepts in to the wrong time setting. Like the medieval romance novel with modern clocks is an example of an object in the wrong time period. Now, there are modern anachronism where things of antiquity pop up. You see this happen as a common trope in urban fantasy where some kind of ancient relic is a major plot device. A fine example of this can be seen in Neil Gaiman's short story Chivalry. His handling of both the relic and the knight seeking the relic is excellent. These elements of the story remain true to their time period despite the fact that they are transported to the modern era. (I'd give more details but I wouldn't want to give spoilers.) 

A bad example of this can be seen in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The grail scene is poorly executed and campy at best. The only good version of anachronism that pops up in that movie is the motorcycle jousting scene. (I have more opinions on the Indiana Jones franchise, but I can summarize them by saying it's a pulp series of movies with big name actors that are the only reason why it made it to the box office.) And then you have a series that just throw anachronism and nonsense at the wall to see what sticks and use that as plot fodder. (Xena and Hercules, I'm looking at you.)

Badly done anachronism for the purpose of humor is fine. It is a hallmark of some authors' work. Historical fiction that's slap-dash and full of speculation about alternate timelines that include anachronistic elements can make for a fun read. Terry Prachett's Nation is a great example. The best part of how Sir Pratchett handled it was the fact that he had characters recognize and comment on it. Because Sir Pratchett was the master of breaking the fourth wall intentionally.

Anachronism breaks the fourth wall when done poorly. If you are deft and subtle, however, you can use anachronism to crack that fourth wall a bit to add new dimension to your story.

What is your writing style? Don't know? That's ok.

 Dear Reader,

Before I started writing books, I worried about if my writing style would appeal to the masses. I worried that I wouldn't find my 'voice' and that my work would be confined to the perpetual slush pile of shame. I spent a lot of time in college working on academic papers along side working on my first book. (Well, revision two of my first book, because revision one got destroyed. I'll get to that in a minute.) Some of my academic writing leaked into my fiction work. Some of my fiction work leaked into my academic work. It was a weird period in my writing life.

The thing I learned from that period was that it didn't matter what my style was like or what my 'voice' was. The thing that mattered was to be precise in what I was conveying. I had to demonstrate conclusions in a manner that was clearly understood by someone who wasn't an expert on the topic. When I did use jargon, I did so in a manner that allowed my reader to figure out its meaning through context cues. In some situations, I gave definitions with the first time I introduced a term that I expected would be unfamiliar to my reader. My work had to have a logical progression, something that tied the narrative together in a fashion that made sense.

The biggest lesson that I carried away from that mixed up writing period of my life was that I had to support what I was presenting with the strongest arguments I could give. One may wonder what these practices that are more typically applied to writing non-fiction have to do with writing fiction. The ability to suspend reality is necessary for good fiction. If you can present your work in a way that holds together with an internal logic that isn't too far beyond the scope of reality, that helps suspend reality and gives you the opportunity to do some pretty nifty things in your fiction. If you have invented terms, you need to make them accessible to your reader. This will give depth to your writing and will work to draw your readers deeper into your created world. Action in a story must follow a logical progression that comes to a clearly illustrated conclusion - even if that conclusion is a cliff hanger - that would make sense to someone who hadn't read any of your work before.

I still don't know how to describe my writing style. I don't know how to describe my writing voice. It's alright, though, because I am focusing on my content. Focusing on your content and your work, the rest will fall into place.

Craft of Writing: Grind your way through or not?

 Dear Reader,

It's a tough question when you are just burned out and you have a project sitting on your workbench. Do you grind your way through the writing process to get at least something down on paper or do you stop and take a rest? There's merits to both approaches. It gets complicated, however, when funky brain chemistry gets added to the mix. You may be the sort of writer who gets a dopamine hit when they reach word count or plot related goals. You may be the sort of writer who finds writing an escape from their stress and anxiety.  Regardless of the type of writer you are, depression sucks a lot of the joy out of the task of writing and turns it into an exercise in endurance.

Grinding your way through a project when you are depressed is a heroic accomplishment that feels like it is just not good enough to see daylight. Setting the project aside when you are depressed feels like further evidence that the lies of depression are accurate (i.e. you're not a real writer, your work isn't worth the time you put into it, etc.) and that can make your depression worse. There are times, however, that it is wise to put aside a project. If grinding your way through the project is making your depression worse, set it aside. If grinding your way through the project is making your anxiety spike, set it aside. If grinding your way through the project in anyway negatively impacts your mental or emotional health, set it aside until you are well enough to work on it again.

This is not a defeat. Your project will be there waiting for you to return to it with fresh ideas, fresh eyes, and a renewed sense of purpose. This is a tactical withdrawal from a struggle that you are heavily burdened by. This is you taking a breather so that you can come back to the project with more energy and focus. If you need to step away, do so with no shame. Shift focus to something that is restorative and spend time refilling your reserves so that you have it in you to continue to fight the good fight of writing or creating art.

NaBloPoMo 13? I surrender.

  There's no way that I am going to make up the missing posts for the remainder of this month. Being sick for two weeks with that sinus infection threw everything off. Then I got hyper-focused on writing books. Add to that the chaos of a few days of distance learning, the kids being off from school for a few days, and the typical afternoon/evening chaos when they get home from school ... Well, you can see why I made it to thirteen posts before I hung up my hat on this front.

NaBloPoMo 12: Two fisting coffee and water, come at me, bro!

 I've a full night of sleep. I'm on my second gigantic mug of coffee. I feel like I'm warmed up for working on my novel. Now I have epic music playing on my play list. Seriously, listening to this makes me feel like I've got a horde of vikings at my back cheering me on. If I get organized enough, I may take a break from the novel to write something for my pulpy scifi. I'm leaving my options open for the next blog post for today. But, if you're writing fantasy or urban fantasy, I highly recommend epic music to play in the background. It can make the scene gel in your head as you're working.

NaBloPoMo 11: Music.

 I've been playing this song on repeat since the election. It just feels appropriate. It's also been useful inspirational music for scenes that I've been writing. I have it on my NaNo2020 playlist on Spotify. The biggest scene that Dear God inspired was a massive fight scene where my characters chewed through a stronghold that was lit on fire. It was inspired by a LARP scene that my character was part of a team that did that. It was brutal and chaotic. And it seemed like all the other PCs and NPCs were just throwing everything at the big bad guy and his minions to no effect. Then my PC got the drop on him and put him out of commission. It was a fun game. It's been fun writing in this universe and recreating the LARP scenes out of memory from a different perspective. If I could share excerpts, I would. I'm doing the next best thing by sharing music that I'm writing by.

NaBloPoMo 10: Behind again, but not on word count.

 Dear Reader,

I accidentally sacrificed my blog writing time to the nap gods over the last few days. It's this lingering cold that's sucking the energy out of me. I think my fever finally broke. I'm no longer feeling dizzy and as though the world is spinning about me at a 45 degree angle at a rate of about five feet per hour. Since I was too ill to wander around the apartment doing housework, I was parked in my chair in front of the keyboard when I was awake to be writing. I'm now at 41k words on this NaNoWriMo project. My plot hasn't gone off the rails yet. I consider that a pretty big accomplishment for writing while sick.

I seem to be more prolific with something to track my word count and a goal. I'm thinking that I have to get to work on re-doing my writing bullet journal so that it is more oriented towards tracking word count for my manuscripts. I've got two book series that I'm working on now. Book one of the second series (yet to be named on both accounts) is getting close to done. I am also seriously considering gathering up all of my pulpy scifi and republishing it as a single e-book. 

I have found my notes for the backstory on the pulpy scifi. I am debating if I'm going to take them and work them up into a book and release that before the compilation of what I have up here as random shorts. I'm still at the decision making stage. But I have at least found my notes. I am highly annoyed with Eleon Musk for naming his thingy 'neuralink' because that was in the earlier versions of this thing that I had published on a web forum about ten years ago. That pulpy scifi has some history to it. 

I'm still thinking about sacrificing time to the nap gods. I am not feeling completely well right now. Still, I have stuff to get done. So, I'm going to two fist coffee and water and power through. Relive college for a day or something. Wish me luck?

NaBloPoMo 9: Brainz?

 Dear Reader,

I'm of the opinion that it shouldn't take two weeks to get over a sinus infection and a head cold. The antibiotics are still doing their job. My head still feels like it's packed with wool. It's slightly less painful but I don't know if that's because I'm getting better or just getting used to the feeling rotten part of this thing.

I've been doing some writing. I just broke the 20k word count barrier. I'm going to try for the next major milestone, 25k. That means I'm half done with this thing. Editing is going to be headache, but it always is. I just hope that I have enough mental fortitude to get something cohesive on the page. In the meantime, my alpha reader is still working on that other non-fiction project. And let me tell you, I knew it wasn't looking good because the manuscript was three different sources mashed together. He's reported back that it's bad. We're also thinking it might be going for the world record for the number of uses of the word 'and'. At least I got most of the comma splices and semicolon splices out of there.

