Please try to contain your obvious shock and disbelief at the news, but I've published a new chapter of Memory over at No Fear of the Future. I know, two weeks in a row is almost unheard of lately. This marks the 41st installment of my Moorcock/Zelazny/Vance cosm-spanning heroic adventure, the one in which Flavius comes eye-to-eye with something far larger than himself, searches for his lost sword and winds up doing a fairly passable imitation of Bilbo Baggins on the Forest River:

Flavius sat in the dark, barely breathing, praying the Ketza'qua would go back to sleep... or whatever the gigantic serpent did.

The eye snapped back open, the strange, emerald glow spilling over Flavius. A subsonic rumble rose up from deep inside the Ketza'qua. Its massive scales clattered against themselves like a cavalry charge across a field of cobblestones. The buoyancy spheres shifted again, and Flavius hastily considered the inherent instability of his footing. All around, the protesting groans and whines of cables and scaffolding reverberated through the spheres.

The Ketza’qua sensed opportunity amid the chaos. The opportunity for freedom.

As always, feel free to comment, recommend to your friends, blog about, send money or anything else The Story compels you to do. Or ignore it quietly, the choice is yours (but Flavius may take exception...)

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I've just published a new installment of Memory over at No Fear of the Future. This marks the 40th chapter (chapter being a loose identifier, since they're generally so short), but the first after an unacceptably long gap--it's been just about two months since no. 39 went up in late July. This one's a bit longer than average (does that make it "A Very Special Memory"?) but it's not two months' worth longer, unfortunately.

Maintaining even the modest publishing goal I set back in January 2008 of 1,000 words weekly has grown increasingly difficult to meet. For various reasons, the day job is consuming more and more of my energies, and family takes up a great deal of what's left. After that, non-fiction writing projects--such as the research-intensive Chicken Ranch work in progress, as well as paying gigs like interviews and book reviews--have muscled past my fiction to the top of the queue more often than not. I'm not a particularly fast writer to begin with, and I'm learning that outside of certain narrowly-defined parameters, I'm not one who can multi-task on several writing projects simultaneously. I started writing Memory as an experiment, a learning experience, and I'm learning a great deal. My production rate stinks, but I suppose that's part of the experience.

I am, however, no longer flying entirely by the seat of my pants. I started the project with very little set in stone: I had two characters, Flavius and Parric. I had what I considered to be a pretty nifty MacGuffin in ongoing assassinations of Flavius across the multiverses. And that was it. The setup allowed me some leeway in telling an origin story via shorthand introduction of a far more extensive history and relationship between the two protagonists, but beyond that I didn't know more than the readers. I didn't know why Flavius was being killed, although I do now. I didn't know why Parric refuses to use only a tiny fraction of his vast power, but I do now. I've yet to get a clear picture of the ultimate resolution, but I know how they get there. I see some of the events between here and there, and new characters who've yet to be introduced who are, for the most part, as vague and mysterious to me as they are to you, the reader.

What is particularly fun is that I'm just now getting into a part of the story where my subconscious was way ahead of me. Neil Gaiman mentioned this curious effect back in my 2002 interview with him, and the following exchange illustrates what I've started experiencing:

Your Sandman stories were essentially complex, serialized epics in a marginalized medium. As your stature as a writer grows, I can't help but see a parallel with the career of another product of Great Britain, Charles Dickens. Have you ever considered the parallels between your careers?

I don't know if I particularly considered parallels. I do remember, toward the end of Sandman, I was reading Bleak House for pleasure. There were points in there where I'd go, "Okay. You know what you're doing with this. You don't know what you're doing with this. This is just something that you're writing to fill in a few pages, but you're putting something in that may become important later. This is something where you think you've done something that isn't important, but actually it will become important to you later."

I recognized the beats. I recognized the technique reading that. There's a level on which you know something when you're going into a story, but a lot of the stuff will turn up on the fly and you'll use it. You have to sort of learn to be open to the infinite. You learn to toss balls in the air, not necessarily knowing how they'll come down, but knowing they will be descending at the point where you'll need them.

Terry Pratchett had a character in a book recently--the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, who quit before they became famous. His name was Ronnie Soak, and Terry had written him without knowing which horseman he was. He just named him Ronnie Soak, because it sounded like the right kind of name. There came a point where he was writing Ronnie Soak going past a shop window in which everything was reflected, and you'd see his name reflected in the window. And it said "Kaos." That was the moment where the penny dropped for Terry, who this character was. You can ask yourself questions: Did you know this unconsciously before? And when you're involved in serial narrative, you don't necessarily know.


So is that kind of sub-conscious, serendipitous writing unique to the serial form?

