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Working on a dieselpunkish piece, tentatively entitled “The Blue Train.” People may notice I tend to skip around a bit on project. By my guess, I think I’ve got about a dozen pots boiling at any given time, and at least two of those, right now at least, are longer works. I think this one will end up a reasonable length of around 5k, though.
By six PM, his lordship was up and ready to be shaved and dressed. I had sandwiches sent up, something to tide him over till he went out. His haggard eyes were pouched and heavy as though he hadn’t slept.
“Where to tonight?” I asked as I stirred the lather, smelling of bay rum, and spread it over the black shadows on his jawline.
“Jenkins,” he said. “He’s set up some sort of game in his car on the train. Says it will be novel.”
“Novel” is not a word one likes to hear from an older vampire. So often their ideas of novelty involve pain.
“Have the front desk call me a taxi.” He studied his lapels, fingering the wide black expanse, before he held out an arm and I placed his watch, freshly wound, on his wrist. Gold, not silver. A showy piece, but one vampires would appreciate. They like gaudy on other people.
He looked at me. “Do you want to come?”
He hadn’t asked me that before. It wouldn’t be anything new to have me there waiting on him while he gambled, but previously I’d avoided the vampires. They like nonhuman blood more than human and they’re not hesitant about feeding on servants. Would his presence keep me safe?
But there were tired blue shadows under his eyes. He needed backup. He needed a friend there.
His servant would have to do.
It’s been fun, but lots of research in an era I haven’t done much with. Otoh, the point of divergence from our own is almost a century earlier so lots of leeway.
...
Another teaser from a steampunk short story I’ve been working. My codename for this world is Altered America, and this is the fifth short story I’ve placed in it.
Each time they stepped on the swaying platform between the cars, Laurel paused. Jemina couldn’t blame her. There was an exhilaration to the travel when you could feel the buffet of the passing air that was lacking when you were inside the actual cars.
They stopped outright on the last one. Laurel clenched the railing, shoulder-height for her, with both hands and looked out. Her hair lashed in the wind like an uncontrollable Medusa’s tangle.“Will we see Indians?” she said.
“Quite probably,” Jemina said.
“And buffalo?”
“Undoubtedly.” Jemina had, as was her way, researched the trip well before embarking on it. She knew the distances between cities, and had the route plotted out on the map of the United States that hung in her head, colored with elementary school dyes, unfaded over the years.
Laurel took a deep breath of the wild air, sweet grass mingled with coal smoke, before reluctantly moving to the door.
Jemina stepped after her. They both nearly collided with the passenger coming out, who scowled at both of them, dividing the look between both and them and pronouncing them equally unsatisfactory. He was dressed in the Western style, with high-heeled boots, but with a tuft of lace at his untanned neck, a dandy’s puff that somehow set Jemina instantly against him.
...
There’s plenty of room left in my upcoming online classes.
The big news is that I will be guest-editing the Women Destroying Fantasy issue of Lightspeed. We are still working out details, but it will be open subs.
I provided a teaser from WIP Laurel Finch, Laurel Finch, Where Do You Wander?
I made it onto this list of women horror authors you need to read. (Here’s the book they suggest, which is serendipitously 2.99 as part of promotion for next week!)
I talked about good things on the 27GoodThings Blog.
I sold a story to Beneath Ceaseless Skies, huzzah! Also, ten stories completed so far this year, which feels terrific.
For Writers:
Books I Talked About for You Should Read This:
Things of Note:
Timewasters!
...
She was awake. She jolted upright, disturbing Laurel, who said something drowsily. Jemina stroked her hair with her right hand, settled the child back into her lap. Her heart still hammered uncomfortably.
She looked out the window into the darkness and could see only the reflection of the car’s interior for a moment. Then as her eyes picked out detail, she saw the stars hanging far overhead, the blaze of the Milky Way, a curdle of starlight spilling over the plains that rolled out as far as the eye could see.
Chuggadrum, chuggadrum, the sound of the wheels underfoot, the everpresent vibration working its way through her body as they hurtled through the night towards Seattle.
They’d promised her a laboratory of her own. A budget. Assistants.
Things she could do without interference. That was worth a lot, for a woman in a field that held so few other of her sex.
“I have nightmares sometimes too,” Laurel said.
Jemina’s hand sleeked over the curve of Laurel’s skull, cloth sliding over glossy hair.
“We all do.”“What are yours about?”
