WIP Meme
So, here's everything I have worked on from November forward that I actually do want to finish one day. I am posting the first 300-600 words of the things, so y'all can get an actual idea of what the story is like.
Chaos Theory - sci-fi; 80k+ words; one of my NaNo projects.
Three guys and the ways and times that they meet as they bounce around the universe.
The nice thing about having a smaller ship was that Aric could set it down anywhere he damn well pleased.
The shitty thing about having a smaller ship meant that sometimes he ended up setting down in the middle of nowhere--where setting down was synonymous with a near-crash landing--and wondering where the fuck he was and how he was going to get back to civilization so he could talk a fuel ship into flying out and filling up his tank.
Aric sighed as he walked down the ramp and onto the soil. At least this time he'd been able to find a relatively clear-of-trees place to land. He'd taken down a tree that looked like an oak with the bark of a birch tree and parts of it were still clinging to the undercarriage. He pulled them out, muttering under his breath.
"Another fabulous landing, captain," Klick said, like the jerk she was. She looked like she'd just woken up, her curly hair somewhat mused (not that that was abnormal) and her face still sleep-soft. "Where are we this time?"
"Endskar," he said, and pulled at a branch that had wedged itself inbetween the ramp and the cargo bay doors. It wouldn't have been a problem if the doors were shut, but with them open it was wedged in there pretty fucking well.
"Ooh, exotic," she said, raising her left hand and wiggling her fingers in little waves. "Do you happen to know where the nearest refueling station is?"
"We flew right over one, but..."
Klick's hands dropped to her sides, then she moved them behind her back, clasping them and bending over to get her face closer to Aric's. "You didn't have enough fuel to land?"
"Got it in one." If Aric was going to be bothered by her teasing, he would have done it a long time ago.
"Mmm." Klick straightened up, bringing her hands back to the front again, clapping them together. "Well! Are you going to go for fuel, or should I?"
She'd gone last time. Aric was a ripe old [27] to her tender young seventeen--a friend of a friend's daughter who needed to get out and see the world and, oh yeah, leave her parents the fuck alone because she was apparently crazy. Klick was frequently bothersome, but certifiable? Aric was pretty sure she'd just been stir-crazy and nothing more.
At any rate, although she was young, it wasn't like Aric was old yet. Getting older, yeah, but not old. "I'll go."
---
Machlin - fantasy; ~25k; co-written with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
penny.
This is going to be a HUGE project when it is done, but... I really do love the world and the characters that we created, so I want badly to finish it.
The capital was almost overload after being in remote locations hunting down and interrogating rebels for the last four years. So many people, so many buildings, so much noise.
"Hey, watch out!" someone on a bike called, and it took Lorn a moment to figure out which way the guy was going, by which time he was riding by, nearly clipping Lorn with the handlebars. "Fucking Lin!" he called behind him, with much more force than Lorn had experienced the last time he was a resident of the capital, back when he'd been in training.
The exchange was maddening; Lorn expected that kind of thing out in the newly-captured territories or when he was squirreling out a rebel base and questioning them. But here in the capital? Pikél was supposed to be the height of civilization, the heart of the empire, the very last place where he should be facing this kind of disrespect.
He had half a mind to chase the guy down and demand his name, but the other people were glaring at Lorn, not at the guy on the bicycle. He'd learned to gauge the attitude of crowds pretty easy, and this one wouldn't put up with Lorn calling the suicidal idiot on his anti-Lin sentiment.
Suddenly getting recalled to the capital for some bullshit teaching position when he could be out there catching rebels made so much sense.
And when he went to spend the very last of this month's stipend on some fresh-baked bread, one of the benefits of being in the capital, the guy examined Lorn's money a bit too closely. Not to mention looking like he didn't really want to sell Lorn the bread!
Asshole, Lorn thought, and munched the bread the whole walk through the rest of the city to the Lin complex.
