Brane and brane, what is brane?

FTL is a necessary weasel of Space Opera. Not all space opera, but it is as generally accepted as is the ability of terminal tuberculosis sufferers to sing an extended aria in that other form of opera.

All of the methods and terms are essentially hand-waves. Some touch lightly on ideas in physics that might do something that, if you squint, vaguely resembles faster-than-light travel, but we skate over all the impossibilities and, in the end, it is no more scientific than reversing the polarity of the neutron flow.

In any case, I'm gonna use wormholes.

The main thing they give me is one big hand-wave that ties together multiple implausibilities into one pill to swallow. In a way I hope will be amusing enough that the readers will go along for the ride.

So we've got the quantum foam, tiny vacuum energy fluctuations. Where we part from physics is that in this universe, they can "clump." Anisotropic distribution forming semi-stable solitons. So, basically, tiny wormholes are constantly forming, lasting for a short time, then coming apart. They are largely outside the cosmological universe and thus exist in multiple places at the same time.

(And yes, black holes, especially quantum black holes, aren't handy tunnels. Well, shush.)

Now, to get them to do what some of the plot requires, they have to have a very selective distribution. Have them everywhere in the universe and the effects would be visible on cosmological scales. Have them clump around gravity sources and they'd change stars in ways that would be astronomically observable.

I could give them a goldilocks zone; assume the radiation of active stars inhibits formation of the solitons, for instance, but that they also don't form well in interstellar space. For reasons. I'd really rather not use the old saw that they are attracted to "life" (however we define that), but it would certainly be handy.

For the purposes of story I'm saying they aren't conventionally gravitational but tend to go where dark matter goes. Which is also anisotropic, but only in certain places (so that part isn't cosmologically significant). 

In any case, it can get very clumpy around these dark matter concentrations, and if you are clever monkeys, you can do some technical things and open a stable wormhole. It still requires such difficult steps as making exotic matter, and the chaotic nature of the clumpy wormhole foam plays out a lot like a particularly rambunctious nuclear reactor; quantum embrittlement and point failures, meaning not only does it cost a lot of tech to build the thing, but you have to have a well-developed industrial base keeping up with replacement parts and other maintenance.

But on the flip side, you get power back. Lots and lots of power. Basically vacuum energy extraction and there is some fear this is destabilizing the entire universe (the old false vacuum problem) but so far the practical thing is that these wormholes tend to rip the universe a bit.

That is, the micro-holes start appearing down a spreading dendritic network, like roots of a tree. And eventually nodes appear where the right civilization could start up a new wormhole.

The first one might not have been artificial. Or might not have been on Earth. But anyhow.

Hand-wave, hand-wave, and a starship can, by applying enough power (and maybe a little exotic matter) open semi-stable wormholes long enough for it to pass through. Which since this is based on encouraging the naturally clumping micro-wormholes, means the best routes to take are along the  Lichtenberg figures spreading from a stable wormhole.

So there are lanes, or maybe currents. 

The idea of the vacuum energy -- done through maintaining a stable wormhole -- is that it puts a top level to the energy pyramid I was getting into with the battery stuff. Ships are largely possible because they carry some very dense fuel (H3 possibly) that is possible because the civilization sending them out has the power available. Power that is essentially a natural resource, and a rare one at that (that is, a place where the holes got really clumpy). So it isn't an exportable technology. They can only send out stored power.

I might not even need gates for travel. Given the right dendritic lanes, ships pretty much explain everything. Oh, and they might get some kind of artificial "kick" if launching from around a node.

The other silly thing you get from this is that the unstable micro-holes happen at planetary surfaces just often enough, and are just big enough, they provide a weird sort of panspermia. The interesting thing here is that they aren't just transporting primordial amino acids. They can transport seeds, possibly even small animals.

As long as the transported material is intact enough and advanced enough relative to its new surroundings, it provides the ability to Galapagos fresh worlds with, let's face it, terrestrial analogs. Since the wormholes are random and rare and more developed life is going to be influenced rather less by small numbers of competitors, the ecologies do diverge, especially the more evolutionarily developed examples. 

There's more hands I can wave at this one, horizontal gene transfer etc. etc., but basically this means the film can be shot within a day's drive of LA. After humans have encountered a few biomes, they've even identified a few template biomes; "This part of the planet is falls within the parameters of a Vc template; temperate rainforest, coniferous analogues, cool and humid."

And means once you get done playing with tamed wormholes on your bottled energy, you can set down on a place with breathable atmosphere and possibly even edible flora and fauna.

