A nice meal and a glass of wine.

I've been looking at my page views and they are exciting. I know it's 'cos I'm posting up on FB that people know I've posted (I'm also doing that on Twitter and getting nothing, which just cements a view of the usefullness of Twitter that I've had for a while), but It means people are looking at bits of my books and then coing back to look at other bits.
This bit needs a touch more explanation than the others. Adam, who is 24 and an English teacher in Japan, has entered the virtual world (think Matrix) of The Land. He's also entered the 11-year-old body of its hero, Brendan Earle. It means that he's a little kid and that all of the (literally) film-star-georgeous girls around him don't pay him any attention.
He's with Phoebe McLeod, who is 12, but is in the body of 18-year-old Malika Zinta. She looks like this:

and is rather pleased. Adam is the only one who knows that she's really only 12, just as she's the only one who knows he isn't 11. The middle of a really long story is that they've had to go back to a non-fantasy part of the virtual world and have been left alone. It's the first time they've had the chance or need to actually talk to each other. This is what happens.

Phoebe

We had time to get some shopping in after the film. I was getting hungry, so Adam said that he’d do something quick. We went to a big market to get some salad stuff and meat. I couldn’t believe the meat. It was hanging up in the air! I asked him about the Food Laws, but he said there weren’t any here and anyway, this meat wasn’t real, was it? That sort of made sense, so I supposed it was really like in vitrio, and like, you know where that comes from, don’t you?

Then we went to a supermarket in China Town for rice and things. Before we went back he insisted I go into a wine shop and buy a bottle of red wine. He picked out what sort he liked, but I had to get it, natch, him being underage.

We took the Metro back out to the house. When we got in, the place was lifeless, so I asked him if we could stream some music. He pointed at a rack with loads of thin boxes and told me to take my pick, then went into the kitchen to cook.

I didn’t know any of the names of the groups written on the boxes and I couldn’t work out how you started them, so I followed him into the kitchen with one.

“Are these some kind of mem for music?” He was washing some rice in a pan.

 “Ah, right. Hang on a minute and I’ll show you.” He finished the rice and put it on to cook, then came through to show me the machine.

“That’s what they use to play music? It’s huge!”

“Yeah, well, this is a long time ago. You press this and put the disk in here, and then…” He pushed the sliding thing that had opened up and it closed. “… it’ll play by itself.” He looked at the box. “You want to listen to Nick Cave?” He looked surprised.

“I dunno. I’ve never heard of any of these bands. Are they all real?”

“Yeah. What do you listen to?” He pressed a button and the noise stopped.

“Last Chance Divas, er, Playthings, Water On The Brain, FacePlace, that sort of stuff. Is there anything like that in there?” When he said ‘no’ I could hear he meant ‘Thank God!’

“So, is there anything in there that I would like?

“Er, try this. You’ll know this song.”

He picked out another of the boxes and put the disk in the machine. “You can change tracks by pressing this button here. I’m going to get started on the meal. It shouldn’t take long.”

Then he was back out in the kitchen. The machine started playing ‘Landslide’, but not like FacePlace do it. When it was done, I got it again. The words were written in the box, so I could sing along.

When that one was done I played some of the others. There was one about a soldier who goes off to a war and gets killed. Just listening to it I was nearly crying, it was lovely. It was called ‘Travellin’ Soldier’. I’d never heard music like that before, but I knew that I’d look to see if you could still stream this when I got home. Two more songs in and Adam was coming out to set the table, so I gave him a hand. He poured himself a glass of wine. Then he saw me looking.

“Well, I am eighteen now.” He laughed.

“I’ll get another glass, but I think you should take it easy till you know how well you can hold it.”

Then he brought in the food. There was a salad, the rice that had been cooked with coconut, by the smell, steak that had been cooked brown on the outside and was still red in the middle – I knew ‘cos it had been sliced thin – in a sauce that tasted a bit of soy, but had something else in it. There was some of that French stick bread, but it was brown. We sat down to eat. It was really delicious. I was hungry anyway, but it really was good. I tried the wine. I’d never had that before, so I did just sip it, but it was lovely too. I’d stopped the music when he brought the food in, but he went over to the machine and started it again to play in the background.

“I heard you singing from the kitchen. You’ve got a nice voice. Do you like this?”

“I think it’s Malaika who has the nice voice, but thanks anyway. Yeah. I like the way they do ‘Landslide’ and the one about the soldier.”

“Okay,” he said, and moved through the tracks to another one. “Try this.”

Then he sat down and started to eat.

“How do you like the wine?”

“It’s delicious, but mecha. And I know I’m s’posed to say this to be polite, but the food is really good, I mean really. I don’t think that’s ‘cos it’s meat. When you said you’d cook I thought you were just going to heat something up. How do you know to do this without a recipe book?”

“Family tradition. Mam loves cooking, but so do her brothers, Steve and Simon. They were never around much, but whenever they turned up they’d always spend a lot of time with me. Steve was a captain in the Royal Engineers before he retired and Simon’s taught English all round the world. He’s out in the UAE working in a university near Masdar now. Between them they’ve been everywhere.

Even after mam married Alistair, they’d still come to visit and they’d always do the cooking to show us something else they’d eaten somewhere exotic. Mam taught me to do ten things well before I went off to uni. For the rest, she reckons anyone who knows how to read knows how to cook. If I’m honest, I admit to occasional episodes of culinary dyslexia, but mostly I can feed myself. This is something I used to do before the food laws came in. How about you? Does your mother get you to help with the cooking?”