I thought that project was going to be about a month of work. I was a fool. That thing is going to take a lot longer to clean up and modernize the language. And I am more than a little sure that I am going to make people angry with this. At the same time, I think this version is going to open up the audience and make things more accessible. Which is the whole reason why I started on that project. For now, however, I'm going to stick with this urban fantasy that I'm writing and try not to put in too much gibberish due to being feverish as I am writing.

NaBloPoMo 8: Meme Edition.

 

If only word count did that, am I right folks?

NaBloPoMo 7: So close to that goal but so far away.

 Dear Reader,

I'm in striking distance of 20k words on my NaNoWriMo manuscript for this year. I'm trying really hard to get writing time in during this weekend. It's been hard because I felt like garbage most of the day yesterday and focusing was almost impossible. This sinus infection and head cold are possibly beginning to clear up. I think my intermittent fever finally broke. It just is hard to write when my brain says the world is spinning around me slowly at a 45 degree angle when the reality is entirely different. Despite getting started late, I'm about three days ahead of the official word count for the day.

My goal is to get as much done this week as I can accomplish because the school calendar has changed due to Covid-19 stuff (as I suspected was going to happen). The two days before Thanksgiving break that were half days have been changed to digital learning days as have the two days after the break. The biggest challenge in all of this is if I have to reschedule my dentist appointment (which I've been waiting to get in since April). Beloved says that he thinks he can help me get that sorted out.

All editing work has been pushed off to January 2021. I know that the next two months are going to be too chaotic to really focus on any of it. I did the read through again of book V of the Umbrel Chronicles and it still looked pretty solid. I also did a read through of book VI. It has some weak points that are going to need to be re-written. I still haven't finished writing book VII. I have to get on that at some point, I just don't know how I am going to fit it in.

I'm trying to focus on my writing and not worry about the political stuff going down. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris getting the nod gives me hope. At the same time, his orangeness is going to do something insane. His more violent fringe supporters have threatened to spark civil war. I don't think there's enough of them to accomplish that. At the same time, I am concerned there is going to be an uptick in domestic terrorism on the behalf of that guy. I can't go protest the crap that his orangeness has pulled because of things with my health that would make exposure to tear gas potentially fatal, never mind that I have children to care for. I don't know what to write. The steady march towards fascism has me still horrified. The fact that we have concentration camps in this country makes me feel sick. 

I tell myself that things will get better. First they're hard. Then they get weird. Then they get better. We're still at the hard phase. I have a feeling it is going to get a lot harder as people try to go back to ignoring that almost half this country think that human rights have a price tag.

NaBloPoMo 6: Zombie writer at work.

 Dear Reader,

This sinus infection is still kicking me in the face. Despite that, I've broken the 10k barrier on the NaNoWriMo project. I still have no title for it, but at the moment I am just trying to get the ideas down. I figure the title will come when I'm in the editing process. Major scene that I'm entertained with is when the antihero throws a bad guy into traffic and the bad guy gets hit by a bread truck. I was always told by my brothers that if I was going to get into a car accident, it was going to be with a bread truck. I knew that I had to some how work a bread truck into a scene where someone was getting taken down. I'm pretty amused with how it came out. It is dark humor but that's the best kind, right?

You may be wondering what my NaNoWriMo project is. I won't be posting excerpts up here because it's completely unrelated to the Umbrel Chronicles. It's an urban fantasy novella set in a LARP universe that I had the privilege of playing in. The creator of the LARP saw my fan fiction and asked me to do a little writing for him. I squeed in a key that was heard by the neighbor's dogs alone. It's been fun trying my hand at writing urban fantasy. I think when I finish this thing up, I will write another one with my own setting. While it's been a pleasure and an honor to play in his sandbox, I think I need to put out something in my own sandbox.

My pulpy science fiction stuff is on hold right now because I lost my notes. It's not that I lost a notebook as much as the desk at the thumbdrive that I had everything on. I'm still trying to find that thumbdrive because it has some of my fan fiction on it and I can use it to augment what I'm currently writing. I'm not going to cheat and boost my word count by just lifting whole passages from the the fan fiction, but I'm going to take some of the scenes and rewrite them.

I can literally say that I am powered by coffee right now. If it weren't for the pot of coffee that I just drank, I'd be unconscious on the couch at the moment. I am, however, trying to get myself more alert and awake because the kids are going to be home from school in about an hour. I'm going to need to stay on my feet then. You can't have the inmates running the asylum. It just doesn't work that way.

NaBloPoMo 5: Still ded, sorry.

 Dear Reader,

This stupid cold and sinus infection has me sleeping terribly. I woke up at 4 am practically choking on congestion. It was a nerve wracking few minutes. When that passed, I was wide awake (for obvious reasons). I tried to go back to sleep, I really did. I spent the hour staring at the ceiling and rehashing scenes from LARPs I had played in over ten years ago. I spent my time thinking about plot ideas for other books. I laid there with my mind spinning a million miles a minute. There was no way I was going to get back to sleep.

I was tempted to sneak into the living room and do some typing but Beloved had passed out on the couch. I didn't want to wake him up. It was just agony to have so much stuff flying around in my head that I couldn't pin down and write about. On one hand, the thoughts were vivid and relatively well organized. On the other hand, they were like trying to catch a handful of smoke when I tried to actively consider them. Put that together with the wooziness I had going on and, well, I knew that I had a fever with out having to check the thermometer. At least it wasn't hypomania, otherwise I'd have been filled with the compulsion to clean EVERYTHING and organize ALL THE THINGS. And then I'd never find anything again. Because hypomania makes my brain itchy until I do that. And when I am organizing things, I think to myself that because it is organized I'll find it again.

Since my last hypomanic episode, I'm still trying to find where I put the packet of taco seasoning. I know it's here somewhere. I know it is in the kitchen, even. But I can't find it. I keep getting more taco seasoning and it keeps going missing when I have brief hypomanic episodes. Somewhere, there is a cache of taco seasoning going stale and turning into taco flavored, packet sized, concrete. Thank goodness that when my hypomanic episodes hit, I don't go and start organizing my writing stuff. I'd be an utter mess if that happened. *knocks wood*

NaBloPoMo 4: *thud* I am ded.

 Dear Reader,

I'm ready for a nap, and it's just barely past 1pm. This stupid cold and sinus infection are working together to make me feel exhausted and a bit woozy. Trying to get a solid idea to write down is like trying to grab a handful of smoke. On the plus side, my fever is finally coming down so I am not going to have to worry about delirium. I haven't attempted to write anything on my NaNoWriMo manuscript yet today because the kids still are doing digital learning right now.

Time I usually spend writing, I am spending reminding one kid to stop looking at cat pictures and pay attention to the class. Or I'm spending it checking the other kid's spelling and grammar. And there's a dash of let's do math. I hate math. It make my brain hurt. And yet, both kids need some academic support with their mathematics. They're at two completely different levels of competency and have completely different academic challenges. The rapid switching between their needs is almost as exhausting as being sick right now.

I want to write fun stuff, but my brain is like jello and it is all I can do to keep up with the kids.

NaBloPoMo 3: What?

 Dear Reader,

I can't follow kid logic. My kids are busy doing class work and talking. Some of the stuff I over here just baffles me. For example: What would you do if a giant chicken with no beak was chasing you? I'd keep a list of the stuff that they come up with but it's hard to keep up with them. My writing prompt box would be completely full within a week, I'm sure. I try to keep kid logic in mind when I am writing characters that are children or child like. It's sometimes hard to do so. I took a child psych course at college, but it doesn't help me as much as the experiences I had working in education. Watching kids solve problems and try to get to the unexpected answer is interesting. Their focus is on fun and learning is secondary. As a result, they go to strange places in their problem solving. Sometimes it works and no one can figure out why. Sometimes it's a spectacular failure. Kid logic has only two out comes: wtf success? and wtf flaming failure? Either way, you're left going "What?" a whole lot.

NaBloPoMo 2: Day late again.

 Dear Reader,

I was up half the night before coughing due to this stupid cold. My telemedicine visit with the family doctor ended in him prescribing a hefty dose of antibiotics because every time I blew my nose, blood profusely came out. We're pretty sure it is a sinus infection on top of a head cold. Not the Coronavirus but not fun either. I'm feverish and feeling kinda rotten. At the same time, I am trying to stay on top of the kids' academics while they're home from school sick.

I was in despair that I wasn't going to have the spoons, time, or ideas to write anything for NaNoWriMo this year. Then, a half hour before I had to head to bed, an idea struck like lightning. It's not going to be a full length novel. But I have a start on a novella that will work for the informal project that I've got going with the creator of one of my favorite LARPs. I feel a little bad that I don't have all of my notes from the beginning of my participation in the game, but I can rebuild things from a different perspective and keep the storyline intact.

After all, that's what I did when my first novel got destroyed, then shredded, and then deleted. It was hard work, but each iteration of the thing improved it to the point that the concept of the first book has turned into a series. Things that were glossed over are now actual plot points and such. So, we'll see what this novella will turn into. I'm probably going to write two novellas this month, if life lets me. I'm not even going to worry about word count. My focus is going to be on just getting the story down. Because NaNoWriMo is about getting the ideas down on paper in as much detail as you can manage.