And lastly, since you can't bottle them, create them, or carry them, you can only make use of this wormhole stuff where it is already occurring. No black hole grenades for you.

Starbase

Revisions on The Early Fox are going so very slowly. It isn't a lot of fun to go back again and again to a thirty-page document on everything you got wrong, then try to figure out how to apply those fixes to an 80,000 word novel. I keep having to take a break, both because this takes a lot of concentration, and because it takes a lot of emotional stamina.

No closer to starting the next book, then. Which I still think should be SF. But wading around in Penny's adventures, spending a big chunk of the day with her narrative and working in her voice, I can't help but want to see her in another one.

I have three images right now. Or call them fragments of scenes. There's a novel drifting somewhere between them, but one that still lacks a central plot.

A dying tech billionaire, a man with strange ideas about transhumanism. He wants to do a thing that sounds on the surface insane -- something about "mental renewal" or regeneration -- but after long conversations and some other things she has learned, Penny supports him.

Penny's friend Amelia, the American comic-book fan she met in Paris. Several phone calls over the course of the book, with Amelia exploring her own peculiar comic-book like theory of what has really been going on behind the scenes through Penny's adventures.

Penny serving at a consciously retro diner. That is, it wears a futurist '50s dress, chrome and rocket ships, but is actually serving soy beef patties and smart drinks -- expensive ones, too. And she's not here because she needs work; she's here to investigate something scary that's happening behind the Happy Days mask.

What ties it together is something that looks a lot like a data center; a tech center, an industrial park, served by a company town which is a utopian designed community. Yes, with all the failings of that paternalistic approach that have been well-known for about a hundred years now. 

You know, Elon Musk actually built one? Yeah. We really don't learn from the past, do we.

BTW... that company town in Texas has a tiki bar, too.

Rewrites

 I've just gotten to chapter two.

This is new to me. Having a detailed set of notes, but more than that, having notes that came from an outsider. So it took a week just to digest them and try to shape them into what I was actually going to do to the narrative. And get everything in order and compiled into a single file.

The first chapters are hard because first chapters are always hard. You are trying to simultaneously give the reader enough to understand what is going on, and give them some reason to care. You can't get to "Bob is in trouble and you like Bob," without explaining a little of what the trouble is and who Bob is. But every word you spend on the latter, is time in which the reader still doesn't care.

I've revised before, but usually on a larger structural scale. Even if that does require re-doing entire chapters because the way they were before didn't support the new vision. What I've never had is a chance to revisit those opening chapters with all the knowledge I gained through writing the rest of the book, and really pick and chose what to show the reader and in what order to entice them along.

Aiyla's lakeside stroll just got more urgent, and more dangerous. And she got a name.

Penny is getting slightly more backstory. The way I set up the first chapters to begin with, I was heavy on atmosphere but let the reader pick up on the clues about what was going on the same way Penny was. Now I've got more explanation. And I'm making her more active, too; on the surface, a passive filter, but inside, being analytical and smart. 

But it is slow going.

I'm also still adjusting from leaving my full-time job of the last ten years. Lots of paperwork to do. I've still got NDAs to sign and phone numbers to transfer. Adjusting to new schedules and also trying to figure out how to spend less on food. Finally getting around to re-arranging my place (didn't have the time or energy before) and making some appointments (like optometry) I was also putting off.

Plus, you know, three days in the hospital with an infected leg.

My latest Fiverrrrrr hire is starting to worry me. She promised me a dialogue. She's got a deadline of the 12th and she's had the materials in her hands since the 5th. I'm beginning to think "dialogue" is going to be her doing the whole thing at the last minute, and shooting me a final package with a "any questions?"

At least one of my prior artists is still around. She did good work, we got along fine, she's up to draw me a nice Clovis Point. For the dinkus.

***

I have a plan

 

I'm working to "rescue" the Athena Fox series, not because I'm in love with it, but because that's six years of back catalog and having more books out there always benefits the writer. There's a lot of things to be done, which is why I wasn't able to attempt this before.

Identify market and approach with an outside advisor. I have one now and have some confidence this one will work out.

Revisions. I'm still collating notes from two beta readers and of course myself, so I can get The Early Fox fixed up. It is actually in pretty good shape but could benefit from a bit of tightening. I am rather less looking forward to working on the others, but will probably go through beta readers again; weighing the potential value of an already-written book against time that could be spent writing a better one.

Editing. Yeah, I want a human edit pass. I haven't figured out yet if I can afford it.

Possible new titles, definitely new covers to fit the identified market approach. I have a stack of Shutterstock pulls for the latter and intend to mock up my own consistent set of recovers for the whole series, then hand those off as concepts to an artist -- preferably a solo human artist, not the front end of a cover mill. Which is also expensive, and I'm on fixed income now.

