Writer's Lounge - The Podium

Book Review: The Fire In Fiction - Donald Maass

2012-02-10T13:19:00.000-07:00

I recently finished Donald Maass' The Fire In Fiction. In summary, this is the single best book on writing I've come across. Mr. Maass covers the following topics:

Protagonists vs Heroes
Characters Who Matter
Scenes That Can't be Cut
Novels,
Voice
Making the Impossible Real
Hyper reality
Tension
The Fire in Fiction

Each chapter has nuts-and-bolts practical tools and exercises and all this from the man who is considered one of the top Literary Agents in the business as well as having authored numerous other works on writing.

I would recommend this for anyone serious about writing fiction.

Larry

New Moonbird Express Query

2011-12-27T13:47:00.000-07:00

Here's my new Moonbird Express query. Any comments? I'd love to hear what you think.

Three months ago, Matt Newcomb had been the proud captain of the first explorers on Mars, but their mission had taken a bizarre turn. Today, he’s fighting for the life of his astronauts who’ve been stranded by sabotage. Help is coming but it may not arrive in time.

Richard Nickelose, an ex-space station engineer, has spent most his adult life trying to forget a childhood mistake that cost him a sister and his mother’s love. He has never met Matt, but he just killed a man and stole an American military vessel and sees this as his single hope for personal redemption. Today, he commands a pieced-together space barge, carrying over three hundred lunar settlers to Mars to establish a new colony and save the astronauts. But, two ships of U.S. Marines are approaching with orders to stop them.

4th Quarter Writers of the Future Contest - Honorable Mention

2011-08-01T09:41:00.000-06:00

My short story "Lawman" received Honorable Mention in the forth quarter Writers of the Future contest.

Short Story Development

2010-09-07T05:07:00.001-06:00

Based on my interpretation of James's Frey's 'The Key', I used his Myth Method to attempt to improve some of my old short stories. While this story is still a work in progress, it still illustrates the method and the result. So, you be the one to decide if this is helpful or not, but here goes:

DEVELOPMENT:

TIME ENOUGH - by L. K. Pinaire

GERMINAL IDEA:

The leading scientist and past chairman of Zinor's General Assembly has a life changing experience when he meets members of their world's lower cast who have discovered a vast spaceport in a remote region. Now though the scientists have been studying their star for a thousand millennia and will complete their task in the next two thousand years or so, they want to leave.

THE WORLD OF THE ORDINARY

Lars Maandsten is an astrophysicist who studies Zinor's dying star. The last of hundreds of generations of scientists on Zinor, he has outlived his wives and perhaps his usefulness. Their star is about to go nova in the next 2 to 2,000 season-cycles and the scientists are awaiting the end. No one knows Zinor is a Dyson sphere and have been taught since antiquity that everyone awaits their star's end.

THE CALL TO ADVENTURE

Lars receives a visit from an old friend, Grayson and a lower cast woman, Lola. They beckon him to visit the farmlands beyond the city where they have made a wondrous discovery that will change the course of Zinor's history. They need to discuss it with him there. After being haunted by dreams, which warn him not to go, he and Lola leave.

OVER THE THRESHOLD AND INTO THE WOODS

In the Farmlands, the rules are different:

· People live primitively with little electricity, few buildings and work the fields with beasts of burden.

· Organic material covers the ground.

· The lower cast believes in All, but do not recognize that the Ancients built Zinor for the single purpose of studying their dying star.

· They believe there is more to the universe than this world.

· They are discontent, angry and considering violence to achieve their freedom of choice. Many want to leave Zinor and explore the cosmos, whatever that is.

THE HERO MUST BE TESTED – THE TRIAL OF TRIALS

· Lars visits the fields where he meets Lola's sister, Lister. They show him the dreadful life of the lower cast.

· Lars visits the spaceport where they show him that the Ancients kept the ability to leave, and therefore must have considered it.

· Lars visits a hospital where the lower-cast die without benefit from science.

· Lars returns home with Lola and rediscovers his world.

DEATH, REBIRTH & CONFRONTATION W/ THE EVIL ONE

· Lars falls for Lola while he visits the country dwellers and sees the plight of their lifestyle and that the ancients apparently had planned to leave at some time. He and Lola return to the cities to disclose his revelations.

THE ARRIVAL HOME

· After a few weeks of living together in the Science Center, he is shocked at the anger and prejudice against her cast.

· He decides to throw his support toward the farmers and recommends they be allowed to leave.

THE HERO: Lars Maandsten

Zinor's leading astrophysicist

6'0" Tall

Hairless

Pale skinned

180 lbs
Photo omitted.

HERO'S PHYSIOLOGY (Body)

As an adult, Lars Maandsten is six-foot (1.83 meter) and 185 lbs (83.9 kilograms) with a thin, body. He is healthy and still works at 144 season-cycles of age. He is completely hairless and has brown eyes and looks like a man half his age.

Lars has a pleasant face, good teeth and a pleasant but reserved smile. He, like all the scientists, was bread for intelligence and his occupation. Like the other scientists, he seldom walks, using his seat for all transportation and his muscles show significant atrophy. He loves his star, likely more that the wives he's had over the years. Now, he lives alone. Lars is a steady as their sun and like it, now wanes in his latter years.

HERO'S SOCIOLOGY (History)

Lars was born in the capital city of the Planet Zinor. Born from sperm and ovary donors based on their genetics, he lives and works in the Science Center where they study the star.

Lars has outlived his five wives, but due to genetic issues, female life spans on Zinor were typically only half that of those for males. Besides, Lars had never been good at being a husband, virtually living in his laboratory to better study their star.

HERO'S PHYCHOLOGY (Needs)

Lars loves his star and has never been really interested in anything else. His wives have all been provided to take care of someone as important as him. For ten years he also took the position of Chairman of the Zinor General Assembly, but has since retired back to the labs.

He believes that sentient life is All's gift, and his duty is to study their star. The years he spent in the General Assembly did teach him that he had a duty to all those on this world. He always did his best during that time to practice fairness as long as it fit with the goals of All.

HERO'S WRITTEN JOURNAL – IN THEIR VOICE

Here I am, a hundred and forty, I've gone through five wives and I'm alone now. I'm not sure I care anymore. They still might bring another one in, but I don't know why. All I need is my star. It's really troubling, though, that I was born in time to study the beginning of it's end, the purpose of our existence, but I might still miss the big event by two millennia.

I just can't understand all the recent changes, the dissent from the peripheral regions and people questioning the laws of All. It doesn't make sense. You'd think that as long as people have been studying the star, people accept their roll in things. The ancients didn't build this world for nothing.

HERO's Lover: Lola

Farmer

Educated in the hospital, trained medical volunteer – studied eight years

37 season-cycles old

5'8" tall

Long blond hair in a bun when she works

Pale skinned

135 lbs
Photo omitted.

LOLA'S PHYSIOLOGY (Body)

As an adult, Lola is five-eight and 135 lbs with a thin but muscular build. Intelligent and fit, she works in the fields each day and in the big nearby clinic most evenings. She has long blond hair and blue eyes

LOLA'S SOCIOLOGY (History)

Lola was born in farming community that supports Zinor's capital and the Science Center. Her father was Steverston, a leading agriculturalist and esteemed farmer and her mother was Saras, a physician at the local clinic. Both she and her sister Lister, work together daily on the family plot.

LOLA'S PHYCHOLOGY (Needs)

What makes Lola special is her education. Few from her cast are taught more that farming, but because of her mother, she has learned medicine. She believes, like most farmers, that the cast system must go. She's aware that many want to leave and she's seen the spaceport. Because of her endless long hours, she is lonely.

LOLA'S WRITTEN JOURNAL – IN THEIR VOICE

Here I am, farming the land six days a week and working in the clinic until I'm so tired I drop to sleep without eating. Then, she considers all the people in the cities whose lives are as painless and effortless. The scientists ignore us and begrudge us the slightest convenience in our lives. Why? Then, there's the matter of the spaceport. If the ancients had intended us to stay on this world forever, why leave us ships that can travel beyond this world. I just wish that I could once, talk to these people. Maybe I could shake some sense into them.

TIME ENOUGH STEPSHEET

1. Begin in the word of common-day. The call to adventure has already been accepted.

Lars awakens from a dream where someone is warning him not to follow Grayson and the woman out of the city.

2. The Threshold

During the seat-flight to the farmlands, he worries whether his associates will pay their star the attention Lars normally gave it and why the farmers didn't see that their social order was the will of All.

3. And Into The Woods

They visit Lola's home, a farming community where people have never used seats and believe in All, but not the myth that the Ancients built Zinor to study their sun and stay till the end when it goes nova. They meet Lista, and Lars is revolted by the poverty.

Then they visit the spaceport where other primitives argue that the old story about All wanting the population to stay forever and study the star to its end was wrong. Someone, millions of people, had at one time planned to leave. They explain their desire to leave and need explore whatever else there is besides Zinor. They believe there is something beyond their world of steel.

Lars and Lola become involved and he convinces her to visit the city.

4. The Arrival Home, Death, Rebirth & Confrontation W/ The Truth

Lars brings Lola back to the city where he shows her the important aspects of his life:

· His star – where she learns to understand him.

· His Spartan apartment – where they grow closer.

· His friends – who, including Grayson, disapprove of their relationship, of her living in the city, of her genetics, education, culture and caste.

· The city – where passersby shun and ridicule her.

· The council – where he announces his support of the separatist movement.

After numerous attempts to leave, the discontent faction find and open the space door. Lars and Lola's daughter, Isidora, commands the last ship through the portal to explore the universe.

STORY (as it currently stands)

TIME ENOUGY – by L. K. Pinaire

Lars Maandsten gasped, unable to catch his breath. His heart thundered and his chest heaved, desperate ... starved for air. His eyes opened. Awake in his sleeping net, he turned his face to the side.

The room, his apartment, remained unchanged from last night, empty but for a few mementos, some simple furniture and a kitchen he never used. Safe, alive and at home, he waited for the perspiration on his body to dry.

Though awake, he grasped for the fading memory of the dream he just woke from: their star, his star, going nova and exploding. He knew it was too soon for that -- or was it?

***

They burst from the port and the scenery turned to a rainbow blur. Balanced on one of Zinor's great standing waves of EMF flux, Grayson's trans-seat, hardly larger than something to sit on, led with Lola's slaved to his side. Lars followed into the great outdoors, smiling at the firm inertial tug -- and trees and soil, hiding Zinor's floor. From his feet, through his body to his arms and hands and head, he felt alive and invigorated and enjoyed this very much.

A soft breeze sifted through the front field generators against his face. Their seats darted upward on the fluxways, toward the clouds and away from the city, their capitol and the Science Center.

Lars was more excited than he'd been in ages. He could feel a shit-eating grin covering his face.

Still, while wondering how Grayson and Lola talked him into this, he was grateful. He opened his comm. "Thank you both. I've never had so much fun."

"This is important, Lars. There are things we need to see, things you must see."

Lars didn't want to argue. Not with all this around him. And the girl, Lola. She excited him, and he was a hundred and forty-four, but now his life had slowed.

He really hadn't expected to find life, covering and hiding Zinor's surface, but surely their food came from somewhere. Rich smells, warmth and softness came from this thing they called the soil, and this day of revelations had just begun.

He leaned back and relaxed, until they swooped down toward some sort of activity and stopped a few meters above the surface.

A tall, dark and muscular female approached, walking naturally, as though she could stand on her feet forever.

Beside Grayson, Lola waived her hands and grinned with joy. "Lars, this is my sister, Lista."

The girl -- barely a woman and wearing only a loincloth, raised her hands to All, palms flat and forward, as a greeting. "Welcome to our farm."

While Grayson and Lola hovered, Lars nervously approached where Lista stood and faced her with one palm also aimed forward to All. "I'm Lars. Praise All." Then he saw the great beast, grazing behind her.

Trying to ignore Lola's half-naked sister, Lars turned to Grayson and pointed at the creature. "Why is that monster here?" He'd never seen such a thing before.

"We are tilling the land." Lista smiled back and Lars found himself excited for the second time, today. She climbed onto the back of Grayson's seat with her legs straddled around his and her arms wrapped around his chest. She rode there until they stopped, a meter above the ground, between a stand of towering flora near a small structure built from some mineral-like stuff.

Lars released his restraint, slid off his seat and stood. The pull on his legs made him wonder how anyone could do this more than a few minutes a day. Whooh! By the time he crouched and entered the place Lola identified as her dwelling, he had to catch his breath again.

They sat around a stone table on chairs carved from something dark and grainy that once might have lived. Lola stirred the cauldron while Lista dipped porridge into ceramic bowls. Lars gripped the wooden spoon but set it down when the women stood.

Hands raised to All, Lista gave a prayer of thanks. When they sat, Lola picked up her spoon. "Please enjoy your meal."

Lola's blue eyes glimmered with excitement. "Thank you, Lars, for coming to visit our part of the world." She smiled.

Lars couldn't get over the strength and beauty of these women. "Since my retirement from the General Assembly I've spent most of my time working in the lab. I appreciate the diversion."

A few chunks of meat danced in a thick broth. While a bit lean, its spicy flavor brought tears to his eyes. He smiled and wiped his mouth with a bare arm. The expressions on the sisters' faces suggested they were sharing a delicacy.

Lista sat up straight and looked his way. "Does the Assembly govern all the cities or just the Science Center?"