NaBloPoMo 1: Day late, but whatever.

Dear Reader,

I've been sick most of the last four days. It started out as a head cold that I caught from the kids. Now it's a sinus infection. And my fever is creeping higher slowly as the day goes on. The medication is keeping it in a safe level but I feel loopy. I am at a loss if I am going to do NaNoWriMo this year. I have no plans (but that hasn't stopped me in the past) but my schedule is a mess. I'm trying to work around the kids' schedule while they're home sick and it's been challenging. If we go to remote learning, I don't know how I'll get blogging done, let alone editing on existing works or writing a draft of something new.

And that's before you factor in the mess of anxiety that I have going on because of the election. It was weird that Walmart pulled their guns from the main floor and put them back into the stock room for an hour before returning them to the storefront. They cited concerns for civil unrest. Then backpedaled to say that the civil unrest is in isolated areas. I have no idea what to expect over the coming week. I am worried about if this election is going to literally cause a civil war. At the same time, I am worried about my kids performance at school getting negatively effected by the fact that they've been home for a week. And, on top of this, I'm fretting about my health again because my blood sugar is running high due to my having this stupid cold (which is turning into a sinus infection). 

I'm rambling right now because my kids are running around the house being loud. If I had something cohesive, I'd be posting better content right now. I blame my kids and this damn fever.

Writing a novella is harder than writing a novel, fight me!

 Dear Reader,

I am ready to bash my head against something hard until I pass out because I am so frustrated with the novella I'm working on. I literally can't gauge a good stopping point. So many plot bunnies come out of the woodwork and nest in the storyline it is bonkers! I still haven't come up with a pen name yet for this project. I'm one step away from going with a random name generator. 

Each time I think that I have hit a good ending point, more plot reveals itself. More stuff needs to be resolved from previous plot elements. Characters that were originally just background set pieces suddenly become important plot elements and integral to the story. It's just very exasperating. This is why I don't write short form fiction. I sit down to write a short story and next thing I know I'm passing 30k words with no end in sight.

How the hell does Chuck Tingle do it? He's the most prolific e-book author that I've seen out there and he's writing stuff that's a hell of a lot shorter than what I've got. I keep thinking if I can manage to figure out the formula or whatever witchcraft that man is using to keep his word count relatively low while still telling a full story, maybe I can get some decent e-books out there. Some theorize that he's got a formula down. I don't know. All I know is being able to pull off an e-book in the span of two weeks is an impressive feat. To do so in such a manner that you maintain a large fanbase and keep the story quality high enough for the fanbase to come back book after book is equally impressive.

Editing this novella is going to be a headache, but it's going to be worth it. Now, if I could only figure out a pen name. That, aside from the ever growing word count, is my biggest problem here.

Seasonal Affective Disorder Sucks.

  Dear Reader,

I have Seasonal Affective Disorder. This is also known as seasonal depression. It's such a lame disorder that the acronym in SAD. This and my most recent Bipolar depressive episode has been getting in the way of my accomplishing much of anything on any front right now. I feel pretty awful, to be honest. It's been bringing up some trauma memories on top of it all. I'm doing my best but I feel like my best isn't good enough.

Scumbag brain is telling me that sharing this is a vain attempt to get the internet to throw me a pity party. (Quips from my ancient past arising again, yay complex post-traumatic stress disorder.) But, I've got two deities leaning on me saying that I should talk about this. Something about mental health is not a stigma and it'll help me push through the lies that are being recycled on loop in my head about it.

I grew up in a household that didn't believe that mental illness was real. They decided that depression was laziness and anxiety was being a drama whore. It was harsh, especially as I hit puberty and depression got really bad. I still struggle with the concepts that were (in some cases literally) beaten into to me. When I get depressed, I have a hard time seeing that my value is more than what I can produce or what the sum total of my parts may be on the black market. It's been part of a mental loop that I've had stuck in my head since about the age of ten.

I am not suicidal. I am still taking my medications and they are helping. But the medications are not "happy pills" they are just enough to keep my depression from sinking so low that I start having problems with psychosis. Because my flavor of Bipolar II comes with psychotic features. I don't have psychosis symptoms when I am manic but when I'm very severely depressed. And then, it is reliving the abuse that I grew up with. It's auditory hallucinations that get so realistic that I could swear that the person speaking is standing right behind me one foot to the left. Due to how much I was gaslighted as a kid, I reality test anything weird that happens. So, if I am sitting with my back against a wall and I'm having a hallucination, I know it's not real because there is a wall behind me.

I have been told that my ability to distinguish when I am having hallucinations is highly unusual. I had a brief period where I thought they were real. Then life circumstances changed and I realized with horror that what I had thought was neighbors screaming in the next apartment over was a hallucination. It just got worse from there and I had times where I was shaking from the effort to ignore the hallucination and continue on with my day. I'm not at that point in my depression right now, thank gods. I fear having hallucinations and the prospect of being hospitalized again due to depression.

Right now, I'm pushing forward on the grim hope that things will get better. I tell myself every night before I go to sleep that tomorrow will be better than today. I try to make it happen. It's exhausting. Some days, I don't get very much done at all. Other days, I have the energy to do the bare minimum. But I wake up everyday with the intent to come on here and post. It's just been really hard to find the energy and the mental focus to do so. Please bear with me as I am working through this.

Nope, not at the halfway point of edits. Send HELP!

 Dear Reader,

My Beloved is helping me with edits on my current non-fiction project. I foolishly thought this was going to be a straight forward and simple project. Something I could complete in a month or so. I was woefully wrong. I managed to get most of the comma splices and semi-colon splices out of the way. At the same time, I hit a level of fatigue in the process that I missed just how many sentences began with the word 'and' as well as a lot of sentence fragments. Thankfully, Beloved is eagle eyed and catching these things.

I'm beginning to think this is going to take much longer than a few months. This might be a year long project. You might ask why. Well, it's kinda complicated. There's a lot of false archaic language that has to be cleaned up and removed. There is an embarrassing amount of just plain bad language used. I'm not saying it is vulgar as much as there is enough poor grammar that it's painful to read in many places. Also, it is shocking how many times the word 'and' got used to splice things together. 

At the same time Beloved is helping me plow through this document, I have been working on a novella to be published as part of a series of e-books for a Live Action Role Play (LARP) game that I love. The author of the game took a look at my fan fiction and said, "Hey, how about you write a few e-books that can be companions to the game!" To say the least, I went squee at a pitch that disturbed the neighbor's dogs and began writing. I am roughly at the middle of the novella. This is always the point where I question everything about the work. 

As more things develop along that front, I will keep you appraised. If you're curious about the game, it's really easy to play and is based on Arthurian mythology. It's called Arthur's Legacy. You should pick up a copy, grab some friends, and play it. It's like a superhero LARP crossed with high fantasy. And, the best feature if you're mathematically challenged like me, it's diceless.

At the halfway point of editing, yay?

 Dear Reader,

I believe I am at the halfway point of editing this non-fiction text. It's almost as painful as editing papers from college, to be honest. But, I think that I am about ready for beta readers. I think this thing is almost ready to get polished up for a test print run via Lulu. It is a little frustrating to have to convert the document to a .pdf to publish it on Lulu, but I still have to say that Lulu is pretty good. I will be taking another swing at getting edits done on book V. My plan is to spend October editing so that I can spend November writing. All of this being dependent on school staying in session and everyone remaining healthy.

*knocks wood* 

Line edits are exhausting.

 Dear Reader,

This religious text I'm working on has reached the first major editing milestone: the first round of line edits. It is just arduous to sit and go through this thing line by line. It reminded me that I have to slow down when I am typing or I make lots of typos. I'm making progress at it. I know that what I'm working on is going to be considered heretical by the orthodox sects. At the same time, it's going to make some goddamn sense when you read it. No more faux archaic language cluttering the page. No more sentences that are a full paragraph long series of comma splices. No more sentence fragments just hanging around in irrational space.

Someone in the past claimed that the bad writing was actually poetry. I'm sorry, but, no. The writing was actually that bad. So, I'm giving it a full makeover so that you can actually read it. The places where it isn't supposed to be prose are going to be sectioned out and visual distinguished from the rest of the passage. I'm just frustrated that this thing is consistently so messy despite there being at least four different versions. The original hand copied one I can't get to the digital archives for it because the site went down. You'd figure someone along the way would have read it over with a critical eye and say "Hey, we can't really read this that well. We should fix it." I don't know, maybe I was destined to be that person.

It makes me feel like I should go back to editing book V because I know that I have complete sentences to work with there nine times out of ten. *headdesk*

Long week.

 Dear Reader

It's been a long week. If you happen to see my sanity, put it into a nice little box with some fluff to keep it cozy. I have been working on this transcription/revision/synthesis project and I'm at about the final third of it. I keep having to fix grammar and language to make things flow smoothly. I thought editing my own work was an ordeal. Taking three separate versions of one text and mashing them together into one version with a few minor tweaks is proving harder than I expected.

