I have promised myself I will write 365 days in my blog without a break. So far I’m at 277 days. Right now, I’m at the point where I wonder why I’m doing this. Some days, I have no ideas and the prompts aren’t to my liking. Today is one of those days.
I’m all about Big Audacious Goals. But writing daily for a year is not a Big Audacious Goal. A BAG is more like writing a novel or getting it published, and even that was only true for the first time I’d done it. It’s a goal; I’m sticking with it.
I need a Big Audacious Goal soon. I’ve been through writing a book, getting it published, doing a book fair (locally), publishing the book that was my problem child for a while … I can’t think of anything that represents a new challenge in the way that determines a BAG. The current book is a challenge, but not in the barrier-crossing BAG way.
So I’ll have to stick with my small goal for now, and hopefully get to 365 days of blogging. And then take a break, of course.
I am writing a serialized novel called Kel and Brother Coyote Save the Universe and I now have the general shape of the two arcs — one being Kel and Brother Coyote’s chemistry, another being growth arcs for the main characters, and the plot arc that deals with the link between the restricted class-planet Ridgeway III and the exploitative colonial corporation InterGal. I think I will have at least 9 more stories, which should put me at 35-40K words, or a novella length.
Here’s an excerpt from the latest episode:
In a strange room, on a strange planet, Kel lay on a strange bed on the floor, wrapped in tight bandages across her ribs. She glanced up at the glittering suncatcher that her shipping partner, Brother Coyote, called a Sun Mandala. Kel, hopped up on painkillers after a spectacular rescue of the leader of Ridgeway III, dared not look at the wall where the reflection of the mandala shimmered. If she did, she might see something again, and she didn’t want to deal with that just then. The prisms sparkled and made her sleepy. She closed her eyes …
She heard the doorknob open and opened her eyes to Brother Coyote and a floating carry unit. He shut the door and sat down next to Kel, folding his lanky legs up beneath him. The gravitation unit sank gracefully to the ground. “Mom sent me up with dinner from the buffet line. She’ll be up in a few minutes.”
“The party’s still on? After an attempt on her life? That’s a pretty gutsy broad — Oops,” Kel giggled. “I suppose I shouldn’t call the Convener of the — the Moot — a gutsy broad.”
“Mom would have no trouble with that,” Coyote chuckled, pushing back his blond hair. “As for the party continuing, that’s a Ridgewayan cultural tenet. The celebration must go on. We remember too many times we’d quarantined ourselves from various fevers on the planet, so we celebrate any time we can.” Coyote lifted the lid of the carry unit; savory smells enveloped her.
“How do you get carry units on this planet if you’re a restricted trading planet?” Kel wondered aloud. “I can’t make that make sense.” Kel found herself wishing her tongue weren’t quite so loose. “It doesn’t have an internal grav source, of course. I’m levitating it. Luckily it doesn’t take too much energy.” Kel sat up and Coyote transfered the tray to her lap.
“Ok,” she said. “What’s this?” Whatever it was, it smelled much better than meal bars. “The stew there is made with native mushrooms and a legume that developed into a landrace here.” The stew, she noted, was an intense golden color, and from the smell, she suspected that Ridgeway III had a local equivalent of curry powder. “Then, with that, is a mess of greens that combines diaspora culture DNA tailored for this planet and some local weeds we’ve cultivated into crops. The two grow together symbiotically, which is a bonus.”
Kel took a small spoonful of the stew. “Take a bit of both individually. Then take a bite of them together. Then try a little of that paste on the edge of your plate with them. It’s important to be creative with your food,” Coyote instructed.
“Tell me, how does one get creative with meal bars?” Kel smirked, but she tried the food anyhow. “Wow,” she said after a few minutes absorbed in her food, which smelled warm and mellow, contrasting tartness and a deep mellowness. “This is amazing. What do you use for spices?”
“A lot of things, largely local. We have a tropical belt which accepted diaspora spices, and we have many native herbs. This planet has immense agricultural potential, but only if it’s cultivated carefully. And by carefully, I mean as close to wild as possible.”
“So you’re hunter-gatherers instead of farmers.” Kel finished her meal and considered the pastry on the tray.
“Well, not hunters, unless you count mushrooms. We’re wildcrafters, we’re permaculturalists, we’re companion planters. We’re tree climbers, plant researchers — did you know there’s a plant here only pollinated by one particular miniature fruit bat? The guy’s not much bigger than a bumblebee and climbs into the fruit’s flowers and gets drunk, then visits other flowers on a bender. He finally passes out in a flower and sleeps until the petals drop out from under him.”
“You must have a lot of farmers if you can’t factory farm.”
“Yeah, but we don’t have a lot of factories. We have them for the technologies we’ve chosen, but we also have artisans and craftsmen. You might notice this tray is wooden.” Indeed it was, Kel noted. “We have a stepped-down economy, and not a lot of us go off-planet, as you might guess.”
Kel found herself looking at the reflections of the sun mandala, which were mere shadows on the wall as twilight fell. Her sight blurred as she found herself sucked into a vision — Keyli, the Convener of the Moot for Ridgeway III and Coyote’s mother, strolling down the hall with a feline creature that came up to above her knee, trotting beside her on a leash.
“Coyote,” she said, instantly regretting the words when they fled her mouth, “Does Ridgeway have felinoids the size of Terran Shepherd Dogs?”
Words Like Me 