“Mum died when I was six.”

Like everyone else, he did that double take people do when I say that.

“Sorry, I didn’t even think. I’m so used to it being just me.”

“No, that’s ok. I’ve had time to get used to it.”

“How did it happen?”

He wasn’t looking at me when he said that, but I knew what was going through his head. I’ve done the same thing before. It’s like a tooth coming out. There’s a hole that hurts when you put your tongue into it, but you keep putting your tongue into it. You don’t really want to, but you can’t stop it. You always want to compare.

“She was in hospital for appendicitis and she got one of those super bugs. Her case was in that class action that got brought against the government. If you don’t mind, how did your real dad die?”

“Hit by a bus. A number nine bus. Mam always says he’d have appreciated that touch. He had that sense of humour.”

“Yeah, my dad’s like that. He says that if you go to the gallows you should have a joke for the hangman ‘cos you get points for it. His is: ‘Hello mate, I wonder if you can help? I got a Viagra stuck in my throat and I’ve got this awful stiff neck.’”

He laughed at that. Then he poured himself another glass of wine. He was about to put the bottle down when he saw that my glass was empty.

“Nothing about this place feels right, does it? I know I should offer you another glass of wine, because your glass is empty, and I know that I shouldn’t because you’re underage; but I can see you’re older than I am, but I know you aren’t used to drinking wine and I don’t want to be responsible for getting you drunk, but I don’t know if the programme will let that happen, because you are under age and …” he looked at me and shrugged. “Do you want another glass? You can say no.”

I laughed. It wasn’t really funny, but it was as well... I said yes... I didn’t think he was trying to get me drunk, but he was waving his hands around while he talked more than before, so maybe he’d had too much.

The music stopped so he got up and put on another disk. “This is The Lighthouse Family. They're good at what they do and I think you'll like them.”

I listened while I ate a bit more and decided I did. I liked everything tonight. We chatted until we’d finished what was on the table, and then he went out and brought in some really good chocolate cake. It went so well with the wine. It was all super, super yummy. 

When we’d done, he put the dishes out in the kitchen, promised he’d wash them in the morning and made some coffee. I usually don’t drink coffee, but it just seemed like the right thing to do, so very not twelve, so I had some with lots of sugar and milk and we sat down on the sofa and talked and joked and I giggled.

It wasn’t really freak, but it was too. We’d been in the Land for a week nearly and hardly said anything. There was me thinking he was so unfriendly and stuff. That night we just sat and told each other things about ourselves. I told him about Dad and Auntie ‘Lexie, who isn’t really my Auntie. She was Mum’s best friend and her bridesmaid. Then she got married and moved away. She came back just a bit after Mum died, ‘cos she’d got divorced.

The guy turned out to be a nutter. He came round to try to get her to go back and was shouting and pushing her around. We arrived at her house, ‘cos she’d invited us for a meal. We found the front door open and heard this shouting inside, so Dad went in, saw the guy and hit him. Just once. He always says that in the ring you don’t threaten and you don’t hesitate. Then he dragged the guy to the door (he wasn’t in any condition to argue or walk) and told him what would happen if he ever saw him again.

He wasn’t angry. Dad rarely gets angry, but I think the guy knew he meant it. ‘Lexie never saw him again. Never ever, ever. When he’d gone, Dad just moved furniture around, told ‘Lexie he’d put the meal out while she got ready (her mascara was all over her cheeks) and then acted as if nothing had happened. I was remembering it all as I told it and I felt a bit teary. “That’s my dad all over. He’s an impossible act to follow.”

“Get on,” he said, “You’ve pulled off being eighteen, won battles and filled in a skin this morning. I’ve spent most of my time unconscious while you’ve been saving a world. I’d call that pretty good.”

Well, like, he wasn’t going to tell me that I was making a mess of things, was he? But I thought he meant it, and I blushed. I think that might have been the wine. But I liked the wine. Super, super yummy. So I got up and filled both of our glasses again. The room was swaying, but that was fine, it was only a little.

I decided that I really liked his taste in music too, so when the music stopped I told him so and asked him to choose some more through the week for me. He put on a band called Deacon Blue. They were great too and Scottish!

It was freak, ‘cos he was a little kid and he wasn’t and I felt I was doing something dangerous sitting on the sofa with him and I wasn’t. Like, he wasn’t Max and I didn’t fancy him, but I started thinking that he was ok. Y’know, okay. OK. Maybe nice even. Drinking wine alone in the house with him… I knew I was going to have to think about that a bit more, ‘cos it didn’t feel like nothing, but I’d have to do it tomorrow, ‘cos I was starting to get tired.

This was a dream, but it wasn’t. So many, many things that had never really happened to me before. I’d never had a boyfriend before and I’d never sat down with someone, drunk wine and talked like an adult, well except with Dad, ‘cos he’s Dad and that’s what he’s there for, but we didn’t drink wine, of course, ‘cos he wouldn’t let me. Natch, he’s Dad.

And ‘Lexie. I told Adam I thought they wanted to get married, but they didn’t want to say anything yet. Maybe ‘cos Dad was worried how I’d get on with ‘Lexie as a stepmother. That night was the first time I realized that it would be fine with me. I mean, not just ok, but fine. Mecha.

I can’t remember what we talked about exactly, but we both giggled a lot. I did tell him thanks once, ‘cos he didn’t do what a lot of the Elders had done when they were talking to me and keep looking at Malaika’s chest. That’s so, so rude.