I think, however, when I get this thing finished it will do a lot of good. I'm taking a religious text that has been heavily femme and moving it to gender neutral. I occasionally have spasms of anxiety that I am doing something WRONG!!elventy1! but then they pass as I realize that my efforts are actually making the text easier to read. Correlating the points that align across all three existent versions of this book is proving surprisingly easy. I truly believe that once I get this to the finish line, it will make the holy texts of Filianism and Déanism (one of the religions I practice, my spiritual life it weird.) more accessible and easier to understand. I am also going to have the audacity to put a section with commentary on changes made and why. Because there are some changes that I know the orthodox practitioners are going to disagree with because they want the texts to remain the same. My goal here is clarity of text, ease of readability, and opening the text to a wider audience (which from what my research has shown me was one of the things the founders of the religion wanted to do before their group fell apart due to politics).

Now, if I had the spoons for it, I would sit down and do the same thing for other religious texts that are much meatier (i.e. the Christian bible). Because I think that holy books shouldn't alienate readers and that they should be open to all believers, regardless of gender, which should be reflected in gender representation in the text itself. I try to do a decent job of equal gender representation in my writing. I feel it's important. That's part of why I took up this project to begin with. I want, in the end, a book that if my boys felt like reading and learning from didn't leave them feeling like they were less because they weren't female. I know the founders of the faith were working to uplift women during an era that female figures in religion were uncommon in England and most of "the west". (I have thoughts upon that expression, but I'll save them for another day.) The founding of this religion shows up during the civil rights era and attempts to address the inequality women faced in that era in England.

The original texts and the excellently researched published texts from Rev. Sarah Morrigan and from the Eastminster society for Filianic Studies (publishers of the New Celestial Union Version and the Eastminster Critical Edition of the Clear Recital, respectively) show that the founders were deeply thoughtful in their theology and philosophy. There is a branch of Filianism and Déanism that swings really hard into femme dominant territory, which I think is an aberration and deliberate misinterpretation of what the founders had in mind that arose during the 1980s, not long after the original cultus of worship had fractured and fallen apart due to political issues within their organization. At the same time, without that more extreme branch, Filianism and Déanism would quite possibly have become lost to the sands of time. It's all convoluted in places and yet very sensible in others. But, that's what you get with any religion.

But, this is what I have been working on this week while I try to pick up the threads of where I left off with everything else. My life's beginning to get a bit more organized with the school routine settled. I'm even beginning to get back into my journal writing. It is my hope that next week, I will be blogging on here daily. Even if it is minor ranting about writer's block or my frustrations with this big project that I'm working on right now.

Not sure what to write today.

 Dear Reader,

I'm not really sure what to write today. Typically, I'd be discussing exotic plants and fantastical animals from my little world but the inspiration for that just isn't present. Right now, the kids are drumming away on some random thing in their room. By some minor miracle, they're not fighting at the moment. I'm still stalled in the fiction department. Honestly, I'm stalled in my journal writing even. I've debated breaking out my prompt box and writing stuff based off of prompts but I kinda hate doing that.

Life's been strange of late. The smoke from the fires in California land Oregon have reached the East Coast. It's made the sky look the wrong color and there's the faint scent of fire and death on the air. Death by fire smells like burnt to blackened, charred, ash meat. When I was a kid, we drove past a house where people died in a fire and that smell was there. I never forgot it. Smelling it on the wind now, however faintly, is disturbing and makes me feel like its a bad omen for the remainder of the year.

Looking at the pictures of the forest fires, all I can think is that is what Muspelheim looks like. Nothing but towering flame and choking smoke. It's deeply disturbing. I pray for rain to come and help put out the fires. There's a different kind of fire going on through out the country too. Protests regarding police brutality seem to be everywhere. Some folks I know have said that these are happening because people are bored and looking for some excitement after the confinement that has come with Covid-19. It's a raging fire of fury against injustice. It's not bored people looking for entertainment. It is as deadly serious as the forest fires. I keep saying that the Black Lives Matter movement is a human rights movement. There are folks who are not happy with me taking that position. It doesn't change the fact that it is.

There's a lot of egregious human rights abuses happening in my country. I never thought I'd live to see the day that state sanctioned violence happened openly in the streets. There are protestors being kidnapped from the protests by unmarked police officers into unmarked vans. It's happened in broad daylight. The Attorney General Barr is going so far as to say that he has the power to authorize this bastardy. We're not living in Nazi Germany, but the parallels that I see are deeply disturbing. I'm frustrated because my health is impared enough that I can't go protest. I can't do much aside from write angry blog posts and do my best to raise my children to know better than to act like how so many adults are right now.

It sucks the light out of things. It's enough to inspire depression by itself. To have my seasonal affective disorder and my bipolar II acting up at the same time is just making things harder. I fear for the future.

Craft of Writing: Pandemic Exhaustion Edition.

 Dear Reader,

Currently, my boys are in the background debating if you can destroy a black hole with the largest thermonuclear weapon known to humanity and speculating what will happen to the galaxy when the world will be swallowed by the sun. They are just distracting me from what I want to write with their discussions. It's been that way for months. Not because they're incredibly loud but because they're very enthusiastic about it and keep throwing out questions that catch my ear and make me go "Wait, what?" Latest question, "What do you think would happen if Jupiter replaced our moon?"

Almost all of my creative energy since March has been sucked into fielding those questions, trying to come up activities to keep the kids from getting bored, and doing my best to keep them engaged with their distance learning. Now that school has been in session for a week, you'd think that I'd have recovered some of my mojo and was ready to get back into the saddle. The problem is I'm tired. I've been on high alert since March and doing everything in my power to keep the kids distracted enough from the fact that we can't go to the park to play while at the same time trying to decide if I have to sterilize everything that comes from the store.

My anxiety has been a roller coaster. As such, my focus has been garbage. I'm tired. I'm so very tired of the anxious thought that any person I come into contact with outside of the house could be a carrier of Covid-19. It's kept me functionally housebound and miserable for these last months. I'm exhausted from trying to stay on top of the kids academic work and provide the various academic supports they need (before I had kids, I worked in special education providing support for kids like the boys). The rapid switching from one child's needs to the other child's needs makes my head spin. I try to find some solace that they are at school now (with all the safety precautions and protocols being followed) but I worry that something's going to go wrong and we're going to go back to distance learning again in the near future.

My writing time during the day is getting eaten up by chores that I'm attempting to catch up on that I had fallen way behind on when the kids were home 24/7. You don't want to see the laundry situation. It's all clean thanks to Beloved's hard work, but ... well, let me put it this way, if the pile had a bit more structure to it and clothes were a little less floppy it would easily come up to my shoulder. It's exhausting to do. My exercise routine that I was beginning to get into back in March got destroyed when the governor shut down schools and the park closed. I was starting to do walks over there while the kids were at school, but that couldn't happen and I couldn't bring the kids to the park with out them being allowed to play on the equipment (which was roped off).

I've been trying to get back into blogging but I am depressed and feeling like everything I post is pointless. I have my books for my research project here. I've read through them and just can't bring myself to start working on the notation for the project. I look at the draft of book 5 of the Umbrel Chronicles and my brain goes blank. I look at the running documents for the serial stories that I have going on here and my brain goes blank. I just want to cry sometimes because I just can't seem to tap into my creativity right now.

Unless it's in yarn. I've been making my anxiety washcloths again. I have a pile that's several inches high and I'm almost done with the cone of yarn that Beloved bought me about two weeks ago. I was working on a monstrous sized version of the wingspan shawl. Initially, I planned on doing it in the full spectrum of colors. I started out with a hook two sizes larger than was called for in the pattern. This has had unintended consequences. The exponential growth of the pattern has me at the point where I'm working on the color green (I started with red that was half a ball of yarn, orange was 1 ball, yellow was 2...) and there's no way I'm going to go beyond green. Green is 4 1lb balls of yarn. This thing is long enough to cover my couch and I'm not even finished with this section. Blue would be 8. Purple would be 16. I can't do it. I've learned my lesson, do the project in the recommended hook size or it will take over your home. To say the least, the weather got too hot for me to work on the wingspan project and I had to set it aside for about two months.

So, I started an embroidery project. I've been stalled on that because I feel guilty working on it when I have piles of laundry to put away and other household chores to work on. That feeling of guilt has been stopping me from writing too. I'm kinda flailing and doing about as well as a fish out of water. And, ontop of all this, I had to put down my fancy crowntail betta fish because he caught some kind of parasite. I'm a bit emotionally raw from that. And from some familial troubles dealing with my side of the family. I'm still sorting those emotions out and struggling to figure out what manner of productive thing I can do with them.