No, what it does is . . . In the serial form, you realize early on you are locked in. In normal writing, if you're working on a novel, and you get to chapter 11 and you realize you need a gun in the desk drawer, you just go back to the desk drawer when we saw it in chapter two. You make sure that you mention there was a gun in it, and when people read the book, they go "Ah yeah. Got a gun in the desk drawer." When somebody goes for it in chapter 11, it's there.

You can't do that if people have already seen that drawer, and they've already seen that it was empty in chapter two. So you learn to make decisions without necessarily knowing why you've made that decision. You'll put a gun in that drawer because something has to be in the drawer, and then in chapter 11 you'll look around and go, "Oh my god, I need a . . . Oh, I've already put it there." That is a very weird and specific kind of thing.

If anything, the whole serial nature of fiction taught me not to go for perfection. You know, perfection—you're heading for the horizon. You'll never reach it. Get to the point where you've done enough, you're willing to let it go, it's as good as it's going to be. Let it go. Move on. Do the next one.

The influence of Moorcock is obvious in Memory with the infinite multiverse setting. When I reached the point of the story where Flavius and Parric came to the Eternal Dominion and the Palace of Un-pic Ja’ab, I'd recently completed Jack Vance's mesmerizing Dying Earth series. I'd been enamored of the relentless parade of wonder Vance slathered his work in, taking Clarke's maxim that any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic. Vance's far-future Earth was pure surrealistic fantasy, but steeped in the conceit that our primitive minds simply couldn't comprehend the technology underlying the impossible inventions. I seized on that idea--inelegantly I admit--to throw the kitchen sink into the invention of the Palace of Un-pic Ja’ab. The peq, the em Naga-ed-der, the echoes of Mote in God's Eye reproductive issues amongst the Eternal... these were great fun to come up with. The most Vance-like invention, however, was Ketza’qua, the colossal, extra-dimensional serpent creature enslaved to hold the Palace aloft. At the time I first wrote it, I was simply trying for an absurdly incredible image through which to stress the separation of that alien cosm from ours.

I hadn't realized that I was actually writing the scene in which Chekov's gun is introduced. The Ketza'qua is a very, very big gun. Those of you who've read chapter 40 of Memory will understand that the trigger has just been pulled. I hope you approve.

This writing stuff can be fun sometimes, eh?

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Ugh. This has been the longest break thus far. I suppose losing the external hard drive to a hideous, tipping-over death serves as some sort of excuse, but a break of more than a month is sooooo embarrassing. My apologies to all six of my loyal readers. In any event, Chapter 37 is now up at No Fear of the Future, and goes a long way towards clearing up that little issue of whether the moironteau kills Flavius again:

“Flavius!” Acaona screamed.

The foothead reared back suddenly. As it did so, a dark fissure snaked its way across the mottled skin. A great crescent slice of jaw fell away, streaming purple blood. Neatly bisected lip-to-lip, the foothead thrashed wildly, jagged teeth gnashing against others no longer there.

Flavius stood in the same spot, drenched in purple blood. The point of Memory had buried itself a good foot into the ground from the momentum of Flavius’ stroke. Flavius twisted his wrist to free the sword, holding it defiantly overhead.

“I am Flavius MacDuff, of Clan MacDuff,” he bellowed, his words echoing off the palace walls, “descended of Bellona's bridegroom, the great Thane of Fife who slaughtered the Norse and Cawdor, and toppled the tyrant MacBeth! I am the bane of both the Whistard Holdchau and the Phatrical of Koor! Death has claimed me a thousand times over, and I jam my thumb into his rheumy eyes and rise to live another day! Yer chase ends here, beastie. I am yer doom!”

Flavius is fun. I like him.

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Hey kids! I've got a new chapter of Memory up at No Fear of the Future for your reading pleasure. That brings us up to 35 installments total, with no end in sight. Shouldn't I get a cookie or something?

Flavius tried to stand only to find a vine had managed to wrap around his thigh, holding him down. Every time he moved, the hairy spines gouged a little deeper into his flesh.

“Goddamnit,” he muttered, sawing at it with Memory. The vine parted, but not before giving a fierce constriction. “Yeow!”

He leapt up and kicked his leg free. He found Acaona a short distance away, held fast by a knot of the vines. Flavius could see now they were definitely moving, and not as a result of Acaona’s struggles.

“Lassie, what kind of garden have we landed in?” Flavius demanded as he hacked away at the tendrils coiling around her.

Oooh! Killer plants! Things don't look too good for Flavius right now, do they? Give it a read and find out if he survives or not. Or, better yet, start at the beginning!

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I've just posted a new installment of Memory over at No Fear of the Future. We're up to chapter 31 now (who'da thunk it?) and the narrative now takes us back to Flavius and the perilous situation our Scottish hero finds himself in.

