Beyond Limits – Part 1
I wanted to go back, and redo one of my previous stories very badly. It’s always a thing with me, that nagging “what-if” sort of internal dialog. Hindsight is 20/20, and being able to look back now on some of my earlier work, I have things I wish I had done.
However, that path lies madness. That path lies twenty reworks of a script, and then throwing up my hands and becoming an accountant. No. Instead, what I will do is this: I will forge ahead with a new story, and continue to gather what I have learned into it’s crafting.
Doom’s Gatekeeper had some exceptional promise, and I loved what I ended up doing with the story of Hayoan. It was good stuff, and I don’t regret ending it where I did. I do still feel terrible at my lack of Mind Like a Hive work. But that’s okay, what I will probably end up doing is going back to that story at a later date, and making it into a serial short story, ala Temple in the Stars. It’s definitely something worth doing.
So, for my new story, I would like to have more of a morality tale. My inventiveness is in a good space, but I need to dig deeper, and create stories with layered meanings. Stories of rich depth and complexity. That might be asking a bit much of my nascent career, but it’s important that I continue to use this space as a chance to stretch myself and grow.
Most of all, I’m glad that this week has become a point of such stability and hard work for me. I got my first entry to my editor, and if I hustle hard enough, I can get it into the hands of the beta readers today. Then, Friday of next week, I get to have my first launch. That’s a big deal. I know it’s on Kindle’s Self Publishing platform, and that there are a lot of people who feel that’s an inappropriate gateway for publication. Some of them are even right, and it is entirely possible to put things up which disgrace the written word.
However, I have avoided all of those pitfalls. I have assembled an amazing editor, gotten the assistance of a wonderful artist for the cover art, and have a close group of highly educated and well read beta readers. All in all, my first work will be a highly refined piece of literature, self-published piece of literature or not. It makes me feel profoundly grateful and supremely proud of my achievement. I never quit, I never gave up on myself, and I kept on chugging until it was done correctly. My first 10k word submission was a giant dumpster fire, and I didn’t panic. I just tore it down to it’s base elements, and rebuilt it into something better.
Dunno about you, but that’s some real deal author type stuff right there.
Beyond Limits – Part 1
A sickening, wet plumphff sounded throughout the cockpit, and Cary nal-Tensire let out a furious expletive. “What the wet blumphart was that?!” She hastily unraveled the woven fibers of her restraints, and dashed down the central root-vein towards the engineering pod at the rear of Sunchaser. As she hurtled down the corridor, the phosphorescent flower bulbs that lined the walls opened as she approached and closed as she left, making her a human-sized willow-the-wisp moving towards the engines.
The door membrane irising open gave Cary a view straight into her worst nightmare. The naglath pool was splattered with the remains of it’s occupant. The three large tentacles which lead from the pool to her ion engines were a ruptured mess of sickly grey blood and green skin. It looks like some sort of bomb went off! The pool occasionally splashed as more gore dropped from the ceiling of the hardened pod.
Cary’s job had just gotten a lot harder. She had at least three naglath wurmlings in the nursery. Assuming they haven’t eaten one another Cary brooded as her mind worked furiously to get her out of this mess. The ship began squealing, the wood creaking and moaning as it lost the necessary momentum to maintain it’s place within Yggdrasil’s channel. Eventually, there was an enormous shudder, and Cary had to grab at the wall to keep from pitching to the deck. Sunchaser had clearly re-entered normal space, It was inevitable, but Cary still fumed at how much time this would cost her.
It had taken her a full week of constant acceleration in normal space to enter Yggdrasil. Between the time it would cost her to clean the engine pod, drain and refill the pool, convince one of the wurmlings to adopt the pool, and then wire it into the engines she’d be lucky if she was back into Yggdrasil within the next two months. Given the urgency of her mission, this was the worst possible thing that could’ve happened to her.
Which is exactly why it couldn’t have been an accident.
To be continued…
Wurmfully,
Justin