To say that I'm not doing well is a bit of an understatement. I'm going to do my best to get back into my posting on a daily basis. I can't promise immediate success. My schedule is a mess. My brain is not exactly in the best state becasue I'm depressed and the seasonal affective disorder is starting to kick my butt. But I will try. And I'll post pictures of the monstrosity when I get the green triangle done and of the embroidery project as I get more of it filled in. The embroidery project is a quote from Dune. It's the only good thing to have come out of that series of books. Frank Hubert was a mysogynistic prick. He may have had talent as a writer but he was about as kind to women in his works as H.P. Lovecraft was to people of color.  This quote came into my life during a particularly rough period when I was a kid. On the tapestry I am embroidering, I dropped part of the quote, but it has enough of it to get the point across. Here's the Dune  Litany Against Fear:

I will not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
It is the little death that brings oblivion.
I shall face my fear and allow it to pass over and through me.
And when I turn my inner eye along the path it has gone,
Only I shall remain.

How is it the middle of September already?

 Dear Reader,

I have no idea how it is the middle of September. I could have sworn that it was still August last week. I'm operating on the edge of burnout right now. As I review book five of the Umbrel Chronicle series, I am just staring at the pages in exhaustion. Times like now, it'd be real handy to have an editor I could tap for a few hours to trouble shoot this stuff. 

My youngest child has decided that he's going to be an author like me. Over the summer, I taught him about outlines and how they work to make writing your story easier. He's still on the fence about the idea but he put together a pretty good story for his brother's birthday. We were going to use Lulu.com to self-publish it as a picture book but he kept getting distracted from making the pictures for the book. I'm saving the story, however. He has his own file box full of story ideas and notebooks that he's filling up with pictures and snippets of stories.

It's like watching a younger version of myself at work. This is going to be interesting as he gets going in English class at school. Either he is going to do very well and make great strides because of his enthusiasim, or he's going to get frustrated because the assignment limitations keep him from writing what he wants. Beloved (my husband) was the second kind of student. Even as I type this, he is in his room writing when he should be putting toys away.

The real trick here is going to be helping him with his handwriting and correcting his grammar. He gets excited and his handwriting degrades to an illegible scrawl. I have absolutely no idea where he gets that from. *wink* I really hope we don't have to do flashcards. I hated flashcards as a kid. They felt pointless and stupid. I learned more from working with the language than I did from just memorizing how to spell words and meanings. That's what dictionaries are for, am I right?

The kids are back in school with all safety protocols in place and social distancing. So far, they've reported that they have no homework. I'm a little suspicious but this is the first week of school. I have spent my mornings just stumbling around with my cup of coffee and trying to make headway into research I am doing for a religious text that I'm working on. This business of getting up at 5:45am IS NOT my friend. But, the kids bounce out the door and have made it to the bus on time every day this week with all of their supplies. I have even remembered to pack lunches for every body. So, maybe there's hope for me after all.

Gods help me, the chaos!

 Dear Reader,

Now that distance learning has ended for a few weeks my home has erupted into utter chaos. There's toys a few inches deep in strategic places. I think the children are trying to assassinate me because of them. There's the constant noise of siren impersonations (my eldest is actually getting pretty good at imitating the fire siren up the road) and bickering. Writing time is all but impossible for me to find because I'm so busy playing referee and hostage negotiator (because one will steal toys from the other with a list of demands).

Quite simply, I'm out numbered and out gunned at the moment. My youngest child has been going through what seems to be a sheaf of paper to make comic books. It's been an experience. We worked together to write an actual story but he's moved on to other things instead of drawing the pictures to go with it. Thank goodness that Beloved does a weekly recycling run, because with out it we'd be neck deep in half finished sketches and "robot diagrams".

School is starting late this year because of Covid-19. It is my hope that once we get into the swing of the school schedule that I can get back to writing on here. That I can get back to writing in general. It's been a while and I'm getting a bit twitchy. Obviously, book five is still on the editing table and that process has been stalled. Random fart noises and siren noises along with the kid shrieking at each other over whatever topic they've decided to fight over makes it really hard to concentrate on editing. I can't give you an estimate when it will be ready. I'm trying to get to it in what free moments I can find, but writing time is at a premium.

I haven't forgotten about you.

Dear Reader,

It has been a very long and trying couple of months. This distance learning business is exhausting. My boys are doing summer school, so we're still working on it. There's no news yet on when and how school will be opening. I have been struggling to find the time to work on most everything necessary. I don't have the luxury of taking the kids to the park to let them play while I write in a notebook because I don't have the means to sterilize the equipment to make it safe for them to play on it.

We've been remaining home and indoors most of the time. As a result, the apartment is utter chaos. Beloved goes to work and then comes home. We visit his parents once a week to check in with them. That's the extent of social activity that we have. We're a bit stir crazy. While social distancing isn't a big departure from how we had been living our lives before Covid-19, it is enough of one that it is getting to us.

Beloved has been doing all the errands and shopping because I am in the "at risk" category. I kinda miss strolling through the local grocery store and finding delicious things to make for dinner. I feel a bit weird confessing that. Theoretically, I have more time to write, because I'm not spending my weekend on doing chores. But that is not accurate.

My writing time has been getting eaten up by the children. Now that I have depression kicking me in the teeth, it is even harder to just do my one page daily journal entry. I am going to try to get back to writing in this blog. I can't promise success. I can't promise that it will look the same as it did before.

I don't think anything is going to look the same as it did before, to be honest.

The wrath of Ashur (A Dacia's War short)

Sorenan stood in the center of the arena. His sandy colored hair was bound back in a braid that snaked over his shoulders as he turned his head to watch his opponent. He bore the Sword of Ashur. He was one of the two sword-bearers. Where the Emperor wore his Sword as a ceremonial thing, Sorenan carried his openly. Bearing the god-weapon was a heavy duty but it marked him as the third of the prophecy. It showed the people of the Dacian Empire that he was the third star in the constellation associated with the union of Ashur and Julara, the holy gods of the Empire. No one knew for sure what the star meant, this was lost in the library and the head librarian gone to the North of the Empire as a newly minted priestess, none could find it or read it.

Sorenan's opponent was a sub-general who insisted that the Empress had broken faith with Julara and was no longer deserving of the honors of being high priestess of the faith or to be recognized as her living daughter upon the face of the world. The sub-general was a decorated military man. When General Zalaz learned that this man had spoken blasphemy that was being rumored in the North, the general despaired that he would have to report it to the Emperor. Zalaz came into the hall of the Emperor's council and found Marcos and Sorenan discussing the problem of the ongoing fighting in the South. Temna remained a major threat and the sub-general's blasphemy suggested that an internal threat was gaining strength. Marcos looked over at Zalaz and saw the general's look of dismay.

When he explained what happened and how he had taken the sub-general into custody, Marcos nodded. The Emperor looked over at the mercenary at his side. While the customary punishment for blasphemy was slitting the tongue and banishing the offended, he couldn't help but feel that an example had to be made of the sub-general. "Death by combat," Marcos said, his tone questioning. Sorenan nodded in agreement. "Tomorrow then," the Emperor of Dacia said. Zalaz let out a breath that he had been holding. "Let it be known through out the city that the Sword of Ashur metes out justice tomorrow at noontide." Zalaz nodded and looked sharply at a scribe. The scribe practically ran out of the room.

So it happened that Sorenan stood in the place that Emperors had stood in the past. The sub-general was a wiry man like Sorenan. The desert man did not wear the heavy armor of the guard. His armor was burnished brass that shone brightly in the brilliant sun, nearly blinding Sorenan with its gleam. The sub-general paced about the mercenary turned military advisor to the Emperor. As he took his measure of the man, Sorenan noted that he had a slight limp in his left leg. Like Sorenan, the sub-general bore a sword.

Deciding that he wasn't going to wait longer, as soon as the sub-general passed on his left, Sorenan attacked. In his black leather armor of the mountain people, the man was sweating heavily. He ignored the discomfort as he charged the sub-general, not even bothering for to reach for his sword. Sorenan slammed into the sub-general hard enough to knock him off his feet. They rolled across the ground, grappling with each other for a long moment.

Sorenan found his way to the top and delivered a mighty punch to the sub-general's right jaw. He could feel heat burning its way down through his arm as he threw that punch. It was just like when Ashur took over on the battlefield. That was his only warning that the world was about to slide sideways. Thrown out of his body by the angered god, Sorenan stood beside himself watching as his possessed body beat the sub-general with such force that his helmet was dented.

The sub-general somehow manage by some quirk of fate, or perhaps Ashur's desire to deliver yet more misery upon the one who had spoken blasphemy against the high priestess of his wife, to remain conscious. Ashur-Sorenan stood and kicked the sub-general in the ribs. The man rolled across the ground and got up onto his hands and knees. As the sub-general stood, there was the sound of birds calling in the air. He looked up and realized that eagles were circling above. Ashur-Sorenan drew the sword and it made a noise like metal tearing as it came free of the scabbard.

The leaf shaped sword shone with light and the sub-general raised his hand to shield his eyes. Ashur-Sorenan strode towards the sub-general who saw that Sorenan's typically leonine eyes had turned eagle gold and shone with light from within. The sub-general drew his sword and cast it away before he turned to flee. Ashur-Sorenan bellowed, "Stand, heretic!" It echoed like a thunder clap through the stadium. Where the city residents had been murmuring or chattering in anticipation of the gladitorial combat to begin in earnest, stunned silence filled the space. Compelled by the deity, the sub-general turned to face his doom.