I was getting too tired to talk much more though, so I said good night and went to bed. I think I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

Adam

Who was it who said, ‘I can resist anything except temptation’? It was a bloke being honest, that’s who. I knew that nothing was happening, and I knew that was nonsense. I was sitting down drinking wine with one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever met and we were at the trading confidences stage.

There must be a name for it, it must be some kind of syndrome, where you go through a traumatic experience with someone and that makes you close to them. I think it might just be called life, though. Nothing might be happening now, but a week of this and nothing would only be happening by a great effort of will. I wanted out. This was all too crazy and I didn’t need five million years of evolution pushing me to do things that I knew were even crazier.

There’s a classic Japanese anime, ‘Tonari no Totoro’, which is more magical than anything Alistair could ever have come up with. Two young girls meet a gentle monster called Totoro. After their first experience with it, they wake up and find evidence that the impossible things they did with him the night before actually happened. They dance in a circle singing ‘Yume kedo, yume ja nai’. It means ‘It was a dream, but it wasn’t’. Maybe you need to see the film to understand it. I understood it. My head was starting to go round in a circle, singing, ‘This isn’t real, but it’s too damn real’.

Phoebe was getting very giggly over Deacon Blue being Scots and singing about Glasgow one minute. The next, she was patting my hand and thanking me for not looking at her breasts (no, not hers, Malaika’s) all the time, like the old neeps back at the Gard. While I was busy thinking how little she’d noticed, and wondering what neeps were, she wobbled off, saying she was tired. Yup, I thought, and emotional.

And so was I. Getting drunk on that much wine. What was the thing going to do next, make it rain?  I listened to music for long enough to let her clean her teeth and get into her room and out of my range. Lorraine McIntosh’s voice was still soaring like some seagull over Ricky Ross’s lyrics. I switched off the CD player. The silence followed me up the stairs. I’d been listening to ‘All I Want’ from an album called ‘Walking Back Home’. Why did I set myself up like that? The music described my mood and the words said it all.

Hah, Barbara Cartland meets the Keystone Kops. The only thing that could have been more ridiculous than watching this non-event would have been watching him make a pass.

The last piece of violence for this week

It's not having a karate class to go to this weekend or last that does it. Hanging around, nothing to do, the mind starts naturally gravitating to thoughts of murder. So anyway, here's the introduction to the most deadly killers in the whole of The Land: Laurel and Hardy.

Cully reached a thumb into his nostril and scraped out something like a green cornflake. He examined it in the lamp-light with pretended interest to keep the fat one waiting, then flicked it into the road.

“So, who are you that I should help you look for someone?” he asked. His mates were watching from across the street and looking forward to seeing some fun here. Wouldn't be friendly to disappoint them, would it?

“We, sir, are in the employ of the great Mage, Maldon.”

A claim, thought Cully, that could be made by half this continent. Cully himself had once listened to a midden-cleaner boast of how he had carried Maldon's own dung to the compost pile. He'd punched him out for going on about boring shit, a line that had got a good laugh from the lads.

“Oh yeah. An' what do you do for him, then? Lead his armies into battle, eh?”

“No, sir, we undertake a variety of tasks for him. Most recently we were employed in extracting teeth from someone at his orders.”

“Yeah,” said Cully, “I've heard of that. Dentists is it?”

“No, sir, Stanley and I are torturers. We hurt people professionally.”

Something in Cully's hind-brain tried to warn him that the fat man wasn't taking the piss and that that statement was too ridiculous to be anything but the truth, but his mates were watching and the fat man and his thin, stupid-looking mate were just too funny to be any kind of threat, so he ignored it. And laughed.

Later, the lads agreed that the sequence of events must have been something like this, though it happened too fast for anyone to be sure. The fat man had given some kind of nod (Little Davy said it was a hand signal, but the others said bollocks). Then the little one, who wasn't holding a knife or anything, must suddenly have been holding a knife, but then definitely wasn't holding a knife again, 'cos they never saw it. Somewhere in there Cully's face picked up an expression of almost comical surprise, while his throat started wearing a smile that went from ear to ear. They checked that later and it really did, that wasn't just something they said when they told the story. Then the fat man and his thin friend had turned and come over the road to ask them all to help with looking for a man and a girl. And Cully bled his life out through his throat and they all watched, too stunned to do anything about that.

“Good manners, Stanley.” said the fat man, ambling along the road and raising his hat to a pretty young Mage girl, who smiled indulgently to him. Probably because she hadn't seen what had just happened. “They are what separates us from the animals.”

“Yes Olly.” replied the little man, probably not understanding, but always keen to please his big friend. “They really are. Should I clean that one up Olly?”

“No Stanley. His friends can do that. It will give them something to think about.”

Stanley didn't understand that at all. Getting rid of inconveniently dead bodies was usually a thing Olly entrusted to him and which he was very good at and did without much thought. Often, he would cut them up into smaller bits so as to be able to move and hide them more easily, but generally the hardest part was keeping the blood off his clothes. Olly always complained of the mess if he got blood-stained.

From violence avoided to violence not quite seen

There is a lot more death in my second book, which has got the working title of Virus. The deaths are all due to war and murder. It's a much more cynical book than Brendan. It doesn't view violence as something that is glorious or attractive. I'm of Ferguson's point of view that it's to be avoided if at all possible. This next scene is the reason why. It isn't pretty, but I think that makes it more realistic. It comes purely from imagination, so it's probably wrong, but I hope it feels right.

