The Infants Didn’t Answer

  • by jenI’ve had tests.
  • unfettered by child labor laws
  • down in the pelvic region
  • rolled about in uncouth positions
  • like lovers do

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The infants didn’t answer my query. Believe me, if they had I would have heard them. I have excellent hearing — I’ve had tests. At the Academy they are unfettered by child labor laws, and they take full advantage of it, forcing students to construct weapons under the guise of education during the day, and conducting rigorous physical exams well into the night. I was loath to enroll my children in such an establishment, but would they be safe without the proper training? Through no fault of their own they’d been born into a dangerous life. What kind of father would I be if I failed to equip them for survival?

Pondering such an important topic left me distracted, and before I knew it I was face to face with the last person I expected to see in the Inimical Archipelago.

“Tessa!”

I hadn’t seen her since I left the island in the biplane with Xylona, and at that point she’d been kissing my brother Jove. Perhaps this wasn’t Tessa at all, but one of her sisters in disguise. And what a disguise! She was wearing a grass hula skirt and coconut bra.

I tried to keep my guard up, but it was nearly impossible when she said, “I’ve been thinking about you, you know, down in the pelvic region.” She ran her hands over her foliage-clad hips. “It’s been so long since you and I rolled about in uncouth positions, like lovers do.”

I was quite exhausted, and carrying four newborn babies, but something about the way Tessa rustled her skirt got my heart rate racing. She slipped out of her hula garb and laid it in the shade of a nearby beach umbrella, then took my sons from me one by one and placed them gently on it.

Even though I knew she probably wasn’t the real Tessa, and even if she was she was most likely merely after another sample of my alleged exotic compound, I could not resist her.

I used my top hat to block the babies’ view.

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The Next Chapter

This week we tackled the last of the items on our To Do list relating to the Science Novels. We’re ready to plunge into writing Sibling of Music Novel, and didn’t want a bunch of tiny tasks swarming around us like gnats.

Kent whipped up a nice batch of epigraphs for the third novel, while Jen divided said novel into chapters so that he’d know how many he needed. (Answer: 28) Additionally she gave the chapters names.

We’ve mentioned before that Jen is our resident namer, and it’s a job she really enjoys. There was no chance that Kent was going to get his grubby paws on this task. Don’t get all riled up in his defense, though. Jen does ask for his opinion, and he has veto power.

During composition, we tend to give the scenes that we write goofy or overly spoiler-filled titles. They’re full of inside jokes and terrible puns. In short they would make egregious chapter titles. Would you read a book with chapters called “long day at the business factory”, or “emotionpalooza” or “merrily merrily merrily merrily” or “poopin’ in a bag” ? Of course not.

For the Science Novels, the actual chapter titles all relate to places in the stories. It was easy to come up with a couple dozen of those for the first book. As we moved through the series it got more difficult, largely because we don’t want to just repeat all the same place names from book to book. The thinking cap got a good workout, and in the end we came up with a nice, evocative batch of about 70 names, to cover all three books in the series. Now the whole series has proper chapters, with names and epigraphs and everything.

Having a writing partner means always having someone to share an inside joke with, even if it won’t make a good chapter title.

John Turned in a Full Circle

  • by KentI’d love to get to know you
  • she’s not a girl who
  • You may be an adventurous person
  • use their vacant home to have sex
  • — or so he thought —

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John turned in a full circle. He was surrounded by basilisk lizards — or so he thought — as my uncanny reproduction of that creature’s call echoed and reverberated from the limestone cliffs overlooking the beach. This end of the island chain had few permanent residents, but the clifftop was dominated by a sprawling vacation house. When the owners are away, the locals use their vacant home to have sex, I assume.

Before John could regain his wits, I belted out my piece de resistance, the cry of the Himalayan Snowcock. Such creatures would never be found at sea level, but John’s terror of them was such that he slumped onto his derriere. I stepped up and collected the babies. You may be an adventurous person, but you do not want to fuck with a new father of quadruplets.

“Go save your sister,” I urged John. “She needs you. You know she’s not a girl who will get herself out of trouble.”

I left him there in the sand, carrying the four infants like I’d been lugging four infants around my whole life. “So,” I said to them, “what’s your story? I’d love to get to know you little dudes better.”

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The Mimes Began to Circle

  • by jencursed at me and called me a child
  • “I’ve been having relations with your wife.”
  • some perfect mix of ethnicities
  • Boom! You’re officially
  • an allergic reaction to the bite of a basilisk lizard

Tune in next time part 359      Click Here for Earlier Installments

The mimes began to circle, malice in their dead eyes. John seemed unconcerned.