"Observe the fate of all who profane the name of Julara's Daughter," Ashur-Sorenan boomed with that thunderous voice. The sub-general's eyes streamed with tears as he realized the extend of his folly. The sword swept through the air as the sub-general screamed. His tongue was slashed in half and a sharp line was cut across his face. As the burning sword moved away, the sky darkened to the point where Ashur-Sorenan seemed to glow on the red sand of the stadium floor despite the dark armor. Then the eagles descended. Screams of horror came as thousands of birds swooped and ripped the man apart, their talons ripping through his armor as if it were merely linen. The man was lifted and dropped several times through the cacophony of eagle cries and their efforts. Ashur-Sorenan lifted his right arm and an eagle covered in blood landed on his wrist as the others flew off to what ever strange place they had come from.

Laying on the ground before him was the barely living ruins of the sub-general. His eyes had been pecked out. His face had been shredded by talon and beak, as had the rest of him. He seemed a quivering lump of meat. The cries of horror in the crowd had dropped down to whimpering and weeping as Ashur-Sorenan walked up to what had once been a man. The burning sword came down and Sorenan found himself back within his body. Beside him, though none but him could see him, stood Ashur.

"Go North," Ashur said, "Quell the uprising. The Lady of the North has opened the way.:

Holy Science Fiction, Batman!

As the lift rose up to the main deck, Angel cleaned the gore off of the sword. “How long until we're in orbit? Are the solar sails still holding?” she asked the empty air. Aeolus formed into an image at her side. An average height man with Grecian features and tousled dark hair and dark eyes, some how Angel knew this was what the man whose mind was forced into the ship's mainframe looked like in his prime. This time he wore a flight suit similar to hers, sans insignia of rank.

“Three minutes until we are past the lunar ring and entering Earth's orbit,” the ship said into her mind, directly stimulating her auditory processing cortex via the neural-link. “I have hacked into the manifest. The cargo at the bay above the one with the plasma damage is holding repair materials.”

Angel's eyebrow arched and the cyborg tipped her head slightly to the left as she looked over at the hallucination of her ship's consciousness. There was no sense of fuzziness in the image as she turned her head. Aeolus was getting better at the mutual interface. There was the queer feeling that came with her blind spot being overrode but even then the image held true. It was almost as if she could reach out and touch him. “Secondary sail is holding steady, primary sail is at eighty percent capacity. The tertiary sail is still locked in its bay,” he said as he took a step forward. It was eerie to see the sight of a man walking and hear no sound of foot steps.

“Monitoring the coronal stability, we have three to four terra-cycles before the next major CME,” he said stopping at the door of the lift. The sliding doors hissed open and he turned to face Angel. “It is possible to regenerate one of the clones,” Aeolus said as Angel stepped past his image and into the main corridor. “There is a regeneration tank though it would not be clear how much memory he retains from the process,” the ship continued.

“Dregan is dead,” Angel said, “I killed him myself.”

“If the clones retained that much memory, Dregan is not dead but in stasis,” Aeolus replied. Angel looked over at the manifestation of the ship's consciousness with shock. “What was the point of origin of those clones?” Aeolus went curiously still, as though suddenly turning into a statue. His dark eyes turned bright with light as he was sifting through data. They darkened again and the hallucination began to walk forward to the bridge.

Angel began to walk quickly after the hallucination. “Aeolus, you can do this with out messing with my neural network,” she said. “Just tell me.”

“Better to show you,” he answered.

“Damn it, Aeolus, what are you on about?” she demanded in an exasperated tone. The doors to the bridge opened. As they did, the main screen came up with an image of Earth. Aeolus made a gesture at the screen and it shifted. The image of Earth rotated along its meridian until the continent of Antarctica appeared. Angel stepped on to the bridge as it zoomed into research locations stationed on the continent and the seed vault. A marker came up on the seed vault. It blinked with an almost frantic quality, though there were times where it went out all together.

“Aeolus, what am I looking at?” she said.

“Your man's heart rate, as best I can get it through his neural-link. His is not synchronized with any others,” Aeolus answered, turning to look at Angel as she staggered to a chair and sat down. “It's at the outer limits of my reach right now, but as you watch, the signal will become stronger.” Angel stared at the screen.

“He may be compromised just like the clones,” she said weakly.

“You were in search of seed,” Aeolus said, “Of multiple biological origins.” As they communicated, the signal moved from cutting out every so many seconds to a steady but rapid pace. “I can connect with his neural-link in a few moments. The communications array was easy to configure to make long range contact.”

Angel looked over at Aeolus. She could see a fleeting look of resignation on his face. The last twenty years with him had left its mark. The old adage of the captain being married to their ship was strong here, though it was not a union that either would have chosen first. Initially Angel was clipped and angry with everything. Aeolus could read her anger and maintained silence until the late hours of night where her neural-link was active. In her sleep, she reached out desperately for the neural-net satellite network and found resounding silence with no hope of even a faint ping of Dregan's unique signal.

One night, Angel was deep in 'sleep' and inside a frantically constructed array of screens, all blank. Then in her 'dream' there was the sound of someone entering the monitoring room she had. All of the screens lit up with data. None of it made sense to her as she tried to find Dregan's signal. “He's not on board. I can't reach that satellite network because they're too low power to send data out this far,” said a voice behind her. Angel whipped around in her command chair, one that was a memory of the command chair of the ship. Standing before her was a man who was shrouded in shadow. Aeolus' voice was pleasant but the shock of hearing it when she was listening for a ping to indicate she had located her lost lover's signal on the neural-link satellite net made her feel fear.

“I am Aeolus,” he said. “You are my captain. I thought it time to introduce myself. My last captain did not have the … luxury of an interface like this.”

Angel looked back at the screens with a scoff at the mention of the previous captain whom she personally kicked out an airlock for his screaming tirade that she was to service him in a personal manner. The combat unit was not a pleasure unit, though that training was part of her background. She was resolved to only allow that sort of physical contact from one person and that person she wasn't sure was alive or dead.

“Your history is extensive,” Aeolus said and Angel scoffed again. “I am pleased to meet you, Angel,” he said. Angel looked over sharply at the name she had been given by the non-persons of the lower levels of society Earthside as she was their avenger and protector from the roving bands of bandits, criminals, and the peacekeepers.

“What did you call me?” she demanded sharply.

“Your name,” Aeolus said, “You are one of two combat units that have a name. The other is Dregan, a previous generation of another line who suffered from synchronization sickness and developed an independent sense of self from the cohort. Your cohort didn't survive the Gauntlet. It was in the classified files that were on your transport ship. I regret to inform you that you launched your handler out the airlock. I suspect, however, that will not trouble you.”

For the first time in months since she arrived, Angel laughed. The stasis pod was enough to keep her body still as she 'slept' but within the created spaces of her mind, her laughter rang. The shadow of Aeolus smiled.

The memory of their first conversation whipped through Angel's mind at lightning speed even as Aeolus observed it. “Aeolus, I will not abandon you,” she said, “We've kept each other sane and the rest of the crew as well. If you can connect with Dregan via the neural-link, you can do it with the same stealth that you used to monitor me before our first conversation. Observe, determine his state. We will know if he is compromised through a complete system check. They do them often enough Earthside when we're connected to the net that it wouldn't make a change to his state to make him aware that you're connected to him.”

“The storm of all storms will burn Xenogen to the ground. Project Morpheus will permanently be offline as will all of the others. This is a rescue mission,” Aeolus said, “The next major CME is going to strip away large parts of the magnetosphere even as it sets us hurling past the outer planets. They're going to be helpless. If we're lucky, the sails will hold long enough for us to get through the Oort cloud. After that we can continue on inertia. If my calculations are correct, there is a cold version of Earth beyond the Oort cloud circling a brown dwarf. It may be close enough to be warm enough to be habitable.”

“How sure are you of this?”

The hallucination smiled. “You've been calculating this and searching for that brown dwarf the entire time you've been up here,” Angel said in mild disbelief.

“I was named for the god of winds,” Aeolus, “I promised them that I was going to return on the storm of all storms. I may not be walking around like you are, but this is my body and coming back instead of relaying data so that Xenogen could build their shelters and leave the rest of humanity to die is my revenge.”

“God,” Angel breathed, “You're willing to sacrifice eight billion people?”

“Not all of them,” Aeolus replied, “We need some of them to keep the species alive.”

Angel shook her head in amazement. “Three hundred and fifty years in stasis, with the latter part of it being forcibly machine linked and fighting to stay sane, you change your outlook on humanity. To them, I am like unto a god. Ageless and terrifying. I was the first of you and you and Dregan are the last. I can reprogram him. I could reprogram you.”

Angel stared at the hallucination of the ship's consciousness in horror. “If you were another Xenogen combat unit, I would have. Just as I did with Maeson,” he continued, “Maeson was a lower level combat-communication unit. His neural-link was of a lower grade than yours. It was easy to supplant the loyalty to the corporation with loyalty to the crew. I will disperse the other combat units, what you'll have left are the cannon fodder. Some of them may have enough of themselves left that they'll be willing to leave Earth.”