Lars smiled. "Oh, no, my dear, we govern all of Zinor." Her ignorance amazed him.

Then, Lista jumped back in. "Then why do you know so little about the part of your world that feeds you?" Sharpness had crept into her voice.

Lars caught his breath. "I don't know."

He glanced around at walls painted with rainbows of color, stuffed mats in the corner, and a hearth for cooking. In spite of the terrible poverty of this primitive life, they shared the best of what they had.

Grayson interrupted, "Lola, what did you think of our city?"

Now Lola remained speechless. Then she took an awkward breath and pushed out a smile. "It was an interesting and marvelous place, but so different from our world in the fields -- " She looked at Lista. " -- and our people."

Grayson interrupted again. "I know Lola doesn't want to talk about everything yet, but this trip, Lars, is of true importance and might effect all our lives."

Lola stood. "We will have plenty of time to talk once I show you more of our world, but now, we have work to do ... in the fields."

Lars swallowed his last bite before they returned to the seats and then to where they left the beast. Again, they stood.

While Lista and Lola pulled back on the beast's harness to attach it to a metal blade, Lars did his best to remain standing. He couldn't pull or lift or help in any way he could see, but he tried. If he were just a little younger.

Between the four, they hitched the beast to the blade and Lars managed to get from their way and stay standing while Lola and Lista tilled the field. Then, Lars collapsed next to Grayson from the worst exhaustion he'd ever known.

"How can you do this?" Lars asked anyone who might listen.

The women laughed, and Lola brought water to the men. Meanwhile, Lista guided the blade across the field, splitting the soil as it moved, releasing a soft fragrance that wafted around them on the breeze.

Nearly the victim of sensory saturation, Lars tried to grasp the myriad of ideas and experiences dancing in his head.

Lola looked into Lars' eyes. "Do you see? Our lives are a struggle."

Lars nodded. What could he say?

At the day's end, they returned to Lola's lair, and she pointed to the bedding on the floor. "You should rest. Tomorrow, I'd like for you to meet some of our leaders at the hospital."

After the best sleep he could get on a matt on Lola's stone floor, especially with all the light, he awakened to the sound of something alive, flying through the woods.

The girls had left, perhaps to work the fields. Lars arose, left Grayson still sleeping and steered to the den's flat stone roof. Above the hills and trees and away from the confines of the cities, bright orange flooded the sky and ground from all directions. Above anything that might block the light, the new day stunned him, but of course it would be like this -- until their star winked out.

When Lola and Lista returned, they bathed in water from her cistern and changed clothes. Their lack of modesty troubled him.

The clinic sat on a hill less than two klicks away. They landed and walked in, joining three older men in white gowns near a table with six place settings in a building lit by electricity.

When they sat, the older of the physicians, he guessed, stood with palms forward and out.

Then, Lola stood. "Our Clinical Director, Mr. Haastic will bless our meal."

"Welcome, gentlemen," the tallest of the men-in-white said. "After breakfast, there'll be a brief tour of our facilities and then, I believe, Lola has an agenda of her own."

The tallest man-in-white, a thin fellow, wore full facial hair. Lars had never seen that before. In fact, he'd never know any man with facial hair of any kind. Very odd.

Lars ate something dark and juicy in a bed of vegetables, as good as he'd ever tried. He'd ask Lola later if he had the chance.

In spite of the pain, they walked, touring operating rooms. Lars cringed. There, they cut people open with knives and -- shudder -- babies were born from their mother's wombs. Not much genetic selection that way. He struggled to keep his silence while Haastic explained the function of each clinic section.

Lars looked into Grayson's eyes. His friend since childhood, he had been the only one who could have convinced him to visit this place he heard of as a child but discarded as myth. "How could we allow this to happen?"

"I don't know." Grayson's words trailed of underscoring his frustration.

They finished in a long chamber with fans and beds where patients recovered from recent procedures. A nearby one caught his eye.

A preadolescent boy lay covered with course, white linen, and tubes ran from bags of fluid to a needle in his arm. A few oscilloscopes and meters traced his progress. Barbaric by any standards.

Lola moved both hands, as though to gesture to the whole room. "I'm sure your technology surpasses ours by measures that I can't even imagine. Remember, I saw your world."

"Of course, it does," Lars spoke before he could pull back the words. As though this poverty and the affluence in the cities were balanced by their study of their star. His heart twisted in deep regret.

"I'm sorry." He put his hand to his mouth. "I'm at a loss for words right now." Today's revelations had shaken him. He'd never felt so ill equipped to deal with a situation. Something long ago had gone terribly wrong here. "Let's go."

Lars' stomach turned sour. The sudden urge to walk away pulled hard. Lola took his hand and led him into the next room.

She smiled. "We're done here, unless you'd like to see more." Her expression faded.

"Just how could this have happened?" Guilt turned his eyes away. Lars took a deep breath. "I didn't know."

"I saw how you lived and more, when I visited your city." She also dropped her eyes. "I knew then: I had to show you."

They walked to meet Grayson, who maneuvered his seat and its slave-craft to meet Lars'.

"With the flesh raised where eyebrows might have grown," Grayson said, "You see? We had to bring you."

"I see," Lars shrugged.

"I knew I couldn't do this as well as Lola." Grayson pursed his lips.

Lola smiled. "I'd like to spend the remainder of the day here in the village and then we'll set out in the morning. I'll show you something that might change all our lives." Her eyes almost twinkled. "There are no seatways where we are going."

Lola and Lars took the joined seats back to the farm.

***

“This region must be the only place on Zinor with soil on the surface," Lars said. I’d never seen such a thing before, or the trees.” He took a deep breath at the sight of a jungle of broad leaves, swaying above them, stretching from stalk-like plants, forming a low canopy. Living growth, brilliant reds and blues, hung from the spines of the plants like some saprophytic tag-along softening the delicate view. And the fragrance… Another deep breath and he could sense something of their essence without the slightest touch.

Lars and Lola slid from their seats and waded though knee-deep growth, some clinging from his clothes, toward Lola's den, a stone hut against a hillside, with a flat roof. Flowering plants surrounded its base and everything nearby. Grayson and Lista remained at the clinic.

“Lars, you came today with your mind troubled and you’re body weary.” She touched the back of his hand with her fingers. “Have you forgotten the joys of living? Do you not have fun? Or love? What kind of life do you live?” She shook her head and led him inside. "You show the sign of All, but you don't seem to have Her joy in your heart.”

“Hon, I worship All, but from what I see, I suspect our beliefs might be different.”

She sat in the single-room dwelling and pulled his hand. "Thanks again, for leaving the Science Center. Being the senior scientist, the council will at least believe you when you tell them what you've seen." When Lars knelt beside her, she placed her lips against his and kissed him like a lover. The sight of her, the softness of her lips, and the closeness of her body, all took hold, and he lost the power to refuse.

In minutes both were intertwined like tangled leaves in the autumn, twisting and moving until the end. Then, he lay with her naked body against his, youth against antiquity. He never felt better in his life.

“Many of my people want to leave Zinor, you know,” she said before she kissed him again.

The blasphemy caught him off guard.

"I don't understand. Where would they go? What else is there but Zinor and our star, the sun?" How could they go against the Law of All?"

"Do you still believe All placed us here just to study our star?"

"It is true. How can you question that? What else is there to study?"

"Zinor itself? Something beyond? I don't know."

"Perhaps our beliefs are more different than I thought."

"My beliefs have changed." She was a steady, cool breeze on a hot day, a brief diversion from his life, but she did say the strangest things. He had to return, soon. His star awaited him.

Lars placed his fingertips on hers and then traced the shape of her lips with his forefinger. “Lola, I have never met anyone like you.” He kissed her for the longest time then released her.

“Spend the night with me. Tomorrow I'll show you what we found.” She ran her fingers over his chest, and her smile disarmed him.

He nodded and then fell back into the nest and they became closer acquainted until sleep took them.

***

Lars slid from his seat, and strong pain climbed his legs, the reward for so much time on his feet. He stood, proud he could still do this at his age. Many couldn't. Grayson also grimaced while Lola climbed down.

"Follow me down to the dock." She led and they did their best to follow until all three came to and sat down in a small covered sailboat, guided by two men.

The first standing water Lars had ever seen reflected all of Zinor back into the sky. The boat gradually gained speed and moved forward under the endless sky of silver.

"Your world is full of the unexpected." Lars stared at the channel, deep and longer than one could see.

Lola silently raised her palms to All and turned back and forth as though to show them a new miracle. From both sides, a lush jungle sent humid air across their bow. While they sat and talked, the scenery shifted, and the chirps of living creatures serenaded them for hours until she leaned into Lars' arms and slept.

Lars opened his eyes to Lola tugging on his wrist. "Okay! Let's go. We've have lots to see."

They'd anchored at a large concrete dock that ran at least a klick toward the bend of the ground. Synthetic bumpers separated their boat from the structure.

Lola climbed up and offered Lars then Grayson a helping hand. From there, cylinders with rounded noses appeared above the dock and pointed at the sky.

Lars' jaw dropped and he turned to see Grayson, smiling.

"I see you got to see everything first."

A sea of these tall objects broke the view as far as his eyes could discern. Lars remembered to exhale and shook his head.

"You see," Lola said. "These are starships, and something is not right. We've been lied to. When All guided the ancients here to build this world, more than a few of them planned to return somewhere. This law of All that we stay here till the end of time must be false, or why would they leave all this that we see? This is a spaceport." Her face wrinkled. "Something must have gone wrong."

"How long have you known?" Lars rubbed his chin and turned to Grayson. "How could this be a secret as old as time?"

Lola folded her hands into each other. "This place cannot be seen from your seatways. The only way here is still by boat. All your science is focused on that one single star. You give nothing else on Zinor a serious look."

Lars sat on the ground, astounded and exasperated. "Lola, we study our star to learn how it grows and ages. Duty binds us to wait for its final days. I was born and bred for this purpose. Why else did the ancients build Zinor?"

Grayson joined him.

Lola looked down. "I was also taught that All built Zinor, but I'm not sure what I believe anymore. We've been exploring this place for quite a while. Best we can tell, thanks to Grayson's analysis, they are ready to go minus a little fuel and recharging of the batteries. We contacted him to help us when we decided we didn't have the knowledge to go any further. They run using antimatter for fuel and there's a remarkable amount of it in storage, controlled by technology that looks more like magic. It's been running and repairing itself for eons. Welcome to our future."

Lars silently attempted to absorb all the changes. Now, this certainly alters the course of things. With their entire society structured around the science of this one star, the idea of change struck fear in his heart.

Lola offered a tour of a ship, but after a short time, Lars again felt ill.

He looked into Lola's eyes. "I suppose your people do want to leave here."

"I don't want to go anywhere, but many do." She paused. "Lars, I'm not sure if those who stay will want all your technology, but they should have a choice."

When the vortex of events slowed, Lars considered what he really wanted. "Lola, I'd like you to come back with me to the Science center at least for a while. I'm going to try to set things as straight as I can."

The smile across her face grew into a grin. Her expression made him look the other way with joy.

"I don't know how well I'll be received, but I can try to fit in."

Before they left, Grayson moved his seat to Lars'. He leaned forward and whispered. "You know, Lola will probably never tell you, but this was all her doing. She found the spaceport, came to the city for me and orchestrated the whole thing."

Lars only smiled.

***

Lars sat at his desk with the observatory shield open, their star framed by the windows' shape. Instruments purred in the background while Lola brushed her hair against her naked flesh. They'd been here nearly a season-cycle and been married almost as long. He'd never seen such a beautiful woman, certainly not the previous wives the council had made him endure for his own good. His only regret, that he would never be as much a husband to her as she'd been a wife to him.

She smiled at him, and he couldn't look away.

"Tomorrow, I'll be addressing the Assembly. I think the time has come. Please join me." He shuddered, having dreaded this for a long time.

"I'd be very proud to." She stood tall and self-assured.

In all his season-cycles, he could never have imagined the welcome he and his new wife had received, but the everyday citizens of the center had clearly spoken their minds every day since their return. Lars gritted his teeth.

***

Lola and Lars walked through the city, no seat or slave for his bride. Above them, like streaks of motion in the sky at every level but the surface, and in every direction imaginable, seats carried his fellow citizens to their every destination. As Lars went on, some would notice, as they always did. They'd slow and swoop to see this oddity first hand. At first, the taunts were distant but soon grew more personal and close. "Mutant! and "Savage!" and "Liar!" filled the air. Then the chants came again ... and again. Sometimes they rang out in unison. Lars had heard this all before, every day since returning from the farms. His heart grew heavy, as it always did in public. For the first time in their lives, the people of the cities had learned fear. They now knew the terror of change and had focused on this innocent woman. Why?

After a brief jaunt in a vertical transit shaft, he walked through the shimmering holo-curtains and steadily to the General Assembly forum table with Lola at his side.

The chamber, where he'd served ten season-cycles, and all the electorate, went silent, with only an echoing cough, then a seat bumping into the arched table beyond which everyone else sat.

Lars spoke, "This occasion brings me both joy and sadness. Thank you for your time. I am overjoyed by a chance to be here again, but this time, you see, I'm standing." He looked into the legislators' eyes and saw the same fear, but they had brought this on themselves.

Lars went on to remind them the story about those who lived in unimaginable poverty to feed the people in the cities. He mentioned the spaceport with more starships than this world had people.

The hush deepened.

