NOTHING EVER CHANGES – TUESDAY’S TALE

NOTHING EVER CHANGES

“Yeah,” he said. “So I’ve heard tell.”

Maugham sighed, then leaned over with a groan and put his head in his in hands for awhile. He rubbed the top of his head slowly as if to somehow comfort his own mind. But it didn’t seem to work.

When he lifted his head back up he looked at Steinthal.

“Do you think it will ever change?”

Steinthal looked at him and then shrugged wearily.

“I suppose that’s entirely up to the people involved. I only know one thing for sure… and even that’s not much…” and then he fell silent.

Maugham waited but when Steinthal said nothing else he just stood back up. It was obvious he was hurt though, so Stenithal moved over and put his arm under his friend’s and around his back and helped him start to walk again.

“What’s the one thing by the way?” Maugham asked as the men made their way torturously out of the ruined building.

“Oh that,” said Stenthal, as if he had just assumed his friend already knew. “Nothing ever changes much when no one ever much changes.”

So they made their way back to the river, dripping sweat, shedding blood, grunting in pain, and limping as they went.

from The Detective Steinthal

THE TROUBLE WITH YOU – TUESDAY’S TALE

“Personally I have never understood the idea that the herd is so all pervasive that you dare not leave it or the pack so all powerful that you dare not defy it. You don’t like the herd, then go your own way. Plenty of places the herd won’t dare go that you can. The pack turns on you then you turn on it. They’ll even be plenty of times you should turn on the pack when it doesn’t turn on you. That’s life.

See, it’s just a herd son, it’s just a pack. Simple as that.

This ain’t rocket science kid it’s just plain old fashioned manhood. And whenever necessary a man stands absolutely alone and entirely unafraid. But don’t pretend with me what I’m saying is so unbelievable you can’t even imagine it.

You’ve imagined it plenty. You’ve just never had the balls to act like a man about it.

So the trouble ain’t them boy, the trouble has never been them. The trouble is you. I know it, they know it, and you know it. Because the trouble will always be you until it ain’t anymore. And then the real trouble starts.

But at least by then you’ll finally be a man about it.”

From The Detective Steinthal

Steinthal talking to a low level informant and petty criminal. From one of the cases of my Detective Steinthal.

 

THE YEAR OF CHARACTER

I’m sitting here tonight (last night actually) working on the major characters that will be a part of my fictional book and novel series. I’ve spent much of the past week doing the same.

One invaluable thing I learned from James Patterson’s Master Class on commercial fiction is the importance of ongoing, serialized characters that others adore. I’ve known this intellectually for a long time based on my own reading history both as a youth and throughout my life (John Carter, Tarzan, Spock, Jesse Stone, Sherlock Holmes, Doc Savage, Batman, etc.) but looking back on my fiction writings I’ve realized that it hasn’t really sunken in until now. It had sunken into my mind long ago, but not into my soul. Not until now however. But now, finally, I am fully getting it.

I’ve always been a “Story-First” kind of guy and looking back upon it all I suspect I very much now know why. I was trained and self-trained to write stories through D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) and through game writing in general and D&D was indeed the very most excellent practice and training for story-development. But because I so rarely played and was almost always the DM or GM (Dungeon or Game Master) and was always the one creating worlds and writing the stories I never concentrated much at all upon “Character Development.”

That is to say I always let my players develop and run their characters with as little possible interference from me as I could ever get away with. Therefore almost all character development was in their hands and I become STORY AND PLOT AND WORLD FIRST and in many senses, I just habitually adopted the idea of STORY ONLY. Character-Work was for them, I was the World Man.

Not that I couldn’t write or develop characters, I did have several characters of my own I played and I developed some very complex Non-Player Characters (NPCs) but that kind of thing happened rather rarely compared to my World Building and plot and background elements development and so Character Development became a secondary and almost a background issue to me as a fiction writer and story teller. I realize now that I have for most of my life had this sort of subconscious psychological habit of developing stories in complex detail but sort of letting Character Development handle itself in a laissez-faire fashion when I did not outright ignore the issue.