“Olga’s a mime sympathizer, John,” I said. “She’s going to hand that test tube over to the grease-painted scientist they keep trapped in a glass box, and who knows what he’ll do with it!”

“Dr Marceau escaped years ago,” John said. “I’m surprised you didn’t know.”

I shook my head pityingly. “No mime ever truly escapes the glass box, John. If you care about your sister at all you’ll stop her before she completes her initiation rites. Once she fully joins, she’s theirs for life.”

John cursed at me and called me a childish name that I will not dignify by repeating.

“Oh yeah?” I retorted. “I’ve been having relations with your wife.”

It was often like this between John and me. When things got tense we regressed to juvenile taunts.

“These nephews of mine,” John said, cuddling my four infants, “are some perfect mix of ethnicities that the world has never seen before. I’m going to carry them to safety and let the mimes finish you off.”

Before this week I’d had no children, had never wanted them. And now, in the course of just a few days I was suddenly a father of six and something inside me had shifted. It’s like some animal part of my brain said Boom! You’re officially a protector now! and there was nothing I wouldn’t do to protect my offspring. There was no way I could let a backstabber like John raise my sons.

My lightning reflexes and years of extensive Academy training kicked in, and in less than a minute the tide pool was littered with the bobbing corpses of so many mimes.

I wiped my hands on my soggy morning suit and turned to see John backing away, still clutching my quadruplets. Years ago John had suffered an allergic reaction to the bite of a basilisk lizard, and ever since he’d lived in mortal fear of that particular reptile. And as I mentioned before, I am able to imitate the call of any bird or beast. I took a deep breath and made the ululating cry of the basilisk lizard.

John’s eyes widened in panic.

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When Writing Feels More Like Acting

We mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Kent is writing epigraphs for the third Science novel. As with book one of that series, the epigraphs are excerpts from the in-world science fiction novels written by one of the characters.

We need these snippets to have a voice that’s distinct from the Rune Skelley voice. They need to feel like they’re from a different era. So, to create them entails getting inside the mind of their fictitious author.

All fiction entails getting inside the minds of your characters, but this is something verging on stunt fiction. Get inside this character’s head, while she’s getting inside her characters’ heads. Write like she would write, and then rewrite like she would rewrite. Thank goodness these things are brief!

For the middle book, we gave this fictitious author a break and excerpted a story told by someone else. The process bore much similarity, even though the resulting epigraphs that time were quite a bit shorter and more interconnected.

Now we’re back to how we started, except that our in-world author has been through new experiences, some of which shook her. How does that color her writing? How does she cope with other constraints (which would be gigantic spoilers if we told you about them)? We don’t want to just serve up another batch of the exact same stuff, but we do want to do more of what’s good. It’s a tricky balance. Kent had some initial ideas that Jen had to nix. Those mystery constraints clamped down hard. Fortunately, Kent believes that constraints fuel creativity, even if they also prompt the occasional tantrum.

Having a writing partner means you have someone to run lines with you and help you get into character.

 

I Said, “Hand Over The Tube, Olga”

  • by Kentunnaturally taxing their bodily energies
  • how much interaction your son has with the housekeeper
  • captured later that night
  • in more ways than one
  • rebellious but still very poised

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I said, “Hand over the tube, Olga.”

She sneered. “We’re surrounded by my allies. Let go of me before you get yourself killed. Embarrassingly.”

My own lips curled in a wicked parody of a grin. “Your allies are no threat. All this sun and feigned volleyball has been unnaturally taxing their bodily energies.” It was true. Most of the mimes were still on their feet, technically, but they were bent over and panting with exhaustion.

“Then you leave me no choice,” Olga retorted. “If you continue to interfere, our sleeper agents among the Contrarian nobility will exact revenge upon your children.”

“I hate to admit this,” I said steadily, “but Fleur is more than capable of neutralizing your operatives.” Fleur’s competence was fearsome, but still I was bluffing. I paused dramatically, then said, “I almost feel sorry for them.”

Shrugging, Olga said, “Ultimately it depends on how much interaction your son has with the housekeeper.” Now I knew she was bluffing, too. Housekeeping is banned in Contraria. Although, warlords have been known to flout such regulations. But not Fleur’s father. No, he was a traditionalist, and if he learned of illicit domestic laborers under his roof they and their patrons would be captured later that night.