"The sad story here today isn't so much that the ancients didn't tell us we could leave. I do know that thousands will choose to depart for whatever rests beyond the limits of our world. The real sadness in my heart has come from our people who regard my wife as half-a-person and not quite human, like all those on which we do so depend."

A noise moved along the table and through crowd of seats hovering beyond the assembly. The muttering, grumbling, hissing rumble grew angrier.

Lars inhaled and went on.

"I had planned to recommend that we allow a few of the outside people to leave to search and find what lies beyond our world." He swallowed. "Now, though, I've changed my mind. We don't deserve that they stay to feed and support us." He paused. "It is you that have changed my mind. It is your narrow-minded anger that has broken my heart. I am no longer one of you."

The crowd's volume grew and grew as seats raised and fists shook.

"I say let them go." Before the crowd went wild, he paused again. "Thank you."

Lars and Lola walked away from the jeers and hoots and never returned.

Walking out, Lars held up Lola's hand. "I don't expect I swayed anyone, today, but I'm sure I've set them thinking. It may take a while, but the seed I've planted will grow. Too many of them worked too closely with me to ignore my words. Eventually, things will change."

***

Isidora sat across from her pilot, helmsman Isogreg in the last ship departing Zinor.

"We're nearly there, Captain."

"The door should be directly ahead."

Nearly a season-cycle out from the spaceport, traveling under full thrust, Isidora was ready.

"It's coming into view on the holo." Isogreg pointed to the suspended image.

The great door in their metal world hung centered in the view. No further from their star then the place where she'd been born, Isidora shivered with excitement.

"Can you imagine the reaction of travelers aboard the first ships to leave when they found this opening on Zinor's opposite floor?" While she waited, the great gateway parted like a metal jaw with four opposing sets of teeth.

Vast expanses of starlight rained down upon them from outside the expanding door. She realized: the gap between intellect and understanding sometimes proved very large. In this case it stood gigantic as she began to grasp her world.

"Each one of those is a star like our sun?"

"They are not exactly the same." She stood, filled with excitement.

As they passed through, the apparent, flat, gray surface revealed itself to be a metal sphere. The door to the stars slipped shut, and as it did, she took her last glimpse of their sun vanishing behind it. Darkness took its place, and with no more than the light from the myriad of stars in the heavens around them, this metal world that contained her father's star could no longer be seen.

"I don't mean to pry, Captain, but with you parents as instrumental as they were to this exodus, don't you think they'd be proud of you."

"Oh, I don't know about that. Neither of my parents ever wanted to leave. All Father ever wanted was to live to see the end of our star. He always said that my birth was the most extraordinary thing either of them ever did."

"Oh." The helmsman grinned.

"I always got a laugh out of that, as well," she said.

Isidora thought of her parents. Both had passed in recent times and their memory sustained her as she left. She would never forget the story of how they met in the farming region outside their city, and in time changed their world forever.

She remembered their walks in the city. Father had always said that the only way to teach others was by example, and every day she could remember, they went out and walked the streets among the seats and angry people. Then, one day, the folk in seats finally quieted. In her heart, her parents' bridging the gap between the societies had been their greatest feat.

Isidora looked forward into the myriad of stars ahead, to her new future and worlds beyond her wildest dreams, and as Mother and Father had always told her, she knew that All had not built Zinor, but maybe she’d find who did.

The End

I'd love to hear what anyone thinks about how this method works.

Larry

Moonbird Express final long and short Synopsis

2010-08-14T16:06:00.000-06:00

Short Synopsis 522 words

To halt America's impending financial collapse in 2073, the President promises to end the space program. He sells NASA to the Chinese to pay off an astronomical foreign debt, bargaining away the American Space Station, the self-sufficient Moonbase and the lunar platinum mines. To close the deal, he offers to promote ambitious UNMC Colonel JACK MILLER if he brings the inhabitants of those facilities home, authorizing the use of force, if necessary.

After a year on Mars, MATT NEWCOMB, captain of the first team of explorers, dreads leaving; he knows they'll not return. But, he and eleven other explorers find themselves stranded after discovering their ascent vehicles have been sabotaged. With no means to return to Earth and with less than six months of supplies, they await America's last Mars-capable ship, which might not arrive in time.

Matt believes his crew has a shot at survival if they can find the right resources. He establishes a methane pumping station near Olympus Mons. The new fuel source extends the range of their rovers and places the ice cap within reach, but they only discover frozen CO2. Matt's astronauts use robotic rovers to find a large Martian cave that sits on a frozen aquifer. They seal and fill it with oxygen. Construction begins on a subterranean village where they can live.

Before Miller launches his ships, RICHARD NICKLENOSE, an engineer with no ties to Earth who works at the space station and lives at the Moonbase, organizes a rebellion with like-minded astronauts determined to maintain the life they love in space.

Ships laden with armed troops arrive at the space station to evict its residents. Richard kills a guard and commandeers the vessels to the Moon where his friends, angry miners and some of the inhabitants, have pieced together a space barge, Moonbird, to take hundreds of families to Mars. Richard, having accepted command, deals with problems en-route ranging from freezing dorms to passenger deaths.

Under Presidential orders based on flawed intelligence, Miller brings more ships and intercepts them a few weeks out from the Moon, but he's used all his fuel. Now, Moonbird is his only way back home, and he launches a series of attempts to board her. Richard successfully defends the barge and cripples both of the colonel's ships. Miller dies with most of his crews, and drifting bodies of dead marines haunt the rest of Richard's life.

By the time NASA's supply ship arrives and delivers the means for Matt's astronauts to return to Earth, they have learned that Moonbird is coming. Having begun their new lives, they know that to leave is to never return. They choose to stay. By the time the refugees finally reach Martian orbit, a Team B engineer admits to the sabotage, to prevent the President from calling them back to Earth.

When Moonbird attempts to land, Richard fights to hold the ship together during descent and can't find enough thrust to slow them. Struggling the whole way down, he crash-lands near the habitats, saving most of the passengers. They join Matt's fledgling community, and with support from China and other space-faring countries, the Martian colony begins its tenuous attempt to survive.

Long Synopsis 828 words

To halt America's impending financial collapse in 2073, the President promises to end the space program. He sells NASA to the Chinese to pay off an astronomical foreign debt, bargaining away the American Space Station, the self-sufficient Moonbase and the lunar platinum mines. To close the deal, he offers to promote ambitious USMC COLONEL JACK MILLER if he brings the inhabitants of those facilities home, authorizing the use of force, if necessary.

After a year on Mars, MATT NEWCOMB, captain of the first team of explorers, dreads leaving; he knows they'll not return. He's just asked IRIS LANGSTEN, his electrical engineer, to marry him, but she told him no. Because of infidelities, she can't trust him. Matt and the eleven other explorers find themselves stranded after discovering their ascent vehicles have been sabotaged. With no means to return to Earth and with less than six months of supplies, they await America's last Mars-capable ship, which might not arrive in time.

Matt believes his crew has a shot at survival if they can find the right resources. He establishes a methane fuel pumping station near Olympus Mons, extending the range of their rovers and placing the ice cap within reach. But, they encounter a storm during their return, and Matt's expedition is stranded on Amazonis Planitia when their rover crashes.

With only two days supplies and the habitats two days away, they must let someone know they need help. Matt's crew takes refuge in an abandoned Russian space capsule where they find a dead chimp and air. While he tries to contact Earth with the capsule's old equipment, two crewmen climb a small mountain and attempt to contact the satellites and the habitats. Still reeling from Iris's rejection, Matt shares a brief fling with a female engineer. When the other crewmen fail and return, no one knows that Earth received their message.

Rescuers find Matt's crew, lying in the sand, unconscious from CO2 poisoning. They revive, but Matt's lover dies from internal bleeding. He is stunned at the loss and then learns that someone has murdered Team Beta's doctor at the habitats.

Matt returns, determined to make things right with Iris. After team Beta's captain leads an expedition to the ice cap to find a source of water but returns having only found frozen CO2, Iris confides in Matt that she's pregnant and agrees to marry him.

Before Miller launches his ships, RICHARD NICKLENOSE, an engineer with no ties to Earth who works at the space station and lives at the Moonbase, organizes a rebellion with like-minded astronauts determined to maintain the life they love in space.

Ships laden with armed troops and munitions arrive at the space station to evict its residents. Richard kills a guard, steals the station's new ion drives and commandeers the vessels to the Moon where his friends, angry miners and some of the inhabitants, have pieced together a space barge, Moonbird. His friends have overthrown the local government, and after fitting the new drives and much of the stations recycling system and equipment, they conduct a trial launch. Rising on five massive chemical thrusters, Moonbird lifts and sets down. Days later, they leave for Mars, carrying hundreds of families. In space, the ion drives provide thrust and light gravity. Richard, having accepted command, deals with problems ranging from freezing dorms to passenger deaths.

Under Presidential orders based on flawed intelligence, Miller brings more ships from Earth and intercepts them a few weeks out from the Moon, but he's used all his fuel. Now, Moonbird is his only way back home, and he launches a series of attempts to board her. Richard successfully defends the barge and cripples both of Miller's ships. The colonel dies with most of his crew and troops, and drifting bodies of dead marines haunt the rest of Richard's life.

Matt's astronauts use robotic rovers to find a large Martian cave that sits on a frozen aquifer. They seal it, and with heat and light, duckweed grows, supplementing the atmospheric miners and filling the cave with oxygen. Construction begins on a subterranean village where they can live.

By the time NASA's supply ship arrives and delivers the means for Matt's astronauts to return to Earth, they have learned that Moonbird is coming. Having begun their new lives, they know that to leave is to never return. They choose to stay.

By the time the refugees finally reach Martian orbit, a Team B engineer admits to the murder and sabotage. He and the doctor had conspired to prevent the President from calling them back to Earth, but later, they fought when the doctor was going to confess damaging their flyers.

When Moonbird attempts to land, Richard fights to hold the ship together during descent and can't find enough thrust to slow them. Struggling the whole way down, he crash-lands near the habitats, saving most of the passengers. They join Matt's fledgling community, and with support from China and other space-faring countries, the Martian colony begins its tenuous attempt to survive.

A Boy and His Dog

2010-08-14T13:27:00.000-06:00

I just watched A Boy and His Dog. I'd forgotten the ending. Nice.

MOONBIRD EXPRESS

2010-07-05T09:26:00.002-06:00

I'm getting ready to go out and make another try for an agent. My latest stab at a tagline is:

Lunar settlers revolt after NASA's sale.

My most recent version of the one-page synopsis is as follows:

To halt America's financial ruin in 2073, the President has promised to end the space program and secretly sells NASA. In a deal with the Chinese, he bargains every item of equipment, the American Space Station, the self-sufficient Moonbase and the lunar platinum mines. He offers to promote ambitious marine COLONEL JACK MILLER if he brings the inhabitants of those facilities home, authorizing the use of force, if necessary.

Before Jack's ships arrive, RICHARD NICKLENOSE, a space station engineer, astronaut and previously happy resident of the Moon base, organizes a rebellion against the forced evacuation. He has no remaining ties to Earth and refuses to give up the exploration of space and his new life as a pioneer. Richard finds many others who share his dream.

On Mars, Captain MATT NEWCOMB and eleven other explorers are stranded after discovering their ascent vehicles have been sabotaged. With no means to return to Earth and with less than six months of supplies, they await NASA's last Mars-capable ship, which might not arrive in time.

Refusing to give up, Matt believes his crew has a shot at survival, if they can find the right resources. He establishes a methane pumping station near Olympus Mons. The new fuel source extends the range of their rovers and places the ice cap and water for survival within reach. Then, someone mysteriously murders one of the doctors. The astronauts convert a cave they find on top of a frozen aquifer into a place where they can live. With heat and light, duckweed grows and fills the cave with oxygen, and construction begins on a subterranean village.

Ships laden with heavily armed troops arrive at the space station to evict its residents. Richard kills a guard and commandeers the vessels to the Moon where his friends, angry miners and settlers, have pieced together a space barge, Moonbird, to take hundreds of families to Mars. He deals with problems ranging from near-weightless cooking to passenger deaths. Jack catches up to them a few weeks out from the Moon. He's used all his fuel and in a desperate bid to fulfill his orders, launches a series of attacks on Moonbird, but Richard successfully defends it and cripples both attacking ships. The colonel dies with most of his crews, and drifting bodies of dead marines will haunt Richard's remaining days.

By the time the refugees finally reached Martian orbit, the supply ship has delivered the means for Matt's astronauts to return to Earth, but having begun their new lives and with the barge about to land, they stay. An engineer confesses to the sabotaged to keep the President from calling them back to Earth and then to the murder to keep the doctor from talking. Then, Moonbird crash lands on Mars but most passengers survive and join Matt's fledgling community. With support from other space-faring countries, the Martian colony begins its tenuous attempt to survive.

I'd love to hear any feedback.

Larry

Latest Synopsis for Moonbird Express

2010-06-04T10:30:00.000-06:00

To halt America's financial ruin, an incoming U.S. President in 2073 secretly sells NASA, its equipment, the space station, the self-sufficient Moonbase and the Lunar platinum mines to the Chinese. He chooses ambitious marine COLONEL JACK MILLER to use force if necessary to bring the inhabitants of those facilities home. Before Jack's ships arrive, RICHARD NICKLENOSE, an engineer, astronaut and previously happy resident of the Moon base, organizes a rebellion against the forced evacuation. He has no remaining ties to Earth and refuses to give up his new life in space. Richard finds many others who share his dream.

