Spooling Up the Fiction Engines

r-avatarWe may have mentioned our novel launch once or twice in the past few weeks, but in case you missed it: Miss Brandymoon’s Device is available! For FREE! Right NOW! Go download it, we’ll wait.

You’re back? Great. Before you go immerse yourself in our book and forget about the outside world, we’ll give you a quick update on our activities in the writing cave.

Son of Science Novel is next on our agenda. We thought we were ready to write it. It’s been discussed to death, outlined thoroughly, and broken down into scenes (at least the first act has been). We know the characters and settings pretty well, have reference photos for inspiration. From the outside we look overprepared.

But from the inside we’re still finding gaps in our knowledge. The layout of the not-so-abandoned-after-all cold war doom factory will be important not just in this early scene, but in blocking later scenes as well. We need a floor plan now so we don’t write in errors that we’ll need to fix during revisions. Kent fires up Illustrator and puts his brain in Dungeon Master mode!

Do we really need to write a whole scene wherein Boss tells Underling to recruit Heroine, when we can simply show the recruitment? Will readers question Underling’s motivations? Is that necessarily a bad thing? Jen puts on her Problem-Solving hat!

Some of this might look like procrastination, what with the multiple visits to Pinterest and the innocent google searches that turn into bottomless research clickholes, but it’s all valuable. It’s all immersing us in the story world, one we haven’t visited for a while. The better prepared we are, the less we’ll need to change later.

And as everyone knows, it’s dangerous to go alone. For us, having a writing partner makes the journey less perilous.

mbd-cover-cropRead a description of Miss Brandymoon’s Device

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I Waddled Out of the Store

  • by Kentthe blood came out like a balloon breaking
  • Such a generous nose!
  • dismissed the possibility of terrorist involvement
  • “… it’s interesting.”
  • — during an election year, no less.

Tune in next time part 120                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

I waddled out of the store, head swimming.

“What about my son?” I muttered. “What do you mean?”

“Not now,” Tessa scolded from under my borrowed tux.

“Now’s the perfect time,” I said. “If anyone notices me talking, they’ll just think I’m some fat, crazy man mumbling to himself. I’m not going to put up with –”

Tessa’s hand moved with invisible speed, striking me on the schozz. The blood came out like a balloon breaking.

“Such a generous nose!” she cooed as I tried to contain the crimson spillage. A pair of Contrarian policemen watched the whole thing from across the street and then resumed their patrol, having evidently dismissed the possibility of terrorist involvement.

“I’b nod kiddig,” I insisted. “Tell be what’s doe ibbordand.” I paused to clear my nasal passages. “What’s this about my son?”

“Well,” Tessa sighed. “He,” she started, then paused for a long time. “… it’s interesting.” She paused for a longer time. “It’s not what you’re thinking. But we’re lucky it’s happening when it is — during an election year, no less.”

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My Wife’s Bodyguards Lurched Toward Us

  • by jengymnastics for the monkeys
  • with a patience and a calmness entirely German
  • inside the pocket was a receipt
  • such a quantity of gorgeously colored feathers
  • I need to talk to you about your son

Tune in next time part 119                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

My wife’s bodyguards lurched toward us, their large, hairy hands curling into fists. Tessa smirked. “Allow me to perform gymnastics for the monkeys,” she said, then backflipped toward the hulking quartet.

Mere moments later all four were unconscious on the floor. Tessa searched them with a patience and a calmness entirely German, uncovering a not-so-small arsenal which she secreted away in the folds of her old man disguise.

She stripped the tuxedo jacket off of the largest of them and tossed it to me. It was many sizes too big, but I put it on anyway. Inside the pocket was a receipt from a pawn shop and such a quantity of gorgeously colored feathers that I was startled. Was this man an exotic bird smuggler?

Tessa put her hands on my shoulders and hopped up, wrapping her legs around my waist. “Button the jacket,” she said, meaning to copy the real Svetlana’s old trick of disguising herself as a man’s rotund belly. If there really was a real Svetlana. Perhaps it had always been Tessa in disguise. Which woman had seduced me on the train? Was it the real Svetlana, and if so, was she actually pregnant? Or had it been Tessa, and if so, was she pregnant? Was anyone besides Fleur carrying my child?

“I need to talk to you about your son,” Tessa said, then drew her head down inside the jacket like a turtle retreating into its shell.

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The Shopkeeper Unlocked

  • by Kentnearly a hundred
  • flick your eyes at mine
  • hat in hand, towards the partition
  • more remote than our cannibal ancestors
  • Nobody lives forever, so let’s roll!

Tune in next time part 118                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

The shopkeeper unlocked the riding crop case, giving Fleur access to nearly a hundred of them. She snatched up a matte black one and said to me, “I’ll flick your posterior with this, each time you flick your eyes at mine. But first, we must try it out on your traveling companion.” Fleur, Isolde, and Myxolemia surrounded Svetlana, who had begun trying on men’s hats in a doomed effort to maintain the Uncle Vanya disguise. She was led, hat in hand, towards the partition screening off the changing rooms. I felt like a coward, my courage more remote than our cannibal ancestors, for standing there just watching them escort her to her torture, but they had us outnumbered and two of them were a warlord’s daughters. Shortly there came three sharp smacking noises followed by three muffled thuds. Svetlana came back with both the hat and the riding crop, grinning.

She hiccuped. Then she removed the fake beard, and with it a latex mask. Before me stood Tessa, the ninja, leering and waving a riding crop.