I tightened my grip on her elbow, and felt the bones shifting in her arm. I flinched, thinking I was injuring her, but it was just her double-jointedness. Soon she gave me the slip in more ways than one, first slipping her arm out of my grasp and then running off up the beach, zig-zagging among the panting mimes and disappearing.

John scuffed his toes through the sand and stared off into the waves. “She’ll get it to Xylona,” he said. “My sister is rebellious but still very poised to see her mission through.”

I slogged over to him in the hot, dry sand. “You sound insane,” was all I had time to say before I made an unnerving discovery. The mimes had caught their breath.

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Olga Slipped Between Heinrich and John

  • by jenI’m no good at math
  • , hands in his pockets,
  • the second best killer that I ever have seen
  • consider them to be murderous badasses
  • Holy hell

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Olga slipped between Heinrich and John, heading toward the silent volleyball players. I’m no good at math, but there’s no way a group that size could stay quiet during what they’d just witnessed. I hadn’t heard a peep out of them this whole time. Nor had I seen a ball.

“Mimes,” I muttered. “Why did it have to be mimes?”

John just stood there, hands in his pockets, acting like he didn’t know we were surrounded by mimes. Like his own sister, with her marvelous double-jointedness, wasn’t in league with them. John may be the second best killer that I ever have seen, but he’s always underestimated mimes. It’s like he doesn’t consider them to be murderous badasses. I lurched forward and snagged Olga by the elbow. I couldn’t let her hand over the test tube of my semen, whether or not it truly contained the exotic compound everyone claimed.

“Holy hell, Jason!” she shouted. “Let me go!”

“I can’t do that, Olga,” I said. “Disco Island is at the far end of the Archipelago, and we all know that’s dangerously close to White Faces territory. It’s clear where your loyalties lie.”

“And anyway,” said Heinrich. “That’s not Jason.” He handed my four sons to John and waddled off down the beach, taking Svetlana with him.

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Just Hold Still, Dammit!

Jen and Kent are hardcore plotters, expending a ton of energy at the beginning of a project to get every last wrinkle ironed out. It is the Skelley way. It makes it a lot easier to divvy up the writing later if both halves of the partnership have a rock solid understanding of how all the pieces fit together.

But back to that “expending a ton of energy” part. Jen is currently in the midst of creating the actual outline. You know, the kind with roman numerals and all that jazz. It’s something she usually enjoys (don’t judge), but this time it’s frustrating her. Events in the timeline keep oozing around and refusing to hold still, and Jen really feels like they ought to know their place by now.

Our process is long and arduous, but not particularly complicated. Usually anyway.

  • Step one is a lengthy series of conversations where we talk through the whole story and take copious notes.
  • Step two is combing through those notes to put everything in order and discard the bits that are obsolete.
  • Step three is to polish the results of step two into a prose outline. For this novel (Sibling of Music Novel) that came to 24 pages (12,000 words), plus an additional couple of pages of notes on the setting.
  • Step four is not always necessary, but we dusted it off for this novel: an actual calendar to track events. Jen went through the prose outline and distributed the events on the calendar to make sure everything lined up properly. Everything seemed to be swell until she started:
  • Step five, which is the current step — the Real Outline. This is the step where the actual structure of the novel starts to come into focus. We look at how the events will break down into actual scenes. There are plenty of facts that we know about the story and our characters that are important, but that don’t justify their own scene. So as Jen works her way along, she’s looking for dynamic and interesting ways to convey some fairly mundane (for now) facts so that they won’t come out of nowhere later when they matter, and feel unearned.
  • Step six will be using the outline/glorified scene list to create the mini scene synopses that we call stubs.
  • Step seven will be the actual composition.

Each step along the way clarifies our story’s structure, uncovers plot holes and magical thinking, and helps us get to know the characters. By looking at things from so many angles, at so many differing magnifications, we find the weak spots before we start to write. It’s a lot of labor up front, but it saves a ton of work in rewrites.

The problem Jen’s encountering is that the events she so painstakingly placed on the calendar in step four are getting shuffled around in step five. It’s nothing so earthshaking that we need to rethink the plot, it’s just that now the calendar will need to be updated to reflect the actual actual flow of events, and that makes Jen sigh.

Having a writing partner means having someone to soothe your fevered brow while you shake your fist at the universe you created.

