Lyudmila Hated Jason

  • by jenwanted nothing to do with him
  • fatal slugs
  • “When the sirens went off,”
  • directly to my tongue
  • (but I definitely did)

Tune in next time part 797      Click Here for Earlier Installments

Lyudmila hated Jason. She always said she wanted nothing to do with him. Had she been lying the whole time, or had something recently changed her mind? Something, perhaps, like an encounter with near-fatal slugs? Lyudmila was both fascinated by and allergic to icicle slugs. The danger of anaphylaxis turned her on almost as much as the slugs’ aphrodisiac qualities. “When the sirens went off,” I remember her telling me, “I knew the EMTs would save me, so I didn’t worry about it. I just rode that wave.” Having recently had an icicle slug applied directly to my tongue, I felt like I probably knew how she felt. Unless I didn’t (but I definitely did). Would a near-death experience cause her to rethink her anti-Jason stance, if he were the one to supply the slugs? He’d had a pair of them since we were at the Academy, raising them as pets.

I looked at Too Tall and lisped, “Icicle slugs.”

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The Writing Grotto

We’re excited to announce the newest addition to our fleet of writing locations. We’ve spoken in the past of our Writing Cave, and our Auxiliary Writing Cave, and now we’re excited to be posting our first blog entry from our Writing Grotto. Oo la la! How fancy!

The Writing Grotto is outside, and features a fire pit. We foolishly thought we would be able to have a work session there, with full productivity from both of us. It didn’t work out that way. First we had to make s’mores, and then we had to throw the ball for our canine overlords Lady Marzipan and the Bandit Lord. There was a brief interlude where we negotiated the peace between the dogs and a big fluffy orange neighbor cat who sauntered across Lady Marzipan’s realm.

And then there’s what fire does to Kent. Tending an actual wood fire scratches some deep caveman itch. It hypnotizes him in a way that the gas fire in the the Auxiliary Cave does not, and if you’re not careful he starts to wax philosophical about it. Or maybe that’s just the Golden Monkey talking.

We’re planning to spend more time in the Writing Grotto as the weather gets warmer, and we hope that we’ll equilibrate to it and actually be able to get some work done there despite the myriad distractions.

A writing partner is one who will tell you when you have marshmallow goo stuck to your chin. A good one won’t even laugh about it.

“It’s Funny You Chose That Word”

  • by Kentbuild little prisons for all my food
  • definitely into some weird shit
  • Spanish for Scotland
  • So he kissed her again
  • “Sorry, sorry, alright already, I’m going, sheesh.”

Tune in next time part 796      Click Here for Earlier Installments

“It’s funny you chose that word,” Tall Man said. “When I was a lad, I used to build little prisons for all my food, and the butternut squash was always the warden. And this Lyudmila chick was definitely into some weird shit, but that isn’t the keyword.”

My hand twitched by the control knob for the polarizing couch. “But that doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “That’s absolutely the code word she would use, if she wanted you to make sure you were giving the message to the right person.”

“Well, I’m sure you’re the right person,” he replied. “Like I wouldn’t recognize America’s #1 wedding rapper!”

So, the message was for my twin brother, Jason!

“Silly to even suggest it!” I said. “Can you give me a hint about the keyword, though?” I rolled my eyes significantly in the direction of his diminutive companion to remind him what the couch’s higher settings were capable of. “You did say you’d tell me everything.”

He swallowed. “Something I noticed about Lyudmila is, when she sneezes it sounds like Spanish for Scotland.”

Was that supposed to be a clue? I began to wonder if we were in fact talking about the same Lyudmila, but that just made me want to hear the message even more.

We were interrupted by the barkeep, who appeared just then to ask who was going to settle the Right Anglers’ tab. Before I could shoo him away, Tessa spoke up. “We’re a little light on cash at the moment, but I’m sure we can work something out.” She stood with her hands clasped behind her, digging one toe on the floor and batting her lashes. The barkeep looked as surprised as I felt, but then he stepped over to her for a kiss. She moaned softly and wrapped her arms around his neck. So he kissed her again.

“There,” she said. “That should about cover it, don’t you think?”

“What about my tip?” he asked.

Tessa growled.

The bartender lurched backwards away from her. “Sorry, sorry, alright already, I’m going, sheesh.”