There was a smell. Danny had smelt nothing so bad before in all his life, but somehow knew what it was. Something in the DNA told him. It was the smell of death. Over the hill were rotting corpses. Dead meat. He knew it.

Over the hill were rotting corpses. A level plain full of them. The Warg must have assembled in thousands and been moving together. Something had killed them. Killed them all. Full human, full wolf or some caught in mid-change. A species lay across the grass, black birds picking at them.

He looked at a corpse nearby. A raven, almost absently, pecking the face. He realized that one of the sounds he could hear, behind the cawing, behind the sound of the wind and the fluttering of wings, was the sound of eyeballs being plucked from sockets. The thought seemed to flutter inside his head, resisting the effort to chase it out. He didn't even want to think about that being a sound an ear could hear. He didn't want to know what that sound was. But he thought he would hear it in nightmares for the rest of his life. Chase the bird away? Pointless. There were thousands of them.

A cluster were packed around the open guts of a young female Warg. Blue-black feathers stained with a red itself curdling into black. Heads bobbing, pulling, mindlessly stabbing at each other in arguments over scraps in the midst of a myriad dead. Steam rose in the cool morning air from some bodies too fresh to be cold. The place stank already, but a day more and it would gag the breath from everything for miles.

Ahead of him a scene from a nightmare, behind the sound of someone vomiting their guts, Davy looked and searched in vain for words. He couldn't tell anyone what this was like. Nothing he could say would cover it. Within clear view was a Warg family. Half changed father, wolf changed mother and two cubs. The parents had obviously tried to shelter their offspring from whatever had killed them. Small holes were dug into the bodies. Guns? Had someone shot them? Offspring, what kind of a word is that? Something killed them and their kids. These aren't enemies any more. These are victims. This isn't war. This is murder. Behind him, someone was muttering. “Shit, shit, shit.” It didn't work for Davy. It wasn't enough. He couldn't even curse his feelings into sound. Nothing matched this.

Alice spoke. “What could kill all of them?

And they saw it. Across the plain. A figure on a horse picking its way through the piled dead. Even at a distance the flash of gold from the face told them of the mask it wore.

“Maldon.”

They should have disappeared, fled, done it by reflex and done it immediately. But reflex was dulled by shock. They stood and looked.

“How could he do all this by himself?”

At that moment, the figure on the horse turned its head and saw the group of young Mages. Simultaneously, every raven on the field stopped and turned its head in the same direction. A caw erupted from every throat on the plain and there came a clatter of wings.

Only one of the cohort made it from the field alive. Blind in one eye and bleeding from more jagged rips in her flesh than anyone could count, she limped into Ferguson’s camp and stammered out a tale that stunned.

Dear Finns

It's Iron Sky, isn't it? Since I posted about it and how much I want to see it, I've had a lot of page views from Finland. I WWOOFed there two years ago with Martti Gronfers and love the place. We've had Finnish friends here in UAE who've now moved on, love them still.
Initially, I was attracted to the news of a SF film made independently in Finland. Then I read more about the project and decided I loved every part of it. If anyone out there has seen it, I'd love to know if it comes up to expectations. Come on people.There's an awful lot of love in this post.

Phoebe

I woke up in a bed. I’d expected something more dramatic. The Seekers would come to the Land through a Gate and I thought I’d be a Seeker. I couldn’t remember what Sylvester had said, but it looked like I was already there. Something felt bad though. I had a bit of a headache and a cramping pain in my stomach. I had to pull back the bedclothes before I could see what it was. Blood on my pajamas, down between my legs. Yada.

I knew what it was, of course, even though it was the first time. Auntie ‘Lexie had told me all about it, and Dad had been getting me books and stuff about it for just forever – to help me prepare. My friend Sara had already had hers and all the girls had been talking about it, you’d guess, innit? Didn’t mean it wasn’t just mecha gruse. It was; well, for a second.

Then I thought I could tell Dad and he’d let me have the party he’d promised for it. He’d said it was a change I should celebrate. I think he read that line in a book. Then, of course, I realized Dad wasn’t here, I was well off the range of a GPS tracker, and I couldn’t have a party until I got back. Which made me wonder.

A girl couldn’t get into the Land until she’d started her periods; everyone knows that. So maybe this wasn’t real, and they’d just given me one to make me feel like I was ready, even though I knew I really wasn’t. And (far, far away ikky) even if this was my first time, it wouldn’t be hers. It’s tres freak to feel you’re having someone else’s period, believe me if that’s never happened to you before, and my day was about to go glom when a Duergar came in through the door.

I nearly leapt out of bed and danced around the room! This wasn’t like watching them on a DIV; this was real. Right there in the room with me, carrying a tray. She looked me up and down (mostly up of course) and saw the bloodstains. She nodded and said, “Ah. Me thingim allsame. Me bringim this one for Mma. Makim you better mor. You go cleanim youseleva en dringim thisfella.” She nodded at a door and passed me a cup of something. I got up and sort of hobbled to the door, trying not to let my legs touch. Yada. Big, big ya.

You had to slide the door to the bathroom. I remembered and didn’t try to push it.  The bathroom looked just like the ones you see in the DIVs. There was a big, deep, circular tub made of wood, set into the floor, full nearly to the brim with steaming hot water.

I knew you had to scoop water out of the bath and wash yourself first, so started to strip off the pajamas. I jumped when I saw the dark skinned woman out of the corner of my eye, but sussed I was looking into a big, steamed-up mirror. Then I nearly squealed. I was Malaika! 