“What have you done?” I spluttered, unsure how I was going to feel about her answer.

She giggled, then hiccuped again and shook her head. “Nobody lives forever, so let’s roll!”

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We Turned Onto the Contrarian Equivalent of Rodeo Drive

  • by jenall of those are possibilities
  • trying to enjoy sex together
  • young, dashingly ill-disciplined Ambassador
  • The keen air made me giddy
  • venerable British saddle maker

Tune in next time part 117                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

We turned onto the Contrarian equivalent of Rodeo Drive and Svetlana pulled me into the overly air-conditioned showroom of a venerable British saddle maker. The keen air made me giddy, redolent as it was of rich leather and richer customers.

“This is not a good place to hide,” I said. “My wife’s family shops here all the time.”

Proving my point, young, dashingly ill-disciplined Ambassador Myxolemia strolled in, arm-in-arm-in-arm with Fleur and Isolde, all three of them laughing. Fleur’s cadre of bodyguards loomed behind them. So much for making my escape from Contraria.

“You’d better be on your way, Vanya,” I said to the disguised Svetlana. The last thing I needed was for Fleur to realize this ‘old man’ was really a young woman.

Fleur grabbed me by the hand and took me to a display case of riding crops. “Imagine we are trying to enjoy sex together but it has become boring. Which would you choose to liven things up?”

“That depends entirely on which of us would be wielding it,” I said.

Fleur turned to the obsequious shopkeeper and waved her hand at the crops. “All of those are possibilities. My husband and I will try them now.” She smirked evilly at me then. “I’m sure Svetlana will be happy to provide a surface upon which to test them in exchange for her freedom.”

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Cover Reveal: Miss Brandymoon’s Device

r-avatarIt’s one week until launch day for Miss Brandymoon’s Device, the first volume of our Divided Man trilogy! We’re very excited and proud to reveal the cover design Kent created.

Feast your eyes!

mbd-cover-crop

Miss BrandyMoon’s Device: A novel of sex, nanotech, and a sentient lava lamp.

As soon as it launches we’ll provide info on all the ways to get your hands on it. Stay tuned!

“Uncle Vanya!”

  • by KentWhat do you think of dusky pink?
  • News travels fast.
  • I’m sitting in my office
  • coming from Cuba
  • I have a good relationship with the Fahey family

Tune in next time part 116                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Uncle Vanya!” I called out as I hurried toward Svetlana and the agitated old woman. “There you are. Aunt Olga is worried to pieces.” I patted my ‘uncle’ on the shoulder and subtly straightened the false beard on Svetlana’s face. The elderly woman made another complicated hand gesture at me, which seemed more rude than superstitious. Steering Svetlana up the street I kept up the act. “Olga’s still at the car dealership trying to decide on a color. What do you think of dusky pink?”

A truck lumbered past us and a bundle of newspapers thumped onto the sidewalk. “Presidential Zeppelin Hijacked” was the main headline.

“News travels fast.” Svetlana hiccuped again, trying to make it sound manly.

I have a recurrent dream in which I’m sitting in my office speaking backwards to steam open envelopes coming from Cuba, while a woman whose face is hidden behind her fashionable hat tries to hire me to track down her sister. I’ve never known what it means, and I didn’t know what made me remember it just then.

Svetlana hiccuped and said, “We have to get out of Pittsburghistan tonight. But my ride fell through. And the whole country will be looking for us.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. Not that I had any kind of plan of my own, but in times of crisis I just remind myself that I have a good relationship with the Fahey family.

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We’d Only Taken Two Steps

  • by jendrew her arm coaxingly through the old man’s
  • he’d bribed a child
  • frightened the old lady
  • The obligatory scream
  • you have to do lots of awkward stuff

Tune in next time part 115                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

We’d only taken two steps down the sidewalk when the presidential zeppelin blotted out the sky. It flew down the street as speedily as a dirigible could, which is to say — not very. Its altitude was so low it barely cleared the spires that topped nearly every building in Pittsburghistan.

“Maybe we can catch it if we run to the roof!” I cried.

Svetlana shook her head and sighed. “Not in my condition.”

Just then an old woman staggered out of the laundromat across the street. She looked up at the red, white, and blue zeppelin in terror. Svetlana in her old man disguise steadied her. The old woman smiled a wrinkled smile and drew her arm coaxingly through the “old man’s” and began chattering in Low-Contrarian. I am much more fluent in High-Contrarian, but she seemed to be telling Svetlana about the time she’d bribed a child to spy on her cheating husband and collect evidence for her divorce.

Svetlana hiccuped a very feminine hiccup, which frightened the old lady. She threw a complicated hand gesture meant to ward off evil. The obligatory scream was coming, I knew, and I had to prevent it. You have to do lots of awkward stuff in my line of work, but keeping the old woman from revealing the truth about Svetlana was one of the most awkward things I’ve ever done.

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Location Location Location

r-avatarIf you reached today’s post through a bookmark, you’ll want to update it. We’ve relocated the Skelleyverse to the newly constructed Blog Wing of runeskelley.com. All of the content you know and love made the move, and everything is arranged exactly the same way. The only difference is the beginning of the URL.

Yeah, this means we’re still wallowing around in the “not-so-much-writing” part of writing. It’s leavened with a smidgen of actual writing and editing, so we shouldn’t get too rusty.

What does this mean to you, faithful reader? It means that we’re drawing ever closer to the big day when our first novel will be available for the world to see. We’ll keep you posted.