A release scheme. Probably staged, under new ISBNs. I might purchase my own ISBNs this time. I'd love to do ARCs for reviews, but I don't know if I'm up for that, too.

More cooking at home, because I want to be conservative with my expenses, and I've been meaning to get back to that. But I don't want to be too ambitious with it yet. I need to clear out more space in the kitchen. And that means cooking has to stand behind general cleaning and re-organization.

I have plans but they basically require I lose from thirty to forty percent (by bulk) of what I own. I've done most of the obvious. Now it is down to sorting out old cables and electronics, clothing I don't wear, books I've been keeping in the closet...and then increasingly challenging questions, like do I want to get rid of the musical instrument parts (including a half-built ukulele)?

My hope is to lose the two big bookshelves, shift the two small bookshelves and add a matching third, both opening up more bare wall for space and light and also freeing an entire wall to rack up some musical instruments. In the kitchen, even more ambitious; completely clear one end and stick acoustic material up there so I am less self-conscious about practicing musical instruments at home.

Revisions on The Early Fox are probably going to take a week. Deliverable on the marketing plan is seven days as well. So that's probably the focus for at least a week and, especially if I get into editing and/or revisions on other books immediately, at least the rest of the month.

That thing about making a solid back-catalog is in context of writing stuff that isn't another Athena Fox adventure. I have a floating list of potential books, with two currently close to the top and ready to go.

Those two are a weird contrast. All Systems Blue (working title) is robust in the structure; technology, philosophical ideas, structures of society, etc. But as yet I've done very little on the surface look and feel.

The Tiki Stars is all about the surface. There's really nothing under it. But since the surface is so vivid and mostly already constructed for me, writing it is likely to be easier and it is also (plotting concerns aside) closer to being ready to write.

Or my marketing consultant might convince me to throw more behind Athena Fox.

(I really do want to do another American episode, specifically, a blue highway adventure; dropping off a Greyhound bus into some small town and discovering a big problem. The stumbling block is while I've thought of half of dozen plot hooks already, I can't seem to get archaeology into the mix.)

Football and Knife

I'd heard somewhere that it had been suggested there be a pistol in the Nuclear Football, so before "pressing the red button" and killing millions, the President would have to look one man in the eye and kill him.

Well, turns out the original story is weirder. Roger Fisher, of Harvard Law School and a major thinker in Conflict Management, suggested in the March 1981 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, that this be implemented -- in the form of an implanted capsule containing the launch codes, and a butcher knife. The President would have to gut one of his own aides in order to launch those weapons.

That is way too good not to be in the novel. Not because it is a strikingly weird tidbit of history, but because that tension between the remote-control deaths of millions and the twist of a knife up close is what drives the central conflict and resolution of the book.

Anyhow. My knee didn't reach football size, but I had an episode of cellulitis that got caught maybe twenty-four hours before the danger window. Spend two days in hospital getting antibiotics on an IV drip. That, and still being on oral antibiotics and a tight Ace bandage wrap, means I haven't been up for getting my place straightened up properly.

Now that I'm retired and all. Not that I've exactly stopped working. My old work has had me on the phone or coming down to drop off keys for at least a week, they still have me on the roster as a consultant, and I interviewed to light Earnest in July.

So I guess this blog is coming back into its name. I'll be doing theatre again. And I'll be on a more limited budget.

So I've been poking around at new writing projects, plans to go forwards, market analysis...and I'm finally ready to go hit the revisions on The Early Fox. Or The Drake Equation, which is a problem I'm looking at seeing if Fiverrr can help with. Should I re-stage? Probably. Should I extensively revise? Probably not. Should I re-name? I...don't know.

My confidence in Fiverrrrr is low at the moment. I started looking at the beta readers, and one that jumped out advertised: "I will a service of beta reading." Clicking on the details, she claims to be an English speaker, and goes on to inform that, "Over the years, Ive developed a sharp, detail-oriented eye..." 

Ah, yes. Details other than apostrophes.

As usual, it is a futile project. What I want is someone to A) look at the series as currently presented at KDP, including reading sample chapters, B) confirm or disagree with my current understanding of the correct market, and C) give an opinion on changing the titles.

What I am looking at is people who want me to define genre and hand them all the operational keywords, at which point they will then as efficiently as possible (quite possibly using AI) throw into some boiler-plate blurbs and SEO. With this desire of theirs for maximum return and minimum variation strongly supported by a vendor (Fiverrrr) framework that wants to turn every transaction into a Set Menu.