Overwhelmed by horror = writer's block.

Dear Reader,

I am overwhelmed with horror at the events unfolding in my part of the country. The tragedy of COVID-19 that is ongoing downstate is marching its way into my region of New York. I've recently come to the realization that there is just no way to 'dodge' this. It's simply a matter of time until one of us becomes infected. Then it is a question of if we're part of the asymptomatic population or the part of the population that shows symptoms. I've spent the last several weeks following this stuff in the news.

The state and local government response were impeded by bad information about this virus. They're being impeded by bullshit behavior by the federal government. As I have been doing my best to stay informed about all of this, I am coming to the horrific realization that we're going to be decimated as a nation because of this. All because of a narcissist who doesn't want to look bad and get himself another term in office. This is emotionally traumatizing in a bigger way than the terrorist attacks in 2001 were because it is a longer lasting event. It is more traumatizing because we are literally helpless and trapped. There is no way to escape COVID-19 any more than there was to escape the Black Death.

I take some hope in the fact that basic hygiene is one of the first effective steps to protect oneself from this thing. I also find hope in the fact that social distancing may work to keep more of us alive. I just fear that the social distancing measures were put into place too late. I fear that there are people who are not taking this seriously and still think it's just like the flu. The worst part is, some of those people are in the government. I've been so overwhelmed by these thoughts that I barely can focus to write in my daily journal.

I attempt to soothe my anxiety with hand crafts. I made a shawl and I'm currently working on a scarf or two right now. It just doesn't seem to quite work to make my mind stop racing and make my heart stop hurting so much. I'm trying to find the words to work on my fictional world and such. It is very hard to, right now, because so much is going on.

This is on top of the fact that we're presently home-schooling the kids as school is not in session and are still working out the bugs in the distance learning program that they're putting into place.

Why can't I write word problems?

Dear Reader,

It's been a hairy couple of weeks. School and the entire state shut down about two weeks ago. School is closed indefinitely. New York State is not playing around with COVID-19. We have been attempting to home school the boys for the last little bit. It's been alright, I guess. There's one problem, I suck at writing word problems. I can write a novel in a month but I can't write a word problem that my son can't solve in less than a minute. I am mildly vexed.

I have been struggling to find the time to write anything. The kids have been keeping me on my toes. Mornings have been busy with academic work. We fit in almost everything in the morning: English, writing journal time, social studies, math, more writing journal time, and art. It's when we hit lunch time that things go sideways. Just yesterday the boys had an epic screaming match while I was washing dishes. It seems that I have to stay on top of them to keep them occupied with stuff. The problem is, I am beginning to run out of ideas.

It'd be easier if I could just print off stuff from the internet but I don't have a functional printer. I am drawing out worksheets by hand. It's been a challenge. I am starting to run low on kid friendly writing prompts. It'd be one thing if I could let them just free write for the whole writing session. The problem is, as autistic children, they write about their special interests at the exclusion of other topics. So, it gets harder to get them to write opinion pieces, fiction, or pretty much anything other than what their focus is at that moment. This is why I have been giving them prompts for their writing journal.

We've been curating how much of the news the boys watch because they get anxious over things. COVID-19 was a huge source of anxiety for my eldest for a little while after the school explained that they might be closing because of it. It took us a solid week to explain that as long as we maintained good hygiene and proper safety procedures we'd most likely be fine. I, however, have been watching and journaling in my daily planner the progression of COVID-19 in my state. I am deeply concerned and doing my best to come up with as much indoor activities for the kids as I can.

All of this rambling aside, I am still trying to get Book 5 of the Umbrel Chronicles of Evandar ready to send off to the printer in a few months. Gods only know if the COVID-19 business will allow me to get the book out or not. Worst case scenario, it goes out strictly in digital format. I'm still trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with my interface for Lulu.com and why I can't get things going through there again. I keep getting error messages that I have the wrong version of Flash to use all their features. It's why I've been doing more stuff through KDP, even though I don't exactly like KDP's platform.

Going digital for now.

Dear Reader,

Maybe you have heard of this COVID-19 bug that's making the whole goddamn world sick. Aside from social isolation and doing my best to home-school my kids right now, I'm in the process of making sure that all of my books are available in digital format. While there are people all through the printing process and delivery process in need of work, their safety is of higher priority. As such, I exhort everyone to purchase digital editions of the books that they are interested in. The work of producing a digital edition is predominantly done via computer programs and far less people are physically involved with the product (and each other) which makes it safer for consumption right now.

The COVID-19 situation is making things crunchy and weird. As a medievalist, I was fascinated by the black death but I had (and continue to have) zero desire to live through such situations. And yet, here we are. I'm going to attempt to produce some short works and price them as low as I can manage to help you stave off boredom and cabin fever. Goodness knows I have a pile of notebooks full of story ideas. I may even share some of the stuff that my kids came up with. My youngest was inspired by my book writing efforts to make his own called The Sad Worm and The Happy Cat. His handwriting is illegible because he was so excited that he just scrawled random lines (or at least what looks like random lines) to go with the pictures.

If I can get things organized enough around here (which is a laughable idea at the moment as the kids are doing a terrible cover of The Beatles' Hey Jude at FULL VOLUME in the other room), I will share some writing prompts and ideas for writers of all ages. I have been logging the progression of COVID-19 in my journal. I have no idea what I'm going to do with this but I feel like it is an important thing to do for posterity. If you're inclined to keep a journal, consider using pens that are good on acid free paper. You're making a historical document, even if it doesn't feel like it, and it will quite possibly be important years down the road.

If I'm lucky, by the end of this situation, the kids will have learned how to carry a tune. Or I will learn to have the focus of a zen master. I suspect that I will not see either happen.

Stay safe everybody.

I think I'm done editing. I think.

Dear Reader,

I think I finally finished editing the little book that I'm writing for the Filianic and Déanic faith community that I am apart of. That was arduous and irritating. For some inane reason, each time I uploaded the document new errors appeared. Errors that were not in the original document. Like my table of contents completely disappearing. Like fonts getting changed or suddenly becoming unavailable (which was really weird because just about everybody uses Times New Roman). I was beginning to think the damn project was cursed or something with how many times I had to tweak and re-upload with the prayer that it wouldn't magically develop another issue.

I am having difficulty getting Lulu.com's site working with my browser. It keeps telling me that I have the wrong version of Flash for me to use all of their features. As a result, I am working with KDP's site. Maybe it was because Mercury was retrograde through the entire time I was working on this. Maybe it was because of demons. I don't know, but this was a  process that made me wish that I had somebody else fighting the computer and all I had to do was just write shit.

I suddenly understand now the pull of traditional publishing. Editing was painful and it was a small text. Uploading was a headache again and again. Then there was the process of making the cover and working out a decent blurb. It was ridiculous. I really think that there are bugs in the KDP platform and that's why things like random font changes happened. I'm trying to get Lulu's site to play well with my computer because I prefer Lulu's format. But until I can get it sorted out, I just have to keep kicking KDP in the teeth when it tries to alter my books with out permission.

Anybody with more experience using KDP's platform have suggestions to get its interface to be more cooperative please drop me a note in the comments. In the meantime, I have another book to edit and prep for release. Still also on KDP and it's still a headache but I'm closing in on being finished with that project too. It's another Filianic/Déanic book (actually the paperback of the digital book that is dropping on Saturday).

I'm urging people to go for digital copies because of the pandemic. I figure computers can't spread COVID-19. That way everybody in the chain of supply for the paperback books is a little bit safer with a few less books to handle.

Life is getting in the way of my writing, again.

Dear Reader,

It would be awesome if things like my dishes could take care of themselves and laundry just magically folded itself up. Bippity, boppity, boom! It's done. Alas, life isn't that helpful. My kids try to help clean things up but tend to leave a bigger mess behind than was there to begin with. As such, my kitchen's kinda a disaster. I still have a big ol' pile of laundry to fold (and I was folding laundry all day yesterday) and my bathroom is in questionable condition. But, hey, we've got a wide path for egress through the living room so we won't die if there's a fire.

Some days, I feel like it's going to take a small army of people to keep up with my family and the housekeeping so that I can stay on top of my writing. Then I remember, if I do a little bit every day, I have a hope of getting things to a maintenance cleaning level. On top of trying to keep up with housework that mushroomed out of control when I caught a cold, we've got school stuff going on. I'm trying to wrangle my youngest into sitting down and actually studying for his spelling test this Friday instead of drawing plans for space ships. He has decided he wants to write a book at some point because I write books. Maybe I can connive him into writing some kind of story featuring all of his spelling words. I don't know. This has a chance of going off the rails into insanity.

So, I have not forgotten about this blog or my books. I just have been eyeballs deep in laundry and housework. I thank you for your patience. Hopefully, in a couple days, I'll be caught up.

Editing is making me miss whiskey.