---
Learning Curve - sci-fi; 2.5k words.
This is a follow-up to a published story called Trust Me. I really, really want to finish this one, and then write Sera's story, and put them all together in a little anthology.
Koit got the news in the middle of one of those arguments with Atlas, the ones where Atlas tried to tell Koit how to live his life--in particular how to use his powers--and Koit, rather justifiably, got pissed.
"I don't even know why you're so..." Atlas started off yelling, but trailed off, sighing and sitting down on the bed.
Over in its niche on the wall, Koit's screen chimed.
The glare on Atlas's face said don't you dare answer that, so Koit reached over and picked the screen up, flipping it out of hibernate and answering the call before he registered who was calling. "Hello?"
Atlas wasn't so rude that he would interrupt the call, but the look on his face was pure murder. Bloody fucking murder, with Koit's name the first on his list.
"Koit?" it was his mother, and her nose and eyes were red. Wait--were those tears on her cheeks? Her eyes were certainly glassy.
His mother called him exactly once a week; he'd already talked to her once this week. Something was clearly wrong. "Yeah?"
"I'm not sure how to tell you this..." she trailed off, her eyes unfocusing for long moments until she jumped abruptly and looked down. "I don't know how to say it, except to say it: your father died."
Died? As in dead? Not living? Koit felt like he had been punched directly in the chest, so hard that he couldn't even gasp for breath for a few seconds.
---
The Boy and the Lightning - urban fantasy; 25k words.
50k weekend project that I just ended up dropping like a bad habit because I got burnt out.
He stands with his legs spread, his shoulders squared, his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. "It's coming," he says, without looking away from the approaching storm.
"I know, Ren, you've only said it sixteen times so far," I growl as I try to pull him away. His powers are like a lightning rod; he's been struck six times already and he's barely even eighteen. We need to get out of the path of the storm, post-haste.
"No," Ren says helplessly, pointing with one finger at the dark sky. "You see, you see--it's coming!"
I look over my shoulder, but I see nothing except dark blue sky and black clouds, lit up momentarily by some cloud-to-cloud lightning. Sunset was an hour ago. "Aaren," I say, resisting the urge to grind my teeth. "Come on, we have to get in the--"
A clap of thunder startles me into silence.
"Look," Ren whispers.
The lightning that arcs through the sky, heading in the far distance for the ground is thick even as far away as we are. Up on it, it would probably be thick around as a skyscraper, a giant skyscraper from the clouds to the ground for bare seconds, lighting everything up in brilliant white before disappearing once more, leaving my eyes dazzled. "Wow," I breathe, almost involuntarily.
Ren's goofy, happy little smile is hard to see, but I catch it anyway, white contrasting against his dark skin. "Pretty."
Right, we were getting the fuck out of here, weren't we? "Come on, Ren, you don't want to get struck again," I say, trying reason out on him.
"But they're coming," Ren says, his voice a near-whine. "I want to see them. Seen them so much, but I want to see them."
I sigh, shaking my head. "No, Ren, that's not what we're going to do. Now are you going to get in the car or am I going to drag you?" Well, I say car, it's actually a hummer, one of those military-issue ones that were the first on production; it belonged to my sister, before she died.
Ren hates it. The hummer. He hates all cars, but that one especially. Getting him into it is a chore at the best of times, when he's not determined to stay and wait for someone or something--I have had enough of a taste of his powers by now to know that he's not bullshitting; something is out there in the lightning--to come here and meet us.
"Get in," I growl at him, as I pull his small frame toward the vehicle. We were out on some dusty--now muddy--back roads, seeing all that there was to see. Ren was fine the whole time. It's only now, with the storm, that he's having problems getting back in.
"But," Ren says, and his eyes are dazed; I can see it in the light from the hummer's open door, even dark as his eyes are.
"I'll give you whatever you want," I say, desperately.