MATT NEWCOMB, captain of the first expedition to Mars, discovers the ascent vehicles that are to take his team to their ride back to Earth have been sabotaged stranding twelve explorers on Mars. While waiting for NASA's last Mars-capable ship, which might not arrive before their six months of supplies run out, Matt establishes a methane pumping station near Olympus Mons. This fuel extends the range of their rovers and places the ice cap and water for survival within reach. The astronauts convert a cave they find on top of a frozen aquifer into a residence. With heat and light, duckweed grows and fills the cave with oxygen, and construction begins on a subterranean village.

Ships laden with heavily armed troops arrive at the space station to evict its residents. Richard commandeers their vessels to the Moon where his friends, angry miners and settlers, have pieced together a space barge, Moonbird, to take hundreds of families to Mars. He deals with problems ranging from near-weightless cooking to passenger deaths. Jack catches up to them a few weeks out from the Moon. He's used all his fuel and in a desperate bid to fulfill his orders, launches a series of attacks on Moonbird, but Richard successfully defends it and cripples both attacking ships. The colonel dies with most of his crews, and drifting bodies of dead marines will haunt Richard's remaining days.

By the time the refugees finally reached Martian orbit, the supply ship has delivered the means for Matt's astronauts to return to Earth, but they stay. Moonbird crash lands on Mars but most passengers survive and join Matt's fledgling community. With support from other space-faring countries, the Martian colony begins its tenuous attempt to survive.

The latest synopsis for Moonbird Express

2010-05-18T05:15:00.001-06:00

In 2073, a new President calls back the American astronauts and pioneers in space, but some won’t go.

A U.S. President enters the White House with a mandate to end impoverished America's spending on the space program and is secretly selling NASA, its equipment and technology to the Chinese. He chooses ambitious marine COLONEL JACK MILLER to use force if necessary to remove everyone from the self-sufficient lunar village and American space station so its new owners can move in.
MATT NEWCOMB, captain of the first expedition to Mars, nears the completion of his fourteen-month tour. In spite of the new President's campaign promising to end the space program, a replacement team just arrived. Then, an unidentified explorer sabotages both teams' ascent vehicles. Unable to reach their orbiting ships, they are stranded on Mars.

While waiting for NASA's last Mars-capable ship, that might not arrive before their six months of supplies run out, Matt establishes a methane pumping station near Olympus Mons. This fuel extends the range of their rovers and places the ice cap and water for survival within reach. The polar expedition on Mars finds only frozen CO2, but later Matt discovers a cave atop a frozen aquifer. When he seals the cavern’s entrances, it holds air. With heat and light, duckweed grows and fills the cave with oxygen, and construction begins on a subterranean village. Then, a Martian crewmember confesses to the sabotage, all to keep the President from calling them home.

While Matt fights for survival on Mars, RICHARD NICKELOSE works aboard the American Space Station in orbit around Earth. A leading engineer and astronaut, he lives at the Moonbase Lunar Colony when he can get away from his job. Richard, who has no remaining ties on Earth, refuses, like many others, to give up his new life in space.

Ships laden with troops and munitions arrive at the space station, en route to evicting the Lunar Colony settlers. Richard leads a space station insurrection and commandeers the vessels to the Moon where his friends, angry miners and settlers, have pieced together a space barge, Moonbird, to take hundreds of families to Mars.

Richard, the senior astronaut and engineer, accepts command of the barge and deals with problems ranging from near-weightless cooking to passenger deaths. Only days away from the Moon and still docked to the stolen ships, he discovers two vessels, closing on them.

Colonel Miller uses all his fuel to catch the barge. To his chagrin, he is unable to seize Moonbird. The colonel and his crews are lost, but to make matters worse, he cannot allow the barge to escape still carrying the two nuclear warheads he had sent into space. Miller launches a series of attacks, but Richard successfully defends the barge and cripples both attacking ships. The colonel dies with most of his crews, and drifting bodies of dead marines will haunt Richard's remaining days.

By the time the refugees finally reached Martian orbit, the supply ship has delivered the means for Matt's astronauts to return to Earth, but they stay. Richard attempts to land Moonbird. Needing more thrust than available, he tries to slow the barge, but it crash-lands, killing six passengers. Matt, Richard and the other survivors face new lives on Mars much like early American pioneers did leaving St. Louis for the old west.

Review of The Key by James N. Frey

2010-05-02T10:43:00.000-06:00

Short Story Plots

While struggling with developing good plots for short stories, Ruve Draba suggested reading more James Frey. So I went through The Key with highlighters and sincere interest. When I finished, I have to say it was pretty good. The book is all about using the power of myth for plot development. I won't get into the details except to say it was thoughtful, comprehensive and helpful. The method requires quite a bit of structure and detail, and I'm not sure how you could use this in flash fiction, but I gave it my best shot for fixing an old short story that didn't have a storyline that made sense to anyone. So, here it is:

Ship of Slaves Carnival

Randy Martin looked around his empty waiting room. His was business dying, he owed people money and a hearing in two days would decide if he kept his license. Then, the holo buzzed. He answered, "Martin Investigative Services."

Just when he thought things couldn't get worse, his father's scowling image appeared, turned, looked down his nose and spoke. "Son, why don't you stop wasting your time and education and come work for me?"

Randy cringed. If he didn't need the work so badly, he wouldn't have answered the call. After ten minutes of his father's rant, Randy tightened his fists and exhaled. "I'm really busy this morning, Dad. Can we talk later, maybe over lunch in a few days? Call me. Got to go." He closed the connection and wiped his brow.

The holo buzzed again. This time he looked at the signal ID. His landlord. Randy answered.

"Good morning, Randy. I suppose you know I didn't receive my credit."

"I know. Business has been slow since the big stink about not revealing my source for the Desmond case, and I'm a little short." Randy waited for any response.

Finally: "Okay, I'll give you five more days before I petition for eviction. This isn't a charity, you know."

He knew. "Thanks for the time, Calvin. I appreciate it."

Just as the holo went dark, the waiting room door beeped, and he looked up at the office monitor.

A young woman, twenty-five max, entered. She wore a short skirt that ended more than a foot above her knees and a halter that she had to adjust to hold back its contents. Her shoulder length frizzy, blond hair made a perfect backdrop for her delicate, smiling face.

Randy poked his head into the room and smiled.

“Please come back into my office and have a seat.” He pointed to the couch across from his desk. The young thing entered, stood directly in front where Randy sat and adjusted her skirt.

“What can I do for you, miss?”

The woman's brown eyes looked down. “My name is Olga Stem, and I represent The Renowned Carnival of Everywhere. Are you familiar with us?”

Olga shook Randy’s hand and sat, placing her jacket next to her.

“I’m Randolph Martin,” he said. “I’ve been in this business for the last five years, and I guarantee my work. If you’re not satisfied, you don't pay. Your carnival is a cosmic menagerie, isn’t it?"

“Not exactly. We offer zoological gardens representing sentient beings in their natural habitat.”

“I think I read something about that. The aliens serve in the zoo under contract.”

“That’s right. We pay them, provide their transportation to Earth and do everything practical to create a legitimate, natural habitat.”

"What can I do for you, Ms. Stem? Why do you need a private investigator?”

Olga crossed her bare arms, took a deep sigh and leaned back. “We’ve lost one of our exhibits. The newest one, he’s left us--fled.”

“Tell me about your missing alien.” When Olga crossed her legs and readjusted her skirt, Randy had to catch his breath.

“Stangoné is a Mud Dweller from a distant system. He’s a little guy with a tail and cilia grippers instead of hands and feet. When my brother, Jonathan, our operations director, signed him, everything looked like it would go smoothly. The Dweller needed the money, and Jonathan provided him with a female companion as part of the package. The couple seemed to get along well. We wrote the contract for two years plus his star transit time, and he's been here six months.”

“Then what happened? Why did he leave?”

“I’m not sure. Jonathan thinks someone offered him a better deal, but his mate believes he's been abducted. I need him back here so he can finish his contract. Else, we'll have to find a replacement and that takes years.”

Randy looked at her again. She seemed sincere. "I’d need a thousand credits a day plus expenses. Can you afford me?”

“Not really,” Olga answered, “but Jon authorized me to hire you. We’ve never lost a delegate before, and this could ruin us. We spent a great deal of our financial resources advertising the exhibit, and now it’s gone.”

"I will need my money."

"Jonathan is making arrangements."

"Do you have any idea where I might find this Mud Dweller?"

"There's an old Vardiaan in the Australian Outback who's on Earth gathering exhibits there for his show in The Hub. It's an orbiting city above their home world, Vardiaa. That'd be my guess. He's a lowlife." Olga spent the next twenty minutes detailing her knowledge about the missing dweller, adjusting her halter and bringing perspiration to his forehead.

"Oh, the Outback. I really shouldn't leave the country. I have to appear in court in a few days. I really am sorry."

Olga stood and turned to his bookcase. "What's this?" She touched his old marksmanship trophy. "National Champion?"

"That was several years ago. I'll show you out."

He escorted her to the door where she shook his hand and stepped into a hover-bus. Returning, he flopped on the couch. Damn, he needed the work. With his forehead planted in his hands, he sighed.

That night his brother called, ranting and raving about his wife learning about the money Randy had borrowed. Allen needed it back now. Next day he found himself in a small restaurant, the Star Crossed Diner, sipping coffee across from Olga, again.

"I'll take the job. I changed my mind and maybe it'll be interesting. I will need to meet Stangoné's mate. I can get started right away, but I need to know more about these Dwellers.”

She smiled deeply, reached out and hugged him. "Thank you. I've heard so much about you; I didn't want to go to anyone else. I've been following you problems with the legal system." She blushed when she said she knew about the threats to have him jailed and his license removed, for protecting an informant. The softness in her eyes; was that kindness?

They sat, she spoke and he listened. He asked questions, and she answered. Finally he said, "Thanks. I'll call you if I need something more."

"I must warn you, though." Her expression turned grave. "Jae Basee is a dangerous man, a wild man of sorts. I've heard he's killed a lot of people. You must be careful."

Randy finished his coffee. "Olga, I'll be fine. I can take care of myself. No problem. I believe I can help you." Randy stood for a whole minute, before Olga looked up.

"Okay." She held out a credit slip, gave him a smile that would last him all day and then left.

Randy grabbed his hand-held computer, his coat and hat and boarded a hover-bus outside the restaurant's front door.

After enough time to browse a few holo-ads, he glimpsed the carnival as he landed. The alien reserve waited below, a large, wooded area bordered by the North American megalopolis. This place appeared a comfortable and inviting oasis in this world of steel, concrete and plastic. The transport dropped him at the gate where he paid to enter and walked toward the missing Mud Dweller exhibit.

Down a smooth, tiled trail with rails to limit access, Randy came to the first exhibit. Ghosts from the planet Medimos. One of the aliens sat in a chair on a grassy lawn in front of a modest dwelling. Randy couldn't quite focus his eyes on the fuzzy little guy who could separate himself into two identical parts, each occupying different time and space

He came to a second exhibit, the new one with the missing male. Mud Dwellers. Beneath the ground with a clear, overhead view through the roof, a series of tunnels in the mud rose to the top of the wet, brown surface. Inside, a lone female rested with her head face down in her palms. He called the house using the number Olga had given him. Minutes later the Dweller woman walked out of a doorway in the ceiling. She stood no taller than a child.

“My name is Randolph Martin, and I’m an investigator hired to find Mr. Stangoné. I hope you’ll help me?”

The little creature with a pretty, human face held up her--something where her hands should have been, but more like a fist of six-inch long wiggling noodles, or worms. He tried to shake her whatever, but she actually gripped his hand, and they shook. “I’m Ieason. Thanks for coming. How can I help you, Mr. Martin? If he doesn’t come back, they’ll close the exhibit and send me home. I need the money.”

“What happened to Stangoné? Where did he go?”

“I really don’t know. We were getting to know each other, and I thought the arrangement was working out. Then with no warning, he went out to swim in the mud and never came back.”

“That’s all?”

“He wasn't alone.” A small, lonely tear slipped down her face. "He walked away with a woman. The same human who was hanging on to that Vardiaan creep, Jae Basee, that approached when we arrived at the Alice Springs spaceport."

They spoke nearly an hour, going over everything she could think of, answering his questions. Randy shook her thing, shivered, thanked her for her time, smiled and left.

Two hours later, packed and ready, he sprinkled some fish food in their tank and said goodbye to his Blue Discus and Tin Foil Barbs. He'd be back tomorrow.
***

Randy's big mistake had been Harvard. If he hadn't gone, maybe chosen Minnesota or Kentucky, his father might not be pushing so hard, expecting so much. He wished. It felt like the world was crashing in around him. It just wasn't easy running a business when bad publicity was driving all the customers away. Even his mother had quit calling, no messages, nothing. If Mom had been herself, before her breakdown, she wouldn't have his father to treat him this way. But, his dad had shoved her out the door the same way he was pushing Randy toward becoming someone he wasn't.

Sitting in the sleek, individual seat, he studied his hand-held: police reports, personal information, traits, habits and general information regarding Basee and Vardiaans in general. The last three times he'd been seen had been near Alice Springs, and indeed, he'd been linked to a long list of killings. Then, an alarm announced their arrival.