Dear Reader,

I am so close to finished with my edits on this manuscript. Now I have to deal with formatting issues. Each change I make, magically, undoes itself when I upload the manuscript to the self-publishing site. EVERY DAMN TIME! Font changes? Useless. Line spacing changes? Laughable. I'm beginning to think that there are dark forces moving against me and I'm going to have to sacrifice an animal or something to make this work properly. Also, is it me or does the self-publishing sites have a hate for Google Chrome? I keep getting error messages that I don't have the current version of Flash to use various features. (I have the most up to date version of Flash on this gods damned computer right now.)

I can only imagine how hammered Hemingway would have been if he had to go through this stuff.

Flora & Fauna: Roots are hard to draw.

Dear Reader,

I've been having some difficulty with my sketches. Roots are shockingly hard to draw. I thought feet were complicated and I knew that hands were challenging. I never dreamed that something like roots would be so hard to draw. I am currently attempting to draw something that looks approximately like Mandrake root and it looks gods awful. I now understand why they just took a shortcut and drew them to look like little people in the ground with leaves sticking out of their heads. I am quite tempted to do the same thing. Ugh. Why can't roots be like potatoes? Potatoes are easy to draw. (No, I am not going to post images because I am ashamed of how ugly they are. I should draw potatoes instead.)

Craft of Writing: Revise & Revise Again

Dear Reader,

I am currently in the process of revising a manuscript in preparation for self-publication. Revision is a long process and can lead to burn out. It is tempting to say after your first run through the manuscript that it is good enough. Don't give into that temptation! Resist! For the love of your book, resist the temptation to say that your manuscript is done after one revision.

Maybe you can get away with that in a high school English class, if you're teacher is overworked and is just skimming through papers. Get outside of that special life of writing that is for secondary school and you can't just skate through with out 'extra' revision. There is this myth that authors, especially the big name ones, write the perfect book in one shot and editors just breeze through them to make sure that the layout looks good. It is a terrible lie. Don't believe it.

Revision is a skill. It does not come easily. Let us be honest, here, none of the skills in this trade come easily. Sitting down with a work and searching out its weaknesses and flaws is painful, boring, and tedious. That's why I will let a fresh manuscript sit for a few months before I pick it up again to start the revision process. And I don't try to bang my way through the process in one month. If the manuscript is really short, I may get lucky and one month is how long it takes. Most of my manuscripts, however, are not that short.

It takes me at least three months to get through a NaNoWriMo project (50k+ words) for my first round of revision. Then I set it down for a month to work on something else. After that, I pick it up for the second round of revision. The first round is checking to make sure that the major story elements work and that I have character details correct in most of the scenes. The second round is where I start looking at the mechanics of the book and things like grammar. It is the nightmarish part of revising and editing that I don't particularly enjoy. Still, going through the book with a fine toothed comb is the only way you can get it ready for the third round of revision. That final round of revision is where I try to get things like pagination and font spacing right. I am still looking to make sure I didn't miss anything in the previous rounds of revision.

After spending most of a year on the three revision phases, I will have a manuscript ready for me to consider publishing. I stick it in a proverbial drawer for another month, sometimes two. Then I read through it. If it still works and still tells the story I want to tell, I proceed with the process of self-publication. Sometime, however, after the functional year of revision, I have to scrap large parts of the manuscript and rework. That puts me back at square one after I have done that. I usually want to light my laptop on fire and throw it out a window when that happens. It's ok to cry and eat that pint of ice cream when that happens.

After those feelings pass, come back at the writing desk and see what you have sitting there. It just might be worth spending another year on revision. Or, you might be insanely lucky and have something that is just right. Still do that first round of revision, just to make sure, though.

SCIENCE! fiction

Angel checked over the plasma rifle. Satisfied that Maeson had kept the weapon in good condition and fully charged, she walked out of the security suite with the plasma pistol holstered at her left hip and the rifle over her right shoulder. It felt good to have a real weapon in her hands. The sword was in her left hand. It was not as elegant as the katana that she preferred but she took what she could from the situation. She stepped back into the stairwell and looked down to the deck below. Satisfied that there wasn't anyone coming up from below, she continued down to the corridor to the lift.

As she stepped into the lift, she said, “Bring me to the lower cargo deck.” Aeolus initiated the movement of the module. The gravity systems required for the lifts to work were hardwired to stay on-line. It was something that Angel couldn't command Aeolus to override. She didn't worry about that, however, because she figured it was something she could use to her advantage. The doors to the lift hissed open and she stepped out. The plasma breech was above her. She could see how it was slowly eating away at the metal in a far corner of the cargo bay.

She resettled the rifle on its carrying sling so that if she needed it quickly she could bring it to ready immediately. “Captain,” the ship said via the neural-link, “This level may be able to tolerate combat but only for a limited time.” Angel muttered in the darkness something about how it wasn't going to be a long fight. She reached the emergency egress to the upper deck and climbed the rungs up. She punched in her command code and the hatch opened.

Her vision heightened to the limits of human vision and pushed farther by the display that the neural-link generated, she could tell that her targets were at the opposite end of the bay still trying to figure out how to open the main hatch. “Dregan!” she shouted. The cloned units turned as a single body. As they began moving towards her, she stepped back and dropped back down to the lower deck through the open hatch.

The first of them jumped into the darkness. The clone found himself with a sword cleaving into his torso as he hit the deck. The claymore was heavier than what Angel was used to but it did the job superbly. While the cyborg clones were well designed to infiltrate non-combat units, it left them a little more susceptible to injury than the combat units. They lacked the metal impregnated skeleton that the combat unit clones had because they were just bodies to throw as cannon fodder. They didn't have the neural-link or any of the other features of the combat units, such as enhanced reflexes or broader visual acuity. They were little more than doomed men wearing her lost lover's face and memories. The second clone began to climb down the ladder as Angel moved back.

In the pitch dark of the cargo bay, they stumbled over the corpse of the other clone. Angel brought her sword down and decapitated them. Two clones executed, she awaited the other four. She knew that the clones would learn from the situation because they were not androids. She called up to the clones on the deck above. “Dregan! Get down here!” Angel waited. “I'm not getting any younger, lover boy,” she called as another clone came down. Their foot met the bodies and gingerly they felt their way around them. “That's right,” Angel said, “Come this way, follow my voice.” With her enhanced vision she watched the clone walk directly towards her.

She stepped forward and hacked into the clone with the sword. Where the first two didn't have an opportunity to scream, this one did. It was a cry of betrayed agony. Angel felt something inside her sicken at that sound. “Don't worry,” she said, moving closer as the clone dropped to his knees, “I'll make it better.” She could see the head turn towards her. With a single blow of the sword, she beheaded the one that gazed at her with wounded betrayal in their eyes.

The clones on the deck above moved towards the hatch and down into the cargo bay below. Angel stood well back from them, the sword at her feet and the plasma rifle in her hands. She shot the first one in the back. A brilliant, blindly bright blast of light came from the blow and the body began to burn as it fell away from the ladder. The third clone hesitated at the hatch entrance.

“Lights up, Aeolus,” Angel said, “I want him to see what I've done.” Angel blinked at the sudden shift from utter darkness to pale running lights illuminating the gloom. As the clone in the exo-suit climbed down, they looked around the empty bay. They saw Angel standing at the opposite side with a plasma rifle trained on them. They saw the bodies of the other clones.

“What are your orders?” Angel demanded.

“Complete the mission,” they answered in Dregan's familiar, husky voice.

“Well, the mission is complete and we're enroute to deliver the data,” Angel said, “So, I'll ask you again, what is your orders?”

“You're compromised,” they said, “We are supposed to take command and confine you until the replacement arrives.” Angel shook her head.

“Wet-work never was your forte, was it?” The clone shrugged while looking around for something to possibly defend himself with. “Listen to me,” Angel said, “I promise, when I get back to Terra Firma, I'm going to burn the whole thing down, like we planned.”

The clone's attention snapped to Angel. As she edged forward, she let the plasma rifle swing back to her side. She slowly drew the pistol at her side. “Xenogen is going to go down,” Angel said, “Just like we planned. I just have to get back there to shut project Morpheus down and all the rest of them. You're going to help me, just like we talked about it.”

“I... I don't remember,” the clone said. Angel's voice was soothing as she raised the pistol. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because you're dead, lover boy,” Angel said, “They killed you thirty years ago.”

“But, I'm right here,” he said, “And you haven't aged a day.”

“Stasis in the Creche does that to you. They got me the day they got you,” she said.

The clone gripped their head through the exo-suit. At her words, a memory of Angel's screaming and blinding light and pain hit the clone. Operation six was a failure because of the neural-link synchronization sickness. He fled into the the city and found Angel. They were happy for a time. And then operation six found him again. They accomplished synchronization for a brief moment to implant the command to bring the wayward and hunted prototype cyborg to a location for them to take her in.

The clone looked over at Angel as the memories slammed into them. “End it,” the clone said in a ragged voice, “You don't know what else they programmed into me.”

“I had to give you a chance,” she answered. The clone of Dregan nodded and straightened. Angel fired her plasma pistol and the head whipped back as it was vaporized. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she turned around and picked Maeson's sword.