But now that I realize this fault and oversight in my own writings, and the way I go about writing, I have decided that for me this will be the Year of the Characters. This year Characters and Serialized Characters become equally important to me as Story and Plot and World Building.

This is to be my Year of Character, and the genesis of the development of the Great Characters of my Fiction Writing Career.

This year I build Men and Characters and not just Worlds.

COME THE HORIZON – TUESDAY’S TALE

This is a little piece of flash fiction I wrote involving one of my detective characters, the chief one, Steinthal.

 

THE DETECTIVE STEINTHAL – COME THE HORIZON

“You know part of me really would like nothing better than to save everyone. But another part of me knows equally well that to habitually do so only makes people, especially some people, dependent, enslaved, useless, and weak.

It is entirely immoral and unacceptable to abandon the truly helpless and indigent. Yet it is also wholly wrong to save those who should be busy saving themselves.

So I won’t do either because both are evil and unwise. Even God understands that you cannot save those who refuse to change. That’s as true for individuals as it is for groups of men.

See, as much as I’d like to help you I’m just a detective, not a messiah. Therefore I can’t help your friend Sara. I can’t help anyone who won’t help themselves.

And all the evidence here points in just one direction. That boy doesn’t want help, he wants to be saved. From himself. There’s no real cure for that, and there never will be. I’ve got no trick to fix it. There is no such trick. Those are the actual facts I’m afraid, and I never argue with the actual facts. There’s just no future in it. For anyone.

If only he truly understood that. Or really cared. Because either one would probably do.

But he doesn’t and I can’t do those things for him. You know as well as I do he’d rather die before he tries either. I wish I could tell you different, my dear, but I’m far too used to the truth. It would just sound odd and unbelievable to the both of us. So I’m going to spare us both the pain and suffering of a futile effort.

He’s not here speaking to me because he doesn’t really give a damn. And you’re here speaking to me because you do.

As strange as that sounds let that be some consolation to you. Because the truth is he’s not worth you getting killed for, and there will be plenty of others to save. People who will let you help save them.

He’s not one of those people, and you shouldn’t be buried beside him because you’re too stubborn to admit that to yourself.

Live, my dear. That’s the very best help I can give to you. Because if you stay attached to him the way you are now, you won’t.”

I left it there because it was the truth and because it was as good a place as any to leave it.

She sat across from my desk staring at the floor for a long while. Then she raised her face to look at me and her eyes were watery and unfocused, as if she were looking through me and out at something on the horizon she didn’t expect to escape.

She stood up slowly, her breath uneven and shallow and short, like women breathe when they are both upset and resigned to their fate. Then she turned and walked for the door.

When she got to the door she turned the doorknob, pulled the door back slightly, paused, and wrestled with herself as to whether or not to look back at me.

Eventually, with a little shake of her head, she decided that she wouldn’t. Instead she opened the door just enough to slide out it and then pulled it quietly shut behind her.

And I knew she was as good as dead…

THE SECRET PLANET KILLER AND THE INVERSIS

In the past couple of days I’ve had two excellent ideas for science fiction stories/possible novels/novel technology components.

1. Last night, while soaking in a hot bath, I had a great idea for a science fiction story involving a planetary kinetic kill weapon employed by an alien species. I haven’t worked out all of the details yet but the weapon is so effective because it is first projected at the planetary (or planetoid or moon, etc.) target as a near massless object at near light speeds and only within reaching a certain distance from its target does it decelerate rapidly regaining its original mass.

At this “transformational point,” or “weaponizing kenesis point” (kenesis being a term incorporating both kinetic energy and genesis or transformation point) the near massless projection becomes massive again (reabsorbing its original mass which it had been projecting ahead of itself as a gravitational anomaly) and it slows by conversion to about half its original speed, but because it transforms near the target and is still traveling at such tremendous velocity (which increases as it moves into the gravitational field of the target) it is almost impossible to defend against.

The only way to detect it is in energy form as a near massless projection and as a gravitational anomaly traveling in a tightly constricted area immediately preceding the projection. But neither of those would be able to be detected by the target until the projection reconverts to a massive state near/at the target site.