Alice Springs. After three hours in a hypersonic transit tube, his body trembled with numbness from the ride. When he released himself from his restraint netting, he got out, he stepped up to the surface and steadied himself in the dry warm breeze. This guy he wanted to question was known to frequent lower class establishments, spend time in the streets and routinely set up public auditions for his show. Randy went into the streets to look for the sort of place where that kind of folk might gather. Then he saw a thirty-meter-tall holo, shimmering like the aurora borealis above the main street in the heart of town. Likely visible anywhere in the city, above thousands of rowdy, partying aliens, a series of words strung across the sky, first in Earthen, then other languages: Ship of Slaves Carnival auditions, tonight.

Randy arrived after a short turbo-ride. Pandemonium was the first word that came to mind. He remembered Olga's words: "The laws of each alien species applies in the Outback." The big holo overhead reminded him that slavery was still legal as hell on Vardiaa and consequently here as well. He'd also read that if a Vardiaan killed his own slave, it wasn't considered murder. Perhaps the reason no one had tried to charge him.

He pushed his way through Ghosts, Onionheads whose flesh molted as they walked, Ramasese, the winged blue-skinned born pregnant species that looked female but weren't, and others he couldn't identify. The blue maidens wore no clothing and looked sexy--but weren't. The crowds of these party animals flocked to beverage islands like ants around fallen sugar. His head spun from all the activity. He needed to find where the auditions were being held, so he worked his way to the nearest bar.

After a long wait, he placed both forearms across the counter, swallowed and looked the bartender in his palm-sized faceted eyes. Oh... The two-meter tall Scimenon looked down over his mandibles.

"Speak up or make room for someone else. I'm loosing money while you stand there with your head up your ass."

"A Heineken please."

The segmented insectoid with tri-pronged pincers handed him a brew with surprising grace.

"Thanks." Randy picked up his beer. "Where are they holding the auditions? I heard they might need humans."

"Not likely," the big guy answered. "There are still too many of your kind around here. Over there." The Scimenon pointed to a three-story structure less than a hundred meters away.

"Thanks." Randy pushed his way back through the crowd that filled the void he just left at the counter. Maybe this would be easier than he thought. He took no more than three steps away from the swarming mass of customers when someone gently gripped his upper arm. He turned.

"Hello, mister." A redhead, every bit as tall as Randy, looked him in the eyes. "I'm Naomi. You're looking for the Ship of Slaves?"

Randy nodded, not exactly wanting to advertise the fact.

"I know the main guy. We spent time together, sometimes."

I bet you do. Randy almost laughed, but he did follow the skinny, woman through the crowd. At least once, the masses shifted, sending a logjam of aliens right into him: some black and hulled, some small and some with such an obnoxious stench that he wanted to puke. He nearly stumbled back, but regained himself and moved on, the woman still by his side. Over the building entrance, a sign flashed "Ship of Slaves" in multiple languages.

She led him into a crowded atrium, wall-to-wall humanity, but he knew that wasn't the right word, not for a sea of aliens.

"Jae's office is on the top floor. If you want to meet him..."

Randy followed, through the pneumatic lift, a corridor and into a large room with humans. No--they were Vardiaan, seated behind large desks and a few thuggish looking men, also with pink eyes and pale faces, milling around. They looked like albino Earthens from the outside, but internally--all the differences in the world. Naomi spoke to one, turned around and pointed at Randy.

"Him!" She pointed at him like one kid blaming another.

Randy had been set up. Damn!

While Naomi went the other way, two men grabbed him by the arms and ushered him back through the door he'd just entered.

"What is wrong?" Randy tried to free his arms. "I haven't done anything." Both of them were stronger than him, and no matter how hard he pulled or pushed, he couldn't break free.

With silence as an answer, they carried him down the corridor toward a doorway and the end. Randy's heart began to race, and he had a very bad feeling about the rest of his day.

When both men let go, Randy turned, prepared to take advantage of whatever had saved him and the sight of Olga with a pistol the size of a small baseball bat aimed at both men floored him. He darted in her direction, but he could here footfalls coming fast behind him.

When her gun discharged, Randy glanced back. An area of floor the size of a pitcher's mound between him and the remaining man had vaporized. Olga dashed into the lift and two step later, Randy lunged in that direction as well.

About the time his head entered the passenger chamber where Olga waited, a laser burst, truncated by the closing door, cut a deep path through his leg. The lift dropped three floors before he recognized the growing pool of blood beneath him. A growing sensation of warmth and pain almost matched the anger in his heart. Loosing fluids like he was, he wouldn't make it long.

He looked up at Olga. He'd never be able to thank her enough for this. "Lock the door. I need a minute." He could hardly speak.

Randy took a deep breath, slipped off his belt and tied his leg above the wound. The horrible pain sent shivers through his body. Finally he made it to his feet and while Olga took him by the hand, he hobbled through the crowd.

An hour later, they'd come no closer to refuge. Against a building in plain view, he loosened and re-tightened his tourniquet. My God that hurt! A few more seconds to catch his breath, and they moved on.

Olga stopped and looked him square in the eyes. "You need a doctor."

He guessed she might have seen the tears in his eyes or the darkness of his leg. "I'm sure they're looking for us. We need to lay low. I have an idea."

Randy checked his hand-held and looked up. "There might be something up ahead, a block, maybe." Two blocks later they came to a storefront with an overhead holo: "Golden Paradise."

She gave him a dirty look as they entered the one place Randy thought no one would look. The pungent-sweet smell of ruined lives filled the air. He spoke to the little old woman who greeted them at the inner door. Cash credits for a room, a med-pack and some stuff. All the while, Olga's nails dug deeper into his hand.

When the entered their small room, both sat with backs against opposite walls and leaned against the tiny bed. "We should be safe here," he whispered while he released the deadly grip of his belt. Again, his blood flowed from his tingling, stinging half-numb leg. He opened the pack and wrapped it around the wound. Antibiotics, pain relievers, anticoagulants and tissue regeneration accelerators. Now, what he needed was rest.

Olga's anger must have subsided. "I followed you," she said, her voice barely loud enough for him to hear while the sweetish pungent scent of self-destruction crept into their room. The small lump of black tar he'd purchased to spend the night would still be in his pipe's bowl when the morning's next occupants arrived, but drew no one's gaze.

"You shouldn't have. This is a dangerous place."

She smirked. "And where would you be if I hadn't? And besides, I've come here frequently on business and had an appointment tonight, until I saw you and--that bitch."

"You know her."

"She came snooping around Stangoné's hotel room the night he arrived from the Dweller World."

Rand and Olga shared a few stories about themselves in the stench of burning opium from the other rooms. Finally the pain in his leg subsided, and he drifted off to sleep and ignored the hopeless humanity and alienity around him. He pitied them.

Morning arrived with a headache...and Olga's smile. Raised his finger to his mouth to shush her as she helped him to his feet. His leg, stiff but better, supported his weight. They moved out of the den, him limping and her, a bright spot in a sea of darkness.

You didn't have to go far in Alice Springs to find what you wanted. You just needed credits. Randy's head throbbed like he thought his leg should have as he entered the dark cellar store.

"Good morning." The tallish Onionhead, bald except for a single lock of long auburn frizz that dropped to mid-tunic, looked down. "I don't get many Earthen customers."

Randy smiled and showed his hand-held to the proprietor. The list he'd made last night: transit scooter, laser pistol, defensive vests, a rifle with sabot rounds, maintenance worker uniforms and information. "Andrew's Place." This shop sold everything. "I need both equipment and information if you can help me." While he spoke, he felt Olga's hand holding the back of his arm.

The vendor examined the list, rubbed his chin and turned back. "This will be expensive, especially the information."

"I have a rich friend."

Just after he felt Olga's fist poke him in the ribs, a clump of molting flesh fell from the vendor's forehead and landed on the floor. Randy suppressed the impulse to gag.

Nearly two hours later, Randy and Olga donned their new attire, left the shop, loaded the scooter and reviewed the information. A little nervous but determined, he throttled the drives and guided the sparkling, new Jetstream manually into the Alice Springs morning with Olga seated behind him with her hands around his waist.

The tower where he expected to find Jae rose against the horizon during their approach. Five stories tall, surrounded by a sea of concrete at its base, it stood alone, the only interruption of arid terrain in sight. He parked, stowed his helmet and turned to Olga.

"I wish you let me go in there with you. I'm a big girl, you know."

"No. I need to do this alone. Pick me up on my signal." Both synchronized the settings on their hand-helds. He watched her slip into the sky on the scooter and then turned to the building.

Randy checked in at the worker's entrance using his fake ID and worked his way toward the basement. He'd done this before. If you knew what you were doing and looked like you belonged there, you had a chance.

Working his way upward, he measured the airflow in the ducts on the third floor and found an access door to a crawlspace where he could work without uninvited eyes. He clogged the ventilation ductwork leading to the building's top level with a self-inflating balloon and stopped. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he re-entered the service hall.

He hadn't noticed his heart racing, but it was. Then a passing suit spoke.

"Morning, son. You new here?"

The Vardiaan's voice seemed more curious than alarmed.

"First day, sir. Just conducting airflow inspections. Once a year whether it needs it or not."

"You work for Lastima?"

"No, sir. I'm an outside contractor for Advance Environmental. I just came in on a scooter."

The suit nodded and walked on.

After ending the flow of cool air to building's top floor, Randy called Olga and worked his way toward the service entrance. Outside, under blue-white Outback skies, Olga sat on the back of the scooter, waiting. Her smile could light up a cave.

Randy stowed his gear and both zipped off toward Alice Springs and some coffee. They sat in a somewhat clean shop, sipped java and waited until the summer temperatures had enough time to make Jae's office unbearable.

"I passed by the holding cells on the third floor. My service pass opens the main door there. The place was teeming with slaves inside individual cages. I didn't see any guards but there were lots of holo-cameras."

Olga placed her hands on the back of his, which were face down on the table. "You worry me."

"Trust me. I'll be fine."

When Randy decided that they had waited long enough, they returned, she dropped him off and he went back inside.

The back entrance receptionist looked up. "You here again?"

"I won't be long. I just got called back."

Randy climbed into the turbo, and with a whoosh that pulled at his stomach he entered the top floor. His service pass opened the door into the VIP area and he walked into the master offices where the temperature was stifling and wet. He strode like he owned the place, past working office folk and a variety of aliens that seemed unusual even for the Outback.

A receptionist sat at a desk guarding a large office.

"The climate system is out up here?" He smiled. At thirty-three degrees C, they were miserable or already dead.

"Go right on in." She pointed to an aisle behind her desk. No guards, no thugs and no one had paid any attention to his brown eyes. He drew his pistol as he entered and held it behind his leg.

A man--no a Vardiaan sat behind a polished desk the size of most hover buses. Randy recognized Jae, who stood. In spite of his more dignified Extranet images, the pink-eyed executive with receding hair and thick black mustache still gave the impression of a thug. His crumpled white shirt, jeans, leather vest and bandanna clearly defined his personae.

"I need to work in here a few minutes and I think I can get this fixed. The main duct-way runs behind this office."

According to plan, Jae walked toward the entrance and Randy raised the pistol. "Stop, or I will shoot."

"What are you doing?" The Vardiaan glared.

"You have a Dweller on the second floor. I'm taking him back. I need the pass-key to your holding cells."

"And I'm going to let him go with you?"

"I'll leave with him and you can go on about your business. You haven't broken any laws here...yet, but murdering a human is illegal even in the Outback. Give me the pass." With the comm-system shut down for the top floor and the VIP turbo disabled, these aliens were isolated. The only way in or out was this floor's service door.

Jae placed the key on a table and moved away.

"If this works, I'll call your security and send someone up to let you out. Otherwise, we'll see how long you last with the temperature in here gets worse than outside."

"The key works."

Randy grabbed it, but something hit him hard on the back of the head. Stars swam in his mind while Naomi moved between him and Jae.

"I came to tell you, Jae, that the human might be back, but I see you know."

Randy raised his pistol again and Jae came right at him. The last thing he wanted to do was shoot an unarmed person in his own office. Before Jae reached him, the woman jumped him. The pistol fired, Naomi dropped and Randy fled for the service door, pulled it shut and leaned against the other side. Jae's grimacing face looked back through the clear, ceramic-steel window as the sound of his fists pounding against the door, echoed through the service hall.

Randy ran down two flights of emergency stairs and used the service key to enter the third floor holding area. A circular hallway surrounded hundreds of locked cells, and each step brought new aliens into view. Angry anxious creatures of all forms shouted and shook their fists and claws and finally a whatnot at him. The Mud Dweller.

"Stangoné?"

"In person," the little guy answered. "Jonathan sent you?"

"Olga." Randy place Jae's key into the slot. It opened, and he exhaled. "Let's go."

Randy and the Mud Dweller ran to the service hallway, jumped into the turbo and exited at the main floor. No guards, in fact no one, the place seemed empty. Thank God.

Ten minutes later, he rode off into the sky with Olga and the Dweller on the seats behind him. He rented a room with local credits, and while sitting on the floor, with his arms around Olga who sat with her back against his chest, the three planned the last leg of their escape till dawn. No one came.

Next morning, the three ate breakfast at the local pub and then headed for the hypersonic transit. Randy parked as near the tube entrance as he could and they walked toward the main station.

"I never thought I'd get back to the Carnival, or anywhere else on this world," Stangoné said.

"You have Olga to thank." Randy looked around them as he walked. "She could have chosen to replace you."

Olga remained quiet; perhaps the ordeal of the last two days had drained her. "You, milady are the hero of the day. Those thugs would have killed me if you hadn't stopped them." She was still one of the best lookers he'd ever seen, but what he liked was her loyalty and humanity. She cared about people and made him feel good.