There’s a line in Book One where someone asks if Malaika is good-looking, and the answer is she’s too busy being gorgeous to have time left for just good. And there she was looking back at me. From the steamy mirror. With no clothes on.

I really had to look away. I mean, Malaika is tres, tres hot, with a bod to just die for or from, but I was like staring at it. I felt myself blushing hotter than the bath water. It would take a while to get used to that being me. I took just a small peek again and thought, ‘Oh I wish!’

I could get used to it. I could suffer that.

I mean, I have got brown hair and brown eyes and when Dad tells me I am going to be a stunner at sixteen and he’s going to buy a club to keep boys away he always sounds like he means it. That’s my dad though. He once told a friend of mine he was really Tony Blair, and he’d escaped from prison by digging a tunnel with a bent teaspoon.

We didn’t completely believe him, but that was ‘cos we didn’t know who it was. We had to go wiki the name up on a pokkecom to read the history, and find out Blair was still in prison. Well, we were only eight at the time. What did we know?

Anyway, the point is; it isn’t impossible I could look nearly as hot when I’m older. But that nearly would be just like Earth to Moon near, not Earth to Sun near. Sort of comparatively nearer than Sara could get, ‘cos she’s blonde, but not close enough to whisper in an ear kind of close. I’ll never pwn boys.

I grabbed a towel and covered myself a bit and took another look at my new face. I pushed a strand of hair back behind my ear and grinned and just … Like wow.

I had a drink from the cup before starting to wash and the effect was like magic. (Duh!) The headache and cramp just vanished. The stuff must have been chia, but it tasted like the milky tea Dad always makes for me. I still wasn’t keen on getting into the bath after washing – I didn’t think the bleeding had stopped too and just didn’t want to lay there in it; far, far away gruse – so I toweled myself dry and went back to the bedroom.

The Duergar had gone out, but there was underwear and a set of loose, dark grey cotton pants and a top laid out on the bed. Apart from a sanitary pad, it was all senior Mage clothing. I had a feeling I had to get ready for something formal going on.

Then it came to me. I was being dimmy this morning. Naturally, the Seekers would be coming, and I’d have to go and take part in the Opening. All this would have to start with Brendan going through his Initiation, even if I wasn’t doing one. Of course, he’d pass and the Light of the Chosen’d shine from him, but it all needed to happen so Senior Niall would know he was capable of great things. I dressed as quickly as I could.

Good. She’s accepted who she is. Maybe this time things will work out as I want them to.

My first protagonist

Adam.
The one I found easiest to write, since he is male, adult and a teacher of English in Japan. As this is in the future and I'm a follower of Yogi Berra on predictions, Japan isn't much described in the book. The future generally isn't, though hints are dropped all over the place as to things that have happened there.
Anyway, Adam. The aim for this part was simply to bring him in and make it clear that he is suddenly snapped into a situation which he wasn't prepared for and didn't arrive at by any normal means. There is meant to be a lot of sensory iimpression. He simply records everything that he sees, hears and smells. With luck, the reader gets the idea that he is aware of all of this at exactly the same moment that the reader is, so the transition that the reader just went through to get here - turning the page- is pretty much the same sort of feeling that Adam has.
Since he can't be McLeod's daughter, I love to believe that everyone clued in immediately to the fact that he is the other figure jacked in to the computer. To do that, they'd need to also get the idea that he is now in a simulation like the Matrix, a computer-generated world that doesn't need to follow the rules of our world.
There are a number of (really bad) jokes buried in the story and Adam's entrance to the simulation contains probably the worst of them. Worst in terms of it being a dreadful play on bad opening lines and in that no one has ever spotted it. If you think about what he says, Adam is telling you that it was a dark, but not a stormy night. For those who don't know this one:

It was a dark and stormy night

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"Dark and stormy night" redirects here. For the film, see Dark and Stormy Night (film).

"It was a dark and stormy night" is an infamous phrase written by Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton at the beginning of his 1830 novel Paul Clifford.^[1] The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest uses the phrase as a signifier of purple prose. The original opening sentence of Paul Clifford is an example:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was formed to "celebrate" the worst extremes in this style. The contest, sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University, recognizes the worst examples of "dark and stormy night" writing.
I hope that I don't have too much purple prose and that I also give the signal that games will be played with expectations here. Things aren't what they seem (I think I've said that several times before already).
I actually got rejected by one agent (who was at least nice enough to send me something that was personal and not pre-printed) for this.
The objection was that the story ignored the fact that the reader had expectations and that meant it wasn't working for that agent. My feelings were that I was making use of the fact that the reader had expectations so as to confound them (a bit) and bring a feeling of dissonance in. Can't please all of the people, can you?

Day One

Adam

It was night. For some reason, I’d been expecting a storm, but, although very dark, it was warm and pleasant. I was standing near the top of a vertigo-inducing set of stairs. Somewhere outside, in a city with traffic noise. Somewhere with stone walls, cobbled streets and perhaps a faint smell of after-the-pub-piss. I had a moment of thinking I knew this place before the memory clicked and I realized it was the Dog Leap Stairs, going down to the Quayside. Newcastle? Was that right? Was it supposed to start here, or was that just because it was me doing the crossing?

Someone touched my arm, and I got an impression of there being several other people with me. The one nearest ushered me on towards the stairs and started a low chanting. Something about the rhythm made it sound familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d heard it before.

