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.