With all the heavy equipment sold back to the dealer who would pick the scooter up later that day, they traveled light. Now, a modest sense of euphoria crept back inside him, pushing away the frustration of recent events. He even smiled.

The brilliant sky shone through ahead, an opening for hover-bus landings and fresh air without the effervescence of steaming oil and heavy CO2.

A flash of light announced laser fire and the warmth that spread across his chest. He looked at the others who seemed to be okay. Randy' heart began to pound, and two more flashes turned his chest hot as fire. He looked up; they were only shooting at him, but a head shot would kill any of them.

Jae and two armed thugs dropped from above wearing turbo packs.

"Get back!" Randy pushed his arms out before he dove for the cover of a parked bus. With his armor still burning his chest, he aimed the pistol he had planned to surrender at security and fired three times. Jae's body slumped and turbo pack slammed him head-first into an adjacent building at a hundred klicks an hour, exploding into a ball of plasma. The others fled.

A hollow feeling crept over him. He'd never shot anyone before, and today's events would likely stay with him as long as he lived. Contrary to popular belief, Alice Springs did have police. They arrived minutes later and cordoned off the area. They confiscated everyone's armor and weapons, checked everyone's identity and ushered them to their own private holding area, away from the other prisoners.

Initially it looked as though they be released, but someone had complained from Jae's desert tower and by the time the investigation had finished, Randy and Olga had gotten to know each other and six days had passed.

Randy returned home to good and bad. First and foremost, he and Olga had begun seeing each other. Perhaps the events of the last few days had caused them to bond. That was good, because now he had lost his license. That hearing he had needed to attend had gone on without him...at his expense.

He would never work for his father, but perhaps he'd use this experience to push him into some new direction. If his dad could build an Extranet empire in just five years, Randy could surely do something with his life. He knew he could. So, all in all he'd had better days, but he'd had worse ones as well.

2010-04-28T17:29:00.000-06:00

Sorry it's been so long. I know you all have been clawing at the door to read more. I'll be spending more time here very soon.

Larry

Ruv Draba's Trainer-Wheel Recipe for Short Writing

2010-01-18T12:38:00.000-07:00

RUV'S TRAINER-WHEEL RECIPE FOR SHORT WRITING

Ingredients:

A theme. This is an observation or idea, and will be the ‘point’ of your story. Your theme should be of the form ‘If X then Y’, or ‘When X, Y too’. Your theme can be anything. It doesn't have to be true -- just interesting, but you should have some reason to think it true. E.g. 'When cats stare at us, they're reading our minds.'

Notes:

1) If you're used to starting without a theme (with a character or situation instead say), please bear with me. Put your character or situation aside and start with a theme instead. It pays off later.

2) This is a strange form for a theme, I know. But it helps you slide your plot between X and Y.

3) If you want to write a genre story with this method, you need the right choice of theme. I have some suggestions for different genres below.

·

· A situation and a setting in which the antecedent of your theme (X) could be true.

· A Main Character (MC) who lives in that setting, and experiences the situation where X is true. Make this character interesting – a person, not just a role.

· An objective that the main character wants because of this situation. Make this objective somehow link to the antecedent X -- seeking something or avoiding something related to X.

· Some opposition to this objective, which makes getting the objective difficult or dangerous. This should emerge from the setting and situation, but it needn't relate directly to 'X'.

· The risk of disaster – something that may befall the main character, or people the MC loves if the objective is not met. Link the disaster to the consequent Y in your theme, and to the character and situation. The disaster might arise from Y happening, or from Y not happening.

You don't strictly need them before you write, but the following two ingredients help a lot (like Bread Improver if you're baking bread):

· An idea for a Climax scene – where the disaster must be fought or avoided

· An idea for an Ending and how the MC will feel. Does the MC succeed or fail? How will we know? Will the audience feel good or bad about this?

Method:

This method is meant to keep your short short and focused.

Write eight scenes at one line per scene. Each scene must feature your MC either attempting something difficult (action scene) or reacting to something new and significant (reaction scene). In listing the scene I often list the location too. (Note: the location doesn't have to change in each scene. The object of the scene is to crank the tension up a notch each time.)

To keep it short you have a scene budget as follows:

· Scenes 1-2 (Introduction): Introduce the character, setting and situation. Introduce the objective and opposition.

· Scenes 3-6 (Complication): Make the character’s objective difficult, dangerous or complicated

· Scene 7 (Climax): Here have the MC struggle mightily to prevent disaster from happening

· Scene 8 (Ending): Here, describe the aftermath.

If you want to meet a word count then divide the words by the number of scenes. That’s your average word budget per scene. (Note: these scenes don't have to change location. They each just move the tension on one notch.)

IMPORTANT GENRE COMMENTS

If you want to write genre using this method, you must start with the right sort of theme. If you pick the wrong sort of theme you may get something that looks like fantasy or horror or romance say, but doesn't feel like it. Try the following kinds of themes for these genres.

Fantasy: Write a theme about morality, psychology and society. Pick one that you can explore using interesting symbols. E.g. My theme might be: 'If we forgive too soon, we make things worse'. Forgiveness might be represented by a princess. Badness might be represented by an ogre.

Science Fiction: Write a theme about the 'people' face of technology or frontiers. 'Technology' could be machines or just methods and sciences. 'Frontiers' could be any place or state in which we're uncomfortable and out of our depth. Think about your theme from the perspective of a consumer, a victim or a pioneer, and make it something you could explore theoretically. E.g. 'If we could all read minds, we'd go mad from the amount of evil hidden inside us'. (This is a 'frontier' theme - breaking down the barriers between people)

Horror: Write a theme that focuses on exaggerating, inverting or perversifying something we want to believe. Make it personal and emotional. E.g. 'When your mother is at her kindest, she hates you most', or 'If you tick off a policeman, he can become the worst enemy you've ever had', or 'Cats are not pets in pitch dark'.

Mystery/Suspense: Write a theme that focuses on challenges to community expectations, social order or justice. Make it something that could be investigated factually. E.g. 'When parents give their children everything, then nothing has value', 'Sometimes the best revenge is to fail', 'If you can't find a motive, maybe there isn't a crime'.

Romance: Write a theme that focuses on morality, relationships and personal growth. Make it something you can explore from personal, emotional and sensory perspectives. E.g. 'When he always knows exactly what you want, it's because he's making you want it.' 'If you can't stop thinking about her then you're in love -- even if you hate her.'

WORKED EXAMPLE

For this example, I've chosen a SF story using my sample SF theme above: 'If we could all read minds, we would go mad from seeing the evil hidden inside us.’ (As I said, it doesn't have to be true - just interesting). Here is my choice of ingredients

Situation and Setting: It’s modern day in our world, and scientists make a breakthrough on a retrovirus that helps people read minds. The retrovirus works by increasing the production and connection of mirror neurons in the brain. (These neurons are thought to be responsible for empathy and learning - so maybe some autistic kids have problems with them?) Intended to help autistic children; the mind-reading is an unexpected side-effect.

Character: Mary Lee supports her young autistic brother Simon. (Note: she needs more character detail than just that, but this is just a sketch!)

Objective: She’s heard of Glass – the experimental retrovirus that’s supposed to help autistic children learn, and wants to get her brother put onto a course.

Opposition: While the treatment has near-miraculous results, the scientists insist on giving it to only the worst cases of autism, and only to the young. Simon is a teenager and not profoundly autistic.

Disaster: In cases where users already have near-functional mirror neurons, Glass gives them such high empathy that they can actually read minds. But this sends them mad and often suicidal – because human minds are actually far more nasty than we realise.

Climax: After getting Glass for Simon, Mary’s shocked that his rapid improvement is followed by terrible deterioration. In desperation she takes Glass herself to try to gain understanding of what’s happening to him.

Ending: Mary begins to see into peoples’ minds and she realises just how horrifically evil and selfish we are underneath. Horrifically, she realises that she is going mad -- as her brother already has.

Scene Outline (Action, reaction scenes are marked (A) and (R) respectively)

1. (Intro) At home, Mary struggles with the difficult task of helping her autistic brother Simon through dinner (A)

2. (Intro) At Simon’s special school, Mary hears about Glass – how one of the school children has improved, but how difficult it is to get on the program (R)

3. At the offices of the manufacturer (invent a name), and despite Mary’s strenuous arguments, Simon is refused entry to the Program on grounds of age and condition (A)

4. At work, Mary seethes over the injustice and fakes Simon’s application (Note: it might help if Mary’s job would assist this – eg a medical clerk) (A)

5. At home, Mary sees the marked improvement in Simon (R)

6. At home, as Simon starts to deteriorate, Mary tries helplessly to save him from self-harm (A)

7. (Climax) Desperate to save her brother’s life, Mary takes Glass herself to try to understand what he needs (A)

8. (Ending) Looking out with her brother’s eyes, Mary realises just how much evil is hidden in peoples’ minds – and prepares her own death and her brother’s (R)

COMMENTS

This method isn’t for utter beginners. You need a reasonable understanding of character, setting, narration, plot, dialogue and tension for it to work. It’s meant for writers who understand the basics, but are still having some trouble producing solid short story designs.

This is a learning method. The whole point of this method is to put some discipline and focus around the design process so you can think about other writery things (like themes and characters and settings and narrative and dialogue) instead. If you hate discipline and focus -- or if you already have enough discipline and focus through some other good method -- then don't even think of using this!

Using this method, key to getting a good story is to start with an interesting theme. If you're writing genre, you should realise that what makes genre feel like genre is common concerns and common treatments. Pick a theme that reflects a genre concern, and that makes it easy to treat using genre conventions. Regardless of whether it's genre or not, the theme should be easy to 'prove' when you set up the story.

Another key to a good short is to have the MC either change drastically or make a strong, definitive character statement just at the climax.

This eight scene structure is based on a conventional Three Act structure (Beginning, Middle, End), and adapted for shorts. You can make it shorter by dropping some middle scenes or even scene 2. You can also add some more middle scenes if the story requires it – but I find that 4 middle scenes makes a fairly happy medium.

Scene length may vary depending on story and style. It might be as few as 100 words, or as many as 1,000. It’s often good practice to try and make your scenes as short as possible, and pack the most punch into the fewest words.

Cut down, this method adapts okay for some flash fiction, but I wouldn’t try and beef it up for novella or novel design. I feel that it’s too inflexible and predictable to deal with the way that novels need to unfold. Use another method.

Using this method, you can produce some very capable, workmanlike shorts. But there are some shorts you can’t tell well in this structure, and there are many shorts that just tell better in other structures. However, once you have shorts popping out reliably, you can think about other ways to design and tell your story ideas.

I hope this is useful. If you try it, let me know how it goes!

I've reprinted this with Ruv's permission and hope you all find this useful.

Happy Holidays

2009-12-24T16:09:00.000-07:00

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all from Larry, Peggy, Adam and Jonathon Pinaire.

Spring's First Breath

2009-12-06T13:39:00.001-07:00

I'm posting this because it's so cold outside.

Spring's First Breath

The woods' first spring breath

Ambles up my hill, clean and dry,

While a few birds bark their praise,

And a fox leaps toward the ridge.

My feline friends rest under the sun

Against a near windless afternoon;

My bare oaks silhouette a milky blue veil,

And far away highway sounds stray to my mind.

I remember dreams of tomorrow,

And why I love this place so very much.

Two birds far apart sing different songs to each other,

And then when it becomes music,

Silence pours over the hillsides.

Most of all, it is peace that fills me here

And the sunshine warms my face.

BEHOLD PARADISE

2009-11-30T17:22:00.000-07:00

The whine of Dr. Murphy's gun charging marked this as the worst day in Frank's life. "Why are you doing this?" he pleaded. "I love you."

"Oh, you only think you love me, Son. You don't really understand. Drink your tea."

Frank's stomach tightened as he considered the events that brought him to see her. First, there had been his dreams. Since that night seven years ago when the police found him suffering from amnesia and wandering the streets, his nightmares had haunted him. If only someone could have uncovered his identity, but the police found no traceable records.

Frank wanted desperately to learn who he was, but the only clues came in dreams. Last night while he tossed and turned, voices reached out through his slumber, pulling at his consciousness. These visions had troubled him as long as he could remember.

He remembered a light, hanging over the operating table, surrounded by people who shouted and cheered a woman's name, but none of it made sense. Dr. Amelia White. He awakened soaked with perspiration though he'd slept in soft, open netting.

Later in the morning at the institute, while working outside the envirodome where Earth's warming had all but stolen their lives, he had waited too long between gulps of air from his pack and passed out. A woman's face and the name Amelia had shocked him from unconsciousness and likely death from carbon dioxide poisoning. Before awakening, he had clawed his leg bloody before releasing air to his breather. As the Chief Environmental Biologist there, he was supposed to be the expert at working in Earth's dead-world atmosphere. He should have known better, and to make matters worse, his fiancee, Adrian, would have been the one to find his poisoned body, but that had only been the beginning of his day.

Still before noon, there had been the matter of the wedding license and his first visit to the borough hall, where the young clerk turned down his request. Frank wasn't sure whether to feel hurt or mad, but from there he remembered visiting the manager.

"I'm getting married in three weeks." Frank crossed his arms and raised his voice. "Your assistant denied my license."