To detect it you would have to both understand what you are perceiving and it would have to pass through or by an early detection system, such as a DEW Line. In effect it would be a secret or stealthy planet killer and kinetic kill weapon which could be projected from almost any direction/angle against a target and unless detected by a pre-existed warming system it would literally impact against a target before the target was even aware of its’ presence.

Needless to say this weapon would be terrifying to anyone against whom it is employed and extremely difficult to successfully defend against.

I have a couple of ideas about how others might defend against such an attack but I’m only just now sketching them out.

I also have an idea of how the weapon itself might work, but that is all entirely theoretical of course.

2. This afternoon, while walking through our woods with my children and my dog Sam I had another idea for a piece of very advanced technology. What the device would do is disrupt the gravitational field around smaller volume massive objects, like White Dwarf stars, Pulsars, Neutron Stars, etc. causing the gravitational fields they produce to rapidly oscillate and fluctuate.

The point of such a device is to create fluctuations so intense that many of the higher level energies (x-rays, microwaves, etc.) and exotic particles being produced or ejected or radiated or compressed by the lower order observational event horizons in and around such objects can be freed for practical use. The same or a secondary device is then used to harvest, contain, and utilize these gathered energies, including the associated gravitational waves produced by the initial fluctuations.

At this point I’m calling this device the Inversis. Or that is what humans will call it. It is basically a very advanced exotic energy and particle harvester that operates by creating intense gravitational fluctuations in massive stellar bodies.

Theoretically the same device could be used to create temporary fluctuations in the outer gravitational field (near the outer edge of the event horizon) of a black hole as well.

In real life such a device would require so much energy to operate, even when concentrated upon a relatively small area of the overall target that I cannot in all reality say that it would actually produce and harvest more energy than it consumed.

But at this point it is only a sci-fi story idea anyway. So I don’t have to worry about real energy costs or anything like that right now.

At this point I plan to incorporate both of these ideas as working models for technologies to be included in my Curae series of science fiction novels.

In any case it has been a nice weekend for good ideas.

THE IDEA-L IMAGE

If these images don’t give you plenty of story, poetry, song, and even invention ideas then you’re probably already dead…

This is also a Vadder’s Dream.

http://all-that-is-interesting.com/abandoned-structures?utm_source=hexagram.com&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=hexagram.com#1

MOMMY PILLOW AND THE SUGAR BISCUITS

It might surprise even those who have known me for a long time that in addition to writing tough-mined adult stories and novels I also enjoy writing children’s stories.

By that I mean not just Middle Grade and Juvenile and Young Adult books and stories (and I en joy writing those kinds of things as well) but all the way down to picture books and early picture books. My mother taught me to read very early on, about 5 or 6 (early for those days), and even as a baby she read me far more advanced and complex works that other kids hadn’t heard of at the time, like Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Aesop’s Fables, and parts of the Arthurian Cycle. I never forgot how those early stories she read me had a profound effect upon my own thinking and outlook, even as a small kid, but only later did I come to understand how it had deeply affected my mental and neurological development.

I simply never developed (or desired to) the modern claptrap idea of “stages of learning” and “age appropriate vocabulary development” and all of that other modern educational bullshit far too many currently try to mindlessly foist upon our children.

Even in the very simplest things I write I have far more confidence and faith in the mind, the active imagination of the child (and even of the baby in the womb), and the ability to understand of the child than I do in any of this self-limiting theoretical crap that passes for modern educational “expertise.” That being said, here is a very simple children’s picture book I wrote this morning. It is meant to be read to newborns and children up to about the age of four or five. The story is unfinished as yet and when I do finish it I will seek a publisher.