At least one thing is solved. I have a basic idea for new covers for the whole series, and I've started hauling assets into Affinity Photo. I'll rough them up, then go out to a proper cover artist (possible Miblart again) for a package deal of taking my mock-up and doing their magic on it.

Ben Franklin was not an alien spy

I was thinking this morning about urban fantasy. And then I wondered if there was a way of using magic to break history.

And not with the usual hidden history garbage. Something that happens now, in the contemporary world, that makes the fun stuff of pseudo-history --  the mysterious secrets of the ancients, glowing swords, and multi-level ancient tombs -- possible now when it wasn't how history unfolded then.

Well, I did think of one. "The Fae Lords."

I'd just read the first book of an urban fantasy series that very much did not have a masquerade (as TVTropes calls it). In this series, the magic came back, and was so deeply antithetical to tech it made a ruin of Atlanta. Well, the whole world, but the setting is Atlanta. What I mean is an urban ruin; the kind of charm of big city urban decay that got people so riled up when lead additives to gasoline were still a thing.

Life goes mostly on but the usual underfunded infrastructure is now dealing with lycanthropes and necromancy in addition to car crashes and fentanyl.

Well, that's an idea I like. 

So here goes; "The Fae" (whatever they are) show up suddenly in the modern world, complete with most of the powers and attitudes you'd expect in many contemporary depictions. And they fit right into the existing power struggles and other issues. Humans don't suddenly get the ability to throw magic around. Tech doesn't stop working (the Fae would like you to think that, but mostly they just like to hang wifi jammers around their spaces).

And they are fascinated by human history (there's some reason I haven't figured out yet). But this is the shallow fascination of cheap AI YouTube channels, pushing the fast-and-fun myths (water was so foul medieval people lived on beer) over anything with more substance.

The Fae love that kind of stuff (and maybe other aspects of pop culture...haven't gotten that far). And...this is something that has been going on for a long time already anyhow in this our real world...rich dilettantes are buying up historical things in order to more fully realize their fantasy version of that history. Only these particular arrogant, ultra-rich, strangely popular tech-bros can work magic.

The whole point of this (something that seems like a sideline, and almost certainly is a sideline to what they are doing to economics, politics, etc.) is that space I was trying to explore with Athena Fox; both having the real history of the Palais Garnier, and having an actual living breathing ghost-haunted Paris Opera House complete with hidden passages, half-masked weirdo in the basement, and a non-OSHA chandelier.

Basically, a mad wizard did it.

Anyhow.

I gave up on the plan of kicking another novel out in six months while I continued to work and put money into the 401K. Had a chance encounter of my own (plus a couple of other things). So it was time to quite the day job and go back to contracting. For the moment, I actually have time to write.

Which was great, because the more I looked at it, there was no way in hell of getting any book kicked out in six months. "Blue" is coming along (now with the subtitle "tales of the Fairy Ring." Probably). I was spending time on energy mostly to nail down the easy stuff first, and have a firm foundation to grow the rest of the world-building.

Now, I've got several books and at least one TTRPG campaign under my belt to know better than to succumb to world-builder's disease. But that doesn't mean there isn't work to do, and I may have underestimate how much work.

Which makes two reasons why the Tiki book might be what I should be aiming to write next.

The world-building of the tiki book seems simpler, as it isn't attempting to make sense of the used furniture. Also, as I realized taking notes today, it comes out of pulp, which doesn't delve into structural reasons (what set SF aside, at least as argued by Campbell and others). There's a revolution, but who really cares what the true causes were, or who is in the right, or even who wins. Instead it is a situation where adventure can ensue. We may have a rebel character who has their own strong emotional reasons for what they do, but this is character, not world-building.

The other reason, though, being the tasks of writing a story that isn't a linear whodunnit in a single POV. I have to re-learn how to construct different kinds of plots and different ways to present them. Now, the Tiki book is episodic. So more like a string of short stories. Blue adds the complexity of more continuity with these episodes being parts of a long continuous story.

But basically the one is like a story-board; a form that lays out the writing problems in a way that is simpler to understand.

Cooking

I am looking forward to getting back to cooking. I was gifted a wok. And I found a new cookbook.

 I have a grocery store next door with a great selection of fresh produce, bulk produce, and harder-to-find ethnic items. And if that always fails, I have a few of these:

I hope I don't regret not taking the whole box.

I'm also hoping to finally get some cleaning done. And, well, writing. Less money coming in, though -- a lot less. But it was time to make the move. For that, too, I hope I don't regret it.