The big guy in the grey suit leaned back. "Sorry for your inconvenience, but last week, the blessed refreeze wasn't as blessed as you environmental guys might think. Sub-surface thaw water worked its way into the local records vault, destroying everything. Your personal records are gone."

Now Frank was sick.

"Don't worry. I'll download them from the National records. This won't take long," the man assured him.

Frank waited, thumping his fingers through news that didn't seem remotely important. Finally, Anderson's face twisted and his forehead furrowed.

"I'm sorry, but what you're looking for doesn't exist." The man's tone suggested disbelief.

"Okay, what do you recommend?"

"I have no idea. Those records never existed. I can't help you."

Frank walked away, shaking his head, his stomach so tight his breakfast threatened to flood back into his mouth. How could his records not exist? The local police had filed the John Doe documents for him. Dr. Murphy would help him. She always had.

Returning to the present, where his numbness grew by the minute, he reconsidered that decision. "Doctor." Frank's lips tingled. "PLEASE put the gun down. Why are you doing this?" His eyes glanced around the medical conference room where she had invited him in. Her expression gave no clue.

"Oh, Frank, I wish you hadn't come today. I guess there was no avoiding it...once you found out about the records." She took a deep breath.

"All my life that I can remember, you have nurtured and protected me. You brought me in and treated me like a son. You put me through college. What are you thinking? Where are my records? What is it you're not telling me?"

"Frank, please. You deserve an explanation, after you finish your tea."

For the first time in Frank's life, he wondered. Had she lied about the night they found him? Had everything been a fallacy?

He put down the cup that he'd concluded to be poison and stood. "What really happened?" His hands trembled, and his face turned hot from the anger inside him. "Doctor?"

"I'm very sorry, but your usefulness has passed. Your part in the grand experiment is over. I don't want to shoot you, but if you don't drink your tea, I will."

Her words stunned him like a slap in the face.

Dr. Murphy pushed her thumb against the pistol's safety, releasing it. She re-aimed.

"Dr. Murphy!"

"Oh Frank, this is so disappointing. The national archives don't list you because my associates forged and placed your records in the local database. No one would ever have known except for this problem at the hall."

"For what reason?"

"Frank, You're body is just a host, a clone, like the ones used for transplant organs. What we want, what we gave you ... is between your ears. You are the most significant scientific achievement in centuries. The only one."

Frank didn't understand the events unfolding around him, but he saw the gravity of the moment. He recognized perhaps his last opportunity in her twisted expression. She also was afraid. He saw death in her eyes. His death.

Frank lunged, throwing his shoulder into her torso. The pistol discharged, hissing like steam under pressure followed by a clap of thunder when air slapped against itself filling the heated vacuum. It fell from her hands. Somehow--she missed. Frank gripped the doctor by her collar and shook her.

"I'm a clone?" He raised his loose fist.

"Frank, one of the girls in our R. & D. lab built you."

"You crazy woman!" He shook her and shook her, banging her head against the floor with each push. "Tell me the truth! Cloned brains have no intelligence!" She fell limp. Now, only white shone in her eyes, and he dropped her to the floor.

The doctor's gawking expression answered him completely.

He listened for her breath and although he was no doctor and fought the shock of the moment, he saw she was dead.

Frank sat in disbelief, slipping deeper into angry disorientation. The adrenaline that had carried him this far today was spent. His eyes glanced down to the floor where Dr. Murphy's palm-held computer had fallen. He dropped to his knees and picked up the pad. It's brightly lit screen read: 'Dr. Amelia White'. The name stunned Frank worse than the body at his feet. The message from an address in Ohio Borough warned of Frank's possible visit. He stood and walked from the office, suppressing the urge to run through the empty hallways, to the sixty-seventh floor bus dock where he whispered a request for transport.

Having killed his doctor and mentor, only the coming night compared with the darkness in his heart. He needed help, but who--? Adrian? He couldn't involve her in murder. He had just lost her--forever. With nowhere to hide, not here. Not inside. At best, he had until morning before someone found the doctor's body. Then, how long would it take to track his voice on the recording, being the last visitor to her office. Terror crept through him. A noose tightened around his throat making each breath more difficult. With nowhere in the borough to hide--he considered his options. Maybe outside.

When the bus arrived, he spoke the coordinates of Harm's Way Environmental Research Center, where he worked. Adrian would have missed him for lunch, but now everyone surely had gone home. When he landed, he asked the aerobus to wait for him. He visited his lab and filled a cart with air packs and travel food-pouches. His work com-pin sat on his desk where he'd left it this morning. He ignored it and returned to the waiting vehicle. He held up Dr. Jansen's badge. It would give him access to outside, and the police wouldn't immediately know who used it. Might buy him a few hours.

Frank set-in a new transit schedule and tapped the badge against the authorization node. The bus whisked him up, through the air curtain to the region outside the borough envirodome. Flights commonly traveled in the uncontrolled atmosphere between the boroughs and for a while, no one would pay this one any attention.

Reaching the apex of their flight, the New York-New Jersey coastline rested below, reminding him of the blessed refreeze that had saved them all. In the last century, as the Arctic cap re-established itself, the coast had receded, uncovering Jersey. Everyday citizens should have been filled with hope, but that was hardly the case. Why didn't people see a better future in these changes? To most, the world still lay ruined, never to be better. They had forgotten how to believe in themselves. Then, the bus dropped like a large stone, causing his empty stomach to try climbing up his throat.

Theory told him there would be pockets of oxygen and air deep in the woods where any surviving wildlife would be found, but he might be wrong. He gambled, but staying in the envirodome was a death sentence. As civilized as mankind had become, the penalty for murder was still lethal injection, and how could he argue self-defense against the frail elderly woman, who had given him everything?

Frank directed the bus deep into the old Smoky Mountains forest. The deep green of the growth surprised him. Recent reports had been stark and disappointing with few signs of regeneration, but not here. He glided over a wide stream with froth bubbling below large boulders sending a mist of moisture upward toward him. He could smell it in his mind. A clearing ahead, the result of some fire started by lightning or who knows what, was a large enough place to set down. He brought the bus to the surface.

Frank instructed the aerobus to wait, and though he was far beyond any known route for travel, people sometimes visited sights in the tormented atmosphere outside for various reasons. Officially, considerable research had been done and all those reports had described a lingering blight that might never improve, but that wasn't what he saw here.

While parked outside the envirodome the bus would draw attention if anyone exited its air lock and did not return. On the ground, Frank grabbed an air pack and stepped outside the airlock away from the pancake-shaped, metallic conveyance. The blinding light stunned him, causing him not to immediately notice the fresh air around him. He inhaled deeply. Clean air--and sunlight! My God! How could this be? The sky above was blue like he'd never seen. Where were the clouds? Where had the endless grey gone that stood as the symbol of man's self-destruction? Frank returned, snatching the air packs, food and gear. A few words later, instructing the bus to make five additional stops before returning to the borough, he left, tossing the stolen badge back inside. About the time he reached the clearing perimeter, the bus lifted into the sky, returning toward civilization. Frank entered the forest. The pristine wood here stood as it had before the great thaw.

This air, deep in the forests, had been good for years. He couldn't understand such a secret. He'd measured the air outside the borough for the last two years and while it had improved measurably since then, it was still so toxic it would kill. Why would anyone lie and try to hide this miraculous transformation--that their world had begun to breathe again. First, the rebirth of the glaciers then the forests returned to life and in spite of all that had happened to him, he smiled.

Frank stepped into the forest with his satchel of goods strapped over one shoulder. The crumbling stone walls of the first building completely surprised him. Others surely had seen this place; the clearing had been so easy to find, perhaps a landing point for whoever was keeping this desperate secret.

Frank walked deeper into the forest, stopping the first evening to rest at the base of an old oak. While darkness blanketed the Earth, insects praised the night with their melodies and branches rustled, announcing that life had returned to the wilderness. His mind drifted to Adrian before sleep took him. In his dream, they were together, married, and a small boy, played in their yard.

Morning brought a cacophony of color and sound. Birds sang melodies just for him. An eagle soared aboveWeren't they extinct? He removed Dr. Murphy's tiny solar powered computer from his pouch. Even though no longer connected to the net, it's internal Encyclopedia of Life offered images of tens of thousands of flora and fauna and helped him learn their names and traits.

By the eighteenth day, the food he'd brought was gone, but he'd learned to harvest tall grasses and tree barks, treating them with debranching enzymes before he cooked them. His laser, which usually charged slowly under the cloud-covered sun, now recovered quickly in the bright light of day. With this, fire was easy, and he found new foods to eat daily. He also learned about animals and how to trap them.

The blue sky overhead reminded Frank of the terrible decisions that led to mankind's situation, but he really didn't blame the people back in the twenty-first century. They had tried so many ways to halt the warming, but in reality, entropy and adiabatic equilibrium had been the problem. They kept adding heat into a closed system and were surprised when the temperature went up. Before they figured it out, the great thaw had begun, and Earth lost its ice caps. Only when mankind moved inside the envirodomes was the world finally saved. There, heat was recycled, never released, and in a pinch, they'd store some of it using endothermic chemical reactions. In fact, his life out here in the bush took them back a little--but not much.

Over the next months, Frank found a new life. He grew accustomed to this world, hunting and fishing, and Adrian's face gradually passed from his thoughts. He missed her, but by now, she would have found new direction. His true regret, not returning to shout to the world about the revelation of this rebirth of life, stayed repressed. He intended to find a way, but not at the expense of his freedom.

Frank had even found relief from nightmares about Dr. Murphy. He was no clone. She must have gone mad. Every human emulation ever created was born without so much as the brain function to sustain its life let alone think and reason. That's why they were keep on machines and in stasis until someone needed body parts.

The next months passed quickly, the challenge of life, consuming his thoughts and now his heart. Nearly a year after his flight from the borough, Frank sat in front of an open fire, warming away the morning chill. With winter fading and the sun rising higher in the sky each day, he thanked God for its warmth. Hungry, he stirred the coals and pushed several into a cupped stone with a stick. He moved his homemade plate over the coals and placed his last piece from yesterday's dinner in its cusp, just long enough to make the flesh sizzle before he let it cool. He ate.

These little pleasures became his best moments. He stood, stretched and walked toward the stream. His own path marked the way between the poisonous weeds under the canopied forest. Here, its verdant fragrance rained over the foot-high mist that hid much of the ground. He loved his early walks.

A few minutes later, he came to the stream. He sat, dropping his feet into the water. Then he slid in, splashing and bubbling, as it left him breathless. He leaped into the air and let out an earthy bellow, expressing his views on life. His voice echoed through the woods, and Frank's day had begun.

He left in favor to check his traps near a small group of fallen buildings. The take was disappointing, one small rabbit, so he broke its neck and placed it in his bag. Dinner would have meat. Frank reset the traps and moved on to the rest. He strode ahead. The forest was thin here, near the clearing. The birds were quiet and the fragrance of dew from the stream on the tall grasses settled across the wood as a breeze wafted over the thicket.

Then, something was wrong. The powerful stench of hot machinery burned his nose--and voices echoed distantly. His heart began to race. Shock, the rush of blood from his head, dulled his reaction to the moment. Perhaps these men had come to photograph and study, or perhaps he'd been a fool to feel safe, so near the forest's edge. Then, the sound of his name, Frank Standing tore away all illusions of the moment. Perspiration ran down his face and his heart pounded harder. These weren't police, but someone, not wearing environmental suits, was still searching for him at the clearing where he left the bus months ago. Someone who knew the air was breathable. Lying flat in the thicket, listening and watching, he remained stunned for nearly an hour in the morning breeze. The men who had intruded into his world climbed back into the bus he'd never heard and slowly moved back into the sky--away from him.

The police hadn't come here for obvious reasons. They didn't think anyone could survive here. Not even an outside biologist. Someone wanted to keep him from his story. He couldn't return home, but an idea crossed his mind. The Knoxville outpost. Perhaps if he could share his secret, he could sleep in peace again.

Frank didn't want to go, but he needed to do something. These temperate forests wooed him to stay. The mornings teased him with haze-covered mountaintops, raining dew on the verdant world below. In spite of these pleasures and his fear of being captured, he stood and returned to the stash he'd carried there the day he left the envirodome. He turned the spigots, testing them, and strapped one to his leg. Then he filled the remaining room in his pouch with dried meats and plants, the computer and his laser. That day, he began his march back to Knoxville.

Frank managed to follow the old park road out of the forests without a breath from his air packs. He traveled thirty miles over the crumbling interstate where only the hardiest of weeds poked up from its cracked surface. Using his air supply, he approached the environmental research station near the old Knoxville ruins. There, with only one air pack remaining, he walked over fields where men once farmed the Earth, before its ruination. Here he felt the specter of man's horrible mistakes, like a vulture, circling a fallen creature.

When he voiced a request for entry, the station door opened. He passed through an airlock and into an outpost that might employ two or three people, and a beep, he didn't recognize, signaled from inside his shoulder pouch.

Two gangly men in white robes entered the alcove.

"Who are you?" the tallest one asked. "How did you get here?"

Frank took a few minutes and told the story of his survival in the forests less the reason he felt implored to go there. More worldly men would have asked why, but their faces lit with his words.

"That's ridiculous. How could we not know? We're only fifty miles away."

"Someone has been lying to us all," Frank answered. "I saw people out there and they certainly knew. Take a short aerobus ride, and gather some data. Confirm this for yourselves."