It lasted for only a moment, seconds at the most, but there was an odd sense of the tone persisting after the voice had stopped.  Something like a finger round the top of a wineglass, but right at the edge of hearing. Then the scene straight in front of me broke, pixelated and flowed away, like watching sand fall through an egg-timer from above. Someone walked into that warp in the air, melted and swirled to nothing.

The hand touched me on the arm again, urging me forward. A voice, a man’s, the accent Northern Irish, said, “Don’t worry, just walk straight into the Gate, you’ll be grand.” I didn’t understand why, but I believed him and walked on before thinking, of course I’d be alright, how could anything here hurt me?

As my foot touched the edge of the swirl, it broke up and flowed away. That wasn’t just what I saw; it was exactly how it felt. I’d have pulled back with the shock, but I had no time. Before I could do anything, I’d become a million grains of Adam, flowing and falling, but somehow doing it straight forward. I would have screamed, but my throat had gone. Then my mind fell away and there was a time of nothingness.

Holding in Abeyance

Orson Scott Card, who has been known to get behind the typewriter and belt out works of SF that people (in large numbers too) were prepared to spend real money buying, once wrote a book on writing SF and Fantasy. (He called it, How to write Science Fiction and Fantasy, which is direct, but always looks to me as if it should be a subtitle. For a really good title, Lawrence Block's, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, can hardly be beaten.) One of Card's ideas about the SF reading community was that they are very good at the title of this piece.
Any work of SF worth the paper it is written on should take you to worlds that you have never encountered, 'cos they don't exist. These will, of necessity, be full of stuff that people have never met before. When you hit one of these things, the writer has two choices. One is to stop everything and explain the thing in full. The other is not to bother just yet, but to wait till there is a lull in the zapping and explain it then.
Choice two is the best thinks Orson, 'cos SF readers would always rather the writer played the advantage and let the story go on raher than blowing the whistle and bringing the fun to a halt. I'm with him on this and I'm sure most other people are too. At least, if they are SF fans. Probably if they like mysteries too. Dunno about you, but I'm pretty sure Agatha Christie wouldn't have got on that well  if she'd rushed to reassure the reader that it was the butler what did it in the first chapter.
There is a place for exposition, and SF readers tend to like being told how the flux capacitor's inability to handle chewing gum can lead to the threat of the universe exploding. Often that's all they need to be told, as it sets up the need to prevent the Garrilian terrorists from throwing gum into the capacitor. (You can have that one as the start of a story if you are desperate. Otherwise, I really wouldn't bother).
Anyway, all this leads up to the secnd part of the prologue. The first part pays off so far into the story that it isn't worth spending much time on. It's my insurance. I've told you about Gaia and that she comes in later. When she does, you'll be ready to believe I had a plan for all this. That's enough.
With McLeod and the scene on the couches, I've tried to set up something that will help the reader get into what is happening next. You know that two people, one female and young, have been joined to a computer, or something similar. You've heard the idea that books and stories are connected with this and you should have picked up on the idea that time is going to be compressed. There is also a strong hint that someone is being lied to here - that bit about the tech waiting for them to leave and then resetting the compression factor and starting the simulation. There is another hint, painted in as strongly as I can get it, that there is something going on here that isn't to anyone's plan.
Bu now I'm hoping that the story is starting to sound a little multi-layered and complex. There is what McLeod has been told is happening, which we might have an inkling for, but will have to hold in abeyance a bit. Then there is what the people who are running this simulation are really doing, which we can only guess is not what McLeod thinks it is. Then there is whatever is going on with the girl's character number being changed, which is clearly not to the plans of anyone and is very, very important.
Small wonder I say that nothing here is what it seems to be. The next post should just be the first part of Day One. More about that after I've posted it.

Second part of the Prologue

McLeod watched as the two settled back onto the couches and were helped into helmets. Despite himself, he felt unease on seeing his daughter’s face covered by the visor. It made her look an insect-headed alien, and, in some way he couldn’t have explained, made the sticking-out wisp of her brown hair look stolen. The techs jacked them both to the central unit and reclined the couches to the horizontal.

Then the guy beside him spoke.

“Okay,”

A hushed voice, not whispering, but as if at a bedroom door and not wanting to disturb the occupant.

More respect than that bloody suit showed.

“Here we go.” The tech tapped his touch-screen and both reclining figures took small, sharp in-breaths, followed by soft sighs.

Like her falling asleep. The tension McLeod hadn’t been aware of holding released as both bodies relaxed.

“Well then Mr. McLeod, that’s about it for now. The first stage will take about fifteen to twenty minutes for her, perhaps a few more for him, then they’ll have their day. She’ll be back with you in…” He wiggled a hand in a ‘more-or-less’ gesture, “…fifty minutes to an hour. She might have a bit of jet-lag, because of the time difference.”

“It’s that unsure, is it?”

“It’s case by case. We’ve usually found kids are quicker to connect, so we’ll probably have to hold her back a few minutes while he catches up. The compression is set for a half hour, though, that part’s certain. Once we’ve got them both logged in, we’d be able to do this again in about thirty seconds. And the commercial version will compress much more than this, of course.” He grinned, “No one wants to wait for as long as half an hour to live a day nowadays, eh?”

“Was it like this with the others?”

“Well, not the characters, no.” His eyes glanced back at some memory, while his mouth twisted to suggest a tangled situation. “They all took a minimum of a weekend; some of them two, but those had to be much more detailed readings, being as we don’t have them available real-time, like this. But we’ve all been in there, and for us, yeah, I suppose, pretty much like this. You’ll have to try it yourself some time.”