I don't want to knock Ren out just to get him in the hummer, though I've knocked him out before when he was having a freak-out. I learned how to do a sleeper hold when Ren was eight and I was ten, and Ren started having his freak-outs, and I've done it enough at this point that I know exactly the safest ways to do it. Sometimes it's just easier to knock him out and deal with the fall-out of that than to try and reason with him.
"But Manny," he said, in this pitiful little-boy voice, "They're coming for me."
---
Demon priest - fantasy; 5k.
Just calling this one by its file name, heh. I tried to write this for an anthology, but I just felt so much like I was forcing the story. But, I do want to finish this; it's an interesting premise.
Sel getting out of bed woke me, and I lay blinking up at the ceiling for a few bare seconds, until the message worked its way around my sleep-addled brain. I was thoroughly awake once I realized what was happening.
Amin, the bastard.
Well, not as much of a bastard as most demons were. As a Ziyan priest, Sel could do much worse; everyone knew the stories about demons killing priests, and the fact that there weren't any old priests seemed to support the stories. But Amin was still a demon, and thus worthy of my hatred.
I slipped out of bed quietly, pulling my nightshirt back down over my hips, and padded on bare feet to the door to the sitting-room. It was made of solid oak and not the type that could be listened through, so I turned the handle as quietly as I could and opened it a crack.
The door didn't squeak; I made sure the hinges were well-oiled.
"It's time," Amin said, in that don't-argue-with-me tone.
As usual, it worked like a charm on Sel, who despite the frightened look in his eyes nodded. "If you say so."
Amin glanced at the bedroom door and I leaned away from it; he did not notice me, looking back at Sel. "Have you told him yet, Selsíe?"
Ire crossed Sel's features; he hated Amin's nickname for him. The ire was there and gone quickly, though, and Sel said, "No."
Even from where I was, I could see the way that Amin's eyes went vivid red, standing out starkly against his white skin and hair. "What? We had a plan, Sel, and you not sticking to it means that we have to make a new plan or start over with this one and--"
"Maybe I'm just not ready!" Sel cried, and sat down hard in the chair at his desk. I winced in sympathy; it was not the most comfortable chair that he owned, even by a stretch.
I stared in wonder just as much as Amin did; this sort of protest was just not the Selousíe, Ziyan Priest of the Fifth Order, that I knew and loved. There was no doubt in my mind that Amin's feels did not equal my own.
"Selsíe," he growled, lowly. "It is this or kill him; make your choice. Again."
---
What You Wish For - fantasy; 54k.
This is my current project and it is going to get finished even if I have to beat it out of myself, omg. I love it so hard!
I know somebody like me having a dragon is a big deal, but you gotta understand: I didn't do it on purpose. I know what everybody says, and everybody's liars, because even if I wanted a dragon I wouldn't of... I don't know what to call it, rightly, because stolen ain't the right word, not when she walked over to me like that. But I wouldn't of done it on purpose is the important part.
I already done this month's few nights of work at the pleasure-house, so I woke up early the way I liked to and did what I always did: climbed up to the caves where the wild Slate dragons lived because I liked to sit up there and smell their sulfur and watch the sunrise. Not because I knew there was going to be a hatching today and thought maybe the hatchie would choose me over its own kind.
For starters, I ain't that self-centered, and for continuing, it ain't like I had the funds to raise a dragon. They are right expensive.
So there I was, minding my own business, sitting on the cliffs. I always did like sitting up high, and aside of straddling the bow of a dragon-ship there ain't a finer place than sitting in my favorite spot between this one tree and where it grows out of the cliff. And I was there to watch the sun rise--which I had, by the time the ruckus started--and maybe talk with the wild dragons, if they were willing. Some days they was, some they wasn't.
I was climbing back to the edge of the cliff and had just stuck my head up over the top when I saw that the clean dragons that lived in the cave--I call 'em the Slate clan, because they're mostly Slates, but it ain't all Slates--had brought an egg out. That only could mean one thing: it was time for it to hatch.