 

MOMMY PILLOW AND THE SUGAR BISCUITS

Sarah had a pillow
Her favorite pillow too
Her mommy made it for her
Upon an ancient loom

She wove it out of sunshine
Moonbeams and small stars
Every time she slept on it
Her dreams would wander far

Many were the evenings
Her pillow seemed to dance
Every morning when she woke
The world just seemed entranced

Sarah’s favorite sleeping snack
Were sugar biscuits gold
Although she liked the silver ones
Glazed with honey bold

The blue ones topped with cinnamon
Made her often laugh
The green ones striped with fairy dust
She saved to eat for last

The brown ones sprinkled ginger
If she shook them as she ate
The golden sugar biscuits
Shone like jewels upon her plate

When Sarah with her pillow
Would go to sleep at night
Her tummy full of biscuits
Cooked in love and light…

THE OTHER GUY

Here is a writing challenge I got today from my friend and author Kira Peikoff:

“Want to try a fun (and hard!) creative challenge? Write a 55-word story starting with a line of ten words, then nine words, etc. down to one.”

So this is my story:

THE OTHER GUY

I met the informant behind the abandoned industrial curing plant. Only he wasn’t the man I expected to meet. He nodded at me, but I didn’t respond.

So we both studied each other suspiciously.

He pulled his gun and fired. He missed because I anticipated.

I pulled my revolver. Then I fired.

He fell.

Deadman.

______________________________________________

Give it a try. See what you come up with.

THE WARSHIP NAMED WORSHIP

Earlier today a friend and I were having a discussion on Facebook about an archeological site in Mexico. He brought up the Aztec Schools of War and Worship and then made a little linguistic play between the terms Warship and Worship. I simply could not let those lines go by, I had to find a way to make use of them. So I went for a walk with my Great Dane in the woods and ruminated on the terms Warship and Worship. The more I thought on it the more I saw the obvious connections. Upon returning home I found this poem had germinated in my sub-conscious.

_______________________________________________________

The Warship named Worship that sails through the world
Her keel made of scriptures, her mast made of Words
Her bow sleek and slimming, by salt bitten deep
Her rudder all workman, her sides high and steep
She churches the oceans, she runs in the storm
She anchors at havens, her sails are adorned
With wonders and marvels that God wove in there
She glides through the waters, she cuts through the air
Preachers and Priest-men and Monks has she hauled
Cargos of Sinners and Martyrs et al,
Yet blood paints her deck rails, sweat stains her bow
Her heretics aft, she drifts when allowed
This Warship named Worship that sails through the world
She lists to her port side, her flags are all furled

This Warship named Worship a frigate she seems
When honor is High-Held and Virtues esteemed
The crows-nest is scouting and looking for God
The glasses are scanning for heavens to trod
The stars chart the night-seas, the Son shoots the day
The compass is true-north the sextant will say
When she’s finely running, goodly and sharp
Her lines are all pretty, there’s nary a mark
But scow does she labor when she’s gone astray
Her canvass all tearing, her life-boats away
Her knots are all twisted, her ties are all frail
Her guns are all rusted, she lumbers and smells
Her mid-seams are swelling, her starboard is vexed
She drinks in the bilge-scum, and drowns in the hex

This Warship named Worship was made for the War
Gainst evil and ill things, to even the score
When Wrong and Malignant and Vice take to sail
To patrol all the coastlines and blockade up Hell
Her Mission is active, her orders are sealed
She runs still at eight bells, her dog-watch at wheel
Supplying the stranded, the marooned, and the wrecked
A watch for horizons, all hands are on deck
She’s tight in her timbers, she’s tried in the storm
Repentance at ready, she’s full of reform
This Warship named Worship, when she’s sailing true
The oceans are endless, the skies are all blue
If only this ship-shape could last for all time
She’d never lose sailors, none would resign

Yet this Warship named Worship is old in the lists
She’s scheduled for dry-dock, no new men enlist
I’ve watched her from landfall to see how she fares
Are her sailors all sea-blind, or just unaware?
You can’t take to sea boys if your ship isn’t fit
You can’t take the beating, you can’t take the hit
The oceans are filled with the pirates of war
How can you meet them, so torn and so worn?
You need now a refit, to trim all your marks
God as your Captain, to Him you should hark
The shipwrights should labor, the workmen should work
Your Saints and your draftsmen should straighten your quirks
Your Women and Children should all be aboard
Everyone serving, Good Crew of the Lord
For if you want Worship to sail round the Earth
She’ll have to be remade, and given new birth (berth).