Flavius eased onto his side, Memory’s scabbard uncomfortably hard beneath him. The room spun in perfect time with the pounding of his head. Barely daring to breathe, he gripped the side of the bed and pushed himself up. An involuntary groan caught in his throat, and he winced.

“Ready for another go, Flavius?” Anacaona popped up beside him, entirely too perky and enthusiastic for such an ungodly hour. She cocked her head and pressed her three pair of copper-red breasts against his bare back, leaving new smudges of glittering dust to join the others covering his body. She buried her face against the nape of his neck and inhaled deeply. “Huna! You have the most erotic scent.”

“It’s called sweat, lass,” Flavius muttered, rubbing a bleary eye.

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Goodness, it's been almost six weeks since I last posted an installment of my online serial, Memory, over at No Fear of the Future. What can I say? End of semester projects and finals really worked me over and cut into my writing time. But I'm back, just in time for Christmas with chapter 29 of my ongoing saga:

Djserka looked back the way they’d come. “So those moironteau things have been sent by Rapteer? Dreadful.” Nictating membranes flicked over Djserka’s eyes. “I daresay that explains why His Imperial Majesty’s restricted Nexial access. Damn. I should’ve spat in Rapteer’s food when I had the chance.”

Parric shook his head. “Should be doing more than just spittings.” More alarms sounded from the chamber. “We must be leaving before they break through.”

“You think those beasts will get past the Imperial defenses?”

“Of coursing they will. This palace is operating on skeleton crewing, remember?”

“Well, staff, yes. But there’s a full Eternal Militia battalion permanently stationed in the palace.”

“Only one battalion?” said Parric in surprise. “That is buying us less time than I’m initially thinking.”

“You’ve got quite a negative demeanor, don’t you?”

Be sure an tell your friends and neighbors! There's lots of fantastic words just waiting there to be read!

Now Playing: Dr. Demento Show November 29-30, 1997

Hey kids! I've got chapter 27 of my online serial MEMORY up over at No Fear of the Future.

Parric’s stomach grumbled as he watched a fluttering swarm of fyrit--tethered to the serving tray by minuscule golden threads--taken down to his simulacrum. Such a waste. The three courses he’d sampled were flawlessly prepared, but they’d been comparatively small. Certainly not enough to constitute an entire meal.

The simulacrum would eat them all dutifully, of course. Then the intermingled mess would be unceremoniously dumped somewhere within the palace once the simulacrum dissipated.

Finally, after an interminably long time, dessert arrived in the form of gossamer-thin orbs filled with aromatic smoke of varying hues. Parric watched with a mixture of exasperation and impatience.

A passing peq caught Parric’s look and shook its head in sympathy. “Empty calories,” it grunted, then ambled on.

Thanks for reading, and remember--let me know if you like what I'm doing!

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Howdy folks! Things have been challenging on my end of late. Yes, I know I missed publishing a new installment of MEMORY last week. My bad. But as I've mentioned previously, my photography and art courses I'm taking this semester can be quite time-consuming, and several time-intensive projects converged to hammer me big time last week. This week was only slightly better.

There's a silver lining, though. In my art class, I perverted an ongoing, multi-stage project into a chance to illustrate some of my fiction, select characters from MEMORY being among the subjects. It just so happens that one character, a Naga-ed-der who shows up in this week's installment at No Fear of the Future, is one that I chose to illustrate. Neat-o, as they say.

Interesting thing about the artistic process. You've all seen book covers and illustrations that in no, way, shape or form conform to the descriptions in the book itself. We've all griped about them. Even fairly literal interpretations of scenes and characters often take artistic license in obvious and dramatic ways. Well, I'm the author and the artist, so my pen-and-ink efforts (feeble tho they may be) should have no problem faithfully replicating that what is represented by the written word.

Well, not exactly. Turns out I was more interested in an illustration that was more representative, in general, than specific. In short, I took artistic liberties and deviated from what I wrote, for reasons including (but not limited to) practicality of composition, the mood I was trying to convey and pleasure of the artistic process itself. I know what you're thinking: If you ran into a Naga-ed-der at, say, your neighborhood Applebees, would it look like the illustration? Well, yes. More or less. But there's plenty of leeway in there for other artists in the future to bring their own interpretation to the gallery without being "wrong" (as if that's ever going to be a concern).

The more important point in the above discussion is wholly missed by the whole fixation on illustration accuracy, however. A Naga-ed-der would never be caught dead in an Applebee's, or a Bennigan's or TGI Friday's or any other so-called "fern bar" eatery. A Ruth's Chris Steakhouse is probably as lowbrow as one would go, and that's pushing it. They'd gravitate more toward fusion cuisine, anyway, so I suppose that's a moot point.