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Lyudmila had a Very Sketchy Romantic History

  • by jen, the occasional magician
  • it had been about eels
  • don’t be cruel to me
  • “How genius of you.”
  • a very long running affair

Tune in next time part 795      Click Here for Earlier Installments

Lyudmila had a very sketchy romantic history. She’d dated con-artists, exotic animal smugglers, back-alley dentists, the occasional magician. You get the picture. She said being a contortionist made her tastes flexible, too. The night of the butternut incident her date was an accordion player who’d had one hit song, and it had been about eels. Lyudmila wanted him to sing it for her, and he was refusing because he wanted to be known for something — anything — else.

“Don’t be cruel to me,” she pouted. “Sing it.” She pouted very fetchingly, but he refused.

I plucked the accordion from his hands and, thanks to my Academy training, played a passable version of the hit, which, in the Yankovic code spelled out the word “Butternut” over and over.

“How genius of you.” Lyudmila purred, running her hand up my thigh and cupping my very own butternut. And that was the beginning of a very long running affair between myself and my best friend’s sister.

Things ended messily, of course, but that’s a story for another day. For now I needed to know what she’d sent these two wooly dreamboats to tell me.

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You Know What They Say About Small Packages

As we work on the climax of As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #1, we’re finding that the scene lengths are suddenly shorter. This is entirely expected, because setting up the dominoes takes a lot longer than knocking them down. It’s good for morale, because we feel like we’re writing faster.

We say we aren’t surprised that these scenes are shorter, but a more honest take is that we were only surprised briefly. There was a moment of confusion about it, because the fact that this is what everything’s been leading up to kind — it’s the biggest big deal in the book — implies that these scenes should take up a disproportionate page count. Also, there’s a lot going on! These are mostly action scenes. Again, that means it’s a good thing that they’re concise, but they feel so weighty that their brevity is counterintuitive. That mental disconnect, that an event’s magnitude within the story isn’t related to how many words it takes to describe it, is a lesson that we seem to relearn on each project.

A writing partner is someone to get excited with during the exciting part.

“Do Your Worst”

  • by Kentperformed a sexy little number
  • “Oh, fuck,”
  • you were in the circus together
  • threatened to kill again
  • “Butternut,” I said.

Tune in next time part 794      Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Do your worst,” grunted the small man through clenched teeth.

“Okay,” Tessa chirped. She turned the polarization impulses on his couch all the way up. He tensed, then began to quiver. The vibration speeded up until his outline blurred, and then kept increasing until it hit a resonant frequency where he transformed into a mass of cubes in different sizes, all slowly revolving against each other. He looked like Picasso having a nightmare about Escher. I found the event nauseatingly hypnotic, but it seemed Tessa found the spectacle somehow arousing. She performed a sexy little number on her tip-toes to show her enjoyment.

“Oh, fuck,” said the tall man. “I’ll tell you everything!”

“Good,” I said. “Start with who recruited you back when you were in the circus together. Was it Lyudmila?”

“We were never… But wait, it was someone named Lyudmila. How did you know that?”

“Because it’s always someone named Lyudmila. Don’t tell me, she said I was a killer, and that I had threatened to kill again?”

“No, nothing like that. Actually we just have a message for you. All that stuff about an ass-kicking was just our way of making it a little more fun.”

I scowled at him. “Okay, whatever. What’s the message.”

He eyed me nervously, the low-level polarization of his couch making his limbs twitch. “This is going to sound like I’m trying to play for time or mess with you, but I promise I’m just following her instructions.”

I nodded wearily.

“She said I can’t give you the message unless you tell me the keyword.”

“Butternut,” I said. I said it without hesitation, because of one very strange evening years ago when Lyudmila had been present.

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“I Wish You Wouldn’t Talk about Arlo”

  • by jenwhere lasers mimed demonic lightning storms
  • dripping out of your ears right now
  • bunch of tiny cubes
  • the color of urine on snow
  • “I’m not here to make friends!”

Tune in next time part 793      Click Here for Earlier Installments

“I wish you wouldn’t talk about Arlo,” I said. “With or without clogs, that guy is such a dick.”

Tessa laughed, and it was the sort of laugh that made it impossible to believe that she might be a robot whose head was filled with circuits and microchips, where lasers mimed demonic lightning storms as they rocketed around and simulated thoughts.

The two bebearded gents on the sofas began to twitch. The mime juice was wearing off, and once that process starts it goes quickly. Since we hadn’t restrained the men, I said, “We better switch these things on now, before they fully recover.”

“Aye-aye.”