---
Yeah, I write a lot.
Chaos Theory - sci-fi; 80k+ words; one of my NaNo projects.
Three guys and the ways and times that they meet as they bounce around the universe.
The nice thing about having a smaller ship was that Aric could set it down anywhere he damn well pleased.
The shitty thing about having a smaller ship meant that sometimes he ended up setting down in the middle of nowhere--where setting down was synonymous with a near-crash landing--and wondering where the fuck he was and how he was going to get back to civilization so he could talk a fuel ship into flying out and filling up his tank.
Aric sighed as he walked down the ramp and onto the soil. At least this time he'd been able to find a relatively clear-of-trees place to land. He'd taken down a tree that looked like an oak with the bark of a birch tree and parts of it were still clinging to the undercarriage. He pulled them out, muttering under his breath.
"Another fabulous landing, captain," Klick said, like the jerk she was. She looked like she'd just woken up, her curly hair somewhat mused (not that that was abnormal) and her face still sleep-soft. "Where are we this time?"
"Endskar," he said, and pulled at a branch that had wedged itself inbetween the ramp and the cargo bay doors. It wouldn't have been a problem if the doors were shut, but with them open it was wedged in there pretty fucking well.
"Ooh, exotic," she said, raising her left hand and wiggling her fingers in little waves. "Do you happen to know where the nearest refueling station is?"
"We flew right over one, but..."
Klick's hands dropped to her sides, then she moved them behind her back, clasping them and bending over to get her face closer to Aric's. "You didn't have enough fuel to land?"
"Got it in one." If Aric was going to be bothered by her teasing, he would have done it a long time ago.
"Mmm." Klick straightened up, bringing her hands back to the front again, clapping them together. "Well! Are you going to go for fuel, or should I?"
She'd gone last time. Aric was a ripe old [27] to her tender young seventeen--a friend of a friend's daughter who needed to get out and see the world and, oh yeah, leave her parents the fuck alone because she was apparently crazy. Klick was frequently bothersome, but certifiable? Aric was pretty sure she'd just been stir-crazy and nothing more.
At any rate, although she was young, it wasn't like Aric was old yet. Getting older, yeah, but not old. "I'll go."
---
Machlin - fantasy; ~25k; co-written with
penny. This is going to be a HUGE project when it is done, but... I really do love the world and the characters that we created, so I want badly to finish it.
The capital was almost overload after being in remote locations hunting down and interrogating rebels for the last four years. So many people, so many buildings, so much noise.
"Hey, watch out!" someone on a bike called, and it took Lorn a moment to figure out which way the guy was going, by which time he was riding by, nearly clipping Lorn with the handlebars. "Fucking Lin!" he called behind him, with much more force than Lorn had experienced the last time he was a resident of the capital, back when he'd been in training.
The exchange was maddening; Lorn expected that kind of thing out in the newly-captured territories or when he was squirreling out a rebel base and questioning them. But here in the capital? Pikél was supposed to be the height of civilization, the heart of the empire, the very last place where he should be facing this kind of disrespect.
He had half a mind to chase the guy down and demand his name, but the other people were glaring at Lorn, not at the guy on the bicycle. He'd learned to gauge the attitude of crowds pretty easy, and this one wouldn't put up with Lorn calling the suicidal idiot on his anti-Lin sentiment.
Suddenly getting recalled to the capital for some bullshit teaching position when he could be out there catching rebels made so much sense.
And when he went to spend the very last of this month's stipend on some fresh-baked bread, one of the benefits of being in the capital, the guy examined Lorn's money a bit too closely. Not to mention looking like he didn't really want to sell Lorn the bread!
Asshole, Lorn thought, and munched the bread the whole walk through the rest of the city to the Lin complex.
---
Learning Curve - sci-fi; 2.5k words.