Naga-ed-der

Amid the steam and smoke and clanging noise, a circular balcony filled the center of the kitchen. Here nearly a dozen aerial waiters worked rapidly, taking serving trays from peq and diving over the edge, tethered by silken threads from their tail spinnerets anchored to the balcony railing.

“Excusing me,” Parric said to a passing peq loaded down with some purple, tuberish vegetable that appeared disturbingly phallic. “I am needing to speak--”

“Ours is only to serve, sir, and we are serving now,” the peq said with a courteous but unmistakably dismissive nod, then continued on its way.

“I...” Parric started, but the peq had already vanished amid the chaos. Clicking his beak in annoyance, Parric pushed his way through disinterested peq to the one chef that seemed to exude the most authority. “Excusing me--”

“Who let this one in here?” the chef grunted loudly without looking from his confections. His orange skin glistened wetly from the steam. “Have the doorman escort it out.”

The entirety of chapter 26 can be read over at No Fear of the Future.

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I've finally got a new installment of MEMORY published over at No Fear of the Future. The 25th chapter at that. Wow. do I get a cookie or something?

“Yer right,” Flavius said suddenly, pushing his plate and drink away. “Yer Imperial Majesty is absolutely right.”

Emperor Camargo barely concealed his surprise, then narrowed his eyes at Flavius. “About what, friend Flavius? Some of my predecessors have argued for infallibility in every Imperial thought, word and deed, so specific examples would help my studied evaluation of such claims.”

“Why, the bit about the leaving, of course,” Flavius said. “Yer Imperial hospitality’s been grand, but yer right that I dinnae belong here. Even yer food, fine stuff that it is, no doubt, is too much for my simple tastes. So, aye, I’m leaving.”

“And when do you plan to depart?”

“Immediately, if nae sooner.” Flavius stood, wobbled a moment, then bowed politely. His head swam more than he’d expected. “May we meet again in better times. And by better times, I mean with fewer bodies trying to put me in an early grave.”

This proved to be quite the difficult installment to write. I'm certain other writers out there will understand when I say it's a sequence which contains relatively little action, yet is essential in terms of moving the story forward. It's not a sequence that wrote itself, suffice to say. The whole Imperial dinner was and awkward animal to tackle, seeing how it needed to be treated lightly but at the same time avoiding a descent into farce. I don't know if I succeeded. I do know that there've probably been more rewrites these last few chapters than I've had to do before. It's a delicate balancing act, I suppose. The fact that my free time's been dramatically eroded by art and photography assignments merely ups the challenge.

And I still don't know what's coming next. Oh, I know something that's coming up soon, but that's probably a month away still. What happens next week is still anyone's guess.

Now Playing: Billy Joel Songs in the Attic

I've just published chapter 24 of my online fiction serial MEMORY over at No Fear of the Future. I suppose this sequence I'm writing now could be subtitled "Flavius' dinner from hell." You'll be happy to know his suffering continues unabated in this installment:

Flavius’ table rotated as a waiter dropped a plate in front of him. Orange and green squares were piled high, opaque, gelatinous things that seemed to crawl about of their own accord without the use of legs. Blue-striped berries rolled between and over the squares randomly. A frothy red liquid now filled his glass. From the gasps of shock, astonishment and delight rising up throughout the hall, Flavius guessed these were more of the Empress’ last second menu alterations.

“A bit ostentatious, serving troesken as the fourth course. I wonder what my debauched wife has in store for the rest of the evening?”

Flavius snapped around just as the Emperor Camargo’s table merged neatly with his own.

Remember folks, if you like it, spread the word!

Now Playing: The Kinks One for the Road

Hey kids, it's that time again--time for a new installment of my universe-spanning fantasy adventure, MEMORY. When last we left Flavius, he was stuck in the middle of a bizarre formal dinner. Will Flavius rise to the occasion and blend in with the arch ritual of the Eternal Dominion? What do you think?

Through the crowd, Flavius spotted Parric. Remembering the mysterious featherscale, he waved as his table drifted along.

“Hoo! Parric! Over here!” he shouted, drawing startled stares and whispered comments throughout the dining hall. “No, nae that way, ya stupid table. How do ya steer this damned thing? Oh, bugger it.”

Flavius grabbed the side of the table, planted his feet on the floor and threw all of his weight to the side. The table groaned, a piercing, hollow echo of metallic agony that reverberated through the dining hall. But it slid toward Parric.

“Excuse me. Coming through here,” Flavius said, grunting as he shoved the table along. “Sorry about that. I dinnae ken it’ll stain. Was that yer foot? My fault. Out of the way, now.”

Yeah, Flavius isn't much for blending unobtrusively into the crowd.

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