I Just Helped Deliver Quadruplets

  • by Kentand since his leaving Disco Island there has been no news
  • dating her husband’s sister
  • “It sounds like an alien.”
  • this is a confirmed story
  • as double-jointed as a trained mime

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“I just helped deliver quadruplets,” I said to the suddenly nude Olga. “Your sister’s quadruplets, my quadruplets. It’s all too much right now. Also, your brother is watching.” (Not to mention all the volleyball players.)

Olga didn’t seem to hear any of my protests, and to my own surprise my body began to actively disagree with all those objections. Olga wasn’t the loveliest of John’s sisters, but she was still a knockout in — and even more so, out of — a bikini. The next thing I learned about her was that she was as double-jointed as a trained mime, a discovery that raised questions about her affiliations. Soon she had the exotic compound, whatever it was, and I had completely forgotten my concerns, whatever they’d been.

John gave us a light round of applause, handing the infants to Heinrich so he could clap. Olga held up a test tube which appeared to be full of semen. I tried, but failed, to picture how she’d accomplished the sample collection. “The compound we’re interested in degrades rapidly unless it’s kept cold. This is a confirmed story from several of our operatives, and accounts for why our stockpile of the chemical is so small.”

She hid the test tube in her bikini top. “No one is really sure what this substance is, or where it originated. Hearing our biochemists describe the stuff, it doesn’t sound like it comes from any known living thing.” She flicked an eyebrow my way. “It sounds like an alien.”

“You weren’t complaining a minute ago.”

“Who’s complaining? I just need to get this sample on ice for transport.”

“And then take it directly to Xylona,” John admonished. “She will then fly it to Rolf, who happens to be dating her husband’s sister. He supervises the lab, which is located right here in the Inimical Archipelago.”

“Not anymore,” came Svetlana’s muffled voice. “The lab is still here, but Rolf hasn’t been running things for a year. He waded into the surf, and since his leaving Disco Island there has been no news.”

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Before I Could Collect Myself to Congratulate Her

  • by jenpack up its ovaries and flee
  • pulled out a whimpering dog
  • an easy matter, Olga,
  • find much more comfortable quarters
  • multi-jurisdictional nightmare

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Before I could collect myself to congratulate her, Svetlana gave another cry and produced another baby. And then a fourth. I was stunned. Any lesser uterus, when faced with quadruplets, would pack up its ovaries and flee. But Svetlana was a contortionist, and so apparently was her womb. At that point I wouldn’t have been surprised if she pulled out a whimpering dog, or another dozen babies, but she seemed to be done. The babies were all robust and plump.

“Four boys,” I stammered.

“I told you they would be remarkable when I tricked you into impregnating me,” Svetlana said. “They must have inherited my contortionist genes, otherwise there’s no way so many of them would have fit.”

Our awkward family moment was interrupted by Heinrich’s arrival. He shouldered past the gawking volleyball players. He had John with him, and Olga, too. I hadn’t seen Svetlana’s youngest sister in years, but here she was, just in time to be an aunt. It occurred to me then that John was my children’s uncle, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

John and Olga stared at their sister and her four newborn sons. Finally Olga said, “You were simply supposed to get a sample of his semen, Svetlana!” She jerked her thumb at me.

“I did!” She nodded at the infants. “How else do you think this happened?”

Olga shook her head sadly. “It’s not his genetic material we need, but the exotic chemical compound surrounding it.”

“You should have been more specific. It would have saved a good deal of discomfort. Now what am I supposed to do with all these babies?” Svetlana asked. “It won’t be an easy matter, Olga, to hide all of us under Heinrich’s shirt.”

John sniffed. “I’m sure we can find much more comfortable quarters for the infants.” He hauled Svetlana to her feet and took the children from her. She twisted and did a complicated backbend maneuver, then stood up straight, all signs of her recent pregnancy eradicated. She kissed each baby on the head and then gracefully coiled herself back into the harness on Heinrich’s chest.

“Hurry up and get a sample from him, Olga,” John said. “Then he can take the babies back to Contraria and we can get off this damn island. Xylona’s waiting at the biplane, and our scientists really need that exotic compound.”

“Wait!” I said. “You want me to take these kids home to my wife? That would be a multi-jurisdictional nightmare!” I was both American and part Indian, Svetlana was both a Contortionist and part Russian, and Fleur was as Contrarian as they come. There was precedent for adoptions such as this, to increase a warlady’s brood, but it required so much paperwork.

Meanwhile, Olga was stripping off her bikini.

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