This is a follow-up to a published story called Trust Me. I really, really want to finish this one, and then write Sera's story, and put them all together in a little anthology.
Koit got the news in the middle of one of those arguments with Atlas, the ones where Atlas tried to tell Koit how to live his life--in particular how to use his powers--and Koit, rather justifiably, got pissed.
"I don't even know why you're so..." Atlas started off yelling, but trailed off, sighing and sitting down on the bed.
Over in its niche on the wall, Koit's screen chimed.
The glare on Atlas's face said don't you dare answer that, so Koit reached over and picked the screen up, flipping it out of hibernate and answering the call before he registered who was calling. "Hello?"
Atlas wasn't so rude that he would interrupt the call, but the look on his face was pure murder. Bloody fucking murder, with Koit's name the first on his list.
"Koit?" it was his mother, and her nose and eyes were red. Wait--were those tears on her cheeks? Her eyes were certainly glassy.
His mother called him exactly once a week; he'd already talked to her once this week. Something was clearly wrong. "Yeah?"
"I'm not sure how to tell you this..." she trailed off, her eyes unfocusing for long moments until she jumped abruptly and looked down. "I don't know how to say it, except to say it: your father died."
Died? As in dead? Not living? Koit felt like he had been punched directly in the chest, so hard that he couldn't even gasp for breath for a few seconds.
---
The Boy and the Lightning - urban fantasy; 25k words.
50k weekend project that I just ended up dropping like a bad habit because I got burnt out.
He stands with his legs spread, his shoulders squared, his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. "It's coming," he says, without looking away from the approaching storm.
"I know, Ren, you've only said it sixteen times so far," I growl as I try to pull him away. His powers are like a lightning rod; he's been struck six times already and he's barely even eighteen. We need to get out of the path of the storm, post-haste.
"No," Ren says helplessly, pointing with one finger at the dark sky. "You see, you see--it's coming!"
I look over my shoulder, but I see nothing except dark blue sky and black clouds, lit up momentarily by some cloud-to-cloud lightning. Sunset was an hour ago. "Aaren," I say, resisting the urge to grind my teeth. "Come on, we have to get in the--"
A clap of thunder startles me into silence.
"Look," Ren whispers.
The lightning that arcs through the sky, heading in the far distance for the ground is thick even as far away as we are. Up on it, it would probably be thick around as a skyscraper, a giant skyscraper from the clouds to the ground for bare seconds, lighting everything up in brilliant white before disappearing once more, leaving my eyes dazzled. "Wow," I breathe, almost involuntarily.
Ren's goofy, happy little smile is hard to see, but I catch it anyway, white contrasting against his dark skin. "Pretty."
Right, we were getting the fuck out of here, weren't we? "Come on, Ren, you don't want to get struck again," I say, trying reason out on him.
"But they're coming," Ren says, his voice a near-whine. "I want to see them. Seen them so much, but I want to see them."
I sigh, shaking my head. "No, Ren, that's not what we're going to do. Now are you going to get in the car or am I going to drag you?" Well, I say car, it's actually a hummer, one of those military-issue ones that were the first on production; it belonged to my sister, before she died.
Ren hates it. The hummer. He hates all cars, but that one especially. Getting him into it is a chore at the best of times, when he's not determined to stay and wait for someone or something--I have had enough of a taste of his powers by now to know that he's not bullshitting; something is out there in the lightning--to come here and meet us.
"Get in," I growl at him, as I pull his small frame toward the vehicle. We were out on some dusty--now muddy--back roads, seeing all that there was to see. Ren was fine the whole time. It's only now, with the storm, that he's having problems getting back in.
"But," Ren says, and his eyes are dazed; I can see it in the light from the hummer's open door, even dark as his eyes are.
"I'll give you whatever you want," I say, desperately.