“The war. What about yours?”
Laurel lay silent so long that Jemina thought she had gone back to sleep. But finally she said, “How my parents died.”
Jemina’s fingers stilled as though frozen. She waited.
“We were in the house and they came,” Laurel said. “My uncle said they were supposed to stay on the battlefield and no one knew they went the wrong way.”
Her voice was subdued, thoughtful.
“It would have been all right, but papa heard them at the door and he went and opened it. That was how they got in.”
Jemina saw in her mind’s eye, despite her attempt to force it away, the scene: the man mowed down, devoured with that frightening completeness that zombies had, before they moved on to the rest of the house…
“How did you get away?” she asked.
“I jumped out the window and ran away. I tried to get my brother first, but it was too late, so I ran.”
“Your brother?”
“He was just a baby. He couldn’t run.” Laurel moved her head in slow negation. “Too late.”
Jemina closed her eyes, feeling the story wrenching at her heart.
These things happened in war. They were sad, yes, but unavoidable.
The wheels screeched as the train unexpectedly slowed. Both of them sat up to look out the window.
“Whose are those men?” Laurel asked.
“I don’t know.” But she suspected the worst, given the fact that the group had their bandanas tugged up around their faces, that many had pistols or Springfield rifles in their hands.
“They’re bandits!” Laurel’s voice was excited.
“Yes,” Jemina admitted.
They waited. Around them, everyone was abuzz, but stayed in their seats.
The front door of the car swung open and two men entered, both holding pistols, red cloth masking everything except their eyes. Both were hatless, their stringy hair matted with dust and sweat.
“We’re looking for a fellow name of J. Iarainn,” one called to the car at large. “You here, Mr. Iarainn? If not, I’m going to start shooting people one by one, cause according to the manifest, you’re in this car.”
Jeminia held up a hand. “I am Jemina Iarainn.”
Her gender astonished them. They squinted at her before exchanging glances.
“You’re headed to Seattle and the War Institute to work? Some kinda necromancery?”
“Yes to Seattle, yes to the War Institute. No to necromancy. I hold joint degrees in medicine and engineering, specializing in artificial limbs.”
Exasperation kept her calm. Why should these dunces not believe a female scientist could exist? And necromancy — she was, by far, tired of that label. She worked with devices for the products of such technology, but she wielded the forces of science, of steam and electricity and phlogiston.
...
Cathay was a Chaos Mage and didn’t care who knew it. Fear and envy were fine emotions to set someone spinning into a roil, and Cathay could sip from that cup as easily as any other. She dressed sometimes in blue and other times in green or silver or any other color except black. Her sleeves were sewn with opals and moonstones and within their glitter here and there another precious stone, set in no particular order, random as the stars.
A love of gambling was part of Cathay’s definition, and so she often wandered through the doorways of Serendib’s gaming houses, whether they were the high-tech machines of the Southern Quarter or the games of chance and piskie magic played in the alleys across town, in one of the neighborhoods where magic reigned.
Cathay stumbled into Serendib through a one-time doorway, like so many others. She was walking in a wood one moment, and then her foot came down and she was in a city. It made her laugh with delight, the unpredictability of it all, and she soon learned that she had come to the best possible place for a Chaos mage, the city of Serendib, which was made up of odd pockets and uncomfortable niches from other dimensions, a collision of cultures and technologies and economies like no other anywhere.
When she arrived in the city, she had three seeds in her pocket, and so she found an empty lot, precisely between a street where water magic ruled, in constant collision with the road made of fire and iron, so daily fierce sheets of steam arose, driving the delicate indoors and hissing furiously so it sounded as though a swarm of serpents was battling. She dug a hole with her little finger, and then one with her thumb, and a third by staring at the dirt until it moved. Into each she dropped a seed, and covered it up, and sat down to wait.
It was not long till the first inquisitive sprout poked through the dirt, followed by a second. She waited for the third, but it was, by all appearances, uninterested in making an appearance. She shrugged; two were enough for now.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
(science fiction, flash story) Discretion was the company’s watchword, or so Tiffany had been assured by Maria, who lived two floors down and had done it three months ago. No one needed to know. The technician was a thin blond youth, the left half of their face a conservative faux-tribal tattoo medley, almost retro, dressed in a bland-patterned coverall. They carried a slim silver box, briefcase shaped and sized, the handle set on one of the smaller sides.
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