He left these men with an image of hope, they'd surely never known before, refilled his airpacks and turned to leave and return to the forests. He couldn't be sure, but he suspected these men would spread the truth like water in a flood. A sense of satisfaction settled over him as he held Dr. Murphy's little computer, the one he'd found so long ago in her office the day he'd killed her. Its solar batteries, like all the others, still worked, and the good doctor had just received a message. "FOR FRANK STANDING".

Frank inhaled and opened the six-month-old e-mail that had waited for Dr. Murphy's computer to come into extranet range. It was from Adrian.

Seconds after reading it, he called for a transport ride. His bus entered the Borough of Ohio portal, somewhere above the ruins of Cincinnati. It then docked to the building address listed on the data pad in his hand. Frank moved through the waiting area. It stood empty. He strode toward the rear and suspected that madness was his guide. He pushed the door open into an operating room, filled with people dressed in white medical synthetics. His heart tried to pound its way through his chest, but his ribs held it back. Despite climate control, sweat dripped down his forehead. Frank felt something inside him pull at his sensibilities, but the time to back out had passed.

A man stood, looking his way. "What a perfect surprise. When you killed Juanita, we thought we'd lost you." He turned to a woman near the rear. "You we're right. He bought it."

Adrian stepped from the shadows, motioned to several people who immediately moved toward him.

Frank should have run, but couldn't. He was too tired, his stomach hurt too much and his spirit was broken. He opened his mouth to ask her why, but no words came out.

"Grab him." The man pointed directly at Frank's face. "We have work to do."

The men in the room rushed at him from all directions. Frank turned to run, but three large men lifted him from behind.

"Prepare for retrieval. Be delicate with this man. He has the only positronic brain ever successfully transplanted. We're going to pull it out for a download."

"What?" Frank's voice slipped from control. "Stop!"

The man, who seemed in charge, ignored Frank. "Bring in another cloned body."

"Won't you even look at me," Frank pleaded.

"You won't exist in a few minutes. With A.I. s illegal as they are, we need to keep you hidden. If you know what you are, you'll tell someone. The records loss screwed everything up. Then you vanished. I ought to cut your fingers off just to see your reaction."

Frank tensed his muscles and held his breath while the brutes lifted him to a table. "No don't!" His tall, brunette ex-fianc©e walked closer, and all eyes in the room turned to her. She stood as beautiful as ever.

"Adrian, your message was a lie!" His heart broke, and a wave of nausea swept across him, sending his hand to hold his stomach. "I came here to see you and my son." Then, arms from all different directions strapped him down to the table. Frank trembled uncontrollably while he fought back. He had made a terrible mistake, and in spite of his strength and determination, he succumbed.

Adrian leaned over him. She spoke while others moved frantically, preparing for his procedure. "Frank, I'm sorry, but you were ruining everything. You have no child. Clones like you are infertile. You were born when Dr. White planted our creation, your brain, into a laboratory body. She died last year, but we have others who have taken her place. Your brain is the culmination of years of research."

"There has to be a reason. Why you?" Frank felt the end coming.

"You are the first of thousands." Adrian's expression saddened. "No one has been out in the wild in half a millennium, and we'll help ourselves to the resources there. Before anyone knows, we'll run this world from the background like puppeteers in a show. This is my project, and I had to keep an eye on you."

The big men held Frank again, and someone placed an IV in his arm. Numbing warmth came over him, yet he remained conscious. Regardless of what happened now, the outpost researchers would spread the news about the rejuvenation of the forests. Oddly enough, two ideas danced in his mind. One he had already considered was that he was not human. This disturbed Frank, but he had never really known who he was and now he did. The second was that he loved this Earth and most of the people here, and that told him that whatever he was, they couldn't take his dignity. Before he could twitch, a doctor flashed a laser across the top of his scalp twice. In his last moments, blood crusted on his forehead, and he heard two of them speak.

"Its' a shame we can't just wipe his memory?" one said.

"Oh, we will, but we can't save the body after that."

The End

Moonbird Express Synopsis and Query

2009-11-02T13:35:00.006-07:00

I'm looking for feedback. I just revised this for my next round with potential agents. Please let me know what you think before I send these out. Any mistakes? What would you say differently, word differently, or add.

Any help would be appreciated.

Larry

SYNOPSIS

MOONBIRD EXPRESS - L. K. Pinaire SYNOPSIS November 2, 2009

In 2073, poverty is rampant in America and incoming President MICHAEL VOLPERT enters the White House with a mandate to end U.S. involvement in space. He secretly agrees to turn over the Moonbase and American Space Station to the Chinese as part of a trade agreement and dispatches an ambitious marine colonel, JACK MILLER, to use force if necessary to remove all astronauts from the self-sufficient lunar village and the space station.

Anticipating a forced exodus, RICHARD NICKELOSE from the space station, and his ex-college roommate, ANDY NELSON, Lunar Mining manager, have no intention of returning to Earth. Andy builds a space barge to take hundreds of determined pioneers to Mars.

After a year on the red planet, MATT NEWCOMB, captain of the first astronauts on Mars, loves this world and wants to stay, but can’t. His duty is to take his crewmembers home. When an unidentified astronaut sabotages their ascent vehicles to keep NASA from calling them back, Matt’s teammates are stranded on the surface. He has always believed they could survive there, but struggles to build for their future. The President promises them an unmanned supply ship, but un-piloted missions there have been notoriously erratic.

Matt and his astronauts find a methane well near Olympus Mons, establish a pumping station and use the fuel puts the northern ice cap and a possible water supply within their rovers’ reach. While returning, Matt and his crew nearly perish in a storm. After their rescue, he learns from Earth that the President is sending ships to evacuate everyone from space. He warns Andy at Lunar Mining and learns about the barge, Moonbird. It will carry angry, uprooted families of fleeing Moonbase citizens to Mars.

When the colonel’s first ships arrive at the space station above Earth, Richard leads an insurrection. He pumps stolen sleep-gas into the military vessels, subduing the occupants. He kills a guard, and the rebels hijack Miller’s ships to the Moon where Andy has incarcerated the lunar government officials. Over three hundred men, women and children flee their homes for the red world in a flying mass of fuel tanks, stolen parts and scavenged engine drives. These refugees take much of the Moonbase technology and are prepared to live on Mars and help Matt’s astronauts. Richard accepts command of Moonbird and deals with problems ranging from near-weightless cooking to a brothel. While Matt works to find critical resources on Mars, the relentless colonel follows the barge.

Matt’s astronauts fail to find water at the Martian polar cap, but later discover a cave atop a frozen aquifer. When they seal Amazonis Cavernous’ entrances, it holds air. With heat and light, duckweed grows and fills the cave with oxygen. They begin to build a village. Then, one of the astronauts confesses to sabotaging the flyers.

Colonel Miller closes on the barge, but with his fuel spent, Moonbird is his only hope of returning to Earth. A first marine assault fails when they are trapped inside the barge in crossfire between barrages of rubber bullets. When the second platoon attempts to enter, they are driven back. Miller’s downfall comes from the very weapons his first ships brought into space. Remembering the bulging veins in President Volpert’s face and the words ‘at all costs’, he is desperate to stop the barge. He cannot let these people go -- and launches a nuke. A Moonbird engineer sacrifices himself by flying an EVA propulsion device into its way, exploding the rocket harmlessly. Now the colonel pushes his last nuke out the door. Richard, while commanding the barge, severely damages both attacking vessels with a weapon, also from the Colonel Miller’s first ships, before finally destroying the bomb. The drifting bodies of dead marines in the two ships he destroyed will haunt his remaining days.

Finally in Martian orbit, Richard, Matt’s lieutenant and the barge pilot attempt to land Moonbird, despite only being able to evacuate some of the passengers to the safety of Mars. Needing more thrust than available, they desperately try to slow the barge, but it crash-lands, and six passengers die. A year passes, Matt and Richard become parents, and Andy is the first Governor. With the US unwilling to help, Russia, China and others plan to support the new international Martian Village. The food is terrible, but babies are born and a new civilization begins there. Matt’s dream of living on Mars is now shared by everyone there, and they begin to build a new future.

QUERY

November 2, 2009

Dear Agent’s Name,

MOONBIRD EXPRESS is my completed 105,000-word hard science fiction novel. In 2073, a President is elected with a mandate to end the American space program. He sells the self-sufficient lunar village and the space station to China and sends Colonel Jack Miller to bring everyone home, using force if necessary.

This novel captures the American pioneer spirit, when angry lunar settlers and astronauts must choose between abandoning their homes to spend their remaining lives on Earth -- or revolution. Astronauts on Mars are caught in the conflict when one of them sabotages their ascent vehicles, preventing the President from calling them home.

In defiance, Richard Nickelose, a space station astronaut leads a revolution while Matt Newcomb, expedition team leader, fights for survival on Mars. The insurgents leave the Moon in a space barge they’ve been building from stolen and discarded parts, and take with them the technology to survive on Mars. Before they travel far, the colonel overtakes them, exhausting his fuel. Only the barge can take him home, so he sends two platoons in environmental suits to take Moonbird, but the pioneers fight back.

I am an active member of The Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. I hold a BA in Chemistry from Indiana University. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

L. K. Pinaire

What aspect of writing proved most difficult for you?

2009-10-27T18:07:00.000-06:00

Today, I'd like to pose a question for anyone with time to post a reply.

What aspect of writing proved most difficult for you and what did you do to get past it?

Larry

The books that most influenced my reading and writing.

2009-10-26T10:25:00.001-06:00

Good morning,

Since the subjects of reading and writing can hardly be keep too separate, I thought today I'd list my top most influential books, mostly older. I’d love to hear which books most influenced you. Here goes:

The eleven most influential books I’ve read (I couldn't stop at ten.):

Last and First Men                     Olaf Stapledon

Foundation Series                      Isaac Asimov

Stranger in a Strange Land         Robert Heinlein

Brave New World                       Aldous Huxley

Childhood's End                         Arthur C. Clarke

Lord of the Rings Trilogy           JRR Tolkien

I Ching                                      Unknown

The Book                                   Alan Watts

Narcissus and Goldmund‎              Hermann Hesse

The Stand                                  Stephen King

The Mote in God's Eye                Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Larry

Reviewing

2009-10-25T08:54:00.000-06:00

Good morning.

I try to review a piece every day, to grow my networking, to sharpen my skills and to help others. It seems I'm better at reviewing other people’s work than my own. It amazes me how long a missing or wrong word can remain before anyone notices. I've found them in pieces reviewed twenty or more times over multiple years.

The technique I use for reviewing is as follows:

· I begin with a gross edit using MS Word, and then post the work on FanStory. I like their editors, which convert pieces to HTML very conveniently.

· Then, I read the posted writing and edit both the word and posted document as I work through it.

· Next, I print a copy from Word and edit from the printed copy. (I only afford the luxury of printed reviews for my own works.) I believe that reading from different medias helps me catch stuff. Of course,

· I use the Word spell checker and any help I can get.

· Finally, I keep a spreadsheet of my own systematic failings such as excessive exclamation marks and overused words, and I check my work for those items on a checklist that also includes missing quotes. I’d love to hear what methods others use.

I have also found that a review of the basics every few years is very useful. I just re-read Elements of Style by Strunk and White and am beginning on Show Don’t Tell by William Noble. I plan to complete the cycle with The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman, Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain, On Writing by Stephen King and Eats Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. I’d love to hear which books others have found helpful through the learning process.
I actively post my work at the Online Writer’s Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror and have a few items on Writing.com.
So, in summary, I review other people’s work routinely, use a method and am trying to stay knowledgeable.

Let me know what you think.

Good writing,

Larry

Good morning America.

2009-10-24T06:18:00.001-06:00

Let's start this morning by considering the difficulties involved with writing. In 1962 I was a National Science Fair finalist with a minor research project related to the polarization of light during the cycles of Cepheid variable stars. I had studied stellar atmospheres and a little bit of Chandrasekhar and at the time held high hopes for breaking into the field of astrophysics. Later in college, my professors convinced me that most people educated in that area were flipping burgers. I moved on.

Also, at the early age of about eleven, I developed a love of space travel, or at least the hope for space travel. My early reading of Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men, Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy that grew and grew and Childhood’s End, Clarke, prompted me to attempt and complete my first novel as a project for my high school junior English class. This pitiful attempt ended in a story, maybe 50,000 words written in short sentences, passive voice, excessive pronoun use and all telling with a little dialogue. I compounded the atrocity by adding two additional stories of about the same size, completing a trilogy of how mankind finds the origins of the human species -- on Earth. Novel, right?

For the next forty years I redirected my endeavors toward survival among others, worked my way though college and three marriages, the last and present one of twenty-four years and climbing. During most of that time, I wrote prolifically about rheological science, manufacturing methods and quality standards. After twenty years as a quality manager at a local manufacturing concern in Louisville, I lost my job and while unemployed, began writing.

Now, after several short-lived positions in a volatile economy, I can say I’ve re-learned the English language and re-discovered my love of writing. Probably the most difficult steps were learning to edit my own work, learning to plot a story and the tough-as-nails hard work necessary to write for the reader. I’m certainly no expert, and don’t have tons of publications (other than technical) to my name, but now I can weave a little fictive dream and others tell me they like it.

So, I’m beginning with a series of posts about writing, with the hope of sharing my experiences and possibly helping guide others to where I’ve stumbled. Wish me luck.

Larry

2009-10-23T22:03:00.000-06:00

Welcome to the new Writer's Podium where we discuss various topics of writing and publishing.

Larry