I don't want to knock Ren out just to get him in the hummer, though I've knocked him out before when he was having a freak-out. I learned how to do a sleeper hold when Ren was eight and I was ten, and Ren started having his freak-outs, and I've done it enough at this point that I know exactly the safest ways to do it. Sometimes it's just easier to knock him out and deal with the fall-out of that than to try and reason with him.
"But Manny," he said, in this pitiful little-boy voice, "They're coming for me."
---
Demon priest - fantasy; 5k.
Just calling this one by its file name, heh. I tried to write this for an anthology, but I just felt so much like I was forcing the story. But, I do want to finish this; it's an interesting premise.
Sel getting out of bed woke me, and I lay blinking up at the ceiling for a few bare seconds, until the message worked its way around my sleep-addled brain. I was thoroughly awake once I realized what was happening.
Amin, the bastard.
Well, not as much of a bastard as most demons were. As a Ziyan priest, Sel could do much worse; everyone knew the stories about demons killing priests, and the fact that there weren't any old priests seemed to support the stories. But Amin was still a demon, and thus worthy of my hatred.
I slipped out of bed quietly, pulling my nightshirt back down over my hips, and padded on bare feet to the door to the sitting-room. It was made of solid oak and not the type that could be listened through, so I turned the handle as quietly as I could and opened it a crack.
The door didn't squeak; I made sure the hinges were well-oiled.
"It's time," Amin said, in that don't-argue-with-me tone.
As usual, it worked like a charm on Sel, who despite the frightened look in his eyes nodded. "If you say so."
Amin glanced at the bedroom door and I leaned away from it; he did not notice me, looking back at Sel. "Have you told him yet, Selsíe?"
Ire crossed Sel's features; he hated Amin's nickname for him. The ire was there and gone quickly, though, and Sel said, "No."
Even from where I was, I could see the way that Amin's eyes went vivid red, standing out starkly against his white skin and hair. "What? We had a plan, Sel, and you not sticking to it means that we have to make a new plan or start over with this one and--"
"Maybe I'm just not ready!" Sel cried, and sat down hard in the chair at his desk. I winced in sympathy; it was not the most comfortable chair that he owned, even by a stretch.
I stared in wonder just as much as Amin did; this sort of protest was just not the Selousíe, Ziyan Priest of the Fifth Order, that I knew and loved. There was no doubt in my mind that Amin's feels did not equal my own.
"Selsíe," he growled, lowly. "It is this or kill him; make your choice. Again."
---
What You Wish For - fantasy; 54k.
This is my current project and it is going to get finished even if I have to beat it out of myself, omg. I love it so hard!
I know somebody like me having a dragon is a big deal, but you gotta understand: I didn't do it on purpose. I know what everybody says, and everybody's liars, because even if I wanted a dragon I wouldn't of... I don't know what to call it, rightly, because stolen ain't the right word, not when she walked over to me like that. But I wouldn't of done it on purpose is the important part.
I already done this month's few nights of work at the pleasure-house, so I woke up early the way I liked to and did what I always did: climbed up to the caves where the wild Slate dragons lived because I liked to sit up there and smell their sulfur and watch the sunrise. Not because I knew there was going to be a hatching today and thought maybe the hatchie would choose me over its own kind.
For starters, I ain't that self-centered, and for continuing, it ain't like I had the funds to raise a dragon. They are right expensive.
So there I was, minding my own business, sitting on the cliffs. I always did like sitting up high, and aside of straddling the bow of a dragon-ship there ain't a finer place than sitting in my favorite spot between this one tree and where it grows out of the cliff. And I was there to watch the sun rise--which I had, by the time the ruckus started--and maybe talk with the wild dragons, if they were willing. Some days they was, some they wasn't.
I was climbing back to the edge of the cliff and had just stuck my head up over the top when I saw that the clean dragons that lived in the cave--I call 'em the Slate clan, because they're mostly Slates, but it ain't all Slates--had brought an egg out. That only could mean one thing: it was time for it to hatch.
---
Yeah, I write a lot.