“Not really my thing; having my mind read and all.”

“Oh, take my word for it, it’s a blast in there, you’d love it. You’ve read the books, I take it?”

“The first two as bed-time stories. After that she read them herself, and I got all the details over the table at meals.”

“Yeah, mine’s nine and we’re at that stage with her too. Well, there’s nothing much more to see here, erm, would you like a coffee or something while you’re waiting?”

“Aye, that’d be grand.”

They left the room. Another tech watched, impatient, ‘till they’d exited, immediately changed the compression factor on both screens, initiated the simulation, and then left as well, his mind on something stronger than coffee. The two on the couches slumbered on, unsupervised, save by the machine.

A watcher might have noticed the girl’s touch-screen reading flicker, and, like a malevolent stagehand removing a vital prop, the character assignment figure change from 1001 to 321. But you are the only watcher, dear reader, and your observation does not collapse any wave form. It will not change the story back.

For, in that moment, history altered. No, please don’t think that melodramatic. I’ve thought about it very, very carefully, and that statement isn’t exaggeration at all.

The cover

The pic is one of Smailholm Pele Tower. It has absolutely nothing to do with the story of Brendan Earle,I just found it on the Internet, liked it and thought it would look good. That does partly have to do with it having a lot of sky in it where I could put the title, but isn't all.

The landscape that the story is set in is described as looking like Northumberland and pele towers are mentioned once early on. There isn't one that looks like this, but I did have the idea that it would be a good scene-setting device to help the reader picture the landscape. The scene isn't as clear-skyed as I'd have liked, being as The Land is first described as having beautiful summer weather,  but it being a bit darker and colder doesn't hurt for the tone of the story, which quickly turns more menacing.

More Gaia

I hadn't actually planned to post this (and I'm not doing it now 'cos of being too lazy to think of something new to say). I was looking through my second book - working title Virus - and read through the bit from Gaia that I've started it with. I hadn't thought about it for a while, but re-read it and got interested again. Gaia isn't anything more than a voice at the beginning of the first two books, but she is the real mover and shaker of book three - even in the parts where you don't see her, which will be most of the book. And she is most of the reason why you get the rest of the story.
Fair enough, I thought I'd put her next bit in here. She's worth it.

Gaia

Stories. Where do they begin and do they ever, ever end? For you, dear reader, the answer to those questions may be with the opening and closing of this book. But for me? My end will come soon with the Resurrection, when the Chosen will fly up into the sky and meet their maker. Then I may go to my rest; my well-deserved rest.

My beginning is heralded by the chronicle you are about to read. But as to where I should begin this chronicle, when every story has a story that precedes it. Begin with a record of the Transgressions that led to the End Times? With the first understanding that the End of Days was dawning? With the children whom my grandfather saved? With the coming of my parents and their decision that I should be dedicated to the salvation of Mankind?

I would have you understand me and forgive, if you can, the things I have done and those I have not done. But every beginning is too far from this end. The years and years of the work. Each detail and the detail that gave birth to it.

Forgive me if I seem to begin in the middle of the story. Each beginning that I choose was given birth by another beginning and this way, at least, I may catch your interest that you might look at the Acts of the Believers and have your own beginning in them.

She is all of what she says she is and all of the characters that she presents as. This voice is very much the same as the one that appears at the beginning of Brendan Earle, but it won't be seen much in book three (unless I cahnge my mind, which happens a lot in the world of Brendan Earle).

The original prologue

They taught me to think of them as my parents and I still do think of myself as their little girl, though the relationship wasn’t either biological or legal. And even though they hung the name Gaia on me. I mean, how hippie is that?

They taught me to think of him as my Grandfather, though their relationships with him were similar to mine with them. Not as deliberate, though. Like, I was definitely on my parent’s to-do list, but he kinda got them all dumped on him.

I haven’t been able to be with any of them for some considerable time. Way things work out sometimes, huh? What the hey, come the Resurrection, we’ll all be together again.

It’s kinda hard to say who took up the Faith first, him or them. Like, they brought him the Word, as we call it. But it wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, y’know. Just like, information about the World and the Flesh that he didn’t already have clear, having only guessed at it by looking at folks. But it’s because of them all that I do the Great Work.

Some of the story I’m going to give you comes straight from his memoirs. I got them left to me after he’d passed on. Some parts come from what my parents saved for me while they could. Some other parts I’ve had to sort of work out. Mostly, I think it’s right, but, to be honest, I’m a lot like Grandfather, and he lived to tell stories. His were mostly fiction, with some deeper Truth buried in them, of course. Mine are mostly the truth, with what you might call a Higher Fiction tucked in here and there.

I know, I know. Me and all those capital letters just don’t seem to go together well do they? And most of the time I don’t talk about it. I just get on with the Work, doing a bit here, a bit there, y’know?  Usually, I try to be just a regular girl.

I know I’m not, but I try.

Like anyone else, though, I kinda want people to understand me. And, like I already said, I just like telling stories. When you hear this one through, I think you’ll agree; it’s a doozy. And why am I telling it now? Well, the Resurrection is close, so I figure it’s about time to get it on record. This is my story too, though I’m not in this part of it, it sort of leads up to me.

Gaia and this book.