Tessa and I each pushed the Polarize button on the sofa we were stationed beside, and the process began. A few minutes later, the men were fully conscious and in the throes of polarization. I cleared my throat and spoke loudly to be heard over the mechanisms. “You’re probably wondering what is dripping out of your ears right now. It’s a bunch of tiny cubes the color of urine on snow, and you know what that means.”

“You’ve polarized our ear wax!” Tall Guy cried.

“You animal!” Shorty yelled.

“I’m not here to make friends!” I said. “I’m a General of the Contrarian Humor Battalions, and I’m here to find out who sent you. The polarizing sofas are currently on level 2. Will you answer my questions, or do I need to turn up the reactor power impulses?”

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Novel in a Bottle

As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #1 mostly occurs in one locale. About 80% of the scenes take place in that spot. We briefly considered making that the only setting we would use, but chose not to impose that restriction on ourselves.

It would be very hard to make it work. Not that “it’s hard” is always a good reason not to do things, but this would be a giant amount of work. Even if all we needed to do was eliminate 20% of the scenes (or figure out how to move them to the right setting) that would take a lot of effort. But it would be worse than that, because we would have to change things around in other scenes too in order to keep everything lined up. This book was not planned with “only one setting” in mind, and doesn’t really lend itself to the treatment.

There are certain types of story that lend themselves to certain types of constraints. For instance, mysteries often work very well in first-person narration. The satisfaction comes from feeling the solution come together — all the clues must be assembled into one picture, and it’s the picture seen by the narrator. But there’s not much epic fantasy that’s told in the first person. Having just one viewpoint available greatly limits the bandwidth for world building.

When only one locale is available, you get a bottle episode. Some stories don’t have to stray beyond one place. Strangers thrown together at a remote motel is a standard trope. But many stories do want some room to run. There’s a reason why “strangers coming and going yell exposition at each other across the lobby” isn’t such a well-known setup.

A writing partner is someone you don’t mind sharing one location with.

I Grabbed The Tall Man’s Ankles

  • by Kentonly poets could properly express
  • fart and fall down
  • how your boss feels about robot nipples
  • The first rule of Magic Club is
  • regretted not bringing his own clogs

Tune in next time part 792      Click Here for Earlier Installments

I grabbed the tall man’s ankles and started dragging him across the chapel. I said to Tessa, “I’m going to stick you with the little one.” And friends, only poets could properly express how sly her smile became. We got both of the Right Anglers loaded onto those couches, and I managed not to fart and fall down even once during the whole process.

Each couch’s polarizing controls were located on the end, so that if you were sitting by the arm you could reach down and activate them. Why you’d want to do that is a mystery. I moved into position by one button and Tessa manned the other. Then we just had to kill time until the mime juice wore off.

“Why were you so concerned about whether I’d killed them?” Tessa asked.

“Well, Fleur would probably disapprove, and she’s not only my wife but also kind of my boss on military matters.”

Tessa shimmied a little, her Ultra-Druid getup making it quite a show. “Did you ever wonder how your boss feels about robot nipples?”

I blinked. “Are you telling me that you’re a Tessabot?”

She laughed. “The first rule of Magic Club is not answering that question!”

“What’s the second rule?”

“Can’t tell you, but I can say it’s why a certain viscount regretted not bringing his own clogs.”

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With My Right Fist I Drew a Figure in the Air

  • by jendescribed as peanut shaped
  • “One of your lovers?”
  • spider venom coursing through his veins
  • five kinds of tranquilizers
  • those polarizing candy cane striped couches

Tune in next time part 791      Click Here for Earlier Installments

With my right fist I drew a figure in the air, one that my sensei once described as peanut shaped. It was designed to distract and mesmerize an attacker. I hoped it would work when there was more than one.

“Who taught you that?” the taller man asked. “One of your lovers?” The way he said it I could tell he was hoping to upset Tessa by implying she was not my only paramour. She ignored his taunt and pulled out a blowgun, and moments later both the tall man and his little buddy were on the floor, not moving.

“They’re not dead, are they?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how Fleur would feel about that sort of thing on her airship.

Tessa smirked. “Not unless either one of them is allergic to the spider venom coursing through his veins now. Or any of the other five kinds of tranquilizers.”

She’d dosed them both with mime juice. I shuddered. You can take the girl out of the invisible box…

“I wonder who sent them,” she said.

“I know how we can find out. Help me drag them over to those polarizing candy cane striped couches flanking the altar, and when they wake up–”

Tessa finished my thought. “We’ll polarize them.”

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