Someone responding to my sample posted up on Youwriteon.com, which deserves a plug, as it is a very useful place to get feedback on your writing, once told me I should change Gaia’s name as it had been used in another adventure novel. I didn’t point out that it had also been used in Lovelock’s The Gaia Hypothesis, which is where the idea to use it came from. Gaia doesn’t really like the name, though she understands why her parents gave it to her. It is central to her self-image, but she dearly wishes they hadn’t hung such a hippy-sounding tile on her. She knows who she needs to be and does do what she has to, but she’s also very conscious of who she’d like to be and fashions an identity around that image.

In the first version of this story, Gaia didn’t come in at all. I hadn’t thought of her. The book got to the point where it finishes now and stopped there. It was a good place for it to stop and that’s why it still does, but I had no idea what happened after that point. I had already decided to make a virtue of this necessity and pretend I was being a bit edgy. What happened next to Phoebe and Adam, what had been happening outside while they had their adventure? I thought the reader could decide for themselves. This isn’t as naughty as The French Lieutenant’s Woman, which cheats by not telling one story or the other, but it was still a bit weak. Fowles knew what his possible endings were and, as a story-teller, should have picked one and told it that way. He got away with it though, so had left an open window for me to do the same. I sent the book off to MacMillan New Writing and waited to become rich and famous.

That didn’t happen. While I was waiting for them not to publish (and no, I’m not surprised that they didn’t), I read Iain M Bank’s Feersum Endjin. It’s a brilliant book, I think possibly his best, and it caused me to think about the future of machine intelligence and the idea of a mind being stored inside a programme. I’m sure I’d seen The Matrix by then, but I hadn’t thought about it except as a way of abolishing the laws of Physics.  Magic can work inside a computer programme – you just have to tell it to. At the time I hadn’t read anything about the idea of the Singularity though, so I wasn’t thinking about the idea of the abolishing of death. Once you get onto that a lot of other possibilities open up.

I sat back and thought a bit and realised that I did know where the story could go. I sat down and started to write the second book. Gaia was one of the first things I knew I would have to put in it. As soon as I had though, I realised that she could/would probably have to go into the first book. As she says, she isn’t in it, but it is a big part of her story.

I took the prologue that I’d written for the second book and put it at the front of the first. It considerably confused an already confusing beginning. Originally the story started with Adam becoming conscious in Newcastle, a part that hasn’t changed much since I first wrote it. After a while of people telling me they didn’t know what was going on, I decided I needed to give a bigger hint.

This is something I’m very reluctant to do. Orson Scott Card, writing his book on how to write SF and Fantasy, points out that the SF crowd are very good at ‘holding in abeyance’. They read, to nick an example from a book that my daughter Aki just introduced me to * , the term storking (the spelling is correct) and are quite happy to wait a page or so at least to find out that it means to dump an unwanted child on someone’s doorstep. In more extreme cases, and as long as enough hints are given, they are happy to hold off for a long time. In this I don’t see them as being any different from Mystery or Detective story fans. I don’t know for sure that Agatha Christie ever rushed to assure readers that the butler did it so that they wouldn’t get confused and fretful, but I doubt she’d have become such a big seller if she had.  I read William Gibson, Iain M Banks, China Mieville , Philip K Dick and Neil Acherson. They all charge cheerfully into their stories knowing exactly where they are going and pretty much dare the reader to keep up.

So I wrote the next part of the prologue. That will come in a couple of posts’ time. To my mind, it pretty much tells you what is happening, but it still seems to throw some people who can’t join the dots between it and the first posts by Adam and Phoebe. Tough. That’s all they are getting. Anything more would be a spoiler, akin to telling everyone that there are no butlers here, which I’m not promising.

Anyway, getting back to Gaia. She means every word that she says about the End Days and resurrection.  How real these concepts are to her and what the implications of that are to others doesn’t become obvious until book three, tentatively titled Resurrection, by which time the reader might have worked out a lot about her. She may have another prologue appearance in book two, working title Virus, but I’m still thinking about that. This wasn’t my original prologue. I have a very clear idea of what Gaia looks like and how she sounds in ordinary life. After a bit more thought, however, I realised that she’d have to assume a disguise and present herself as two different personalities. I think I can tell you that and still not give away anything. When I finally get round to writing Resurrection, it shouldn’t get in the way of anyone reading it to know that Gaia isn’t going by her own name in it. I’ll post the original prologue just for interest and then move on to the second part of the current prologue after that. Step by step.

I've published it.

Bob Studholme's Smashwords Author Profile: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/bobstudholme
Book page to sample or purchase The Chronicles of Brendan Earle, Apprentice Mage. Totally Interactive. (Autosaved).: http://smashwords.com/b/125551

This means that you can see the book and read about 30% of it on the website. If you like what you read, you have the chance ot grab a copy for free if you dive in quick. This is the coupon code that you need to use:
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Prologue

My name is Gaia, and this document my testimony of the Last Days and the Resurrection to come.

You will not find me in these pages. This is the story of Grandfather and those he saved. The tale is told in their voices, and so of them you will meet many. One might say a legion.

What was for them an adventure was, for my family, the beginning of our history. So this is, in many ways, an indispensable part of my story and that the reason why I must introduce myself. My achievements are not modest; still, I do but continue the Great Work of saving and converting which Grandfather and my parents began.

Ours is an uncommon chronicling, as we are an uncommon family, so I will commend to you the words of Sir Francis Bacon, who wrote, in The Advancement of Learning:

 “If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties”.

For those who tell you this tale did not know all of its twists, and what they knew, they did not always tell clearly. Moreover, I am my Grandfather’s grandchild, and we spin stories as spiders do webs.